She is a fantasy

"If you follow the rules and stay out of trouble you'll never know what the world is offering you"

This is one quote she lives through by. She has many appealing traits which make people wonder at her for versatile reasons. She is daring & her enthusiasm is contagious. Let you know something mysterious about her.

      1.She never bothers, how older she is. She still poses weird before CCTV cameras.

2. She respects people for their intellect, discipline and education. Age is her least criterion.

3. She couldn't keep up lies. So she never takes the risk.

4. She always competes with Koala bear in sleeping. A koala bear sleeps for 16-18 hours and rarely the koala bear wins.

5. She doesn't flatter or get take in by flatterers.

6. She is afraid of none in the world except for those icky cockroaches and her conscience.

7. She has run more in hospitals rather than playgrounds in fear of injections.

8. She loves coffee a lot.

9. She has said a very few no's to her friends

10. She never cared about marks because she believes that single sheet of paper explicitly implies the memory power and not the knowledge.

11. She deserves to be compared with black. Even on mixing different colors to it, black remains black.

12. When she writes her biography, half of its paging would be about her teachers.

13. She never celebrates her birthday.

14. Harry Potter is her greatest pleasure and she has read "Harry Potter and the order of Phoenix" three times.

15.She believes destiny when it is of her design.

Amusing, right? And that's she.

Well. Let me be as sober as a judge. Concisely, one needs to have some steel of
 nerves to get onto her journey of life.Besides, she derives her inspiration from all 
those she had met in the journey of growth. Her craving to excel in everything kept
pushing her continuously up the ladder.  Basically, she is a multifaceted girl. She is
a writer, blogger, artist, orator, bibliophile and a motivator. To excel in a single
chosen field & to hit the top is by itself is commendable, but she has excelled in
more than one field and created a niche for herself.She plays various roles and
performs each one with elan.She is an aspiring writer and a budding author who has
a great passion for blogging that made her win awards from few national blogging
sites. She is an artist who wins the hearts of many and earns from pockets of few.
She is an awesome orator who makes her audience glued to her words in many
forums. She undertakes many sessions for school children and other people under
training. She has great astonishment on reading books and that's her favourite
hobby. She always gifts her friends with her favourite books. And in short, she lives
not to motivate but to inspire.

‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’

Swathi Mohan

(Investing completely in the art of living)

This post has won the WOW badge from Blogadda. You can see the list of winners here

True sight!

The bench in the park was deserted as I sat down to read beneath the long, straggly branches of an old willow tree. Disillusioned by life with a good reason to frown, for the world was intent on dragging me down.

And if that weren’t enough to ruin my day, a young boy out of breath approached me, all tired from play. He stood right before me with his head tilted down and said with great excitement, “Look what I found!”

 In his hand were a flower and what a pitiful sight with its petals all worn. Wanting him to take his dead flower and go off to play, I faked a small smile and then shifted away.But, instead of retreating, he sat next to my side, smelt the flower and declared with surprise, “It sure smells pretty and it’s beautiful, too. That’s why I picked it; here, it’s for you.”

The weed before me was dying or dead, not vibrant in colours-orange, yellow or red. But I knew I must take it, or he might never leave. So, I reached for the flower, and replied, “Just what I need.”

But, instead of placing the flower in my hand, he held it mid-air without reason or plan. It was only then that I noticed for the very first time that the weed-toting boy could not see; he was blind.

I heard my voice quiver, tears shone like the sun as I thanked him for picking the very best one. “You’re welcome,” he smiled, and the ran off to play unaware of the impact he’d had on my day.I sat there and wondered how he managed to see a self-pitying woman beneath an old willow tree. How did he know of my self-indulged plight?

 Perhaps from his heart, he’d been blessed with true sight.Through the eyes of a blind child, at last, I could see the problem was not with the world; the problem was me. And for all of those times I myself had been blind, I vowed to see the beauty and appreciate every second that’s mine.

And then I held that wilted flower up to my nose and breathed in the fragrance of a beautiful rose and smiled as that young boy, with another weed in his hand was about to change the life of an unsuspecting old man.

With smiles...

Swathi Mohan

(Investing myself completely in the art of living)

Fitness freak

Life has become highly materialistic & humans become self-centred beasts. We are leading a barbaric life. About 50 years ago, life was so peaceful. People were quite healthy because of abundant availability of high-quality water & air, that too free. We are forced to shell out so much money for good quality these days!

