Your Grandparents are The Best People That Happen to You


I Love My Grandparents. They are no more. But, those memories of happiness are forever. They teach you fundas of life with a blend of love, and minus the dose of strict self righteousness that is patented to parentology. My maternal grandmother was avant garde. Ahead of her times. She knew flawless English. She loved cricket and Sachin Tendulkar. Highly artistic, she made jewelry, the famous halva ke dagine(worn in Maharastrian Weddings). She read the newspaper and could hold intellectual discussions. Neverthless her taste in selection of colors, clothes, and saris, simply outstanding! What a woman I have always been proud off. She was a highly creative and a talented person. A very patient, enduring, sweet, and a compassionate person, whom I simply can’t stop loving. Nobody could make rotis and the famous ‘Maharastrian Varan’ like she could. My maternal grandfather was a noble man. Simple, sweet, hard working, would never say a word to hurt anyone. They are the best examples and ideals in my life. I don’t need a Richard Brandson or any hot shot’s biography to imbue.

I have had the privilege of experiencing the love and company of my great grandparents too. They were happy, cheerful, dynamic, avant garde people, who exemplified the finer things in life. My great grand mother was an epitome of kindness, compassion, and goodness. Her values about life is something we cannot find in books or parchments. My great grand father was a humorous man. His timing of wit and enthusiasm for life and everything new is hard to find in people of today. They showcased the lives of people who have been through real struggles and honored them through their trust and organization, Vypari Foundation. Educationists true to the core, who define the very definition of ‘Guru’ in its truest sense.

The ideals and principles my grandparents lived by are enough for me to follow for the rest of my life. My paternal grandmother was a dynamic, strict, and highly organized woman. Her sense of understanding relations and life is on par with what you wouldn’t even find in ‘The Secret.’ It’s hard to find people like them in this life, you know. The values they lived by, the gumption they had were so urban, it would put a modern man to shame. She was always up for learning something new. I have such deep admiration for them all, they have left indelible imprints in my subconscious. My paternal grandfather had a great sense of humor, was disciplinarian, sweet, hard working, religious man.

When I look back at these memories, and see the way they lived their lives, facing bitter and bigger challenges, our lives look less challenging and simpler; it works like an epiphany. I love them all, through to the core. Grandparents are special! They are like your guardian angels. Those are the kind of people so full of love and kindness. All of your mischief and rebel is accepted with warmth only to condition you into a better human being.

How I began Glass Painting


242330_10150203182781400_7947154_o240423_10150203184871400_7139226_o When I took down my bespoke studio, Faporazee, I had brought glass shelves from my studio to home. Since, they all were 8 inches wide, I was thinking how to utilize them. I first, cut them into round rectangular shapes and fitted them like tiny wall mounted arrangements. The rest of the pieces, were too many. So, I decided to paint them instead of throwing them away. How many shelves can you have at home anyway?

246633_10150203183691400_6465022_nSo, I started with my favorite, abstract design, then go onto doing floral motifs, birds, and random stuff. I loved pottery too. I had done some pot painting as a kid, using sand paper and plaster of pares to do up the texture. The next thing to do was paint it in motifs that I love by stenciling them first. I have always been good with arts and painting works. I never had to use a stencil for glass painting at all. I started off with the motifs in my mind directly onto the glass. I painted around 10 to 12 pieces in a weeks time. So, next time, I have a bottle or any glass piece that I do not use, I paint it and utilize it for decor. The pictures in this blog are my glass painting works done a few years back.

My Love for Language, Words, and Scrabble


Scrabble is to me what Superbowl or cricket is to many. Scrabble and cricket with one tup catch is something I am up for any time. There is no maaza in playing cricket without the chalk drawn wickets and one tup catch out. What if this was a real rule? Hahaha, that would be fun, wouldn’t it? The best part about playing an outdoor game is, you can have your own rules. Word games, language, come to think about, why don’t people focus on the language they use? You are not going to lose authenticity for showing some civility. Why are these values passe? You don’t have to sacrifice assertion for the sake of being polite. Rudeness is a camouflage for lack of faith in self. It is a way of projecting a made-up image to compensate for lack of confidence and belief in self.

Fluid language and expression is an ideal diet for a mental floss. Words and language carry beauty of thoughts and the mental markup. What sounds better? Poetry or expletives? I have always written abstract poetry since the time I learnt the usage of language. My love for scrabble is eternal. I could grow so old and not have teeth in my mouth, but a game of scrabble might just light me up. I am not an elitist. I do not have intellectual snobbery. I have no patent over these matters. What I love is language, culture, music, literature, words, poetry, thoughts, thinking, gumption. I make my inner world rich, no matter how I come across to as a person.

