Dilli ki galiyo mein...

I wonder, if it was in the capacity of Delhi to offer me so many places to visit over just one wekend, or was tht for my own capacity to roam around aimlessly & continously.

Places i covered over the last weekend:
1) CP
2) Jama Masjid
3) Chawree Bazar
4) Atta Market (& GIP & CSM) Noida
5) Khan Market
6) India Gate
7) Chandni Chowk/ Paranthe vali gali
8) Red Fort
9) Saket Select City Walk
10) Band Baja Barat & Phas gaye re obama

it was just not like me.. n i m so amazed at my own courage to travel in metro, autos, rickshaws, and through dilli's tight n blocked streets....
And i got good stories for each of my destinations.
An interesting, long, tiring, happening weekend it was for sure :)
and now i wish this monday morning i could skip my office!!

The Seven Love Lessons....

6^th standard, Bhavan's Public School, Amritsar. We were asked to join either of sports or NCC. I chose to try my hand at Badminton.

It was for the first time that I started saying this word, “Love”, so openly.

Love All, the start. The start of what?

A war starting with “Love All”! Really.. how is this possible.. What was in that person's mind who devised this term..!!

I obviously don't have answers to this question.

But I have something about which I was longing to write from quite some time.

I have learnt many love lessons during different phases of my life. Here I wish to share the Seven Love Lessons.

Lesson 1: Love is a feeling which has no definition, its extent cannot be bound in any length of words.

Ever since I started realizing feelings, I have known Love as a feeling. A feeling, which makes my parents concerned about my every wish, small or big, possible or impossible. A feeling, which makes my sisters worry every time I try to prove I am a grown up girl and I can handle things on my own. A feeling, which makes my friends care about the silliest of my issues. A feeling, which is pious of all the immaterial and material things. A feeling which cannot be described and can only be felt only somewhere deep inside.

Love neither has any reasons. Its just so unconditional in its existence.

Lesson 2: Love all!

My first worldly experience with this word told me to love all. When I look deep into it, I see, I was told to love not only my friends but also my opponents. Even if anyone is against me, only thing I am supposed to do is to love that person, pray for the well being of that person. If I am questioned for my deeds or if I am challenged for my righteousness, I only have to prove by playing my part honestly as I used to do by playing against my opponents with an earnest conviction of winning.

Lesson 3: Loving more than the love you receive will only increase love in your life.

Love, in my life, could not end just with this “Love All” game.

It had to go further.. much further..

As a child, I used to wonder, what forces my parents to care about me so much. What are they getting in return. Now I know, its love.. “an investment which doesn't seek any returns”.

I am fortunate to cherish all the love bestowed upon me by many good God's souls, but fairly not fortunate enough to be able to revert all the love I am blessed with.

The number of ways in which I have received love, the number of sources of love I have cherished, I wish someday I be able to outnumber that.

More u love, more you receive love, happier and happier becomes your life.

It then becomes an infinitely increasing love loop... :)

Lesson 4: Love - Handle with care.

Its only a mother's love that knows to give and keeps giving forever, without asking for anything back. My mother will do anything for me, she is not concerned about how tired she is or how busy she is. Yes I do share a lovely father-daughter relationship also. But papa would not always be polite to all my actions. He would demand justifications for the things he thinks are not good for me.

After all somebody in the family has to take responsibility of me not turning to a spoilt kid.

All other relationships that share a love bond need careful handling.

Don't ever take your love for granted. There are expectations involved in most of the relations. And its only up-to you to improve or spoil any relation.

Lesson 5: Love is not a measurable quantity.

Never compare anyone's love towards you, as there are no means to measure love. “I love you more than anyone else” stands no meaning. Love either exists or it doesn't. Its simple.

Love is a state which takes you to purity. Do not demean it.

Try finding out reasons for loving someone, if its a measurable check list, this definitely isn't Love. Stop be-fooling yourself.

Lesson 6: Love is about being Selfish.

Selfish! Did I just mention a word called “Selfish”!! when everyone says love is about sacrifices, its about forgetting your pains and making the other person happy, how can I even think love is Selfish....

Well relax.. I can explain this one...

