Funda

I am feeling very wise all of a sudden. So I am going to share with you a story I had picked up a few years ago when I actually used to read and think about what I had read and share those thoughts with people. You know.... before I got a laptop, and DC and gtalk had come into my life.... Yes, right.... very very long ago....

Once upon a time in a land far far away (:P) there lived a very learned and rich old king. He was frequently consulted by his subjects for all their problems, and he always obliged.

A young man who was about to set sail to faraway lands in search of treasure, came to him for his blessings. The king decided to teach him an important lesson and entrusted him with a simple task. He gave the young man a spoonful of sacred oil and asked him to walk around the palace while guarding it carefully for the next two hours, such as to not spill even a drop. The young man walked around with the spoon with unwavering attention, never looking away from it once. He returned to the king at the end of two hours.

The king admired his diligence. Indeed, he had fully applied himself to his task! But had the young man explored the beautiful palace with it's sparkling chandeliers, huge fountains, lush green gardens and exotic flowers? He hadn't, as he had been too busy with his task. So the king asked him to look around every nook and cranny and come back whenever he was done. The young man was mesmerized. Never had he seen such a beautiful place! He felt like a child on an unexpected treat. After many hours, he returned to the king and excitedly told him how lovely the tour had been. The old man was amused, and pointed out that the spoon was empty.

Such an important lesson, so unforgettably put.

It's so important to explore the palace and also so important to guard the spoon. Perhaps it would be fine if we spilled a few drops, and didn't really discover every secret the palace held.... as long as we did them both. But we usually go through life after having chosen either of the two....

Reminiscence

I miss school so much. I miss the place where I had learnt to read and to pen down my thoughts.... only it was so much more to me that it cannot be put into words. It was the place I discovered that I could write.... and the place that encouraged me to do so.

I had to be back home really early.... around 8-9 I think. I could't imagine midnight strolls. Or night outs. (I still think that they are highly overrated.) I love the fact that I can do these things now. Even then, what would I not give to spend a single more day in that school with all the people present there like nothing had changed.... yes even the ones I hated... how wonderful it would be! Let that remain a rhetorical question. Perhaps, now, if actually given a choice I would choose a more lucrative option, which would in turn leave me a lot less happier.

I remember so many first times.

I remember my transition in the seventh standard from a quiet little good girl to someone who doesn't shut up. I owe it all to my best friend in school. And of course under her influence, I remember the first time I had to stand in the morning assembly holding my ears. This used to be an honour conferred on those few who had succeeded in pissing off the class monitors the most that week. It had indeed been a proud moment! It had signaled the birth of a new me.... who wanted to talk and talk and talk about everything on her mind.

I remember having close friends who I thought would stay... but they didn't or perhaps I didn't... it could't have been just them... But I guess I don't even give enough credit to the few who stayed by throughout.

I remember being made a prefect in school. How easy it had been at that age to fill me with pride and to give me a sense of achievement! I always seemed to have found reasons to be happy and feel fulfilled. We always get sadder as we grow older, don't we?

And do I remember home cooked meals! Yes I do! Never appreciated it much while I had it.... but now.... every time I go home, I seem to come back 5 Kgs fatter! I love home cooked meals- they are the most wonderful things in the whole world!

I remember a birthday party in school, when my friends had brought a whole cake for me! I still maintain that it had been the most awesome birthday surprise ever! I remember feeling like the most popular person around with the best friends ever, who loved me so very much! Yes, that's a lot of superlatives.

I remember that I had wanted to be Head Girl, though I never said so.... and I remember being so disappointed when I wasn't chosen. Small things mattered then. Or maybe, it's just that what is small now, wasn't small then. Our perspectives change... and so we keep telling ourselves how we used to be much better off, when probably we have been the same all along.

I remember my first shy furtive glances at a guy.... followed by the immediate feelings of over-consciousness on being discovered.... then getting over it and trying again.... and of course getting caught again. I remember my first date.... and the innocent blunders that made it so perfect. Followed by many other firsts....

I so vividly remember each of our Annual Functions that I used to wait for so eagerly! Sometimes I try to reconstruct our practice sessions in my mind. They used to be a treat! You could miss as many classes as you liked and no teacher would ever say a thing!

I remember the last day of school, when I being one of the unworldly few, could not figure out what everybody was so sad about. I couldn't imagine a life outside the one I had already known, one that didn't consist of the people I met and talked to every day. But as it turns out, everybody was right and I was wrong. I am glad that life isn't the same any more and that it's going to change even more drastically in the next few years. But I cannot help the fond recollections.

I might dedicate a blog to college life some time later, when I am stuck somewhere in a job I don't care the least about with a boss who makes me want to kill myself.

Childhood

Do you remember the times many years back when you were not scared of the rain? When you were forcibly deprived of an afternoon of showers and puddles and newspaper boats, so that you wouldn't catch a cold? Remember the times when you sneaked out anyway? And what about now? You have probably forgotten what you had once yearned for, and now that there is no one to stop you from getting drenched..... you stop yourself. And others too, if you get a chance.

