Rashmi's Space

I logged on to Facebook today and saw a pic of one of my college friends. Nostalgia hit me like a ton of bricks! Now you must think...awww, college, no wonder, 'those were the days'....'ah the good old college days'....no, none of that.....this was pure nostalgia for my friend, who has now been separated from me for the last decade (decade, really?)...and has disappeared somewhere in this large abyss of life! 

Log on to Facebook, you see a video that your friend has posted which already has a lot of 'shares' and 'likes', you want to check it out for yourself, you click 'play' and instead of the video, an advertisement begins....and you have to wait another minute before your video begins.....sounds familiar? Advertisements, or ads, are found all over the internet today. As part of videos posted on the internet, flashing and distracting internet users by flanking both the sides of most of the pages on the internet.....it is very common to see these commercials, so common that nobody finds it annoying anymore. (Some advertisements, though, have a 'close' button so that you can skip watching the ad altogether......but the ads are there all the same.

Of all the animals Mother Nature created, man was the only animal she bestowed the gift of brain on; or rather, the ability to reason. And what a gift that turned out to be! It was this gift that made man different from all the other animals. From the earliest times, man made good use of this gift and used it adroitly to keep him always one step ahead of all the other animals.Since the earliest known times man has always been in the search for the new, for the better and for the more convenient. He started with the invention of fire and the wheel, and has never looked back since. He went on to invent the internet and all the other smart technology inventions using this very wonderful gift.

'No man is an island', someone once said 'its invitation to danger, its invitation to dread' 'Bring on the dread, bring on the danger, I'll take my chances', said the lone ranger.... This is the story of the lone ranger . This person is individualistic and prefers to do things by himself. This is a person who has always managed things independently and has learnt to ace it. It could be any one of us. This story is about that one person amongst us who is fiercely independent, who likes to do things his own way, who is not comfortable with anybody else's way of doing things. This lone ranger could be born out of necessity, out of choice, or could be the result of upbringing or could simply be because there was no other way out......whatever the reason, the lone ranger walks his chosen path, all alone, most of the time seen by others, (mostly wrongly), as a selfish person or someone who finds it difficult to adjust or comply.......this is his si...

I recently met a few friends for lunch. Part of the group, were working moms, stay-at-home moms and a working from home moms (like yours truly).  After the initial cat-up about kids and family, the conversation naturally veered towards work-life-balance. One of my friends, who is a stay-at-home mom mentioned that she was looking for a part-time job. She felt a little a little depressed, she said, and admitted that she was stuck in some kind of an identity crisis. A mother and a homemaker by choice, she couldn't help the feeling that she was losing out on her identity as an individual. We all knew her to be a very intelligent and successful person in her own right, although, she sometimes tends to think more with her heart…so, this friend of mine, felt she was losing herself somewhere between being a mother and a wife and a dutiful daughter-in-law.  Listening to her, another of my friends, who works full-time, said it was much better to be at home full time, as she s...

"Wow babe! I got a Facebook request from your MOM!!!" I heard someone screech....and just like that twenty or so pairs of eyes around us went in search of the 'babe' in question whose mother had hopped on the bandwagon of the newest breed of parents and grandparents joining the social networking community. It is pretty cool to be a member of the same social networking site where your children, grandchildren and most of your relations are members too! Or is it?

Let's choose executors and talk of wills: And yet not so, for what can we bequeath Save our deposed bodies to the ground? William Shakespeare ,  Richard II  (c. 1595), Act III, scene 2, line 148.  A few days back in my blog, I wrote a post about the importance of making a will; and making one when time is still on your side. Many of my friends who read the blog, had a lot of questions...some of them quite specific...some wanted to know if it is required to seek legal counsel when making a will, while some wanted to know what exactly one can include in one's will? Some wanted to know if a soft copy of a will is admissible, while some had questions as to where the will needed to be for safe keeping. The questions made it pretty clear that although, as far as lawyers are concerned, making a will is mere technicality, albeit a very important one; for the general public who have limited or often wrong knowledge of law, it is very important to have a few more clarifi...

'A diamond is forever'; advertisers for DeBeers came up with this advertising slogan in 1948....and till date we all recognize it! "Just do it!" "Open happiness!" "Connecting people"; "I'm loving it!"...are just a few examples of the most recognized brands today....So, what is it that makes brands so important in our lives? We often hear 'brands give us a sense of self...brands define us...'  but do they?

Being a lawyer, a wife and a mother, there is little that surprises me......but there are many things that make me think....and when I think, I write...Recently, I had a client tell me an interesting story. She was in the bank to withdraw some money from her husband's account (this was not a joint account). When the cashier saw that the amount involved was in six figures and when she saw that the said husband had not himself come down to make the withdrawal, they asked her for identification and made her wait for a good half hour while they satisfied themselves that she was indeed the wife and that she did have the right to withdraw the money! It got me thinking, if merely to withdraw money from her own husband's account she had to undergo all this...think about it when there are no proper nominations and clear instructions as to who gets what after a person has passed on....

With his latest, Revolution 2020, Chetan Bhagat has done it again! Even though I had excused his  earlier work 2 States: The Story of My Marriage  as a one time mistake of writing with a Bollywood movie inspired plot (I excused him, thinking maybe it was too close to his heart, though I don’t know how true or false that is); I still find it amazing how one Bollywood movie supposedly based on his book can turn a ‘different’ young and upcoming, free thinking writer, who is India’s paperback king, suddenly into someone writing crude screenplays for typical masala Bollywood movies!

The third verse of the Book of Genesis; in the King James Bible , reads: 1:1 - In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. 1:2 - And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. 1:3 - And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. 1:4 - And God saw the light, and it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. This division of light from darkness is what makes the earth different from the other planets. This difference between light and darkness is, however getting blurred today with the increasing amounts of power shortages. Our generation has seen and continues to see a lot of light and a lot of good; many of the things that were unheard of when our parents generation was still young.

Yeah. I want money too...we all do! In this wonderful and beautiful gift of life that we have received, we all crave for a lot many wonderful and beautiful things that money can buy, if only we had all the money that we would ever need! The mere prospect of making money, or rather, making a lot of money, is very very appealing. But the requisite investment of time and hard work for the said purpose is a little difficult to achieve.