Category Archives: Life

Turning the pages

02 Friday Aug 2013

Posted by in Dreams, Happiness, Life, Musings, Optimism

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This is the first time EVER that I am writing a post on a topic suggested by someone else. The simple reason being that I wanted to see how well I did when I water a seed that someone else planted in my mind. This idea is courtesy Meenu who asked me to write a post about the book that I have liked/loved most and I said…why not? Let us see what we can come up with. So, in a way, this post is dedicated to her.

So, which book am I going to talk about today? I will be honest – it wasn’t an easy choice at all. Though I have never claimed to be a “voracious reader” and I work in an industry where paper is treated as an untouchable commodity, I am responsible for a fair amount of trees being cut down. Out of all the books I have read so far, each one (with a few exceptions) has been an enjoyable journey. Intriguing at times, engrossing at others. So, picking out one was easier said than done. That being said, I decided to go by gut feel. I just laid back, closed my eyes, and the very first image that flashed in my mind was the story of Santiago, a shepherd boy in search of his dream.

As many of you might have guessed by now, I am talking about The Alchemist, one of Paulo Coelho’s all-time classics. I will not go into the details of the plot of the book. You can always refer to Wikipedia for that. Neither am I going to come up with a review of the book, as I believe that a book is something to be felt, to be experienced, and not to be evaluated or reviewed. I am simply going to tell you about the impression that this tale made on me, and how it has helped me in my life. Yes, you read that right. This is one book whose theme I have been able to apply practically in my day-to-day life. 🙂

Thanks to SRK and Om Shanti Om, almost everyone is aware of the key theme of the book. “When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it” is what the alchemist tells Santiago. To a large extent, this is something we all would like to believe in, and why not? Who wouldn’t want to desire something and have things fall in place auto-magically? Seems too good to be true, and it indeed is. This is something which I have found that many of us miss out on. In the ecstasy of imagining our dreams come true just like that, we forget about one more thing that Santiago was told. And I will admit – I didn’t catch it the first time either. It was only when I actually tried applying the principle in real life that I encountered it. Curious? Read on.

“Those who don’t understand their Personal Legends will fail to comprehend its teachings” is what the alchemist says to Santiago, adding that when we are young, we all know what our “Personal Legend” is. Admittedly, this sounds like high-brow management speak, until you realise it is nothing else but the basic purpose of your life – the role that you are supposed to play on this big stage. As I understand it, it is all about really focusing on what you want to achieve in life, what you want to be remembered as after you have made your exit, and then fearlessly working your way towards it. It is only after you have set foot on this journey that things start falling in place for you. If you expect to sit on your ass and expect things to fall on your lap, remember that even a beggar sitting outside the temple doesn’t enjoy that luxury. He has to reach out to people and tug at their heart strings to make them loosen their purse strings.

Coming back to myself, this book has always been a great source of inspiration to me. Whenever I feel down and out (yes people, I do feel like that at times) I simply pick it up, flip to a random page and start reading. Invariably, I find that calm is restored within some time. Two of the most important lessons that this book has taught me are – “follow your dreams” and “life listens to what you say/do and rewards you accordingly”. The first one is pretty obvious to understand and equally difficult to follow to the fullest. Fortunately, I have always been blessed with opportunities (and people) around me who have been supportive of my efforts to make my life the way I want it to be. Of course, there have been detractors too, a fair share of them. But for me, they have proved to be more of a motivator. If there is something I really love doing, it is having people tell me that I cannot do something and then proving them wrong. 😉

The second one is a bit tricky. At first, I had thought that it was all about life paying you back for your good/bad deeds, or what is popularly known as karma. Then, I realised that it was not just karma, it was also about how we accept what life bestows on us. Whatever life puts in our hands, we have to accept it with equanimity. If it gives you something which makes you happy, smile, be grateful to it and thank it. If it gives you something that makes you sad, smile, say “no worries, I hope I get a better deal next time round” and move ahead towards your dream. Trust me, life WILL pay you back what it owes you. 🙂 In my experience so far, I have found it to be the most balanced credit-debit sheet EVER. One thing that I have learnt (sometimes the hard way) is not to deny anything that life offers to you. If it offers you something that you feel you are not worthy of, you are WRONG. Life knows better. If you are getting something, it is because you deserve it, as simple as that. Don’t deny yourself the pleasure, cherish it. 🙂

