Overhearing Birds ;)

Well after the first time I attempted dialogue writing for monkeys, I thought I can do it for birds too!! 😀

Lemme know what you think 😉

Pipa : Hey Chika have you seen Mina?

Yooohooooo…..Mina…?? Are you down there? C’mon buddy don’t hide, Show up!

Chika : Maybe he is playing hide-and-seek with us.. Lets search and bust him! What say??

Pipa : But its our lunch time. I am hungry man!

Chika : Alright, we’ll eat after we search Mina around this big island. He might be lost on the other side you know.

Pipa : Damn it..! What if he is lost and can’t find his way back to home island?

Pipa : Oh then can I eat his share of lunch, Eh? Eh? Temme… 😉

*after a few hours they still can’t find Mina*

Meanwhile….

Mina : Chika and Pipa are bloody emotional fools 😀 I sneaked out just to eat three portions of lunch 😉

Inspired.

As the release date of a new book by Rashmi Bansal approaches, I am truly inspired, not just because her new book (Follow Every Rainbow) is about stories of 25 female entrepreneurs, but also because I finally see a direction to my dream.

Rashmi Bansal is a writer, entrepreneur and a youth expert. She is the author of four bestselling books on entrepreneurship – Stay Hungry Stay Foolish, Connect the Dots, I Have a Dream, and Poor Little Rich Slum.

After more than 140 posts on both my blogs and heaps of inspiration from fellow bloggers and friends, what gave me courage was stories of ordinary people taking risks to do what they genuinely love.

Enter inspiration number 2 – Amish Tripathi. Economic Times tells his story –

When Amish Tripathi finished writing The Immortals of Meluha three years back, he took it to virtually every publisher in the country. All of them rejected his work, the first of the Shiva trilogy, for reasons as varied as a book on gods would have no readership and that it would have no connect with youth. That’s when the alumnus of IIM Calcutta decided to do the next best thing: go back to his marketing textbooks and chart out a plan to publish and sell the book himself. Tripathi printed the first chapter and distributed it at all bookstores in a unique sampling initiative; alongside he got a movie trailer made for the book and uploaded it on YouTube. A year later, Tripathi published the second in the series, The Secret of the Nagas. Together, the two novels have sold over a million copies. And earlier this month, filmmaker Karan Johar bagged the rights to adapt The Immortals… for the big screen.

Read more here.

I quote Rashmi Bansal,

The qualities that I believe make for success are:
1) being pigheaded (believing in your story and way of writing when no one else will)
2) being ahead of your time (what you’ve written has not been seen before or done before)
3) being I-don’t-give-a-damn (I started doing this for fun, not to make serious money or a big career).

**

So, now I have a dream (publishing a book), I am a pighead (I believe I can do it), I am not sure if I am ahead of my time (everyone has an opinion now-a-days, will my opinion count?) and I don’t give a damn (I really enjoy writing, not for money but to make my thoughts reach the crowd)

**

P.S : I really like the idea of creating YouTube videos and distributing pamphlets for publicity – and mostly I’ll employ these.

P.P.S : Plz help me being one step closer to this dream – cast your vote!

Connecting with Nature

How often do you take a stroll in a garden?

How often do you prefer walking than taking a vehicle?

How often you breathe in fresh air?

How often you read a novel under the shade of a sun?

How often do you notice nature’s beauty?

**

Are the above-mentioned things even important to you?

**

To me, it is…

Snaps from my recent visit to Lodhi Gardens – DelhiLodi Garden is one of Delhi’s most beautiful and popular parks. Here monuments are located amidst landscaped gardens. The most prominent are the 15th and 16th century tombs and a beautifully decorated mosque. There are smaller structures belonging to the late-Mughal period as well.

The Lodi dynasty in India arose around 1451 after the Sayyid dynasty. The Lodhi Empire was established by the Ghizlai tribe of the Afghans. They formed the last phase of the Delhi Sultanate.

As there is little architecture from these two periods remaining in India, Lodi Gardens is an important place of preservation. A favorite picnic spot and a joy for morning walkers with lots of greenery and trees.

Benefits of morning walk –

• helps to lose weight    • reduces the risk of heart attack and stroke

• reduces type 2 diabetes risk    • improves lung’s breathing capacity

• helps in the management of stress    • helps to treat hypertension

• protection against miscarriages

• very beneficial for the people suffering from insomnia. 20-30 minutes’ walk after the meals in the night can help to reduce the stress levels and can also helps in the digestion of the food which in turn gives you a sound sleep.

