Origami Birds

On our return from Ventiene Loas, we spend a day at Udon Thani, from where we were to board plane back to Bangkok. At the ticket counter, there was a bouquet of fresh flowers which were mainly orchids, and in between the flowers there was a small bird in origami. So tiny that it was surprising that my cousin observed it, she plucked out the tiny paper bird and pushed in my hands. The girls behind the counter were amused. They pointed to more such tiny birds in other bouquets and each time my cousin plucked it and placed it in my hands.

We went through immigration and waited for more than an hour in the waiting lounge.

When the announcement was made for boarding the flight, we stood in line. The girl, whom we had met earlier at the ticket counter was now waiting at the exit to check our boarding pass. When she saw my cousin, she smiled and presented her enclosed envelop.

There were 20 more birds made in origami by her, all made from flyers

Happy journey she said, smiling once again.

Celebrating Children’s Day 2010 Virtually

I remember celebrating this day with gusto when I was a kid. Every year this day would be celebrated in school with snacks (popcorn, wafers, glucose biscuits and candies), some balloons, gifts, games and same boring speech by our principle.

Every year we would hear the same story that November 14 is celebrated as Children's Day across India to mark the birthday of India's first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlala Nehru. He loved children very much and was popularly known as 'Chacha Nehru' (Uncle Nehru)!

Every year I would hear our teachers say “Children are the future of tomorrow, you must grow up to be good citizens” and I would anxiously wait for the future when I would be fully grown up.

But I never grew.

The child in me refused to grow up. (what to do?) I am still excited by the rainbow on a cloudy day (yayaya!!). I will still run after a colorful butterfly. (Yipeee!) I still laugh heartily at a good/bad joke (Hahhaaha). I still get annoyed when people ignore me(eeewww). I will still cry/sob when I am sad.(sniff! sniff!)

This year, children’s day was on a Sunday. Normally, my virtual world is closed on Sundays.

Sunday is the family time and I try to avoid going online as much as possible, (although not always successful). There are moments when I peep into my smart phone for a while, stealing some moments from the family time. And with BB within my reach, it is easy to do that. Actually I don’t do it but that child in me does it. (So not my fault at all)

Thus, at the end of the day, when I finally went online on my desk-top (the proper proffessional way), I saw that I had missed a great party.

The great party was at twitter board.

People had tweeted about various things they did #wheniwasakid and (I had missed it, but noworries) I was happy to tweet on this hash even though I knew none of my friends were there online.

#whenIwasakid I would steal baby milk powder and eat it secretly when aunt would be asleep

#whenIwasakid i never knew how to swim or went for any extra class

#whenIwasakid I always worried abt fan falling off from ceiling n crushing me

#whenIwasakid I was afraid of every person in uniform, be it police or a nurse or even a nun

#whenIwasakid I was terribly afraid of earthquake and had tied mom's pallu to my little finger n followed her wherever she went

People had chatted about the things they did in their childhood at #bachhpan too and had posted their childhood pics. It was interesting to read all those tweets. My friend saw me online and asked me to post my childhood picture.

I didn’t have any.

Perhaps my family was not very rich or maybe I was not that pretty enough for my parents to invest money on camera or maybe- both. I don’t have any childhood pictures. There are few pictures clicked by rich uncles and aunts who must have visited my family during that time, but there is none of me alone. But since my friend wanted me to upload my profile picture, I stole one from baby wall-papers on net and posted at a collage titled twitter #bachpan 2010.


I was happy to see my picture in that collage

When I visited google to search for a picture of babies, the picture on the google page was a pleasant surprise created by 14 year old kid from Mangalore-Akshay Raj who won the second Doodle4Google India 2010 competition!

His logo was up on Google India's homepage throughout the day. He named it as 'My dream for India in 2030'. I must appreciate his thoughts as it clearly speaks of his dream, his maturity at such a young age. The logo simply sums up every aspect of growing India

Last hour of the children’s day was spend reading about my friends childhood memories and having a good laugh, and like every other day, I need a midnight feast, walked to my kitchen to extract a box of sweets , thus ended the day with a bite of cold sweet laddoo – sinfully

Find me at twitter at pushpz

Random thoughts -Why are we always trying to please?

People who like us will accept us the way we are, so why must we go out of our way to be goody-goody?

In trying to please others, we are too obssessed with comparing ourselves to others.

Whenever we try to compare ourselves to others, a strange feeling comes over us making us feel superior or inferior as the case may be..

We are not ready to admit that we lack something and we try to cover that up with silence or may sometimes go secretedly to a library to understand that knowledge of know-how or simply we may drown ourselves in self pity when we feel that we never had opportunity to learn and the circumstance were not in our favor.

On the other hand, when we feel superior and think that we are more intelligent than our friends, we start wearing the cap of attitude and we close our mind to further learning....

In both counts we are pretending to be what we are not.

Wordless Wednesday

Winged Birds Mehfil by the lake

Celebration

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 16; the sixteenth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

One more Diwali this year.

I think, the craze diminishes with age, especially if you don’t have children to enjoy with, it is not like those Diwali days of yester years when we were kids.

This year it wore a subdued mood.

Best Diwali was celebrated during those days when mom was alive. It had a different meaning then. Mom would start cleaning the house fifteen days before the D-day, which would be followed by shopping for new clothes, then making sweets, distributing to family and friends and finally the prayers, with plenty of gifts exchanged, some of them recycled. There would be lots of crackers and fireworks, mud lamps were placed at every window sill in the house and balconies would be lit with colorful bulbs. We would have continuous stream of guests, and of course lots of phone calls from relatives who lived abroad.

But, after mom, nothing is same.

With 90% of my older relatives dead and gone, the few that are left, they live in their own world.

Cleaning is done by maids, sweets and savories purchased from the stores and shopping is just a norm. We are shopping all year round so this is just another day.

I walk downstairs to meet the kids in my building compound and they are bursting expensive rockets. ‘How much did you pay for this 30 seconds pleasure?” I ask their father as I see the rocket go up in the sky and burst into thousand spraklers "Don’t even mention, it burns our heart and our pocket” they say “We have paid through our nose” and their kids looked at them with crinkled nose trying to understand what we meant and I tell them “Beta, you don’t understand how difficult the times are now, wait for 20 years and you will understand”

The children continue to derive the pleasure of bursting more crackers, those bigger strings of 2000 noisy crackers and I pause for a longer time to complete my unfinished sentence.

I am proud of the blinking red-rose shaped bulbs, which runs parallel to string of colored bigger bulbs and then there is one more string of hundred tiny green bulbs running across my balcony grill in the zigzag fashion. I am elated each time I go to my balcony to admire them, and then suddenly...Oh No! It is raining heavily, wetting my extension cord. It never used to rain during Diwali . Global warming! Bah! It is darkness again.

I recieve many SMS's, people sending me the forwards with no originality or personal touch. I do the same. All my friends are on social media and they all wish me on Face-book. No postman arrives with a greeting card. (when they come for Diwali bakshis they have an embarrassed look) All of my NRI family is on a smart phone and they exchange virtual sweets, jokes and greetings, but nobody calls to wish…no warm voice I hear. Every body’ messages I read on line and smile…alone.

I am glad that I do have family and friends towards whom I can stretch and reach physically.

I eat, pray and love during Diwali for sometime with them, offline

The fellow Blog-a-Tonics who took part in this Blog-a-Ton and links to their respective posts can be checked here. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.