Anecdotes of Friendship

A really long time back, i woke up one day trying to recollect how i met my best friend in college.It made me smile remembering that very day, very moment and soon i realized i had a photographic memory. I started thinking about all the other close friends that i had made over the years and each one of my first day's with them had a beautiful story associated with it. Since then i really wanted to pen down my memories of them and now i am finally here doing it...:) I am glad i met them, i am glad that they would definetly be glad reading this when i send it across to them.

 I never believed in the term '3 am friends' which i read about in lifestyle magazines( which practically i would call 'gossip' magazines :) ), but you know what - i ve started to believe in it. I have a bunch of really good friends who i can turn to at any time of the hour and they would be there for me, and same with me. I would be there for them. There are a couple who have helped me during my really trying and testing times, with whom my friendship went through a sour phase and got back, and with whom the bond just got stronger as the years rolled by.They are all people who i ve know for easily more than 6 years now, each of them not necessarily knowing one another.

Going just by the psychological taxonomy of relationships, everyone has a pyramid of important people in their lives.The zenith of this pyramid is occupied by your immediate family with whom you have years of emotional bondage, and the next in the hierarchy would have all the other relationships-friends,relatives etc.That day i realized the occupants of my friendship pyramid and i was surprised that they all just came into my life without any invitations (;)) and have stuck on with me. I always think of myself as a very difficult person to deal with, but when i realized the number of good friends that occupied this pyramid of mine, i felt at ease :). To keep some mystery around the identities of who is who, i d like my friends to identify themselves from these anecdotes :). Not in any particular order so please don't assume your spots on the hierarchy ;)

Hug Machine :)

Lemme call this friend the hug machine :) why? very simple coz she showed me the power of a hug while we were in college. I was never the hugging kinds, but she had a recipe to overcome issues - a simple HUG :) I dont think i ve ever mentioned this to her, but i think she know s it herself.
She joined our class after trying her luck in Commerce and then finally decided that Science was what she could deal with in her life ;) Somehow the charisma of hers is this confusion that always surrounds her life :) Confusion is sort of synonymous to her. :)

I remember the day when we were having ice creams at Ice Thunder near college, and this really self proclaimed Mr.Cool comes upto us and asks 'Can you ladies tell us what are the happening place in Bangalore?'. So my hug machine gives him one nice stare from head to toe and just utters these lines ' For people like you, they made the Directory, go check it up' .His face turns pale, and I as usual  burst out laughing straight on his face :)Too bad Just Dial was not even born then ;)
Co incidentally, we both ended up studying in the same colleges pursuing different degrees, but somehow we still managed to survive our friendship. My hug machine is one tough nut, i wish i could borrow even half the emotional strength that she has dealing with soo many things in her life all through out. God knows how many litres of ice cream and coffee we ve consumed in our friendship but every memory of mine with her has always been either in an ice cream parlor or a coffee joint  or at each others homes where we used to catch up with each other, and pour our hearts out :) .And yes our many many trips to Vidyarthi Bhavan- we d never get bored of this one for sure :)We ve both matured a lot over the years and can very proudly say that she s my very good friend. She s been with me whenever i needed an ear to lighten my heart out of worries and i ve always been there.
My biggest problem with her is that she never keeps her promises :) She works on timeline worst than IST(Indian Stretchable Time) but i think she does it to console herself and keep herself occupied.Which i am ok with....
Bottom line- i love you dear and be the same strong person that you ve always been for me.

Smartie :)

