Women - Confused Creatures?!?!

Men seeing the title would really be nodding their heads and smiling to open this post eagerly.(Am sure my husband wouldn't agree more!!!) Women, on the other hand would be looking suspiciously, scrunching their foreheads and wondering why would someone say that. But, we, women, all know the truth, just dont want to accept it.(Or is it that I am the only one like this????)
As a carefree girl before marriage, even while laughing at all the wife jokes, I used to wonder why wives were often portrayed as the husband's 'peace-sucking', 'constant-nagging', 'money-spending' souls. And husbands.. Oh! They are always the poor 'saints' trapped with the 'WIFE' - Worries Invited Forever!!! During those times, I had decided my life should  not turn out to be something like this, as in, my husband should never think of me as a pain.. even as a joke. Yea.. we girls always have a fantasy of the perfect marriage and us being the perfect wife fulfilling each and every wish of his.
Back to our topic, I was just a simple straightforward girl before marriage. I knew what I wanted, did what I wanted, never regretted anything in my life. I had this easy-go-lucky kinda attitude. Post marriage.. yes.. lets see what happens now.
Let's begin with a simple incident. Me and N go for shopping, no plans to buy anything specific, but as history proves it, as we walk past the women's section, a pair of eyes, legs freeze there and it's obviously not of N's. After a minute of talking to himself, N realizes I am no longer beside him. Turns back and finds me staring at a beautiful dress and then smiling at him. Of course he gets the message - I take it and try it on and later realize the price is $15. For the first few months I came to the US, just like any Indian, my mind would go 15*40 = 600Rs.. Gosh! Expensive!! I guess now, am growing out of that. So in the back of my mind the $15 seemed fine, but I couldn't bring myself up to say that. So my lips go "Ohh!! It's too much for this dress. Let's move on" and N says "Ok" and we walk away. But, my mind is still on that dress and I couldn't get it out. I am a bit disappointed but I ask myself with what.. with whom??? ok.. Let's revisit the same scene and try to do it the way I wished. So when I say it's expensive, N says, "Heyy!! that's not very expensive and if you really like it you should take it. Let's go ahead and buy it!". I ask seemingly not convinced "Do you really think so?" He replies in a real confident manner, "Yes, of course".  OR From how N would say later the scene could be, I see the dress, I like it, I tell N, I like it and then I buy it. Doesn't that seem simple enough? But the latter never happens, because I always have this at the back of our mind, whether his "ok" was whole heartedly or was it a formal "ok". Maybe he thinks I am a spendthrift, maybe he thinks I am being arrogant and doesn't want his permission. Aah! The Female mind! And hence the dress remains "un-bought". Later at home, N has long forgotten this episode, while I am still going over the scene again and again, like a story writer looking for the best climax ever!
This is not a big issue and even women forget it fast. But this crops up in many walks of a couple's lives.

I guess the root cause of everything would be expectations. It's easy to say, "No disappointments, if you have no expectations." Sometimes men have a misconstrued perception of women(have to blame bollywood,tv etc) :P In their intent desire to please their wives they go to lengths to get them such nice gifts for their beloveds.
N is never satisfied with anything he sees, end result is nothing :D 
This is where I should say a woman's mind is in a turbulence more! She herself doesn't know what she wants. But then what men forget is, simple happinesses in life play far more importance in a woman's life than diamonds or a pretty dress. I have to agree even a woman can't know another woman's mind in such situations. It could be small and uncomplicated stuff like, going for walk together, buying her something small she loves, be it a chocolate or a roadside jewellery(which works best! :P) etc... Each couple to their own !
Blessed is the man who can find his woman's small and true happinesses; the woman blessed more then ! 

 It's truly said that Men are from Mars and Women from Venus. But then one cannot help but wonder why the hell are we put together? 

Care for some Superstitions???

This post truly depicts the name of my blog - it's totally random, am all over a lot of things at once!
I have been composing this blog for a long time now - To make sure I don't leave out any key, unusual, striking ones!

As part of growing up in Palakkad(which my husband loves to put down as a 'village' and I proudly accept!!) in a staunch Brahmin community, there have been a lot of 'superstitions' or more like 'sayings', most of which we used to follow just for the sake of it or rather we were used to doing so and never because we actually believed them.

