Yeah baby its quite the high. :D

Artist:Natasha Sazonova

And one fine day I quit smoking just as suddenly I started smoking 4 and a half years back. No particular reasons as such. Hmmmm nobody asked/compelled me to nor did I promise anyone that I would and nor was it a new year resolution. Okie yes I have never been a compulsive smoker but at my peak I did smoke up to 10 a day and if we were out drinking or clubbing then like many other smokers I lost count. The smoking ban has helped tremendously cos I realized that I can be out drinking and having fun minus a cigarette. I remember a time 3 years back when I couldn’t dance without a cigarette in my hand and now it seems so so ridiculous. Why did I ever condition my mind to such an extent? Tsk tsk the follies of youth. Yes I make a confession that it did feel really cool scandalizing people in coffee shops when one was in college and you took out a smoke and started puffing at it under the angry glares of the older generation. I had tried to cut down on smoking a couple of years back since I got obsessed about working out and had gotten it down to one a day but failed inevitably as I was going out too often with a bunch of people who smoked and drank excessively. Yes peer pressure does exist. Nobody ever forces you to smoke but unconsciously you become like the others.
So here I am and it feels good. I’d be lying if I said that I don’t crave for that occasional smoke while drinking but I can control that urge, look the other way and not go out with the others as they head out for a smoke and not give in to temptation. I feel a teeny meeny bit proud of myself cos this was of my own accord and no external influence. Yeayyyyyyyy! I wonder if Dad would have been proud of me. I wonder if this was his doing. I don’t know and I never will know but maybe in some strange way his passing away did induce me to quit smoking. The biggest kick is being able to run on the tread mill for 7 minutes continuously at the speed of 8kms an hour or being able to run 3 minutes at the breakneck speed of 11 kms an hour while your fellow joggers reduce their speed after the first minute too tired to carry on at that speed. By the end of those final minutes that familiar excruciating pain in my chest doesn’t hound me any longer and I am not choking or gasping for breath like I use to but just panting, plain panting and breathing, breathing freely and gulping in more oxygen. Yeayyyy baby its quite the high not smoking at all.

“The best way to stop smoking is to just stop - no ifs, ands or butts.”

Watching life pass me by.....

Source:www.fineartamerica.com
Someone told me the other day that I could either chose to sit on the fence and watch life pass me by or get down right into the middle and get my hands dirrrrtyy. Have I been sitting on that fence for too long? What about my “ahaaa” moment? Do we have to sit it out for a long long time before something concrete comes along your way? Is it because I didn’t want it badly enough that I landed up compromising? I wish it hadn’t been this way when all I was left with was this one option, the old option. Sometimes it is like I fell flat on my face and I hate it when people ask me why did you come back? I don’t feel like telling them my long long story that sounds like some melodramatic movie. I hate answering questions on why, how, when and what now? I don’t know about what now. I have no idea and no stupid lofty plans. I’ll take it as it comes whatever this is and wherever this may lead me. It isn’t bad at all but just that I didn’t see myself here. No I wasn’t supposed to be here at all but here I am and took me sometime to even accept it cos initially I just saw it as my failure to get anywhere in life. But as each day passes it gets a little better and things do brighten up and the grey starts to fade away. Doors open up, side doors mind you and the sunshine starts creeping in. You start building your own little niche again be it at work or be it with the new house. You get into a routine and you find ways to keep yourself busy on weekends with old friends and some new ones and on weekdays when you tire yourself out at the gym. It is never as great as you make it out to be and never as bad as you make it out to be. This is it at least for now so might as well make the best of it cos who knows when the winds of change come in tomorrow and blow you away in some other direction.
“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. Which road do I take? she asked. Where do you want to go? was his response. I don't know, Alice answered. Then, said the cat, it doesn't matter.”
Lewis Caroll

Of Cycle Rickshaw Rides and Purani Dilli

What a merry time A and I had trapezing all over the city last Saturday! The highlight of the day being the cycle rickshaw ride from the Metro Station at Chandni Chowk to Kareem’s near Jama Masjid. Now A and I, well we aren’t really small people yet there we were happily sitting on one rickshaw. A is 6ft 2 and can no way be classified as skinny while I like to call myself plump. Hahah! But we had soooo much fun on the way and I couldn’t stop laughing cos A wanted to capture every moment and every object on his camera. Photography is his new found passion thanks to his Iphone and he was uploading those pictures almost immediately on Facebook much to my amusement. Those photos were instantaneously inviting the comments of his friends who were all wondering what exactly was A up to until he changed his FB status to Delhi 6. :-) Yup hanging around with him was fun, fun, fun and much nicer than that crazy night at Cirrus in Bangalore last September.
The food at Kareem’s was delicious especially the Mutton Burra Kebab and the sweet nan they bake. I know its called something but I cannot get myself to remember the name. A ordered a Biriyani which wasn’t anything out of the ordinary but the Chicken Kadhai was out of this world with a fusion of flavours. A pronounced that the meal had been worth the Cycle Rickshaw Ride and not to forget the long Metro ride from Dwarka. I followed it up with a huge meetha paan while A smoked and forbade me to do so saying I’ll cause a riot if I smoked in a public place like this. The paanwala was this cheery middle aged man who promised me that I would have never had such a paan before and insisted on putting every possible ingredient into the paan leaf until it was this gigantic thing that could not be stuffed into my mouth. It turned into more of a wrap by the end of it.  We walked into Jama Masjid with our shoes in our hands clicking photographs and trying to find the right mishmash of shadow and light.
Our last stop was India Gate where we treated ourselves to ice lollies and took some very pretty pictures of the tree lined avenue bordering India Gate. Yup it was a day well spent. I like such outings when I get to do something I wouldn’t have done of my own accord. Exploring the old city on my own wouldn't have been half as much exiciting as it was with A. :-)

“After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings.”

If you forget me.....

I want you to know
one thing.

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me.

Well, now,
if little by little you stop loving me
I shall stop loving you little by little.

If suddenly
you forget me
do not look for me,
for I shall already have forgotten you.

If you think it long and mad,
the wind of banners
that passes through my life,
and you decide
to leave me at the shore
of the heart where I have roots,
remember
that on that day,
at that hour,
I shall lift my arms
and my roots will set off
to seek another land.

But
if each day,
each hour,
you feel that you are destined for me
with implacable sweetness,
if each day a flower
climbs up to your lips to seek me,
ah my love, ah my own,
in me all that fire is repeated,
in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten,
my love feeds on your love, beloved,
and as long as you live it will be in your arms
without leaving mine.

Pablo Neruda