A little piece of India

There are few moments in life which make you feel like you are a part of a larger cosmos - even though you are far away from your homeland, far away from your people. Today was one of them.

I had lost interest in cricket when as a young girl, I literally had my young heart broken with the match fixing scandals that became rampant. Ever since I could never feel the same way about the game - even though it was something I had grown up with. I think every Indian can remember crowding around television sets - black and white, color - I remember our Onida and I remember Maa's superstitions and angry protests blaming every wicket on herself. "Switch it off, switch it off - I know they are going to lose". And the moments of ecstasy when our country emerged victorious. It is a sport - that's true but for us Indians - it personifies a lot more. If you asked me what more - I probably wouldn't be able to answer you. I would not be able to explain the patriotism, the unity, the passion, the heart-beat, the pulse in your throat and much more that this sport becomes - you either feel it or you don't.

The last time India won the cricket world cup was in 83 and I was too young to remember. 2003 we came very close - the disappointment at India's loss seemed to echo the known feeling of being let down. Now it is 2011 and we are very close again. We have a lucky captain and the stars do seem aligned - and there are positive smiles and nods all around - I have a feeling we might just win it.

A bunch of Indians at my workplace arranged to get the semi-final match India vs Pakistan screened in a conference room. The timing was 2:00 a.m. - 11:00 a.m. Ofcourse the night owl that I am, even after telling my husband to wake me up at 2:00, I happily snoozed off and didn't even open an eye till 7 a.m. At this point, it was a gloomy outlook, Pakistan was hitting 4's and 6's and victory seemed to be moving out of our grasp. Through my commute to office, and my mother's phone commentary, there still seemed a chance - if there was a wicket. By the time I reached work, one fell. By the time I settled down to work with cricinfo open on my screen, Afridi fell. And then I had to see it on the big screen. So yes I did rush to the conference room for the last stretch when India was almost sure to win.

There were a group of Indians gathered there with the lights switched off, Willow cricket stream being projected on a large screen. Cricket is one sport - the more the merrier, you just need the cumulative shouts to get your adrenaline going, the blood boiling and the decibels increasing. As the run rate slowly piled up, and the wickets kept falling - the jubilation, the rants, the cheers and the happiness became more and more infectious. It didn't matter that there was only one other person I knew in the room - Purnima, my team-mate. For that moment of celebration with all of us clapping cheering and jumping up and down - it was as if we had brought a piece of India into that room with us. So even though far from home, and far away from Mohali and the old television sets and the familiar crowd of family members crowding around - I felt at home.

Regardless of whether India now wins or loses - I think today revived a spark in me - a spark of belief I had lost as a child in a Kolkata home watching news channel reports - I rediscovered that spark today in an American office room among Indian strangers. 

Reflections on failures...

I can't imagine it's been nearly 10 months since my last post. I feel like I keep coming back to my blog now ... only when I need to draw sustenance from it, from writing.
I felt life was treating me unfairly - well I get the chance to complain about that only when life is not looking up. :) But if I do take the time to look around and actually listen, I find everyone is struggling with it. If it's not stress or depression which the lesser confident among us fall easy prey to, it is worry and anxiety, or solitude or pressure.......
I can't believe that in the last year I could have let my life take so much a turn for the worse that I hardly feel confident of me being me anymore. That last bit of self-esteem, the last indelible or so-I-thought principles which I hold on to so tightly could have been completely eroded from me. So can it come as a surprise that I feel I have been striped of everything ..... the building blocks that I built on my career on no longer stand true.
I feel like an imposter if I call myself a computer science engineer, or software developer or anything remotely connected with it. I know I am being hard against myself but who or what else can I turn against.
Should I pick up the pieces and move on ... but move on to what ... the same life elsewhere ?

Survival

Though this sounds like a chapter heading out of Twilight, believe me it's not :). With my ear phones plugged in and my ipod at a volume which makes the ear-phones unnecessary in the first place.... let's say I am trying to drown out my thoughts. I have been trying all day in-fact........ to unsuccessfully just stop thinking. I feel like today I could identify with any cigarette smoker or drug addict in the world........ I can understand exactly what would drive you to want one, I wouldn't mind one myself at this point.

For me, when I am uncomfortable, hurt, depressed, the first thing that gets immobilized is my voice..... for some reason, I cannot form the words that are going around in my head. It does sound cliched, but I feel exactly like Meg Ryan in You've got mail when she talks about how she gets voice paralysis when stuck in an unpleasant situation. I've hated altercations and fights from forever......and shy away from unpleasantness like a touch-me-not. And yet this behavior is the worst adversary to you and yourself, since the imprisoned words and thoughts now swirl into poison fumes, engulfing your mind and feelings, preventing you from doing anything but wallowing in self-pity and sadness....... you live relive the humiliation, agony and just the wrong of the moment in your mind as if it's not a thing of the past but your absolute present and future. Not only that, every single such moment in your past life now piles on to this one, pulling you back into the abyss.


