April Fools' Day

It is really important to have friends. Whenever I move to a new city, I feel tremendously lonely and trust me, it's NOT a nice feeling. Mumbai is no exception. The loneliness is felt more when there is a festival or a celebration. It's no fun celebrating anything alone, including April Fools' Day. I actually felt grateful when a friend of mine sent me this today: 

This cute little thing touched my heart in more ways than you may think. It meant I was thought of on the occasion of this fun day. It meant, I have friends. It meant my life is richer than I thought, and so on. 

My father tells me that people are the treasures of life. I have learnt it to be true over the years. I thank all my friends for enriching my life in so many ways! 

The Climb

Today, I suddenly realised how true it is when the wise one said, “Life is a journey”. Yes, I totally agree with that. More so when I realised how we have to move on in the journey, regardless of whether or not you have the same companion you started your journey with or met on the way. 

For me, life is an uphill climb. Uphill, not because it is difficult, but because, we are supposed to live up to our full potential. We have to complete the task of being born as human beings; we have to reach our ultimate possibilities. In this climb, we meet many people, some of them boost our morale, some discourage us from looking up ahead, some make us weak and some just waste our time. In my climb in life, I have met all sorts of people and most of them continued to stay on. Some I had to let go, because they were just not worth it. Some came back and stayed even more committed to the journey and we became co-hikers or co-travellers for life. I know most of them will stay on till I reach the peak. I am at that age, where I can see things rationally now. I know what is doable and what is not worth sticking to. 

In an “aha-moment” I found out a perfect example to cite here: Say, I am on a mountain hike. Everything around me is beautiful, lush greenery, heart-warming meadows, musical springs and I am hiking with two kinds of drinks on my back pack. One is plain water and the other one is my favourite lemon iced tea. The bottle with lemon iced tea suddenly falls in the gorge below. What do I do? Shall I go down and find it or should I continue my hike with the bottle of water in my hand? I would choose to continue with the bottle of water in my hand. I would definitely continue my hike. :) 

See, I told you before; writing makes me think straight and feel good. Thank you for reading!

This is a wallpaper pic from live-positive.blogspot.com :) Nice noh?

A New Year is Here...

We are finally approaching the end of the year 2010. I am trying to review the passing by year and the feeling is unexplainable! The year 2010 rolled by like a roller coaster ride for me and coming to think of it, I have actually enjoyed every moment of it. No regret whatsoever. In the beginning of the departing year I remember tweeting, “No New Year resolution for me this time. This way, I will NOT feel guilty for not sticking to it” and I am so happy to be able to stick to my words.

I took the year as it came and lived every moment of it with full honesty and dedication. The year 2010 was mostly marked by travels, people and events. I had great fun in the form of trips abroad, trips to many Indian cities and beaches, celebrations of many kinds and my brother’s marriage to a sweet girl, all made 2010 worth every moment. The most satisfying milestone however was organising of the cultural event Bohagi Bidai where I was completely involved from the beginning to the end and in that process met many people and made many friends.
Celebrations give you happiness and let you savour these moments for life. On the other hand, you get wiser with bad experiences. I experienced that too. It was extremely difficult to accept certain changes, but I coped with that phase and got wiser by learning from that experience as well. The year 2010 was a journey of self discovery for me. I have discovered a new me and I didn’t know that this me existed at all. This me is wiser, patient, tolerant and extremely loving. I discovered to what extent I can go for something/someone I really believe in/love. I stretched myself to the limit and I know in this process I have enriched myself as a person.
In the year 2010, I experienced friendship at another level, I realised to what extent I can go and can stretch myself to accommodate people, events and work. I took the risk of breaking the invisible wall around me that I had built to keep myself safe from people. I chucked fear and that’s a great feeling! I used to feel extremely lonely when we first came to Kolkata. It has changed now. I have mentioned about it in one of my previous blogs, how the law of attraction has changed my life. Now I am a complete peoples’ person. I have so many friends that the entire world feels like home. I feel safe. :)

Now that 2011 is approaching, I am going to stick to my “No Resolution” theory so that I can experience life and the year as it presents itself to me. Of course I have my visions, set goals and my to dos ready for myself. But I don’t resolve to do or stick to something just because I made the resolution. I want to embrace every single day of the coming year with full enthusiasm and an open mind. I am so looking forward to this.
Today is 25th December, I wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and a very Happy New Year!

This Happened in India

Today I met this nice and cute lady in her ripe years who told me an amazing story. I had to share it here on my blog. She told me not to write, I promised I won’t quote the real names. But this is an amazing story!

Few days back I had met this Tamil couple, who happens to be my relative. Since they live in Geneva , I am meeting them for the first time in my life and we gelled so well. One day over some Chinese lunch in a star hotel in Kolkata, the man, (lets call him Athim here as Athimber stands for brother-in-law in Tamil, though I call him by his name as he prefers that :)),  told me that his mother cooks very well and his parents are Bengali. Well, I couldn’t really understand why was he saying that. How can he be a Tamil guy while his parents are Bengali? Well, my curiosity remained unanswered as everyone was talking about food and food alone and me being the youngest of the group, had to maintain courtesy. However, the itch remained inside.

