Red Alert!

     This morning I was running late for this meeting I had to attend at 9am. It was already 8:42am. My mind was racing and i was quickly calculating, it takes 15mins to get to work and it takes 3mins to park and take the elevator and go up to the 10th floor. I will be just in time for the meeting. So I quickly put on my shoes and jacket, grabbed my car keys and laptop bag and turned the security alarm on, closed the door and got into my car.
     I was backing out of my garage when I suddenly started hearing a sound beep..beep..beep..beep................ It wouldn't stop. I checked my music system and my steering and everything, but could not find anything, my heart started beating so fast, "Could it be a bomb?". I quickly parked the car on the side of the street and started panicking "Oh my god! What should i do now? God please don't kill me! What will happen to my son and my husband....". The sound would not stop and it was getting louder and so did the thoughts in my head.  I quickly got out of the car, but the sound started getting even louder, i thought maybe the bomb was below the car and i was about to bend down and look below the car, when suddenly something caught my eye! It was a garbage truck that was backing up and the sound was coming from that :) ! Then I realized that I watch way too much Law and Order and Criminal Intent. "Like I was some celebrity figure that somebody would want to plant a bomb in my car to kill me! Silly Me"!  I laughed at my self and looked around to make sure nobody saw me make a fool of my self.

Now ofcourse I am making a fool of myself on the web, but I thought it was worth a laugh :)!

Rain Rain come again!

         Little Shruthi was rushing through her home work, looking at the clock every few seconds, as it was getting closer to 5'o clock in the evening. She was all excited to go out and play hide and seek with her friends from the neighborhood. She quickly finished her Math homework and ran to her mother, "Mamma, Mamma, I finished my homework! Can i go now, can i please go now!".
         Leela put down her coffee cup on the dining table and took the book from Shruthi and went over each math problem double checking the answers. Shruthi was impatiently looking at her mother's face. Leela finished and looked up at Shruthi and gave her a smile and said, "Good work! You can go now!".
        Shruthi's face lit up with excitement and happiness and she ran to the front door to wear her slippers, when she suddenly noticed that it was raining outside. She was so busy with her homework that she hadn't noticed that it started raining. The rain started out silently and suddenly started pouring heavily, as if it didn't want Shruthi to come out. Shruthi was still ready to step outside when Leela called out to her, "No Shruthi! Not in the rain!". "But Mamma, please! I finished my homework right! Please Mamma!" Shruthi's voice cracked when she screamed out to her mother and was almost on the verge of crying.
        "No Shruthi! Look its raining heavily now. You can look out if you want, I am sure none of your friends are coming out to play in this rain". Shruthi was so disheartened, this was her favorite part of the day. She had so much fun the previous day playing hide and seek with Neena, Pragathi, Kiran, Rahul and Sunny. She never got a chance to count and hunt for the others yesterday. Today was her turn. She was supposed to catch the others. She was planning for this all night. She knew most of the hiding places now as she had been skipping from place to place to hide from the others yesterday.
        It started raining heavily now. Shruthi sat near the window trying to fight her tears and was looking at the rain hitting the glass windows really hard. She had never seen it rain that heavily. She could hardly see anything outside. The windows were trying to hang onto the hinges while the wind and rain were fighting each other to pull them off.
        Leela made some hot hot mirchi bajji and brought some for Shruthi to eat, but Shruthi was so heart broken, that she did not want to eat anything. Leela felt bad for Shruthi! She tried to console her, but Shruthi just would not speak to her.
       After a while, the rain slowed down and slowly Shruthi's mood also changed. A bird flew into the window, trying to escape the rain. It was so beautiful. Its feathers were a mixture of blue, green, red and yellow as if it just flue through the rainbow. It was a small bird, but with big eyes. Shruthi was all excited about it. She slowly got up holding the window grills and put her hands out of the window and tried to catch the bird, but the bird probably noticed Shruthi and just before she could grab it, it flew away. Shruthi ran to the front door and saw the bird flying away and felt a new happiness. She held her hands out in the rain and started swaying and was giggling as the rain drops fell on her.
        Leela was watching all this and was delighted to see Shruthi happy again. She walked over and stood beside Shruthi and held out her hand into the rain and filled her palm with some rain water and sprinkled the water on Shruthi's face. "Mammaaaa...!", Shruthi giggled. Leela laughed and said "Go!". Shruthi asked "Where?". "Go and play in the rain!" said Leela. Shruthi was surprised. "What?", her face lit up again. Leela said "Go, it will be fun! Go and play in the rain!". Shruthi's happiness had no bounds. She jumped straight into the rain with a huge smile showing all of her teeth. She started screaming out with happiness.
         Neena who was watching TV peeped out of the opposite house. She saw Shruthi dancing in the rain and quickly ran and pulled her mother to the front door to show her how Shruthi was playing in the rain. Neena's mother smiled at her and told her to go. She screamed out to Shruthi with happiness and told her she was coming. 
         Shruthi stopped for a second and quickly grabbed her slippers, opened the gate and ran out on to the street to meet Neena. Both of them held hands and started playing in the rain. They jumped into water puddles, splashing water onto each other. Slowly all the other kids from the neighborhood started coming out. They would stand under small trees and shake them for the rain water on the leaves to fall on them. They had so much fun! They all played till they were tired.
         Sudhir came by on his scooter. He was all drenched in the rain. He hadn't planned for this, or else he would have taken a rain coat. He saw the kids playing on the street. He saw Shruthi having the time of her life. Shruthi saw Sudhir and came running to him, "Daddy! Daddy! Its so much fun playing in the rain!". She saw that he was all drenched too, and said "Daddy did you also have fun in the rain?". Sudhir smiled and parked the scooter and walked towards the gate and looked back and said, "I think you should come in now, or you would get sick!". Shruthi looked in the direction of her friends and saw that they were also leaving one by one. She was already tired so she decided to go in.
        Leela was standing at the door with two towels in her hand. She handed over one to Sudhir and she put the other towel on Shruthi's head and started to dry her hair. When she was done she wrapped Shruthi in the towel. "Happy?" she asked Shruthi with a smile. "Thank you Mamma!" said Shruthi and hugged Leela. "OK, now go and change your clothes" said Leela. Then she turned towards Sudhir to take his lunch bag.
       "You shouldn't have let her play in the rain, she could catch a cold!" said Sudhir. "If she catches a cold she would recover within a week, but she would cherish this memory throughout her life" said Leela with a smile on her face.




