50 random things about me

I saw this post on fellow blogger's space and she did a real good job and i wanted to do one too .
So here i go: 50 random things about myself.

1. I learnt sewing dresses and salwar kameez ,kurtas and curtains, pillow covers only 3 years ago.And strangely  i'm quite good at it.
2. I love miserable,pining, aching  love stories. Especially when the protagonist is a male who preferably dies for love .Therefore i think 'A tale of two cities' by Charles Dickens and 'Jude the Obscure' by Thomas Hardy are the best love stories.
3. I talk about books i like -impromptu.To anybody who will listen.And i can go on and on !
4. I get uncomfortable when people praise me. Nowadays, i don't understand if the person is really praising me or just following some vague rule of etiquettes ! 
5. I love pasta,dabba gosht and chinagrass pudding.
6. I love only my mom's biryani. And i haven't eaten one since she fell sick and will never eat since she died 2 months ago. I can't eat biryani now at all because it makes me miserable.
7. I can ride only a bicycle- not a bike or car because i'm shit scared of Pune traffic
8. I'm cynical
9. I don't give gifts but only money simply because its too confusing and secondly because in my mind's eye i can see the person i'm gifting talking about how bad the gift was !
10. I like flowers even a bunch of daisies can perk me up and make me happy happy !
11. I think the most romantic thing anyone could do for me is - if i fell sick [ God forbid- since i'm horrendous freak when i'm sick] he could care for me ,take care of my food and medicines and Be there.
12. 1 haven't seen a single movie in theatre since last 8 years and i have lost interest in doing it too.
13. I'm honest -sometimes too much.
14. I'm shy....even if i'm perkiest,loudest etc !
15. I love dancing but wouldn't be able to if my life depended on it !
16. I have a bad temper.
17. I eat sweets  and a lot of it only when i'm depressed.And that's quite often since a long time in my life.
18. I cry easily - yup  movies, books and other people's tales of sorrow.
19. I'm quite gullible and have only acquired good sense recently {doubtful !]
20. I 'm a lipstick fiend. And now , everybody knows it !
21. I'm a stickler for loyalty and quite easily break relationships if i feel betrayed.
22. I don't express love verbally ... never have.Yup, i could write paens ,send email, in a card but can't express with my voice face to face.
23. I'm misunderstood all the time.
24. I  will wear out most of my clothes till i can. I acquired  this from childhood days because my mom used to stitch me and my sisters clothes uptill  last 5 years.I think its criminal to waste.
25. I embroider my ridas with my 2 hands.[ a kind of burqa].Everything from tracing to beading and then mom used to stitch it up.
26. I think that Internet is the greatest thing about this century ..i doubt if anything could beat what Internet has done to businesses,relationships and fraandships !
27. I'm klutzy. I fall trip and hurt myself probably a thousand times in a day .Its a miracle that i'm still alive.
28. Yup....in addition i've never suffered a fracture yet.
29. I laugh loudly.
30. I think Calvin and Hobbes is the Greatest comic strip ever !
31. I make mean pastas, pizzas and idlis !
32. I don't exercise but i'm everready to walk. I'll probably walk even if i'm a little sick.
33. I hate to be overcharged and cheated and fret,fret fret till eternity.
34. I nag people i love.
35. I love going for a drive. i think sitting on a good sturdy bike and going for a drive with a guy is extremely romantic and extremely fun in case its done with friends.
36. I am  rude and sometimes unknowingly and unintentionally.
37. I get turned on by generous and extremely large hearted and wise guy- a really practical and wise {genuine wisdom only !] person !
38. I love love Les Miserables, Pride and Prejudice,Anton Chekhov's story 'Grief".
39. In my second life i want to be a lookalike of Audrey Hepburn.
40. I get up late in the mornings although i sleep early at night since i'm a light and poor sleeper.
41. I hate action bloody super hero kind of movies and don't watch horror because .....yes i get scared ! Only exception are Alfred Hitchcock's masterful creations.
42. I've climbed Sinhagad tekdi  3 times in my life .I want to climb all mountains in the world however i doubt that'll happen !
43. I think eating out is justifiable only under following circumstances: a] no food at home/don't want to cook b] romantic date c] staying away from home.
44. I'm not ambitious nor street smart.
45. I love icecreams 
46. I love chocolate anything !
47. Lately,I watch TV A LOT! Too many shows which are crap !
48. I love my independence and hate it when people demand to know each and every minute detail of my whereabouts.
49. I can wander alone in the markets...actually its more out of necessity than want these days :(
50. I don't have girly girly friends :(

Real living !

Image Source: Gocomics

We suffer ....but not in vain !

