Falafel for the soul

I hope my 2.5 readers havent missed me too much. The last few weeks have come as both a surprise and a rude shock to me.. from my boring 12x6 work schedule i suddenly reached Egypt on a 9 day dour as part of work ofcourse but for a change i was able to mix work with pleasure and take time to see why RG wants to go to Egypt someday. I told her its a good thing i got a head start atleast now i can tell the difference between a mummy 24 and a pharaoh or is the same?.. the mystery continues.. and ya RG didnt accept that as a honest excuse. Well must confess the beauty about Egypt or cairo in particular is that you can be there for a year or even more and yet you cant say you have seen it all.. Its like its a land where time stopped.. the buildings, the people, the pace of life.. its soooo slow.. and you need all your nine lives if u plan to drive or travel by car there.. my my..
Oh so you all must be dying to know the places i managed to visit during my expedition to Egypt..
a. Egyptian Musuem: if you wanna know where all the tourists are in Egypt, go to the museum on a weekend. Its so crowded.. and the musuem is like a treasure chamber of history and artifacts. Always do a little bit of reading about egyptian history before you actually go there or have a good guide or reference book otherwise after 15 minutes they all look the same.. You cant take photos so that makes it a even more special stop.
b. River Nile: If you are on a really tight budget or you just wanna see the city i suggest you walk across the street towards the Cairo city tower and you will see the River Nile. River Nile thats pretty much all can say about that.. you can cross the river by boat or do what smart people who have no life insurance usually do.. Use the bridge and thats wht I did..
c. Cairo Tower: When i put Cairo Tower on my list I knew exactly what I wanted.. See Cairo from the highest point possible and take as many pics as I can. and as i went up the tower on usually crowded lift i reached the perfect spot.. Its a lovely view and on a good day you could just spend hours standing and watching the city life.. I suggest you dont go there if you dont have a camera.. and its a great place to take group pics.
d. Citadel: I suggest you visit the citdael only if you are in a mood to walk. coz this is a huge fortress built on a hill.. The mosque of Mohammed Ali is a definite beauty.. remember to remove your shoes/sandals before u go in or carry polythene bags to cover your shoes.ge
e. Giza Pyramids: Never Walk and see the pyramids.. thats an insult to its beauty. I suggest goin on camel back like i did or horse back.. Dont pay anythin more than 50 LE ( egyptian pound). again the place to take pics.
f. Food u must Try: Falafel, Foul, Sea Food ( from the port saied Suez Canal).
Places i will see next time with RG; all the above and a few places more.
In my limited experience the people there are really kind and friendly.

I guess that pretty much sums up my Egypt Trip.. From my next article onwards i will be back on track reflecting on what becomin 25 years old means..

Home sweet home!!

It's the first day of year. I am home. Sweet home. It's a place I grew up in. I wont say that i know every nook and corner of this small town yet it's a memory I always cherish. I look out of the window of my room and I see a beautiful world. A world minus of dust and pollution, rid of intoxicants in the air we breath. It's a small town in was born in, it has no assigned place on the map as well but it exists. People who have grown with time and changed dwell here. They have grey in their hair now. Reminding me of my long lost childhood. Concrete has encroached here as well. A few years from now this peace, serenity and calm will be gone and it will become one another concrete structural world.
I stand besides a window, my eyes are vigilant, my ears tuned to the sound of nature around me. The river which flows below my house, the gushing wind moving softly over the flowing water and the sweet sound of the river taking a turn all of it is out of a dream. I sit outside the house in the early mornings and I see small time farmers walking towards the river to take bath and gear up for the day ahead. On their way to the river they talk to my grandfather who is the chiefton of the panchayat. He is a man of medium height and a strong yet lean built. A family is an agricultural family with a good hold in the community and people respect my grandfather as he is one of the most influential man around. His built can never give you a glimpse into the ability he has at farming and his capacity to make over fifty people work on the fields every day during the harvest season on the paddy fields. The panchayat has decided once to make a bathing pond for the poor in and around the place where I live. I remember how many an old and wise people had a conversation with my grandfather to give a piece of his land to built the pond. He was generous enough to have given a mass of land for the pond as well as for the construction of the panchayat school. After a few years all these deeds would be forgotten because time is an eraser. People forget the bad fast and the good faster.
Humans have a very short term memory and it works as a great weapon when one wants to forget and never recall. Some things in life are unforgettable; first love, first kiss, tender warm of the souls encounter of the other, realisation that what one looks upon is the one for whom that feeling of doing anything ushered in.

