NewYear Coffee

Writing today I have a new feeling combined with an energy that the mere change of year column in the date brings in the life. Yes we are in 2016 and 2015 lay peacefully into its grave. The year change never signifies any change in my life but when I take into account the optimistic part of me, I look forward to special things that may

happen. In the last year I was accused of being perfidious when it came to love and in my defense I had only words that were too uncanny for the likes of people who think fidelity comes from staying together till the end. To give a kick start to my year which I think is perhaps the most important year when it comes to shaping my future, I decided to go with the most important thing associated with my life. Your mind will be full of curiosities about the things that I am talking about and to just ruffle up a

bit, it is neither about love for a person nor it is about my past. It is about a thing that acts as an inspiration for the words to flow. Yes for many it may be bar hopping but for me it is café hopping. It has been months since I last wrote something when the aroma of coffee beans were brewing my mind with thoughts, the sips of coffee was adding the atypical thoughts and to add to that tinge of vanilla in my flavor just made it a treat to write, drink and later on read the sumptuous piece of words having a rhythmical cadence to it.

I sat down on the most comfortable sofa of the café and started to recollect the thoughts that I wanted to write about. To accompany me to the café were my three friends: laptop, camera and to counter my creative blocs was my Kindle. These three things have lately become my escapades to life and my window to dreams, my pillars of a happy life. As usual the trend continued with me going for a king glass of vanilla latte and avoiding the extra shots of cream owing to my New Year resolution of eating healthy and staying fit. I was trying to picture someone probably my inspiration to just start with the flow of words but I was faced with a storm of thoughts that were trying to come out of my mind for months now. Waiting for the storm to abate was not on the list as my funds and time reserved for this unusual date with coffee were limited. I tried to write a few lines but they were not of the level which I expected them to be. As soon as I started to doubt my abilities to come up with something worth writing, I had a guest on the opposite side of the table. Owing to comfort of the couch, a place opposite to a lost soul who was perhaps not interested in the surrounding world was the best place to sit in the café. Without bothering to ask me she sat down and bought out her camera’s memory card and laptop. For a few moments I was gaping at her as if some intruder has just entered my world and is trying to change it according to her liking. But as you know in India looking at a beauty comes with a price tag which can be as expensive as receiving a mouthful of rebukes so I decided to give it a rest. The entry of a foreign influence just abated the storm but my concentration was nowhere near to the usual which I prefer for writing. So I stopped and started to read a novel rather than writing some genius shit which will be hard for me to decipher in the end.

In between my reading I would look at the uninvited guest opposite to the table. She was fair with long hairs, it seemed her twinkling eyes behind the specs were after my pecks and to go with that her cheeks like rose were making her too beautiful to ignore. She was dressed in red sweater and black jeans complimenting her skin’s color and making it look more and more bright. Her lips left an impression on the cup which I presumed to be of vanilla latte and the way she lifted her lock of hairs form her face and tied down to the back was making my heart beat rise. How badly for a moment I wanted to be that cup which she took into her world, embraced it and left a trace so that everyone could be jealous of the relation she had with me. Looking at her hands searching for the ring and to my joy I couldn’t find was the reason for me to strike a conversation with her. Her beautiful face lit by the screen of her laptop and the reflection of her photos one her glasses were enough for me to give all my thoughts a rest and concentrate on her beauty. Her face was flawless, white as a moon with everything in just the perfect position making me thing how beautiful a person can be. Happiness is looking at such a flawlessly pretty face and admiring it with all the adjectives that come in your mind.

