During the “100% talk time free offer” promotion period, you will receive 100% talk time free simply by purchasing $5.00 or more of trueroots service.  The more trueroots service you buy, the more free talk time you’ll receive.

Hurry the offer ends on 22nd September 09, 9:00 a.m. Eastern time.

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During the “Up to 1000 Minutes of Free Talk Time” promotion period, you will receive free talk time simply by purchasing any denomination of trueroots service. The more trueroots service you buy, the more free talk time you’ll receive, up to 1000 minutes.

Subscribe to trueroots today & get up to 1000 Minutes of Free Talk Time.

Visit trueroots promotions page for all details.

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Your mother is special, call & tell her how much you care.

Trueroots celebrates Mother’s Day with a special Buy One Get One Free offer. Subscribe to trueroots today & we will match the purchase on your account with the same denomination for free, i.e should you subscribe for US$ 5, then trueroots will top up your account by an additional US$ 5 for FREE.

Enjoy talking!

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While some complain that Mother’s Day is a Hallmark holiday, celebrations of motherhood can in fact be traced back to ancient times. Ancient Greeks celebrated Rhea, the mother of the gods, while ancient Romans had a holiday to celebrate Cybele, a mother goddess. The tradition of celebrating mothers in springtime can be traced back to the celebrations of the goddess Brigid, which occurred at the first milk of the ewes. This brief history traces the way embarking on motherhood moved from being women’s sole purpose, to an assumption, to a duty to produce heirs, and finally, to a decision for the woman herself.

Ancient Times

Around 600 BC, Spartan girls were trained in athletics like running, discus and javelin, in order to become strong and healthy mothers.
In 431 AD, the Council of Ephesus first recognized Mary as the “Mother of God,” resulting in the spread of the cult of the Virgin Mother.
In the early years of the Roman Empire, women had little power: they were expected to be mothers and run household tasks. Infertility was grounds for a divorce. Women did not have a choice between having children or not, and also were not able to overrule the husband if he wanted to get rid of a newborn. After birth, babies were placed at the father’s feet. If he picked the child up, he “recognized” it as his, but if he left it where it was, the child was left to die by exposure. Later, as women gained economic power, Roman mothers exercised a genuine influence over family decisions.

Medieval Times

Medieval people had a special reverence for motherhood, in many ways inspired by the idolization of Mary. Motherhood was thus honored as an almost mystical ideal. Men were expected to show lifelong deference and respect to their mothers. Mothers of kings even held their own courts and led influential factions in royal politics.

On the downside, the medieval diet was low in iron, which women need more than men. Iron deficiencies meant many women were frail during childbearing years, and death during childbirth was common. In general, women died much earlier than men – but if they survived their childbearing years, they often lived longer than men. Later, changes in agriculture that brought better nutrition significantly raised the average woman’s life expectancy.
Women generally had 4-6 pregnancies over the course of twenty childbearing years. With a high rate of miscarriages and still births, women were either pregnant or nursing for most of their adult lifespan. (Up until the 18th century, 25% of children born in England died in their first year.)
For women of all social classes, raising a son to adulthood was the only means of securing their own support in old age.

Early Modern Mothers

Motherhood in early modern times has been described as “nasty, brutish, and far from short” – like Medieval women, early modern women spent about fifteen years either pregnant or nursing their children. Mothers wrapped their children in swaddling bands, thought to make limbs grow strong and straight. There are some accounts of peasant mothers hanging their swaddled babies on hooks to keep them out of the way while the women performed their exhausting amount of daily chores. Babies were also carried out to the fields and placed near where their mothers worked, sometimes secured in trees.
The Reformation was key in upgrading motherhood to a teaching position. Protestantism held that mothers were expected to read the Bible to their children, and to instruct their children in reading and religious knowledge. Of course, women were still restricted from official positions in the church, and many women in lower social classes remained illiterate, but the foundations of women as educators were laid.
The 17th century also laid the groundwork of a different cult of motherhood, as breastfeeding became a moral issue. Even wealthy women were encouraged to breastfeed their own children, although many still relied on wet nurses. This new emphasis on the joys of motherhood and celebrating domesticity would become the full-fledged “cult of motherhood” in the 18th century.

Industrial Revolution

While motherhood usually refers to the direct personal care aspects of mothering, the woman’s ability to contribute to the income of the household can also be considered a form of motherhood. So, it’s natural to expect that an economic force like the Industrial Revolution would reshape the role and perception of motherhood.

