Children can pep up your vacation!

It is said that children are forms of God and there is also the common saying that travelling is a part of education. The relevance in mentioning these two seemingly different sayings lies in the strange nervousness among newbie parents when it comes to travelling with their kids. They are simply scared. They are scared merely by the thought, leave alone trying it out! Every good reward needs some sincere planning. Once your travel planning is proper, children can really pep up your vacation! So, instead of postponing your travel plans why not take few simple measures so that your kids have the best of times during their vacations and you can have great time as well?

Being a traveler when my kid was small first thing I had to ensure was not to put a long break to my travel plans and at the same time not to compromise on taking care of my little angel. Undoubtedly it was easier to plan than execution. There were plenty of challenges and my boy was no easy man to agree to my moving nature. But with proper planning, patience and persistence I had managed to overcome the hurdle. Yes I really made my kid a part of most of my travel sagas and he too, as they say “like father like son” gradually developed the affinity of travelling, like baby cubs learn tearing fleshes! Today I shall share with you those old research secrets so that you too can make your kid an integral part of your traveling and amplify the fun of your vacation!

First step is to understand your baby. See, he is a living entity with wishes which you must respect and take care of if at all you intend to make your vacation fun filled. Kids are undoubtedly unpredictable but at the same time, unlike us they are easier to satisfy with small rewards or change in situations. Do not ever tell a direct ‘no’ to your kid. At first make a primary survey of his demand and judge how justifiable it is. It is wise to be open minded and unbiased. Being a kid doesn't always ensure that his demands would be silly. In cases where you think that your kid’s demand is irrational, check whether it is harmful for him. If there’s no harm just agree to that during your travel itinerary to keep things under control. If you feel it is harmful offer him an alternative distraction which you know he can’t refuse! Do not make him feel he is being denied.

Other than this basic knowledge of kid psychology, be careful in your packing items. Your handbag must contain an extra pair of clothes for your kid, his food and the toy he is maximum attached to. Take care of your kid and I assure you your kid would take care of your fantastic vacation and make it enough peppy for you two!

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

Had chosen the hard way!

Life gives us various moments when the same we become best, better, good, bad, worse or the worst. Navigation is must in our life but we never know about the correctness of the path we're choosing! We do either the right thing or the wrong thing, or sometimes a wrong disguised as right. But in all these things we always have a motive behind the real act. Same goes for telling a truth or a lie. There's always a motive. So, it doesn't matter what you're speaking or doing, as everything is ultimately relative. Point is how genuine is your intention behind that truth or that lie. Anyway I'll tell a story today (personal experience) about a time in my life where navigating to the truth was the right thing to do!

We were in college, charged with impulses, emotions and urges to get along with the other gender. Being from a pure boys' school breed, there had been no proper interaction with the other gender in my life previously. Same was true with my other two-three close friends. They all were as if starving to be in friendship with college girls. Honestly so was I! In the beginning of the college you presume certain things and later your blindfold gets loose and you see through more things, even your own actions. I did some good, some shameful and few very bad things during those days, as I analyze them today. Today's story belongs to that class of black deeds for which till today I ask myself if I really did the right thing!

After final year result was out, my best friend Govind rang to my home one afternoon (mobile phone was not there those days) and requested me to meet in college canteen. There was excitation in his voice as evident from the trembling nature. I asked him for a trailer but he did not agree to reveal any secret in advance. While going to college meeting spot, I dragged Manu, our mutual good friend along with me from his house. There was a shyness in Govind's eyes as he unraveled the news- “I am going to get engaged pals! My life is going to change forever, for good. I am super excited brothers. I was never so happy before. Pinch me once to confirm that I am not dreaming, please Tilak.”

Things passed quite fast after that and Govind could hardly give us time due to his personal commitments. We turned up at his house on the day of engagement. Those days carrying a photo of every other person in mobile was not in fashion as there was no digitalization and gadgets then. So, me and Manu were yet to get a glimpse of Govind's going to be bride. We were very excited for that one glimpse. The moment I saw the bride, gorgeously dressed in traditional clothes I was shocked and my heart almost came out of my mouth! It was the very girl with whom I had a relation a year back which was more of a physical nature. She was mean and a reputed liar. Later as she showed her colours and I too eventually understood her nature we had broken up. Now how come my dear friend Govind got trapped to that inappropriate lady, it was impossible for me to digest!

It was never easy but that day I argued with the person inside me thousand times before taking a step. I gathered courage and told everything about that girl to Govind. Later the marriage was canceled. Till date I do not know whether it was a right or wrong thing, but for me, that day telling the truth was really essential. I think I navigated to the right path!

