Goodbye, 2018!

I see myself as an imperfect human being, who is trying too hard to make things better for herself, for her family and for the world she lives in. As I report to work on the last working day of 2018, I get myself prepared to strike off some of the resolutions made sitting on this desk last year and carrying over a few.

Just a quick look at this chapter of my life story and I feel glad to know that this year has, indeed, made me emerge stronger and way better a human. I thought I had a connection with this number, 18, until God made sure I no longer believe in numerology. Well, this, surely, has been a hell of a year! 

The wheels in my feet were greased for short trips to Vizag (our yearly pilgrimage to the hometown), Vrindavan, Tijara (Alwar) and Chandigarh/Morni Hills. Considering the places that they are, I am glad I made the right choices in choosing the destinations.

The work life sailed smooth, with occasional hiccups of being unable to organize priorities. However, the workplace itself experienced drastic changes in terms of losing business and high attrition. Nevertheless, my work experience has grown if I look back to where I stand today. It’s always wise to not travel downstream and halt to know where we belong. I still need to think if this is it.

Physically, this was clearly not my year. If I do not look at the viral fever which loved me a little more to let go, the gym life was a constant on-off. Honestly, due to the decision of deliberately keeping off from heavy exercises, all I did was no exercise at all and this should be completely unacceptable considering my expectations from my body. Eating habits, too, were haywire and, most of the times, I was hogging like a pig on the food, which I could easily have said no to. Nevertheless, I leave the bad memories here.

Spiritually, I can say my relation with God has become a little stronger. I feel Him everywhere, silently listening to whatever I say, reading my mind and bending the ways exactly how I want them to be. The bad times never stayed and the good times left sweet flavors in my mouth, almost palpable all the time.

The big and the most beautiful segments of my life, which stayed there and grew strong, are now being carried over to the next year. My family! I cannot ever thank God enough for this. They have been there with me through all shades of grey – my husband, my brother, my parents – they are big gems, which add value to my life. Their roles in 2018 have been especially worth mentioning. The rock that my brother is, the strong values my mother and father add to my life and, of course, the way my husband mends me into a better person – they all are an integral part of my presence. I can say I am a sum total of them all.

I say this every year whenever I am changing the calendar, but I am ready to work on myself, more seriously and more relentlessly, this time. I am optimistic that things will fall in place, prayers will be answered and good times will prevail. I wish the same to all my readers, too. 

Cheena's new year's prayer:

O, Dear Lord! Bless me, so I seek you, see you and feel you everywhere. Watch over my loved ones day and night and keep them in the pink of their health. Help me be kind, generous and optimistic at all times and see through the hard times to learn from them. Help me take one day at a time and make the most of it. Hold my hand while I strive to make my dreams come true and add value to my endeavors towards shaping my future right. May I always thrive in your love, indulge in your blessings and grow under your guidance. May my love for you always grow and my belief in you become stronger than ever. I thank you for the year gone by and I look forward to receiving your love in the coming year. Amen!      

Too Often to Notice

There’s some effort it demands – self-love is never easy. There she goes, loving herself to perfection. There’s so much to look after, after all. The hair, the skin, the teeth, the nails… the list never ends. If done continually, self-love seeps into one’s lifestyle to become a habit and there you go, practicing this as a mundane task to the extent that you hate any aberrations from what you termed as ‘perfect’.

She was a goddess to an onlooker, a masterpiece, someone who was just flawless the way she was. It was hard to take eyes off her, her looks and her style was too ideal to be true. For herself, she had forgotten how amazing she looked. She seldom realized what impact she had on the people she worked with. The goddess that she was not just made hundreds turn heads for a second glance, but also made several skip their heartbeats when she giggled. The fragrance she wore added magnetism to her aura, almost like giving her mysterious powers. THIS man who she lived with had to be the luckiest for getting her for life. He couldn’t have complimented her enough, for his appreciation would have been the real fuel to her smile.

Snap out of this to another land of male charmers. This boy here could well be touted as the dream man for any girl. It seemed as if God had taken a few days off work to sculpt his physique. He, honoring the blessing he had received, took special care in building his body, presenting it the way it was meant to be. He redefined masculinity, giving a fresh benchmark to millions of women to look up to in a male. He didn’t know how women around her sighed imagining him around them, all alone. He, indeed, put in great efforts to keep his best traits up. He was someone, who would be a pleasure to look at, let alone the thought of having him over you. THIS woman who has his to keep should have been forever grateful to him for have chosen her over others. She would have sung praises, cherished him forever and pampered him to happiness.