This has been a long post so far, but a very satisfying one to write. Thanks Meenu, get your brain cells buzzing – if these are the kind of ideas you are going to come up with, I need more of them. 🙂

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Same thing, same time…

14 Sunday Jul 2013

Posted by in Life, Musings

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“Hey, I was JUST about to say that”
“Same thing at the same time…great minds think alike, at the same time, too…” 😀
“Yaar, mere munh ki baat chheen li tumne…”

If any of these sound familiar to you, you already know what I am going to talk about today. Yes, its about what is generally known as telepathy, or that awesome (or weird if you claim to possess that intangible quality called sanity) phenomenon where your mental frequency (wavelength if you choose so) matches with someone so well, that completing each others’ sentences, reading their mind, and yes, saying the same thing at the same time (even if it is not directly related to what you are discussing at that point of time) becomes an everyday affair. It happens many a times with me, not with many people though. And like most of my other posts, this too is about my own experiences, and definitely NOT about whether telepathy exists or not. If I experience it with you, it very much exists. If I don’t, it doesn’t. As simple as that. 🙂

I have always believed that if you have people in your life with whom you can speak less and say more, and be assured that they will get you right, you are a very fortunate person. This person need not always be your lover/spouse or even your soulmate. Yes, one’s lover/spouse may NOT be one’s soulmate, but I digress. It can be a friend, or even someone whom you have known for a short while. What really matters is that with these people, communication is nothing short of near-magic, where you don’t speak much not because you don’t have much to speak about, but because you don’t need to. And when you speak, the understanding is so good, it almost seems too good to be true. Now, this does not mean that you agree on anything and everything, it simply means that even if you don’t agree on something, you don’t have to do much to make the other person understand it.

After reading the above paragraph, you might think that I have digressed from where I started. What does understanding each other well have to do with telepathy? Right? Well, let me ask you this – where does the damn telepathy come from? Unless you understand each other well, it is well-nigh impossible to be so much in sync that your thoughts (and words) complement each other even when they run in opposite directions. You might be a butter chicken fanatic and they may run away even at the mere glimpse of an egg, but if the very mention of “food” gets both of you saying “Chal yaar…kuch khaate hai…bhookh lagi hai”, THAT, my dear friends, is telepathy. And before you think that all I can think of is food (someone definitely considers me a “foodie”), let me tell you that I took food as an example because its the easiest to understand. 😀 I could have equally well taken up a topic like emotions or love, but then knowing me, that would have been so predictable. 😉

Now where does this “telepathy” really stem from? I believe that we all have our own unique blend of craziness (this theory does explain my round-the-clock ability to yap quite well) and when we come across someone with a similar blend, the resulting magic is inevitable. There is really no scientific explanation for this, and I am not even seeking any. I am just happy that such a thing exists, and there are people in my life (however few) with whom I can experience it. 🙂 In fact, when I come across a new person in any sphere of my life, one of the first things I look out for is the ease with which we can communicate. And if I happen to strike gold, the happiness is second to none.

Having said all that, I must say that this is not something I have experienced it with too many people in my life. In fact, I can count such people on the fingers of one hand (and I am not even Hrithik Roshan to have an extra finger). So, if I have told you that I have experienced this with you, you belong to a very select club. Thanks for matching my blend of craziness…you are awesome! 🙂

Salty icecream, sweet sunshine

28 Tuesday May 2013

Posted by in Hope, Life, Looking back, Love

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Walking hand-in-hand, he felt a slight tug of her hand on his. Turning back, he looked into her eyes – only to see what he had been dreading since that morning. A look of resignation, tinged with fear and laced with uncertainty. “What happened?”, he asked, not really expecting an answer. She continued to look at him, almost urging him to not say anything.

“Lets sit down here for a minute. Is that okay?”, he said – pointing to a bench nearby. “Do you really think everything is okay, Bugs?” was her hesitant reply. “I know its not, but I don’t want you to get affected by it.”. She said nothing and just sat on the bench as if someone had laden a million burdens on her shoulders. He settled down next to her and just held her hands, silently, reassuringly.

For a few minutes, the only sound one could hear was of the traffic passing them by, while both just looked at each other – speaking nothing, saying a lot. When the silence got unbearable, she blurted out – “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to do this anymore!!”. The suddenness of what she said took no time to hit him, yet it was a few seconds before the impact of it truly hit him. And when it did, tears welled up in his eyes. However, this is not the time for them to show up, he thought to himself as he pushed them back with sheer effort.

