PMS woes

I am one of those women who undergo some really crazy mood swings starting 10-12 days before my period. That is almost half a month. My body goes through such drastic ups and downs that it becomes very difficult for me to handle. I suffer from PCOS, for which I take birth control pills to regularize my period. The first side effect of these pills is mood swing. I am not making this up, I cried at a YouTube video this evening where people were prepping for the Boston Marathon and I saw a man running with a wheelchair on which his loved one was enjoying the fresh breath of air.

I am blessed with a brother who has seen me go through the painful and irritable process and always made sure that he gave me the space or attention as needed. It turned out quite well when he started dating a girl and would do the same for her. But not everyone can be that understanding, even if they want to. Some of the common questions asked to me are:

“What can I do to help?” “How can I make this better?” “Am I doing anything wrong?”

The answer to all of these is - I don’t know. I cannot tell you how you can make this better for me. I cannot possibly give you any suggestion when I am not able to handle myself in these times. One moment I am euphoric, the other moment I am crying, and later I am stuffing my face with food that is totally not good for me. I know I should try and get in a light workout, but getting out of bed becomes such a task, that it all just seems far fetched. Sometimes even a person next to me breathing loudly makes me flip.

I am not using this as an excuse to do whatever I want. I don’t even know why I feel the need to put this out there, but it would be nice to have someone at least trying to understand that it is not in my hands, how I react to situations. Sometimes one just needs that someone to hug them and hold them and tell them that everything is going to be okay. Seems like this is a lot to ask for.

Sometimes we feel the need to remind people to be a little more considerate towards us, but repeating it every month only leads to making the opposite person frustrated. Where does that leave us? Nowhere. Possibly wanting to punch another person for breathing too loudly next to us.
The amusing part is that they used to do it all for you before. They used to keep track of your dates. They used to be OKAY with your mood swings. I guess its just a chore now. When it becomes a chore, we just have to let go.

Where’s my bar of chocolate?

Clusterfuck.

SNAFU. FUBAR.

Charlie Foxtrot.

Some of the terms I can associate my life with at this very instant. I wish I could go ahead and post something cryptic yet philosophical, make some smart references, throw in a metaphor or two here and there but the fact will still remain. My life is a clusterfuck.

I am nothing if not a planner and the plan I had for my life has long fallen flat, caught fire and burned to ashes at this stage. I have no focus, no direction, I am ready to go anywhere, but its just that I have no destination. Some may call this living on the edge, taking it one day at a time, but it just makes me feel sorry for myself at the end of the day, for being okay with achieving even something that is close to nothing. Why am I okay with this? Am I really prepared for living my life this way? I don't know.

Its supposed to be the festive season, and I am sitting at home, alone, typing a blog post about how miserable my life is, while I am almost dizzy with the medication for my flu. I don't see the point in dressing up anymore. I don't feel the festive spirit. No one's smiling around me. I have no energy to say anything positive to anyone either.

Emotionally I am not doing great either. I wish I could elaborate. But it'll just make me cry. That's the thing with clusterfucks. Its all haywire.

Snip.

You know, I have realized that having to lose weight is not just a physical but a mental process. Once you dig deep enough to get to the point where you're so lost, you don't know what to do or say or think, when you break down and cry like a baby, when you let go off that tough exterior, you lose a lot of emotional baggage and that shows on the weighing scale as well as on your body too. I am still a work in progress as far as all this goes, but I think I am ready to be out with the old and in with what and who really matters.

Over the years I have spoken about de cluttering and letting go but when we say we let go of things, we sometimes bury some emotions just because we are not in the state of facing them at all. Those emotions, in our opinion are not worth the hurt and tears, but they cause us more damage than we can think. Every time we talk to someone we are seemingly opening up to, we speak about either having some emotional skeletons in our closet or having gone through a lot in life and being able to feel the pain of some people because we experienced it at some point in our past. Did we really deal with those emotions at all?

I guess we need to fish out all those buried emotions from inside, and deal with them, cry over them, and when we talk to people the next time, we think to ourselves that as much as we are aware of how it felt, we are so glad that we are not in a place that we can feel it anymore.

I just wrote a Dear John letter to my jerk of an ex boyfriend. Although it has been several years since we broke up, I guess there was some part of me that kept certain emotions locked inside. It would have been another story if it was anything happy but all those memories are of disapproval and betrayal. I wrote to him saying that I forgive him for everything he did, not because of any other thing but for my own peace of mind.

I feel light headed already. He will probably send me an email back with a list of swear words I would have never heard of, but you know what, I forgive him. I will update on how this affected my weight loss goals next week. 

Love, thou art a funny, funny thing indeed.

