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Two Years of Red Velvet | Highlights & Memories
Time flies. It still feels like yesterday that Red Velvet made its debut. Has it been two years already? So much has happened in this time. It’s hard to believe I’m actually typing this post down. Honestly, when I started Red Velvet, I had very little interest in it. I knew I wanted to write somewhere out of my 9-to-5, but I wasn’t too serious. Truth is, I do not have a techie bone in my body. And I can get notoriously picky with the slightest of things. Plus I’m lazy. Naturally, the idea of putting up a blog and being consistent with it was pretty daunting. Tathagata being the…
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Sailing Beyond the “Honeymoon Phase” – 5 Intentional Practices We Follow in Our Marriage
When I wrote about the 7 lessons on our first anniversary, I was starting out with marriage. I was learning a lot. Picking up traits. Exploring. Another year into it and I found myself awed at its realness. With each passing day, the fundamentals of marriage were being laid bare in front of me. In the largest of events. In the tiniest of moments. With love. And I couldn’t help but feel amazed. I’ll give it to you upfront. Marriage isn’t a fairy tale. Because that would make it fictitious. Marriage is hard work. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to scare you away from it. Truth is,…
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Why Fitness is Important to Me | My Exercise Regime + Benefits
When I was in the seventh standard, I remember my parents had picked a nice white dress with pretty embroidery for me to wear in Durga Puja. I was really excited about the dress and could hardly wait to wear it. There was a lot of beadwork on the dress which was coming loose in places. So Maa decided to sit with it one afternoon and mend them. I was in school and Baba in office. A quiet autumn afternoon. Just as Maa had begun to work on it, the doorbell rang. Untimely. Outside the door stood Baba, leaning on his colleagues, looking like a train wreck. He had bruises on…
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INTERVIEW: Collaboration with a Lifestyle Blogger | Women Empowerment
Erratic Rantings started off with a question, “What will I write about?“. Pat came the answer from TG – “Anything you want“. And the rest is history! Slowly Erratic Rantings grew into a full-fledged lifestyle blog. It became an outlet for my emotions where I could write about anything I wanted. It became my comfort zone. And in the process, it started to gather a handful of readers like you who began to follow it. So what started as a memory bank has now become a responsibility towards you. While I continue to blog for myself today, I also do it for my readers and maybe help those out who are…
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What Lockdown is Looking Like for Me – Keeping Sane in Quarantine: Part 4
Read Part 3 here. Introduction to Anime At the initial stage of the quarantine, Tathagata and I had been debating over whether to subscribe to Netflix. We are already subscribed to a DTH service where we have rented a set of channels – sports channels for football, the popular movie channels, some of the channels that air TV shows and a couple of travel and adventure channels. This has been working well for us since we didn’t want to be committed to any of the stuff on TV. But with the lockdown in place, the equation changed. We were discussing about watching movies of our choice and maybe, follow some…
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What Lockdown is Looking Like for Me – Keeping Sane in Quarantine: Part 3
Read Part 2 here. Working Out Since I get this asked often, I have been meaning to do an entire post about my work-out routine and why exercise is a vital part of my life. But I haven’t been able to come around to it with so many other things going on that I have been sharing with you here. I will write that post down soon. So, I won’t give out the details here. Anyway, quarantine or no quarantine, exercise is a regular part of my everyday routine. An hour a day, five days a week. I distribute this hour throughout the day. I don’t go to the gym…
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What Lockdown is Looking Like for Me – Keeping Sane in Quarantine: Part 2
Read Part 1 here. Now that I have acknowledged and put my thoughts into perspective, I can have a clear mind for my other activities. Daily Household Chores You see, routine and regularity are the two R’s that maintain balance and stability in the mind and the household. With the lockdown in place, there has been a massive tipping of that scale. Routine disappeared and regularity lay in shambles. One of the key reasons behind this is the absence of domestic help. In a family of six people, this sudden change becomes overwhelming. So we suddenly ended up in a space where household labour was threatening to pile up faster…
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What Lockdown is Looking Like for Me – Keeping Sane in Quarantine: Part 1
After an unusually exciting beginning to the year and our 2-year anniversary celebration, the world suddenly came to a standstill. While we had only begun to ease into the new year by March, so had the coronavirus, without most of us knowing. When the lockdown was put into effect in India on 26th March, the virus had already started to rip the world apart. And before we knew it, the engines screeched to a halt. Earth was closed for maintenance. We went into the quarantine hoping that it would help contain the virus and things would gradually return to normal. Little did we realize then that there is only hoping…
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30 Quotes That Changed My Life
I have a habit of writing down good quotes. I used to have a diary for them and now they’ve all been transferred to a Google Doc which I access from my phone. So every time I come across a sentence that resonates and touches a chord with me, I quickly try to memorize it and write it down as soon as I get the chance. The thing is I never know where I would pick out a quote from – it could be from a song, a book, a prayer, a movie or even a conversation – which is why I’m always on the lookout. Now why the habit?…
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Sundarban – A Breather in the Mysterious Mangroves
I get asked this question a lot – what do you want to remember a year by? For the last two years, my answer thankfully, continues to be the same. Travel. Okay, so how do I count my blessings for last year? Here goes: Bali for a merry start to the year Koh Samui to ward off the summer heat Darjeeling for a Durga pujo cuppa Tajpur & Mandarmoni for a pre-Christmas jolly good time God has been kind, oh so kind. Tathagata and I had been looking forward to this year’s travel which we had planned to begin in May with bookings to commence from March. Needless to say,…