With all the strength in the world I tried to get her attention but she was too busy to observe the surrounding disturbances. I gave my every try a halt and started to enjoy the moment with my eyes constantly glued to her. After half an hour she also noticed that I was trying to strike a conversation with her. She ordered one honey oat cookie and looked at me. As soon as her eyes were about the make contact with me, I started to look at the book that I was reading. “I am not that ugly for someone not to look at me” were her first words that I heard. Her sweet voice found the hidden passage to my heart and lost for a few moments, I eventually gave voice to my words, “nobody is ugly, it is just a bit of decency left in me that says never ever try and offend a girl with your eyes.” She asked a simple question stating if a girl wants to get offended with the eyes then what a person like me will do. Thinking for a few moment in silence I answered, I will not offend her with eyes as they fall for anything and everything that is attractive, I will offend that beauty with words as they need to be priced out of me and you already are witnessing the demonstration of it. You are not offending me, you are just giving the compliments in a flurry, said the beauty. The best part of giving compliments is that you always get one back and the loop continues, she was quite impressed with my reply and said she is only looking for a small talk and by convention of it the talk should have already ceased. I said yes and granted her wish of ceasing the small talk and ordered two coffees for the conventional long talk to begin.

We talked about our common hobby of photography and came to know that she teaches at Indian Institute of photography. We exchanged photos instead of number and exif details instead of names. Yes this type of talk is very limited for me as I only discuss photography when I am a bit depressed as it has way to make me feel happy. For the first time in my talks with a stranger there was no sign about my dream of writing best sellers and I chose to ignore the anomaly as both photography and writing are two pillars which have helped me resurrect my life from the worst of phases. The talk continued but it reached a premature end because of the time constraint. As she bid a bye I said, time has always been my enemy and I am killing it since my inception, so you will find me here wasting time on name of satiating the need of wanderlust that I have. She smiled and swiftly moved out without looking back (not in context of Bollywood movies). As my cup reached its end I also picked up all my stuff and started to move out of the café. Came to mind was a strange thought of not knowing the name of the person to whom I talked and I was lost in the thought that I completely ignored the person calling me from behind. He ran and got hold of me to give a discount coupon and yes most importantly a visiting card which he told was left by the girl who left in a hurry for me.

Again something or the other leads to an incident that you forever want to remember. For me these coffee chains have literally turned out to be the stage for the different actors to come and introduce them to me. Yes for me a lot is still happening over the coffee and the caffeine toxication has already gripped my mind in the nascent stage of the NEW YEAR…

P.S. As I say, fictions are all mine and facts are all yours but for a change I will say that I have started to love writing facts rather than fictions…

STRANGERS..AGAIN

The last month of the year December always brings something or the other and makes me think of my journey of life. Today was one such day when I woke up with some unusual feeling characterized by an emotional outbreak. As the day grew old the feelings started to get stronger and were pushing me into an unusual place by adding deeper and deeper shades of darkness. To free my mind of all the biases I decided to take an errand, with a cold wind brushing my face I thought of memories associated with this month. Suddenly to my surprise I could only manage to see a face and thus evincing the magical connection that I had with this day. The memories of pain are still fresh, it was never always about the pain and frankly I couldn’t remember when it was not but surely not always about the pain. She was amazing, my unicorn and a girl I thought existed in dreams. As we moved from one stage to another of the relation, the game of expectations got better of us and we lost it in the midway.

I faintly remember that day after the Christmas celebration when it all happened. Six years back on this very day there was something that was not allowing me to lie down. I was in love or was about to fall in one and thus the reason for all the anxiety. The cake, wine and dinner all were taken care but the feelings in my heart stayed and were trying to find a way out through the words that I was mincing. It was 2am in the night when I received the message from my fairytale’s angel that she has returned from the hospital and was feeling lonely. You all must be wondering where this hospital came from, after the dinner she started vomiting and owing to restrictions of a girl’s hostel I couldn’t accompany her to the hospital. All the time that she spent in the hospital my mind was busy contemplating on my situation and stringing together theories of success and failure of my proposal.

