To the undaunting spirit

We all have had our favorite super heroes at one point on another - Batman and Spiderman for the adventurous folks, Krishna and Rama for the true to India folks, Hardy boys and Nancy Drew for the bookworms like me. But then most of us have only always had REEL heroes, REAL life super heroes are hard to come by.

I consider myself lucky to have known one such superhero. And that person is nothing like you would imagine a super hero to be. She is a little shy of being 5 ft tall, less than 100 pounds in weight, beautiful white hair and an infectious smile which is sure to catch you the minute you meet her. I met Karin or my American mom as I call her 6 years ago when I had just landed in the United States. I was invited over to dinner at her place one night and what started on that one evening has blossomed into a relationship I could have never imagined. Karin has been my friend, philosopher and guide over all these years. Their home has been a home away from home for me, to the point that they now consider Pradeep their adopted son.

Karin and Bob(Karin's husband) have taught me a lot of things over the years but the most important thing is the importance of love in our lives. It does not matter where we live, how fancy our car is or how much money we make as long as our hearts are open to people around us. They have hosted people from 82 different countries in their house over the past 10 years and to this date there has never been an uncomfortable evening at their place. It just goes to show that truly as humans there are no boundaries that separate us, but there is one common string that binds us all and that is mutual respect and love for each other. As they like to say they did not need to go out and discover the world, the world came to them. This just shows that when our hearts are open there are not a lot of things that we cannot do with out lives, life in turn happens in phenomenal ways to us. Thanks to them and their marital advice I think Pradeep and I have been able to lay down the foundations of a happy marriage.

Bob jokes sometimes that most people have 16 hours in their 24 hours, my wife has 48 hours in 24. Karin is an educator, a volunteer, an excellent cook, pretty much all of her gifts are hand made, she manages to catch up on her reading and still have the time to host people every other weekend. Once again she proves to all of us that life will only happen as much as we are willing to push our boundaries. If the spirit is pure you will always have a great amount of energy to do a lot of things in life however if we carry around a lot of hatred and animosity in us, a large part of our energy is sucked into just dealing with the negative emotions. Never once have I heard either one of them complain about anything in their lives, they believe in giving to everyone around them and as a result they receive a lot from people around them too.

Nothing proves her greatness more than her current struggle with cancer. Karin was detected with lung cancer in April this year, the predictions that doctors had for her were very bleak. But in her typical style she was not going to take anything heads down. She got to work immediately figuring out what her options were, refused chemotherapy and resorted to only holistic methods of treatment. She had won the struggle once before with breast cancer and she was going to do that again this time around. Despite all the struggle that she is going through I think she is still much more hale and hearty in spirit than anyone of us can even imagine. I have days when I go home complaining about work or the dreary weather or some tiny thing and then I get an email from Karin describing the beauty of the fall colors on the tree in her backyard and how the Lord was helping her by making each day more beautiful. For me that serves a reminder of how beautiful this life is and how we pollute our mind with small complaints every single day to a point that after a while we stop looking at the beauty of life.

The reason that I wanted to write this blog was that I thought it was not fair for people who did not know Karin in person to not know that such a beautiful person exists among us. Another more selfish reason was that after reading this blog I can get more people to pray for her speedy recovery.

Incase you wanted to give her your wishes, here is a link to her caring bridge site.
https://www.caringbridge.org/visit/karintreiber/

" It is not important to be a superhuman, it is important to realize that being human is super " . - Jaggi Vasudev

Sridevi bani meri mummy

                                             http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Vinglish
I recently watched English Vinglish and it reminded me of my mom. Now before you start thinking this blog is about how my mom learnt to start speaking in English, I should warn you that my mom has a Masters in English Literature! All through our childhood my mom widely used her English speaking skills any time she wanted to let me and my sister know that things were going to get serious. Only problem was that we only realized this very late in life and by that time the harm was done, we had successfully managed to not listen to all of her warnings that were always delivered using the choicest of English language phrases.

Well, coming back to the point the reason the movie reminded me of my mom was because of the earnestness that Sridevi had in the movie to learn something in life and get better. She is shy and scared but the desire to learn and grow is so deep in her that she is willing to put aside all of her fears to get better. Of all the people that I have known so far I think my mom displays the strongest desire to learn and grow. You will be surprised by the number of avenues she has actually sought in her life to learn new things in her life.As long as a person is willing to teach she is always an eager student.

