In dodo's head

Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.  I think there are just a few of us out there, or maybe I just live in a cluster of those who don't. I am talking about those who appreciate the changing façades of the sky and its many meanings and metaphors. It is not infrequent that I would be walking down the streets listlessly and look up and find my mood turning around into one of pondering.  Over the Ganges, September 2010 I remember vividly a day gone not so long ago. I was walking down a street with two of my close friends. We were talking of mundane daily things when I suddenly looked at the horizon. The sky was a shade of pink then, with streaks of purple. I almost squealed 'Look! Isn't it beautiful..' And they looked around while asking 'Where'. On being told to look at the sky, they almost sounded disappointed with their 'Oh's.  Birahi sky, June 2010  I do not know what ...

There are signs in life about how fleeting a moment could be, our eyes may be like the lens of the camera but we do not stay frozen in a memory. It is both the beauty and tragedy of life, the strength and its weakness. Life is constantly changing and painfully fleeting. It is like walking on a beach, holding on to seashells and sand granules. Some hold our attention for a while, some touch us somewhere in our souls, and yet some we quickly forget. Some of us walkers will want to hold on to a fistful of sand and make the most of its texture and beauty and the way some seashells leave an imprint of their texture on our palms, while the others will race to feel all the seashells and appreciate the changing effect waves have on them. There is no right or wrong, each has its beauty and tragedy. Each comes with its pain and 'what-if's.  (I took this picture while I was on a beach in Vietnam back in July 2010. I have named it 'Holding on.. or letting go', for looking at ...

There is a sinking feeling inside me, threatening to swallow my insides into a whirlpool. There are doubts and worries galore. No one knows me better than me, And I do not know me enough, What does this mean for the choices I make and the turns I take, What does this mean for what the future holds. What does this mean for the compromises I have to make? Questions fill my mind, flooding its insides. Logic leaves its side. And all that's left is debris. That cannot be made sense of. What matters and what worries is, at the end of the day, only I will be left to clear up and piece together the million little pieces that life becomes after the storm, and the flood.

What is it about talking to particular friends that brings out a side in you, a side usually masked and shielded. Like that glass rose in Beauty and the Beast?  Yes, that rose.. Remember? That part of the world where we have a tab of our weaknesses and fears. That part of the world where there is a hall of mirrors where we keep our fragile side. Talking and discussing fears brought me to such a room. Of mirrors. No escape routes. No parachutes to shield the fall. I fear losing the people I care about so much. Yes, I know, it does not make me a One-in-a-billion person, everybody fears it. But it's my greatest fear. The friend in this case talked about deletion of people who got too close. And it instilled in me, a fear. You see, my life is like the Ozone layer (if I must talk in a environmental nerd way).. It's so easy for people to be let in, but once they do come, I find it so hard to let go. Each time one does escape, I am left with a hole in my heart. Seriously. I t...

Hey you all, I have got two more pages for this blog.. On the top, next to where it says Home, you might be able to see two more headings 'Why do I write' and 'Dear God'.. Move your cursor over it, and just press the mouse.. and you will automatically find yourself launched like a rocket into galactic space with lots of  'food-for-thought's.. try it, it is fun.. ;)

I once read somewhere - Faith is about doing. You are how you act, not just how you believe. It, at once got me thinking. On the bloodshed in the world around this, over something as simple as religion. Forgive me for thinking this is a simple concept, for I can almost feel your incredulous faces. Religion simple? I can hear you say. You could dwell in History, talk about the history of these religions and bring out examples of the complex situations our world found itself in, all because of this dangerous word and the many connotations it brings. But what if we were to step back and question its very existence? Why do we have these religions in the first place? In the olden days, was it not just about one clan choosing to worship idols and another nature? Why did we then begin to fight about how one God is greater than the other? If looked at simply, most of these do not involve the Gods, it's most likely to do with politics or resources. The Crusades being an example. The Churc...

I see things black and white. I do not believe in grey really. Is that true? This is what my food for thought was, the whole 30 minute or something walk home. After yet another mind-racing lecture on Environmental Law. My lecturer, you see, is a pretty cool English bloke, some would say. He literally puts things black and white. He confirmed today what our fear has been all these years, The Indian fear. That these people here today are not really bothered about environmental problems. This world is really, an egocentric society. They are not,like us, driven by needs to protect our direct environment like we are. All through the lecture, all I could picture in my head were families in a flood situation.Imagine-water filling up in cities. The rich guys in houses on stilts. High stilts. They are not really bothered with the floods. They might instead focus on selling products, handing them down to the poorer ones for cash. The poorer ones however are busy trying to drain out the water...

I have been thinking a lot lately. A process sparked off mostly by my father remarking about the sort of image I have been projecting here over the last few blogposts.. That of a confused and indecisive girl. Lost and unable to decide anything. It has been a pretty true picture but he told me- The picture we paint of ourselves everyday has a deep impact on the kind of person we become. It made sense. I had read the book 'The Secret' by Rhonda Byrnes, you may have heard of it or read it even. In it, she says, and I quote- The law of attraction says that like attracts like, and when you think and feel what you want to attract on the inside, the law will use people, circumstances and events to magnetize what you want.So I guess, all these days, I have been attracting all the wrong energy and vibes fretting over trivial matters. I decided therefore, to look for small signs, small signs of optimism. And I realised, I saw these signs everyday, I had just chosen to ignore it.. ...

2nd of October always takes me back to the school days, when we were made to carry our 'Shramdan', a sort of community service where we had to clean our dormitories and do all the household tasks by ourselves. It was to celebrate the birthday of our big man, our father of the nation, Mahatma Gandhi. Being school kids then, we did not think too much about the significance of the event, all we thought about was keeping our beds and lockers clean enough to pass the inspection check that our wardens and house-mistresses carried out at end of the morning.  I guess, I did not think about it even more because I was never a big fan of Gandhi. Being a passionate History student, I idolized the likes of Subhas Chandra Bose and Bhagat Singh, and the history lessons back then made me feel as if Gandhi was somehow responsible for their downfalls and deaths. Also, I felt that his idea of Ahimsa (Non-violence) and Satyagraha (path of truth) were almost hypocritical and costing Indian lives...