An ode to my second mother – Saoli Ma’am

It is said that behind every successful man lies a woman. This woman can be a mother, a sister, a wife or simply a friend or a colleague. But, if someone tells me to rank them in terms of importance, I would straightaway put mothers at the top of the list. There is no doubt that a mother deserves the first credit for a man’s success, for she brings him to this world, nurtures him using every ounce of care and affection, protects him and teaches him to stand tall in the society. Whoa! Mothers are all-rounders. In fact, a mother is the superwoman in every man’s life.

I consider myself truly blessed for I have not one mother, but two! No, this is not some typical Bollywood story where the actor has a birth mother but he is raised by someone else. My story is different in the sense that I had been brought up by two mothers simultaneously in different environments.

My first day at office: When a shave saved my day!

Before anything else, a big THANK YOU to BlogAdda for encouraging me and giving me the much-needed push to write this blog post. I had almost decided to skip this activity until these sweet words in an email sent to me revived the blogger spirit in me!

………because you have been extra nice. BlogAdda is very glad that you have maintained such a good relationship with us. We have loved being associated with you in past activities……..

Clap your hands for BlogAdda. 🙂 

Alright, applause over; now back to business. I could not have asked for a better time to write something on the importance of a well-groomed face; only a few days back, I had joined my first job in a big oil exploration and production company…..and suddenly I felt I have grown up. I felt the need of facial hair! 

My top 5 favourite Bollywood movies of 2014

2014 is about to end and it has been a busy year for me in terms of watching movies. To write this post, I had waited for the release of PK because I had an inner feeling that this movie would feature in my list of favourites and I am glad I waited. This year has been filled with some great Bollywood movies and some terribly bad ones. I’ll spare the bad ones and highlight the good ones instead, so let me present you my top 5 favourite Bollywood movies of 2014.

1. Queen

Queen has to be the most beautiful movie made in Bollywood in recent times. It is one of the very few movies which actually gave me goosebumps! Who would have thought earlier that actress Kangana Ranaut could pull-off the role of Rani, the protagonist, with such flair and brilliance. But, she had mesmerized the audience with her beautiful potrayal of an independent woman who did not allow a broken marriage to pull her down and instead, learned to celebrate life in beautiful Paris and Amsterdam. You can read my blog post on the movie: Kangana Ranaut: The Queen of hearts!

“When words can feed a hungry child” – A BlogAdda initiative with Akshaya Patra

Exactly a month ago, BlogAdda had started a noble initiative Blog To Feed A Child in association with Akshaya Patra, in which bloggers had to blog about how to eliminate classroom hunger and ensure every child in India gets a decent meal as well as education. The wonderful aspect of this initiative is that each blog post would sponsor a meal for a child for an entire year. Honestly speaking, I was not interested to write anything on the theme in the first place as I thought what difference would my post make, when so many children still remain malnourished, impoverished and illiterate despite the continuous efforts of different organizations. 3 weeks have passed since my good blogger friend Dr. Ryan Fernandes had nominated me to write a blog post on this topic (Read his post: Food For Thought). I feel so irresponsible and slightly ashamed that it took me this long to contribute to this cause. But, better late than never, as they say.

So what suddenly inspired me to delve into this theme and pen my thoughts? Or should I say, who inspired me? The answer is Nobel Peace Prize winner Kailash Satyarthi. When I keenly listened to his moving speech at the Nobel award ceremony at Oslo, Norway about his fight against child labour and work for child rights, I felt proud of him and his dedicated efforts. When he asked the audience to put their hands over their hearts, close their eyes and feel the child inside them, I reciprocated too. What happened in the next few seconds jolted me from inside! Images of children working at a road-side restaurant, wiping tables and cleaning dishes, flashed in my mind.

Child Labour In India (Image courtesy: http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/2011/02/reasons-for-child-labour-india/)

I felt numb and my eyes got teary. I questioned myself as I opened my eyes: Do you still think you can not make any difference to this initiative when you’re getting a wonderful opportunity to volunteer for a noble cause?

My Top 20 favourite Bollywood songs of 2014

The year 2014 is almost about to end and all Bollywood movies including the ones to be released in this month have launched their soundtracks. It has been an exceptional year in Bollywood in terms of the music in the movies. Music directors as well as the singers have made sure that music lovers have plenty of good songs to hear and to choose as their favourite ones. Being an avid music lover, I weigh a Bollywood movie’s success by the quality of its songs, and this year, most of the movies I’ve liked had a fantastic soundtrack.

Initially, I planned to list my top 10 favourite Bollywood songs of 2014. However, I realized it’s easier said than done as a few more songs kept telling me to also include them in my list. After all, I have heard them so many times, often on loop. I had to honour their requests!  I mostly like romantic tracks, the slow soft ones and occasionally, I listen to party songs and dance numbers.

Since I am not writing a music review, so I’ll skip the elaborate details about the songs. Unfortunately, I can’t embed audio links in my blog. I hope you would not mind about that.

So, I present you my top 20 favourite Bollywood songs of 2014. Tune in and enjoy!