I can't be a SPARE PART...

...if this world was a big machine!!

I recently watched this movie "Hugo", that really taught me a lesson. I really enjoyed the movie in-spite of it being quite slow. The movie revolves around the life of a young boy named Hugo who likes to fix things. He got this from his dad who he loved dearly. What amazed my about that boy was the fact that even after loosing his dad to a fire accident, he was not shattered, even though his father was all he had got. His dad was a clock maker and believed that machines don't come with spare parts. They ought to work flawlessly with everything they have got. Hugo learned this from his dad and this gave him the strength to live in this brutal world all by himself. He said to himself, "This world is a big machine and since machines don't come with spare parts, he can't be a spare part. He got to have a purpose in this world." This is all that made sense and this drove him to find his purpose in this world which happened to be "Fixing things".

This deeply touched me and ended up teaching a lesson.

Often times, we draw dependence on other beings. They might be anyone; someone in our family, someone we love or even a friend. We forge a bond with them, we do things together with them, we get used to them. Even a thought of losing them in any way sounds catastrophic to us. We start having an unconscious belief about ourselves that we're incomplete somehow -- missing something without that special being in our life. We start believing that special person fills in the missing piece and makes us whole. This is a terrible situation to be in if that person is not available -- and even if they are available it makes for an unstable sense of personal identity.

But I guess we need to recognize the fact that little boy did at such a young age. That every human being has a purpose in this world. We are complete in ourselves and not a spare part in this big machine we all call The World!!

Our job in this life is to find and fulfill that purpose!

The fork!!

Hey guys, I have decided to split my blog in two. I just figured that I wanted to keep the artsy stuff separately. So I moved all posts related to my DIY experiments and all my art work to my new blog titled "Get Crafty" at this address: http://my-diy-diaries.blogspot.com/.

Hope to see you there as well :)

Lohri used to mean...

...Love, Family, Fun and Laughter.

But now I can't even remember the last time I celebrated Lohri with my family back in India.

However I do recall that it was not a public holiday and how I always complained about that fact. I don't quite understand that to this day. It's more of a night festival. So you don't really need a holiday. Lohri isn't much of a religious festival as most other Indian festivals are. Probably that was the reason, we didn't get a holiday.

People have a sizzling bonfire during one of those freezing winter nights (I am talking about North India here). It marks the beginning of "end of winter". So people get together one winter evening and wave goodbye to the dreaded winter. Although due to global warming and what not, 13th Jan is not even close to the end of winter these days.

For me though, I didn't care what it marked. Although I do like one of the stories associated with Lohri and the song we used to sing along -

Dulla Bhatti, like Robin Hood, robbed the rich and gave to the poor. The people of the area loved and respected him. He once rescued a girl from kidnappers and adopted her as his daughter. His people would remember their hero every year on Lohri. Groups of children moved from door to door, singing the Dulla Bhatti folk-song: "Dulla Bhatti ho! Dulle ne dhi viyahi ho! Ser shakar pai ho!" (Dulla gave his daughter a kilo of sugar as a marriage gift).

But more than anything, I just liked the fun part of it. Loved how everyone came together and celebrated Lohri with bonfire, music, dancing, chit-chat and good food. And when I say everyone, I don't mean just family. I mean the entire neighborhood.

And today, all I can do is cherish those beautiful times.

All these festivals and every passing moment of my life remind me again and again, not to take anything for granted.