A WOMEN’S DAY SPECIAL

8th March was InternationalWomen's Day and on this very day this year I had written thus:

A WOMEN’S DAY SPECIAL
At the very outset let me wish all the women, who have come in my life (and they are great many), ‘A Happy Women’s Day’! A great number of them, women, I mean, who have shaped and influenced my life (I am proud to acknowledge that) and they have made me what I am today. I thank all of you! I was surrounded by women right from my birth. My mother, my sisters, my aunties (five maushi and three mami), wife daughter, daughter –in-law and sweet grand - daughter and many of friends and collegues, my cousins and many more, have had a great role to play in my life.
As a child I was quite comfortable playing with girls of my age older than me (mostly friends of my elder sisters). I unashamedly played their games (sagar gotya and bhatukli) and also made them play our games (cricket, viti dandu , lagori,etc.). I loved telling stories and I still do. We had a lot of story- telling sessions. (At times I would spin yarns or two) I loved reading and I still do, a habit inculcated from our mother.
‘Movies’ is my other love. I am a movie buff, you may say. So as a teen watching ‘My fair Lady’ I imagined myself to be Professor Henry Higgins, an ordinary man, who desires nothing more than just an ordinary chance to live exactly as I like, and do precisely what I want, live my life free of strife. It would be nice to be just an average man, having no eccentric whim about me and doing what I think was best for me. Why let a woman in my life and lose my serenity, so I thought. I would remain a bachelor forever and sing ‘happy to be bachelor boy until my dying days', so I believed.
But it was not be. I did let a woman in my life and got married. After forty plus years (44 years to be exact) with my wife, it’s not bad…No, I never felt that I was up against a wall, after getting married. She did redecorate my small home (we do not have a cellar or huge dome). - just a small house but she made it into a big home! She raised our children very well, just the way my mother did.She has been a good ‘bahu’ and now a good ‘sans’ ….so, you see, letting a woman in my life wasn’t that bad idea at all…but in fact, it’s very good to let a woman in your life! 
 
Movie buff as I am, I was also impressed by the female folks of the cinema world. But about them some other time! Ha,ha!
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So coming soon with : 'Several Times Women from Celluloid World and me!' But, of course, all of them will be from Hollywood at first. 

                                                           Vinay Trilokekar