A Quote.. !

It has been ages since I last wrote a Blog.. or anything for that matter..well of course leaving aside all the Official scribbling ! Lot has happened during this time .. while there were loads of laughter, there were too much of tears; while there were some beautiful light moments, there were awful lot of times which required huge strength to carry on; while there were many happy smiles, there were tonnes of pain, totally uncalled for! 

Yes, I learned a lot.. I grew up.. but I do feel that I lost a lot of precious time. Between all the chaos , I learnt something so meaningful ~ it was to 'Keep it Simple' ! As simple as this quote from Audrey Hepburn ~

“I believe in pink. I believe that laughing is the best calorie burner. I believe in kissing, kissing a lot. I believe in being strong when everything seems to be going wrong. I believe that happy girls are the prettiest girls. I believe that tomorrow is another day and I believe in miracles.”

Of Sneezes & Cold! Sigh..!

Have you seen that episode of Tom and Jerry where Jerry fools Tom by convincing him that he (Tom) has got measles! He makes fun of Tom and pesters him crazily! At last, it is Jerry who actually gets measles! Well, a somewhat similar incident happened with me in the past few days. Sigh..!

It has been raining here, ceaselessly, since past four days. The weather is dark and dingy, wet and cloudy, 24x7. For the first two days, we were relishing the rains. J But now, we are yearning for some sunlight, for a change!

My bro caught cold 3 days back. He was having coughs and sneezes and body aches. He was feeling lethargic and wanted to sleep all day and insisted on putting off the fan. I did not make fun of him but I was continuously pestering him for being a lazybum, not letting him sleep and cribbing when the fan was turned off!

Yesterday when I got up in the morning, I felt a tingling in my throat. Sigh.. I knew what was coming. By the time I took a bath, the tingling grew into pain. L By afternoon I was feeling febrile! Then ofcourse, the cold caught hold of my nose~ continuous irritation and 4-5 sneezes at a time. :/ And then as the night approached, I was all wrapped up in a blanket, feeling cold and sneezing profusely with a head-ache. And when my bro came to the room and tried to approach for the switch of the fan, I .. er.. had to say to him..

“Please fan mat chalao..Hume thandi lag rahi hai” L

He raised his brows and said,

“Ab pata chala hume kaisa lag raha tha” :/

I felt so embarrassed. :P

How I .. (wait, I am trying to remove the word ‘H**E’ from my dictionary, so I would say) ‘dislike’ this cold! :/ No matter how febrile you feel, the mercury in the thermometer will refuse to show any rise and this prohibits you from taking Paracetamol. And the elders will say, “Koi bukhar nahi hai tumhe!” The cough syrups fail to provide relief from the cough for more than 2 hours. And there is nothing you can do to control your sneezes! A terrible body ache follows and what makes it worse is a head-ache! :/

The only thing that seems to provide some relief when you are barely able to breathe, is the Vaporub; but CAUTION- If you overdo it, it can cause further irritation!!

So the only thing you can do is to bear with it and wait, till the virus completes its cycle! :/

Yes, you can certainly make this time interesting! Wrap yourself up in your cosiest blanket and lie down on your bed, with your softest pillow under your head. Keep a novel or some comics (Archie, in my case) handy. Relax and read! Take steaming cups of Coffee at regular intervals to extend some relief to your sore throat. Sounds better..? J

And from next time, be careful, empathise with the person having a cold! Sigh..!

Some Timeless Pleasures! :)

Now, this post is dedicated to someone very special ~ and that is ‘Me’! J There are some things that are soothing to your soul and more often than not, these are very small things, some unmentioned joys of your heart! So here are few of my ‘Timeless Pleasures’......! J

·      Contrary to the popular belief (which is a result of my own habits :P), I love waking up very early in the morning ~ at ‘Dawn’, to be precise. I simply love to watch the Sunrise. We used to hear this from the elders, that ‘dawn’ is the best time to study and yes, it is.

