My article on Valentines Day

I wrote this article for the Nashik Times on Valentines Day two years back...
for me this read was a dip in the nostalgic spring of the very words that came steeaming from my heart two years back....
though you bloggers will like this!!!!

Ties That Bind

A relationship that is consistent, intimate, lifeward, loving and caring can do wonders to your life…

Emotions are the breeze which sets our heart aflutter. Feelings of acceptance, sublimity, sensitivity, compassion, thoughtfulness, endurance, flexibility and tolerance…all rolled into one make a relationship beautiful and worth cherishing. Two individuals grow in a relationship and bloom into better human-beings nurturing and guiding each other through.
With love comes sense and sensibility. Unlike infatuation love is a steady blaze which lights the life of both the ones who light it and receive the light. Infatuation is an intense feeling of elation while love is exhilaration coupled with a sense of maturity and responsibility of the other individual. Kirti Pandya, who has recently tied the nuptial knot shares, “One often confuses infatuation with love. A good-looking individual or a charming personality passing by may attract your attention; but only after knowing a person properly can love come into the picture.”
Well said. Love is eternal and everything else is ephemeral. Two people basically come together because they share the same set of values or core principles of life and desire similar things from life as a whole. It does not matter much if their personal interests, likes and dislikes towards material things differ from one another.
SK Singh and his wife, a doting couple who are looking forward to their 30th anniversary, when asked about the secret of a lifelong union slip into a nostalgic mode as they speak their heart out, “It’s pretty easy to fall in love or for that matter simply feel the emotion. But what is important is to experience a constancy of feelings and emotions for the other person. Even after years of marriage the basic care, concern and responsibility for each other, one’s needs and happiness have remained constant. The feelings are mutual and that is what makes a relationship truly beautiful.”
A number of relationship experts and marital counselors lay a lot of emphasis on communication in a relationship. It’s not only essential to be a good listener but be ready to talk things out with your partner if things are going the way you anticipate instead of simply blaming each other or getting tangled in the ‘taken for granted syndrome’ which will threaten the relationship in the long run.
The road to a joyful affiliation with your partner may not always be a path of roses. A few pebbles or grunge may lie on the pathway. Mind you! There will be bends on the road too. Maybe the cruel pace of life with grueling professional schedules and other obligations will grind out your time for each other. But trust, faith, accepting each other’s shortcomings, understanding and appreciating the differences and more importantly spending quality time with each other will see you through. And last but not the least you have to love and respect yourself; because you cannot give to another individual what you do not have for yourself. And nothing is more satisfying than knowing that you can love an individual with all your mind, heart and soul and be loved in return.

Falling from grace


Adrenalin oozed out. Outraged rants bombarded news channels and newspapers screamed of heartache and anguish. The Mumbai attacks cut open urban India and has exposed flesh bones et al. Everybody whether directly affected or just witnessing the event on the other side of the TV were talking about the territorial and emotional assault on the financial nerve center. All was loud and bright until the dazzle of elections weakened the wick of the candle.

Indeed, couple of months back our tricolour nation took to streets, soul-stirring sms, e-mails and online petitions driving you to play your part and do your bit that you can to make the world a better place to live in. The cream of the crop found their activist voices that apparently fizzed out in a while. And now we're all back to work. The epidemic that everyone was down with soon wiped every essence of its presence. Looks like the movie Ghajini talk about a commonplace disorder…short-term memory loss. For the state of memory of the aam junta is not really different from what the protagonist in the movie suffered from.

Catastrophes like these wake people up from their deep slumber that in turn tries to wake the authorities up. When the terror gun was pointed at Aamchi Mumbai muddled administration of the city and the country as whole raised its ugly head followed by R. R. Patil being replaced by Chhagan Bhujbal as deputy chief minister of Maharashtra. Well, did we forget that he is the same man who was made to resign five years ago after his name cropped up in the Telgi scam? Well. Like I said, short-term memory loss. If 2 years later, god forbid if there is another bomb blast he will resign and a Vilas Rao will be pulled out of the woodwork since public memory would have cooled off by then and his current incompetence would be a haze.

