Remembrance

With success, you get to see the real faces of your friends and family . Yes, you read it right, with success and not with failure.  "A friend in need, is a friend indeed" - That proverb has become clichéd. Everyone knows that, but few really explore the fact that success has such similar traps as well.  As you become successful, all of a sudden, you would have friends and acquaintances - who at one point in time were ashamed of - calling you, introducing you as their best friends, as if they have always known you like the back of their hands. Then you have long lost relatives who never even cared to give a damn call to enquire if you were alive, remember you one fine day to ask you for favours unashamedly.  Frankly, their behavior amuse me. They are conditioned to behave exactly how the societal norms dectate them to.  Somehow, this quote from Zahir makes sense - “Our true friends are those who are with us when the good things happen. T...

That's a question for anyone who is above 30. Ask yourself, when was the last time you made a friend. And, I am not talking about someone you met and added on Facebook. It is the kind of friendship you struck when you were a kid, when you became friends with anyone and everyone without judging them. But, do you do that now? As you grow old, you pile up conventions after conventions. You create certain 'ideals', you need your new friend to fit in your definition of that 'ideal'. Those ideals could range from the banal to the sublime. You only want to be friends with people who are of your class, status, match your intellectual wavelength, adventurous, humorous... the list goes on as you add more numbers and white hair (not necessarily in the same order) to your life.  You lose your spontaneity to be friends with a stranger, someone who is totally unlike you or someone who breaks every possible definition of your 'ideal' friend.  Question is why...

Life could be harsh, but at times some things make it worth going through the trite of 'living' it. A rainy Sunday evening spent with your favorite yellowed book, earmarked at several places, reading it again brought different emotions & perspective that you did not feel the first time you read it.  A long-forgotten song that suddenly plays in the car radio while you are stressed out to reach to your next meeting on time, bringing the deluge of memories you shared with your friends in school/college never worrying about a dime in the world. A tenner in your jeans pocket that had been washed & ironed, & you find it just when you are short of a tenner. A poem you wrote when you were a starry-eyed young-thing & loved all that you wrote, & discover it just when you had edited your article for the nth time & still think it's not making the 'cut'. A discolored picture from your childh...