Denial and Courage

When I write here now, I won't explain contexts because there are less than maybe 10 of you who read this and the basic current happenings and context of my life you are all well aware of. So this blog I guess is me growing on my path of over sharing.

Calling life strange at the moment would't even begin to express how I have felt in the last few days. Years seem to have passed from Thursday to now. The night we found out we couldn't come back to JNU was confusing and sad. It was like we were all suddenly grasping for air. No one could stay in their rooms. Three of my friends and I decided to go for a walk around campus distracting yourselves with gossipy anecdotes and lapsing in silent tears when we thought the others weren't looking. Constantly asking each other "What do we do now? What?! Where do we go? What do we do?!' Constantly reminding each other to breath. Now I don't mean to sound dramatic but that is how we felt, even if it seems like an over reaction to some.

History is not an easy discipline and I'm sure to all of you reading, I have ranted, whined and complained many times over the last 4 and half years about it. It is thankless and requires countless hours and countless skills. I could spend many a post writing to you telling you just the stuff I've had to learn in the last few years and at some point I probably will. But sadly this is what I have chosen to love; this is what makes my brain light up, what makes heart agree to work hard at. Some of you may say I've been in this too deep, I need to step away, take a break maybe but you need to understand that it was only in the last year and half that I truly realised that I love this, that this is what I want to spend my time doing, this is what I feel is important in the world. Seeing the systematic destruction of the social sciences and distortion of history that is happening in the country, it certainly reaffirms my choice that this is in fact a worthy cause to defend and an important space to protect.

It hurts so much because for most of us, this dream of wanting to be a historian or to teach history was a newly realised one. I finally knew what it was that I truly wanted to do, I finally had goals, had ambitions. I know there are many ways to reach a goal, different perspectives and different paths are something I am well aware of and familiar with. What hurts is that you worked very hard and towards a goal, which now reaching closer to the finish line, you find out doesn't even exist. You were taught to come back, you were encouraged to study things you wanted to come back and research, work with people who you would come back and work with. Heck the first joke anyone cracked about JNU to me was how they would not see me now for another 4-5 years. That was the first thing even the professors told us, that was all I heard until a few months ago. How I would never leave and I'd become one of those JNU students who never left. It hurts so much now, because that joke now stinks, it reeks of a dream that has recently died. This dream was a baby but I had already charted its life in my head, the many ways it might grow, where all I would take this dream, what it would look like in another 5 years, another 10, another 15. Never was there even the stray thought that this dream might be taken from me. A day may come for another dream, but at the moment I am grieving and it hurts so much.

None of us wanted to study history because it was easy; no one wanted it because it would be easy money, hell everyone knows academics don't make money. This hurts so much because I can see that the repercussions of this are far reaching. Peoples entire lives were dependent on being able to stay here, live here, be independent and have agency. Everything hurts so much right now because there seems to be a crack in everything; everything seems to be crumbling from within. Everyday you check the news and you sink even lower, rock bottom being pushed further down. It hurt that when I was watching Lord of the Rings, dialogues seemed relatable and if I was crying it was for me and not for the characters. 

There is a dialogue between Samwise Gamgee and Frodo Baggins,  

"It's like in the great stories Mr. Frodo.

The ones that really mattered.
Full of darkness and danger they were,
and sometimes you didn't want to know the end.
Because how could the end be happy.
How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad happened?
But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow.
Even darkness must pass."

"Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t.
Because they were holding on to something."

"That there’s some good in this world, Mr. Frodo. And it’s worth fighting for."

My brain says that this is a fool's hope, that it is denial; it is me not coming to terms with the fact that this indeed is the darkest timeline and it's me not fully processing this darkness. But my heart says that if denial is giving you the courage to persist, is it all that bad? If having a fool's hope is helping you carry on, is that such a bad thing? 

"Times change, so must I"

I have been grappling with the idea of writing more on this blog. To anyone who ever read it, basically my family, I am sorry I haven't written in here in years. In my last post, 2 years ago I wrote that it was time for a regeneration, it certainly has been a personal regeneration but it is also now time for this blog to regenerate.

