You are captivating

The thing is that I got my first Christmas gift...this is itself a very nice feeling. I always read in english books about Christmas gifts, but never got one. This year it was different. Receiving a gift always gives a nice feeling and more so if it is a surprise one, and if it is a book, and you know that someone chose that book having you in mind and if that someone is your friend!!! In my case, all the above points are true!!! So it is obvious that I am super happy :-)
The next part is more interesting. As started reading this book, I was astonished. It was as if I am standing in front of a mirror, looking at myself. The book is about "unveiling the mysteries of a woman's soul" and it is speaking to me, reminding me of my worth and my long-lost dreams.
Women in the 21st century have lost their feminism. The more feminist they become, the more they forget what their true worth is. There is nothing more silly than to imitate men. We are different and we should be proud of that. If man signifies power and strength, woman is for grace and beauty.
I would definitely lay stress on beauty, it is the inner as well as the outer one. Have you wondered why "Rupang dehi" is the first thing we pray for?? Why girls are so concerned about how they look?? Why is it that we feel great if the guy we love say that we look beautiful?? Because we love to be the Princess and we are waiting for our dashing Prince to come for us and love us with all his heart. I too feel that.
I was a tom-boy in my teenage days. I loved mechanical toys, I loved to play cricket, I still love many boyish things. But, somewhere in the deepest core of my heart I actually long to be the Princess of my dreams.
I feel good to think that woman is the crown of creation. The creation would be incomplete without us. And there is an awesome match between the dreams of a man and a woman. In the presence of a man, the femininity of a woman unfolds. She becomes more loving, caring and dependent on the man, which enables him to be protective and strong. A woman inspires the man to be a hero!!! This concept is beautiful beyond words....how we complement each other.
When I am bogged down with studies and chores and errands, when I juggle between video retrieval, egg-curry, walmart and PhD admissions, I take a moment's break. I put down my mop, shut down my laptop, leave everything for a minute and look out to the view from my balcony...to the Creation and tell myself..."the whole, vast world is incomplete without me. Creation reached it's zenith in me."
Someone said I am the "ezer kenegdo"... He said "You are captivating." Someone loves me very much...and that Someone is my Creator!!!

The Indian Ambassador

We are having something called the International Education Week at UAB now. Today it was about India, we had to tell people all about our homeland :-) I think if we really wanted to tell them everything from the Indus Valley Civilization to Chandrayaan, it would have taken ages, so we did it the grad-student way...putting up posters and explaining them (which we are very good at!!).
I love presenting stuff, be it a poster or a statistics problem. I dont know why, but I JUST love presentations!!! Perhaps it's because I get to talk a lot and there are people around me who listen, that makes me feel good :-) Surely I get importance, and that slowly has boosted up my confidence in public speaking and all good stuff...anyway, that's not my point... the thing is that we showed stuff about India today...
We have a group of Indian students, AIS and frankly speaking, I dont like most of my team-members there. I dont know how, but miraculously yesterday evening we got along so well, just too well, and we worked fast, liked what we did and ended up with some gorgeous and colorful posters and display boards. Seriously they were fantastic!!!
What did we put on them?? Haha!!! We had monuments, landscapes, science and technology, with Chandrayaan and our Agni, Prithvi, Pinaka, Brahmos, and Aryabhatta, INSAT...oooh the names themselves make me feel so proud. I almost fluff up!!! In Sci-Tech we had pics of Dr. Kalam, J.C.Bose, Sir C.V. Raman, Satyendra Nath Bose, Homi Bhabha and of course Rakesh Sharma!!!
The other posters were of weddings and dances. The center poster had our "Satyameva Jayate" (truth alone triumphs) with the Lion Capitol, our Tricolor and some of our statesmen. I obviously put some pics of Netaji, and I wore Mission Netaji badge also :-)
We showed artifacts...handmade stuff...nice things and did a glamorous rangoli outside with sidewalk chalk!!! Kathleen helped me a lot in that. She even helped me wear a saree :-) She's GREAT!!!
I wore a blue saree...and I know I looked good in that :-) Many people came, my professors Dr. Sprague and Dr. Bangalore, Marcie my project manager, my friends from all over the globe, my friendship partners...so many people... I love it!!! The people who serve food at the international cuisine are so sweet. They treated me like a princess!!! My friends were also asking me to advise them about what to eat. The butter chicken was good but I dont know why they colored it red!!! Rice was good, the veggies were also good. Sheekh kabob got a bit messed up. They were more like meatballs than kabobs. Anyway, they did a great job!!! Trent couldn't pronouce "sheekh kabob" properly, he was fumbling and saying some weird sounding things, when I said, "If I can pronounce CHEESEBURGER, you have to pronounce SHEEKH KABOB !!" and he got it right in the next try!!!
It felt so nice...sitting there wearing a saree, eating Indian food, the song "yeh jo des hai tera" playing in the background and sharing my culture with my non-Indian friends!!! There was a warmth, not only of the golden sunbeams streaming across the place but also of a promise of friendship and love that will last forever!!!

