Preeti Shenoy's Blog, page 44

Why you should smile today. (Blog marathon post 1)

 The above mail, is as good a reason as any to start my blog marathon! Yes! I start today. 30 days. A new post every day! If you want them delivered to your inbox,  just enter your email id on the right, and hit enter. I promise I won't sell your email id to those people in Nigeria wanting to give you money, or anyone else :) It is safe with me.

It’s been a while since I was here. The reason as you all know is because I was lost in my novel. Most writers will tell you that when they write a novel, they go into another world. Completely. They live with their characters for months and months. To them (and later when the book comes out, to the readers as well) those characters are real. You form a connection with those characters, and live in their worlds for a while. I am no different. I was lost in the world of Aniket, Nidhi, Subbu, Tara and many more, whom you will meet too, when the novel comes out.
I finally sent my 2nd edits yesterday. If you want to know what the editing process is like, click here.Today to celebrate, I treated myself to a movie. We watched ‘ Waiting’, directed by Anu Menon, starring Naseeruddin Shah and Kalki Koechlin. The movie was simply brilliant. Outstanding. Finely nuanced. It left me speechless. Even hours after the movie, I haven’t recovered.
Just before I entered the multiplex, I got recognised by a group of readers. They came upto me and told me how much they loved my books. They said they were employees of Capgemini and they said they were waiting for my next novel.  They also told me that they follow my blog avidly. I told them I would be starting my blog marathon today. They said they look forward to it. Then they clicked a picture with me.
When I got home in the evening, there was a huge storm.I was happy to be back home safe. I watched the rains lashing out in fury, from my balcony. I was filled with gratitude that I had shelter, and I sent a prayer of safety for those who didn't. 
 If we have a comfortable home, we are indeed blessed. Take a moment to send out gratitude. 1.77 million people are homeless in India.(and this is according to the 2011 census).
Till tomorrow, keep that feeling of gratitude in your heart, and a smile on your face. You look better that way!
ps: here is a selfie, I clicked in the multiplex today. 
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http://preetishenoy.com/

How to tell if it is the right decision.

It is summer in India. Bangalore is scorching hot. Thirty eight degree centigrade. Blazing sun. Skies so bright, you can't really  see the blue. Only white. Heat. Heat and more heat.

So you can imagine what state I must have been in at 1.00 pm when I finally reached the gas agency. I needed to buy a rubber tube and also get one of those consumer books. The gas agency was crowded, teeming with customers who had issues ranging from a booking not accepted, a cancelled gas connection and a transfer which needed to happen. The lines were long and tempers were short.

As I was waiting to be attended to,  in walks a bull. He was in full finery.



It reminded me of what my teacher had told me when I was about 7 or so. He had told me of 'Basavannas' in karnataka-- which is basically a bull that apparently answers questions with a yes or a no. My teacher said that if you ask Basavanna a question and say "Is that a yes basavanna' he will shake his head with a yes. if you ask the same question  and say 'is that a no basavanna?' he will shake his head again to indicate it's a no. What my teacher was trying to say was that you couldn't really get any meaningful answer from Basavanna.

He asked us to be decisive in life. To never be like basavanna.To weight the pros and cons when faced with a dilemma and to march boldly ahead.

Many a time we are plagued with doubts as to whether it is the right decision we made. We forget that sometimes we are just puppets with strings of destiny.
No matter what you do, whatever is ordained will occur. There is free will, yes. So we can choose what course of action to take. But some life events are truly not in our hands. So once you decide, whatever you have decided is the right decision. Do not worry about it.

This little lesson of philosophy was what passed through my head, as soon as I saw this Bull in the gas agency. I fished out a ten rupee note from my purse, and gave it to this Basavanna.

Walking around in the Bangalore heat, going from shop to shop , I think he truly earned it.

Till next time, stay cool, stay hydrated. Don't let the heat get to you.


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Buy Why We Love The Way We Do at a great price too: Bit.ly/WhyWeLoveTheWayWeDo






http://preetishenoy.com/

Photos from the award night ( Business excellence award by NDIM Academia awards 2016)

So at a glittering event at Jahawarlal Nehru Stadium, new delhi, in the presence of more than 2000 people, I got my award from Shekhar Gupta.
If you wish to know more about it, read my last post. 

  Here are the pictures which I promised to share.

I left for Delhi , wiht my family by the early morning flight, and we had a great time going around delhi, shopping in Sarojini market, Khan market, eating lovely street food.

At sarojini market


Then when it was time to leave for the event, I wore a saree.



Was asked to say a few words after I got it
Shekhar Gupta already knew me from the India Today story. It was delightful to meet him

The certificate


And  finally, here is the award..It is beautiful!