I don’t know why but I always feel a gush of energy within myself whenever I step out of my house at dawn. To watch the first rays of the sun peeping through the leaves of the trees, rendering a golden hue to everything around, is a feast to the eyes. A brace of ducks or a host of sparrows, flying in the boundless blue sky, given you a feeling that a new day has begun. J And ofcourse, the nippy breeze of the morning, leaves not just you but everything, refreshed and rejuvenated. Honestly speaking, it is like meditation to me. J

Then slowly, the world starts gathering pace. You hear the symphonic chirping of birds which is the best music created by nature. Morning makes everything look so beautiful & wonderful.

Ofcourse, then you start seeing people coming out for morning walks and children dressed up in their uniforms, ready to go to school.. the newspaperman throws the regular daily into the boundary of your house.. breakfast served.. a new day has begun! J

·     Another thing that gives me bounteous peace is to watch cows. :P May sound silly to some of you but, hey.. that is me! J I would say, you should try this too.

Whenever I am too tired of the hectic schedule of my day or fed up of the humdrums of life, I go out, stand at the gate and watch the cows wandering in the field in front of my house.

They are plain, harmless creatures who have nothing to do with the world around. You just leave them on their own and they’ll be quietly grazing, strolling in fields or may be just sitting and staring.

Just look at the simplicity of these animals. They are so unadorned and peaceful. I often stand and watch them, and whenever I do, I forget everything and just keep admiring their chastity. J

·       As I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts, I love it when it is raining outside and everybody is at home, cosy and warm. J Then to sit in your veranda or peep outside the window and see the beautiful rains.. ah.. isn’t is lovely to be at home.

And then, as the cliché goes, have pakodas or sandwiches, watch T.V. and what else......just feel the warmth of being at home. J

·   I used to love those days when Bhai and I used to sleep with our parents. It was so cosy when on those cold winter nights, we used to be tucked up in our bed, under the rajaiis, which were heavier than us :P . And yes, the mosquito net, which used to be a mini-home for me then. I, ofcourse, being a girl, used to keep a soft toy or two with me when I slept. Often bro n I used to cover ourselves with the Rajaii and used to play inside it. J

Even though we sleep in a separate room now, but we are still tucked up in our beds cosily when we sleep. Don’t you just love it when you are warm, under your blanket, on a freezing cold night! Is there anything cosier than that! :)

·   Brought up in a big, joint family; my biggest moment of happiness is when the whole family gets together to celebrate a festival or any other reason for that matter. Isn’t it glorious to have a house full of Bothers & Sisters, Uncles & Aunts, your Grand Parents and Parents! J

It is so pleasing when the whole family sits together at night and has a conversation ranging from narration of silly comic incidences to real stimulating intellectual discussions. Every second hour, there is a round of tea and all this lasts till 3:00 or 4:00 A.M. in the morning. No matter how sleepy you feel, you don’t want to miss the fun! :D

Love Joint Families ! :) 

A tale of 'Agni-Pareeksha' ......!

This isn’t the first time I started wondering about these things and I am sure, this thought must have crossed the minds of many girls; so this post is dedicated to one out of the multifarious aspects of women’s lives!

Today I was reading this book which was dedicated to the great women whose names find place in the world’s history. When I mention the word ‘find’, I mean it literally. So here I was reading about the lives of these amazing women and I ended up observing that every second woman that I read about had done something remarkable and ‘hero’-ic in her life (not for herself, but for the world around her) but in the end, she still had to pass the ‘Agni-Pareeksha’ laid by the society to prove that she deserved respect (to say the least).

Here I’d mention an example ~ Joan of Arc.  I am sure you must have heard her name but let me throw some light upon her life.

She was born in a small village in France and grew up hearing stories of the sad condition of France from her father, how the country was in possession of England and how the French King did not dare to be crowned. She felt so deeply about it that she made it the mission of her life, went to the king, and asked him to allow her to lead his soldiers to victory against the English.

