Bajirao Mastani - Stunning movie!!

Bajirao Mastani is one of the very few good Hindi movies that released in 2015. It is a Sanjay Leela Bhansali movie and has fully lived up to my expectations. I went in expecting grandeur, romance, beauty, rich dialogues, a little bit of historical touch and the movie delivered. You can call me an ignorant soul but I had no idea who Bajirao was before I saw the movie.

I learned about the importance of this larger than life person in Indian history through this movie. History books don't actually have a lesson on him. So thanks to Sanjay Leela Bhansali, a lot of other people like me got to know about Bajirao and about Mastani as well. 

Now for the past few days, my Facebook wall has seen consistent outrage about the movie from a certain section of people who happen to know Maratha history really well. All I hear from them is that the movie didn't do justice to Bajirao's role in Indian history. My question to them is:

Anne Frank - A young girl in the times of war!!

I recently finished reading the Diary of Anne Frank. It is a compilation of letters written by a girl to her diary during the second world war. She was from a Jewish family and the entire family lived in a secret annex for about two years to hide from Nazi atrocities. She started writing this diary when she was 13 until the age of 15 after which the family was captured and sent to concentration camps. This book has touched me so deeply for a lot of reasons.

Festive Season !!

Like the final minutes of a YashRaj movie, last quarter of every year is filled with emotions, enthusiasm, hopefulness and lots of family time. It is my favorite time of the year. All the other months exist just to set the stage to welcome these final months. No, wait, not all the other months!! Holi month is important and my b'day month and my anniversary month and my husband's b'day month and family members' b'day month..... alright I guess the other months are important too!! But they aren't festive enough :P

Growing up !! Isn't it fun??

A lot of times, I hear people say, "Oh I wish I could go back to school !!" It's the same emotion each one of these people have; unless they were bullied really bad in school, in which case they wanna go back to some other part of their life. Some just wanna live the toddler life forever. Special mention to the married people who can't get over the time they were bachelors and "free to do whatever they want."

Every time I am having such a conversation, I wonder "Hey you!! Didn't you do it right the first time? Or Did you forget to live the moment when you were there?"

When was the last time you saw him?

"When was the last time you saw him?" Shelly asked her.

There was a look of longing in her eyes when she replied "It has been three days".
"That's not a long time at all, you need to cheer up. 3 days ago is almost like yesterday. People don't get to see each other for decades and they survive"

"Yes, I know but I miss him already. It will be a whole month before I see him again. I don't know if I can wait that long. The last time I saw him he seemed aloof. He was happy but engrossed in his own world. I wonder what he was thinking about.
I asked him what was on his busy mind, but he didn't tell me. This month, I plan on calling him more than I did last month. I want to be more involved in his daily life. Last month I got too busy to talk to him daily and then last week when we met,  I felt like I wasn't a part of his life anymore."

Shelly tried to shake her out of her monologue "I think you are thinking too much. It doesn't matter if you couldn't call him enough last month. He has been so supportive all this while. He is the smartest guy I have met so far. I am sure if you pester him a lot, you will invite more trouble to the relationship than anything else."

She wasn't listening to Shelly at all. Lost in her own thoughts, she was weaving the beautiful dream date for when they meet the next time. She has so much to say to him and so much to ask. "I will call him tonight and we will talk all night" she thought.

Life and lessons learnt :)

In my life I am yet to meet a person who thinks that textbooks can actually teach you more, than life can teach you. If you are that kind of person, don't tell me coz I will judge you!! I am not even talking about the really profound life altering lessons here. Just the small important ones that you learn on a normal work day or even a beautiful Sunday brunch. You just need to take a moment to stop, think and absorb that right. For example, lessons that you want to learn - like a tip from a good friend on 'where to buy that perfect jacket that goes with every skirt?'; or lessons you need to learn - like a survivor's guide from a co-worker on a really bad work day;  or lessons that you didn't even know you need to learn. I wanna share a story about a lesson of the latter kind.

Sachchi Advice :)

Parents are a child's first teachers and for me they are my best teachers coz they gave me the best advice ever! Needless to say, when I was young I didn't like hearing their advice but am extremely thankful for all of it today. However, there are some particular pieces of advice that shaped the course of my life for good.

The first one came from my dear mother. My parents (like all good Indian parents from their generation) wanted me to either be a doctor or an engineer. And I (like all bad teenagers from my generation) didn't wanna do what they wanted me to do. In 11th standard, I chose non-medical stream but did all I could to not be an engineer like not enrolling for any preparatory classes for engineering entrance exams. 

