A young mother's 'size zero' concern

March 18, 2009

What is size zero?" asks my daughter, squinting at a caption beneath a glamorous photograph of a reed-thin female in the newspaper. "Roughly your size, the size of a ten year old", I say frowning. "It says here that the woman is a coveted size zero. What is coveted, amma?"

Amma is struck dumb. I could have explained a coveted degree, a coveted achievement, a coveted dream even, but I was stumped by a coveted "size". But an intelligent ten-year-old cannot be warded off so easily. "Er� it means something that one desires, wants," I mutter.

"So women want to have a child's size? Women desire a child's size?" she persists. I adopt the coward's way out of the labyrinth. I pretend to be deaf.

"Don't you have anything to read? What about that Enid Blyton Adventure of the Pantomime Cat, was it?" I enquire. "That? I already finished that one, last week", she sniffs and walks away.

Left to myself and that glamorous photograph, I carry on an imaginary conversation with myself. What if I had answered her truthfully? How would the conversation have run?

"Some women want to have a size zero".

"Why zero?"

"No fat, basically-zero fat".

"But the Science text says, to be healthy you need fat, minerals, vitamins etc, etc. So is the text wrong?"

"The text isn't wrong. Our expectations of what make us attractive sometimes go wrong. With zero fat, one's hormones can go for a toss!"

"What are hormones? And toss? As in toss a ball?"

"Forget it!"

"So do you want to be size zero too, amma?"

(I sit up alert. Time to be damn honest. Remember the agonising moments on the weighing scale, the envious looks at the flat tummies of those models in TV... the sighs and the memories of a former self un-afflicted with the "muffin top" syndrome).

"Ah, sometimes even the most prudent tend to be foolish too. I wouldn't mind being slimmer but I wouldn't want to look like you, sorry, I mean like a ten-year-old!"

I am grinning to myself, albeit like the Cheshire Cat, when daughter walks into the room again.

"Bulimia Nervosa. What is that? Can I check the net?"

"Where the hell -- sorry, heck -- do you get such doubts from? And, NO, do NOT check the net!"

"You asked me to read the newspaper every day. Says, someone famous is suffering from this stuff. What is it? Is it like cancer?"

To think that we call innocent toddlers "terrible twos"! My little one wasn't giving me half this trouble!

"Cough, cough... yeah, something like cancer... I mean... people eat and then puke and then eat... I mean to stay thin� Gosh� something like that. Are you sure you finished that Enid Blyton?"

My daughter gives me a condescending look. I wish for an uncomplicated world where ten year olds were happy reading Enchanted Wood and The Magic Faraway Trees. This generation, it seems, read too much news.

"So it is a puking cancer, huh? And coveted size zero sometimes makes you puke?"

Oh, Lordie, have mercy on my soul! I gave up the fight and admitted defeat.

"I don't know, dearie. Frankly, I don't know. Tell you what? Let us watch Prince Caspian on the laptop!"

A bright smile permeates the serious little scholar's face. Round one won!

Just as I am inserting the DVD she reflects, "Not all things are worth coveting, huh?"

Her hapless mother decides to type an article.

The author is an IAS officer working in the UP cadre. She is the proud mother of two daughters.

LOOK WHERE OUR MONEY IS GOING????

LOOK WHERE OUR MONEY IS GOING????

Revelation on Swiss Bank Accounts

"who can save india no one knows where tax payer money is going "

Revelation on Swiss Bank Accounts
This is so shocking . . . . .
wish black money deposits was an Olympics event . . . . .
India would have won a gold medal hands down.
The second best Russia has 4 times lesser deposit.
US is not even there in the counting in top five !!
*India has more money in Swiss banks than allthe other countries combined !!!!*
Recently, due to international pressure, Swiss govt. agreed to disclose the
names of the account holders only if the respective govts formally asked for it.
Indian govt. is not asking for the details . .. .
no marks for guessing why ????

We need to start a movement to pressurise the govt. to do so !!

This is perhaps the only way, and a golden opportunity,

to expose the highand mighty and weed out corruption !!

Please read on . . . . . and forward to all the honest Indians to .....

like somebody is forwarding to you . . . . . and build a ground-swell of

support for action !!*

Is India poor, who says?

Ask Swiss banks With personal account deposit

bank of $1500 billion in foreign reserve which have been misappropriated,

an amount 13 times larger than the country's foreign debt,

one needs to rethink if

India is a poor country?

