life

life is weird. We keep living it with certain beliefs , notions and ideas about ourselves, our society , and the people in it. Whether its are our friends, family or the rest of the world ranging from the US president to our local fruit vendor, we have atleast a basic understanding of each. And hence of their actions.Atleast that's what we think.

What we dont know baffles us and with certain exceptions (such as maths in my case), we keep trying to figure it out. If we know atleast the people around us and understand their thoughts and actions, it gives us a sense of deep rooted security. It is this which makes moving to a new home or a job so difficult. You dont know anyone or anything there. You feel unrooted, insecured and alone. But what do you do when without as much as throwing a pebble in the calm waters of a peaceful and harmonious life, things suddenly turn upside down, well metaphorically. I am not talking about sudden deaths or natural calamities that do indeed turn your life upside down, I am talking of things that are more intangible and though I could not possibly undermine the impact of the tangible disastors, these are intangible only by nature, for their impact can be as devastating, or atleast confusing.

As children, our parents are our first ideals, we want to be just like them when we grow up. I remember, well actually my mother does not let me forget, though she remembers it fondly and embarrassingly in front of all our relatives, how I used to put on her makeup and take her bag and pretend that I was going to office , when I was 5, just like her.

And as we grow, we idealize more and more elders around us, our teachers, elder siblings, some relatives. And but for the exception of the teens, when movie, rock, and sports stars dont really leave space for anyone else to be idealized, there are always people around us we admire for some reason or the other. And it is this knowledge which makes us feel that we know the people around us.

But what do you do when you realise the one quality you admired somebody for, was just a facade put up for a great show. What do you do when you realise a person you admired for his unaffectedness, dropped it like a hot brick at the first instant of possible benefit to be attained from shrewdness. Or someone you thought believed in honesty was lying all along. Or someone who loathed quite unequivocally, crafty maneuvers, turn out to be quite adept at using them for short term benefits?

What do you do, when right after you think you have got somebody all figured out, you realise things were wrong from day one? What do you do when life spins completely out of control at the very moment when you thought the sailing was smooth?

You feel lost. and doubtful. of yourself. your judgement. and your own ideas and beliefs. Everything is shaken. But most of all, you doubt if the principles you have set for your own self are correct or not. Perhaps what somebody has done is not wrong, and you are being too impractical and unrealistic.Perhaps what somebody is the right way to do things and it should be, for they are happy aren't they??

You ponder over it for days , weeks, at times even months at end, till it slowly recedes into the background of your mind. Sometimes it changes the way you think, and you adapt in order to survive more successfully, but mostly it vanishes as yet another rock that slowly sank in and the surface became calm again. And though it does at times cause permanent damage to your opinion and perhaps relationship with that person, and make the water bed rockier, you just learn to recuperate from the storm and keep sailing forth. Trying to figure life out, you start all over again. And though you cant predict nor avoid the next storm , whether it should leave you wiser or embittered, is entirely up to you and that is what makes that elusive thing, called happiness , attainable. So happy journey!

zindagi hai ke jiye jaatey hain
gum ke ghoont piye jaatey hain
zakhm hi miley is dil ko
ishq ka karam
maut ka intezaar kiya jaatey hain
zindagi hai ke jiye jaatey hain....


I, hereby, take this oppurtunity to thank my friend who introduced me to the original piece and take full and sole responsibility for this mortifying, ruined version, of a great piece I can
neither remember nor find. My sincerest apologies to the creator(may he continue to sleep in his grave/bed peacefully)...and I promise to be more regular in continuing the tradition of this blog till date of trying my hands at different writing styles, languages and subjects and producing similar blasphemies and idiosyncracies ... each aiming at a higher impact .... ;)

"...Do you ever get tired of being who you are?I mean seriously, do you ever wonder what would it be like to be someone different...no i dont mean a celebrity, or a personal ideal or the one you are jealous of (oh yes you do!! you want to be just like someone you are jealous of!you wish all the time!!)....although all of these would also qualify for this context, i dont mean some other person at all....not like someone else, just different from who you are...and just to make things a tad more complicated, im not talking of self improvements, interospection and all that psychological jargon either, coz what is normal and acceptable is also relative to our sorroundings, to others arround us...

