Why regret is the worst, when it comes to food

Regret is the worst emotion. And ‘if’ is the worst word. The lesser “if’s…” (and not f**cks) you give in life, the better you’ve lived.

Sadly, when it comes to regret, we’ll always rant about the following:
1. Love
2. Friendship
3. Studies
4. Breaking someone’s nose

And in the rat race, we leave behind something, that deep down, could be the possible solution to every single problem: The perfect food.

So, here I’ll enlist five (hopefully non-debatable and convincing) reasons as to why we should eat what we crave.

1.       It’s compensation for love

Why do you think the first thing people do after break ups is eat that entire tub of chocolate ice cream? Because it makes them feel good.
Food is something that will kiss your lips, play with your tongue and fill your soul with feelings (and flavor that comes along as bonus).

2.       It’s compensation for home

All of us who’ve reached legal adulthood (legal, since you never really feel adult, do you?) have stayed away from home for at least a month, to pursue whatsoever. And those of us who have stayed away, have known what hurts the heart, the mind, the soul…and the tongue the most. The awful food.
So, when you’re out some day and see those hot paranthas…grab ‘em because all you have to do then is close your eyes and feel at home. It’s worth a lot more than the money you’ll spend.
Also, when you’re home and your grandma and ma and everybody else around you (India- Mere haath ka khana nahi khaaya. Major disrespect) wants to feed you. Just eat. Shut up and eat. Jo hai khaana, Kal ho na ho, and shit.

3.   Inflation

You never know when you lose your job, or when French fries at KFC start costing over thousand rupees, you never know when your favorite restaurant shuts down, or when your favorite food gets banned (you know what happened to Maggie). In this highly unpredictable and ever-changing world, you never know what gets snatched next. So, go out there: Buy 5 Kit-Kats and 15 Ferrero Rochers, drink McFloat, gobble down some Barfis and probably order a large cheese burst pizza as well. Simple because, you never know?!
Spare yourself the sadness of walking down the lane of regret.

4.   Happiness 

Trust me, I’ve studied some of my medicine syllabus well and I know that some foods stimulate endorphin release!
Chocolate has been proven to fight depression.
And maybe pumpkins and karelas have been known to cause it, still under study!
So, eat your food, be happy!
Clap your hands and tap your feet!
(To burn away some calories)

5.  You can always lose weight

Hum ek baar jeete hain, ek baar marte hain. Khaane ka mauka bhi ek baar ataa hai, aur obesity bhi… but then there are gyms in every neighborhood.
All you need is the realization and motivation. And for that you have the music and the internet.
And of course, I said eat everything. I didn’t say quit exercising!

So, in the end, you wouldn’t want to be on your death bed, wishing that, “I should’ve have eaten that!” ;) 

Let's Believe

Let’s believe

That somewhere there’s a land,

Where our vision doesn’t meet horizons

And the mind dares to soar to where there are no desires.

That someday darkness won’t exist 

Our fears and guilt be defeated by conscience, ungiving;

Our shadows too will brighten and pave way,

Making sure every aura gets a chance to play.

It’s a possible land, with simplicity all around

Where sound is music, and numbness dances along.

Miracles happen but that’s a daily tale,

And ever creature lives with nothing at stake.

Each blooms with hope not succumbing,

To catch the drops of freedom and bathe in vitality.

Let’s believe 

That a place such does exist,

Where rainbows never end and happiness showers when thought of

Where the moonlight hums and the breeze translates.

We know it’s imaginary, but so is our existence,

There is need to calm, even if it’s believing in illusion!

-आ कां क्षा 

Let's be alchemists: Change those wings back to GOLD!

“Yeh Kahaan Aa Gaye Hum, Yoonhi Saath Saath Chalte?”  “Where are we heading, having been unknowingly walking together?”

(This is not a Bollywood post like the previous one, but it does have one thing in common with it: the country from where both originate: India! India, and where the youth’s taking it.)

India! The country where the earliest civilizations started, where the mother of mothers, Mother Teresa, father of fathers, Mahatma Gandhiji, son of sons, Shravan Kumar and daughter of daughters, Rani Laxmi Bai set their feet. The nation where science and literature, architecture and music, astrology and astronomy, mathematics and poetry took birth and walked hand in hand to reach the zenith of all possible glories! The same India, Hindustan, Bharat or Aryavarta, where the Guptas, the Mauryas, the Mughals, the French, the Portuguese, the British laid hands on: some to construct, some to demolish. India, like the charm of crystal, the purity of a pearl, the essentiality of water and the décor of eras; is nothing less than the enigma of the present world!

For someone who is unaware of India, as a nation must happen to draw up a lovely image of a country bustling with every possible image of prosperity! He must have thought of ‘the enigma to the world’ as the unknown reason for such an amazing state! But sadly, if this person were to visit the place, he would find me and kill me for feeding him with the bullshit I’ve stated about the country in the above few lines. But, unlike him, the world knows it’s true! But then, sorrowfully, unlike the world, and like the person I talked about, our youth, the buzzing new generation doesn’t even have a guess, for whether it’s true or false.

The sons and daughters the nation provided us with continued to be ripe and fresh, ready to serve, ready to know and ready to acknowledge and respect the country. But it happens to be such that someone suddenly stopped watering the soil of our country; that the generation produced today, happens to be, not a little, but pretty much unaware of anything related to our country.  

I do not here, emphasize on the fact that India is a great country, and we must praise it for its flaws. I am also not being the crooked History teacher and asking every child to memorize when, where, how and why! But then, isn’t it important for us to know? For our children to know? And theirs and on and on?

“Unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength.” -Abdul Kalam.