Sacrifices come naturally. Sacrifices in love are not the ones which u might do downheartedly, but these are of a higher division. You don't even realize you just sacrificed something, you feel happy because you gave a smile to the person you love. And this becomes the reason for your happiness.

If you are really selfish in love, you would want to see yourself more happy. And for that you will do whatever it takes to make your loved one happy.

So what I mean to say is, more selfish you become in your relationship, more happy and strong becomes your love bond.

Stupid logic I know, but there has to be some fun in love. Every rule should not be so serious :)

Lesson 7: There is only one happiness in life, to love and be loved.

When two people are in Love, their happiness gets connected. Love is a state of being in haven.

You pray for your Love's happiness before praying for yours.

You see your own joy in loving, you find yourself special when you are loved.

Love is indeed simplest of all definitions & still is more complicated than any complex scientific theory..

Respect this feeling. Don't waste time digging reasons for the acts that don't please you at times. Using spade for going deep in mud will only spoil the crop that might turn to a good fruit plant very soon. Ignore a few thorns that might hurt you rarely, for once the plant is nurtured with love and care, your life will be a happy life forever... :)

I will wait till i die...

U said u are by my side
And so I got the reason of my life

U said u will never ignore
Thts when My faith got lifted a lil more

U promised many things
I had confidence within

U confirmed it again
And My belief sustained

Then U found ur life's prorities
I accepted my fate's atrocities

U kept on extending ur pauses
While I could hardly present my clauses

So U said u will try
But Do U kno.. that for u,
I will wait till i die...

A note to myself..

The transition. Sadness of leaving behind many things. Goodbyes n lots of promises. You are still not over all this.
And then the change. A new chapter. A new life. U became a professional. You now are happy for d work u do. You have good people around to make ur moments unforgettable. You have a decent job. You start earning. You do many things for d first time. U do wat u always dreamed of.. u do things u always wanted to do. u don't care of money if its about fulfilling any stupid wish. You enjoy every second of ur life. Peace of mind makes all things move on so comfortably. And then u say.. yes life is beautiful :-)
Good going Neha..
This is how I always wanted your life to be..

Love
Neha :)

When you find it don't let it go

“Taking things for granted” on one side of a balance and “Expectations” on the other, which way would the needle bend?

Both are justified. Both weigh equally good... till the opinions don't conflict.

For once, it feels good to receive (and give) 'Support' and 'Love'. And then it starts with taking it all for granted following the surging expectations.

Meeting up to the expectations of somebody momentarily gives pleasure but when it becomes the habit of the seeker, it feels like an obligation.

And then comes the Guilt or anger. The feelings of unmet anticipations can become suffocating.

Discomfort takes the control. The good times are forgotten. And everything gets messed up.

What could have been a better escape to this?

Not expecting anything from anyone, avoiding relations, not getting attached to mankind, not loving or by just doing everything superficially and heartlessly?

There has to be a better answer. A simple one. We need to find it, for a happier life.

Differences in thoughts is what becomes the reason for instability. Assumptions create confusions. And so do taking things for granted.

Expectations, that don't interfere with one's happiness and space, strengthen the relationship. Understanding of the balancing forces is needed. Respecting the differences is important.

Its hard to find a reason that satisfies the purpose of life. It may be your love, your job, your family or your friends or anything (or anyone) that gives you happiness.

When you find it don't let it go.

Hold it, Respect it, show Care towards it, not only for a moment but Forever..

My experiments with travelling

History has the proofs. Mysteries have always been a part of my wanderings. From the starting times wen I learnt to step my feet to this, I have collected many stories treasured along with my wander lust.
I have enjoyed almost all possible modes of travel- road, air, water...
And so is the diversification of my experiences ;)


Early 1990's. A bus ride. From amritsar to chandigarh. There came a halt for lunch. While my family was having lunch at the bus stop, I escaped quietly. I went in some other bus which left the stop after I stepped in. My parents were searching for me at the bus stop as soon as they realized my absence. The bus passengers noticed a child crying and no one to claim tht child. After moving on just a few meters, the bus driver stopped when the passengers told him about me. I was fortunate enough on that day to be granted with the grace to return to my parents. The newly added feature of walking at that time could have taken me to anywhere. This thought scares me off. But it was funny.. :)
Never mind. I was back in safe hands.
And so continued my wanderings and as the associated mysteries.


