In the past month I have watched 2 movies, which is pretty unusual for me. One was 'Taare Zameen Par' (stars on the ground) the Hindi movie most talked about recently and a Malayalam movie 'Kadaparayumbol'. Both were good movies. The first one I saw as part of the class I'm attending about Learning Disabilities. It was really good movie about Dyslexia, done in a truly empathic way, without trivializing the problem or glorifying it. As it has been done by such a big Bollywood name, I hope many people will see it and get sensitized. I only wish I had seen it once more in a theatre rather than in a classroom.
The Malayalam movie was good because it was a simple movie. My husband and I are not big movie goers, except when a movie is highly recommended, which is how we went for this.
I must say it's nice to get to watch a movie in a darkened room, once in a while. Watching movies on TV is the worst thing imaginable.
I also got to listen to an octet from Chennai this evening, who call themselves Octet Cantabile. They sing only Christian music though. But they were very good. They did a rendition of Bach-Gounod's 'Ave Maria' which was wonderful.

Here I was being needy (in the blog world) and being self-focused, when I went over to Moanna's blog and there read about a friend of hers, which made me feel small and guilty. All I had was a bad allergy cold and some need issues (which I can never articulate in real life; only send it out in blogosphere). Thanks so much for all the caring that all of you blog friends gave me.

For various unexplainable reasons i need a hug from friends, and a virtual hug will do.

I came across this song today and decided that this should be my aim for this year:-

Let there be peace on earth

And let it begin with me.

Let there be peace on earth

The peace that was meant to be.

With God as our Father (mother)

Brothers (sisters) all are we.

Let me walk with my brother/sister

In perfect harmony.

Let peace begin with me.

Let this be the moment now

With every step I take,

Let this be my solemn vow

To take each moment and live

Each moment in peace eternally.

Let there be peace on earth

And let I begin with me.

Onedia has passed along a blessing to me, something first started by Ukok.
The idea… it’s a game of tag with a difference, rather than looking inwardly, we look outside ourselves and bless, praise and pray for one blog friend. By participating in this endeavour we not only make the recipient of the blessing feel valued and appreciated, but we are having some fun too. We’re going to see how far the bloggin’ blessings can travel around the world and how many people can be blessed! Recipients of a bloggin’ blessing may upload the above image to their sidebar if they choose to. If you recieve a bloggin’ blessin’ please leave a comment on this thread here so that we can rejoice in just how many blessings have been sent around the world!

I decided to bless more than 3 people. So I bless
1. Shari, because she is an inspiration in every way,
2. Mallika, because she is a good blog friend and an encourager,
3. Dot, also a good blog friend and an inspiring person too.
4. Esbee who is one of my early blog friends and is funny and informative.
5. Hiphop Grandmom for her interesting outlook on life.

For them I wish :_

"May the good Lord bless and keep you

Whether near or far away

May the good you wish for others

Shine on you today

May your heart stay tuned to music

That will cheer the hearts of men

May you long recall the rainbows

Then you'll soon forget the rain

May the warm and tender memories

Be the ones that will remain"

(from the song 'May the good Lord bless and keep you' by Meredith Wilson)

A Tag about furniture

Eve's Lungs tagged me to write about a piece of furniture that means alot to me. Well, after much thought I would say it's a cupboard which was given to me by my mother when they moved to this town. It's a heavy (and I mean heavy) rosewood cupboard with a full length mirror, on a rosewood stand. It was always a part of my life.
This cupboard was gifted to my mother when she got married (which was in 1938). But it was my father's cupboard for the longest time. I remember him opening the cupboard to take out his clothes, all neatly arranged and his ties all hung inside the door. There is a draw, which was usually locked. The cupboard reminds me of all the things my father was--very neat and tidy, very organized, sentimental too.
The best memory associated with the cupboard was a flute! I remember that I first noticed this object, which looked like a flute in the back of the cupboard one morning(this must have been when I was 6 or 7). I knew my father was not musical at all (even at that age I knew :)) . I've always been a fairly timid person. So it took me a while before I asked him what that was--in case it was not a flute at all! He told me it was his younger brother's flute. Now let me tell you, this brother, 6 years younger to him, had died of tetanus, when he was 14 and my father 20. By the time I noticed the flute my father was around 44 0r 45. So that was over 20 years since his brother had died and he still had that flute with him! I don't recall what happened to that flute eventually.
But when my mother moved here and brought all her furniture, she told me she had no space for the cupboard and I told her I'd gladly keep it in my house. She told me she thought it was a useless cupboard because the shelves had no depth and yet the cupboard took up so much room. I told her I had just the place for it and gladly took it. It now stands in my guest bedroom. It hasn't been polished in ever so many years. But there is a satiny look and feel to it. I have a vague feeling the mirror broke once during one of my parents' many journeys and my mother had it replaced. The rest of it is the original, from 1938, a lovely solid memory.
Eve, I hope this fulfils the tag. As to whom to tag, as usual whoever would like to take it up.

