This was the very first time she was in the care of people outside the family. Yes, I was apprehensive as a mother, but not harried and worked up. Thankfully, she took it well and so did I. It is the wonderful temperament of most kids to be easily diverted and we are naturally wired to explore. There will always be actions and ways that have been learnt at home that will continue where ever she goes. I might want her to learn and evolve some, but there are some actions I think she is doing just fine in; such as saying a “thank you” when she takes something from me or anyone else.

One of the actions I don’t insist in her changing is despising eating with her hands. I want her to learn how to eat neatly with her hands and maintain the hygiene. I also want her to master eating with a spoon. The first thing I was asked about in her care was if she ate only with hands and this was asked with some part disgust. Though I didn’t give an explanation as to why she liked to eat with her hand and I didn’t mind as long as she ate and enjoyed her food, but I knew that most Westerners and in this Aussies don’t like to eat with their hands. In many of the conservative nations, other than middle east, some African countries and Indian region, eating with hand is not appreciated.

However, this is changing and people are beginning to realise that there are etiquette involved when eating with hand and only right hand and moreover, it adds a lot to the entire eating experience. As a child I was taught not to drop any food while eating with the hand. Wash my hands prior to eating. Not to let the entire hand, the palm to touch the food. Use only your right hand, even to break the roti/Indian bread. Only use the tips of the fingers and most importantly, take what is needed and never to leave/waste food. These eating habits and etiquette are as important to eating with your hand as it is with eating with cutlery. Moreover, something that my daughter needs to learn in order to appreciate her Indian culture in this world and be comfortable with it, where her next school could be in any country other than India.

I read an interesting article  in New York Times to support this and I am glad that people are beginning to look at eating from other non-western perspective too.  After all imagine struggling with a knife and fork to eat dosa or roti. It simply kills all the enthusiasm involved in eating.

Yun hi, from Tanu weds Manu has checked all the boxes except for probably the way it was filmed. Rather, did the heroine for the way she acted and portrayed the character deserve this song!

But let’s forget about all that and concentrate on why is this song featured here.

I have a habit of listening over and over to good songs or the ones I take a major affinity to. This song surely happens to be an ethereal combination of Mohit Chauhan’s husky, wonderfully modulated voice along with Ujjaini, lyrics that were written with pure love by  Rajshekhar and music, oh so wonderfully and delicately composed by Krsna.

When you love a song, it is human to visualize those lyrics and more often than not associate with your own life. So, if I were to dedicate a song for my love, for the number of ways in which he loves me, then it would be this song.

Happy Birthday hubs!

Bas yun hi, aaj hume kuch likhne ka mann kia aur bas iss gaane ko sunte aap main kho gaye….

S’ complaint was that he could not just ping me or one of our gang members over the messenger and just share his thought/appreciate a song/ article/blog/anything of interest.

I have since realised that without good discussions, life becomes insipid. I feel the biggest dearth is when you cannot find, at least one person, to connect intellectually. Finding the right people around you all the time is now become a matter of luck. It is subject to a number of conditions and in this ever changing world, the parameters that vary are also numerous.

I suppose that is why all these social networking sites are thriving. People want to share, want to know what others say and here are platforms to do so. Come to think of it, personally, I do not like to share all these thoughts with everyone. As I feel that it may not be appreciated by all. But do I really have a choice in deciding who sees it and who don’t when I put up in a public forum? I suppose everything has its pros and cons.

So, who are the people who matter in your life with whom you would like to share your spectrum of thoughts?

You begin to wonder, is it really worth it!

The answer to all this is ‘Yes’! You do need to go through all of the above and probably more and have a child in order to experience some very precious moments.

Today D came out with me into the balcony and I thought she would play as usual. In stead, she started picking up her washed clothes from the tub and started handing them out to me to hang.

What can I say, am beaming!

There is a beautiful saying, ” Don’t count the moments, but count the moments that count.”

You surely live for this!

These brain waves are crucial to one’s life. Otherwise just imagine, we wouldn’t have discovered so many things and Archimedes wouldn’t have said, “Eureka!”

