carpe diem

If I had the privilege of picking a seventh sense, I would've chosen the power to freeze moments. The moments that fill my heart to the brim with a fear of passing too soon. The moments that thrill me in a thunderous sort of way.
Yes! I would definitely wish for this one. Because, despite my tender age, I cannot count the memories that I wish I could go back to. I don't want to permanently dwell in the era they occurred in and relive my life then on; but I want to be able to seat myself on my favorite spot by the ocean, lay back and close my eyes to relive everything that the moment brought with it. The joy, the anxiety, the inexplicable happiness and the delicate fluttering of my heart. I want to be able to play it over and over in my mind without lapses in thoughts or memory. I want to feel exactly what I had felt then.
This obviously preposterous fantasy I have, comes rushing to me every time I stare at pictures that have captured the good times in my life. Every once in a while though, I wish I could close my eyes and be in the picture all over again.
Before I build memories, I prepare my mind to lock them up in a safe, retrievable place. Although I have a crazy intuition of dying too soon, there is a strange picture of a queer, old lady in my head. She is me. And, it is terribly scary to be in her place, without stories to narrate. It is also extremely frightening to be that old lady, whose heart is burning to relive certain memories.
More than anything, I love to live in a seize-the-moment sort of way. I live on the edge of the second hand of a clock, sometimes getting off, struggling to push it back. Because I know of its unrelenting ways, I supersede it now and then, capturing terabytes of moments before I resume my place on it again.

Wouldn't it be nice if our lives were like VCRs and we could fast forward through the crummy times - Peanuts
Wouldn't it be nicer if we could just pause the good times - Me.

Take me away

Sometimes I feel like I'm God's very own entertainment package whose life he just sits back, with his jumbo-sized tub of caramel popcorn, and watches.
Shraddha Bhatia - Made in Circus.
For starters, he has made me clumsier than a rat scurrying backwards. On an average I have about 5 new scratches on me every day. You would say, that's probably in an ordinary room with an ordinary amount of furniture; but NO - even if its a flat piece of land with nothing but grass, I'd find myself a burrow to stick my foot into so that I can settle for a bruised nose instead.
And not even Einstein would've been as distrait as I am. Add that to one sleepless night and you'd have yourself a free clown.

On a more serious note though, I downrightly believe that he has in fact built a customized theme park for me which I'm sprung into from time to time purely because my funny ways propitiate his satire. All this, remember, with a JUMBO tub of caramel popcorn.
I, on the other hand, hurraying every single time my ride glides over a little knoll, luxuriate in the glory before I find myself atop a wild, gnarling beast. I grapple for steadiness (Picture Tom) - with my hair on ends, mouth open and tail widely out of the picture.
I glare at my creator upwards and there he is, my Jerry, giggling away with that mouthful of ,did I mention - caramel popcorn.
I pretend to be unforgiving and nasty, before he actually gives in and I find myself in an iridescent wonderland, with marshmallow flowers and chocolate fountains.

Ahhh!

I forgive. I forgive. I forgive thee.
Why don't I see your hidden glee.
I give you a hug, cuddling like a bug,
In your arms, I surrender me!

When I wake up, my credulity has once again been assumed, and this time it feels like I'm aback a fat centipede who is making its way inside someone's ear. The ride gets worse with each minute. I am tossed and exploited and juggernauted.
Oh! He has belied me again, I grouse and grumble and plan an escape, decidedly unwilling to grant amnesty.
Unexpectedly, I reach a pristine meadow, which pulls me in magnetically. I bask in it, looking up to return His mischievous smile with an angry pout and fall asleep.
Somewhere, in the middle of my blissful nap, I wake up to catch His eyes on me, the depth of which speak volumes of his love for me.
And that's when I notice; his popcorn bucket has nothing more caramelly than my hundred angels which protect me.




In your love,
my Jerry,
I shall wallow,
till eternity.





## His love, has its own ways.

### Don't take your foot off the pedal when life is just about to turn around.

SILENT

Here I am again, lying in my bed, waiting for the tears to get out of my system so that my eyes can finally seal and take me into an unconscious zone where I feel no pain.
I wait for them and wonder. Even though I have surrendered my life to fate so willingly, I miss my old self that worried about the future all the time. I wonder where my life is headed and why the alley in which I've landed so dark and endless. My heart has been split into two. One half contains all my fears and sorrows and worries. The latter is keeping me going, the one that has faith, the one that makes conversation with every cell of my body, and nudges it to keep going, the one that is giving me an inexplicable hope about the future, the one that keeps me calm, composed and the one that exudes love. It is my soul that is ruling my existence. My soul has taken charge and is rising within me, holding me upright, taking all my doubts and fears, grinding and pushing them out of my body so that when I wake up, I will never remember this pain again. It is re injecting me with so much positivity every day that I have no choice but to feel it. It is healing me. I feel pure, cleansed and and renewed. How I have survived this, only He knows. He is the witness, He is the master. I wish I knew what He has planned, at least a clue, at least a hint. But He has conveniently resided within my heart and is smiling all the time, like I'm the tortoise who will win the race eventually. He has reined me back, slowed down my dreams and made me surrender. He seems to have answered my prayers in the strangest way. I wanted to live a true life and it seems like He is opening my eyes to just that. He is keeping me real, He is making me pure. I have no CLUE. I have NO clue. But its healing me.


