Friday, May 30, 2014

A Pencil Sketch and an Acrylic Painting





A random Pencil Sketch of a little Girl
Type: Pencil sketch on paper

Materials Used : 2B, 4B Pencils from Faber castell, Eraser, Sketch book

Time taken: 30 Minutes.

Size: A4 size

Red Frangipani Flowers and Bubbles
Type : Acrylic on Canvas 

Materials Used: Acrylic Paints (Red, Yellow, white and Black) 

Size: 40 cm X 70 cm

Time taken: A full day owing to the bigger canvas size and the multiple coats of paint.

Linking this post to Paint Party Friday.






Sunday, May 25, 2014

A Crazy Little Thing Called Love


Image Source


For me Love is magic.

I am talking about romantic love, the most encompassing yet selfish emotion in the world. The emotion that could affect even an iron-willed and ruthless person like Adolf Hitler, the emotion that was the harbinger of a thousand wars of the yore.

“That love is all there is, Is all we know of love” said Emily Dickinson. It is magical , it is mystical.
Is there another emotion that can compete with love?

 When you fall in love, it is the most magical thing you experience in your whole life. The person, who stirred this emotion in your heart, all of a sudden, acquires the power to make you his/her slave and you become ready to do anything to win his /her affections.

Nothing matters anymore other than your lover. It is as if this magician called love has put you in a trance, all you hear are his commands, and you become a helpless puppet in his arms. Every thought like a homing pigeon returns to your lover and every moment you invent a reason to be near him/her.

It is like a powerful potion, which has been absorbed by each and every cell of your body. 

 If the magic ends for some reason, you find yourself drained out of the very substance that had fed your soul, and you wish that your heart ceased its rhythm. The beating of your own heart starts to hurt you.

Many lives have perished after falling prey to this ruthless magician. While many other lucky creatures have flourished and bloomed just because of its magic.

Why do we become minions of this crazy little thing called love?

What else is Love other than Magic?



*.....*

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.


Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers

Thursday, May 22, 2014

Tear Drop : Colored Charcoal Painting

Tear Drop... An attempt in creating realistic Art
Material Used: Coloured Charcoal Pencils (Sepia, Sanguine, Black and White) from Monte Marte

Paper: Ordinary hand made paper.

Time Taken: 1 hour.

Size of the painting : A3 Size ( 11.69 X 16.54 Inches)

Captions Please....!!

Tuesday, May 20, 2014

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Cinderella...

A Scene from the disney movie cinderella..



Watched the Cinderella Movie from Disney with my toddler today for the Nth time. I just don't tire watching it. Its charm is never ending for me.
I remember being enchanted by the story as a small kid when I first read it.

It was a very pretty story book from disney and I absolutely loved it. I kept it safe for a very long time. May be I expected my prince to jump out from it when the time was ripe. :)

When I saw the Cinderella Movie for the first time, I was in my teens . I was even more captivated by it this time. I was watching the images that I cherished come alive. It was magical. May be..I hoped ,My prince charming would come to me and sweep me off my feet. I waited and waited and he just never came. He showed me glimpses every now and then and just rode away.

Later on in my college a friend called me Cinderella... I didn't understand why and then he asked me to refer the dictionary. He had called me that after I surprised everyone by playing the guitar of a friend. I  took out the dictionary and referred the word Cinderella.

And this is what I found:











Definition of Cinderella in English


Cinderella

Syllabification: (Cin·der·el·la)

Translate Cinderella | into French | into Italian









  • a girl in various traditional European fairy tales. In the version by Charles Perrault she is exploited as a servant by her family but enabled by a fairy godmother to attend a royal ball. She meets and captivates Prince Charming but has to flee at midnight, leaving the prince to identify her by the glass slipper that she leaves behind.
  •  [as noun] a person or thing of unrecognized or disregarded merit or beauty.
  •  [as noun] a neglected aspect of something:is research into breast cancer to remain the Cinderella of medicine?
  •  Philately any stamplike label that is not valid as postage.

Origin:

from cinder + the diminutive suffix -ella, on the pattern of French Cendrillon, from cendre 'cinders'

So boy...Wasn't I happy???

