The Rebelle blog

इस साल की शुरुआत काफी अच्छी रही।  मेरी मुलाक़ात इक नयी दोस्त से हुई। वह इतनी जल्दी प्यारी हो गयी की कभी उसके अजनबी होने का एहसास हुआ ही नहीं।  हम बहुत बातें करते हैं, बहुत सारे विषयों पर - संगीत में हम दोनों को बहुत रूचि है, किताबें पढ़ने में वह दिलचस्पी रखती है और रोज सुबह मेरे लिए कॉफ़ी तक बना लाती है। बहुत मीठी, नर्म मिजाज़ की है मेरी दोस्त।  उनका नाम भी उतना ही प्यारा है, बिलकुल उनके स्वाभाव की तरह। मेरी दोस्त कहलाती है - रजनीगंधा! पहली मुलाकात में उनका नाम सुनते ही मैं गाना गुनगुनाने लगी- 'रजनीगंधा फूल तुम्हारे, महके यूँही जीवन में....' ऐसा बहुत काम बार होता हैं जब हम दूसरों से किसी अवरोध बिना अपनी छोटी-बड़ी बातें बाँटते है, बगैर किसी हिचकिचाहट। इसमें सुननेवाले इंसान के संयम को दाद देनी जरूरी है। मेरे बहुत अच्छे दोस्तों में जल्द ही रजनी शामिल हो चुकी है। यूँ तो यह कहना गलत नहीं होगा की बढ़ती उम्र के साथ हमारी दोस्तियां कम हो जाती है, उनमे से बहुत तो ख़त्म तक होती है। हम बस जिंदगी की रफ़्तार में भागते हुये उन्हें भुला देते हैं। किसी फुरसत भरे पल शायद वह हमें याद भी आती है, पर...

Snakes! I dreamt of snakes last night. One of the many incoherent dreams I have had recently. My hatred for gliding reptiles goes way back to my childhood when I remember seeing one of my Dad's relatives have a fit after being chased by a snake through cotton fields. He had almost died from the shock and poor man lived with mental imbalance for a few years. My Dad's mother used to jump and be afraid of Discovery TV channel each time us kids tuned in for watching shows like Deadliest Catch or Survivor man. She couldn't bear looking at snakes, tigers, lions- the fierce species. It didn't help that she had spent all her life in a farm house surrounded by tall crop fields. She was even wary of light. Darkness had been part of her most adult life. She found that change difficult to embrace. As a child, I remember seeing small field snakes during monsoons around the quiet bungalow we lived in, surrounded by a large plot of uncut wild grass and trees. The terrace provide...

Does it ever happen that we completely run out of words to say or things to express? I have started thinking it has happened to me this month. April is Academia time and I've had hands full of academic work- exams, assignments, deadlines. My work got the better of my desire to write everyday or regularly at least. Now, April is ending and here I am looking towards the many possibilities and events that shaped the past few days. A very interesting conversation that came up between my parents and me last night was about living according to society's will and living on individual principles. While they said, that us humans must make compromises and settle so that we fit in the society we live, my mind was churning exactly different thoughts. One part of me was saying that we ought to mix in the society we live in and other said, we ought to also live on our terms & principles. Is that too much of a chaos to deal with? Why are we so tied with a society that doesn't be...

How strange is it to exchange phone numbers with people we know we are never going to talk/meet again! We live such complicated lives that even simple gestures sometimes confuse us. I spend a lot of time thinking about such events afterwards and often come up with 'Oh-I-should-have-said/thought-this' laments. While attending a lecture today evening on a Buddhist scholar and philosopher with connections with Chinese culture, I met someone who is interestingly a Law student and quite aware about urban governance issues. We shared some views on Bureaucracy, City Planning and Civil Services which are hot topics these days. It is almost amusing when strangers make assumptions about our lives which may/may not be true yet they entertain us in that moment. I've had so many memorable conversations with strangers I've met at public meetings/events, and ended up not keeping acquaintances with them. Do they regret it as much as I do now? I've seen that my memory works sha...