Dance-Frenzy

I am no Basanti.. There is no Gabbar threatening... No shattered glass and definitely no Jai or Veeru and this is no Sholay.. this is not you who is reading and not me who has written.. Then what is this about..**scratches her head in irritation and resumes** The sole point of similarity in the scene and me, happens to be the song that follows. When Hema Malini sings and dances, actually it's Lata singing and Hema dancing, my li'l heart flutters to the lyrics... "Haan, Jab Tak Hai Jaan, Jaane Jahaan, Main Naachungi". I cannot help wondering about the lyricist who wrote this song. I would have said Anand Bakshi had actually read my mind even before I was born. Now, is there a law to sue plagiarists who steal thoughts of the unborn? There should be.. Damn.. I don't even have any lawyer friends..

It is indeed true that I cannot control myself dancing when I listen to some peppy music. The location somehow doesn't seem to matter. Take my kitchen for example.. The blowing of the pressure cooker whistle, or the sound of veggies being cut or the act of mixing atta.. everything seems like music to me.. Even silence has it's own kind of music. What I mean to say is that I do not need any excuse to dance:) I just like to dance.. all the time.. People think I am crazy.. but heck! who isn't? They just don't admit it, that's all..

Well all this impulsive dancing does get me into trouble sometimes. Apart from embarassing family and friends who think dancing in public nothing short of a sin, I did have a very weird experience once. Not that this incident stopped me from dancing but it certainly did increase my confidence in my dance skills;)

It was a Friday evening and following the usual Friday routine, I went to an Indian Grocery store in West San Jose to pick up some DVD's and samosa's. They usually play music and I was looking at the DVD's and was generally grooving to the beats, when this guy suddenly comes up and stares at me and then goes. It looked like he was making an attempt to talk to me. I didn't want to make his job any easier so I just ignored him:) At the checkout counter, I was still dancing and I carried my grocery bags and put in in my car. I started the TL(Acura.. our first car) and reversed it to get out of the parking space. Then I was driving out of the complex, when suddenly this guy from the store startes following me in his BMW. Once on the road, he comes in a lane next to me and makes some frantic gestures. I was scared and thought that I might have hit his car or something. I knew I hadn't but that guy kept asking me to pull over to the side. And I eventually did. Then he comes to me, and says 'I don't want to stalk you or sth but I would like to go to dance with you tomorrow night. I saw you dancing in the store and you dance very well.' Then he hands me his phone number and walks away. I never called him nor had any intention but that was a close call;)

I am not a pub or disco person. I went to a disco only once in SFO and decided it was the last as well. I wanted to see what it is like and hubby wouldn't come. So I went with a very close friend of mine(You-Know-Who)! And it was a horrible experience. Never saw those many drunk perverts at one place.. Couldn't wait to get out of there. What I do like is dancing with friends and family. And of course after we returned to India, I started my dance school in my community.. Had to stop once I started working but we do keep meeting and dancing in the clubhouse, every now and then. It is a great stress reliever and workout as well. All worries go away when I dance.

When Appu asked me to write about Dance, I promised her that would be my next topic and so this one's for you Appu Darling!! Oh God! I see the scroll bar appearing much smaller and before the blogger people decide to banish me for over-writing, I will stop!!

Cereal Hoarder

How I love the taste of crunchy cereal with a few slices of almonds with a dash of cranberry's in a bowl of cold low-fat milk.. mmmmmm ....yummmmmmmyyyyyy. It's possibly the best breakfast in this whole world for me and heck! healthy too.. an irresistable combination. That ladies and gentlemen is nothing but Cranberry Almond Crunch from Post Selects:) And that happens to be the only one that I eat;)

But somehow the people from Post seem to have got a hint about this cereal maniac and they started keeping the prices pretty high. But never-to-be-dissuaded-by-price me kept on buying it at $4.59/a small box where Costco sold much bigger boxes of other brands/flavours for much lesser price but no; yours truly is so loyal to this particular one, she would think of nothing else.

So it came as a pleasant surprise to me when we were is LA once and found the same cereal for $2.00/box in a Burbank grocery store... I thought Holy *&%$# ! And got as many boxes as my car would accomodate. So much for price differences. But those boxes did not last for long:( Anything that good, never does:( Sometimes I would find it for $3.00 at a nearby Target but that was the lowest price I could find in the Bay Area! So I began to live with it..

