Tujhse Naaraz Nahi Zindagi ..Hairaan Hoon Main..

The most intriguing part of life is that it goes on.. don’t know how.. right from getting over the reluctance of getting up at 6 to go to work.. to maintaining a healthy life, eating, exercising, to having a decent conversation without falling asleep in between .. everything seems hard these days, everything seems a chore.

I cannot fathom my life without the people I cherish the most, who I love and who love me back.. but the stress, the frustration, the daily agony is straining each and every relationship I treasure. There is a unexplainable distance, which seems non-existent at times but at other times its seems so huge that I am lost.. but life goes on..

I am the most tired, fatigued, exhausted (and all the synonyms you can find to express the feeling of almost dropping dead).. But yet, from an unknown source of energy, I wake up and dress up and drive to the train station, fearing what might be lying ahead in the day that will push me off the cliff.. the cliff of sanity to the abyss of irreproachable miserable insane depression... but then the day goes on, passes by and I come back to sanity of my home and life goes on....

Not to mention the lovely weather that's around these days.. when its not sunny that the skin burns, its gloomy .. gloomy enough to give me a heartache.. and when its not gloomy, its cold.. like the heart of Ebenezer Scrooge (Christmas Carol) .. but then life still goes on , no matter what the sun looks like..

We discover moon has water and mars can be inhabited and so we continue to destroy earth. We discover more and more ways to warm car seats and then make them perishable, we get diseases, we find cures, and then find that the cures give rise more complex diseases.. we get depressed for little things, and then be brave on the face of crisis.. we counter everything that ever happened around us and find a way to still get up and walk around like nothing happened.

Is there anything more intriguing than that? Life just goes on, just like the show that goes on.. that's possibly the only explanation why I take life so granted, I sleep and awake with predictability.. I think we as a human race have found balance in just about everything.. and as I read in a certain powerful ideological book.. "Even if the Sun weren't to rise, I am sure we will invent a substitute" . We will do everything to just make life go on...

Main Thi Main Hoon Main Rahoongi

Relationships - so simple, yet more than three quarters of world can't get it right - why? 'Its complicated' .. I heard my friend tell me when I queried about what she thought about Rihanna being butchered by her boyfriend and she patching up with him and accepting him back into her life... what do people see in their relationships that they decide to go back to the very same person who has hurt you, physically, mentally and has tortured you throughout his life.. its not just Rihanna, its millions of women around the world who are subjected to domestic violence every day and are still with their husbands.. there are men who cheat and lie, and their wives accept their lame excuses for cheating, and the best part is ... this happens not once .. but over and over again... A classic case as I heard on the radio this morning - A girl calls in to the "agony aunt" show - and asks the psychiatrist on the channel - My boyfriend has cheated on me thrice before, and he is has always come back and apologized and regretted it, and then he did it again this time - what do I do .. ?

I was really shocked, so shocked that I started laughing aloud - much to the misery of the people who were riding with me and took that show seriously... But that is the truth - the ridicularity( if there is a word like that in English ) of the issue was beyond all limits. How can a girl not see through this person, who is just using her! Good Lord I thought to myself, these people are so insecure that they are not willing to let go of the person who abuses the relationship, abuses their esteem, abuses everything that defines their existence... and all for what? So that they have someone to talk to? someone to give them company.. exactly what is motivating them to stay in there?


Now I agree in every relationship there are ups and downs , pluses and minuses, you can't have someone perfectly stitched for you, you kind of work around somethings.. and sometimes it does happen that you give something up , especially expectations or opinions those can be given up sometimes (I stress on the word sometimes) or if you are not the very opinionated person, you probably deserve to be bossed around... but I swear no one deserves to be cheated and lied to.. and definitely not beaten .. Of course there are people like me who are total high maintenance, so I need people to give me attention all the time, anything otherwise is sacrilege .. But given that you have defined your limits of patience, if someone goes past them, you react, retreat, scream shout , fight, win your stance back or at worst case let go of the person and get your freedom back... I don't know why anyone would want to hang on to years of abuse and ridiculing just beats the sense out of any human logic.. except may be insanity!

For now .. just a small message to all those people in abusive relationships .. there is a world out there that you can explore, all you have to do is just step out - go beyond temporary conveniences, step into a world of opportunities. Stand on your own and see the difference it makes in your life, 'coz afterall your life is at the end of the day about you and your existence!

Palkein Jhukao Na ....