# God loves you desperately, live as though you believe it.

## What you're becoming is more important than what you're accomplishing.

Animal Diaries Chapter 2- A 'MURDER' of Crows!

Next, I'm going from paws to claws.
From indistinct cat paws to crow claws.
Have you ever wondered why it is 'A Murder of Crows' and not 'A Black Noisy Bunch of Squawk heads' instead?
I have, naturally.
I think it is because of their tendency to attack, defend and mourn in such vast numbers that they end up looking murderous with their black raven color adding to the monstrosity.

But, I'll tell you why it's a 'murder' of humans when they exhibit crow-like traits.
Like crows, humans tend to stick together in opportunistic situations.
It is easy to be a conformist than to stand against a bunch of fools,eh?
Well, if you're standing with the bunch of fools, you're not really counted as anything else.
And when you're always toeing the line, you're not doing anything to break the bubble of conventionality.
And so, you become a 'murderous' bunch that proclaims nothing but orthodoxy.
Nothing but boring black against the blue sky.


My plea:

STOP doing what everyone else is!
Don't join social networking sites because everyone else is, especially if they have idle games. Our farmers would love us on the actual field instead; or being a part of their legislative rights instead.
Don't follow every single thing that your books claim. Question.
Don't be scared to speak up.
Don't be miserly with expressions. It takes 5 seconds to laugh and love but it gives you a kick that will keep you blushing for long after.
Break the rules if you have to. The world is changing everyday. Fight change with change.
Stop being like crows. Evolve.
You're a black beauty who can squawk himself to victory.Alone.

Crow-talk:

I am not black and ugly.
I am black, beautiful and I reflect the colors of the rainbow on my feathers.
We stick together purely for unity, not to look like a 'murderous bunch of fools'.

AHEM!

Sleepy Drunk

Exhaustion can have a strange manifestation.
Most people I know sleep it off.
I, on the other hand, am the exact opposite.
I sleep when I hate facing the world and when I want to curl up in my cocoon; when I don't want to face a nagging situation that I know I won't be able to handle;when I want to run away from it.
It's my defense mechanism. My subconscious brings out the tucked away thoughts in my sleep and urges my ego to face it. It helps me tremendously. But it makes me go into hibernation more often than I'd like it.
Exhaustion on the other hand brings out the clown in me.When I have a heap load of work with an overhead deadline, I spend every possible minute trying to be productive and sleep is anything but that in my world. So by the end of a few days (weeks sometimes) my brain gets dangerously hypoglycemic.
Something gets dewired between the brain and my mouth and my words make no sense at all.
It's almost always a combination of insomnia and hunger but trust me, its pretty entertaining for anyone who's willing to tolerate it. Most of my friends, love to!

For eg:

Dad's in the room
Mom's in the kitchen
I enter the room and yell, "BYE MOM".
And then just as if to correct my mistake, I hurriedly walk towards the kitchen,peep in and yell, "BYE DAD".
Then I exclaim loudly, "Why can't you'll respond?" and storm out.


To my fat friend who knows I call her fat;
On a hot, frustrated day:

WHY CAN'T YOU JUST LOSE WEIGHT?
WHY ARE YOUR FEET SO DIRTY?
WHY DO YOU LOOK LIKE THE SAME PERSON EVERY SINGLE DAY?
WHY IS YOUR BACKSIDE SP-ILL-INGG OUT OF THOSE JEANS?
WHY..WHY..WHY..ARE YOU SO FATTTT?

To the drivers on my left and right:

Stop crushing me like I'm the cream in a cookie!
Huh?

No..Me first....STOP IT....Let me go...Stop..Honk..Honk...Insolent Dog...Honk Honk Honk Honk Honk Honk Honk Honk.

Your staring into my car....Its my space...Your in my space..GET OUT of my space...Blink!

To the RJ:

Huh?!

JUST
PLAY
THE
DAMN
SONG
P L E A S E!

To the Sun:

URGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGRRRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHH!
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR..

To my Bed:

Stop looking at me so invitingly!

To my mirror:

Who's that ugly thing?

In my sleep:

I swear I woke up on time Sir!

To my food:

You should've been over fertilized!

