Picnic Problems: A Tale of Stolen French Fries

As parents, we want our children to be happy and enjoy their time with friends. But sometimes, even the simplest things can cause frustration and disappointment. Such is the case with my son and his beloved French fries.

You see, my son is a massive fan of French fries. He loves them so much that he always requests them as his snack for picnics and other outings with his friends. However, his joy in his snack has been dampened by the fact that his friends always seem to take his fries.

My son was sad and confused. He couldn't understand why his friends would take his fries when they had their own snacks. He also very sweetly used an analogy of how his friends line up (or rather get crowded) around him like they are trying to get tickets for the Varisu movie. After some observation and discussion, he came to the conclusion that it was the pepper on his fries that was attracting their attention.

In his mind, if he didn't add pepper to his fries, his friends would leave them alone and he could enjoy his snack in peace. So, he asked his mother not to add pepper to his fries anymore.

As a parent, it can be difficult to see our children upset. But in this case, we able to offer a simple solution that made our son happy. By removing the pepper from his fries, he was able to enjoy his snack without the fear of it being taken by his friends.

It's a small thing, but it greatly impacted my son's happiness. And as a parent, that's all that really matters.

The birth story of Lord Krishna. Have you seen it in this context ?

I was in my 7th or 8th grade when our Social Studies teacher Rev.Fr.Mark raised a question about Lord Krishn's birth out of nowhere and never bothered to give an answer. I didn't understand his intentions then and am not sure if I understand it today either. But, I am only gonna focus on what good has this question done for me.

Here is the question:

"Why did Kamsa allow all 8 children to be born at all if he knows the 8th is his destroyer?"

He simply could have:

1. Separated the couple.

2. Killed both or either one. (Instead of 8 children)

For another 10 years, I couldn't get an answer to this question, not that I was pursuing it so aggressively, but it's one of those things that I couldn't forget from my school life. When the answer finally reached me one day, my immediate reflection was that I was not ready to be able to digest this answer all these days and it just came to me when it knew I was ready to take it, digest it, and continue my faith in the Devine as usual.

I feel all religions and spiritual stories lose their context when people desperately try to make alterations to the story so it is easier to tell small children (and make them what they want them to be). What's the hurry? It's so much easier to teach Godly virtues to Children than to teach them, God. I strongly believe so because "children see children do". Children listen.... wait... when did children atleast the majority of them ever listen? Children follow actions, not instructions. So watch your next move, children are gonna make the same move. So writing spiritual or religious texts for children is the biggest waste of time ever. Simply put, Krishna's birth story is so irrelevant to children, especially when it involves the killings of 8 newborn babies.

Anyway, let me present to you a context of Krishna's birth story that I found to be filled with meaning and love.

This involves 3 characters:

1. King Kamsa

2. Vasudev - Kamsa's Best Friend

3. Devaki - Kamsa's Cousin Sister

Kamsa is very excited that his Best Friend Vasudev and his favourite cousin sister Devaki have married each other. He is so filled with the joy of seeing 2 people that he loves dearly coming together and starting a new journey of love and life. But that's when tragedy strikes, he comes to know that the 8th child born to this couple will be his destroyer.

Now imagine this complicated situation that Kamsa is in:

"My Best Friend and Loving Sister's 8th child is prophesied to destroy me." 

What do I do now?

1. Kill them both or either one? - No. I love them, they are my family. I don't want to kill them.

2. Separate them. - No, I know how much they love each other, separating them is no different from killing them. So I don't want to separate them either.

Under this conundrum and due to his own insecurities is how Kamsa comes to a decision where he wants his sister and best friend to continue their married life under his watch and give him all the first 8 children they have and then carry on with their lives.

This context to the birth story of lord Krishna has helped me find the answer to so many more conundrums that all of us might face with our family and friends. Any issue in such relationships where no blatant lies or deceit is involved, the underlying reason is seldom anything other than love. The love a person has for the other with a touch of insecurity. 

This Janmashtami let us learn to weaken our insecurities by strengthening our faith and love towards one another and him.

Happy Krishna Jayanthi 

P.S. Feel free to comment your thoughts to add value to others who read this just like you. Thank you for reading.

Mission Awkward Rose

I always do things or talk stuff through which I end up surprising my own self.