Another message came and she was feeling that nobody loves her and instantly I replied that I love her and reassured her of my presence. Then came perhaps the most beautiful surprise of the night, a message saying I love you too and asking me to remain with her till eternity. Yes technically I had proposed her on simple text message and it was accepted but emotionally those words that I was busy stringing together in a rhyme still lay in my heart and were trying to find a way out. That was the last message exchanged of the night. I remember it was this day of the month when for the maiden time I proposed a beauty and to my utter surprise I was successful at it.

Sometimes in life things happen when you don’t expect them and my story of love was something that proved it right. I still remember our first kiss, the whole aura turned magical when my lips touched hers. Though my eyes were closed but I pictured the expression that we both were having. The warmth of the hug and yes love in its nascent stage was what we were going through. The best part I remember was meeting her and probably thanks to our chemistry teacher who made it impossible for me to copy down the notes so borrowing was the only option left for me. In course of borrowing and returning the copy we became friends and thus started the connection that left a glorious trace on my life. Spending the time with her was perhaps the most beautiful thing. It was pathetic to see guys doing anything to get the right girl and I was no exception. I started to attend lectures and giving up my bike to walk with her all day from one corner to another were few aberrations that happened in my life. From the stage of meeting, we moved on to the chase part and people call it the best part. All I wanted was to talk with her, follow her and wait for her. Every time I saw her there were butterflies in my stomach, she was everything that I could dream of.

After the chase frame we went into the phase where we could express our love to each other and when we completed this stage we had an album of memories together. From the beautiful places we visited to those serene dates with nature, everything was engrossed in our mind and became a source of our happiness. After the stage of love was over we started to take each other for granted and became complacent in playing our part. The girl who was crazy about me few years ago was the one who lost all the driving forces to be together. On the other hand the boy who once called this girl a dream was dissatisfied but wanted to remain with her. Our relation fell apart and everything came crashing down. There is never a good way to describe a relation which is going through downhill.

We wanted to leave on good mutual terms, if that was ever truly possible. We started on a different path taking us back to the place where we started, STRANGERS. The change was so drastic and blunt that we wanted to get back together immediately but this didn’t happen and distances grew. She moved on and found someone new and thus started the worst part what everyone called suffering. It doesn’t matter whether we get over the past and try to remain friends things will never remain the same. Once in a while she will cross your life again but the burden of the memories will not allow you to live that moment. Our lives will continue on a path leading to a point called STRANGERS AGAIN. Everything we shared has been reduced to fragmented memories. From so long a question if it even really happened?

All that is left is a box of random stuff from a fatal time period when the stranger that I am writing about was the most important person of my life. Those walks are no longer beautiful and those flowers are not blooming with fragrance. The essence of my every errand is missing. Visiting the place where we first met I sit in a corner, I notice a faint me walking past with that jubilant smile. I see a young boy holding hands of a beautiful girl, as I move I see and relive each and every moment spent here….A sudden cry breaks my dream, these moments will never come to sand again…

I think life has separated us, and we will end up in totally different places, I’ll always remember when our paths aligned from the period of time- and I’ll be thankful for that. And hope that, wherever you are, you’ll be thankful too. And I think that’s the best I can wish for if not her.

The Dilemma of Lunch

Dealing with the paradox of expectations and reality, here I stand or rather sit (corporate life) on the crossroads to choose the mode for my sustenance. Not to mention the dilemma has given life to the writer in me and from a dormant state to the active state, the transition was rough and hot. The hot part is due to the rising mercury of the place and the rough is related to the arduous one. Running round and round around the same thing is what I am good at but today being a very hot day, I will directly jump to my agenda. The dilemma of choosing between aloo parantha and aloo Burger, it may seem a very clamant thing but I am sure after reading this you will comprehend my stance about deciding my mode of sustenance.

Aloo Parantha an Indian delicacy eaten without any discrimination all throughout the country and is readily available from 5stars to rickety stalls. This for many is a secular diet and eating this satiates their need for equality. On the other hand we have burger a product accused of being a descendant from the union jack and is the jack of all hungry stomachs. This misunderstood piece of bread is categorized under the junk food category and thus comes free with a scolding if eaten frequently. I don’t like both of them because of the analogy that my mind comes up with linking both with life.

