The Universe and I

I read somewhere once: 'The Universe is like a an ocean.It throws back to you whatever you throw into it." What you give is what you get.........

I always wondered whether it was true.But now i am slowly realizing that it does hold true. Otherwise why would i would get my friends back who at one point of time had been washed away in it!!!!!!! It is not just a mere coincidence that after eight years i find my childhood friend staying just at a walking distance from my house?????? I can start walking from my home and she is just 15 minutes walk away........Whenever i feel like having to talk, all i have to do is to walk down.....

It was quiet a thrilling experience to discover that most of my schoolfriends are in a city i moved in just one year ago...And then get togethers and all the grapevine followed......The best part of most of them was making fun of all the teachers we had.....especially a maths teachers who used to chase the students around in the class......

I relive my childhood again in their company...What is more surprising is that none of the emotions have changed.The equations are same till now. Friends have remained friend, foes have been kept at distance....And flames are still flames!!!!!!!!!!!!

Its a great fun to catch up with childhood buddies....Although friendships i made later on in life are more professional and mature one, the childhood ones are quite sweet and funtime kinds...

Tatas, Singur and Bengal

I am quite perplexed nowadays seeing Bengal for all the wrong reasons in the newspapers and the media.....

Not that i am not familiar with the leftist culture that exists there....The slow pace of progress that exists there....or that once you reach there, it seems as if time has stopped...What i am peeved about is that were these agitators sleeping when the land was acquired, when tata was building up the plant..Or they were waiting for their chance to attack once the investment of time, money and labor was ripe..So as to strike at a moment when it would hurt the industrialist most???????????

Am much more perplexed at the people who cannot see through the plot that a certain political party is trying to gain a mileage out of this at the cost of future of West Bengal..Tata will lose its capital for sure..But along with it will sink the industrialization and progress of the leftist state...I hope some economist calculates the loss in terms of money... Tata will lose some 1500 crores, and loss of credibility to Bengal would surely amount to some million crores down the line........

I also wish the leftist politicians would do some practical politics in line with the welfare of the nation and the state....... First it was the nuclear deal and now Singur.....Its high time they realized that progress requires moulding and reforming of ideologies instead of keeping it rigid forever.........If you don't, you always remain where you began.

Generation W

I am just back from a day's work and relaxing for some ten minutes before i go for yoga classes....And my mind is roving about a workshop that we need to conduct for orientation of my colleagues and peers for gender sensitization, equality and development.......

Had a quite fruitful day in that regard...A senior colleague of mine has already designed the logo for the cell which i am quite thrilled about.....Had a meeting with a senior expert in Women's studies(who happens to be from the same institution as mine! and instead of 15 minutes, the meeting went for more than an hour!!!!!!!!!!) She has agreed to come down and am quite glad about it too..........

Belonging to generation W is one thing!!!!!!!!!Being in the hot seat for doing something for the Generation W is quite another ! Let us see how we pull off this feat.............We still have to design the brochure, organize few more activities and rope in more people.........

I hope i can free my mind of all the thoughts before i hit the mat for pranayams!!!!!!!!

I belong to Generation W(women) obsessed with W(work) more than once in a while!!!!!!!!!!

Gadgets!!!!

I am fond of gadgets….a little more than that is expected of girls!

And I have received a gift of lifetime today! My brother has gifted me a digicam…Birthday and raksha bandhan all rolled into one…..And I am going gaga over it…Have spent my entire evening learning its function, connecting it to my laptop and planning all the photographs that I can share with my friends now!!!!!!

First on my priority list is group photographs of school and my college…Few are just fun to see and reminisce……Also on list are preserving few heritage photographs of the family in a digitised form…..

Now I can give my creativity a free run for photography…With no restrictions……Technology empowers in innumerable ways…And few powers gained are truly exhilarating!

Am just bubbling over with excitement……..That also means I will be spending a little less time writing here…….will be preoccupied with my new gadget for quite sometime now….

(Well, i guess its not that a good idea to capture a print photograph on a digicam...scanner would have been a better option...i found out subsequently)

RACE

Ever since i have seen Usain Bolt bolting through the line, the nut n bolts of my memories are also creaking up a bit. Am reminded of the first race of my life.And it was a needle race!!!!!!!!!!! (Am pretty sure it was brainchild of my pretty ladies teachers!!)

I was in standard III.It was season of winters ,most probably January.Annual sports events. A 100 m track was set up. The needles and the threads were kept halfway of the track.We were instructed in advance to get our own needles and threads.Not to say that i was quite a thinking animal with a killer instinct to win, but its a pure coincidence that the shopkeeper gave me a needle which was quite big in size by normal standards( he had run out of stock with small needles, thanks to the cute housewives around!!!). And it so happened that i went to the race with a needle which had quite a convenient eyehole ;)

I stood on the start line, shot on at the count of three, grabbed my needle, put a thread through the eyehole-and here moved in my killer instinct!!! Without wasting time to pull out the thread full length, i just ran almost blindly and did not stop till i dashed into the teachers standing at the finish line!!!!!!!!

