Soulmates

(I didn't write this myself, but enjoy it all the same)

She was haunted by a man whom she had never met. He came to her in his dreams. It was not just a recurring dream about some random Prince Charming archetype. This guy has flaws, he was just as mixed up and lost as she was. She would wake up from a dead sleep to the sound of his voice whispering in her ear, "Look out the window." She would argue in her half asleep stupor, "Be quiet! I'm sleeping." Again, he would whisper, "look out the window." She would eventually drag herself up from the cozy comfort of her bed to gaze out the window. There was the full moon, big and beautiful. It magically called to her from somewhere in the back of her soul's oldest memories.

She could feel him there, her ghostly suitor. She knew that if she spun around quickly, he would be standing there behind her, but every time she turned, there was nothing there but silence, silence and darkness. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind, she could hear him silently promising, "Wait for me. I'll find you if it's the last thing I do." She would toss and turn for the rest of the night feeling his intense presence and wrestling with the fact that he wasn't real.

As the years went on, she would learn that he did not know her name and that he called her Destiny. She began to call him Passion. She was not allowed to search for him. She was to sit still and wait. It was part of the game, part of the agreement. His challenge for this lifetime was to search for his Destiny. After all, what is Passion without Destiny? He had to learn how to recognize her. She had to learn how to wait in blind faith that he would find her. Both had to live real lives with real mates. Neither could shake the very real belief that the other one existed somewhere out there.

How many times would she convince herself that the man standing in front of her was her Passion? How many times would it not be true? How would she know when it was finally him? How many women would he mistake for her? Would Passion and Destiny burn out and give up, writing it all off as just some figment of their imaginations? Do soulmates really exist? Or are we looking for an impossible ideal?

A soulmate is not just someone that you love from the depth of your soul. They are not just someone that you have a karmic connection with. They are not just someone that you want to spend the rest of your life with. They are someone you miss hanging out with before you have even met. They are the ones that upon first meeting you simply sigh in relief and say, "Ah there you are, I've been waiting for you." There is no question, no getting to know you stage. You have known them for all of eternity. You may want to share stories of your journeys and how you came to find each other, but you already know them as well as you know yourself. You see yourself in their eyes. You understand them on a soul level because you share the same source.

Unfortunately, it is not always a blissful experience. Most of us are not ready to meet our other halves because we are not even ready to look ourselves in the mirror. Until you can truly love and accept yourself, then you will not be able to love and accept your soulmate. They are not some fantasy person sent to save you from the ups and downs of real life. They will not make your life a magic perfect delight. They will simply love you on a level that is unlike any other.

If you do not hear the call of a long lost soulmate, count yourself as blessed. You have the freedom to love anyone you choose. You get to make any kind of match that pleases you. Do not try to force a soulmate relationship. Be content in knowing that you are exactly where you are supposed to be, doing exactly what you are meant to do.

If, on the other hand, you do hear your Passion calling, or you see Destiny in your dreams, then my prayers go out to you my dear. For yours is that path of finding the proverbial needle in the haystack. Don't ask me to tell you if they're worth the hunt. Can you bring yourself to give up the hunt even if you tried? Only you can gauge your ability to silence that cosmic voice calling you to hold out for that certain person that only you will recognize. Only you know what it's going to take to find them. Perhaps the angels will smile upon the two of you and help with some old fashioned happenstance. Perhaps you will telepathically connect and find your way to each other's arms. Perhaps you were just meant to experience the longing. Perhaps you will go through some bad relationships first so that when you find your Destiny, she'll be that much sweeter and more appreciative. Nobody knows for sure how it will play out. But I believe that on some level, deep down, you know.

Did you already meet your soulmate and choose to walk away from each other? Was the intensity too much? Did it scare you? Was it overwhelming? Was it too hard? Will you have a second chance with them later down the road? Will you miss them forever? Yeah, probably. Will you learn something about unconditional love from them? Yeah, probably.

Did you find each other and recognize they shared the same soul as you? Did you hold on tight? Count yourself as the very rare and the incredibly blessed. Cherish the gift of finding yourself in another's eyes and seeing just how beautiful you are.

Columbiformed

I'm having murderous thoughts. Evil, cruel, malicious intentions are occupying the front seats of my mind right now. I have an itching desire to evict squatters from our flat, not unlike the cruel landlord in the story who turned out the hapless widow with her little baby in a snowstorm in the middle of the night. Did he feel guilty, did his conscience bother him at all, did he suffer from nightmares and did he drown his sorrows in drink every time it snows? I’ll never know; but one thing I know for sure is I wouldn’t be feeling guilty at all, it never snows here anyway, and the nightmares I can only hope never occur.