This was the name i christened for her which sums her up totally.She s(was ;)) intelligent, padaaku, everyone's role model and a very grounded person.She was the one who bore all the torture of surviving engineering with a mad person called Shravani, and you know what she did real good at it. I can proudly say that i could survive the tough times at college only because i had Smartie with me then and vice-versa. She was my best friend in college and she still manages to be that even now. We ve gone through soo much together in college-spoke about soo many things-studies, boy talk , shallow girls, responsibilities, job...you name it. Just realised how over the years our topics of conversations have just moved on from kind to kind. In college it was all about which subjects to chose, who was a dependable person in class, then it went on to relationships (she was going through soo much then), went on to how to prepare for job interviews, to what next after work, and now on a more mature front responsibilities and complex relationships. We ve given each other soo much mental time that i am even surprised i ve spoken soo much to any one in my life...She s been there through my tough times, holding my hand and lending her ear when i needed it.Supports me on things which are good and always has a mind of her own to make her own judgments to tell me when i am wrong and when i am right. I just love her for that.Going through all that i have right now, she s been one of the people whose helped me understand that i am not wrong on some things that have happened.(i know she knows what i am talking about). She s the one whose seen and heard me cry, seen me helpless and lost. She s seen soo many facets of my personality that i feel she knows me well. She helped me pull myself from the bad spot i was and helped me along with a lot of other people to get back to who i was...the real me :) Thanks a lot Smartie...
Being the silly girl that i was in college, i ve troubled and pulled Smarties leg soo much that if friendships had divorce she would have applied for one with me :) There are soo many incidents that i wanna share about her. She still doesn remember how we met the first time. It was the 2nd sem lab externals (some programming lab crap), and she was waiting outside the lab for people to come in (back then she was clubbed with comp sci guys) and she sees me and comes up to me and introduces herself...hi i am ,....i was meant to be with u guys in info sci....ill be joining you all next sem....:)  
So she joins us next sem and as written in her fate she got stuck with me after this hilarious incident....
So this guy from XXXX college sends me a mail asking me about Mountaineering club of which i was actively part of. Surprisingly he voluntarily gives out personal information like -' I have my girlfriend in Info Science who told me about it...she s your classmate'...This gets my evil mind thinking :).....who could be this girl?? I used my analytical skills into picture and list out all girls who can and can not fall into the category of being taken....Somehow Smartie was a border line case and the only possibility of this guy's girlfriend, coz
a) she was a mystery girl who was'n with us the whole of last year
b) there was not much i knew about her to understand her personal life yet
c) she was soo pavum girl next door kinds that if this assumption of mine is wrong, i would be digging my own grave with a new girl in class....Weighed all my options and then thought...what the hell lets just let the bomb go :) I went up to her next day, sat next to her in class and passed a note which very vaguely had something like this in it "I think i know something about you but i am not sure if its correct or not"...she s like confused on this and asks me what it is...i pulled her aside coz by that time i had already attracted a lot of attention from other people( read DP :p)...and i confusingly told this-" i dont know but i think you have a guy and i think he from XXXX college"....her face was something to remember at that point...she was red ...with anger (courtesy her guy) and embarrassed (courtesy me)....she was ready to chop him off that evening on letting out this bit of personal detail to me who he doesn even know...and very embarrassed she admitted that its her....i felt a sense of cheap pride which i just cant explain here....i felt like Sherlock Holmes solving the greatest mystery on earth....:) I just laughed my heart out at that time. 
If it was anyone other then Smartie then that person would have vowed not to talk to me ever in their life again...but thats what Smartie is all about...one gem of a person, patient, appreciative, full of fun...we had our friendship go through some turbulence at the end of college but somehow we got back.I think she s the only person i have been successfully able to forgive and forget... something i ve learnt from her...I love you dear :)

When i think back at it, just realized God has his own scheme of things where accidental meeting turns into a long bond of meaningful friendships.God has it all planned in his diary he has for everyone of us called our 'fate' and how he intertwines it with each other.

Dirty Dancing

                                            

Every now and then we have these few classics you really want to watch but never really get the opportunity to. I ve always heard of Dirty Dancing , being the lover of dance that i am i really wanted to get my hands on this movie an watch it... And watch i did today...and must say i thoroughly loved it.....

Loved it for the obvious reasons - 'Dance'..any movie that can depict dance in the purest and subtle way is surely to win my heart and this movie did too. Keeping the fact that i am dance fanatic aside... i think this is a great movie to watch... has really great music that keeps ringing in your head all throughout the movie, very crisp plot depicting 2 contrasting worlds of the protagonists... and really good character sketches of the leads and the people in the movie..all tied up to a very simple , believable romantic storyline.

