How is saree conservative?

Saree - I just can't understand how it is conservative! It exposes a women more than a salwar or a jeans does for that matter. There are people who think wearing a saree is being traditional and conservative. As a matter of fact, I personally feel, saree limits the tasks a women can do. You cannot sit on a bike at the back with one leg on each side. You cannot run around as freely as you can as compared to a salwar or a jeans.. and there are many more such things..It clearly looks bad when u have to bend or do some household work. Yet, I just don't get it as to how it is more traditional and acceptable to every occasion to all the audience and other dresses are not! 

Dad's Daughters and Mom's Sons!

It is said that girls are generally more intimate with their dads and boys are more closer to their moms. I have two girls.. So, I started thinking about the concept and came up with an answer as to why it is said so! 

In earlier days, girls hardly used to go out. They are mostly confined to their homes. If they need anything from outside, they have to depend on their dads. Since they are taught to be good at household work and cooking, they might not need much from their moms and don't rely on them for anything. In the case of the boys, they hardly have anything to do with the kitchen. They have to be dependent on their moms even for a glass of water. 

Hence, girls will be more nice to their dads and boys will be extra sweet to their moms because they totally depend on them in things they have absolutely no clue about and cannot risk it!

Canopying in South Africa

South Africa - A place where you have a scope for many adventures, if you are interested to do, like abseiling, sky diving, canopying, ostrich rides, segway rides, zip rides and a lot more! One of the adventures that I performed was Canopying, where I was harnessed and hung to a rope connecting two huge mountains. I traveled from mountain to mountain sliding onto the rope with thick gloves on my hands. There were totally eleven slides to reach the destination. After two slides, there was a chance to decide whether it was enough of an adventure and we can choose to walk away. But, Once we are past the third rope, there was no scope to go back without finishing the eleven slides. It was a rainy day. Rain in South Africa was not the way it rains here in India. It was a very slight drizzle and highly windy. The climate, dress, helmet and the entire - it felt like we were astronauts walking on the moon.

The ropes were made of some steel and hence highly slippery when wet. We were to apply breaks in order not to end up banging our legs to the mountain at the landing. If we apply extra breaks, we will end up hanging on the rope itself without reaching the landing point. We will have to drag ourselves to the mountain on the rope bearing our entire weight on our arms. There was high fog all around and from the elevation we were at, it was completely as though we were sliding over the clouds high above in the sky! The first slide was scary. In the midway, neither could I see the starting point from where I began to slide, nor the landing point. The wind was so noisy that I could hear nothing other than its uzzzzzzzzzz. The sound itself was scary. As we moved from mountain to mountain, the fog slowly began to clear up, the fear faded away, the fun exponentially increased with the confidence fully built! Nature and its beauty moved us forward with the site of the beautiful mountains - some green, some brown, some white; some foggy, some clear- with waterfalls running in between here and there.

After all the slides with a floating experience, there was a 20 minute trek to reach the jeep. With the costumes that felt like they weighed about 5Kgs, we had to drag ourselves against the hilly terrain with no sign boards on the way. As there was no other way, we decided that it was the right way and walked across 3 hills where we finally saw the open top jeep to take us back to the reception! The slight drizzles were all over us, eyes never tired of watching the beauty around, mouth not tired of praising it..Awesome experience!! Simply loved every minute spent over there.. 

Keep the gossips away!

"Gossip" is idle talk or rumor, especially about the personal or private affairs of others.

Sometimes I wonder, If I am silent to something that is happening around me and I know it is not right, am I not supporting it in a way?? There are people who are extremely interested in peeping into others lives and making their own conclusions and passing it around to every soul they come across. They derive extreme pleasure out of spreading dirt and misinformation about others. Can you do anything about such people, though sometimes you know who they are? I blame people who listen to such non-sense and make/change opinions about others. Beware, you could be in it sometime or the other!

A wise friend of mine said years back, "I don't care what everyone says about xyz! As long as I don't face any problem with that person, I am not going to give xyz the cold shoulder". I would have lost many wonderful friends if I had not implemented her logic..

If you don't realize the goodness of a person, just because someone else(irrespective of whether you have known him/her for a long time) has a bad opinion about that person, you have the same thing to lose as that person! You basically lose each other.. Sometimes the gossiper might not know it is misinformation, but it could only be her own wrong perception. Simple rule of thumb, ignore anything that has not been processed by your brain or heart!

girls are precious!

