Frozen in time

Delhi 2010.. Commonwealth balloon.. clean roads, cleaner metro stations.... my Riverdale-like lil Noida... with its breezy empty glittering roads ready to be driven on by familiar wheels.. And then when it couldn't get any better.... came Diwali 2010... ! During Diwali 2009, a thought crossed my mind - "Delhi houses have come a full circle in terms of their lighting aesthetics" -- Diwali 2010, the realization dawned that even if they haven't, there are very few things that significantly matter... and perfection and aesthetics are definitely not some of them... the SPIRIT is!
The Jazzily lighted up city air, calling you out into it every evening of the pre-diwali week, to bathe yourself with the accompanying cheer and the lightness .... the perennially unwavering enthusiasm of the Delhi family to plunge head on into the gifts-shopping-cum-distribution scene.... Giving papa a hand with the electrification of your own home, and getting still more variety to add to last year's box of lightables... Catching up with the most important people in your life for once, ignoring the competition and the drive and the ever-surreal co-workers who can never take the place of those you have grown up with .........the nose-twitching crispily chilly Delhi wind and the late nights in wet lawns, in that wind, wrapped in a shawl and up against a cushion, loosing at poker to the family the adorable elderly of which have lent you with your gambling capital...... Diwali morning and the dressing up of the home Pooja, and the entrance with Rangoli.. and dressing yourself up in the evening to pocket unending praise for the change of attire (Traditionals rock! :D)  .... swearing by the Montreal Protocol yet ending up jumping on Chakris and sprinting across the garden from lighted up Anars , with cousins ... then ending up at a night out at a different relatives place altogether... chatting the night away to glory with the wittiest and the most adorable brothers and sisters ever :)) .. the charade continuing into the morning which is filled with Silly games that are the most rejuvenating ever.,.................. all this and hello... the best part about this festival is that it has still not ended.. there's chitragupt/govardhan puja.. there's bhaiduj... and hence there's more lighting still... and more shopping.. there's Mehndi.. and more holidays from office for family... and hence more time amidst the things and people that really matter in life.....!

This Diwali weekend has been the most rejuvinating and greatly needed, heartfelt memories time I have had this year.... it's like those times that cause your heart to ache with all the sweetness, and you don't feel like sleeping even at night, lest you miss a part of the time-warp that's filled with only sheer bliss and none of the ugliness of the world

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If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or, being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or, being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise;

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with triumph and disaster
And treat those two imposters just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with wornout tools;

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on";

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!
                                      - Rudyard Kipling



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Is "Intuition" ..nothing but another name for Hope?

I have never boasted of any respectably quantifiable intuitive quality about my Persona... even though I have been extremely awed and amazed, by those who seem to genuinely possess some of it...
The adulation follows from the fact that Intuition signifies a constant contact with one's inner person, and such inner person's puritan, innocent commands that really help dilute from focus all that is irrelevant and inconsequential to the purpose of their existence...

Of late, I do suspect what some wise men call "intuition", paying me occasional visits. I'd be cautious to term it intuition though, given my congenital inability to achieve anything close! (Like this morning... some intuition could have definitely saved me an extra round in the sun and maddening traffic, to get some fuel for my car the blinking fuel meter of which I just missed noticing in the late-morning rush! ... so Intuition? nah... don't think so! Don't have it! :P)

So the what are these surges, that make me go forward with that extra push, defying all parameters of logical calculation?

Considering that I am sitting at a stage of life, where everything there is to it.... be it ambitions, be it norm-changing zeals, be it love, be it friendships, be it anything at all... are backed by, on the one hand, a drive to change mere aspirations to reality, and on the other, a sentimental attachment to an era I am bidding farwell to, and all things forming part of that era..

Compressed into one word, the last Para, stands for Hope, perhaps!

I hope that the world becomes a more colorful place, and people are more motivated to chase dreams and freewill, hence I am "hit by the intuition" that it is my call to work for putting into place a culture facilitating the same (The College Magazine)

I hope that I fulfill my life plan (career-wise), and therefore I am "hit by the intution" that I should sweat that little extra sweat the purpose behind which remains cryptic as of now (ALL on my plate this sem)

I hope that What I saw in, or How I saw, the important protagonist in my last fairytale, was NOT a delusion after all... and I am "hit by the intuition" to hold him (or things) at a high pedestal, despite it all running ridiculously contrary to reason and logic

I hope that I never have to live in isolation from those closest to heart (Family and oldest friends, and deeply pervading relatively new friendships), and hence I am "hit by the intuition", to picking time with them over other commitments, as far as I can..

