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July 16 - Olá Lisboa.


I'm running two days behind on my writing schedule - which defeats the point of writing everyday! But I have been travelling and there's a bunch of other issues i am preoccupied with and maybe I am also very slowly coming to terms with the fact that I will be leaving gorgeous Europe very soon to back home to India. I love india - i really do, but I definitely love Europe more. I found myself thinking - maybe I do not go back at all and stay here for a bit and explore options of being a teacher here, in this part of the world. A glance at my passport told me that was not an option available to me. However, my usual dread of leaving Europe to go back to a desk job is no longer threatening me with pain and despair, because I go back to still working on the things I love ! Plus there are a bunch of interesting projects I am working on in India, so I am excited to go back.

But for now, I am in Lisbon! My obsession with Italy meant that I would not want to explore any other parts of Europe. But this year, a friend of mine invited me to her place in Lisbon and I thought about it for 2 whole minutes before opening SkyScanner.Com. I had an idea of what Portugal would be like and I have only been here for a day and already Lisbon matches up to my expectations. Sitting pretty by the sea with gorgeous colourful houses painted in cute pastel colours or covered in vibrant ceramic tiles, Lisbon is a dreamy city. Of course I am looking at it from a tourist's point of view, but my friend who lives here loves the city with mountains in the backdrop and blue sea lining t  equally - so obviously there's immense gorgeousness all around.

There's one thing that beats all the prettiness though - the food.  I have only been here for a day and already had amazing seafood and that is all i will be eating for the rest of my trip here. This was not meant to be a trip review of Lisbon. But I am so overwhelmed by everything here, I could not not write about Lisboa. So in the next couple of posts I might throw in pictures of more seafood Ive eaten or stories of where I have been and what I am up to during my time here.

One of the things that I have realised in the last year is that you have to be open to change - to constant change. We have all heard lines like :change is the only constant: but on of my favourites quotes on change is Virginia Woolf : a self that goes on changing, is a self that goes on living. I love that line. I feel like it denotes everything that has happened in life thus far for me. When I was not changing and holding onto a job for the sake of comfort and stability, i was not growing and hence not living. I have grown and lived more in the last one year than I have in the last 3-4 years maybe.

But even then, i feel like somewhere along with this whole growing up and being responsible thing, I have lost the wonder of life. So by slowly jumping into opportunities, by following my heart and by listening to what the Universe is saying to me, I am undoing some of those conditioned ideas of success, life and love. In my travels when I encounter people from different cultures, I realise as Indians we are taught very early on, to stick to a routine, to follow a certain path and never deviate from it. We are asked to take up certain subjects in school and then work in careers and industries associated with those subjects, to keep our head down when the temptress of dreams calls out to us, to satisfy ourselves with mini vacations and lazy weekends, to tick off the checkboxes of love, marriage (sometimes in opposite order), children, middle age, retirement, old age.

In most European cultures, people have many careers, many passions and many lives. They try their hand at something, they succeed and love it, work on it for a few years, and then move onto something else and throw themselves into that art and life completely. My decision to quit the only job I had held was met with such shock and horror in my extended family, if I hadn't had the conviction to listen to myself and be strong, I would most probably have been shattered or would have gone back to my employer asking to be re-hired.

Of course, some of this is historical. Most western cultures have been very rich for very long, they have well established welfare schemes that allow their citizens to explore and live the lives they want to without worrying about where housing, food and healthcare is going to come from. They have re-education schemes that allow people to completely change the course of their careers mid-life and be successful at it. In India we do not have that. We are just about getting along with a middle class lifestyle, unless you are rich and wealthy. We grew up in this middle class, knowing scarcity of some kind and the answer to not being deprived in life was study well, get good grades, work hard, get employed and work hard there, earn a tonne loads of money and save it. And frankly that is all good advice. But sometimes you do not want to follow it, and follow the song of the siren as they say.

I watched this brilliant movie called Gully Boy, that took India by the storm earlier this year. There have been a few others in the past (3 Idiots for eg) that speak about following your intuition and asking you to tread the offbeat path. There's a poem called Ek Hee Raasta by the gorgeous Javed Akhtar in Gully boy that deserves quoting in this post

एक ही रास्ता
जिस पर चुप-चाप
सर झुकाये हुए
बांध आंखें किये
लोग चलते हैं सारे जनम

जानते भी नहीं,
सोचते भी नहीं
पूछते भी नहीं,
उनको यह रास्ता
लेकर कहीं जाएगा?
या कहीं भी नहीं?

चलते चलते
कहीं एक मोड़ आता हैं,
सीधे रस्ते से बिलकुल अलग,
कोई दीवाना ही होता हैं
जो की उधर जाता हैं,
वर्ना बाकी तोह सब
सीधे रस्ते पे ही
अपने सारे जनम चलते  हैं

सर झुकाये हुए
बांध आंखें किये
और यह दुःख लिए
मोड़ जो देखा था
उस पर मुद जाते हम
तोह न जाने कहाँ तक
पहुँच पते हम

The poem talks about how most people follow one single path silently, with closed eyes and hung heads, without knowing, without thinking, without asking whether this path will take them someplace or no where at all. While on this path, sometimes you come across a diversion, a bend, very different from the road you are on, only a mad person will take that bend, all others continue on that straight road their entire lives. With closed eyes, and hung heads, carrying the pain of regret in their hearts,  wondering to themselves, if we had taken that road less travelled, who knows where we would have reached?

Every time i listen to these words, I get goosebumps and ask myself - what is stopping you then? Here is your road are you ready to tread on it or will you shy away and wonder with regret for the rest of your life?



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