Myriad Hues

Bisexual / Gay / Gay Pride Parade / Homosexuality / Lesbian / Minneapolis / Transgender

I was bombarded with news feed on ‘Gay Pride walk’ on all my social media profile. It was difficult to miss the growing buzz on ‘Homosexuality’ in the Internet and choose to be ignorant about the subject. It was more like the ‘ripple effect’ but more profound. Curiosity dragged me to the parade ground on Hennepin Avenue in Downtown Minneapolis, dragging my husband with me to witness one of the most colorful parades that I had seen till date.  
There were children as old as few months dolled up in colorful rainbow beads, tattoos carrying banners to adults as young as in their eighties to show their support for the LGBT  (Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender) community. Even the pets did not shy away from attending the event. There were smiles floating through every corner of the street so were the kisses blown out while huge bear hugs were the order of the day. And I could see the city was ready to showcase her enigmatic style among dozens of onlookers. She had a strange aura surrounding her and it intrigued me. An uniqueness in the air which I could not fathom and I believe I wasn’t eligible to do so either.
The sparkles covered the streets like a velvet carpet making way for the brightest and dazzling LGBT exhibitionist. Together all the bright colors and skimpy clothes screamed ‘Freedom to Express’- a quality which I have always admired. The event appealed to me for more than one reason as it displayed ‘Strength’, ‘Optimism’, ‘Determination’, ‘Creativity’, ‘Attitude’, ‘Diversity’, ‘Individuality’ and ‘Earnestness’. These represent a mind of an artist. I saw the germination of a new breed of winners who had the ability to embrace failure with love and smile and yet have the stamina and strength to keep walking towards the goal. Never shy and never hurt - stronger than I had imagined them to be.At this juncture my mind reverberates with the Poem ‘Stopping by woods on a snowy evening’ by Robert Frost.

“The woods are lovely, dark and deep....

...And miles to go before I sleep”.

I believe sexuality is a personal choice and you cannot force people to abide by rules and regulation of a society or a country. Thus, I do not think it would be appropriate on my part to comment on homosexuality since I will never be able to do justice to the subject. However, I have tried to capture the spirit of the community - ‘Always moving forward’.

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The Lahiri House Murder

short story

Nandini Lahiri was visiting her parents in Assam for a month long vacation. Her father was a tea garden manager and had recently shifted in to a plush thirteen bedroom bungalow situated in Dibrugarh. Tea garden bungalows were built during the British rule in India and had innumerable legends attached to them.  One of the most popular legend that did the rounds in Mr. Lahiri’s bungalow was that of a young Indian woman who had an affair with a British officer during the early nineteenth century and was killed by the villagers. Since, then many people in the bungalow seem to have witnessed multiple unexplainable activities around the house.
Nandini, a pleasant young girl who feared nothing apart from Dogs, Cats, Crickets, Worms, Rats, Heights, Raging traffic and Ghosts. Well almost nothing! Every night she would say a little prayer and take to bed. Her bedroom was on the second floor and had one grand study table, a couch and a single bed.  A week had passed by and her holidays unrolled before her eyes just the way she had imagined - Orange juice served to her bed along with the daily newspaper, elaborate breakfast, lunch, golf at the gymkhana club and end the day with a dip in her private pool in the bungalow.
It  was one of those perfect days where she had met a smart and intelligent man called Rishar at the club and they hit it off instantly. “It can’t get better than this!” she gushed under her breath. He dropped her back to her place, she jiggled a little, hopped a little and sing-songed her way to the room. Quickly mumbled her little prayer and took to bed. That night she wasn’t sleepy as she relived her ‘Mills & Boons’ moments from the evening just when she heard strange footsteps in her bedroom. She looked no further as she jumped out of her bed and sneaked out to her brother’s room. She had definitely heard and felt a strange presence of somebody in the room. The following day her brother chose to ignore her explanation and warned her not to intrude his privacy while the servants in the house acknowledged her experience and added their two bits to the story that the ‘village girl’ was murdered in her room. ‘Wow!’ she said in disgust. As the sun gave way to the moon, she chose to be a brave heart and ignore the tale spinning around her room. This time reciting her prayer multiple times before closing her eyes. Only to be awakened by the same strange footsteps, she plopped out of her bed and rushed into her brother’s room. Her brothers rants were better than a rendezvous with a ghost, she thought. Yet, another week had passed by and she would still take refuge in her brother’s bedroom despite all warnings not to sleep in his room until he locked his room so was her parents room. She couldn’t be sleeping in other rooms all by herself. What if the ghost decided to follow her, she wondered.
Gathering all courage she decided to head back to her room and face her biggest fear. She moved towards her room. She armed herself with an iron rod (she had heard that ghosts fear anything made with the ferrous metal) and picture of Lord Ganesha in her pocket. As she stepped into her room and went to switch the lights on, she let out a huge shriek, jumped high in the air as she felt a cold wave pass by her legs. For the next few minutes she screamed, moved her iron rod in every possible direction, jumped as high she could, all this with her eyes closed. The last thing she wanted to see was a ghost. If the ghost wouldn’t kill her, the sight of it will for sure. Her folks, brother and servants rushed to the spot from where they had heard the ear-piercing ruckus. Upon reaching his weapon wielding daughter’s room Mr. Lahiri immediately grabbed her by her waist. Nandini let out another cry and fanatically started beating up her dad hard with the rod. When her brother in a very sleepy and groggy voice said ‘you crushed a Rat under your foot!’.  Silence preceded.

