Lately i have noticed that i do not often see this facial expression on people.  The simple curve at the end of your mouth or around the eyes, that can light up a room or a life, refuses to surface easily.  Are you taking a bit of time to figure out what I am saying?  I do not blame you. It’s a lost art.  SMILE. Is it lack of exercise that faces are losing their flexibility or it’s just that people are afraid of catching something dangerous? Well, if you sneeze you do catch the flu, so when you smile….you never know.  Or is it something more subliminal? I fail to understand the reason for the fall in its popularity  but I know it takes less muscles (17) to smile than frown (43) and no, the other person will not take undue advantage of you beacuse you smiled at them. The best part is, its easy. 

Come one, yeah…one corner at a time….and practice makes it even easier. 

Yes, PERFECT

101 things I like 

1. Sitting alone meditating and watching my thoughts
2. The calmness that descends on me in temples
3. The way my mouth waters seconds before I eat the first morsel of my mom’s uppitu or any other thing that she cooks
4. Watching a dew drop at the tip of a leaf or flower
5. Lying on bed in my room, reading books and chuckling or shedding a single drop of tear
6. Lying on bed in my room, watching horror movies in the dark and all other kind of movies during the day
7. Licking my fingers after a meal and slurping the last bit of juice from a glass
8. Sleeping on my stomach
9. Arguing with friends just for the sake of it
10. Holi
11. Photography, especially black and white
12. Kids
13. Dancing
14. Listening to music, soft
15. Sleeping under a tree
16. Fruits – Banana and butter fruit
17. Walking along the beach
18. Making sand domes and digging tunnels in them
19. Writing- poetry, quotes, articles etc
20. My favorite blue denim
21. My cameras
22. Day Dreaming
23. Traveling- any place
24. The first phase of falling in love/crushes
25. When I am gifted something someone has made
26. Compliments
27. Rolling up my shirt sleeves
28. Sports
29. Water in every form
30. Mountains
31. Eating Eggs
32. Tell jokes, if I remember them
33. Sleeping on someone’s shoulder while traveling
34. Love traveling by train
35. Gerberas
36. Dogs
37. Sleeping under a star lit sky
38. The patterns on desert sands
39. Anticipating and spotting the rainbow
40. To sit on swings
41. Toys
42. Comics
43. Calvin & Hobbes
44. Chikkis and eating milk-powder
45. Playing football in the rain
46. The colors black and white
47. Girls in Skirts/Girls with curly hair
48. Philosophy
49. The feeling when I say the national anthem
50. Walking-early morning, evenings and in the rain
51. Mayflower trees
52. Smell of paint and petrol
53. Cadbury’s fruit and nut
54. Watching sunsets
55. Swimming
56. Writing in ink pens
57. Leather strap watches
58. Home and spending time in it
59. Having a pillow around my legs while sleeping
60. Wicker furniture
61. Listening to music in my car
62. Weaving my own stories to tell kids
63. Scrabble
64. Laughing
65. Genuine hugs
66. Theatre
67. Short stories
68. My Red boxers
69. The smell of wet earth
70. Watching ants march
71. The smell of coffee flowers
72. Looking at hoardings
73. Seeing daily/weekly/monthly astro predictions
74. Like to read newspapers and magazines from the last page first
75. Red chilly sauce in Chinese restaurants
76. Mayonnaise
77. The color of my birth stone /wine– ruby
78. Observing people
79. Keeping things neat
80. My blue sunglasses
81. Holding a firefly in my hand
82. Watching the flight of an eagle
83. Picnics
84. Spicy food
85. Noodles
86. Staying in tents
87. Silences and being alone
88. Non-stop talking with some friends
89. Being secretive and keeping people curious
90. Calling up people on my birthdays and asking them to wish me
91. Changing my look often
92. Stationery
93. Candle light dinners
94. Foot and head massages
95. Animated movies
96. Villages
97. Reading about star signs to assess people
98. Humour pages in Reader’s digest
99. The pictures on tarot cards
100. Smsing
101. Sitting in parks

If i look back six months, i was never listening to Kannada Music and strangely now if i do watch TV (rare) the only channel i do watch is the Kannada music channel. Some of the anchors in the channel can get on my nerves but the songs that follow soothes it.  Are there any other music channels on TV nowadays? I mean MTV is more like those MAD comics that i read as a teenager and i have not seen “V” on my cable for months now not that it makes a difference to me. If i ever listen to FM, i automatically tune into the only Kannada channel.

I just wish the trend continues and the industry continues to enthrall us with atleast one good number in every film. I wish i could say the same about the movies though. Majority of the movies still are a tangled heap of violence or over the top romances!!!

