My everyday date with Cuppa Koffee – How it helps me in my everyday life

Yes, you heard it right ! I love my Kapi (in Tamil), Koffee.  The wonderful coffee mugs with beautiful sayings written on it makes me smile. In fact, I like to spell out Coffee as Koffee (just because it makes me feel 10 years younger).  I know it sounds out a little weird, but that’s how I can become if I don’t get my filter kapi first thing in the morning.

There are many of us here who will agree with me, be it chai or koffee till we hold it in our hands, we do not get geared up for the day ahead.  This is more so for the homemaker, the working woman of course, both of whom have either their cuppa chai or koffee and begin their day with gusto.

Yes, you can call it addiction, but “itna addiction toh fine hai boss”.  When I have my coffee, there are so many thoughts taking place in my mind, few thoughts that keep pouring in because I have chosen to live with them, thoughts that have made me feel not so good at some point in time. These are thoughts that I have fed my mind with and the result being that it made life look truly boring and uninteresting, which is not the real me.

I chanced on this coffee mug the other day at a mall that had this beautiful saying “Letting go of the not so good things will make you feel lighter and happier”.  It instantly hit my brain and it rung a bell in my mind saying “  Rekha, this is something that you should not miss out on”. This mug reminds me that I need not hold on to feelings and emotions that are not doing me any good. It’s actually pulling me and holding me back which is the total opposite of me. This is how I started letting go of all the old and unproductive thoughts.

Bad thoughts and emotions are like stale food in our refrigerator.  Will we eat food that has been stored for a month or a year, forget a month a year, we will not even be able to eat food that was prepared and stored a week back.  It will surely make us sick and unhealthy and we will surely land up in the hospital. Just imagine how much care we take of our physical body. So then why is that we subject our beautiful mind to this torture? Why do we choose to hold on to stale thoughts that are doing no good not only to ourselves but also to people around us.

I have discovered that when we are able to let go of anything that is stale and redundant, it shows on the face and in our life.  It is all about taking the first step and that is by letting go.  Never choose to stay with thoughts of hurt,jealousy, depression as these will eat up your mental health.  It may appear to be a little difficult to incorporate all these things all at once and to bring about changes as the mind will definitely show some resistance.  But try doing one at a time and you will see the results showing up.

So folks ! Let go, keep smiling – it definitely makes things much simpler and beautiful and just look at the mirror, you will look years younger and of course BEAUTIFUL.

Signing off for now- Happy Navami and Dashami for tomorrow in advance.

Luv

Rekha

My relationship with the six yard wonder - I simply LOVE you and will remain to do so

Come festive times like Navaratri , Diwali or for that matter any festival, the six yard wonder does surprise me everytime.  Irrespective of the varied transformations that have taken place in women’s line of clothing, the grace and charm of a saree is truly something that has continued to hold its position over time and it will surely continue to remain.

Even the designers of the international arena are in awe at the manner in which the Indian saree is draped so brilliantly and falls on every Indian woman (irrespective of her skin tone) and oozing grace and charm.  Ours is truly a democratic country and the saree has maintained its democracy which is clearly visible from the fact she has managed to make us look beautiful irrespective of our body types and revealing all the curves exactly in the manner in which it needs to be revealed without making us appear cheap at any point in time.  She has managed to hide our not so perfect figures and in fact gone a step ahead by accentuating the Indian figure so wonderfully.  Hats off to you for that!!

This six yard wonder makes even the full figured and voluptuous women look ravishing.  I have specifically mentioned “Full figured” considering the Indian body type is full with its charm and sensuousness.  Accepting our wonderful curves is something that the saree would have taught many of us and I am so much in awe of this six yard wonder and thankful to her for making all of us look so beautiful and graceful always.  She does not fail to disappoint anyone for that matter.

With Navaratri and a dash of colours, I saw a sea of colours yesterday with every shade of green and it felt as if we are seeing lush greenery everywhere. On my way to office, I could see women dressed up in every type of saree like the patola, the rich kanjeevaram, the paithani, the designer saree and of course the humble cotton saree (the most graceful one).

What I observed was that every woman who was wearing the saree and rushing to make her way to the office had a beauty of their own and I am sure every woman would second me on that.  Inspite of the busy Mumbai life, they still made it a point to enjoy the tradition and culture and happily enjoyed being a part of this cultural extravagance.

So Ladies, check out your wardrobes and check out all those sarees that have simply accumulated dust over the years, air them out.  The festival of lights is on her way to bless us with her light and shower us with prosperity.  Let’s dress up the best and wear our Indian attire and welcome her with a SMILE.

So happy draping beautiful women out there !!!!! and I thank you (the six yard wonder) for making me and everyone look so beautiful and confident ALWAYS.

