When to have kids?

In my last post I wrote about so many things, but nobody read or reacted about anything other than gender bias,and it shows that relationships are the most popular topic for everyone. I got an anonymous reaction also and a strong one, but I didnt publish that, because I feel if someone has something strong to say ,be brave to put your name to it. But still I will clarify my stand, I would like to state categorically that in my post...
I never ever undermined boys, on the contrary i always say that today boys are getting short changed, and personally my son is the best, gem of a person, and to me both daughters and son are equal, I rather wanted to say that to prove their equality I couldnt undermine the son...
My son always stands up for the right thing and person and I have always respected and valued his opinion and still do.and those who have been reading my blog for some time will know how precious he is to me.
As for equality in Pooja...somebody has to do it first, if the girls do, then boys will say why?....and the people who go for this type of equality, I feel doubtful that they will ever make a happy family.A cohesive family comes only after every member aspires for it, but if some of them are always balancing the scales, then sorry....it becomes a game only.If its a patriarchal system then girls crib, if tomorrow there is a matriarchal then boys will crib..so to me it is like this that if you want to crib, do it but you wont benefit anyone, not even yourself.Even if a mother gives food to two children, she will give first to one and then to second, giving second is not undermining her love for the child.One should learn the definition of family first..family is a group of people bound together by love, will do everything for each other, and keep others before self.

And I know that sometimes inlaws are quite bad,but I will write only what I see around me..this is my blog, my personal experiences....and today i see that majority of parents are adjusting, and the girls are becoming haughty and arrogant, so that comes out in my posts. and so a girls, who is working and still not haughty, looks after the house and is polite and respectful to elders will always get my respect whosoever she may be..my daughter or my DIL or my blogger friends.I have never liked..I ,me, myself attitude, I told my daughter also when she got married....
कोई भी कितने अरमान से बेटे की शादी कर के दुल्हन लाता हा, तुम्हारी किसी भी बात से माँ का मन नहीं दुखना चाहिए ( everybody gets her/his son married with so much of love, that you should never hurt your MIL in any way.)..she will vouch for that.Its not that I say something else and teach and behave with my daughter differently. When you enter a family, dont go there with the attitude..what they are doing for you..see what you will do for them, try to please them..and Inlaws should also look after the new girl well.No girl can get the love of her husband unless she respects his parents and since girl goes to sasural..she has to deal with inlaws on day.to.day basis, not the boys, certain equations are different.

And anybody who reads my blog will know that I am a a very judicious mother to my daughter also, I never support or hide her mistakes, I dont believe in hiding mistakes, I rather try to rectify them..may be I come out as a harsh mother to others, but strictness at certain label, some discipline in life and pampering at different times only can bring up a good personality..this is my personal belief.

Now-a-days whosoever meets me keep asking whether my children have any issue?( as they have been married for few years, quite a lot if you consider Indian thinking:)
and when I say..NO, they advise me that I am being too careless, and its not right and all that and yesterday I was thinking about all this and came to the conclusion that...
children are lifelong responsibility, once they arrive, parents will be forever looking for something..bringing them up, education , marriage etc etc.
So its only before that they can enjoy their life fully and fulfill their dreams and can have some METIME.
Secondly what happens that with life expectancy increasing, with early children , a situation comes in life when parents are in late 80's and children in late 60's. and for those children its not an easy time to look after parents when they themselves need some help..so having children late will have many pluses..
first one gets enough time to oneself
and when you grow old, your children will be young enough to look after you ( of course only if they want to:)
and one is always able to provide better to the children,
So I thought that i will never ever ask my children to hurry up and have kids(as if they will listen to me:)....enjoy life, fulfil your dreams and then plan family whenever you need them.,really want them.
This weekend my daughter is coming for two weeks..so its going to be fun time to me, waiting for her.. I miss her so much, but marriage changes a person so much..I miss those times.. I wish that for sometime at least she becomes that little girl of mine.

