Yess !!! You are right, she is beautiful and I am addicted to her !!!

What is it about Mumbai that she is so close to our hearts?  She is like first love, love at first sight for sure.  Be it a man or a woman, Mumbai is sexy and mesmerizing in her own way for one and all.  People complain about the crowd,  the mess, the dirt around and that things are not managed the way it should be.  But look at her, Mumbai is so accommodating. She is like a girl friend whom you can take out, she is a mother who feeds all those people who come from different states and believing that she would feed him, in whatever small way she can. She is like a devoted and caring wife who cares for you and is there like a pillar even at times when one is struggling.  She is not going to leave your hand whatsoever  (Remember Yeh Rishta hai Saat Janmon ka).

The Mumbaiyaa attitude is happy go lucky and people mind their own business.  But when there is a calamity, the Mumbaikars get together in all their strength and are ONE.

The multi talented role that she plays is something that makes her so full of life and vibrant.  Yes, the people here are full of life, amidst the chaos and rushing, they know to smile, shop, eat out and fun in their own way.  Weekends are fun, night life is superb and street shopping is something that we take pride in.  Like street shopping, eating the pani puri is so blissful, I can’t express. The very thought of having to write about Mumbai makes me so excited.  Vada pav (my all time favorite) – Mumbaikars cannot imagine life without this for sure. Vadapav takes me down memory lane at Mulund- the vadapav wala at Veena nagar and also close to ShivSagar on M.G. Road.

The latest addition to vadapav is her cousin - Dabheli which is sweet and spicy.  Mulund is home to dabheli and I love you for satisfying my cravings for street food.  Who can forget Ghatkopar, the quintessential gujarati area and of course the Khao gali.  I should mention about the varieties of dosas that get dished out with a plethora of chatnis all served so wonderfully.  We are definitely accommodating when it comes to the Chinese as well, look how the Chinese bhel has captured the teenage hearts?

I should mention here that a way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, but it’s the same for women as well.  So my love, you are vibrant and I cannot think of anything else but the song that we used to hum at school and it is so true:

I love you my Valentine Mumbai – you are closest to my heart and will always remain so.  It is her lap that I am comfortable in and I thank you from the bottom of my heart to have loved me so much and still continuing to do so.  Yes, you are truly addictive!!

Love and blessings always

Rekha

p.s.

Come from England, come from Scotland, come from Ireland
Come from Holland, come from Poland, come from any land,
If you're looking out for a pleasant holiday,
Come to Bombay, come to Bombay, Bombay meri hai.

Bom bom bom bom
Bombay meri hai
Born bom bom bom
Bombay meri hai

Our ladies are nice, they are so full of spice
Come to Bombay, come to Bombay Bombay meri hai.

Wear a dhoti, put a topi and a small coatie
Mini or bikini is so good for you honey
If you ain't so gay then you can live the sadhu way
Come to Bombay, come to Bombay Bombay meri hai.

Puri bhaji, bhelpuri you can try and tell
Idli dosa, hot samosa you will like it well
Once you come to stay then you won't like to go away
Come to Bombay, come to Bombay Bombay meri hai.

I like my home a little messy –It’ me and a few fun loving people living in it!!

Without my daughter around, my house would be definitely neater and quieter, but I could sit and admire it only for 300 seconds max not more than that.  There is a certain warmth and comfort in the messiness (this is the word I have been bombarding my little world with) when she leaves her coloured clips, hair bands, lip liners, handbags, slim bags (what not) strewn.

Yes, there will be so many moms who will second me on this note.  Without our kids, our homes can be peaceful, blissful (you may choose the choicest of adjectives).  The emotional drama and the war of words mostly when it comes to a messy bedroom is when and what we fight over, apart from the TV remote. Though both of us are more as friends, when it comes to things lying (literally strewn and scattered) on the granite platform of the bedroom, we fight like cats and dogs.

She says 5 minutes and I see it as 300 seconds (yes I like the number 300)- u may think!!! Much to my hastiness, she is much cooler and calmer only when it comes to the work part. Clearing up things can wait for sure, but not her Romedy Now Channel – To be frank, I love Romedy now and I am addicted to it just like my Kaapi (cuppa Coffee).  It’s youngish, funny, full of humour and the best thing is that we watch it together without having to fight for the remote (so that is yet another thing, that we have in common, you see).

It is sharp 6.20 p.m that’s when i enter my home,  I enter my bedroom with my office bag, dump it on the chair and there she is cozily tucked in the arm chair (Romedy channel shouting in all its glory)-  yes, I want to shout at her for all those things that has managed to occupy my kingsized bed. She knows I could really be hard on her and just to escape my shrilling voice and in her cutest tone she says “Amma, you will love this movie for sure”.  It’s the Devil who wore Prada.

