Good to be back? Uhm, NO!

This is something I had penned down in my diary in my hotel room after we came back to Chennai:


After the weeklong stay at Malaysia and Singapore, landing at the Chennai airport left me stunned for a while. The ‘indianness’ was suddenly so much more magnified and apparent. The sticky heat, the stink, the brownish-orange spit stains adorning the walls, the dirty floors.. I was aghast at the low standards of the airport because I was expecting it to be something like IGI, Delhi; which it clearly, clearly wasn’t.

And suddenly I realized the stark contrast between India and Singapore. It was immense! The dirty roads, the men urinating by the roadside, people throwing litter anywhere and everywhere, the bustling crowded, noisy places, the carefree cow strolling lazily on the highway. All these things became more pronounced. It gave me a glimpse of what the tourists and foreigners and NRIs must go through when they visit India. I stayed out of it for ONE week and this is what I felt. They must go oh-so-crazy! Mom and I were acting like sophisticated phonies and saying things like “Eww, so tacky, so gross!”  :P

After Agra, Singapore had felt like a dream. Everything there is made to perfection. It is shiny, sparkly and runs with such finesse and efficiency. We saw the iconic Merlion statue, we took a river cruise to visit all the prominent buildings; we took a cable car ride overlooking the majestic view of the city. Everything about that place will fill you with enthusiasm.

Sentosa was delightful. The colourful places, the attractions, the rides, the restaurants, the ambience, the music, the people, everything is enough to make your day! The highlights of the day were definitely the underwater world (witnessing sharks and the craziest looking sea creatures floating over your heads was some experience) and Songs of the Sea (a laser-light-water show on the beach)

(Cable car view of Singapore)

(Clarke Quay, Singapore)

(River cruise at Clarke Quay)

(The Merlion)

A place like this really makes you wonder what went wrong with your country and why it couldn’t achieve what Singapore could in such a short time. Population? Corruption? Illiteracy? Everything is interrelated I guess. Many times, over there, standing in a queue or in the bus, I observed all the people. Indians were very easy to spot. One, their colour, yes. But Indians everywhere always seem so tensed. Like they’re worried something bad might happen, like all the time. And they’re either eating or making noise. Mostly huge families together. Maybe that’s how they’re tuned to living. In crowds, amongst cheats, fighting for a small thing with so many people pushing them around.. that’s just how they’ve become.

Our hotel was magnificently huge. Large beds, a fantastic view of the city, pool and wifi. What else do you need? It felt so good to not see a single ant/insect/fly/mosquito/lizard/cockroach anywhere in that entire place whatsoever. Thinking of going back sucks. But there are a few things that I do want to do. Like talking to my friends and making long phone calls and eating aloo tikki and maggi noodles and blue lays’ magic masala favoured! And back there, one packet won’t cost 4 dollars!!

KL

People of the world! How are we today? Wait, before you answer, let me tell you how I am today! I am AWESOME! :D

I’m sitting in my hotel room in KL and I cannot believe I’m here and the things that I’ve done in the past three days. I’m in love with this city. It’s clean, green, non-dusty, the people are friendly, the buildings make your caps fall off your heads, the roads are smooth and everything is well managed and systematic. Genting Highlands was one crazy adventure. Experienced high-pitched-scream-generating and thrilling roller coaster rides. It’s set up on top of a hill and it’s splendidly beautiful. Everything is just beautiful about that place. We also visited a chocolate factory export surplus shop and drooled over huge dragons made of dark chocolate, saw the Petronas towers, walked around the local areas and bought awesome tiny things, sat in Asia's longest cable car overlooking rich, green tropical rain forests accompanied by amazing weather and lived in luxurious hotels! And it's not even over yet!!