I loved being a child.

In fact, I am often told that I am still a child. I think so too! I know that I can be overtly sentimental (ha ha ha... need I say more!), and very often most impatient, and at other times simply a pain in an intimate body part.

You know what I like most about children? You obviously don't and so I am going to tell you.

I love their honesty and the sincerity of their emotions and the fact that they are so very curious! Yep... I love their curiosity! I love the way that their minds are so devoid of prejudice and that they simply see things as they are... and definitely not as they should be! A little child will ask you such uncomfortable questions! She won't take it for granted that your maid should sit on the floor and not touch the furniture. She won't look away from the beggar on the street who's eyes you tactfully try to avoid. She will tell your best friend exactly what you think of her, so remember to keep your mouth shut when she's around. She will stare at the ugly and call it ugly in it's face and she will duly appreciate the beautiful even when she's not supposed to.

But then she learns to behave and to be polite (to the right people of course) and also to hold back anything even remotely spontaneous. And, she learns it all without knowing that she has. And then passes it on.

What if we could all be like children? Doing whatever we wanted, saying whatever we actually felt, and free from all preconceived notions. Wouldn't it all be a much better place? After all, every one of us was once pure, untouched and ignorant. We all once had our eyes wide open.

Bikes!

Don't you just loooove bikes!!!! Well, I know very little about them and have been on one only once (yes once.... spare me those incredulous looks... I've seen them already)..... and that once was only 2 days ago..... (yes I'm 21 and it was my 1st time)....... but I am so much in love with them already!

Well, you picture the perfect bike ride as one where you are hanging on to the love of your life in the most enviable way possible and whizzing past your more unfortunate friends who jealously tell each other how it won't last..... don't you? Sure you do! You just don't say so. Well, the good thing for you is that my ride wasn't anything like that. Being kind of chicken-hearted I had protested at the idea of 3 people and no helmets, but had obviously been overruled. I started off by making funny noises and holding on pretty hard for my life to the person in front. My whelps even convinced some street dogs that I was being kidnapped and they gallantly ran after us to rescue me (as interpreted by my 'friends' on the bike).

Half way around the campus, I started loving it!!! Totally!!! And that's when I wanted to go faster and faster! The wind just felt so wonderful and everything felt even more wonderful and I am sorry for my limited vocab because I would really like to use some other nice word in place of 'wonderful' but I can't think of anything right now. (Looks like GRE mugging was even more worthless than I had realized.) Thankfully our driver wasn't too wild and so we survived scratch-free. We had 2 'wonderful' rounds of the campus. :P

That's all I had to say about bikes. That's all I know about bikes actually. And thanks so very much for the ride!! :)

Kgp ki bandi....

Yes... we are intelligent and smart and beautiful!! And proud of it too! Not "arrogant" as you put it. And why shouldn't we be! You can't stand it when you see a girl more confident than yourself... and you call it arrogance! And you question our beauty! Well that's a lot to digest from someone like you. If you are so busy with all the little things that you do and you don't even have the time to bathe (or shave or get a haircut or change your shirt more than once a week)..... then we can definitely be pardoned for not having the time or patience to look like Christmas trees.

And what else? Too "career-oriented"? "Self-centred"? Well shouldn't we be? Aren't you? Nobody is going to give us jobs for our culinary skills (which might not be so good, but they are better than yours any day) . And we use you, do we? Stop being used, for starters. And secondly, hasn't a guy ever taken advantage of you "naive" nature? Stop generalizing. Live with it.

You say that you are much humbler than we are. We behave like "queens", do we? O well, you can't really afford to act like a king, can you? Unfortunately, we are heavily outnumbered out here by you guys and no girl is going to pay any attention to you if you start behaving like you own the world. So, for you, being nice is kind of the only option. And trust me, if the day ever comes that we outnumber you (I pray for that happy day) then your "niceness" towards us will decrease considerably. And then I am going to say "I told you so!".

In the meantime, try dating a guy.

I got a story to tell!

This is a story I had read sometime back. I had loved it at that time and I still do, though as the years have passed and I have grown considerably more skeptical, there are certainly some things that I don't like about it now! You will hear about those things too. Anyway, here goes......oh and by the way, I don't really remember the story as I had read it, so most of it is a result of my hyper-active imagination and bad memory.

Once there lived a handsome little bird who loved adventure. He loved to fly, he loved to discover new lands, he loved the feel of the wind as it brushed his feathers. This adventurous little fellow had seen more than any of his friends, but he didn't fly to go places, he traveled because it set him free... because he wanted to... and because it was just who he was.

So, you might have guessed that this is going to turn into a love story! Well, yes it is. It was a beautiful rose who saw this little bird and fell in love with him. She loved his free and proud spirit....the way he would listen to nobody and would stop for nobody. She yearned to be close to him and to ask him about the faraway lands he had been to. Whenever the bird flew past, she would look at him in wonder. Little did she know that the bird wanted to be with her too! But our proud little hero, who claimed to be fearless, wasn't any different from the other birds when it came to love! He fought his feelings for some time.... but then he had to give in.....