“I know why you said that first sentence, but I don’t believe you when you say that second one. I know very well that you do want to do this.”

“This is what scares me really. Why do you know me so well that I can’t even bloody lie to you? At least then you would be hurt less than now“

“There is nothing like more or less when it comes to pain, Bunny. And who says that you are hurting me? The situation that we are in is screwing us..fine..agreed…but we will overcome this, I am damn sure.”

“How the hell can you be so confident that it will work out? I don’t see it happening.”

“Even I don’t see it happening – we will have to make it happen. And no matter how optimistic I am, I cannot do this without you. We cannot do this without each other.”

He reached out to her and held her face in his palms, tenderly kissing her forehead. “Don’t do that. You are making it more difficult for me.”, she said.

“Really, if that is the case, why are you still holding on to my arm? Why are you not letting me go?”.

“Coz I don’t want to…I don’t want to.”

“So now you know how I am feeling…right? And you felt you could walk away just like that out of my life?”

“I was hoping I could, but I know I am wrong. I am so selfish. I can’t assure you of anything, yet I want to hold on to you.”

“You’re not selfish re…its just that life is really testing us. Do you remember about how we talked that day about having a house on the beach in our old age?”

“Hmmm…”

“We may or may not end up in that house, but does that mean we don’t even try?”

“We must try re, but I am not sure whether we will succeed”

“Neither am I…but then that is the beauty of it. If we succeed, we enjoy the destination. If we don’t, we have at least enjoyed the journey.”

“How can you be so calm? I just don’t understand that.”

“Well…firstly you don’t understand many things. Secondly, who is calm? Idhar mera band baj raha hai. Baahar se nahi dikhta to kya hua?”, he said, tapping her head lightly.

As she broke into a slight smile, he pulled her cheeks and said..”Do you like salty icecream?”

“Salty icecream??? Kuchh bhi!!!”

“Haan of course!! Itna rona dhona kar diya…icecream khaaogi to wo bhi salty ho jaayegi dekhna..”

“Nahi hogi…meethi hi hogi…tum hi dekhna. Aur haan…I am gonna eat up your coffee walnut icecream too.”

“Arey then what I am supposed to do?”

“You? You are supposed to pay for the icecream, watch me while I eat it and yes, then you are supposed to drop me home. Chalo..kaam pe lago..bahut kaam hai tumhaare liye!!”

As a bright smile returned to her lips and her eyes sparkled with a new-found happiness, they walked towards the ice-cream counter. The future was still uncertain, but love had  lived on, to witness one more day of sunshine.

Do sikke

01 Wednesday May 2013

Posted by in Happiness, Hope, Life, Looking back, Love

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“Here, keep this with you”, he said, handing a coin to her.
“Whats that? Oh, a 10 rupee coin!! Where did you get one of those?”
“Actually, I got two of those. One for you and one for me.”
“I don’t think I deserve to get anything from you…not anymore!!”
“Why so?”
“…..”
“Just because things have not gone the way we wanted them to go, that doesn’t mean I can’t do anything for you…right?”.
“……” All she could do was hold on to his arm and rest on his shoulder, like a child holding on to a parent.

His fingers intertwined with hers, partly as a matter of habit, mostly as a gesture of assurance. “You don’t have to say anything…not now, not ever.”
“This isn’t fair to you…”
“Sometimes life isn’t fair…not fair at all. I gotta take what comes my way.”

Clasping the coin in her palm, he faintly kissed her fingers and said “Keep this one with you…and I will keep one with me”.
“Is this meant to be a forever-together promise? What happened to that ‘we will always be under the same moon’ dialogue of yours?”
“That was when we believed that we would always be together. Things didn’t quite turn out that way na?”
“…..”
“There will be a time when my being there, if only in your memories, will hurt you. That is something I just can’t allow to happen. If I ask you to look at the moon and remember me, the moon is never going to go away, and neither is the pain. This coin can be used and let go on its way forward.”
“And what about you? Are you gonna let your coin go, too?”
“………”

This was one question he had no answer to. He could only look in her eyes – speaking nothing, saying a lot. “I think I should leave now…“, said she as she held on to his fingers for one last time and stepped back.

Both the coins stayed tightly clasped in their palms, waiting to be let go on their way forward.