*Disclaimer: All characters and place are fictitious and any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely co-incidental.

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The Inevitable!

Social Media / Tidbits

The year 2011 will be remembered for many a reason starting with the protests in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya to the natural disaster in Japan and to the recent protest by Anna Hazare in India. All this in less than four months and we still have a long way before we can bid adieu to this erratic year. It has been a ground-breaking year so far. India’s fight against its evils is the latest in line of people rising against oppressive rulers, rising food prices and decades of being taken for granted by dictators, corrupt politicians and monarchical despots.

However, amidst such hue & cry was the overwhelming response of netizens across the globe on such issues and all thanks to the blooming social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Buzz, Newsvine and Stumbleupon among others. This voice did not just stay as an info-byte in the world wide web but it was acted upon in reality. Agitated individuals/groups used it as a medium to communicate, inform and organize protest against injustice meted out by the government. It was used as a medium to showcase the stark reality in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and India through sharing photographs, videos & status updates. A news report stated that as many as 4.4 million tweets in support of Anna Hazare was tweeted from 8,26,000 unique users across 79 cities in India in just three days while Tweets on Tunisia showed up in Twitter streams as many as 329 million times,reaching 26 million Twitter users! Another online site called the Avaaz.org launched in 2007 has been creating waves with their online campaigns.  These are just not only impressive statistics but they also reflect the sentiments of the common people.

Social Media has not just been used as a tool for organizing protest against oppressive rulers but it brought all the ethnic groups together to join in prayer for the disaster in Japan. As the powerful earthquake of 8.9 magnitude struck the coast of Japan which caused a major Tsunami in several places. In less than an hour after the earthquake, it was reported by Tweet-O-Meter that 1200 tweets were sent out per minute from Tokyo with the country’s telephone system being totally shut down. Soon after Twitter and Facebook exploded with prayers and condolences from all corners of the globe. Its been one month since Tsunami in Japan yet the prayer tweets continue to fill the digital space.

The drivers of these causes have been the youth themselves and it speaks volumes about the consciousness of today’s generation to bring about perceptible change. The youth today are not just well-informed but definitely have the burning passion to make a difference in this platonic atmosphere.

A very young talented friend of mine called Jasvipul Chawla - a research scholar at IIT Bombay and a passionate photographer has captured the many moods of the youth in IIT (B) where a recent candle light vigil was held in support of Anna Hazare’s cause. He informs me that this was the first time in IIT(B) where such a protest was held to support a political cause. The following photographs are from his private collection.

