I have recently taken up paper quilling. This is amongst my many other hobbies ranging from embroidery to drumming sessions. It began an interest to learn a new art. I also started making my own jewelry to kill time.

At first I started out not feeling much other than creating something to show off to my friends after all it is a great feeling when someone compliments and says nice earrings and I can smugly say I made it myself!!:)

Over time I began to feel changes in myself. It was more than pride in the finished product. I began to feel

Less stressed.

Less anxious

Elevated mood

“Healed.”

Improved concentration.

Less dwelling on petty things.

Energized.

Deal with people better post any such creation.

Content (A very powerful feeling).

Spiritual.

This made me want to read up and discover more about why working with hands can be one to the ways to calm yourself inside out.

I did read up that creating or tending things by hand enhances mental health and makes us happy (full article here http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-creativity-cure/201205/creativity-happiness-and-your-own-two-hands).

The article is bang on especially when it mentions about altering the inner life through creating something. I absolutely love this “Take it out of your mind, through your hand and into the world.”

I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t experienced it myself.

Attaching my “creations” as photos and currently this is how I am getting my “high.” :)

I recently went to watch Kasturi Nivasa the famous 40 year old Black and White Kannada movie in the theater again and this time in color. What I felt sitting in the theater was something i cannot describe in words. All i can say is i can do with one such movie every month and I can live on that high for the rest of the month! I wanted to write an elaborate review. Then I realized that if I did that, it would run into pages. That is the power of the movie. So I challenged myself to strictly write just one word which to me best describes the different categories in the movie. So here we go!

The Actresses – Ageless

The Acting – Effortless

The props –Measureless

The story - Fadeless

The Songs – Deathless

The Humor - Flawless

The dialogues - Timeless

Dr. RajKumar – Words fail me! And only a true Kannadiga would understand:)

I miss Roald Dahl.

I feel some people especially some authors shouldn’t leave this world and continue writing and we can continue to read their awesome work and continue to be enthralled.

No one till date has ever come close to Dahl’s kind of writing or so I thought. While I have no intentions to compare his books to that of any other author, Horrid High by Payal Kapadia comes close.

There are bad schools. There are Rotten schools. And then there is Horrid High. Think of all things rotten about a school. In fact if each one of us put our nightmare school from our minds into words, Horrid High it is…complete with horrid teachers, grossly delightful descriptions, quirky characters, unpredictable twists and turns …the book was un-put-down-able. :) I so love this author!!

What kind of Kids would one find in Horrid High? Well…kids with special powers, born to unbelievable parents, resilient kids who come out tops against the worst conditions.

What kind of faculty would one find in Horrid High? Completely Bonkers! Though they consider themselves normal with a misplaced arrogance that only teachers who are bonkers have.

Teachers - who loathe kids and set out devious ways to make their life and the whole learning process as miserable as they can. Teachers, who can only be described as living nightmares. Throw in a cook who is really vile with her even viler cooking. I must say I lost my appetite for a while when reading the descriptions of what she dishes out to the students:)

Who is the good egg here? Who is the savior of them all? Who is all that a teacher should be? Well…read the book and I hope you feel as lucky as I did and experience the “high” that only good reads can give.

I thought of writing a detailed book review on this book but words failed me. So here is my “review” about the book:

“I wish it had never ended.”

:)

What Safety means to me in my city – Bangalore.

To catch a late night movie, a play, a concert and never have to worry about how I am going to get back home.

To not have a male “chaperone” to accompany me should I decide to go to a concert or outskirts of my city.

To walk in parks at leisure, anytime and take in the sights and smells rather than worry if there are any perverts lurking about.


To walk confidently in crowded areas and not always be on high alert for fear of being groped.

To wear what I like and not be judged and stared at.


To never hear the words “she asked for it” or “nice girls don’t….” from anyone.

To be able to smile in friendly way at a guy at a mall, the bank or anywhere – just from one human to another and not have it misinterpreted as a “come on.”


To be able to get on public transport – autos/buses/metro any time morning or night and feel one hundred percent secure in doing so.