Alas, we see these diamonds we live with every day, but we see them too often to notice their charm, their sparkle. What if we get to know that our souls are like those tiny plants, vying for love and appreciation? What if we saw that the auras shone brighter when they were caressed and treasured? What if every day was not treated as ‘ordinary’? Woah!

Hold that special person close, praise them for what more or little they do, pamper them with what they love the most, notice their quirks and manners and give an ear to what they say. You never know, this might just change your equation with love forever!  

You would never say.

They say that your happiness knows no bounds when your home is not a place, but a person. How true; one could almost feel her adrenaline gushing at a mere sight of him. Their love story was no ordinary, for he defined love for her and he hardly was friends with words.

 She didn’t know if love ever existed in words; for her, it was a feeling, euphoria, a lot of warmth and him. Yeah, pretty much. No festivals, occasions or conventional times of the year would bring enough happiness to her more than the tip that he was standing outside her office to pick her up. In the distance of close to fifteen minutes back home, their conversations would range from the happenings in the day passed without each other to what they plan to do once they'd be home. A lot of times, a song one would have been vying to make the other listen would fill the silence and thus would commence the sweet nothings.

She knew his existence revolved around her and how she was oxygen for him. Each day was a battle for him and she knew how strong a support system she was. You don’t calculate love, you don’t measure the conditions, you don’t draw the perfect map and you surely don’t write down the T&C's – when you love someone, you BELIEVE – in dreams, aspirations and life together.

She knew how a perfect team they both were and how he would always need her for every big or small decision he would ever take. She knew their love was a melody, a song they both loved humming to and a dawn turned to dusk while talking.

Their love was the wind beneath their wings and she loved how God made them dance at the twilight, in the sheer ecstasy of each other's company. She knew, for a fact, that they were inseparable and, also, that he would never say. 

Their love story might appear a little vague to the world outside, but on the inside, it was clear and complete and that’s what made them stand out – they were not ordinary, but complementary.  

Waiting for Him

The windows had been set open. After all, he could be here any moment. Other days might not have had that effect on her, but it was just a different day. Maybe it had set differently or progressed so, she was able to feel each moment passing by today. The ticking of clock was giving wings to the butterflies in her stomach. She was actually looking forward to her husband coming back from work and her holding him in her embrace.

While the rest of the days were a part of the routine, these days were especially earmarked as festivals. Rains cast that spell on you; they make you happy from inside and this happiness just spreads on to everyone around you. She prepared the snacks they had almost forgotten they used to have after their marriage. Things were definitely different that time. The desire to know each other and get close was such that it superseded every other desire the mind ever conceived. She set the snacks on the table placed in their courtyard which was covered in a way that they could still feel the raindrops falling on the ground. Even the winds seemed to be dancing along with the rain drops, splashing some on them while twisting and twirling along. Meera was reserving this pleasure to be had with her husband, Karan. Till that time, she was making sure that Karan forgets all his worries the moment he enters the house she was so endearingly decorating today.

Flowers in the brass vase, incense sticks lit in the small temple hung on the wall in the study room, fresh, washed curtains and the cleaned linen on the bed, all were creating a beautiful aura in the home, the home she lovingly called her masterpiece. For the first time in months, she was feeling like dressing up in a saree, that red one which was his favorite. She couldn’t help but wear the anklet her mother-in-law had gifted her after her marriage. She remembered how Karan used to love its tinkling and how it was often the start of tickling nothings between them. Kohl, bindi and gajra, she wondered how she had almost forgotten these friends of her she adored seeing adorned on her mother.

The sky was covered by dark, grey clouds and raindrops were hugging the ground, almost as if answering its prayers. The cool breeze was bringing back the memories of everyone from their childhood. Even Meera had a lot of memories of playing with her brother in the rain when she was young and, then, of waiting for someone special in life to cling on to during such weathers when she was an adolescent. She wondered why she never told this to Karan, may be because they never sat down to talk anymore. 

Today would be a different day, she thought. She had been living her dream ever since she got her marriage arranged, a caring husband, a house to call her own, the liberty to take decisions and a loving family, she could have never asked for more. She wondered why she never expressed her gratitude enough. She thanked rains for bringing a sense of happiness and a desire for her to stop for a moment and feel herself, her body, her mind and her senses. Passing a flying kiss to the sky, she set her one foot in the rain while sitting on the recliner in the courtyard. She thought she would sit down to talk, spend some time listening to him and caress him out of his worries. She had so much of love to share with him and the rain had been a perfect buoyant force to bring all of it out. She set the teapot on the table along with their favorite mugs and played the music they both loved listening to; after all, every couple had those special love songs which they called their own, the ones they played to cheer the other up and the ones which were timeless. Ah! She felt the freshness of the old times and the bloom of a newlywed bride. 