His entire collection can be viewed at
http://www.me.iitb.ac.in/~jasvipul/IITBAgainstCorruption/

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The 'WONDER' of the world

Tidbits

It all started with a small conversation with my father as a young girl of ten, on my way back to the boarding school. Dreading that a new semester would begin and so would my saga of love & hate with books. I chose to brush aside the thoughts of studies for a while and enjoy the mischievous wind that seeped in through the car’s window and softly played with my messy hair. Driving through the curvy roads of Assam was a treat in itself! Just as I had started to relish the road trip,my father decided to burst my carefree bubble dream and said to me ‘we have just one life to live and thus we must work hard to make it a memorable journey.’ I turned my head down and softly whispered ‘I will try.’ It continued to stay with me.

With years I had undergone a series of changes. I welcomed every change in to my life with an open arm. I recall names from the pages of books in college - Marx, Plato and Aristotle seem to call out from a distant land. I had grown to be dainty little brat who detested family occasions, the stupid pseudo political discussion popular among Uncles. Family tagged me as the ‘Wild child’ but I couldn't care less. There was a ball of fire burning deep within me and it irritated me. Life looked like a giant roller-coaster, there were highs and lows. While ‘high’ points of life ensured peels of laughter, the ‘low’ points would grab and strangle me. Life looked wasted but time tossed me out of that phase and I was happy to be alive and kicking.

As individuals we all go through the dark phase from where life looks like a mere joke and curse the very existence of it. Crazy as it may sound but life is like a spider’s web - intriguing, meticulous, difficult yet attracting us towards it all the time. The sacred Hindu scriptures of ‘Bhagwad Gita' has a mention of something similar "Every day, men see creatures depart to Yama's (Death’s) abode and yet, those who remain seek to live forever. This is the greatest wonder of life."

I do not want to contest the truth about ‘Life and Death' as it can bring incalculable joy yet potentially be malignant. However, I do know that each day I want to wake up to see the sun rise, feel the dew beneath my bare feet, the lady-bird quietly rest itself on my palm and then see the night take the entire neighborhood into its fold. These little bubbles of happiness does not cloud out the fact that there might be times where life can smack you hard. Indeed a Wonder!!!

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The weight of a wait

Tidbits

While the weary sun quietly makes way for the blue cheek moon and while every single soul in the neighborhood takes to bed, I find myself wide awake. Amidst the murmuring darkness, beside my snoring spouse, I wait impatiently for the dawn to break. How do I express the emphatic and excruciating long wait for a mere game to begin. With just days to go, skipping heart beats and the brotherhood on social networks seem to be the order of the day. Everything else takes a back seat as I try to maintain my composure with a glass of wine! This wait makes so much sense and no sense at all.

I despise the game ever since there has been a flurry of sub-tournaments as they aptly say ‘too many cooks spoil the broth’. Players, pitches, ICC rankings, format everything looked a distant dream until ‘World Cup’ came along. So much has changed of the game with power-play & UDRS (Umpire Decision Review System), I wonder. My husband's animated discussion on strategies every other day leaves me bewildered and thoroughly confused and yet today I find myself impatiently tapping my fingers and counting days. This wait makes so much sense and no sense at all.

My body tells me to do a little jig yet I refrain from such child-like attitude. My heart calls upon on the color ‘Blue’ and I refrain. My lips quips ‘I am coming home’.

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As Spring prepares to sing!

Love / Tidbits

As Spring waits patiently outside to burst in to my living room, I am reminded of the warm happy days gone-by. As the fleet of Geese swing across the moody sky, I am reminded of the days when I swung across the room in glory as I read the love notes. As the sparrows chirp across my deck, I am reminded of the days I would endlessly chirp away in to the digital desk. As the trees prepare to adorn new colors, I am reminded of the endless but colorful trials at the boutique shops - shimmering diamonds and the yellow metals made me go weak in the knees, they draped me red, yellow, purple, blue and every color in the gorgeous rainbow. It was spring without a doubt!

