Friday, May 28, 2010

A little inspiration ... A little hope...



Watching the sunset from the wide windows at my apartment right now. How come watching sunsets always give a kind of spacious calm? I can stare at it for as long as it lasts and while it changes colours in the sky and think of absolutely nothing yet everything.
Watching the sunset, the time to watch it and be in a spacious clam is a blessing... and so rare.
And today while it sets, I wonder if the sun is ever lonely, all alone in an expanse of nothingness. 
 

Sunday, May 9, 2010

The Dubai Chronicles # 2

  
Living alone means getting used to aloneness. But don’t mistake aloneness with loneliness.
There are times when you miss company. And the definitions of that change over time. When you are in your teens and you are alone you miss fun, when you are twenty two you miss the charm of not being alone, when you are twenty five you have a need to not be alone. At twenty eight on your way to twenty nine, you miss someone to just share simple nothing’s.  (I realized this post reading a friends blog
(good stuff must be checked out))
Probably simple nothing’s make up for more than a lot of big things put together.
That’s when a little thought creeps in – ‘Can you ever give this up?’
So, you smile and cuddle aloneness and cherish it for as long as you have it.
Aloneness brings along with it many revelations about your own self as well.
You learn to respect your surroundings. Your surroundings become sacred.
Cleanliness has a new meaning – A lot of times you have nothing better to do but clean.
You expect people to respect your home as much and how you do.
Crinkly sheets and dirty dustbins irritate the hell out of you.
You start thinking a lot. – Well there isn’t much to do anyways, other than cleaning of course.
So you think and you think and you wonder about life. You write and you wonder and then you think again.
You blow smoke into nothingness and sip on coffee at odd hours staring at lights that define your existence at that point.
You can be smelly and dirty and roam around with oily hair and it just doesn’t matter.
Aloneness can be addictive. It is a drug and that scares me at times because I am sniffing the benefits to the fullest and I keep wondering how soon will I be an addict to independence?

Wednesday, May 5, 2010

The Dubai Chronicles # 1


One of the first things you do when you move to a new place is fix your feet firmly to the ground. No matter how many cities you move and no matter how old you get in the process, newness has a way of sweeping you right off your feet.


With my first salary in my pocket as I walked down the mall, I realized how much the past twenty five days have changed me.

How I don’t look at pretty things on spectacular window displays.

A place like Dubai with just shopping malls to entertain you can be pretty swaying. Apart from the temptation of all the beautiful things in the world there is also the temptation of losing yourself into something you totally are not.

I remember when I first felt the need to fix my feet firmly on the ground; it was when I just started working in the big, bad world of Bombay. The first Friday night was an eye opening experience to a world that went deeper than the rabbit’s hole.

There I was all of twenty one, very thin and with flawless skin trying to understand the simple and complicated ways of adulthood.

Drinking was simple but controlling post drinking behavior was complicated

Having sex was simple and legal but heartbreaks way too complicated

Monthly salaries were simple but the long hours at work absolutely not!

Everything I thought adulthood would be fun for was actually complicated in so many ways.

That’s when I learnt to fix my feet very firmly on the ground…

It didn’t matter if I got the promotion or the cute guy, what mattered was how peacefully I slept at night.

7 years, 10 kgs, many laugh lines and a diminishing bank balance later – I still need to hold myself when I move a city so that I don’t fall.

Every city has its lures and I guess it has to do a lot with age as well. Bombay had the lure of love, parties, booze and everything wrong. Delhi was indulgence and giving in to being a snob. Ahmedabad lured me into spending money – the chance to be reckless.

Dubai is trying to lure me into her whims and fancies very very slowly.

It’s the pretty things you see… That’s what dictates this city.

‘Pretty is not always beautiful’ someone told me once

Before I moved here I remember a conversation with a friend who said, “Dubai will change you and the way you look (probably the way you look inside)”

I have come to believe that this city can either make you look extremely pretty in your own eyes or very very ugly.

It is basically how well you avoid the pretty window displays.

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