More than just strength

they all said he faced it well.

he is strong is what all felt.

its depressing to think that when we all were broken and crying

scared to even go the place...

he was out there gathering the broken pieces.

doing what was needed and cleaning up the mess.

we all said bravo! and admired his strength

but today i know it was not him who was out there gathering those pieces

it was not him who we saw cleaning up the mess...

he also actually never went there

he also did not have the strength to...

what actually went there to collect the broken pieces was a zombie...

mechanically doing what was needed to be done.

he had blocked it all from his mind his heart...

never spoke about it, not even to himself...

for the sake of the responsibilities that lied ahead of him...

The luxury of being scared was not for him.

Today when you told me this,

it took me back to those days..

harrowing as they were,

i would still say, no one could have handled it better.

but it would have been better if you would have been stronger

when you could have indeed not blocked it out...

cried about it and yet cleaned up the mess.

It is very tough I know,

but it is the better way of doing it.

hope you never face such a situation again in life,

but if ever you do, 

remember to be more than just strong...

Pocrescophobia

noun  the fear of gaining weight

I made fun of people who took to dieting; people who compromised on cheese sandwich or chocolate pastry for the sake of saving a few calories.

I always thought life is too beautiful and avoiding cheese and chocolates are too big sacrifices. Ones that make life downright meaningless.

I mean how does a person eat a sandwich without cheese!

Or how does one go to CCD and not indulge in a chocolate fantasy! Of course with extra chocolate sauce on top of it!

Isn’t this what makes life beautiful?

I was in glee. Merrily enjoying the gooey, melted, yummy ‘sizzling chocolate brownie with nuts and vanilla ice cream’ when a friend politely told me to leave the rest of the chocolate.

I looked at him with the are-you-kiddin-me look... 

and he replied with a you-are-on-the-verge-of-going-out-of-shape look!

It shook me.

My world collapsed.

I, for the first time in my life, left chocolate in my plate! I mean, for a person who is used to wiping off chocolate from others’ plate because I believe it is a holy wastage to not finish chocolate, it was downright sinful.

Coming home was worse.

My mom kept on insisting that I join a gym. All my trip photographs were critically analysed, diameter of my arms’ disapproved and every helping of rice during meals was questioned.

It was then that I realized what makes people go through the meaningless diet programs. What motivates them to indeed refrain from having extra cheese in the McChicken or extra chocolate on the pastry…

It is the tire that shows around your belly. It is a constant worry. I have heard that worry makes a person lose weight because if that is so, I will surely lose atleast 3-4 kgs.

All said and done, the alarms have gone off. Its time to check myself. Its time to have McChickens without extra cheese or one day I will have to avoid them altogether.

So I, Pallavi Patil, hereby declare that for the first time in my life, I am going on diet.

God help me avoid all temptations.

Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him. Bible, James (ch. I, v. 12) 

 

             Sizzling Brownie sundae

Wish I get to thank you, God

Desperation makes man do anything. Wish for anything and hope for anything. Compromise he does on his standards to any extent. Any.

Not really checking if it is worth it. And what if you don’t compromise?

As they say, sometimes if you are adamant on what you want, you actually end up getting it!

So similarly, even if in desperation, one decides not to compromise at all, will that person get it?

Hmmm. Well, it would be too premature to say so and might also sound like ‘grapes are sour’, but a gut feel says something good (touchwood) is in store.

A gut feeling tells me that there is a reason God is not listening to any of my prayers.

It tells me I am going to live to thank God that all my prayers were not answered.

I hope, dear God, it is indeed so.

Amen.

Telling you about myself

There are 1s and there are 2s in this world. There r also more than that as in 3s and less than that - as in 0s, but i am essentially talking about non-loser people here.

so well, there are the 1s, who have just one face. They are what they are everywhere.

With their closest friends, their peers, at their profession and with themselves too.

and then there are the 2s.

They are people who have 1 face for when they are with themselves and with closest friends and lovers and another at their professional life.

these 2 faces are different. sometimes remarkably different. but they are so seamlessly managed! awesome. just awesome.

i am a 1.5

and boy this 0.5 is the killer. it is like I know I have to be 2, because the kind of person I am with myself and friends is not quite the person managers are made of... 

so if i have to succeed as a manager, i need to be a 2.

but then my principles as a type 1 person somehow do not agree on having a type 2...

so we are stuck in this argument.

and so here i am being a 1.5

Now how does that sound for a 'tell me about yourself'??

 When your heart is turmoil 

 and your head a mess

 

when they both aint going in the same direction

 and all is a chaos...

 when you know you have got to do it,

 but you do not know how...

 when you grapple for support outside

 with a realisation however 

 that strength has to be seeked from within...

 when your heart bleeds to know

 what all you have to leave

 when memories kill you

 and the mere idea brings tears

 when you know it is not an end to one thing

 but many a things

 and you wonder what scares you more- 

 a life without it 

 or a life with its haunting memories..

 when you wish there was something, anything

 that would make this simpler

 which would pull you out

 without making you find that inner strength to do it

 Coz the inner strength shall not manifest itself,

 for, for long it has been derived from the very thing it now has to kill...

 complicated though it sounds

 it is as simple as that,

 An end to a lot of beautiful things

 A beginning to the unknown...

