Go Goa

When I was in class five or six, we went on a family vacation to my Dad's favourite holiday spot Shimla. We travelled in the Toy Train, stayed in a gorgeous hotel, visited Chail and Kufri and did tourist-y things. 

That is the last memorable vacation I recall where it all seemed extremely simple.

Subsequent vacations to Jaipur, Rishikesh and even Muscat were adventurous but lacked the element of holiday. 

So when the Goa holiday with friends was propagated, I got excited. I was ecstatic, daydreaming during exams, using it as a bargaining tool to finish chapters, using it as a motivating factor. 

However, now as the fifteenth of January draws nearer, the thrill is slowly seeping out.

When the Goa vacation was created, I imagined days spent lazing, not worrying what we ate or what we wore, not having a schedule of places to visit or must do things, hours spent lying on the beach writing/filling my diaries, sipping at pina coladas staring into the sea. That's the image I had in my head.

Its increasingly becoming something far and far away from this image.

Shopping, clothes, accessories, suitcases, money, dresses, shorts, sunscreens, hats, things like body image, party behaviour, swim ability and adjusting are becoming the major issues.

The things I want out of Goa seem terribly different from the things that other people are going for. 

My reason is simple : I want a vacation from everything. I want a holiday from life in Delhi, some days to myself to process and think without being distracted by mundane things. I want to enjoy, laugh and have fun for five days without giving sparing a thought about anyone. I want to sleep. I want fun. No partying, no friendship, no family. 

Most of all I want peace.

Terrifying

The last three days have been particularly hard. It is not easy to deal with the real side of dreams. We were taught, dreams are endless but are they really ?

When  terms and conditions render them all but useless, does the integrity or the very essence that makes it a dream remain ?

In my head, the steps I had paved to my dream were enough. But I realize they aren’t, and I suppose it’s the worst feeling.

It terrifies me to admit this but I am back to square one now. What is worse, I don’t know where to begin. 

Stay

Some people leave, others come back and then leave and then there are some who just stay.

It haunts me

Nothing brings life into perspective like death.

Death is unpredictable, happens out of the blue. You don’t expect it; you cannot make contingencies for it. It hits you like a slap in the face. You stop living your life like you did the moment before that.

The perspective that hits you may or may not last. The attitude change may affect life as general or not.

You just hope that the perspective lasts, that it stays like a filter or perhaps a pair of glasses when you see the rest of your life. Because that is the only way you would do everything without a care about the consequences.

Death shocks you, the suddenness of the event gives you goosebumps.

She may have been sitting in front of you one day asking her Dad on the phone to book tickets for the movie and the next you have a text in your phone about the sudden demise of her beloved father.

The jealousy, the anger, anxiety, evil thoughts, hatred, envy, scepticism and the resentment it all drains out of you. All that is left is shock and perhaps shreds of pure guilt for having such thoughts.

And then you think about all those people who are dear to you and what if something like this happened to them?

What would you have changed or done more or said more or perhaps just loved more.

Lessons

Star World, it seems has taken upon itself to educate the younger generation about the joys of TV series extending beyond five seasons.

It recently came back with Grey's Anatomy, everyday at ten o' clock.

I have not been watching everyday mostly because I cannot stand Meredith and Derek. To tell you honestly, I am waiting for Hunt to return and spar with Yang. I like my love stories with a little fight between the lovers and not with the others.

Anyway, what I have realized is that life is not like Grey's Anatomy. Save me the roll of  eyes saying "told you so".

I did think so. I thought you could describe your feelings to someone as it came to your mind without thinking, that eventually you could fall in love with your friend and it could be all you wanted and a hundred other things you assumed.

I was eighteen. I was naive. So yes, my younger Grey's watchers don't expect life to unfold like Meredith's.

You cannot express your feelings to another person as they are in your head. They need to be moulded and created accordingly.

So even though it may seem so easy to go upto another and say what you think, here are repercussions to that. 

Things about me

I pray for this every damn time !
Except when its Mum.

DT

We were talking about studying abroad when he asked, Why I preferred the US over any other country ?
At first I could not think of any specific reason so I told him I had family there, more than anywhere else.

