A New Year to Welcome With Passion

My art

Everyone has a passion and passion often leads us to success. I have two main passions, one is writing and other is art.

I was bitten by both these passions almost at the same time during the summer of 2011. I had lost my father in March and was depressed. I had to do something to distract myself in order to escape the wallowing sadness. That was how I discovered the power of creativity in eliminating sadness. Words and art slowly but strongly helped me face my loss. They provided an outlet to vent my sadness and my frustration.

It is often during the darkest hours that the best things are born. We learn the best things while coping up with hardships.  Those experiences make us and shape us into the persons we are destined to be. Often during these times, we stumble upon things accidently and they change our life.

I discovered the world of knowledge hidden in the many You Tube Videos during my darkest hours. I self taught myself to draw portraits with their help. It was entertaining as well as informative. The best thing was that they were free.

The only problem that existed was the slow buffering of the videos, which sometimes killed the enthusiasm of studying something. Right at the peak moment, the video would start to buffer. I would then wish for a faster machine that would not bring in any hurdles in viewing the videos.

Recently I am addicted to the “Who Do You Think You Are” series on BBC, which has more than 200 popular videos uploaded in You Tube. I love the series because of the stories that they feature, of the tragedies, happiness and hardships some of the ancestors of the featured celebrities went through. They bring us vignettes from the life of long forgotten people from a long forgotten era. Each video brings me an unexplored territory of history that I could write about or get inspired to write a story. It talks about what expectations, perseverance and ambition can do to a person.

My resolution for 2015 is to complete my work in progress, my second full-length novel and to write more short stories on my blog. I want to grow as an author.

When I watched the demo video of Micromax Canvas Tab P666, I knew what I require to fulfill my dream for 2015.

I will watch more inspirational videos and be more creative in 2015. I want the best of me to be show cased on my blog and writings. I am sure I would be inspired daily by watching my favorite videos online. I have also become a member of the 5 am club of Robin Sharma. I begin my day with the 20-20-20 rule, 20 minutes exercise, 20 minutes of watching inspirational videos and 20 minutes planning my day or journaling.

Now I can also stay connected with friends & family with voice-calling and 3G connectivity of Canvas Tab P666! It has 3G Connectivity, Voice Call Support, Wi-Fi Connectivity, Bluetooth 4.0, GPS and Micro USB Support. I can watch the videos with clarity, download and store them and even read books online.

I plan to gift one for my cartoon and angry birds addicted son after downloading all the gaming apps.

Definitely a must buy it is.

Check more about it at http://www.micromaxinfo.com/tablet/Canvas-Tab-P666

This post is written for Indi Happy Hours

Aarohi's Lovestory

“No Aarohi, No. I have seen him and I do not want you to marry him. No matter what you say, no matter how well earning he is, he doesn’t suit my princess in anyway. Look at you and look at him. You look like a Disney princess and he looks like a rogue from a cheap bollywood movie,” shouted my father and stomped away from the room.

I couldn’t blame him. When Ajay had come to meet my parents, who were on a brief visit to our city, he had just recovered from flu and didn’t look his best. More than that, he hadn’t been able to shave and his unkempt looks had driven Daddy up the wall with anger. My Dad, due to his upscale London upbringing, couldn’t tolerate anyone who dressed shabbily or didn’t care to groom oneself properly.

I was so sure of his approval. I was madly in love with Ajay and we both had built castles with our many dreams about spending our future together. All those dreams had crashed in a flash. Sad, I sat in the favorite corner of my living room and wept hugging the heart shaped pillow, which Ajay had gifted me.

“Aarohi, don’t worry. Your Dad will eventually come around. I have a plan. Listen,” said my Mom and my face lit up with a smile on hearing it.

After much persuasion from Mom and me, my father agreed to meet Ajay one last time. He told me it was a mere waste of time.

While we were walking towards our table which had been booked for us in an uptown restaurant by Ajay, my father pointed out to me a man seated at a table obviously waiting for his dinner guests to arrive, impatiently looking at his watch.

