Dew

We have heard this word often. Today, I felt the essence of it truly. It is a practice in Indian families to host a ritual called Shrardham in remembrance of close people who have reached God's abode. Ten years ago, the same day, we lost our grandmother. After all the initial mourning and intermediate outbursts that happen when ever we think of her, life kept us busy... I was away every year when my parents conducted the Shrardham for my grandma. This year, fortunately, I am in India and had a chance to see the proceedings and generally participate when required. The grandchildren have a small role to play in the whole ritual and it was nice to be a part of it, especially when my mind was all lost in the thoughts of the past when my grandma was around. After ten years, I mean ten long years, even as I write this post, I am unable to stop the flowing tears.. and I don't intend to... It was like that in the morning as well when the priests were at home. I walked over to the ki...

K.J.Yesudas, the king of Carnatic and Cini songs in Indian Cinema, is finishing his fiftieth successful year of singing career. There was interview with him in one of the Malayalam Television channels. One point among many of his valuable thoughts caught my attention and has managed to hold my attention to it over the last whole hour. "If it is not meant for me, I wont get it and I have never worried about it. Its best to appreciate others work for what it is and my belief is that I will not get what is meant for the other person." This was his response to the question, " Have you ever wished that you got the chance to sing someone else 's super hit song?" What a wonderful philosophy!!!.. Think about it.. Its so simple and the best way to make peace with our many thoughts many a time. Don't you think so? The younger generation, that is all of us, always want something, or wish that we had a chance to get something, or be somebody, or be like somebody, or jus...

I am definitely not talking about clicking the I'm feeling lucky button on the google search page. I was in the best of my cheers this morning when I set out to office. I wanted to wear Jasmine flowers that according to me would compliment my hair style today. You cannot get out early in the morning and expect Jasmine flowers just like that in a completely residential locality like the one I live in. I knew it well, so just kept aside the thought and continued my walk. Just when I shut my mind's non-stop questions on how to get Jasmine flowers at this time of the day, a flower vendor crossed my way. I stopped her and asked if she had Jasmine.. I have never seen any one's face brighten up so much, in a long time. She was very happy to uncover her bounty of fresh Jasmine flowers neatly woven into flower strands. I asked for some flowers and immediately pinned them on to my supposedly well-dressed hair. Every time, I wear Jasmine flowers, I can tell you that my feel-good facto...

That's how I see the guy behind the coffee counter in my office cafeteria. 1 coffee!!!! 2 tea without sugar!!! 1 Badam Milk!!! 1 coffee strong!!! 3 coffees, 2 teas, 1 badam milk!!! 4 coffees -one without sugar, one strong, 3 teas, 1 badam milk, 1 Boost!!! One of these orders was ours. We were paying cash, some were paying the vendor's coupons, some others were paying sodexho passes. And none of us were tendering exact change. The guy at the coffee counter is a super-quick juggler, I must say. You should see the speed at which all these orders were processed. The change for each payment were given out correctly. Coffee or tea or badam milk... you got what you asked for with the right specification without having to repeat your order. Everyone seemed to get their orders immediately. The wait time is almost negligible. In the three minutes that I stood there today, I noticed how swiftly his hands worked on filling up the coffee ( strong or light ), adding milk ( with or without su...

Oh Yes, I love being called Aunty by my friends' children. I do not accept any other way of addressing me, except of course my name. I insisted that my friend introduces me as 'Deepa Aunty' to her six year old daughter. As is usually the case with me and children together at any given moment, any given time of the day, it did take the child a while to know that she can actually make friends with me. We spoke about her school, hobbies, interests, achievements, friends.. yes, that is a huge list of topics that only a child can talk to you at the first sight. It is sad to note that as we grow older, we lose this habit of candid talking.. Wonder how? Wonder why?? While I was still marvelling at the very idea of 'being a child', she ran off to fetch a paper and pencil and then found a quiet corner for herself, set rules that no one in the house should try to read her work for the next few minutes. Her sister stood beside her anyway.. Brought smiles immediately as I could...

March 1 was important because I finished six years in writing.... March 2 secured a rank in my professional diary because one of my writing-related articles got published in a news letter. I am still not out of the silent joy that these two thoughts bring me, when I see this award from Nishita : Thanks a tonne, Nishita . Today, I want to pass this on to my blogger friend SG at http://sowmyagopal.blogspot.com for her high-frequency blogging about varied experiences. She is just over a year old in blgospot and has contributed so much to her circle and her folks.