Today was Sunway Lagoon. These places are HUGE. One day is never enough to experience everything.  Dad and I tried out reverse bunjee jumping today. You’re shot into the air at a speed of 200km per hour like a bullet and then you come down, and go up again and come down again. Your entire world goes topsy turvy upside down. It’s exhilarating and feels out of the world! I screamed till my lungs were sore. It was amazing. I could do that again! The water park was a lot of fun and dad was being such a sport. He accompanied me on all the crazy, scary, snaky water slides! I love him!

We have been walking nonstop since morning and my legs feel like they will get detached from my body! Tomorrow we’re doing Singapore and we’ve to get up early! I cannot write a detailed post, even though I really really want to! I’m just out of the world amazed and excited and exuberant at what the world can offer!

I just looked out of my window. The city looks awesome. Sigh. I wish to live in a place like this.

Some day. One day!

Off to a land far far away!

Some days turn out to be hilarious. But some days begin in the most comical way possible. My mom came to wake me up in the morning and the general custom is that she shakes me and pokes me and I cover myself up and mumble things like “Go away”, or “5 more minutes” or something to that effect. But would you believe my mom’s bewilderment when she shook me today and I looked at her and burst out laughing. Hysterically! In a half-sleepy state. Mouth open and eyes half-closed. She stood there befuddled and asked me if I was okay. I then realized I had been laughing in my dream, and uncannily, I was laughing at her! I’ve been guffawing at that incident all day. Crazy! :P

Anyway, guess what?  I’m excited. That doesn’t even remotely describe just how excited I am. I’ve been packing! And planning and dreaming! Why?

Okay, here it comes. *clears throat* I’m going on an amazing family trip to Malaysia and Singapore! :D :D

I can already feel the anticipation rushing through my veins as I type this! OMG, how did this happen? Here I was, not too long ago, longing for a break, longing to go somewhere, do something exciting and now I’m flying 5000 miles away and going to live in a different time zone! And going to amazing water parks and night safaris and water shows and rides and what not! And on the way back we’re going to stay at Chennai and the Andaman Islands as well! In your FACE, monotony, in your face!  Talk about a good trip, huh? Okay I don’t want to gloat or anything, but I’M REALLY REALLY EXCITED!! :D

All day I’ve been googling all the places we’re going to and have just been going *gasp* ‘wow!’ *gasp*’wow’! I’ve all intentions of sitting on every roller coaster ride I can and eat every new delicacy I can and scream at anything awesome I see and jump and prance on the streets and click crazy pictures and wear short clothes and smile at strangers and just have the time of my life! I’m going to break my going-to-a-different-country virginity!

The best part is that I’m also going to get a lot of alone time to spend with myself. I want to sit on a beach, listening to music, having a Pina Colada or watermelon juice, with my pen scribbling away in my diary. That’s the stuff!

I can’t believe I’m going to be incommunicado to the world for more than a week. That’ll be a first! But I’m also looking forward to it. To this complete detachment from my world. Although I’m going to miss a few people really bad and I wish they were going with me. Or that at least I could teleport my messages to them somehow. Anyway, I’m going to return on October 14 and I’m going to fill you up with the details of my trip!

Till then guys, stay awesome! And miss me! Wouldja? Couldja?  :D

P.S. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee *pauses to breathe* eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! :D

Wear Sunscreen

I’ll give you three good reasons to read this blog post. First, read it if you want to read/hear something beautiful. Second, read it if you want to feel good about life. And finally, read it if you want to know why this song which my best bud shared with me (who I will henceforth refer to as Chee) makes me cry when I listen to it.

‘Wear Sunscreen’ is an essay titled "Advice, like youth, probably just wasted on the young" written by Mary Schmich and published in the Chicago Tribune as a column in 1997.  In her introduction to the column, she described it as the commencement speech she would give if she were asked to give one. The most popular and well-known form of the essay is the successful music single "Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)", released in 1998, by Baz Luhrmann.

EVERY time I listen to it, I smile, I sigh, I dream, I spurt and I just feel happy. Such simple lines, and yet so powerful, moving and inspiring. The song conversion is simply beautiful. You have to listen to it. Like seriously!  