There is this NGO. they had this exhibition of articles manufactured by unprivileged children from recycled goods. I went there to see and thought of buying something to encourage them. One thing I have noticed that most of the time the prices of the products are kept very high, to me its like killing the golden goose. why cant they keep the competitve prices, then their products can be marketed easily and will have more demand. And whoever organises it,must give their space either free or very low cost, because if they also want to make profit then it totally backfires, as there wont be much sale. I saw that few products were good but prices were very high..it was like going to a designer place. My H being a practical person asked my why do you want to buy this product at a multiplied cost, why not give that money directly to charity, but I think its better to encourage work..its like teaching fishing. I always buy something whenever I see any exhibition or sale directly from handicraftsman or any such NGO.Earlier there was this shop in Shilparaman Hyderabad which used to sell some spices soap etc made by adivasis and I bought so many things and believe me they were very good quality, even soaps very better than those branded ones, and spices were very fresh.Now they dont have that shop anymore and I couldnt find their where abouts even.

here is my talk with webneetech.....

http://webneetech.com/2009/12/10/interview-with-blogger-renu-rastogi/

OH MY GOD!

This Saturday we went to my H's alumni meet..I just go for good food and good music, as I dont get to meet and talk many people..because I know none and people here are sort of reserved...that way I miss my last apartments crowd, people there had a class of their own, They always made me feel sop welcome and one of their own..Since this time the venue was Accord Metropolitan,it was also an incentive to see a new place. The hotel is good in ambiance but food was bad..not a single dish was worth it..One thing I have seen that here north Indian food preparations are rarely good anywhere, so why not keep it traditionally south only, I prefer that instead of eating rubber like paneer and watery gravy, and special dinner without dahi bhalla or raita is unimaginable to me . But we had good DJ :)..so I enjoyed the music and felt sad to see that so many foot tapping numbers he played but none of the young crowd came on the floor..when he played..kajraare, I remembered how in Delhi, we couldnt stop anybody from dancing, people were so much in love with this song:).If there is a game or quiz, its imperative that my H will win something, he is a sure shot winner, last time in our apartment building we had TT matches and when I gave his name people were a little skeptical that he could beat them..I mean young crowd..but he demolished them all.So here also there was a quiz on corporate people, and in business knowledge , he is a pro..after all he reads BL thoroughly and watches only CNBC, so we got a gift voucher for AVM sound zone.
Then i the evening I watched a little of..TERE MERE BEECH ME..a show by Farah khan the director and choreographer...here are a few of her statements and questions to the guest .....

1--Now I am going to present two girls who are like SONS to their families......

Notice the saying sons..it shows our prejudice, why be like sons, why not good responsible girls?..I hear many families saying..for us our girls are like sons,..hello what do you mean by that, why cant girls be like girls only? it shows that whatever we say we still consider the boys better.whereas we keep denying any credit to boys even by saying that girls are more caring.

2--You have done for your families what normally the boys do.....
with this statement we say two things...like boys do a lot for their family again a contradiction because you must have heard many people say that girls are more caring, though i dont understand the meaning of their caring and we are showing our gender bias.

I have forgotten the other questions, but this show was full of such things. My opinion is that to bring equality in this world we will have to change our thinking..

Girls need not not to be like boys, they just need to be good in everything.We need both in our lives..boys and girls.

Girls need to be independent in everything in life...that way I like what John Abraham said about Bipasha...he admired her for being totally independent, never asking him for any work to be done or any maintenance of house or anything else.She can take care of ANYTHING... thats what is independence all about.

And to bring a change we need to have a righteous thinking....

today what I see is that girls like want a husband who

1...earns more ,
2---respects their parents and looks after them well,but should have some self respect and not stay with inlaws
3...is a metro sexual men..well groomed and helps in the house., soft hearted,but shouldnt be a sissy.
4--if possible with eight packs abs.but shoulnt look for beauty in a wife, as beauty is not important as the virtues.
5..strong enough to protect them,
6-pamper them silly,
7-be chivalrous,
8-shouldnt take or expect anything from inlaws

so you will see that most of the points are a contradiction ....

1....why earn more..there will be always one partner who will earn more and it could be either wife or husband..if wives can live with the husband's earnings, so can the husband with wife's

2-Why the boys living with inlaws are looked down upon..why?.if he has the duty to look after them , then he can stay also with them, secondly if you want him to take care and respect your parents, then you better do that to his parents..you just cant discard them from his life.