To not carry an increasing supply of weapons – pepper spray/knives/scissors instead just fill my purse with the usual girlie stuff like I once used to.


Most importantly, to wake up and not read/hear about yet another atrocity committed against women every single day and instead, the opposite would make my day!!!

Bangalore Boring???

I am tired of people who come from other cities to Bangalore and complain endlessly about how boooooring Bangalore is and that there is nothing to do here and

methinks oh reeeeaaaaally???

Yep, we don’t have a beach here but we have an awesome weather to make up for it and I wouldn’t compromise THAT for anything!

Here’s a check list of all the things one can do in Bangalore

Malls and Multiplexes: Every area has ‘em – to hang out, to catch up on the latest flick, or just simple window shop.

Pubs and clubs – no need to expand on this.

Endless Eateries: From offbeat quaint theme based shops to Roadside stalls to posh hotels – from the north, south, east and west – Indian to international cuisine we have them all here.

Hobby classes and workshops : From quilling to belly dancing there is something for everyone happening continuously.

Theatre: Every weekend and sometimes even weekdays there are enough and more plays to watch.

Shopping: This one is for the ladies – you can explore defined shopping places like commercial street or brigade road or check out the by lanes in lesser known areas and you’ll find something you like

Markets and santhe’s: Everything is available from the time a person is born till the person dies…. it’s all out there!

Okay so you may say that all this costs a bundle here are some stuff that come without a cost

Activities that not only are fun and different but also gives one the exposure to learn a skill or simply make friends like:

The community drum jam every month or unique events like the blind walk

The parks – Lal bagh, Cubbon park or just any local part that offers peaceful walks or to day dream or just soak in the greenery. I could spend hours in these.

Exhibitions and museums – one every weekend from painting to history.

And besides the above lists there are always cricket matches to catch up on, there are temples and religious places to go to, go karting, bowling alleys and leisure zones, walkathons, marathons, … there is always something happening.

To sum it up, if a person really wants to crib, there is no dearth of things to find fault with. My response to them would be to get a life!

I gotta live mine and I have got a variety of stuff to choose from in namma bengaluru!;)

This incident really moved me. In an age where there is a price tag attached to almost everything, the sheer innocence of this child was great to experience.

Years ago, when my neighbor’s child was just three or four years old, my mother and I went to a sweet shop and bought some sweets. We gave a box to the child because we knew he was fond of them.

Overwhelmed by our gesture, he felt he simply had to give something as a return gift to me (I was then one of his good friends despite the age difference of more than a decade!!).

And the gift he decided to give me was…a packet of noodles!!:)

Till date, it is the best gift I have received.

Here was a person who didn’t attach a price to the gift, didn’t expect it be presentable, dint think that it has to be “socially appropriate” enough to impress anyone.

He was crazy about noodles and felt that he had to pass on his love for noodles to his friend through a return gift.

Quite sums up the words in the picture above eh?

THE RED PENCIL

Rahul was celebrating his birthday. He had just turned ten years and was having a large party for his friends and family. They had loads of fun and there were presents galore. Rahul’s uncle gifted Rahul a lovely pencil box. Rahul was thrilled because he loved drawing and writing and always got top marks in his class for it.

The pencil box had a red sleek pencil with a lovely point. The eraser was shaped like a toffee and gave out the most delicious scent. The ruler was flat and long and the sharpener was smart and shiny. They were all very happy to be a part of Rahul’s box for he took care of his things very well. All, except the red pencil.

The pencil thought no end of itself. “Look at me” it said proudly, “I am so sharp and pointy. I help Rahul write and draw beautifully. You all look just like ugly lumps lying around the box. You hardly do any work at all. It’s me that Rahul picks up first when he reaches out into the box.” It boasted.

“That’s not true” said the eraser, “I help Rahul correct his mistakes.”

“And I help Rahul draw lines beautifully” said the ruler.

“And if you have a beautiful point, it is because I help you” added the sharpener sharply.

“Pooh!” said the pencil, “You’d all be useless without me. I am the best. Rahul uses me the most. I am most important in the box….” and on and on went the pencil.

