You can’t hurry LOVE!!!

You can’t hurry LOVE, you just have to wait, LOVE don’t come easy!

It’s going to make you wait and wait till you can’t take the wait no more. And just when you want to give up on it, it will slowly creep up on you, like a burglar in the night (if this still happens in a very digital world), and steal your heart without you knowing.

It will make you work and work and work with no outcome! It will show you an oasis only for it to turn out to be a mirage! 

It will make you kiss a thousand of frogs (not that I am calling the ones who I’ve dated frogs, just using the analogy, and now I am greatly digressing form the topic) till you find the one! 

On the plus side you get to meet and kiss (and much more) a few, if not many, till you eventually get there, if you are open to meeting them all.

You can’t hurry love, it’s going to take its own sweet time to get to you (if you’re lucky enough for it to find its way to you).

And although you may wear your heart on your sleeves, you can’t make a heart to love, to see you as a potential mate. And let’s face it, if you have to make someone see you that way then that may not be worth it, cause you can’t really make someone love you, you can’t force someone to have those feelings for you, just as you can’t do the same for you. You can’t hope for someone to fall in love with you, to see you for who you are and what you could be, if they are not ready for you, if they don’t want to.

And if they say that they are not in the same place as you are, they need time, know that you are better off not waiting and hoping and pining. You are doing a disservice to yourself (and the same applies when you are the one saying this).

If it has to happen it will happen. Never keep your hopes up, or hold your breath, cause it could only lead to headaches and heartbreaks (lucky are the few who’s waiting are rewarded). 

There’s going to be false starts and dead-ends and paths that lead to nowhere, going around in circle, all adding to the anxiety and tension that racks us.

But then we are fools, even after knowing it all we will still be shameless and loose our mind and sleep and increase our anxiety and hope, when we need to patient (and not become a patient of our of our own doing). Love’s going to take its own sweet time.

We are going to react when Cupid strikes with his arrows behaving like a fool, when we should be rational.

So in short, you can’t hurry love. You’ve just have to wait. Love doesn’t come easy!!!!

What’s done is done

What’s done is done 

What’s gone is gone

There’s nothing you can do 

To get it undone that’s what has been done

No matter how badly you wish 

You could go back and undo 

That what has been done

That what has gone 

What’s done is done

And it can’t be undone

It’s time to put the rest 

The ghosts that haunts your head

Exorcise the demons and their torments

That refuse to leave us till we are dead

The past is done and gone

So don’t let it haunt and torment and torture

What’s done is done 

And nothing you can do will get it undone

It’s time to let go and find a release 

From the clutches of regrets

It’s time to move on 

No matter how much you try to hold on 

Not wanting to let go

But that’s what you need to 

And that’s for the best for you

Cause there’s freedom in letting go 

What was not meant to be yours

That was meant to be forever

What’s done is done 

It something that can never be undone 

So let it all go and set yourself free

Put the past behind

A fleeting reflection in the rear view mirror

Not something to hold on to

Not matter how bitter and scarred it has been

It’s in moving on will there be healing 

A chance to find peace and grow stronger 

Once you let go and leave it all behind

What’s done is done 

What’s gone is gone

There nothing that can be done 

So let go and move on and heal 

And find the peace that no one can deny!!!

The week that was…

Oh what a week it has been… from birthdays to restarts and new beginnings to starting of new chapters and making new connections and reconnecting with old ones… the week had all of it!

To begin with, the week had its share of birthdays, beginning with mumma’s 74th one, to the birthdays of your fellow running buddies and coach. This meant a lot of birthday messages and birthday posts, which at times can be tiresome but at the same time pretty fulfilling.

The week also saw a return to working from office, albeit in a hybrid format. After almost 5 plus years of working from home, it felt good to finally work from office, a good change of scenery, a return back to a life that you once lived.

But most importantly, the week also saw you starting a new job after a month of being jobless. 

