Hopelessly Hopeful

Kuch dhundlayi hui si yaadoo mein kuch khojne ki koshish, har baar us ek modh par le ati hain jiska zikr na tum karna cahate ho na mein. Phir kyu, roz hum yeh socchte hain, ki kuch toh hain, un dhundlayi hui si yaadoo mein... Aur kabhi yuin hi, bina daastak diye, har us baat ka zikr ho jata hai jinhe humne ek bare se sandook mein samet ke rakha hai, jiski chabbi ek muddaat hue kho gayi hain... Jaab woh band pitara khulta hai, kisi zikr pe hum hustein hain, kisi pe chuppi sadh lete hain, lekin woh ek zikr na tum karte ho na mein, jo hain kahi dabi hui un dhundlayi hui si yaadoo mein...

It is the day that is gone by. The day we cannot do anything about. It has become a part of our memory, irrespective of being good or bad. Then why do we lament about it? Because we hold on to it with our dear life, we get attached to that memory and if it is bad, we keep trying to analyse how we could have turned it into a more positive one. That, doesn't work. Our job is to learn from our mistakes and move on, not analyse and keep over-thinking about it. Yesterday is the day that will never come back, and it never should. Whatever is in the past, let it remain there. The past could be our podium to grow from, but never an anchor that should drag us down. Learn to release your past and live in the present moment. I wrote this a few years ago, but it still holds true: Jo beet gaya wo kal ka sach tha Jo ayega wo kal ka sach hoga In do kal ke beech mein Ek aaj ka sach hai Wahi jeena hai Wahi sach hai...

Women by default are endowed with X-factor, they are born with two X chromosomes after all! While men need to really work it out, they have to get the Y or as they constantly ask (the Why) out of their system to finally attain the X-factor. So, what is this X-factor, that has made Axe cash-rich by selling some elusive dreams? From a woman's perspective, it is really not a wowsome physique or drop-dead good looks or someone drenched in the 'scent of Arabia'. It is more to do with the intrinsic personality of an individual. That one factor which makes an individual unique from the rest of the crowd. And it could be anything, it could be as simple as a smile to as heavy-duty as compassion for everyone. It is that one characteristic that defines a person. You see, X-factor has nothing to do with your outer appearance. It is all about who you truly are. Be you, that's your X-factor.

I always had a special attraction for Superman, he has always been my favourite superhero, even with his ridiculous costume and equally funny hairstyle (Though the modern version got an almost 'better' upgrade). I never understood why it was Superman that I loved so much, instead of the other superheroes. I even had his stickers pasted all over my Walkman.  And then, years later I heard of the following lines from Kill Bill: "Now, a staple of the superhero mythology is, there's the superhero and there's the alter ego. Batman is actually Bruce Wayne, Spider-Man is actually Peter Parker. When that character wakes up in the morning, he's Peter Parker. He has to put on a costume to become Spider-Man. And it is in that characteristic Superman stands alone. Superman didn't become Superman. Superman was born Superman. When Superman wakes up in the morning, he's Superman. His alter ego is Clark Kent. His outfit with the big red "S", that's...

I had lost my voice In the din of crowd Among those people Who lusted for power They wounded me badly Scalded my flesh With hot iron rods Of crude words and phrase. I endured them still Waiting it to end one day The day their soul Will call for peace But noise is all That they knew Used it in force To drown my voice. They shouted And shouted The tempo was up I have had enough And told them to Shut up Now I know a peace so rare It ties my heart to the sky up there.

It might seem the most difficult thing to do. But when you dissolve your ego, a sense of calm envelopes you, and you feel at peace like never before. The ‘I’ evaporates and your entire being is in sync with the energy of the universe. But, as exhilarating as it may sound, it is not easy to perpetually live without the shroud of ego. The moment you feel liberated, the ego starts the dance of celebration and you are again entangled into the same cycle. However, you can break this cycle, the answer is simple – Just live in the Now! Ego is fed by our desires, expectations, personalities, and even by the seemingly positive traits like self-righteousness, charity, helpfulness. It boosts our ‘feel good’ DNA and our head touches the moist cloud. We feel invincible, strong and on the top of the world. And, from there our degeneration starts. There is, however, a way to stop this. A simple solution – Being aware of yourself, about each moment of your life and living in the presen...

We crib about being taken for granted but recently a friend said, "I would love to know that my wife takes me for granted, that's the most awesome feeling. It means that she trusts me and does not want to look beyond me." I tried to find logic in that answer, but somehow couldn't. Maybe, it is different for men and women. Frankly, I don't like being taken for granted. When someone takes you for granted, it basically boils down to you being an option or a choice, you no longer remains a priority. The other person may just keep giving excuses in their head, some being, "I don't need to give her any explanations or I don't need to tell her anything or I don't think she is going anywhere." They keep you at the back burner, because, guess what, they think it is okay to take you for granted! And that's where the problem arises. It is never okay to take anyone for granted, even if it means it is your wife or husband or even kids. Treat th...