I write to make sense of the thoughts in my mind. Writing has always made it easier for me to understand what I'm feeling, why I'm feeling it or it helped me create a feeling I wanted to be true. Writing on the blog for me was always an exercise in testing my fiction muscles. I don't think it would be a surprise to anyone, all I have ever wanted was to be in one of the adventures I read or watched, but in the words of Frodo Baggins himself "my own adventure turned out to be quite different.'

Writing is still a big part of my life, just not in the way I imagined it to be. I have, in my adult life so far, written to make sense of the past which meant that writing for myself naturally took a back seat. In that time I've started to feel that I'm slowly developing my own style of writing and that might not neccesarily suit any sort of fiction writing. At the same time I find that with everything currently happening in the world, in my country and more specifically my own universities, my mind keeps pulling me to my blog. A nagging thought of 'write and you'll feel better'. I need to write to make sense of my thoughts again. As I said, I've always written for mainly that reason, but I've never really properly written posts on this blog that way. They have always been my thoughts through characters I've written and in some cases, happier and lighter posts to distract myself from whatever I was feeling or thinking at that moment. I now want to start writing to you directly and sadly it may often be non-fiction.

So to cut this very long explanation short, I will hopefully write more on this blog but the tone will definitely be quite different from before. In talking about current events, I do not claim it will be the best written work out there, I will link to better researched and written articles all the time. I only want to get back to writing and hope to write honestly.

Time for regeneration

It's time for transitions again and time for changes. Unlike the last time when I was 17, I feel like I may have a slightly better outlook on things this time. I think this may be purely driven by lots of rewatching 'Doctor Who', but I have come to apply the concept of regeneration to humans as well. I may not be a Time Lady with two hearts, but I most definitely change, grow and regenerate. A recent rewatching of  Eleven's regeneration made me believe in it even more. Everything he said was so completely relatable .

 "But times change, and so must I"

"We all change. When you think about it, we're all different people all through our lives, and that's okay, that's good, you gotta keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be. I will not forget one line of this. Not one day. I swear. I will always remember when the Doctor was me"

My college regeneration so far has been my favourite. The most chaotic, wonderful, scary and lovely all at the same time. I didn't have a pin-stripe suit or a bow tie, but I had my short hair. I had my soundtracks changing with every season. Most importantly I had my companions. Some who were the first face this face saw, some who I carried on from before, some completely new ones. All whom I will always have with me. Maybe not all in every adventure but the life of the Doctor is strange and wonderful and hopefully very long so there is room for everyone and still enough for lots of additions

"It all just disappears, doesn't it? Everything you are, gone in a moment, like breath on a mirror. Any moment now... He's a-comin'."

And just as suddenly as this college regeneration happened, the new one will begin. We will all be left in strange places not knowing how to fly our own T.A.R.D.I.S. Slowly, begrudgingly re-learn some things and excitedly learn new ones. Regenerations are scary and exciting business. I wonder what my catchphrase will be, what will be my costume? Will the soundtrack get darker or lighter, orchestral or electronic. However the Doctor would be nothing without his companion and neither would I. So I go into this regeneration, knowing that when I come out the other side not liking the colour of my kidneys, wishing I was ginger or wondering If I am good person, I am safe because I have my companions. Change can leave both parties afraid and confused and doubting things, but just knowing that the company is still around makes everything better.

So bring it on regeneration.
GERONIMO!!

    

Hush now, let the silence return,

the deafness is calming me

my blanket of escape

just let me be.

Hush now let the silence breathe,

my thoughts are getting bigger,

killing my soul

the fights are getting louder

lost all control

So, hush and let the silence talk.

It's always expanding , never caring if I 

scream, shout, cry

It's been my friend these long years

will be till I die

The silence can be smothering

moving through me

breaking down everything

corrupting to simplify 

It's deafening and black

getting worse before everything is alright

It'll all be the night

Nothing can change me now

no me even left.

