Ranting

For those of you unaware, the last one month has actually been a very emotionally exhaustive one. I was caught in tangles of relationships that have now severed. Yes it did hurt quite a bit, I went throught bouts of loneliness, confusion, not necessarily anger towards anyone else but just frustration at my lack of clarity, sadness, torn and guilt. I think tonight I have let go of all of that. Or at least realized I want to let go of all those emotions. I think it is time to accept that for a long time now, I kept hiding behind people. I started adopting other people's ways of thinking and opinions and started expressing them as mine, a sort of plagiarism in life. While I just stepped out of hiding behind one person, another has come in waiting to be let in. But I want a pause. I think it is high time I stop hiding behind other people. You know, many times I have heard "be selfish" and I myself have said that many times, but saying it and doing it are two entirely different things. Being selfish, being guilt free, being free, unattached and at times alone. Tonight, as I write this I want to be at that stage. For a change now, I think it is time to think of just me, not me and anyone else, just plain old me.

I think in trying to be honest with others, I stopped being honest with myself. That's a point of trouble. I want to feel what I feel without feeling guilty about it, I want to do what I do without having to explain or justify my actions or inactions. I have come to realize that yes, I have made many mistakes in my so short life so far. But I don't regret them. I have done what I have felt like doing in the moment. Sometimes doing that has worked in my favour and sometimes it has ended up badly or not in my favour. But I don't regret my actions. The catch is though, in this not-regretting-anything business, is taking responsibility of the consequences of my actions. To take responsibility and to learn from my mistakes. That's a skill that can take a lifetime, but at least I realize I need to learn it.

So what have I learnt now? I have just started feeling this sensation of focusing on just me. I have learnt and seen what happens when "I" gets lost in a "we" and I have seen that sometimes you need a strong kick in the ass to start seeing yourself again. I have learnt it is hard to be completely honest with yourself, mostly because sometimes you don't want to see your dark selfish side, you don't want to believe that you as an individual have the capability and the capacity to hurt another person. But the truth is, we all do and we all have at some point or other have hurt someone dear and close to us. Maybe the sooner we accept this, the easier things become in terms of accepting our flaws and failures, taking responsibility and living for ourselves rather than anyone else. I have also learnt the importance of dreams. If you have been following my blog, you willl understand that I see horrible dreams. Why? Perhaps I was too scared to see something good for myself. Many times we consider ourselves undeserving or unworthy of the love and attention we get. I do so as a defense mechanism so that the love and attention does not go to my head and make me cocky. But that defense also blocks out the good dreams. I want to start dreaming good things again.

But that requires a change in my thinking. A complete change. Not of what if's and but's, but of certainty and strenght. I will not be afraid to see happy dreams. Whether my dreams turn into a reality or not, I do not know. But perhaps the point is not that. Maybe the point is in dreaming itself. Having the courage and the strenght to see and visualize something just for me, something that I can close my eyes and I can feel I have achieved my dreams. Earlier, I kept looking everywhere, outside and inside ofme for clarity. But the thing is, clarity was always there within me. But I had muted its voice. Perhaps of fear of being alone, of hurting someone else, of guilt or whatever. But the voice of clarity was there all along. It's just that I didn't pay attention to it because my heart and mind were muffled by everyone else's voices. Now those voices have ceased, or I have pushed them away. It is time to find and listen to my own voice and I am happy to be there, am at peace with that.

Wedding and bday pics

Hi all,

As promised, just uploaded a whole bunch of pics on Picassa from the wedding and my brief trip to Ahmedabad again.

Here is the link: http://picasaweb.google.com/sharma.richa41/DropBox?authkey=hgBCTUY0u6Y#

I am kind of feeling blah right now. My work has stalled considerably, I am carrying a flu since more than 2 weeks now and my mind just wants to shut down. Perhaps I will do that for a while now.

So will keep this entry short. Hope you are all well, and keep in touch!

