How to save a life.

After Derek died, Grey’s Anatomy fans, all over the world, hit the roof. They went ballistic over how their beloved creator Shonda Rhimes, so brutally uprooted McDreamy from Meredith’s life leaving fans with little or almost no time to process any of it.
I was one of those people. I cursed the creators over killing off, one of my favorite male protagonists, in a show. But what I had forgotten in the course of the last 11 seasons, was that the only protagonist the show ever had, was Meredith. So Derek or no Derek, Meredith will never cease being front-runner.
After I finished watching the final episode of this season, I felt something unexplainable. I felt this strange sense of calm. Seeing Meredith out there, attempting to get her life back on track after her husband’s untimely death, helped me realize the idea 'Life Moves On.'
I had never imagined myself as a person who would admit that a show saved her life but Grey’s Anatomy did.
Meredith and Derek had me convinced about the idea of true love and forever and all those things and the first thought I had when he died was “Wow! True love definitely doesn’t exist!” and it broke me a little because after all the effort I had taken in making myself reach this destination of less realist and more romantic, this death move was a road in the opposite direction.
The next two episodes changed that. 

So the fear I had when I realised that the person I love, might leave me like that someday, was replaced with this feeling that I will survive it, nevertheless, I will deal with it because my favourite character, has seen worse.

I began watching this show, for the surgeons and before I knew it, in all my relationships, I could see traces of the show. While I had friends criticizing the show for being dramatic, sexual and even annoying I couldn’t care less, because what Grey’s means to me, no person, life coach, counselor can ever be.

“People can be broken, sure,” Meredith says. “But any surgeon knows, what’s broken can be mended.”

These lines brought tears to my eyes because this line summed up the journey that I ended up taking with this show. I learned how to take my time to heal when I was hurt, I realized how I had to put myself out there, ask someone to pick me and choose me, and stay strong even if I wasn’t. It made me realize that being a career woman is just not wrong (Here is looking at you, Dr.Yang). It made me embrace my twistedness. It made me accept my dark side, my sort of emotional-less side, my inability of feeling emotions when people in my family died, but crazy tears when my mother’s friend died. It made me realize that I don’t have to be good, happy, and perfect at all times. I can be less shiny and happy than my college friend and that makes me no less of a person.

On a very personal note, Grey’s has made me feel comfortable in my own skin. Every time I struggle with feeling insecure, disappointed, self-doubt and these terrible feelings of self-loathing, I watch an episode, and it makes me feel less alone. Less scared of the overpowering sense of depression.

Thank you, Grey’s, for bringing me back to life on my dead days.
The 40-second dance party is always nothing short of magic.

Lessons I learned this week.

(Written on 3rd May)

My mother lost one of her college friends this Monday, in an avalanche on the Everest base camp, due to the earthquake in Nepal.

Though I had never met the lady, her death shook me, in ways I had never imagined.

I spent an entire day in an almost dazed state trying to absorb her death. Trying my best to move towards acceptance.

I shall not go into details about things her achievements but she was definitely someone who was living her life. Someone who was squeezing life out of each moment of her life. Maybe that is the reason why her death made such an astonishing impact on me. 

Kashmiris have a phrase ‘shamshan varag gasun’ which literally translated means the lessons you learn about the volatility and vulnerability of life, its nothingness are just more of a momentary realization which fade away as soon as one leaves the crematorium.

My plan, is to not let the lesson, its effect, leave me once I leave this crematorium, where not just her, but the numerous lives lost in the earthquake have been laid to rest.

The volatility of life, is a paradoxical concept, it reminds me that my existence is finite, but the potential for greatness in me, and each human being, is infinite.

Unfortunately, we keep forgetting this, and tend to lose ourselves in the monotony, drudgery of everyday life. I do not mean quit your job and go backpacking around the world, but if that is where your calling lies, do not let anything stop you. Take risks, be thankful for the opportunities, but do not spend one waking minute of your existence, wishing you were someone else or wishing you were somewhere else, If you find yourself doing either of the two, stop not till you find what makes you tick. Squeeze each drop of sensation, the feeling of being alive from your live.

Make the most of your limited time because dying with some vague, tingling sensation of fulfillment will/ must be much better than ending a life that you never lived in the first place.