Hush now, let the silence take over,

It lives for me instead

Flowers behind her ear

As I grew, I was repeatedly told of all the different fates I could have. There was always a rangoli, some lovely vases, life in the tree. But the one that truly stuck with me was the holiday. It was a short life but it sounded so absolutely fantastic. When I go, I would like to go that way. The idea, to be tucked behind a human ear but not just any ear, an ear on holiday. "Find a human ear on holiday! That's the best way to go!" They're at their happiest and you get the best seat to some of the most gorgeous places in the world.
     
                                          *               *            *             *            *      

"Flowers behind the ear is holiday uniform" her older sister had said those words to her since she was little. Holidays need not necessarily be when you go to a new place or take a vacation, holidays happen when you want them to. So, many an afternoon was spent finding flowers. But as both sisters soon realised, flowers don't bloom all year round, for which the older sister always had her trusty plastic roses. Wearing their favourite clothes and armed with some of their mother's never-used make-up and the trusty plastic roses tucked behind their ears, both girls fulfilled their mission of creating a cute but chaotic house. Whenever they actually went on a holiday and found flowers, that was an incredible treat. The happiness would wash over their faces. Everything in life felt like it was coming together. No matter how well they imagined themselves, nothing could ever beat the real deal. Nothing could take away from the actual experience of having a real flower tucked behind your ear and getting to see new places, a true vacation.

                                          *              *             *             *            *

Waiting for her older sister to catch up, the younger one waited under a tree, a frangipani tree, a flower fell on her head.

                                          *               *            *             *            *      

I noticed her standing under my tree. Something in that moment felt like everything in life was coming together. The winds were changing. It was time to go.

                                          *               *            *             *            *      

With the flower tucked happily behind her ear, she answered her older sister "just keep walking, I promise the view is great!"

The Case of Crenshaw's Block #6

#1 #2 #3 #4 #5 

He always liked his mornings to be slow. A long routine to help him completely surface and get his mind functioning at full capacity. 

Music was put on, coffee was slowly brewed, teeth brushed, toast buttered and eggs scrambled as usual. His playlist slowly building up to songs with drums and french horns. You could tell he felt happy today, his french horn songs were only reserved for happy days. 

Now I know what we all want, he's got the idea, so why is it taking so much time to get to the good bit, where he starts writing and we finally have our story? To this I say, how can you be so sure you know which is the good bit? And good things come to those who wait, a truth Crenshaw is also familiar with. A man who likes slow mornings isn't going to speed things up for you and me.

He needed to keep his brain occupied so that in all these tasks, somewhere in the back of that brain was a box which would begin to rattle and shake and open with a loud BANG! and out would come a grandmother, two girls and a boy. The rattle had only just begun, so he continued with his routine. A bath, washing dishes and some more coffee. He fished out his laptop from his cupboard and went on to reply some emails. 

He mainly wanted to write to his sister, that always helped. This had nothing to do with any advice exchanged, just the process of writing to her helped calm his mind. He opened his inbox and there waiting for him was a mail from her. One sentence and an attachment : Hear with good headphones, you will love this!

Once he clicked download, he didnt know that the BANG! was just about to happen. His sister never knew how many character-detonators (as he liked to call her mp3 attachments) she had sent him over the years, he of course kept count. 

Play was pressed and then it began, this strange and wonderful song of a cello, a mandolin, a violin and a double bass. And he could now see it all so very clearly. Grandmother sitting at the table with a cup of tea next to him, boy moving from room to room humming, one girl checking her phone and the other in the kitchen grumbling about how she could smell something burning but couldn't track the source.

They were here! 

Maybe this is the good bit?! 

Feels I'm being hauled in a fireman's lift by someone I wrote

I like feeling smart. There is a sense of comfort no? Knowing you're a little bit better than someone, even if it's in small ways. Maybe you make tea better or your internet skills are crazy good.  But this comfort of being better is easy to give up for that small and ecstatic moment when you grab hold of your essence. You find that one bit of you no matter what, will never belong to anyone. No matter what anyone says it will be independent and original to you. open to only you. No matter how great or terrible it is. 