The effect of the Industrial Revolution on women’s employment was mixed. On the positive side, some claim that new labor opportunities developed. However, with limitations for women (legal and otherwise), the classic division between the man as provider and woman as domestic expert began, the division of labor principles of the Industrial Revolution pushing a further, parallel division of social role.
Working-class families that needed to pool wages to survive would tend to have more children, so as to have as many working hands as possible. Women not only formed a part of this familial labor force, but had to struggle to manage the greater domestic strain of having bigger families.

1930s

The 1930s marked a radical shift in family structure and the ideals of family life: a ‘good’ mother did not work, and women who did pursue careers were stigmatized as selfish women, devoid of a proper maternal instinct and nature. The Great Depression only furthered the need for a mother to keep the family together, while the man was out trying to provide for his family.

1940s

The role of mothers became even more crucial and demanding with husbands and sons off to war. The war years caused most families incredible hardship. Around five million war widows were left alone to cook, clean, and care for the children. Making up for the workforce lost overseas, many women were also trying to hold down factory jobs which demanded long hours. Stresses and strains of separation and war trauma caused a spike in the divorce rate after the war.

1950s

Marriage and birth rates soared at the end of the war, and women were again placed in charge of housekeeping and raising the family. The 1950s encouraged the ideal of the ‘stable’ and ‘model’ family and the American Dream Ray H. Abrams’s article, “The Concept of Family Stability” (November 1950), emphasizes the materialistic bent of this dream: “the ideal family, judging from the advertisements, blurbs, and social pressures of our time, is also one that it is constantly endeavoring to raise its standard of living by security better houses, automobiles, education, radio and television sets, and in a not too aggressive fashion by attempting to climb the social ladder with all of its neat class stratifications.”

1960s

The sexual revolution of the 1960s allowed women to begin to exert power and freedom more publicly. Despite this revolution and the efforts of minority groups to gain equal rights, attitudes towards women changed a surprisingly little amount. Most American women in the Sixties were mothers and housewives, volunteering at churches and PTAs. Business and politics remained almost exclusively controlled by men. Women did start to work more outside of the home, but those who did were still in the minority.
In a huge leap forward for women’s choice in having children, the 1960s saw the birth control pill become widely available to the public, with 1.2 million American women taking the pill by 1962. 2.3 million were on the pill by 1963, and by 1965, 6.5 million women were taking the pill and it became the most popular form of reversible birth control.

1970 - Today

The most significant changes in women’s roles were brought about by the rise in feminism in the 1960’s and 1970’s. Women organized for equal rights and employment finally began to change. Their full participation in the labor market was even encouraged. Women with college degrees were actually using those degrees to enter the professional world.

Another significant change occurring in the family structure was the role of the mother. Whereas her responsibility and duty had been based solely in the care and upbringing of her child, the role of ‘educator’ was now being relegated to professionals. Children as young as two and three years old were sent to pre-schools, allowing mothers to pursue careers as well as have a family. Even though beliefs that the rise in working women would bring about the demise of the family, women proved they were still the glue that held the family together.

Notably, Susan Douglas and Meredith Michaels argue in The Mommy Myth that media since the 1970s has created an impossible to reach idealized mother figure that has subtly demonized the working mother’s role, her attention away from perfect mom details coming off as unduly sacrificed. Women – and mothers – are certainly working more: under a third of married women worked outside the home in 1961, while by the 1990s, closer to two-thirds of married women were in paid employment.
Less than a third of married women were in paid employment in 1961, in 1991 it was over half. As wages have trended towards more equality, more and more cases of the typically maternal role have shifted to men as part of a greater redefining of the women’s and a mother’s place in society. Single motherhood is more accepted, women have more rights, and while domestic arrangement stereotypes still exist, they are on the decline.

There is no denying that mothers certainly have a tough job to carry out, even if concerns like death during childbirth have been largely controlled. Surveys report that one of the biggest challenges in raising children today is dealing with outside influences such as drugs, alcohol, peer pressure, television and other media outlets, which were not as prevalent even thirty years ago. Though children are expected to be more self-sufficient, mothers are often the ones caught juggling the duties of work and family life.

So this Mother’s Day, take a moment to appreciate how far motherhood has come, and look forward to a future of capable and equally-treated women as you thank your mother for doing the job as millions of mothers have before.
Here are some quotes about motherhood to leave you with:
Honore de Balzac
The heart of a mother is a deep abyss at the bottom of which you will always find forgiveness.
Tenneva Jordan
A mother is a person who seeing there are only four pieces of pie for five people, promptly announces she never did care for pie.
Sophia Loren
When you are a mother, you are never really alone in your thoughts. A mother always has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.
Irish Proverb
A man loves his sweetheart the most, his wife the best, but his mother the longest.
Victoria Billings
The best thing that could happen to motherhood already has. Fewer women are going into it.
Honore de Balzac
A mother who is really a mother is never free.

