This year has been a year of change. It kicked off with changing cities, of being away from a city that has been my home for 26 years right since the day I was born. Each city is known to lend you it’s unique color, but Mumbai is known to color you in indistinguishable shades like water in the palette that’s colored by the dip of the artist’s brushes. Everyone is mad about their cities. In Mumbai you are simply in love with it. Moving away from this love was more than just physical distancing. It was also emotional. But when you cross a quarter of a century in age and in experiences, you begin to come to terms with life and its ways. It almost spiritual - this realization of finally known to have grown up to shoulder new responsibilities although deep within you are still a pampered princess. This year has again proved that love is all you need to survive, not just of others but also of your own. Finding time for yourself to do things that make you happy is probably one of the toughest things. It’s so easy to settle into a mundane routine and let all the good things in life take a back seat under the pretext of lack of time. The key is to get up and act. The more you are in possession of your own interests and actions, the lesser are your chances of holding someone else responsible for your disappointments. There is no wisdom in letting inhibitions rule your actions. There is a fine line between fear and respect but when you substitute one with the other it makes a world of a difference. Sometimes you should just let things fall in place on their own. The harder you try to mend them the longer they seem to take. Nothing is more promising than knowing that you have a listening ear, a helping hand, and a strong shoulder to come home to. It’s good to live in an age where technology has shrunk the world. It’s fortunate to be nestled in the presence of sane people in a world that’s increasingly losing it all. Hope continues to show the way, even if sometimes it is just about those little things you look forward to do over the weekend. There’s so much that’s behind us and so much more yet to arrive. The new year promises a new start and fresh aspirations, even as it safely shelters the past in the shape of memories of days well spent.
Lend me the silence of the night sky
The solitude of the islands that dot the seas
Color me with shades of the four seasons
Let me leave now, with no reasons
Like the river that flows through wild woods
Lead me to places that I haven't been
These wonders of nature
I have long since seen
Let me rest in peace
Let no thought ruffle me
Am an old bark now
I ain't no autumn leaf
I have wilted now
And so have the roses on my grave
I shall survive now
With the hope that you always gave
Of the dawn that awakens every sleep
I embrace my slumber dark and deep
Fear is the biggest impediment to a life full of possibilities. It holds you back like a tethered horse, that only gallops in place but never experiences what it is like to be in the fields unconstrained by boundaries, running towards the horizon, against the forces of the wind sheltered only by the canopy of the open sky. Man has always been taught to live within boundaries – Boundaries of culture & traditions, boundaries of income, boundaries of state and nations and also that of the gender. It is in this constant pursuit of doing the right things in the right way in a boxed existence, that he forgets to dream, that he grows shy of exploiting his own potential, of thinking beyond what’s obvious, and doing beyond what’s but ordinary. Every attempt to defy this rule of being bound to his own thinking, is susceptible to failure and every failure in turn invites an urge strong enough to either given in or to give up. Winners are not born by their constitution, but by the circumstances that shape them into one. By events that are so powerful that they leave an indelible mark in the memory like that of a careless splash of ink on linen. Something that can only fade but never leave. The day you decide to overcome fear, is the day when you experience real power, in thought and in action. That is the day when you would believe in yourself a lot more than the world believes in you, when you’d reconcile to your unfathomable shortcomings as much as you would to you overwhelming abilities hidden beneath fear - the biggest impediment to a life full of possibilities!