A gift

The thought of writing this blog came to me just few minutes back. As soon as this topic hit me I was all excited about it because this is something that I absolutely love and I wanted to document something that I'm proud off - My Friends.

'Friends are the family we choose'. Heard it before? me too. This is so true. We meet people with a smile, strike small conversations, start to like each other and fall in love with each other and before you know it you would have made a friend. A beautiful relationship called Friendship is created. You created this relation so be proud of it. Friendship is a blessing more than we realise. We are allowed to be weak, we are allowed to be rude, we are allowed to be stupid, we are allowed to be what we want to be when we want to be and at the end of it, all is forgiven and all is well. How does that work? There is no formula or no thesis at the end of which I can say 'Hence proven'. But it always works. At the end everything is fine with no backlogs. The slate is clean once again. Whereas with family or any other relationship this may not be true. People tend to carry forward the past. In many of our lives Friendship doesn get credit as much as it deserves. Family does. Family gets more importance than any other relationship in our society. I don't say it shouldn't but my point is Friendship doesn't.

Friends give you space to be who you want to be. They always encourage, they are always trying to make the whole atmosphere filled with laughter. Friends don't care if you fail again and again at something. If they believe in what you are doing they give all their support and say 'Try once again macha. This time you will surely get it'. Sometimes when your friends know you are doing something really stupid, which they know you are not made for, they don't hesitate or think what if you feel offended if they say what they want to say. They don't care what you would think of them nor do they care if they would offend you but they will put some sense into your head. They don't worry about what you would think about them all they care is you are in right track.

Why is that most of us like our school or college friends more than the ones we make during your professional life? Is it beacause those friends we had long back were very real to us and now we all are trying to be politically correct to each other? When we grow up why is what others think becomes more important than what you truely are? God didn't create you to impress someone else. He created you to be who you are inspite of what others think of you. I wish I knew how to get back the lost time and correct my mistakes and say sorry to the friends whom I have lost on my way. I dont want to regret again after couple of years. But I want to be real and I want real friends. No more being diplomatically correct.

Everyone is capable of making friends that is something that is natural to us humans. If you don't have any friends its because you are holding yourself back and going out there and meeting new people. You might be out in a new place, make new friends, get out of your comfort zone there are billions out there with whom you can fall in love or at least one out there who needs you. Be there for them your old friends are not running anywhere away. They will be there for you. Don't be scared, the max that can happen is not get a smile back.

I'm so blessed to have found a friend who gave me the space to be what I want to be, who has always been supportive, for telling me when I was acting stupid and then standing with me all this while. Right now I just want to hug her and say I so blessed to have her and that I love her(I did call her but did not say all nice things..we generally talked. Its so comforting. :)). She din't let anything change between us. I hope all of you have found one such friend.

Its not like she is the only one friend who has been good to me, who has stood by me or who has always been there for me. I have couple more of them. That is why I said I'm blessed. I know they are gift from God. God knows who exactly to be put in our life to make our life beautiful and worth living.

I know I haven't told this enough but I love you guys. I'm sorry if I was not there for you when you needed me. You better forgive me. You dont want to miss out on what is to come. You haven't seen my best yet. Love you.

JOHN 15:13 - 'Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends'

PS: The above all was about the ones who live with my physically, but there is one who lives with me spiritually and the love that I have in him is what completes you all for me.

PPS: This is a quote I found on internet 'The capacity for friendship is God's way of apologizing for our families' --Jay McInerney, The Last of the Savages. Please dont let my family know :D

A good good bye......

This is my last week here in Ireland. I cannot believe I have spent 11 months in this beautiful place. I have this vague memory of me looking out of the window of a Bus on my journey from Dublin to Galway when I first arrived here. That was my first glance of Galway. How I wondered about the whole lane discipline that people followed here, how cold this place is even when its summer, how green this whole area adjacent to the road is, how fat the cows are, all these thoughts running at first then they slowed down and then I gradually fell asleep. Was I tired by the flight journey or was the view so calm and beautiful? I don't remember, but I do remember how still I felt. After I reached Galway I just did what i was "suppose" to do. I missed India, my family and friends, my church everything I had ever known. The rain and cold here was getting to me. I wanted a familiar place to be and I know church was the place. I had searched for churches in Galway on internet and had found Discovery church. I was desperate to go to church. The day I got there I was out of control, tears just rolled down, I had no idea why. When pastor spoke to me, when his wife came to introduce herself, while the worship was going on.. I had no idea why those tears dint stop. But I remember telling God, 'You are same in India and you are same here'.

