Feeling blue...

It is glorious outside, the sun is shinning, Oxford looks pretty as a picture and is inundated with tourists and foreign language students. End of June university term ends and students leave Oxford only to be replaced by swirling mass of international students who have come to join summer schools. Everyone seems tanned and in great mood, everyone except me, that is. The carnival I was organising just finished, was great fun and tremendous success. But now suddenly there is a vacum in its wake and I am at a loose end, do not know what to do with life. I am still feeling very tired, but my mind is alert and needs next project  to keep it busy. Obviously the practical thing to do is to look for another job. But there are so many ifs and buts right now and job hunting is such a slow and excruciating process that it is making me feel quiet blue. It is so bright outside that my blue is light and faded, a bit like the sky blue, but just cos it is faded does not mean that it is not a blue. It is a blue indeed and I am stuck in its grips. Sadly.

Love & Peace

Just read something which the writer has signed off with the usual 'love & peace'. I know it is fairly common but today it makes me pause and wonder.

It is just silly me pondering but do we really have both love and peace in our lives? Can we have both love and peace at the same time? How inter dependent are love and peace in our lives? Do we have to be in love to feel peaceful or do we have to be peaceful to be in love? Or are they completely seperate emotions achievable on their own? Are they actually emotions? I would say love is an emotion or rather a state of emotion and peace defnitely is a state of mind. So when we are in love and be peaceful does that mean we are emotionally and mentally secure, happy and without any emotional stress?

Love & peace...weighty phrase....I wish I could say for definite both of these are in my life and here to stay forever.....

Blog Hooked...

Some days I feel blog hooked. Today is the day.

It is a bit of feeling like you want to cling onto your parents forever and dont want to grow up...if you cling long enough, or smell in your mother's sweet smell, you will not grow up...
It is a bit of feeling like you want to hold onto your beloved forever...just hold him...if you move, or slacken your hold, he may vanish, or worse you may wake up and realise he was a dream...oh is he?
Similarly some days you just write and write and write. It is as if you dont write, unpleasant thoughts wont come clamouring to you...the world would not be a happy place...no no...dont pause, just type on...breathe but dont let the oxygen reach your thought inducing grey cells...let words fill that empty space inside you...let thoughts erase the confusion, let ideas balm your soul...who needs chicken soup? writing therapy suits me fine...at least till I write...but the moment I stop...they all come knocking, it doesnt take them time to break through barriers...they march in and demand ransom which is too high...I cannot sit in office and brood...why is worry such a demanding emotion? why cant i put him in some corner and let him fizzile out? Nah that would make life way too easier....

What if....

What if one day you do not want to conform to your self or to the world at large?

What harm can it cause if one day I wake up and just decide to be different?

What if I am rude and shocking and scandalising? Would my co workers still work with me?

What if I am bitchy and mean? Would my friends still love me?

What if I am immature and unreasonable? Would my partner still accept me?

I am asking all these rethorical questions because I suddenly feel that people we interact with, love, cherish and honour, we do all of that because something in that person, some quality we admire.

But what if the other person or for that matter me, have no qualities worth admiring or loving, would the people still be interested in being in some kind of relationship with me?

Ar'nt relationshops way too 'me' centric? How much do we actually think about the other person in a relationship?

What are the relationships we actually value so much, actually worth? Or are relationships matter of convinience like A loves B when it is convinient for him to do so and vice versa?

Just some random thoughts. What do you think?

STRESSED...

Right now I am experiencing very high level of stress.

Ask me why? Even if you dont want to, lemme tell you...

I am quiting this present job of mine---loads of work to finish before I go-- not in the mood to work at all, but then how will I finish my work and get going?
Relocating to Kolkata at the end of this month-- frantically looking for a mover & packer who will not rip me, yet provide door to door service...calling them from morning....office people are giving wierd suggestions and cracking inane jokes which are not helping me at all. Why cant people know just when to crack jokes and when not to? Hope I am not this insensitive to others in plight or stress.
Travelling for the coming ten days for which shopping & packing still to finish-- lots left in the to do list.

