And Then There Was 2011

A long break and I’m back (not my best piece of writing but getting back from a writer’s block is never easy) There is so much I want to tell you all, but all in good time.


A beautiful song by Jason Mraz urged me to write some of what has been on my mind.

Here’s wishing everyone a year full of love and light. As for my own self (as will be obvious from the post below) I hope I embrace the beautiful changes 2010 bought me, I pray I am able to take a few more leaps of faith and I urge life to surprise me more and more…

Before the cool done run out
I'll be giving it my bestest
And nothing's going to stop me but divine intervention
I reckon it's again my turn to win some or learn some…..

We grow, we evolve and we learn. We change, we progress and we discover. Looking back at the year that has gone by (and this post comes way after the New Year frenzy is over) it certainly was a year for change, just as it had promised.

In overt as well as subtle ways came changes directly or indirectly altering my life. Today on the onset of another journey, another year I couldn’t have asked for more.

I start this year with so much more assurance, affirmation and normality. I enter this year with love and happiness. I begin the journey into the next 365 days with a vow to embrace the beautiful changes 2010 bought me.

Well open up your mind and see like me
Open up your plans and damn you're free
Look into your heart and you'll find love love love love
Listen to the music of the moment babay sing with me
I love peace for melody
And It's our God-forsaken right to be loved love loved love loved

Often when we love we give so much of our selves to other people, we are drained eventually of our own soul. It is hard but not impossible to get yourself back. It is harder though to keep it that way and worse still to step into even loving again.
Therefore, sometimes you need to take a step back, guard yourself and be in your own company in order to value yourself again. It is then that you look inside and realize all the love of the universe is right there with you.

So one fine day you rise up and demand from the universe your inherent right to be loved.
And slowly, somehow love from everywhere creeps in, just when you don’t need it.

So I won't hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait I'm sure
There's no need to complicate
Our time is short
This is our fate, I'm yours

You reach a point where you need to surrender and take a leap of faith….. And when you are full of assurance within, it is so much easier…and you do.

I've been spending way too long checking my tongue in the mirror
And bending over backwards just to try to see it clearer
But my breath fogged up the glass
And so I drew a new face and laughed

I spent a half of the year fighting with myself and the other half trying to find peace within and when I found it everything seemed apt, set and meant to be. So I smiled and decided to move on ….

I guess what I'm be saying is there ain't no better reason
To rid yourself of vanity and just go with the seasons
It's what we aim to do
Our name is our virtue

What I learned in a short span of the last 365 days is that there is no use in planning where and how you want things in life, yes it is right to strive for your dreams but sometimes you need to let life take over… let it drift you along …

If things were according to plan there wouldn’t be a Dubai, new friends and a new home.

Therefore ….

But I won't hesitate no more, no more
It cannot wait I'm sure…..

With Love and Light,


P.S. Listen to this awesome song here....

Through the looking glass ... From the Kaleidoscope

Through the looking glass ... From the Kaleidoscope

On Patterns

As human beings we love patterns. We like lines, symmetry. Ants following each other in a line, supermarket aisles neatly arranged with hundreds of products kept in orderly rows, paintings hung in straight lines. We yearn for similarity and evenness. Disruption and disorder scares us. We never stop to think what would happen if ants didn’t move in a line or if the sun didn’t rise one day. The mere thought troubles us.

We are trained and conditioned to follow patterns.

When Ivan Pavlov performed the experiments for classical conditioning he formed the basic law of human behavior – we get so used to patterns that we respond to unconditioned stimulus.

A few days ago someone asked me what kind of people I liked being friends with. This person believed that there had to be some kind of similarity amongst the people I have known. The best at that point I could come up with was – people who don’t snore.

But I got thinking, was there a pattern, a similarity in the people we attract into our lives?

Do we time and time again run into the same kind of people, the same situations? Like a never ending merry go round.

The thing with patterns is that good or bad, they become so comforting and familiar that we try and stick to them.

Are we all one of Pavlov’s dogs?

