Why Blog? My take on it

Its been a while that we have all been hearing that one should blog, express his/her personal opinions, views or thoughts in a public forum. Specially for people from open source or agile community, there is a lot of credibility that gets built around one through his/her blogs. I personally follow many blogs that get me thinking, Seth Godin's blog is one of those.

I took up blogging as my new year resolution of 2015 @ http://yashasree.blogspot.com. It's a personal blog, and I blog about everyday things in life. I have set myself a target of one blog per week i.e. to cross at least 50 blogs this year. This means that my Facebook friends would get at least those many notifications everyone I blog :)) as I shamelessly promote my blog on Facebook n twitter. It's going good so far, and I am loving it.

Here is my take on the benefits I reap out of it:

• It helps to put my thoughts together on a certain topic together when I write about it
• It's working like a diary for myself which would be a great thing to look at later point in time
• It defines my thinking, what's on my mind, so people close to me know me better
• It also gives me an online identity which is a must in today's world
• I get an opportunity to clear my thinking on certain topics important to me in my life
• It provides me another reason to re-look at various things in life
• It's an open platform, so I don't need many rounds of external reviews to publish the same
• I can flaunt it to my kids and suggest them to write
• It opens new topics to discuss when I meet people
• I get a satisfaction of creating something original when we are all in the business of forwarding what's app messages to everyone
  
  I still need to work on improving the search ability, attracting audience apart from my friends and relatives, but I hope I will get there some day.
  
  My secret ambition is to author a weekly column for a newspaper some day in my life, hope this blogging helps me get there :)
  
  All in all it has been a happy and rewarding experience for me, looking forward to continue...

What's BMC digging for!

Scene 1 - I have left for airport early morning at 4:45 am, my car comes out of the lane and the exit is closed with yellow barricades, signs of men at work. The driver and I request the workers to make space for us to go through, they oblige

Scene 2 - I come home pretty late, ~11:45 pm in an auto, the whole road leading to my lane is now closed n getting dug up. Again after persuading, they make space for me to return home.

So many years in Mumbai, literally having spent quarter of my life time on road ( or railways) I have never understood how they manage to keep digging the roads all the time. 



One of my favorite advertisements when DNA newspaper was launched was this.

What is BMC digging for?
A) Coal B) Gold C) Oil D) It's a top secret

I fell in love with this advertisement and subscribed to the newspaper, reading it for 9 years now!

I think every Mumbaikar will relate to this question. The road near to my house has been dug umpteen number of times, telephone cables, electric work, water pipes, drainage, what and what not. It was first made as a tar road, then dug out completely to use paver blocks, now it's been remade into tar road again. I am sure roads serve as a means of livelihood for so many of them, the workers, contractors, and for sure corporators.



Things have been much better in recent years though, the tar road just outside my house has provided a great opportunity to all kids to learn bicycle, all vehicles to get a great parking space, all young adults to do bike racing late night.

Now till the time this main road gets tarred, we all along with shop keepers will learn to use our scarves or masks to avoid the dust, slow down while walking to ensure the piles n heaps of stones don't trick us down and hope that the road gets done soon.

We all carry on our lives as MMRDA reminds us to "Bear with us for a better tomorrow"!!

Oh Dear National Park, A poem for you

I have been a regular morning walker at the National Park, but missed going there for last few weeks. The other day I went to National Park after a long time, I realized how much I really missed it. 



Here is a poem that I wrote for my dear national park, hope you enjoy :)

Oh National Park, I walk in and realize
How much of you did I miss

The birds chirping sweetly, a music to please
The rustic air, that's  clearly a bliss

The Hot summer and the bright flame flowers
the fragrant air that the flowers kiss



Streams without water and Trees without leaves 
The hilltop and the sunrise, with the view one sees

Summer, rainy, or winter; Shine, color or foggy
Makeover of each season, Is what really appeals


I

Is this really Mumbai? The city that never sleeps
This golden silence, This breathtaking peace!



It surely has it's own charm, it's rustic beauties
Loved by me for this same wilderness, that it is...

ICC World Cup 2015!

After many days of mauka mauka ads, following World Cup closely, heart break of losing in the semi finals and finally the World Cup coming to a close today, there are quite a few things that I discovered.

My son is unknowingly growing a cricket fanatic as all of us Indians very fast. He prayed for Indian cricket team's victory in World Cup at a temple forgetting that his final exams are impending. He was absolutely upset, low and picked up fights at home when India lost the semi finals. He started talking numbers and names of who took whose wicket, and made how many runs without any additional efforts of remembering things!!