“That is the sort of man whom I would approve as your groom without much ado. Just look how he shines among all the others seated there. Ha… Aarohi how I wish he was your choice,” said Dad and I chuckled and then laughed aloud.

Dad glared at me and I shook my head to ward off the laughter, which was refusing to stop.

“Dad, that is Ajay,” I said and watched my Dad’s mouth open wide to form an O.

My snobbish Dad was stupefied by the clean-shaven look of my boyfriend who had taken care to shave off his unsightly beard and had worn a well-fitted suit.

“Ok then girl, I approve,” said Dad and I ran and hugged him tight thanking him profusely. Ajay joined us and I watched as my proud Dad shook his hand. Mom winked at me and raised her fingers in a victory sign. Ajay had followed her instructions to a T.

I am accepting tag from Anita in this post.

 ‘This post is a part of #WillYouShave activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette”

Terror before Christmas

I was walking down the crowded lanes of North Bangalore shopping for baubles and gifts for the festive season. The shops were overflowing with Christmas trees and decorations. I wanted to spend my whole day shopping and had decided to return home loaded with goodies that would then require to be packed as Christmas and New Year gifts for friends and family. It was tedious yet exciting to think about the likes and dislikes of friends and family. After all, it was time to show them that I really loved them.

It was while selecting a top for my niece that I saw the man first. A bearded man, who was dressed in casuals and a denim jacket, was looking at me eagerly. I felt uneasy and moved away. After a few minutes when I checked, he was still there looking lost in thoughts.

Stepping out from the shop, I hopped into my favourite bookshop to treat myself to some new arrivals and best sellers. Though engrossed in selecting my books, I became aware to the presence of the bearded man once again as he entered the shop and lingered near the shelves looking around aimlessly. He sighed as though in relief when he saw me, started to walk towards me and I panicked. Gathering whatever books I had selected by then, I approached the shopkeeper to pay for them. I walked hastily out of the shop to get rid of the stranger who was still following me with a fanatic look in his eyes.

I quickly turned a corner, stepped into another street, and crossed the road. Looking back, to my dismay and horror I found the man a few steps behind me. He had crossed the road and was now calling out to me to stop. I didn’t and ran straight towards the duty police officer and complained to him about the stalker.

The police officer confronted him.

“Sir, I am not stalking her. She is my former colleague, Priya. She didn’t recognize me. I was just playing a prank on her by acting like a stalker, to punish her for not recognizing me,” said the stranger and I gasped as I recognized him at last.

“Bimal, you idiot! How dare you play a prank on me? And what is this look you are sporting?” I asked and swatted on his shoulders playfully. The police officer walked away, complaining audibly about mad youngsters disturbing him.

“So much terror because of my poor beard,” said Bimal with a snigger and we walked together to the nearby café to catch upon where life had led us during the three long years that we had spent apart.

I am accepting tag from Canary in this post.

‘This post is a part of #WillYouShave activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette”

Scrapbook of Memories

I had a scrapbook made out of a discarded diary, which had a zipper bag that came along with it, during my school days. It held a collection of quotes, poems, favorite songs, beautiful sceneries, photos of my favorite bollywood actors/actresses and even newspaper cutouts of any interesting news that caught my eye. I remember keeping in it feathers of birds, lovely stamps, matchbox covers, chocolate covers and other baubles. Dried flowers and leaves too found a safe haven inside my scrapbook.

There was no order and no index as to what was inside the book.  Therefore, every time I opened it, which would be once in every few weeks to add a new treasure, my own collection would pleasantly surprise and cheer me up. After a while, the bug of poetry bit me and I started to add my own poems to my collection.  I would doodle on pieces of paper and keep it inside for safekeeping. It was literally my very own treasure house of memories.

