Happiness challenge day 9 ..... Jai Shri Krishn

Watching the Mahabharat serial without missing too many episodes is something that gives me great happiness...especially the sermons of Shri Krishn. His naughty looks and smile and his ageless wisdom would make my day. Many of us seldom realise that what The Lord has said in the Bhagavad Gita is something that makes our life easier if we follow it, to the best of our ability. Though my daughter teases me saying that I like the actor who plays The Lord, I like to believe that Shri Krishn looked like this. Even if it is an actor playing the role, probably while essaying it , he is filled with divinity.....or so I like to think...making him truly successful in the role....

Anyway happiness is watching Shri Krishn on the small screen.

Happiness Challenge day 8.... A rose is a rose is a Rose...:)

The heady smell of roses specially the paneer roses fill my heart with fragrance amd joy. Mom always had a garden with a section full of roses...dark red, pink, orange , violet pink, maroon, double color et all. I loved stepping into the garden each morning to see which and how many had bloomed. 

It reminds of my school days when I stole roses secretly to gift them to my favourite teachers and friends. Mom would never allow me to pluck because she believed that roses and all flowers look lovely on plant. So I secretly pussy-footed to the garden when she was away and hastily stuffed the plucked rose into my school bag. I also remember the time when I presented my favourite Physics master with a rose..:). He didn't accept but softly told me that if I wanted to please him I should score good marks in Physics. I hated him for a few hours then, but understand the wisdom of his words now.

Great teachers are made of these.....sadly they are a rare breed nowadays...

Happiness Challenge Day 7..... Unto thine I surrender

Happiness is lighting the lamp in the morning and evening very single day and bowing at the alter of the Supreme Power. Thanking him for every breath, every thought, every microsecond, the past the present and the future. Nothing gives me more peace than silent prayer...

Family ....Oops...Bloopers. Sorry guys !

And then there was the time long ago when my only beloved elder brother was around thirteen or so, Mom and me, we had to go shopping and my brother stayed home. When we returned Mom asked him whether we had had any guests. He said, a close family friend had visited. He also said that he had invited him in and even made polite conversation with him. 

Mom was happy with her son's PR skills at that age and praised him and asked me to learn something from him. I glared at my Bro and he smiled happily. After a few minutes Mom called him into the kitchen and asked him about the eight cut-lemon slices in the sink.

A very proud brother replied, "You know Mom, I offered uncle a plate of biscuits and some lime juice. But I had just one problem, I kept squeezing the lemons one by one but the glass wouldn't fill. So I stopped at eight lemons...since the glass was three-fourths full, I added salt and offered it to uncle."

Mom looked shocked, not knowing whether to laugh or cry. Then she asked him incredulously, "Did uncle have the lime juice?" "Yes" replied Bro "but I think he had a cold. His voice sounded different.He quickly left saying he had an appointment with the family doctor."

My Bro had served the juice of eight straight lemons neat....to an uncle and the uncle had politely downed it. The uncle is over 80 now and my Bro is a Canadian citizen now with a son of his own.

And then there was the time Mom found the pressure cooker in the sink when she came home from a visit to a neighbours house. On enquiring with my Bro, who was home alone then too, she found that he had made tea for yet another uncle. He was at a loss at to, what to make the tea in. He caught sight of the pressure cooker and made the tea and that too quite successfully.

The last I saw was, Mom polishing up Bro's tea-making skills.

And then there was a  time when my four-year-old son took ordinary 'everyday' words at total face value. Those were tough times. 

I started noticing that each time my four-year-old son and his younger sister wanted to go from one room to the other in the house, they would stand cautiously at the door for a few minutes, hold hands, glance nervously at the grandfather clock in the hallway and dart at full speed to the next room and vice versa. When it happened a bit too frequently, I wondered why. When I asked him about it, he said, " Mummy, remember you told me that, that big clock strikes !". It was a ding dong clock which struck every half an hour. How would I know that my son had a different logic. I had a tough time explaining the difference between a clock striking and 'Beating-Striking'.

