This is special

A successful businessman was growing old and knew it was time to choose a successor to take over the business.


Instead of choosing one of his Directors or his children, he decided to do something different. He called all the executives in his company together.


He said, "It is time for me to step down and choose the next CEO. I have decided to choose one of you." The young executives were shocked, but the boss continued. "I am going to give each one of you a SEED today - one very special SEED. I want you to plant the seed, water it, and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from the seed I have given you. I will then judge the plants that you bring, and the one I choose will be the next CEO."


One man, named Jim, was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed. He went home and excitedly, told his wife the story. She helped him get a pot, soil and compost and he planted the seed. Every day, he would water it and watch to see if it had grown. After about three weeks, some of the other executives began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.


Jim kept checking his seed, but nothing ever grew.


Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by, still nothing.


By now, others were talking about their plants, but Jim didn't have a plant and he felt like a failure.


Six months went by -- still nothing in Jim's pot. He just knew he had killed his seed. Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing.
Jim didn't say anything to his colleagues, however, he just kept watering and fertilizing the soil - He so wanted the seed to grow.


A year finally went by and all the young executives of the company brought their plants to the CEO for inspection.


Jim told his wife that he wasn't going to take an empty pot.
But she asked him to be honest about what happened. Jim felt sick to his stomach, it was going to be the most embarrassing moment of his life, but he knew his wife was right. He took his empty pot to the board room.


When Jim arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by the other executives. They were beautiful - in all shapes and sizes. Jim put his empty pot on the floor and many of his colleagues laughed, a few felt sorry for him!


When the CEO arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted his young executives.


Jim just tried to hide in the back. "My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown," said the CEO. "Today one of you will be appointed the next CEO!"


All of a sudden, the CEO spotted Jim at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered the Financial Director to bring him to the front.  Jim was terrified.. He thought, "The CEO knows I'm a failure! Maybe he will have me fired!"


When Jim got to the front, the CEO asked him what had happened to his seed, Jim told him the story.


The CEO asked everyone to sit down except Jim. He looked at Jim, and then announced to the young executives, "Behold your next Chief Executive Officer!


His name is "Jim!" Jim couldn't believe it. Jim couldn't even grow his seed.


"How could he be the new CEO?" the others said.


Then the CEO said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone in this room a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today. But I gave you all boiled seeds; they were dead - it was not possible for them to grow.



All of you, except Jim, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you. Jim was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it. Therefore, he is the one who will be the new
Chief Executive Officer!"


* If you plant honesty, you will reap trust
* If you plant goodness, you will reap friends
* If you plant humility, you will reap greatness
* If you plant perseverance, you will reap contentment
* If you plant consideration, you will reap perspective
* If you plant hard work, you will reap success
* If you plant forgiveness, you will reap reconciliation

So, be careful what you plant now; it will determine what you will reap later..
Think about this for a minute.


If I happened to show up on your door step crying, would you care?
If I called you and asked you to pick me up
because something happened, would you come?
If I had one day left to live my life, would you be part of that last day?
If I needed a shoulder to cry on, would you give me yours?
This is a test to see who your real
friends are or if you are just someone to talk to you when they are bored.


Do you know what the relationship is between your two eyes?
They blink together,
they move together,
they cry together,
they see things together,

and they sleep together,
but they never see each other;
that's what friendship is.
Your aspiration is your motivation, your
motivation is your belief ,
your belief is your peace,
your peace is your target,
your target is heaven,
and life is like hard core
torture without it! 

We Indians are Unique

1. Every Indian bachelor wants to marry a fair girl.

2. When the doorbell rings, a male or kid goes to open the door and the females run for their dupatta. So, keep ur friends close but your dupatta closer.

3. Picking up/dropping a relative (airport/railway stn) is an important family affair. Railway stns are like a stroll in the park.

4. Every teenage girls first crush is Dhoni or Virat Kholi. Mothers approve!! Mothers dont approve film stars though!

5. We thrive on street food and we dont get sick.

6. Every indian mother has 2 careers… working/housewife + Match making.

7. We have all had secret boyfriends/girlfriends. We dint care about them cheating on us but we dreaded getting caught by each others parents.

8. Indian girls have 3 type of brothers…. Real brother, cousin brother, Rakhee brother. Every indian guy is definitely somebodys rakhee brother!

9. The bride MUST cry at her Vidai. A bride has no business looking happy.

10. We go on cleaning sprees only during diwali/Christmas or when we have guests coming over.

11. However old we are, our parenrs need to know every detail of our schedule. Daily. No excuses. No exemption.

12. When indian parents buy tickets, every child becomes under 12. Getting a half ticket is a huge victory!

13. If we live in another city and dont call our mom daily , she’ll freak out and call all our friends to make sure we are alive.

