Real Beauty is Skin Deep

I, like millions and millions of people around the world, found my own mother the most beautiful woman in the world. Mom was a widow for last 40 years of her life and she only dressed in white.

Many years ago, when I lived in Surinam, Parimaribo, one of my friends invited me for a wedding ceremony. I asked my mom to accompany me. She wore a plain white silk sari, her hair rolled up into a small bun, and no make-up at all. For jewelry there was just a pearl necklace, 2 gold bangles and her diamond ear-rings (that she wore all the time). My friends were impressed. Next day when they met me, they told me that my mom was the most fashionable lady they had met. My jaw dropped. Fashionable? I thought my friends to be crazy. How could they call my mom fashionable when she was dressed so simple? She had no make-up on, no flashy clothes, no fancy handbag and no matching shoes. I looked closely at my mom to try to figure out fashionable element in her and discovered that my mom wore grace and a smile – maybe it was that what they perceived as elite. Who-so-ever met mom were always in awe with the way she carried herself.

Real beauty is skin deep, which is cliché but undisputable fact. One status I read recently on FB said “Search for truth and you shall find beauty, search for beauty and you shall find love, search for love and you shall find God, search for God and you shall have them all”

There are hundreds of ads on TV that show products that promises beautiful body, smooth and clear skin, long flowing hair, a group of admirers who will go ga-ga and drool over our physical beauty. I have met many people who fall for these products and who will swear that they will strive to be beautiful. I envy them when I see them dressed in most expensive finery that the money can buy. I know I cannot afford those things and even if I could, they won’t suit me. Every time I look into the mirror, it puts me into a pause mode. Not having a perfect figure is the big disadvantage. My mind drifts back to one nagging question “What will people think?” or maybe, I get conscious that some may feel sorry for me that nothing really suits me and am still trying so hard to keep abreast with fashion fads, which results into even more depressing mode than looking at the ugly figure in the mirror. I cannot change that so I stopped trying. I decided if anybody needs to see the beauty in me, they need to know me because I will continue to maintain the inner beauty instead.

Beauty has different meaning for different people, like in the video of Gul Panag, where she talks about women empowerment, of respecting oneself, which is also one facet of beauty, of building one’s pleasant quality.

Some time ago, one of my friends’ #FF me on Twitter as ‘beautiful people’ asking her followers to follow me. I was flattered. Now this friend is my virtual friend whom I have never met, (and not sure if I will ever meet her) so naturally she is not likely to learn about that image that haunts me everyday from the reflecting surfaces. For her, I am the person whom she knows through my writing abilities, through the range of my work with mentally challenged, through my choice of my friends’ circle, through my lens at photographs that I post on my walls. I have never tried to make any impression on anybody but sub-consciously, my thoughts get translated and interpreted into the messages that reach out to people who care.

A beautiful face can easily be Photo-Shopped on virtual wall, it just requires the right kind of tools to brush away the scars and blemishes but can our thinking and beliefs be hidden from the real world?

What kind of beauty is that if we wear it with an attitude? When we show no compassion for our fellow human being and are so occupied with our own self that we just don’t care?

We may have walked the red carpet with a crown on our head, have brought home thousand of gifts from our admirers during the beauty pageant, or even hosted ‘Get Gorgeous’ shows, but the fact is that besides being beautiful, we need to be draped with beautiful habits too. We throw away the dirty cotton swabs on our dresser after cleaning our face, the lipstick cover is missing, the talc powder is sprinkled everywhere and we wait for somebody else to clean our mess? Cleanliness is next to spirituality. If we cannot keep our environment clean then the bad vibrations that surround us, results in bad temper, restlessness and unstable mind. The bad mood seeps out of our thick face-pack showing the ugly chip of our character.

However rich our finery is, however expensive our cosmetics, the real beauty will never get a chance to shine its worth if it lies burried under the layers and layers of our bad attitude; the ugly lines of bad manners will continue to crinkle our face.

This Indiblogger contest is what kick started my thoughts on ‘real beauty’

Note: This post is written as a part of What does real beauty mean to you?? conducted by  Yahoo!! Real Beauty in association with Dove !!

and this is what I received as a gift hamper as a token of appreciation
Thank you Dove and Indiblogger.....

Mother's Day celebration - 2011

Source

All day long, since last two days, people have wished each other mother’s day. Two days before the big day a message was posted on friend's profile that said "In honor of Mother's Day let's change our profile picture to a picture of your Mother and keep it there till May 9th.I did and so have several others. If you will and like the idea, please repost as your status, so everyone gets the message and see how many Beautiful Mothers we can get on Facebook." It was a nice thought and I quickly added my mom's picture on my FB. The face-book was full of mothers’ picture and it seems quite nice to see all them on every friend’s profile.

