Preeti Shenoy's Blog, page 26

Life is so unpredictable. Stop judging! #Sridevi

This morning I woke up to the news of the legendary Sridevi, being no more at 54. I have grown up watching her movies. She is a tremendously talented actor.

I have been reading so many write-ups about her. There are whatsapp forwards, blog posts, news reports, status updates and so much more.

What I do not understand is how people comment on her personal life. They have watched her movies, or met her at an event, or know her through 'friends of friends' etc. They talk about how she 'tried to hold on to her beauty', how she went under the scalpel, how she was stressed etc etc.
Everything about her is open game --no matter what the truth is.

I am saddened reading these discussions.

I lost my father to a cardiac arrest. He was healthy,  fit as a fiddle, had none of the age related ailments and looked so much younger for his years. He had twice the energy of someone half his age. Even on the day he passed away, he had gone for his usual 6 km walk. He was just 66.  It was no age to go. His death was a huge paradigm shift for me. It altered forever the way I look at things.

Cardiac arrests happen.
It can happen to you, to me--to anybody.

STOP JUDGING. Don't assume you have the right to take anybody's personal life apart, just because their death was untimely, that too of natural causes.

Please say a prayer for her family.
And for her soul.

Nothing more.
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The inspiration behind each of my books and seven other fun questions.

For today's post, I thought I would share these questions, which I get asked over and over!


1.      What is the inspiration behind your books?Each book is inspired by a different thing. In Secret Wish list, I explore the concept of whether wishes can come true just by writing them down and doing nothing about it. In Its All In the Planets, I explore ‘Fate versus Destiny’. Each chapter starts with an astrological prediction, and by the end of the chapter, you get to know whether the prediction came true or not. Why We Love The Way We Do is a non-fiction book about relationships, which are again adapted from my newspaper columns in the Financial Chronicle. Each of my nine books, have different inspirations. But the common inspiration is life itself and the complicated nature of human relationships.

2.      Tell us one thing that no one else knows about youThat I am an artist, a yogi, a traveller, an avid urban farmer and I grow my own vegetables; Also I played national level basketball at school. I love fitness and I run everyday. 


3.      Name one author you'd like to spend an evening with. Nobody, I would rather read their books than talk to them. But If I had to choose one person, it would probably be Emily Dickenson or Sara Teasdale.
4.      Name one book you want a sequel to: Can’t think of any. There are thousands of new books waiting to be read, relished, discovered and enjoyed. Why not move on rather than wishing for with sequels which don’t exist?
5.      Name one female author you look up to:
 Audrey Niffeneger.
6.      Name one book you wish you could read for the first time again: Time Traveller’s Wife or The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society       
7. You are stranded on an island, which one book you would like to have with you?
A survival guide. With detailed instructions on how to make a boat and escape. An Illustrated edition would be good.
8.      And last, but quite debatable: Paperback or Kindle? Either--as long as the book is interesting! _______________________________Buy my books: http://preeti.io/amazon
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Sacred

Be that manWho looks his woman in the eye when he gets homeAnd says ‘You look beautiful, darling.’And means it.Because this thing you have going is Sacred
Be that manWho offers his woman a back rub, a glass of wineOr coffee Or simply some time and spaceWhere she can be herself.Because this thing you have going is Sacred

Be that manWho doesn’t make jokes about his woman, behind her backBecause she is too precious, too dearSome things you do not joke aboutBecause this thing you have going is Sacred.
Be that manWho would drop everything in a jiffy to be beside her Not because she cannot manageBut because you know how much she hates to do it all by herselfTell her she is strong and brave, And hold her handBecause this thing you have going is Sacred______________________  **************© 2018 Preeti Shenoy

For more poems click here. Some poems have already appeared in print. Kindly do not reproduce without permission. Buy my books: http://preeti.io/amazon

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How to save a bad relationsip