What am I talking about..... well, well wasn't that evident, I am talking about the professional world and its vagaries, and surviving in that world. As days pass, I become more and more disillusioned that I will ever be able to survive in this world. It lacks the personal touch for me :). I feel the world is suddenly made up of people judging other people's capabilities, assessing other's qualities with little consideration of what they themselves can or cannot achieve, and black-holing the victim's opportunities. It's about whether you can talk and present yourself with confidence and back them with the right arguments... in short it's turning out to be about everything I am not. I hate to give up but I don't know where to turn, whether to change myself and persist or find something with the personal touch :).

Countdown to new year....

As places across the globe ring in the new year ....... and we wait ( 12 more hours) for the clock to strike midnight in Seattle, I am sitting in my cozy little living room, my only guest our first live christmas tree, listening to old songs and reminiscing the past year.

We are having friends over for the countdown to new year. Space Needle is a glance away and I have read they countdown by moving the elevators up each floor and having fireworks from all around which ultimately culminates at the very top.

But I am digressing, this year has been quite the high and the low. It started in Paris :). Then continued with a personal achievements, personal downfalls, successes, failures, traveling no end and enjoying some of the most scenic places.......and ending in Seattle.

Apart from everything above, the thing I am most happy about is that I was finally able to escape some sort of shell and rediscover myself through my hobbies. You will not believe the amount of reading I have been able to complete, all thanks to the brilliant service at Seattle Public Library. Here is the list:

•   Twilight Saga : twilight, eclipse, new moon and breaking dawn
•   Water for elephants
•    Snow
•   Middlesex
•   Audacity of Hope
• The Story of Edgar Sawtelle

I should be truthful. The Twilight series and Sarah Gruen's book are the 5 I have completed, the rest are in the process of being read :). But this is still progress..... from nil to 5 .......and I am happy.

I also changed my blog template. Actually I was trying to enable the Amazon associates search bars, and you need to upgrade your template for that. I still have my old lonely chair template saved somewhere though. I need to restore that or come up with a brand new one. I happened to be searching on the net for blog templates and surprise surprise, I found even this is a business (check out Artisteer )


Getting back to new year resolutions: that's an easy one:

•  Lose weight
• Be positive
• As always Conquer the world :) : and by that I mean someday you will be forced to read a book written by me.... :) 

That's all for today and now... Happy New Year !!

Introspection

As I near the one year birthday of one of the momentous happenings of my life - my wedding .... I can't help but think that this year has simultaneously brought some of the best and some of the worst, some of the happiest and some of the most downhill, some of the most enlifting and some of the most humiliating moments of my life. And as the itouch borrowed from Joy spins out songs from the Bengali movie Antaheen (endless wait ...) , I sit and reflect on what made 2009 ....... 2009 :) (apart from copying Dickens' opening lines of Tale of two cities.)

After trying for a year, and going back and forth and forth and back, I have finally taken the decision, and things have worked out in favor of moving to a new team....today. Oddly enough, I feel relieved and depressed at the same time. Heaven knows that I have been over many mountains in this team, spewn a lot of my work related stress on my home and yet .........it is an association of 2 years and almost (but not quite) 7 months and I feel sorry I have to leave. I had joined my company on 21st May, my birthday. And I would like to move to the new team on Dec 21st - makes book-keeping really easy. :) Maybe I am the good kind of scared about whether this is the right decision about my career, my life at this point. I will always wonder if I made even a tiny impact on this team though.

This year we started in Paris and we will probably end at home in Seattle. But in between we have seen a bit of paradise - the glaciers and ice-bergs of Jasper, hiked miles till we felt we would drop, drunk an amazing blend of tea at a tea-house at an elevation of 3500m (?), watched sound of music in a live backdrop, eaten hot fish and chips from Ivar's, walked hand in hand through our favorite Farmer's market, taken the Paradise trail and enjoyed wildflowers in their glory, visited endless relatives and eaten luchi and begun bhaja at a surprising rate and never got bored of it, enjoyed the company of everyone closest to me being at home at the same time .... and then lost my dog to leave behind - forever - an empty spot and my now incomplete family, renounced social contact to lose ourselves in each other, regained friends when we returned to reality, fought and cried as we adjusted to the newness of marriage and frustrations, smiled and joked, laughed and played, loved, lost, won, and....... lived. Makes you smile doesn't it. :)


