The pain I feel now is the happiness I had before

Have you ever tried to put heart wrenching pain into words? To bring in some sort of logical flow or pattern into those words? I used to do that a lot and I still do it sometimes. In the past, I always wrote down those words and tore it apart..Pour down my unstructured emotions into a paper, tore it apart and blew it in the wind.. Frank and bold I might be misunderstood, but I am never frank enough to show what I feel or bold enough to admit how I feel.. And almost all the time, it is this heart wrenching pain..
Happiness doesn’t want an expression. It is so light that you don’t mind keeping in your heart even if your heart is overflowing with it. But sorrow cannot be so treated.. It fills your heart with its heaviness.. And your heart slowly starts drowning…
It’s the same now.. Its wretchedness all over… it cannot be altered.. There is nothing or no one causing this pain.. But all the same there is a reason for it.. A reason that cannot be altered.. I sometimes wonder, why do I keep committing the same mistakes over and over again. Is it because I am in love with that mistakes or the pain it creates.. Could be both.. There is an element of pleasure in this pain as well.. I am reluctant to let go of this pain.. This pain gone means I am gone numb.. I would be unfeeling then. I would rather be a feeling person and suffer the pain it causes rather than be immune to both.. I will miss the pleasure in the pain if they are gone.. I won’t be myself again then.. I will be someone else just wearing my robe..

Peace and goodwill to the mankind on earth

Glory to God in the highest
Peace and goodwill to the mankind on earth!

This was the message that the angels sang when the baby was born in the manger 2000 plus years ago. It is a time of joy, cheer, goodwill, peace, charity, sharing and love. For the faithful, this is the anniversary of that day when god kept his promise to save the mankind by giving us the savior. This is the birthday of the noblest man ever who walked the face of earth. Over thousands of years, Christmas has been celebrated with this spirit.
If this season of Christmas brings in such a state of mind where people share peace and goodwill, this is the time we need it most. And what we need is Christmas-as a state of mind and not Christmas-as a holiday season. Right now, the joy of Christmas season is over shadowed by hatred and fear. There is no peace in the community or in the mind of people. There remains uncertainty because of terrorism and social unrest. People live in the fear of bomb blasts and gun shots. In one part of the country, when unrest occurs due to terrorism, in another part it is domestic violence.
I am not preparing for Christmas celebrations by observing lent. Neither do I have a Christmas tree or a crib nor a star lit at my home. I am not buying any Christmas gifts. At this Christmas, all I wish is this “Peace and goodwill to the mankind on earth!!!!!!”

Feels like Christmas

Happy, happy Christmas, that can win us back to the delusions of our childish days; that can recall to the old man the pleasures of his youth; that can transport the sailor and the traveller, thousands of miles away, back to his own fire-side and his quiet home! ~Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers

Remember, if Christmas isn't found in your heart, you won't find it under a tree." -- Charlotte Carpenter

It feels like half a life time ago
That we celebrated Christmas by making a crib and decorating a tree
Now there are no cribs and only plastic Christmas trees,
But it feels like Christmas again

It feels like half a life time ago
That Christmas brought in joy and cheer with family
Now I am far away from home,
But it feels like Christmas again

It feels like half a life time ago
That I made merry with other kids during holidays
Now there is no one left but me who is not grown up
But it feels like Christmas again

It feels like half a life time ago
That we took those mid night walks to the church on Christmas night
This year, it would be just a memory as old days are gone by
But it feels like Christmas again

It feels like Christmas again
Though no Lents or long holidays or family near by
Though the moments of making cribs and trees are just memories
It feels like Christmas again

The star is lit in my mind,
The baby will be born in The Crib of my heart

So, it is gonna be Christmas again

On love- as I know it !

I am fighting a battle. The weird thing is I am not fighting anymore. But the battle is still on.
And I am not able to get out. I don’t have any idea which side is winning or which side is losing.

I am in love with this battle. The battle itself is love. All that remains is love.