Last summer when I visited home, I found it again, safely tucked inside the locker of my cupboard, beneath a few old clothes. I spent hours going through the contents and some items brought tears into my eyes. Some were reminiscent of carefree and happy days while some others reminded me of the much confusion that a young schoolgirl might have gone through. Some reminded me of old friends, crushes and hobbies. Notes written in longhand in some pages, reminded me of my ambitions, my ideals. The dried flowers reminded me of the gardens where they had originated from. The hollering owners of the gardens from where I had stolen them were now long gone, but the dried flowers had survived the ravages of time.

Inside the pouch was also an autograph book, which had the messages from my school mates scribbled in haste on the last working day of school. Many of them are still my friends but some who were close to me then are no longer a part of my world now. Time had brandished its sword and cut the cord of connection between them and me.

These days, I no longer keep a scrapbook for memories. I prefer to relish the present moments and make them memorable by taking photos that I safely store into electronic storage devices. I keep multiple copies. And when I am bored, I go through my memory collection and relive those fine moments which had been captured and frozen in time.

My blog too have become my online scrapbook where I keep on adding pieces of my creativity and vignettes from the present or a forgotten past. 

This post is a part of Indispire on Indiblogger.

The Truth

Friends can be a boon or a curse. If you have trusted and become close to a person emotionally, you often let her or him to rule your life. If they are of the bad sort and cunning enough, they try to manipulate your feelings for their own advantage. If we are gullible enough, we become their victims and they transform into emotional vampires who feed on our emotions and time.

Until a year ago, I trusted a friend of mine with my life. Not a day passed without me calling her. She told me that she led a miserable life, her in laws were the worst sort of people, her husband was rude towards her, treated her as a doormat and her kids never gave her a moment of peace. Every day I would spend hours trying to cheer her up. My telephone bills increased and every time she would convince me, I was the lone sunshine in her life.

Then one fine day, out of the blue, she unfriended and blocked me on Facebook and stopped all contacts with me. It was based on a quarrel she had with a friend of mine that I had introduced to her- a counselor for her many problems, someone who bluntly told her to grow up. I was hurt in the worst sort of way emotionally as though someone had thrown a bucket of ice-cold water on me. I had not hurt her with even a single word.

After almost six months, she again sent me a friend request. I accepted. But by that time, a few of my other friends had warned me against her and had made my eyes open to the fact that she was a typical emotional vampire. She loved playing victim to emotionally blackmail people to get favors done and told lies without even an ounce of regret or shame. I understood that many of the things about her life that she had told me were lies. They asked me how I could believe such a lot of lies. I felt like a fool.

So this time, I played safe and did not try to re-establish our friendship but instead observed her and saw through her lies. She had not changed and lies one after another began to be revealed to me. I was disgusted by her talks, chats, and messages. She told me she had broken our friendship not because she hated me but because she was angered by the interactions between her enemy (the mutual friend) and me on my Facebook timeline.

Lies continued to be poured down my ear and I tried hard to keep the façade of friendship by treating her like any other friend. But that wasn’t enough for her, she wanted our old friendship back, so that she could vent all her troubles on me.

She wanted me to be the same friend who would trust her every word, applaud her every step and dance to her tunes. I had but moved on and realized what our friendship had been in reality. It had been just a façade using which she utilized my faculties for her benefit. She had found an editor for her overly stylish Facebook updates, a psychologist to discuss her problems, an entertainer who gave her books, applauded her beauty and one whom she could pull down with lies about her own superior achievements.

If I didn’t answer to her whatsapp messages or facebook messages she would question me. If I didn’t like or comment on her facebook status or updates she would get furious. I ignored her. The truth was that I didn’t consider her a friend anymore because I hated liars. But to tell that to her was difficult for me. I tolerated her silly requests and began to do what she requested me to do.

Every day, her demands began to increase. She questioned me about why I couldn’t spare time for her anymore. I had to give explanations to my actions and my being genuinely busy.

One day I watched the following new Kinley Advertisement on YouTube. 

It was cathartic for me. I decided that enough was enough. I didn’t want to fall victim to an emotional vampire anymore. I decided to tell her that I had learnt about the truth about her many lies. And that she cannot emotionally blackmail me anymore playing the harassed victim.

