Turning the clock back ...

‘Time throws a blanket over slumbering memories until one day we walk back to them unknowingly, following the bitter-sweet scents of love, of loss, of happiness and pain, of a war won and battles lost.’

“It wasn’t called Pakistan, Beta. It was India”, said my grandmother, correcting me. “It earned its name only after we came here, after the partition”, she added with a sense of pride in her voice. Sitting in her favourite chair, watching T.V and knitting a beautiful pattern with white wool, she looked like a happy and content lady. Her forehead showed lines of hard work she had put into building her life here and the life she had left in the land of her childhood, Pakistan.

It was a weekday and no one was at home. My family had gone to attend a close relatives’ wedding. Grandmother was not fond of crowded places and hence avoided going until completely necessary.

Lying on bed listening to my grandmother’s stories at nights was one of the very few things I used to look forward to. It put me altogether in a different mode. I could listen to her never ending heroic stories forever. Since we lived in a joint family, silence was a missing entity. Calmness crept in after lights went off and even if my grandmother was asleep, I used to nudge her and wake her up. And since she was a light sleeper, she never really seemed disturbed.

But today was an exception. No one at home on a weekday was very rare and since I was in the middle of my Christmas vacations, I was surely making the most of it.

“It was not at all easy to pack up your entire life in a jiffy and leave behind everything”, she continued.

“I was born and married there. Life had just got on path and we had to come here. Everything turned unsafe”, her eyes going wide, “I wish no one has to see such days”, she said shutting her eyes and saying a silent prayer to herself.

“What about your friends, Dadi and what about school? Did you not go to school?” I asked with curiosity.

“He he... I was married when I was fifteen. I went to school till I was about twelve. After that I was assigned to learn all the house work and by the time I got married, I could make food for hundred people together”. Another wide smile came to her face. She may not have been very educated but she certainly was a woman of substance.

Hearing her tales made me sway along with her through her nostalgic ride. Her journey had not been an easy one. But each time she told me a situation or an incident of her life, she managed to grab every iota of my attention to her captivating storyline. How amazing yet difficult would it have been for a teenage girl to leave her one life behind and enter another one, in a new land?

We all know that the partition of our country brought tranquility to some but a sense of melancholy to those who had to leave their homes and lives behind to commence a new beginning. She was no different. The sight of death was that a common one which she witnessed through the most important journey of her life. Gruesomeness around made her strong at a very tender age.

My grandmother is no more and like every grandchild, I too had formed a special valued bond with her. Reminiscing about her life, her talks, her tales, connected me to the sadness she felt each time she held my hand and took a walk down her memory lane. Her stories are safe with me; her childhood, a part of mine.

When I look back and smile :)

I usually do this, or rather I blame it on nostalgia that creeps over me, I tend to suddenly remember moments, memories, people, pauses, awkard moments and many more in the year past gone by.

This year was definitely no different. Its been a year where bonds have strenghtened with time. But yes, I realized something that these four figures are generally not remembered by us when we go back memory lane.


We remember dates only while filling forms and they happen to be so tedious! :P


So what is it that makes you remember of the good old days and the year gone by?


It's surely not the posh restaurants you visit that makes you remember them so much, but the laughter you share over dinner which adds to your diary of moments.

It's not only the long walk you take along Nariman point that makes your day worthwhile, but the person with whom you match your step and thoughts.

It's  not the best ice cream joint you visit, but the fun you have laughing at someone with a milk moustache :P

And, it is certainly not the shock you get on seeing your itemized bill, but the 3 hour long talks into the wee hours of the morning which brings a smile on your face and before you know, your already sending that person a message remembering good old times..


Its the people you collect over years of talking and jabbering and sharing the deepest and darkest secrets of your heart that bring tears to eyes. :)  


 People may come and go but memories get collected in the library of your heart and remain there. Period.


If by chance you remember an old friend or a lost friend with whom you have shared some good moments in life, then just pick up your phone and send a heart warming message with wishes of the new year. Life is too short, just like the year past by. :)


Wishing everyone a very Happy new year filled with more moments of happiness . 
Cheers! :D 

*Respect*

http://teach4india.wordpress.com/2010/01/02/from-akansha-to-teach-for-india-shaheen-mistry/

The 'bookmarked' pages of life! :)

How many of us do this at a book store: - Pick a book which we intend to buy, contemplate for a while and then keep it back. 
Well, if you do this then join the gang! 
I do this pretty often. I'll decide to go to the bookstore to buy a copy of the book I have collected good reviews about. Even after knowing the fact that it's a decently good book, I still won't buy it! Reason was unknown, until today.

