Sealed With A Loving Kiss...

Maybe it is old age creeping up on me. I just recently found out that it has become almost impossible for me to comfortably get a piece of A4 paper and a pen and write something decent in a legible handwriting. In fact, with age (and I am yet to hit 40 where supposedly life begins) my handwriting is becoming worse and worse, to the point where I can hardly read my own handwriting! Ok, let me not be so melodramatic, about 10 years of typing on the computer has made my handwriting almost non existent. And yet it has always not been so.

Growing up I was a prolific letter writer. I wrote and received lots of letters from friends and family. During my college days, there was no email (at least not in the form that we know it today) and a mobile phone is not something one came across casually. I never even imagined that the word sms will become part and parcel of everyday vocabulary. Letters are what kept me in touch with family and friends. I took A4 foolscaps and wrote long letters, in clear legible handwriting. Stories were told, love professed and frustration and advised meted out in handwritings. There is nothing I enjoyed like the sound of the post man calling out my name at the gate, or turning the key into the post box and finding it full with letters for you. It was equally disappointing when you found the post box empty! Nowadays I just text, write an email, tweet something or tag you on a photo on facebook.

And over years, I kept all the letters that I ever received - right from the teenage crush I had to my dad asking me to take my college studies seriously to encouragements from my sister. Aerogrammes, stamps from different countries, envelopes of different colours and designs...When I was much older, at times, during moments of boredom when one ransacks stuff in the house aimlessly, I would open some of these letters and read them. Some were from friends now dead. Others funny. Others sealed with lipsticks from long forgotten girlfriends(Dearest Charles, SWALK -Sealed With A Loving Kiss...). A couple of years back when I was moving house, I discovered that my wife had burned all my letters. She said it was a mistake but I always suspected that she did not want old relationships sitting somewhere in the house as we began a new life...



Kids, this is what an aerogramme looks like!


PS: I wonder whether my dad still has the old telegrams I sent to him while I was in college. Almost all of them had just three words. SEND MONEY URGENTLY. I wonder whether kids nowadays know what I am talking about...

Blast From The Past - Books To Re-Read

The thing with having a demanding job, two demanding daughters and a host of blogs to read is that one rarely has time to read books. This, coupled with having picked up a few boring books over the last few years has meant that reading has become even more tedious. Especially reading fiction! I was today reading the blog Beanbag Tales on some of the books on love that the blogger will be reading this love month, and suddenly I remembered some of the novels I considered classics when I was growing up. I started reading very early, when I was 8 years old I was stealing Enid Blyton books from the local library, and by the time I was about 12 or 13 years I was done with the Hardy Boys (and *whispering* Nancy Drew) series. I will not easily admit it when questioned by I even read the James Hardley Chase and Mills & Boon series and by the time I was 15, I could not read any novel below 500 pages. But it was when I had all the time in world -- that is college -- that I really did indulge myself in reading. I read an average of about 3 novels a week, especially during the hot Udaipur summers. The following is a list of titles that I read then that I considered the mothers of novels (classics excluded) and that I have decided I am going to read again this year -- about 13 years later!



I read this book in 1995, and then read it again that same year -- The only other book I ever read by Anthony Grey was Peking but it never came close to this. Surprised I have not heard of a movie version of this.



The image of Howard Roak was in my head for days after reading this book. I never read it again but last year I got to read Atlas Shrugged. I still prefer The Fountainhead



I got this novel just after I had finished high school, and this was because they were showing the series on television but the TV timing was not good for me. I don't know whether I will find it a bit cheesy now that I am no longer a teenager but nevertheless let me give it a try. I never read any other book by her so I don't know if she was a good writer...



I read quite a number of books by Erich Seagal but this was the standout. It was the monsoon season in 1995, I had no option but to stay indoors and read and this book happened to be laying about...



I was never really a fan of Harold Robbins but after graduating from the James Hardley Chase type of books, this was the first "big" book I read, mostly the book placed under the table during Maths lessons. Good thing I was seated at the back of the classroom. I also never let people in on what I scored in Maths....



A friend gave me this book but I did not think it was worth reading and kept it in the house for a few days. I only picked it up because I had run out of materials to read. Let's just say that I found it hard to put it down after a few chapters. I remember dreaming about the characters in my dream. Does anyone know if it was ever made into a movie?

I would also like to get some recommendations from you (for fiction that is) on books that you read years ago and would love to read again...

Online to Offline: Can Online Friendship Be Real?

A man (not sure about women) usually reaches a certain age when it becomes difficult to make friends, unless of course you are in a job that requires you to make friends (maybe security intelligence?). In fact when I think of it, after college, the friends that I have made have mostly been work related, either because we worked for the same company or our work brought us together. And when I started having a family of my own, dividing my time between my wife and kids and my employer made it even more difficult to have friends. I have actually moved in and out of a few neighborhoods over the last few years and each time I have moved, I have discovered that I am hardly leaving any friends behind.