I told her just that. I told her exactly what kind of lies she had told me and why that hurt. I told her I could not dance to her tunes, as I preferred to spend my own time fruitfully rather than listening to her lies. And I asked her to leave me alone and not harass me demanding to act like the friend I once was. I was not that naïve fool anymore. By pretending to be her friend, I was deceiving her and myself. I could not tolerate lies anymore.

I didn’t care whether she would get furious at me or slander me or shower me with expletives. I told her I forgave her for treating me like a dustbin to dump all her lies and manipulating me. But for my own sake and well being, I had to become selfish.

She was speechless when she realized that I had learnt the truth. She didn’t have anything to question me about. She blocked me immediately on Facebook and whatsapp. At that very moment, I laughed heartily. I felt like I had become light as a feather.

True, Kitna chain hota hai sachai main!

This post is written as a part of Indi-happy Hours

E-books or Paperbacks?!!

Books waiting to be read

I am a bibliophile, someone who is in love with books ever since I remember. I even got a best library user award while in school because of my addiction to books.

The debate e-books vs. Paperback books rages the world over as to which one is better. I am simply not bothered to give my support to any of these groups.

Did the first paperback books pose such a dilemma to the readers? Did they have trouble welcoming the latest entrant to the world of knowledge? I don’t think so. Those who love books does not care which form they arrive. I have equal love for e-books as well as physical books. Recently, the majority of books that I have read are in the e-book form. While on a long journey, I prefer e-books as I can carry around thousands of e-books on my laptop, phone or kindle.

Now to compare the two:

E-books	Paperback
Cheaper to purchase	Costlier than e-books
Easier to carry around. A kindle can hold thousands of e-books	Carrying paperbacks in your travel bags can break your back.
Easier to find word meanings or to mark portions of the book that you found interesting using the online thesaurus. Your scribbling and comments can be erased when you wish to.	You have to carry around a dictionary if you want to check word meanings. Highlight some paragraphs in your book and you leave an unsightly mark, which can’t be erased unless you used pencil.
Instantly downloadable from online portals. So you get to read them at your convenience.	Paperback books ordered from online portals take time to reach you. So you are kept waiting.
A data crashing can delete all your books in a flash. The benevolent water can turn mischief-maker if you drop your e-reader in a puddle.	Paperback books can stand the test of time if they are kept at a distance from termites, fire and water. Your favorite book can be with you throughout your lifetime without much damage.
You can read in darkness and be a night owl devouring your favorite story without disturbing anyone.	You need adequate light to read paperback books and often face resistance from other members of the family who plead to switch off the light.

Though e-books seems to win in terms of convenience, true bibliophiles will never bother to find who wins the battle eventually. I wouldn’t. I am interested merely to gather the bit of knowledge the book is going to deliver.

As long as Muse romances writers and readers romance the books, I don’t fear anything. Let there be peace. Let those who prefer e-books own plenty of them and let paperback lovers fill their home libraries with loads of paperbacks.

Have a great day folks!

 This post is written as a part of Indispire on Indiblogger

Travelling with Kids

Travelling is fun. Exploring new places, meeting new people and getting out of the usual dull routine bring bliss. It is easy to travel while you are a couple, but once you become parents, the entire scenario changes. Instead of enjoying blissful, carefree vacations, during those days, we parents face temper tantrums, travel sickness, brawls among siblings, unexpected delays, tensions of missing kids and hunger pangs.

I loved travelling as a kid and every year I went on short vacations with my parents. Those were the times when I squeezed out maximum care from them, made them dance to my tunes and acted like a spoiled brat. They would never scold me unless I did something unforgivable. My food preferences decided the menu, my sleeping habits and laziness delayed our journey. During long bus trips, they struggled to get a proper sleep cramped into the seats allotted to us, while I slept like on a proper bed keeping my head on the lap of one parent and legs on another. I made my father carry me when I became tired even though he might have been equally exhausted. I did all that and believed that it was my right.

