Never failing!

On a day to day basis, a lot of things disappoint me - not that I am hard to please, may be a little I am, LOL, but when my hubby doesn't call if he is getting later than the time he mentioned or when Aarti wants to go on a Telly marathon I get it - disappointment - loud and clear. Now, there are things that never disappoint me - like A R Rahman's music. His music always makes me feel better, livelier and happier. Just the other day, when the slow, solo number Dheemi Dheemi in Deepa Mehta's 1947 Earth (performed by Hariharan) was playing in Santu's car stereo, I gazed out of the window and found the otherwise mundane and blah looking hills covered with dried grass very very beautiful. I almost felt a dopamine kind of surge that is associated with being in love. I was relaxed, happy and strangely content at the end of a jam-packed, monotonous day. All due to a random Rahman composition. The song, along with unexplainable joy bought with it a series of reminiscences - The way I listened to the album on repeat whole day when it debuted and the way Rahul Khanna swept my world off my feet with his charm and good looks and the way the lyrics and the rendering of the lyrics made me feel perpetually in the feeling of realising being in love.
I had to dissect the experience in my usual signature way and I pondered over the lyrics. They say that 'Your body is a sensual and soft smell, and when you are near me, how can my heart not get enticed??' Okay - this is a loose translation, kind of like a 'think aloud' admiration of how well the physical attraction of a courtship amalgamates with the emotional attachment to a person. Curiosity led me to check out how the song was pictured. It was the usual, no frill, artsy Deepa Mehta way where Nandita Das and Rahul Khanna (sigh) ride doubles on a bicycle in what seems to be an endless journey thru blah surroundings. In my own imagination, I envisioned a slow motioned run of the Heroine thru the woods while the Hero sits on the grass gaping admiringly at her. May be a Johar or a Chopra would have done justice to the hopelessly romantic number - and no offense to the realistic Mehta style.
Anyway, I just seem to have realised that a physical aspect to a man woman attraction is almost like the soul of a relationship. Is it not this extra element that distinguishes our relationships with our friends/siblings from that of our loves?? And to celebrate it, we have the likes of Rahman, Akthar and Bhansali. If you want to feel a soul stirring joy, listen to the song - I promise - it won't disappoint!

Balderdash in the attempt of rhyming.

I love fresh flowers in my vase
And my daugher's warm embrace.
I love painting my finger nails
and Department store sales.
Sales that have steep discounts
So that they don't empty honey's bank accounts.

I love well made meals.
And sparkly high hells.
Birds in my backyard make my day
they fly in to fly my blues away.
The Telly brings its happiness too
While I watch the re-run of Friends
And my kiddo watches Winnie the pooh!


I like smiles on faces
and meeting people in new places.
Travelling I love as well
as long as there is no farewell
That needs to be said to new found friends
when the joyful journey ends.


I love singing songs
writing poems and sing alongs.
My blog, I like scribbling here
As much as it might appear.
But one thing makes me as glad as can be
Whether you agree or disagree -
I like your comments
So keep them coming
and I shall find more things I love
In the process of a writer becoming!

ROFLOL.

It's late night and I obviously need sleep:=))

All I want.

I tucked away the baby tooth
Wrapped in a tissue
Under my pillow.
And made a wish, not for money!

The fallen eyelash
Was collected with care
Placed on my left hand
And blown away gently -
I made a wish, not for fortune.

The rainbow appeared pretty and bright
I made a wish as I shut my eyes tight
Not for a name, not for Fame.

Each year till I grew up
Old enough and impure too -
I wrote a note and made a wish
For Santa to deliver on Christmas eve.
I wished not for toys or gifts

As I blew out the birthday candles
And counted my years and blessings
I made a wish - but not for jewels
Or cars or vacations.

The shooting stars appear now and then
Prompting me and tempting me
With a promise that my wish be granted
And so I wish, but not for success.

I wish upon everything wishable
I wish I wish with all my heart
Not for Gold, nor silver too -
All I want is simple and true
It's love and laughter and being with you!

The fairer sex, the weaker Sex!!

I have a obsessive compulsive disorder - of following the copy and jingles of TV commercials. As a kid I used to sing for an audience in my class, the now obliterated Cadbury's Dollops Ice cream commercial. "Say Lops" - it goes and ends up in a sexy male voice concluding "Don't just say ice cream - say Lops" LOL

Recently another jingle for Walmart caught my ear. A husky female voice sings


- How lovely to be a woman
The wait was well worth while
How lovely to wear mascara
And smile a woman's smile -

while the focus lies on women of all ages applying makeup and choosing from the brands at Walmart. Indeed, I realize!, that it is lovely to be a woman. To have endless options in dressing, accessorizing and making faces up while the males around us can at the most have options for their laptop bags, dress shoes that come in shades of brown and black and probably sunglasses and wrist watches. The fairer sex seems to have a royal treatment in this department - the getting dressed department. But as I sing the catchy tune of walmart commercial while stirring the streamed rice, I realised that being a woman is not always lovely, or about wearing mascara or even smiling - since being a woman can be a vulnerability that can be exploited. A pain than can be excruciating depending on what part of the world you are fortunate or unfortunate enough to have taken birth in.

