Merry Christmas !!

  
It's Christmas....!!!

Wish You A Merry Christmas
May all your dreams come true this year....
May Santa bring you tonnes of Happiness, 
And Goodhealth and Joy !!
May Peace be your gift at Christmas 
And your blessing all year through !!
Hope you have a wonderful Christmas !!

With lots of Love, Prayers and Wishes, 

Ode to my childhood companion !!

He was in the welcoming committee
when my parents brought me home from the hospital....
He lay nearby as my mother fed me ...
He guarded my crib, always alert for the slightest whimper....

He supported my faltering steps....

He ran with me along a thousand steep steps...

He kept my secrets and kissed away my tears...
He stood with me through my childhood humiliations...

He saw me off to school everyday....
Looking out through the big iron gates.....

He missed me a lot when I was away...
His joy knew no bounds when I returned back from school...

He never left me alone when I was sick....
He snuggled close to me when I was afraid of the dark....


He played with me whenever I felt lonely...
He listened to all my rantings...
He saved me by guzzling the food I slipped under the table....




He was my precious childhood companion...
He taught me what a gift it was to be loved by a DOG !!
My lovely Alsatian Dog - ROCKY !!

Celebrity Worship .....MAD ICON Disease ??

Today when I saw little Johnny sitting wide eyed in front of the TV watching Ben 10, not aware of munching away the corns, I was thinking of what he told me of aliens yesterday ... 

There was this picture of the alien force . XLR8, Heatblaster and the like...which he was downloading from the net. I just happened to pass by and peeping on to the screen , got irritated by the look of those ugly aliens who didnt even have a face you could look upon....

But the shouts of exhilaration that kept coming from this little guy as he went on downloading one picture after the other, went like this....
 " Oooh ! Awesome ! Look at Omnitrix ! Look how handsome HeatBlaster looks..."




God !! I was thinking of the little boy who once jumped out of the terrace of a multi-storeyed building just to show his friends he could do like SUPERMAN !! 

I really did feel that there needs to be given a little awareness to these kids on this aspect ..... and maybe channelise their interest in some other  , if possible.... But this is not just the case of little ones...

Teens and college-goers too go through problems like, idolising a sweaty rock star rushing through the stage in a frenzy....or a politician,  a film star...it could be anyone from Obama to Bin Laden even !!

Many of these guys would  wake up every morning thinking of  Soorya or wonder what John Abraham was doing that day ? Or what Thamanna would be having for breakfast ? 
  

But let me get my point across......if  someone keeps thinking of some celebrity too much...  this could be the beginning of a psychological condition called 

CELEBRITY WORSHIP SYNDROME...or 

CWS ....which is also called 

MAD ICON DISEASE !!


Lots of people especially little children suffer from CWS. They may be obsessed with someone whom they like so much .....most likely, some cartoon figure..  I've seen many little friends of Johnny getting addicted to Ben10 , the best cartoon character of this century, who fights against enormous alien forces ... 

 Sadly these aliens who look horrible to elders look so pretty in the eyes of these little ones....
 It is true that one in at least three people seem to be obsessed with some public figure so that they become sufferers.... who are so taken with their idol that the obsession affects their daily life....
  
Many a time there appears to be a clear clinical component to attitudes and behaviours associated with celebrity worshipping, especially in children. 

These kids tend to have an intense personal type of mental /emotional relationship with their idol or grow a special kind of bond with their celebrity . They turn out to be real problem makers as they are introverts, and are impulsive and antisocial with troublesome intensive traits. 

They stick posters everywhere on their bedroom wall, suffer from hallucinations  of their favourite celebrity being their soul mate and develop a special bond with their celebrity emotionally . 

But guys !! I suppose we all agree at least to this one statement of the great celebrity and philosopher of all times...... Jesus !!!   "Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image " 
Let us be careful not to give in to these practically useless characters and let not these silly idols make those real true idols to stay in the shade !!

Its not just me...but …Me , Myself and I …Hiding in my soul!!

 I always wonder if it is just ME who is like ME…. or there are a hell lot of others somewhere out there …who are like me ….?


  But one thing is really confusing …
Are we really who we think we are? At times , are’nt we turning out into somebody whom we are not? What I mean is, why do we turn into different persons depending on different situations… and I’ve often felt that we all change according to the people we move around with?