Knocking at the door and noticing it open, Karan entered!

The Best in Me

Love Story

10 Days without You

I, ashamedly, admit that I have zero experience in running a home, like a perfect house manager. Yes, I am married, yet, I'm, circumstantially, in an internship phase. My husband lived in a country abroad for good six months and he’s back now and how! The update is that my honeymoon phase is going to be over soon and I am to start living with him, running a house – like a boss.

My parents set the arena for a nice practice game for me, when they left for a lovely, but long (ten days!) trip together. My KRA was to babysit two babies in their late twenties – one my brother and the other has to be my husband. Shit got deeper when my brother joined a new office, where he was supposed to report at 8:30 in the morning, right when I used to yawn wide in my dreams. Trouble started when all eyeballs starkly pointed at me, like a digital compass very sure where to set itself, for making everyone comfortable all through the void.

I was always scared of being unable of holding up everyone’s expectations. I could never imagine myself getting up at 6 in the morning, having slept at 2 in the night, to cook for the breakfasts and the lunches. I have never in my life bothered to make things look shinier just so somebody was turning up at home – you can say I have been spoilt to the brim, but that’s how I have been brought up – and I am sure many other babied dolls would swear of the same situation as mine.

Superseding my own expectations of myself, I sailed through and I would say, I was fairly good! Thanks to Google, cooking never seemed a daunting task, and the thought that my brother would have to leave home starving compelled me to get up and cook. Fortunately, the two overgrown babies, too, behaved themselves and showered all their concerns and love. I can say that is what kept the motivation flowing right through me. I was, in all possible manners, trying to emulate my mom, recalling everything she did, right from storing the leftovers to cleaning the washrooms to effectively balancing her work life.

Never did I realize that though she never sat me down to teach me things, she silently made me pick up all her habits. Her being around, carrying herself just being her, was an inspiration enough to steal a glance and check what’s keeping her busy. The zeal of starting a task, even if cooking, was infectious enough to grab everyone’s attention at home.

Things were right there on the subconscious level, just they were dug up and pulled out now. I am glad I managed to run the show and keep everyone entertained for the ten days they weren’t here – though inside, I was striking dates off waiting for their return. Life all this while has, undoubtedly, moved at snail pace, yet the feeling of having accomplished an elephantine task lifts me two feet above the ground. When they were back, I seemed to, in my mind, hand things over to her as a mother-in-law does to her newly wed daughter-in-law; I wished to thank her for teaching me the ways of life, but something inside pulled me back – I am sure she would have said her aura needed to be thanked.

Ms. to Mrs.: A dream transition!

So now, the world identifies me as somebody’s wife; the feeling? It’s inexplicable. I am sure every couple, who in their dating period feels seriously for each other, dreams of this transition but seldom they are able to reach this stage. I am one of the few chosen ones who could successfully hit the goal, without facing any opposition at all.

My say on the feeling of this transition from being boyfriend-girlfriend to husband-wife is IT IS NEVER THE SAME. Dating is way different from living a whole, life-ful of relationship. Living with each other 24x7 not only gives way to serious revelations about the other person, but also opens up another chapter of love – sustenance.

The only privilege ‘pre-marriage-dating’ blesses you with is that you don’t listen to the other person as a just-brought-home cat, who doesn’t know how to act feeling a new air around. You freely meow, purr or even pounce, as if it was your own house and your own people J

The first hit I got was when I woke up, startled, seeing him sleeping on the same bed as mine! J Yes - when we got to sleep for some 3 odd hours after I reached my “new” home at 5 AM. My first-hand experience on dating, love and marriage is that friendship transcends all hardships you face as a couple and brings a lot of peace and calmness back home. So, you know, great food, romance, organized life, adjustments all take a back seat. 

I am sure preaching does not help when it comes to relationships and the only thing you would want to experience is a free-fall, being yourself, feeling an eternal calmness of having achieved a big goal in life – togetherness. So, I will not preach a word on how you should be steering a relationship to the right path (I don’t know it myself, to be true J). Let us all, newlyweds, make our honeymoon period last for a lifespan and hope that this transition from bachelorhood to marriage takes off as smoothly as a Lufthansa airplane racing on the runway to kiss the clouds. 
Here’s wishing all the best to all the couples travelling on the same boat. Bon Voyage!

