Spritually Alive !

It was another chain mail lying in my inbox. Being an active member of the “No, I don't care If I die at 12 AM, I refuse to pass on your Chain Letter " group, the norms of the group dictates you to delete any chain mail within the vicinity of your inbox. But the following words caught my attention.

“If you're spiritually alive, you're going to love this!
If you're spiritually dead, you won't want to read it.
If you're spiritually curious, there is still hope! “.

I decided to read the mail further and given below is the summary of the mail.

A 'devotee' wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper and complained that it made no sense to go to the Temple.
“I’ve gone for 30 years now, he wrote, and in that time I have heard something like 3,000 mantras. But for the life of me, I can't remember a single one of them. So, I think I'm wasting my time and the Gurus are wasting theirs by giving services at all “.

This started a real controversy in the 'Letters to the Editor' column, much to the delight of the editor. It went on for weeks until someone wrote this clincher:
“I’ve been married for 30 years now. In that time my wife has cooked some 32,000 meals. But, for the life of me, I cannot recall the entire menu for a single one of those meals. But I do know this... They all nourished me and gave me the strength I needed to do my work. If my wife had not given me these meals, I would be physically dead today. Likewise, if I had not gone to the Temple for nourishment, I would be spiritually dead today! “.

The mail did make sense. I truly agree to the adage that when you are down to nothing.... God is UP to something! Faith sees the invisible, believes the incredible and receives the impossible!

Thank God for our physical AND our spiritual nourishment! Especially for people like me who live by the motto “When Satan is knocking at your door, simply say, God, could you get that for me?!! “.

Make Up Your Mind....

It was one of those days when I just wished I never existed. Managed to drag my self to work only to find my self slowly disappearing into oblivion.

Yeah, I was feeling pretty rocky. With not much work to do, I sat at my desk trying to skim through the pages of an e-book on Agile Testing. But I was sure my mind was pre-occupied with something else. My friends who generally are the repositories for my tales of woe were busy with their chores. I don’t know if you have ever experienced it, but it is a very unpleasant thing when the mere sight of an Inbox or the GTalk widget began to depress me. I did not feel well. I felt sluggish - physically and mentally.

Suddenly I decided to do something to pep me up. Shop - Binge! The idea was absolutely new to me and seemed the only refreshment to cheer my desolate soul. Clothes, Shoes, Make-up, Perfumes....ah! The options were unlimited. I did hear that tiny lil' voice screaming “NO”, but I paid no heed to it , shook off the gloom that held me down and ventured out in search of a shop that would cater my needs for the moment.

As I entered the nearest H&G outlet, the fresh air in the shop sluiced through my lungs, magically drawing me towards the shelves lined with the best of the beauty products the industry had to offer. The best, which advertised to change a woman's life, turn her life topsy turvy, set her on the right track and what not...

I was the perfect bait. My face broken, lips chapped, oily hair plastered to the scalp, nevertheless made me look like a whimp in paradise.
As I was staring at the creams and powders, the sales woman approached me.

“How can I help you, Madam?”
“Eh?”
“How can I help you, Madam?” she repeated again with a pretty smile on her glossy lips.
“I’ll look around for a while “I said sounding like a lok ayukta officer who had decided to raid a house, but not sure about what to search for.

15 minutes later I was completely confused and found myself going back to the sales woman like a lost kid.
“I want to buy that thing... you know. That thing...Thing...that “, I said wildly gesturing at her.
“What thing?” she asked apparently baffled at my sign language.
“That thing...the thing “I said pointing at my lips.
“Oh lipstick?”
“No...No...That thing...” It occurred to me that I was not only confused, but was on the verge of a breakdown. Not only was I speaking gibberish, I was also not able to convey one of the most important commodities that a woman must have in her purse. A Lip Gloss!!!

Sensing my situation, the saleswoman asked me to wait and called out at one of her collegues
“Aye Geeta, swalpa baare illi. Customer na attend maadu”.
[Translation: Hey Geeta. Please attend this loony customer.] I guess she must have been tired playing dumb charades with me. Then came Geeta. A woman in her mid-twenties, tall with patrician features. I was studying her intently when she approached me and asked,

“Yes madam, how can I help you?”
“Eh?” . This was not happening!! I was going in loops. Infinite loops!! This is going nowhere.
“Is there anything you wish to buy? Is there anything you want? “She asked in a syrupy voice which could have sold a million insurances.
“I want to buy some make-up “ I said in a feeble tone.

