Weddings, birthdays, events. We put in so much time and effort. For what? To create that special moment that will forever be etched in our memories. The moment which is filled with unconditional love, with joy, and happiness. At the end of one's life, or even as we sit and stare aimlessly reminiscing, somehow it is the joyful moments that seem to find their way back to flood our minds with images and sentiments of one thing. Love. Moments that we've worked so hard to create or even the multitude of simultaneous moments of goodness and giddy are the ones we remember. And that is what life is about.

***

It was that time of year again. My dad’s birthday. I had booked the ticket for Megabus a month in advance and was ready to do it again. As I boarded the bus, memories of my dad’s 50th flooded my mind. The excitement and anticipation of driving around running errands, hoping that no one had seen me in town and inform my dad. It was his 50th last year. And boy, did we ever pull that one off!

He was genuinely surprised. That moment when he walked in thinking it was Yakulan’s mom’s birthday and then seeing me, his sister, his nephews from Buffalo and Toronto, his entire family from Ontario.. tears of joy filling up in his eyes. You could feel the love in the air. His heart was touched. And it showed in his eyes.

As I was on the bus, I rang up my mom to let her know that the bus was delayed and that I’d only be in Montreal around midnight. Luckily for me, this worked to my advantage. My brother came and picked me up. Boy, was it ever cold in Montreal.

We drove home and tiptoed up the stairs to our room. I finally fell asleep around 2. And then I get a knock on my door. It was my mom.

5 AM.

“Wake up, appa’s going to get out of the shower soon”, she said, “go wait downstairs, and turn the lights off”.

My father has a habit of opening my room door in the mornings before his daily morning prayer.

Sluggishly, I wiggled my butt out of bed, eyes still half closed. I made my way down the stairs and waited for my dad. His morning routine takes about an hour after his shower. My apamma (paternal grams) walked up and down the basement stairs, not knowing what to do.. she gets excited easily.

She woke up my amama (maternal grams) and they were both ready, on the sofa, for the big surprise.

Around 5:30, my dad made his way down the stairs and into the kitchen. He engaged in casual chit chat with my mom about the ongoings of the day before. The anticipation was killing me. Half because I wanted so badly to walk in with a cake and see the look on my dad’s face, and the other half because I was still half asleep.

Around 5:45 my mom woke up my brother who tiptoed down the stairs half naked. At least he wasn’t completely naked. That would’ve scarred me.

My apama, in overexcitedness, didn’t know what to do with herself. She kept walking back and forth from her room to the basement. I have to say that I shared the same excitement, only I had the control to contain myself.

Finally, I heard my dad washing his hands after eating. Adrenaline in my blood, I felt the excitement in my rapidly beating heart beat. My brother lit the candle on the Black Forest and with my two grams and my brother behind me, I walked up the stairs and just as my dad walked out the kitchen, with a birthday cake in hand singing “Happy Birthday to you..”

The look in his eyes. The same glint of joy. Of happiness. Of surprise and excitement. Of his heart melting. Of love, I saw in his eyes. The same look he gave me last year when we surprised him. All this was worth it for that look in his eyes that lasted precisely a half a second. 

***

So finally, I walked into the kitchen and set the cake on the table. My dad cut the cake and we all stood in a circle around him waiting for our turn to be fed. Bella, our beloved German Shepherd, took a seat in the circle waiting to be fed last. With her nose perked up and her tongue licking her lips anticipating a piece of that Black Forest. Oh, yes. By far one of the highlights of 2012 for me.

***

And that is what life is about. Moments like these are what make life worth living. Moments like this is why we live. To create happy moments filled with love and joy with the ones you care about. This is it.

So I went to the optometrist yesterday after many days of squinting, headaches, and general blurriness. I was convinced that I was going blind and was taking action.

So I'm sitting in the chair while the opto is directing a bright light into my pupil all the while, in my head, I'm wondering if this contraption may further damage my eye sight.. considering they tell you its bad to stare directly at the sun or bright objects (which I often do deliberately, partly in defiance, and partly because I think I can see what the sun actually is) but often to much dismay as I'm caught half-blind afterwards and seeing spots.

"You have very nice eye lashes", he says.

Oh crap, is he really flirting with me?This can't be happening.

"You know, out of 1000 people, only a few have eye lashes as long as yours", he continues.

Crap, crap, crap.

"It's probably the mascara", I reply dismissively.

"No, I can see that your eye lashes are very long".

Oh, God. After several minutes and numerous tests. He tells me that my vision is fine and that I have weak eye muscles. He prescribes me a light prescription and eye drops.

Apparently, my "weak eye muscles" coupled with the mascara I wear on a daily basis (which dry out my eyes) blur my vision. He prescribed me some eye exercises and told me only to use 'new' mascara and not to alternate brands.

Hmm..

interesting.

Anywho, point of the story: Wear mascara for external use only. And practice those seemingly useless techniques to strengthen my eye muscles that I learnt in Teacher's Training Course for Yoga.

