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SCREAM

Memories of communication

It feels rather strange to even write about this. What could be just a change of hand set (Cellphone) to some is something else to someone.

i recently had to change my handset. As i didn't want to loose more data i quickly switched form my old to new handset and transferred the contact list. I don't change hand sets too often. So the last one i have been using for about 3 years now. I feel they were the most remarkable years of my life and i could see myself grow as a person, build more associations. i have moved miles closer to being Me. Stopped worrying about what others want me to be. and there are hundreds of communication with some and many, who have brought me where i stand today. Much at peace, much happier.

Many communications which make this part of 'my story' were trapped in that small device we all call Phone. Cell phones have become such a source of communication that this one with which i was parting, still held so much of information, things i would still go back to and ponder on, a text which made me smile, an angry word not yet buried, 'Just the care' needed in time, last communication with the friend i lost an appreciation which made me think world of me and many more ...

To retain all that, which was important enough for me, i made all the efforts to transfer the text history but without any success. i held the handset for days, till finally when i had to take a call on it and discard.

Today finally i was pushed to reformat it and erase all of that, though something someone said, made me over come almost an traumatic situation :) - Let it go, the experience of those moments will always be with you - isn't it!

YES IT IS and the the people who made them are still with me. I look forward to creation of those new moments with them ...with us

Keep It Simple Stupid ( Silly - i heard is more 'acceptable')

some one said that to me long time back, about some one. Interestingly in those days i was simple enough to for anyone to say that to me.

Recently have been toiling over creating my on space, wanting to feel the air under my wings and wanting to fly. always cribbing around how things have not been working. Trying really hard for those who know i am when i mean it. But still not being able to make it happen for myself.

Made mistakes and learnt from them - but still being pulled down all the time for the same. not finding space and time to make it to the run way to fly.

Though the thought had often crossed me - that there is something wrong in the way i am thinking - i just have to believe it, i just have to do it - no amount of preparation, explaining others was anyway going to help. I have to do it myself. But like the salt in the food there was something missing. Now over years it is getting to a point of frustration and twitching between belief and disbelief in things hope and despair.

Till this morning i saw this video;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo0Cazxj_yc

being always excited about adventure and sports it was exciting and it just got me thinking- how come people can do it or even imagine that something like this is possible - Walking on water ??

just then i realized what i was doing to my own dreams, its not about the plans one makes, its not about figuring out how it works, its just Simple FLY

all the acts in this video were for possible (for me) because they just believed it can be done and i guess that is all I needed to know this morning.

To all those who i believe in and who have helped me believe in ME

'Eyes only'

Recently i was out again traveling and at an interesting country side. The most interesting of it was the mountains rising from flat lands forming plateau and into become part of the magnificent Western Ghats.

All mornings i went for a long walk, challenging myself on most of the available mornings. I enjoyed the smell of the wood the perfume of the earth, the bird cheer, at intervals disturbed by honking horns of the trucks. It was just nice being in that place, just sensing the place at it is. having a peep at the lives of the people in the village, seeing their morning routines with herds and water and ...

Till one day as i was crossing the gate, on to the road, the sky followed by the highlighted mountains caught my attention. Photography being one of passions, i went back to the room to get my cam. And sure the batteries had run down. I went back to change them with another set and they were uncharged too.

On my return i made sure that i keep one set to charge over nite and so did i. next day morning the sky was even nicer, more deeper and just the right amount of light when i started. completely excited i went with my camera looking forward to capturing all the sights i had seen over days. Already looking forward to changing the picture on my desktop. I was glad to start early and be able to capture the rising crescendo of light over those splendorous mountains.

I opened the cap of the lance, looked at this dry, dark long tree behind which a rising deep peach light glowed the sky followed by ruffled clouds and the mountain in their profile. I pushed my finger over the 'on' button and bang came the message 'batteries exhausted' :)

for a moment i felt dam! but just the next site took the negativity away and i remembered words of my good friend who once said, Some sites are for 'Eyes Only'

The precious ice

I love mornings, sinking into a big chair and having this big mug of coffee, the news playing in background and I doing my own thing, not too much of conversation ….Just the perfect morning for me.

What often irritates me is my pestering maid calling me for every other thing and for sure, they will never come up but expect me to go to them. I guess I have a habit of spoiling people. So like most odd days today morning she pestered me for something and I know it would not be too important and I continued ironing. I ignored the call the first time around, the second time and then I heard she saying ‘but if I keep it on the platform it will be all water water everywhere’. It drew my curiosity, as to what will ooze water, and what is she talking about.

Yes it was ice, some extra vessels of ice I had drawn out of deep fridge to wash, but what seemed unimportant to me, was so precious to her. The pestering brought back some memories of how life has changed and we just let it pass by.

Very early in life, my working mom had felt the need of fridge, we often had neighbors coming for ice if someone was ill in the house. We as children used to feel very important by sharing ‘our’ ice. I remember how it became quite a issue of fight in the house when people started asking for ice for cooling water in summer. But with more and most houses having fridge, over years I had lost its importance, it was just a thing like …………………..? Hey, can’t think of what, first I thought sugar, but no would not throw sugar, may be like water.

