Tayari jeet ki

Har paath par kathinai hogi,
Bheed nahi, to Tanhai hogi

Akele chalkar thak jayega,
Lekin tu na ghabrayega

Aasan nahi hai path manzil ka,
Har shann hai teri pariksha yeha

Jab tu karega yakeen khudpar,
Duniya ka bhaii na hoga aasar tujhpar

Sirf daarna aapne karmo se,
Na bhagwan aur na daanav se

Tayari puri ho raah ki
Phir mile na mile manzil chaah ki

Koi haar antim na hogi
Jab tak rahe yakeen tujhe jeet ki

Khushi's dose of the day!! Innovations

Khushi: Mom I want to do a lot of innovations
Mummy:(Really? Does shr even know what is innovation?Or has she just picked up the word from my conversations? AMUSED. ..) What kind of innovations darling?
Khushi: Anything Mom!
Mummy: But give me one example of what you want to innovate?
Khushi:(After thinking hard...) What about a ROBOT?
Mummy: But that's not your innovation, its already implemented long back! So what is special about your Robot?
Khushi: Mom, my Robot will do all the house work and go out on my behalf. Like going to school, going to office, going to shopping etc. It will be just like me!
Mummy: Then darling you dont need a Robot, you need a clone!!

I am sure, these brilliant innovations are the outcome of Doraemon and Ninja Hattori cartoons, Khushi is so fond off! But at the age of 5, innovations n clones were unknown words in my dictionary.  Forget knowing their meanings!

Beyond the wall: A memoir

This is my second wall painting and this time I wanted something to accommodate the wonderful pictures on my vacations. So here we go with the picture tree.

Steps to do similar wall painting

1. Choose the picture you want to draw or think of a free hand design to go with the theme 

2. Select a big enough wall which is not hidden by furniture, curtains or book shelves in the room

3. Make sure the wall is well painted, a wall with stains would not be the best choice for your hard work

4. Draw a draft sketch on the wall while keeping in mind the scale of the image. Grids will help you keep up the scale

5. Also sketch the details like branches, leaves and other design as it is in the picture

6. After the sketching is done, check the whole picture once again and whatever modifications needs to be done, do it before starting to paint

7. Use oil paint colors (not the water colors or the fabric colors, they don't give the same getup). You will need the required oil paint tubes, brushes of different sizes, turpentine/linseed oil

8. Start covering the major areas like trunk, branches etc. If you are doing a free hand painting, finish coloring the major blocks of the whole painting and then move to more delicate and intricate work. This has two advantages. Firstly you can scale up as per the look you want and secondly you want your painting to look grand and delicate at the same time. And you also need to space out properly the picture frames you plan to hang on the branches.

9. When you paint, you need to take enough colors and be uniform with the direction of strokes. Oil paint colors are a little more difficult to work with, so avoid reworks as much as possible.

10. When you want to highlight the photos, its always a good idea to use a single color. It will give a monotone base to the wall and at the same time enhance the look of your pictures

11. Let it dry for 3-4 days and the wall is ready to embrace your memories in the form of your photos

12. Photos you select should preferably be framed  in basic color photo frames. I prefer black, champagne and silver frames

13. If you prefer changing photos after a while,make sure you use changeable picture frames

14. You are all set to nail the frames on the wall now. Play with your imagination and make your wall shine with golden memories of your life. Because every picture you hang there is going to tell something about your life which you would want to cherish forever

Incredible Bharat!! ATITHI DEVO BHAVV

Our culture states "ATITHI DEVO BHAVA". And we Indians take it quite seriously, especially if the atithi is a foreigner. Whether in his country he is a criminal, carpenter or a cowboy. If he is a foreigner, everybody around him tries to charm him and be friendly with him.

Recently, I went for a boat ride in Munnar, Kerala. There was a long queue of 50 people standing in the hot sun. Behind me was a plump guy in his early 40s flashing his Prada shades and Arabic accent. He was trying to communicate with some Indians with sign language and few English words he knew. Soon few more people joined the conversation and he had more admirers. In that super enthusiastic junta, there was a gentleman who was so keen on making our guest comfortable that he called another gentleman who knew Arabic language. This gentleman had stayed in Dubai for some years and could speak broken Arabic. It was amusing to see all the heads turning left to right with the rally of conversation between our country's guest to the Dubai return VIP. Others standing had no language problems, but they hardly greeted each other. But when we have a foreigner around, we have no barriers.
Haven't we all seen the innumerable foreign nationals welcomed in our film/television industry? From Laura to Leonne, all are still our VIP guests after spending years and earning millions in our country.
And remember those devotees in the temple/ashram's wearing cotton saffron attire and rudraksh beads necklace who are made to sit in the front rows? And also that British/American well-dressed senior manager who visits from your head office and your boss continues to treat him like God, even in the informal evening dinners.
                      
Like all the foreigners think, all Indians are poor, uneducated, snake charmers. We Indians feel all foreigners are millionaires, smart, geniuses whom we should always keep happy. No harm in following a great tradition, but lets follow it for our own people also. Lets welcome our neighbours equally open-heartedly as we do the strangers.
On a lighter note, the biggest irony is that we consider all foreigners as Obaama and they consider all Indians as Osaama. #NothingSeriousAboutIt