A long while back I had a written a post about two women, both economically backward, who had been given a hard time by their menfolk. Now I want to post about a man who is the antithesis of their menfolk.
He--let us call him N--is a gardener and general odd job man and must be in his early 70s. He and his wife have no children. Around 5 years ago, his wife suffered a stroke. Apparently she is somewhat paralysed on her right side. Now it is N who takes care of her with the help of his neighbours. For a while immediately after her stroke, he could not come to work at all. As he is a hard working gardener, even in his own home and has a green thumb (I've yet to see a plant that he has planted/replanted, die), he managed to get by, eventually selling a small piece of land near his house too. Now he comes to work only 3 or 4 days a week because he says he can't always depend on his neighbours to take care of his wife. He helps her bathe, cooks the food for her and leaves it in such a way that she can reach for it when she is alone, and then goes back and cleans up. Till his wife had her stroke, he was nothing extraordinary and spending some of his daily wages on a stiff drink on his way home from work. But now he hurries home after work. Kudos to N and many other such unsung heroes.

Onedia has been writing about friendship this month. (Onedia, I'm making this post part of 'chatting over the fence' if that's ok with you.) In her post 'Nature of Friendship' she quotes C.S. Lewis on friendship...."Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival". This looks like a very negative statement I know. But to me the sentence that stood out was that friendship is "one of those things that give value to survival". How true that is. Why we survive one more day may have many reasons. But surely whatever makes that survival valuable is good, is beautiful! In fact, you could say philosophy and art are like that too--adding value to survival. If survival had no value, why would we want to survive?? I think maybe C.S. Lewis missed a point there--the things that go into giving value to survival are essential to our survival and relationships of all kinds are part of that.

You tube for ever!

There are so many posts in my mind that all the competing thoughts are getting me confused!
Well the past 3 weeks--before I went back to work--was of course full of grandson. I did take a video with my camera but find that, as I took it with the camera turned sideways, there is no way, with the tools I have available, to rotate it.
My grandson is a big You tube fan. So something I ended up watching umpteen times was this

('once a lolly....jumbak)
and this one from the 'Madagascar' penguins.
apart from sundry videos of planes landing and taking off--mainly for the background music :)

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Listening to: Astrud Gilberto - Come Softly To Me/Hushabye
via FoxyTunes

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary and that of my husband's 3 brothers too. My husband is from a large family and he is the eldest of the brothers. We were married 36 years ago on Jan 2nd. 5 years later, it so happened that the next brother got married on Jan 2nd--not planned like that believe me. Then 6 years later the next brother too got married on Jan 2nd--again not planned like that. So youngest brother decided that there was no way he was going to get married on any other day :) So till that point, we had all got married on Jan 2nd Sunday. I then looked up a long term calendar and found that only 11 years later would there be Jan2nd on a Sunday. Since youngest was really young (he was around 4 when we were married) that seemed ok. But after around 9 years, my mother-in-law felt he should be married. He was fairly adamant about the Jan 2nd date. So he did get married on Jan 2nd but it was a Saturday:) So there we were altogether yesterday, celebrating 36, 31, 25 and 15 years of married life respectively. We had a nice relaxed evening all of us with our 3 sisters-in-law and whoever's children were around.