I could completely relate to the woman in the cricbuzz.com advertisement after my son managed to throw the snacks in dish in my hand all over the place while throwing an imaginary ball in his hand, and also managed to break my daughter's beads' bracelet in Domino's through another. It must surely have been quite a scene, all of us looking under the table for all the beads while my daughter was surely upset.



I rediscovered the joy of watching cricket and cheering up Indian team after a long break I guess. It was so much fun! First match India vs Pakistan provided the necessary steam as I was with my brother n parents and actually brought back my childhood memories of watching cricket together!

It's so much more fun to have the company of childhood friends while following cricket. While we are all far away now, constant messages on whatsapp did the trick, sharing all our thoughts and adding much more masala to the ongoing matches.


India has become so creative in thinking, all the mauka videos and innumerable viral jokes on whatsapp n Facebook can be presented as proof.

India has moved away from pelting stones on players' house, burning effigies n resorted to viral jokes now. The spoof on poor anushka was totally uncalled for, but seems she became an easy target for at least 100 viral jokes! Leaving  that aside, In general, we heard more positive things even after the defeat than all attacks we hear all the time.

Sachin is so graceful in what he says, his tweets after India lost out to Aussies clearly show why everyone loves him so much n the young brigade in the team believes so much in him. It was awesome to hear the cheer at Melbourne every time his name was announced at the closing ceremony.



We probably have more self belief as Indians than ever before. The kind of talks people had, the advertisements showed up, overall mood in the country where cricket is treated as a religion and the show all fellow Indians put up in Australia supporting India was simply indicative of this.

Finally the young brigade that played this time has really earned a lot of respect and learnt lessons and confidence to carry forward in their careers. Thanks guys for giving us those wonderful moments of awesome performance and pride! Better luck next time!! And hats off to Saina for her awesome achievement of becoming World No. 1. So what if India's sons could not retain the title, India's daughter has made her proud :))

Waiting at the Airport

There is something about waiting at the airport all alone. As I am waiting for the flight today in the crazy morning hours, I thought of penning (or rather typing) down my thoughts.



Most of my long hours of waiting at the airport have been during my international flights. Earlier when I would have a lot of time to wait, I would simply find my gate, dump my head in a book and finish it off while waiting for the flight. I had been able kill really long hours using this trick.

But recently my short trips where I travel alone and wait for an hour or two at the airports, I have found interesting ways to spend time apart from reading books.

One of the ways is to tour all the shops that are available at the airport. While I am not really a shopper, and mostly buy only sweets or special delicacies from that place, it's a great way to pass time. I am always amused by the various Indian special art and craft items on display there. Most of it is very expensive and not reasonable at all. I think it's mainly targeting the foreign tourists. But it's an awesome eye treat. I try and get ideas on what kind of things I should buy for myself and my home  from a place that sells it at a cheaper rate.

On my trip to South Indian locations like Chennai and Bangalore, it's sandalwood articles, gods goddesses, typical Mysore craft items are all really inviting. North India carries embroideries, flashy colorful things that are so Indian. Great things to look at, I have been able to avoid the temptation of buying those so far, not sure how long I can though!! While roaming in Europe on the airport, I picked up quite a few trivia items like fridge magnets, cow bells, souvenirs and so on.

The other way I spend time is by just observing people's behavior. There are IT folks like us who are rushing to finish their presentations on their laptops, businessmen trying to do their deals over calls, some loud people flashing how busy they are hopping across cities. There are mummies running behind their hyper active kids, mummies and daddies picking up costly toys and chocolates for their little ones waiting for them at home. There are anxious people who would continuously keep checking that they are at the right gate or not, people who are really tired travelling these weird hours.


There is the airport staff always busy in doing their very very important things ensuring that everything is fine. There are colleagues in groups cursing their bosses for meetings they are travelling for. People frantically searching for charging points to charge their dying mobiles and laptops that can get them back on their always on life. There are people cursing the internet bring very slow and not being able to send that critical mail out before they fly.

My observations at Istanbul airport where I was supposed to wait for 8 hours, that got extended to 10 hours were really very vivid. I got talking to this Egyptian guy who spoke broken English. When I mentioned I am travelling for work, he started praising Indians being so business minded. I am not sure where he saw business in my mind, but anyways I accepted his compliments on behalf of all Indians. During that wait period, I saw at least 100 different varieties of burqa or hijab being wore by the ladies from Middle East and Africa, a great mixture of races and nationalities running around to catch flights, it was quite an experience!



All in all, I have learnt to observe people, enjoy their moods and learn from them. It helps me keep busy even in other situations when I am alone like marriages of distant relatives, other kids' birthday parties where I don't really have much to do. So many moods to look at, so much to learn!!