Consider genocidal Darfur for instance, where rape is used as a weapon to terrorize women and entire communities. Sadly enough, no woman or girl is safe there, or some of the male dominated countries where women are more of wall flowers or door mats or meagre channels of having male heirs. Sadly enough, the instinct to look at women as objects to satiate sexual hunger is predominant in all cultures and countries. It is still unsafe for women to travel alone after a certain time of night, no matter where she lives. Women are looked down upon as sexual objects and not as human beings.Birth of girl children is mourned - All this in the current day and age, very very sadly.

As I ponder about how much fun a woman has shopping for shoes and handbags, I wonder how many women out there actually walk miles bare feet and lead lives without ever knowing that they could have their own handbags to carry their money. On one hand I see the four friends in Sex and the city, living empowered lives and looking for love and lust in the big Apple and on the other I read about sexually assaulted underage girls in Godforsaken places like Darfur. While I feel extremely fortunate and blessed to have the privilege to think my thoughts and live my life on my terms and not on the man's that I am married to, I feel the necessity to reach out and give something to the other human beings of my sex. Please make a difference - donate to educate a girl child at www.ashanet.org or to one of those UN relief camps in Sudan or just think of dropping off your outgrown wardrobe at a local abused woman shelter. Reach out and help and then putting on mascara or wearing stilettos becomes optional, since feeling good is the beginning of being beautiful.

Baba, the Blog Baba...

Mr. Amithab Bachchan, the man himself and my Blog idol and Blogbaba - as I fondly call him replied to my comments to his 506th post, two of them actually, that I posted on the same date - comments to his 506th post on september 9th 09.

laxmi addanki says:
September 9, 2009 at 10:02 pm
Blogbaba -
Been waiting for this since your last post

Much love
L addanki.


ab says:
September 10, 2009 at 5:22 pm
waiting for what .. another post well here it is …



laxmi addanki says:
September 9, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Don’t fret about the Urban Legend history of stanford Blogbaba - Sometimes the underlying message is more important than whether it is a fact or a fiction. Our elders tell us lots of stories - we get the message but dont really bother to check whether thier anecdotes are facts or fiction. Sometimes we derive more pleasure in finding other’s mistakes than our own. LOL. When you call us your family, the need to explain your genuine mistakes ceases.

Your messages are always precious. I cant get enough of them.

Luv
L addanki.



ab says:
September 10, 2009 at 5:30 pm
thank you yes .. it is good to read the good even if there is error

Priceless.

These daily cares
Newspapers and junk mail
Cluttering the crevices of the house
Piles of dirty dishes
Deshelved toys and craft supplies
Needing to be picked hour after hour
Meals to be cooked
Beds to be made
Heaps of clothes filling the hampers
Calls to be answered
Mails to be replied to
Barthday parties, weddings, baby showers
Countdown for weekends
Planned trips
Strolls in the parks
Playing the first teacher to kids
Cleaning the countertops
while hating the grout
Scrubbing the toilet bowls
Vaccuming the carpets
Not even mentioning
The dusting, the mopping, the shopping and chopping.
Who says a home maker doesn't work?
She just doesn't get paid for it!!

Seventeen Dresses

Red and yellow
On a creme background
Definitely a frock
Perhaps a butterfly print
Young enough not to remember in detail
Just old enough to remember.

I thought I had this in
Till a moment ago,
Now my grey cells need some boost.
May be I shall come back
Once the memory does.

A chocolate brown skirt
with tiny flowers
Really tiny.
A creme shirt
With a collar??

Navy blue satin
Piped with off white
Cut into an umbrella pattern.
White shirt with pin stipes
Birthdays were a perpetual countdown
and loads of fun!


This one's a traditional number
Aquamarine garden silk
With self brocade
in endless frills
the perfect long skirt
with a monochromatic blouse.


Dress again - in a pale olive print
with a black contrast yoke
and pin tuck detail.


A very unusual lavender
with blue orchid kind of flowers
A mock over coat
and a crisscross thread across the chest.

This one blanks out too..
Just blanks out.
Shall come back once it unblanks:-)

The most glamorous one of all
and may be the costliest
a jeans skirt with suspenders
and a cherry red blouse
I remember being called
Princess Diana!

