Dasara2025

 Just finishing up my Dasara holidays, wrapping up, boxes are packed and up in the attic, everything is back to routine. 

10 days of Dasara - started September 22nd, the preparations started a few weeks earlier as a lot of planning was needed. 

- ensuring all the white clothes were ready

- deciding what all to give with kumkuma

- cleaning every corner of the house

during these few weeks, I felt like I was getting ready to welcome all the Devis. And it was true, all the Devis came to our house in the form of all my family and friends 😍 

I am not being cheesy or dramatic here, it was a true joy to have so many people visit us. I feel blessed to have so many people in my life. So this post is a gratitude note to each and everyone who came to our house. And also to those who could not come physically but were here mentally 😃 The energy during the last one month has been so vibrant. 

I decided to wear a saree and celebrate each day of Navaratri this year. I love waking up early in the morning, the energy is always magical. Here is a glimpse of the colours of our Navaratri. 

Day 1 White

Day 2 Red

Day 3 Blue

Dressed up for Garbha

Performing on our Dandiya night
- fun practice sessions, making new friends and dancing

Day 4 Yellow

Day 5 Green

Day 6

Grey

Day 7 Orange

Saraswathi Pooje

Day 8 

Peacock Green

Day 9 Pink

Day 10

Ayudha Pooje
Love the leaves - all different, yet same

Day 11
This year Dasara stayed for 11 days 😊💃

My inspiration ❤❤

Low to High

There are always some moments in a day or week or a month where it may feel impossible to crack the code. What code am I talking about - the one and only mystery of life. Even for a person who has everything going great in every aspect of life, there are those certain moments where one just feels so low that it may seem impossible to just be. And there are very few people in this world who have everything going great I guess. The point is how does one swim through these pockets of vacuum (am just giving it a random name) - whether tiny or huge! If the pocket is tiny, it may be easier as it may last for a short time. But if the pockets are huge, it can get overwhelming and it becomes a necessity to come out of these pockets. 

The tricky part is that when we are in these pockets of vacuum, we may not even be able to do what we love, we may not want to meet our loved ones, we may not even want to do the basic chores or even smile. And this makes us feel weak.  What I have experienced is that when I push myself to do small things during these vacuum phases, my mood changes gradually. These small things can be as simple as wearing a nice dress, making my favourite cup of coffee, eating something I love, talking to someone, going out, driving, exercising - can be ANYTHING. But they definitely help us in floating and swimming and not drowning. 

The key here is to push ourselves to do that one thing, Doing one thing at a time till our mood changes slowly, naturally.

Each picture below has a story and took time to reach that stage.

My all time favourite!
The whole foundation of life!

Flying high when feeling low 

A solo journey

Never a dull moment when surrounded by children

Strength

Good things

 There are so many perspectives to life. And each one of us more or less believes that our perspective is the best and the right view. Just like anyone else, I have been blessed with a beautiful rollercoaster life. When life gets crazy, it becomes difficult to look at anything else other than that one thing that is driving us crazy. There is one song that we sing at school which I love. It is called "Need ka nirman fir fir, srushti ka aahvan fir fir" It is written by Harivansh Rai Bachchan. Am sure each one of us interpret the song in our own ways. But for me, everytime I sing the song, it feels like a flash of my life and the line "lag raha tha ab na hoga is nisha ka ab savera" and continues to "kintu praachi se usha ki  mohini muskan fir fir"......"naash ke dukh se kabhi dabhta nahin nirman ka sukh".

which roughly translates to:

was feeling like the day would never come after this night

but the sun rays smiled and brought magic into life

the sadness of destruction doesn't stop the joy of building

Just like the song is saying there's always hope, there's always something good in every situation in spite of all that we go through. And most of the time we refuse to see the good things in our lives. These good parts may be very very small or subtle, but they exist. And these small things can brighten up our days if we pay attention to them. 

There's always a choice - to look at things that are not going our way OR to look at the tiny things that are going well. It may be as small as having food and shelter, though they are not small but get disguised as small due to being taken for granted. 

On this Independence Day, let us focus and highlight the little things that are going well in our lives, however small they may be.

Grateful for an amazing job

Being able to enjoy my coffee everyday :) 

Being able to spend time with family 

I can see it as a gateway to an enchanted forest or as a gateway to a scary place

 

The joy hidden in rangolis 😍 and learning something new everyday💃

Laugh

Most of us are blessed to have amazing friends in our lives. Today is Friendship Day 😊

I was driving this morning and caught myself wondering if I laugh easily. I was a bit taken aback at the possibility that I don't. There is nothing right or wrong about it I guess, but it certainly is nice to laugh. 