One day the bird approached the rose. He was overcome by her beauty and her sweet fragrance. The day soon gave way to night and then the night ended very fast. In due course of time, the shy young couple fell deeply in love, and realized that they couldn't do without each other. (In the actual sense, not in the Kgp sense.) They were very happy together.

But the bird missed his journeys. He wanted to fly again, and he did, but it wasn't the same any more, he never felt that he could go anywhere in the world with nothing to stop him. He knew that he could never do that again for the sake of the rose. The rose was bowled over by this sacrifice, and the bird thought that it had been worth making.

But things began to change..... as the days went by, the bird wasn't the same any more. He no longer had the same freedom of spirit that the rose had fallen in love with, he no longer was the charming hero of her dreams. The rose began to regret having chained down the bird. They realized that they had lost themselves, in trying to own each other.

The bird was flying one day, when a cool breeze tempted him away.... he went along with it, and then he realized that he had to go back. Just a bit more..... he told himself, and so he did go a bit more. And he went farther and farther till he reached a point where he knew that he wouldn't go back, because he didn't want to. So he continued with his adventure and for the first time in ages, felt truly alive......

The end. So that's the story I had to tell. Very nice. Very profound. Clap clap clap. Well yes, I agree, that it is good and the message is definitely something I believe in, and of course I believe that it's easier to preach than practice. Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about. My first objection to this story is that the rose is a rose. Or a flower for that matter! I mean, the only thing she ever does in the whole story is just sit around and look pretty and smell nice! So, that's a bad thing. Seems like the person who wrote this story was a bird married to a nagging flower! Was that offensive? I don't know.

But more importantly, the practicality of the matter. I mean, this story obviously isn't for birds and roses (who don't really care much about each other, I'm sure). What if the rose were a very reasonable flower and the bird would his fly away on his adventures every now and then? Would that necessarily be a good thing? I mean, I know that freedom is important, but I find it so very difficult to know where to draw the line, or rather, if there should be a line at all. Maybe there shouldn't be. But imagine this..... suppose the bird were a naughty one, and would every now and then forget the rose who loves him, and want to do stuff with some arbitrary orchids who he meets on his travels!!! Then, what does the poor rose do! Sadly enough, the little fables that we read do not answer such questions! Anyway, I'm sure that the only thing for the rose to do would be find another bird, preferably an ostrich this time.

Well, jokes apart, I believe in freedom, but I also realize that it's easier to demand your own freedom, than to grant someone his freedom. And moreover, freedom means different things to different people. To me, freedom is not the lack of commitment.... rather it's the ability to choose what is best for you and to commit to that. And having said that, I know how hard it is to love someone so much to be able to let him do whatever he wants.

Back to things I love

Its been so long since I wrote when I actually didn't have to! That's a sad realization for someone who used to pour out her feelings on paper at the slightest provocation. Well, for starters, the paper's gone! No one in his right mind uses paper any more. So I'm following the trend..... getting used to pouring out on my keyboard now! But It's a different kind of feeling from the times a few years back when I managed to fill my drawers will papers full of feelings so deep (:P) that I would be too embarrassed to show them to anyone at all. Well, there they are still, unread and gathering dust... and well, it is kind of embarrassing to show people your writings (unless you are an established writer and people find out diverse interpretations of your lines when they actually just mean what they mean.)

So......back to things I love. Someone has just asked me to write a book!!! Well, interesting thought... and moreover it was a childhood dream to see my name up on a shelf at a bookstore, some day. But, being as impatient as I am (well, for the uninitiated, I am very impatient) let me tell you that I had started out more than once, and then abandoned it mid-way. But yes, its nice to know that someone still remembers the dream that I had myself forgotten. Thanks a million for that! And I promise to try.

Writers always say that writing gives them this feeling of never wanting to stop.... the feeling that the most important thing in their lives is to share their thoughts and that they could never make out why anybody in the world would not want to write. Funnily enough, I can completely relate to that. Writing was my passion, that thing that could make me forget everything else in the world, and make everyone wait till I was done with the very last word. Well, that last sentence was oddly intense! Forgive me for being melodramatic.... but I guess I really mean that.

So, I am back to writing for good! I should have never given it up in the first place. I mean, I can always say that I had other things, but then, this feeling that I am getting at this very instant, while writing these words..... is something I cant really describe. I missed it so much. And besides, I have so much more to say right now. After I left school, I have learnt so much, and changed too.... I have beautiful memories, and deep scars too.... I learnt that the terrible things that I could't imagine happening to one of us while I was in school, do actually happen to real people just like us. But I know that we have to fill our scars will our beautiful memories, because those are the things that make our life worth it. So, I treasure the happy times, and laugh about the naughty times, and learn from the bad times. Yes..... I have many other such sermons to deliver! And sadly enough for you, I will deliver them.