On a trip from Chandigarh to Chennai via Delhi, we (group of 5 stupid PEC students) reached the Delhi station 3 hours before the scheduled time of our train to Chennai. The tragedy is very interesting indeed. Being before time, being at the station itself, we missed our train. "How' is a good question here. Well this none of us can explain till date. Haha. We assumed that the train will get late as all other trains were behind their respective schedules. So we didn't bother to inquire the timings of our train.
But by any means we had to reach Chennai. That day for the first time I saw bribery from so close. Had to give some extra money to the station master to get hold of the tickets of next train. When I think of this story now I cant stop laughing. But that day it was amongst the worst feelings I have ever had :P
Late night in a city like Delhi, no where to go, in the chiling winters of January, and when my parents were calling me if he train has started moving or not...
I had to lie to my father tht train is late, this was just to avoid him taking tensions :)
And today he is a proud father n tells this story to people to show i can handle situations independently without bothering my parents.. B)

Another fun-filled (actually stupidity-filled) day was when I was coming back from Noida to Chandigarh with another innocent PEC friend. Took an auto to reach the Delhi bus terminal. And on the way we decided to go to the railway station as train would take us lesser time. On the road dividing into two ways, one to bus stand and the other one to railway station we asked auto vala uncle to stop. Called my papa to check the availability of tickets for Jan Shatabdi on net so that we could finalize our mode of transport.
Auto uncle shouting for the wait. Confusions and tensions rising. Amidst all this somehow by next taking a rickshaw we reached the station. Now a long queue to get the ticket. Both of us got in to separate lines to try our luck. Finally we have the tickets of some local train to chandigarh. Next target was to find the train on 10th platform. Train.. uffff... in such a bad condition.. unexplainable :P
now we realized the meaning of “Local train”. And the worst part was now we realized that we were at OLD DELHI RAILWAY STATION when we assumed we were at NEW DELHI RAILWAY STATION. Heights.. :D
Disheartened both of us went to bus stand at the end and wasted the half day leave we took to reach home early.
Not all train trips have sour memories. One to Mumbai was a memorable one, with 5 of my cousins. Playing antakshri at 11 pm. And then an elderly person came to us to stop the nuisance and lectured us how we are supposed to behave while travelling in AC compartments :P
I remember this trip also for the heavy rains we enjoyed in Mumbai.
For steering the vessel in Arabian sea myself at the Mumbai High Port. For the fun at the water-kingdom. For the days we spent in clouds while our stay in Sahara City, Lonavla and Khandala. The pretty scenic views on the way to Nasik and Shirdi. Hmmm.. :)

I have been to India's heaven. Kashmir. Here also, as expected, the arcane followed.
While we were capturing the beauty of Sonmarg, and planning to visit Gulmarg next morning, we got the news of riots burning up in Srinagar. Our one week long tour had to cut down to just 3 days. Immediately left for Srinagar Airport, witnessed fire on the roads, police all around, horrifying experience. Next, on the spot ticket to Chandigarh was not available. We took a flight to Jammu. This was just a 25 mins flight. As it took off, we had a sigh of relief that finally we were safely out of Srinagar. But it was still not all. The landing of flight at jammu airport still had to give us another alarming instinct. Due to bad weather, run way was not much visible. Flight somehow landed and the bumpy and growly landing.. I still remember when I clutched to papa's arms in the fear of assuming it was an end. Haha.


