S S School

T turned 5 this April and we had already decided to enroll him in a big school from the UKG. I was little reluctant to do so as that would mean a whole change in the entire schedule and I was not sure how he would cope up with all that. But my happy go lucky son proved me wrong, yet again and proved yet again that I am blessed to have him.

Death beckons

What is that one thing which we all know is going to be faced by one and all who has come in this world? That ends our existence and begins a journey to that different world of souls and hell and heaven? Yes, it is death, which is feared by one and all. Though we all know we can't escape it, we want to be oblivious to the fact that one day we all have to go. In these past 2 months, I have got the bad news of my relative and my best friend's mom passing away. And it brought me to reality which I had tucked away in some corner of my mind.

April and hike

End of first quarter.

New financial year for salaried people.

And yes today my company announces hike and new salary structure gets rolled out from today. We will get to know about it only by Monday evening. I was talking the other day to my colleague who asked me about my expectations about the hike and the renewed salary. I said I had no expectations.

She was surprised and asked me if I was Shri Krishna. I laughed out at this reference and said Yes!!

The meow story

I am an extremely friendly person.

I am not afraid of cats or dogs or cockroaches or lizards. I do not shout and jump at their sight or run away from them. I react, but not very sensationally. Cats have been a regular in my maternal house when I was in school. There were 3 generations of cats and we all lived very harmoniously for many years. We all loved and pampered those hairy soft balls of fur and also took care of their legacy by almost opening a maternity home for the cats.

Morning walk

As mentioned in an earlier post, we are doing a challenge with my girlfriends of targetting 30 minutes per day of exercise or any activity which keeps you moving (e.g cycling, jogging, swimming etc.). On Saturday, I woke up at 6:45 am somehow and decided to utilize the time to go for a nice morning walk. I usually do it at 10 am, but never in the morning as I have to do a lot of things at home, including preparing breakfast and sending T to school. So when I got a chance of doing it in the morning (which usually is the good time), I grabbed it with all my might and went off walking.

The mosquito menace

I stay in a complex of 9 buildings that are divided into A and B Blocks. A Block has 5 buildings and B block has 4 buildings. Between both the blocks there is a huge road on which kids come to play in the evening. It also has a Badminton court and Football court and older kids play football in full swing and there are lot of other activities, like skating and cycling and cricket happening simultaneously on any given evening. One more breed takes an active part in the evening activities along with the humans and they are Mosquitoes!!!

Summer vacations, yay!!!

It's almost mid-March and kids are busy with their exams and their mothers are more heckled than the kids are. Kids come to play down and relax a bit, but the moms stay at home wondering how can he/she go to play now? Tomorrow is Biology paper and what not. My son is just 5, so we are little away from this hustle bustle of exams. We are still in that carefree zone and I wish later also it remains the same. 

The idli fiasco

Staying in Bangalore for more than 12 years has brought me still closer to the south indian specialities like Idli, dosa and wada. While in Mumbai, we specially went to Udipi restaurants to have paper dosa and idli wada sambar and chutney. These items were not prepared daily in my house and it gave me all the more reason to go out and try it out.

Women's Day

I woke up today to a host of messages on WhatsApp wishing and congratulating on Women's Day. I also went with the flow and wished a few of my dear friends. But I kept wondering is only wishing each other  today the actual essence of it? Shouldn't it encompass something more than just awakening to the thought of wishing each other? Thanks to Aabha my friend who actually put this thought on FB and I decided to write about it.

Untimely rain - A temporary respite

It was getting very hot day by day and I had to switch on the fan today while working. I couldn't just bear the hot and humid climate anymore. I kept feeling that this is going to be a great backdrop for rains. But I was not expecting the rains to arrive right in the evening today. And not only rains arrived, but also thunder and lightning.

The new him

It was a very turbulent night for him.

Thoughts clouded his mind, pulse raced and sweat made him wet and vincible. Fear writ large on his face. 

He was not sure how to tell his parents that he is not yet ready for marriage.

He was not sure how to break the news to his parents that he is not willing to get married

To a girl.

He kept thinking all night and dreamt of being ridiculed and laughed at.

Then he saw rays of sun peeping through his window onto his face. It finally dawned on him that he was different and he was not going to be ashamed or afraid of it

He saw himself yet again with supreme confidence and he had a vivid idea of what he was going to tell his parents and the world.

He could at last breathe free.

Vivid

The star in the sky

I want to fly
high up in the sky
go up there and see that dazzling star
that I have called since long as mine

They say people die and become stars
and bless you from up above
I want to go there and see if aaba
still watches me laugh and cry

He must have beamed with joy
seeing his Deepa and great grandson thrive
He must have been immensely proud
of the achievements of the apple of his eye.

I thank you aaba for this wonderful life
I will always look up at you and smile
And I know for sure that you and the star will always be mine.

The white globe

It is almost 4 p.m. and I still don't have any topic to write on. Thinking of all options, possibilities, but no, nothing is coming to me today. And there comes a mail from my dear friend John, who is sitting in the other corner of the world and has sent his blog post as promised. Today he has written about his experience in the new city, about how he is trying to blend with other people who are like him, away from home and country, trying to make a life there. He says there is so much diversity in Toronto, yet everybody is existing there in peace, without problems. Thanks John, I have something to write on these lines today.

Riya's Retro

I am a great music buff.

I like to listen to music when I am alone at home, working on my laptop. I like to have some noise around me. No, noise is not a good word to describe the absence of silence. I would like to call it sound, yes, I like to have some sound around me, some life around me, and some movement in form of music around me. I like to hear old Hindi classics (especially from 70s and 80s and 90s to some extent). There is an app called Gaana available on Android and I am a loyalist of it. My favorite show is Riya's Retro which is out every Wednesday.

The Fitness Club

It’s an age of communicating everything with the help of technology. Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp are the most famous and widely used platforms to make a statement, get noticed, meet up for coffee or lunch and it is also used to lash out on someone, start a rumor or a fight. That’s the ugly side of technology. I use WhatsApp regularly and am active on many groups on that. There are groups of school friends, of the moms of my son’s school friend, of all the ladies in my apartment and then there are groups of my parents and my in-laws. There was one more group of my friends (whom I added from my acquaintances and friends to form a group) who wanted to participate in the yearly event of Pinkathon, which is usually held in Bangalore on last Sunday of January every year.

Mathematics of life

The last day of February, the shortest month of the year is very important in the life of Boschlers (people working in the company called Bosch) especially for the ones working in India. Today is the day when the company gives us the bonus along with the salary and this number is the biggest in terms of salary compared to all the other months of the year. Anticipation and calculations are on everyone's mind. Till the salary slip shows us what exactly we have got, there is an atmosphere of tension in the office, and it is exactly the same feeling when the results were to be announced during the school times. Once the salary slip is out and the SMS of the money getting deposited in the salary account arrives, it is the time when disappointment sets in for most of them out there....

Ventilator - A Marathi movie

I got a chance to watch a Marathi movie called “Ventilator” which was released in Maharashtra a few months ago. The name suggests a heavy, tear jerking hospital drama which depicts something about person who is on a ventilator in the hospital waiting for the D-day. But it was anything but that. It is a nice, humorous take on that one day when a person called Gajju kaka gets ill and his whole clan gets to the hospital to lend support to his immediate family with their own secret agendas.

6 years and counting

I took a long break, a really long one.

My last post was in July 2016. I missed writing on so many things in past months. So much has happened, so much has changed for good, and so much has just gone by unaccounted or unwritten.