And I do feel at times, that zodiacs have something to do with all this.. Other zodiacs have always found pleasure in saying that Pisceans like me, are dreamy and have a personality which gets shaped according to the place and people whom we are with…. .


But  me , being a cusp (for those of you who don’t know about cusps …its those people born between two sun signs) never do follow those characteristics specific for Pisceans but rather, tend to be double faced like I have been accused of ...by my friends.  

 I tend to be sentimental like a Piscean, and also be strong like Aries. But I really do feel cusps have a more or less split personality maybe! Of course no two people can ever describe me in the same manner (with my pisces-aries character ). A lot of them feel I am an introvert while others who are close to me find it difficult to shut me up for sometime. One minute I am talking like hell and the next I withdraw into my shell. I get extremely emotional at times with some of them, whereas I become the symbol of practicality with some others. But I know it all depends on whom I am dealing with….

The thought really sucks ! I sometimes try to believe that each of us are not single persons but maybe have many different people living inside us. Don’t we have a variety of personality shades hiding in us, which come and go at times ?  …I mean we are strong sometimes but weak some other time depending on a whole lot of stuff ? I often feel that it is because of all those different people living inside us, who come out one at a time… depending on situations !!!.

 Maybe that is why we hear the story of a murderer becoming a saint overnight? A freak turns out to be a responsible son who takes charge of a family business ? A young flirt becomes a responsible mother ? A killer becomes a monk ? Such transitions don’t happen just like that! Could be because those people living within us emerge one by one ? Ha Ha ..

There are people who say that situations change a person. But one person cannot just switch between evil and good.. just like that...  if he really didn’t have that personality hiding in him all along ?…which means that one person can become another ,depending on a catalyst !! Which also means,  that maybe all of us are hiding lots of other people inside, who knows?  

Ooooooooh!!!  So peep into your soul, and ask  “ANYBODY THERE???”
  

Real Men wear Pink in October !!

Excuse me Guys!! It is November now...and I know I should have posted this long time back. Any way, you know there is no stopping me when I have something in my mind .. Well, Thats me!! Take me for being pretty 'difficult' ...but still,  understand that nobody is 'difficult' but rather 'different' ???  Ha Ha...

Well, now ..Its going to be a little serious ... For those of you who are not aware of the cancer campaigns and stuff associated with it.....Hope you ve heard about cancer ribbons and that each month is dedicated to a particular type of cancer... like for instance, a gold ribbon stands for childhood cancer and the month of September would be dedicated to childhood cancer awareness campaigns every year....

The same goes for every month...

  

visit www.cancerindia.in for more details on cancer ribbons

The color Pink is supposed to be girlish and feminine.....And I suppose men dont wear pink ???  Think about a man wearing a PINK JEANS OR A DARK PINK SHIRT...you'd call him a freak or a junkie even.....

But PINK…. in the World of Cancer , has great importance cos it stands for Breast Cancer and the month of October is dedicated to this issue...

Cancer campaigners and volunteers all over the world wear pink when they turn up for campaigns or volunteer activities regardless of whether they are men or women......





Now, this is not the main issue here….Last month I got a mail from one of my friends in New York who is an active voluntary social worker but one who works in the administrative section in one of the biggest companies there.

He had gone through very difficult times when his mother whom he loved very much had suffered from breast cancer which was diagnosed in the worst stage and the lady had sadly refused to go in for treatment and finally had the most painful death possible….

 So this guy made it a point to wear a pink ribbon on his suit everyday during October...and also pink shirts and pink handkerchiefs whenever he could ....Not to mention the sly looks and snide remarks of his colleagues who would tease him for his improper dressing !! ....

But everytime someone teased him, he would make it a point to explain to them why he wore it. He says he took real pains to explain ...and most of the time it would be quite embarrassing….but he still did it , cos he felt that his actions would speak more than just words ....

And... as he was using himself as a tool for this awareness program, he felt so happy doing it  ...Well,  I would say that this was the best awareness campaign possible…

Now to give the chills to my male readers ...

I suppose you know that the number of men having breast cancer is on the rise. An estimated 10 percent of the world breast cancer population is men, which is supposed to increase again according to recent statistics....





Now I suppose you guys would agree to my statement that Real Men do wear Pink in October ? Or shall we say ....we need to change the color of the October Ribbon to pink and blue cos it is not just women who suffer but men too …… Anyway , we do have such a ribbon now !!