Its like a power that I have to attract problems. Lol.
Where ever I go, it follows. :P
But then i guess... It only adds fun and reasons to remember all my trips.. :)

Harsh! Yet …… the truth

Speak up; you will have to end up inaudible. Stand out; eventually you will be made to sit aside. Stand up and speak out, you will be ASSASSINATED.
Harsh! Yet …… the truth.
The truth in which the today’s world is drenched up: the truth which has become the reason for losing eccentricity of the humankind.
Here in the following few lines you will not get to read about few brave women or about the works done by them or how they struggled through their life but the motive is to make you know an up surging question with the reference of some famous people.
Writing for common people and speaking in front of them are amongst the often used ways to make people encounter the blackened truth of our makeup. Every constitution says you have freedom to express whatever you feel. But now the reality is not far from our catch. People know that there will always be some dormant or dynamic links trying to make halts over trials of putting across what you want, even if you speak in an attempt to lead the society towards a constructive edge.
People nagging in the name of religion, be it the common people or be it the terrorists backed Islamic extremists, while in the air of politics are the links which overpowered the people concerned in this write up.
The worlds watched it all, the revolts and the killing; or to be brief, the cruel reality surmounting over these people. Taslima Nasreen, a writer, presented in her novel all she observed and knew about Muslim culture, and what she wanted the world to know as well. She talked of Muslim traditions and their impacts, in order to create awareness in society. Benazir Bhutto, former Pakistan prime minister and a prominent politician, had a strong determination to reinforce democracy in her country, in unison with fighting against terrorism. Brutality had such soaring impacts that the writer was kicked out of her country for the reason that people believed that she had hurt their religious sentiments. And for the other, who tried to stand against the winds, bullets were fired over her in public from a distance, merely of a few meters.
M F Hussain, our very own Indian personality decided to quit his Indian nationality for the disrespect of his work shown by people. Not even the government could come to the rescue.
Whatever the writer wrote or the painter drew or the politician said, had their thoughts and observations; right or wrong, no one has any right to credit that. By imposing ban on her novel and ultimately a BAN on HER was no justice. If the readers felt the novel was out of their acceptance, they could have simply ignored its presence or could have revolted in the same way as she presented her thoughts, by writing. Protesting and exploiting her freedom for using her right, was an inhuman act. Well, to talk of inhuman acts, KILLING a person is the most dreadful one. The mastermind of the layout and the way of assassination of Benazir Bhutto might be unknown till now, some nasty things might remain in the woodsheds; but the upshot is evident, she died in the want of changing the conventions. She wanted an end of dictatorship and her country to be free from terrorism.
Life took wrong turns but not the unexpected ones. They had some idea of what destiny might have for them before all this came to pass in reality. Nevertheless, they kept fighting and never took any reverse tread. These three were no less than any revolutionists for the world as they wanted amendments in the society. If given a chance, they could have done a lot in their ways to enlighten people. Alas!! They were not allowed to…
If every moment of such leaders is so uncertain, we will soon start losing all our revolutionists. Now what makes the question is; after watching such alarming ends of eminent personalities do we still have people who will dare to take up the lead to change the persisting system?? And even if we have select few, are people willing to “Respect” them??
Public mistrust is on such heights that taking new steps is rather more followed question over supporting those who take initiatives.
History has proofs for this, Darwin, Galileo got the punishments for bringing in changes.. and so will this continue forever...
If the dis-respect continues to be on the rising end, the day is not far when we will acclimatize ourselves to swallow evil deeds of others, without raising our voices against them. We will remain quite after watching things going wrong. We will be frightened of fighting for our rights.


Their tryst with destiny left many questions unanswered..

Your Achilles’ heel

Treated me as a toddler,

And soon with her love n dignity made me apt for swift playings…

Being rebuked once,

I lost my faith, but her smile set aside my failings…

She happened to be my sweet chum,

For eternity helped me out off this world’s unfair sayings…

She kept wheezing throughout,

Bar this Achilles' heel of hers’ never trounced our game into strayings…

But not a soul could battle that fury of nature,

And on that nightmarishly scary 29th, we lost someone so caring,

This verity, that we are now not proficient to take note of her valuable scolding,

that this is an end of her sagacious of our burgeoning,

has now, for all her disciples, turned out to be our slaying…

She promised me extravagant care all the way through,

But I guess, this all was just amongst her expert lyings…

Unperturbedly, I know, this wasn’t a lie…

I’ll always stay clutched to your blessings…

You are always here to steer my each stroke…

With your yet caring hands shoring me up,

Yes, I know u r still here for me…

I can wisdom your presence…

Will never let u down…

The Youth, Politics and Internet

I see the youth, the future, they are busy these days. Busy in creating a newfangled word list. This novel vocabulary defines tweeting, googling, orkuting. You are cool if you are in this. And you might be bullied by many if you are out of this redefined society. It is a status symbol to be visible with maximum number of profiles.

