Dying to be Alive.

It is time for "moving on"
It's time for a closure and a new beginning.

Lets press Ctrl+R... or perhaps Ctrl+N.

It may or may not be an end formally, but it ends in my head. Can't continue without wnting to.
And don't want to.

It's the swan's last song for sure. After it, it dies... happily and satisfied.. or burning with raging desires to 'prove its worth'.
Either ways, it is worth it. Perhaps burning with raging desires is better... to keep the fire alive... the passion going.. the life button on bright green rather than a pale standby.

But happily satisfied seems to be more desirable, given one's proclivity to a peaceful and normal life.

But the current test is the toughest ever. God is being pinged every other minute and bombarded with random and desperate prayers.
If only he would reply back with positive content!

Haseen Daastaan

An honest laughter...
a stint of vicarious pleasure...
the moment of finding someone who thinks EXACTLY like how you once did (and then laughing boldly at your old self)..
spinning yarns of self-obsessed wishful thinking/dreaming..
getting a quick reply to a desperate question posted on a forum...
seeing the thinner version of Adnan Sami and being convinced that India has changed drastically in the passed months...
Giving genuine answers/advice to someone in distress and realizing how much it applies to you...
creating music in the piano class...
loving a professor for changing your life so greatly...
going shopping with a friend who is so typically annoying and you love him for being himself!
Harboring a burning desire...

Figuring out what has to be done with life... and surprisingly finding a concrete answer that is satisfactory.

These mark the current state of thought.

I am not sooo lost anymore... there is a dim focus... a non-zero focus, as I can hear someone say :-)

change of state

I stare at the phone. And I refresh my email.

There was a time when personal emails would go unread and unanswered, and incoming calls would be thoughtlessly and mercilessly rejected. When I said "I'll call back", I knew I wouldn't.

There were too many people. I wanted my space.. my peace..

And now I have all the space I can ask for, and more. And all the privacy.
And no incoming calls.. and no personal emails.

It's not a complain. It's just an observation.

Finding the fine balance, as with everything else, is the solution.

My first

long distance drive!

Now I understand the personification of a car and the connection its (or his/her) owner feels with it (him/her).

All thanks to my brothers Kai and Pam (and my skewed geographical sense), I decided to meet them mid-way between LA and SB, which by my calculation was Malibu.
I left the home feeling a sense of 'picnic'... carried with me fruits and all that.. and left on a high note.. only to realize that I didn't have the directions and that my mobile didn't have much of a charge on it (hail Murphy for the nth time).

But being the pseudo-brave girl that I am, I went on to go to fill gas and then hit the Freeway. FiIlling gas was an adventure in itself. All the stations were occupied, and no matter where I parked, I was blocking someone or the other. And reversing the car is so not my forte!

Anyway, after a couple of maneovers and all, I thankfully managed to fill gas and then off I went on the freeway. Wow! The world suddenly looked so much more beautiful than I last remembered it. And the weather was perfect what with the sea staring at me with it's brutally wild waves, and the weather being that of the teasing rain. I pulled down the windows and put on Reshammiya to the loudest. I dont remember feeling so benevolent in a long time.

And then I thought, of what use is a convertible if you can't convert it. So I halted on the side, put on my sweatshirt and rolled down the cover. Agreed that hot chics in halter tops and sunglasses covering 3/4th of the face, with just the right tinge of tan and hoops adorning the ears look awesome in an open-top Mini Cooper... but chics in earth-brown sweatshirt with covered head in the hood and nakli rayban, clinging on to the steering wheel look no less interesting :-)


So there I was, traveling at 55mph and brrrring in the cold and totally loving it. I screamed the songs and eventually lost some of my voice. And I openly cursed and laughed loudly, all the sound drowning in the 'zooming' of the car.

In all this frenzy, I drove on an exit-only lane and went on the wrong route. Normally, I would curse myself, analyze the US roadway system, think of a better alternative and in general spend a lot of time musing on all this. But not yesterday! I laughed louder at my callousness. And instead of calling up/asking for help, I went with my instinct. Thankfully I retraced steps correctly, inspite of all the excitement. Glee!

