Pets being impacted too...

...with recession. With more than 1500 visas getting cancelled everyday and people going back to their home countries, Dubai is emptying out. While its easing out the traffic on roads which is pleasant on the face of it, the dark side of it is disheartening.

"Be prepared for long hours of traffic jam, rents as high as the tallest bldg out there and hot sand storms", this was the image we recieved for living in Dubai when we disclosed our decision of moving out of India. It however failed to deter our nomadic spirits. We came here all prepared and with least expectations in the immediate time, we were pleasantly surprised by quite a few things about this land when we landed here. TOUCH WOOD, must I. Times are not v good. Holding on to one's chair is the latest addition to the JO's for those who have work while I had already given up whatever I had, in India so I have nothing to loose u see!

Before I loose track of what I mean to say, I will pull myself back from my random thoughts. While browsing through dubizzle(a website offering local classifieds & forums for job, housing etc) I came across this particular category "Pets" that I was hooked onto for the next one hour, last weekend. Cats, dogs, parrots, fish, turtles & even pet cobra/snakes (?) being offered for adoption as the owners either cant afford them or are moving out and cant take their pets along. I was surprised at one ad where this fellow is seeking a temporary home for his persian cat because the paper work for cat's travel will take around 6 months & he is ready to bear the cost of living of the cat for that period.. How painful can this recession get!!!

I being lucky with lotsa time these days, have offered to take home some of these pets.. lets see what works out..especially considering the expression on husband's face which was worth a notice :P, but then my heart goes to these pets who currently have the fear of being homeless.

Holi '09 & '08

This was the making of it in reverse order!

Sabudana papad (made all by myself!!) and a pinch of turmeric powder for rang! That regular n  umm yum omlette for breakfast (lucky me to have Amit). That was our holi before he left for work.. That was also how we made up after yet another war(this was a mine one though) last night :p, about he being sleepy and me being busy with the net and the light disturbing him etc... why do so many blogs get updated just when u just want to hit the bed??? 

--*--

Last holi at this time, we had already climbed the Vaishno Devi Shrine and what a holy trip it was! We had prior bus bookings from Delhi to Katra but when we reached the bus stop there was some goofup between main bus operator and the agent doing the bookings. We were made to wait and compelled to grumble to get the seats we had booked in the sleeper bus, for an overnite journey which anyways can get tiresome. We reached there at around noon, checked into a simple lodge basically to keep our stuff n freshen up. Had planned that we will take the resigtration slip for darshan, have lunch, relax and start climbing in the evening. It was good only till we saw the miles long queue and a 3 hours waiting at the 'Yatra registration counter' and we were supposed to start our trek within 6 hours else the resistration would be rendered invalid. That left us with no time to relax (which is much recommended before a 13 km trek for darshan, having already done a 12 hrs bus ride on the hills); food wasnt good either, maybe coz we had the lunch at 5pm. With 'Jor se bolo - Jai mata di' enthusiasm we started walking, getting equipped with our walking sticks on the way. I tell you, the trek upill was filled with so much of energy & zest. 

Its advisable to keep ur belongings in cloak rooms behind and take only minimal stuff with you uphill. We were adviced by a friend to carry new pair of clothes and take bath before doing the darshan in those new clothes. So we did that.. From what I remember, at 1 km from katra is 'Banganga', where the goddess is believed to hv stopped to drink water, she actually shot an arrow into the ground and water gushed out in form of a spring from where she quenched her thirst; then there is 'charan paduka' at another 1.5 km where matarani rested before going ahead. 4 and a half km further is 'Ardhkuwari' where she meditated for 9 months inside a cave. This is halfway point in the yatra. & you find another long queue to get a group no. and then a long wait to be called to go inside the cave when your group's turn comes. Its a narrow cave so only one person can pass thru at a time n hence all this arrangement. We were told that our group will hv to wait for some 3-4 hours so we thought of covering the bhawan in the meantime. Who knew that the onward journey will be tougher owing to aching legs, another long queue and wait to enter the main shrine or 'bhawan' as it is called. 

