New year, new beginnings...

So, on 31st Dec each year at around this time, I start my thank you roll call. Unfortunately though, 2015 has been so crap at so many different levels, that it feels like I don't have a lot to be thankful for at all. I trudged through the year, hoping things would start looking up soon, until the year just passed me by completely. Or maybe I've just been so busy trying to look for the bigger picture, that I missed the small joys altogether.

Before I continue, let me say that the best thing that has ever happened to me in life, happened this year...I got Ashwat - that's my nephew, and lately I pretty much associate all my happiness with him. Holding him for the first time ever, singing him to sleep for the two weeks that I spent with him, trying to feed him...those were the absolute best parts of 2015! He is the reason I laugh with abandon every weekend on Skype, he makes me look forward to that.

Aside from that though, crap year all around! And no, this is not my ranting kinda blog. I hit rock-bottom this year in some aspects, so I guess, thank you 2015 for showing me what that feels like. The only way to go from here is up!

Some of the highights (lowlights in this case I suppose):

1. Missed trip to Mansarovar due to Nepal earthquake - I'm not complaining because the people that were there when it happened fared much worse.

2. Hazy holiday in south-east Asia - But I got my 4 days of sushine in Bali eventually and a tan to die for!

3. Andy got married - This is actually good news, but it makes me feel like an old bat now, so it makes my lowlight reel anyway (sorry bro if you're reading this)!!  :)

4. Some other things that I'd ather not social media rant about. These things come back to bite you in the ass eventually, and I'm not drunk enough already to ignore that.

PS: On that note, I quit drinking for the year. I was never much of a drinker to start off with, but now I've just stopped cold turkey until the end of 2016. For the record, the last drink I had was in early Nov. I know the exact date, I choose not to disclose it. And I didn't know at that time that it would be my last, I just decided to stop altogether right after that for a lot of reasons that I hope to never ever talk about to anyone...ever!

Anyway, swiftly moving on...this year on 31st Dec I'm not kicking off any thank you roll call. Instead, I'm writing a blog, because this year I have a bucket list of things I want to do in 2016:

1. Find a hobby - or even rediscover an old one, but just find something enjoyable to do in my spare time. Netflix is addictive, I should really just lose my subscription and find something worthwhile to do with my time instead.

2. Learn something - a language maybe, or a musical instrument, or a sport even (kickboxing comes to mind), or read a textbook again. Its been too long since I've been a student, and the grey matter up there in my head is rotting away slowly. On that note, I should start solving crosswords, I like those!

3. Fall in love - with a person, or a thing, or a place...who cares?! Not an animal though, I'm no animal lover unfortunately!!

4. Travel alone - I have always said that I prefer travelling with someone like minded rather than by myself, but you don't always get what you want, so...travel alone.

5. Read and write - I used to be a voracious reader, and now I cannot remember the last book I read. And I set up this blog years ago to write more often about things on my mind, poems, random stuff...when did that creativity die?

6. Find an adventure - I've wanted to skydive forever, I just haven't gotten around to it. I ain't getting any younger, so I should really get on with that or any of the other stuff I've had on my mind all these years.

7. Empty jar - so there's this thingy doing the rounds lately that we should start the year with an empty jar and every time something good happens, write it down and put it into the jar, and look at it at the end of the year to see how many li'l things made you happy. I think I'd like to try that, count your blessings I say!!

There's a few other things too, but those relate to the lowlights I refuse to social media rant about. So if I start bucket listing them, that'd be a bit of give away, no?!

So at the end of 2016, I will come back to this post and see how many of these boxes I've checked. If you have a suggestion for anything else I could do, or anything related my list above, lemme know. If you have any way of actually motivating me somehow to get on with these things, even better...that's usually what gets in my way.

So once again: New year, new beginnings...let's see how far I get!

Happy new year everyone! 2016 is here  :)

Seven Lives

A few years ago, a friend of mine started questioning me about one of the most basic questions in Hindu mythology - what happens after your seventh life (since we are supposed to have seven lives and all)? Now I'm not a particular believer in any of this, and in my opinion, when I die, I wipe my slate clean. That's the ultimate price to pay for all of my sins in this life (I mean, what bigger punishment than death, atleast according to most constitutions in the world), and the most important blessing for all the good deeds done in this life ('Moksha' as it is referred to by the ones that believe in it). In either case, I strongly believe that we do not carry our burdens of this life into the next. So I said something to that effect to my friend, but we carried on this random discussion about what kind of lives I could have after this one. It wasn't until a few days later that I had a thought - what if this is my seventh life? What if this is it?! Well, that turned out to be the inspiration for this post. I figured since I (obviously) have no clue about my earlier lives or ones supposedly yet to come, I wanted to create my own little life fiction.

