The Story

You walk down the road, you purposefully turn left at the crossroads, you know exactly where you are going. You ignore all the emptiness that surrounds you in every direction and just keep walking. A right here, a left there and suddenly after an hour of walking you are back where you began, an old and crumbling building at the corner of an empty street half hidden by the branches of a large banyan tree. You look up at the light shining though the window of the fourth storey flat, take a deep breath, push through the gates and pass through, thinking that it wasn't so hard after all. You begin the climb up the stairs and suddenly it seems like it's impossible again, the stairs feel like they go on forever. You pause and wonder, maybe it isn't such a good idea after all, it is 4 o'clock in the morning, but then the memory of the light shining through the window flashes across your eyes and you can almost feel its welcome warmth. You start climbing again, faster this time, willing your legs to carry you with utmost speed towards your destination. At last you reach, out of breath but feeling glad that you made it this far, for realization dawns that coming this far was the easy part. You steady your breathing and reach for the doorbell and give it a push with no effect, you let out a small laugh, feeling like fate was laughing at you, testing you to see if you would give up. Feeling steadier now, you raise your hand and gently knock three times and then take a step back. You wait for something to happen but nothing does, so you step forward and try the doorknob and find it unlocked. You hope to God that you did the right thing and push open the door and the sight that beholds you reassures you that it was the right thing to do. A small figure is curled up sleeping in an armchair pulled up near the window, a book has fallen from her outflung arm onto the floor, glasses are still perched on her nose. You continue to stand at the doorway and look around the room, hardly anything has changed since the last time you were here, the same old sofa, the ancient lamp on the table beside it, the armchair by the window, the cabinet with the assorted showpieces from around the world, even the television set looked unchanged. Your eyes were drawn back to the sleeping form in the armchair, you look at her for a long minute, then cross the room and crouch beside her so that your faces are level. You wonder if you should wake her up, she looks so peaceful, then feeling like you would go mad if you didn't speak with her, you place your hand on her shoulder and gently shake her awake. She opens her eyes but doesn't move and smiles her welcome like she has been waiting for you for a while and then she lifts her hand and slaps you across your face. You are shocked and jump up yelling, "What the...?" to which her only reply is, "What took you so long?". She sits up now amused at the stunned look on your face, "What? You forgot that I can be unexpected?". You make haste to rearrange your expression to one of mild annoyance, clear your throat and say, "Your door was unlocked, anyone could have come in". She looks over at the door, nodding her agreement and then looks back at you, "But nobody else did, did they? Besides, the doorbell was not working and I knew I could count on you to show up the most unearthly hour when I was bound to be asleep and knowing your fascination with fate, you would probably leave and I wouldn't see you again for another ten years." She spoke lightly but you couldn't help feeling that you were as predictable as ever while she would never cease to surprise you. You say, "I saw your light on" at which she throws back her head and laughs, "For heavens sake would you stop stating facts?" but you are tongue tied, having agonized over this moment for so long, now that it has come you don't know what to say. She sighs, rises from the chair, comes towards you and saves you the trouble of thinking of something to say by placing her lips on yours. And in that moment, all your doubts vanish as you pull her into an embrace and kiss her back with a passion that you haven't felt in years and time just stands still for you in that moment. Nothing else matters.

Living in the Moment...

There is much sense in the saying 'stop and smell the roses'. That, along with many other sayings all say the same thing: enjoy the moment that you have right now. Everybody's heard of this but few of us understand what it really means. It does not mean that life should all fun and games but that it should feel like it is so. Too many of us are of the belief that constantly worrying about the past or the future will somehow help improve our lives. Not to say that some amount of planning is not necessary for life but to be obsessed with every little detail all the time just drains you of all the joy that comes with it. Take life as it comes, face problems, weigh options, make decisions but more importantly laugh loudly, smile widely and feel happy every day! Care more than it is wise, risk more than it is safe and dream more than it is practical, just do the things that make you happy today. Its true that tomorrow you may not remember most of these things but you will certainly remember the feeling of satisfaction that came with it. The relief that you feel when you decide to live in the moment can make you quite light headed. So why don't more and more people embrace this feeling? The answer is that its too easy and we as human beings are wired to always believe that if it isn't hard then there must be something wrong. So we slog through our days doing things the hard way just to pat ourselves on the back at the end of the day feeling like we have accomplished something. Just ask yourself this question today: what is that feeling of accomplishment worth?
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Through The (Looking) Glass...

I should start off by explaining that without my glasses I am practically blind, hazy shapes and fuzzy colours are about all I can see! So a few days ago, just to experiment I decided to not wear my glasses for an entire bus journey and just get a glimpse of the world without my glasses, the result was pretty damn amazing. The entire irritation arising out of endless traffic jams was wiped out to be replaced by a moving portrait swiftly changing before me. Streetlights resembled yellow pools of light suspended in the air and the long row of these lamps almost seemed like a pathway to the heavens. Lower down on the ground, all I could see were yellow pinpricks of car and bike headlights zooming past and only shadowy images of the actual vehicles and their occupants. The green of the trees by the side of the road somehow looked more sinister than usual and the sky dark and looming. The buildings were only identifiable by the colours of lights in the windows, shining blues and yellows with the occasional bright white of a hoarding on the roof. Things like gates, walls, railings, speed breakers, potholes had absolutely no significance for the simple reason that they just could not be seen. The shops on the other hand for the large part were so brightly lit with so many different colours that they caught the eye without me even knowing what I was looking at! I played a game with myself to see if I could recognise all the familiar landmarks and I did but they looked so different that it was almost like another world altogether. This entire experience made me wonder at how life is full of surprises. I had never before bothered look around me without my glasses except in the familiar terrain of my own home and here I was having spent an hour looking at the outside world and feeling like 'Alice Through the Looking Glass'.