The girl on the beach

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Dreams, Life

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Close on the heels of the earlier post, comes this one about – yes, you guessed it right – yet another dream of mine. And unlike the earlier one, which was still pretty sober, this one is something which you wouldn’t expect of me. So, here comes a disclaimer – this is my dream, not the real me. 😛

It all begins in a hut near the top of a mountain. I am sitting outside the hut getting bored and looking towards the base of the mountain. There I can see a large beach on one side and a deep valley on another. I am in two minds as to where I should be going when I happen to notice a pair of binoculars lying nearby and decide to use it. Peering through the binoculars, I see a female form on the beach and nothing significant around the valley. So I opt for the beach. When I come down to the base of the mountain I am faced with a thick forest which was not present there when I had looked from above. Nevertheless, I decide to cross it – only to find that it is full of  trees and thorny bushes. Undeterred, I go on. The thorns tear my clothes to rags and I am profusely bleeding, but I still move on towards the beach, pulled by some unknown power.
When I cross the forest after what seems like an eternity, I reach the beach. There I don’t see any female but I do notice a rundown shack a few paces away. I enter the shack to find it very neat and clean, with stuff properly arranged. There is a bed and a small table beside it. I sit on the bed and instantly get a feeling of deja vu. Looking around, I notice that the drawer of the table is slightly ajar. I open it to find an envelope inside, containing a photo of me with a human form – the human form has been cut out of the picture. I put the photo back. When I am doing so,I notice that there is a blank photo frame lying around. I check it to find that there is actually a photo hidden inside it. It’s of a simple (but beautiful) girl whom I have never met before (in real life or in any of my dreams). I carry that photo with me and come out of the shack.
Wherever I can see, I can find only the sea. Now I am really desperate to find the girl in the photo. So I decide to walk in one direction, hoping that I would mange to find the female that I saw from the top of the mountain. After walking for quite some time, I happen to see a female walking some distance ahead of me. I run to her and holding her hand, turn her towards me. I am taken aback when I notice that she is faceless, except for her lips – no eyes, no ears, no features except lips. She smiles at me and says “you should not have come here”. I ask her who she is and what she means by that. She says nothing and just steps closer to me. As her scent hits me, I feel waves of intense craving engulf me. I pull her towards myself and kiss her hard. She has got luscious lips and I get totally carried away. I hold her body close to mine and though she does not seem to be responding, I am too carried away to notice. After a while, she starts responding and we proceed to make love for what seems like an eternity. At the end of it all, I am too exhausted but it feels absolutely heavenly. Then, as we are sitting close to each other, listening to the waves of the sea, I happen to look at her and see that she is no more a faceless entity, but has developed a face – the face of the girl in the photo. She smiles at me as I look at her and again says those very words – “you should not have come here”. I get confused and try to reason with her. Suddenly, a huge wave rises and falls on me. I nearly get carried away into the sea but manage to hold on. Strangely though, she remains unaffected by the impact of the wave. She again pleads with me to go away but I refuse to do so. After some time, a second wave hits me. This time though, I get pulled into the ocean. As I am being carried away underwater, I look at her – she is still smiling that same beatific smile when the scene darkens out, and I wake up.

Dream on

29 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Dreams, Life

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I was talking to a friend yesterday, when I happened to mention that “mujhe boring dreams nahi aate”. Her response was – “Aisa kya interesting aata hai? :O”. Well, now I don’t know if its interesting or not – so the best way was to post one of those here and let everyone decide for themselves. 🙂

