WordWorship

As a child I had a wish of a photographic memory. Oh my pleasure when a teacher had said that maybe I had! Read/see something once and remember it all your life. No revisions, no studying before exams, no homework - just reading in class enough!! But then as I grew up, I realised what a curse it was. No, I do not have one but certain moments tend to get indelibly imprinted on your brain, which I cannot seem to shake off no matter how much I try. There are instances you want to forget - a bad boo boo you did, a moment of personal shame, a sweet memory that now cuts you to the core. But then one realises that there are no pros without cons. Memory Man by David Baldacci is the story of one such man. Amos Decker, a hyperthymesiac following a hit in which he died twice and came back is reeling under the memory of murders of his family. He starts to put his life back together when more than one and half year later his town is venue to a mass shooting, which is just the first link...

" A man seeks employment on a farm. He hands his letter of recommendation to his new employer. It read simply, 'He sleeps in a storm'. "The owner is desperate for help, so he hires the man. "Several weeks pass, and suddenly, in the middle of the night, a powerful storm rips through the valley. "Awakened by the swirling rain and howling wind, the owner leaps out of bed. He calls for his new hired hand, but the man is sleeping soundly. "So he dashes off to the barn. He sees, to his amazement, that the animals are secure with plenty of feed. "He runs to the field. He sees the bales of wheat have been bound and are wrapped in tarpaulins. "He races to the silo. The doors are latched, and the grain is dry. "And then he understands. 'He sleeps in a storm.' "                                                               ...

I walked a mile with Pleasure; She chatted all the way; But left me none the wiser For all she had to say. I walked a mile with Sorrow, And ne'er a word said she; But, oh! the things I learned from her, When Sorrow walked with me.                                                                                                       No, these lines are not by me. Oh!!! If only they were!!! 

There were times when the feeling was not there - a fleeting moment of consciousness, of awareness, a feeling of weightlessness as fit had been a feather on her chest, and not a boulder. She had seen that form before. She was sure of it. She knew that shape well. Where, where was it? Two years, four years ago? No, no... it was way more recent. It had been there just a week back.

He was always there. Everyday I would find him there, the corner near the entrance. In fact, everyone, who commuted via the station, did.

Everybody has a confidante in their lives. A friend, a mentor, a parent, a pet - one can find them in all forms. I, too, have a circle of friends who kept me whole when my own self had given way. But few days back, I realised I had a confidante without even knowing that I did.

Days traditionally have been very well documented. When to start, how to go about, best way to end - the possibilities are endless. One can fill volumes with the quotes and quips exciting us about the same. For me however, night is way more fascinating. It is dark, deep, mysterious and , above all, mocking of us - much like our real self that comes out then.

And once again you came out. A single moment of let go, an instant of lowered defenses, an unguarded response and there you were crowding me all over again - me, my mind and all my memories. When shall I have have the freedom I so crave for? Maybe the day I stop looking for the shackles, maybe. And till then?

What do you do when one day you advice someone to have only those people in his or her life who add value, who somehow contribute and the very next day someone you hold incredibly close to your heart suddenly stops talking to you because they felt you 'advise them wrong'? Is the other person not doing exactly what you said someone should do? Do you blame the other person for not being insightful enough? Or respect their decision and maintain the distance? Because ultimately what you mean for someone is for them to decide, not yours. And how do you accept the other person's decision? 

Huh!!!! back after a long long time. Feels different... both good and bad at the same time. Now, coming back to the topic. I just finished The Class. About 3 4 days ago. And here are my views on it. In one word, it was "amazing". I was reading the book for the 2nd or 3rd time and that, more or less, proves my love for it. It is an amazing and beautiful book that grips you and makes you introspect at the same time. I have not come across many books that can claim to do that. The Class, written by Erich Segal, follows the story of 5 men - Theodore Lambros, Jason Gilbert, Danny Rossi, Andrew Eliot and George Keller - students from the Harvard Class of '58(I think). It is their story, the story of their lives and the players that held a key role in each's. You get to read their journey to the hallowed grounds, the four tumultuous years and the lives thereafter and end with their 25th reunion where they realise that those they had once seen as combatants are really bro...

