Lessons learned..

Suddenly I have all the time in the world and I can't get more of movies, reading and blogging. Just last week I perusing a friend's blog when I bumped into one of her Valentine's Day special posts. The blog spoke of the evolution of love over time; how one feels the same emotion differently as one matures in life. The blog reminded me of a book that I'd half-read three years back - 'Rubbish Boyfriends' by Jessie Jones. I'm sitting here thinking of the few frogs that I've kissed..

Puppy Love
Puppy Love is an amazing feeling. It's ecstatic the first time you feel those butterflies in your stomach. Sleepless nights and rose tinted panoramic views of a lifetime. We did have our share of fun. The best part was we were best friends (we're still friends!). Young and crazy that we were (still are?) we embarked upon a never-to-forget stomach-churning roller coaster ride. Our escapades ranged from visiting museums and botanical gardens, attending award-winning movie screenings and participating in anti-smoking 'walkathons' to sucking on golas (ice popsicles) at Chowpatty, going crazy in salsa dance workshops and cooking together. All said, the best five years of my life. Were there tears, hollering and fights; hell yeah! That said amidst all the heart break and heart ache they qualify to be a never-to-forget phase in my life.

A lesson that this experience taught me was that love is not the comforting feeling that one experiences when one is dependent on someone during an emotional security crises. Love is strong and stems from confidence..lesson learned.

Hero Worship
Let's face it, haven't  we all had those parent like or older sibling like figures whom we adored. The sad part, we mistook the adoration for love. Thankfully for a few of us the adults in the deal ensured that sanity prevailed and our feelings were kept on tab.

When we realise that we're still too young to make a vocational decision, that realisation my friends is called maturity. Until then we may keep telling ourselves that we're 'grown-ups' in vain. This experience took its toll on my emotional fabric as well. Never in my life have I written such creative diary entries. In fact I even owe my blogging to those few months of being inspired by someone I adored so much. Today all I have left for the person in question is respect; lesson learned.

The First Time
..and just as I was beginning to learn how to accept solitude and be truly independent, he came along. Tall, dark and handsome the man swept me off my feet and there was no looking back. I felt like a woman for the first time in 23 years and each day I nurtured the dream with raw emotion and before I knew it my life was tethered to his.

Women never learn that men do it tortoise style when it comes to commitment. May be if I'd have read 'Why Men Marry Bitches' by Sherry Argov back then things would have panned out differently. Well I'm guessing the pressure got to him and in a 'poof' he was gone. I mourned his loss for over a year; I waited for him to come back failing to understand that he was never there in the first place. He broke my heart and I hated what he did. I hated myself more because I couldn't get myself to hate him. I saw his actions as a violation of my trust again failing to understand that he was young just like I was. Well, today when I think in retrospect I'm happy that I have nothing against him. He did what any normal man would; lesson learned.

Something Like The First Time
Thanks to my past experience I swore never to wear my heart on my sleeve; but as I said women never learn!

When he pinged me for the first time I thought he was some kind of 'chipku-despo' and that all he wanted was to explore. I believe that men are like toddlers; they want to explore their world. They pursue the subject only to pacify their curiosity and not because they want the subject. This one too I thought would woo me, sway my heart and then turn around and say "Hun, it's not going to work" and guess what.. I was not going to let him do that. I was as rude and as cold as I could be initially. Over time we did getting chatty but it kind of ended before anything began. Why that happened is a blog for another day! Well, lesson learned.

This morning I learned that one of the frogs is on his way to priesthood; makes my stomach churn and it undoubtedly feels weird even though there is nothing left even if I were to go back there. Well, c'est la vie I guess. As they say, it's better to have 'loved' and lost than never to have 'loved' at all!

Reference links:

• http://sliceofmylyfe.wordpress.com/?s=love+in+30s&submit=Search (Thanks Anita Menon!)

Evolution...

Oh Evolution thou has kept the world revolving...

No, this is not yet another science versus religion blog and neither am I an atheist. That said I do believe that evolution is the carrier of existence and that which chooses not to evolve ceases to exist sooner or later.

Evolution to me also means progress; an inevitable change that brings about the realisation of a higher state of existence. I'm saying all these things because I believe that I've just stepped into phase two of my career. Fresh out of college I knew that I had to get into a boutique firm. Small time organisations have a holistically hone our skills thus rendering our core competency a sharp sword ready to slice the task at hand into two.

My stint with an agency, my first proper work stint, is coming to an end and its a cathartic experience to have gained so much in the past nine months. There has been tremendous learning thanks to my inclusive and never exhaustive job description. My learning from the work I've done and my observations of my superiors' and colleagues' work has helped me get trained across an extensive range of media activities - most typical public relation tasks, events management, integrated marketing communication and print journalism. Apart from technical knowledge I've been blessed to have learned a lesson or two about survival in the bad world. With all this under my belt I'm set to take the plunge after a short 'battery charge' period.

The evolution or progress comes in here because now when I look for the next break my priority would be pay-pack, benefits and allowances, promotions and learning in contrast to my priority before my first stint - only learning. At this stage I find myself seeking to settle in a big corporate where there is scope to climb the ladder in monetary terms and otherwise.

Well at some point I hope to get my dream phase two job opportunity. For the interim I have a bucket list ready. I jwas reading a book off the local library shelf few months back and I bumped into a sentence that paralysed my senses for a few seconds. I realised that soon I'm never going to be in my early twenties again. I've got three months more and I can't help but promise myself to live the last bit of my early twenties to the fullest - read, explore and write. How exactly am I going to execute this plan? Well that is a blog for another day!

'Coming home' is watching who are from the outside..it's becoming yourself all over again..I'm coming home!

Chaddi Buddy

Friend's are siblings God didn't give us...

That was what Del had said to me as we'd chatted one late evening months ago. As I further ponder over the idea I can't help thinking what would we ever do without friends.

I'm one of those people who has a lot of friends but few F.R.I.E.N.D.S. if you know what I mean! As a child too (I have no siblings) I had just one imaginary pal. As I grew a little older she sublimated in thin air and for the next few years, actually practically two-thirds of my childhood I spent time with Sameeha - the girl downstairs.

Sameeha a.k.a. Sana and I weren't really the best of friends; but we were all we had and so we derived cheap thrills from the craziest of adventures. We'd wrap curtains as sarees and wear her mom's pencil heels. We'd fight over who got to be Akshay Kumar's wife; being the more submissive and compromising one I was forced to settle down with Sunil Shetty ('yuck'). We'd prepare dance sequences for an imaginary audience or for Christmas get-togethers at my home. We'd record songs after learning the lyrics on the tape recorder (we were the cassette generation!). Kitchen toys, dolls, lipsticks, earrings...

*******

Sana's baby girl turned one last week. As I sat on the pale brown couch in the party hall I smiled to myself as I realised how we'd grown together; grown from being girls into beautiful women. What amused me even more was how the girl I'd fought with, laughed with, cried with...was now a complete woman - career, motherhood and all. It's beautiful how individuals who were once naive and carefree suddenly (or gradually) become mature and responsible. Though our basic personalities remain the same we are pushed through a phase that renders us more polished as we move out of it.