Here’s why I get in trouble time and again, coz I love. I love love and I love to love. Love for me is not something that is between people who are intimately involved or in a relationship or married, but way more than that. I am the kind of person who would also say “I love you” to friends, or just people whom I love.

But with love also comes a certain degree of possessiveness. And that is fine by me as long as it does not result into over possessiveness or obsession. I also get protective and possessive about everyone I love, which is why I have had hard times when my friends started dating guys and I felt like they were ignoring me for no reason. I was a kid back then. Slowly I learned how things worked and worked my way around it.

But this, this was something special. This was love. Every time I said to you that I love you, I got a warm and fuzzy feeling in my heart. I thought it was the same with you. But there I went assuming and I made an ass out of you and me. So when I saw you say “I love you” to her, I died a little inside, and when I saw her say “I love you too” I died a little more.

It’s funny because we’ve been through our share of hard times and eventually reconciled but now its making me feel whether it was just for the heck of it or was it truly because you missed me?

Now when I even think of saying “I Love You” to you, I cringe a little, inside.

Walking down the memory lane.

I have been staring at this empty typing box for 5 minutes before I actually started typing. Too much to be told, things that were never said before, bonds that no one understood, and an utter load of confusion. But alas, there are no regrets. Hope still keeps the day alive.

When I look back at the first post on this blog, I see what a long way I have come and how many changes took place, I am a completely different person now. In retrospect, I just grew up. Still growing up. Growing more aware of everything and the conscience has started to matter more than it ever did, till date. I am becoming good people, people! Time to change my blog link? I don't know that yet.

I met people who changed my life and molded me into the way I am today and I am thankful to each and every one of them. I am sorry for the things that should have been but did not turn out to be, and I am happy that what was meant to be happened in that moment. The sad part is that I don't know whether I would be able to love anyone the same way ever again. I don't know if I will be able to trust someone again.

But what if someone came along and made all that numbness and void go away?
The hope still remains.

That time of the month.

No, I am not talking about PMS, for all those who are wondering.

It's that time of the month, where you just wanna take a rain check on everything just because you are so overwhelmed with all the information that comes to you, good or bad. You just wanna hit the pause button and breathe for a second. You feel happy, sad, angry, excited and upset all at the same time. To sum it up in two words, you feel "messed up". But with people like me this is the story of our lives. Happens with us more often than not. And I love it this way.

This is that time of the year when I go on and on about de-cluttering our closets and hence our lives. With Diwali around the corner I have no other option but to clean my room (It is not dirty, just that I like to collect a lot of unwanted stuff) and discard what is really not required - like bills from a restaurant which is a decade old, or clothes that are never going to fit me again, to my high school notes to old embarrassing diaries. The diary bit, I like. Every year I read it and I evaluate myself. But this time, in the middle of a huge pile of unwanted paperwork, I found an old CD with my ex's name written on it. Curiosity always kills the Cat and I am no exception. I had to check out what was in that CD. In my usual situation, waterworks would follow looking at all those pictures and videos of us together, and all the songs we loved listening to, everything. But you know what, I am alright. I feel happy.

Exes can never be friends - A lesson which I thought I had learned. But then you know what, it is okay to be friends with your exes as long as you know the boundaries and can categorize your heart and mind well. I was friends with one of my exes for a long time till my notion was changed by my recent ex. I am sure my recent ex still wants me to be friends with him as do I, and that is the biggest contradiction to the exes-cannot-be-friends theory. One of the reasons why this does not hold true in my case is that none of my break ups have been ugly. There was no name calling, no hurling abuses, no disrespect and no grudges. So why not be friends then?

I don't know why am I writing all this on here, it is just I am so overwhelmed after watching those videos and seeing the pictures, the whole journey is just flashing right before my eyes. I was this irresponsible, immature, unaware and hyper excited girl, just so happy to be all by herself for once, and look at where I am now. I mean the difference is massive. The sheer loudness in my volume and actions had me sitting jaw dropped in front of my computer screen in a state of a minor shock. The looseness of my posture, the body language, the dressing sense, the messy hair, the skin... I could go on and on. I am kinda freaked out right now. I know I am at a much better place, and can analyze things and have a better judgment of people. I have learned to forgive and I have learned to apologize. I do not have any regrets, and after all, this is how growing up happens right?

It's just that when I look at girls in their late teens now, and see them behaving the exact same way like I did when I was about their age, I probably would try to cut them some slack. One should never jump to conclusions with anyone. Someone very special to me told me that every one is unique. Einstein failed his 10th grade, perhaps because he sucked at sitting there and mugging up everything. But he went on and found out the theory of relativity and much more. Everyone has something special about them. You have something really special about you too. Some people even are really good at being bad people. Just their specialization I guess.