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Call India for as low as 0.9 cents per minute.

Trueroots is for this special offer introducing 2 new plans at $8 & $10. Choose your plan & just talk. Speak more to your loved ones & pay less as you go along.

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Stay tuned! We will be updating our blog.

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This year, with the markets in a nosedive, it may be that you will light a few lamps less, or light fewer fireworks. Perhaps you won’t buy the jewellery and the finery you might have done on most other Diwalis. But although this is the festival of Laxmi, it is, first and foremost, the festival of lights. And light, like the all the good things in life, is free. It is within us. So don’t let the morose economists, the glum newscasters and gloomy stockbrokers get your spirits down. Cheer up and let the lights within shine forth. Their effulgence will surely brighten the lives of everyone around you.

Happy Diwali.

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It’s their way to wish you and your family a bright and colorful Diwali.

For the occasion, trueroots is offering a Buy One, Get One Free promotion until October 30, 2008. For those who haven’t enjoyed one of the great promotions offered by trueroots, it means that your purchase will be doubled within 24 hours. It’s double your talktime or, as you can see, it’s the equivalent of 3.45 cents per minute for calling to India!
And, for even more talktime, if you subscribe to the Auto Recharge feature, every Auto Recharge on your account before October 30, 2008 will also get doubled!

Happy Diwali

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While traditionalists lament the garbi giving way to disco dandiya and, more recently, to Bollywood-style bump-and-grind, the fact remains that Navratri is one the most popular festivals among young people precisely for those reasons. Here in the West, I have known of some really interesting developments on the dandiya front. Fusion seems to be the name of the game here. Of course, like with most of our traditional festivals, we are at risk of reducing Navratri to a frolic, food and finery event. To be fair though, it was also all that to our pious ancestors. I’m sure that our festivals were their chance for some revelry at the end of hard periods of poverty-imposed austerity.

We may not be as poor as the peasants of yesteryear Gujarat in monetary terms, but are impoverished in other ways. Culturally, we expats can be a rather deprived lot. It’s during festivals like these that we reconnect with, reaffirm and celebrate our roots. So no matter what your social, political or religious affiliations, you would do well to don your favourite angiya, kurta or chaniya-choli, pick up a pair of dandiyas and rock the nights away. Happy Navratri.

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One of my favourite novels is Mary Margaret Kaye’s The Far Pavilions. An epic romance set in 19^thcentury British India, the novel is, despite its unabashedly orientalistic tone, a heart-warming story of forbidden love against all odds. The aristocratic British army officer, Ashton Pelham-Martyn falls in love with the beautiful princess Anjuli and rescues her from a terrible fate. The awe-inspiring Himalayas, the bloody Afghan War, murder, intrigue and scandal are all woven into a grand narrative that makes the book deeply fascinating and engaging. Of course, it is full of stereotypes and is not quite politically correct. But that is Raj literature for you. Kipling’s work was like that too. One can love it and hate it, all at the same time.

But what if a story like were to happen in real life instead of in the realm of fiction? Well, it did. The BBC reported yesterday on just such an unlikely romance across borders. Ten years ago, on one of his footloose and fancy-free jaunts across continents, Tim Wallace, a one-time hippie from England met and fell in love with Tura, a village girl from a remote part of Meghalaya. Fighting the odds of cultural barriers, familial opposition, serious illness and class divides, the two were married and continued to live in Tura’s homeland. Tim and Tura have been man and wife for a decade now and have a bonny little daughter, Amazonia. The couple are still very much in love and very happy, although Tim seems to miss home.

Well, here’s wishing them all the luck and fortune. Good for you, people! May you prosper.

One has to wonder though, how things would have worked if the babu had been desi and themem had been English. The mandarins at the Home Office would not have taken a very romantic view of things.  There would be a mountain of paperwork and visa formalities and immigration questions to tackle. And in the interim, our desi babu would not even have been able to work, like the love-struck Mr Wallace could, in India.

To his credit, Tim Wallace does understand how privileged he is. “I come from a relatively rich, middle class, multicultural western society and can access any information I want. I have been able to travel where I want and do anything I like,” he says. Of course, you can do as you please, Tim sahib. Your compatriots have even bought off half of Goa benaami, haven’t they? Be that as it may, it is nice to know that in India there is still space for a romance verging on the foolhardy.

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