Life - A Potrait

“Please don’t go, stay back!” is what I kept chanting to her all day. I was at my creative best giving her all possible reasons as to why she shouldn't leave. She kept laughing at my immature request and she in her style just talked me through it. I knew I was making a futile attempt, but don’t know why I kept trying. Trying to convince her not to travel. I have never stayed away from her in the last one year. But now when I look back it sounds foolish to me what I did that day. I was sure she would never cancel her trip.

She was as always in her witty best when she tried hard to distract my mind of her travel, and tried to divert my mind off her travel. As I helped her in her packing, she kept drawing me into different conversations, but somehow I felt like a visiting faculty who kept walking in and out of her conversations. My mind was very pre-occupied with the thought of her not being around starting the next day.

We hardly spoke on the way to the airport. We seemed like two strangers travelling together. Sensing my frame of mind, she too felt the best thing to do was stay silent rather than giving me an opportunity to start all over again. She had heard enough of it all day long.

We finally arrived at the airport. As I took her bags from the car and kept it on the trolley, she gave me that “Enough!!! Let Go!!! Smile please….” look. And I did precisely that. Of course I had never said a no to her previously, and how could I not listen to her. As she spread her arms, like a small kid I ran into her arms and cuddled her tight. With a small peck on my forehead she said “Don’t miss me!!! I will be fine. You take care of yourself!!!”

It’s been a year since Ananya and I have known each other. We met fortuitously. A dumb girl is what I thought of her when I first saw her. I was setting up my home and to fill up the emptiness at home I wanted to adorn the home with some art. It was in one such art exhibition that I met Ananya. Blessed with a pretty face she was any artist’s portrait. She was someone who was a perfect contender to become a brand ambassador of an energy drink. Dressed in a black saree, she was full of energy speaking incessantly to people who flocked around her. Animated she was, and expressive. There was an aura that surrounded her. For a few moments I was engulfed in that aura and forget about the very reason I was there.

After having spent well over couple of hours at the gallery, I finally zeroed in on two paintings. No particular reason that I picked them. As I approached the event manager about my decision to buy them, I was told that since these paintings were on display for the entire duration of the exhibition I will have to wait. They took down my request and I was given an address from where I could pick it up after a week.

Sometimes we feel the unexpected and the coincidental things always happen only in movies. And that’s exactly how I too felt when I walked into the office to collect the paintings that I had liked the other day. It felt like it was all scripted to perfection and Ananya and I were destined to meet. The paintings that I liked where all her piece of work. For a moment I was proud of my selection. But was it the painting that I was proud off or the painter? On learning about me and intention of visit, she was excited that I had actually bought two of her paintings and in that one was very close to her heart.

It took me a while to digest the fact that someone as pretty as her was actually an artist. We all have some preconceived notion of various professions and the people who work in those professions. Ananya was someone who proved me wrong completely. She was curious to find out why I had chosen her paintings and what was I planning to do with them? I told her I was setting up my home and felt her two paintings will add to the exquisiteness of my house. Being the lively person she was, she instantly volunteered to visit my home and help me find the best place for the two paintings. Seeing her excitement and eagerness I couldn't resist. I guess it’s always hard for any man to turn down a pretty woman.

“That’s how I met Ananya first, Sneha”

(To be Contd.....)

A come back post......

It’s been a year since I last wrote something for my blog. And by all stretch of imagination that’s a real long time. While many would mail me or during causal conversations ask me to start blogging again, I always kept giving lame excuses. One of my avid followers (I like to credit all my occasional reads as my avid followers) told about an interesting fact about my blog recently. She was narrating to me an incident of how she recommended my blog to her friend as a good read, and how instantly her friend reacted saying ‘that blog is full of pain and sorrow, nothing happy in there’. I actually laughed when I heard that comment. But then a serious retrospective of my posts and it’s nothing but true.

Each one of us need something motivating or a driving factor to be able to accomplish something. On most occasions it’s already something that is within us, but a small external catalyst helps us go that extra mile. I have been doing lot of writing in the recent past. I do a lot of creative writing for my uncle’s firm, help them in some real hard sales pitch and since it’s worked for them they keep coming back to me for all their prime clients. But all this didn’t require an external motivation for me. It’s my passion to write, and something that I am blessed with.

But when it comes to my blog, it’s different. I always look for an incident, a person who has touched me, has changed my life, and that becomes my motivation to write.

Happiness to me is best expressed in actions and something that needs to be celebrated. Often you will find many people to be a part of your celebrations and share your happiness and that’s a nice thing. But pain, sorrow, grief is something that we all hold back from sharing. For on most occasions we don’t trust people around us to understand us. And even more interestingly no one likes to hear sad things. But we all secretly wish, wish if he had a person with whom we can share our sorrow, our pain, and our darkest secrets and feel better. How often have you read a piece of article and instantly been able to relate it to your life? Just look back, you will never relate a happy article to your life, it’s often only your not so happy moments you relate with others and articles that you read.

For you to appreciate your life, you must go through pain. I often wonder what makes the mom-child relations so unique, why so much bonding. And that’s because it’s all the pain a mother takes and undergoes to bring the little life on this earth. Same holds good for any relationship. A relationship that has gone through pain will always survive the fiercest of battles. All it requires is patience. And in the end if your patience has not paid off, don’t give up. For the pain you have endured will make you a wiser person in life.

“I often wish I don’t wake up to see the sun rise tomorrow and I drown in this pain forever. But then I wonder what if you come back to me tomorrow? And I continue to breathe in hope” -fzl