Why women wear the damned things, I sometimes wonder. Those women wobble around, they take longer to get from here to there, they often trip on small sidewalk imperfections, and they regularly fall and get hurt.

I will confess: my gut reaction is that a woman’s IQ relates inversely to whether that woman tends to wear accident-inducing high heeled shoes. I think of women who flock to such shoes as women who aspire to become Barbies or Princesses. Before you write a comment to protest, I realize that my gut feeling is a gross over-simplification. I also have an analogous gut feeling with regard to men who aspire to higher forms of masculinity by rushing to engage in dangerous activities such as motocross or hang-gliding . . .

Contrary to conventional wisdom, I don’t think that women who wear high heels are “hotter” than those who don’t. To the contrary, I’m annoyed by high heels. Most woman who wear them look uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that they become objects of pity than sexiness. But many other men (and women) disagree with me. For proof, take a look at almost any advertising !!

Anyway, let me start with the facts – It has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt that wearing high heel shoes contribute to numerous serious injuries.

• Corns and calluses. Thick, hardened layers of skin develop in areas of friction between your shoe and your foot.
• Toenail problems. Constant pressure on your toes and nail beds from being forced against the front of your shoe by a high heel can lead to nail fungus and ingrown toenails.
• Hammertoe. When your toes are forced against the front of your shoe, an unnatural bending of your toes results. This can lead to hammertoe .
• Bunions. Tight fitting shoes may worsen bunions — bony bumps that form on the joint at the base of your big toe.
• Tight heel cords. If you wear high heels all the time, you risk tightening and shortening your Achilles tendon.
• Pump bump. Also known as Haglund’s deformity, this bony enlargement on the back of your heel can become aggravated by the rigid backs or straps of high heels.
• Neuromas. A growth of nerve tissue. A neuroma causes sharp, burning pain in the ball of your foot accompanied by stinging or numbness in your toes.
• Joint pain in the ball of the foot – This causes increased pressure, strain and pain in your forefoot. Shoes with tightfitting toe boxes can lead to similar discomfort.
• Stress fractures. Tiny cracks in one of the bones of your foot.
• High heels have also been linked to overworked or injured leg muscles, osteoarthritis of the knee and low back pain. You also risk ankle injuries if you lose your balance and fall off your high heels

Rupert Evans, an accident and emergency doctor at University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff said injuries could lead to long-term problems. Women should stick to shoes with heels less than 4cm (1.5in) if they wanted to avoid a trip to hospital, he advised. Dr Evans said he has seen an increase in the number of women being admitted to hospital with injuries caused by the fashionable footwear. Injuries ranged from sprained ankles to broken bones and dislocations – and in some cases caused permanent damage.

What kind of permanent damage? chronic knee pain, sprained ankles and back problems.

So why do women wear high heels?

After Mangalore, now its turn of Bangalore, and may be soon after that the whole of india is going to be affected by it.

The responsible person, as usual, is the chief of Shri Ram Sene, Mr Muthalik.

This time around, he has made funny stand, and even funnier statements after that. Read more about it here, in the latest Times of India Article .

All I am wondering is, in a democratic nation like ours, how come any leader, who he calls himself a saviour of tradition but at the end of the day, is just a dirty politics person who want to hog the limelight for all the stupid reasons, gets to make this kind of statement and get away with it. I mean, at that rate, it would be difficult for any two different gender people to come out togethr on V-day cause once caught Muthalik would get them married, irrespective of their status of relationship, being just friends, or even sibling like.

Anyway, I was happy to read in the newspaper, the views of other people like Renuka Choudhry [ Union Minister - Food and health ] Who would come down to Bangalore to take precautionary measures against Muthalik and his Ram Sene People. [ UPDATE : in today's newspaper she made a nice statement.. read it here ]

I was also happy to read the outrage against it, on Twitter, which became a hot trending topic for the day.

And in the blogger world there were mixed responses. But the best one, which made me smile, at the attempt of Gandhigiri, like Vimoh has done is here

Rock the V-day all! at least if nothing else, a free wedding is waiting for you!!