DISHONEST INDUSTRIALISTS,

scandalous politicians and corrupt IAS, IRS, IPSofficers

have deposited in foreign banks in their

illegal personal accountsa sum of about $ 1500 billion,

which have been misappropriated by them..

With this amount 45 crore poor people can get Rs 1,00,000 each.

This huge amount has been appropriated from the

people of India by

exploiting and betraying them.

Once this huge amount of black money & property

comes back to India , the entire foreign debt can be repaid in 24 hours.

After paying the entire foreign debt,

we will have surplus amount, almost 12 times

larger than the foreign debt.

If this surplus amount is invested inearning interest,

the amount of interest will be more than

the annual budget of the Central government.

So

even if all the taxes are abolished, then also

the Central government will be able to maintain

the country very comfortably. .

Some 80,000 people travel to Switzerland every year,

of whom 25,000 travel very frequently.

'Obviously, these people won't be tourists.

They must be travelling there for some other reason,

'believes an official involved in tracking illegal money.

And, clearly, he isn't referring to the

commerce ministry bureaucrats who've been

flitting in and out of Geneva ever since the

World Trade Organisation (WTO)

negotiations went into a tailspin!

Just read

the following details and note how these dishonest industrialists,scandalous politicians, corrupt officers, cricketers, film actors, illegal sex trade and protected wildlife operators, to name just a few, sucked this country's wealth and prosperity. This may be the picture of deposits in Swiss banks only.

What about other international banks?

Black money in Swiss banks --

Swiss Banking Association report, 2006 details

bank deposits in the territory of Switzerland

by nationals of following countries :

Top Five

1. India ---- $1,456 billion

2. Russia ---$ 470 billion

3. UK -------$390 billion

4. Ukraine - $100 billion

5. China -----$ 96 billion

Now do the maths - India with $1456 billion or $1.4 trillion

has more money in Swiss banks

than rest of the world combined.

Public loot since 1947:

Can we bring back our money?

It is one of the biggest loots witnessed

by mankind -- the loot of the Aam Aadmi (common man)

since 1947, by his brethren occupying public office.

It has been orchestrated by politicians, bureaucrats and some businessmen.

The list is almost all-encompassing.

No wonder, everyone in India loots with

impunity and without any fear. What is even more depressing

in that thisill-gotten wealth of ours has been stashed

away abroad into secret bank accounts located in some of

the world's bestknown tax havens.

And to that extent the Indian economy

has been stripped of its wealth..

Ordinary Indians(now recently named as slumdogs, by proud Indian Film Stars)

may not be exactly aware of

how such secret accounts operate and

what are the rules and regulations

that go on to govern such taxhavens.

However, one may well be aware of

'Swiss bank accounts,'

the shorthand for murky dealings, secrecy

and of course pilferage from

developing countries into

rich developed ones.

In fact,

some finance experts and economists

believe tax havens to be a

conspiracy of the western world

against the poor countries.

By allowing the proliferation of tax havens

in the twentieth century, the western world

explicitly encourages the movement

of scarce capital from the

developing countries to the rich..

In March 2005,

the Tax Justice Network (TJN) published

a research

finding demonstrating that $11.5 trillion

of personal wealth was held offshore

by rich individuals across the globe.

The findings estimated that a large proportion of this wealth

was managed from some 70 tax havens.

Further, augmenting these studies of TJN,

Raymond Baker -- in his widely celebrated book titled

'Capitalism' s Achilles Heel : Dirty Money and

How to Renew the Free Market System' -- estimates that

at least $5 trillion have been shifted

out of poorer countries to the

West since the mid-1970.

It is further estimated by experts that

1 %

of the world's population holds

more than 57 % of total global wealth,

routing it invariably through these tax havens.

How much of this is from India is anybody's guess.

What is to be noted here is that

most of the wealth of Indians parked

in these tax havens is illegitimate money acquired

through corrupt means.

Naturally,

the secrecy associated with the bank accounts

in such places is central to the issue, not their low tax rates

as the term 'tax havens' suggests.

Remember Bofors and how India could not trace the ultimate

beneficiary of those transactions because of the secrecy

associated with these bank accounts?

*IS THERE ANY ONE WHO CAN SAVE INDIA ?*

Shall I be able to fulfill my dreams?

Sunday 1st February 2009, 11:35pm, New Delhi.

All is going fine as per wish. However, will it be like that in future? Day after tommorow, We all are gonna see each other after sometime. Feeling gud in advance! :)