Early morning and drives

Generally speaking I am not a morning person at all. Actually I am a night owl. Give me night over morning any day. I can be up till very late in the night infact I can be up till morning but as me to get up early morning and you will have a very cranky and itchy person on hand for the full day

But there is one exception to this and that is when I gotta hit the highway, gotta go for the drive. I absolutely love highways early in the morning. For the start we can avoid the dreaded traffic but also the fact that everything looks so beautiful and fresh at Dawn (yeah but only on the highway ok? ;p) witnessing the sun rise between the trees and the road

the dhabha walli cutting chai – stronger than chai can ever be

And who can we not talk about the breakfast, whether it’s the hot paranthas with extra butter in the north, kandha poha in the west or steaming idles in the south breakfast tastes better

Currently as I type this on my phone I am enjoying yet another lovely drive and for this one I demand a Nobel prize as I got ready at 5 am wearing a saree, things one does for being a good Bahu

VAWM | How long is long enough?

Ranju was playing with her brothers and sisters, all 5 of them when her newly married uncle came visiting along with his new bride. She always used to look forward to the visits from uncle, he would bring along with him sweets from the city and a adult male presence in the house which was missing since her father left them all to deal with their luck and poverty one day to become a man of God, a man of God he wanted to become when he really couldn’t even become a man of life. In her uncle she tried to find her father, a father they had lost.

She was smitten by her aunt too. Pretty like any other new bride, gentle with her, she played with all of them while uncle and her mother tried to work out how will they survive the next month. When they were leaving the aunt asked Ranju if she wanted to go to city with them. The thought of a vacation excited her, she packed her bags quickly and was ready to go. A couple of days passed by like a fairy tale – good food, new clothes and many places to see. After couple of days the aunt suggested her that why doesn’t she stay in the city with them, study in a good school. She was enrolled in the near by school and the aunt brought her up like her own daughter. She had kids that treated her like their elder sister. Time passed by Ranju graduated and started doing a job, the aunt was more her mother than the one in the village. And like all girls one day it was declared that she is ready or marriage, some rishtas came her way and the one that sounded suitable to everyone was promptly fixed. A decent looking guy who runs his own shop and a nice family what else does one check. Ranju and Mohit were married with all the grandness the aunt could afford.

However reality dawned a couple of months later when she realised that the shop is owned by the father and he actually does nothing in it, a job was arranged by the uncle who came to her rescue. However Mohit didn’t last in the job long and when Ranju asked him why, began a new chapter in her life, Mohit slapped her the first time that day and the abuse never stopped after that. The mother in law and everyone else in the house would stand and watch when Ranju was being beaten and later verbal and emotional abuse would follow from all of them saying that if she didn’t even care for her mom, its only money that mattered to her. The thought that she has already troubled her aunt too much and her mother could hardly do anything. Bringing up 4 children with no source of income wasn’t easy made her tolerate the abuse and so did the fact that she was carrying her first child.

The abuse continued, eventually the aunt came to know about it but hardly could did anything she had her own kids to look after, she would sit at times and think how life came a full circle and her situation  became much like her mother, probably worst she atleast didn’t have anyone beating her, she would live on the money given to her by her aunt and Mohit’s brother. If she would talk about going back to work, she would get beaten again and slowly this started taking toll on her health but she held her fort. Today she has by her sheer will power managed to bring up a daughter and a son who are both educated and working, who stand by her and ask their father to stop if he tries to raise his hand. The emotional  abuse unfortunately still continues but she has made the focus of her life her kids and derives her pleasure from them.

