Moving out of the old into the new

I am sitting quietly, alone, or perhaps is it the song that is keeping me company? Listening to “Suspicious minds”, for almost the first time since I last heard it on the day I moved into this house, I realise we all have suspicious minds- suspicious of others, of ourselves, of the future, of the past... Elvis passed, the song will stay forever, meaning different things to different people. I distinctly remember that day, the day I discovered the wonder of train sounds and rain tapping the windows. This house, will soon be a thing of past. This beautiful wonderful abode where I have shared countless memories with close ones, lived a pretty carefree life, set up home in Delhi... The eyes wet up thinking of the goodbyes to the walls, rooms, corridors. One has to let go of the old things in order to acquire new ones. There is seldom space in life for both.

I haven’t known in a while where I am headed- the direction is mapped out but the wheels keep taking me elsewhere. I don’t meet people I should be, I am not doing the work I should be and sometimes I think I am merely a shadow of my earlier self. Despite having shed the unsure life, the blinding lack of accountability and having accepted to take the baton of the one tie that binds one for life, I find myself in a sea of uncertainty. The only difference from all the previous times is that this time I am not in this alone. I have wonderful hand, holding mine and helping me grow into a better person.

The frame

Robert Evans: There are three sides to every story. My side, your side, and the truth. And no one is lying. Memories shared serve each one differently

The mirroring image on the outside was picture perfect. No spots, no dust, no misgivings, no faults, no cracks... Her world seemed so content to the outsiders. No one knew that she wanted to scream out of her frame... She wanted to break the bondage of pain and self harm. No one ever understood her. No one ever will.

"'The only people who see the whole picture,' he murmured, 'are the ones who step out of the frame.'" — Salman Rushdie (The Ground Beneath Her Feet).

Settling in and moving on...

Her whole life flashed by in a matter of seconds. She stared quietly at the green outside. Boundless pastures and fields that filled her window and view. Thatch-roof huts, wide fields, small riverets, peace, lack of waste, lack of crowds- it was the neo-paradise. The travelling soul was not ready to settle, geographically or mentally. She searched for her roots but couldn’t find any. The home was far behind and far ahead. In the middle were patches of uncertainty. She did not know brick and mortar, she knew canvasses- to paint and to live in and to love.

The body was bound but the mind was free....

Small only in size

The city to city hopping had made me forget all about the small town India. All that remained in the name of small town memories were in the form of second hand information from the book – Butter Chicken in Ludhiana. It had been 8 years since I went to my parent’s native town and even longer since I visited a village. So the rude shock of road travel in U.P took the mind screaming through small shops, clustered and congested roads, crowded side walks, solitary bakeries, numerous chai stalls, painfully slow life and big dreams. Big trucks loaded with hay, urea, men, women, beds and even hand drawn carriages.... Where else in the world will you see such a sight? I wonder if one day there would be a city to village exodus, whether we will all one day go back to our agrarian roots and farm for a living. What an utterly delightful idea for a soul tired of city nuisances!

I feel my will to write fading as soon as I hit the Delhi airspace. Gone, I can feel it leaving me, like a ghoul.

The vines had bloomed, the grapes were sour. In this line you will find a positive and a negative. But she chose the bloom and the positive, hoping that the grapes will sweeten with the passing of the season. She had been fighting new demons off late, surfacing every now and then in the mushrooming web of thoughts. She wore a mask of impenetrable loneliness. She could not address the most obvious; she thought that the problems may iron themselves out. Like when it is cloudy outside, and we yet refuse to carry an umbrella.

Of journeys and roads

The incessant traveller in me has her wish fulfilled ever so often. Call it deceitful planning or a heavenly intervention, but I don’t have to bear the Delhi bore for too long. I meet strange, wonderful, pleasing people all the time and that gives me something to reflect on and to write about. I was dreading my direct flight to Chicago, but I my neighbours on either side were very pleasant accommodating people. On my right was a young man of 18 who shared my music interests, we ended up listening to each other’s music and talking about life. He was starting college and was born in the 1990. Titli and I always used to wonder how people born in the 90’s would be like, and since we did not know many people that age outside of the battery of cousins, we really did not have an opinion. However, Ankur was a smart young man, with a good attitude and a lot of perspective on almost everything that we talked about. So the generation next- given the Internet, the savvy new gadgets, information explosion, and a hoard of other factors- are a lot smarter group of people than we were at that age. On my left side, were a mother and a daughter duo who were a lot of fun to talk to too. I have met a lot of Karan’s colleagues and completely enjoyed their company, whether it was a family of four, or an elderly Kenyan-Sikh couple or an elderly couple from the States, they all had a memory rich of experiences that time can only add to. Each journey made, each new twist and turn in the road, brings along new uncharted territories, where the only way is ahead.