It was an unusual day at college (PSG CAS) as I was there and also there was a Commerce Department function happening on the same day. As usual there were a bunch of junior girls stationed at the GRD Auditorium entrance to greet the people who came to attend what ever was going on. As I was approaching the entrance, I noticed the table they stood behind had a plate full of roses for creating a pleasant ambience. I wanted to keep myself occupied through what could be a really boring event today and decided to snatch a rose from that plate and just give it to some random junior girl. That's the plan - “Mission Awkward Rose”. But I was so bad at snatching and I ended up asking this sweet little girl behind that table to lend me one of the flowers explaining my plan. Till date I am not sure if she gave me a dirty look, but I managed to pick a flower from there. The next two to three hours I spent loitering around the auditorium, as the (whatever) event kept proceeding, with the stem planted into my trouser pocket and the flower popping out. I guess the flower was more anxious to see me get wacked by some girl.

But that was very less time, 2 to 3 hours was just not enough to find one girl to whom I wanted to give that rose for no reason and display an awkward smile.... So just when I was leaving the place, I bumped into the same little girl from whom I had borrowed (or may be she threw it at my face) the rose. What happened next is something I took a really long time (until today-7 years later) to realize that I had actually accomplished my “Mission Awkward Rose”.

I thankfully returned the rose to the sweet little girl and said “I couldn't really find anyone who sparked me to offer this rose.. so here you go.. I am returning it to you.”  And that , ladies and gentlemen, is how I met her.. Annie Jenifer. Least did I know that she is the one I would be marrying 7 years later when I gave her the rose without realizing that she was my plan the whole time.

Visit us at annie.surjee.in for more..

fb link :All because two people fell in Love.

iResign - Surjee's Version of Steve's Resignation.

Notice the hand (probably God's)
picking Steve.

I have always known if there ever came a day when Steve could no longer meet his duties and expectations as Apple's CEO, he would be the first to let us know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

He has hereby resigned as CEO of Apple. He would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as his successor goes, he strongly recommends that they execute their succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.

He believes  Apple's brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And he looks forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

He has made some of the best friends and greatest fans (like Surjee) of his life at Apple, and he thanks them all for the many years of being able to work alongside them.

Surjee

What all I do with my life..

Its my life and I have only one. Err.. Probably that should have been my closing line for this post. But that’s ok, read on, I’ll come up with some thing better. There is something special about this post. I’ve been working on this post for almost a year now, trying to make it as less depressive as possible. But now I just want to get over it. So here it goes…

Surjee in Lena School: It must’ve all started the day I ran back to my dad after he had dropped me at Lena School. I hated School, I repeat I hated school, but not Lena School. Its the most beautiful school I’ve been to and seen in life. Its located in the middle of such a beautiful layout of nature called Lovedale, such an apt name. Lena School also had an view of the meter gauge railway tracks of the Nilgiri Mountain Railway which runs on and in our beautiful mountains.

 

 

Surjee in Rex Hr Sec School: This is when I was in my 4th std. One very beautiful  day I had to go to school as usual as it wasn’t a holiday, I was woken-up on time, I wasn’t sick, I couldn’t pretend I was sick, my dad was kind enough to drop me at school as usual, his bike didn’t break down on the way as usual, there wasn’t a dinosaur in town or at least my school was not demolished by a wrecking ball or a meteorite. Darn… I had to be at school and I haven’t done my Hindi home work as usual. After reaching school I didn’t know what to do. If I had to attend Hindi class, I’m certainly going to ne doomed. I didn’t know what to do until I just simply took my bag and walked out of school. Had no clue about where I was headed to or what I was up to. But happily took a break at the railway station. The Ooty Railway station. It is such a beautiful place. The only reason, I believe, is because there is no train or people to distract the calmness it carries throughout the day or at least whenever I’ve been there. I sat down on one of those really heavy and rigid benches they have there. It had a metal frame painted in black and the wooden seat and rest in dark green with a glossy finish. One of the best places to sit and think or not think at all. I was doing the later until a man who looked like he worked at the station came to me with that look on his face - “I know this kid from somewhere”. This is where the drama starts but this post ends.

To be continued…

The way Girls are..n Boys too.

Awesome, Amazing, Out of the world and all the words that explain awesomeness. Thats how I felt the moment I saw this video and probably even now, as your reading this, I might not ve come out of it. Its the best short film I ve ever seen. Trust me.. I ve never seen anything like it.

Amazing direction and screenplay. Acting is above the mark. Climax is too good, though I predicted it, I loved it. Loved it so much that its made me write on my blog after quiet some time back. The boy also reminded me myself in few parts.

Though it made me laugh I wouldn't call it funny because it also made me smile as I realized its just the truth.

I first saw it on facebook and didn't want to hit the share link, but so badly wanted it on my blog. Simply, I ve never been so happy to share something online. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did :)

Spectacular

A night to remember. Wonderful game. Wonderful show. Spectacular.

