I've learned -
that you cannot make someone love you.
All you can do is be someone who can be loved.
The rest is up to them.

I've learned -
that no matter how much I care, some people just don't care back.

I've learned -
that it takes years to build up trust, and only seconds to destroy it.

I've learned -
that it's not what you have in your life but who you have in your life that counts.

I've learned -
that you can get by on charm for about fifteen minutes. After that, you'd better know something.

I've learned -
that you shouldn't compare yourself to the best others can do.

I've learned -
that you can do something in an instant that will give you heartache for life.

I've learned -
that it's taking me a long time to become the person I want to be.

I've learned -
that you should always leave loved ones with loving words. It may be the last time you see them..

I've learned -
that you can keep going long after you can't.

I've learned -
that we are responsible for what we do, no matter how we feel.

I've learned -
that either you control your attitude or it controls you.

I've learned -
that regardless of how hot and steamy a relationship is at first, the passion fades and there had better be something else to take its place.

I've learned -
that heroes are the people who do what has to be done when it needs to be done, regardless of the consequences.

I've learned -
that money is a lousy way of keeping score..

I've learned -
that my best friend and I can do anything or nothing and have the best time.

I've learned -
that sometimes the people you expect to kick you when you're down will be the ones to help you get back up.

I've learned -
that sometimes when I'm angry I have the right to be angry, but that doesn't give me the right to be cruel.

I've learned -
that true friendship continues to grow, even over the longest distance. Same goes for true love.

I've learned -
that just because someone doesn't love you the way you want them to doesn't mean they don't love you with all they have.

I've learned -
that maturity has more to do with what types of experiences you've had and what you've learned from them and less to do with how many birthdays you've celebrated.

I've learned -
that you should never tell a child their dreams are unlikely or outlandish. Few things are more humiliating, and what a tragedy it would be if they believed it.

I've learned -
that your family won't always be there for you. It may seem funny, but people you aren't related to can take care of you and love you and teach you to trust people again. Families aren't biological.

I've learned -
that no matter how good a friend is, they're going to hurt you every once in a while and you must forgive them for that.

I've learned -
that it isn't always enough to be forgiven by others. Sometimes you have to learn to forgive yourself.

I've learned -
that no matter how bad your heart is broken the world doesn't stop for your grief.

I've learned -
that our background and circumstances may have influenced who we are, but we are responsible for who we become.

I've learned -
that just because two people argue, it doesn't mean they don't love each other. And just because they don't argue, it doesn't mean they do.

I've learned -
that we don't have to change friends if we understand that friends change.

I've learned -
that you shouldn't be so eager to find out a secret. It could change your life forever.

I've learned -
that two people can look at the exact same thing and see something totally different.

I've learned -
that no matter how you try to protect your children, they will eventually get hurt and you will hurt in the process.

I've learned -
that your life can be changed in a matter of hours by people who don't even know you.

I've learned -
that even when you think you have no more to give, when a friend cries out to you, you will find the strength to help.

I've learned -
that credentials on the wall do not make you a decent human being.

I've learned -
that the people you care about most in life are taken from you too soon.

I've learned -
that it's hard to determine where to draw the line between being nice and not hurting people's feelings and standing up for what you believe.

Author Unknown

This has got to be one of the cleverest E-mails I've received in awhile. Someone out there either has too much spare time or is deadly at Scrabble. (wait till you see the last one)!




DORMITORY: When you rearrange the letters: DIRTY ROOM
PRESBYTERIAN: When you rearrange the letters: BEST IN PRAYER
ASTRONOMER: When you rearrange the letters: MOON STARER
DESPERATION: When you rearrange the letters: A ROPE ENDS IT
THE EYES: When you rearrange the letters: THEY SEE
GEORGE BUSH: When you rearrange the letters: HE BUGS GORE
THE MORSE CODE: When you rearrange the letters: HERE COME DOTS
SLOT MACHINES: When you rearrange the letters: CASH LOST IN ME
ANIMOSITY: When you rearrange the letters: IS NO AMITY
ELECTION RESULTS:When you rearrange the letters: LIES - LET'S RECOUNT
MOTHER-IN-LAW: When you rearrange the letters: WOMAN HITLER
SNOOZE ALARMS: When you rearrange the letters: ALAS! NO MORE Z 'S
A DECIMAL POINT: When you rearrange the letters: IM A DOT IN PLACE
THE EARTHQUAKES:When you rearrange the letters: THAT QUEER SHAKE

I woke up early today, excited over all I get to do before the clock strikes midnight.

