The volley of thoughts

Men cannot multitask and women can never think of one thing at a time. These may be the stereotypes we live with but in my experience so far they are so very true. I think I fit into this stereotype like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle and believe you me it is not something I boast about.

A million things passing my mind asking me questions, suggesting options, playing devils advocate, proposing new ventures, scaring me with the what ifs of the world and all this at the same time. It is really a wonder I havent short circuited my brain by now. With each passing year it gets more complicated and the number of thoughts increase! Why O why are we women wired this way? In this volley of thoughts, where some hit me right in the head, some miss me and some stay forever how have I managed to find sense and answers? Well thats a wonder and I guess Im not to going to start figuring that one out!

So the big question is what to do when these volley of thoughts attack me, bombard me and leave me standing there like a damsel in distress? earlier on it in situations like this I would call my best friends and we would discuss these various situations and most of the times add to them, or I would call my boyfriend and well that would either lead to feeling better or a fight or I would put on a movie or watch my favorite sitcoms as they would transport me to a world where these thoughts couldnt find me at least for sometime. Things are different now, best friends are there but these conversations have outgrown us, boyfriend.. hmm who is that? but the movies and the sitcoms are there but not doing such a great job as usual but yes still bailing me out time to time.. What remains is well writing it all out, sharing it with myself and telling it to myself out loud cos believe me that works too..

So all my girlfriends out there.. your thoughts troubling you? well take them a thought at a time and write them all out cos that will drive them away or turn them into that friend you wanted  it to be..

Prince Charming!

Once upon a time there was a little girl, she was told a zillion of fairytales and as she grew up these fairytales became an integral part of her being. She began to see that there were so many others like her who are waiting for the fairytale in their life to come true, waiting for the signs, the hero, the villain and ofcourse the most important thing, MAGIC to come into their lives. Cause Magic can explain the unexplainable and can solve the unsolvable.

Well, as you would know after a zillion years later she grew up to find the villain, the common village people, in a remote way the dream, the king and the queen, but what never showed up was Magic or Prince Charming!

Well let me introduce you to Mr Prince Charming - he is the answer to every girl whether princess or not's prayers, he is the perfect mix of a hero, a saviour, a lover, a poet, a mind reader, a wizard, a parent and a friend. He is good looking, rich and has the heart of gold. He is not frazzled by his girls tears, neither does he ever want to leave her. His mother is not a problem and her father loves him! well anyone who has treaded this earth for a zillion years like I have will realise that only MAGIC can create a Prince Charming and one will need stronger Magic to sustain his wonderfulness.

You must think I am a tad cynical - ofcourse I am and its my cynicism that helps me live in this world where there is no Magic and defnitely no prince. This is although partially true, the entire truth is that well magic is within us and so is our prince charming. As a single, working girl with career aspirations, high cost of living and social pressure we tend to look for these two things to ease our lives. But in reality we need to save ourselves before any magic can. Magic like faith cannot be seen or felt, it needs to be believed in even in the darkest of times and the loneliest of hours for it to come true.

And well, Mr Prince Charming - I accept you dont exsist. 0.00001% of me still waits for you, but in todays world its easier to find the evil witch or the nasty villain but mr prince charming, you are tough to find! 

The two lives we lead

Most of us lead two lives, the one we actually live and the one we live in our heads.. I realised this while I was at work the other day. It was that break in the day, where one has finished the main task and deliverable for the day and is free to browse, read or get updated on the news. I was using this break to read some of the generic mails that had come in about social blogging, media trends etc.. it was at that time that I came across this article by a senior leader in the company and as I was reading the article, parallelly in my head I began to imagine what it wold like to be a published writer, a writer whose work people will read like I am reading someone's work. I began to think of my blog, what the topics would be etc.. It was at that very moment I realised the two lives I am living.

