THINK!!!!!!

Never complained

George wrapped the potatoes in foil and put it in the microwave. He set the timer and waited for Susanne to return home. It was Tuesday and he had his day off at work. Susanne on the other hand would be running late today.

George decided to prepare dinner as he waited for his wife.

It was Susanne who had taught him to cook. The first time he tried cooking, he had nearly blown off the kitchen. She had to clean all the mess.

The second time the kitchen was fine. But the food wasn’t. Still when he gave it to her to taste, she didn’t complain. She had a bite and said it was the best food she ever had.

When George tasted his own food, he found out how miserable a cook he was. When he asked her how could she find it tasty, Susanne said-

“Because it’s filled with your love. It has you hard work in it. How can it not be tasty for me?”

George couldn’t say anything.

He had been both a terrible cook and a terrible student. But Susanne never complained.

He strolled around the house while waiting for the timer to beep. While looking around he found the corners of the house needed some cleaning. There was a snapshot of their graduation on the wall just opposite the kitchen. “She’s the most perfect woman I have ever met in my life”, he thought.

They first met during an academic conference in college. And the first time he saw her he was dumbstruck by her beauty. She was blonde with shiny golden brown hair cut short. The sky blue sweater vest and black skirt she wore defined her curves well. Her black silhouettes made her more graceful. George couldn’t take his eyes off her.

“Hi I am George Williams”, he stretched out his hand.

“Susanne, Susanne Arquette”, she took his hand.

At that moment, somewhere in his heart, George knew this was the woman he was meant to be with. There was a pleasant smile on her face, one that would take all your tensions and worries away. Her voice was filled with melody.

Within a month they started dating. On their first date, George was late by an hour. When he reached, there she was waiting with a smile on her face. George was surprised. He was scared that when he reached she would freak out and start shouting at him. But Susanne didn’t complain.

As days passed, George knew that she was a good listener, compassionate about her work, and the perfect woman he had ever met.

At work also, she had the best ideas, made the best presentation, met the deadlines on time and within six months of joining, she was promoted to the post of vice president of the house.

Within a year they were married.

The timer beeped. George went to take out the potatoes. He decided to make some salad. The doctor had told Susanne to have more vegetables after the accident. He knew it was his fault. It was his fault that even after six years of their marriage they are childless. It was his fault that there was no one to throw light in the house that both of them had decorated with so much love. But Susanne never complained about that.

They had been trying to conceive from the second year of their marriage. After a year, the fertility test had showed that his sperms had low motility. It was all his fault, George knew.

Two years after the fertility test, he got Susanne pregnant. Their happiness knew no bounds. He still remembers Susanne’s face that night. That was the first time he saw true happiness in her eyes. There it was, something more than that simple pleasant smile. George just stared at her face in awe.

 

Last September, it was Kelvin and Kathy’s marriage- their best friends from college. Susanne found it hard to find a dress that would go with her bulging stomach. She was eight months pregnant. But she was the perfect woman. She found out a blue satin dress which made her look thinner and put on her best make-up. George looked at her with pleasure. She was looking as beautiful as she looked on the first day he met her. They had a lot of fun that evening. Susanne had also proposed a toast to the happily married couple.

While returning back home, Susanne had proposed to drive as he was a bit drunk. But George assured her that it would be okay. He can take care of his wife and child. She believed him.

The next morning, at the hospital, George knew that it was all over. He had lost his child. The doctor also told him that the accident had a terrible impact on her and so she can never conceive again.

George broke down in tears and cursed himself. Susanne was lying on a bed, asleep and calm, in a private room with barely enough space to stand beside her in a secluded wing of the hospital where they don’t visit for expectant patients.

Before the ultra-scan Susanne told the doctor that they didn’t want to know the sex of the child. But now George knew it was a boy. He had held his son close to his heart long enough before the nurse came and took it from him. He wasn’t sure whether to tell that to her or not.

When Susanne woke up she sat with her eyes closed, her head in his arms. She never said anything to him. But George knew that she will never be able to forgive him.

George found there was nothing left except for a few carrots. “Strange!” he thought.

There refrigerator was always stuffed with food. Whenever she went for shopping, she bought extra bottles of oil, milk, juices, beer and wine; zippered bags of pasta, vegetables, fruits and yam. Whenever he looked at the refrigerator, he was both surprised and satisfied.

It never went waste. When friends dropped by, Susanne would prepare the best meals. She would go through different cookbooks and serve George a new dish every Sunday evening. The date when they first had a new dish would be marked by the recipe in the book.

After their marriage, George knew Susanne was the perfect wife. Their house was always clean. She would keep the shoes in the closet, coats on the hanger by the door. She would pay the bills as soon as they came.

