Leap of faith...

Last night I dreamt of swimming in a kind of a small emerald green coloured water body or oasis arising from a spring. There was a group and the guide or some person was encouraging us to take a dip in the crystal clear water.
No one seemed very keen to do so. I went ahead and just peeled off my T shirt and jeans, took a deep breath, and dived into the water. Due to the presence of a hot spring the water was warm, sweet and nice. I dove down and was amazed by it's glass like clarity. There were small fish swimmng all around of different shades. Sunrays being bounced around by the small ripples on top were dancing at the bottom which was light brown and wavy. It was just me in the water alongwith the fish and I felt as if I could stay down forever without ever needing to go up to breathe.
I could feel the warm water gushing up from dark, large round vents at the bottom. The water was totally lighted up by the sunlight filtering through but the vents stood out with their dark blue ominous colour.
I felt drawn towards the vents and was captivated by their enormous size and the warm water churning out of it. I remember reading somewhere that no one knew where the water was coming from and some kind of giant turtles come out of them at some specific intervals to feed at the top. At this time I realise that I am in some Arabian country, most probably Saudi Arabia and I wonder if they ate the turtles and why don't they use this sulprus of fresh water to irrigate the land.
I wanted to explore the vents so badly but was afraid as to what will happen if I never come back. And if I dive inside will anyone know and how long will it take them to realise that I have disappeared for good. I somehow had a hunch that there is something good waiting for me on the other side.
This would be my leap of faith!
Which would be more of a dive.

Pepper & Ginger

I don't write about pets as a rule, specially the younger one's as I feel that it puts some kind of a jinx on them.
But with these two I am making an exception to the rule.
These two as it is had an amazing journey in life so far.
They were born to Furgie a couple of months back and were in a litter of four.
Their mom made sure that they were delivered in an undisclosed location and I came to know only after she came back one day all slim 'n trim and ravenously hungry. She got them home when they were a month or so old and her daughter from the first litter, Soxie, joined hands (paws) with her to help raise the brood.
So there were 6 cats in the house now. As cats move in mysterious ways, Furgie took her litter and disappeared one day with Soxie left high and dry.
Soxie hung around the house for a few days and then went in search of them. Being familiar with the cat world she obviously tracked them down and got two kittens back.
Pepper & Ginger.

Soxie, after she got these two back was in a very "chatty" mood and kept on meowing to me. I expected the worst and imagined some kind of misfortune befalling Furgie and her other kittens. Soxie got herself promoted from a nanny to a full on surrogate mom in no time and was busy playing and grooming them the whole day. The most amazing part was that she even started lactating and I was astounded to see the kittens suckling!
All this while I wondered what had become of my first cat, Furgie.
And then one night I saw her crossing the road just next to my house. I ran after her, calling her name, and she just walked away without even looking back.....

Random musings

For a person who loves his idleness and tries his best to be carefree I seem to be extremely busy all the time. How do people manage to run clinic, do volunteer/charity work or even read beats me. I am so sleepy by 10pm that someone would think that I had slaved in a stone quarry somewhere. Where do they get the time from? What do I do the whole day? Where does time go? Why don't I have enough of it?
Just now the attendant in my department came and tied a rakhi to me! That was something I wasn't expecting and despite my general rapid response took me by surprise. Though I must say that she moved really fast and it was all done in 3 minutes flat. I am getting too soft. Damn it! There should be a SOP for such eventualities.
I have to do something about the mental drifting. This year is taking way too long to get over. I feel as if I am slowly sliding done a mountain side, moving along with the slush and mud. It isn't harming me in any way and is all wet and gooey but nonetheless I don't have any control over it and neither do I know where it's all going to end. Such events make me realise how complacent a life I have been leading and a little bump is all it takes to throw me off balance.
The problem is too much reliance on happiness. People who are mundane or pessimistic all the time seem to remain unaffected. Did I have a good stretch for way too long now? Is this pay back time?
Irony of life : when you feel you will be screwed, it turns out you are safe. When you feel you are safe. You are screwed!
I feel like a traveler on a night train. My destination is supposed to come sometime in early morning. There is no landmark visible and it's pitch dark outside. The train is hurtling through the barren landscape. Everyone else is asleep inside the compartment. The air conditioning is at full blast and I am freezing to death. I am dying to get into the blanket and go back to sleep but if I do so I might miss my station where the train will stop just for a few minutes. You don't know whether the train is running before time, on time or is late, you have no clue where have you reached, you don't know how far your station is and you have a sneaking suspicion that you might have already missed your destination because you remember the train stopping somewhere in between but you could not read the name of the station in the dark. In such situation all you can do is wait.
The blessing is that I have this innate feeling that whatever will happen will happen for the best. I am not good with change but so far whenever it has come I have adapted to it.