I had decided I won't make any new friends, the idea was not to get attached to people. Days went by so did the idea of staying to self. I had no idea when I let my guard down and started making friends, I made peace with the weather here, I started to have fun. We played football everyday during summers and in winters we played only on weekends. I broke my hand too.. I experienced my first snowfall here (though it wasn't much of snow). Several trips to different countries as tourist :P made me understand why do people travel to see places... Though you know nothing about the history, or the architecture, just to see something which was part of that particular country's history makes you feel tiny..I remember standing inside St.Peter's Basilica and wondering how huge these sculptures are and how talented these men and women were to create this without the modern technology. Standing in Colosseum trying to visualize the scenes seen in Gladiator movie made me realize that place has seen some of the bravest men in the world and some most coward ones. These men and women are dead and gone, and the ones alive we wonder about what they have created and left for the world to see. For me as a tourist the highlight was not the place, or the what historical buildings made me feel, but how this one man in a small village Oriveto, Italy brought out the kid in when me showed a small magic. I will never forget this man. I guess very few and rare influence the world, leave their mark on this world, but most of us can and will influence our near and dear ones and sometimes a stranger, a tourist for the rest of their lives and this is a great opportunity to bring in positive change or even to change yourself to become a better person.

Sorry, I drifted away from the topic. Did I even have a topic? I just write what I feel like at that moment. Galway is a beautiful place, people are always wearing their jackets, always prepared for the rain and always prepared to help. Yesterday when I said my good bye to few folks at office, it seemed we connected deep at that moment with each other. I knew I would miss seeing them and this office and they knew they would miss "a character". At the end of any journey when you look back, it seems everything turned ok. Those fights, anger or anything that seemed important at that moment was actually not important. At the end of it all it is just the overall experience that you would carry with yourself. and Galway for me is and was a Blessing.

Now to say good bye to all of these places, all these people, all friends you have made is so weird. I'm not a word person and weird may not be the word for what I'm feeling right now. Right now I am seated in bus which is taking me away from Galway towards Dublin airport, and me looking outside the window, its green again, everywhere, with a little of drizzle outside, and my heart again still... makes it a perfect way to say Good bye.


Jeremiah 29:1-: For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.

I LOVE IT!

Have you ever experienced this?.. When something you have been hearing for years, which you know is true and it has become a part of you.. but then, when that time comes all of a sudden you actually believe what you know... I just had an experience like that...I actually was trying to realize what just happened...the joy is limitless, I couldn't stop smiling, I couldn't stop thinking about it, it just made me happy and I wanted to tell the whole world.

If you have had that kind of experience already, close your eyes and think about how it made you feel and never forget that feeling. Its beautiful..

God Bless You!.


Exodus 4:12 - 'Now go; I will help you speak and will teach you what to say.'

Someday... Oneday... I WILL be who I WANT to be

I have been trying to blog for long time now. I have had so many ideas in my head on which I could blog about but nothing seems to keep me focused beyond few minutes. I had been to couple of trips in last 30 days and I wanted to write my experience, then I wanted write about the people I met there and then on how I was missing Galway, few days later I wanted to write about my reaction to the news that I might have to return back to India. None of them held me interested long enough that I could write a long blog on them. When these ideas took birth in my chaos mind, it caught my attention and I framed and reframed in my head the sentences that I would write. At that moment all I thought about was the topic. Few minutes into it I got distracted. I guess thats my personality. I get bored of things too soon, everything seem interesting at the beginning and then it all falls apart. This leads to lack of committment in me and that is a huge problem that I have to deal with. Its not like I haven't tried to stay committed. I have made plans, kept myself to a routine, took really serious decisions not to ignore the decisions made, but then it all falls apart again. I'm actually tired of this whole process where my mind takes things seriously, commits itself for few days and later ignores, feels lazy about the whole process.

