What If I Am Stronger Than I Think I Am?

So I realized, that I have the ability to do ANYTHING! Absolutely anything ! I have the power to froget, to forgive, to move on, to be strong. I have the power to realize just how strong I am.  I remember questioning my own capability to face some of my lowest and toughest moments. But boy did I surprize myself! We often underestimate ourselves. SOmetimes when I’m feeling whiney and cranky, I remember my mum telling me never to let my chin hit the floor while I whine about life. She would admonish me and remind me to keep smiling. Even now when I’m frowning and I feel my cheeks sag, I burst out laughing thinking of my mum imitating my sad dog face. I never realized how right Mum was(Isn’t she always?) back then. I do now. It is so ,so so soooooo easy to let the sadness get to you and be a cranky old lady. It take guts and glory to be brave even when your knees are shaking and you dont know ow you will make it through the night. IT isnt about the amount you cried that night, its about the fact that you actually woke up the next day and wanted to try again.That is what matters. We all cry, we all fail, we all doubt ourselves. I’m not asking you to be rock solid n stone cold. I’m asking you to remember that even though its okay to cry or have a sad day, its NOT okay to let that become your life.

So I am going to put on my pretty pink Coach shoes and walk all over town, or maybe all over you You never know!

What if I couldn’t keep up?

You know the hardest part about growing up? It’s the part where all your friends move onto different stages in their lives and you can’t keep up. They get engaged, they get married, they get new jobs, have new friends, new responsibilities. How do you keep up when you don’t know what it feels like? Friends often fall by the side because you don’t know what they are going through in that stage of their life, simply because you haven’t reached that stage yet. Even though it makes me proud, to see my friends moving on, it scares me too-because I’m not ready to see them move on, because I’m not ready to move on with them, maybe because I can’t move on with them.

So then what do I do? Let them go? Hell no! I try to understand where they are coming from, why their priorities are different from mine, what is important to them, what is their happiness source code. Sometime I understand, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes I can keep up with their lives and updates, sometimes I can’t. Like if my friend is getting engaged, it takes me time to wind my head around it, but I understand it. If my friend is starting to spend more because of a newer, higher paying job, I understand it-but can i keep up? Not really.

But then at the end of the day it’s just about making choices-these are all people I want in my life, for good, people who have been my friends forever and will stay so, forever. So I have to make a greater effort, to understand those different from  me, to understand the different stages of life that they are covering sooner than me.

What Makes Music My Oxygen?

There’s a song for every moment that you needed one. When you were overjoyed and when you hit rock bottom and when you simply just needed to hear a song. My life isn’t a movie with an OST, but there’s almost always a song playing in my head. It’s like everytime I feel some overpowering emotion , there’s a song to soothe me.

 A song to help me celebrate that insanely happy day, a song to help me through that dark night, a song to help me smile through my deepest fears. Music reminds me that somehow, somewhere, somebody went through the same thing I’m going through and that they made it through, they wrote a song that millions heard, and they were okay. So somehow, I’ll be okay too.

 If I had to describe music in one word-that word would be hope. Music is hope.Music gives me hope. Music reminds me that everybody hurts. Music reminds me to keep dancing. To keep facing my worst fears. To keep moving on. Because as long as the music is playing, I’m gonna keep going .

 Which is why I started the 30 day song challenge. Because each song says something about me. The 30 day song challenge started off as just a random thing I wanted to do, and as I went on, I realised that more than anything else, the songs I loved and hated described me. They spoke about times when music had played as I fell in love, and times when music saved my soul from being sold into the darkness.

So music is my hope, hope is my oxygen, hence music is my oxygen.

What If I Couldn’t Erase You?

Blog post

She was here again. She always is. At the wrong time. At the wrong place. When I least want to remember her. She never fails to appear. Taunting me. Mocking me. Mocking the girl I am with. Reminding me of how silly these pursuits are. These lonely pursuits in a hope of ever achieving something remotely close to what I had with her. These pointless pursuits.