How many of us live this way i wonder? one foot in the present and one dangling in ones conscience. it is a funny thought and if you can picture it, it will be a funny image but that exactly how a segment of us live. We get stressed over un acomplished goals in our imagined life and stress over the difficulty of the present, when possibly if the imagined life did get true, it would be equally difficult in its own way. Are we then really tuned to be stressed? Are we all really out there to make ourselves miserable and look for targets to blame? Well of course there are situations and people out there which cause enough distress, but are we really stressing ourselves out? What is that fine line between dreaming and making ourselves run behind a cloud? Will we be better off with feet firmly on the ground or is it the parallel life that keeps us going?

Lots of questions, with possibly one answer.. and this one answer is different for different people. For some, it could be take life as it comes, some it is not to take oneself too seriously and for some it is a constant quest.. My answer is that both these lives are mine and to make the most of that I need to stop worrying about things that I can do nothing about. But whatever said and done, what makes life wonderful is that it needs to be discovered everyday and with each opened layer it the picture gets clearer.

Melbourne French Festival

The Melboune French Festival - Paris to Provence, November 23rd to 25th.

What a wonderful 2 days it was. When I had first come across this event months ago, i had decided that i just had to to experience it and so I marked the date down in my claendar and blocked these 3 days off. Few weeks later on their facebook page, was a call for volunteers to work at the festival and I was just super duper thrilled. Not only was I going to experience it but I could become a part of it and that is  an even better way to experience something. So i wrote to them and volunteered for the event.

It was only in the later part of October that all the interested party was called for an interview/discussion  with the aim to finalise our participation. I eagerly went over to meet the organizers at a hostoric and beautiful location, the Como House and Gardens in South Yarra where the festival was also going to happen.

During the meeting I was introduced to Laura and Sam, two gorgeous women who have been organizing this for three consecutive years now. Laura shared her story about her love for all things french and her desire of bringing her culture to melbourne in the form of this festival. They gave us a tour of the site and a visual picture of how all the marquees will look and where all the various events will happen.

The Como house is a victorian house of the days gone by but its splendour and grandeur not diminished in any way. The potraits, furniture, linen, wood work, cutlery etc of the house speaks its history. The grand ball room of the house was going to be the palce where all the talks/seminars were going to be held and at once i decided that this is the event i would be the happiest to manage. The tour done, we all signed up for our activities and interst areas and left waiting for the grand day to arrive.

Another great thing about being a volunteer was the uniform consisting of red hunter boots, white tee with navy strips and a straw hat! o la la!! i coudnt wait for the festival to come!!

Well finally the 23rd arrived and would you believe it, I was down with fever and a bad cold. Body ache and a runny nose didnot allow me to go on the 23rd. Very upset I let Laura know and hoped I would be fine on the 24th. Thank fully I got much much better and reached the festival grounds 9 am sharp to get into uniform and begin my day.

As I had chosen I was given the responsibility of managing all the events in the grand ball room which included ticket checking, room setting, coordinating with the speaker and rounding up afterwards. Sounds easy but has quite a bit to it. Logistics of any task is always underrated but has huge impacts, and I learnt to maange logistics of setting up a room for the speaker. Managing customers who walk in with a booking insisting on lack of knowledge, system errors and the worst 'i wasnt informed', phew! dealing with them was a huge learning. But the biggest learning of all was my interactions with the speakers.

Off all the speakers I will always rememeber Jane Webster, an author and Jenny the owner of French Provincial magazine. Their stories, their journey is such an inspiration for me as they have succeeded on the path i have always wanted to take as a writer and an editor of a publication. It was really a very encouraging experience to have met with them and to have known them.

A little bit about the rest of the festival.. imagine beautiful victorian house grounds and gardes set up with spotless white marquees and embellishments like metal scultures and flowers. Stalls of all things french, clothes, accessories, soap, cheese, bread, perfume, antiques and much more. Aroma of coffee in the air mixed with melting cheese on a baguette and visualise hot and yummy crepes and pies all things nice. Free flowing french wine drowned with increasing sounds of music and laughter, what can be more delightful and heart lifting. Floating mime performances and comic actions by Monsieur Fatty, live accordian perfomances and magic shows to add to all the merriement. Exciting competitions like crossioant throwing and espargot eating brought out the child in everyone. Basically eveyone was left wanting for more.