I had a friend in school and for her the spot was her morning loo time. If we were pondering upon a problem, then she would come back with her solution and sometimes brain wave after her morning visits. Back then when she shared it, I was amused and wondered how it could happen. Looking at it closely, it probably reflects two things:

1. It is probably a point in a day when you are concentrating on the problem or conundrum at hand and the entire mind’s focus, both conscious and the sub-conscious are in unison
2. It is probably also a time when you think about things that you are most interested in and your brain likes it

This goes to show that when we work in concentrated spurts of time (say 60-90mins) then our brain is most focused on the one thing we are working on and hence the productivity is very high. Secondly, you should always pick the work that you enjoy most to do, then it stops being work and something you enjoy doing and as a by product make money too.

An ideal situation which is not easy to achieve, however not impossible either.

Coming back to my ‘spot’ of enlightenment, well it is that time in the night, when I lie down to sleep and the lights are out that some of my finest thoughts flow. I am too lazy to make a note of such thoughts and more often they have just remained the passing thoughts. I am trying to put a special effort in trying to remember these thoughts, as I never know I might be a good writer too

I call this the ‘Kubla Khan’ syndrome because Samuel Taylor Coleridge, had once a dream of a beautiful poem in his sleep and when he woke up and started writing. He could only note down a third of it before being interrupted. That poem was named The Kubla Khan. The beauty of this incomplete poem lies in the literary merit and richness of the composition and it is regarded as one of the best composition’s of Coleridge. It does tend to get incoherent like all dreams, but has a lot of merit to it. It was inducted as a part of our school literature course and least to say, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

Kubla Khan
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge

In Xanadu did Kublai Khan
A stately Pleasure-Dome decree,
Where Alph, the sacred river ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers was girdled ’round,
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.

But, oh! That deep, romantic chasm which slanted
Down the green hill, athwart a cedarn cover:
A savage place! As holy and enchanted
As e’er beneath the waning moon was haunted
By woman wailing for her Demon Lover!
And from this chasm with ceaseless turmoil seething,
As if this Earth in fast, thick pants were breathing,
A mighty fountain momently was forced,
Amid whose swift, half-intermitted burst
Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,
Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail;
And ‘midst these dancing rocks at once and ever,
It flung up momently the sacred river!
Five miles meandering with ever a mazy motion,
Through wood and dale the sacred river ran,
Then reached the caverns measureless to man,
And sank in tumult to a lifeless ocean.
And ‘mid this tumult, Kublai heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!

The shadow of the Dome of Pleasure
Floated midway on the waves,
Where was heard the mingled measure
From the fountain and the caves.
It was a miracle of rare device:
A sunny Pleasure-Dome with caves of ice!

A damsel with a dulcimer
In a vision once I saw:
It was an Abyssinian maid,
And on her dulcimer she played,
Singing of Mount Abora.
Could I revive within me
Her symphony and song,
To such deep delight ‘twould win me
That with music loud and long,
I would build that dome within the air!
That sunny dome, those caves of ice,
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry: “Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle ’round him thrice,
And close your eyes in holy dread:
For he on honeydew hath fed,
And drunk the milk of Paradise!”

It is just never the same once you become a parent. Life is suddenly all about this little creature – cute, cranky, playing, pooping and so on. It took me a considerable time to get used to what hit me Yes, what hit me. People usually tell you how nice it is to have a baby, but no one really prepares you for those not so very nice times. I am not complaining, but just saying that it sure is nice to know and be prepared.

But then fast forwarding to the present…..

I can proudly say, I haven’t just been there and done that – I have braved that and done that as well as I could. It is a mixed bag and I did enjoy and pull my hair in sheer madness/boredom and desperation. I also made it pretty tough for all the folks around me and my husband gets special accolades for all the supports. Frankly, I couldn’t have done it without him.

Leaving a full time job and spending my time in taking care of a creature who wouldn’t know reason and has her own time table and rules. There is not a moment’s respite and absolutely no delays allowed in the schedule. An extremely demanding job that makes full time job a breeze. It has not been easy at all in any which way.

