Why I hate Holi - The Festival of Colours & Hooligans

Holi, the festival of colours celebrated by Hindus all over the world.

When I was a child I loved Holi as I would get the chance to play with water balloons and colours with all my friends.

As I grew up I began to hate the festival as I found that it gave the lecherous men a chance to touch and paw the females and generally misbehave.

In 1983 when my sister, her 4 month daughter and I were walking along J.P.Road Andheri (west)

a group of rowdy children started flinging water balloons on us. I was carrying my niece and a balloon hit my hand and burst.I was thankful that nothing hit my niece as it would have hurt her.

The rowdy children were in a group aged about 12-18 years and I happened to know some of them as they were studying in the same college as I was.There were still 7 days for Holi and the children had begun their celebrations so early.

In 1989 I was in Delhi along with my 4 friends and we were guests at a family friends home. To our bad luck it happened to be during Holi .

Photo by James Khoo.

As our host knew that we would not be able to go out, we were relaxing at home.Around 9 am a group of young men known to the host knowing that there were 5 female guests were visiting from Mumbai, came over and applied colours on our face and drenched us in water and were basically very excited that they managed to mess up our faces and hair with colour. Though our host was not very happy he was not rude to them as Holi is celebrated in a big way in Delhi.

We had to wait till evening to have a bath because Delhi was having a water shortage and the water came only once a day in the evenings. There was enough water stored for cooking and any emergency requirements otherwise.

In 1992 when I was pregnant with Magali and was going to the Doctor for a check up some small boy flung a balloon on my back and ran way.I was in the 8th month of my pregnancy. The most irritating thing is this happened when there were 8 days for Holi.

Parents should teach the children not to throw anything (balloons, plastic bags filled with water) on anyone as it could hurt them.

Just this morning I happened to read of one train commuter dying & several being seriously injured after some foreign substance entered their eyes. Slum dwellers throw everything from stones to chilli powder or other harmful / toxic substances at moving trains & buses.

Have A happy and safe Holi everyone and enjoy yourselves.

Love,

Sheila

Love Marriage or Arranged Marriage : My Story

This is a debate that can go on forever depending on the people involved and their thoughts and views about marriage.

When I got married 22 years ago it was an arranged marriage as my parents wanted me to marry some Goan boy who belonged to the same caste that we did. Well, Ezy (my husband) proposed to me, so it was  an arranged union but partly love marriage too, at least on his side.

I had two paternal Uncles who were Priests and my father did not want them to say that we had not done the right thing. He always told us from when we were young that he would have to answer for the wrong that we did and so we siblings were even frightened to talk to the opposite sex as we were worried that Dad would take it wrongly. Three of us married the partners chosen by our parents while one brother married a girl of his choice but luckily she belonged to the same community so Dad had no problem with that.

Arranged marriages are good for two people who are willing to make the  marriage work even though they may not know each other very well before marriage.

Ezy and I had a lot of problems at the beginning adjusting to lot of things and all the interference from people from both the families. But we decided that we wanted our marriage to work and we sorted our problems and are still together. We have arguments now and then and Magali is the referee many a times.

Many a times I have seen arranged marriages break up because of the meddling by family members and also because the couple do not really bother to try to make a go of the marriage. When there are children involved it is difficult for them to see the parents separating and  they are mentally scarred.

In my opinion I would say that even if a couple gets into an arranged marriage they should be given enough of time to go on dates and get to know each other before the D-Day. I got engaged to Ezy in June 1989 and though we went out sometimes we both were shy to ask each other questions and so there were a lot of questions left unanswered. He joined a ship soon after and there were a few letters exchanged and  a few calls between us. He came home end December 1989 and we got married on 20th January 1990.

We joined a ship together in May 1990 and sailed for 13 months where we got to know each other and had time to ourselves when he was not working.The other Officers used to tease us that Ezy was spending all his time in the Cabin and not coming to the Smoke Room to watch movies or play carrom or Table Tennis.

