Why I hate Rickshaws!

In my opinion, the best time to take your car out and drive civilized on Bombay roads is when there is a rickshaw strike!

For those of you who are reading this blog and have no idea what I’m talking about here’s a background:

“An Auto Rickshaw is a three-wheeled annoying vehicle that has a capacity for 3 passengers. It is the main cause to the traffic problem in Bombay and does everything it can to contribute more in ruining the traffic situation even on highways. Because of its front wheel, it has the annoying edge in being able to maneuver through traffic, breaking all the traffic laws. The Auto-Rickshaws in Bombay….. (wait for it) have now made the traffic laws. If you ain’t driving like an auto rickshaw-walla, you haven’t learnt how to drive”

 

With my definition complete, here are my top reasons (of my infinite list) to hate rickshaw-wallas and their annoying 3 wheelers.

• They cause traffic jams
• They fiddle with their meters to increase fares
• They try to squeeze into spaces they can’t fit into, causing more traffic jams.
• They break the laws
• They drive on the wrong side of the roads!
• There are no laws with them
• They DO NOT GIVE DRIVING TESTS and are given licenses in masses.
• Some ricks even cause pollution.
• Some ricks have annoying horns, some even sound like trucks – to scare you to make you believe there is a very irritated truck driver honking at you to make you hurry up.
• They pullover for passengers without giving any signals. For that matter, they never use their signals ever!
• They go on strike quite often just to throw stupid tantrums about how they are so unhappy about so many things. If they do bring their ricks out during a strike, they charge you exorbitant fares.
• With the meter down halfway:

Me: Rickshaw!! (with my hand out, calling a free one)

Rick: Kidhar jaana hai?

Me: (Stating my destination, I get into the rick – only to hear the rickshaw walla say….)

Rick: Nahi jayega.

Me: Kyun?? Phir gaadi kyun rok kar poocha ke kaha jaana hai mujhe?

Rick: Arre?? Tumne roka! Tumne dekha nahi ki meter toh engage hai?

Me: (fuming!!) Chalo abhi! mein toh bait gayi (too comfy to pick up all my stuff and move) nahi toh police station chalo!

Rick: (very calmly replies…) Chalo! main toh bataoga ki meter toh engaged tha, aur tum zabardasti kar rahe the!

And I had to get out of the rick and get another one!

Here is my latest story with a rick, so that by the end of this post, my reader hates ricks as much as I do, joining hands with me to fight this cause.

So, on my way to work, there is just this one signal at a round-about, which is a pretty long wait if you miss the green light. As we approach the signal, which to my relief was green (which meant there would be no 10 mins wait here), to my horror, the ricksha- walla stops the rick!

Me: Challoooo!!!!!

Rick: (Very calmly replies) Signal dekho Madamjee

Me: Kya!? Signal green hai! Red matlab stop, Green matlab Go!

Rick: Arre Madamjee! Abhi Red hoga!

So we waited for the signal to turn from ‘green’ to ‘red‘, then ‘green’ again, to start moving.

Before I end, I must tell you.. I do not own my vehicle. Sad but true, I travel by rickshaw to work. But my motto everyday is to teach the rickshaw-walla who I travel with for 10 mins on my way to work, is one new traffic rule.
But I believe that through this, I will change the world – One Rickshaw-walla at a time!

 

Fearfully and Wonderfully Made

Psalm 139:14
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.

How many times have I heard that, what does it mean?

The Bible tells us that we are made in God’s image,
He has formed us with His very hands,
He knitted me in my mother’s womb
He has ordained every one of my days and
I am His child.

Why am I writing today about Psalm 139?
There are times in every one’s life when we wonder if there is a God, wonder if there really is a heavenly father or a heaven.
Psalm 139 speaks of the love of our Father in heaven and what he has showered down upon mankind and his creation. To think and imagine that the God who created the universe and earth and the skies has molded and formed every part of our bodies and made us in His image is too deep a thought to fathom. To think that he pays attention to that much detail, tells me what a masterpiece of God every single one of his creation is.
What’s more? The bible confirms that he continues to pay that much attention every detail and that psalm was only the beginning of what He continues to do in our lives, EVEN when we aren’t responding.

How could they say there is no God?
The bible says he breathed His breath into us, which means that my first breath was God’s. I have His nature & His Spirit in me. It’s upto me to let the Spirit nature dominant and not the sin nature.

Well, what do I do with this life that He has given me?
I live for Him, Live for His Glory. Renew my mind to believe in every one of his truths everyday and trust Him to know what’s best for me.
For times when I know the going gets tough I know that every diamond is made under the most pressure.

For those of you reading this and wondering what this blog is about, it’s about your life and your pressures.
There is a Lord who is your God who is watching over you. He has breathed His breathe into your body and has given you the gift of perfect life. Claim it! It’s your birth-right.

Remember through your troubles that you are Fearfully and Wonderfully Made.
As I sign off I’m reminded of a song, that reminds me of the love my Father in Heaven has bestowed upon me.

Questions?
In the comments. I’ll try answer as many as I can

 

Life Balances

Life is such a RUSH!

All that I’ve been doing in these past few weeks is rushing from one day to the next, one chore to the next, one job to the next, one mood to the next.. It’s a wonder one year has passed by and I haven’t noticed time fly by with the amount I have been rushing about.

