Zendagi Migzara

ओ  रे पाखी ओ  रे पाखी  कैसा यह तेरा फ़साना  ढूंढे हैं क्यूँ  डारी  डारी  नया ठीकहाना  ~Swanand Kirkire | Shantanu Moitra Khoya Khoya Chaand "You don't think we are meant to be?" Anuradha asked, absolutely flabbergasted that she was even asking this question.  What did he mean by they weren't meant to be, why were they even together if he didn't believe in it. She stood there stunned by those words and not knowing how to react. Well she knew how to react, but somehow she had lost the will to gather the energies to mouth any more words, so she stood there in silence and felt everything around her stop for some time. When the world started to flow again around her, she sighed out the words "what do you mean, you don't mean that, do you?" In that sentence she had asked him a question, she had answered it herself and then went on to refute it as well.  Anuradha and Karthik were a rarity. That was for sure. She was all sorts of madness, a force...

                                           धुप पानी पे बरस जाएँ  यह साये,  बनाये मिटाये    मैं, कहूँ और तू, आ जाएँ बेहलाये  हर दूरी शर्माए  तू साथ हैं, हो दिन रात हैं  परछाइयाँ बतलाये   तू साथ हैं, हो दिन रात हैं  साया साया  माहि वे माहि वे  मेरी हर बात में साथ  तू हैं  माहि वे माहि वे  मेरे सारे हालात तू  Maahi Ve ~ Irshad Kamil   As she sat out on the porch soaking in the sun, enjoying this space and the solitude and her dreams, a smile spread out on her face. Little by little, it went from a buddha smile to a wider smile of happiness, and eventually to a soft smile of contentment. Time had stopped, and usually when she felt like that, her life had a soundtrack in the background. Her fingers started tapping, on the arms of the chair she was sitting on. The beats were notes of Hindustani Classi...

I believe in God, i really do. Maybe not God as in Jesus, or Allah or the million Hindu God and Goddesses. But a higher power that is guiding us and that also rests within us. Which is why when in our most desperate moments, we kneel down and pray to God and ask for a sign or ask for courage, we tend to find it, in ourselves and in things around us - which are also all a part of the magnificence of this power, of the Universe. That universe which is itself a manifested version of the unknowable and indescribable God.  I share this Universe, or God, and his/her religion with all the beings - human and others. Some days, when i find it difficult to find God within me, and I feel far away from love and hope and faith, I somehow find it in music. One such day as I stopped everything I was doing and just sat, feeling all sorts of things in my head and heart, so overwhelmed that I could break into tears if someone asked me to speak or spoke to me, I shut my eyes and took a couple ...

Think & act, people say Build a list & make it stay Don't trust his words right away Look through facts & check it twice, Act coy & sugar-nice Hold your heart until you're sure You have everything you want? then ask for more. I tried playing by the rules & did all of this, Used my brain & gave my heart a miss You see, I'd gone with my heart before there was a time when I was very sure, but that didn't take me very far Aur phir wahi tamasha beech bazaar So I didn't trust my gut That said when I first saw you, 'Here's the one The one you should pursue'. I ignored that voice & brought my mind in, To overrule the magic & enslave the djinn. Lo & behold That didn't last very long & here we are writing our own song. * phir wahi tamasha beech bazaar : borrowed from Tamasha by imtiaz ali

I fell for a man, who was honest & kind All things serious & not almost like a mixture of honey & lime. More lime than honey maybe, the kind that makes your lips pucker He riled me up sometimes, but most times he brought me succour. Deep belly laughs &  Quiet nights of staring  Musical marathons & even more chatting & sharing. He held me gently  & listened to my stories, Discovering old scars & new dreams, traversing uncharted territories. We bloomed in times of darkness when light was hard to be found, He was my guiding torch of reason, but in him, I also found my wilderness uncrowned  Slowly i let this magical bud flower I walked the path unsteadily & unsure I then began to run & dove in, Turning him from a stranger to a lover.

She got ready for work and stared at herself in the mirror. Why did she feel the need to escape - she had worked really hard to be where she was. Very early on in life, she knew law was what she wanted to do. She had the zeal, the skills, the passion and the morals to be in that profession. She had done her school proud and then gone onto study law at NLS. When she was graduated from NLS, her family threw a massive party. Why not. They were proud of what she had achieved thus far in life and they were excited about all that she was set out to achieve. It was a perfect life. And she really did think it was. Until one day, at her yoga class in the midst of Balasana, child's pose - she felt a tear roll down her cheeks, the teacher asked them to take longer inhales and exhales - but if she tried any of that right now, she'd break down, she thought. What's wrong - where is this coming from? Work was alright, mom and dad were fine, in fact she was helping her best friend ...

"Every true love and friendship  is a story of unexpected transformation. If we are the same person before and after we loved, that means we haven't loved enough."~   Elif Shafak  I could endlessly read books and have them enrich the very depths of my soul. i can be plunged into deep despair and come out floating on a cloud - all within one day, all within the magical boundaries of the first and the last page. I had often head about Forty Rules of Love - but i had the privilege of reading it last year and transformational it was. This is a story of Rahul and Aida. You could look at them and feel a flow of sorts - a conscious stream taking it's time to meander through the forests and fields trying to find a destination. They represented the continuous movement of that stream but also the stillness of it, were it given a chance to settle down in some plain for a bit. Their journey tossed and turned them around but they continued to withstand the harshness...