I remember being so insanely happy on that day. When I first saw her that morning, I almost cried. Her  face  bursting with happiness, thinly veiled . She was not your typical shy bride. She was happy and had no qualms showing it. In our photos you can see her dimples stretching from cheek to eye on either side. She didn’t hold back. She let all happiness loose that morning. Maybe she shouldn’t have., Maybe somebody envied us enough to wish us ill. Maybe…… if she hadn’t been so happy that day, I wouldn’t be so sad today. So typical of me, to somehow look for someone to put the blame on. How could I ever forget that seeing her that happy that day, made me feel like a better man. Because on that day, no one but I was the cause for her elation. How could I forget the way it felt to hold her hand for the first time after our wedding. The way she clasped my hand, trusting her future to me.

But on nights like these, it’s so hard to remember the good times. It’s almost as if a re- run of all the bloopers are on reel tonight. I hate it. I hate that I  don’t have some memories at beck and call. I hate it that they only choose to come to me when I don’t need them. Like when I’m walking by  the jasmine plant and the whiff of those flowers reminds me of your perfume that was a mix of so many things but mostly of jasmine. I hate how it makes me stop in my tracks and linger there longer than I should. To take in that smell and carry it around with me for as long as I can. How much longer should I carry your memories with me? When can I let go of them. When can I let go of you?

“Sometimes it lasts in love

But sometimes it hurts instead”

I heard these words today….and ran into you only moments later. Your skin was the same. That faint pink touch on it when I touched it as you slept. Your eyelashes curled so gently upwards it was almost as if they were apologising for covering eyes so beautiful. Your hair pulled back so tight, revealing a face so gently pretty. It wasn’t a face most would find pretty. But then, they never saw you while you lay in bed tracing my face. They never saw how beautiful your face looked when it was full of love for me. They would never see it, because you didn’t love me anymore.

What If It Was Time To Let Go & I Didn’t Know?

So yet another friend had to let go of something she loved today.Which made me think about letting go and all the baggage it brings. We have all been there, at that line where we didn’t know if we should keep fighting  or we should simply….LET GO. So what are the red lights that flash along the road to let us know when its time to let go?

Sometimes, the red lights are bright and shiny and IN YOUR FACE. There are some red lights you just can’t ignore-like cheating, broken trust, hurt-physical and mental. But even then, how do we gather the courage to let go and the strength to draw that line and say “too bad you overstepped it”. What about those tiny little red lights that are mere blips in the distance. Like tiny warning signals of worse to come. How do we know if we should try harder, cry some more or carry on hurting? How do we know which red lights to ignore and which ones to heed to?

 I go with my gut . Silly right? But it has never failed me. Plus, what else do I depend on? My friends can give me advice, my parents can guide me. But at the end of the day, I have to depend on myself and my gut instincts to tell me whether its okay to let go or whether its better to hold on and fight for it. I have always been afraid of letting go, simply because the comfort of familiarity is so hard to let go of. That familiar feeling we get when we are with someone who has known us forever, can never be replaced by someone new. It takes courage and guts and a little selfishness to let go. Because you have to be selfish enough to want the best for you. That’s another red light-when you know you’re harming yourself by holding on. 

 But the guilt that comes with letting go is so immense at times. Did I do the right thing? Should I have held on longer? Does it make me a horrible person for taking the decision to leave the relationship? But then I remember, that I’m leaving for a reason. That the friendship or the relationship isn’t working for a reason. That I could choose to stay and work on it, but I’m choosing to leave because there’s no more work to be done. Because, all hope is lost. It’s as simple as that. It’s when that final sliver of hope has slipped away too, that we know that its finally time to let go and try to move on.

I’ve been there more than once. With love, with friendship, with people I cared about immensely, at one point in my life. I’ve questioned myself . I’ve doubted my choices, I’ve even doubted myself. But the funny thing is, when its time to let go….somehow…you always know.

Picture Courtesy : http://learningobsessed.edublogs.org/2011/03/24/let-go-of-coverage/

What If Love Is Just A Multiple of Like?

