Blah blah and more blah

Sometimes the ironies of life are such...

When you want a conversation, everyone is busy.

When you want to be left alone, people will come seek you out.

When you want to keep a low profile, what you do becomes everyone else's business.

That's when I decide to rebel...

I keep quiet when I want to speak out. My silence works much better than my outburst.

When I realize I am not strong enough to bend will against instinct, I prefer to stay away from things.

And mostly, I smile when I am at my angriest. The argument ends without any permanent damage because the best fights are the ones we avoid :-)

Common Sense Vs Temper

Sometimes, we all are misunderstood and guess what, at the same damn time too! Be it the misunderstanding between friends, siblings, someone you care about or even colleagues, it affects you somehow. When the day has been long, tiring and anxiety ridden and the night just stretches like elastic with loads of anxious moments, you wonder whether to just snap or ignore. I even wonder why I'm even letting things get to me in the first place!!

I sometimes wonder whether the other person is wondering the exact same thing. When you feel angry enough to not want to speak at all, whether the other person is also debating whether to vent out or not. I always remind myself that and rush forward with the olive branch. And then I get angry when this is met with a Kroor Singh look!

Of course common sense tells me that it works better just to let things be until sanity and peace is restored. But, its so very hard to control yourself till then!

Scratchy notes - 3

I was just playing around with my blog a bit and I found it amusing that many people on this planet searched for the keywords "miss you daddy", "cute iyer girls", "iyer girls musings", "identity crisis", "cartoon dads birthday", "dell e5500" and ended up on my blog. Well, it makes sense because a few of my blog posts from the past contains those keywords or is somehow related to them. The curiously amusing part of it is that some poor souls who searched for "dear god help me please" also ended up here! Now, I am not surprised that there are people who even type such things.

What interests me most is did they find what they were looking for when they ended up on this blog? Well, I tried Googling the exact keywords but my blog didn't turn up in any of the search results. Wondering if the country of residence, browser or the search engine would make any difference!

When I started this blog a year and a half ago, it was merely a space for me to type down my thoughts. Writing helps calm me down and often is a means for me to wander inside my own imagination. I never expected to have an audience, let alone a following! My blog has turned out to be more than what I had meant it to be. Its found people - old friends and even new ones who were strangers before!

So, if any of you happen to type "dear god help me please" and end up reading this post here, I just want to say that - Hey, please do not despair. Everything will be alright. Just because all your prayers weren't answered doesn't mean you are loved any less. God probably might be having a bad day Himself or may be the communication link is broken temporarily :-)

Cheer up and stay happy...

Singing out loud

The best place at home to sing to my heart's content no matter how horribly I sing?? Hands down, its got to be the bathroom :-)

With the intimate comfort of the space, the wonderful sound effects and the warmth/chill of the shower, this is where most people think they can really sing! I am no exception. If you put me in front of 10 people, I might hesitate. But in the bathroom, you hear a different me. This is one place where I find solace.

Sometimes, bathrooms can be quite misleading, having you believe that you are better than you actually are! Just think about it. It makes you think that you are like a frog in the well i.e you are the master of your domain and no one is mightier than you. Also, you are surrounded by people who either love you no matter what because you are the apple of their eyes or loathe you or have something to gain from you or people who have this weird compulsive habit of lying. And these scenarios give you an absolute comfort and a great sense of invincibility.

But if you want to know your true worth, you have to throw yourself out there into the ocean and learn how to swim. Yes it would be foolish not to be prepared for what you undertake. Its always good to realize very soon that a million people would say you are very good but only a select few would be there to point out the mistakes that you make. I think the best thing to do is to listen to all, absorb what is needed and apply only the absolutes.

And while at it, you have to continue singing in the bathroom. Who knows what it might lead you to....may be the country's next singing sensation or may be yet another eureka moment!! :-)

Dream On

I am driving this giant eighteen wheeler along some coastal highway and suddenly a huge ice age mammoth comes flying out of nowhere and slams into my vehicle pushing me hard onto the guardrails just inches from the ocean cliff!! Later I find myself alone in a dense and eerie forest. A giant bear appears out of nowhere and belches a hungry growl just inches from my face!! And as if by some spell, I find myself caught in a tornado and my house is pulled off its foundation and gets thrust in this colorful fantasy land crushing a local witch. There is this adrenaline rush which yells at me to lift the house off the witch!!

Well, it looks like I've been watching too many fantasy adventure movies these days because I woke up to the above weirdest dream and it surprised me that I did remember quite a bit of that. Phew!!