14. We get embarrassed in front of our parents even when the word “sex” is written on a form to specify gender.

15. No other nationality can beat indians in bargaining. “Chalo bhaiya . Na tera na mera. Itne paise theek hain.”

16. No matter if we are Convent educated. When we are actually angry, we switch to highly effective, dirty, Hindi swear words.

17. We spend more time talking to guests at the door when they are leaving than while sitting in the living room.

18. Why to change the remote batteries when u can just slap the shit out of the remote and make it work?

19. Meeting a person with the same surname is like finding a long lost twin.

When justice is tempered with mercy...( A Wonderful mail received...)

A judge was sitting in judgment of an old lady who pleaded guilty of stealing some tapioca from a plantation.
In her defense, the old lady admitted to the Judge that she was indeed guilty of the crime because she was poor and her son was sick while her grandchild was hungry.
The plantation manager insisted that she be punished as a deterrent to others.
The judge going through the documents then looked up and said to the old lady, “I’m sorry but I cannot make any exception to the Law and you must be punished accordingly”.
The old lady was fined Rp.1 million (USD 100) and if she could not pay the fine then she will be jailed for 2 1/2 years as demanded by the Law.
She wept as she could not pay the fine.
The Judge then took off his hat and put in Rp.100,000 into the hat and said, “In the name of justice, I fine all present in the Court @ Rp.50,000 (USD 5.50) each as dwellers of this City for letting a child starve until her grandmother is compelled to steal to feed her grandchild. The Registrar will now collect the fines from all present.”
The Court managed to collect Rp 3.5 million (USD 350) including the fine collected from the plantation manager, whereby the fine was paid off and the rest was given to the old lady.

The Falcon & The Branch

Once there was a king who received a gift of two magnificent falcons. They were peregrine falcons, the most beautiful birds he had ever seen. He gave the precious birds to his head falconer to be trained.

Months passed, and one day the head falconer informed the king that though one of the falcons was flying majestically, soaring high in the sky, the other bird had not moved from its branch since the day it had arrived.

The king summoned healers and sorcerers from all the land to tend to the falcon, but no one could make the bird fly.

He presented the task to the member of his court, but the next day, the king saw through the palace window that the bird had still not moved from its perch.

Having tried everything else, the king thought to himself, “May be I need someone more familiar with the countryside to understand the nature of this problem.” So he cried out to his court, “Go and get a farmer.”

In the morning, the king was thrilled to see the falcon soaring high above the palace gardens. He said to his court, “Bring me the doer of this miracle.”

The court quickly located the farmer, who came and stood before the king. The king asked him, “How did you make the falcon fly?”

With his head bowed, the farmer said to the king, “It was very easy, your highness. I simply cut the branch where the bird was sitting.”

---

We are all made to fly — to realize our incredible potential as human beings. But at times we sit on our branches, clinging to the things that are familiar to us. The possibilities are endless, but for most of us, they remain undiscovered. We conform to the familiar, the comfortable, and the mundane. So for the most part, our lives are mediocre instead of exciting, thrilling and fulfilling. Let us learn to destroy the branch of fear we cling to and free ourselves to the glory of flight!

August: Osage County

Finally The film is released in India; still, too bad it took that long for it to get released here and that too only in one theater, with one show a day!

Anyways, when a Movie of Julia Roberts is released I have to see it no matter what!

It was really sad to see strength of people attending the movie were not much. Though, sincere fans like me couldn't have miss it.

The movie start with low phase and continue doing so. It is not much of action happening around but a chaos going all the way from start to end. The theme is of a Family reunion that takes place because of a sad event. These people who haven't seen each other for a long time, not aware of problems the others are facing, when come together and discuss the problems one and other realizes they all are quite in deep S*#%.

As the movie progress lots of dark secrets comes out. Some, in hilarious way- "Eat the Fish, Eat The Fish, Eat The Fish...", and "Oh... are we breaking the plates now?", woooow I loved it. I enjoyed Julia and Meryl's performance a lot. Violet (Meryl) who was desperately waiting for Barbara (Julia), as she believes her eldest daughter is the only one who understands her better than anybody else, and it is clear that they both are very much alike. Hence, when Violet lose control because of her addiction Brabara takes control and tangles (Literary) with Violet in doing so. But in the end, Violet, when left alone by the same Barbara and calls out after Barbara leaves, made me cry, which I tried to conceal as hard as possible.