My earliest memory is of my mom is when she took a computer class with kids my age. The fact that she was older than them or concerns about what others would think about her were never a deterrent to my mom, she just wanted to stay up-to-date with technology and be a part of Gen X. That desire was enough for her to go ahead and do something which none of the women around her were even considering. Ever since then there is always a new activity every year that my mom picks up. She worked around out school schedules, my dad's work schedules, taking care of the house etc and still managed to find time to learn something new. There was sitar, veena, singing, painting, cooking, knitting, meditation, yoga and the list is just goes on.

The most surprising thing is that as years are starting to add to my mom's age the desire to do newer thing is growing at a even more fervent pace. She turned 50 last year and to mark that she started learning carnatic classical music once again !!  One amazing thing about her is that she is always pushing her boundaries, every passing year she is making sure that she is afraid of fewer  and fewer things in her life. My mom always felt she has missed out on being a working woman and experience of being out on your own. So to make sure she crosses that of her list she decided to start working once she hit the half century. Not as an employee though, she is entrepreneur in her own right. She runs a mini music school for kids in our colony now and the number of students keeps on increasing every day. As you might have guessed by now she is not satisfied by just teaching the kids, she comes up with newer techniques to keep the kids engaged and interested during the entire class.

Sridevi did a great job of capturing the fact that as long as there is desire to get better in life there is nothing in life that can really stop you and I think my mom is a living example of that.!

Getting married 101

So it all finally happened and went well . Given how much I had blogged before the wedding, I had to write something after it was finally done and also because a friend mentioned that he would be kind enough to read it :-).
So all the while that we were preparing for the wedding everyone that we met gave us some insights into what there's had been like and from that we had a clear cut list of what we did not want our wedding to be. Here are some things that we heard
1) You will just want the wedding to get over as quickly as possible and just get back home to sanity.
2) Weddings are all usually just a big daze, you hardly remember what happened during the entire time . It is almost like a photo where multiple frames got merged together
3) People are all very stressed out at weddings and they end up stressing you out.
4) All the rituals are so boring and old fashioned
4) Weddings are a very expensive affair and they drain your pockets out.

Armed with what all we did not want our wedding to be, we met some amazing couples who gave us tips that made sure our wedding was nothing like what we had heard. So when I decided to blog, I thought I should capture all of these points. So here goes my wedding checklist
1) Find a fun and chilled out husband / wife . I was lucky that ways but if that is not working for you follow the remaining tips.

2) Having a fun wedding is your responsibility. Plan things that will break the ice and get people to realize that they are here to have fun and not be caught up with just arranging things. I started off with a questionnaire for my family about the other side.Train journey, coupled with cards and some antakshari also can do the trick. Best of all tricks is to go up on to the stage during the sangeet and dance/sing. Nothing works better than the bride and groom dancing to each other tunes at the wedding.
3) Maintaining a journal throughout the wedding is also helpful as it prevents you from getting dazed and not being able to live in the moment. Capturing the simple moments on a video or on paper will help you stay focused and aware throughout the wedding.
4) Another tip that I received was not to resist taking part in any of the rituals. The more you detest them , the more you will end up spoiling everyone's mood during the marriage . It helps to do some research before as to what these rituals mean because then when they actually happen you will be able to athedd  certain quality that the ritual provides into your relationship. Some of them like taking care of wooden babies or playing with a flower ball help to lighten up the situation a lot.
5) Force yourself to smile no matter what chaos is happening around you. A friend of mine said, Akhila smile till you die at the wedding, you will have to live with these pictures for a lifetime to come and you don't want a swollen face in any one of them.
6) Get yourself a good photographer. Good photographers have this knack of making the simplest of things look the best and so when you look at the pictures you will end up feeling you had the most grandest of weddings when in reality it might not have been all like that. Consider this a cost cutting investment.
7) Do small things for the close friends and family at the wedding to show gratitude for all they have done at the weddings. Often times the wedding is so much about us that we forget all the other people who put in the effort to make it a grand success for us . Hand written notes with small gifts can do wonders.
8) Also remembering that this is just one day in a lifetime of togetherness helps . There will be good days and bad days in a relationship and it may so happen that things go terribly wrong at your wedding but then how both of you takes it defines how your relationship will look in the days to come. So if not for anything it is a good test of your relationship.
9) Finally Indian weddings are project management at the biggest scale, with each one person having a opinion on what is the right way of doing the wedding . After the dabbawalas of mumbai I think MBA grads should focus on how despite all these impediments Indian weddings do get done.