The heroine Frances as the poster perfect 'good girl' whose grown up in the sophisticated world, wants to study economics and eventually would get married to a Harvard grad like her father.A girl who does n want to disappoint her father and yet cant help fall in love Johnny.She's depicted as this perfect girl to take home to, who is selfless and nothing but perfect...One of the best non-dance moments of the movie for me was when she has the emotional outburst with her dad when she confesses she s spent the night with Johnny..The scene is really well shot and acted brilliantly by Jennifer Grey as the vulnerable Frances..

And then we have Johnny as the rustic, smooth dancer who grew up in poverty and makes his ends meet with his job as a dancer. Patrick Swayze is truly amazing in his performance in this movie as the guy who gets 'used' by rich cougars who dance with him or learn dance from him. I ve never seen a male character being depicted on a delicate emotional front as Johnny is done in this movie..and he s truly fantastic in the movie and really eye candy...  All thumbs up for Patrick who is brilliant in his dance moves and portrays his nice-boy character effortlessly...

I believe that men who look good and men who can dance are 2 different species all together and when those 2 worlds really meet ..one really has to appreciate it :D

Another thing great about the movie is the music, great to hear such classic symphonies used soo brilliantly in this movie, I would have heard the song "Time of my Life" zillion times before, but never saw the movie for which it was made...and trust me when you see Johnny dance with Frances for this song in the last scene you really want to get into the frame of the movie with your partner and dance your heart out for that song :) 

Brilliance :) 

This is one of my recos for a lazy weekend afternoon for all dance and music fanatics to just curl up in their couches with some popcorn and have a lovely movie watching experience..This movie falls in the same movie watching experience as Pretty Woman or Ghost . 

Great that i watched this movie when i was having dry runs at classics :)

Not so sure i would feel the same for the sequel Dirty Dancing -Havana Nights though.

Life unplugged....... :D

The past few weeks of my life have been anything but 'crazy'.Trust me when i say CRAZY!!!!! people talk about doing crazy things.....i had things happening at a crazy (unfortunate) levels to me... I was soo thoroughly angered by the extent of misfortune i had faced but now when i think back at it .. all i do is laugh it off and say 'Shit happens :)'... Well my story can definitely be used as a screenplay for some nice masala flick... depicting irony and surreality at one shot :)

  How would you feel if you had a chance to a moment of glory which gets wiped off your feet by a friend of yours who was n even supposed to be there at the 'moment of glory'...... well for starters thats my story :) and yes i was at the receiving end or rather the losing end here..I would have never believed in similes like 'Theres many a slip between the cup and the lip' but now when i ve had it happening to me at such a detailed level i thoroughly believe in it....

 So my radical story goes like this.... I had gotten shortlisted as one of the finalists to a competition , the winner of which would get a all expensive paid trip for 2 to London and also to attend one of the best Rock concerts that happen in the year called the Ambassadors of Rock .The finals of this was to happen at Hard Rock Cafe. I  happened to take a couple of my friends along to have a nice time while wishing the lucky one would be me...Here's where the turn of events get truly bizarre....

Amongst the 10 finalists shortlisted, only 8 turn up(including me)..so the contest organizers pep up the tempo by choosing 'wild card' entries from the crowd.Amongst the 2 fools who got selected one was the friend i took along.So the final 10 were split into 2 groups to compete for selecting the 2 winners, who would at last compete with each other in the second round. So the intial rounds were done amongst the 10 of us and as you guys would have already guessed...amongst the 2 final finalists..one was me and the other was the friend of mine i took along.

Round 2:

The stage was all set....we were the cynosure of everyones eyes...This moment was truly bizarre for me....the fact that i get to the last round and that too compete with a friend i drove to the venue was too crazy to happen at one shot...The crowd was losing it....everybody was breathing London all around...i could literally sense everybody's eyes on us....wishing it were them on the stage and not the 2 of us....Now i d take time to explain exactly what the contest i lost out to was... The stage had 5 electric guitars and just 1 amp...each one of us had to pick a guitar each....by the random draw of numbers, one of the chords of the guitar gets plugged to the amp..and whose ever guitar strums would be the winner... In true movie style this finale was meant to be nail biting. Chord 1 goes in...none of our guitars strum...chord 2 goes in...NO....Chord 3...NO LUCK...any probability genius would definitely guess that the next one would surely be the one which would make either one of us the winner....and in goes the Chord 4 and 'whaammmm' strums my friend's guitar...... The crowd goes frenzy...my friend loses his head - he was n even supposed to be there...he was there because of me........and he WON...yes he WON.