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

Bad body odor has a strong negative impact on your public image!

How to remain smell-free in summer is a big challenge for city dwellers and people who need to commute in the public transport, for them the bigger challenge waits anytime- how to deal with smell people all around! Foul smell from our body can quickly create a negative impact in people around us. Some will have smelly armpit, other will have smelly shirt and few will go to the extent of maintaining smelly head! Simply it is horrible and grossly unacceptable! Honestly speaking, bad body odors can create an impactful and lasting bad impression. 

Once I was commuting in a city bus and like most of the days it was over packed. Hardly there was place to stand, leave aside sitting. Among many others, one guy at my right was dozing off pressing his sweaty smelly armpit portion against my cheek (Alas my short height!). I pushed him awake few times but all in vain. Then I raised my voice and asked him, "Uncle doesn't she get angry by this foul odor... I mean aunty...??? Or, is she fed up with it?" The smelly moron got properly disheartened but seeing a dozen of faces staring at him curiously couldn't give me any reply... silently boarded down the bus in next stop!

Now I'll share another such funny but disgusting memoir of impactful bad body odor.

It was a family get together in summer vacation and I was in class 8 or 9. Occasion was perhaps my parents' belated marriage anniversary A far away relative who claims to be my aunt had arrived late when the last batch for lunch had sat which included me, after taking tare that others have been properly treated. She was a long long ago "past middle aged" obese lady, with extravagant makeup and boasting nature. She used to claim that she spends her summer in London in her son's place to avoid the sticky unbearable heat of India! We always had doubt whether her son was really working in Europe or some Gulf country... anyway! When she entered the hall she was drenched in sweat, huffing puffing her way, gave a plastic smile to all of us sitting with our plate.
"Oh last time didn't I tell you to fix an AC Meenu?" she complained at my mother.
I was praying that she shouldn't spot me in her second sight but my worst fear got materialized. She came running to me and hugged me from back of the chair. A strong foul odor invited my nausea and the piece of papad dropped down from my mouth to oblige the plate!
I screamed revengefully, "Aunty, how long it has been since you haven't taken a bathe? Is it why you fly to London to escape taking bath???"
Impact of what I had said was no less than a family earthquake and I better don't recapitulate that unpleasant episode in finer details.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

Music puts my baby to sleep!

Your child and you is always a complex yet beautiful interaction. Bedtime events are very essential to ensure that my baby sleeps peacefully and allows me to have a proper sleep for myself as well as for my spouse. Children have quite a lot of fickle mindedness and it takes a little or negligible stimulus to disturb them from their state of momentary bliss. Keeping babies asleep for around eight hours, i.e. the entire night is undoubtedly a big challenge for every parents, especially in the initial years. There are many parenting books or rather guidebooks available in the market which teach newbie parents how to tackle with their babies. But I personally feel that there is no fixed recommendation for the same and these ways of tackling our babies should certainly be tailor-made after understanding the demands and nature of individual babies. Coming back to the bedtime rituals, I have my own set of methods to put my baby in to a sound sleep.

I know my baby is very restless kind of human being. Unlike adults, restlessness in babies doesn't always sink down by the end of the day. So, my objective is based on the dampening of my baby's restlessness. Apparently it sounds so simple but it is never an easy thing doing in reality. I play baby songs in low volume for thirty minutes. It is a sort of conditioned reflex which my baby has acquired by now. Perhaps he knows that when I play the music player I wish him to fall asleep! Wait, it is not that simple too. Sometimes he gets irritated by the music track. In those times I instantly stop the damn music and try to sing with my hoarse voice. Somehow, my non-melodious voice pleases my baby's ears and he giggles at my poor attempts, as if slowly relaxing with every bad note.

In majority of those days when my baby digs the music and the melody takes a lead, he usually craves for few particular soft toys, favorite of which is a blue lion called Leo. Actually Leo is larger than him in size but he pretends to be the guardian of that poor thing. My baby tries to mimmick those steps on his soft toys, usually consisting of patting and caressing which I do on him. It is a sheer joy seeing his eyes slowly drooping down like a wax angel. Sometimes I wish I had someone to make me fall asleep. I know I am getting nostalgic and emotional but few emotions are hard to control, right? In remaining nights when the music player and my non-melodious voice fail to charm the kid, I take him to the terrace and walk slowly while patting his back. Either the darkness of the moonless sky or the dim light of the moon, coupled with the light breeze from the far away river bank helps my baby to fall asleep. Mostly it is the music that puts him to sleep!

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

Music fantasy engulfed me for one last time!

