Another paper rolled into a ball and thrown in the air. The room was full of it. She started with another plain paper, tried sketching an unknown object. There were no colours, just shades of black and grey. Every time she was half way done, she rolled it into a ball and slung it in the air. People said she loved doing that. Throwing things. After a while she stopped, smiled and settled down on the floor with legs folded. Her hand stained black and still smiling. Was she finally done?

Her last smile faded away with her last breathe. Paper balls unfolded and precious art took the world by storm. Famous after death. Mental asylum is a funny place after all!

 I Walk Alone And How

I found my ‘me’ time and it’s just so beautiful.

So I walk a good 2 to 2.5 kilometres every day (no not every day, but most of the days) to office with a million good thoughts. As the cold morning breeze touches my face, I realize how beautiful the world is. The birds, the tress and the vegetable vendors. How nice everything is!

The walk is pretty much delightful. I smile. I often spot known faces on the way, sharing a smile. It feels good to know people. It feels good to smile at them. Butterflies fluttering by. The sun shining at me. Cows chewing on grass. Cute little dogs running here and there. Aww, everything is just so adorable.

OKAY NO WAIT!

The walk is not as rosy as it seems.

At times I feel like a warrior from those Hollywood Sci-Fi movies. I encounter cows. Huge big black cows. They stare at me. They stare at my lunch bag. They advance towards me with their horns facing right at my eyes. I duck and jump and do all the Kung Fu I have seen in the movie Karate Kid. If the cow will eat my lunch, what will I eat?

The dogs look at me and I can see a speaking bubble over their head saying, ‘I am gonna bite you. If not today, someday. BEWARE!’ They run towards me and then I run to escape and then they go somewhere else, leaving me behind, embarrassed. ‘Why was I running? Hope no one saw me,’ I tell myself.

To my horror, I spotted a HUGE number of monkeys on my way. They were swinging on the trees, breaking flower pots, picking on each other’s hair and what not! I told myself, “You are strong. You are a woman and you can do everything you wish to. You can come out of a difficult situation very easily. No one can ever bring you down. Nothing in the world can stop you. These monkeys can never harm you.” After talking to myself, I took a U-turn and took the long root to office. Okay I am a woman, but the monkey might not know how serious woman empowerment is these days. So couldn't risk it.

Spare me the horror when it comes to rickshawalas. They hover on my head. No matter how much I ignore them, they will still look at me, honk at me, slow down near me and ask if I need a lift. The other day I thought I’ll tell a rickshawala before he follows me that I don’t need an auto. STILL. He had to come follow me. Once, I was too tired to walk and decided to take an auto mid-way. Surprise! Couldn’t spot a single auto. When needed, they are nowhere to be found.

Last but not the least, traffic! Ahmedabad is a slow city, said someone. Really? Not with traffic. Everyone is in a hurry. Everyone wants to go first. And yes, nobody wants to follow rules. Wrong side se jane ka mazza he kuch aur hai. Poor pedestrians. I fear Salman Khan would appear from nowhere and ride his car over me someday. I sometimes feel like I am dancing in the middle of the streets. Go forward, step back, put one leg on the left and stop. Stop for the biker to pass and repeat. We were taught to look right, left and right before crossing roads. Now we have to look right, left, right, forward, behind, right, forward, left, behind and then cross. If you cross safely, you have achieved something big today. I sometimes look up too. Who knows if a drone is passing by or something!

My daily life with a twist (shrugging shoulder).

A Trip Down South

I just got back from a trip to Kerala (my native), and I haven’t felt this way before.

In one word, it’s heavenly. Totally!

Look right, left, up or down, it’s all green. When you look up, coconut tree is what blocks your sight from looking at the sky.

And of-course, mountains, lots of mountains caressed by the clouds.

These sights were quite normal to me. It often made me wonder, why are people so crazy about this place? Visiting Kerala was just another boring trip. For me it was a state full of HUGE mosquitoes. A LOT of them. They will suck your blood till the last drop. But then, there is much more to this place. And now watching Discovery seems too mainstream. Once in Kerala, just look around. You’ll find many unidentified objects; insects to be more precise. Apart from the ugly bloodsucking mosquitoes, you’ll find ultra huge spiders, caterpillars, bugs, grasshoppers, butterflies, exotic birds sitting on your rooftop, rats and more flying objects. Once you realize how calm and non-harmful they are, you’ll start loving the stay. Snakes and elephants are a common sight.

Every house will have a basket full of coconuts plucked from their backyard and jack-fruits too and how can we forget the fresh banana chips fried in coconut oil !

If you are here and you haven’t had coffee, you are missing something BIG in life !

If you have assumed that Kerala means non-veg food, you are ridiculously wrong. Most of the households cook pure veg food, for instance rice, sambar, appam, idli, dosa, rasam and so on. Typically! Non-veg food is cooked on rare occasions. Festivals and important dates are celebrated with veg food to keep it pure and holy.

Being born and brought up in Ahmedabad, I find the tea in Kerala absolutely ridiculous and that is one thing I don’t like about this place. The milk here is too thin and tea is too mild.

Visiting Kerala during summer can be the worst mistake you make. Best time to visit would be monsoon (Mid June).

There are ample farms which will make even the longest of walks, worth it. The soothing sights will keep you from getting tired.

A good amount of people here know Hindi and you can always rely on English for a communication. Humans here are genuine and polite. They love to talk and are enthu to help you out.

They like fat people more. Keralites believe that humans should have enough flesh and fat in them to survive. They will make you eat everything edible to make you fat. This time when I thought of dieting in Kerala, people said I was too thin and need to eat more. 

Men comfortably riding bike in lungi is a common sight. Quite a few of them wear it to office as well. You might find this funny, but it is a tradition best accepted.

