B for Bangalore

On a Cold Winter Sunday morning of 2002 Platform no 1 in Yashwantpur Railway Station was moderately crowded. Most of the people were waiting for Howrah Yashwantpur Express to Arrive, the group of people that gathered in the Platform were mostly youngsters waiting for their college buddies or Fresh IT Industry Software Engineers waiting for their roommates or close colleagues.

Time has an interesting toll on most human minds. It can travel for 35 Hours in a train without complaining a bit but when an hour delay seeps in the mind gets agitated and impatient.

That is exactly what was happening among the travelers in the train, most of them were ready after having the morning tea to get down at Yashwanthpur and embrace the Bangalore chill weather, the women had plaited their hair nicely, some chanted their morning prayers, young college girls managed to brush their teeth and put the lipstick on reaching out to their handbag’s tiny pocket, boys struggled to find their sleepers and packed them before putting the snickers on to start running as soon as the train stops in the platform for a rickshaw where a lot of bargain and argument would follow.

Among all this hustle bustle a boy in Ac 3 Tier, B1 Seat number 38, Upper Birth was sleeping peacefully. In his dream land, he was standing on a sea beach looking at the horizon and seeing a ship sail towards the far end which seemed to be the end of the world. In the twilight the beach looked not only peaceful but calm. He looked in his left and right no one was there other than a Ballon Seller. He felt almost like being Rajesh Khanna from the movie Anand, the only difference is he didn’t have the death taking disease cancer. He kept looking at the horizon as the steamer went close towards it. Life is good he felt.  Serene, calm and no complains

A sudden thud and someone calling out “Macha, get down, we have arrived” made Adarsh wake up to reality. He could hardly open his small eyes that had a twinkle in them when he saw everyone is so busy around him, trying to do something. Fraction of a second he realized, where he is and where he actually belongs. Quickly he got down to go to the wash basin and put some water on his face. He asked the fellow Macha passenger – “Bhai aa gaye kya Bangalore?” The Macha traveler nodded and said, “Ya man we are just waiting outside the platform for the last 50 mins”

Ten minute from then the Train entered the Platform leading one person towards his destiny. Little did he know it was a new chapter of his book called “Life”

 

Pic Taken from Google

A for Adarsh

"Why did you block me?" were the exact words that were typed in the small Facebook Messenger window

Adarsh kept thinking the reason why Priya may have blocked him
Was it because he didn't take her out for the Dinner Date that was scheduled months back
Or Was it because he didn't appreciate her gesture of buying the "Chocolate Mud" from Just Bake as a Shubho Bijoya mishti mukh

The Text got a notification of "Seen 9:34pm" but no one was typing
He thought in his mind its all over, she will never forgive him
But didn't he speak the truth and only the truth to her
Wont a woman like her, who is caring, matured, loving understand all that he said and all that he couldn't say

Time flew as he kept roaming in the grey hallway of his thoughts
Has he done something so bad that he will never be forgiven
He never wants to hurt someone, that was not his intention.
Will all the walks and the drives and the holding hands and the kisses fade away to just one thing he said

After a good 20 mins Priya replied - "There is no use talking to you now. You need time to settle and I don't want to linger things"
Adarsh felt a moment of relaxation, unknowingly he just took a deep inhalation and typed very carefully - "Yes, you are right"
He paused thinking that the tank of angst in Priya will start flowing
Again there was the "Seen 9:59pm" but no "...is typing" was seen
Out of desperation he wrote "You are an amazing person"
Again there was the "Seen 10:05pm" but no reply
Adarsh thought in his mind why is time so heavy on him now. Why does it feel he is in a chamber breathing and he can hear his own breath
This time he wrote "I am no longer at Techno Park now, I have moved out of the place"
Curiosity is a tool to unscrew. Though there was the seen on the messenger but no typing or reply came back.

His mind tried to convince him that he did the right thing. He did tell the truth, he did try to give it a nice ending, but his heart popped up with a balloon of honesty saying You know what you have done

To be Continued..... 

Struggle of Writing

Sometimes you really want to write something, but you don’t know what to write about.

Write about love? The most written thing on planet earth. No. It’s over rated, its judgmental, its private, it’s just you and me. May be on a different day. Then? What next? Political issues? Its not my cup of coffee. Social Causes? Most of them are misread and misinterpreted at many levels. What do I write about then? Friendship? Hmm, not something from my bucket list right now.