I am not sure when Indians started celebrating this day; I don’t remember celebrating this day when I was in my teens or in early twenties. I don’t even remember buying my mom any gift or flowers to show my appreciation. When did this day become a day to celebrate in India? When did this idea travel to India?

On Google search it's said that Mother's Day was first suggested in the United States by Julia Ward Howe in 1872 as a day dedicated to peace after the Franco Prussian War. The holiday gained its popularity majorly due to the efforts of Anna M. Jarvis, who began a letter-writing campaign to garner support for its celebration.

I became aware of this day when I migrated to Spain. “Dia de Madre’ is the big day in Spain and is celebrated with much affection. The streets are full of shoppers and people get busy buying flowers and gift for their mom. In every coffee shop you see the bond, the glimmer, the affection. When I lived with my brother’s family, we would buy gifts for my mom and brother’s children would buy gift for their mother, while yours truly received none. (not even a tiny rose), my nephew waited for aunt's day so that he could buy me a gift too and often questioned why there was no 'Aunt's Day' to celebrate.

That is the pain of not mothering a child of your own. You remain an aunt to thousand kids but they have no reason to celebrate your existance.

You may have the best of qualities of bringing up your brothers’, sisters’ or cousins’ children, showering them with all the affection that you are capable of giving, by singing them nursery rhymes till your throat goes dry, inventing stories to keep them amused while their real mother is pampering herself with a spa, or listening to their sob stories when they are unable to sleep and are sharing your bedroom because their parents' privacy is more important, sometimes you may have even spent your extra cash on that brat for a computer-game which his mother had refused to buy for him, but on mother’s day it is strictly ‘real biological mother’ and even if they wished you with a soft peck on your cheeks, it will be out of politeness, but it just doesn’t seem real.

I visited my sister on mother's day and her unmarried sister-in-law complained that her brother’s sons failed to bring her any presents and that all her life she has doted on them but still the children only remember to get gift for their own mother. I told her to buy herself a gift instead of waiting for somebody to gift her. Expectation is the mother of bigger sin and the root cause of many disappointments. it is better to stand in front of a huge mirror and wish the hour of the day. The smile that reflect back at you is the true smile.

During the family chat with my cousins on blackberry, I off-handedly wished all my cousins ’A Happy Mother’s Day’ expressing the notion of how lucky they were to have children, my cousin wrote back these beautiful words which felt good to read. She wrote back “You don’t have to give birth to be a mother; you just need a heart that loves unconditionally, that’s when you are a mom, so here is to you, a woman with a heart full of love who mothers so may tender hearts and fill them with wisdom”

Yes it is true I have loved all the children, (I still do). I have enjoyed great moments with them, cooked their special meals, stayed up all night when they are sick (even wiped their runny nose) and have mothered them unconditionally but to expect them to wish me on this day, and to be disappointed if they fail to include me on this special day is like loving them ‘conditionally’.

Wordless Wednesdays - Mango Tree Very Pretty

When will you be ripe? tell me Quando, Quando, Quaaaaando???

Tenerife - My holiday home

Flowers grow wildly here, creating a colorful tapestry on the edges of the road; the dividers on the express highway have different shades of green dotted with colorful specks of tiny flowers. One side of the motorway runs parallel to the bluish sea while other side slopes upwards towards the green and brown hills. I have lived in the North of the island of Tenerife for ten years, and during those years all I have dreamt about is to come back to Mumbai, I could never adopt that place, although I cannot deny that it is one of most beautiful cities in the world but still, Mumbai has a special place in my heart and staying in any other part of the world does not hold my fascination. Whenever I had expressed my desire to my guest of moving back to Mumbai, they would always lecture me about my foolishness and implore me to change my mind and live comfortably there forever, but I just couldn’t. I found my peace only when I moved back to Mumbai.

Tenerife is now my holiday home and I visit it whenever I need to relax.

The day I reach the island, I take a walk down the street where my brother owns a store. People are very friendly here and I have known them for many years. Whenever they see me, they come out from their shops to have a friendly chat with me, they try to talk to me in broken English and I in broken Spanish, its fun when some of them will even cross the road from the other side of the road to just plant a peck on my cheeks and a big warm hug, a great feeling! yeah!

This is a small town called Icod de Los Vinos, My brother has a tourist business very close to 1000-years-old tree called ‘Drago Millinario’ (a dragon tree). Just opposite my shop is a plaza which has beautiful plants and trees with the botanical name printed under each tree. There is a small church and also a small cafeteria where they sell cortado, a strong coffee. During my regular walks in this plaza, I am always fascinated by this tree.

