The blue sky

There I go again, into silence and oblivion to the blog world. All other people must have churned lot of things during this one month and I am just contemplating on what to write and should I write and for whom should I write. Our black Hyundai Getz is finally home after 3 weeks from the garage.

2 weeks ago, I completed 35 years of my beautiful life on this earth. 35 looks like a simple number, but it has many hidden meanings. It is often considered as a sign signifying end of youth and beginning of old age. One has to worry about his health and expenses to cover them as now the energy saps and diseases start dwelling in the bodies. But for me, 35 is just a number and I am sure many of my friends will agree on this.

Blame it on the weather or blame it on my lazy bum. When was my last post on my blog? Though my mother in law is visiting us for 2 months and now I have more time for myself, I haven’t blogged since a month now. I am busy with cooking different types of cakes and muffins, visiting places, inviting people for lunch or snacks and then at night, I hardly have any inclination to write anything. I just watch a few serials and then go off to sleep. But today I thought to myself. The hibernation has to end and I have to start writing again. There are so many things in my mind to write about. And I also wanted to share good news with you all. 

When you hear the word pumpkin, what comes to your mind? I am reminded of a story from my childhood in which an old lady sits in the carved pumpkin and saves her life from the wild animals in the jungle. She says one line ‘chal re bhoplya tunuk tunuk’ (speed up pumpkin speed up). And then pumpkin finds a regular place in our kitchen as it is a great benefactor of health. Pumpkin raita and pumpkin puris were the only two recipes which I knew related to pumpkin, but when I visited the ‘Kürbis Ausstellung’ in Ludwigsburg yesterday, I was amazed to see the different shapes and sizes and colors of pumpkin and also the recipes made out of this not very likeable vegetable in India, at least. 

The Marathi Sammelan (get-together) was held by the Marathi Mitramandal, Germany in a resort called Familiendorf, Hübingen on 30th and 31st August 2014. It was a two days event and there was a stay-over at the resort at night. Most of the people had got their cars, but there was also a pick-up arranged from the closest train station called Montabaur to the resort.

I stay on the main road in a small town near Stuttgart and I often hear the sound (siren) of police vans, ambulance and the fire brigade which Tanay and his friends from the crèche have lovingly named as ‘tatu tata’. Whenever one of these three vehicles is heard on the road, all the other vehicles on the road stop make way; move aside, no matter how congested or small the road is.

A small act of kindness, no doubt brings joy in the benefactor’s life, which cannot be measured in terms of money. But when we are at the receiving end, the happiness is even more, because we haven't expected it in the first place and another reason is that it might come from a source, which is totally unknown to us. You would be thinking, what philosophy doses am I giving here, but now, I will tell you the reason for writing these lines.

The concept of book spine poetry appeared in 1993 with Nina Katchadourian’s Sorted Books project. Katchadourian began collecting interesting titles and arranging them in clusters so the spines could be read like a sentence. Thanks to Uma Chellappa for introducing this wonderful piece of creative writing on her blog. Check it out here.   http://mymaidenattempt.blogspot.in/2014/08/book-spine-poetry-1.html   http://mymaidenattempt.blogspot.de/2014/08/book-spine-poetry-2.html   The second post of hers set me thinking and since last 24 hours, I am trying to find some time to sit and write something of this sort. Finally, after a deliberate attempt, I am ready with my maiden attempt at Book Spine poetry.   My mother-in-law, who is currently visiting me, also helped me with it. Let me know how you like it.   The Notebook (of) the pilot's wife (unravelled) the Secret (of) revolution 2020 (created by) the jewels...

My dear daughters and sons, You all celebrated the day of my independence from the colonial British Raj with great enthusiasm. How old have I been now? 67 years old? I will always be thankful to your ancestors for giving me a new lease of life and freeing me from the autocratic rule. I had hoped that I would flourish, make lots of progress and see India emerging as the super-power, but alas, my dreams are shattered by the sad reality.

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival - C.S.Lewis This quote holds true in my and Arpita’s case. We both are from Mumbai. We studied Arts in college. We love Literature, Arts, History, Mumbai, Life and liveliness. But we had never seen each other in India. Only when destiny brought us together in Germany in a common group did we realize that we share so much with each other.

