The Past....

One of the few things that have always amused me are the “employment involvement” activities that are held in office. A bunch of people getting together to create some sort of excitement in the otherwise mundane and routine weekday. To me most of them are …well ..appreciable but not something that I’ll remember after about a month or so ( we’ll remember all the regular masti that happened but not the cause of the day). Infact even the concepts on most events are usually something I’ll not bother with. But today for a change, the event being held in office has made me think… Rewind.. or so the theme goes is a day we look back upon the past 10 years of this place, and it made me think… why do all references of going back in time only talk about the good things….”Good Ol memories” as they are called….. what happens to the bad ones, the heart breaks, the failures, the struggles…why do we always want to forget the pain??

I have always believed in the whole “ the energy in the universe is finite, it only changes form” theory of physics. So logically, I have always wondered what happens to force and energy created by all the pain in our lives. Every time we break our hearts, we collect the pieces and move on… does that mean that years later, that person doesn’t deserve the tears we shed when we had just said good bye… ok.. maybe in the bad break up , the he cheating, disowning etc etc type it may be true because all your feelings are converted to hate, but… what about heart breaks caused due to other stuff… like distance or change in priorities… it pained us that time right?... so why not now?... maybe its human nature to fill up voids… but where do all those feelings disappear?? Where does that energy go?.

And the same applies not just to love but also work… at one point in time we gave our life and blood for something, a business or a part of the business we called our own… and then we moved on… so what happens to all those feelings you had about the earlier job…. Don’t those outcomes mean anything to you anymore?.... I spoke to a team member from my earlier job a few days back… and he went on cribbing about the way things have become at my old office….and it cringed me to think of the way the new guys have screwed up the business I spent 2 years of my life building…. I was angry and upset and pissed…almost fuming over the phone… yet today after 2 days I’m fine… and I wonder why… we give up our personal lives for our professional commitments and then we give up those very commitments… at the end of the day…. What do we have left???

The Ever Pending Goodbye...

It’s always amazed me how relationships are so dependant on factors beyond our control. People usually state that the way a relationship moves is based on how you “work” on it, mould it etc etc. But how much do these controllable factors really impact the “story” of any relationship? “working” on it itself is not 100% controllable… there are factors like . time, space etc which are anyways not in your control. So many times we come across relationships we would like to hold close to us forever. But when I look around the only relationships that truly last a lifetime in all their glory and impact are so few that it’s scary. I’m not talking about friends we “keep in touch” with once in a way, or blood relatives we cant get fully away from, or even spouses who after 10 – 15 yrs you end up not feeling the same way you did when you started off. Agreed that every relationship grows and people change…. But somewhere all the effort you put into making friendships and relationships “work” should pay off right?... the most upsetting part of any relationship for me is the ever pending goodbye… a very close friend today mentioned about moving out of the country… and it put my world to a standstill for a few secs… will I ever see him again… will we be able to share jokes and daily funny moments like we do.. gossip about our common circle… solve each others problems.. I don’t think so….

In our love relationships whenever distance becomes a fact, we put extra efforts, talk about it, work around it, acknowledge it as an issue and work towards it… most times it works…. And whenever it doesn’t work.. we say goodbye and move on…. But what about friendships… something that is soooo close to us and impact our lives so much… when friends move away… why don’t we ever talk about it… why do we always say “all the best”.. stay happy and just leave it to fate… why is there never a good bye… some closure to a relationship that atleast at some point in our lives held a lot of importance… why is it so ok to let friendships fade… we never say end… because that person will always be close to your heart…. But maybe not in the same form and glory as before… he will hold some position in our lives, maybe not the same one he does now… and we’ll live with it.. live with the void and the blankness.. eventually fill it with some other friendship.. and move on… ..and yet we’ll always have an ever pending Goodbye…right ??

Bombay Bleeding.....

