A Privilege Called Life

I am rather happy to be alive. To love, to enjoy peace, to be happy with what I have: family and friends who care, a nice neighborhood, air to breathe, food to eat, clothes to wear and good health. Well, almost. If you think I am being mushy, well, yes, I've got reason to be. I would be the first one to admit that life is pretty precarious - I am not sure what news I'll get each time I hear the phone ring. The last of my aunts, my Mom's sister, is still in a coma. We know we can't do anything about it. Her chances of survival are less than slim. Yet we pray, because we like to hope and believe in miracles. We want to.
The past week, we have had long power outages (like 15 hours at a time) and after the initial worry of pending work piling up, stuff in the fridge (oh yes, it is a big thing for me), wet weather - I decided to make the most of being offline, yet again! We went out and socialized with friends and went out for dinner and had a couple of wonderful evenings. Since we went to another area, we skipped the power cuts. 
One day, in heavy rains, we set out to see a house a friend had bought.  We completely lost our way and had a good ride around the city. The rain was refreshing, actually. We had candlelight dinners at home and also spent time together singing in the dark. Our favorite game is "antakshari" - which is sort of like a song-tag. The person who starts sings a song - and the syllable their song ends with must be the next person's song's starting syllable. So let us say you sing a song, for example: (lets take a Beatles song - "Love me, do") 
"Love, love me do;  You know I love you;  I'll always be true,  So please....love me do".  
Next, it is my turn and I must sing a song that starts with "do" Not the word - but the syllable. So I'll sing.....um...... "Do you know where you're going to" by Diana Ross (theme from "Mahogany") ... and so on. Get it? Except, we play it with Hindi songs.
There are many more games, but I'll make that another post, eh?
During the times we went out, I took longer than usual to shop and checked out a few things I had been meaning to. I usually rush through this. I also got more time to cook and prepare things for my kitchen shelf from scratch. 
So let me show you some of the things I've been up to, besides doing a lot of reading! (Click photos to view enlarged version).
Cooking, of course, and in this cold weather, the kitchen has been an even nicer place to be. This is what I had on my plate today, ready to make lunch. Tomatoes, cabbage, carrots, capsicum (peppers?)
I prepped it - keeping some for salad - I love salads- and rest of it to stir-fry for fried rice. Love the colors! Visited a new mall in our area. It has a huge bookshop - one of our favorite places. The chain had a branch that was pretty far off from where we lived, so we're excited that this one is just within walking distance from our place. Yay! And I love, love, loved seeing a little girl busy reading, with a stack of books next to her! I also loved her shoes! I took a walk around my area, as I always do. This cactus has fascinated me for a long time. It is quite tall, as you can see. These guys renovated their house and had the sidewalk paved. I am not sure if this cactus is rooted, or if they've just placed it there on the concrete. If it weren't rooted, it would dry up, right? Maybe the stem is inside the ground. Anyway, I love how it looks.  Pomegranates. Love this fruit. I enjoy peeling it, and storing the pearls in a box to eat later. Tastes lovely with fresh mint leaves. Try it! Also love to add it to my curd (yogurt) and rice.
Oh, it is the season for rose apples. As kids, we called them love apples. One of our teachers had a huge tree in her garden and would encourage us to pick them, and take them home in baskets. This teacher was also my Mom's teacher - yes, folks, my Mom and I both went to the same school - and we even had the same teachers! I always have lovely memories when I see this!   I love this overhang on the wall of this house. The sun suddenly came out and it was glorious to see them lazily swaying in the gentle breeze. See those little white flowers?. 
On the way back from school yesterday (yes, Saturdays are full working days at school for Vidur) - I saw yet another tree that had uprooted itself on the side of the road - it fell on the building just beyond the wall, across this enclosure on the left; again, luckily, no damage. And no one hurt. I am always fascinated at how a huge tree, rooted to the spot for years, just tips and falls over. It has probably been building up for a while...see the pavement built around it!
Yes, folks, life is bouncing back to normal - and I am looking forward to a wonderful week ahead!
Let us now head to Unknown Mami's blog - she hosts this fabulous link up - and travel the world from there.
  Have a great week ahead!