On Change

Disruption is the law of nature – Disruption alters simplicity into extraordinary.

Everyday there is a chance to disrupt the way we live, the way we behave. Everyday there is a chance to disrupt a pattern, to alter a way of life.

Try sitting on a different seat in the bus, taking another route to work, try a different dressing in your salad. – The world looks different from another angle, the world tastes different.
Take the leap of faith at times, risk to try something new – meet people who are just not like you, different in belief and being. 

For once, try walking in the sun.

Changing Pavlov’s theory, twisting and turning the kaleidoscope.

Wake Me Up When September Ends

I have been receiving comments about the blog that it is 'depressing' but as Hemingway put it - "There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."  It is just some snippets of yourself, some that you borrow from others and you weave them into a wreath and hang it at the doorways of the soul. Happy Reading :)

Wake Me Up When September Ends

I didn’t know why Green Day sang this song until recently someone told me it is for the singer’s late father who died in the month of September.

September has never really been my favourite month to begin with. I am not particularly (for no apparent reason) fond of the number 9. September is when you suddenly realise that the year is coming to an end and nothing that you planned as a yearly chore or the remote New Year resolutions you took have been put into any real practice yet. September is also when the weather starts to change; it’s a limbo – neither hot nor cold. I have never been quite fond of any kind of a limbo state and this in particular.

It has been a year to that fateful September I went through in 2009. It seems like yesterday yet when I start thinking about the events that took place and followed, I feel I have skipped leaps and bounds from where I was to where I am today.

So last September I was planning on settling my life and preparing for a new one. While I was rediscovering the joy of knowing and being known I was so unaware of what the coming months would bring me.

A year later I look back at the events that took place that fateful September and I am filled with a heaviness that almost sinks me.

I am nowhere close to today of where I would have or could have been.

Memories flood my mind and take me back to all the laughter that filled my heart exactly a year back.

Isn’t it strange that you can feel all the anger and hate at one point and then someday after time has passed you look back and all you remember are the smiles and the laughter.

Even if you want to feel the animosity again, you can’t. You try to remember pain and reasons that led to it but what comes to your mind are the good times.

Healing is a strange process, the moment you think you have healed a certain wound that is the moment you get wounded again. You start healing the new wound and forget the older one ever happened.

However, scars remain, and they emerge randomly on some unaware idle Saturday evening to take you back into time.

That is when you wish you could go through sometime in slumber just to dream of what could have and would have been and only wake up, when September ends....

Of Destiny, Karma, Happiness and that thing called Life.

Destiny plays with us in two ways, one in which it is pre-destined and the other in which we choose what to do, the path we take that changes its course forever.

There is no such thing as coincidences. We don’t meet anyone accidently, we don’t stumble upon jobs or change houses. These things happen as per a plan that we at some super sub - conscious level have chosen long long before. The exact time and place where we would meet someone, the consequences that would lead to it and so on...

Ever wondered at a particular situation and travelled back with it? Everything appears to be linked. Nothing and no one enters our life at the wrong time. It is always the right time.

But that is where the second role of destiny comes to play. Destiny gets us to the point, the crossroads where a certain path could alter our lives if we choose to walk it and maybe if it is not the right path, wonder all along the way what the other path could have bought into our lives.

To choose the path and to walk on it in order to let that destiny enfold is free will.

There is nothing that is impossible, no path and no choice that is not given to us, what we do with the choice, how we exercise our free will, how far we go to either make ourselves or perhaps others happy is up to us, at each point and each day in our lives, when we make the decision to wake up and live another day.

If destiny is pre chosen then why do we make mistakes you might ask?

Could the answer be Karma or maybe sheer bad luck? No one can and would choose an unhappy life, isn’t it. We are all on our own spiritual journey treading slowly towards a path that reveals itself unfortunately only when we make mistakes, or to put it in the positive sense, when we learn.

I am not saying that it does not reveal itself when we are successful or happy, but do you remember the last time when you were truly happy and you thought about karma, destiny or your growth as a spiritual being?

This brings me to another question, what is happiness and where does unhappiness begin?

