Life is easy kya karein

Everyday in our house in Jharia, Rotis were made for the dog, crow and  the cow.  I did not live on a farm and we did not have dogs as pets. These rotis were made every single day for them who were stray, homeless or should I say 'free', which really would be more apt. In Fatehpur Galli, no one had pets. Somehow keeping an animal or bird, captive and providing them with the best food and bed, did not gel well with the lane. My grandmother would take a few Rotis every afternoon and go down to find a dog and a cow. The rotis for the crow were torn into pieces and thrown on the terrace. If my grandmother was out on a Teerth Yatra or a pilgrimage, the servants, when they went home for the afternoon nap would take the rotis and give it to the animals. This was not a big deal or some big charity we were doing, it was a routine. Similarly putting grains on the terrace for the birds, was a way of life. Gauri Bai had Bajri and Jowar grains in a Dalda tin with a small round Aluminium ...

My new phone is a Google Pixel and there is nothing dramatic about it. The time spent in deleting all possible whatsapp images is huge. Everything including voice notes will get saved, no matter what you do. Your full time job is to sit and delete. You can only say that let it save on wifi and not on your cellular data. This is the big thing with the Pixel. Unlimited pictures. Now on my phone, I have a few hundred positive thoughts from Buddha to Paulo Coelho. Each one knows how I can lead my life the best. I have umpteen numbers of videos which other people find motivational and the funny ones too. I don't seem to have any humour left as I delete the clutter from my phone. When I wanted more pics on my phone, they were never about friends' friends dinners, holidays, someone 's nephews and pets, gardens and the new dishes they cooked everyday. I am feeling totally incapable now as a human being, cook, Mother and what not. Basically I do not like my phone cluttered with st...

My mobile stories do not end. I am forever in search of a new mobile phone. The reason is not that I am excited about new technology but because I am forever unhappy with my phone. The past two times I have had an iPhone 5 and 6. Lost the first one in the desert sands of Dubai. With the iPhone 6, I have lived in the fear of  loosing it. I have been so alert that I was stressed. I got used to its newness but was always scared that I will drop it. I bought the golden iPhone but put a cover on it so as no harm comes to it. I think I took care of this one more than I took care of my children and it is perfectly okay to exaggerate things. I was just glad that I had an original iPhone cover and not the multi coloured covers everyone around me, has been using. After taking care of the phone so much, I had to keep deleting pics all the time even on a holiday. I hardly downloaded any apps except Whatsapp for friends and school Mom groups and Camscanner for clicking homework and sending to...

I was invited on a Sunday afternoon by a dear friend for a poetry and a music session. Sunday afternoons are a complete no no for any event. That Sunday afternoon sleep is so precious. But I agreed to go and am glad I did. There is a chain of restaurants called 'Social' and they pick up the name of the area they are in. All distressed furniture, the look of a shed where a few mismatched tables and chairs are put up. Plenty of windows with sunlight and open seating area too. I am talking about the Social at Khar, a suburb in Mumbai, which is known as 'Khar Social'. They have good food but the put off is the aluminium plates, bowls and boxes , they serve the food in. Here I am struggling to remove Aluminium cooking vessels from my kitchen and why would I eat in Aluminium knowing very well it is harmful. The place is promoted for the young entrepreneurs to come, have meetings and work from here with free wifi. In the Evenings the place turns around into a lounge bar or a...

I love beautiful homes and really who doesn't? Right through our first home, we have been unhappy with the sofas we have had in our drawing room. The sofa is used to lie down and read books or take an afternoon nap or to take a pre night sleep nap with the tv on. No sofa  can ever fulfill this criteria. So I put  a single bed from the guest bedroom into the living room. The living room got very crowded with it and yet the comfort was missing. The bed was moved to both the side walls of our rectangular shaped living room and then finally kept in the centre of the living room , parallel to the television. This was perfect position but one had to walk around the bed to access any part of the living room or the house, for that matter. I got smarter as we moved to our second house. I did away with the long sofa and kept only the two chairs. This time I put the mattress on the floor and put lot of cushions on it. Every fortnight I would change the mattress position and the sofas....

Often I feel overwhelmed with work. I think the reason is that I have not been able to find everything I need for living, in my vicinity. Starting from the groceries to snacks to a beauty parlour to a tailor to a place to buy crockery and another to buy steel vessels and a third to buy glass jars to store my home made Gujarati snacks. Another place where my mixer / grinder gets repaired. Actually I have a problem. The problem is I don't like the quality of groceries in a lot of the places. For dry fruits, I like another shop. I also don't like most super markets. They do not give a grocery store feeling and personalised approach. I still believe in helping the small shop keepers and the little vendors. I do not throw away the mixer grinder, at first signs of it not working and replace it with a new one. I am concerned about the electronic waste my household is generating every time a phone charger stops working. I like pulses and peanuts at Sarvodaya. I like my Dry Fruits at ...