What was not shared by me on twitter are hot Bips, cool Sahid, determined Sachin, mongoose Hayden, late comer Pollard, magnificent Raina and Dhoni – The Captain.

Great captaincy and wonderful fielding by CSK. They definitely deserve it.

Happy Eyes

It was like a perfect  flight journey.

Yeah, with all those well groomed and good looking ladies in Orange saree with a dark blue border the visit to Vasan Eye Care Hospital was definitely worth it. Its a hospital with very good hospitality. Thank god my eyes are working fine.

When I entered the hospital through the glass door, two ladies greeted me with a really nice smile. Since it was the first time I visited, I had to register myself and wait for my turn to meet the doc. After all the usual ‘read the alphabets’ exercise that I cleared without a hitch I was let to meet Dr.Sruthi Tara. Sruthi and Tara is such a good combination to make a beautiful name. I like this doc’s name already. At first sight the doc looked like a serious person. I could guess she was in her early 30s. She smiled only after she took a look into my eyes through some equipment that was attached to the really comfortable chair I was sitting on. I told her that I work a lot on the computer.  With the same smile she told me that my eye sight is totally perfect and added that I had dry eyes. I gave her a puzzled look and she explained that there is not enough tears in my eyes. With me having a ‘tell me more’ look on my face she added “Its nothing to worry. I ll prescribe some artificial tears which you can use once a day while working. Just a drop in each eye would do.” She also suggested I could wear anti-glare while working to protect my eyes. I thanked her after clearing all my doubts i had with the prescription. The smile on her face didn’t fade at all. At least until I left.

On my way back home I kept thinking how could a person have dry eyes ???? I’ve never heard of such a thing in my life. Probably I should have asked this also to the the doc, but I didn’t and I had to figure it out now. At least to update my status message. That’s when I started thinking about it and found the answer by the time I reached home.

“Happy Eyes” - just a beautiful way to tell dry eyes. Yeah… may be its because of the reason that I am such a happy person that even the tears in my eyes got dried up. :)

Therefore, when something happens to you - Good or Bad , consider what it means. There's always a purpose to life's events. To teach you how to laugh more or not to cry too hard. When you feel down because you didn't get what you want, just sit tight and be happy. God’s plan is to give you something better.

Note : I know its hard to believe I wrote those lines. But, that’s how I ve been talking since I completed my last book - “A Walk to Remember”. Though I have watched the movie that was based on this book a hundred times with a lot of emotion, I loved reading the book too. Every book I read seems to be changing my perspective towards life in one way or the other. This book is one perfect example for that. Ok Ok that’s enough for now. I just don’t stop, do i ?

It felt good – The pain.

I was really surprised when amma said “why don’t you call your friends to cook?”.

“You mean Annie ?”, I confirmed.

“Annie, pony who ever your wonderfully cooking friend is..” replied amma.

I was surprised that my mom was ready to share the kitchen with someone other than my sister, an awesome cook(definitely not trying to butter her to make my trip to Dubai). Well, I don’t remember seeing amma cook with anybody else. May be my praising over Annie’s cooking to amma has worked :D. But then all this is happening for Shalu (my dear brother-in-law Vikku’s wife) who is carrying the sweetest load that only women get to carry.

I have always liked this beautiful badaga custom of cooking a feast for the pregnant couple (of course the husband deserves it too). There is no equivalent to the happiness one gets out of offering or consuming food.

Annie was sweet enough to accept my request without any hesitation with her exams just around the corner but a little nervousness to cook with amma is what she expressed. That is obviously is because she didn’t know my amma enough to cook along in the kitchen I guess. To fix a date for the feast really took more than 2 weeks because Shalu’s schedule was jam-packed with the feast by all the relatives. Finally my turn was confirmed to lunch on a Wednesday, which means I would have to rush to office once we are done with the feast. Fortunately, Rahul also would be joining on the same day provided he doesn’t forget to buy or carry his train ticket from Chennai. I also invited Aarthi to join us because its been quiet some time since we had met and its her birthday the next day. Aarthi had to sacrifice her day time nap schedule to make it to the feast.

It sounds good already. A small and beautiful gathering to focus on making the one happy. I couldn’t wait for the day to come. The day before the feast is when I had to take Annie to get the required groceries and vegetables. I couldn’t believe the patience that she had while picking the vegetables. She had to inspect each vegetable for more then one quality parameters before she approved it and put it into the cart that I was let to carry.

