Whats on my mind?

A tidbit advice: Go for an evening walk with your dad, you will be glad! Most of us are more closer to moms than dads in terms of sharing things, but dads truly are great companions and you sure can pour your heart out to them and expect a most sensible solution to most of your problems.

2) Never ever store sweets in transperant containers, never stock cookies and chocolates at home, never for a moment go weak on your resolution and think, its just this one time, its okay, am not going to be fat by eating just this!I will work it out.. NO!!Please NO! 15 minutes of on the spot jog and 10 minutes of hoola hoops burns a mere 76 calories, the exact number of calories in a single slice of brown bread. Lets not even talk about fried chicken

3) Out of my joblessness, I googled on how to make wishes come true, and there indeed were loads of sites asking you to visit them for 8 days to have ur wish come true! And Yes, I registered at one of those :)

4) Newborns sleep for 20 hours a day, but why are they so demanding and exhausting?

5) I wish tomorrows 30 minutes are life changing for good!

Happy :)

I feel lighter , happier and full of positive energy. I was finally be able to give up my grudges against someone which I was holding on to for a long long time. It seemed completely justified to have those grudges, as I was hurt, and was just not able to reconcile. But now, I decided to completely follow my dad's advice and go ahead and make an 100% effort to look at things through a different perspective and give it a try to make things better. And am glad I did it. Am more at peace and feel better.

Than you Dad.

State of Mind

Last week, I sulked for 2 days over a problem, I wouldn't talk to anyone, nothing pleased me, I didn't feel like doing even my usual chores. I made the problem so big that I couldn't enjoy my baby's laughter, her small antics, my fave Tv show. I even tried cooking therapy and indulged in cooking and eating my fave dishes, but that too didn't help much. I kept cribbing for everything, nothing seemed good. Life suddenly looked horrible and I started wondering if there was a way out. I started feeling claustrophobic with absolutely no way out.

Then I happened to chat with one of my old friends who said, " neekenti amma life full enjoy"(i wouldn't translate this one, else it would lose its effect). It hit me big time. God did bless me with everything but here I was, still cribbing and sulking about one small thing I wasn't able to get? Why was I not happy and thankful to God? Why was I angry on him? It was completely my inability to be happy inspite of having everything. It was just that I was not getting something that I wanted badly at that point of time, which was ok. I only had to try harder.

I feel powerful today, as if in complete control of my whole life. I have realised that my happiness lies in my state of mind. That's my strength. If I try to keep my inner self at peace and stay happy, no matter how big the problem is, it wouldn't effect me drastically. I mean no problem could be bigger than you, big enough to affect you!

I promise, to count my blessings, find happiness in every walk of life, and spread the cheer! Amen!!

Me and Meri Maggi

Maggi has always been a comfort food for most of us, easy to make and yummy to taste. Delicacy right from school days. Till date I have come across only 3 people who said they dont like Maggi, My grandpa, my dad and my husband! The latter name came as a bit of surprise though but still my grocery shopping has never been complete without maggi!

Last sunday, my house maid came in a lil late, to be specific after our breakfast was done and before our lunch was prepared. She generally never asks for tea/snacks but that day she said, amma, give me something to eat, my stomach is burning(kadupu kaluthundi). I frantically looked around to see what I could give her to eat, rice not yet cooked, no snack stock at home( thanks to my dieting!!), idly batter got finished,no fruits too! My maggi to rescue.. my saviour any day! I cooked maggi for her and she ate to her hearts content. Thank you maggi, for keeping my lazy bones in tact and also giving me the pleasure of "art of giving"!

failure my friend..

It's frightening when you encounter failure from close quarters. It shatters your self confidence, makes you feel absolutely good for nothing. You even start wondering if what you achieved till date was just by chance and not by virtue!

Going through a bad phase of failure after failure, despite the will, hardwork and some brains! Lady luck as they say hasn't been smiling on me much.. but I know this too will pass on.. Good things are just round the corner.. all I need to do is hangon!! Its only making me stronger and better.

Poppatness continues..

