Hope

Reading real life stories like this one, make me feel a warm glow inside me. I feel, slowly but steadily, we can bring about a revolution in our country. I know there is still so much to be done, but one day at a time, one child at a time, I do believe we can get to and go above our potential!

Sponsorship along with support from the family (probably most important) helped them become self-sufficient and pursue a happy life!

I sponsor a child and I am really proud of her! She sends me the sweetest letters every Eid and Diwali. I see her pictures every year, and in just 2 years I have seen her transform from a chubby child to a beautiful pre-teen, ready to spread out her wings and fly high! She loves to paint, and languages are her favorite subject in school. I sometimes day-dream about her becoming a writer, or a famous artist! But most of all, I pray for a healthy, happy and independent life for her.

If you have the means, I urge you to consider it. There is nothing more satisfying...

Edited to Add: Through Children's International, you can sponsor a child's education anywhere in the world (not just India). Helping any child anywhere to become educated and independent, is welcomed. This is not a sponsored post, this issue is just close to my heart and hence the post. 

Broken thoughts..

Darkness and cold. Lost and lonely. Desperate and hopeful. Distance and doubts. Sad and strong. Brave and defiant. Submissive and devoted. Prayers and faith. Bargaining with Him. Arguing and Negotiating.

Love. Family. Life.

The ironies that aren't funny!

My brother, who lives in a developing economy comes home from work at 10 pm, and sis-in-law who works from home finishes at 10.30, can walk into the living room and have food readily prepared on the dining table.

M &I, who work (and currently live) in a developed economy, come home from work at 9.30 pm and have nothing to eat.

Some ironies aren't that funny ha? Don't feel sorry for us though. We did have some "theplas" in the freezer that we were able to enjoy! ;)

In some other news - the weekend blended into this week so quickly, I did not even realize! This is going to be a long, busy week. But I am going to try my best to not bring home work this coming weekend! Touch wood. I just realized, that there are only 3900 weekends (out of which almost half are gone). I am determined to make the best of remaining 2000 I have left! 

Snippets of my (very random) thoughts

I feel really proud when my American colleagues travel to India for work and always describe their experience as amazing/scary. I am sure they are being kind to me, and that traveling to India evokes many more emotions in them - like pity of poverty, fear of traffic, flabbergasted(-ness) at the number of people, and many many more. Why do I feel proud? Every time someone tells me that, I remember this incident that happened to my sister. Born and raised in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, when she went for an MBA-entrance interview for a high end college in Mumbai, she was asked this question (no doubt by some snotty Mumbaikar, who thought everything starting from Borivali and the rest of the India is nothing but so-called "backward"  India) - "Why should we admit you to this school? Coming from a small town (since when Indore is "small", I have no idea, cos I always feel lost there) to Mumbai, how do you think you shall cope?". My sister, a proud Malwi, answered - "because, the difference between me and Mumbaikars is, I can come here and learn your ways, easily fit into the fast life, but if one of you were to go and try the same in Indore, you wouldn't stand a chance". Ha.

You can't be everywhere, and you can't do everything. It's that simple, and yet my mind refuses to understand this simple piece of information. I feel extremely stressed right now. Since Tuesday, my housekeeping started going down the hill. By Friday, the sink was overflowing with dirty utensils, the bedroom was covered in clothes lying everywhere, the dining table was full of "stuff", and the couches were all a big mess of cushions, throws, papers, measuring tape(?) and remote controls. I have not swept the house for 2 weeks now. Don't even get me started on the bathroom. AND I have a LOT of work stuff to catch up to this weekend. On the bright side though, I went to the Gym twice this week and spend some quality time with M yesterday.

Me: Shruti, you can't be everywhere, and you can't do everything!!
Me: I know, but I cannot live in this mess, but I also don't want to spend the entire weekend cleaning, and working.
Me: Just suck it up... 

Gentlemen who golf

"She figured out early what every man with a corner office has long known: To make it to the top, you need a wife. If that wife happens to be a husband, and increasingly it is, so be it."