Luck is what forms the backdrop of this movie. I found the movie absorbing primarily because of Scarlet Johanson but the climax really took me by surprise. You only realize in the last minute of the movie as to which side the ball really fell and who won the grandslam. Many of us pooh-pooh luck and believe in hardwork all the way. It is true but at some point during all your grunt work, luck would have silently played it’s part to ensure success. But again i think, for luck to favour you, you need to impress it with hardwork or good deeds.

So when someone says “Lucky you” when something good happens to you, look back at what you might have done to earn the title

Learning to read and write the musical notes was a bit confusing in the beginning and remained so till the end. I said to myself that i am meant to make music and not write music. I bought an Indian violin (the instrument does not matter, it’s the hands that hold it and play it) for 4000 Rs. and was all set. My misconception of the violin being an easy instrument was shattered into bits when i struggled to hold it in position, let alone play it. But again, i was not the one to be disheartened and i said, the shape of the violin was not favourable to my structure and again it did not matter. The music was in the strings and the bow that stroked it. Then finally it happened. The bows touched the string and it was pure magic. It happened everytime when the teacher played my violin. He used to leave me alone to practice so that i do not get distracted. Three months into practice i realized why he used to leave me alone. I had only mastered the BAA of the BAA BAA BLACK SHEEP rhyme by then. But even that sounded like an injured or retarded sheep!! The strings begged me to stay away and the bow shook from fear of being tortured. I dropped out of the classes in search of a more favourable instrument.

My teacher was all for it as he never enquired why or what happened. There are still days when i have such intense feelings for music, but i am more compassionate towards instruments!

The kiss you gave your lover  all of a sudden in a well crowded market place, breaking into a running race with friends after stepping out a restaurant, sitting backward while pillion riding, a trip you took just because you happened to be near the bus or railway station or getting a new hairdo…didn’t you enjoy those moments of madness? The experience is amazing and the memories everlasting. As children we did most things on impulse and as we grew, we become more conscious and calculated in every move. I agree that there are norms in the society that demand us to be like this or that but once in a while, it’s ok if we forget them and become children.

What spurred me to write about this topic is a birthday of a good friend which we celebrated recently. It was the typical party with people eating, drinking and behaving decently as there were people on other tables, until the cake came. We had ordered for 1 cake but were surprised to see 2 on the counter. One of the cake was brought to our table and the formalities were conducted. As we stuffed the birthday boy’s face with cake, one of my cousin and a friend caught hold of him and lifted him horizontally on the ground for the birthday bumps and all of a sudden, 15 of us had forgotten that we are in this decent restaurant and it turned into a riot with all of us kicking him, laughing and screaming. The best was yet to come. Suddenly we had a family of 3 generations, from the other table ( the only table that was left) joining us in giving him the bumps. That’s when we saw cake no.2 from the counter being carried to their table. They were celebrating a birthday too and guess who joined in giving the birthday bumps to their birthday boy. The stewards and waiters enjoyed this first event of madness in their restaurant as much.

If they had the energy, i am very sure that the grandpa and grandma would have landed a few bumps on their son and my friend!!!

But like i believe in god, it’s natural for me to believe in angels too. As he cannot be anywhere, I believe everyone has an angel taking care of them. Yes, the one with the wings. Maybe, it’s an angel who guides us to someone who need our support because their angel doesn’t know the solution to a particular problem. 

So there are angels, with wings and without. Believe in the ones with and trust in the ones without. They will get you through hard times.

It so happened that last week, I received an sms from a friend and it said ” i found something just for you and i am sending it by courier’. I was travelling on work and when i joined office, i had this pale yellow post cover on my table. I stared at it for a minute and tried guessing what it could be, but in vain. I opened it and was amused to see a folded ten rupee note. I slowly unfolded the note and found a piece of paper with a message ” Just a note to remind you that you are unique” and asking me to take a look at the number on the note. I looked and felt so happy to see 140778, my birth date 14/07/78. I was touched by this lovely, unexpected and REALLY thougtful gift.

What made the gift even more special was, she had made me a year younger. My birth date is actually 14/07/77 . She needn’t know this!

So last night, since mom is away, a friend and I went in search of plain dal and rotis. We searched for a while in RT nagar (where i stay), we did not find any. So we went to Sanjay Nagar and finally found a north indian joint, a small one. We were very hungry  but the sign board just made us feel starved. It said ” HAVE MORE”!

Great branding but i felt it missed the tag-line. ‘We will charge more”!!!!!