My Expression!! My Life!!

I read somewhere, that a year changes you a lot. Its true. Its slow and its steady, but it does change you. The past few years have perhaps changed me a lot, but 2016 was the year that in all probability I accepted the changes in me. When I started 2016, I was under the impression that it would be another 2015. 2015 had been awesome. 2016 at best can be termed as a mixed year. And it was. My wish for 2016 last New Year was very simple. I wanted madness, magic and not much of the mundane. You could say I got what I wanted, in short bursts. :) But definitely not in the way I expected. I wanted more of the journeys, more of the fun and more of joy. Travel was at a minimum this year, but on those short travels fun was had and there were some unexpected moments of joy. I created a bucket list at the beginning of 2016. It was filled with some regular stuff and some out of the box stuff.  Out of the 19 odd items in my bucket list (most of which involved travel :-...

They said women aren’t allowed on the battlefield. And yet here I am! Fighting my way through the mounds of dead bodies, the stench of rotting flesh and the cawing of the vultures. My eyes are weary of searching, my limbs are aching and a sense of dread has caught hold of my heart. I am hoping against hope that he is not here, in this blood strewn battlefield. I don’t think I can see him like this. In my heart, I know he is gone. His fate was sealed that dratted day in the sabha. And yet I hope! Maybe, I thought wrong. Maybe the gods decided to give him one last chance. Samantapanchaka… I heard a whisper. Duryodhana lies at Samantapanchaka, the winds whisper. Or was it the spies?  I am not sure. I am not sure of anything anymore. I only know now that my feet are leading me towards the lakeshore. I was but a naïve girl when Duryodhana abducted me. I was scared, cowering inside the chariot of the boorish man who had held me by force, furiously pegging his horses to ride faste...

Dusk had now turned into night. And yet, Shikandini, was entranced by the clearing and couldn’t move away. Everything seemed so familiar and yet nothing was clear. She found a smooth rock surface under a tree and sat down. She closed her eyes, in a bid to clear her mind and almost as if she had done this before, crossed her legs into the ‘padmasana’ pose and started chanting Lord Shiva’s name. The rhythm came to her naturally, the breathing settled into a regular tempo and she submitted herself completely to the consciousness. ---X--- Amba sat in penance invoking the warrior god, the commander of the devas – Kartikeya. He was the only one she knew capable of defeating Bhishma. Days passed, months passed, and years flew by. Amba’s austerities soon forced Kartikeya to reveal himself in front of her. She fell at his feet and beseeched him to defeat Bhishma. Kartikeya smiled. He gave her a garland of blue lotuses and told her that whoever wore the garland would be able to defeat...

She had just one thought. She hoped that she would remember everything from this life that she was giving up. All the fear, all the hurt and most importantly, the fury. With Shiva’s name on her lips, she stepped into the scorching pyre. ---X--- The girl looked around furtively. No one was around. Neither her parents, nor the courtiers, not even the guards. She was prepared this time. Dragging a spear, twice her height and multiple times her weight, she poked the garland. Trying to dislodge it. She poked and prodded for what seemed like an eternity until the garland, fell – right over her neck. Ever since she had lain eyes on them, she had wanted them. She was curious and a little bit scared, because everyone else in the palace revered it to the extent of praying in front of it. For what felt like a few minutes, she fingered the lotuses on the garland. The never-fading lotuses. A rich blue in colour. Unlike any of the other lotuses she had seen. She patted them with ...

This seems like a fun prompt, after 2-3 days of serious prompts. But it also means that I got to rack my brains to put down something that I probably may not have mentioned on this blog before. Ah! Never mind, I think I may mentioned most here on the blog. So random things in no order as such. I don’t like the skin that forms on the top of milk – the ‘ aadai’ or the ‘ malai’ . This is the reason why I never order coffee in South Indian restaurants. I don’t mind it in tea, probably because it disintegrates pretty fast. Never on coffee. I used to be an extremely shy kid in school. I never ever wanted to participate in school programmes and would always hide under the desk when the teachers came calling for participants, in a bid to escape. Even then I got picked up to be an angel ( oh the irony! ) for one of the school X-mas programs, and I bawled my eyes out when they took for us practice. This after the group had a very close friend of mine. Of course, all that...