( Add to that the surprising small pleasures of life - like picking up the book you placed on hold from the library only to find that a second book that you had wanted is also available - I guess this will relate to only the book-lovers out there. )

I'll end with the lyrics of the song I am listening to..... (since I replay it over and over, I usually have the capability to drive anyone in my near vicinity - nuts - in a very short time :)). These are in Bengali -

Ferari mon

Alo alo rong jamkalo chand dhuye jai…
Chena sona mukh janasona hat chhuye jai..
Fire fire fire ghum ghire ghire gaan rekhe jai…
Kichhu michhu rat pichhu pichu tan deke jai…

Ajo ache gopon….
Ferari mon…
beje gechhe kakhon….
Se telephone…

Chena sona mukh janasona hat rekhe jai..
Fire fire fire ghum ghire ghire gaan deke jai…

Ajo ache gopon….
Ferari mon…
beje gechhe kokhon….
Se telephone…

Choto choto din alaper rongin ..
Nurir moton..
Chhoto chhoto raat
Chena mou tar ..
Polisher bon..

Ahaaa aaaa haa

Agochhalo ghor..
Khorkuto moy
Chilekotha kon..

Ahaaaaaaaaa
aha haa

Choto choto din alaper rongin ..
Nurir moton..
Chhoto chhoto raat
Chena mou tar ..
Polisher bon..

Agochhalo ghor..
Khorkuto moy
Chilekotha kon..

Kotha chhilo hete jabooo chhayaapoth….


Ummm hhhh hhh
Ferari mon…
Beje gechhe kokhon….
Se telephone…



Kichhu michhu rat pichhu pichu tan obikol...
Alo alo rong jamkalo chand jholmol…

Ajo ache gopon….
Ferari mon…
Beje gechhe kokhon….
Se telephone…



Guro guro nil rong pencil jochhonar jol..
Jhuro jhuro kanch agun chhoyach dhekechhe anchal…
Footpat e vir jahajer dak phire chole jai..

ahahahaaaaaaaaaaaaaa


Guro guro nil rong pencil jochhonar jol..
Jhuro jhuro kanch agun chhoyach dhekechhe anchal…
Footpat e vir jahajer dak phire chole jai..


Kotha chhilo hete jabo chhayapoth………

Ajo ache gopon….
Ferari mon…
Beje gechhe kokhon….
Se telephone…

Alo alo rong jamkalo chand dhuye jai…
Chena sona mukh janasona hat chhuye jai..

Ajo ache gopon….
Ferari mon…
Beje gechhe kokhon….
Se telephone…

Lights in Seattle

Since I am in the mood today, I might as well make up for all the times and days that I have not written a word...... just been busy in coming back from work, cribbing and cooking up arguments over trivial matters, spoiling everyone's mood and going to bed without dinner...... (I am exaggerating .... a bit :))............. and do some back to back posts.

I take that back that I once said USA would never enjoy the festival of lights as India did. You should just be here now .... so close to Christmas. There are festive lights on verandahs, terraces, christmas trees decked in lights peeping out of windows......... truly looks like a season of miracles. :)

One of my favorite parts of each day is when I meet my husband near my office or bus-stop and we both camper on to the waterfront pier bus to scramble home. And this is when we take in teh waterfront, the lights, the people, and the decorations and all the signs of christmas. He has to take a 5 min diversion on his bus-route just to meet me, but that's part of why it is all that more special. As for me, I relive being a school girl in pigtails, being received at the school gates and accompanied home. I know this simple pleasure won't last forever, my office is moving to a new destination and that might be too out of the way to actually meet and come home together or set out together. But that's why I wanted to write it down......so that I can treasure it forever even when it is no longer something we can do .......... as something we used to do and shared so much through. Ofcourse, it's not all that rosy and romantic.... more often than not, what I greet Joy with - is a face wrought with the stress and frustration of the day. But well, not everything is perfect..... and maybe that can be my next affirmation (see previous post) ...... to leave work at work and smile when I leave office. :)

Affirmations

Today has been a good day. For once, the stars were aligned exactly as my horoscope said they would be (yes, I am big into horoscopes - big into seeing how they rarely come true ........but still depending on them to ascertain how my day will turn out.) and things turned out my way. And so I am indeed glad that I read what I did today ... about which I shall tell you in just a minute - let me take this minute to bask in the glory ..... like so many others....... of this moment where I am holding the stage :).