The period in the dream is somewhere about 8-10 years in the future. I am living on the top floor of a multi-storey building with huge glass walls through which I can enjoy the sights and sounds of the city flowing below. Something like Aamir Khan’s Sydney residence in Dil Chahta Hai; only with all glass walls. One night, I am watching the city skyline, trying to gather some sleep, albeit unsuccessfully. Suddenly there is a knock on the door. Since I am under the influence of incomplete sleep, i just ignore the sound. After what seems like ages, the knocking starts again. This time, it has a weird hypnotic rhythm to it. I am scared but something pulls me towards the door. On opening the door, I find nobody outside. Now this scares me even more. I close the door, come inside and am about to settle back into my chair when the rhythm starts again. This time, I am absolutely petrified and run towards the door in a fit of fury. Again, there’s no one outside but this time I find a straw basket lying outside my door, covered with a dirty little piece of rag.
I remove the rag, only to find a newborn baby inside the basket – with fresh blood on its body and the umbilical cord ominously dangling. Its face is contorted as if it were crying but I am unable to hear any sound. Beside the baby is placed a cellphone and piece of paper with a number on it. I pick up the phone and dial the number. At first, nobody responds. I try again, and the call is answered. A deep baritone echoes at the other end. I explain the situation to him and ask what the hell is going on. All he says is “You don’t always get what you want; but you surely get what you need”. Saying so, he disconnects the line. I call repeatedly, only to get no answer. Now, in the darkness of the night, I am left with the baby, about whom I know nothing. I pick up the baby, wondering what to do next. Suddenly, it touches my face and lets out the most blood-curdling scream I ever heard (in a dream or otherwise). Surprisingly, instead of being terrified by the turn of events, tears start flowing from eyes and I start sobbing. This is where the dream ends, leaving me wide awake.

Interestingly, whenever this dream occurs, it is always followed by major changes (mostly positive) in my life. So,I have come to look at this dream as an indicator of the future, so to say. 🙂

Happy Birthday to me :)

20 Saturday Apr 2013

Posted by in Happiness, Hope, Life

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No, I am not wishing myself a happy birthday here, though it does seem like I am. This is just to sum up a wonderful day that I had yesterday. If the calendar was a clock, it would have struck 34 for me yesterday (this is for all you people who keep asking me how old/young I am) and rang an alarm asking me to check my relationship status (this is for all the people who keep asking me about how long it was before I decide to make someone’s life miserable :P). Contrary to what some (actually many) people would have me believe, I have been enjoying my birthday even more as the years pass by. Every year, just when I think that this one is going to be a fairly standard, routine affair, life blesses me with some moments that make the day memorable. This year was no exception either. To know how, read on.

It all started at the stroke of midnight (actually a couple of minutes before) when the calendar crossed over from 18th to 19th. A friend (and a fellow genius – you know who you are. :P) who is known to doze off during conversations, and that too much before midnight called to wish me. It always feels awesome to have someone wish you at that exact minute, so it definitely means a lot. 🙂 Minutes afterwards, my best friend Aru came up with this, which truly made my day. I had tears (of joy of course) in my eyes.

The D-day started off with some awesome puranpoli made by mom. It was spent mostly at office, being the center of attraction (my one day of stardom…bliss!! :D) and evading questions about age, treats and marriage, mostly in that order. Yes – work got done, too. NOW you can safely call me a workaholic, I guess. 🙂 Oh yeah, one more rare thing happened – when I left office in the evening, the sky was actually bright with sunlight, and not the stars as it normally is. 😛 On reaching home, there were 2 cakes waiting for me – one bought by dad and one sent over by Aru. Lo and behold – they turned out to be IDENTICAL. 😀 That was a fun thing to see (and eat).

No, I am not done yet. While all this was happening in the real world, the virtual world also showered its share of love and blessings on me. People whom I had not even known until a year back wished me on Twitter/Facebook without needing to be reminded (In all modesty, I am not someone who pimps my own birthday – I prefer to let people remember) at all. Thanks a ton, all you beautiful people. You added that extra dash of sunshine to the day. 🙂

So, all in all, it was a great day – one that I will remember for a long time. And if you think that nothing spectacular happened (like parties, celebrations etc.), let me tell you, all that will indeed follow – the fun has just begun. 🙂

P.S.: There were a few people who forgot to wish me, despite remembering it till a couple of days before. They are going to get their legs pulled like anything. like I said above, the fun has only begun. 😛

Talk to me

17 Wednesday Apr 2013

Posted by in Life, Musings, Sharing

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One good thing that has started happening since I have started writing a post every day is that the reactions to a post typically provide me with the idea for the next day’s post. That way, I don’t have to tax my brains too much for the next dose of inspiration. Following this pattern, a friend and me were discussing about yesterday’s post wherein he mentioned that though I said that love can happen more than once, it was very difficult to find someone worth loving. I asked him about what he looked for when he looked for “someone to love”, so to speak. The main thing that came out of the discussion that followed was that it is not always about romantic feelings or physical companionship. What he really craved was simply having someone to share his feelings with, someone to just sit down and talk to.