It's this terrible feeling of being dead but your physical sense doesn't seem to reflect that. The other day you told me to conquer my fear. When one day you read of the characters in my head, you will see them as what I want to be. I hope I can show the melancholy and sometimes restless torment inside my head and make it beautiful. Being in control of these people in my head who know take such realistic forms, its hard remind myself they aren't actually there. These versions of who I'd like to be. Always at the back of my head is the fact that I control them. It comes as an epiphany almost, when these beings act of their own accord. They've become these shifted versions of myself. What started out as a person I so longed to be instead of me, is now nearly alive. I feel I live so much through them. They may not be present in a physical sense but then I've never felt I am physical.

So much, most, of who I am is not in the physical. And it's when I started to live only through my physical presence that I felt my death. Essentially what I did was force myself into something I've never been. And it was what I wrote yesterday, or what I write at all that resuscitated me. Slowly being brought back to my shifted self. Not back completely.

But it feels I'm being hauled in a fireman's lift by someone I wrote. Slowly with every step the breath is easier, but I am heavy and slips will happen.

So I guess if this was a Panchatantra comic the moral would be that I tried living in the moment and being present in the now and that the now isn't mine to be in. I don't live in the now... I live in songs that echo in the mountains of the treachery I did, I live in that monastery on the side of a stone cliff, I live as a monk saving my friends and burying another, I live as an winged person sent to accompany humans. 

Mine is not the present and I wonder why I ever thought it was.

The Case of Crenshaw's Block #5

#1 #2 #3 #4




Mr. Crenshaw realized his mind had run dry. He wasn't blocked he was definitely dry. He understood the world of the woman in twenties even though it was never his reality, he could understand her world and thus could write about it.

As he massaged his cramped back he realized he was dancing around an epiphany. Like when you wake up in the morning and you know the feeling of your dream so well but what the dream was is a little hard to remember and then little by little, the dream comes back to you.
Though he understood her world, the want to be in it was decreasing. Sometimes the fantasy is so real to him, his first nature. And little by little as he remembered what his dream was he realised what was first nature to him now. His reality was becoming stronger, it was its time.

As a writer all he really wanted was to have that voice inside him translated as truthfully as possible and that voice keeps changing. The woman in twenties no longer had a place in his heart nor did her world, it all shrank away from him. In its place he could feel his own story filling his heart.
This was the story he now felt compelled to tell people. But not just yet. The characters were filling his heart but they need to reach the point where they burst out and plonk themselves next to him.

Now would come the scene where you see our writer furiously typing away, in the throws of his thoughts, creativity pouring out and music swelling behind. If we all lived with our personal production and background score team, our lives would be pretty much that scene, but we don't have those teams and neither did Crenshaw (he did often daydream this though).

Crenshaw did what all of us would do in that moment, the moment when we had decided this was the night of the all-nighter, then fallen asleep at our desk and given up on the whole stupid mission and gone to bed.  He at least had enough sense to write down this new idea for a story on a post it note and then collapsed in his bed. One doesn't begin the post-epiphany day without a good nights sleep, neither did Crenshaw.

Stuck on the keys of his Remington was a blue post it note, which said "Detective Nani and her sleuthy sidekicks"

For the Lights

My light is out

My land seems lost.

Have faith my friend

only your path is bent,

all life isn't spent.

The dim like rain keeps falling

For whom do I spark my light?

The darkness is calling

I'm losing my fight.

Do not stray my friend

Your dream can stay true

Your light was meant to shine for one

one, will always be you.

What if when I reach 

no brightness is around?

For lights which I thought were plenty,

none seem to be found.

No one to take your hand 

No one to guide towards your land.

I am not the bravest or my fire bright

is there anything can be done by my light?

There is power in your fire

Strength & Might

It will make the forest brighter still

Defeat the ever growing night.

And if you find no forest

no beacon is in sight

You can be new hope

do it  For the Lights.

There are days with sunshine
a Bright Heart
a Blazing soul.

Days turn sour
minds turn grey
eyes search in a melancholy fire
for lost brightness

shrouded in their blanket of grey
cold tears run from ashen faces

like a spark hands extend to
beating hearts.
A swirling red pigments the grey
a Red of love, a Red of anger
a Red of heart
a Red of Human.

