A blog about blog..

I have been wondering how long has it been since I posted something on my blog. And the answer is - pretty long if I look back at the frequency when I just started blogging! I had this doubt in my head at that point as well. I was all excited when I just started writing and felt like writing every other day like maintaining a dairy :P. I used to ponder how long would that enthu live. And I can pretty much see that it has been aging quite drastically. Even faster than I expected. Guess it's suffering from Progeria.

This pattern is not just limited to activities like blogging. I see it in every small thing in my life. It's the newness of a thing that excites me. But I tend to get 'used to'; actually 'bored' would be more appropriate; very soon! It's both good and bad. Good in a way that I keep looking for new things and thus exploring and learning new stuff however petty it may seem. But at the same time, it's wasteful. I buy something new with great excitement and within a few days (you won't believe, but sometimes within a few hours) the excitement starts wearing out. It's wasteful specially in case of materialistic things. And it's not very positive on the other front too; when I get excited about a new activity and start off with a great passion. But soon I start loosing interest and quest for something different starts. This again is both good and bad. I get to try my hands at many things, but then at the end of the day, I don't feel that I am good at any of them!!

It's more like a cycle..I come to start liking the same things again when I come across them after a long time..not sure if this is the right way to go about things..but it's not entirely in my hands right? You like something and you don't like something. What can you really do about it?

Guess it's pretty late at night to find answers to such complex questions of life :P
I better go to sleep now. May be I will find a solution in my dreams :D

To be continued..

Expressiveness!!

"My life is an open book" - a lot of us say this all the time. But do we all really mean it? For the past few days, I have been thinking if only people were more expressive; probably half the problems in our daily lives would go away! But it's one of the hardest things to do I believe. It may not result in pleasant consequences always. I like being subtle at many points, probably because that's just easy to do. May be we need the right composition of expressiveness and subtlety. Excess or dearth of both these can lead us to many problems, common among them being misunderstandings, hidden hatred, wrong opinions - sort of a cold war at times!

There are two opposite sides to it as is the case with every coin. Expression of Joy and expression of sorrow. Being expressive is hard in both cases, second being much harder than the first.

Many a times, we make a pessimistic assumption about others capabilities. Believe it or not, it's our loved ones who we feel are the weakest and thus shirk telling them everything. One reason we give to ourselves is that we don't wanna give them unnecessary tension. Second, it's always hard to come upfront with our failures, especially the people we are close with. We have a hidden fear they would start thinking less of us, they wont have the same respect as they have now, thoughts like "Oh i can just deal with it. there is no point bringing it up at home"

This starts small and adds up, as our problems start small and slowly build up into a monster!! And that's the time, we can't hide it anymore. This is the time, we portray ourselves at our worst. Biggest failures in life. We loose trust of our dear ones. We suffer and make them suffer even more. There exists unspoken tension, unspoken friction that's hard to express. We just try to put up with this mess and continue living the same way. Trying to be more expressive, but failing miserably at every point. And thus becoming out permanent habit to hide things - however small or big...

Is there a coming back? Ofcourse there is. It's never too late to do anything.
It's never too late to set things right if we have the will and if we place a little most trust in our dear ones. They are the ones who become our support system ultimately. However weak they may seem, they would come out as the strongest beings we have ever known. Isn't their still putting up with us a sign of how strong they are. They could have turned their back on us and left us at anytime.

This is the time to hold their hand, to place our trust in them, to express, to share and to sort out everything. Afterall two minds can think more than one, four hands can do more work than two, and beyond all this the morale boosts non-linearly!

But all this could be avoided if we try to be more expressive in first place. In little things and in big. Lets share, the joys and sorrows of this life - for togetherness is better than loneliness!

Festival of lights....

Diwali, The Indian festivals of lights...the name itself brings so many things to our minds - beautiful earthen lamps and candles, sweets, rangoli, new dresses, fire crackers usually top the list :)

Just like Christmas, people like to celebrate Diwali eve at their homes while exchanging gifts throughout the week and sharing the fun with friends and relatives. Being away from India, I do miss the family bit of this festival a lot! But I try to make up for the fun part as much as a I can :)
I celebrated this Diwali with all the things that topped my list :P - sequence of phone calls to India (talking to my family and close knit friends), preparation of some savories like Besan ladoo (agreed that I had to look up the internet for a recipe, the end result was mouth watering :P), Livermore temple visit (agreed that we spent more time in the queue for the yummy prasad than inside the temple), lunch get together at a friend's place (agreed that the friend cooked most of it :D ), watching Golmaal :D, lighting candles and diyas, making Rangoli (agreed that it looked like a art n craft project of a 5 yr old :P, there were pros to give it a finishing touch :) ), dancing, playing games, taking pictures, getting back home and lighting candles at my own place (agreed that everybody was already asleep and it was 1:00 am in the night :P) and oh I almost forgot getting dressed up in traditional clothes.....