A great deal is contributed when we go out of the house. Stuff like black cat crossing, Rahu Kaalam are known to all and is not peculiar to our community. The lesser known ones follow:

- Meeting a lone Brahmin guy as you get out of the house - Oh supposed to be a very bad omen!! I have actually seen my grandfather make sure that there are none when he goes even for a walk. Should also appreciate the fact that he avoids getting into some one else's path too. :)
- A similar one is meeting a guy with any kind of weapon like saw, sickle, knife etc.
- Going in a group of 3 - The visit will be futile. Whatever you wanted will not happen on that visit. I remember, once my grandmother made someone go along as the fourth person till the end of the street!
- If you are going for an exam or something equally important and had to come back home because you forgot to take something, it is a must that you sit for sometime or drink some water. I can't believe I have actually done that, since my neighbour paatti(grandmother) insisted!!

Now as I start thinking about this, looks like there are so many of this kind. Some come with sayings attached:

- Wednesdays - "Ponnu kadachaalum Budhan kadaikkaathu" (You might get gold (not a girl) easily but not a Wednesday) Yea right! Like they are so scarce every week! On the contrary, hearing some one's death news on Wednesdays is really bad. If so happens, you will get another death news by Sunday!!!
- Speaking of deaths, as soon as you hear about any relative's death, you have to take a head bath. I believe previously this was done in case the person died due to some illness/disease and for the sake of avoiding any contamination. Now, we continue to do this - Doesn't matter if you have never seen that person in your lifetime or if that person lived thousands of miles away!!
- Also, seeing a crow take bath/play in water - definitely bad/death news is on the way! - But if one of them caws for long near your house, make arrangements - Guests are likely!
- When you come into the house, always wash your heels, else the Saturn God will take over your life - Yea, he knows the way in only through your heel!
- On the same note, you should not wash your feet after you come back from the temple. You will lose all the goodness you earned.
- Taking bath as soon as someone leaves the house is considered inauspicious since it indicates you are "getting rid" of the person. Same is the case of leaving the house while someone is having a meal, not for the same reason though. My grandmother literally gulps down her food when there is any sign of anyone leaving.
- Now for my favourite one - Before going to sleep, whatever you want to eat will be fulfilled - Yes. The belief is, if you ask for something and go to sleep without having it and God forbid you don't get up in the morning your wish remains unfulfilled, right? So, my mom very cleverly forbids us to ask anything which cannot be had before sleep!! :(
- A funny one - if you see a shooting star, you should say out loud the names of nine bald men you know, else it's considered unlucky. It became easier as we grew older. :D

Now for some religious ones - These are unquestionable and tough to argue since they require no particular reason! I can never fit them all in this blog and so mentioning only a few:
- During dusk time, one shouldn't sit on the foot steps. This belief is related to the story of Hiranyakashipu(a demon king) who was killed during dusk in the footsteps by Narasimha, one of the incarnations of Lord Vishnu.
- Also, shouldn't comb your hair or clean the front yard during that time since that's the hour Goddess Mahalakshmi visits our house and such actions would outrage Her.
- Whenever you donate money it should not be in tens. Like it should be eleven or twenty one instead of ten or twenty respectively.
- Seeing the moon on Chathurthi(4th day after New Moon) is awful but the 3rd day is lucky and as Murphy's law goes, I always catch the moon on the wrong day!
- Performing any ritual facing South is taboo.

There are a lot more like these which I guess many of you may not be keen on. So lemme just give you the more interesting ones:
- One evening, mom was chatting with the neighbour paatti and it turned out that in Thirupathi the Goddess' thaali(sacred thread tied during marriage) fell off from the idol. That evening I went for a walk, and at every small junction, there were groups of ladies gathered together discussing and their faces filled with astonishment, bewilderment and "what now" looks.. The solution(God knows from where it came from) was that every married lady untie her thaali and tie it back again!! I could neither believe my ears nor my eyes when I saw my mom do it!
- Another such incident that I vaguely remember was that guys should buy their sisters a green color dress. I wasn't clear on the reason, but my mom was happy as she got a new saree!
- The master of all these is the one, am sure, none of you will ever forget.. Lord Ganesha drinking milk..
Man! It was fun during that time. Everywhere around my house people had only one thing to talk about. To top it all, when I went to grandma's house, I found a big vessel full of milk and in it Lord Ganesha, Krishna, Vishnu and all Gods one can imagine. She didn't bother to try and feed them, just immersed them in milk so that they can drink however they want. And she wasn't partial to just Ganesha, she made sure all Gods drank!!

