Barcelona Day 2!

The irony of the Catalan architect, Gaudi was such that his art was rammed and dreams crushed under a tram with a day full of perplexing geniuses who declared him an ordinary beggar that could not be nursed back from death till reality struck and alas, Barcelona lost the only man who managed to make this city worth visually reminiscent!
But let’s suppose, he was an ordinary man and not one word more, was he not worth the same effort?
Or maybe among the bohemian vibe and the cosmopolitan street affair, there isn’t enough time for Tomfoolery. Either you manage to imprint your name on the most extraordinary architecture of the city, the Roman Catholic Basilica of the Holy Family (Sagrada Familia) as the symbol of faith, love and hope or die an ordinary man, I mean it’s not like you architected historical marvels to deserve any of that, oh cmon!

Barcelona Day 1!

Before Barcelona shows you anything, it’ll show you free will!

And love if you ain’t the free will kind, don’t bother flying across oceans, come this far and let the albatross wing size city of liberals disappoint you.

But if you do, let it go!

Madrid Day 3!

Travel more and you will know every corner, every lane, every city, every country is writing its own story book! So was Madrid.

Gran via over the years has seen the history-changing on its roads, the graffiti being made over and over again, the artifacts getting older and more valuable with their outdated glimmer and growing worth. The massive doors wearing out! The 100 yrs old street that has hustled through time holds so many memories hard to look away from, oh the number of heartbreaks it must have witnessed, the number of love stories that might have started here, the number of people that may never come back, the number of people that never left, the millions and millions of footsteps and each with a story! What are the chances ‘You and I’ sat on the same street, in the same cafe, stopped by to see the same window, passed the same fragrance of baguettes, just what are the chances!

It feels so overwhelming to be a part of a street that started collecting stories a century ago when ‘You and I’ did not exist, our stories hadn’t even started, but Gran Via stayed put for you to reach here and add another page to its storybook (and maybe one to yours too)!  

Mallorca day 2

Among a lot of other things, traveling comes with a clause of distance! Distance from what you love, who you love, your routine, food, lanes, lifestyle and else. It’ll tell you what you don’t like for sure, more than what you do. All in all, do it! Experience it, it’ll basket you with a million things you might not know about yourself!!

Madrid day2

It will not be the massive buildings and fancy architectures that would take your breath away, but little corners of buildings made in 1800s and the tiny churro stops that would make you wanna stay back and share a moment or two!!

The Mirror Side! (3)

Living once in a while,

Forget once in a while, are we living at all. As much as of a cake walk it sounds, it’s one mammoth of a task. I guess mostly because now it is a task. ‘Tasks’ in itself is tag that emits exhaustion! Have you ever heard a group of girls saying we have to finish the task of shopping? No right, you see my point.

I have lived by, what I have grown up listening to, from my supremely (sometimes unnecessarily) optimistic mother. “There’s always something”, if my mom was the knight who was saving the princess, she would leave the castle whispering in the dragon ear, don’t worry, it happened for a reason, drop a bandage and leave.

Well, I, on the contrary, would not say such things but maybe leave a bandage behind (mothers DNA). It has been an insane fude between the two minds that walk parallel in my head. The other being my very strong headed, practical father’s DNA, who’d be like slit the dragon’s throat, we don’t have the time for tears.

While I have been between the battle of the sexes, I have fairly managed to pull through my not so perfect life and believe you me, lived it. Legitimately, lived it. I love the fact that I’m alive, I breathe, I can touch, sense, view, comprehend unfathomable beauty and atrocities, all at once and separately.

And that’s a lot for someone who constantly tries to judge, choose reactions rationally and then react, at least to my capacity. The distress and saddening hypocrisies that I come across each day is so consuming, the stereotypical money making flesh we have turned into, for what?

To pay the bill of food we decided to go eat at the fanciest restaurant in the town, while we look into our mails for the next day? To buy a health insurance for 60’s? To die in the most extravagant house with the most exotic funeral dinners or a 14 day lavish get together in case you’re a Hindu (yes, even death ritual is larger than life for us).

Remember talking? Whatever happened to that!

We don’t anymore, like we used to do!

(Part-3)(END).

The Mirror Side! (2)

I don’t know what went wrong.

Something must have gone haywire, or what I like to situationally believe and have been repeatedly told ‘we grew up’. Did we?

I’m not very good at growing up perhaps, and alas I’ve made peace with it or so I’m left to basket. What I fail to understand is that since when did growing up become a boring process of knitting a life you don’t seem to like, but choose to live. Live because, well no reason, just live it you piece of flesh, it’ll make dying less of an episode. Darling, you weren’t living anyway.

I have all my life disliked raw tomatoes, mustard oil or other little things, not out of a trivial taste test, but out of a million tries to gulp it in, in every possible way and failing. I just do not like it, in fact I cringe at the slightest of smell. But that’s not the nature of luxury I may have if I was in a scenario of food scarcity, which I’m not, so ya I don’t choose to waste it either, but I won’t force it down my throat. I’ll choose the food without it, simply.

But growing up in India doesn’t teach you that, it teaches you to learn, adjust, develop a taste for anything and everything (protocol for females only, BTW). Sad!

So I developed a taste for mustard oil while I battle with certain taste buds, still. And while that’s the state of my food log, that’s also the story for a larger picture in my life. Doing things out of sheer feeling of getting it over with, not because you want to or like to, but because you have to.

So saying that something changed with the dragon would be unfair, something or a lot of things changed with me too. People who have known me for decades would agree and be flabbergasted, all at once.

I think change, as much as is the law of nature, it also is a choice we make, mostly to survive. The question is are we only looking to survive?

Or maybe also live, once in a while?

(Part-2)(End).

Push Harder!

It’s funny how we push,
Push harder,
For all the nonsensical things in life,
Things that lead us to nowhere,
Add nothing to us,
How awfully well we realize this,
When we look back,
Laugh, cry, crib, question, & judge
Or not,
Our truths maybe different,
Our journeys maybe too,
But the thing common about our reality is
It’s pragmatic!