Yet another cliched Mastercard moment

Working 15 hours straight, every single day, 7 days in a row, month after month.

Exhausting.

Being too tired to carry-on with social niceties and being labeled a social recluse.

Inevitable.

Realizing that being on-call every Holiday and every long weekend in the coming year.

Sucks.

Having a dream and believing in it.

Hard.

Keeping the faith when all hope is lost.

Harder still.

Living your dream every single second........ Priceless.

P.S. Having no time to blog, sad.

Realizing the dwindling number of footsteps treading the blog, sadder.

Discovering there are still some ever-hopeful souls who visit the blog, amusing.

Dear Blog,

My deepest apologies for having been gone without a trace for all this time.

And may be this does not come as too much of a surprise to you. I know I have been playing this love-hate relationship with you for quite a while now. I post in a frenzy. Then I get depressed. Or stressed. Or both. And ignore you for a bit. And then I bounce back in a flurry of apologies and hope to be received with wide open arms.

So here I am. Yet again. Hoping to be welcomed back.

And to be honest with you a great deal has been going on with my life lately and someday I will sit down and tell you all about it. Someday when I have the time.

In short, I am back. From a quick trip to Calcutta.
And I changed my career path. Yet again.
And no time or energy to blog. So you will have to be patient.

But do you believe in Miracles?
I do.

Hang in there. I'll be back.

~M

The Measure of Success

How do you measure Success?

Do you look at people who are considered successful and see how you measure up against them?
Or do you set your own standard and see how you measure up against yourself?
Or do you let someone else decide for you? Let some stranger tell you if you are successful. Or will be successful. Ever.

"Don't ever let someone tell you, you can't do something."

"You got a dream, you gotta protect it. People can't do something themselves, they wanna tell you that you can't do it. You want something? Go get it. Period." ~ The Pursuit of Happyness

Period.

"This part of my life is called"....

....the pursuit of happiness.

Couldn't be more true for me.

And if you haven't seen it yet, please do.

"And it was at that time that I thought about Thomas Jefferson writing that Declaration of Independence.
Him saying that we have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And I thought about how he knew to put the 'pursuit' in there, like no one can actually have happiness. We can only pursue it."

Makes you think.

Smile and the world smiles with you. Cry and you cry alone.

I think grief is a very private emotion. Unlike most other basic human emotions which find comfort in expression. Like joy. Or happiness. Or good cheer. Which you can share. Spread around like some magical shimmering fairy light. Or say anger. And hatred. You let it out. Express your self and feel relieved. And then there is love. Which always needs to be expressed and shared for it to grow and bear fruit.

But grief is in a different league altogether. Because it cannot be shared. Or expressed. Or understood by anyone else. And you live it everyday. Through broken dreams and faltering faith. Through unshed tears and dying hope. And yet, I don't want your pity. Or words of comfort saying it will be alright. Which is why I want to be left alone in my grief.

Tread softly because you tread upon my dreams.

The Blank Noise Project

Read about the Blank Noise project and wanted to support it by putting in my two cents. I know I am late, but they say "Better Late than Never". And after all it is never too late to do something good.

Street Harassment.
What can I say about street harassment that hasn't been said by hundreds and thousands of women all over the country? We've all been victims at some point in life and we've found our own ways of dealing with it. We've been jostled, prodded, groped....anytime the perpetrator felt the need to and was reassured of his getting away with it.....in a crowd.

I can't even remember any more when it first started. Or how I learnt defensive techniques of evading these men, by squirming or moving away at the last instant, or by holding my bag behind me so that it would form a barrier between my bottom and any unwanted visitors. I never gave it back to these creatures by calling out their bluff. Because I was embarrased that this was happening to me. Because I was nervous. Because I was the kind who hates drawing attention to herself. And yes, there are women like me. And year after year, these men get away with it. And women go on being victims.