A good start can take a relationship a extra mile , so dnt forget to laugh and have fun at the wedding , you can add that extra mile or two...

Counting my blessings ...

A lot of times in the past 4 years the thought has crossed my mind that I should write a blog about my friends , fondly known as the erie rockers but I have never actually been able to that . The primary reason has been that I do not think that my words can do justice to what I feel for each one of them .

If there exists something called pure love amongst friends , then it sure is defined by the love that I have received from my friends in Minneapolis . This is one place where people do not work based on their egos or competition of who is better than whom , all they want and expect out of you is just love and that is all they give too. Friends who have left Minneapolis can justify this statement , they just keep coming back to MSP because nowhere else can they find a place where one can just be one's own self and people would just accept and love you the way you are . We can be pulling each others legs for hours at an end but at the end of the day never have there been any harsh feelings .

If there is one name for creativity , enthu and encouraging others to be a part of something bigger than themselves , Erie rockers has got to be the name for it .

Sometimes it scares me , we are too good to each other , how is that actually possible ??? :-)

Today on my birthday , I just feel like saying a very big thank you to all these great set of people for being there for me always and showering all this love on me .

Looking at the post I wanted to say smthing a lot more creative and non cliche , but then like I said words fail me in writing in this post .

Heights of eventfulness

I believe my life has been pretty eventful as a whole , but today stands out among a lot of other days .

Hardly did I know that getting up on at 5.30 on a saturday morning had the power of making a day so eventful . Got up at 5.30 all set to volunteer at the yoga festival , drove to the hotel with the sun still shying in the background and kailash kher's teri deewani giving me company . I reach the venue at 7.00 only to find that my team is not going to show up till 9.00 . A brief meditation session and a phone call later I decided to venture out for a short walk which turned out to a 1.5 mile walk ending at Al's breakfast . 1 hour and still standing in line for the pumpkin pancakes I had made 3 new friends who engaged me a very rare conversation on spirituality .

All charged up I walked back 1.5 miles only to find myself an hour later standing in the queue to see none other than President Obama . The line happily streched for 3 miles and we went and stood at very end but we had Obama's words in our head ..."Hope " and we hoped with our full hearts that we would get to see him ..joyously we waited for 3 hours and cheered for some unknown minnesota leaders but nothing could beat our joy when we got a first glimpse of Obama ...I was howling and shouting along with crowd , it sounded more like Brad Pitt had stepped in there , we were just blown over by his charisma .....

You would hope I would be done by the day by now , but the day was just starting , back home to dress for the evening dandiya event . Taking our own sweet girl time we were ready in 3 hours just in time for the 2 hours that were alloted to us . But today's dandiya was not just any other dandiya ....all the dance , all the giggles and secrets were all for a purpose , waiting for my buddy to propose to girl of his dreams and then dance in celebration for that . Thats wat you call a perfect end to the day ....1.10 am he proposed to her in front of all us and she accepted , thus becoming a part of family .

I am pretty sure this did deserve a entry in my blog ...now that it is here I can happily sleep off ...!!!

Behind the scenes

The name NITR brings back many memories from the very first day of walking in the Ladies Hostel , till the final day of looking out of the auto to get one last peek at it . When we talk about the college days we talk about the hostel nites , our friends , the institute and its happening but one thing that almost always slips out is all those behind the scene people.

I think my college experience would not be complete if I do not mention these people . The first person that I still fondly remember is Chunni Opa , she was there was us every evening getting us all the things we wanted , she always had the most interesting stories to tell while she was taking attendance , she was also the person that I got to try out my oriya on and no matter how bad it was I always got encouragement from her . I will never forget her sincere attempts to find a Oriya Puo ( Good oriya boy ) for me to get married too. I think one of the most at home experiences that I had was when she invited us to her place for the pooja . Not just her all the Opas in the hostel were so helpful and forthcoming all the time , I am filled with gratitude for the love , care and the pampering that we got from all of them .

