Best Friend

I was your guide,
I gave you joy-rides

I was left in the cold,

Ere I could grow old.

Sarabhai Vs. Sherawat - It's all in the name!

It's not the name of the next sitcom on Star Plus; it's about an important part of my being, my name Mallika. My dad always said that he had named me so, after Rabindranath Tagore's poem 'Mallika', and he would sing it to me. My mom said that she named me so because, my stars dictated that a name starting in 'M' would be good for me, and it completed the word RAM, ( one of the most important avatars of Lord Vishnu in Hinduism) when combined with the first letters of the names of my brothers, Ranjan and Anjan.

Mallika in Sanskrit means the jasmine flower, but I was fonder of its Urdu/Arabic meaning- queen, primarily because I had a mad crush on a guy whose name meant 'king'. Oh the golden teenage years!

As a child, whenever I introduced myself with my first name, it evoked an "Oh Sarabhai!" especially from the intellectually inclined men and women. I knew Mallika Sarabhai was an acclaimed classical danseuse, but didn't know at that time that she was also an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad, the top-most MBA institution in India. To be honest, it took a few years, until I began to appreciate that comparison. As a child, classical dance wasn't the most appealing thing to me.

Man Proposes, Dog Disposes

Ever since I read Deepak Chopra's Perfect Health, the chronological calendar has had less significance to me compared to the biological one. Hence, a new year is more a time for partying as everyone else is partying, rather then celebrating the onset of a new calendar year.

My mind follows the same train of thought about new year resolutions as it does about the new year. In my opinion, promises are meant to be kept every day, and if one keeps waiting for a calendar year to turn to make and keep promises, often times they are broken by the time the pages turn to the spring months. Nevertheless, 2010 being an immensely tough year, with a lot of friends and family going through major unfavorable life events, I couldn't wait for it to be over, set our lives back in order and start afresh in various respects.

One of them was to start using cash over credit cards, in order to keep a closer fist on the spending, which many-a-times gets derailed by these 'credit cards that have got no limit'. So here's how it started off.

Just started

I am happy that I have just started doing something that I have been wanting to do for a long time. It appears that today was a day off from work worth taking. I have named my blog after a favorite song - Unwritten by Natasha Bedingfield. That's the way I feel about myself.