At the end of two days of fun and france i dragged my tired but very happy self back home with the fondest of memories and a pair of bright red shiny hunter boots!!!!!!

i still havent found what im looking for

Since I was little or as long as I can remember Ive been a great fan of the movies. They have been the singlemost uncontested love that I have had ever since I was a child, to the extent that I find myself quoting from them in real life situations. To be honest I am not a fan of all the genres, i am a romantic movie girl, always have been, always will be!

Having watched a whole ton of romantic films today I can see the pattern in all of them, a pattern that made me love them, that i would look unknowingly look out for and find comfort in. Every story begins with a girl who has either never really been in love or due to unimportant situations doesnt believe in love anymore, who meets her guy in the most uncommon of places, falls in love but doesnot explicitly express it although it is explicitly recognised by eevryone else ( who play an important role in the end), gets hurt, leaves the scene, however few scenes later is pursued by the guy or in some cases vice versa, makes a heart wrenching confession of love and well lives happily ever after! From Cindrella to the current day's Andie and Sams the story doesnt really change..

Today was perhaps my zillionth watch, but today I am intrigued and compelled to question this pattern?  Does this pattern make the story or do all stories have this pattern? Given that I am somewhere still stuck in the first few scenes of my own story, do i need to have this pattern clear? Are these stages the defining stages of a narrative or is it experience of wise men being expressed over a medium called film making? I guess right now I dont have the answers and well somewhere i really dont want the mystry unravelled.. But what is true as of now is that I still havent found what I am looking for......

Is there really a happy ending for all of us?

This post is not meant to be sad or one of dejection. In fact it is a thought, a reality or a proablity that I have been doddling with for quite some time now.

Through all my years, all 27 of them, everytime things went wrong or dint go my way, I was told by friends, family and sometimes by movies and books that for every bad thing that hapens, life compensates with something good. I grew up with this belief and took this concept for granted and waited for a whole lot of compensations. But what got me thinking about this was when I read about tragedies that have happened to people over time across geographies which could not have been compensated for. History tells us a lot of stories and a whole lot of them are about tragedies that have happened to mankind and for most of them there has been only pain and suffering. The Nazi concentrations camps, the world war, sati system, slavery, civil wars... the list can be endless.. Then I read about biographies of people Parveen Babi, Rekha beautiful people with tragic lives. Yes there can be arguments that some of the choices they  made caused them pain but overall there has been uncompensated suffering. Two incidents that has happened in my time... the Taj bomb blast and the Jill Meager murder case which really shook me up to the reality of tragedy.

Im not saying that we should all live in the hopelessness of a happy ending, just that a happy ending cannot be taken for granted. So many of us today complain about little pain and setbacks forgetting that no one really promised that all wishes will be fulfilled and that there are deeper and stronger wishes that god needs to fulfill across humanity. So my message is to count our blessings and pray for a happy ending!

The old list!

Every girl has this conversation with herself once every now and then.. This conversation is about the feel good factor, the little self motivation, the personal cheer of the solo cheerleading squad which she needs every time reality kicks. So what is this reality? the dream job being turned down, the girlfriends not being there over the weekend, the parental pressure or the most common but very painful one - the breakup!

Yes the song "we are women, hear me roar" was written with great thought and spirit as it was about picking ourselves up when times are down or making no matter what the circumstance. But life is never easy and everyone needs a bit of help! This help is the personal chat with ourselves which helps us gals see the larger picture of life and smile through the pain.

This blog is about my list, my own version of "when the dog bites! when the bee stings! when I'm feeling sad! I simply remember my favorite things, and then I dont feel, sooo baaa-aaa-aa-dd!"

1. To look beautiful and tempting at the same time - so get a haircut and buy the way too expensive dress"
2. To travel to a foreign land and find myself - look at Europe tour options and plan a holiday
3. To become a writer for my favorite publication - so I write in my blog
4. To write in my diary or read my book in a quaint little cafe - go to a cafe asap
5. To be saved by my prince - watch my favorite films
6. To relive the favorite dream of the perfect proposal - play my favorite song

This is to all my girls who dare to dream and dream again! love you all