A Woman in modern days takes on as many tasks as men do and infact more. As a baby the challenges which include learning to walk, run, talk, eat etc are the same. Women are challenging men wrt academics and career as well. After marriage, women definitely have a lot more challenges in their hand. Leaving her area of comfort, she not only adjusts in the new place but also slowly makes it her own place and takes in new responsibilities. Considering herself and her husband as one integral unit, she works to own his people as hers, whether or not they try to do the same. While a father is the president of the family, mother is the prime minister :D

Some women continue to build their career with all the other tasks at home, some with help and some without, some with emotional/moral support and some without. Some other women give up on their career to be happily unemployed, considering home and happiness of the home the sole priority. Those who work after marriage and kids, don't do so necessarily because they have to for the family to run. They could also do it because they just want to! And those who don't work after marriage or kids have a lot of good reasons other than the perception that they don't because they cannot. 

Women are a priceless gift to mankind. If you have one in your family, look very high upon them. Girl kids are as precious as guys. Don't look to people without boy kids in a pity way. Be ashamed of urself if u have done so ever! Gone are the days when boys stay with parents after marriage and look after them. They are after their own careers, running across the globe and settling down accordingly. If it is destined that u need to be taken care of at some point in time, you will be from either a girl child or a boy child, if the situations permit. Otherwise you wont. Period. Instead of thinking about the future and worrying, the best thing to do is enjoy the present as long as you can!

US trip updates: Hollywood, LV & Grand Canyon

Hollywood had a few super heroes, marilyn monroe's, spider mans and lot more on the streets asking us to take pics with them ;). Madame Tussauds wax museum had me and my 3 year old jumping around the whole time and left the camera drained out of charge. Vegas was totally a maze, I must say. We don't walk on the roads, we walk through the casinos to go across the road. You can see the destination right opposite to you a few feet away, but to reach there, u might have to go through atleast a couple of casinos and get lost a couple of times and take a few elevators. There are few other things I have done in Vegas that I have been longing to do for a long time. Ofcourse, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas :P. 

Grand canyon left me speechless for don't know how long! Awesome is the word that is just not enough to describe the beauty of it! Was totally worth the 10 hr 2-way drive from LV. Nature at its utmost beauty that I have seen so far. I haven't seen another wonder like that ever before. It was as though each mountain was hand carved to perfection. It was tooo huge to consider that possibility! We saw the narrow streams here and there which have carved the entire Grand Canyon over all the years to its present state. We also witnessed the sunset there. Drive back to LV was very scary though. We were literally in the middle of the desert in the middle of the night with no vehicles in sight either in the front or at the back and past 'no services for the next 30 miles' board, with no street lights, only reflectors everywhere and cat eyes.

Jetblue, a local airline has a wonderful policy of not counting strollers and car seats as luggage. They will be checked in, no questions asked. The beauty is, car seats can be checked in even if u are travelling without kids!! The flight had entertainment channels on throughout, even while takeoff & landing. Also, free wifi was available throughout the flight journey!!

Thoughts on the way back!

Our trip in US is almost coming to an end. I did not give much thought about this till someone asked me the other day about the positives and negatives in US over India. I first wanted to start off with the negatives since I thought that would be easy as I already began missing India. People complain about the culture here, but I would say the deeper emotions within a person are always the same irrespective of the nationality of the person. There are people in both the countries who love their family and try to spend every available free second with them. At the same time there are people who feel family is a big responsibility and see it more like a burden. What is 'our culture'? There was a time during my childhood where alcohol was considered bad culture in India. And by the time I graduated from college and started working, alcohol was considered social culture. There are still people with their own set of opinions on the matter even today. Leaving that aside, the point I am trying to convey is, something can be right to some people and wrong to some others. It is not right to categorize a country as bad cultured one. 

Every day when we go around shopping or looking around the city, we get greeted by atleast a dozen strangers. The other day I was pushing the stroller with baby through a door and a passer by asked me if I was okay or needed her help. I said I am doing just fine. But she waited till I left and made sure I was okay before she left. There was another instance where at the billing counter there were two people with heavy carts waiting before us and we had only one item to be billed. I asked them if I can go before them and they both let me go with a smile. So, people here are helping. I noticed something else too. People sometimes go to parks in the evenings on bicycles and park them there with no need to lock them. They are assured of its safety. At the same time, there were places we have been to, where I was scared to ask someone to take a picture of all of us together for the fear of him running away with the camera.

