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How can I not be grateful? #gratitudecircle

When I sat down to write the last post of the year, which was supposed to be my gratitude post I drew a blank. Gratitude posts don’t come easily to me. However, later when I was posting the new year wish on my Facebook timeline I realised the one thing that had cheered me through the year had been my friends and family.
And there it was – that one single thing, which I mentioned ever so casually, was the biggest blessing anyone can ever want – the love of friends and family. And this year has been more bountiful than ever because I met up many friends, actually many many friends, some for the first time, in person, face to face.
In all of my ten years of blogging I hadn’t ever met any of my blogger friends, in part because I am in one rather isolated corner of the country and part due to my own rather unexplained reluctance to do so. It was momentous then, that I met Shilpa a dear BARmate right at the beginning of the year. And we chatted for hours like familiar friends, easy and comfortable.
That set the tone for the entire year.
A friend from my journalism days dropped by. Seriously, there really is no gossip as delicious as office gossip. I caught up with who-had-moved-where, who-got-the-pink-slip, who-moved-to-television and who-will-always-stick-to-print. I do miss all of that sometimes.
Then came another friend from my Mumbai days. She was my roomie in the working women’s hostel. She’s the one who would ‘save’ tea and breakfast for me while I slept in on Sunday mornings, the one with whom I trawled Churchgate pavements for books and Fashion Street for clothes. She’s the one who made hostel life bearable.
I travelled to Delhi during the summer and met up with a bunch of school friends. The years fell away as we chatted about dreaded teachers and well-loved school mates and made as much noise as we made during ‘tiffin-time’ at school.
I spent a few days with my first ever mommy friend. Our kids were almost the same age and we reminisced how we celebrated when they first went to play-school, how we’d felt at once bereft yet relieved when we had those two hours of me-time. It’s amazing how the toughest days make the best of friends.
Later in the year, I ventured to the Pune Lit Fest, meeting up another writer friend who was soon to launch a book. She’s the one who prodded me to write my first ever story for the Chicken Soup series. I wrapped up the year at her launch event feeling very proud and very happy for her because I know exactly how hard it is to write a book with two sons and a house to run.
But the most momentous occasion of all was meeting up with my cousins – the Super Six. We recreated a two-decade old childhood photograph and it was absolutely the best thing to have happened. I wrote about it here.
Lastly, most importantly, each time I have been happy or upset I have had all of you to unburden myself to. We haven’t met and we may never meet, yet how can I not be grateful for your presence?
I might not have broken any records, or won any lottery, but the year was crammed with scores of super-happy moments. How can I not be grateful?
Thank you 2016.

Linking up with Vidya’s Gratitude Circle Blog Hop
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Raising a cheer to 2017

2016 seems to have slid by without leaving memories of anything exceptional. It was just so Meh! That said, I should perhaps be grateful and stop complaining because friends around me have struggled with illness and loss and much worse. All I had to deal with was a nagging not-so-happy feeling that left me listless, crabby and unwilling to do much, making it difficult to write or to concentrate on anything.

The feeling refused to leave despite trying pretty hard to get rid of it. Maybe I tried too hard and ended up strengthening it simply by thinking too much about it. That sounds crazy and over indulgent I know.  I have no real reason to feel sad or sorry and yet I do.
The good news is that …
2017 is round the corner. There’s something about January the 1st, that fills me with optimism and enthusiasm. And maybe there is a purpose in 2016 being a duh! year. Maybe this year was meant to be a foundation for something better – so said my very wise sister.  Maybe this was the push I needed to get out there and make something happen. And so my resolution for 2017 is to:

MAKE IT COUNT


That’s my resolution – to make my time and my life count 
1. for people around me and 
2. for me on a personal level too.
As I get caught up and sink overwhelmingly deeper and deeper in mundane everyday worries and chores the wish to pull myself out of it all seems to be getting stronger too. And that, I know, is a recipe for permanent dissatisfaction unless I do something about it. It might also have to do something with the birthday gone by recently, which has turned me a little philosophical. It has brought about a realisation that I won’t be around forever and that life is, or should be, much more than struggling with (and obsessing over) the kids’ studies, household chores and the freelance work that I am currently involved in.
I realise that it isn’t going to be easy to get myself out of all this. But I do have a plan of sorts and I intend to give it my best shot. I will talk about it here but not just yet lest these become another few of the hundred projects that have been planned but never took off.
I cannot afford to have another dud of a year. Here’s to a more happening, fulfilling 2017.

