I will pass through this, O Lord

I will pass through this, O Lord, 

I will play along all through.

I will stay strong and smile,

Never surrender, repent or rue.

I will pass through this, O Lord,

For I look forward to what this will lead to.

I will stand through the storm,

For I know there’s a lot still left to do.

I will pass through this, O Lord,

For I trust in your game plan.

I will stay determined and focused,

As I know I will and I can.

I will pass through this, O Lord,

I know I am your favorite child.

Seldom would you let your fans down,

let alone testing a Godchild.

I will pass through this, O Lord,

for while you look at the bigger picture,

I get anxious, jittery and what not,

Narrowing my vision to pixels.

I will pass through this, O Lord,

For patience and perseverance are my virtues to possess,

And I know I am in safe hands,

while you carry me through stress,

I will pass through this, O Lord,

For I’ve heard your best warriors last the longest,

Diamonds are a result of tough times,

Turmoil, pressure and pain at their best.

I will pass through this, O Lord,

Because I know I am made for big things,

And while ordinary living is easy,

Your love for me will be the wind beneath my wings!

A world above, a world beneath!

Shout out to all those who read this first on Women's Web

We are the smart couples, the ones who inhabit the skyscrapers one’d have been amazed looking at back in 90’s. These imposing edifices reflect not just prosperity on the owner’s part for they are no cheap, but also a sense of equality – living amongst the equals.

NCRs, or national crowded region, would consist of hundreds of ‘mini’ societies, which would boast of giving you a life you would have only dreamt of. True, back in 90’s, society only meant one, huge area, Punjabi Bagh West, for instance, where everyone would know who lives next door and, also, what happens in their lives. For now, several modern ‘mini’ societies have mushroomed around us and have changed the lives we have ever been living.

Coming to this second just passed, and this one I am trying to hold on to, I am looking outside of my balcony on the second floor in one of the poshest societies of Indirapuram. It’s been close to 10 months since we have shifted to this house and made it our own. This house and the society gives you a life which takes time to sink in, to get into your lifestyle and makes you alter your living habits as per its rules.

True, this is a society, which boasted of luxurious living on its marketing paraphernalia, and true that it takes care of all the tags you might want to console yourself with for having spent lakhs buying a small space in it – sprawling gardens, huge community hall, basketball, tennis, badminton courts, swimming pool, gym, kids’ play area, senior citizens’ club and everything else. But in the 10 months passed, I have only seen Mondays turn into Fridays catching up with work and the rest two days catching up with home.

The web we have intertwined ourselves in doesn’t really let anyone to sneak out and seek life. Husbands work, wives work, kids either confine themselves to schools or crèches and the rest, the stay-at-home lot – the retired or the housewives or a few like me working from home stay back and let the ‘society’ life make you solitary despite sensing the worlds living beneath, adjacent and above you.

There’s a home beneath me, a home above me; there’s a young couple living beneath and an elderly couple living above of me. The only connection I have with them is through our balconies – no I don’t see them there, I either drop clothes below or receive some from above. Balconies were only meant to dry out clothes – weren’t they? Soaking in the sun, savoring oranges, guavas or peanuts while basking in the sunlight are all passé, right?

While buying groceries one day, I ended up bumping into the girl who lived on the first floor, right below my house. I was amazed to know how she, too, dreamed of a friend in this vast society. It was impossible to have a life sans one’s work and home in this setup. But, what really stopped us? Well. Nothing.

Why don’t we step out and talk to each other? Why have we stopped passing smiles and exchanging pleasantries? Why do we no longer get together to celebrate mini victories or major losses? Why have we turned into the new-age zombies, who go to work, obey every duty and sleep in their pigeonholes? Why don’t we learn skills from each other or rather just talk and learn? Why don’t we make a first move for a friendship or a relation? Why is this ‘equality’ not helping in breeding friendships? Well, they didn’t guarantee a great social life in their marketing campaigns, they only did a great society. Pretty well, they have delivered. 

This post has been chosen as Spicy Saturday Pick by BlogAdda!

One year, countless memories!