3--its humanly quite difficult.

8...is very gender biased, when girls always want their inlaws to DO EVERYTHING for them, then so should their parents..if the boys get the share in their parents property, so should the girls bring it in their marriage..to make it equal.

Why is this that whatever a girl brings to the marriage is DOWRY and what boys get is INHERITANCE.

Till we get a clarity of thoughts, we will have all these muddled up minds and sometimes girls and sometimes boys will keep getting exploited. To me everything boils down to one thing....Just be a good human being !

In Big Boss Raju Srivastava got evicted..it was Ok also, otherwise he would have lost his fans. Now I think its totally a manipulated game, though I would love to see Bakhtiar winnnig, but thats not going to happen, either Poonam or Vindu will win.

I saw..OH MY GOD..this movie is about a common man (Vinay Pathak) who promotes a scheme to get rich, one day his wife cries a lot in front of God to help him, now god comes in the form of lottery seller and insists Vinay to buy lottery and then a particular ticket, he doesnt listen to him, the he comes to him in the form of a gambler and let him wins 10 crores, he doesnt take as he doesnt want to take the gambling money, and then he changes the pamphlets of his scheme to currency notes and then the mayhem starts:)..very funny movie, though the message it gives doesnt sound good, because he faces all the difficulties becuse he wants honest money. Divya dutta plays his wife. And Saurabh Shukla as God is just fabulous and best dialogues are given to him..it was fun watching what God thinks when his different type of devotees come to him and cry.

MY heart is beating......

I was reading those one words tag and noticed one thing that whenever anybody is asked about mother everybody says..an angel...and I thought that with so many angels in the world why its so full of hurts, miseries, deceit and painful things....so what is it?

Is it like my mother is an angel and yours..........

or the mothers are angel to their children only,not for the rest of the world ......

Why a women cant be an angel, why only mother?

why cant we behave well in general?

why ? why? why?

I for one would feel very proud if people unrelated to me find me good and my children, instead of giving me a high pedestal( may be its a case of sour grapes:), would themselves behave in a way where everyone will say what a good upbringing they had, to make me feel proud. A company is always known for its products:) why not we broaden our horizon, where we just try to be a good human being and with that we can cover all our relationships also and make the world beautiful to live in.
Most of the problems come because of our perspectives only, if we condition ourselves that the way we see only good things in our mother, we must adopt the same about all other relationships also. It doesnt happen that way, because most of the human beings are self centred , they want to enjoy the best of everything, ignoring the rest, we adopt those things only which benefit us only..
I feel really sad when I see the partisan behaviour of women..women because normally I have seen that men are not so conditioned to ..mera tera. I am considered a strong person in my family and then I feel strong and behave with courage, even if someone dear to me is sick, not like I see that many people say they are very strong, but their strength is only because they dont care for that person , but when some one dear to them falls sick, then they are totally down even in a simple fever, the same people who were claiming to have lot of strength even at the time of someone's life threatening condition, reason is very simple, their heart beats only for certain people.But then you cant claim to be strong.
Now-a-days my mother is not well, and I am disturbed, as I cant even go now, with so many other family responsibilites and problems..but then that is life and one's test of strength only comes at such times how you conduct yourself.

BLUE AND LIFE PARTNER

BLUE

This is one of the most expensive movies made in India in the range of 129 crones....but movies are not documentaries, they need to have a good storyline ,good music,but this is sadly lacking in all. I saw it because of so much hype and then Jayed Khan is my favourite..he is such a good mix of child and man and then katrina and akshay. Sanjay dutt is looking old, flabby and Lara looks all the time as if she is on top of the world getting to work opposite Sanjay....know what I mean:)..totally a mismatched couple...It has only some good underwater scenes and a liitle good...Rahul dev.i always wonder why people brand Salman for taking off his shirt, every hero does that and at the most inappropriate times even..here Akshay is going to dive and before that he is shown standing without a shirt.