I have always been a person who enjoys people coming home. Be it family, friends, relatives, or just acquaintances, I like to be host to them and talk to them and entertain them. In Dombivli, when I was a school going kid, my grandmother’s siblings often visited us and I absolutely loved the time, when my favorite aaji, Sakhu aaji (grandmother in Marathi) came home to stay. I pestered her to stay longer and longer and never wanted her to go. She had a soft corner for my dad, as she was the one who took care of him when he was doing his military school in Pune.

My day started on a bad note today as I learned that my favorite Hollywood actor, Robin Williams is no more and he died of depression and committed suicide. A person who tickles the people’s heart with his indomitable spirit and energy and laughter cracking persona, dies of depression? Really!? Is this possible? What made him so sad and made him leave his countless fans behind in a world, which can never see him play a character again?

I quote Wikipedia’s definition on Raksha Bandhan. ‘ Raksha Bandhan is a Hindu festival that celebrates the love and duty between brothers and sisters; the festival is also popularly used to celebrate any brother-sister like loving protective relationship between men and women who are relatives or biologically unrelated. It is called Rakhi Purnima , or simply Rakhi , in many parts of India’. The earliest memories of this festival are from school times, where we girls rushed to tie rakhis to a few ‘mischievous’ boys in our class and they ran away from us saying no, leave us alone. But there was one boy called Tushar Shetty, who never shied away from getting the rakhi tied and he very sportingly and lovingly displaced the maximum number of rakhis tied on that day.

Recently we were invited by Tanay’s friend, Enya’s family for a chat and snacks. We were actually invited for her birthday but as Tanay was not keeping well, we couldn’t go and hence to make it up, we were invited again, which was a very sweet gesture on the part of the German family. We reached there, parked the car and Enya, Tanay’s friend was already waiting for him on the road. They both squealed with joy and from that moment on they were inseparable.

Friendship day has come and gone. Like every other year. I am miles away from my best friends, but close to their hearts and in their thoughts and prayers, I am sure. The crazy friendship bands have got lost somewhere, the silly gifts also ruled out, and personal meetings, way too hassled. It is just the technology now which is keeping us together. Whtsapp messenger, Facebook and mails are the forums which we resort to when we want to ‘talk’ to our friends. They are just one call away, but do we call each other and hear the voice of each other? No. Pinging is easier than calling now. 

Being in Europe and not seeing Rome is a sin, according to me. Capital of Italy left me amused, tired and happy. All emotions and same emotions experienced, which I would have, back in my home country. Setting off on a trip to Rome and Florence for 5 days was not easy, especially with a two year old kid, who tags along with you day and night, not understanding much of what is going on. The hotel, we chose was very close to the Metro station and the moment I came out from the airport of Rome, I felt like I was very much in some Indian city, the only difference being, the majority of the people were bright skinned. 

My colleague and good friend, Bala, sent me a mail about the Indian Film Festival in Stuttgart which was going to happen from 18th-20th July. I was delighted and excited at the same time. I immediately glanced at the programme and was happy to see many good and regional films that were going to be screened in this festival. They were going to be presented with sub-titles of course! It was going to be an interesting thing to watch the German people's reaction to Indian films as there is a enormous difference between the two countries, cultures and cinema.

Technology has once again come to my rescue. Yeah! After 20 years, the gang of girls from my school is re-united, re-connected. Thanks to the wonderful and magical App called Whtsapp. Early this year, I got in touch with many of my old batch mates and realized that the boys were connected to each other all this time. Then why the girls shouldn’t also give it a try, I thought. Suddenly, it dawned on me to start such a group of girls and I immediately posted it on our FB group page. The responses started pouring in and within no time, we 4 gals took off.

30th June 2006 and 30th June 2014. What has changed and what has not? We, once carefree individuals have become more grounded, no wonder why, because now we have the most important person in our lives, our 2 year old son. We overlook each other's shortcomings and tend to focus on the good aspects of the personalities.