Amongst the thousands of posts flooding the social media, a very catchy GIF caught my eye. I shouldn’t have clicked on it but I did and then I got sucked into that black hole of the Internet, where time and you both disappear, only to emerge many hours later, to discover that absolutely no work has been done and your brain now filled with useless information like who vacationed where, and what the Biriyani tasted like at someone’s wedding, and the picture which someone’s child drew.But, the saving grace was that this GIF that I clicked on was not entirely useless. It talked about saving a marriage.
It told us the story of a couple that had been married for long, who were now fighting, all the time. There was a lot of negativity between them. The wife criticized anything that the husband did or said. Anything that the wife said, the husband pounced on her. The relationship had soured to an extent where it   showed no signs of improving. After months of this domestic war, the man got tired of this and decided to do something about it.  In the depths of despair, inspiration came to him, when he realised that he couldn’t change his wife and that he could only change himself. When he woke up that morning, he asked her ‘What can I do to make your day better, today?’ She was suspicious and cynical, and asked him why would he want to do that. He repeated his question, saying that he wanted to make her day better, and then he asked again, till she exploded in rage, saying ‘If you really want to do something, clean the kitchen.’ Wordlessly the man did it. Each morning the man asked the same question, and every time the wife came up with a new task that had to be done around the house. He did it cheerfully, without any complaints. Sometime during the second week, when the man asked the question, a miracle happened. The wife burst into tears and told him to stop asking her that. She admitted that he was not the problem, but it was her. She was difficult to live with, and she told him she did not know why he still stayed with her. He lifted her chin gently and told her it was because he loved her and he wanted to be the agent of change.  He then asked her what he could do to make her day better, and she told him that maybe they could spend time together. He told her he would love to. From that day onwards, their relationship changed. His wife started asking what she could do for him. It wasn’t that they never ever had a fight again. They did. But when the disagreements cropped up, they were able to resolve it with love and understanding. The man says that decades later, they are still together, and every once in a way, one of them will roll over, and ask the other what they can do for the other person.This story—I have no idea whether it is a fact or a product of a writer’s imagination--- sounds very nice, almost too good to be true. If it is true, the guy who saved his marriage, by doing this should be conferred sainthood!
One of the hardest things to do is to be deliberately nice to someone who is being unkind or unfair to you. But the key thing here, and in all relationships is that we are powerless to control the behaviour of others. We can only make changes within ourselves. We can tweak what we say and how we say it. We can adjust and fine-tune our body language and our tone. But this is possible only if there is deep love, and there is a genuine desire to improve things. To make a change in a relationship, which is mired in sarcasm, angry, words and indifference would require super-human effort from the person wanting the change. The wounds of the past cannot easily be washed off . Building love and trust is a long process. Unless the couple has made huge investments in nurturing the emotional bonds in the relationship, which can happen only over time, small actions like mowing the lawn and cleaning the kitchen would remain just token gestures, confined to feel-good stories which go viral on the social media.
 No matter how bad a relationship is, there is always hope.
_______________________________buy my books: http://preeti.io/amazon
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A wonderful evening at Amazon India.

Today I went to the Amazon offices in Bangalore, as they had invited me for a lovely event called 'Fishbowl.'  It is open only to Amazon Employees.
We had a lovely session!
I had a full house and it was a superb audience interaction, where I answered many questions about my writing process like how I research, how to plot, Is there a writer's block and many more.

I totally enjoyed myself, and from the feedback I received, so did everyone who attended.
Here are a few pictures from toda










With the Amazon Communications team.
Of course we had to click the mandatory selfies after the event.


A section of the audience


After the event, just before I left.

Thank you Amazon India, for having me over. Thank you for the wonderful gift too.
(They gave me an Echo Dot  and I am truly in love with Alexa now!)

_______________________________
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Some reactions I received for my BBC interview

I guess most of you who read this blog regularly know that I was interviewed by BBC, on television as well as on radio. It was a half an hour in depth sit-down interview.
It was telecast many times, the world over. (The reach is an astonishing 400 million in over 200 countries)
 (click on link to know more and see telecast timings)

For those of you in UK, you can catch it on the iplayer. here's the link:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b09jl6lx/talking-books-preeti-shenoy


I got many emails after it was telecast in the UK and also many tweets.

Since the tweets are in the public domain, I am sharing a few tweets that particularly struck a chord:







I was delighted with these and hence wanted to share it with you, my dear readers, as all of you have been very supportive throughout my writing journey.
That's it for today folks.
Meet me here again tomorrow!
_______________________
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Push your limits. I just broke a record!

I am delirious with joy as I type this, as I have broken a record which I had set in 2012.
The highest number of words I had written in a day was 7256.
Today, I broke that record. I have just finished writing 8252 words of my tenth novel, plus about 750 words for another piece, making it a new record! I had begun writing at 7.30 am this morning, and I am calling it a day now.
Tired, exhausted, exhilarated and oh-so- contented. Those are the rewards, when you push all your limits.
Tomorrow, I go back and do it again :)
To understand what this means to me, do read the piece which I had written in 2012, and which is also on my website.

