My Bucket List.... :)

Have written so much about everyday things that happen in life and make you think... thought of putting down somethings that I keep saying I want to do... it goes like... i have to do this... and have to see this.... well... here's what I want to do... (inspired from the Movie - The Bucket List...)..not necessarily in this order...

1. Lose Weight
2. Visit Europe
3. Buy my own house
4. Learn Photography
5. Learn to speak a foreign language
6. Learn to play at least one instrument
7. Re-do the entire kitchen at my parents house as a gift to Mom.
8. Sky dive
9. White water Rafting
10. See all of India
11. Visit Alaska
12. See the northern lights (Auroras)
13. Go to the Caribbea
14. Learn to swim.... almost there!!!
    
15. Go SCUBA diving
16. ...many more to be added..
    

Are they Selfish or Smart???

It’s sad how things change. The way the road suddenly splits and you have to make a choice. How people choose different paths. How they take the easy road when they hit a road block. Instead of trying to clear out the road block they choose to just walk away. It’s easy for some people to block things in life; things that are not doing any good to them in their life. Should that be called a selfish move or a smart thing to do?

Looking at it in one way only makes it seem the logical thing to do. I mean why bother oneself with things or people that are bad news for you. Just block them out of your life and go behind the things that make sense to you and what you truly want. Just chuck everything else. Throw it in the nearest available dumpster and walk away, as fast as you can, never look back and see what happened of it.
But like it’s said, everything has a second side. And this one makes it look like the most selfish thing to do. Use something/spend some time with someone for sometime because it makes you feel good at that time. Then after some time you realize that this thing/person that was making you happy is of no use anymore and is not doing you any good. So you toss it away. Not even giving it a second look. Not caring about what happens of it. Here I use ‘it’ for a person and a thing as that is what the person who has been through something like this feels, like an unwanted mantle piece.

It’s sad that there are people like this in this world. I keep wondering how one would get over this. This gash in the heart that opens every now and then, you carry on with your day to day activities not letting anything cause the gash to reopen and then something happens and there it’s open again. How long does it take to heal? Only time will tell, is the only answer that comes to my mind. No matter how much one tries not to think about it, it does not help. That pain is there all the time, reminding you that you stopped thinking about it and you are back to beginning of the loop.

The more you avoid it, the more you are reminded of it… so what is one to do? Think about it and hurt or not think about it to end up thinking all over again.
It’s a sad state that is beginning to sound funny… are you laughing yet?

What would life be without friends...

I want to dedicate this to all my friends who have stood by me at all times.

Everyone is selfish at one point in time. So was I. Maybe more than once. I admit it. There have been a lot of situations in my life where I have done things that I was warned against. But me being me, stubborn as a log, never listened and did what I thought was making me happy just to find out at the end that they have been right all along. Even after going ahead with what I thought was right and then being wrong they have always been there with arms wide open. Ready with tissues to help me through this.

I have always claimed to be very independent. A person who can stay on her own and not need anyone... but the truth is this is not entirely correct. I have always needed someone by my side at every point of my so called independent lifestyle. And I have found these guys next to me at every step.

I confess that I have done some really stupid things in life and have gotten myself in such situations from which I have always come out on the losing end. Instead of screaming at me and telling me "I told you so", my friends have been there telling me "Its ok, things are going to be ok".

I want to dedicate this blog to my friends, they have been my family when I am not at home and thats been a really long time now.

I have to say this that if it was not for them, there would have been a lot of days of depression and lonliness. They have never let me be alone, though they might not be sitting next to me. They have always been a phone call away. Ready to listen to hours and hours of the same talk.
I want to take this moment to Thank them ... though I know some of them would say that I am swearing at them by thanking them. But I really want to Thank them with all my heart. Coz I don't know how I would have gotten through all of my tough times.
Thank you for standing by me. Listening to me when all I did was babble. Thank you for holding the tissue box while I poured my heart out.

Thank you for being family to me.

I also want to say sorry. Sorry for all the things that I have said and done during all my different Phases. I know that I have said and done things that I have hurt you and there is no way I can change that. I can only say that I will not side-line you ever again. And if I do I invite you to come and take me left and right.

