Life… is all about the choices we make

We are all drowned in the hustle-bustle around us that we don’t have time for ourselves, forget family and friends… In today’s competitive world, most of us want to be the independent working professional and make sure that we are not left behind in the rat race!! We are all in the game… a game of name and fame!! We all want a better house, a bigger car, a fatter salary and eventually a better life than our relatives & friends… these are the benchmarks in our lives since ever!! Since the time we are born… we keep comparing… comparing ourselves with all that we have and what more could we have…

When we were kids we wanted better toys… when we started going to school, we wanted better books, lunch, etc… when we were adolescents we wanted better pocket-money, clothes etc… When we started going to college, we wanted better and more friends, privacy, freedom… when we started working, we wanted a better designation and salary… when we got married, we wanted better husband and in-laws, when we got kids, we wanted them to be better than anybody else’s kids, to be the best in academics etc… all this while we kept struggling to give a better life to our families, to make sure that they get the best of both the worlds! Now when we have grown old, here, we are sitting all alone and wondering what do we have better today?

But have we ever thought about what all have we left behind in search of a better tomorrow… the answer is TODAY!!! At the cost of our family & friends do we win the game of name & fame!! It is all about the choices we make in life… do we choose to sit back and relax for a while and spend some quality time with the family? Or we choose to continue being a part of the great gamble called life!! Do we enjoy our present or we keep running behind our unknown and unforeseen future? Do we take time to enjoy the little things in life? Are we there with the family in their tough times, to support them? Do we enjoy innocence & laughter of our kids? Do we reach out to our old parents and make them happy by our little gestures of love & care? Do we keep in touch with our old friends whom we have lost somewhere on the way to success? Err… I am not looking for any answers here… all we need to do is a little bit of soul searching… how true are we to ourselves and to the people around us whom we love the most…

This is the irony of life!! Generations after generations have been committing the same mistake, not a mistake but a huge blunder and by the time realization comes, it’s too late!! We run through life and not live life the way we want to and one day we realize that life itself has outlived us!!

Life goes on… work goes on... and it will always go on... but precious are little moments which will never come back in life... we live them only once… only once… in a lifetime!

There is only one life and we get to live it only once!! It's a call all of us have to keep taking... time and again... a choice that we have to make...

So have you made the right choice today?

Reflection...

There are lots of incidents or episodes that happen in life out of which there are a very few that leave a mark on your life changing you in some or the other way… for either the good or bad… Such instances make me the person I am today…

"It is by chance that we met, by choice that we became friends."

It all started on a Saturday morning when I tried reaching him (Bunty) on his mobile a couple of times for over 2 hours, maybe more than that, to find out if everything was going on well at the office even though I was angry with him, and that he did not face any problem in whatsoever it may be. But to my great dismay I was unable to reach him even after trying incessantly for more than 2 hours as I got only one message that “this mobile is switched off”. In those hours, various thoughts started coming to my mind out of which some were pleasant and some were not. And the unpleasant thoughts carry you into some other world...

With all the turmoil going on in my mind, I then decided to call up his sis and did so at around 12:30 pm to find out what had gone wrong, and she mentioned that he was running fever that morning to which my instant reaction was that he could have called and asked me to go to the office instead of him going in that feverish condition. And then he happened to call up his sis on the other line at that very moment itself and I got to know the status of the work after which I immediately hung up the phone but still with lot of questions in my mind which were still answered… which in turn lead to more and more questions….I was at that point of time in the market doing some routine grocery shopping for the week and at that time as well my mind was not at peace as I did not have the answer to so many questions which were erupting in my mind like a volcano but somehow I did shop at the same time missing out on more that half of the things which I could not remember….

