The Stale Flower…

Someone gifts you a fresh rose- beautifully red, sweet smelling, attractive, just wonderful. You love to see it, smell it. You admire its beauty and may be even wonder about how wonderful Mother Nature is. You simply find it so very beautiful and attractive. You place it in a very special space ensuring its safety, trying to help it maintain its freshness. You also make sure you have placed it such that you can keep seeing it every now and then. Yeah, it’s the fresh red rose. And you don’t miss noticing it every time you happen to see it.

But as it is the most natural thing, time changes everything. The rose becomes stale sooner or later. It’s still there in the same place where you had kept it because it has not rotten yet. The rose is beautiful but no longer fresh. And losing the freshness makes it lose its attraction. The rose doesn’t attract you anymore to notice its eternal beauty. Now you don’t really care about its safety because you kind of think nothing else can go wrong with it...  or may be you never find time to notice it. May be you are just waiting for it to wither so that you can throw it away… or may be you don’t care about what next to do with it. The flower is still a part of your house but one of the least cared for. It has lost all its attraction and attention. Now, it’s a stale flower.

A new relationship is so crisp, smooth and wonderful. You love every moment of being together. Everything is so special. You just don’t want to stop looking into each other’s glowing eyes. The most difficult thing to do is to keep your eyes off their admirable face. You wish you could hold hands and keep talking (even senseless stuff) forever. You listen to every word of that special someone so carefully. The most adorable thing is their smile. Your knees go weak when you see their charming face. Oh, that strong attraction. The expression of love makes your heart beat faster and you just want to hug and say “I love you too”. You blush when your friends tease you about it. Every time your phone rings, you hope it is nobody else. You keep seeing your phone even when it doesn’t ring. You keep waiting all the time for the next meeting. For that one hour of date everyday, you spend all the other 23 hours thinking about what you would say and how. It is all so cozy and rosy- a new relationship.

And yet again, the destined evil- Time! 

Everything changes from special to not-so-special to casual. Although you become a special part of each other’s lives, there is barely anything so special. Everything becomes so very casual. You forget the joy of those long hours of being spellbound into each other’s eyes. You find nothing special about all the talking unless it is really important. You start hearing them more than you listen to them. Holding hands gives no thrills anymore. Smiles become an obvious- absence of smiles may be noticed but presence wouldn’t be too special. You barely find yourself admiring that same face for such long moments as in those days. “I love you” although doesn’t lose its meaning but probably loses the feeling of special-ness. There is no novelty in the relationship, all the attraction is gone with the wind. Everything that was once so special becomes more like a habit and very casual. You don’t know where you are heading, and you don’t even care to find out. You reach higher levels of understanding and closeness. Your bonding is stronger. Yet, ironically, you take the relationship for granted.

The stale flower of your relationship...

Of Heights and Depths...

 

We all want to rise high, really really high!

We wish to erect sky-scrapers and look at the world from great heights. We wish to fly high in our careers and climb high on the corporate ladder. We have high expectations from our relationships and wish to take them to great heights too, don’t we?

Tall buildings, great careers, wonderful relationships… They all have something in common… And that’s depth!

Yes, for all these heights are based on great depths.

Higher you aim for your careers, you cannot ignore the depth of knowledge and efforts of hard-work that go in to it. Taller the building, deeper is the foundation required to make the building strong. If the foundation isn’t deep enough, the building wouldn’t be strong to be able to reach and sustain at the desired heights. So is the case with relationships. When we dream of big and great relationships, we need to base their foundation with equally deep emotions, care, feelings, commitments and dedication. Deeper the care and dedication, stronger becomes the relationship to withstand the troubles of time.

The tornado of problems which tries to shake relationships time and again- can pass without shattering them only if the strength is sufficient. The earth-quakes of conflicting egos which are capable of turning everything into dust wouldn’t be able to destroy your relationship-castle, only if you’ve built a base that’s strong enough to make this earth-quake bite the dust.

Heights are good, we all desire them and will be able to achieve them, if only, we do not forget the depths and make consistent efforts to strengthen our constructions for sustaining those heights.

Cloudy night sky...

Its been long since i was eager to spend some time of a night lying on a terrace and watching the sky! Thankfully, after a long week of hectic daily schedules, i convinced Archana to spend some time relaxing on the terrace of our hostel. Both of us climbed up around 2 a.m. last night. No, we weren't just the two of us! We had a lot of addictives with us. She had her phone, i had my iPod, we had some delicious food which was freshly delivered. After hogging on to our late-night meal, we lay our tired bodies on a bed-sheet which we had spread on the terrace floor. She clung to her phone and i stuffed the ear-plugs listening to my favourite numbers. And finally, i started my much-awaited Sky-watching! The ambience was just perfect!! :)

The sky looked appealing, despite a complete cover of thick clouds. Various formations of moving clouds gave my imaginations some wings. Wild animals, fairies, cupid, God's eye, huge teddy bear... ah! an endless list- no exaggeration!! At times, the clouds let the sky be a bit visible and i could see tiny stars twinkling bright, until the clouds covered them again. Now, another addiction took over me- food for thought. I somehow start relating things to life, credit/blame the belief that everything happens for a reason and every little thing could have a deeply implied meaning.

The clouds hide the twinkling stars like a curtain. And yes, this curtain falls right in front of our eyes. Some times, clouds hide the stars so well that we forget that the sky is not made up of clouds! We forget about all the shining stars, we forget about the moon, all that we can see is the cluster of clouds. Yeah, its about the sky, but this happens in life too. A curtain falls before our eyes during various phases in life and we forget what life actually is. We start believing that life is all about the few things that we can see right in front of us.

The clouds of bad experiences make us forget about how much good life has in store for us. The clouds of temporary desires cover the permanently twinkling stars of greater virtues. False-friends cover our sight so well that we ignore our true-friends. A boy-friend/girl-friend proves a reason enough to lie to our families, or may be even rebel against them. A short-term cloud of attraction hides the stars of long-term committments. Clouds of immediate income overpower the planning for long-term benefits. The cluster of clouds of incidents while blaming each other makes us forget completely about the beautiful twinkling moments of love and understanding we have had with our loved ones.

Thick clusters of cloud cover our sight, but when the clouds move slowly- getting thinner, we get a slight glimpse of the stars and the brightly shining moon. Yes, the clouds are gone, now the sky is clear. And the moon has lit us up with a lot of realisations. Those realisations which enlighten our lives, probably, at least till the next cluster of clouds bring another phase of short-sightedness.

Realizing its 3 a.m., we rose up to return to our rooms and i couldn't fail to notice that we were completely moon-lit! What an hour of sky-watching!! :)