This is the point where our patience gave up. There was chaos, flood of people wandering almost aimlessly, no information boards, no place to stand or sit, utter madness with people pushing, jumping the queue and even cheating to get in without queue or appearing in the middle from nowhere into the queue. Sumit and Amit tried to control the crowd at one point but for how long could the army of 2 people take this battle and some unheard curses on? I cant believe that all these people actually come here for peace of mind and solace. Rab to yaar ghar mein rakhi bhagwan ki murti mein bhi basta hai. We stood in the queue in turns thus getting some time away from all this. Anyone going there for the first time without prior booking or VIP tag or 'jaan pehchaan' would feel totally lost I promise you. It was getting difficult to keep up our holy spirits. The chilling cold winds only drained us some more. Now just as we were to see a ray of hope, reaching the entry gate, they declared that the gates will be closed for pilgrims for next two hours. Being the aarti time. & later I heard from the same friend of ours that they were escorted in, for darshan in the proper aarti time(?!!?!!). This is what I mean by VIP TAG or 'jaan pehchaan'.. Cruel.. but then it exists at all religeous places is what she tells me. Disgusting..

Some more of madenning rush n push! Guess, it must have come as a shocking surprise for many like it did to us. & whynot? Try n imagine holi leading to a long weekend, in north India and a crowd of thousands of shraddhalus and equal no of trekkers coming here as a wkend getaway from nearby places. So the in-flow of ppl continues 24X7 and there is no adequate arrangement at bhawan or any other point for such huge number. The thoughts of a slide or some mass mishap started haunting me and it was suffocating to see people all around. 

We tried to sit near one of rare booth meant for assistance at a point just near the main shrine and what we heard were stories of ppl missing. Its bound to happen when you go in groups and members have different speeds or the elder ones take a pony or palki and reach here before the rest. So the help this booth was providing is by doing announcements about lost and found kids/young/elderly.. I also got into consoling an old lady who had this strange worry that her son and DIL must have planned the trip to get rid of her here and she asked us money and means to go back to her village somewhere in bihar. Her cries and the cold made me feel sick and irritated Amit enough to call it quits. We said our prayers and apologies to mata rani peacefully and somehow made our way out of that flood of ppl sitting all over & waiting for the gates to reopen for darshan. There is 'Bhairo temple', which is to be visited after completing the darshan here. Not sure of whether this qualifies as our darshan, we still booked our ponies to go back via Bhairo temple. There was long queue there again..sigh! But with sunrise, there was warmth in air and with visibility on the top of that hill I felt less choked. We spent some time there and headed straight back to Katra. Downhill ride on the backs of these ponies who are trained to run like in marathons, was painfull and we crashed as soon as we entered our room at Katra. Not a single bone was intact, all screaming aloud for what we did to them. I think we managed to take hot water bath before crashing there as I remember that had helped. That was 'holi' day, our very first holi as a couple and I dont even remember if we had lunch that day or not.

My dreams of playing a full fledged holi with Amit is still a dream only..

The buzzing alarm woke us up in the evening. We gathered ouselves somehow, collected our stuff and checked out. Did some shopping on our way to the bus stop and took one to reach the railway station. Now that is where we had a nice dinner and a walk in spite of the aching bodies before we bid good bye to this beautifull hill station.

Its a BIG NO-NO going there during the holiday, wkend and summer seasons. With little bit of prior planning it could have been better but having said that, I was completely disappointed. Most of my friends have been there and had good experiences but they all had gone with someone having influence over there or with prior bookings.

We have told Mata Vaishno Devi to invite us again OR next time we gonna come & see you in off season!!

This is the scene when we had come back from the yatra, look at the crows still coming in and seeking registration slips when the officials have already closed the counter for the no of pilgrims had exceeded the manageable limits. If we call our darshan incomplete what would they call theirs??

I was going down this way on the pony back :-(, when i saw this monkey that seem to be enjoying his drink...

Much celebrated 'blogging'

I think there are certain waves flowing in abundance at particular times. Similarly there are phases in life when certain activities enjoy more of your time than others. Like I would play a carrom game every possible evening with dad, bro n sis some time back. Being a winning team used to matter so much. There are lot of things we pick up while we grow, if we enjoy we continue with some of them and it reaches its peak before it gradually starting to fade down. A rare few stay with us as a part of life for ever though in addition to the experiences and memory ofcourse. 

Of late it has been the blogworld for me.. Blogging to me is an extension of my diary with some modifications obviously. While I didnt want me to be read by many I was curious to know others via their blogs. I know the blogs might not be about the the real people but I enjoy the different way of writing and expressing mundane stuff, so initially I tried clicking 'next blog' which is the 3rd button on the blogger page and just read them randomly if I could read them that is. Not all bloggers write in english for that matter. If I like a particular writing style or content somewhere, I quickly put some sort of bookmark so i revisit those blogs. wait i think its called blogrolling them and there is even a feature to let such blogowners know that we follow n like their blogs. I this its cool.. Now thats the fun of computers and internet. I recently learnt that writing about blogging in the blog is called metablogging (if i remember correctly) so I see its a big world with some fancy terms involved already. 