Last week I attended a job interview. The wierd company made me give a written test in the first round. I so wanted to say "Duh!" and leave , but yeah, I had to behave myself. I thought the test was a disaster( well, for a change I have to agree that am well past that age of sitting and writing exams!). The HR lady asked me to wait till she corrected my answer sheet. I was hardly tensed, as I knew how I gave that. When the HR came back and told me that I cleared the written test round, I blurted out "Really?" followed by a stupid grin !! Mistake number 1! I wish I had learnt better techniques of masking emotions!

Then the tech interview round 1, I was asked to write a program and while thinking, I was playing with the pen so hard that the cap flew and hit the glass wall. Mistake number 2! Why would anyone have a person as clumsy as that as their lead? but surprise!! I cleared that round too!

Cut to tech round 2.. I was careful this time not to make any mistakes, may be I just tried too hard, they never got back to me after that!

lesson learnt: be yourself how much ever clumsy you are.. the moment you try to be someone else, you will be shown the door :)

Scared for a reason!

yeah, I kept my promise to Akki, She has already recieved 2 mails from her mom.. and more to come.

Last week I learnt a valuable lesson. We usually give home made raagi porridge as breakfast for Akki. the flour got over and we went to the market and got a flour which claimed to be consisting of similar ingredients that we used and made hygienically. It was called "Health Mix". We foolishly fell for it and got a small pack to try. All the while the only thing on my mind was, if Akki would like the taste. She liked it and so did I! We fed her the same next day too. What we overlooked was she didn't poop the previous day. Story repeated the next day too. And by third day we started getting worried as she was growing cranky and not eating well. We somehow got her to poop, which was again a hard sight! The hardest stool she had ever passed, crying out of pain,all sweat.. I can never ever forget what pain she had been through! The guilt that I went through when it stuck to me that the breakfast powder had been the culprit, cannot be put in words. She suffered coz of one foolish decision of ours. She developed high fever, stomach indigestion, cough and suffered through the following week which only added more to my guilt. She was suffering and I was watching her suffer helplessly.. torture!

The lil ones are here in this world because of us, so small, so innocent, so pure! They learn everything from us, to talk, to walk, to smile, to cry, to play, to enjoy... they are a reflection of our upbringing. Our small mistake can effect them so much! Its our responsibility to protect them.. give them a good life by giving a good upbringing.

Today I am what my parents moulded me to be, and am really proud of the way they brought me up. I can say that they life I lead, is a gift they gave me. I do not want to believe in destiny. I attribute everything to them, my success, failure, happiness, everything.

I want my daughter to have the best life, I want her to be independent, self confident, generous, kind, helpful and an affectionate human being. She might have inherited some qualities by birth, but the above are the ones that we can inculcate in her. I know its a maor task at hand and I don't even know if I will be fulfill that dream. I need to be a good mother first, which means there is no scope for mistake, not even 1 percent. Scary!

P.S:I might keep going back to remember how my parents brought me up! Copy paste can be applied here also ;)

I wish...

Sometimes I wish I knew a lot more about me, I know about my childhood is only as much as my mom remembers. It really feels good to know how my mom felt when she first saw me, when she first took me in her arms.. what i did when.. my milestones..
I promise to give this gift to my daughter!
Akki, I promise to give you the pleasure of reading your childhood.. a gift that you n I would cherish forever.

Merry christmas!

Life's good and a yummy moist spongy christmas cake has made it more merrier :)
My neighbour is celebrating christmas and I joined her in just the cake part of it.
Yet to plan for the new year party! looking for ideasssssss.. post some!

Cooking is the new in thing!

Cooking is my new found interest. I have actually started enjoying the experiments. Yes, you heard me right and am perfectly alright. I still find the everyday cooking very very boring but am anytime on for a new experiment. There are these daily cookery shows that come on tv 12 pm to 1 pm. There would be atleast 1 recipe in the shows worth trying.
The end result does matter. The happiness you get when your experiment is a super duper hit is worth all the trials and failures. It gives you a creative satisfaction :)
I still can't forget the excitement when i tried making rasgollas. It came out exactly the way they showed it on the video.. all soft, puffed up and super yummy!
Yeah, am not sure second time I try the result is going to be the same so there is no fun in repeating experiments ;)

Am Back!