Love

Sickness, weddings and lethargy

Hi all,

Writing after a week now. I was sick earlier last week and literally slept for at least 30 something hours in 2 days. On Friday night, I took a bus from Keshod and went to Ahmedabad from where I had to catch a flight to Delhi at 10.20 am. I went to a small city called Faridabad (near Delhi) to attend my cousin sister's wedding. Disclaimer now: I do have pics but will be posting them up by the end of the week on Picasso, so stay posted! The wedding was good fun. But I think more than anything related to the wedding itself, I really just appreciated spending time with my cousin sis and brother as well as my parents whom I was seeing after 2 months. There are parts of an Indian wedding that are really quite sweet and fun, but to be honest, most of the rest I find quite tedious. I have seen 4 Indian weddings now in quite a bit of detail now and I feel like everybody just ends up being exhausted, the bride and groom and all the family members or the organization party. I think this exhaustion definetely refers to the physical exhuastion itself, but also the mental and emotional exhaustion that comes from looking after everyone's needs, trying to please people and making sure people are satisfied. I perhaps am not articulating this as well as I can. Nonetheless, the more Indian weddings I attend, the more convinced I get not to have one for myself. It's too much. I do have an image of what kind of wedding would be fun to have, but I won't get into the details now. All I can say is, keep it short, sweet and simple, just like me :P (haw haw haw, I know, pj).

On a different note, my parents are coming to Ahmedabad for a few days later on this week, so will be making another extremely short trip to Abad. I have been travelling a lot recently, and am actually pretty fine with it. The only problem is I usually end up getting a little sick. It's just this stupid cold/flu that caught a hold of me last week quite badly, and hasn't let go ever since. So in general, I am in a pretty lethargic mood, just feel like lying around and reading a novel. I probably will do that soon enough.

For those of you who would understand, I suddenly wish I was sitting in Mr.Hill's class just listening and gorging over English literature and critizing it ovr the bullshit meter. For those unaware, mr. Hill was my English teacher in highschool and my bigggessstttt crush over those 5 years :p AAhhh...I am thinking now is the time to lie down, have a novel in hand, and dream about Mr. Hill's room no.14 talking about English literature and life. Lovely eh?

Love

Daman

Hi all,

Last week I had gone to a port city called Daman with my uncle and his family. It was a pretty nice trip (albeit we didn't exactly catch a lot of sleep). The thing is, Gujarat is a dry state = consumption of alcohol is banned. Of course, it has a very strong illegal presence throughout the state. Nonetheless, you won't find any drunkard on the street. However, Daman is not within Gujarat and so all the Gujaratis rush over to Daman and other such places every chance they get to drink up. So did we ;) (Just kidding). We went there to see the beaches, the world's second largest dam that falls on the way to Daman (Sardar Sarovar Dam), and just relax. There are two Daman, a small Daman and a big Daman. Small Daman is the commercial area with the tonnes of restaurants and tourists and markets. Big Daman is the residential area that has beautiful old architecture and is peaceful, clean and very green. I don't have pics to show you the comparison between the two. Nonetheless, I definitely enjoyed Big Daman (Mota daman) a lot more than small daman (Nani daman). The food also was amazing. If you don't remember, let me remind you that getting non-vegetarian food in Keshod is difficult, especially in the area where I live in as the neighborhood is for the Patel caste, who do not even say the word "egg" out loud. So of course, when I went to Daman we pigged out on all the tandoori fish we could get hold of. Every meal consisted of chicken and fish and it was absolutely worth it. Tandoori fish is something I can keep eating again and again and again. I think it's even better than tandoori chicken. Anyway, I had a good time over those 3 days and I do have the pics, (see the link below). Btw, apologies for the unorganized nature of the pics now. It's a real hassle to upload pics on my slow connection, so I am just dumping them all in one folder on Picassa. I am sure you can still make sense of them.

I am ready to leave for Delhi again tomorrow for my cousin's wedding. I will be gone for a few days, but will be back with a few more stories and a few more pics. Till then take care.

Love

Link to pics: http://picasaweb.google.ca/sharma.richa41/DropBox?authkey=hgBCTUY0u6Y#

As always let me know if you can't open it.