Then what? Then let’s write about the "Struggle of Writing". Let’s write about now. This moment. These lines. Let’s write about the fact that you want to write something but you don’t know how to begin, how to end or how the flow should be in-between. 

Writing can be a bridge we make between the mind and the finger tips, if the bridge is well done the write up is interesting to read. But if it’s not well done then it crashes with its good intention to pieces hard to gather.

  

So what to do. Let’s first start with one sentence. Just ONE SENTENCE. This is the sentence I want to write. Slow down my mind. Slow down a bit more. Pause a bit. Take a deep breath and literally watch your inhale and exhale. Hold on, pause, again take a deep breath. Do you feel a bit different now? 

A writer can always read her mind. Her mind is just like the newly wed daughter in law who is a child at heart, who walks and jumps in the verandah that stretches across the rooms of her in laws palatial house again she can be quite as the cat to walk down to her husbands arms very softly, slowly yet confidently. Let’s ask the writer not to have multiple thoughts in her mind. Request her to stop making the mental grocery list, stop thinking what to wear for the evening party, stop worrying about the promotion her boss is never going to give her, STOP STOP and STOP. 

Just start to write now.  Now her mind has a headwaters from where the stream of words start flowing. Now they start taking their own turns, make their own path and start flowing. They now start making sense and they now make their own river and you a writer.

Is this part of a couplet?

Heart speaks mind agrees
Where are the burning trees?
The wide sky has engulfed them,
Now life looks blue and green

A new inclination!

My newest inclination now is photography. And not only photography but building a story and presenting it.

For me a Frame says a lot. It talks about a moment and just like a Dancer makes a movement and uses her body to communicate to her audience. A photo uses the still to communicate to the reader. Usually I refrain from giving too many pictures in my blog but then from now onwards you may see some pictures here and there popping up.

Hope you like them and if you dont please let me know that too. I am too new in this category of art so anything that comes my way is a learning for sure.

Alchemist (Paulo Coelho) - What can I say? Its never to late to read a good book and so I was not late to read a good book. A bible in its own way

 

Adultery (Paulo Coelho) - Learn to Love :) With all the dogma set down author defines Love in a more realistic sense. Loved it!

 

Forbidden Desires (Madhuri Banerjee) - I simply love Madhuri Banerjee. I find her candid. Desires are often forbidden in this land of diversity and how different characters dealt with it made me smile. I shared this book with 3 of my friends

Naw Hanyate (Maitreyi Devi) - Some books are legendary. So is "Naw Hanyate" (meaning It Does Not Die) written by Maitreyi Devi. Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam the movie is based on this book.

Love is eternal and that is exactly what the book says

 

Like the Flowing River (Paulo Coelho) - U dont want to read a lot at one go but you want to finish the story. This is the book for you. Short write ups that are inspirational in their own way. Brings in different colors of life :)

Drama

This planet, the soil, the air, the water, the gossips has just too much melodrama in it. Sometimes its unbearable. Its weird how we do not want to empower each other but we want to make people be dependent on us all the time. What happens when the ladder of dependency goes, won't it be better to show someone how to hunt rather than hunting for the person each time and coining that with the word "Love" Its weird how we all use each other under sentiments that we term as "Love" Its sad how emotions are exploited under the name of "Love" How standing strong and saying no to emotional exploitations makes one insensitive and how drama makes things very nice easy and acceptable.

How dramatic life gets on with relations and relations that gives you only headaches and no peace of mind

3 words that hold tremendous value in each one of our lives - "I Love You" has been exaggerated, dramatized, emotion-ed with, sulked for, so on so forth.

But there are so many other 3 simple words that could and would have made life simple and easy like
"I don't know"
"I won't do"
"I can't adjust"
"I will stop"
"Immediately get out"

So when we have words which makes our lives easy why run after words which make our lives complicated

Dus ka Dum

Today morning I was talking to a friend from USA. He asked me “how do you pamper yourself?”

My answer was “Pamper = read, write, do nothing at times and travel at times. If I don’t do the first 2 I get into depression” Honestly the fourth one is not happening much and that is something that I am pretty unhappy about. I need to pull up my socks and do something about it. When? I don't know. A friend told me, most of the times my responses are "I don't know" but that is what it is what can I do? when I don't know I simply say I don't know. When I know I will surely say I know :) Writing this makes me wonder. Am I this confused a soul? (let me park it for later)

Prelude

Pulling back - My answer was “Pamper = read, write, do nothing at times and travel at times. If I don’t do the first 2 I get into depression” 

This is so true. My last weekend was much drained emotionally, mentally and I got into unnecessary conversations that I feel I could have best avoided. I was feeling sick within. I couldn’t wait for Monday Morning, when I would come to office and during my break write something. I am not talented enough with the art of writing that whenever I want I can write. Something needs to strike me. Not intentionally but unintentionally. It has to come in a flow, like how a river flows with its own essence.