Anyway, since a few days/months, I was at a point in my life where I had hit the peak of imposter syndrome - I felt I didn't know anything. I was a failure as a computer scientist, I should have chosen some other branch, become an author. Everything and everyone I saw around me, made me feel as if I could have done that and been good at it....... anything except computer science.
I don't know what led me into this black hole - because isn't it true that you can't make others make you feel inferior without your consent.

So just when I had hit rock bottom, the planets became aligned and mercury moved into jupiter's retrograde or some such cosmic thing and things seemed more positive than they had in days.


I had gifted my husband, Joy Dilbert's 20th anniversary edition book and this includes an introduction by Scott Adams on the events which led to Dilbert. He writes about affirmations wherein he would write out 15 times each day about achieving a personal goal. There is this one time when he made a foolish bet with his colleague on beating her score in gmat, picked a score of 94 and practiced his affirmation of "I, Scott Adams will score 94 in the GMAT". He says he is a great cynic when it comes to believing and he doesn't think that magic was at work, but when the score came out, after having consistently obtained seventies in all his practice tests, he stared at the report of 94 - exactly as he had visualized it.

So here's today's lesson, go write down a personal goal that you wish to achieve and continue doing so everyday. Maybe you will see how weird "coincidences come together to make it come true".

My Calling

Everybody, at some point of their life or another are faced with the question of "what is my calling in life?" Is this what or why I came into the world for.... of course you need to have the luxury of circumstances to indulge in such questions.

So, it is not surprising that as I near my 30ish crisis ( I am still a year away though, so not THAT old already :) ), I start questioning myself about - what am I doing now, is this what I was meant to do, am I happy doing this..... and though there are never going to be answers to that, I suddenly realize there are a lot of things I am not doing. I am not learning french or for that matter a new language, I am not volunteering anywhere, I am not reading at the rate I would like.


If you have read between the lines, I am sure you would have guessed that all this is arising from some dis-satisfaction with my job. Basically right now, there are 2 spheres in my life, my work and my home. And I have seen others successfully disassociate their home lives from their work life, and possibly due to my immaturity I have not been able to do that. I always carry my work problems home and make a mess and tangle of my home life. Well, everybody introspects at some time, and I guess my time has come. I feel there is some other calling in my life which I have not listened to closely enough. ....... we'll see where it leads me.

.............................

Bruno died yesterday.....Nov 6th.

Finding India abroad .......

Ofcourse I can never rediscover or recreate India abroad, not through Durga pujas or Dandiya festival celebrations or selected hindi film screenings. But imagine my joy when I discovered Ndtv.com and live screening of the news as seen back home. :) I have been skipping about in glee, and clapping my hands once I realized I will get to see all my favorite ads (call it ridiculous if you must!!)

Not that I have ever been a stickler for news (starting today I will be: my horoscope says that the more constructive feedback I take in today the better for me in the long run ;) ) ...... I must have been the worst at quiz (except literature) and gk in my school...... and throughout college life - all the hindu and times of india newspapers that I got would end up in the waste paper basket. It's never late to recover though. So after reading all about Indira Gandhi's 25th death anniversary and about state politics in my home state, I googled out two of our bollywood heroes blogs.

The first: Aamir Khan
The second: Amitabh Bachan

That's old news for many. I myself have happened on them before and forgotten them. But then since today I am supposed to work on improving myself (again by my horoscope :)) so I'll make new beginnings. I tweeted for the first time in my life, worked out on Wii fit plus ... let's see what else can I break my head on..... ( but you know these signs, it's the over-enthusiastic beginner trying to rediscover him/herself.... very quick downhill slope trend :)).

Bruno still fighting...... Baba is home so Bruno is spending as much time idolizing Baba now.

I am on the verge of giving up on something but with this new found joy of self discovery I might just have to brave it out and stick on, let's see.

Losing a dog....losing my dog .....losing Bruno

How many of us, when frustrated with life simply wish that we were dead ! Sometimes life shows you the true meaning of your words. My little dog of 12 years is suffering from cancer, now quite rapidly and steadily plummeting towards his death.

We had hardly believed he would survive so long - the mass of cancerous cells swelling into a tumor, ebbing away on excision, and reappearing with mightier force the next time around. I had not dared to hope of seeing him alive when I arrived home. And yet there he was, to welcome me, possibly for the last time. Remarkably thinner, with a white bandage masking the left foreleg, where he had undergone repeated excisions to keep the cancerous mass under control.

