Will be back shortly...

Hopefully will be back writing blogs shortly but presently have to sort out certain things...life at times throws more things at you than you can share...wish me luck...

Relationships...

This is one of the most complicated aspect of life. And this is something that should have been the most simplest aspect of life. Human psychology is so damn complex. What we want we dont know, and this leads us to utter confusion.

Why am I babbling about this so late at night? When I see around myself, I dont see any couple happy with each other. Yes, I am talking about people I know, and true they are not enough to pass on a verdict for the entire world...but my world comprises of them. Am I really that unfortunate that couples I know, friends I care about... they dont seem to be happy with their partners at all?

Think of any possible disparity and I know someone or the other who is going through it at the moment. A friend of mine, got divorced recently. He wasnt happy when he was with his ex-wife, and he isnt happy now either...Is this love?

A firend of mine, having a lot of problems in her marriage... she thinks its worse than a broken family...they are together for the sake of thier child, but their togetherness is devoid of any meaning. They are not happy together, probably they wont be happy away from each other as well...Is this love?

A couple I know, are together, but keep on straying each other which is an open secret and probably an understanding amongst them. Apparently they are one happy family, but both the husband and the wife are having affairs outside their marriage. Is this love?

A colleague I know of, is having an extra marital affair with a widow and his wife has no clue about it. Is this love?

Another person I know is having a secret affair with her wife's best friend...and the wife doesnt have a clue about it...Is this love?

A long time friends of mine - I know of a couple who were madly in love, got married against all odds and now the guy is having an affair elsewhere. The wife knows but is quiet...Is this love?

Another firend of mine, though claims to be a perfect husband, wants to have an affair with his one-time girl-friend - an "affair" mind you...he doesnt want to marry her or anything - he wants to "sail" on both the boats... Is this love?

One of my acquaintance recently ommitted a suicide... am out of touch with him for long now, but other firends who were close told me that it has to do with his wife. Is this love?

A friend of mine is getting attracted to another guy outside her marriage as the "other" guy reminds her of her ex-boy friend! Ridiculous...Is this love?

And since all these above examples are from my firends circle - one can very well imagine that am talking about couples who have been together for minimum 10 years! Most of them have had love marriages... most of them "chose" to spend their lives with the chosen partner...n now this!

What do we look for, in a relationship? I think we ourselves are not sure what our expectations are - so we really cannot blame the other person for matching upto them. I want to ask all these friends of mine...why are they spoiling their lives like this? If they dont think they are spoiling their lives...then I want to ask them...why are they shattering my faith on "love"...why why why?

Am really heart broken now... I want to meet people who are happy in love...who are good examples of "love" and "relationships". Need some positivity to sustain my belief in "love". As I begin to "end" another day of my life... I pray to God, please show me one "true" love...a love that culminates into perfect bliss every moment...a relationship that has sustained many oddities and is still going strong... a love that is pure and makes two individuals proud of its existance. Let me re-affirm my belief that "love" is the only thing that gets you going...love that is selfless, egoless and makes you strong. Love is like "oxygen" - you just cannot live without it...let us have this oxygen in its purest form, God...

Today, am really hurt broken - result of an internal turmoil for long... need God to intervene and restore my faith. Show me one genuine relationship God...show me soon.

Hot-N-Cold Vienna

At times I crib about our country not being so advanced as in West. But this hot-n-cold treatment in Vienna made me realize that sometimes not having to stay in an advanced country helps - or may be that I am too used to be in a place which has never put me through freezing cold outdoor and burning hot indoor!!!

Vienna in October is cold cold cold!!! 10 days back when I had arrived here, it was freezing 3-4 degrees with rain/snow and a itchy wind. For the last some days, the waether changed completely - now its very nice - may be aroound 9-10 degrees, no rain and the wind has calmed down. This is a rare climate for Vienna in October, localites say... may be God did it for this special daughter of His, who He knows wouldnt have stood that weather for long (love to think it in this way!)...but whether its is 3-4 or 9-10 deg, its still cold. Sho when u are out u have to wear quite some winter accessories to protect yourself, including woolen gloves, mittens and hats. The irritating part comes when from outdoor you are venturing in some indoors - like your apartment of hotel... you have to start stripteasing the moment you are in! And this is no exaggeration. Because indorr it is warm! At times much more warmer than you would prefer. Say for instance, my Apartment...

Its hot hot hot.

Dark room, bright room. Closed windows, open windows. Heater on, heater off. And the last straw was yesterday, when I put the heater off, and a.c on. But my room takes pride in the fact that it is a perennial tandoor.