What do these young people talk about, what subjects do their reviews relate to, which all stuff do they discuss and what kind of questions do they raise on social networking sites? The views represented on the internet belong to just one particular lot of people or can these be applied collectively to whole of the modern generation? Are people actively involved only in enhancing their social links or do they actually use this tool for professional, intellectual and brain storming purposes?

The dot net debate or the internet question has numerous extremities.

Solving one log jam might link you to some other slayer virus which possibly will delete necessary data from the hard disc of your intellect to slower down the processing speed of your brain while uploading worthless files, lowering the effective memory and time available for one’s critical jobs. Welcome to the internet world.

But many deadlocks are not insolvable. Step by step any closed loop can be straightened up.

As the first step, one question I would like to raise is that “Is the youth interested in politics”. This needs a serious scrutiny. On various networking sites while analyzing the profiles of many of my friends I observe their comments on political views. “I hate politics” is what most of them have to say.

We talk of an electronic era today, where political parties are using the internet medium for their promotional campaigns. But if people on internet, in general, are not interested in politics then can this e-publicity create any influence in making them vote in favor of any party.

Probably yes!

In recent US elections, the number of young people voting tripled in some states. No state showed an increase of less than 40 per cent. There are undoubtedly many reasons why Obama has captured the enthusiasm of young voters. But certainly his ability to reach them where they live — online — and his use of social networks to allow them to create communities independent of his campaign organization, has played a large role in building their enthusiasm.

If this is the case in US then why cant such be the situation in our country. For the Indian scenario, Vir sanghvi has a say to this matter, young people are keenly interested in politics, have strong views on many events, and are far more articulate than the generations that preceded them. This is justified by strong and sometime fiery comments witnessed by his blogs relating to political matters. And not only his blogs for that matter, all of us should also remember the recent twitter comments by SRK and his fans.

Moving to the second step, I have the next question. Can the internet users be grouped together for their same thoughts?

The interactive nature of the Internet helps to see how different people respond to issues and events concerning economic issues, religious issues, cross border relations of the country, the government leaders, etc.

Most of the internet users seem to form consensus on many issues of national importance. The general attitude of any learned youth who post comments on blogs of famous writers are perhaps the views of a whole new generation of affluent urban Indians, not just those who are on the Internet.

Gloom observed on news channels after death of Jyoti Basu in west Bengal was of little importance on the web, proving this internet generation has disapproving attitude towards Marxism.

Then talk about the ancient disputes about medieval mosques. These are trivial issues concerned only with the old age bracket. Babri masjid is one such religiously motivated political issue about which youth have not much to say on the internet.

The cohort on the net represents modern beliefs. They are against backwardness. They mean equal rights for everyone. This generation hates anything that sounds primitive or regressive. They want to revolutionize the society. And they do have the power to do so.

What this generation has to say about our leaders?

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is a clear winner for our youth. Except for the hard BJP core, most bloggers and tweeters respect Manmohan Singh.

This seems to be a reflection of the respect that Singh commands among educated Indians who see him as an icon for modernity.

Cross border relations of India is another worth mentioning issue.

People on internet are hard line xenophobes. Their remarks after some incidence of national disrespect proves this fact.

This is a strongly patriotic generation that is driven by a vision of India as a potential superpower. Anybody who attacks India or is seen as standing in the way of India’s rise is treated harshly.

But there is no generalized hatred of Pakistan or China on the whole.

And finally: The distinguishing features of this Internet generation?

Commitment to modernity, a strong nationalist streak and contempt for the ‘socialist’ past and those who represent it.

The question has an open end. Extremities are immeasurable. The points I raised today are just a few drops belonging to the vast oceanic extent of the debate but are indeed worth mentioning and deserve a notice from everyone, our leaders, the learned writers, the old and the young themselves.