Of love and Loss ( One Art by Elizabeth Bishop- one of my favorite poems)

One Art

The art of losing isn't hard to master;

so many things seem filled with the intent

to be lost that their loss is no disaster,

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:

places, and names, and where it was you meant

to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or

next-to-last, of three beloved houses went.

The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

-- Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident

the art of losing's not too hard to master

though it may look like (Write it!) a disaster.

Fake or Awake??

Skepticism has become a way of life for me- unfortunately inseparable too. I can't help notice how fake people can be. Are they becoming what they think they should be and embodying their ideals or are they becoming what they think will be perceived by others as ideal? Sometimes I think maybe that's the real them and me failing to see it because of my blocked mind. But at other times I can't help notice the fakeness. And I wonder, am I the only one actually spotting how people are trying hard to be something that they are not or are the others/the admirers pretending to admire as well? Pretty complicated world huh!!!

World is indeed a stage and each of us playing our part, sometimes playing the part that we think is desirable (carved out of our own narrow preconceived ideas) by others or what we consider to be desirable by ourselves instead of what we actually should be playing. Confused? So am I.

Why can't we just let loose and be ourselves? Or why can't we just be accepted for who we are?

Till death do us apart?

Yesterday, on my way to Kew Gardens in an ever-slow District line, one of my friends exclaimed, "Oh! did you know Amy Winehouse is dead? "

"What?"

"When?" I couldn't hide my surprise at the news. Something remotely thought of and imagined and a totally unexpected news to hear on a rare sunny day in London.  But thinking of it, who expects of a death?

Don't we all choose to live with a naivety that we will die one day, but sure enough in our mind that day can't be tomorrow or even today for that matter. Life can be unfair although we choose to believe the opposite. We are optimistic creatures I think, to think that we have our share of time, here on earth but failing to either realise or ignore that this time can be extremely short.

This sudden demise of a true talent and few other acquaintances of mine within a short period of time, has seriously made me question myself on this inevitable truth of life. I have constantly come across the line "Life is short". But I never gave it a thought without realising how short can be so short sometimes.

And now, with an uncertainity looming over our own existence, what should be our approach towards life? Do we live like there is going to be no tomorrow or do we live with a positivity that our actions today will shape our future tomorrow which we are sure we will get to see?

And in all this confusion over how one should live their life, should we make "death", THE DEFINING TRUTH in our life?

Friday the 15th?

Ok, so here’s the thing. I am a firm believer in astrology (sign compatibility, sign characteristics and all that crazy stuffs. Call me the mad woman or even aspiring psychic for that matter) and am so insanely obsessed with it that I have managed to rub off some of my obsession to my near and dear ones. While it’s true that it’s a part of science and is as much arbitrary as much as it is scientific, no one can give a plausible explanation as to why that some stranger looking at the crystal ball or some Pandit Bajes who go through your birth charts, can accurately narrate your past while claiming to predict or forsee your future. Now, if the future predictions turn out to be true or not, is an entirely different thing. I believe it’s more of a psychological thing, with those fortune-tellers gauging the psychological effect of their predictions as well. But I am a firm believer in the sense that, the planetary movements/position at the time of birth, have in some extent, an effect on the characteristics and behavior of a person.

Being as much non-judgemental as I am, I can’t help notice how people of same astrological sign share so much in common. Their characteristics and sometimes even their way of thinking and general attitude towards life is eerily similar. Other than that, I like to believe that I am quite open-minded and  don't dwell too much on psychic future predictions et al. So when my lovely cousins always worried about Fridays (supposedly the unlucky day for both of them) and avoided scheduling important events on Fridays and were extra careful even when going to work, I used to laugh it off or give a satirical look of Oh-right-it's-Friday-the-thirteenth, until one day I decided to experiment myself and be extra cautious to the happenings of the 7 days of the week to determine if I did as well have an unlucky day of the week. 

My mom (she literally lives and breathes astrology ) always reminds me, as per one of the monks, that Friday is meant to be my unlucky day too. So I thought why not see what happens on Friday to determine if it is really that bad.  So I thought of all the significant things(both good and bad) that had happened in the recent months and see if I could remember the days too (pretty tough and crazy I know). Unable to find much, I decided to keep things simple and just focus on finding the unlucky day of the week for me. I starting taking mental notes of what happened on Fridays. And to my amazement,  Fridays seemed to be bad days for me. All of a sudden, I started not getting seats in the same train that I travel everyday to and fro to my work at the same time. Spending 3 hours of daily commute without getting a seat was a great misery to me and I couldn't decide if it's because of the day of the week or just by pure chance. Either way I am becoming a bit of a mind-reader trying to read the mind and observe the gestures of the seated strangers so that I can predict who is getting off at the next station so that I can jump to their seat. Pathetic I know, but I don't want to go to work with a bad mood and tired even before my dose of bad day at work.  I can't not be getting seats just because it was Friday. But sadly, the truth was same thing happened other Fridays. At days when I did get seat for the last few stops, it was certain I would have a bad day at work, which without fail I would. Work would feel a drag with too much pressure, stress, nagging colleagues at their worst etc. If I make any arrangements or call somewhere, it was surely bound to be a failure.

Now, coming to think of it, I blame myself for all this. It's not the days of the week, it's me and my mentality, the power of thought so strong that the waves of those thoughts are ringing true. And as I am writing this, I feel I am giving  this arbitraty theory even more validation and certainity to it. HAH!!! I am making things happen with my thoughts albeit the negative ones, still my thoughts nonetheless.  Now, if only I knew how to channel these into making something positive happen, I would be standing beside The Dalai Lama.

Until I figure that out, I will just have to do with  being  way ahead of the crowd and actively looking out for the next person likely to leave his/her seat so that my commute to work on Fridays would be less troublesome.