The Infinite Possibilities

I'm turning twenty in less than a month. Twenty! That feels so... Old, as a friend put it so eloquently! And yet I feel like I've barely lived. I've not even made a dent in my mental bucket list. At my age, James and Lily Potter were married, Harry was just around the corner and they were fighting the Dark Lord. Bella Swan (idiot that she is) married Edward Cullen at 18. Percy Jackson saved the world at 16; and again at 17. All I'm fighting, albeit half-heartedly, are pimples and an expanding waistline. I've done a decent job with the pimples though.
Twenty feels final. There's no turning back now. It's like an initiation into the adult world. You can't use the excuse of being a kid every time you make a mistake. The mistakes you make now could very well be permanent. But sadly, this is probably the decade you'll make most of your mistakes as well. I'll just comfort myself with the thought that everything happens for a reason. But honestly. Me, an adult? Really? Isn't an adult supposed to have, like, survival skills? And yet, here I am at the doorstep of the official club of adulthood, attending my first potluck and I've forgotten to bring what was asked of me. Can I get kicked out? How are we supposed to have it all figured out by now? Or at least, how do we appear to have it all figured out?
I feel like I'm standing at a crossroads. Conflicted, confused. Much like the poem 'The Road Not Taken'. Can't life be like maths or science? Where there's only one right answer? Why does it have to be like a subject of humanities-one with infinite answers?
And yet, I feel a sense of excitement that maybe now my life will truly begin. I will finally grow up (I don't have much of a choice, do I? :P). And, eventually, I will figure out how to deal with the Sun not shining on my life all the time. It shall be a beautiful adventure
Oh well, leaving you just as confused as I feel, yours truly,
Pallavi

Always..

Alan Rickman is one of my favourite actors. And not just because nobody could have played the role of Severus Snape better than he did. I loved his voice, his talent, his versatility, his intelligence, the fact that he fell in love, married and stayed with the same woman he met at 19. I loved the fact that when you watched him play the role of a villain, you couldn't imagine him as much else. And that's only until you watch him play a romantic role. He's Severus Snape from Harry Potter, Colonel Brandon from Sense and Sensiblity, Hans Gruber from Die Hard, Sheriff of Nottingham from Robin Hood. He's all these people and yet he has a quality that's solely his own. His phenomenal voice that can sound intelligent, sarcastic, sardonic, chilling, disapproving, mocking, comforting and kind all at once. His voice, once heard, is unforgettable. He may not have been the most traditionally handsome actor around town, but there was something undeniably appealing about his face and his smile. He was brilliant and he has immortalized himself not just as one of the characters he played but as Alan Rickman. He will be missed. Always.

Clear With Periodic Clouds

My phone, like all smartphones, gives me the forecast for the day. Today it said "clear with periodic clouds". I couldn't help but think that our lives too are very much like that. All of us have periods of distress and have experienced the calm before the storm or the horrific storms themselves. When you think about it, our lives can be explained in the form of a weather forecast. Take my day for example; mostly sunny with a few thunderclouds. It's a nice way of looking at life. A simple way-without all the riff-raff that we bother with.
I'd like the message on my gravestone to be along these lines. Somehow, when you look at life this way, it doesn't seem so complicated anymore. And therein lies our problem. We overcomplicate everything and then are shocked to find ourselves tangled in a filthy mess. Take it easy. We have only one life to live! Now, if only I could follow my own advice! Oh well, Merry Christmas to all, and to all a goodnight!

Sappy, Lovesick Lines

While looking for some Disney clips for my mom's project, I found a song from 'Sleeping Beauty' called 'Once Upon a Dream'. The video shows Aurora dancing through the woods, singing about how she met the love of her life in a dream. And of course, as fate would have it, an actual prince shows up. Aurora, naturally, is a little wary. But then he tells her that they met in her dream. And of course, they dance together
Now, I know this scene was meant to evoke a smile on my face and perhaps an 'aww' as well. But all I could think was, "What a creep!". Anyone who actually uses that pickup line will probably get beaten up or be laughed at. Who says that to someone they just met? And Aurora. What's up with the naivety, girl? You don't talk to strangers for a reason. Especially not strangers who follow you around and then tell you that they are the one you were dreaming of. However much they look like Adonis.

But this is a fairytale. So it's alright. What about girls who actually fall for this shit? Some guy tells you some sappy, intense romantic line he probably googled and then forgets what he said a second later, and you start swooning?! Get a grip on yourselves. Why can't guys just stick to a regular introduction? And, if at all, add a compliment in there. Keep it simple. Keep it normal. Keep it sane. Frankly, if I heard something like this, I would be laughing my head off and whatever romantic interest the guy had in me would be diminished to nothingness.