Luv

Rekha

Spring cleaning your mind – Diwali around the corner

Hi folks ! With Diwali just round the corner, we are going to get busy shopping for stuff, decorative material, shop for clothes and most importantly, spring cleaning and of course preparation of the sweets and savories ( I truly love Diwali for this). Come Diwali time, many of the womenfolk here have a sudden outburst of love pouring out (specially for our maid servant). This is when we see her in all forms and the most adoring form that we would love to connect is in the form of Durga (with all her ten hands) helping us out.  This is also the time the Durgaroopini (“Bai” in Mumbai) also attains her Durga form and throws all the possible tantrums and conveniently will skip a day or two just when you NEED her the most (pun intended). 

I have slowly got out of this “Bai syndrome” as my Bai has ditched me on a number of occasions, for reasons only known to her. This is more so when there are so many back to back festivals like Ganesh Chaturthi, Navratri, Diwali and so on and it is ME who takes the form of Durga literally at such times (by hubby would surely second this). Getting back to spring cleaning, here’s what I feel.

We want out homes to be sparkling clean, spic and tidy.  We tend to change the furniture, furnishings and most of all the colours of our walls as and when there is a festive season approaching. But how many times have we tried to change the colour of our thoughts, ideas.  Very few times ! Somehow, many amongst us are happy and carry alongwith us the same grudges and beliefs.  I didn’t know when I read somewhere that people love to be depressed; in fact, they love to be in a state of sadness.  This can be quite dreary. Just take a minute to think about how your beautiful heart and mind would look when it has only one colour to it. It could get so very boring. So let’s add new colour to our minds.  Just like how a painter goes about scrubbing the walls and getting rid of the old colour, let’s just scrub away those not so good thoughts from our minds. 

Once we get rid of the old belief systems, you can then add a new and fresh colour.  Even thinking about this makes me feel SO SO HAPPY. So let’s spring clean our mind by throwing away all those junk thoughts that have done us no good. It has simply rusted within and has made us all the more boring and static in our life approach. 

Let’s make an attempt to scrap a not so good habit which has not been of much help or has not added much of value to our lives.  Let’s get rid of relationships that drain us and that are toxic. I have always truly believed that the less stuff you have and you collect, there is lesser strain on your mind. There are fewer burdens on my minds and fewer things to be discarded.  There is more time which can be fruitfully devoted to things other than cleaning and scrubbing which can truly guzzle up your time. 

Hey folks!  But I should admit that I simply love cleaning and keeping my home spic and span. It gives me a sense of peace and I feel absolutely connected and at peace with myself.  I do it with all my heart and of course with my hands.

So get ready to usher the beautiful festival of lights by buying some wonderful diyas (lets all try to make less noise by investing in noiseless crackers).  Diwali is a festival of lights, so LESS NOISE PLEASE.

Signing off for now,

Luv

Rekha

You are in queue- Let me love myself first !!!

Hey you heard it right - just what I started my heading with.  Loving thyself is the most beautiful thing that we can give to ourselves.  In the past, loving oneself was considered to be selfish, but with a lot of new thinking coming up, we now are able to comprehend and understand the basics that only if we love ourselves, we will also be able to love others around us who truly deserve our love.

We have grown up watching films of Karan Johar with his interesting one liners stating “ It is all about loving your family”, but hey come on,  I have not even loved myself completely.  No offence to Karan here, Karan I really really love you and your movies that show a riot of romance and emotions, just what everyone loves to see. 

We get so much engrossed in taking care of whether others around us are happy.   Mothers are worried and are keen on loving their kids, husband. If you are a daughter, then you have to love your parents and siblings. If you are a daughter in law then it is your in laws, husband and of course your kids.  We knowingly or unknowingly tend to forget about us and our little heart that beats day in and day out and what it expects from us. It is that little love that the heart is asking for.  You need not expect it from the outside, you can love yourself by just tapping it just the way Aamir Khan wonderfully says it and taps on his heart saying “All is Well”.  Yes truly ALL IS WELL.!!!

I have experienced this when my daughter was a kid.  The moment she accidentally fell down, all her eyes would be set on me and she would look at my expressions.  If I gave her the feeling that she was hurt, there would a burst of tears enough to flood the Tansa lake.  But I realized that when I was calm and just told her “Darling, you are perfect and alright “. She was fine and went about doing her antics.

The heart within is child like and loves to be pampered and fondled.  We need to love ourselves for it.  Teenagers nowadays love the tattoos on their skin and I love tattoos too as long as they don’t pain.  Coming back, let’s do ourselves a favour, oops sorry, let us love ourselves and get our brains and minds permanently tattooed by loving ourselves.

