Playing with shadows and charcoal..

 the shades are done by using the ashes of cig stubs!! had no charcoal stick per se... :)

i was trying to capture sun's beauty...but GOD had other plans... final product seems good !



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The dancing reflection on the window...

the brutal love...

i usually don't post videos..i assume nobody has the time and the patience to go thru it ... but i could not resist this one... found it on fb and thought of all the blogger friends... have a look at it .. i promise you will not regret it ..

i watched it at least 5 times..and i cried like a baby each time...

may the love of divine unmanifest envelop each of you ...

spread love around .....

Jules from Trying to get over the Rainbow came up with an awesome idea of spreading love. She offered this button to all her followers suggesting we send out this button to our blogger friends which in turn would spread the love around us...

so here it goes for you all... spread love ...

A confession...

i come back with a confession

i have told some of you individually, but today i go public with my social shyness problem with you all...

since childhood i have suffered from social shyness , any type of attention makes me feel very very very uncomfortable

i was a stage performer but i would come back hungry from parties because i was shy of eating in public, during my youth when i got attention from opposite gender i would want to hide in a cave, i refused promotion while working because i was underconfident of my skills as a manager, i refused to give presentation on assignments for which i had really worked hard (broken my neck!) because i could not muster courage to go public ... ... outwardly i have reacted as a rebel not caring to wear clothes or makeup (people around me thought i was bindas..) but the deep rooted issue was that i was scared of attention

nobody in the outside world except a few of them know that i can actually look the way i do on my blog... in fact not even the man i am married to knows that i have won lots of dance competitions...blogging was a medium of expression because i had so much inside me and i did not have the skills to share it with the world around me ....

i have been given awards by my blogger friends in the past, but due to this handicap i have felt very embarassed to display them on my blog...every time i see a new person on my blogger friend roll i get anxious..not happy ... anxious of failing them ...

when i got this one today i thought probably universe is forcing me to mend my ways....these blogging friends of mine have somehow managed to find my name everytime they wanted to share their happiness ....

i hereby display this award given to me by Samantha from  Life, Love and Living in France fame

Thanks Samantha, i am humbled to the core....

i would also like to thank all my friends who have in the past showed their affection for me by passing on the awards to me , i am sorry for not having enough courage to display them on my blog at that point in time....

Life is good, because today i have chosen to break this wall inside me... even if it is a virtual world... i am sure .. there is a plan which is coming in action .. thank you all for helping me surpass myself..and my limitations..

I would like to pass this to

http://juliemooreonlife.wordpress.com/
http://expressionsofamadwoman.blogspot.com/
http://mybigsecretblog.blogspot.com/
http://thinkerpositive.blogspot.com/
http://stuffcouldalwaysbeworse.blogspot.com/
http://velvetoversteel.blogspot.com/

you just need to write briefly about "life is good" and if you feel like do pass it on the award to your other friends...

the poor king ..

this is what i was doing all this while...
the painting is a reproduction of a shot of an old poor man taken by my younger sister Dolls during her trip to exotic Himachal Pradesh...

i have made him a king by giving a touch of gold acrylic on his cap and on his creases to represent the wealth of experience..

the standard of painting is far below anything decent - i have used students' oil colors and eyes could have been better ...creases also have not come out the way i had imagined it ...

Oh Sire...my Father!!! Your eagle is wounded......

you gave me your wings
your share of wind
and your share of sky
i flew high up in the sky
talking to winds and daring the sun...

oh sire...my father..
your eagle is wounded now
wings clipped
wind gone
the piece of sky all blurred and grey

you stand on the ground
watching your eagle fall
wounded, tired, lost, struggling to keep the dive...
lost in her own piece of sky
your eyes... all wet and sad...

i always told you
you were a bad investment banker
you invested in wrong stocks
your fixed deposit all gone
looted by the corrupt bank
you worked too hard with no result...
you chose a wrong eagle
the weak one
and though it flew for few hours
now it is ready
to dive to death

oh sire..my father...
please forgive me
i wasted your wing
your sky
your wind

this imperfect man.....