Long distance, Skype and the things which irk me the most

I have to thank technology for its whole, truckload of contribution in my life. I would not have been able to survive a long-distance relationship if it wasn’t there. I know thousands of couples continue to kindle their relationships, no matter how far their spouses would be, through whatever combustible environment technology provides them.

Back in time, when it was decided that my spouse would be moving out of the nation in search of greener pastures, I was deeply disappointed for I knew my weekends would lose their meaning – and they did. I started to look sad and ugly on weekends, too (I work from home on the five weekdays and the weekends were the only time when I, all dolled up, got to step out of the four walls I constantly stared at the rest of the days). Anyway, time swooshed by and I couldn’t even get to know when it was five months already.

For all these days, we constantly were in touch – through phone (thanks to the free international minutes VoIP blesses you with) and Skype. Yes, this latter application has impeccably bridged the distance and talking is almost like catching up over coffee. A slight difference still exists – on our coffee dates, I looked the best of me and he, well he “tried” to look good J. Now, our dates are a mirror of how we would “actually” look at home.

It’s been quite some time since we have been putting this application to serious use and, now, I have started to get irked by it. Why? Well, at times, while talking, he would pan the phone camera across his flat and I would suddenly feel like flying to his place. And you smell romance here?! Read on.

I get deeply bothered by the mess around there and feel itched to CLEAN HIS ROOM (and fly back J)! Right from the kitchen to the hall and further to the bedroom, I don’t see a place a person could possible sit on or at. Ohkay, I might be getting way too serious about the normal behavior of ‘boys’ as you say, but what do you have to say about the concept of ‘cleaning’. Cleaning home, according to him, means packing his bag – just the bag!

Meanwhile; somewhere on the planet.

Precisely, an easy out to most of the problems out there!

As I calm down, I understand there are ways people live by and it’s not necessary yours would perfectly overlap with your partner’s and I totally believe contrasts like these give way to a rainbow of colors you would not have ever noticed had life been spick-and-span like a monochrome light.

To put off the heat of the argument, he has a strategy which seems to work, almost always. I am rather compelled to stop ranting when I am told I sound more like a girl. Fact check: I am a girl. Super-twist: I never want to sound like one. Reason: No, that’s not an insult. Further explanation: Stop pissing me off, will you? I am a perfect mix of the best of the girl and the boy traits (with the former dominating a bit. A BIT.) No matter what, messy room is not acceptable. No, I don't want to see it all over again. Wait! I would not be able to see you otherwise. I love Skype. Rant Over.

Backatcha!

  

Behaving My Age

It’s that time of the lifetime when you finally have to change skins to become a responsible human being while your inner soul still pretends to be a kindergarten brat; that time when speaking shit comes as easy as a storm in a desert and listening patiently seems a task next to impossible; the age when the conscience about one’s own stupidity does not show up and everything that you say sound pearls of wisdom to yourself; when doing household tasks seem the most crucial KRA of your maid and you helping her in the same implies deduction in her salary; when the fact that you earn and work in an MNC overpowers everything else left to do in the world, including cooking and when you look in the mirror and feel tad too proud of the way you look and wonder who on Earth would be able to match that nerve and fail to find one name, even close – YES, this age, this time, this phase – PRECISELY this is when THEY decide to get you married!

It’s like taming a mad ape – accepting that you are getting married and knowing that you get to be the female in this setup – the traditional one who behaves the way others program her to. The one advice, order, request or commandment that you hear from all the directions, while you happily behave the way you have been doing since ages, is “behave your age”. “Well, I’ve been all the same!” is all I can say in return. Suddenly, everything you do right from dressing to walking, from speaking to shutting up, from eating to picking your utensils up from the table, from getting up in the morning to pretty much, existing starts to appear faulty to those people who loved every bit of whatever nonsense you did before THIS time.

Now, I try to behave my age – in fact the one well ahead of it. It will, obviously, take me some time to shed the skin I have been comfortably living in since ages. But all that I have got to do is try to monitor how I behave, timing my smile, gauging the number of times I nod, looking at all random places while keeping mum in a room where the topic being discussed seems as stupid as the arguments being thrown to defend each other by the people involved, checking the usage of words like shit, crap, fuck, bitch, booh and trying to fit in a circle of “all grownups”.

Or, I have got an easier way out! I believe in order to get a valid visa to be able to step into the shoes of an “espoused”, all that you need to do is screw this gyaan up and team with your spouse up for a bigger mess. You never know, he might already be choking himself while acting a “grownup”. Behaving your “self” over your age is a nice idea for a cool, relaxed life. I bet behaving my age would never come easy to me, especially when I know I am good when I am “a lady” but I am much more a fun when I am “me”.