One after another, everyone came dashing in..And i had ample time to draw the thread full length to show to my teachers as a proof that i had successfully completed the race, satisfying all its criteria..And after a few minutes i was standing on the highest position on the podium!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Brings home the point: it takes a little trick to separate a champion from the rest!!!!!!!

(And there are lot of ladies behind my first successful race in life!!!!!Talking about lady luck!Luck has to be a lady for sure!!!!!)

About other races, later on.............

Phelps, Federers and Sachins

This is the season of olympics..And much more of champions creating history....This sunday i switched on television just to check whether Phelps won the eighth gold medal or not!

I still remember the last olympics when i was reading in the newspapers what the 17year old Phelps had to say:"Sometimes i have difficulty getting sleep.The adrenalin becomes too high." The quote remained engraved in my mind.I had a feeling that here was a champion who would stay and leave a mark on sports for centuries to come.

I am fond of very special kind of champions. The ones who are very focussed, gentlemen and in love with the game they play.The world might be fancied with Nadal but Federer still remains my favorite. Have attempted to make Federer as my scrensaver several times on my desktop(its another that it has been changed quite often to goddess Durga !!!) I just love Sachin Tendulkar and its a joy to see Sanath Jayasuriya playing and then enjoying his life in page 3 parties and looking out at you amongst beauties in gillette poster ads!!!!!!!!!!

I have been unable to follow Pete Sampras and Tiger Woods but i think they have my favorite struts too......And then there has been Steffi Graff...I think along with Andre Agassi they make a perfect champions couple...Its surprising how much journey a man can complete in a lifetime..from Rockstar to a spiritul and responsible gentleman...sometimes it strikes me men change more in life as compared to women..from completely reckless youths into responsible men full of character. No one signifies it more than Andre Agassi....

These champions are human.They do not brag about their capabilities. After the games, they go back to live their simple lives. To be with their loved ones. They love, care and cry............

Thats why i am so fond of these down to earth champions. They do not give me complexes that they are any different from me !!!!!!!!!

Raksha Bandhan

Am done for the day for raksha bandhan ....So much so that i feel as if somebody has given me a shot of sedatives...Feel as if am falling into a vacuum.

Rising up early, finishing up all the rituals, sneaking out time to complete the gayatri mantra template, lunch..and am all in a zero..........................very often happens to me during festivals....

Wishing all the happiness and joy to the entire world on this day.................

Phew !!!!!!!

I had a quite rigorous independence day !!!!!!!

Not because i i got up at 6 in the morning to attend flag hoistings!!!!!!!! ( I had both official and unofficial invitations!)Rather because i decided to get independence from mess and dust in my book shelves...And what a hard work it has been.....a natural consequence when you hardly work for the entire year to organise it anyways!!!!!! My bookshelf now looks fresh and the room has brightened up....

Decluttering and reorganising does wonders to life!!! So much so that i was thrilled enough to make a collage of my paintings, have already put it up on the wall and am already ideating on the next artwork............Am checking out how to correctly write 'gayatri mantra'!!!! (Yess!my next painting is to write the mantra in some old vedic tamrapatra style!!!!!!!) Am feeling slightly ashamed also that although i can recite it correctly, am not able to write it properly in devnagari!!!!!! Am also searching for few poems my father used to recite....There were few proses that were very close to his heart.I hope i can find them too.....

Its about time to wind up the day...Tomorrow is raksha bandhan, am done with my shopping and all..am eagerly looking forward to the day tomorrow.................

Letters to a daughter, from a father.......

I love writing letters.

(When i say writing letters i mean personal letters and not official letters which i write every other day !!!!!!!!!)

Its another that i have not written one ever since i lost my dad some eight years ago. I used to write to him almost every other week when i was staying in the hostel in Delhi. I remember I would rush from my school to the hostel during lunch time to catch the postman just in time(He used to come to the nearby hostels during the lunchtime at around 1.45 pm!).Ordinary posts we used to receive via our mesenger in the rooms only but registered posts were delivered only in person. And Dad always used to send me registered posts(he never sent letters without a DD to me!!!!!!!!!!!!! )

I have preserved his letters along with the envelopes till today.The yellow envelopes on which he used to write my name and address very elegantly with a green hi tech point pen.....and the long letters where he would write about every member in the family. Sometimes he would also write about what plans he had for us and our future.

Ever since he is gone, i have stopped writing letters. Much because of advent of emails, communication is fast and short now. And also maybe i have suffered a withdrawal of emotional intensity. The void that has been created is going to remain lifelong. As i look back, consciously and unconsciously, i have carried out almost all his plans. Sometimes i wonder, how happy he would have been had i written to him saying that i have done this, and i have done that...................and how happy i would have been just writing to him..................