That's all for today's post.
Will be back soon.

Till then, be cheerful. Remember, there are people with far worse problems than what you face at the moment. And it WILL pass.
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Buy my book 'It happens for a reason' at a great price
Buy Why We Love The Way We Do at a great price too: Bit.ly/WhyWeLoveTheWayWeDo









http://preetishenoy.com/

A proud moment Winning an award (business excellence award from NDIM --Academia Awards 2016)

Good Lord! Where does time fly?
I know the answer to that one. It vanishes into the pages of the new novel you are working on, if you happen to be a novelist :)

Yes, I have been working on my new novel and i am completely lost in the world I have created. I do not know when it is day and night anymore. I wake up, and it is like my characters beckon me. Every novelist will tell you that these characters live inside your head, the entire duration that you are writing the book. You laugh with them, cry with them, rejoice at their triumphs, feel sad at their disappointments and you are lost in their lives. It is hard to switch tracks and juggle an existence in the real world. Which is why I think, novelists who are writing a book should take a 'van-vaas' in the Himalayas.

So, it was in this frame of mind that a mail landed in my inbox, that jolted me back to the real world. Pretty quickly. I landed with a loud BANG. Not a gentle thud.

The mail was from the retd. Judge of Supreme Court of India and Chief Justice Bombay High court, informing me that I had won the coveted Business Excellence Award, instituted by New Delhi Institute of Management, for outstanding contribution to their field, enhancing India's reputation internationally and nationally.

You can imagine my reaction---surprise and an overwhelming sense of deep gratitude. I immediately shared the news with my family and closest friends, and publishers as well who were elated.
I am sharing with you the text of the mail I received. (shared with permission)

Dear Ms. Preeti Shenoy,Every year India’s premier MBA school New Delhi Institute of Management recognizes and awards distinguished professionals like you for innovative best practices, for their outstanding contribution to specific activities and for such efforts by them which add to India’s national and international reputation.Since public acknowledgment at times is not commensurate with the outstanding efforts of achievers like you, New Delhi Institute of Management instituted “Business Excellence and Innovative Best Practices- Academia Awards” in 2013 to acknowledge such contribution. CMDs of NTPC, ONGC, OBC, STC, GAIL, Power Grid Corporation , NTPC , REC, Yes Bank, OIC, Hyosung Corporation India, HINDUSTAN POWER PROJECTS , UFLEX, LG, CMC, Schneider Electric, AIMA, Samsung, Fortis Healthcare , Cushman & Wakefield, Schneider Electric, Jaipur Golden & EXL India, NHRDN, Quatrro, Zomato, Amul, NDTV, Max Life Insurance, Ultra Tec and HAVELLS  have been felicitated under different heads of activities with these awards.”Academia Awards” by NDIM to distinguished change agents like you have been highly appreciated by the Industry and the business chambers as NDIM is nationally and internationally accredited and is among the top 25 MBA schools of India and one of the first  to institute the “Academia Awards” for “Business Excellence and Innovative Best Practices”. These awards also help in inculcating the spirit of hardwork and innovation in our MBA students who take tremendous pride in researching the outstanding activities of great achievers. The awardees are chosen through extensive research by our 800+ MBA students, 74 members of faculty (drawn from 19 international universities and 201 industrial houses), our Advisory Council & Executive Council, and are presented by the high powered Board of Directors.Today, when the country is readying for a bigger leap into history, we want you to associate with the Academia Awards-2016 as their distinguished recipient and inspire the young MBAs in the future journey.We shall be honored to confer the “Business Excellence and Innovative Best Practices-Academia Awards -2016” on you at our 25th Annual Festival at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium (auditorium) on 12th March 2016 at 7pm in the august gathering of 2100 distinguished invitees, media, bureaucrats and young students. Felicitations would be at the hands of famous Journalist Shri Shekhar Gupta and our Board of Directors (details given below). In the past these awards have been given by former Chief Justices & Supreme Court Judges- Justice Mukundukam Sharma, Justice B.P Singh, Padma Vibhushan Sonal Mansingh along with our distinguished board of directors.We are looking forward to your confirmation and acceptance. The event will take about 40 minutes.
With Regards,Justice BP Singh,(retd)-Judge Supreme Court of India & Chief Justice Bombay High Court.

So I will be flying to Delhi, on Saturday to receive my award. It is indeed a proud moment and my family will be flying with me.

I wish to deeply thank each and every one of you, my dear dear readers, who have been a part of my journey.
I shall share pictures from the event soon!

Till then keep smiling, stay positive and calm and remember to drink lots of water to nourish your body. (summer is round the corner!)