Interesting what a brick of ice could do to my morning, it took me to my childhood and my amazing memories with my sister
I feel she and I will remember this throwing of ice for a little too long then just looking at it an errand in the morning……….
Have a great day :)

Strange feeling in a strange country...

After a few things that happened in Gujarat, I no more feel that I know Ahmadabad – Gujarat, as I used to. It’s a place have grown up close to have had friends, have chilled out, spent my most boisterous days in. This is not the best blog I would have written, though it was something which needed expression for me, so just penning down an attempt of becoming a stranger in the city which has become strange to me.
Even as I write this blog – in a min bus a loud spoken, tobacco chewing idiot looks over my shoulder and I catch him reading over screen of my laptop. I give him a very ugly look at what he is doing, in a way enough to suggest that it is most unappreciated thing.
Yes so this is how Ahmadabad keeps annoying me these days. Any way with a lot of conviction, I try to become a stranger and rediscover the place to overcome my biases; this for all reasons has not stood the test of events, though my shot at it. When I landed the beginning of the week, had decided to drop all the unpleasant feelings I had about the place and give it a new try. Make my way through city as I would operate in any other city which was not known to me.
To begin with I have this very critiquing taxi driver dropping me to my destination from the airport, who was talking about the general attitude of the people and how annoyed he feels with the growing indiscipline ( in this case in traffic). He asks me more specifications on where I have to be dropped and I tell him about a petrol pump in the area which was landmark. Ahmadabad has had this, long time back, of having petrol pumps as land mark. He asks me which one and tells me that 3 more have cropped up in the area. Then we talk of times when the one I knew was the only one which was there in the area. He goes nostalgic sharing about the changes the city has gone through , further driving me nostalgic enough to the times I have spend in that area with a bunch of friends. Some pleasant memories flash back.
Later in the evening I join one of my extended family and we plan to have eggs for the evening. As I am from Pune, an egg based menu would need shopping not more than 5 minutes of distance. But, yes for sure I braced myself. As I with my relative spend more than 15 minutes on the bike; I am being told how he has identified this one egg shop in one of the corners. We go to this lazy old shop, and I order eggs. The assistant waits for the owner to ask him to give them to us and he also hands over a black plastic bag, so that it would not be identifiable what is that I have purchased. The next hunt is to buy some good bread. So I guess the city has grown in terms of size and the diversity of brands and now I just got to know that Ahmadabad has just been identified as the 3rd fastest growing city , but I guess it still does not have diversity and multi-cultural growth in its plans.
The city for sure has become very machoistic and women being assumed more dispensable, my confidence of traveling alone in the city which had shaken in between in late evenings is slowly growing. Some of the administrative aspects really take you by surprise; the infrastructure development is something which is really noticeable. But you scratch the surface and people tell you how the gap between the ‘have and have nots’ has been growing wider. I don’t know when for me this city will just be another place that does not matter or I will be able to drop my difference with it. But I guess my experiment as a visitor in the city seems to be helping, just that acting bit doesn’t come easily to me.
Signing out form Ahmadabad, till the next time.

Aaman ki asha...

Admits such a lot of noise on the Judgment on the peace of land in Ayodhya, that is all it is for me, there have been different reactions and it has been quite an effort to say away from this.

The pattern of these reactions have been quite interesting...
I realized since some time back that i have been receiving some of these chain mails about the different opinions and discussion related to judgment and people saying 'Finally' and expressing fear and raising a lot of emotions around it, it was uncanny though to see most of them were from meteors, and my immediate reaction was, once again they need a new hype this week to hook on to, almost the same way most of us hooked on to TV channels during the Bombay attack.

At home i have been constantly reminded by 'family' how big this judgment is, how we can not be ignorant, we have to be careful and it could be quite and thing and all. i was sleeping on this, till i received a call this after noon from my child's daycare, that they are closing down. And they believed that the kids better be 'safe' with their families. As i finish this blog i go to pic my kid up.

One of the most wired aspect i realized this morning of the judgment was assessing social feeling when the Mosque was built in the first place some 300+ years ago and i don't know how we could ever be able to do so and what is the need ...

ANYWAY ....

Amidst all this euphoria what touched me and built my confidence in community leaving and warmth was this little incident yesterday ...
I was at this store close to my house buying the cartridge of water filter, as i was settling the bill a man unknown to the shopkeeper, middle aged, just another person, climbed up in the shop and asked the owner- 'Kal Aaman ki asha hai na?'

The shopkeeper was confused about what he asked. i did hear the words clearly but was amused, i asked the shopkeeper if he knew him, he said no and then he looks back at this gentleman and asks- what did you say and both of us repeat in chorus 'Kal aaman ki asha hai na?'. He then realised, what it was in reference to and he did not miss a sec to respond - Definitely So

I nursed a dream to myself, hope there are many more like him moving around...