I did pretty much the same thing at a road side book store today. Knew very well that I wanted the book but kept it back after looking and reading a bit of it for a while. My friend happened to be along with me and mind you, I had done this for the second consecutive time at the same store! :P

The minute we left the stall, he remarked, 'Seema, you intend to go to the bookstore with not the intention of window shopping but actually buying the book but you never do it! Pick something if you like it a lot, you don't need to think whether it is a good or a bad book.'

The minute he said this I pondered for a second, turned around and went back to the book store and without a single thought bought the book.

Well obviously, it does look like a silly story of me and the book but if we look at it for a second, it's much more profound than that.

Our life is very much synonymous to the cycle I mentioned above.
First make a decision.
Then look at the pros and cons of that.
Doubt the decision.
And bang, before we know it, it's gone!

We don’t really realise this but life should pretty much be the same to what you have already thought. Looking at the brighter side of things is what we are supposed to do. If you put yourself in the indecisive gear for too long, you shall remain there, period.

So what if there are wrong things on your list, at least the good and the bad both belong to you and not to someone else! And interestingly, you are the one who holds the reins to make the bad into good and the good into better. :) 
 
So the next time, someone even suggests a book of a shitty author, buy it. The only good thing you do in this is increase his profit margin by a tiny bit. ;)

Adios.

Democracy and its Cynics

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article2379704.ece?homepage=true

Democracy. A word whose value, meaning and depth is not understood by many.

The above link is a display of that.

Arundhati Roy, on August 21st, 2011, blatantly wrote in a prestigious national newspaper, that Mr. Anna Hazare preached Gandhian but his demands were certainly not. In a country like ours where the government doesn't succumb to the right things and pays more attention to unnecessary details, I definitely don't think that what Anna Hazare did could be classified as unjust, unethical and certainly not wrong.

One needs to grab the attention of the media to gain power here. I think he played along not because he wanted to but because he was forced to. Being adamant to not step out of Tihar Jail and showing indefinite reluctance to give up on his fast were only ways to show the right direction and awaken the people of India who have  never seeked truth beyond tradition.

There had to be a start to this and someone had to do it. We all knew something had to be done but how was the question. This man, aged but with a dream in his eyes has set off to make this country a better place and I don't see any reason as to why should he be opposed.

Oscar Wilde has very correctly stated ...

A cynic is the one who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.

P.S- post comes late. But opinions don't change with time. ;)

We are weird.

The world functions on weird analogies.
For example..
a.)Only the closest people hurt you the most.
b.)Sometimes its worth keeping a smile on your face to make another person feel happy.
c.)It's better when somethings remain unsaid.
d.)Hardworking people reap success after a hell lot of hard work.

If you go to think on this, all of them contradict so much.
a.) Why will anyone close to you ever want to hurt you? Doesn't he or she know what your likes and dislikes are. Oh I forgot.. there is a clause attached to this too i.e they hurt you more because they know you will understand them. I mean, seriously, this sounds more complex than the movie Inception. In that movie, Leonardo spends 50 years of his life with his better half in their dreams. Still understandable. But human psychology is a bigger mess than Indian politics. There you know the person hurting you, more sympathetically, is the opposition party but Hello.. not here!

b.) Okay. No judgement firstly. I love making people happy. Being amusing is nice. But even you know that down there you feel horrible when someone is not around you to console and caress you when you need that cheering up desperately! Some people care only about the fact that they are happy. That's it. The door shuts there for the self centered ones. But the people who are selfless, kind, caring, generous have always a part left within them to share with someone who needs it. They are equally human. They feel just as bad when something goes wrong with them but they are still there for the one's who need it more. :)

c.) The only things which should remain unsaid are secrets, secrets and more secrets.
What people fear most are of expression. They don't want to express because they are very okay with the way things are. That my friends is wrong or rather dangerous. Expressing is a way of letting out what you feel. Trust me on this, whatever the matter is and once it is said and done, there is a heavenly feeling which comes along and makes you feel a lot more better. When I say expressing I don't mean letting out anger or hurting someone, I mean letting others know that there is a good human which resides in you. Let your feelings go the way the should.. Don;t stop them.

d.) This is one thing I still don't get. It is not far that a man working hard on a barren land gets no rain as the year passes by! But again, analogies remain queer till date. And so is this one.

Getting caught in this web of human nature will draw you deeper into it.
But the only thing which remains stagnant is that human nature is and will remain the way it was. Period.

Adios. Ciao.

Confusion personified

Its 2am in the morning.
And I have no clue where life is heading .. Feel like I'm right in the center of a tornado which is twisting and turning me the way it wants to. I just hope I don't come out of it being a massacre.
People say that when your not able to decide something, go with the flow. And not like I have not done that. I have practiced it with eventually no result or rather answer in hand. I think being confused at this age is considered okay. But I fear that this civil war within me doesn't go on for too long. :P

P.S :- Hope you'll get what I am talking about. Tc. :D