Whenever I see the hot sizzling parantha, I remember my corporate life and the sizzle that used to come due to the various pressures. If you closely look at the parantha you will see few spots where oil has not crept in and few black spots (over cooked). In life there are few parts where you over do things and also there are some neglected ones. We hate both the parts and strive for that perfectly oiled brown spots which makes our eating a delight. More oily the parantha more damages to your body just as bigger the company more the formalities and bigger the problems. When I think of the burger it makes me think of the part where you are sandwiched between problems and people enjoy from the sidelines like the one relishing the burger. Toppings are like those countless boulders which pull you back at each and every step. I can sympathize with the patty which has no option of going anywhere but in our stomach just as life from one end to another end.

Though my life has an evergreen connection with the paranthas and that green has nothing to do with cilantro that people add as a topping or filling. I remember eating these with fresh butter and different kinds of pickles just like this world eating my life without leaving a trace. Sometimes the world enjoys me with a bit of IT topping and other times they couple me with some sales pickle. The most loved Indian cuisine is aloo parantha and though it faces competition from different kind of foods of different origins but the slight changes in the toppings always reestablishes its monopoly. The differentiation and cost leadership as compared to its competitors gives the parantha an inherit advantage over its competitors. Though globalization has resulted in alteration of recipes but the end result is always the same.

Think of this special Indian bread as the industry you work in and yourself as the potato inside it mixed with different kinds of toppings and seasonings. It hardly matters whether you like it or not as all that counts is the end result that must be loved by the customer. The baking part of parantha can be compared to the different struggle that you go through and even if your asses are on fire and you cannot quit owing to the desires of the customers and illusive profit. Pleasing the customer is my only concern working in sales and marketing firm just as the potato stuffed bread that I am writing about. Add-ons to boost the sales are given in the form of water mixed curd called as lassi or raita which invariably makes the customer to eat more. The same goes in life when we see some freebies being offered but with a difference of diameter of hole that it burns in our pockets.

Writing about it I myself tried to make this special Indian bread and discovered how similar it is with my career. Dough and other raw materials are the attributes that you have and the rolling part can be compared to the efforts that you put on in making your life successful. Ingredients and attributes add flavor to your parantha and life respectively, so one must choose wisely.

In a way these bread are different from us and could make you jealous even. Seeing your crush tossing a bite between her lips, how badly you will want to be that parantha is not worth mentioning as it is worth feeling (pun intended). But alas! There are differences that one has to deal with. Love for parantha can be constant but love for a human can never be. The most important difference being the price, you pay to buy a parantha but same doesn’t go with life. For some your life can be priceless and for others a means of entertainment or flirt having no value or a value of a freebie.

All this while I have lost the count of my phone’s beep, probably someone is eager to have me on the other side of the table to share it…

Best enjoyed with ALOO PARATHA….

Thoughts of an ISOLATED mind

my chicken pox diary 😛

Rendezvous with life

In the previous post I have already described what sort of a place Dubai is. Doing a PGDM with foreign exposure is something of a rarity, though many institutes give the degree of international business with many of its taker not having a passport. Discussing it further will only add another dimension to the evergreen debate of MBA, pagalguy is enough to eat the mind of your head and provide you with so called guidance. PGDM being a very hectic course takes all your time and you tend to hate it when you cannot do a thing that brings a smile on your face. After a month of struggle at the hands of it, I found myself in a forced vacation. A vacation  where you are bound to live in a 10*10 room, no friends around, no hustle and bustle; in short a vacation of sufferings. The silence is such…

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2 Contrasting PhaSEs Of my LIfE

So here I am again with another piece of writing and contrary to others, this is a real story. The story of my battle against all the odds to achieve a thing that at one point of time was happiness for me. I have lived life in two phases and the one that I am presently in is the one I dreamt of years ago. It all started when Federer was undisputed champion, Sachin was a young man, message card was of 100 messages and the call rates were sky high. Due to the burning rates of calls and messages, people used to concentrate only on their bf/gf and the rest of the world for them didn’t exist. Like today, people were of two type i.e single and committed but due to mobile inflation committed had only one (not two or three) and singles as usual had none.

