Birthday Hungama

Just a few years more before I hit the Big 4. But birthdays have never been so good. Only five days back, I had a great birthday with a few close friends. Went to this great restaurant which serves Thai, Korean, Mangolian, Chinese, Japanese .... food and I loved it.

Firoz and Jasmine, the party-goers had of course tried the place and like it anyway. So did Lindsay though his nights are usually spent in some bar rather than a restaurant. Patcy had never tried a restaurant like this and I could see she never will, but I am glad she was with us.

And I received gifts. Candles, jewellery, clothes, chocolates, diyas, cake, but best of all is my diamond ring. Now I know why people say diamonds are a girl's best friend. It has not left my finger.

But the party was not over yet. The next day got invited by a couple Rozina and Micky who are extremely sweet and very proud owners of a huge house. It was a double celebration, house-warming and my birthday. Sat, chatted, drank, ate and came home with a big smile knowing that the world a one big beautiful place.

Waiting for my next birthday!!!

Great Words

"Laugh and the world laughs with you,
Weep and you weep alone,
For this brave old earth must borrow its mirth,
It has sorrow enough of its own.
Sing and the hills will answer,
Sigh! it is lost in the air,
The echoes do bound a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice and the men will seek you,
Grieve and they turn and go,
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not want your woe.
Be glad and your friends are many,
Be sad and you lose them all,
There is none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must feast life's gall.
Feast and your halls are crowded,
Fast and the world goes by,
Succeed and give and it helps you live,
But no one can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure,
For a long and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on,
Through the narrow aisles of pain."

-- Ella Wheeler Wilcox.

Busybee

Lifes turned topsyturvy lately. Dont know if I am coming or going. Theres so much to do and so little time. Wish the day was longer so that I could fit in everything that I wanted to do and not wait for another day to finish it. Wonder when this will get over and I can get eight hours of undisturbed sleep.

Karma theory

Believing in the karma theory can be very confusing. For me it is more so because I believe only in one part of it. The Divine Justice that I keep talking about is something I know happens, but rebirths I don’t want. Do I want to know that all my actions will generate some fruits and if they are not finished in this birth then I take it to the next one. Do I want to take birth again? It’s difficult to believe in this theory when you don’t believe in rebirths.

Karma stays with you whether you like it or no. You have to know that whatever you do will generate a reaction and it will come back to you ten-fold. The sufferings you heap on others will be unbearable to you if you face it. The happiness you spread around will be amazing when you get it in return.

But there are few things that are out of our control. Like hurting others without meaning to. One knows that by taking a certain action, one is right. But it is wrong for the other person. And one suffers. You turn around and ask God if that was fair. But when Pandavas fought for their right, were they happy after that? They were unhappy because they lost their families. So even if your actions are right, it makes others unhappy, you can be sure you will be unhappy too. It’s a very dicey situation, one, which cannot be explained by anybody.

Hindu philosophy is very interesting. It gives you so much space to grow as a person. Its’ religious intentions are not to kill anybody but find liberation even if one is a non-believer. And it is not necessary to pray to find moksha (liberation). One can find it through dharma (duty), kama (physical) or artha (financial). But one can also find it by going beyond the mundane and realizing the self. Self- realization means being introspective and knowing yourself and trying to be as selfless and active as He Himself.

But I know one thing for sure and that is whatever I do, I will reap the benefits of it in this birth and not the next one.

And then….

There are the other friends who have inspired me and awed me with their immense resilience and grit. They are my little known friends who I have only recently discovered. The college friends I mentioned in my earlier blog are one of them. I really admire Bhakti for her confidence that nothing can go wrong for her. She knows that whatever she will do, she will succeed in it. She is a go-getter and that’s the way it should be. Shraddha is the mature and level-headed girl, a rock really. Khushbu on the other hand is a highly emotional person who cries at the drop of a hat probably. But she awes me with her spirit to be positive despite the negativity in her life.

Firoz is a very smart guy who knows the meaning of surviving under the hardest circumstances. This guy just amazes me with his sheer determination to face the odds with a smile on his face. And he enjoys his life to the fullest. He has been quite a support during my low times. We have a very affectionate bond which I guess only we understand.

Vishal started out as our physical instructor, but soon became a friend. A very highly sensitive and dramatic guy, he can amaze me with his focus and one-track mind about physical fitness and bodybuilding. He wants to compete in a body building competition and wont think of anything else but that. Call him immature and you can get his hackles up considerably.

And then there is Murali, cousin and friend. Since the time I can remember, I have never seen him stress free or just doing something for himself. He is always working for others and getting conned probably by the so-called friends. If you are looking at an ideal son, brother or husband, he is the one you should look at. He is probably the only guy I know who can’t refuse his mom anything. He is a great guy.

My college friends are young, some actually twenty years younger to me. Now that is something that amazes me, that I am surrounded by people who were born when I became 18. One of my young friends told me that if I had known them then, I would probably be carrying them in my arms and playing with them. Yeah imagine that!

The objects of my affection…

Are my friends. They are few, very good friends.

I got friends who are of all ages. Some are older to me, some my age and some much younger to me. But they are all aware of what a weirdo I am and still love me.

Starting from first best friend Jacqueline who was my school buddy, a fellow backbencher. We were quiet and reserved and boys didn’t come near us. I still don’t know if I was happy with the situation about boys, but I was happy that Jack was and it was ok by me. We got married, lost touch, got in touch again many years later, and now we are good friends.

My next best friend is Zaki whom I married. We are poles apart. If I like astrology, he likes astronomy. I like hindi masala movies and he likes Brian de Palma and Steven Speilberg. We fight and argue everyday, but at the end we like being with each other. We are still friends.

