The Big F

My "trying times" (if you'll allow me to be cheesy this one time) started on July 30th. I'll never forget that day, and that horrid phone conversation, with me standing on a rainy grey terrace, getting drenched in the unrelenting Poona rain.
Little did I know how the next two months were going to unfold, nor did I have a clue about how I would deal with failure considering I've always been a sore loser. Not to mention, this was officially my first tryst with the big F. Thus far, despite my flair and attraction for the dramatic and the extreme, I have had a fairly steady climb career-wise.
Coming from the family I come from, failure has never been an option. I was always a good student through school and college, and as the end of my undergrad days drew closer, the pressure to do something worthwhile and impressive with my life multiplied.
Although the pressure was a definite catalyst, the real reason my ambitious career-woman mode turned on was far more personal. My experiences in the last eighteen months or so convinced me that it wasn't just about pleasing my family, but the fact that I wouldn't really like myself too much if I let myself warm my seat and be complacent about life. Complacency was a plague I immediately began to detest, and thank God for that, because that allowed me to dream big, perhaps a little too big.
I have had several instances in life when everyone has questioned my judgement and looked at me with doubting eyes, including my family, but I pride myself on always sticking to my own choices. I am impulsive, sometimes dangerously so, and stubborn.
The dream I chose to dream for myself is quite ambitious and quite big, and with the passage of time, I have come to believe that my life is about to change irrevocably in a very short time. My fear of rejection, loneliness, self-doubt, and failure have now passed and turned into wispy ghosts of the past, because like someone said, we only fear the unknown, and I am now fairly familiar to these past fears.

I am not exactly in the happiest frame of mind presently. I am home-sick and exhausted beyond words, and could seriously do with a giant bear hug, but hell, I'm closer to the finish line than I've ever been.
Now is not the time to rest and look back.
I'm trying very hard to be zen and just move forward with every day that passes.
Failure is a part of life, one that we must all face some day. All you can do is be grateful that you are now introduced to this largely feared beast, and the only place you can go from rock bottom is up.

This too shall pass..

Genes, Genetics and Family

The inheritance of that lopsided smile, of a certain trill in your laugh, and how your hair tends to fall in stubborn little rings on the sides- these are tiny little proofs of genetics at work, because at sudden moments, like perhaps when you're looking at old photographs of yourself with your children some day, or when you're dressing up for a party and suddenly notice these quirks of yourself in the mirror, you realise that you were once nothing but a single cell packed with DNA carrying several more peculiar traits such as these..
We are mirrors of our parents and our grandparents; maybe the mirror is a bit skewed, a little less polished, but I do believe we reflect, more or less accurately, who we have been raised by.
Little mannerisms and preferences that we have, like choosing to sleep flat on our tummies at night, or having our parathas with ketchup, or our choices in music, these things aren't as original to our personalities as we might want to believe. They've been bequeathed down to us and pumped into our blood by several others who came before us and lent us their last names.
I've always been so enamoured by the fact that I have my father's nose, and my mother's voice, and a thousand other little things borrowed and hidden in little bundles of twisted DNA strands. It's realizations such as these that ground you, make you aware of the fact that you're just a puzzle made up of so many different pieces that come from all over your family tree.
The unlikeliest sources might be the origin of a personality trait of yours that you value most.
Have you ever wondered where those fingernails came from, or where you got the colour of your eyes from, or where your love for karela stems from?
Oh, how I wish we had technology clever enough to decipher these little clues that add to the bigger picture!
The world would make a lot more sense then, and perhaps we'd be a whole lot more comfortable in our own skins.

An Ode To Your Disappearing Act

As subtle as your footsteps
Could possibly be,
Caressing the little fables
And the pretty lies--
You strolled in
With the confidence of a warrior
And the grace of a bride..
And as you drew the blade
Of that silver sword
Closer to my jugular,
All I could think of
Was that moment we shared,
That night, holding hands,
That bottle of liquid fizz,
And the sudden abandonment..
I'm used to evaporation,
So used to singularity,
And yet your blade
Managed to stab
A hidden sense of belief
And a silent prayer for company..