This time around , my title isn't just titular it is the very content of the small blog -

I recently stumbled upon an old CD that had collected dust in my huge rack of cd's ... It had some really offbeat songs that I had picked and burnt apparently when my taste and mood was better than what it is today .. One song that featured in the CD was Palkein Jhukao Na from Sehar - a movie about gangsters vs police.. and you must be groaning saying "Oh no not one of those again .. .but not this was not one of those meaningless action movies where all you can hear is gunshots throughout the movie and end up with terrible ache in the head after the movie says "The End" .. no not this one - This was a really clean cut movie which had a bit of everything - it was about a good, honest police officer facing not just a criminal genius who want total absolute power over everything , but also the bureaucrats who really dont know which side they are on.. and over all of it his own traumatic childhood .. does this sound like a complex plot of emotional drama with the side of blood and gore? Nope wrong again this is by far the least emotional Indian movie I have seen - a well thought of and executed movie .... absolutely no nonsense stuff and has more depth than Sarfarosh - which is the only other cop movie that figures in my police favorites ...

... but movie apart - the song -reallyy delightful one .. picturized on the ever delightful cop (played by Arshad Warsi) and Anamika (played by Mahima Choudhary) his object of desire (other than the famed don 'gajraj' that is!!)

Adnan Sami's deep voice rendering the slow tune with soft beats, and the easy lyrics - the lover asking the the lady to confess her love for him .. and ofcourse doing the same himself.. Oh and does Arshad look sweet or what! Especially with the dimples when he blushes somewhere in between the song! Sweetest of the songs in the recent times.. The song has no surrealistic picturization - it has no dreamy stuff and definitely no large opulent sets - yet it lingers in your mind much after you've heard it or seen it...

....On this note - hear to the song and adieu till later!

Chup tum raho.. Chup hum rahe..

Words are the most beautiful things when said in the right way at the right time.. words are the most powerful if they come from the right person in the right tone.. Words mean a lot when they offer comfort to someone down and dejected .. and yet words are the most inadequate when it comes to expressing the most intricate feelings, especially that of love and sorrow.. I have increasingly noticed that people are the most quiet when they are in pain or they are with someone they really love and they just want to spend the time absorbing the presence of each other.. It does remind me of a song in Swades movie where the hero and the heroine are sitting inside the car with the song running in the background and they are not talking , not looking at each other (that would be too cliched eh?) not doing anything, but just reclining on the front seats of the car and ... thats it.. just feeling each others presence.. ain't that romantic? I think its amazing what silence between two people can convey..

Having said that.. I don't want to take the romance away from poetry and I definitely do believe that words play important role when communicating ones feelings and ones thoughts, its useless if one speaks too few words and then goes into some kind of a misunderstanding mode where all is lost to the lack of words..

But getting back to the silence.. there is a strange kind of understanding that develops when one stops speaking and just "feels".. I guess it has something to do with the development of some senses when others are shut down.. you are more sensitive to movements, to heart beat, to even the breeze whizzing through your hair.. It simply has an ethereal feel to it..

Although .. I doubt how long I would survive in the "silent movie" mode .. despite all its romanticism .. I have a trifle too much energy to stay quiet and unfigety for too long! But a stealing a couple of minutes of silence to truly experience the surroundings .. (whether it inculdes someone or not.. ) ain't a bad idea.. ain't a bad idea at all...!

Ajeeb daastan ..

No one really believes me when I say planets do affect us and our thoughts and actions. We are made of the same substance as the rest of the universe is, then how can we say that we aren't influenced by the forces of nature? Over the past several centuries we have evolved as humans but by definition we are still made of the same atoms and molecules as the mud on mars or the debris in Saturn's rings. So why is it considered a farce that planetary movement does tell upon a person's mind. Agreed that what exactly the planets do and how they actually influence us has a probablistic base and can be argued upon for eternity thanks to a few individuals who have corrupted the science for their personal gains.. but however it is undeniable that planets have a profound affect on peoples mind and not just the thought process, it influences everything around us .. and what more than a personal experience to make the belief stronger..

It was cold and freezing outside in the morning, and I was cuddled up in the bed, not willing to wake up and get to work when my phone rang.. It was my carpooler telling me that he wont make it to work today so I'd have to go by myself.. I got up reluctantly and packed my stuff and decided to take the train to work.. so I walk to the train station.. A kind lady at the station tells me "The train is not coming..some rails came off the tracks, so they canceled the train " I thought to myself.. "To go or not to go..." I decided to head back home and work from there , when a lone traveler like me turned up at the station and inquired about the train as well .. I could have walked away, but there I was waiting and listening to the very same words that I was told 5 minutes back.. and the traveler turned to me and said "I am driving to work, do you need a ride .." Call it impulse, call it madness, I would not have done the same thing another day, but today was different, I hopped into his SUV and hoped to good Lord that it was the right thing to do.. !

