Wise words

It seemed that Alexander McCall Smith found me instead of my finding him. Or rather his book found me. 

Where: Bookstore at Suvarnabhumi Airport, Bangkok, Thailand

When:Around 10pm local time

I had finished the book I was carrying in hand and was looking for something else to read. I also had some small change in Thai Baht to release, since coins would not be accepted for foreign exchange. Having read and thoroughly enjoyed his earlier book "The No 1 Ladies' Detective Agency", I picked up "The Forgotten Affairs of Youth" and promptly set out to read it. 

What resulted was a pleasant, albeit long drawn journey into the beauty of simplicity. Aside from the story featuring a Isabel Dalhousie, a lovable philospoher-writer, the book was peppered with quotable quotes on life, most of them so simple but so bang on that I wondered more than once why it had not struck me! Here are a few gems:

Self doubt was a luxury, as perhaps, was the examined life. And yet the examined life, as the adage had it, was the only life worth living. 

Don't write - or say - any more than you have to. Just don't.

Beauty - whether in nature, in art, or in music - was always ready to do its work; all we had to do was to open our hearts to it. 

And I suppose that at the end of the day things are the way they are and we just have to accept them.

A Poem, by A A Milne, the creator of Winnie the Pooh, the Hundred Acre Wood and all the characters in it:

If Rabbit were bigger

And stronger than Tigger

Then Tigger's bad habit

Of bouncing on Rabbit

Would matter no longer

If Rabbit were stronger

I'm quite capable of tossing caution to the winds. It makes such an exhilarating sound, when you toss caution into the wind. It's a sort of whooshing.. 

There would be quite enough guilt in the future; being human, we all had our share, except for those who never felt guilty about anything because they had no idea why they should.

It was an exciting time, obviously. Everything was so fresh, so challenging. To be eighteen again!

- And to know, at eighteen, what one knows now.

That's what we all are at heart: love-struck teenagers. And every so often the love-struck teenager within emerged to remind us that love is quite as capable of turning our world upside down as it ever was.

That's why..

Corporate culture does not promote the pursuit of excellence; it is designed to circumvent the pursuit. That's why consulting companies make so much money!

Fresh Air

It's a precious commodity these days - fresh air. That's why Winter is my favourite Bangalore season.

It was 2 weeks ago when I felt the first signs of winter in Bangalore - the faint nip in the air after six in the evening, the gentle mist early in the morning, the extra bright sunshine (I think it has something to do with the air being thinner in winter than in summer but I don't have any scientific data to back the theory).

Winters in Bangalore remind me of bright colours and cosy evenings spent tucked in bed, reading. They make me think of hope, happiness and new beginnings. Maybe it has to do with the fact that it's almost the end of the year rather than the season. But when i drive to work every morning with my window open and music playing in my stereo I feel the teeniest surge of something nice and warm in my heart. That maybe things will look up, soon. That maybe everything is not as bad as it seems.

It feels like I have been holding my breath all this while and I have just let it out. What else can we ask from life other than to be happy? When I wake up in the morning there should be something, anything to look forward to that day. It's been a while since that happened. After getting first depressed and then stressed about it, I have now moved into "thoughtful" mode. Seasons come every year at around the same time, and they bring the same characteristics. Yet, there is always something uniquely different about them each year. It's like the sunset. If you ever have the grand luck of watching the sunset everyday you would realise that no one sunset is like the other. Yes, it comes everyday and finally the sun sets, but each time you watch it, it feels different. You can never get tired of watching it. I watched the sunset everyday from my room for 5 years, when I had the luck, and I never got tired.

Winter is here. So get out your jacket, walk on the roads at 8am (it's the most beautiful time of the day), and end the walk with a hot, piping coffee or cocoa drink at a cafe. Breathe in Bangalore at its quintessential best.