Post long overdue

Since the last post and this, a lot has happened. Life has been rocking…

To list a few things, won strategym, celebrated yet another Diwali,wrote an exam, saw Mumbai shake with terror... lots of things.

 At each time thought of posting something, but it was one of those times when your brain is all so messed up that writing sounds like too much effort...

But it has now become a vicious circle i think. brain muddled -> i dont write -> brain stays muddled.... so gonna write.

 The things that happened....

1) Strategym win: A proud moment of course and as rathi says, it took a long time to come…

2) Diwali: Well, I am in love with this festival since 4th standard. This was the year when my and mom’s annual diwali ritual of visiting main road started. We would make a shopping list and go to main road. The list included small small rather insignificant things like rangoli colors to laxmi pavla stickers…
but i used to so look forward to those trips, I still do.
The enthusiasm there is in the air…With its twisting narrow lanes jam packed with people and all the lights and colours and overall festive mood it is simply awesome… Lights, colors, crackers and puja… I just love festivals and this one in particular. This diwali I kept wondering as to where will I be for the next diwali????

 3) Exam: hmmm… Now these were amazing too. I don’t remember writing any examination paper in my life without reading a word about the subject matter.

I did it this time and I have reasons to believe I have fared pretty well! Oddly actually, exam time was when I believe we actually got some time to relax in our otherwise hectic time… (another benefit of being in marketing)

 4) Loads of presentations: The less we talk about them the better it is.

 5) Mumbai attacks : Howmuchever we talk about these is less.

A slap not on the politicians face but on the innocent citizens who are being made a fool of by the underqualified, undeserving people who are supposedly governing our nation.

Lack of capability is sickening and worse still when such people lead us, it is like making a jackass out of the educated, innocent Indian.

I believe Mumbai has finally awakened.

I never really was proud of the ‘Spirit of Mumbai’ coz more than the spirit it was indifference when people got back to their routine without so much as a genuinely angry retort against the politicians.

But this time around it is different. Somehow there is a feeling of ‘enough is enough’ and I hope it leads to some solid results.

I hate to say this, but finally things will move… coz US will make them move.

Another mockery of the biggest democracy of the world.

 PS: A lot to come. Now I am gonna BEBO  (for all those blogging illiterate folks out there, it means Blog Early, Blog Often)…

phew, kept my promise alright :)

Strange stranger

Strangers behave strange at times. (Is that why they are called strangers??) A few days back as my cab waited at the Oberoi signal for it to turn green, my head was a super chaos with a cacophony of innumerable mindless thoughts... There were so many of them and so senseless, it was as if each one was competing to be more useless than the other and I was sitting back and enjoying them fight :) The strange medley that they were together creating was apparently reflecting as a weird expression on my face! “Why is the red man blinking? He usually doesn’t blink does he?” “and oh, this indicator is so in sync with the blinking man! See.. On.. Off.. On.. Off... totally in sync.. hmm” “What if there was a straight bridge from here across to my hostel rather than this curved one.. would it not have been faster.. but then everybody would want a bridge and then it would have been another classic ruin situation... hmm” (These are some of the mentionable thoughts that were crossing my head at that time.) And then, as if someone suddenly pushed the pause button on a heavy loud rock music, my thoughts were interrupted by a loud “Madam!” I looked around for the source of this interruption. A gentleman in late fifties in a long shiny black car standing next to my cab was calling out to me... Of course I was surprised and thanks to all the thought-music frozen in my mind and on my face, I only stared at him... “Madam, dont think so much and dont think so loud! ” He said, with a smirk on his face... as if he had read my thoughts and was so totally amused... sort of teasing me... for it was obvious I would not have wanted anybody to really know what I was thinking of... but he knew... and as if to confirm what I was thinking, he added “yeah, I can read your mind you know! Dont think so loud..” and before I could gather myself, before I could push the cloud of thoughts hung in mid air in my head aside to take in what he had said, the signal turned green and he sped off. The taxi driver though was furious... (apparently he understood english) “inko kya karna hai koi kitna bhi soche... aap itna andar baithe ho phir bhi aapko bulaya... budhha aadmi tha sharam nahi aati!!” he went on ranting. But I was totally amused. I dont know whether he really read my mind or was the music in my head so loud that it disturbed the music in his head... Or may be he was plain bluffing... but whatever it was, he made me realise that at any time, if I took a cross section of my mind, I will see atleast 20 different thoughts... and thoughts so wierd and so irrelevant, I wonder how much mind space i waste on them and why? But if he was not bluffing, and he was indeed able to read my mind... It amuses me to think how totally crazed he must have been to read behind the wierd expression on my face :)

Pitter patter rain drops...