As Charles Bukowski said, “find what you love and let it kill you.”

Nothingness of life, might seem abstractly, contrary to what I just asked of you (i.e absolute involvement in life) but it is almost in tandem with the same. It is more of the chalk that you use to draw the boundary around how involved you are in life. Perishability, holds true for every animate object.

These are things I never want to forget but as an envelope to this rather long letter of life lessons, what I learnt can be summed up rather concisely by this alteration to Carpe Diem. Seize the day, before it seizes you.

MH370 taught me.

As the mystery of the missing plain MH370 deepens, the only people whose absence (death probably) struck me really hard is of the two Iranians using the fake passports.
I don't, in any way, intend to sound insensitive towards the souls or the grief of the loved one's of the others aboard that unfortunate plane.
A chance reading of an article about the last status update by those two Iranians made me break down into convulsive sobs. (http://time.com/20592/mh370-nourmohammadi-iran-malaysia/)
It makes me miserable to think of the irony of the post which has the man saying no when asked are they ever coming back.
It makes me feel thankful for being blessed but more than gratitude there is a strong surge of guilt gripping my body and mind.
Guilty of living a life that they were running away for. Guilty of how having everything they must have spent nights yearning for and despite having all of this, complaining about the most minor elements of discord in my otherwise seemingly perfect life. Guilty of how despite, the younger one being as old as me, won't live to see a glorious future. Guilty of having been chosen to be blessed.
I have never really prayed for a stranger but this is the purest form of gratitude and askance of peace for their souls. For everybody who was there on that doomed plane. For their loved ones and anybody who has ever died before having a shot at life.

It has gotten me to a really poignant conclusion which is a fact that must've been hidden away from me owing to my absolute ignorance and disregard for all that is good and lovely in my world.
Life is the most precious gift.
Squandering it, should feel more devastating than ending it.

PS the painting attached, is my depiction of the above post, I'm not exactly good at it, but as one of my friends said, "All arts are about reflections. :)"

Repair Centre

A week into hostel life & I feel like there is a tenant in this personality.
A loner is hiding somewhere behind that excessively jolly visage.
I look at that face and something pierces me.
Something invisible & something painful.
That person is fake. Trying so hard to be THAT someone that they aren't.
Trying so hard so push life into dead situations.
Trying even harder to smile her way through things which she knows will not work.
It's like she has been given an appliance that won't work and she tries her best to hit that machine, throw it around make it work. But it won't.
It is like every situation in her life is like that appliance, refusing to work out.
I try to run a finger over that face. It feels cold. It is my face.

So I lament. Cry. Scream. Do all that I can to make it work.
Spend almost all my day in that exasperated situation.

But then I start writing.
My mind clears up.
"The clouds burst forth & it began raining".
That rain soothed the roughened edges of my mind.
Quenched that pained, thirsty side with an answer.
I had tried everything but this-

I put in new batteries into the appliance.

Is dreaming a crime?

I woke up this morning, with a feeling of absolute disarray.
Like as if my feet were stuck in quicksand & soft waves of water washed over the quicksand giving me hope to get out but actually pushing me further inside. Water was behaving like a villan with a visage which was the epitome of pretention.

And then back in reality someone yelled at me.
What started as a discussion cascaded into a verbal duel in a time span of less than a few minutes. Rather verbal attack. It was one-sided.

I was yelled at for being shallow.
For being a person who is superficial. For being a dreamer.
For dreaming of encompassing things that 'could always happen'. 
For dreaming of a better future.

Now since it was a verbal 'attack', I'm going to clear my stand through this blog post.

Is dreaming a crime?
No it isn't.
If Kekule wouldn't have dreamt we wouldn't have had the structure of aromatic compounds.
The base tune of the Beatles song 'Yesterday' came to Paul McCartney in a dream.
Now coming to day-dreaming.
It's a pivotal thing.
If you wouldn't day-dream, you wouldn't aspire. If you wouldn't aspire, you wouldn't implement. If you wouldn't implement, you would never achieve.

Now for me after step 2 in the above nothing really follows but I have a belief. A belief which tells me that there will be a day when I'll wake up in the morning and will be determined to achieve. That day when I'll start implementing.
And hopefully it won't be too late.

And I know one thing as each day passes, I get closer to THAT day. :)