A little Koffee anyone - No? Really? Not even a little bit?

Just the other day, when I was sitting in my room absolutely bored, I turned to YouTube for some much needed entertainment. I spent half an hour going through a lot of crap before I chanced upon an episode of the show 'Koffee with Karan'. Now, I am not a huge movie buff, I don't really give a shit about most of the movies that are running in the multiplexes. But I like filmy gossip,again not to the extent that I sit over it for hours and ponder and worry about it, but just generally, I like to watch chat/talk shows with different famous people in them. Now don't get it in your head that this is the only reason I watch these shows, I am not that shallow either, but it is definitely one of the reasons when it involves film stars. I am not looking for any kind of 'gyan' from them, obviously.

So for those of you who are not familiar with the show itself, Karan Johar is a director in Bollywood who most of the actors would die to work apparently. Lets not get into that kind of logistics for the time being. He hosts this chat show where he gets all the biggies from the industry to come by and chat with him in a 45 minute episode where they discuss everything from the actor's journey to stardom, new movies,ex relationships and current flames on an apparently steaming couch ( Don't blame me, I borrowed the cliche from Mr Karan himself). Despite how cheesy and terribly annoying it sounds here, it is actually quite nice. As in, the show is well hosted and some of the movie stars are really funny. You wouldn't want to watch this if you are in the mood for something useful because this really is utter nonsense. But sometime utter nonsense is what you need for entertainment.If you can watch movies like Shivaji or Dabangg or Ready which is actually mindless shit, this should be OK too. You watch it for 45 minutes,smile and laugh wit them and then you let go. You don't ponder over what they said and what they are doing because the truth is that you don't care. Neither do I. Nor do we have that kind of time in this age. So for all those who keep bitching about talk shows like this, go get a life. If you only wanted to do something useful in life everyday and nothing else, you wouldn't be doing half the things that you are actually doing.

Life is not meant to do only useful and awesome stuff. Take a break once in a while, do some nonsense, it helps :)

The best days of the week

I have been a happy kid these last two days :) So what has been driving me... Some good work at office and a lot of cleaning at home. I don't know what it is about cleaning, but it makes me so happy after I've done it. I like to think I'm like Monica from F.R.I.E.N.D.S who has the obssesive need to clean. The sad part though is that after I'm done cleaning, I find it that much harder to maintain. But its good in a way because then in a couple of weeks, my room's messy enough to warrant another cleaning session. Ok, I'm just babbling about something here that has no connection to the topic posted above, so lets get back to that. The best days of the week for me are always Fridays and Saturdays. Yes, that's all. In a week of 7 days, I only find 2 days of true happiness. Now if your curious, here are my thoughts for all days in the week -

Monday - Oh no! Its Monday again. Not only do I have to be at work for the entire day, I have to worry about not getting my Monday headache (If you've read my older posts, you know what this is)

Tuesday - OK, 4 more days for the week to come to a close. 4 days-4 days-4 days-4 days (chants in the head) . Its going to be ok. (Then the realization) Shit, I have to get up early tomorrow because I have to be at work by 8.30 :(

Wednesday - Ahhhh! Class.. Trust me, nothing is more painful than having to work all day from 8.30 am to 4.30 pm and then having to head down to school to attend a lecture taught by an innocent looking albeit cunning professor for 2 hours. ( But yay! he lets us go at 8.05pm instead of 8.30pm)

Thursday - Week's coming to a end. Muhahahahahahaha ( I wish I had class on Thursdays instead of Fridays so I could truly enjoy my Friday, but its OK I guess)

Friday - If your happy and you know it, clap your hands . *Clap-Clap* :D Even the class in the evening does nothing to dampen my spirits because I know I have two days up ahead to laze around and chill and do more cleaning. :P

Saturday - Yawn. Best day of the week. Knowing that you don't have to do anything for that day and the next is  pure awesomeness. Its that kind of a day where you can lie down doing nothing the entire day and still be smiling!

Sunday - Sunday I think is a holiday to make you do all the tough physical work that you diligently avoided over the week. Cook,do the dishes,the pile of laundry and not to forget, the gloom that hovers around you because Monday is fast approaching.