You’ve got to be really grateful that you found a new job within a month after you lost your last one knowing that many out there who have gone through the same thing as you have and are still searching for a job. You are grateful and thankful but also you not taking for granted what you have and the people who stood by you and through it all. Most importantly you are thankful that you maintained bonds and connections and didn’t burned bridges that helped you get through it all.

So it’s time to put away all the hurt and helplessness and the rejections and the anxiety and the fear of the sword hanging over your head, all the self-doubts and tears. Time to put it all behind you and start a new chapter.

But still there’s a lingering self-doubt, the anxious feeling, a sense of fear of failing, that refuses to go away despite your best effort to rid yourself of these feelings. You have been scarred and it’s these scars that remind you, that scares you.

But in the end you know you need to move on and start afresh and let the experience be a lesson that you have learned, one that you should not repeat again, one that you should never take for granted.

And, as your burgers and fries mentioned, you are here to work and not to make friend, so you don’t have to be so sweet and kind, and maybe this is something I need to incorporate, but knowing me, this is going to be damn difficult.

So you have it, you are starting a new job, but at the same time it means returning back to the workplace to work from office, to working amongst people as against working remotely on your own.

So once again you are figuring out the fastest way of getting to office, which meant taking multiple mode of transportation, and thanks to connectivity you can actual do it.

So it’s running to catch a train and standing in long lines only to stand in buses, trying to get to office without looking like you bathed on the way. And then you figure out other and quicker ways of getting to office, like changing metros. But that meant you reached office in one mass of sweat, but still you reached pretty quickly.

So there you have it, a pretty interesting week, a week of celebrations and firsts and restart, the week that was!!!!

Don’t stop believing…

Don’t stop believing, Journey sang

And how true are these words

Cause we are the believers, the truth seekers

The never giving uppers

Holding onto a feeling, a belief

Even if it’s just a glimmer of hope

We continue to hope and believe 

Hope that the tide will turn 

And things will  go our way

A belief that things will get better, eventually 

Cause we can’t loose hope

We can’t loose faith

Cause if we do, it will be the end of us

So we continue hope and have faith

And continue to believe 

That no matter how things may seem

No matter how things may be

Even if we are tossed on life’s tempest

Hope will always get us through

Hope will always get us there 

No matter how bad life may seem

No matter how dire our situation may be

We will find a way to survive

To rise up and shine

Like a phoenix, from the ashes of despair

We will soar high 

Cause we have hope in our soul 

And faith, the wind beneath our wings 

And a belief that we’ll make it through

So as long as be keep believing 

Holding onto a feeling of hope, of faith 

We will survive and thrive 

So as Journey sang 

Don’t stop believing 

Hold on to the feeling!!!

That’s me in the corner…

That’s me in the corner 

That’s me trying to avoid the spotlight 

Cause when I find myself in it 

It’s for all the wrong reasons 

Making me wish I was somewhere else instead!

That’s me in the corner

The one that’s often overlooked 

that’s often ignored and forgotten

Always on their own

Nothing quiet special

In fact quiet ordinary to look at

A bit of a bore!

That’s me in the corner 

Always on my own 

Wanting something or someone to call my own

But often left sad and forelone

Wanting to love but scared of getting hurt

Wanting to love but often friend-zoned!

That’s me in the corner 

Wide and eyed and smiling 

Trying to appear cheerful and positive

But internally wracked with 

Nervous anxiety 

An eternal pessimist

Coupled with low self-confidence 

And high self-doubt

That refuses to leave me alone

Often insisting keeping me from being on my own!

That’s me in the corner 

Someone who’s frightened of happiness 

Cause something bad might happen next

Someone who’s worried about 13s and

17s

As they come with their share of trouble

And anything falling in these days 

Will never go your way

Call it superstition or overthinking 

It’s just the way you are!

That’s me in the corner

Someone hoping to be in the spotlight 

Cause no matter what 

You have faith

And prayer on lips 

And hope in your soul

No matter how things may turn out

All will be good in the end

And you’ll no longer be

The one in the corner!!!