Gals and Guys I salute you for standing me and at the same time standing by me. Love you all!!!

I don't know what to call this one...

Best friends, Friends Forever, Best Buddies... do all these things mean anything when you know that you are together only for a short while? What happens when you go back to where you've come from. For instance you are in a new town for work, you stay there for sometime and then after a while you know you are going to back. You meet a lot of new people, you get close to a few. But then what? One day you go back and then thats all there is.

You keep in touch regularly for a while and then it becomes once a week from everyday and then once a month and then slowly it just fades off. Not that you do it on purpose or anything. You just get so busy with your own life that a day comes when you run into each other and are like 'Oh my god! its you! its been so long..." or something like that. Why do we have such a hard time keeping in touch with people we once called our friends... ?

I was once told by someone that when you are away from home and make friends there, you are just friends due to need.. and it is just for that much time that you are great buddies and then when one of them goes back, its all over. All that remains is just memories of all the fun times that you had.

Why is it that you cannot keep in touch with people you claimed to be your great friends once you go back to where you came from? Is it so difficult?
Its happened to me as well... but i fail to understand it. I have accepted this fact that when the people I spend so much time with here go back to India, I cannot expect them to be the same. They are going back to their lives... something they have kept on hold. You don't matter to them then. As they are back with the people who have always been most important to them. You were just someone they ran into when they were out of town...someone for them to spend the time with while they made plans of going back.

You are only just a memory of someone who they met when they visited a new town...

Here's to all my good Friends and to all those people who said they were Friends Forever... Cheers!

Forgive and Forget !??!

Forgive and Forget...a very simple statement but it has great implications...

Is it possible to forgive a wrong and forget all the hurt and pain that was caused? YES, It is. Not an easy task but possible.

You might wonder, why forgive a person who has done you wrong or forget something that has hurt you and caused you pain, specially if the person who did it, did so knowingly. Well, its simple. For your peace of mind.

This is what I feel:
There is no point in keeping all the anger and frustration inside. The only way to move on is to completely forgive the person.

When I say completely forgive, what I mean is not have any grudge against that person what so ever. When you meet or speak to this person, there has to be no sign of the hurt and pain. You have to be at peace with yourself. Every time you feel angry or negative towards this one person just think of all the nice time you had with him/her. Thank God for all the nice times that you had and then forgive this person for causing you all the pain.

Come to understand that there are some things that you just cannot control. Why be angry at one person for something that went wrong. As they say... there are 2 sides to every coin. No one person is ever at fault. It has to be both ways. ALWAYS! At times it might so happen that only one person may be affected more in the whole situation.

Things go wrong. Shit happens. Its life. People fight, some make up some don't. But even if you don't make up doesn't mean you have not forgiven the person. You just have to be so at peace with yourself that whatever has happened should not affect you anymore. Forgiving someone doesn't necessarily mean that you have to be buddies again. Its just that you have to let go.

It takes a strong person to forgive someone and be-friend them again, after all that they have put you through. Everyone has this strong person in them. Its just a matter of time that this person will surface.

There are some who just move. But deep down inside they carry with them the pain of whatever has gone wrong. And then there is one day when all of it just surfaces and they go through the entire cycle of getting over it. Why do this to yourself? Why go through the horror over and over again. Forgive and Forget people. Be at peace with yourself.

Let go...Its not impossible, try it!

Relationships....so many strings attached...

So many strings attached or is there only one... the one called 'Love'?

ok..let me get straight to the point here... i am not talking about relationships we have when we are together in the same town... when we can meet each other every now and then...what I am talking about here is when we are not in the same town and the only means of contact is the phone or webcam... what happens then... how far does the string get streched and how long will it hold?

I have been talking to my friends who are here in the US with me and have their boyfriends/girlfriends back home in India... and they keep telling me about how things are between them... then I was talking to some of my friends who are single and who are the spectators, like me and it got me thinking...

Well there are the good times and the bad in all relationships...but when it comes to the long distance...its a whole different ball game...its like a test that life puts you thru... a test of your love and understanding for each other...

