कुछ लोग..

भीड़ को समझ कर दोस्त, खूब मुस्कुरा रहे हैं|
अपने ही अक्स के साये में खुद को महफूज़ पा रहे हैं||

शुक्र है

कई बार कई फैसले
हमारी ज़िन्दगी के
हम नहीं करते
नहीं कर पाते
शुक्र है|
बोझ अपने ही फैसले जीने का
भारी नहीं लगता वैसे तो
पर कई बार राह लम्बी हो
और सफ़र करना पड़े अकेले
तो बोझ बहुत बढ जाता है

सब फैसले खुद के नहीं होते
शुक्र है|

Of roads not traveled and places not seen

Two in three people I know would say they love traveling if I asked them - or maybe more. I would too, of course, if you asked me. Traveling is really fun, exciting, adventurous. From ancient travelers who wrote tales about lands and regimes they passed through, to the modern-day backpackers and travelogue-writers, their choice of lifestyle has that enigma, that excitement worth being jealous of.

Of course, I am a consultant - it's one of a few jobs where traveling is a part of profile, a requirement. What, when, where, how much - all depends on how lucky or unlucky you are with staffing. :) But the why is always a constant, 99% is for work, 1% for official recreation, which is also work under disguise :)

One could argue that work related travel is hardly travel, and correctly so. Of course there's no fun in waking up insanely early for a morning flight, battle random traffic mess,airport queues, flight delays and train crowds to get somewhere, prim and proper to meet a client at about the same time you get to office on another day. And zip through roads, hotels, airports to work late till night because of all the travel time "lost", and brave yourself for an encore the following day. No complaints, it's part of the job!

But that's exactly what it is - part of the job. It isn't exactly traveling, is it. I have been in eight or nine cities in the last couple of weeks as part of the job. Short field phase. But that wasn't travel. What did I see of those cities? What do I remember of those sights and sounds and smells?

The boyfriend just returned from a nine day vacation to Sikkim. It reminds me the last trip I took to anywhere was a two day trip to Lansdowne - 250 kms from Delhi - almost a year ago. Excluding an overnight getaway to Alibaug near Mumbai few months back. And before that, I cant remember anything till the Sweden exchange except IITK.

It reminds me how little I have traveled in my entire life. It would shock most of you, but if I died tonight, I'd have never seen Jaipur, Jodhpur, Agra (I was 2 when I was taken there - doesn't count), Goa, Shimla, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune .......And then there's the list of places that work has taken me in the past year - all comprising of work-filled stays of one night or less, and therefore not counting as travelled either - Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Kochi, Lucknow, Kanpur (been to IITK once before for Antaragni). Hell, it would be shorter to count places I have been to.

I admit I'm a loser. I know you're going to say, take a week off, pick your bags and go somewhere, anywhere. I know I want to do that - have always wanted to. And still haven't. Till a year back I never had the money to do that. I was in college, I was supposed to study, have fun within the campus confines, and make my pocket money last the month. I also didn't have the friends, for the most part, for company. And what would I say at home? Where am I going - why, with whom. Now I can manage the money, but the other two is still a problem.

I know I need to get up, grab a backpack, and just leave. The complications would probably wait till I return. Someday.

Anyone wanna join?

Writer's block

An empty page stares at me
I imagine drops of ink
taking some shape, undetermined.
Thoughts rush, collude, collide
disappear, boomerang, rewind.
Sadly, my imagination is limited
words say formless, shapeless, unborn
thoughts continue to wander around blind

Too serious? :)

It's a small world.

Life - I can't decide whether it's long or short, opinions flip flop on that one - but life is reasonably long to make us forget a large part of it, as it happens. We get over most of it easily.

Some, of course, we like to hold on to. In tinted, hazed versions. In pictures, boxes and words. In stories we remember every time it rains, or cry to in the darkness of nights.

But since it is a small world, and as I said, life is reasonably long on an average day, sometimes we run into figments of our own life that we had forgotten, lost or gotten over. Bang, they're right there in front of us. Those people, those places. Those pictures, boxes or words. Stories we half-remember. They tend to take us down nostalgic lanes, mostly hopping over things we have held on to, and sometimes revealing forgotten milestones that surprise us -pleasantly or unpleasantly.

I do not know if this ever happened to any of you.

"Hey I knew this person... I spent a good year sharing all my secrets with her, crying over her shoulder and hiding behind her to avoid getting caught for my pranks. What happened? Why don't I remember why we got over each other?"

"Ah! I don't remember ever drawing these things. God, how silly was I. Why did I ever stop?"

"This place looks familiar, and still doesn't. I know I spent years jumping around these halls, but.."

Of course, you move on. Things lose relevance quickly. That's relatively speaking. At that moment, the pace of time is slow enough to make it feel like the entire universe, or the biggest tragedy in the country upon a human being - as the case maybe. Things feel different when they happen to you, I guess. The funny part is, once time has passed, we get over them so quickly that it's easy to be distant and forgetful, even more than if it were to happen now to a stranger in front of us.

And of course, this holds for about 95% of the people we meet and 98% of the events we live through.

It's amusing how seriously we take life still!!

I wonder if this will happen to this blog, say, 10 yrs from now. Would I care so much? Would it exist? Would I remember? Who knows...

But the archives will always state that here, in the 600th published post on this page, I acknowledged that in the roller coaster of life - hopefully, not a long one - these archives would have their own special place. :)

Cheers!

Being there

Something in me wanted to run away, if only for a moment. But of course I didn't. I couldn't have, no matter how suffocating my own helplessness was making me feel. I was irritated, mostly at my inability to help. Not at him. I was angry, also mostly at the events that brought him to me in this state. Not at him. I wanted to pity him, maybe, but couldn't get myself to.
At my wits' end, I asked, meekly, what my heart wanted to know, "How can I help?"

He looked at me with more questions than answers in his silent eyes, and then shut them. He probably didn't have any response, or maybe, I hadn't understood his response.

For sure, I didn't understand his problem either. There was no reason I could comprehend why this should be like this. It didn't make a lot of sense, and seeing him in misery, without knowing how to make it better for him, made me angrier. I wanted to find something or someone to blame, including myself, but it didn't seem to work. I wanted to walk away and hope everything would become magically alright by the time I returned.

Lost, I said, I'm there for you, and left- trying to figure out for myself what being there for him meant.

Devil in my pillow

A devil lives in my pillow. I would have said bed but that could have other unintended meanings. Anyhow, the said devil is pretty evil anyway. It jumps in my head and plants evil thoughts. One night in a month or two it manages to overpower and make me sad. Then I say crappy things, think crappier things and write..eh well, you guessed it. I imagine trouble, and over-react to real and imagined trouble. It's all pretty funny, actually, if it weren't so idiotic. The good part is it is a cleansing exercise. The bad part is people get worried for nothing. And the ugly part is it happens all over again after a few months.

Anyway, no mood to work today, etc. Let's chill.
And kill the devil, someone?

Limbo

Sometimes it is hard to decide whether having a choice is better than not having any.
Life has stopped moving in any direction, and the inertia of the interim has started to get to me. The depressing thing is that neither of the possible short term alternates look attractive enough to energise. One slightly better and slightly worse than the other - that's all.

The good thing however, is for the first time in a long time, the medium/long term looks like something I would like to live for.
Now, how about some sunshine?
Actually, on second thought, the monsoon is great - the rain makes me want to fall in love, and the damp nights make longing that much thirstier.
Que sera sera, I guess.