Love and words

Love and words for me, are the two most compelling passions in the world. And I often use one in place of the other, I think them rather interchangeable. Once, I met a wonderful old lady on way to Bombay from Poona on the Deccan Express and she told me her very heart warming love story. I have never really penned it down; I shall do it today before memory and time take it away from me forever. She had grown up in a predominantly Gujarati area in the city of old Bombay and belonged to a deeply religious Hindu family. She went to an all girls school and she loved reading. SatyaBen, her name is, and she and her friends went to a football field to watch their brothers play in the evening. She was always escorted to and back from the field by her brother. One day he went out of town and she sneaked out to the field by herself. She noticed one particularly handsome and athletic young man and started secretly doting on him. Every day she went there only to see him. He got a whiff of her affections and one day came by the school at closing time to acquaint himself with her. They fell in love. Minor omission- he belonged to a strict Muslim family. Her trials and failures at convincing her parents to let her marry him, his relentless pursuance of his own family, nothing yielded anything noteworthy. Finally, they eloped to Poona with help of certain daring friends and married in a temple. Their families still don’t talk to them. They couldn't bear children and they adopted 4 children and have raised them to practice a religion of their choice. One of her daughters, who was accompanying her, kept smiling throughout the rendition. I will never forget those two faces...etched in my mind forever. Love makes people do ridiculous, crazy, beautiful things... And words express them better than any action can.

Void

There exists and subsists a feeling of emptiness and the need to fill a void. The writing inked out more void, it failed at exploring the answers. The swaggeringly deceptive eyes told no truth and none emanated from the depths of the heart. But there was no communiqué from the mind to indicate the nature of the void. It is just there, lying in the abyss, nameless, indivisible, invisible…

Angel or Demon?

The uneasiness grew inside me, making just sitting around nearly impossible. I went out in the heat, I went out in the dark, but the restless soul knew no respite. Little harmless lies had become hard to bear, and I wondered about my own set of lies. A pack of cards in my own hands and blaming the other side of indulging in debauchery. A maze of contradictions and a path of divisiveness. Indulgence is all that the winged creature wanted. Were the wings, the devils or the angels? Who knew...?

Underground...

I feel like giving whatever little I have up and going far away, to go underground.... Untraceable, far from the crowded cities and selfish souls. Far from the world which knows only how to take and never to return. The void and the vacuum of the seemingly infallible life had become a bit much to stand every day. The will to run in an unknown direction and travel in solitude has taken over my soul completely. All I want is a train, a ticket to anywhere, a set of books, some snacks, a big rucksack of necessities and a clear sky above.

Melancholy and excitement

She had been always been a driven soul, driven by her passion and sometimes by her faith. Her recent sufferings had been a strange mix of melancholy and excitement. Melancholy for what was left behind and excitement for what is yet to come. All she had in common with the previous self was the restlessness and the impassioned spirit. Every day we pursue our days with either wasted energy or a tired soul and lose our perspective on our ultimate goal. We never break up our dreams into small daily plans and we all know that we should.

Shiny old stuff

I pulled out old leather folders and bags unused for a long time. They had been gathering dust and nearly growing mould. I sat them down, despite the late and odd hour and carefully cleaned them. The leather cleanser read “clean with a cloth using light circular movements”. The apt cleansers and the right mind-set. The closets- the metaphysical and the mental ones, need an order sometimes- to be able to refer to the right contents, to rid the clutter and the dust. We need to weed out the unnecessary things, sometimes when they don’t need us and sometimes when we don’t need them. Everything in life needs nurturing, occasional cleaning and lots of sunlight.

Drifting

The pain and the discomfort became visible and apparent. She can never mask her emotions. Something always gives it away- the expression on her face or the tremble in the voice. What was once a pleasurable torment had now become the Achilles heel. Only a fragment of her smiling self remained and she disappeared slowly into an abyss that her heart had formed inside her. She felt as if she were hung up by her toes, unable to eat, breathe, sleep... talk... She wanted to wear a farce and pretend nothing happened, but something had. Something irreversible. They say you reap what you sow...

Yippeeeee!