Even though i make fun of all these, it surprises me now, how I never questioned the reason behind all or any of this and just obediently did what was asked. I guess I knew mom or grandmother also would not give a clear answer and all I will have to hear is - "It's like that. Just do it" because that's what they also used to get from their parents. Maybe there are valid reasons for some of them at least, which I don't know about yet, some of which one of you guys might know and some left to ponder upon..
P.S : For those of you who expected this blog on Tuesday, sorry, I decided to push it a day further..err.. After all, Wednesday is a good day, right? ;)

Diwali Mela 2008

It has been two months since Radio Salaam Namaste started advertising about Diwali Mela 2008 (Yes, we do have not one, but two Indian or should I say desi radio channels, here in Dallas... and yes.. we have a Mela too. Pretty neat, huh?) Come Saturday morning, me and my husband were contemplating whether to go for it or not and finally decided to give it a try. We reached there about 7PM. I should definitely mention the venue at this point - It was the Texas Cowboys Stadium(American Football). I am sure it can hold more than 60,000 people. So, we were kind of curious to find out how extensively the area was going to be used.

As we were driving towards the stadium, I was enquiring about the directions and my husband said, "Just look out for Toyota Camri or Honda Accord, follow them and we'll be there!!" The parking lot was just starting to fill up and we pulled up. We could hear some blaring music and headed towards that direction. As we walked in, there were flyers being handed out and also raffle tickets - first prize being a car. I excitedly got two and we continued to go in.

It is at such places that our eyes go wandering trying to spot a familiar face - easier said than done when there are thousands of people around you. I was quite overwhelmed by the crowd. People from every part of India, wearing all possible outfits one can imagine - from sarees to mini skirts and what not!!!

From where we stood we could see plenty of stalls spread over along both sides. The first stall in there surprised me completely. It was that of our big temple here. There were idols of Lord Ganapathy and Goddess Lakshmi. Wah! Even Gods get to advertise now or should I say 'need to be advertised'? Maybe that was a wrong way of putting it - The stall was there for us to seek blessings first and then carry on with the mela, 'Oh God! Keep me in good health after eating all this food!!!'

We started investigating each and every stall and I must say the crowd was quite manageable. As long as I don't bump into people on every step, I always enjoy it. Proceeding further, it felt like the number around us was increasing and at the same time I also felt the aroma of delicious food tickle my nostrils. We were still outside of the stadium - inside there were some cultural programmes going on including a dance drama depicting 'Ram Leela'. I was initially feeling guilty about avoiding that and just happily whiling away in the food stalls. But as I saw the people around me, I realized I wasn't alone. :D

Almost every Indian/Pakistani restaurant in Dallas had put up a booth amounting up to 60-70 numbers in total - quite a variety. We sampled some of the interesting, new dishes we had not tried before. The sign 'Bombay ka Chana Batura' stared at us invitingly but the queue in front of it seemed a bit hostile. Not disheartened, my husband bravely made his way to the end of the queue and I followed suit. There were around four parallel lines and out of nowhere two ladies came behind us. One of them just kept giggling and laughing out aloud; in the meantime she was squeezing her way ahead of the line. (She reminded me of the evil sister-in-law character in movies/mega serials.) She was acting as if she was doing it unnoticed, and that made it worse!!! It is incidents like these that spoil the fun of the occasion. Well, lets put that aside for the moment. So there we were, waiting (im)patiently in the long line, looking suspiciously at anyone trying to even come near the line. The ones in the front of the queue made their way back with their hands loaded with goodies. The look on their face is really something. To quote Jerry Seinfeld, "They act like they have been chosen". At the same time, it is a sight to watch the people in the line eyeing the 'slurpy' dishes - you could ride a boat in their mouth and then they suddenly become aware of the same and hurriedly gulp it down!!!

Finally we too were 'chosen' and we came out of that chaos to relish the Batura. Satisfied with our achievement, we decided to take a break off the eating and moved to explore more of the stalls and stumbled upon a board that read 'Sahaja Yoga'. There was a picture of a human body, pointing out its seven energy points. The words self realization, relaxation, yoga was enough for us to go and find out what it was. What drew us there actually was there were people seated in chairs and others standing behind them performing odd motions with his hands around the seated guy. Interesting, we thought! Curiosity is something very difficult to fight. End result - We both sat gingerly in adjacent chairs waiting for some miracle to happen. (Again, the words 'just 5 mins', 'free of charge', 'revitalise' clouted us!) End of 5 mins and I was just the same. The lady asked me whether I felt cold breeze in my hand (It's quite embarrassing to say 'No') It seems the cold breeze indicated a surge of the energy awakened from within.

I am aware that a mere five minutes on this, does not give me any rights to judge the procedure or anything related to it. Maybe it is good, maybe it is truly helpful. But, the circumstances were such. There was loud, blaring songs played from two different directions and people talking all around us - how can I relax; there was wind blowing constantly - how can I attribute that to energy being released! Well, maybe in a different surrounding, I might have felt differently - who knows! :)

That was pretty much it in the mela. It was a very 'Indian' mela in every way.(i.e if you replace the tissue papers in the food stalls with a big can of water and a broken cup to wash your hands!!!) All said and done, it was an amazing evening, had a great time and no fair in the world can beat the Indian one nor can it give us such scope for fun.