Said squatters being a pigeon family who had taken up residence on top of our empty cardboard boxes in a corner of a shelf in our kitchen. Birds in the kitchen? I hear you cry in disgust. Well you haven’t seen our kitchen. It’s not a big kitchen, but the place where the pigeons hung up their socks is right next to the door so it is almost like they never come inside the house. Fly in the door, land on your very own bird-doorstep, do whatever it is that birds do all day, fly out when hungry, make noises and when someone peeps at you get all jumpy and startled like you've never seen humans before and you're just dropping in for a chat. When they first deposited their luggage we didn’t mind much, and when they laid two eggs we were quite excited, checking it every other day to see if they’d hatched. It was all downhill from there. The eggs hatched, and two little ugly chicks were born. They sure were ugly, and for some reason one of them was not quite developed as the other and I think the parents kind of rejected it because it kept on falling down on the floor and we tossed it back up numerous times. It’s not exactly the nicest surprise, I'm telling you, when you are standing there in the kitchen doing whatever it is humans do in the kitchen when something soft and furry and heavy suddenly attaches itself on your shoulder. If you're the jumpy panicky type you would've screamed your lungs out, or told it to everyone so that by the time the fifth person hears about it it would've been a bat trying to suck your blood, or something equally gross and unbelievable.

Following Darwin’s theory of Survival of the Fittest, the weak chick died ( and we thought they were stupid and well, birdbrained), I don’t know about the funeral arrangements but one day I peeped into the villa and it was no longer there. I was a bit miffed for not being invited to the funeral service. I could’ve said something nice. The other chick is all grown up now, but not yet quite as big as its parents, and still lives in the nest, and the mother has just delivered a new set of siblings-to-be. I saw the older brother yesterday strutting among the broken things and the cardboard boxes as if it was his kingdom. I don’t mind the strutting, the startling and squawking, the watching you suspiciously from the balcony, or the lovemaking noises. What I absolutely cannot stand is the flying over your head without any warning, dirtying the floor with poop, the kicking down pieces of concrete and straw from your bedroom, and the bad reputation we as flatmates have acquired for having you share our flat and you don’t even contribute to the rent or maintenance. With so much generosity and benevolence shown from our side, can’t you at least act like civilized birds and keep your nest and its surroundings neat and tidy?

Dear reader, I hope you will now see my side of the coin and forgive me for all these unkind and nasty thoughts that are festering in me, and if the day ever comes when I turn the cruel landlord I hope you’ll pronounce me “Not Guilty.”

got Klue?

Today is Election Day in AP, and the streets are awfully quiet. There was no more campaigning for the last 48 hours and it suddenly feels weird not having loudspeakers blasting day and night, not seeing party workers dressed in their party colours and roaming the streets and shouting slogans. The wine shops have all been closed since yesterday and that means the street below our balcony looks like any normal street. As I write this people are standing in long queues to vote for whomever they think is best to rule the country for the next five years, whomever they think will be the best player in this ridiculous game of power.

Speaking of games, have you heard of this online picture puzzle game Klueless? It is developed by IIM-Indore, I'm sure many of you might have heard of it because the first level, Klueless 1, was launched way back in 2005, a long long time ago in the online world. Like the slowpoke I am I discovered this game last night and I played it till my eyes closed on their own. It’s very interesting and addictive. Four levels have been launched in all, the links and the rules of the game are below. Enjoy the game, and if you have played it, please keep the answers to yourself. There are plenty of blogs and forums out there where Klueless is being discussed; you might want to hear what people said about it.

Rules of the game

Klueless 1

Klueless 2

Klueless 3

Klueless 4

Summertime

• Cool nights
• Juicy mangoes
• Sudden showers
• Dripping ice cream cones
• Wearing fewer clothes
• Great hair, great skin
• Lime soda
• The smell of the sun on freshly washed bed sheets
• Long days
• Midnight trips to highway dhabas
• Coconut water
• Predawn moments
• Vacations
• Bare feet
• Swimming pools and water parks
• Lassi
• Watching terrible movies just to escape from the heat
• Sleeping on the terrace
• Movie marathons
• Ice cubes
• Power cuts
• White clothes
• Holiday flings
• Window shopping at air conditioned malls
• Watching the sunrise
• Going to sleep after sunrise
• Kulfi
• Dust
• Weekend getaways
• Holi
• Blossoming gulmohar trees
• Dreaded exam results
• IPL
• Watermelon
• Going home and enjoying the mountain breeze
• Going home and feeling cold because it’s raining cats and dogs
• Going home and meeting old friends you haven’t seen in years
• Going home and doing nothing for two weeks
• Going home and never wanting to leave again
• Going home and feeling suffocated and out of place

I'm not going home this summer.