It is written in the Gita and also propagated by Buddha that evolved is the human being to whom happiness and unhappiness holds no meaning. We cry tears of joy and laugh when life slaps us in the face, we yearn for drama in simple, normal lives and when in pain wish for relief. We never endure happiness or unhappiness in its true sense. We hardly become numb to emotions, a place where there is no beginning or end to these emotions.

I often take my own example when I wonder about life; I don’t want to take the liberty with anyone else’s life. I look around me today and I wonder about the lesson I am supposed to learn from what is and what is not in my life today.

I also wonder if the ‘lack’ of something is truly a lack? Or it is a perception of my make believe perfect world.

I wonder about what is not lacking in my life today, is it ‘perfect’ and if it is how often am I living up to its perfection?

Of the various books I have read, people I have met, conversations I have had, movies and art I have seen, I have truly come to believe that destiny always brings you to your dreams, because somewhere at some level you are always fighting for your dreams with the universe. The universe being as compassionate as it is delivers, maybe not in your face but it does.

What you choose to do of your dream, to live it or to leave it be is up to you.

I have also come to believe that it never gives second chances; it never crosses the same path twice.

And then one day you die.

Morose? Well, it’s the truth isn’t it? As Mitch Albom in the beautiful Tuesday’s with Moorie wrote that we ought to live each day as if we were going to die tomorrow, we would then live a happier life.

Pick up that phone, write that letter, and make that long pending visit. Tell the people you truly love that you love them. Quit the unhappy job, find your dream and when you do, live it as if there was no tomorrow. Pay attention to the signs the universe gives you, the people you meet, they are there for a reason, don’t let them go. And when it is time, also let go.

Make a point to start living, maybe selfishly at first, and you will notice that when you are happy how much happiness you can bring to the ones you love. Because there is nothing as comforting as to see someone you love happy and content.

A day to live and a day to learn while I hope tomorrow brings sunshine.

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I had the strangest day today. There are some days when you wake up and you know something will not be right today. These are the days when you should keep quiet. These are the days when you should listen to that voice warning you. But exactly on these days, you refuse to listen to that screaming voice inside of you.

I learned a few things in the past few days – about myself, people and life through myself, people and well, life. 

• I have learned that if you lose a friend, that person was never really your friend to begin with. It is sad and it hurts but it’s true. Friendship doesn’t come with terms and conditions; people don’t come with terms and conditions. It is all a game of expecting and accepting. 

• I have learned that relationships have their troubled times. We stop being what we are initially to the people we love. We become comfortable and say things that we should not say. It is at that point that we have a choice to either evolve with the relationship or fight. 

• I have learned that I don’t have the energy to fight anymore. We are so starved for love that we fight for love itself. Maybe that’s the reason even countries fight. 

• I have learned that as we get comfortable in things, places and with people we also start to ask for more. We start to treat those things, the places and those people as home. We take them for granted.

• I have learned that there is no time slab, price tag or an expiry date on some relationships. Sometimes, they just fade. 

• I have learned that we can’t accept the fading away. It’s a fear we carry around us all the time. 

• I have learned that letting go is a process. It takes time. We feel it’s the hardest thing we have to do. But truth is, we have to let go, we have to walk ahead and we have to move on.

• I have learned that with love comes insecurity. To evolve and conquer it is an ongoing process. It is also the same process that either brings two people closer or makes them fall apart. 

• I have learned that I have to wait for love to come to me. The kind of love that has its ups and downs, arguments and insecurities but all of it stems from passion and immense emotion. A love that each day learns the good and bad about me as I learn about him and together we grow to make him and I – Us.

Of Circles, Squares and Thin Lines.

There are these moments in life when you feel that you are walking on thin lines. Points where everything seems perfect but you know that a little gentle push and you will fall on either side. Neither side you know is anything compared to this but you know sooner or later you will fall.

So what do you do?

I remember a line from a song that says – ‘Even falling feels like flying for a little while’

Sometimes we like to endure pain, revel the pleasure of risk and fight with ourselves to go to the limits of our beliefs and values.