Well, I specifically used the word “recent times” cause I am normally a hyper active kind and there is always one or other thing that I keep my self busy with. But recently I’ve been much busier, with my elder sister’s engagement coming up next month, also the passion for photography and learning more about it that drives me to indulge a few hours of my day in either reading, or experimenting, and again this month I’ve taken up a few writing projects too. so over all, this month is the busiest time of the year. Although I’ve great vacations to look forward to, One in August at my sister’s Engagement ceremony, and another in October. Hopefully a bike trip to northern [himalaya] regions. Gosh, I am talking about my vacations, and not the topic I started this post for. let me get back to that. So yes, it was one of the busiest day, cause at the end of the day, we, a group of motion photography enthusiastic people at FTFM [ First time film makers] ended up shooting four small documentary films! Which is in itself a record breaking success cause, its really hard to manage that into a mere 12 hours time,specially when atleast 40% of the people are actually meeting for the very first time, as in real time. Of course, we have interacted online before.

So lets see at the day’s happening one by one, shall we?
The People I remember the names of, and are the most important to the whole project, are Mehul Upadhyay [The filmmaker], Meshank Lakhia [the idea-list!!], Purvesh Shingala [The Source[from matrix]!], Manan Gajjar [ actor and a great support in making the idea of the AIDS film possible.] also, Ami and Sumit [two students from DA-IICT/the enthusiastic ones] Harshad and his dance group Summit [actors/the great faces in the documentary films].

They started the project at 7 in morning, with their first Short-Documentary “Antyeshthi”, at a crematory placed in Bapunagar. I wasn’t able to reach that early, due to unavoidable circumstances, so I do not know much about how that went. Though I plan to watch the making of it, shot by one of the crew members, to understand it better. Anyhow, when they left that venue to reach another at Gujarat Univercity, for the next Documentry called “Lifeline”, I had reached there.

That is the place where the camera was set up and Meshank was letting the actors know of the whole scene and how it should go. Mehul was busy making the ‘making of the documentary’. And Purvesh and the cameraman, were ‘lost in translation’ of technical details.

This is Mr Mehul Upadhyay himself, in a very original mood of his, with his favorites things with him, cameras!:)

Now that’s Meshank, and Harshad, posing after the second documentary finished. The one that was related to Anti-Tobacco Movement. Although we ended up smoking [not literally though] a full packet of cigarettes to make that scene more realistic. Oh well, we shall call them necessary evil and forget that bit!

From there, we moved to Changodar Industrial Estate, here is where the next documentary “ Save Daughter” was going to be shot. We reached within 40 minutes and again after reaching that workshop, there were tossing of ideas about location and placement of the next shoot. Constructive ideas were flying about, and it was a good time to be in, though I was also interested in taking my favorite types of photographs, macros of rusty chains and screws and other stuff.[ Do check my Flickr account to see those.]

Here is where, our Director Sir is making the actors know what’s in the script and how it should be done. Of course he is working with nuts/bolts and etc, Surprised already, that whats the connection between that subject for documentary script and this location? well, wait till the short film is out, then you can also appreciate the irony as we as brilliance of the script.

In both the pics, people are in their basic instincts, all lost in doing what they are. Mehul is shooting the documentary, Meshank is shooting him making that documentary, Sumit is capturing the images with his Nikon F10. And me, shooting them, with my Nikon Coolpix p2! [ come on, did you really try to find me in those pics? ]

By 6ish, we were done with that shooting too. And thus we headed back to Manan’s place, None had had anything to eat since morning, and the amazing part was, none actually remembered that yet. But at Manan’s house, we chilled out for a while, eating Daalwada and Drinking Thumbs up before we start shooting for the last documentary of the day. It was when we literally chilled, relaxed as newspaper reporter came in, and interviewed all of us on one-to-one basis. After he went, Ami and Sumit thought it was time for them to leave too.

That left us, 7 people. 6 guys and Me. We started shooting the last documentary. This time with Manan as an actor.