Here’s how it goes. Read it and savour it. And then watch the video I posted.

WEAR SUNSCREEN

“Ladies and Gentlemen of the class of ‘97,

Wear Sunscreen.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.
The long term benefits of sunscreen have been proved by scientists whereas 
the rest of my advice has no basis more reliable than my own meandering experience.
I will dispense this advice now. 

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth; oh nevermind; you will not understand 
the power and beauty of your youth until they have faded. But trust me, in 20 years you’ll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can’t grasp now how 
much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.

You’re not as fat as you imagine. 

Don’t worry about the future; or worry, but know that worrying 
is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum. 
The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your 
worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday. 

Do one thing every day that scares you.

Sing.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts, don’t put up with people who 
are reckless with yours. 

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy; sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind.
The race is long, and in the end, it’s only with yourself. 

Remember the compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing
this, tell me how. 

Keep your old love letters; throw away your old bank statements. 

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life.
The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with
their lives. Some of the most interesting 40 year olds know still don’t. 

Get plenty of calcium. 

Be kind to your knees, you’ll miss them when they’re gone. 

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll have children, 
maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken
on your 75th wedding anniversary.
What ever you do, don’t congratulate yourself too much or berate yourself either.
Your choices are half chance, so are everybody else’s. 


Enjoy your body.
Use it every way you can. Don’t be afraid of it, or what other people think of it.
It’s the greatest instrument you’ll ever own.. 

Dance. Even if you have nowhere to do it but in your own living room. 

Read the directions, even if you don’t follow them. 

Do NOT read beauty magazines, they will only make you feel ugly. 

Get to know your parents; you never know when they’ll be gone for good. 

Be nice to your siblings; they are the best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future. 

Understand that friends come and go, but for the precious few you should hold on.
Work hard to bridge the gaps in geography in lifestyle because the older you get,
the more you need the people you knew when you were young. 

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard;
live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft. 

Travel. 

Accept certain inalienable truths, prices will rise, politicians will philander, 
you too will get old, and when you do you’ll fantasize that when you were 
young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their 
elders. 

Respect your elders. 

Don’t expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you have a trust fund,
maybe you have a wealthy spouse; but you never know when either one might run out. 

Don’t mess too much with your hair, or by the time its 40, it will look 85. 

Be careful whose advice you buy, but, be patient with those who supply it. 
Advice is a form of nostalgia, dispensing it is a way of fishing the past  from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than its worth. 

But trust me on the sunscreen.”

I feel..

Like an a corrugated iron nail in the ocean

Like the wax sliding down a candle

Like a fish thrown on the shore by the vindictive waves

Like a lonely stranger walking alone on a cold winter night

Like the smoke that blows away into eternal nothingness

Like a sad song that reverberates into oblivion

Like lies and contempt that has no meaning

Like a soft whisper that is heard, and then is lost again

Like a lonesome tear flowing from a brown eye

Like a discarded photograph, faded with time

Like a beautiful dream, erased from your consciousness

Like a forgotten memory, that is not forgotten after all

Like an old, torn out yellow-papered book

Like a broken autumn twig on the ground

Like a paper boat that lost its way, soggy and adrift

Like a soft caress, that is felt briefly, and then never felt again..

When I think of Bombay..

When I think of Bombay I think of the never ending flyovers and the palm trees.

I think of the million CCDs specked everywhere.

I think of the humidity.

I think of the local trains, vada pav and bhel.

I think of the beaches, the malls and the big buildings.

I think of Rangeela and Essel World.

I think of Gothic Victorian architecture and cobbled streets.

When I think of Bombay I think of bumping into celebrities, great looking people and the film industry.

I think of Candies. 
I think of Chowpatty and the Taj.

I think of wet sand between my toes.