We know the present scenario isn’t much of a worthwhile ‘watch and praise’ kind, but to lift the nation from the dooms of decay to the skies of development (which it lost a while ago) we need to children of the nation to do nothing more than this in the first place: LOVE! Yes, the simple four letter word again! But it’s got power. Power amounting to heights that can force one to be the change and continue to change. And maybe India only needs an alteration. So, imagine what respect can do!

When I was a little kid, my mother would tell me about how wonderful India is, about how glorious we were and ought to be. She taught me patriotic songs, we watched movies that moved me, even as a child! My father, during bed time, would tell me the Ramayana and Mahabharata, just so that I knew! It’s never unnecessary to pass on cultural stories. It’s never genius to not let your children know.

Today, if you pick a child and ask him, what we contributed to the world, he’ll smirk and say: ZERO! And no one would correct him. Well, you’ll say, “He is not even wrong! We did contribute that digit” But you do not know, with a zero, he means nothing! He needs to know, that it was math we gave the world, it was physics, it was art, it was poetry, it was design, it was democracy, it was fashion, it was yoga and, beyond all: CULTURE!

Have we forgotten what we taught?

Is there where we were destined to be?

Is this Bharat Mata? Are these her sons and daughters?

Let’s change the answer form a ‘YES’ to ‘NO’!

As children (even if you’re 18+), we’ll read and watch and as adults we’ll so the same, but also teach. We have inexhaustible raw material! A population of over 1.2 billion!

Let’s no longer call India a nation! Let’s let it be what it is: a festival! A festival called India! The festival that people join from around the globe, the festival where we show them what we’ve got, the festival where we CELEBRATE INDIA!

“India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the human peoples.”

-Sri Aurobindo

The destroyed dream of acting drunk in a saree.

“Karvatey Badalte Rahe Saari Raat Hum, Aap Ki Kasam! Aap Ki Kasam!”

Out of most of the things I’ve literally died within myself wanting to do, singing this song with Rajesh Khanna in place of Mumtaz. Sigh. Life.

Anyway, here I am in the 21^st century, still wondering about how wonderful it would have been at that point of time. The era, the glory, the respect! What life can reward me with is a television with old classics playing, me watching and listening to them, imagining, imagining and imagining! It’s not all that bad though.

Acting is such an amazing thing, something that I could do for free, for the love of it! I’ve hardly made any great advances in it, no one even knows much about it, except for a play in my previous school, and my selection into the dramatics club and then dropping out due to unavoidable reasons! It’s a sad story and maybe I shouldn’t even have an incline towards going on about it. The ‘unavoidable circumstance’ is responsible for many more unavoidable things that came later. Sigh again.

This piece of writing, I mean the post you’re reading is very light hearted and being written just to put across a pretty grievous story of my life. So, take things lightly as you read. It’s just a silly piece of writing.

Now, as one may wonder, “if her love for acting is so huge that it forms such an integral part of this ‘drama-queen’s’ life, why doesn’t she try now?” I have excuses to this too. 

Reason one being the fact that you need to slim down to weigh probably 50 kilos to even reach the screen and be accepted as a good ‘actress’ today. (That is if I go in young.) Yes, sadly, acting in a way is inversely proportional to your weight. Otherwise they would cast Huma Quereshi in place of Katrina Kaif! Back then, during the 90s, you needed to look presentable. That’s it. Chubbiness was accepted. Today you need have a perfect jaw line, have sunken cheeks (that look like concave, very opposite to mine that are pretty convex!), have your beauty bone to be very visible. (Unless I go in like when Kirron Kher did!) And, of course, the saddest thing, for each of those, you need to move your body and eat less. Very sad indeed.

Reason two being that, in order to make people love you even more, more and more you need to wear less. You didn’t need to do the same back then. You could sing a “Hawa Ke Saath Saath, Ghata Ke Sang Sang” with a hot and cute person like Sanjeev Kumar, wearing full pants (that too bell-bottoms) and a full sleeved shirt. You could dance on in “Chup Gaye Sare Nazaare” with Rajesh Khanna wearing a salwar suit and a saree. I could even act drunk in a saree, if you remember "Jai Jai Shiv Shankar"! What could get more decent? You’re doing your job- people are getting entertained, and then you don’t have to get into swimwear to woo people. Everything was so respectable. Unlike now. I couldn’t go in now, maybe because I wouldn’t want to be up there on the ‘bada pardaa’ with everyone whistling. I want to move their hearts, not other parts.

Reason three being; I could pursue true drama then! True crying, intense emotions- love, hatred and so much more. Today, even if I am the main reason why some people couldn’t feel the essence of a movie like ‘Jab Tak Hai Jaan’, I’ll be signed up for ten other films. Why? Because I am a showpiece. Tadaa.

Overall, it’s pretty sad I wasn’t born back then. I know cinema has a lot to offer even today, but somewhere down the lane the respect of a lady has been given up. Walking around on the beaches, playing volleyball, even shopping in bikinis is on the go. Women are being used; they’re passing wrong messages (Item songs, where the blondes don’t even know what they’re dancing to!) Nothing about the present industry even excites any longer. We have smarter directors, but maybe a deteriorated culture. Actors have to be performers today. And even outside the movies, they need to keep advertising to keep them visible. (The most useless thing! Truly! It’s like bribing people.)

I realize that back then also you had a Zeenat Aman who did roughly the same in Satyam Shivam Sundaram, and there was a Helen, but maybe what they did wasn’t mandatory.

Ending things on a pleasant note, here is a picture of a lady romancing one of the best on screen lover, in snow, wearing a fur coat. (Not having drunk packs of beer to bear the cold in her little dress!)