The want of being heard or the feeling of just venting out for the sake of it, thinking aloud-recording it at the same time and along the way learning of some interesting add on's from people who happen to find and bother to read and thankfully add their thoughts to ours. It has its own pull. Writing does act as a therapy to so many!

I am more of a memory person than one who can visualize myself in future. Maybe because I cant articulate what i want, not even to myself in my mind. I generalize it as 'good time', yes, this is what I always keep wanting my future to be.. my boss often reiterated to me the importance of looking into future I cant be but myself. Right now I feel like trying to remember few of the waves I encountered and then conclude how boring has my life been or NOT.

-I loved collecting empty matchbox. Googled to find some matchbox names right now and I find a blogpost on them done already, the pics brought back the memory..While the object of interest keep changing, the craze of collection has remained always with me.

-Skipping a rope was like the daily soap but it was done all 7 days a week. Again, there are interesting articles about rope skipping on the net that I read through just now as I write(thanks to the time I have, to kill right now) & yes, we used to do double-tripple(2-3 ppl skipping with one rope, the middle one holding and moving the rope carefully and all three jumping in sync) & rope jumping tricks like crossover. Now skipping might have become like once in a year activity but we do have an adult's skipping rope at home & I am capable of doing 100 n more skips at one go. I will be breathless by the end of it but I still can!

oh! as I think back, I go more n more into those times and its leading to nostalgia so I drop the idea to continue.. I think I will not go on with this even for the sake of killing the time..coz i just realise i am killing myself of hunger now. So before I fix something for lunch I will just mention one more. That's 'orkutting'. I can hear my bro and hubz giggling at me on this one(I was such an addict) but I am happy I got into it for I got back in touch with so many of my old friends which was some strong old wish of mine coming true.

I conclude here with kudos to blogging for the time being. Its good for me right now. I see myself fumbling less for words. I am not here to follow any rules by the way.

hit by insomnia

There is no pending job to be attended to, 32% battery life of the laptop is left, I am sitting in the balcony to avoid the light or keypad noise disturb the sleeping husband. While the breeze is cool, I am not enjoying it much. I guess there are somethings going on in the mind. Is it because of oversleeping during the day(I started watching the movie 'chandi chowk to china' at noon as I had nothing else to do and felt asleep for the movie couldnt hold me up enough)? or is it sign of having enjoyed enough of the break from work now? or is it out of the anxiety of this testing time (recession) and our rent being higher than what others are paying for a house twice as big as ours? or there is something else altogethre?

I should be feeling nice after having met two nice friends i hv made in the last one month in this new land. I have already felt nice for that but sleep isnt coming still. Tried tossing in the bed for half an hour and got up to read something on the net; some further study options, some blog reading, some comments not making much sense on other's blogs, read few news articles and some applications on the job sites. All done n I am still not sleepy. 28% battery life left.. Dont want to plug in the adapter coz then i know i will keep sitting here till the morning with my eyes almost popping out n me at the same pt where i started from..

I will go, try sleeping again now.. for record, its 3:20 am India time :( my laptop still shows India time :( hope i get up feeling nice n fresh!

An enchanting date..

...with sunset,

so close, so warm

a little more thought of it and i might just start poetry.

which i know would not be good enough, so leave you with some views.

@ around 5:30'ish, friday evening

near Dubai customs building,

@ jumeira open beach

a close look will show the moon and the evening star, so well positioned.

That tall thing on the right end is Burj Dubai (another unique attraction here)

I would not have called it quits had amit not given me his i-am-bugged & i-feel-neglected looks!!

Tag of 25!

When in Rome, do as Romans do!

So here I am, doing this TAG where I have to pen down 25 things about myself randomly. My first ever tag in the blogosphere and I Thanks Nancy for putting me to this task :o I think I was happier reading other's Tags but as they say 'when in rome do as romans do', I will give it an honest try.