Another time, I was gathering the dried clothes from the clothesline, which was outside my bedroom window. Since there were three, under the age of ten in the house, there were tons of clothes to be washed everyday. Since my bedroom window was near, I started bundling the children's  'outside' good clothes....which they wore when they went shopping or visiting or to the park, through the window so that it fell on my bed to deal with later. After some time I found the clothes coming out of the window one by one and falling near the drain nearby. I gave a yell and rushed to the window where my three year old son was sitting on the bed and slowly but surely pushing the good clothes out of the window. When questioned he said, " Mummy you only said that these were the outside clothes na, so I am putting them outside". I had no answer, but couldn't help smiling.

And the time I was chauffeuring my teen to her competition venue, she was adept at playing he quizmaster at the most unlikeliest of times, she started asking me some tough questions. I rued the day when I had proudly announced to my kids that I loved quizzing, in a bid to get them interested in quiz competitions. She asked me a really tough one...like something to do with the Incas or some such thing....It evades my memory now. 

Winding in and out of the rush-hour traffic on an almost-never-in-the-near past serviced two-wheeler. with almost nil brakes, a bare back tyre and a rear-view mirrors which hated being in position, was something I was quite used to by now. Still, the prospect of excavating my long-term memory about the Incas, along with that, seemed a little too much. Yet. I spent about two minutes concentrating on them and all I got was the proverbial picture of the Red Indian dancing in perfect tune to drum bears around a huge fire, replete with feathers. I shook myself out if the reverie and disappointed my teen, telling her that I didn't know the answer. I hated it, but.....

Without wasting a minute she gave me the answer complete with statistics. Her tone, I could sense was one of extreme satisfaction. 

I was definitely amazed at her knowledge and made he mistake of asking her how she knew all this.

Without batting an eyelid, I am sure, she said 'Mom, it's common knowledge'.

It took me the effort of a century not to unload her then and there, by the roadside and ride back home!

Once I was late for work and so in a hurry. My other teen wanted me to drop her off on the way. I started the vehicle. She lifted her leg to get on, but absent-minded me just drove off leaving her in the lurch, with one leg raised and mouth open I shock. I haven't heard the end of it yet. Picturesquely speaking, she compared it to a dog lifting a leg to relieve itself. I apologised profusely but the picture even now brings a smile on. Reaching my workplace my senior, a very serious lady who never even smiles, laughed her head off for quite a while and for a few months after that, she used to repeat the incident to me and have fun. 

But I am sure my beloved teen has still not forgiven me for that even today.

My Family...My World....

My family was, my dad, my mom, my one-year elder bro and me. Oh ! It was the bestest family ever. I probably had the best childhood in the world. There was great bonding between my mom and dad and thus we were an almost-always happy family. 

My dad was an aircraft engineer and he loved taking us out on trips....long and short. We grew up in Bhubaneshwar and our trips included long seven day car journeys from Bhubaneshwar to Cochin during the summer holidays..WOW ! They were simply amazing journeys. I have loads to share but here I shall pen down some wonderful moments of that long journey.

There was the time when our Hindusthan 14 car horn got stuck and wouldn't work. Dad was at the wheel and the highway traffic had plenty of trucks. So he bought us an air horn..we were around nine and ten then. Dad instructed us to honk the airhorn when he gve the signal. Whenever there were huge trucks in front dad would ask us to blow and me and my bro would pump away with our full strength. The air horn was SO loud that the truck would immediately make way for us, only to find a tiny Hindusthan 14 overtake it and come in front. The drivers would be really red with anger. To irritate them further my Bro and me would make faces at them, sticking out our tongues from the back windows... Oh! It was such fun.

Since it was summer, as we passed through Rajamundhry in Andhra, we came across plenty of mangroves full of ripe yummy mangoes. Dad would stop the car in some isolated shade for a drink of water and to wash his face since he was the only driver and didn't want to get too tired. We would stealthily go across the road, jump the fence and quickly pluck several ripe mangoes and rush back to the car. By the time the guard dog and the owner came running we would already be on our way, waving to them. Then Mom would slice the mangos and all of us would have them.