I could not stop thinking about the fact that he (Bunty) could not have given me a call and I could have gone to the office to do that extra share of work…after all I was just a phone call away. Is he that angry with me…as I have not been speaking to him for the last 4 days; without any fault of mine? That statement of his which he made 4 days back had pricked me to the core as I thought of him to be my best friend and not a colleague of all the people I work with at the office. He said “If I had been in America, I would have sued you for doing this”. Those words pierced my ears first and then straight went to the heart. The fact that he kept money above all the relationships in the world… even friendship... hurt me somewhere deep inside. It lead to a long silence of 4 days… which seemed like ages…I don’t whether that silence was comfortable to both of us… but I felt that I was torturing myself by not talking to him all these days…I can go the extent of describing as to how I felt with each passing day as to how the situation went on to become worse day by day!! But all I can say in a line is that I felt that I did “not live” for 4 days…And he did not even bother to ask or feel why his friend was so angry at him. Probably he never considered me one… may be that is the way he is but this way he could loose many good friends in his life as true friends are hard to find and even harder to retrace once they are lost…

I kept cursing myself the whole day that if I was not angry with him all these days, maybe he (Bunty) would have given me a call, he could have taken some rest at home and I could have gone to the office. But then he did not just because of my stupid anger on him… with all these thoughts in my mind which were troubling me and were ruining my day, I tried calling him in the afternoon sometime 3:30 to find out how he was doing and also to find out why he did not give me a call. But to my great dismay, he disconnected the call after two rings which made me feel even more miserable and antagonized. I got even more upset at myself, cursing myself that I made him so angry at him but not talking to myself that he does not even want to talk to me, he did not even answer my call. With a hoard of questions and thoughts that kept coming to my mind, I kept thinking about him the whole day… and surprisingly the thoughts that came to my mind were very different from what I had thought…

Bunty as I know him, I thought I would visualize the not so good side but to my surprise I saw the other side of it…I saw myself thinking that… It is a different matter that we keep quarrelling with each other over very little things but this is the beauty of friendship and we still are the best of friends, and I guess we will always be. In spite of whatever, I still care for him; I really do as always… the way I used to. I still like him for the person he is, the way he is. I have been touched by all the little things he did for me… even if it is getting a cup of tea for me… or giving me a chewing gum or even thinking about me… and there is lot more that I can go on and on narrating… I always miss him when he is not around, I missed him when he went to Chennai for some official work; when he was away from office for a conference; when he went for office cricket team practice… the fact that I remembered all the times when he was not around was in itself a testimony that I still like him and would want him to be my friend all my life and would want to be his friend all my life… I still like him… unconditionally… irrespective of the kind of person he is…

He is this silent & sweet person yet very jovial & interesting at times with a great sense of humor but then this sense of humor at times does hurt the feelings of some one very sensitive like me. But then if I gave it some more thought; I felt or realized that guys are not so sensitive towards most of the things in life. This thought probably gave me some solace and I learnt to live with the fact that this is the way he is… and true friends accept each other the way they are, with each other’s positive & negative qualities… Maybe he would some day realize that he had a friend sitting next to him rather than just a colleague, who was a little different from all the others in a way…just the way the saying goes “you don’t realize the value of something until it is lost”….

With all the thoughts that filled up my mind throughout the day and the introspection that I got gradually indulged into, completing a few tasks also for the day and closing my day with dinner which I half-heartedly had after a day’s fasting as family was pressurizing me to have, I sat down on the bed to watch TV and all of a sudden my mobile rang at 9:50 in the night, and the moment I picked it up, to my surprise I saw on the display screen… “Bunty calling” and within that second my anger was off my nose and some thousands of questions like sea waves came to my mind with a big smile on my face.

Yes, I wanted to speak to him so badly, yes, I wanted to find out how he was keeping, yes I wanted to tell him that I was sorry for being angry at him even though it was his fault, yes I wanted to ask him why he disconnected my call, yes, I wanted to ask him was he angry with me; And yes, all my questions got answered within that 2-3 minutes talk we had. I was extremely happy to know that he was not angry with me, even happier to know that he did not have high fever. His call put an end to all the anxiety and sadness I was surrounded with the whole day… At last my folks could see me happy, smiling & jumping around all over the place and then we went for a long drive…

I still value his words, thoughts, views & opinion. I still cherish him and would always do till I am alive… because… Bunty

“A part of you has grown in me;

Together forever we shall be.

Never apart;

May be in distance but never in heart”

Bubbly

Broken Hearts...

It is because of Sonia that Vikas & Priya got separated… their love though so true… died!!!


Vikas was Sonia’s fiancé but fell in love with my friend Priya who was working with Vikas in the same organization…


It is just because of Sonia, her silly doubts and her orthodox thinking that my friend Priya lost a good friend like Vikas and vice versa. It has been over 6 months that they spoke or mailed each other. If her beau had to severe his ties this way, why did he extend this relationship to such a great extent…?