Anecdotes from a Crazy Love Life

This is the first time when I am narrating an instance from the very personal corner of my life to my readers; I am sure you would enjoy reading this as much as I have reveled in writing it and, most of all, in living it. This is surely one of those few moments, which keep cracking you up even after days or months when they happened. So, here goes a short, funny reminiscence which makes me laugh, cry and wonder all at the same time, thinking how my fiancé never leaves any stone unturned to add spice to our lives.

This happened a week back while I was happily chatting with my husband-to-be, sitting several miles away from me. I had been envying a lot of cute, just-married, couples on social platforms leaving mushy, gooey, cute messages for each other either in the form of posts or comments. Call my groom-to-be shy or hesitant, he doesn’t find it fit to spit his love out on social media (as if it’s venom) where there are hundreds of eyeballs trying to find some fault in it, if not any than grammatical. I hate his this habit as I am really active on social media and I don’t feel mollycoddled through his words on my posts or pics and I particularly hate it because we are engaged and there’s immense societal pressure (I feel, eh) on me to prove it to the world that my man is good with words and how!

So, I uploaded a pic, which looked somewhere close to this, but I surely looked way better; I always do, even in my out-of-the-bed selfies!

I knew my bae is never going to comment on the pic, as the best expression of his love is his “liking” the pic, and I fail to make him understand that out of 100 likes I got on the pic, his special love-filled ‘like’ will get crushed and tramped down (Sigh!).

But this time, I collared him (virtually, of course) and forcibly asked him to comment on my pic. Poor he, he thought this was probably the toughest time of his life, tougher than taking board exams. He immediately started ‘Google’ing severely romantic shayaris ever written and after half an hour, came out with this (on a pic that has me smiling and pouting, all at the same time):

Koi Aankho-Aankho Se Baat Kar Leta Hai.. Koi Aankho-Aankho Mein Mulakaat Kar Leta Hai…Bada Mushqil Hota Hai Jawaab Dena, Jab Koi Khaamosh Rehkar bhi Sawaal Kar Leta Hai…

Sawaal?! Bearing a question mark on my face, I complained about his bad judgment and how he could not think of something as simple as ‘looking pretty’! Why, at all, he needed to Google compliments?

He started digging further into the world of internet and this, for a moment, made me feel guilty wondering if I am asking too much of him. Never mind, this feeling was as temporary as my thought bubble which was again pricked by my beau who had found something he thought worthy:

This pair of small eyes, Help in saying big things, Love not expressed from lips, Is confessed by a wink. At any place in the world, Her eyes keep searching for me, Sparkle of her eyes is moved to her lips, After she finds me. Each feeling of her heart, Is said by eyes of hers Whenever I leave her, Droplets of water stroll down in form of tears. Can always find, Unconditional love for me in her eyes, Confirming the thought to be true, That the pair never says lies. I have a feeling, She has a straight heart to eye connection, As she expresses everything, by her eyes, That's needs to be mentioned. When I can't find her eyes around me, Don't know what happens to my day, Smile from my visage, Remains at bay. In the night when I lie on a gathered hay, Under the starry layer of the endless worlds, I trace your eyes in the maze of stars, Like a pattern laid out by two beautiful pearls. This pair of small eyes, Help in saying big things, Love not expressed from lips, Is confessed by a wink.

Well, I did not want a lengthy, 200-word essay on my pic, which already had some 10 odd comments by now, so I frowned a bit and asked him to quit whatever he was doing. To this, he so innocently said “but I’d honestly fallen for your eyes. I think they add spark to your beauty”. Well, this worked! I was flattered and thus, he got another chance to look for some nice comment to post on my pic. Here’s what he fetched:

Girl I'm not a shy guy, but you got me feeling like I might die. Those beautiful eyes, got me melted inside.

I thought of killing myself – not because this was too cheesy, but because I wasn’t looking for anything artificial: anything he could write that could make me feel I belong to him. I guess he picked up from my cue of not replying to this message that I disliked that, too. So, here’s my bae’s another attempt at pleasing me:

I miss the beautiful eyes that I can sail through forever. I miss the smile that send me to heaven

By now, I was banging my head on the wall being frustrated to the top-most notch. I, my last try, asked him to compliment me in Italian (I remembered he had championed this language way back in time). At this point, I could guess he was baffled, too, for how he was just not able to make me happy and how he's been ignorant of this new avatar of me, a girl who’s crying for his love, spelt out in sugar-coated words, written right on her post.