So today I was very excited to write but nothing came to my heart that wanted to voice out. So what I did was I was listening to music. Music doesn’t come too often to me. They come to me only in quality not in quantity. In the mean time I was chatting with a friend from Middle East. He asked me “Do you ever work?” He thinks I get dressed up and come to office simply. I do nothing. Sometimes I am listening to music, sometimes I am writing a blog, always I am online on Whatsapp and prompt with responses, so on so forth. So I described him with a pic from Google how one looks with and without music. Now he asked me how I looked at that moment.

PC - Google Images

So I clicked a snap of mine with my laptop camera and did send it to him. Most of my friends and family don't live in my city so I cant catch up with them in physical existence as an when I want. Thanks to whats-app I can send and receive pictures through Whats-app. Its easy and almost real time. I feel close to them and may be they feel close to me.

My Afternoon Date (about whom I have mentioned before) she told me she liked my picture. It was just a boost within that I did the right thing.

Coincidence

After my first set of duties at work I was reading random blogs. I have some of my favorite bloggers. So somewhere I saw this video with renowned authors where they are encouraging people to write and one of them said “You write because some-days that’s the only way you can stay sane” This is so true. I couldn’t agree more. For me if I don’t write I loose out on my sanity. Like it happened last weekend. I didn't write and I think I was loosing out somewhere. Sometimes I share my writings and sometimes when I am not very comfortable with what I wrote I keep Silent. But I write. Few Days back My afternoon Date told me, “Write what you want to, but keep a check on your spellings” The next post I did I was trying to be careful. Later when I re-read my blog I saw so many mistakes that I felt embarrassed that some of my friends already read it with all the mistakes and still applauded. May be that is the beauty of Friendship. No matter what they never stop patting your back. But I have imbibed the awareness. Even in this blog I want to read and re-read at-least a couple of time before I post it and that is exactly what I am doing now. Another friend told me “When I see my blogs that I wrote previously and the ones that I write now, I have emerged as a writer” May be that is what writing does to one. It makes you think well. Categorize well. Articulate well. Me the person is a haphazard one. I am the fraternal twin of Obsessive–compulsive disorder. I live in impulse and I choose to do that. I am too predictable at times and too unpredictable at others. I mix being upfront and insensitive. But that is how I am. I can’t change myself forcefully. That will be utter mess. But writing has started giving me some clarity.

Ten and Go

As a kid when we used to play Chupa Chupi (Hide and Seek) the one who had to seek, had to keep their eyes closed till the count of 10 and all the ones who had to hide, had to search their best den by then. As a toddler the number 10 came as some milestone, some completion and some success. And today I see I have finished 10 posts in my blog and it feels like an achievement. I have 10 stories to tell to people. In one of my whats-app group a friend said, "Payal needs to write 10 blogs" and that is when it struck me to check how many actually have I written. I didn’t tell him I am already done with 10 but may be now I should look for 100 or 110. I have not thought about it what should be my next milestone. But this day I secretly celebrate my 10 writings of the blog.

The best part of having a blog is it’s so secretive. It’s like you are in a crowd and you can still whisper in the special ones ear and say “I love you” For me my blog is almost like that. I never post them on Facebook. I keep it here and I share it with people I want to.

New Born

Everyday something is born and today is a friend’s and fellow colleague’s Blog is born. I did pester him to write from yesterday. I know he writes well. He has a very good comprehending power. And I feel if he is not writing in a structured format a lot of people are going to loose out on his story telling capacity and he is loosing out from the joy of writing. I was ones pursued by my Afternoon Date to write and now I have given the baton to someone else. There is a oneness between all writers I feel. May be I will never write a book, may be no one will read my writing other than few of my friends, but my joy lies in "Just Writing". I remember one day I had seen an unknown person to comment on my blog. I went and checked his profile and his blog. I kept on looking at his blog page for a long time. I kept thinking someone somewhere whom I don’t know has taken the time out to read my blog. I felt ecstatic. What more can I ask from God. Thrilled!

PS: So now I have my 11^th post today :)