Banter Battery

Here's my very first blog post...


“LIFEISNOWHERE”.

I got this as a sms and I read it as ‘life is no where’, a split second later I realized it also read ‘life is now here’.
I tend to brood over things a lot, so I kept pestering my mind asking if I was a pessimist. In normal life experiences I am quite optimistic. I always felt it is better to be like that-the more we frown at life the more life frowns at us. Then why did such a negative outlook creep into my reading.
Maybe am used to taking life in its smallest form that appears before me. That’s how life has always been for me. The issue at hand is of utmost priority and the consequences are often not quite thought about. I do think about them but maybe not as much as usually any sensible person would; for many times I have regretted my decisions. But that however helps me least in changing for good. I always enjoy taking what life brings-good or bad. I feel it adds to my life’s experience…
I need to have some real good life excerpts to relate to my kids in future. If I can’t learn from my mistakes, someday at least my kids can learn. I can reduce that much of trouble for them.
My parents come from a very conservative family, especially my mother. My dad did have an adventurous life (in comparative degree with my mother’s), But however it isn’t of much use to me. Two reasons-1). Being a girl his adventures can’t help me quite a lot as even in these days girls do not get the freedom boys of those days got(in south India) and so our situations in life would be quite different.2). My father dear has never been very expressive about the faults he committed in life (just a typical man).mothers are usually quite useful in relating their stories of adolescence and the mistakes they made. The intention is absolutely not to degrade themselves but to save their kids from a similar situation. But my mother was an innocent darling who never got the opportunity to commit mistakes (except maybe marrying my Dad, which again was not her mistake; her parents’ mistake, which she has been happily coping with for the past 30years). Yes, she has been able to guide me and my elder sister from mistakes she has seen others commit, just as I learned to avoid punishments watching and avoiding situations she got punished for.
See, how a small sms can put me on to think all this…… I cant restrict myself from thinking.
I can request my friends not to send me such provocative sms ……
What do you think????? Let me know.

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

Link to my first blog post : Life Is No Where?

All married men I know show major regret on being married.
All married women I know,are eager to list out uncountable 'solid reasons' why unmarried days as a spinster were bliss.
There is a very very small percentage of people who don't grumble about being married.




If marriage is that awful, what in the world do everyone get married for?
Or is there an unspoken rule about saying no good of marriage; a rule to forever frown over your coexistence with another person?

Sonia Sunny Thomas from Random Thoughts has awarded me the Beautiful Blogger Award. 


Though she awarded this to me on the 24th of February, the delay is owe to all that has been happening & keeping me away from Blogosphere. 

Rules!
* Mention the name and link of the person who awarded it to you - I already did.
*Thank the person - As if I needed a rule for it. Anyways, Thanks Sonia (you were right; outright silly rule)
*copy and paste the award on my blog - Yeah, another rule to tell me what to do where it would have been done even without it.
*Mention 7 things I find beautiful.
*Pass it on to 7 beautiful bloggers.


So, the 7 things I find beautiful.. Choosing 7 from the whole long list isn't easy. But I need the exercise to snap out of inactivity.


LOVE


It makes everything; almost everything around beautiful.


[ Oops! think I sounded too mushy. its the pre-effects of getting married, do bear with me. Though I must say, life does seem beautiful with love.]


ART


Any form of art appeals to me. A good piece of art is not only a work of beauty but can render their beauty to the surroundings too.

BABIES

oh they have an innocence and cuteness that is one of the most beautiful things in life. This beauty is not restricted to the babies of only human beings, but almost the young ones of dogs, cats, birds, rabbits,goats, cows, hen... All kiddos are beautiful.

WOMEN

All girls/ladies/women I see, happen to be beautiful. Some simply because of how they look, some by what they do, some because of their words and most of all because of what they are.

SAREES

Of late, the saree craze has got into me. Sarees are gorgeous; to look at and to see others wear. Though it comes down a bit in rating when we have to wear it, commute in Public transport and manage for 9 hours in office.. Yet, without doubt a beautiful attire.





MY SISTER


Ever since I was a kid the word beautiful has had a constant synonym; my sister. Though precisely 11 years elder to me, she still maintains her beauty (overt and inert) to the point that people ask me if am her elder sister. I just fear one thing..ten years down the line people asking me if am her mom... definitely not impossible.