I have responsibilities to fulfill today.

I am important. My job is to choose what kind of day I am going to have.

Today I can complain because the weather is rainy or I can be thankful that the grass is getting watered for free.

Today I can feel sad that I don't have more money or I can be glad that my finances encourage me to plan my purchases wisely and guide me away from waste.

Today I can grumble about my health or I can rejoice that I am alive.

Today I can lament over all that my parents didn't give me when I was growing up or I can feel grateful that they allowed me to be born.

Today I can cry because roses have thorns or I can celebrate that thorns have roses.

Today I can mourn my lack of friends or I can excitedly embark upon a quest to discover new relationships.

Today I can whine because I have to go to work or I can shout for joy because I have a job to do.

Today I can complain because I have to go to school or eagerly open my mind and fill it with rich new tidbits of knowledge.

Today I can murmur dejectedly because I have to do housework or I can feel honored because the Lord has provided shelter for my mind, body and soul.

Today stretches ahead of me, waiting to be shaped. And here I am, the sculptor who gets to do the shaping.

What today will be like is up to me. I get to choose what kind of day I will have!

Have a Great Day ... Unless you have other plans.

Author Unknown

Sipping lichi juice,
diluted over and over
with water fetched by the waiter boy
We sit and talk;
Of him and her, he and he, she and him
and then of them.
Small talk on office politics,
Of time spent and unspent,
Of forgotten dreams and cherished desires,
We sit and talk;
On the cobbled pavement
across a table of cement, rooted to the earth.
Of loudness and the necessity to project
an exterior of brash,
A futile life.
We sit and talk;
You tell me how you want
To drop everything and go sit in a corner,
You tell me of the story of how you found him
or rather of how he found you.
I dont tell you of how I found and lost him
I do not tell you of how I lost
Another him.
But I tell you I want to fly,
I tell you that I dislike the circus of life.
Savouring the last drops of my drink
(Your empty bottle has been staring at me for long)
We sit and talk;
Move on to another table
For a plate of bhelpuri and sabudana.
And then we walk around the horseshoe
that is built over a gutter.
Curious knickknacks, bangles and trinkets,
Skirts that would billow if the wind was strong
Wallets and earthern pots.
We amble along,
Two kindred souls I would like to think,
Sometimes stopping to pick up and scrutinise,
oftentimes just pure admiration
Of the sketches and the fake Ravi Verma paintings
The kolapuri chappals
You stop to confer about the colour of a salwar kameez
Finally aquamarine blue over the conventional red is bought.
I just walk around
Pick up things to immediately put it back away,
Quest for quality, the habit of forever seeking the best.
Finally we have lavender shararat*(mishief)

*shararat -the new lavender coloured ice lolly from Mother
Diary. Price Rs 5/-

Would God prefer butter toast? or vermicilli? or stuffed bittergourd and orange juice? or fish curry with rice?
Why do people vie with one another to feed sweets to the gods? What if they don't have a sweet tooth? Sweets, fruits and milk - form a huge chunk of all offerings.
Bechare bhagwan ji subh unko kitna meetha khilayenge? a bewildered senior at work questioned.
Yes, come to think of it all offerings comprise
sweetmeats and sugary stuff. What if he has diabetes or high
BP? my senior continued.
Its tough being baghwan in this subcontinent.
But I particularly like the TV commercial for a popular health drink where children mutter a quick apology before they proceed to polish off the glasses and containers of milk they trugded up a hill as offering to an idol under a tree.
There isn't any specific reason for this post (I do like to think that other posts serve a specific purpose-Ego trip:)) but just that a couple of days ago I paid a visit to the Gurudwara Bangla Sahib. And along with the tasty prasadam I also found a beach in Delhi.
After several weeks of the sun beating down in all its harshness, the capital got some relief with a sprinkle of premonsoon showers.
Surrounded by a carressing breeze, the weather was perfect for a walk and so two friends and me decided to drop in at the nearest bookstore. But then one informed that since it was time for the prasad to be distributed at the gurudwara why don't we go there first?
Within no time I found myself depositing my shoes and entering the sanctom sanctoram. Not acquainted with customs I cautiously followed everybody, careful to cover my head with a duppata.
Inside the gurudwara there is a small pond filled with fishes, around which the devout take a parikrama. The evening was young, the sun reflected on the water that was rippling in the breeze created an impression of waves on the sea. (Perhaps I was trying too hard to recreate the beach) But I swear that it was the first thought that struck me when i saw the lake/pond/ Hey Beach.
I felt the same sense of peace, the same euphoria and the same tinge of pain that I associate with the beach.
After that we stood in line for a share of the halwa being served. It was amazing, absolutely-out-of-this world.
The bookstore was closed so we took a stroll on the old Janpath road, filled with the usual clothes and knick knack accessories.
Mother dairy icecreams and then Bhutta!
It's another story that I couldn't eat the corn. Darned teeth. I went around for two days with my jaws feeling like lead. Signs of old age :-).

