C'est magnifique!

Your Inner European is French!

Smart and sophisticated. You have the best of everything - at least, *you* think so.

Who's" Your Inner European?

A Rhapsody

A while back I read this quote that proclaimed how the funniest thing about life is that no one gets out of it alive! I read it, chuckled, and then chuckled some more! It has since become something I keep telling myself when things are not going all that great. In spite of the glaring truth in that quote, isn't it incredible how easily life twists us onto its littlest finger and twirls us around like nobody's business!?! Playing havoc with our emotions is just another day's job for the miracle that is life! Phases of elation, monotony and gloom may be a recurring feature in almost every person's life, but isn't the feeling of being happy after long periods of gloom, always a welcome and well-received phenomenon? No matter how adroit we be in handling despondencies, there's nothing like soaking up the first rays of sunshine after a dank few days!!! (Not the sunshine for me, though! Give me the cold weather and damp snow any time!) Anyway, going back to my metaphorical frame of mind, as welcome as the sunshine may be, there also lurks deep inside a sometimes unnecessary fear that before we know it, dark days may come upon us again and soon! What keeps us going, nevertheless, is hope and trust. Without these, each of us would have had to accept the biting cold as a companion of many precious days! Not that I mind it in its real, physical sense, but accepting it in its metaphorical guise is an altogether different ball game!!!
Intuition and premonition work in much a similar manner for me. They may portend joy or dismay, but what makes them bearable is hope. For, although we won't get out of life alive, we'll at least die satisfied.

Happy Children's Day!!!

Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
- Rabindranath Tagore

Bygone Charms...

With the festival of lights just waiting to burst upon us, a friend and I were talking about how different things were when we were kids. I lived in a highly secular locality in an entirely different part of the country, where all of us neighbours would get together and celebrate a good many of these festivals, whether it be Holi, Diwali, Eid, or Christmas! Each had its own charm for us. While during Holi, we got downright filthy and smeared with colours, with not an inch to spare, Eid saw us wolfing down countless sweetmeats! Christmas was when we knocked at each door in the neighbourhood, singing carols into the wee hours of the morning!
Diwali had us lighting diyas on each step of every stairway and in front of every house door! Although the usual share of noisy firecrackers was inevitable, what I loved most were the light emitting ones. A gazillion memories are attached to each of these lovely festivals, but what remains uppermost in my mind is the harrowing experience of one particular Diwali.
My sister was busy setting up little diyas all along the stairway of our apartment, when her dress caught fire from an adjoining lamp! Her friend spotted the disaster even before she herself felt the heat closing in on her. What her friend did next is something I can never forget. She beat down vigorously upon my sister's dress, dousing the flames as best she could with her bare hands! So determined and quick thinking was she that before any of the parents milling around could've realized what was happening and douse the flames with water, the brave girl had curtailed most of the damage! The sight of the two friends hugging and crying, one with a blistered hand, the other with a ragged dress, is a sight that I've associated with Diwali ever since! They don't make them like that anymore!

October...

...was pretty long to be just one measly month!