The others got tired of the vain pencil and tried to ignore it, but the pencil wouldn’t let them. Soon besides jabbing them with words, it began to jab them with its sharp point.

One day the eraser, sharpener and ruler had enough. They waited for an opportunity when Rahul would leave his box open and go out of the room and soon enough he did.

Rahul had an important assignment at school coming up, one that involved drawing a lot of maps and lines. One evening, he had opened the pencil box to do his work. Halfway through his work, his mother called him and he left his box open to go to talk to her.

Quick as a wink, the eraser, sharpener and ruler hopped out of the box and hid inside Rahul’s bag which was crowded with books.

The pencil saw them go and was pleased. Now it had the box entirely to itself.

Rahul came back to his room. At first he resumed his drawing without glancing at the box. Soon one of his drawings went a little awry. He reached into the box to erase the mistake but couldn’t find the eraser. In fact, he was surprised to see that he couldn’t find the sharpener or the ruler either. He looked around here and there but he needed to get on with his assignment so he continued with his drawing – puzzled over what happened to the eraser, sharpener and ruler.
It wasn’t very long before the pencil became blunt, but there was no sharpener to sharpen it. Rahul needed to draw a line and there was no ruler. He needed to erase whatever mistakes he made but there was no eraser to be found.

Rahul was very upset. “Oh! This is most annoying” He exclaimed. “What’s the use of a lovely pencil that is shiny and red when it is becoming blunt?” “What can I sharpen it with? Where is my eraser when I want to erase? How can I draw without the ruler? It is most annoying” He said aloud unhappily.

The pencil heard this and felt rather ashamed. It dawned on the pencil that Rahul was right. It needed the other three as much as they needed the pencil.

Then, mother called Rahul for dinner. Rahul shut the box with a bang. He decided to finish his dinner and do his drawings later and also to hunt of the other three which seemed to have mysteriously disappeared.

Once he was gone, the pencil called out to the eraser, sharpener and ruler.

“I am terribly sorry” it began in a small voice. “I realize now we are a team and need each other to work together. All of us are special in our own way.”

“Also,” it said, “Rahul who always took care of all of us is very upset. Please come back into the box” it pleaded.

The eraser, sharpener and ruler were pleased to hear this. They too missed being part of the box and gladly hopped out of the bag and hopped into the box.

When Rahul came back after dinner, he was surprised to find them all there. He rubbed his eyes and wondered if his mind played tricks on him. He quickly sharpened his pencil and set about his drawing using all the items in the box. He used the eraser whenever he had to and drew all his lines beautifully with his ruler.

All the drawings turned out very well now that he had all the items and guess what? When he showed it to his teacher the next day, he got top marks for his assignment.

As for the pencil, you can be sure it never bragged again and was pleased instead, to have three good friends to share the pencil box with.

Vidyas

I simply couldnt resist picking this story off a book. This is one of the best bad stories i have ever read. There is a lesson in here somewhere but i am missing it;)

THE LITTLEST DEVIL (Steve Boynton)


Source: Chicken Shit for the soul 2 by David Fisher.


Of all the devils in creation, he was the smallest one and had always been so. At school, all the other young devils would make fun of him and he would get angry; but because they were bigger than him they had bigger powers, so when he tried to call down the fire on them, the flames were no bigger than a match and the other devils would easily blow them out. When he tried to spin a hurricane, it would be but a small breeze they barely noticed. When he called forth a flood, it was barely a trickle.


Even when he was fully grown, his two horns barely stuck out of his forehead. When he graduated from the University of Devils, he was determined to do worse than all his classmates, but he soon discovered that many people would not give him a chance. Employers wanted big devils capable of producing major storms, of blowing the tops off volcanoes and shaking the earth. They wanted devils who could make the stock market crash and spread plague and create great droughts.


Finally the littlest devil found a kindly old devil in the office of regional wars willing to give him a chance to run one region on earth that nobody cared about at all. When wars started there, nobody tried to stop them. Often nobody even knew that they had started. The pay wasn’t good but for the littlest devil this was a chance he had been waiting for to prove his ability to do really bad things

.