Most of you will read about this tomorrow in papers or see it on the news tonight. We have scored a second big victory against the tobacco industry today after the ban on public smoking last October. From May 31st this year, all cigarette and other tobacco products would have to display mandatory pictorial warnings on their packets. The Supreme Court finally let us have our way (in a limited manner albeit) and has directed the Government of India to enforce the law mandating the display of pictorial warnings which will see all tobacco products displaying images reflecting adverse health effects of tobacco on 40% of the front panel. This victory has been six years in coming and I can’t stop grinning from ear to ear... My first ever writ petition, my first ever draft!

Also

I drove through the hailstorm, the city lights coming on at this time. I saw some shuddering in a corner and some playing gleefully, mindless of the little rocks hitting their bony heads. The accompanying rain flushed the scorched and dusty surfaces clean. The city looked like a newly born life, pretty and spotless. Sometimes we need these storms to invade our private spaces to flush out the inner toxins.
____________
“I wish there was a cookbook for life, you know? With recipes telling us exactly what to do.”...
“You know better than anyone: it’s the recipes you create yourself that are the best.”

You cross my path, but I don't cross yours

I sat outside in the balcony in the dead of the night. Alone but not lonely. The trains brought me human company every now and then. The little wheel in my heel was satiated by the thought of journeys that others take. I watched people pass on their journey to other cities, other worlds... Carried by noisy, yet strangely soothing trains. At that time, most compartments were dark and the occupiers in a slumber, yet I caught glimpses of lit up bogeys, people playing cards, children wandering about. So many lives cross my backyard every day and every night. Rich, poor, famous, oblivious of my existence, I of theirs. A mutual oblivion that can never be resolved...

mUjhik association

We were talking about song association last night. I associate most songs with events/places... I associate the song “Mitwa” with Warwick... Sitting in my room, listening to Hindi songs with increasing intensity everyday, as a way of connecting to the mother-ship (home). I lived in a student block called “Lakeside”, the most posh of them all. Yet all we had was a bed, a table-chair, a book shelf, open racks, and a closet- oh and a loo to ourselves. I used to play “Suspicious minds” on a loop too. It was summer, summer in England is brilliant. I had a view of the farm in the back, green land stretching beyond naked eye view. Beautiful... I used to play it in the office, in the International Office where I worked (my first real job) full-time. Listening to it right now in my present office, transports me back to that country. I so miss it. You must think I miss everything! I love today, but yesterdays were a lot of fun too. A wee fragment of what has passed should always be carried forward as a good memory.

Of karma and more....

A single common human desire is to levitate above reality... and mostly, in the pursuit of the profound, we encounter the banal. I had been reading about flower power, hippies, the Nam war, napalm and it all got muddy inside my head. In the manner propounded by numerous new-age self-help books which discuss spirituality that conveniently exists only in the Oriental East, I should want to climb Himalayas, alone, in the search of the “youth fountain”. Or better still, look for a personal guru- an enlightened yogi who would lead me to nirvana. So does the much promised microcosm exist? Perhaps I intend never to find out. Over the last four decades, we have been obsessed with rock and roll and they (read the West) with karma and neo-sanyasism. Maybe a day will come when we consult the West the learn about our culture. I, for my bit, am getting a copy of a Puran that Titli recommended... English version, of course...

Disillusioned

Jagdish Tytler goes free again. Tytler feels “vindicated” because “the case destroyed” his career. After the Nanavati Commission and all the various admin commissions set up before Nanavati, took little or no cognizance of implication of Congress leaders in the Sikh riots of 1984 in Delhi, the last bolt from the Congress before the elections this year was to “vindicate” its tarnished leader- Tytler by giving him a clean chit. Strange coincidence it is then that Manmohan Singh had announced during one of the first parliamentary sessions of his government, that “the issue of 1984 riots will be revisited as there is an existing sentiment that justice did not prevail”. In 5 years, they replicated their previous achievements in this regard. The others, despite clear and pressing evidence, also went scot-free- HKL Bhagat died in 2005. This is the distressing political state of our country- one young and previously unknown leader from the opposition makes communal and disturbing remarks about another religious community while the ruling party vindicates the likes of Tytler who is purportedly responsible, along with Bhagat, for deaths of over 4000 Sikhs in Delhi in 1984. Jai Hind! Long live democracy... and oh yeah.... please vote!
Refer for details to-
Movie: Amu
Book: When a tree shook Delhi- Manoj Mitta and H.S Phoolka

Cut, open and dry

I cut myself up yesterday while opening a can of sweet corn. It was small cut but it bled for a while. I tried sealing the wound with a kitchen towel and when all else failed, I had to run it under tap water. The rush of water caused more pain than before. Funny how it hurt more the further my finger was from the tap, and the closer it was to the mouth of the tap, the less it hurt. The deeper we go, the more it hurts. The analogy of the two processes- an open cut and love is uncanny. Morbid? Yes... But well then...

