When you came along…

When you came along, life was a mystery
Waiting to be solved

When you came along, life was a journey
With many paths less traveled

When you came along, life was waiting to
Make its mistakes

When you came along, life didn’t know
What was right or wrong

When you came along, life found someone special…
to love and hate

When you came along, I looked around to see you
Only to find that you were never there to hold my hand

When you said goodbye…

When you said goodbye, I began searching for words
To tell you the things I never said

When you said goodbye, I was broken
Thinking that something special was lost

When you said goodbye, it didn’t matter to you
But it did to me…

When you said goodbye, I reminisced
About the days gone by…

When you said goodbye, I wanted to make time stop,
To create more memories...

When you said goodbye, I thought it was a phase
Little did I knew that it was the end of a beautiful pain

Alas, it’s time to say goodbye to you now,
As we have parted never to meet again.

Goodbye my friend, goodbye my love.

The power of “Free your mind and your ass will follow…”

I’m a sucker for funny anecdotes, idioms and even graffiti messages. Most of you will agree that it’s a delight to display them as a status message on Gtalk or Facebook, what with all those pings u get from your chat buddies. There’s something about these lines that fascinates me.

Firstly these are original thoughts and secondly they are developed straight from the heart. The prelude to these lines is gotta be something deeper that the person who framed it had to go through in his/ her life.

Sometimes it’s also spontaneous feelings translated into words just for fun. The line you see in the headline of this blog is something that caught my attention while I was surfing through the pictures of a friend who recently went off to Germany.

This was a sprayed graffiti on what looked like a garbage can placed on the backside of a cathedral. According to me this a unique sentence that intends to draw attention of the non-believers popularly known as the atheist?

In other words, what I’m seeing here is the power of language. By power I don’t mean that all atheists would start praying but I can’t get over the fun element that it conveys.

It’s amazing how we humans can play with words. We can, rhyme them using all kinds of figures of speech which get shaped as poems, we use complicated words twist our thoughts and narrate stories or create articles for people to read. This is one genius conundrum that we won’t be able to solve. I don’t think any scientist can reach that part of the human brain which is able to secrete such creative expertise.

Finally all I can say is that wordplay is one talent humans can certainly beat any other species at.

Hail Humans!!!

PS: Just when I was writing this blog, a friend of my mine realized that the graffiti line could be inspired from the 90s song “Free your mind and the rest will follow…” by a band called En Vogue.

At Siddhivinayak…where the lord blesses all

On a Sunday about a week ago, I happened to visit the Siddhivinayak temple located at Prabhadevi in Dadar. As it was a pooja organised by my family, I happened to spend over four hours at the temple. Usually it’s just that we stand in the queue take darshan and walk out with loads of pedas. Siddhivinayak is one of the world’s famous shrines of India.

As I sat with my family members with joint hands for the pooja, I was dazzled to observe the mass of people gathered to seek the divine blessings of Ganapati Bappa. However, it wasn’t surprising to see the crowd pushing and hushing to reach right to the front and pray to the lord, who is said to make your wishes come true.

It was overwhelming to see the exodus of devotees holding baskets of flower, pedas and lot of other offerings. Even I prayed, I always pray to Ganapati Bappa, he’s my favorite God :) I think he's always listening to us whether you visit him personally or not.

Just talk to him looking up in the air sitting on your couch and he will grant you your wish of course only if you deserve to own the wish you have made.

All I can say is Ganapati Bappa Morya!!!

Of goodbyes and reunion...a new life begins

I have believed that do what you want to, yearn for what you need, but at the end of it life has it's own plans that will materialise for better or for worse; whether you like it or not it's bound to happen. Friends, it has happened to me, yet again. Just as I was waiting to begin something new, life's mysterious plans have worked its wonders , albeit this time for good.

After ten months of tackling hard news and battling my blood-sucking bosses, i have been reunited with DNA Academy, the education supplement with which i began my full-time working career.

The reunion was as sudden as my separation from the supplement ten months ago. It all happened so fast that i just couldn't get enough time to even think and also put my feelings into words on this blog.

Two weeks ago a dear friend and colleague from Academy got a wonderful opportunity and hence she decided to say goodbye to all of us (she's gone to Germany with her husband), hence they brought me back to help our other senior colleague.

Although, I was aware of her going to Germany sooner or later, frankly, i had never thought that they would allow me to get back to where i believe I have always belonged professionally.

However, I'm glad to have said goodbye to the webdesk (that's where i was all of the ten months), as i don't see my self sitting at a desk and correcting copies of reporters from around the world. In fact I have always wanted to be the person who goes around the world and puts her experience in to words.

