Jealousy can leave us blind.

Most of us tend to become jealous at one point in our lives. In Remembering My Childhood In The Continent Of Africa Sedaris is jealous of his partner Hugh's childhood. He was jealous of the adventure and the way of life Hugh had in Africa wishing his life was more like his. I remember being jealous of my cousin Sri, to the point where I wished I was more like her, when I went to India over the summer. Sri was my mom's sisters daughter. She is much younger than me, and everyone adored her. To my parents everything she did was perfect. To me everything she did was irritating and annoying. First thing she ever told us was about were her achievements. When people travel long distances to visit you people ask about how they are doing or how was the flight, instead she begins her bragging session on how awesome she thinks she is. She had perfect scores, a  first place dancing competition medal, and can cook like every Indian food you can name. She was "polite" and never whined about anything. She was basically every parents dream. Everyday she would do something impressive like help out in the kitchen or win some sort of competition during the course of the summer. Each time she would go up to my parents and brag about it for like 20 minutes. This one time she saved a kitten. She found a random baby kitten in our garden in need of shelter. She brings it to our house and feeds its and finds it a family. My parents were so impressed that they kept praising her the whole day as if she went through fire and rescued the kitten or something. I grew jealous of her everyday, because I don't get perfect scores, I don't get awards every week, and I never rescued animals. I wanted to be praised by my parents too. I felt like they loved her more than they loved me. I started to not like her and acted all grumpy every time I saw her. My grandmother noticed this. So this one afternoon, my grandmother took me to the store and asked me if I was okay. I told her about my irritation with my cousin. She told me I did not have to be doing perfect things or getting awards to be loved by my parents. No matter how awesome my cousin is, my parents will always love me more because I am their kid and she isn't. She also said that I have to love myself first if I wanted people to love me. If I always felt insecure about people hating me or someone being better than me I will always feel unloved. She pointed out that jealousy will leave me blind to my surroundings, for as long as I stay jealous of someone I wont see who they are as a person.
 I agreed with my grandmother. Since I was jealous half the time I was there I never got to know my cousin. After visiting the store I talked to my cousin and really got to know her. She turned out to be really cool. I love her now. She taught me how to cook and do math better; She became a really good friend to me. I was sad that I only made an effort the last week of my 5 week visit. I wish I had not been jealous. I learned during my trip that jealousy gets you nowhere in life.

Work

The essay “the company man” is written by Ellen Goodman. The essay the company man defines a man who gave all of his attention to his work only. He is always away from his family, even during the weekends he does not give any of his time to stay with his family. Since he is away all the time, his family barely knows or cares about him. He dies a lonely death at work because of health problems, and none of his family members have seen him enough to care. Unfortunately, there are many people in our society are like Phil, who are perfectionists and tend to work a lot. Workaholics are so addicted to their work that, they don't realize they are affecting their health. Their focus is mainly on the perfection of the work they do that they forget to eat or sleep properly. If a man is a workaholic, he has more chance to die at an early age than an normal working man. Sometimes they have to realize that having a family and good health is much more important than doing the job perfectly. People are so obsessed with their work that they are forgetting they are earning for an happy life. The happy life only comes with good health and a loving family to share it with. So when you forget your family and make yourself sick because of obsession with work, there is no point in your work.

Marriages

 According to Joan Didion, people get married for five dollars in Vegas on drive thrus. In her essay Didion points out the stupidity in those weddings.  I believe that it is the most insulting way two people can get married. The marriage seems like a business or something causal as if they do it everyday. According to me marriage is supposed to be a event in a persons life where two people unite to spend the rest of their lives together because they love each other. The marriages in Vegas are like ruining the specialty of that type of bond. It is only a legal marriage but not a serious one. Now days people who have big weddings are ending up divorced, imagine people who get married in Vegas. The longest they will perhaps stay together is a year. I feel like marriages like these are pointless. The marriage is a way of under age kids to get married and ruin their futures. Drive thru marriages should be banned because it only leads to couples that are only getting married for the fun of it. I mean if they really loved each other, they would spend lots of money because it is the most important day of any couples lives. They would not have a cheap wedding, as if they were placing an order in Mac-Donalds.

