Chal chaiya chaiya.. destination 1

Shot taken from the train..

It was raining as soon as we entered the north eastern states...(and it rained as we left).
The small hills and lush tea gardens greeted our sight. Video I took from the train.
The climate is so different from the west of India ( had been to Rajasthan 5 months back) to the east of India. The wetness of the East as compared to the dryness of the west is so welcome a change.
The first incidence that striked me was the dis connectivity of my mobile phone, At first I thought there must be a tower problem, but soon I found out that my prepaid wouldn't work in the North East (and in Kashmir) due to security reasons in the troubled states.

I forgot to mention I was an inhabitant of Tinsukia, (once upon a time I called it TinDUKHia) a small town in upper Assam. To say the least, and let bygones be bygones, I will defer to say now, that this trip of a fortnight was a much memorable and enjoyable than the five years spent there.
All of a sudden, I loved everything about the place, the weather, the house, the people..
It was a travel back in time, it was almost ten years since I left that place which was my home at one point in time. The house was the same, the furnitures,curtains, everything same, people same although a bit older. The lifestyle there hasnt changed much. I spent some first stupefied minutes as I stepped in the house there..

There was a particular friend there who was my only friend and confidante there, and whom I had to visit no matter what. A good 6 days passed before I finally landed up at her house unannounced. She had already gotten whiff of my presence in the town and had been waiting for my visit. Apparently she told her kids stories about our friendship, and she said that, I wouldn't dare to step out of the town without meeting her. Since I was a good 6 days late, her teenaged son had already started teasing her and saying, "your best friend did't turn up?" :)
This friend is still living like she was living 10 years ago, absolutely no change, never goes out (isn't allowed to, in fact) anywhere, her world is her house, (reason I had to visit her and not vice versa).

I went through each part of our house, especially the part which housed my rooms. I had never thought I would return there some day, although being a beeg house of a large joint family, members of the family still live there. Although my rooms were bare and nothing in there anymore, I stood there imagining and lapsed into the timeless past.. hmm cant exactly put my thoughts in words here!

Aaah, it was nice to go back, visit and reminisce. I did some shopping too and have bought myself a muga mekhala, a traditional silk saree, which I plan to wear at the next beeg do.

Muga mekhala I bought for myself.

Why should boys have all the fun?

I always thought, Why should boys have all the fun?
Yeah, I know it sounds like the tv ad for the Hero Honda pleasure, but I swear they stole my idea (dont know how they did that.)

Anyways, boys seem to be doing the most outrageous things and nobody minded.
But I did, I definitely had a mind of my own. They seemed to be out of the house all the time, and adda marooing (chatting with gang of friends) away with friends or playing on the road. Did you ever see a girl playing on the road? All hell would break lose if some gang group of girls wanted to play on the road! I was pissed. X(
Why, they even walked in the middle of the road, as if baap ka maal ho (property of father).

I wanted no less, I would get my friends and get to a corner, and talk aloud and guffaw literally. My friends tried to quieten me, saying.. everyone is watching! I would be remain unyielding and replied," never mind, even girls can maro adda!"

Cheeky that I was and full of scorn for boys, I walked in the middle of the road, and I never moved till the car behind me honked at least thrice. That was my way of getting back, "yeh raasta mere bhi baap ka hai!" :P

I even played all boys games, be it flying of kites or spinning the top or marbles,  played them all.
Aah, How can I forget the cigarette? Of course I took the puffs (though I loved my life too much to ever inhale it) and tried to give out rings of smoke and showed off in front of boys.

All just to prove a point, I am a girl, but apart from that, no less than you guys!!

Picture from here

Bend it like Bush

My mummy used to tell me, " Don't be like the stiff trees which get uprooted in times of storms, but be the short shrub which bends itself when the storm comes and then pulls back to its upright position after the storm."

Guess I was stiff and unyielding, most of the times, and in most cases had an irresistible urge to be like the tree.

And why not? The tree was more powerful and beeg. The tree symbolized all that I idolized. I could never bring myself to think like the bushes. The tree had more pros than cons, and in my mind's eye, the pros of the tree was all that mattered. For me, being a tree was nothing bad and not all trees got uprooted in the storms.. at least the more sturdy ones still remained.. So, I thought I was one of those types. the sturdy 100 year old banyan types!

Did I last? well.. umm, don't know for sure, only time will tell! :)

PS.. most of the times I don't admit to doing things because I don't like to even voice it. I may have bent several times and that may be the reason I am still there... :P (there, I said it)

Picture from here

Till I saw.

I wept because I had no shoes... till I saw somebody uncomfortable in them.


