Books,Dance and Pedicures

The past four or five months that I spent in hibernation was a rediscovering period for me.

First I rediscovered my long forgotten passion of reading.. My long commute to work and back was now converted to reading time as I discovered the joys of audio books.

For those of you looking to read something that was as insightful as Agatha Christie or as whimsical as PG Wodehouse, you might want to try AlexanderMcCall Smith.. his character Mma Ramotze can give Miss Marple a run for her money.

So while I went back to reading (read listening to) books , I started wondering which was the other activity that I was missing so much. Dance..I had left BharatNatyam over 7 years ago and then even though i had countless opportunities to start again, I never did.. So finally I googled for a teacher and went back to re discovering bharatnatyam.. in the process I also discovered countless muscles in my body that I didn't know ever existed. The first class completed.. and i am all agog for the next one.

With these aching muscles.. I went for a pedicure and discovered the pleasures of strong arms massaging my tired legs , applying a masque that made those aches go away..All my toes look pretty now , Red and shiny and I love showing them off in my peep toes. I vowed since then to pamper myself with a pedicure every month.. even if it left a tiny hole in my pocket.

If you were wondering where I had been and why I hadn't been writing.. now you know..


Adios...

Yippeeee

Let's all just raise our hands and shout yippeee..... the world can now breathe in peace... we need not worry about "our dear one" for she is safe.... Yayyyy Paris Hilton is out of jail and she is OK!!

I could'nt beleive the number of channels that covered the 50 baby steps that she took and pranced to her mommy dearest... smiling and pouting her way through the cameras...

It's Raining.

The recent downpour in mumbai took m down memory lane, back to the time when rains didnt mean stalled cars or losing deadlines, buildings falling down and walls crashing...when it meant, no school , no homework turn ins.... cold wet shoes... the lovely plasticy smell of the raincoat, the rising aroma of the wet mud, trees shaking of droplets of water, stepping unknowingly into a muddy pit... hot chai, hot samosas, a very warm and cozy blanket , I dream of Jeannie... , nights without electricity and light, evenings in the balconies, watching life go about you in a whirl , playing carrom with mom and dad and kiran , trying to catch a few words in the dim light of the candle wick...

welll memory lane it is!!

The Snooze Button

For the past few days, I have been resorting to the good ol' Alarm clock to wake me. My dad used to do this effectively earlier on. Sadly, due to the distance between Dallas and Mumbai, waking me up everyday turned out to be an expensive deal for my dad. Hence walked in my new alarm clock to give company to my old cell phone and my new cellphone and between them 5 alarms to wake me up.

Everyday, I have trouble opening my eyes, until the sun is shining brightly and almost blinding my closed shutters. The alarms that I keep do not help me in anyway , because all I do is snooze them. Today when I snoozed my alarm at 7:30 and then was woken by the next ring at 7:39, I realized that there was something aberrant from the usual. Why did my alarm go of at 7:39 and not at 7:40 ? ( I am gald, that gave me an extra one minute more to get ready and catch my 8:16 train.)

I got to work and was yawning away , when I remembered the point that had bugged me in the morning. This prompted me to get online and do some research on why alarm clocks had a 9 minute snooze interval. I came up with some captivating answers.

Engineers believe their bosses come to check on them every ten minutes. Ho ho! ---I am one!!

Physiologists have found that a sleeper who doesn't want to get up will fall back into a deep sleep if left for longer than nine minutes. ----------------Very True...

Wiki said: "Well, I have researched this topic and yielded some theories. If the snooze button is 9 minutes then the digital clock would only have to keep track of the last digit, because the last digit would go down by 1."

So thats the digital clock. What about the analog one?

"Clock experts say when snooze alarms were invented, the gears in alarm clocks were standardized. The snooze gear was introduced into the existing mix and its teeth had to mesh with the other gears' teeth. The engineers had to choose between a gear that made the snooze period nine-plus minutes or 10-plus minutes. Because of the gear configuration, 10 minutes on the nose was not an option.

According to these clock historians, engineers chose the shorter snooze, figuring "less than 10 minutes" seemed more punctual and marketable than sending people back to dreamland for "more than 10 minutes." "

Have you realized how that has messed us up.. I get these amazing dreams in those snooze periods.. and just when I am about to get to the most interesting part of the dream .. RINGGGGG RINGGGGG.