Click HERE to be taken to my website, to read On Writing.

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Photo by Kaitlyn Baker on Unsplash 
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Be proud to be YOU.

Bow-wow, a 30-year-old rapper and actor became the butt of ridicule on social media for posting a photo on his Instagram account, where he said he was boarding a private jet at Atlanta.  Bow-wow, whose real name is Shad Moss frequently, posts pictures of his lavish lifestyle. He is very successful in his music career, having sold more than ten million albums. He has a massive online following of more than 3.4 million on Instagram.  It turned out that the picture, which Bow-wow posted was an image ripped off the Internet, and it wasn’t even at Atlanta. After posting the picture of ‘his private jet’, Bow-wow boarded a regular commercial flight to New York and travelled economy, where a fellow passenger spotted him, posted a picture of him in the flight, and called out his lie.

 A few years back, the much revered Lance Armstrong, a cyclist who won the Tour De France seven consecutive times, and came back to win again, after fighting testicular cancer, fell from fame to disgrace, as it turned out he was on banned performance enhancing drugs. He had been fooling the system throughout. In 2012, UCI stripped Armstrong of his seven Tour De France titles and banned him for life. Nike terminated his contract and he also stepped down as the chairman of Livestrong foundation, which he had started to improve the lives of those affected by cancer.
Bow-wow’s posting a fake photo is definitely a lesser misdemeanour than that of Armstrong’s. However, what is common to both is that they are taking refuge under falsehood, trying to project a picture, which is simply not true.  
The strange thing is that both Armstrong and Bow-wow are very successful on their own merit. Why then do they resort to unethical means? Whom are they trying to impress when their followers and fans already love them for who they are? Why try to be someone who you clearly are not?
It is not only the celebrities or hugely successful people who think it is okay to paint an incorrect picture. Many of us who lead plain, normal and ordinary lives do so too. A wonderful movie that I watched yesterday called Dum Laga Ke Haisha(2015), written and directed by Sharat Kataria, stars Ayushman Khurrana who plays Prem, a high school dropout. It has a scene depicting an arranged marriage. In the preliminary meeting, the prospective bride and the prospective groom meet at a temple, along with their families. When the groom’s father asks what the educational qualification of the bride is, her father proudly tells them that she is a graduate and is now doing her B.Ed, studying to be a teacher. When they ask about the groom’s qualification, his family lies and tells them that he is a Commerce graduate. The reality is that he has repeatedly failed his class ten examinations. This portrayal of falsehood creates many complications in their married life. We know of many marriages like the above, where truth is hidden in the hope that after the two get married, it will all somehow work itself out.
All of us know that one incorrigible friend or a relative who exaggerates their own achievements or that of their children. They boast telling us of the exotic vacations they took or the fabulous pay packets that they earn.  Their audience simply listens out of politeness, as they do not want to call out their bluff. But once they leave, there are sniggers about the grand claims.
With the kind of lives that we lead, immersed in our phones, our gratification comes mostly from social media. Everyone, including Armstrong and Bow-wow is concerned about keeping up appearances. If you don’t have it, you fake it and pretend you do. We post happy vacation pictures of Facebook and other media to show what a great time we are having.  Never mind the fight that you might have had with your spouse, it is the Instagram photo and the ‘likes’ that you will get which counts more than pacifying an irate partner.

It is mostly for a sense of acceptance and validation that people do it. Our egos need to be stroked constantly. We crave adulation and praise. All of us want to be loved and admired for who we are. The problem arises when we want to be loved and admired for who we are not.
________________________________This piece was first  published in The Financial Chronicle

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These onions won't make you cry!

A painting I made today. I guess art is all about finding beauty in the mundane :)

See more of my art: Instagram.com/preetishenoyart
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A one minute writing challenge for you.

There's a site called One word.
It's very simple. You will see one word at the top of the screen. You have sixty seconds to write about it. You don't have to think..You have to just write.

I did that for today's post.  The word I got was

Danced 

Here's what I came up with.

 She danced as she thought no one was watching. But unknown to her Mr. D’souza was by the door. She winced in pain, grimaced but nevertheless carried on. It was important to her. She was dying. Only, no one knew but her.


Your turn now!Go :)And once you have written it, come back and share it here, in my comment box. (share your word, as well as what you wrote)[You can also see other people's entries for the same word on the site]  _________________________
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Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash


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