Who can forget Nakul bhaina , for every student in NIT JAM signified so many things , place to go when you grew tired of hostel food , place to hang around with friends , cool out the summer heat with infinite number of nimbu paani and lassi glasses and Nakul bhaina was the one who added the personal touch to it . I remember when I used walk in my final year into Jam and I would say Nakul bhaina ek coffee , he would finished the sentence by saying chini kam , dood zyada . That’s how well he knew all of us .

Then there was Nakul Bhaina for the mess , sameer ( hawa ka jhoka as we used to call him for serving us food ) , the maggi waali didi and all others who made hostel life so much simpler for us .

Moina bhai was always a permanent friend , giving us back door access to the printers in the SAC whenever we needed them . Everyone at the SAC office was almost like family to us , when we ran out of things to do we would drop in there and chat .

They say hostel becomes almost like a family away from family and all these people were surely one of the most loved people of our extended families

Overwhelmed ...

Have you ever cried because you were so happy that you were just too overwhelmed by your happiness . Today was such a day for me . I recieved a hand made card from my sister all the way from Guwahati rite in time for my bday . First thing I never expected to get anything from anyone back in India . Secondly the fact that my sister had the time to make a hand made card for me inspite of her exams and sports meet was just too much for me . It has always been that I somehow have never put in the effort to give my sister a nice gift but with every coming year she just makes my bday more and more cherishable ..N on this day I feel I am just too damn lucky ..awesome sis , wonderful parents and great friends ..what more could a person hope for ..!!!

Fire in the jungle ..run run run ...

I wrote about my room mates penchant for chairs earlier ..it would not be fair if i do not mention the havoc i m causing in the house ...

Now wat is happening is due to my carelessness i have as of now melted a plastic plate , a spoon , cutting blade and a lid along their edges ...wat actually hpnd was that i was cookin smthin on one of the burners and left these articles on the the nearing burners and eventually a part of them melted before i could realise ...yest was the latest one..a lid was kept on one of the burners and i accidently turned on the burner below it ...

Junta who is reading it may not allow me into their kitchens if they come to know of this ..but guys the situation is not that bad ..i m tryin to avoid such circumstances to the fullest hopefully your house will not be a victim of my carelessness ..:-)

Dandiya nite

Finally managed to make it to the dandiya nite , organised by the gujarati association of minnesota. Seriously guys this place just doesnt feel like some place outside india . There was a flood of indians all decked up in their fineries ..each trying to outdo the other .

Finally got to wear a salwar suit after a long time and ya got to dance ..Danced like crazy for a long while . It was great fun.

Work like crazy on assg all thru the week and dance till you drop on sat nite ..this is life man..!!!

Our very own chair museum

Location : Apt #308 , 419 Erie Street

It all started with a decent looking couch i got into our totally unfurnished house coz my roomie thought we should have some furniture ( picked up from street ..apparently thats what everybody does here ..) in our house ...The couch would not fit into our drawing room cum kitchen so we had it rather put in our bedroom and now so both the rooms have their roles reversed . That was about the only furniture in the house before my roommate came back from her internship .

This is where the fun starts ..we need a table to keep our stuff on ..but actually wats happening is that my roomie finds is a chair every time she is walking back home and she just cannot resist picking that up . So we had a single seater couch first which we picked up all the way to the last room on the second floor from the street across us ..( dnt ask us about the cramps we had that day ) ..the next day i come back i find a chair in the bathroom ..ppl actually thought we sit and brush :-) ..( it was kept there to be cleaned ..which did not happen for 2 weeks ..) ..next came in a wodden chair and i have news from her rite now that we have a sexy little chair waiting in the apt ..i m damn sure our teeny weeny apt can no longer take any more chairs..but then you cant just help it if you are staying with a chair enthusiast like the one i do ...

ps: my roommate wanted me to add this ..its me and only me who uses all those couches and chairs ..c how well we complement each other...