One Sunday Morning….

I hate hearing my alarm buzzing at morning. The most annoying sound in the world however musical it is. Forgetting how helpful it would be for me to get up and do my duty on time, I become mad and snooze it and go back to bed again. Usually I get up only after 10-15 minutes of alarm time of which I have set. I always love and long to have a fresh good morning without any interruptions and beeps. And I never fail to make it during weekends.

On Sunday morning when the alarm beeped at 4.00 am. that is an hour earlier than the usual time, I almost jumped from bed smiling myself. Lot of anticipation and excitement twirled up on my mind. I got ready wearing a dress that was chosen randomly after pulling almost all clothes out from my wardrobe.

I took a bus from Madurai at 5.30 am. It seemed like ages since I had travelled alone. For the first time I left my kids to my husband and was travelling for the Reunion of my college mates of Communication Department in M.S.University. While I was travelling, my mind got into the time machine and just travelled couple of decades back. How exciting it was to look back to see those cheery days after a long span.

I was playful and not a bright student at the end of the school and the lesson learned through the marks I scored,  gave me a determination to choose a subject that is easier and enjoyable for me. I started loving Shakespeare, Shelly and Keats. And I was in English Literature class in UG. Never ever thought about what would be my career in future. I was a day dreamer then, never attended the class seriously. Most of the time my eyeballs moved when the Professor moved on the stage and I remained physically present and mentally absent on those classes. If not, I doodled something on my note pages. Yes I loved doodling. But some how managed to get a first class degree that was my target then. One of our professor introduced communication course in M.S University and He said it would be awesome to learn as it has endless opportunities regarding the career. so he selected few of us and asked us to do the Post Graduation in Communication.

Thus three of my class mates (me, Latha and Vadivu) and a senior boy, Mathan joined but we never knew what we were going to learn since we were in the first batch of the department. We were in and not at all disappointed to see the old tiled, dusty shed as class rooms with few rusty chairs as the University building was under construction. We all loved that simple and small class room. We were all anxious and in the brim of joy that we were going to learn something different and new. We had no syllabus, no library, But we had a couple of great faculties.

Unlike I was in UG, the communication made me to attend the class and I listened, yes listened and took notes as we didn’t have access to any of the text books. I enjoyed every session. I realized how precious every class was. I should thank Mr. Murali and Mrs.Susan for their knowledge input and they were who introduced us to the subject. Mr.Natraj did tap our latent talent as I have mentioned in his welcome speech and threw a new light about the career and profession we were about to. And Dr.B.P.Sanjay was our HOD and the real source of inspiration. Till today, He is my Guru to all my new ventures I make in my career and business. Our department faculties were so sweet and down to earth. It was unbelievable and exciting when Mr.Murali, Mr.Natraj, Dr.B.P.Sanjay came to my house in Nagercoil. Mrs.Susan was awesome and stayed in my house during a diwali celebration. I was so fortunate to have those faculties.

Three girls (me, Vadivu, and Latha) who were from Nagercoil, stayed in one of the nearby college hostel since the university building was under construction. The rules inside were so strict and all should sit up and read during study hours. When we said we had nothing to study, we were forced to flip Dictionaries as magazines or other books were not allowed to read during study time. We were distressed about being separated from the family and severe homesickness made us to quit the hostel and by then we were the day scholar travelling from Nagercoil to Tirunelveli (82 kms) by train. Starting from home at 7.00 am to Tirunelveli and back to home at 9.00 pm. We carried jolna bags and did the assignments at late night.

I would say, the bunch of students in our class were unique by their own way. They were intelligent and helpful by nature. We were serious learners during exams. We were in an era where we didn’t have access to google or wikipedia to do our reference or assignments. we all believed in Knowledge sharing and we shared with others whatever we had learned individually and did group studies. Every semester, Arul took the lead in securing marks. Me, Haneef and Vadivu were just few marks behind him. We were all good friends and we never competed with each other. But at the end of the course, final semester marks and the thesis I submitted helped me to become the Topper. I was not so excited as I felt, Arul deserve that title. Now I am happy that all of my friends are in the right path and topping in their respective career.

By the end of the course we had some unwanted group clashes too with other friends in the class that made some of us to embarrassment but now after decades we are all together and it was like a kids fight making us all realize and smile.

I was so eager to meet all the professors, friends and all the juniors of the dept. And being quite ambiguous whether they all remember me or not since it has been a long time, two decades and I have never met them in between.

