View From The Top

As above, so below.

Looking out from my window, I saw two scenes today. The bright, glowing sky full of shiny fireworks, the pretty view one always encounters on Diwali and the second scene was a father and son duo praying to God partly in, partly outside their hut, shivering in cold. Their undying faith shook my convictions – there are people who are so miserable so why isn’t their God descending to wrap a blanket around them? Playing favorites, are we God? Well, your sky is all bright and beautiful; may be its time to look at those beneath that colorful mirage. Should they expect you in the near future or optimistically wait till they die of hunger like million others?

Surprisingly, this is not even surprising anymore. 

I am the Present!

I am the Present. They tell me I am a gift because I bestow people life. My brother, Past, acquainted me with this world; he enlightened me about the history of our ancestors, their miseries, inhibitions and the immunity granted by the Lord. And my other brother, Future, explained to me that it is not all set in stone; everything depends on the choices people make. So, I stepped into the world believing I understand it all but boy, was I wrong! There is so much to witness, to discover, to learn, to experience, and to endeavor; I am the Present and this is my realm.

I gazed around and observed everything but it got me more baffled. So, I decided to question around; I inquired about one thing and got inquisitive about the other; they answered one query and I thought of a thousand more. Soon I realized that not everything has a definite answer – some things you need to feel, to believe, to sense. Although I met all kinds of people –good and bad, devils and angels, white and black, I could never find out the why they were what they were. Why is there so much hatred? Why are they so similar yet different? How can God create so much happiness and then deprive people of it? What triggers their action; how is their fate decided; how they are differentiated against? I know not if I will ever get answer but I wonder…

Like many, I dream a dream, hopeful of a better tomorrow. Past is gone, Future is yet to come which leaves just me, Present. Regardless to the bad, oblivious to the worse, I will make the choices and dictate the future because I am the liaison between the mistakes of the past and prospect of tomorrow. I am the Present and this is my interim era.

A Sucker For Happy Endings

You know how I define a good story? The plot where all the pieces come together in end, people get together all happy and gay, everyone finds a special someone; to sum it up, a happy ending. I had a tiny problem – I read the ending of a book first to get the gist, just to figure out if it’s all merry and if it isn’t, I keep it aside thinking may be someday I’ll have the courage to withstand the sadness; quite a big collection it has given me of the book I might read one day.

I don’t know about others but I really feel like slaying authors who kill their leads in novels and don’t get them back with a new face or some hero story. I mean come on! Why would you disappoint your readers like that? I would never do that. Still, only a good writer can make you cry – I don’t like that sad sob in any case. Oh how much I have hated Nicholas Sparks for breaking my heart. So much that I swore of his books, worthless, sadistic, fool!

The plot where the guy hates the girl, comes around, starts loving her, they have differences, spend time apart and get back together again…just makes the heart swell. I don’t care if it’s the most cliché story in the world – it clicks; it gives us an escape route from reality. They say that romance novels have filled women’s head with crap. I say bang on! We’re all crazy, feeding on hope, constantly worrying if we’ll ever find Mr. Perfect. You get disappointed only when you hope but if that shiny bright light is not there, what’s left in this world? We’re absolutely, 100% crazy because we’re hopeful for a better tomorrow. May be it exists, may be it doesn’t. May be we’ll get it, may be we wont. One thing is for certain – we won’t ever stop trying.

Dreaming, Again!

Since I started sleeping late, I have started dreaming. Bizarre, to the sense of the word, is how I can describe these dreams. Finding myself in the weirdest of situations doing completely moronic things, it’s a nice change from the former dreamless nights. The best part about dreaming is that you don’t remember it the next day (or the same afternoon, which is the case here) but I still sense it – the out of the ordinary circumstances, doing eccentric things in each of the dreams and still differently – not one dream matches the other in any way with just one exception – I’m moving, running, going somewhere. There is no knowing if I do get there; just one thing I can say for certain: it is definitely reflecting what’s on my mind. ;-)

Just A Dream?