In my last blog post I had taken you to my beautiful musical world of imagination where two of my old college pals Ashu and Arushi had tamed a hall full of impatient college audience with their heavenly dance and music. Owing to the ongoing blog marathon, I am lucky to sit idly, close my eyes for the second time so that I can fantasize with my sweet reminiscence and Blog about how any situation would be coated with the magic of music when Ashu's sensational moves and Arushi's magical voice come together! Who doesn't know these young, charismatic and extremely talented regional celebrities well known for their dancing and singing skills respectively. So, here I will recreate Ashu and Arushi's live concert magic once again, in a slightly different background.

A group of Indian passengers are sitting in international lounge at Qatar airport and waiting for their connecting flight to Cape Town. Sitting for five damn hours is never easy and after that when your flight delays for another seven hours it surely becomes hell. There are two breastfeeding kids in the group of passengers and two extremely old passengers, one of them with a walker. A brown haired middle aged man approached the airline counter and came back with a grumpy face. At first he told something to his family. Then another couple of men approached him with sheer curiosity to inquire their flight status. Human psychology is pretty weird. We get curious on things which are not our real problems but just distractions to that. To men who approached the brown haired man pretended to be curious about their flight status but actually they wanted to know what made that guy pissed off. In a nutshell, junk informations are our source of entertainment for sure! Then rest of the passengers gathered around him as he disclosed the reason of his mood swing. The airline executive had refused to give him access to their executive lounge or rest room when he had asked that his wife needed some privacy to breastfeed their infant! Undoubtedly it was not a polite gesture from the airline, especially so when the delay in flight was their liability. Other passengers, mostly women approached to the airline counter to lecture on the lessons of basic etiquettes and humanity. But the executive vanished in the meantime! All they could do were screaming, ranting and cursing the airline company. Had it been their homeland there could be some acts of vandalism too. Just then all heard a heavenly voice and a young enigmatic man arrived dancing on the lounge, as if sent from some other planet to monitor humanity! Oh it was none other than my best pals, Ashu and Arushi! In five minutes of fabulous dancing and singing duo charmed those impatient passengers and kept entertaining them till their flight arrived.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

Old music once again!

I will narrate a story or rather Blog about how any situation would be charged with energy when a dancer's sensational moves and a singer's magical voice come together. It is more like a past recall for me. Ashu and Arushi are great in their respective fields as of today, i.e. dancing and singing, without a doubt. They used to be my college peers. We laughed together, ate together and bunked classes together. So, obviously it will be an enigmatic evening if a single stage holds both of them once again. All I can think are a bunch of lucky old college friends, throwing hats, whistling and clapping. Well, here I'll choose to imagine of a great moment when Ashu and Arushi are performing together after so many years in the same college stage! Let me dive into the world of soothing imagination and enjoy those rare beats of melody, beats of happiness and of course last but not the least, beats of life!

A big hall with perfect acoustic walls, packed with audience and dim lights are all you want to create the fore-ambience of a coming up celebrity on stage who can make the crowd crazy, can make the restless folks mute, can control all of them like a perfect magician. Here also with growing time, college students are getting somewhat restless. Most of them are checking their watches or mobile phones for time as if by checking multiple times they can make a difference. After mutual exchange of dissatisfaction kids start looking at other rows to spread the negativity and waves of impatience. Suddenly sweat trickles down the bald forehead of Mr. Sharma (a parent). “What the hell!”, he screams. How can he get sweaty in an expensive air conditioned auditorium! He gets scared if he is going to get a heart attack or some serious ailment because one of his friends had suffered the same condition a month back. When he tells his son he grins and says that the air conditioning is probably malfunctioning. They look around and see many people wiping their facial sweat with hankies. Now Mr. Sharma gets real mad. Like most other desi public he wants maximum value for his time. He has spent his whole evening for a college show and now how dare the organizer make him taste the heat of summer and delay of ex-student celebrities! The anger spreaded very fast throughout the hall and the head of organizer came to apologize and repaired the cooling fault. But now the issue is no more the air conditioning. Everyone wants celebrities on stage. At that very moment Ashu appears on stage with his perfect dance steps and Arushi singing with a smile, as if God sent them to manage the situation under control! Everyone gets awestruck and starts enjoying the magic of Ashu and Arushi with wide open eyes. I'll come up with more stories about Ashu and Arushi in subsequent posts.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

Keep your kid peppy!

