The cloth-clip story

I had been wondering from many days how to reach to the ropes tied in my flat’s balcony to put my clothes to dry. They are two high and every time I’ve to use the only plastic chair in my house to reach to these ropes.

I, sometimes, tried pulling them down through a cloth hanger but as soon as I left the hanger to put the cloth on, the rope went back to its position. It has been weeks that I am questioning what to do with this situation? The only plastic chair is a solution but it belongs to my mother-in-law and she doesn’t like anybody putting his/her dirty feet on it. I do not want to spend money in buying a new stool or chair.  Plus, buying another plastic chair is as tough as a gladiator’s fight. We don’t own a four-wheeler, so I alone cannot buy and bring it home on my two-wheeler. My husband has Sunday as his weekly off and loves to spend it on the couch, watching TV. He is never interested in going out that day and buy something as silly as a chair or stool.

But, amazingly an idea poped in my mind a few days back. I haven’t had any creative ideas since my marriage (that period is by the way a year and a half). I hung the cloth clips with waste wire pieces on these ropes. These were very thin wires and fortunately there were holes in the clips already. Awesome, now I just hang the clothes with these clips and hurray no more jumping around or getting on and off the chair. 

Can you imagine the relief I got? And it saves me a lot of time every day.

Restart – The Indian Way of Resolving Probs

This weekend I made a revelation. I came to know that I'm an Indian by heart, mind and soul. And what helped me realise this, is my laptop. Yes, I love my laptop and it works fine...most of the time. And when it is not working or connecting to the internet or slow or stuck…what I do? No points for guessing… I RESTART it. Usually it works after restarting once, however there have been times when I've to do it twice…or thrice…not more than that…because then I just quit trying.

So why am I boring a small of amount of visitors of my blog by all this…BECAUSE I want all of you to give a thought to it, isn’t this the way we all operate in our day-to-day lives? By words like ”us” & “me” I mean Indians. We all make things work by JUGAAD. By the way, in case if you are not familiar with this word, let me have the privilege to introduce its meaning to you. Jugaad means a locally made solution, basically for machines around us.

This mechanics is a proof of creative minds. We think all the way...in a full circle around the problem. And this creativity is all acquired and then inherited due to the Indian circumstances of lack, less-facilitated backgrounds and a whole system of deficiency in the society. Whereas our developed counterparts don't enjoy this mind frame as they have all the facilities given to them, all the technologies in hand, adequacy in all senses.

It is very Indian, very desi, very apna. So here is for all the Jugaad minds… Keep It Up because “necessity is the mother of invention”. Cheers!

Sherlock Holmes : A Game of Shadows

Has Robert Downey Jr. grown old since the first Sherlock Holmes? Well…I felt so, however, he was as stunning and mysterious as always. The movie once again takes you to your childhood; it surely took me to the days we used to borrow such books from school library. But somehow Rajinikanth kept on flashing in front of my eyes during action scenes. I wish I could calculate that much before a fight even starts and on top of it if my foes too could think like that and we would finish a fight in our thoughts than in reality. This has a deeper meaning too. It proves that thoughts have frequencies and that is what manifested in the reality.

Anyway, back to the movie…I am so fascinated and attached to the British style and accent of English. Splendid! I can watch this movie over and over again just for that reason. But the first film was far much better in understanding of the characters than this is.

I also have no clue why there can’t be some people in a gun factory, no guards and the huge cannons just lying there as if it is a scrap yard. But hey, shouldn’t I have habit watching a movie with lots of loose ends as I belong to group of Bollywood watchers!

I wanted Sherlock Holmes to be a detective not a super hero, I already have a few to count on like Spiderman, Batman and Rajinikanth. They all are capable of saving the whole world. I just want Sherlock to solve criminal or murder mysteries.

However, the movie has its own pace and it is worth watching a couple of times. It has a funny angel too. GO, give it a shot, feels like an oasis after blunders like RA One.

Bollywood manifestation

Our family extended recently. NO, I wasn’t pregnant and did not give birth. We’ve got a puppy. It’s a Lab. This story is not about him though. What happened was… I took our puppy to the Vet and I was the only one present there at that morning hour. Three kids, aged around 10-11 years old, came there with a shoe box. I saw inside it to find one day old two street puppies. They had washed away in the previous night’s heavy rains and reached to these kids somehow. Those puppies were newly born. They were of my palm size and hadn’t opened their eyes yet. Anybody would have felt compassionate after seeing such a thing with life in it.

Well, my husband and I volunteered to take those puppies home and give them to some NGO where they can be put up for adoption. Once I got them home, my own puppy (by the way his name is Gollum, now you will be able to guess why he behaves weirdly sometimes :P), started to attack them. Somehow we passed a day and took those puppies back to the vet because the NGO we talked to could not take the puppies before the next 4-5 days. The Vet, too, showed inability to keep them. We were in great confusion. Now what?

But help always come from the least expected place. To our great surprise there was another person at the vet who had brought his German Shepherd bitch for post delivery treatment. That bitch had delivered five puppies a few days ago and all of them had died during delivery. She was miserably depressed. Vet suggested the best way to treat her without any medication is to give her those puppies and see if she accepts them. This activity will naturally release all the hormones in her and the puppies will also get mother’s milk.