If you can dream...

Well, everyone knows that I am Princess Jasmine, so the title might make them think I'll be writing about some pink and silver princessy-stuff, but no. Though I love to be a princess and I love to have "magic carpet" rides, today I am thinking of something different...but it has got to do with dreams...dreaming of the past.

If I had a time machine, where in time would I love to go to?? This is a very difficult question for me to answer...I love Egypt during the Pharaohs, I love India during the Golden age...I even love late 19th century England...so I dont know where I'd want to go...hey wait!! I do know...I want to go back to my ancestral village...I want to be born in the same family but...but...but...250 years ago!!! That sounds weird...doesn't it?? Yeah...that's why I said you need to follow my dreams.

This thought came into my mind one evening when I was washing rice at the sink of my little kitchen of Denman Hall. Clad in "tinkerbell print" pyjamas and my hair tied in a pig-tail, I definitely had no resemblance to the girl from mid- 18th century Bengal. She was the youngest grand-daughter of a very wealthy landlord from the Ganga- deltaic lush green plains of eastern India.

There was a huge mansion beside a river in the place called Jessore (now in Bangladesh), and that belonged to the Ghosh family. They migrated there in like 1750s from the western part of Bengal. The mansion had orchards surrounding it and beyond the orchards were rice fields...and then the river. This girl is in my imagination, but I can see her whenever I want to. She's beautiful, with long black hair and large black eyes and the sarees she wore were light colored. In the summer evenings, she walked by the side of the lake...and you could hear her humming some tunes under her breath...the tunes filled the cool wind that blew from the southern seas and rustled among the leaves of the coconut and palm trees. Sometimes she just sat and thought...her mind wandered off to places she's never been to...
One day, she met a traveller...he was coming from some other part of the country and he was playing his flute...the girl could not stop herself from going and talking to the traveller though she was not permitted to do so. He told her stories of different places and the girl's dreamy eyes followed the traveller's tales...he'd been to Ceylon on a ship and had seen the raging waters...he's met different people from many places, merchants from many countries...he changed her world...she was fascinated.
But dreams are not forever...they dont last long...so the girl had to go back to her house among the other women, she couldn't live her life the way she wanted....the traveller went his own way... they never met again. He remained in her memories forever.
No, please...this is NOT a sad love story...this is the way our lives are...we meet some people and they fascinate us, but we are all travellers walking on our own tracks...sometimes our roads merge and we find some fellow companions...but they are not forever. We talk and feel good that someone is with us, but they will leave us sometime, and we are not supposed to leave our roads and go with others....cherish the moments you are happy and bring back the memories when you are lonely...and "if you can dream" you can always let your mind wander to nice places and in that way you can always feel happy...that's how we can enjoy life.