Twinkle Khanna's Latest Blog On Akshay Kumar's Obsession With 'Balls' Is Damn Hilarious!

7 am: The baby¡¯s birthday is coming up and the party planner sitting across is showing me images of a Ferrari-themed birthday party though I have tried explaining that the party is for the four-year-old sitting on my lap, and not for a 53-year-old man with two gold chains around his neck and an unsightly comb over.

¡®Peter rabbit please,¡¯ I insist, ¡®with a few cutouts and balloons.¡¯ The party planner then coos to the little one munching away on a chocolate chip cookie, ¡®What is your favorite color, should we do pink balloons?¡¯

BCCL

The baby frowns, ¡®I want brown balloons like my belly button,¡¯ she states, clearly and articulately about the color of her skin.

Unlike Baba Ramdev who once famously said that he was denied the Nobel Prize only because he was ¡®black¡¯. At which point I hope Asian Paints promptly sent him a shade card with a note stating, ¡® Brown is not the new black¡¯.

11 am: I am just going through my Twitter notifications when I spot a gentleman, apparently so uncomfortable with the fact that I still go by my maiden surname that he desperately tweets multiple times, ¡®You are Kumar not Khanna, got it?¡¯ Navigating slowly through a maze of craters on our good old Mumbai roads, I find myself rather annoyed. I don¡¯t know if it is the ¡®got it¡¯ that gets to me, or just the fact that I have answered this question so many times over the years. So I type back, ¡®A lot of people bring this up, though not as stridently as this gentleman-Khanna it will always be. #MarriedNotBranded¡¯

BCCL

Marriage is not a hostile takeover where a larger company buys out the small one, and the latter has to alter its logo to its new master¡¯s. Changing your name is, and should be a choice.

But after 15 years of being married, people still ask me this question, ¡®Beta looks odd na, why didn¡¯t you change your name?¡¯ Isn¡¯t it odder that only one partner has to redesign their identity, wipe out their past, while the other one goes through the transition unchanged?

But then cities and roads are frequently renamed as well to eradicate their history, like the recent Race Course Road to Lok Kalyan Marg. So that the people currently cruising along that path can feel they are walking on new ground, one they can shape to their will. Cities, roads, women ¡ª alter their identities, wipe out their past and stamp your own seal on them.

4.30 pm: Sitting at my desk, I work on the final draft of my new book with the editor cracking her whip all the way from a place called Delhi, though it could well have been renamed Indraprastha or Hastinapur if a certain minister had his way.

7.30 pm: The baby is ready to sleep and I sit at her bedside with a book of fairy tales in my hand, when she suddenly exclaims, ¡®I want to be a princess, don¡¯t like that bad witch.¡¯

The words ring in my ears, the ¡®bad witch¡¯ of medieval times now has a new moniker, ¡®bitch¡¯.

BCCL

The ¡®bitch¡¯ in the news these days is Hillary Clinton with the New York Times running a headline that referred to her as ¡®The Bitch America Needs¡¯. A bitch implies a woman who is perceived as unlikable, perhaps because she stands her ground, raises her voice just a smidgen higher than the man constantly interrupting her, in the manner of an incoherent Donald Trump who interrupted Hillary 51 times during the 90-minute-long presidential debate. A woman who does what needs to be done without bothering about pleasing people along the way. All fine qualities when it comes to a man apparently as no one refers to such a man as a dog. And therein lies the chewy bone of contention.

But coming back to the book in my hand, I look at the little one who has both our last names ¡ª Khanna, Bhatia ¡ªto pick from; she can choose one, drop both and pick a third or use a symbol like the singer Prince did, it will all be up to her. And I tell her, ¡®It is not bad to be one you know. Witches were once princesses who got tired of their knights in shining armor falling off their high horses once too often, and finally decided to take matters into their own hands.¡¯

She may not completely understand what I am saying today but I have put my message in a bottle, and it will keep floating in the sea of her subconscious, waiting for her to open it when she needs it.

bollygama.com

9 pm: The baby has to go dressed as an octopus to her playschool the next day and as usual I have left this to the last minute. The man of the house comes home, weary from a rather grueling day at work that started at five in the morning. He spots me sitting on the floor, surrounded by hollow tubes, pipes and an old T-shirt, I moan, ¡®I have to somehow make her into an octopus and send her off tomorrow.¡¯ And he looking at the mess on the floor, asks, ¡®How will you fix all the testicles on her?

Cackling, I add, ¡®I couldn¡¯t find any testicles at such a short notice, so I thought I would just stitch some tentacles to a T-shirt instead. Do you think it will work?¡¯ He rolls his eyes in exasperation, muttering, ¡®Slip of the tongue ok, you know what I meant!¡¯ I laugh, ¡®It¡¯s alright, seeing the way men watch cricket and football, I realize they have a strange obsession with balls!¡¯

And then as I sit trying to put this octopus together, I am suddenly thrown off balance as Cleo, my large German Shepard, with her bright red collar, a wagging tail and a slobbering tongue, jumps onto my lap. She is a bitch in the truest sense, a word used for her as a simple definition of her biology. But used for women, when the world, unable to deal with a strong woman, attempts to belittle her by comparing her to a barking animal?