I wept because I had no network...till I saw 
people committing virtual suicides.


I cribbed to reach the top... till I saw 
it was so lonely there.


I wept when I fell down... till I saw 
there were many there.


I missed my past... till I saw 
the real gift in the present.
Picture from here

db

db
dolls to dudes!
balls to babes!

Why pity your love?

What is love?
What is pity?
Are we tempted to love or like the ones whom we pity, or who in some way or the other looks like a suffering victim in the hands of fate or otherwise.
Ever noticed the most likeable character from any story, is the one who is most deprived and sad?
Why do we love the sad stories of others?

The protagonist of any story is seldom a very happy go lucky (read happier than us) kind of a person.
From the fairy tales to novels and movies, the sad ones are the most lovable ones. Take the example of Cindrella, our heart went out for her and we were so happy when she got the prince finally!

Why do they attract us? Do we like the fact that we are in a better position than them?
Does their apparent bad condition make us feel good by comparison?

Seen Tom and Jerry? Our heart is in Jerry, he is tiny and cute and is forever escaping Tom much to our relief! But, when Tom is being chased by the bulldog, we dont feel a thing for Tom!

Most often than not, we find ourselves falling in love with these characters. My question is, is it love or is it pity? Can we love without pity? Pity without love?

Do I hear a, " I love you," actually meaning, "I pity you?" :-/

Picture from here

learn to say NO

Its in built in us to compromise.. to give in.. to keep nodding..

Even I am trying to learn.. but I feel guilty as soon as I say NO.
My mind fatigues me with.. you pressurized the poor fellow, that was an outright insult and you were rude, you should have been more reasonable and adjusting!

And while I am still learning to say NO, I am teaching my kids, especially my daughter to say YES, to compromise, to nod, to let go..forgive and forget.

This probably explains the reason for me being a shopaholic. Could never say NO to the shopkeeper and ended up buying a whole lot of unwanted stuff. But I am learning, learning the ropes.. :)

I read this somewhere which made a lot of sense to me, " learn to say NO in a relationship, rather than saying NO to the relationship."

Easy to teach, hard to implement. NO?

Picture from here

travel in sleeper class

I used to travel sleeper class long time before.
When I married, it stopped. Then it was always an AC class.

My friend teases me and calls me a snob, RC (I used to think RC was red carpet till I was told it was rowdy club). Urgh . x( I have no qualms going any class, but my friend insisted that sleeper was a NO NO for the likes of me.

Now being the person I am, I am mighty intrigued by challenges. The moment somebody tells me, you cant do this, my mind and heart is set on doing it! Come what may, I will prove that I can do it! The motto burns into my mind,"NOTHING IS IMPOSSIBLE."

I managed to persuade everyone to allow me to travel in the sleeper, and I assured everybody that it was going to be OK and I had my aunt travelling with me. Of course I had heard stories of how terrible and cramped and smelly and dirty the sleeper travel is, but this did not deter me. I took some room sprays to combat with the smell and some small rags to wipe the seat if they were dirty.

It was winter so I packed some blankets for they don't give them to you in sleeper. The day travel was good enough and I traversed event less. We finished dinner just around 10 pm, that was the time we were going to enter the region of Naxalites. We slept soon after dinner. After an hour or so, there was some loud noises and I woke up to see swarms of men inside the coach and they didn't care it was almost midnight and passengers might be asleep. They went on with their loud banter and as if that wasn't enough, they started encroaching our seats. Some even squatted on the ground because all seats had sleeping occupants.

I was quite safe sleeping in the middle berth, but poor aunt, she was almost cramped on her own (lower) seat. I was wondering why was she keeping quiet and not asking the men to leave her seat alone and that they were pressing against her. I was to know later that they were probably naxals and my aunt had been dead scared to even move while they kept pressing against her for more space!

One guy tried to put his bag where my feet were, but I wasn't going to tolerate this and I pushed the bag sleepily away, with my foot, feigning a, oh! I did it accidentally. :P I even asked them in a rather annoyed manner, " Where are you all going?" Sometime later some uniformed men came inside but they too didn't seem to mind the commotion and the ticket less passengers!

Well, naxals or not, if I was on the lower seat and if they did as much as keep a part of their ass backside on my seat! I am sure I would have not let them. As it is the seats are too narrow for even a single person!

Picture from here

Stats

I recently came across an article http://www.reachouthyderabad.com/cheers/99club.htm, called "The 99 club."
I have joined this club, not because I got 99 coins but because where there was 1 visitor before, and now there are more and I keep striving to make it 100.