I chanced to give a hand in a cake order recently on behalf of my friend. She is this interesting cousin of this lucky chap who got married to this lovely girl. My friend wanted to send a special wish from 'Across the miles' and you know our online orders at times.. I remember how one such order reached the venue at 10:00 P.M for a 9:00A.M wedding. So, I thanked her common sense to have an offline order placed for this cake. Now, when you are paying a fat sum and you are extremely creative and expressive, it is natural to expect a cake that exactly matches your specification. At least, when I took the order like I would do for myself, I wanted to be sure. We decided on a Baker and started off with the careful and long and process-oriented ordering process [ There is much more to process adherence in a bakery than we have in IT industry. .]. I generally cannot settle for " Its okay... this would do.." when I stand in for someone else to do something. So, I bothered the...

I had this first-ever invites to a painting exhibition. I love drawing, have done some coloring as a child, but almost always I have flopped the dusk and dawn paintings. Over the years, I glued myself to black and white art. Many of my friends have suggested that I do color pictures, but never really took it serious enough. The photo frame sized canvas base I saw in one of the stationers, thrilled me to an infinite extent. What's in a plain canvas, you ask? I can tell you that the best motivator for art is its drawing base. I totally loved the idea of painting something nice on that piece of canvas base. I had no idea what kind of colors to ask for, so called my artist friend and got some hints. She told me this : Just get started.. You never know how much you know till you start off with paintings. I believed it completely, but when I finally picked up all I needed, I somehow thought I must approach an art school and learn this through, to start off canvas art. That was all and th...

I had a very interesting conversation with a ten year old today.. According to him, he is nine and a half years old and will turn ten next month. We were talking about his school and classes and games. The conversation slowly drifted towards bed time and he told me he had stayed awake very late at times, doing some drawing. I told him, its best to sleep early and wake up early enough to concentrate on drawings and exam preparations. He was not sure if I was talking sense, so asked me questions about how I handled my exams and tests when I was in school. The conversation was interesting, because no one has drilled me with so many questions on my bed time during exams, in a long time. Examinations are almost forgotten in my corporate world. The kid said that he spent 1.5 hours for one of his exams; "that too I did not work too hard", he added, and "I got 25 marks on 25" [ Which is cent percent ]. Without thinking, I asked, "why did you not study with complete foc...

Unsure why I thought of this old school prayer hymn yesterday evening, but it is nice to recall and jot down the prayer here for us to read and reflect. I think it is one of the well-thought out thanks prayer that I have come across so far. This being the 250th post of mine, I thought this thanks will fit in very well here. Thank you God for : All you have given Friendship and Love Faith and Freedom Thank you God for All. Thank you God for : Wonders of Nature, Learning and Sport, Music and Singing, Thank you God for All. Thank you God for : Staying so near me, Caring for me, Making me Healthy, Thank you God for All. Thank you God for : Days that are happy, Days that are sad, Hard things and easy, Thank you God for All. Its nice to say Thank you and sometimes, never really enough.... Thank you all for your readership and viewpoints on my posts.

Have you attempted to say one line on your birthday that describes your mind state? Here are some of the responses I have heard: Getting too old to celebrate... Getting older... Getting older and getting wiser too... Time to think of wedding... Don't put candles on my cake to remind me how old I am... Time to wear a shorter dress just so I don't feel too old... Don't even ask!!!! Yeah, its just like any other day... Who ever said it is special... How long do you think I must celebrate this day... I am getting older... We are just planning a dinner outing this evening.. Nothing much.. Its just any other day... Yeah, lots have changed, learnt quite a few things.. lost and gained some sense :) Now, that is the usual routine note of responses that we would hear... Yesterday, at office, we were celebrating a friend's birthday. Cake, Samosa and coffee to keep it simple and quick. When the initial round of cake was over people shifted focus to the birthday hero. We wanted to h...

Top reasons why a hostel life experience is very important: To be able to make friends with most people... To be able to say Good Bye to friends... To be able to sleep undisturbed with the lights on, the whole night... To be able to share a bar of a favorite chocolate with five others... To be able to take a quick bath... To be able to make a sandwich for a friend.. To be able to attend to an illness... To be able to break a bad news... To be able to rejoice at a peer success... To be able to appreciate a letter, phone call, or email... To be able to focus amidst heavy music and loud noise... To be able to crib about things and adjust with them, nevertheless... To be able to make someones day with a joke, gift, or an honest compliment... To be able to keep your stance, when you know it works you, no matter what any one says... To be able to know what does not work for you... To be able to love your neighbour despite all imperfections... To be able to understand the other person's p...

How many times do we say that we do not have time for prayers, people, phone calls, emails, hobbies, and the list can go on.. Each of us has different reasons to give for not being able to do something and never have one reason why we must consider doing it... I think I have finally stumbled upon that one reason to do all that I would otherwise postpone saying 'No Time'. Last week, I chanced to read some points that gave me a very different picture about Time. We have about 1440 minutes in a day. Math : 24 * 60 = 1440. I wrote it out just in case you are trying to do a mental math on this. It is as clear as the calculation, that we have a whole 1440 minutes to do all that we want to do in a day.. With this thought, can you just spend a minute to check if you can spend five minutes each day in prayer, 20 minute for friends, 10 minutes to respond to missed calls and text messages, and say another fifteen minutes for music or exercise or some hobby? In all your spend time would st...