At 9.00 am I reached Tirunelveli and Josephine, one of my junior of the department who was already known to me through fb received me there. I met my friend Haneef there after a long gap. We all joined and headed to the University.

The new university building was huge and well maintained. The department was clean, beautiful and well equipped with all updated state-of-art stuffs. We met the present HOD of the communication department, Dr.Govindaraju. I didn’t feel like that I met him for the first time. I think that’s the magic of the Communication family. Prof.B.P.Sanjay, who was our HOD of the department then, to my surprise, He did remember me and recalled few instances about me. I was super excited and thrilled to meet him. Mr.Natraj was as such as he was decades back. I felt everyone were from my family and didn’t feel like we were meeting after a long time. It was nice to hear their lectures and that took me to the past classroom. Dr.Ravindran was in when we completed the course. So we were not fortunate to hear his lecture. The speech he made during the meet made me to long to attend his class. Dr.Arul Selvan, my classmate Arul’s brother was there and I liked his thought and attitude when he spoke in the meet. From my batch, four of us were there. Me, Haneef, Salai, and Durai. It was like a dream and the whole day was a day of fun and laughter. We also met our direct juniors and friends and we shared some interesting moments when we were together and missed other classmates who didn’t attend the meet.

I bought some Tirunelveli special Halwa for my kids and my husband who were so sweet and understanding and helped me to attend this wonderful memorable meet. I reached Madurai at 10.30 pm. My husband and my two kids were waiting more than an hour in the car to pick me up. My daughter jumped to me and kissed me and said how much she missed me during the day. I thanked God for the wonderful family and friends I got. World is so beautiful with all those unconditional love and care.

A day that is entirely different from my routine – work, designs, deadlines, emails, daily chores, fb… I told my husband, “We have been missing something in our life while we battle with machines and technology. The real world….. It is still beautiful”.

 

Happy Pongal -2013- Thanksgiving to Nature and the farmers!

Pongal is a Tamil harvest festival, celebrated in Tamil Nadu, a southern state of India. Our life, amidst all the innovations of technology and inventions, we still revolve around the nature and its pace by all means. What we do against nature may fetch you some kind of happiness for a while but it is just a temporary thing that could be vanished so easily right?  Switching to organics in agriculture is the best instance for this. I personally love this thanksgiving festival to nature.  Using earthen pots and utensils, something ancient or traditional, is a wonderful way to live with nature and it is the most beautiful and healthy way that brings you assured happiness. This festival is a traditional one, also celebrated to honor and thank the farmers during this harvest season.

I cooked Sweet Pongal (Sweetened boiled rice) in my house and offered it to the Sun God and thanked him for helping farmers in the agricultural process and feeding us.  But today most of us, including me, cook pongal in the cooker or oven to celebrate this festival, instead of cooking it naturally outside during sunrise. Though the way of celebration is changing, still I could find the spirit of the festival is everywhere. Night before the day of Pongal, I could see, all women gathered outside and were embellishing their houses with beautiful Kolams and decorating their houses, hanging mango leaves as garland  at the entrance and tying turmeric plants at doors.

My heartiest wishes to  everyone and their family for a great year of Happiness, Peace and Prosperity.

 

DIY- Upcycle old T-shirt to Kids pillow.

I have been thinking for months to do some DIY stuff. Work, daily chores and kids took most of my time and many of my wishes were just remained idle in my to do list. January 4th,  my little girl’s 4th birthday. I thought to make something special for her. When I found my daughter playing with a tiny snail toy, Got a quick flash and it was not a bad idea.  I wished to do one in the form of pillow as my crazy little girl loves cozy kids pillows. When I tried to grab some clothes that suit a snail body and shell, all I found was the piles of old clothes in the shelves. Well, its time to upcycle her dad’s old t-shirt to a toy pillow.

1. First draw the shape of the snail body and shell in a paper.
2. Trace it and cut those in the clothes as in picture and sew the sides.
3. Invert it and the skin of the snail is ready now.
4. Mark eyes, smile using hand embroidery. Fix a bow at one side that adds more girlish to the toy.
5. Now its time to stuff. Voila! Snail cushion is ready to decorate your kids room! 

Written and created  by: Jaya

Send in your queries and comments!

 

Multi-Talent – Boon or Bane?

Generally every one is multi-talented. It means that a person has many different talents in many different areas.  It depends on all how you perceive things around you and create interest towards it. Recently I read an article about multi-talented tasks. It asserted and came up with some thoughts that multi-talented will make you lose the focus on one subject hence you aspire less in your works than the person who is not. This made me to think and to probe over this subject.