Surprisingly, the ride was very interesting, a good conversation and a decent start for what started out as a bad day.. My ride was only till 3/4ths of the distance .. I thought to myself, well thats not bad, I can make it to work from here, its just a couple of miles away and I knew what bus to take... it can't be that bad.. hmm spoke too soon!

I got off and bid adieu to a new friend, and started to the ticketing machine..and realized that I did not have any change left in my purse.. Thats when the cursing began. After finishing with calling myself all kinds of names I returned to the bus station to see if I could get to ride the bus free with my train ticket. It was purely luck when I got a really nice lady at the customer service - She told me to ride another train to the administrative office and get a token to ride the bus free all day - some compensation of kinds for the train breakdown - having no other choice at hand, this sounded like a really good thing, and besides, whats the worse that can happen ?

So I headed out..rode the train - finally found the building, but it took me eternity to find the entrance!! Geez I thought to myself.. why are buildings so complex here! So after 10 minutes of struggle I finally enter the building and pick up my token and head back to the ticket machine... well maybe it should be re-christened to ticket monster! 'coz it ate up my token and did not give me a ticket!! More cursing.. and this time along with lots of swearing.. coz the weather turned nasty and freezing...But I told myself.. you can do this..I called the customer service lady again and she was sweet enough to give me directions to the next ticketing center..and how to get my token back!

Thanked all stars and with restored faith in humanity, I got a ticket.. only to see the I had just missed the bus!! Cursed all stars above again and waited for half hour in freezing cold, hungry, tired, all I wanted now to see my desk.. not do anything, not think anything.. and I waited and waited.. finally after what seemed like a lifetime.. the bus came.. God was I happy to see the driver..! Got in the bus, thought it was end of my miseries.. I am rescued.. nothing can go wrong now.. Well thankfully nothing very significantly went bad with the bus ride except for a weirdo asking me if I smoked weed.. I was so tired I could as well have said yes.. but well I was not yet insane..so I just smiled and said.."No..not into weed" ..

Came to office and my computer would not log me in.. my work was pending, my brain did not work, people I needed to talk to did not talk to me.. people whom I did not want to talk to talked a lot to me.. spent a whole lot of time just to make things normal again and gosh was it a confusing mess... and I thought to myself what went wrong? where? ... It was 7 in the evening when I reached home .. more tired than I had been in all previous week put together and opened the laptop, still puzzled about what happened throughout the day.. and in the news section of google -I see in bold words - Penumbral Lunar Eclipse.. It struck me like a lightening then, all the weird things happening made perfect sense! - And just for clarification to any skeptical readers - this has happened to me before, and as consistently bad as it was today!!

I sighed ... if penumbral lunar eclipse did this to my day and me..then what on earth am I going to do when its total lunar eclipse!!??

Kabhi Khud Pe Kabhi Haalat Pe Rona Aaya...

Why me .. ? how many times have we questioned ourselves that , how many times in our day to day life we've felt that the universe truly conspires to hit us hard when we are hurt the most .. and how many times have we felt a strange sympathy for ourselves..being the victim of the vicious circle of politicking and fraudulent systems.. inefficient methods and inconsistent society.

Self pity while being the most common trait in us, tends to eat away at your confidence slowly and steadily .. like arsenic poisoning in milligrams a day.. Its easy to pick out things that happen to us, but things aren't just happening to you and me..there are things that are happening all over the world to the entire human race.. not to mention the animals that are endangered.. and well how about earth itself? Why don't we ever wonder how mother earth would feel if she'd have the privilege to indulge in self pity? She'd go "Why torture me like this with Global Warming, with de-forestation, with ozone depletion, pollution, population, war, terror ... and mostly plastic...oh and as if that was not enough, you throw out space junk, so that one fine day it loses its orbit and comes crashes into me!!! .. Why me?!" Its rather strange how we forget that there are real problems in the world, in the universe that need to be addressed.. there are always problems in each one of our lives that will never go away.. why keep clinging to them and make life more miserable.. We as humans definitely tend to that quite often, we have queer pleasure in making our problems more complex than they really are and convincing our self to delve, revel, thrive in that gloated feeling of misery, when it is all really quite trivial..and can be simply resolved.