I would surely have fractured my limbs laughing so hard after what happened next had he not gotten me out of that by finally saying bye. This is what he said, “Here is my username and password, can you please comment whatever you feel is appropriate yourself?” Imagine me, pretending to be him, leaving romantic comments on my own picture! All my anger and frustration was bubbled in a matter of microseconds and I was actually feeling silly for have asked him to do something he just isn't good at: expressing himself under the sun! 

I shut my laptop down and retired to bed, just when I received a notification on my mobile saying someone has left a comment on my pic. It was him and this is what he wrote: Ti voglio molto bene! (Meaning: I love you so much!). I bet my day couldn’t have ended in a better manner J   

There's A New "Hair"sitter in Town!

A long stint of trial, patience and hard work but were the efforts all worth it? You’ll have to read on till the end of this post in order to get the answer. I am talking about my hair and the amount of efforts it has demanded of me to bring them up right. This might be the first time in my life (another first!) when I have thought of cultivating this natural harvest to the extent it happily could and I dare say it has brought out the best in my behavior. How? Ohkay.

I, now, feel as if, being a child psychologist, I am writing the best of parenting techniques parents should practice but I must concede growing your hair right to see them how exactly you’ve wanted them to be is no way a lesser job. I have seen myself go through a lot of behavioral changes in order to accommodate the pain: tears, worries, fears, anticipations and, finally, bliss that growing my hair right has brought along. I confess I am now more patient with them falling and have learnt how to toss the blame on to the environment - you have to control your tears when you see them going down the drain or leaving their home to elope with the comb – great deal of perseverance, indeed. You have to make friends with the fact that some seasons are there in existence because they have some number targets of hair strands they have to register as fallen before they bid adieu to that place.

I get a feeling that I have become an erudite “hair”sitter, capable of writing a book on good “hair”sitting (I would love to call it that because I hate to repeat what I’ve said before). I must have read thousands of magazines and blogs online talking about the best hair care tips by everyone from amateurs to professionals – I had a patient ear for everyone. One side-effect of this whole activity was that a lot of times, I was directed to some fabulous recipe websites from these blogs; there was so much food to be applied on either hair or scalp being talked about that I finally gave up on covering my head with them and thought of becoming an unrepentant sinner indulging herself in gluttony J

Anyway, one year of persistent determination, eating right, oiling my hair twice a week, taking multi-vitamin supplements, working out regularly, combing with utmost care, breathing right, burping less, blogging more, praying even more, turning a blind eye to all the ‘good’ things in the world, watching lesser television, drawing constellations on assumed-to-be starry nights, bitching less, smiling to all the relatives, saying yes and all the ‘sane’ stuff those blogs could ask me to do - I have done IT ALL; some tips worked, others were fun to try; some gave good results while a few reassured there’s more to life than long, healthy hair. Finally, here I am, with THE results. I am sharing a few pictures with y’all – a few experiments I have done, now that I have learned to tame my hair. While I prepare myself for my first trimming session in all this time, I pray to God that I don’t return with a bad face and a back-on-track behavior (to hell with perseverance, I want them to stay for long!) J

The Aura of the Airport

This is one first-hand experience, ‘another first’ this year, of seeing someone off at the airport. I have always been on the other side of the story, happily bidding adieu, boarding the flights while looking forward to my journeys. During all these farewell cheers, I could never understand why my parents used to shed tears, for a dimwit like me had never felt that heart-wrenching sentiment of biding au revoir and returning home with a feeling of having left something at the airport.

This time it was my brother who decided to take his career to a new level, stepping out of his comfort zone, punching hard the challenge, right on its nose. And there, a new experience set its first foot in my life. The aura there, it just gets into your nerves, slowly reaching each limb, weakening them from within, making them anorexic that you just go weak and cannot help but cry.

I stood there, noticing the scenario around and here, I've tried jotting down the snippets of the things I can, now, only sum up to call it all a ‘feeling’. I saw parents hugging their kids tight, with tears in their eyes, though waving their hands, still unable to say goodbye; fathers clutching mothers’ hands and holding them while they walked out of the parking spaces; spouses leaving and the partners who got to stay not able to bid adieu with a smile (I also saw a couple or two cuddling, which, apparently, made my heart grow fonder and brought along an 'aww' monent); a few grandmothers who were checking from a never-ending checklist the things their kids, who were leaving, should do when they land and the things they should never do when they land; friends exchanging hugs and high-fives — uncounted prayers, well-wishes, hugs, kisses, talks - sad and happy - all enclosed in oodles of LOVE. You don’t feel the world is going to come to an end, you want to forget about wars, you don’t want to remember all those who have been hostile to you, not helped, never cared… you only want to remember this moment, the feeling, the thoughts, what you should say, what you shouldn't, the prayers and the best wishes. The only thing that makes one cry is the aura of the airport, which makes LOVE flow along!