Ranju’s story is unfortunately a story of many women in India. We as a society need to do something about it. Stand up raise a voice, do something about. If you observe domestic abuse around you, don’t be afraid to interfere. You could save a life

 

A Room full of books and love

Yes tha’s what will be my most favorite place in the world and a constant supply of love and some wine with make it perfect

Sigh one day one day I will make a room like that my home one day…

Picture credit – Google

Wordless Wednesday – spiderman and spiderwoman

I am sure this will put a smile on ur face

NaBloPoMo with a difference

Yes a month of everyday blogging but not NaBloPoMo. Some days back both me and Sups were cribbing on twitter that how we need another month long challenge to start writing again and later she tweeted to me saying that a bunch of bloggers have come together to blog through the month of October, some days on topic of choice and on Mondays and Thursdays of every week on a selected topic. It seemed like an exciting challenge and I said yes, the word got around and 8 bloggers came together to form Bloggers united

However this month the challenge I am taking is to write a post eveyday and I am going to spread it across my blogs depending on the topic I chose that day.

Today we do a ten on Tuesday, so here are ten random things I have been upto

1. I am starting a little late on the challenge but damn I was traveling u see and yes travel has been good to me to this year, just came back from a short break at Coonoor yesterday and had a blast of time at the small quaint town (more on this soon)
2. I am missing Delhi again, come festival season and I start missing delhi so much. Its been 10 years but the feeling doesn’t go away at all
3. I am missing my mom even more than I am missing Delhi, the last I met was in Feb and its been what, no please don’t calculate and tell me.
4. Ojas has vacations and is driving me up the wall. God how they need entertainment every waking second of their life is amazing. God grant me more patience for next ten days
5. On the line of CSA, we have started Women against Violence month and the stories have began to come, heart breaking but yet the ones which require and need to be brought to the forefront
6. I am missing most of MasterChef Australia this season because when it comes in the night mil wants to see serials and when it comes in the morning ojas wants to see cartoons and afternoon at 2pm we are having the damn power cut.. imagine? I think its high time I bought tata sky plus so that I can record it and watch.
7. Life of a mother is never dull as I said on twitter/FB last week. Ojas on the first day of his holiday decided to jump from the staircase, had a bad fall and gave us the scare of life as we had to rush him to emergency for a CT scan. Thankfully all is well and he is fine now. These kids I tell *rolls eyes*
8. I am also slowly realising that I am turning into my mother when it comes to ojas, oh the horror. God help me and God help ojas
9. Tomorrow I am doing Kanjak at home, the joy… will be making halwa, poori, chole yumm yumm yummm
10. I so want the iPhone5, iWANT iWANT iWANT

so tell me what have u guys been upto?

The Auto Saga

In a ten on Tuesday form on a Wednesday abhi thoda belated tou chalta hai na

1. Bangalore auto drivers are amazing and impartial people they don’t like to hurt anyone so they continuously refuse to go everywhere. After all if they go to place A and not place B, it won’t be fair right? And no I am kidding, ask anyone. I have once asked an auto driver “where will you go, I will go to that place” in as many words because he said no to atleast 10 people in front of me
2. They also don’t want you to waste too much of your time and hence any distance above 15kms is really not done, but wait lets be fair to them and not go too near too, so there is a minimum distance limit of 5kms. So kindly chose your travels to be anywhere between 5-15km. Anything not falling in this bracket is strictly a passenger’s fault and an oversight in planning the city
3. Meter, whats that? Its just an evil device forced on them you see and its mandatory to add atleast Rs 25-50 to the amount which comes on it (if at all its used that is) else they will be in such a loss, poor auto drivers
4. Another thing you must remember about these guys is they don’t believe in keeping change with them, it’s an insult you see so if your bill is not a round figure (note Rs 50 or Rs 100) its your responsibility to give him change and please if you don’t have change, don’t insult the poor man by asking it back so what that it sometimes might even be Rs34 (I have myself been forced to leave this amount once) forget about single digit numbers
5. They also love bangalore as it used to be u know, the small city comprising or malleshwaram and MG road and frazer town and around. So all new places are really out of the city and hence demand a double meter and this includes areas like outer indira nagar and if u live in Martahahalli or hosur road, god help you. All I can say is “Good Luck”
6. Somehow in Bangalore I see another huge problem, the poor auto wallas never ever find a savari back you see, whether its a drop in the middle of kormangala or whitefield or even sometime MG road, I think we people of Bangalore must have a sensor which detects that this auto just dropped someone here and hence we shouldn’t take him
7. There are so many phone applications that these days provide you with shortest distance and some even with the fastest route to a destination, but have you ever seen an application which provides you with the longest possible route,Bangalore has many such walkie talkie applications yes our dear auto driver who else. He knows the longest route from every A to B possible in the city
8. What its 8 o clock? and what u still are on the roads? its your fault obviously and the poor auto walla has to pay for it now to drop you to your house I say. U better give him atleast the double of what is the meter, even if the rule actually is 1.5 times after 10:00 pm. Auto drivers of Bangalore believe in following nature and not the man made clocks and the natural cycle says 8pm is dark and is night
9. All auto drivers in Bangalore are slowly getting impressed by their Chennai counterparts and turn promptly to Kannada if there is any confusion while  interacting. So inspite of living in this city without Kannada for 10 yrs now I feel the need for it. May be they are acting as government agents and helping the govt implement the learn Kannada rule
10. And last but not the least inspite of everything if you have gone lucky and got an auto, I have only one thing to say “good luck” for two reasons – one you should reach where you have to safely as they really are the most rash drivers on the road and two I pray for your mental peace because they really are an expert in every single thing in Bangalore
11. And this bonus point for people who are on the other side of auto drivers (including me most of the times). They are also the best friends of car drivers and even better than police in keeping accidents at bay, what confused? Ask any car driver in Bangalore and they will tell you how extra alert they become when they see an auto near their car, after all if an auto is driving in the middle of the lane and going either side every two minutes, you really can’t be anything but alert and I have always been taught “being alert is the best way to avoid an accident”