She smiled back at me and led me to the farthermost section of the shop.The next 30 minutes was well spent in a thorough induction about make-up accessories which I never knew existed in the first place. Concealers, toners, moisturizers, blushers, cleansers , lotions, eye shadows...
I sat there savoring the knowledge in a way like Arjuna did while Krishna rendered the Bhagavad-Gita on the battle field. The entire session proved to be very therapeutic. Now I was armed with all the necessary weapons to face the world with a new found confidence.

It is an authentic law in a woman's world, that the amount billed when a woman shops during leisure is directly proportional to the degree of depression she faced. While billing the accessories, I saw another lady getting her items billed for a whooping amount of 5000 bucks!!! Good Lord!
She must have been on a verge of suicide!!....

[PS: The next day my colleague actually complemented about the radiance on my face and asked me the reason behind it. I grinned like a Cheshire cat and replied “Because...I'm worth it ".]

Face Value

Came across this feature at one of the matrimonial sites. I actually had to mention the actress who I resembled the most. Plus the field is a mandatory one without the option of “No answer ". It’s a pity, I didn't get to see Katrina Kaif’s name anywhere on the list. That would have been a very close match. Although she does resemble me though...ahem...sometimes...Hey I'm just being modest ;-)

Why is it that this information was meant only for the brides and not the groom’s profile? What purpose was it meant to serve? I actually browsed through many profiles to see if they actually looked anything like the actress's they chose to mention. Zero results. Anway I've got to chose one. May be Illeana...Umm... or Trisha... may be Tamanna :)

Yeh Dil Maange More....

While emptying my mailbox today, I chanced upon seeing a mail titled “B’day Pics " . Owing to curiosity I opened the mail only to find photographs of a famous birthday party celebrated at my first job. Soon old memories came rushing back...Here I go into flash back...3yrs ago...

It was appraisal time that year. My teammates and I were in dumps and for all the hard work done that year; the chances of even a 1% raise appeared to be bleak. Financial crunch. Dire needs. Apparently bagging a good appraisal on top of my wish list. After racking our brains , eventually I came up with this dorky plan of celebrating our manager's birthday. Yes! Yes!! .. You are guessed it right. We actually thought of patao' ing our manager by celebrating her birthday so that she would be kind to us during the appraisal meeting. After much cajoling, my teammates finally agreed. Crazy. But true.

On that fateful day, we were all set to start the action! Cakes, Flowers, Confetti, Balloons, Gifts...what not? We hadn't left a stone unturned in our attempt to showcase the best of our event management skills. We wanted to show her that we were the only ones who cared for her unconditionally in the entire office . And yes! That did burn gargantuan holes in our wallets because it was that time when our salaries (which was a pittance) were nearly over with some month left :)

Deep in my heart I did feel that this was the heights of nautanki, but I was too busy with the arrangements to ponder. Me and my partners in crime were jubilant that we had finally made it to her favorites list. But fate had other plans. The photographs used in this post bear a silent testimony of that eventful day, which by the way didn't favor us very well. What injustice!!! Disheartened, but not discouraged.

Back now, reminisce of this incident simply brought a smile on my lips.

The Holiday...

I still remember, the first time I watched the movie “The Holiday ". The movie was aired on HBO recently, and voila!! I was hooked on to it. In the very beginning, I had casually dismissed it as yet another no brainer, cheesy chick flick entertainer. But it was the well etched roles of the 4 characters that finally made the cut. The movie was an ordinary love story which had 2 love stories running in parallel. It was Iris (played by Kate Winslet) who seemed very naive, a naturally sweet melancholic who I was able to immediately co-relate with. lris is a victim of unrequited love, and she hopelessly clung to a nonchalant, stoic jerk who went by the name "Jasper", and actually had the guts to tell him how worthless he made her feel all through the years. I'll tell you it was an instant reprieve for my self esteem. Why carry the toxic emotional baggage and keep mum about it? Always say what you have to say.