And i was left there in shock and disbelief that something like this has even happened to me.....i really could n curse myself harder than i did that night..The worst was losing to a friend who got there because of me ... i mean it would n have hurt soo much if i had lost to some stranger trust me....I was so close and yet so far....truly lady luck was not on my side and i (as usual) ended up being the lady luck to my friend...

It took me nearly a day to zap back to reality from the loss....But the events of that night were truly unbelievable...everyone who heard of this episode of my life just could n stop laughing at my loss and now even i do laugh at how bizarre things got to me that evening... I was really not that sore about losing a trip to London coz i know someday i will definitely travel there(and i can very much afford a trip to London on my own terms :) )...but what was the reason of the soreness was something deeper than that can be expressed..It was about losing something that you were so close to...and losing to somebody who didn even know about the existence of something like this. Sore about the fact that why someone i knew had to go steal my thunder....how i wish it would have been me winning it...how i wish i could rewind back to the ill fated Thursday evening and wish i could have picked another guitar...or wished i did something different than what i did that evening to change the course of events to my favor in the grand finale :)

Well that's life i guess....it takes you a whole 359 degrees and gets you back to ground zero :).... i know luck didn favor me that night but ....its no big deal....its just a contest... the take away i got from that night was much more than i could even believe ...I never really believed in luck...never really believed in bizzare things happening to me....never really believed that something soo radical could ever happen to me....and there it was all happening to ME.. :)

The turn of events that night made me realize the value of the friendships i shared....i had this friend of mine who was torn apart trying to compose himself on whether he should be happy that our friend won or whether comfort me over the misfortune i had over the night....We had a really great time that evening...at the end of it all three of us had a tight group hug and were filled with disbelief.... My friend who won could n stop apologizing to me..i was sore for myself.... but ya what the hell..he won finally ....and i had a great memorable evening...

Its times like these that made me realize that this is what life is all about and that i was living mine right here :)...and we need to understand to enjoy every bit of it as it comes...as you really don't know what life holds for you in the next few moments...one sec you could have everything that you ever wanted and the other might just lose everything else....i am glad i had that bizarre evening with one of the 2 closest friends in my life at the moment...really don't know what holds in the future for the three of us...we will all drift apart in the sands of time...move away to different cities ..different places in our lives but i am glad i got to experience something with these 2 fools :)

And what followed this event was paparazzi which i wish not to talk about here :)

Bottom Line: I love my life and this will be story to tell my kids who would n believe it :)

Turning seven :)

It was Tina's 7th birthday and she was all excited about meeting her favorite 'Nanni' for her birthday.It had been a good 1 year since Nanni visited her at Bangalore, so Tina was all excited when her parents decided that for a change they would be visiting Nanni for Tina's birthday.Even if it meant that this year there would be no 'surprise' birthday parties, no meeting Riya(her best-est-est friend) and celebrating with her barbies and doll house gang, Tina was all up for this change as she wanted to prove to her parents that she is a 'big' girl now.

Tina loved her Nanni very much.Nanni brought into her life a sense of reality in fantasy for her.Since she is a part of a thoroughly nuclear family, going back home to her Nanni after school was something Tina used to look forward to.Tina loved Nanni's home made food, she loved the lime pickle and avakkai's Nanni used to make for her while she was around.Nanni used to treat her like a princess - it just had to be a kind request from her and Nanni would make sure her wish was fulfilled. Since she was the princess while Nanni was around, Tina would order a bed time story every night by Nanni, which was duly fulfilled to her. Nanni was an ultimate story teller - she used to wind fantastic stories for her princess which always used to keep her mesmerised as to how many stories Nanni actually knew.After one point of time Tina just stopped counting as she did'nt know to count after 80 :) .Tina was a girl with an excellent photographic memory and vivid imagination, all this thanks to her Nanni for being able to sow into her mind, stories of nature, love, war, goodness , truth and other topics which needed imagination of the listener as important as the creativity of the story teller.