Our values are digitized. You will not fine someone penning Oscar Wilde gumption like a common place. Language and expressions are not enough to verbalize emotions. You need emoticons, GIF’s, and maybe even infographs to express the flowchart of emotions. The process of how they come to existence, needs to be explained, else, you will be passed off as a phony or someone who lacks empathy. “Oh, so you DO use emoticons, therefore, you could have an emotional streak.” This is how we infer the emotional nature of an individual now.

 

My interesting Routine Speaks of My Love for Life


Stillness reveals the secrets of eternity- Lao Tzu.

My day starts at 6am. I do the breathing exercise for 5 minutes before I get out of bed. I love my king size breakfast. I rustle up a planned breakfast every day. Mostly salads, doused in seeds and olive oil and a whole glass of fruit or vegetable juice. I have been on an organic diet for a really long time. It helps me keep chronic ailments at bay. I look at the silver lining of a good routine despite challenges.

This is my routine. I get better at it everyday. At least, I am not running inside the hamster’s cage, day in and day out. I don’t feel the onus to deal with the daily grind of  compulsions. I retain my natural, spontaneous, spur-off-the-moment independence. I wouldn’t give away my sense of freedom for million dollars or the mousetrap of true love. I do miss people and socializing daily. I would love that too, but my love for ideas is high!! Higher than the need of finding a middle ground that trammels my sacred religion of being free spirited. I don’t give a dime to epochal thinking, or doing something with the intent of creating an epic. I cannot miss the pleasure out of doing things I love.

Freelancing, working from home, afflicts social life, but you do not miss out on the rich inner world. You might communicate more with birds and plants than humans everyday. The ‘Me’ time becomes so potent, you develop a strong reason to shut down the rigmarole and the mundane small talk. I have never been the small talk kind of a person. Though, it is an ice breaker in any conversation. My self absorption with ideas has taken over social life. I jot down, write, read, sketch, cook, clean, and create.

I have a heavy breakfast and lunch light. I love cooking for myself, as well as people I love. There is true joy in doing that. I think, I have come so far because I have not given up holding on to good dietary habits. I am a massive foodie. But, I prefer not to get into temptation habits, not cause of self righteousness, but for the love of my own well being.

Then my work starts at 7am or 9am, depending on random stuff I choose to do early morning. Sometimes it could be a morning walk, or listening to music, or grooming plants, or just sitting still. Stillness is vital to me. I have a dislike to be shaken up. I, especially, like my mornings quiet. Then goes on the roster of things planned ahead of the day. Writing, mostly. I pen thoughts for myself and also take up the technical and mundane formats of writing as a part of my daily work.

This has been a long, unwinding journey having its own pitfalls. But, in all the chaos, peace, and a motley of incidents, my yearning for a disciplined life remains consistent. My core values have not changed, and nothing will change them. Nobody or nothing is so potent enough to change them. I love the pace at which I move my own life. i love it, because I get to choose the pace of my own life, in the case of happiness as well as adversity. I love it that I am incapable of being pushed for anything that does not coincide with who I am. No temptation of money, fame, or allure of true love is so big that it can put a veil on me. There is hardly a scope for boredom, with or without people. I am comfortable in my own skin.

 

Science Makes You Stoical and Art makes You Crazy?


Science and artistic fields may seem like oil and water. A balanced left and a right brain can dwell well in both. Steve Jobs is one of the offbeat, extraordinary examples of the left-right brain mix. A shrewd hippie, with a mind for tech, and a taste for aesthetics. Science demands logic. Creativity dwells on the magic you create with your imagination. People who choose science lead practical lives looking like an extension of humanoids. Doesn’t working with logic consistently make you impassive? But, we are human, aren’t we? We live for emotions. Those emotions reflect through family, friends, and people you love.

I think how practical can love get for these folks? They might simply work on parameters and checklists, isn’t it? when it comes to relations. The irony is, these are the kind of people who have stable relations and marriages, compared to the creative souls. Somewhere, deep down, when the practical mind is thinking well, realistically, it makes the other person’s life easy. Isn’t it? We, creative folks, live so deeply, intoxicating our minds with intensity, we give it a crown of madness and chaos, and call it free living. Doesn’t that completely defy the very meaning of free living?

Come to think of, creativity lies in science too. Music and art are made in numbers, format, and structure. Isn’t this the practical side of creativity? When designing smartphones, gadgets, the aesthetics are looked into. Now that, most certainly is the look and feel of a gizmo created with art in mind. So, what’s the facade about? What’s with the snobbery of science? We artists really have to learn to behave ourselves, and not be so open and expressive, expressing ourselves individualistically. But, that takes away the whole point of being a creative person. ‘Expressionism,’ the art of articulating yourself without the stain of pretense. Aren’t there more junkies in artistic fields, and it seems to be the norm? But, doesn’t art require balance too?