Dreams

I have been an avid dreamer for years now. Perhaps it was after 11th that I really started seeing vivid dreams. I remember the first just dream I saw was seeing my own funeral. My body was being cremated and my soul or whatever you want to call it was floating above it watching the procession. Since then death has been a very recurring theme in my dream. Some of the more memorable death related dream has been that my hands have been chopped off, that I am eating ashes of the dead with a Muslim priest sitting beside me at the Pyramid in front of the MacLaurin building at the UVic campus. In my darkest moments, I see a woman dressed in black, with wild hair and a tilak made of ashes on her forehead. She has blood shot red eyes and she just stares at me, trying to intimidate me and scare me. In times of greatest distress, she comes and stays. Sometimes comes and lies down beside me. But the thing is, she ceases to make me afraid. If and when she comes, I tell her she is just a figment of my imagination, all my stress and darkest thoughts manifested in this one black ball of a witch, who is there because I have created her. Sometimes if I look at her face closely enough, she resembles me. And that reminds me, I have created this fear.
I am not sure why but I cannot remember the last time when I truly saw a happy dream. Throughout my years at UVic, these dreams got more vivid, sometimes more scarier, more absurd and at times I couldn’t make any sense of them. People tell me that these dreams might be a result of hiding something in yourself. Not speaking up about things that I need to speak about. Perhaps. Some tell me to not pay attention to these dreams, just let them be. But the thing is, I think my dreams are a way for my mind to show me clarity. To indicate things that I cannot see and make sense of consciously. Nightmarish and ghastly they maybe, but they are mine. At times I cannot wait to get up and sometimes I run in the dream and force myself to wake up. At other times, I am just an observer in my dream, not taking any action, but just being and seeing and letting things happen to me. Perhaps the one place where my dreams irritate me is when I start seeing these ghastly things about other people, those around me. That is when I feel helpless. My dreams can do things to me and I am ok with that. But I don’t understand why they do those things to my close ones. Sometimes they act as a premonition. I saw a terrible dream about a friend, but two days later, I received a positive and encouraging email from her telling me to keep going. But why did I have to see a bad dream about her? I don’t know. People tell me don’t let your dreams affect you like they do. But why should I not? In fact I do. I cannot reject and run away from these dreams. As I said, they are mine. And I think they are a way for my screwed up and perpetually confused mind to tell me things I otherwise don’t understand. A few years ago, I saw a horrifying dream about cannibalism, a baby was being weighed like some form of a meat at a butcher shop for sale, I went in a basement and it was filled with human carcasses hung upside down, bloody and some chopped, ready to be consumed for gluttony. I stopped eating meat for 2 years after that dream. Sometimes I wonder till when these dreams will follow me. Sometimes I wonder when will I see that perfect happy dream that makes you wake up with a smile or not wake up at all but just keep dreaming and stay in your dreamland. Or if that will come at all.

Happy Diwali!

So I finally celebrated my first Diwali in Ahmedabad in 10 years! It was quite the experience. The night before Diwali I spent at Komal’s house where her mom was busy making Diwali snacks till literally 2 in the morning. We three were seating in the kitchen, she was cooking and Komal was helping her as well as putting mehndi on my hands. After that, Komal and I were up til 4 am, talking away about things you don’t need to know ;). Nonetheless, the next morning I was up by 9 am and reached at my uncle’s place where we got ready and then went over to my aunt’s house. There we ate and ate and ate pani puri and stuffed myself to the brim. Once I got home, I needed to do some packing and then at 4 pm, I went out with Mervyn (one of my supervisors in Keshod, he was also in Ahmedabad celebrating Diwali with his family). So then another round of food eating starting, and holy jeebus, 2 cups of ice cream, vada pau (this potato sandwich thing) and a very tall soda type drink in Barista. It was fun, we had a good chat and got to roam around a few streets of Ahmedabad that I had never been on before and a few places that I have had interesting experiences at. Nonetheless, upon my return, got changed for the third or fourth time in the day, had dinner again!, and sat for the Diwali pooja prayer and then went over to another uncle-aunt’s house where we all lit some firecrackers. We didn’t blow any bombs, but we played with rockets, anar, chakri and fulljari. Once again, for those not familiar with these words, these are basically pretty looking firecrackers, just google it you might get a sample of what it is. OHHH, and I forgot to mention, but during diwalis, we light up the entire house with light. We use diyas- little clay pots, put oil in them and then soak a cotton strand in the oil and light that. It looks beautiful. Along with the diyas, my cousin and I made rangoli. Rangoli is basically any design made out of power colours and you create these during Diwali to decorate your house. They can be made on the floor. The pic attached shows what Rohan and I created together. This was the first time for both of us and it was fun! We were pretty slow at it, took us about 2 hours to make this, but still it was worthwhile. Btw, I wish I could say that the design was a creation of our imaginations, but no, it’s actually made with the help of a stencil. But we still filled in the colour ourselves!!
After the fireworks, we drove around the city a bit and went for some roadside coffee. The entire city is lit up during this time, people want to have fun. What’s really amazing though is the fireworks. I didn’t know whether to be in awe of them or be scared of them. Well, I was both. Awe because there is such a large variety and there are fireworks going on across the entire city and the sky is literally lit up any direction you see. Scared because some people are ridiculously stupid in how they want to enjoy the fireworks. Many people would light up little mini bombs in the middle of the street where cars, cows, and two-wheelers (bikes/scooters) are going by. Many times people light a bomb in their hand and just chuck it. Other times, people go in the middle of the road and set up an entire box load of those big fireworks (like the ones we see during the firework festival in August) and just set them off. In a few buildings across from us, we could see that a group of people were standing on the terrace, lighting hand rockets and just chucking them downwards towards the road, towards moving vehicles and people. Forget being on a two-wheeler, even driving in a car is adsljfasldjfldsjfsdfds. You better be a skilled driver and know your fireworks to be able to tell when something is lit or not, be ready to swerve your car at the last moment, just really really tricky. Anyway, my night ended at 1.30 am with the balcony door open and the sounds and lights of fireworks enveloping my room. I woke up really early the next morning, around 6.00 am, again to the sounds and lights of fireworks because it is new years day. On new years day, people actually started to light the fireworks at 4 am. So imagine you are sleeping and waking to the sounds and lights of fireworks in the style of the August fireworks in Vancouver. Except, instead of one small boat lighting up some firecrackers for 2 hours, imagine, thousands and thousands of people lighting up the entire city sky for an entire night (and many nights before it too) with different styles of fireworks. Hadn’t experienced that in a while, but glad I did now. In any case, happy belated Diwali and hope yours went well if you celebrate it and in case you don’t hope you had a good Oct 28.
Love

