Life

"There is no value of life except what you choose to place upon it. "

-Unknown

When we come to the end of our lifetime and we look back across it, the only thing that will matter is, "What was the quality of our love?"

-unknown

On Love..

"Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.
- Captain Corelli's Mandolin.  "Love is the beauty of the soul." --St. Augustine

....

There is something I would like to understand. And I don't think anyone can explain it..There is your life. You begin it, feeling that its something so precious and rare , so beautiful that it is like a sacred treasure. Now its over, and it doesn't make any difference to anyone, and it isn't that they are indifferent, its just that they don't know, they don't know what it means, that treasure of mine, and there's something about it that they should understand. I don't understand it myself, but there's something that should be understood by all of us. Only what is it? What?

-"We the Living ",Ayn Rand

Entanglements..

"..Can fulfilment be felt as deeply as loss ? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfilment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself..."

~The Inheritance of Loss(Kiran Desai)

"Mathematics , rightly viewed, possesses not only truth , but supreme beauty - a beauty cold and austere , like that of a sculpture , without appeal to any part of our weaker nature , without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music , yet sublimely pure and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest can show."

~Bertrand Russel

Crowds...

"Crowds.I don't like crowds.
The rivers of people anywhere in the world, pouring along sidewalks, pressing along subways
and train stations and bus terminals in the morning and evening , are rivers of people who know
just where they are and just where they are going, they have passed this way before and they
know that they will pass this way again. So knowing, not much humanity shows in the masks they wear- that humanity lies within, struggling with problems, contemplating joys of past and
future. Those crowds aren't people at all, but carriers of people, vehicles with people inside, all
shades drawn. There is not much to be said for watching a procession of curtained carriages."

-A gift of Wings(Richard Bach)

Walls...

"
I build walls

Walls that protect,
Walls that shield,
Walls that say I shall not yield or reveal,
Who I am or How I feel .

I build walls

Walls that hide,
Walls that cover what's inside.
Walls that stare or smile or look away.
Walls that even block my eyes,
From the tears I might have cried.

I build walls

Walls that never let me truly touch,
Those I love so very much.
Walls that need to fall,
Walls meant to be fortresses,
are prisons after all." -

celebrate life......

"What does it cost to have a celebration?

A winter evening.
Four friends.
One barsaati.
Four glasses of chai.

Hundred bucks of gas.
A rusty old bike.
And an open road.

Maggi noodles.
A hostel room.
4:25 am.

3 old friends.
3 separate cities.
3 coffee mugs.
1 Indiatimes messenger.

Rain on a hot tin roof.
Pakoras deep frying.
Neighbours dropping in.
An impromptu party.

You and mom.
A summer night.
A bottle of coconut oil.
A head massage.
Gossiping about absent family members.

you can spend
hundreds on birthdays,
thousands on festivals,
lakhs on weddings,
but to celebrate
all you have to spend
is your time.".....celebrate life..
-TOI

.....

Perhaps this could have stayed unstated,
Had our words turned to other things
In the gray park , the rain abated,
Life would have quickened other strings.
I list your gifts in this creation:
Pen ,paper ,ink and inspiration .
Peace to the heart with touch or word,
Ease to the soul with note and chord.

How did that walk,those winter hours,
Occasion this?No lightning came ;
Nor did I sense ,when touched by flame,
Our story lit with borrowed powers-
Rather,by what our spirits burned,
Embered in words, to us returned. - "An equal music" (Vikram Seth)

Fragment of a dream...

It is all so easy to shatter a story.....to break a chain of thought......to ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain.......to let it be..to travel with it....is much the harder thing to do".

-"The god of small Things"

BWM......

" I know not by what methods rare,
But this I know god answers prayers
I know not if the blessings sought
Will come in just the guise I thought,
I leave my prayers to him alone,
Whose will is wiser than my own."

....Dreams and Reality......

"We thought we could live in that beautiful world forever.....
But just when we felt so...

We realized it was just a dream.....

When we thought we could treasure it as a memory.....
It hurt us like a wound....
For the reality said something else...

When we thought we could forget it..
We realized it had become a part of us...

For sometimes beautiful things are just meant to be like that........."