The finicky me!

"I don't have a heart" - my mother usually says this to me. Well, this statement is made when she does not have anything else to say about my "logical" reasoning :P. My mom loves to win the argument against me, but she seldom succeeds. Well, that's altogether another story and post.

I have this habit of analyzing people and thing around me. I love to know them, observe about them, their behaviour in different situation, their reactions to certain things, their love and hate for the same thing at different time, the list goes on and on. Now I don't only observe people, but I even try to find logic behind their behaviour and reactions. And no, I am not vella in life, I love to do it. This answers why I usually win argument against my mom - I KNOW her well, rather more than she knows herself :P

And I have my weird traits too. More than one!

Last evening, I was talking to a friend of mine. He is going out of town for a business meeting. Now, when it comes to packing, I can be VERY irritating about the cross checking part. I check and recheck each and everything at least ten times. Clothes, extra clothes, brush, comb, deo, perfume, facewash, towel (yes, I carry that too :P), torch, charger, plastic cards, book and fifty other things. I do not keep anything to be packed the next day. I have a separate toothbrush and toothpaste kit for travel. Coming back to my friend, I controlled myself a lot not to keep poking him with my mindless questions about packing. But he kept probing me about what he should be packing. I sent him 2 smses late night and early morning about reminders of what he should be taking which he maybe likely to forget!

That's his story. But people who are travelling with me get so very irritated with my constant nagging about such things. I keep thinking about what I have packed and what I forgot till the time I return home. Yes, as the packing part does not end once I leave for the trip. When I am staying somewhere, and a day before the check out, I am again the finicky self, looking for stuff in all possible places, opening each drawer 5-6 times - PHEW!! I would not have tolerated myself for such a thing!

Second thing that triggers my panic button is extra clean rooms! I cannot stand that. I feel sick and get the hospital room feeling when I see clean rooms. A couple of years back, I went to Pune with a friend. She is a cleanliness freak. Her wardrobe is also arranged in colour coordinated manner! We stayed together for five days and only we know how it was for both of us. She even arranged my stuff thanks to her weirdity, and I kept creating a bit of mess here and there!

There are many more weird traits in me. But more on that, later :)

Childhood Musings

Does it happen with you when you read a post by a fellow blogger, you remember something similar, or you want to blog about the same subject too expressing your views about that topic? It happens with me all the times. Most of the times, I rant on their blogs and use the comment form for my post, or simply write a post on my blog. Today is one of such times.

Last week, Kavi wrote a post about Harihareshwar and that post reminded me of my childhood I spent at Umbergaon. I mailed him a few pictures of that place. But my fingers itched to type out the memories and publish them here. Though in my various posts, I have mentioned about my childhood and Umbergaon, but when my childhood friend Jigisha shared an album with me, I immediately smsed her to take her permission so that I could share those images on my blog.

Umbergaon is a small town located near Gujarat Maharashtra border. Not too crowded town with majority Gujarati population, it welcomes you with a warm village feeling minus the huts. Huts are there too, quite a few of them in the interiors of this small town. But rest of the things remain the same. Narrow lanes, kachi sadak (dirt road), wells, temples at every 100 yards, rangoli outside every house, neighbours talking to each other while cooking or working and such. each and every person has time to at least wish you good morning. Almost everyone knows everyone. 

I spent my childhood there. I was born to my parents, but was brought up by the neighbours. Now, that's how it works there. My parents have parented so many kids too but their own. My brother and I even had our meals with neighbours. And it was considered very normal.

This was the bungalow with five houses where I was brought up. It is just the half portion that you can see. The other half was demolished when this picture was clicked. Now it is fully demolished. My house is very much there, right opposite to it; but for me, this was home. And I will always miss it as my entire childhood was spent here. These poles witnessed so many games played by us. Old people sat on that bench in the far corner in the evening. My first ever friend stayed in the house you can see now. All the houses had swings.

This is my school. The ground that you can see, it was our volleyball ground. There are corridors on the both sides of the main gates. That's where I usually stayed during school time. I never did my homework, and my usual punishment was to stand outside the classroom. But well, it still never changed anything. There was not a single day on which I must have done my homework.

On the left hand side of the volleyball ground, we had our drawing class, which is of course not visible in this picture. I loved to paint and I always managed to score pretty decent in the subject. Another advantage I had was that my mama (maternal uncle) stayed bang opposite to my school. Many times, I went there for lunch or just to show off at the time of lunch break. People envied me as I got to eat hot and fresh lunch. Ah, I have always been a show off :P

Now comes the most beautiful part of the town - the beach. Umbergaon has a wonderful beach. And it is right behind my school. Each day, we enjoyed the beach view from our classroom windows. In the picture above, you can spot the photographer and another girl who was brought up by me. She is my first friend's cousin. That's how it goes.

Ah, I miss this place. It's been 12 years since I shifted to Mumbai. I love this city and those who read me regularly know that very well. But somewhere deep inside me, I am still a small town girl. Given a choice, I will settle in one of the small towns of India. Umbergaon is definitely an option, but most of the places with which my memories are associated are no longer there or even if they are there, they are modified or renovated. But still, it is an option. Maybe when I retire (if at all I do! I am a workaholic!), I will settle in one of the small towns. Do I have any company in my neighbourhood? Any bloggers? :)

I am tired

I am tired

Tired of the words they say

They please you, they praise you, they win your heart

They admire you all the time, making you blind;

They make sure you trust them from the start.