I lost a distant cousin this evening. He was on the bike with his wife and their 8 month old baby, and he passed away on the spot. His wife is under intensive care. The baby is scratch less... I really don't deal with any news involving deaths very well. I just go numb. I don't cry. I don't feel anything. I am feeling very sorry though. But the sheer thought of death of anyone that I love scares the hell out of me. I think it is just a downside of starting to love your life. Ha, you hate your life and you get lemons, when you love it, you still get lemons. But I would still choose to go from here putting on a happy face.

I have a friend who I have lost complete touch with. She lives on the other side of this world. The thing is, while I lost touch with her, I became a good friend of her younger sister who is in her late teens. She is going through a pretty tough time right now. An unwanted pregnancy. Too late to abort. She hasn't told anyone and is living at a shelter as of now. She has a sleeping disorder so she cannot sleep on time. She cannot eat anything because she pukes out most of the food she eats. There are very few times where I have nothing to say, and this is one of those. I just wish her the best and hope she finds the strength to face all this with a brave shield.

On top of all that, I read a blog post today talking about the ABCs of having gal pals without the drama. A lot of that made sense to me. And then I realized that I do have some really cool ladies in my life, more than I would care to admit. Guys in my life are pretty practical and good friends but I'm telling you, when you start looking better, most of them start getting attracted to you and then it all just spirals down into nothingness. So I am happy with my girlies, whom I never gave any credit for being as amazing as they are, and will continue to stay so.

I am just so overwhelmed with everything that is going around me right now, and somehow it is just not enough no matter how much I try to sum it up into words. I am trying to direct it in the most positive way possible, and I really cannot get myself to talk to anyone about all this. But, for the first time since I started my blog, I feel like I am talking to you guys. Just a stupid rant though!

Growing Up = Letting Go.

Life has been throwing minor punches in my face so frequently over the past few months that I have become non responsive and have decided to give in and absorb what I can. There were numerous instances when I thought about going ahead and blogging about it, but you know what, it all felt incomplete. Like there is a lot more coming my way. Playing Miss Spongebob has helped me in more ways than I can imagine and introspection in itself has been dug deep into and revelations that took place only brought out how much in denial I had been living for the past half a decade. But that is all part of growing up, right? Right.

From indulging into retail therapy to realizing the importance of knowing my body as a medium to know myself, from turning into a social animal to embracing something I knew always existed within me but never found the drive to give my everything to it, from changing my wardrobe to changing my look, from deleting my laptop and computer history to renaming every single folder on there, from reading between the lines to regretting being a whorezilla to people, it has been a real steep learning curve, and only one thing has been constant - Change.

I think one can only find happiness inside their heart when they learn to let go. Let it go people, for real. Coz the best feeling in this world is when you forgive people, when you forgive yourselves, and keep this in mind that life is nothing but a series of changes, which you will keep adapting to, now and forever. I have had a hard time letting go of people who managed to hurt me, and here's the thing about that - people can hurt me only if they have been that close to me or have had me love them at one point or the other. I do not get hurt by strangers. But when I do get hurt, I find myself in that awkward spot where I feel they might have belittled me just coz I loved them unconditionally, which in turn unleashes the bitchy whore in me. And then I just spew out words right from my emotional gutter, inventing new things and just filling out my own heart with hatred. That was so not cool. I should specify one thing though, no matter how much hate I send at you, I will NEVER, EVER wish badly for you. I can promise you that much.

But here I am, apologizing my heart out to anyone I might have bitched about, knowingly or unknowingly, or hurt them in any way whatsoever. Except one person, who hurt me so bad that I have not found it in my heart to be nice to them yet. I don't think that's gonna happen either. But yeah, other than that, Please forgive me guys, and know that I love all of you the same.

Life, like it is.

I have been learning this more and more as each day passes - Life is unpredictable. Just when you think you've got it all figured out, it pulls you down to rock bottom and just when you have almost given up and have no more hopes, it shows you how beautiful it is. The more we get comfortable, the harder we hit the floor when we fall. So I am trying consciously to not take it for granted. I say that every time. Let us hope I stick to it this time.

I spoke of a plan. But I have realized that although there is a plan, you have no control over it. It is all destiny. Now I know some of you would come up with all that "I make my own destiny" and stuff like that, and I myself believe that destiny does not mean you leave everything up to it and stop doing things on your own, but there is a plan.

As for now I am trying to cope up with the changes in my life. Things seem to look up but I can only embrace all that with open arms - with a slight reluctance in my mind that it can change any moment, any time. Perspectives have been changing and things are being re considered. Procrastination is taking a backseat while de-cluttering steers the vessel of my life. Funny how a hot cup of coffee and the perfect weather outside can string out all the thoughts like unwinding a ball of yarn.

Hope everyone is doing well!