Am back on my blog page after a lil more than 2 month break. It really feels good to be back, coz all it means is that am in control of my current frame of mind :) A state that I love to be in!
Last 2 months have been a roller coaster ride, happy sad frustrated elated decided confused celebrated humiliated.. everything that life could offer, it did. Am glad I went through all that, coz today I think after all that, I am a better person today. I grew as a person(quite literally too!). And am only hoping I remember my lessons learnt for life !
Lets get started again...

The timing...

After a long lazy saturday and enough of stink, I finally decided to take a shower. The hot water suddenly felt too tempting to resist. I am all set to go and I turn on the shower knob only to hear an empty pipe trying to blurt out last few drops of water!

After a long break from my exercise routine, one fine day I get super motivated and decide to break that break. I keep an alarm for early next morning, wake up and take that wii fit board and switch on the tv, take the body test and got shocked when it showed the upward graph of my weight and bmi. I get super motivated again to do rigorous exercise and suddenly the message on TV, batteries of the wii fit board are empty. I need to recharge them. I keep sulking the rest of the day for waking up early for nothing and also not being able to do anything about the upward graph. What the hell!

Am running late to office and I have only 3 more minutes before the meeting begins. This ones going to be the last signal before I reach office, and I see the light green, I speed up and am almost there when the light turned red. I tried to somehow feign ignorance and pass through the signal but the hefty traffic police blows the whistle and I freeze. meeting began while i stood frozen at signal for the next 3 minutes. Shooooooooot

One day, I decided to have gulab jamun in the office cafeteria and was cutting out on the calories from morning. Oats for breakfast with honey (no sugar), Soup, salad and roti with daal for lunch. After having all that, I was craving to eat that gulab jamun even more. Tick snacks time and I went slurrping to cafe, only to find that there were no gulab jamuns made that day. Grrr..

Akshara slept in time and i wanted to catch the repeat episode of my tele soap I missed the day before. I switch on the TV to find that the cable wasnt working. I call up the customer care and they say some repair, and its going to take time. I kill time by readin paper, checking mails again and again and by the time Akshara woke up, cable also got repaired. Phew..

Whom to blame? Why only me? are just some of the many questions that go round and round in me!

Dillemma of a working mom- Part 2

Am completely in awe of people who know what their priorities in life are and stick to them no matter what and work towards their priorities. I don't care what their priorities are and why!

I realised how messed up I am with regards my priorities in life. I want everything which I know is impossible and ending up being in a confused state constantly.

I decided I am going to be a stay at home mom for an year or more and give my baby all the time she needs. I couldn't stick to this one. The idea of quitting the job didn't go very well with me. I looked for work from home opportunities, thought of all other possible ideas to keep me working at home, but nothing materialised.
Finally, I ended up getting a part time job, 5 hours at office and all other time with my baby. It seemed like the perfect thing to happen. My family came over to support me , to look after my baby while I was at work. Everything seemed to be perfectly in place till I actually started working.
I try giving my 100% at work, but I have only 50% time.
I do suffer from guilt for joining back to work everyday, when my baby cries when I leave for work.
I keep thinking about her, if she has eaten well, if she has slept well, may be she needs me now, inspite of the assurance that I have left her in safe hands. The thought that she needs me and am not there keeps coming back.

My career also isn't going great , coz no matter how much effort I put in, am only putting in 5 hrs in office compared to others who are putting in 10!
What seemed to be a perfect deal, now seems to be the most loser deal! You seriously cant get everything! You need to let go!
I have friends who are working full time and are literally not seeing their babies all weekdays. They are happy coz they are doing good at work and are ok spending only weekends with their babies.
I have friends who have quit their job and are happy dedicated moms to their lil ones.
Am neither there, nor her and am not happy.

Dedicate this post to My sister Swapna , Gunjan, Pavana, Raksha, Vijaya and harsha.

