Is Santa for Real?

Knowingly or unknowingly innocence gets killed in all of us. Somewhere deep down we regret that a lot. Remember the days when Santa Clause and Tooth Fairy were true and one of the much awaited visitors? As we grew up, these angelic characters faded away behind the curtains of so-called reality. Either we caught our parents secretly putting gifts for us tagging it with Santa’s signature or we got mocked down by our friends for believing in these fantasy creatures. Both ways, a little hope is us died and suddenly world became more ‘practical’. I don’t say that we shouldn’t face the reality and should always remain in a make believe world where everything is ideal, but I beg you to keep that child alive in you, the child that makes you believe in miracles. Because it is this child that will help you sail across the most troubled storms of your life.

Here’s an article I came across. It’s about an eight year old girl called Virginia, who was hell bent on keeping her Santa real, despite being teased by her friends. She didn’t want to give up on her belief in miracles. Somehow I could relate to it. I guess you might also spot a little part of you hidden in this article.

Back in 1897, New York’s newspaper, Sun, was the most credible source of information to people. It was believed that ‘It’s true if it’s in the Sun’. So, little Virginia sent a letter to the editor of Sun, asking him to clarify once and for all if Santa was for real. Here is her letter and what the editor Francis Pharcellus Church replied to her. Both of these letters went into print and became history’s most reprinted newspaper editorial.

Virginia’s letter: Dear Editor, I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus.Papa says,  'If you see it in THE SUN it's so'. Please tell me the truth; is there a Santa Claus? VIRGINIA O'HANLON. 115 WEST NINETY-FIFTH STREET Response of the Editor: VIRGINIA, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism  of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can  be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether  they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours man is a mere  insect,an ant, in his intellect, as compared with the boundless world about him,  as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and  knowledge. Yes, VIRGINIA, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and  generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your   life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were  no Santa Claus. It would be as dreary as if there were no VIRGINIAS.  There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable  this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight.   The eternal light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished. Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies!  You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on  Christmas Eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if they did not see Santa Claus  coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no  sign that there is no Santa Claus.  The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see.  Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no  proof that  they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders  there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You may tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is  a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united  strength of all the strongest men that ever lived, could tear apart. Only faith, fancy,  poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal  beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, VIRGINIA, in all this world there  is nothing else real and abiding. No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives, and he lives forever. A thousand  years from now, Virginia, nay, ten times ten thousand years from now, he will  continue to make glad the heart of childhood.

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Merry Christmas friends

Don’t stop believing in miracles. There is a Santa who sees all the good and bad you do, and he rewards you with miracles when you need them the most.

The Big City Therapy

Big cities are a blessing sometimes. Living in a small place like Goa, that too in a meager fifty something acre campus, our scope of thinking gets limited. Sometimes it doesn’t even cross the hostel room where one can spend hours wondering about things that are may be just a myth. Myths that haunt, that divert us from reality and restrict us from looking forward to something. Since there is almost negligible exposure to the outer world, these thoughts create a claustrophobic cell around us, which, after sometime, make it impossible to find a crevice that may let some light in. Things just keep getting darker. At such a time, coming to a big city, sprawling with people, embedded with tall structures, rushing at fast rhythm which leaves no time to stay put and think, strangely becomes the source of the kind of oxygen you badly needed. In the crowd you feel tiny and all the troubles that you imagined you had, seem to dissipate in it. All your focus goes into matching your pace with that city. Unlike the walls of the hostel room that echoed your thoughts, the buildings around absorb them to a great extent. The voice in your mind is silenced by the noise everywhere.  Now sometimes, this is more relaxing than sitting on a beach at sunset. Truly said, everything has its own benefits and excess of everything is… dangerous.

(In)Carnation

On an eventful Thursday, which we girls dedicated to various indulgences like wandering, eating and shopping, I came out of a crowded mall in Panjim hand tied with shopping bags. A short spell of rain had given the road outside a rejuvenating makeover and everything glistened as the droplets retired from their surfaces into the soil that flaunted its new scent. As my friends stirred around to find our car in the parking lot, I got imprinted by an innocently beautiful white carnation sitting coyly in the basket of a flower seller. I just couldn’t move on. So I bought it, for myself and no one else. And now, it soothes my room with its tranquil beauty.