He did just what he had been taught in school. He gave food and shelter to one side and starved the other. He gave guns to the starving side but not to the other side and then he created a confrontation and waited.


The result was terrible. The two sides negotiated a peace treaty in which they shared the food and the guns. The littlest devil was fired in shame. People laughed at him.


The littlest devil tried everything he could to make people hate him but he just couldn’t do it. Even the freelance jobs he got didn’t work out well. Once he was hired to create a small tidal wave and ended up providing the perfect conditions for a surfing competition. Another time he was hired just to make it rain enough to wash out a big golf tournament but he got his dates mixed up and it rained just in time to make the entire course lush and green when the tournament began.


The littlest devil was so unhappy. He had no fire in his eyes. Maybe he just wasn’t cut out to be a devil. He thought, maybe he should go into another profession. Maybe he should be a lawyer.

But one day, as he was sitting all alone, an old devil saw him there and asked,

“What’s the problem young devil?’

“Just everything. Nothing I do turns out bad. Every time I try to create a disaster it turns out to be a disaster. I can’t make anybody hate me.


The old devil chuckled. “You know, when I was just getting into this business, I had a similar problem. It seemed like no matter what I did, somehow it turned out wrong. One summer I made this wonderful heat wave, it was hotter than here, and then somebody went and invented air-conditioning!


And when I started a flu epidemic, somebody else discovered a flu vaccine. It was very tough.


The littlest devil was intrigued. “Then what did you do?”


The old devil leaned down and said softly, “that’s when I realized you dint need to do really big things. Those people down there are very clever for human beings. If I did something really big, it got their attention and they did something to stop it. So instead, I started doing small things, and I found that small things eventually became big things, but by the time they do, it’s too late to stop them.”


“Like what?”


“Who do you think made it so easy to get a divorce?” the old devil stood up proudly. “That’s right. You are looking at him. By the time they figured it out, it was too late. It was more widespread and affected more people than an epidemic.


The littlest devil looked at him with wonder. And then he set out determined to do some good bad things. Think small, he reminded himself, think very small. And he thought and he thought and he thought the smallest thing he could think of was – a tiny flea.


A flea? What harm could he possibly cause with a flea? He wondered. And as much as he thought about it, he couldn’t come up with that answer, but sometimes he realized he just had to have faith in Satan that things would turn out badly. A flea, he decided firmly, that’s how he would get started.


It was a hot summer evening down on earth. The littlest devil searched until he found a smiling dog. Then, just as he had learned in freshman spells 101, he pressed all the right buttons and created one small flea.


It wasn’t much of a flea, but it was a flea. And as the dog was walking down the street, the littlest devil made his flea bite that dog as hard as he possibly could.


The dog yelped and ran into the street.


A car driving down the street swerved to avoid the dog and slammed into a parked car.


The parked car went crashing into a light pole and hit it so hard that it made it almost fall down.


The falling light pole stretched the wires until they tore loose. In the power station, bells went off and all the power going through those wires was diverted to another system.


The other system was already operating at full capacity when the additional power began surging through the wires. This overloaded the system and sparks began flying. The engineers had to shut it down.


But when they shut down this generator, other systems in faraway places that were connected to it also became overloaded and had to be shut down. House by house, street by street, neighborhood by neighborhood, town by tow, city by city, state by state, the entire country lost all its power.


Lights went out and television sets went dark and refrigerators turned off so all the food began melting; computers stopped computing, cordless telephones wouldn’t work, and the traffic lights blinked off and people drove right through them and had accidents.


All the devils watched this happening. This was truly a terrible thing, they thought with delight. And then they wondered who could have done such a grand thing? When they learned that this had been the work of the littlest devil, at first they couldn’t believe it. No one thought he would ever do anything bad.


But finally all the big devils apologized to him and told him that while he might be small in size, he was a very big devil!


The littlest devil was never sad again, for he had learnt the most important lesson: Bad things can also come in small packages.