I say” Oh Prada, I would surely love that movie. She says “ It’s just started Amma” you will love, it”.  Yes surely I will love it but let me first freshen up and get us both something to eat.  But where is the remote- yes, the remote!!!! –I am sure it would be on the bed or on the window sill granite or precariously placed on the bedroom cabinet – I let out a shrieking voice again, but to my dismay!!!! The movie begins- I tell her, yeah, the start is good and the background score brilliant. So there it is my little devil who wore Prada!!

Luv and blessings always

Rekha

Certain chapters of life are best left unpublished

Yes, there are times all of us have passed through in our lives which are not as happy and I choose to define these as lean periods of our lives.  These times when recalled are similar to raking up the wounded memories or something like visiting a graveyard.  I personally feel these are like those stories and events of an author’s life which he or she chooses not to publish.  These incidences may be wonderful content for books, but as long as you are able to keep the author anonymous, it is fine!!!

These could be actually very important memories where the person would have suffered within his heart. It could be anything like a heartbreak, a failure in examinations, aggressive nature resulting in physically abusing or being physically abused, inability to cope with the changes in the society  - it could be anything !!

Physical abuse has been quite a subject of discussion nowadays but I am sure it would have had existed even many many years back, it could just be that the boy or the girl never had the guts to speak about it. With changing society and the internet pouring us with a flood of information, it is definitely not taboo now to speak of all these delicate issues.  This period (and I must say) that all of us are lucky to be in this era is seeing a sea of changes, mostly positive. For the number of emails and private messages that I have been receiving mostly from teenaged girls and women, I can see for myself that there is a lot of openness in the mind and thoughts. These are positive changes and keep the flow going. There are people who I do not know my face writing to me,  but I know for sure that whatever I am sharing is definitely making a change in their lives, I am happy for that.

I hope this blogpost would reach all those people who are feeling guilty for some reason about the past and are carrying a huge backlog of unhealthy emotions and feelings.  Please dust the past as it is not going to help you remain happy. If those thoughts are not going to help you or anyone, please don’t publish it to the world!!!   Honestly!!! It’s not going to help you ease the problem.

Love and blessings always!!

Rekha

The Rendezvous times with my kitchen – I still love you my dear KITCHEN!!

The alarm clock goes zoom!!!!!  at 5 a.m. in the morning.  How I hate it when it rings?  But I also love it when it gives out that shrieking alarm on weekends (the feeling of pulling back my bedsheet/rajai and going back to sleep) is much more than I could ever imagine. Yes my bedsheets cheat me nowadays, especially now when it is so chilled.

I remember how as a kid I used to be the first to wake up in the mornings and I really looked forward to the mornings.  Yes, I look forward to those mornings even now and the only saving grace is the Kaapi (coffee) which is freshly brewed in the stainless steel coffee filter.  God bless u kaapi!!  The ultimate satisfaction of drinking it slowly sip by sip mesmerizes my soul and body. Yes, my body is geared totally for the dayyyyyyyyyyy to begin!!

When I was a kid, I wanted everyone to get up once I was up. I can imagine how amma would have felt then? I guess as kids most of us love the noise and commotion and PEACE was something that was Greek to most of us, I am sure. Yes, I love this GREEK word now. But once we grow up, we realise that those moments of solitude are absolute bliss.  If I could catch up on all those moments of sleep that I lost when I was a kid? Hmmm!!!!

A normal day for any homemaker or for a working woman, I am sure begins in the kitchen.  My conventional kitchen (if I may say so) smiles at me in all its glory. I am gender biased for sure and I would love to call the kitchen as “she”, because it is the womenfolk who work here (most of the times).  I am sure the female that she is, would not mind getting handled by men (once in a while with care) what say kitchen???

With the 3 burner gas stove at my service for the next 2 hours, what more does one have to ask for?  The milk boiling, the cooker whistling in all its glory and the kadai trying to make love to the curry and the spices that I have hurriedly put. These 3 genies are the ones I love the most in the mornings and I literally thank them every morning for helping me out those 120 minutes ( I am reminded of Shahrukh’s dialogue here Woh sattar (70 minute)!!! From Chak De -

Yes, amidst all this, I try to catch up on the whatsap – this is really too much, Actually the whatsap is to check out the latest gm messages, chit chats of my friends/school friends,  I am sort of new to this Whatsap but I must say that it is the most dangerous thing to do especially at 5.30 a.m. in the morning when the pressure cooker is yelling and giving out a cry and shriveling at me that I AM DONE with the dal and the rice!!!! What next???

There is more to come about the rendezvous with my kitchen and the good and not so good times when I am running late for my office! But I love my kitchen for sure!!!

