work life balance

It is  so hard  for most peopleto find work that there is no question of work life balance, not in my country. You have to work so hard to get work that you become weary when realize that you have got yourself in to a dead end job just in order to find something to do. Of course there are lots of escape routes but most of us don't even have time to remember them.Sometimes we get lucky and have some genuine fun , but as Frost put it
Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.

Nothing gold can stay. So gold slips out of our hands and we try to work things out so that we have a 'work-life balance'. What is work? Something we do regularly, is quantifiable and is often repetitive. What is life? It is primarily eating resting and sleeping.Eating is also called dieting these days. Resting can also be through exercising or watching TV or a DVD.Sleeping is God's gift to the lucky few.
What about me? I take up too much work with good intention. I relax far too much for the amount of work I have taken up. (am severely handicapped by a poor economic sense) and don't sleep much. Guess should work on these thoughts though it was a relief just to type them here.
Hello don't think I don't know about life being about loving, giving, growing and sharing. These things should happen, shouldn't they? 

About some kho-kho players.

When Dinesh, a student of business administration, started a project to introduce kho-kho to rural boys as part of his post graduate project, he had no idea what a remarkable change it would bring about in the life of the children involved. The team he formed began to participate in tournaments and he took up the task of  not only training them for free , but feeding them and giving uniforms,shoes and transport charges to them. They won some of the matches and some of the players went on to make it to the state team and later on to win a kho-kho match at the national level.
He then started an academy, which conducts state level tournaments and identifies talent and gives free training to rural students. In the last three and a half years he has trained a thousand students, 40 of whom have got free seats in sports quota. 3 have joined the military, 25 have passed the umpiring exam and of course, all of them are different people who have had glimpses of the leader within them.

Dinesh is in his early twenties and is now working in Chennai and runs his academy from there. Good story of leadership!

Tearless and fearless!

Looks like am not going to be able to blog at all. Simply because am into content writing now. And also more text book writing too, I believe. And this is when work is supposed to be less.
And one more thing about interesting old me! I can't cry. I really can't. I remember my mom hitting me quite a bit and saying "Look at her! Not a drop from her eyes!". Not that my tear glands don't function. When I ride the two wheeler at seventy, my eyes water automatically. You can't call that crying, especially coz it's actually exhilarating riding at that speed.
I remember crying on two occasions though. The first one was when my dad told me on landing in Chennai one morning, that my friend Padma's dad had died. It was a shock to me for this person was a unique individual. Mr.Chandrashekar never scolded his daughter, (infact, I realize now that he had spoilt her a bit) was terribly proud of her and always had something simple and insightful to say. Going back to what happened when I heard the news, I started to cry. Rather it was a body wracking snort, exactly four snorts and I imagine that's how a rhino would snort. And not many drops of tears came from my eyes

Then the next time I burst into spontaneous tears on the return journey from Pilani, where I had deposited my daughter at her hostel. This time there were some tears but it was a single outburst that lasted a minute or so. This happened seven years ago. Even now when am sad, I try to cry. I contort my face and and try to sob but no tears come and then I end up laughing. I sometimes wish I could and get relieved from pain and then tell myself it's better not to cry. What if I end up as a crybaby, addicted to self pity.

And then when my daughter got married, and got into the car with her  brand new husband, my husband burst into tears and my daughter's eyes filled up and my son- in- law's eyes turned sympathetic and moist; a typical scene, that has inspired many a film maker and ad maker, and there I was, dry eyed and throwing furtive looks all around! And why did I throw fearless into the title? Not just because it rhymes, coz am basically fearless too and more about that in another blog. tata

what i have been doing

I was writing textbooks and was unable to blog! So goes the story! I was also helping my family in celebrating my daughter's wedding. But the real reason I did not blog may never be printed. Since I have very few secrets, I don't know how to keep myself from talking about something that I should not open my mouth about. Let me summarize by saying that I had a good time doing something else too. 