There are always people and experiences that you encounter and experience in life that alter the way you perceive the world or change your way of being, always for the best. But never have I experienced such a lack of integrity in the milieu of "humanitarian" work, which in itself is based on integrity. I am thoroughly disappointed in the capitalist ways our society has evolved into and that is being perpetuated. "Business" is never 'personal', or so they say, but what if we keep going the way we are? When machines take over, they won't need us to do the work. Eventually, they won't need anybody to work. Why? To maximize profit. But hey, it's "not personal". 

So why do we need businesses in the first place? To share our passions, to create spaces and things that are to be shared with the world. So how and when did business, the art of sharing your passions with the world, turn into being about power and money? How did it become so impersonal that people will put their own integrity on the line? Where people will straight up lie, hurt the feelings of others, and put dedicated and loyal workers out on the street to make an extra penny? 

I couldn't digest it. And still can't. 

A sense of business is good. But being penny hungry isn't. You lose sense of your humanity. And that is dangerous especially when you are working closely with 'humanitarian' causes. 

I'm not oblivious to business, I've been managing a family business with my father for the past decade. But, losing your integrity to gain a few extra dollars is never how we made our money. What do you think?

I had been working at a call center as a fundraiser for the past two and a half months primarily to save up for university and to pay off my debt incurred throughout the past couple months away in Toronto. The fact that I was calling on behalf of NGO's was a total plus, not to mention, the great people I work with that makes our work that much bearable. 

    Appa woke me up bright and early this morning, I hmmed and through one eye barely recognized that it was a bit past 4AM with the ray of light from the hallway beaming through the open slit of my doorway. I closed and my eyes and made a conscious effort not to fall asleep. I heard the shower turn on a few minutes later and realized that I had a few more minutes to enjoy the comfort of my bed. I lay in bed, although my body could not sleep as I was well aware that I'd have to be up in a few minutes. Like my own personal snooze button, my father was out of the shower and signaled that it was my turn.
   "Five minutes. That's all you've got. Prahlad said we had to be there before 6:30", he said as I walked into the foggy and misty bathroom nice and warm from the shower he had just taken. 
   I brushed my teeth with my eyes half closed, still not accustomed to the bright lights and hopped into the shower. I quickly damped my hair and conditioned it and soaped the major areas of my body. Surely enough, I heard a knocking on the door signalling that my five minute bathroom allowance was up. 
   "Coming!", I hauled as I washed the soap and conditioner off of me as quickly as possible. I hopped out of the shower and into my room as my father called in my brother for his 5-minute bathroom time. By now, it was five o'clock and we were on schedule. Much to my surprise, my brother rose quickly, despite the two hours of sleep he had gotten, and entered the bathroom looking more like a zombie than I. I turned on my morning meditative music and dried myself with the towel in my room. I found a very simple black top and chudidar pants that I slipped on and matched it with a black shawl that was lying around. This was barely the Bollywood outfit, I opted for comfort this time. I quickly lined my eyes with the liquid liner and applied some mascara, sprayed some perfume, and was out the door. 
    I walked into the kitchen to see everything packed and ready to go. My mother had been up since 2 AM preparing the vadas, the murukkus, the leaf and vada necklaces, and preparing some food for the priests. She saved picking the flowers for last as I knew this is something she took great joy and pride in. With her silver flower basket in the grasp of one hand and a whiney tone from the long morning she had had, she finally entered the car. I was jostled between my mother on the left and my grams on the right, who--for most people who've driven her around--know very well that she is not the most pleasant guest to have around simply because she doesn't have a sense of control over her tongue and every car ride inevitably turns into an hour long lecture that we've all heard several times before. 
   Regardless, I suspected she would save her comments and lectures for when she wasn't in the presence of my father--who, lucky for us, was the driver. I closed my eyes and pretended to doze off and was surprised to see or rather not hear my grams the entire car ride. Pleasant morning. Pleasant morning indeed.

The Hanuman at Val-Morin is considered to be our family's surveyor. Every year, without exception, we gather family and friends and are most often accompanied by numerous Ashram staff to perform our annual pooja and offerings to Lord Hanuman. This year we decided it be best to keep it quaint and intimate as our family has been dealing with some serious life roadblocks that have stumped our family and forced us to re-evaluate.

We arrived at precisely 6:28 AM and unloaded the car with the pooja items. Prahlad met us a few minutes later. My brother was appointed the bell boy for today. So he was asked by Harish to help him bring the Hanuman statue out of his home and outside. He was facing west now. This was the first time in twenty years that Hanuman had been facing this direction. 

Harish started up with the puja, first cleaning the statue with oil and then pouring kumkum, turmeric, yogourt, rose water, and water on the statue. The washing of the deity with various powders and essences are meant to evoke divine energy and to manifest maximum benefits to the worshipper. 

The puja lasted about two hours. At the conclusion of the puja, Harish handed out some puja water collected to drink and it was divine to the taste buds. Harish then handed us a tray of holy items that had been blessed and to conclude the prayer, had to circle the hanuman statue three times. When standing directly in front of Hanuman, the sun shines directly at you, and that's when I realized why Harish had put Hanuman at that precise location. Among the trees and the leaves, it was only when you stood directly in front of Hanuman that the sun smiled at you. Every time I stood facing Hanuman, I basked in the divine energy and that from the sun. It was glorious.