This was not part of the plan

This was not part of the plan. This, my life. My close friend told me that maybe this was a part of a bigger plan. I certainly hope so. I wanted to be somewhere else. I wanted to be someone else. I wanted to be with someone, forget someone else. I do not rant here. I do not want to rant here. I should not rant here. On another note, maybe my life is taking a turn for the better, coz it couldn't get any worse, really. I am thinking of shutting this blog down. Too many memories. But then again, I can erase them from here. What do I do with my mind? Funny.

I felt like writing but...

... There is nothing to say. So I'm gonna leave this post blank.









































Peace.

Prose Mashup : You Found Me v/s Remembering Sunday

He woke up from dreaming and put on his shoes
Started making his way past 2 in the morning
He hasn't been sober for days.....

The sudden realization of urgency makes us more impatient with every passing tick on the clock. Search for it inside, outside, around and beyond... Only to ask ourselves.. What exactly am I looking for here? Can't think straight, loss of focus, never knew that a void this huge existed within.

Where were you
When everything was falling apart?
All my days
Were spent by the telephone
That never rang
And all I needed was a call
That never came
To the corner of First and Amistad

You get comfortable with your discomfort. It doesn't even hurt anymore. Loneliness feels like a sweet, sweet pain. You scream it out loud, but no one can hear it, coz' you've built a soundproof wall all around yourself. I recently read somewhere- sometimes, the walls that we build around us aren't necessarily there to keep people out, but to see who cares enough and is worthy enough to break in. But all that you get to hear is your own echo, and you think,' I'm okay that way'. You let someone into your life and they just break your heart into pieces then walk all over it. Maybe the only person that you can trust is yourself after all.

Even though she doesn't believe in love,
He's determined to call her bluff
Who could deny these butterflies?
They're filling his gut
Waking the neighbors, unfamiliar faces
He pleads though he tries
But he's only denied
Now he's dying to get inside

*humming to self*"Lost and insecure.... You found me... Lying on the floor.. Surrounded... Why'd you have to wait, where were you?... Just a little late.... You found me.." WHY NOW? you were not here when you had to be, then why bother now? You could have just lied to me, you know!

Why'd you have to wait?
To find me, to find me...

Turn off that radio, take a nice hot shower, look at yourself in the mirror, It looks unbearable. But hey the good side is that you have now perfectly learnt to mask your emotions behind that fake smile. No, but the eyes don't lie. A silent tear rolls down your cheek...

I'm not coming back ,
I've done something so terrible
I'm terrified to speak ,
But you'd expect that from me
I'm mixed up, I'll be blunt, now the rain is just
Washing you out of my hair and out of my mind
Keeping an eye on the world,
From so many thousands of feet off the ground, I'm over you now
I'm at home in the clouds, and towering over your head

.... you wipe that tear, and then you smile at yourself. Perfect. No one will notice.

Well I guess I'll go home now...
I guess I'll go home now...
I guess I'll go home now...
I guess I'll go home.

Rotten Apples

It really sucks when someone you are awfully close to goes missing without any notice. I mean, what are you supposed to do? Wait for them when there are no signs of them showing up day after day after day? Or are you supposed to be worried about them when there is no way of reaching them except for email and messages to which you receive no response? Are you supposed to be angry at them for not being available, or are you supposed to feel the constant blues?

Our mind is really funny... Sometimes it gets attached to an idea of a person, the person we want to be, or the person we want to be with, or the person we want to fall for, just the whole idea is so amusing that we start living in an illusion which makes us happy and keeps us going, gives us the motivation to move ahead.

The point which confuses me is, since there is an almost invisible line between reality and illusion... How far can we go? How far could we believe it? People come and go but some of them, we really want to stay besides us. So do we let the real person go and keep staying with the illusion?

Don't know if any of you is familiar with this feeling...
Life's a bitch like that!

New Year Checklist

First of all, wishing everyone a very happy new year!

Thought of having me a checklist this year :) Let's see how well I do at the end of the year :P

1. Health is wealth. Concentrate on my health and overall well being.

3. Learn to get out of my shell. Dance like no ones watching me.

4. Focus more on my career path this year. Get a freaking job!

5. Take a trip, with a friend. Or even all alone. Just some me time.

6. Learn to trust people. But not to over trust them.

7. Give space, take space. Give respect, take respect.

8. Buy a new cellphone.

9. Get a new hair do.

10. Try to blog regularly :P

11. Try to learn a new language. Not the basic, but the advanced.

12. Buy at least 4 new pairs of shoes. It is harder than it seems when you have a size 13 women shoe :P

13. Change my blog url.

Well that is it (for now)
I would love yo know your checklists!! Leave a comment :)
Wish you guys a very very happy 2011 once again!
Love,
Me.

Why I love Christmas...

