Just About Everything

Every year during this time I would generally be counting days for the festive time to begin...  Especially Durga pujas, which is so much more than puja and rituals, it is celebration and fun time...With less than a month to go, if this were a regular year, Kolkata would have started transforming....creative puja pandals would be coming up, shopping places would be buzzing with people, and a general sense of happiness would prevail.  Year 2020 changed it all! This year I feel none of the excitement :(  Can't imagine I won't go out to see those creative and artistic pandals, each more unique than the other. The pujas will be held but on a low scale and in a controlled way given that the pandemic is continuing to be. Don't know if there will be those out of the world creative pandals to see this year, and even if there are, I would have to stay home and watch on TV 😢 I was going through the pictures I had clicked from the 2019 Durga pujas.  Just going through the...

  I love sunsets; there is something indescribably beautiful about them.  Time comes to a standstill; t he changing colours and contrasts of the sky leaves me mesmerizied.  One moment dark and cloudy, and the next moment clear and a brilliant blue; the canvas of sky changes so beautifully and completely... Isn’t it so much like the contrasting experiences we face in our lives? Even more so now with the entire world in the grips of a pandemic that has  changed and is changing so much around us, and in us.  I wonder why contrasts come into our lives...and when they do, the tunnel seems inordinately long without any light in sight :(  All is not lost for sure, and the good news is, nothing lasts forever:) Here is one of my favourite poems by Rumi,  so relevant and so beautiful; it fills me with hope: Seeker, when you feel your soul contracting know it is for your own good. Allow not your heart to burn with grief. In times of expansion you spend ...