Rekha's Ramblings

   We moved recently and surprised at myself, found these in one of the boxes, I'm not into cooking and for me to even have invested in a recipe box and cookbooks...my daughter asked what was I going to do with them ; they never saw the daylight and needless to say, they never will, they are now at the bottom of a recycling bin. My sad ramblings on this Monday!      

Today is International Peace Day. While I personally have never suffered a true hardship as such (if you can call lack of electricity or running water 24/7, having to study in a candle light or having only a pair of flip flops as your only shoes for a whole year a hardship, then yes, I have had a hard life).  I did not have much while growing up but one thing I always had was a roof over my head, three basic meals, a loving family and above all, a place that I called home, I belonged to a village, a community. I had a sense of belonging. I was born in India and therefore an Indian, that was my identity.  Then opportunity knocked on the door, came to America and now I have not one, but two homes, my home where my family still resides and my adopted home, the United States of America. My children are privileged, they will always have a place that they can call home.  While I hear of the suffering of the refugees, I will never know what it is like to not have an identit...

  We as a family are non-athletic; I never played any sport and for some reason didn’t encourage my children to do so either. So generally don’t watch any sports however have made it a point to watch both summer and winter Olympic as a family. Back then, watched it with family whatever little appeared on Doordarshan (Indian TV channel) and familiar with only some athletes names and events. We got hooked on to watching Olympic Games after 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta where we watched a hockey match. But now that we watch it daily, some names such as Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt have become household names and watched all their events. I have felt happiness when Michael or Usain won as predicated but was also sad when some of them got injured during their event and what bothered me the most was disqualification due to a false start, all that hard work , some of them won’t get a second chance at the next Olympic. While some stories were simply heart touching such as when the Ame...

  One of my friends called me this week. She is that friend who I do not necessarily talk to every day but who understands me, who has known me for a while. We stay connected with each other with sporadic text messages, Christmas greetings etc. And although we would like to chat with each other more often, we just do not have that kind of spare time. For starters, we live in two different time zones and then she works full time, and I am a mother of three which is more than a full-time job. This time however, we had a few minutes to spare for each other, got talking, and had an actual conversation without interruptions.     After we had caught up on whatever was going on in our lives, she told me the real reason she had called me. She said she was listening to this song on radio," I don’t need a hand to hold, I got that fire in my soul" and she could not stop but think of me, about me. She said I was the only Indian friend she had with a fire in my soul, who w...

  M y 9 year old nephew asked," Who is Thoreau ?" I, "he is a philosopher."  He," what does that mean?" I ," someone who lives alone, never marries , never has children , lives in the wild is a philosopher and he gets to advise the rest of us on how to live our lives, that advice is philosophy ." Philosophy rambling on this Monday!!!

 Road trips are so much fun now that my children are at such an age where they can take care of themselves; from hauling their own luggage, using the restrooms unsupervised, applying sunscreen to carrying their own water bottles and hydrating as needed.  Most of the stress that comes with traveling was already relieved as we were travelling within the USA where we can drink water out of the fountain (trust me, we have travelled to different places where the water is not safe to drink) plus the major stressbuster is dialing 911 if needed.  People in the US do not know how privileged and fortunate they are to have this service. This year’s road trip was going to take us to American southwest, through the states of Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and Colorado.   This road trip began with the usual airport and airline drama but ended with happy and precious memories. Whenever we travel somewhere which includes flying, there is always drama associated with it, for e.g., flight d...

  These days shopping for a car for our teenage son and remembered my days, twenty one years ago.  I was new in this country, didn’t know anything about car shopping or buying , nobody to help; but a car was a must since no public transportation available in the little town of Thomasville GA.  After six months of walking, hiring taxi cabs, rides from coworkers, it was about time to get one. All the other Indian friends said to buy either a Honda or a Toyota , they are good cars , economical, can last up to 200,000 miles etc. (trust me, I was clueless as to what that meant, no one from my family had ever owned a car )  Some of my friends who had arrived with me had bought used cars and were having trouble.  So I decided to buy a new car.  One of my friends drove me to the dealer one day, it happened to be a Honda dealer as it was near to the place of work . He had two civics left on the lot for that year , another one of my friends and I bought the same exac...