Keeping your child peppy is a a big responsibility and a major part of your family life. What makes my baby peppy is a very tender and sweet discussion. If you ask to any father or mother the reaction will be more or less same, because, babies' demands are universal and certainly not materialistic like adults. Tiny things are usually sufficient to bring happiness in my baby. My baby has specificity but never high demands! So, today I will tell you about few sweet, silly and fun things those keep my baby peppy.

Basically I am a person with least earthly demands. So, possibly my baby inherited that quality! Whenever I see shades of unhappiness in my baby, I play his favorite rhyme tracks. Those are musical version of nursery rhyme. Although he is too small to understand those rhymes I have observed that “twinkle twinkle little star” makes him most euphoric. He bends his head backwards and sways it sidewise, giggling with every rising notes. It's simply a pleasure to watch. My baby also likes to bite soft milk chocolate bars with his few tiny milk teeth. Unlike other over-concerned parents I do not discourage him from taking chocolates as I know it won't affect his teeth or cause cavities if I get his teeth properly brushed, regularly. Moreover, if you become strict about your baby's health from point of idealism you will most probably kill his peppy self.

My baby gets quite peppy when a particular cartoon show is telecasted in television. It is Adam's Family. Again I am very sure that my cute-pie understands nothing that's going on in that television show but I think the unpredictable soundtracks or background music pleases him.

In a local auction shop I had bought an old wooden cum brass rattle for keeping it as a showpiece. Unfortunately it is no more a showpiece and fortunately it gives immense joy to my baby. Due to its vintage nature the rattle is somewhat heavy with respect to my baby and when he fiddles with it, if you see from a distance you will be amused thinking whether the rattle is playing with my baby or he is playing the rattle! Another thing that draws my baby's attention for good is a blinking night lamp that we place over the bedside table. It emits different colors of light which rotates like a whorl. The lamp also helps to put my baby into sleep after a brief period of ecstasy. Good thing is he never care to crawl towards the lamp or throw his arms to grab it. He's a silent and blissful observer. These are few things which keep my baby peppy. Please share the same which are applicable for your baby so that other parents are benefited too.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.

Now get used to overwhelming compliments!

Do you want your skin to be complimented as fantastico? Then first thing you got to do is shifting from your artificial chemical products to herbal ones. It is truly said that our ancient Ayurveda has various benefits over cosmetic facial cleansing regimes and Ayurvedic formula when blended with the microbicide properties of turmeric prevents oily skin, fights pimples and also clears blackheads. I wonder, even after knowing these why we modern human beings fall for expensive chemicals marketed as facial cleansers. Today I will talk about some of the natural and simple skin care tips which my readers can easily try without any fear of rashes or hypersensitivity reaction to get not just smooth skin but I call it fantastico!

Pimples are probably the most common and widely found skin problem which bother my beauty conscious readers. Right? So, I will talk about different natural remedies of pimples. Before telling these I want to warn you of synthetic remedies available in market. Please do not try them on your delicate facial skin as they won't cure your pimples permanently and they can harm the skin as well. Citrus fruits, especially lemon juice rich in vitamin C, can be used to treat pimples. Squeeze two lemons and apply its juice over your pimples affected skin with a soft clothe or cotton swab. Allow it to dry properly. Wash off with cool water. Repeat this twice a day for a week to cure your pimples! Garlic contains sulphur and it is quite effective against pimples. Slice a clove of garlic and rub its juice on your pimples. Allow it to dry and then wash your face with cool water. Repeating it thrice a day for three to four days shows effective result. You can also treat pimples with natural honey as it contains natural antibiotics. However bland cucumber tastes, when used with honey and lemon it shows wonderful action against pimples. Paste cucumber in a blender and add lemon juice with a spoon of honey. Apply the paste over your face like face mask. Allow it to dry and then wash it off with warm water. Repeat it daily for seven days for guaranteed results. Tomato juice, papaya juice, egg white, neem paste, turmeric powder paste, steam bath etc are other natural alternatives to cure pimples.

If you want to make your locks bit extra shiny follow this simple natural technique- add an egg to a mashed banana. Apply the paste on your hair. Allow it to settle for half an hour. Wash your hair under cool water. That's it! Your elbows and knees sometimes look pretty ugly and shabby right? Don't worry, you can easily exfoliate the dry and dead skin over its surface which is making it look ugly. Rub pieces of orange over them and let it dry. Wash it off and you are done! Are you frustrated of black heads? Don't worry. Mix few drops of lemon juice with natural honey. Apply it over your black heads. Let it dry and wash off. You are good to repeat it few more times in coming days to get rid of all those black heads! Friends, if you have natural and simple skin care tips please share them with me in comment section. Meanwhile try these tips and get used to overwhelming compliments.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.