When all you can do is-

Dear friend,

Its funny I am calling you that. It has not been very easy for me to accept the reality that we cannot be friends anymore. I hate to think what effect it must have had on you, given that we spent some really special moments together. I wish I could capture those moments in some sort of a film and could store it in my memory forever. With time these memories will fade, but what will always stay with me is that happy feeling of being with a friend you love, feeling safe in a place where you can be yourself. I have wronged you. I am to be blamed for the situation we find ourselves in. Will 'sorry' help? Probably not.  But what I want you to know is that I pray for you. Everyday. I hope you remain a happy person in whichever place you are in this big, big world. It is through these prayers that I redeem my mistakes.

Good luck,
R

Dear Mom..

Dear Mom, 

       I am writing this letter to tell you how much I love you and how much you mean to me. I feel blessed to have you as my mother. As I grow older (and hopefully wiser) just like you do, I get to know you better. When I was a little girl, I thought you were perfect. "All mothers are perfect and they never have or will do anything wrong in their life.." This is what I thought.

        Then I grew up a bit more. As a college going girl, I thought you were my best friend because I could share everything with you (well most things). This continued until recently, when an unpleasant incident completely changed my outlook towards our mother-daughter relationship. You expressed some of your opinions about the incident, which I totally disagreed with. "How could she say this?" I thought. You suggested I should come home earlier than I usually did, you were very curious about which friends I hanged out with and where I went. I was angry and sad because I thought the both of us had very similar mindsets, opinions and philosophies regarding different aspects of life. One of the most hurtful things is to be mad at and disagree with someone you love. I thought about this for a very long time and my mind was confused because on one hand you mean so much to me and on the other hand you said things that infuriated me. After some thinking, a realization dawned upon me. They say circumstances make a man. How could I expect you and me to be like-minded when there is a difference of twenty four years between the two of us? Our struggles have been different. And hence our opinions and notions. You are my mother and worrying comes naturally to all mothers. I realized I should love you and respect you for what you are - my mother. Friends are different. You are not my friend. You are someone who cares excessively and hopes that I be safe all the time. No one is perfect, neither you, nor me. So I will stop expecting you to be "more like a friend rather than a mother" and to have the same perspectives about everything in life. Loving your folks without expecting them to be perfect all the time gives true happiness.

Yours, 

R

Make me feel better..

I am sometimes scared of wonderful and fun moments. Because you know, they come to an end. Then you have to move on. You have to miss those special people with whom you spent amazing times. Very recently I was on a vacation with some really lovable people. One of those friends is passionate about music. She asked me, "Do you know the song 10 o clock postman"? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSRAe3A4Tm8

10 'o clock postman bring me her letter

10 'o clock postman make me feel better...

Make me feel better....Most of my folks are away from me. Even the people I spent my vacation with. Even though I am enjoying my life and the work keeps me busy, I miss home and friends once in a while. I feel nostalgic. The things that keep me going are the emails, messages and the photographs. Why I love the song "10 'o clock postman" is because I totally understand and feel the emotion behind it. Reading a letter or an email from a dear one helps us to not miss them much. I read and re-read those emails. Maybe life is all about making those wonderful memories with wonderful people, and thinking about them when you are away from them. It is these emails, and the letters and also the postcards that make us feel much, much, better.

The lone traveller

In the past few months, I have been pretty much on my own. Away from friends and family and having set my foot on the foreign land for the first time in my life, I travelled a lot to many places on my own. I explored the new city, its malls, cafes, parks and streets- all by myself. I must say, it was wonderful! Really amazing! Once in a while, travel alone. Just you, a camera, and some money. Go to a nice, beautiful place, a lake, a beach, a village, whatever you like the best. Walk the tranquil roads by yourself. You will enjoy, and will spend some quality time with yourself. Try taking nice pictures of the place. Socialize with random people, the other tourists, and you will realize that humans are the same everywhere (unless you are very unlucky to meet grumpy people). All this time that I spent journeying alone, I got to know myself a little better. For everyone, there has to be something, that is the most important to them in their life. It may be their family, career, a loved one, their hobby, or anything else. I realized my 'ground' in life, my 'fall-back pillar'..the things most important to me. And therefore I say, pick up your bag and start a little trip with you and yourself!!

This is what I preached myself!

        You should learn to forgive yourself. Yes, as a human, you make many mistakes. Sometimes, you take the wrong decisions, at times you do not concentrate well on your work or you procrastinate it. You place your trust on the wrong people, and then get heartbroken later, hating yourself for that. You tend to over-analyse situations, you get un-necessarily angry, you crib a lot and you sometimes hurt the feelings of other people. A lot of times, you are sad not because something or someone made you feel that way, but because you put yourself in that situation..So in every such situation, learn to forgive yourself. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. If you do not forgive yourself, chances are that you might not forgive anyone else. What follows is learning from your mistakes. With the new-found wisdom, you can make amendments, overcome any shortcomings that you think you have and emerge a better person. Always remember, natural processes too tend to have errors (this example is very geeky and it is thanks to the subject I study)...eg.. a DNA polymerase makes many errors when replicating DNA, but the cell has all the machinery to correct the mistakes.. It is never too late to make the changes that you want to see in yourself. You do not have to be ashamed of any fault of yours, realizing that you have them and trying hard to make the corrections is more than enough. Lastly, never feel guilty for anything that you did..That is not to say that you can go on a mistake-spree where you think that all mistakes are forgivable. Wrongdoings of the past should be remembered so that you do not repeat them in the future..:) Its just that, it is always better to not punish yourselves too much..For one thing, you cannot change the past, for another, you will not be able to enjoy the future, and for yet another, it defines who you are.

Hello everyone!!!

       Since I am a bioinformatician by profession, I spend most of the weekdays in front of the computer and analyze biological data for a living. Sometimes when I get bored, I read blogs. I love reading blogs on travel, culture, life experiences, relationships and so on. For a long time, I toyed with the idea of writing a blog of my own. I have this habit of writing what I feel on occasions when I am very happy, sad, or emotional or when a new realization has dawned upon me. Maybe converting all of this into a blog is a good idea. It feels nice to share random things with other people and ask for their opinions on particular topics or ideas. So here I am, writing my very own blog..:) I hope people like it!  

Looking forward to being a blogger:)