Wednesday night, 10.35 pm….I was watching some movie trailers on MTV… my daily “homework” you see… the phone rings and it’s Karen reporting in to me that the studio work for the day is over…and then … tells me that some blasts have happened in VT and that she’s rushing back home… I tell her to avoid the train and call me once she reaches… all the while just thinking that oh god another blast… but unfortunately feeling… ok..JUST another blast….it was only when I shifted the channel to the news did I realize that this time it wasn’t ..Just ..another blast…. For the 2nd time in my life span I was seeing a war on the streets… the 1st incidence was 1993, a time of total chaos..marked in my life by a call recd by my uncle on a brand new phone number stating …”you 2 brothers(referring to my dad) showed a lot of valor last night (we had a neighborhood watch schedule running at that time).. be careful.. you have families”… that was a Thursday night…and today after 15 years I’m feeling the same chill down my spine… only difference being that this time it’s not one another we are fighting but some inhuman irrational things who for reasons unknown believe that keeping phirangs hostage and killing 6 year olds will get them what they want…. What they don’t know is that this is BOMBAY… you can hurt us ..you can upset us…you can even kill us…. but you cannot shake us…. And more than even that …this is INDIA… we will strike back…and like a chain SMS I read today morning said… “forgiving a terrorist is left to god.. but fixing their appointment with god is our responsibility – INDIAN ARMY”

But that’s just the sense part of it…. But what about the emotionality part of it… admist all this action what gets lost is the true emotional damage that those assholes cause…and I’m not talking about the “sansaniiii” type of emotional damage… I’m talking about the the true stories of people who lost their lives in this ordeal…. The 5 chefs who were shot point blank… or the wife and kids of the GM of the TAJ who were burned… mostly alive…. And the jewish family including a 3 yr old child that who killed …just because… when will we realize that something like this can happen to anyone…..that we may as a city be full of spirit and unity… but whatever we do we will never truly understand what the families of those who are no more feel.. all we can do is pray and in our own small ways try to make our country safe…..

Fidelity...

Fidelity is a very funny concept. General use of the phrase refers to sexual loyalty between couples. But the question is does it end there? Is sexual loyalty the only thing that can grant you the virtue of being faithful?

There are many instances in our lives when we are actually torn between feelings, love, lust, guilt, conscious. Defining feelings is anyways a Herculean task let alone, justifying it, slotting it, understanding and accepting it. Amongst all this chaos and effort what happens to the pure romantic in us? I used to be a die-hard romantic… believing in “love of your life”, soulmates, “the one” and all that jazz, till I discovered the complications of adult relationships. Love used to be so simple at one point in time… you meet someone, get to know him better, fall in love, spend time together, laugh together, fight a little, then make up and make love and that’s it… but in today’s life, it doesn’t end there… there is the ghost of old fights, eeky habits, the eternal jadedness and ofcourse other people. Now by other people I don’t mean other lovers just people… friends, colleagues, gym buddies, dance class partners, the list is endless. What happens to your poor lil heart when it is now exposed to such galaxy of feelings. Someday there will be someone who will come along and tread very close to your definitions of soulmate. Someday you will find a friend who has more in common with you than you beau ever did. How do you keep your heart from moving towards that person. Sexual loyalty is the last step, but how do you ensure emotional loyalty. Isn’t having remotely romantic feelings for someone else equal to infidelity? If you don’t cross the line, is it ok to deep in your heart constantly wonder what if?

The other side to it is that if you have managed to slot your life well and accepted the fact that your feelings for all people involved are genuine.. then how does it matter if there is sexual loyalty or not. I’m not talking of the controversial “sleeping around” phenomenon. I’m talking about making love around?... if your feelings are aligned.. what’s the bloody difference? You will always choose one person to spend your life with and that decision will be a combination of feelings and rationale… but what about relationships that are based on only feelings… no rationle what so ever.. when you feel like at some very basic level you are deeply bonded with a person, when making love is actually an expression of that very bond… when you just want to consume that person in all his/her form irrespective of the definition the world would give to your relationship. What happens then… are you being unfaithful ?... if you say yes, then when did you become unfaithful… when you made love or when you fell in love or when for the first time you smiled at that person with a glint in your eye.. the biggest question is .. can we truly ever be monogamous… in the truest sense of the word can “fidelity” ever be achieved… Honestly, I don’t know anymore…

Bangkok

Visited Krung Thep aka Bangkok a few days ago. Krung Thep as it is fondly called by locals means “City of Angels”… though that is something that is soooo not what we associate with it.. unless you call fair, porcelain skinned, skimpily dressed thai girls, angels…. And in reality some do….

The trip encompassed 2 days in Pattaya and half a day in Bangkok. Needless to say, the half a day in Bangkok was utilized to shop shop and shop some more. The real adventure lay in Pattaya where we discovered new cultures, new food….and new friends !

