Wake up Sid! 😉

You can guess from the title what my fav movie is. Yes! I can watch this movie n number of times without getting bored of it! Hehe

Clicheeeé I know! But it's true! There is nothing not to love about this movie. A. It's based on Mumbai. The city I love so much! Oh the last scene on Marine drive just makes me ache to back to Mumbai just to enjoy the rains! 

B. It depicts the quarter life crisis of the protagonist which so resonates with my situation! Well it has been like that since a long time :P but I'm getting there slowly.. What a coincidence! My blog alias is Sleeping sun! 😄

C. It shows the coolest places. The kind of spaces that have their own identity. The kind of places that I would make and would like to be a part of! 😊 the home that Aisha lives in, the Mumbai beats office. Oh I just love them. South Bombay ( yes Bombay not Mumbai coz I love it that way ), the streets, the bazaars etc etc etc.. I can go on and on..

D. It has a happy energy about it. It just makes you feel so upbeat about life! Like you can just reach out and pluck a dreAm from your bunch of dreams and just live it! Who wouldn't love that?

E. It is a love story! 😉 😄 I know so predictable right? But this one I like because it is more real and familiar love story. Like Aisha says "like life" not like a movie. 😊

F. It has a spirit to it. It has the emotions that touch a deep corner of your heart. And just makes there place right there. How we struggle to come out of the shadows of people who inspire us and still want them to feel proud of us ( mostly these people are our parents and/or siblings, friends etc ) , friendship, fun, struggle, daily life, neighbors.

G. It is filmed in Bandra! The place I've called home for almost a decade! I love it! And will keep going back to it like a lost soul looking for some place to call home.

H. It has all my fav actors! Anupam kher, supriyaPathak, konkona sen, Ranbir Kapoor ( was kind of obvious, this one! 😉 ) and rest of the cast. Everyone is awesome! 😊

H. It is filled with sweet moments that melt your heart. Simple ones like the terrace scene on Aisha's birthday. 

Yes I can go on and on and on about this movie. Yes I just finshed watching it yet again! And yes I can start watching it all over again right now! 😄

I watch this movie every time I'm very happy, very sad, just done with something important like a project or an exam ( yeah I'm officially done with GRE! 😉 got a decent score too ) and so it's a movie for every occasion in my life! 😋

Wow! I'm obsessed! 😂 like I don't want to! Hell yeah I'm obsessed! And I like it! 😂

If you feel like I do about this brilliant movie and you haven't watched it in a while. I suggest you better get to it! 😉

P.S: I loooooooove the songs too! 😉

Here is a picture of my freshly painted toes! 😉 it's party time! 

Monkey

Perseverance. This word! Or rather the lack of it sums up my life until now :P

You can call it lack of patience, laziness or simply getting bored with everything too easily..

Because temperance is in my nature 

I avoid digging deep as long as I can..

Depths scare me, they make me feel claustrophobic..

Maybe that makes me superficial or maybe it just makes me who I am

A monkey! Jumping from one branch to another..

Sniggering at myself when I stay on a single branch too long..

I'm apprehensive of staying too long at a branch but never too shy when jumping to the next one

Never worrying that the next branch might snap and drop me to the ground or worse still a deeper abyss..

I seek attention but when absolutely all the attention is on me I become extremely nervous and completely lose interest in doing the clown like tricks that I normally do to get that attention..

You see I'm a very image conscious monkey! :d 

So I would rather be mistaken for a statue than for a not-so-funny monkey ;)

I love myself very much and revere myself too for all the small things that probably only I appreciate about myself.

So if someone tries to show me a mirror and tell me I'm not all that whatever I think about myself, I don't like those people very much :D 

But somehow the paranoid me tries to crab me down and sometimes I totally swat it away and sometimes...well you know...

Are you a monkey too? What makes you tick? What braches have you swung on so far?

I'm a curious monkey too you see ;) 

I like finding out what makes people tick because I like to please people 

Probably I'm one of those jamura and ustaad type performing monkey..so I have to absolutely be sure how to please the crowd

If I don't know then that scares me :D

Btw so that brings me to a very intriguing question: do monkeys have a purpose like a higher purpose in our lives? Or are they just doomed to always monkey around like they have got nothing better to do? :D

Well I will leave it to you to find the answers...while I try to find some myself..

Feeling overwhelmed

Now that I have no job but a pursuit of becoming an artist by profession..

I have also developed a dilemma...

