Filed under Paris, france, language, poetry, series by barkha | 0 comments
Last week, on the Paris Metro, I found another set of beautiful lines. (Like earlier) This time, I googled for the four lines and found the whole poem:
Que m’importent lieu, durée,
Si je demeure assurée
De garder toujours l’instant
Seconde ou siècles, autant
Le vent sur sa route emporte.
Lieu, durée, ah, que m’importe,
Tout défile au même train.
Je ne saisirai qu’un grain
Du sable des destinées.
Pour le cueillir, je suis née.
- Liliane Wouters
Extrait de Tous les chemins conduisent à la mer, éditions des Eperonniers, 2007.
Keeping aside the stink of the Metros, I think it has been a worthwhile ride.
Filed under 30each, Life, books, friends, geeks, heh, mumbai, series by barkha | 1 comment
It all started one day when Akshay blogged about how he wanted to make a positive change in his life by starting to wake up early each day. I have tried a lot of different alarm clocks, and various ringtones (including a shrieking voice) and radio that goes off early at 6 am, but none seemed to work for me. Its not that this has been an issue since ages - I used to get up by 5:00 am and reach the station before 6 am a few years ago. But somehow, I got myself into the habit of sleeping at 2am/3am and waking up at 8/9/10 am.
So when he asked if anybody was game, I jumped in.
Akshay, his friend Anil and I took up the challenge of waking up at 5:30 every day for the one month that followed, in a very interesting way. It was decided to document the whole experiment on a wiki. Hence, was born 30each. One of the challenges that we decided upon was to capture 30 sunrises. I however, did not capture any. That needs a different post.
In the course of the days that followed, I realized I got up not because I had to, but because I wanted to beat the others at the proto-call. 
As days passed, not counting the days I slept late because I couldn’t help it, I realized reading before I hit the bed helped. I made sure I switched the laptop off by 11, and would be drowsy by the time it was midnight.
Although the month of May was a very hectic one with a lot of positive developments on the personal side (yes, this being one), I still managed to miss only 11 days, that too, because: one, no day was an exception, (as per my own rules set during the start of the experiment), two, a lot of days were spent on things which shall be blogged later, and three, a lot of Partying happened in this Month - especially night outs with cousins. So, all in all, it is a big Yay!!
During these days, my reading activity shot up. I completed reading A thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Maximum City by Suketu Mehta and Why Men don’t listen and women can’t read maps by Barbara and Allan Pease. I am reading Chetan Bhagat’s 3 Mistakes of my Life these days.
It is June already, but last I checked, the wiki looks like it will keep getting updates from the three of us. 
Filed under avatar, series, tv by barkha | 0 comments
Water bending.
Ankur handed me a few episodes from the first season of Avatar - The last Air bender. I loved little Aang - clueless about how will he save the world - he doesn’t even know anybody alive who could teach him water bending.