***Ramadan Kareem***

Hello beautiful hearts,

Wish you all a very blessed Ramadan.
Hope you make the most of this month.

Make sure you eat a healthy, high in potassium and less fat suhoor.
 I suggest milk, bananas, muesli, flavored yogurt, dates.

Do not invest precious time in making iftaar.
Whenever you get time prepack stuff to prepare in the next day.
Keep a diary handy to add stuff you want to buy next time you go for groceries.
Add stuff you want to cook for iftaar in your diary as and when you remember them.
In this way you wont have to keep thinking of what you will have in iftaar everyday.
Cook only as much as you can eat, dont go overboard.

Give and encourage charity.

Drink sufficient water from iftaar till suhoor and take time out to walk half an hour after dinner.

Take a nap during the day.

Dedicate most of your time for salaah and Quran recitation, listening, understanding and memorising.
Try to memorise the duas and verses which you always wanted to but didnt find time for.
Start small but its important to start and keep following.

Be sincere in your duas and I pray they get accepted.

Beautiful hearts, please remember me and my family in your duas.
Ameen.
 

The relaxed mind sings...

Hello beautiful hearts...❤

I have been traveling around my hometown past few weeks.

The temperature has reduced and so has the city noises.

The serenity of the place has brought a peace to me.

As I sit in my balcony sipping my evening tea , I watch the life outside with delight.

I remember the quote from Bollywood song...'mai shayar to nahi, magar aye haseen 

Jabse dekha maine tujhko 

Mujhko shayari a gayi'......translated as I am not a poet, dear beauty

But after seeing you,

Poetry has come to me.....

 My relaxed mind feels as if speaking to me the below lines...

I wish I was a bird 

I would fly so high,

Into the vast blue sky. ⛅

No borders, no visas for me,

I am free I am free.

I wish I was a flower.

And would bloom so wide,

Every morning on the green tile.

For the little girl who sees me

The world would look so right.

I wish I was a star

Which shines so bright so bright

To give the direction sign

For the wanderers of the night.

Do comment if you ever experienced this feeling....and dear friends your suggestions are always welcome.

When it Rains :-)

Since decades now, I have known how it feels when it rains, but when it drizzled in the dessert land it was a new feeling altogether.
The temperature here is very high(50`s) in summer and very low (5`s) in winter. The arid climate doesn't have a monsoon season in particular. It rains anytime when winter is coming and retreating.
In some way I feel it marks the joy of goodbyes to summer hotness and then the sadness of the departing winter coolness.
The area witnesses showers for only a few minutes, but ironically it sometimes leads to floods on the street(blame the drainage).
Ah, but unlike back home, flood here is just water logging on the streets, there are no children playing in the knee deep waters, no automobiles splashing water on the people walking along the street, no fun!

My heart aches for the rainy season back home. I remember when we were kids, school reopened during the monsoon and in just few weeks everyone would be drawing for the topic 'A rainy day' in their drawing books.Pages painted with grey and dull blue showing a lady in umbrella, raincoat and gumboot clan children being escorted to school, on street children making paper boats and sailing them in the gushing gutters were typical.
And as we grew older we went from playing in puddles to trekking near waterfalls. The rain showers turn everything on land green. Our colleagues and friends would organise treks into nearby mountains. The lush green mountains with springs and waterfalls here and there were so refreshing!

I stand here now in my window, hands outstretched to catch the pouring rain drops. My husband looks at me with a smile and says 'makes me remember my days as a kid when going out in the rain was forbidden'
Ah...I am young again....The rain is still refreshing...the smell of sand still nostalgic...