Just About Everything

Happy "Holi"day everyone. I wish each of you everlasting happiness now and every day of your life. Although, these days I am not so much into playing Holi but I enjoy the day nevertheless. The high positive energy that this day brings is absolutely infectious! Everybody is in such high spirits! You can't but get affected by it. As a child I used to love playing Holi, it was great fun to run wild! Our Holi get-together would usually happen in an Army club, my parents would have their own group of friends, and we children were allowed to just be… What fun! And every year, there was this standard lunch for Holi…Chole bhature, and I loved it! Never got tired of it. I still remember the taste. The colour from our hands would kind of mix with the gravy, and we happily gobbled that...nothing happened! I can't dream of being that bindas these days! I guess now I know why I can survive without any stomach problems, even after having a lot of pani-puris from the road s...

This is what I was humming to myself after using the Dove split end rescue shampoo and conditioner- I am so in Dove, in Dove, my split ends are all around when Dove is not here, when Dove is here they quickly disappear, I am so in Dove. In Dove, I need Dove in everything I do, in everything I want my hair to be, I am so in Dove. This is actually a song which goes like --I am so in Love...in love the moments seem to drag when you are not here... But I don't know where I heard it, and I just can't find this song anywhere!   And I have not hummed this song in ages! I don't know why all of a sudden I started humming this song. The only logical reason seems to be Dove! My love story with Dove received a fresh boost a few days back when I got this package from dove. A very nice bag with a dove split end rescue shampoo and conditioner. I have been a huge Dove fan since I started using Dove. But I had not tried out the split end rescue shampoo. I have used it around fo...

Madhubani Painting by school children  We left Darbhanga at around 10.30 am and started for Madhubani. We wanted to go to village and meet artists and see Madhubnai paintings...we were informed that a village by the name of Jitwarpur is home to some artists who are actively involved in Madhubani paintings. We set off and soon after reached the village. We were caught off guard and were very pleasantly surprised when we suddenly chanced upon a painting on the wall of a house, wow! We stopped the car and started clicking, up ahead we saw a school, and really that school was something. It has paintings on the walls by school children. We stopped the car and we were wondering if there was some way we could take a closer look at those paintings. We did not want to disturb the school's normal functioning.  We got noticed after some time, and they gave us permission to go around the school without disturbing any school proceedings. I was thrill...

We reached Darbhanga around 8.30pm. We were tired but happy to have accomplished so much in such a short time! Our purpose of stopping over at Darbhanga was mainly because we wanted to visit one of the oldest cities of Bihar. Darbhanga has so much of history that it definitely warrants a visit. The other reason was to visit Madhumbani, I am a huge fan of Madhubani paintings and I wanted to visit the source of these wonderful paintings. Some historic facts about Darbhanga. I had found the name a bit weird and could not resist finding out about the origin of the name before my visit: This is what I found from Wikipedia (the -paragraph in italics has been taken for Wikipedia) The name Darbhanga is the mutated form of "Dwarbanga". That is, it is the combination of words "Dwar"(Gate) and "Banga" (Bengal) meaning "Gateway of Bengal". If one notices Bengali and Maithili, he will find many a phonetic similarities particularly in the main verbs...

Aerial view of Nalanda University I am continuing with the travel posts on my Bihar trip . From Rajgir we set off for Nalanda, unfortunately we did not have much time because we had to reach Darbhanga the same day and it was already 1pm and we still had long distances to cover! This left us with only a couple of hours of daylight in Nalanda, I regret not having more time. Nalanda does require more time, and I missed the museum:( Nalanda is known as one of the greatest universities of the ancient world, it was founded by Kumaragupta around 413-455 AD, and Kingh Harshavardhana of Kannauj (from 606-647 AD).The Pala kings continued to patronage this institution, but Nalanda started declining around 1200 AD when it was invaded by Bakhtiyar Khilji. Entrance to Nalanda Brick walls inside the ancient university Students came from distant places and countries to study in Nalanda. Some of the well- known people who visited Nalanada are, Nagarjuna, Aryaveda, Vas...