Madness and unruliness is not an excuse to be artistic. Likewise, being restrictive and reticent is not synonymous to science. Pragmatism is a feeling too, as long as it does not go to the extremes. It then becomes programmed and manufactured emotion, in its extremes. Sometimes, I feel, why these folks can’t feel so deeply. Because, when practical living seeps in, there is that uncompromising, self righteous, rigidity; and art is about flexibility. This goes to say, you can’t get into science without having a utility based thinking. You can’t get into art without being outrageous sometimes, you are allowed to be vile and offensive, if only there is a deep gumption that turfs out the vile and the sickening roots of conventional wisdom.

 

I have Become a Herbal Tea Connoisseur


After drinking black coffee for a really long time, I switched to herbal tea when it felt like there were coffee streams running in my blood vessels. My caffeine addiction ceased to zero. Once in a while I smell the freshly grounded coffee and add chocolate syrup to the black coffee, so you cannot call it black coffee anymore.

Green tea has been in the list of my daily intake. So, I tried as many flavors as available. The cinnamon, lemon, mint, tulsi, and more blends. Then I tried black tea. I found black tea to have boosting my metabolism than green tea. I also tried the jasmine, Apple,Hibiscus,peach, apricot, and the fruit flavored teas. They make you feel lighter.

 

 

Living Outside the Limbo


Since the turn of Sept 1st 2016, it seems like I have already been living in the unborn month of October, outside the scope of my limbo. All these months have been riding on the auto pilot mode, but looks like the settings have changed. What did the oblivion do to me?Let me sail in my search for peace through meddling chaos. It’s quite the quagmire, let me tell you! Like the quicksilver, time runs out of you, as much as you are running along the time. Doesn’t unpredictability make life adventurous? Too much information can shut you down for good. The kind of shut down that reincarnates and beckons the innate nature, almost forgotten over the passage of time.

After almost a decade, I have started to recognize my true self. Re conciliate my inner peace, enjoy the sunlight and the rain equally. Past is not bad as long as it reminds you of who you truly are! The original you! You get so lost  hotfooting, you forget simple things that matter and forget to thank God for all the good things happening with you. Limbo is your pet stop watch. You are thrown into a limbo by life, when every aspect starts to steer at an overwhelming rate, without the look out for breaks.

When a few lines begin to rhyme the rhythm of the present, it seems like a gift, truly! Meaningfulness in its fullness starts to snail into the little holes hammered into your soul. Chaos theory is only for the creative hearts who render them beautifully. They understand the purity that lies beneath the dust of chaos and mayhem. That is what deep living does to you. You alight down the staircase of insensibilities and unconcerns and FEEL so real, it bumps off the eclipse of numbness with an epidemic outbreak of compassion. I do remember now, like a breath of fresh air, how compassionate I have been before being pushed into the cosmos of abeyance. To the world, it might seem like an immovable stagnation, but for me, it has been a spiritual challenge to know the unknown in the state of nothingness.

You feel the gravity, but inside your soul there is no pull. You nourish your body robotically, because something inside you is not dead yet. That something has been at a primitive stage during this long period of nowhere. That something has evolved into a matured gumption, and full blown awareness. Auto pilot has chosen to flake out. I think forgiveness is from true realization than from manufactured wisdom. The long term contract with the limbo now ends with the end of August.

Bruised, Abused, and a ‘No’ to Suicide


here-and-now-413092_1920It’s disturbing how young actresses( Pratyusha Baneerjee) decide to end their life over an abusive relationship. It’s discouraging. I wished she had bugged her friends and family with her woes, cribbed about her relation till she felt better, blogged about it, ranted at length just to let it out of her system; she’d live longer! That thin line, one could stop crossing and preclude taking such drastic steps. Every industry has it’s own set of challenges. The idea of managing emotions and ambitions, per se, is a roller coaster ride for one and all. All of us have seen the blues, but what keeps us going is that one faint ray of hope thinking you came this far not to do away with your life but to reflect, retrospect, and improvise. This is no sensational wisdom, just a simpatico thought.

People fail to understand depression, especially, concealed depression. That’s because parenting is all about being self righteous (apparent from Hema Malini’s tweet about the actresses’ suicide). People rarely believe in a sense of free spiritedness. The way people in general respond to the very onset of depression is appalling, while those few sensitive souls do understand, thank god for that! It’s not something that can be cured with a pill.

Depression and mood swings are a chemical activity inside the brain not a character disorder or a result of damaged thinking. Not everybody is going to put their personal mayhem on their sleeves. But, there are signs of concealed depression that can be addressed by near and dear ones.