Yesterday I met a friend, who told me that she had stopped looking for love and was now ready to settle for “like”.  At first it didn’t make sense to me. But after a little thought I realised, that she may just be right in doing so! Think about “like” as “love” ‘s nicer cousin. The one that will lend you a jacket when you’re cold and laugh at your jokes that aren’t quite so funny, and smile at you when you make a weird expression. Now “love” on the other hand, is the mean one in the family. The one who laughs at you when you fall  and doesn’t understand your jokes. “Like” is a safe option. If I like somebody and they don’t like me back…..well…. I’ll deal with it. But , if I love somebody and they don’t love me back….well…..I’ll bawl my eyes out and question everything I’ve learned about life and love and everything else.

 

So then why do millions of us choose love over like? Love is what puts that insane happiness in your heart and a crooked laugh on your face. Like can only make you smile. Love can make you burst with the need to tell everybody that you’ve finally found the one and that this time-you’re right. Like will only make whisper quietly about this person you met, who would be perfect for you.  Like is a pre- conceived notion of who we should be with. Love has no notions and no explanations.

In our teenage years, we were all about the love. Love was all we wanted. Crazy, insane, INSANE  love. The type that made our parents red in the face and our friends green. We wanted to strut and flash our love in everybody’s face. In our twenties, a quieter, more graceful acceptance of love came about. We didn’t want to tell the world. We wanted to keep our love to ourselves. We wanted the magic to be our secret. We wanted this secret to be ours and ours alone. But did we ever think, that maybe , it wasn’t love every single time?

What if knowingly or unknowingly, we stopped falling for all the wrong guys and started falling for the right ones, simply because we could like them before we loved them. Instead of falling head first into the rush called love, what if we had grown from like to love. So is it such a bad thing to call “like” the young girl that grew into the graceful woman called “love” ? Instead of treating “love” and “like” as two separate entities with nothing much in common, how about treating them as the same entity at different stages in their life?

Picture Courtesy :http://favim.com/like+vs+like/

What If I Decided to Opt Out of This Beauty Parade…..

So today while I was eating breakfast, my dad tried to desperately brush some white powder off my face. Then my mum had the insight to quickly come to the rescue and distract him which made me realise that it was probably something embarrassing such as umm maybe my *cough* bleach powder *cough* (quickly looks around to see if anybody caught that)

If you don’t have a vagina ( I thought of saying breasts or estrogen, but then a lot of men today, well you know what I mean)  then I’m sorry you probably have little or NO clue about the amount of work some girls put in, to walk out of the house looking like fashion models. Like seriously, how many girls were born with perfectly arched eyebrows, or skin that shines like the moon. It takes hours of tweezing , waxing, facials, blow drying, straightening and God-knows-what-else to make her look ( for a lack of a better word to describe it ) Va-Va-Voom! 

I’m not sitting here on my high horse and looking down my nose in disdain at all those foolish young girls who go through this torture on a weekly basis . Unfortunately or fortunately( if I choose to look upon it as a learning experience in Pain Tolerance 101) I have been there way more often than probably even necessary. But what if, one day I woke up and decided to stop messing with my hair or my face or my eyes, for good? How long would I last before I came crying back to the safe refuge of my straightener and my eyeliner and a million hair products?  

So what is it that keeps me bound to these artificial methods of beauty ? Is it my need to look pretty or is it my need to look prettier than the next girl?  Is it to impress the boys? Or impress myself when I look in the mirror?  Why are these beauty products like an old love I can’t seem to get rid of?  Maybe the answer to all my WHYs  is as simple as self-confidence. Maybe looking good makes me feel better and gives me that extra boost of confidence when I need to get up in front of a crowd and talk. Or maybe when I need to party, looking a little better than something the cat dragged in, may actually make me enjoy myself more.

So try as I might, to sound liberated and pretend like I don’t need the help of all these tiny bottles of happiness, I will come back to them each night.  The debate is still on- but the verdict has already been passed- the products stay! Simply because they make me happy.

What If I Had The Power To Change My Life?

So today I was thinking, I know almost exactly, what I want from life. So then what is stopping me? People forget that they have the ability to visualize exactly what they want, and go after it and MAKE IT HAPPEN! People, that is, including me!

So what I’m trying to say is, you and me have the insane, unlimited power to make every single one of our dreams come true. I have very average dreams. Every person walking by me probably has the same dreams. In order of absolutely no preference….here they are….