Now I cringe when I think about my thoughtlessness, but I understand that what goes around comes around. These days, I am at the receiving end of exactly similar treatments.

Nevertheless, the magic of travel has not gone, instead it has become extra special. Be it the presence of a twinkle in my son’s eyes because of the beauty of scenes that he behold or be it the small games that we play together to pass time on long travels, the enchantment of our time together has become more. I remember the things that used to excite me as a kid and guide him to enjoy similar things.

We make sand castles and draw doodles on the beach together, for the ocean waves to takes away. We feed the hungry fishes in the temple ponds. We count sheep, trees, cows and houses on the way to our destination and try to identify the various landmarks.  

Not only has the size of our luggage increased, but also our travel destinations have also changed. Impromptu tours and treks have become extinct. We double-check accommodations, the mode of travel and the climate of our destination. We take care that we visit child friendly places that will ensure our child’s happiness. His bag is packed with utmost care to cater to his needs, the climate and his happiness. His bedtime storybooks, his tablet with game apps installed, travel documents and emergency medicines find a place of importance in our luggage.

My hand bag size has grown significantly to cater to his demands and the majority of the space inside my bag is occupied by his things- his tablet, wet wipes, snacks, extra dresses, towels and sometimes even his favorite toys.

Answering the innumerable questions that pop up, inventing new games and discovering new things together bring immense joy. Be it a short trip to a nearby beach or a month long vacation exploring new places, the moments together become precious pearls woven into the tapestry of memories.

Capturing snapshots of him enjoying the vacation both on camera and in the mind’s eye is another favorite pass time. After every trip, we return home a little more closely bonded as family and a little more rejuvenated.

We begin planning for the next trip and are eager to embark on our next one. When moments become cherished, trips become memorable.

This post is written as part of IndiHappy hours in association with
http://www.clubmahindra.com/teddytravelogues/.

The sanctity of Love and Marriage

Many things exist that are beyond human perceptions. And one such thing is the power of love. Love in its magnificence is capable of miracles and the highest form of love is the union between two bodies when they revel in the ultimate union of the body and soul.

The act of making love or sex is considered sacred in many religions and it is so because it is the coming together of opposite energies, opposite entities, the Ying and the Yang. In many tribes, the act is considered so sacred that special prayers and rituals are performed when a couple is married. When a couple gets married, there is a promise made, a vow given with extraordinary depth of feeling and singularity of will. It is a promise witnessed and sanctified by the presence of one or more persons. Even when there are no witnesses, our subconscious mind, our soul and God become our silent witnesses. Such a vow becomes an oath that gets embedded in the very core of our being.

In every incarnation, there is a mate for every human being. And some of the souls reincarnate with vows made to be together in age after age, incarnations after incarnations. An invisible thread of love binds such souls. When we succeed in finding our soul mate, our twin soul, we attain the highest possible bliss in love and advance spiritually.

For these very reasons, I am not in favour of pre-marital sex. The coming together of two persons before marriage is considered as a sin in many religions. If a person doesn’t consider the union between two souls or two bodies as something sacred and magnificent, then it degrades as a mere act of pleasure that lasts for a short duration of time. But when two persons who have exchanged marriage vows and are comfortable with each other make love, the act of their coming together bonds them together in a solid relation.

In many western countries, couples live together and test their compatibilities before getting married. Some couples never get married. But they live together throughout their life; this too is a type of marriage at the spiritual level, where God is the witness. The institution of marriage is questioned for its purpose and sanctity. But in an earlier period, in Europe and other countries, pre-marital sex was a taboo and a man caught in a compromising position with an unmarried female was supposed to have ruined her. He had to marry her.

In India too, pre-marital sex is not approved by most of the societies. Though urban societies have toned down their outlook towards pre-marital sex, the rural regions still consider sex before marriage as a taboo.

The current generation is open to the ideas of living together before marriage and they don’t consider it as an act of sin. Many say that there is nothing wrong in pre-marital sex if there is mutual consent. But many later regret their decisions.

