Baby, you make me sing!

It is amazing how a little human being with tiny feet, pink cheeks and hair like strands of silk, can make a singer out of anyone.

The beauty of singing for a child is in its spontaneity. You have no idea whatsoever of what you’re singing; you just start ‘la-la’ing off to make the baby stop crying. And when it seems to work, when the frown is gone, and the eyes shift focus on to you, or close peacefully in slumber, you suddenly realize that the gibberish you sang was really a tune. And you sing it again and in loop. Right then, at that point, you become a singer. No matter how harsh a voice you think you have, when the baby in your palms will start to cry, you will sing. And that song will be the most beautiful, because you will have no idea of where the song came from, and you will want to sing it again and again, just to re-experience the joy of having relieved the divine little being of its restlessness.

Find yourself at home…

I got my first sneak peak into the Zen philosophy yesterday; just a soup in the food for thought.
And it was disturbing. And then marvelous.

Disturbing, because it is most inconvenient to fathom that all you are, and all everybody around you is, is mind-body – the co-existence of certain hardware and certain software.

Marvelous, because thankfully

What do you want for your birthday?

“What do you want for your birthday?”

I was asked.

“A nice day!” I underplayed.

I love surprises. A midnight birthday cake-cutting, some nice little surprises here and there…

But that’s not how it’s going to be every year, I know.

So this time, I said, “I want a nice day! I’m going to buy myself something new, get out into the city, buy me some flowers and do something nice!”

I did buy myself something new. I got a few lovely gifts from my folks, too. I went out with my best friend aka my hubby for a playful afternoon, a long walk and some awesome burgers…and spent dinner-time with my family. (And of course, hubby bought me a box of chocolates and a rose with pretty purple flowers around it.)

I did, have a nice day! 🙂 And the after-glow is going to last a while…

What you don’t remember

Turns out we don’t remember a lot of stuff. Even stuff that we thought we would never forget.

Things like nicknames, or days we thought were historic in our lives, or the lame jokes we shared in college, or the best hangouts ever.
Things that once used to be ‘our thing’s.

Well, we do have a few things that connect us to our past – pictures, videos, journal writings, poems, music, people…
Look around you, and everything you have has a story behind it.

Freedom From…Perfection

Picked white flowers fallen on the rain-soaked road on a breezy post-shower evening.

Walked all alone with myself, breathed in the sweet smell of wet mud, and sighed.

As the skies got darker, and so did all the colours of nature around me, I saw the miracle and the life that exists in that changing.

Life exists in changing.

I was alone, and I felt safe in my arms and in my mind.

I looked around, and for a moment, I felt like an invisible particle of the universe, something that existed only to observe and rejoice in the observation.

Then when I closed my eyes and looked nowhere, I felt that what was inside me was the centre of the universe.

I held those flowers together in my muddy hands. I felt the graininess of the moist soil on my fingers. The graininess, that which I came from.

I saw with magnifying eyes, traces of earth, black and brown, sprinkled and smeared across those pretty little whitelings.

What beauty in imperfection! I thought.

I caressed their petals, as the thought caressed my soul.

Fighter. Pilot.

If you were ever 24, what were you like? I’m sure you were free-spirited, rebellious even, giving your dreams a wild chase and having the time of your life in every moment of it…

When Captain M. P. Anil Kumar was 24, he was a young man of many dreams, a fighter pilot, flying high, gathering accolades, having the time of his life.

Years later, on a bright Sunday morning, I was an ambitious college girl, walking across the huge lobby of the Quadraplegic Center to meet the young man.

Die today

People who know they’re going to die soon, are people with some of the craziest, busiest, happiest lives.

They have every reason to be that: they could, after all, die unhappy of a wasted minute.

They’re so busy doing things they wanted to, saying things they wanted to, making trips and learning music and searching for long lost friends, that they don’t realize how much they’ve lived in their few counted days.

What’s sad is people who are still in the dark about their deadline. People who live with the belief that they have a long life to plan for, to secure, to fear for.

And in the process, forget to make trips, to learn music, and keep in touch with long lost friends. And forget, that they might never be lucky enough to know their deadline in advance.

And when it comes, we would die unhappy of unthinkably too many wasted minutes.

Hope v/s Truth

We do not crave for truth, as much we do for hope. Even though it may be illusive. People who prefer truth to hope are saintly, but those who see hope above it are bravehearts, who raise a new hope in their hearts every time they lose a battle.

Hope is above reality, truth is seething beneath it.

Hope sees life in a myriad of colours, whereas truth is determined to see it in black and white.

But the truth is that sometimes, one ray of hope is all we need, to believe that despite all present odds, everything will be alright.

That hope may fade off the very next moment, but after all, it was hope that led us to that moment.

The wondrous cliche

Today is a gift.

The four words you read, might have come across to your mind as just words. Clichéd words. Preachy words. Flowery words. And you might forget them the moment you step out of this blog.

But some ordinary day you will mysteriously be touched by this simple 4-worded message somehow, through the voice and the words of a person who loves you, or that of a stranger, or the sight of the rising sun one morning, or a sweet surprise hidden in a phone call or behind the door or under your pillow. A sign of love whose existence you had overseen.

And on that ordinary day, from that particular moment when you realise the worth of ‘today’ as a gift, the gift is yours.

The day you spend gratefully will always be followed by a night you shall sleep through like a child.

The boy who never cried

There lived somewhere they say
A boy who never cried,
Through every loss he showed
His handsome superficial side…

They say he never cried
When as a young lad he had to leave home,
That’s when his older kin thought their boy,
would grow up strong, but with a heart of stone…

That might have kept him from weeping
Even on that dreadful unfortunate night,
When sitting ride beside his driver’s seat
his younger brother had died…