I think of rains. 
I think of sitting at Marine drive at 3 AM, with the breeze blowing my deep, poetic thoughts into the air, somewhere far far away on the noisy wings of nonsensical talks and sniggers.
I think of poor sweet scary doo, throwing me her protective and head-shaking smiles.

I think of loud music, a dingy place, raucous laughter, drinks with a crazy bunch of friends.

I think of screaming and dancing without a care in the world.

I think of holding hands and street shopping.

I think of homely, loving parents and a home cooked meal with love.

When I think of Bombay I think of balancing on moss covered rocks and the waves crashing and roaring against them.

I think of the warm gleaming sun in the cloudy sky and the feel of the water spray on my face.

I think of the powerful, cool breeze blowing my hair wild and the feel of the intermittent waves lapping at my feet.

I think of the scores of invisible people running about, making out or just walking and I think of holding the hand of that one person who really mattered that moment.

The boy with the infectious smile who looks like a little child when he talks about something excitedly, with a gleam in his eyes.

When I think of Bombay I think of the train ride and the conversation that flowed.

When I think of Bombay I think of friends.

I think of fun, and joy, and laughter and craziness backed by a dosage of unbelievable awesomeness.

When I think of Bombay, I think of dreams.

When I think of Bombay, I think of love.

When I think of Bombay..

I think of him.

Mary and Max

I saw Mary and Max by Adam Elliot yesterday. And I HAVE to talk about it. Because I can’t get it out of my head. It was one of the most sublime, deep, endearing black comedy movies I’ve ever seen. It’s a true story about how a lonely little eight year girl from Australia, Mary Daisy Dinkle becomes pen pals with a 44 year old obese, Asperger’s syndrome ridden man in New York, Max Jerry Horowitz. (Don’t you just LOVE the names? They’re so much fun to say)

The special thing about the movie is that it shows two highly unlikely people becoming best friends, extending their love and affection over two different continents; and how they’re so utterly lonely in their respective real lives. Mary asks him the most innocent of questions, ("Do sheeps shrink when it rains?" "Do goose get goose bumps?) which he patiently answers and shares his own fascinating life experiences with her. They find solace and consolation in writing letters to each other and exchanging exotic chocolates.Because of his disorder, he'd never been comfortable at understanding people and "love was as alien to him as scuba diving." Ergo, when the friendless Mary asks him questions about love and relationships, they send him into severe anxiety attacks and lands him into a mental institution. However, their unusual friendship grows stronger over a span of twenty years and even though towards the end things become a little turbulent, they do manage to salvage their friendship.

Although it’s a clay animated movie, (where the makers of this movie actually created clay puppets for all the characters), it basically focuses on the darkest of aspects about life in a humorous way. It shows how relationships are formed, how they break, how morbid and despondent lives can get and the kind of problems people face while they’re struggling to survive in this mad world. It talks about death and depression and sex and mental disorders, but all in the most innocent manner possible. And all this they’ve done through animation, art, photography, crafts and design. It is sheer brilliance to listen to the letters exchanged between them.

The movie starts with the words spoken by the narrator, “Mary Dinkle's eyes were the colour of muddy puddles; her birthmark, the colour of poo.” If I could, I would have quoted the entire dialogues between them over here, but I’ll restrict myself to my most favourite quotes from the movie: 

Max: “Do you have a favourite-sounding word? My top-five are "ointment," "bumblebee," "Vladivostok," "banana," and "testicle."

(Psst, my favourite-sounding words are’ whimsical’, ‘postulate’,’ impeccable’, ‘protagonist’, ‘ginger’, ‘vegetables’, 'befuddled', ‘pickles’.. and actually many many many more!)

Max: “When I was young, I invented an invisible friend called Mr Ravioli. My psychiatrist says I don't need him anymore, so he just sits in the corner and reads.”

Max: “It would be good if there was a Fat Fairy. She would be a bit like the Tooth Fairy but would suck out your fat.”

Mary: “Where do babies come from in America? Do they come from cola cans? In Australia they are found in beer glasses.”