Ambikapuram to Amsterdam...

I took a deep breath as I sat at the steps which approached the Juliana canal - clear water with a few ducks floating here and there. This is the canal which separates the Dutch and Belgium. Am not a great history/geography buff, and for the same reason do not want to indulge in those details. So I was at this place called Stein, Urmond about 200kms to the South of Amsterdam. I can see many of you think how lucky I must be to visit the so called 'Sin City'. Yes, I do consider myself very lucky to have come such a long way - as the title reads.

Pondering over my thoughts on how I ended up in this place - It's fascinating as to how quickly the course of one's life can change. I don't know how many of you have even heard about the place called Ambikapuram or the district it belongs to - Palakkad . Ah! The names itself brings a big smile to my face. I guess many of you have not heard about Stein either and hence the start and end point of this journey are more or less alien.

I, Lakshmi C A S - A great number of people would really wonder, what the three initials stand for, when they hear it for the first time. The more curious ones find out when I say it with a mixture of smile and pride, CHANDRASEKHARAPURAM APPADODHARANA SUBBA LAKSHMI. (Phew! Wish MS Word provided a spell check on that one!!!). I guess it would be better to elaborate on my name and the mayhem associated with it, on another post .

Venkateshwara Colony, Ambikapuram P O, Palakkad, Kerela, India... This was my hub for a span of almost 24years. You could actually say it is a village,though not set like one. Most of the people there used to be in a village at some point of their time and hence their attitude remain so. Almost an all Brahmin colony, the mamis and mamas there are very orthodox, following our culture to their maximum. Girls never seen to wear a jeans/T-Shirt,faces never made up and mamis wearing nothing other than saree; them wearing churidar was considered a great transition.

I moved to this colony when I was around 5 years and there were hardly 5 or 6 houses there. Presently the number is 75. Quite a number,right? Growing up so, made me familiar with each and every person there till date. Till date..Yes.. that date was till I was a day scholar.

20 years of being home and then one fine day I found myself in Amrita Institute, Ettimadai, Coimbatore. Quite a magnificent campus - set at the foot of a beautiful mountain. If you look at it from a distance you can see it is shaped as an elephant.That was my first step out of my home town,first feelings of home sickness, first stay at hostel, first classes with boys and the list goes on. I had my all-time best buddy, MP, with me. She is one in a million.. Be it, sleeping in class or ogling at guys or window shopping or 'combined study' or travelling around.. she was there with me.. Ok.. am not here to say how great my college life was..(at least not for now!! ;)) It's nothing new.. Everyone love their college days.

As is the dream of every student now, so had I - get placed from campus, join a software company and work my way to independence. Mind you, it was just a dream for me - an impossible dream - or so I thought!!

And on June 2nd 2004, I was there waiting in line for Wipro's interview. It is at these moments that I get all positive - don't misunderstand, not about getting the job. I make up a mindset of 'what if I don't get the job' - and all possible options open up in front of me - "This is just the first company, plenty other companies will come in. If not software, I can always take a career as a teacher" etc etc. The end result was someone was shouting out 'Subbalakshmi' and no one was responding. I looked up and thought 'Oh! That's me!' One of the many instances of stir due to my name.I was never used to being called Subbalakshmi!!

2004 December 21st, I was in the Sarjapur Rd(Bangalore) Office of Wipro to join as an intern for 6 months as part of my MCA. On October 10th 2005 I was officially an employee of Wipro Technologies. It was a feeling of pride, happiness and what not!!!!

There was this huge crowd outside the office and a big 'pandal'(a temporary shelter - shamiana) - It was almost like waiting to go in for a temple festival. So many students(professionals-to-be), from different colleges, different states, different languages waiting to be inducted!!! Even as I stepped outside Wipro, the majority of people I met in Bangalore were almost the same as me. And this is when you tend to realize that you are just part of a huge crowd - no special person -just a common species of software engineer found almost everywhere - As my people back home say - If you trip and fall, you will land on a software engineer!!!!

Life in Bangalore was quite something. When I quit the job I just had my last month's salary in my bank account -Thus was my life!!! But, how much ever charming, fancy, fun filled the life there was, I couldn't stay away from home for more than 3 weeks or a month. It was like recharging batteries - visit home and come back and I am filled with renewed energy.
(From Bangalore to US.. To be continued...)