I’m somewhere and I can’t get back home. The feeling has been haunting me in my dreams. Like something is really wrong with the situation I’m in and there is no way go turn around and run. Funny part is once reality closes in, it’s all happy and glowing and shining. It is just those flashes I get all day long of the dream that suggest otherwise. It says I’m trapped. Well, you don’t remember your dreams, or nightmares for the matter, after you wake up but I guess the almonds are doing the trick. If I try really hard, I get just a gist of what’s happening to me in my dreams. Like last night, I couldn’t flag a cab; the metro station was right where I was standing but for some reason I was still, unmoving, frozen. And before that, I was someplace away from home and I could sense danger. So, if I’m deducing these dreams right, I have impending doom around the corner, waiting to sneak up to me and blow me apart. Or, I’m just really creative. 

Beginning of a New End

Chicken + Coke + Gajar Ka Halwa = Best Last Day EVAAA!!!


Life offered a lot of choices this year – although I like to believe that I did my best in deciding the best alternative for me, but even if I didn’t, it’s all in the past and I can do nothing to change it. That is what is exciting about a fresh new start – the old regrets get left behind. It’s true that history is what shapes us, make us who we are but it doesn’t necessarily have to dictate our present, isn’t this what we call “moving on” taking the best, leaving the rest?

Feelings make you a liability, they put you out there where you can get very easily damaged and where you can hurt others. The worst part is that feelings change all the time – they are confusing, unreliable, manipulative and messy. Nevertheless, it is these emotions that make you human. Is it not better to feel something than being numb? Before I bid adieu to my past, I want to rewind and relive a few emotions to scrutinize how I welled for myself.


NAVRAS – Nine emotions of my life, my 2010.



The most over-powering feeling of all is anger – the one that makes you its slaves, taking away your entire defense against it, attacking you off guard. An angry man knows no limits, his anger is dangerous enough to cause unredeemable damage and ultimately ends with quite a mess and a bucket full of remorse. As they say, stick and stone break bones, words often break relationships. Well, the thing about anger is that it consumes all of you, with not even a tiny rational part to contemplate the consequences of your actions. This is what happens to me, all the time. Whenever I get mad, either I get burst out or I hold back which makes me as flammable as petrol. This past year, anger has been a problem but not as big as it was a few years back. Hey, at least I’m not throwing anything, which ought to count for something, right? The angriest moments of this year? During the advertisement campaign…when I was voted the rudest person in class…fights with my brother, each and every one of them made me mad…when my cousins “forgot” to wish me on my birthday…people avoiding me, taking me for granted and the list just goes on and on and on…

Love conquers all. Love is blind. Love is patient; love is kind; love doesn’t envy... If you know not love, you know nothing at all. Tom Cruise said in Jerry McGuire “You complete me”. This is what love does – it makes you whole. It holds true not just for your lover, but for all the people – your friends, your family, your audience – who admire you, accept you, critique you, and help you being the person you are. Life takes a U-turn once you commence to love someone or when someone starts loving you – it is total upheaval of life as you know it. My roller coaster of love started with the last January 1st when I stepped into 2010 with someone who has made my life beautiful just by being in it. I like to believe how you start you year is how to spend your year and God knows I spent it loving and being loved by a lot of people.

Facing your fears is courage. Standing your ground is courage. Doing the right thing when the alternative seems more alluring is courage. Moving forward leaving the known behind, walking towards the unknown is courage. I’d call myself courageous if for once I broke the rules and did something completely inappropriate. The righteous side of me doesn’t let me go there; like I’m too afraid to be someone I’m not. I don’t “lose it”, I never “let go” since I’m too much of a coward to try. Better be safe than sorry, that’s what I’ve been told and may be I took it a little too seriously.

All the peace I have had this past year began at 6.30 sharp in the morning at the place where I board my bus from. Early in the morning when you’re half asleep, half awake, there is only one thing you can feel watching the lonely streets – tranquility. So, it’s just me and my peace of mind. I don’t talk on the way to college; I just look outside or close my eyes. It is the most quiet, calm time of my day when I can think clearly or not at all.