Shiva's third eye must be openning somewhere very near by.

So what happens is that when am indoor I am in a hot atmosphere -(right now, my a.c is on at 16 deg but somehow the room temperature is showing as 27 deg! I was taking a nice Sunday afternoon nap and when I woke up 10 mins back I found myself in a pool of sweat!!! And now, am planning to go out for a walk and I feel like rebelling this hot-n-cold torture by not putting on any winter garment at all...!!!

Love...

It has been another long day for Rituparna. Long, tiring, and to make it worse a routine day; nothing exceptional, good or bad happened and that what makes it so irritating for her.
"I need a miracle", she thought as she unlocked her apartment and entered in there. "I need a miracle to save me from the boring, uneventful life that am living; and I need it soon, before it is too late." As she kept her stuffs in their "supposed-to-be" places she wondered if those stuffs felt the same boredom that she suffers from. With a sudden impulse she kept the umbrella on the shelf of her bedroom rather than on the Stand in the main entrance. She kept her purse on the centre table rather than in the cupboard and left her laptop bag on the bed itself. Let them enjoy a different state of being today...irrespective of whether it is better or worse...just to have a different "taste" of life. She smiled at her insanity and wished she had the power to change her own course of life the way she is doing for her stuffs!

Rituparna, a successful career woman in her late twenties. A woman who lives life on her own terms and faces its consequences with a smile today feels burdened with her life. Not because her life is not worth living. In fact, many women would love to trade places with her. A successful career, well established, independent woman, living life on her own terms in this faraway land in Europe... earning a decent livelihood as well as respect in the society...who would not want to be in her place? And she realises that. She is grateful for everything life has given her. She realizes the value, all the more because she has earned them all. Some people are born lucky, some people "get" lucky, and she is definitely the latter. So she relishes the achievements of her life. But with all the fights that she fought right from her childhood, today she feels tired. Tired of fighting and getting things - today she wants to "be" lucky and not "get" lucky.

After changing she switches on the TV - her companion at home and starts preparing dinner for herself. Boredom sets in yet again, but she knows she has to "fight" it to prevent herself from starving. She has to cook tonight, whether or not she feels like doing it. She takes out the marinated chicken from the freezer and stars chopping onions... she always liked chopping onions...as then you can cry your heart out without feeling guilty. The "strong" woman tag that she wears all the time prevents her from crying...but the soft girl inside her, wants to cry - this conflict is best resolved when is is cutting onions. As then the girl trapped inside can cry her heart out without the strong woman interfering in there. As she cuts the onions, she cries and tries to console the girl...the innocent girl who feels like rebelling, but is too weak to do so.

Ritu was very popular amongst her friends always. A bubbly girl, always with a friendly smile whose simplicity moved everybody around her. She believed in perfection of human relationships. She believed in Love... a girl in love with love. All her relationships she lived perfectly. Her power of "loving" was immense and divine. She was the perfect daughter, the perfect sister, the perfect friend...in short her "love" was perfect. She was idealistic and wanted an ideal world - where she would be able to heal others' pain and miseries. Many a times she got scolding from her mother for being too liberal in giving all her stuffs/toys away to needy and poor people around. Her father always supported her and she adored him for that. Ritu was a girl who would unconditionally "give" in every human relationship that she lived. And she believed the world is exactly the way she is.

That has been her biggest mistake. She believed "Love" is conceived by everybody exactly the same way as she does. And her idealism truely exists. At every crossroad of life when someone somewhere would break her heart, she would fight with the cruel world and take her idealism forward - no way she could let her belief break because of one or two persons! She always believed in optimism. She would not let anyone break her faith on "love". So all the hearbreaking events, now matter how small or big they were, were kept somewhere deep within her heart. She believed there would be one specialperson who would help her forget all those events and make her realize that her dream of finding "true love" has indeed come true one day.
And it happened when she met Rahul. She knew he was the one...she knew she got her soul mate. She forgot all her past miseries and she knew her life was perfect with her soul mate. They loved each other truely, or so she thought and their life together was a perfect example of love and togeherness...or so she thought. She felt so secured, so protected in Rahul's arms. She knew thats her world, and she was happy and content.

After being together for 3 whole years and enjoying many good moments, their relationship started falling apart - this process of falling part was so gradual and slow that probably both of them didnot realize it till the time the gap widened to such an extent that they realized they just cannot accept that gap and continue living. Ritu did not want to know whose fault it was - and thats not an important issue at all. The most important issue was it was a great loss, and that the damage was done.

