Turning the clock back ...

‘Time throws a blanket over slumbering memories until one day we walk back to them unknowingly, following the bitter-sweet scents of love, of loss, of happiness and pain, of a war won and battles lost.’

“It wasn’t called Pakistan, Beta. It was India”, said my grandmother, correcting me. “It earned its name only after we came here, after the partition”, she added with a sense of pride in her voice. Sitting in her favourite chair, watching T.V and knitting a beautiful pattern with white wool, she looked like a happy and content lady. Her forehead showed lines of hard work she had put into building her life here and the life she had left in the land of her childhood, Pakistan.

It was a weekday and no one was at home. My family had gone to attend a close relatives’ wedding. Grandmother was not fond of crowded places and hence avoided going until completely necessary.

Lying on bed listening to my grandmother’s stories at nights was one of the very few things I used to look forward to. It put me altogether in a different mode. I could listen to her never ending heroic stories forever. Since we lived in a joint family, silence was a missing entity. Calmness crept in after lights went off and even if my grandmother was asleep, I used to nudge her and wake her up. And since she was a light sleeper, she never really seemed disturbed.

But today was an exception. No one at home on a weekday was very rare and since I was in the middle of my Christmas vacations, I was surely making the most of it.

“It was not at all easy to pack up your entire life in a jiffy and leave behind everything”, she continued.

“I was born and married there. Life had just got on path and we had to come here. Everything turned unsafe”, her eyes going wide, “I wish no one has to see such days”, she said shutting her eyes and saying a silent prayer to herself.

“What about your friends, Dadi and what about school? Did you not go to school?” I asked with curiosity.

“He he... I was married when I was fifteen. I went to school till I was about twelve. After that I was assigned to learn all the house work and by the time I got married, I could make food for hundred people together”. Another wide smile came to her face. She may not have been very educated but she certainly was a woman of substance.

Hearing her tales made me sway along with her through her nostalgic ride. Her journey had not been an easy one. But each time she told me a situation or an incident of her life, she managed to grab every iota of my attention to her captivating storyline. How amazing yet difficult would it have been for a teenage girl to leave her one life behind and enter another one, in a new land?

We all know that the partition of our country brought tranquility to some but a sense of melancholy to those who had to leave their homes and lives behind to commence a new beginning. She was no different. The sight of death was that a common one which she witnessed through the most important journey of her life. Gruesomeness around made her strong at a very tender age.

My grandmother is no more and like every grandchild, I too had formed a special valued bond with her. Reminiscing about her life, her talks, her tales, connected me to the sadness she felt each time she held my hand and took a walk down her memory lane. Her stories are safe with me; her childhood, a part of mine.

The 'bookmarked' pages of life! :)

How many of us do this at a book store: - Pick a book which we intend to buy, contemplate for a while and then keep it back. 
Well, if you do this then join the gang! 
I do this pretty often. I'll decide to go to the bookstore to buy a copy of the book I have collected good reviews about. Even after knowing the fact that it's a decently good book, I still won't buy it! Reason was unknown, until today.

I did pretty much the same thing at a road side book store today. Knew very well that I wanted the book but kept it back after looking and reading a bit of it for a while. My friend happened to be along with me and mind you, I had done this for the second consecutive time at the same store! :P

The minute we left the stall, he remarked, 'Seema, you intend to go to the bookstore with not the intention of window shopping but actually buying the book but you never do it! Pick something if you like it a lot, you don't need to think whether it is a good or a bad book.'

The minute he said this I pondered for a second, turned around and went back to the book store and without a single thought bought the book.

Well obviously, it does look like a silly story of me and the book but if we look at it for a second, it's much more profound than that.

Our life is very much synonymous to the cycle I mentioned above.
First make a decision.
Then look at the pros and cons of that.
Doubt the decision.
And bang, before we know it, it's gone!

We don’t really realise this but life should pretty much be the same to what you have already thought. Looking at the brighter side of things is what we are supposed to do. If you put yourself in the indecisive gear for too long, you shall remain there, period.

So what if there are wrong things on your list, at least the good and the bad both belong to you and not to someone else! And interestingly, you are the one who holds the reins to make the bad into good and the good into better. :) 
 
So the next time, someone even suggests a book of a shitty author, buy it. The only good thing you do in this is increase his profit margin by a tiny bit. ;)

Adios.

We are weird.

The world functions on weird analogies.
For example..
a.)Only the closest people hurt you the most.
b.)Sometimes its worth keeping a smile on your face to make another person feel happy.
c.)It's better when somethings remain unsaid.
d.)Hardworking people reap success after a hell lot of hard work.

