The Human Touch!

Last few weeks I have been feeling fervently quite low due to several reasons. Mood swings, unsolicited tears, drifting apart in solitude etc. Guess we all go through this phase once in a while in the journey of life. Not everyone is perfect or let’s say none of us are perfect!

When I have my lows, I feel that, the moment a dear one comforts me or even speaks to me in a kind way, I feel like I’ll break down and can’t control my tears. Even if someone just touches my shoulders in a comforting way, I feel like a kid and start crying. It’s probably an accumulation of my emotions which just comes out with the human touch. After the tears leave me, I feel so much better!

I have observed that the human touch work wonders to me. Holding the hand of a close friend while walking the known pathways, giving a good-bye hug, greeting someone with a peck and a hug and similar small gestures of being human is sometimes healing. Many of us stay by themselves and don’t have family nearby. There is understandably a feeling of loneliness and solitude. But when another human, who loves you, makes their presence felt, you feel happy, you feel there is someone who cares!

The world these days is delimited by definitions, it was not so when I was a kid. If two guys walk with their hands on each other’s shoulders, we blotch them as ‘gay’, similarly if two girls kiss, we say they might be ‘lesbians’, or if a guy and a girl hug each other, we say they might be dating! Things were not like this when we were kids, we used to happily walk hand in hand with our friends, be it a guy or a girl. We would kiss and hug each other without thinking even once! It’s so easy to show hatred, have fights, arguments, even kill each other, then why is it so hard to love each other just as humans without the discrimination of race, cast, creed or sex! When our parents love us, when our grand-parents hug or kiss us, when our friends cuddle up next to us, it’s all a very human touch! It makes us feel alive, feel a part of the world, feel human!

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Make friends, not war!

The human touch is therapeutic to me when am feeling low. I used to cling on to my bestie all the time whenever we would travel, and she would always shrug me off from her and ask why I am ‘glued’ to her all the time =)! I would reply saying that we live in opposite hemispheres, when you are with me, I want to feel your presence! Well, each of us is different in our own ways and how we feel or how we heal. But I guess the small gestures of love which I call as the ‘human touch’ is necessary to signify the presence of love in this world without the precincts of demarcations!

If it’s easy to show your hatred, trust me it’s easier to show your love! Just hold your friend’s hand while you walk, give your mom a hug when she is angry on you, tell your sister how much you love her and care for her and that you are always there, call your father more often, smile at the passer-by on the road. We all have our pains, all have our own battles to fight, the small gestures of love keep us going. Life is all about the small things, cherish them and smile! xoxo

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My Fitness Mantra

I am quite a lazy person when it comes to regular exercise or workouts. However, one fine afternoon I decide to go for a walk and make my life a little better or at least get over the guilt of being lazy.

I put my headphones on and play my favourite playlist, get into my walking shoes after dusting them a bit and just go out along the walking tracks near my place. Initially I come across quite a busy area with some nice shops around and I feel this urge of going for shopping instead and get a coffee, but I voice myself to focus and keep walking. The beats of my music is slowing giving me a rhythm and I am feeling better already. I cross the hustle of the city and slowly get into a more residential area.

This area is leafy and full of trees which have lost their leaves in Winter. I come across many oldies who smile warmly at me and some moms who are busy attending their kids while they walk holding hands. Reminded me of my mom and how I used to go for walks with her as a kid. I keep walking. I see an old lady trying to cross the road but is scared. I stop by and hold her hand and help her cross the road, she smiles and says “God bless ya child”. I smile back and feel at peace, I keep walking. I can smell the air around, the strange smell of the bark of the leafless trees, the smell of grass, or some seasonal flowers and the smell of winter in this part of the world. I can see a church a bit further up, I am quite exhausted for my low stamina but my lure towards old churches kept me going.

The Sun is about to set, the last rays of the Sun is falling on the Church and making it look so beautiful. There is no one around, but I decide to go inside the Church. I slowly push the Church door and it opens with a squeak. I am scared if am barging in. I see no one inside the Church, no wait, there is someone, an old lady. I walk towards her and then take a seat in one of the front rows and smile at her. I have to appreciate the old piece of architecture and how well it has been maintained over the years. I pray for a while closing my eyes and open my eyes to find that the old lady is decorating the church with some beautiful white lilies. She was picking every flower as if it was her child and then very carefully placing them on the wall.

When I told her that the flowers are beautiful, she said there is a funeral later for which she is setting them up. Does white symbolise death, it certainly symbolises peace, so maybe its for the peace of the departed soul. I was suddenly feeling very small compared to everything around. Death, that’s such a nonpareil truth. All we congregate in this world, all the wealth, possessions, relationships everything is perishable…someday. What will remain in this world will be the bonds we make and the memories in the heart of the near ones. I felt an unanticipated tear in my eye. While immersed in such deep thoughts, I didn’t realise I was being observed by the old lady.

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She looked at me and asked my name. She said she has been coming to this Church since years and to her, birth and death are like best friends who are inseparable. They go hand in hand and make a complete life cycle. How easily she explained it. She walked towards me and gave me a hug and said was great meeting me and that her name was Bevillé. I wanted to say the same but my voice was chocked. I ran on the way back, happy, fit and realising that the true fitness mantra is to be nice to others, smile and just live a healthy life.