Then there is Sam. I call him Sambul. He is Zaki’s best friend and now he is my friend. He is this eccentric guy who talks less and smiles even lesser. He has seen me through many changes and suffered me for a bad tempered person to actually liking me for the person I finally turned into and I am sure he appreciates it that he is not at the receiving end of my tantrums these days. He is a great guy who we love and cherish.

Doris and Sunil, Rupanday and Hari, both couples not together anymore but still good friends of mine. And then there is Rupa and Sajid. Both a little far in Dubai, and not so much in touch, but we can pick up where we left off the last time we met. Rupa is this hyper active person and Sajid is equally laidback. Rupa takes charge and Sajid is more than happy to let her. This just proves that there is nothing better than a good marriage. Putty and Sandhya, I haven’t forgotten you yet. Putty made the third angle in Zaki, Sam’s group. Great guy this with an equally great wife.

Lastly come my very young friends. Kushbu, Bhakti and Shraddha are pretty new and getting quite close. But Chaitali, Pracheta are my lifeline in college. They are a strange mix of maturity and innocence. They love me any which way. Whether I am being preachy, bad-tempered or nasty. They smile and indulge me. They actually look after my needs so well. They spoil me rotten and I am thankful to them for that. They depend on me for the notes I can make out of the very difficult subjects that they never understand really and I depend upon them to tell me where I go wrong with my practicals. It’s a life that I am living once more when I was 18 when they come and tell me their heartaches and breaks, the boys they like and have crushes on. It’s an adventure with them and I don’t want to trade it ever for anything else. Never have I felt so great having such a great bunch of friends. Thank God.

Says Kabir, listen O saints!

Kabir saw how social conventions had hardened into blind beliefs. He also noticed how people indulged in greed, hypocrisy and selfishness under the cover of religion. He refused to keep quiet. In an age when freedom of speech was unknown, he dared speak freely. He hit at rituals ruthlessly. He defied all that tended to hide the truth and divide people. His addressed his poems to people trapped in ignorance.

His creed is love. It simply connects. His poetry assures that God is nothing but Love. He is personal experience. He is known to each differently. He is in every heart, in that invisible space which Kabir refers to as the void between the breaths. Every breath brings His message but lost in sleep we cannot hear it. We need a Kabir to awaken us.

Where do u look for me dear?
I am closer than close to you.

Neither in temple-mosque am I,
Nor in Kaba-Kailash,
Nor in rituals, nor in yoga-ways.

Neither in goat-sheep am I,
Nor in axe-knife,
Nor in skin-tail, nor in flesh and bone

He who yearns, finds at once,
Far from the crowd,
I live in a quiet refuge.

Listen to me in the void, says Kabir
In between all the breaths.



The shadow of the evening
Grows darker and
Love overpowers body-mind.

Throw open the window
To the west, and
Dive deep in the Void of love

Sip the nectar,
From the lotus of awareness
And let waves embrace you.

In the glorious Void-palace,
Listen to the music
Of conch, bells and lute.

Listen, O saint-brothers,
I found my Lord-Eternal
Within myself, says Kabir.

Why isn’t anybody talking about Suniel Shetty.

I saw Main Hoon Na for the second time and still wondered why hasn’t anybody spoken about Suniel Shetty and his ‘acting’. For those who haven’t seen the film, he is this hardcore villain who gets beaten (not beaten up), in the end by the hero. He isn’t an anti-hero kind but a real villain and he does a pretty convincing job of it too. From being a non-actor to actually doing a good job of beating up Shahrukh Khan, he is good, despite the tacky blue lens in his eye and that horrid wig.

So there is no mention of him anywhere in the papers or magazines or anywhere at all. Its’ sad because in this film, he has taken a risk of experimenting with the character and he has succeeded. Personally, I feel he makes a better villain than a hero. His dialogue delivery sucks otherwise as a hero because he doesn’t have a deep voice but a rather thin one. Still, it works in this character.

He has, definitely, improved by way of acting as compared to others who go around claiming that they are ‘actors’. I liked him in this film and hope that people take a second look at him and say something.

In Memory

We had a great thing going. We were together. We did a lot of things. We fought and made up. We joked about ourselves and laughed. We cooked and ate everything up. We shared. We cared. We confided and we kept those secrets. We were friends.

But now all that is gone. Perhaps I should have listened to another, “nothing lasts forever”. Distance has made us strangers. But memories are strong. Till they fade away, it was the bestest time ever.

A beginning

Ah! Dancing! I woke up one morning, went to a dance performance and decided that I wanted to learn Bharata Natyam again. Don’t know what mental state I was in to take that decision cause I was in my early thirties and 20 kgs overweight (I was underweight before that) and was in no condition to move either my legs or my entire body. Despite a disastrous first day where my guru asked me to jump high in the air and I came down very unceremoniously flat on the ground (it shook I think), I stuck to it and today it’s three years since and I am glad I decided to go for it.

People often asked me why did I take such a drastic step knowing that I earned a five-figure salary and had a pretty glamourous job of interviewing film personalities and to give it up was stupid. My sister also told me that I should have taken photography, as that was more glamorous to explain to her friends when they asked about me instead of “oh she dances”. So was it because I wanted to become a performer or was it because I wanted to open a class and earn some money sitting at home. I simply told them because it made me happy. Happy as nothing ever did. Not my job, not people, jewellery, clothes, perfumes or money, it was just dancing that put me in a great place.

Today I dance with 15 other girls ranging between ages 18 and 21, who have great energy levels and who keep me on my toes, literally. But does it discourage me? No way. In fact I feel quite blessed to be among such talented dancers who inspire me constantly.

Now everybody invariably ask me what next? What next? Just the moment for me of dancing and learning the fine details about this art form. Of knowing that this has opened new avenues for me academically. And feeling happy that I went back to college again.