Tina had never been to Banwasi , her ancestral village. In fact Tina was a total city girl.Never been out to her village, always travelled in cars etc etc. The train journey to her village was something very exciting for little Tina.She kept peeping out of her window whenever the train halted at a station asking her daddy inquisitively 'Daddy are we there yet? Is Nanni going to come see us at the platform?...How much longer daddy?'. Her list of questions never seemed to end.
Finally Banwasi arrived.Tina, mommy and daddy got a chauffeur driven car to pick them up from the station while her Nanni was waiting eagerly to meet her princess at their house.The car led Tina into Banwasi through narrow un-tarred roads, roads which no one knew when had a pot hole or when a ditch.The driver artistically led them through the roads of her village- the roads were filled with rich greenery of paddy fields all around them.Far away were enormous hills which Tina thought one could never reach.She had never witnessed such rich blend of strong colors around her, she was just jubilant and that could be seen by the intensity of attention she was paying to her natural surroundings.It was such a beautiful ride that she almost felt like she was being ridden into her kingdom in her own palanquin.

After a nice 20 minute ride into the fields containing paddy, coconut trees and other crops that Tina couldn't yet recognize, they finally reached their 'Nanni's' house :). Nanni was standing there waiting for her Tina in her crisp cotton Saree, hair tied into a nice cute grayish-white bun.Tina got out of her car and went running to give her Nanni her beariest-bear hug.After being ushered into her house, Tina couldn't stop to think how big and airy her 'Nanni's' house was. Tina pleaded her Nanni to take her around the house and wanted Nanni to make-pretend to be her guide in her newly formed kingdom.Nanni as usual obliged :).

Nanni held little Tina's tender hands and showed her around.The tour was to begin from the entrance and end at the terrace."Let the show begin" said Tina. The house had a huge lawn outside with a variety of plants which decorated the entrance of their house.As she stepped her foot inside the house she saw a quadrangle bigger than her apartment's lift lobby which ran all throughout the house.In the center of the quadrangle was a huge empty courtyard where Nanni had her sacred 'Tulsi' to whom she prayed every morning without fail.On the periphery of the quadrangle was the kitchen, a couple of rooms, and the other boring parts of the house.Each room had huge ceilings which Tina had never seen anywhere before.The walls of the house were filled with artistic paintings that Nanni had made when she was a little girl maybe even when she was as little as Tina herself. Nanni showed her each and every painting that was hung in the house and told her everything about each one of them.


There was one painting amongst them that Tina couldn't stop staring at. It was a beautiful array of colors that mesmerized her.The symmetry of shapes, the inter wining of patterns, the exquisite color pallet in the painting kept Tina asking for more.Nanni knew Tina liked the painting a lot and on purpose didn't describe much about it to her.Nanni knew Tina would get attracted to this one particular painting and hence had her birthday gift related to this painting.Tina kept begging Nanni to tell her what the painting really, actually (with 'God promise' made) meant, but Nanni kept playing around her excitement and asked Tina to wait till tomorrow(her birthday) to get answers to her questions. Tina was soo lost in the painting and attracted to it that she spent the whole evening trying to figure out what it is exactly?Is it a design? Is it a flower? Is it the rainbow turned into a circle? She kept looking at that particular painting and swinging back and forth in her wooden swing in the quadrangle.She was soo full of questions that it was fun to see her derive her own logic out of simple little things around her. Her parents played along with Nanni and kept her questions unanswered till tomorrow.

Tina spent the rest of the day tagging along with Nanni, helping her around the house, learning her everyday move and enjoying every bit of her holiday time with dear Nanni.But there was still this question running in her mind as to what the painting really was :). That night Tina slept with her Nanni in her room.For the first time Tina didn't ask Nanni for a bed time story, instead played floor chess with her till she dozed away in Nanni's lap.

