Winter Musings

 I have observed that many of my blogs start with a customary “when I was a kid...” I found it funny and hence I am going to make it some sort of a tradition now onwards. Anyways, when I was a kid I loved playing with my kitchen set. It was a big Barbie-themed pink kitchen set with small utensils, a cylinder, a basin and even a fridge. I would spend hours playing it alone (you see, I am the only child of my parents). Little did I know that my love for playing ‘kitchen – kitchen’ would soon develop into my love for real cooking. Thanks to watching numerous cookery shows sitting beside my mother I developed an interest in it. I used to spend hours sitting on the kitchen platform while my mom cooked. I would help occasionally. There are a lot of photos of mine in which I am helping my mother or at least trying to help.  After a minor fiasco in my 5th std which involved me dropping a vessel of steaming tea on the floor, I swore that I would never enter the kitchen again. Well well...

 In their childhood, many girls loved to drape their mothers sarees and play homemaker or teacher. It's in our genes, I suppose. I remember asking my mother to give me one of her sarees at least once a week so that I could dance around in it. I would feel like a grown person and order her around. Years passed by, and the roles were reserved, but my love for sarees remained the same. Every time we visited our kuldevta's place, I would bring out my blue stitched saree and pack it carefully in the bag. Then, on the temple premises, I would dance around, being very happy with myself. Children are easy to please. Later, it was during school function days when I draped my mother's wonderful sarees and went to the events. I used to walk around carefully and was extra alert as the "borrowed saree" had to be stain- and crease-free. I guess we are all weirdly possessive with our sarees, so I can't actually blame the mothers for this rule. Soon I learnt how to drape a ni...

  I love the sea. That’s it. That’s all I have got to say. Usually, I start every blog with a big introduction part and then write the main body. Can’t help it because that’s how I talk in real. It takes me around an hour to tell an incident that was of merely 15 minutes. See, I started blabbering again. So, I love the sea. I love the beaches, sea shells, the wind that blows near the sea, waves, coconut trees, salt and wind in my hair and that dampness on my face. I love it all. I think my Pisces sun and Aquarius moon are to be blamed for this love of water bodies. No wonder I love the beachside. Everything about the sea makes me happy. While taking long walks on the beach in the evenings and getting tanned being in the sea in the afternoons I contemplate life and everything that is beyond my understanding. I love to just sit down on the beach and stare at the horizon. So, I guess I can say that I am totally a beachy person. People who have read my earlier blogs know about my l...

A Goa trip with friends is a dream of many college-going people and colleagues.   There is something special about going on a trip with friends and spending mad crazy times with them that fascinates every young person. Well, I haven’t gone to Goa with my friends yet but I did get fortunate enough to go on a Mandu trip with my bunch of crazy people whom I call my college wali family. I went on the trip dreaming of happy crazy fun-filled and embarrassing moments filled of times and I wasn’t disappointed. So let me take you, people, along with me on this journey as seen through my happy memories and cringe moments. Here we go. Though our trip covered the cities of Indore, Ujjain and Maheshwar this blog focuses mainly on Mandu because that’s the reason this whole trip was planned. A friend of mine is utterly fascinated by this place and convinced the other friend to plan a trip here. Soon we all were discussing it. Our first stop was Indore wherein we camped for the next 3 days while...

  As a kid, I hated the idea of travelling. I have talked about it in my previous blogs. As much as I loved exploring new places and sightseeing I hated the actual time spent travelling from one place to other because of my problem with travel sickness. Whenever I travelled I required at least a day to get back to normal health. I always imagined that as an adult I wouldn’t travel unless necessary. And boy was I wrong. Hence it was an absolute surprise to me when I realized that for the past few years now I have enjoyed travelling to different places. Even if nearby, I loved going to see places. After my trip to Indore with my friend's group I was jokingly telling my father that so far I have had the fortune to pay my respects to rivers Krishna, Narmada, Kshipra, Godavari and so on. Now I need to visit Ganga and Yamuna. I strongly believe that someone somewhere was listening to my conversation that day and smiling at me. Because I soon got the opportunity to visit Vrindavan. A ri...

  Fate had decreed that she should be the Queen of the world and the Princess of time.” – Iqbal Nama-i-Jahangiri of Mutamad Khan.   I love reading the tales of strong female characters from the past. There’s something very fascinating about the opinionated queens and princesses with strong characters that make my heart gleam with respect for them. Mehrunnisa is one such character. Reading about Nur Jahan in history textbooks always left me wanting for some more snippets of her life, more glimpses into her royal life. One fine day I came across this book that invited me into its enchanted pages and took me on a journey on which I experienced the royal life and splendor as well as deceit and power games. Ignorant I didn’t have an idea that ‘The Feast of Roses’ is the second book of a trilogy. It was a book I picked up in the library. Only when I started reading it did I realize that I am missing out on something. And at that very moment, I fell in love with the Taj Trilogy. ...