The things I learnt about me, life and everything in the past week

The learning curve !!!!

In and out of doctor’s clinics, a surgery and after a lot of pain, I am now in a state of recovery.  The past week has been a roller coaster of emotions ranging from pain to pleasure and everything in-between.  Here are snippets of some of what I learnt and understood through the week that went by.....

·     I know physical pain, or have claimed to know it. But pain can and will deceive you just when you think you have conquered it. That’s when it stabs you right through your chest.

I tested my limits of pain, patience and endurance in the past week. ..

The funny part is when the pain vanishes (and that happens in a split second) you forget it existed because the pleasure of not having pain is way above any kind of endured pain.

·     I tasted fear. Fear has a taste so bitter that you can feel it right till your stomach. It travels from your dry mouth into your gut and way into your stomach burning everything in the journey.

I cried because fear took over me. Fear of the knife, fear of life and fear of the unknown.

I didn’t know I had the fear. And that was an eye-opener.

·    Whatever you do in life, make sure you make good doctor friends

·     Hospitals suck. They smell unhappy and they smell of pain.

·     Some people lose a place in your life and then it’s very hard to place them in that slot again. 

·    You can either be a good person or a bad person, religion, philosophy and blah are just guidelines. The action is up to you.

·    Being a good person is the right religion, the right faith.

·    Forgiving is easy, applying it – well, that’s the task my friend

·    There is nothing like your own home, your bed, your pillow, chicken soup and a caring family to take care of you

·    Flowers always brighten the day

·    It’s a short, little life. And a time gone never comes back. 

·    Everything changes in a second.

  

P.S ----- I have combined a list of stuff that makes me drool (check the blog sidebar) I am writing more of those, send in stuff that makes you drool  - I’d love to make a long list of stuff that makes ALL of us drool : )

When nothingness takes over... its beautiful !

Since the past two weeks, I have been busy doing nothing. I’ve wanted to write but the ‘nothingness’ has taken over me, which mind you, I don’t mind at all ;). I can’t remember when the last time was when I did nothing – no job, being at home, no agenda, no plan.

I never really have taken a break. College vacations meant being at home, working on projects and internships. As soon as college got over the mad rush to get into a post graduate college or getting a job became the focus and before I knew it, the big bad corporate world swept me off my feet just a month past college. It took me two years to take the break to study again, not earn and live on someone else’s money, which lead to getting a job as soon as the course got over.

I worked in my previous organisation for almost three years. By the end of it, I was so glad it was all over because somewhere I had burned out. Is it because of the organisation, the system or a very high burn –out rate in today’s generation?

For the first time in 12 years, I am free with no agenda and no plan, and the best part is this is not even a holiday.

I don’t get why we run behind things that hold no importance after a while. Why we want to grow up soon and why we yearn for responsibilities that once shoved upon us are burdens we don’t want to take so what we do is take a U-turn and run back to times which were simple. Sadly, we hit a road-block – its a one way street.

So well, what have I been doing during nothingness –

• I have discovered the pleasures of afternoon siestas. Life is certainly good when you can sleep whenever you want. My official sleep timing have now become 11 + 3 hours. 

• I have finally taken over the wheel and enrolled in driving classes, I know its a wee bit late in life but I always did believe it's better late than never (another one crossed from the to do before 30 mega list)

• I have discovered the internet in whole new way. I swear by www.stumblupon.com . it never fails to enlighten and entertain me. 

• I spend hours staring blankly at my FB page and quite honestly I’m getting bored of it. Twitter keeps me entertained though. Its fun to know what Shahrukh Khan’s kids are doing and what he ate for dinner. (OK, it is fun – is sarcastic, yet it’s entertaining!)

• I have started enjoying music again. There are some brilliant artists like Brandi Carlile and Ingrid Michealson I have discovered and become instant fans of.

• Nothingness has given me time to ponder on what touches me most – Children. I have the time to plan my education project, learn and read more about child rights and welfare. I am re-reading – a long way gone (and am shocked yet again) There are organisations like http://www.child-soldiers.org/home and Amnesty working with child soldiers yet some 250,000 estimated child soldiers exist in the world today. Somewhere something hurts and then one wonders two things –
• When will I as a person get the courage to get out, get there and do something?
• When will materialism take a backseat for me?

         The answer is in the questions, and that is the irony. 

• I also spend hours each day on dubizzle.com, a website on which I am sure everyone in the UAE depends on for everything. I go through it to find the perfect house for myself. Did I ever mention how excited I am to do up my house, my own house! Dubizzle is sale heaven, everything is CHEAP. I know the IKEA catalogue by heart now and instead of my small studio, I am sure I will be able to furnish anyone’s villa in Dubai. (which is not a bad freelance option now!)