My Mom believed that since my Dad had to do all the driving, he should get adequate rest in the evenings and nights. So whichever big town we reached at around six, we would check into a hotel and spend the night there. At night we would have food and all of us would cuddle up around Dad and he would read aloud the adventures of Tintin. He had a commanding voice and he would put in the right intonation to the words especially Captain Haddocks swear words. ...Mom, Bro and me enjoyed listening to it as much as Dad loved reading it.

After the seven or eight days journey when we reached my Grandpas place at Cochin, we would have plenty of adventure stories to regale them with.

My Dad left this world four years back and I am a mother of three now but even now my eyes fill when I relive these memories.







Happiness Challenge Day 6......India Triumphs Again !

Happiness is watching India win every match in the World Cup series so far. Happiness is watching Captain Cool bat, saving the day yet again...happiness is watching MSD defend every member of his team at any cost....happiness is watching Indian supporters waving Indian Flags and dancing with joy.....Oh how good it feels to win !

Happiness Challenge Day 5....Sweetness Personified

Happiness is ....watching our kittens Hutchiko and Browniko sleep peacefully after a heavy meal of Pedigree...yes that is what they love nowadays..:) they are lost to the world,twitching heir ears and nose  lost to the world...sometimes I envy them...they are so without a care in the world...no responsibilities,no tensions, no stressors....

My tensions ease when I watch them while they sleep or play. I feel so tender and soft and happy...:)

Happiness Challenge ... Day four....Summer Rains

The fresh fragrance of the earth...the cool, cool breeze making the leaves dance in gay abandon, the skies opening up the downpour of summer showers melts the heart with happiness. It feels so peaceful to sit at the window or the garden swing and listen to the pitter-patter of raindrops. To watch the glistening drops slide down the rich green water-glazed leaves to form patterns on the earth. Oh ! How I love the rains...especially the unexpected summer showers...

Happiness Challenge ...Day 3 A thing of beauty is a joy forever..:)

I just can't wait to see my daughters' face when they see this little gift I bought for them. Just thinking about it makes me feel happy. It is soooo delicate, well-made and beautiful. Happiness is seeing beauty in everything..:)

HAPPINESS CHALLENGE ....Day Two....Contentment

It is fun to watch my youngest try her hand at Sudoku flanked by two content,well-fed,lazy cats...who keep pushing their body onto the newspaper in a bid to sleep...every now and then my teen pushes them rudely away when she is unable to fix a number...again the cats sprawl and again they are shoved....oh ! It is a scene of strange contentment where all of them are happy doing their own and just watching them makes me happy...:)

Day 1 The Hundred Days Happiness Challenge....DAWN

The happiness that I get from spending time with myself on most early mornings is non compare. The dawn-nip in the air, the cool breeze, the peaceful solitude, the soft chirping of the early-risers, all these energise me for the day's battles. I hate waking any member of my family that early, because I find it difficult to share my dawn. 

Children of a Lesser God ( from a Home)

Am I a child of a lesser God ?
Am I a life that no one wants ?
Am I a waste in this material world ?

Then why do I feel all alone ?

My father ...the creator (they tell me)
Created and vanished.
My mother ...the carrier (they tell me)
Delivered and abandoned.
The world ...all curious
Pitied and sympathised.

And now, I feel all alone....

What is my role in this ever-changing world?
What is the plan that God has chalked out for me?
What did the world feel about me?

I know not...and so I feel all alone..

I learnt my lessons early in life,
I learnt about 'survival of the fittest'.
I learnt that 'where there is a will, there is a way'
But in spite of wisdom acquired,

I feel alone...

I want to be a success in life, I know not how.
I want the world to love me...for myself
Not their sympathy.
I want to be a 'normal person'
Not the apprehensive,mixed-up character that I am.

I thank the world for letting me survive.
I thank the people for their concern.

But...I am not the child of a lesser God...