I dedicate this to my mother who gave me so many good memories to cherish all my life :)!

Chocolate - a Sinful Bliss!

I keep trying to weigh the pros and cons of chocolate and would always end up with pros weighing more than cons with just the word "Bliss". I loved chocolate, probably since birth :) .... well I feel that way :)! Chocolate has always been my way of celebrating, or my way of relieving stress. Its probably another kind of addiction to people like me! Once you get addicted to chocolate and you are around it, it haunts you, you would want to avoid eye contact with it, or try to avoid it even hearing the word from someones mouth and you could be secretly praying for the bowl to be empty soon, but it keeps calling out to you and when there are only a few left, it would whisper out to you silently to come and get a taste of it. Its too tempting! So I decided to take a strong oath once to be away from it - for a year.. umm... no its too long, ok 6 months... still too long how about 3months... oh what the heck .. max one week, then again its party time over the weekend and chocolate cake...and I think you might have guessed already.

Then the scale on my weighing machine goes on a roller-coaster ride and guess who is to be blamed - my beloved chocolate. Then again some strong resolutions to burn some calories and to turn my back on chocolate for a while! This was my only chance to take the blame off my sweet little chocolate's back. Those were the most depressing days of my life! Then one fine day I would feel much lighter and would be ready to reunite with the love of my life - my dear chocolate (no offense to you my dear husband ;))!  And then this viscous circle of calories and chocolate continues! Thus chocolate remains a Sinful Bliss in my life!