Here's an interesting article.
Depression.
Please Don't Have a Nice Day
I'm kind of relieved that I'm not alone in thinking about pain,suffering and depression as probably a push - sometimes they are just the push ,a knock on the head - absolutely required for human race.I've learnt certain lessons only because of good solid knock on my head and melancholy and frustrations. Infact  I have learnt nothing from happy moments - not even gratitude ! Gratitude  i learnt from bad times and remembering to be grateful always is still a task !
x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x

"Human resilience is really quite astonishing. People are not the fragile flowers that a century of psychologists have made us out to be. People who suffer real tragedy and trauma typically recover more quickly than they expect to and often return to their original level of happiness, or something close to it. That's the good news—we are a hardy species, even though we don't know this about ourselves. The bad news is that the good things that happen to us don't feel as good or last as long as we think they will. So all that wonderful stuff we're aiming for—winning the lottery, getting promoted, whatever we think will change our lives—probably won't do it after all. We're resilient in both directions. We rebound from distress but we also rebound from joy."
-Daniel Gilbert from Stumbling on Happiness

Lipsticks

Ok ,I think I've fetish for lipsticks ! I have tonnes of lipsticks and as far as i can remember I've completely used only one - a nude from Lakme ( this was easily a decade ago). My Mom got alarmed whenever she saw the dabba full of lipsticks and i think she mentally calculated how much i had spent.Now my spending on lipsticks increased alarmingly in the last decade which was full of strife,heartbreak,frustration ,stress,pain and general stupidity.The last decade was also the time where i worked jobs so i had the money. So ,like decadent selfish youth, i splurged and am still splurging on lipsticks.

Now don't get me wrong...I'm not a make up person however...I'm a lipstick person. During my teenage and twenties i seriously ( naively) thought kajal and lipstick means make up. So a beautiful palette of eyeshadows and blushes which was gifted sat gathering dust in the cupboard because invariably we 3 sisters ( yes ,we shared make up when we were naive, unselfish sisters) thought foundation and eyeshadow ,blushes was too much make up.

Now I'm talking about an age when Lakme ruled the roost in India and foundation was worn to make one whiter !

Why talk about make up now ??

Well, you see i accidently came across a make up blog and since then trawling makeup blogs and reading about all the beautiful blushes and stay on eyeliners is a kind of stressbuster in my miserable life.
Hurrah for internet and for the fact my father can afford one!

I also learnt how cleverly applied makeup can highlight features.And its trickery - make up is trickery ! And more importantly , I learnt about Chambor, Mac, Revlon,Maybelline and the stuff they hawk and of course now in hindsight i realize how some of the stuff from Lakme was really bad.
Maybelline i knew when i was in senior college . But hey, i always thought it was very expensive. Of course i now realize Revlon and Maybelline is just a drugstore brand in US and retails there so cheaply yet they are so costly in India. They retail for far more in India. But then in India, all make up is costly - especially the really good stuff and sometimes the bad useless stuff as well.

Now recently to stub my loneliness and grief, I bought eyeliner Prunella and Cocobar and metallic black and pledged to My Mom that i'll use my makeup, iron my clothes and be as well dressed as i possible can.More importantly use my lipsticks and not buy stuff which I'll probably never use !

Wash thy face

Since i'm conventional and since i did not have mom who always wore make up..i readily believed whatever my mom said especially about cosmetics and creams.
Now when my mom was young or for that matter well into her thirties they didn't have something called 'facewashes'. In fact i don't remember seeing multitudes of ads on Tv for facewash till the time i turned 15 and that's when i bought Garnier facewash and my mom wondered why i wanted to waste money. I'm a Mama's girl and that was true even when i used to argue with her, tell little white lies( yep, she has caught my big lies ALL the time- since i'm very bad at lying ).Anyway, so though i bought the tube i never really let go of 3 cheap recipes which always worked for me. I have a smooth wheatish brown skin without blemishes or pigmentation. Now , I've turned a full circle after last so many years of experimentation on creams, facewashes, shampoos and other blah blah.

Here are my failsafe recipes for fuss free facewash:

1. Mix fine masoor dal powder 1/2 tsp with 1 tbsp of milk (use full fat if you have very dry skin) then add 1/2 -1 tsp of lemon juice depending on the quantity and mix and apply to your face. Now if you have time - add 1/2 tsp honey ,a pinch of ambahalad.You can use this any time of the year.And to make this super easy for you- subsituite milk powder for milk, omit masoor dal powder for dryer skins or mix oats powder.

2. Another cheap deep cleansing face wash for pimple prone skin is honey + lemon juice+ mild reetha water .Apply and wash off after 5 minutes. Mild reetha water can be made using 2 reetha soaked in 1 glass of water ,mashed filtered and stored in fridge. Add a pinch of sodium benzoate to this to increase its shelf life.

3.Another simple face wash is dahi + honey + pinch of ambahalad.

You can add and minus a lot of stuff from these basic recipes depending on your knowledge,time and patience.The smart thing to do here is make this stuff for one-time use only.