The world is a funny place, it shows you new things when you least expect them. Just goes to show that we should always keep our eyes and mind open lest we miss out something that could be of great value to us. No matter where we are in life, there is always something new waiting for us just around the corner, a new opportunity, a new perspective, a new direction, a new relationship, a new challenge and the list goes on! Just like I could never have imagined that I could see anything worthwhile without my glasses, most people spend their life imagining that this is it, this is all my life will ever be. You have to take the time look around and see things you have never bothered to look at before or look at old things with fresh eyes. The 'things' here could be anything really, that's the beauty of it, the world is your own backyard the minute you decide to see it as such! There is nothing we cannot achieve if we put our heart, mind and soul into it. So any obstacles standing in our path are nothing but excuses to keep living in our comfort zones. So think about it, open your eyes and find that something new in your life today, seize the day and trust me it will be worth it. Cheers!
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Pointless Things To Ponder About...

Just yesterday I was thinking of the most pointless things to ponder about. It started off with seeing a facebook status which was contemplating whether the batmobile is air conditioned! After that there was no looking back. Here are some of the things that I have pondered about since then:

1. How the best suicide hotline would be the Domino's Pizza hotline!

2. How in TV series, they always seem to remember the exact number of years ago something happened (in graphic detail mind you), they never even have to stop and think about it!

3. How we think that frantically charging the phone for 5 minutes before rushing out of the house will make any difference to the almost dead battery!

4. How trees grow upwards since ideally gravity should be pulling them down!

5. How they almost never seem to talk about basic bodily functions in thrillers! Its like the entire story takes place without anyone needing to use the loo!

6. How Iron Man created a whole new element without telling anyone! The least he could've done was to have added it to the periodic table :P

7. How Star Trek has only english speaking people! I mean think about it, they have a translator for every other alien language in the universe but you never hear any other language from planet earth!

8. How the staff at big hotels are such snobs! I mean what have they got to judge us with, its the hotel that's grand not them!

9. How Rajnikant jokes have taken everyone by storm and shows no signs of stopping. So much so that this is the joke going around now:

A frustrated message from Rajnikant to all

"Saalo ek limit hoti hai.. yeh kaun likh raha hai ki Rajnikant chawal khata hai aur piche se idli nikalti hai'' :)

And now since Rajni has been mentioned, nothing else can top that. So I shall stop my pondering now. Feel free to add anything you might have pondered about lately :P

Cheers!
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Sunday Evening

The Sunday evening drew slowly to a close. The pale yellow light from lamp on the table by the far corner shed its warmth all around. The pool of light illuminated a divan with a couple of books thrown around, the newspaper and its assorted supplements, the television remote, a pair of glasses and a mobile phone. On the table where the lamp stood was pile of old newspapers with an ashtray for a paperweight, a landline phone with its dust cover. Across the room, in the corner by the window was a study table overflowing with photo albums stacked haphazardly. The huge french windows were open, inviting in the gentle evening breeze making the curtains flutter lazily. In the armchair next to the divan, angled towards the T.V. was the evidence of human existence in the room: a very squashed cushion! And as the T.V. churned out its usual volley of advertisements, the Sunday evening drew slowly to a close...
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Rain! Rain! Went Away!

Its official! Monsoons are over. October is almost here and the weather seems to know it. Clear blue skies, bright sunshine, fluffy white clouds and not even a hint of rain. And the colours all around, everything got such a thorough cleaning during the rainy season that its practically shining wherever the sun finds its way. Of course not everything came out looking squeaky clean, the roads are definitely worse for the wear and buildings have a very sorry look about them. But nothing that some repairs won't fix. And as for us, the inhabitants of this crazy city, we can finally go back to stepping out of our houses without an umbrella; leave the windows open without worrying about the rain washing everything away; traffic will probably ease up a teensy weensy bit (hopefully the 2 hour journey will turn into 1.5 but that is just wishful thinking); and best of all, maybe now with temperatures soaring again, we'll enjoy ice creams again.

On that note I'll end this rambling and wish everyone a very good day ahead! Cheers :)
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We come into this world with nothing, but as we go along our way we gather a lot of things but 'things' may be a bit ambiguous. What I really mean to say here is the people that we gather around us. The friends we make, our circles, our gangs, our groups, our lifelines, these are the guys that make life what it is. Everything around us is a testimony to this fact, from social networking sites which wouldn't even exist if not for the innate need in mankind to connect with each other to sitcoms which more often than not would fall flat without the band of merry men to boost along the story. So winding back to my original point, whenever I look around, I am amazed at the number of connections we make in our lifetime, people we meet at every point in our lives who somehow just remain with us long after that time in our life is gone. I feel doubly grateful when I see the number of people in my life who I will always always cherish.. Here's to you guys. Cheers!

