When I read my name in the newspaper!!

Young minds on climate change

A Town of Memories...: Who are you?

A Town of Memories...: Who are you?: Who are you,  really? You are not a name or a height or a weight, or a gender. You are not an age and you are not where you are from...

Who are you?

Who are you,
 really?

You are not a name
or a height or a weight,
or a gender.
You are not an age
and you are not where you are from.

You are your favourite books
and the songs stuck in your head.
You are your thoughts
and what you eat for breakfast on Saturday mornings.

You are a thousand things
but everyone chooses
to see the million things
you are not.

You are not
where you are from,
You are where you are going
and I'd like to go there too.

He and I

He and I

When words run dry,

he does not try

nor do I.

We are on par.

He just is,

I just am

and we just are.

In a coffee shop someday..

We met at the wrong time.
That's what I keep telling myself.

Maybe, oneday, years from now,
we'll meet in a coffee shop
in a far away city somewhere,

and maybe we could give it another shot.

The Story behind the Club.

Thoughts come across your mind every minute of the day... good and bad, noble and selfish, constructive and destructive. The human mind is always thinking something.

Sitting in a debate competition one winter morning, a random thought crosses my mind and I lose focus for a minute or two. I push the thought aside and concentrate on the speaker again. Later that night, the thought made its way back to my mind and this time, I did not push it away. The thought was : There are so many people who can write like Shakespeare and talk like Obama, but they do not show themselves to the world, for the sake of some unspoken fear. Hidden they remained in the cocoons they built for themselves and hidden remained their talent.
 What is it that makes them so scared to express themselves? Is it the fear of mockery - that people will laugh at them because their grammar and pronunciations were incorrect? But then, did Obama not have critics? Did people not find fault with Shakespeare?
Criticism comes hand in hand with appreciation and one must take it in stride and move ahead.

You will fail once.. twice.. but the third time, you will win. It is the patience that one needs to hold on till the third time. The same people who criticised you some day, will respect you.
Leave behind all your fears and step into the ring.
Be brave and fight.
Fight till you win.

I thought, if there could be a club or an organisation that could provide a platform to these hidden stars and bring out the radiance that has been long kept in the dark, how wonderful it would be!

I put the thought into action.. hands joined in; encouragement, support and cooperation poured in.. and here it is today :
That 'random thought' the other day is ESCALADA today!

A Bird's flight in City light

I have always been strangely drawn to the site of birds returning to their nests as soon as twilight sets in. It seems like the sky becomes like a railway station at a rush hour.. different flocks flying in different directions, separate destinations maybe but that one theme in mind : Homecoming. This strange attraction may be because when I see them heading home, a tiny part of me wants to spread my wings and fly home as well..

But what if twilight never happened? What if the sun never set? What if the birds had longer time to venture out in the blues?

I think I have found an answer to that. No, the answer did not come from a complex dream analysis like so many great men, for I am but an ordinary little woman and I found the answer in the Indian Land of Sweets ~ Gujarat. I am not saying the sun never set, but compared to the last twenty years of sunsets that I have seen, it almost felt like the sun did not want to set. I understand it's reluctance because anyone who has ever seen that place would never want light to abandon as beautiful a place as this.

To the normal human eye, it is no ordinary a place. But deep down, that is the real magic. It is ordinary. It does not make you feel foreign, and you feel at home! The ease of adjustment is the hardest obstacle to overcome in an unknown place, and Gujarat offers you the comfort you seek.

I had been in a Summer Internship Programme in one of the major players in the pharmaceutical arena, Cadila Pharmaceuticals Limited. I had never before, been to  a more enormous, elaborate and aesthetical amazing campus. When we (I had my cousin for company, by the way.. so loneliness stayed far at bay) first entered our workplace, we were two scared chicken - unknown and unaware. When we left, it felt like it flying away from the nest.

The people, their behaviour and their art of living reflects 'Gandhigiri' in its purest essence. Nobody fights with anybody. Everybody seems to mind their own business - some poking around is human nature but that can be easily overlooked in comparison to the rest of the world. It is a place no less than a shrine because there is serenity in the air, simplicity in their style, and peace is the motto.

It is not odd for pure non-vegetarians like me to feel nervous or have serious survival questions on the first few days, but when the salty air rubs on you, the materialistic cuisine cravings are effortlessly replaced by the surreal  culture. The Gujarati platter is as appealing  as any international cuisine you name because it is a plate full of balance and flavoured with a hint of sweetness. The variety of food that I have had during my one-month stay has been far more in number than the dishes I have had in my past twenty years, and just for the record, I may not have tasted even a quarter of the plethora of Gujarati cuisine!

It goes without saying that what went as sparsely-filled vessels of our minds have taken away more than expected. Not only was it a learning experience in terms of knowledge but to me, a personally enriching exposure.

I often stood by the huge window in my room, there and stared at the eagles hovering over the hustle-bustle of ordinary city life, and the pigeon-heart in me gave way to the ambitious hawk wings that want to soar higher and higher before the sun eases down and twilight sets in. ~ A Perfect Summer. Eleven on Ten!