Mary: "Here's a photo of my other neighbour, Damian. I wish he was my boyfriend and we can be in love and do sexing"

Max: “Dr. Bernard Hazelhof said if I was on a desert island, then I would have to get used to my own company - just me and the coconuts. He said I would have to accept myself, my warts and all, and that we don't get to choose our warts. They are part of us and we have to live with them. We can, however, choose our friends, and I am glad I have chosen you.“

They’re so deep yet naive yet thoughtful, right?  How can you not like such stuff? The last scene of the movie was so painful and touching and beautiful. It culminated with the most perfect words “He smelt like liquorice and old books, she thought to herself, as tears rolled from her eyes the colour of muddy puddles.”

Such movies really impact you and compel you to think. About a hundred things. And I can’t mention all of them here. This movie is going to stay with me for a long time.

P.S. Once again, thanks to my spurtal buddy for sharing this with me. You deserve a colon phi :)

The Weekend

My spurtal buddy came to town to give me a visit for the weekend. It was beyond amazing. Beyond perfect. Right from the moment I saw him walking towards me, smiling from ear to ear when I went to pick him up at the station; to the time he peeped out the train to wave me goodbye two days later.

We visited my school and I squealed telling him stories behind every nook and corner; we hung around in my room and read the crazy stories I used to write as a kid and laughed till I got tears in my eyes and his sides burst; we went out for lunch and had fruity French pudding; he met my college friends and I met two of his, who came all the way from Delhi to meet us; we had pizza in the car, listening to music while the rain drops fell against the glass of the window; we went out on my Activa late at night to get medicine ‘cause both of us were sneezing and wheezing like pigs; he visited khet with me and picked out moong ki phallis; we had a warm lunch where my parents and grandparents shared hilarious childhood stories; we held hands and clicked the cutest of pictures together; and we went to the station to drop him off, listening to Dil Se as it continued to rain outside.

He brought me shampoo for my hair fall problem and he brought me Catch 22 which I really wanted to read. He also got me movies. I did nothing except spurting and PDAing in the craziest manner. And telling him how much I love him. He’s perfect for me. Tailor made and customized to suit me. I’m still trying to recover from the crazy-fairytale-adventurous-amazing weekend and settling back into the college routine. I’m having a lot of trouble doing that.

I’m missing him beyond measure. He always cheers me up (even if all he says is “Tee tee!”) I’m missing his amazing straight hair and his beaver teeth. I’m missing his small but clean arthiritic hands and the way he sticks his tongue out when he’s up to mischief. I’m missing the way he wrestles with the steering wheel of my dad’s old car and says he enjoys it. He is funny. And tall. And he makes me feel pathetic when he scores 98 percentile in CAT. He writes so well. He sends me the funniest and interesting-est of articles and he sends me the cutest text messages you can imagine. He listens to me every day and tries to help me through my whiny complaints and jibber jabber. He laughs when I tell him I have defective body parts and says he loves my nose even though it’s big. He gingerly sings soft kitty with me and laughs when I’m being funny. He calls me Asthie. And Chee pee. And Pop. And other variations of it. He tells me just how much he loves me.

I hope it wasn’t all a dream. It wasn’t, right? Was it? I wouldn’t be surprised if it was. This is all too good to be true man. How do these things happen? How can a person like him even exist? But no, it was not a dream. Miraculous awesome stuff happens. At the risk of sounding cheesy, I'd like to say that I just feel like the luckiest girl ever :D What's happening is beyond belief! It's the legendary incomprehensible super amazing stuff that happens in movies.

And man, do I love it. Please, let it not be a dream God? Like, please? :)

Amen.