I am ME, Myself....an individual on my own,
Who wants love and acceptance
And nothing else.

My Journey From "Or" to "And"

The journey from being a starry-eyed girl to a tough, Phoenix-like, determined woman was far from a bed of roses.

Just out of grad school, with dreams in the heart and absolute naiveté about relationships, roles and life in general, she stepped into the dream-world of marriage with 'the man of her dreams'. Little did she realise that this was a house of cards and the Princess of Hearts was in for a rude shock.

The troubles started as early as two months into the marriage. Arguments, ceaseless fights and cold wars became the order of the day. The Princess was immature but so was the Prince, who was nine years older. The reasons for the tiffs were silly and foolish, but neither realised it. Despite efforts, the situation only worsened each day.

Then came the day when the Princess turned into a Queen, when a sweet little princess was born to her. She loved her to distraction. Being very young herself, the little princess was like a live toy and she took great care to see that the little one had the best of everything.

All the household chores were less dreary and tiresome because she finished them quick so that she’ll get more time to spend with her favourite-st little princess.

She was happy in her own little world, even though the tiffs and cold wars still continued. But after a point, it grew so bad that the little princess refused to go to her father because she sensed the discord and heard him ranting and raving at her mother. The father loved her a lot too but the little one refused to go anywhere near him because she was too scared. He even tried bribes but nothing worked.

By the time the little princess turned two, she started being affected by the ceaseless fights and cold silences between the only two adults she knew. She started becoming withdrawn, remained mostly quiet and was easily startled... even by the sound of her father’s bike.

She refused everybody's company, made no friends in her playschool and clung to her mother all the time. When the mother left her to go to the bathroom, she cried till the door was opened and she was cuddled.
The Queen tried many ways to prevent the quarrels and have a peaceful atmosphere for the little princess to grow up in, but she sadly failed.

That is when the Queen took a decision. No compromises on the physical, mental and emotional development of her little princess. If she wanted her unscarred and healthy, physically, emotionally and mentally, she would have to leave.

The decision, though tough and painful, brought relief to both parties. Maybe they just weren’t meant to be.

The princess and the queen were quite alone, but not lonely because they had other people who loved them.

After a long tough journey, twenty years later, the princess, a thorough all-rounder, earns her living in a good company and supports her mom in every way.

Life has almost come a full circle. The little princess now looks after the physical, emotional and mental well-being of the queen, who still has some fight left in her. Together they make a great team. 

Once upon a time, I had to choose and I chose my daughter, her well-being, her life. From then on, she has been both my “and” and “or”, never making me have to choose between anything else ever again. She AND I.

This post is a part of #UseYourAnd activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette Venus“

Things That Define Me

I sure cannot and will not be limited by one label.

There are many roles a woman has to play in her lifetime. Some she enjoys and some.... she just performs. We play our roles based on our priorities in life. Right now, my two most important roles are those of a mother and a daughter.

As a mother - helping my teens in their studies, listening to their emotional unloading after school/a hard day at the office, shopping online for the family, chauffeuring them to and from their activities, helping my writer-daughter edit her stories, coaxing my son to study for his board exams, dividing their internet-time with accurate amount of justice, finalising a common breakfast, lunch and dinner menu that everyone is happy with... and so on.. These sometimes-stressful, mostly enjoyable duties are a few things that define my duty as a mother.

As a daughter - sharing my Mom's memories of her childhood and adulthood at the extended breakfast sessions, listening to her rant and rave about her TV serial characters, admiring her just-bloomed precious orchid/color-changing rose etc., being awestruck at her crafting capabilities of turning any waste product into a beautiful, useful thing, discussing news/incidents, lazing on her bed and listening to the family history/geography, relishing her home-baked stuff, serving her meals on time with that extra care to ensure that she will relish them... In her old age, few things can light her eyes up, make her wave her hands around animatedly describing something, and I take it upon myself to do everything that I can to enable that.

Since my only brother and his family are far away in Canada, my role of a sister, much to my chagrin, is limited to listening to his joys and sorrows every weekend on Skype.