The Plot: In London, Iris Simpkins (Kate Winslet) writes a wedding column in a newspaper and has an unrequited love for her colleague Jasper Bloom. Nearby Christmas, she is informed that Jasper is engaged and will marry another colleague, and her life turns head over heels. In Los Angeles, the movie-trailers maker Amanda Woods (Cameron Diaz ) has just broken with her unfaithful boyfriend Ethan and wants to forget him. Amanda accesses a house exchange website, and impulsively swaps her mansion for Iris' cottage in Surrey for the holiday along the next two weeks. While in Surrey, Amanda meets Iris' brother and book editor Graham (Jude Law) and they fall in love for each other. Meanwhile Iris meet her next door neighbor, the ninety years old screenplay writer Arthur, who helps her to retrieve her self-esteem, and the film composer Miles (Jack Black), and they fall in love for each other.

Just imagine swapping lives (and homes) with a complete stranger across continents. Iris' home was one of those cute , cozy cottages that you'd have probably read about in fairy tales where as Amanda's house was one of that avant-garde mansions which reminds you of how much pleasure leisure can be. Also by the end of the movie everything just falls in the right place... right use of time and sensibilities.

My favorite dialogues from the movie:

Iris: I've found almost everything ever written about love to be true. Shakespeare said "Journeys end in lovers meeting." What an extraordinary thought. Personally, I have not experienced anything remotely close to that, but I am more than willing to believe Shakespeare had. I suppose I think about love more than anyone really should. I am constantly amazed by its sheer power to alter and define our lives. It was Shakespeare who also said "love is blind". Now that is something I know to be true. For some quite inexplicably, love fades; for others love is simply lost. But then of course love can also be found, even if just for the night. And then, there's another kind of love: the cruelest kind. The one that almost kills its victims. It’s called unrequited love. Of that I am an expert. Most love stories are about people who fall in love with each other. But what about the rest of us? What about our stories, those of us who fall in love alone? We are the victims of the one sided affair. We are the cursed of the loved ones. We are the unloved ones, the walking wounded. The handicapped without the advantage of a great parking space! Yes, you are looking at one such individual. And I have willingly loved that man for over three miserable years! The absolute worst years of my life! The worst Christmas', the worst Birthday's, New Years Eve's brought in by tears and valium. These years that I have been in love have been the darkest days of my life. All because I've been cursed by being in love with a man who does not and will not love me back. Oh god, just the sight of him! Heart pounding! Throat thickening! Absolutely can't swallow! All the usual symptoms.

Iris: I understand feeling as small and as insignificant as humanly possible. And how it can actually ache in places you didn't know you had inside you. And it doesn't matter how many new haircuts you get, or gyms you join, or how many glasses of chardonnay you drink with your girlfriends... you still go to bed every night going over every detail and wonder what you did wrong or how you could have misunderstood. And how in the hell for that brief moment you could think that you were that happy. And sometimes you can even convince yourself that he'll see the light and show up at your door. And after all that, however long all that may be, you'll go somewhere new. And you'll meet people who make you feel worthwhile again. And little pieces of your soul will finally come back. And all that fuzzy stuff, those years of your life that you wasted, that will eventually begin to fade.

(The evident truth. The miracle of a heart break beautifully rendered.Almosts tugs at my heart every time I hear it..... Awwwww...sniff. I mean, how many times haven't we injected hope into our minds about few unfinished business? )


Iris: it's over. This - This twisted, toxic THING between us is finally finished! I'm miraculously done being in love with you! Ha! I've got a life to start living.

(Ha...Only if girls said this very often, this movie would have definitely bombed at the BO. But Iris's joy is positively uplifting. )

Graham: I have another scenario for you - I'm in love with you. I apologize for the blunt delivery, but as problematic as this fact may be, I'm in love... with YOU. I'm not feeling this because you're leaving, and not because it feels good to feel this way... which, by the way, it does, or did before you went off like that. I can't figure out the mathematics of this, I just know I love you. I can't believe how many times I'm saying it! And I never thought I'd feel this way again, so that's pretty phenomenal. And I realize that I come as a package deal: 3 for the price of 1. I know my package, perhaps in the light of day, isn't all that wonderful, but I finally know what I want and that, in itself, is a miracle. And what I want is YOU

(This is one of the propositions EVER! Ha...Couldn’t help, but chuckle... Looks like Graham had no time to think over a well prepared speech to woo his lady love. )

A feel good, mushy movie, with a bit of magic weaved into it. Hans Zimmers music is yet another icing on the cake . Wonderful background score I must say . If you are looking for comedy or laugh aloud moments, please avoid the movie altogether. Watched it twice already. Cannot wait to own a personal copy :-)