There are two universal truths that most of us (women) cannot escape due to the way we are created - we have menstrual cycles and breasts. With regards to breasts, that is an essential part of our anatomy and once and for all we would like to tell the menfolk that these do not speak, so stop staring at them. However, this post is about sanitary napkins, and the entire stigma around 'being down' or having 'those days'. Really, why do we mince words. This is a reality that cannot be avoided and hiding it under the carpet is not a healthy option. But that's a topic of serious discussions, that requires ground-level effort at a mass scale to bring about change. And, maybe starting by de-taxing sanitary napkins the Government could do a big favour. Let's hope for the best. But, for now let's focus on our main topic, sanitary napkins in black polythene. My same gender readers, especially in urban India, would identify with this. Every time you buy pads from...

The quote of the day says, "Happiness is a warm puppy." - Charles M. Schulz Although, ironical, but this song really makes me warm and happy, and never fails to bring a smile on my face. Especially this Spiderman version, the vulnerability of a superhero...sublime. And, hey enjoy this poem that I wrote years ago, as I sat on my stairs soaking in the midnight rain. Wish it rains in Delhi soon, the heat is getting unbearable. At the stroke of the midnight I sat at the foot of the stairs To hear the pattering of the raindrops On the concrete street and rooves The scarlet sky did not scare me Nor did the constant downpour Instead I attuned my heart To beat with the fall of each raindrop.

If she was a queen She would have swaggered down the street Sashaying her attitude But, that's not her She is what she is A sweetheart She is dreamy but believes in being an achiever She is emotional but hides her expressions She is sensitive but prefers to be practical She is patient but also immature She is intelligent but makes silly mistakes She is lovely but gets cynical too She desires but sacrifices easily She advises others but follows none Her heart is simple but head is strong She cannot be a ruthless queen Because she is what she is A sweetheart.

I don't believe in perhaps or what ifs. If you are convinced about something, go for it. Don't get entangled with conventions or societal ideals. If something feels right for you, it is right, that's all. Our internal compass tells us what we ought to do and what we shouldn't, so why listen to anyone else. Just do what you have to. And, then you would never have to look back, and ask yourself, 'What if'. It is simple. Test your conventions, validate your theories. Unless you do it, how would you know you were right or not. But, we keep our desires and wishes under the carpet, thinking about thousand different things, re-thinking a few more thousand never-to-occur scenarios. And, that's when we let go of things we ought to have tried at the first instance. Years later, as we sit and analyse our lives, we go through certain memories and realise that those could have been different if we had the courage to take a different path. But, at that time it seem...

This is one of those random posts which has no meaning. But then again, seemingly meaningless things are often the most meaningful thing! Paradox, that's what life is about, which often hands us lemons, but wait, this post is about oranges. So, let's talk about the juicy oranges, the bigger and better than lemons, and therefore, tastier too. This post is clearly inspired by the story '17 oranges' by Bill Naughton. If you haven't read it, do read it. A fun story, with an unexpected plot twist. Spoiler alert: The story is about a boy who ends up eating 17 oranges, peels and seeds included to avoid being caught for steeling them! Yeah, a small boy eating 17 oranges, that's impossible right, but that's what this delightful story is all about. Oranges also remind me of a scene from one of my favourite movies, "Andaz Apna Apna". Salman Khan's character Prem suffers from stomach upset, and while trying to convey his feelings to Raveena Tandon, ...

Nice guys oath to finish first. Every single time. They should. Then why is it that they are the ones who leave alone being first, often struggle to even finish the race? The answer is simple, most of the time they are not even running the race. And during the rest of the time, they are busy helping someone else to reach the finish line. Does that mean they lose out often. Prima facie that's what it seems like. They are seen as the ones losing out on that dream job, the wonderful house, the ultimate relationship et al. They are constantly the ones at the backdrop, giving way to the others, who are often seen as less deserving and yet they get the 'prize'.  But on a deeper level, the nice ones know that these are not what they want at the first place. And, what people see as opportunities are merely some milestones created out of societal expectations.  So what do they want? They want what is right for them. And they wait. They wait for what seems right t...