To the dog:

Are you dead? The last time I saw you awake was in 2009.

To my friends:

I haven't slept in 20 hrs.

To my family:

I haven't slept for more than 3 hours a day in the past whole week.

To the wall:

I've barely slept.

To the painting:

I slept for only 2 hrs today.

To the mosquito:

SMASH!!!!
I need sleep.
SORRY!

I NEED SLEEP!

Peanuts

How many times have you had the most unusual thing happen to you that leaves a lingering feeling of goodness?
It keeps you smiling for the longest time and sometimes it changes a very small but important part of you. I have a knack for picking up the little nothings in life, the small tidbits that don't even matter to most people.
But, because of the lovely jumpy feeling that it creates inside me, I'm going to share some of my cutest, unintentionally memorable moments.
Now, I may get mushy and over-sentimental about it, just to prepare you.

The single best thing that has ever happened to me without me or my family or friends being a deliberate part of it, is bumping into two half-strangers at a coffee shop. Half-strangers because they were acquaintances of acquaintances whom I was barely even acquainted with.
Anyway, so I was having one of my worst days or so I thought, and I was really low and glum. And for the first time my best friend and me had run out of things to say to each other. Now the one thing a "good" coffee shop should inevitably have is SPACE, enough to prevent any eavesdropping that may lead to some horrendous discoveries about strangers and people and humans actually.(Ahem!). But this coffee shop had tables stuck together like it was meant to be one of those speed-dating events. Urgh!
Now, boys can be really nosy, especially if they're bold and they sort of know who you are and your best friend is one of the cutest chicks around. So Mr. Tweedledee and Dum just smoothed themselves into our monosyllabic conversation which, in my defense, I tried to ignore A LOT.
But they simply refused to budge. I don't know what it is with guys and being so hard shelled about acknowledging hints. I know that they know that they're ignoring the hints, and I know that they think that we're playing hard-to-get but that's not always the case guys. I don't understand how you can stand being pushed around all the time and not tire of it.
Anyway, so Mr.Dee and Dum started smarting around and eventually just goaded their way into our evening. I don't remember where we started and how it turned into a laughter riot but for those 60 mins, I remember almost pee-ing a little with the unstoppable laughter. When the ice did break, which it eventually did, we looked like two couples on one of our regular double-dates.
About 30 mins into our conversation I realised how sore my cheekbones were from laughing so much. It was not just me and my BFF but Mr. Dee and Dum were having a ball themselves, and not for any hidden intentions.
I don't know how to put this into words but there's never been an evening of such nonchalant flirting that has left me blushing for this long.
I know it doesn't happen to everyone and I feel terrible about it. Trust me, it should.

P.S : Mr. and Miss. Tweedle Dee Dums haven't bumped into each other ever again. We didn't exchange phone numbers or details about our love lives. WE JUST HAD FUN.
And I can't forget that evening! It's kept me smiling for the longest time.

THINGS THAT DON'T HAPPEN USUALLY AND OFTEN BUT ARE THE THINGS THAT SHOULD - STORY 2
My friends were picking me up from BKC before college. When I reached there, the Rik fare was 20 and the driver had no change for a 100. I paid him the only 10er I had and requested him to wait for a few minutes till my friends arrived and I could pay him the balance. Now it was hot and humid, I had an exam and I was carrying at least 10 kgs of education on me so I didn't want to step out of the rik and wait. Within a few minutes though, a 'Pandu' snapped his fingers and asked the driver to move. The driver told him about the situation and I intervened to justify. I was getting impatient and I looked back towards the signal from where my friends were coming. From the corner of my eye, I saw the Pandu reach out to his wallet. I guessed it would be to look for change but he didn't call me or anything so I assumed he didn't have any. Before I knew it, the driver sped away and I looked at the Pandu confusedly. He read my expression and said the GOLDEN WORDS I will never forget.

Imagine:
A pandu, your local traffic havaldar, whom you tip so notoriously, after whining sooo much about that last hundred rupee note in your wallet, saying :

"DON'T WORRY, MAINE USKO DUS KA NOTE DE DIYA, GOD BLESS YOU, DON'T WORRY, DON'T WORRY"

And that's why...
I believe in small observations of rare sightings....and hearings.

I love when devils turn angelic without a warning - STORY 3

Remember you had this one professor in college who dressed up hideously in garish 'Item Number' type of clothes and was so frustrated perpetually that you and your gang derived probable reasons for her annoyance ranging from her mental health to her sexual satiety?
Well, we had one of those and needless to say we despised her.
She was our in-charge for one year and at the end of it we were all really short on attendance, which almost ruined our chances for appearing for the final examinations. We knew there was nothing we could do about it and our lives were doomed.
Just then, she enters the class, smilingly for a change and says: "Guys, we have decided to X-CUZE you'll."

