Low points

I turned 25 on 8 February 2015. It was my first birthday outside India. Nikhil got a chocolate cake with some margarita. He gave me a card and teddy bear with a bouquet. We went to the mall and then I bought things. My birthday started at midnight IST and ended at midnight PST.

Anyway, thats that. Let me be honest. I am in possibly the worst mood tonight. My room is in a mess. I feel dishonorable and utterly useless. I am listening to old songs of Mahesh Bhatt movies. I have reached my lowest point where I want to shut everybody out and just roast in my own apathy.

I have desisted to write but I guess I have to for I have no choice but to write it all down. The thing is that nobody likes a sad person. The question is why am I sick of everything.

I do not have a job I hate doing. I have zero responsibility. I am supposed to have the time of my life but I just want to run. The problem is I can't run that much because my iron levels are running really low. I am not even feigning interest in whatever others are saying. You know that feeling when you are in a party with friends but do not feel like talking to anybody? You don't get it, right?

Too bad! I am not in a mood to elaborate.

Grab a Doughnut

Probably the only person who would be happy enough to read my blogpost today would be my husband. I am married. Yes, I am.

The months, which went by, made me feel a lot of emotions such as love, nostalgia, sadness, excitement, adventure and happiness. It also gave me a realization more than ever, that life gives you different opportunities to start over, to begin a new story in its own twisted ways.

There is something else I realized, everyday when we wake up we have two choices. The choices being to "love" and to "fear". It bottles down to these two feelings. I won't say "hope". I feel that hope is too much of a beggar. It wants others to do a favor. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't but between our choice of "love" and "fear", there is no dependence on the outside. I want us to value that choice. Between both, I choose "love".

I have a reason. I want to confess. I don't want to choose "fear" because it has this uncanny ability to engulf you up. I have a purely metaphorical scientific reason behind it. We all have eyes. They certainly help us see, but they also act as "projectors". We project the world in a certain way and if you choose "fear", get ready to get more of it. The feeling of "fear" not only creates a ripple of unprecedented scare but it also makes you somebody who makes decisions based on it. It makes you want to do a job you do not like doing. It makes you want to marry for convenience. It makes you want to steal the happiness of others for no reason at all. It is like being that character on the stage who is scared of taking chances, who is scared of taking risks. The sad truth about that is that nobody in the audience likes that man, they merely tolerate it and wait for that moment when that person becomes bold. While you are on your death bed, you will have your dreams, your talents coming to you and asking you, that "we came to you. Why did you show us the door? We wanted you to make us alive? Why did you pull away? Now with you we will die too, but a death far more morose than you because no one is going to moan for us."

I have no reasons to choose "love". It is probably because it helps in the process of taking a leap of "faith" and not "hope". It probably wants you think of the difference you want to make to this world. It probably makes you do things you did not know you were capable of. I was scared of cooking. When I entered US, I simply was rattled by the fact that I will have to cook on my own now. When I started out, I was terrible. I treated it like a chore, not something we like to do everyday. After a while I decided to not hate it and embrace it. I started looking at YouTube videos and blogs about Indian cooking. My relationship has somewhat changed with cooking. I have started liking it very much and now I laugh at my cooking disasters. It has become a friend in this foreign world which gets messed up many times but is the most delightful company many a times. Love helps to bring the choice of "acceptance" to another level. You don't accept or tolerate things anymore. You begin to embrace them and look them in to the eye and say "I will not leave you because you are complicated. Let me learn about you a little everyday and understand you better. Who knows, we might end up having a relationship with each other forever." 

Just like the fact we cannot forcefully start loving somebody its the same with things. I am not saying start doing what you love. It is irrational but isn't that a flaw in every Economic theory one will ever read. 

So in the end I have not taken any choice, but I have put my trust in a leap of faith. Catch me if I fall or well, at least get a doughnut by then.  

Six Days Two Continents--Madness Unplugged

It was an ordinary Monday, 24 May 2014.I got married to one of the best persons I know of. May be the link will help. http://www.quora.com/Who-is-Nikhil-Garg (I am so sorry Nik to put up a link here but I thought its so damn cool to have people asking as well as answering it on Quora).

Our wedding was supposed to happen in Spring 2015 but due to some hassles it got preponed to Fall 2014. I am so sorry to all our family and friends who had by then booked their tickets to India in February. 

It was nice. Everything seemed a bit rushed but due to the organising skills of our parents, nothing went wrong. Most of my cousins couldn't make it. This void was anyway filled up my best friends who stepped in on the stage and made us look better. A few of my friends cancelled their trains to be my side for the big moment and I shall forever be indebted to them for offering me so much love.

The seven promises were pretty much designed by the family pandit skewed towards me and Nikhil promised to honor each one of them. 

We went to Bhiwani, Nik's hometown. In those two days, I had been visited by many people who could not attend our wedding in Chandigarh. We went for a slight detour to Andaman and and had the best time at Havelock Islands. It was fantastic and so beautiful. Our resort Munjoh had a private beach and had the most exciting setup. This is however for a story next time. It was an enchanting experience where we did not have access to the Internet which worked out to be fine in the end.