Carnation belongs to a family of flora, Dianthus that means ‘a heavenly flower’ or ‘the flower of the Gods’. The effect it has in my room justifies the claim. In the limited luxury of my hostel room, I could just offer an empty mineral water bottle to this flower as a vase. But it compliantly adapted to it and now smiles at me as it dances with playful monsoon breeze that pays regular visits through my window. I never thought that looking at a simple flower that seldom gets unnoticed in bouquets, can be so delightful. It seemed as if it understood my displeasure and yet it encouraged me to smile.

Like many other flowers, each type of carnation stands for a meaning. Where light red carnations speak of admiration, dark red announce deep love and affection. The white ones whisper pure love and good luck, while purple ones are for whimsicality. The pink carnations have a holier significance. It is said that when Lord Jesus carried the Cross, Virgin Mary painfully shed tears and the places where these tears fell, carnations sprang up and bloomed. So, in many countries, pink carnations are gifted to mothers on Mother’s Day! It’s so amazing to know that how many meanings and stories are associated with so many things around us that we don’t even notice in our daily lives. I guess it is truly sad, ‘God is in details’. And right now, I am in love with this white carnation that is for me and only me.

Summer of 2012 - 1

After boarding Goa bound flights since last one year, boarding Delhi-Mumbai plane was nothing less than a cultural shock. In flights going to Goa, our co-passengers are mix of holidaying families, honeymooning couples and ultra-excited youngsters looking forward to a dil-chahta-hai-flavour holiday. And we, the students of Goa Institute of Management (yes we are real and normal students who STUDY here, and our classes are NOT conducted in the beach shacks… mind it), appear to be a depressed bunch of overdressed people. But flight G8-229 showed us how we have still not reached the pinnacle of sophistication, despite one year in a ‘serious’ management school. Being a Monday morning flight, the plane had an overwhelming attendance of erstwhile ‘blackberry boys’. The skilled and high income section of our workforce, dressed in crisply creased western business formals, titter-tatting on their smartphones with one hand and carrying all varieties of laptop bags in the other. I and my friend Karishma looked at them and then at each other and then at ourselves, ending the tour with a hesitating gulp. Same thought echoed in our thought clouds, ‘Dude! We are so not corporate material yet… And that is our future!!’

Anyways, that did make us feel a li’l younger amongst our co-passengers. We hurriedly grabbed our seats and even before the flight took off, both of us dozed off. I woke up to a ting, a sound which the push button above your head politely and sophistically makes to call the stewardess for you. Outside the window, a serene stream of white cotton candy clouds rested peacefully, giving us an illusion of motionlessness. That soothing picture was suddenly interrupted by a rocky mountainous terrain, just like the entry of a villain in a hindi film immediately after a romantic duet. But they seemed more like dependable guards than evil sentinels, as following them were the high rising buildings of Mumbai suburbs interjected by comparatively grass level slums. With this sinuous skyline I knew that we have reached Mumbai.

As I thumped my Delhi-feet into the Mumbai airport, a huge sign with a Gateway of India picture greeted us saying ‘Welcome to Mumbai’. I am always happy when I come to this city. Although I don’t know this place well, I can never be an alien to this land where I took my first steps, which would be somewhere in Goregaon East. We had no time to rest as we had to immediately proceed with our shelter hunt in Thane. So we took a cab, loaded our massive luggage and commenced with our project. Traffic jammed Mumbai kept surprising us with a random sequence of warm and cold breezes and salt-dunes replaced slums and buildings, while we tried to keep a mental record of what came when, Santa Cruz, Ville Parle, Andheri etc. etc. Finally, sometime after paying the toll tax, we reached Thane.

We spent the whole day searching for accommodation. At everyplace we went to, after calculating its distance from office and station, and our monthly payable, I would try to form a mental picture of me inhabiting that place. Some places fell short on surroundings, while the others smugly mocked our tiny pockets. Unfortunately, the search is still on, but not for long I hope. I have seven hours long induction to attend tomorrow, and unlike classrooms, I can’t afford to sleep during it. So here I am, signing off from the first post of my ‘Summer of 2012’. Ciao!