The one incident I would like to share is something that happened on the streets of Calcutta. A city that has been touted as being safe for women. I was walking down the road to the bus stop near the Tollygunje Police Station. Now how much safer can you get, right? You have the P.S. bang in front of you. And it was around 4:30, so it wasn't even dark outside. There were people out on the street, taking a stroll, chatting with each other, children playing. You get the scene. And here I was walking down, trying to make it to the bus stop. I spot a group of young men coming towards me from the other side. Now my natural instinct put me on my guard. You adapt to these instincts if you are a girl growing up in a big city. Right when these guys came across me I could hear them passing comments and smiling at me. I kept on walking trying my best not to look at anyone and pretend like I didn't see them. And then one of the guys decided to get a little bolder. He reached out, touched me and grabbed my dupatta and bag. I tried jerking his grip off and fought to break free. Now there were atleast twenty people all around us on the street. Some even stopped what they were doing and stared. And while I was crying for help and fighting off this guy, not a single person intervened or came to my help. And all the while his friends just laughed and cheered him on. When I finally freed myself and got away I remember running the rest of the way with tears streaming down my face. When I reached home I wept. For myself for not being strong enough to hold my own. For every girl who has to face this kind of harassment. For the city that prides itself on being safe. For the myth that Calcutta is a city with a heart.

Eve-teasing has become a way of life in India. We live with it and grow up with it. And I truly believe none of the guys who read my blog have ever done anything so gross. Yet, there are hundreds and thousands of men who do harass and take advantage of women on the streets. The one time I saw anyone take a stand against eve-teasing was on a crowded bus where a man was trying to shove his hard-on into my backside and this young gentleman who saw what was happening started shouting at this man and made sure that he was forced to get off the bus. I salute men who stand up for the harassment women go through everyday on the streets. And I salute the people who are taking a stand against street harassment. And if getting on my computer and posting this prevents even a single incident of eve-teasing, then I will consider this my most significant post ever.

Choosing my day

It started off as a really bad morning. Well, first I lost my ring. Then I spilt coffee all over the place. I ended up leaving the house late hoping to still make it to the train station on time (considering the traffic is always lighter on Fridays). Unfortunately there was a trailer that had an accident and was on fire on the interstate which meant traffic was backed up both ways for miles and people were taking shortcuts through the by-lanes. I not only missed my train but was beginning to doubt if I'd make it in time for the next one. I would have missed the next one too because there was this freight train stalled on the tracks that I needed to cross before I got to the station. I finally got through and made it to the station. It took me exactly one hour and ten minutes to get from my house to the train station. A distance of 2.5 miles. Ridiculous, wouldn't you agree? And that means I am in a really bad mood. Grrrr.....

It started off as a morning that could have been bad, but turned out pretty great after all. Well, I lost my ring. But I found it again hiding under the comforter. Then I spilt coffee all over the place. But I was lucky that I had a tray and all the coffee split on the tray, sparing the brand new carpet in the bedroom. I missed my train. It took over an hour to reach the train station when it should take less than ten minutes. Ridiculous, agreed. But I still made it to the next train and reached work before nine. I mean, it could've been so much worse. Right? I think it is going to be a beautiful day.

Strange isn't it how we look at things? React to them in different ways. Someone sent me a very nice email about a 90-10 principle in life. Things that we do not have control on, that happen to us out of the blue make up about 10 percent of the situation. How we react to them makes up the other 90 percent. We can choose to be angry, we can choose to be in a bad mood, we can choose to blame everything around us and have a bad day. Or we can choose to look on the brighter side and realize how lucky we were that it wasn't any worse. We can choose to have a beautiful day instead.

Because you let me

You let me walk all over you. And you still love me.

I know I can say anything I want without fear of losing you, do anything I feel like and still have you understand, be anything I want to be and you'll still support me. Because you let me be myself.

When I'm down in the dumps and vent all my frustration on you.....you let me. Because you understand. You listen to all my rants, my crazy ideas, my impossible dreams, my unreachable goals, my endless aspirations. And you teach me to aim higher. You make me believe in myself. And you never give up hope. Never.

And through all my crazy changes, from changing names to careers to geographic locations, you've given me unwavering support. Without questioning me. Even once.