PS: LInk to my pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/sharma.richa41/DropBox?authkey=hgBCTUY0u6Y#5262634714816582018

let me know if you can't open it ok?

Love again

Ahmedabad

Hi all,

Just reached Ahmedabad this morning at 4.00. Happy to be here during the time of Diwali, finally celebrating it in India after 10 years!! Hope it will be a good one. My train journey was actually really nice. Upon the suggestion of a friend and his love for that particular seat, I thought, sure why not, I took up the lower bunk seat on the side. Now for those not familiar with what the inside of a Indian railway coach looks like, I tried to find some google images for that, but couldnt see annything that would describe this adequately. Anyway, these seats are generally smaller in lenght and a bunk is made when two sitting seats fold together. So everyone was saying those will be uncomfy, but actually it was the most comfy seat that I found so far. And ridiculously, there was more than enough space left both above my head and below my feet. (generally people are not able to stretch out in these seats coz they are short in length, but courtesy my small height, this was not an issue for me). Nonetheless, having a really comfy seat, the fresh wind outside and the stars in the countryside with awesome music in my ipod = a very comfy train ride. And the thing is, when you are lying down, the train shakes you so much, you are literally moving sideways. I was up till 2.40 (making someone else go to sleep) and I caught a nap for an hour or so and then I was up as the train arrived at Ahmedabad junction at 4.00 am.

I am finding I really enjoy the wind here. It is not chilly like the wind there (canada). The wind here is cool and pleasant, something you actually want to enjoy. I have also been seeing a few falling stars in the sky. One when I went to Somnath and the other one yesterday. People say that when you see a falling star, you should make a wish. Well, I did make a wish at Somnath (and no, it hasn't come true yet, when it does I will let you know) but yesterday when I saw that falling star, didn't know what to wish for. I have what I want and what I need. I have choices and options and work, and food, and freedom and water, and time (at the moment mostly for myself), family and friends. Didn't know what else to wish for, so I just watched it fall across the sky and that was beautiful enough in itself.

I am glad to be back in Ahmedabad. Unlike my last trip where I had a few things planned, things I wanted to get done, I have left this trip open-ended. I will take what comes my way, but I am certain about one thing: GOOD FOOD!!!!

I have been trying to post up pics on blog, but it's not working. Will keep trying, but if it doesn't work, then I will figure out another sight for you to access my pics. Till then, hope you are all well. I have been hearing back from a few of you through emails and that has been really great. So keep emailing and keep in touch. Till then,

Love