New musings

-
Why are trees being cut on the highways ?
Why are the RTI activists being killed?
Why is Binayak Sen in jail?
Why do the people living in chawls seem to be having more celebrations than my building?
Why am i envious when I see yet another wedding in the chawl? Another night of festivities, lights, crackers?
Why I loved the film Band Baja Baraat but dont like it happenning around me?
Why I did not enjoy my own wedding?
Why do I love all wedding movies like DDLJ, Hum aap ke hai kaun , Kal ho na ho and still not enjoy my own wedding?
Why I fear the weddings of my children ?
Why do I have fear of the life partners they will choose and the life they will choose?
Why do I love attending other people s weddings ?
Why do I get upset when friends dont call back?
Why do I get upset when I still have friends who never call me?
Why do I want to be friends with people my Mom warns me about ?
Why do I not write when I am so full of thoughts wanting to come on paper?
Actually, who writes on paper these days?

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Nange Paon in Navratri

-
When I was working and staying in the hostel, I kind of stopped believing in most festivals and rituals. I thought all this was some weird things which people did, it had no scientific base and why should I follow anyone. In the college hostel, vacations were time to go home and not connected with any festival except Diwali. Sophia College hostel was a cocoon in the heart of South Mumbai. The campus with an old palace building was a quiet oasis with trees and birds, in the mayhem of Mumbai. No festival touched it unless the college celebrated it. The Polytechnic had rock shows and one Dandiya night every year, which it soon stopped having by 1988. Only celebration was the Vegetable Biryani in lunch on Sundays. The Polytechnic hostel did not even believe in pampering the children with food. Memories of bread being there round the clock for breakfast, lunch, tea and dinner. For them, while the non vegetarians ate eggs for breakfast, the vegetarian had bread. And then when non vegetaria
Read more

Antakshari

-
Today we were playing antakshari at the Holi get together. We did not know any new songs so naturally only the golden melodies were being sung. The whole generation playing antakshari was singing the similar era songs on the alphabets they got. I realised a couple of things. In English language there is no game like Antakshari. How many sentences end with I or The? How can you sing when most songs start with I, The, Once, When and How?I cannot resist explaining the game, we all grow up with, in India. Antakshari means Ant : end , Akshar: alphabet ie last letter of the word. Akshar also means God. It also means God has the last word. Its a game with two teams and we call the teams as  'party'.  We say "Baithey baithey kya karein, karna hai kuchh kaam, shuru karo antakshari , le ka Hari ka naam." Translated from Hindi, We are sitting idle, lets do some work, lets start antakshari, starting with God's name. In Indian games, there is a lot of religion or belief in Go
Read more

Shraddh period in Hinduism

-
According to the Hindu calendar, this is the shraddh period going on.  For fifteen days in a year, the ancestors are remembered and prayed to. No auspicious events / ceremonies take place in this time. People use the tithi/date of death to invite a Pandit and feed the departed soul. It means you remember the person passed away, give food to the Pandit and the crows. People keep a cooked meal on the terrace. They try to make the favourite food of the departed person. My memories are of my Grandma mixing and crushing all the savouries with her hands and when it was in form of  a paste, my Uncle would go to the terrace and throw the food for the crows. Crows in Hinduism are considered messengers of the departed souls. A lot of people feed Gathiyas to the crows for the full year. If your ancestors are happy, then your life goes well ,is the general belief amongst Hindus. The shraddh period falls exactly between Ganpati and Navratri. One does not buy a house or have a wedding in this time.
Read more