Getting published is any writer's dream come true. Mine came true last Saturday when an article written by me was published in Deccan Herald. While the article is not an opinion or something with 'personal' scrawled across it, it is not bad for starters. Hope this beginning leads to something....  http://www.deccanherald.com/content/374382/your-gifting-manners-speak-you.html Amen!!!!!

every day is a brand new day. but every night is the same old dreary one - fraught with the demons of the past and scares of the future, a gigantic beast stretching from me to eternity. 

The other day my roommate and I were cooking together. Somehow the talk drifted towards life and its ups and downs. I, as usual, started cribbing about how it had been for the past couple of years - uncertainties, broken promises, shaken foundations, blah, blah blah. It was at this junction that she shared a pearl of wisdom that I will take to my deathbed. Following is what she spoke: Have you ever seen a river? Let us take a small part of it. It starts as a small sliver of water somewhere up in the mountains. From the beginning it has to fight for its existence every single instant. Slowly, yet steadily, it moves ahead. In the beginning, even the smallest of pebbles pose a threat to it. It defeats them and moves ahead. Next it has to stave off the challenge of the big rocks that come in the way. It overcomes that too, little knowing that soon it is going to fall and fall heavily. Lesser is its knowledge that the higher it has started, the mightier its fall is going to be. Blissf...

6 years... 6 years is the time lesser mortals like us had to wait for another offering by the great called Khaled Hosseini. Many books came and went in this time. Yet, there were few which rose up to the standards set by the amazingly beautiful, profound and touching A Thousand Splendid Suns . While there might be no specific line or quote I can recall from that book but each and every incidence in that book is so well etched in my mind that few of those still send a chill down my spine.

They say - Out of sight, out of mind. Wisdom like that is supposed to be applicable pan everything. Then why does it not work with me? Why is what out of sight not out of mind?  Or maybe I should rephrase it - it's not the type of pain that fades away, it's the type of pain that one learns to live with. Is that what you are now? You have truly come a long way - from my most beautiful dream to my worst nightmare. As I sit here, I try and think about the road that lead to this. Where did our paths fork and they became yours and mine?

Remember tonight.... for it's the beginning of forever.....                                                                                   ----------- Dante 

"In the first place, his startling likeness to Catherine connected him fearfully with her - That, however, which you may suppose the most potent to arrest my imagination, is actually the least - for what is not connected with her to me? and what does not recall her? I cannot look down to this floor, but her features are shaped on the flags! In every cloud, in every tree - filling the air at night, caught by glimpses in every object, by day I am surrounded with her image! The most ordinary faces of men, and women - my own features - mock me with a resemblance. The entire world is a dreadful collection of memoranda that she did exist, and that I have lost her!"                                                                         ...

It hurts more to be replaced than rejected.

It is at least thousand times a day I think about all the things we could have done differently. All around me, I see things or measures we didn't take, the small little measures that could have made a difference. Maybe, if I had talked like this or you ad handled it like that, the outcome would ave been something else altogether. But I know it is pointless. The water's under the bridge now. However, it is still a storm for me. A storm that threatens to whirl up my world and tear my life apart. I wait for the storm to subside and, if not subside, at least, weaken in its intensity. There are times of complete lucidity with everything fine. At times, whole days pass like that. But then it all comes hurtling down and I realise that it has gone silent but was gaining in power. There are so many things that could have happened, many more that should have happened. And I know that thinking cant change anything. It will only end up giving me more regrets like such a small thing ...

And today, I once again told myself - it's gonna be ok. Someday, sometime, it will - maybe it's time to give time some time and test how good a healer it is. This is precisely the reason why I decided to stop using words like soon, tomorrow, etc etc etc. Because in this case, tomorrow will come. And by the looks of it, it will be as miserable and as hopeless as today was. So why put an expectation on it?  I know i know I know. there are many out there who would say that I am being cynical and, in some weird way, am putting an expectation on tomorrow - albeit of a different kind. The kind in which it will be bad and hopeless and miserable. But I think am just being realistic. Don't they say that Rome wasn't built in a day? This too is like that. To have a better, less painful day tomorrow, at least something from today should have gone into it. If today the pain was 100, tomorrow I can expect it to be 99. But what if today also, it has an infinite value? What is infi...