A letter buried in my inbox.....

Was just talking about Bombay to my friends, chattering away about places and food and people and experiences, when I suddenly realized that there was one common element to my experiences - my lens, that was you. You romanticized everything - the traffic snares, the local trains, the Bombay rains, the street food, the soaring rents, the house help woes, the lack of space just to name a few. I loved my borrowed lens - every color seemed brighter and sharper than before. For the first time, I felt tempted to discard my 'so what' attitude. You made me believe that life is worth embracing in all its glory - the good, the bad and the ugly.

That healing touch

Sometimes in life you come across people who touch your lives in ways which you could have never imagined. It might sound silly and surreal, but I believe that these people are God’s angels. This post is an ode to one such person who touched my life – N. When N and I met, my spirit was broken, my confidence shattered and my faith in people all shaken. I was a self-loathing, frail image of my former confident self whose favorite past time was sulking and favorite adventure modules in self-pity. I was sinking; getting sucked into a vortex of negativity, when he reached out for my hand and yanked me right out of it.

All these years, when I had everything in life that could be imagined by “conventional yardsticks”, the one thing which was always missing – that crucial piece from a jigsaw puzzle – was acceptance. N accepted me with his arms flung wide open – never questioning, never doubtful. He helped me appreciate all the colors from the spectrum (including the daunting shades of grey); he taught me the art of loving others and myself. Most importantly he taught me the meaning of unconditional love and acceptance – beyond the realms of philosophy. My life was never the same. He came along and painted my life a bright sunny yellow with his magical brushstrokes.

Unfortunately, due to the trappings of a bitch called practicality, N is not a part of my life anymore. For the sake of our own sanity, I can’t reach out to him and tell him, how much I prize him and value him; how much I respect him and adore him; and most importantly how much I am grateful to him. About a year and a half back he resuscitated me back to life and gave me happiness that I had never seen before. So for all these things and more N, I would like to say THANK YOU. The words in this post are not enough to measure the depths of gratitude in my heart.

Thought for the day

"People who have the capacity to weather many storms are the ones who are oft-tested by destiny"

Enlightenment!

Enlightenment is best, when it is shared.....even when it is with the invisible or non-existent reader....

Pardon me for these incessant ramblings, but I am reluctant to let go, especially since I have found my voice after a very long time :) Hence I take the liberty to share my "enlightenment"

Time travelling......

I was reading "Eat, Pray, Love" and stumbled upon these lines, which made me travel back in time.

"David's sudden emotional back-stepping probably would've been a catastrophe for me even under the best of circumstances, given that I am the planet's most affectionate life-form (something like a cross between a golden retriever and a barnacle), but this was my very worst of circumstances. I was more despondent and dependent, needing more care than an armful of premature infant of triplets. His withdrawal only made me more needy, and my neediness only advanced his withdrawals..."

Sometimes in life, when you go through bereavement/loss/misery/emotional upheaval, it almost gives you a sense of misplaced superiority; emotionally you isolate yourself from the so-called "lesser morals", blindly believing that they haven't experienced your quantum of pain. After all my emotional loss is more than your job woes, right?

Reading these lines was not only cathartic by finding resonance in someone's pain, but also greatly humbling; It taught me that on many occasions we attach a lot of importance to our own misery, by quickly discounting someone's pain. This not only leads us to revel and wallow more in self-pity, but also isolates us from many others, in whose experiences we might find our own answers.

Men are from Mars and women.....well we're still trying to figure that one out!

Women are silly creatures (a good amount of offense meant!)....they look for a reason/a pattern in everything....even though most of their behavior can never be explained with good reason...I might offend my fellow Venetians with this insight, but it's always better to be self-deprecating and accept it graciously, than be slapped on that face with facts :)

Free falling in love

Falling in love is like free falling....you might be consumed by fear, but unless you allow yourself the privilege of that fear, you can never experience the magic of love