"Happy Birthday to you...Happy Birthday to you...Happy birthday dear Tina...Happy birthday to you". These were the words little Tina woke up to the next day :) These words were like music to her ears and she woke up rubbing her eyes and giving her best smile possible :) . Nanni took her in her lap and placed in her hand a long rectangular package wrapped in colorful sand paper. Tina was soo excited to get a gift from Nanni the first thing in the morning, and the smile on her face just got plastered for a little longer than she thought. She carefully unwrapped her precious gift. It was a long rectangular piece of hard cardboard which had a mirror on either ends and looked like it was filled with something, when she shook the gift she could listen to nice melodious clicks.She was very excited and asked Nanni what it really was. Nanni told her that it was a Kaleidoscope. "Ka-lie-do....Ka-lie-do-sco-ppe" she finally got to spell her gift in her still slumbered voice. Tina wasn't sure how to use her new found toy, it didn't have a button to press, didn't have a key to start with, it was just a long rectangular box like thing which if was a little bigger could have passed off as her pencil box. Nanni got Tina to use her gift, she trained her hands to place her gift in such a way that one of the mirrors was placed in front of her eyes.Tina was made to close the other eye and look into the mirror with the other one. Tina just couldn't believe what she saw in front of her eyes.It was exactly a pattern like the painting she was pleading her Nanni to explain her to. The symmetry, the pattern, the colors and the different designs the gift made with her turning it in different directions brought her soo much joy that no other barbie she played with ever got her.She turned her "Ka-lie-do-sco-ppe" round and round till she found newer patterns in front of her eyes.Patterns she had never seen, never made and never imagined. The little clicks inside her gift brought to life colorful forms that made Tina's heart jump with joy. It didn't take Tina long to figure out that the elusive painting was all about such patterns that Nanni had seen when she must have got her hands on her own Kaleidoscope. Tina hugged her Nanni tightly and thanked her very very much for such a beautiful gift.

Tina knew that none of her friends had ever seen something like this ever in their little life and Tina was the first girl in her class to have something soo special for a birthday gift.What made it even more special for her was that Nanni had made the Kaleidoscope all by herself for her Tina.She used her old colorful bangles which she no longer used to make the inner 'clicks' of her Kaleidoscope. She spent the whole day proudly walking around her quadrangle playing with her beautiful Kaleidoscope all through her new Kingdom.

Thank you sooooooooooooooooooooooo much Nanni. I love you a lot :)

Spiralling confusion

I just realized that we are all at stage in our lives where the only thing that comes out clear is 'Confusion'.I am victim of this syndrome too and hence write this bit which is more or less a piece of my mind i guess.Be warned you may not like to admit it ...but all of us go through this arbit 'confused' period in our lives at one point or the other, just that i seem to have realized it strongly now :)
My confusion is not a materialistic one which deals with things like - what should i wear/ or what should i be carrying with me ... My confusion is more to do with.. 'What am i really doing with my life ?????'... Am i in the right spot? Am i making the right decisions? Am i doing something which i like or am i doing things just because there's nothing more/less left to do? Why is it that its confusion that lurks at every nook and corner? Sometime back i met an acquaintance of mine from work, and we happened to travel back home together that night. It was such a strange realization i had that day. Every time i would meet her i would see her fuming over her state of affairs and i would be the one giving her an assuring reply to every frustrated sentence of hers.But this time it was like a complete role reversal.I was her and she was me. I had a really bad day at work, the past few weeks of my life were literally spirally down on me, and i must say it was the first time i had soo many open ended questions that i wanted answers to. Our conversation that day went on and on for a really long time and it stuck me soo strongly that day that i was basically 'confused' with my life :) The whole episode led to us discussing on something called 'Quarter Life Crisis' (i know i sound soo old while i say it....but its true..we r all around 24 something that makes the Quarter and well the Crisis is the confused state of affairs of ours :) ) . Just thought id share this article and see people go 'Sigghhh!!!! that's my life' :)

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like.You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.
You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.
You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.
Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure.
You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.
You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you.. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you're doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. You want to settle down for good because now all of a sudden that becomes top priority. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.You begin to think a companion for life is better than a hundred in the sack and for once you would not mind standing tall for that special someone which otherwise you had never thought of until now.You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would b e great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!
What you may not realize is that every one reading this relates to it.We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.
We call it the "Quarter-life Crisis"

