Tagged: Life

While I sit here..

While I sit here eating bagels with cream cheese and drinking coffee too fast, it is 6.30pm somewhere in the world. Someone, somewhere is playing hip-hop loudly while getting dressed for a third date. Someone is tumbling out of bed with a crick in their neck and promising to restart yoga from tomorrow. Someone is wrapping up six peanut butter sandwiches, four with jelly and two without, and putting them into paper bags for the kids’ post-football snack. Someone is trying to log on to skype and is hoping that hovering over the “Forgot password” link will help them remember it. Someone is uploading a picture of themselves with someone else on Facebook and hoping that someone else entirely will see it as evidence of having moved on. Someone is checking their wallet to make sure they have enough cash because she always forgets to carry some. Someone is falling in love with old jazz and is wondering if that makes them ‘pretentious’. Someone is drawing up a to-do list of weekend projects, starting with taking out the recycling. Someone is getting a tattoo. Someone is setting themselves a reminder to call the dentist tomorrow. Someone is wondering if it’s too soon to text. Someone is giggling while someone else is calling for another carafe of the house white, please. Someone is checking out someone else’s Facebook pictures and wondering if that’s who he’s dating now. Someone is jumping into the pool hoping to clear their head before the conference call. Someone is holding hands tentatively with someone else. Someone is falling out of love at the sight of another gray sock strewn across the floor. Someone is tip toeing around the kitchen, trying to make a midnight snack without waking anyone else up. Someone is bashfully admitting that they have two left feet but is dancing anyway. Someone is smiling and making a memory that they will remember with nostalgia, while eating bagels and drinking coffee too fast, many mornings from now.

Chennai Calling..

A guest post by my sister, on coming home..

Coming back to this city always delights me. I revel in the familiarity that home brings; the comfort of amma’s food, the constant churn of people in the house, the amazing ability to imbibe copious amounts of cardamom laced tea. Even as I step into the house, the constant hum of the fan that tries to beckon an imaginary breeze, the incessant ringing of the doorbell and the annoyed calls across the house for someone to answer the door make me feel like I never left. And then I venture out of the house to be received by the sounds of a bustling city, and I beam at everything…the honking of horns that everyone knows are means of communicating rather than expressing anger, auto drivers convincing you that it does cost fifty rupees to go to adyar since petrol prices have gone up, the young men with sprouting moustaches who really think they’re going to get a response to “Howvaryoudoing?”…though perhaps my beaming at them could be a tad misleading.

And I do so love how busy everyone is. There is a sense of urgency here, with everyone in a hurry, perennially late, but always heading somewhere, and I can borrow their destination even when I don’t have one of my own, as long as I hurry up too.

It’s different in Palo Alto. People are still moving there…but quietly, efficiently and politely…almost unnaturally. It puzzles me how you can have a million thoughts whirring in your head and an urgency of purpose without allowing it to reflect in the sights, sounds and smells of your own little world.

That’s perhaps why I am thrilled by the chaos of my city, the aroma of filter coffee, the dizzying hum of voices…children pushing each other as they come back from school, men in cream shirts talking in low voices about that idiot boss, aunties chatting about the ridiculous price of brinjal and their very eligible sons in the US.

I don’t live in this city, at least not for now. My books, my job and a major part of my life belong to Palo Alto. But my spirit comes from Chennai, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Life is..

I make plans, dream little dreams, dream bigger ones.

Think of how I’ll be when I finally grow up.. Of all the things I want to do, places I want to see, people I want to be.

But life? Life doesn’t care so much about the five year plans and long-term goals.

Life is chilly Thursday evenings spent watching a week’s worth of House episodes.

Life is searching for a particular song on a Saturday afternoon and then listening to it all weekend.

Life is dirty dishes piling up in a tiny kitchen and finding one purple-mauve sock and never figuring out where the other one went.

Life is Sunday afternoons spent with friends and home cooked meals and taking back leftovers in Tupperware boxes.

As the man said,

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans

- John Lennon

Ten Years Ago

  • I did not own a mobile phone. This was probably a good thing, since mobile phones were the size of a ham radio – not including the extendable antenna
  • The computer I used had a CRT monitor, as did my television
  • There was no Facebook
  • There was also no broadband. You could fire up the computer, go make a cup of tea, catch the headlines on the 10pm news, and it would just about be ready for browsing.
  • We caught the news once a day – at 10pm, and Breaking News really meant breaking news – not what Rakhee Sawant wore to a party last night
  • Reality TV meant Candid Camera
  • I was in high school, and had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up (The latter still holds true)

I wonder what the next ten years will bring!

This is not the First Random post (or the Last)

The good is rightly thought to be that at which all things aim. That was Aristotle by the way, not me. But if I asked you what you were aiming at, what would you say? Happiness? Identity?

What defines happiness?
What defines you?

Or are they answers to the same question?

All of the above, as I found myself saying earlier today, are perfectly true and completely irrelevant..

I’ve seen many people lose hope because they didn’t get what they want. But nothing compares to the bitter disillusionment of a person who got exactly what they wanted, and then didn’t know what to do with it.

Are we searching for answers without knowing the question?

Life. Love. Loss. Luggage. And Laughter.