What's the news?

Its been a while since an update and its purely because I have been living much more offline than I do online. Being in a place where you can actually go out and see things is great after the last station. In the last three months I have been to a puppet show at the Indian Habitat Center organized by Ishara puppet theater, the largest Mall in India at Gurgaon, and to the internal wholesale markets in the heart of Delhi-6.
Life could not get any better!
In Gaffar Market I discovered a shop that sells all the imported stuff like Mars bars and Toblerones at whole sale rates. Needless to say my purse bottomed out there! Got some amazing bottle shaped liquor chocolates and lots of tinned sardines and tuna stuff as well. Not to mention huge boxes of sweets for Rehaan to distribute in school on his birthday.

Take a look at my shopping haul from that day!
Now the FA1 is almost on us and then we look forward to the summer holidays. Other than that life is busy due to the on and off absence of the part time maid. The water in Dwarka is horrible. It dried out my oily skin! Can not believe how that happened.
Another unbelievable event was my Twitter Account getting hacked. Read the last blog post for details. 
Other recent excitement included getting an article of mine published in the Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul - Teens Talk Growing Up. Its a real thrill seeing your name in print, no matter how much you manage to publish online.   Am also looking forward to the next issue of Salute Magazine...fingers crossed...you may see yours truly's article printed in it.

Twitter Account Got Hacked!

I don't know how it happened, but it did. I have been more involved with the book that I am editing than the online work recently so it could have happened any time last month. All I know is I got a message from the Twitter customer care team saying that my account information had been reset. I had no clue what happened and did not pay too much attention to it.
I, of all people, should have known better. My account had been hacked and every single person on my follower list was @ messaged with a link to some unsafe site. I was blissfully unaware of this till I happened to come to this blog. On the home page I had an app which would show my last few tweets. Imagine my shock when I saw just what these were.
Anyway, I logged into my Twitter account after using the change password link from the email that they had sent me. Now I reset the information and began deleting the tweets that had the link. Imagine my horror when I realized that it was not just a few but literally thousands of tweets. Thanks to the built in security measures at Twitter I can not delete these en mass, but have to do so one at a time.
It was just not worth the effort. So I have deactivated the account and am now going to stick with the blog and Facebook to share whatever I want to. A real violation of privacy and steady reminder of just how unsafe data shared online can be. As of now I am not restarting the twitter account as it really does not provide me with any special advantage. So if you need to get in touch with me use email or Facebook.

A whole new blog

Its been a while since I wrote anything on this blog. As I had begun two blogs at the same time in 2008 it was the one on wordpress that got more attention as it was more fun. The widgets were more friendly and the themes were fun. Since then there have been a large number of changes at Blogger. It has come up with a number of more useful features and the general format of the site has improved. Plus its much easier to monetize given that Google runs both Blogger and Adsense.

Since I was initially playing around more with the wordpress blog I had given the paid domain name www.cashmerelashkari.com to that blog. Last December when it was time to renew the domain name I decided I did not want it any more. Some privacy issues, and some financial ones made my decision. As of now there is a cyber squatter on that domain. (That is a person who has nothing to do with me but still bought my domain name hoping I would pay to buy it back. Not going to happen.)

Strangely enough once I kind of shut down the personal blog on wordpress I began to miss it and so I decided to revamp the one on blogger which I have been ignoring for the last couple of years. I spent the better part of the morning today sorting out this blog. I took out old posts that would be no use and deleted any internet forwards I had shared. I am wiser now about the kind of content that can get you in trouble. If I don't like my content being copied on other sites, they would not like it either.

All in all I have decided to continue with this blog as my main personal story teller. I have also come to realize that when you write a niche topic it is better to get a different website for it. So I have set up a few other websites. Here are the details

Party Food and Games - Party Food and Games
Tarot - Get a free online tarot reading
Rhymes and Lyrics for Kids  - Rhymes and Lyrics for Kids
Making Money Online - Work from home
Spoken English - Spoken English


Apart from these websites that I have set up I continue to write on a number of other revenue sharing site which includes Hubpages - Cashmere on Hubpages


Now I feel that the blog is cleaned up and ready to take on my story as I discover Delhi. I hope to write more often here than I have been on the wordpress blog. Lets hope it all comes together well. Look forward to your support on this blog, just as much as you supported me on the previous one. So long and take care till the next blog post!

We hit 10

On the occasion of our 10th wedding anniversary, we were true to form and did nothing! The day coincided with Diwali this year, unlike the year when we got married when it coincided with Dusherra. It was a quiet and relaxed day.
I made a cake
Chocolate with chocolate  walnut icing. Recipes for both can be found at the Party Food and Games blog.
Now I am gearing up for the move next month and may not be blogging for a while.

The Joys of Urdu Bazaar, Gorakhpur

If I had not traversed through these narrow streets and gullies I would never have believed the amount of stuff it is possible to pick up in Gorakhpur. Last Saturday three of my friends and I decided to venture into the interiors of the old market and were amply rewarded for our efforts.

We bought everything from plastic containers and mugs to cheap pearl earrings. From lace and appliques to material for kurtis. From card making stuff to curtain making stuff. From fridge magnets to a bartan rack made out of steel. It was like we were on a scavenger hunt.

And then not satisfied with the small street shops we headed over to the City Mall and did grocery shopping in Spencers. On the way back home someone had the bright idea of hitting the canteen and we did that as well.Loaded with shopping bags we bundled back into the auto and got stuck at the railway crossing for twenty minutes.

We left the house at ten in the morning and got back only at quarter to six in the evening. After which I had a splitting headache and went straight for a bath. After having washed off oodles of dust and mud I sank face first into the bed and stayed that way for half an hour.

The next day duly recovered from the trip I sat down and hand stitched a couple of window curtains using the cloth and the lace jhalar that I had picked up in Urdu Bazaar the previous day. And this is what they look like. The Photo does not seem too bright as I took it from my mobile camera and not with the regular one. Still I think it gives you a fair idea about what I managed to make.

 

This was a folder that I made for an Afwwa Competition last year. I thought I might share it with you guys too. The concept was mother earth on her sliver of green with the oceans of blue on which she floats. The tree was the symbolic tree of life which binds all creatures of earth. And of course the butterflies were to show the teeming life that flutters its wings in the world.

I wrote about all the stuff we did on our Baby's Day Out when the four of us went to Urdu Bazaar in my last blog post. As if once was not enough I went again the following Saturday. This time with an entirely new set of ladies. The four of us did not waste too much time this time round as we all knew just what we wanted to buy.

Plus this time round I was able to play guide and take them to the right shops all along the way. I picked up a beautiful Baransi silk sari for a friend of mine and was seriously tempted to pick up one for myself. Then I stopped myself, with great regret, and indulged in picking up a couple of embroidered suit pieces.

This time round the trip was not quite as long as we left the cantt only after 11 in the morning and were home by 5 in the evening. We missed lunch but managed to grab some roasted bhutta on the way. Each one of us claimed that none of our husbands would have ever let us go walking the streets eating bhutta and shopping the way we were.

It was a fairly relaxed outing as compared to the last time. I also managed to see the famous Geeta Vastra Vibhag, but personally I prefer going up to the Krishna cloth house bang opposite. the guy has more our kind of stuff than the Geeta Press people do. Picked up some pillow covers with nice bright flowers. Should cheer up the room. That's it for now.