The 200th post in 2008: Flashback

Darn, I am going to reach 200 posts after all. I'm feeling very exuberantly talkative. 

So review of 2008, here goes.

31 Dec 2007 found me at home in Bombay - with a bunch of beloved friends - included a very pregnant Simrat, (whose now gorgeous son Kabir is the calmest almost-1-year-old I know) and also Brownie the doggie, who slid under sofas and dark corners with utter alarm at the fire crackers that went off at midnight. Beer+whisky, rock and roll, drunken dancing, then some soothing guitar playing, and then a cosy sleep off.

This pretty much summed up what the first 6-7 months of 2008 were. Lots of beer, rock and roll, drunken dancing, and laziness.

In March, was my first encounter with death. I lost a person whose face I can't remember without a smile. He cooked for me everyday for the first 4 years of my life, and then each time I visited. He'd bought me lollies, and fizzy drinks, and I'd followed his finger to kindergarten school.

Also in March, I bought my first ever domain - www.indiadailyphoto.com, and planned to post a photo everyday, which turned out much harder than I expected. I then invited Pranav, Sasidhar, and more friends on board until we grew to where we are today. A faithfully regular photoblog that is a thrill and joy to us, and pretty much the first thing I look at online everyday.

In April, I met a friend in Goa who I hadn't seen for years. She and her boyfriend had moved to Goa, and were living off photography and his paintings! I was thrilled for them and intensely thrilled to meet them.

The next day, the boy drowned in the sea. I have not forgotten the day and what it felt like. I wrote this then.

There came a time, maybe in June or July, when I was asked by a friend about what I was doing with my life. I had no answer. I imagined turning 30 and looking back to see that I had done nothing with myself other than start a photoblog. It was a depressing thought, and a part of me was helpless to the idea that this predicament was sure to come true.

In August, we lost two friends who vanished into smoke one day. I can't explain what that blow was like, but left us with gaping aches in our hearts, and questions that we had no answers to. Why? Why? Why?

And then, August brought the hardest day of my life. On my Parsi birthday. A day that knocked the wind out of me so hard that I couldn't stand, and didn't want to exist. I wished the earth would open up and swallow me down, I didn't imagine ever having a friend or looking anyone in the eye again. It was the day I wished death for me and someone else wished death for me too. I was the villain in my own fairy tale. 

But as the zen masters say 'nothing is an accident', that day turned out to set in motion events that have changed my life 180 degrees. 

Isha happened in early September. The timing was impeccably perfect. Destiny's got style, man. ** 

And since then, everyday has been a immense learning, a step towards something infinite, unbound by time and space. I've learned more about love, and joy, and death, and karma and nirvana, about bliss and about the divine, and what it means to be human, and about animals, about myself, about history, about you, about the universe, about life. 

I've learned how much a slave I was to my compulsions, and still am to my body and mind and emotions, and each day is a lesson and an attempt to slowly unbind myself from these.

I have much to do in 2009, for me and for you -- even if we've never met. 

** And Stylusha.