K is for Kindness and the random act!

I do not know where I read / heard about it first, but it was long long ago when I was in college. And I have been following it ever since (if only I was so committed to post my entries to the A-Z challenge in time!). Recently, I was watching my favourite show Dharma & Greg and I heard it again. Dharma's random act of kindness. That's when I realised that I have been following it religiously almost everyday! Feels good. Seriously, try it!



If one day, or every day of your life, you decide to do at least one random act of kindness, it makes a quite some difference in the happiness quotient of the world. It's really simple and it brings a smile to someone's face. And it is loaded with goodness. It's about some really small or really big acts you do that might not mean much to you but will make someone's day.

Let me leave you with some small and big examples for the random acts of kindness:

1. Tell your househelp that she can skip some utensils / cleaning a room on a day she looks tired.
2. Offer your seat in train to someone even if the person is not old, sick or pregnant. Don't let the person know that you offered your seat to help. Just walk towards the door.
3. Thank your cab / rickshaw driver while paying by the meter. In Mumbai, tender good amount of change (notes of Rs 10 / coins) even when your meter says Rs 98 and you have a Rs 100 note! they will be so happy!
4. Offer to babysit your neighbour's kid for a couple of hours so that she can rest for a while.\
5. Tell your vegetable vendor that you really like how he/she brings the freshest veggies.
6. Bring special cookies or pastries for coworkers even when it is not your birthday / festival.
7. Compliment someone every single day. If you are home alone, just look at the mirror and praise yourself ;)
8. Volunteer for a social cause.
9. Call up a distant friend or relative you have not been in touch with or only Liked their wall posts on Facebook.
10. Speak nicely and patiently with a customer service caller who tries to sell you a loan or scheme.
11. Visit my blog and leave me a nice comment ;)

J is for Jaisalmer in Rajasthan, India

I just love the nicknames some cities have! The Big Apple (New York), Sin City (Las Vegas) and back home The Golden City of Jaisalmer.

While in school, I found remembering these terms really tough to score better in exams. It's tough to build logic with these things unless you have been there. And I need logic to remember anything. So my scores in history always pulled my final exams' percentage down (who was born when, where... please don't ask me names and dates!).

But once I started visiting place, I had a whole new perspective. Like when I visited the beautiful city of Jaisalmer (named after the founder founder Maharawal Jaisal Singh) in Rajasthan. Once you reach  you know why many call it The Golden City. The hues, sand, forts and havelis, they all are so beautifully golden-ish.

I have no idea!

I am generally not short of ideas, whether it is arts and crafts, cooking, blogging or creativity required in my advertising profession. Thankfully, most of my ideas have turned out to be good. 

 
The surprising thing is that when I am really upset about something or when I have a really tight deadline, the ideas I come up with are better than what I have when I am relaxed and at leisure. That is actually very helpful in the highly demanding and creative field like advertising.

But this once, when I decided to write a post on ideas, I am really clueless. Maybe since I started pretty late after missing the deadline for the 'I' day of the A-Z Challenge. A few back to back stressful events in my life within a span of 4 days might be affecting my thought process. 

Makes me think:  

• Why is it possible to come up with ideas for everyone else but yourself?

• Why setting a deadline and trying to meet it results in the best ideas, mostly at the last minute?

• Why I am so clueless when I am thinking of an idea to write something on ideas?
  

I have no idea! So this time, I will end this right here to prevent myself from losing my blog readers. I guess there's a better idea - I will move on to 'J'!

PS If you thought I wasted your time with this post, you might want to read the title again; I had warned you much in advance!
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This post is written by me for the A-Z Blogging Challenge where I will post every day (except Sundays) all through the month of April. Most importantly, I will blog thematically on topics from A to Z! So for April 1, I chose a topic starting with the letter A, for April 2 the letter B and so on. 
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My A-Z Challenge Entries: A B C D E F G H I J K...

If I am not born Maharashtrian, it does not mean I can't ask you to keep the state clean

I AM A PROUD MUMBAIITE WOMAN AND ALWAYS STOOD FOR MY CITY. AND MY COUNTRY. PLEASE DO NOT MAKE ME REGRET IT.

My best friend is Marathi. It was my favourite subject in school and the language still is. Some of my closest friends and favourite people speak Marathi. I am the only Mumbaiite to run a Mumbai local trains blog to help Mumbai commuters. No one is paying me for that, yet despite fibromyalgia, I manage to keep you all updated because I want to help people of this city and suburbs. I hardly see hardly see people switching off the fans in local train compartments if it is the last stop at a non-peak hour so that some power can be saved. I have politely asked commuters throwing rubbish in /out of trains to discontinue this practice almost every single day, so that the city remains clean. Once a foreigner in Rajasthan told me how she found it strange to see Mumbai people littering on the streets. Even knowing that she was right, I argued and defended Mumbai's pride.