Everyone asks me if I am excited about moving to Dubai. For starters, till the visa arrives (and that takes sometime) I really am not going, besides I am keeping all the excitement for when I get there. I am sadly superstitious about my own feelings. Also the astrologer (read here) had mentioned I will not go abroad to stay, so till I prove the B@#$%^& wrong, I am not jumping the gun though come to think of it with the extensive Indian population (did I mention that Haji Ali Juice centre has a branch in Dubai?) he might have considered the UAE a part of India and therefore not considered it abroad.

Nevertheless, I am shopping for funny things used in the kitchen – chimtas, belans, chaklas and all of that. I am also shopping for clothes – Indian advertising spoils you, when you can go to work in osho chappals and denims you never think it is important to own a business suit.

Shopping well, is always fun. 

So, it’s been two weeks so well deserved and well earned that nothing for a long time will compare to this time spent sleeping, driving, random internet surfing and cyber stalking shahrukh and kunal kapoors twitter pages.

Two weeks of letting go. Embracing things that haven’t yet come and living the moment of nothingness.

Simply fantastic!

We are the choices we make.

There is redness everywhere I look. Walls blank, freshly painted – Red. The yellowness of the silent light glows bitterly and creates a halo over nothingness. I stare at the wall and wonder if the halo is for something I can’t see or maybe someone I choose not to see.

There is heaviness in my head. The kind you get after a rough plane landing. Shaken and stirred. I haven’t moved, yet nothing is still.   

I know I have to move but I remain in a limbo of nothingness.

‘We are the choices we make’ a voice inside me whispers.

‘Don’t misjudge the light for brightness and don’t forget to see the person under the shadow of the halo”, it says.

Sublimely, I rise.

The unconditional one.

 My earliest memories of her are her rough hands, dark fingers with untidily chopped nails. Strangely her palms were white. The lines on her palms were so deep that they formed deep crevices into the white skin.

 She sang while the roughness of her hands caressed my forehead and put me to sleep.

 Most of her memories in my head are sepia toned and exist in a faded time. A time, I don’t think about anymore. Sometimes it feels like there was another me who lived then, almost like a Technicolor movie that has faded and has scratched, torn posters adorning walls of a foregone era.

She never asked. She never demanded. I fail to understand now how she always just gave.

I don’t talk to her often and these days I don’t have much to tell her too. She used to be my confidant though; she knew when I gave up on life, when at the age of eight I fell in love for the first time. When my heart broke and when I cried. She knew what would make me smile. She knew it was the crystallized jello that made me happy. It still does. It’s not crystallized anymore and it maybe that’s why it doesn’t taste the same.

At times I wonder why she did all this? Why she bathed and cleaned me. Why she listened to me when I screamed at her. In return all she did was fondly cuddle me into a big bear hug.

She gave me more love than she did to her own children. She spent more time with me. She wiped my tears with her dirty saree that smelt of onions but that was somehow comforting.

Sometimes I hear her when I’m alone, I hear her call me fondly like she always did.

Sometimes I wonder why I ever grew up. That’s when I really miss her.

Release - Love Letter 20

 You are telling me the sweetest things any woman would kill to hear. My eyes look into yours and my lips wait. My mind is away, my mind remembers a man whose shop I walked into and who told me in simple words – ‘you are someone whose heart will always flutter, you are a butterfly’.

I try to focus on what you are saying, you have missed me and you are trying to say things that will make me feel so wanted. Your fingers are getting ready to entangle into mine. My feet slide away, they want to run. My feet have a brain of their own.

Your words soothe my heart and it makes me still. It makes me wait while you proclaim everlasting love. I know I have waited so long, just to hear someone say those words. But they don’t move me. Is this how it is? I wonder and wait. Maybe, there will be something. Maybe, there will be music and a flutter somewhere in the insides of my stomach.

My insides are crushed. Splattered blood and smashed organs make up things under my skin. They don’t hear music anymore. They hear voices, ghosts of the past and future in fierce arguments with each other.

It’s easy to give in and I do momentarily. I give in to the silkiness of the moment that we bring about whenever we are together. For an instant there is no you or me, there is blankness.

Blankness that speaks to you but stares plainly at me. I hear your heart beating and it doesn’t match with mine anymore. I wonder if it ever did. 
I wonder if it should. There were times when it did with someone else but then, I’m with you today.

You tell me you love me and I try to force words that fail to reach my gut. They are swallowed by something that lives inside me.

Something that has lived inside me for a long time, the one that has smashed the organs and splattered the blood.

Something that has captured the butterfly into a permanent cocoon.

All I want to do is fly.....

me.

more love letters and posts on love here