Why?!

We watch, spell bound..! We consume the news....We panic...we shiver. We watch. We ask, concerned. We say, 'we're safe'. We grieve, we talk...we exclaim..! We make calls, we discuss...we feel the pain..!! We watch. We change channels, we go out. We eat, we look for updates. We watch. We read the newspaper, we google, we study...we laugh...! And, We Forget. We all watched in horror...the drama that has been unveiling in Mumbai since last night. We're all affected, we are all angry...sad and concerned. We worry for our safety and that of our loved one's. Tomorrow it will be history and like all the other things that we put up with and learn to live with, we will live with yesterday and today...!! We will change the channel that runs the same images again and again and turn the first couple of pages of the newspaper cause it contains what you already know through the TV. We will exclaim that its a terrible blow to the city and to the country's security. Some of us will question other's and question some more. The point is, we can turn the pages of the newspaper and change the channel....until...until...those people we see on TV are us or one amongst us. Until it is me, who doesnt come home after work...We'll wait until then..until then we can still catch that movie, we can still sleep. What is with this world? What's with us? Why are people doing this to each other? For what? What did those people die for? What did anyone acheive? What is it about? Money? Religion? Oil? What? What is the one thing out of all these that you'll take with you once you are gone..and dead? You dont even take yourself..? So then what is this struggle for? My God or your God? Ridiculous, isnt it? Cause the only thing that can exist in this situation is NO GOD. These may sound like rehtoric questions, but they are not. I am genuinely asking the reason. The exact reason. I want to know..i want to know - WHY?! Why did i die? For what purpose? And to what end? Give me an answer and then probably dying wont be so bad...! Then maybe i can bear that i couldn't complete the collage i was making for my mother's birthday, that i couldnt attend that party my friend was throwing, that i couldnt say sorry to my brother after a fight, that i didnt tell my husband that i loved him..that i couldnt go to my kid's open house! If only, i had a reason. What has made these young guys, posing as terrorists, so angry? Where is it coming from? Did the terrorists loose their loved one's, who were innocent? Is that why my brother/sister/wife/child/friend/uncle/neighbor had to die? Do they want to rule this world? Do they want us to tell them "you've been right all along", "we are moron's" "we are sorry your father died"....we'll say these things..we'll say...IF...if you can just please STOP this...carnage...! Bloody bloody carnage.

At times i feel like screaming...screaming for the world to stop..asking it to come to a standstill...to just quiet down and listen. Listen to themselves...take an eraser and wipe all the violence away. If only they can open their eyes and look around. And by this i dont mean just these terrorists..but politicians, who wrong others time and again for money, for power, for sheer politics...to industrialists, who control the markets, to every single person who puts himself before other's at any cost...the price of which, we pay. To the whole world - Let the winds be winds of change...let this be a heart warming experience..let us get on with our lives, catch that much awaited movie but never forget what touched our hearts todayBoy

Bob Dylan - Blowin in the wind.
How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man?
Yes, n how many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand?
Yes, n how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before theyre forever banned?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky?
Yes, n how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry?
Yes, n how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind.

How many years can a mountain exist
Before its washed to the sea?
Yes, n how many years can some people exist
Before theyre allowed to be free?
Yes, n how many times can a man turn his head,
Pretending he just doesnt see?
The answer, my friend, is blowin in the wind,
The answer is blowin in the wind

To Do or Not to Do

I finally know what i want to do in life. Finally. I want to do two things - Everything and Nothing. No, No...don't think this is a philosophical statement or one of those crazy thoughts that dawn on me all of a sudden. I am very serious when i say this. When i say everything, i mean everything that i want to do - be a hair stylist, a sociologist, a writer, house wife, professor, traveller, act in plays, start my own restaurent and many more things. And by Nothing i mean, i want the freedom to be able to give up everything and do just 'Nothing'...for a while, till i can maintain my sanity and then when i feel am going insane doing Nothing, i want to go back to doing everything. You know what i mean?

Considering the fact that i get bored with monotony very soon, i don't want to follow just one career path.... there are too many things out there to be done and to be experienced, once before you die. I cant bear to be just a sociologist, just a writer, just a client servicing supervisor, just a house wife. I want all of it. The fun thing is, this is not impossible to achieve. Impractical, maybe.... but not impossible. As i write this, i realize that there will be more people criticising me for this than encouraging, the world always expects you to do what they think is the right thing to do. But what the heck - everybody is allowed to have a dream of their own, aren't they. Well, this is mine!!

Down memory lane....!

Mails from long lost times...feelings you'd felt so strongly, now forgotten...moments spent and cherished, now history....little little things that made you smile, now gone!! Life.

I happened to read some old mails written to bosom friends who are no longer a part of my life. Friends who belong to a time when i was not the me i am now, when i felt emotions i dont feel now, when i cried over things that i dont remember now and laughed at things that no longer bring me joy. Life.