You keep on giving. Trust, love, understanding. Unconditionally.
And I keep on taking. Everything. For granted.
And I keep coming back for more.


I never thank you enough........ To my parents with gratitude, M

Down on my knees

I am not a very religious person. That does not mean that I am an atheist. Or even agnostic. (Although sometimes I wish that we could get rid of religion altogether from this world to free ourselves of all the political unrest that is being caused by religious sentiments). It just means I am not a very religious person. I do not go to the temple on the first weekend every month. I do not quote shloks from the Gita to prove a point. I do not burst into enthusiastic Om Jai Jagadish Hare at social gatherings. I do not see the point of fighting and killing each other over religion. I do not see why we need to break down mosques to build a temple, or why we have to burn people because they are Christians, or why we have to set fire to a train because it is stashed with Hindus, or destroy entire populations because they practice a different faith.

Yet sometimes I just go down on my knees and pray like crazy.

Usually it is when I feel very helpless and scared. When I truly believe I need a miracle, some kind of divine intervention to make things right in my life.

I pray.

My Sudoku

After putting off familiarizing myself with Sudoku for months I finally tried my hand at solving a few puzzles last weekend and just reconfirmed my initial suspicions regarding the puzzle that has taken over the civilized world lately. It's way too trivial to be worth my while. I tried a couple of the so called "hard" ones and went through the numbers like a flash. It just seemed too obvious and easy for me. If that is the best this puzzle can offer I dread to think what the easy ones must be like.

I've watched hundreds and thousands of men and women on the train pouring over the daily Sudoku in the newspaper having fun solving it. And Sudoku was everywhere. They had it in the newspaper, they had books dedicated entirely to these puzzles, you could download it on your laptop, you could print it out from the internet....people commute with sheafs of Sudoku in their bags, they go over it while they are waiting for their train, they go over it while they are in the train, even when they are standing. And I am convinced they do Sudoku even when they are in bed! And I've always wondered what is it about Sudoku that is so addictive, so gratifying, so unputdownable (my apologies to The Telegraph).

And now I know. It is the relative ease of the puzzle, the challenge that can be overcome that brings these poor souls to Sudoku. I mean how many people do you know who can solve crossword puzzles with ease? Not that many. Because you need to have some kind of knowledge base to be able to succeed in that. But not with Sudoku. It is the perfect ego-satisfying game. One where you think you are being challenged and one where you can meet the challenge and emerge victorious. And that makes people feel good. And it doesn't take that long to solve the puzzle either. It is a perfect time-pass for the short commute on the train. It keeps one busy, it gives one a challenge and it rewards with gratification.

And that is something that I do not find stimulating. If everyone on God's green earth can Sudoku then it is an insult to my intelligence to spend time doing something that trivial. Give me something else......give me the Mensa challenge. I know I sound like some egoistical bastard. But I have a problem boosting my ego solving a problem that can be done by anyone and everyone. That to me ceases to be a challenge. The only ego boost that I get is when I see myself doing something that most people fail to do, something different, something difficult, something that sets me apart. There was something that Rabindranath Tagore wrote in Shesher Kobita that echoes what I am trying to say here. I do not want to be someone in a crowd, I want to be the one, separate and different than the rest. That is my Sudoku.

Being human

I gave up my seat to a blind man on the train this morning. You may be wondering what the big deal is about and I sincerely hope that you are wondering, because that would say that we are thinking along similar lines here.

You see I've been noticing a really strange trend in people these days. Most people on the street seem to have lost all sense of compassion and humanity, assuming there was some to start with in the first place. For example this morning on the train which was fairly crowded considering the morning rush hour, I see a blind person board the car that I was in. Now every car has these priority seats for seniors and persons with disabilities. The blind guy heads for the priority seat which of course was occupied by regular morning commuters. Meanwhile I am sitting a few seats away expecting one of the guys to jump up and offer this man his seat. And strangely neither one of them got up. One of them turned his face away and pretended to be unaware that this guy standing in front of him is disabled while the other one closed his eyes and continued listening to music on his iPod. And all the other people in around this person either look away or keep staring and do nothing. Now all of this happened in a few seconds but to me it seemed to stretch out for an eternity without anyone moving a muscle to help this poor guy. Now I jump up and go to this person and tell him that there's a seat for him at the back and guide him to where I had been sitting a few minutes back. This guy thanks me and I get a few stares from people around me and that was it.....life chugs on.