I likes!

I like the concept of negative calorie foods.. U eat them and they burn ur fat :) Talk about eating and losing weight! wow!
How? They take more calories to digest than the number of calories they provide.
Negative calorie fruits:
Papaya, peach, watermelon, pineapple, apple, strawberry, orange, lemon, lime.

Negative calorie veggies:
Onion, Beetroot, brinjal, cucumber, carrot, lettuce, cauliflower, cabbage, green beans, tomato.

Others:
Oatmeal, garlic, green-tea, Low fat milk, curd, whole-grain cereal.

Joey Poppat: Saving money!

Last week we went out to a small eat out in the neighbourhood. I was having a masala dosa craving. Sometime after we placed our order, we were served masala pappad. We didn't order for it yet we had it assuming it might be complimentary.
Our order was served next and then the finger bowl. Akshara was in my lap and before I could respond, she toppled the used finger bowl over me. (yes , mothers need to have quick reflexes!!)
later, the bill came and we saw that the masala pappad was included in the bill which we never ordered. My sweet hubby was about to pay for it as it was only 10 bucks. But the rebel in me woke up, I wanted to revert that 10 rs from the bill. I called the waiter, the guy who took the order , did all drama , got some cheap looks when I said, we thought it was complimentary. Somehow finally, I managed to get our 10 rs back and I came home basking in the glory of saving ten rupees!! Just when we were about to reach home, I realised I left Akshara's snack bowl and the spoon in the restaurant. Spoon, my friends, was a silver one costing around hundred bucks.. naturally, we couldn't find it where we left it in the restau.
I sulked all night and vowed that I would never go back to that restau.
Ps: One question that I cannot answer is , why on earth did I carry the silver spoon to restau inspite of having hundreds of other low cost spoons! Fate, my friends!

Summer holidays are back with a Bang!

Remember those school wala summer holidays? All play and no worries? I had almost relived them this summer.. thanks to Akshara! Few kids in the neighbourhood come home everyday to play with Akshara. It was real fun watching them play, mess around the house, innocent question and even more innocent answers :)
6 year old Anu came running along the stairs and said, "Aunty give me water , my heart attack is going faster". She meant her heart beat :)
Yesterday was all the more fun. One of them said, she wanted to play hide and seek and all of them wanted to hide. So Akshara and me has to cont and find them all. yes, I played along with them and felt transported back in time forgetting all about the age difference. Later i realized I had to behave my age but it was too late. I continued playing and had super fun.
Later in the evening, in the park, one of the kids mom asked me," Did you play hide n seek with the kids? Pihu(her daughter) was telling me".
I tried doing some damage control.. "yam amyam yam.. No I was just watching them " and the last nail in my coffin came from Pihu as she suddenly appeared from nowhere and said.." Aunty don't tell lies, you played with us right?"
Her mom, my friend laughed but gave me a saving grace by changing the topic. Thank you!
But yeah, the embarrassment was all worth it. I did really have fun playing with the kids. (I don't want to sound retard, but if you ever get a chance, give it a try, you will sure have fun!)

Chocolate balls recipe

Ok, this one is a relatively low cal but lip smacking dessert.
All you need:
1 pack marie light biscuits.
4 tsp cocoa powder
1 cup sugar
handful roasted peanuts.
Milk Cream (I took Amul low fat fresh cream) - Amount.. just enough to make the mixture moist enough to make moulds.

pretty easy procedure..
1) grind the biscuits, grind the sugar.
2)Mix them with 4 tsp of cocoa powder.
3) Make it in to a dough using the cream.
4)Now make small rounds out of the dough.
5) Peanut can be placed on top of each mould but I preferred to put it in the center of the ball just for the surprise element. Take small amount of dough, flatten it on ur palm, place the peanut and then cover it up and make a ball.

Try the recipe, its seriously worth it!!

Chocolate balls saga continues...