They say with money comes independence and independent I was. They also say independence brings the power to make decision of one’s own life and thus I did - ‘No time for marriage’, I had declared. Skipped a city if I was bored of it and hopped to another if she allured me enough. In other words, I lived a very carefree life which encircled work, travels and friends until ‘Life’ happened to me.

Entry of ‘Life’ into my otherwise spinning world happened at an unexpected juncture. It surprised me at one time and amused me in another - I pinched and punched just to be sure if he was real. Every time I pinched ‘Life’ I would squeak and as I would take on to punch him another time, I was embraced by his warm arms. One led to the other and thus began the most beautiful sonnet of my life.

“It is a learning that I procured, marriage cannot happen if it is forced upon. It happens when you want it to happen”.

Probably, I am the nth woman on this blooming globe declaring the same sentiment but strange are the laws of nature before we know, we find ourselves standing at the aisle with gleaming beady eyes and a flashing smile. Till then, we keep twisting and turning like a spool of wool.

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More than Words ;-)

Internet / Social Media

It took me some time to start liking the entire gamut of digital communication. I still remember the day when my best friend Lesley had sent me an email way back in the year 2000 - I was not particularly very happy with it. Initially I could neither comprehend her expressions nor her excitement. I thought I could not relate to my friend. I wanted to read a hand-written mail from her (which usually took weeks before it reached me).Often I miss the personal touch of an ordinary mail post - little errors, the handwriting, customized pictographs and times when we exchanged dry flower petals, glittering stickers among dozens of other things.

However, thousand plus emoticons (for many), smileys or pictographs (for others) across the globe each day is trying its best to add the missing personalization in the ever growing digital communication environment. Today there are perfect emoticons to express the accurate feeling of an individual at any point of time. The first person documented to have used the emoticons “:-)” and “:-(“, with a specific suggestion that they be used to express emotion, was Scott Fahlman of Carnegie Mellon University on the 19th of September 1982. Thus began the beautiful and colorful story of emoticons.

As a matter of fact, my chats with friends and family or e-mails to them are rarely completed without the use of emoticons and I feel they play an important role in the digital communication world. Communications in the world of social media (IM, FB, Twitter etc...) are more often very informal and precise since we are always on the run! Yet, it is true that we are still missing out on one important aspect of communication today and that is two people hardly see each other face while communicating in the e-world. Making it difficult sometimes to understand whether the person was ‘serious’, ‘joking’ or being ‘sarcastic’. At this juncture an emotional avatar or emoticons would save further explanation.

There are creative artist like Pat Byrnes who have pushed the envelope of emoticons a little further and have dug deep in to the subject to recreate emotions which are human-like called Smurks! Smurks are available for iPhone and ipads which an individual can use for email, twitter, Facebook among others. Facebook chats have become more interesting ever since I stumbled upon several emoticons signage recently apart from Emoinstaller a free application which integrates into Facebook automatically and allows a FB user to choose from dozens of emoticons while chatting. The only thing I did was click on the download option. Fantastic, I say ;-)

After Internet took away the pleasure of receiving frequent snail mails from me, I absolutely do not mind in indulging in emoticon enabled communication over FB chat, Gtalk, Messenger and emails which are getting more human-like with each passing day. They add that dash of color, force the lips to break into a smile and makes the fingers click away in glory.

*Few more FB emoticons for reference :-)


1 :) 2 :( 3 :p 4 :D 5 :o 6 ;) 7 8) 8 8| 9 >:( 10 :/
11:’( 12 O:) 13 :* 14 <3 15 ^_^ 16 -_- 17 o.O 18 >:O 19 :v 20 :3
21 :|] 22 (^^^) 23 :putnam: 24 <(") 25 :42:

Happy discovering the Social Media fabric.

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Strength of a 'WOMAN'

Tidbits

A strong woman works out every day to keep her body in shape ...
but a woman of strength kneels in prayer to keep her soul in shape...