Until...

We decided to move back to India and I totally forgot it in all the excitement that followed our decision. Too many things that needed to be done packing.. shopping.. again packing and shopping for even more.. A 20-foot container could not contain our luggage.. so we had to book another one. Anyways, so once we boarded our flight and I started thinking about our life in India and it suddenly struck that I had no idea about groceries in India. I tried to console myself and was prepared to live without my favourite cereal when I landed in Bengaluru.

After a few days I decided to take a tour of local grocery stores, I was soo pleasantly surprised to actually find my favourite cereal at Namdhari Fresh and at More as well. But as I looked at the price tag, I had the shock of my life... crap.. this was priced at Rs 425/box. The way the exchange rate was last year, that was almost $10. Even then, it was outrageous.. But so-in-love-with-the-cereal me ended up buying it. Though our grocery bills were ridiculously high thanks to the exorbitant prices of my treasured cereal, I didn't have a choice, did I?

A few months later there was another surprise in store for me. When I went to Food Zone on Varthur Road, I found the same Cranberry Almond Crunch priced at Rs 325. But that didn't last long either:( Soon they went out of stock and I was back at square one. It was not until I went to Food World in Whitefield that I was surprised again. They had it for Rs. 240.. can you believe it.. 2.4.0.? I had found my new haven in Food World!! God Bless them! Every time I go there I buy whatever they have in stock:) And the looks that fellow customers and the ones at the check-out counters give me, don't escape me but don't bother me as well:)

To me, a perfect morning warrants a perfect day. And what's more perfect than starting my morning with a bowl of crunchy..tangy.. sweet.. Cranberry Almond Crunch!!

Flashes of Amber..

Did I wake up first or did I open my eyes first? Before I could decide the sequence of events, the room was lugged into broad daylight. Light had managed to sneak through the slightly displaced curtains. I sat up and stared in front of me.. stared and stared.. walked up to the balcony and stepped outside to get a view of the lake. The chirping of the birds at first was pleasant, then it grew louder and louder into a cacophony that I couldn't take anymore. It took me sometime to realize that the cacophony was in my own mind and that was not the birds but something else..

Some call it brainwave.. some call it sudden stroke of genius.. I call it 'flashes of amber'.. cause thats what I see with my eyes closed when I think of something suddenly. Haven't been able to stop these flashes since yesterday for some reason. I don't know what came upon me but I have been thinking.. thinking in not words and sentences but in paragraphs. It feels like they always had been lying dormant, waiting to erupt when provoked. And once they did, my feeble efforts to contain them could do nothing more than a stopper cork could, in a flood.

I tried to duck them, hide from them, tried not to think at all but all in vain. The unconscious mind proved too strong for the conscious one. When those neurons start firing and the grey cells get to work, I realized it's utter foolishness to evade them. Then once they occupied my mind, my fingers started tingling and are not able to keep up with the tirade of thoughts inside.

Where are these coming from? Why don't they stop and give me some reprieve:)

Hair-A-Do

I stood staring in the mirror and began to like what I saw. It was one of those great-hair days when my hair looked really good. I love my hair everyday but it was one of the few times when it loved me back.. It has a smooth and soft texture, begins wavy end end up in curls. But not everyday does it look or feel this good!

I grabbed my hair brush and started combing slowly. Not that it needed to be combed but I like the feel. The way the brush massages my scalp is amazing. Kudos to the one who invented a hair brush. Such unsung heroes should not be left unnoticed by history. So here's a toast to all those who spent their whole life inventing hair accessories, so that people like me could rave and write about it!

I fuss a lot about my hair. I guess most of us do. It is something you dare not admit lest people take you for a maniac. But I do see follicly challenged people fuss about their hair even more, so there's some respite for me!

When people ask me who my stylist is or how do I set it up that way, I just smile and say that it is the way nature intended my hair to be. If it wanted me to save a thousand rupees every month on hair style, heyy.. I ain't complaining!

The Un-Derived Mind

"Do not laugh out loud!"