1. God gave one of those bright stars from the sky to my parents as gift so they decided on my name as 'Tara', I was told this story by mom-dad and I happily believe them and think I am that star. :P
2. I have an elder sister and younger brother but i wanted the other way round. An elder brother to pamper me and a younger sister who i could bully. And strangely enough, when all my friends in school used to dream of Amir Khan romantically, I wished he was my elder brother :)
3. I have generally been a shy person. An introvert, always avoiding functions be at school or home. Just a day prior to any picnic I coincidently managed to get fever or some ailment thus escaping the events happily.
4. Inspite of that I was my teachers favourite, almost! but that was no fun for they would put our names for all extra-curricular acts where no one else participated & we couldnt dis-please them.
5. I am a girl of very few words when it comes to talking. Still, at work I am okay and confident of holding discussions or calls with colleagues from any level of hierarchy.
6. I can be real pain with my long long long writings. so while i talk less, I am just the opposite when it comes to writing. & like Goofy mom said (who tagged the one who tagged me), I prefer writing to talking as a mode of conversation for clarifications/justifications etc. And like her, I too have my email sgn ending with ...Smiles
7. I love to live in memories. Call it clicking photographs or going back to browsing them, every now and then..
8. I love my parents (both set of them, after being married) & strongly believe that at this stage of their life we should give them more than we can just like they did to us all their lives, including the most healthy & prime time of their lives. Something as simple as a phone call means a lot to them..they dont ask for more.
9. At home I was the bai. while chores were being divided, i would not get anything better than sweeping, washing dishes, folding the clothes or kneading the dough. all the indoor jazz stuff was being taken care by didi n mom & outdoor by manu, m bro :( maybe thats y pt no 2
10. I have this feeling that I have inherited all odd things from my parents in terms of looks. like my mom has perfect teeth but i hv like my dads. Dad is tall but i hv gone on my moms hgt. and stuff like this u see..
11. But having said that, I have conveniently accepted the superstition that people who have gap between the front two upper tooth, are lucky. I have reasons to believe that way. 
12. I am infact lucky. Be it studies, job or marriage (what else is considered imp in our society?) I had almost no struggle through all this. I even got an easy, smooth break from work(that is now!) after wishing it for sometime, having worked for 7 years.
13. Marriage is such a gamble. While arranged marriages of our parents are working well(touch wood), I hv heard of even love marriages with tough time nowadays. So, having found a nice person with a family with whom (Insha'Allah) these 2 years have gone by so smoothly, I must once again touch wood and consider myself lucky!
14. I met Amit through matrimonial site. Till then I had no idea that a thing like finding ur soulmate thru d net could work for me. I enjoyed the whole phase of groom hunting, making some good friends in the process.
15. Havn't I yet mentioned that I love gardening. I love water, I love nature in general.
16. I have a painful eye for detail. Ask my boss or my husband to explain you what it could mean. hehe. Its a positive but could be a twinge as well.
17. I am a cleanliness freak of the same greatness. And have a passion for being super organised. Even in the mid of an operational risk review meeting at work If I get a call from home I could tell the caller that the particular CD is lying in the left corner of the 2nd drawer of the middle almira in the master bedroom, without even blinking an eye for thinking.
18. So Masood should not worry that i wont return him his John Grisham books all in order only once he gives them to me :o .. No No, I am not reminding you my dear! I am only completing this task of telling 25 things abt myself & this one says I want to read some of his courtroom dramas.
19. I am a very low maintenance girl. I mean no makeup, accessories, visits to parlour for manicure kind of stuff etc etc. But when I go to my fav parlour & ask for a facial, I love to sleep for almost 2 hours while she does her job very professionally with the motherly warmth of her hands
20. My Idea of romance is lying on a hammock on the beach and listening to some nice gup shups or if I am alone then reading, enjoying music or simply gazing out at the sky or the waves. ah! I am already into that world as I write this.
21. I was till some years back, very apprehensive about going to foreign lands. The people, language, culture, ways of life, food, getting lost on the roads - had all that kind of silly fears.
22. I can survive on fruits and salads for long enough.
23. Adventures thrill me. I want to get done with all possible adventurous activities as early as possible in life. Heights, edges of cliffs, depths of water .. nothing scares me but a sight of lizard or a mouse is all it takes to make me jump n scream like hell has fallen on me. I guess the later applies to most of the girls.
24. O' I simply love snakes! I see colored snakes in my dream. I love their gait. Their tail passes from the same point as their head and in between they travel all zigzag and its amazing to me. I love discovery guys for making so many snake stories and showing them repeatedly.
25. Recently I had a minor problem with cervical spine, maybe due to excessive working on the comp and wrong posture. I have become cautious about my health after that & really want to get into regular exercise habits. After all I need to be healthy to be able to do all that i mentioned in 23rd pt.