This day, last year, we took the plunge to start living together, giving shape to our dreams. Reaching here, to this decision, settling in India and choosing to tread on the path which could prove to be extremely tough wasn’t taken in a day; it took us months and to me, it all seemed like an era.

I always tell my girlfriends it never seems to me that I live with my husband; the time we are spending now seems a mere extension to our dating time, when, of course, we were not staying together. It’s been a fun one year which has taught many life lessons I could possibly write a book about but, for now, let us do with a blog.

1. No expectations = life full of surprises. Pretty much. I never expected him to cook or wake up early and make me tea or take extra care of me when I am not well. He did, and I pretended to take all that like a breeze!
2. Friendship > marriage. Well, this dates back to the time from where it all started – it all started with friendship. So, we decided to retain the flavor and not adulterate with expectations marriage might hold from a couple.
3. You + Me = We. A massive change. Yes, it is a couple taking decisions now in almost all the spheres. For the first time in my life, I have been putting my view in taking big decisions and enjoying the discussions happening before the consensus is settled.
4. Marriage ≠ proving to each other. Accepting the other person the way he is, his way of living and thinking, habits, culture from where he comes all clubs into a package home-delivered to you, all wrapped in a gift paper. Living together would give way to whole lot of revelations which should just be taken as a milestone in knowing in each other and crossed happily.
5. Love = being comfortable. That pretty much is the crux. One year is a long enough time to understand each other rather clearly and be able to breathe superfine in each other’s company. When there’s nothing to prove to the other person, you learn to live just the way you are.
6. Marriage ≠ growing up: Yes! Be as crazy as you have always been and never let go of the things which actually bring pleasure to you. Though you have decided to grow old together but this sense of satisfaction of being with the right person might actually reverse age for you! Do not ever think of succumbing to societal pressures just because you’re growing old. I’ve been thinking of taking life one second at a time and, trust me, it makes me feel real light.
7. Best times = sitting and talking: Just this. I trust in you and you trust in me. That should end the story well.
8. Feelings ≠ words. When you live together with your husband and the feeling of being married starts sinking in, you realize that love is much more than words could ever define. It engulfs your relation, keeping it warm and giving you enough space for growth. You know no words could ever tell him how you feel and this feeling is so contagious that each other's mere presence would leave no space for words. You realize loving each other becomes as a habit as breathing.
9. Clashes ≠ serious fuckups: It’s perfect to fight like pigs and come together later in the day because you need someone to talk to. It would always be your decision what you would want to prioritize at any given point – person, relation, matter or your ego. After all, any stupid decision taken in haste would not mean end of all the problems, but starting of a new set of problems.
10. Success = being happy: This is my final word to sum up my one year this day. Love is being happy because you’ve been blessed to live the life of your dreams, to see things falling into place, to feel god’s blessings in all spheres of life and because you have so much to thank god for and even more to look forward to!

To the sheer happiness that spreads when we're together!

Five Tantrums He's Sure to Throw at Home if He's an Entrepreneur

Hola to you all who'd read this article first on Techstory!

To a wife, nothing would come across as bad a nightmare as her well-settled, ambitious professional husband’s plan to kick his stable job right in the bum and start working for himself. While this might sound tad too grand on the face of it, especially when he will narrate his future plans to you, but things would, by all odds, get way too graver, deeper and tasking as you’d get neck-deep into them. 

Being a wife to any from the genre of husbands in question here, you really have no option other than facing him head-on almost all the times and learning to glide off all the tantrums he would, knowingly or in a fit, throw at you. Some of them are surely interesting enough to talk about in detail. 

1. The days when all he’d want is to be sentenced to solitude
This is the time when he’d showcase ‘the no mood’ channel on the television of his face. Since his life and, to a part, his mind would shy a classic pressure cooker, thanks to the lots of decision-making he’s committed to himself, all that you’d listen from him is the ‘leave me alone’ whistle he would occasionally blow. Well, get set to face doors being banged on to your face, because your dear hubby is thinking out loud on the other side of them. 