I remember this dialog, which actually made me skip a beat when I'd heard it for the first time, from the movie, Love Actually:

“Whenever I get gloomy with the state of the world, I think about the arrivals gate at Heathrow Airport. General opinion's starting to make out that we live in a world of hatred and greed, but I don't see that. It seems to me that love is everywhere. Often, it's not particularly dignified or newsworthy, but it's always there - fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, husbands and wives, boyfriends, girlfriends, old friends. When the planes hit the Twin Towers, as far as I know, none of the phone calls from the people on board were messages of hate or revenge - they were all messages of love. If you look for it, I've got a sneaky feeling you'll find that love actually is all around.”

I concede that I shed a few tears when I was seeing my brother off, but I cried my guts out during my travel back home – this experience possibly drew me closer to him, way more closer than I’d ever thought I’d ever be. I think the distance does that to you, the AURA does that to you!

Embracing the discomfort

My life swears to obey by the famous French saying, the only thing constant in life is change. Conquering the apprehensiveness, skepticism and anxiety that comes along with the nearing ‘change’ surely seems a task big enough to discourage many ‑ for others, growing and evolving is a message every second ticking away leaves in mind.

So, I made my mind to move ahead in my professional life having left behind a plethora of memories which were weaved, thread by thread, in the three years I had spent in my previous organization. I feel it’s absolutely correct that when there are no external forces to make you feel uncomfortable, you never feel the need to break the cocoon of comfort and step out. That’s why, along with change, one thing that I would happily embrace all my life would be ‘discomfort’. This feeling of uneasiness made me feel I am worth more and the belief paved my way to success and a more worthy life.

Stepping into the change and finally experiencing it have been two exciting phases in my recent life. I dare say that I am living the dream of millions—no matter how dearly I thank my God for this, it will still be less. Living every bit of my entrepreneurial role, I feel I am no less than a CEO of a big MNC. Thankfully, the atmosphere I got is conducive enough to write my success story without considering any punctuation marks. Did I say before that I am a real lucky bum; anyways, I don't mind tossing a flying kiss to sky again!

Lastly, the learning life has made me take back home is:

The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn and feel and change and grow and love and live.

Homecoming

I have grown up listening to numerous stories my mom has been telling me about the things she used to do, things she expected and things she never thought she would experience when my dad sadly stayed away for weeks or, sometimes, months while serving the nation. Marrying a defence personnel comes with a price tag, she feels, as she concedes that the distance, more than anything else, makes you go weak from inside, making you worry about the well being of the person besides not letting you concentrate on anything but the person. 

Frankly, I never took those stories too seriously; heck, I mostly listened to those seeing how excited my mom was to share all of her experiences with me. Amongst all the stories that she had to tell, letters was a common aspect that she used to focus on. Letters, according to her, took a week to reach the recipient and thus, left the sender guessing why and what she was talking about two weeks back when she would finally receive a response to the same.

My fiancé-to-be has just come back from England, a place where he feels his heart lies. While he was away for 1.5 months, I found myself right there, in the shoes of my mom, living all the stories she'd told me, as if they all were scripted considering me as the protagonist. The only difference here was the fact that it was way easier for me to communicate with him; thanks to the ICE age we dwell in.

This communication was one of the reasons why I feel I have visited London myself; my eyes, it looked, were roaming around with my body being very much sedentary. Now that he is back, his homecoming has brought a lot of reasons to jump around with joy and make merry—the GIFTS that I have been pampered with. I feel I have been adequately compensated for all the worry, anxiety, concern and most of all, well-wishes I had invested in him for all the time when he was away. 

Here is a glimpse of all his love wrapped in lovely gifts.

That's a jacket he's brought for my brother.

That's the kind of bag I'v always wanted to have.

Loads and loads of delicious chocolates :)

Soliloquy: Who cares anyway!

When the things that happen around have way more impact on the atmosphere within; when the perceptions, opinions, thoughts and interpretations all battle amongst themselves to have a stand; when the matters boiling over in mind seem too crazy to be spilt out; when the world looks like a crazy sphere and us the sanest mortals alive; when fluxing out what mind has to say becomes a necessity and identifying who will understand it perfectly seems too much of a task, speaking to oneself DOES help; soliloquy, in fact, then acts like a medicine, an elixir or a monitor who ensures that sanity is in place.

