The Circle of Life…

Daily Prompt: Mid-Season Replacement (dailypost.wordpress.com)

For many of us the seasons are changing, bouncing unpredictably between cold and warm. Are you glad to be moving into a new season, or wishing for one more week of the old?

My Thoughts….

Seasons mean joy, celebration and many other things. For me, seasons don’t seem to represent the actual weather.  They actually represent the celebration of the earth’s rotation around the sun.  They represent the changing colors and moods of nature.  They represent the inherent joy of life.   Pumpkins and scarecrows are in every front yard.  What a great way to celebrate change!!   As the squirrels gather their last nuts for the year, there is an antipication.  Nature knows it  and so do we, the amazing circle of life.

Mom’s Wisdom: The Secret Hiding Place…

I was prompted to write this article by a friend’s post on Facebook.  She grounded her child from all electronics for a week.  She realized a week later that she cannot find where she kept any of the electronic devices.  It has probably happened to all moms – we all call it the secret hiding place.  It is so secretive that even we cannot remember where it is.

I wasn’t sure if it is the type of parenting style.  We do not want to emulate our parents.  We somehow feel we can do better.  My parents are amazing people but when I was little, they were so strict.  So my parenting style is opposite – lenient. We have rules in our house but I so desperately want to be their friend too.  The consequence is a confused authoritative figure.

I am known as XX’s mom.  And I am fine with this identity.  My children seem to think it is OK to check emails on my phone or text messages.  And I don’t even give it a second thought.  I do not have anything to hide.  My life is so public to my family and so are my passwords and so are every secretive hiding place.  They seem to know my gray cells more than I can remember, which leads me to believe that this secretive hiding place is never to be found.

Lesson Learnt:  If you mess with mom, you will lose all your crap….

A nice poem by fellow blogger

http://www.hollowtreeventures.com/2013/04/moms-favorite-hiding-place-in-limericks.html

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Book Review: Cheating Death by Dr. Sanjay Gupta

You will be surprised where I found this book!! While on my trip to the store to organize my daughters birthday party, I zipped by the dollar store to pick some gift bags.  There in the bottom isle, I saw this book.  Dr.  Sanjay Gupta with his star appearances in CNN is a household name.  So for a dollar for this hardbound book, how bad could it be!! So I picked it up without a second thought.

Amazing find is one world I can summarize this book.  I have always been fascinated with the medical field.  The integration of engineering with medicine – the biomedical engineering has always perplexed me with the translation of numbers or data from my body to a meaning to the doctors.  Another article on that will do justice.

Now getting back to the book – Sanjay Gupta discusses advances in medical field where death has no longer a meaning.  Being a avid believer of the big bang theory myself, it makes so much sense.  He talks about advances in medicine especially neurology that allows bodies to frozen to sub zero temperature to save the human body.  The book talks about the findings along its way.  The first mistakes they made and subsequent findings.  All of this in simple language.  No medical words that throw you off.  He makes you walk a doctor’s life, their debugging methodology and their subsequent conclusions.

A very good non-fiction book.  A must read!

Book Review: Oleander Girl by Chitra Banerjee DivaKaruni

Oleander Girl: A Novel

When I picked this book, I was expecting wonders.  I was introduced to South Asian novels with one of her books “Arranged Marriages”.  It was so different and I felt so connected with the characters in the novel.  It amazed me!!  So when this book was published, I was one of the first few people who quickly went to amazon to order it.

Oleander Girl is a beautifully lyrical novel.  Its main character is this young woman, Korobi.  Korobi has never known her mother who named her after the beautiful but poisonous oleander. She was raised by traditional grandparents and  she is engaged to a man from a modern, progressive family.  Early in the novel, a secret is revealed, propelling her to travel to America to find answers.

Having met the author during a book event, she discussed how she had gone to Calcutta and she saw this mix of the modern and the traditional and the book definitely reflects those thoughts.

Divakaruni handles great emotion with understated, calm language. At first, the juxtaposition put me off, but I came to find this style enhancing of the cultural story. Certainly times of deep crisis are portrayed; crises deepened by the family’s deep sense of tradition. The main characters are well portrayed in phrases that allow us access to their private and public selves. A deep sense of privacy on the part of Korubi’s grandparents inform an important part of the plot.

The culture of India that has shaped these characters, has become in itself a character in this book. I quite enjoyed the levels of society revealed in this novel. The same world surrounds us all, but ways of our minds decide how the world is admitted to ourselves. This book is a wonderful route to understanding modern India. And we come to know why Korobi is named for the beautiful but deadly oleander.