Flute Music

My hands smell of school. The classrooms, the textbooks, the corridors, the desks and chairs. I spent a considerable amount of time cleaning out all my stuff. I now have only one-third of what I had in my room before it got painted! Can you believe that?! There was so much of junk.. old copies, books, clothes, pencil boxes, stuffed toys, comic books, notes, stationery, SUPW stuff, and many, many little things with so many memories attached. I read all my old notebooks where I’ve had entire conversations with my friends in classrooms during lectures. I read old slam books, saw all the school photos and read through the notes. I even saved some of my exam answer sheets. It was such a different time and place. Can’t believe it was the same city.

I’ve started setting my room up and I’m so psyched. I’ve given away many of my toys and books and so it made a lot of room to keep other prettier stuff. My books look so good against the purple wall. And I’ve put posters of my favourite bands (S&G, The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Radiohead) They are those small ones, with a matte finish. I’ve put a huge Café Coffee Day mug on one of the shelves, and a scented candle on the other. Oh, and I’ve put pot pourri in a glass bowl and I’ve kept it next to a picture of my sis and me. It smells glorious! It smells of springtime, and monsoon, and little babies, and puppies, and love, and laughter and sunshine and cotton candy clouds, and kites flying in the blue sky, and mom, and chocolates, and friends and the good ol’ memories, and well, flowers :P I’m just waiting to put the curtains and set my wardrobe and I’ll be good to go! Psst, on a completely unrelated note, I love popping bubble wrap. It's so satisfying. Throwing it away before poppin' all o' 'em bubbles in a crime! 

So, while going through my old notebooks, I came across my explanation of a poem by Rabindranath Tagore that we had in out twelfth standard ISC poetry book. And I remembered how much I used to love it. It is called ‘Flute Music’. It goes like this:

"Kinu, the milkman's alley
A ground floored room in a two storeyed valley
Slap on the road, window barred.
Decaying walls, windows crumbling to dust in places
Or strained with damp.
Stuck on the floor,
A picture of Ganesha, Bringer of Success,
From the end of a bale of cloth.
Another creature apart from me lives in my room
For the same rent;
A lizard.
There's one difference between him and me:
He doesn't go hungry.

I get twenty five rupees a month
As junior clerk in a trading office.
I'm fed at the Dattas' house
For coaching their boy.
At dusk I go to Sealdah station.
Spend the evening there
To save the cost of light.
Engines chuffing,
Whistles shrieking,
Passengers scurrying,
Coolies shouting.
I stay till half past ten,
Then back to my dark, silent, lonely room.

A village on the Dhalesvari river, that's where my aunt's people live.
Her brother-in-law's daughter -
She was due to marry my unfortunate self, everything was fixed.
The moment was indeed auspicious for her, no doubt of that -
For I ran away.
The girl was saved from me,
And I from her.
She did not come to this room, but she's in and out of my mind all the time:
Dacca sari, vermilion on her forehead.

Pouring rain.
My tram costs go up,
But often as not my pay gets cut for lateness.
Along the alley,
Mango skins and stones, jack fruit pulp,
Fish-gills, dead kittens
And God knows what other rubbish
Pile up and rot.
My umbrella is like my depleted pay -
Full of holes.
My sopping office clothes ooze
Like a pious Vaisnava.
Monsoon darkness
sticks in my damp room
Like an animal caught in a dead trap,
Lifeless and numb.
day and night I feel strapped bodily
On to a half-dead world.

At the corner of the alley lives Kantababu -
Long hair, carefully parted,
Large eyes.
Cultivated tastes.
He fancies himself on the cornet:
The sound of it comes in gusts
On the foul breeze of the alley -
Sometimes in the middle of the night,
Sometimes in the early morning twilight,
Sometimes in the afternoon
When sun and shadows glitter.
Suddenly this evening
He starts to play runs in Sindhu-Baroya raag,
And the whole sky rings
With eternal pangs of separation.
At once the alley is a lie,
False and vile as the ravings of a drunkard,
And I feel that nothing distinguishes Haripada the clerk
From the Emperor Akbar.
Torn umbrella and royal parasol merge,
Rise on the sad music of a flute
Towards one heaven.