Well that was my way of celebrating Diwali and I did have a lot of fun :)
Happy Diwali....

Those were the days....

Those were the days, when festivals used to be so colorful, when enthusiasm was in abundance, when our home used to be fragrant with home made festive delicacies, when we would start preparing for the festive season 2 months before, when we used to sit with our dad and make a huge list of things to buy, when we used to sparkle clean our home for festivities and still not get tired, when we used to go to Ram Leela every night during navratri, when we used to invite lil girls for food at our home, when we used to go see Dusshera festival where they burnt Ravan Statue, when we used to make our own Ravan Statue and fill it with fire-crackers, when all the ladies and girls would sit together for decorating their hands with Hena late at night and still manage to get up early in the morning to start Karwa Chauth, when staying hungry during fasts used to be so much fun, when Diwali used to knock months before with loud fireworks, when we would pester our mom to buy more n more diyas and candles to light our home, when we used to pester our dad to buy more n more crackers, when we used to make greeting cards with hands for everyone, when we used to buy new colorful dresses for the festivals, when we used to light our entire home with bright candles and diyas and not electrical lights, when we all used to sit for pooja on Diwali eve, when mom's Halwa Poori used to taste more delicious than a 7 star hotel gourmet food, when we used to get happiness from life's little pleasures, when we all used to be together!!

I miss those days, I miss India, I miss those festivals, I miss my home, I miss being together with my family.....

They say - Body is mortal while soul is not. Does that mean it is any less important than the soul?

I am not really a follower of spirituality, not that I am against it or anything. I have not just gotten into it as much! But the little that I know about it, they say Body is mortal, while soul is not. Does that mean it is any less important than soul?

Well if we are talking about the life beyond this world (that none of us has really seen); may be 'yes', but right here where we all live, on this earth, in this world - that doesn't seem like the case to me! I don't really have a lot to say, because others might have strong opinions about this topic. The point of my post here is not to argue against spirituality or against anyone's beliefs.

I was watching this movie the other day - Just Like Heaven - that made me ponder on this. Deep down somewhere, even I believe that we will all leave our bodies and our soul be part of the eternal power. And at the same time, I also believe in respecting the body that God has given us. We must take good care of it by exercising, giving it what it needs to stay healthy. But I had never looked at it from a different perspective.

What if our soul and body are both alive - but disconnected!!

May be it's not even possible in reality, but the movie portrayed something like this - Elizabeth met with an accident that put her into an indefinite coma. Her soul was no more connected to her body and that's what made the soul so helpless!! The body was there, lying on that hospital bed, still breathing, but totally disconnected to the soul. And there was the soul, healthy, but not able to talk to anyone (well not 100% true, but lets not add any more drama here than there already is :-) ), not able to touch anything, not able to make it visible.....Sounds funny or stupid?? Well it might be, but just think for a sec, what if this was true? Although the soul is our real being - we really need it's visible existence to connect to rest of this world. And while we are alive, its this world that we care about right and not the unseen afterlife world? Our body gives our being a visible existence and that's something we need to be able to live in this world, be able to do things, be able to give this life a meaning....

House on Water!

I have been meaning to write this a long time ago - well about 2 weeks ago to be honest! But I have been traveling crazy for the last few days. Not that I don't like traveling, I absolutely love it; but it does take a lot of time and energy. Had been sleep deprived for 2-3 weeks now. I think I am digressing a lot here - you must be wondering how the hell does all this relate to the title of this post "House on Water"....

It was the Labor Day weekend and we rented a houseboat on Lake Shasta and that's what I have been calling a house on water :-) it was soooooo much fun, I still feel at times, that I am sailing away on the waters on Lake Shasta! There were seven of us and all newbies on house-boating front. When the idea was in nascent stage, we couldn't believe that we would be captains of our own boat. Nobody else would accompany us for steering/docking/taking care of the boat. Plus the idea of staying with so many people on one boat, in one single room wasn't something usual :P

But believe me after all this nervousness and all these doubts, it was such a awesome trip! I am glad I did it and conviced other 6 to join for this nobel cause :P

We did everything - Modeling (well models pose for the pictures all the time, and the place to scenic it was almost inevitable), Swimming (so what if it was with life jackets; none of us had swum in 250 feet deep waters before), Board games (yup Settlers of Catan it was and that particular game turne dout to be so interesting we took a picture of the board at the end :P), Cooking (So what if it was just Maggie :D), Baking (Oh yes we baked a pecan pie and it came out pretty well after all the major blunders such as a mixing egg in the pie filling, replacing Cane sugar syrup with water to mention a few :-) ), Star gazing (oh it such an amazing experience lying down on the boat roof and gazing at the stars), Story telling (the ambience turned out to be pretty conducive to ghost story telling :D ).......