The whole incident was probably trivial and no one is going to remember it, yet it left such an impression on me. I've been taking the train during rush hour every morning and evening and have given up my seat countless times to seniors, pregnant ladies and once to a girl with a plaster on her feet and walking on a crutch. Yet, never did I see anyone else jumping up and offering his/ her seat. I don't even see the hesitation or a look of concern or something that says that this person is contemplating offering his seat to someone who may need it more. And I ask myself what is wrong with these people? Are they blind or without a heart or simply so selfish that all they care about is the warm seat that they are occupying and cannot think beyond their own needs? And then there are these people who are crowding near the door so that they can get off the train at their stop to rush up the escalator before the others. And they stand near the door many stations ahead of theirs, simply to make sure that they are the first ones to get off. They do not care if others have trouble getting in or out, they do not care that if they crowd the doorway other people have trouble getting into the center of the car which of course is relatively less crowded. They will push and trample over your feet and still be unapologetic in their urgency to get out before anyone else does. And agreed everyone is in a rush to get home and everyone has other things to do but that does not give one the reason to be selfish and so unconcerned about their fellow-passengers. It just amazes me that I see more and more of these people than the ones who show a little concern for others. And it makes me sick.

Are we really so caught up in our own world, so stressed out with life's challenges and so very preoccupied with our own needs that we fail to appreciate the niceties of human nature? That I see this attitude on a daily basis really breaks my heart, makes me lose faith in humanity.

And please when you read this don't say things like "you did a good thing this morning". Please don't. There was nothing "good" about it and I do not deserve applause for doing something that was the only right thing to do. I am not exceptional when I say I have compassion, I feel and I care. I am only human. And hopefully what a normal human should be like. And I only pray to God that may there never be a time and place when I am so blinded with my own needs that I forget to be what I am. Human. So next time you are on a train or a bus look around you and see if there is anyone else who may need the seat that you are in and please don't look away and pretend that you do not notice. Do something right. Live a little better.

To clean or not to

I believe that I'm turning into a clean-freak. It is something that I've been noticing in myself lately. Everything around me has to be spotless, organized and clean. Last week with my house brimming with family I was constantly cleaning up after people......I ran the laundry every single day.....I cleaned and vacuumed and tidied up given half a chance. And trust me with little kids running around and throwing food everywhere it was not easy. You see lately we've have been keeping the house spotless and to see rice strewn across the dining room rug or spilled curry on the table cloth or coffee stains on the kitchen counter or toys laid out strategically at the bottom of the stairs is well....disturbing. My counter tops have to be gleaming, spotless......my floors clean and sparkling.....my rugs smelling fresh and clean.....everything needs to be in the right place or else we call it "clutter". You get my point, right? I know what you are thinking and trust me, I am thinking the exact same thing. This reaction is not normal. Some folks may call it OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) but honestly it's not that bad. Yet.

And I blame it all on B because he is the one who started it and considering the kind of influence he has on me this freaky cleanliness is creeping onto me quite steadily. You see, I was so unlike this. When I was living with my parents my room was the only eye-sore in the entire house. My parents are both neat and clean people. They believe in keeping the house spotless too. Both of them. Usually the women in the house are the ones who are tidying up and keeping things clean. But in our house even my Dad would do his share. He would clean up after he used the bathroom, wipe off all the water from the faucet after his morning shower to prevent water marks and stains. I used to complain that our house did not feel like a home because it was too clean, too nice, more like a model home. It did not have a lived-in look or feel to it. In contrast my room had books all over the place, clothes hanging across the back of my chair, stuff everywhere. That was me. And that is what made me comfortable.