This post actually started in my mind after I tweeted saying this because the Mumbai folks were cribbing about their auto drivers and the response I got was am I sure

Dear Mumbai people I know strike is bad but if u hate ur auto wallahas so much please pass them to #Bangalore we’ll gladly take them

so tell me now folks u think the same Trust me having an experience in auto drivers in four major cities in India I think Bombay really has the best auto drivers (it might seem like a case of andhon main kana raja but nonetheless) followed by Delhi (right now) and the only city which probably beats Bangalore is Chenai… so my sympathies with them, may be we can split the mumbai auto wallahs chennai if u promise to share the murugan idlies with me

Annoucing VAWM – Violence Against Women Month

Dear Friends,

Thank you all for supporting our initiative through April 2011 on CSA.
For October we are planning a similar initiative, taking the topic of Violence Against Women. We are cognizant with the fact the subject on violence against woman is very huge and includes multiple aspects. To ensure that this awareness campaign is effective, we have limited our scope to the following aspects….

1. Domestic violence – Physical violence against the woman by husband/partner and other family members
2. Violence against girl child including deprivation
3. Sexual violence – including marital rape, date rape
4. Emotional/psychological abuse
5. Dowry related violence including Bride Burning
6. Female Infanticide
7. Acid attacks

We, the core team, would be delighted to have your support for VAWM Oct 2011.
The plan is similar to CSA April 2011.
We have a blog on Violence Against Women where we invite guest posts and anon survivor stories.
We also would like bloggers to post on this topic on the blog all through October, first announcing the month and second, posting on any aspect of this topic they feel strongly about.
We also have a twitter handle which will tweet information about VAWA and invite experts, NGOs, counsellors, etc to take questions. @ VAWMonth
Do let us know if you would be interested in participating, and how would you like to participate. Also, if you have any leads to NGOs or organisations you think we should partner with do let us know.
The email to write in to is vawawareness@gmail.com.
Please do feel free to forward this to anyone you feel might be interested and might want to contribute/participate.

