the years have gone by since the days i learnt to remember. new memories add to my mind's expanding library but my very first one has a special hold over me because it was the moment of my awakening.

this is the story of a mirror. i was about three years old, the age when the idea of a ball eluded me but i had no qualms spending an entire afternoon playing with one.

i was in my parents' room, infront of a mirror.

my right hand was on my face, covering my right eye. i was looking into the mirror. the image is supposed to be mine, but i dont feel like it is me. i switch hands; my left hand covered my left eye. it was the same boy, but it couldnt be me. i put both my hands to the side and looked once more into the mirror; the boy stood dazed, with a 1000 yard stare of a hardened war veteran. " this isnt me. who is this?" i asked myself, wondering if im the one saying these words.

from another room, my mother called out my name. " yes, ambi. thats my name. but who is that woman" i thought, looking out the door.

i knew she had to be my mother, but i didnt know if she was. i didnt know who i was. i felt like a stranger in my own body. i felt like i was a prisoner in the body of a three year old.

as these thoughts raced in my mind, i turned around and saw a red ball. my playmate for the afternoon. the crisis passed and all was good with the world. my mother was my mother, i was myself and more importantly, the ball was with me.

i dont understand why we do this.

years have gone by, great men preached all they can, to masses that celebrated them for their words.

now, history remembers these great men for their words and not the spirit of what they meant.

buddha, gandhi, martin king jr have all graced our history books as men who had something important to say. now, all we find is how they lived their lives, but not how they pleaded us to live ours.

is it just that ignrance corrodes all ideals, or is it just human nature to lose sight of the important?

gandhi said ” jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you christians- you are not like him”

if he had said this today, the world media would have branded him a proponent to their lord and savior jesus, but would never take the time to understand why he said this, or what he said by this.

to remember a man for his deeds and his words is fine, but forgetting the spirit and living by the words disrespects their memory as much as causing a genocide in their name. but alas, we huumans are not above that. countless wars waged in the manes of people who would have detested the very idea of a war just stand to show that we should learn to be better than we were.

the past is the past, but if we learn nothing from it then we should rather live in the past.

this was to be a piece on ignorance corrupting the best of ideals, but what can i do; i am merely human. it is in my nature to lose sight of the important.

the heartwarming story of a girl who falls for a guy with hemorrhoids, massive ones. the kicker in all this is that she doesn't know this, and they guy doesn't let on the fact.

 follow them through a journey of hide and seek; the girl seeking a long lasting relationship and the guy, hell bent on hiding his disease.

         will love triumph over hemorrhoids? will it not? 

  stay tuned to know more.

the sky loomed over my head like a huge, blue blanket with a lot of tears. sitting on the terrace of my apartments, winds started billowing my loose t-shirt, so much so that my thin frame looked like that of an overly obese man. the sound of the howling wind filled my ears and my mind so much so that anything I didn't focus on was lost into the trenches of my mind.

   somewhere far away, i heard someone call my name. a woman. someone i knew. someone i knew very well. I turned around, almost by instinct, but as soon as I did, I realized the futility of what i did. " She's dead. SHE'S DEAD.. she is GONE. no need to turn around anymore" I said out loud, almost screaming. the last sentence brought the memory forth, again. again and again, i visited that memory, that 3 second scene which replayed in my mind like a broken cassette. her screaming, my wailing and the sound of the car's hood scraping on the road. the memory revisited brought great unhappiness and a tinge of guilt every time. every single time. but now, i had had enough.

 ' people die everyday. even if we don't want it to happen, it does. there's no life on earth that isn't marred by sorrow or tragedy. why should mine be any different?' i keep saying to myself, as soon as the guilt resurfaces. " it wasn't my fault. IT WASN'T MY FAULT" i shouted into the vast expanse of sky, irrationally hoping it would comfort me. it didn't. 

 this thought pattern broke when the rain started. at first, it fell on me, silently. soon, the sound of the falling raindrops and the howling winds reached a crescendo. nothing remained in my head except for the sound of wind gushing through the seams of my loose shirt and the sound of raindrops over my head. my heart pounded like a race horse, but I didn't notice it. my hand was gripping an old photograph so hard that it was on the verge of crumpling to dust, to become nothing but a memory, but i didn't notice that either. the only thing i noticed was the shape of a dark cloud in the sky. it lay in front of me, and above me. just enough high that i could see it and not too high that i had to strain my neck. a blackish, blue cloud. in itself, it wasn't a very peculiar one, but what i saw in it, no one else could have. i saw her face. i saw, with excruciating detail, the shape of her honey brown eyes, her soft lips, her thin, sharp nose and most of all, i saw her smiling at me. i wept silently, unknowingly. the rain beat down hard upon me as i stared at the cloud, hoping it would last forever. it didn't. but, as the cloud got swept away from the sky, so did part of my guilt and sorrow.

  sure, the memory remains, but now, the picture isn't tainted by the black ink of sorrow which, for weeks, had clouded it. sure, the is some sadness that remains too. but one thing I've learnt is that I shouldn't let sadness eclipse the memory of the woman I loved. the woman who loved me. the woman who died.

roses aren't red

violets aren't blue

greed isn't dead

but i am not at all sure