The little person in your head

There’s this person 

Residing inside your head

Living absolutely rent free

Constantly whispering in your ears

Constantly sowing seeds of doubts 

Making you think and rethink and overthink

The one that sees 

What others and you don’t see

The bad in the good

The negative in the positive 

Who’s constantly on the lookout 

For dark clouds on a beautiful sunny day

Always diverting your mind

To the worse that could happen

Even when everything is going right

Sending you in a tailspin 

Filling you with anxiety 

Turning you into a nervous wreck

The one who goes at everything 

With a magnifying glass

Magnifying even the smallest of doubts

Magnifying every insecurities 

Magnifying the smallest of flaws

The smallest of mistake

Magnifying it 10 times than what it should be

The one who’s constantly questioning 

Constantly doubting 

Doubting  your capabilities and abilities 

Constantly causing you to doubt yourself

Weakening your hope

Shaking up your faith 

Always causing you to self-doubt

Always causing you to think for the worst 

Even when there’s chance for good

That inner saboteur that constantly doubting

That’s constantly questioning

Who makes you constantly live in fear

Who makes you live in 

A constant state of anxiousness 

Oh how you wish they would leave you be

And stop living rent free

So that you can evict them 

This person that lives in your mind!!!

All will be alright

Everything will be alright, they say

But the question is 

When will things be alright

Have faith, they say 

But how much faith should one have

Before they begin to break

Be patient and things will get better

But how much patience should one have

For how long would one have to patiently wait 

Cause for someone that’s racked with anxiety 

Coupled with an overthinking mind 

That’s in constant overdrive 

It’s difficult to be patient 

Especially when the mind 

Is constantly thinking up ways in which 

Things could go wrong

They say things will get better 

But when will that happen 

Is what you want to ask them

When will things start to get better 

You’ve been through the wringer 

Now all you want is a moment to breathe

A moment of levity 

A moment away from the insanity

That you find yourself in 

A moment to untangle the knots

You knotted yourself in

They say stay positive 

And manifest good things 

But how do you stay positive 

When your mind is constantly negative

How do you manifest good things

When your mind is always thinking

About the worst things that could happen 

They say have hope

But how much hope do you have 

Before you finally breakdown and give up

In the end, despite what your mind might think 

And how you act and believe

You’ve got to keep the faith and keep moving

You can never give up 

You keep hoping and moving on 

Cause eventually everything will be alright!

The Despair Syndrome

Setbacks are never easy to bounce back no matter what others say. They erode a part of you leaving you with self-doubt and tons of questions and emotional turmoil.

When something happens you keep asking yourself “why me?” “Why did this have to happen to me?” and so many questions that fill your head  threatening to drown you, threatening to suffocate you!

They say you’ll bounce back and higher but first how do you get over this heaviness in your chest, this anxious feeling that’s weighing you down. How do you get over this fear that clouds your mind, that threatens to push you down a bottomless black hole. How do you stop your brains from overthinking the worst case scenarios.

Setbacks leave you with self-doubts often questioning your ability and capability. Often questioning who you truly are and is this for you. Often eroding your confidence in self.

Failure can be a bitch, a tough teacher leaving with you with this bitter taste and hopeless feeling. Often leaving you embarrassed and frustrated and disappointed with yourself. You find yourself questioning your ability, your inability, ending in this feeling of an impostor syndrome, making you feel like a fake, unworthy, a loser!

There’s a lesson to be learned but somehow you feel so hopeless, drowning in your own sorrow that you find it difficult to even learn the lesson that you have been taught. You are unable to see the lesson in it all. And somehow you are unable to learn the lesson you are meant to learn.

You’ll bounce back, they say, but when and how, is the question you ask yourself, a question you want to ask them, cause you are feeling so hopeless and low and you are unable to perceive an end in sight , apart of putting an end to it all.

You want to scream and shout and cry and let it all out, but you are unable to do so, cause you programmed yourself to appear strong and clam. But internally you are crumbling, you are melting, you are sinking in a quagmire of despair.