The heart of Pattaya lies in the famous.. or should I say infamous walking street. 2 odd Kms of massage parlours, bars, discos, street food and street fucks. Every sight on the walking street is a very shocking, amusing, exciting(for guys and girls who swing the other way ) yet a very depressing sight. With girls as young as 12 – 13 twisting themselves around to pleasure old thurki firangs and thai men pimping out their own wives, amidst all the fun and sexual vibe of the place… it’s a completely different feeling to step back and try to understand the reality of the place.

A country, so beautiful, so much into peaceful Buddhism, marred by poverty and sustained by the sex trade… Thailand – the land of smiles as it is called is a perfect example of the helplessness and surrender of humanity. It is exhausting to see so much flesh being thrown your way, how can this be the only way for a country to survive. I’ve always propagated the existence of prostitution pockets in cities, it does help in keeping the crime rate in control. And here is a country that is the prostitution center of the world and it eeks me to see how the entire world got together to fuck a country to a level where skin is a commodity and marriage is a business arrangement…. It is truly the “City of Angels”… after all no human would have the heart to serve the world in such a way.

Manipulation

Webster’s defines “Manipulation” as ‘to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means especially to one's own advantage’ . Totally in sync with our definations and associations of the word…But… it also defines manipulation as ‘to manage or utilize skillfully’ … so who draws the line between being manipulative and being “MANIPULATIVE”.

Like most people I have always prided myself as being a straightforward person, I knew I was complicated but never “manipulative”. But now I stand at a point in my life where I wonder what exactly is manipulation. Is concealing certain truths to get your work done manipulation? Is lying to a friend about what you are really thinking manipulation? When what you are actually thinking of is telling him that he’s about to do the biggest mistake of his life but you don’t know if he’ll continue to be your friend after that point…. What exactly is manipulation? …. People have usually commended me on my ability to form networks and exercise them well… but these networks were formed out of a genuine effort of friendship not a motive of “networking” and today I don’t know when I’m making a friendly call and when I’m “exercising” my network. Does time really bend you so bad at times… that you tend to forget the basic form of who you are…

I met a very very dear friend after a while yesterday in a semi professional context, I had so much to talk about so much to share and being the way I am I did… yap yap yap.. today im back at work realizing that I hardly spoke about what he’s been going through, and considersing he’s just managing a city and job change , it makes me cringe at the fact that I don’t even know how he feels about the new city he’s in… it’s not like we havent spoken about all this, but I still feel like I haven’t been there completely… I know he doesn’t really expect me to be there like always…but I used to want to care about every damn thing about every one in my inner circle.. I was a total worry pot!!... why have I learnt to let go of things… people say its for the better, to learn to distance, learn to draw lines… but excuse me..who draws the line between giving space and indifference??

Complications....

Its so amazing how we manage to compartmentalize our lives so easily. Tuck away each person, event, feeling into various nooks and corners of our head and heart. Never realizing that at the end of the day all these things have one thing in common…You. And that at some point or the other, they will touch each other and either co-exist or get destroyed. Do we really have enough in us to be able to maintain harmony between our million different feelings… can we maintain our sanity even when our hearts are constantly in a whirlwind of emotions, trying desperately to keep all parts of our lives at their rightful place and get their respective dues. Sometimes I really wonder whether we are the source of our own complications. I have never been able to understand people who claim to be ”Simple” …how can anyone be immune to the complications of relationships, unless you’re a total recluse … the world is full of wonderful people, some who make you tick and some who don’t…those who do make you tick will take a place in your life… some a higher place than others…the more the layers the more the complications and more the ecstasy of life…so can we ever lead a full simple life…a life full of the entire gamut of feelings and emotions yet simple enough to keep you sane… I don’t think we can ever use the words “simple” and “full” in the same sentence…But the bigger question is… Should we want to?... A friend once said “I prefer stability over Passion”…considering this was said in context to love, I really wonder what is it that drives people to run away from complication…. Is it so bad to want it all and be ready to go insane trying….

Soulmate...

