My First Blah!!!

“You must write Didi” said my brother Shashank. He was at my place a few days back, visiting from Pune, on the occasion of Rakshabandhan. “But I am so busy bhai” I told him. He was here for just a day but kept repeating the same words. “I will try for sure”- I had to say when he was leaving. And a week later, I find myself hitting the keyboard in frenzy!

With two kids, a businessman husband who has no fixed working hours and a home to take care of, and a bit of content writing as well, my hands are really full. And yes, my kids are the sunshine of my life, yet I still feel need to have a niche for myself – where I can say things that come to my mind without the fear of setting the wrong example or of being judged or ridiculed. So today the 16^th of August, a day after our Independence Day, I am trying to find some independence for myself!

A tiny slot of time for myself, doing something I love- playing with words, pondering over events and ideas, weaving some dreams, putting thoughts into words and coming up with ways to accomplish my dreams- all of this has brought me here- to the huge world of blogosphere. I hope I will be able to connect with like-minded people, proceed a few steps towards my dream, find suggestions and help on the way and make some friends, too!

And it is not as if I don’t write - a content writer, I have written for many travel firms, healthcare organizations, food and fashion related stuff and a lot more. Sadly, all of it has been ghost writing. Though I get paid for writing all that stuff, none of it is credited to me. The craving to see my name somewhere, to have a teeny-weeny sense of accomplishment even if there isn’t much money in it, and also my brother’s encouragement has led me to write my first blog post today.

The one thing that haunted me was- what should I write about? I am not the perfect housekeeper or the best cook or the geek or the fashionista or the been-there-done-that traveler, but I do have a lot to share. I regularly read a lot of blogs and some were particularly inspiring- I will mention them soon! What they made me realize is that blogging is a great way to connect, share and learn; to become a better person and a more successful individual, too. So I gathered some courage and took the plunge!

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Not Just A Pretty Face!

We all remember how we laughed till it hurt when Alia Bhatt said that Prithviraj Chauhan was the President of India some time ago on Koffee with Karan. Although Varun Dhawan, her co-star from Student of the Year, also gave a wrong answer to the same question, he was forgiven (whatever the reasons!). Since then, Alia Bhatt has been the butt of countless jokes and memes making fun of her intellectual prowess, or the lack of it.

But the pretty young lady has not only taken it all her stride, but also gone ahead and paid us back in our own coin! You should know; if you have seen the video called Genius of the Year- it is the latest video to go viral. It shows Alia Bhatt training at (very aptly named) ‘Dumb Belle Mental Gym’ and transforming into a genius, after which she appears on the show again and answers the most complex questions easily. In fact, she knows a lot more that the host Karan Johar himself and has some advice for him as well!

Now all the Alia haters can give their Alia-is-so-dumb jokes a decent burial and acknowledge that this young woman is not just a pretty face; she has brains and even the courage to take all the unkind stuff written and posted about her on social networking sites sportingly. In fact, this video is ample proof of her coolness quotient.

And of course, Karan Johar, Parineeti Chopra and Arjun Kapoor also deserve a round of applause for their part in the video.

P.S.

However, Alia is not the first one to do a spoof on herself- Alok Nath, whose ‘sanskari babuji’ image earned him a lot of jokes, was also part of such a video. It showed him wearing some real cool hip-hop style clothes and crooning ‘yo baby yo honey do you know who’s the bauji?’, which was really hilarious!

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The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge -- Is It Really Serving The Purpose?

The Ice Bucket Challenge that has gone viral for the past few days needs no introduction – with actors, musicians, TV celebs, sportsmen, politicians and businessmen as well as common folks posting videos of them getting doused in ice cold water, we all probably know about it now.

But do we all really know what it is about? Very few of the people going under bucketfuls of chilled water have mentioned that all of it is for a cause and for charity. They just seem to be having fun and challenging their friends to do the same. And common people waste no time in aping them.

And some of us those who know that the ice bucket ritual is for ALS, do we really know what ALS is? It is a neurodegenerative disease which affects a person’s nerve cells situated in the brain as well as spinal cord. This disease impairs the motor neurons’ ability to send impulses to muscles, which in turn leads to the muscles becoming immobile. Finally, it causes loss of movement, speech, swallowing and sometimes even breathing, and the affected person dies of it.

As of now, there is no cure or even treatment which can reverse or halt ALS. There are people who have been living with for years while some have had a quicker degeneration and have died. There are many clinical trials under progress to help people suffering from ALS and the Ice Bucket Challenge began with the aim of raising awareness about the disease and encouraging people to donate money to organizations helping ALS patients and carrying out research for treatment of ALS.

However, people posting videos on social networking sites seem to be having a lot of fun with the Ice Bucket Challenge, which has also been slammed as wastage of water by many critics. And they are not wrong, either- In a country like ours, where clean drinking water is not available to many people, it is definitely a waste. Maybe people can just go ahead and donate money to some organization working for ALS patients instead. 

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