My Friends...

The guy I once loved hurt me badly, broke my heart and was the most insensitive person I have ever known. Yet I am very thankful to him- because it was only during the messy break up did I realize the value of my true friends. I had many friends at that time, and believed that they would help me recover from the heart break. I was wrong, some of my friends hurt me more than my Ex had. One commented, " Oh! Its OK, your parents will get you another guy". I wonder what the hell was he thinking when he said that? That I was all desperate just to have a guy in my life? Another one was more irritating. "How could you actually love someone belonging to another religion? Go get someone from your own!" And I am ashamed to admit that the one who said this was once a very close friend of mine. Not surprisingly, he dumped his ailing girlfriend just because she was serious about their relationship, while he was not ( "I can not marry someone from a different caste!!" was how he put it). Anyway, coming back to my story, I was almost depressed after getting dumped. I say "almost" depressed because I was just one level short of being classified as clinically depressed. And I had cut off contacts from most of my friends. But still, three of them stood by me. They were always there to listen to me, to comfort me. Never once did they say anything hurtful- no mention about the religion thing, no probing about the details of the break up, nothing intrusive. They always tried to cheer me up & make me see the positive things in life. I realized that from among the numerous "friends" I had had, these were the only ones who really cared about me. They were my only true friends !! I would have never known this fact had it not been for the break up. Its been years since that idiot dumped me, and I cut off many meaningless friendships. And am very thankful to GOD for giving me the most wonderful people as friends who stood by me even when I did not deserve their support.

Doing dishes...

Washing the dirty vessels in the kitchen sink is something I used to despise when I was younger. I was around 15 years old when I was first made to do dishes- I absolutely hated it !! That was before the invention of liquid dish wash, and I had to make do with the bar. It was a dull green, slimy and smelly. YUCK!! As a kid I never had imagined that one day I would actually have to wash dirty vessels. But life has a way of making you do things you would have never done by choice. And this is how important lessons in life are learnt- not by choice, but because there is no other way. Gradually, I resigned to my fate and realized that it was not such a bad job after all. In fact, many spiritual thoughts came to me while I was engaged in this unpleasant activity. Cleaning a sink full of vessels was very much like facing certain life situations. Initially a problem may seem insurmountable to you, but if you think about it calmly, you would definitely find a way out. The way to tackle problems when you find yourself surrounded by them is to tackle them one by one. This is how I did the vessels, one at a time. First I would scrub all the plates, then the tea cups followed by spoons and ladles. This would clear up half the load.Now I would be left with the huge cookers and kadhai. In a few minutes, they would also be done. And there!! The sink would be cleared!! It would take just around 30 minutes. But before you could move away from there, someone would start dropping in more dirty dishes to wash- used spoons, greasy plates and all. Ah!! So much like life. When you think you are just done with facing a challenge, you find yourself surrounded by new ones. Still, life goes on, as more dishes pile up in the sink for cleaning.