Creativity I like, looking at people's creativity, their drawings and their art I like but studying for the qualifying examination is something I keep procrastinating...

Shutting my eyes when I see the challenge looming at me to believe that it will somehow vanish by magic or sheer chance...

Some days go amazingly well when I start the day on the right note by revising my vocab, doing my routine stuff like workout at home, some house chores and gym and a healthy diet and bit of art too along with the social networking that I indulge in..

Some days are just plain poetic when I don't worry about anything study or no study I enjoy myself...

And then there are days of guilt...

When I know I need to study but I binge on other activities like house chores, internet surfing, drawing, talking to family or just thinking..and then I keep on accumulating the foreboding of the piled up to-dos for my GRE..I know they are not many, but these days have the power of making me feel sucked out of life..

Give me a headache, sometimes disturbed sleep too...

And sometimes I feel it's just my body missing the workout it was promised..

You know how they say that working out releases positive hormones in your body?

I guess that's most probably it..

Maybe, maybe not..

Maybe it's just a lack of discipline 

Or just too many distractions...

Or maybe it's my fear of failing to accomplish what I want to achieve..

I need to give myself some pep talk daily I guess so that I keep working hard...

You find it funny? :P 

But I've seen that it actually works on me...

I have never been too much into gym and fitness but I found that reading inspirational tweets has made me look forward to my workouts and observe results in myself and that makes me motivated further...

I guess I need to do the same for my studies...

Sounds like a plan! :)

Little lessons of life

In the past few months the big n small changes in my life have made my heart grow lil more..

I have learnt to love the friends that I have

I have also learned to make new friends, 

It makes me feel like I'm a child again taking the risk of opening up to strangers

I have learnt to hug and be hugged in return,

I have learnt to love deeply and be loved in return even though we know it was never meant to last

I have learnt that age doesn't matter if you can still dream,

I have learnt that happiness and sadness are always lurking at the corners 

Depends on who you notice and welcome in your life..

I have learnt to cry openly and shamelessly when it really hurts

I have learnt that sometimes when you terribly miss a friend all you can do is hope that they are doing good in their lives

I have learnt and acknowledged that I have some anger management issues :P

I have learnt that sometimes you have to be your own counsel

I have learnt to be easy and patient with myself..

I have learnt to do things that make me happy :)

And I have learnt that it's damn scary to go after your dream...

I have learnt that sometimes you wait so long for something that you forget how to be excited when it finally happens

And I have learnt that that's ok :)

I have learnt that the biggest struggle in our lives is to be in the here and now! :)

Well I guess I have learnt enough for the moment! ;)

Time to snooze for a bit! Haha! :)

Growing up

Is this what growing up feels like?

when you feel a lot but have no words to say...

when you want to do something but hold back...

because you know its for the best..

when you meet many forms of love in life but you can't understand them all so you just let them be..

when experience teaches you something your childish heart wouldn't have thought of?

what does growing up feel like?

does it feel like trying to be a child again?

does it feel like loving anyone who needs your love because you only have that one thing that you can truly give?

does it feel happy? does it feel sad? or does it feel like flowing water in the stream a motion so natural and fluid..

you can't really feel what it feels like because every moment is so different..

does it feel empty to have grown up? or does it feel full?

empty after letting go of all the dreams...some that you lived and some that you could not realize..

full with the supposed 'wisdom' from

all the things that you have been through...

does it feel like a stationery but very wise tree who has stood the test of time?

or does it feel like a shattered house whose roof collapsed in the last rain storm?

does it feel like a change of season? sometimes bright and sometimes cold?

its really hard to tell now...for that I really have to grow up and grow old...

to tell the tales that I have to tell..and answer my own questions which I pondered so hard on when I knew little..

but would I know so much when I grow up and grow old?

or will I still be child wondering about life like I do now?

who is to say?

Thank god for small things in life! :)

Thanksgiving a holiday that is not a part of  the culture where I grew up at. So this was my first ever thanksgiving holiday experience since I came here to the United States of America.
For most of the people who come here from and either just go for a thanksgiving dinner to a friend's place or take the holidays and go out with their own family. But me and my husband spent a whole Thanksgiving week in the mountains with my American cousins, my uncle and my American aunt. There was no reception on our cell phones and the internet connection was as slow as a snail. Thanks to that we had the most amazing vacation of all times! :)

Since there was no cell phone reception we discarded our cell phones and kept them switched off in our rooms. We played board games, badminton, dart game, card games, slept well and most important of all talked to my cousins, uncle and aunt. We cooked together, went for hiking, ate a lot of food, had wine, laughed a lot and made merry! :)

Frankly speaking this was the kind of experience I haven't had with my immediate family in years! :)and it was such welcome change :) I could not believe that I can have this much fun! :) It was like going back to the childhood days of innocent fun!

