Perspectives...

My annual trips to India include a sojourn to Pune where I spent 10 very formative years of my life - the early two being life changing.  It is here that my parents, puzzled about what to do with my life as well as some sincere intentions to give me worldly education, sent me to board and educate myself at the nationally revered Fergusson College in Pune. I was all of 15 when I said goodbye to everything stable in my life - mom's food, dad being at my beck and call, friends and plays, the television, and my bed. I was the center of my universe as well as two other people who I served as the life purpose for.  And now I was one of many many girls living up to the rules of an dictator like elderly couple who hated anything developed post 1985. Queuing up every night to receive a spatula full of lentil and rice and the much in demand buttermilk, I doubted my existence. I shared the room with two other girls who clearly despised my because of my always somber disposition....

Very rarely have we been so vulnerable to the prospect of dying due to external reasons in the most common of situations. I no longer have to be in a battle zone to lose my life.  I realize I can die shopping for watermelons in the neighborhood grocery store, while running on the lakeshore, at the local cafe while eating my croissant or giving a presentation at work. Grateful is not a word we would use for the incidents in motion across the world. But I am grateful for the realization of mortality that is so on my face. The knock on the door is hard, calling us to take notice of our whole lives - on how we are living, on the definitions of success we have long harbored or the unforgiveness that lives within us. Death can be the greatest teacher, as in the face of it, every semblance of urgent and important that we have long held dear, weathers away. We stand face to face with what is real. Are these incidents here to remind us to take notice? Are they here t...

My purpose in life is to explore life's big questions & to rise above the pre-occupation of everyday life to realize life is bigger.  And to experience it.  ~