BIG Breath! in and out! I am done! but hey, I could go on for some more(refer pt 6). There is lot more to me than just these little titbits. For now, lets follow the rules and stop here, tagging someone else to do this. hmmm, well...I know not many bloggers to ask them to do it, most of them have already done it by now. So I tag only one person hoping he does it for sure. Masood! I tag you - please do whenever u have time. ok? :)

one plus, one minus

Use of plastic irritated me in India for it creates a non biodegradable waste & I am all for greenstorming n stuff, but seeing the amount of plastic waste in Dubai, that seems too little. This is worrying. I keep trying to use and waste as less as possible though.

But if I forget that for a while, the shopping experience here is pleasant. I mean, in India nobody has time to exchange a smile, forget anything more. I am writing as it comes to my mind, and coming to think of it, they do have time to stare at you or give u an odd frown at times for reason known only to their god. I dont mean to generalise, this is out of experience. But here, when I go buying the veggies or grocery, the staff greets me with a smile (no, you are wrong if you think that the staff must be a male! Even females do so). If I have to wait even for 10 seconds at a counter, they apologise and are so helpful in general. The other day I was looking at different kind of green leafy veg's & was picking whatever i thought i would experiment with. I didnt have a basket or polythene bag in my hand so this guy comes and gives me 2 small bags. I thanked him with a smile & got back to my business, moving to the pulse section looking for peanuts. Another fellow comes and asks me if I m done with the vegetables. He took them from my hand, got them weighed and returned the bags to me with price tags on them. 

Felt nice but to be honest I couldnt casually take this much of kindness, simply coz I have never been used to it. Even the bus driver here has patience to greet me when I board one. Small things but this is wow!

I by no means am comparing the two countries, perceptions are built by experiences and I am just sharing mine. Good and Bad exists everywhere I guess.

Is it attachment or just plain convention

that I am finding difficult to alter with. 

Even after being out of India for good 10 days, my cellphone as well as the watch shows India time.

Everytime we feel we are late for something/somewhere & I look for time, I only get knocked for six as the Indian time further adds an hour and a half to the delay :( :(

When I am home alone, I keep looking at the wall clock where Amit had set UAE time before I came and chk the India time on my laptop clock and start thinking what ppl back home would be doing now (yes, India time on laptop as well, I hvnt changed it anywhere yet.)

I think its too much! but no, I am not missing India. I will change it in a day or 2.

Cool Dubai and some cold..

So I finally get a Hindustan Lever Stamp (read it as leaver my dear). Thats what i was told when i was at the airport.

Yesss! I am in dubai, the land of sun and sand as some call it.

& it snowed in some parts here, the day I landed. What a cool welcome..

Let me start with my worry of packing my stuff(literally spread all over the house in mumbai) into the 20 kg baggage as i mentioned earlier. I didnt want to bring anything extra because past experience tells me that 70% of my clothes dont see the light outside my suitcase/cupboard. Sweetly enough, Mom helped by arranging for a spring balance. I removed my warm clothes, heavy punjabi suits, few more sarees and some old casuals etc and managed to come with only 5 kgs extra.

Isn't that good management? Now other side of story is that I had stuffed my laptop bag, cabin bag and purse/handbag as much as possible as they are not weighed. But my heart weakened at the mumbai immigration counter to read on a board that only 2 bags are allowed (including laptop/cabin/hand bag) so quickly filling the immigration form, I arranged max of my purse's contents into the cabin bag but where would i put the purse itself? it wasnt small enough to be put inside any other bag so i might have to leave it at the airport. Being my first international flight I was little apprehensive. I had also heard that rules are strictly followed in international airports. But I was nowhere questioned abt anything. & I landed with all my luggage intact.

I must mention this as well. Husband had expressed his devout side to my mum and asked for Tulsi plant to be sent along with me. Now would I be able to carry it? The driver suggested that I tell the authorities (incase they question) that its a medicinal herb that I am carrying. But I tell you, its a problem only when u ask someone whether you can carry or not. I packed it in a long tube like container and kept inside the check-in bag and forgot abt it. 

That too reached here safely.

On the flight, I got a window seat and kept looking down, clicking pics from there too. The view of ships in the sea through the clouds from top was captivating and strengthened the place of 'a vacation on cruise' in my wish list. & then an idea of a desert safari as soon as we crossed the Arabian sea and came over the endless deserts. 

