Explain to me...!!!

So I have these friends who live kind of far, far away. Stingy soul that I am, the most effective way of keeping in touch with these wonderful individuals is the Internet. Unfortunately (for them, that is - I really couldn't give two hoots), these wonderful individuals have a very strange method of keeping in touch.

They come online everyday, open their email accounts, then - wait for it - open their orkut accounts to send me a scrap telling me how they have so much to tell me but are kind of busy so will email me later.

To add insult to injury, I am then expected to open my email account, see the extremely exciting notification about having received a scrap, open my orkut account, and then see that they don't have time to email me, but have time to open utterly useless accounts to inform me of that fact.

Now in the time they waste opening this second account, would it be too much to ask for to receive a simple email - even if it's just two lines long - telling me how they are and that they'll send me longer email when they're relatively free? Why waste my time just because they're so busy?!?

Now would someone explain the logic of this to me?

Beautiful in my eyes...

Some memories never go away. No matter how many years pass, something will happen and make you realize that the memory of those incidents are as fresh as ever.

Yesterday, while using a projector for a presentation, I noticed the dust particles flying about in the stream of light which was coming out of the projector. They're tiny insignificant things, often quite annoying, but they always remind me of one particular incident. And that memory makes them beautiful to me.

My mother used to be a teacher. No matter where she taught, which level she taught, or even which subject she taught - everyone loved her classes. Her students from more than a decade back still keep in touch with her - she meant that much to them.

I must have been 8 or so when she came to teach one of the senior classes as a substitute teacher for a few days. She came home and told me she had taught them about dust particles. The very next day, during the morning assembly, I happened to glance towards the class she had taught the previous day, and the entire class was looking upwards towards the sunlight and exclaiming, "Look, dust particles!"

Yes, dust particles can be beautiful.

Tell me...

How do you translate lajja into English? Shame? Embarassment? Coyness? Shyness? They're all close, but not quite the thing.

Lajja is one of those things which, without intending to sound be discriminatory in any way, is probably a characteristic found in Asian women. I really doubt that any, say for example American woman would ever experience the feeling of lajja.

Legend has it that the demons Shambu and Nishambu were once given a boon that no man could kill them. As a result, as demons are prone to do, they went on a rampage and started killing pretty much everyone they came across. The Devas, as they are prone to do, went into a panic. Luckily for them, they managed to find a loophole. You see, the boon said no man could kill them. So what did the Gods do? They went to the Goddess Durga and asked her to do something about the situation.

That was when Goddess Kali was born from Durga's forehead as Kal Bhoi Nashini to save heaven and earth from the demons. After killing the demons, however, she lost control (and I have no idea why) and started killing anyone who came her way. So this time, the Gods went to her husband, Lord Shiv to ask him to stop her. He went and lay down in the forest she was walking in. While walking around in a rage, she stepped on his chest, and suddenly came to her senses. Realizing she had stepped on her husband, she stuck out her tongue in lajja.

So tell me, how do you translate lajja into English?