I don't know if you are like me, lacking commitment. Each one of us have a problem that they need to work on. Something in them they want to change, they have tried and failed. And then they try again. We know what exactly is wrong with us and what exactly we need to do to overcome it. We feel guilty and ashamed when we repeatedly repeat the same old mistakes. I feel yuck about myself when I repeat my mistakes. I don't know how you feel but I'm sure its not good. But what we fail to notice is that we haven't stopped trying, we haven't stopped being creative in coming up with solutions that would train our minds to not do the same thing over and over again, we are coming up with ideas which could cheat/train our minds to NOT do something which which is natural to it. How awesome are we? That sound so cool, cheating your own mind stuff. Anyway what I want say is we all are like the itsy bitsy spider. Who tried and failed but tried until it had success and that is what even we should do. Never give up. We will train our body and mind to work the way we want it to work. Someday but that oneday we will achieve it.

Itsy Bitsy spider climbing up the spout
Down came the rain and washed the spider out
Out came the sun and dried up all the rain
Now Itsy Bitsy spider went up the spout again!

And once I achieve that I will move on to another spout.

Galatians 6:9 - And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up
Philippians 1:6 - And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ

Making it our own...

INDIA..My Nation..I love my country. I love every aspect of what it is to me. I have had a wonderful childhood here, I have made a lot and lot of friends here, I have chosen my partner here, I found my Love here. India will always be special to me, I would never be able to love another country like I love this one. This country may not be all that great for a someone else or as organised, powerful or advanced as many other countries, but its MINE and thats enough for me. 'There is no place like home', and this is home.

If you have to write an essay (like you used to in school) about India you might have used the following words in it - developing nation, slums, poverty, festivals, colors, bollywood stars, unhygenic, unorganised, poor infrastructure, IT minds, mathematicians, pollution, population and more. Any nation has both positive and negative aspects to it, depending on the person you are you would focus on either of it. India too has both positves and negatives to it . We are a developing nation. Yes we are not China, we are slow, but we are growing. We are a land of colors, festivals. You can see different colors in the rangolis we draw, sarees in a marriage, duppata of a college student, recently in the vastu appropriate houses. Everything that a foreign mind thinks about India is true, but its not all. We are much more as a nation, a nation with more to offer to world and also a nation with a lot more dirt to clean up and a lot more internal problems to solve.

In this post I want to present an idea to solve one such problems we face. Not a solution but one small step towards solving this problem. Close your eyes and imagine (both video and audio) of the following places- you in a Mumbai local train..... now move to your school class room..... now move to Majestic bus stand in Bangalore......now to Forum mall in Bangalore. Lets do the same with a different country, take yrclose your eyes again and imagine similar places of a different country........ Let me give you few more minutes to relax :).... I hope you are back... Was your brain less stressed in the second set of places? I'm sure the difference you saw was the number of people unless you imagined China in second set (If you did, why would you imagine China of all the places???). We Indians say population is one of the major problems of this country. People are everywhere, there is a queue for everything, waiting list from train, waiting list for college admissions, we don't know the term 'personal space' because there is no such thing called personal space in India. (This dialogue just came to my mind- if someone asked me for personal space i would answer- There is NO personal space in public places and your father is not the 'Father of Nation' to demand... even if he was, know that 'Father of Nation' was killed by one of us).

Problem - Population. Solution - to make it our own, by which I mean solution is adoption, to adopt a child to make this child your own. Whenever you decide to have a child think of adoption too. If you want only 1 kid and want it to be of your ''own blood'', well go ahead and have one. If you want to have 2 kids, why not give birth to 1 and give life to another by adopting. If you decide on more kids, it would be great if you can adopt as many as possible. I know most of us would adopt a child when we cannot have our own. We go to a orphan child when we are helpless and we cannot have our own kid hoping it would make us its parents. Instead why not go to a orphan child and make them as our little angel or little prince even when we don't need to. Adoption should be from heart not the step when thats is the only way to have a child. If you cannot adopt a child and bring it home due to what ever reasons atleast adopt a child's education, donate to a child's education, its health care, its future. We spend a awful lot of money in branded clothes to parties in an expensive restuarant all for a image. Why not adopt and change the image that you see everyday in the mirror, to an image much gentle, much kind. Giving money to charity work is an excellent deed but doing the charity work in your home taking it as a privilege would be Beautiful.

I just realized this may not reduce our problem- population, but on the other hand may help in cleaning up dirt, dirt from some child's life, that it may not have to suffer in streets or grow up without guidance or love. I urge you, if you can, talk to your partners about this. If not to eradicate any of our nation's problems atleast to go beyond the call of duty. Think about it.