"Do not play too much"

"Study hard as nothing else will fetch a job today"

How many times as a child are we told what to do and what not to do? While I totally understand the predicaments of elders while they try to put us in the right way, somewhere along the path we start becoming them. Our minds are trained to accept all the terms set by everyone around us or rather everyone who can influence us. We mould ourselves into becoming what they want us to be and during the process lose our SELF.

Slowly but surely, we begin to expect to be told what to do at every step. We seek advice from everyone before making a decision, we seek approval after every step. All our thoughts are influenced by what others think. Right from our behavior to theories of Physics, everything is derived. All scientific developments since civilization have been the originality and genius of a few underived minds. Had they been influenced like the rest of us, the world of today would never have been.

What we need is a paradigm shift. To come across an uninfluenced thought is nothing short of a miracle. Once it comes, let it wander across your mind and fully occupy it. Then you would have found an entrance to a gold mine. Once you open your mind to the freedom of thoughts, there is no stopping you. You could be a genius in the making!

How do we come across an original thought. For that we need to see not only with our eyes but with our mind. Let all your senses perceive whats around you. Our mind is often contaminated with needless thoughts and problems. It would need the pristine nature to mend it and leave it as nature intended it to be.The silence in the hills.. a lonely road.. sound of waves.. a duck in a lake.. these are some of many things that actually explore the unexplored.

Why do the beings of the wild have such extraordinary senses? Where as we, considered superior beings, are so lost in our worldy problems that we even forget that we have these senses. Why can't our eyes see the obvious? Why can't our nose smell emotions? Why can't our ears hear the feelings of the heart? Why aren't we part of nature anymore? I wish I knew the answers to these questions.. someday may be I will, as I wander on a lonely road.. or a silent hill.. or by the seaside!

Love etc!!

Love..

Why is it that the magical feeling that eludes us most of the time, is still the most coveted in this whole world?!! The one feeling that binds one heart to another irrespective of the kind of relation between them.. how does it feel to love? How does it feel to be loved? Where can we find it? How can we feel it?

It is indeed true that love is timeless, ageless and boundless. Sometimes it's the affectionate touch of a child or caring hug of a parent or a friend holding your hand or even your dog wagging it's tail when it sees you or it could be because of no specific reason at all. It's everywhere around you but still invisible. You will never find it when you go looking for it. You must let it come to you; for when it hits you, it hits you like a ton of bricks and you will never be the same person again.

I keep falling in love very frequently and every single time I feel more full and energetic and complete. The last time it hit me was about a week ago. My husband and I were going from Tirupati to Tirumala on foot. It is a 9 km trek and had around 3660 steps/stairs along the way. It is quite strenuous at few places but this time I never felt it. I never knew there was so much energy in me that kept me pulling towards my destination. As we were just more than halfway through, it started raining. We kept walking, and when there was no roof above us, completely got drenched. And we reached a the road and then suddenly there it was. Deep green valley by the road, clouds above the valley pouring over it, and there we stood -- above the clouds. Words cannot explain the fullness of feeling that I felt right then and there. I felt it in every single drop of rain that fell upon me. The ecstasy was so hard to contain within myself that I thought I would explode with emotion. One of the beauties of our life is that we feel:) And to be swept away in that endless emotion that I felt there was a great feeling indeed.

Another time love came upon me was when I was watching the sun set. Down he was going, like a red ball of fire, into the realm of unknown. I stood in my balcony, completely speechless, as I saw the change of colours in the horizon. The shades of amber that reflected in the lake had me captivated. I felt as if I was part of it. The feeling of us being part of something that amazing... isn't it Love?

There can be no love without passion. It has the power to make amazing things happen. It has led to discoveries and inventions and created solutions for many a problem. If you are full of love, no worry can ever touch you. But for you to feel it, you need to be free and carry an open mind. For love is wild, untamed and not often accepted by the society. We are all domesticated animals who have built a cage around us and try to live with in that. The so called society sets it's norms and rules as to how you should be living and we lead our lives by what others want us to do. And as time goes by we end up forgetting what we really want. We are so busy trying to please people we think we love, we forget our love for ourself. I, for one want to find out my true self before it's too late!!!