2.  And the ones when you’re his guiding star

You’re a modern professional, who knows her ways with work and home, and you have the finances in your hands; bud, you have got to have your halo up all the time! You’re his knight in the shining armor, the person who is playing it live in the corporate world and who is abreast of the times in her industry and can vaguely foresee the near future and who has money clinking in her pocket, all available at her disposal. You surely would have been the most loved person in the family had you been the groom; umm, being a bride might, too, bring occasional days of happy realization to him and to you, this would only bring episodic bouts of ‘momma’ love.

3. And those when he’s nervous and doesn’t want to admit
On a lot of days, you are just going to see him glued to the bed and he won’t say a word why he’s religiously meditating in his dreams. Well, by now, you know that he has shedload of tensions running a marathon in his mind and the simplest way he has chosen to defeat them all is by switching off his mind from the race. He would simply sleep away all his troubles, and expect you to better not judge his way of living by his weird habits. Gah!

4. The talk-less, do-more trash
You would see a massive behavior change in him the moment he would step into the world of entrepreneurship; he would want an atmosphere at home resembling that in the house of a kid who’s appearing for boards. Soon, you would want to break the deafening silence by blabbering since you would, obviously, not want to talk rocket science with him and that’s when he would want to extend the already-mindboggling silence to extend indefinitely, plainly because he thinks he has so much to plan right at that moment that he wouldn’t want to simply waste his time yattering with you. On the contrary, you’d be tad too surprised when you would get to know how much he talks to every person he meets when he puts his entrepreneurial cape on! Well, God made friends, anyway, and we made internet!

5. He doesn’t want it but he wants it
Sooner enough or until his venture would break the back of the breakeven point, he’d run out of the means to run his ‘supercool’ lifestyle and, then, he has you. On one hand, where he will never say that he wants to buy that pair of jogger jeans he had seen his ‘some’ idol wearing, on the other hand he would still want you to understand he wants it. No, you are not bringing up an extremely cranky, moody and overgrown baby, you are just trying to put up with this guy you love with all your heart and soul, and his ways? Well, good luck with them, until you need some expert psychiatric counselling on how to calm your mind when all that you see in your husband is a sweet-looking, giant punch bag!

The Backstage Life

Casually browsing my television, I came across something which did not let my brain move on to other things. It was about the women who never came to the front and who were totally fine living a common man’s life when they could have easily reveled in celebrityhood, while their husbands actively scored hits over hits on Wikipedia searches. This was a random cookery show I was kind of stuck at till the credits set rolling and I noticed how a show being hosted by Sanjeev Kapoor was produced by his wife, Alyona Kapoor. I was amazed at how despite being equally well-read and talented, she was never really attracted to the ever-pulling limelight. And, then, I was reminded of so many such, who had delighted in their spouse’s success without creating noise about their own presence.

I have, for a very long time, emulated my idol, Sudha Murty. Reading more about her revealed to me how she, despite being from a service-class family, happily gave away her savings to fund her husband’s idea to start his own venture. All her life she believed in the power of her good thoughts and karma and stayed backstage, cheering him, a stalwart who is now an IT sensation in the entire world. She had her own area of expertise and interest, which she never lost hold of. No wonder her simplicity speaks for itself, even today.

Before I get carried away expressing my love for her, I should better come back to what I am trying to put forth. These women of substance seem to me not only an effective propelling force behind the successes of their spouses, but also a strong pillar of support who was always busy cushioning the grounds for their husbands just in case they fall bad. No wonder they meant business all the time they were being sensible while letting their husbands happily build castles in the air of the empire they would build sometime in future. I am sure trusting these weird, creative species requires whole lot of belief, patience and fingers crossed behind backs.

Speaking of whatever little experience I have, I am sure these ladies, after years of enduring an entrepreneurial husband, when finally get to see their nights turn into day, have very little left in them to claim their share of fame in the work space which never really belonged to them. I am sure there are enough reasons behind living the backstage life, the strongest one being the fact that they have been wanting, praying, begging for that one stroke, one shot, one right move in the play that would strike the chords for the idea to work right so much that they finally do not want to adulterate the taste of victory by giving it their personal flavor. 

Waiting for the first success, the first right move, first good news is nowhere a small task and having invested so much in wanting to see it real doesn’t command any more of their participation, other than them watching everything from the backstage. It is like you assist in cooking a dish and stand all the while in the kitchen watching it prepare, only to savor it way later after it was ready when the flavors are finally off your head, right?