Enjoying the beauty infrastructure of roads and buidlings we landed at 4pm. Didnt spend much time @ the airport but that was beautiful too. I found the eye test sheer waste of time though. The flight took me 2 & a half hours and the formalities at the airport took another 2 hours. The heavy laptop bag and cabin bag were being carried on all these 2 hours. So, by the time I came out and looked for Amit, I was totally tired but still was all smiling at the sight of him.

Yesss.. I have finally reached here all well :) I hope this move across the geography prove good for us in all ways.

The warm welcome by the darling husband was lovely. He afterall had been waiting to get his laundry and other things taken care of :p and now that my visa says "Housewife" as occupation, he doesnt leave a single chance to giggle over it and tease me.

We had an amazing first weekend roaming around some malls and Jumeira beach by the sun set. & Some friends from this land have just given baby news so there are plans to meet them soon.

Its gonna be fun setting up everything all over again but the cold waves have hit me hard and I have been shivering and feeling feverish for the whole of today :( 

Need help.. linking pictures?

As part of Travel 2008 series, I am writing a travelogue on a special trip, which will not be complete without linking it to lotsa pics. But I dont want to insert images in the post for that will 

• increase the size and length of the post
  
• make it difficult for me to manually do it (for lack of patience)
  
• and it will delay in loading of the page
  

I have an idea & have seen in other blogs too, that we can put pics in sites like flickr and link the text to them BUT flickr has a limit in the number of pics that can be loaded in a month. I am also not familiar with manoeuvrings in flickr. 

So I need some help in sorting this out.. pleaseeeeeeeeee give some ideas on how to do this pls...

whenever I drink

Ever since I have accompanied Mom to her endoscopy and seen the test happening live, every time I am drinking (say water) I can imagine it moving down my mouth to wherever it traverses- like the esophegus to stomach to duodenum... thank God the imagination doesnt go beyond. I am a freak! u think so?

I have done good amount of googling and you tubing on this test, including some scary looking interiors of human organs and I am grateful for the healthy state I am in [mum also has a mild problem which will be gone with 4 months of medication and timely meals etc]. Touch wood! 

:D :D & you thought I was abt to reveal of my drunken state??? some other time for sure(provided I suceed in getting drunk in the first place)..

till then, 

good health wishes to a!!

I wonder..

I have made a blog friend!! 

So far, have interacted with this friend through blog comments only but to me this is enough to feel good with. I am not asking the friend to acknowledge or to reciprocate any of my feelings.

I am just wondering about blogosphere (not sure if I spelled the term right), its a world in itself...

Unsure of my regularity in pouring out the crap here once I am with Amit(life gets busy u see, ahem ahem.. ) but I have realised that I do need at least one channel to connect online. Because when I quit orkut few months back, my love for blog reading surfaced. Thankfully. Orkut was a sheer waste of time after a point, its great to find all your old pals (school, college, neighbourhood etc etc) and I did that, but besides that nothing much. On blogs, I have read the journey of people, their point of view on n number of things under the sun and beyond, humour filled expression for simplest of feelings, the power of words in a nut shell. All this is inspiring. Dunno how but it is, for me.! 

Maybe this also speaks of an aspect of my personality.

Seeing the huge gang of blogger friends, makes me wonder how they manage it though.. as soon as they publish a post, comments start pouring in. I am serious when I say I would find it difficult to keep track of them and reply aptly to each one of their comments. 

With moderation ON, it must be really taking them good part of their time. So here is a round of applause to all those bloggers for managing their readers so well(including this new found friend of mine)

****

my phone just rang while i was wondering about all this.. what adds to my speculation is "how can he think of getting on an ironing board if he can't find anything else to reach that high point on the wall?" 

In the mid of our conversation, he mentions of the mess in the house and the need to buy some furniture n stuff including IRON BOARD. 

"But I saw one when u recently sent me our new home pictures" I said. 

Having poor luck at that moment, he quickly got caught and told me the truth. he he.. glad he has not broken his knee at least. 

There is not one but many such incidents that keep me healthy and I know he is not gonna spare me for sharing it here.

****

Sari n me = love n hate relation

Mum takes hardly 2 minutes to drape a sari(perfectly) and just about 5 sec to remove it as soon as the purpose of getting sari clad is over. When we were kids, me and Di used to criticise her pallu length or number of pleats. Not only this, we also had mum as the victim of our experiments on her hair - she has long nice hair and she used to be nice to let us do whatever we wished. But now(after marriage), I realise what it takes to put this otherwise elegant and beautiful and all that kind of attire on. While I did try wearing one at home few times during school days, I could never handle it properly.