Love never dies. Love ends; but never dies. The love that has been shared is never reversed. It remains as it is as long as eternity lasts. Love is eternal.

I have loved- loved with all my heart. And still I do. But the great question answered by silence is –am I in love. Being in love is a state-which can change. I have just an answering silence.

But my love for you is always there. With you, all I know is to love. All I am capable of is love.
We have lost a lot of things- hopes, passion, understanding, happiness.. but love still remains. All this has begun and all this will end in love.

Love is just not an end in itself. It is a journey that we chose to take.

We don’t know where the journey ends or the bend in our road.

We know the pain of separation for we have separated and come together again. That separation was not the end of our lives albeit being undesirable for me.

But now we know, separation cannot kill us or the love that we shared.

I am perfectly confident on you - you don’t need me the way I used to imagine when I was a perfectly naïve female.

And I don’t need you in my life any more as I used to imagine. I don’t need any body for that matter. But if I need any body at all at any point o f time, I’d rather be it you.

Well, is that what is love? Or is it just an open declaration of my comfort with you? Or can that be the acknowledgment of my fear for the unknown?

Unsure about many things, but I can assure of this- years and years hence, I will be saying this with a sigh and a wandering eye that I have loved- a love that is lasting. That remains as long as eternity lasts.

And I am happy for the moments of togetherness, moments of separation, for hopes and the lost hopes, for the flush of excitement and flood of disappointment, for the lightheartedness and the heavy heartedness that this love has given me.

For the reason that without this love for you, I would never have known what loving like this meant.

The Modern Surrender of Woman

In this post, when I write “I”, I mean the group of woman out there somewhere in this world, who agree with whatever I have written. I agree that it could be a minority probably, but it will be the popular minority.

I understand that men and women are different. Men tend to be physically bigger and stronger. They can lift heavy things, push open lodged doors and bottles, not be tired after long journeys, and… and.. that’s it??!!! Well, it seems pretty much it! Oh yes, all the things like this. I used to argue that to balance the see saw , woman are emotionally stronger, can think straight, logically and sensitively in crisis, can show much compassion when it is called for, so on and so forth. There used to be and still are, much debates and disagreements from the side of men against this capabilities of woman. Or rather, these capabilities of woman were ignored in light of the irrelevance of such capabilities in this world. All that mattered is- men are stronger. In the context of the modern surrender of woman, yes I agree to the men folks. All these centuries of arguments, I was wrong. At the wake of the 21st century, I finally see your argument and realize the irrelevance of the capabilities of woman in the ‘emotionally strong’ context. In this age of outsourcing, you can get someone else to do all those things for you. You can depend on a psychologist or a counselor for your emotional pressures and call EMRI\911 for an emergency and get the help of disaster management teams in crisis.
I agree with you (men) when you say that woman tend to gossip about other women mostly because they are jealous. Though men don’t generally gossip about other men; they just bitch about women, it cannot be attributed to jealousy at all. Because why would a man be jealous of a woman!! It sounds so logically incorrect and inconsistent! And a man never loses sleep on the promotion his colleague received or on the new car of the neighbor. The bitching that men tend to do about women are just affirmative statements where they have seen the women crossing limits-either morality or general codes of conduct. Discussing politics or social issues is the way men show concern about what happens around them, men have real good suggestions on how things should be run in the world. These are not time wasting gimmicks but while having such serious matters in head, you really cannot afford to learn about micro level issues like how to run a kitchen. On the other hand, I absolutely agree with you when you say about a woman who would have given an input to your world changing discussions that she is talking in her ignorance and should rather concentrate in running the kitchen rather than the government. After all, how can a woman talk about something other than her cosmetics!!
It is also true that women bosses are so ignorant, stupid and unrealistic. And this is not a stereotyping statement at all. The word stereotyping itself could be a woman invented word as that does not convey anything meaningful. And from what is written, it is evident, there are no bad bosses among men. I know all the men love their men bosses and since men don’t ‘gossip’, in the history of human race, not a bad word has been spoken about any of the men bosses, if it has been spoken, it is the imagination of the women lot.
And, as I said after all these centauries of disagreeing with these kind of things that men keeps telling me, finally now I have decided to unconditionally agree with you on all of the above and more not because men ‘just doesn’t get the point’ and no point in arguing with men, but because I agree with these concepts!