I wonder if we are all masochists at some level and on another level if we are all desperate attention seekers.

We reach points of balance and we like to stretch them till the longest time. Then it all starts to seem mundane and so very boring.

We look for triggers to sway us, make us tip and make us fall.

We fall, rise and start walking the line again.

If life is just made up of these circles, when does one settle into a plain, simple square?

Just some thoughts on an idle Friday afternoon.....

Of failures, love and simply emerging.

I am back and emerging. I have played the vanishing act for some time now and it is time now to wake up, smell the roses and the coffee (whichever is available) and move on, live another day and breathe another moment.
I have been in a trance since some time now. Flowing and moving in a stride without any reins in my own hands. It’s been one of the times when you don’t know who actually holds the reins to which you sway, sometimes uncontrollably.

I wonder if that is a good or a bad thing to do – letting yourself flow along the tide. Does it mean you get hit by the occasional rock? Does it mean you just keep flowing and never reach the shore?

I can go on and on being pseudo-philosophical here but the truth is sometimes we can’t help but flow. Sometimes we don’t realise we are in the middle of the water till the tide kicks in, shakes us and forces us to float – directionless but afloat nonetheless.

When you are in a limbo, writing gets affected. You go through so many emotions at each moment that writing them is a task. It has taken me hours to pen down this much and I have no clue where this post is headed.
Therefore I think it’s better to share news.

In recent news, I tasted failure.
True failure I believe is only achieved when you fail in your own eyes. That only happens when you put expectations on yourself to excel and then you don’t. You know it and there is no excuse you or anyone else can give to make you feel better.
Thankfully, I have always emerged from failure as a learner and stronger and readier to face worse.

In other recent news, I wonder about love.
I do believe that ‘Love’ is the most overrated and underestimated word we humans have created. In those terms it is quite the oxymoron.
I have never understood how people can put in boxes, squares and rectangles an emotion such as love.
Why does saying I love you become a big deal, so big that people don’t say it. And then life just passes you by.
Imagine if six billion people accepted, emoted and professed love to the people they knew, how much happier a race would we be?
Love comes with its own set of expectations and issues and reasons, maybe seasons too. It’s a journey, quite a tricky one, to move past these and rise to something close to unconditional.
When I was told, people get over people, they move on and that is what happens to each one of us.. I started looking back at the people I had let go. Or had I really?
Do we ever really let people go? We talk about them, we think about them through our life, yes we let go of the emotion, but we never let go of people.
They just move from a certain part of our hearts to another part. A part where they become less important in the scheme of things but they always remain somewhere as people who came, touched our lives and someday just moved away.
Instead of cribbing that someone didn’t love us back, shouldn’t we be happy that we loved them, for whatever time and at whatever level, we felt the power of love.

So, while the rant continues in my head. Bukowski beckons and I leave...

Love continues to touch me from all around as I open my heart to the universe, failure on the other hand like a timid mouse hides in a little hole somewhere in the crevices of my brain.

To more rants and random musings... cheers!

Just another rant post ....(where she rants about the blackberry, friends and new city)

I wonder if writing a post and changing the opening line a million times classifies as writers block. These days I seem to suffer one more than what I would like.

Idle Tuesdays have become insomnia driven Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday nights.

Nights where mundane facebook stalking and tweeting are given importance. Books are bought and never read. Paints are drying and empty word documents stare at me all the time.

The BBM messenger has become a curse. Did I have a life before February 23^rd 2010? I wonder if I did. Ummmm, yes! I certainly did. It involved conversations across the table with numerous cups of coffee being consumed and moments in between spent looking at the world go by, at  birds flying back home and watching the sun go down.

There was a life before BBM messenger. I just seem to have lost that.

Technology will kill us one day, I always used to and continue to say that and sadly I have become prey to the evil itself. Someone told me the other day that he is just a BBM message away and I wondered where the days of, ‘I’m always right there.’ And ‘I’m just a call away’ have vanished.

In the future will I ever meet friends and have conversations?