She was just 18 when she led an army of 5000 men against the English. Mounted on a fine war-horse and clad in white armour from head to foot, an ancient sword in her hand, she rode along past the cheering multitude. She ‘led her men’ to victory after victory against the English and drove the English back to far North of France. Her fame spread everywhere, and the English as well as the French thought she had more than human power.

Then, Charles (the uncrowned King of France), urged by Joan, was finally crowned as ‘The King of France’.

Now what do you think should be the end of ‘her’ story? Well let me tell you –

Joan was betrayed and accused of being ‘a tool of the devil’. She was tried, and was burned! And guess what! Later she was declared a ‘saint’ by the Catholic Church!

Ironical .. haan?

Well, this is not the only example, the book is loaded with numerous such examples! With all due respect to God, I don’t think I even need to mention the origin of the word ‘Agni-Pareeksha’.

I am not a ‘Feminist’ that I would say that all women are good. No! But one thing is for sure, no matter how much ‘good’ a woman does, the ‘society’ (so to say) will find some reason (rational or irrational), or some loophole, to blame her of being ‘wrong’.

I did not find any reason for people to call Joan of Arc as a ‘tool of the devil’ and burning her for absolutely nothing! And on the other hand, I read about Queen Victoria who survived eight assassination attempts, was even injured! But she did not put her assassins to death, even when she had all the reasons and the power to do so. They were merely imprisoned.

Take the example of history itself! We must have heard about Queen Victoria and some of us may know that it was she who made Britain the most powerful country in the world during her reign. But do we know, that it was Queen Isabella who encouraged and funded Christopher Columbus to go on his expedition which led to the discovery of ‘America’. It was she who made Spain, a world power, during her era. And do we know that the Egyptian economy flourished under the rule of a woman - Queen Hatshepsut. 

There are many such names which are not even mentioned today. It is ironical. They say and rightly so ~

“Whatever women do, they must do twice as well as men to be thought of half as good. Luckily, this is not difficult.”

Why look at the 'larger than life' deeds. Look around, take the example of our very own Indian women. No matter whatever their condition is, no matter how successful or modern they are, they will observe 'Nirjala' fasts for their husbands. Fasts, which are taken as mere customs ~ that all women are supposed to observe. Wish someone could peep into a woman's heart to see with what devotion, piousness and love they observe these day long fasts. :)


And So, here I am, again wondering, what made women so full of ever-lasting love, devotion, sacrifice and patience. What makes them so strong to endure all the pain, ready to take all the tests and still misjudged! What was God thinking when He was making a women’s heart......!

I’ll just end this post with a saying ~

“Woman ... is the divine object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy, achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of herself”.

P.S. - I repeat once again, please do not 'misjudge' me as a 'Feminist'. I am not. :)

Unburdening my soul......! :)

It may somewhat sound ‘philosophical’ but when you reflect back upon the life you have lived; you realize how you yourself complicated everything in your life and then you feel~' I wish I had been a little more mature'. But what is more important than to just realize it, is to learn from it so that you can make your life more beautiful; for yourself and for the people around you.

Since childhood our Moral Science Books taught us to ‘Forgive & Forget’. We did learn that, but we only learnt it in pieces. When we seemingly ‘Forgave’ people; we failed to forget. And when we ‘Forgot’ their follies; we failed to forgive, only to leave us getting reminded of it over and over again.

Today when I look back, I see it in a completely different light. My first interpretation of the phrase, as a kid, was that we should forgive people just because everybody deserves chance to rectify his mistakes. Today I feel, it was never really about others. 

