Bombay, my love!

Came across this website called India Memory Project. Sheer beauty. Phantoms from the past tugging at you, at the beautiful Indian within you. The stories of the lives lived in black and white India, through pictures. Going over the stories therein, I couldn't help but miss my city all over again. Bombay.

My first love, my joy and my soul, Bombay is one of the many facets that define me. Makes me who I am. No matter how busy or frustrated I get about anything, just a reminiscence of that love washes it all away and I'm at peace again. Love like that is meditation. Joy like that is bliss. This post is difficult to even put in words..but oftentimes I forget who I am or how I am or where I'm going and in that, Bombay roots me. Defines me for who I am and why I am and snaps be back to my core. They may change her name. But she'd always be Bombay to me. The city I call home, the city I've fallen head o'er heels for.

Curbing the lunatic in me from aimlessly romanticising on any more, here's, to conclude, a snippet from a friend with the common love, on his upcoming visit planned for January, 2014:

I can just imagine right now... Being on a plane going back home. As the plane drops below the clouds, I can see a big blotch of light. The plane travels on, hurtling at hundreds of miles an hour towards that blotch. Slowly but surely, that mass of light breaks up into individual, slightly smaller yet still fairly large patches of light. A few spaces of darkness between them. The plane continues flying oblivious of my emotions. It goes on and the lights continue to separate. They fill up the entire landscape visible to me below. Now I can see lights and discern their sources. Some come from buildings, most from streetlamps and cars. The city that never sleeps. Truly never ever sleeps. I pass over a building that I know is my home. The plane lands with a slight jolt, as always. I step out of the plane after it halts. And I breathe. My first breath of air in Bombay after more than a year and a half now. It reeks of refuse and waste. Of smoke and pollution. Of sweat and blood. Of a million dreams shattered. Of love at first sight. Of love after years of being together. Of flowers being sold somewhere on the streets by urchins out to make a last few sales to religious drivers hoping to bribe gods in their favour. Of a billion dreams being dreamt. There are a million things wrong about Bombay and there are a billion things right about it. And each of these things are in the air I breathe in. I am home again.

Fitting portrayal of the mesmerizing drug, Bombay; my love you will always remain.

The Joy of Writing

Early morning class. Incomplete assignments. Overload. Time crunch (need to come up with a fancier/different term). Bored and blank and inattentive at class. Math. Last bench. Smartphone and laptop both dead so nothing to distract myself with. Half hour down into it I shove my notebook aside and pull out my 'Ramble Journal' notebook. And start scribbling away.

The next one hour was bliss! Instant teleportation into a nicer world. All mine. All spelt by the words I use. My opinions. My ideas. My view. The awesomeness vantage point! Beauty and well, for want of a better word, stand-still. I hadn't slept the night before class thanks to all the impending assignments; didn't have time to grab coffee or breakfast in the morning. So was almost cranky. Was looking forward to rush home at end of day and either hitting the sack or catching up with friends (read: force them to since I knew nobody would be around at the hour) or do 10 of the 20 things on my to-do list. But that one hour; one hour of letting all that mental rambling and futility of planning come down on paper and there was instant calm. I was suddenly refreshed and awake. And the entire day looked up from there on. I was suddenly chirpy and cheerful! Like I'd just had a night of restful sleep and sumptuous breakfast! It was amazing!

Novels have been my lifelong companion. Inspite of being the extrovert I've always been, my best friends at the end of the day were usually that couch and novel. For writing, I've lost count of the number of journals I've had over the years. Then came Yahoo 360 blog followed by Blogger. Enter computers and smartphones and reading's been reduced to articles and writing's tweetish status updates or Evernote scribbles. Novels are still something I don't seem to be able to repeal off everything else and sit down with. Feels like sin with the constraints on my time. To enjoy a good novel, I need to be away from distraction (all that jazz). Something I don't get unless I decide to go the woods lately, which I oftentimes do now.