There is a deafening thunder as I write this post Nasik lately has been witness to floods and heavy rain. Such rain it had not witnessed in the past forty years! The weather outside is beautiful. It has not started pouring yet, but the thunder gives a fore warning of their arrival.. Its dark.. almost as if its late evening.. Nothing sounds more tempting now than a blanket, a cup of hot coffee and a novel... This is the season for the one of my favourite flowers - white butterfly ginger lily... better known as sontakka in marathi. It sits pretty in my living room right now.. spreading a beautiful fragrance which is second only to the scent of wet mud that comes from outside. As I look outside the window at the tiny drops of water that have started to slowly make the garden tiles polka dotted, I wonder whether, away from this peace, I also have a super hectic and run-all-the-time life when I am in Mumbai...? This is so contrast to all that.. so serene.. so calm.. It has started to pour now.. my garden is all wet and the atmosphere chilly. One more loud thunder and the force of the rain increased... I wish I could go out and get drenched... but I cant. I have fever :( The pitter patter on the shed outside reminds me of the poem "I hear thunder... I hear thunder.. oh do u? Pitter patter rain drops..." which my bro used to sing in nursery in a typical sing-song manner of his... I can picture him in his navy blue tiny pants and making cute finger movements while saying "pitter patter rain drops".. :) Oh I so simply love rains... the wet garden... the thunder.. the occasional lightening... the cool breeze... the peace.. the calm and the pitter patter rain drops...

Young @ 80

Its her birthday today and this post is dedicated to her though she will not be reading it ever.
Wish she could. 
I am sure she would have cried. 
The super senti woman that she is.
 She cries the most in my family I think.
She used to cry every time she read the 'hostel' poem I wrote.
  Whenever I go home, she is the person I talk to the most. she goes on and on...

  "So how is Neha? when is raji's shaadi? what does her husband do? what is neha's sister doing now? where is prachi now? how is tarang doing? What do you eat at the hostel? how do you sleep at the hostel? blah..blah..

She has to know everything. and she does know everything. 

I so love yapping my time away with her...and get updates of the whole family from her... We dont argue much... the only few topics (on which too we have agreed to disagree) being my sleeveless dresses and my dirty jeans.

  She loves chocolates, ice-creams, jalebis, moong dal sheera and pav-bhaji... in the same order.. but if you really ask her, she will deny and say she really isnt too much of a foodie..

At home, the most beautiful moments are when I wake up in the morning and go back to sleep with my head in her lap... and she gets sentimental and asks me if I will remember her when she is gone... 

and how much ever you insist that you will, she will not believe you... She celebrates her 80th birthday today...

@ 80 she hardly looks or behaves her age... She works enough to put a 40 year old to shame.

We call her the most reliable reminder...

She can discuss with you about anything and everything under the sun and crack genuinely pathetic jokes with you... some of them are at times straight dirty!

She is a total sweetheart... A lady who has seen and gone through much in life. One of the most sensible and strong people I know.. Happy birthday ajji :)

Emptiness

I read in the speaking tree an article about Abhinav Bindra saying he felt a strange emptiness after winning the gold. Not that he was unhappy but somehow he felt empty. For, all his life he had strived for this moment... and now finally when the moment had arrived it made him realise his quest is over. Over time he had come to enjoy his journey towards the Olympic gold. A dream of every sportsman. Now what will he strive for? I mean really at the age of 26 he is left with no goal to pursue! Well that’s kind of depressing isn’t it :)

I experienced the same emptiness yesterday. Since last year when i bought my laptop i had been trying to make a record in by winning minesweeper, the expert level on my laptop. I had cleared the novice and the intermediate long back but the expert level kept eluding me.

I would reach the end of the game most of the times and then there used to be a pure chance based decision and yes it would mostly turn out to be wrong... and then I would ask God as to why does he do that? Shouldn’t success always depend on the person’s ability and not on pure chance factor?

But yesterday, after 436 unsuccessful attempts, when i clicked the last cell which made me win the game finally... I felt awesome... :) but once it was over and it merely asked me if i wanted to play again, i realised now there was no goal left in my life! I had mastered minesweeper’s expert level too...!!!

Now what will i do every time my internet is super slow and i am looking for a time pass till the site opens? I realised what Abhinav Bindra must have felt like... emptiness...

Guess now I should move onto some other game. However, in the end it is always an emptiness that will greet me...

Guess as it says, enjoy the journey to Ithaca, the demons, the beauty, everything of it, coz Ithaca in itself will hold nothing for you, but don’t be disappointed when you find Ithaca and realise it has nothing to offer, remember it offered you the journey and all the riches you gathered along the journey.. Ultimately that is what Ithaca was really about!

But all said and done I must say Microsoft windows should at the least have some place wherein it records the names of the high scorers.. I mean honestly for all the efforts that i put in in the 437 games all i get is a window asking me whether i wanted to play again!!

Well, why will i want to play again... when I have just won my personal Olympic gold of it :)