Experiment

Is it that very few people have the chance to do expeiments? But it's my luck that I can experiment, whether be it with life or with life again..... They say I should concentrate... but until I find a ground where my comfort level is the highest, how can I? Even after long, meticulous discussions and permutations and combinations, people find it hard to realize that I require time.. Time to find a foot-hold, a parking space. All the theories about patience and tolerance go for a toss. I firmly believe that only with the right amount of impatience can one progress in life. Patience means stagnation. When a certain individual becomes highly patient his stagnation level drives closer. Patience is a virtue but not when its your career you are talking about. With relationships you have to be patient, because investing into humans and investing into career are two different things. Human interaction is two way, if it's one-way then saturation level increases. Many a lives break up because of the mere fact that their lack of patience leads to inability in interaction. A hundred per cent risk factor is not advisable when it comes to relations but at a given point in time a highly volatile risk is possible with career. If I cannot jell well into a certain atmosphere can I give my hundred per cent into it? Had I been the live-life-the-way-it-is, it could have been possible. But now that I have been engineered in a different fashion..... different doesn't mean extra-ordinary, it just means different as in different from other individuals, I cannot slog in a completely suffocating atmosphere. I have taken a stand that I will never work in a place where I'll have to let go of my dreams. My dream to travel, my dream to read a lot... the joy of being with children in NGO's and teaching them that life can be fun. Certain things I will never want to give up in life.... these certain things are only a handful. Had they been huge in number I would have been judged as over demanding from life, but as they are equivalent to negligible.... I want them.

Pages from an incomplete Book....

Firstly I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to my 1 1/2 readers around the world. I know I had promised to be back with the right topic but as you know by now I am so good at keeping promises. The only thing that I did do as promised was skip gym but I would like to take this moment to plead to RG that please don’t use unparliamentarily language because I skipped gym.. I was attending my twin nieces (Hey I am not that old.. its just that I have old cousins) Rias and Fias Birthday party. I thought atleast this year the children would stop crying when they see candle flames or the knife and cut the cake but to my despair my cousin brother had to once again take the responsibility of doing the honours. If only children could understand what they mean to their parents.. I guess it’s a never ending saga.. parents trying to convey a message to their chidren and often children not understanding it.. anyways I am will come back to that in 2015 or so right RG???
Anyways a few months ago I had thought of writing a book and embarked on a journey to attempt writing it never got past the 8th page guess my approach was not right.. Well it’s a tribute to a person who has taught me a lot in life gave me the courage and trained to speak up infront of a crowd and win prizes to write what’s on my mind and impress people always believe that I can do whatever my heart desires. Suneel Sir we love u get well soon….
DON’T QUIT

When things go wrong
As they sometimes will,
When the road youre trudging
Seems all uphill;
When the funds are low
And the debts are high;
And you want to smile,
But you have to sigh;
When care is pressing you
Down a bit.
Rest if you must,
But don’t you quit.
Success is failure turned inside out,
The silver tint
Of the clouds no doubt,
And you never can tell
How close you are,
It may be near when it seems afar;
So stick to the fight
When you\re hardest hit…
It’s when things go wrong that you must not quit…………
- Anonymous
I remembered seeing that poster stuck on the door of his locker in school. Perhaps during those days I didn’t read it properly or maybe I was too young to understand what it meant but sitting in his flat in Mumbai and seeing that poster again after nearly two decades made me realize what had kept this man going strong for all these years despite all the hardships he faced in life. I could still see the shine on his face, the smile which had made me feel confident about myself, a smile which said, ‘its ok if you make a mistake, I am here to guide you but never say I quit.‘

I was always a shy child in school and I had always been extremely conscious about myself. The Annual Talent Show at school was the most sought after cultural activity. Students would spend weeks practicing in order take home a certificate which had their names written on it. I was not sure I could do anything significant but after continuous pep talks from my mother I finally decided to give it a try.

So the big day finally arrived and I was watching the other participants do so well and I was just praying that I don’t embarrass myself. The thought of winning was never in my mind.
“The next participant in the Mono-act competition is TT VI- K”,” Oh god! that’s me”, I thought to myself. Well here goes. I gathered all my courage and walked up to the stage to perform my event.
Seeing such a huge crowd sent shivers down my spine but I felt since I have come this far I might as well give it my best shot. As soon as I said “Dear friends I am about to perform….. “, I heard a bell from the time keeper. “Your time is over”. The entire crowd started laughing because I didn’t even start and due to the shock of my debut performance ending before it even started crushed me. Rules were rules and I had to get off the stage. “How could 3 minutes get over so fast”. It was hard for even a 6th grade student like me to understand. Is this what they meant by the world is a stage and we are all mere performers?, Well if it is then I am a flop.. I felt so miserable, so small.

Suddenly a classmate came up to me and asked “ what were u actually planning to perform” that’s all I remember because after that I started crying so bitterly that the centre of attention was not my classmate who had won the competition but me. I could hear people saying “ why is he crying?” ; “Oh that’s because he didn’t win”. I wanted to shout to all of them “No I didn’t get a fair chance”.. and I promised myself I will never participate in any competition ever again.

To be continued ……………………………………………………….