I was...Happy to the core.
But alas my Prince still was missing from my life.

Then I too got married to a tall,dark and handsome man and yes he was my Prince charming.I became mother to a loving and cute son too. 
So when I watched the same movie today again , I find myself feeling happy and blessed.


Thank You my fairy Godmother wherever you are...

Top post on IndiBlogger.in, the community of Indian Bloggers

Wednesday, May 14, 2014

Indian Cricket Fans Cannot Keep Calm


Indians cannot keep calm when it comes to cricket.

We treat our cricketers like God or Crap. If you bring out your best in that crucial game, yes -you become god. If in the next game, you go out on duck or give out too many runs, expect dung bombs and rotten eggs/ tomatoes awaiting you on arrival at your homeland.

Many incidents prove this. I personally know a person who tore all the glossy posters of her cricketing heroes she had collected over the years, after a particularly dismal performance from them.


Why I hated Rapunzel



Rapunzel Image Source



There was a time when I hated  Rapunzel to the core. Yes…You guessed it right. It was a case of sour grapes.

I had two semi- Rapunzels at home to make my envy grow as tall as Mount Everest. Both my mom and my sister had long hair. Blessed with thick knee- length curly hair, they were the eye-candies wherever they went. Though I am blessed with the same genes and similar hair, my hair has never grown longer than my shoulders. Blame it on my laziness. 

Throughout my school life and until now I have kept my hair short. I hated to oil my hair. I hated to de-tangle them after I slept keeping them loose and tangled them overnight. Therefore, my hair remained short and Rapunzel remained a hated character.


I love to experiment with my hair. I straightened them chemically once, blow dry them occasionally and cut them almost mercilessly.


During pregnancy, my hair grew a bit longer, but then split ends took the life out of them and I again chopped them short.

After coming to Bangalore, the chlorine water and the bore-well water took the toll on them and split ends made me go to saloons for the professional trims, which effectively did away with the split ends.

When I found a trial offer of Tresemme split remedy on Indiblogger, I immediately grabbed the offer and registered myself to receive a free sample. The sample arrived but to my dismay, the shampoo bottle had been damaged in transit and half the shampoo had spilled out.  The conditioner bottle was undamaged luckily. Like a treasure, I preserved the rest and tried them together with the conditioner. I followed the instructions of use to the letter. I took care to apply the conditioner away from the roots and the result is above expectations. I could see much difference after using it for a week.

The gift samples

I have used Tresemme before and I prefer it to other shampoos. Tresemme split remedy shampoo is far better compared to the effect it has on my almost un-manageable hair. My hair looks better and shines better.  The mild scent and the silky texture of the shampoo with a good lather is exactly what I prefer. It is gentle enough for daily use.
Latest hair pic.. My hair is soft and manageable and I am loving it..:)



With Tresemme split remedy, I find my loathing for Rapunzel reducing. Any way I am not ready for competition yet, but mind it Rapunzel, you are going to have a rival very soon…:P

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

V is for Valediction: A Short Story













Years ago, beneath this grand old Banyan tree, which had witnessed many a heartbreaks and valedictions, had sat a couple. The girl had tears pouring down rapidly and the boy was trying to blink away the tears that were clouding his eyes.

It was not the era of mobile phones or the internet. The elite prided in the possession of telephones but mailbox was the lone cupid. Vacations had been bitter pills and this moment of valediction was toxic.

Hand-in-hand, they watched their merry classmates exchange mementos and pose to capture the last moments of togetherness.

It all seemed final, this last day of college, this ceremony of goodbyes. They weren’t ready for it yet.
Their story was not such, about which poets wrote or films made. Theirs was a love that had blossomed with time. They had progressed from being to classmates, to friends and then to being lovers very gradually. They never knew when they had fallen in love. It was not an incident or a single glance that had triggered love. It was just time.

The same time was now sounding the alarm bells that told them their time together was ending. Like migrating birds they were about to fly to different destinations.
She had to return to her parents who had already begun the hunt for a groom for their very own lady- doctor.
He was preparing for his post graduation abroad.

In the conservative Brahmin family to which she belonged, marriage to a lower caste boy would never be approved. Being the loving and dutiful daughter that she was, she didn’t want to go against her parents either.
Therefore, this moment of valediction seemed like the final line of the last chapter of their love story.