LIFE PARTNER,
This is the movie about two couples...one..Fardeen and Genelia..Genelia is shown to be a spoiled brat who changes her hobbies or profession every six months and though she is no good at that, her indulgent father encourages her and boyfriend never tells the truth,before marriage if she has illogical demands,BF fulfills everything , but after marriage the same things start irritating him..this takeI liked..like how parents pamper the children wrongly and lay a wrong foundation for their future lives,and how boy friends pamper to the evrywhimof their girlfriends without ever telling them the truth or differentiating between right and wrong,but after marriage they want them to be responsible wives..arent they expecting the impossible? Genelia is shown as a girl who cant do anything except enjoying the life..partying,shopping etc.But Fardeen is happy with her before marriage and expects her to change overnight...here in a comic way the movie gives us a good lesson.

Second couple is Tusshar and Prachi...here the culprit are Tusshar's parents who in their zeal of saving Indian culture are so dominating that they become the cause of breaking their children's marriage..Prach iis shown to be a girl good in most of things though she is also from a wealthy family,and well educated also,and Tusshar is always shown to be dominated by his father.

These two have a friend...Govinda,a divorce lawyer who does his business at the cost of everybody's family, but in then end its he only who brings everyone together ,he brings a few laughs with Himani Shivpuri..Amrita Rao.. opposite him is looking very artificial, even Genelia has also done over acting at many places

Now I have lost interest in Big Boss..as most of the interesting people have gone..Shamita,Tanaz,even Sherylyn was better than these men.
.

This is why Tata is a Respected name in India....

Meeting with H N Srinivas – Senior Executive Vice President, Taj Group of Hotels

He narrated the 26^th November 2008 terror attack on Taj Mumbai and there were some important points.

A. Terrorist entry

1. They entered from the Leopold Colaba hotel entrance and also from the northern entrance – spraying indiscriminate bullets on the Taj security personnel and guests in general.

2. Though Taj had a reasonable security – they were surely not equipped to deal with terrorists who were spraying 6 bullets per trigger.

3. The strategy of the terrorists was to throw chunks of RDX in an open area that will explode and burn – creating chaos so that the guests and staff run helter skelter so that the terrorists could kill them. The idea was to create maximum casualties.

4. There were several critical gatherings and functions happening in the hotel on that day – a Bohra wedding, global meet of Unilever CEOs and Board members and 2 other corporate meetings were being held in the hotel – besides the usual crowd.

5. The firing and chaos began at about 8.30 p.m. and the staff including employees on casual and contract basis displayed exemplary presence of mind, courage and sacrifice to protect the guests who were in various halls and conference rooms.

B. Stories of Staff Heroics

1. A young lady guest relation executive with the HLL gathering stopped any of the members going out and volunteered 3 times to go out and get stuff such as ice cubes for whiskey of the guests when the situation outside the hall was very explosives and she could have been easily the target of the bullets

2. Thomas George a captain escorted 54 guests from a backdoor staircase and when he was going down last he was shot by the terrorists

3. There were 500 emails from various guests narrating heroics of the staff and thanking them for saving their lives

4. In a subsequent function, Ratan Tata broke down in full public view and sobbed saying – “the company belongs to these people”. The wife of Thomas George who laid his life saving others said, she and the kids were proud of the man and that she did not know that for 25 years she lived with a man who was so courageous and brave

5. The episode happened on 26^th November, a significant part of the hotel was burnt down and destroyed – the hotel was re-opened on 21^st December and all the employees of the hotel were paraded in front of the guests

6. It was clearly a saga of extra-ordinary heroics by ordinary people for their organisation and in a way for their country. The sense of duty and service was unprecedented

7. The young lady who protected and looked after the HLL guests was a management trainee and we often speak of juniority and seniority in the organisation. She had no instructions from any supervisor to do what she did

a. She took just 3 minutes to rescue the entire team through the kitchen

b. Cars were organised outside the hotel as per seniority of the members

c. In the peak of the crisis, she stepped out and got the right wine glass for the guest

8. People who exhibited courage included janitors, waiters, directors, artisans and captains – all level of people

C. The Tata Gesture

1. All category of employees including those who had completed even 1 day as casuals were treated on duty during the time the hotel was closed

