What I like about you........

I haven't blogged very regularly.. but I liked the sound of the title so.. :D.

It's strange that I feel the urge to write but I seldom find a topic that piques my interest. Well something finally did.

There we are driving across Death Valley and we see a sign that says 'Death Valley Health Center'.... if you know me, then you will be able to imagine the laugh I would have laughed.

But then it got me thinking I love quirks of a place/humans/anything. If you know my friends most of them would put a Norman Rockwell character to shame(This statement is thoroughly plagiarized, Thank you Linda Goodman I cant pick a better description).

If you are a friend who is reading this.. you should be thoroughly honored that one of your incidents is mentioned.

Ok, I know, back to the topic. I love all things strange and have just understood that denying their strangeness is an insult to their existence. Yes, I love a lone tree all burnt up.... I love you when you are standing amidst a thousand green ones and I love you when you are all alone. I love that.. a part of you represents me all proud and stubborn, unwilling to give up. I love that you represent a part which all of us crave, for isolation .. you bring to me a sense of serenity.... So thank you :).

I love a raging ocean, all agitated , I love the sense of violence you represent. I love when you pound wave after wave taking care of all your emotions and never spilling over the brim. I love it when you are calm ..show me a perfect sunset. I love how you show me how beings work. You show me that we are elements all having our differences but at the end all same.

I love mountain ranges standing all proud ... you remind me of my parents .. looking over me..... standing proud. You remind me of my mischief and the good old past. You remind me of being a constant. You give me a sense of strength and joy. Thank you.

I love my friends ... each with their peculiar habits. One scared of a kite, a lift another of arguments, yet another who puts music above all others. You show me how I love what you do too.. you show me how I can learn and grow... you show that I am not different.. You bring me down a peg or two.

I love my bro.. who pushed me down a mountain..(Yes bro you did!!! Stop cribbing). Who to date does not accept the fact that I did spell graphite right... A brother who is hyper and will not accept the fact that he is. I love the sense of constant chaos you bring. I love how you struggle.. I love all your weird theories of positive reaffirmation and thereof .. I love the fact that you think you are responsible, calm, mature and absolutely unbiased.. it makes me hope because this means I am justified about my delusions too...

Uday.. well I love the fact that he can scream. I love that he can actually win an argument when I am right. I also like how he can think about things and not express them :).. and still expect you to understand. I love that you say you can run/play cricket/piano/paint... when I haven't seen you do anything... I like the fact that his scream goes off in my head when I am all alone and driving and make a tiny mistake....I also love the sense of contentment he has and hope I can have that...

It would be amiss of me not to mention a last person whom I will not name yet... I love you for the fact that you bring a smile to a person I love. I love you for being a feminist.. we need more of your kind. I love your passion and hope that you do have you quirks.. I hope you day dream the way I do.. I hope you have your moments of silences .. and crazy chaos.. I hope that we get to be friends :)....

Well I also hope I meet a person who has none of the qualities I mentioned above .. and I hope we become buddies.. here's to liking all of you .. and embracing all things..

It makes me think good or bad(well nothing is really bad!!!!).. if you bring a smile or make me think.. you shall always be in my good books....And well that's what counts.. in my world.

Ulysses

It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.


I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honour’d of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers,
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.


I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!
As tho’ to breathe were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this gray spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.


This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle–
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and thro’ soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.


There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me–
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads–you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
’Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

--Alfred Lord Tennyson.

I AM !

Lava Beds ... It was supposed to be just another visit to another National Park. I am not trying to undermine the other places which were classically beautiful but this place touched a part of my soul. I do not know why, it seemed to be the least likely of all the places we visited that weekend.

We drove through lush green Oregon Countryside to get to this. There is point where you can see the vegetation dwindling down to bushes. The beautiful creeks giving way to black rocks.... It was hot and not a pleasant drive.

This place is famous for its textbook volcanic formations and geologically very very important (atleast according to the Americans).

But what fascinated me was the barrenness of the land. You can see acre after acre of land all empty ..in varying degrees of red and black, and you can imagine why people fought for this.

You can feel the Lava flowing down the mountains.. flowing into the lake. You can feel the anguish, the pain, the joy and exhilaration. I can imagine this landscape a thousand, a million years ago. Standing proudly, untouched. I can imagine all the era's its witnessed. While it continues its own journey.

I can imagine a thousand horses running across the land. Small tribes making their home across the lake, and I can imagine the WAR. The Modoc war where the native Indians held off an army which was 10 times its size. I can imagine the bloodshed.
I can imagine the mountain ranges standing there bearing witness to all that happened and storing them as a part of history.

I can also imagine thousands of birds which visit this place every year. And the lake which held its own.

The rocks are alive you can almost see them bearing down on you , some benevolent some proud. You can feel the history in the air. Forget the books , this is the real thing. I wish I was taught history on road trips. It gives you a sense of perspective like no other. When you stand in the place where people lost their lives. That's when you remember. When you see the ashen grounds, then you remember the lava flowing down and why it exploded. When you see animals , you understand the importance of life cycle.

I think its the best way to understand life!!!