Much to my surprise, my parents were betting on their intelligent genes and not on the prep courses so much!! So they made me sit for all the entrance exams anyway and in parallel I started applying to all English and Chemistry Honors graduate courses (the only two subjects I liked). I started attending my Chemistry Honors course feeling quite confident about the failure in the other exams :) However, I passed each of the engineering entrance exams. On the day of first counseling I attended, my mother very subtly told me to select 'IT' in the counselling form for a college near our home (not ECE or CSE which were really popular but IT). I got selected to the college she suggested and in the course she suggested. Till date, I have no idea where all this confidence my parents have in their kids comes from!! But that subtle piece of advice didn't just shape my career but everything else in my life as well. I met my dear husband in that college in IT stream. :D Could a choice of graduate course 'BE ANY BETTER'? (big Chandler Bing fan ;) )

The second advice came from my superhero father. He gave me the same subtle piece of advice at two instances in my life. I was in my first job clocking endless hours in a week and was exhausted. I was feeling incompetent having to work so hard at something I am supposed to be good at. I did IT engineering and got selected on campus for this job after all. So I called my father at 2 AM one night from my office and said - 'I can't do this anymore, I am quitting'. Very calmly, he said - 'Sure, quit, come home, we are here for you'. And the next instant he asked me - 'Will you be happy sitting at home?' 

He knows me too well to know that I can't be happy sitting at home all day doing nothing or doing household stuff. So he threw this curveball at me and I decided to stay and fight it out at that job. I did well thereafter, not just at the first one but at all the ones following it :) The second time, he said the same two lines to me but in a different context. I had one big fight with my husband and called my father to say - 'I can't do this, marriage is too hard, I am coming back'. Same two sentences in the same calm manner - 'Sure, quit, come home, we are here for you. Will you be happy sitting at home?' He knew I loved my husband too much to be at my father's home!! So I stayed with my husband - 'Happily ever after'. After all, sachchi advice apne hi dete hain :)

I am participating in the #SachchiAdvice Contest by MaxLife in Association with BlogAdda.

Somewhere I belong !!

What do you think makes people move from one city to another? or one state to another? or one country to another?

I think apart from the people who have jobs where they are regularly transferred all across the country, those who move always have the same reason deep down inside. Trying to find a place where they belong. The move might take them closer to home, closer to a loved one, closer to friends or far from the world they don't belong in. I have been living away from my country for more than a year now and this question bothers me more than ever - Where do I belong?

Fake it till you make it !!

I have heard this phrase - 'Fake it till you make it', over and over in a lot of different contexts.

Self-help books ask people to pretend to be what you want to be... day in and day out.. and voila... one day you will actually make it !!

Spiritual books tell people to channel all your energy and focus on what you want to be... project the image on the world... and one day... it will be reflected back on you !!

I am back - after an amazing trip back home :)

It's been a month since I last wrote. I was pre-occupied with the preparations of my trip back home and then with the actual trip. A trip back home is always exciting, partly coz I get to meet all my near and dear ones and partly coz I get to shop a lot and receive a lot of presents ;) (did you just call me materialistic!! guilty as charged :) )

The time I burnt my own hair!!

I have been hooked on to this Taylor Swift song - Bad blood for some time now. It portrays the emotions that arise inside you when a great relationship (that she calls mad love) turns sour (she calls it bad blood). There are a hundred emotions that arise like confusion, pain, sadness, but I think the most dominant one is - anger (unless you are an absolute saint). I am quite bad at expressing anger so I keep it to myself and brood over every little detail silently. I recently spent a good one month being angry with a person (day in and day out). I had lost all good sense and cultivated my anger into this all-consuming hatred for everything around me that connected to this person.

Trip to Jakarta :)

 I last saw her on my wedding day three years back. Last month I got to know she is coming to Jakarta for work. All I could think of was; she is right here, so close by!! I couldn't wait to see her. I booked my flight to Jakarta as soon as she booked her tickets from India to Jakarta.

I have never been to Jakarta or any part of Indonesia before so I knew nothing about this country. The only other way to experience a country without visiting it; is to read about it. So I started reading and I got to know that people don't speak English there. They just stick to the local language. Luckily the local language is similar to Bahasa Malaysia (language in KL). In the last one year, I have only picked up some phrases of Bahasa Malaysia from the locals and learnt the numbers and greetings. As I wasn't going backpacking to Jakarta, this was quite enough.

Living in KL - Part 3 - Life with Friends!!

My life in KL has come full circle - from being taken around the city by friends; to taking friends around the city an year later. This is the story of my first year in KL. The difficulties of being so far away from family were overshadowed by my encounters with some of the best people I have ever met in my life.