2. Relief and assistance to all those who were injured and killed

3. The relief and assistance was extended to all those who died at the railway station, surroundings including the “Pav-Bhaji” vendor and the pan shop owners

4. During the time the hotel was closed, the salaries were sent my money order

5. A psychiatric cell was established in collaboration with Tata Institute of Social Sciences to counsel those who needed such help

6. The thoughts and anxieties going on people’s mind was constantly tracked and where needed psychological help provided

7. Employee outreach centers were opened where all help, food, water, sanitation, first aid and counseling was provided. 1600 employees were covered by this facility

8. Every employee was assigned to one mentor and it was that person’s responsibility to act as a “single window” clearance for any help that the person required

9. Ratan Tata personally visited the families of all the 80 employees who in some manner – either through injury or getting killed – were affected.

10. The dependents of the employees were flown from outside Mumbai to Mumbai and taken care off in terms of ensuring mental assurance and peace. They were all accommodated in Hotel President for 3 weeks

11. Ratan Tata himself asked the families and dependents – as to what they wanted him to do.

12. In a record time of 20 days, a new trust was created by the Tatas for the purpose of relief of employees.

13. What is unique is that even the other people, the railway employees, the police staff, the pedestrians who had nothing to do with Tatas were covered by compensation. Each one of them was provided subsistence allowance of Rs. 10K per month for all these people for 6 months.

14. A 4 year old granddaughter of a vendor got 4 bullets in her and only one was removed in the Government hospital. She was taken to Bombay hospital and several lacs were spent by the Tatas on her to fully recover her

15. New hand carts were provided to several vendors who lost their carts

16. Tata will take responsibility of life education of 46 children of the victims of the terror

17. This was the most trying period in the life of the organisation. Senior managers including Ratan Tata were visiting funeral to funeral over the 3 days that were most horrible

18. The settlement for every deceased member ranged from Rs. 36 to 85 lacs in addition to the following benefits:

a. Full last salary for life for the family and dependents

b. Complete responsibility of education of children and dependents – anywhere in the world

c. Full Medical facility for the whole family and dependents for rest of their life

d. All loans and advances were waived off – irrespective of the amount

e. Counselor for life for each person

D. Epilogue

1. How was such passion created among the employees? How and why did they behave the way they did?

2. The organisation is clear that it is not something that someone can take credit for. It is not some training and development that created such behaviour. If someone suggests that – everyone laughs

3. It has to do with the DNA of the organisation, with the way Tata culture exists and above all with the situation that prevailed that time. The organisation has always been telling that customers and guests are #1 priority

4. The hotel business was started by Jamshedji Tata when he was insulted in one of the British hotels and not allowed to stay there.

5. He created several institutions which later became icons of progress, culture and modernity. IISc is one such institute. He was told by the rulers that time that he can acquire land for IISc to the extent he could fence the same. He could afford fencing only 400 acres.

6. When the HR function hesitatingly made a very rich proposal to Ratan – he said – do you think we are doing enough?

7. The whole approach was that the organisation would spend several hundred crore in re-building the property – why not spend equally on the employees who gave their life?
Minuted by Dileep Ranjekar

Source.email

Happiness

Sorry friends, I havent been able to read blogs and update mine for a long time, this was the longest break I must have taken , since I started blogging. Actually first we were shifting and due to incessant rains we got the Internet after a week and then I had guests.

Last week our friends went to a trip to Ooty and the amount of havoc rains created there was really shocking..more of it was due to the flaunting of rules , neglect of environment and greed of certain people, we lost 300 crores and some lives..dont lknow when we will have ethical honest people here.The highlight of their trip was that they saw one young man who was looking very handsome and different, they asked him who he was and lo..........he was the hero...Kiran, they were very impressed with his demeanour and behaviour. Some people always remain down to earth.