The Mistakes We Make

When I wrote my boards in the 10th grade, I felt that nothing could be harder and I couldn't wait for it to finish. Then I reached the 12th, and thought, "Okay, this is the hardest thing I've done". Then I reached college; well, you catch my drift, don't you? It's the way life works. We always assume that THIS will be the hardest thing I will do, that THIS is the worst possible way I could screw up and then life surprises you. Rather, you surprise yourself. You can't expect life to be mundane and stagnant. It's filled with mistakes. You make mistakes so that you learn a lesson and are cautious enough to prevent it from happening again. When you make mistakes, major ones that is, you feel like it's the end of the world. Like choosing to trust the wrong person, losing your wallet that contained every single thing you need for identification (this actually happened to me a few days ago. Thank god I found it.), disappointing someone who believes in you. That's the thing about mistakes. They happen. They happen to all of us, no matter how careful we are. Life throws curveballs at us every step of the way. Some things are easy to deal with and some aren't. When I lost my wallet, my mom and I literally lost our minds. She was screaming at me about my irresponsible behaviour and I was ready to pull my hair out at my own stupidity. Had I not found it the very next day, I have no idea what I would have done. But you move on. You have to. If you don't, you haven't learnt much. Because that's what mistakes are for. To shape you into a better, stronger person.
I hope to God, I didn't come across as preachy. I'm so sorry if I did.

The Noose Around The Neck

I've always been very proud that I was brought up as a secular individual, taught not to believe in crap like 'janam kundali' which is basically some silly superstitious thing in India that supposedly determines the way your life will go and how it will affect the person you marry, and the zillion billion rituals and backward beliefs that most Indians possess.
Honestly, I don't understand how, in this day and age, educated professionals somehow still believe in this crap (not all of them, but quite a few). How can a piece of paper, based on no scientific knowledge whatsoever, decide what kind of person you are? Not only can it decide the kind of person you will be, it will also decide the kind of person you will marry. Because "the stars" cannot lie. Stars, my foot. What's the point of getting an education if you want your "life partner for seven births" to be chosen based on your compatibility on some pieces of paper that tell you what planet has a dominating effect on you (given by a fraud of an astrologer who tells you exactly what you want to hear. I can do that. And you wouldn't even have to pay through the nose for me). What absolute rubbish. I'm not the most logical person around and yet, this goes way too far for me. The logic of the janam kundali is that the two people will be married forever and ever (the seven lives- that's actually a vow made during the ceremony). Now how exactly does that work? How does anyone know how the marriage will turn out? What if they can't stand each other? What if they fall in love with someone else? What if they just bore each other to death? To be honest, the reason there weren't many divorces back then was because the couple felt they had no choice. It was better to tolerate each other than face the SHAME of getting divorced. What will society say?!
I find this absolutely despicable. I would rather never marry than have to put up with somebody saying I need to have a kundali. And then following it up with saying that we are not compatible and I may die because our kundalis don't match. Sure, you will die. I'll kill you myself with my bare hands. As a country we've come so far technologically and industrially. We are doctors, lawyers, accountants, pilots, teachers. We're role models. It's an insult to our education, our profession if we succumb to following dumb, pointless rituals. Do we want to teach the future generations to believe in meaningless superstitions and allow them to let it guide their lives? Or do we teach them to believe in themselves?

A Path To Immortality

I've always wondered what I look like through someone else's eyes. What do they see when they look at me? How would they describe me if they had to? Would they describe me through my facial features? Or would they visualize my expressions, my laughter or even my temper tantrums? We look at ourselves everyday. I highly doubt there's a face in this world we know better than our own. But at the same time, there's so much we don't know. What may seem completely ordinary to us, could be special to someone else.
I've always believed that we are the quickest to find flaws in ourselves, in our lives. We look at everyone else's lives, we think they've got it all sorted out and that we are the ones with the problematic life. But the truth is, we're all screwed up. Everything can't always be okay in everyone's lives. But we are blind to this. In a similar manner, we are oblivious to flaws in other people (unless we don't like them, of course. Then we begin to invent flaws for them).
How I would love for an author to describe me. It would be like looking at myself through someone else's eyes. Seeing what they see, judging what they judge. There's nothing quite like being written about. It's perhaps one of the only ways to be immortalized. Even if it is just a couple of lines, you're there in those words, forever. What would they say, I wonder. Would they talk about my loud laugh, my irascible temper, my fire breathing dragon nostrils (only when I'm angry), my wide smile, my bracelets manner of walking or the fat around my waist? Or will it be something else altogether? What stands out?
What do you see when you look at somebody? Like, really look at them. Me, I notice their smile, I notice the expression in their eyes, their manner of speaking, their voices and of course their physical appearance. I've tried it a few times. Writing about people I know-describing them without giving away their identity. It's fascinating to see how different my description of them is from their self-perception. And I know I'm being narcissistic, but honestly, I'd like to read an unbiased descriprion of myself written out beautifully. I'd like to be immortalized. To know that those words are permanent. For me, for the writer and for anyone else who reads it. That's not much to ask now, is it? :P