Just read this by Kristen Kemp, who is a big-time freelancer based in New York:

"There's no ending point in my field. When I've finished an assignment, I hope to have nine more on the horizon. If I don't have a project to begin immediately, I obsess about lining stuff up. This loop, this obligatory freelance cycle, warps the spirit. A writer may seem to have the charmed freebird schedule, but we take our hits. Freelance writers receive one accolade for every 15 criticisms. The good hacks get one acceptance for every 10 pitches. Loneliness and self-deprecation creep in as we wait for checks that arrive on the backs of snails.

Less taxing but equally time-consuming are the tasks we do for others: Freelancers are the secretaries, personal chefs, messengers, and pack mules for loved ones who are stuck at the office all day. The schedule is frenetic, unstable. We are busier than anyone gives us credit for, always loathing ourselves while we do God-knows-what.

Mild depression sets in as a bad day turns into a lousy week then becomes a shitty month. Self-doubt intensifies. I go from thinking I'm successful to fully believing I am a worthless failure with the talent of Milli Vanilli. I conclude that people become head cases only after embracing this profession. Would Hemingway have become an old man if he'd choen to be a dog walker? If Sylvia Plath hadn't spent her time waiting for editors to accept her work and then sign her checks, might she have used her oven more safely?"

I agree completely!!

What's been a shitty week is turning into an even shittier month. Have been down with the nastiest case of food poisoning that I have ever, ever experienced - 103 fever, stomachache, throwing up - the works! Someone tells me that some kind of stomach flu is going around in Bombay...so be careful of what you are having. Trust me, this is BAD!!

While stuck in bed, have taken this as opportunity to catch up on loads of celeb gossip from my other journo friends in the entertainment field...and there is lots of it. Madhuri Dixit's having a second kid (although why, with a doctor husband, would she say that she "doesn't know how it happened", I have no clue), Saif Khan and Amrita Singh splitting up and about to file for divorce (never saw this coming - always thought of them as the perfect couple, people who made it work despite all the odds stacked against them), and, of course, steamy updates on the Anil Ambani-Sushmita Sen link-up!!

Actually, after working with the film industry people for four years, I can literally count the number of sane, heads-on-their-shoulders kind of people that I have found. Only four - Tom Alter, Ashutosh Gowariker, Nana Patekar and Kajol. I am sure there are more out there, but I don't know of them yet!!

I really admire Kajol for the way she has settled into married life within a joint family...it cannot have been easy for someone as independant, successful and in the media glare, as she is. Her priorities have always been very straight. As she told me when I met her a few days back, and asked her why she had refused Babul, which would have been the perfect comeback vehicle for her: "Frankly, I haven’t really made up my mind whether I want to start doing films again. I am listening to a lot of scripts, I am talking to a lot of people but I have honestly not made up my mind. And now I can't only go by the script - it also depends on how accommodating the people making it will be, whether they will be able to take it into consideration that I am a mother with a small baby and that’s just not easy. I don’t want to do anything that makes me feel guilty – if I am not going to enjoy it then what’s the sense of doing it?"

There are not too many stars who would spell it out so frankly. Most of them would nicely accept the film and then just accept the directors and producers to fall in with their demands and the kid's schedules. Kudos Kajol!! Or, maybe, the kudos should go to Tanuja, who taught her daughters "never, ever to lie – this was very, very categorically drilled into our heads by my mother. We could not even twist the truth a little. It was a HUGE deal, when I was a kid. I knew that if I ever lied I was going to get the crap beaten out of me. And that has remained with me till date!" Which is probably why you never have to read between the lines when perusing a Kajol interview!