A friend asked me for the link to my blog. I opened the app on my phone to send it to her only to notice that I have been amazingly lazy about writing over the last 8 months. Utterly shameful indeed. So in an effort to remedy that and to overcome the laziness (read embarrassment) I am back here. I am not quite exactly sure which one, but one of Elizabeth Gilbert's books (maybe Big Magic ) said, we need to show up at our workspaces for our creative muse to show up as well. You need to meet her halfway. I guess the reason I have not been writing is because I tell myself I don't have any ideas - but in reality, I haven't been showing up. I need to have this laptop in front of me, with Blogger open on it, before I can even let the ideas slowly warm up and roll onto this blank canvas. Although, truth be told, I have been contemplating moving my writing to Medium - it just looks nicer and people say there's more readers there. But I'm stubborn like that and this blog ...

I arrived in India just in time for my birthday! A part of me wanted to rush out of the airport to greet my parents and a part of me wanted to hop back on that flight and head back to London. But thankfully time travel (to the past or future) is not a skill humans have developed yet. Some things need to remain a mystery, and sometimes you need to move on. The day began like any other day, it was nice to be back in familiar surroundings and lay out my yoga mat and start my practice with my parents morning mantras playing in the background. I am brutal when it comes to routines. I have put myself on a twice a day work out schedule and a very strict diet (or at least what for me is strict) to get back in shape and get fitter. While practising I included Utkatasana (chair pose) in my sequence and I was surprised at how weak my legs seemed - i remembered all of my teachers and suddenly missed them. As beautiful as a self practice is, being led by a teacher who cares about your progre...

Dedicating this song below to my trip to Portugal. A movie I hated, but a song I quote like combining Hindi and Portuguese Fado styles, Yaadon mein from Jab Harry Met Sejal  penned by Irshad Kamil. Echoing the feelings I carry in my heart as I leave Europe to head back to my life in India - happy to go back, albeit reluctantly. यादों में जलते रहना तेरा मेरा यादों में जलते  रहने को मिले हैं क्या यादें भी लेजा तू अपनी जहां चला यादों में डूबे दिन भी ढले हैं क्या तुमसे वादा नहीं तुमसे शिकवा नहीं तेरा वह हैं जहां होक मैं न जहां तुमसे ...  हाला की यह एहसास हैं तू पास हैं फिर क्यों अभी से ही मुझे यादें  तेरी आना लगी  छोड़ों मेरी तोह खैर हैं जिनपे चलें हम साथ मे उन रास्तों कि जान भी जाने लगी तुमसे दूरी नहीं तुमसे बिछडी नहीं थोड़ा सा तू वहाँ थोड़ी सी मैं यहां I am writing this as I am seated at the Abu Dhabi airport, very sleep deprived, craving some hot meal and a hot shower. Last leg of my series of "OMG I am going to be 31...

Singapore is one of those places that invokes extreme reactions from me. I love Singapore. i truly do. I ended up not liking my solitary life there too much, but i was talking to a friend about how there are aspects of the city that i truly love. And Food is one of them. I miss hawker centers, I miss Tiong Bahru, I miss chicken rice, I miss kaya toast and teh, I miss chilly crab, i miss wonton noodles, I miss Din Tai Fung's fried rice, I miss cereal prawns and shrimp paste chicken, I miss pandan pancakes and kuehs and sambal stingray and clay pot rice. I can go on and on and on, about the things I miss about Singapore food. I'd name probably 5 people I miss from there too - but that is about it.  I might head back to Singland later this year for a wedding, and I can not wait to raid a hawker center and drink 100 glasses of sugarcane juice. It's crazy, really, because I can get very good sugarcane juice in India. But the joy of walking into Tiong Bahru market on a h...

When i got off Gatwick yesterday and took the train to Victoria, i felt like I was home. There is a scene  in Love Actually about how airport arrivals are happy places because you see love all around - this is my film buff heart going gaga about the movies and trying to interpret real life scenarios through them. But, well, that is who I am. Airport arrivals or any kind of arrivals - bus stations or train stations - are special places for me. In spite of the chaos, the crowd and the noise, there is a certain joy in watching reunions and greetings, there is beauty in long hold hugs, in the gentle swaying hugs, in forgetting all that exists around you for a tiny moment hugs. I love it when I am dropped off at airports & other stations and even when I am greeted at the arrivals sections. When I am not, I realise very deeply how much I miss it - how less exciting it makes my departures and arrivals. Of course in lives we lead, with airports many many kilometers away from t...

Sometimes you come across certain places that feel like they were created specifically for you. I have written about Deju Lu, the second hand bookstore in Cascais and how quaint and gorgeous it was. When I entered Deja Lu, I was trying to escape the 3 PM summer sun and in a way also tick something off my "must do" list for Lisbon. But as soon as I entered the shop, i was transported. Bookshops have that effect on you, or at least they do on me. I forget where I am, who I am with, what time of day it is and i'm lost. In a world of words and print, the mixed smell of old books, new books, of old well-known authors i love and authors who are beginning to discover their words. Some of them speak slowly softly, you almost have to search for what they were actually trying to say. And some scream, and you have to put the book down once in a while to get away from all the noise. Some books whack you in the face with hard truths about the world we live in and some that take ...