Till the next time ( which will be an update soon), adios.
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Buy my book 'It happens for a reason' at a great price
Buy Why We Love The Way We Do at a great price too: Bit.ly/WhyWeLoveTheWayWeDo







http://preetishenoy.com/

Last post--Visiting my Alma mater--(Blog marathon post 30)

Went to my Alma Mater and got a WONDERFUL welcome. It was fabulous to go back. My session was a national creative writing workshop, which i conducted and it was beautifully received.
Here are some pictures.




In front of my college!
After that I had back to back Press Interviews. I also had an interview with a television channel which is well known in kerala-- Manorama.
Then in the evening I had an event at DC Book house. That went well too! Pics of that, when I get back to bangalore. Painfully slow internet. in my hotel room, from where I am writing this post.

This is the last day of my blog marathon. 30 days have flown so fast!
Will definitely be blogging more often.
A big thank you to all of you who read it and extra special thanks to those who left comments on every post of mine, ever since the blog marathon started. (You know who you are)

Goodnight folks! Keep smiling!
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Buy my book 'It happens for a reason' at a great price
Buy Why We Love The Way We Do at a great price too: Bit.ly/WhyWeLoveTheWayWeDo




http://preetishenoy.com/

Postcards from Kerala and a medley of thoughts (blog marathon post

So, I left home at 7.30 am this morning and am in Kerala right now. I will be conducting a National creative writing workshop at my alma mater, St.Teresa's college Kochi. The other two writers who have graduated from here are Shinie Antony and Jaishree Mishra, both of who are my seniors from college. I feel proud of this Institution.

Tomorrow evening I will be at DC books, convent Junction at 5.30 pm. Come! or if you have riends in Kochi who would like to attend this event, do pass on the inforomation. On 15th I am giving a talk at Sacred Heart college, Kochi and then i get back to Bangalore. In between, I have press interviews too.

Today, as soon as I got off the plane, I was barraged by messages, which demanded that I turn around an assignment in less than 24 hours. It would require me to read at least 25000 words. No prior intimation was given of this deadline. It was foisted upon me and I was asked if I wasn't aware of it. There was no mail sent earlier informing me of the deadline, nor was I consulted. I agreed to do it out of commitment to what I do. When I do something, I put my heart and soul into it. I am sincere, committed and 100 percent genuine. Anyone who has interacted with me or has been reading me or who has met me would vouch for that. One thing I cannot stand is pretence. The other thing I cannot stand is rudeness. Or a sense of I-am-greater-than-you. I deal with it by mentally distancing myself from it and surrounding myself with positivity.  That's usually the best way.

I went on an amazing 6 island tour today. Kerala is indeed God's own country. If you have read my books, you would know that many of them are set in kerala. I share with you two pictures I clicked today-- two postcards from kerala. With love.



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ps: 

 Buy my book 'It happens for a reason' at a great price
Buy Why We Love The Way We Do at a great price too: Bit.ly/WhyWeLoveTheWayWeDo

http://preetishenoy.com/

How to be a sexier man(blog marathon post 28)