On Wines-especially Sula & Product Plugging-specifically in Almost Single!!

Prologue :

This prologue is written after the below post was published. When I was writing this post, my impression was the favorable mention of Sula in the book ‘Almost Single’ by Advaita Kala was a carefully planned product placement. But later on, I realized (from the comment posted by the big man himself) that it was not an instance of product placement, but a product plug. Advaita Kala must really be in love Sula. So, friends, I stand corrected though I don’t want to make changes to the original post I had written. I am changing the original title from On Wines-especially Sula& Product Placement-specifically in Almost Single to On Wines-especially Sula & Product Plugging-specifically in Almost Single!!

Now you may read on the real stuff.…

My first memories of wine being mentioned was in the holy masses-Jesus took wine, blessed it and gave it to his disciples; and asked them to repeat it whenever they gather to remember him. And so- we did! In all holy masses the ceremony was repeated with ardent faith. But in our churches, they just spoke the words-the priest would never distribute real wine to the people. All that they would do, that too, a few times a year on important dates is to dip the Holy Communion in wine. And that was on very very rare occasions. Even before accepting my first holy communion, I got a taste of wine on one of the Monty Thursdays when dad brought wine for the occasion. That was just a port wine.
Then there was the different type of wines that my neighbor used to make at home-pineapple, beetroot, amla and many other different flavors. On visiting them, I used to get occasional chances of tasting those, but I was still not a wine lover. My love for wine started only when my dad made wine at my home for the first time. We saved a couple of bottles for a few years and then I realized that the concept of ‘old wine’ indeed is a noble one. That is when the stuff becomes really real! Thus homemade wines- ginger, amla and especially grapes remained my favorites for a long time. Otherwise, except for a wine tasting evening- I was not exposed much to the world of wines.
I used to read about the exquisite world of French Wine in Mills and Boons, Sydney Sheldon and the like. And used to wonder how it was like. But it seemed so smooth and sophisticated in the books than in reality. It was then, that I came to read Almost Single by Advaita Kala. Suggested by my friends who read and loved the book, it was a great contemporary novel by an Indian author. Awesome book!! And I got exposed to the world of Sula through it. Though it was read by many of my friends before me, somehow, they all missed the compliments the main character of the book had paid for the Indian wine brand-Sula. As luck would have it, that was the top of the mind recollection for me after reading the book. And I decided to try this one. A little prompting from my side- my friends were also eager to try this new stuff. Promptly, Sula arrived at my house. The young brand from Nasik won my heart that night. Henceforth, as far as I am concerned, the wine nights are definitely going to be Sula nights.
Though that is all about the wines and Sula, being a Marketing majored MBA(though working on a lousy job which has got nothing to do with marketing and hence forgetting all the marketing fundas at a fast phase), I cannot help but comment on the Product Placement/Product Integration done in the book Almost Single. The mentioning of Sula brand as the character’s favorite in the book, is nothing but a clear instance of Product Placement. I was familiar with product placements in movies and television and thought of it in books as a very rare and newly evolving form of marketing. But on research I realized, product placement in books can be dated back to the 19th century. When popular author Jules Verne wrote the classic Around the World in 80 Days, many transport and shipping companies were lobbying to get mentioned in the book. Later, many books have followed suit particularly by placing goods targeted at teenage girls.
In any case, this was the first time; I came across such an effective product placement as far as I was concerned. I tried and loved Sula!!

PS: This post is a classic example of product plugging (instances of product placement without an economic transaction). Here, I have placed both Almost Single and Sula. All the marketers out there! Pay me! I am willing to place your products in my upcoming posts!!!