Man power is very costly in US. Most of the assembling work will be done by the people who own the commodity. It is sometimes fun and sometimes tiring. I assembled a BBQ grill and a patio table chair set and felt good. Assembling a basket ball pole however was very tough and I left it half way through.

If u stay in suburbs, it is practically not possible for you to commute without a car and of course you should know the driving and have a licence and must be confident enough to go on highways and must be familiar with GPS and maps. And the biggest catch is, u should have a credit card with good credit history to rent a car. If u are with babies or infants, u cannot even hire a taxi from any random point since the car seats are mandatory.

US trip updates: San Francisco

Summarizing what I have seen in the last 5 weeks is very tough. Not a single day passed by without having me excited over at least one thing. US is a place where you can find people from different countries. I liked the beautiful residential localities with parks at walkable distances. I liked the vastness of the place and large open spaces. The best of all is that most of the pictures taken in US in the day time come really well :P.  

I saw so many types of vehicles in San Francisco. I travelled in a bus on road with wheels which had a pole on top connecting to a cable running across. There was another bus running on rails on the same road. There was a train which also had two poles on top connecting to two different cables running across. The roads have a lot of rails on them. One look on top and u see a lot of cables running across. I was very excited to see so many types of transportation. Did someone ever say roadways and railways cannot meet without a gate? And yes, the place reminded me of the long forgotten Civil Engineering concepts. 

I stayed in a non-Indian's house for 3 days. It was a very pleasant experience. She was Vijay's colleague at his previous office. She was so sweet to order a sofa couch to make us comfortable in addition to the bed which was already present. She has a baby and the entire house was a perfect example of a baby proofed house.

The Golden gate bridge was a complete beauty, especially when half covered in fog. I made sure to read all the stuff displayed about the bridge there. The walk on the bridge showed great views of the city. There were a lot of people sailing on the sail boats as hobby. I enjoyed each and every minute spent there. The bridge is equally gracious from all the angles. I will update about the rest of the things that amazed me in the next couple of blogs. I gotta go now!

What the hell?

In US I have seen people placing a lot of decorative items in front of their houses where there is a scope for anyone to grab, but they do remain there!I want to mention about the incident that happened just today. We ordered something online and were expecting it to be delivered today. We waited all evening and opened the door at 8:00 PM and the package was at our door!! I was like - "what the hell? How on earth can he just leave it at the door and go? What if someone takes it? What if it rains? Or even worse, how can they prove that it is delivered to us without getting our signature?" "Relax.. this is how it works here. They come, ring the bell once, drop the package at the door and leave. No one takes it.." -  my sister-in-law calmed me. I am still not happy with how it went..but learnt that thats how it is here.. 

First experience with snow!!!

I have seen snow only in photos and videos but not in reality before. I know there is not much snow in California and I was worried that I was going to miss the experience. But there is a place called Tahoe with so many mountains and it had very good amount of snow. It was a two hour drive from my sister in law's house. I was very excited at the first site of snow on the road as we were nearing Tahoe. It was a sunny day and I was scared that I will not get an opportunity to touch it or play with it by the time we reach the place. So, we pulled over on the road to have a feel of it. As soon as the car stopped, I was the first to jump out of it and run towards it to touch it.

Snow is nothing but finely crushed ice. I held it in my hand for as long as I could and had some photos taken.We then continued our journey. As we were approaching the place, the view began to get better and better. The mountains had snow over them here and there in the beginning. But later, the mountains were covered with a thick blanket of snow which looked like untouched thick layer of vanilla ice-cream. I with held my temptation to take and eat a scoop of it!

After we reached Tahoe and got down from the car, it was freezing cold. It was around 11:30AM when we boarded a gandora(rope way) to go high above into the thick layers of snow. I was not tired of wondering how beautiful the view was after every minute. It was just awesome. We landed at a view point midway where we had a chance to go around in a circle to enjoy the view and come back. We could see the tall casino buildings in the Nevada state, snow covered mountains, lot of greenery, and the three shades of the huge lake Tahoe. We got onto the gandora again and reached the final stop.

wowwww is what I said the moment we saw snow snow and snow all around. Infact there were people skiing in the snow there. It felt really good to watch them. I looked and looked and looked.. till I was satisfied and then started playing and rolling over it. The snow seemed to be pure white in color and quite soft. I even made an Olaf(a fictional snowman character from animated film, Frozen) with it, taking breaks in between to calm my numb hands. We threw snow at each other and ran and fell and had loads and loads of fun! The ride back in the gandora was equally good.

