Rise and shine

The sun was peeking through  the drawn curtains of my bedroom window announcing the arrival of a new day. I drew my blanket closer to my eyes and tried to shut the sunrays away, a futile exercise i engaged in every single morning. Sleep, however, had eluded me by now and I caught myself studying the flowery pattern on my snug blanket. Big red roses with green tiny leaves; there were some brown and pink flowers as well added in for that extra effect. I sighed and absentmindedly started tracing the outline of the  red roses with my little finger but was soon being tugged into a dark abyss, an abyss that always crept up on me when I least expected it. I shuddered and hurriedly hurled the blanket out of my eyes sitting upright on the edge of the bed. No sooner had my feet hit the ground, that first wave of dread hit me like a speeding car rummaging an unassuming passenger. My mind went numb and the bottomless abyss beckoned me back to the assumed safety of my blanket.

But I was not going to give in without a fight. I dragged my feet towards the window and parted the curtains a teeny weeny bit. There was the expectant face of the sun smiling at me, luring me outside into its arms, into all the wonderful possibilities that the day held. A silent game of tug of war ensued but my face soon broke into a huge smile and I winked back at the sun as its glowing warmth engulfed me away from the darkness in my mind. I started humming a soft tune and returned to my bed; tugged at the blue and orange bedsheet, skillfully smoothening the creases and tucking them away neatly underneath. I looked at the red roses and smilingly folded them into four equal halves neatly piling the blanket on top of my pillow.

With my bed neatly done and the sun having my back, I was now ready for whatever the day held for me.  

The “Act” of public speaking!

Ok, so our dear ancestors, the brave and the courageous cavemen had the same symptoms. “Pete, what’s wrong with you? That is a bear coming at you! Get your spear out! Fight! Run!!” But Peter does neither. The last thing he remembers is his legs turning wooden, his hands trembling, his vision blurring and oh yes, that familiar lurching sensation in the stomach.

I can empathize with poor Pete. Definitely not a pretty sight being mauled by a bear, or for that matter, by your boss! “Come on Archana, this is the fourth time you are getting sick just before an important presentation and with what? A stomach upset! Get a little creative! This is turning into a pattern now”. I gave Mr. Boss a sheepish smile and stared nonchalantly at the pattern on my dress. Bang! What was that? My boss had thrown a book in front of me. “Here, you need this!” he smirked. I tried to focus on the book in front of me – Public speaking for “dummies”. Now this was seriously offensive and I wanted to tell my boss exactly that. I could very well visualize my next appraisal go down the trashcan resting next to my feet if I spoke up but I didn't care. I made up my mind; it was now or never. I stood up in a flurry, knocked down the trashcan with my feet, looked my boss in the eye and said – “Thank you!”  Darn, I hated myself.

Later that day as I was flipping through the pages of the book and contemplating whether to feed it to my dog or offer it to the crackling fireplace in my living room, I saw a picture of a caveman on one of the pages. That was our very own Pete with his dilemma. Poor chap. He appeared on all the pages explaining to the “dumb” readers the science of overcoming this fear. That did it. I liked Pete, I read on. Oh, so the fear of public speaking is only the second most common fear right after the fear of death. I and Pete were in good company. That felt good. Taking public speaking workshops or acting courses is said to have reduced the anxiety in a lot of people, Pete announced somewhere in the book. That held my attention. Did he say acting? I love acting. In fact, I have acted all throughout my life. Don’t want to go to school, act sick. Like that hunk at work, act difficult to get. He approaches you for coffee, act nonchalant. The hunk offers to pay the bill for you, act offended. Acting was in my blood. I sure was good at it. I had to give an acting course a shot and see if it helped me!

I turned to Mr. Google for advice. He didn't disappoint me. He offered me a list of acting schools in my city. I chose one of them and attended the course. And that is where the transformation started. My first time up on stage, I felt the same lurching sensation in my stomach. But a realization dawned. Hey, that was not me on the stage anymore; it was the character I was playing, a drunken fisher-woman. And “she” could make mistakes, she was drunk after all. I think I gave my best performance that day. As I portrayed different characters through the course of the workshop, I learnt an important lesson, that it was important to be comfortable in one’s own skin. And that is was OK to have flaws, to fumble, to make mistakes. No one was perfect. Through the various well planned activities that the acting course entails, I could slowly but surely feel my confidence building up. I was ready for the world, for my boss!

“Breathe Archana. You will be just fine”, I told myself as I looked at an ocean of faces staring right back at me in the conference room. My boss was sitting in the corner having rubbed in the fact that this was my fifth attempt at an important presentation. I took a deep breath and started speaking.

“Now that was a good presentation”, my boss beamed as he stopped by at my cubicle later that day. I knew it as soon as I had finished speaking. Yes, I had fumbled at a few places, forgot a few important points but I was no longer afraid to make mistakes and there was definitely no fear of public speaking. Pete would have been so proud. “Thank me in leisure”, my boss guffawed as he strutted off. I ignored him and muttered under my breath, “Thank You M!SFIT!” 

