Showcase

How would you allure customers, that too people like me? Very eazzy, put your best items on display and you will have me there. From curd-vadas in the darshinis calling you in the face on a day of fast to the faintly-gleaming mysore-paks in the old sweat-meat shops [I like the word sweet-meat :--)] to the dresses on the mannequins inviting you to use your credit cards.

May be my tinge with the show cases began from my birth itself. My dad tells me that the first dress he bought for me was a show-case piece. Even to this day most of my dresses, apparels are the display items.

Two-faces of a a coin, yes exactly. Sometimes your shopping becomes so easy. You can quickly pick a thing just by seeing the display. Also, you get to know what’s latest, what is available in that shop just by seeing the display. But many a times its tough to resist too.

But alas, its not the case with my daughter. I have not been able to get even a single display item for her till date. Maybe I should ask my dad do that for his granddaughter!

Grown old... wise..otherwise

Sitting in a meeting and bragging about how-we-used-to-do things before, I suddenly  started feeling many years have roled by...

So I started compiling words that make u feel old

Earlier it was not like this...

When did this change?!!

That's not how I used it ...

I have always done like this...

New folks always need to learn how we do it.

During college days...

When i was @ xxx company/place

Remember how we used to hog on that MD [masala dosa] + coffee

Oh I used to love that eatery, is it still there?

and of course seeing gray hair on a Monday morning as u are getting ready/late to office !!! Hmph...

And...

It's a sinusoidal curve - the way life grows and ends.

We start out all alone and grow up , build bonds, get married, children and the family grows.
And then u reach the peak of activity - earning for the family, growing and nurturing the family.
And eventually everything slows down,
        parents are no more,
                    children are grown up, have their own lifes.
                                 freinds have moved out far away
                                            and
                                                    then there u r with your soul mate, if your marriage is sane.

And then you are all alone again, bonds grown weak
and there u are waiting...

Bag reading

Show me your friends and I will tell you who you are. Its well said. Your circle of friends define what kind of a person you are. But recently I felt there needs to be another new dictum, going with the times. So this one would be - let me the see your carry bag and I will tell you where you shop, where you stay and a lot more about you! Something like face reading this one will be called bag reading. Oh.. this reminds me of the ZNMD- Bagwati ha..ha..ha. Well, this is a lot more than the oh-so-costly-euro-bag.

I noticed this last week when I used a baby shop cover to pack my lunch box. Earlier it would have been some west side or shoppers stop cover safely kept only to carry my dabba. But now its all my baby's covers! We end up buying some thing for her every weekend and all these are baby shops. So I have a good corpus of these shop bags. Its like I am advertising for these shops. And all these shops are in-and-around my current house.

Have you noticed the kind of carry bags we use - they tell a lot about us. It could be where we shop, where we order our food from, which jewelery shop we go to and a lot more about our life style itself. Also, we visit particular shops in-and-around our abode. So it could even tell where you stay and what are the shops around your place. Nice way of advertising too. Now I know why the shop keepers would nt crib when my mom would ask for covers more than the items she bought, especially at the saree shops.What you carry is who u r! 

Think about this the next time you want to flaunt your carry bag. But I am wondering why is my colleague carrying an old Schneider Electric jute bag ?! Should tell him I am finding it tough to bag-read him :-)

Lesson learnt and unlearnt

This incident actually provoked me to start blogging. If not for anything at least to share with people about this lovely story I had read during my school days. Its called  "हार की जीत" by Sudarshan Bharati. This story tells why its tough to actually believe people who are in trouble.
To cut the story short -

There once lived a saint called Baba Bharati who was very proud of his horse-Sultan. This was his only worldly possession. His daily routine includes going fora monring ride on his horse.

Khadga singh is a bandit of that area. He eyes for this horse. He asks Baba Bharati to give away his horse as a saint does not need to have pride possessions. But Baba refuses to give it away to a theif. One morning when the Baba goes for his morning ride, he sees a handicap person on the way begging for help. Out of his goodness, Baba offes to help the handicap person on to the horse back. After a few minutes of ride, the handicap pushes the saint onto the ground and rides away on the horse.
Baba is taken aback. But he only shouts out to Khadga Singh " Please don't mention this incident to anyone, else people will stop believing the poor and the disabled."

And Lo !! the baba's words had a astounding effect on the bandit and he returns the horse back to its true owner. So this is the story.