You don't know what is going on in your partners life...all you know is what they tell you. You call them everyday...talk about things that happened in the day and maybe a few other things and then you get back to your daily chores. What if you don't call them for a couple of days? Will they understand? Will they believe you when you try to reason?

Why do you talk to your better half everyday, maybe even twice a day? Is it because, you miss them or is it because you think that if you don't call them regularly they might forget about you..?? tough question and a mean one too... i agree; but it is just something that came up when discussing about this topic with a friend...

Long Distance Relationships (LDR), can do 2 things...1. Destroy your relationship by creating all the possible misunderstandings or 2. Make your relationship so strong, that nothing in this world can come in between you. I hope all my friends find that LDRs lead them to point #2.

There are so many things that go wrong... you have fights and cannot go over to the others place to talk about it... you may have to wait for days before you hear the voice of your loved one after a fight... but the one who has hung up and not talking doesn't realize what chaos is going on in the others mind, who is so far away from home... its very critical, for the person back home to understand the mind set of the person here... coz this is a mean land... no one is anyone's here... unless you have friends to comfort you, you are all by yourself and even after that at the end of the day you are left all alone with your thoughts... its the scariest feeling of not being able to talk to that one person who means so much to you... this is where your mutual understanding is tested...

But that doesn't mean that only one person does all the understanding... it shouldn't happen that only one of you is making all the adjustments... and at the same time convincing him/herself that things are going to be ok... thats not fair either...why should just one of you go thru this ordeal... Love is about sharing and I feel even this feeling has to be shared...

Its very difficult to understand whats going in a persons mind, when you can't see their face... you can tell a lot from a persons facial expressions during a conversation...

You spend time with your local friends... go out..party, have fun...and then all of a sudden you feel guilty about all the good times that you have had without your loved one with you... is this right? I don't think it is... coz you are allowed to live your life... thats what love is... love is letting go... and not holding on... letting go and trusting that your love will return... as it was always... with new stories to tell... new experiences to share...

There is a lot more that one can write here.... may be i will return and continue... till then...think about it... enjoy your life even if your loved one is not with you... it doesn't mean that you have stopped loving them...or that your love for each other has become any less... all it means is that you are living your part of your life... think of it like this... it will give you a little more to talk about on the next phone call... it will add those lovely 10 mins to the call that goes on for hours... it will just say that.... I miss you, I love you... and so I am living my life to the fullest... coz it makes me happy to see you happy... and when both are happy...there is no place for doubts and misunderstandings...

Like one of my friend says... Life is only as simple as you make it :) Fall in love people... over the seven seas .... its a very strong string... it won't break that easily....

I want to go to Amrica...

Everyone these days wants to come to the US... Me too was excited about coming here... and everyone in my family was oh so proud. But reality hits when you get off the plane and walk into the airport. You are in awe of the huge airport, the massive buildings, the system in general. Everything is great in the beginning. Then you reach your hotel room or where ever it is you are going to be staying. You are all by yourself. Don't know anyone (you are lucky if you have people here), don't know anything. You feel lost.

This is where you start thinking of all the things you left back home. Your folks, friends, dog... you miss the smell of the wet mud when it first starts to rain. You miss rushing in the morning so that you get your 8:10 train to work.

What is so great about this part of the world that everyone is so attracted to it? Why do people give up everything back home to come here? Well, one part is the amount of money you make here. No one can deny that... but at the end, you miss what you left behind.

You spend all your day in office in front of the Computer screen, then you get back home and cook food, and you are back in front of the screen...waiting for your loved one to come online so that you can tell them about your day and ask them how their's was...

Here friends become family. In this land of opportunity, you come across so many different people away from home...all here with one purpose to make something of themselves. Some tired of the way things are back home... but at the end of the day we are left with a feeling of emptiness, loneliness... we may not say it, but all miss the chai ki tapri and wada pav... the road side chinese and tandoor... the bhel puri and the katta where we used to hang out with our friends... the times we spent with our family... all the small little things that we used to take for granted in our day to day lives... we miss all that... and hope that soon we will go back to all that.

Till then lets just enjoy the pizza and the burger and have a sip of the machine made coffee while we wait for our loved ones to come online, so that we can tell them how our day has been just like the one we had when we first arrived here...to tell them that we miss them and love them and hope to see them soon.