Apart from these two main roles, I have a multitude of interests.

I would love to be a part-time volunteer at a social service centre. I would like to spend at least one day a week at a geriatric care unit. I play sports ranging from badminton to tennis, cricket and football.
I would like to give my all to the special children I am working with right now. If I am able to help them be self-reliant, I will consider myself blessed.

I am planning to open a library with the numerous children's books I have so that the children in the colony I live in realise the importance of reading, add to their knowledge and vocabulary. Someday, they might realize what a treasure trove books can be, what an asset cultivating the reading habit is.

I also like to dabble around in the kitchen, mixing this with that, chopping up a storm and creating a recipe for my family to relish. I am passionate about finishing the half-read books on my shelf, downloading those numbers which take me back to a happy childhood and also those which get my feet tapping.

I write. I have written poems; some published, some tucked away in a notebook, some yet to be penned down from my heart. Every day I continue to write new ones.

My days seem to be too short and too full to indulge in every one of my passions, everything that gets me going, gets my heart pumping. And I’d like to think that these are the things that come together, in bits, by pieces, to make me the person I am today. But to try and limit me to just one label? Hmmm... Not possible.

This post is a part of #UseYourAnd activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette Venus.

Those Dangerous Eyes

Amidst the thick forest
Where the trees stand silent sentinels,
Where the cricket chirps in constant chorus
And the mist settles like a blanket in the valley.

Where the everfresh fragrance of the eucalyptus
Teases the nostrils in vivid delight,
I feel the presence of unseen eyes.

Bold and dangerous...
They penetrate straight to my soul.

I turn, 
And look straight into those unflinching eyes.

They size me up, in a bid to gauge my thoughts.

My heart thudding, my steps faltering,
I try to compose my thoughts.

Utter confusion clouds my brain.
A part of me refuses to believe 
The dangers 
Of those dangerous eyes.

A part of me wants to flee...
Far away to the safety of human settlement...

The victorious part wins....

I boldly look right back
Into those dangerous eyes,
Finding depth and soul and passion.

They ask me a question,
"Are you upto me?"

In all intenseness I face them and think.....

'Life is not life, well-lived.....without risks'

O Dangerous-eyed One....Man or Beast

I am your kind.

The Return.....

I stood at the bridge and gazed at the sky,
I gazed at the swirling waters below,
And wondered at life's vicissitudes.

The shafts of sunlight fell on the waters
broken only by the branches of trees.
They made the waters sparkle as if
someone had dropped pieces of golden ice.

The tiny waves danced-I felt they were mocking me....
"Are you a coward?"they asked."Face life boldly,
do your duty and hanker not after worldly pleasures...
which are but mirages of pain".

I sensed a new reason to live anew...to face life

Life is beautiful,it is too precious to waste 
worrying,hurting,hankering,expecting.....

Aren't the beauties of nature not reason enough ?
Aren't your loved ones', care and love not enough ?
AREN'T YOU YOURSELF A REASON ENOUGH ? For living life to the hilt.

Time -stops for none, Death-waits for none....

So walk along with time and ready
yourself for a life of happiness....to a new sunshine.

The Passing Away

As the seconds fleet

As the minutes pass

As the hours move...a feeling of vacuum sets in.

The mind is vacant,the heart expectant,

The soul mourns....

the passing away of yet another year.

A year full of mixed experiences,

Many joyful...many tearful.

As the world celebrates the birth of another year

Freshly born....filled with suspenses...another year 

Of joys and sorrows,victories and defeats,

love and hate.

We dwell.

We know not what the future holds for us,

We know not what the New year heralds.

There is a deep sense of anticipation...eagerness.

Readiness to face another....hopefully fulfilling year.

Amidst joy and cheer..we bid adieu

to the past year...lost in the sands of Time,

Never to be regained again.

We thank the Supreme Power...

For His mercy and blessings...throughout the year.

We thank Him for the strength...

In facing the trials and tribulations.

And, we pray...

That He be with us...throughout the coming year.