My little Mascots!

Makku and Ginger!

These folks are my constanat companions!

Makku is a 7 year old canine pal and ginger is a 1 year old feline friend! They are the best pets in the world! They look really adorable and are the most reliable ever friends on earth!

They are just bursting with energy and are always upto something!

Makku accompanies me on all treks and practically everywhere! Ginger, the poor soul, isn't allowed inside the house....

Makku and Ginger are extremely pally...They get along with each other like a house on fire. They are the most fabulous ever creatures created! Infact, Makku has become the hero at home and my mother takes better care of the "two guys" than anyone else!

Everyday is an adventure with them...you never know what they will do that day....

Sometime back, there was a mongrel which was trying to attack Ginger, and Makku, like a brave warrior, went to Ginger's rescue! It was a very touching incident..

Something that I read somewhere -

If you can start the day without caffeine or pep pills,
If you can be cheerful, ignoring aches and pains,
If you can resist complaining and boring people with your troubles,
If you can eat the same food everyday and be grateful for it,
If you can understand when loved ones are too busy to give you time,
If you can overlook when people take things out on you when, through no fault of yours, something goes wrong,
If you can take criticism and blame without resentment,
If you can face the world without lies and deceit,
If you can conquer tension without medical help,
If you can relax without liquor,
If you can sleep without the aid of drugs,
If you can do all these things,

THEN YOU ARE PROBABLY THE FAMILY DOG

He is your friend, your partner, your defender, your dog.

You are his love, his life, his leader.

He will be yours, faithful and true to the last beat of his heart.

You owe it to him to be worthy of such devotion.

This really defines my little, loving four legged friends!

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT by Fyodor Dostoevsky

I read this book over a span on 1 week….. It is a very interesting insight into the mind of a criminal.

The protagonist of the story, Rodion Romanovich Raskolnikov (Rodya), has committed a murder. He does not know the reason why he commits it. He just does it in a state of delirium and keeps justifying it.

He is a student of law himself and having committed such a crime, keeps thinking about it, wondering how he can get away from the police and continue with a normal life. He becomes hostile to the people he loves and abandons them out of sheer stress and the psychological impact caused by what he has done. He meets several interesting people throughout the book and goes through many different scenarios and spends hours together, thinking about them. Meanwhile, the detective who is tracking down the case of the murder of Alyona Ivanovna, the old miserable pawnbroker and her simpleton sister Lizaveta Ivanovna, does keep giving hints to Raskolnikov about him being the murderer.

He also meets Sofya Semyonovna Marmedilov, his only confidante who asks him to “go to the crossroads, bow down to the people, kiss the earth, for you have sinned against it too, and say aloud to the world, ‘I am a murderer’ ” What is most ironical is that Raskolnikov couldn’t explain the reason for him committing the murder till the end. Eventually, he goes to the police station and says “It was I who killed the old pawnbroker woman and her sister Lizaveta with an axe and robbed them.”
I think this statement he made needed a lot of courage on his behalf to declare openly. Of course, he was made to pay for this crime by being put behind bars in Siberia for nine years.

The last paragraph of the book is really amazing. It says,
“He did not know that the new life would not be given to him for nothing, that he would have to pay dearly for it, that it would cost him great striving, great suffering.
But that is the beginning of a new story – the story of the gradual renewal of a man, the story of his gradual regeneration, of his passing from one world to another, of his initiation into a new unknown life. That might be the subject of a new story, but our present story is ended.”

I learnt three things from this book –
1) A criminal may not be all that horrible after all.
2) NEVER commit a crime
3) Simple language is really awesome!

The Guitar!

After a lot of patient expectation, 5th April was the big day for me!
The guitar was my birthday gift from my family, and there could be no better gift that they could have given me!

It was a really awesome moment when I had the first glimpse of the guitar. It was a jet black guitar, looking as majestic as ever!

It is truly a beauty.....I am out of words!
The moment I got home with it, it was like a reflex action to sit down with it and just keep playing it! I am not trained to play the guitar ,but I will be learning on my own with a bit of guidance from my friends who play this truly exquisite musical instrument.

Infact, I felt like my guitar has a personality of its own...
When I spoke to my brother that night, I said "Aaj raat ko mein usse baat karoongi!"
And, I did just that! I tried to make a beginning at learning it, but I was just too excited to even listen to it carefully!

I slept at around one the next morning and found myself awake by 6 a.m , looking for "Ebony".
I have been playing it everyday and am making small amounts of progress...
This was like one part of my personality coming to me.....I can never forget that day as I got something which is very close to my heart .