If you go to think on this, all of them contradict so much.
a.) Why will anyone close to you ever want to hurt you? Doesn't he or she know what your likes and dislikes are. Oh I forgot.. there is a clause attached to this too i.e they hurt you more because they know you will understand them. I mean, seriously, this sounds more complex than the movie Inception. In that movie, Leonardo spends 50 years of his life with his better half in their dreams. Still understandable. But human psychology is a bigger mess than Indian politics. There you know the person hurting you, more sympathetically, is the opposition party but Hello.. not here!

b.) Okay. No judgement firstly. I love making people happy. Being amusing is nice. But even you know that down there you feel horrible when someone is not around you to console and caress you when you need that cheering up desperately! Some people care only about the fact that they are happy. That's it. The door shuts there for the self centered ones. But the people who are selfless, kind, caring, generous have always a part left within them to share with someone who needs it. They are equally human. They feel just as bad when something goes wrong with them but they are still there for the one's who need it more. :)

c.) The only things which should remain unsaid are secrets, secrets and more secrets.
What people fear most are of expression. They don't want to express because they are very okay with the way things are. That my friends is wrong or rather dangerous. Expressing is a way of letting out what you feel. Trust me on this, whatever the matter is and once it is said and done, there is a heavenly feeling which comes along and makes you feel a lot more better. When I say expressing I don't mean letting out anger or hurting someone, I mean letting others know that there is a good human which resides in you. Let your feelings go the way the should.. Don;t stop them.

d.) This is one thing I still don't get. It is not far that a man working hard on a barren land gets no rain as the year passes by! But again, analogies remain queer till date. And so is this one.

Getting caught in this web of human nature will draw you deeper into it.
But the only thing which remains stagnant is that human nature is and will remain the way it was. Period.

Adios. Ciao.

Confusion personified

Its 2am in the morning.
And I have no clue where life is heading .. Feel like I'm right in the center of a tornado which is twisting and turning me the way it wants to. I just hope I don't come out of it being a massacre.
People say that when your not able to decide something, go with the flow. And not like I have not done that. I have practiced it with eventually no result or rather answer in hand. I think being confused at this age is considered okay. But I fear that this civil war within me doesn't go on for too long. :P

P.S :- Hope you'll get what I am talking about. Tc. :D

Ponder

A Social circuit has become such an essential part of today’s world that it cannot go unseen. I being a super talkative person am seen laughing and jabbering away with anyone around me. I say it makes me feel happy. Well, obviously yeah it should since we humans are so called ‘Social animals’. But we don’t realise that sometimes we find the closest of friends ‘Baaton Baaton mein’ and there starts a journey to an endless, jovial and an understanding relation.

But there is another side of the coin to this too.

We hate it when you talk to someone only for a purpose or reason and make the person so close to you… Not knowing that maybe it is not the same on the opposite side. Moreover, it becomes even more difficult to actually detach such relationships from you because they become a part of your everyday life. Talking to them is less of a habit and more of a requirement. Such friends may or may not be with you for the rest of your life but they surely have a lot of importance for the moment.

Sure, we go ahead and meet new people. But that person’s value still remains the same in a corner of your heart forever. Mind you, we are so silly that we never want ‘that’ person to know that everything is not okay.

It is strange but years down you will definitely think … what went wrong? But the answer to that question shall never be more than an ‘I don’t know’. And the weirder part is that there is no one to blame.

Regards,

Seema

P.S : Posting something after really long. And it feels good.

Cheers :)

Facing facts......

Its been long since I wrote something.I have off late been in a wandering thought process.Lots to do where work is concerned but still some thoughts,weaving their tales at the back of my mind.Anticipation,anxiety which doesn't seem to die.Overlapping thoughts which seem so muddled up that one single thought cannot be picked up explicitly.

           
In this wierd frame of mind,I happened to read the hot favourite '2 States' which has somehow left an influence on every couple dating or non-dating.The reason why this book has done so well is because it has connected with the masses,youngsters and even married couples who recall their days of convincing the girl's side or the boy's mother.Certain parts in the book are so true especially Krish's cousin's marriage in Delhi which is so typically 'Delhi',the line about '3 things what guys live for',Dolly the Delhi girl and the detailed description of her mother and how she flaunts her petrol pumps,the part where Ananya slams Duke of being a looser being one of my favourite parts.

But apart from the amazingly funny one liners and the dry sarcasm to set someone rolling,lies a message which the author says in his subtle way.......that love doesn't lie in the boundaries of religion.It lies in the simple fact that two people who love each other..want to be with each other...and do not know each other as a Hindu or a Christian or a Parsi or a Malyali.When someone makes a friend,he or she makes a friend for the soul reason that they connect with each other,can share everything with each other like no one else.So why not the same while choosing a partner?Why are we bounded in these chains which hold value only on a spirtual level.

Its not stars,horoscopes,color and race but interests,feelings and attachments which should matter more in today's world.Where the divorce rates seem to peak higher and higher,people have lost the connection with their loved ones for the very sad reason that they never connected,even though their horoscopes were a perfect match.

This book is more importantly written for the parents of our country rather than the children to tell them that we don't want to go against you and do something but rather convince you so that you too will add to this happiness......The reason being that 'We love You'.

Chetan Bhagat's second best piece of work....Looking forward to more.