A person say C, who is very close to you and shares a lot with you, who is a very close relative, but more like a family, suddenly decides to stop interacting with you due to some misunderstanding and cuts off all the contact with you for many years. He/she doesn’t bother to keep a tab of any proceedings in your life and one fine day, after 7 years, he/she decides to come back into your life and asks you to forget everything that happened in the past and urges you to start a new chapter with all ‘goody goody’ relations. How would you react to this person?

My mother is my best friend. I can talk to her about everything and anything. She is in general very enthusiastic about life and extremely positive spirited. She is a trekker and is extremely fit at the age of 59. She just celebrated her 59 th birthday on 28 th May and I had to make it special for my dearest aai.

I was tired of my own cooking routine and I wanted to break away from the usual roti-sabji, dal-rice stuff. As I am a strict vegetarian, I do not have many options to eat outside and I was tired of whatever options are available e.g.   Bread, pasta, salads etc. I wanted to eat something which was definitely vegetarian, but not from the routine. In Bangalore, I had a cook and she took care of the food there. But here, in Germany, every afternoon, the question ‘What’s cooking for dinner’ stares at my blank face. I then took to searching food blogs and I was amazed to see 'n' number of people writing blogs about their experiments with food and they had won a lot of accolades too. And I was even more surprised to see that many of the food blogs that I came across were for vegetarian stuff only! I read and referred a few blogs for a few dishes and prepared them in past 2-3 weeks. Tanay and Atul were my subjects for experiments, but they survived and me too! I prepared apple...

When I hear this word ‘amba’ (Mango), it takes me to my childhood days, where my mother’s grandmother (in Maldoli village) used to open the room to me where mangoes were stored and she used to tell me, have as much as you want! We visited her mostly in summer vacations and that was the time when the whole house and everything in it smelled of mangoes. There were different types, the best one called Alphonso, which is considered the king of mangoes!! Mango itself is the king of all fruits and the king in mango kingdom means you can imagine the taste and the texture and the sweetness of it! We had mangoes for breakfast, when panji (my great grandmother) sliced the mangoes and put them in front of us. Then for lunch it was aamras (mango pulp) which was prepared by selecting the best of the ripe and fragrant mangoes and removing the pulp from it, by hands! And then the program of cleaning (licking every bit of mango) from the seed was a great event in itself. After a sumptuous lunch ...

Narendra Modi, (christened as NaMo) the messiah, the saviour, the future PM finally emerged as winner and his party, the Bhartiya Janata Party won a majority of seats in the Loksabha Elections held in different states in April and May 2014. Friday, the 16th of May was the day when the results were announced and the whole country was rejoicing and had come out in streets to celebrate this victory. The youth of India, who mostly shy away from the country's politics also was keeping a tab on the happenings over the passing day. I missed the vibrant atmosphere in India on this particular day and I am sure it was no less than celebrating a festival together. I feel very bad for not being able to vote in the Elections, though I was entitled to. As I was away from my country, on a deputation, I lost the chance of choosing the right and person in my constituency. Not only me, there are so many like me who were not able to cast their vote. There should be some system in which the NRI o...

The word home has so many synonyms -  abode, diggings, domicile, dwelling, firseide, habitation, hearth, hearthstone, house, lodging, pad, place, quarters, residence, roof in the English language and in Hindi, it is synonymous to ghar, gharonda, basera, makaan, sadan and so on..   Ye Tera Ghar Ye Mera Ghar Kisi Ko Dekhna Ho Gar To Pehle Aake Maang Le Meri Nazar Teri Nazar Ye Tera Ghar Ye Mera Ghar Ye Ghar Bahut Haseen Hai Ye Ghar Bahut Haseen Hai Ye Ghar Bahut Haseen Hai This song from the movie Saath Saath exactly depicts my mood today when my dad just called me up to tell that he has collected the property documents from the bank (after we cleared the home loan 2 months back) and the house, our dream home in Bangalore is finally ours! Oh! What a feeling! We are the proud owners now, the house is finally ours. The moments just flashed before my eyes. How we booked this particular flat in a single day and how we liked it very much and how we saw it get...