simple pleasures

it’s grey, gloomy, and winter and i’m once again inspired to write.

theres a withered money-plant sitting on my desk and i’ve yet to trash the fancy packaging of my new laptop. 3 yrs of NYLON is stacked on my bedside table and i’ve a long mirror next to it that i barely look into. but these little things that aren’t of much importance provide me with immense pleasure because they add character to my life and i start to think  life is beautiful.

life is beautiful only when you realize it. you lose a few people in your life and welcome some more. living with memories, living with hope, and living with anticipation, all so beautiful. they become the wheels of your life. you can’t know what awaits and so taking pleasure in what you have is as best as you can do.

i like to take a sip of my tetley ginger, water my drying plant every now and then when i remember to, and look out my window and wonder when spring will arrive. future – what maybe.

one afternoon and NYLON

i sat with my frappuccino and a copy of NYLON while the older lady settled in with a more subtle cup of coffee and a copy of TIME. at that moment i felt irresponsible. shouldn’t i be doing something more concrete than flipping the pages of a fashion magazine? what was a copy of NYLON going to teach me ? and then i thought, why shouldn’t i be doing this? this magazine celebrated young people, their success and the inspiring stories of how these young people got to where they are simply by following their dreams and doing what they loved and of course putting effort into it.

i went back to feeling good but before i knew it, my mind was back to thinking mode.

being young may be a virtue but it comes with the burden of having to carve a path for the future, a future that is bright. i wondered if the life the lady was living the bright future she had pictured for herself. she was dressed in a suit,  looked calm and every now and then took a peek at her blackberry. it was an attractive image but i wasn’t sure if i would feel right in a suit.

the rain had started to come down a little now and my drink had turned kind of watery brown and my neck was tired from stooping over the magazine. it was time to head home.

ps: a good listen for a rainy evening – \”turn your lights down low by lauryn hill & bob marley\”

a snowy moment

as i watched the snow fall like confetti and pile an inch or so atop the dried flowers outside, all from the warmth of my room, it felt surprisingly good to be living. it was so beautiful. it felt pure and untouched and just drove me a little further from the daily doses of reality. but this was just a facade of course. once you stepped out, it became a different story.

i was walking back home and the footprints i had seen earlier in the morning were now perfectly invisible under the fresh coat of snow. the night was still and the white everywhere made it seem more like dawn than night. again it was beautiful. no noisy cars on the street, no kids running around, that sense of serenity… wow i’d like that once in a while.  but even as i walked awestruck by the calmness and beauty of the scene, i wasn’t completely able to enjoy it. the sudden blows of winter chills and my tightening face took away from the joyous moment. also trying hard not to slip and dislocate my hip (maybe not so extreme) was another thing keeping me from taking in an evening that hardly came by.

ever since my escalator accident, i’ve been ridiculously cautious with my steps.   at times when i have absolutely nothing to do, my eroding mind directs me to gruesome thoughts of falls gone bad. very bad. the things that come to my mind are so nasty, i feel its unhealthy to even  be descriptive about them.

and now coming back to what i was originally taking about, snow, its still coming down and piling away. my arms haven’t fully recovered from last night’s intense shoveling and now there’s another one in the waiting. that ought to be the last snow of the season.

RELIGION

Technically I’m a Buddhist but to me religion is an open mind. if you do your part of helping those in need, don’t harm or think ill of others then you are religious. i’m sure all GOD (whether it be Jesus, Buddha, Allah or any other) wants us to do is create peace. you don’t have to belong to a particular religion to do good. having said that, i don’t necessarily mean you have to opt out of following one either. if being part of a certain religion encourages you to become a better and a more compassionate human then by all means go ahead.

i say religion is an open mind because i feel religion basically means considering everything and everyone around you. when you are considerate, you are working towards creating peace and isn’t that what religion is all about? why compare one religion to the other, why declare one better than the other, and why oh why blame religion for all the evil in the world?

let us be happy.

dreamer on the way…

i’m constantly trying to find myself. i change my mind faster than i can think about it. it’s weary.  many times  i just want to kick and tell myself to stick to a plan and not waver so much. but agian whats the fun in limiting yourself to a finite set of rules.

