I have been single for a very long time now. Only a year and nine months this time around, so you might say it hasn’t been all that long, but I think of it as kind of…cumulative singlehood over the years. I started dating when I was eighteen. I’ve been in love, I’ve had my heart broken, and I’ve not jumped from one relationship into another. So yes, there have been enough days and months and years of built-up singlehood for me to think of myself as perpetually single.

And it’s not a bad thing, this perpetual singlehood. It’s a bit solitary, but it is not empty. My life, without the comforts to be found in a relationship, is also free of the encumbrances of a relationship. And the fact of the matter is this: since no couple is perfect, neither is any romantic relationship. Which means there’s drama, there’s disappointment, there’s happiness, there’s joy. Pretty much the same emotions that you experience as a single girl too. I am lonely sometimes, but who isn’t? I read, I watch movies, I hang out with friends, I work, I travel, I spoil the people I love with gifts, I get laid a bit, I tweet a lot. It’s a good life…

[Read the full story on POPxo]

I’ve been off TV for a while, so this little bundle of joy (NOT) has arrived in my life a little late. It’s the Patanjali Saundarya vs Aishwarya ad that’s been airing for the past month and a half that I’m talking about. It’s a straightforward ad if you want to sum it up in a sentence: ‘Girls, use the Patanjali Saundarya Swarn Kanti cream if you want flawless, pimple-free skin’. But the messaging of the ad as a package is just so mind-bendingly awful that you can’t really do justice to it (or to a lot of women) by doing that one-line summary. For this ad, you see, is also about the ‘Good’ Indian Girl vs the ‘Not-Good’ Indian Girl.

[Read the full story on POPxo]