We then helped ourselves to prasad; vadas and murukkus. Yum. Swami Ambika joined us today and her presence is always a breath of fresh air. 

We cleaned up and by 9:15 we were off. A wonderful morning indeed. Om Sri Sri Rama Jayam!

who were generally in happier mood either recovered from their illnesses faster or rarely fell ill. After some research, Dr. Kataria decided to try it out for himself so he gathered a group of friends and headed to a parc in Mumbai where they would laugh at jokes.After a few days, they ran out of jokes and wanting to continue on with this practice, so Dr. Kataria did more research and discovered that the body cannot tell the difference from a real laugh and a fake one, and that you reap the same benefits from both. Interesting, I thought. The video concluded with endless laughter and love beaming from it. Considering my laughoholic nature, I figured this would be a great experience and given my thoughts on my thesis subject, it just seemed like the universe was showing me the next step. 

   I had asked my parents permission to attend this retreat, and to be honest, I had just started working and the retreat had a heavy price tag but I knew very well that the value of the personal gain was incomparable. So I asked, and they were hesitant. In fact, they hadn't approved. 
  So, with deep regret, I informed Salimah that I was not able to attend the retreat and she replied with, "I had to fight for what I wanted and couldn't accept 'no' for an answer from anyone".

I woke up bright and early this morning to the bright rays of morning sunshine peeking through my window. I woke up, stunned, and in panic thinking it was late in the morning and how awful it was that no one had woken my up for my first day back at Marianopolis for summer school. I anxiously grabbed my phone from my nightstand and saw that it was barely 6:30 AM. "Thank the Lord Jesus and Krishna", I thought, as I lay my head back on my pillow and lay there in bed allowing my breath to return to its normal pace and staring out my crocheted curtains at the bright blue sky with intermittent clouds. "It's going to be a beautiful day", I thought. I lay there quietly for a few more minutes until I heard my door open and my father's head peak out the small slit. We briefly discussed my mode of transportation to school that morning and he closed the door and proceeded to carry on with his morning routine. I finally rose out of bed at 7AM, played obstacle course to my way to the door through the two full luggages and array of randomnities lying on my bedroom floor and proceeded to brush my teeth. 

I was excited. 

After numerous outfit attempts, I finally settled for a casual 3/4 sleeve khaki dress with a tall collar and a slim brown waist belt. I was going for something sophisticated yet casual. I grabbed a binder with a new pad of loose leaves, a couple stationary items I had not seen since my finals at U of T, and filled up my bag with the food my mother had prepared for me for the day which included freshly cut mangoes, shrimp noodles from supper, a roti bun from our restaurant, as well as a banana and a Nutrifresh bar that would undoubtedly get squashed in my bag and would inevitably end up in the trash. I grabbed the keys of my father's new Intrepid, probably the 8th or 9th car in the last decade of my father's, as well as my bagel with cream cheese and headed out the door. The warm breeze that met me as I walked out and the sunshine's bright rays seemed almost as if it was smiling back at me. It was a wonderful morning indeed.

I proceeded to start my ride for the day, adjusted the mirrors, seating, radio station, and steering wheel and took off for my first stop of the day: Marianopolis College. The ride was pleasant. I listened to a few radio stations with the generic top 40 playlist and some whacky news they like to throw in for "entertainment". I finally took the Saint-Jean exit for my school and wandered for a solid 20 minutes before finding parking a couple blocks down. I didn't really mind it as the weather was gorgeous and anyone would be a fool for not taking full advantage. As I finally made it up the hill to the entrance of Marianopolis, I realized that I had not recognized a single face. I won't deny that it was definitely uncomfortable at first. I vaguely remembered seeing D209 as my classroom and proceeded to the left as I entered the building. I still remembered that the whole school was connected through the 2nd floor so I knew I would eventually end up passing D209. Luckily, it was much closer than I thought and the small rooms took me by surprise. I had spent countless hours in numerous classes in these small classrooms and it is only after returning after a whole year in university that I realized how quaint and intimate the classrooms really were, especially at Marianopolis. I briefly looked around, didn't recognize anyone and proceeded to sit in the 2nd row. I sat there and recognized a few faces but always turned down to my phone to avoid eye contact. To be honest, I was a little embarrassed. And then, a few minutes later, Waishnavi, a family friend, walks in with a puzzled look on her face. I was shocked. I fibbed and told her I was taking this class because I dropped it in my last semester. I wasn't sure how to say that I had outrightly failed the course so I figured a little fib wouldn't hurt. 

In the entirety of my Marianopolis career, never had I ever taken a course with Porfessor Vukov. He was of average height and had a mix of black and white short curly hair, and an accent of which origin I could not fathom. He walked in and started his lecture with a warm, friendly tone. 

It was 12:01 AM when Gaanan came to pick me up Montmorency metro after a long day at work.