On Teachers Day, when the highest class students are supposed pose and act as teachers, as a mark of respect and acknowledgement to them, all girls must wear sari- is the expectation. I feared sari so much that I found it easier to convince my maths teacher pleading that I can only wear a panjabi suit [sari n suit were the only dresses i saw my teachers wearing in our north India CBSE schools]. My sister on the other hand is an expert on this front, this being another point of j feeling which now has turned into admiration and inspiration.

Wearing sari on manu's thread ceremony around 2 years back, when I managed it the whole day made me excited and confident(I got many compliments that day :) ) but there still are times when I go back to being sad. Here is one such time. Once for Amit's friend's reception, I decided to test myself on my sari skills. I started with a pink sari that he had selected for me. Not much of surprise though. It took me more than an hour and finally changing into another simple blue sari that was easier to wear, to reach a satisfactory state of mind and head to the party. Husbands really have patience when it comes to waiting for their wives get ready. But when I saw the other wives there, flaunting those heavy designer sarees so effortlessly, I felt like hiding behind somewhere. I felt J, in the Delhi's Dec weather, these ladies had skimpy blouses and I was in a sweater!! Dont know what I should call myself for this now, boring, dull, whatever.. Sari therefore has always been a Big Deal for me. (MIL is so sweet. she has never made me feel that I am a bad DIL for this reason. maybe coz I never gave her a chance wearing it somehow for all those occassions like diwali, puja etc.. :D ). Its however my secret wish or desire to be able to wear it at least some times and feel great about it.

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Having a girl child is "upshagun" as per the ma-sa of this much talked abt television serial //BALIKA VADHU\\ on colors channel. How SICK is that... 

these are my instant thoughts when i end this post while partially listening TV

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The green dot

I have made more friends in the virtual land than real. Maybe this speaks about me as a person. I am sure it does.

When I started using internet, I wanted to read surf learn and explore everything instantly. And the journey is still on. There is just soo soo much up there. I also wanted to talk(chat actually) to different people from different origins, fields etc who were online to know more about them, how they use internet and for what purpose etc. Online dating, porn, recipes, interesting places for travel, studies, matrimony, job search & etc etc. This was not long ago, a couple of years back or more. Today you just type a word and google throws at you a list of sites of relevant information. its really a "WOW" thing. If God wanted to leave me alone on an island with one thing (husband is not an option a] he cant be considered a thing & b] i am sure he will find n join me there) then I will want that one thing to be internet and will never ever complain.

Like real world friends, they also come n go from your life; but thanks to google, when u see a green colored dot with a friend's name, there is an instant "hey!" moment when u exchange few somethings with each other and then get busy in your worlds again. A great way to remain in touch. isnt it? 

PS: The invisible mode comes handy too at times...

whats my point in writing all this at random? just a celebration of a great mode of communication at hand.. happiness lies in simplest of things, they say!

Of bye bye and blessings!

I eagerly look for new posts by bloggers whom I follow. Its lovely, how they put their thoughts and experiences into words and some moms so passionately put down their journey of being 'mom'. Now today when I returned home after a day of running around for my ticket, forex etc etc, I read Parul's blog on salaams n namaste's and went into flash back with a smile on.

It was the day we had packed our bags in Delhi. While Amit was moving to Dubai, I had to come to mumbai for handover at office n stuff. Sumit (Amit's younger bro) had come from hostel the night before to stay with us and believe me I was wanting to stuff his bag with every little thing that I couldnt pack in our bags, reason being-disposing them or leaving it back for it to go waste wasn't agreeable to me. I guess he had come by bus or rickshaw so that while going back he could take the thunderbird (Amit's first love). Thank god! he didnt sell it off. Now, I hope to ride on it again whenever we go back to Delhi and someday fulfill my wish to photograph this 11 murty statue myself.