Indian culture has given a lot to the world. The sacred relationship between man and woman, the sanctity of marriage is one such belief. According to Hinduism, the sacred vow of marriage exists between the persons for the next seven incarnations. If these two souls come together, they attain a higher level of spirituality in the ensuing incarnations and attain the nirvana or ultimate salvation eventually.

The presence of the atrocities like rape that exists in society also degrades the divine union between man and woman. Under the influence of alcohol and drugs, many men commit such atrocities. It is often the female that is persecuted and she dies inside after the heinous act. She blames herself and is further outlawed by the reactions from the society. Such poor girls should be rescued and rehabilitated.

The spiritual strength of marriage and the sanctity of it should be preserved by all individuals. The peace that such a relation bestows upon a couple is enormous. 

Click here to buy Poonaam Uppal's True Love - A Mystical True Love Story on Flipkart. which according to the author is a passionate Gospel of true love .

This post is written as a part of a contest on Indiblogger.

The Day I Conquered Fear

It was April 26, 2006 and I was at the Karipur International Airport waiting to board a plane to Dubai. The people around me were cool, walking around and talking with loved ones on the phone. Though I strived to appear calm, I was shivering inside. It was my maiden trip on an airplane and to top it, I had a worse case of aerophobia - the fear of flying.

There was no friend or relative accompanying me. My parents had scolded me thoroughly when I had expressed my fears of how I would manage the trip alone. In their opinion, I was just being childish. When our illiterate old neighbor could travel to the Gulf and back without much ado, they were wondering why I, an engineering graduate working as a lecturer in an engineering college, could not travel alone. I was travelling to join my husband who worked in Dubai. It was a matter of the heart as well.

From whatever I had heard and seen in the videos and pictures of Dubai that my husband had sent, I absolutely loved Dubai. It was my dreamland. But the fear of flying in an Airplane was choking me. I had even made discrete enquiries of whether there was any other way of travelling to Dubai. May be there was a ship. I knew swimming, but by God, I didn’t know flying.

When all my pleas fell on deaf ears, I began visualizing a happy and safe trip to Dubai daily. I would visualize reaching Dubai and walking out of the terminal in Dubai to join my husband in my very own dreamland. I would affirm daily before sleeping that I loved travelling in airplanes. The phobia started to reduce day by day.

But on the day of travel, all my fears came down upon me like an avalanche. What if I took the wrong plane and landed up in a strange country with no friends at all? What if I slept off, came back in the same plane, and ended up where I began the trip? Many of my fears made me chide my addled brain as I had studied the procedures that accompanied a plane trip, the detailed check in and boarding procedures, which ensured that travelers reached their destination safely and happily.

The 9/11 incident were still fresh in the minds of people and I suspiciously watched my co-passengers as well. Was there a terrorists lurking among them? The thin man with a French beard, nervously checking time did seem like a terrorist. I shuddered at the thought. Then I watched an elderly woman join him and his face became calm. He was nervous thinking why his mother had taken long to return from the toilet. I heard the woman assuring him that it was just the nervousness of the trip that had made her stomach upset and that she was okay. I sighed in relief again. There were more members in my club!

I waved at my parents who had stayed to watch me board the plane with a forced smile and took in their happy faces one last time before walking into the bus that took us towards the plane. May be, I would never see them again!

Once aboard, I asked the woman occupying the seat next to mine where she was headed to sheepishly. She assured me the plane was bound for Dubai and there was no need to panic. It was her 20^th trip to Dubai as she travelled every three months to Dubai to visit her husband. I began to relax.

Then while the plane was preparing to take off, the flight stewards arrived, began the on-flight safety demonstration and my fear began to re-surface. The woman, sensing my fear, asked me to ignore them. The procedure was just a part of their in-flight safety demonstration and didn’t imply in any manner that our flight was doomed. When the flight took off, almost all the gods and goddesses, whose names I knew, irrespective of religion or sect, received my prayers.