Since past so many years, I kept regretting and fretting over my choices of friends because our friendship ended in a fight. Because of my anger, I built a wall around myself so that nobody could come close enough to hurt me. In the process, I mistakenly showed my back upon the people who really loved me, cared for me and were my true friends. I was so full of doubt that I never allowed myself to trust them. And what did I get? I lost precious time doubting people’s intention towards me when I should have been cherishing their friendship. I had so many well-wishers around but I felt ‘lonely’. And all this time, I kept blaming everything upon those friends who seemingly ‘broke my trust’. (*That is what human beings tend to do.. we always fail to look at our own mistakes, or, on a second thought, we are too egoistic to accept our mistakes)

But today I know who was ‘actually’ wrong. It was I. If I would have forgiven them and forgotten it all, my past 2 years would have been different. ‘To forgive’ was not difficult but ‘To forget’ certainly was. It would have taken time but certainly not as long as 2 precious years while I failed to value some beautiful friendships coz’ I chose to be full of doubts.

Now it sounds so silly that I used to miss having ‘true friends’ in my life while I was busy scaring them away myself. (What a strange brain did God give us.. hehe.. see, once again I am blaming someone else for my mistakes.)

I should also confess, that if my friends and I would have chosen to let go of our ‘ego’ and decided to ‘forgive and forget’, may be, we would have been able to save that friendship that brought us so much happiness for 4 long years and would have continued to do so.. only, if we allowed it to!

Somehow, everything boils down to ‘prioritization’! We tend to give a higher priority to our ‘Ego’ in comparison to ‘love & happiness’. Think about it. What was better ~

• A satisfied ego; a broken heart full of mistrust, hatred and regret; a self-made life of loneliness & an unsatisfied life. Or,

• A subdued ego; a happy and content heart with no negativity; Loads of friends around to love and care (including some old friends that you lost and some new ones that you made). In all, a satisfied life!

The choice is obvious now (Only if you let go of your ego)! 

Today I so wish to have forgiven them or (even better) made up with them. I wish I had chosen love over hatred. I wish I had chosen to forget their mistakes instead of constantly wishing them to be punished. I wish I had chosen to value the 4 years of friendship over 4 hours of fight......!

I know I cannot ‘undo’ things, but today I forgive them for all the things that hurt me. I would be lying if I say that I forgot all the wrong that happened but I promise myself to forget it as soon as possible.. may be by reminding myself of the happy moments we had together. :) Hey, I feel good already!

I couldn’t have been more wrong when I said to myself that ‘Friends to aur ban jayenge.. vo bhi inse better’. Silly me! Friendship is precious! If God gave us friends, we need to learn to value them or else God sure knows how to ‘teach’ us to value them.

Hence, Forgive & Forget. (Trust me, it is not as difficult as it sounds) There is one life and it is definitely not for carrying the burden of hatred and regret. After all, friends are precious! (Realize it now, or you’ll realize it later) :)

‘There is no forgiveness without love; and, there is no love without forgiveness.’

~That says it all!

Back to School ! :)

The other day, while my Mum was busy purchasing vegetables in Reliance Fresh Store, I was wandering around, seeing the objects in the offering. I moved past a rack dedicated to stationary. I then realized that this is the time when the schools are about to re-open after ‘the Summer Vacations’. What followed was obvious...... I tripped over the cliff and went rolling down the memory lane...... :)

• What a delight it used to be to have a new school bag, a new Pencil box or a new Lunch Box! And if you had an entire new School kit, you were on cloud #9. :) We went around flaunting our newly acquired fortune in style. As for me, I would find weird reasons to open my new bag or the pencil box 100 times. :P
•  New books! Whenever I went out to ‘Ajay Pustak Sadan’ or ‘Krishna Books and Stationary’, I was super excited. It was a treat to see the shopkeepers collecting all the text books and presenting them in front of you in a bundle. All you had to say was ‘Christ Church, Class xyz’ and they knew what to offer. And often you would bump into another classmate. (* I am sure all of you would agree, though we spent 300 days of an year together in the same class, meeting a classmate outside school was ‘out of the world’.) :)