Even after that conversation ended, this stayed in the back of my mind. Why did I prefer the US ?
I do have close family there but I knew that wasn't the reason, neither was the fact that I saw it on the TV shows.

A few weeks later, flickering through channels, I came across Vijay Amritraj interviewing Donald Trump. It was at that moment that it struck me, why the US formed such an integral part of my dreams. It was when Trump started talking about what a success Apprentice had become that it came to me, like an epiphany almost.

The fact that I had given up on the one dream I have had since I was fourteen. I had given up on it because of the dismal dark place that my career was heading towards during graduation.

Now I am at a better place, I am going towards a better one. So even though I may not have a twelve year old postcard stuck to my table that I daydream to but now I am taking my dream back.

Trump is on !

Rainbows

Is there something at the end of this not-so-pretty rainbow ?

So you trudge along, waiting and silently cursing the difficult path. While others jump along the way, faster and happier. On some rocks you trip, others you kick while they have no rocks in their path.

So you get the plot right.

Now my question, do we all get the same pot of gold at the end ?
If yes, why ? If no, do we even get a pot of gold ?

One day. Again

A picture was all it took to convince me to write again.

A picture says a thousand words doesn’t it ?

It said to me a few, something you love isn’t given up just because you are bad at it.

And if you think about it, its true.

So I’ll write. Write about all the stupid mundane things I used to.

Lawyered

You know you are a law student :

11) While travelling in the metro, big “seat want” aunties offer you their seat when they see the five books that you are carrying weigh atleast thirty kilos.

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  2)  Watching the movie Speed : Cruise Control for the tenth time, all you can think of are the number of negligence and tort related suits that would be filed in the court in when the ship enters into the harbour city.

  3)   When you bribe naïve siblings to pretend to be judges while you as the Defendants lawyer present your      case

  4)  Anytime you start an argument, atleast one person says “ab please lawyer-giri mat jhaad”

  5) When you know what Hrithik Roshan refers to Article 21 when fighting for his life in Guzaarish

66) When Hotel Management students complain about wearing black and white to serve as stewards and the only thing you can think of is, black and white is for lawyers bitches ! 

   (Shall be updated as and when :) )

One Year

It has been exactly a year since I blogged. Well a year and one day since I wrote without being  asked.

One Day

Oh I know that when Dex puts his hand inside his pocket, he will pull out his lavender scented invitation and I know that when I turn the page Emma Morley will guide their way through the maze. I know I will dread turning the pages once Dex reaches Paris.
What I don't know is why I come back to this book again and again. It begins as a casual read, something to pass these dull summer moments by and suddenly it turns into a mystery of known facts.
I suppose its Dex and Em that pull me to read, they seem like old friends now. People I once knew an its oddly comforting to read their story again. For here there is no pretence, just plain in your face honesty.
Finding me and relating myself to a character is what I did the first time I read the book, the third or the fourth time that I am reading it now, I am not able to identify with either because they seem like people I would know in real life.

I know I am like Emma, yet I know this too that I would not have the courage to do half the things she did. At times, the emotional daftness and the false vanity of Dex is like looking into a mirror.
At the end  with Ian, Em knows in her heart that she loved him yet she was not in love with him. It makes me ponder and wonder every time I read it. It is such a difficult difference to make and yet it is one that makes all the difference.

The yearning and the desire that flows between them isn't what keeps the pages alive but rather it is the narration, its like being in the character's head. It almost seems an autobiography.

When I started the book, it seemed like a stiff upper lip British novel and I looked forward to chapters of annoyed phrases stacked together against each other and love and feelings described in single lines but instead I don't know when I fell for Em and Dex.
Em first and Dex later, you always fall for the playboy later.
The arrogance of Dex is hardly endearing but over time you discover that it conveniently hides the complicated person that he is. Em could be any girl, every girl.

As a reader you know when it is more than just a book that you are reading, it is when you feel that intense dislike for Dex or Em which lasts only until they explain, almost cajole you into understanding until you are unconsciously bobbing your head in compassion giving them permission to mess up further.

So what makes it special ?
Its not the love, their love story is highly unremarkable, cliched and predictable.
However, the journey is anything but. the ups and downs most importantly the friendship that continues irrespective anything.