Volcano

What is it about destruction that attracts us? Nobody ever wants it to happen to them but nevertheless everybody eagerly follows the news when there is a calamity (natural or man made). With connectivity getting better and better, news from all over the world has invaded our homes and lives. Its not just that these incidents are increasing by the day, we find out about them immediately and that is what adds to the shock effect. Even the silver screen realises this, evident from the movies where the end of the world seems to be the theme! What is it exactly that pulls us in? Is it just the drama? The philosopher Henry David Thoreau once said 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to their grave with the song still in them'. Maybe we ease this desperation by feeling the adrenaline rush that comes from an event that threatens to destroy everything. The rush of emotions: fear, anger, pain, empathy all combine together and give us the feeling of being alive and from that springs the will to survive in any way possible, the proverbial fight or flight so to speak. But at the end of the day, when the movie is over or the crisis is past, we go back to the humdrum of our everyday lives...until the next time!

PS # I think I should mention here that I was watching this movie called 'Volcano' last night, I'll leave you to guess what that was all about :P. Cheers!
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Love Affair of a Lifetime...

There are many reasons to love the internet, I particularly like the fact that I can download sitcoms that I might not ordinarily have access to. There are so many sitcoms these days that one has their work cut out trying to follow them all on TV. Besides, the timings may not even be all that convenient, sometimes they even coincide and they almost always reach the TV half a year behind the original release. The solution: download them from the internet! And right there is an entire world of possibilities opening up before you, a world beyond the constrictions of the television set. My initiation to this wonderful phenomenon began even before I knew what it was all about, the TV series Lost was quite difficult to follow when there was a week between episodes aired on HBO, but a stack of DVDs with Season One and Two on them and I was hooked for 15 hours straight. All the flashbacks and the eeriness of the island and the fact that were stranded pretty much in the middle of nowhere, made it all very exciting indeed. It helped that it was summer and school was out and it was too hot to do anything else, but the journey had begun from where there has been no looking back. Strangely after the marathon run of the first 2 seasons, I have never managed to follow the rest of Lost, I eagerly read about the series every time Wikipedia got updated but never got around to watching it. I progressed from Lost to OC which most might agree was not much of a progression but I went through the whole of Seasons One and Two religiously anyway, it was a phase that one had to go through. Sometime later I caught bits and pieces of Seasons Three and Four when they were airing on TV but didn't really get hooked enough to download them all and watch them while devouring ice cream. I do however do an occasional YouTube search of 'Best of' OC videos and songs and that satisfies me quite enough. F.R.I.E.N.D.S. of course has been a part of all our lives at some point of time or the other. I began watching it on TV from the time they were airing Season 9 and went on to watch it till the end. After that, it was all bits and pieces of episodes as and when the channels decided to do reruns. It wasn't until college that I managed to watch all 10 seasons and it was always the best thing to do when feeling sick, I still have them all stored up coz it is definitely something to keep for the rainy day, the evergreen humour will never fail to make me laugh. The next sitcom of note to enter my horizon was the much debated about How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM). Having heard endless rave reviews of this one, I decided finally in my second year of college to check it out and I could not have picked a better time. It was the time when everyone was quite fed up having watched 5 seasons and yet not discovering who the mother was and here I was watching it for the first time. And not a moment too soon, coz soon after came season 6 and I was so new to the thing that I loved every minute of it. I'm not so sure about the upcoming season but HIMYM and I have had a nice ride. Another epic sitcom for me has been Castle. I accidentally began watching it on TV one day and I was hooked. The rest as they say is history, I have followed every episode with bated breath and still have all three seasons saved up on my laptop. In fact, I just spent an entire afternoon going through my favourite parts of Castle. I, along with a million other people wait in great anticipation for Season 4, which is coming soon (but really not soon enough!). Along the way I have also fallen in love with the eccentric geniuses of The Big Bang Theory and can watch all the episodes over and over again. The Mentalist also touched my radar but alas have only managed to follow it sporadically on TV but a big fan anyway. Grey's Anatomy is one other series that has captured my imagination over the years but I strangely never had the urge to watch every episode of this one, I was absolutely content with watching an episode every now and then with absolutely no idea what season it was from. In college I once discovered an entire collection on someone's laptop and filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. This series is also a target of my YouTube searches for all its beautiful songs and also for some really amazing compilation videos. Speaking of college I cannot help but mention the infamous Gossip Girl series, which I have never particularly liked but never managed to stay away from either. Indeed I only recently finished watching the remaining part of season 4 which I had begun in college and what can I say, it was one hell of a ride. Gilmore Girls too was something I discovered in college and have tried to follow it as much as possible because it really is such a happy show. Recently, I have become an addict of the TV series Bones and am avidly following it on TV these days. That about sums up my love affair with the sitcoms facilitated in no small way by the internet. I guess I miss all those times in college where I've just forgotten everything and lost myself in the world of sitcoms for hours at a stretch. Those days may be gone but the sitcoms, they will stay on, there are too many memories attached to them and I will treasure them for life. This in no way is the end of the journey, I am trusting that the entertainment industry will continue to thrill us for many many years to come. Cheers!