Fuchsia skirt
With a black and Fuchsia top.
Mandarin collar
cute as a button.

Navy blue again,
this time a kurta and salwar
15th it was
proud and tall.


Sweet sixteen
in an over flowing hot pink number
traditional, modern
utterly 90s.
Geeky, gaudy
Hopefully pretty!


purple Georgette
The color of cadbury's dairy milk
Painstakingly smocked
one of a kind
Made me feel as delicious
as the chocolate itself.


Eighteen - coming of age
well almost
In a yellow silk saree
with a hot pink detail
And gold border.
light as a feather
Proud as a lion
young, alive
and full of promise.

Nineteen in an understated
Khadi cotton salwar kameez
with kutch work detail
black on whitish grey
The taste, the personality
and the person evolving.

Twenty came with a
tobacco hued outfit.
tone on tone
as sophisticate as it could get
expensive and utterly delightful
and that should sum up the seventeen dresses.

Reformer

When you and I were busy
Counting our monies
Fighting our ego battles
And scheming our ploys
He felt the plight
And the pain
Of a virgin widow -
A little girl yet to celebrate her first decade
That had her head shaved
And covered with a white shroud like muslin veil
Mourning the death of an unknown husband
That could have been her granddad.
He raised his voice
And steered his conviction
To make a difference.

When you and I
Were educating ourselves
To equip our lives with degrees
To feed our little tummies
He thought about us as humans
Surpassing color and creed
And fought our wars
For a world
Where We'd be judged by the content of our character
And not by the color of our skin.

When you and I were fooling around
living our childhoods and adolescence
In flying kites and dreaming about crushes
He stood up for our freedom
With non-violence as a weapon
And bared his chest
To bullets of hatred
And shed his blood
For a free nation.

They lived their lives
Like they were not theirs
But ours.
They fought, they thought beyond themselves.
They come and go in all places and nations
Like guardian angels
Like Knights in shining armours
To make fairy tales out of our selfish lives.
They walk on our earth like beacons of hope
They reform.
You and I rejoice.

Mystical

I walk on endless expanse of silver sands
That unfold before me like dreams
Creeping into a relaxed being's slumber
Creating and recreating infinite images
Happy, sad, mystical and magical.

The weightless froth embraces my feet
And licks my toes, stinging me
With its electric cold fangs
Much like the pain of a saddened vision
That penetrates into an innocent snooze
In the form of those endless images.

The waves overlap one another
Confusing me with their endlessness
I falter to gather
Which one begins and which one ends.
Thoughts come and go
Like those vicious waves
Dazed, I look around
not knowing where to start - or to stop.
Thoughts - like waves, like their froth
And the sand that surrounds them.
Everlasting,
In an ironical existence
That shall perish.

Closing doors.

I visited the website Illuminations.com this afternoon to see what is left of my favourite business after our local store at the plaza was closed. The website said that it was thankful of my interest in their brand but with the recent economic uncertainties, they had to make the difficult decision of closing their doors forever. Strange as it might sound, I felt a weird sadness creep in though it had been a while since I grew out of the Illuminations shopping syndrome.

As a young bride and home owner, Illuminations seemed to be an alter ego to my off beat taste. I found the whole philosophy, product range and great customer service very attractive. I used to follow their sale patterns and buy loads of sconces, candles and other unique knick knacks. Lot of my friends used to ask me about my shopping finds and I'd slowly and surely acquired the status of an interior decorator in my own right. The candlescapes and the accessories the store carried were like none other and they inspired me endlessly to build my own creativity around what the store had to offer. Later on when I shifted focus form being a homeowner to a mom, I weaned off my Illuminations habit, but every time I was in the mall, I used to go to the store and check out their cool interiors and always desire to make my home smell like their shop. In a way, Illuminations helped me find my own voice, expression and aesthetics and spread its fame far and wide when I made it a point to gift their startlingly life like floating candles (often shaped like flowers and leaves) to my mom and aunts. Even to this day, I pride my collection of candles shaped like slices of watermelons and fall leaves. Now that I might not be able to replace them, I am sure I'll cherish them a little more.

As I ponder further I realise that closing doors is more like losing something more than a lucrative business. Just like Illuminations came to represent a lot more than a brick and mortar store, many businesses that find form out of some one's vision and passion, are more like human beings than money churning ideas. When I was a teenager, my family had to take a difficult decision to shut down the local newspaper our family owned. I knew from the day it took form, that it was my dad's way of realising his love for writing, journalism and making a difference in a little way than to make money out of advertisements and subscriptions. True to his passion, he ran the paper more like a charity than a business and at some point, the costs raised and the profits sank and we had to close doors on a very precious and passionate dream. From then on, I kind of mourned every business failure as they came to represent more than loss of dough, they were loss of dreams.