 My dear darling,

i write this mail to you to let you know a few things about life.our lives. i fear you will never come to know about them if i were not to relate them to you. since i am bad with talking i jot them down here. in this holy void of mine.

    this is about the man.. 
who fathered you  

i don't remember getting up at nights EVER to feed you EVEN once after i stopped my feed to you. he would feed you every night, every three /four hours. Till date, no matter how busy we are, no matter where we are , he is always alert about whether you are hungry or thirsty, and till date, if it is ever required..he is the one who gets up to get you milk..He knows exactly when your Complan needs to be refilled!

He is an amazing singer... and he sang beautiful numbers keeping you in his lap..putting you to peaceful sleep ... he does it even now if you are very cranky... he sings patiently to you ... lovely songs... i hope you will remember the beauty, warmth and rhythm of them when you are all grown up and ready to face the world on your own...

During your nappy period, he would  change your nappies absolutely on time and he always knew when we had to get a new packet!! He was more involved in your toilet training than me... he, in fact, toilet trained you .. very patiently ..

He never complained of not having enough sleep! we have a room free but he would never, ever, leave you and sleep in peace. This continues till date (remember last night how tired he was.. you played music and you had to share so many things... he did not leave you .. he waited till you allowed him to sleep....)

 He gets up each morning at 6 am to prepare you a hot water bath (on your school days) and lays your school dress, jacket with a perfectly pinned handkerchief on it, your socks, your cream, your bath-robe ..in a perfect order on bed. he wakes you up with loads of love and puts your shoes on once you are ready for school. he goes to drop you to the bus-stop and is home at sharp 6:30 pm to enjoy your company! All this when he is diabetic and he gets tired easily

His diabetes leaves him irritable at times, but, he is NEVER impatient with you. He sits with you and teaches you A,B,C as if it was a coding and data architecture topic... you cannot imagine the patience required for an adult to reduce to A B C when amidst studies you have so many stories to tell him ... he paints with you .. he admires your dance... he listens to your stories.. all this when i know his body is giving up and he really wants rest.....but i also know that you are the source of his energy and happiness .. so i don't interfere...except when it is dinner time!

He celebrates your birthday with balloons, cake and flowers because you claim it is your birthday! and this happens at any time of the year :)

 He takes you to places so that you emerge as a beautiful, well - read, well - learned, non-judgemental, respectful soul... that is his way of educating you

when you grow up and you have enough education .. like all over educated people you might have a tendency to see the imperfections in your father

but do not ever forget that.....

this imperfect man did everything to make your childhood a perfect one

the wandering soul.....

The topic of life after death has always been very close to my heart. I read, found books, borrowed from friends every time I glimpsed this word or thought that probability of finding something new about this contemplation point was higher in those pages – I don’t know if it was past-life memory that I carried within me but as a child when I could not express properly I would ask my father who made stars.. and who made the ONE who made stars? I was drawn to the nature in a more Para-scientific manner .. I used to and till date wonder how petals can be so specifically defined, colored and placed the way they are.. how is it possible that leaf and tree can nourish themselves..i wonder at nature’s arrangement of photosynthesis process and cross pollination leading to growth and maintenance of species, I wonder how perfect blue sky looks with green forest… how do smallest of beings survive.. how is the matrix of our existence so perfect … I have taught my daughter that HE is a perfect artist .. later I will teach her how perfect a SCIENTIST he is :)


I often wondered how could I dance when I actually had no control over my body … it was as if music seeped through my being and I moved… people said I danced well.. I won competitions, they came to see me perform .. .then one day I grew up .. and it died.. .did I lose my past life learning? When I was going through a depressive phase on how I have stopped dancing I stumbled upon Paulo Coehlo’s book whose protagonist found GOD through dance??!!! From thence I read at least 2 books of his, which talked of magic in succession! Why did i venture into magic realm.. very recently i watched movies on magic one after the other wihtout any planning , it just happened .. after the movies and few days ahead when i was casually scanning channels to find something interesting i stumbled upon "Decoding Magic" on AXN! needless to say .. i visited that program more than once because i was hooked...

My journey into the world beyond scientific explanation became more vigorous when I lost my cousin in an accident which should not have happened

I was drawn to Bhagwat Geeta , the mother of all philosophy books. I had heard from well read people that it contained THE truth, which when discovered, took you to another plane as a person/being.