How has 2016 treated you? Do you have a plan for 2017? A time schedule for accomplishing your goals? Or do you intend to go with the flow? Either way – do be kind to yourself and make time to make yourself happy. 
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Enchanted!

If you have a child between the ages of 5 and 12 years you’re going to love this. I don’t do product reviews too often, this time, however, I am making an exception because I stumbled upon this absolutely fabulous subscription box for readers – Enchantico.

Have you heard of it?

I’m really really excited and I’ve been longing to share it here. I’ve often rued the fact that H and N are rather selective, reluctant readers. And yet I’ve refused to give up on them. Ever so slowly I see H getting hooked and N coming around too. They’ve stuck with Captain Underpants, Wimpy Kid and Dork Diaries but I’m not complaining — beggars-choosers and all of that.

Anyway so I picked up Enchantico because of the way it matched books and activities. It sounded just the perfect thing to entice them to widen their reading. Of course I wanted to blog about it the moment I saw it but I held on and went in for a three-month subscription before I spoke about it. Now at the end of three months I can recommend it with complete conviction.

A typical box contains:

– At least two books (sometimes three).
– An activity kit related to one of the books or to an upcoming festival.
– and the coolest collectibles.

My major reservation was:

‘What if we already have the book?’ To answer that – the books are picked from Indian as well as International publishers and are all new releases . And I can vouch for them – they are fantastic reads. I’ve been having immense fun reading them, even more than the kids, perhaps. I’ll be reviewing them here shortly.

Some specifics:
The boxes come in four age groups so that the activities and the books are age appropriate 5-6, 7-8, 9-10 and 11-12. I got my three month subscription at Rs 2999/-. There are other options for longer subscriptions too.

Here’s a peek into our latest box:

There are three books along with author cards. Oh I didn’t tell you about the author cards. Each book comes with a small card with bits of trivia – some serious some just fun – about the author.

The activity this week was making a Goody Box. So we got to put together a box as also paints, sponges and decorating material.

There was also this huge stocking with the suggestion that the children fill it up with goodies and gift it to someone.

And lastly there was a Santa pencil stand and a ‘Booked for Life’ badge.

What I love most…

… are the small touches like this card which we’ve put up on our soft board. Then there are the author cards as well as those badges.

 

The box seems to be put together by people who truly love books and reading. I am sold on it. The kids find enough reading material to last them through the month and I find my Book Club meetings becoming more colourful. Do hop across to enchantico.in and take a look.

Picture Credit: PIXABAY

Disclaimer: I’ve in no way been compensated for this review.

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Birthdays gifts and badly kept secrets

With Christmas around the corner I was going through my wish list checking to see what gifts I’d saved away, and I came upon this – a bunch of wallets, flashy ones – one with a peacock feather motif, another one all gold and shimmery and a third bright pink one. 

I stared at them. And I wondered. Not for the life of me could I fathom in what fit of bling I had ‘wish-listed’ these. My memory is not quite what it used to be, but I was certain I wouldn’t do this. It just wasn’t me. 