And that is how my week goes by. No prizes for guessing what day of the week it is today. :)

If your happy and you know it, clap your hands *clap-clap*
If your happy and you know it, snap your fingers *snap-snap*
if your happy and you know it, and you really want to show it
If your happy and you know it, tap your feet *tap-tap*

YES! Its Friday and I'm a happy kid who's anticipating the weekend. :D :D

The thrill of competing

The spectacle that London 2012 was is finally over. Personally, I did not watch anything other than the terrfic gold medal badminton match between Lee Chong Wei of Malaysia and Lin Dan of China (both, being players who I had never heard of before, but then again I don't follow the sport, so yes, its alright). So what am I writing about here? No! Not about the 6 medals that my country won. As proud as I am of our athletes, I am also miffed by the fact that 6 medals was all a country with over a billion people could manage. So then what is this about?

The other day, purely because I was bored, I watched a video of Usain Bolt's 200m race in the Olympics. It was a 20 second affair, but an absolutely gripping contest. At 150m , Blake and Bolt were running head to head. The fastest man on the planet was being challenged at that point! It is of course another thing that he eventually pulled away and won comfortably with Jamaica taking silver and bronze as well . So excited I was while watching this that it brought back fond memories from my own life. Long long ago, when I walked those tracks, when I could hear my heart beating as fast as I don't know what.. at the start line while I tried to listen to the person yellin Ready...Set...GO, when we celebrated victory like it was the most important thing on the planet. I don't compete in this sphere anymore, but what fun it was in those days, training together, the team work and effort, cheering for team mates when we were not competing in that event. It is definitely one of the things about my life that I miss a lot - the thrill of competing.

The slave

She worked all day and all night,

To keep others happy, she worked so much

Sadly though, she knew not, what made her happy.

She was lonely, she wished for freedom,

Freedom from the chains of fate

Those bloody chains,
the ones that had already cut into her skin

leaving behind marks of agony,

Marks that would not be erased by anything.

Marks that she would regret getting for 

a long time afterwards!

Einsamkeit

Somedays you are so lonely that the tears wont stop flowing..

Somedays you are so overwhelmed by grief,

Those are the days you wish someone was with you,

To hold you while you cry

To just be quiet and be there

To tell you not to worry

To support you.

To let you finish crying

To understand the way you feel

To be patient

To care

To listen

To tell you that things will work out

To tell you that things will be alright

To tell you that better times are ahead.

You wish someone was there..

WEIRDNESS

How weird this life is,

When things that ought to have brought much joy,

have actually brought nothing but pain to her.

The tears wouldn't stop flowing,

no matter how hard she tried.

That very familiar feeling was back,

The one that would chase away all

happiness, leaving nothing but a deep pit of despair.

The one that suffocated and addled her brain.

The little happy world she built around her

crumbled slowly while she watched.

No, she didn't just watch, she tried to stop it

But like sand through her palms,

the harder she tried to hold on, the faster it slipped.

She wanted to give up, she had seen enough,

the battle just got more ferocious inside her head.

But each time, something held her back.

That little bit of faith from deep inside

told her to hang in there, that good times were due

'They may be a rarity now, but it wont be the case forever',

she told herself, again and again as she waited..

To be contd

And it is a good morning

“What on earth are you still doing with the damn newspaper” screamed dad as I sat up all groggy in bed. The grogginess, well… I think that story is worth another post in itself. So yeah…I dug out my phone from under the pillow to check the time and it was just 7 in the morning. My eyes hurt from having not slept properly in over 48 hours, but I knew that if I slept any longer, I was asking for some serious trouble. I hauled myself out of the comfort of my bed, oh wait, it wasn’t that comfortable anymore. The air conditioner had been switched off four hours earlier and it was as hot as hell! I adjusted my pillow leaving my phone under it for safe-keeping. Rule number 1: Never wake up with the cell phone in your hand, especially if your family can see you doing that.

Then, I see my brother walking into the room with the grumpy expression on his face and mumbling under his breath. Just as I was getting used to the light, my mom screamed for me from the kitchen. By now I was wide awake. I got around to brushing and then went to the most hated part of my mornings, milk. (Yuck!) I grabbed my coffee mug from the kitchen counter and moved to the balcony, away from everyone at home as they rushed about, trying to get ready on time. I settled comfortably in the easy chair (like a 60-year old as my mom liked to remind me) and opened the newspaper. And as always, I lost interest in the news that had been published after a mere fifteen minutes. I turned my attention to all the noise that was coming from outside.

It was almost 8’o clock. Most schools around this area begin at around 8.30 or 9 and I knew that there would be all the auto-wallas honking and screaming for the kids to come quickly lest they be late for school. I smiled to myself as I remembered those days when I was one of them, running around in a hurry trying to avoid being late to school. I paused to take in the scene around me. There was the usual middle-aged mother next door dutifully oiling her daughter’s hair and plaiting it. Was it my imagination or did the girl look grumpy? Well, it could be my imagination because back when I was in school, I was never happy with whatever my mother did with my hair. I would constantly complain about how my hair was standing up at the back or in front, phew… it was a bit of a struggle until 8^th grade after mother gave up on me and told me that I could do whatever I wanted with my hair. I felt like I’d won my battle with her.