"Seven of the 18 women who are currently CEOs of Fortune 500 companies—including Xerox’s (XRX) Ursula Burns, PepsiCo’s (PEP) Indra Nooyi, and WellPoint’s (WLP) Angela Braly—have, or at some point have had, a stay-at-home husband."

"At-home dads are sometimes perceived as freeloaders, even if they’ve lost jobs. Or they’re considered frivolous kept men—gentlemen who golf."

Says this article. Although it may, on the surface look like a good way of repentance for men, the question begs to be asked - Isn't this creating the same problem all over again, but this time with men? Won't there be a generation of men, sometime in the future, struggling to find their feet in the woman's world, while trying to manage household stuff at the same time. And even though at some level, my evil self would love to see it happen, to be completely fair - it's not fair. Is it not possible for both spouses to have a high-flying career AND a life AND a family? Is that really too much to ask?

I think what needs to happen, and what is slowly but surely taking place is, both need to own equal parts of the responsibility of earning the moolah, but also taking care of family and home. If that is not possible or feasible, then something about our attitude needs to change that makes the person who stays at home feel like this - 

"Caring for children all day and doing housework is tiring, unappreciated work that few are cut out for—and it leaves men and women alike feeling isolated and diminished."

Staying at home and taking care of children, is also what my mother did, and I respect and appreciate her for that. That is an important job, important enough to leave a job that pays, and it deserves it's due respect. But what is that change that needs to be made to make the person (man or woman) who now does a full time job of caring for home with no weekends, or paid vacation, feel the significance that they deserve?

Thoughts?

Check!

Hola! Hope you guys had a nice weekend! I did!

This weekend, I am proud to say I was able to check off one more thing off my list! You guys must feel so irritated by me, cos I have been going on about the list for like ever. Well, like I mentioned, I am obsessive. And the item I crossed off this weekend has been on my things-to-do list ever since we moved here. So yeah,  for almost a year now. What, I just have been really busy being lazy.Anyyway, lets focus on the positive, that this project has finally seen the daylight.

So let's get right down to what I finally accomplished -

Find and install a "devghar"
I was hoping to finally go went to Target and get got a small shelf to hang under the kitchen cupboards, but that never happened!

That was probably confusing to read ha? Basically, long story short, I finally got my sweet behind to Target and bought a small shelf that will fit on the wall under the cabinets and not block my microwave.
Take a look!

And I am not trying to show off but I also managed to check this off - Finally donate the stack of books set aside to be donated a few months ago
That too on a weekday! Thanks to a very helpful friend. To my utter disappointment, the library refused to take all the books, so I had to recycle some. Such a shame.

And just so you guys don't think I have turned into a total religious nutso, I want to share some awesome ideas I wish I had found, before I created my photowall -

My Photo Wall

I did not search online at all when I thought of doing this, but I wish I had cos I found some pretty classy ways of making a photo wall, much better than clipping some photos to a ribbon. Oh well, the good thing is I can always take my photos and implement these ideas -

 Make A Stylish Photo Frame For Several Photos

Decorate A Boring Blank Wall With Photo Mosaic

DIY: Cheap and Easy Photo Wall

Very easy and affordable ideas! Love them! :)

Faith

I woke up this morning, and grew up a little. Usually, I listen to pandora or dhingana.com while getting ready for work. This morning, I found it too inappropriate to listen to "Ooh la la", in the face of a beautiful sun rise. Instead I searched for bhajans and bhaav geet and listened to those. I was never a big fan, but today the soothing sound, restored a little bit of faith I had lost recently.

While growing up, I remember waking up to the sound of bhajans many times, as both my parents though not deeply devotional in a conventional way, are very spiritual. Although I didn't fully appreciate it then, it maybe the most pleasant thing to wake up to. Especially when the mind is full of chaos.

One of my favorites is this one by Ajay-Atul, sung by Shankar Mahadevan -