Uncertainty of life!

On my way home from my son's school, I pass this "Radiation and Oncology" department of a hospital. Somehow, it always gives me the jitters when I see this. I see it everyday and everyday, a shiver seems to run down my spine . So, one day , I thought to myself- "Why do I have this strange feeling?"
Immediately as if in answer to my question, a gush of thoughts flooded my mind about how uncertain life is, how good people always seem to leave this earth fast, how bubbly and enjoyable people get hit with the unavoidable truth of life- death.
Memories started flowing in of a friend who nature had taken away. She was a very jovial person who loved life, lived life and enjoyed life!
She loved to dress up and loved style and fashion. She loved to travel, meet with friends and have fun! She was a real fun-loving person you would call. To supplement her love for life, was her husband He was a person who would keep you laughing with his witty remarks. One fine day, they invited us to a Gurudwara service that they were throwing. The obvious question that arose in our minds were - "What was the occasion?" He replied saying - "It is to commemorate her 4 yrs of remission of Leukemia" It was as if we struck by a thunder. We never could imagine that this sweet girl was suffering from such a dreadful disease. And to top it all they had masked their sadness so well with smiles and laughter. If you saw this couple, I am sure you would envy them and think that they were having all the fun of the world. Now it seemed to make sense to me why he was always extremely meticulous to meet all her wishes. He loved her as if there was no tomorrow. Sometimes, I envied her. Now everything seemed to fall into place.
Her fifth yr in remission passed. The doctors had told her that if 5 yrs passed by in remission , she would be fine for the rest of her life. We had moved from that place around this time and life has it, we had contact with them over the phone and e-mails. Suddenly, there seemed to be a silence from their side and then lo ! one fine day, we get an e-mail that her leukemia had come back and she needed a bone marrow transplant. Her sibling came all the way from India only to find out that she was not a match. Drives started and people started flowing in. To her good luck, they found a match and the doctors decided on the marrow transplant. The marrow transplant seemed to have gone well. But the fourth day had seomthing else in store for her. She started getting a fever and she seemed to be getting weaker. Her immune system was not responding well. So she had to stay in the hospital for a month or two. Imagining him trying to balance his work, life and everything made me really think about life hard. He shut off much contact. Phone calls from him started fading. E-mails withered. I could imagine the phase he was going through. He still tried to keep up his cheer. He maintained a webpage where he would post updates about her. I would religiously go and look for any updates about her. Then as time passed by, the updates stopped. Seemed like things were returning to normal for them. They had bought a house and it seemed like life was starting to be fair to them. A couple of years passed by with no much news from them. So, a few weeks back, I suddenly for no reason gave a search in google for them and found a webpage in her memoriam- She had passed away in jan 2005! I could not believe it! Well, practically all of us knew that her years were counted but you do not want to accept the hard reality!
When I read her obituary, I started thinking to myself- is it worth fighting for petty reasons, is it not more worth being loved and loving, being nice to people around you. Life is just a passing dream. It will soon end- who knows when . I reminded myself - Enjoy life while it lasts , for the flame will soon extinguish!
Everyday, when I pass the Oncology department, somehow I am always reminded of the nice things that we should be thankful for in life, little pleasures that bring a smile to our face, the no-biggies that we always tend to overlook!

Haata , Sawaan ka ghata!!!

So I have been having this strange feeling or emotion whatever you call it where you feel somewhere, something is not going right. You try to set it right only to have been hurt more.
You try to be nice to people only to be snapped at.
You try to do things which you think will make them feel good but unh-unh . For them it is just normal or they do not show that they are happy. So the next question is - what do you do in such situations? Think your brains out, cry your heart out. No, no aint gonna work:) Sometimes, even talking it out makes it worse. It makes you a villain , as if "Things are Ok with me, why are you making it an issue" . A strange feeling, a mixed emotion of anger, sadness, trying to mend things. Really tires you out.
In these situations , I try to remember a friend who had once told me that whenever you end up in such crisis, give your head a jerk and say to yourself " Haata , Sawaan ka ghata. They are not worht it!".
Believe me..you will smile to yourself !

This afternoon reminds me of something- something from my childhood that I cannot exactly tell you. I am having a "DejaVu" - as if I have lived this afternoon earlier in my life.

Is it because the air of puja is around?Thinking back, maybe yes- it is the DURGA PUJA air that seems so familiar. Reminds me of my childhood days and college days when we would go collecting the "Siuli" flowers and make it into garlands. Among friends and cousins, we would compare who had the longest garland. We would save the garland as long as we could which most times would be a day . I neither get any "Siuli" flowers here to make garlands nor those early mornings Birendra-Bhadra mahalaya. Somehow , I seem to miss these a lot . It has been around 9 yrs since I have been out of my country and I have got used to the weekend pujas, the ashtami anjali - though it is not ashtami .

I wishfully think if ever I can go back to the childhood days - only to be awakened from my reverie by a bell ringing. I hear the postman saying aloud- "You have a mail and I need your signature!"

On India's winning the 20/20 world cup.....

My mail box was kind of flooded with e-mails of all kinds on India's 20/20 world cup championship. One of them actually struck me ... It was in my orkut scrap book- and it said "Proud to be an Indian" and then there was this clip which showed India's 3 penalty balls against Pakistan.
It was really nice... But hey are we not proud to be Indians anyways...even if India loses the world cup. Is it only the world cup that we are proud about and not all the other lovely things that India has offered us! If India would have lost , I am sure there would have been mails around criticising India playing badly and so on. Should we still not be proud of our motherland even if India lost the world cup?

School starts!

Yesterday was the day when the school re-opened for FUSD. My son started Kindergarten yesterday. It was such a mixed feeling. All these years , I kept on hearing from moms that "moms go through a separation anxiety when kids start kindergarten" . All these years I used to think ..how can moms face this anxiety. When it came upon me yesterday, I knew what the feeling was! It was so strange- a mixed feeling - a feeling of apprehension whether my son would be OK at school, whether he would do good. I know my son- He is really really outgoing much more outgoing than the average kid. With adjustments, he has the least problem. He is a very friendly kid (to the extent that every time we go to the park , he has a new friend).He has been going to day-care and preschool since his toddler years. It was just that he was officially starting school. Even after knowing all of these, all different kinds of feeling rushed through my veins. It was then that understood what they say when they use the term "Parents-separation-anxiety"
When I went to pick him up, he was really happy and he had had a very good day. The grin on his face told me all. He narrated stories of his school and based on that I had to submit a paper to his teacher- My first day at school.

I reminisced the memories of my first day at school. It is still so fresh - I can still smell the jasmine that grew near my class. I can still smell the fragrance my teacher used.
I can still feel the warmth of my tears on my cheeks when I saw my dad leaving me in the class. I can still feel the sadness that I felt after I came back from school and I cried to myself ashamed that I would let myself out in front of my parents, worried that they would think I was not happy .
When I questioned my son - " What did you do today?" The non-stop rush of answers and the excitement in his face made me really happy. I was happy that he was happy!

Pledge to Myself!

I have been pretty bad about maintaining my other blog. After google changed it's blogsite, I had created a new blogsite but have not got to posting a blog. Imagine!!!!
So, I thought it would not be a bad idea to start afresh.
Well, I really will try hard this time to be more regular in my ramblings.