A year well begun...
02/January/2010 03:20 PM
Amrita and I are spending these few days with Arpita and Vivek. The regret is we are unable to show them around various places as planned. The celebration is we are able to spend more time together thereby. Perhaps this is just the way it is supposed to be. I vividly recollect last year’s trip to Statue of Liberty. To put it mildly, it was a sheer wastage of time. Although, I was able to capture some great pictures of birds...
There are various theories about how to celebrate friends. Mine is pretty simple. Spend more time with them. Where and how are irrelevant, since concentration on the specificities take away the beauties associated with the general notion of having friends.
There are various theories about how to celebrate friends. Mine is pretty simple. Spend more time with them. Where and how are irrelevant, since concentration on the specificities take away the beauties associated with the general notion of having friends.
The Gift
01/January/2010 03:36 AM
This is going to be a continuation of my most beloved exercise; resuming something I have done for years. Possibly apt to recollect the very first “diary” I received as an exciting new year gift from my father way back when I was five.
January 1st always used to be a celebration for me. Not because it was marking a new year - a concept hardly fully explainable in context to Orissa’s cultural traditions. But simply because it was a secular day for gift exchange between my father and I.
I was never a good artist. But when it came to drawing a sickle and a hammer, I was a natural. I could even fill the insides with red without having to leave a Picasso abstraction. And then I would write “Laal Salaam” on the handmade greeting card and save it under my pillow, so that when the clock would strike midnight on the new year, I could present it to my father.
In exchange, my father would gift me a diary. The most precious piece of treasure for me. Usually one that never had a date inside. Nothing remotely fancy. And a tiny one. And Bapa would ask me to write down dates on each page, and then jot down possible news headlines everyday, or just about anything else I could write about.
Thrills knew no bounds. The diary was something to call my own. My source of communicating with the world. Key to my life’s quests. Royal road to my consciousness. The world where I decided what was right, and what was not. My canvas for truths, joys and record of recollections. The best gift I could ever receive was my diary.
January 1st always used to be a celebration for me. Not because it was marking a new year - a concept hardly fully explainable in context to Orissa’s cultural traditions. But simply because it was a secular day for gift exchange between my father and I.
I was never a good artist. But when it came to drawing a sickle and a hammer, I was a natural. I could even fill the insides with red without having to leave a Picasso abstraction. And then I would write “Laal Salaam” on the handmade greeting card and save it under my pillow, so that when the clock would strike midnight on the new year, I could present it to my father.
In exchange, my father would gift me a diary. The most precious piece of treasure for me. Usually one that never had a date inside. Nothing remotely fancy. And a tiny one. And Bapa would ask me to write down dates on each page, and then jot down possible news headlines everyday, or just about anything else I could write about.
Thrills knew no bounds. The diary was something to call my own. My source of communicating with the world. Key to my life’s quests. Royal road to my consciousness. The world where I decided what was right, and what was not. My canvas for truths, joys and record of recollections. The best gift I could ever receive was my diary.