After reading this article i felt soo relieved. Not that it gave me any answers or anything , but just the assurance that i am not the only person who is going through this paranoia :) And as usual when i like something which hits me really strong, i share it with everyone who can appreciate the worth of the thought. And when i shared it with some of my friends, i realized all of them felt the same as i did, just that the extent of realization varied from one person to the other. The talk with that acquaintance and the article she shared with me, made me realize that all of us are stuck at the exact same phase in life, its up to us to make decisions to bring out clarity in our lives. What we choose to do from the point of realization of this confusion to the point of clarity is up to us. Well i think i ve made up my mind on the point of clarity i need to achieve, it all depends on whether i successfully get there or not :) Now i am actually loving the confusion i am in, cause i know that someday(hopefully :) ) i will be out of it ..but till then the paranoia looms i guess :)
Well i guess this is what life is all about, and all of us are living it right here :)

Adieu to the king

There are days which start off with such a big bang that you are left in a state of disbeliefe for a really long time.Today was one of such days for me. I was at my gym this morning and i couldn help notice that they were playing all of MJs hits back to back.Refreshing as it was with comparision to the boring collection they usually play, what i realised next was not even close to refreshing. My TV screen was blaring with FLASH NEWS in red, saying 'Micheal Jackson dead'.
When i read that i really thought it was some practical joke someone was playing...How could MJ possibly die??? He had a series of concerts lined up in London come July and there was soo much happening around his soo called 'comeback tour' that i really was in a state of denial.

I didn really understand why i was soo bumped down by hearing this news or seeing it in front of me.Whenever MJs name scrolled on the screen i would remember the time when i was a little kid.The times when i used to listen to MJ croon from the cassettes my brother recorded of his when he came down from his hostel during his vacation. It reminded me of the times when i was the kid who secretly watched MTV hoping to see some MJ videos and practice his dance moves.His moonwalk, his amazing high pitch voice, the bizzare 'aaooow' all of those came running back to my head.I realised that it wasn the present 'me' who was mourning, but it was that part of me which was that little kid who grew up listening to MJ s music, watching his videos,secretly trying his dance moves.I just realised i was 'that kid'. I just realised i went back to that part of my childhood which i hadn thought of in a really long time.

The King of Pop as he was popularly called, and i think he truly deserves it.I mean he brought to the entertainment industry across the globe what possible no individual could ever bring.He propelled the sensational 'break dance' to this world in his music videos and performances.He must have influenced thousands(or probably many many more in count) of young people to get into dancing, influencing his dance in their everyday life, inspiring people to choreography.His contribution to just inspiring young people around to get into music and dance is way above than something that can get measured.His high pitch voice, the mix of different styles of music in his songs brought the freshness and attraction that people craved for.And even till this day am sure if anyone of us hears his 'Thriller' you would want to just get up and dance.He has some excellent scores which will forever remain classics in my(our) minds.
He may not have been the best of the person he was in his personal life, but what he gave to his audience and fans was truly extraordinary. He is a legend and will be remembered for many many years from now.
I really wished i could see him perform live in India before i could die, but..... this was the closest i could get to this legend.

He is one of those whom you could love, you could hate but you couldn just ignore.To pick one of my favourites would definetly be hard.Though i liked his older songs when he looked 'himself'...'Beat It','Thriller' and the rest...But 'Thriller' was this one video which spooked me up when i first saw it, but as i watched it again and again i fell in love with it.Another one to mention here would be 'Heal the world', that song had the healing touch with his soothing,balanced voice which actually makes the listener want to believe that he can make his world a better place to live in.

I d like to end this post with one of his songs.

" Do You Remember The Time
When We Fell In Love
Do You Remember The Time
When We First Met
Do You Remember The Time
When We Fell In Love
Do You Remember The Time"

We will always remember you.You will be missed
R.I.P

Its not about the bike- Lance Armstrong

Taking a complete 360 degree turn from my last read is the first of the autobiographies of Lance Armstrong. It is the first autobiography that i have successfully been able to finish reading and it deserves credit for it :)

Its a very soulful description of how Lance Armstrong goes in and out of his battle with testicular cancer.Being a victim of something as deadly as cancer is harsh enough for a normal person, but the whole journey of this through the eyes of an international athlete for whom his/her body has to be perfect composure is even more painful.