Freedom...

The last few books that I read (especially the order in which I read them) has really got me thinking. The simplest things are the easiest to miss and when someone does take notice and makes a success out of it, we wonder what special powers they are blessed with. The people themselves know it ofcourse, it just leaves the rest of us baffled. To explain a little more clearly, the book I finished reading just today is 'Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell. More impressive than the title is the subtitle - "The Story of Success". You may be forgiven for yawning and thinking heard that before but seriously, this is a very radical approach. According to this book, the way we behave is rooted in our cultures and environments we were reared in no matter how far removed we are from it. It also goes on to prove that success is no accident but a combination of opportunities and hard work. The term 'hard work' is looked down upon these days, with smart work being the flavour of the season, but it amounts to the same things, gaining proficiency in your chosen field by constant application and practice and thereby getting better and better at it. Moving on to the the next book on the list, this one was an old favourite, 'Freakonomics', discovering the hidden side of everything has never been so much fun. An interesting thing to note about both these books is that while at the heart of it they deal with facts, figures, research and analysis, they are not the run of the mill economics textbooks (read: they don't send you off to sleep) simply because they are narrated like stories with examples of real people, real lives which makes them so irresistible, you keep turning the pages waiting to see what happens next. And once you do find out, you not only have a great story but you've also learnt a few facts of life! And that brings me to the other 2 books that I read recently, 'It Happened in India' by Kishore Biyani and 'Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch' by Arindam Chaudhury. They are similar yet different books, almost mirror images of each other. While Kishore Biyani tells his story of success with the his theories of management hidden within them, Arindam Chaudhury talks about his theories and gives us examples to support them. In any case 2 things were very apparent once I was done reading these books; the first being that management in India is very distinct process (hence proving Malcolm Gladwell's point that culture has everything to do with people's behaviours). Traditional theories, models, best practices and procedures need to be customized to suit the Indian context instead of lifting straight out of popular literature. The second fact is that though there are plenty of people who have realized this truth and are doing things differently, there is hardly any record of it, nobody writes about or publicizes a new way of working which actually works in this country! So the big learnings for the month are to understand how our culture defines the way we work and use it to our advantage and also to make sure that we tell the world about how we do things instead of trying to mould ourselves to fit the so called universally accepted principles which are at best applicable to only half the world's population.

And that my friends is what I think freedom means. Its about making the choice to embrace who we are instead of being ashamed of it and telling the world we are proud to be who we are instead of apologizing for not fitting into acceptable definitions.

Happy Independence Day...

Cheers!

Self Discovery...

Her fingers raced across the keys on her laptop. Even from the flickering reflection in the window of the bus, it was obvious that she was hard at work. Brows furrowed, deep in concentration, lips twisted in a way that showed that whatever was showing up on her screen was far from good news. After half an hour of pounding the keys and somehow balancing the laptop while the bus jerked along the puddle filled roads of Bombay, she gave up and gave in to the nagging headache that had been wrecking havoc for the past few days. Even packing away the laptop in its case seemed to require too much energy so she just let it sit in the seat next to her and stared moodily out of the window into the incessant rains outside. Monsoon was certainly at its peak and she was caught right in the middle of it. After a minute or so when her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she became aware that she was far from home, it would take atleast another hour to get there and then she had an appointment with the gym. She groaned at the prospect but she had promised herself that the next three months nothing would stop her. She was to be married come December and she wanted to look her best and the thought of that made her smile sleepily before she drifted off into exhausted sleep..

And that is where it gets interesting, for you see, this is where I am lost. I can set up the picture perfectly and make you feel like you're actually there, its so vivid but when it comes to imagination, feelings, thoughts, there is very little I can do. That is probably the reason why I have half a dozen half finished stories lying around somewhere or the other, I kept telling myself, its just a problem of mine of mine, I just can't write stories. Essays? Monologues? Speeches? Anecdotes? Interpretations of events? Philosophy? All those things but never a complete story with a beginning, middle and end. I had resigned my self to the fact but that’s where apparently I was wrong. I read a book that told me otherwise. It said that the only thing that kept me from writing a story, which I clearly wanted to, was my fear of what people might think of it. Having read this a few times and digested it, I set out to figure out what it really meant. I had always prided myself on not caring much about what the world said and thought, indeed on occasion I have deliberately gone out my way to do things differently and questioned things that ought to have been left alone. So you would think I wouldn't be afraid of what people might say to a story that I may choose to write, right? Wrong. The book went on to tell me that the more the things are dear to us, the worse this fear of failure gets until we're so paralyzed by it we can't even bear to think about it. Well that made a lot of sense and again I'm not just referring to writing here. The fear of failure and rejection is always there tapping on our shoulders until we crumble and give up. The trick is to just not let it do that. Sounds simple doesn't it? Yet it is the hardest thing to do on earth, it is actually probably easier to pull the trigger of a gun! But just think for a moment that if instead of giving in to the fear we learn to accept failure as a part of life, knowing that we'd be richer in knowledge because of it, life would certainly be different. I like to call it the 'practical power of positive thinking'. I used to be skeptical about the theory that if only you would believe and imagine the best would happen, it would happen. It sounded too idealistic to be true. But lets just twist it a little bit. 'Think Positive' needs to be more interpreted to mean that whatever happens should be used as an opportunity to learn something new. So now instead of naively saying, 'Oh I'm going to think positive, I am going to be rich someday' and expecting to sail to the finish line; we would be a position to learn from the mistakes we make, hurdles we cross, ridicule and criticism we attract and because of this learning, we would be rich in more ways that one!