Every morning Susanne would wake up early, go out for jogging, come back and prepare breakfast for herself and her husband, run her errands and then go to work. She was never late.

But now it no longer mattered her. She would keep her sneakers by the door when she got home, her coat on the sofa. She no longer seemed to be disturbed by the fact that the sofa didn’t go with the new Turkish carpet they got last summer.

George no longer looked forward to the weekends when they would sit together in the morning solving crossword puzzles or mow the lawn together.

He decided to put some candles on the table. He began to open the drawers one by one. He tried to locate a candle among the scissors, the eggbeaters and whisks, spoons and forks. He found a packet of left-over birthday candles in the cabinet above the sink.

On his last birthday, Susanne had thrown him a big surprise party. One hundred guests had come- neighbours, family, his friends from school, college and work. She had prepared him a heart shaped pine-apple cake to show how much she loved him. It was his favourite. The room was decorated with white and pink balloons and there was wine kept in a tumbler full of ice. She had done this all herself alone.

Since last September, they only had Susanne’s mother as their guest. The home had become lifeless. Felicia came and lived for two months with them after Susanne returned from the hospital. She cooked dinner every evening, did the cleaning and laundry and drove herself to the market every Saturday. She was a religious woman. She took care of all the household chores. She was polite to George without being friendly. She knitted sweaters for him but gave them to him in the most unceremonious manner. Though she never said anything, her eyes always accused her, “you are the reason behind her misery.”

It has been three months since that all stopped. Susanne has become more silent. She now didn’t care about how she looked or the surrounding. Mostly they would have their breakfast and dinner in silence.

She now took up more assignments, worked overtime to run away from the pain her home gave her.

It had started raining outside.

“She didn’t get a raincoat”, George suddenly remembered.

George decided to grate the carrots and make some macaroni. He started washing the carrots.

The doorbell rang.

It was Susanne. The rain had nearly washed all her make-up. There was a thin line of lipstick on the outer edges of her lips. The eyeliner she wore left patches of charcoal beneath her eyes. She looked like this on mornings after late parties when she had been too lazy to wash her face, too eager to drop in his arms.

She was standing there, in a grey coat and blue denim over her white sneakers. There was a calm smile on her face.

But her smile was no longer soothing.

“It’s my fault”, George knew.

But she never complained.

The circle of Life of Women

Once upon a time, Mom went into labor. Yeah, that’s where it all starts, doesn’t it? (This is the part after the Happily-Ever-After, the one they seldom show)

After quite some time of panicking, huffing & puffing, screaming, several glasses of ice-chips and hours of birthing that tested her threshold of pain, out popped an itsy-bitsy baby.

‘It’s a girl!’ cried the Doctor. Mom was just happy it was a healthy baby and Dad couldn’t speak for the emotion choked his throat up. Inside, they both questioned their parenting abilities while vowing to bring her up her like the princess she was.

Dad looked at his two girls, proud beyond words can explain. His little nest was complete now. His love had borne fruit.

Mom didn’t mind that she, for the first time since they fell in love, didn’t have her handsome husband’s undivided attention; he was philandering it all on the little miracle that she’d borne. She didn’t mind at all.

They went home.

Her first smile had them on their knees, her cry had them scampering for solutions. They recorded her every movement, reveled in the length of her pretty eyelashes, rejoiced in her deep dimple and knew she had them both twisted around her little finger.

Mom had to fight her own tears when she cried on the first day of school. She went an hour early to pick her baby up just because she couldn’t wait any longer. She worried so much; what if she gets hungry, what of some kid pinches her, what if… Nobody knew her baby like she did.

Dad’s heart almost broke when she came back from the bicycle ride with a scraped knee. While he whispered comforts into her ear and rocked her to sleep on his chest, he wondered how he’d deal with a broken heart, God forbid.

She grew in leaps and bounds.

Mom had conversations with her. Told her about the birds and bees and all in between all the while wondering if her little princess had grown old enough to have The Talk with. She still seemed too young, a mere child.

Dad watched her from afar, playing the disciplinarian and refusing to let her go for the ten day class trip to Goa. He didn’t budge; not to her tears or rants or door-banging. Later he told Mom to take her shopping.

She drifted apart; from the parents, who she’d admired, loved, trusted. They became strangers while a whole new world opened up to her. She experimented with her boundaries; she touched, got burnt and touched again.

She had fun. She took pictures, she flirted, she drank coffee and bunked classes. She flunked and topped and wrote bull in her papers. She tried on clothes and didn’t buy them. She painted her nails black and didn’t care. She made a lot of noise, learnt to drive in her friend’s car, ran along the beach, barefoot screaming with her BFF’s – her oyster, the world and beyond.