I seriously think, reading about lives of people and how they have coped up in tough times gives a lot of hope and will to survive in this world and take care of yourself. Self love, after all is not an ostentacious self indulgence. Most of us ignore self love and self awareness. Even the strongest have to be reminded of this when they hit rock bottom. All of us need that trusty side kick who can lift our spirits knowing and acknowledging that we are strong and able. Being depressed is not characteristic as most of them like to think. Depression is not a personality trait or an excuse, but a real thing most of the people in this world have no choice but deal and live with every single day. It’s a silent scream that nobody can hear. It’s a cry for help that nobody is aware of; not even those closest to you. That is the very nature of depression. It stays concealed and sometimes people don’t even realize how it affects their lives only because they are blissfully unaware that their mind is hit with depression.

With high level of stress, demanding jobs, lifestyle, and social pressures, depression is one thing I hope this society takes a serious look at. No matter how bruised or abused you are, no matter how tempting it seems to end your life, just put a lid on that thought, forcefully, if you have to, and say a strict ‘No’ to that moment of wanting to see the other side. You don’t deserve it, nobody does! Because, life is always willing to give you a fair chance!

The Symphony of Heart


I have never understood no strings attached relations. I wouldn’t even dare to try. Only because emotions feel good. They feel good because they are true. I am old school when it comes to relations. I have always believed in stability of relations. Isn’t that what matters in the long run? Why would you want to waste your time in associations that won’t turn into something meaningful. I belong to the era of millenials, but my heart belongs to an era where real relations were valued and had no interference or influence of the digi world.

It’s funny, when you look around, how these values stay in a penultimate shell. People do not want to believe real relations could exist, and that you are not one of those groupies you ‘chill out’ with. Strange as it seems, your desire to see a few things in black and white get colored by the external world. Those discoordinated colors that people fill just to get a kick out of it, do not realize, they are aching someone’s heart through to the core. Emotions are no fun to experiment. They are either there or ain’t there, there is no mid way in this.

Whether you succeed or you fail, love is all you need to make the journey worthwhile.

5 Wise Risks Independent Women Take in Life


Women do not need empowerment if they follow their instincts and waive the habit of second-guessing their hunch. “Directness in action,” ain’t a virile attribute anymore. When they start thinking for their own needs, without being a martyr, they exemplify being the stronger gender.

Being guided by intuition

Did you ever have a hunch about something and you dismissed it by rationalizing it? Did you feel better when you chose to survey your perceptions? It felt right, didn’t it, being guided by intuition? That is one of the risks we dare to take without being skeptical about it. When we work on what feels right and take action, that is when we emerge from being a cliche.

“Taking action,” is not a manful propriety. It is a bold chance independent women take as a result of having strong conviction. When autonomy becomes your sole prerogative, it gives women lesser odds of permitting smacks of abuse of any kind.

Being assertive

Assertiveness comes from a mere ability to say ‘No.’ A firm, polite, ‘No,’ to matters that do not coincide with your principles, beliefs or gumption. Women often feel guilty to upset anyone and sacrifice their chance to stand up for themselves. This lack of self-assurance is a gateway of being abused, deepening further into a web of emotional traps.

Assertiveness saves you from being sent on guilt-trips and vain vacations. This quality guards you against dissembling and manipulative people. When you listen to your gut, and assert yourself in any situation, you radiate into a stronger person.

Being directed by emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is our will to analyse our feelings from a neutral standpoint. That way, we are neither being biased nor wallowed into self-pity. By thinking of solutions, to improve us internally, and learn to give life a fair chance without being dramatic.

It is a way of life that is bound to transform us into someone better, eventually. It makes our judgement sound and our wisdom solid.

It helps us positively. It helps us weigh situations fairly. Having emotional intelligence does not make us hard-hearted but rather compassionate. It helps us take care of ourselves, both, internally and externally. It helps us create balance in ourselves and our relations by positively moulding our emotions.

Speaking your mind

There is more honesty in straightforwardness than diplomacy and white lies. While being brutally honest might not be considered kind, sugar-coating even grievous issues gives the impression of being a pretender or being feeble-minded.

Either ways, it does not resolve any conflicts and bring well-founded solutions. Being assertive is speaking your mind in a way that is not offensive and at the same time honest.

Sometimes there are situations where you have to do a little more than speaking your mind, be bold and take the bull by its horns!

Being bold and adventurous

Wearing what you want, pursuing what you like without giving heed to what anyone else thinks is being bold and adventurous. It’s a conviction and faith in your choices you make without the need of affirmations.

Sometimes people enjoy dragging you down only because they fail to venture and explore themselves. They will try to put you in the vas of a stereotype. But, you know yourself too well to let it affect you.

Women who take these risks at the cost of being labelled and still stay strong in their conviction are true examples of independent women. She could be a housewife, a waiter or a Ceo. Independent women are not synonymous to being financially independent alone but to think on your feet and think for yourself at any point of time, in any given situation.

5 wise risks independent women take in life. Being independent does not always mean financial independence. It means taking charge of your own life in order to make firm, reasonable decisions. Whether you are working or not, nobody can take the autonomy away from you. Nobody can validate you, except you!