So here is a solemn pledge to shut out the fear and make the best use of the life I've been given to learn something and do some good in this crazy world! And I think some stories might see the light of day after all!

Cheers!

The Bigger Picture...

Sometimes we just get too caught up in the moment to realize that there is so much more beyond it. These are the times when we let our worst fears rule our best instincts and the worst that can happen at a time like this that you find that you have no one beside you to tell you otherwise. If you are ever faced with a situation like this, then just repeat to yourself a very simple statement: This too shall pass. For there is nothing in this world that lasts forever. So if you're going through hell, accept it. If you find not a single friend around you who understands why you are doing what you are doing, accept it. If at times you yourself don't understand the things you are doing, accept it (trust me, your instincts know better). Think of the bigger picture. The bad time will pass and your far thinking will take you places, the true friends will remain by your side for life in spite of what it may seem like for now and your instincts will be well honed to recognize these signs in future. And most of all just remember that there is a lesson in everything in life and that is NOT that you should fear what life throws at you just because you have had one bad experience in the past, but that you now are better equipped to deal with the situation before you. It isn't easy I know to keep yourself from sinking into doubt, but make a deal with yourself not to wallow in it. Take a minute, but only a minute, to tell yourself every single thing that you can possibly do wrong and then vow not to let it happen. You will feel better for it for two reasons; one is that once you list all the negatives they won't seem all that bad and two is that the reassurance from yourself that you won't let anything go wrong will go a long way in boosting your confidence when you find it failing. Don't get me wrong, mistakes will still happen, but they won't cripple you if you have that vision in your head of where you are headed, the light in your eyes which guides your path and voice in your ear that gives you your confidence, in short: the bigger picture is what you need to think of.

Fortune...

When once upon a time,

You sat upon a wall

Staring into the distance

With dreams shining in your eyes

The people of the town,

Would look at you and say,

"There's a lad who needs to

get the hell away!"

The children of the town

Would come around and play

And look at you in awe

And wonder what you did all day

But alas they never knew

The reason you were there

Was only so that you

Would be fortunate enough

To catch a glimpse of

The fair maiden that resides

Behind the castle wall

The very wall on which you sat

And wasted your life away.

And life and fate are such that

In the end you didn't even sway

When you took that last quiet breath

The reason I call this poem (or atleast an attempt at poetry!) 'Fortune', is because I believe that most of us waste our life away waiting to catch a glimpse of it. Instead, lets get off that wall and do something about it. Cheers!

Parodies...

Have you ever looked up into falling rain? Or noticed how raindrops bounce off surfaces before they finally come to a rest? Or how perfect it looks when you see rain caught in the beam of a car's headlights? So perfectly aligned every drop that even as we curse all the havoc the rains cause, we can't help but admire the beauty of it. For it really does test your patience when they is a lovely cool breeze playing around outside but you dare not open the window of the bus lest you get drenched from the rain. Instead, what do we do? We sit in a steaming bus stuck in never ending traffic jams on just another rainy day in this crazy city we call home. But I digress, I was talking about the sheer beauty of nature at its best. Nature taking care of its own, replenishing parched soils generously, never sparing a thought to what it might be doing to all creatures great and small. But to be fair, its not that rains are only about bad things. There is so much joy in splashing around in puddles and getting thoroughly drenched even though there is an umbrella in your bag. And who hasn't stuck out an arm through a window just to catch raindrops in their palm? Its all these enticing little things that keep you coming back for more, even when you know that at the end of the day, a drizzle will turn into a downpour and then a thunderstorm and alas flood you with all its might; but for now its just fun to play in the rain. Cheers!

Blink Of An Eye...

A blink of an eye carries so much in itself, the sheer joy of closing the eyes, giving them that split second of respite, only to open them again and behold the world in all its glorious colours. We don't appreciate it enough, the simple act of blinking, the fact that the eyelids work tirelessly all day to keep our eyes fresh and clear to look out into the world and conquer everything in it. Our eyes have a thousand qualities, they are the windows to our soul and can never hide anything from the person who chooses to look into them. Truth pours out of them like water from a fountain, our lips may lie but the eyes never can. It just confirms my belief that we may (and often do!) lie to the world but we can never lie to ourselves and that is what you see in the eyes. The eyes are also the road to our hearts, shining brightly with love one second and filled with anguish the next, all depending on what the heart is being subjected to at the moment. True joy can also be found here; as a child I never understood what it meant to smile with your eyes but now it makes perfect sense. The only way you truly smile is when it lights up your eyes, the happier the occasion, the brighter the light. Of course joy is not the only emotion to colour our eyes, the red hot of fury, the green of jealousy, the black of hate, the icy blue of indifference are all there, ready to come out into the open at the lightest provocation but us human beings naturally tend to look for the bright and happy yellow more than anything else and when we see it, it feels like everything is good in the world. But alas nothing lasts forever so is the same with what we see in the eyes, from love to hate, fear to anger to triumph, disgust to determination, patience to weariness, they all come and go, all within the blink of an eye...