Fitness is not only to have a healthy body but also to have a healthy soul. Mental health is as important as physical health. Everyone has their own battles, help others in need and smile when you see a sad face on the street, maybe all they need from you is a Smile 🙂

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My friend at the Cafe!

I have a friend at the coffee shop. I don’t know her name but she knows mine. She also knows what coffee I usually order. Every morning, one of the motivations I have, to come to office, is my coffee and a small chat with my friend. We talk about everything, about the weather, the food, my evenings, her evenings, about flowers and life in general.

She is a beautiful young lady with a warm smile. She talks to everyone very nicely; everyone likes her I believe. She has very beautiful eyes. Just the other day, my hands were very cold and I was freezing in the Melbourne winter. When she met me for taking my order, she was feeling bad for me and said I should buy gloves. Later, when I was going out for lunch, she offered me to wear her gloves, in case I am too cold. I felt really gratified with her gesture.

We don’t know each other well, neither we spend so much time together, but the small gestures of love make my day warm. Such are the effects of ‘being human’.

Today when I went to grab my afternoon coffee, the café was quite empty. My friend came over and offered me a cookie from her own share. I gladly accepted. Then she said today is her last day in this café! I felt a gush of sadness crept inside me. I didn’t know what to say! I looked at her and she smiled and said, “You’ll make new friends”. She said she is travelling to Northern Australia and after she comes back, she would join some other café, somewhere else. She also shared her gratitude towards me and said how nice its been talking to me all these last five months in this café.

I finished my coffee and walked up to her to say the final good bye. She gave me a hug and said, take care. I started walking back to my work and didn’t turn back.

They say, “Goodbyes are never forever”. I wonder why I felt bad when she said she is leaving, why I never asked her, her name. This is life! We make friends and then bid them farewell and then make new friends again in the journey of life. Sometimes you suddenly don’t see that same face you see everyday and search for it, faces change, everyday. Sometimes you can’t even say good bye to everyone you love. That’s the truth.

Just be nice to everyone you meet, say hi and ask how are they doing. Life is too short to have grudges. I will miss my friend at the coffee shop tomorrow, but who knows, maybe I will see another warm face saying, “What coffee would you like”? 🙂

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What’s your song?

They say, “Everyone has their own song”. A song that connects them to eternity, to love, to life and to themselves. Similarly, every relationship has its own song. A song that is reminiscent of time immemorial or of something exceptional. A song is your own because it relates to some specific personal event, it is own because our life finds its rhythm and music in that song. Whenever we hear that song, we remember the event or the person to which this song is allied and treasure our solace at heart.

Some songs remind us of a journey, some remind us of home, some of our parents or grand parents, some songs remind us of friendship and some of love. Sometimes the tune of an old song takes you back to the memory lane and you even land up making a call to an old friend or a lost love. Some songs make you cry while some make you smile but every song stirs a feeling inside your heart. The tears are the witness of some painful incident with which this song was concomitant. The smile on the other hand is the evidence that this song is part of some happy memory. A song reflects the state of your heart at that instance of time and that in turn makes a song your own. You hum the tune when ever you want to revisit that occurrence of time.

Humans are very possessive. They don’t want to let go of time. They want to cling on to time either in form of a photograph or a song or a video or something tangible that takes them back to the memory lane. A song is a way to capture a moment forever. Sometimes on a gloomy day, I remember the lullaby my mom used to sing for me when I was a child, it’s a vent to revisit my childhood days. When I miss my best friend, I remember the songs we sang together on our journeys and in many of our memorable trips. My favourite songs have changed over time. Some new ones have become my favourite now and some old ones are slowly fading away from my memory with time.

I guess life is also like a song. People come and go, some stay forever and some fade with time. Lucky are those who find their song and for the rest, have you tried finding your song yet? 🙂

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Be crazy this New Year

Yesterday was the first day of 2016. I was cleaning my house and wiping an old painting in my living room. There was a black mark on the right hand corner of the painting, which I was trying hard to remove. After several attempts when I was loosing my patience, my mom, who must have been watching me for a while, said, “The black scar is inside the frame and not external. Even if you try, it will be there like it has been since years. It’s this scar which makes this painting special dear’. She smiled at me and then went back to the book she was reading.

Wao! That was so true. We all have our scars, our hitches, our weaknesses, and our inabilities but then it’s those scars, which make us special! They make us different and in fact they define who we are. Sometimes the scars are peripheral and sometimes inner but who cares. They are ours. They tell our story, they tell how we faced life and even after we got hurt, got scarred, we stood up, fought and survived! If someone tries to change us, or get rid of our scars, well then that person is definitely not the one to be! Sometimes even we ourselves think that we are not perfect, we have this black mark in whatever way. We are so wrong and condemnatory towards self.

We are what our life’s journey has made us. We are the experiences we had and the fights we fought. We are survivors! No one is perfect and sometimes imperfection is our beauty, our pride and our inner soul. This new year, let’s promise that we will be happy the way we are and not be ashamed of our scars, be it inner or outer. We will laugh loudly, act madly, speak truly, dance insanely, live freely and love genuinely.

Wishing everyone a crazy new year 😉

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