And now, this is me. The very same person who enjoyed disorder and chaos to give a place the lived-in feel. Now she freaks out when things are not in order. I can't believe this is happening to me. OCD? Nooooooo. I don't wash my hands compulsively. I don't check the lock on the door a million times each night. I'm still normal, right?

Gentlemen prefer.......

Beauty is only skin deep. Right? Apparently not. Okay let me elaborate a little on what a funny realization I had over the past week.

I had a haircut last weekend. Okay........ what's the big deal, you ask me. Well you see this was my first proper "haircut" in say, ten years. I know you are wondering which end of the planet I just sprung from. Well you see I wear my hair kind of long. I mean it is really, really long. And all I've ever done to it in this last decade is just trimmed off the end to avoid getting split ends (I know I'm losing you guys....but the girls will know what I'm talking about). And since it reaches to beyond my waist I felt that leaving it open would not only be messy but would pose to be a dangerous thing with the potential of getting my tresses tangled in barbed wires and the like. Hence....for the last eight years or so I've been piling up my hair into a bun that sits a little above the nape of my neck. It was convenient, hassle free, low maintenence and best of all, nobody noticed the split ends!

Okay the downside to this whole hair-bun thingy was that B hated it and I wasn't particularly fond of the "look" myself. Yes, I would let my hair down occasionally, you know for a family photo or something, but I could never wear it down when I went out. And everytime B would mention doing something different with my hair I would start off a sob story about how ugly my hair-ends looked and how very inconvenient it was to leave it hanging down my back. Now, my patient reader (if you've lasted this long) you may ask, if I was having so much trouble with long hair, why did I not cut it off ? Well you see......that is where my false sense of vanity pops in. The fact is I love my hair. It is straight and sleek and very black. And it took me a long time to get it to grow this long. And the thought of chopping it off just made me shudder. And then, B just adores long hair. I think it is a guy thing. Most men I know seem to have a penchant for long hair. And he would probably just leave me if I did actually cut off my hair. So you see, the bun thingy persisted in tormenting our lives, everyday for the last few years.

Then last weekend I decided I had enough of this and wanted to get my hair in shape so that I could do something more pleasing with it. And so I went into a salon and told them that I wanted to cut my hair shorter but not too short (you see, B and I had already decided what the critical length was for him to be able to still live with me). And I let my hair down. You should have seen the look on this lady's face when she saw how long it was. She was almost sorry to have to cut it off. Anyway, we went through the whole routine....shampoo the hair, chop it off, decide if the length was acceptable, dry it, spray something to get rid of fly-aways and polish it off with a serum to give it gloss. And at the end of it she gave me this beautiful mane that boasted of layers, some framing my face, some a little longer, but the overall length reaching halfway down my back. Which was a beautiful length. Long, but not that long and definitely not short. I was pleased. In fact, very very pleased and couldn't stop preening in front of the mirror for the next hour or so (which if you know me is highly uncharacteristic of my normal no-nonsense self). And B was very pleased too.

After that I simply stopped tying up my hair. No more braiding the hair at night because it makes the hair look awfully wavy in the morning when you unbraid it....and no more piling it into a bun because that made the ends turn scraggly. So this whole week I have been going to work with my hair hanging down my back and getting used to these wisps hanging on either side of my face. What I am also getting used to is all the attention that I am getting all of a sudden. Which brings me to what this post was all about in the first place. I just realized that inspite of all these claims about appearances not being important and men actually look for substance in a female...... it is all a myth. When a man looks at you, he does just that....look and that's it. He doesn't care whether you are nice or beautiful inside....I mean, not right away. He just cares if what he is looking at is visually pleasing or not. With my puritan hairstyle out of the way, and with these shiny tresses crying out for attention I am suddenly swamped with people trying to be more friendly, making conversation on the train, getting stared at, being told that this hair looks good on me and even had someone wanting to touch it and feel how soft it is! How ridiculous is that? I mean, it's still plain old me under here and the fact that I get a sexy haircut makes me desirable and attention-worthy all of a sudden? And that is what I just realized.....men do prefer goodlooking women. Not because they believe they are going to get her but simply because they like something visually stimulating. And yes, appearances do get you places.