Hmm! That is an unusual prompt. I don’t think I have ever written openly about pain on this blog! I have made the odd references to it on and off but more or less, I try avoiding and speaking about it. Exactly the same kind of thing when I am going through it as well. The one thing I do when I am going through physical pain (and that used to be a lot considering how clumsy I was!), I turn into a weepy sort especially when I am talking to the folks back home! :P You know, missing home and such :) I get all teared up when I am speaking to Amma or Appa when I am physically sick! At that point, all I really want to do, is just curl up near them and have them soothe and cuddle me. As for the emotional pain, it’s a whole other gamut. Usually I end up thinking about it so much, make up imaginary scenarios in my head, give myself a migraine and end up heading to sleep. If it’s not too much of an emotional upheaval, I try distract myself and read myself to sleep. Either ways, sleep ...

Ok! That’s a good question. Honestly, I don’t remember. And frankly, a little too late to answer this question, I suppose!! ;-)  All the while, growing up, there were different things I wanted to do. One year I wanted to be a newsreader, another year I wanted to be a journalist, some time in between I wanted to pursue dance full-time, and at other times I wanted to be a CA, you know follow dad’s footsteps and all that. One thing I was extremely clear about was that I would never be an engineer or a doctor. Aversion to science influenced that decision pretty heavily. ;) But then once I finished schooling and graduation in commerce, I didn’t really have a clue as to what I really wanted to do. At that point I wasn’t very keen on CA, having given the foundation exam and not faring well, the ego took quite a beating! :-/ A lot of my classmates were bandying about MBA, CAT, XAT etc., so I decided to join that bandwagon. Took a year off after graduation, did my MBA preparatio...

Oh boy! One thing? I have plenty! Why stop at one? Considering, my teenage was about a decade and half back, which sounds ages back, when you think about it, there are so many things that I would like to tell my younger self. I did that once, a long time back, a tag I think! This one, here ! But let me do this the right way! Dear Younger ME, Hi! This is your older, and hopefully more self-assured self, writing to you from the future! I know,  Right!  BAM! From the future, yes! So, there are a couple of things I wanted to tell you, so that you could prepare yourself for what’s coming your way. Scared much? Don’t be! It’s nothing radical or out of the box, okay maybe 1-2 things are radical! But I’ll prepare you for it. Not to worry. The first thing I would like to tell you is stop ‘going with the flow’. Seriously, stop it right now! Stop doing it and stop saying it. There is no such thing really! ‘Going with the flow’ is a term that some jobless fellow conc...

I like today’s prompt … it makes me feel all nice, warm and fuzzy when I think about these things and trust me it was no easy task to think up of things that would make me smile… I am sure I would have a lot more if I dredge up the energy to think, but some of these materialistic and not-so-materialistic things should do for now… And therefore, in no particular order ... “ Traditions that I have formed or those that have been followed for ages at home. Going back home for a vacation and checking out each nook, cranny and corner for familiar smells and things. Black and white photographs. Random hugs from the back. Dancing and sweating it out and having an ‘endorphin’ high! A very well made cup of coffee with just the right amount of milk and very little sugar. Drizzles on the face while taking long walks. Songs, places, things that bring back bitter-sweet memories. Surprises when you least expect it. A long road trip. Bike rides or car drives where the window is open and the ...

I have been asked to write about three good things today. I don’t really know, what context they mean here, but as always, I’d like to write about the top three good things in my life. # 1 – The Perfect Support System - FAMILY I know I have talked plenty about my family over posts in the blog, but I don’t really know if I have said this. My parents have always been more my friends than parents. When me and Achu crossed our teenage years, Appa and Amma took a step back from being parents and started gelling with us more as friends. So, until this day, our dining table conversations are peppered with an all-inclusive set of topics, sometimes bordering on the inappropriate for the dinner table. :P Of course, they still do wring their hands in exasperation over the things their offspring end up doing, not listening to them. The parental force kicks on in full swing on and off during those times. ;) We have stuck by each other, all through the ups and downs and anything importa...

Guilty as charged on the book re-reading aspect. I always end up reading any book that I buy at least twice. “If one cannot enjoy reading a book over and over again, there is no use in reading it at all.” ― Oscar Wilde And on that count, the books that I have read the maximum number of times, would have to be ‘The Godfather’ and ‘Harry Potter’ series. I have written about both these books, plenty of times in this blog. ‘The Godfather’ has been and will be my most favourite book ever. I must have read it at least a few times short of 100. :) It heralded my reading into the dimension of serious and better books. I started reading the Godfather when I was laid up in bed after a very eventful appendicitis operation. With nothing to do and not being able to climb the stairs to my bookshelf, I had asked mom to pick up books and give so that I could at least read. Until then, my repertoire was only filled with Sidney Sheldons and Mary Higgins Clarks. Reading ‘The Godf...