Feline & Fangs

I used to be a dog person. Had dogs throughout my life. Of all assorted sizes and breeds. But this blog is not about dogs. It is about cats and how they entered and influenced my life.
We had a stray cat and kitten in Jammu who used to drop in now and then for scraps of food from the kitchen. They had this knack of appearing at lunch time and a cat with a pleading face is hard to resist. Even dogs do pleading expressions but the one a cat makes comes out of thousands of years of expertise. It is pretty hard to resist.
At around the same time we got a german shepherd pup and though it played with the cats initially with time it grew big. A dog, even a huge full grown one imagines it to be still a puppy throughout it's life, and the cute games he used to play with them became almost like a game of death for the cats. So with that there came an end to the beautiful friendship much to the puzzlement of our dog, Carlo, and the cats disappeared.
A few years back I started reading Murakami. The strong role cats play in his stories had a strong effect on me and I became intrigued with the breed.
I finally got my first cat, Furgie, from a kittens for free advert in OLX! So those things, the online placements, really work.
She was a handful to begin with. I had no experience of cats and already had a labrador, Suzana. It took me some time and quite a few bloody scratches to gain her trust.

The God & I

I have always struggled with the concept of god from a very early age. Surprisingly from what I recall I wasn't too god fearing as a kid. In fact I had more faith in science then I had in god. This must have been some where in 5th to 8th class and I distinctly remember telling my classmates in 6th or so that there is no god and one of them even complained to the class teacher! The little twerp.
I remember it was in a hill station where we had a hut, Patni Top, that I got around to the existence of a supernatural benefactor. There was this small rectangular mound of stones with a mud thatch on top, around 4 feet high which I discovered in the coniferous forest by chance. Inside there was stone plaque with a 4 arms deity engraved. The face was disfigured or not carved too well so I couldn't make out whether it was a god or goddess. It was kind of my personal divine angel. It started in a relatively simple way, I asked for something trivial. it came true. So I presented a small silver trident as a token of gratitude. These tridents or trishuls were available in the nearby towns for 40-50 bucks. As time progressed so did my desires and demands. I used to ask for something, it would come true, I would present a trident. As the stakes rose so did the price of trishuls. I think the last one I gave must have ran up to thousands!
As time progressed we stopped going to that hut and my folks shifted to our house in Kashmir. I used to go there every other month at one time. Now a whole year passed and I didn't even go there once. Eventually we decided to sell that hut.
That ended a part of my life which in retrospect seems like the closest I have ever come in being a believer.
I was a Shiv follower in college but that must be more due to the fact that we had a good Shiv temple in the campus and it was strategically positioned on the way to the examination hall!
Dharwar made me a agnostic once again. It was the trifecta effect of company, book and circumstances. I moved away then and it has been 14 years now and I am still away.
I believe in reincarnation. I believe in spirits. I believe in guiding angels. I believe in luck. I believe in coincidences. And I believe in houses giving good or bad vibes. But I do not believe in god.
Instead I believe that there must be some kind of strong supernatural force which guides this universe, but it doesn't give a crap on whether you have been good or bad. It runs things by it's own mysterious code.
I believe that I have some kind of guiding force helping me now and then along the way of life. I feel it when it's there and I know the times in life it has deserted me. Sounds very mystical, or maybe as if I am confused, but whatever it is that's the way I feel it.
So, I don't pray, I don't go to temples and I feel all organised religion is a sham.
I believe in me.