i want to live big and in this case bigger the better. i don’t want to have to cheap out or restrain myself or not do things because they are out of reach. i want to be rich. YES rich is what i want to be. 

i want to do things. i want to teach, photograph, blog, shop, eat, mother a child and most of all love people close to my heart and i want to do all these my way, the big way. i hate to admit that i am more of a dreamer than a doer but i can just tell that someday i’ll be the latter. i will make myself one because if i don’t, i wouldn’t have served my dues. my dreams are big and i hope the world has space for it.

i love you, you, you, and you. and please love me too. good day.

twenty twelve / 2012

Is the world really coming to an end? 

It is a matter of concern no doubt but so soon? The rumors and sepculations, unknown whether true or not, have concluded that the big “END” is 3 years away. So now what do we do? I simply laughed it off when I first heard about it and accused Hollywood of playing with people’s minds but down there somewhere i feared the worst. We have seen some outrageous things happen to our world and humanity in the recent past. Whether it be acts of terrorism, mother nauture gone wild or humans becoming greedier each passing second, our world has changed and the change has not been entirely favaroable.

If the world is indeed three years from its end, what should we be doing now? Try to protect this ridiculous event from happening or live happily for three years with no fear or spend all your savings or try and save some money incase all this bullshit turned out to be a spam or what in the freaking world could we do that is not totally insane?

Maybe we could ask Speilberg to come up with a plan, ask the federal government to fund it, and ask Tom Cruise to be our ultimate hero and save us all from burning to ashes. How crazy is that?

ok so enough of the goofs and back to logic. If indeed the world were to come to an end, how would it end? Surely the world is not simply going to disapper so then will it explode and there’ll no longer be a planet called earth? How is it going to end? Will the oceans rise and swipe us all out? will the world burn out? The humans are going to suffer no matter how it ends because we are all sinners except for the select few who think they are mightier than the rest. could it be so? Nope. Disasters don’t discirminate. They hate humans anyway. Afterall we are the ones who provoke them inthe first place.

whatever happens, life is dope lets live it. what the future will bring, we don’t know. so why dwell?

march 2, 09 – the snow storm. chapter 1

It wasn’t a case of challenging Mother Nature or any other for that matter. I was simply trying to get home, fighting the blasting winter snowstorm. As I walked, disturbing the peaceful white blanket of snow that had covered the sidewalks, I felt my toes go numb. Was I happy that my feet weren’t directly exposed to the cold? Yes. But the pair of chuck t’s and socks I had on weren’t exactly keeping the cold out either. They were just there as a sign that I indeed belonged to a civilized society because from the few cars running on the street, people were eyeing me as if to say “what the hell is wrong with you going out on a weather like this?” Had I a choice, I would have stayed in too but the fact was I didn’t and thus, this painfully bitter venture. In retrospect, it wasn’t all that painfully bitter. I did get some thinking done while my eyes enjoyed the fluffy snow resting on anything “surface” which otherwise would have been snirt the next day, an eyesore.

The wind was getting stronger and I was slowly but surely getting closer to my destination. Of course it wasn’t coincidence but ironically it felt as if the wind was protecting me from getting to the place I so often felt I had to get out of for various coming-of-age reasons. I was drowning deeper into my thoughts when I saw a lady wave at me. I looked up at her but couldn’t read her lips, so I unwillingly unplugged my headphones. She asked me where I was heading and that sparked an instance of joy in me as I thought she was actually concerned for a stranger and that kindness had not fully disappeared from our world. But unfortunately, that instance remained an instance as her follow up question asked me what bus I had taken leading me to assume that it was not out of concern that she had asked me where I was heading but out of necessity. She obviously had to get somewhere but was not sure if the buses were running on schedule because of the awful weather. “712 from Elmwood Park” I answered and got back to my thoughts.

