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Doctors have become such an important part of our lives, that we are controlled by the them and medicines. How many of us can claim that we have not been to a doctor for the past 6months? Not many can say so. If you are one of them, then you do have grand parents at home. I remember some cases from my family, where my grandma had the solutions. But noone heeded, coz she was not a certified practitioner! Once a cousin of mine had eye problem and she was planning to visit the doc. My granny suggested her simple exercises which can be done as part of daily routine. She asked my cousin to clean dal or rice using a sieve and to draw Rangoli which would require bending. But my cousin ignored and went to the doc. In the evening what do we see, she had picked up some small pebbles and marbles and had thrown them on the ground and was picking them one by one!! This was the exercise which the doc suggested. How different was it from what granny said? More over she had paid Rs.800 to get this a...

14-Feb-2016. It's Valentines Day yet again. As I sit and watch TV, I'm taken back to my childhood. The days of innocence. If you liked someone, it was enough that you are able to see that person every day. There was no need to convey your feelings. If, fortunately, the feelings are reciprocated, even then it was enough that you see and talk to that person. For most of my friends in similar situation, it was the same case. Then SRK happened. He made love more cute. But even then, it was all about silent glances, simple smiles and simple talks. Holding hand was a taboo. Next came Friendship band craze. So all the 'love lorn' people took a back step and learnt to make Friends with their Crushes, before taking the next step. Again thanks to SRK!! So our love guru, then taught our generation the next major lesson -Valentines Day. And that you have to gift a Chocolate and a Red rose and may be a cute card( cards were mostly avoided since one can't take it home). Noth...

Rabindranath Tagore's short stories are very famous. I'm currently reading one such set. In one of the stories, he mentions about a boy whose grand mother tells him stories. And these stories began with the standard 'Once upon a time there was a King', and the kid used to enjoy the story. But, Tagore has rightly pointed out in the story that the future generation is not an easy to be fooled one. Stories cannot be just 'spun' the way they used to be. If one begins with 'Once upon a time there was a King' , questions would be popped up. Which year, what was the name of the King, What is the new name of the Kingdom he used to have and many more. Neither can your story have a Castle of Chocolates and Ice creams, coz the kids know that buildings are made of Brick, Cement, Mortar..Blah blah.. I grew up on my granny's stories and some of those stories, I try to pass on to the kids in my family. Once I was telling a story about a boy, who ate a poisonous ...

I just completed reading The Namesake by Jhuma Lahiri. A very nicely written book. Relations are portrayed beautifully. But what caught my attention was the concept behind nick names. In North India its common to have Nick names like monu,sonu, guddi, etc. In South India, you may have multiple names, but all the names will be meaningful ones. For e.g., Sita is the name given by elders, in school she will be Gayatri. But in Bengalis, it is a custom to have a bhalo naam and a daak naam. Bhalo naam is the formal name by which one would be known in school or college or office. Daak naam is the pet name ones family keeps. Selecting this pet name in itself is a task. And these names are weird, Bulty, Rumi, Budi and so on. But there lies a deeper meaning to this tradition. These names are meant to make one realize that life is not always serious, life is not just about struggle, life is not just about running for survival. Life at times is just for one self. Life is sweet cute and meanin...

Story of my Origin - born Tamilian, celebrated my first birthday in Kerala, spent rest of 15 years in NCR, next 9 years were spent in Karnataka, married to a Malayali and back to NCR. This not only makes me multi cultured, but also multilingual. I'm good with Tamil, Malayalam, Kannada, Telugu and Hindi. So are my parents. Now this capability has also landed us many a times in a funny situation. To state some of them, when my mother had just began learning Hindi, she used to goto super market and ask for Moti(pearl) instead of Methi. My granny had a great broken Hindi vocabulary. Once she went on a rikshaw and udhar jao was the only words she used in giving directions, every now and then poking rikshaw puller's back. Granny dear's Hindi was responsible for driving away 3 of our maids. My dad till date has a confusion on 'main, hum,tu,aap'. Once a colleague of his asked him where their boss was, my dad being an expert in Hindi (or so he thought) said hum aagaye ,pa...

Most of the work we do has a common attribute that it is both 'art n science'. But I learnt it post marriage that even cutting of vegetables involves art and science. Before marriage my visits to the land of vegetables and spices was limited to demanding mom to make something to satisfy my taste buds. Then there were some days when mom was not well, so me and dad took over her department. But instead of kitchen, it ended up becoming a laboratory with all sorts of combination of spices and vegetables. I guess instead of getting better, my mom must have felt insecure leaving her kingdom in hands of paupers. Cutting of vegetables was never a big deal for us. It was quick and we considered it to be a no brainer task. Post marriage my MIL asked me to cut vegetables. So here I was, cutting the vegetables. My MIL must have seen it more like slaughter. She saw my work and simply smiled and went back to work. Mothers are born teachers. My MIL is no different. She taught me that the ...

1-Jan-2016 New Year's eve. Our home was bustling with laughter and chit chat. Our cousins had come down and we were discussing good old days. Eldest of us started telling the kids (next gen) about how we used to celebrate New year during our childhood. In sometime, we had our dinner. The food tasted so good. Then we started playing charades and Antakshari . Every now and then someone would come up with an anecdote about someone in the family and it triggered a series of stories. It was nearing 12 and we were all sitting together singing some of our favorite songs. And then the countdown began. Party popper, cake, lights all set and then 'Happy New Year' in unison. Photo session, cake smearing and a bit of eating and then back to talking talking and talking. Everything was perfect and I was loving every moment of it. But there was something which was silently watching all this. Something which probably felt left out. And yes I'm happy we had ignored it. I had a Happy...