And like a spark again comes the yellow
its suddenness mirroring that of life's
A Bright fills in again.
A Sun warms a Soul.

Home

In light of all that has occurred over the last 6 months, I've been grappling with what home is? Where I felt at home? Where would it be now? Where would I feel the same as I had in the house that I had grown up in and lived in for 10 years. Would it be where my parents lived now? would it be the house they left behind, where half of my things are? would it be my hostel (but do hostels ever feel like home?!)

On the topic of home and the feeling of it, the words of Andrew Largeman from the film 'Garden State' would come back to me.

"You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place."

And to some extent I understand this well and agree with. Here he talks of the house he grew up in not feeling at home there, but we left the house I grew up in, it truly doesn't exist in my world any more. I don't understand this need I have to define what home is  but I have it.

The more I think and try to define what home means to me, where it is, the more the silly age old line would pop into my head "home is where the heart is." It just stuck in my head, when I put this line together with everything that has transpired in the last 6 months, there isn't a better explanation. I realise how cheesy this all sounds and I try and cut out the cheesy when I write to you (try!) But I guess that's the reason I haven't written in so long, because my life of late is only that, cheesy and wonderful.
With this realisation that home is truly where your heart is, where you feel so incredibly loved, I could see my life in flashback. When I started college and my parents moved, I was pretty sad (I love my familiar space and familiar people, that's why they call me a cat) But the amount I've been loved and looked after is amazing.

Home is having lunch with G and going every weekend to family, eating dinner together and just spending time together. Home is stealing your brother's t-shirts and playing video games together.
Home is having the entire family together for the first Diwali you thought you'd be alone.
Home is going to a friend's home and leaving tiny presents because you know you won't meet for christmas. It is, watching tv and eating crappy food till 12 with friends and getting scolded by others for being too loud. Home is the time spent alone in my room dancing around.

And for each of these instances it's as though my mind just goes "you're doing okay kid." 

Plant People

Did I ever tell you I love flowers. I've told my sister many times that one of the things I really want to experience is getting flowers from someone, anyone for no reason what so ever. I just want to be given flowers on a random regular day just because.
Have I also told you that I buy myself flowers on days I feel sad or out of sorts? Its a combined effort of my mind and my ipod that gets me to a shop and makes me buy some flowers and spend time putting them in water and making my room so much brighter.

Ever since I was little I remember hearing my mom and my nana (maternal grandpa) talk about different flowers and trees. They way they spoke showed so much knowledge and love for them. Even my sister came to be included in this. It seemed that it was genetic this inherent knowing of plants. In my mind it became their thing, they were my plant people. I wanted to be them so much. I wanted to be good with plants and know them too. Then a couple of years ago I was buying some stationary and was having a generally crappy mesh-into-others kind of days so in the spur of the moment I bought some purple coloured tiny flowers for myself to cheer me up! And then that became my thing. To buy myself some flowers and cheer myself up.

But one of the main reasons I love them in my house or room so much is that it always reminds of my plant people. Whenever I buy some flowers I always think how nana grows these in his garden or how mum would love putting them in one of her lovely vases (which I miss so much!)

Now that Delhi is gearing up for Diwali, I can't help but remember mum, Aman and me going early morning to go buy flowers to do up the house with. This being our first diwali apart, I feel gutted (okay, yes I did use that word because I've always wanted to).
But never mind, I get to go home soon and then I'm going to help mum grow some orchids! And now having read all of this again I guess all that is left for me to do is declare myself as one of the them.... I am now a plant person.

As my mum described it "we're all being all being tossed up in the air at the same time and we have to wait and see where we land"
All of us are changing at the same time. All friends and all family, we've all reached this point in our intertwined lives where we're being forced to become a little bit independent from the other.

I've reached that point in my life, where the decisions made by me will not mean a way of life for my sister or my parents, or the other way around.

We will forever love each other but our lives become our own. I'm learning now of being my own self.
For years we move on this earth, learning and living. There are people who change us, things that make us. There are days spent in laughter and some spent alone on your bed.
There are walks taken under trees. There are hugs and there is music.