But writing, oh writing! The simple power of picking up a pen and putting it to paper. Or even just a blog post like now. I'm writing this while with friends (who're right now bonding over trying to solve my math assignment for fun!). And I'm here typing away on my smartphone. I usually have better etiquettes than that, but so long it is not Facebook or Twitter or Whatsapp that I'm at, I feel my crime is presently not so bad. I'll make up for it with a cheerful post-blogging me ;)

So yes, writing has taken a precedence over my other hobbies lately and I wish the relationship stays..well..uncomplicated and committed! Hope I can someday graduate from just rambling to actually penning down something meaningful. But even if that doesn't happen anytime soon or ever at all, the writing would never stop for me. So long as there is parchment, I shalt scribble my heart out. Cheerio!

(Blogpost motivation: A friend and me were supposed to attend the weekly Writers' Guild meet today at my university that we missed. So counter deal was to update our respective blogs. Works!)

Crunch Munch Rumble Ramble

Yes yes. Time crunch blog post again. 5 courses when I'm down to my 3rd semester at Grad School, office position at 2 student organizations, 1 part time job, sport and other extra curricula, and lots of friends and frolic! My excuse? 4 months of plain-nothingness-summer! So I work my everything off the next 4 months. Frankly like the setting. Vacation-work-vacation-work. Finances are rock bottom but that's something I try to ignore. Maiden gig few states away, yeah spend!

I remember watching some Super Soul Sunday episode on OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network, yeah I was a fan till she visited India and ruined it!) not so long ago where the guest speaker, Iyanla Vanzant, a rather annoyingly chirpy female, said "You ain't living your live to the fullest if you don't feel nervous enough each moment that you're gonna pee in your pants." Rather disturbing thought. I'd equate it to near heart attack moments and use that metaphor instead, and proudly say that happens more often than not! I do not finalize on things till the very end. Heck 3rd semester and I decide to jump from aerospace engineering coursework to mechanical. Thank heavens there's no other related field offered in my University or who's to say I'd take those up next Spring!

But yes, it is fun. I've come to accept the fact that I'm never gonna be sure of what I want to do or where I want to go next. Living each day one day at a time. Living or sleeping that is, either, have stopped regretting that as well. So if today I decide on something, I'd go ahead and do that, if I can get off the bed. Tomorrow, something else. Whatever tickles my fancy. So long as I'm alive and having fun with it. And I can be snotty enough to say I wouldn't change a thing about it even if I'm sure to regret it sometime in the future. That is not today so something I couldn't care less about!

Bleh, life is as you live it. Bring out the wine when there's nothing else to do. Or sleep and wake up to a new day and start. Cheers!

Strength

Dismantling hurt

Killing emotion
Forgetting pain
Numbing direction

Forged in stone
Value Illusion
All surreal
Falsification

Heart trembles
Holding delusion
Misdemeanor
Righteous suppression

Worlds collide
In this redemption
The living thrive
Seeking correction

Faith dies
Wake of destruction
Hope cries
Resurrection

Strength we find
In realization
When all else fails
Inner reflection

Silence is bliss
Ignorance golden
Flight to glory
Character molten

Moulding anew
Heightened sensation
All arise
Reverberation

A new day is here
A new dawn is here
The sun shines through
Everything's clear..

Summer 2013!

Every summer I have plans to do this and that. And this summer ain't even off time, my coursework has dragged onto it, marring the fun (not much) in truest fullness. So there's still coursework while I try to fit in the summer goals. The list is kinda long and is up on my room's wall. My project, a musical instrument, some exercise, a language, some novels, some travel, the works. They've never been up on any wall before and stashed away in diaries and Evernotes so right now it is atleast something I see daily first thing when I wake up. Also this article: http://ankurmans.wordpress.com/2013/05/01/my-90-day-summer-street-workout-challenge/ by a friend Ankur has me hooked onto the habit development plan.