Oh I almost forgot to mention - it happened to be my birthday as well :)
My friends successfully hid my bday cake! Although I unloaded almost all of the food stuff from the cars, the cake managed to escape my eyes! I was pleasantly surprised to see a cake at the roof top at midnight :-)
Wow how to describe how it felt like cutting the cake on the roof of the boat admidst Lake Shasta - absolutely sensational :P

Long story short, it was one of the best trips I have made so far - the combination was just perfect (Company of awesome friends (including some very special ones :-) ), calm, soothing waters of Lake Shasta and my birthday :P)

Balanced high energy life - is there a contradiction in this stmt?

Work hard and Party hard - that's how life used to be while I was in college ~ first BITS, my alma mater and then UW.

BITS - We would keep running around with classes, test series, labs, tutes and what not and still find time to catch up late night RAF movies (They used to screen 24 movies (yes you heard it right) in the auditorium), prepare dance sequences to celebrate a friend's b'day even before the test, go to C'Not (the hangout junction at BITS) every now and then!

UW - Things were a little different, mainly because we were not in a hostel anymore. But still that was a high energy stint in life. We would still be running around for classes, for meetings with the profs, for project discussions but still find some time to go to those Ballroom sessions every Friday night, have dinner out on Friday eves, go to Farmer's market every Sat morning and have a pot-luck or dinner invite every now and then!

And now I feel as if life has taken a step back, it has become more slow paced, more laid back! At times I feel it's more balanaced this way. I am atleast able to sleep well at night and enjoy my weekends and weekday evenings not worrying about work all the time. That keeps changing a little bit depending upon the work pressure. But that's how it is on a daily basis. That's all good, because I have become a little health concious these days and thus working out, eating healthy, getting enough sleep and learning new sports/activities have become part of my life.

But sometimes I ponder if this is it - if this's rest of my life! I love the balanced part of this life, but again I miss that energy! I enjoyed that running around all the time and I seem to miss that now! I again want to be on my toes all the time - but at the same time I want to have a balanced life so that I can have a healthy life style, so that I don't miss on some of the most marvelous things on earth - such as exploring nature, learning a new activity, stopping by to gaze at stars, going for an outdoor concert just a block away from my home......

Well such is life - we can't get everything at the same time. We need to compromise on certain things to get other! But I feel we need to keep introducing little changes to keep life flavorful. Changing schedule of various things for instance would bring some change - for instance going to work early in the morning for some days and then going to the gym early in the morning before going to work for some days would bring some change :P

Probably balanced high enery life is indeed possible. Need to work hard while we work and need to party hard when we are not working - it's as simple as that! That being said, it's not all that easy as it sounds. I seem to be concentrating on the latter one lately :P I certainly need to switch, oh no not switch but strike a balance between the two :) Need to bring that energy back!

Money - Can't we live without it?

I don't really know why this question came flashing into my mind! But when it came, it kept bugging me. Can't we live without money? Or is it really overrated? Is it just easier to say "Money is not everything! You have it today, you may not have it tomorrow!" when there is no lack of money? Imagine for a second that you don't really have any cash with you, your back account is absolutely empty! Suddenly you would think, oh man I can't live like this. I have no life. It's all over!! However happy you were before, suddenly you become sad. It just takes everything away from you. But why is that so? You just lost money, you have everything else. Your family, your friends!

It's true it's not easy to live with the lack of money, nor is it easy to earn respect and dignity when you don't have it! I saw this in "Pursuit of Happyness" - a movie that conveys that we always pursue happiness. It's not something we can have, not something we can own. Chris Gardner led such a hard life. He was struggling so damn hard to earn money - indeed he was pursuing happiness. Does that mean "You need to money to be Happy"? Money is just not something that just pays our bills, that buys us food, that helps us lead our life luxuriously! One gets happiness when they see their family happy and contended, when they can keep upto their needs and demands, when they can feel they are worth something, capable of doing something extraordinary, when they can make the world realize that they are smart! But at the end of it, you need to earn money for this. This is how they measure your success. Chris Gardner had to make most money at Dean Witter to get the job offer. Finally he did, but the underlying aim was not to earn money - it was to see his son happy, it was to prove that he was not ordinary!