We become someone, being in the company and love of all these things and people. And we can choose to spend our days with them but that is an independent choice, made by you alone. Made by your being and your mind alone.

And if you trust in your heart they will move you towards that life. Move you to a life where your being is complete, where your emotions fill you up and you have no regrets, not even by the pain cause by separation.

Filling you in

Hello  all!

Well since the last time we spoke I have officially become a grown up and sometimes I actually feel like one! (rarely though)
Come next week I would have been going to college for a month which is pretty cool. I'm also living in this hostel type place, which I did not like at first but now I kind of like.

You know I really wanted to study history and so far history is not being that nice to me. It's a bit boring and I'm really waiting for the good stuff to start. But you know I'd still rather be doing a bit of boring history than no history.

So basically I just wanted to fill you guys in before I get back to regular posting and seeing as I have done that....bye bye

The Letter That Never Came

I have posted this song before and today I thought I would tell you the story behind it.



I was 10 years old when the film came out. That last scene, where the Baudelaire children receive the long lost letter from their parents, just stayed with me. The words of that letter are some of my favourite ones but it was the music that stayed in my heart. Now since the film came out in 2004 I wasn't so savvy in downloading that song or hearing it online but I would sing it to myself whenever I was alone from the fear that I might forget it.

For years that tune would play so clearly in my head but between these 8 years, time did get the better of my memory so it slowly started to fade. When it started to leave my memory a new song took its place, a very similar tune, but that bond I felt to the older song was so strong that I still needed it, still needed my song.

And even though in the recent years I know my way around the internet I didn't hear the song, until very recently. I was just sitting at my desk checking my email etc and then suddenly out of some distant place in my mind I remembered the song. The tune in my head was all cracked and broken, nothing like what it used to sound. So I quickly opened youtube, plugged my headphones and played it.

I just sat there in awe, it sounded so very beautiful. I felt like I was meeting my younger self, meeting a heart that I had known so well, a heart that is still inside me and was just waiting. I sat there at my desk crying such happy tears which I didn't think I was capable of.
If there was one song in the whole world that I would want to be this would be it. This is my song. It is one of the most important events in my life.

Here are the words that go along with this song, the letter that never came:


'Dearest children - since we've been abroad we have missed you all so much.
Certain events have compelled us to extend our travels. One day, when you're older, you will learn all about the people we have befriended and the dangers we have faced. At times the world can seem an unfriendly and sinister place, but believe us when we say that there is much more good in it than bad. All you have to do is look hard enough. And what might seem to be a series of unfortunate events may, in fact, be the first steps of a journey. We hope to have you back in our arms soon, darlings, but in case this letter arrives before our return, know that we love you. It fills us with pride to know that no matter what happens in this life, that you three will take care of each other, with kindness and bravery and selflessness, as you always have. And remember one thing, my darlings, and never forget it: that no matter where we are, know that as long as you have each other, you have your family. And you are home.' 







p.s- both the songs mentioned here are composed by the same person, Thomas Newman

The Last Bite

Why is it that the last bite of anything is always the most loved?
It tastes exactly the same as everything else, all seasoning intact, yet it's the end of the rainbow with all the world's gold.

The last bite of the ice cream cone or the last spoonful of the freshest raita, the last edible portion of the after lunch mango, the last sliver of sponge cake with tea, the last sip of tomato soup on a freezing day or the last gulp of lime soda on a sweltering day, the last piece of cucumber that bursts in the mouth.

There is just something better about that bite. Everyone knows that everything tastes better in the last bite.
It's the last piece of magic which lingers on in taste, like fairy dust floating and twinkling in the air.

Holidays in Shimla always consist of the best food with so many last bites, they can make a meal in themselves. But it is only here that after the last bite the magic doesn't linger, it begins, in the form of an after meal nap.

Gramophone Days

"Rusty noticed the sounds because he was happy and a happy person notices things."

There is a gramophone that has been lying here in shimla for I don't know how long, lets just say it's been around for many many years. But yesterday was the first time I ever heard music from it. 