Long live the american dream.

Decisions!

There are so many instances in life where we have to make decisions... right from what to wear for work to who to marry... There are so many times where we have to choose from. Sometimes the choices are easy and sometimes they are not all that simple.

There are times when you want to do something, but deep down inside you know that it is not exactly what you should be doing. Maybe it is the wrong thing to do. But you still do it...why? Maybe because you like doing it. Maybe because it makes you happy...but all of this doesn't make it right and at one point of time you have to decide! You have to make a choice...else your conscience is going to eat you up.

This is the most difficult thing to do I think... Choose between something that makes you happy and the right thing. Makes life a little hard I guess, but at the end of the day you have to do the right thing. It makes us all sad to give up something that makes you happy but we have to do it!

So here's to doing the right thing, even though it makes you sad!!!

For one more day...

Just finished reading this book...'For one more day' by Mitch Albom. A nice book. Touches your heart in a very subtle way. A story of guy who does somethings because of which he ends up all alone and decides to end his life. This is when he meets his dead mother and how he gets one more day with his mom.

Made me think... isn't it true that sometime in our lives, we too have taken our parents for granted. They go thru all the hardships to put us thru the best schools and colleges. Get us the best clothes etc... and then one day we grow up and are embarrased by the same things that we used to love about them. We forget all that they have been thru, overlook all the times they have stood up for us and then one day we move out... move on and get too busy with our lives... call them sometimes... and visit them only on festivals... or holidays...
We take everything they did for granted..forgetting to appreciate them.
Today, I am here away from them... and I wish I get one more day with my mom. Where I can tell her how much I love her and miss her. How grateful I am for all that she did. For the sweets that she made, for the great meals she cooks... for all that she's done for me in all these years. I wish I get one more day with my dad, so that I can tell him that I love him and that I appreciate everything he's done. One more day so that I can sit with them at the dinner table and have a healthy conversation.

One more day as a family!

I love you mom. I love you dad. And I am thankful for everything that you have done! I am here today because of all the sacrifices that you made and really appreciate that.

Well I guess I will get this one day soon enuf...but for all those who won't...remember that they are always with us...as long as they are in our hearts, they are alive - in us. We all have a little of our mom and a little of our dad in us...

The Perfect Life

Each one of us have sometime in our lives pictured the perfect life for ourselves. We have wanted perfection in one or more aspects of our life... like the perfect dress, the perfect job, the perfect partner... what have you....

We sometimes try to get closer to this idea of perfection that we have through someone... then maybe that person is a good friend or just someone we came across...
What we fail to understand is that this person we are using as a prop has a life of his/her own...and we cannot expect that they leave everything they have for us.

Looking at it with a different angle, we migh be the prop for someone else's idea of a perfect life... the perfect friend or whatever... but do we think that while we live in this illusion of the perfect life, we are inturn affecting the lives of the people around us? How do we get ourselves out of this imaginary world and face the facts that the world is not a perfect place to live in... that every turn that you take has something new to offer... and that this uncertainity in life is what makes the life ahead a perfect place to be...

Its easy living an illusion...just make it all up as we go along...and we will have no problems at all... but then when we do come out of it where do we stand... how do we deal with it then... how do we explain to ourself that the real thing is much more severe than we imagined it to be...
So I think its time for us to wake up and come out of this illusion of the perfect world and instead of just living an illusion try our best to actually make this world; our world, a perfect place to be in.

I don't know if anything I have written makes sense... but ... its time to wake up and smell the coffee... the perfect world is awaiting us...

Attachment...

Getting attached to people is real easy. All it needs is a little care. If the person shows a little care towards you and if you get along well...u r attached!!!
As with everything it has its ups and downs... you tend to get used to being around that one person and then when one day that person has to leave, you feel lost. As if there is nothing you can do anymore. Its not true though. The lost feeling is normal. It takes some time to actually absorb the fact that the person has to move on for maybe a new job, or he/she gets married...the reasons could be varied.. the fact remains that you are left hurt and feeling lonely. Specially if you hung out with this one person a lot.