Now, logic tells me that lifting a house is impossible for a single human being with regular human strength. However, I guess the mind is numb and immune to all this logic when it comes to dreams. So, in my dreams, I lift the house off the witch, I punch the bear in its face and also jump out of the sunroof right before my vehicle hits the watery grave!!

P.S -  Punching the bear on its face might hurt your hand after the adrenaline rush has worn off. I was icing my hand right after I woke up because in reality, I had hit the bed board!!! :-)

I am sorry moth

Today evening, as I sat in the balcony reading, the soft lights of the setting sun hit my face and it really felt wonderful sitting there and enjoying like never before.

Suddenly I felt a soft disturbance on my left hand and nonchalantly I flicked it with my other hand. I then saw something which seemed like a golden powder on the spot where I had felt the disturbance. I searched the balcony and found a small moth lying a bit far from where I sat. It lay there a little crippled and I felt really really bad about what I did. That moth could have been me!

I just wanted to write this down in order to lighten myself from what happened. I just hope I didn't damage the moth too much. One wing is very thinned with the loss of the color. The other lush golden wing told me what a proud beauty the damaged wing once was before I hurt it. The moth is still sitting in the balcony quietly. It flutters and jumps whenever I go near it and try to touch it.

I just hope it is able to recover, fly again and live like before. I really did not intend this. I am so sorry moth!!

There's a solution to every problem

My mother narrated this story to me the other day. She explained that every complex situation has a solution and that we should give it a try. Her advice has always helped me face various situations in my life. Hence I decided to share the story here.

Long long ago, in a small Indian village, there lived a farmer and his beautiful daughter. The farmer had the misfortune of owing a large sum of money to the village moneylender. The moneylender, who was old, ugly and cunning fancied the farmer's daughter and proposed a bargain that the farmer's debt would be forgiven if he married off his daughter to the moneylender. The farmer and his daughter were horrified listening to it. So were the villagers.

Upon this, the cunning moneylender suggested that they would let the divine providence decide their fate.

He suggested that he would put one black pebble and one white pebble into an empty money bag and ask the farmer's daughter to pick one from the bag. If the girl picked a black pebble, she would become his wife and her father's debt would be forgiven. If she picked a white pebble, she need not marry him and her father's debt would still be forgiven. But, if she refused to pick a pebble from the bag, her father would be imprisoned for the rest of his life.

So, on the decided day, when everyone was standing on a pebble strewn path and talking about the situation, the moneylender bent over to pick up two pebbles. But, the sharp eyed girl noticed that he had picked up two black pebbles on purpose and put it inside the empty moneybag and then asked the girl to pick one!

Now, imagine if you were the girl, what would you have done? Or if you had to advice the girl, what would you have told her? If you thought carefully, you'd see that there are three possibilities - Refuse to pick a pebble/ Expose the cunning nature of the moneylender by showing the villagers the two black pebbles/ Pick a black pebble and sacrifice her life in order to save her father from debt and imprisonment!

But, this is what the smart girl did -

The girl put her hand in the moneybag, drew out a pebble and without batting an eyelid, fumbled and dropped the pebble on the ground so that it got lost among the other pebbles on the path! Then she carefully said, "Oh, how clumsy of me. Never mind though. If you look at the pebble left in the bag, you'll know which color pebble I had picked".

Since the remaining pebble in the bag was black, everyone assumed she had picked the white one. Since the moneylender dared not admit his dishonesty, the girl changed an impossible situation into an extremely advantageous one without losing hope.

Moral of the story is that every complex situation has a solution. Also, the important thing about a problem is not the solution, but the strength we gain in finding the solution. We just have to keep trying without losing hope and we'll definitely come up with the best possible solution to any problem.

Just another thought...

People close to you let you down sometimes even after all the things you have done for them. I guess, they don't realize it until you stop doing it for them! I wonder, why does this always happen? The only answer I can think of at the moment is that we are humans and nobody is perfect! I know...I know...sounds silly doesn't it?

I guess the only way to avoid disappointments is not to have any kind of expectations from anyone at all. I don't really know if it helps. May be its just another wall we are building? After all, we are humans and there's always this slightest expectation. And lets just say, it was not met. Then, it definitely bothers us isn't it? Then, how do you solve this problem? The problem of not having any expectations at all? To not feel anything so that it wouldn't hurt you? To control your emotions?

Hmm...I have no idea!! I guess this is something to reflect on tonight....