You don’t know how it feels until you are on the other side of the gun and India has been on this tin edgy end more than once. We are definitely under the weather, but we cannot overlook the importance of making things better and breathing cleaner air. Well we have already started a battle, a battle of words… everybody from Mahesh Bhatt to Barkha Dutt to my paperboy have an opinion that goes to the emotional crest. We have Simi Garewal pointing out the brilliance of George Bush's strategy of attack and we should do the same. She even directed our attention to those jhuggis who are displaying green coloured flags.Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi pointed to lipstick painted and powder dabbed faces at candle lit vigils calling them no less than terrorists. Shobha De retorted by saying she is proud of her lipstick and powder and a lifestyle, honestly earned and enjoyed. The policy is if you do not throw a bouquet at me expect a brickbat. It's amazing how quickly we turn the venom on each other at a time of crisis.

Somebody said the crisis has brought India closer together and established us as united, sensitive and humane? Is it or we are back we are. Going about our own affairs and minding our respective businesses slipping into the non-clinical Alzheimer living in our glass cubes where we can definitely see each other but not touch and feel others.

Youngsters said they don’t want a movie about their grief and pain on the glorified 70mm. But will the coming generation remember and feel what we all went through as a collective nation on the ill-fated day? Were there no movies like Buniyaad, Garam Hawa, Gadar, Earth, Pinjar would be able live the pain, grief and anguish what the generation before experienced? It is art, paintings, literature, poetry and cinema that keep something in public consciousness alive. To have awakened somebody you constantly need to stir him.

The my-outrage-is-better-than-your-outrage-and –my-pain-is-deeper-than- your-pain-& -my-grief-is-of-the-greatest-magnitude-&- we-are-holier-than-thou attitude does not work.
So please don't turn a deaf ear. You really matter even if your effort is a drop in the ocean. Especially if you are the one who sends me the millionth SMS or email or facebook invite asking me to wake up. Remember you have to be awake to wake others up.

Hey Soulmate…

Isn’t a lot already been written, said and read?
But my prose is yet to edify a path not tread.
My lyrics will unveil a tale unfold,
To reveal shades unseen and feelings untold.

Can you but conquer a language just by making a few words your own?
Or simply douse your hand to gauge the depth of the mighty ocean that the earths adorn…
Love is breathing life into gestured emotions that mere words fail to evince
Its Not bottling emotions within or giving the words a mince

Experiencing the joy of my Soulmate walking by
Even when the clock threats to run and minutes simply fly
Unearthing the latent virtues and those deep embryonic sighs.
Lifting our conjoined wings to reach enthralling highs.

Trying to Capture the tempest that jogs into a dervish whirl
Strings of my heart that I pull and hurl
Having found you my search ends but journey continues
A soulful lilt planted in my step as each moment renews…

~ Soulmate (Solemate)

MY WAY

I've just seen a few springs in my life
but have traveled many roads.
And not ones that were beaten and rife
But treading the path and choosing my way.

Regrets and remorse… yes I've had a few, who doesn’t?
but I still walked my way strong
Taking every defeat in my stride
Still walking the path with all the plume and pride

I bit more than I could chew
Asked questions whose answers I always knew
I have nursed a broken heart
Embraced pain when I had to reluctantly depart

I have run into the strangest of by lanes
and yet managed to find my way
There were times when I screeched at the tiniest of doubt
And then actually fought it all out.

I've it laughed till I cried
I have shed copious tears till I managed to pull a smile,
I've strangely loved and lost
And lost and found the same love again

I have been there done that,
and landed up right there back again
Tried to run away from myself the most but in vain
And always ended up bumping into me…yes again!

Jumped the tallest mountain falling to the zilch
and yet climbed it back again.
The blows and scars say it all
Bearing witness to the journey I have had.

The curtains are yet to fall
The tree is yet to shed its leaves
The stream is yet to bury its head in the rivers’s lap
Until then..I have time to live my dreams…

Live it all My Way~~~~