Quirky Tag

Long back i had been asked by Monika to reveal 6 quirkies in my nature. I've done similar tags before but for the benefit of new readers I list them again. I am not checking my older posts on the subject so I may be repeating things. I am nearing 60 with about 2 more years to go so I can afford to be a quirk. People will put it down to my age.Ha!ha!!lucky me.

1. I keep adding up numbers all the time and love it when it adds up to 8. On my way to college I add up the registration numbers of vehicles and bet to myself whether the total would be an odd number or even one. I don't understand my facination for numbers. May be something to do with my past life.

2. Every time I wake up to relieve myself at night I switch on the light to check the time. Sleep is so precious that I have to know how many more hours of sleep I can get. For this very reason I go to the rest room with my eyes closed lest I lose sleep. I don't mind losing silver and gold. Losing sleep?? Never want to lose sleep.

3. I get confused if I am taken to a saree shop and asked to choose one for myself. In fact I feel like running away. Most of the ones I wear have been gifted to me or selected for me by someone else. When I have to buy stuff for others there is no confusion and I can get them something good within 15 minutes beyond this time I find it impossible to remain in the shop. I start feeling claustrophobic.

4. I have this compulsion to 'consider the other person's view' and often end up defending my opponents. As for defending the underdog - well my husband would be able to give a better account of this quirky habit. He just has to blast someone and I become the person's defence lawyer. I wonder how come he hasn't thought of dumping me. When children came complaining my first question would be 'what did you do?'

5. I cry easily in imagined situations. The 'vidai' ceremony in real life or movies bring tears to my eyes. I used to cry thinking of the day my daughters got married when they were in their preteens. But strangely I did not cry when they actually got married. On the other hand I cried when my brother's wife cried on leaving her parents and was actually accompanying us to our house. Is that quirky enough? i suppose so.

6. Finally, I seem to relish challenging situations more than an easy going life. Long back my husband's annual bonus was the only means of replacing curtains or repairing furniture. I thoroughly enjoyed the planning that went into these things and felt satified about every penny saved or spent. Without having to worry about money I ought to feel relaxed. Strangely I miss the years gone by and there seems to be no joy in walking into a shop and buying what one wants.

I tag Renu, Ugich, Manasa, prats joy, rajk and preeti to carry this forward if they haven't already done it.Any one else who is interested may also take it up.

Happy Diwali!

The festival of lights has arrived yet again and let me wish all of you a Very Happy and Safe Deepavali. The stories that give reason for such a celebration are many but the fact that is underlined in these stories is that might is not always right and justice prevails. Evil forces are ultimately conquered and truth wins. We need to remind ourselves of these optimistic messages whatever our religious belief. That is perhaps why Deepavali is welcomed by one and all. Do we need to be told that if Lord Ram had to fight a single Ravan- so what if he had 10 heads- We have to fight several Ravans in our everyday life.

To a father who tries to get his daughter married a dowry demanding groom and his parents must appear as Ravan personified.

To a pensioner who has to grease the palms of a dealing assistant to get his papers processed, the corrupt official who encourages his sub ordinates to do so and accepts a share of the bribe thus collected would be a modern version of Narakasur. When is Krishna planning to intervene? Or should we all become modern Krishnas and fight corruption?

The unborn female child who is subjected to sex determination tests and killed in the womb has to first deal with injustice at the hands of her own parents followed by doctors who say 'if not me it will be someone else. Why not me then?'

The terrorist who trains youngsters to become suicide bombers are amalgamations of 10 demons put together.

The best way to celebrate Deepavali would be to say a big NO to all social evils. We all have a Ram within us. We only need to identify our strength. The terrorist, corrupt officials and illegally functioning poly clinics would cease to exist if we stopped patronizing them. Let us take one step at a time and learn to stand up for our rights. The strength it gives is unbelievable.

A Happy Deepavali to all!

Tagged again

Rajani has given me this award for a second time and here are the rules.