Before I go on, you need to know that my birthday is round the corner. And nobody  is ever as excited about it as H and N — not my friends, not my parents, definitely not the Husband (who once made the cardinal error of forgetting it, and is not likely to forget it in a hurry ever again) and most definitely not I. I mean of course I like it when someone remembers it but that’s where it should end. The hoo-haa is kind of embarrassing but then when have the kids ever worried about what embarrasses me? They start planning months in advance and they make up for everyone else … they create enough of a hoo-haa to satisfy the most hoo-haa craving person.
Every year they scrimp and scrounge to get me a small gift. This year they decided to enlist the help of Mr Moneybags – the Husband. I’ve overheard secret phone calls which they think I have no clue about and eavesdropped on whispered arguments which they think I cannot hear. 
They first convinced him to order a book from Amazon. The rather proactive Husband, did so right away and I received my birthday gift in November – more than a month in advance. 
I was suitably surprised at how apt their choice was and very thrilled too … but the children decided it came too early and so didn’t really qualify as a birthday gift. Now, they have taken things in their own more capable hands, or so they think, and they’ve been furiously surfing Amazon. Only – they have no clue that the things they ‘secretly’ save in a wishlist is my wishlist. That’s how those clutches/wallets came from – all N’s choice!

Since I made the discovery I’ve been logging in everyday to see a new set of gifts. They seem to change their mind everyday. The latest is this – a personalised ‘I love you mama’ cushion and a World’s Best Mom trophy.

I’m waiting with baited breath to see which one makes it to the final day.

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Friend, buddies and influences

Much as I tried H and N were never the perfectly behaved children I would have liked them to be. They had their good moments and their bad. They could embarrass me thoroughly in public making me question my upbringing and then do something so sweet, so thoughtful, so completely unselfish that my heart would fill with love and pride. Their being Geminis might have something to do with it!
However hard these ups and downs might have been, they taught me one thing – that there were no really ‘bad’ kids. Having seen so many shades of my own I believed firmly that all kids had bits of good and bad in them.
And so when they were younger I encouraged them to include all other kids around them when they played. The quiet ones, the shy ones, the naughty and boisterous, the spoilt and the generous ones – all of them. Despite their quirks and shortcomings they all stuck together. Also, once I got to know them I learnt to like them all.
It helped that we were a bunch of like-minded mothers who looked out for all the kids and reprimanded them too, as they would their own.
However, I find things changing as the kids grow. They are no longer small children nor are their friends. All of them have suddenly developed personalities of their own, rather strong ones, at that! They have fixed ideas of what is cool and what is not, what is good what is bad, right and wrong and that, sometimes, doesn’t coincide with what I think is right or age-appropriate.
I hear some of the older girls giggling over ‘crushes’ and  when N tells me about them, all I can think is “She’s just ten!” — too early to be listening in on stories of crushes. I hear words like ‘loser’ (how I detest it!), ‘jerk’ and much worse. One day N asked me what a b*****d was. Then we had this very lengthy discussion on why I must object each time they says sh**. ‘Everyone says it’, H argued, ‘even adults say it.’ He’s right of course and yet I’d much rather not have that language at home.
With peer-pressure peaking, I have to confess I have begun to think about how other kids influence H and N, specially the older ‘cooler’ lot, who the twins idolise. I find, now, that there are children whom I wish H and N just wouldn’t hang out with. Yet it doesn’t feel quite right to brand a particular child ‘bad company’, to ask the children to stay away from him or her.
What makes it more complicated is that I do see the good in them too – some are extremely well-read and well-informed, one of them is a crazy Harry Potter fan (a definite plus for me), one is a computer whizz, another one is passionate about animals and has loads of interesting nuggets of information. I like them for all those things but I feel they’re not quite right for H and N.
So what do I do?
I understand that there will be good and bad influences around them all the time. I cannot control them. I know that. So can I continue to stick with my idea of ‘people aren’t bad, habits are’? That’s what I told them when they were younger. Or am I being too idealistic?
Should I accept that along with the good comes bad and let them be, even while I continue to remind them of the rights and wrongs and hope to God they are listening? Will that help at all? Are they capable of seeing the good from the bad rather than idolising people as a whole? Or are they just too young to evaluate people objectively?
I could engage them elsewhere and minimise interaction. But that needs just so much energy and mind space. Sigh!

Apologies for off loading my worries here but I’m a bit lost. Am I over-thinking this whole thing?
Picture credit: PIXABAY
Linking up with Nabanita’s #MommyTalks.

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