Money has become a 'scale' for many things today. And we say "money is the cause of all troubles". It's actually not money that's the cause - it's our thinking that's cause. We have become it's slaves while money should be our slave. We created money and not vice versa. Money is the means to satisfy our material needs in life - it's not life!

Yippie got my own ice-skates :)

Yes after all those contemplations and searching frantically on internet, I found them, practiced with them and feel a lot happier now that I have them :)

I was really nervous about the size and fit since I had to order them online. Yea, skates are not true to size when it comes to different brands! And it's very important to have a perfect fit to be able to skate well. Buying them from a store isn't a piece of cake these days, apparently because it's summer. Many stores that ought to have them said they didn't have them for this season! Well I don't really get it, when there are several ice skating rinks that are operative in summer why do the stores get them only in winter? Well whatever, I resorted to my friend "The Web" and it didn't disappoint me :-). These skates feel so much nicer on ice! No more torture to my feet with those rental skates. Now I am Happy Happy :)

The curious case of Benjamin Button

At times we feel our lives are so complicated. We don't feel happy and contended with what we have. Our mind wanders - always asking questions like - "what's next"!!

Though it seems very unpredictable, we know a lot about what is it going to be like tomorrow. Well not exactly true, but we know that we will be a day older tomorrow and more as the days go by. Many a times we wish if time could just stop, if we would never grow old! But I never ever in my life pondered what would really happen if I never grew old (leave alone getting younger). "The curious case of Benjamin Button" - this movie made me ponder that!

How Daisy and Benjamin were both so helpless. If I had to compare, I thought it was Benjamin who was even more helpless. First getting born like an 80 year old - he couldn't enjoy his childhood like other children do. But he said OLD AGE wasn't that bad. It would be unfair to say something about this since I haven't had an experience yet - but still I would agree with him. It isn't that bad if it comes at the right age! But what about him, who was born old and died an infant! When he married Daisy and had their baby girl, he didn't want to get any younger. Instead he wanted to grow old with his daughter. Could you imagine someone more helpless that him? He had to leave Daisy - the love of his life, his soulmate, his wife. Daisy suffered too - because she loved the strange Benjamin Button! He made the right choice, Daisy wouldn't have been able to brought up the two of them - their daughter and him. He was a strange miracle, not everyone couldn't understand. I felt the most helpless and emotional moment was when he died. He was an infant in Daisy's lap. He couldn't speak, but he knew who he was, who Daisy was.

Then I wonder he still lived so many years. Because there are people like Queenie, who love unconditionally. His own father thought he was monster and abandoned him. He was ugly - but still one day old child craving for the love and warmth of a mother. Queenie gave those to him, she made him live, she loved him and he loved her back.

It's the love that drives this world, that drives us. We have so many things in our lives we take for granted. We take for granted that we would lead a normal life, we take for granted that we would own many worldly treasures, we take for granted that people around us would behave well. This list can never end. Leading the normal lives, the number of things we take for granted keep increasing. In all this, we forget that we came into this world empty handed and that's how we are gonna leave this world. Lets not take anything for granted. Lets thank God for what we are, for what we have.......

Ice Skating Wohoo or buhoo!

Ice Skating - does it bring chills to your mind or excitement or both? I will go with both :)

I have been thinking all along how I sucked at almost every sport ( :( !! $%#$#) - well it's mainly because I never really tried my hands (or more to say 'legs' :P ) on anything!
Then one fine day I decided to change that notion. Lets try and explore something I am absolutely alien to - I thought! Ice skating came pretty close :) Not alien in the sense that I never heard about it or didn't know about it, but never really imagined myself in the ice ring. Alright, I just signed up for it and started waiting for the first day of the class to never come :D But fortunately or unfortunately it did! When I first set my foot on that ice ring - the first thing to flash in mind was if I really wanted to do this? I kept thinking - Why the hell do I want to break my leg or sprain an ankle. Isn't life just happier and way better without it :)) Hmm just 6 lessons, five more to go - I will somehow pass my time holding tight to the walls and never think about it again :P

At that time it was hard to imagine myself even standing away from the walls, without any support, just on those skating blades. I felt I was learning to walk all over again, taking baby steps and fumbling at every moment, trying to hold anything that was close enough and within my reach. I was a child again. There was one significant difference though! A child doesn't know
what fear is while we adults have it in every other corner of our mind in some form. Those 3 yr olds just went zooming around me and I was trying to stand, march with baby steps with fear that I was gonna fall!! But I haven't fallen even once. How do I even know how bad it hurts? I just keep saying - it depends on the angle, position and momentum we fall with. And I just assume all these three parameters are going to play against me when I fall :P

I wonder how easy it would be to learn almost anything and everything if we could just let go off this fear. We can make progress otherwise too, if we have the will and determination. I can't say a whole lot about the fear factor, but I can certainly work better on the latter two. I am still fearful and still death scared to fall, but I am making progress with the will to skate and determination to learn. Now I can glide somewhat without any support - wohoo! Hoping this will not turn into buhoo :))

Mango People!

