A friend wished me at the end of 2007 (actually she was not a friend then just yet...and don't know whether she is now....never mind) in my kind of way, my kind of language. She made a random list of the things that happened to her and what she learnt from them and added a post-script saying it would be nice if we could do the same with our lives and our year gone by and send it across. Well, it has taken me a whole year to do what I then wanted to do. I am sure there is some learning here as well but haven't quite figured it out yet. Actually, I have and am sure you have to. So here goes.
* I have decided to label this year the year of just-misses.
*I quite dislike this year and it is some kind of a blip in a continuous run of good years from 2000. There were only some patches of sunshine.
* It started with hubby receiving a somewhat alarming piece of news which hopefully is proving to be some kind of a false alarm. Let's just call it a positive just-miss :)
* It then kinda brightened up with me scheduled to go to Brazil. What can be more exciting? Travel half way across the world and spend a day in the deep forests of the Amazon. Wait, I don't give labels just like that. Suffice to say it did not happen quite in the last moment
* Next, I missed a promotion that was more than due though I say it so myself. It did come later but having to walk into a cabin of a kindly-looking- embarassed- to- death boss' cabin and him pleading 'don't tell me anything' before I could utter pro...kind of sucked the joy out.
* 'Living' was a joy and it still is. I love the thing. I love everything about it. Even the despair at being unable to think of the next lead. The frustration of PRs calling up before during and after sending an email. The earnestness with which some doctors write about piles and gas problems. The pathetic attempts at neo-feminism by some others. I don't how long this loving will last. I am scared about the end.
* I began writing more regularly. That patch of sunshine I was talking about. And writing about subjects I want to write about. Not fashion. Not cancer. I learnt that if I love to write about something, I can do it sometimes in 10 minutes. I also began writing poetry again. And I learnt how much I had missed it.
* After 10 long years, thanks to a persistent friend who loves reminding me that she is a true-blue Scorpio, I met the man I used to hero worship. The intravenous scholar. My english teacher. I learnt how when you don't see the person you truly care for for so many years, for reasons nobody can fathom, you get back the piece of heart you left with them. Intact. Fuller.
* I completely dazzled everybody at a marriage. Yeah yeah I am saying it myself but that's the thrilling truth :). Ok won't go on.
* I realised I am absolutely addicted to gmail chatting. I have spent many a five-minute just staring at who's got a green dot and who's got red. And I am addicted to reading and re-reading status updates. Actually it is not addiction. It is my very own OCD.
* I realised I am still intrigued by my brother-in-law. Perhaps because he is like a mirror.
* I have truly understood what my definition of love is. And I love it. And I realised I do not need any props for it. And my thanksgiving for giving me the kind of everyday dose of love I have got has only doubled. My garden of light.
* I also realised that my inner life is crawling and alive and truly healthy. Enough for me to last long in a deserted island.
* I missed going to Poland by a whisker. The whisker part is a guess. But instinct tells me it is a right guess.
* I haven't watched a single thoroughly memorable film this entire year. Though I finally found the CD of 'A Walk in the Clouds' That kind of makes up for all the near-misses.
* I continue to be fat and continue to exercise in spurts. I have also, I think, lost most of my stage fear.
* I have learnt that I will perhaps throughout my life be a sucker for the silliest of romantic tales. Now, no judgements.
* I am perhaps discovering, as my friend wrote last year, 'my cause'. Never before did I feel so powerfully about something like I feel now for universalism. For xenophilia. The best words I have heard in the entire year -- rabba sacheya, sabar de do jo tere nede karde (O true God, give me the patience that will take me nearer to you).
* This website was the best gift I have received this year. I re-learnt how much my birthday means to me and was surprised anew that it does not mean so much to the rest of the world :P
* The Wasted Vigil was the best book I read this year. Close second is Bill Bryson's Here and There. Diametrically opposite books.
* I have come to realise that my love for the Urdu language was not a childhood-related amusement. I plan to do something about it.
* Music seeped into me through many crevices this year but none so powerfully as Atif Aslam's. Serendipity. That's how I discovered his voice. And then him. He is the single brightest patch of sunshine this year.
I suppose that's it. For now. 2009 is waiting.
Wasted perhaps this very vigil is
A tale that makes me whisper, please!
Scorches the soul; this pomogranate burst
Taliban, tyranny, tragedy and blind trust
Endless its nights; its days a kind of curse
Dauntlessly but sanity claws, its nerves terse
Vigil it keeps over people who calmly accept
Insanity shrouded in verses, wives stoned for being suspect
Grief over books nailed to the skies
Irreverent here are a little fidayeen’s cries
Live, it tells me, your life’s far far nice
This btw, is an ode in appreciation of a book that am reading right now called Wasted Vigil (if you didn’t realise it already — the first letters of the peom make up the title..a favourite trick of mine :). This is by a London-based Pakistani writer Nadeem Aslam about everyday life in Afghanistan from the time of the Soviet invasion to the defeat of the Talibans. Perhaps because of its topicality or perhaps because it is a subject that I get passionate about or perhaps because it is indeed a heartrending story..I don’t know the reason but this book has seeped into my dreams and is snaking along my skin. I want it to get over quickly and I don’t want it to get over at all. And unlikely I will get over it ever.
Today, I rode on happiness again. Last time too, I could not do the barn dance. I was in Delhi and had just learnt that I will be going to the city of my dreams, London. This time, the world was too much with me to dance with abandon. There were people staring at me in the bus -- I know my eyes were shining. I was even happy to feel the crush of the shivajinagar crowd automatically pushing me inside the bus. I was thrilled that I didn't get a seat. I rode on happiness as I told you. Atif Aslam is performing in Bangalore. This day I will remember, more than the real thing. Unheard indeed is sweeter.
Am I the only one feeling distressed about the amount of hate floating around? I see it in my father’s mutterings and my mother’s downturned mouth, in silly status updates and facebook groups. Uck. I can’t analyse, I can’t articulate. But I can write a limerick.
It’s business as usual for the fanatics.
this really is the jihadi’s very fix
Hate’s like busy little tics;
that swarms inside and pick
at those who gladly mimic
others ideas; So happy to fall for those tricks
So easy to make the mind sick
enough to believe life’s a black-n-white flick
Oh! But life’s really by grey licked.
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