All smiles! :D

So it’s your regular Sunday afternoon and I was back from the Sunday class.
It had been quite an inactive week.
The usual: Less talking, more sleeping, feeling guilty for not talking and sleeping more.
Today’s day was particularly sad L Amidst the less niceness and more rudeness I faced today, the only thing I started craving for after unlocking my door, slamming it behind me after coming back was: to see a beautiful smile.
And the search began. 

Smile! I need to see someone smile! 
Where can I find a beautiful smile?
DAMN! All the doors in my corridor are locked!
Let me explore foreign territory (Other floors) ..
“Hey! How are.. ”
“Oh Hi! I’m glad you came! You know this thing happened yesterday and it led to this thing today and then….”
“Yaar I’m bored”
“Hello Tikkis! What’s up”
I got very interesting discussions on topics from GATE to interviews to GRE to things happening within the campus (final semester, what can you say!). But didn’t get any smile. I guess my timing was wrong. L
So with heavy head hanging down, I came back and lay down and tried to remember all the smiles I had ever seen. Fortunately I recalled few smiles that I liked to remember. I could count them on my fingers. A true, genuine smile has more healing power than we think. We'll see what it does to you in some time.

When life gifts me days filled with abject misery or I’m feeling hopeless or downtrodden, I don’t require a consoling discussion dripping with pragmatism and logic right away. Being a petulant person, I can guarantee you my mind would wander on its own journey after some three minutes. If you dare continue, I might ruin your day as well!
What I’m trying to say is that the mind is not receptive for logic just for the moment. So however correct the other person might be, their efforts are futile. I would be able to properly understand and work upon the suggestions given to me once I get composed and the mind is placated.
And for that, we don’t need to bother with any lengthy procedures, when just a simple genuine smile would do! I am amenable to that extent that a nakli wala ‘It’s going to be all right’ is an added bonus! J

Coming back to the main point! I would like to describe the most beautiful smile like Joey describes the best sandwich which he could take a bullet for, in F.R.I.E.N.D.S 

So imagine a day when you are at your lowest. One of those days that come once maybe in two months. You have had a rough day, none of your jobs have been done properly and in the evening you are there sitting like a fat lump (or in cases like me, a twig! :P ), sulking, brooding, annoyed by everything coming in your way.

May be your day started off badly and by the time of the sunset, you are infuriated! The mind is occupied and an ugly frown adorns your face. You take quick steps, you are stomping your way till the home and you're determined to rant it out on the next person you see. 

You press the doorbell three times quickly. No one responds for 10 seconds. You do it a couple of times more.

THE DOOR OPENS

And before you say something, the face of the person lights up on seeing you back home. And the smile is so beautiful that it goes right through you. It somehow seizes the permission to remain angry anymore. It makes your insides tingle. And flowers start blossoming inside you like they showed in the advertisement of Strepsils. The volcano, which was on the verge of bursting now quickly becomes dormant. Your breathing slows down, the mercury dips, and as you enter your home, you forget 80% of the reason of your earlier state of vexation and the rest 20% becomes insignificant as the monster deflates slowly. All the irritation, anger was self-created. Why was I angry, again? It's not required anymore. You have found better things to do now!
All the endorphins have been released, the bad mood is gone. At least two hours of being grumpy are saved, you lips are stretched and the eyes are sparkling.

This kind of thing that I was craving for today. 

Isn't it amazing that eyes can convey better and a simple genuine smile can heal quicker and better than hackneyed statements!

The simple joys in life are so inexpensive and therefore should be abundantly scattered yet somehow I found so much difficulty in finding one today.

Anyway the grumpiness ended today when they announced, "A monkey has come inside the hostel. Please get inside the rooms" and the mood flipped instantly.
Blahaha! What is the poor guy doing here?!

So we now come to the end of what I had in mind.

I'm not very sure if I conveyed what I had in mind properly so that you construe it in the way I intended to, but  I'll be sad if this long blog post didn't make you smile even once.
So, here are twins who are happy for the fact that this long post is over now! :D
Tada! 

What Does Your Home Say?

Hearing the word home can bring up different thoughts in different people: Typically, the feeling of comfort and security and delicious homemade food, and family love :)
When I come to think about it, a home is a place where I am always welcome and always wanted and always missed. Home has all the strings which pull back a person tired from the daily ordeals one might have to face. But most of all, it is something I feel, like I can "feel home" with certain people at any place and time.

If you are wondering what prompted me to write this, it was being all emotional while coming to college this time about having lived the last day at the house where I grew up. (Assuming I won't visit before the semester ends, which has a probability of 0.99) We would have moved by then!
Now, the place where anyone spends a significant part of their childhood is obviously dear to them. Because it is only during this time that we can call it unsparingly ours.
This home has seen our first steps, our first fall, our first words, also our first bashing 😕,  our childhood games, fractures, 90s style lovely birthday parties organized by our awesome parents, the first bunch of friends that we made, sleepless nights of the mother when we got sick (it still happens in case of sickness or travelling at night in spite of being miles away), the heart beating uncontrollably on seeing papa's angry face on coming home late for the first time, having cousins over for summer vacations, sibling fights- slaps and punches and tickle wars and scars and scratches yada yada yada yada. 😁
After that, for most people is the phase of wandering, work, or study. Basically trying to relish the moments when we are able to find our way back.
It so happened that while relishing the final moments at the place, a potpourri of emotions welled me up!
I had seen the view around change from 1998 to 2017 and wanted to fix the entire place in my mind like a picture- just as it was.
Mountains on all 4 sides, one side snow clad most of the time,
This place, that wall, this door, that tree, seen two forest fires veryyyy close to the house.

• The wall - where I used to compare my height all throughout my school years. I didn't grow much after 9th standard.
• The staircase- from where I threw my toddler brother and he got his chin cut.
• The aangan- where I was having breakfast in the winter  dhoop when a monkey came and snatched my parantha from my hand and left me in shock.
• The wall- where I banged my brother's head so hard that he is dented for life.
• The room- where we siblings made tents and spent time like adventurers 😉
• The bed- which was nearly burned by sleeping with the heater on.
• The mango tree- which was the center of many of our games in childhood. It's quite an old tree, it still bears fruit :)
• The kitchen- which has witnessed many of me and my brother's experiments.
• The particular spot- where I had seen my one-day old brother for the first time. (First reaction- Is it ours? Chhota kaka? 😳😭😭😭)
• The window- sitting at which we used to wait for our mother to get back from work.
• The edge- holding which my brother stood up for the first time.

Like these, looking at each and every corner, each of them had its own story to tell.
I could never outgrow this place.Wherever I live in the future, I am sure of what picture will come into my head while talking of home 😶
So this was the story of a tearful farewell to a place occupying 18 years worth of my heart's space- which is now safely closed and locked. In the end realizing that the home speaks a lot, maybe equivalent to an encyclopedia, if one can read it properly.
I'll miss the place, I'll miss the faces.
You can't erase, you can't replace it!

I'll try to edit it later to add pictures to compare. The internet is acting up at the moment!

What is your idea of home? (You can drop by in the comments to add :) )

So shall we end this without a song? 

Absolutely not! As Hannah Montana says: 

When the lights go down, it's the ending of the show.
And you're feeling like you got nowhere to go.
Don't you know?
You can change your hair and you can change your clothes.
You can change your mind, that's just the way it goes.
You can say goodbye and you can say hello.
But you'll always find your way back home! 💖