Punk-avatar

chapter 765 (I love giving random numbers) of my boy-met-girl-and-after-that-the-disaster-which-was-unstoppable series.
I love wearing slit back dresses..... I hope my audience has no objections to that!!! Even if they have...I see very few ways of irradicating it! Dig out your eyes, bury your face or do the bewitch act for yourself. This personal description of what i like has nothing to do with the following read-up. Just wanted to give it a hot start!!!
A friend's sister is the punk stylo converted into the FTV model. Growing-up years of a child can be tough for parents and even more traumatic for the kid. A standing example was the sister in question! The perpetually confused teenage organism. Teenage suddenly sounds like a disease. The loud make-up, red lipstick, body piercing at places which are painful to the visible eye. How can I ever miss out on the tattoo? I once saw a youtube video on the art of tattoo making wherein even colours are filled in the design. The way eight to nine needle are sqeezed together and attached to a hand machine and how the needles move at fifty pokes per minute! Ouch! These puck kids have it... I must say they have some guts to do it. TT doesnt understand the cult i guess! He is the most sane NRI i have ever come across! oh! we never use "come across" we technically use "bump into"! It sounds cuter as per him! well as per me as well! Without diverting the topic and staying put to the punk cult issue I would like to add that this habit of diverting from the currect topic of conversation to anything and everything on the blue planet and outside is a direct influence of my literature classes and my very influential set of professors who continuously day in and day out make it a point to drill the fact into my small compressed brain that topics can have connections and links everywhere so.... go out and explore...!!!!
I hear people say that all this is a result of the western influence. But I have a question.... Globalisation brings together distant and distinct worlds wherein amalgamation, exchange and adaptation is the method to progress! Wow! Heavy words... putting it simply, we are expanding.. 'go forth and multiply' has attained true meaning in this world. We can't deliberately stop this wave now which we had ourselves initiated in the guise of exchange of ideas and theories and given very many intellectually provoking ideologies to the world around us to declare that we are capable of taking in the pressure. Then how and why do we try to blame the outsider?
Coming back to punk cult...and the party at my dearest friends place. My sweet friend wasn't very sweet in welcoming the punk queen, the kid sister! Even though her face said it all my sweet friend introduced her kid sister by saying, 'Oh! she is such a carrier of the torch of change!' Hmm... now I know what it means when u say....Change is the only constant object in life. What is constant here; my friend's change or sister's punk avatar..that I leave upto the reader to decide.

Ya RIGHT!!!!!!

"When u feel like writing you cant find pen and paper when u find pen and paper you dont find time when u find time and pen and paper you dont find the right words... "
(lazzy blogger- ME)"

I guess that pretty much sums up the way i am feeling at the moment.. so many things to write about but not finding the right words..
Actually is there such a thing as the right word.. come to think of what does the right word, right action, right time, right this right that.. mean?? . who decides this and do we ever agree with each other what is right ? The right thing to do. The right way to behave, the right thing to say.. I guess we all under this constant pressure to do what is right.. or in a never ending battle to prove that what we do and say is right and advocate that everybody around us should also accept what we feel or do is right, which as we all know never happens so we continue to convince ourself that, yes what i said or did was right and the rest of the world can accept it if they want or prove me wrong.

RG and myself have worked this non-alignment policy where we never say "oh thats not right" instead we say " i was being honest" or "Ok.. I am fine with it if u are ok" etc etc.. trust me it works wonders and once hear the code word we reanalyse our decision and actions or words and if we are still convinced we go excute the plan however we still do bypass the policy once in a while but then thats all right!..
I am learning very slowly and must admit very late that, One cant always be right and one should see a situation from all angles before hitting the right button.. I guess the search for the right thingy ( word i learnt from RG) is never ending and its best left that way.. If we all agreed that we all are right then we would have still believed the earth is flat and that elvis is still not dead.. and we wouldnt have had wars and bloodshed.. no divorce no quarrels..(wo)man! life would have been so smooth..

All right.. I still havent got the right topic to write about so i am goin to try tomorow.. Anyway i wanted to ask you RG...Is it all right to miss gym tomorrow.. Ok you dnt have to throw the book at me!!! yikes.!! the search for right continues..... good Nite/morning..

Mantra for the day:
"Never ask a guy or girl :why were u online even at 3:00am in the morning"

Self-explanation....

It had reddish-brown eyes, or was it some colours which I could'nt decipher. It was stairing, continuously stairing at me. Naked in the bathroom I was like a soldier left alone in the field with grenades falling from every direction and paralysed due to the evil observing me. I wanted it to move. I wanted to imagine that it had gone but I knew that I'd be cheating myself. The RAT.... wish I could read it as "him". The tale doesn't begin with the rat neither does it end on it, but yet it plays an important role. The role of the gothic in the tale. The tale is of women but ofcourse, women and with some men lingering in the scene! Not the damsels in distress.. but the damsels who like to put people (can also be read as RATS...) in distress!