A good life

This post is a part of #UseYourAnd activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette Venus“.

I always wanted to live a large life,. Have it all. Work, play, family, friends, holidays, fame and fortune, everything.

At 50 when I take stock, I feel I did fairly ok.

I left home in a small city at 17, much against my mother's wishes, to study in Bombay. By then I had learnt cooking, knitting, embroidery, painting and candle making. I was groomed to be the wife of an IAS officer or an NRI. But I wanted to study. I used to tell my dad that "I want to be a big executive in a big company."

I rejected all the matches that were sent my way and managed to finish an MBA. Along the way I fell in love and married a Christian boy. Inter - religion marriage!! It had all the drama that can be expected.

I worked for a few years in a couple of companies and then went on to start my own business. I worked like a dog and  did make a success of it. Had two girls in the course of all the other frenzy. In fact, for both my deliveries, I was rushed from the office to the hospital.

I had this fetish that because I am a working mum, my kids should not suffer. So I plunged headlong in their life. I was the class mum for one  girl's class, the field trip in-charge of the other girl's class. I volunteered for bake sale and craft fairs.

I also wanted to be the "corporate wife" to my husband and went for parties and trips and dinner dressed to the nines and made all the right noises.

In the middle of life, my father was diagnosed with cancer and for a year I did nurse and hospital duty till he, sadly, gave up the fight. Then I held my mother's hand.

I was a business woman and a mum and a wife and a daughter and a daughter-in-law and a friend and a party girl.

At 50 I shut my business. Now I teach 4 days a week at an NGO. I teach Maths and Science to Std IX and Std X kids. It is tuition class that is run to help kids with studies after school and I love every minute of it. I have picked up my brushes again and the walls of many a friends boast of my artwork. I joined computer classes and learnt Photoshop, Corel draw and Dreamweaver.

I now want to start a quiz and trivia website. 

I self taught myself equities trading and now have a most profitable portfolio.

All in all, I did do it ALL. 

My do-it-all friend

This post is a part of #UseYourAnd activity at BlogAdda in association with Gillette Venus'.

Shikha had just uploaded pictures of her Diwali party. It was special because she lives in Chicago and every year she throws a mother-of-all Diwali parties for her friends, colleagues and neighbours. The pictures showed the most exquisite rangoli, house decorated with diyas and flowers and a table laden with Indian food including dahi wadas, pooris, slow cooked mutton raan  and besan ladoos and kheer.

I immediately whatsapped her,” Lovley pics. What effort!! Did you cook all this yourself?”

She replied, “Who else. Arre I can do this at least once a year.”

“So did you take time off work?”

 “No.” She replied. “I just did it every day for the last 15 days once I got back in the evening.”

Shikha is one of my oldest and best friends. She is a go-getter career woman and has been awarded the best performer in her company in Chicago over three years. She is out of the house at 6 am and back only by 7 pm. She works hard and she works smart.

Her husband, unfortunately, lost his job in corporate reshuffle a few years back. So she is now the single bread winner of the family. But she takes the politics, the stress and the gruesome work pressure and just roles with it.

AND she is awesome homemaker. She cooks like a dream,. Weekends are devoted to the family, fridge is stocked with food for the coming week, laundry is done and friends are entertained.

She plans all family holidays, she remembers birthdays and she is one of those aunts that kids feel comfortable having a heart to heart.. She does not do things by half.

I always look at her and think, “Wow!! She is this complete Durga kind of woman with gazillion hands and each hand is busy doing something.” She does not have to choose between being the director of her company and being a wife and a mom. She is all. In spades