I survived... yet again!!!

I cannot help but write my thoughts on what my numb mind saw and heard on television the last three days. I saw, I heard and what played in my mind was a different story. I do not know why but all my mind could actually see was the images of a destroyed war-struck Afghanistan, as potrayed in the book – “A thousand splendid suns’. I can’t help but dread the possibilities of India turning out to be a disaster story like that. I may be stretching my imagination a bit too far, but isn’t the best way to plan is to plan for the worst? Isn’t that is how the wars are won? Isn’t this how we should as a country prepare ourselves? There I go on again, but these are some of the questions that come to my mind.
Experiencing, discussing, accepting and forgetting such attacks seem to be becoming a way of life here. I cannot even remember the last time blasts made news in India. This is a scary thought. After all how can we solve a problem if we fail to remember? But then, remembering alone doesn’t do any good does it? Neither does writing blogs on this subject. What about cribbing every time a security guard at a movie hall asks to check your bag? What about getting impatient when security personnel demand your id to be displayed in office? Does this help at all? I have always understood that these measures are important and have tried to co operate, but despite the understanding there have been times when I have been irritable on being faced with these situations. If nothing else, these pictures of horror flashed on the TV screens are going to make me more compliant to security measures (whatever little) being taken in the country.
There have been times when we have laughed off the lags in security in the past, only this time am sure there is no one even smiling, except ofcors who wrote death in this drama. I distinctly remember how we made a joke of an incident where when one of our colleagues just walked straight into a Hyderabad cricket ground with the security guards shouting from behind for her bag to be checked. She of course was unaware of the guard and therefore did not bother to stop. Now I wonder what if it wasn’t a normal person unaware of the surroundings and in a rush to watch a cricket match for the first time. Is this how easy for someone to breach highest of security arrangements? The incident did seem funny at the time. Now, after witnessing the terror attack for three days it doesn’t seem so funny.
And now as I sit at 1.30 am in the morning, my mind is playing games with me. Some I sit and try to see forward in the future, and I see streets with blast debris, I see ladies in their darkened houses grieving about their recent losses and taking pride in telling the stories of their old ones. I see a house with smoke coming out of it. Smoke not from the kitchen chimney, but from where just a missile hit it. I shake my head and I see a green valley. I see a girl standing near a stream, the sun turning the stream into sheets of gold. The girl turns and I see a smiling happy India, an India we made. I just want to close my mind, and freeze my thoughts on this happy scene. Freeze it and remember it. So that we know what we need to work at!
PS: Do read the book – A thousand Splendid Suns – by Khaled Hosseini

They say they say

I knew my end was near the day i became a no one in my own eyes. Human beings have a weird quality of believing things as true if they hear them more than a couple of times... and I for sure carry this trait of the human race. The truth after sometimes just ceases to matter and gets twisted out of proportion. What is left is the imaginative lies... And how does this affect us?... well I used to pride in being a very intelligent and strong of our kinds... but then when did I turn into this weak pathetic creature, cribbing at every possible opportunity... I dont know but then this reality has hit me hard in the face, and I have two options.. either I crib about the whole change in me or just start thinking in a logical way, not on how did it happen but how can I get back to the same old self i took pride in... The fact that I was able to acknowledge this change is a positive sign as it says that i still have hope... hope of survival.... survival in a world where the weak are reputed to get extinct at a pace that seems just a made up figure...

Me vs She

No matter how lucky I am, she still seems luckier to me...
There are certain things that always affect you when you are least expecting…
On that rainy evening, when we all were out to have a nice time, I came face to face with these two little girls… One had a huge bunch of red balloons, which she was trying to sell off, and one with cute pink ribbons in her hair… they were the same age, same size, yet so different and as soon as the girl with the pink ribbons in her hair stepped out of her car, she saw the girl with the red balloons.. And it made me smile to see an expression of longing flash on the little girl’s face… It was actually funny, this girl thought the other one to be so lucky, after all didn’t she have a whole bunch of balloons in her hands, she looked at her parents.. with those eyes, begging for just a few of those balloons, and was just led inside the restaurant… the girl kept looking at the balloons … as they slowly disappeared from her sight… I was quite amused and turned back to look at the other little girl, and just froze, not because I saw sad eyes on a young face, but because what I saw was an expression-less face that had aged beyond its years…