THE WAYSIDE FLOWER

Childhood is a period when you can live with no care in your life. The only worry will be school exams, the number of holidays and your favourite cartoon show's time coinciding with your father's news time. Adulthood is the opposite of it. When the two of these different periods of life meet at a point, it creates your teenage period.

I can still remember walking home from the bus stop after school. Our home was not that far, but not near either. I used to walk along with my sister. We went to the same school and we both enjoyed our evening walks. The climate will be perfect for a stroll and we used to stop walking for a while to admire the wayside flowers. They were just beautiful. The yellow palette of their petals shone well with the help of sunlight and they always made a pretty sight.

One more thing that made my walk even more amusing was the roadside shops. Among those shops, only one had my eye. It had all the new sweets and chips that they used to advertise in between the shows. My parents always gave some pocket money to both of us. The words, ‘Spend them wisely’ used to accompany the money.

And my way of spending it wise was buying new chocolates and eating them.

That was my way of spending them and the sail was smooth.

My sister was the exact opposite of me. Everything she did was not included under my school of thoughts. And ‘not spending’ the pocket money we deserved, was definitely not there.

She was just a year older than me. And as far as I could remember, I had never seen her spend a penny for pleasure. I decided to ask her the next day.

On the next day, as we neared our home, I threw the crumpled chocolate wrapper on the road and turned towards her.

“Isha, why do you never buy anything with your money? Aren’t you being a little stingy?”

I guess that question must have shocked her, because she didn’t reply immediately.

She then took my hand and continued walking. We stopped at our favourite place.

More flowers had been blooming and she bent down and plucked a flower.

“Can you see how beautiful this is? Even the flowers at our garden are not as beautiful as this one, isn’t it?”

I did not know what to reply. Whenever my sister wanted to explain something to me, she used to get this strange aura around her, as if she was haunted by a soul. That used to frighten me and as a result I kept looking at her, without opening my mouth.

As I had expected, she did not wait long for my reply. She continued.

“They are more beautiful, because they are self-reliant. No one waters them. No one cares for them. But still, they took care of themselves and now, they shine the brightest!”

I did not understand what she had wanted me to understand. It was not hard to decipher, but I guess I was just reluctant to look beyond.

She must have understood my mind, because she just smiled at me and said, “You will understand it someday!”

My mind was never the same again, but that didn’t stop me from spending.

The actual lesson was yet to happen and it did not need deep thinking to fathom it.

It was years later that the following incident occurred.

My sister was in the final year at school and I was a year behind her. It was the start of the final term.

My sister and I returned home one day to find our parents discussing in hushed whispers.

I went to my Dad and told him that  the school had announced the fees for the final term. On hearing that, his face broke into a sweat. He looked at my sister and asked about her fees amount. The fees had been a little more than the usual. I didn’t worry about it as I knew that our father will pay it the first thing, the next day morning.

But he did not. Not the next day, and not the day after, and not the next week either. On seeing our names in the notice board,I went to my sister and told her that the fees was yet to be paid. That surprised her too, as it had never happened before.

My sister approached my dad and asked him about the fees in a light voice. He had not forgotten about the fees, as I had thought.

He told my sister that the finances were a little low, and he will pay our fees soon. It was painful to hear. Something must have happened, and our parents had preferred not to disclose it to us.

What I heard my sister say next shook me to the core.

She said that she had the money.
 Did she rob a bank or what?

My Dad must have been surprised too, for he asked her, “How?”

I went and joined them too. I wanted to hear about how she had accumulated it.

She told us about how she had saved all the money she had got from our parents and grandparents and she had saved it all in a bank account, which was opened by her with the help of her teachers, as a part of a school program.

We only had tears as answers for her confession and I felt embarrassed for the first time in my life.

Why didn’t I ever think about it? Why was I always spending and never saved a penny?

That day along with the proud feelings for Isha, another feeling surfaced along my mind. 

I have to fend for myself. I have to take care of myself.

That made me more careful in choosing my decisions and I slowly learned to be independent. And in that summer holidays, Isha and I joined some part time jobs and saved some money. And I too had started saving money. 

One day, on my way home, my eyes fell on the wayside flowers. They appeared to be more beautiful than ever. The meaning behind what Isha had said that day dawned upon me and those wayside flowers reflected my smile.