While in Mumbai, I suffer the most during the month of May, when not even the AC  can bring me any solace and it is during such moments that I miss Tenerife the most, its’ mild, spring climate with an average temperature of 20degrees centigrade throughout the year. Outside my balcony in Spain, I can see the mount Teide on one side that rises to more than three thousand meters and remains snow-covered for most part of the year and on other side of my house are the grapes and cabbage plantations that slope down gradually towards the ocean. Every evening I watch beautiful sunsets behind my kitchen windows, inbetween my daily chores of cooking and washing dishes.

Tenerife is the city of siestas and fiestas. Our shop opens at 9am then closes for snooze and lunch from 1pm to 5pm and then work a bit more, the day is done by 8pm. This sleepy town comes alive only during festivals which occur throughout the year. Spanish people just need a reason to celebrate, to dress up in their traditional clothes, carry their musical instruments, sing their folk song and dance till late nights.

Tenerife has more than 30 different festivals with Carnivals being the biggest event. The streets come alive during carnival season which lasts for more than 20 days, moving from one pueblo to another within the island. There are parades on the streets, with children and adults, all in festive mood enjoying during the selection of carnival queen in every suburb, drinking, dancing and partying at every lane. Another big festival that we all look forward to is Reye, when people go crazy shopping, and children are made to believe that three wise men had dropped their gifts for them on their way to bless baby Jesus. It fall on 5^th of January and the business that we do on these days can cover our yearly expenses. Besides these there are many more festivals like Corpus Christi, when the streets are decorated with colorful sands and flowers creating a carpets on the road, San Andres, when every slope is occupied with youngsters sliding down on wooden planks, ´Dia de Candelaria´ when pilgrims all over Tenerife walk or trek to a shrine of Virgin Mary at Candelaria and many more festivals celebrated in different suburbs of the city. Cristo de calvario is the festival celebrated in my pueblo.

When in Tenerife, I would enjoy the most when my family would visit me. Many evenings we would walk down Puerto de la Cruz, near the portside and have hot chocolate, Sometimes I would take them to Santa Cruz de Tenerife for shopping and sight seeing and sometimes to South of Tenerife to enjoy the marine sports and night life.

There are many places of interest where one can enjoy with family and friends all day. Many holidays, we would get together in a bigger group and spend all day at the beach or at the park.

Yes, we did have fun and life was good. But then I wasn’t born there, so for me Tenerife will always be a holiday home.

How to get there:


Spain’s national airlines ‘IBERIA’ have regular services to Tenerife. Charter services are also available, any reputed agent can advice you. There are two airports in Tenerife. ‘Los Rodeos in the North and ‘Reina Sophia’ in the south of the island. Frequent buses ply from airport to different parts of the island. Tenerife is also linked to the other six Canary Islands by jetfoil services.

Post card from Darjeeling

I looked out of the bus window. We had arrived after five hours journey. Different shades of green glistened under sunlight. The small wooden cottages behind the lush greenery looked so cozy and inviting. I envied the people who lived so close to nature away from heat and dust of Mumbai. The air was cool and crisp. I wrapped myself with my woolen shawl and got off the bus. I needed to walk, to stretch my limbs. It’s awfully tiring to be travelling in the bus for so long. The scenery was breath-taking and we had passed many tea gardens down the winding road. I made a mental note of visiting those tea gardens later during the day. But first we had to check into a hotel and freshen up. Hotel was closer, just few minutes away but driver had decided to stop for a while.

“Hurry up” said the driver “If you want, you can take a short walk up the hill to see the war memorial, that stands as a reminiscence of the Gurkha martyrs of Darjeeling, who sacrificed their lives for their country in the wars and operations that have taken place since independence." he said, adding, "In 1976, Manish Gupta, the then Deputy Commissioner of Darjeeling, had taken the initiative to construct a War Memorial, to pay homage to the 76 brave sons of Darjeeling who had sacrificed of their life, for the cause of their nation.” explained the driver pointing towards the monument.

We started to walk up the narrow path, and had almost reached the steps leading towards the monument when we were distracted by the train whistle. The toy train came chugging and we stood to watch it roll by, excited like kids even though we saw this train many times, as it kept turning, making several u-turns and passing us from different attitudes of this park, we stood there, stationed at one position, turning our heads in the direction of the train and following it with our gaze.

Some of the other people walked up to the war memorial to get a closer look, but for me train was a novelty and I stood there, leaning against the railings till the train disappeared behind the hills and the whistle faded in the air.