October Dawns

New month tomorrow. Time to accelerate progress.

Better health.

Better work culture.

Better routine.

Better organisational skills.

Time to get up early and starting the day with yoga. That means getting out of the bed by 6.00am. Very much possible.

Breakfast by 8.30am. Special breakfast recipes include my regular oats and milk, vermicelli upma with soya nuggets and a new recipe by my cook, The "Soaked Fried Chana " (SFC)

So Chana (Chickpea) is a very nutritious lentil which can be eaten just like that after soaking them overnight. It tastes somewhat like peanuts. For those who don't enjoy that taste too much, they can heat oil in a wok, and fry the chickpeas and add salt and pepper.

Drinking a lot of water throughout the day. My regular dose of one "Naariyal Paani" from my coconut vendor friend outside my house. (Ya, I'm good friends with them now, we chat about how they run their business and other stuff)

Plus, I'm going to dance this Navaratri in Palace grounds. I'm all excited. I'm even getting a ghaghra choli on rent because I did not carry a ghaghra choli to Bangalore.

The most important point being NOT to plan the whole day in your diary. The only routine that stays is morning yoga and breakfast.

Happy October everyone!!!

Before After

I had such a roller coaster day yesterday. You know those days where in the beginning everything wrong that could happen ended up happening. And the second half of the day suddenly came with a beacon of hope.

So the first half of the day starts like this.

There was this school were I was a part timer. I wasn't really enjoying the work so had been thinking of quitting it on and off. I even had a talk with the principal of that school regarding this. Yesterday afternoon they told me that they were looking to keep a full time dance teacher who can take regular classes and still need me for bigger projects. I didn't know whether to be happy or sad. Happy because I was finally out of stress but upset because one source of income reduced.

What followed was that I was supposed to go for my corporate show rehearsal and before that I was to transfer money to OT's account. Now I had two cheques both of different banks. To cut a long story short, basically I was running around for three hours to get the money transferred and finally couldn't even do that.

I come back all famished, only to realize I had forgotten to take my keys. Worse, my phone got switched off because of low battery. I had no option but to walk up to the company where my roommates work, hope to see some known faces and ask them to call any of my roommates. This process was also an elaborate one hour process which finally got over. Immediately after I came back I had to go to the place where my garba workshop was supposed to be conducted. I went there and took my roommate along. I told her we'll be done in some half an hour but it took a whopping 3 hours from 7pm to 10pm. But those were one of the best three hours. Anyway, it turned out to be quite an enlightening one. I met this guy who was a dancer who told me a lot about business strategies and tactics.

I was actually so dazed that I wanted to write all those points down.

Anyway, the day ended with blissful dinner with OT and Madhavi in my house, candle light and yellow lights across the balcony on the 9th floor , scenic view from the balcony.

And suddenly, everything in the world seems fine.

Why do we have bouts of negativity?

I thought of getting this negativity out of me. Like a disgusting virus that I would treat with yoga. Or an infection out of the body with medicines. I'm letting this be my medicine.

So I have been very very negative with everything around me for the past couple of days. I haven't yet been able to figure out what it is, but its eating me up. I thought I should blog about it, because as much as I don't gather strength to write down when I'm low, it is the truth that only blogging really helps me vent out all that is there inside.

So I have been very insecure lately. With everything around me. With OT. And sometimes I just feel its immaturity. In fact I ALWAYS feel it after I am done feeling that negative emotion. Has it ever happened to you that you feel so insecure about everyone around you? This ugly feeling that your friends have more important friends than you? And then to avoid that you try and cling on to them more, and that puts them off all the more. And then you get more annoyed and cling on even more.

And the cycle goes on.

The only way to break this cycle?

To get rid of your own shortcomings.

I mean forget ego, forget being right all the time. Whats more important right now is not to be important, but to understand that its OK to be wrong , as long as at the end of it you thank yourself for being wrong and correcting it.

Sometimes even when work goes on very well, and to avoid facing the problems that we are facing, we tend to hide in excess of work, making ourselves believe that working like mad will actually divert attention.

Sorry to burst the bubble, but it doesn't. It just waits for it to ferment inside, till it becomes so stale but you cannot get it out because its become a part of your skin.

That is exactly what I have been doing till now. Any problem, any shortcoming, anything that bothers me... I sink myself in work.

End result : Work has gone well. I haven't.

So I take a pledge this time. Next time I have a problem, I solve it then and there and then move on in life. And blog about it if I have the time, space and required tools.

How many of you are with me in taking this pledge? I hope to create an anonymous page where we can rant away all out problems, we can share with each other how to solve it , but never have to know who it really was.

After all, there is a huge part of all of us that does not like telling others if we have a problem. All of us are born in a way where we'll show we are happier than what we really are. I think its good in a way, its like Fake smiling.

When you are upset and still have to smile, you start feeling genuinely happy after sometime.

But lets get to the root of it this time. Lets make ourselves feel better . Lets be honest and get all the negativity out. Trust me, its Ok to be sad about something. We are human after all right. Just like we feel happy, we do feel sad,upset, insecure, negative, suspicious, impatient, intolerant.

I am saying all this because this is what I am (or was) experiencing .

And every time, blogging substantiates my belief of being therapeutic in nature.

So lets take a pledge together today, shall we?

Wonders what A.R.Rahman must be thinking

You know I always ask people around... What will be going through A.R. Rahman's mind when he would listen to his own music piece. Would he be thinking "Wow, can anyone believe I'm such a prodigy" , or "How can I be so awesome?".

Have you ever thought of anything like this whenever you have done any work?

I haven't.

Anyway, I got a huge collection of all A.R.Rahman songs from a friend's external hard disk the other day. Not to forget the collection of How I Met Your Mother too, which has got me all fat and old because all I do is watch it all the time.

Its weird because in college I had decided not to watch any more TV series after F.R.I.E.N.D.S because a)I spent my entire one month vacation only doing that. And when I say ONLY. Imagine ONLY. I brushed and bathed in the evening. Slept for five hours, got up and started watching friends. It was a crazy addiction. But this seems to have started again.

Have you realised sometimes that when we try to make a point with valid arguments, we say "A)" and we don't either have a "B)" or end up putting some lame point. Zubair made me realize this once. And that is what just happened above.

My next book is going to be Shantaram. I have heard so much about it that I just have to grab the next copy. Wrapping up with my Luanne Rice's Summer Light.

I'm going to be a part of a Kannada movie dance sequence. I'll be travelling this week. Lets see how this goes.

And ya, if any dance readers out there, this is for you all. Rama Vaidhyanathan, the versatile Bharatanatyam dancer is coming to Bangalore on September 16th. I had seen her performance once before and I had blogged about it. http://priyakumarnitb.blogspot.com/2010/04/can-i-live-life-of-danseuse.html

Its so weird. Exactly a year ago, I was thinking about whether I can live the life of a danseuse. And exactly a year later, here I am living it. :)

Check out her schedule on facebook.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/RAMA-VAIDYANATHAN/54554134237

And ya, please don't forget to check out my site www.piah.in :)