Give Life a Chance

Time and circumstances are the greatest levelers of them all. They just turn things around on its head and make the best of situations the worst or as it was in my case, a hopeless situation into one filled with promise of a beautiful tomorrow.

I began this year with a 2-pt agenda: that of Naukri (Job) and Chokri (Bride), with an intent to settle down after spending a good 24 years studying and a good 27 years being single! I had my ups and downs, more downs than ups and nearly half way through the year I was wondering if anything good were to happen with my life with no progress on the chokri-front and landing up with wrong job profile on the naukri-front.

But things do change, as they always do and they always will. And by the end of June everything turned right with a dream job and a dream girl walking right into my life. I will be honest and say that I did not find them: the job came on account of a diligent professor of mine who called me nearly 3 times to tell me of this job opportunity and I found my blushing bride to-be thanks to the diligence of my parents in searching for her from an ocean of prospects. Perhaps I would say there was no initiative on my part yet things look bright and beautiful by the end of the first half of the year.

How often have we looked at situations like and said 'This is not what i want cause I did not choose it.'? We tend to value our freedom without fully understanding its core elements and its true worth. Lack of choice makes us weak and frustrated but what about circumstances beyond you? What about destiny? I would never have met the love of my life today had I relied on my power of choice because my power is simply not powerful enough. It takes the power of the whole universe to bring 2 hearts together. The power that is in my hands is how do I accept this gift gracefully and keep this relationship now that we have found each other.

And this I have seen is true of all things in life. If you give Life a chance it will bring you more joy and love than you could have ever gathered with your own strength. So go ahead, take a chance on life!

While I was away...

Hey there. How have you been? It's been a while since I've written this blog. It's been quite a while actually. Three months and a week to be precise. Ouch that's really a long time. A little over one-fourth of the year to be precise. So what was I upto?

Well, it's been a whole lot of ups and downs as is with everyone. While the pessimist may see more downs and ups and the optimist see otherwise, I would say, 'Well, it's only with both of them together that you have one hell of a roller coster ride!'

I went UP a mountain in February, trekking after a really long time and came DOWN with a twisted ankle, limping all the way down. And with that went tumbling down my ability to cycle for some days. And it's funny how easily one can forget about the new things when the troubles of life hit you.

But I guess what matters most is that you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start over. So here I go and make a start, urging you to do the same anytime you fall down 'coz nothing makes the pain sweeter than the taste of success on your next try!

The Silence of Music

The best thing about a busy day at college is that I get to bike my way around Mulund in the dead of the night. Today, I was cycling from about 12:20am to 1:10am and it's been the most fun  have had so far cycling in Mulund for several reasons.

For one, I did not stop my pedalling even once for any reason. I think I managed to spot just 4 cars in total for that 50 minute period. That in the city of Mumbai is priceless road time I'll tell you. But something even more priceless is the Sound of Silence, no I am not referring to the Simon and Garfunkel number but to the very real silence that was on the streets. I have this habit of plugging earphones into my ear holes to plug out the maddening sounds of the city and replace them with music from my iPod. Although I am not for causing voluntary deafness, I would rather do that than walk through sounds that occupy the city. But tonight was different, I had the music on a comfortable volume level and the best Love Ballad Rock band to walk on this earth playing: Michael Learns To Rock (MLTR).

Music has this intoxicating and mesmerising effect on many people. Personally, it transports me back to my school days when I actually heard them and those were some really good times!  Not a care in the world, lost in our own world, whose periphery barely made it beyond Mulund! Schooling on weekdays and Sunday Schooling on Sundays. Thursday Holidays and playing Cricket on the Football grounds. Fighting with the girls at St Mary's but secretly liking them. That was the life we all had that we all left behind.

And left it behind because an oyster needs to jump out of its shell to be in the Queen's necklace. 12 years later some have outshone themselves while some of us are still trying to make it there. But I guess all of us will remember that time of our lives when we could be ourselves and 'growing up' meant new clothes every 6 months 'cause the old ones wouldn't fit anymore!

Bark! Bark! Bark! I am broken out of my thought cycle by a bunch of dogs barking at the 4th vehicle I saw on the road tonight. And I realised how easy it is to be lost in silence. Through all that music I remembered the songs we sang, the steps we danced, the mischief we committed, the fun we had, the teasing with girls' names, the crushes on girls, the letters we wrote, the carvings on desks, the Pepsi-Cola stick and the Vada-Pav in the school canteen, the Annual days and the Zero Period practice, the Sports days and the March Past rehearsals, the Parent Teacher Meets and the Art & Craft Exhibitions, the hush-hush talks and the sex education, the debates and the elocution, the school hours and the after-school tuition, walking through shortcuts to reach home and the cycling through these very lanes. These lanes they have time stamps of my childhood all over them just as they do for so many of you from Mulund and elsewhere.

It is an intoxicating and mesmerising feeling to go down memory lane. But I guess once in a while it would do us good to revisit those roads in the silence of the day and realise in the silence of our hearts the place where we came from and where we were formed into the people we are today. And if you need a bike to do that, mine is always available for you!