P.S. I cannot stop laughing over this -

War of the worlds

I'm a person who hates losing. Sometimes I’d avoid battles if it looked like I would lose, and then sometimes I would get into one just to see how it would turn out. As a rule I don’t like making enemies, I guess nobody does, but there are times when you just cannot avoid being on the other side of the fence. There are times when the other party is such that you cannot but hate it, cannot but wage a war against it, and can in no way bring yourself to coexist happily with it. The world just isn’t big enough for the two of you.

I have this particular enemy who just wouldn’t give up the fight. With this longstanding adversary I’ve fought endless battles, we’ve had hundreds of encounters, and I’ve set out on hundreds of missions to destroy this foe. But I’ve never succeeded. It just wouldn’t die. It is one of those undefeatable things which no matter how badly it was beaten or routed somehow always finds its way back to you, and since I'm not exactly known for my meekness and tolerance we would once again end up drawing swords. It is all around me, unavoidable, unlovable, unlikeable, it surrounds me completely, and I can feel its presence merely by breathing.

Summer is the time when it is most aggressive. During the scorching days and the hot nights I sometimes thought the whole world is conspiring against me, that everything is on its side. It taunts me and mocks me from every corner, and I in return go after it with a vengeance that can only be described as relentless. But although I have employed many fighting strategies and applied war tactics of Alexander and Napoleon and the like, I’ve always found myself on the losing side. But do I give up? Oh no not me. The world is a battlefield for the two of us, and I don’t see us shaking hands anytime soon. I will chase it, will wipe it off as much as I could, and it will also follow me everywhere I go and be with me as much as it could.

I don’t have hopes of winning. I know it’s a losing battle I'm fighting, and my enemy will ultimately defeat and kill me. It is as old as time, has the advantage of being older and more experienced, has travelled to the four corners of the earth and back, and fought in all the wars the world has ever seen. Against such an enemy do I stand a chance of winning? Not at all. Eventually the day will come when I will have to bow my head in defeat and go over to its side, becoming a soldier in its army and fighting all its wars. I know this because it was written in Genesis 3:19 “In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”

Roses

Every Sunday morning fresh fruits and vegetables arrive from the villages and are then sold on the roadside in the area where we live. I'm just assuming here that they arrive from the villages because I’ve never seen them actually arriving, all I know is that when I go down in the mornings they’re already spread out by the vendors on the roadside, kind of like the Mizoram Saturday morning markets. You get fresh and dried fishes too. Each vendor has a regular spot, and the faces have become familiar, I’ve been going there for almost a year now. The guy who sells me potatoes always asks where I was if I missed a Sunday or two. The lime-soda guy always puts less salt for me. The dried fish vendor always asks me to buy some although I never did, not that I don’t like dried fish, I do, immensely, I just don’t buy them. The young man who sells fruits is always ready with a smile. You see, I know them quite well.

Last Sunday I went down a bit earlier than usual, I think it was around 9. What I usually do is, I’d go until the end and start my shopping from there until I eventually reach our doorstep. So off I went, and hadn’t bought much when I saw these roses, beautiful roses in different shades of red, pink, orange, and some yellows and some whites, being sold by the man who usually deals in fruits. There was quite a crowd of housewives around him, and his assistant was shouting at the top of his voice “Five roses for ten rupees.” Ten rupees is quite a popular scale in this market. I thought, “Two rupees per rose, now that is cheap!”and fought my way through the fat women and soon found myself at the front row. Five minutes later I had with me a bunch of yellow and white roses, and I continued with my shopping.

When I reached home I discovered we didn’t have any flower vases so I cut an empty mineral water bottle in half and arranged the roses as best as I could. Next came the problem of where to keep my arrangement. All the tables were covered with bags and newspapers and books and chargers and earphones and drawing sheets and magazines and crayons and coloured pencils and T-squares and all sorts of scales. So I put the “vase” on top of the medicine box on top of the fridge. It gave the house a happy summery feel to it, and I gave myself a pat on the back for having bought the roses.

A few hours later, I found that most of the heads were bent down, as if they’ve had their last meal and were now waiting for the executioner’s axe to fall. It was then that I realized that the roses were way too close to the ceiling fan, making them bow their heads in submission. I straightened them, and looked for another place to keep the vase. The only horizontal surface that was free from clutter was the computer table, so I put my arrangement there.

Sunday went by in a flash, and on Monday morning I thought I’d change the water to keep my roses fresh. But to my horror I found they were almost dried up, and the water had gone down almost to the bottom of the bottle. I took them all out, tied them up with an old shoelace and hung them upside down on the kitchen wall. After a few days when they are completely dried I will take them down and paint them and I will have beautiful dried flowers, but will not have a place to keep them.