I remember one of my friend was telling during my college days, “Jaya’s baby will be the luckiest in the world and would be brought up very cozy and comfy with all her creative makes. She was telling this when she saw my dress which was designed and sewed of my own. Thanks to my mom. She is the real creative person  but she didn’t get good exposure or platform to showcase her talents. Along with my sister who got similar interest and hobbies, we were making wonders apart from our studies.

Right from my college days, I receive lot of compliments about the innate ability to do any sort of work in creative manner. I showed a great interest in art and crafts. And along with the background of communication studies, I chose my career in visual communication and become a creative graphic designer. My workplace has become a great platform to quench my thirst for creativity. I enjoy every click I make. Though I thoroughly enjoy and love my job, I always tell myself, “Long way to go”. I always wish to be better and better everyday. In my dictionary of life there is no BEST things. I do not want to make  fullstops on anything saying THE BEST. So I like the term BETTER, better which always lead you to the betterment and provides room to improve and grow.

Being a mom of two, naturally your days become shorter and busier. Apart from home making things, I always feel like I have tons of work to do in this world. My list is becoming endless. My mood swings very often from the confident to do anything different and creative to the feeling that nothing has been achieved so far as most of it remains in my mind’s list and left idle. Desperately I started analyzing my “to do” list and found many things that left undone are what I wish to do of my own. Since I always long for ‘something different’ stuffs, whether it is a Kid’s bed, dress, scrapbook, interior decor, Paintings… I wish to do all those of my own and shows lesser likings towards the stuffs available in the market and to pay huge amount for it. And same in the case of designs I make. I always look for perfect and better designs, most of the works done by others are not satisfactory to me. This attitude of mine makes my list bigger and bigger and sometime fetches some negative and unpleasant feelings.

Looking at the positive side, I have pretty good stuffs to share. There is no boredom or monotony in life. When both my kids started going school, first day I felt that I was left in the planet where I could hear only the tapping sound of keyboard and ticking of clock. But soon I started feeling good with my tight schedules to do my routines, office works and other interesting stuffs in my list. If you think, focusing on single subject will lead to progress, you may be wrong. May be one task at a time may work well. That doesn’t mean that you should focus only on a single task throughout your life. The people who are not multi-talented, likely to become lazy as they are lacking in variety, they get bored with their repetitious tasks hence show lack of interest on their works.

Personally I just can’t imagine a life focusing on a single task throughout and making it tedious and monotonous. Multi-talent makes my days busy and helps me to feel Proud, Good, Full, Ease and Complete.

 

Becoming Vegetarian by choice…

My five-year old son was holding the silver foiled edge of the spicy chicken Lollipop. Keeping his tiny mouth wide open, he tried to pull a large piece of it using his deciduous teeth. He chewed and chewed the mouth-watering fried chicken and asked me:

“Amma…where did these Chicken piece come from?”

Me:  “from Chicken”.

My son:  “I asked you, from which plant or tree it comes ?….like  mango from mango trees.”

I did not want to give him a detailed explanation about the origin of that cooked chicken piece. I was sure, if I did so he may not like to eat it. I just diverted him by telling, “you know Hrishick…, Chicken is good for health. It contains protein, B Vitamins…”

Obviously, in India most of the meat eaters or lovers have these type of guiltiness at their corner about slaughtering animals to make a sumptuous meal. India, being a proud vegetarian country has the highest percentage of vegetarians in the world, which stands at 99% in 2006.

There are as many different kinds of vegetarians as there are vegetables to eat. A few types would include ovo-vegetarian. This is where you eat eggs, but not dairy products. If you use dairy products, but don’t eat eggs, you would be a lacto-vegetarian. Then there are just plain vegetarians. I describe this as not eating anything with a face or any products that have animal by products in them. There are many who say they are vegetarian, but eat fish, I do not consider this vegetarian as I do think fish can feel pain. You would be called a pescatarian, but not vegetarian. Finally What I have chosen is lacto-ovo vegetarian.

Well, coming to me, I was not brought up as meat-eater during my childhood. As my father was a vegetarian, my mom followed him and never cooked it in our house. So I was the lover of veggies during school days. After my father’s demise, my brother who was in his teens was demanding my mom to cook fish for him at first. He loved eating everything under the sun.

Slowly I started loving it and at one point I was telling,” I just can’t imagine a life without these fried fish or chicken. I really feel pity over the vegetarians who miss this taste.” Those words I uttered while I was in my college days. Later I was eating like crazy all those but mostly fish, chicken and mutton.