When I started blogging, few visited me and I was OK with my blogging and quite conscience free, but since I have installed feedjit, and the blogger has an added stats tab, my constant worry for ," did I get a visitor and if yes just how many, has got me jittery.
Am I showing on the google search?
If yes, what are the key words which point to my blog.
Lately a lot of people are turning in to one post of my blog! http://shaziawish.blogspot.com/2011/01/making-india-proud-my-kids-way.html

Since all this, I am developing a kind of hysteria, and thinking about a lot of things, (obviously to write on) so much so that my mind seems to be exhausted and too tired but it isn't stopping, the imagination is stretching its wings, just like the tummy which keeps stretching as you keep feeding more and more into it. the same is happening to my poor little used-to-relax and take-it-easy brain!

Anything I see or read, it becomes the food for thought and my seeking brain laps it all up, and leaves me with indigestion!

If one has an habit of overeating, he/she becomes fat, so he can go on a diet or if he has faaltoo more money, he can join the VLCC's of the world (sorry to VLCC folks, no offence meant to you). But, what about this? how to reduce the size of the brain once it increases?? Now, is this turning into another food for thought? eeeks no more!! :D

Picture from here

Spring beauty!

I mentioned earlier (problem of plenty ).

Being a Jack of all, its in my inherent nature to keep trying all sorts of things.. 

When I am doing a particular thing at a time.. I am completely enamored with it and then it becomes my life and passion. I don't know for how long.. it might be a temporary fad and fade away like the rest of them.

I came across a blog a couple of days ago, thanks to Shiju who dropped in to comment, I went to check him out and I was floored by his photographs and then I thought, why not give this a try as well!!
Thank you Shiju for being a turning point!

Yes, you guessed it.. I am going to be a photographer, at least for a while!
This wasn't an entirely a new idea, but not being able to go out, I often wondered what could I click in the vicinity of my house alone? I thought about the sunsets and moon, but I am not equipped with a very good camera to be able to zoom them.. I thought like everybody thinks.. taking pictures of something extraordinary could only be found if I had more exposure to outside world.. wished like everybody to be a bird and to be able to have a bird's eye view and I cribbed being an ant. I assumed I was like the ant but now I think that for the ant, the world is much much more beautiful than us!

Here are the first few shots tried by me. I hope to improve more!

PS.. These are flowers from my garden!

organizing my wires

Today I was cleaning behind the TV. Now there is an extension cord behind the TV which holds a gamut of appliances, the cordless charger, the mobile charger, the home theater, the laptop charger, the modem plug, my son's PS3 plug..  Not to mention the cable wires and the telephone wires which came from outside to kindle life into my modem/phone and TV

Since long, the wires always seemed to get entangled however much I tried to put them in order by tying the extra lengths and keeping the counter as wire free as possible..
This time I got an idea *-:) and I straightened all the wires and aligned it against the wall and stuck broad transparent cello tape over it, now it looks so organised and the counter is wire free! #:-S

I did all this with a little bit of my daughter's help, she held the wires while I stuck the tape or she cut off the tape and passed them to me. I proudly told her, "see how nicely I have engineered this." To which she replied, "If this is engineering, we need not study it, because its just common sense!"
I said." right, but it is applied common sense."

I was wondering, our head is like that, full of mixed thoughts (wires). The only way to disentangle those wires inside my mind is through common sense and more than that applied common sense..

Don't think proper (ego), think common (humble) !

Time to organize my wires :) And blogging is sure helping a lot!

Picture from here

IN and OUT

IN the mINd
OUT of the mOUTh

LOST!

WEALTH LOST = NOTHING LOST

HEALTH LOST = SOMETHING LOST

CHARACTER LOST = EVERYTHING LOST

The above is printed in bold fonts on an A4 size paper and stuck on the billboard of my father's office.

My daughter is 12 years old and she was asking me today," Mummy, what does that mean?" She was trying to remember what was equal to what? She tried to recall and was wrong because she seemed to remember what she thought was the right order.

Her version was

Wealth lost = something lost

Health lost = everything lost

Character lost = nothing lost

She was sure she remembered the correct format and was cheekily happy that for once she had gotten me wrong, so I dialed my father and asked her to confirm with him instead. She was shocked to find she was wrong, but she wasn't convinced.

I explained the meaning of character to her, yet she couldn't relate to wealth lost = nothing lost!

She asked me how can one live without wealth?

According to her, there is no health or character for that matter, without WEALTH.

I was having my usual tete a tete with my mil over tea and she said, there was a woman who had come to seek work, because her husband had left her and she has 4 kids, and she looked so weak and sick.. poor she!

