Women's day - Mar 09

International Women's day..

Internaional Women's day (IWD) is celebrated on March 8 of every year. It was first celebrated on 28th Feb 1909 in the United States (courtesy: wikipedia).

It is a major day of celebration for the economic, political and social empowerment of women. It is good to see, in a society that was dominated by men, women making a mark for themselves in every other field ranging from the the local bus driver/conductors to politics to various fields in art to ruling a nation. Some of the women who have etched their presence in Indian history are Rani Chenamma, Onake Obava, Rani of Jhansi and many more. And all of these women have outperformed their male counterparts to either save their state or country from foreign invaders.

On one hand there is a day dedicated to celebrate the success of women and on the other we still get to see cases of female foeticide, infanticide, eve teasing, molesting, rape, acid attacks, dowry harassments and deaths. The celebration of IWD is complete only when all of this is completely eradicated and we, especially the men, help in reporting such cases to the concered authorities and ensure the wrong doers are rightly punished (the killers of 14 year old Aarushi, are still at large !!)

One good thing that happened today (8 Mar 09) is that one of my classmates became a proud father of a cute little angel baby girl. God bless the angel and her parents.

Celebration means...

Celebration may mean a lot of things to a lot of people… Could range from a quiet dinner just between two souls to an extravagant event involving hundreds of people.. Recently got a forwarded mail with the subject “Celebration means…” and this is how it reads:



Celebration means......

You and mom.
A summer night.
A bottle of coconut oil.
A head massage.



Celebration means......

Bunch of friends; Rainy Day...
no raincoat, no umbrella!



Celebration means......

1.30 a. m … Hundred bucks of petrol; A Rusty old bike…
Triples…
And an open road!



Celebration means......

3 old friends; 3 separate cities; 3 coffee mugs.
1 internet messenger!



Celebration means......

Maggie noodles; At Friends place...
3.25 a. m!



Indeed… all of the above are celebrations …. no significant cost involved but loads of happiness...

Gift !!

If I search on the internet for what constitutes a gift, there are many things that come to mind. It can be a present, it can be something given without expecting anything in return, it can be something tangible or just a feeling of love and affection. Well, if you are wondering why we are discussing about gifts, here you go ..

One of the gifts I got recently was this beautiful coffee mug, which had all the facts about the letter “A” like the character of a person, the history of the letter A, future of the person whose name begins with A, meaning of the letter A (sounds interesting !!) and list of celebrities’ names beginning with A (unfortunately my name did not find a place on that list .. ;) ). This mug with loads of info was gifted by Paddy (occasion, gotta ask her...) and now this mug is proudly positioned on my desk.

Another gift that I received was from this very sweet and kind lady in Amsterdam, Emmy, my counterpart, colleague and now a good friend. To this day she addresses me as “geniee”. (that’s because she believes I have a solution for every problem like Aladdin’s geniee.. ).

The third of the gifts I got was from this very good friend of mine who’d been to Delhi. Out there she picked up a mariner’s compass that has a “real” antique feeling to it, has “Stanley London” inscribed on it. This compass is enclosed in a brass container and on the back side of the container it has one of my favorite poems by Robert Frost – “The road not taken”.

Now, it is my turn to start gifting, and I like it doing more than receiving them….