Warm regards,

VAWM core team

Looking forward to your participation. Also please help us spread the word and display the badge on your blog.

click here to download the badge code

Day 98 | TC | With a touch of blue

So the theme for today in TC is

“BLUE” (Water, Sky, Vehicles, Houses, Flowers,…)

and I thought this picture we clicked in Leh while having a leisure maggi lunch, fits perfectly. A lovely brid with a touch of blue. Anyone knows what bird it is?  It was sitting on the small building for a long time, looked so peaceful and content as if its found nirvana in hills too

PS: I wanted to post this on the photo blog I dont know how I messed up. Posting there too

Chennai Chronicles 5

Before I go to the next trip (yes Leh it is on Thursday) I thought I might finish the previous travelogue so that I can come back and start fresh, read part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4 before this if u want

So after having a sumptuous and satisfying lunch at Temple Bay we proceeded to explore the rest of the ECR which has many many good options if you ask me, on the way up we had seen a coupe of tracks with ATV (all terrain vehicle) and being the driving freaks that we are we were very keen to try it, so the next stop we did was one of those and heavens we loved it all of us including Ojas (a tip here there are two tracks there one closer to chennai and one a little further away on ECR, the one further away is a better bet. The ATV’s he has are in better condition, the helmets are cleaner etc..)

After spending a good adventurous time in the track we proceeded to another place which was in my must visit list since I had planned this trip. Dakshin Chitra Chennai, a place where cultures meet, lovely handicrafts are sold. A place which is all about culture of the four south Indian states. I am a sucker for exhibitions like these, dastakar, Delhi Haat give them to me any day over the popular markets.. (well errr I love the markets too )

One of my most favourite handicrafts that day, bought the car one for ojas room and sigh I still haven’t put it up

The whole concept of Dakshin Chitra is about showcasing houses of all four South Indian States, it was so nice to observed the differences and yet some similarities between the houses. And one the house from Chittor area of AP is exactly how N’s granny’s village house is… so we spent quite a lot of time there comparing small things which we have back in the village with what it was there. Some of the artefacts and display pieces just stole my heart

There were many artists at work too, the potter, the weaver and Ojas had a good time observing them at work and asking questions

There was also a play area for kids in which predictably Ojas freaked out

There is also a shop there which sells handicrafts item which though a tad expensive has some excellent stuff that I picked up

Post this we headed back home, freshened up and braved the chennai traffic (which BTW sucks) to meet a close friends family for dinner. We caught up with them after a long time and it was such a pleasure

The next morning I had to do what I couldn’t the previous day and had breakfast at Murgan Idly, when I think of it my mouth starts watering all by itself again   and post the breakfast I met the lovely uma for coffee, chatted with her while the boys went back for another round of ATV driving, post that meeting we spent some quality time with family again and alas it was time to head back to Bangalore.

Everytime I go to Chennai I get a strange feeling, I fall in love with some parts of Chennai and absolutely hate some more. I love the fact that there is so much to do there, I love the food there, I love the fact that it has beaches. The city has a soul which it stands by beautifully. But I hate its weather I can’t stand humid weather and Chennai is like a advertisement for humid weather. But more than anything what I don’t like about Chennai is the freedom I have in bangalore, I can wear anything here and walk down the streets without a second glance. I can easily walk up to a booze store, buy what I want and come back home. In chennai stares if you wear even a jeans are not uncommon. Another thing I don’t like about Chennai is the fact that they are so rigid about their culture, agreed thats what has helped them preserve it but still we don’t need to be policing all the time do we? So what I have with Chennai is a love-hate relationship. Love to visit the city but will hate to settle there  

So with this we complete the chennai chronicles.. untill next time Chennai you will be missed

Here is where you can read about the return drive

Hello People, Whats Up?

and no I haven’t the blog and you guys yet. Just that life has been playing a bitch off late. Health is not upto the mark, things on the work front are not moving as I would like it to be and had a huge huge problem in terms of a mother of all a@#%le I got as a tenant, refused to pay me rent, refuse to leave and the way he has left my house it feels like it was a horse stable more rather a house for people. You think I am over reacting see this pic, a part of the bedroom flooring and trust me when I tell you this is not the worst

For the life of me I can’t understand how they managed to ruin the floor to this extent, the bathrooms are stinking from a km away the garden has been uprooted I just don’t understand what kind of family lives like this Never mind currently I am just thankful that they are out of my house and I am rid of them.

So currently my days are spent alternating between doctors and hospitals and masons and mistris and I tell you its not fun at all.

So whats up at your end folks