"Mango People" - this word or rather phrase is stuck into my head since today evening! Thanks to the Mango Bollywood movie "Love Aaj Kal"... oops I apologize for the slang here! If you happen to understand Hindi, you would have fathomed by now - Mango means "Aam" in Hindi and "Aam" in Hindi means Ordinary!! Though an ordinary movie, it did convey some extra-ordinary msgs.

Title of this movie seems so apt - Love aaj kal - Love in modern days! I think the most important msg was conveyed by Rishi Kapoor - He became successful for love of his life while Saif broke up with his lover because he wanted to be successful! How come time has brought this drastic change in our lives. It has changed definitions of some of the most important things existing in this world!

Let me share a wonderful story with -
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A woman came out of her house and saw 3 old men with long white beards sitting in her front yard. She did not recognize them. She said "I don't think I know you, but you must be hungry. Please come in and have something to eat."

"Is the man of the house home?", they asked..

"No", she replied. "He's out."

"Then we cannot come in", they replied.

In the evening when her husband came home, she told him what had happened.

"Go tell them I am home and invite them in!"

The woman went out and invited the men in"

"We do not go into a House together," they replied.


"Why is that?" she asked.

One of the old men explained: "His name is Wealth," he said pointing to one of his friends, and said pointing to another one, "He is Success, and I am Love." Then he added, "Now go in and discuss with your husband which one of us you want in your home."


The woman went in and told her husband what was said. Her husband was overjoyed. "How nice!!", he said. "Since that is the case, let us invite Wealth. Let him come and fill our home with wealth!"

His wife disagreed. "My dear, why don't we invite Success?"

Their daughter-in-law was listening from the other corner of the house. She jumped in with her own suggestion: "Would it not be better to invite Love? Our home will then be filled with love!"

"Let us heed our daughter-in-law's advice," said the husband to his wife.

"Go out and invite Love to be our guest.."

The woman went out and asked the 3 old men, "Which one of you is Love? Please come in and be our guest."

Love got up and started walking toward the house. The other 2 also got up and followed him. Surprised, the lady asked Wealth and Success: "I only invited Love, Why are you coming in?"

The old men replied together: "If you had invited Wealth or Success, the other two of us would've stayed out, but since you invited Love, wherever He goes, we go with him. Wherever there is Love, there is also Wealth and Success!!!!!!"

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I do strongly believe in this. Love between a woman and a man, between a mother and a child, between siblings and above all between GOD and his children is such a divine thing, it can only bring along the nicest things in the universe.....

And given that we are all Mango people in broad sense :P, we can't wait to become immortal and set our names in golden letters in history books for our children and grand children to read. Lets love everyone, lets respect everyone and lets enjoy life!

I gotta go and have some mango now - man talking so much about mango, how can i restrain from having one :))

have a happy monday ----

On my mind

It's 11:53 pm and I suddenly thought of starting blogging! Weird isn't it? It's been ages since I have been thinking blogging isn't for me. I can just read a few at best! But they say there's no time and age to start doing something. Then it just makes you feel so relieved when you pen your thoughts down as if somebody has just taken hell lot of load from your shoulders. It feels nice, it has already started feeling nice :-)

I was watching Frasier tonight while having dinner (sort of a daily routine that I have been following quite religiously :P) and it just occurred to how I was so similar to Frasier in certain aspects! Started wondering if he is a Virgo too. Perfectionists as Virgos are - is it really a good thing? I have started feeling that it somehow reduces the satisfaction and happiness you could get otherwise. Frasier was planning a perfect vacation and every single spoiler was making him grumpier! I have seen this happening a lot with me too. I start planning things so much in advance and it pains when anything goes out of order! Is it that big a deal really? Someone just mentioned yesterday that everything is temporary. If we could bear this simple in our mind all the time, we would never be unhappy again. No decision would seem as bad, because our mind will immediately start working towards a better one.

But it's not all that easy after all. We will need to keep reminding ourselves, because it's very easy to forget in glorious moments and in very sad ones too! I was feeling quite low yesterday - this one word did the magic "Temporary". I felt much better all day and it's gonna last atleast temporarily and I am gonna enjoy it as long as it does :-)