Anjali...

What makes a friend… I’m blessed, truly am! Anjali is someone I should celebrate for the world to see and know.

On Friendship - Kahlil Gibran
"Your friend is your needs answered. He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving. And he is your board and your fireside. For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace. When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay." And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart; For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.
When you part from your friend, you grieve not; For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain. And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit. For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
And let your best be for your friend. If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also. For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live. For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness. And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed."

How many people do you meet in this lifetime to whom you can say these things to? Feel so deeply about? Love and be loved so completely and have the comfort of just being yourself… warts and all. Let me try and describe Anjali, will be a test of the descriptive writing classes I took… Anjali is the funniest person I know, I mean her repartees, banter and sense of comic timing, she’s witty and makes me and a lot of people laugh senselessly. She’s artlessly funny, it’s just a natural talent.

She is like an open book, no surprises and no artifice, a bit of a ‘Susie’ as we call her… sophisticated susi! How many people do you know who will travel across thousands of miles just to spend a week with their friend, every year for five years? Ever since we have come here to the UAE, Anjali has come here from Bangalore, every year… Every time I think of it my jaw literally drops (closes, when I hear her voice say, melli… see those teeth man going ‘upper forward march’) and I am humbled and very proud at the same time. It’s simply wonderful, having the comfort of a friend like this.

Anjali is super smart and can accomplish any task given to her, be it in her career or personal life. She’s an achiever and was top of her line in exhibitions which required her to travel around the world. I have been to so many places through her stories.

I’ve known her since we were both six and I really got to know her 12 years ago. I have come to love completely my worst critic, after myself, ‘cause with her, I know that no matter how deep my fall or total my decline, regardless of how steep I climb or mercurial my ascent, she doesn’t give a damn. I’m ‘Melli’ and that is enough. Worst critic she may well be but she doesn’t judge. In fact she makes excuses for me, umnnn… not while she sometimes rips me apart with her acerbic tongue. She’s frank, open and honest. Among the many things that attract me, is her utter honesty. And you will hear it like it is. No pretense.

This is for you Anja, for being my BEST friend, my confidante, my support… My life, am sure would be vastly different if you weren’t in it. I wouldn’t have laughed as much for sure! You make me think (which is in itself, a big feat!) you make me feel like the luckiest friend on earth… you irritate me to the point that I have to finally move my lazy ass and act!

All of us play different roles, daughter, sister, wife, mother, friend, companion… we excel in some and suck in the other, we are crappy at most and brilliant at few or maybe we are mediocre at all… Anjali is Brilliant as a friend… the best there can ever be. You know, I guess its better to be superlative at something rather than be passable at all.

Thank God – he chose Anjali to be my superlative friend!

On beauty...

I'm always amused by the concept of beauty and by the attention it recieves. Of the mania it supposedly purports and passions it arouses. Through the ages, people have devoted their lives in pursuit of something beautiful - possessions largely and of course women. Remember Bathsheba who incited David's lust leading him to kill her husband, Cleopatra who brought the mighty Ceasar to his knees or a Helen of Troy, the face that launched a thousand ships... The Kohinoor diamond, Botticelli's Venus, Michealangelo's David.. Da Vinci's Mona Lisa.. I could definitely go on...
Between beautiful women and works of art, I guess you have to hand it to the people whose mania to own and capture immortality via beauty led them to disregard morality and the values and belief system.

As I'm writing this, I looked up the meaning in Wikipedia and quote, "Beauty (also called prettiness, loveliness or comeliness) is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure or satisfaction."

I'm a big fan of Somerset Maugham, an English playwright and novelist who was quite disdainful of this concept and craze around beauty. He said,
"Beauty is an ecstacy; it is as simple as hunger. There is nothing to be said about it. It is like the perfume of a rose: you can smell it and that is all...
But people add other qualities to beauty- sublimity, human interest, tenderness, love - because beauty does not long content them. Beauty is perfect and perfection ( such is human nature) holds our attention but for a while.
Beauty is a blind alley. It is a mountain peak which once reached leads nowhere.
Too much has been written about beauty. That is why I have written a little more. Beauty is that which satisfies the aesthetic instinct. But who wants to be satisfied? It is only to the dullard that enough is as good as a feast. Let us face it: beauty is a bit of a bore."

I can't stop smiling at this. Every time I read it, I'm amused... interested and it gets me thinking... To me, the most beautiful things in life are my two children. It seems there is only one beautiful child in the world and every mother has it. But yes we can rationalise and say that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and if the beholder has a sophisticated eye - well, Somerset Maugham can take a hike.
There is much beauty to be found in the world though, in the unbridled smile of a child, in the calm of the sea, the finality of a sunset and the promise in a lover's eye...

And in your eyes... God knows what beauty lies...