Specks of Happiness

By Keerti Garg

My book, 'Specks of happiness' is about the remarkable moments of joy in our everyday life. We all experience them but somewhere in the mundane tasks and routine chores, we often tend to bypass these moments and are never able to enjoy them. We always keep waiting for our 'big dreams and expectations' to come true and materialise and we put our happiness on hold while these specks of happiness keep passing us by. I am not saying that we should not wait for our dreams to come true, in fact on the contrary, if we learn to recognise these specks of happiness in our lives, the positive energy generated would propel us towards accomplishing our bigger goals even more rapidly. At the same time, our everyday existence would become so much more meaningful and blissful once we start savouring these.

I am sharing some of these moments from my life, small things and significant people in my life who have given me a reason to stop and experience that moment of elation in my life. I have also tried to highlight my learnings' from each of these experiences wherever possible. I call each of these stories a speck of happiness in my life. If after reading my stories, you are able to recognise even some of these moments of happiness in your life, the purpose of my book would be served.

Happy reading and wish you countless specks of happiness throughout your life!

-Keerti

• Language: English
• Publisher: Keerti Garg
• Release date: Jun 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465877192

Keerti Garg

Keerti Garg is a freelance writer having completed her schooling from St. Xavier’s, Delhi, India in 2002 and graduation from Shri Ram College of Commerce, Delhi,India in 2005. She went on to do her Masters in Business Administration, popularly known as MBA from S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research, Mumbai, India majoring in marketing management and organizational behaviour in 2007. She also holds a postgraduate diploma in Training and Development from Indian society of Training and Development and has completed several business courses from Stanford University.She joined Standard Chartered Bank as an International Graduate in 2007 and worked in areas like branch sales, collections, business strategy and talent development for a period of two and a half years till November 2009.She quit her job in November 2009 to get married to the man of her dreams, Dr. Ajay Gulati and shifted base from India to Palo Alto, California.When she is not writing, she spends her time volunteering with Non-profit organizations, playing the guitar, running half marathons, taking long walks in the woods, hiking, biking, swimming and baking. Her biggest inspiration and role model in her life is her mother, Dr. Asha Gauri Shankar who has been teaching Mathematics in Delhi University for over 35 years now.Keerti can be contacted at the email id [e-mail]. She would love to hear from you and answers all her emails personally.

Book preview

Specks of Happiness

By Keerti Garg

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2011 Keerti Garg

http://www.keertigarg.com/

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

Thank you for downloading this free e-book. You are welcome to share it with your friends. This book may be reproduced, copied and distributed for non-commercial purposes, provided the book remains in its complete original form. Thank you for your support.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1- Beginning of the rest of my life

Chapter 2- Believing in yourself

Chapter 3- Have a good day!

Chapter 4- Learning from each other

Chapter 5- Miss Universe

Chapter 6- Sweet Bath

Chapter 7- Testing the Limits

Chapter 8- The Common Themes…

Chapter 9- The Red Bag

Chapter 10- To Sir, with Love

Chapter 11- Too Good to be True

Chapter 12- Feeling Peachy

Chapter 13- The Lady and the lady finger

Chapter 14- The Sunlight, the coffee cake and the Russian tales in Hindi

Chapter 15- The Pond

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to my mother Dr. Asha Gauri Shankar for making this possible and real. Thank you for your encouragement and support all along.

I would also like to thank my father Dr. Gauri Shankar, my brother Vinayak Garg and my husband Dr. Ajay Gulati for being there throughout the time I was working on this book.

I am indebted to God for making me what I am and for giving me all he did. Thank you dear God for the right experiences and the right people in my life.

Thank you dear reader for picking up this book and making all my efforts worthwhile.

.

Preface

A few days back, I was in Berkeley for a friend's birthday party. They had invited my husband and I for an overnight stay and we were returning back the next day to Palo Alto, which is where we stay right now. Just before heading back, we decided to catch up with another friend of ours in Berkeley. He was busy at work and we decided to wait for him in a yogurt parlour.

This kind of place generally offers a variety of flavours and one can add fresh fruits and nuts, chocolate pieces, gummy bears (my husband hates them and I love them) and similar toppings to the yogurt. This particular parlour had flavours like green apple, coconut, coffee, mint, apricot, butter pecan and strawberry. A diehard fan that I am of sweet and sour things, I picked the green apple flavour and my husband picked the butter pecan. We topped it with fruits only (we try to eat as healthy as possible) and sat down to enjoy our dessert.

My husband, Ajay who is a researcher and has a doctoral degree in Computer Science was working on one of his research problems while I was reading a book given to me on my birthday by a dear friend, Linda. While I was reading and eating the yogurt, I looked up in between and saw a young girl; around eight years of age enter the parlour with her dad.

I do not know what it was that caught my eye, probably it was her curly, bouncy, jet black hair or it was her mile wide smile or maybe it was the spring in her step or probably it was her innocent doe eyes, I guess it was a combination of all. She started scanning the flavours that were available and finally decided to sample the strawberry yogurt. She licked a little from the spoon and closed her eyes while doing that. The look on the girl's face at that time was of pure, unadulterated joy and contentment. She then gave the spoon to her dad to taste some. He too liked it and they bought some. She went out the store, dancing and licking the yogurt from the cup. Such extraordinary happiness at such an ordinary everyday thing!

My book, 'Specks of happiness' is exactly about these remarkable moments of joy in our everyday life. We all experience them but somewhere in the mundane tasks and routine chores, we often tend to bypass these moments and are never able to enjoy them. We keep waiting for our 'big dreams and expectations' to come true and materialise and we put our happiness on hold while these specks of happiness keep passing us by. I am not saying that we should not wait for our dreams to come true, in fact on the contrary, if we learn to recognise these specks of happiness in our lives, the positive energy generated would propel us towards accomplishing our bigger goals even more rapidly. At the same time, our everyday existence would become so much more meaningful and blissful once we start savouring these.

I am sharing some of these moments from my life, small things and significant people in my life who have given me a reason to stop and experience that moment of elation in my life. I have also tried to highlight my learnings' from each of these experiences wherever possible. I call each of these stories a speck of happiness in my life. If after reading my stories, you are able to recognise even some of these moments of happiness in your life, the purpose of my book would be served.

Happy reading and wish you countless specks of happiness throughout your life!

-Keerti

Chapter 1- Beginning of the rest of my life

This was the time when it was a little