“Illa aunty, konjam potta podum…”, I heard Annie tell amma as I entered the kitchen to leave the chicken which would be a delicious curry in few hours. I tried to be a good boy and choose to stay away from the kitchen. But amma took the risk. She asked me help her out with scraping the coconut. I used the dark metal coconut scraper which I believe has scraped coconut even for my great grandfather. I had to sit on the floor locking the scraper’s position with my right leg and held one half the coconut in my left hand pressing against the scraper and my right hand had to rotate the handle to scrape the coconut. I had scraped two full coconuts and immediately prepared some juice for all.

After having the juice I also did the usual “Surjee in kitchen” thing. I obviously by mistake broke the glass mug out of which I drank my juice. Unfortunately tiny pieces of the shattered glass fell into the scraped coconut that I had left on the floor. Even before anybody could think, I had decided that I will have to immediately run out and get new coconuts and scrape them right away. But I had to show signs of shock for a few seconds, feel sorry for another few, ask “amma what to do?” and wait for her to come up with a solution while she was trying to pick out the glass pieces. Within a minute, as I had decided a decade back, amma asked me to rush and get coconuts. Within minutes I returned with the coconut and realised that we were already running late as per our schedule. Again I scraped the coconuts with just my right hand this time using the wet grinder. I found the scraping accessory after raiding the busy kitchen for 10 minutes.

Aarthi and Rahul had already reached Shalu’s place where Vikku, Shalu and Hema aunty were warm in welcoming us though we were supposed to be the host. Immediately the naughty bunch (Aarthi, Annie, Raghul and Surjee) had started their monkey business of taking photographs. I wonder why Annie looked so reserved that day where only Aarthi was new to her. Anyway the feast went on fine solving the ultimate purpose of sharing a beautiful time with loved ones especially the couple.

Later came the pain when I was at work. My right palm has swollen a little between my thumb and index fingers and the joints on both my palms were aching. I knew it was the border level arthritis which my orthopaedic said I could be suffering from when I consulted him a few months back. Fear filled inside me. I couldn’t concentrate and my mind started think about the effects of arthritis which also includes an extreme effect of one’s bone joints getting stiff and immovable. That is when my phone’s vibration in my pocket scared me. I used my phone’s sliding feature to attend the call without looking at who the caller is. It was Annie who desperately wanted some feedback on her cooking today. I just said it was awesome thought it was actually more than that and I immediately told her the condition of my palms.

“Oh… that is because you you had to scrape the coconuts using your palms to press the coconut shell no, that is why it is paining dumbo…!” she said. Phew… and that is exactly when the pain felt good. I had already wasted more than an hour worrying about some stupid disease. I desperately started to feel overwhelmingly  happy about my beautiful life.

Therefore, in this first post of the year 2010, I would like to thank all my loved ones for making my life(including the few inevitable pain) beautiful and Wish you all a wonderful 2010.

“May all your dreams come true and your hearts filled with joy year thru.”

Sudharshan Bellie never had a belly

Yeah. I ve never had a belly in these beautiful 23 years of my life until sincelast month. Surprised is what I was when a friend pinched my stomach and said “Oh my God” (read that really fast). Now, how did that happen ?

According to my analysis yesterday night for an hour before I fell asleep,it looks like (1)I ve never liked school or college. An unhappy feeling has been haunting me the whole time. (2)I can’t stay without my family and that is why I didn’t put on much even when I was working in Bangalore before I joined MBA.. oops PGDM. (3)I think I just started to to live my dreams. Since the day I ran out of PGDM I have been having this excitement which I realised when I touched my new belly. Talking about running out. Guess what ???

I did it. 4 months back when I was writing(say attending) my PGDM second semester exams, it was the day of the Quantitative Techniques paper(I actually like this subject, its amazingly confusing). As usual I realised that the time I spent to study for this paper was a big waste only when I was sitting at the exam hall with he question paper in my hand. Now starts the messed up part starring me, written and directed by me.

I just walked out of the exam hall exactly after 30 mins since the exam had started with a real weirdo look on my face and headed straight to Ooty. Actually I went home, packed, checked my purse(cos I am taking the bus) and then left to Ooty. And yeah, I also stuck a note on the TV for my dad - “I can’t do this any more”. It was a very nice journey for me. But I am really sorry to Mom, Dad and my Friends who had to go through a tough time before I reached Ooty and actually let them know where I was headed to. I m sorry guys.

I just realised there is a lot more to explain in this funny turning point life. So I jus decided I m gonna break this post into 2 or more parts so that it doesn't get too long for you to read.

Looking into your computer monitor for too long is not good for your eyes. Cya.