Life - or something like it

After I wrote the post My experiments with infertility where I lay bare my soul, I received a lot of support from all you dear friends who read my blog. I would like to thank each one of you for being so kind to me in this difficult time. Your emails, messages, texts and calls have given me strength to carry on, thank you. Many people congratulated me for being brave to have  written  about how am dealing with infertility. I believe that just like people who have a hole in their heart or suffer from diabetes, infertility is a disease and there is nothing to be ashamed of being infertile. In 2009,WHO (World Health Organisation) has defined ‘Infertility’ as a disease. This is not self inflicted and can happen to anybody. Why do then people feel ashamed of talking about it? After reading my post, some friends felt sorry for me and others had an instant advice ‘Have you thought of adoption? ‘. This question makes be furious . Instead of asking me, how I am coping, people ha...

‘Unch Maza Zoka’ loosely translated as ‘My swing will touch the sky’ is a Marathi television series based on the life of ‘ Ramabai Ranade’ . The series deals with her life and that of her husband 'Justice Madhav Govind Ranade’ who was a reformer and the founding member of Indian National Congress. Ramabai was married at the age of eleven to Madhav Ranade who was 32 and had lost his first wife to illness. Ramabai was illiterate when she married Justice Ranade who helped her to learn how to read and write. In spite of their age difference, there was a camaraderie between them and Ramabai was thoroughly inspired by Justice Ranade. He was highly educated and strived his whole life to remove the social evils that existed in the society. He was against untouchability, the practice of sati and child marriage and sponsored the first widow marriage. He was a strong advocate of women’s right to education. Ramabai herself is  shown to be very enthusiastic and dedicated to learning. The...

These past few years have changed me as a person. I was someone, who could talk a lot and have a conversation with anyone, on any topic. But now, I am unsure about making conversations and try to listen more rather than speak. In this entire process of learning to listen more and speak less, I came across a lot of specimens who had some distinct qualities that could be neatly categorised into sections. I too have been a part of some categories at one point of time and so can easily identify the symptoms that plague them. They  all practice the art of listening at different levels. You too can easily identify them, they are all around us. 1) The Motor Mouth : This class of people can be identified by the endless talk coming out of their mouth. They have a perpetual verbal diarrhoea and cannot keep from talking on all topics right from their cat to their cousin’s aunt’s nephew’s neighbour. They don’t even take a pause to breathe and can comfortably keep talking for hours at end....

Her wrinkled face and hazy eyes look out wistfully at passersby as she sits on the dusty pavement. Her nine yards 'Saree' is draped over her head and a few glass bangles tinkle as she raises her palm to catch the coin dropped in her palm by someone who has taken pity on her state. The old beggar woman sits there everyday  in the same place, her cloudy eyes searching for a loving face, in this fast moving world. I have seen her everyday for the past 20 days. She sits outside the building where my driving school is based, with the look of resignation and helplessness in those milky eyes. Some days I drop a few coins in her hand and other days I get her Bananas and other soft fruit which she can eat with her toothless mouth. In the hustle and bustle of life, not many of us stop and think of people like the beggar woman. A few coins dropped in needy hands takes care of the guilt and we forget them on our way to better and brighter things. For most of us, they are a part of th...

How many kids do you have? Arre married for long and no kids? You don’t want kids? It is time you both  started a family. When are you planning to have kids? Planning chodo and now have a child. My husband and I have faced this litany of questions all the years we have been married. Most of the times these questions are asked by family and friends, and at other times by nosy busy bodies who have too much interest in other people’s lives. I had been thinking of writing this post for many days now,but always stopped as I did not know how my family will react to this post. I finally gathered the strength to write the post, for all the people who have been in my place and have had to struggle with the agonising fact that they will never be able to have their own biological child/children. Writing this post has acted as catharsis for me. After 12 years of marriage, I had to face this brutal truth. I had to undergo a battery of tests and procedures over a period of two years w...

It was one of those blustery monsoon days when the Mumbai rain has washed away the filth on the road and the leaves on trees look bright and green as if freshly painted. It had been raining persistently the whole week and the road in front of our building was flooded with water. It had rained a lot and the sewers were over flowing with the downpour. We had some friends visiting us and all of us had just finished our breakfast. The rain had let up for a while so it was relatively quiet. In this quiet, we heard the howling of a dog. Initially, we ignored it and were sitting around chatting when the howling became louder and did not stop. I called up the security guard and found that a dog was trapped in one of the drain pipes near the gate of our building, who was creating this ruckus. On further inquiry, we came to know that it was a small dog who got swept in the drain with the rain water rain who is now lost and scared. I immediately fired up my laptop to search ...

  Well! Well! look who is out of hibernation. I know all of you must be shaking your head and tch tching at my sudden appearance. Not believing one bit that I will stick around for long. Believe me, this time I intend to do so. To tell you the truth, I have been caught up in work and have also been a wee bit lazy about Blogging. On the personal front, life was as chaotic as cyclone Thane making me go blue in the face, followed by long stretches of absolutely not doing anything. I spent that time just catching my breath and trying to resemble an actual Polar bear. As you can see from my blog I am a total movie buff. I spent a sufficient chunk of  time watching movies in movie theatres that too alone, as my better half is happy as a bear taking a snooze cozied up in bed rather than sitting in front of a screen. What he does not know is that after I die, I am sure to come and haunt him and sing horrible movie songs. The operative word is horrible songs and not sing horribly...