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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