Of thoughts, old and new

Yelo, world!

It's another brand new day - and I am raring to go at the keyboard once again!

Many things have happened of late - for one, 3 of my e-pals of over a year ago, mailed me after a long break - a couple of them even remembered my birthday! I was touched to see their best wishes sent over borders (cultural and geographical) - even if I have been nothing but an irregular correspondent with them. Thank you Aabid! Royal, I still can't believe you didn't forget my birthday! (;-D) And even better, I was absolutely thrilled to get a mail from my friend Li after a year - filled with her cheerfulness and 'never-say-never' attitude in each and every sentence. I hope you guys are reading this and have a big smile on your faces as well to match the one on mine.

My birthday celebrations this year were fantastic in short! I have completed a year at work too - and the maturity I have gained over the year shows now in how I treat others, life and myself. I was bombarded with wishes from people right from my schooling days to my colleagues at work. Everyone remembered - and what started as a superb morning went to become the best day I've had this year. I think it also helped that I was pretty much under fire both at home and work for reasons valid and invalid for 3 days preceding my birthday - and the days of gloom magically transformed into days of joy in just one day. I had an fun-filled lunch with 6 of my closest friends at Bosch. To my surprise, the team I work with demanded a treat from me - and their persistence won me over. Plus assorted treats for friends at work made over the year (I was actually excused for not meeting my deadlines for the day as people kept streaming in and out of my cubicle talking to me and demanding treats). The best was yet to come - I treated my parents and my mother's best friend and her husband over the weekend. It might have burnt a big hole in my pocket but it filled up my heart with an incomparable peace which could never be bought by anything but pure love for a child they had seen grow up in front of their eyes. Maybe the only thing that was lacking was that I couldn't share my happiness with my sister and her family who are in Chennai right now.

After that, life's been a blast. In fact, yesterday, our department guys decided to go gokarting. Of course, my mother and father first dismissed the idea of me ever driving a kart car (leave alone a normal Maruthi 800) - and me taking part in a race? Never! In fact, my Dad almost convinced my mother that I was actually going to the race track to test software on the cars there (:-D). (I have a hunch he still doesn't believe me that I actually drove a car, albeit, quite slowly, for around 7 laps around the race track!). I am glad I went though. There is nothing like the power of speed, the thrill of dashing around sharp U- bends in a machine controlled by an accelerator, a steering wheel and a brake only and not having to think of anything except how you are going to make it around the next turn looming up in sight. I also got a chance to have a lot of fun with people at work - people I normally just say 'Hi!' and 'Bye!' to each day. My friend and colleague Sushma and I had a jolly good time as well - it's been a long time since we laughed and joked like yesterday - of late, all I talk of with her would be tasks, PC2 hours (;-D) and how some code works (LOL). We were a noisy twosome yesterday - cracking weird jokes - and my sense of timing had never been more perfect - I said all the wrong things at the right time and the two of us would be laughing our hearts out the next minute. It reminded me of college and school days a lot...

On a more serious front, of late, I have been thinking a lot too - of who I am and what I'd like to be. I have figured out, with the help of a friend, that life is nothing but perfect sometimes - and to not be ruffled by the imperfections - but to live with them the best I can. Of late, I have depended too much on others for the moral strength and support they offer that it hits me hard when I think about this - one day, I might wake up to find them gone out of my life - and I might be shattered by that. I suppose that is true of each and everyone of us - we learn to depend on others so much, that we laugh when they laugh, cry when they cry and look to them for help when we need it the most. This is OK when it comes to true friends - who are rare in numbers. But there are some people in our lives out of whom we expect too much - people who might care too little for us to stick around and offer the support we need. My friend pointed out that - it is best if one learns to love his/her own company - because no one is going to be closer or more faithful or more loyal or more caring or more true to one but him/herself alone.

There is no such thing as a 'happily ever after', is there? - this is something probably each and every one of us have felt, experienced and known for as long as we began to think for ourselves. For someone like me who does not get along with change very well, each and every time unpleasant things happen around me, I learn the meaning of 'change' anew. As one of my teachers at school once remarked, my progress in my studies (and my life too, I think at times) is like that of a sine wave - not a straight line - not an irregular curve - but a sine wave - reaching highs and lows alternatively as time progresses into infinity. At first, I took it as an offence. Like my optimistic boss who wishes his charges have a learning curve similar to the up slope of Mt. Everest, I too wished that the sweet taste of success, the addictive sound of praise and applause never ended as long as I lived. But as I have learnt over the years, to appreciate the nice things in life, one has to get a dose of unpleasant things too - just like sugar tastes always sweeter after a spoonful of bitter medicine. One never knows the value of success till he has seen failure - and conquered his/her fears to get to the top. The tree which bears the sweetest fruit is the one which has withstood storms, rains and the wind ever since it discovered how to put out it's first root out of it's protective seed cover into the dark earth and push out the first tender green shoot into the warm welcoming world filled with sunshine. Maybe, if the life within the plant had decided to hibernate within the seed coat one or ten or a hundred years ago, today we wouldn't be enjoying it's fruit. I don't know - but maybe not today, tomorrow - or even as long as I live - all the good things I try to do may not bear immediate result - but someday, somewhere, someone will think of me and say - "If she hadn't decide to change herself for the better, life just wouldn't have been the same for me!" - and that, my friend, would be the best compliment of my ordinary life.