Hey-Hi-Hello, Ha-Ha and Ho-Ho!

Hey there! Are you still reading my posts? Cool, so I love you for that! And now that you are here, let me say Hi-Hello to you!

Hi, I am Anuradha from India. I am assuming that most of you have reached this post via the A-Z Challenge. Yes, I have completed the first week successfully and am all geared up for this one: G, H, I, J, K and L. Confession: I have not been able to reply to all the comments or visit all the blogs I should, but I am trying my best.

Hello??? Looks like I got carried away. So this post is for H. And I realized how some tiny words starting with the letter H bring so much joy!

Google search: What else would I want it to do

Google Guru, as I call it, is probably the best thing that happened to us in this life. The Gyaani Baba knows it all. It is the one who clears all my doubts across various subjects. I don't even need to say, "Open Sesame," and it opens a treasure box of information, entertainment and just envy thing you can possibly think of.

But, as it is with us humans, we always want more. So while I love Google unconditionally, I would appreciate if it could find some more things for me:

• The remote control which I always misplace when my favourite television show is about to begin.
• My glasses which I just can't find when I desperately need them.
• A good househelp who will not leave abruptly, not demand unnecessary things and increments every now and then, and not bunk whenever she feels like.

Failure: From Frustrating to 'Fort'ifying

There are two types of Failures: Tiny ones and bigger ones.
The tiny ones are so tiny that for this post I will not focus on them ;) The bigger ones are those that alter our life or way of living to some extent.

Coming First in the school exams was what defined my first set of goals in life. I just had to come first in exams. If not, even if I stood second, I would be really disappointed with myself. I would focus more in my studies for the next year and mostly fare quite well. Yes, I know I sound nerdy here, but I turned out to be just a fun loving person later in life. So I don't mind being a geek in school ;)

Eoin Colfer and the world of Artemis Fowl

The are two people who brought me back to reading books - my husband Mrinal and the author Eoin Colfer.

After college, I became a copywriter and in a span of 12 years, I worked on several brands across categories, across media. And as it is with advertising and online marketing, life got too busy to read books. Whenever there was any time, I would read about the latest advertising ways and media. And then I discovered blogging and tried my hand at it as well (thank God for that!). So, for me it was reading just a couple of non-work-related books in a year.

Dark Light and The 3-Point Analysis

They follow each other everywhere. It's a never ending chase. As if darkness and light are running in circles. When light brightens something, it leaves a shadow too. And sometimes the shadows are more dramatic. Like when we create those shadow figures / animals with our hands!

Figuratively, the dark times in our life are followed by lighter moments and vice versa. For some of us, the dark times are much longer than the brighter ones. We do try to convince ourselves that the sad phase will be followed by a happy phase. But the truth is that we are so tightly entangled in the sad phase that we actually end up increasing its length. 

Consider the following 3-Point Analysis I came up with (my very own debut theory... hehe):

Point 1 - Pre-Dark: Often, we sense the depressing / upsetting time as it is on its way towards us. And so, even though the sorrow has not arrived yet, we let it overpower our happier current phase. It's the anticipation that spoils it all. 

Creativity or Complications? Too many Cs out here ;)

Correct me if I am wrong - as we grow, life seems to be getting complicated.
Childhood fun times keep disappearing while deadlines take over. 

Cancelling the morning alarm no more makes sense.
Catching the bus or train to work is the first target for every day.
Can we reach office on time and leave before it's too late?
Can the boss be less bossy?

BTW

By the way, as I continued exploring new blogs via the A-Z blogging challenge, I came across a ghost story. I am not a big fan of horror movies, but I like some ghost movies (yeah Casper). So I challenged myself to write one someday. I guess I might have to do a lot of thinking and since I was getting late for work, I decided to write something easier this once.

But often when you discard the tough path to take an easier one, someone up there doesn't like it. And my Internet connection went off... Just like that when I had just hit the New Post tab on blogger!

Then it hit me, it is Tuesday! Sometimes we have load shedding on Tuesdays and this time the broadband provider had a power cut before it affected our building. But I was damn keen on completing a short post before I leave for work. So I called up the Internet guy. Thankfully, he said there was no powercut at his place. I requested him to come and check my computer. And as luck would have it, he was in the same complex monitoring a new internet connection. He arrived in 15 minutes! Looked like I would complete the post for the day in time.

A: Why is it the first letter?

I must confess, it took me a great deal of thought to decide what topic I should chose for my first ever A-Z challenge participation. Thanking Arlee Bird for initiating the A-Z Challenge four years ago. It's a challenge of sorts and has our brains working!

I started writing about my profession Advertising at first - Ad Mad World. But then, I reached the fifth paragraph only to realise that I might go on and on and then no one will visit my blog again and again ;)

So, I did you a favour (alright, it was for me actually!). I have kept it in Drafts and will touch it when I am completely lost for topics.