dreamer forever and ever

              “Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions”

We are practical creatures….well most of the time we are. We have seen life …its twists and turns… and plodded on regardless of where we are headed. There is no clear answer to where we are going and yet each day we strive towards unaccomplished goals. It’s a pretty routine scenario and rarely do we come across someone who has been driven by passion to take a different road….very rarely! We walk the beaten track because well firstly…its there…it’s been tried and because we hate risks.Our life you see is very precise,very clear and its how we have always believed it should be!

 The mind however is a different matter all together it dwells on all that could have been….could still be….its not practical at all. It takes our hand and walks us through the beautiful landscape of our innermost wishes. In our dream it meanders through paths not taken without fear. It heeds not the frantic voice telling it to stop a while. It answers not to any attempt to hold it down….break it up…it just stays there …as pure and innocent as we were when we were born. It lights up with joy….it makes the heart skip a beat…it lulls us into believing in a life we have yet to live…..places we have yet to go…..things we have yet to do.

In our humdrum existence our dreams are like an anchor holding us steady while we get buffeted by the waves. they are our inner calm….our inner peace….a little corner of our soul which the outside world cannot touch ….cannot tarnish!

You ask me why I dream. I dream because it makes my life worth living…it gives me hope….it gives me a million reasons to smile …it tells me that tomorrow will dawn with all my cherished desires coming true. Even if tomorrow my dreams don’t come true they will still have given me happiness….and isn’t that everything? 

whats love got to do with it???

Ok so it’s that time of the year again folks when suddenly you are engulfed in a pink shimmery haze of mass love driven hysteria. You cannot escape it…..the movie cinemas are full of mushy new releases, the newspapers talk of broken hearts, relationships and little else. Something that was once confined to a single day of madness now extends to a week replete with days like chocolate day, propose day etc. yes really!!!! If you have the same perplexed expression that I do then welcome to the fold my friend for we just do not understand the circus surrounding this st.valentine whosoever it was!! As it is I think the poor guy must be turning in his grave seeing the catastrophe he has wrought by his innocuous actions. What did he do?? Well apparently….and yes even this is unsubstantiated he was a priest who just got some star crossed lovers married and got thrown into jail for his efforts if you please!!

So now as this day looms you cannot walk two steps without being bombarded visually with one or many heart shapes. They jump out from magazines, newspapers, television and shops. Big hearts, small hearts, quirky and scrawny hearts…all different colors assail your senses. There are the absolutely horrendous over stuffed ones which proclaim ‘I love you’…..ummm I definitely do not! Let’s not forget the color scheme….it has to be either pink or red…..yes no other color will do!  Barbara Cartland would have had a field day she with her pink fetish which extended to her candy floss pink hair!!

This is just one miniscule part of an industry thriving on the testosterone driven feelings of the youth. There are mammoth cards over flowing with sentimental blabber….stuffed teddy bears (somebody stop me!!)…chocolates….and roses... yes bunches of roses... long stemmed and red….because its love right?? Ok do not get me wrong here and think I’m some crabby woman who hates all the lovers out there I’m not and I do not!! I think it’s wonderful if you are in love and it’s beautiful if you can express it in words and gestures however small. But I do not understand the growing need people have for being over effusive and denting their bank balance in the process just to prove the strength of their feelings. If its there you don’t have to prove it!!

So yes call me a cynic if you will but I feel that the hype has done more to take away from the emotions than give it anything. When all you can think of is how expensive a gift you can buy…..and are under immense pressure to live up to expectations….where’s the time to actually say what you feel? And even if you do the words will be lost in the glitzy shine of the valentine hoopla!

To give the romantic ones their due it probably gives them a chance to express things that they do not get to the whole year round…..but will someone explain why this one day? Am still waiting for some answers here…..anyone?

tryst with a new age guru...well almost!