I should make a special mention here about an incident that happened and I would not like to reveal the name just for anonymity sake.  One of my friends in train always complained about the way she looked, the way she had gained weight and there was only negativity emitting from her.  I started to avoid her because I was getting engulfed in that negativity and felt suffocated. However, my conscience pricked me and somehow I roped in my guts to get back to her and started counseling or could we call it “making her realize her true self”.  By the way, this friend of mine was an excellent cook and the cooking did take a toll on her health and of course her weight.  With a little effort, I made her realize that she was truly beautiful and was managing things so wonderfully.  You could call it magic or a wave of good luck, but now she is a changed person.  She is now a positive and I would say more or less changed person and ensures that she lives everyday with a lot of positivity and it has created a lot of goodness in her life.  It all began with loving herself and I am so happy that I was the catalyst, so I LOVE MYSELF JUST THE WAY I AM.

Signing off for now

Luv

Rekha

Doing what you love and loving what you do –Two sides of the same coin

Even a few years back, I was not quite sure about whether I could even qualify as a mediocre writer.  My journey into writing began few years back and I would put down thoughts on my laptop and ensured that no one read it – I had gone a step ahead and also put a password protect – I was shy as to what anyone would think as I had even jotted down all my deepest thoughts and feelings.  But with time, I realized that people are slowly getting to be more matured than what they were.  It is easier to address this tech savvy audience who love to understand and who also are accepting and are open to a lot many issues that were once considered taboo by our society. 

The very fact that someone sent me a private message on my FB (actually I do not even know who this person) is ? He/She has asked me to write about “Why some relationships should not be defined or should not be given a name to.”  I felt happy; this is a reflection that people want to know what we as a society think about relationships that have no specific name or gender.  This also takes me back to the movie Lunchbox which I saw recently and it truly captured my body, mind and soul. Wonderfully captured and expressed – though I know I do not know much about production and direction, the movie was truly food for thought for my mind and it surely will arouse the interests of every person who loves to see meaningful cinema. 

Writing has been my passion, but even few years back, I was unsure of how I could reach out to an audience, even though it comprised of only my friends and family. I was surely skeptical about it initially. But with all these years passing by, I realized that I loved writing and loved to do it day in and day out.  It’s never been a burden for me, the reason being, when I am happy I can write, when I am sad I can write and what the heck, I could write even when I was not doing anything.  It’s easier to form mental images or rewire your brain and make snapshots of the same which could be later put in the form of writing.

When I started this blog, I did not even actually know that I could have a designer blog with bold and beautiful colours and that I could add pictures and new patterns. I found this to be quite interesting and you will see that I have changed the colours and background.  The thrill that I am experiencing when I am seeing all these new things is very much like the first crush that I am sure many amongst us would have gone through at least once in our life, though I will still like to believe that one can fall in love more than once with the same person.

Someone asked me the other day, why is it that you write when you know that you would not even be paid for it. Isn’t it better to write for websites that would pay you handsomely.  I did not react or respond but just stated that “At times, it is not always about the money”.  Had it been few years back, I would have been blunt and responded.  But I guess at times, when you are too happy doing things that you love, you do not want to get disturbed by these petty issues.  Many amongst us read the Bhagwad Geeta, the Ramayana and many of the shloka books.  Why do we do these?  Does it pay us?  NO.  But we still do it and ensure that we do not miss out even a single day. The question has been answered.  I am doing this because I DO WHAT I LOVE AND LOVE WHAT I DO.

Keep loving and doing things that you all wished to do.

Rekha

Some relationships are special and cannot be named – They are truly special and memorable

It’s possible to define relationships and give a name to a relationship when you have one.  But what about those relationships that cannot be given a form or a name.  Yes, this is very true and though many amongst us may not want to agree to this, I feel there are few relationships that are much above our so-called relationships.  What I could do from my side is to not name them.  We come across a number of people in our lives and knowingly or unknowingly are related to them in one way or the other.  Few of these people leave behind a strong mark and it’s just not possible to erase them from our memories.

When we are teenagers, we come across many friends and acquaintances who come and go, making some contribution to our life. Though we may have had a slight inkling of what they mean to us at that point in time, we would have been busy with our individual lives and careers.  But just sit back and recollect all the wonderful people who made a difference in your life, even though it may have been in a small way.  The list may really be endless.  I took out the time to recall back those wonderful memories that I had spent in Mulund.

Here I would make a special mention and a big thank you to all those people in the chawl that I grew up in at Mulund. This is where I have spent my initial years of growing and I can surely say that chawls in Mumbai does teach you a lot of life lessons. One such special relationship was with one of the neighbours, everyone called her Gujarati Mami and she was the same for me as well. I am sure did not even know how to read or write English or even understand it.  For some reason, I loved to go to her house as she always used to give me the special masala chai.  I used to read out my English compositions to her and she would say in her usual gujarati accent “ Bau saras che”in Gujarati and it meant “It’s wonderful”.  It would give me instant encouragement and I also used to feel elated that she could not write as well as I could do, little knowing that she was just trying to make me feel happy about myself.  Just when she had completed the first sentence, innocently she would ask me “ What is it that I read out to her” ?  I would explain the entire essay to her with my usual gestures and she loved seeing me actually perform the composition as if it were a play.