As I said life shows you - even though I argued with Maa, that Bruno was so alive because he didn't know what was plaguing him, that he was dying, I or for that matter everyone of us everyday would bow to the spirit of life in him...... whether slobbering over chicken rolls and forcing us to give him two thirds of what we ate, or shaking his head with his favorite moo pillow tight in his teeth in that "bullish" way to play with us or refusing to come home when we was taken out for his walk or sniffing out a cat and chasing it till it had run out of the neighborhood..... it seemed all he wanted to do was live...... for the simplest pleasures of life as he knew them.

It's hard to accept death, even when day in and day out you see someone waning in front of your eyes. And that is when it hits you with its solemnity. Something beyond your control and fighting, something that is really not jokeworthy at all, the gap which death creates can never be filled up. Ofcourse these are all known and morose thoughts and that is why it is best left unsaid, best not dwelt upon, but "accepted".

Let's leave it at that though and move on to more cheerful thoughts and memories....... here is a video link to Bruno's forays into the Bay of Bengal, last month.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2V5rZuUq7CM

Bruno is one of the most avid fans of road trips, and that's what we did. We took him to Mandarmoni by car. He loved the trip (in his own excited way of barking continuously at everything in sight) and he loved the ocean even more. We love you Bruno and will always miss you. You became so much a part of our lives that we dread how life will be without you and dread the gap that your going away will create.

Bruno and I parted proximity when I boarded my flight back here, but he is still fighting out his last few days back home. The malignancy has attacked his lungs and is manifesting as respiratory distress. I don't know how many days he has left ... but I pray that the ones he has left are to some extent painless.

Diwali from the skies , home, Bruno and more

I had the misfortune of having to leave home on diwali. Even after a decade, I wasn't able to burst crackers on the festival of lights. However I did get to light red, gold and green sparklers or 'fhul-jhuris' the day before, and also try my hand at lighting flower pots better known as 'tubris'.... only the 'tubris' true to careless workmanship, ended up bursting at times at the end of the shower of golden light (that's the closest I can get to being technical about fireworks.)

On the other hand, I am sure few have had the fortune of viewing Indian cities from the sky when they are alit and celebrating diwali. Believe me, Kolkata was glowing with the light from small diyas arranged on balconies of flats and houses, buildings with electric lights and rockets bursting into red and blue glitters and garlands above them. Delhi had five times the fireworks and beautiful silhouettes of parliament buildings. I couldn't help but feel lucky that I knew how it felt to set one of these alight myself, instead of sitting on the bank of a water-body and watching the display of fireworks stranded on a barge.

To be contd..

A short "continued"

I haven't written in so long a time , that I was almost on the brink of forgetting this part of my existence. But hopefully I am back in time to save me. It won't be a long one this time around, but I am sure they will get longer, as I get into my habit of rambling.
I was missing my mom immensely and more than that was missing her simply fussing over me... about the oh so little things that only mothers can make a huge deal about. I guess its another bout of homesickness, but I wish I was back home right now, to be in that cocoon of mom' s protection, to share with my brother the joys of starting out on his own, to help my little old dog of 12 years battle cancer and still live like he so much likes to, maybe just be back in Jamshedpur for a spell of vacation with baba, maa and Tukan..... something that would bring those faded kodak photos back to life again. Sigh ..... I wish ....

I had thought....

I watched some 3 movies over the weekend and Monday... starting with Sense and Sensibility, A Wednesday, The Last Lear and ending with The Lives of Others. Each of them was very much a revelation and a thought-provoker in their own way. I am very happy by the evolution of the storyline in hindi cinema. Each one comes out better than the previous.... very different.... very down to earth and realistic. Ofcourse this is all minus the constant commentary of my brother that there are infinite loopholes and how could I have EVER overlooked them.

But each is an interesting viewpoint nevertheless. An interesting viewpoint of the director, the story-teller....... more so the story-teller and that is the point of my whole blabbering actually. I don't know how I become indoctrinated to stories... I remember somebody, Maa, Baba reading out to me. As it is, it seems I was this talkative little brat who would never stop talking. I remember vaguely ... like those one or two childhood memories which become embedded forever and are the only ones you can recapitulate..... sitting in my little frock with my legs outstretched and hands holding on to the balcony railings....
there was a wide expanse in between me, the balcony and the next building..... the wide expanse of the park where I spent my every childhood evening.. playing and swinging ... boy did I love to swing.

But I am digressing ..... as I said, it seems I was this talkative brat ... maa says my talking would fill tapes and tapes... funny all those words somehow disappeared as I grew up. :) Well anyway.... that one childhood memory that I guess I will never forget is how I would spin up stories about actually belonging to that house across in that other building.