When you receive the prize you must write a post showing it,together with the name of who has given it to you, and link them back

2. Choose a minimum of 7 blogs (or even more) that you find brilliant in their content or design.

3. Show their names and links and leave them a comment informing they were prized with ‘Brilliant Weblog’

4. Show a picture of those who awarded you and those you give the prize
(optional).

5.And pass it on so now I need to pass this award to bloggers of my choice who I consider brilliant.I choose to pass it on to those who have encouraged me in the past but are either too busy or for some reason have lost touch with me.I choose

Itching to write for the lovely accounts she gives of her twin delights.

Artnavy whose muthu stories were entertainingly brilliant.

Passerby55 who has stopped blogging but is nevertheless one of the most forthright and sensitive bloggers I've come across.

Apu who is rather busy now but writes brilliant pieces on my pet theme-feminism.

Velu Nair Where are you??I am not able to read you at all.

Neers for the lovely pictures she posts and the heartfelt poems she writes.

Archana Bahuguna whom I found and loved from DAY1.

All these bloggers are brilliant in their own way.I haven't been very regular myself so I can hardly blame them for drifting apart.However I do acknowledge that they all have a special place in my head and heart.

Gup Shap-2

On my husband’s insistence I write this piece ‘cos I cannot refuse him the right to be part of my blog world. He likes to tell people that he gives me ideas and I elaborate them which is not wrong. A few of the stories that make their rounds in our family have indeed found a place here and it was he, who suggested them. I was on a vacation to the south and in Tiruchy I happened to hear of a distant relative who’d qualify to be a Mrs. Natwarlal – such is her flair for duping people. B……. is a modestly educated woman who has duped the likes of bank managers who trusted her enough to give her loans for starting a computer center in the first instance and a dairy farm in the second. On the first occasion she borrowed money from the bank and purchased 10 computers at Rs. 30,000/- each and sold them for 20,000/- in about a month. She lodged an FIR with the local police station that her computer center had been robbed and the loan was written off as bad credit. On the second occasion she purchased 20 Jersey cows that yield a good amount of milk and started a dairy farm. Once the bank inspection was over she managed to sell the cows and replaced them with scrawny looking cows well past their reproductive age buying them for a pittance. Whenever the bank officials came to collect money she’d say that the cows did not yield sufficient milk and she’d pay up the loan when business picked up. When asked why the cows looked so disabled she’d insist that they were being fed well and suggest that perhaps a jealous neighbor had cast evil eyes on them. Finally they stopped approaching her since she would wail and complain that they were harassing her for no fault of hers. She could only feed the cows and it was up to the cows to yield milk. On a third occasion she bought jewelry from a well known goldsmith impressing him by arriving by car wearing a good amount of (artificial?) jewelry. She fussed a great deal about the design, rejected a good number of their stuff and finally purchased some jewelry pretending to oblige him and promised to come again when a fresh lot arrived. She paid him by cheque signing it by an imagined name and gave him a fictitious address. The cheque naturally bounced and she could not be traced.

I am not really sure if a person can get away with cheating and falsehood each and every time but I have no reason to doubt the story having known such a person in Jamshedpur as well. I had heard of his fraudulent dealings through reliable sources but while traveling back from Bangalore earlier this year I met a couple who had been his victims who gave me a first hand account. The man had taken 1.5 lacs from them promising admission in a reputed engineering college for their only son. The son neither got admission nor was the money returned. It is also said that the man’s wife explains to her children that their father was justified in accepting money for such services since he had the right connections. He was only charging them a ten percent commission. If the people he dealt with swallowed the money how could he be held responsible? A friend of mine talks of an acquaintance who claimed that it was not wrong to take advantage if one had the right connections.

“You are righteous under compulsion.” She’d say. “If you had the right connections you’d also make proper use of it.”

Would we? I wonder. As far as I perceive a person who cannot even make ends meet could well be honest and upright and another having all that money can buy could still crave for more and may resort to unfair means to obtain it. It is all in the mind and studying the mindset of such people may be interesting.

I personally wouldn’t mind being called a loser if a winner was defined as a person who expected to win whatever the means. Call me old fashioned but I cannot agree that the end justifies the means. At the same time I do agree that stories such as these have their own entertainment value.