Romance and reality

I am a sucker for romance and despite work, a small child, a busy husband and a household to take care of, I often spend time in my own dreamland. When I just had a baby, I had to give up on reading for sometime. I didn't miss it at that time though, because I was too busy admiring the beautiful thing that I had brought into this world. Now that he is a little older and I have some free time, I have started reading avidly again. Although I read all kinds of books, newspapers, magazines and blogs, I love romance above all.

A book which I read recently and totally loved is Knight in Shining Suit by Jerilee Kaye. I discovered it on Wattpad and was instantly hooked. Many a time, I come across romance novels which can be summed up as the story where a rich and drop dead gorgeous alpha male comes and rescues the poor little helpless heroine and they live happily ever after. There is a rich and gorgeous alpha male in Knight in Shining Suit as well. But he doesn't rescue the poor little heroine. She faces betrayal, humiliation and heartbreak, but draws from her inner strength to overcome it all. She takes matters into her own hands and fights back. She has her family and set of true friends to whom she turns for help when she cannot do it on her own. That is how normal people react, right. Ofcourse there is also magical romance that may or may not exist in real life. Slowly and steadily she learns to trust her Knight and lets him into her heart. She even goes on to rescue him and their love when he is in distress. This book is a bit of reality and a bit of fantasy, but the message I got and loved was that we women ought to be strong and independent and every once in a while we should don the shining armour ourselves and rescue our knights.

Knight in Shining Suit is available on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. 

Gross food

I just read an article about a delicacy from Philippines called balut. It is a fertilised duck egg and when you crack it open, there will be a duck foetus which you then eat. It obviously grosses out many many people. I am a vegetarian at the moment, but I eat eggs. To be honest, I love the taste of fish and I always enjoyed eating chicken. Sometimes I do crave for these things. Maybe that is why I think that it is snobbish to feel superior about what you eat and don't eat.

There is so much prejudice all over the world about the culture, food, habits, celebrations etc of 'other people'. I have been the target of such prejudices because I am an immigrant in the country where I live and belonged to a minority group in the country where I was born. In my childhood, I was oblivious to it because I did not realise that I belong to a minority group. As I grew older, started working, got married, moved another country, I faced it from different sections of people at different times. Although it mostly made me angry at the time that I faced it, later on I realised that it is universal and almost everybody has to face it in one way or the other. Now-a-days, when I hear a prejudiced opinion, it just amuses me; even if it is directed at me.

I hope with all the technology and exposure, we will move forward to a world where people don't judge others based on their race, religion, ethnicity, nationality etc. There is definitely hope for one world where all of us are just human beings.

Birthday Indulgence

It is not my birthday. It was a friend's daughter's birthday yesterday and we were invited along with Sunshine. The little girl's mom had cooked a very elaborate Indian dinner for the guests. There was a papdi chaat that tickled the senses, kachori with green chutney, palak poori and mattar paneer, malai kofta, biryani, nariyal ladoo and gulab jamun. She had cooked everything by herself, from scratch with a little help from her husband. I forgot all about medicines and weight gain and indulged myself. I had to work full day yesterday and instead of some quick fix dinner, we had a feast.

Sunshine had a ball of a time with the kids and I met some new Indian people. I find it very refreshing to meet people and I love to talk. I guess I talk so much, even to people who I meet for the first time, that sometimes they find it strange. Even my not so good German skills do not deter me from talking. Eventhough it was an all-Indian gathering, there were people from different states with different languages and we had to speak in English most of the time. But I suspect that most Indians like to talk so much that if they had no common language, they would probably still communicate with each other using sign language.

House Hunt

I am involved in a massive house hunt in two different countries at the moment and it has left me dazed and confused. We are looking to rent in Germany and something to buy in India. In Germany, things are slow. Not many new houses come on the market very often. But those that are there apparently do not get tenants that easily either. I see the same houses over and over again in the on line ads. On the other hand, in India, the market seems to be exploding and the options seem to be endless. Every single dream and wish you have ever had can be met and money is the only constraint.

When I say that money is the only constraint, it is a bit of an understatement. You have to see the prices there to believe how expensive real estate has become in India. I cannot fathom how people who work there and earn in rupees all their lives manage to buy houses or apartments. We have lived in Germany for so many years and a euro is more than 80 rupees at the moment. Still, I have to always remind the agents in India that my budget is limited, but my wish list is not.

Although it is time consuming, I am enjoying the hunt. As usual, it left me wondering if I should choose this field as my career. No wonders there. Every time I start a new project, I end up feeling that that would be my new career. I guess it just shows that I am immensely bored with my job or my field. Maybe it is time to start a career hut.

Soul Food

2013 has not been particularly good for me. I had to face some health issues which were bad enough to mar the quality of my life in general. So, this year, my resolution is to get my health back on track and get the other aspects to life right as well.

I have started practising yoga regularly. I have put on a lot of weight because of some of the medicines which I have been taking. I tried every possible exercise to lose it or at least control it and failed. That is when I started watching videos from Baba Ramdev, the great yoga guru. I am at a loss how it works, because for a given time, one burns a lot fewer calories with yoga than other exercises. Yet, where all else failed, it worked. It is not like those miracle pills or diets or exercises where you get a supermodel body overnight. But I have managed to finally halt the weight gain. And it has started coming down albeit at a very slow rate.

I also started practising Pranayam or breathing exercises along with yoga. I actually look forward to getting up in the morning and doing yoga and pranayam. Also, the unhappiness and helplessness that I felt at times last year seems to be slowly lifting. I feel more hopeful and happy. It is the perfect recipe for physical and mental well being and probably will atleast help start the spiritual journey as well.

Baby shower

My charming friend Deepa and her family are moving to India by the end of this month. She is expecting her second child and we threw her a surprise baby shower a couple of days back.

My biggest take back from the party is that I need to really pull up my socks. The surprise was not completely ready when Deepa rang the bell at my place. I was still decorating and only one guest had arrived. So we had to think of some quick plan to whisk Deepa away from my place so that I could complete the decorations and the other guests could come in and hide at my place. Anyway, the day was saved because Deepa decided to go for a car wash.

I will miss Deepa and sunshine will miss her son and DH will miss her husband. But their move may be only semi permanent and they might come back to Germany. In the meantime, we are also trying to move back to India. Life seems a bit uncertain right now, but hopefully there will be some clarity soon.

A Wednesday

Sunshine and a group of his friends meet almost every Wednesday for a playdate. It was very easy to arrange these in summer when the weather was good outside. We could take the kids to a big play area and they would get busy in no time. The only difficulty was convincing them to go home afterwards.

With the onset of autumn, we are in for gloom and grey and abundant rain. This has forced our playdates indoors. Yesterday was the first of those indoor playdates. There were six kids including Sunshine who were around 3 years old, give or take a few months. I thought it might be a good idea to organize some activities for them as leaving six playschoolers to play on their own could turn out to be catastrophic. So, we started our playdate with a song, my friend and fellow mom Jenny read a couple of books for the kids and finally, they were given a huge sheet of paper and crayons and felt pens to show off their artistic skills. After this, it was time for freeplay.

I have to think about new games and ideas for our future playdates. I really enjoyed it (probably more than the kids) since I love kids and it makes me immensly happy to be surrounded by them. I hope they had half the fun that I had. The biggest success for me was that they refrained from pulling each others' hair, pushing, hitting biting etc that they sometimes resort to when they get bored.

Hopefully next time, we will be able to move forward with the idea of creating a toy repository as well.