The movie ‘Rang de Basanti’ provided in-flight entertainment and distracted me. It seemed like yet another bus trip. All was well until landing time after the Captain announced that we were about to land at Dubai international airport. I quivered with fear again. God! Didn’t majority of plane accidents happen during landing or take off?

I closed my eyes and prayed again. Then before I realized, it was over. When I walked out of the terminal after claiming my luggage, I was grinning ear to ear. Plane trips were not so bad after all. I had conquered my fear with élan.

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This post is written as part of Indi happy Hours on Indiblogger in association with Mountain Dew India

A Mother's thoughts About Classroom Hunger

There is nothing more satisfying than feeding a hungry child. I am a mother and when I am able to give hot and tasty food to my son when he is hungry, I am the happiest. When he is away from home, I wonder whether he has eaten, I wonder about his ability to feed himself. He is just six, and at home I take care that he finish what he has been given.

But when at school, there is no mother who will keep on checking whether he has finished his snack, or completed eating his lunch. His lunch would only be half eaten and he would say that the food was cold and unappetizing. I then wish I could be a helicopter mom and could hover around there inspecting him eating and compelling him to finish his food. Kids don’t understand that food is essential for proper growth, for developing immunity and to get a proper attention span while sitting in class.

I can tempt him with hot and his favorite food on returning home. But how to keep him happy and hunger-free at school? Now he has classes only until noon, but from next year he would be there till two fifty in the evening. I worry about his hunger already. But if I somebody could assure me that he would eat his lunch properly and he won’t be starving by the time he reach home, I can be happy. The lunch, which I would prepare at 6.30 in the morning, won’t taste as good b noon. And he would refuse to eat it.

But what if he was served hot and tasty food at school? What if the authorities saw to it that classroom hunger was eliminated? I would be the happiest.

Even though Akshay Patra Foundation which provides mid-day meal to many school kids all over the country, it is not involved in the activities of my son’s school and I am plotting on ways on how I can provide hot and tasty food to my son during lunch hours. May be I can slip in his lunch box during lunch hours and bribe his teacher to make sure that he ate his lunch!

Blogadda, as part of its blogger responsibility activities is sponsoring to feed a child with every blog post that a registered member writes on the theme. This post is written with that aim. I request my fellow bloggers to participate and use this opportunity to feed a child. Come on folks, let us eliminate Classroom hunger!

I am going to #BlogToFeedAChild with Akshaya Patra and BlogAdda.

With an Aim to Feed a Hungry Child

When I think about food, the first name that comes to my mind is that of my grandmother. It was at her house that a hungry kid, returning home from school calmed her raging hunger. She would be awaiting me and seeing me at a distance would go into the kitchen and keep the food ready for me. Her first order would be to wash my hands, legs and face and then I should eat without talking. Food was to be respected and we should give thanks to God for feeding us. That were her words.

I will remember forever the taste of her food, her dal, her salted mangos and her vegetable curries. My mom also was a good cook, but nothing compared to the taste of Grand mom’s cooking. The hunger that it quenched made it tastier. After food, I would rush to join other kids to play our favorite games or head to the library to find a new book to read.

I guess, there are millions of such kids who return hungry from school eager to devour whatever they get hold of. In this age of micro families, grandmothers are missing and so are the sumptuous meals on return from school. Money spent at fast food joints, bakeries are increasing day by day, and the healths of kids are deteriorating day by day.

Lunch is an important meal of the day and is supposed to be the most nutritious one in the whole day. Kids who eat lunch properly are healthy and concentrate more on their studies. Attention span of a hungry child is very less and teachers find it hard to teach hungry kids.

Aksha Patra Foundation strives to eliminate classroom hunger and Blogadda promises to feed a child for every blogpost that is written by member bloggers. I request my friend bloggers to make use of this excellent opportunity to help Akshay Patra feed a child for an entire year.

There is no greater good than feeding a hungry child.

 I am going to #BlogToFeedAChild with Akshaya Patra and BlogAdda.