After becoming a mom I found a change in my mindset which was against slaughtering to satisfy our appetite and adding up the sins to our life’s good list. For years, I was trying to give up eating meats, but it was so crazy and kept postponing for some reasons. As I underwent c-section for both of my kids, I was also in the position to listen doctor’s advise.

When I announced, I am going to shun myself from eating meat, some friends and family relatives came out of their valuable suggestions:

“Do not stop fully. You can opt to reduce the frequency of eating if you like”

“Why can’t you avoid red meat and take fish as it is more healthier?”

“You may feel bad if you fly to western countries. You won’t get any good food you like sometimes.”

Of course these words were the outcome of the people who really cared me. Though their words were discouraging, it had its own value. And some one started to bet that I cannot keep my words or tongue against it as I loved eating fish and meat. It was disgusting. Just ignored those things too.

For past few months I have been eating Lacto-ovo Vegetarian stuffs. My kids and my husband are still meat eaters and it is my duty to cook for them during weekends at least. I do not want to force them anyway. When they grow up they might choose this. It’s up to their tastes and thoughts.

It’s quite easy to turn against meat-eating with Indian staple foods. We need not to worry that we may end up with protein deficiency if we give up meats. Every traditional dish of India or of tamilnadu have a balanced nutritious of Carbohydrates and protein. Whether it is Idly and sambar, Chapati with dal and sabji, Puttu and payuru, venpongal and sambar, all our breakfast or dinner dishes have sufficient protein. As they are mostly a mix of cereal and pulses.

A bowl of boiled rice topping with dal grave (paruppu) and a spoonful of ghee, and broken pieces of pappodom as garnish. And for side dish, Avial which is made up of mixed veggies, yogurt and coconut would be the tastiest in the world. The aroma of this cannot be replaced by any other meat dishes. That’s my all time favorite dish.

But I also love the taste of the fish or chicken grave. I really don’t want to miss that taste too. So I just opted for alternate foods like Mushrooms,Tofu or Paneer. While I cooked chicken for my husband and kids, I made it separately with the same spicy masala with mushrooms or paneer. It was awesome. No change in the taste of the dish.

And the pleasure of being a vegetarian is something cannot be expressed through words and it is greater than anything else. This could be attained only by experiencing it. Go green. Go vegetarian!

 

“Chithirai Vishu” – Tamil Newyear Celebration!

While the Tamils celebrate “Chithirai Thirunal”, the first day of  Tamil month “Chithirai”,  marking Tamil new year, Keralites call it as “Vishu”- the New year for Malayalees.  As my home town is Nagercoil which is in the  border of both states, we celebrate both mixing together.

We had “vishu kani” on this auspicious day. We arranged varieties of fruits infront of a mirror during the night before new year day.  At morning while we get up our first sight should be on the special mirror with fruits. My kids are so excited on seeing that. We had a traditional sumptuous meals for lunch and also held poojas in our house and distributed sweets to our neighbours.

I never knew my name,”Jaya” is also there in the tamil year names list. Since this newyear is “Khara”,  just two years to go for “Jaya” new year.

These are the 60 Tamil years name:

Prabhav, Vibhav, Shukla, Paramoda, Prajapati, Angira, Shrimukha, Bhava, Yuva, Dhatu, Ishwar, Bahudanya, Pramathi, Vikrama, Vrisha, Chitrabhanu, Subhanu, Taran, Prartiva, Vyaya, Sarvajit, Sarvadhari, Virodhi, Vikriti, Khara, Nandana, Vijaya,  JAYA , Marmath, Durmikha, Hemalambi, Vilambi, Vikari, Sharvar, Plava, Shubakrit, Shobhana, Krodhi, Vishvavasu, Parabhava, Plavanga, Kilaka, Saumya, Sadharana, Virodhikrita, Paridhavi, Pramadi, Ananda, Rakshasa, Nala, Pingala. Kalayukta, Sitdharti, Raudri, Durmati, Dundubhi, Rudhirodgari, Raktakshi, Krodhana, and Akshaya.

 

Hello world!

Well, began to blog  finally. I am here to jot my pages about anything and everything around me. I will share my Ideas, Thoughts, Observations, Creativity, Photos, Updates, News, and some of the interesting things I come across.

I am excited as this blog would be a diary of my life, a bookmark of things I want to remember, a platform for ideas and creativity I want to share, and of course to practice my writing.  Thanks!