The past is left behind, and you decide to move forward. While everyone talks about freeing oneself from the past, they seldom focus on what happens when one free themselves from past experiences. When you clear out the past, it creates a certain vacuum inside, as we have forever held on to our pasts in a guarding manner. Suddenly, you have nothing to fall back upon. Your personal history has all of a sudden obliterated. Does that cause anxiety? Or the need to fill it up again with those memories? No, it creates uneasiness, but not anxiety or the need to fill it back again. However, it does create certain nothingness inside, a gaping hole, though in a comforting way. I don’t really know how to define this. Reminds me of something that I read in Paulo Coelho's 'The Zahir'. ----- “How does one go about abandoning the story one was told?” “By repeating it out loud in meticulous detail. And as we tell our story, we say goodbye to what we were and, as you’ll see if ...

But can you really? And how to? It's tough to get the answers for these questions. The attachments are too deep. You want to cling on to your comfort zone, even if it has been making you miserable. Or maybe, you don't want to let go of your expectations. You keep believing that things will one day become fine, they will fall as per your wishes. But, those wishes remain that, just wishes. And, that's what you need to realise, some wishes cannot be fulfilled, no matter what you do or how hard you work towards them. You finally you come to the finish point, the edge, from where you know that either you could be stuck there forever or just let it go and take a turn towards a new road. Granted that it would be an unknown one, there would be new challenges too, but that should be better than being trapped at one place endlessly. Question remains, how to? Once you realise that you have been holding on to something that is not worthwhile, the next step is to letting it go....

We are all actors Some best and some really bad We... Hide our scars behind flawless photos Hide our tears behind hearty laughter Hide our fears behind adventurous acts Hide our loneliness behind a group selfie Hide our love behind some puny puns We hide us from us behind a mask we wear everyday... Unmask... Be you. Live today. Live now.  Life is slipping by each moment.

There has been insane amount of things happening at my end at this single point in time, and in all these, I am not sure if continuing with this challenge - blogging from a to z April - is a good idea or not. But, then I told myself, "I am not a quitter." There are obstacles, but I need to push my boundaries, I need to go beyond my limitations. Plus, if I quit now, I am surely going to regret not completing this task once the month is over. Somehow, it is not just this challenge. Today, I feel like quitting everything, and just sit at a quite place and be with myself. I want complete and pin-drop silence around me. I want to leave behind the raging storm, or maybe just find a spot under the eye of the storm where things are completely calm. Maybe, I should just let the storm rage around me, and be Buddha-like, have a Zen-like attitude.  But then again, sometimes I feel like screaming at the top of my voice, take those pending rage out of me, and give each one of th...

People usually have ice-creams to quench thirst. Not me. I eat ice-creams because I love them. And, just after devouring the sweet-iced-candy I need to drink water, almost immediately. Ice-creams become responsible for adding on to my thirst, rather than doing anything to quench it! For years, it was such a tough thing to manage. My parents could never understand why would I need to drink water after having an ice-cream, neither could my friends. And, frankly, even I could never figure that out, and brushed this 'weird' characteristic of mine under the carpet of 'the many weirdness of Asha Dey.' And then I found someone as 'weird' as me - my soul sister. As we talked about our love for ice-creams one day, she surprised me by telling me that she also has the same tendency of drinking water almost after eating an ice-cream. I wanted to jump out of joy at that moment, the world finally seemed a little less 'weird'. It was like finding your 'Man F...

Death is the ultimate reality of life, yet losing a loved one to death is the most painful emotion. It creates a vacuum which can never be filled, no matter how much time passes by or how many new people enter into your life, that empty space would remain forever. As children, most of us never realised these sorrowful adieus, but as we grew up, crossed certain thresholds in age, death became a prominent fixtures in our lives. Some of us lost our grandparents, parents and even siblings, and some painfully children or spouses. The immense pain such a separation creates is beyond anyone's imagination. No one can ever understand what a person goes through at that moment, because that tragedy is personal. It is only the person who has lost truly knows what it means to never see a person ever again. There is no hope, those people are gone forever, and yet we might have taken them for granted when they were alive. We never account for the vulnerability of life, and cling to exp...

Have that gut feeling that it is the right thing to do? Then, don't think, just go for it! At times, we waste our opportunities by thinking and over-thinking a particular situation. We keep worrying about what ifs and what nots, and sometimes without any rhyme or reason. And, the end result is we get nothing out of it. Then why do we indulge in such useless pursuit? The answer lies in our insecurities, our fears, and our past experiences. Often we don't want a repeat of certain instances and experience pain or hurt. While at other times we fear to take the plunge, we fear the unknown. We keep trying to find instances that could provide us a reference point to our current situation. We also extend that to people in our lives. The moment we find some similar pattern with a person in our past, we label them as per our experience. We forget that every individual is unique, and different from the other person, no matter how many similarities you could draw between them. The...