To be a woman is the most difficult proposition probably tougher than being Obama or Hu Jintao. It has always been tough being a woman since the inception of human civilization. Women have always played a critical role in the development of a Kingdom/State/Country - may it be Mariam-uz-Zamani (also Known as Jodha Bai) who played an integral role in the political affairs of Emperor Akbar’s court or First Lady Michelle Obama whose social campaigns have added to Obama administrations positive approval ratings. As a matter of fact, a close friend of mine who is married to an army captain in a candid confession mentioned that senior army officers appraise their juniors based on feedback received from their wives about the better half of their juniors officers’.

We celebrate a hundred years of Women’s day this year and reports suggest that we have grown from strength to strength each year. A recent study by the Bureau of Labor statistics (2011) show that women are the backbone of the U.S economy. A staggering Sixty percent of women are working while Forty-six percent form the labor force today.She is indeed not just a pretty face!


Lets face the truth - ‘She has the power to make the world go round’ but most of us do not realize this strength and even if we do some of us use it to degrade the gender. It is a very common discussion among peers that women use her sexuality to progress up the corporate ladder and thus leading to a widely held view that some of the women who have made it to the top may have taken the aid of their femininity to get there. An acquaintance of mine regrets certain decisions in his life and recalls how his ex-girlfriend (with poor working and language skills) used him as a resource to get an admission to an American University - he burnt his mid-night oil to write essays on her behalf, wrote recommendations for her. Unfortunately it does not just end there, she would constantly get her projects completed by him, only to realize later that she was cheating on him. Yikes! Wish such women were an exception.Danielle Chiesi is a perfect example of the breed which created waves in the investment world who was charged as part of the Galleon insider-trading ring. She used her sexuality to get insider trading information and pass it onto Raj Rajaratnam (Sri-lankan born American who founded the Galleon group -a New York based hedge fund management firm). At this juncture I am reminded what Mae West said “There are no good girls gone wrong - just bad girls found out”.

Women are the foundation of every household,society and a nation. A society would develop manifolds if such women could learn to keep their soul in place. We have the strength to rise above all challenges, we are more t

han just a pretty thing. As women we should uphold the integrity of being a woman. As women, we have taught the world over centuries to have patience, derive strength from our weaknesses, to adhere by and exceed ethical standards of where we work, study or live.

I feel blessed to be born as a woman and sometimes wish that God had not trusted me so much. As they say with ‘Great powers come great responsibility’.

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Home is where the heart is ....

Family / Home Science / Love / Travel

I was born in a dynamic state called ‘Nagaland’ and it was my abode - my home. Home - where I would come to find my mother cook delicious delicacies, where I was surrounded by my friends, where I always ran away from our two gigantic German Shepard but spoke endlessly to my bunny friend and would spend hours wondering ‘Why doesn't my red nose parrot utter a word?’ also loved every time our dog hunted down our irritating neighbour’s chicken! Home sweet home :-) siggggghhh

As time progressed, I was sealed and parceled to a residential school in India at the age of seven where I went on to spend most of my ‘growing-up’ years amidst the Himalayan ranges, lush Tea gardens, friends and more friends. I never really missed home rather I would miss my hostel - I would miss the endless gossip, miss breaking rules, miss bunking classes. Little did I know that it had become a part of my life, a part so intrinsic only to realize it when it was time to say Adiós! Thereafter, I went on to live in several parts of India either for education or for work. Each destination is still close to me and they were home to me in their own right.

As famous as Mother Teresa who was born in Macedonia yet she adopted Calcutta as her home. As a matter of fact, she never went back to visit her family after she left them at the age of eighteen in the year 1928 or for that matter Body builder, Actor and Politician Arnold Schwarzenegger. He was born in Austria and spent a good twenty one years in Austria but later chose to move to USA and adopted America as his home so much so that he went on to serve as the Governor of California from 2003 - Jan 2011. His love is evident when he said “Everything I have, my career, my success, my family, I owe to America.”

I have a friend who grew up in Bombay and Calcutta (in equal parts) but just like millions and zillions of people around the globe, higher education took him to Germany and now for an assignment in America. While chatting with him the other day, he expressed that he is eagerly waiting to return Home - Germany.  He misses the place, the strong european culture, his friends and everything that spells and smells Germany without dismissing his old love Bombay & Calcutta in no particular order.