The Reluctant Loner

She sat alone reading “The Reluctant Fundamentalist” and enjoying her solitude. The life had come to a standstill in the quaint cafe and the world seemed to soak positive energy all around. The setting was perfect, the absence of human company, the cinnamon-maple toasts, the smell of fresh cakes, the nice cuppa earl grey tea and the intriguing book. She explored the pages with increasing interest till three men ascended upon the landing and started conversing in the cafe mistaking it to be a noisy pub. She recognised one of them as someone she had one debated against and lost to at a national debate. Strange how we remember defeats far more easily than our victories. The exit of the men left her to herself again and she could once again be numb in her reading, but she chose to step out for a smoke instead. She felt a hand on her shoulder which startled her. The man just stared at her for no apparent reason and when she asked as to what she had invited his pat; he smiled in amusement and said “to the loss of your recently bought book”. He handed her the book she had been reading, flashed the whites again and waited, probably for an apology or a word of thanks. What he got instead was an offer to smoke with her... She noticed his light brown eyes and the peaky nose more closely than she had before. He seemed to always replace what she had lost. The losses were the crevices in the heart which were being slowly filled back in.

Re-visiting the by-gones

We got off the flight and I nearly kissed everything in sight, including the dilapidated Bombay cabs. The beautifully sordid city has been the last love for the longest time in passing. The sea mist hits you the moment you step into the city, the city which exists in conflict with modernity, while at war with the history, yet sublime in its being. It finds that converging line between the past and the new and stays wonderfully on it. The 7 days spent there were a much needed break from the increasingly boring Dilli. The sights, smells and the tastes of Bombay always make me nostalgic about the one year spent there- the fish stink in Colaba, Karan’s clammy flat, Hard Rock, old friends, old office, they all make me miss the place as if I had left it ages ago. It hasn’t even been a year yet and I cry for the city. One night after I was done with my social calls, I just took the cab around the south on my own- the “town” as its called- went to Muchhad’s for paan, walked around Marine Drive, gaped at my old office from below (it stands 17 floors high), took a tonga ride in Colaba and had strawberries and cream at “Batchelors”. Even made a trip to Churchgate in the morning to look at people queuing up for shared-cabs. Aaaaaah. The city that takes everyone in and makes them its own.

Walking on broken glass

I woke up early today. Unable to sleep and unable to dream, I found myself taking a walk in the park downstairs. I would have imagined it to be full of morning walkers and old couples but it lay solemn, almost deserted. The lack of humanity comforted me no end. The sophomoric behaviour on display by certain people in the fairly recent past had piqued me immensely. From that were borne my own follies and guilt. The putrid thoughts needed instant cleansing; they needed to be scrubbed and rubbed out of the mind and leave it as it were before the invasion. "Snow" is playing in my head and on my i-pod. It has more meaning to me now than ever before.

__

"Deep beneath the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow
Privately divided by a world so undecided
And there's no where to go
In between the cover of another perfect wonder
Where it's so white as snow
Running through a field where all my tracks will
Be concealed and there's no where to go"

Chaotic Fulfillment

Her palace of illusions had been witnessing bouts of reality. She washed her head of all the mess and set off towards her chaotic fulfilment. All the others had come away unbidden, but Shoe had found a way in. A “sue” in the beginning and a “shoe” in the end. Oh and a “darn” in the middle. The messy long name, which sounded perfect. Perfectly stupid, perfectly sweet, perfectly perfect and perfectly adorable man... She had been talking about an ambulance a while ago and it seemed to have arrived, at least the time stood still and the wounds were being sealed, whether they would heal forever or not. Help came from the most unexpected quarter and it lingers in the air above. The heart actually jumped with joy than nag with worry and confusion. She felt like she was falling and this time the feeling of falling was eerily more assuring than scary.