The art of making new friendships have however been given a new dimension by social networking. At first, I was not enthusiastic about social networking and saw it as another of those internet inventions that is designed to take away valuable time that I could have been spending reading or doing something more meaningful. In fact, I argued a lot about the notion of actually meeting people online and thinking that it could lead to any meaningful offline relationships. No guessing then for my feelings about online dating and the likes. After a lot of encouragement from a friend, I got into MySpace sometimes in 2006 and after a few weeks I had even forgotten my log in details. I was then harangued my a number of friends and eventually got into Facebook sometimes in 2008. What Facebook did however was to bring up all the school and college friends I had even forgotten ever existed. Suddenly I was having friend requests from people I had not even thought about for 15 years. It helped renew some old acquaintances but for a majority of these, after the first greetings we have barely communicated except wish one a happy birthday when Facebook reminds you it is their birthday. So I wonder whether it is really worth it in the first place. For me, Facebook is more about maintaining friendships not making some new ones. Sometimes people you don’t know will send you a friend request but I am never sure whether to ignore or accept.

Last year, after reading about all the hype about twitter, I decided to give it a try. After a few days I almost gave up but once I found interesting people to follow and learned what retweeting meant and how to shorten url links, I found it was actually more interesting than Facebook, that is in times of meeting new interesting people. Unlike Facebook where you have to accept friend request before you know this stranger who has decided to connect with you, with twitter, you just followed someone, decided it was not worth it and promptly unfollowed. Within time you actually start making conversations with people whose interests cross with yours. I was thus actually surprised when I found myself actually meeting some of the friends I made online and that turned my earlier belief that you cannot make offline connections with people you meet online.

I still believe that online connections should largely remain online (I am conservative like that) but if perchance you think you have made some interesting connections that can go offline, why not?

"Real friendship is exchanging secrets, rolling over like a puppy and exposing the soft underbelly. You tell your friend the truth, and you feel the friendship growing - like a bank account - with each upfront opinion you give, with each honest answer you hear." - Adair Lara, Cosmopolitan



A former schoolmate recently posted this photo, which we took about 19 years ago, on Facebook and tagged us. Suddenly characters emerged after 19 years to post comments. That is what Facebook can do. I will of course not point out who is me on the photo.

Points to Ponder – My Take 3 on Staying Married

“You need to ask yourself whether you want to be right or stay married”, one of my friends remarked as four grown up men discussed marriage experiences while observing pigs on a pig farm. We all had interesting takes on how our marriages have survived and how our parents have stayed married for what seems like an eternity while we divorce left, right and center every other day. This was good advice to me as I grew up believing that I was born never to lose an argument, a belief that has fortunately been tampered by age now. Nevertheless I have still been known to try to prove that I am right when I get into an argument with Janet! I did not mention it then (maybe for fear of sounding like a sissy) but for me, there are three quotations/phrases that I learned some times that I have always held dear when it comes to the “business” of being married. I don’t necessarily practice them faithfully but so far I think they have served me well (maybe my wife could be thinking otherwise?). And they form my points to ponder for this week:

“Most people get married believing a myth – that marriage is a beautiful box full of the things they have longed for. Companionship, sexual fulfillment, intimacy, friendship. The truth is that marriage, at the start, is an empty box. You must put something in before you take anything out. There is no love in marriage; love is in people and people put it into marriage; people have to infuse it into their marriages.

A couple must learn the art and form the habit of giving, loving, serving, praising – keeping the box full. If you take out more than you put in, the box will be empty.” – J. Allan Petersen (Homemade)

The second passage:

“When I was in college, one of the professors said to us, his students, ‘the secret of successful marriage is this: marriage is not a 50/50 proposition. A 50/50 proposition is one where nobody is giving anything.

‘Rather, the secret of a happy marriage is 60/40. The husband gives 60% of the time and expects the wife to give 40% of the time. The wife gives in 60% of the time and expects the husband to give in 40% of the time. In a 60/40 proposition, you don’t clash in the middle and say, “now it’s your turn”. Instead you intersect and overlap because you are each giving 60%’” – Robert Scinller, Be an Extraordinary Person in an Ordinary World (Fleming Revell)

And finally:

“Those who want to become happy should not marry. The important thing is to make the other one happy. Those who want to be understood should not marry. The important thing is to understand one’s partner.” Hermann Oeser

And that is all I have to say on that before I start getting mistaken for a marriage counselor!

Imani Finally Goes To Class, But No Shaving Off The Dreadlocks!

She had been excited for the better part of the month, especially after Christmas, knowing that she will be joining big sister in school. Not that Imani had any idea of what school is like, but to her the whole idea of a bus picking her up in the morning and returning her home in the afternoon like her sister is what was exciting to her. My thoughts about school are well documented HERE (and of course everybody knows that I feel nothing much towards exams as well)but nonetheless for the sake of peace I have had to take them to school at an early age. Anyway, I digress, so, last Tuesday was Imani's first day in school and though these pictures don't reflect her excitement, she was as excited as I will see her in a long time.




Tamia gets ready to take her little sister to school

I don't recall my days in nursery school but I have often been told that when I was first taken to primary school, I ran away from school on that very first day! A few canes from my mother ensured that I stayed in school (and I think I spent the next 12 years in class because of the looming threat of punishment). It is now 30 years since that day and Imani follows in my footstep!





Imani ready for the ride to school

I heard she cried on the first day because she wanted to be in the same class as her class 2 sister. Today morning she cried insisting that she wanted her sister's books. Sometime I try to explain that they are in two different classes, about 4 years apart, at times I give up and hope the mother will sort it out. For now she finally understands that she needs to be in a different class but the fight over books and diaries will continue for some time.



Finally in class

There has been messages brought home by her older sister that we need to get rid of Imani's dreadlocks, they are not allowed in school. I want to see how long we can get away with ignoring that...what has hair got to do with learning?