• supplies fresh oxygen and blood to each and every cell of the body which is required for the transport of every nutrient in the body

• reduce the risk of cancer and if someone is already suffering from cancer then it helps in the fast recovery and survival of the person

• improves the brain power    • add years to your life

Most common excuses for not going on a morning walk :

1. I am too busy    2. There are pet-walkers and the stray animals

3. The virtues of sleep    4. Walking is for the old, I work out

5. I play sports – that’s enough    6. Garden/Park is too far

I think we owe it to ourselves – to be connected to nature – make the best use of its gift. We may be too busy today, but won’t we be too late if we don’t take an action soon?

Recent roadside incident

With marriage season starting on 24th November (this is 2012), the roads and streets were flooded with band bajaas and baraats. And sometimes dolis too. At such times travelling by road is very (read extremely) tough. Traffic jams take about 2-3 hours extra of your life.

In these circumstances, the auto walas are more keen on taking rides to small distances and going without meter (a crime) and charging high prices if you are dressed well (obviously they know you’re in a hurry to go somewhere).

So to convince an auto driver to take me 15 km away was a task not easy. It took 4 people to try their luck at 9 auto drivers to finally find the one who charged as much as he wanted. (he clearly saw the desperation in our eyes). A young girl dressed well, an old aunt wrapped in woolen shawl, a 7-year-old playing with a suitcase and a house servant trying to tackle a heavy suitcase and a naughty kid. And yet I am sure we caught attention of not many people that day : this is the good thing about Delhi, you can’t be easily recognized in a crowd.

So finally, the greedy but cooperative auto uncle (now I started paying him respect — he is responsible for my life’s safety for next 40 mins or so) took off from my starting point.

But soon, he announced to me, the front tire of the auto was punctured. I kinda choked on my pasta that time. I asked him how long will it take, to which he replied, that depends if we get someone to repair the puncture. After that I stopped eating. We (mostly he) searched for puncture repair guys on two petrol pumps en route to my destination. With no success, and the tire breathing its last few minutes, he finally decided that it would be best if he (read-we) repaired it himself.

So after parking on the roadside, I saw him struggling to convince someone to give him a hand (yea, talk about how tough people are to convince these days). Eventually I told him, no help is coming and that we should proceed.

20 minutes and one flat tire later, I was seated back in the auto only to think, why we dint get any help. Oh wait, one middle-aged man smiled at me while I was holding the auto up(it weighs 610 kg) so that the driver could screw those nuts in the new tire. By the time that man’s conscience hit him, he went past us but then returned to ask if we needed any help. Luckily we were done by then. He then walked back to his rickshaw.

When our rickshaw over took his, I waved and smiled at him. At least he bothered to notice me that day. At least he took 5 minutes out of his life to ask about a fellow traveler  At least he had the courtesy to stop and offer his service to a damsel in distress.

Bless you! Whoever you are, wherever you are!

Interesting Links:

Fact file of Auto Rickshaws

Punjabi wedding traditions : with explanations on Doli, Baraat etc

A to Z of Delhites ;)

Auntys (you see them everywhere!!!)
Bungalows (display of your assets)
Camera freak (absolutely :D)
Diamonds are best friends (Check out the list of outlets of Jewellery stores in Delhi – You’ll be shocked)
Eating (especially roadside)
Farm house (for a weekend get-away)
Gadgets (see see see I have ******* phone 😉
High society high heels (O, yeah.. SATC)
Imported cars (but bad condition of roads)
Jewellery (artificial is better than real, and most of the times you can’t find out the difference)
Khan market (shopping HUB)
Luxury safari (what FUN 😀
Marriage (excites everyone)
Not real (So true!!!)
O Teri (most commonly used word- after the swearing obviously)
Pubs (in every nook and corner)
Queen size (so common – yet doesn’t stop people for wearing anything they want 😀
Restaurant (5-6 in every street- yes we love eating THAT much)
Sale season (makes people go GA GA)
Tour of Canada (is SO common in elite families)
USA dreams (for one and all)
VIP (nobody is NOBODY in Delhi)
Whisky (on the rocks)
Exercise (~no comments~)
Young (no dictionary had the word OLD)
Zero size (most desirable thing – for men and women 😉

Disclaimer : No intentions to hurt anyone’s feeling!

Note for readers : “Delhite” is a slang given to people living in Delhi

A fun link : Facebook page of  Proud to be a Delhite and I love Delhi and also Meri Delhi Meri Jaan

An interesting link : Samosapedia – The definitive guide to South Asian lingo