On the way back I realized that snow is good to play and have fun now an then. But it is very troublesome to live in places where it snows. Driving in snow is risky and involves great care and concentration.

First few days in US

As a child, I was really crazy about US, main reason being the fact that it was held very high upon by many people around. I have a couple of school and college friends carrying a jansport backpack saying it was from US. And I used to hear a lot of stories about how the life style in America is from a lot of people who have their relatives there, some real and some very highly blown up. America is very neat, roads are very clean, rules are strictly followed, there is a very good work culture there, we can earn a lot of money there - waitress gets a tip of about 2-3 dollars which is like 100-150 Indian rupees. In short, people gave a picture that living in America is a luxury and to most people foreign country means America and only America.. I used to think - hmmm.. Whats with this America in reality? Have to pay a visit sometime! 

As time passed, I forgot about this. Its almost been a week since I landed in California with my family and here are a few things that I noticed about this place. Firstly, the place is vvvvvaaast. It felt that the sky was closer to us than it was in India and also, I could see that the earth is Spherical as in the sky felt like it was merging with the earth in all the direction far beyond. Upon discussing this with Vijay, we suspect that in India, we don't have much of an open space to look so much beyond and that could be a reason for my observation here. Secondly,  there are hardly any bikes on the roads. Sreesikha, my elder daughter noticed this. I was really curious to see many cars with cycles in stands over or behind the cars. Some cars even had small boats behind them in a stand. Its tough to manage around without a car in hand as the city is very huge and there is no public transport to every place. Most of the things here are huuuuuge. The shops are very huge with high roofs. The Onions, water melons, Oranges, Lemons, Potatoes were all of the biggest sizes I have seen so far. I have also seen very small tomatoes and baby carrots. I am just too excited about all the varieties and sizes of vegetables and fruits to worry about the hybridization and where it leads us to.

Most of the places are stroller friendly, which was really good for us. I fell in love with some of the dishes here that we don't generally get in authentic form over there. For Instance, I liked the Bagels, Croissants, big juicy muffins, pan cakes, waffles, huge variety of breakfast cereal, breakfast bars and a lot more. Having visited other countries earlier, I thought its a tough task to survive as a vegetarian away from India. But I was totally wrong. There are umpteen varieties that you could live on. The best part I liked so far is shopping with coupons where you get a lot of discounts! ;) lol

I have a few more weeks to explore the place.. will post by whenever I get a chance to!

Complicated!

We come across many people in our day to day life.. There are a few who are very expressive, while others who are not! Some give us their feedback, good or bad, directly to us. Some others give only the good and keep the bad for their gossip session with others. There is yet another category, who say all the bad they have to say and mask it under the word called 'joke'. 'Hey, was just joking ok?' is all they say to get away with anything. Some in this last category however are not recipients of the same thing towards them. And again, this depends on perception. A person might fall in a particular category for a person x, and might fall in a different category for another person y. Sometimes the same person might fall under different categories for the same person under different situations. Huhhh....Human beings are complicated!

Some people we meet leave an indelible mark in our lives. Some people will be remembered, for what they are, positive or negative towards us. We might forget how some look like, due to a very short interaction with them,. But we will never forget the interaction we have had with them or a minor favor they have done at the time u most needed it. Looking into my past, thinking about all the people who I cannot forget after all these years and wondering if I have done anything like that to another person to be always remembered! Life is complicated as well..

Rotary Visionary Couples: Experience

When the thought of giving something back to the society came to my mind I thought, I want to do service and I can do whatever I can in my own little way. Why should I be a part of any organization? Why can’t I just do it on my own in my own community where I can see it myself? But I realized what is it that Rotary brings in. Meeting different people in various seminars and interacting with them gives an idea about how much planning goes into each of the activities undertaken by Rotary. Giving is not as simple as I thought it was. 

We need to consider various factors like the level of impact our service brings in the society and the sustainability of the impact etc. I understand that a proper channel is important for the service to reach the right people in an efficient way. Pooling in our efforts towards a common Vision and mission will all the more take us in the right direction. Service through Rotary is totally a different experience altogether. Rotary lends u its brand name. Even a small group like ours gets very well received when we approach someone in regards to any service related activity. People give us their time, listen to us very attentively and would readily help us without having to worry about whether we are genuine. They know they can trust us and this makes a lot of difference. 