Jealousy works so well in movies; the girl flirts with some other guy and the guy of her dreams realizes she’s the one. In real life, jealousy is more prevailing and less noble. Even the most self-assured of us envy people for their success, happiness and accomplishments. The person who instigates this sentiment in me the most is my elder brother – the person for whom I feel more than one emotion (hate, being at the top). To be fair, he doesn’t deliberately do it. On second thoughts, he does – everything that he maneuvers is completely intentional. I often say older brothers are bullies; another truth to this one is – they get everything very easily while the rest of us have to strive hard. No one admits to it but the first child is always much more dear, not that I’m accusing anyone of being unfair to me; it is something I know and have grown use to. So yeah, I envy my brother because a) he’s a guy b) he gets sympathy and its undue advantages and c) he is everybody’s favorite. Don’t get me wrong, I like my brother (when he’s not around).      

                                                                           

                                             Disgusting. Repulsive. Revolting. Filthy. Loathe. Over time, I have felt this strong emotion for a lot of people though not for long. Call it a weakness but I have this tendency to forgive people whether they ask for it or not. Hating person is like drinking the poison and hoping he would die, which I stupid. Overcoming the feeling is better for a lot of reasons – the best of them all is that you get to move on, get rid of the negative energies inside and focus on things that are really important. In my case, I just get bored and put the feeling to rest for the better.

You can find happiness in smallest of things and the biggest of events. Happiness is a state of mind. Those who want to feel elevated will stumble on a way to bring joy in their lives and spread it to others. This has been the joyous year of my life – wandering on streets with my best friend, going for Eclipse and catching Aisha, my birthday, those online chats, meeting three of my “virtual friends”…it all has been so incredible. I have my share of laughter the past year which was, if I recall correctly, A LOT.

When did I get scared the most? When I thought I’d fail myself but most of all someone else’ expectations. I truly hate it when people expect something from me simply because it is dreadful. What if you don’t live up to those expectations? What if you let them down? What if you disappoint them? The pressure is just too much and the stakes are too high – someone is counting you to come through a winner. Knowing that you are losing something, something very close to your heart is the worst kind of fear. I’m terrified, petrified, scared witless because I know I’m getting detached to my love of writing – I’ve already parted with my dream to be a writer; now writing is just a job. You think you know where you are heading but the paths change as you walk; they lead you someplace you never thought you would find yourself; the destination changes and so do you. That is terror – not knowing what you want anymore, a free fall. Nevertheless, as long as you’re walking, you’ll reach somewhere…




Surprise surprise! It won’t be a shocker to people who know me that I’m horrible, pathetic, awfully awful in giving surprises. I’ll get a birthday gift for a friend and tell him the same day what I got if he persisted. There is this small funny incident I just have to write about so as to make me laugh in future. It was my best friend’s birthday and I had planned a lot of surprises. The first few ones were carried out beautifully – I had bought many gifts (small and big) and asked her sister to plant so that she discovers them time after time the whole morning. First one was placed on her bed at midnight, the next one in her car which she was supposed to drive the next morning and the third one in her bag. My mom gave her the last gift when she came by to pick me up. So, everything went smoothly till then. Next was a part we had planned and that was the bummer. I don’t know how, seriously no clue how, but she knew when we arrived at the venue. And to top it all, one of the guests screamed at the top of her voice “Where are others? I thought we were having a party.” DOOMED. Finally, the birthday girl said “I know about the party”. From her birthday to mine, I got a lot of gifts that day and it was the happiest day of my life (if we don’t count the day my niece was born). Oh, how much I loved being the centre of attention. When some unexpected visitors landed with yet another chocolate cake, I was over-whelmed with joy – beyond doubt grateful that I was born. Since we are talking about surprises, two more stories from this year. It was 4th of October and my cousin was going to surprise with an unexpected visit from UK which everyone had inkling about in any case but he missed his flight – talk about surprises. And the last instance from the surprise bag was the time we planned to catch the newest Twilight movie Eclipse and my friends took me for Aisha instead. Swear to God I didn’t get suspicious even after we were in the theatre – they let me think it was Eclipse and I was shouting “We’re in the wrong theatre” while they were at their seats, enjoying popcorn.

                                  







It was one heck of a year – won some, lost some. Whatever it was, it is all gone. The dates have changed, the year has changed yet it doesn’t feel any different. May be it wasn’t an end after all and perhaps the beginning isn’t dominated by numbers. May be, just may be, it is your prerogative to decide whether or not you want a beginning; I don’t.