Sometimes you need a rude shock to get you to look up and face the truth.

I was working so hard and so late for a couple of months until spells of niggling chest and back pains and dizziness forced me to go for a check up.

The result: Hypertension (though it was just one day, the next day we went to the doc and pssh! it was gone).

Which is funny since I usually am considered calm and competent (my boss will never again look at me the same way).

So, I cancelled a few business trips, was forced into bed by the Man who now checks to see that I do not overdo it.

To think that I am only in my late twenties and have already to check my stress levels really irritates me, but so does the fact that I see sunshine maybe one day in a week (if I get really lucky).

And as I sit here thinking, I know that my lifestyle is not going to change anytime soon, my boss will still give me impossible deadlines, I will still try and cram in too much in a day and I will continue to feel ill most of the time.

Unless I make a stand. And I made that stand today in no uncertain terms to my team (and boss) and wonder of wonders! they actually seem to understand what I am saying (the first time too). I have cut back on my work hours (a little but still that does help too), have begun to meditate forty minutes a day (on the doctor’s orders) and am eating healthy – the point being I really did not need this to happen to know what I was doing was wrong. I needed it to happen to force myself to change. And I ask of you people just this – do not wait for a similar incident, it’s ok to pull back and tell others you cannot do it, it’s ok to insist that you get weekends off.

Especially us Indians who think we have so much to prove to the world that we let go of our health and personal lives, it just is not worth it. So get up and get moving (away from the PCs and laptops) and have a healthy and wonderful life (and the hell with deadlines and stuck-up bosses).

Why do you insist on bleeding me dry

Of all emotions

Till I become a haggard and dry prune

While you run behind the juicy berries

Again?

If my death means your life

May I die over

Again and again;

And if the only payment

You want for a smile

Is my pain

Then laugh aloud

For I am now

The way I was when I first came here;

Resembling a foetus

Which has been torn free

Of the womb

Far too early to survive.

And so he weaved in the Jasmine

Through my hair

And began to caress every strand

Breathing in the fragrance of the flowers

As he would every night;

And as they were crushed beneath us

We breathed in their death

And were more alive then

Than ever before.

As soon as I can …

Work is a little hectic, to put it mildly

Be good people

For Sunday Scribblings on “Hungry“

Just twelve more to go

She promised herself

Just a few more pounds to lose

And they would stop clamouring in her head

The voices laughing

And the taunting

They still echoed

Through the playgrounds she had once known

And played until they drove her out;

Just twelve more to lose

She thought

Even as she lay starving on the bed

Twelve more, she whispered

As they rushed her to the hospital

Just twelve more, and I will finally be thin;

And the laughter will stop;

She was thirteen

And weighed twenty six pounds.

The chennai tweeters are meeting at the Farm on Old Mahabalipuram Road. For details, refer to this link.

I am thinking of going for a number of reasons:

a) It’s on a saturday afternoon and at a place I have heard lots about

b) The Man is at work

c) I really really need a break and what better way than to mingle with perfect strangers. The options alone are mind-boggling, I could be anyone I wanted to be and no one would know. I am thinking of taking up a new personality and conducting a social experiment there. But more on that later.

So, if you are coming for that and you know me, please turn a blind eye and don’t bat an eyelid.

I suffered from insomnia for a while and then rejoiced for I was cured.

Now I find myself in front of the PC at 3 AM listening to some music in the background while completing a report.

It’s been almost three days of no sleep and staring at numbers, reports and graphs and I am reading things that are not there.

So if I have commented on any of your blogs and the comment made no sense, bear with me. I am on a caffeine rush.

Of course this could be simply that The Man is out of town and so there is no one around to insist that I get into bed at night. And since he is back tomorrow, maybe I will finally go to sleep after about 4 days (what the hell is 4 * 24 anyway), I wanted to write this in terms of hours, it sounds like so much more in hours and even more in seconds.

If you had the chance to slight a person you have been hating for more than a year and you don’t take it, does it make you a coward?

Or a damn good strategist?

On Romance;

Tingling

Can I say it

That I can feel my skin do exactly that

When I meet your eyes

And watch the glint

As you try to figure out

What I am upto

This time?

That a smile

Lifting the corners of your mouth

Makes me forget

Myself

And dry my flow of words;

As you hush

And place your fingers on my lips

I know

You have found a way

To finally stop my blabber;

That holding your hands

And crossing the roads

Makes me walk just a little taller

Just a little happier;

And your shoulders

Are my haven

From my problems

Resting my head

On them

Makes me forget myself

And dream a little dream

Again

Of Hope

Of Life

Of Love.

A little memory

Bold and taunting

Waves her hand

Bonks me on the nose

And with a little giggle

Turns

And flees;

And I see in front of me

A picture

Long forgotten;

Ah Dorian Gray

If you could bedevil devil again

Would you ask

That your sight lie to you?

A long forgotten song

Hums itself in my ears

And a rueful grin

Ruins my grimace,

Whatever said and done

No one can say

He never had pluck!