Christmas holds a special place in my heart since I can remember. It's not just a festival for me, but a complete season. The atmosphere is buzzing with the festive spirit all around the world, and it times the perfect mark for closing the ends and opening new beginnings. Now before any of you start to think why am I so biased towards Christmas, let me clarify... I have my reasons for why I love this beautiful season!

When I was a little girl, I used to write notes to Santa every year and put them up in my socks every Christmas eve, and the morning excitement knew no bounds :) One year I wrote to Santa to get me a big ol' Christmas Tree, and guess what, I got it! :P A 5 feet long artificial tree <3 I have managed to put up a Christmas Tree almost every year since then, and I decorate it with lots of cotton and all those small gift boxes, and bells, and ribbons, everything!

It's funny that even when the time has changed, and decades have passed by, Christmas still manages to evoke the same feeling in my heart, every year, year after year. I found out who my Santa was, and grew up eventually, but the excitement still remains! Add to it, the weather is beautiful this time of the year, and there is no noise, smoke or pollution involved. The carols playing in the background make you wanna smile instantly, no matter how sad you are.

This Christmas is quite different to me as compared to the last few years. It does mark the ending of an end and the beginning of a new season, of love. It marks the beginning of a new person, a new attitude, a new approach, and a new goal. So this December, I put an end to all the misery and promise myself to remember myself, and cherish the people I love. I apologize to everyone whom I have hurt, knowingly or unknowingly, or have spoken badly of. I forgive everyone who was bad to me, and hurt me or made me upset. I do this because, 2010 was a really bad year for most of the people including me, and I hit rock bottom, but now I have nowhere to go, except up. So here I am, starting on a brand new page, with nothing but smiles and love to give, and forget all the pain and sorrow.

Wishing everyone a Merry Christmas and a very happy 2011 :)
Me.

Nothing Else Matters

So close, no matter how far
Couldn't be much more from the heart
Forever trusting who we are
And nothing else matters

I can see you, right in front of me. But when I reach out my hand, it just passes through you. Are you even real? To a small child, you're the box of chocolates; to a teenager you're that first crush, to an unemployed man, you're his job; to a workaholic you're that sleep, to an aching soul, you're the peace. I yearn for you, I want you, I need you. I cannot have you. But I know one thing, I'm gonna get you! I have always been so unsure of myself, many times, I tried to run away from it, and now when I embraced it, it just made me so sure about everything. It all just made sense.

.... Glad to be back on Blogger after a long long hibernation phase. Missed you guys tonnes! How have you all been doing? I would be so happy if you drop a holla back! Will start posting soon! :)

Au Revoir, 2009

It's been so long since I last blogged. No, it was not 'writer's block', it was not boredom, it was not that I was busy, it was not that I was off internet, but you know, just did not feel like it. And suddenly today realization dawned upon me and I woke up to the fact that it's been over a year since I have been blogging. Unknowingly, I also did a very good thing in 2008. I started blogging in December, so now it's helping me analyze a lot of stuff as 2010 is knocking on my door.

So since I did not celebrate my Blog-Birthday, I might as well just press the rewind button and share with all you guys, and myself, as to what I learned this year. Here it goes:

- Facebook is way beyond connecting with people. Thanks to Mafia Wars, Cafe World and Sorority Life, I have been finding new means to keep myself motivated and focused :P

- There is a lot more than hard work involved in success. In my case, there needs to be luck, and a lot of weight loss. Increases the brand value, you see :D

- Blogging is about speaking out. At least for me, it is a medium to convey what I think, how I think. Somewhere in the middle I kinda got so lost in pleasing myself and learning new things and in the process I forgot to express myself. Also since blogging is so close to my heart, it affected my thought process too. So anyway, my point is... Be yourself! It's a good feeling.

- There are very few genuine friends you can find. So don't lose the ones whom you have already. And get rid of the bad mangoes before they start spoiling your life too :P

- Friendship has no boundaries. But sometimes, you have to maintain distance anyway.

- Love is tough.

- Keep looking forward.

- Eat to lose weight :P (Very important one)

- Think positive, and believe in yourself.

- I am turning into a woman from a girl now :| So accepting the facts :P

I always look back at the year that passed and wonder how quickly it went by. And I always look forward to enjoying the year that is coming ahead. 2009, not so good. So 2010, you better be better!

Au Revoir, 2009... Good riddance to bad rubbish :D But you made me a better person anyway. So thank you!

Have a very happy 2010 people!

Uh... Happy Diwali...

Hello Everybody,

It's been a while that I have been unable to write anything on my blog. Some call it writer's block, but I needed some time out before I could get back to expressing myself full throttle once again. I hope all of you caught up on a lot of other interesting stuff, which reminds me that I have to go through all the blogs that I follow!