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A journey I just don't have a map for

Exams must be reaaaaaaaaaaaaaally a handful... because no matter what time of your life it is.. and no matter how much more "learned" and "matured" you feel otherwise in your attitude toward examinations... exams are bound to cloud ur life with monotony.... explains why bugger-longings return always when I have nothing else to do except prepare for and give exams... that despite the momentous stage my life is going through, and all the consequent buzz in it owing to such stage.. when I am coercively kept away from that buzz of excitement and motivation, by the so-called "exam-timetable" I begin again to miss certain things in life...

of certain things..

I always have been a dreamer.. I do not doubt my idealistic world, not even slightly.. and why should I? Life in general has not given me a reason to... whatever I have cherished passionately in my dreams.. I have always moved toward making reality out of it.. sure I haven't reached any pinnacle.. but I do see myself headed in the direction of my dreams... in every which way... every which way except one... Looouuuvveee (okay.. secretly, I don't like addressing the emotion in such a ridiculed manner... but somethings just don't seem to go down in a better way with people, EVER!)

Where we talk of love.. the only reality that I have so far been able to extract out of those dreams.... is..... the reality of hope! Hope is all there is to it! Because none of the things I wanted for myself by now.... none of anything close.. has presented itself! Do we look for it? How do we look?!? looking does not figure in my dreams or my definitions, so far as this hallowed emotion is concerned! And I don't ever see myself compromising enough to get down to "looking for love"! No that was not part of the original plan... that was not what "WE"(me and my superego - superego is a freudian term, and there's more to it than meets the eye;) ) agreed upon .. so its not happening, 'cause in my world.... superego is big, superego is respected!
Love is supposed to (rather WAS supposed to, a LONG time back!) hit! It is supposed to take you by surprise and that's how you enjoy it! In my life so far... some experiences and indulgences.. have hit.... and I wouldn't go so far as to call them disasters ... because nothing I even mistook for love will I label as disaster, ever.... but then they do disconcert me by the feeling of having been picked up to go all that way only to be dropped back to square one...

When you keep hitting square one.. the lost feeling does start to set in... You do start to feel apprehensive about the grand plan...

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I feel like Howard Roark did about unfinished Cortlandt

Is bursting of your bubble so necessary, always ?

My mind is not at rest now, and for the simple reason that, I climbed mountains just so that my mind may be at rest.. but after all that climbing I am not being given a flag to wave from the top!

Worse is that I have no time to waste, 'cause there are several other mountains to climb, that I have noted down on my list... only, to tick them off my list, my mind should be at rest again.. but how can it be, when I know that no matter what you do, no matter how steep a path you traverse to make the impossible, possible.. your fingers might not be even given the touch of the one little flag at the end of it all!

It is quite a test, to kindle a fire, create a benchmark, then watch the benchmark gather dust in a closet..  it might be sifted out sometime, but by that time, you have already moved ahead to other pastures, and without too having been provided with the fuel from your dust-gathering work, for so moving ahead.. you don't even get to live the glory!!

So, okay, it is not best to live for public acclaim, and work for glory... But am only human, and If I keep checking things off my list.. I don't live for love, I don't live for riches.. I don't live for glory, I don't live for acclaim.... what do I live for?? What exactly should keep me going?

I need a quick answer to that... 'cause the one thing that I definitely know, is that I have to keep going, and with full heart...

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Does everybody's life have that one nemesis, in several different powerless forms, that outwits them?
Life is all about colorful experiences, and if you seriously believe you wouldn't know whom or what to swap lives with, if given an opportunity, then why regret anything that is already a part of your mixed bag?
But then, what about those gushes of blood that run to embarrased cheeks and make you quease your eyes as you wince at your own stupidity, in some of those isolated moments of unwilling self-introspection?
That no matter how good you are ...no matter how much of a grip you have on everything happening in and around your life... there is always that one pickpocket.. that one crush.. that one mystic.. that one salesman.. that one imposter-of-an-opportunity.. and so on..
All but forms of that one nemesis, that outwits you! Being trifle experiences in a life so big, and so all-important... they do manage to make you smack your head OH SO HARD at one of those later evenings in life!
Now, no matter how hard you try to run away from them or their memory... these are things that have already happened, and are mostly of the type that cannot be undone! You can hardly ever hunt down that clever-witted pickpocket and get your snatched item back... nor are you ever given a chance to wash the impression of, or time with, that crush out of your head... not that you're still sour from the picked pocket, or hurting under the washed away sand-castle of the crush.. those are feelings that never lasted... yet, that what got into your mind and your body at these surrendering moments, remains a mystery... is what returns to trouble you now and then..
Since, these occurences that outdid you, for all your wits and your experience, your grip and your being headstrong .... neither were powerful enough or just enough, if considered independently.. severed from their win over you ... nor are you foolish, or off-guard enough in general.... My hypothesis is this -

Like everyone has a soulmate, everyone has their nemesis, that god designed as an exclusive fit for them. While you do not happen to chance upon the soulmate so easily, nemesis is more easily attracted.. and when yours meets you, you'll be, more often than not, caught hanging off-guard!

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