This post has been chosen as the Spicy Saturday Pick by BlogAdda 

Unexpected Perks of Being Married to an Entrepreneur

Having recently been married to an entrepreneur, I am coming to terms with a lot of serious behavioral revelations, which are, rightly, taking their own sweet time to sink in. The best part about my life right now is that these shocks are being accompanied by loads of pleasant surprises which would seldom have found their way in to my life had I been married to a nine-to-five employee. I would love to quote something I read while randomly surfing the Internet and loved to the core:

Entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t. 

Considering the startup environment in India today, I am sure many a girls would be sailing in the same boat as I. Hola to all those! Now that we have all decided that we will help our man build his dream empire, let us all embrace the struggle which is a sure thing bound to accompany us during our journey. 

And now that you have sneaked a few moments to read this post, let us quickly jump to reading about my array of experiences, which I am sure a lot of you will relate to and laugh at, thinking how being wives to these crazy techies has made us all a lot more patient and tolerant :)

1. He stays humble and isn’t much of a nag

This lot does not like to complain. Though, he has his own, small wishes, which do not cross a certain self-assumed limit, he would never nag you about your errors, forgetfulness, attitude or style of working. Instead, he would take a rather noiseless way of solving problems and getting things done his way. 

2. He is a multitasker

He knows the value of getting tasks done on time and, in the process, he would himself take up a lot of tasks he deems as doable. This applies at home, too. Don’t be surprised if he makes the bed, washes the dishes, brings home the groceries or takes care of you – he’s acquired this habit of multitasking, which was totally a prerequisite for being an entrepreneur. 

3. He believes in teamwork

Surprise! He’s not the conventional husband you have ever heard about. He believes in getting work done, giving the work the utmost priority. If eating food on time is one of his priorities, I bet he will be working in kitchen with you, getting the pending tasks completed instead of being a couch potato and showing you the watch. 

4. He gets work done exactly his way in the most conducive manner

He knows it’s a startup that he runs and the team, too, is getting accustomed to the environment. He realizes how important it is for everyone to be happy and positive about the work at hand and, thus, he knows how to correct everyone’s (and your!) mistakes in the most pleasing manner. At times, you wouldn’t even get to know that after all that time you spent sweating in the kitchen preparing chicken curry, he would give you a nice recipe for the next attempt you make at it. 

5. Everyone knows him; he’s everybody’s favorite

With time, you realize everyone knows you and you would not be able to find a reason why unless, of course, your husband would tell you that they are all his acquaintances. Thanks to his wonderful PR skills, he is friends with almost everyone he meets and his contacts list would have new numbers flashing every day.

6. He foresees a business opportunity in almost all the circumstances he comes across

Don’t be surprised if he starts building castle in Spain about setting up an automated, man-less, credit-based, online veggie store, which would have the peasants who are selling their products present on the live chat, while you are still bargaining with the vegetable vendor for giving off five rupees on the entire bill amount. 

7. He already knows the freshest piece of news you might have

Blame it on his habit of being acquainted with the burning trends and topics, he would always be abreast with any freshest piece of news you might have to discuss with him, unless, of course, it is about his grandparents, to which he will show an alien face reflecting zero instigated interest.

8. He’s extremely judgmental about almost everything on Earth

He bears an opinion, which you have to agree, makes sense almost all the times. So, if he explains to you why the move of Myntra to go app-only was the most unwise one, you would want to take up a notepad and jot down all that what he’s casually blabbing about.

9. He would, most definitely, put you to some use for his work

Be it social media optimization, social media management, content writing, content management, handling finances, maintaining inventories, trimming Excels or administrative tasks, he would, certainly, put some of your skills to use for his work. Charity begins at home, after all, and the fact that you love him is a tool that would come handy to him almost all the time! 

10. He totally appreciates that you earn

Unlike many other men, who get their egos inflated to the brim when they see their female spouses earning/spending more, the entrepreneurial husbands would appreciate you earning and would, if it’s a startup, handover the responsibility of running the house on you, the way you wish to. One thing that's a dead cert is he'll always be thankful to you, the most, for believing in him :)