Though there are others around you, others rallying for you, you find yourself alone. You find yourself internalising your feeling unable to give it a vent, thus filling you with despair and pain, threatening to burst out and consume you in its flames.

But through this despair you try to find hope, hope that you can hold on to, hope you can cling on to. You try to find that hope that will keep you going and will get you through it all.

You know you can never give up, you will never give up, you will  continue to soldier on, keeping the faith , hoping for a better new day.

You know that giving up is never an option and the only time you will is when you’re dead. 

So you continue to soldier on, to fight through cause you know that as long as you have hope you’ll continue to fight through it all, it will keep you going on. You continue to hold your head up high and move on knowing you somehow, somewhere you’ll find you’ll find your way through!

The Positive-Negative Conundrum

We are so caught up what with the negatives of life that we forget about the positives. We forget that a beautiful picture develops from a negative, in a dark room.

We are so caught up with beating ourselves about what we did wrong that we forget to see what did we do right. 

We are so caught up with up with our mistakes that we forget that we need to learn  and grow and move on.

We are so consumed by the hurt that we feel, the sadness and the loneliness that we forget that we need to give ourselves time to heal.

We are so hard on ourselves and what we do that we forget that we need to be kind.

We are so scared of falling and hurting ourselves that we forget that falling is part of life. If we don’t fall we will not learn, and with every fall we will pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and move on.

We are so afraid to make mistake that we forget to learn and that making mistakes is part of the learning process, and with learning we bring about the change, the only constant in life.

We so in our head about the future and what will happen that we forget to live in the present.

Life’s never going to be easy! 

Life’s never going to be simple!

But then that’s the way life is meant to be!

We’ve got to remember that negatives attract positives. So bad times are never going to last forever. We’ve just got to find a way to weather it out.

So stop being so hard on yourself!!l

Stop being so negative and in your head!!

Stop worrying about what is to come! Remember, it’s not here yet.

So live in the present and live with your head held high, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

You’ve got what it takes to make it through and you will surely weather the storm.

So just hang in there and have faith and believe. You’ve got this boy… you always have… you’ll always will.. so just LIVE!!!

Mumbai… Dubai… the city conundrum

I’m constantly asked this, why don’t you settle down in Dubai, after all your sisters are here and wouldn’t your mum want to be closer to her daughters? Don’t you like Dubai ? Obviously, isn’t Dubai way better than Mumbai? 

Well to an extent I know what they say is true. I know that my mum would love to have her children together rather than shuffling between two countries (let alone two cities), and no matter how much I deny it , Dubai is leaps and bounds ahead of Mumbai, but then the heart belongs to Mumbai. Trust me this is not a patriotic thing, it’s just a personal thing.

They say home is where the heart is, and the heart belongs to Mumbai, cause no matter where I go, Mumbai will always be home.

Yeah, Mumbai is no Dubai, but then the same can be said about Dubai too, Dubai is no Mumbai. Mumbai has a charm of its own, it has a beating heart, feels very much real. Dubai, for all its trappings and luxuries and amenities, somewhere feels very man-made, feels very plasticky, and no matter what they say, life in plastic ain’t fantastic.

Plus mumbai is where the friends are, people who are more like family. Mumbai is where the tribe resides, whether it’s running or dancing. People who make you feel most alive, people who make you feel the love, people who make you feel yourself.

This is something you don’t have in Dubai. So you can be with a bunch of people and still feel all alone.

You’ve gone through so much in Mumbai, loss, heartbreaks, heartaches, failures, resentment, hopelessness. But despite it all you know there’s resilience, there’s still hope, there’s still faith, there’s people who will rally around you to save you from yourself. Something you are afraid that you may not have if you move anywhere else let alone Dubai.

So in the end, after every trip, it feels a pang of sadness to leave Dubai, after all you’ve been here so many times, and people who are your blood resides here, but your heart will always be there with Mumbai.