Quality of soil in agricultural land is also ruined by the use of fertilisers, unlike in the olden days when we improved soil quality by planting different items on a rotational basis, which replenished the requisite nutrients. All the food that we eat, especially fast food, is highly poisonous and are devoid of the nutrients we need. Technological advancement has made us so lazy & most of us today are leading a sedentary lifestyle which ultimately results in lifestyle diseases.

About 5 decades ago, people used to get a lot of physical exercises by doing all the household chores. Manually, from washing, cooking, and cleaning to agricultural work. Now, we have machines for everything. Automated life stinks, I feel.

Everybody is so hard-pressed for time. So, fitness centres have been the major contributing factor in the spiralling of lifestyle diseases.

So, here are some features in MCW fitness group facilitating for you.

MCW fitness group serves you with types of equipment for the purpose of physical exercise.

It consists of free weights including dumb bells, barbells and other major exercise equipment in the main work out area.

 It also has rowing machines, stationary exercise bikes, elliptical trainers and treadmills.

Group exercise classes are also conducted by certified fitness instructors which include aerobics, spinning(martial arts), and other high-intensity training.

‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

This post has won the WOW badge from Blogadda, Mumbai.
See the Winners list, here.

Pathshala Funwala!

"There comes a time when silence is a betrayal" 

I really wanted to speak out  regarding this and thanks for the team Blogadda and Nihar Naturals Shanti Amla, a leading hair oil in the country.

And truth is to be spoken at right time. Otherwise, it may be worse than a lie.

My mother is a teacher in a government school, but not as a regular government employee, bunking classes. She is an honest woman working for the welfare of children in remote areas. In fact, I learnt the discipline of “Loyalty to the chair” from her. She has been my inspiration many times by profession. She has also suffered from the frequent cut of arrears and bonus amount from her office people for the reason that she is perfect in her works and questions them for their irresponsibility. Although she has suffered a lot of transfers and other troubles, she never fails to work for her children. You won’t believe your eyes when you see her classroom. It will be like a private school owned classroom with non-A/C.

Last week, when we were doing some chart works and PowerPoint slides for her school, she said me that she wants to make English easy and friendly to her students and has been working on that allocating time for it. And she also suggested me to come and undertake some sessions for them so that the interest on it can be reinforced.

So we planned and adopted the following.

• ·        We made the children realize that they need not be afraid of making mistakes so that their confidence level would be increased. And thus, we inculcated a thought that, if only they speak, we can help them correct it.
• ·        We practised this every day by making a study plan. We informed about this plan to their parents too for encouraging them.
• ·        We frequently indulged in the four core skills, reading, writing, speaking and listening.
• ·        We bought many DVD’s and used to play it often.
• ·        Generally children adore stories. So, we narrated stories and gave them a bunch of short story books for them to read by self.
• ·        We concentrated on the mistakes more and taught them through their mistakes.
• ·        You can teach a parrot English words but that doesn’t mean it can speak English! You still need to have an understanding of grammar. So we concentrated on Grammar.
• ·        We started to converse with them slowly.

·        Along with the children, we both too learn new vocabularies everyday.

And now, we are offered with the magnanimous service of Nihar Naturals Shanti Amla for aiding children. Thank you team Blogadda and PathShala Funwala Contest. 

Toll-free number for this service is 8055667788 

I am blogging about Pathshala Funwala by Nihar Shanti Amla Oil in association with BlogAdda.

With smiles...

Swathi Mohan 

(Investing myself completely in the art of living)

It's never too late!

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. But there are times when we hold ourselves back and don’t even take that single step. Be it about acquiring new knowledge or mending a relationship – it is never too late to live the life you want to. So, my weekend post is gonna be like this!

It’s never too late to fall in love with Harry Potter. I mean the series of Books.

Books turn Muggles into wizards and Harry Potter does.

Those who are purposelessly wasting time in chats with their crushes and lovers, Those wasting life in desultory conversations with their “EXES”, those who haven’t read any books yet, come on guys!

Harry Potter novel is much pleasure than a girl! And it’s never too late to doomed to extinct yourself in that pleasure.

Harry was defined by something that happened to him as a baby, and had to grow up forging a legacy beyond that of ‘The Boy Who Lived’. Overcoming our past is a prevalent theme across the whole series.

You can learn lots of life lessons through it. It can mean to us in different ways. You can learn much from

Harry’s choices

 Voldemort’s mistakes,

Sirius and Regulus's different paths,

Grindelwald’s remorse and Dumbledore’s regret.  

Those who already tasted this pleasure can relate these pictures with the life lessons. For those who want to read this, let me not break the suspense! But the life lessons could be as follows.