Neale Donald Walsch’s book, Conversations with God, came to me at that point in time when I desperately needed an answer for something I was going through. It was a new experience and I was young. I had lost somebody I had shared my life with. She was close to me and despite our differences I loved her. What jolted my impressionable mind was the paradox – I could see her denims, her lipsticks, her stuff but not HER. Didn’t they say soul lasted forever and every earthly thing was transient! How was it possible when her denims existed and she did not? I was scared I would see her when I was alone and I felt tremendously guilty about the fact that I was scared of her spirit form. Didn’t we eat in the same plate the other day? Wasn’t she the one who gave extra rupees to the rickshaw bhaiya just because he was old! She was kind. She would never hurt me but I was scared! I tried my best to connect with her by focusing my energies on her thoughts. I thought, like movies, I would stumble upon her photograph in the book, or something from somewhere will fall near me and I would know it was her message to me. I kept repeating her voice in my head, the last time when she had called me, 10 days prior to the accident. The last time when I had seen her, I had left her sleeping on the bed, and she had lazily asked me if I was leaving for my hostel and I had said yes. Her face, the bed, my movement away from the bed, the room, the flat, kept coming back to my mind. What if I would have stayed back the day incident took place? What if I would have talked to her in detail on the phone the day she called me to wish me happy birthday – her last call, I had sensed the depression in her .. .what if I had tried and made it to the apartment that weekend instead of staying back in my room with my friends and preparing for my exams… what if.. what if.. what if…

She never appeared in my dreams, though she did in my sister’s – she was sad and silent and had walked into the forest

Since I had nobody to talk to, I started reading on what happens once we are not in this physical form. Dr. Brian Weiss happened to me then. They say when you seek an answer universe conspires to grant you the same. His book – Many lives, Many masters was kept in my hostel room. It belonged to my friend’s cousin. I asked her if it was ok for me to read the book. Each page from thereon was a revelation. I could not believe the coincidence of reading precisely what I was looking for.

Dr. Brian Weiss, from Miami, is into regression therapy. He is a psychiatrist who stumbled upon the wealth of past life by accident! Here is the verbatim introduction of his book – Many Masters, Many lives from the introduction page of his book ONLY LOVE IS REAL -

“Dr. Brian Weiss had been working with Catherine, a young patient, for 18 months. When his traditional methods of therapy failed, he turned to hypnosis. As a traditional psychotherapist, Dr. Weiss was skeptical and astonished when Catherine began to recall past-life traumas that seemed to hold the key to her recurring problems”.

In his book, ONLY LOVE IS REAL, he has mentioned an incident where during his guided meditation amidst one of his group conferences a forensic psychiatrist experienced something rare. Mentally he perceived a shadowy presence of a young woman who asked him to announce to the group that “Natasha is well”. Given the fact that such names are rare in that part of the country he was little taken aback but he did the needful. In that crowd was a woman. Her daughter had died tragically in her twenties only 6months ago. Her daughter’s name was Ana Natalia. ONLY her mother called her NATASHA!

I have suffered from lot of anxieties and insecurities since childhood – car crash is one of them. Till date I am rarely able to enjoy car drives due to this fear. Losing my dear ones is a chronic anxiety I suffer from. Was I separated from them in one of my lifetimes? In my younger days I never could commit myself to a relationship for fear of abandonment, I had always seen a flash, a very blurred one, where I am standing in a room, a big one, all alone, it is a furniture-less house, as if WE have just moved into it, and there is a man who has just gone out.. Left me and gone… and I am going through this sense of hopelessness…I have had flashes of a kind face.. a gentle blue eyes… but it can be a deep influence of my liking for Jesus.. and his serenity

I have always , and firmly, believed that I was a French in one of my lifetimes. I somehow see a black cobalt lane – it can be an influence of watching too much of travel and living though :)

I have somehow loved my country so deeply that I feel it was a gift of choice to be born an Indian. No “third world” topic deters me from my pleasure of being an Indian. It is as if I still remember my soul state and everything about this country is ..so inspiring… it is as if I see it from outside and I feel blessed to have acquired body to spend time in this land of beautiful weather, color, happiness, dreams, relationships … it is as if .. i was an outsider and stayed back here because i fell in love with this country !

Why do abusive men happen to you? Why do things, you never anticipated will happen, actually happens to you? Why your fears appear as realities in-front of your eyes? are they premonitions? or you actually attract them to you ? are they past-life baggage and you need to clean up your act to start afresh ? questions and more questions ….