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This post has been written for Apno Ko Apne Dum Pe Jeena Sikhao Happy Hour contest for Indiblogger in association with HDFC Life.

Will you be my Valentine?

As I sit writing this post or rather typing this post, the world around is waking up to a great day. Yes. Today is Valentine's day.

Today will be the day where roses are exchanged, with their redness depicting the hearts they have given to the other. It is a day full of love. A day full of joy with your Valentine.

Now, who is a Valentine?

Valentine is someone who has stolen your heart, who makes you breathless, who will make your heart forget it's rhythmic beat and your eyes will forever be signed to that Valentine.

How many of you have found such a Valentine for this Valentine's day?

Now, I have found something worthy enough to be my Valentine.

In one of my previous post, I have mentioned about the Asus phones.

Let me tell you five reasons about how 

Zenfone 5 will be my Valentine for the V-day!

1. The first should be the best and I promise to follow it. So, here it goes.

Asus Zenfone has 2GB RAM!

This one specification was enough to drive me crazy over it. One of my friends wanted a new phone, a few months back. That was the time when most of us were in a phase of getting us better gadgets.

I had purchased a new phone a few months before. So, when she asked me for some ideas, I naturally recommended mine and promised her to surf the net for more options.

I was shell shocked! I really was.

I used the Flipkart app to look into different models and their specifications. I noticed this phone under 10,000 category. And when I looked into the specs, my eyes fell onto the Memory category.

At first, I refused to believe. It must have been an error. 2GB RAM at 9999 INR? Are u kidding? Was the App kidding?
No, It wasn't.

It truly had 2GB RAM.

I am the type of person who opens an app and in the middle of a game or so, opens another app to check my messages.

So, naturally I was in need of a higher memory. But all 2GB RAM phones were beyond my budget.

Zenfone 5 had it and I had already purchased something else.

I cursed myself for not having waited a little more.

2. Even though it comes under the title '2nd', it is by no means inferior. Now what is it?

The Camera.

I am not a professional photographer.

But, that doesn't mean I won't stop to take a picture, of a bug creeping slowly on a leaf, or a click at the heavens showing a mix of wonderful bluish palette.

Even before the 'Let's take a selfie pulla' song hit the road, I was bitten by the selfie bug and I turned into a shutter bug to satisfy the inner demons.

As I have said already, I am by no means a professional photographer ( That doesn't make my photo less beautiful), so I don't carry the camera with me always. Sometimes, after class, when I am on the way out, I will want to take a picture of nothing in particular. Those times, the true saviour will be the phone camera.

Asus Zenfone has a 8MP primary camera and a 2MP front camera. Gone are the days when your face on camera, looked like a picture from the previous century. With this 2MP primary camera, my friend doesn't stop taking selfies. And as her friends, we too use the opportunities to freeze the time and store them in the memory card.

And the 8MP camera never disappoints me, when I borrow her phone to click some random shots whenever we are on an outing.

Eager to read the next? Next is nothing less.

3. Memory. Memory is such an important and integral part in our lives. Recent memory. Remote memory. Immediate memory. But all these could never help you, when you have to play all the best games from your phone, if your internal memory is poor. No memory pills for it.  You just have to change the basic component. Though you can move your apps and games to your beloved Class 10 SD card, it is not the same when you store it in your phone itself.

Asus Zenfone is blessed with good memory. It has an internal stotage of 16 GB RAM. How much of photos and songs can I have? Plenty!

You never have to worry about your phone hanging in the middle of a race to the high score.

 Combined with a RAM of 2 GB, it surely does create a platform for gamers.

4. The cricket season is here. And if you are a person who is constantly on the move or if you are like me, who has to fend off people wanting to watch soap operas, to cheer for my country, then you would know how valuable YouTube is.

The fight for the single TV screen at hostel is something worse than the world war. I should dedicate a separate blog post for that. Now, coming to the matter at hand, the fourth reason.

The fourth reason why this phone deserves to be my Valentine is 'the screen size'.

It is perfect at 5 inches. I, for one have to use Video channels to watch my favourite matches, when I can't fight off those soap opera maniacs. ( No offence! ) For this, I would feel better if the screen size is reasonably large.

The 5 inches screen with IPS display and good pixel grade, would be easy on my eyes and it will not be difficult for me to carry it around.  It is neither a toy phone size nor a brick, and it is perfect for me.