So here's what we have so far, you can't be your favorite celebrity, your ideal, your envy not even your better self, just different!! Do you ever want to be something different, as you??"

"God Shipra!!! you're crazy!! please stop driving me nuts!!"

and hence my friend brushed me off...I guess more than being irritated, she took the question as a personal offence. For at that time she was deeply engrossed discussing people with other people, yes yes, gossiping, something she knows I detest greatly,

but then may be a personal offence is how anyone will take it, may be thats how I would take it if I was at the receiving end. Is it because we are so conceited or that we atleast like to put up the facade of conceit....for we know what we lack, but we dont want others to find out.Having others know our weaknesses make us feel vulnerable in front of them and hence scared of being taken for a ride. But then, this fear is not entirely unfounded, people use other people, that why they call it a "jungle" right!! "the survival of the fittest!!" ??? or is it the survival of the one who puts up the best facade, has the maximum layers hiding his weaknesses, can fool the maximum number of people?? why are we then taught things like "good wins over evil"...and "honestly is the best policy" when you actually should excel in getting things done, your way!

But I digress, and greatly so. This article is not meant to be a rhetoric on the world today, I just wish to find out answers to a simple question....do we ever realise if what we think are our weaknesses, are actually our weaknesses or are they hidden strenghts which we keep trying to eliminate by wanting to be someone minus those weaknesses, while our actual weaknesses remain beyond the horizons of acceptance of them, lost forever into the realms of denial.

I have seen people, yes I have this obessessive compulsion disorder of silently observing people, at times with an amused smile, asking awkward questions which almost always offend them and then writing about them!!! but I have seen people making the same mistake repeatedly througout their lives, and cribbing over it, blaming God, destiny, people, the world, even abstract theories, all this just to escape a true introspection, I mean a true one, not where you already know,or think that you know, what went wrong and all your introspection is actually an effort to reinforce a justification of self-exoneration. They never actually find out what went wrong, though I dont know if they do during the last moment of being alive, I hope they don't, or else we would all die with a realisation that came in too late to improve and yet too soon to not leave a regret


But then Who gets to decide what is a weakness anyway....what do you call a weakness, as another crazy...err I mean philosophical friend put it once ..."you have just qualities, it is the context which makes them strengths or weaknesses"...if that is what is it, then what do you call being self aware?? I guess its just about figuring out all your qualities and learning to pick which one, where, how, and how much!!!


but all this is useless, because ultimately aren't we all searching for happiness, and honestly, no!!! honestly!! aren't we the happiest when we are proven right, to ourselves and to others, or perhaps when we can make people admit that they were wrong. isnt there a masochistic pleasure we get is whining because that gives us sympathy and attention?? No no no, the
strong and silent types, so to speak, get even more attention and sympathy by visibly hiding their pain!!! So perhaps what we actually run after is general acknowledgement and admiration of the society, may be because that is our sole parameter of happiness. Validation by others who sorround us, whether it comes as sympathy or admiration or even envy for that matter, (for you envy some one only when you want to be like them and know that you cant be), but a validation nonetheless

So if the self exonerating introspection works everytime in gaining us some more attention, sympathy and acceptance then why even bother for anything else?? why do we need to term anything as weakness or a strength, we just need to figure out all our qualities and learn to pick which one, where, how, and how much will be the most effective in gaining us the attention, sympathy or admiration!!!

any takers???

its weird...how you want something all your life, you crave for it day and night, and have been,for as long as you remember, and when you get it....no its not that it doesn't matter anymore, its just that you realise its somehow not right for you....it doesn't fit, so you leave it, and then to make matters worse you see someone else with that perfect fit....

i went shopping a few days back, and found these perfect pearl earrings i'd been fantacising about ever since i was a little girl, and had seen movie stars wearing them, and when i tried them on..... all excited, ready to pay anything to get them....they looked horrible,ok ok i looked horrible in them....i was so disgusted, i didnt buy them ofcourse, but i was disgusted at the irony of life....as if to intesify the irony, the next day i saw a colleague wearing them, and ooooohhhhhhh they looked so pretty on her....maybe i should've bought them anyways...it was a childhood dream afterall, or rather, it still is.... :((

some more sketches...