“Then what happened to that couple mom?” ask my eager teenage daughter perched near to me on the bench beneath the banyan tree of my Alma-mater.I slip again into the rosy lanes of memory.

“As they say, true love always finds a way,” I say fondly.

Valedictions necessitate actions, and that too immediate. The thought of never being able to be together goaded them into action, which preceded all thoughts of wisdom.

They secretly had a court marriage in the presence of a few friends. Then they broke the news to their families together. There were clouds of anger, flashes of temper and rains of tears. However, in the end, the sun shone on them brightly. Both parents warmed up to the their love.

“And they lived happily ever after?” ask my smiling daughter.

“Yes..almost always. Except when their naughty daughter threw tantrums,” say my husband tweaking her ears.
 She hug us both tight, snickering and shouting “So you both were the couple?!!”


 This story is a part of Blogging from A-Z April Challenge.


The Blogging from A to Z April Challenge was first held in 2010. The challenge is that we have to post every day of April, except on the four Sundays. April 1st is a theme with letter A, 2nd with letter B and so on till April 30th which will be Z themed. My theme is #Learning Everyday, I post about new random things every day.


Saturday, May 10, 2014

Dear God...




My home was magical until that Friday a month ago.

Fragrances of food wafted in from the kitchen bringing a smile on my face, birds sang from the trees praising the beauty of the garden, the clothes were clean, the beds warm, I had a father who loved to crack jokes, a mother who loved to laugh and there was music all day.

Now weeds cover most of the garden, the wilted plants no longer invite the birds, the house stinks buzzing with unspoken words, and the kitchen bin is crowded with half-eaten take-away packets.

Fear gnaws at my heart while I watch my silent father who keeps staring at the empty side of his cold bed, as though expecting someone to pop-in there at any moment.

God, return my mom, the fragrances, the warmth, the laughter; Please god, return the magic to my house.











This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.



Tuesday, May 6, 2014

The Curious Case of the Cricket Aficionados

There were days, when cricket aficionados died out of sheer frustration and heartbreak, when power-cut took away the final moments of a cricket match that promised to be a nail biting and tear jerking one.

Those were the days when the little master walked onto the cricket field like a god and turned sighs of the spectators into shouts of glee.

Oscar-winning performances by youngsters reigned supreme then, in many houses. The parents worried about the mysterious head/tummy/whatever ache their kids were afflicted with and the many missed days of school/college. The cricket world cup on television was indeed a happy coincidence that helped their kid to forget the pain.  

Monday, May 5, 2014

Memories of a Happy Month


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When I decided to sign up for the April A-Z challenge, I had thought that it would be an easy challenge. After all, I only had post everyday for a month and in addition, the prompt to write was just an alphabet. Didn’t I become an expert in them, way back in Kindergarten itself?

How wrong I was?!!!

I decide to theme it as ‘learning everyday’ by posting about things I wanted my tell my readers every day. I hadn’t decided on anything particular even when the first day of April dawned. I called upon all the gods and Angels to help me begin and aha, I had my A post. A is for Angels.

Friday, May 2, 2014

A liebster Award from Michelle


Mornings brings surprises and today it was a Liebster award from my friend Michelle Stanley who blogs at http://writer-way.blogspot.in/.
Thank you so much  Michelle, for the award.


The Rules

1.   Link back and thank the blogger who nominated you in your post.
2.   List 11 facts about yourself.
3.   Answer the 11 questions asked by the blogger who nominated you.
4.   Pick 5 - 10 new bloggers (must have less than 300 followers) to nominate.
5.   Ask them 11 new questions. Do not re-nominate the blogger who nominated you.     
6.   Go to each blogger's site and inform them of their nomination.

Thursday, May 1, 2014

My role Model: My father

Dr. K. Kunhikannan


I still remember the warmth of his shoulders on those sleepless and feverish nights.
I still remember the cool breeze that came from his handheld newspaper-fan that worked non-stop, on those days of long power-cuts, which made me sleep.
I still remember the security his presence gave, when nature played havoc and threatened my world with thunder, lightning and storm.