Just recently, a cozy little restaurant that served authentic north Indian food closed its doors owing to some lease issues. We went there frequently and four months after the doors are closed, I still miss Jeet's fluffly naans and yummy vegetable sides as much as I miss my mom's food.

Be it large corporations or little cottage industries, closing doors have a lot more to them than making a difficult decision in tiring economic times. They leave back the same void and pain a person would leave back when they exit the stage of this world. So Illuminations that advocated the idea of 'living by candle light' would always represent to me a light source that bought me joys of simple beauty and accomplishments. And just as with every closed door, I hope another window of hope is opened to illuminate the darkness to its Founders and employees and all forcefully and tearfully closed doors across the globe.

High Spirits

Being a teetotaler, I always wonder what the hoopla surrounding getting drunk is. As a kid I watched the Telugu classic Devdas and could not for the life of me figure out why Devdas resorts to drinking in a self destructive attempt to forget Paro nor as a grown up could I understand why tons of liquors of all sorts get sold out in all kinds of brick & mortar and virtual stores surrounding me. Just the other day I was watching a realty 'event management' competition being aired on HGtv and noted with awe how Kim Kardashian's party that was being managed by an aspiring group of wannabe event managers was mainly focused on alcohol. The host actually went to the extent of saying that the hallmark of a well organised party is abundant spirits - the spirits that come in bottles and intoxicate us by the way.
I always proclaim about my addictive tendencies. The moment I read a book, I usually read a dozen in a month and the moment I gobble up an M&M it is usually a fist full following suit - so though I belong in the ultra-modern and progressive immigrant category, I never ventured into enhancing my spirits with the aid of spirits. Call it principle or being past prime (isn't entering 30s being past the official youth?)
but I remain a alcohol virgin if you discount the couple of times I swallowed the few drops of wine like it were some kind of acid, in an attempt to belong in the group of friends that I'd accompanied to the winery tours.

Growing up, liquor was pretty vile to me. We used to come back home from school by a three wheeled carriage called rickshaw that was pulled by a guy named Doctor. Yeah, Doctor. So Doctor was this typical labourer, riding a bunch of school kids back and forth from the school. Consuming arrack was characteristic to labourers. I always used to look for tell tale signs of intoxication when he used to come to pick us up though he was a really nice and always a sober person. Watching educative dramas on DD 8 was probably an influence but I used to freeze the moment our rickshaw passed through the arrack shop on the way back to home form school. Usually, I would find a guy eagerly consuming the evil potion and with my overactive imagination, spin a story about how he'd go home and beat his wife and kids up in the state of intoxication. Liquor -the bad, horrible liquor was the epitome of evil for a 10 year old back then - a couple of decades later, I see that the way I look at alcohol donned a humorous twist to itself, but the impact and the evil it comes with remains the same. When I first came to the United States, my hubby took me to a cruise party that was commemorative of a successful project at work. I met a young woman who'd talked to me for a good half hour - she looked normal to me - normally loud and enthusiastic. But it took me time to realise that this is a woman under the influence of alcohol and in realty, my husband filled me in, this woman is a reserved and quiet person. Just the other day while on a camping trip to Mendocino, when our group was awake past normal hours and creating slight noise, the camp patrol guys came up and reminded us that we need to keep our voices low as a courtesy to other campers. We apologised and obliged. When the guys told the same to a louder group that was camping opposite to us, a lady took offence and started hauling abuses at the poor guys. It was F@%(, after F*#( after - you get the idea, and unfortunately enough, the lady was drunk. Cops, apologies, cries and drama later, the group was allowed to stay in the camp site. Had she not been drunk, she'd have considered the request with dignity and abide by the rules of the land but it is sad how taking ourselves into a so called high can actually plummet us into a real bad low.

Spirits usually come in a package deal I observed. You buy one and you get being 'out of control', 'destructive', 'evil', 'out of better judgement' and "ill health" as gifts with purchase. I'd personally known of a common friend who lost his life to a drunken driver and heard stories about people who abused family and dwindled their earnings and savings in pursuit of high spirits. I don't give a spit in the toilet if it is social drinking or obsessive compulsive drinking - Alcohol in all forms and potency is evil spelt in another way. Don't we see the occasional celebrity mug shots in the DUI cases? How could you ever come to respect someone who can drink and drive and potentially jeopardize lives around them??

I don't know what it is about alcohol or any other substance abuse, but I do know that it is as bad as wars and weapons.