For more reference on cancer ribbons do feel free to visit my website on cancer : 
www.cancerindia.in

Crazy Rambling !!

Coming out of the airport entrance, my driver happened to pullover suddenly towards the right without turning on the indicator lights, when I shouted that one of my papers flew out. I could hear angry shouts coming from a beautiful white Opal Corsa,  ...!!! To my ill luck, a traffic police man suddenly loomed up in front of me from God-knows-where !! My driver was trying his best to pacify the old guy , explaining to him that one of my valuables had fallen out of the car and he had no other way than do this !! The white sedan which came behind had pulled up behind us and a young lady got out wearing a blue jeans and a white kurta .To my surprise I could see the smiling young lady running towards me with open arms ready for a bear hug... ....and in a matter of minutes, I was talking to one of my very best friends from college.We had'nt met for many years now.....and somehow, we had not kept in touch over the mail even. And surprisingly...both of us chattered on like we had never been away.....

This really makes me wonder why we feel comfortable with certain people even when we meet them very rarely or have'nt met for years together...Sometimes this happens even with people whom we meet for the very first time,  to whom we feel like talking as if we had known each other all our lives...whereas we would find it difficult to open ourselves to certain others whom we would have been with us for such a long time .

Just like this, rare incidents happen at times...like love at first sight...finding a friend who understands you in such a way that she would complete your sentences for you...Well ...How do we define such incidents ?
I suppose most of us come across someone whom we seem to have known forever...it could happen between companions with perfect tuning....or even those who've been friends for long...

You may not even actively maintain the friendship ..or make regular calls or send mails...not even forwards ...
But when you meet them after that long gap...you can start from wherever you had left off. It makes you feel like you had been connected at the soul level , all along...

But there are also extremes where certain relationships are short lived and teach you a lesson . And once the lesson is learnt, it ends. It explains why you get affected by a person who fleetingly appears only to disappear in the same manner.

But some people remain for a lifetime in spite of odds.We feel like they are our real friends whom we cannot live without.



There are certain others who pop up suddenly during a difficult time and then disappear again only to reappear in some other difficulty....maybe even after years. They may lend a shoulder for you to cry on , give advice and when you have crossed the difficulty they completely disappear ...

Thinking about all these people, I get reminded of what I had read long time back, about soul mates...Does this mean that these people whose soul get connected to us could be defined as soul mates...these people who perfectly understand you...Or could be that even 'you' may be a soul mate to some other friend !!

Why do we feel this way, only with certain people ? Is it because of similar frequency of thoughts ? Or is this what we often say  "birds of a feather flock together" ? I dont think so....

Is it something connected to reincarnation like the hindu vedas speak ? Well.....I suppose soulmates come in some form or the other....going on from one birth to another ?? A brother could have been a father ...and a mother could have been a sister or a child...a husband could have been a brother...a wife could have been a mother ...

Well, just look at all your relations...those that really matter to you...What I mean is...try to actually SEE them ....Well, do you really get what I mean to say ? Well I suppose that is why ....a husband sometimes tries to play the role of a father ? A girl plays the role of a mother to a friend... a wife behaves like a child...one of the children get attached to you so very much than all the others...??

Just analyse the kind of relationship you share with the people who really mean a lot to you... If you happen to understand this... you may understand what I mean.... Maybe you will recognise your soulmates!

Sounds Crazyyyy ? I suppose this will at least help you to know each one of them better.... and maybe understand everyones actions better ..also you might know how important each one of them is ...in your life..... !!!

Nov 19 is not "World Day for prevention of child abuse"...Every day is !!

IF TEDDY COULD TALK......... !!

If  her little teddy could ever talk...
He would have told a thousand stories ......
Of her fears  ......of her silent tears....
He might tell you things..
You may not want to hear...
He would tell you of....
Her longing to get away and hide...
Into a world where there would be no one to hurt ...
Just teddy and her !!
Its not just this little girl. But lots of them...crying!
You cant wipe away all their tears...but still...
let's never let our children long to say...
" If my Teddy could talk....!!! "


The Teddy bears and Barbie dolls of children are not just toys..... 
Sometimes they are the only love felt by them !!!

Remember ...............!!!!!
"November 19 is not the only day to fight against child abuse...Everyday is...." 

Dedicated to all the little angels abused !!!