• Back home, the first thing I would do, was to flip the pages of the new books. My first choice was the English Reader. From The Gulmohur Reader to The Oxford University Press Books to Shakespeare and Charles Dickens......I loved them all. Next book used to be the colourful Science Textbook (till the time it was split into the more complex Physics, Chemistry and Biology) :/
• The night before the school, Mum would sit and cover up all the books, (which I never liked) with the brown or the Orange covers. We later found a way to escape that by covering our books by transparent Cellophane sheet. Putting up name stickers on the books and notebooks. (The stickers were sometimes Disney or Fido to sometimes plain red and white ones) and writing our names on them in our best hand-writing. :)
• On the first day, no matter how much your parents tell you to leave some books behind, you would insist on carrying all the books and notebooks in your bag......just in case! (as if you would cover half of the syllabus on the first day itself)
• The lovely welcome by our beloved School Principal Mrs. W. Nair, in the Assembly. And ofcourse, singing The School Hymn in the first assembly of the new session. 

• Then to check if our new prefect was a nice and kind senior or a strict and rude girl who would thrash us on seeing our long finger nails or if we forget to bring our Hymn book! :/

• What could beat the feeling of writing in a new (fresh) notebook for every new subject! :)
• I can never forget the excitement all of us had when we first moved from Pencil to Pen! It was in Class IV as far as I remember and we were supposed to start writing in ink. (Most of us had atleast 1 fountain pen with a green body and golden cap). Then we later moved on to ‘Auto pens’......Pilot pens...... and finally Ball Point pens, mostly Cello Grippers!

• Writing the ‘Class Time Table’ in your extremely precious ‘Rough Notebook’ and then copying it down on the best Time Table (format) you had. (By the way, I hope all you Christ Churchians remember how we used to collect these time tables on the last day or rather the ‘Result day’ of a school session, when representatives of various stationary shops of the city flocked outside our school with colourful Time tables for publicity!)
• Eagerly awaiting the distribution of the School Diary. :P (I wonder how many of you remember that)
• While we tried to sit with our best friends on the first day, our Class Teachers would declare that we would be given our seats in accordance to our heights. We would crib and complain if we are separated from our friends, little knowing that we are sitting with a new ‘friend-to-be’.
• And ofcourse, checking out the ‘new admissions’, if any and trying to act smart in front of them, being the older inhabitants of our second home. :)

Well, when it comes to our dear ol’ School, this can never be all. There are many more posts to come, because our school memories are the fondest of them all!  :)

P.S.- I would like to give the credit of this post to Aditi who literally ‘drags us’ back to our school memories through her blog! :) That is the reason why I love her Blog.

Lessons from Life ......!

All of us, during our lives, come across some life changing thoughts and learnings. This post talks about few of the priced thoughts that changed my outlook towards everything in life.