You learn to move on too... true you miss the person and wish that they would not leave. But, this is life and the only thing that is constant in life is change... so i guess the best thing to do is tell the person that you will miss them and move on..

the best thing to do here...the ideal thing is not to get too attached to anyone... have to learn how to do that though.

Mistakes...the whole 360 degrees...

Just yesterday I was thinking of all the mistakes we make in life... how they all get to us some way or the other... Now, when I say mistakes I don't just mean the intentional one's, coz these do get back at us in some way...the one's that I am more concerned about or those that worry me the most are the one's that we don't know we have made!

Like take for instance the misunderstandings that you can have among friends...you don't know about it till something goes majorly wrong between you and the friend. You either end up talking about it, which is a good thing of course, or you end up losing a good friend...for what?? This was not intended...

Sometimes, we forgive and forget...but that does not help either, as then the person who has done wrong, thinks he can do it again. But you don't want to lose a good friend...so what do you do in this case. What if your being nice is the biggest mistake you are making??? What then?
When does being nice to someone spoil things? What is the limit that we have to set? Who sets this limit? These are some questions that no one but you can answer!!! You set the limit and decide when to stop being nice... but then the question arises...what if it is too late?
How do you mend something that is broken from the inside and does not show the cracks on the outside?

Everything that you do comes back to you in some way or the other...even being nice to someone has its own drawbacks...When being nice to someone, make sure that it is not morphing into a big mistake that can spoil things not just for you, but for all those who are involved...and sometimes, for those who are not too...

This, has been my lesson for now...

Confusing times... where do i find the answers???

Sometimes we just put ourselves in a situation that we later don't understand how to get out of. At such times we wish there was someone we could talk to, someone who could help us get out of this situation we have gotten ourselves into.

But is there really such a person in the world who has the answers. I mean, if we ourselves are not able to figure it out how do we expect a person from the outside to help us out. This is what I think...when we turn to this one person for answers, answers are not what we are looking for. We are looking to this person for support. Someone who will be there with us in whatever we do. Someone who will just sit there and listen to us and say ok, what you are doing may work.
I don't know how far this makes sense. Sometimes, we might have 10 people to talk to but at the end of the day it just feels like we are all alone... thats what they say right... you come into this world alone and you leave alone... but what makes this journey purrrrrrrfect is this small number of people who have touched our lives.

We may have a 100 friends and out of these 100 there maybe a few that we are very close with. Then why at the end of the day do we feel lonely and lost. As if there is no one and we are left on this planet to face everything by ourselves.

There are certain decisions that I have made. I don't know if they are right or wrong... I don't know if whatever I am doing is good for me. I cannot lie here...whatever I have decided... I am a little selfish... there is somthing good that comes out of it for me too... but for how long? I don't know...

Both these people I have come across are nice people. Then why do I feel I cannot trust them sometimes... but in both the cases, the feeling of the heart is much stronger than the thought of the brain. So if I doubt these ppl after I have done something... like talk to them when I am not supposed to... would I be doubting myself and my decisions???

Life!

LIFE...A very heavy topic to start with... but I guess we are all in awe of this one little word. So much to learn, so much to cherish. Not one day in a person's life is like the other. Even if we say that our life is so routine. The same drill everyday from sun up till sun down... but if we look at this routine with a microscope we can see that not one day is the same as the other. Everyday we come across something different. We meet new people, connect with them. In some way or the other even if we have met a person for a couple of minutes...they have made a significant difference in our lives. Everyone we come across teaches us something, whether we like it or not. Its up to us to keep the lesson learnt or to forget it.

Life brings with it its own thrills...ups and downs... new experiences with things as well as people.
Having lived alone for sometime now I never came across a lot of different people, as I was staying on my own and didn't go out much. Even my friend circle has been limited to my really close friends. I was always scared to experiment and try new things. But even that small group I have come across a different person in each one of my friends. Each with his or her own identity.
Now that I have moved away from home and am staying in this alien world called the US, I know how important these people are to me. Life here is all the more different. Everyone is on their own...everything is so formal. This is a place where we really come to understand the love and care that people back home have for us...