1.That Dream Job…..there are only two jobs I want….. and I don’t even know how one single person can want two such different jobs- one in the Advertising Industry and the other in the Implant Design Industry. See , this conflict describes me completely-confused as always.
Even while doing my Masters In Biomedical Engineering, I sneak off once in a while to the Language and Writing Lounge (I call it that, I wonder what its actually called) of our University. Its my secret get away. I go there and browse through their books and poems and internships walls and sometimes play pretend to belong there. Then I quietly pack my bags ,switch off the lights and return to the Engineering Students’ Lounge.
So how did I realise that I had finally found something in the world of BME(Biomedical Engineering) that finally interested me so strongly? The secret has a name. But considering that this is my public blog and not his, I’m assuming I can’t name him. I have a professor-lets call him Professor X – it was while sitting in his classes and going on those field trips and attending those seminars he conducted and talking to him that I finally realised that this was it! Implant Design! I loved it. I wanted to do it. There was a part of me that was almost relieved to find that BME hadn’t passed by me completely, leaving no traces of its existance. I held this secret closer to my heart than my advertising dream, because everybody knew I could write and that communication was my forte-so advertising was an expected career choice . But could I excel in Implant Design? Then came the Design Project that single handedly gave me the confidence I didn’t even know existed within me. By the end of the project, not only did we have a fanatastic new idea ready to go through the tough patenting process, I personally, also had a truckload of confidence to boot! I was ecstatic! And I remind myself everyday , that this just the beginning of a dream……..

2. That Insane, Movie Type- Love – now this, I will not compromise on. I know it will happen. Simply because I believe. When I was younger (not so long!) I used to think that I would fall in love and he would fall in love and we would live happily ever after. I was 18-what else did you expect? Then, as each relationship failed, my definition of love changed. From love at first sight , to a love that grows over time. From love that is perfect, to a love that accepts all imperfections and yet loves fearlessly. From a love that will solve all my problems. to a love that may cause some unforseen problems. From a love that will complete me, to a love that will teach me to be my own person and discover more about myself as I fall deeper.
My definition of love changed, but my belief that I would someday fall in love, and that it would be by chance (or due to some insane planning by my friends ) stayed the same. I believe that fairytales do happen, just that our own versions maybe slightly different from the ones we read as kids. Instead of a coach we may have to catch that auto to go find the love of our lives. Instead of glass slippers you may have to trudge in heavy winter boots. Instead of your prince charming who rules a kingdom, you may find that sincere stable guy with a 9-5 job. Our definition of love and expectations from love may change, but don’t let it taint your image of that crazy, insane thing called LOVE!

So I’m going to add more to my dream list and check them off as they come true….. Cynics beware!

Why Am I Even Starting A Blog All Over Again?

So the funny thing is I have 3 Blogs….. One private(yes that is where I’m writing about you if you deserve to be talked about) , and two public (both about India and how that country fascinates me)
I was 18 when I started blogging. It was the best therapy I had ever gotten for free! I could write and I could vent and I could say anything I wanted to. My blog replaced my secret diary, yes I had one of those- with a key et al. My million little secret diaries I had written in over the years, got shoved aside to make way for my new fascination-a blog. My personal blog scared me and excited me at the same time , to write something so personal online and keep it secret from everybody. Nobody knew I blogged. I would tap away furiously about all my passions, my fears and most of all- my secrets. My secrets were out there on the worldwideweb and I felt like a fearless bastard for putting it out there ( now would be a good time to say I was Puss in Boots pretending to be a tiger because my blog was private and inaccessible to anyone but me ) But the thought that somebody could potentially view my secrets (since the internet is so very untrustworthy you see) gave me an adrenaline rush.

I was 18 then. With age came a need to write again. I want to write. And this time, I want to write an honest public blog. About what? I don’t even know. But I do know that I’ve travelled to some of the most exciting cities in the world and met some of the most amazing people . So if I have nothing to say, well then nobody does! So I’m going to put my experiences to use. Lets milk those cross atlantic tickets for all they are worth.