In other thoughts, ‘Friends’ reminds me of how difficult it is to make a friend these days.

Do you remember the last time you made a REAL friend? Someone you could be honest with, open your soul to, call at 4 am and have them standing at your doorstep in fifteen minutes, watch all kinds of films and listen to all kinds of music with, laugh your guts out, talk rubbish, talk sense, not talk at all yet communicate.  – You know that kind of friend?

I honestly don’t remember when. I guess in the words of Baz Lurhman (we all need to..) – “Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography and lifestyle because the older you get, the more you need the people you knew when you were young”. (Sunscreen song, my anthem)

I guess he knew how hard it is to find friends as you grow older. More than that how hard it is to compartmentalize them because that’s what you need to do with every year that you add to your kitty of numbers. Boxes and compartments for the married couple friends, the single girl friends, the (very rare and almost nonexistent) single guy friends, the couple friends parting ways, the younger lot of friends, the older lot of friends. .... and on and on .....

There are rules and lines that one needs to draw when it comes to making friends as one grows older.

The single girl will not appear to be too lonely for the single guy to think he can take advantage of her. A simple coffee becomes a ‘DATE’. The married woman will not appear to be too friendly with the married guy or it might connote an affair. The singles won’t go out with the couples and the couples will try and always fix up the singles.

It wasn’t this complicated a decade ago. Life was simple, to the point and accurate. These days I don’t know where it is headed and where the 4 am friends have vanished.

In other happier news, it is a pleasure setting up a house. It is a pleasure every human being (and especially single women) ought to go though and experience to the fullest.

I had this dream when I was little about how my ‘grown up’ house would be. How it would have nice smelling candles (that I would actually burn and not just keep) and fresh flowers every day. I can’t afford the flowers but I have the candles and they are consumed!!  I have a fridge stalked with coke and beer – none of which I drink too much but it feels really good to see it there.

During insomniac nights sometimes I look around and ask myself, am I really doing this? Is this really happening? Did I really move here?

I still look both sides before crossing the street, I still cannot explain the road that leads to my house to people who are visiting, I still convert the prices of onions and still wonder how chicken can be so cheap!

This was not in the plan. But it happened. My 6^th city, my 6^th set of acquaintances, my 6^th home.

And when people ask me if I am liking it here? I have no answer.

Maybe I will when I will finally understand which side the traffic moves.

GREY and the shades in-between

Before posting this I made a friend read it and she said - ' I hope the person who marries you doesnt read these blogs because your'e just not this person' ... to who ever I might marry and you will someday read this - I am this and much more, I am grey and I am shades of pink and blue.... :)

I often ask myself, ‘Did I want to be this person I am today?’
I am not perfect even if I choose to believe so for my self confidence. I know there is more of grey in me than any other person I know.
I know I have told lies, cheated and at times hurt people for the pure pleasure of hurting them.
But I am not a bad person either.
I have forgiven, apologized, been kind and given myself while expecting nothing in return.
We don’t choose to be the people we become; it’s the paths we take that eventually mould us to be what we are.
- If I had not left a small town at the age of sixteen I would have been a different person, I would be married and probably taking care of two children at the moment
- If I had not chosen what I did choose to study I would be a Biology professor or maybe an actor
- If I didn’t break up with him, I would be cursing myself all my life for making a wrong decision
- If I didn’t choose to live alone, I would not be a loner today. I would not be selfish (or maybe it’s a wrong word) I would not be so independent, I would not be outspoken and hence a lot of times misunderstood
Living by myself, not being answerable to anyone has made me selfish, complacent or for the lack of a better word, a loner. Being blessed with parents to whom I have never needed to be answerable too even in the two years I recently spent living with them, I have forgotten how it is to be around people and to live and work according to their schedules. I don’t think twice before planning my life as it only involves me and no one else.
I remember a conversation with my mother a few years ago about how rigid people become when they live alone for a long time. How their ways and being becomes set in a particular way which is difficult to change. Therefore I decided to keep changing cities, I would build a new life every couple of years, make new friends and change myself according to what the city and the place demanded.
I sit here today, wondering if I have become the one my mother dreaded. If that is selfish, if not being used to being answerable is a bad thing or being a self centered person. I wonder.
I look back at the events that shaped my life, the decisions I took and the twists and turns of it all. The decisions we solely mine at every age, again that’s because of being blessed with parents who never took decisions for me. The events that took place were results of the decisions I took of which I am living the twists and turns.
Every day when I take the bus to work I plan I will sit on a different seat and that I will get into a different coach of the train and that I will walk on the other side of the road.
It is so easy to change and switch situations while it is so difficult to change the repercussions those switches bring into your heart and soul.
The funny thing being each one of us can only change our self but what we keep wanting a change in others.
But I also don’t know if I want to change myself. I don’t know what is wrong or what is right, it is at the end of the day all grey.