A guy frm the north pole and a gal from the south pole...living together on the equator !!

Well I am back again...One big long month away from the blogosphere.....I feel really happy I am back ....I really love to scribble something ...every now and then. However, right now , guys ....I need to make a wee little escape from my work... ? Ha Ha ...Any way ...here goes today's butterfly ramblings  …

I thought  I ll write about something ..not that serious... but still, something that the butterfly finds intriguing again !!!

Well...Its about me and the person I love the most...That's Bambly...(my handsome hubby, of course !!!  I'm quite used to calling him so... that i really am prone to embarass myself by forgetting his real name one day !!)

Bambly and I .....we never really have the same likings but still love each other so very much... Its always confusing how two different individuals hailing from two different places can be so very close , when they share more of dissimilarities and more often have extremely different viewpoints on various regards...
  
You know ...Its like a guy from the north pole and a gal from the south pole sitting together comfortably on the equator ??? But I suppose most of you guys , feel the same too !! 

To say about differences...lets take colors first.... 

I love Pink….the color pink in every little shade.... Pink Dresses, Pink Walls, Pink mobile phone, Pink Shoes,Pink nailpaints, Pink Laptops... (Well..Can’t forget the salesman staring at me when I stomped off the shop saying I ll wait till a pink netbook comes in !! ) Take me for being crazy, but I love pink !! And there is no way Bambly could change me......try as he may !! 


You know what ??? When i was a little girl, I used to dream of a Pink Sky even ? 

But sadly Bambly loves blue..Like any macho man, he just loves blue...blue in everything...blue in every shade..blue shirts, blue jeans, blue walls, blue every where around him !He is at his real best when he wears blue !!

Well....If you take movies... 

I love watching movies at home..Its more of being together with Bambly that I enjoy,  than watching the movie itself..So any movie is fine , provided we watch it together... So i would never mind watching any stupid film on earth.... in any language ...even without subtitles ...,just  for the sake of being with Bambly !!

Bambly is not like me...He enjoys good movies with good stories , even old ones go fine with him...especially watching them at a theatre munching popcorn ..I love Johnny Depp whereas he hates Depp....but loves Will Smith and Jackie Chan and he must have watched each and every film that  Jackie (OVER)ACTED in......some of which I am sure even JACKIE WOULD'NT HAVE BOTHERED TO WATCH !!! Ha Ha !!.


Coming to seasons... 

I just love rain ...just like that ...  the sound of rain ... the sound of thunder ...the sudden flashes of lightening .  the smell of wet earth, the puddles on the road ...the smell of bajjis and vadais as you race through the rain ...water splashing from the wheels of the car....the hot coffee at home while the thunderclouds rumble! 

Bambly hates rain..To him it wastes his day..He would prefer to sit in his air conditioned office, pondering into files or the computer, instead of getting his shirt dirty pitter pattering in the rain...Maybe he'd love it if it was a rainy holiday and he could sit at home watching news ???


NEWS !!!...Well..thats something I hate..... right from the time i was a child .... my dad used to drag me in front of the TV , so that his little baby gets some knowledge about this big old world...


Bambly just loves news ...politics ??/ he just loves them !! HE WOULD WATCH THE SAME NEWS AGAIN AND AGAIN IN MANY DIFFERENT LANGUAGES ...any number of times... but poor me !! I would prefer to watch news about aliens visiting earth...UFOs ....genetically engineered veggies .. .earthquakes...tsunamis...well ..you know , those things really do matter....we've got to care for this world , Yaar !!! 

But take my word...NO politics.......except of course !! OBAMA DANCING with the school children ?? WOWW..,,,,,,That is one interesting piece of news worth watching !!


Books are Bamblys passion ...he even loves the smell of books!! you know, he loves everything classic .. scientific ...psychology...philosophy....occult science and what not !!....But me...i would prefer to read something sweet to kill time ( But that's only when I really could find some extra time to be free !!)...maybe even a sydney sheldon would do fine ...but nothing serious...no fiction... If ever I am serious , I would prefer to read a scientific journal...related to my research....


Singing.....All my friends know that I really do sing fine ... !! Bambly too loves singing... but only when he is under the shower , taking bath and you know...HE GIVES EXTREME COMPLEXES TO DONKEYS !!


I like to stare at the sky ...but Bambly likes to stare at the screen of his computer !!!