Thank you so much Gujarati mami for having innocently and patiently heard me out when I was growing up. Even when you were busy, you made it a point to listen to me just because it brought a smile to my face.  I miss her today so much because she is no more.  What should I name this relationship, was she a friend, a neighbor, an aunty?  This is when I thought that I could not name the wonderful relationship what I shared with her.

For all those people who have made a difference to my life, I say a BIG THANK YOU. 

Signing off for now

Luv

Rekha

It’s not always necessary to seek everyone’s approval – Follow your Gut Feel

Many a times, we tend to get depressed and do not feel good about ourselves.  The reason for this could be many.  But one of the reasons that I have identified is the need to receive approval and be liked by one and all.  The moment we feel that someone is not too much in favour of our thoughts, behavior and the manner in which we speak and behave, we tend to get a little uncomfortable.  Subconsciously, most of us (me included) at times try and seek everyone’s approval and are not sure about ourselves.  As long as we do not become a victim to it, things would be fine, but if it is the only thing we are seeking out, we tend to get addicted to it, which is definitely not a good sign. This calls for a change in our thinking and we definitely can make the beginning, it is not all that tough as we presume it to be.

Many of us want everyone to like us – actually this is not wrong.  I too love all the likes (the very fact that there is a smile on my face when I see all the likes posted by many of my friends on FB) is indication that I too am a party to this.

This gets me into telling an incident that happened on Friday afternoon when I had left from office early (the reason for early leaving was that I had to arrange for the Navaratri gollu and the sthapana of the devi). As usual, I took an auto right from office premises to Thane station.  The auto driver was patiently waiting for a customer and he was happy that he could get one.  I sat as usual and told him to take me to Thane (West).  The traffic was just getting to its peak and it was touching 1 p.m. The auto driver for some reason got talking about the roads and how the concrete roads were creating a lot of stress on the tyres of the rickshaw. He also mentioned that the dambar roads were good and were smooth. I asked him “Oh is it so!!”.  He replied in his usual lingo “Haan madam”.

I said “Accha mujhe nahin patha tha”.  Then he started off saying how Mumbai was getting too crowded, about the weather and basically about the politicians.  I tried to ease him and changed the topic saying that Mumbai is much better as compared to many other places ( the reason for my stating this was simply because after all I am a Mumbaikar).  The auto driver got talking and he actually asked me “ Madam, Can I tell you my story|”.  I was a little puzzled and surprised as to what he wanted to tell me and of all people, ME.  But I guess that was the day when he wanted to pour his heart out.

I in my humorous tone reciprocated “ haan bolo na, mujhe problem nahin hai, par jab thane station aayega,meter bandh kar dena, aur job bhi bolna hai, aap boliye”. He had a chuckling smile.

He then began by saying how he lost his daughter aged 17 yrs.  Since my gut feel and intuitive powers are as strong, I asked him whether it was suicide.  I then realized -Why the heck did I ask him that.  But he replied saying Haan madam.  I asked him what happened and whether it was a love issue. He again replied in unison.  There again my gut feel supported me.  The auto wala explained how his daughter who had just given her 12^th std ended her life as she was involved with some teenager who had ditched her.

I asked him whether his family was against it.  The auto walla said that he had explained to his daughter that mistakes do happen and his family supported his daughter totally,irrespective of that small mistake that she had committed.  I was surprised at the maturity of that person who I feel would not have been as literate as many of us here.  But I saluted his maturity once again when he said “ Galti toh sab se hotha hai madam”.  Life se jyaada aur kuch important nahin hai.

I thought to myself this is a man who totally supported his daughter and I felt good that many of the parents of today are much more understanding and loving and are trying to be friends with their teenagers. However, the auto wala’s daughter felt ashamed that she had degraded the respect of her parents and this is when in one of those weak moments, she took the help of the noose and ended her life.  When saying all this, I felt so bad from within and my heart wept all the more considering it was when Navaratri was just to begin. We all worship the Devi in the form of a mother, sister and daughter and here is what is happening.

What I could deduce from this was that the girl who committed suicide wanted some sort of approval from everyone which was why she got weak and gave away. For her just seeking approval from her parents was not enough.  He had just completed his story and I reached Thane station. I had nothing to tell him or assure him.  I just paid him the money and told him GOD BLESS U ALWAYS.

I wish to sign off on an abrupt note for this post and let’s retrospect from within and not seek approval from one and all.

Signing off for now

Rekha