Saturday, January 31, 2009

Just 'kid'ding!

Yesterday, my hubby was partying, so I grabbed the opportunity to chat with one of my closest friends. Don’t take me wrongly, we do have great time together, but I don’t get time normally for other things like reading or just whiling my time away. So, coming back to my friend, well, she is going through a very difficult time. Her beau’s parents are just not agreeing for their marriage, and in India, single status after a certain age, do raise eyebrows (especially for a girl). And let’s face it; the good ones are already taken by then! I could not tell her anything. I had no answer.

 

Sometimes I think about kids. How their life is totally in your hands; I always fear what if I did not know what to do in a particular situation. For a kid, parents are know-all, be-all. What would a parent do when the entire world is running after better scores and so-called “all-round personalities”! How do you decide what is good for your child? The other day, some of my friends, who have kids, were discussing about schools, etc. One said, “I want to put my daughter into gurukul kind of school. She should be away from such harrowing anxieties of competing and winning everything.” But then I remembered, something which another friend had said on a different occasion – “When you put your child in gurukul kind of school, away from all the competition, how will you prepare her for the eventuality. In this world, can you really stay away from it for long! Sooner or later, she will have to come to mainstream and then how will you prepare her to take this in her stride? By then she would not have known competition, wouldn’t she feel totally out of place and disconnected with all these? Besides, don’t you think she deserves similar opportunities like all her peers, and you would be denying her those if you totally cut her off from the mainstream?”

 

Whoa…….some words of wisdom! Well, I do agree it is a tough world.

 

It is funny how whenever my hubby misspells anything (he is a disaster in spellings but still wins scrabble), I tell him, our kid definitely would not be learning spellings and language from you! And he says, whatever, I just want my kid to be independent, and not look towards us for every decision she needs to take. Isn’t that what each one of us wants, but it must be so difficult to let go (especially for a control freak like me!).

 

Friday, January 30, 2009

Ain't no sunshine

I saw Notting Hill few days back. It is quite a popular movie, people have like it. I found it Okay. But there’s a beautiful song.  This song haunts me quite often and it's beautiful, so here goes the lyrics:  

 

 

Ain't no sunshine when she's gone.
It's not warm when she's away.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
and she's always gone too long
anytime she goes away.

Wonder this time where she's gone,
wonder if she's gone to stay
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone
and this house just ain't no home
anytime she goes away.

And I know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
I know, I know, I know, I know, I know, I know,
I know, I know, I know

Hey, I ought to leave the young thing alone,
but ain't no sunshine when she's gone,
ain't no sunshine when she's gone,
only darkness everyday.
Ain't no sunshine when she's gone,
and this house just ain't no home
anytime she goes away.
Anytime she goes away.
Anytime she goes away.
Anytime she goes away.
Anytime she goes away.

Friday, January 09, 2009

Catching Up!

After deliberating for a long, long time on where to start from, since so many things have happened in all these months – I will write in about present thoughts.

Someone rightly said (actually in a movie) – Yesterday is History, Tomorrow is Mystery. Today is the only gift. Perhaps that is why it is called “Present”!

The reason for not writing is purely laziness and nothing else. I like to believe, I’m very busy the whole day; but if you can’t find time to do what you love doing the most, nothing really matters.

2009 did not arrive with cheer and happiness. We do hope it brings joy to everyone, there should be new hopes and new dreams; but practically speaking, every other news was grim and disappointing. I’m not even going to dwell on any of those things right now.

I want to talk about the good things in my life:

Ø We celebrated our First Marriage Anniversary a month back – and he really took me by surprise with a trip to Panchgani. It was really cool (and I’m not only talking about the temperature)!
Ø We moved in to our new home - with all the changes we planned doing to it. It turned out to be awesome! Of course, there are several more plans for our home, but that would happen gradually.
Ø We saw hordes of good English movies, courtesy – BigFlix. Of late, our speed has slowed down but soon we will get back to our pace (as soon as we adjust our timing as per the new place).
Ø I made a huge collage of our pictures and moments of last 5 years together. It has come out better than my imagination. Actually, it was my gift to him on our Anniversary. We are planning to put up right in front of our bed. Actually, it is said that one should place pictures of happy moments all around at home. It especially helps when you are fighting. You let go off many things just looking at those. It works really!
Ø I hired a new maid for cooking in the morning. The funniest thing is she can’t really cook much. She can cook typical Maharashtrian food but that’s about it. I considered replacing her with someone else, but the only problem is I like her. She is extremely sincere in whatever she is told to do and is keen to learn what she does not know. I ignore a lot of thing because she takes care of the basic thing I need – cleanliness. That is absolutely sacrosanct.
It is really not about what you know and what you can do but it is about whether you are sincere and if you get along well with other people. The basic thing is people should like you.
Ø When we open the door of the balcony of our bedroom, there is a clear view of fields. In the early mornings (read 7.50 am, which is early in winters), it is full of fog. It instigates a sense of déjà vu when I look at it. It suddenly seem several years ago, standing just like this in front of my house, admiring the beauty of nature. It just keeps coming back.
Ø After getting back from office, we make it a point to have tea together and play something (earlier it used to be Scrabble, but these days it is Ludo). It is really fun (and some times very ugly, when we start fighting on who is a bigger fool and a bigger cheat)!
Ø In the new year, I am thinking about resolutions. Invariably, the resolutions are always the same:
- Read more
- Write more
- Call up friends and family more often
- Lose weight
- Better time management

Frankly speaking, you can never achieve perfection on above. You can never say you have read enough or you are in perfect shape or you manage time perfectly. It is always a moving target.

But as they say if you don’t know where you are going, you will not reach anywhere!