The blue maqbara

So here we are contemplating new twists, turns and hopefully pleasant ends. Negotiating happiness with life has become the order of the manor. What else would you rather negotiate? I was driving by the blue maqbara again and wondering who lay there, or if anyone lay there at all. The spirit must be anything but lonely with thousands of cars crossing it by every day and night. A strange roundabout it had come to be. A strange afterlife to have... It led to - Humayun’s tomb, Hazrat Nizamuddin’s Dargah, the Lodhi Road with its gardens and India Gate. All places where either others were buried or commemorated. The blue tomb is one of the prettiest, it looks stark in the orange dusk light. The nomad in me yearned not to love the city yet, not to grow roots, to move on. But the transition had started already. I loved the old monuments and the lovely food, I had made peace with the errant drivers, the annoying fellow north Indians, the pesky rickshaw-wallahs and the lack of sea. I am not a convert yet, from being the Bombay-loving-self but Delhi exuded a romance which Bombay may never be able to exude in its money-making rat race.

Yeh Dilli hai mere yaar, bus ishq mohabbat pyaar....

Thank you Arpit!

So in the middle of my whining tirade, a friend cheered me up... This is what he wrote:

U know they built the great wall of China to stop RB from entering..
They failed miserably.
RB can set ants on fire. With a magnifying glass. At night.
RB did in fact built Rome in a day..
RB can judge a book by its cover.
RB once kicked a horse in the chin. Its descendants today are known as giraffes.
RB Doesn't wear a watch. She decides what time is it.
RB's Pulse is measured on the Richter scale..
RB had to stop washing clothes in the ocean.. The tsunami's were killing people.. She just said oops.
RB cannot be found through google. U simply cannot find her. She finds you.
RB can watch an episode of 60 mins in just 22 seconds..
RB can sneeze with her eyes open..
RB doesn't own a house. She walks into random houses.. And people just move..
RB can smell, what the rock is cooking.. Coz the rock is her personal chef.
RB can divide anything by zero..
RB had counted to infinity. Twice.
RB doesn't go on the Internet. She has every Internet site stored in her memory. She refreshes web pages by blinking.
RB uses pepper spray to spice up her steaks.
RB is the sweetest friend of the fuRBall. Period.

He tells me these are popular over the net, but anyways.... A BIG AWWWWWW.... Thanks ARPIT, you are the sweetest :-)

Bangla Sahib and the urge to leave

The little girl was dressed in red overalls and a white tee. She couldn’t have been over 3 years of age. Her mother tried to keep her steady, but she bowed down three times in succession, to allow her forehead to gently touch the marble step which lay before the holy book. The golden bandana on her head, rode up, revealing several brown curly strands of hair. I watched her, perplexed and fixed, admiring the sweet soul of a child and her simplicity. Zing’s eyes were still closed in prayer and concentration, prayers which were being recited in a language that she didn’t understand, but brought to both of us, the calm and the peace that we needed. Before going to pray, I had just rushed out of my office, all my books, my snaps, my files tucked under my arm, my laptop packed, determined not to return. I don’t remember when was the last time I did something this impulsive. This time the impulse was strong and honest. The wish never to return was more resolute than ever. One can work for human rights all they want, but there is no compromising one’s honour, integrity and self-respect. I want to be like that little girl, keep my faith and bow, but carefully, and avoid hitting the marble too hard. How possible is that?

Heartless Dilli

Zing and I were out midnight cruising and came across this huge road block, cars lined up bumper to bumper at Lajpat before the Defence Colony flyover. Two massive Metro construction trucks had slowed down the traffic. Suddenly the sound of an emergency siren boomeranged through the stretch and an AIIMS ambulance came buzzing by. We pulled over to the left to allow the metro truck to park on the left, so that traffic stuck behind it could be eased out. Others just kept at their positions without budging for the man in need of emergency medical care. The Camry in front of the ambulance did not give space for 10 whole exhilarating minutes. Those 10 minutes could have been a life saver, someone may have lost one of his family last night, those 10 minutes could have eased someone’s physical agony. It is at times like this, that one feels helpless, disheartened and still amazed at the lack of humanity in those who walk among us. Delhi doesn’t fail to surprise one; where indolence and apathy are concerned, Delhi-ites win hands down.

Big Fish

Its one of my favourite movies- it has everything... magic, love, mystery, loss and happiness... I had found my “Big Fish” and it did not even need a wedding ring as bait (reference to the movie “big fish”). It just took my heart as bait and clung on to it for a long time, without caring for it.

She mended the broken fences with fresh white paint and nails, but there is only so much that cosmetic corrections can do. The fences are important; they decide for us who to keep out and who to let in. They act like a moat around our castle, the ditsy fall into the water, unable to climb up to the land and the strong come through, riding the water. The broken fences and the dry moats symbolise a guard down, a wish for death and the inability to recover. The big fish left an impact like none others, the guard down had begin inflicting slow mind numbing poison into her soul. The impact, that would last forever.