Isn't it a better thing to just take things in stride with a pinch of salt.. and if that's not enough, then a pinch of pepper as well and just be thankful for being alive and being able to think ..and truly speaking that is all one needs to survive it all... and sometimes food too.. there is nothing in this world that is more powerful than the human mind.. all you need to do is to tune it so that the mind stays at DC even when the situations around you are sinusoidal. However easy it is to succumb to self pity, one must realize that the greater truth is that if you are able to think, it means the worst has not come yet, and if you have lost your cognitive sense, then well you hardly would care about the world crumbling under your feet.. so there is no real reason for worry or sadness, not for prolonged time at least, it would only prohibit you from living life to its fullest. Having said that , its not good if you completely act ignorant of the compelling times ahead, but when things are out of your hand and there is nothing left to do, you wait and hope .. and patience is as much a virtue as is the ability to not sympathize with yourself!

Although sometimes this is easier said than done when you are in a particular helpless situation... There have been times when I have felt that there is so much that happened and there can be no looking up ever, times that my confidence in humanity was shattered, my dreams broken...but then the show never stops there, you pick up and move on... make more dreams, strive to make everyday worthy of you, rather than think that its never your day , your month .. or even your year.. you are what you make yourself to be.. and at the end of the day you can either be the winner by letting optimism take over.. or lose out on the good things in life by indulging in negativity and sympathy ..

As someone famous said -- Life is really long... don't make it more boring and longer by being sad.. Look inside yourself for happiness, then all else around will seem more saner and more beautiful than ever.. seek and thou shall find true love for life within thee.


Disclaimer: I absolutely love the song mentioned in the title.. its a beautiful song and nothing relates it to the actual content of this blog post, it just seemed a fit title, so used it...

Yeh Sama...

It wasn't your usual bright cheery day..In fact it was just the opposite, cloud covered sky and misty roads, I generally am depressed when weather's this way, but today driving on those roads felt like cruising on clouds!!

As I waited for my fellow carpooler to join me, I more deeply in love with the sights and sounds around me.. grass looked more greener, dew droplets dripped from the bare tree branches .. the distant houses on the hills looked like a whole new world with fog embracing the hill.. Ah..I could not help but let out a sigh.. just felt like singing Louis Armstrong 'what a wonderful world' out loud..My vocal cords never live up to my expectation anyway so let it go, just hummed to myself as my partner came in and we went on our usual commute to work.

The visuals were fantastic, I had been in the same place for over half a year, but this was my first winter, and gosh was I loving it! Living up a mountain certainly had its pluses .. I was adoring the sights all the way and secretly wishing time would stand still.. and let me absolve myself within the nature around me..

Well as they say.. be careful of what you wish for.. it might as well come true.. time did not stand still but we sure did! My car came down from 75mph to 5mph.. and eventually we stopped! no my car didn't break down, but somebody else's did and there was that fabled traffic jam again.. I thought to myself, hey no harm done, its a beautiful day, romance in the air, a little traffic jam ain't gonna ruin it!15 minutes later I realized that was not true!! To hell with the beautiful day.. I need to get to work, gosh that important meeting, I could almost see my manager give me that one-raised-eyebrow look! I gulped.. looked around.. the green grass did not speak out to me this time.. I turned to music instead and gave my partner a cursory glance and said - 'hey do you think we'll be able to make it in time ?' and well I can't be too sure, but I think I heard a four letter word followed by a what sounded like a mumble "Do you REALLY want me to answer that?!" and some more of the four letter words..

I tried to laugh it off but it sounded more like a soft whimper of a wet doggy. 'Ah.. now where did that CD go..' I thought to myself music soothes the biggest and meanest of the creatures, lets try that.. it wasn't the best CD I had but will do. 2 songs later.. that opinion changed to wont do!! and I was fidgeting with the cd player trying to skip songs as soon as I knew what it was, apparently did not realize that'd cause the anti-soothing effect on big and mean creatures.. and there was that four letter word coming out again.. "would you not do that!! .....please" that please came out after a long awkward pause.. and I told myself I'd better behave lest I wanna a be called the soup of the day! So music was out .. and returned to gazing out of the window again.. and huge chevy drove up beside me .. conveniently blocking my view of the exotic mountain!! It was my turn to growl..I fumed over the fact that I was now seeing a muddy pickup that probably wasn't washed for centuries instead of the grazing cattle and green fields!

And then my eyes caught something.. a pair of the most beautiful eyes I had ever seen, glistening in the sunlight that just peeked through the clouds, and not willing to let me gaze move away.. I felt the smile returning on my face as I looked into the adorable big eager eyes of the cutest golden retriever I had ever seen.. I chuckled to myself and well.. started humming what a wonderful world all over again.. and well as they sing and the world sings with you.. the big beast.. err..I mean my carpooler exclaimed hey that's my favourite song!! and sang along all the way to work!

And so my first work day of the new year began with a smile... Happy new year to all my readers!