delhi 6/dilli 6

as expected of a r rahman, the music of delhi 6 is just genius and besides that, since its from the makers of rang de basanti, we can definitely look forward for originality and a beautiful/meaningful script. hopefully the lead actors will not fall short of all the hype and bring down the movie. based simply on the teasers, the box office future for the film looks promising. movie is coming out on 20th feb. and *spoiler alert* hrithik supposedly has a role in it too. interesting…

must listen:

1. delhi 6 (title track)….”yeh delhi hai mere yaar”

2. masakali (the opening theme will make you miss home so bad)

heres delhi 6 for your ears

2009

HAPPY NEW YEAR. HOPEFULLY THIS YEAR WILL BE BETTER THAN THE PREVIOUS. LET US HOPE FOR HAPPINESS, PEACE, a little bit of WEALTH AND WHATEVER EVERYONE IS HOPING FOR. ITS 2009 BABY…YEAH!!

kite runner on Christmas

to me Christmas was no more than the 25th day of the 12th month or so it seemed that morning. like usual i woke up at around 9:30, washed up, and sat in front of my computer browsing through youtube or anything that caught my attention (for roughly 5 hrs give or take). at 2:30, just like last christmas, i set out to agnes’. she is an old lady up in glen rock. i was supposed to watch her until her daughter got back. my only job was to plate her dinner at 6 and make sure she didn’t fall off her chair. easy enough. well thats not my point however. while there, i started reading “the kite runner” by khaled hosseini. i had brought it along just in case i got bored watching nbc (agnes doesn’t change channels and i don’t bother either).

i read from the beginning even though i had already read the first 15 pgs way back in july on my way to delhi. with absolutely no memories of the content in those few pages i had read in the summer, it wasn’t a bad idea to start from the start. i knew it was a good book. critics had raved about it with good reviews but i had no idea how much more precious this book would turn out to be once i had finished. in the wee hours of dec. 26 (2am to be precise), i completed my reading. along with the author’s pain, i felt mine too. i had shed a few tears of my own here and there, thought about my past, parents, friends, the lies i had told, the pain i had caused the people who loved me the most , and worst of all, the aching truth about my regrets and the attempts to redeem myself, each time only causing more hurt.

baba (amir’s father) made me think about my father and never in my life had i felt so far away from him. i wanted to hug him, be by his side till the end of time and repay all the kindness and love he had shown me while holding his brown, withered hand that had worked so hard to bring me up to become a capable human. baba’s passing scared me and reminded me of the inevitable fate that lay ahead in my future. i closed my eyes and wished god would hear my prayers. hassan’s death almost cracked open my heart. i couldn’t control the tears rolling down my cheeks. when amir opened hassan’s letter and began reading it, i felt a sense of hope and saw a glimpse of happiness ahead but all that got shattered with the news of hassan’s tragic fate.

once upon a time we were all happy and once upon a time we all wished time passed and we grew. wishing is a strange thing. you get what you wished for only to yearn for something else. ultimately, amir is a good person. his tormented conscience continuously brought back memories of that dark winter night when he had witnessed the horrific incident in that narrow alley. he could not forgive himself for turning his back to what he had seen. he wasn’t a murderer but was he any less? he kept telling himself he wasn’t a worthy human and i can in someway relate to that. does bad only define those who have committed actual criminal acts? i may not have taken someone’s life but what good have i done to deserve the title of good?

all sorts of thoughts gathered in my head and i just lay in my bed thinking how in the world was i ever going to clear up this mess and become pure. i read the last pages of kite runner and was sincerely happy for amir, sohrab (hassan’s son) and their reunion but that meant i was alone and could not share my burden with amir. his life was confined in the pages of the book but mine? i realized it was time for me to draw the outline of my life and polish it as i went along and when the final draft was ready, maybe i could share it with my family.

when donna reassured her mom, agnes, that she would be back soon and closed the door behind us at 3, i was envious of her. would i ever be the good daughter i wished to be? would i ever be able to serve my parents and make them proud? would i ever be capable of being loyal and truly loving the people in my life like hassan had? would i ever be able to redeem myself like amir?

december 25th, 2008 made me think and as i wiped the last of tears, i turned off the light and went to bed, hoping i would wake up a better person.