So, no wealth ultimately lead to no character and no health!

Practical life is different, no? I hope my daughter understands that while theory is good to keep in mind, we usually end up being very practical in life!

the middle verses

Today while listening to some of my favorite songs I concentrated on the lyrics.
Usually I am unable to memorize the lyrics of songs and can remember only as far as the opening lines are concerned and the rest is all about the tune..

Today while listening to one of my favorites, the middle lines caught me off guard.. it was wowow!
This one was from "mujhe tum mil gaye humdum" and the middle verses which caught my ear was,"yeh main jaanoon, yeh tum jaano, ishara ho tho aisa ho."

Obviously, from then on I started to look for more good ones inside the songs I like and soon I got another from "tumhi tum ho" and the lines were "ek ho mere tum is jahan mein, ek hai chanda jaise gagan mein." Amazing lines, I wonder how did the brains of those people worked who penned down such lovely lyrics! WOW, totally floored..

Another one from Masoom, my favorite movie, ""mukaraaye tho muskurane ke karz utarne honge
muskaraaoon kabhi tho lagta hai , jaise honthon pe karz rakha hai ".. wowow!
More to be added as and when I come across some other good ones which strike a chord within me :)

so so

SO what if life is SO SO, SO SOon in life!

Child or children?

Are children the cause of being rich or poor?
When I had my 3rd baby,  some people looked at me as if i had committed some sin!
Will my baby be the cause of my wealth dwindling?
IS that why the rich have only one or maximum 2 kids?

My maid has 10 kids.
I was thinking if she can raise 10? why do people 100 times richer than her raise even half her number?
what is it that we will have to forgo? If we have 2 kids, it is ok. the moment the 3rd arrives, the problem arises.
will we have to go out less? less trips and holidays?
less parties and less diamonds?

A friend said very emphatically that one child doesn't divide the property and hence the family remains rich!
I think a rich family instead of overindulging with their kids should have more kids so that their expenses remain at a level where they are not able to indulge the child, and make him or her a spoil't rich brat!
How the hell would the child know the importance of owning without depravity?

Supposing I have 1 lakh to buy techstuff for kids.. I would surely buy a macbook if I had one child, a laptop if I had 2 and a notebook if I had 3? Does giving the child a macbook more imp?
Regular expenses is a little bit of a problem, where in you have to give the needs of food and clothing, still if one is rich enough, that can be done without much of a problem!

It would do some good to the kid to be left in wanting. Thats a good thing.. to remain in want! Its the force of want which keeps you going and striving and having hope!

There are some who would say that we can have one and still not indulge, but I think the majority of us don't know where to draw the line, and as I said in an earlier post, its very hard to say NO to your kid, especially if he is going to be the only breadwinner in the family in future, so you got to treat him good so that he treats you OK when you grow old!

Apart from all this, the child grows up knowing how to share and care and fight and forgive.. ( I could go on) with their brothers and sisters. Overall I think, very good for the psyche.

PS. Sorry, one child is a NO NO for me and China may not agree. Thats ok, as long as India keeps the mantra "hum do hamare do"(we 2 and our kids 2), even 2 is better than 1. :)

Apart from doing the child good, its a very good lesson for the parent too. The parent has to be nuetral and understand the shades of characters each of her child possesses and be more reciprocal with each one of them.
Let me explain via an example.. My elder SIL (sister in law) had her first child after I had had 2 kids. Once while I was in the same city as she was, and she was going to travel (by flight) to our in laws, where I would also join some time later. I wanted to send my elder daughter with her so that her school wouldn't be missed and I could have an extended holiday. She was so reluctant to take my daughter with her, she said she wouldn't be able to keep a watch at 2 kids at the same time and her hands would be full with her kid (my daughter was 2 and a half years old). I didn't say anything because probably she was anxious for her only child and maybe didn't know how to take care of 2 kids together. My second kid was just a few months older to her first kid. Anyways, such is destiny, that she now has 4 kids and she still remembers the day when she was so fussy about taking my kid with her, and now she did confess to me, that she felt bad about it and that now with her 4 kids, wouldn't I think how was she travelling now?

Picture from here

weekly bazaar

A video I took of the local weekly market..
I have submitted the same to the TIMES OF INDIA for their ongoing competition for "a day in the life of India."

Hope you enjoy it!

Here is the link on my channel

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zf_8btDErCw&feature=channel_video_title

Japanese story puzzle

Hi,
Read the following short story and answer this,
Do you think the father poisoned his son and daughter? Give reasons to validate the answer.

KAZUO ISHIGURO A FAMILY SUPPER -