2013. The Year Of Balance

I am a bit late with this post. We are already an hour into 2014. But somewhere in the world, people are still trying to finish their 2013 resolutions and gearing up for the New Year. They say that the sun is always rising somewhere around the globe. I say, it’s never too late.

2013 taught me about the act, beauty and nature of BALANCE.

It gave me two beautiful new friends and at the same time, took away a cherished one.

It gave me successes in my career but made me make tough choices.

It gave me time with my parents but for the first time made me realize that they are getting old.

This is the year I saw some of my favorite paintings. I stood in front of Starry Night and almost cried. I dropped my jaw at Monet’s water lilies till I got completely mesmerized.

I watched Tom Hanks live on Broadway and controlled my urge to scream.

I climbed a shaky windmill.

I discovered flea and farmers markets, I discovered a side of my city I was searching for.

I built tall walls around me, broke them completely and then built them again. Every time I did this, it emptied me completely and left me off ground. I finally learned to walk on stable ground, throw away the walls and build fences instead. 

I met strangers in strange countries and became friends.

For some reason, they seemed to get me more than a lot of people who claimed to know me. I learned that the beauty of friendship doesn't come with language and time. 

I traveled to new countries and continents by myself but didn’t spend enough time at home in solitude.

As I enter 2014, I take with me the lesson of balance, walking the line and of sowing and reaping.

I have come to believe that sometimes you might do or say things that are not right at that point of time. But if your intentions are pure, they don’t mean malice and they stem from a greater good then sooner or later balance will be restored.

So, to all the people I know - I hope this year brings you your part of balance. I hope you reap it all in 2014 and I hope that you walk the line, head held high and with a smile on your face.

Have an amazing 2014 full of travels, adventures, new experiences and the kind of love that you just cannot contain.

Sehnsucht

There is a feeling of emptiness. A sense of dissatisfaction that has engulfed me for the longest time.

It rises and ebbs perhaps depending on the phase of life I am in. I doubt if this hollowness will ever be filled. It was there when I was born and it continues to grow as I age.

To fill it is my struggle throughout this life that I have been bestowed. The rise of the yearning to diminish it is my force to move ahead, to grow and move on. Its ebb is my period of lull, of comfort.

It doesn’t like the lull though. In no time creeps in the discontent, the doubt, the uneasiness, the longing of another place and another horizon.

I am always walking the thin line between finding the reason of its existence and the utter comfort of my ignorance of it being the core of what I am.

I could let it be stagnant, but I scrape its raw skin ever so often.

It’s a fresh wound I enjoy the pain of.

It’s the unknown that excites me.

It’s the darkness that leads me to the light.

Where would I be, what would my soul be without this hollow, this yearning, this discomfort?

I wouldn’t be me.

Evanescence

Letters, words and all of that.

Letters,
With their rough edges
Slicing, slowly through my veins,
Crawling towards each other creating words.
Words, that stare at me, slam me with their heaviness,
Look into my eyes blankly.
Unspoken, unheard,
Screamed, withdrawn and shouted.
They know no way back,
Leaving everything that ever was,
All they do is slowly creep forward into darkness,
Taking you and me into nothingness.

You Live, You Learn.

Have you ever felt like quitting? 

Waking up day after day with a lingering question - 'Is this really worth it?'

You pull yourself together and get through the day because somewhere deep down you know that nothing lasts forever and no one lasts forever. Hard times come and go, friends come and go. It’s tough but in the end all you are left with are some lessons, lots of words and your own self. 

Each day you live, you learn -

You cannot control everything or anything.

There will be a few moments in a day when you will not be able to be perfect and it is OK.

Patience goes a long way.

Negativity not just spreads from one cubicle to another but from your office to a friend, a relative and everyone you meet.

There is no right way of telling someone they aren't good enough.

Always keep a few cards to yourself even if you are urged to show them all.

Carrying your work to your personal relationships is doom - sooner or later.

Keeping what is in your heart is a recipe for self-destruction.

Saying what is in your heart is not always the best option.

If you really want something you give it all, you figure it out.

If you don’t want something, nothing in the world can make you want it.

Joy is the other side of hurt. At every point in life, one will be higher than the other.

There is nothing wrong in bearing your soul to someone if you still have a bit left to hold on to but if you do, be prepared to let them go. Not everyone appreciates an open book.