This book teaches you about friendship, that bit about it which nobody teaches and nobody writes. Its about the bond, the bond between friends and the need, to discuss, for each other. It forms the foundation of it all and losing it will be fatal.

On page three hundred eighty two, Em says and I quote "Ridiculous, at thirty eight, to expect a song or book or film to change your life".
Well I am twenty one and this book though did not change my life but it did change the days of my life. Those days when I forgot everything and concentrated on the book. For if you read it, you know its not the kind that you read in chapters.
So here's to Em and Dex
and to One Day for being this brilliantly written book that I will always come back to.

(One Day by David Nichols is officially the fourth book to be added in the Forever Collection)

Habits

Once a habit now a hardly remembered memory, that’s what blogging has become sadly.

When I wonder ?

When did that need to write disappear, when did that urge to discuss and pen down the details fritter away, when did I forget about writing. Frankly I know the answers to all of them as shamed as I am to admit that.

Shamed I am to admit that I have lost a considerable amount of time I used to take out for myself. I could blame it on a thousand different things or even my favorite thing to blame “college”; but lets make this blog truthfully (unlike the other ones).

To blame I have only me.

I think it started with college, the reason that I cared for things or people which would eventually mean nothing to me. I am slow in picking up these things sadly. I became so involved in the juvenile things that happened. It was high school all over again just that I wasn’t the cool kid I was. I was the worrier, the wannabe, the acceptee.

I am not out of those clutches but I hope this knowledge that has dawned on me rather late doesn’t go futile.

Of course there are some other reasons also, the phone talking with my self confessed best friend. I think the need to talk which existed flies out of the window when another person listens. Listening is hard I have realized. You don’t need ears to listen, you need love which does sound corny. But if you don’t love a person I can indemnify that you wouldn’t bother to listen.

A theory to test out eh ?

Be careful this theory may not work on girls in case of absolutely lip smacking gossip.

Scarlett ensures that blogger wont work on her system hence to ensure regular posts I have to wait to get an actual smartphone.

However, I Bluebutterfly solemnly promise to tell the truth and only the truth and nothing besides the truth irrespective of however gruesome, hurtful or rude it may be.

The Beginning

On page ninety three of the book Sam’s letters to Jennifer by James Patterson, Jennifer thinks “How many of us know the true stories of parents and grandparents? How many of us share the stories of our lives with our own children? What a loss to the children if we don’t. What are we but our stories?.”

I sat in the Delhi Metro on my way to college at eight in the morning and this question made me wonder. What are we but our stories? At the end, everything ceases. All we are remembered by are our stories. What was the story of our life and how the story is known to others?

That got the wheels of my mind whirring; I wanted to tell my story. Though nothing remarkable however I wanted to record it. This belief was only deepened when I went for a TED event where a young writer talked about his passion for writing.

While he explained about getting the required seed capital about his venture, all I could about was the disastrous end that my writing had come to. My writing which at one time couldn’t be contained in word documents alone was now lying in tatters in an unread blog.

Unfortunately, I always have thought of myself as a bit of writer. I remember reading books and discarding them after reading one chapter thinking, knowing that I could write better than that writer. Sadly I realized my vocabulary was too restricted, didn’t use the required fanciful words and was largely concentrated on self depreciating humour.

However, that was not to be the truly sad part. The reason that it all ended was the simple reason that a blog which started out as a place to document my thoughts became a place where I would write to be socially accepted by the “writer” friends I had acquired.

I miss that adulation.

But that was writing for the masses. My trademark whining posts were transformed into half page drafts of short humorous accounts of events. It got boring, so boring that I did not have a single post for five months. I had five blogs and none of them had that attraction left.

So as you can see I love to talk about anything. But I love to talk on paper.

The one particular aspect that remains undecided is the audience. I am thinking of doing a bit of an experiment. You know, giving the blog address to some friends, testing the reaction and depending on the outcome that particular aspect will be ascertained.

So here’s to a new journey to an unknown place, to the new people that we’ll meet on the way, to the good and bad times that will be documented and just to getting back to a passion; writing.