Childhood now and then!

Do kids these days have as much fun as we did when we were children? This is probably something that came across everyone's mind some or the other time. Just the thought of it brings back so many memories from my childhood - watching Door Darshan, playing cricket in the streets, climbing trees, eating ice-cream from street vendors, eating corn in the beach, the first time I tried riding a bicycle and went straight into a dumpster, He-Man the master of the Universe, waiting every weekend eagerly to watch Chitralahari, going for a drive on  the "Lambi" scooter with my parents and brother, eating hot hot jelebi from the sweets store at the corner of the street, going to school in a rickshaw(I think it was a waste of money, we never sat in the rickshaw always used to push it from behind, when the rickshaw driver used to pull the empty rickshaw :)... fun ...fun!).............. Well I can go on like this. They are endless!

The life that our kids are experiencing is quite different from ours. The very cities that we used to live once are much more advanced now and you can hardly find a tree to climb or a playground or a park to play in and its not safe to play on the streets anymore. They do have other activities like swimming, football, basketball etc, but are they not missing this whole concept of playing what ever you really want to play? Indian kids living in foreign countries are probably missing this even more. To play outside they either go to a park or during winter they go to the mall to play in some confined play areas. I guess they are content in what they have and probably are having fun, but I feel like they are missing out a lot of things.

One more thing that comes to mind is spending summer holidays with cousins. My brother and I have a lot of cousins and we are very close to them now and that is probably because we had so much fun when we were kids. All the games that we played together, all the fights that we got into, all the horror movies we watched together, all the pranks we did on each other and got in trouble with our parents and all the weddings that we attended and had a lot of fun. Those are all wonderful memories now! Now everyone is settled in different countries and hardly get a chance to meet, but still we are in contact with each other and share a lot of things via phones and emails. However our kids are away from their cousins and hardly know them. They don't get to meet them as often as we did. This way they would never know the importance of cousins in their lives. They will never know how much fun they can have with their Aunts and Uncles at family gatherings. Once they are old enough they would either long for all this or would think its boring to talk to their Indian cousins or relatives - who knows! I think they should experience all this at an early age, so they could  also build some beautiful memories over the years which they can cherish forever! This is just my point of view!

Music + Love + Life a tasteful combination

A big HELLO to all the music lovers out there! This is my first blog and I simply got inspired in writing a blog just by reading a couple of blogs.

I wanted to get a hobby to make my life more exciting than it already is with my lovely 18month old :). He does keep me busy for the most part, so i do need some time for myself and I thought that blogging is probably the best way to spend my time, but I was not sure what I should blog about.... and then music was the first thing that came to my mind, and that got me really excited.....!

I guess music was first introduced to me right after i was born, through the lullabies sung by my mother and probably even my Dad. I am sure thats how everybody gets introduced to music :) ! My Mom & Dad always had a passion for music. Although neither of them had any training in music, they did enjoy listening to songs. My Dad does have a good voice and sings well.  Probably that was the reason why they decided to get me some formal training in Carnatic music and joined me in music classes when i was 6years old.

I still remember my first music teacher, she used to play sitar holding it in the style of a veena. My mom used to drag me to the music class and make me practice at home. I was probably a typical child who would rather play cricket with the boys in the street, than bash her thigh hard to do the talam while singing. Oh by the way I used to call talam - keys in english and my mom used to laugh at me :)!


It all seems funny now, but I am really grateful to my mother for introducing Carnatic music to me. I realized the greatness of music and the difference it made in my life only after my mother passed away a couple of years ago. She always said I had a good voice and asked me never to stop learning music and singing.

I never really got continuous training for music because we had been moving from place to place and had been changing teachers and all of them wanted me to start from the very beginning. Then I had gone to college and never got a chance to learn music till i got married. My husband's interest in music encouraged me to learn music again.

Now my son loves music and I love singing to him. I love music in any form. We listen to rocking music when my son and I are in the car and when my husband is in the car its always old melodies :).


Happy Blogging!