The end of the day...

The scene from the window was absolutely beautiful.  It was unbelievable how the bustle of a hot summer's day could lead to such peace and quiet. Street lamps lit up the empty roads with the occasional car passing by and lights twinkled in the windows of the buildings all around. The sky was overcast with white fluffy clouds with only glimpses of the dark blue sky above. But best part about this scene was the one thing you couldn't see: the cool and steady breeze. With the music softly playing in the background there was really nothing more I could've wished foe except maybe that the end of every day  could be spent peacefully contemplating the window from my window ledge with the breeze blowing through my hair. You don't need anything exotic to make you relax at the end of the day, just find that one thing that works for you and thats all you'll ever need.

Cheers!

24.02.2013

As this blog turns four years old,  the author is in a contemplative mood. So I do what I do best, stretch out on the couch, put on some soothing music, stare into the lamplight and contemplate. My thoughts are in a mood to wander today, and I am in no mood to organize them. Sometimes its good to let yourself wander. My mind goes back to random memories, both happy and sad: a sunny winter day spent in the park, a long walk at the end of a summer day, an amazing impromptu lunch and a roadside joint, a movie and dinner and all the laughs that come with it. I once read in someone's autobiography that when you look back on memories, if they are happy ones, you can actually re-live the joy of the moment by just thinking of it but if they are sad ones, you don't really feel it as acutely as it had been. I think this is so true and so wonderful, its like life telling us to go out there and do whatever pleases us best, for tomorrow all the bad stuff will feel just a little less bad. I have always tried to live my life that way with as little regrets as possible and I'm proud to say that I have managed quite well so far. When faced with life's toughest situations, just ask yourself if you could do it all over again, would you want to change anything? In most cases, no matter how bad, my guess is that your answer will be a 'no'. Likewise, when trying to make a difficult decision, always toss a coin: if you're disappointed with the result, then you've already made your decision. Take notice of all the little things around you and you will find yourself smiling even if you were in a foul mood seconds ago; and the best part is that the smile is something that shall make you smile when you remember it, where as the foul mood will just be a memory. So chalk up as many smiles as you possibly can for this is the most important scoreboard that you can have. Focus on all the positive stuff and accept the negative stuff too for what is life without them, just make sure when you look at your scoreboard, you have more smiles than frowns or tears. For there is nothing in this world that is greater than happiness and the pursuit of it.

Here's wishing it to be fruitful year ahead.

Cheers!

It was a beautiful morning, sunlight filtered through the fresh green leaves which swayed gently in the breeze. As I looked out of the large windows and saw the vast expanse of blue skies with bits of grey clouds floating across, I felt deeply content. It was uttlerly peaceful and made me want to keep day dreaming all day. The hills in the distance, the buildings tall and short in the foreground, the trees in the office compund, the railway track at a distance and not a soul in sight; just everything about the scene spelt serene. It made me feel grateful for all my blessings and happy about all the good things in life. Simple things which don't need to be put in words, I sat there just recounting them in my head and then glancing at the clock brought me back to reality. Until next time then! Cheers =)

To see a world in a grain of sand,

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour...

- William Blake
Auguries of Innocence

Promises

There is dialogue from the movie 'Shall We Dance' that I really love. It goes like this:

We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'

Its an extraordinary thought and never fails to bring a smile to my face. Because really if you go to see, all the other things in a marriage can be found even without being married. But it would be very difficult to find someone to be your witness for life without having that kind of promise from them. Very simply sums up the idea of a marriage.

Cheers!

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...
Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone

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!

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!

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!

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 :)

Poems, Prayers and Promises...

One of my favourite T-Shirts says, 'Music Feeds My Soul'. I find that so true. I don't know what I'd do without it in my life. One of my all time favourite artists is, yes you guessed right, none other than John Denver. It just so happens that I'm listening to one of his songs titled 'Poems. Prayers and Promises' which like all his songs is simply beautiful. I have been a fan of John Denver and his music for a long as I can remember. The lyrics and melodies all come together in such perfect harmony that you can't help but be soothed by them. Most people might not even have heard of John Denver or even if they have, it's only 'Take Me Home, Country Roads' and 'Annie's Song'. But there is so much more. 'Dreamland Express', 'Perhaps Love', 'Seasons of The Heart' and 'For You' are filled with such meaningful lyrics that you are left wondering at the genius of the guy. There are also a host of songs that narrate stories (they don't write songs like that anymore!) like, 'Rocky Mountain High', 'Wild Montana Skies', 'Matthew' and 'Leaving on a Jetplane'. Lets nor forget, 'Cowboy and the Lady', 'Chrismas for Cowboys', 'Whispering Jesse' and 'Sunshine on my Shoulders', the list goes on. I don't think I can ever tire of it. I would never have believed that such simple everyday words could be strung together so beautifully. You have to hear it to believe it. The entire list of John Denver's music is strongly recommended for anyone up for some easy listenin', and I promise you, you won't be disappointed. Hope I have inspired you enough! Cheers!

The Wonder That Is Maggie...

During the course of the past one year of my life, I have become acutely aware of the fact that an altogether too large population of people love MAGGI. Why this fact should be so unsettling, I don't know. I personally detest maggi (I know I'm going to get a lot of flak for this!) and I really don't see how people can be so crazy about it. I've had my share of maggi while growing up but at some point of time, I just got too sick of it! I am quite willing to cook it for someone else but lets just say that I will probably only eat it if it happens to be the last bit of food left on earth. Anyway, the point of this blog is not to express my opinion (however strong!) but to narrate an incident that occured last Sunday. Now, having lived in a hostel for a year, I have discovered that maggi can effectively become breakfast, lunch and dinner, not to mention an evening and midnight snack. Believe me, I have been witness to a scene where after an evening of clubbing (and getting no dinner in the process) a bunch of girls eating oceans of maggi and calling it the perfect end to the day! Anyway, after seeing endless maggi advertisements, it was quite heartening to see a real life example the other day on my way back from Bombay to Pune. The bus was stopped at the half-way point between Pune and Bombay, and I saw this girl eating maggi from a styrofoam cup! The setting was just perfect, pouring rain, chilliy breeze and a steaming bowl (cup) of maggi. I don't know what it was about the scene that touched my heart and almost made me forget my dislike for maggi. Just a thought though, I wonder what she would call it, if it got selected for one of the maggi ads? "Meri bus waali MAGGI" perhaps?

One Art...

This is a poem by Elizabeth Bishop, which features in the movie "In Her Shoes" which I absolutely love (both movie and poem!). It goes like this...

The art of losing isn't hard to master:
So many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something everyday. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing further, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring you disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last,
or next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, and lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
The art of losing's not hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

PS # I don't know what is with me and poetry these days, but I guess I was thinking of Rashima and hence "In Her Shoes"

Lost and Found...

This is a poem called "Do Not Stand At My Grave and Weep" by Steven Cummins which I had penned down somewhere and mislaid. I came across it suddenly today while flipping through the pages of a notebook and thought I'd share it...

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there, I do not sleep
I am a thousand winds that blow
I am the diamond glints on snow
I am the sunlight on ripened grain
I am the gentle autumn rain
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight
I am the soft stars that shine at night
Do not stand at my grave and cry
I am not there, I did not die.

A really beautiful poem...I think Mansa will agree.