Shruti, it seems to be only a blink of an eye since we celebrated your birthday a year ago, all together, but now when we are all back to where we belong, I'll take a moment to treasure the best there is. You have always been the one island of calm in the midst of the storms that blew around us and it was the strength in your gentle eyes that shone like a lamp through the darkness. You saw every colour there was to see and yet you never tired to see some more. May you always stay that way and many, many happy returns of the day. Cheers!

Great Explorations...

When you search online for the greatest achievements in human history, you find under the category of greatest explorations, the following:

• Columbus's discovery of the New World (America)

• Lewis and Clark Expedition (They traversed the uninhabited territories of the USA from the Atlantic to the Pacific Coast in the early 1800s)

• Marco Polo's journey to China

• Magellan's circumnavigation of the globe

• Amundsen's journey to the South Pole

Before these pioneers explored beyond the boundaries of conventional thought there were vast parts of the earth that was absolutely unknown to man. Seems inconceivable today doesn't it? The Atlas as we know it today has been there forever or so it would seem. Every child in school has been made to learn the names of countries, their capital cities, the principal mountains, the chief rivers and lakes, the distribution of forests and deserts and even the crops that grow in the different parts of the country depending on the climate! As children, we have all cursed the very existence of the book of maps and on more than one occasion even changed the face of maps when memory evaded us, but if we could travel back to a time when the maps were being created, we might see the beauty in it, the sheer joy of watching the shapes come alive for the first time. Of course it was not without its own problems with society being so firmly entrenched in their own notions about the world and further back in history, in the age of kingdoms when maps were regularly redrawn to reflect the might and power of the kings in question. These explorers in fact had their work cut out to convince the people in power that their journeys would reveal anything at all! So now when we may even a casual glance at the map of the world, it is with the secure knowledge that there is little else to discover. Every piece of land and water body is neatly demarcated by multicoloured lines; which goes to show just how far we've come. Of course we're far from being sure of what all goes on beneath the surface but even that, with today's technology is not that hard to project. What we're forgetting however is that no matter how advanced things are now and how easily and carelessly we can access information, we are still poorer than our ancestors in knowledge. This day and age is wasted on us. Once upon a time, people with much less information on their hands, were more hungry for more knowledge and they made sure they got it, the scarcity of it making it all the more precious so that every last drop had to squeezed out of it. People ‘read' languages different from their own instead of merely learning and forgetting them; people read books to know about places, things, people and cultures that they had never seen; society was a closely knit community where people looked to each other in times of joy and in times of need; there was time for work and there was time for play and last but not the least, there was an appreciation for all of these things that is missing in today's life. The word culture was originally coined to mean the cultivation of the soul and mind. How many of us can honestly claim to doing that? Or even attempting to? It isn't easy mind you, even if you did decide to wake up one morning and start enriching yourself. We are limited by our own passion for speed and anything that doesn't quite match our pace gets left behind. The internet, that wonderful platform that literally brings the world at our fingertips is rarely used to discover something new unless circumstances demand it. We have become a servant to the technology, blindly following glitter instead of gold, instead of technology serving us. We have the means to read about anything we wish to; visit almost any places that we may wish to and find entertainment in any number of ways but how often do we actually do take that crucial step towards the unknown. It gets easier every day to arrange for anything to be delivered straight to your doorstep but it gets harder and harder to break out of the comfort zone. Its like having an entire ocean at your disposal and being content to live in the bottom of a pond of stagnant water. For that is exactly what our lives have become: stagnant. Of course one may argue that we after all are not completely at liberty to always do as we please and that we have responsibilities to fulfill but unless you put some passion into it, nothing you ever do will feel like worth it. It is heartening to hear about people who have broken the mould of ordinary and ventured into the unknown; we follow their lives with breathlessness and wish we could be the same and yet at the end of the day, we scoff at their foolishness and lack of wisdom. I'd say that people had it much better when they knew little and thus wanted to know more. They would journey across the world by the only means available to them which took them months to reach their destination (such cruel waste of time I hear you say!) but they used their time to enrich themselves like we never have. Think back to the years spent in school, how often have you sat in class and strained to hear the bell ring that would signal the end of the lesson? Did we ever even then think about learning something new, get excited about knowing something more than you did yesterday? We didn't and reason for that is just that the world and our society has made us that way, looking out into the world and seeing only the present (and an exaggerated version of the future!) and nothing else. So, sometimes, we should take the time to cast our eyes back to the time when explorers set out to discover the world (in every sense of the word) and then drew the maps which in a sense was almost like creating the world all over again; and then when we come back to the present, find some way to bring into our own lives, a passion for discovering something new and extraordinary.