Overnight I've been transformed from a quiet, unassuming, nice girl to this desirable, hot female with the gorgeous hair. That is a little unsettling.

What say you?

Please let me be wrong

They say something about a woman’s intuition…. sixth sense…. hunch. It is uncanny but true. This time I am hoping that I am wrong.

Remember Joe, the security guard that I was talking about the other day? The one that says nice things and tries to cheer everyone up? Well I am getting a really funny feel about this whole nice guy business. Okay so it starts out with Joe checking my bag every morning (security reasons) and saying things like “how are you doing this morning” and “have a wonderful day”. Which was great. A few weeks later he is saying things like “honey you have a million dollar smile” and “I like looking at that pretty face of yours”. The context you ask me? It’s just that I had found a different way of getting into our building without going through the security check at the front desk each morning. Which means I don’t run into Joe everyday. Then one day I go round the front because I took a bus that dropped me off right in front of the building and I run into Joe. He asks me where I have been and why he hasn’t seen me lately. So I tell him that I go round the back because it’s just easier. And he tells me that would mean he would never get to see me again and that I should come by and show him my “pretty face”.

Okay at this point I’m thinking that he is just being extra nice and mildly joking. So I say that I will and go my way. Of course I did not take it seriously and keep sneaking in through the back every morning. Then last week I was leaving the building in the evening to go home when I hear someone honking from the distance. I turned to look because the street we are on is very quiet otherwise. And there I see Joe waving at me from the distance trying to get my attention. So I wave back and keep on walking my way. Then I hear him run after me and I stop. A little curious I turn to see what he wanted. Apparently nothing. He just enquired how I was doing and why I don’t come round the front. And then he says, “promise you’ll come through the front and see me everyday”. Now I’m beginning to think this was a really weird conversation and say something to him and start walking off. Okay by that time I am rationalizing with myself that I am just screwed up to think that Joe was being anything but his friendly self. But somehow I was not getting good vibes from my inner self.

Then this morning I had to step outside my building to use my cell phone (the dratted thing refuses to work inside the building) and just as I was about to return to the warmth of my desk I meet Joe again. After last week’s encounter I had purposefully kept away from the front entrance and was a little taken aback to run into him again. He comes up to me smiling and says, “I’ve been looking all over for you. Where’ve you been?” and hands me a little folded sheet of paper. I asked him what it was, all the while pretending to be entirely at ease and like it was the most natural thing in the world to be handed a note by someone you barely know. He says, “It’s a surprise I’ve been carrying with me to give you”. I open the note and in neat handwriting is his full name and a telephone number. “It’s my cell phone number so that you can call me anytime you want.” I go, “Oh…” as in extreme surprise and after a pause say thank you and run off.

By this time I’m hearing alarm bells going off inside my head. Is Joe just being friendly or a little too friendly for comfort? Why on earth would I need his cell phone number and why in God’s green earth would I need to call him? All I’ve ever done is smile and said thank you every time he has said something nice to me. He could be my grandfather for crying out loud. Okay…may be not that old, but older than my own Dad. And it’s not even that I am the available kind, if you know what I mean. So what is going on here? I call B and tell him what just happened and he laughed it off saying I was wrong and reading too much into things. Well, may be I am. And I sure hope so that I am. Because in this case I would want to be mistaken. But there have been other incidents over the years….., like when I was sixteen and a friend of my Dad tried to take advantage by touching me and trying to kiss me (on the lips if you still have any doubts) and all along I had these intuitions about this guy being weird. Or when my best friends boy friend got fresh with me. Or when….and every time I’ve tried to rationalize that it was me who had the sick mind who reads too much into things. And every time my intuition has been right. So call me crazy for being paranoid. But this is one time I am praying that I am wrong.

For Rabi mama

"Enechhile shathey kore mrityuheen pran
Morone tahai tumi kore gele daan."

