Methinks

 There is only TWO people that you need love from, to be truly content, peaceful and joyful. Their love will constantly fill up your vessel and overflow it so you can offer that love to others in your life.  The first person's love, you have no care for and no regard for. It is free, it is abundant and is available any time you need it. It never wavers, never changes and always seeks you, even when you are negligent, apathetic and most times unresponsive. When you are hurt, this love embraces you and brings back the peace and hope, and when you are healed and forget it, it waits patiently for you. The second person you are actively hostile to, with constant criticism and rejection. You don't like anything about this person, you wish they could be anything but them. They are craving your attention and your time. And while they wither away due to lack of your love, they try to seek love from others and it leaves them even more depleted because that is not what nourishes them. I ...

 My fellow Indian women, All your life, being a girl, you're told by parents, brothers and then husband on what to wear, how to walk, where to talk, how to behave. Everything you say or do is scrutinized and censored because it supposedly defines how traditional you are or what family values you come from. You have always been told to strive to achieve what society dictates on what an acceptable image for a daughter, sister, wife or daughter-in-law is. You could be an engineer, doctor or a scientist, but if you can't cook or clean the house or can't be at your husband's beck and call, you're sub par, you are a disgrace with a poor reflection of your upbringing, you are supposed to consider yourself lucky that you are "allowed to" have a career and carve a niche for yourself in your field?! Who gives someone the right to bestow on you, your basic human rights that you are already born with? Girl, you are a first class citizen too and you are given one life ...

 The whole world is brought down to its knees by a micro-organism one billionth our size. We see the result of this as being separated from everything we thought we couldn't survive without - our favorite sport, restaurant, gym or things that we thought added value to our lifestyle - malls, theaters, parks, vacation or beaches. But what we actually should notice is how our hubris is ground to dust. The richest of the rich, the strongest of the strong or even the most powerful of the rulers, have all been bound by one thread with the rest of us - mortality! If anything, our false pride in thinking that our wealth or highest educational qualifications or jobs or titles that we hold or even our religious beliefs or ethnicity made us better than the person next to us, should be decimated by this global pandemic. We judge others by their weaknesses, by the choices that they make in their lives not even knowing what they go through, but when we come face-to-face with ugly and tough choic...

 Trilll.. is the first sound of the morning that I hear because my groggy, sleep addled brain interprets the supposedly serene, morning birds and breeze alarm sound to a cacophony of shrill train whistles. Living in my head for three decades now, it sure understands that nothing less than that could possibly register as a call for action for my befuddled body to rise, as I have to face yet another, oh so woeful Monday. The battle between the mind and body begins while I refuse to acknowledge the possibility that it could be dawn already, I mean, how can it be? I just lay my back a minute ago, didn't I? Whilst I linger in this limbo, my brain, the problem-solver leaps into action trying to do the most complex mathematical computation of all time - how to extract an additional ten minutes from the morning routine? While I languid in my bed in those extra precious ten minutes that my brain traded off for hair conditioning, I ponder all the things I could do in future, from chopping of...

  Step out of the box, do something new, do something bold. Push yourself to find out what it is to be you. Maybe you are scared of falling or failing and that fear won't let you shatter your cocoon and emerge out as a valiant warrior that you are. Maybe you are happy and comfortable where you are and that complacency won't let you discover who you truly are meant to be. Maybe life has knocked you down and you are struggling to get back up and to find the lost self. Whatever your reason for where you are, STEP OUT, STEP UP, because you are a force of nature and every time you look your apprehensions and fears in the eye and triumph over them, you will have created a new you. The past you is a pale shadow of this new you with fire in the belly and defiance in the eyes. You define you, no one else. So I say again, step out, step up - each time, every time! Say to yourself - I am strong, I am brave I will it, so I can. I can, so I will