Cliched yet different!

Just came up from a long session at the mess table with everyone narrating their love stories. I got all mushy at the end on how sweet every relationship was. Also, I realised how a common link ran through the building of relationships. It was almost as if there were random combinations of the same parameters. Maybe that is a very non romantic way of looking at it, but its true.

Every relationship can be divided into two categories-with senior and with batchmate

With batchmate: It starts with the inevitable bonding during some arbit project in December. Infact statistics will show maximum anniversaries during December. Maybe some Christmas spirit spills over to India also. Meals together, night outs, movies. The project gets ditched, but the relationship reaches completion..

With senior: Some fundae for some company, resumes, scholarships, fundaes for insti activities, MI seniors, dept seniors. Intellectual sessions leading to the gal being impressed. Resume gets made, schols get awarded and you get hitched in addition..

The weird thing is that inspite of every relationship story being cliched, with the same tricks and games being played, yet its still so sweet and beautiful to listen to..!!

Hats off Cupid!!

For the unphoenix

One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs
Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls

These are lines by Saeb-e-Tabrizi, a seventeenth century Persian poet while praising Kabul.

These are the lines that Laila, the protagonist of A Thousand Splendid Suns remembers when she is returning to war torn Kabul after the US forces have defeated the Taliban there.

These are the lines that every citizen can find befitting to describe his/her home nation.

Just finished reading this touching bestseller in which Khaled Hosseini has tracked the history of Kabul from 1980s to now. It seems a pity that a country so beautiful is destroyed and shattered by war. All because of power play. Power play, a game that twists your conscience and breaks all your moral bindings; wrenches the heart right out of your body and hurls it away.

In such times of adversity, what does it take to survive? Laila survived. She did not come out unscathed or unscarred. Memories of the terror, nightmares of the massacres continued to haunt her, but still she learnt to live with hope again. She still had the courage to come back to her home country which had taken away everything from her-her parents, her youth, her freedom. But that was Laila. She was undefeated by the war demon. What about the thousands who succumbed to the terror the demon yielded? What about the thousands who didn't have the courage to return? Everyone is not a phoenix.

And for those unphoenix(pardon narrative license), I mourn today.

PS: Bunked a CAT class to finish the novel and write this blog. Back to the world of books, I am loving it!