THE ICE MAN

I cannot believe a diabolical killer of more than a hundred people inspired me to write this. Yet, here I am writing about Richard Kuklinski – A mafia hitman with a double life and one of the most notorious killers of all time. He murdered his victims brutally, ingeniously and without the slightest remorse.

I just finished a book on him by Philip Carlo titled “The Ice Man.” The book is gripping to say the least and it led me to watch his interviews on the internet. (Search and you’ll find enough videos and information on him).

Richard came from a family that gave him no love, just severe abuse and trauma. Outside of home was no better as he was targeted by bullies, one of whom he did end up killing. He simply did not experience anything “good” that he can look back upon, no family, no love, no friends, no mentors – and the result? No emotions but an all consuming rage and twisted perceptions of people and the world.

Around this time, I was also watching motivational speaker Ben Zanders talks. In one of them he says that make it a habit to give everybody an A grade - from Taxi Drivers to waitresses to mother in laws. In his eyes, everybody is an A student.

Also, I was reading about Anne frank and her quotes on life that inspired me put them up on February’s blog (I do go all over the place eh?)

Anyway, I was thinking what A would I give Richard Kuklinski and I realized I do not have an answer to that question. Only Richard can answer that had he had help to look within himself at the right moment.

I will not excuse or support a single killing here. I do feel he deserved what he got in the end…a long stint in prison. I am just looking at this man from different window.

I would probably give him an A for his care and concern for his family (wife and three kids) in his own screwed up way…considering he never knew what it meant to care for anyone.

I would give him an A for his calm demeanor (devoid of emotions one may say, but enviable nonetheless).

I would give him an A for mostly killing the scum of the earth most times (though not an excuse to play the god of death)

I would give him an A for sparing women and children.

I would give him an A for his generosity that we get glimpses of when reading the book.

If I could make up five alternate careers for him based on what I read and heard if he was made differently and if he was inclined to take the right path, then these would be it:

1. A counselor – who better to understand disturbed individuals than a person who has been disturbed himself?

2. A pediatrician – for his detailed, organized, methodical ways and attitude towards children.

3. An Actor – His sense of humor, his looks would have suited certain types of roles.

4. In the police force – His risk taking behavior, fearlessness, wanting to put a wrong right with the right intentions would have made him a reliable cop or some kind of an agent.

5.A bouncer at a bar…on second thoughts maybe not.

As Anne frank says, "Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness."

So most of all, I WISH I could give him an A for using his above strengths for channelizing his basic goodness.

Makes me wonder what he would have ended up as.

Maybe not on as an article on this blog ;)

I love Anne Frank. Some of my best pick me ups are when i read about her views on life and everything that goes into it.

“How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world.”

“Think of all the beauty still left around you and be happy.”

“I can shake off everything as I write; my sorrows disappear, my courage is reborn.”

“Parents can only give good advice or put them on the right paths, but the final forming of a person's character lies in their own hands.”


“I don't think of all the misery, but of the beauty that still remains.”

“No one has ever become poor by giving.”

“Because paper has more patience than people. ”

“Human greatness does not lie in wealth or power, but in character and goodness. People are just people, and all people have faults and shortcomings, but all of us are born with a basic goodness.”

And i know this works....

“The best remedy for those who are afraid, lonely or unhappy is to go outside, somewhere where they can be quite alone with the heavens, nature and God. Because only then does one feel that all is as it should be and that God wishes to see people happy, amidst the simple beauty of nature. As longs as this exists, and it certainly always will, I know that then there will always be comfort for every sorrow, whatever the circumstances may be. And I firmly believe that nature brings solace in all troubles.”
― Anne Frank, The Diary of a Young Girl

I sometimes see a lot of funny, amusing, inspiring sayings, quotes here n there. Thought I’d write in my top three for the month:

“The best cure for a short temper is a long walk” – painted on placard in the park where I walk regularly. Truer words were never painted methinks:)

“Common sense is not so common after all” – From a T-shirt worn by a guy. ( LOL!)

“What we call meditation is just an unsuccessful suicide attempt” – from a book. (Am at a loss for words to comment on this!!!)