I Believe I Can Fly

I used to think that I could not go on
And life was nothing but an awful song
But now I know the meaning of true love
I'm leaning on the everlasting arms
If I can see it, then I can do it
If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

Bridge:
If I can see it, then I can be it
If I just believe it, there's nothing to it

Chorus:
I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can sore
I see me runnin through that open door
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly
I believe I can fly

See I was on the verge of breakin down
Sometimes silence can seem so loud
There are miracles in life I must achieve
But first I know it starts inside of me

{Chorus}

Cause I believe in me

{Bridge}

{Chorus}

If I just spread my wings
I can fly
I can fly, I can fly
If I just spread my wings
I can fly, woo
Check it out
Hmm.. fly fly fly

Lord, I am tired.

This or that. Right or Wrong. True or False.
Decisions, decisions, decisions.
When the mind is lulled into a cocoon, it is hard to decide, unless something comes around and gives it a hard knock, a wake up call, a deciding moment.
You have to either get on the bus or not. The tube gears up to leave and gets to supersonic speed level within half a minute. Unlike an ordinary train, the Metro gathers pace at the speed of light and there isn't time to decide whether to board or not. Falter and you might just be dead. Caught and pulverised by the high-tech bogies.
Today I missed two buses in a row. The first, cause I let it pass, the second cause I wrongly gauged the amount of time it would halt at my stop. Split second decison.
That was my wake up call, reflexes gone slow. Time to get up and get going, time to start getting into shape again. Start jogging again. Sometimes I am tempted to sleep, to close my eyes and be a child again. To make a pillow out of the first to greet me with a kind word. To trust, with a fierce self centredness oblivious to the wants of the other. To accept it as a permit to intrude into their space.
Fairytales can do that to you. Lull you in their sugary syrupy warm delicious embrace. Oblivious to the real world. Day must follow night, the lullaby has to end. Sleep must give up to wakefullness.
But is life kind? Could it offer you another chance after the sleep. By the sleep to say we end The heartache and the thousand natural shocks. To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?
Yes, but then there is also the decision.
To be or not to be.
To die: to sleep; No more; and by a sleep to say we end The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks/ That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep; To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub; For in that sleep of death what dreams may come/ When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause: there's the respect/ That makes calamity of so long life; For who would bear the whips and scorns of time, The oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely, The pangs of despised love, the law's delay, The insolence of office and the spurns/ That patient merit of the unworthy takes, When he himself might his quietus make/ With a bare bodkin? who would fardels bear, To grunt and sweat under a weary life, But that the dread of something after death, The undiscover'd country from whose bourn/ No traveller returns, puzzles the will And makes us rather bear those ills we have/ Than fly to others that we know not of? Thus conscience does make cowards of us all; And thus the native hue of resolution Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, And enterprises of great pith and moment/ With this regard their currents turn awry, And lose the name of action. - Soft you now!
The fair Ophelia! Nymph, in thy orisons Be all my sins remember'd.

The country from where no traveller returns, disappears like a ghost. Quite tempting, to leave the sweat and the grime and the dirt and fly away.
But promises stare at me from the walls of my room. whitewashed over and over, the pages of the diary remind me of dreams, plans, music, friends.
There are still miles and miles to go before the sleep, miles to go and promises to keep to myself and many. Promises that were burried under layers of solitude and shutting out people.
Stories to be told, journeys to be travelled, and homes to be built. Can't sleep now. Not yet!
Decision to stay.
This. True. Right.
----------------------------