Such experiences have always pushed me to look for answers I cannot discuss scientifically.. it is like air.. it is there.. only the presence is felt… though you can prove its presence by passing bubbles through water but not its visibility… I don’t know how to express this further

Why do I jot this?

Because I am going through one of those phases where I go to my little library and dust the old books and pick up one of them… for I feel restless inside and I need answers.... this time I picked up Dr. Weiss and it stirred lot of thoughts I had not put in words for long…

Why was I propelled to read what I have been reading for past few days? Why is it a compulsive feeling to jot this down today? Is this a message to somebody ? I don’t know .. so I surrender my thoughts to this void, where lies all the questions and answers beyond our under-used minds…

madwoman: The Glassful of Water (dedicated to mother earth)

check out the rare take on water conservation - on loving mother earth
i could not talk about it in so many words so i have used my sister's old post....

madwoman: The Glassful of Water: "This is the story of a glass of water. There was just one glass of water. My great granny had got it from her mother. She’d handed it over..."

The Indian Woman that i am ! ... salsa with the camera...

today the Indian in me decided to experiment with my traditional looks... here is the result!

dead dream..

dreams
die silently in the dark nights
like their silent birth in hopeful sunny afternoons


there is no funeral
no prayers
no weeping
no rememberance

no thing

just a lingering pain in the chest walls
and a choking sadness in the throat
the nostalgia
of their youth

the failure of systems is gradual
fighting the externals
clinging to hope
with no life-support
gradually
they decay
tired and dead
they rest in their own shells

there is no post mortem report
which can conclude
the cause of their death

her first friend!!!!!!!!

my little one has made a friend.. and she loves her so much that as of now her life revolves around Annanya... :)

this is the first time, in the complete journey of motherhood, that i have learned how important is your baby's happiness to you :) so much so that you do things you have never done in life!!

i went ahead and invited Annanya home .. treated her with pop-corn, barbecue chicken and a fairy-tale movie!! i also did a little photo-shoot with both of them .. next step will be to get it framed and display it in my baby's room - i know it will make her happy ...

i have been blessed with friends.. and i know how important they are in our lives.. i am glad my baby has embarked on the same journey :) i am soooooooooooo happy for her!!

strokes....

You cannot please everyone....

This post is dedicated to a friend of mine.. A girl needs 2 talk :)...  here it is for you little one :)....


One day a man was going to market with his son and his ass. they met a couple on the way.

"Why walk when you have an ass to ride?" called out the husband, "seat the boy on the ass."
"I would like that," said the boy, "help me up father."
And the father did that willingly.
Soon they met another couple. "How shameful of you!" cried the woman, "let your father ride, won't he be tired?"
So, the boy got down and the father rode the ass. Again they marched on.
"poor boy", said the next person they met, "why should the lazy father ride while his son is walking?"
So, the boy got onto the ass too. As they went on, they met some travellers.
"How cruel of them!" They are up to kill the poor ass." cried one of the travellers.
Hearing this, the father and the son got down. Now they decided to carry the ass on their shoulders. As they did so, the travellers broke into laughter.
The laughter frightened the ass. It broke free and galloped away.

MORAL: You can not please everyone

i found my love....

There was a prince in my mind through my teen years
from the books

the unconditional love
the silent walks
the wordless understanding
the complete devotion
the sense of security and warmth
the sense of being loved
the sense of giving love
i knew one day he would happen to me

as time passed by
my dream did not die
but the reality check began

i kept dreaming
but passing on the "i will find my love" concept to "next lifetime"

then,
she happened to me

i was besotted
she occupied my mind
i knew i occupied hers!

for no matter what
she understood the unsaid
her eyes would search for me in the room full of people
no pretty woman made it to her list
she never cheated on me
i was the love of her life
she cared sincerely
she cried when i cried
she knew exactly what hurt me
she sensed my sadness when i smiled
with her little hand she would hold my face
with her salivating lips she would seal a kiss of faith on me
we had a silent love
pure as white

i felt so complete
this was an awesome feeling

i had discovered what i lingered for so long
the true love

not in the form of prince - the man who would walk me through all the struggles
but, in the form of princess - the child who would be beside me on my deathbed

love had different dimensions
and this was the most divine and pure of all
i felt liberated from an incessant search of sufi love

i was lucky
i would always be her ONLY love...!