Love and blessings always

Rekha

The lady and her life echo – Marilyn Monroe (Part 2 of 2)

There have been PMs (private messages) asking me to write something more about Marilyn.  I am going to try my best to collage her life events and thoughts on how she felt, walked, dressed and lived her life.  To capture Marilyn’s life events and quotes is a complete project in itself and I would want to really push myself and want to do justice to what this sexy and intelligent female is and was all about.  If you go to think of it, there is a bit of Marilyn in all of us- whether you like it or not!!

The quotes which I have been reading truly make me ponder about her life. Was she happy, sad, intelligent, shrewd ?  I feel Marilyn was a package and dictated terms on how she would live her life. 

I was really taken aback by this quote from the lady herself wherein she quotes :

I have too many fantasies to be a housewife. I guess I am a fantasy.
Marilyn Monroe

Yes, she wanted a home and someone to call her own. She wanted to be a wife, a mother and all that any normal woman would have wanted to become. But her love for the silver screen and the strings attached were strong enough that she could not somehow just leave everything aside. Many a times, she had said that I have so much, but I am still a pauper within.  She says men did not understand her or was it that she did not want to be understood. Was she trying to have that turtle shell around herself?  I feel she feared humans for sure – yes, she has admitted to it as well, or else who would not want to live happy? 

For me, she epitomises and correctly fits in every word (Live Life Queensize) but there was some sadness within.  She said that Hollywood paid for an onscreen kiss in dollars but a genuine soul would not cost even few cents. She bartered her real soul for dollars and she loved the lavish life and the extravagance that came with it.  She worked hard to get to that pinnacle and yes topped the list of the rich and famous. There were people with her but there was this sense of loneliness which only she knew. Marilyn was fighting a battle within herself, she was a like a kid within who wanted to be pampered, loved and even scolded, but there was no one to call her own.  Just the loneliness which engulfed her in her pompous home.

Women are considered arrogant and aggressive when they speak their minds and hearts out, but men are not. An aggressive man is considered to be a go getter but, Marilyn definitely had a say in a man’s world.  She did not mind giving a pound of flesh for allowing her to wear the pants, she loved to command and dictate her men. I would not say that she did not enjoy the attention and paparazzi that came with it, but just that somewhere she would have got bored of all this life drama. This is clearly visible in what she penned “You know most people really don’t know me” – I feel she wanted to maintain that enigma woven around her life and she loved it every bit.

The moments of her silence were moments when she would restore herself, her balance of mind and juxtaposed feelings.  Men did not find her boring, because she was intelligently and imperfectly beautiful. The famous Chanel V is something that she loved wearing (to the point) that she wore it even on bed.  This voluptous and beautiful siren completely changed the definition of being sexy and acted sexy every inch of her body. She made rules which she believed in, broke the rules, took ownership for her mistakes, admitted them – She was real but society found her artificial.

That’s all for now from my Google Pandora

Luv and blessings always!!!

Rekha

The BOLD, BEAUTIFUL and INTELLIGENT – Thy name is Marilyn!!!

Hey friends ! I am back again after the short break once again. I need to take these breaks time and again so as to feed my mind with something interesting to be able to pen down.

This blogpost is dedicated to the intelligent, beautiful, iconic Marilyn Monroe who was more than just a sex symbol.  The post is also dedicated to all those wonderful women out there who paved their way to a successful career/ homemaker and who are still striving to do so. 

My daughter of 19 yrs asked me just 2 days back “Amma you have posted something about Marilyn Monroe”- I said Yes, I liked the quote, so I posted it.

To be frank, I did not even know that Marilyn was her screen name. She was Norma Jean Mortenson in real.  I had just read few of her quotes, but there was this urge to read more about her and her life.  There was and there will always be something eerily beautiful about her( in every way).

Her quotes made me THINK, that she was not the typical dumb blond which men normally thought a woman to be.  This is why I wanted to delve deeper to find out about this blond bombshell (this is how she was nicknamed) who was not only beautiful but was intelligent.  Before entering into my quest of who this wonderful person was, all I knew was that she was sexy, sassy and everything that a man would want her woman to be.  But I was wrong.  She had a man’s courage and determination to prove that she could drive her wheels all by herself even during that dogmatic period when there was still a lot of taboo on women even in the so called “Western World”.

I am not quite sure whether she was mentally strong or not because her death remains a mystery to many amongst us, though the reports state otherwise. 

Marilyn was a woman with more than one talents (apart from her bedroom talents) if I may say so, she was poetic and the willingness to excel in whatever she did was something that drove her from being an ordinary person to her role on the silver screen. If I could quote, one of her closest friends stated that if  she was dumb, she would have been happier, but she was someone who was intelligent, thanks to her love for reading and the vast library that she had.

Every thought and emotion comes out as an outburst of her deepest feelings and emotions. If one could read between the lines, it will truly depict and express that she was more human, caring and she wanted someone to care for her.  She loved her womanliness and expressed it with all her heart and body.  When I read her biography,

I could understand that she wanted a family, kids, someone to care for her. Yes, there were men who made her feel like a woman (she loved that completely and basked in that glory), but somewhere the desire to be loved for who she really was surpassed this mere physical instinct.