So here we go ~ 

• Whenever you say something about a person, if the person deserves it,  then it is fine; but if he doesn't, then it gets reflected back to you ~ In my adolescence, I used to be extremely short-tempered. (*As most of the kids are) so my best friend Pallavi shared this thought with me. And how true she was! Unless we are sure about the reasons behind a certain behavior of a person, how can we judge him and retort back to him (*or give our opinions about him) in an unpleasant manner! I understood my folly and rectified it with loads of practice. But somewhere that got lost again when my life became more complex. It became worse when I joined MBA, where everyday you had to deal with a lot of negativity around. But what I could not understand was that this added on to it. Sometimes in life you learn only when you stumble. The same happened with me. All my pessimism and negativity that I uttered, fell upon me. I could not even realize what I was doing until someone :) reminded me of this thought again. Today, when I have imbibed this into my life once again (through a lot of conscious effort) I am feeling its effects. You yourself feel so pure when you do not say ill about others. It is really a pleasant habit to adopt. :)
• All of us have the power to decide our thoughts and the way we feel~ This is an original thought. :P But yes, it is true. I mean all of us experience this at some point of time but fail to adopt it as a habit. You know, whenever you are in a bad mood or feeling low, you can change it, if you really want to! The same goes with your thoughts. If you want to see good in something, you can; but if you wish to stick to bad thoughts, it is totally up to you. *Here I would like to mention something interesting! Yesterday, I came across the same thought in the famous book "The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari". It was such a pleasant surprise to see something that once crossed my mind, written in exact words in an acclaimed best-seller! It made me feel special ! :)
• The real glory lies in being knocked to your knees and then coming back ~ Well this is a proverb. The point is 'never give up' ! It makes me feel really happy to say that this is one thing I have practiced all my life (and with God's grace, will be able to practice later too). During the most challenging times I complained, I cried, I was sad; but I didn't give up! And as they say 'koshish karne walon ki kabhi haar nahi hoti' ...... I stood up again. :)   
• Silence speaks a thousand words ~ It is difficult to be silent. Isn't it? But I have learnt something. The more you try to explain yourself to someone, the more he will misunderstand you. If you think you are correct, wait for the person to realize it, instead of defending yourself. If you think you are not valued,do not sing your own praises, instead, wait for the person to realize your worth. They say, 'Good deeds speak for themselves' If a person who is close to your heart) is rude to you, instead of having a war of words and making things worse, stay quiet, the person will realize his own mistake. Every rule has an exception though. I presume, you are wise enough to know when to use it.

• Adopt the pace of Nature; her secret is Patience~ Patience is a virtue. It certainly is! I truly believe, if you are correct, there is infinite power supporting you and if you are wrong, then there is infinite power opposing you. So stick to the fight when you are hardest hit; Its when things seem worst that you mustn't quit ! So, learn from the previous rule. Stay quiet and wait, if you are correct, you will get your due. God will not be unjust. Though difficult, one should learn to apply the same rule in a fight. Don't jump on to revenge, leave it on God and it will be taken care of. This is a cycle of life, your deeds will never be left unrewarded.
• Karma kar fal ki icchha mat kar ~ This was something I realized when I was preparing for my MBA entrance test. I am not a saint, that I started following it from the beginning. I started working on my preparation with a thought that I have to clear my entrance test. But this thought used to fill my mind with a lot of apprehensions. So slowly I decided that I will give my best shot (my karma) to y preparations and then whatever result I get, will be God's will. And yes, hard work pays. I got selected in the Institute that I wished to join. Since then, whenever I find anyone getting panic-ridden about results, I tell them this rule. You do your work sincerely, the rest will follow. :)
• Believe and you can do it ~ They say, everything that you see in real life, was once in somebody's mind. 'Its impossible' says reason; 'Its reckless' says experience; 'Try' says dream! In Roadies, Our beloved contestant Anamika once said, If you give up in your mind and say to yourself "Its impossible" then it is over! Faith can do wonders and the best you can do is have faith on yourself. 'To keep trying' is the Mantra.
• When you have given your best to something, leave it in the hands of God and it will be taken care of ~ It often happens that despite constant efforts and your best shot towards something, you see no results. This is the time when you should leave it in the hands of God. It is said, 'Once you have found the right direction, all you have to do is, keep moving.' And as I said earlier, your efforts never go unrewarded. :)
• Think, before you decide to change ~ Most of us do this mistake in life. We change. I do not say that change is always bad,  but one thing is worth mentioning. Change, that comes naturally, can do wonders for your personality; but a change that is forceful, can be equally destructive. So when a person tells you to change, remember, he liked you for what you are and it is your duty to preserve it. That is because, the moment you will change, the same person will find it difficult to accept you in this new avtar. Worst of all, trust me, it is really hard to get 'yourself' back. :)
• The more you run after something,  the more it runs away from you ~ Well, I guess most of us experience this in life so this doesn't need an explanation. :)

You know what, all this boils down to some key things. Believe in yourself; Be patient and Never do to others what you don't want them to do to you. At the end of the day, What goes around, comes around.  :)