Empty pipe

Standing on the edge of the cliff, she smoked the ginger pipe and blew clouds at the dark sky. The wind blew her hair back and the moon stared at her tear ridden face. She stood awhile, counting stars, blowing more smoke at the vacuum, at the vacuum in her heart and the vacuum in the dark. She wondered what the next step would feel like, a cold sharp fall or a warm trickling relief from the pains of the world. Tough call? She stepped away from the edge, the pipe burning its last. Either she can refill it or throw it away forever.

Too little love and too much pain

She walked down the stone laid path
Battered and shattered from the wrath
Leaving and forgetting the painful wall
Where once stood the heartland mall
Insane and inane and loved and hated
She walked on understated and unabated
She went up and down the grimy way
Too much to hear and little to say
Same old story over and over again
Too little love and too much pain...

Chemistree

For her, physics and chemistry were as different as chalk and cheese. Physics was always less intriguing and easier to comprehend that the stupid chemistry. But when she grew up, chemistry mattered more than the physics of it, always. The feelings and emotions and the reactions that we can’t categorise, understand and control. So when she was faced with dilemma, she always opted for something complicated and irrepressible; Chemistry. The ultimate ZJNGGG, the bells in the head, the violins in the background, the string quartet, the red roses, and the flowing gondolas lit with lanterns, all the things wonderful, which are so tough to find, tougher to maintain and the toughest to keep forever. The heart only gets what it wants, when it stops desiring it... And that is the biggest paradox of life.

If wishes were wings...

There I was, out of Delhi again, lifting the colossal writing block from my mind. The lights passed me by at an alarming pace and I held on to my dear little electronic diary, typing out gibberish yet again. It took 24 hours and a series of pathetic jokes to mend the broken glass, the glass that could be patched up and hand blown into consistency once again. The train was taking me back to the rajdhani, the city I had accepted as home, the way a nomad looks lovingly at his current settlement, aware that the bliss is short lived. The fog and the dark faded the beautiful greens outside and I got goosebumps, I remembered the long winding bus journeys to grandma’s farms. The paddy soaked till knee, the peacocks performing their monsoon mating dance, the rains splashing the arid land, the farmers in frenzy, toiling away, the beautiful red verandah of her house and the place I took my first steps in, spoke my first words in. The steps and words witnessed only by the two people who aren’t alive to tale my childhood tales anymore. The memories only cherished by those who are better off in another world. The stories of ghosts told in the light of an ancient lantern, the stories of how I could stand on my grandfather’s hand in a perfect balance. I miss them, both, terribly. I have also been wishing for something for myself for a while. The universe is supposed to conspire to bring to you what your heart truly desires, so where is the thing I want the most? That Coelho is a liar for sure.

Road Block...

There is a very thin line between passion and stupidity. She blocked the world out, people spoke all around her, in loud voices, but all she heard was the blare of guitar and drums in her ears. To block the world out, sometimes, is the easiest and the most convenient thing to do. There were gaps in her conversation; her mind was where her body wasn’t. The chinks in the armour show only when you go to war. The wounds were easy to make, the chinks were clear and obvious, she was at the enemy’s mercy. The enemy had been closing on her for a while and all her strength could not save her from the impending eventuality. She lifted her slight head to look at what lay ahead. A couple of vintage postcards which defined who she was, and photographs of those she loved deeply. They smiled silently back and gave her a quiet strength. She will mend the chinks, bandage the wounds and smile... Smile through your misery as the only thing which is constant, is pain...

Ah another one

So the new year has come and I am still wallowing in the last one. Wondering what was right, what was wrong, made some pretty good decisions, some rather nasty ones, like the rest of you... So maybe we are all industrial clones with problems, happiness and trouble, maybe we are a part of a manic inter-galactic game where we are mere pawns in the hands of others. Or a reality show for those whom belongs extreme boredom- where our daily lives become a-la- "The Truman Show". Well, chin up and smile at the new year and lets all keep our fingers crossed!

"I'm looking for love," gushes Carrie, "real love, ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming, can't-live-without-each-other love. And I don't think that love is here in this expensive suite in this lovely hotel in Paris."

Carrie (Bradshaw- Sex and the City) found this love at 38! Wow, that’s a long long bloody wait. I love the line though.