This was a miracle. We gave those puppies to this man and not only his bitch accepted them but started feeding them as well. We couldn’t believe it. These dramatic unfolding of events left us speechless. We all were just looking at one another and kept smiling. I think we continued to smile that whole day, I am sure we all did because I know I couldn’t stop thinking and smiling about it. No one can know nature’s ways of healing. It was as if we were watching a Bollywood movie. Now I know Bollywood does have incidences picked up from real life. I wish a very healthy life to this lovely mum and the babies!

Zero Limits

I recently read “Zero Limits” by Joe Vitale and Ihaleakala Hew Len. Dr. Len practices Ho’oponopono and this is what this book talks about. Now what he speaks about is that we are responsible for whatever we are experience in our lives. He suggests to take 100% responsibility of our lives. Now, what I understood by all this reading is that I have to forgive myself rather than getting angry on other people or blaming other people. I think that is the most difficult part. It is so hard to digest that I am the cause of everything happening around me. How can it be? All those people who were mean to me, who hurt me and those people whose reactions I’m gonna experience in my future, are not at fault? I’m the one who is causing all this?

When I watched the interviews of Dr. Len, I realized he is really a simple man armed with an extraordinary tool to vanish all the negativities from our lives. His answer to all question is to say “I love you”. He says whatever we are experience is due to data playing in our memory. One can discontinue this data playing by saying I love you, I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you. Just four sentences and our equation with the outer world will change.

I have experimented with this Ho’oponopono technique in petite things, things of daily routine. It has worked for me. I have seen sudden and miraculous changes in people’s behaviour. But it is difficult for me to keep forgiving myself for whole day’s happenings. I was regular in saying these sentences when I was reading this book, then the practice gradually declined. By the time I write this, I am able to do it only twice a day. I would like to be more regular in it and see what else it can do for me, though, I think this whole practice has a selfish view point where we keep forgiving ourselves for our own benefit, but there is another angle as well, if by forgiving ourselves, we make a change in the other person's behaviour, then it turns out to be completely opposite to selfishness. Well...I am not here to judge when the best thing would be to use it.

Deal Temptation

They say e-commerce is on rise in India. It is the boom time for deals and e-commerce sites. Why such a volcanic thing is happening? Have you ever thought of a reason? No?

The reason is ME and all the other people like me who are so fond of shopping that they want to do it on their laptops and even on their mobiles. Such a colourful, wonderful world of deal and other online sites is, where I can buy things I need, things I might need and things which I’ll never need. I am so very tempted towards that strike through (Rs 2500) rate. It makes me feel that I’ll never ever again in my life going to get that product in THAT offered rate. And oh yes, my mind says “buy it”... “buy it”.

There are other divine sensations I experience while visiting these sites, like blissful feeling of having so many things to browse around on my laptop screen, as if my house has transformed into a giant mall. I feel the rise in my heartbeat by a little scary thought of someone else buying all that stuff before I could reach them. So such feelings make my way easier to move forward on the site.

Therefore, I give a chance of some workout to my wrist and move the mouse on each and every category of products. This exercise increases blood circulation in my mind and it starts working towards creating all kinds of graphs of “how to buy”, “when to buy”, “what excuse to make for buying”, “buy it for yourself” or “buy to gift”. This whole idea of deal sites is like yoga, affecting body, mind and soul.

The most difficult part is selecting the stuff. Once that is done, my happiness is just a click away. And, when the payment is through, I literally count days to receive the product. I have a strange smile on my face till I get it, a smile like I had in the initial days of falling in love. I feel enthused and wait eagerly for it...like a child waits for his Christmas present. And finally, finally the day comes when I get it, I feel like I have just come out a meditation. I feel calm and serene for the next few hours. And guess what?...this feeling vanishes sooner than expected and I go back to some deal site.

This is a very viscous chain of actions but as long as it is related to shopping, I don’t think I’m going to care because as I said it rejuvenating. It is no way a lesser experience than going for shopping on the streets or in the malls rather in this way I don’t have to take my husband with me and later listen to his long complains of how boring it is. I think I’ll give full marks to e-commerce. Thumbs up!

So it begins…

It has been a long time that I’ve been thinking to start my blog. Life is very uncertain in a true way. As soon as I finished my MBA, I got married and shifted here (the city I live in). I started working in an IT company, which is completely contradictory to my past experiences. This gave me an exposure towards web marketing. And My, Oh My, what a world it is…deeper than ocean and wider than sky.

It keeps opening its layers to me like an onion and guess what - I haven’t peeled it off yet, :) a lot remaining. I am learning a lot every day, from a lot of people…I think I am writing a lot of “lot” here. Anyway, I come back to my beginning of this blog. The name of blog just came up in a casual conversation with someone. I was kind of boasting myself that I am a marketing fairy and your product/service has had a magical touch of mine, and there I go...finally found the name for my blog, which seemed to be the most difficult part.

This blog would have all kinds of conversations. My thoughts, my talks to myself and talks with others. Hope this blog will see me maturing as a digital marketer. I love this place called INTERNET and I am here to stay. Cheers!