Precious Pearls

Calling it a dark Sunday morning wouldn’t be an overstatement. The fire broke out in our residential complex at the darkest hour of night, just before the dawn. A commotion woke me up. When I opened the main door, a cloud of smoke entered catching me unaware. Within a fraction of moments, our ceiling, walls and even our faces gathered thick black layers. Veils of smoke on staircases blocked our exit point and we had to be home-bound for a while, which at that time appeared like eternity. We learnt later that an unidentified man had torched around 90 two-wheelers and some cars in some housing societies and outside a pizza outlet, all within the stretch of five kms. My old bike was one of the victims.  Though a major tragedy was averted and there were no casualties, the extent of damage was huge. Those who were trapped indoors during the arson had breathing problems. No water, electricity and elevator, black layers of smoke all over the building, moving six floors up and down d...

A longtime friend comes over…You see your spouse at the end of the hardworking day…Your child returns from the school…A relative drops in after a long gap…An ex-colleague bumps into you…Talk, we love to, with friends, families and near and dear ones (and perhaps, sometimes with foes too!!). Why just fights, even light talks and friendly banters can go on for hours. Not every time we can walk the talk still there is no denying the fact that talk we must. I don’t like it when the talk between the any two labelled as gossip (even if it is!). After a long phone-chat with friends or cousins, “Who were you talking about?” could be the question confronting us. I too have gone through this situation umpteen times. After a phone call with the best friend, my mother, all ears to our conversation, would ask, “Was it this and this friend you were talking with?” I don’t like every girl-talk being dismissed as ‘gossip’, which often is the case. Of course, gossip is a relative term. Family ...

Our association began ever since my birth and it grew thicker as almost three decades flew by. Though you mean much more than a childhood friend to me, I was never enchanted with your presence as I was in the recent past and especially today. Just being with you was so meditative and a complete experience. I was just wondering why I was mesmerised so much today and why not over so many years… Tracing the major milestones of our friendship, I think I am truly reconnecting to you today after a gap of several years.  Though you were at a motorable distance from my home, we would meet mostly on holidays. We would wait for days together for the sea bath. And ancestral home is situated at the banks of your backwaters! I just remember how hard we would try to explain the connection between the sea and the backwater to guests just to boast that we live by the seaside. But those were the years when I failed to fathom your vastness, depth and expanse… as a child, I was unmindful of you...

Sitting at home on a working day was an unusual experience as I would barely plan my holidays without a ‘to-do’ list. Reading, study-material or writing would generally top my priority list followed by some house-cleaning or wardrobe arrangements in a descending order. My newborn daughter suddenly climbed up the top of the list for all valid reasons for a year. After a year, a stage gradually came where I could get back to my ‘to-do’ things minding her simultaneously. Yet, the last week it turned out to be an unusual holiday without such a list. What stopped me from making the ‘to-do’ list was the potential that my little daughter developed to throw all plans out of gear. I had taken similar experiences on weekends. I would allocate some works to myself during the time she would fall asleep and she would never sleep or get up earlier than expected. Oh, my ‘bitter’ memories of baby scattering all the unclear stuff and adding to my agonies were fresh. Hence last weekend, my ‘to-do’ l...

Patience is the best virtue, they say. Huh, not always we can be patient enough to praise the value of patience. Moments come when want things spot on. But... Things will not always move the way we want them to! Each of us knows this. Hence, what’s the point in me telling you this, right? Well I don’t even tell it to myself, therefore the possibility of telling it to any of you is ruled out. Everyone must be reacting differently when it happens but waiting for opportune moment is easier said than done. Whatever happens happens for the good is another refrain that greets us every now and then and we really don’t want to entertain when we are really down. It could be observed in many walks of life right from planning an outing or taking key decisions like careers, business ventures, wedding or major purchases like house or car. Once in winter, I was tempted to have an ice-cream. I was already suffering from cold and my conscience knew ice-cream would have worsened the matter. Yet...

Sometimes in life, there comes a point where going gets tough and we seem hemmed in by hurdles…Come on, let it be a plain talk without philosophical overtones! Forget life, but it’s a traffic situation on chaotic Indian roads and a little more often in Pune!! Traffic situations are so very precarious that ‘going gets tough’ could be an understatement. Traffic comes to a standstill. You are clueless whether the signals are functional or cops are manning traffic. In short, no relief in sight and no signs of reaching the destination… It’s tough to stay composed during such moments. Each of us is most likely to have encountered traffic snarls. But they are not always negative. My experience is positive at times… When the traffic is halted and there are no chances of it moving, there appears a small gap allowing your bike to pass through. The ‘small’ gap slowly but steadily takes you much farther than you could ever imagine and makes you cross the green signal! On noticing this, I...

“I am not such a bad person but don’t know what went wrong that particular moment…” Has that feeling ever hurt you? It happens with many of us many times. Leave aside what kind of a person we are; it goes without saying that others decide our goodness or badness!  What triggers at that particular moment decides our personality trait. Period. The other day, while reading a counsellor column in a newspaper, I stumbled upon a sentence of a ‘devastated’ girlfriend saying her boyfriend who abused her all the time and drove her to a frustrated state of mind. She admitted that she said a thing or two about him in a fit of rage. What hurt her the most was the feeling that ‘she was never such a bad person’. However, the counsellor pointed it out rightly that the abusive relationship brought the worst out of her. Though it’s up to us to react to situations and people irrespective of circumstances, the nature of a person we are dealing with has some bearing on it and vice versa. Inter-p...