Your life as you know it will change in a moment, at any moment.

If you ever see the slight glimpse of love, consider your self the luckiest person alive, even if for a split second.

Whatever is now, is history next. So hold on. 

Tomorrow is always a few hours away, all shiny and bright.... who knows, it might bring that life changing moment.  

To My Soul Mates...

There are very few people who enter your life and are allowed by you to hold mirrors to your soul.

These are your soul mates, those to whom you can’t help but pass on the mirror.

In front of these people you lay quite bare, there isn’t a lie you can tell and not a twitch you can hide.

Most of the times you don’t even need to say anything. They just know.

Destiny knows when, where and how you need to meet them. And when they need to leave.

It also knows the exact time when you need to meet again, even if it is a phone call - The point when you have forgotten how you look, how you looked when you met them.

It brings them back to you.

They can never be your lovers or the friends you hang out with. They are the ones you go to when you need to break all the walls you have built around you, so that when you shed every mask in front of them and open up your heart, they just know what to say, what to remind you of and never tell you what you should do.

They just silently protect you with their divinity and you know nothing can ever be that wrong.

They are the ones you will love the most in some strange, divine, nonsensical, unconditional, heavenly way.

They are the ones with who no place will ever be far away.

If you have people in your life that hold this place, cherish them forever.

I have a few, and you know who you are.

Thank you for being my reflection, my soul mates and my this life to the next people. 

Renew, Regrow, Reboot.

There are moments in everyone’s life that define and pave the path to his or her own personal quests. Instances that change who you are or sometimes even bring out what you really are deep inside.

Eight years ago, on an idle Saturday I walked into The Crossword store in Bandra, Bombay and as if destiny was pulling me, for the first time in my life I entered the travel section.

It was shouting out to me with its 1500 pages – The Lonely Planet India. In a trance, I picked it up, closed my eyes and opened a chapter – Pondicherry.

I read with awe, it was the first travel guide I was reading despite having had family holidays twice a year growing up.

I remember distinctly, getting out of the store, calling my parents and telling them, I was going to Pondicherry, alone. I presume they must have thought I’m bonkers. I never gave them a chance to tell me that.

All the biggest decisions in my twenties were made on a whim and a call to my parents. Something that has changed in my thirties. I am much more guarded and analytical today. 

The trip to Pondicherry was no ‘Eat, pray, Love’. I didn’t find peace, my inner self or a soul mate but I became contemplative, self-assured and quiet. I loved being alone with myself; I enjoyed my own company for the first time in years. Most importantly, I discovered how traveling made me feel. Nothing has felt as joyous than travel ever since that trip. 

Since then, I have taken several trips alone to different parts of the world. I still pick a map, close my eyes and choose where I should go.

In a few days I embark on a solo trip to Holland and The Czech Republic.

That idle Saturday afternoon comes to my mind as I prep my camera and my travel bag. Each day, each trip since then has been a different kind of journey; I have evolved and changed in both negative and positive ways – as a traveler, as a person and as a woman to reach a point today where it all seems to begin again.

This time I pack my bags with things and also with a few years of toil, questions, arguments, answers, regrets, guild, resentments. I pack them all.

It’s time not just to visit another country and meet new people. It’s time to let go of some extra baggage, go back to the whim of that Saturday eight years ago. to meet the person who had that whim, once again.

It’s time to shed every thing that adorns my soul and begin again.

To renew, regrow and reboot.

Stardust

Change doesn’t happen in an instant.

It’s a process that has its own course.

If you step back in the middle of the process to look at the imprints of the journey, you see the beauty of evolvement.

You can map out the troughs, the peaks; the etchings made permanent with tears and silent vows with yourself that pushed you to reach this far.

Each process of change has an end that is the beginning of something new. Something that will remain fancy at least for a while until the waves of transformation twist the hands of destiny and change your life once again, for what will seem, forever.

I see an end now, I can see light so close that I can almost feel its glow around me and feel the warmth in my bones.

I look back to see the various layers I have shed on this path to transformation.

Bits and pieces of my skin entangled and engraved with guilt, pain, pity. 

I see myself far, far away. Is it really I? Or is it a version of I, I cease to remember?

As I adorn this new skin, all shiny and bright, I pass on some light to that woman standing far away.

Someday very soon when I will touch this glow, she will become one with the light and burst into a ball of energy leaving stardust into a time, when I was her.