I am tired

Tired of the games they play

They catch you, they push you, they rip you apart

you lose faith, you lose friends, you lose it all you have

They leave you all alone, with a broken heart

I am tired

Tired of the things they do

they stab you in your back and come to console you

They command you, they possess you

you are left at their mercy, they have the last laugh.

You are all alone, nowhere to go

You cannot run, you cannot hide

they make sure you are not even left with the option to die

you are in total darkness, scared of yourself

they have won! won the game they played

Yes I am tired

Tired of losing all over again..

On the other side of the table

I am enjoying teaching. I teach three different subjects to undergraduates who are either pursuing their bachelor degree in commerce or appearing for professional exams. The subjects I teach are Business law, Business Communication and Management. The most interesting of all is Business Communication where I get to give all the gyaan that I have about English language, Effective communication, how to write an essay, how to avoid using jargon and how to use your vocabulary in the best possible manner. 

Today's lecture was about essay writing. Now, last night I happened to have a conversation with a blogger - NH, who is in the same batch as a few of my students. When I told her that I was taking a lecture at 8 am on a Sunday morning, she gave me an insight to a student's mind (well, I was a student of this age too errrrrr 10 years back :P). Her accusations on "my kinds" were:

"Why do professors always spoil students' weekend?"

"Can you explain why such outrageous timings on a Sunday morning! students par anyaay"

"Ah, even I have to get up early, travel for an hour to reach there and give a lecture for 2 hours on how to write an essay!" - this was my explanation to her as I couldn't have said that I understood her point. After all, I am now on the other side of the table where I have to be "cruel" :P

When I entered the classroom, each and every person was looking sleepy and dreamy. If it would have been a law lecture, I am sure all of them would have zonked out in 5 minutes flat! But the topic was about how to write an essay - a fun topic as the subject matter I chose for them was "Social Networking Sites" - something all of them (and us too) love. My first question to them was - "Do you guys know what is a Blog?"

To be honest, I was not expecting any of them to give me the exact picture as there are very few teenage bloggers around. But one student did know what blogs were and what blogging was all about. When I asked him whether he reads blogs, he said, "Only celebrities blog!"

Now I did not know whether to feel proud or offended about this statement; but I did not tell him that I blog as well! In the train too, two ladies were discussing blogs. They were talking about what kind of blogs they prefer to read. According to them, personal blogs are boring. How youngsters only rant on personal blogs - about their job, life, husband and wife, friends, lover, food, traffic, travel and every possible thing! 

It's always interesting to know what others think of this blogging world. Actually, for me it's always interesting to know what people think about even smallest of the things. I have heard so many opinions about lawyers, bloggers, students and now professors. Standing on a stage addressing on a particular issue to students who may start looking upto you if they can relate to you. You are standing at a place which you always respected when you were on the other side of the table. Pardon me if I am sounding conceited, but this is what I always wanted to do; well apart from 10 other things in my professional life :P.

Here is a small incentive of being a Professor that brings a smile on my face each time I see it:

About festivals and Kids

It's festive season all around Maharashtra. At least in Mumbai, people are celebrating. Loud music is playing at every corner. An NRI friend called me and became so damn nostalgic after hearing the loud music that he didn't even realize that he was on phone with me! But well, I can give him that liberty when he is already missing the Ganesh Utsav in Mumbai. 

I visited a few friends' too who had Ganeshji at their places. It's always amusing to see the decorations, enthusiasm and spirit of Indians when it comes to celebrating any festival. This time around, Ganesh Chaturthi, Eid and Jain festival (Paryushan) fell on the same day. Each and every corner of the city was decorated with lights, there were smiles everywhere and no rains. Now, it's difficult not to feel happy in such a festive mood. Yes, the heavy rains, gloomy weather and bad mood turned all happy happy thanks to the festivals.

But the happiest and most enthusiastic person is my niece. She is too young to even know the difference between human and God, but still, each time the music plays, both her hands go in the air, and each time Aarti starts in the neighbourhood, she starts clapping. If she sees Ganeshji, or any other God, she lowers her head and folds her hands. She does the same when we switch on the lights. None of these has been taught to her. She does it after observing people. This has made all of us very careful. We make sure we do not shout at anybody or or use bad words (we anyway do not use bad words, but we do not even use the words idiot and stupid), we talk to her about everything and she even understands quite a few things! Phew!! Kids today are damn smart!

But my mother has taken her "understanding" to a different level altogether. My niece is now a days hooked to some TV serial called Utaran (pardon the spelling mistake, if any!). She becomes so very happy the moment she hears "kya hoti utaran"! I didn't know what to do about it, so I got her hooked to wavin' flag by K Naan :P She even enjoys CID (which I love watching) and Cricket. She is not an avid viewer of TV though. She watches it for a few seconds. If she smiles, that means she likes it, if she throws tantrums for no reason whatsoever, it means that you are supposed to switch off the television as she does not like the sound of whatever is playing!

Any age group, kids are very smart these days. I happened to visit a mall a few days back. There were many rides like train, horses, cars and such rides, but the maximum crowd was near the bungee jumping board for kids. Kids were going mad there. First they were crying for their turn, and then they were crying to come down. I made a friend click a few photographs of that place. I use a non-blackberry business phone with no flash in the camera. Thus I had to ask him to click those snaps :)

Above: the empty train and Below: the empty horse ride

Ah, the kids gaming zone had the heart game too. Aim and win :D

Toddlers also wanted to bungee jump :)