Thankful

Culture is a beautiful thing! Every culture has so many intricacies and this year has been my time with the American culture. First Halloween and now Thanksgiving! Being a vegetarian I cannot be a part of the Turkey ritual but Pumpkin Pie is the BOMB.

Anyhoo, Did you know that Thanksgiving day is a day of giving thanks for the blessing of harvest of the year? FOOD! Isn't food the best thing that has ever happened. Quite a gluttonous thing to say as I bite into my caramel filled Ghirardelli chocolate square.

However, apart form Food, there are so many things to be thankful for and so I think Thanksgiving is probably one of the most beautiful festivals I have ever come across. I try to be thankful every day but then sometimes I'm a serial cribber. So here's my chance :

I am Thankful for this opportunity that I am getting to see a whole new world, a new perspective through the same old eyes. A new set of friends and a new home, socks covering my toes to keep me warm and fairy lights in my room to keep me joyful.Tears that make me value my people back home and smiles from the happiness that the new ones give me. Struggle (READ : STATISTICS) because I'm realizing my strength and strength because that's something I really need. I'm thankful for the seasons I have never seen before; the colors of fall the whites of the flakes. A warm cup of Peppermint Mocha (Thanks Nandita) and a chocolate-chip cookie. 

I'm thankful because my people back home are safe, sound and happy and I'm thankful for the technology that  makes me see their happy faces. For a beautiful mother, a passionate father and the cutest grandmother in the world. For my dog who wags his tail for me on Facetime! For my best friends that I miss so much and for the telepathy that still prevails! You guys are still my support system and distance couldn't do much to that. For brothers and sisters, friends old and new, for love and for happiness and a few frowns too.

I am thankful for the eyes I can see from that sparkle and cry, eyebrows that I raise when I'm trying to ask why. Limbs that walk through snow and sunshine, people who I can really call mine. Ears that can hear christmas carols and a voice that can sing along, a mind and heart that tells me what is right and wrong. A nose that can smell something chocolatey and nice and a tongue that craves cinnamon and spice.

If you think for a second or two, you'll  suddenly realize there's so much to be thankful for!

That you're Happy, Healthy and Loved.


'tis the season to be jollllllaaaaaay,
Love and snowflakes,
Juie 

People

You know who you learn the most from? From people around you!
In this new city I meet new people every day! In fact, the people I have met in the last 3 months were unknown to me all my life. From the train ticket checker I met on my first train ride in Chicago to the shuttle driver who drives us to school everyday, from my room-mates to my extraordinary cohort of 120 IMC-frenzied class-mates, From Devraj, the Wok-guy who fixes an amazing bowl of asian wok for me to my professors in school, all these people in the new world that I am in have taught me so much more than what meets the eye. A smile, a tear, a comment and sometimes a joke gone wrong, an expression and an eye contact; things that can easily go unnoticed are sometimes life-lessons!

And so, I write about People...

They're made of skin and bones, freshly pumped crimson running through their fragile veins, thoughts and fears and technicolor dreams that emit light through the radiant sparkles in their eyes. Remarkable, sometimes helpless, sometimes misunderstood and sometimes magnanimous. Thinking, dreaming, loving grenades with skin sometimes sun-bronzed  and sometimes pale, some white and some in varying shades of brown. Some wish upon shooting stars and eyelashes.Some make machines, some are machines, while some are free in their own madness. 

Mostly fire with a crust of ice. They have the depths of the ocean inside them. They all err sometimes, in fact they're made to err. Personification of the most perfect form of imperfection. 

They all have their ways to feel free. To Blow away like dandelion seeds? 
Some sing and dance and write, some laze with a good smelling old book, some rave and some choose intoxication. But free? That's an anomaly! They're strangled by society, culture and religion. Sometimes they're strangled by the very thought of being free. 
Their minds are trampolines and they all have invisible wings, believe me they do! They all fly in the wee hours before twilight to places that they want to see. Places where they feel free. Little caverns full of love and light. 
They fly in wakefulness too, through parts of their mind that they are ignorant about. 

You know what affects them the most? The same living, walking, temporarily beating and pumping material that they're made of. They all hate to hurt but they hurt each other. Some forgive and some don't. Some dwell and some forget. 

They build empires sometimes, earn a lot of green crisp paper, some live simply in little homes full of belonging. Some have never heard of love. They all suffer in the same quantity. Some are homeless and some live in white marble palaces.Some wear rubber gloves and have grease in their hair and some have a diamond band tied tightly to their wrist. Some eat sugar cubes and bread, they drink some water and fill their stomachs. Others fine dine in style. But they're all starved.

Looking for something that they don't know of. They know there's something out there. They don't know the shape, the color, the texture or the feeling. But they know its there. 
They're made of hope, people. 

Huge wells of hope they are

and that's how they survive.