"Its nice to go back to a place that remains unchanged, to discover how you yourself have changed" Past is like that place you visit. I visited it today, through the mails and got to know a little more of myself. Its a good journey to undertake, once in a while.

I belong with me

"Kasturi, you dont need a man to complete you"...she wrote...! I understood her concern but I dont need a man nor a woman to complete me. I am complete in myself. Broken in places, unsure, confused, wild, immature, sensitive, strong...am all of this, and i am complete. My sense of identity is intact and in place. What is it that made her think i wasn't complete? Because i loved too much? Because i gave too much?? I loved doing that, loved loving, loved giving and thats what i did. But that does not mean i am dependent on anyone to be able to define myself or give meaning to this thing called "ME".

I've met and seen people who need that support, who need to lean on someone to go on, to look into the mirror and recognize the person staring back. Its sad. Just like Charles Cooley says - I am not who i think i am, i am not what you think i am, i am what i think, you think, i am!! We normally form a perception of ourselves depending on what 'we' feel others think of us. For women, they just loose themselves somewhere, get dissolved.... they dream dreams that their eyes didn't see. This is not to say that women are so selfless in their love, dedication that they forget themselves. I feel its quiet the contrary. Our first love is always ourselves and yet we are scared of this person called 'me'. Try staying all by yourself without any outside contact, no TV, music, people, phones, internet. Beyond a few hours we cant tolerate living all by ourselves. We dread to be left alone, to find ourselves in a situation where we are not wanted or not loved by another. Women perhaps are ready to pay any price not to see themselves in that situation, the cost - your SELF.

If only we stop being afraid of ourselves, maybe, we can belong somewhere, with someone..... with ourselves.

Being in love...!

While i was working on my pc, someone came up from behind and thrust a magazine one inch from my eye for me to look at something. Obviously i had to hold it, take it away from my face at a readable distance so i could see what that person wanted me to see. Holding someone too close to yourself is something like that. We hold them so close that we're unable to 'see' clearly. I have a theory about being in love. That when you fall in love, its not so much the person you fall in love with but with the way he/she makes you feel...you fall in love with the feeling of being in love.Only when you distance yourself a little from him, look at him as a whole, as a person (rather than a 'thing' that belongs to you) you begin to know him and eventually you either fall in or out of love.

Liv Ullmann says "Love is like two trees growing side by side". But its difficult not to be a creeper and to be a tree. We entangle ourselves so much in the other person that we begin to think that our identities are the same..that we are 'one'. All this, in the intial phases. As time passes by we 'discover' the other person, we start knowing what it is like for him to be him. Thats the point when you either break an illusion and get shattered by it or smile that your dream is now a reality...you are YOU who is in love with HIM.

Death of a story writer!

Three years back at a theater workshop, organized by NSD (National School of Drama) alumni, Anamika Haksar, a well known theater artist, asked us to 'imagine' as if we had discovered an old chest after 20 years. We were to enact on our own what we found from the chest..using our 'imagination. People got to work. After 15 minutes of this exercise, people recounted the things that they found. A pair of old shoes came out, some read their old dairies and love letters, some even discovered cool spider man costumes...as for me, i found nothing. I have no clue what i did for those 15 min. I tried hard to imagine, to visualise, to put myself in the situation and think..think what i could possibly find. But i didn't succeed. I found nothing. When my turn came to tell Ms. Haksar what i had found, i made up some stupid story on the spot and relayed it. She smiled.

I didn't realise it then or perhaps even if i did, i didn't give it much thought. I lack imagination. Am utterly deviod of it. I realised this a couple of days back when i was talking to a colleauge about story writing. She used to be a copy writer and has now shifted to client servicing. She was asking me why i wasnt into copy since i write. And instantaneously i told her that i lack imagination, i can write what i feel and express it very well, but i cant 'create'. It was only when i SAID those words that i realised how true they were. I find myself unable to write a story, to create a charecter and live his/her life through my words. Or probably, the child in me is dead. As a child i did write stories. I remember writing one about a monkey with only 3 hair on his head and how each hair had a magical quality that helped a prince find his treasure. Now i can laugh and yet envy the 6 year old's imagination that i now a 25 year old, cant capture.

A lot can happen over a coffee..!

No, my face doesnt always show what's behind it, not any longer. Fear looms inside me, i supress it and smile at him. I can't put in words the sense of loss and distance i feel while he sits next to me, an arm's length away. We talk a lot about nothing, i smile a lot. He's telling me about how much fun he had the previous night with his friends. I smile again, because i am not a part of his story and yet strangely i am. I reach out and touch him, hold his hand......'he seems real'...then why isn't he? I can hear him...but why isn't he talking? I'm crying..why can't he see it? He laughs and i hurt.

I smile yet again, swallow the tears and plead the fear to hush up and leave.

"Do you want coffee?"