The Rebelle blog

Some days the only text messages I receive on my phone are from the Zumba group I happily and dare say, religiously dance with five days a week. They are not even directed towards me, only some regular forwards, jokes, some promotional jewellery and meditation cum well-being workshop events. At times, I really detach myself from everything that goes around. DO we ever realise the information overload we are sending back into the universe every single minute, all of us 7 billion people? I may have expressed this thought here before and I am doing it yet again. A very random stranger who has become a familiar acquaintance on Instagram texted me the other day urging me to write a bestseller and that I am a genius. These words coming from someone who only knows me from some regular interaction virtually over books, photographs and rants, separated by a physical distance of thousands of miles and oceans between us, humbled me. Happiness comes unexpectedly. Her words made me happy, gave ...

It's close to midnight, raining, the tenants living upstairs are creating some ruckus and here I am, pondering over my disastrous cupcake kitchen adventure from the evening. My head hurts badly with a splitting pain throughout my temples and perhaps, I need to pay a visit to my ENT doctor tomorrow. Each year, at least once I suffer from these splitting headaches which are usually only warning me about my ear infections. I am a very healthy person. I seldom miss appointments or work assignments or social commitments due to sickness. But that's because I am really scared of illness and the pain that follows it. As a kid, most of my doctor visits were due to ear infections only. For the past couple of years, I have been relatively healthy and fit with no major or minor sicknesses ever, not even cold or fever that warranted a visit from me to the doctor.  Last Sunday, I was travelling through a mountain pass in my car and happened to witness a magical moonlit night that seem...

Why did we begin in the first place to complete something? Always go back to the reasons we started doing something we liked. Very straightforward, isn't it? We are what we think! My many musings these days apart from the random chaos that plagues my mind found me reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Joan Didion, simultaneously. As I went through Marquez's words, it dawned upon me of the many vices that reside within us, which have a better hold than we think they do. It's all part of our making and our inner being the way it is. I once read somewhere that "Your mind will always believe everything you tell it. Feed it faith. Feed it truth. Feed it with love." How then do we still end up belittling ourselves to such an extent that it harms us? Words have the potent power of endangering minds and souls into a deep abyss of destruction. I am filled with a mad rage at the world. We give ourselves to the world, its avarices and end up empty handed, figuratively ...

Sometimes I’m afraid I’m happy, but because I expect it to be something else, I question the experience. So now, when in doubt, she shrugged with true bravado, I’ll assume I’m happy.     ― Carrie Fisher, Postcards from the Edge. Something happened and all the happiness and positive spirits I was feeling are drained now. Sometimes my mind scares me with the dire things it thinks. I cannot give up. I don't give up easily. I mustn't now too. It helps to ponder over things that trouble us over a span of couple of hours. A few hours earlier I felt extremely dejected at my failure of attaining something I was confident I had in my kitty. Then, I started talking to myself about the futility of unnecessary freaking over the unoccurred and voila! I feel fit as a fiddle, not drained emotionally nor depressed at all. This only makes my resolve to seek the higher transformative powers of creating change within myself and embracing it too more stronger than ever. It's true th...

I was going through an emotional turmoil last night and used this blog to vent out my grief. Sometimes, well, only a few times, I wonder if my understanding of grief, misery and sorrow is the same that everyone goes through or I am severly meddling these confused emotions I can't seem to word out. Whichever way it is, I felt incredibly better after writing everything here, and I am trying to assert my mind into believing that THAT which hasn't happened yet and perhaps won't take place shan't worry me and cause me distress or unncesarry panic. I suppose I already should be alert at the use of such negative energy bubbles into my conversation here. I am throwing caution to the wind and deciding not to think about anything at all. My heart goes into a ballistic mode once I conjure too many multiple scenarios in my brain and then as if ticking on a machine, it starts weaving these elaborate sequences I deem fit only for fictional accounts. Hemingway wrote A Moveable Feast...

मला उगाचच पटकन मनाला लावून घ्यायची सवय झालीय. फार लवकर वाईट वाटून घेते मी. यात तोटा माझाच होतो शेवटी. प्रचंड मानसिक तणाव राहतो मनावर बरेच दिवस, कधी कधी आठवडे देखील. मागच्या वर्षी तर खूप महिने प्रचंड दडपण आलं होतं मला. अभ्यासात देखील मग मन रमत नव्हतं. त्यामुळे एक फायदा असा झाला कि इथे मी ब्लॉग मात्र नियमितपणे करायला शिकले तेवढ्या अवधीत. आज घरातला पुस्तकांचा आणि वर्तमानपत्रांचा पसारा आवरताना मला बरीचशी जुनी कात्रणं सापडली. मी पार हरखून गेले सगळंच अधाशीपणे वाचण्याच्या नादात. लोकसत्ताच्या लोकरंग तसेच चतुरंग पुरवण्यांमधले अगणित लेख, टिपणं, आणि संग्रही केलेले भरमसाठ विशेष पुरवण्यांचे गठ्ठे! माझी आई नेहमीप्रमाणे मला ओरडली कि सगळं टाकून दे, गरजेपुरतच आता संग्रह आवरता घे. तेवढ्यात माझे डॅडी घरी आले आणि मी काढलेल्या मासिकांच्या गट्ठ्यांना ढूंढाळू लागले. मग काय आम्ही दोघं त्यात गर्क झालो तासभर. शेवटी हो नाही म्हणता म्हणता परत मोठा ढीग झालाच परत. मग जेवणानंतर मी मला वाचावेसे वाटणारे कात्रणं नि पुरवण्या हाताशी धरल्या आणि गुंगून गेले सगळ्यात. खरंच! आपण आयुष्यात किती गोष्टींचा संग्रह करतो. कधी आनंद...

If you have the words, there's always a chance that you'll find the way. So wrote Seamus Heaney. This sweltering heat is making me go nuts. I have just come back home today after yet another two days of continuous travelling to a city I love with all my heart except the heat makes me want to slither into a cool cave and wait there until summer ends. I have also been strongly fighting against the urge of not being able to churn out words lately. Seems like my brain has melted all the thinking nerves. Right now, the news on TV is running a reel on water shortage and drought in villages not far from Mumbai's peripheral areas. Water from rivers and dams located in these villages was supplied via pipelines to the Greater Mumbai and Thane suburbs. Now, the residents there travel for miles and often into other villages in search of a pot of water. Borewells and groundwater reserves have long depleted and the only visible proof of an existence of a river are the remnants o...