kuch is tarah...

Lying on a surfboard, in a wet-suit on a sunny morning out in the sea is the definition of 'serene'.
Surfing is difficult.
Even with 10 foot long surfboards, I nose-dive into the salty, oily, weed-filled water and have my ears, nose and what-nots filled with the water. And then the naughty board magically finds the farthest spot in the ocean to lad after it;s high and might jump in the air.

Once located, I try to cover up the distance between me and the board. But it tries its best to drift away. I smile victoriously when the gap between us is converging :)
And then it reluctantly gives in after its swan song of jumping again in air.

Whatever!

And then I have to go all the way back into the ocean.
THIS is when all the big waves come, right when I have to get in.
And I swim like crazy, only to realize that I am still at the same spot, if not closer to the shore.

Somehow I make it. And then, I just lie on the board, eyes trying to calculate a wave, and whether I can catch it.

I like surfing. I should do it more seriously though. And that's true of most things I do.

Apart from that, the daunting driving test has been passed.

Now I have most of the things that make me belong here - a credit card, a debit card, a driving license, a car (but I still use the word dicky instead of boot), a social security number, an acquired habit of inquiring into the fat calories of every edible item, a pair of cool sunglasses, a bikini (glee :) ), a notion of weather (but I still can't identify the molecules of smoke that others can so easily do), an active facebook account.... and a close firang friend :)

I look forward to the India trip, but not as eagerly as I once thought I would.
I like it here.

Apart from that apart, I talked to Aditi today. The only decipherable communication was laughter on both sides. We laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. It was crazy.

There is always sunshine after rain :)

One of the best

Just can't figure it out.

My New Family

It's 9pm. I am at a friend's place. My cell rings. I ignore it, and the call is missed. And it rings again. I take the call this time.
"Kab aa rahe ho ghar? Khaana khaaoge na? Hum ruke hai!"

I wrap up, and head for home. I haven't heard such words in years. Even when I was back at Mumbai, the calls from mom were more out of unfounded fear than anything else.

Here, there is someone who is cooking for me, and waiting for me, and all that.

Shalini is probably the funniest girl I know. The only one who can match her wits is Prasanna. And the duo make our house vibrate with laughter and sarcasm.
Anjini and I can't do much except explode in paroxysms of laughter.

Anyway, it reallly is fun to have such an atmosphere at home, where everyone is friendly, easy-going, humorous.. and where everyone has a bunch of idiosyncrasies.

Now it's time for me to put rice in the cooker (as per Shalini's instructions :) )

Shrugging off the Remnants...

She walks out of her house, and suddenly a flash of images strike her. She knows that paying heed to those images can only bring in pain. She refrains. Successfully. And she is surprised by the success.

As someone had told her - "One lives and learns".
True. She finds it now truer than ever.
The wounds that once seemed impossible to heal and the memories that once seemed impossible to delete... and the flashes of images which were inevitable... and the random thoughts triggered by the all-powerful "if only..."s, all these seem to now become handleable.

Is that a good thing? Is 'getting over' something a good thing?
Perhaps not until there is something to look forward to, after 'getting over'. If there isn't, the memories form a convenient substitute of that which is not.

But probably pointless memories are... pointless, and reliving them in the silent hours is an anti-antidote.

She looks around.. and smiles. She suddenly has an eventful life again - new set of friends (un-complicated and funny), new bunch of roomies (very very interesting and super-fun).. almost a family. (She gets woken up and offered tea.. something that never happened even in Mumbai!). She has newer things to learn (too many perhaps).

She has laughed so much, and gone out too often for it to be true, and all of all that.

She is happy again. She still remembers. But now the pain translates to a momentary lapse of focus on her current life, and eventually it'll be a distant past to ponder over in times of retrospection, with fondness (hopefully). This, like many other things, is a stolen belief.

"Have the experience and miss the meaning"
She didn't let that happen... not this time at least :)