Life - or something like it

Today my blog turned 5 years old. It has been such a roller coaster ride, these past 5 years. I changed from not being a writer to a writer, co-authored a book and started my own content writing and editing company.   As prompted by Debajyoti , I thought of writing of my blogging journey today. It all started as an experiment, on a lazy weekend with nothing much to do. I was in the UK and was missing my dog and wanted to express it in some form. As a child, I had written a few stories complete with drawings of beggars and in hideous English. These got lost somewhere as I grew up. Later, as a teenager, I started writing a diary everyday describing the events that were happening in my life. It was mostly filled with how my soul was tortured and how difficult life was living with my parents and sisters. I had a laugh riot when I read those entries after a few years and realised that I was such a drama queen. That was my only experience with writing, before I started the blog. I would

My blog is turning five years old this month. It seems like yesterday that I sat down and wrote my first ever post because I was missing my dog. My writing journey started on 31st March 2008, when I sat down and opened a blog on blogger and took my first step in the blogging world. Little did I know that this space will not only become an extension of me, but will also be a means to step into the profession of writing. Though I was missing from the blogging world for nearly two years in between, because of personal commitments, something always prompted me to come back to this space and get back in touch with the wonderful friends, I have made over the years.  When I started blogging, the blogging platforms were not very professional and there was not so much competition amongst the bloggers. All of us were writing for the pleasure of writing. In the beginning, my posts were read only by my friends and they were such a loyal bunch.  After nearly a year of blogging, I made some

Here is the winner of the Caption Contest 18, ‘You think you are funny?’   Umashankar Pandey: " Captured in time" Congratulations!!! Drop me a mail at  and I will mail you the trophy. Hope to see you in another round of Caption Contest this Wednesday. 

I was born in a small town called Nagpur in Maharashtra, India. Nearly 40 years back Nagpur was a small town as compared to its glamorous cousins Pune or Bombay. It still retains its small town charm in the lanes and by lanes that I frequented as a child and then as a grown woman. There is a certain kind of joy growing up in a small town, which is incomparable when you grow up in a big city. The hustle and bustle of a big city makes it impossible for a person to enjoy the relaxed life or even notice the changing seasons. While growing up, most of the people I knew lived in Bungalows with a garden around the house. There were buildings but there were very few of these. Our house was surrounded by Papaya, Guava and Custard Apple trees. We also had a Lemon tree along with a variety of flowering plants such as Rose, Mogra, Hibiscus etc. For any Puja in the house, all we had to do was grab a basket and pluck the flowers and fruits. One of our neighbours had a Mango tree and all the kids

This is a caption contest ‘You think you are funny?’ Please Write a Caption for the picture below : Pic courtesy: Fun2video.com All the Best.  P.S: For those people who would like to know the rules, please check  here . 

Nagpurians can be easily identified amongst a group of people, as they stand apart anywhere because of their unique personality. The food, the weather and the attitude makes us what we are and even if we no longer live in Nagpur, it is difficult to shake the Nagpuri out of us. What makes us unique is our outlook to life and the never say die attitude. You can identify us very easily because of our language, taste in food and how zealously Nagpurians can prove to you that Nagpur is the best city in India. Here is what makes us asli(true)  Nagpurians 1) The language we speak is like you have never heard anywhere. It is a mixture of Hindi and Marathi, where you will find words such as: Hou (a combination of ho- yes in Marathi and haan- yes in Hindi). Sahi (which in Hindi means right) which we use as an exclamation of joy or to say fantastic. Mahol (in Hindi means atmosphere) again means fantastic or out of this world. Ek number in Nagpur means very good. Abey Yaar means wh

Here are the winners of the Caption Contest 17, ‘You think you are funny?’   Roshan Radhakrishnan - Black is for pansies, real men wear pink Corinne Rodrigues - I'm too sexy for my tutu Congratulations!!! Drop me a mail at  and I will mail you the trophy. Hope to see you in another round of Caption Contest this Wednesday. 