Coming back to the present, I decided to focus elsewhere and noticed that there was another girl down near the compound gate probably waiting for her father to bring their car out. Meanwhile, the vegetable seller came in. The empty pavement was suddenly filled with women of different ages as they all hurried to get the best of vegetables at reasonable prices. They argued and pushed around for about fifteen minutes and when each of them had collected what they wanted, they started to move out leaving the vendor to count his collection for the day. He counted and appeared satisfied as he put the money in his tin box. He looked up at me where I stood watching and smiled. One happy man, I thought to myself as I waved to him indicating that we had the vegetables we needed for the day and would not be making any purchases.

He pushed his cart out and went to the next compound just as my mom yelled again from inside causing me to jump. I’d nearly forgotten about the milk I had brought. It was cold now, I tried to take a sip, but it tasted so bad that I couldn’t bring myself to drink anymore. I looked around to see what I could do when I saw Mouschi, the neighbor’s cat jumping into our balcony from the sunshade. J I smuggled a pan from the loft, poured my milk out into it and gave it to her. She lapped it up in no time and all I had to do was hide the pan till my parents left for work. I came back inside with the most innocent look that I could muster and that was the end of an eventful morning. One definitely worth describing. J

ALL IN THE MIND

I know it has been a while since I made any entry here, but I guess I can forgive myself by stating that working in the IT industry has barely given me any time to re arrange and make sense out of my thoughts, let alone write them down. But here I am, and the topic I have chosen for today is how much of life is built around what happens in the mind.

Let us take self belief for instance, when I begin doing something believing that I can finish it on time or successfully or whatever it may be, it makes a whole lot of difference as compared to me starting by wondering if I’ll ever be able to do justice to it. This of course applies to almost everybody on the planet. Realizing this is just the first step, there is a long way to go after this. I have learnt that confidence can be hard to build during bad times, but not impossible. Actually, with time, determination and effort, nothing is impossible.

Obviously this is one of the simplest examples. I, for one have started to believe that you are only as healthy or happy as you want to be. I have seen so many people including friends and family members suffering from various ailments. And the one thing that I have noticed in common is that when each of these sick people want to do something they enjoy, they are able to sit up and do it despite being sick whereas if it is some daily routine kind of thing that they are not particularly happy doing, then they are too sick to do it. I personally know of a person who cannot bring herself to do the daily chores at home. Her head hurts, she feels giddy, her legs and hands are swollen etc. But being the religious person she is, even walking a couple of kilometers to the temple does not hurt. Of course her argument is that God is taking care of her when she goes to visit him. I respectfully disagree. I am not an atheist, but I’m not a religious fanatic either. I firmly believe that God will not help if you were to sit in one place and just keep praying without lifting a single finger to help yourself. This of course can be another topic of discussion in itself. But coming back to the point here, what I am trying to say is that she is able to visit the temples without feeling as much pain only because she enjoys doing that and in her mind she knows that it will make her happy. If she were to employ the same thought process while doing other things as well, I am sure she will be loads better. It is easier said than done, because wallowing in self pity is something that comes naturally to us human beings. But then again, nothing is more dangerous than self pity. You lose respect for yourself and become miserable. That is precisely the moment when you cease to exist in the eyes of others.

The same is for happiness. If you choose to be happy, if you want to be happy, then there are hundreds and millions of ways to be happy. Constantly complaining about how things have gone wrong in life, and the number of obstacles you have had to face while walking to the path of success will only leave you weak and demoralized. Victory is sweeter when it comes after you have fought your battles like a true soldier. Life would be no fun if we were all to get what we wanted immediately. Every time something goes wrong, we must learn our lessons, pick ourselves off the ground and walk on with our heads held high. The past will remain with us, but we must use that to pave the way for a happier future, not as stories that we tell people to earn sympathy. We would do well to remember that today is the day and now is the time to be happy. We will never get these moments back, and every minute spent frowning or being unhappy is a loss in this short life that we lead. Atleast for me, when I go, I would like to be remembered as someone who smiled and did things the right way even when everything around her did not exactly favor her. I’ll finish by saying this, ‘The mind is hard to control. I am not saying anyone is an expert, but optimism must be the way of life’.