Software engineers are so used to carrying laptops day in and day out, never have time for anything other than work most of the times, forget what vacation means after the long vacation they took after their wedding, are almost always on the complaint radar in the family, especially when it comes to taking the family out and remembering to buy something from the store. We are not talking about the rare exceptions here. If you are one of the rare exceptions, God Bless You. :-) Over the past week alone, I had multiple chances to notice how much some of my software engineer friends change for their children. One of my friends who was very much a common software engineer( with all the introductory characteristics) before he became a responsible parent, can actually manage to leave on time for his daughter's school day function. Unbelievable!!! I exclaimed almost aloud. I am all smiles :) Another friend whose home is a mini-computer lab in itself actually sets his laptop aside and carri...

I write user manuals as part of my profession as a technical writer. I am a proud peacock when it comes to saying: Every product comes with a user manual. Think about it.. Just about everything you buy or see or know has some sort of write up attached to it. There is at least a caution word or disclaimer attached to just about anything today. I was talking to a friend of mine on particularly nothing.. Somewhere in between our getting-to-know-each other chat, parenting and children became the subject. When talking about her new-mommy stage, she said: My baby didn't come with a user manual. She went on to say, how it was a very different learning and we continued on that for sometime and stopped at "Yes, nature has its own way of teaching you things..." but my mind carefully noted that one line: It doesn't come with a user manual. My tech writer friend, who had a baby recently said, after a tiring day-and-night match with her newborn : "You forget that there is no...

We did not know the meaning of this word nineteen years back when we were seated in the Fifth Standard class room of our school. There were ten boys in a class of fifty. That was the last year the school had co-education. We had our first ever farewell party, at the age of nine in the school playground. The forty of us bade a definitely not tearful farewell to all the ten boys in our class, the first ten boys in our academic life.We had dances, plays and games and some speech by the teachers and the principal; all of which was just fun for all of us. We never realized that we might miss these boys around, the next year. Well, the whole idea of farewell party in itself didnt sink in back then, and friendship never meant anything at all. Everyone who studied with you, who was nice to you, was a friend!!! The next five years went on in the school routine, the only difference we felt in Class Six, was that all of us were girls and it was different fun. We never had to be punis...

Onam day - Festival of Colors and Festival of Prosperity dawned colorfully for me at office. We had this Pookalam: Here is my Onam wish for all my readers: Wishing you and your family Health and weath, Joy and happiness, Peace and prosperity, Love and luck, Care and cure, And A multitude of reasons to smile today and always!!!! Happy Onam and Happiness Always, Smile, Dew

Thanks to Nishita for awarding me the Humane award  for my posts in the Spoorthi category: An award always makes your day!!! :) I'll pass this award on to some deserving blog posts. And that will be over the weekend. I'd like to pass on this award to my new blogger friend SK whose blog is one space to really stop by : http://polambifynig.blogspot.com/  . It is a tamil blog and has posts that deserve the humane award. Have a good day, Deepa

It was a fantastic evening for a lot of reasons - children, children, children every where. It was so much of fun for the children in the apartment complex this evening, as they were to take part in the Ganesh Chathurthi special programme. There were plays, songs and dances by the children and the amazing cheer there was so contagious. I enjoyed myself thoroughly with the decked up Gujju dolls, King, Lord Shiva, Godess Parvathi, Lord Ganesha, the Moon, the Old grandma, the toddlers and tiny tots in angelic attires, the Raman of Tenali, the guards and the parents running here and there with papers, lipsticks, eye brow pencils and costume change requests!!!! I was visiting my cousin's family today and decided to be around when all the character artists were getting ready for their stage performance, this evening. My neice was playing Lord Shiva's role in a dance-drama. I loved the costume for all the careful details it took care of. With a little bit of make-up, my little niece...

Hi People, All thanks to Nishita at http://nishitak.wordpress.com/ . She has nominated my blog for the zombie chicken award that you just read about. Am super-thrilled about this award because it is the first award after a very long time in my life, and also the first-ever online recognition for my blog space in the last 3+ years of its life. Few blogs that I would pass on this award to are : Clearing the Clutter in the attic by Sowmya Gopal for the enthusiasm and positive attitude showered all over her writing. Casey's Korner by Krupa for the chances to laugh, smile, and grin throughout the reading experience. I love Nishita's Rants and Raves for the straight-forwardness in her writing. You don't award some one who has just given you an award.. Do you? :-) If I could, I would any day nominate her posts for book reviews, movie reviews and shopping reviews. In Singapore: A Local [Af] Fare by Shobha for her 'full-of-life' writing. If you want to read the mo...