One more exciting thing that we did was learn salsa on the eve of Thanksgiving from my cousin. It was amazing since I was doing salsa for the first time with my husband who is not so comfortable dancing and feels conscious very easily. But thanks to my dear cousin who made him feel at ease and comfortable enough to dance with me a dance that he had never tried before :)

The whole experience of setting up the thanksgiving dinner and then getting ready and having the dinner with the family, saying grace before the meal and also sharing what each one of us is thankful for was so sweet! :) And the food was so amazing that by the end of dinner I was feeling like a stuffed turkey myself :D and looking more like humpty dumpty dawdling from one place to another :D Oh it was pure joy! :)

Frankly speaking I have never spent so much time with all of my cousins and I was a little sceptical before going for the vacation. But its amazing how we gelled so well. My aunt had planned everything so immaculately and she kept us all engaged by suggesting some or the other activity at the end of which she would give prizes to the winners. And we grown up people would turn into small kids all excited to receive the goodies! :) Oh I felt like such kid :P

We went to the movies and I watched the Hunger games for the first time :) both the parts :) and enjoyed it thoroughly :) and also how my aunt would get excited at the movies like a kid and would scream so loud when some shocking scene would come up :P and how the girl sitting behind her would scream after that because she would get scared from my aunt's screaming! :D it was so much fun! :P

Oh and we also made absolutely adorable cookie houses and decorated the gingerbread man! :) Seems like we did all the stuff that little kids would do but hey I am still a little kid at heart and I thoroughly enjoyed decorating candies on top of the houses and also eating some of them :) sticking marshmallows and gum drops everywhere to make my houses look the prettiest! :)

We went to a trivia competition as a family and had so much fun even though we did not win and wrote completely ridiculous answers to some of the questions.. but it was amazing and we had such a good laugh about those silly things till the time we left from Poconos :P

We also went shopping as it is impossible to have an outlet mall nearby and not go shopping specially when the holidays are here! :D

All this makes me re-think the importance of festivals in our lives and what their actual intention is! :)

How wonderful life is and how these vacations and festivals give us the time to realize that and be thankful for everything we have...

I had a sweet and happy smile all the way coming back from Poconos to Pittsburgh...

If we can make such simple things joyful, life would become so many more times worth the grind that we put ourselves through daily!

And I have taken a break from my career in search of the same happiness that somehow went missing from my life between working and travelling and thinking about my husband who was so far away from me all that while and lots of big and small things that happen in our lives daily :P I am really glad things turned out the way they did! :)

I am feeling absolutely happy and blissful at the moment and all energized to take on anything! :)

So cheers to the happiness! :) May all of you have absolutely awesome holidays! :)

Love <3 <3
Payal

Feels like rain in my heart

It feels like the rain in my heart..
where the drops of love fall..
sometimes big and sometimes small

they fall musically sometimes in a rhythm of their own
lending a tune to my heart
in which I dance and rejoice..

sometimes like blobs they drop
washing my heart all over with love and care and the color of happiness

sometimes it brings strong winds
which sweep me away

and yet there are times that they are gentle
as if they just want to caress
and bring to life my hopes
they bring to life long forgotten memories
and how those moments felt..
the fragrance of the time gone by
and etched in gold in the fondest corners of my heart

the most treasured bonds
that I would never trade even for my life

the ones that I would guard to the end of eternity..

the ones which have stood the test of time..

the ones that have changed with time but are still going strong..

and also the ones that used to be..

strong when they were and still sweet in my memory..
like colors in the rainbow they all shine

it feels like a rain in my heart and fills the river of love
and leaves it overflowing...
sometimes gentle and sometimes rash..
sometimes thoughtful and sometimes impulsive

I try to catch the water in my palms
and then let go of it
coz I can't contain it all
since my hands feel so little to hold it all

and so I let it flow
I drench and I drown
with a happy smile :)

the drops fall on my face and with my eyes closed
I see it all...

the place they are coming from
and the blessings that they bring..

the music that beats like drums of happiness
on the green leaves of hope

I see all grow in my heart
the truth that we know from the start

everything is clearly visible
to my closed eyes with drops of love falling one after the other on them

And it feels like rain in my heart...