keep moving forward ...

                                   Happy MLK Day !!                                         

After failing to conquer the mount Everest, Edmund Hillary said,

“You beat me the first time, but I’ll beat you the next time because you’ve grown all you are going to grow… but I’m still growing!”

an arty wednesday.....

 

coz .....

                                                                                 ~andy warhol

1. camel in crayons.... picniked & gimped for the final effect...

2. my first painted t-shirt

3. a photograph taken at Phipps conservatory, Pittsburgh

4. rangoli at HRI, Diwali 2008

5. have a great day xoxo :)

"You get a strange feeling when you're about to leave a place, I told him,
like you'll not only miss the people you love but you'll miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you'll never be this way ever again."

       — Azar Nafisi (Reading Lolita in Tehran) 

Remembering Mother on her birthday....

- Mother Mirra Alfassa

Life is full of interruptions and complications.....

and ... general opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed,
but I don't see that.

It seems to me that love is everywhere.....

 

Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there-

parents and kids,

....husbands and wives,   

boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends....

 When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love.

If you look for it, I've got a sneaking suspicion...
love actually is all around.

the photographs:

• brother and me
• husband and me
• my mom and dad
• my dad with his youngest friend 
• mom and aunt
• friends from my graduate-years

updated with new images of us with our son on 6.11.2013

text quoted from Love Actually

Though the life holds its treasures out ....

              To be enjoyed by everyone........

                   It is the lifted face that feels the shining of the sun..

nothing but the clatter of cups and spoons and the hissing of the cooker
mark my mornings.... yet i am bent on lending each day a character.
so without scorning the normality of the regular, i go ahead
and complete my chores,- one after another. - till all is done.
set the bed, fluff the pillows, lay the meals on the table-set. 

clean the surfaces bearing marks of yesterday, then read and write by the afternoons.
later with hair neatly set apart and in a dress ironed to the hem
i wait for husband to return and share his story of the day......
each day follows a routine just like the other.... 
yet the reading, writing and the cooking sets it apart.... 
besides... every night when i resign to bed
i rest myself with the realisation that i have grown a day wiser

and have come a day closer to you-  my love ...

[the title quoted from here]

...

remembering 26/11 ...

           

Hold your tongue or hold your breath 

and you can hear time whispering 

its existence and regrets...

                              

-Vimal C

 remembering 26/11 ...and saluting the brave and the innocent who paid with their lives 

                        for the fanaticism of a few....

image from

when you realise that you want to spend the rest of your lives together.... 

you want the rest of your life to begin now....

thus our life-together began on 18th September 2004 

and after an year in a grand family affair we tied the knots on 18th November, 2005.

.......and then lived happily ever after.............

                     happy anniversary, Ni ! the past six years have been lovely............

                                                         Thank you so much for everything.....

 love and kisses...

yours wifey...

[quoted from Harry met Sally]

Coz all you need to bring back that zeal ....

on a swampy soggy groggy rainy day

....... is a cup of piping hot chai, few anecdotes and a lots of inspiring words.....

verses from If by Rudyard Kipling.

Art Love...

me and husband are extremely fond of art. we visit art galleries whenever we can and often return with a bundle of art-prints ..... besides others, we both have developed a special appreciation for the strokes of Van Gogh and the forms of  Hussain.... so yesterday when while surfing online I came across this art event where serigraphs of Maqbool Fida Hussain and Sayed Haider Raza would be exhibited, I just knew where I would be this evening !   ... and so at 5pm today i and a friend were at Sumukha Gallery,  glaring at a wall with The British Raj at one end, Asoka at the other and an array of Hussain's Kerala-Jaisalmer and horses in between....

Kerala, Hussain

Since our print-collection does not have a Hussain yet I was hoping that today i would find one... but serigraphs were all that they had.... i however did not return empty-hand... for the gracious lady at the gallery handed to me a booklet of limited editions which had this message by Hussain in it....

                          it made me smile... for we are certainly the class with more taste than means......

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.

For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

MESS.........

Of late I have been feeling a little low. No reason in particular.... but nevertheless....

Given that my husband is coming home after almost an year, 10 months to be more precise and the fact that i have recently earned my Phd degree , i should be joyful and happy. in fact i am happy yet  i am  feeling low...

As I write .. a hint of the reason behind this ugly feeling is peeping from somewhere......

seems to me that I have spread myself too much over the last few months. i guess i have gotten involved in  a lot of affairs without considering how to wrap them up.... too many incomplete ends to meet.... and this state of being is driving me crazy. the truth is that i have been groomed to be sincere about everything i do.... where it be housekeeping or work or whatever it is.... and once undertaken,- there is no job, no relation that i can treat frivolously... so it bothers me immensely when i see that sincerity and honesty is slipping out of me just because i have undertaken too much and cannot handle it all together....  i hate it when i do not know the end of something i had started in a moment of impulse.....

That reminds me of what Dirac had once told Neils Bohr in his moment of confusion,

"I was taught at school never to start a sentence without knowing the end of it...."

Note to myself: In future remember what Dirac had said  before plunging head-on into odd commitments !

[image from weheartit]

I quote...

Courage is not the absence of fear 

but rather the judgment that something is more important than fear.

The brave may not live forever

but the cautious do not live at all.

          ~ Ambrose Redmoon 

Andy says.....

I say, " Amen !"

Lost World

I was sleeping,

when the morn-bird cooed-

I was wandering

where the pepping sun stood.

When I awoke,

the world glittered bright and gay

ah! I missed the childhood

of a beautiful day!

 – Soumya Das

The poem is by one of my friends and colleagues Soumya Das... I love how simple and well-worded it is and so wanted to share with you ... and the photograph is from another friend's assimilated collection.  In his words this tiny little blue bird used to wait for them every morning perched on the thatched straw roof of their hut  in Dholavira, an ancient city dotted with ruins of the Indus Valley civilization ....

Have a Nice day !

It's all I have to bring to-day,
   This, and my heart beside,
This, and my heart, and all the fields,
   And all the meadows wide.
Be sure you count, should I forget, --
   Some one the sum could tell, --
This, and my heart, and all the bees
  Which in the clover dwell.

 ~ Emily Dickinson

[photograph from weheartit]

A painting and a poem ....

Words of wisdom ......

 GYPSY

I asked a gypsy pal
To imitate an old image
And speak old wisdom.
She drew in her chin,
Made her neck and head
The top piece of a Nile obelisk and said:
  Snatch off the gag from thy mouth, child,
And be free to keep silence.
Tell no man anything for no man listens,
Yet hold thy lips ready to speak.

~ Carl Sandburg 

The painting called "Gypsy Woman" is by the Russian artist Nikolai Yaroshenko. I found it by google search and wished to share... Isn't it lovely ?

Leap anyways....

"......... for one small step for a man....
                            might be a giant leap for mankind.. "

[drawing inspired from a book of Chinese paintings]