Flats and towers are latest entries with sky rocketing maintenance charges. There are more of bungalows. You will find the finest architectural structures here. It will leave you awestruck. The colors, the design of houses are spellboundingly amazing.

Street cats and dogs are a part of the family. They roam around in houses and nobody minds. If you find them sleeping besides you on your bed in the morning, it’s normal!

God's own country? Definitely! A destination to rejuvenate. 

She’s a bitch...

What’s the logic behind saying that? We all must have used it once, right?

You call somebody a dog when angry. He’s a bloody dog (kutta to be more precise); she’s a shameless bitch! We humans have made dog & bitch a swear word. In reality, they are the best creatures, better than us humans, aren’t they?

Dog, a man’s best friend, the best companion, trustworthy, doesn’t understand the language of words but understands the language of feelings better, patient, never complains, loyal. We don’t find much loyalty these days. But dogs, they can never be disloyal to their masters.

Only good qualities to give out, but still humans have a negative thought about them when called a dog. What's wrong with you human?

Next time somebody says, ‘Kutta hai tu’, smile back and say ‘Thank you.’

Positivity is everywhere, we just need to find it :)

Some dreams are unforgettable...

It was a stressful day at work. After falling on the bed like a dead bird, I never realized when sleep caught me as I recalled my day loaded with work.

The dream that night:

It’s a desert. I am sitting on my desk, the same desk at office. I am typing something, my eyes on the computer & my fingers rapidly running through the keyboard. Suddenly I feel strange and look around. It’s all sand & huge mountains. The sky is dark yet there is light where I am sitting. Leaving aside all the work, I push my rolling chair backwards & stand up to figure out where I was & what was going on. I look around & then walk towards my desk. The wires from the pc behind are coming out of the ground like roots of a tree. The first funny thought I get is, where is the electricity coming from? I looked around again & this time with fearful eyes. Trying to spot a human around whom I can go up to, but the place is alienated. I find no signs of life. Am I the only human left in the world?

I thought I’d close my eyes for a minute, relax & then things will get back to normal. I do so. Nothing happens. It strikes me; maybe I can get to communicate to someone the situation online through my pc. As I walk slowly towards my desk trying to take in the situation I am in, think of ways to get out of it. Taking a seat & a long deep breath I try login in on the internet. It doesn't work. Is this a trick? What am I doing in a desert with my office desk & no internet?  There has to be a way out. Next thing I know is, I am running, running all over the place. I try to shout but there are no words coming out. And I realize the lack of speech. I cannot talk, because I have no reason to, because there is nobody to hear me.

A change is going to occur says my intuition. The first thing I notice is the milky brown sand is gradually turning into liquid, it melts. The huge mountains, they are flowing down, the way chocolate flows down from a chocolate fountain. The sky is turning pink, purple, and orange. The colors mix together and pour down. It was a sign. It was the end. I am the last human. I get to see the world end. There’s a wide hole where I am standing, right beneath my feet. I am floating in the air. The hole swallows everything that passes through it, the sand, the mountains and the sky. It’s all gone, it’s black. The kind of black my office keyboard is. Fear, is the last feeling I experience before I get swallowed in too.

That fear, woke me up. I felt relieved like never before. My phone beeped. After a horrible dream, the message made me smile. It was a message from my boss. I was promoted from being a junior to a senior.

We are all MBA’s, no?

When you tell a friend sitting next to you, “I have a bad headache!” and s/he replies, “Just take an aspirin, it’ll be fine.” You know they are an MBA.

When the doctor asks you to complete the medicine course & you leave it half way when you feel back to good health, you know you are an MBA.

A person shouts, “Modi has a hand in Godhra riots I am sure.” Here’s another MBA.

When a student in the class makes others believe that his/her teacher is a psycho, s/he is an MBA still at school level  :D

When parents makes the child believe, “Sleep early or else the boo boo man will catch you!“  That’s a scary MBA parent.

When you believe in the internet that says, ‘Nothing is impossible for Rajnikant’. The internet my friend, is a confident MBA!

When some baba on some religious channel of some other language says, “Life is just an illusion”, and you read it in English in the subtitle and completely accept it as a fact, the baba is a super MBA.

When you look at the sky and decide, “Naah, it won’t rain today!” and it rains, you are a wanna-be MBA.

When the computer hangs and you shout, “The virus is BACK, but I just got a format done!” You are a confused MBA.

And for those who are wondering and curious to know what an MBA is, it means ‘Mane Badhu Aavde che’! It translates to ‘I know everything’.

If you think you can write better or there are better blogs to read, you are an MBA with an opinion!

  :P

My life can be a blockbuster movie…

Maybe just once, but this thought has sure passed your mind, hasn't it?

Being 23 and full of experiences, where every emotion can have a book each.

From uniforms to latest fashion, from oily neatly tied up hair to the free flowing tress, from flat ballerinas to heels, its amazing how things change, lifestyle changes. The time when we ate bags of chips without counting the calories and today, everything seems fatty. The moment when a chill would run down our spine realizing we haven’t completed our school homework which has now been replaced by deadlines & responsibilities way more serious than our imagination. Pleading and getting angry for a raise in the pocket money and later saving money for the future after getting a job. The time when you spent money without a second thought & the present where each penny counts. Checking out the menu in the canteen to cooking your own food.

The challenge of going through teenage and standing up to the expectation of parents. The accidents, heart breaks, complaints & failures we got over. The fear of submission on time & later the fear of passing job interviews. The parties, the occasions, the passing with flying colors, the appreciations, that long trip with friends we have adored. The first official mail & the first meeting with a client that gave immense happiness.

All of this, with a completely different story in each one’s life.

Every life can be a movie indeed! 

Or even better, a story to tell…