The music is true,
Where, in the everlasting twilight-hour of my wedding,
The Dhalesvari river flows,
Its banks deeply shaded by tamal-trees,
And she who waits in the courtyard
Is dressed in a dacca sari, vermillion on her forehead."

Do you see? The beauty? The depth? The sadness? The loneliness? I love how many of Tagore’s poems have this lonely, melancholic, dreamy, theme about them. His poems talk of longing, and love and separation and music. I especially like the line “And the whole sky rings with eternal pangs of separation.” It’s so beautifully heart breaking. You can’t help but feel for the poor fellow. His lifestyle, his broken relationship, how he still thinks about her, how he tries to hide himself from the world, how he has an almost non-existent existence. How listening to the flute music is his only respite from his dreary life. It shows how hard surviving is for some people. How terribly dull, meaningless, insignificant living is for them. And how they are born poor and how they die poor. Sigh, it makes me so sad. It makes me lonely and dreamy as well. But this kind of loneliness, I like. That is why I like the night time so much. It is so utterly quiet. There’s no one to disturb you. No door bells ringing, no phone calls, no one to remind you of some important work that you’re supposed to do. It is just so peaceful.

I’m looking at the collage I just placed on the wall opposite me. It makes me smile every time I look at it. And every time I look at it, it makes me excited at the prospect of living an entire lifetime of blissful, crazy, days filled-with-random-acts-of-stupidty; singing soft kitty; writing every sentence ending with a colon and an asterick; long laughter sessions; completely inappropriate and astonishingly profane jokes and innuendos; and extreme, shameless PDAs and mushiness and chocolate covered cuddling. It will be similar to the pot pourri in the glass bowl. No, it will be exactly like the pot pourri in the glass bowl! :D

Acceptance

There are five stages that people go through when they come to know they're going to die. They’re called the five stages of grief. The first one is Denial (this cannot be happening to me!) The second one is Anger (why is this happening to me?) The third is Bargaining (I promise to be a better person if) Next comes Depression (I don’t care anymore) And finally, Acceptance (I’m ready for whatever comes)

Interestingly, thanks to Dr. House, I came to know that even the people who lose their loved ones go through these stages. And since I came to know Shirley is going to go, I’ve experienced myself going through all these emotions. When I wrote my previous post, I was probably in the Anger stage.

But it’s not that bad. I’ve finally realized that she’ll be happy in her new home, maybe happier. Although her absence is eating me, I can take solace from the fact that I will get to meet her every once in a while. I keep looking at her chewed up toys, her favourite spot, her rug, her eating bowls. I keep wondering what she must be doing, whether she’d be thinking of me as well. I sometimes forget she’s gone and expect her to come trotting out from some corner of the house, tongue out and ears bouncing. The feeling that follows is terribly painful.

But I guess I’m finally in the Acceptance stage. My mom and dad talked to me for a couple of hours and I was so relieved to know they’re grieved as well. I just wish she’d adjust to her new home and new life and grow up to be a chubby, happy dog :)

On the brighter side of life, my room is now mauve and a bit of purple. It looks.. well, girly. Which is good actually; and I needed a change. I’m going to spend the entire day tomorrow setting it up, getting rid of all the unused clutter. Apart from the literal cleaning up of my wardrobe and bookshelf, I really need to clean out the skeletons from my closet. It is high time I take them all out, instead of pushing them far and far in deeper.

The day started off in the worst way possible, but I’d like to end it on a positive note. I’m looking forward to a few specific events that are going to take place in the foreseeable future. I watched Death at a Funeral yesterday, and I’m still giggling thinking about some of the scenes.

Listening to Simon and Garfunkel now is already making me feel so much better. It kind of like, soothes your nerves you know. I’m terribly missing a certain someone and I really hope that person calls me back soon. I'm exhausted and I guess I will hit the sack early tonight, after a long time. Tomorrow is going to be a better day :)