All of you must have heard the news that Google is phasing out Google Reader by July . When I heard the news, I was a bit worried as it meant that I will lose out out on reading blogs that I follow very diligently.                                                                                                                 RIP Google Reader Photo Courtesy: Freedigitalphotos.net After checking online for various options to Google Reader, I finally signed up with Feedly. All of you who want to move from Google reader to Feedly , you can find the guidelines here . To know about various options for Google Reader, go to  Mashable website Since I use Chrome as my browser, I just had to add the Feedly plugin for Google Chrome and all the feeds that I follow were smoothly transferred from Google Reader to Feedly. No fuss, no mess. It does take time to get used to the layout of Feedly, but am quickly catching on. With Google Reader dying, I am also worried about the readership of

This is a caption contest ‘You think you are funny?’ Please Write a Caption for the picture below : All the Best.  P.S: For those people who would like to know the rules, please check  here . 

People who have been reading my blog for many years, are already familiar with the caption contest,  "You think you are funny?" which I had started some years back. Due to personal reasons, I was unable to update my blog regularly and had to discontinue the contest. Starting from tomorrow, the contest is back.  You can hop over to my blog every Wednesday and take part in the contest.  Anyone who is new to my blog or the contest, please read the following rules: RULES OF THE CONTEST 1) You can send as many entries as you want. 2) Please post your caption in the comment section of this post. 3) The winner will be declared by Monday of the following week. 4) No plagiarism, no racial slurs or insults will be tolerated. That entry will be rejected outright. 5) The decision of the judge (Me) is final :) 6) The winner will receive the Golden Trophy below as a prize, which he/she can proudly display on their websites. Hope to see you all tomorrow for some funny and hilar

In my life, friends' have always played a major role. From the time I was a child, I was always surrounded by hordes of friends and my family had to tolerate them as all my friendships were sacred to me. My post Death of a friendship talks about it. I also got into numerous fights with my older sister, when she called some of them wacky. Such was my devotion to my friends. The idea of friendship was firmly ingrained in my mind. Being a good friend meant that, I was always there for that person come rain or shine, through thick and thin, day or night and I expected the same in return. There were many books I read and the TV series I saw, such as "Friends" and "Sex and the City" that further influenced my thought process. I was fully convinced that such friendships existed in the read world, where friends called each other at 3 in the morning or rushed to help each other without a second thought. The Movie Sholay's Jai and Veeru epitomised friendship for

This is not a post about the band "Fred said right" or about Govinda gyrating to the god awful Hindi song, "meri pant bhi sexy". I am talking about the emergence of a new eye candy in our Bollywood movies. Move over Bipasha Basu, John Abraham has arrived.  It is now the dawn of the era of the "female gaze" in Bollywood. The naked male body was never in the limelight, as it is now. Salman Khan set the precedent, when he discarded his shirt in each and every movie, whether it was hot or cold, raining or sunny. Mr. Khan never left a single opportunity to show his 6 packs and bulging biceps, which made several women swoon and gasp for breath. Gone are the days, when heroines in drenched white sarees, gyrated seductively in the rain and made men's hearts race. Gone are the days, when raunchy lyrics and dhak dhak karne laga dil's were only the privilege of men. Who can forget John Abraham in the movie 'Dostana', walking out of the oce

When Corinne  asked me to do a post for her very popular blog "Everyday Gyaan" , how could I refuse it. As her blog tag line says "Keeping life simple, authentic and holistic" , I have tried to write a post that was true to these words. Here is the excerpt of the post I have written.  When I talk about finding  positivity during chaos , I am actually talking about trying to be positive during the inner turmoil that happens within each one of us, when we go through stressful situations and are tackling our inner demons.  Since the past five years, my life has been thrown into chaos for various reasons, some of which, I willingly chose to go through and some things that crash landed in my life and has a left a huge crater of confusion, depression and negativity strewn around. Hop on to 'Everyday Gyaan' to read more . Do let me know what you think.

Facebook has actually been a boon in disguise, where I was able reconnect with old friends and connect with like minded people through various groups. I have always been fascinated and in awe of people who are extremely talented and have the courage to start their own venture. They are just like me who started of with absolutely nothing and have slowly built up their business by hard work and determination.  Today, I would like to introduce you to a wonderful artist and an entrepreneur, who creates magic with colours. Surabhi Mehrotra is the owner of  "Surabhi ka Pitara" , an online store for hand painted products. She lovingly crafts products using her own creativity and has a variety of products for everyone. I met her through Facebook, on of the groups and have always marvelled at her use of colours to create wonderful products. I had the opportunity to get to know Surabhi and understand her passion for colours and painting. Hand Painted Mug How did you start