Now why am I racountering it over here?

It was more than a-year-and-a-half since I had driven my 2-wheeler, courtesy my pregnancy and post-recovery. So one fine day I took my father's bike and decided to go buy lunch for me and mom. The same old roads and turns really felt new, with the wind gazing in your face.

I was suddenly stopped by a very old person. He seemed to be in trouble. He told that he is Mr.Prabhakar, retd, University executive. He was working with a company now as an accountant. Some body had pick-pocketed him in the bus and now he needed to go to Yeshwanthpur. It was 1.00 pm, scroching sun and he was walking in the opposite direction. It was clear that he was lost.  He asked me for directions but he was very from his destination. I offered to drop him to the nearest busstop so that he could take the bus to Yeshwanthpur. When I dropped him at the bus stop he said he did not have even a single paisa to take the bus, he was too poor to take an auto to his home. So i paid him 100/- Rs. [ ok I am lying I gave him 200/- bucks ].He gave me his cell number, he took my number too and promised to M.O the money back to me. He was almost down to his knees, thanked me umpteen number of times.

I was oh-so-happy to be helping some one. I bought a little less food as I was left with only few notes in purse. Now I told this brave story to my folks at home. Ha-hah-ha-ha... why why? I asked my hubby why are you laughing? Did n't I do a good deed? Do you think I am outta my mind just because I am new mother now etc ...

He said you wait and watch!! And I am still waiting... The number Mr.Prabhakar gave is a fake one. Its not that I had lost my 200/- bucks but its about the story. Now I definitely would not stop to help any senior citizen. This so realistically relates to the story.

Some where there still is a false hope, this is Mr.Prabhakar's number - 9980132251 - The airtel number you are trying to reach is temporarily out-of-service.

http://www.bharatdarshan.co.nz/stories/haar_ki_jeet.html

I miss you...

There are loads of cards on display when you go to the " I miss you" section of the greeting card shop. There are different types of e-cards which help you express your "missing" feeling err... I mean " I miss you" feeling. You might have sent these to your best friends during your school time after she changed the school because here papa got a transfer to another city. You must have spent money and given these to your BF/GF durign your teenage times etc. How much you might have actually felt, how much you actually meant can never be equal to what a mother feels when she is separated from her child, may be just for a few hours.

These words hit hard on me when I call back home to check on my daughter and hear her babble dadddaaa mammaaa to my mom-in-law. She does not say that she misses me, nor would she understand my world of words. But she cuddles next to me all night waking up umpteen times to check if I am next to her. I hug her and shower kisses on her as soon as I reach home. Its just that no card or present can replace your actual presence.

God's love... its so wonderful

I was humming this song of course in my mind as I sat seeing the carved eyebrows of the dentist who was peeking into my crowded museum-piece like mouth. How every part of our body, especially our face is designed.

God is a very good designer. Imagine what it would be like if our teeth were to be as long as our fingers and vice-verse?! This, less than 1cm teeth gives so much pain in the first place. If each of my tooth were as long as my fingers then the Doc would have taken more than 1hr to just excavate it !!! and 2 hrs to fill it and imagine the amount of pain... hmph. Ahh...so hard to even think of that. Also, what would the devices look like, the mirror, the tongs, forceps etc? What would a root-canal treatment do to you? And not to forget, the costs of all these treatments.

Thanking God, now I gargle, brush etc ... and take good care of God-given oh-so beautiful teeth :-D [do u see them?!]. Aren't they now shining like Raju's मोतियों जैसे दांत !!

No-change Saar…

There is an ad on the TV, forward-preface can’t remember, but it shows the lady at the cash counter giving back chocolate to a ‘not-so’ good looking customer instead of rendering change and …

But this trend is oh-so fast picking up that you better shop for a round-off value else you end up getting unwanted chocolate at the grocery shop, dried and all-dead coriander at the hopcoms and so on. What kind of a gimmick is this?

I remember teachers rounding off our marks so that we might look a little cleaner when showing our test papers to our mothers and mothers further rounding off the % to look cleaner in front of the neighbors. But now all the shops, toll-gates and anywhere where you spend money round-off to the nearest available not so useful item. So here I heard my hubby’s cousin making a big fight at the small-town’s super market. He returned back the chocolate and told the counter lady to “keep-the-change”!!! What would you want to do ?