Saptamir shokal, 1412

The flesh and meat and the gory details

Sometimes the most innocuous day to day incidents can bring the most monumental changes in ones life. Mine started with reading an article on the internet. It began with the story of a child who got sick after eating an undercooked burger at a fast food joint and ultimately died from HUS (hemolytic uremic syndrome) caused by a pathogenic strain of a bacteria called E. coli. The article went on to describe the horrors of how the meat industry works and the various schemes to cover up the most gruesome practices in the civilized world. As I read the article I could not believe the atrocities that were described and by the time I was through, the mere thought of eating meat made me nauseous.

Obviously I had to do some checking. I googled a bit and came up with the term "factory farming". Now as I said before I had no idea what this was leading me into. I read some more and with every article that I came up with, it only served to make me sick with the facts and shocked at the cruelty that was being practiced each minute as I sat there learning about it. Now for those of you who are in the same state as I was prior to this eye opening incident and have very little idea about what I am referring to, you may want to check out this and may be this. But be forewarned that what you are going to see, read and learn is gruesome to say the least. In fact some of the pictures and videos were so graphic that I could not bear to watch them. But what I did see was enough to convince me into giving up on meat.

I come from a country where a vast majority of the population is vegetarian and probably would not have any qualms understanding where I am coming from. I on the other hand have grown up knowing that we need animal protein in our diet (vitamin B12 folks) and that every meal should include either meat or fish to provide me with the appropriate nutrition. The staple food in any home in Bengal would comprise fish and rice. And after coming to the US our diet was largely governed by all the different kinds of meat that were so readily available and oh so inexpensive and yes so easily ready to eat. We lived on hot dogs and burgers.Pizzas always had to be smothered in sausage and lunch would be sandwich with any kind of lunch meat. So for a person like me to be faced with facts of this proportion was a staggering blow to my intellect, my humanity and my entire existence.

Overnight I gave up eating meat. The mere thought of eating meat was now repulsive to me. I had no trouble converting my husband either. B is one of the most compassionate human being I have ever met and he has taught me many a valuable lesson in humanity. When he read some of the things that I had unearthed he had a similar reaction. Folks back home in India who of course have not come face to face with these gory details were shocked and a little outraged at our sudden dietary restrictions. But nothing they said could make me change my mind. And we've survived this meatless existence quite well for the last 9 months. Changing the way my parents feel will take some time, but then, you can make the difference by moving one stone at a time.

The whole point of my writing this post is not because I am any kind of activist or that I am trying to convert any of my non-vegetarian readers into making a lifestyle change, but because I believe a lot of people just are not aware of things like this. There are organizations and there are people who spend their life fighting to prevent such cruelty. And even if I am not an active part of any such movement, I strongly believe that my support can go a very long way in making a difference. With every burger that I refuse to eat for the rest of my life I am probably going to save the life of one cow in my lifetime. With my husband we can make that two cows. And to that add all the goats and lambs and pigs....well, it does make a difference in the long run.

At last

"My heart wants to sing every song it hears
My heart wants to beat like the wings of the birds
That rise from the lake to the trees
My heart wants to sigh like the chimes
That flies from a church on a breeze
To laugh like a brook when it trips
And falls over stone on its way
To sing through the night
Like a lark who is learning to pray"

After weeks of nervous apprehension and trepidation I am happy (atleast I think I am). I wish I could share my feelings. Let's just say I believe I may have got a really shining star when I reached for the sky. Makes me happy. For now. Thank you!

contemplation

They say about 7 million women in the US are suffering from depression and that one out of every five women can expect to develop depression at some point in her life. They also say depression most frequently affects women between the ages of 25 and 44. Does that put me at a greater risk of being depressed? It sure does. Does that mean I am depressed? Probably not. But the statistics are scary enough and they scare me.

Do I have any reason to be depressed? Of course not. I’ve been loved and nurtured all my life, I live and love and enjoy life, I have a husband who loves me, parents who are proud of me, friends who care for me, a past that I cherish, a present that is worth every moment and a future that holds promise. Yet, somewhere in between the narrow crevices of my life are failures and disappointments that remind me of things that I wanted and did not get, of dreams that I had and could not realize, of hopes and aspirations that I tried to live up to and could not reach high enough. Does that make me a success or a failure?