And then came the unexpectedly mountainous route : 23 south! It was no less than the typical routes of Garhwal, excpet that instead of a bus full of 50+ passengers and an extremely experienced driver and conductor listening to Altaf Raja hits, this time it was a puny car with a highly inexperienced driver listening to "Kya Mujhe Pyaar hai.." (yes, in spite of my mood, I switched loyalties from Reshamiya to I-dont-know-who-all).

It reminded me of Tennyson's poem somewhere... I am not at all that literally bent or literarily bent... but some poem that had "canon to the left on them, canon to the right of them.... but theirs was not to ask why?, theirs was to do and die!"
Analogy - canon:bikes and their:gargi (glee!)
:-)

It seriously was the most confounding journey... I tamed down and symbolically put the hood up, and covered the car. And drove very seriously, and took breaks only to blink!


After making Kai, Pam and another person wait for about 2 hours I reached there.

We had a great time - cracking crazy jokes on each others, Gujaratis, Kailas pariwar and all that. We immitated the servers, laughed at our incompetence at immitating them.. We discussed Narendra Modi, 20-20, weight-loss... the Fortune 40 list and all that.

The eventful evening ended with Kai doing trick photography and us posing in front of the beast. I need to coin a 'cool' name for the Mini pretty soon...(obviously a guy's name).

The drive back was not that challenging... came back on Highway 1 all the way. It was fun.
Was reminded of the google quote that I had read a few days back:-

Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
- John le Carre

When I finally took the Glenn Annie exit, I felt a changed person. Really. I wondered why.

I went to Albertsons... had a super-surprise bump into an old friend... whom I havent met in a long time now. It felt rather good to see him.

The day ended with me eating very delicious food cooked by all the others...
:-)

Life is good... if only God allows our plans to get executed... well, if only God astutely selects the plans that should get executed...
May be he does!
At least there is faith... an unquestioning faith in the judgment of the Almighty.. although one has been warned of it being misplaced... One continues to live and learn...

A moment to cherish

for a lifetime.

I've always thought that 'when I do THAT', or 'when I achieve this' or 'when this will be accomplished', I will feel on top of the world.

Twenty three years of existence passed without me ever feeling even as high as the Eiffil Tower, leave alone top of the world (I think I reached Marathon Heights at most ;-) ).
Loving myself never stopped/reduced. But the sense of achievement never really hit me even if I did manage to achieve what i set out to.

It was generally about grades in school, admissions in college, GRE scores... and more of such flimsy criteria that would translate to a celebrating-worthy achievement.
I often 'celebrated' as well as ridiculed the celebration an equal number of times, if not more.

Today, something beyond grades and something beyond the conventinal yardsticks to measure academic proficiency, happened.
I was talking to 4 Computer Science professors, and they were listening to MY OPINION.
And they wanted to know more.

I could not believe it.
I still can't.

A small thing to them, but to me, it was unbelievably uplifting. People who obviously know a lot more than you, who have 'been there done that and know it all', are listening to your opinion on someone's recommendation.

I am happy. Tearfully happy. Somehow, it seems that I redeemed myself. For what, I don't know.
But I always had the underlying lurking faith in the way I approached academics. It is not 'good-studentish', neither is it 'bad-studentish'. Its just an approach that I think is right... not always, but most of the times.

Scores, grades, admissions are touted because they are perhaps (and unfortunately) the standard and the only widely acceptable way to confirm a person's intelligence/smartness/curiousity/
other-words-for-you-know-what.

Having said that, I have yet to meet someone who is genuinely happy and feels a sense of achievement based purely on grades and admission (which is isolated from the thoughts of a brighter future, whatever his/her idea of that might be).

Anyway, all I know is that no matter how high I score or whatever academic success I get, nothing could beat today's experience.
It may be the case of grapes being sour, but I think not... and I care not :)