5. Now, we are at the end of this Valentine post. What could be the fifth one? I have told you about its awe inspiring RAM, the high pixel camera, the ever perfect Memory, the pleasant appearance in 5 inches. Have I told you all of the qualities? What would you need more from a Valentine?

But there is a little more. And let us postpone the ending a little bit more.

The last and the final one is about it's processor. Asus Zenfone comes with 1.6 GHz processor with Intel Hyperthread technology, which is better than how it sounds! I have used my friend's mobile many times. And you can never complain about it! She doesn't complain about me using her phone most of the time too.

The qualities of the Valentine described in numbers. These 5 make the Asus Zenfone series a worthy contender for the Valentine post this Valentine's day. It is my Valentine for tomorrow.

What do you say?

This post is written for Asus #unconditionallove in association with Indiblogger.

A healthy child makes a happy home

When Sheela opened her window that morning, she saw the mist that was covering her neighborhood. The winter season had started already. The germs that were lurking before would rise to the surface causing innumerable problems. The winter diseases were always worse than the diseases that occurred during other seasons.

Sheela was a house wife and she usually got up early to prepare breakfast and lunch for her husband and son, before they went to work and school.

She had got up early that day too. She started her regular chores.

The clock struck seven and it was time to wake her sleeping son. The school bus would arrive by eight, and she always made sure that he was there prior to it.
That day when she entered her son's room to wake him, she saw that he was awake.

She was surprised at it because, it had always been tough for her to wake him up. She went and sat near him.

Her son, Arjun sneezed loudly. He sneezed again. And again.
He then opened his tiny eyes which had started to water from the sneezes, and looked at his mother.

Sheela took him in her lap and asked her 5 year old son whether he ate anything outside home, like ice cream or a cold drink.

Arjun denied eating anything and Sheela couldn't help but believe her son.

She then made him ready for school and fed him in between the sneezes. She gave him hot water in his water bottle and packed a couple of throat lozenges along with his lunch.

After the school bus took off, Sheela returned home and called her mother. Her mother gave her some home made tonic recipes.

The grandmother was worried that her dear grandson had caught cold and wanted do something. Her beloved TV show was running and in between the show, there was an ad about Dabur Chyawanprash. It had Amla and other 40 more ingredients to develop immunity. The Grandma watched all this with intense concentration.

That evening Grandma decided to visit her daughter and  Arjun. On the way she asked the auto driver to stop at the local supermarket.

Arjun returned home with fever and Sheela took him to a nearby clinic and was surprised to see many children of Arjun's age waiting there. No wonder Arjun caught cold and fever. His whole school must have had it, thought Sheela.

When they returned after the visit to the Doctor, they were surprised at the Grandma standing there at the door waiting for them. The sick Arjun was quickly pampered and put to sleep. And worried duo of the mother and the daughter discussed about Arjun's health.

Children are the ones who bring peace and happiness to the family. When the child falls sick, the adults find themselves finding it tough to look beyond their child's sickness and the whole family becomes filled with gloom.

The same thing happened at Arjun's home and his mother and Grandma was worried sick. Arjun was coughing and sneezing for a week and for that one week, his home oozed sadness.

The next Monday, when Arjun started going to school again, Sheela started a new routine her mother had advised.
She gave Arjun, Dabur Chyawanprash daily. Her mother had even bought it for her and she was told the goodness in it by her mother. She wanted to improve her son's immunity and that seemed a good way.

After one year

The climate had dropped to a record low that year. Sheela had not seen such a harsh climate in her life.

As her routine, she started making breakfast for her son. Her husband had gone soon today and she made use of that extra time in preparing Arjun's favourite lunch.

The clock struck seven and she went to her son's room. Arjun was sleeping peacefully and for a moment she didn't want to disturb her son's sleep.

It had been an year since she started giving her son Dabur Chyawanprash and she had seen her soon becoming healthy.

He had not fallen sick after that single episode in the past year. She was not even afraid when she saw a little boy sitting next to Arjun in the school bus coughing and sneezing. Her son had good immunity and she can breathe a little. She was happy looking at her healthy son and as the proverb goes, Health is Wealth and only a healthy child can be happy and only if the child is happy, the whole house is happy.

And then it was time to wake Arjun.

This post is written for a healthy child makes a happy home contest by Dabur in association with Indiblogger.