It starts of with one of the very striking elements of the book.Lance's relationship with his mother.He shares a very kind and a highly understanding relationship with his single and struggling mother.The series of descriptions that Lance provides on his mother gives you an insight of where the root of Lance's strength comes from- his Mother. It talks about his journey from being a local hero to breaking international borders and venturing into the tougher cycling worlds of Europe and fighting through the vicious grips of cancer.

Its a great book to understand what passion is all about.

He talks purely about his passion and describes the art of being a cyclist in a very retrospectal way.Honestly i must admit that i am no sports fan and the only thing i knew about Lance Armstrong was that he was a 'stud' when it came to Tour de France...but what it takes to be there and win it...came to my understanding after reading the book.I thoroughly respect him for being the professional that he is and he truly deserves every victory that has come by his way professionally.The way he talks about his practice sessions..his struggle through the total understanding of the competitive world around him is quite an int resting read.He doesn care to hide the fact that he was/is an arrogant person but i think that's what made him what he is now.

The other aspect of the book is his fight through Cancer and how he is determined to fight it out because he wants to 'ride' again.The book is very well compartmentalised to describe the various stages of cancer he goes through and in each chapter he describes each element earnestly.He has one chapter on chemo...one on survivorship...all are worth reading through Lance's eyes.After surviving testicular cancer he goes on to be a father.This is such an important thing for him especially since he doesn have a strong fatherly figure himself and he badly wants to complete the void by being one for his own kid.

After reading the book the only complaint i have is the title of the book...I think 'Its not about the Bike' is a little hypocritical if i must say....i think the whole book was about the bike and about whether or not he would be able to ride it again.Lance always says in his book that amongst the 2 most important things (fighting cancer v/s being able to ride again) he would have chosen to fight cancer but honestly i think both of them were kind of symbiotic for him....he fought cancer as he was determined to ride a bike...and he wanted to get back to riding as he was determined to fight cancer off..

Another observation i would like to make after reading this book is that Lance is extremely lucky as an individual to have had the people he had around him.Be it his mother, his closest friends, his team mates, his manager Bill, his then wife Kik.I mean he wouldn have had even half as strength as he had without such a rock solid support system around him.

The book is also quite an eye opener on human nature...it gives us such a beautiful insight on how it its to be a struggling single mother who successfully provides all the necessities to his son, its about how it is to be a victim and survivor of cancer, its about how receptive people are to the world of cancer, how it is to be a supportive friend and guide (his manager Bill) to an athlete who just comes out of cancer desperate to meet his financial crisis and get back to riding in note-worthy competitions again when the cycling world has lost hopes on what Lance is all about, its about being a totally patient and thoroughly understanding wife who supports the athlete to do whatever it takes to get his dream back-even if it means leading a spineless nomadic life...

Its a book describing how hard it is to be Lance Armstrong -the cyclist, Lance Armstrong -the cancer victim(i hate to use the term cancer patient) and the Lance Armstrong-determined to punch the face of people who called his career an end after cancer.I think whats most commendable of his insights is that the book never begs for the reader's pity...Its just talking about Lance without giving you a chance to opine...as a reader you just want to know what happens next in Lance's life (and i think its a great factor in making this autobiography such a hit).Another element which makes this a good read is that you never feel very pained reading this as an autobiography...Its very realistic description of what Lance goes through and in all the cases it doesn hide the basic arrogant nature of Lance as a professional and also as an individual.

As always i have my favourites from the book.

There are 2 things i totally loved which Lance writes-

1) He says that people talk about living life like there is no tomorrow when you know your fighting a lethal disease.But he totally rubbishes this theory as something which is made for narrow minded people.He gives a very int resting description of how selfish life would be if you were to live each day as though its your last day.

2)One of the last few lines in his book totally appealed to me- He says that 'I did not beat cancer, the medicines did..the chemo did..the efforts of his doctors did...I just survived the cancer'..it takes a lot to think this way and pen it down too..

It a book on survivorship,on will power, on being hopeful that every dark cloud does have a silver lining after all.