KERALA


I have forever been in love with Bhopal. However the love for Kerala is comparative new. Kerala's natural beauty makes it "the" destination for a spa treatment of our senses, a visual treat guaranteed.




Now, the big task... passing it on to 7 beautiful bloggers.

* Butterfly

* Farida

* Yemiledu

* Supriya

* I'm Nu

* Alice in Wonderland

* Choco

Again, as usual, doing the tag is not necessary.Have the award, flaunt it and 'njoy Blogging!

He had been walking for hours. He almost stumbled over a child; lying there covered in blood with missing limbs.Bile rose in his throat; he indulged. He knew he had no energy left to even puke anymore. Yet he dragged himself to walk on.He had to.. somehow. He had to get away from all this...

Yesterday when he returned from his shift and browsed for more than an hour before finally giving in to sleep, he had not even dreamed of having to face a day like this. And that too the very next day..

He didn't know what actually woke him - the loud noise or the cries or the pain that shot through his body or the eerie feeling of fear he had never experienced before. When senses returned to him, they did so with a lot of pain. He could feel blood gush out of his ears and saw a broken bone protruding out of his left hand with blood and flesh exposed. That was when he first threw-up that day.

He tried to compose himself. He looked around. What he saw, he could never have believed. There were no homes, no vehicles on the usually busy roads and not even roads to be seen.. All that could be seen was debris - concrete, dust, carcass and blood. For once, he couldn't stand the crimson color. He had always loved to see his love wearing crimson colored dresses.

He ran, as fast as he could. He must see her. Hoping she was unhurt, he had run. He had ran for hours and on the way all he had seen was destruction and death. He had stopped just enough to let the vomit escape before running on and on again. The few people who were alive like him, were in tears over their lost ones. Some refused to leave the shattered body parts of their family, some could not even cry.

But he couldn't find her house. With all this debris and the usual landmarks not to be seen, he couldn't even be sure this was the place where she lived. Something within him told him that he had lost her. He had lost the one who had loved him the most. He wished he had called her yesterday, he wished he could just hear her voice.

He thought about his parents. They were with his pregnant sister in the Gulf country. He wondered how vast this destruction was. He hoped they were fine, but he had no way of knowing. No TV's anywhere, he never got to retrieve his smart phone, no computer, no internet . He didn't even know if the Third World War had started and this was its resultant or if this was just another terrorist attack where his city got targeted. He didn't know why he survived...

He wanted to lie down somewhere. He wanted to stop the pain growing inside him. He wanted to nurse his hand which had become numb with pain. He wanted the flies to leave his wounded arm alone. He wanted to turn deaf to the wails of cries around. He wanted to eat.

He couldn't believe how among all this he could feel so hungry and so desperate for food. Yet he had to. He walked on and on. Looking for someplace he would get something to eat. He remembered all that food he dumped casually in the office canteen's waste basket because it was too salty or less spicy or just not interesting enough. He remembered ordering more than he could eat at restaurants and without regret binning them. He wished he could have a morsel from them now..just a morsel.

He knew he had walked out of city limits when he saw fields. He felt happy. There would be something to eat. But even the fields were destroyed. Then he saw a partially destroyed paddy field. Yet he felt defeated, it was recently farmed, it was not even near ripe. But hunger gripped him and he knew his life depended on it.

He fell on his knees and struggling to keep his left hand out of the way, he uprooted each blade of paddy with his nails and fingers. He found a grain of sprouted rice on its end. He split it open to find a white thing within. He scraped and ate it.It was hardly enough for him to even taste it. Yet he kept on repeating it. He dug with his fingers on the hard ground, scraped the mud till his nails and fingers were bruised & bleeding - for each unharmed grain in the fields.. With every grain, his eyes filled up with tears...



When he woke up his heart beats were abnormally slow. He panicked. He looked around. Everything was intact. It took several minutes before he could convince himself that it was a dream.


But he could never again live like he did till the day before. He could never forget that dream. He could never shake off all that he felt in the dream. He could never again take life and its blessings for granted. He grew to value what he had. His life would never be the same...


There was one question that drove him to live a new life, more than anything else : "What if the dream came true???" In today's world it is not an impossible thing. In fact many fellow human beings might have actually gone through worse..


Till he lived, his every action was haunted with the question, What if... ; yet it only brought him happiness and an odd sense of fulfilled living...

