Something about life

What happens when you decide upon a deadline and don't meet it? In some cases, you might even die or cause deaths and destructions. Fortunately, a little punishment would be enough in this case. It is the fourth day from the last blog post. I did what I am best at doing. Procrastinating! But I cannot abandon this thread. It is way more personal than any of you can imagine. In fact, it is way more personal than I would ever mention aloud. Twist in the story is, this particularly incident is not what I witnessed, but in my defence, I heard it straight from horse's mouth. It took place in Jodhpur, my very own sun city. It resurfaced day before while working in kitchen on an omlette. In the year 1999, The Lonely Planet listed a small shop from Jodhpur as the "The omlette shop". Cheap price, quality and the element of surprise made the man behind the counter a superstar and his business boomed after it. So much so, that he scrapped everything else off his men...

Blame it on poor health, but having not left the house for many days deprives you of many things. These stories I intend to write are one of them.  It's been almost two weeks now that I am house arrested for this terrible lung infection I have. I always wanted a vacation, just not of this kind. And for the promise I made to myself, I had to dig up stories from past. Well, the thread must go on! Another incident which knocked at my door last week is related to my household help. She seems to be in her late thirties going by the stories she has told me. To the naive eyes, she won't look a day older than 25. A mother of four, and a wife of a construction worker she has a lot going on in her life. She is unlike some of the people I came across from her trade. I, along with many Indian ladies, have had both good and bad experience in terms of house helps. They can at times be pain in neck. But if there is some good karma in your kitty, you would find one who is nice. My karm...

As promised, I woke up this morning with the determination to write for this new thread. There was an incident playing at the back of my mind since last few days and I wanted it to be the opener. There is a middle tier vegetable vendor in my society market. Now if you are residing or have resided in India, and I am not counting the tourists in, you would know what I am talking about. This guy has a fixed place to operate, a land line telephone connection which helps him home delivering the orders and customised bills which he uses more as a visiting card than for its usual purpose. No, he does not go out handing it over to people on street, he just hands over one if you would want to order something over phone the next time.   We have all heard our share of stories to know that he is not really going through a financial crisis of any sort. And we know better than to look down at people like these. After all, at times their daily income is much more than what we earn sitting i...

So after failing royally at much talked about hundred days challenges, I decided that things that shallow are not for me. Call that sour grapes, for that is what it is. I decided to come up with something original. Few things which I had improvised and adapted had given me much pleasure and positivity that I decided to keep getting "inspired" and taking credit for it. For example, the idea of making someone happy in my version was, to pay an honest compliment to someone who is not expecting it. Now that of course had certain conditions attached with it. The compliment need not be a ground breaking one, "nice dress", "I like your hair colour" would suffice. But it should be meant and sound genuine. It worked! Now I don't know if people have cracked interviews or have saved lives just because I paid them a compliment in the morning, but it worked in my favour a lot many times. For example, the Janitor on Sydney airport who took all the trouble to f...