PS # I am going to be practicing what I preach. When caught in the middle of a conversation about the Philippines and having only a very vague idea of where it was, I actually used the erstwhile internet to pinpoint the exact location and a very helpful website also enlightened me about the capital city, the principal mountains, the chief rivers and lakes, the distribution of forests and deserts and even the crops that grow in the different parts of the country depending on the climate (Not that I remember even one tenth of this, but it was good to know that I could know anytime I want). Cheers!

All Mixed Up...

Today morning was the most brilliant example of ironies. After an entire week of dark cloud cover over the city, suddenly there was dazzling sunshine everywhere. Pale blue skies, patches of white clouds with no hint of rain and miracle of miracles, pleasant breezes and no humidity! That in itself is an aberration in Mumbai. I'm told it didn't last all that long and eventually it did rain but the early morning impression stays with me, fresh and clean, like what I imagine spring would be, if we had one. The trees and grass, glistening with last night's rain and their colour shining because the showers have washed away all the dust from their surfaces; the swings in the children's playground looking like toys with their bright colours and of course the bright yellow sunshine everywhere. It was too lovely a morning to leave curtains shut and as I went around the house drawing them back and throwing open windows, I could hear the music and the singing in my heart. It was a beautiful feeling and all the useless worries just drained out of my head leaving me feeling peaceful and content. In a minute I would have begun to sing out loud and then the rest would have been history but having recognized the signs, I made an effort to come back to reality and hurried over the mundane tasks of everyday as I was by now running late. On the long journey to work, I finally gave in to impulse and began humming along with the music on my phone. Another thing that pleases me today is that I have finished reading the novel 'Gone With The Wind' for the seventh time. It has become a tradition really to read this book every summer since I was in the class 9 and I am yet to get tired of it. Every time I read it again, I see something with new eyes, which I hadn't seen before and thus the exciting mystery goes on. The vivid descriptions of the scenery, the way of life, the war and the characters that come alive over the course of the book all contribute to the pleasure of reading it yet again. Moreover, wound into the beautiful and intricate embroidery of the story are the home grown common sense observations that hold true even after a hundred and fifty years since those days. Society will always be averse to something that is different from the normalcy that they have defined for themselves; wars will continue to be fought because orators fill people's heads with foolish notions; there will always be people on the lookout for a quick buck by twisting circumstances in their favour; money at the end of the day will not buy you happiness and human beings will continue to be baffled to see changes around them that they never thought possible except for a handful who learn to see which way the wind is blowing. An interesting thing to note here is the place of women in society in those days, they were held in high esteem no doubt but it was inconceivable that they should think for themselves. Apparently sheltered from the harsh realities of life, these women were far more intelligent than they let on to their men folks but their greatest wisdom lay in the fact that they allowed their men to continue believing them the helpless creatures who needed protection from the world. It was this wisdom that ensured that the society was peaceful and life went on smoothly, never changing even in the face of utter destruction of their world. It just make me curious to think what it would be like if it had remained that way. The world today has seen women striving towards the same things that traditionally been strictly the domain of men and nobody would dare suggest that anything was beyond their reach but if we step back and think about it, things are not as pleasant as they seem, there has been a large price to pay for realizing our potential. Women now are faced with the prospect of managing the home (a full time job in itself!) and proving themselves at the workplace; which they do admirably but I can't help wondering if its worth. At the end of the day, wouldn't it be easier to just let men think we're fools and do all the work for us? :P

On that very twisted note, I think I'll end this post which has traveled light years from where it began and await the wrath of womankind. Cheers!

It Rained Last Night...

It rained last night. With a vengeance. Sounds like a horror movie or atleast an action flick? Nope it was just Mumbai on 2^nd of June 2011. There is something about the first rains that is absolutely spectacular and completely transforms the city which for so long has been ravaged by the summer heat. It was nothing like the usual storm and light drizzle which normally characterizes the first rains, it was magical and ferocious all at the same time and it threatened to bring the city to it's knees right away. A bus ride which normally takes an hour, took two while the streets (even the highways fared no better than streets!) slowly flooded with muddy brown rivers of rain and slush (I really don't want to name the kind of things I saw floating around!). The sudden change from day to night, growling thunder and flashing lightning all took on the appearance of a drama that nature was enacting for us lesser mortals; only it soon ceased to be merely a drama and threatened to turn into a full scale battle. Nature is wise however, for it reined itself in and decided to spare us for yet another day. It knows that it is capable of complete and utter destruction and also that with great power comes great responsibility! But jokes apart, I love the rains, always have, always will and its making me realize that by extension, I quite like this city too. Its been two months since I have been back here, the city I used to detest so much finally redeeming itself in my eyes in the strangest of ways. I find joy in the simplest of things like the fact that they have installed TVs in the newer buses, which actually air some good stuff, believe it or not, I've been watching a black and white serialized version of “The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Cunningham Inheritance”. Of course the serial is interspersed with advertisements on everything, ranging from 'Save the girl child' to 'Say no to drugs' and 'Join our computer institute'. All in all a very enriching experience I think :P. There are other things too, I am fascinated by the increase in the number of bus routes all over the city, where earlier there would be one, there are now atleast five buses going the same route, again a point of redemption, I get to pick and choose the emptiest bus while going to work :). The millions of new construction sites may cause a riot of dust and noise but it just shows that there is no end to growth and development. Of course the streets are more crowded than ever before and there are more people taking the train and it takes longer and longer to get places but strangely I feel more at home now than I ever have. There comes a time when you get tired of finding faults and nursing grudges and then you begin to accept things for what they are and appreciate the best in them instead of trying to change what you can't. This is true of human relationships as well. The more you get to know a person, the more you find things you don't like about them (lets face it, there are no saints any more!). So what do you do? Shun them for their faults or learn to live with the good things and leave out all the rest? (love the song by Linkin Park!).