Rainy Days and Self help books !

Maybe i need to give more odes to monsoons....I got a Rainy Day today at work!!!!!!!!! and its playtime......

It has been raining incessantly since last three days in my city..and it provides ample time indoors... I can indulge in my latest fad of reading self help books...Am already done on reading one on relationships. Right now i am gorging on a pretty good book on 'work-life' balance.Next i plan to take up one on managing personal finance.. need loads of help in that department !

Was also thinking about the fact that the moment i mention to any of my friends that i am reading a self help book, each person gives a different piece of advice on that. And everyone has something to say on it surprisingly, which ranges from"i feel psychic if i read them" to"they are useless","i find that i am already doing whatever is written there", "i have no patience to read them, they are so boring!" and so on....

As far as i am concerned, i am just loving them...They offer a wide food for thought, give us a lot of alternatives to pick up in lot of situations and expand our knowledge on number of solutions possible to a single problem...

I think as long as one can keep his/her ability to make the choice with oneself, its absolutely fun to read self-help books !!!

Mills and Boons and Sidney Sheldons

There are certain books that are must read for girls.

Not that i have read them all.... But i strongly recommend Mills and Boons..Have not read a single Sidney Sheldon till now..... Am sure it would be as good as M&B for keeping one's feet above the ground!!!

I think I did not grow up as other girls did. Instead of barbie dolls, i played badmintons and dodgeballs! In teenage, i read famous fives, Nancy Drews.TinTin and Archies. And graduated to Femina,Leo Tolstoy and Salman Rushdie quite soon.......Missed some soft fun in between. No wonder in the last one year i must have read up around three dozens of them !!! One of my friends said that "if you have not read Sidney sheldon you have not missed anything in life!". I am holding onto her words. I hope once i start reading them, her words would hold true..That would spare me reading dozens of them to make up the loss !!!!!!!!!!

Note: I do not read Femina anymore...Not that good value for money except for glossy pages and photographs.Would recommend New Woman anytime over it !!!!!!

Monsoons

I love the monsoons.

Not because they provide a respite from the sveltering heat or because I was born in the monsoons but also because it also throws your health out of gear to enjoy a day off from work once in a while to sit and blog!!!!!!!!

And then there is a rainy day concept! Whenever there is a fear of my city getting deluged, the best thing that the authorities and the so called administrators of the city can do is to advise people to not to get out of homes!!!!!!!! Am I surprised that none of the official warnings come out in the name of any political leader!

Or is it just a coincidence that none of major political outcries and hullabaloos are created in the season of monsoons? Monsoons provide a respite from politicians too in my city! But it is the police force and the municipal commissioners which are at the receiving end.. It is the busiest season for them…..Poor folks! Terrorists and drainage not only physically drain them, they are also at the receiving end of all the flak received for mismanagement…..I sympathise with them wholeheartedly.

Nonetheless I still love the monsoons….the sound of lightening, the tip tap of falling raindrops,

The greenery around, chai and pakodas!!!!!!!! And then the bhuttas round the corners…..it’s a season to indulge……

An Indian August !!!!!!!!!!!!!

August is a month when i am overworked!

First of all is the freindship day mania!!!!!!! whom to wish and whom to not....translates into how to take care to not to miss out people so that they don't feel ignored...am glad that now its a 'friendship week' celebration, so i still have time and scope not to hurt sentiments....

And then there are series of festivities......and my work extends from purchasing rakhis to drawing images of the king of serpents on the walls of my home on a certain festival to keeping awake all the night on the birthnight of a very popular indian God!!!!!!!!!

and the icing on the cake is the month ends with my birthday....so add hosting parties to distributing cakes and sweets to that.........

The only silver lining is that i tend to get few gifts for all my hard work!!!!!! This time i have made it a point to let know my friends and family what i want as gift...so that at least when the month ends, i come out of it with few goodies and few less inches on waist to fit into my old jeans!!!!!!!!!!!
Inches off would really be a hard work well earned!!!!!!!!!!

PACE

All along life people run after one thing or another- wealth, health, beauty or power. Especially in a city I live, no one just even turns their head sideways to notice who is walking along their side. It is automatically seeped into their psyches that others are also running somewhere or another. In fact if you start looking sideways, people start staring at you as if you have some mental problem or they will be irritated that you are breaking their flow of rush to wherever they have to reach !!!!!!!

Not that I am an exception to the same. I start feeling bored if I have some time to sit idle…….. but deep down I have sense I have already lived a cycle of life of mad rush. Its time to begin another cycle, which is more relaxed, where I have more time for myself, can live life idly and be the laziest bone in the universe………

Disclaimer:The images used on my blog are sourced from various websites available in the public domain.Under no circumstances i claim them to be my own creation.