I had this entourage of dolls whom I loved. They would be set up in a line and be scolded and fed and made to sleep and then told stories. They would also have birthday parties with doll size luchis my "mashi" would especially make for them. How well they played along... dressing up everyone in their most pretty dresses and having a doll birthday party.

I also had this lovely kitten book. Each page had the most adoring kittens staring out at you. I can still recall each picture and how much of Johnson's baby powder I would have spent on each of them, just prettying them up. I don't know which story-world I used to live in. But I don't think I ever grew out of it. Even now ... I can fall back on a story anytime. No wonder I get mesmerized by movies... because it communicates the thoughts of someone who thought about the story ... how the characters would act, what they would say, how the relations between them would interwine and disentangle and join together again.

Relationships, that's one topic I'll never grow bored of. Even when I think I have deciphered how and why people act the way they do, I still let myself be surprised or hurt. Funny huh!! Not to say that I am not always to blame... as it is every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

Every person builds up the world around them as best as they know how. They adapt to it as best as they think they can. And then they spend their entire life living it .... I guess my point is that that's how I arranged my life. Some things happened, the rest I arranged and here I am. But if I did look in the mirror today and ask myself (blatantly copied from Steve Job's commencement speech at Stanford) "If I were to die today, is this the way I would like to spend it ? " ... I think my answer would be yes. I wouldn't want to change a thing, (except maybe being in India at home :) ).. there was a time when I used to detest working. Believe me, the very thought of having to go to work from 8-5 was distasteful to me. But then something happened, that it became my escape and my existence. So much so, I really don't mind it anymore because it defines a part of who I am. Ok, either the philosophy or I have become a workaholic. .....

In any case, I think somewhere in the mush above, I made my point... a little bit of trying to define who I am and a little bit of who I have become.

Me myself and myself - one liners

The following are my rants followed by my rants :). Caution: do not read at risk of losing mental sanity.
I wish I were a positive person - like the one who sees silver linings on every cloud kind of thing.

I have heard somewhere the first step in turning your wishes to reality is turning the word wish in the sentence into do/am.

I wish I was not turning into my worst nightmare - an 8a.m - 5p.m cube monkey who finds solace in work, who finds that work is the only means of shutting out the other pieces of life he/she is not able to tackle..... who doesn't know life without work ...and who would rather work than be anywhere else.

I wish I could still be a child, see the world through rose-tinted glasses. (My post, my space, I can write what I wish .... and heavens knows why I needed to justify that).

I wish I could protect those/that I consider the most pure in my life. But I do a bad job at this, mainly because of the subject line.

Nothing seems to happen the way you thought they would, nothing turns out the way you had EXPECTED them to.

Expectations are the root of every or most problems.

Very nice saying from my friend's status message: he who has a why to live for can bear almost any how. I wish I had the why, then the how's would be easier, but the point is the why is an eternal never-ending search for me. (not to mention use of both never-ending and eternal is redundant).

Elizabeth Taylor had said: nobody can make you feel inferior unless you let them. I do just that.

I don't think I am marriage material yet if anybody knows what that means. maybe I will be by my marriage date.

I consider myself damned lucky in some ways and damned unlucky in others.

There must be at least one person in the world right now who understands why I am saying what I am saying.

You are a lone reed (courtesy You've got mail) even when you think you are not.

"You were born a street rat , you will die a street rat and only your fleas will mourn you"...in the Zafar like snarl courtesy Aladdin.

The solution to half the world's problems is having A sympathetic ear, who is willing to listen and tell you where you are wrong.

The solution to the other half is a warm hug.

goodnight.

Power of Love

I was moved to tears after a long time on watching The Notebook. I have been planning to watch it since I don't know when, and after a bit of ABC , and 2 bits on my laptop I finally watched it in totalum. To me the movie boils down to just three words, the power of love...(that's four words but who's counting). Believe me, I have gone through so many times of believing and non-believing in love...... it's almost come a full circle for me. :) (I'll leave it to you to guess whether the end was as a believer or non-believer.)

I was just talking with a friend and whining to my mom, about how life is without motivation now. I live this day of getting up, going to work, coming back, eating and sleeping..... it seems such a meaningless existence. Once I wake up, all I wait for is to get through the day and come back and then the next day and the next day.....

:) I guess I should get out more. I started this post with something totally different in mind but it's becoming more remorse as I write. I guess the amount of time that I have been out of touch with writing... I have probably ended up sharpening my expertise in short to the point business mails ... no wonder it's difficult just letting a clean flow of thought get on the paper, or rather my monitor.
Soon I would have also lost touch completely with writing with the pen as you would call it, having gained the power of speed on the keyboard.
Ahh ...life... :) it remains so much the same and yet so different.

