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!