A Friend to Hang Out with

I suddenly realised that one of the most prized possessions I have is my sewing machine. It has given me many peaceful creative and relaxing moments in life. Don't know if it's the happiness of stitching a curtain in exactly the way I want or the satisfaction of stitching a cushion cover out of a material or a particular print that I bought. Sitting to stitch is one of the activities I do that relax me and let me forget the world. 

However, I didn't realise the importance it has in my life till the moment when its time for me to pack it and shift it to another location due to our transfer. Today I thank the sewing machine for being like a best friend to hang out with! I thank my mother for teaching me how to sew and stitch when I was a teenage girl. I thank God for letting me have the sewing machine wherever I move to. I also thank my dearest partner for gifting it to me immediately after our big day.

Please click here to follow my Sewing Board on Pinterest.

April Fools' Day

It is really important to have friends. Whenever I move to a new city, I feel tremendously lonely and trust me, it's NOT a nice feeling. Mumbai is no exception. The loneliness is felt more when there is a festival or a celebration. It's no fun celebrating anything alone, including April Fools' Day. I actually felt grateful when a friend of mine sent me this today: 

This cute little thing touched my heart in more ways than you may think. It meant I was thought of on the occasion of this fun day. It meant, I have friends. It meant my life is richer than I thought, and so on. 

My father tells me that people are the treasures of life. I have learnt it to be true over the years. I thank all my friends for enriching my life in so many ways! 

Happy Thanksgiving

It’s been really long since I blogged here. I have been missing it. My being absent from the blogosphere doesn’t necessarily mean that I have not been writing at all. To be honest, I wrote quite a few. Lack of time and opportunity kept me from posting here. I will post those soon. But I am here for another reason today.
Every year on the fourth Thursday of November, the residents of USA celebrate “Thanksgiving” in a big big way. In 2012, this auspicious occasion will fall on November 22 (that is tomorrow) and it is a national holiday for them too. Yes, this is a big deal because this is the day when people appreciate and understand the meaning of having a family and the joy of eating together. Attending a real traditional Thanksgiving dinner is one of the things in my bucket list. I know I will someday!
 

My heartiest greetings to everyone celebrating Thanksgiving!
 

Let me share some factoids about Thanksgiving:

• The first Thanksgiving was a simpler event than many people think.
• In 1621, the Plymouth colonists and Wampanoag Indians shared an autumn harvest feast that is acknowledged today as one of the first Thanksgiving celebrations in the colonies.
• For more than two centuries, the days of thanksgiving were celebrated by individual colonies and states.
• It wasn't until 1863, in the midst of the Civil War, that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the national Thanksgiving Day to be held on the last Thursday of November.
• Canada celebrates Thanksgiving on the second Monday of October.

For more info you may also visit:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving
http://thanksgiving.fundootimes.com/index.html
http://www.halloween-website.com/traditions.htm

The Climb

Today, I suddenly realised how true it is when the wise one said, “Life is a journey”. Yes, I totally agree with that. More so when I realised how we have to move on in the journey, regardless of whether or not you have the same companion you started your journey with or met on the way. 

For me, life is an uphill climb. Uphill, not because it is difficult, but because, we are supposed to live up to our full potential. We have to complete the task of being born as human beings; we have to reach our ultimate possibilities. In this climb, we meet many people, some of them boost our morale, some discourage us from looking up ahead, some make us weak and some just waste our time. In my climb in life, I have met all sorts of people and most of them continued to stay on. Some I had to let go, because they were just not worth it. Some came back and stayed even more committed to the journey and we became co-hikers or co-travellers for life. I know most of them will stay on till I reach the peak. I am at that age, where I can see things rationally now. I know what is doable and what is not worth sticking to. 

In an “aha-moment” I found out a perfect example to cite here: Say, I am on a mountain hike. Everything around me is beautiful, lush greenery, heart-warming meadows, musical springs and I am hiking with two kinds of drinks on my back pack. One is plain water and the other one is my favourite lemon iced tea. The bottle with lemon iced tea suddenly falls in the gorge below. What do I do? Shall I go down and find it or should I continue my hike with the bottle of water in my hand? I would choose to continue with the bottle of water in my hand. I would definitely continue my hike. :) 

See, I told you before; writing makes me think straight and feel good. Thank you for reading!

This is a wallpaper pic from live-positive.blogspot.com :) Nice noh?

Law of Attraction

Many a times, I have read, in churches and especially in Christian literatures that if you seek, you will get. However, it was a mere statement for me until I read the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne.
 

I have read about the power of thoughts and how the frequencies of our thoughts attract what we are thinking about. I was amazed by the book The Secret and wanted to experiment with the “Law of Attraction” that it talks about. 

While discussing the book with my online friends one day, a lot of them suggested that I should watch the movie of the same book. They were so convinced that the movie is much better than the book and I must try it asap. I tried to buy the movie in video stores, online stores and so on. But unfortunately couldn’t get it anywhere. I tried my last hope and tried to get it on hire from BigFlix.com. BigFlix informed that the DVD of The Secret is not available in India. The online stores had no option of delivering it in India and in most cases the shipping cost was higher than the DVD of the movie itself. I so badly wanted to watch the movie that I kept thinking of ways to get it delivered from abroad through some friends who might be travelling to India soon....and guess what? The law of attraction worked. Of course it took some time, but it did work. A very dear friend of mine gave me a link on the internet where I could watch the movie. Suddenly I had the “aha-moment” of my life! Yes, the law of attraction works.

This, many of my readers may find silly. I do not complain if you do. But again, it’s all about believing honestly. I do believe in the law of attraction.

I started to think about more such instances that had happened in my life, which could be linked with the “Law of Attraction”. I found many. On and off, I am going to share my experiences here on my blog about these experiences where I strongly believe that the “Law of Attraction” worked.

One of the most recent experiences where I think the “Law of Attraction” worked is when I was almost slipping into depressing loneliness. I have always been a people person. Love people around me and I had loads of friends during my college days. But life moved on and for work related transfers, I could hardly make new friends with whom I could hang out for long. In the course of transfers, I had to come to Kolkata. I joined PwC immediately after the transfer. It was one of the most boring workplaces I’ve ever worked in. Being a non-Bengali, I had no friends except my immediate colleagues. I felt terribly lonely. A year and half passed and I assumed, perhaps, I have become incapable of making friends. But the feeling of loneliness was so annoying. I badly wanted to have friends to go out with, hang out with and have fun with.

One fortunate day, while coming back from office, I saw one glow sign where it was written in Bengali “Haat Barhalei Bondhutta” (Meaning: If you just stretch out your hand, there's friendship)! That was another of my “aha-moments”. It felt as if it’s a sign from the almighty above! I was woken up from my slumber. Realised, yes, I actually didn’t even try to make friends. I didn’t seek, I just complained to myself of being lonely. That changed my lonely life in Kolkata. I started to open up, meet people, and decided to revive my old friendships outside Kolkata as well. I am pleasantly surprised to see the “Law of Attraction” working here. I changed the pattern of my thoughts from “not having friends, lonely” to “wish I had loads of friends” and this really worked. I have many great friends now who are like minded and great fun to be with. “Law of Attraction” rocks! Just believe!