I’ve always wondered what a soulmate meant. Contrary to all the Mush and Marketing of romantic perceptions, I think a soulmate is just someone who gets you. Not in the physical or emotional way but in the “being” way. A soulmate is someone who understands your most complicated expression without you having to explain it again or simplifying it. He’s someone who doesn’t need to hear you explicitly explain what you are thinking to know what you mean, but will still let you rant because he knows you need to. He understands that you are human too just like him and that you are also entitled to being confused and complicated, that you maybe independent and head strong, but you still fight the same battles of head vs heart and passion vs convention.
So what do you do if you think you’ve found your soulmate…. But he’s not your lifemate. Is a soulmate always supposed to be a lover or a spouse? What do you do when you find a soulmate who can’t be either, not because of any other reason but morality? If I were to believe that a soulmate could be just a friend, how do we fight all the feelings that direct you otherwise.. it’s not always easy to hold on to your soulmate, especially if you have found them late in your life. But yet, the ever scrunching need to hold on to them and defy all that’s conventional in this world makes us go out of our way to make them a part of our lives, and not just as a memory…Too bad some things are bound to slip away, yet maybe it’s all for the better….or is it ?

What If...

“WHAT IF” is a four letter word, born out of the heart’s need to feel and the head’s need to think. We cant explain the what if feeling, nor is there any explanation to the dream houses one small What If feeling starts building… It’s a crazy thought that one different choice, one different coincidence, one different turn in life could change it forever and take you in a direction that’s diametrically opposite and tangentially happier…. But the truth about the what if feeling is that it signifies our ability to hope and wish, to feel, to love.. because without the What If feeling, we wouldn’t be able to define the What IS !

Back to Square One...

A friend once recited an old saying “By the time you make ends meet.... they move the ends”. At that time I asked him ‘what the hell is that supposed to mean?’. Today after 4 years I finally got it! Has it ever happened to you that something you work towards so hard, escapes you at the last minute. Have your timelines ever stretched just when you were about to reach your goal. When the feeling of disappointment and fear of uncertainty both arise in your soul at the same time, where do you look? Do we turn to rationale saying it’s for the better, or do we turn to hope to keep us going against the uncertainty. When do we start to get ok with delays in our lives and our loves.
We all tend to plan our lives as much as we can, our careers, when we plan to get married, earn X amount of money by what age etc etc. But what happens when something that’s so on track suddenly gets thrown off track. When we lose all our money in the stock market, when we end a loving relationship for practical reasons, when we get fired without notice. What happens when you get back to square one?
I have always dreaded starting all over, but I’m also very stubborn. So how do we know when it is ok to give up. Who draws the line between persistence, hope and insane obsession. They say the world runs on hope. Does it really? Do we tend to rely a little too much on it? Disguising our denial as hope? At times I dunno where hope ends and fear of letting go begins. All I know is that if there was no hope, I would have probably been a cynical, bitter woman who does not believe in love and trusts no one. Thankfully for me the ray of hope has always seen me through. It takes times but I get there......sooner or later.

Dreams....

Has it ever happened to you that you wake up on a perfect morning, with the sun shining bright and the wind softly caressing your face, with the smell of coffee drifting in the air…and yet feel like just pulling the covers and blocking out the world… Life can be very funny at times…give you everything you dreamed off and worked for and yet make you feel like shit.

Dreams seem like the sole source of all happiness, like they say if you achieve your dreams you’ve “made it” in life. But honestly is there anything known as “achieving your dreams”? I think dreams are those ever elusive goals that we keep setting for ourselves, making our mind believe that our source of happiness lies in that one job, that one house, that one car…that one mate. When infact happiness is all around us, we just refuse to accept it.

It’s not like we shouldn’t have dreams… its very essential for sake of all things that have purpose that we dream and set goals and work towards achieving them. Achieving them is definitely a source of happiness, but should not being able to achieve them be a source of sadness. I’ve been trying to solve this question in my head for a very long time now. Is it so wrong to be satisfied and happy with what you have? Why is there always the need to want more? Is wanting our way of feeling alive, of feeling that we have some purpose. Why cant living life itself be a purpose.

Since time immemorial I remember being asked “ so what is your ambition beta?” and my answers have gone from genetic engineering to astrophysics to medicine to journalism to Advertising to entrepreneurship. Even today if anyone asks me that question I would give them a definite answer, but will achieving that actually make me feel purposeful and happy...well now that’s the question. Will my life stop being purposeful once I get married, get my restaurants running and watch kids grow up well. If not than why do we chase our set dreams so wildly, sacrifice family and love to achieve that career we want, and then sacrifice the career to have the family we want. Why cant we just be content with doing what makes us happy, why the need to constantly win? And in the end who is to say who the winner is. Like I said Life can be very funny at times…give you everything you dreamed off and worked for and yet make you feel like shit