Crazy Dudes In Cars

 Dillard still remembers the chase because it is a moment in her life where she goes through a lot of excitement. It is the feeling you get as a child when your heart beats really fast when your doing something wrong; But it's just fun because you are with your friends and its exciting. I can relate to Dillard's chase because I have been chased myself. It was the summer of sixth grade, when me and my friends Lily, Maitrie, and Christina were spending time together when Maitrie came up with a crazy idea. She suggested we wave and yell hi at every car that came by us. I was a bit nervous about the idea because I did not want the public to think I was crazy however,I was peer pressured into agreeing. It turned out to be lots of fun. Some people completely ignored us while others honked their cars at us which was their version of a greeting. The best hi we got was from an old man, about 60 years old. He basically let go of his steering wheel and waved both his hands out the window and yelled out hi , while the car was still in motion. It was a dangerous thing to do, but he definitely made our day much better. After the old man, me and my friends were a bit more enthusiastic about our little game. We were expecting reactions like the old man from other people. Unfortunately for us a gang of college or senior boys drove by. We yelled out hi to them and the car slowed down as one of them dropped the f-bomb at us. Being ten year olds we freaked out and told him boys sucked. That drove him crazy and he got out of the car and came after us. We ran as quick as we could to Maitrei's house and down the basement. Somerset apartments have connected basements so we went through a maze of connected basements and ended up on the other side of the street. Lucky for us the older boy didn't come after us so nothing bad happened. We were so scared we did not go outside for like four hours. It was actually lots of fun. It was like a game and we won. He couldn't catch us. But to this day I still wonder what would have happened if he had caught us.

Aren't we all humans ?

  In my opinion, people always act differently with people with disabilities. Every time a disable man or woman walks into a room, people never act themselves. They are either too nice or too rude. I mean disabled people are just like all of us. We don't have to change our self and act as if they can't do anything by themselves or be absolutely rude and make fun of them for being a little different from us. Yes they have the physical defect, but that does not make them any different from us. Disabled people enjoy the same things as other people like watching movies, going out for dinner, reading, playing video games and listening to music. They are human just like us, they require the same food and water as all humans. Yet people with disabilities are not treated equally but like children who need help. Part of the reason is because people feel sympathetic and the need to help out, like if they don't help no one will. Honestly, even if it's coming from the good heart, people are basically downgrading them. By helping them for the tiniest little thing, people are making the disabled feel as if they have to depend on someone to live their lives. Which is not true. Instead of making them uncomfortable, people can help out only when there is a necessity. If people aren't too generous , they are awfully cruel towards the disabled. They walk behind them mocking them or they make fun of them verbally. Honestly what joy do you get from hurting someone that has a disability. It is not like they asked for the disability. Making fun of them because of their difference of their looks is not right. The way we look is how God made us and that is how we are born. Our differences does not give people the right to make fun us because we are all different with the way we look. I think that people should treat a person with a disability with the same amount of resect as you would treat your friend. We should all treat them as equals rather than as people who need to be cared for 24/7 or as aliens. Because honestly in the end aren't we all humans?

A little introduction to all

Hello Everybody ! I am Bhavana. I wanted my first post to be a little introduction of myself so you will know the person behind this blog a little better. 

My name is actually pronounced bavna. The h after the b and the a after the v are silent. You wouldn't believe how many people have thought that my name was banana. I mean like where do you even get banana from? My favorite thing to do is to read fiction books. I am an active member of the Troy High school Book club. I can never actually pick a favorite book though, it becomes a very hard task when you have read a lot of books. If any of you ever need a good book recommendation, just come talk to me. Just like I am obsessed with reading I also love to watch movies and TV shows. I love the Vampire Diaries , Teen Wolf, and Sherlock. These are my three favorite TV shows ever and if you watch any of these we can become buddies really fast. I am always ready to try out new things, like this blog. I am the kind of person who is happy all the time and I love to make people happy and smile. I may come of as quite in some classes but I am actually not. It depends if I like the teacher and the people around me. Ironically its usually in the Library where I get loud because the people there are like my second family and I get along with them really well. I love baby animals. I feel like baby animals are cuter than adult animals.

 Many of you are perhaps wondering why this blog is called "The Bhavs". It was just a nickname  my tennis teacher called me every time I did something awesome. I thought it was a really cool and I decided to use it.