                     

VITAPHOBIA.. Fear of Life

You know it is wrong but you don't say anything. You know there is a better way to do it, but you will still do what is told to you. You have a doubt, but you won't ask. You have answers but you won't give them. You are good but you don't want to accept it.. probably, you haven't met yourself yet.

You never raise your voice. You never stand up for a change. You never ask a question. You keep yourself bottled up inside... I am asking : WHY?

You are telling me : I am scared.

I ask : Scared of what?

You say : Scared of Life.

Scared of Life. Scared of change. Scared of public reactions.

But public reactions never paid your bills, they didn't pay you salary either. Then, why are you bothered who says what?

People come and people go.. and you can't be too sure of who is to stay or for how long. So, why depend on them. You are who you are - and there is a reason why you are an 'individual'. Understand. Accept. Respect.

Because if you don't respect yourself, how do you expect others to look up to you?

Don't clog your mind with unnecessary baggage. Set your own targets, be your own example, run your own race. Your competition is not with anybody, but with yourself. Life is, after all, a constant endeavour. How will you walk ahead if you are scared of Life, itself? The fear of setting off along a road heading who knows where, the fear of a life full of new challenges, the fear of losing forever everything that is familiar.. but in the end, you CANNOT give in to the fear.

You are your own inhibition. You are your phobia. If there is anything that's pulling you down, that is stopping you, it is you - yourself. Nobody, but you and only you can break off all the chains. Rebel , rise  and conquer.

It’s strange how what drives us - may abandon us midstream, how what tickles our ears with lies one moment - may tell us truths that knock us on our emotional back  the next.
We strive and strain, bellow and believe, we learn, and everything we learn tells us the same thing: life is one great meaningful experience in a meaningless world. We live, heal and attempt to piece together a picture worth the price of our very lives.

The Walk..

It has been long since I've last blogged.. no excuses. But I suddenly came upon this note-to-self that I'd written about two and a half years back.. and I couldn't resist the urge to put it up..

(17.12.2012) :

Point 1: Some actor in some famous movie said, "Every man comes to this world alone and he leaves alone."

Point 2: Remember Wordsworth's quest for the Mystery of Life in 'Tintern Abbey'? The other day, my father was telling me the secret of Life. He told me that the only mission in this Life is to learn to live alone. It's the hardest and the only lesson you need to learn and master... because once you are content with living alone, nothing in this world can bring you loneliness. When you have people around you, good times.. but when you don't, it isn't as bad a time because you have learnt to be as content with yourself as with others. Inference : If Life is a road, you have to walk alone.

The lines don't hint any non-sense but the theory (or fantasy) that I've grown up with, for 18 years is totally contradictory to these theories!
I always knew that every man has a partner.. a friend who would never let go, a soul mate who is bonded to you for eternity, a companion who never leaves you alone.
And isn't that what every Taylor Swift song or Enrique number seconds?

I see my parents and like-couples.. happily married for years!! People from that era who actually know the meaning of '.. and lived happily ever after.", say that one must learn to walk alone.
And people from my epoch believe a partner is somebody who gives you a chocolate bar every day, a friend is somebody who you can cheat from during examinations, a soul mate is a person you can satisfy your 'desires' with and a companion could be anyone who would accompany you to the nearest shop! I live in an age where words have lost their meanings, their values and everything just seems to be superposed with a thick coat of dirt called 'modernity'!
People don't have 'time' for silly things like values, traditions, relationships or Love! Everyone seems so busy sorting out their lives.. but how can houses be built without bricks? How can lives be built without values?

And amidst that mob of 'busy, practical and logical people', there stands an eighteen year old girl who spends 20 hrs of her day, daydreaming!
No, not the typical dream of a Prince Charming on a white horse-types... But that someday, some person might come and make me feel that Life isn't just waking up every day and praying, first thing in the morning, that may this day pass soon! I dream that someday when I cry pointlessly just because I feel like, he'd hold me in his arms, let me cry for as long as I want to and whisper to me that it's okay to feel like crap sometimes. I dream that someday there'll really be someone beside me to cuddle up on cold, winter nights and it won't be a pillow! I dream that someday if it's another one of those sleepless night, he'd sit with me under the sky gazing at stars! I dream that whether Life turns out to be a hot and sultry day in a desert or a beautiful sunset in a beach, there will be someone holding my hand and walking 'with' me.. 'forever'.

In all these years, I've come a long way but then, I didn't walk alone. My parents always held my hand and guided me till it was time they let go off my hand.

So, for half a year now.. I've known what walking alone feels like and it isn't really a good feeling!
Every step I take, yearns for another foot to step beside me. But before that happens, I think I'll have to stop yearning and learn to enjoy walking alone. That is another tomorrow.
Today's reality sticks to the fact that I'm yet another traveller on the road to Life.. and I'm walking alone.