We talked and discussed a lot and at our age, it always comes down to ..what is happiness and why there is stress in life.I am a person who does lot of introspection whenever anything happens and I try to think....did I do any wrong and if I didnt do anything wrong then why it happened to us? and all of us came to the conclusion that all that stress happens because we thing that we are the doer....whereas its not like this, nothing happens without the permission of God, its HE who decides everything, whatever happens is always his command and because of some grand perspective. But that doesnt mean that we must stop doing karma,....NO..we must always try to do the right thing but leave the results to God, whatever happens, we must neither take credit for it nor feel guilty, deprived or unhappy.What is important is doing the right thing and if we are able to do that, we must be happy and thankful to God, because very few people are able to manage that feet...One line that impressed me a lot .is.......I dont need anyone, in my life to be happy, I am happy in myself ,with myself....my happiness doesnt depend on things and people.
This topic is so close to my heart that I can write and write, but will be boring to others:).

Last week my sis came here from Canada and she did the impossible..she brought my mom also to chennai from Delhi..impossible because my mom has multiple health problems and she doesnt travel beyond the car:)...with this venture my sister showed that there is nothing impossible if one has the will....we had a blast, spent all the time at Pothys, Nallis:):):)..what are otherwise women for:)..then last day we saw 3 temples...Now a good costume jwellery shop has opened in Velachery 100ft road..Jazz, they have good items, though rates are little on higher side.She got two beautiful Pavadais stitched here..I just love them..best for formal wear or daily wear and look good also. The best part was that I and my sis reminisced about our childhoos, both of us grew together with not much of difference in age and our memories are so what should I say different from today's world...like always cooking something if our mom left us behind and younger siblings would be the esteemed guest and they being what they were would later ask our mom to make halwa like didi made( the burnt one)..we laughed so much rememebering those days..like we were quite afraid of our parents and wouldnt dare to do anything prohibited, so we were comparing with today's children..and my sis rememebers every little thing..it was really fun sitting together, drinking tea and gupshup..today when I see the single child syndrome, it saddens me that how much they will be missing, they will never know such sessions or the love of a sibling..its an experience in itself.

Last week was really good to me,as I got a prize from Burp for my review of Influence:)

FRIENDS

Yesterday one of our very old friend came on south tour, and here it is raining so heavily that they were evry dissappointed.and were surprised to known that its a rainy season here... I dont know after how long I had a heart to heart talk with a friend..really friends are a treasure.And this couple is one of those people who have bleen blessed by not things but people...I have realised that god always balances everything, if someone gets a lot of money , then its spent also like that, but if some one is not getting too much, god gives them in some other way.....

LIke getting good servant in a reasonable amount and that too a one who loves them..because I have seen that even this part is so difficult, here every maid charges me a lot, my neighbours.some say that she charges you doublew the amount because you are north indian, try to bargain, but to no avail, some even wail that these NI spoil the servants , increase their rates, but I have no option, either to do everything myself or pay.

Retaining good health..most important, otherwise all your wealth is useless.

Getting a good girl for your son...yes dont laugh, I think its your biggest fortune if you get a respecting and affectionate girl in your house..This is one of the biggest blessings or curse of the GOD you get.>.I felt so happy to see that my friend has a lovely girl in her house who loves her and respects her.

And god always gives you enough warnings for every future problem, telling you.put your house in order, or take care of your health etc, its we human, who always think negative whenever anything wrong happens. It is always god's way of warning us..hello take care, you are not looking after this area of your life, pull your socks.and do the needful.

When I see big Boss, I notice many things, I loved it when Tanaz said to Bakhtiar...for just once let HIM drive you, take the back seat and see, he will take you to a better destination.
I loved her belief in everything good,.
Then once Poonam said......For adults its not proper to say anything improper and then apologise or say sorry....Life doesnt go like that one has to learn to control the temper .and behave like an adult.
I so firmly believe that there are certain things you just can never do and say, so always learn your boundaries and never overstep them, otherwise you may loose something which you will never get back.
whatever may be the end of this game, but it will break and make the image of all the inhabitants...so far Tanaz and Bakhtiar are on the top image wise and Rohit on the bottom,Even Poonam has lost her favour.Raju is coming out as a good comedian, but as a person, just OK, not good.Shamita behaves like a cultured girl.