Please note that I started writing this post around that time (when I'd had that chat with my friend). I cannot believe the ridiculous concepts I set to work on sometimes, but I had scribbled down where I was planning to go with this post when I first started. I think I ran out of fresh reincarnation ideas midway through and abandoned it. I was surfing through my unfinished posts (plural because there were two - I deleted the other one, too depressing even by my depressed standards!), and couldn't stop laughing at the stupidity of this one, so I figured I may as well complete it. So here goes...

In my first life I was born a lion - majestic and proud. I was called Simba. I was a great ruler and all my animal subjects loved and respected me. I was brave and fearless. I led them through an era of prosperity and happiness. We lived through times where there was always plenty to eat and harmonious relations among everyone. Eventually I grew old and died, and my rotting carcass was eaten by other animals (in the animal kingdom, if you're dead, you're food!), and my leftovers got dragged to the pretty river that flowed through my kingdom.

Bits of me got buried in the river bed, and over the years I became part of the fertile river bed and in that way, I continued to see my lands and my future generations prosper. By the beautiful force of nature I was still a part of my old life for many years before I moved on to my second life. After so many years of being buried, I grew into a plankton, a small plant eaten by fishes. I joined the river on its journey to the sea. The travel was by no means an easy one. I kept fighting to see the sun every now and then, but the flow of water would keep pulling me back down. It was a constant struggle. A few times when I got too close to the riverside, I was almost left behind until a big surge in the water would pull me back in. Finally we made it to the sea. It was enormous and once you were in it, there was no end, it just seemed to keep going on...I was still quite close to the shore where my river joined the sea, when I was spotted by a school of pretty clown fishes. They played with each other and for some time they even played with me, until one of them ate me and that was the end of my second life.

I disintegrated into the fish's body, and joined its bloodstream and became a part of the fish itself. A few days later, the fish laid a few eggs, and I was one of them. There starts my third life - that of Nemo! For a clown fish, I did a fairly funny job. I had a decent sense of humor and as a result I made a lot of friends. We would go exploring all over the sea and sometimes even go into dark forbidden places. Our elders tried to explain the dangers that lay in the outside world but we hardly paid any heed. One such day, we strayed too close to the pretty beach near our home. As we played near the surface of the water a large colorful and rather fast Kingfisher caught me in its beak and flew away. I struggled for a bit, but without the water it was useless and soon I died from lack of oxygen.

While I became yet another yummy meal, the life cycle continued, and soon I was reborn as a baby bird. When I popped my eyes open, I was trapped in this big white egg that was all around me. I had to butt into it with my head a few times to get it to crack, and then try and spread my tiny wings to push the rest of the shell away from my body. I was an ugly looking tiny bird, but gradually I grew into a beautiful Kingfisher myself. I lived close to a large city atop a tall tree, but right next to the sea. I spent my days flying around and enjoying the view from the clouds. I lived and loved, had a beautiful family, had a good life, and then grew old and died. Ants got to my carcass, and made a feast out of me.

And then the ants got eaten by a worm, which eventually got eaten by a butterfly. And that's how I ended up inside a butterfly. And yes, you get the picture...the butterfly laid eggs, one of which was me and that is how my next life started. I grew into a caterpillar at first, until after a long period of struggle, my beautiful, strong wings grew out, and I was able to spread them wide and fly around again. This time I stayed closer to the ground, I fluttered from bush to bush and got to kiss a lot of pretty flowers. I lived and eventually died in a rose bush, and of course was buried there too.

The rose bush absorbed my essence through the soil, and before you knew it, I was born again as a beautiful red rose. I was a sight to behold and the envy of all other flowers, and the gardener in that park took very good care of me. He watered the bush and pruned the leaves and ensured that no one got to pluck me from the bush until I had the chance to blossom into my full potential.

And once that happened, I got plucked by this amazing man who gave me to his wife whom he loved very much. She cherished me and took care of me for the few days that I was still alive after being plucked out. She was a beautiful woman, a loving wife, and a doting mother. And she was expecting a second child. As I left that life of the rose, she gave birth to a daughter - yep, that's me! I was born into my seventh (last and final) form as Sneha, a Leo, a lover of water and heights and all the pretty things in life, a believer that we only have one life, and most importantly, a gigantic pain in everyone's life. And in this way, my seven lives/my seven incarnations have come a full circle.  :)