So though I'd be resorting to Ankur's tracking sheet and my own Evernote and Google Calendar, I'd use in some measure of non-spam, this blog. This summer being different what with my post away-from-home-near-traumatic-people-issues (sounds crappier than real, I'm a happy optimistic person still) and larger than life project work, deserves special logging, and there ain't no better place than my blog to do it.

Updates galore this summer, as a log to myself on how good or bad I am in following through with goals I set out to achieve. Summer 2013, here I come!

The Social Week!

What a week! Socializing galore! From outings with individual friends to social gathering with people from 7-8 countries, to send-offs, to treats and more partying, it's been one heady end-of-semester celebration! (And more to come! And my semester is technically not even done yet, haha!) The most number of people I've met within a week and the most fun I've had in a long time. Always great to be with friends!

Some bond over drinks, some over movies, some over games, some over philosophy, some over bitching (:P), there are so many facets to just how much you can connect with someone. It's amazing how so many of these outings weren't even planned; single pings, sudden whims, and off we went! Impromptu fun at its best! Some of them were times when I just woke up with nothing much to do (yeah that seems to be happening a lot lately, ignorance about work I say, bah it's summer!) or was down for seemingly no reason, and bam! Someone would call and drag me out.

I write this post just to say thanks to all the wonderful people I spent the past week with. It's truly a blessing to have so many friends and folk that care, when you're so far away from home. And some moving onto face greater adventures, I wish them the best! Thank you for being a part of my life, your presence makes it colorful. Cheers!

A year hath passed

Blogosphere! Thee must've missed me! (I really need to stop having these opening statements so often in my blog) It has been a year! As with every other post of mine, this one too comes at a time when I really have no time to blog. But since we (you, reader, and me) belong to the stop and stare with time to spare, I shalt go ahead and pour some nonetheless. (..And it just struck me that this is my first post from my MacBook Air! Thank you powers that be! :P)

The United States of America! Oh how do I even begin detailing the roller coaster ride this has been! (Yeah so I'm not going to :P) Not much difference to me from being home, except that Cincinnati is much sleepier and spacious than my Mumbai. I had no jet lag coming in changing 3 planes, I don't miss Indian food; family and friends back home are always in my heart and I still feel one with them. Being back to school after so many years was one change. Hopping from Production Engineering to Aerospace Engineering, a change of a lifetime. The classroom felt the same with aero having a huge batch size here. Clubs the same. People the same. A little ignorance here and an exchange of thought there, but pretty much all the same. There were DC, NYC and Texas trips in between. Ashamed to say I've seen more of USA than India. (*bucket list reformation*)

But in between all this, what I always still fall flat into the trap for are the people, always the people. Being a social junkie that I am, peeling myself off my friends and acquaintances is something I've never learnt to do. Same old overdos, same old expectation, and same old hurt. Being an active part of two big student groups here gets me to connect with more. A huge list of ego trainers I say. I guess you never stop learning there. Never stop believing, running the muck, getting hurt, falling down, and reinventing the cycle of getting back up. Past experiences only help so much as to show you how fucked up you've always been, not in showing you how you got back up the last time, no. Murphy shrouds that wisdom. "You're busy in your life presently of course, you don't have the time for people skills when you're after a different science degree, of course, I hear you, still, go spend time gathering yourself back up. Muhaha!"

And so it is. You give up. Throw up. Scream. Wait for an epiphany to hit you perhaps. Some angels come along, some leave, some stay back for you. A potpourri of advice, a hug, a shoulder squeeze. Again the people that bring you back up. You're never alone; somehow are never allowed to. Not when you're a dynamically invasive personality like myself, I guess. Work and business have somehow not worked for me in being distractions. They'd keep happening, but I really am two people in one when such 'crises' occur. One for work, one for them inundated emotions. One doesn't help with the other.

So my 'stitches' start where the threads went bare. Not with patches of cover up. And the needle work goes on, the fabric expands, reinforced here and there with the holy (my fancy new term for 'shitty') experiences of life. Blind unwavering unapologetic faith in myself. That is what I adorn. Peace.