She fell in love. And got her heart broken into a million pieces. She learnt. And grew.

She fought for her individuality, refused to be swayed by the society. Stood stead by what she believed in.

She made choices, her own. She lived with it. She made mistakes and learnt how to make them go away.

But somewhere along the way she realized that the only ones who’d stay with her through hell and high water were Mom and Dad. She tried to deal with Mom’s concern, she tried to do right. She tried not to wear the mini-skirt in front of dad.

She tried to understand. Because she loved them.

She got a job, one that she loved. If she was ecstatic, they were beyond proud. She did well, she became a career woman. She was the Office Bitch and the one they came to for all the answers. She multi-tasked and blew minds. She reached the top of the ladder and yet remained Dad’s little ‘peanut’.

She fell in love again. He stayed. And made a difference. And made her happy. She lived in seventh heaven with her feet planted firmly on ground zero and realized that this is it.

She got married. And it broke her heart. She didn’t understand why she’d to give her home up, leave her parents. And they reassured her that it was the beginning of her wonderful new life, that they’d always be there.

She became a mother. And our story comes a full circle.

She understood. Everything.

The sacrifices, the unconditional love, the choices, the concern.

She cherished them, the pillars in her life.

She prayed for them, their well-being.

She loved them back, unconditionally.

For she realized that without them, she’d be nothing.

Thus the story of a girl goes on. 

It’s your story and mine. Your life and mine. 

Your problems and mine. Your Bloody Mary and mine.

Let’s share...

The heartbreaks and the Kohl,

The celebrations and the fruit roll,

The love and the laughter,

The tears and the PMS,

The secrets and treats,

The sisterhood and the lust,

The forever issues with weight.

Cheers to bad hair days, being ourselves, getting rid of jerk boyfriends and bitchy ex-friends, cheers to making a place for ourselves in the world and getting our make up right. Cheers to blowing their minds and having fun. Cheers to kicking back and relaxing and to getting down and dirty. 

Being a girl is SO much fun.
Lets be girls together.
HAPPY WOMEN'S DAY....:)

O Bird!!!!

One day I’ll not be here.
My breath will mingle with the winds.
Arrival and departure is a ritual here.
My footprints will be lost
On these trodden paths….

My dreams would sleep on this earth.
My teardrops will flow down the stream.
The petal of memories will fade in the wet dewdrops.
The lust of life will be lost
In the light mists…

O Bird !
I would lay as soil or ashes
Till the rain of love
Reincarnates me as a shady tree….

Who am I?

Have you ever wondered what could the answer to this question be? 

Last night I randomly picked out a book from my library at home and decided to read the first 20 pages of the book to kill my boredom. I picked up Sophie's World by Jostein Gaarder. By the time I reached the fifth page, I was completely absorbed into it. I came across this question "Who are you?" asked to Sophie in an anonymous letter, and couldn't help but ask myself the same.

Who am I? I asked myself, and the very first answer that came to my mind was, "I am Puja !" But then, I went on to think, who the hell is Puja? It was then that I sat down and began writing the answer to this question and to my own surprise, I could define myself in more than fifty different ways! 

Sometimes, out of the blue when we sit down and let random thoughts into our minds, we'd be surprised at how creative we can get, and to what extent we can explore possibilities within ourselves.

Think for achieved the success

Today i was little bit upset in the morning. I read an article in LinkedIn and i thought i'll share it in my blog and i'll follow theses things in my every day life. 

"Think that success means making lots of money?  Think again.

Pictures of dead presidents have never made anybody happy. And how can you be successful if you're not happy? And buying things with that all money isn't much better. A new car, for instance, might tickle your fancy for a day or two–but pride of ownership is temporary.

Real success comes from the quality of your relationships and the emotions that you experience each day. That's where these 10 questions come in.

Ask them at the end of each day and I absolutely guarantee that you'll become more successful. Here they are:

1. Have I made certain that those I love feel loved?

2. Have I done something today that improved the world?

3. Have I conditioned my body to be more strong flexible and resilient?

4. Have I reviewed and honed my plans for the future?

5. Have I acted in private with the same integrity I exhibit in public?

6. Have I avoided unkind words and deeds?

7. Have I accomplished something worthwhile?

8. Have I helped someone less fortunate?

9. Have I collected some wonderful memories?

10. Have I felt grateful for the incredible gift of being alive?

Here's the thing.  The questions you ask yourself on a daily basis determine your focus, and your focus determines your results.

These questions force you to focus on what's really important. Take heed of them and rest of your life—especially your work—will quickly fall into place."

Life in shapes