Everybody is made of boxes. yes. Some people have neat ordered ones with even little labels attached. Intrusion of one into the other causes a great deal of conflict and discomfort.
For some others it is a jumble. Euphemism for mess. Unorganised and spilling into one another. The boxes are so locked into one another like a lego playkit that it is impossible to detach one from the other.
Try and the mess multiplies. Life, Work, Love, Relationships, Religion, Death.... all entwined in one big bundle. Seeping into one another.
It comes as a package and one box cannot be handed over individually. Cannot be scrutinised independantly. One falls and the entire edifice comes crashing down just like a pack of cards.
For the second lot of people, the boxes are them. One gooey, big blob. All who come into contact with these "boxes" people are bound to get stuck in the glue. Dont shake hands with them cause your hands get sticky. Touch them and its like chewing gum. Ew! Sticky.
Oftentimes these 'box' people cut a sorry figure. Invade personal spaces and have to be surgically cut off from those they have invaded.
Hints of "the gum tastes like rubber" do not serve the purpose. Remember the 'boxes' are all stuck together.
Change is painful, surgery is nervewrecking. Moral of the lesson, never let the boxes mingle. The bubble of the sugary gum is gonna burst and stick the boxes together. Scares off a lot of people.
Neat boxes, labelled with clinical precison. It should be, Always.

This is by far one of my favourite poem , check out his unique style, or no style approach to an ordinary everyday tale, anwhere in the world. WOW!


anyone lived in a pretty how town
by E. E. Cummings


anyone lived in a pretty how town
(with up so floating many bells down)
spring summer autumn winter
he sang his didn't he danced his did

Women and men(both little and small)
cared for anyone not at all
they sowed their isn't they reaped their same
sun moon stars rain

children guessed(but only a few
and down they forgot as up they grew
autumn winter spring summer)
that noone loved him more by more

when by now and tree by leaf
she laughed his joy she cried his grief
bird by snow and stir by still
anyone's any was all to her

someones married their everyones
laughed their cryings and did their dance
(sleep wake hope and then)they
said their nevers they slept their dream

stars rain sun moon
(and only the snow can begin to explain
how children are apt to forget to remember
with up so floating many bells down)

one day anyone died i guess
(and noone stooped to kiss his face)
busy folk buried them side by side
little by little and was by was

all by all and deep by deep
and more by more they dream their sleep
noone and anyone earth by april
wish by spirit and if by yes.

Women and men(both dong and ding)
summer autumn winter spring
reaped their sowing and went their came
sun moon stars rain

On Despair


The memory of you emerges from the night around me.
The river mingles its stubborn lament with the sea.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
It is the hour of departure, oh deserted one!

Cold flower heads are raining over my heart.
Oh pit of debris, fierce cave of the shipwrecked.

In you the wars and the flights accumulated.
From you the wings of the song birds rose.

You swallowed everything, like distance.
Like the sea, like time. In you everything sank!

It was the happy hour of assault and the kiss.
The hour of the spell that blazed like a lighthouse.

Pilot’s dread, fury of a blind diver,
turbulent drunkenness of love, in you everything sank!

In the childhood of mist my soul, winged and wounded.
Lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

You girdled sorrow, you clung to desire,
sadness stunned you, in you everything sank!

I made the wall of shadow draw back,
beyond desire and act, I walked on.

Oh flesh, my own flesh, woman whom I loved and lost,
I summon you in the moist hour, I raise my song to you.

Like a jar you housed the infinite tenderness,
and the infinite oblivion shattered you like a jar.

There was the black solitude of the islands,
and there, woman of love, your arms took me in.

There were thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit.
There were grief and the ruins, and you were the miracle.

Ah woman, I do not know how you could contain me
in the earth of your soul, in the cross of your arms!

How terrible and brief was my desire of you!
How difficult and drunken, how tensed and avid.

Cemetery of kisses, there is still fire in your tombs,
still the fruited boughs burn, pecked at by birds.

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,
oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies.

Oh the mad coupling of hope and force
in which we merged and despaired.

And the tenderness, light as water and as flour.
And the word scarcely begun on the lips.

This was my destiny and in it was the voyage of my longing,
and in it my longing fell, in you everything sank!

Oh pit of debris, everything fell into you,
what sorrow did you not express, in what sorrow are you not drowned!

From billow to billow you still called and sang.
Standing like a sailor in the prow of a vessel.

You still flowered in songs, you still broke in currents.
Oh pit of debris, open and bitter well.

Pale blind diver, luckless slinger,
lost discoverer, in you everything sank!

It is the hour of departure, the hard cold hour
which the night fastens to all the timetables.

The rustling belt of the sea girdles the shore.
Cold stars heave up, black birds migrate.

Deserted like the wharves at dawn.
Only the tremulous shadow twists in my hands.

Oh farther than everything. Oh farther than everything.

It is the hour of departure. Oh abandoned one.