He was the one to initiate everything and not her: having lunch with her (in the same plate) and sharing chocolates with her everyday, drinking coffee (from her cup), calling her up both at office and home, singing for her over the phone, talking to her on msn, asking her out for movies, going out with her to the market, accepting gifts from her and vice versa, calling her by sweet nicknames, asking her for various favours both personal and professional, sending her e-cards and personal mails, confessing all the time how much he loves her, giving her compliments, spending most of the time together…


He is doing the same even now. Beware!!!


If all this is not love then what is it? He has done this in the past, he did it with someone else (which she is not aware of) then he did this to my friend and he might be doing it with someone else too, you never know. What is the guarantee? She can’t be so foolish that she can’t even judge after so much has happened or she doesn’t want to accept the reality?


Sonia thinks that Vikas loves her - had her love been so strong, he would have never drifted away from you. He never ever thought about her even once during all those months she was away from him and she says that he loves her.


It’s good to live in this misconception. It’s Sonia’s bad luck that she got such a fiancé who is such a big flirt and cheat; who not only broke her trust but also played with her feelings. She can continue to live in this misunderstanding, for the rest of her life, that he loves her. Her marriage which is yet to happen would only be compromise and nothing more!! She can carry the burden of this untrue and dead relationship all her life; it’s her wish.


It’s better that she gets out of their way and let those two be friends again. It’s just because of her that he broke off, since he fears her; otherwise this friendship would have never come to an end… I bet. My friend is not to be blamed for whatever happened since she was innocent. She could not judge him but now I can’t see her suffering like this. She has become like a living “dead” body as she is really shocked by his cold and rude behaviour.


He has not kept in touch since she left Bangalore. If something happens to her nobody else but both of them will be held responsible for that….

Lost Love...

Tomorrow, 1st March 2009, would make exactly two months since we spoke… I still remember that sunny afternoon of 1st January 2009, when you had called up in the midst of your sleep and were curious to know whether I had reached home safely after the party that night… There was so much of care, concern, warmth and love in that voice of yours which made me feel simply so nice and special and cared for…


But since then till today, I have completely lost that voice, also that person, not only ths much but lost a very good friend who was and will always be close to me and has a very special in my life… my dearest… “….”… as I call him… Tears roll down my eyes as I think about this painful and antagonizing journey of just two months… which seems like a lifetime…!!!


Today, we have reached a point where we don’t talk, we don’t chat nor do we sms to the extent that you have also deleted me from your Friends list on social networking sites… I don’t know why this happened and till today I am trying to figure out why? What was the reason? We were so close till about two months back and today we are miles apart and this distance seems to be unbridgeable… Time and again the questions that keep coming to my mind are like; Are you in some kind of a problem? It could be personal, financial, office stuff, business not working out…??? Or is it that something went wrong on my part? At least tell me what wrong have I done so that I don’t keep feeling guilty all the time… The thought of we being apart keeps killing me day by day… And there will be a day when I would reach a point where I would realize that I am just breathing and not living… as I stopped living long back…!!!


I tried asking you so many times but you did not want to keep contact or you simply would not reply…Once I did manage to put up this question to you on chat and got a reply like “Nothing like that. It’s just that, I am to myself”… Those words are still ringing in my ears and that statement still lingering in my mind because I did not understand the underlying meaning behind it…


I am willing to do anything in this world that would make this relationship work once again like before but only if I knew what the problem was? I wish you told me my fault, life would have become a little easier, I would have at least come out of my guilt feeling… I thought we understood each other so perfectly… But maybe you never understood me, my feelings or my friendship… I cared for you and loved you unconditionally… and would continue to do so… I sincerely wish that I get you back one day… Whether you remember me or not, I will always remember you and keep wishing you and your family well… You will always be there in my good wishes and prayers… Wishing you and your family lots of love, happiness, joy, peace, prosperity & success in life…


Thoughts of you have always left a warm “smile” on my face but today it only brings “tears” in my eyes…


Last few words… from ME to YOU…
“I never stopped loving you; I just stopped showing it…”