Reflections

She sat by the window in her apartment and gazed out into the night sky. As the darkness outside pressed in from all sides, she closed her eyes to be closer to the storm that was brewing inside her. Scenes flashed across her eyes, bits and pieces of her life screaming out to be solved like a jigsaw puzzle. The futility of relationships seemed to have dawned on her, finally. "Every relationship comes with a limited period warranty", she thought out aloud. Blame it on the fast paced life, or the human need for instant gratification, very few relationships stand the test of time, she ascertained. She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She could hear her heart beating but an intense feeling of loneliness engulfed her from all the sides. Outside, the night had become chillier and a cold breeze blew on her face caressing her hair but making her body shudder. She sighed and continued looking into the night sky hoping to spot a falling star that she could wish upon.

Fear - Life of Pi

I am currently reading the fiction "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel and I read an excellent and intriguing chapter on fear. It is just brilliant. So thought of sharing the excerpt.
Here goes:

"I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.

Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.

Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you've defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.

The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you."

Slumdog millionaire

Amitabh Bachchan has criticized Slum Dog Millionaire. He says India is not all about slums and dogs. There is more to the country.
In his words, ""If SM (Slumdog Millionaire) projects India as [a] Third World dirty underbelly developing nation and causes pain and disgust among nationalists and patriots, let it be known that a murky underbelly exists and thrives even in the most developed nations."

I have not seen the movie and definitely cant comment on it but there is a lobby of people here who seem offended. Well, when the theme of the story is about a boy in Dharavi, Dharavi is what you will see in the movie. Why would the director be bothered about what portrait of India is being shown to the world? This is not a documentary on India and hopefully westerners see that. The director's goal was to rake in big moolah and man, has he done that!

But an interesting observation here. When the West takes out its telescope and zooms in on the East, what it expects to see is countries full of slums and poor people struggling hard for their next meal. Stories about poverty sell. This is a fact. They have this "Frog in the well" mentality and in a way they are reassuring themselves that their life is blessed.

But, we have to also understand that the countries in the Asian continent had to see so many invasions and wars. Something from which the western world has been relatively shielded. We have so many internal problems that threaten our very being. We are still finding our foothold in the world arena. So, poverty will definitely be a part of our countries as is with other "developed" nations. But what the West should also recognize is that being a poor country doesnt really take away from the beauty and the culture that each of these countries possess. There is nobody superior here and coming from a particular country or having a certain skin color doesnt really bestow upon you the happiness or the "blessings" that we all strive for. The truth is that We are all just a species named "homo sapiens" lucky enough to get favourable conditions to survive on a small planet that we call the "Earth" in a big galaxy that again, we have named the "Milky Way". What is beyond that, nobody knows and nobody understands.

Hmmm...I think my train of thoughts is moving faster than what I am writing. Started with a movie and ended with something else! Been a long and tiring day. Time to sign off.

Political hungama!

There is a lot of nautanki going on in Indian politics....A new drama is unfolding every time you tune into some news channel....

First we had our honorary BJP leader LK Advani accusing our PM, Manmohan Singh of being a "Madame" ka ghulaam....That he runs to "Madame" Sonia Gandhi for every small decision....

We had Manmohan Singh reciprocating the love saying that all that happened during Advani's reign was some riot....

Advani fumes and challenges Sonia Gandhi to a live TV debate to which Sonia Gandhia "politely" refuses..Manmohan Singh is challenged next and he refuses too!

Advani fumes some more and mocks at the Congress saying that they were a "weak" party and lacked the guts for a live discussion ( why do i feel that if there really is a debate, nobody will be heard because everybody will be yelling at the top of their voice at the same time!)

Elsewhere we have our "maanneeya BJP netha" Varun Gandhi giving anti-muslim speeches which seems to have caught the media's attention big time! In a second he is everywhere on the TV (the new poster boy! ) and his speech is aired a zillion times so much that I now know the speech word to word...Congress jumps onto the bandwagon and accuses BJP some more..Varun Gandhi is arrested and his supporters create a big hungaama and there is a mini riot..Police fires at the crowd...there is some bloodshed..there are 3-4 FIRs against Varun Gandhi, one being that of attempted murder! ( Murder!!?? where did that come from?Is he really being framed?Poor chap was just starting off his fledgling political career!)

Maneka Gandhi makes an appearance saying that her son is being lynched and this is a big Congress conspiracy...She says that people from the other religion were responsible for the riot and Varun is being outrightly framed..(Hmmm...kahaani me twist...)

Like father, like son, some smart alec's are quipping on the news channel....Priyanka Gandhi says she is disappointed with Varun...( there definitely is no khaandhaani pyaar there...)

So between all this Congress Vs BJP war, you wonder kab iss jhagde ka "The End" hoga and kab we all will live happily ever after..!!!! You really dont need to watch the daily rone dhone waale soaps any more! just tune into a news channel, grab some popcorns & well, "Lights, Camera, action"!!!!!!

The face in the mirror - A poem

THE FACE IN THE MIRROR
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There are times in life
When it cuts like a knife

You feel the pain
Everything seems to be in vain

"Why me?" you cry
Deafening silence but no reply

In times like these
When hope seems to cease

A helping hand is a must
And a somebody you can trust!

She has been with you
when you were feeling blue

At your jokes, she laughed
While others had scoffed

She stayed with you, be it day or night
Like a string attached to a runaway kite

She is your hero, your only hope
If you find yourself at the end of the rope

You know her not?!
Oh, it’s a pity!
Fret not
She lives in the same city!

Just look at the mirror
There's no escaping her!
Well, but it’s a known face I see
Staring back at me!
Oh, now I see!
The hero lies in me!!!!

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