Well, I was thinking of writing something on this blog for over a month, but I was not able to bridge the gap between thinking of writing and actually coming up with something. But this evening, I knew I HAD TO put this up here. Diwali is such a festival, it makes us do things in mysterious ways. Be it re-connecting with people you have been avoiding all year, or totally dumping the balanced diet program for a hearty portion of sweets. Be it meeting your relatives whom you hate from the core of your heart, or text a friend whom you have been maintaining constant distance from, for a long time. Diwali just serves as the perfect excuse.

For most of the people, this festival is all about shopping, and eating, and earning money from various sources, and shopping some more, and bursting crackers, and..... STOP. This is exactly what I want to talk about. Bursting crackers. I used to love bursting crackers as a teenaged girl. I was too scared of them before teenage and once I got the hang of it then there was no stopping me. I would burst all kinds of Rassi Bomb, Fuljhadi, Fountain, Parachute, Gol Chakri, Cylinders, and even those Snakes. I used to light those red crackers up and throw them in the air. What a dare devil!

This year I'm just not feeling the Diwali spirit. For one thing, and the most important one at that, I did not shop for even a single item this Diwali. I did not make a Rangoli, and I was literally man handled so that I would help Mom make sweets this season. But that has more to do with the changes I'm going through from within. I was walking on my building terrace this evening, and I was not listening to music while walking today which forced me to take a look around and notice people bursting crackers. Now they were bursting crackers on the ground floor, which means when they all went up and made all kinds of shapes and patterns, they were about where I was walking - on the 8th floor. Everytime a Cylinder or a Rocket or a Parachute went up, I could see a small black cloud of smoke in the air. I am not even going to the noise department in this post. The bigger the explosion, the bigger the cloud, and the smaller the explosion, the denser this cloud.

I noticed 10 such explosions per minute. This was just in my area. I'm too horrified to imagine how much the number is in my locality, or my city, or my state, and my country. I felt too dizzy and nauseatic in a mere 45 minutes and returned home early today when after Laxmi Poojan my parents forced me to light up a Fuljhadi to "celebrate" Diwali spirit. I was forced to create another cloud of smoke. Don't know what to do... I guess it's just a part of the change I'm going through.

More on that in my next post.

... Uh.. By the way... Happy Diwali to all!

Of Naturopathy, Swine Flu, and the couple who got married thrice.

I don’t think I have blogged so much about myself in a long time. But experiences make it hard to hold back. Sometimes we concentrate so hard on what we want that we tend to look over what we have. Other times we expect so much out of people/situations that we forget to accept the reality. But at all times, all we need is a state of calmness and composition in our mind. The balance is hard to strike, but once you got it, every other thing is just a cakewalk.

Before I drift off anymore, let me get to the point. I visited the ‘Nisargopchar Gramsudhar Trust’ located in a small Taluka called Uruli Kanchan, some 40 km east of Pune. This Ashram was founded by Mr. M K Gandhi, and they follow his principles at the ashram till date. I went to this place to get myself some change. Life was getting too monotonous. Besides, there is this constant quest of weight loss with people like me, so I could actually use this change for my benefit instead of getting wasted and putting on a few extra pounds. I had high hopes, since this was my second visit and I had managed to lose 7 good kilos in 15 days flat, the first time I had been there. And this time I had planned to stay for a month.

So what this place is basically about is to live as simply as you can, and spend some time with yourself. It is a very good place for people who are looking for a spa/detox treatment within a budget. It is like the mecca for people who want to lose weight. A normal day at the ashram begins at 5 AM in the morning, where you wake up and after your morning chores they hold classes for yoga as per the age group of people. Usually people below 50 years of age get to go to the 6:15 AM batch, so they can sleep for some more time :P After yoga, everyone is given a special herbal concoction which consists of herbs like Tulsi, Neem, Mulethi etc etc. mixed with jaggery and hot milk [It tastes exactly like Bournvita], after which the treatments follow.

The treatment starts with an Enema, where they cleanse your stomach by putting a small pipe in your ‘behind’ and adding saline water. It completely cleans your intestines and digestive system and makes you feel light. This is done twice a week. Then follows a massage, the masseurs/masseuses’ are specially trained to give you a nice body toning massage. Then there is steam treatment and Kati treatment, where you have to immerse half of your body in hot/cold water. This is a great way to increase circulation of blood in the lower body and it is a great way to cure all the diseases/disorders of the lower body. They also provide a mud pack for the body every day. After all this, we need to take a bath and then follows lunch [without masala/salt] in fixed quantity at 10:30 AM. After lunch, they provide a mud eye pack, which we need to keep on our eyes and have a nap of about 3 hours.

At 3 PM they repeat the herbal tea again, after which people go out for walks/exercises, and dinner follows at 5:30PM. Mostly people are asked to stay on fruits for dinner. After a few hours of recreation, there is silence after 9:30 PM when you’re required to sleep.