We then flew to San Fransisco and then reached Mountain View. Instead of the ladies who welcomed us at Bhiwani, the house which welcomed us at Mountain View was silent and seemed different from the reception we got at Bhiwani. After getting some Mysore Masala Dosa from the Madras Restaurant, we came home. 

I slept while Nikhil worked from home that day. It is funny because within a span of 7 days we had been to 2 continents and 7 cities. I was tired and Nikhil was busy working.

I am settling in here and have been trying my level best to learn cooking. We have also started looking for jobs for me. 

This a rather dry account of what has happened by far. I shall tell you some glorious details later. Till then Take care and Happy Holidays!:)

Spoken unspoken

There are many things which are better unspoken of. One of them is that nobody wants to be a part of your pain every time you feel sad. Nobody wants to listen to your tirade of the glorious past you had and nobody wants to know why you cried.

What do you do then?

You simply start ingesting your sorrow and pray that the future is bright and in a moment of privacy, relish the golden life you had before.

Nothing much

Its the oldest story in the world. You are sixteen one day getting ready for your first board exam and the next you are just resigning from your first job trying to figure out better avenues to go to.

In between you meet so many people. Some become friends from strangers and some become strangers from friends.

I can't say there are no regrets, but I can say that few unsettling days can make your track go in a different way all together. A little distance away can turn into millions of kilometers leaving just a whiff of a memory of the journey.

There are so many places to go as yet. Will it be as smooth as it has been? Questions such as these are answered by time, only if we are patient enough.

Lots of roles, lots of dialogue and then plain silence. That's life!

Train journey

This post is dedicated to all those who are as lost as I am. For the record I am in a train and listening the tunes of Lucky Ali asking 'zindagi' what it wants with so many 'rastas'.

Remember when we were kids and got the summer holiday homework?
My mom used to get at least 10 photocopies of the thing and by the end of June I had only one copy left. I have no idea where the other 9 went. I don't remember ever flushing them or well throwing them.

Anyway I used to be enthused every time that this time, I would complete my homework by may and then enjoy june. Alas, it never happened and sometimes I even took two days after the reopening of school to finish my holiday homework.

Most of the work was usual stuff with maths teachers offloading their pressures of syllabus by giving two chapters of book as holiday homework. Language teachers lacked imagination and gave us writing of one page everyday. Later the English teachers tried asking us to write book reviews of books like Mill on the Floss. Unfortunately the internet revolution had started by then. It was a time when everybody had funky email ids and no two persons were allowed to have the same passwords. Most of my classmates copied book reviews and others copied exact sentences from the book. The good old days!

I had a Casio. I apologize a 'keyboard'. For ten years of calling it Casio, a classmate in a rock band told me it is supposed to be called a 'keyboard'. I felt so embarrassed. It was meant to be a cutting comment. Now that I have completed my MBA, I realize how much the company 'Casio' must have spent on its branding. It was a time when you tried to be more sophisticated by drinking 'Coke' instead of 'Pepsi', when cousins came and you crashed on makeshift beds on the floors because you wanted to sleep together. Now that I think of it, I don't remember ever happening again. We have all grown up into 'cool' adults who barely talk to each other . We have all left that era when being on ICQ seemed cool.

My first email was redridinghood@ yahoo.com . I don't even know if the account still exists.

Anyway it was in the past. Now I want to change the way things are. I want to contribute to the world. I want to change it in some way. I think it is possible.

While I am writing this Lewis Carroll mocks me in my head saying that 'if you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there'.

May June roundup

I have started reading a book by somebody called Siddharth Sharma. It is called Love your Mondays and Retire Young.

According to Ankita B., one cannot love his/her job. It is called a job because you are obligated to do it. Others say that they love their jobs. They say how can you progress if you hate it so much?

I wanted to be in the latter. I spent two months crying and complaining to anybody who would hear my tragic story of the job I dont like. When they stopped listening, I spoke to myself. (Dark days they were)

Then a few days ago, I was given a jolt. I was told that one of my uncles who used to remain always happy go lucky was going to die. My parents came pretty often and discussed how his cancer had engulfed him. I was already going through a "phase" which people generally associate with hormonal changes. My behaviour was rough. I was angry all the time. I hate every aspect of my job. Basically I had become so discontent that I even considered leaving everything and running away.

One of my friends gave me a warning that I was losing grip and finally the realization seeped in. The thing is my last exam was on May 5, 2014. My joining was on May 7, 2014 to a new place which felt less hospitable with every second. It has been a struggle and still is. When I tell people that I have worked for only two months they are surprised. They seemed to think that I have worked long and just need redemption.

Anyway to deal with this, I have decided to develop two versions of myself. One is the one I am usually and the other one is my gangster role with a standard local Gunda name called Hateli Fracture. Hateli Fracture can punch people on the face and should ideally wear a knuckle duster.

The change is pretty instantaneous. I am hungry once again and I want to change the world again. I want to change and contribute to the world. I want to make it better.

Anyway let me go and grab a pack of chips. Anyway tc..:)