A little inspiration - 2

The day I write like this, I would be happy ...

Love

Because of you, in gardens of blossoming flowers I ache from the
perfumes of spring.
I have forgotten your face, I no longer remember your hands;
how did your lips feel on mine?
Because of you, I love the white statues drowsing in the parks,
the white statues that have neither voice nor sight.
I have forgotten your voice, your happy voice; I have forgotten
your eyes.
Like a flower to its perfume, I am bound to my vague memory of
you. I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you will
do me irreparable harm.
Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.
I have forgotten your love, yet I seem to glimpse you in every
window.
Because of you, the heady perfumes of summer pain me; because
of you, I again seek out the signs that precipitate desires: shooting
stars, falling objects.
- Pablo Neruda

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. 

 

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.

Perfectly Lonely

My favorite quote goes something like this – ‘Change, but start slowly because direction is more important than speed.’


I look back today after making a huge change in my life and I realize that at no point of making life altering changes did I have a clear direction in mind. Change was a process that came naturally and well even though it didn’t feel like that time, looking back now it seems like just the way things were ought to be.

Speed was something that change never came with to me. Everything major that changed in my life was a slow process. Everything immaterial (that seemed so huge at that time) was instant resulting in instant joy and instant pain.

The slow changes are a few but those are the ones that made me think, reflect and ponder.

Direction I believe is somewhere related to destiny – the various destinies that we have. The choices we subconsciously make, the paths we unknowingly walk on, at the end each direction leads us somewhere – and what we make of that place is up to us.

Philosophy aside, change is good even if it is a little scary. Sometimes you just need to let life drift you along its flow.

Maybe that’s what I did when I moved to Dubai. I left so much behind – not just physically but emotionally as well. I shed everything that was holding me back from being ‘me’. And I am glad!

It’s been a week but feels like forever, as if this was the most natural thing that was waiting to happen to me. The choices I have made might yield in a million different conclusions but right now, it seems perfect.

And until then – There is a big smile on my face every time I hear this song –

Had a little love, but I spread it thin
Falling in her arms and out again
Made a bad name for my game around town
Tore up my heart, and shut it down

Nothing to do
Nowhere to be
A simple little kind of free
Nothing to do
No one but me
And that's all I need

I'm perfectly lonely
I'm perfectly lonely
I'm perfectly lonely (Yeah)
'Cause I don't belong to anyone
Nobody belongs to me

I see friends around from time to time
When their ladies let them slip away
And when they ask me how I'm doing with mine
This is always what I say

Nothing to do
Nowhere to be
A simple little kind of free
Nothing to do
No one to be
Is it really hard to see
Why I'm perfectly lonely
I'm perfectly lonely
I'm perfectly lonely
I'm perfectly lonely (Yeah)
'Cause I don't belong to anyone
Nobody belongs to me

And this is not to say
There never comes a day
I'll take my chances and start again
And when I look behind
On all my younger times
I have to thank the wrongs that led me to a love so strong

I'm perfectly lonely
I'm perfectly lonely
I'm perfectly lonely (Yeah)
'Cause I don't belong to anyone
Nobody belongs to me

(It's the way, it's the way, it's the way that I want it)

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!