The Oxford dictionary explains ‘Home’ as ‘the place where one lives in permanently’ but the day and age that we live in today, I wonder can there ever be a place where we could continue to live permanently? A close acquaintance of ours probably in her sixties or seventies (she keeps me guessing her age all the time) have sold their home which has been her abode for years and will be moving to Minneapolis to be closer to her son and grandchildren and is absolutely thrilled to do so. History stands witness that there was never a thing that was permanent or ever will be and the term is only relative.

We hop cities, adopt countries/state as home because of Love. We are emotional social animals and we will do everything possible to be loved. Home does not signify which countries passport you might hold neither does it signify the concrete palace that you may have lived in or the cars parked outside. Home is about people with whom you may want to share your every Milli-second and never regret about any sacrifices that you may have made.

Home is where your heart is!

Amen.   

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Social Media or an Ocean??

Internet / Media / Social Media

Social Media is truly the next big thing....some years back my life on the world wide web was just Google, Gmail, Gtalk and slowly it advanced to Orkut then to Facebook...so much so I have learnt more from Faceboook than the Google search engine as a matter of fact I am continuously exchanging ideas discussing different hobbies, social activities more than ever...such is the development that I feel that each day we are shifting our life in to the digital world.
Twitter brought a new flutter in to my world...I follow dozens across the world (celebrities, new reporters, Tv channels, production houses etc) and there are dozens following me back....every bit of it is exciting...its as if I am the first to know...I know what the world is talking, who is the talk of the town and all the other jazz before it even hits the news channels or news paper. While blogging became a part of my everyday diary...new Google profiles promises me to keep me on top of its search optimization....Old professional friend Linkedin indeed helps me keep my networking going...evergreen Picassa always brings a smile to me and so does Flickr....Now I chanced upon Twitlonger - perfect platform for chatterbox like me!
The more I learn about Social Media and it only feels like a tiny droplet in the ocean.

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Rarest of all places...

Family / Travel

The world wide web is thriving with innumerable sites on travel, tourism, ‘must visit’ destination, honeymoon destination, family vacation spots among others. And it is certain, we are not bored of them and neither will we ever get bored of travel blogs or sites. It is a basic nature of every human being to keep exploring new places. Thus our fingers keeps clicking on the keyboard in quest to find a place that no one has ever heard of  or been to. Maybe the need to search and conquer new worlds has something to do with our ancestors from the prehistoric times who always moved on to fresher pastures to search for richer food sources. Though, I live in a time where every place on the face of this earth might have been discovered, every tiny curve measured, every mood of the sun captured and yet there is a tiny little hope that there is a place waiting to be discovered just by me.

Calcutta (as I have always known) is not a new place for me, it is my hometown. Friends, Coffee House, Nandan, Outram Ghat, Baul music, farmhouse picnics, endless adda (chats),cigarettes and tea in earthen pots are few of the adjectives that describes life as a single college student in Calcutta for me. A life free of all strings, completely vagabond*, rebellious, a wonderland, must have a political opinion, brash language were significant to my existence in Calcutta as a young twenty something. However, higher education pulled me out of my city of joy and for years I stayed away from her. And as I moved from city to city, I never really forgot her nor did I terribly miss her. Eventually, I returned as young engaged working woman but she looked different to me this time. The evenings looked dreamy, Flurys and Peter Cat flattered me, boat rides at the Outram Ghat spelt magic. There was definitely a spring in every step  and the sky was painted in a beautiful pink just like a marsh-mellow, in other words the rebellious nature of the city was replaced by romanticism. It felt like wine and I had no complains!

Interestingly, while it is true that we love traveling and that every individual yearns to travel around the globe, it is also a fact that more often than not we have been accompanied by someone or the other thus making the place of visit special. It is so intriguing to me that how a place can behave in a different mood each time we make a visit to that particular place. As if it was a woman sometime ago dressed in a gorgeous glittering gold dress blowing kisses in the air while on some other occasion  it was a man with rigid rules and regulations. Thus, the person accompanying becomes an important aspect while exploring new places or should I say that we will continue to discover the unknown in known as long as we have the people we love with us. Happy discovering :-)

Do share your experience about people and places with me.