Now that struck a chord with me. Not just because I love to talk, but also because I believe that one of the most important factors in any worthwhile human connection is the ability to share your thoughts, experiences, fears with the other person. And as I have observed, the most effective way to this is by – you guessed it…talking to each other. When you find someone with whom you can talk what you can’t talk with others, you’ve found the proverbial pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Do your best to hold on to it. 🙂

Now, why is talking so important to us, especially when it comes to forming close connections with people around us? Forget for a moment cliches like “Man is a social animal” – the fact remains that we all have a basic need to express what we think. What follows is this is the need for an audience, but not everything we think/feel is intended to be shared with all and sundry. This is where the need for a “listener” to whom we can talk freely comes in the picture. Secondly, talking to someone, especially about something close to your heart, is an act of opening up to that person, and trusting him/her to understand you. And when you do that, you automatically form a connection with that person unlike any other. In that sense, I believe that talking your heart out to someone is more intimate a gesture than a hug or a kiss. I speak this from experience – if someone shares with you what they cannot or do not share with anyone else, consider yourself special. You mean a LOT to them. Do all that you can to deserve that privilege.

And just as talk can be used to share your feelings or to foster companionship, it can also be used as a cloak to hide your true colours or to mislead/manipulate someone. NEVER do that to anyone – you will only end up generating a lot of bad blood in the end. Broken trust is the most difficult thing to repair. If you feel that someone is doing it to you, the simplest way out is to take your time to trust people. No one is going to judge you for taking a while to trust people, as long as you trust the right lot. 🙂

For talking to be worthwhile, what matters the most is “listening” (not “hearing”). You need to be a good listener, if you seek the privilege of having someone to talk to. However, I will keep that for another post. For now, I will wrap up things here with a line I read somewhere, and which sums up my thoughts on this very effectively – “When you don’t talk, there’s a lot of stuff that ends up not getting said”.

Does love happen only once?

15 Monday Apr 2013

Posted by in Life, Looking back, Love, Musings

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So…quite a difficult question in the title up there, right? And supposedly, one with no simple answer, right? Well…no and yes respectively, if you ask me. The question is really simple, the answer not quite so. Does Cupid behave like lightning and refuse to strike at the same place twice? Or does he believe in second chances? Like all good questions, this one too doesn’t have a definitive answer, and I only have my experiences and observations (not to mention, beliefs) to fall back on.

Let me keep things simple here. If you ask me if love can happen twice, my answer would be a resounding YES. No round about answers there, just a simple, uncomplicated yes. Okay, so if someone falls in love the second time, doesn’t that mean that s/he wasn’t really in love the first time round? Or even worse, isn’t s/he just a fickle-minded person who jumps from one romantic interest to another with little hesitation? Since I have been asked (and answered) these questions many times before (this doesn’t imply that I have been in that situation many times :P), here is what I always say to these questions.

Firstly, we need to stop treating love like a non-renewable energy resource, which cannot be replenished once depleted. The way I see it, love is more of a verb than a noun, a promise than a feeling. Loving someone is not (just) something that happens instinctively, its a conscious promise that you make to yourself and that person. Of course, you may or may not be able to fulfill that promise depending on the circumstances, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that it is basically something you do, and not something that happens to you out of the blue. And by that definition, you can indeed commit yourself to another person, though obviously not at the same time – that would just make you a desperado in my books ;).

Consider this – why do we think that we will not be able to love someone else? or for that matter, no one is able to love more than once? Why do we feel that the so-called “true love” happens only once? I feel it is because we carry around the remnants of the first love for too long with us. Agreed, it was wonderful to be in love with someone, and to have shared dreams of sharing the sunset of life with that person. But if circumstances have taken that person out of your life – it is indeed for a reason. It need not be anyone’s fault – it could simply be that despite of all that was, you two just weren’t meant to be. And if you keep carrying the burden of the past with you, you are neither going to enjoy the present, nor going to be able to create the future. To create a new dawn, you have to leave the old dusk behind. For the tree to flourish, the seed has to be buried. It might sound (and be) painful to do so, but if it has to be done, it has to be done. 🙂

On a lighter note, consider the mathematical proof (invented by yours truly) of how love can happen more than once. In fact, it can happen at least 300 times. Surprised? This is how it works: The world population is about 7 billion. For the sake of even figures, assume it to be 6 billion. Out of these 6 billion, let only 10% belong to your age group (the “eligible” candidates for a romantic interest). This comes to about 600 million. Considering that you are only interested in the opposite gender, this halves down to 300 million. Now, even assuming that your so-called “the one” is one in a million person, the best ever, and all that jazz, there are 300 people who fit this definition. So, even if you haven’t struck gold the first time, there are still 299 more arrows in your quiver. Now doesn’t THAT sound good? 😛

