Bygone Years

The annual ritual of getting old, that one day when people congratulate you and you eat cake. This birthday, somehow, I am not feeling old. You see, the kind of job I am in, I am surrounded by young people. So, this has made me like the wolf boy. I am a wolf because I live with wolves. In other words, I feel young. The young ones around me keep me fresh and alive.

See, everything about me is young, I love colorful cakes. I love presents. I love attention. I love to receive phone calls and sms. I love people congratulating me for achieving nothing. I love flowers. I love cute teddy bear candles.
And I love the fact that so many years have gone by.

All right let’s get profound here. Another year of good health, some intellectual growth (very little, but still), getting to know some new people, it’s not been too bad. Ups and downs, elation and disappointments, just the way life is. The comforting feeling that people I love and care about are all doing fine and they are around. Birthday is the day you know how much people mean to you.

And this birthday I have another beautiful ghazal for myself

‘Awargi mein hadh se guzar jaana chahiye,
Lekin kabhi kabhar to ghar jaana chahiye’.

Yes, birthday is about being born and being home. And every birthday while I am surrounded by people who are genuinely fond of me, for some inexplicable reason I just miss being with my Baba.

Old, Old Wine

Very often after I have read a piece I wonder, so what’s the point? Well, am sure many of us do it. So, let me clarify this in the very beginning. There is no point. In this post I am not being cynical, or making some smart observation (ER…I think my observations are smart, purely personal point of view it hasn’t been endorsed by anyone yet!). None of it. It’s just random stuff.

It started with my morning cup of tea. I noticed there was a weird smell (not bad or rotten but definitely odd) and somehow the tea would simply not wake me up. Now, I am a hard core caffeine addict. I need that stuff, like hell I do. So then I decided to investigate. I noticed my creamer was hazelnut flavored and my goddamn black tea was decaffeinated. This surprised me, how could it happen. I had myself done the shopping.

Well, fortunately I have a rational, meticulous and an exceptional mind. A mind trained from the very beginning by Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, Father Brown, Feluda, Philip Marlow…I decided to investigate. I went back to the store I had got my grocery from and started scrutinizing the shelves. I had my answer. At the eye level, where naïve or busy shoppers tend to pick up their stuff from they had all these ‘special’ things. I mean, the same color, the same packaging and somewhere in tiny letters there were weird words like elderberry, mocha and of course hazelnut. Now please, tell me why on earth will I want a bland creamer that smells like elderberry in my tea or coffee. Ok, if I was in a holiday spirit at some berry festival in Oregon I could still see the point. And this was so mixed up with the regular creamer I couldn’t tell them apart! No one had the decency of putting a chipmunk holding a berry or a Brazilian nut on the cover, at least that way you know it's got something sinister in it.

As I said it all started with the tea then I saw it everywhere. No plain couscous, either garlic toasted, or cranberry almonded….no plain peas either with cheese sauce or tossed in with Asian sauce. No, all the normal things are there only you have to hunt for them.
Then came the skin care section where it took me 15 minutes to get what we call simple crème. Ya the basic thing. Not hypoallergenic skin lift, not all night long wonders (pun intended), not day fresh radiance. See, I wanted a creme and not commitments of collagen fulfillment. Just cream. Yes, cream.

As I said there is no point in this post I simply wanted to brag about how I 'understood' my problems. And this time I just want to look in the mirror and tell myself, yes I am beautiful, yes I am special and I love myself the way I am…

The Yearly Cycle

I insist, I stubbornly insist that I don’t party on New Years’ Eve. I have no idea why, I am old, I have lived alone, lived independently, yes I drink, I eat meat and no I have never partied on New Year’s Eve.

Certainly, there is that childhood angle here; my parents have religiously abstained from New Years’ party. Reason? Simple, they are not the type. They watch Doordarshan, they have no stomach for late nights and somehow the idea of ‘party’ is not very enticing to them. Besides attending marriages and few other social events I have never seen them actively entering the party zone. This year my mother informed me that Baba had dozed off at 11. Ya, they only get better at this!

So every year I get better at this business of abstinence, so much so that its hard for me to tell whether I am welcoming 1989, 2002 or 2010. It’s always the same thing. This year I sat in front of the T.V and watched back-to-back episodes of ‘Dinner Impossible’. And like my father I was fast asleep at 12. Normally, I never go to bed before 1.30, but then it’s special right. New Year’s Eve with blue moon and all!

Now comes the crucial question. Are you so dull that no one wants you in their parties? Er…well, now this I haven’t thought about, but I never saw myself as the kid no one wanted to talk to. See, there is nothing special about me, and this also means I am not repulsive or overwhelmingly disgusting. In a nutshell I don’t have an answer.

But this New Year I want to reiterate a profound message that great philosophers/ visionary/ writers like Paulo Coelho, Rohnda Bryne have said. When you want something the entire universe conspires to give it to you. So, no matter where I am, what I do, it is the universe working its way to ensure that I do nothing and watch T.V on New Years’ Eve.

So here is a toast to positive thinking and mysteries of the beautiful universe that loves you and only you! Cheers!