Its always about the people and the city...

It can very well come across as a plan full of naivety, what we felt was all about audacity. We were after-all a bunch of dozen over-enthusiastic, highly qualified but under-skilled people travelling across the sea on a mission. We were not sure how and when we would be able to accomplish the task but I am sure none of us had any doubts. It is strange, as many people were involved- in front or working at the back and even the collective wisdom could not see beyond  the valor. And with all this, or rather despite all this, we did it. I think we could because we were simply building hope, and that needs more than just strong cement foundation. So it started after a massive earthquake hit Kathmandu early in 2015 and devastated the beautiful city irreparably. Amidst the efforts of world organizations to pour in help, VolunteerinUAE got involved too. I am a part of this wonderful organization and when they told that they wanted to send a team to Nepal to help build a medical center...

" But what do you exactly want to do? Have you given it a thought? Wanna stay like this or... ?" He too asked this and I honestly couldn't think of a response which would fit into the likes of his binary expectations. It was a long answer. I got muddled, wondering if it was really a long answer or was I falling prey to my tendency of over analyzing and over explaining... This is what I would have said and that is how I felt... The dimensions have changed. The question no more attracts an absolute answer. It is relative. I would say interstellar for that matter. The question is not just 'if' but 'when', 'who' and most importantly 'if at all' Let me try to explain. Have you even been on a hiking trip or for the sake of an example, in Indian context, a trip up to 'Vaishno Devi? (a religious shrine)' If I remember correct, it's a 14 km trip up the mountains. One can choose to walk the whole way or go on ...

“ I'd finally come to understand what it had been: a yearning for a way out, when actually what I had wanted to find was a way in. ” Let me mark a disclaimer of Spoiler because one, it is a reviewer's best practice and two, it makes me feel like a God. While I put the spoiler alert, I'd add that there is nothing anyone can write to spoil the experience of watching this movie. Wild is not really about a story. Wild is an experience, aptly taken from a real life memoir by Cheryl Strayed called  Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. The journey depicted in the movie is that of Cheryl which she undertook in 1995 by hiking over 1000 miles of Pacific Crest Trail. The trail's one end is US-Mexico border and other is on US-Canada. Cheryl took this journey following personal mishaps due to which she spent years of reckless life. It was a kind of redemption...Just the way it usually is. I'll start with what she says in the movie. It sums up how...

I am a love-person. I love the concept of being in love despite the fact that my stance on love is almost same as that towards God. I think its overrated, obscure, too strong to be ruled out but at the same time lacks enough evidence to be rationally accepted. Hence I keep my highest degree of indifference towards these two and try not to fiddle or form/contest an opinion. Of course I believe these two ‘concepts’ are very ‘to-each-his-own things’ and are known to have done wonders to people. So it hardly matters if wonders were based on false notions or true concepts. Whatever works, works.   So yeah, I am agnostic. I feel these claims on God and love are unknowable but I neither rule out nor accept the existence of either. Life’s not so hard or different with lack of certain information on these afterall. But I know one things for which my Love (Oh I still use this word a lot for sake of common acceptance) for Coffee is unabashed.   Imagine you are a normal kid strug...

I can live in a shabby unkempt room but I can’t eat and leave dirty plates in the same room as I sleep. I can’t have curtains not drawn properly or misaligned. I can’t have hems of covers upturned unevenly. I can’t have drawers left half open. I can choose not to wash my hands after a meal but I have to put the soap evenly on both sides of my face. I have to brush my teeth on each side same number of circular rotations. I have to kick either 3 or no stones I see on the road and straighten the creases. I check my passport enroute to airport 10 times when I very well know I have checked that it’s there. I have umpteen number of times interrupted official meeting telling someone to stop fidgeting with water bottles or shaking their legs… What the hell is that? It’s called OCD- Obsessive compulsive disorder. I don’t think it’s what I have because my behavior does not fit completely to the definition; but surely its somewhere aligned in that direction. OCD is an anxiety disorder. It’s call...

This too shall pass…So they say. …And you smile with thousand thoughts in your head about how ‘they’ don’t understand what you are going through. You are convinced that your situation is unique in its own way, so much so that worldly logic and past examples do not apply. You may also feel like a martyr or hero facing a completely unparalleled situation which has no precedence in world and hence, no way out. And then days pass, few or many and you realize things have sunk in. You realize you are looking back lesser and smiling more often. This may take you a week or year, the range is indefinite but you get yourself back again. Your mind wanders less to the grief that once captured every minute of your waking hour and one fine day you realize it has been days that it occurred to you that you haven’t had a thought about your ever lingering grief for days. C’est la vie! It’s true for any grief, losing a loved one, upcoming death, break-up, divorce, addiction withdrawal… anything. Time he...

As the cab turned into that lane, Mia didn’t feel awkward like she thought she would. It seemed as if this was her daily route…well it used to be. She got down at the building still painted yellow with an outlier first floor painted peach. She heard the teenage kids playing cricket pass a comment on her. She wasn’t amused or annoyed – just registered the comment. Her ‘amreekan’ getup must have given away the fact that she doesn’t belong here. The neighbourhood hadn’t changed at all, as if it was untouched all these two years. Only thing that had changed was herself probably. She moved inside the building digging into the keys attached to star-charm keychain that Naren had gifted her. She was relieved he is not going to be home. Making an entry at the register for visitors was new. The guard looked seemingly disinterested in who was visiting or what they wrote. He was only engaged in ink marks. She could have written super girl and he wouldn’t have noticed. She smiled to herself and pr...