I love experimental cooking ...You know what ? ??? Bambly is a nice guy !! He is brave enough to gobble up and even appreciate those goodies I try out !!

When i love to watch the stars on a moonlit night, and wonder about those marvels that God created .......Bambly would love to look up at the sky and think about the speed of light coming from the stars or about comets and asteroids !!

When Bambly looks at me and asks how far my research has gone....I would be asking Bambly how much he loves me.... the umpteenth time !!


Bambly and I love eating chocolates .....I love chocolate flakes.......He loves candies , bubblegums...any thing with the taste "sweet" on it
You know what ? he often gets bitten by mosquitoes and ants...and says that's because they all know that he is so very sweet !!


Well...that reminds me of food .....and that reminds me of the time.......eeeeks !!! Its 1.30 pm ...way after midnight...The notes for my thesis must have been downloaded long back...Got to go !!!

Goodbye till I come back again !!

It's funny, because 2010 has a special significance for me. I am always on the run and I think about how much faster time seems to go now and how it seems crazy that a few years back, I had fantasized about a life that I was not at all headed towards….

It's kind of every week turns out to be an eternity and it is too difficult to find a way out !!

Or is it so for everyone..??

Sometimes I feel I am tired running around with cancer patients… and then the rehabilitation programs , the awareness campaigns for which we travel miles on end, then again comes my doctoral research, the sleepless nights when I sit and write a blog while I download stuff for reviewing my thesis......

And the times I go crazy when I lose concentration in my work at the Research Centre….. and then the lecture classes I have to prepare with utmost care… the guest lectures at the university , my club activities…... seminars...oooohh !!! It really gets on my nerves ! Its just one person....doing all this !! And I wish I had wings and 10 hands to do things  and 4 more legs to stand on ,when these two legs of mine get tired !!

You can’t creep into bed at 2 am every night (Or is it morning ???!)

I feel I am going insane with all that’s going around …Chances are good that I won't make it this way for yet another month…So I thought I would give a pause to whatever is real crap and what I feel, is not essential for me right now.....

To start with, I would be giving a pause to blogging for the next couple of weeks  until I regain a fresh mind to write more crap!!

I am happy many of my dreams have come to fruitition and theres one more left to handle and that’s my research …!!! I’ve been working on it for 2 years now and I am too close to it but have’nt crossed the finishing line …So I need to take a step further there and a step back in the blog game !!So I am going to scratch me off the bloggers list for some time …

Thanks for reading my posts patiently over the past couple of weeks ( My stats tab shows me lots of you... butterflies.... visiting my blog-garden everyday ! Thanks a lot !!) .

It's exactly one month since I started blogging and its definitely cool to be blogging on like this (410 hits in a month ! Feels good !!),  and guys... if you don't hear from me for a while, it's only because good things are happening!!

Bye for now…

Love to all of you,

Butterfly Traveller.

Why I call myself a bad blogger !

I have had such a long week and the last thing I want to do is… be serious right now !! 

So…I thought I could make fun of myself… for just being a bad blogger...

But you would imagine....when there are lots of crap going around in this world, why on earth should I write about me and my bad blogging ? Sometimes even I feel I am getting sick of the juvenile lay-out of my blog…

 

And most of the times I do get lazy…After having sat for hours downloading stuff on microRNAs and knockout genes which make my brains shout  back at me...I would nt even feel like raising my little finger ..Forget about blogging …ooh...

But you know… Sometimes I really do get wonderful ideas which I feel like blogging on…some of them are very clever and keep me musing on it. I would feel I am exceptional to get such great ideas !! But when the time comes for me to blog, whatever I decided to post, would look like crap!!!

Then I sit and think over the issue …

Well...To be honest, I sometimes feel that blogs are a kind of shameless self promotion.. And I suppose I too am doing that shamelessly..right ? Ha ha !!

Well..here i want you to understand that I loathe being a white noise amongst lots of other white noises. But still … I don’t want to opt out of it  . I have many points to refute this whereas many reasons to have a blog!! I suppose I am becoming a parasite ? Let me think again???  Okay, not really !!! 

Any way…Now that I have started writing this….Here comes my next big problem…I need a catchy name for this post.

Do you see the point?  This whole thing is just like me being in school again ..not that I am trying to be the best or am trying to come out with juicy blogs to please everyone..