Ritu, with all her idealism and principles could not ome in terms with the pain of staying in that broken relationship - so she had to decide to come out of it. It was tough as this time the girl in her just couldnt take it anymore. She started losing faith on "love", on "relationship" on "God" on everything that she always believed in. Taking a job in Europe she fled the situation there but she knew she could never flee from the memories...from the ghost of the past.

As she started preparing the chicken and warming up the cold rice in the freezer...the ghosts of the past started dancing all around her. She tried to fight them but she was too weak to do so... she wanted to run away, but she didnt know where to. She knew she had to fight and win them over but the girl within had no energy left in her to do so... and thats when she hoped and prayed that some miracle would happen...

Who is this Ritu? ANd why am I blogging about her? I dont know Ritu, but I know that we all can relate to Ritu at some point of our life. When we believe in something very strongly and that belief breaks, we understand Ritu's pain. So Ritu is in each one of us... And miracle? Does miracle happen?

Am at such a crossroad of my life where am yet to see whether miracle happens or not, when you desperately want them to happen. As for Ritu... I wish her all the best. May God send His angels to help Ritu out.

Flowers and Chocolates

Flowers and Chocolates... why am I talking about them? Well, thats because they are the most common genre of gifts in love. If you are a girl, you loving getting them; if you are a boy, you love gifting them ( I would like to - and this is probably going on from the time immortal (well chocolates definitely have been added in the upgraded version once chocolates came into existance, but flower am sure is going on for centuries.

So whats the big deal? They are not these rare commodities that you just cannot afford to have them unles some one gifts you in love. But even then, the pleasue of getting a bunch of roses or a box of chocolate from your man is a pleasure of a different genre altogether - figures of speech fail to describe such a pleasure.

Ever since i was sweet sixteen, I dreamt of getting flowers and chocolates from my dream man! Dream man kept changing, but flowers and chocolates were always constant. They were always in my "wish list". Long time back there was an ad on TV of Thums Up featuring Salman Khan as a naval officer surprising his girl friend with a flower bouquet... I think thats when I strated dreaming about flowers... and then there was another ad on TV of Amul Chocolate and one of the version was about love... how idiot box makes us idiot...

My "teenage-ism" is still at its peak, though am more than double the age of sweet sixteen now... i still dream of flowers and chocolates... with my increasing waist line and grey hair (yes I saw my first grey hair a couple of days back) I still dream of getting a flower bouquet from someone special alongwith a box of chocolates... Any one listenning''

Another 7 years and my daughter will be sweet sixteen, and I want to pass pn my dreams to her. May she get flowers and chocolates from the man of her life... I dont know whether she will share her feelings with me then, but I sincerely hope that she does, as I want to re-live those dreams with her... let all my share of flowers and cholocates go to her... I pray and hope that her dreams get fulfilled...

As of my flowers, I still have not given up the hope

Happy Diwali

Today, or rather tonight is Diwali - a festival of light, prosperity, joy and fun gallore. Somehow, ever since was a child, never really enjoyed this festival because of the crackers. Never really liked them, they make too much of sound. So every year during Diwali, I wished I was in a place which was more peaceful... and less of noise around.

My daughter loves to play with crackers and so does her father. Though its always fun to see her smiling face but honestly never really liked those hours of burning crackers...

So this time around, God granted me my wish - today being Diwali am away from those madenning sound of bursting crackers. Am in a place where there is peace every where. Deserted streets, freezing cold and no crackers at all. And my heart can go to any extent to see my daughter burning her crackers. Got a candle but forgot a lighter to lit it... ideally this should have been my best Diwali - exactly the way I wwant it to be... but feel like telling God, that I will never crib about sound... please let me never be away from my family on Diwali ever...

Happy Diwali to all....

Vienna Part - II

Am back in Vienna yet again. Had been here only 3 weeks back and even then this place seems so different. Summer is gone, and Vienna looks desserted. The same roads but devoid of colorful tourists. The same roadside food joints but all chairs withdrawn - so what you are left over with is empty footpath. The wind is chilly, the weather a bitch...and everybody seem so dull and devoid of any pleasure in life - and am no exception.

Well, the irony of fate is that, this time work pressure is much less - but I have no place to go. Because would prefer to be at home in this weather than venture out. Europe in mid-Oct is not a desirable time to be in. As I struggle everyday to commute to and fro office and fight my way against the strong south-westerly wind, I miss my home even more, and to think about it, tomorrow being Diwali - the festival of light - am here in this part of the world freezing to death twice every day. And they say winter has still not properly begun!!! Oh my my!!!