The huggies and kissies and the continuous prattle (sometime making sense and sometimes absolutely incoherent) dressing her up and many, many more innumerable episodes have made all these things worth my time. Achieving those milestones from the first time she could start holding her neck, rolling over, crawling, standing up, walking, first word, climbing up, eating and more recently prattling – have been sheer joy that words can never explain! We have many more milestones and battles to win and we will be there in time.

Why am I saying all this? Because, I see my little one turning two in three days. I wonder at how time has blown past and what a joy and trouble she has been through the last two years.

How quickly has she grown up to be a such a feisty toddler!

I am talking about my other support system which is equally and sometimes even has been more important than my family. It is increasingly becoming necessary to have another piece/pieces of you with whom you can share your joys and sorrows unabashedly. They are my girl friends.

As a part of my support system apart from mom and sis, I have roughly more than a dozen chosen pieces of me: the women who are there for ‘me’. I call them ‘pieces of me’ because they reflect a lot of my thoughts and actions which make me what I am and have their unique characteristics which make them so great. They understand the reason behind my cribs, my frustrations, we deal with men and their idiosyncrasies, babies and tantrums and even much before that marriage required or not kinda questions. So the range of off-loading varies from a one of day’s blues – bad day at work -bad fight with someone – life threatening crisis, etc. to the many joyous achievements and occasions life puts in.

In order to function sanely, I feel this support is absolutely required and a must. This post is dedicated to all those women without whom life would never be the same as it is right now.

Thanks for being there!

I would have missed

• The instinct that tells you over and over again, ” This is the one, this is the one….”, on and on in my mind
• The heady feeling of instantly falling in love
• The heady feeling of being madly in love that could make you do many insane things
• The lovely courtship days that made them so special because of all the time we had ‘just’ for ourselves and no sundries being a part of it
• Getting married
• Driving around like mad people in the US and more or less covered the East coast and some of the West too
• Buying our own house
• Decorating it with all things important and trivial, yet so special in our hearts
• The birth of our daughter and her growing up
• Discovering my calling at work
• Making some great friends on my way
• Moving to Australia and all that we are going through now….

I do not like people who blame someone else for the failures in their lives. Sure you don’t always dedicate your success to others, so why blame at every failure?

The answer is because it is always easier to blame someone else for your failure than own it up for the mess you have created. In most normal circumstances, I believe that there is no real situation which cannot be salvaged or used to our advantage. It is just the perspective and the will to make use of the situation that matters.

I had come across some ‘characters’ who do not own up for what they do and some others who go beyond their limit to help them. It is weird how life plays out things and today I am in a particularly philosophical mood which makes me want to sit and muse about these supposed big things or nothings in life.

Looking at my daughter go around her little needs in a care free manner, it really makes you want to go back to a stage where you didn’t have to bother/worry/care for anything at all. Even now, I want to achieve that carefree existence given some responsibilities and sans most of the complexities. Again a matter of perspective I think.

One element of complexity in our life comes from our work/money matters and another one stems from the way your closest relations behave with you. I wouldn’t advise anyone to be an altruist nor a selfish, but draw a mid-line. Increasing number of people are drawn to extremities and more so to the later. I see it is a perspective thing for them and also for us to deal with them, but the solution for such a thing is not very clear.

As I mentioned above, this post is neither meant to be preachy or questioning. It is what it is – musing about the complexities involved in our lives.

Why is everything going hay-way?

When will I be able to get things done?

Will anything ever work out for me? ….and so on and so forth, I suppose you get the drift.

It is in moments like this that I get my peace/answers in renewing my faith in my God. I had written a post on ‘mann‘ which means heart in Hindi. It is a beautiful verse written by the Late. Harivanshrai Bachhan.

If I had to translate this short poem (without lyrical sense) then it would mean…

If whatever you wish for, that happens then it is good

However, if whatever you wish for, if that doesn’t happen then its even better

Because when what your heart wishes for doesn’t happen

Then that happens which is in his heart

And that is much better than what you had ever wished for.

Last Saturday, was one such instance when something very nice and seemingly surreal happened – all because I had supreme faith in my God.