the gypsy and the desert...

i had not a penny then
i was a free bird
no cares in the world
no fear to lose my wealth
no anxiety of saving for bills

i flew like Livingston seagull
flew for the sake of flying
high up in the sky
experimenting with my dives
i had no care for the impression i would create on the other birds
i did not care

i danced with the cloud
i sang
i painted
i laughed
i talked to the wind
i dreamt
i was the undisputed princess of the world so beautiful, honest and white

then i grew up

started working for my living
paying my bills
felt the fear of valuables i gathered
i was anxious
i cared
i could not experiment with the dive
i would be cast out of the group
labelled a rebel
stoned to death

i forgot
to dance
to laugh
to dream

the gypsy soul
couched and restrained in my mind
i walked through the desert
looking at the seagulls flying high up in the sky
carrying the dead me on my shoulder

i was a conformist now

once upon a time...

i scribble this story today for reasons i don't know.. it has left a dent in my psyche and might keep haunting me for all my life .... sometimes it surfaces very strongly on my being and so i chose to jot it down here

i read it long back in a series from Reader's Digest or Chicken Soup for soul (not very sure which one)

this story has haunted me since the time i read it, i howled then, i howl now... and everytime i think of it i feel deeply disturbed

.............................................................................................

A little boy had a mother with only ONE eye. he was really embarassed when she would come visiting him in the school. one day he came home and shouted at his mother - he did not want her visiting him in the school because she had only ONE eye and he was embarassed of her

Time flew

He grew up and like any natural progression dissociated himself with his mother and settled down in a new place. he was still embarassed of her ONE eye

one day his mother died

He came back for her funeral

SHE had left a letter for him (written down here - but not verbatim)

My dear son,

when you were little, you met with an accident and lost your ONE eye. as a mother i could not bear the thought that you would live your life with only one eye. so i gave my eye to you. i am sorry for being an embarassment to you

......................................................................................

i scribble it today for i know that all the mothers give their one eye to their children in forms not very known or clear as this story ... wonder how the children translate it ???........

salsa with the camera...

 ok..i wanted to experiment further to see if the camera still captures my energy....the photographs are processes in Picasa....subject of the shoot is boring but the experimentation is not....:)

My angel in oil.....

well... this was long due... after a long churning period i had to pick up my brush and do what i was longing to do for quite some time now..

i am not a pro..so the strokes are crude...used only one layer of oil paint since i do not have the patience as of now to wait and apply the second layer!

i know that the grey/black strokes should have been softer not killing the innocence of the face..but i did not know how to make them more soft...might put another layer on it to make it more subtle after a week or so....



Cool Coorg...We had a blast!!!

 

our time together

my angel and me decided to have a blast and we had a private photo-shoot on our terrace with my simple digicam.. some of them are processed on picasa... :)

A letter to my daughter....

My dear darling,

you are only 4 and i hope when you grow up you read this letter thrown in a big void where i express my feelings as unsaid prayers

darling.......... mamma is emotionally weak and limped today. while playing in the field when you shouted at her and blamed your fall from the sea saw on her.........she was hurt...badly hurt

i know i am 34 and you 4, i should be more mature but i have no control over this knot that i am feeling in my throat......

why do i expect that your little mind will know and understand my silence...

when we came back home i did not talk for a long time...i was withdrawn in my shell...just trying to heal within...the pain increased knowing that one day you will be gone and there is a possibility that you might turn around and blame me for any type of fall .......

for past few outings i have realised that when you are with your friends you actually do not care about what mamma is saying, in fact you revolt and listen to your friends more than mamma...during our last outing you actually asked me to go away!

i am jotting this letter explaning a few things to you - since i am bad with talking and do not know how to express myself emotionally this letter might be of help to you