If you were a  teen or in college,  in the nineties you would be familiar with the catchy number  ‘I am too sexy’ by Right Said Fred, which released in 1991, going on to reach number two in United Kingdom and No.1 on the US charts. The song is sung from the point of view of a narcissistic, bald muscular, male model with hoop earrings and a netted  mesh shirt  who goes on to sing that his personal level of sexiness makes him too sexy for various different things ranging from a shirt to his cat to New York  to Japan.Another music band The Black Crowes have a song  with really cocky lyrics that  lyrics that go Action speaks louder than words/ And I’m a man of great experience/I know you’ve got another man/But I can love you better than him.There are many songs where the singers brag about themselves and can’t wait to tell the world how great they are and how everyone else just cannot match up to their prowess.How presumptuous and boastful is that?While on screen in music videos such things might be amusing, in real life women would be appalled with a self-obsessed narcissistic guy who is completely into himself and too busy for her. There is a fine line between confidence and being obnoxious. Okay—there is actually a thick fat invisible line, drawn in red --- highlighted, marked, and obvious. Yet many men seem to be oblivious to it. The inherent male competitiveness makes many believe they are a tad more amazing, a tad wiser and a whole lot smarter than they actually are. Scientists say that evolution might have had a part to play in this and it is a trait which is likely to have developed over thousands of years. Various studies have shown that men are most likely to misread signals from attractive women, perceiving their attention to be more sexual than the women actually intended it. They also tended to think the women were more interested in them than they actually were. Men tend  delude themselves into thinking that a particular woman is into him and he might walk away from a conversation with misconception that he has a chance to have sex with her, where as the woman might have just thought that it was nice, friendly conversation.Plenty of advertisements, movies and online articles tell us many ways to ‘be macho’ and impress women by being muscular, fit and an alpha-male. Yet, when real women are asked what they find sexy in a man, you are likely to find unconventional and cute answers which veer from what is presumed to be traditionally sexy.In an online survey, among the lesser known things that women find sexy in a guy were attention to the way they dressed, being kind to animals, reading, respecting waiters, cashiers and other service people, making the bed, helping around the house, being good around children, being kind to someone who is shy and having a good sense of humour with an ability to laugh at himself.In Mating Intelligence unleashed: The Role of the Mind in Sex, Dating and Love , Robert Provine analysed more than 3000  singles and  found that both men and women considered a sense of humour as sexy. But each gender had different perceptions of what they meant by this phrase. Women tended to prefer men who made them laugh, while men preferred women who laughed at their jokes. Social scientists say that an evolved sense of humour indicates both general and verbal intelligence—a quality much desired for the propagation of the species which is why this plays an important role in mate selection. Side note --A tip to be sexier: Women can boost their attractiveness by laughing a bit more and guys can instantly up their hotness quotient by learning how to make her laugh.The other day when I returned back from my yoga class, my spouse had cooked breakfast for me. A grilled sandwich and a fried egg, sunny-side up just the way I liked it.  It was too delicious to not click a picture and so I did, posting it on Facebook with the comment ‘All the single ladies on my timeline: please marry a man who cooks. Men who cook are sexy.’  The post got a record number of likes not only from young women but also from young men, with almost all women agreeing that that indeed cooking is one skill that makes a man instantly sexy.So make her laugh, cook for her, pay her compliments and listen to what she has to say. She will be all yours. _________________________________________________________________This piece first appeared in The Financial Chroniclehttp://preetishenoy.com/

Ten things you do when when you love someone (blog marathon post 27)

No matter how much you try, no matter how much you want to love somebody else, no matter how much you convince yourself that you have moved on, deep down you know the truth. If you are deliriously happy when you think about someone and a smile creeps up on you, even when you are in the worst of moods, if even a mere thought of that person has a power to send a jolt of energy through your weary body, then it is nothing but love. You can try to squish it, pretend that it does not exist, ignore it, try to make it go away, but it never entirely does.
It always finds a way back.

The above lines are from my book The One You Cannot Have.

Here are ten things you do, when you are truly in love with someone:

1. Talking to them for hours feels like just a few minutes
2. You smile throughout the day, each time you think of them
3. You begin to enjoy songs like this one:

 


4.When they are not around, you keep finding yourself, making references about them when you are in conversation with others.
5. When you eat a meal, you click photos and send them.
6.Same when you dress up well.
7.There's no other sound better than the sound of their laughter.
8. If you are apart, then you stare at them mesmerised on video calls.
9. Wifi and 4G suddenly become more necessary than air when you are apart!
10.You are never ever tired to talk to them or see them.

If you can relate to the above, then congratulations for having discovered love.
If you can't--have patience. Love will find you.
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Buy my book 'It happens for a reason' at a great price
Buy Why We Love The Way We Do at a great price too: Bit.ly/WhyWeLoveTheWayWeDo

http://preetishenoy.com/

The magic of absurdity (blog marathon post 26)

 My best friend and I often chat on an Instant Messenger. Sometimes what we talk is so absurd that we crack up completely---and then have to call the other just to hear the absolute helpless laughter. After one such mad session, I wrote this poem which I share below. If you have a friend with whom you can laugh like this, you will probably love this one. Read and let me know if you liked!

Laughter.
Helpless laughter.
Guffaw, chuckles, mirth, cracking-up, cacchination, hilarity
Absurdity.
For a whole five minutes.
Oh, the joy of utter nonsense.
A priceless memory made.
Life gifts you unexpected moments
And sometime in the future,
We will look back and say
“Remember that time when we laughed so hard that our tummies hurt?”
And we will laugh again.
Reliving the magic of absurdity
And it’s power to heal.

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© 2015 Preeti Shenoy
 For more poems click here. Some poems have already appeared in print. Kindly do not reproduce without permission.
Buy my book 'It happens for a reason' at a great price
Buy Why We Love The Way We Do at a great price too: Bit.ly/WhyWeLoveTheWayWeDo

http://preetishenoy.com/

Wissenaire 2016 (blog marathon post 25)

Warm welcomes, Thunderous applause, Ovations---many times during my talk, involved interaction and a lot of love.
Fondest, cherished memories of an evening which went off fabulously---despite the almost cancelled flight, despite a journey of almost 9 hours due to delayed flights, despite barely having time to rest before my talk.
I spoke, they appreciated. And how!
Grateful.http://preetishenoy.com/