I am very bad at remembering birthdays. But, I remember my school friend Divya's birthday, Feb 10th. During school, all my friends used to look forward to her birthday party. Reason being yummy Chocolate balls her mom, Pushpa aunty used to make without fail year after year. They were so yummy that they are fetched in all our memories for ever.
Last week, my sweet tooth attacked on me again and I craved (yes, I am having cravings way after pregnancy) for those yummy chocolate balls. Craving so strong that i called up my Mom to call up aunty and find out the recipe and pass it back to me. After 1 hour of hardwork, I had similar looking, and almost yummy chocolate balls ready!
Last week, 2 kids in the neighbourhood came home to play with Akshara. I generously offered them the chocolate balls and they were very very impressed. One of them even commented, "Aunty, I wish you were my mom because you know how to make these"!!
Next day, there were 4 other kids along with those 2 who came to play with Akshara. I was a lil surprised but soon knew why they were all there. I offered them all and they asked me when Akshara's birthday was. After I told them when it was, they asked me to make the chocolate balls for her birthday party and give them as return gifts to all of them :)
Looks like I am going to take Pushpa aunty's chocolate balls for birthday saga forward... Thanks aunty for the wonderful recipe.

P.S: Recipe in the next post.

The Zen Y

Kids can sometimes surprise you so much with their talk that they leave you wondering for hours.
There is this little 6 year old girl in my neighbourhood who comes to play with Akshara. Today while she was playing, she asked me "Aunty, you don't have AC? Its so hot today."
I said we don't and asked her if she had one at her home. She said she doesn't have but she plans to have one at her new home. With that the gossip "me" woke up and I was curious to know if my friend has bought a new place somewhere. I planned to probe the little one further and get some info from her. I asked her " Where is your new home? " She said "That I don't know, but once I shift there, even if AC is not already there, we will buy one". (OK , she was still stuck on the AC thing! )
"When will you shift to your new home?" I asked in the hope of getting atleast some info about the new house.
"After I marry aunty. Then I will go to a new home na."
The Gossip "me" went underground.

Is a 6 year old really supposed to know that she will be going to a new home after marriage?

The Past.. The Present

I was asked this question during my first job interview, "Where do you see yourself five years down the line"? and I got my answer yesterday in the train. Big time mockery of life.
We were travelling by the first AC as there were no other tickets available and we had to reach Bangalore. My first ever travel in first AC coach. Its a nice cozy coupe kind of thing for four. I think the first class is almost always underbooked, so generally they allot 2 per coupe, so its all the more cozy. Ok, coming back to our mockery thing, murphy was looking at us generously and this time the first class was also completely booked. So we were 4 per coupe and Murphy made sure we had best company in the form of a newly wed couple. They were just married and we all know how the just married are :) I instantly felt like an elderly couple sitting in front of them. It was almost like a mirror reflection of 5 years back and I've come a long long way. Some differences below:

They: were all eyes and ears for each other.
We: were happy with our own eyes and ears :)

They: were holding hands.
We: were holding baby.

They: were sitting in a small 'b' , one curled up in the other.
We: were sitting in a big 'H', with akshara completing the H for us.

They: were listening to music, sharing the ipod.
We: were also listening to music but a different kind. N was playing the background music of all the available ringtones in the mobile and I was the main lead singer singing "Eat akshara, please.. open your mouth, baby eat.. eat baby please". Those were the only lyrics available.

They: were waiting for us to sleep so that they could get all the privacy they wanted.
We: were waiting for akshara to sleep, so that we can get some sleep. All we need is some extra sleep.

They: were all giggles and sweet nothings.
We: were discussing a serious issue, a deadlock scenario. Akshara has not pooped today and hence is not eating anything. But if she eats something, she will definitely poop. How do we handle this, how do we make her eat, how do we make her poop?

They: were helping each other in making the bed.
We: were fighting over keeping the light on or off.

The more I write, the more the differences I find, so lets just stop here. Signing off in the hope that they too will be like us 5 years down their lane :)

P.S:
1) Babies are adorable and are must haves. They are worth all the trouble they give and more.
2) Jo recommends first class AC coupe to all the newly weds. :)