But still…Let me be frank…I sometimes feel like I am trying to carve a niche for myself on the web …now that I have started relating to a few of my butterfly followers , out there , who are always ready to bear with all the holy stuff I write …and many others who could be silently suffering … Its big deal anyway!!

Don’t you think it is ? 

But then i know blogging also involves emotional involvement like any other human interaction.  We feel good when people respond to us and sometimes feel like losers when they dont.

But anyhow.. we need to connect with all those people who love us.  And if you think about it that way, you would certainly feel happy to take that extra time for them. 

Couldn’t hurt, right ????


 

JennyPadua,Nagercoil,TamilNadu,India,JeniPadua
JennyPadua,Nagercoil,TamilNadu,India,JeniPadua

Birthdays can change the world !! So do birthday gifts !!

I just came across this video which really impressed me. For a long time I had been confused about this issue of birthday gifts...  But this innovative and meaningful birthday gifting gives new meaning to the word "Birthday Gift ".

Something which was started by Scott Harison in September 2008 still goes on ... This is not something meant only for celebrities ....
This could be possible to everyone of us...if we can join hands and work towards it ..


To view this video click on the link below :
http://vimeo.com/1552996

http://vimeo.com/1552996


This awe-inspiring video gives an idea of how a birthday initiative by Scott Harrison became the non-profit “charity: water” which brings clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Many of the good hearts involved in this project gave up their birthday celebrations to give it as a gift to those people who really need…

Well...It feels great to work for a good cause !!!

JennyPadua,Nagercoil,TamilNadu,India,JeniPadua

The more people I meet...The more I respect Dogs!!

One of my favorite hobbies is observing people. When I attend parties, the funniest thing I notice is how people behave. The animated gossip of women...the obnoxious backbites...the crazy arguments men have …and how violent they get about it…But the more people I come across in life…the more I seem to respect dogs…because…they seem to deserve more respect than human beings in many ways…

Dogs are forms of unconditional love. They live for their master and are extremely loyal and truthful about it. unlike us humans, forgive and forget bad stuff. They don’t complain and silently bear with us. They'll never forsake their friends. They love you so much that they would follow you to the worlds end .

Dogs are never ashamed to own up their friends however filthy they look. They don’t argue on trivial nonsense or behave like obnoxious know-it-alls. They never give ludicrous excuses and absurd rationalizations for being rude...They don’t make sarcastic remarks and don’t take advantage of friendship .

Dogs miss you so much when you are not there. And dogs never laugh at you when you go wrong. They don’t expect you to wait on them. They are not egoistic. They dont look down upon your intelligence. Dogs don’t kill people emotionally…..

Dogs don’t mind if you take the lead. Dogs understand your instincts . Dogs don’t want to know your history or how rich you are. Dogs are not ashamed to admit when they are lost. Dogs don’t complain.

Dogs are real good friends ....and they'll never want to say... this was'nt friendship...nor was it love , I was just infatuated.. They know only to love, love, and love more…If only a dog could talk…

Dedicated to Duke, my lovely German Shepherd..... And Rocky the wonderful Alsatian who loved us  all unconditionally.....…

JennyPadua,Nagercoil,TamilNadu,India,JeniPadua

Gunshot from Heaven..

 


When the early morning phone call woke me up, I was groping in the dark trying to find my mobile phone. The pink device had slipped out of my hands while I slumbered into deep sleep… Ronan Keating's   song “You say it best when you say nothing at all “ came floating from my mobile phone ...It was my favourite song and I had set it as my ring tone... but now it sounded eerie along with the light which flickered from the device !!


The frantic sound of my friend could be heard on the other end….Jess is very sick !! Could you talk to her now ? She wants to speak to you ! I fumbled in the dark , trying to get to Jess as soon as I could..Jess was in the hospital. They had found cancer.  It was in the worst stage.  I could hear sobs at the other end. She was one of my real good friends..


I tried best to console her but pretty much failed as miserably as I could. Even as I tried to be encouraging, I could find myself whimpering. The words that came out of my rambling mouth were not the least adequate. I knew that this could never be made alright.


Well.. It was the worst thing to happen to a 29 year old..
The least I could do was to ask her to call me anytime, if she needed to vent and get it all out .  I was not sure how much that could have helped Jess, but I heard myself telling her.... I’ll be there for you, in case you need me....


The whole situation was pathetic….unfair.  And there was nothing anyone could do....