As Always
Snig

PS:- Oh by the way the Title says I am .. because that's what the mountains said to me.

Moments...

Phir bhi dil hai hindustani.. thats what I thought I should write about. About how much I miss my folks or how much I miss being in India. About comparisons between how good India is and about how evrything stinks up here. But well that is expected out of people who move to the US of A isnt it. OR for some others it would be oh wow.... the place is neat, oh things are organized, oh look tall buildngs.. wowwie wow.

Well both sides are correct. Both justified. And I am not here to give gyaan to people about the comparison between the two. Who am I to make that decision? For heavens sake if god has given you some grey cells then put it to some positive use.

For someone who has lived with her parents her complete life, what is new is that this is difficult. Not because of the place or things but because of all the small things you never appreciate when you have them.

For all the zillion things mom did and I never even said thanks.. it was taken for granted you see. For the simple wake up smile, to someone reminding you to call. To someone who waited back till midnight worried sick about where you had gone.

The little things you talked about, someone genuinely intrested in you for no apparent reason. For everything and more.

The point is I might I have missed all those moments.. but I sure will remember from now on... and cherish things which make memories...


Back to blogging after ages
Snig

Sum total of things

Well think back, which are the incidents that you remember most. For me they have to be the ones, where either I or any of people I am close to have really really messed up. Messed up not in a sad way.. but in a delightfully goofy way.

Take for example this friend of mine.. all this person remembers is good 'ole college days and all the antics this person and the group performed. As always this person looks completly ecstatic when narrating an episode from that... And having heard many of them.. one thing is for sure..they bring happiness to others...

The week before last, I was in Bangalore with my Bro and his friends and all of them took pride in narrating the not so suitable to narration stories of the MBA course. The sleeping in class. Pulling legs.. how each one had managed to make a complete arse of themselves in one situation and so on....

I look back and things that I most remember are the incidents from childhood where I picnicked in middle of no where. I remember walkin out of the examination because I was bored. I remember that I bunked my college.. got caught.. went to my Discipline heads room .. took permission and bunked ! I remember a hundered and one things that are cases of real life being stranger than fiction.

So what is the purpose of all this you might ask? Well, here is the theory and I would definitely like views...I think that if the only things that I remember after 10-15 years are gonna be such stuff and these are the only things that are gonna bring a smile to my face .. then I think we should devote energies to create goofiness around us.

See, the whole purpose is to exist in a state of euphoria and if this is what it takes... then so be it...

Slightly Goofy,
Snig

Change

"I am never gonna change......"

A sentence I often used when I was a teenager.. a sentence I still use sometimes.... The truth ... I have... I am as I write this piece... There are so many things I never considered doing that I have. There are so many I thought I will and I didn't. So is that good or is it sad.... And the answer is neither.It just is.

I always measured things as right or wrong.. People as good or bad. Things as useful and useless..... I guess I have changed...

Right or wrong don't exist... it's your perception that makes you think the same. What I define as right might be completly wrong for another.... Its all subjective...

No one person is good or neither is somemone completely bad....It's how the person has reacted to a situation that involved me that determines my opinion of the same....

Does this mean I am growing up? Probably... probably not... may be it's just that I have just opened my eyes and am looking around.. this might be dawn.

Or may be just maybe this might be one of those many phases people in life go through. It is a humbling thought that I am one of the zillion and a half people who will go through the same emotions.......

I always wonder about the purpose of a life... there have been probably millions of books about this. So what is the purpose of my life? Truthfully I DO NOT KNOW...

What do I want from this life.. at this very moment....All I want is to remain happy and content....

Hopefully... Someone out there is looking down smiling at me...
Bus itna sa khwaab hai!

Changing...
-Snig

Passion and Now....

They say one should have control over their emotions…
They say one should be collected always. Its in the aura they say.
Don’t get excited. Don’t ever show your feelings…

Sorry that is not something you will get from me.
I always have and always will be the exuberant one..
Would love to be remembered that way.

I mean when I die.. I’d rather have people remember me for my laugh, my scream, my joy……
It’s the small things that satisfy me.. they say I should stop and start looking at the larger picture… But don’t you get it I am not going to lose out on a hundred small things for a big thing. And no its not that I do not want the big win.. the thrill. I do. I love it. But I do so love these other things as well.

It will make you lose focus they say.. B*******t. (sorry that had to be used)….I mean please credit me with some intelligence.. just because I am happy right now, does not mean I have let it go to my head.. I know where I come from. I know my strengths and more importantly my weaknesses.. and yes they are in multiple.. but this one thing I consider my strength…

I always have and always will be passionate about anything I do…. No other way to live.
Ok stop, this however does not mean that you will find me jumping and hyper always.. I like my moments of quietness too…. I like to take satisfaction in doing something which turns out great, and then sitting back in silence and reflecting… that is passion too… though in such cases it is not shown….

So, I am not a modest person. I never claimed to be one. Honesty, is something I pride myself with. Honesty not to others but to I. I am a selfish person at the end of the day I want to see only one individual happy and that’s me.

So here goes.. I will scream and shout.
I will cry and laugh.
I will will all my will
Till my will…


Boy that sounded :D …..

Snig