My life was esoteric, different from others and had no room for things that posed a threat to studies. One day, conversing to my friend of opposite sex (only friend of opposite sex), I asked her what girls look for in a boy and her reply left me dumbstruck. The reply was “no one will look at you that is for sure…you are just pounds short of an elephant”. I felt bad and started to abhor her from that day but it was only the beginning of what life had in store for me. Life started moving after that incident and I was happy in my own world of sports and studies. After passing class 10^th with flying colors, I went on to the engineering side as the wind towards it was very strong and I got blown away.  Problem of Pantnagar is that after choosing engineering side everyone think of IITs but after 6 months of eleventh class, one “I” gets replaced by an “N” and the new destination becomes NITs (that too NITs of North India as South is like an infernal region for us). As soon as the date of exam approaches, students start to pray for any regional engineering college. I also ended up doing the same and got into COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY, PANTNAGAR.

Before getting admitted to college my journey was tough and at times left me wailing. I was at the receiving end of taunts and never ending comments due to my increasing weight. I was like a laughing stock of the town and all I could do was listen. My nature that was eloquent changed to irascible and left me with no one to support. In between all this there were spells of winning competitions that made me happy but my problem with the world was constant. Whenever I stepped on to the stage, I was greeted with taunting remarks but I always left with never stopping claps. I felt motivated listening to all the claps and used to think one day I will overcome my chronic problem.

“One must conquer all his fears before conquering the world” and I decided to conquer my fear of failure by trying to get rid of my constant problem. I started to work on my fitness, I went to the weighing scale to get a glimpse of the acclivity of my problem and my work was cut out as soon as I saw 87 on the scale. My journey of 13 short from a century to 13 over a half century was tough and at times my body refused to get up but due to an undying motivation I will gather myself up and run 6.5km daily. Days were big and nights were short for me, waking up at 4 am and running was itself a test for me. Curbing every instinct to eat fried food and exercising daily to achieve my goal were the only two things left in my life. I wanted to show the world and people that nothing is for forever and one can change everything with three just things, which are dream, passion and motivation.

After three month of rigorous physical work out, I went to the weighing scale again and I was amused by the fact that the scale read 58 and I was overwhelmed with joy and I discovered what happiness is for a person who achieves something that once seemed impossible. I could feel the change and I lived every moment of it. My hard work paid off and I was no longer at the receiving end of those never ending comments that took the life out of me.

The second phase of life started and I was supremely confident of myself. Life didn’t disappoint me and I got everything that it took away from me in the first phase. I gained a bit of weight after relaxing my routine but on any day 63 is far better than 87. Obesity is a thing that can have ever lasting impacts on one’s personality and can ruin the best in one. I have seen both sides of the coin and I know that it is tough for an over-weight person to handle all the remarks that are directed to him. One must try to understand such people and motivate them so that they can overcome their fear.

It is very easy to make fun of someone but it is equally hard to take it in a right direction. As I said nothing is for forever and you never know when you will find yourself on the receiving end of it.  

This note is for all the queries that I receive about weight loss…hope my small effort will serve as a driving force…I reduced weight for my happiness and confidence and it is not impossible.  