Ok, so I was talking of salaam namaste's n the 'flash back'. Original plan for the next day morning was that Sumit will come along on the bike and we two would go by the hired cab to airport. But at the last moment, we pataoed Sumit to bid us bye at home itself and go straight to his hostel. We convinced him that we shall call him incase we need some help and also keep him informed of our safe flights etc.. I basically wanted to save him of the trip by this short cut which meant the same as he coming to airport n saying bye.. and Amit later smiled teasingly with his mischievous remark "there goes the kabab mein haddi." He was hoping and being ambitious that he is gonna get hugs n all that when he drops me at domestic terminal.. :D. Anyways, thats not the point even though all his romantic hopes remained just that.. "hopes"....; Sumit easily agreed to the changed plan and after those final chit chats, when I slid into the car, he bent down gesturing "touching my feet".. I resisted. My good wishes are always with him, he reminds me of my brother and thats how I miss Manu lesser in his presence, so, when I resisted his bending down, he said something which I dont remember exactly. But if I am not wrong, he meant- These are customs which hold value if done on proper occassions. I think he meant that when we see each other regularly, a casual hello is fine but now we will meet only after months or longer. We 3 had been staying together (with short gaps in between) ever since I came into the family, so this was the first time we were actually getting apart. So he felt like following that custom to seek his "Bhabhi's" blessings.

I have asked him to correct me if my interpretation wasn't right.

With due respect to the customs, and thanks to the changing times, I actually dont think these gestures mean a thing. I couldn't agree more to Aneela's comment on Parul's blog which said "tameez dil may honee chahiye', if the person in question wishes me and mine well and says hi, its OK (or so I tell myself)". Having said that, I did feel nice at Sumit's reasoning (If I got that right). Such a sweet little boy that he is! Now I am not being sweet coz he is going to read it. He really is! With small gripes here n there but they exists with everyone. Who is perfect anyways? Right Sumit? What do u say..? 

One of my Firsts..

My first- 'last day at work'.

work, that was in a company I joined as my 'first', little more than 7 years back, just after finishing college.

So there is a lot attached to it. Colleagues joined and left and kept switching jobs further but I never felt the need or got an opportunity to quit. How sad, one might think but  job satisfaction is the word i guess. I had it inspite of those few hardships here and there OR maybe these hardships played their role in me sticking here. Friends who started working at the same time as myself, often tease me saying 'I have some kind of secret contract with this company and i will retire from here only.' Am i making sense in what i am writing or am I too lost in the memories to pen down anything sane? let me pls know. One of them -those same friends I mean, would say - 'hota hai, hota hai! quitting "YOUR COMPANY" is bound to have such effect on you.' (if they read this post that is)

Anyways, so, today was that day; rather yday according to the time i m putting this post up.

I was generally happy for this meant i can join Amit sooner. With the prevailing attrition rates, one gets to read good bye emails almost every now and then but I wanted to be as original as I could. Therefore had been drafting a 'goodbye email' for past few days in mind, finally to arrive at a short and simple one emphasizing on the thankyou part. Being a Maximiser and having an Eye for Detail are my painful 'best' areas so I had thoughtfully created a loooong mailing list as well. And strategically timed the dispatch of this mail just before noon, so that i get to read the responses. Some people send the email at the end of day, I wonder if they are not eager to read the replies. By now you must have got an idea that i was completely vella today(my last day at work) and had no 'work' to do. So what do I get in response? Around one outlook screen full of mails saying either "delivery failure"- some of the ppl in my mailing list had quit by this time, "recipients mailbox full" - some don't bother clearing their mailboxes, eh how lazy.." and "out of office auto replies" - some are still on vacations, lucky them! all of them go into delete folder n rest in peace. What left me smiling were the rest of mails i got. Replies from some seniors, some work colleagues, some friends- with lotsa wishes and sweet things that i actually wanted to hear or say read...

I was really vella.. so much so that I made a log of all those mails and plan to preserve that in my personal mailbox. Today, when I started writing here, putting up that log was in my mind but due to confidentiality reasons(that thankfully did strike me at the last moment) and sensitivity around who said what 'sweet thing' abt me :D I refrain from doing so... why in that case am i still continuing this post?? 

Simply coz I am glad for the special farewell i got today (I mean yday) and i just feel like writing abt it. Its my blog after all (this is a stolen line from so many blogs I read recently) but comes out straight from my heart right now. Wonderful farewell wishes on email to boost my feel good factor, some yum indulgence at the Ling's Pavilion @ colaba, a super delicious cake for belated bday in the evening, quite a few moving grt words spoken by the boss abt me and a beautiful Tanishq pendent as a parting gift. wow! I wouldnt have asked for more. Did I not mention the repeated "i love u's" from a colleague of mine whom i presented a fish bowl today morning? The girls in office liked idea of gifting fish bowl and that again made me happy happy :)