I remember a quote from Julius Caesar:

The evil that men do lives after them,

The good is oft interred with their bones;

Why let that happen? Let the good that men do live on after them and let the rest be gone with him. Life gets a lot less complicated and who knows, by accepting someone wholeheartedly with no reservations, you might just bring out the best in them. With that thought I'll sign off and wish a warm welcome to the impending monsoons and while you sip some coffee on a rainy day, take some time to see all that is good around you. Cheers!

City Life...

I simply love the sounds of a city coming to life. It has a magic of it's own, even if it is the dreaded city of Mumbai. After being tucked away in the peace and quiet of Viman Nagar, Pune for 3 years, it is quite an adjustment to relocate to this bustling city again. I'm making good progress however. While the news that the city greeted me with on the 7th of April 2011 was shattering, it is slowly redeeming itself in different ways. The smell of freshly baked bread at the bakery; watching vegetables being unloaded from trucks to the roadside vendors' carts; the vigorous dusting undertaken at all the stores right after opening, the various signboards and wares that these shops choose to display on the pavement being brought out in full glory; the florist stringing garlands out of fresh flowers; delivery of milk at the dairy; these and so many others are the things I love about the city first thing in the morning. Walking around at this time of the morning has quite a few advantages; the freshest supplies are yours for the taking with hardly any competetion around so you can take your time and choose the best and of course work get done so much faster. There are however glitches in this system of thought; since all enterprises do not deign to open at that hour, you often find yourself cursing them and having to return at a more reasonable hour to try sending out a courier, collecting your laundry, changing a library book or CD, buying light fittings or clothing. There has to be that perfect time that needs to be established for otherwise you may end up setting out too late and then being greeted by half shut shutters indicating a 3 hour lunch and siesta session. Post this session you find all shops displaying a great reluctance to conduct any business until the reasonable hour of 6 pm when the streets begin to bustle with life again. This time there is no qustion of peace and quiet and we find hordes of people at every shop and shopkeepers skillfully using all their pent up energy to sell their wares. Fried junk food and other street food causes quite a bit of congestion on the pavement leaving no doubt that this is probably the mot popular time of the day. As the evening wears on it is the clubs abd restuarants that have their share of people's attention and come night the only thing open till late enough is the ice cream parlour and the 24 hour pharmacy, and ultimately the city slumbers again. It is the same cycle of life that we see everywhere with each stage having its own share of joy and sorrow, light and darkness, laughter and silence, heat and cold an the list goes on. So does the cycle will go on, never stopping, never ending, just keeps moving from one day to the next. But all in all, I think I like mornings the best :)

She came into this world, innocent and bright eyed vowing to not let anything change her, change the way she looked at the world, but alas that was not to be. The very things she valued the most would bring about pain in her life, honesty and sincerity have no place in the world today. The walls close around her, threatening to crush her very being if she doesn't give in to the ways of this big bad world. They say that no good deed goes unpunished, it is indeed true. For what do you do if all your endeavors to do good just fall by the wayside? When happiness is yours only for the moment? When there are more thorns than there are roses? Do you give up? Do you do whatever it takes to survive even if it means lying to yourself? Where do you draw the line? And if you do decide to hold out against the world, the last man standing, what is that worth? At the end of the day, what remains? Just you alone, broken and defeated... Why? Because you did what was right, you followed the wisdom in your heart. So you give in, you do what it takes to survive. You close your heart to things that hurt you, you don't reach out to someone in need, you say what you need to get ahead and you think about your future and what will be best for you. You put yourself so far ahead of everyone else that very soon it gets lonely and you long for the days of uncertainty, never knowing what each minute shall bring, the sheer joey of feeling alive. But what then? You can't turn back to the world you left behind. All is lost and everything the world ever told you seems suddenly foolish and devoid of any real sense, you feel cheated, robbed off a life that you could have lived but didn't get a chance. So, here lets take a moment to celebrate the wonderful thing that is life, in all its beauty and absurdity. Take a moment today to follow your heart and do something that makes you happy even if for just a moment and it shall be worth the risk. A leap of faith is sometimes the only way you can experience things to the fullest without making a million calculated decisions, which are often about things so trivial that all the energy that you invest in it is a complete waste. Having said that however, i have to admit that its not such a bad thing to make calculated decisions, but for the most part, when it comes to decisions of the heart, going in blind is the only way to be...