But when taken Barbara's point of view, what else she should have done? Hadn't she had enough already- a teenage daughter truing to be drug addict. A husband having affair with younger girl. A sister having a boyfriend hitting on her (Barbara's)
daughter. A complex relation of her sister with their first cousin. Ahhh! I would have wanted to escape from it way before Barbara did.

This is the movie, that I won't recommend as a must watch. Specially to those who seeks just entertainment from movies. People who should watch this one are those who thinks their life is in deep S*#%... Watch this movie and you will realize how better your life is.
 
Should it be called a Family Movie, no, I doubt that. It should be called a movie of family trying not to be a Family.  And it seems completely fine when we learn the circumstances.

Mermaid or Whale!

Someone shared this with me... I didn't write this. But...I absolutely love what this woman wrote. So well done! Please read; it's quite enjoyable and share.

A while back, at the entrance of a gym, there was a picture of a very thin and beautiful woman. The caption was "This summer, do you want to be a mermaid or a whale?"

The story goes, a woman (of clothing size unknown) answered the following way:

"Dear people, whales are always surrounded by friends (dolphins, seals, curious humans), they are sexually active and raise their children with great tenderness.
They entertain like crazy with dolphins and eat lots of prawns. They swim all day and travel to fantastic places like Patagonia, the Barents Sea or the coral reefs of Polynesia.
They sing incredibly well and sometimes even are on cds. They are impressive and dearly loved animals, which everyone defend and admires.

Mermaids do not exist.

But if they existed, they would line up to see a psychologist because of a problem of split personality: woman or fish?
They would have no sex life and could not bear children.
Yes, they would be lovely, but lonely and sad.
And, who wants a girl that smells like fish by his side?

Without a doubt, I'd rather be a whale.

At a time when the media tells us that only thin is beautiful, I prefer to eat ice cream with my kids, to have dinner with my husband, to eat and drink and have fun with my friends.

We women, we gain weight because we accumulate so much wisdom and knowledge that there isn't enough space in our heads, and it spreads all over our bodies.
We are not fat, we are greatly cultivated.
Every time I see my curves in the mirror, I tell myself: "How amazing am I ?! "

And the OSCAR goes to.....

It was one of that day when I, regardless being a late sleeper, wakes up early (@5am), finish up the morning ritual and seat in front of TV to witness one of the most awaited events of the year - "The Academy Awards"

The 86th Academy Awards -- Ahh! The sound of it is amazing...! 86 years of glory and this event keeps getting better and better. Ellen was, no doubt, the Best! She kept the audience (Live and Screen) rocking their chairs by throwing the hilarious punches! She reminded Poor Jen Law was reminded about her last year fall! Well No regrets for good laughs!

Her Tweet, (by the way I am still waiting it to get uploaded on Tweeter) was the amazing, I mean come on - Meryl, Julia, Jennifer, Channing, Bradley, Brad, Angelina, Lupita and Ellen herself, in one photo, can anything beat that? No I don't think so... 

When she asked if anyone was hungry I didn't think she will literally bring the Pizza and serve it. And how kind of Brad Pitt to hand on the plates for the Pizza! One word- Hilarious!

The performance by  Pharrell Williams "Happy" from Despicable Me 2 was my favorite of the night. And second was Bette Midler "Wind Beneath My Wings" from Beaches for the "In Memoriam". 

And now huge applause for the Winner!

It was tough to select one of the Best of all the categories of the movies out all the nominee. Hats off to the Academy’s active members, it couldn't have been easy to vote!

I jumped (Happily) when Frozen Won, not just for Animated Feature Film's category but also for the "Let it Go..."

I am so very Happy that Gravity has won 7 Golden Statutes- N I Salute for Alfonso Cuarón, he was undoubtedly the most deservant Director for 2013. I voted and devoted him to Win.

Matthew and Jared you guys deserved it too. You must watch Dallas Buyer Club (If you haven't watched it yet) to get proof for my theory.

I am sorry Juls, I am your huge fan but after watching 12 Years a Slave I did hope Lupita to win and cannot be more glad that she actually did.

My votes were for Amy Adams and that maybe because I didn't get chance to watch Blue Jasmine. Hope Woody will allow the movie to be telecast in India so that we can see the The Best Actress Oscar performance.

Kudos for12 Years a Slave, even though all the nominated pictures were the best, my favorite were 12 Years a Slave and Gravity. Now, when Alfonso won for Director, I was Happy to see 12 Years a Slave took the final and most important trophy (ies) home.

Overall, waking up early was totally worth for getting a chance to witness such an Awesome Event!