• if you feel embarassed about your mother's presence amongst all the baby-sitters, please do not be darling. the only thing that mamma has ever known is to make sure that she is present with you at every stage of your growth, though it might seem little restrictive to you now, in the long run mamma believes it is going to instil a bonding and trust which i would not have been able to achieve if i kept a baby sitter
• i know i get upset, and i am very disciplinary but there is a reason for it sweetheart. mamma is usually anxious about your safety so she shouts and creates scene if you go near fire, vehicle or cycle with speed, it is not to restrict you ... she just wants to be sure that you are safe
• mamma stops you from having junk food because she wants you to stay healthy when she is not around to look after you - not because she is not concerned about your happiness
• mamma beats you up sometimes and yells at you ....but she also cuddles you, sings songs with you, prays for you and weeps horribly everytime she hurts you
• she takes you to the painting class and singing class, not because she wants to spend time alone, but because she wants you to fly high in the sky that belongs to you ... mamma waits for you impatiently ...counting each minute....trying to think of a dish that you would like to have in your personal picnic with me ...she sits on the stairs of your painting class waiting for your return...and she is not doing any favor..she is chosen this road for her self...
• she wants you to sleep for an hour or two everyday, not because she wants to do her own things (that is one of the reasons though) but also to make sure that your body is ready for second half of the day ....you are tired and drained once you are back from school. a good bath and a picnic on the terrace refreshes you. a short sleep will keep you healthy and your brain will grow in a more healthy manner if you have physical rest.. mamma knows all this - so the discipline ....
• mamma is impatient - this is a natural flaw that she was born with , it shows in her drawings, writings, speech etc... but mamma was also born with immense love in heart....hope you will understand the paradoxical existence of both in her being and love her with her flaws- your approval and love means a lot to her!

the other day when i came back home after getting stuck on the road for an auto for about 2 hrs, i was cold and wet, mentally and physically tired ...but when you held my hand and asked me what happened..i wanted to live 100 lives in that moment... you are my blessing..my star......my biggest reason of existence..

i want you to know that i exist because you exist in my life....

i want you to know that every moment of my life , since i conceived you,  i have thought of you ..lived you and loved you

ours is a relationship not a business

she did everything for me that an elder sister should do

she is a year younger to me

on my birthday she called me early morning to come and see her urgently - anxious and scared i rushed to her hostel only to find her smiling . she took me to her room, closed my eyes and asked me to open my eyes after 5 mts - what i saw was a brilliant music system infront of me - she knew i loved music and she had saved her pocket money to get me a music system !!! that was when both of us were still graduating in DU and we had 1000 rs as pocket money a month to sustain ourselves!

one day in hostel i wanted to have chowmein very badly ; clumsy as i was, i did not know what to do, where to go in the university area to get some except to let my sis know about this urge- in next thirty minutes i had her on my hostel gate! she got is packed from her canteen and came all the way from Miranda house to drop it to daulatram

when i started working i never had enough money to pursue my dream. one day very casually i told her how i had this violent urge inside me to do an oil-paint. she saved her pocket money and on my birthday i had a range of oil color tubes, mix of different sized brushes, set of three cloth canvas, linseed oil, turpentine oil and an easel. when i did not know how to hold a brush i made around 10 oil paints in a short span of few months. next time she got a small canvas pad for me from Delhi Book Fair.

though i was working and she was studying, end of every month she would lend me money and everytime i told her to take it back she would tell me only one thing - ours is a relationship not a business

she bought Paulo Coehlo and others from different stores to gift the set of books to me because she knew with my meagre earning i would not be able to buy them - she taught me to read, to explore who i was, she was my guardian angel quenching my thirst for search of ONE

she made sure i had lassi whenever we went out in sunny scorching afternoons of Delhi in the Kingsway Camp Area- she would pay for it - always.....

when we were kids and were in 3rd standard or so - one day some petals fell in one of my eyes and i started crying - we were in hostel - that day she went beserk - she barked, howled, cried and was ready to kill anybody who got delayed in getting me help

when i went to a beauty parlor and the beautician did a wrong razor cut on my hair - my sister blasted off the beutician for experimenting with my hair

she has been a constant figure along with my father in all my dreams ( i can interpret my own dreams) giving me signals of future success since childhood

today i feel lonely without her

till date i feel insecured without her - i am so used to being around her

till date when i want to discuss movies and books i call her up, i am married with a kid, she is newly married with a job - but not even once she makes a noise about "not having time"

she is a copywriter, a photographer, an awesome individual, a free spirit, she carries saris as beautifully as she can carry a mini, she treks, she reads, she sings, she is temperamental, she is cool, she is a kid, she is a parent, she has been my best mentor, the most patient friend i have ever had

she is an awesome mix of tradition and modernity

i believe and i know she is a mother from one of my lifetimes

without her - i do not exist