So here it is, i began working with Academy from Monday onwards. It's like starting a new life in the same old place, but i guess i have rejoined with the same excitement, the similar enthusiasm which i had joined the organisation over three years ago as a 20 year-old starry eyed aspiring journalist.

To end let me leave you with this thought provoking line, from the movie Ratatouille,which stands true in my case-
"The most predictable thing about life is its unpredictability."

Cheers to all!!!

Women's day...when every woman will make history

Today was International Women's Day. Even if you had forgotten all about it or was not even aware of it's existence then I'm sure the Newspapers, Periodicals and Tabloids would have done their bit to remind about it to you.

I didn't do anything special today, just wished my mother, my female colleagues and friends. My office gave all the women employees gifts to mark the day which by the way was in its centenary year.
So coming to the point of this blog, it's almost the end of today (10.30pm as I'm writing this) and yet another women's day will come to an end. As i flip through the newspaper and scan the channels all of which are ending their "Today's Special Shows for women” it hits me one need not need a day but would rather require an entire lifetime to celebrate womanhood.

It’s good to celebrate a day and make us feel good about ourselves but how many of us actually felt so? Or rather feel so in our everyday lives?

I’m not a feminist, for me equality with men, or women’s rights does not mean behaving condescendingly with the opposite sex. According to me, equality or rights are achieved when a woman seats across a man in an office, at home or any other place, looks into his eye has a healthy conversation makes her point, either agree with his and come to a logical solution or has the luxury to agree to disagree with him on any given issue.

For me a liberated woman is the one, who makes her own decisions after weighing the pros and cons, and not draw conclusions out of what other people think, especially men.

History would have been created in the Parliament today if the Women’s Reservation Bill would have been passed, unfortunately, it was deferred till tomorrow. I wonder, if it will ever see the light of the day, considering that we have been fighting for it for the past 25 years. I guess this would have just added insult to injury, as our political rights became just another casualty of illogical politics.

However, Kathryn Bigelow, with her Best Director Oscar award managed to put a smile on our faces. She made history by becoming the first woman to do so and was nominated in the same category along side her husband James Cameroon. It this was her victory and our pride.

I dream of a day, when every woman will make history, not by winning awards or surpassing men in various professions (we have already done that), but when each of them are emotionally liberated not dependent on men, getting our “respect” in the real sense of the word. That will be a good day to celebrate Womanhood.

To us :)

Holi, I will never miss you again...

I played Holi after 12 years, i don't even remember when and with who i played, may be it was with a few people from my building, and it was just not that memorable. But this year it was extraordinary. Not that i hate Holi, i think it's a fun festival full of revelry and recreation, it's just that over the years i have been grossed out by the prospect of puttingthose vibrant yet popularly known to be harmful colours on my face and hair. So i just stayed away.

In fact, i distinctly remember one Holi, years ago when i was a kid, i locked my self in the bathroom for the whole day. My family and friends knocked on the door outside convincing me thatthey wont' put colour, but it was too hard to believe them so i didn't step out until lunch, when everybody had gone home. Sounds funny?? obviously i was 10-years-old then.

Any who so this year was different, among other things, I actually had fun with colours and water this Holi!!! i hadn't decided to play Holi until the previous evening when my newly-married sister and her husband invited me over to their place to celebrate the festival with my other cousins. I obviously didn't agree, and was the first one to back out, i outright rejectetd the invitation.But had to eventually give in after everybody persuaded and forced me to go and Enjoy!!

So on Monday morning dressed in my old clothes (specially for Holi) i went to her place. When i reached most of them had already started playingseeing them i almost turnaround to get back into the auto and zoom off to the station. Something inside me, asked me to let go of that "I wanna run away" feeling and boldly entered the premises.

Well, what happened next was just FUN!! My cousins put colour on me, and a bucket full of water was emptied over me. The next thing i knew was that i was putting colour on people and pouring water on them. For the next two hours i was like a child in Disneyland! Of-course all the play was accompanied with music including the evergreen Holi song Rang Barse.... Bhajjiyas, Thandayi and jalebi added thier grace to the occasion.

On my way back i realised that if i had turned down this invitation, what a mistake it would have been? I even felt that for all these years just by being scared of colours i was barring my self of that one day of the year from experienceing the reverly that India celebrates.

It's a festival that brings out the child in you, parents, uncles, aunties and even grandparents make the most of this festival and live upto the popular adage - Bura na mano holi hai!!!

Hence, i have decided that from now on i will play Holi every year.
Hope you all had a very very Happy Holi!! just like me :)