1. Happiness can be found even in the darkness of times if one only remembers to turn on the light.
2. We’ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. And that’s who we really are.
3. It takes a great deal of bravery to stand up to our enemies, but just as much to stand up to our friends
4. It’s our choices that show us what we truly are far more than our abilities.
5. Fear of a name increases fear of a thing itself.
6. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
7. Words are the most inexhaustible source of magic we have. 

And Finally... Just try and have fun. 

"Life is nothing without risks."

Most ineffable pleasure for a bibliophile will be the one name, "Harry Potter". So, it never too late to fall in love with it. 

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

With smiles...

Swathi Mohan

(Investing myself completely in the art of living)

EDIT: This post has won the WOW badge from BLOGADDA. Click here to check winners.

Unforgettable friend

One day I caught myself smiling for no reason, and then I realized I was thinking of you!

Hey it’s really crazy, right? How can I just be apart from you go months and years without talking to you, but still, you cross my mind every day!

As much as I dislike all the fuss that is made out of that one day, I must admit, it reminds me of my old friend. The friendship that was close to my heart and is cherished even today.

Jeevitha Lena! I mean it.

I could recollect the moment when our friendship was born!

It was when I was mumbling an item song and you heard it little and found the song. I was embarrassed a bit. After a few seconds, you said, “What? You too like this song?” *LOL*

 And that’s when we strangers started to make memories, in fact, a fairy tale!

Yeah! We have made. I still cherish those moments with you when we were together spending times in all scouts and guide camps, in all “Work experience” hours, in all Math special classes in the evening.

In every lunch, we have had together, and I had been your crime partner every time. And do you remember we had been the negotiators? 

(Yeah negotiators, it’s better if she alone understands this :P).

We had been together in the shot put practices. And I still die laughing how crazily we get caught in kho-kho matches, running here and there hastily and clumsily. While we had been rocking on all throw ball and dodge ball matches. I always love me calling you with the name I used to call you. *LOL*

You have been to abroad all of a sudden and we had no contact in the mean time. I tried all ways of contacting you. Finally, I came to know that you were not in India.

I missed you very bad. And whenever I missed you, I would look up at the sky and feel better for the fact that we are still under the same sky! When I just gave up after years, you pinged me all at once. And that day was the most delighting day in my life, the day when my tears had come into contact with my smiling lips.

 It has been around ten years of friendship and we have not met each other since you came from abroad. But it was not as like before. Missing you became easy for me now, because I think you are now just one day further away from the last time I saw you, and you are one day closer to the next time I will see you. 

God! Please let us meet soon! 

Probably we would have made some hundreds of secrets, thousands of jokes, and millions of memory. But, they all bestowed to be a reason for one beautiful thing so called our friendship!

Life moves on, but memories don’t.

You may have gone away,

but our friendship is right here…

in my heart.

I miss you diiiiiii....I love you!

With smiles...

Swathi Mohan

(Investing myself completely in the art of living)

No, your stupid friend...!

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’  

Unforgettable friend because it's hard to forget someone who gave me so much of memories.

This post has won the WOW badge from Blogadda. Click here to see the winners announced.

Maturity -thoughts

Maturity is

1.      When you realize *maturity is deliberate of your attitude and not your age.*

2.      When you lose an argument to win a relationship.

3.      When you realize that books are the best gifts you can ever give or get.

4.      When you just stop looking for the "likes" on Facebook.

5.      When you realize that your school teachers are irreplaceable.

6.      When you come to understand the difference between love and crush.

7.      When you start prioritizing your works.

8.      When you realize that the technology now is 4 to 5 decades ahead of your concepts in Engineering.

9.      When you realize that too much of perfection is never worth to live in this world.

10. When you realize how much the social networking sites project you fake.

11. When you stop exaggerating at someone who gives opinions on sex in general.

12. When you realize that life is short to look at things very serious.

13. When you realize that just a sheet of paper filled with marks can't decide your future.

14. When you realize that doctors are not God. They just comfort you in your tough times if you have money.

15. When you stop failing the student to intentionally reduce his internals just to revenge him.(If you are a professor in engineering college especially)

16. When you start realizing that the world doesn't run only because of love. Yes. Selfishness overrules.

17. When you stop pronouncing *Bandage* for Band-aid :P

18. When you realize that trusting someone who betrayed you is the most foolish thing you can ever do.

19. When you realize that technology is also a suppressor, not to the world. But to the individual.

20. When you stop expecting your professors to care for you and motivate in all aspects because 89% fails to do.

21. When you start realizing that people are more important than money.

22. When you start smiling just to ignore people who have hurt you, instead of taking revenge on them.

23. When you realize that marriage is a socially admitted license to have sex. (* yes! sex. Hope you are matured enough not to exaggerate it*)

24. When you realize that I’ m matured enough because I did n’t write sex in bold letters. :p :p

25. But maturity is when you realize that all these will be known to you only when you come across. :p ( After all, maturity starts when the drama ends and hence is life)

With smiles…

Swathi Mohan

(Investing myself completely in the art of living)

PS: By the way, this is my answer on Quora which got "nK" views and Many messages!