Our ears have been ringing with those words ever since. We know that us, or any other batch will never get to hear THAT again.

:)

Mischievous that we are, we keep crediting her husband.



- Life is like mixing tiny portions of milk in a dark chocolate.
- mE!

Arrival of 'The Animal Diaries'

Given my love for animals (Don't laugh if you've seen a plate of chicken in front of me one time too many. It could be my neighbour's!) and my theory on how we're evolving backwards or, not at all, I'm going to start a series called "The Animal Diaries".
It is to prove that simplicity still has the upper hand and that in some things Man has evolved for no good. It's time we take a step back and learn a few things from our fellow inhabitants.

Chapter 1: CatClowder.

I read somewhere the other day, that cats live their life with no care about the world. Everything is like it is. Blue is Blue. White is White and Love is Love. In fact, even Hate is Hate.
Simple. And I couldn't help but envy the blatancy in their nature.
Because, for me. White is sometimes Blue, Blue is sometimes Red, Red maybe Yellow, Green or Purple and Love is very often Hate.
So you can imagine how unnecessarily convoluted my life is when love can just be love and hate can just be hate.
And I can just be me.
I'm getting nowhere with this.
This is nothing but a theory to convince myself that not every red that is blue is living a hypocrisy.
Sometimes the hypocrisy is just arising out of curiosity.
And unlike that in the case of a cat, it is not killing me.
Yet again though, for the cat;
Blue is Blue. White is White and Love....is always only Love.



Cat-tip: Some things are only meant to be the way they're meant to be.

iJudge

From my observation in recent times, I have noticed why every one's perception about you as a person is different. Leaving aside a few really close friends who've been with you through thick and thin or probably have been associated with you long enough to have seen your multifaceted nature, nobody can be precisely correct about the most striking feature of your personality.
Everyone of us has a varied range of emotions and traits and we employ them differently in different situations.
What others get to see of you in any one particular situation which may or may not have been repetitive is what they base their judgement on. It doesn't necessarily mean that what they see is the most dominant trait of your personality.

I played a game in class recently where we wrote the first thing that struck us about a person, Mr.A.
Now shockingly, the first thing that struck us all about this one Mr. A was a very demeaning trait. Naturally, you don't want to be remembered for being one of the worst.
So Mr. A got defensive about his feedback.
The whole point of the game was constructive criticism and no matter how much you deny it to the outside world, if you have a conscience and your honest to yourself, you'll know exactly why you've been associated with that trait. Because somewhere deep down, you know, you just know, that you've been like that around people. You chose to overlook the fact however, that people are cautious and perceptive and judgemental and that someday it is going to backfire. And so, your ego disallows you to agree with it.
What is the point of criticism then?
Mr. A as a result refuses to see the beneficial side of the game and is hell bent on investigating who among his peers has been so ' HYPOCRITICAL '.

My advice: Just cut the crap and repair yourself.

Nobody can alter their perception of your true character, till you, yourself, choose to do so.

Stay hungry stay foolish

I dont know if you stumble upon a similar situation so often, but there have been countless days in my life when I've felt guilty and worthless for not doing 'WHAT IM MEANT TO DO'.
The most ironic thing that I have observed however and am stunned by is the story of 3 great, very successful men. I don't know their biographies very well but there is one common thread that binds them together which stirs my thoughts to amazement.
Im talking about Baz Luhrmann, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

And they share a strikingly stark truth : At 20, They didnt know what they wanted to do with their lives.
They chose to follow their intuition, which was itself a very dark, unexplored hallway then.

They share another staggering fact : They have been at the very top of what they finally chose to do and they've emerged to be the most victorious and powerful men in their respective fields.

I am in complete awe of the irony here. The most successful people in the world never planned for success. They simply followed their hearts. They stand out now from amongst us all because they dared to take that plunge. They've all set an example for the world and they speak of their lives so inspiringly.We listen in awe, but the real question is does any one of us actually follow this simple rule to happiness?
I am a shrewd realist and I refuse to allow myself to believe that their lives could somehow be recreated somewhere, and another successful man would wake up to a similar story.

But I'm inspired enough by their stories to idolize them.
Their examples are reason enough for me to wake up every day, look in the mirror and have faith in myself.
Faith that, I can reach there too.
I can worry myself to death.
I can shatter my self-belief.
I can feel worthless
And I can be completely clueless about my life.
BUT, if I follow my heart and do that which makes me truly truly happy...
I CAN REACH THERE TOO.
I CAN!




Don't be trapped by dogma which is living with the results of other people's thinking.
Dont let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice.

and most important

Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition...
They somehow already know what you truly want to become.
Everything else....is secondary.

- Steve Jobs.


Don't worry about the future.

- Baz Luhrmann