Dreams uncensored....

Already six days have passed from the sixth month of this year and it isn't too late to start drawing up a plan of action - I kinda don't like the term resolution! I plan, and I act on them and they take shape!

This year, I want to go back to my birthplace on my birthday and meditate among the monks!

This year, I want to write down that dream!

This year, I want to get a tattoo!

This year, I want to bring one change in my life - something which I haven't done before, attempted before, something, anything! This one is open ended as I love surprises, I love things different and I believe in spontaneity :-)

And I have less than six months to accomplish them all, actually less than three months for 'meditating among monks' :-)

I dream, I dream big, I am like that and things happen to me. Wide grin!

Purple Haze or Purple Maze!?

It is cold out here and temperature drops by the minute in the evening and it goes as low as 4 degC. And I am all wrapped up in my favourite purple turtle neck. There’s something about this colour, I naturally lean towards this blue-lavender-purple color family. Huh! I know you will say ‘what about your pink clouds then’? Yes, pink – that particular shade of The North Face pink has become my favourite shade in addition to my ‘purples’ :-)

Well, I am stationed in Imphal in the far North Eastern terrain of Manipur this year end. Days are quite short with wintry haze and sundown by 4.30pm. We need to wind up by 4pm or so or else everyone in the room starts to shiver and look for those li’l ‘bucket’ like charcoal stoves to keep us warm.

When we talk about North East India it brings a different connotation – I wonder whether this is a good way to describe all the exotic terrains, people, and places under one umbrella? Well, I am no historian, I am no expert but my love of this place brings me over and over again, I do feel I have some psychic connection. I am happy to be here, happy to breathe mountain air,

happy to walk on those roads my dad and mom had walked, and happy to see faces I had grown familiar with. It always feels good to be here! Who knows, may be I had died here in my last birth? Huh, I am sounding like a psychic but there’s something about this place that always has drawn me – people, their smiling faces, friendship, trust, love, faith and everything…..I cant really put my finger on one thing!

I was born in the North Eastern state of Arunachal when my dad was posted for 12 long years looking after NEFA, in one of those back of beyond places with no hospital (I mean some 40 years ago). We lived in bamboo huts just like our ‘Apatani’ neighbors and I grew up like a wild child in the wild playing in those beautiful meadows and jumping on those rickety bamboo bridges over those gurgling mountain streams. The ‘tomboy’ in me still lives on and I feel blessed to have all these experiences in my life.

This time I am on a work trip to carry out some research on drug use and I am more like ‘woman with agenda’! As I go about meeting different researchers and discuss our research topics, familiar faces pop up and a part of me seeps into nostalgia. There are people in the team I had worked with before and there are people in the team I had travelled with into the far away lands of Mayanmar and beautiful locales of Manipur. There are people in the team who had seen me metamorphose into this researcher I am today. And sitting here in this nice room in my hotel, overlooking a beautiful cityscape through the morning haze this morning, I loose myself to nostalgia. I hold no judgement, I hold no comparison, yet a part of me constantly nudges me to think what if I had stayed on, what if my dad wasn’t transferred out of NEFA after those aerodromes were built and made functional. Well, life in North East cannot be imagined unless you have lived one for yourself.

Tears rolled down my cheeks as I was interviewing for my research team, and here’s that dashing handsome guy I knew from 2006 before my eyes and I took time to recognise him as the ‘virus’ has made a mark on him. We both knew we were talking to the same people, as our voice are same – he recognised me, his eyes jumped as he recollected our time, our working together and there I just had to quit that interview panel. I could not continue.

It is a challenge to know the terrain so well, know the people so well. You connect as friends and then you also need to work with your friends as they are the ones who know your research subject so well. But back in my mind I was going through a different kind of battle, and I had to confess that I too have bias and in the work I do there is no room for bias. So I left the room and gave away the decision to choose the research team to others in the team.

I came back to another room and started reading so that my mind is at peace and to keep sane. So many layers of thoughts were crisscrossing and I was literally looking for a blotting paper to soak away all my overflowing thoughts! Well, I had to pour it out and here I am pouring it out this morning as I start another workday. I know this work fascinates me, I know there’s something that I want to do through my research work, and I know I have to continue. And I know this path will give me tears, joys, smiles, happiness and sadness. Yes, I know. And I will walk this walk!!

The Rising Sun and Me

This is my space under the Sun (yea, I've a 'sunny' connection)…err in the wide web world and this is the first post which would be nothing less than a glowing tribute to one and only—I , me and myself! Yes, and I am on the right turf as this is the introduction, so…..

I am a special 'case' from the time I was born, and the place I was born and to the set of parents I was to become the (first born) daughter. I always get a special feeling whenever I introduce myself, be it in front of a new gang of classmates or friends or colleagues. At times I had asked myself whether it's me who glorifies all these mundane facts to some sort of important statistics but I am sure many would not have all these fascinating description about their birthplace and the naming process, about being the only female child to her parents, and in the entire family.

I was born in the tribal hinterland of India in the remote North-Eastern state, where my father was posted with my mother (who was pregnant with me). My mother chose to have the baby in that remote area declining the requests of the relatives and loved ones and their pleasant homely comfort. She was adamant and no one could prevail on her. My birth was awaited for very many reasons. My parents were married for many years without a living child of their own. My big sister (though I have never seen her) died four days after her birth. So, I had to be born and had to be alive to make my parents laugh and make them HAppPPY, to make my mother proud of her decision and to make my dad keep the name he chose after the place which gifted him and the family their only female child.

Life so far has been a roller-coaster ride for me and I am happy that I am still sailing, I am still rolling and I am still alive! Thanks to all who helped me in making what I am, shaping the person in me, tolerating me and hating me and nonetheless loving me. And, I am happy to be the girl from the land of rising sun, 'Apatani chhowali', the way my dad refers me fondly!!