It was a roller coaster ride;  and how I wish I could freeze time at the highest moments !!

P.S. This post is third in a series of posts about my life in KL. You can read the other two posts here and here!!

Living in KL - Part 2 - Food in KL

I hope you got a glimpse of KL through my eyes in my last post. Today, I will continue to talk about my KL experience of the most talked about thing in my life: FOOD :)

In my new adopted hometown, the three adjectives that people most often use to describe me are: Indian, Married, Vegetarian.The first one is obvious living in a foreign land. The second one is alright (although I could do without the tag sometimes  ;P) but the third one is a bit of a surprise.

Now you see, nobody bats an eyelid back home when I say I am a vegetarian. Actually. I never have to say 'I am a vegetarian' coz unless someone specifies their preference to eat meat, it is a foregone conclusion that the whole world is 'shakahaari'. But over here in KL, people make it a point to confirm whether I at least eat fish or egg when I say I am a vegetarian and some go ahead to confirm if garlic is 'ok'. So the word 'vegetarian' in itself doesn't mean much to them.

Living in KL - Part 1 - Moving from Delhi to KL

A year and a half back, I made this huge decision of moving from a city where I had two families to a city where I had none. I moved from Delhi (to keep references simple I would stick to the city 10 minutes away from my actual hometown Faridabad) to KL. I wouldn't say it was easy. A lot of things changed, both on the personal front as well as the professional front.

As promised in my earlier post, I am trying to capture all that happened in this one year of my life. Doing so in one post isn't feasible, so I will split my experiences. Both of these cities happen to be the respective country capitals so comparisons are bound to happen. This post talks about my observations of Delhi vs KL and I will pour out other details of the last one year in the forthcoming posts.

Coming from Delhi, the grandeur of KL didn't really hit me (at first) as I had expected it to. Tall buildings, broad highways, high-end malls felt like - been there, done that!!

Short trip on the long weekend - Melaka :)

Long weekends are the most welcome times of any year. Unlike the festive time holidays, there is no set menu for this meal :) You can go ahead and mix your own ingredients - sleep the weekend off or shop the weekend off or travel on. 

This long weekend, I did all of these :). I could ramble on and on about how much fun the whole weekend was, but that might take a while. For now, I would just write about the most amazing part of this weekend - Road trip from KL to Melaka. It's a short three hours drive, which is pretty much the amount I had to spend driving to and from my office in my hometown.

Yes!! That is a cycle rickshaw and every glitzy thing on it is battery operated!!

The biggest luxury of life !!

No matter how many tantrums I throw to trouble her, the first tear that is shed for even the slightest scratch on my body is my mother's.
No matter how many miles away from home I am, the first person to run to my rescue and bring me home is my father.
No matter how much I fight with her and irritate her, the first person I find support from in times of need is my sister.
No matter how many tantrums and fights I have with him, or how long the distance is, my husband is always 'The Last Train Home' for me.

I live thousands of miles away from home, but that doesn't change any of these things at any time.
It's amazing how families don't grow apart with distance but grow stronger instead.

Why confront something when you can avoid it !!

P.S. The title is not an exclamation by mistake, it is so on purpose!!

What in life is worth a confrontation that will definitely lead to a feisty heated argument?

I have had a lot of situations in life where I had to confront people and call them out for their wrongs.
And trust me, I mean it when I say 'A LOT'. I confronted the people that hurt me and pretended to be right in doing so. I could walk away, but these people were worthy of a fight. You know the kind of fight that you have when you need to hold on to some person for life and you can not just let go. The fight when you don't want the relationship to die because of some stupid misunderstanding or miscommunication or something even sillier than that. But these fights were all in my head. Yes, the fights weren't real.

CWC Team India - Winners - Then and now!!

In World Cup 2015, team India had an outstanding streak right up to the semi finals. Performing continuously, winning all the matches and being cheered by all the fans.

But the support these fans had to offer changed when team India needed it the most. While the team was performing, the entire nation wanted to take credit for the victory. There was an abundance of - It is our team, our countrymen, player from my city et al.

As soon as India lost the first match, there seemed to be no shortage of analysis on the loss - team wasn't well prepared, the other wins were against weaker teams, bowlers don't know how to bowl, batsmen don't perform when it is needed the most, captain didn't distribute the bowling overs wisely and the most disgusting ones to hear - Virat Kohli was busy doing advertisements, he was in a hurry to meet the girlfriend, Anushka Sharma's presence brought bad luck. Are you kidding me ??

The joy of reunion!!