There’s a saying that goes "Reach for the moon, even if you miss you will land among the stars". But what if you wanted a piece of the moon and nothing else would fit the bill? Worse still, what if you wanted to give someone you love a piece of the moon and only ended up getting a star. Would that be alright? You could say, that’s not bad, you did get a star, and it’s bright and shiny and looks kind of like a diamond. But it still isn’t the moon, is it? And you could try and try and try to reach for the moon, but what if you cannot reach high enough? What if no matter how hard you tried, the moon was still out of reach and you could never reach it? You could say, well you tried hard and that’s good enough. But it isn’t. You still could not give the person you love the one thing that would have made a difference. Does that qualify you as a failure? Or would you still claim that it was a success since you ended up getting the star?

We all grow up with dreams, with hopes and aspirations. We want, we demand so much out of life. We have big dreams, major goals. Kind of like big rocks that we put into a glass jar and fill up to the brim. And then we have these other aspirations, kind of like sand that we can pour into the glass jar even when it has been filled up with rocks and still find room for so much sand. It’s those space filling sandy dreams that fill our life and make it whole. And when they start running out there is very little that is left holding your life together. When we look at someone’s life from outside we only tend to see the jar with the big rocks. We never realize how much sand they are holding in between the rocks and how much the sand means to making life hold together. That is the essence of life. And that is what makes life worth living.

Crushed

My first crush was when I was 12 years old. It was not the love at first sight kind, but something that crept up behind me and hit me hard one day. And it was the unrequitted, unattainable kind. The guy was tall and handsome and didn't know I existed. He was Imran Khan, the captain of the Pakistan cricket team! During his heyday in the late 80s Imran was the heartthrob of many a girl. I knew I "loved" him and I knew everything there was to know about him. I knew his birthday, where he lived in Lahore, what his likes and dislikes were, who his favorite actress was, who he was sleeping around with....I lived, ate, slept Imran Khan. I would make my dad take us to dinner at the Oberoi Grand when the Pakistan team was in Calcutta playing a one day match, with the hope of catching a glimpse of my hero in the lobby. I even went to watch a highly charged one-day match between India and Pakistan at the Eden gardens a day before my Final exams in school, just to watch Imran play and made myself hoarse screaming with glee every sixer that he dealt out, much to the irk of all the other Indian supporters around me. I had Imran posters all over my bedroom, not on the walls because that was a strict no-no in my house, but all over my cupboards and doors. The crush lasted for a few years. I think it started tapering off right when Imran married Jemima. I haven't had a crush on any other cricket player since.

But having crushes on celebrities is a normal part of growing up. I've been through the Maradona phase, the John Mc Enroe phase, the Tom Cruise phase and the Agassi phase. The Agassi phase I think, lasted the longest. I think I still had some of my Agassi posters clinging onto my door half torn and faded with time, when I started seeing B, who I ended up marrying! It makes me laugh to think about the crazy things I did or thought of doing each time I had these crushes and right now I don't even know what I saw in any of those guys. Tom Cruise makes me want to puke right now. But (sigh) I guess it was one of those crazy teenage things, something to do with surges of hormones I believe. You fall in love with anything because you are more in love with the concept of being in love. I even had a crush on a guy because he was wearing a T-shirt that was a color which happened to be my favorite at that particular time. Or may be it became my favorite color because he was wearing it and I had the crush first....wait, now I am confused....I don't remember which happened first. It was so long back. And it doesn't matter because it was just that, a crush, that lasted may be a milli-second in the span of my life. But these moments live on in your heart as sweet memories which can make you smile even on an otherwise ordinary, dismal morning.

Inner strife

Expectations....we're in a constant struggle to meet expectations. Expectations of our family, expectations of our friends, expectations of our ownself. Does this constant battle within one's self for better and more, make us happier or more endowed in any respect? Or does it leave us drained, tired and frustrated?