Well, mathematical proofs aside, one thing is irrefutable – love can indeed happen twice, provided you open your heart to it. Sinking its head in the sand did no good for the ostrich, and it won’t do any good for you either. So if you haven’t found your rainbow the first time round, don’t worry – there will still be many monsoons coming your way. 🙂

Return to innocence

14 Sunday Apr 2013

Posted by in Happiness, Life, Musings

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One of the immediate reactions to yesterday’s post (just as I had expected) was from my one of my friends – “Abey, tu abhi tak bada nahi hua kya?” (Haven’t you grown up yet, man?). To which, my reply was – “Bada ho gaya, boodha nahi hua!!” (I have grown up, not grown old). While that repartee was enough to shut him up, it did leave me thinking. Why this bias against staying young in the mind? Physically everyone wants to stay on the right side of 30, though. Why do we place so much of a premium on “growing up” that displaying your inner child seems almost like a stigma?

Admittedly, this is a question I don’t have the answer to. Neither am I going to attempt answering that today. What I do have, however, is a firm belief that if you are not keeping your inner child alive and happy, you are doing life wrong. I have taken great pains to make that happen, and I can totally understand when you say that it is easier said than done. When life seems intent on serving you with disappointment in frequent doses, holding on to those nuggets of sunshine can be quite a task. But then, nothing worth having in life ever came easy. So, if your inner kid is still sporting a smile on his face, you’ve done great. 🙂 Keep doing whatever it is that you have done so far. And if he has a frown on his face (or worse, if you can’t seem to find him), let me tell you my way of making him smile. It may or may not work for you, but no harm in trying, I think.

First and foremost, stop caring for what the world would say/think. The moment you start worrying about what someone else would think of your actions, you’ve already started playing your game by their rules. And let me tell you this, it just doesn’t work that way. If its your life being played out, its your rules that have to be followed – as simple as that. Figure out what is most important to you, focus on that and your actions will follow suit. You will indeed need to step on a few toes while doing this, but as long as you are not doing anything devious or evil, you should be fine. This is the MOST difficult first step you will have ever taken, but the payoff is totally worth it. Now, if you are wondering how does that relate to your inner child, go and observe a child. Notice how their first priority always seems to be to keep themselves happy. They may shower their love on you, but will never put themselves in too much trouble, unless really required. This self-centered innocence is what we had as kids. When we “grew up”, we either “developed” it into an excessively self-sacrificing attitude or replaced it with an uncompromising “my way or the highway” stance. Neither of these really helped us, right? 🙂

Secondly, as a result of #1 above, there will be times you will feel that you are doing something wrong. Its quite natural to feel so, especially when your near and dear ones might be affected by some of the things that you end up doing. At times like these, ask yourself this very simple question – if you do what the world wants you to do, and end up being a sad, unhappy person, who (apart from yourself) will be affected the most? Yes – you got that right. A little bit of hurt is always necessary for growth. Trust me – if are honest with yourself and with them, the ones who really matter will still be standing there for you when you win over life at your own terms. The most important thing is to believe in what you are aiming for.

Lastly, and most importantly, NEVER EVER give up on yourself or that kid whom you are doing all this for. No matter how well (or not) you are doing in life, you always deserve a lot better. That is not going to happen all by itself. It will need sweat, blood, and often tears too before you finally taste the flourish of happiness. That is a heady mix – the feeling of having played the game by your own rules, and winning it. Don’t get cynical, don’t feel dejected. Whenever you feel the darkness of the night in your heart, remember that dawn is just a moment away. 🙂 You might get branded as foolish or too optimistic (I have been called that many a times), but then, hang on to that innocent, hopeful child who tells you that all will be well. 🙂

Life may have turned you into a disbeliever and you may have been intoxicated by the dark flavours of cynicism, but believe me – innocence is far more intoxicating. You only have to experience it once, and you will be hooked.

Normally, I like to end my posts with a flourish, a self-quote, so to say. This time though, Enigma have made the job easier for me. I couldn’t have said it better.

Follow just your own way, follow just your own way,
Don’t give up, don’t give up,
To return, to return to innocence…