At the best of times, it doesn't really matter.

At the worst of times, by flux or otherwise, at least in the meta physical sense, I tend to be standing alone in the face of the stormy winds. Those times when the moral support of the loved many fills but three fourths of the void. Those times when all you crave is a simple smile, a warm hand, if not a full hug.

Times like those, you get a chance to see what it must feel like to be really poor, to be standing outside a restaurant and not have money, you know, those sad, sad things....

Those times....
What is it that they say? History repeats itself. And there is a pattern to that as well....

Damn!

Along Life's Journey

Life, I mention somewhere in posts before this, is the greatest journey I have ever been on. And it continues. I have, in this journey, met hundreds of people. Some I remember enough to become footnotes for me. Some stay on, some, despite all efforts, don't. Or rather cannot. What do you say to them those who get off mid-way?

My journey has been, for lack of a better word, an incredible one. And I include the good and bad part of it. Family is something that you are born into. My friends....except for perhaps the best friend Raksha, I met the rest of my bestest friends in the most unusual of circumstances---on bicycle rides from school in another state to an assignment to college to another random meeting at work. I have been told off for the friends I have, well, that's another saga for another day. I shall not talk of them that form my support system.

What can I say today? People come in, travel a while in this journey with me and get off. There is often pain at that, in various degrees. There is shock at the unexpected, at the unannounced. All I have today is the best of wishes. A hope that all lives that touched mine are happy always. Goodbyes are never nice words. I would prefer good wishes, good luck and take cares.

And that is all I have, all that is left. No clever quotes, no lines of melancholic songs, no screen of mist before my eyes, no smart lines to write. Just a take care. Just a wish for happiness and peace forever along other individual journeys.

Life is Beautiful (Though Conditions Still Apply)

Rambling is easy, isn't it? Just pull all thoughts from your brain and throw it out there, out wherever, and breathe in relief, its no longer screaming at you in your head. Well, the thoughts are "out there" but the reasons and the issues never really go away.

Sometimes, life or people in it try to teach you something. Rebel that I am, I resist and scream and shout, but life wins, most of the time. At other times, it lets me have the delusion that I have won, but the lesson I learn either ways.

If I sift and sort through all the layers and peel apart the many worries that plague the days and the brief nights, I notice that, conditions applied, life is still beautiful. Not screaming from the rooftops, jumping with joy kind of happiness, but there is still a lot to smile and laugh about.

There are beautiful people, lovely times, each memory a page I can later turn back to and smile again, fleeting moments that, collectively, make it all worth it.I might not agree with myself on some days, but given a choice now, I wouldn't have wanted life any other way. It is, after all, a strange ride. And I can proudly tell the world, I survived.

And that is what makes life, my life, the greatest journey I have ever been on.

Originally posted at http://thoughtsthatcomeby.blogspot.com

A Sigh of Peace and Paradise

"This is what happiness was---he'd never known it before; this melting away, this exaltation, your guts spilling into your head, filling your eyes---your mind transformed into your body, your body instinct with the joy in your mind; this sensation of reality having met its end." Amitav Ghosh, The Glass Palace

It hasn't been any time lately that I felt this way, this happy, this exaltation, this utter joy. Life, I find, has other plans for you; such exaltation just a rare treat when you are good. Not that I have been the picture of goodness often. But happy I must say I am. If not over the top, cloud 9, yippeeee kind of happy, at least peaceful, I am breathing again kind of happy.

The latest one was going home. When a place looks as alive and beautiful as it does in the pictures above, you cannot but feel that pang of joy. We have a little stream in our fields below the house. Ma was telling me one night about how it had overflown in just under three hours, its tiny banks bursting, after a bout of lashing rains. I just knew then I had to revisit childhood again.

I have always wanted to be in Cherrapunji during the monsoon, even after it has been usurped from its wettest place on earth post. I like to believe it would be just as beautiful as Madikeri during the rains. Wet, very very cold, misty. It was through all this that we forced ourselves out of bed every morning for school. It was quite impossible to stay dry; I don't think I ever went to school dry, unless Appa was dropping me. The rains thunder down from the sides there; with strong rains, it was impossible that you could keep yourself and the books dry. The books invariably won that battle.

But I tell you, monsoon in Madikeri is as romantic an image of paradise as you can get. It gets cold, very much so. Forget rain dancing, a single drop is enough to start shivering there. What seems fantasy now was what I did almost every afternoon, curl up in bed with a book, a hot cup of coffee, a thick blanket, possibly a diary too, for those rushing thoughts. It has remained, the epitome of romanticism, the urge for every rainy day thereafter.

And there I was, soaking it in again. The cold. The rain. Getting wet. The gush of wind on my face. The wetness. Green the colour of live. Home. The joy and exaltation of being a pahadi, a girl of the hills.

The mountains. There was a peace and a brief peep into childhood, its simplicities, its dreams.

And it was raining in paradise.