How could I ever justify myself of being a bong if I never write about fish. So, here's a post on the unofficial favourite food of almost every bong born in this world, and maybe even alien bongs too, fish or as we call it maach . The love of fish is established firmly with the very first few morsels a baby is fed with during her annaprashan (grain initiation ceremony). A special fish dish is prepared for the occasion and post the payeesh ( kheer / rice custard), the baby tastes her staple food for the first time and my guess, loves it too! We are bongs, we are born genetically to love fish. No questions asked. And our fishes need to be fried, only and only in mustaard oil (that's how we pronounce it, and we are proud of it too, thank you very much). I wonder what we would have done if Kanodia never existed. The whiff of the mustard oil, along with the smell of the fresh fish, my mouth is already watering! And, if this wasn't enough, we are the ones who can have ev...

There is a propensity in people, especially in the upmarket Indian urban hip and happening crowd, to look down upon those who cannot speak English in a proper manner or have a certain diction in their speech. For these ‘dudes’ and ‘dudettes’, anyone who is not fluent in English is not smart or intelligent enough to be ‘acceptable’ in their social circle. I know a lot of these snobbish prigs, as my work demands me to meet some of them on a regular basis. These people are almost everywhere, upmarket bars, restaurants, swanky offices. For them, people from hinterlands or small towns are being defined by their accents and they never shy away from being blatantly racist about it too. They make fun of such people, and often on their faces. Do they ever question themselves, ask themselves, what good is their so-called convent education if they are not even able to respect someone’s basic characteristic. But, I guess not, they are the truest examples of – Angreez chale gaye aulaad pich...

It has to be poetic justice that I am writing about deadlines as I run against the clock to finish this fourth-day challenge, with a strong coffee in hand as I desperately try to control my low BP. Wow! This challenge is really becoming challenging now. Well, most people get panicky about deadlines, not me. I love deadlines, the stringent the better. I could identify with what Douglas Adams had once famously said, “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” Deadlines are like the fire that gets me going. It keeps me on my toes. Being in a creative domain, it is natural for writers to slack. We always take the liberty of saying, "I am getting a writer's block." But that doesn't work when you have a deadline to meet. Then, you got to be creative, whether you like it or not. Amusingly, I write the best when I have to submit something within the next 10 minutes! So, deadlines...I love to beat them black and blue!

Clank! There goes another utensil. Guess you can call it divine intervention that every time I step into the kitchen, the utensils start falling on their own from everywhere. As if the auto clumsy button gets activated as soon as I am near something that is ‘fallable’ (I know that’s not a legit word, so what, the dictionary needs new words once in a while). Actually, I am one of those people because of whom the stores put up placards saying, “Considered sold if broken!” In fact, just a while ago I tripped on the doormat of my room. And if not the doormat, it would have been the door stopper, the side table, the book rack, the dressing table, you got the picture. I can even stumble on a perfectly leveled floor! My pinky fingers are so prone to getting hurt that now I hardly well-up when I dash them against anything that I had so conveniently ignored to see, despite seeing. Once, I attempted a magical feat by trying to walk through a glass door. Yeah! You read it right. I w...

Brides in India are supposed to bring loads and loads and loads of dowry. That’s the truth of the entire country – be it the hinterland Bharat or the upwardly mobile India. A girl is still a liability, and boy an asset. And yes, we don’t believe in family planning, unless we are lucky enough to have sons during the first few attempts. To hell with Beti Bachao Beti Padhao! We are here to raise a generation of girls who are taught to remain in their ‘ maryada ’ and boys trained to become MCPs. Now imagine such a heavy dosage theme turned into an entertaining movie. Did I hear impossible? With Badrinath Ki Dulhania, that’s exactly what newbie director Shashank Khaitan made possible. In its outer packaging, this rom-com looks fun and entertaining, but the deeper themes of dowry, gender inequality, women emancipation, sexism, interweaved in the movie portray the condition of the society we still live in. It is in this very ‘progressive’ India the protagonist Vaidehi (another ...

Apologizing is not an art. And, come to think of it, it is not even a science. It is just an expression of admitting to that stupidly dumb thing you had done, which could have been otherwise avoided. Then, why is it so hard to apologize? There could be multiple reasons, but the prime one is you know you have screwed up, you don’t want to face the ramifications, there could be explosives at the other end, and you don’t want to basically face the music. But that’s the escapist route. I think the best way to apologize is to apologize the moment you know you have done something wrong. Don’t linger it. Because not only you are prolonging someone’s pain, but you are also pushing your luck too far! Next comes the question, how? That’s simple too. Just tell the person that you are sorry. There isn’t any need for prolonged explanations, bouquets of flowers, boxes of chocolates or expensive gifts. A simple and sincere ‘I am sorry’ is enough to let the other person know that you had...