Stay grounded

9 slapped 8.

8 asked, "Why did you slap me"?

9 replied, "You are inferior to me, so I slapped you."

Upon hearing this, 8 went to 7 and slapped 7 harder.

When asked by 7 why 8 gave the same reply that 9 said.

"You are inferior to me".

Likewise,

7 slapped 6.
6 slapped 5.
5 slapped 4.
4 slapped 3.
3 slapped 2.
2 slapped 1.

Now 1 has 0 as its inferior.

But, instead of slapping—

1 welcomed 0 with love. Allowed 0 to stand next to it.

The duo became 10.

Tables turned and it is now number 9's turn to get slapped.

Moral:

·         Choose your relations wisely.

·         A good friend is as worthy as 1000 good books.

·         A bad friend is as harmful as 1000 enemies.

·         Even a mighty snake dies if a group of ants attack. Never be proud of your position. Stay grounded.

Ever and anon

One of the greatest lessons that adults can learn from children is the enviable ability to find happiness with simplicity. My cousin's son, have an unconditional love for me and I have fallen for him a few times. Whenever we all get together occasionally he loves to spend time with me solitarily and I have always wondered when all children like him play running here and there, he takes a firm stand to spend his time with me alone. He hugs me often and always wanted to hear the, "when you were me" stories from me.

The same stories told him for a dozen times continue to blossom as fresh flowers.

Once during a rainy day, when the drops bore down mercilessly upon the heart of the city pounding on rooftops  and turning the cobbled streets of the downtown district into a warren of slick stones and muddy waters, the sparrow that is twittering on the edge of the balcony  called up to me this moment, a world of memories that reach over half my lifetime, and a world of hope that stretches farther than any flight of sparrows.

Yes! His hug made me fly.

Whenever he hugs me on the spur of the moment without any particular reason, it meant he wanna hear the same "when you were me" stories. 

He hugged me and asked, "dhidhi! the first day of your school was the longest day for you, isn't?" (which I have said him once)

 I said, " yes, my laddu".

 He again continued just to provoke me," How can a day be longer than 12 hours day, and other 12 hours night. It makes up the same 24 hrs dhidhi" 

"Why not my baby, when you sit with your maths homework or watch Doraemon, don't you feel you have been working out a multiplication for an hour even it is minutes, and had been reading the enchanted episodes of Doraemon for just a few minutes even though you been lost in it for an hour?", I asked.

He didn't reply, excited & continued, "Dhidhi, did you love to do maths homework, or watch Doraemon"

"Oh, dear! I always slept over my maths book whenever I opened it, and your uncle would always pull me up by my long hair and glare at me. One day I told my mom that she should cut my hair very short that it would be easier for her to comb it.But she got me some new oil which helped hair grow thicker and faster! She of course never knew why I wanted my hair short, to prevent my dad pulling me up by my hair!"

 He jumped up and rolled in laughter. And, he would want to hear the story all again. He would again insist me after some time,"Dhidhi,  tell  me why I wanted to have short hair."

He again said excited, " Oh dhidhi once uncle offered you special dinner???"

"Yes! I was very weak to swot up multiplication tables, and once he locked me up in my study until I learned a few tables correctly. The incident at that time was between hot tears and somehow I learned to recite it to my dad's satisfaction and finally he awarded me a special dinner that night, took a time to travel."

He saw me with awe. 

I could literally feel he was little confused to feel comfortable with his weaknesses or work hard even behind locked doors to vanquish them. The beauty of the story is that he accepted both possibilities. It makes him closer to me while sharing my weakness, and made them look up to me while struggling with his weaknesses. Neither the weakness nor the strength was a barrier between us; they became a way to bond us. He did not look me up as a formidable elder who intruded in his life, but someone who was pushing him beyond his reach, as a friend who walks with him.

In fact, I learnt how to be simply happy and rediscover the eternal child within me. 

 ‘This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.’ 

With smiles...

Swathi Mohan

(Investing myself completely in the art of living)

PS: This blogpost has won the WOW badge. Click here to see all other winners!