So ending the arranged marriage debate I would say that Life is Good when you Make it Good. Marriage is between two individuals who should work together to make it a success.

In the present times I think that the children should be given a chance to find their own partner and hence Ezy and I have told Magali that she will have to find her own partner and we will not be forcing our choice on  her.

The couple should  always be ready to make adjustments and nor bicker about small things. There should be no name calling and no physical violence at any time during the relationship. Both the partners should make an attempt to keep each other happy by doing small things that the partner would  love.

In the end I would like to say that Arranged or Love Marriage it is the Couple who have to live through it and do it with LOVE.

May God Bless all the couples with Love, Joy and Lots of  Happy Years Together.

Sheila

Stayfree Indiblogger Meet

A week ago Magali and I attended the Stayfree Women's  Indiblogger Meet at Trident Hotel, BKC.

This was the second meet that we attended.

Stayfree has teamed up with UNICEF to educate 5,00,000 adolescent children from two districts each of Jharkhand and Bihar.

Mr Clement, a french man from UNICEF (working in India for the past few years) spoke very well and made the bloggers understand the need to educate the children as the girl child from these areas are not given a chance to even complete their education in schools let alone going to a college. He also gave statistics that one in every two women were anaemic and that many girl children in villages were married by the time they were 16 years old.

We being born and brought up in a city like Mumbai do not really experience the hardships as these girl children but we can help by making our house help understand about hygiene and also about being clean. We should also make them understand that a woman does not become unclean when she is menstruating and that it is only a normal occurence in a female from the first time until she has her menopause.

I still remember very clearly the first time I menstruated before my fourteenth birthday and was wondering if I was sick because of the blood stain I found on my panties. I did not  know exactly what was happening because though we were given a sex education class in the ninth grade by a priest during religion class no mention was made about menstruation. Though an older friend had hinted about menstruation I was completely unaware of this happening in a girl's life. Also my Mother had not explained anything to me so I was very afraid. I then told my mother who replied very casually that it is normal and that it would be happening every month from then until I would have menopause. I was so relieved that I was not sick and that menstruation was a normal occurrence.

I did not make the mistake with Magali. She was a smart and inquisitive child and I remember her asking me as how children come out from their Mothers tummies. I told her that the Doctors make a slit on the stomach and take out the baby but she very smartly replied that she could not have come out from my tummy as I did not have a scar and that her uncle had a scar even though he was operated over 8 years before she was born. I did not tell her right then but when when she was nine I explained to her about menstruation and it was good that I did that because she started menstruating quite early.

When I was young I used Carefree Sanitary napkins that were completely different from today's ones, they were 'belted' & very uncomfortable. But nowadays there are really good Stayfree napkins by Johnson and Johnson which make life more comfortable for those few days in a month in a girls/ladies life. Also they are donating a bit of the proceeds from every pack sold to the UNICEF to help make the rural Indian girl's life a bit better.

I was happy to meet some other great women bloggers too. I really enjoyed the meet. {Here is a picture of Magali & me at the meet, tweeted by the Stayfree team}

Thank You Indiblogger & Stayfree for arranging this meet.

Love to all,

Sheila

Holiday in New Zealand

Hello everybody. It has been a long time since my last blog post.

These last few months have been busy and my husband and I have had a holiday to New Zealand where we spent Christmas 2011 and New Year 2012.

My friends who are settled in Auckland since 2002  had been inviting us to visit New Zealand since a long time and last year we decided to visit them. We have known each other for over 25 years and were colleagues at Bombay Hospital.

We have had many holidays abroad to Disney World  Florida in U.S.A., Penang, Mellaca, and Kuala lumpur in Malaysia and Bangkok in Thailand.

Ezy & Me.

At all these place we booked into resorts and really enjoyed ourselves. We spent a minimum of 2 weeks at each resort and all the holidays were lovely. All these holidays were as a family. Magali always accompanied us. But this time she did not want to come along because she said we were going to live in someones house and that she did not like that. 