Starry nights....

Just to see you smile....
You always had an eye for things that glittered
But I was far from being made of gold
I don't know how but I scraped up the money
I just never could quite tell you no

Just like when you were leaving Amarillo
Takin' that new job in Tennessee
And I quit mine so we could be together
I can't forget the way you looked at me

Just to see you smile
I'd do anything that you wanted me to
When all is said and done
I'd never count the cost
It's worth all that's lost
Just to see you smile

When you said time was all you really needed
I walked away and let you have your space
'Cause leavin' didn't hurt me near as badly
As the tears I saw rollin' down your face

And yesterday I knew just what you wanted
When you came walkin' up to me with him
So I told you that I was happy for you
And given the chance I'd lie again

Just to see you smile
I'd do anything that you wanted me to
When all is said and done
I'd never count the cost
It's worth all that's lost
Just to see you smile

Just to see you smile
I'd do anything that you wanted me to
When all is said and done
I'd never count the cost
It's worth all that's lost
Just to see you smile

it's a beautiful song... albeit a little sad. Given that it made me cry the first time I ever heard it, I have been playing it in repeat mode for quite sometime now.

And the tunes just had to remind me of something else .... (that and a movie I had seen "A Walk to Remember" - strictly a mushy lovey movie which would totally make it in the the top thirties in my favorites list.)...... had to remind me of starry nights and full moons and terraces and just sitting and chatting while the rest of the world slept.

I am definitely not a night person ... so the number of night outs that I have seen are few and far between , and rarely ever for studying or work ....... no, those that I remember have been on a terrace without walls and pillows tucked against the small mounts, as we lay down on a very uneven granite roof, looked up at a star studded sky and opened our hearts out to the heavens..... from fairy-tales to dreams to life.... there wasn't anything left untouched.... by those who felt like the chosen few to be up and awake at that hour and watching over the rest of the world while it slept. Since this was IST, I am sure we didn't think that there were other worlds alive and starting their work then..... no, that was so far away then .....and so unthinkable.....

Just the blackness which had its own romantic aura about it..... the sounds and shadows of the night just so much amplified because it was dark....

I remember another night, the rest of the group huddled in sleep. A few of us were up all night watching movies ...and then chatting way into the night so that when it finally began to become dusk, sleep had long left our eyes. And I think that was my first full fledged night-out and also the first time a few of us had stayed out of the hostel through the night. Not much in the eyes of passers by (of my blog) but definitely a daring adventure to remain etched in the minds of the partakers.

Apart from that, I have only been way awake into the night when I was engrossed in this book which I couldn't put down... or a movie because it transported me to this oh so fairy-tale world. Just during then , they take me to this different plane, where the real world seems unreal ..... I guess that's why I never gave up on the dream of writing a book or making a movie (and putting all readers or the spectators to sleep :))..... someday :)

Lucky in Love ?

I have been searching for a way to make my blog into a book , and just make it a keep-sake for my reading pleasure. I finally stumbled upon the site I want, and boy! was I ecstatic. I immediately took up a pet-project of creating a book on memories. (After all the hullaboo, the blog is going to be the second project.) Anyway so this is the site: http://www.blurb.com/
And here is the introduction I wrote on my first project: :) No judgments please.

There is always the dream...the dream of someone ....made just for you. And however harsh reality becomes, or you realize that after all Daniel Craig, Paul Newman, Russell Crowe were not made for you, and that a Mr.Darcy doesn't really exist, you still try to hold on , in your darkest, loneliest times, to the hope that someone is out there, waiting just like you are .....
So what if you never meet that someone, there are what, trillions of people in the world, and if you are in Kolkata and he is in Timbuctoo, leave alone a chance meeting, even a catastrophe like in the movie Day After Tomorrow might not make you both bump into each other. So does it just boil down to chance ? Nope. What it ultimately boils down to , as somebody once explained to me : )
"what is really amazing is the quality to adapt/ajdust between two persons....it's rare to find 'made for each other' couples....no one's perfect."

I don't want to do a postmortem of love. I don't want to say, oh you SHOULD HAVE all these COMMON INTERESTS...else you are doomed, or don't you know OPPOSITES ATTRACT. (Notice my caps lock is for the opposite views existing in the real world :and are opposites in themselves.....what an oxy-moron .... hmm.... there you have it - the definition of love :)).
There will be times when you will feel like storming out of the
room , banging the door on someone's face , never ever seeing him or her again, crying yourself to sleep over what you think your better half does not understand....
and yet ...none of this will be strong enough to break apart what you share. It is what triumphs that is love... it is what makes you want to be together, it is what you want to grow old together that is love.
And I realize that having solemnly stated that I will not define love , that is exactly what I have done.
So I will end here without further ado, and wish you all the best in writing your love story. This is a glimpse into mine and I hope you cherish it as much as I do.