So there are two parallel packing going on in my life--wrapping up two years of stuff, junk, memories and lots of unnecessary things is no mean job. At least it is freaking me completely. Also when I start doing something, I remember something else to do and then midway I get confused as to which one I should be doing first.

Right now it is a vicious vicious circle...am too stressed to finish stuff, since pending list is growing longer by the minute my stress level is shooting up.

Ok Suchismita, cool down my girl. Take a deep breathe and relax. It is just a mere transitory phase and soon you would be able to laugh over your stress like your officewallahs.

But what do I do till I get over this stress? Well bugger over it girl. I can almost see the sneer on the face of the men saying " this is the reason why we dont want women to be too independent...they fall apart everytime there is a crisis..."...!!!!!! At the risk of sounding helpless female I wish I had someone to help me with this. Not feeling too strong or independent right now...

Random quotes...MAD...

"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.

"Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."

"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.

"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."

What do you do when you have no money???

While growing up I dreamt of becoming a being of my own, a woman with an identity. I always assumed that whatever job/work I would do would get me money. I mean it never even registered in my muddled brain that I could become a modern working woman yet have no money in life. Women who have no money are the ones who are dependent on their fathers/brothers/spouses and cannot break through shackles however much they face discrimination. Since I had no interest in becoming such a person, money I assumed would flow naturally.

Problems cropped up when I decided to get into development field. In development field you get a lot of things like hands on experience, excitement, over work, interesting no highly interesting collegues, genuine warmth of people for whom you are working, sophistication of superior beings who work in UN and other such superior organizations but money. No ladies and gentlemen, you do not get any money. You go to work for a NGO they would welcome you, burry you under work but money, that is not a polite thing to ask for. What money? NGOs are hardly paying organizations, we can pay you enough to surivive a month in Delhi, well barely, rest please depend on others. So whom do you depend on? For me I went back to depending on my father.

Depending on father/brother/boy friend...does that make me a modern working woman? I mean not having enough money does that qualify me for the rest of the tag?

My colleagues and me, we keep cribbing about this lack of money in life. But lately this lack of money has been stressing me out with more frequency than what is good for my cholestrol level.

Time to look for some money making schemes.

• Ok, I could play lottery: Have any one of you won a lottery ever? I could play Lotto but going by my luck dont expect to win. I have never ever won any kind of lucky draw, let alone a lottery of millions. Worth a shot at least...
• Indulging in Criminal Activites: This could be a sure shot way to easy money making but since I am one of those hyper tensed people I do not think I would ever be able to enjoy the money acquired through this. Scrap...
• Business venture: Mmmmm...worth exploring....

Ok cant think of any more ideas...

BLUEs....

What do you do when suddenly in the middle of a busy Monday morning you get a panic attack?
You abruptly realize that your life is passing and that too very fast and most of the things you wanted to do in life you haven’t even started planning them. Just dreaming doesn’t achieve things, boss.
If I tell my mom, she will scold me to begin with and then say something along this line “don’t underestimate the things you have achieved, the work you are doing and please be patient. The problem with you all is that you are always in a terrible hurry; as a result you loose focus” et al.
How can I explain to ma that none of the things, which I meant to achieve at least partially by 30, I haven’t even started? She with her years of experience always preaches patience and I am really short on that virtue.
Checklist of the top 10 things I would like to accomplish/do before I turn 40.
Find my soul mate--not achieved.
Get married--not yet.
Have children (minimum two)-- none.
Adopt children (minimum one)-- none.
Build a home--no.
Do something to preserve Indian arts & crafts—my favourites are Indian handloom stuff--nothing.
Fight against demolition of Indian bazaars to give way to antiseptic malls--nothing.
Do something really substantial work wise--long way to go.
See the world—travel--not even 1%.
Get rich-- hmmmmmmmmppppppppppppp.
Now do you realize why I feel so blue?

