Pic : Venice   in Middle Ages Did you ever think you will see such a day? Across the globe, governments are doing everything to ensure people stay home. Some are urging us like Singapore, some are coercing like Russia,  some are imposing curfews like India. World leaders are holding press conferences covering wide range of subjects all the way from Billion $ Covid-19 response stimulus to asking people to stop hoarding tissue paper rolls. I read an article recently with a picture of Rajasthan and the headline said "will this town in India, be the next Italy". Being a hopeful Indian, I eagerly opened to read further, only to be disappointed. No points for guessing that the article was not about the progress but about Covid-19 effects. There are a hundreds of differences between India and Italy; economic status and population being the most obvious ones, but maybe we can draw subtle parallels between Italy and India, in-spite of these stark differences Italy and India

Coronavirus a.k.a Covid-19 is the invisible, invincible virus that came and reset our laptops and entered our heads while the anti-virus was scanning. Alas, it was scanning the wrong place. Like psychologists suggest, every human has two sides. While we are naturally getting attracted to the startling apocalyptic news items, we have a hidden die-hard optimist inside,  who must be intensely looking for signs that point to the end to this mayhem. Today we have more than 300,000 Cases across the world and "new cases" graph is only going up and up. The death toll graph is  pointing upwards as of now and from the ~100,000 "closed cases", 12% have ended up with death.  These numbers can push up the stress levels, for sure. But, only if you feel like you have to protect yourself from it. Don't get me wrong, but for a change try pretending like you already have the virus and just don't want to pass it to anyone. This way, complying to the directives of Socia

Have you ever read about the cognitive behavioral concepts? These concepts are formed around understanding human cognitive distortions, unhelpful behaviors and emotional regulations that we form through our lives. It is but obvious, that every human being goes through many experiences through out their life and while going through them they learn about themselves and form beliefs about their own capabilities. Every belief that a person has of  him/her self is based on the past experiences. For example, if I have tried to play a sport a few times and have not been able to do well and in-turn have had bad experiences of facing associated humiliation, I would think a thousand times before I can try another sport. This is because I have formed an unhealthy opinion that I am not good at sports. On the other extreme, if I have baked a cake and everyone has loved it, I will have high level of confidence to try baking cake or cookies or anything else that I think needs similar skill

Women : We are same, we are unique, we are Awesome! Ever wondered, why we need L'Oreal to tell us that "we are worth it"? In the year 1973 this phrase was launched in an ad and it caught on instantly as it resonated with the women then. It definitely must have been an excellent marketing campaign launched about 40 plus years ago. While, it tapped an untapped marketplace within the women community and increased business multi-fold, it gave a much needed boost to more women to focus on self care and beauty. It also gave women a sense of empowerment and spoke from their point of view at a time when it was a new and shiny concept. This somewhat still seems pertinent but we must acknowledge that the world for a woman has changed drastically and still is constantly evolving. Today's women are characteristically diverse. Thousand years of patriarchy has affected the lives of women in varying magnitudes and this has caused us to also have varying degrees of self