A little bit of .....

Well so I had thought that I would never cry again or feel bad when I watched romantic movies by myself. And guess what!! nothing on that field seems to have changed. I just watched Just like heaven and cried my heart out :). I just wish I wasn't sitting and watching it alone.
And in between the movie, there is a scene where David (Mark Ruffalo) I think starts talking about his wife who died. And he talks about all the things that she would mess up and could never deal with and he is crying when he says all this to Lizzie(Reese Witherspoon). And I just realized that he doesn't talk about the sunshine in her hair or what she did right or great, I realized that its not just the good things about a person that you fall in love with, but also his or her small mistakes, their ways of everyday life, their small.... eccentricities or habits ..... like maybe making coffee without milk or just using a coaster whenever you need to place a wet glass on the table ........ which suddenly become so much a part of your life that you never realized when you gave them this whole space in your life, when you fell in love with them and all that is theirs and when you started missing them when they are not there.

So I also decided never again to have a dog in my life. I have one, his name is Bruno and he is a golden retriever. It is surprising that I am writing about him so late in my blog, when he should have been one of the first entries. He has this chocolatey golden color, and a bright red collar when he goes on his walks. I did this whole tantrum thing just to get him, in my ninth standard. I looked after him for maybe about 3 years before I left for Trichy and left all due responsibilities to my mom.
He is probably the person to whom I have cried to the most, all my homesickness..... all my not-wanting-to-go-back-to Trichy moods....... he has this habit of lying down against you back to back , stretched just like you are as if he is no less human, and sleeping away the glorious afternoon by your side. And he would get all confused when I cried, and try to lick away my tears.......maybe because inspite of telling him, he never understood my words. Or maybe he understood but didn't know how to make me feel better. He always seems to understand what my mom is telling him though, and trusts her the most in translating human to doggy language. My brother and I have lied to him so much to get things done, that I guess he stopped trusting us long back.
He is pretty old now, and I am really thankful to have been able to have spent time with him when I went home last December, just because I never thought he would survive through another winter. I don't know if I will see him again when I go home next time and I know I will miss him and his warmth and the little space that he created for himself. But lets hope for the best till then.
I guess that's how I started writing about him in the first place. It's the most hardest to have to do without the things you most care about, and without knowing have come to love .... and miss...... if that makes sense. :)

Fairytale

I didn't really quite imagine it this way.... forget imagine, I never thought fairy-tales happen in real life.... I was almost giving up on love itself and then I found it.... :) somehow .... maybe out of wishing fountains and what-nots or maybe wished something to life out of a Monet painting.
And yet, I was the one who resisted it, from the beginning..... wished to be blind ...can you imagine, after reading all my posts, I thought I would know better to recognize love when it walked in. :) But I didn't.
I haven't been writing for a long time for this very reason... my mind is never so coherent now that I can get all my thoughts out and make sense.
They seem to be understood by only someone, and I would not have it any other way.......... :)

Once I share my life as it happens with him, I really can wish for nothing else to make me feel as good about having shared it as he did. At one time, this blog was my way of reaching out..... of feeling understood.... :) and I am putting it in second place henceforth and forever.

Even when I write today, or maybe its becoz I am out of practise..... I am getting stuck or tears seem to be welling up inside me. :) I don't know if thats what happens when you are very emotional, or when something so beautiful walks into your life that you cannot imagine its true, when you feel so small in front of a bigger universe and at the same time...... wish and hope that what you feel inside, what can hardly be contained in that small throbbing heart of yours is visible to everyone..........when you can't stop smiling for no apparent reason.........when you see people smile back at you as if they know and understand what you are going through..... when all you see or think when you try to concentrate is someone or hear his words echo in your head.........when you hear your thoughts reflected,when things that you may have imagined or thought of or dreamt of as in a fairy-tale but never voiced to anyone ......is reflected in the actions of someone else, and you think how did he know :) , when what you want to speak next and the expression you want to use is spoken out before you voiced them and you wonder if he is reading your mind..... is that what this is all about :) ?

I had to get back to writing, and even if its a small start , its a start..... If it wasn't for the glitter of a ring on my left hand, I would still probably think I am dreaming this all up. :)