For instance, We have collaborated with KBN college for conducting competitions in Youth services month. Though it was easy to get in touch with the administration through my network, it was only because of the rotary that they were very willing to collaborate and work together with us without any need of convincing them. They accepted our proposal to span the activities over two days. All it took was a half an hour meeting with them to pull up a wonderful event. I am very thankful for being associated with rotary. I hope the work we have done has made some positive change in the community.

Old is Gold, Sometimes

Sometimes, really old is gold. My neighbour's mom did what MBBS and MS doctors weren't able to! I had a problem with my big toe nail. Even the slightest of contact to it hurt a lot. Unable to bear the pain, I went to a general doctor. He said that it was ingrowing toe nail, where the toe nail instead of growing out, grows into the skin. The only solution to the problem according to him was to remove the entire toe nail with the roots. I asked if it was ok to get it removed. He joked saying I will miss wearing a nail polish over it. However, he said I will have to be careful going forward without the nail. He gave me pain killers for a week. I waited for 15 days in vain.

I went to another doctor for a second opinion. He identified it as "goru chuttu"(some fungal infection of the nail due to excessive exposure to water). He gave me ointment and a few medicines and asked me to come back in 10 days. There was slight improvement but the problem still persisted. In the second visit, he said that the nail has to be removed, but the roots will be kept as it is and the nail will grow back in a couple of months.I researched over the internet as much as I could. I finally made up my mind to get the nail removed from the second doc. 

On a casual chat, my mother in law told about my problem to my neighbour. Fortunately, her mom, an Ayurveda specialist for goru chuttu was in her house then. She suggested that I should try the medicine once and assured that it is very effective. I gave it a shot. She applied some medicinal paste on my nail and tied betel leaf around it and gave a small dressing. 5 days is all it took. I was so happy. What the highly educated doctors couldn't do over 2 months, she did in less than a week. I will surely remember her whenever I look at my toe. Thankyou Sarada aunty and a big big thanks to your mom!

Crazy cricket mania...

I have been thinking about this for quite sometime.. If it is some inter college match, we cheer our college.. When it is a T20 match, we watch it and support our own region and wish that it wins irrespective of which country the players actually belong to.. Now if it is world cup, we cheer our country...My point is.. what is it we are supporting? If tomorrow we have to play a match against aliens, we will then support our world.. where is the end to 'our'? It can be very narrow or a way too wide depending on how we hold the term. It can start with me, my family, my street, my area, and go on and on.. Sounds crazy, but true

We sit all day supporting our teams and watch others build their own careers..I might sound arrogant.. But the fact is that we are wasting our time.. They play for money, for their career.. They play in their own convenient timings.. They don't play for charity. Movies are with a similar concept.. But it is not at least time bound..What ever we are in the middle of, we make it a point to  at least check on the scores every now and then.. I don't say we do that just for mere entertainment, we do it 'coz we feel it, we own it.. 

Not now, I used to wonder as a student as to why people waste time and spoil their tests or whatever impending tasks they have over watching something that doesn't do any good to us. Knowing the result is enough... Why watch the process?It is not even like a moral support 'coz they don't know it.. People play chess..archery.. Are we watching it live? there are a few sports, which I call spoiler sports of which I must say cricket is on the top! 

tolerance...

I have been thinking about this concept lately.. and it is quite getting into me.. however I am not really able to do much about it rather than just thinking and wondering.. 

We cannot tolerate our kids doing wrong things. We don't like it when they disobey us. It makes us sometimes feel we are kind of failing at showing them the right path. A friend of mine once told me, every parent has an extra responsibility of being very nice, atleast when they are around their kids because they tend to follow the parents. It wont work when we try to preach them something when we ourselves don't follow that. 

All this being said, what I wonder is, are we all not the kids of Almighty who showed us the path to perfection by living it? Are we all following the path of God and being his obedient children? If misbehavior from a kid can annoy and frustrate us so much, how must He be feeling up there watching us all dancing to our own tunes?  It is practically impossible for all of us to be good people, like He would want us to be. I am beginning to believe that God wants us to realize this feeling through our kids.. 

He forgives us most of the times and punishes us now and then as required.. Are we being tolerant to our kids in a similar way like we are being tolerated? Am not sure about you, but I am not!! How much ever I wish to , I am not able to. I am going to wish for more strength to walk with as less deviation as possible from the path I am supposed to and at the same time have more tolerance towards those who deviate from the path I want them to travel in!