Severly Affected by Monday Blues

Mondays are bad on normal days, but if you have been depressed for sometime like as in since before the weekend, then facing Mondays can be quiet intimidating. When I am sad/depressed I usually sulk, brood, don't talk much or when I talk say the wrong things to the wrong people and am a terrible sore to people who are used to seeing the sunny-side-up me. But what to do my Libran scales do tend to dip rather precariously on the negative at times.

So Monday morning I drag myself from bed, somehow wear the fist thing that came to my hand, which is severely crushed and badly needing ironing, don't bother with my usual dose of kajal and ear-rings and just come to office. In office after morosely looking at the piles of work waiting for the efficient me, I decide to do a google on 'how to cheer myself up'. Google has become the most steady thing in my life, it never fails to deliver or disappoint. Predictably some interesting and enlightening stuff come up. But the inappropriate things first.

Google seems to think that to cheer myself up, I need to shop for clothes and shoes, little does Google know I do not have any money to shop and that is one of the core reasons for my present state of mind. Reminder adds to further depression. Tsk...tsk...

Lo and behold, they even throw up diamonds and rubies and other glamourous women wearing such precious stuff. But they are so expensive and so much out of my reach that they don't even depress me. I just avoid them and pretend that they do not exist in my world. Am a non clutter and totally non showy girl, right?

Google throws up a lot of how to cheer kids up stuff. Don't adults need cheering up in this age and day? I certainly do and unfortunately mickey mouse does not do the trick for me anymore.

The search further throws up a lot of political leaders-- what for? How am I supposed to feel cheered seeing George Bush's face? Logic does not crack my fuddled brain, rather the political conscious side of me feels more depressed.

Eat...as if I didn't know about the eating therapy. How do you think women like me got fatter? I have been loyally succumbing to eating chocolates/ ice creams/ potato chips/ various other healthy junks ever since the day I got first depressed. Don't need to see vivid pictures of scrumptous cakes to make my mouth water early Monday morning.

Pictures of anorexic and zero size women looking happy with glowing skin, perfect hair and glamourous clothes---I do like to torture myself.

But not anymore, as they say if I do not love myself and value myself etc etc, then the others will also not do the same. So some good things....

Found this write to heal thing. And I have realised writing does help me lift my mood. So other fellow depressed souls you can try your hand at it.

Then found this nice picture of a girl trying to make some grumpy friend of her's smile. I can imagine her to be my friend and smile instead.

Ok I should not be utterly thankless, this morning when I came in, I saw my desk being miraculously cleaned, looking spic and span. Now did I ever confess that I am not world's tidiest person? In fact truth to be told I am pretty untidy and when papers keep piling up on my desk, I keep meaning to clean them, but never do. So every morning a messily littered desk greets me. But today morning when a nice, clean desk greeted me, I was really pleased. My roomie, the one who went for a date Saturday night, cooked breakfast, so day's eating started auspiciously and healthily. Also got a sms from a colleague cum friend that I should not bother to get lunch, since she is getting it for me. Since I have been plaguing her and her husband to feed me some nice non veg khanna (her husband cooks mean chicken) I kinda know what is going to greet me in lunch.

Come on now Suchismita time and reasons enough to cheer up ( afterall a woman's heart is through her tummy).

Blog Obsession

Ok confession time. My blog obsession has reached new heights, not only have I been posting like a torrent, rest of the time I am cruising through the blog world, looking at others’ blogs. It is a great pass time and like I mentioned in one of my previous posts I have discovered such a diverse, breathtaking world and I’m loving it.
Some of the blogs I saw are real visial treats with beautiful photographs. From there I got the idea to install photoshop in my computer and learn to make my blog interesting with nice photographs. Easier said than done. While I got the software installed, I have no clue how to operate it. I tried reading online but even the most basic lessons are not making much sense to me!
Anyone with any brilliant ideas?