Life is not an airplane, where you have to plan everything ahead of time and be prepared for any kind of malfunction/mishap. Even airplanes fail to follow this principle when life decides to show its importance, just like the recent AF447 incident where even the latest new gen aircraft could not withstand saving the lives of all the people aboard. And I made this huge mistake of planning things ahead of time. I was unwell. Please don’t ask me what happened, but I was really very weak. Of the whole routine I mentioned above, all I did was to take the mud eye pack every day for a month. My health was so bad that I was advised complete bed rest and I could not even walk. I ate well, twice a day, and I lost some kilos, but still, I was next to immobile. I would feel very weak if I even walked.

As a result of all this, I had a lot of time to kill. I had promised myself that I would remain off internet, so I made some new acquaintances [Even though I am a very reserved person. I have very few friends and I hardly talk]. Some of them turned into friends, others into foes. I feel very proud to say that my friend circle consists of people from all age groups. From 15 to 78. I met my eldest friends here at the Ashram. I got to learn a lot from people here. The main thing was, how could such a simple thing called ‘being overweight’ affect people adversely in ways we can never even imagine. I met overweight people who were so troubled inside, and I also met people who knew that overweight people feel somewhat deprived inside and therefore they are easy to take advantage of. It’s very sad. I met people from different cultures, different professions, right from students to people right at the top. And I must admit that somewhere I grew wiser than I was before. Atleast something good came out of my one month at the ashram :P

After a taste of the good and bad, I moved to Pune to experience the ugly. I had some simulator flying to do, and I was so much into the ashram zone that I was in some la la land. I needed a reality check. I needed to get back to my cockpit thinking. I kept telling myself, ‘come on, think fast, faster.. You got to be ahead of that plane!’ After a week of bombarding from my tutor, I finally got back to my cockpit zone, but sadly my classes got over. Every day when I went to my classes from my apartment, a couple on this hoarding mocked at me. They were sitting in front of agni in the picture. All decked up and getting married. The hoarding was of Mayfair Banquets, and it said, ‘Believe it or not, now a wedding package including everything for 200 people in 2.99 lakhs only! No conditions apply’ And I don’t know why but that couple would keep mocking at me every single day with the most plastic smile on this planet.

Pune is a good city, but when something goes wrong, it has to go wrong all the way for me. Which means, if I have a bad time at my simulator, I cannot even go out shopping, coz’ there’s a Swine Flu outbreak in the city! Arrghh.. “Oh, so now I have to wear an overpriced mask and look all mysterious to everyone else around me, take medicines for precaution, and stay away from restaurants [after a month of salt-less and masala-less food] and away from malls [after a month of seclusion and a daily dose of ‘Beta, you’re doping again, come on, pay attention!!!’]” That was it, I was going crazy. And when I go crazy, I start looking at the upside of every ‘shituation’. So the upside here was that due to high alerts in Pune city to stay away from crowd, every one stayed at home so all malls were empty. Even better was the happiness sale on all brands in Central Mall. 51% off. It was a steal! I went to the mall with my friend, and we had such an amazing time shopping… It lifted our spirits completely! Thanks to Swine Flu no one went shopping, and I got lucky!

Just when I started to have fun in Pune, I had to return to Mumbai, and we decided to come by road. And just when we reached Bandra, there stood the same couple, in the same pose, mocking at me again, asking me to be prepared for another bombarding, but this time the hoarding said ‘”Life Insurance Corporation of India”. I started preparing mentally for something bad to happen. And then followed all the comments and complaints of me not losing weight at all in a month.. ‘Oh my, you still look the same!’…’You are useless, what’s the use of spending so much on you?’…’ Oh you look like you have put on some more weight’… ‘So did you actually go to the ashram or you went out to meet someone else?’…. ‘You lost weight? How much? It’s not visible at all!’… were some of the most common comments I had to bear. Everyone at my house had flu. I was the only one who was perfectly in the mint of my health. Not for long…

Just a couple of days in Mumbai, and now I am in Goa, spending time with my family. After we landed in Goa, we had to take a 3 hour drive down south to reach my place. And no points for guessing whom I met on the way – The same couple! Another warning… This time the hoarding read ‘Tanishq, we make memories’. Now what?... Well, the flu has struck me too! Sore throat, fever, cold, cough, weakness, and swelling. So while everyone else is out there enjoying themselves, I am sitting in a room and blogging about my bad health at a speed half of my normal speed since I am busy coughing every minute. I hope I get well soon! I know this was long, but I am glad I spat it all out!

Jibber Jabber

Hello Everyone,

So finally, I am back, after a break longer than anticipated. I do not know whether I should be happy or sad about the fact that I did not miss blogging at all. But now that I am back, I wish I was blogging for all this time when I was away.