I really do wonder why all this happens to people. And it gets too difficult when it is someone whom you really love.  Jess was a very sweet person who had every right to enjoy life like all of us... She was a wife who was the world to her partner …a mother without whom her 8 year old girl could never survive...This should be the very best years of a woman’s life. And she was going to lose everything.....


And finally, the gun shots came in …out of nowhere....Without warning… Hitting harder than anything that had ever hit before....


Jess passed away … it was all too bad …..So unreal..…


We dont understand how much someone means to us until we lose them. I don’t even know if I had really expressed enough to tell Jess how much I cared for her..How much she meant to me…


I keep wondering ... why we dont care to express how much we feel for our family, friends... everyone whom we care  …who they are in our life... I dont know if we really tell them we do love them all so very much...  Tell them we appreciate all that they do for us and how much they mean to us ...Thank them enough for everything that they are in our life....I suppose it is alright even if we are annoying them about it,


But really... We have no idea when the gun shots would come from heaven !!
 




JennyPadua,Nagercoil,TamilNadu,India,JeniPadua

My friend gave birth to me !!

Growing up in a highly orthodox setup, I was disciplined to keep distance with everyone and also to keep up my dignity. I was trained well to be haughty and arrogant and it was a sin if I had a chat with the maid. Well. Let me tell you...I was Daddy’s darling, Mamma’s pet and the Family Icon...!

 

When I was in my ninth grade, special care was taken to delicately tuck me into a car at 9 am with the driver and one of my uncles sitting in front... With me peeping out the window to look at a world which always sped away from me at 60 km / hr.

I loved boogie dancing and was too good at it... But Lo!! My grandpa did not. …But I loved my grandpa...And he was more important to me than dancing…So I danced behind the tightly closed doors of my room.

My teachers were good friends of my family . And so…I accidently came up first in all the competitions I went for…That was injustice to my really talented friends…I loved my friends ….So I said Goodbye to competitions…My friends were more important to me than me winning competitions.

I loved singing...but my granny felt  it was nt apt for children from good families to shout like buffaloes at home....So I restricted my singing to the Soprano classes I had once a week …I loved granny so much and she was more important to me than singing…

I loved sports and was pretty good at it too …but my family didn’t want those rowdies cheering at their little darling..…I let go of sports cos I loved my family….My family was more important to me than sports.

I liked to go to the beach. Little boys and girls played in the beach sand while I sat on the big  cloth spread out for me so that my lovely satin dress would not get spoiled. I would have given everything I had…..just to play in the sand…just to make a sand castle…. Just to squish the sand once with my bare foot.  But of course … I was assured that those children playing on the beach were not as lucky as me!!!

Finally…I loved loneliness … and no one seemed to take it away from me!! I was happy I had lots of freedom in my room …and no one to break the silence…..

I sailed on this way for a long time ....when I had the honor and privilege of meeting one precious person who became a beacon of light for me and I started seeking his help every step of the way.

Caterpillar that I was , afraid of light even...always in my cocoon ...this person worked wonders through his advices....He taught me to think !! To fight for existence !! I think I need to say a few words about this wayfarer...


This loner never knew to smile ..He never was kind to unfaithfullness and pretense....was not all that loving to ignorance .....He was kind of a fighting bull.....fighting against injustice, fighting against  what ever he felt was wrong, losing his temper at the slightest note of distaste.....His strong personality and individuality inspired me....to be like him....I never had fought with anyone and he knew he had to shake me out of my cocoon and wouldnt have minded bursting it open to get me out of it !

And finally one day I burst my cocoon to pieces and came out , a wonderful butterfly...I knew I could fly high without anyone to help me ..I knew  I could travel far cos I found the hidden strength within me...

I have been doing lots since then... all on my own... I let go of my prejudices..my fears...my superstitions...I emerged into a completely different person whom everyone could look up to... In fact he gave birth to me ...The  real new me who did not live "only" for others but also for me !!

Everyone was surprised at the change in me...The shy person who could not  once drive around alone in my car had come out as an independent Iron butterfly  who could address masses and drove around for miles on social issues not fearing my ties !!! In fact I love my freedom so much now and people respect me for my individuality....... I feel I am born again !

And I dedicate this to my friend who gave birth to me... Who helped me find the real me !

JennyPadua,Nagercoil,TamilNadu,India,JeniPadua