OK! am back to posting. The doc says no more need for injections ( **hurrraaaayy**) but since I let the cold and cough come into me and stay for soo long, it will take time to drive them off (something like encroachment thingy)..the pills and cough syrup manage to leave me half drowsy all the time and yet at night, I have trouble sleeping;once I sleep, I have trouble getting up...  So whatever be the technical realities, your GET WELL SOON wishes have paid off, am actually feeling better. In the meantime, Supriya tagged me with the "10 Thingy Tag" which happens to be her third tag, and my third tag in a row too..

1. Jokes [yeah am that predictable :) ]
2. Kids and Pets [same degree, so same number]
3. Meeting or talking to Manu.
4. Books ;especially if someone else gifts them to me (in short - getting what I love without spending for it)
5. Bruno (he makes me feel glad to have come back home ;every single day without fail)
6. humor in blogs of my blog pals, to mention a few, Sorcerer , Alice, Blunt Edges, ..... (I mean there are loads;and in some way or the other most of the blogs that I follow make me feel like smiling or happy that am following them )
7. Seeing my parents lovingly play pranks at each other(especially Dad), fight over it, laugh over it - subtly without ever saying they love each other, making the feeling evident.
8. Remembering my childhood and past days and incidents
9. Being at grandma's place with all those fields, trees to climb, cousins to play & loiter around with, guarding the fields with tin cans(yeah, granma thinks we are more effective than scarecrows)
10. my guy's calls (mentioned last but not at all the least-infact the daily dose comes from this point)

10 things that I just don't have the guts to do

1. Shake hands with height; it terrifies me. I remember being the only person on the crazy swing(they call it Space Gun) in Veega Land (an Amusement Theme Water Park in Kerala) who did not scream my guts out when the swing hung upside down, holding each with a belt around  waist which threatened to break any moment and the rest of the body dangling 18.5 meters above ground. Oh, not because I wasn't scared, I think I was momentarily dead. (Psst:  I got onto the ride because I felt ashamed of saying that am scared of height)
2. Catch a cockroach (I remember paying guys in school for each cockroach they caught and brought for me to be used in Zoology practical classes)
3. Kill anything - be it insects, cockroach, spiders,snake,whatever -even mosquitoes (It irks my parents to see me shoo away any mosquito sitting and drinking up my blood.)
4. Engage in verbal fight with my parents. I react in other ways - moving out of the room, acting as if am deaf, not coming out of my room at all, keeping myself locked up in my room (I do so, 'cos I always felt that it angers my parents more if we speak back or talk to them trying to make them understand that they are wrong; but somehow my silence too irks my parents ... Gosh!!! they can be difficult, at times)
5. Go for a movie to a theater alone.
6. Drive a four wheeler on the NH.
7. Adopt a child (though am in love with the gesture, want to do it with all my heart, but I won't have my parents support and haven't got the guts to speak to my guy about it yet)
8. Take a lift from a stranger - no matter how urgent the situation be.
9. Sweet talk. Its a facade I cannot carry; I have to feel good about you to be good to you, I cannot do anything for doing sake, no matter how much I try. I end up feeling miserable and eventually they'd know if I don't like them (If I like them, they'll keep guessing - Its hard for me to emote my love in words)
10. Break my dreams or cross over anyone else's dreams for anything in the world.

Now, that I have realised that not all my blogger friends cherish having a tag, I keep it open. If I am a follower of your blog, I award you this tag. If you haven't already have it and do not have a problem doing it, you are heartily welcome to take it up.

*Cheers & Peace

1. Bomkesh Bakshi - our very own Indian Sherlock Holmes.
2. Wonder Years (though I saw the downloaded version recently)
3. Friends ( have seen just the first season, need to get hold of the rest and watch them too -again the downloaded version)
4. Tom & Jerry ( phhbbtttt if you laugh at this)
5. NDTV 24/7
6. Boogie - Woogie (long time back- don't know if that show exists now or not)
7. Texavery
8. Madart at Pogo 

1. Zero Degree - The ultimate ice cream destination
2. Papa Panchu or its new avatar "Zabardast" -it keeps me closer to the North Indian dishes I grew up eating.
3. Zam Zam - for Shavai Chicken /Grilled Chicken
4. Ambrosia -for the pastries, cakes and Club Sandwich
5. Barista -college time hangout for some gud creamy cappuccino
   
6. Empire, Bangalore- for their Mallu parrotas and affordable good food.
7. Sukh Sagar & Royal Palace - another college/hostel time hangout for decent food.
8. Kwality Sweets, Bhopal - school time hangout (probably the place that gave me a sweet tooth and a soft corner for dhoklas..  

