Kings and Queens of our Hearts!

You give them an inch, they take a yard. First, they take your couch, then they push you off your bed and finally they take a permanent place in your heart.

Such is the power these children, these Dog-Gods, exercise over you!

The bonds that bind!

The Ibaadat Parrots give a Master Class on ways to keep warm this Winter!

First time bloomer!

Such sheer joy and pure delight at Ibaadat then.

Cordyline Fruticose Rubra Plant, that was growing tall each season, decided to bloom for the first time.

There could not be a prettier sight for the nurturer!!

Divinity exists!

Money can't buy you style, Woman!

I normally don't comment on people's looks or judge them for that. But here was this picture right in my face.

The lady was all made up with God alone knows how many layers of foundation and thickly kohl-lined eyes (top and bottom) and fake lashes and silicone-puffed lips with an expensive stick run over them.

And then I realized what was grossly amiss. The lady should have taken an eyebrow pencil and made perfect arches in place of "now here, now not" receding eyebrows.

Well! like they say, money can buy you brands but it will never get you Style!

Picture courtesy - Google Images

Bae - yes, you heard that right!

A home is you personified!

A lifelong partnership!

This Man! My Man!

17 years, 204 months, 6210 days, 149040 Hours, 8942400 minutes, 536544000 seconds today!

They say you should marry someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. You should marry that one person you wish to grow old with.

And if you find that person, hold him close and never let him go, because it is such a blessing. I know because I did. And I am keeping him close to my heart, well at least until the end of my time.

They also say that you should marry a friend. I was lucky enough to first call Sulabh a friend, then a best friend, later a BFF if you please and as destiny would have it, we chose each other as life partners.

With life’s incessant ups and downs, and trials and tribulations, it helps to have a genuine friend at hand, and it is divine if that friend lives under the same roof as you, and spends a substantial number of waking hours with you. It helps because there is a natural understanding and bond that you have built as friends. As genuine friends, you will be less swayed by society’s abominable pressures and will not bend down to the familial idiosyncrasies.

Marriage, with so much proximity to another human being at so many levels – mental, physical, carnal, social, emotional, financial, is bound to be wrought with conflicts. And conflicts are good. They help put the focus back into equations. They help let off steam and clear the air. But what is needed is not to let the conflicts get the better of you and put any amount of negativity in your relationship. I am lucky that Sulabh remains the peacemaker and with him – like I saw in my parents’ case – no conflict or conjugal fight is good enough to nurse for more than a day. Many times, it is much less and does not last even a few hours.

It is such a relief and divine reward when your spouse does not see you at the surface level alone. Neither of you will remain young, and as handsome or beautiful as you once were. Neither of you will continue to look like a Mr. World or Miss Universe as age begins to leave its indelible imprint on your face and body. Hell, even a Mr. World or a Miss Universe does not.

So, it helps to have someone who loves you for your heart and soul much more than how you look with or without the greasepaint, especially without. It is one of the blessings that I will always count, to be loved by the spouse in spite of having piled on pounds and losing some of the sheen from one’s looks.

I must have indeed accumulated good Karma – and a sizeable amount of it – to have a husband to whom I still am pretty, sexy, intelligent, smart and bright. I am fortunate that Sulabh lauds me for most of my qualities, even the quaint peculiarities, be it my extreme sense of orderliness, control, cleanliness, righteousness; heck even stubbornness, strong leanings and anal-retentiveness.

And it is much more than good Karma when he gives a positive spin and reasons out favourably even the times when I lose my infamous temper, when I scream and curse, when I am not as productive and gainfully occupied as I or he would like it to be, when I am not the very role model of attributes that I would so love to see in others.

I am so blessed to have Sulabh be the perfect counterfoil to my aggression with his natural calm, to my acute critiquing with his inherent compassion, to my skewed worldview with his exceptional nature of being extremely understanding, to my sharp judgemental bent with his pronounced balance.

It is indeed a blessing that we go through the struggles and stabilities of life with love in our heart and trust and respect in our minds. The vacillations we face on our steady feet and keep our ship afloat and rock steady with hands held and shoulders eager to have the other lean on when so needed.

It is such a relief that we enjoy each other’s company and joke and laugh together making life just that bit more bearable when it wants to be hard and trying. I guess even as we have the greys grow in number, I’ll continue to be the loud-mouthed, ill-tempered, order-seeking, cussing banshee and he will remain the chaotic, calm, messy, intentionally forgetful, absolutely annoying Buddha.

So Sulabh here’s wishing that we continue to write our unique story, that we wake up to sunrise and dream with the stars with each other for company.

Here’s wishing that we kick the bucket together. But life is seldom fair. And if one of us has to go before, I ask God to let me be selfish and make me the one who departs first.

I don’t know if you and I will get to celebrate a 50th together, given that we did not really have an early marriage. But what the hell! there is also the next “janam” to aspire to, once we have made a wonderfully exhilarating life out of this one!!!

Happy Anniversary to us, then!

Yuletide is here!

 

Delhi is in Christmassy chill today! No, it doesn't seem like the 22 degrees that Google tells me is the temperature now.

Feels more like the weather that needs to be toasted with the warmth of a brightly lit fireplace, of a freshly baked Apple Pie, of a warm cocktail to send that trickle of warmness down your throat, of cuddling with your furry angel for they are the divine heating pad but only incomparably, immeasurably lovelier.

It is also the weather for hugs, just to keep each other warm, like these necking parrots of Ibaadat! Or Princess Cinderella giving me one of her finest. Or Pasha Baba snuggling up to his father.

Our version of 'Potting around'!!!!

First, there was only that giant pot placed in the Cinpash Garden for our Peacock and Peahen family.

Then we placed two more on the Boundary Wall parapet for the extended family of pigeons.

Next, we placed a stone water bowl to quench the thirst of Mynahs, the odd peacock that walked by the gate, the pigeons, our street fur babies and a clutch of cats that appeared nocturnally.

When Ibaadat got completed, we hung bird feeders along our perimeter on two sides and we saw the squirrels being the smartest to learn to eat off these contraptions.

Ever since, we have placed a buffet of bowls – big and small, in recycled plastic and terracotta and painted in Ibaadat’s Santorinian Blue – in front of Ibaadat to nestle a belly full of grains and fresh water; we have the magic of May madness being played out throughout the day, around the year.

The squirrels and the pigeons rule the roost here. Now a pandemonium of parrots has acclimatized itself to our environs and has made it their own. They sit on the Neem trees, swing on the lower branches, slide along iron rails. They squawk and screech in delight, and having watched pigeons and squirrels, they too have learned the trick of eating from the feeders and bowls.

A handful of Rufous Treepies, the lone Dove or two, a group of Jungle Babblers come down to feast on the buffet too. Mynahs have not yet learned to invite themselves to the table of goodies laid out for them, but for that one, singular time.

Even the peacocks are more comfortable with “their” own platter placed in the Garden and have never been spotted eating from the parapet bowls. As for the Shikra, that’s begun visiting, I think grains are not his scene. He has been noted eating his prey that he must have hunted.

The exotically beautiful Hornbills have also largely stayed away from the parapet party. But, just the other day, I saw one come down and sit on the top of the rails looking acutely at the grain bowls as if to assess whether our offering was up to their taste or not.

I think it is time I become more mindful of the resident neighbours and guests paying us a flying visit and learn to cater to different tastes and needs!

Do you believe in yourself?