The God of Small Things

Arundhati Roy penned this book and won an award for it. Sandhya tells me that it's a great read. When I looked up it's synopsis online, it said that the book is about 'fraternal twins' dealing with the 'small' things in life which ultimately manifest in to colossal deal breakers. Reading this book will go on my ever accruing 'to-do' list. For me 'The God of Small Things' is a concept in one's life which is essential, at times, to appease the tumults of life or simply help you smile at the end of the day, both good and bad.

The concept of having that 'one special person' is scintillating indeed. But to have a God of Small Things is definitely something......something I realized after I had it. So if you have someone in your life who knows you for what you are without you having to explain, takes you for what you are without coining a title, can perfectly understand your episodes of not-your-best behavior and notices those little things that elude the public at large, there you go! You have indeed found your 'God of Small Things'. There is no need to attach any copyright to this and I'd rather do away with the predisposition of reading between the lines since it happens to be a highly subjective concept!

Give the concept of 'moving-on' a thought. If there is something in the past that upsets you and is pulling you down, you must distract yourself with something so much, that it's effect wears off. You spend all the negative energy piling up within you on things you have chosen to do and that in itself is considered half the healing. But memories these days are so easily accessible. They are just a- call, ping, photo, video, wall-post, comment, scrap, voice-mail, e-mail, g-talk, hotmail, yahoo, buzz, blog, text or status-message- away! Does that ever bother you. I have hardly seen about three pictures of my grand-fathers and both of them were gone by the 80's. It takes a while to start smiling over the past, does it not? But hey...distraction is a good thing, ain't it? Ironical rhetoric.

Capital Gain

The title is yet another one of my attempts at playing with the 'metaphor'. Last weekend I listened to a talk by a certain Mr. Terry. He is a high school teacher and was delivering a lecture on Shakespeare's tragic play 'Macbeth'. What I learned about one of the greatest playwrights will be the subject of another post. For now all that is needed is this: During this speech I was made to realize that Shakespeare was a great fan of metaphors. In literature, use of metaphors is one of the most exciting styles of writing. Anyway..... Read on to find out why I used it as a metaphor :)

Over the Good Friday weekend, I went to see the cherry blossoms at Washington DC with my cousin's family. Go to www.nationalcherryblossomfestival.org for the complete history and event list of the festival. This was my first time in the Capital of the United States of America. So it was like I had a huge capital gain (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_gain).....But in every sense of the word, it WAS "Capital Gain" and hence the metaphor :) !! (If you want me to look up 'brevity' in the dictionary I certainly will :))

So coming back to the Cherry Blossom festival. It was fantabulous!! I could probably go on and on about how beautiful everything was but at the end of the day my narrative would probably sound like I described a never ending pink fetish!!! So I will tell you about the other things which pitched in to make this weekend what it was!

1) Weather! It was gorgeous. It made me want to apologize to this place for having blamed it for its incessant snow falls.

2) Drive!! New Jersey to Virginia (to meet cousin's family) and then back again to New Jersey. 10 hours of lone time, with having only me to depend on, for entertainment, a safe drive and crisis management! Thanks to AT&T and to all the people on the other side of the 'sony ericson' for making sure that I was alright!! A special mention to the blessed GPS :) and of course Honda! (Imagine my 'thank you' speech at the Oscars :P)

3) Fully Bloomed Cherry Blossoms!!! These trees are all around DC but are concentrated around the Tidal Basin by the Washington Monument. They are pink blossoms and have a slight fragrance. They form a pink canopy all around the Potomac river. Walking under these blossoms made me feel like someone had held a pink parasol over my head. When the wind blew it created its very own pink 'petal fall' which reminded me of the cinematography in Mani Ratnam's movies.

4) Cousin's Family!!!! I was meeting them after three years. I was in tears when I said 'Hi' to her and when I said 'Bye' to her. Speaks volumes about human relationships as a function of time and distance! Such meetings make one feel zestful about a lot of things and helps one see things in a new and improved light!

Speaking of which, Anu had once told Dinu and me (in one of our random moments) that if you see the picturesque foliage around you (more often while driving and especially in Fall) through sun glasses, the Fall colors look more 'Fall-y'. After trying it out on my drive back from Virginia (Definitely more foliage than Texas!!), I have to second it..... Maybe that is why its called seeing things is a different light. What one sees is only about how one sees it. All colors reflect the light that they are seen under. I cannot stop wondering about how strong that statement is.

So summing up, this has truly been one of the best weekends since July 2008. In all the madness over the past few months, I had lost track of what life used to be. For the past three days, I was being taken care of and I had forgotten how much I missed it since I left India and thereafter Texas. This visit taught me one thing, a person, no matter how strong or independent, would love to be taken care of and feel less responsible atleast for a day or two!! And when such a thing happens....in addition to feeling good......you also tend to sleep well...... :)