That time of the year has gone by, when we drunk on the good fortune of making it past another doomsday prediction promised to make some worthwhile changes in our lives. The resolutions have been made and I’m sure by now broken! So I think it’s a great time to actually make some new ones. A few commandments which are the need of the hour, even though we do not take to being commanded kindly!!! Here’s how I think it should go……………

Thou shalt not judge people

If God wanted us to be same in thought and ideas I really don’t think He would have taken so many pains to shape our personalities. It would have been so much more convenient and time saving to let us be clones of each other! Imagine the scenario we all look the same, think like automatons, agree on everything…..heck it would be perfect right?? Naah I think we’d all die of boredom…. So this year lets try not to judge people by either the choices they make in life, what ideologies they have, what they choose to do and how they go about doing it. We all our entitled to our opinions and may we be given sense to let others be….for better or for worse!!

Thou shalt not be a cynic

Life is beautiful….. it’s precious…..and one day we shall realize its all too fleeting!! We spend half of it learning from our failings and the rest being cynical because we feel it’s such a big bad world out there. Cynicism is just a way of hiding from all that we feel is wrong, our insecurities, our fears…..but I don’t think they are going to go anywhere. Let’s try and face things rather than tip toe around them….. try to give it all we can…. try to treat each year as our last….the Mayans be damned!!!!

Thou shalt not put relationships into slots

On life’s journey we are destined to meet people who change our lives…..we usually walk a while with them, laugh with them and move on. we with our over sized egos and a truckload of expectations put an enormous burden on our relationships. we second guess,over analyze and treat each such relationship as if its an amoeba on a petri dish.Let’s try to not slot each of these relationships under specific pre conceived terms and ruin the beauty.

Thou shalt not regret

Each and every incident in our lives…..good or bad has eventually made us the person that we are. That sounds heavy……aah anyway to continue with that thought…. Regretting things is like doubting the very credibility of all that makes you….YOU!!so lets not waste any more time on regrets....

so here i am sounding more and more like a new age guru......i think i should have another commandment for myself.: Thou shalt not dish out platitudes!!!so long folks!!!

time stands still

I find myself looking back more often now….at phases of my life which were defining even though I didn’t know it then. The best part of them seem to be in school which is to be expected I guess since we spend the first fifteen years or so of our lives there. As I walk the corridors in my school the smells and the sounds enmesh me in a time warp.

Nothing has changed. The cool marble benches, the dark corridors with the flagstones, arched ceilings, the wooden chairs and the desks smoothened…worn out by generations of school children…..time stands still. The smell of a forty odd ‘tiffins’ mingles in the break...jam, bread, butter, mango pickle inexplicably rolled into one amazing smell that pulls me into a tunnel…almost like Alice….and evokes memories of me sitting in my first ever class…..crying my heart out!! I could not believe that my mother had actually left me there!! Come to think of it from a child’s perspective... its first the feeling of being abandoned and then having to deal with a roomful of strangers….cant be a nice feeling for sure. I mean do that to me even today and I’d hate you for it!

As I walk up the graveled incline leading to the principals office block I remember the innumerable times I fell while running down the slope…..all those scraped knees…..running to the matron at the dispensary and getting the customary ‘laal dawai’ swab along with a dose of her acerbic comments!! It didn’t help that I was allergic to that medicine and instead of healing it just used to aggravate the sore. Happened every darned time and yet I would still limp to the dispensary like a lamb to slaughter!!

The principal’s office was only talked of and never seen. God forbid if anyone was summoned inside….it had to be bad news. So we walked on tip toe, talked in hushed tones and scrammed if we were discovered walking in the precincts. The boarders were looked up to because they actually lived there….they talked of places we hadn’t even seen…..they were on better terms with the staff and yes they were a team like us day scholars never were!! The boarder-day scholar cold vibes continued all through our junior years until we all finally realized that hey we were all on the same page….blimey!!! Made some of my best friends there…

Today  I watch my girls dress up in the same uniforms we used to wear and it fills me with a sense of pride. I love it when I see them get affronted if anyone dare say a word against their school……the love they feel ….the loyalty….the feeling of oneness is the greatest gift of all. Proud to be a Martinian!