I had been to this Nature Cure Ashram in the outskirts of Pune city. I have been there before, but this time around I went there for some peace and quiet, away from the city, closer to nature and exploring myself.

The outing was good, but I have started to believe more strongly in the ‘Never plan anything’ story. The new location was a welcome change, but everything else went unplanned. Bad health [in a nature ‘cure’ center] and worse company kept my mind ticking and all I could do was think and think some more. There went my ‘peace and quiet’ down the drain!

After a hectic month of bed rest, I moved to Pune for a couple of weeks. And in those 14 days I realized that my mind and body are completely not in sync with each other. When I need peace and quiet, I think all day and stay on bed rest. And when I need to exercise my mind and think at the spur of the moment, I just go blank. But I have all the stamina in this world for some more shopping and some more roaming around. All I did was meaningless Jibber Jabber where I was supposed to stay attentive while studying.

All in all, it was a fun time I had. I learnt many new things. But this is just a little comeback post, just to let all of you know what I have been upto. Please refrain from reading my blog if you’re looking for some sensible and solved pieces. Coz’ all that’s coming up is some more Jibber Jabber!

The world is mixing!

I love Russell Peters. I know people form opinions about him and some of them really hate him saying he is a racist person etc., but I find him very funny and he is one of the greatest comedians of these times. Yeah maybe some of us cannot stand his jokes, because they might be related to us in some way to us. Anyway, so he had said in one of his shows that, ‘The world is mixing’. He actually concluded that part saying that in the future everyone is going to be a strange mixture of Indian and Chinese people :P And recently, I have come to realize that it’s coming true. The change has begun.

Let me start this way. I hate the kind of people who try to show that they’re above everything else. They would be working in NYC, but they would try to be more Indian than Mr. M.K. Gandhi. Of course, they’re just posing. So there is this guy I knew some 7 years ago. I remember him now because he is a junior of one of my close friends and they study at the same university in the US. And well recently I found out that we have common friends [an acquaintance for him] too. Now since my friend mentioned him, I got this whole flashback of the times when I knew him. He is still like what he was 7 years ago.

This guy was trying to ask me out back at that time. It was all in vain, I was seeing someone else. Back then he used to lecture me as to how stupid he thought people [Indians] were, when they used terms like ‘dating’ and ‘seeing each other’. He used to find it totally un-cool. He used to think we are copying the west. Now my friend told me that he still inquires about me, as in who am I going out with etc. and he still thinks the same way. He says that, Indians try to ‘act’ cool by embracing the western culture [and failing at it miserably] and they just show their cheapness by using words like ‘dating’, and ‘seeing each other’ and ‘proposing’. These are the kind of people I hate in particular.




What I would like to convey to him, and all the other people who think alike, is that first of all it is none of your business what am I up to. Secondly, how does it matter if I, or anyone else, not just Indian, but Nepali, Pakistani, Puerto Rican, Italian, Scottish [or any person coming from anywhere else in the world except from the US of A] consider dating? Or even if we don’t then what is your problem in that? Now if you were so Indian yourself, you would not be asking me out 6 years ago, when you were 20 and I was 15! And my friend even mentioned him trying to eye on this girl at the university today. How fake can people be!

And he brags about being Indian. About Indian arranged marriages and culture. There is a unbelievable count of extra marital affairs in these marriages. And what is wrong with dating anyway? Why can’t two people just enjoy the courtship period. I think it is way better to be dating than marrying a complete stranger and then finding out that you are totally incompatible even if your ‘kundli’ says so. Tomorrow even if I do go for an arranged marriage, I would actually make sure that we are compatible before I even say a yes. In short, I will date him before marriage. No one can do anything about it. That’s just how I am :P And another thing, dating does not mean getting physical all the time. People really need to understand that.

Since I have already mentioned so much, I think this post would be incomplete without mentioning live-in relationships. Live-in relationships are becoming more and more popular by the day in India. That does not necessarily mean we are copying the west. It just makes sense to the people who are into it. They are not a menace to this society just because they live together while they’re unmarried. Most of these couples are very responsible individuals who want to make the right choice.

Lastly, I would like to end this post by saying that whether Indian or American, whether Straight or Gay or Bisexual, whether Hindu or Muslim, everyone has the right to make a choice, and live happily. They are not answerable to anyone and no one has the right to pass any judgment about them. It’s a way of life. We need to accept it. The world is really mixing now. Love is really above all odds.

Love can only be created, not destroyed. It can be converted from one form to the other. The total amount of love in this universe will increase exponentially in the proportion of the rate of spread of love.

:)

I don’t know why I posted this :P maybe I was just angry at that guy.. haha. Oh yeah, and do watch the 'world is mixing' video above :D