Friday, January 14, 2011

CROSSING ROADS

If there is one thing I am absolutely terrified of, it is crossing a busy road. Ever since I can remember, I hated crossing the road. Growing up, I couldn’t cross a busy road without having someone actually drag me across. I am sure my younger brother can recall hundreds of instances where he has patiently waited for the traffic to completely stop until he dragged me across the road.
Things have changed since then and I no longer need somebody to hold my hand when I cross the road as I live in the city now and every other road is a busy road! But, I do admit when I am on my own, I take forever to cross the road if it’s a road with no traffic lights. If the road has traffic lights, I wait patiently until the signal turns from green to red and then run across the road like my life depends on reaching the other side in less than two seconds. Even though I know the signal stays red for a while, I am petrified that by some freak accident the signal will turn to green just as I start crossing the road and a car runs me over!!
I am only getting better and better at crossing roads the longer I stay in the city and even weave in and out of traffic once in a while, when I am feeling especially courageous. I am sure a day will come, not too long from now, when I will calmly walk across the road as the signal turns red, thoughts of the weather and other little nothings running through my head instead of wondering if a car is going to come shooting out of nowhere and take me down!!

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

POEM BY JOHN O'DONOHUE

I was reading Chris Guillebeau's blog,which I have been following pretty regularly for some time now and he posted the poem below by John O'Donohue which I absolutely love. This poem is such a beautiful one on travel. So, here goes:


Every time you leave home,
Another road takes you
Into a world you were never in.
New strangers on other paths await.
New places that have never seen you
Will startle a little at your entry.
Old places that know you well
Will pretend nothing
Changed since your last visit.
When you travel, you find yourself
Alone in a different way,
More attentive now
To the self you bring along,
Your more subtle eye watching
You abroad; and how what meets you
Touches that part of the heart
That lies low at home:
How you unexpectedly attune
To the timbre in some voice,
Opening in conversation
You want to take in
To where your longing
Has pressed hard enough
Inward, on some unsaid dark,
To create a crystal of insight
You could not have known
You needed
To illuminate
Your way.
When you travel,
A new silence
Goes with you,
And if you listen,
You will hear
What your heart would
Love to say.
A journey can become a sacred thing:
Make sure, before you go,
To take the time
To bless your going forth,
To free your heart of ballast
So that the compass of your soul
Might direct you toward
The territories of spirit
Where you will discover
More of your hidden life,
And the urgencies
That deserve to claim you.
May you travel in an awakened way,
Gathered wisely into your inner ground;
That you may not waste the invitations
Which wait along the way to transform you.
May you travel safely, arrive refreshed,
And live your time away to its fullest;
Return home more enriched, and free
To balance the gift of days which call you.
-John O’Donohue

COFFEE AND MY STARBUCKS MUG

I love coffee! It is that one thing that I will never say no to, even if I have had ten cups of coffee that day.
The funny thing is, I was never much of a coffee person, I drank coffee once in a while but didn’t care much for it. This changed when I went to college and discovered the wonders of an amazing cup of coffee. I went from not caring much about coffee to loving it with an intense passion. And my love for coffee has only grown in the past couple of years.
In college, my group of friends loved coffee as much as I did and we all loved sitting around and drinking cup after cup of coffee and did some serious bonding over it too. Many, many memories have been made over millions of cups of coffee during college.
A couple of years have passed since college but I still cannot do without a stipulated dose of caffeine a day. I end up getting headaches by evening, if I haven’t had even one cup of coffee that day (though my mother swears it’s psychological and has nothing to do with caffeine).   
Just about the time I started getting really addicted and even obsessed with coffee is when I realized that every movie that I watched had the actor picking up a mug of takeaway coffee from Starbucks on their way to work/meet friends or wherever else they were headed. And since I watch a lot of movies and tend to notice weird things in them like the coffee from Starbucks, I began this obsession of wanting to drink a nice hot mug of coffee from Starbucks one day (India doesn’t have a Starbucks, though I did hear they are planning to open one in Mumbai soon).
I think I may have mentioned this quirk of mine to my good friends, more than a few times and imagine my surprise when my friend who studies in London sent me a Starbucks coffee mug when she came down to India for the holidays. I knew she was sending me a package but didn’t know the mug was in there till I saw it, and I was thrilled! Sadly, the mug didn’t withstand all the travelling and the bottom broke by the time it reached me, but that didn’t make me any less excited. There I was standing in my living room, holding a Starbucks coffee mug in my hand and it was absolutely the next best thing to actually having a mug of coffee from there.
 I loved that my friend remembered the little things I told her about and actually did something as nice as send me that mug. So, the first time I drink a cup of coffee from Starbucks, I want to drink it with her since I also have to persuade her to buy me another mug from there so I can drink out of it every day!!
Coffee and friends- two of the many important things that make the world go around for me, obsessions and everything else aside. 

Thursday, January 6, 2011

ROMANTIC VENICE

I finally went to the theatre to watch ‘The Tourist’ yesterday. So much for my big plans of saving money, it just doesn’t seem to be happening. Anyway, I am writing not about my half-hearted attempts to try and save money but about how amazingly wonderful Venice looked in the movie.
Since as far back as I can remember all the romantic novels I read had something or the other to do with Venice. The protagonists either fell hopelessly in love with each other while in Venice or were jet-setting off to Venice on their romantic escapades or their honeymoons. Thinking of Venice always conjured up romantic images of gondolas (although I found out that they now use motorboats and the gondolas are used only by tourists), bridges and beautiful architecture.
The various movies set in Venice only increased my infatuation with the place and the latest movie to make me really want to visit Venice is ‘The Tourist’. The shots of Venice are so artistically beautiful that they make me drool! And the characters of Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie dont make matters any better by falling in love in Venice too. It just increases the romantic quotient of the place even more! 
Ever since I was little, Venice has always been on my list of places to visit, much before I developed the urge to see the world and experience its varied cultures.  I wish I get to visit this wonderful, beautiful, absolutely romantic city sometime soon.