I think to give birth and love your child is human but to adopt and make it your own is -divine. Why divine? See below.

Ephesians 1:5 - 'God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.'

Proudly Presents...

Pride. I take pride in certain things I do, in certain things I have, in certain things that I am.

Are you proud? This feeling makes me feel a little arrogant but a lot more special. When you are proud about something example if you can multiple numbers fast and you are proud of it, you know for sure that you can beat a lot of them in and around you if there was a competition right now. You just KNOW that you can do it. You have confidence in it. This makes you a little arrogant because you compare. Comparing with others and concluding that most of them are less talented than you in this area. But we should never forget that there is someone better and this is what keeps you grounded and keeps you on track, that you have to work a lot more, you could be a lot better.

Have you always been proud of yourself? Have you ever taken pride in someone else? someone dear to you, someone you have inspired, someone you mentored, or even some relationships you have. A pride where arrogance is not involved.

I usually prefer to talk about the heart. So naturally this post is not about how proud you are about yourself,  something related to your head but its about how proud you are about someone else. Do you have someone whom you are proud of?

I know a person from almost 14 yrs. I take pride in that. He is not my best friend nor do we spend a lot of time with each other. This fact makes it more difficult to be good friends after so many years. It needs efforts and sometimes just this trust that no matter how many days you don't talk it will still be great the next time you pick up that phone. I somehow am proud of this because I know most of us don't have friends from our childhood. This makes me special and its my own and hence I take pride.

Similar to this there are a lot more that I am proud of. I take pride in my parents, they are AMAZING. Their way of love or the way they brought us up teaching us to treat each other equal, to be responsible with money, to be responsible about our responsibilities. I also take pride in my friends, some of them are really good at math, some of them are great writers, some of them are cool, some of them are good at sports, some of them have amazing sense of humor, some of them have a lot of patience, some of them can talk well, some of them can sing well, the most important thing that demands my admiration is that all of them have a BEAUTIFUL heart. All these features are not mine but its their own, I know that, but still I take pride in them. May be because I am a part of their life, or they are part of mine.

Sometimes I wonder do you take pride in me? As your sister, as your daughter, as your friend, as you girl friend, as your wife, as anything that I am for you. Would you present me proudly....????

Most important of all, not as a comparison but I want my heavenly Father to say this to me.

Proverbs 31:29 - “Many daughters have done well, But you excel them all.”

Inhumanness in Me

Recent events have been very disturbing, the shooting at a Connecticut school and gang rape in Delhi. World seems to be heading towards more uncivilized and more evil destination than towards a civilized, mature and a better world. Why are such events happening around the world? I was wondering what would make this world a better world. The world where there is a constant progress, a constant growth, a constant betterment. I'm not talking about the economy of a country. I'm talking about 'the person' in people.

On second thoughts what about the person in me? When I see the event objectively I say such events have been happening every day. People get killed everyday, someone or the other is abused everyday. But a shooting in a school or a girl been beaten inhumanly after physically abusing her would disturb me more because I can relate to the victim. I think that girl could have been Me, that school could be where my kid or any kid i know is studying. This reminds me of Joker's dialog from the movie 'Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger, will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all, part of the plan. But when I say that one, little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!'. Is this true? Is a solider at border meant to be shot, is he there to die? is a teenager who is riding fast meant to get killed? Yes he should not ride fast but does that justify my indifference towards his death or make it easy for his parents to deal with the tragedy? If I hear a news tomorrow that a group of soldiers were blown up I'm sure it wont be stuck in my head all day. But if i hear a news of lady killed by her husband say who is from IT it would remain in my head all day questioning how could he do that. I'm not sure if this is the case with all of you but that is how i am affected. Affected to different extent by different events when both result to death. I wonder why? Why is that i don't feel anything when i hear about the soldiers. Am i so insensitive? Am i biased to these events? A Life is a Life isn't it? It should not matter what gender, age, reason for death, a life, a person is no more. If that girl is some one's mom, sister or wife, so is the man at the border some one's husband, son or a friend. Then why is that i don't feel anything towards this man. Why is that I'm inhuman towards him? Why?

Isaiah 1: 17- learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.