For Auld Lang Syne… a New Year’s Eve Musing

And so once again we stand 

At the precipice of a brand new year

A brand new book 

With  365 blank pages waiting to be filled

But before we begin to filling these  pages 

Before we begin composing our stories 

Let’s give thanks to the year  gone by

Let’s write an afterword 

Showing our appreciation for all it gave us

Cause through the highs and lows

The ups and downs

The losses and gains

The tears and smile

The happiness and sorrows 

It has shaped us

It has forged us

It has made us

Stronger to face 

Whatever that may come our way 

It has given us opportunities 

It has filled us with experience 

To overcome whatever life may throw at us 

So while we welcome a brand new year

We thank you dear old friend

For being ever at our side 

For teaching us the lessons 

We needed to learn 

For which we will forever be grateful 

So here’s to the new year 

And to the year gone by

And to days of Aud lang syne

The Old and the New

In another few hours and we will be ushering in another new year, glad to put the old one behind us, looking forward to the new one that stands in front us, just eagerly waiting for this one be over and done with and looking forward to a fresh new start.

But while we eagerly and wholeheartedly welcome a brand new year let’s not forget the one that’s gone by.

Yes it’s been a tough one, but we’ve survived it and come out alive and stronger, even though there were times we thought we would not make it through. Even though there were times we thought putting an end to it. But here we are, at the end, well make that almost at the end, of another year, a little stronger, a little wiser (hopefully), a lot older and greyer, hoping not to repeat what we have done in the past.

We have made our mistakes, but we need to learn from it so as to never repeat it again, owning up to our actions, facing up to the consequences of it. But let’s not be afraid or runaway from it. Let’s face it and learn from it. We have fallen a couple of times but remember that with each fall we managed to dust ourselves off and get back on our feet and continue on. 

And let’s face it, not the entire year has been bad, there have been moments of happiness, moments of triumph, moments that will help us weather any bad day.

Yes the year has been tough, but which year isn’t. Every  new year we hope it will be better than the old one, and at the end of the year we say the same. 

So rather than hope make the year better. If you need to pivot, make the pivot. Do what you need to do to make each year better. But don’t never give up.

There’s nothing wrong with hoping but it’s always better when you do and make your life the one that you hoped for.

Every year is going to be tough. But tougher the years the tougher you are, cause through the tears and the sorrow and the pain and the loss you’ll grow. 

You were single at the start of the year and you’re still single at its end and there no telling how long you’ll be the same, but then that’s ok. You’ll always hope to find someone. But one thing for sure you’ll never loose faith in love finding it’s way to you.

So while we welcome another year, let’s give thanks to another year gone by for all the lessons it has taught us, all the experiences and opportunities and all the memories, cause through it all it has shaped us and will continue to shape us for all the days to come. So thanks to the year gone by, cause no matter what, we will be always grateful you.

Be kind.. to yourself!!

Be kind to yourself 

People will come and go

You is all you’ll have 

So if you can show kindness to others

The why not be kind to yourself!

Don’t be too heard on yourself 

Learn to forgive yourself 

For all the missteps and mistakes 

No one is perfect 

So if you can learn to forgive others

Why not forgive yourself!

Allow yourself to mourn 

Mourn the passing of a loved one

Mourn the difficult parting

Mourn heartbreaks and break ups

Mourn endings

And then let the healing begin

And move on

Be not afraid to cry

To find those teardrops in your eye

Cause not matter what the world says

There’s no shame in crying

Cause when you do 

You let your bottled emotions flow

So be not afraid to shed a tear or two!

Accept yourself for who you are 

Cause we are not always perfect 

Perfection may or may not be a myth

But remember we are all flawed

Perfectly imperfect the way we are

So embrace your flaws and imperfection 

So that’s what makes you!!!

Learn to love yourself 

Like the love to you give to others

Why not give some for yourself 

Cause it’s only when you love yourself 

That you can love anyone else 

So please give a lot of love to yourself!!!

So be kind to yourself 

Others may not always be kind to you 

Your kindness may not always be reciprocated 

So nor matter what don’t give up 

Don’t ever change 

But be kind to yourself 

Cause that’s the way you find 

the hope and strength to carry on!!!