When seen being practiced in public, it looks absurd but soliloquy is something which we all do, at some point, at least once in a day. While walking on my way back home one evening, I saw this half-awake, heavily drugged person lying on the footpath loudly complaining about the system, talking to himself, completely oblivious to the people passing by him. Living alone, may be, in a noisy world has made him struggle too much for silence in his life. For once, I did not see anything funny in his behavior; he did not look as if he has lost it or if he is a daft. He looked normal, a person who did not have a live person to talk to or to bounce ideas off of.

I, in fact, love this concept, of talking to self. This practice brings along multiple benefits which goes like follows. Firstly, since I am not saying the trash (that comes to my mind way too often) in front of the person who it is about, I’m saving my ribs from being broken or my face being deformed. I happily stay insured and safe. Secondly, there will be no complex in self-accusation. I could build upon the feeling of being wrong, identify the factors that could have averted the trouble and the things I could possibly do in future to insure I do not make an ape of myself again. Thirdly, I could criticize, applaud, appreciate, make commitments, over-estimate and curse myself without having to take anything on my ego. Everything, anyway, remains at home, no?

Further, I could discuss my dreams, no matter how absurd they may sound, and the possible steps I would want to take in order to inch them closer without having to explain whys and hows. I would want to learn belly dancing, dress in a neon-colored bikini, sip the most expensive wine on a private beach, become a multi-billionaire in a perfectly legal way, buy a lottery ticket every weekend, adopt a cub and NOT explain the ‘why’ part to anyone on the planet.

Lastly, when I am talking to myself, I might appear kooky to everyone but never to myself. I know I am the sanest person around with sound sense of judgment and fine taste in all spheres. Case Closed!

 

Sans the better half

The pain of losing someone close, close enough to quickly forget the loss, is what has engaged my mind all this while. My maternal grandmother (Nani) left for her heavenly abode on 6th of this month. The news was something which we knew was going to float, keeping in view her bad health, but was something which we were never, not at all, prepared to hear.

Writing this blog, as if putting a spell on me, has made me weep silently. Having seen her for a lifetime, I can determinedly say that some part of her is alive in me, and of course, in the people who had met her too frequently to call her an acquaintance. A true sweetheart, she shall stay irreplaceable in my mind; nor do I intend to ever let her memories go off it.  

In all the ceremonies which had to happen post she cashed in her chips, I saw a lot of relatives, who I had seldom seen before, coming, crying, sympathizing, condoling and leaving for their homes—as if doing some formality. I saw distant relatives explaining why the death should not be cried over much, as she was really ill, has left flourishing family behind, had seen three healthy generations or was just old enough to live anymore. I also saw people joining in just to catch up with other relatives and to exchange numbers. This really broke my heart.

 

Despite the overfriendly mannerism of our sweet relatives, I see a person who has been, undoubtedly, affected the most because of what happened to my Nani, my maternal grandfather (Nana)—the man who had spent more than 55 years of his life with this lady. Honestly speaking, I had never seen my Nana publicly cuddling my Nani or showing his affection in any manner out in the sun. For the best part of my life, I believed that my Nana doesn’t love her at all. My mindset, how amazingly, got changed in just four days!

Their bond has been a very queer, yet an interesting one. My Nana has been chronically dependent on my Nani, right from the time when he got married to her, for all the things you could think of. My Nani was literally his right hand. When old age approached both of them, they had this cute way of expressing love to each other, by just being there. One’s aura always helped the other get over any disease, big or small, without much fight.

I could say that they never loved each other, I never saw my Nana running extra mile for my Nani, doing anything which could make her smile, but I now see that the love that they shared was above earthly matters of pleasing or appeasing. The presence of one was love to the other. The feeling that the togetherness will defeat all the problems defined their love. Old age hasn’t been easy on anyone, but standing with a big bat to fight them out together was love to my grandparents. I remember my Nana complaining to me that Nani doesn’t bother to have all her checkups done on time and my Nani saying, ‘Inki mat sun, inko kuch pata nahi hota’…
 

 
Now, standing at this point in his life, I see my Nana the loneliest person on this planet. Fighting with old age alone will be looking heck a big task. I see their love now, more evidently. I see him looking at her bed and losing to some thought process. I see his eyes, as if waiting for some miracle. I see my Nana crying his guts out, giving up to the fact that death defeats all. There’s no big bat to fight this away. I salute their love which was there, invisible to all of us. The love was in togetherness, the love is in the aura.