We left India on 21st December and were received at the Auckland Airport on 22nd December by my friends.

We were our mad selves all the while and the men were wondering whether we were drunk (not possible since we hardly drink) or taking drugs (also not possible since none of us does drugs).We laughed and laughed remembering our old jokes and cracking some new ones and Ezy added to the fun by telling some funny happenings on board the ship.

Almost all of us.

Ezy is normally very quiet but there in Auckland he was quite talkative and my friends were quite surprised.

We visited all the places in Auckland and went for overnight stays to Coromandel and Rotorua.

My friends have a good social group and there were lot of invitations to parties and the days just flew by.

I missed Magali a lot and was sad because this was a first holiday abroad that she had not acoompanied us but she enjoyed herself too with her parents out of her hair.

We spoke regularly over the phone, on skype and also exchanged messages on twitter. So it did not feel like she was so far away.

On 20th January 2012 Ezy and I celebrated our 22nd Wedding anniversary and it was Ezy's birthday also.

So the three of us had lunch at a  mall food court followed by a lot of shopping.

Life could not be any better. I am loving it.

Love to all  of you,

Sheila

Greed Overcomes All Else

I am quite in a serious mood today. Feeling very angry about how a son is treating his mother.

I am a volunteer at The Home for The Aged since  8 years.

There are about 130 men and women all above 65 years.

As I know most of the old people on first name basis and I go at least 3 times a week they are quite comfortable talking about their lives to me.

The person I am going to write about is a lady 0f 80+ years who was literally thrown out of her home because her husband has made a mistake of transferring the house to the son's name.

A picture taken by Magali at the Home for The Aged
at their recent hat parade event.

The old couple were happily living with the son and his family and the old lady took care of the grand children when the son & daughter in law were working. The grand children grew up and by then the daughter in law was getting restless that the "old people were not dying" and that they would never get the house to themselves.

To the good luck of the children the old couple happened to have a daughter who was living in Canada and had decided to take the parents for a holiday. Before they left the son conveniently told the Father that since he would not be around for 6 months at least it would be nice if the Father transferred the house to the son's name, for official reasons.

The Father trusted the son transferred ownership before they left for Canada.

Six months later they came back to India to a place that they knew as home which was no longer theirs.

The son, daughter in law and grandchildren found that the old couple were unwanted at home and tried everything they could do by verbally and physically abusing the old couple. When the old couple could take it no more they informed their daughter who promptly came to India and took the old couple to Mangalore where they were put in the Home for the Aged after paying more than 12,000/- Rupees ($250 which is quite a lot here) a month not including all other expenses. The old man fell sick there and passed away. Now the old lady was all alone and feeling lonely and to her good luck there was place for her at The Home for the Aged in Mumbai and the daughter came to India and brought her to Mumbai. It is now nearly 6 years that she is here in Mumbai and the son has hardly come to meet her. He calls once in a while to find out if the Mother is fine but the call is just to show the Religious Sisters that he calls and that he cares about the Mother.

The daughter visits the Mother every year from Canada and would have liked to take the Mother to live with her but the harsh winters of Canada do not agree with the Mother.Though the Home is a free Institution she contributes a good amount as Donation. I really admire her as she calls regularly and is really concerned about the Mother though she has no financial gain in the situation.

The Mother is bitter about the whole situation and blames her husband for the situation that she is in today.

She sits and talks to me almost every time I go to the Home. I love talking to her and she says that she enjoys talking to me too. Sometimes I take some home cooked food that she likes and her eyes shine when she tells me that she has enjoyed her meal.

I have seen many cases like these. In all the cases the parents have given away all the assets to the children who do not care about the parents after they have the money, gold and diamond ornaments and apartments in their names.

It is a lesson to parents that you should only give away all that you have in a will that is opened after you are dead. Be there for your children when they need you but do not be a fool and then repent later.

This is a reminder also to my husband and me that we should make a will when he is home this time so that the assets will all be given to our daughter when we are no more.

Take care everyone.
Lots of love,
Sheila