My husband and I have known each other for almost 12 years now. 

We met in college and were the best of friends throughout. Then I landed a job in Mumbai and had to move out. And - we started dating.

That was the start of our long distance relationship, which lasted for about 3 + years. I had a blast in Mumbai but one of the sweetest memories are of the times when he would fly in to meet me. Weeks before his actual visit, all I could do was daydream about the days to come and plan about the things to do. The time would just fly past me and before I realized he would already be on a plane to go back home. The next few weeks would still be dipped in the sweet joy of time spent with him.

Whenever I flew back home, I would start counting back days to my flight. There was lightness in my step and as soon as the plane landed - welcome home echoed in my head :) The joy that reflected on the faces of my family members was priceless. I remember my sister complaining that I got preferential treatment (I was treated quite like the Queen of House). Adding to all this was the joy of meeting my husband (the then boyfriend) again. Between long naps, yummy home cooked food, long chats with family, catching up with old friends and being pampered by the boyfriend, I felt like a celebrity in those days.

Once I moved back to my home town from Mumbai, I got married and settled down with my dear husband. All the anxiety that separation brings along and all the joy that comes with reunions was left behind. Life was good but a little monotonous to be fair. And then I shifted base again to KL an year back. This time I was separated from two families instead of one. So there was double the amount of anxiety. That combined with the fact that my husband wasn't moving with me turned out to be a real bummer. 

I floated back to the time when the two of us were juggling a long distance relationship with full time jobs. Well, if that wasn't enough we also had family expectations to manage this time round. So this time even his visits to KL and my visit back home were all loaded with emotions of the upcoming separation for me - it is tougher to stay apart post marriage :( 

It took us one full year of praying and struggling before he could actually move here. Yes, that's right - one full year. But the day he finally arrived - it was pure bliss. I haven't been happier in this city before. The days are brighter and the evenings are more pleasant. I also realized that I had been living on caffeine, which now, my body no more craves for. It will be an understatement if I say life is easy now. To be aware that I will see him when I wake up in the morning and that he is going to be around every evening when I come back from work is just enough to keep my world going round.

Separation is tough, tougher the second time around but reunions - ecstasy!!

Friendship and Weddings!!

One of the easiest things in life is to be around friends.
It is all the little things like
A cup of coffee....
A midnight phone call....
A movie plan...
And the big pleasure these little things bring along.
This pleasure never fades whether you are meeting a friend after a day, an year or a decade.

I have been really lucky as I have friends who stood by me through thick and thin!!
I have friends who would fight for me, fight with me, talk to me everyday and not talk to me for years but still be my 3 AM friend all the same!!

Being a 3 AM friend - Easier said than done, as one of the toughest things to do is : To be a good friend.

It was my friend's wedding earlier this month. A good friend, one who has been a friend for many many years now.
I didn't attend the wedding coz I couldn't (lack of leaves, read - corporate slavery)

Same happened when another one of my good friends got married an year earlier and two others an year before that (some other seemingly important reasons for my absence)!!

At all these occasions I thought I had a good reason to not be there and my friends would understand.

Now let me tell you, a lot of my good friends didn't come to my wedding as well.
Some of these friends had good reasons that I understood (read - we had drifted apart), others made a genuine effort to explain their situations with endless explanations.

However I don't need to look at my wedding pictures from three years earlier to separate my friends into two categories - ones who made it and the ones who didn't. It made sense to me that my friends should have understood the importance of standing by me on the biggest day of my life!!

So what if I am not great at calling up friends regularly or just keeping in touch but I do consider myself a good friend.
However being a good friend should have enabled me to rationally see that these friends have stood by me on numerous other occasions (like the time I needed encouragement with my paintings and poems... Read more about that here!!) lest this one day. But so far I hadn't succeeded in understanding the reasons for their absence!! :(

Now when the tables have turned and I am the one missing my friends' weddings, I am wishing for two things:
Wisdom to let go of the judgements I made about friends' who didn't make it to my wedding...
And a world where my friends won't hold a grudge against me when I can't attend theirs ;)

That is me - taking one step forward in the world of friendship!! 

My First Blog Post!!

Let me start with why I think I should blog in the first place!!

I am an aquarius-pisces cusp, which to me means, I should have the best of both worlds. So the intellect of aquarians and the creativity of pisceans is what I assume has been bestowed on me. (That's my modest show-off about my knowledge on sun-signs :P )

Now being the creative human being that I am, I first tried to pour out my creativity on canvas which to my disappointment was greatly 'criticized' by my friends - good friends and I mean really good ones!! God, did they save me from being a subject of public humour.