* Vagabond

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Globalization

Research

There are thousands of odd people in America like me who have quit a lucrative career back in their homeland to accompany their beloved...enclosed below is a small piece on the same by me (Rita Chowdhury is my maiden name)...this world is a very beautiful place, every step you take and you find different people who speak differently, have different habits, have different faith but we are one human race! We have to learn to live in harmony together and rise above all challenges and that’s life, that’s Globalization :-)

Beyond the Horizon: My first steps in America

The world is shrinking at an amazing rate as if there is a wacky miniaturization machine working just as in the movie “Honey, I Shrunk the Kids”. Experts call it Globalization, Global village and many more terminologies some of which I am yet to discover. Due to this very exact phenomenon, people are now more connected to each other. Being connected is no longer restricted to knowing the whereabouts of near and dear ones but also knowing about the intimate details of each others lives. As creepy as this may sound, we cannot deny the fact that today's world is truly a global village.

Please click on the link below to read the complete article:

http://prevolutionblog.com/beyond-horizon-my-first-steps-america/

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The keys to Heaven

Family / Tidbits

Every time I call home, I always seem to be bombarded by the same set of questions - “How am I managing the household chores on my own?” “Did I burn my fingers while cooking?” “Have I made friends?” and so many more questions that do not even register in my brain. Now that I am actually writing these things in words, I wonder - is there some sort of question bank booklets that are available in the market for folks back in India? Am I posed with these questions since I live far away from the dotting eyes of my in-laws and folks? Whatever, the reason may be but I am always put under the testing grill!

It was one of those days, when I called home and my brain was jammed with all the questions that I was asked. However, I thought I must get on with my chores of the day - so I picked my laundry basket, keys to the cleaner room, told my husband that I was locking him in the apartment since he was in the shower and headed straight for the cleaners downstairs. Once in the cleaners, I dumped all the clothes in to the washer and then I realized that I did not have the ‘detergent liquid’ with me. So I ran out and climbed two flights of staircases, then it suddenly struck me I would not be able to enter the apartment without the keys since I had very conveniently forgotten the keys in the cleaner room. Hence, I ran down only to realize that the doors to the cleaners needed the same set of keys to unlock it which I had very smartly left it inside the cleaners!!! YES, you read it right - I had left the key set in the cleaner room and at the same time I had locked my husband (who was in the shower) up in the apartment and to add to the misery - I was not carrying my cellphone either. WOWW....I am genius!  I chose to blame the phone-call to India for the mishap. I had taken a mental note that I shall never call home till I was over with my household chores.

Nevertheless, I knocked a number of times on the door of our apartment but it was evident that my husband chose that particular miraculous day for a ‘Royal’ shower! I was clueless, do I wait outside the cleaners room or scream for help? I could not spot even one soul at any of the corridors - why would I? It was minus twenty something degrees Celsius and everyone was inside their respective cosy apartment while I stood at the corridor outside the cleaners alone though not freezing yet not cosy enough :-(. AWESOME!

Without wasting another minute, I knocked at one of the apartment door on the first floor, no one answered. It was getting embarrassing for me by now but I chose to try one last time and this time I knocked at apartment # 2, ground floor bang opposite to the cleaners. It was a strategic decision since there was a possibility that apartments furthest away may not believe my story and instead call 911! The mere thought scared me and I certainly did not want myself to run in to any further adventures. I did a very tiny but an honest prayer that someone should open the door and not shoo me away. There were so many thoughts that ran through my mind. It was more like a jungle with all the restless monkeys, elephants and so many other animals. In short, it was a live discovery channel running inside my little brain.

One minute felt like forever, but when the lady did answer - it was like God had opened the doors to heaven! I am not joking :-) She was indeed my life saviour. However, the best part was when I returned back to my apartment, my beloved husband was still in the bathtub taking a ‘Royal Plunge’ oblivious to the blizzard that ran past me!

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