How Do I Explain "Gay" To My Ten Year Old?

My elder son is just about the age when he starts having an opinion on everything. Thankfully, he has not yet reached the age when he shuts himself out! Normally hubby and I discuss the day’s events and gossips with some amount of bitching. Of late my son has started participating. Not obtrusively of course. Just eavesdropping. Its when he doesn’t understand something and asks me the meaning that I get to know that he has been listening all along!

Like he asked me the meaning of "gay" two days back. I had to tell him Dumbledore was gay. He asked – who was he gay with. I had to say - Grindelwald. He explained to me Dumbledore and Grindelwald were just friends – how could they be gay? He further explained to me – I have a friend Kevin, we are very good friends, does that mean we are both gay? I hastened to add - of course not! Then, I am ashamed to admit – I retracted my statement that Dumbledore was gay.

So is it the time to tell a ten year old about birds and bees and human nature? I think he should learn about it in the natural course, He takes an interest in science. He watches animal planet and I am sure knows how the young uns are born. I encourage him to watch BBC and news. Am I being a coward? I have a feeling that if I try to explain about "human intimacy", I will end up looking very foolish! Children his age may know all about it, at least have an idea about it – like we did and pretended not to! So I will save myself the embarrassment, this time at least.

And something else – we have consciously stopped bitching about our friends, colleagues and neighbors in front of the kids ;-)

Is There Plastic In Kurkure?

Is there plastic in kurkure? Kurkure is a highly popular Indian snack liked by young and old alike. In fact its got a pretty heavily devoted following amongst the children. Its a Pepsico product. Lately there has been an email circulating that there is plastic in kurkure and if you burn kurkure you can see the plastic melting. For mothers with an addicted brood of kurkure eaters and followers thats tough news (or welcome news, if thats your cue to start the kurkure de-addiction process, whichever way you tend to look into it). Kurkure of course has responded with an ad "No Plastic in Kurkure," which means the allegation has found a response amongst kurkure users and maybe also has affected sales.

We have known for long that Pepsi and Coca Cola and maybe other MNCs take the lives of Indians lightly and dont really follow the same stringent rules they follow in Europe, USA and Australia when they manufacture their products here. There are enough loopholes in our processes to enable them to get away with it. And why blame them. Our system co-operates with them, as it co-operates with all big business that provides revenue.

It upto us the end users to discriminate and turn back to home-made products for "health"

Here's Kurkure's side of the story.

Barack The Magic Negro

Here is the "Barack The Magic Negro" song from youtube. The song was first aired at a Rush Limbaugh talk show in 2007. A Republican Party major operative and a Republican National Committee member, Chip Saltsman, has distributed the song in a CD to colleagues in what is being described as a "joke". The song is to the tune of a song "Puff the Magic Dragon".