One thing that I do struggle with the most is time management and to use the word ‘struggle’ really undermines my efforts!

From work, to my personal life, to friends and my space – it just seems like there aint enough time doing justice to either area of my life. The only area I think that is most justified really is my work, with the amount of time I spend at my computer and the amount of time I spend at my phone talking to people about work, for work.

So here is what inspired this blog post:
Jobs in India: specifically Bombay involves slogging your ass off, sure work maybe a lot of fun but it leaves with you with barely any time to socialize. Having said that, although work hours maybe super comfortable (with come in when you please, leave when you please) there isn’t anything to do after you leave since you leave that late – since you are that tired and family is just waiting for you to get home and talk about your day and everything you missed out on, while you weren’t home.

To top it off after 5 days of work work work, comes the blissful weekend – the ‘Saturday’ and the ‘Sunday’ (the angels sing aaaaah!), but everything that you have planned for the weekend can be worked out today. But hey! guess what, just like you have planned stuff for your weekend, so have the people in your life planned stuff for ‘YOUR” weekend.

How do I balance that? By doing what everyone else wants and pushing my sleep and my two days of rest aside.

For those of who (if there are any readers to this blog) are in college and are reading this blog wondering why I’m complaining when I’m working and thankfully not studying and in college…. All I wanna say to you “Enjoy college while it lasts, once your out – Life happens”

P.S. If this blog sounds to you like I am complaining – I am not, I love my job and have the perfect family, I just need to learn how to balance my life out. In the comments: Suggestions on how I can do it – Will be very much appreciated!

 

A day in Bangalore

So work takes me to Bangalore and outta Bombay for the first time. Why was I going? To witness the first ever Fan Summit by RCB.

Did not sleep the night before anxiously waiting for the day to begin, in a hope that I would not ruin the first campaign that I had taken the pains to put together, right from the first day it began. So as I lay awake in my bed, all I did was rehearse the entire day in my head over and over again, which was my lullaby that night.

Woke up early next morning to know my flight was delayed by an hour which only gave me some more time to panic about stuff going wrong. We flew out, reached the beautiful ITC Gardenia with Bangalore’s most pleasant weather at 22 degrees welcoming us.

Had some tasty lunch, started to set up and as I did I started to calm down too. I realized all I gotta do is what I love doing the most – Blogging about the entire event, meet the fans, talk to people, enjoy the fame RCB gave me!

It was actually supposed to have been a day at work but it turned out to be quite a fun day actually. Which is when I realized – You gotta love the work you do, you gotta be confident you can pull it off, knowing that you can and seeing a picture of it in your head is what drives you to do it right.

As the bible says, “Man’s imagination has the power to create”, which I realized is exactly what I did.

I make my day, I imagine success, I imagine positivity and I imagine a complete work.

Thank you Lord for that revelation, sure helped me through the day You made possible for me! Amen!

 

Happy Birthday to ME!

The 26^th of February, 2010 was my 22^nd birthday & also the first birthday I had nothing planned out. It was turning out to be quite a normal day except that a lot a people called me to wish me.

My day started with my phone ringing away, me forgetting it’s probably someone calling to wish me, disconnecting the call and going right back under my blanket. When I did wake up, returned all the calls and my messages, it still did not feel like a special day at all.

I went to work, did not have any new clothes to wear so wore something that was lying ignored that mum thought was new, so that worked well. Went to work, was flooded with birthday emails which was a lot more attention than I’d normally get at work and That was when the day started to get special!

Dwayne came to meet me for like 10 mins at work which was good enough for me The Royal Challengers Blog had a Happy Birthday to Natasha blog post up with all the fans on RCB wishing me on my birthday. I felt like a celebrity! Not just that, one of the fans from RCB – RadioSandeep had started a discussion called ‘Happy Birthday Natasha’. You’d think that was it right? More than enough celebrity treatment for a girl? Well, that was just the beginning! My friends at work/colleagues treated me to lunch, we cut cake (strawberry cheese cake!!) & well.. something else on RCB!!

So Nidhi walks in with- “Oh good, your still here! I need you to just check one more thing before you leave” (Just when i was about to leave, i was just hoping there wasn’t more work to do) She continues, “Check the Blog on RCB, something there for you.” I checked it to find – A Podcast – My First! A Podcast dedicated to me!! I had goosebumps listening to it. I felt celebrity-ish! Too Bad I can’t upload the podcast here. Check it on the link.

After the podcast, we drove in Nidhi’s ‘dream zen’ just to get some coffee, but when we reached it was time for me to leave!

So I leave for home, when I get home, Tanya tells me get ready quick.. we going to dinner. So I go to my room, find clothes laid out for me to wear, come back out and there are all of my friends standing in the dark in my house screaming “SURPRISE!!!!” Tanya had planned out the WHOLE thing!!! I was so ‘surprised’ to see them I did not recognize them in that much time, I could only see people, couldn’t process who they were:) That by the way, was only when Oscar wished me.. But it was all fun anyway! And i finally met Gina!

So my birthday turned out even more and more special through the day. Turning 22 was fun!

Oh and.. I will Blog more!