Guess with all the big happenings I will have a lot to blog about now that I am done with the textbooks and the wedding went off well.hehehehe. full stop.

Prayer!

A perverse streak, which tells me to blog when I have other important things to attend to, has prompted me to write this not at all perverse post!
I set goals that overflow with good will; such as scrap a hello to atleast five of my old connections on facebook and orkut, say a prayer for all t hose who tell me, "pray for me", etc etc. Actually apart from this thought coming to me on its own, I have a role model in my dad, who prays for the welfare of every offshoot in his clan ;).Yes, he mouths a prayer in sanskrit for every one born in the family everyday and tells me that he did it on that day whenever I call him.
Inspite of my angelic origins, I conform to neither that or this side of the earth. But this is what I pray for when I do it.

1. First for my dad, that he should regain the glowing handsome serenity that he was born with and somehow partially lost, particularly after 45.
2.Next for my mom, that she should regain her health and effervescence for life and be truly happy
3. My uncle, should get back his zest for life and the dynamism with which he entered our lives
4. Padmanabhan, that he should get out of the circuit of irrelevant self pity and realize the value of his time wasted in it.
5. My brother, that he should be able to do all that he dreamed of and learn to play cheerfully, as he actually did, sometime long ago.
6. My gorgeous twin sisters should start looking gorgeous again through weight management
7.My sister in law should find the space that she seems to be searching for, in life.
8.One person in my family should recognize the bitter streak that is altering his creative intuitive personality
9.Another should learn to imbibe the nutrition that life offers in the form of food and fun and improve in health
10.My daughters, achievers, winners, should continue to dream on and fly forth!
11.The other children in my family, whom I really don't know that well, I pray for your happiness.
12.And of course, people who want me to pray for you from time to time; am not mentioning your names here, but I remember you in  my prayers. Arun prasadh, i know you may read this, I may not pray every day, but whenever I pray for my family, I pray for you too!
13. Sometimes I pray for my school teachers and often for those teachers who gave me lessons of life and moments of joyous illumination.

One day, I will start to pray everyday!!!

Things that can be written easily

The easiest things that can be written are romantic poems. As Wordsworth defined it, 'the sponatneous overflow' ensures that powerful emotions are distilled into poetry or prose.

Blogs, diaries,journals are also easy to write for two reasons. They are based on our experience and do not require high levels of writing skills.The other type of not so difficult writing is report writing. you write what you observe; a series of events, a performance, a product; you give all details and describe the sequence of action in it's normal progression.

Writing a speech is  a slightly more difficult task which becomes easier if we are passionate about the topic, are familiar with the audience and have something useful to tell them. Writing an essay or a thesis requires that the writer has some general knowledge and reference skills to highlight all aspects of a certain issue and put forth a conclusive argument.
Higher levels of creative writing like novels, plays and epics require inspiration, talent, commitment and creativity to bring to life a world of imaginary characters.

But the most difficult things to write, according to me, are didactic poems for text books. Not being a generation of preachers, we teachers are not inspired to spout lofty morals in rhyme.
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Plastic , the magic as well as the logic of it

I love plastic, the range of  colours it comes in and the shine of it! Plastic bangles and ear rings go very well with casual wear and synthetic sarees.The amazing beauty of matching plastic accessories is literally invisible to the Indian eye, which thinks of gold as a synonym for jewellery. We Indians never seem to realize that gold ornaments get to look so dirty and dull and don't really match the dizzying variety of fabrics and designs of the times.
Apart from accessories, the use of plastic as a watertight dust proof cover is indisputable. No other cover, made of paper or cloth, can protect as plastic does. It looks hip too and is inexpensive. There must surely be a way to recycle plastic and rather than make a hue and cry of plastic degrading the environment, we should find ways to dispose off waste plastic successfully.
Personally, I think few things can look as pretty as a red, shiny, plastic mug.