Not the one

I ain’t the one
You‘re looking for
But just another
Girl next door
You’ve gotta trust me
What I say is true
No I am not
The one for you…

I wake up
With swollen eyes
And with my hair all messed
I don’t look nice
The one you’d love
Must be a sleeping beauty
With pretty eyes blue
A li’l sweet but snooty
Unlike me who
Sleeps with her mouth open
If I were you
I wouldn’t have been chosen
So you’ve gotta to see
What I say is true
No I am not
The one for you…

I jump in the rain
I skid in a puddle
I have my own ways
That might not be subtle
I may laugh at nothing
I might snap just like that
I may cry sometimes
Just at the drop of a hat
If that’s too much
To handle for you
Then no… I’m not
The one for you

And We are Back

I was sitting at the airport, trying to breathe slowly so that I don’t let go of the tear that was sitting right at the edge of my eyes. To try harder I closed them. But I guess the things that you see with your eyes closed are the things that can hurt you the most as they bring back snapshots of the moments that touched you the most. I saw a blurred image of my father, driving me to the airport, smiling at me through the rear view mirror of the car and running a checklist of my id, tickets keys etc. Then I saw my sister, standing behind Ma while seeing me off, cursing my college for such a short vacation and hesitating to hug me in public. She suffers from I-am-too-classy-to-get-senti-in-public syndrome. But that makes her cuter. Argh! That made my fight against giving in to tears even tougher. Just then I saw Ma, hugging me. ‘It’s ok beta. It’s just about three months. Make the most out of it. We’ll be waiting for you’, she whispered into my ears, as I hugged her. I didn’t want to leave her. It doesn’t matter that you are taller than your mother. You can always fit into her arms, the warmest and the safest place in this whole world. Her fragrance beats even the best of the aroma therapies. Her words heal faster than any medicine. A trembling good-bye escaped my lips as I trudged my luggage towards the entrance of the airport. I didn’t want to turn back. I knew that if I would see her again, I won’t be able to keep myself from crying. I continuously felt hers protective eyes on my back as I walked towards the check-in counter. Failing to fight my urge, I turned to see those eyes behind the glass door when suddenly something rolled over my foot and my eyes opened with a shock. ‘Oh! I am terribly sorry for that’, apologized a passenger who had accidently ran his strolley bag over my foot. ‘It’s ok sir. I am fine’ Was I? Even after living away from home for six years now, it breaks my heart every time I have to leave. And by the way, that passenger was really cute. If appreciating a fellow human being from opposite gender keeps the mind off sad things then why miss a chance? Soon was joined by friends who were going back to Goa with me. Unlike the last vacation, no one came back with a new haircut or an added waistline. Suddenly all of us were smiling and wishing a happy new year to each other. The smile was more of a relief that even as miserable we have company, than being a genuine happy response on seeing a fellow classmate. We enjoyed grumbling about the boring lectures and annoying assignments that awaited us and that how short our break was. One can’t deny that grumbling in a group and laughing at our situation in the process is as entertaining as gossiping. It’s a pure testimony to the Hindi saying Dukh baatne se kam hota hai (Pain can be alleviated by sharing). The very ironic nature of the fact that we were leaving for Goa to study, while most of the other co-passengers were all set for the poor man’s Las Vegas trip, was very discomforting. I stopped for a second before boarding my flight and took a deep breathe. I love the smell of winters in Delhi. It’s like a sweet raindrop dissolving in my mouth. I opened my palms to touch the last of the winter that I’ll get this year and stepped into the plane. After the customary sort-of-break-dance of the airhostesses on bilingual safety-guidelines-rap, the flight took off. And so did my last hopes of running back to home. As the pilot prepared us for landing, I looked at the golden stars sitting on the dark earth beneath us. Slowly they morphed into street lights and headlights and with a jerk we touched down at the Dabolim Airport. Goa literally gave us a warm welcome with the humid air and fishy smell the moment we stepped out of the flight. The whole world changed within the couple of hours I was in that plane. I wasn’t completely out of my Delhi hangover as one of my friends in the taxi was aiding it by continuously cribbing about coming back. So, I shifted my focus to the scene outside the car window. We drove past Goan houses, beautifully adorned with variety of lamps reminiscing last year’s Christmas and New Year’s Eve. They added so many soft yet vibrant colors to the night. I realized my fascination with the Mandovi again as it ran besides us. We cradled along the serpentine roads and finally reached the gate of our college, Goa Institute of Management. As we drove in, all the moments of the last term came rushing back to me. Secretly taking pictures of friends sleeping in the lecture, chalk fights, running like crazy to beat the RFID scanner every morning, birthday bashes, parties, festivals, night-outs, eleventh hour struggle with the group assignments, late night studies in the library, chatting over midnight tea, resource management in examination hall… All this brought back my smile and I was relieved that even though I am away from home, I am still among my friends… my people. GIM jaisa bhi hai… mera hai.