We dusted it and placed it in the middle of the room, then very patiently took out all the records lying in the cupboard. Just reading some of the titles and holding things so old made my heart so full with joy. There were old urdu songs and qawwalis, old punjabi and urdu comedy records, Mohammad Rafi songs, some cliff richards tracks and I was so thrilled when I found an old Beatles one which had eight days a week on it.  

We sat for an hour or so, all on the drawing room carpet, experiencing something that was probably the a routine part of lives some years ago. This is what I love about history. When you scale it down, forget civilisations and cultural patterns, focus how one life lived, how they stood where we are at the present standing, what they must have felt viewing the same things we are. I love this one on one, this immediate connection that forms when you see something so old. 

A little part of that history becomes us and lives on longer through us. 

Traditional Children's Fiction

There is this book, it's the loveliest book. It permanently lives here and has traditional fairy tales from all over the world.

It has African stories, Greek legends, Norwegian tales, Anderson stories and of course Grimms' Fairy tales and so many more! My dad had gifted this to my sister and me back in 1996 and it has suffered quite a lot over the years.

Whenever I come here I have to read these stories in bed before sleepy time, even though I'm too old for them . My favourite is 'The Twelve Dancing Princesses' by the Grimm brothers. This book has better stories in it with more fantastical plots and creatures but for some reason I love this one dearly. 

It is about 12 princesses whose father is really confused as to why their dancing slippers are worn through every night. He has to get new ones everyday. He sends out word all throughout the kingdom, anyone willing was asked to try find out where the girls went at night. They were given three days for the task, having accomplished it they would win the hand of anyone of the girls that he wished but if he failed his head would be cut off (naturally).  


So of course many come and then their heads are cut off because the princesses give them a sleeping wine. But one man with the help of an invisibility cloak figures out their secret. Their secret includes a trapdoor bed, a walk through a forest filled with trees of silver, gold and diamond and dancing the night away at a banquet with 12 princes till their shoes are all worn out. 


I guess the reason I love it so much is that there is no evil in this one at all. It's just merry dancing! And their is nothing better than that in this world. 

Shimla will always be home

I'm home! My mum and I have managed to find two weeks to come and spend it here in Shimla. We've been coming here for all summer holidays for as long as I can remember since my grandparents have a home here.

And this is the view from one side of home. I admit that Shimla doesn't look this devoid of human existence as the picture above. It is pretty commercial now but the photo is just 2 years old. (plus I took it very strategically :)

Usually we all come here together and help my nani (maternal grandma) to clean up the house and have everything up and running. But this time it's just mum and me. We have been given our instructions, let the cleaning begin!

There are curtains to change, pillow covers to remove, dusting to do, loos to clean etc etc. And though this house feels empty without hearing chatter and laughter, not seeing somebody nap in a room or fight over how many peaches they ate, I am not sad. (not completely) Because company is arriving in a few days, some friends are coming for a week and I'm getting excited just thinking of everything that we're going to do.

There are going to be afternoon walks, lovely things to eat, board games to play and my special favourite is watching episodes of the Sherlock Holmes as played by Jeremy Brett.


Well this has been quite a personal post hasn't it! I must leave you and go eat dinner but hopefully I will be able to post more tomorrow with pictures!

BYE

Transitions

I don't like waiting because waiting leads to wondering and though wondering is a great thing, extended periods of it does strange things to my mind. I lose the clarity and focus I had gained in all this time and second guessing and over thinking plague me again. My assessment of myself reaches an all time low.

I am suspended in this dreadful limbo called waiting. This long bridge from A to B is what scares me. Whatever lies on the other side I've made my peace with it. It's this walking on the bridge that I've made, like testing your own work. The manner of your entry into the new depends on the journey through the transition. The better the foundation you've laid the smoother the transition. You can waltz across the bridge.
But this current transition, walking this bridge, it doesn't feel like it will be a smooth one. I keep waiting for it to crumble under my feet or blow up in my face.

I do not like transitions.

Until this time is over I would like to melt away into the mess that is surrounding me.
I care for nothing and I care for no one.

In truth, what is more likely is that I care too much for everything and everyone. So until this bridge is over or until it gives way under my feet, until I am settled in B and leave A behind, I would like fo myself to try and not care.