   

1. Getting married - never thought I'd say this. :)
2. Being better at all my life roles than I had been till now.  
3. Do my wedding shopping - that's a surprise for me too, being a person who enjoys shopping only if its for books.
4. Having a get-together with all my close old pals - from school and college and hostel.
5. Meeting my nephew - he refuses to talk on phone for more than 2 minutes now as he claims to be tired after school and wants to come visit his Chitta (that's me) only because she has a red truck waiting for him. [3 and a half year old but definitely male :-p ]
6. Feeling relieved of the pain and discomfort am going through.
7. Doing target practice of shooting on nurses who think putting holes in every possible area of my hand is their duty and then say "vein not there" with a glare - Oh yeah, i purposefully hide my veins or have taken them off and kept them safely in the cupboard so that you have a tough time & I get more of these beautiful bleeding holes in my hands.
8. Learning to knit sweaters and socks from wool.

1. Visited the hospital to feel better ; came out feeling worse.
2. Wanted to sleep; in the bargain lost my breath.
3. Got a ban from amma (my mom) for playing with my pets; the kiddo goats and especially Bruno. - One ban I knew i'd break the instant mom is out of sight. Love Bruno!
4. Missed out to be in office with people who make me feel better instantly to be with people who hurt me with injections and did everything possible to make me grumpy.
5. Spoke to my guy . For a change he spoke more and I listened, as he din't want me to take strain -only gud thing that happened yesterday.
6. Tried sleeping after having a white pill, an orange pill and a tonic; but ended up sitting up throughout the night wondering if I'd make it to the morning.
7. Mom kept asking if am feeling well and I kept lying, 'cos I could bear with the growing pain inside me, but couldn't bear to see my parents worried.
8. I spoke to tension queen, my sis (side effects of being a perfectionist). Miss her!

1. Reminds me of school days with sweaters, cardigans, overcoats, mufflers and gloves.
2. Get to wear loads of clothes, in effect feeling like bundled up cosily in bed even while walking
3. Christmas and Christmas carols.
4. No sweat !
5. Cozy sleep
6. Snowfall
7. My mom says am warm even in the chillest of chill (hot blooded femme) so she lets me hug her and sleep in winter. Love it!
8. Seeing Bruno sit only on his chair specially padded with warm cushions and quilts.

1. Having my books published.
2. Having my own personal library which would multitask as my "me" place with entry and access to no one else, except maybe a pet dog/cat.
3. Going back in time, shooting the person who discovered injections and wiping it off from the world. (At least my world)
4. Being myself forever.
5. Do my PhD in Psychology
6. Find a dentist I ain't scared of.
7. Get a grip on my fears.
8. Buy a Army jeep and modify it into my dream Gypsy.

1. Writing
2.  Reading
3. Music
4. Psychology
5. Traveling
   
6. Photography
7. Pets
8. Teaching

1. Koranga... /Korangii (means monkey)
2.  Oh pinnee....
3. Dushtaa (cruel guy/gal)
4. Oowwsomeee
5. Cool
6. Yikes
7. Hakuna Matata
8. Pandaram adangaan - trying to change it (recently knew that it means death ) :(

1. I can't get over loosing a pet.
2. My memories are my best time pass.
3. I love kids
4. Teaching excites me as much as writing.
5. I love myself the way I am.
6. I cannot be a show bunny.
7. I have weird choices.
8. I do what I feel is right and which I am sure I can convince my most loved ones (even if they have a different opinion) as atleast "not wrong".

1. Bhopal
2. Vaishnodevi
3. Pachmari
4. Silent Valley
5. Agumbe
6. Hoganakkal /Coorg
7. Leh/Ladakh
8. All places in Kerala 

1. Cash  - month end, you see :)
2. Good health
3. Sleep
4. Hot thick sweet corn soup
5. More channelized brain activity (or atleast some brain activity )
6. A good camera
7. A 'decent' no-frill mobile to replace my no-frill mobile.
8. Cash again (month ends I tend to be obsessed with it)

1. Betty Manousos 
2. Yemiledu 
3. buckingfastard 
4. Shekhar Shimpi
5. Yella95
6. WriteHelen 
7. The Wandering Minstrel 
8. Garf