Laughing at the small things

Laughing at silly things

Laughing at the big things

Laughing at our mistakes, instead of cursing ourselves

Laughing at all the efforts we put so it makes the efforts seem effortless

Laughing away all our worries

Whether we choose to laugh or cry, life keeps happening. So why not choose laughter over sadness.

It may feel like I am not making sense, but it is scary to realize that many of us go through days without laughing. 

When we laugh, the world feels beautiful.

When we laugh, all the worries seem to vanish.

When we laugh, the burden falls off

When we laugh, we lighten our hearts.

I am sure we can find ways to laugh every single day. It is the only way to keep our spirits alive. 

We can definitely start by watching a comedy show 😂

Laugh away my friend, that is the best gift we can give ourselves!

Make someone laugh, that is the best gift we can give others.

Act of Random Kindness

 I saw the movie 'Evan Almighty' last night. Many would remember one of the scenes from this movie - a conversation between God and Evan's wife enacted by Morgan Freeman and Lauren Graham. 

It is about -

1. standing by each other side by side in pairs (in every relationship - child/parent, student/teacher, friend/friend, partner/partner)

and

2. how life gives us opportunities everytime to create what we have prayed for, but we misinterpret the situations and let the opportunities pass by.

I have always been baffled by how everyone loves to share the good news, the celebrations, the highs with others. But when something not so great is happening in our lives, our first instinct is to hide them. How many of us call friends or family to share our lows? When a low hits our lives, the majority of us tell ourselves that I am strong enough, I will deal with this. In the name of independence, we cut everyone out from our lives. But sadly, we forget that human beings are social animals. 

Sharing helps, talking helps. No one can help us solve our problems, but by sharing, we feel light, we feel heard, we feel we can count on someone. 

I really hope our generation wakes up and realizes that sharing takes courage! Sharing is not a weakness. It takes immense strength to talk, to be vulnerable. We don't have to pretend that everything is great all the time. That is humanly not possible. There was a reason why the joint family system worked in the olden days in India. In a joint family, there was always someone looking out for us, always someone ready to listen to or just be around. 

Another message in the above mentioned movie is about Noah building an ARK. 

What is an ARK? - It is just an act of random kindness - I found this so powerful. We keep saying we want to help others, or make a change in the world. But we tend to forget that it all starts from the smallest act of kindness, a small act at home, to our neighbor, a street dog, a co-worker or a stranger. It can be as small as giving a big smile or saying hello to a person when you pass them. I love it when someone smiles at me compared to being ignored. 

We always think of the bigger things, but there's a reason for the proverb - take care of the little things, and the bigger things will take care of themselves.

Let's start by showing an ark to ourselves and then to others every single day :)

Well deserved coffee after a 8km walk with my friend

Always receiving an ark from my mom 😍

Showing ark to my house 😂

Nature displaying ark to us - rain and puddles 😊

Showing an ark to myself 😛

Light

It is a beautiful rainy Sunday afternoon. I am watching the rain falling on the trees and plants outside, while my mind is churning thoughts inside out and finally when it couldn't hold it anymore it threw out all the thoughts like a hot fresh volcano. Once the thoughts were out, I started feeling how futile all these thoughts were. The only thing it does every time is to turn life absolutely serious! And what level of seriousness!!!

Every now and then I wonder why we take life soooooooooooooooooooooooooo seriously! Yes, life forces us to take it seriously, but we have a choice to lighten our burden by telling life that it is not worth being taken seriously. 

This seriousness pushes us sooo down, deep down! Life is not meant to be lived this way right? Our heart cannot take the weight of such seriousness. We have to learn to live lightly like a feather, treat life with lightness, and keep looking at each moment with freshness as much as possible. 

That is the only way we can sail through life. Let us smile more, laugh more, let go more, play more, sing more, dance more, have fun more, be silly and take life less seriously - inspite of all the hardships 😊

Our true self

 Life will do everything possible to change us. Circumstances will want to make us change. People will want to make us change. Friends and family will want to make us change. Our kids will make us change. We can see that it is very easy to change - we change without even realizing - because the forces causing the change will be so strong. And this change brings in restlessness - a certain feeling that is not natural to us, that makes us wonder what has happened to us. 

This restlessness or lack of peace is because we have changed. We always think that we have changed for the good. While that may be true, what I am trying to say is that in the process of change, we cannot lose our original essence. Most of the time, we become a different version of ourselves in the process of change. Our original identity gets lost in the process of change. 

So beware, we cannot live in peace if our original nature, our original essence, our original beauty is lost in the name of change. We have to get back to our true nature. Only then will we live in peace, happily and in bliss. 

Slowly but surely, we have to get back to our true nature. There is no no other way. That is the reason for our discontentment, for our irritation, for our restlessness.

Identify your true nature and become one.