He was a bit inhibited at beginning, but quite enthusiastic, and thus it worked out quite well as he shed off the shyness on Mehul, Purvesh and Meshank’s coaxing. We had ourselves a few laughs here too. Thanks to Meshank and other guys, even though we were tired we had good time.

But it was already late for me, as I’d an hour of journey to be before I reach back at my place. And so I had to leave, in the middle of the forth documentary after playing my part. Those guys probably stayed till 10ish to finish up from there and go to their homes to relax.

Over all, that was one hectic day, cause the whole journey back, I was feeling the tiredness in each of my nerve. Though it was a productive day, and that was the main source of the excitement and happiness I felt.

well, at the end of the day, I ended up deciding to take more part in such activities from now on. Of course, that does mean digging out my old short films that I’d made before, just for the fun of it, and share it with those guys to properly work on it.

I’m typing this days after that happened, cause the schedules in this week were hectic as well, I’d almost no time to sit down and type it out. In these days, A few friends have contacted me about this, and shown interest to join and Work in FTFM.
Its a good thing that word is spreading, and as far as it does, this venture shall keep rolling.

Best of luck to all of us!

Ekta Paneri.

This is a newpaper cutting of Divya bhaskar.

The center part of the top of the page is article about us! Oh and in the photo, I’m there too, the only girl!:)
The title in the top-middle says: Online friends of yahoo, belonging to one gruop, made 4 short/documentry films in 12 hours of time!
More things, and translations of the whole news article will be the topic of next post! Kudos to all of us guys!! yaay!!!

Ekta.

Where is the bloddy democracy!?

Where the hell is the freedom of speech!?

If it was because they thought terrorists use blogs to communicate and spread, why don’t they stop emails, and for that matter kill the internet,phones, and even snailmails for that matter. I mean, no communication would surely serve the purpose of not letting any terrorist communicate!! It’s be pretty childish to come down to such level, but after DoT came out with this ban, I’ve started to doubt the responsible people’s IQ levels!

Every technological invention has its advantages, which can be used for good or a bad purpose. And you cant really stop people from using that technology. Its a personal thing, a pure matter of choice, and individually one should be punished for making a wrongful or sinful choice. Why should a whole community suffer from a few bad people’s wrong use of it. Where is our india going if this is what the outcome is after 7/11 mumbai blasts!

I’m so pissed off, and am not going to keep it cool or not talk abt it. Wether if that means DoT have to ban my blog, or put me behind the bars, because I’m going to fight for this till the ban is taken off!! This is totally unacceptable for me, and should be the same for the other indian genuine bloggers who use public blogging sites like typepad and blogger.com

What surprises me more is the dictatorship that they are showing off by simply doing it. Haven’t they ever thought of any consequences? Aren’t they smart enough to see where this ban will lead to? Do they really think indian people will take it lying down??

I mean, this happened the second time in less than a month or two, in my enviornment. First was the ban on the movie “fanna” which was totally childish and for political reasons. I admire Narendra modi for what he’s doing, what he has done so far, And he wasnt even actively involved in banning that movie, still his name was used as such. And unfortunately Fanna was not released in any of the theatres around, which to me, came out like a shock. If it was a public protest, they should have let fanaa release, and let people decide whether they want to watch it or not, and then people could have shown the dislike for Aamir Khan’s statement by not going to watch fanna. But putting a ban and not letting it release, is like a large knife cut on the freedom of the choice for people here.

And this is repeating again, this time with a second controvercial issue, blogging used by terrorist. Its even sounding so funny to me, i cant even imagine being it true. I blog from like 3 yrs now. I have been surfing and bloghopping a lot. And so far, I’ve never seen any terrorist write on a blog about when/where/how he is going to blast such and such place at such and such time. [ infact, if anyone who reads me, has seen someting like it, let me know..I'd love to see that blog] No kidding, but that notion seems so ridiculous to me.

Anyhow, If they think, banning a blog means they can ’stop’ terrorists communication, then they are not just acting childish, they would prove to be having IQ in negative numbers. Why blogs, I know i sound quite repeatative, but still.. Why?!

*Sighs*. Why none of the DoT people has ever thought of putting a proposal of banning weapon making?!