And now I have to snooze my outlook calendar every 5 min, that reminds me to update my time sheet. I think the problem is not snoozing..it's just me PROCRASTINATING.

Well anyway thought for the day...

"Ambition is a poor excuse for not having sense enough to be lazy. - Edgar Bergen "

Waking up one morning

One morning I woke up with this question in my head. It kept haunting me.. What is fate? I asked myself. Can we explain all events in our life to fate and destiny, or is it that, the events and the consequences that follow are a direct result of the choices we make, or let others make or us, consciously or sub consciously.

Other than life and death, don't we control everything that happens to us and around us?The force we call god, i believe exists within us. We get the strength from within us to face situations that we never thought we would be able to. Hence I find it very difficult to understand that an external force affects our lives.

Isn't it strange that none of us have problems more than we can deal with. Ultimately we as human beings rise to the occasion and are quiet capable of dealing with the issues that bother us, without breaking down.

So if someone can tell me what fate and destiny are... and convince me.. I'd be grateful, then I can blame my choices and consequences to fate, and not to myself.

another one

In the hours of darkness many, the sky wept and cried loud
Defying her in her angst, my little home, stood too

The wind bellowed through, the Oak trees standing tall
Branches wilted from most all, flying fast at my window

The churning storm it turned, the gentle ripples of the brook,
Into the big swirl of water, that spilt onto the brick lane

My white fence, built around, she didn’t spare that as well,
It broke in places, leaving me open, more to her grief

In her anger, ruin she did, everything that stood put,
Plunging the world around, into a sinister vacancy

And then she cried, till she could no more
Deep sighs filled the silence, left by the wind behind

Waketh I the next morning fine, to see my world as it should
The bright sun had come by, and wiped her tears away

-Kavita

Apr 02 2007

India's Backdoor Entry

After the recent worldcup debacle( India's) the entire blogging population in this cricket loving nation hopped onto the bandwagon of discussing why? Why we failed? So since I follow the pack and never lead it... I did too and thats why this post.

Since the world cup was not too far away this time, the fervor reached me ..and i had retired from active cricket viewing long back..Rediff and its live score cards kept me hooked for the matches... India lost to Bangladesh... sad.. we can do it...provided Pakistan loses to Ireland we still have a chance.. so Pakistan did... and we won Bermuda..Woolmer died and then we lost to Srilanka.. Thats the world cup recap for what it matters.

Then came the office coffee talk.. The importance of the worldcup didnt escape my American colleagues. They knew how we felt, every week of the year they have a football, a baseball and a basketball team to support.

Now that India lost, our converstaions turned to fine tuning what exactly was the problem.. Dravid..no way he is the best.. tendulkar hmm maybe yeah we have seen him throw that wicket away one too many times.


Now the latest buzz word is MSD and though i never understood how he became the captain and the mysterious circumstances of Dravid stepping down.. I dont mind ..Dhoni is bringing cricket back to its fans and we are eager to watch him lead the side for more games to come..

If Life gives you a Lemon...

The old adage never seemed truer.."if life gives you a lemon, make some lemonade..." but the chances of knowing how to make the right lemonade is very small..

Bein optimistic has never been a trait in me... every situation , that arises in front of me, I pose a dozen questions to it. So how do you make that lemonade ?

Sometimes situations crop up, and I pose questions to it. I end up playing scene by scene what could happen. My thoughts flow in a manner of a flow chart. And in doing so, I have allready created my responses and reactions to situtations that are a result of the above lemon. Now this is what gets to me at the end, because then in my little world, I want that flow chart executed. I dont stop to think, what if the flow chart I executed was just one side of the whole problem. Where do I get the sweet juice from ? In the process of putting myself in front of all these decision boxes, what would happen if I just let go and let things work out for themselves. Then probably it might work out for the better

A very close friend of mine told me when I said "I will try to be more positive from now" , "When you use the word try, you are not very close to being positive" .

Maybe I should practise my " Leaping "and Hoping that the net will appear..



I wonder if anyone else had a chance to make that lemonade?