I had to visit my new relatives house for a puja (religious ceremony) and I got the opportunity to meet my Athim’s elder sister, let me call her Akka (Akka means elder sister in Tamil) there in their house. She has landed in the morning for this puja. We got along the moment we were introduced and in the course of conversation, Akka mentioned that though originally she is a Bengali, her parents are Tamil. Well, of course I have had enough of this suspense already. So, this time, seeing that she is such a lovely, friendly lady, I asked her, how is that possible? How can Athim be a Tamil and his parents are Bengali and she is a Bengali originally and her parents are Tamil? I just had to know it. Here is the story that blew my mind off!

Akka told me that when her parents were young they were friends with a Tamil couple. They were such good friends that they wanted to stay together forever as friends. Hence, they started living together. This must have been decades ago. The Tamil couple and the Bengali couple hence started staying together in the same house and had children of their own. The friendship never changed. The children that is my Akka, Athim, their respective siblings, all have grown together in the same house as one single family. Now in their 60s and 70s, these siblings are still very much there for each other regardless of geographic boundaries. I just couldn’t believe it.  

Obviously, my question was not answered yet. How can she have Tamil parents if she is of Bengali origin and vice versa for Athim? She told me another fascinating story of love. When Athim was born, his original Tamil parents sighed and said, “No, not another boy again!” So, the Bengali couple said, “Never mind, give us your child, he will be ours.” The Tamil couple agreed. However, when another girl child was born in the Bengali family, the Bengali family returned the favour to the Tamil family and they lived happily ever after.

Isn’t it an amazing story? Akka told me, the mother of hers and Athim’s still live together. Now they are in their 90s and they have bitter fights with each other everyday, make up with each other everyday because they can’t live without having each other around. I found this story to be really amazing and mind blowing! How people can be so broad-minded and unconventional! How did the cruel society allow such an existence! I am sure people must have made dirty stories about them. But they never bothered. I wonder how they could manage so nicely over the years and the love they share is simply amazing! Akka was the one who had come to Kolkata to choose the bride for her brother (my Athim) and managed everything and nobody objected anything. Athim’s other sibling consists of a very famous female singer of our times now. I cannot mention her name here, but the whole of India knows her. I am so happy to be a part of such a wonderful broadminded family. God bless them!

On Moving On

It’s been few days now, I have been feeling “Oh so miserable!” But I guess it is not helping me. Hence, I am back to my blog to vent out my thoughts that is babbling in my head (writing helps me think clear). The reason of my this state of mind is because a very very close and the best friend of mine had left this place for good and I am missing him so terribly. I have been crying non-stop for three days. People at my home know that I am missing this friend and they are being very understanding. If I was in there place, I would have told to myself, “oh gimme a break!” or must have shouted saying “will you let it go already?!”. But I continued crying even after my people tried their best to make me understand the reality, - the reason why he had to go, why I shouldn’t cry, how I am not losing anything since he will always remain a friend and so on. But I am not buying any of it. I need him here with me, by my side, to fight with him, argue with him, go shopping with him, to meet other friends with him and in one word, to live. I feel so empty inside! I feel as if I have nothing in my life to look forward to! It feels as if I had lost someone in the family. I just couldn’t stop crying! I have tried to see the rationality of the whole thing and tried to divert my mind. I tried watching movies, listening to songs, going to the parlour, doing gardening and whatever is possible to keep me away from his thoughts. But everywhere his thoughts popped up! While watching movies, he was the best friend of the actor (sometimes, he was the hero!), while listening to songs, the song was sung for him, while coming back from the parlour, I wanted him to comment on my new hair do, while gardening, I wanted to show him my new plants….oh crap! He had become a part of my everyday life!
Today is the fourth day of his absence and I talked to myself the whole of last night. Tried to make myself understand that I cannot continue like this. I have to get back on track as I have responsibilities to carry on, projects to finish, deadlines to meet and a home to run. I am neglecting all those and sulking to no end. A college friend of mine advised me on facebook that I should move on, because I was NOT his priority and that’s why he had left to attend to his set priorities. Whoa! That struck hard on my head! I guess she was right! He became my priority but I was not his! I have got so used to having him around that I started believing that he will always be there with me by my side. I was wrong!

Now, despite missing him so terribly, I am seeing the practicality of this entire event. The fact is that, he had left to do his to dos. I have mine. I must do those. Most importantly, I have promises to myself that I must respect and keep. I have to move on. I know we will remain best friends forever and I really hope that even when we meet after 100 years the friendship we have, remains the same! Because I think I will always be needing this friend of mine.
Ironically, I do not believe that long distance friendship can be the same as real life friendship. But I really want to be proved wrong this time. I do need physical presence of the person when I want to be with him/her. If it has to work despite the distance, I need complete keeping in touch with each other on a regular (read daily) basis. I guess he knows me enough to realise this fact. We are keeping in touch, but somewhere in my heart I feel that very soon he will get busy with his work, home, life, wife and I will just silently take the exit route. May be even without realising that everything has changed. It hurts, but it will be good for me if I accept the reality soon. I don’t want another episode of heart break and crying. I thank him for everything today (except that he had left me alone here). I love my friend and will always do.