Hum tum kuch aur badhenge!

I am not a romantic person. I have been married for over two years and wife has concluded that when God was distributing romantic sensibilities, I was busy philosophizing! (And to add to her grievances, I stubbornly refute her claims!)

Honestly, to me marriage or togetherness for that matter, means doing daily stuff together. My idea of a romantic evening is a quiet evening at home, listening to music we both love or watching something like ‘friends’ and just idle chitchatting! If I see couples at a superstore buying grocery together, I find it romantic. I love to watch couples at planet M deciding which CD to buy. I find elderly couples sitting at a bench and generally chatting away very romantic!

Thankfully, wife is not at all demanding! She is fine with my version of romance but the problem is that being a workaholic, I haven’t been able to give her many such quiet evenings. Once in a while, we go out for a movie and I generally sleep through it so it is just so not happening for her!

Under such circumstances, if you get one quiet evening, it becomes so memorable!

Last Sunday was one such evening. We were at home, the music player played some of our most favourite Ghazals. She kept herself busy cooking something we both love. I kept busy just looking at her. Kitchen oozed a lovely smell and her soft voice humming the ghazals. It was exactly the picture I had in mind ever since I was a teen.

It was a special picture made even more special by the fact that I was looking at a soon-to-be mother!

Know what, under such circumstances, if you get one quiet evening, it becomes so memorable!

Chale Aao!

Sigma posted a comment to my earlier post (‘Chale Chalo!’) suggesting it might be a good idea to invite the readers to share stories about some of the ‘heroic’ people they know!

Thanks, Sigma! I think this will be worth trying!

I know I have few readers (and even fewer regular ones), but if you happen to read this, I wish to sincerely request you to put your experiences as a comment to this post!

If nothing else, when I am down and out, your comments will give me one more reason to revisit this post!

Selfish, I am! I know you aren’t - please post your experiences!

Chale Chalo!

If there is one thing that intrigues me most on this planet, it is the people.

Especially, when I see something special, something extraordinary from what we call ‘ordinary men and women’, I feel so much alive!

Here are some examples of extraordinary people that I know:

-Dad has a cousin who lost her parents at a very young age. She lost her daughter (her only child) to Cancer. A large part of her married life went into taking care of an ever-bedridden mother-in-law. She’s barely 50 and just about a month back, she lost her husband in an accident. However, whenever I have met her, she has always been very cheerful, very positive, very strong!

-Wife has a young cousin who is diagnosed with Cancer. This fellow is hardly 17 but he has taken this illness in his stride. If there’s anyone in the family who is (emotionally) not affected by his illness, it is him! He knows a lot about what’s happened to him, talks to doctors to understand more and never ever shows any signs of pain, suffering or sorrow!

-Father-in-law has a cousin who fell in love with a lady from another religion. He waited more than a decade to get his family to see his side of the story and married that lady. (They are such a lovely couple, there’s no bitterness in them even though most of their young age went into this struggle!)

-Father-in-law has a cousin who is married to an absolute pain of a man. To add, her first child is mentally challenged. Her life is one of the most difficult I have seen and still she is always so energetic, always cheerful and full of life!

-I have a younger cousin who is in love with a girl of another caste. Despite tremendous opposition from his family, he was determined to convince his parents and marry only after their approval. It has been more than four years since he started convincing his parents and after a lot of ups and downs, finally, he is going to get engaged to that girl this Diwali!

These all are incidents of a greater magnitude but if I look closely around, I see so many instances of extraordinary achievements in routine life;

I can’t stand a day of train travel, my parents must have traveled for years in Mumbai local trains and it was a way of life for them.

Wife has to leave home at 7 AM to reach her office in time so day-in, day-out, she gets up at 5:30 to cook my breakfast and lunch.

There is this Grandma-in-law (Father-in-law’s Mom) who travels to UK at the age of 80, stays at her nephew’s place without any fuss and enjoys every moment of her overseas travel; she is just so much interested in life even at this age.

I have an uncle whose mom and wife couldn’t be more different. He is one of the most gentlemanly soul I know and even after surviving 25 years of constant domestic conflict, still has maintained his calm and decency.

I have had my share of problems in life; I am sure everyone has! But when I look around, I see such magnificent examples of grit, determination and courage; my problems look miniscule to me.

I have never had film stars or cricketers or political leaders as my heroes; I never needed to. I have my heroes all around me!

It is never about the size of the dog in the fight; it is about the size of the fight in the dog, isn’t it?