THE DILEMMA OF LIFE

LIFE- some say a name to opportunities, some say it’s full of struggle…wondering about this word sitting on my way to Delhi ( destined by my life to travel there). Looking outside the window can feel the cool breeze brushing past my face and signifying the arrival of monsoon. The smell of the whole aura is different now. The tiny soothing water droplets that fall on my face makes me remember those beautiful moments when I was a child and never worried about the things that were happening and had a pleasing sense of happiness in everything I did. At that time the word “life” was like all other words whose significance was nothing more than a four letter word and its spelling was crammed by me in kindergarten days. Sometimes I wonder whether cherishing these moments or your glorious past is life. My heart has always believed that life is all about remembering those moments that makes you happy and forgetting the moments that cannot serve as a source of motivation . But my mind always counters this definition by putting forward an argument that I cannot deny. The argument says that life is living in the present so that you can work to make your future secure. Past is not worth remembering, in fact faster you forget it, better your life would be. So for a mutual agreement I always try to live in the present and learn from my past or in other words you can say gaining experience as I move in this world and step closer to the inevitable end…

My thinking session got interrupted when I saw the face of a kid sitting next to me…and unconditional smile on his face struck me and I thought how the complexities of life have changed everything . Our smile is always overshadowed by the worries and troubles that come in a combo pack with life. These are the only 2 quantities that you can get for free in this world of inflation. Sometimes a week without a smile (that comes from within when you are happy) doesn’t affect the person. People talk about rising prices of petrol but in my view an unconditional smile has become the most expensive thing in this world and many of us can’t afford it. Even billions of money can’t buy this priceless quantity and the person having it are the luckiest person in this world. People who believe that life is a synonym to dream and live their life how they once dreamt, are blessed with never dying smile.

A common person always observes only an area of about 10 meters around him and draws conclusion of the world around but a person who is different from the others always observes the horizon. So I thought to become different from the rest and started to observe the horizon, to my amazement I saw a world that I have never seen. Away from this materialistic world one can think of himself and person close to him. The undying silence makes you to introspect of the things that you have done and makes you realize your mistakes. The world seems to stop for a moment and inner radius of people surrounding you become motionless and your world becomes a place to look forward. Continuously laying thoughts on this concept of life, I thought whether people don’t have 10 minutes to introspect and make their life a better place. Instead of running a 100 meter dash in life it’s better to run a 10000 meter race as it will teach us each and every concept of life in course of achieving the ultimate goal. This concept only re emphasizes the fact that ‘slows but steady wins the race’.

Conversing with a girl sitting next to me, she defined life as a measure of success. According to her more successful you are better your life is.  Instead of arguing with her I just approved her theory but in my mind I was cooking up my own theory. Success is directly proportional to hunger to achieve and when this hunger is satisfied, person becomes successful (the way you perceive it). But all of us know that hunger has no end and it cannot be satisfied. The person he never reaches that ultimate goal and his life will never have what you call an ultimate satisfaction.

After some introspection and realization, the same thing struck me again ‘what is life?’ But this time my mind seemed to be clear and heart seem to be agreeing with my mind. A message flashed on my phone with a gist that it’s better to live someone else’s dream than to do nothing. My mind nodded in disapproval to this theory as I have seen people following this myth, have stopped living their life. In fact they start to live a life that is being destined by some other people. Interacting with many types of person, what struck me the most is that in course of following some myths, they have stopped dreaming and their world has become a materialistic sphere. Their life is full of price tags, having only one aim of earning more than those price tags. Without giving thought to look for the happiness that can take their life way above those price tags or in short priceless.

For me there are only two enemies of a person namely luck and destiny. Instead of living their own life and dreaming to make it big, they live a life that is being designed by someone else. In the course of it blame destiny for what happens in their life. Under achievers always blame luck for not reaching their ultimate goal but there is nothing called luck in this world as you are the master of your life and it’s up to how you want your life to pend out. Dreaming to making it move forward or dreams as a fuel to your ambitions, is the way to go. Have reached Delhi but still the question ‘what life is?’ still lingering in my mind and now have dropped the idea of further thinking as defining life is like defining a limit to infinity. But someday I think I will be able to put a limit to infinity and strech that immune thread.