She had a tough childhood and this quote of hers is inspiring.  It is something that parents should tell their kids :

“No one ever told me I was pretty when I was a little girl. All little girls should be told they're pretty, even if they aren't.

p.s.

I cannot describe Marilyn in 500 words for sure, but I will definitely want to write more about her. There have been stalwart writers who have written wonderfully about her, but I will want to pen down something for this beautiful and HUMANLY icon (if I may define her).

Luv and blessings always!!

Rekha

The grass is not always greener on the other side – Accept the fact that you are at the right time, sequence and place

Dance like the photo’s not being tagged. Love like you’ve never been unfriended. Sing like nobody’s following. Share like you care. And do it all like it won’t end up on youtube!

We tend to compare ourselves with people when it comes to status, jobs, the happiness and so many other things. Yes, we tend to keep measuring happiness. It happens many a times for e.g. we say “Oh they are so happy!! They have everything that they require and appear so happy. What exactly are we trying to project?  Each one of us know for sure that happiness is one such thing that cannot be measured.  We can never tell whether having that exotic holiday or that great job or for that matter that beautiful palatial home is in fact actually a yardstick to measure someone’s happiness.  If that was the case, all the Tatas, Ambanis and Birlas would be happy right ?  That will surely ring a bell for sure.

If you thought that the grass was greener on the other side, it definitely is not.  Why will anyone want to change places and positions with anyone for that matter?  First of all we need to accept for a fact that we are at the purrrfect time and space in this beautiful world and there is no denying the fact. This surely does not mean that we should not be ambitious, it simply means that we need to accept the fact that this life is the right one for us. 

What you are not happy about at this point in time is something that you would have desired to have at some point in time.  When we are young, happiness for us is being with friends, family. As we grow up the happiness quotient changes. We are exposed to a whole plethora of ads and we have choices as to how we can be only be happy only if we are able to buy all those wonderful objects, go for lavish holidays, eat out at expensive outlets. 

There are incidents when people get restless when they find that their family members or friends are doing things better and are doing good for themselves. This lowers their happiness, Why is it so?  Why are we being so materialistic when it comes to happiness? Why is it that our happiness is dependent on so many external factors like only if I get this, I would be happy or only if we go out for a foreign vacation, I would be really happy?

The person who is travelling continuously for hours and days and even months together for office work may definitely get the money, status and recognition and will surely be able to provide much more than his family actually wants.  But in the bargain, he is losing out on those wonderful moments of life – yes, I call it LIFE, when his child is growing up.

There is definitely nothing wrong in doing so, he is actually receiving what he has chosen and what was his dream always.  Life gives you everything that you have chosen, nothing more, nothing less!!

Love and blessings always!!!

Rekha

p.s.:

What we are today is a collective result of our dreams and our visualization – Rekha Mahadevan

THE TWO MOST POWERFUL WORDS OF THE UNIVERSE – I BELIEVE!!!!

“When you believe something can be done, really believe, your mind will find ways to do it.” -Dr. David Schwartz

How many times has it happened that we want something so badly and we try and seek ways to get that favorite outfit of ours and it happens.  It has happened for me, if I seriously feel to need to connect with someone with whom I have not established contact with, I get a call or I make an attempt to identify the number and call up this person. Yes, these cannot be coincidences always.

When the mind believes something, we try and identify opportunities to make things happen.  We take that extra effort with a belief that somewhere down the line, we will be able to see the road.  This means that we have already visualized that the end result is going to be exactly what we believed.

Our lives are working in the destined manner in which it was supposed to be.   The law of universe works on discipline, whether we like it or not. I personally feel and believe that if we are not able to believe in ourselves, no one can. The very confidence that we exude when talking speaking to outsiders says a lot about our personality and our confidence.

You can either make or mar your personality, the choice is yours, the belief is yours. The entire world runs on the belief that someday things would be better. Just imagine if we never believed, we would never strive to do things better. Things would become bitter instead of better. 

At times the need to connect to someone who believes things will work out just the way we dream is important. This is why at some point in life we need a mentor.  He or she could be anyone, it could be your spouse, your mother, your father, your close friend, your close colleague anyone for that matter. He or she believes in your dream and is able to see the world from your eyes. It always feels nice when someone is there like a backup at times when you are losing hope and confidence.

As kids, most of us have perceived our parents to be our mentors. But somewhere as we grow up, we tend to lose belief that they would be able to help us achieve our dreams. As long as you believe that they believe, nothing is lost. 

Love and blessings always!!!

Rekha

I will never let down someone who believes in me MUCH MORE THAN I DO – Rekha Mahadevan

P.S.:  Never let down someone who believes in you so much MORE THAN YOU