For the restless spirit!

  2014 - it was quite a year for me, a watershed of sorts.  A lot changed. I lost both my parents and my marriage of 20 years. I had to steady my ship fast to enable my teenaged daughter to keep strong and focussed on her track.  I turned to travel - no longer as a passion but as a coping mechanism, to allow me to keep sane.  I turned to my homeland - my India., to its calming hills to seek answers.... Extract from Meira's memoirs - July 2014 " I just wanted to escape. Escape from my reality that was overwhelming. But like all who have had the rug pulled out from under their feet, I was unsure. With so many balls up in the air, should I travel? Could I afford it? I wanted answers and for clarity, I knew I had to travel to a neutral space, one that allowed me to introspect.   I traveled with my daughter to this very old school and quiet little property called "Wildflower Hall" tucked above the hill station of Shimla in Northern India. This stately home of an erst...

  These are sad times for those who love wanderlust, for those who seek to be wild and free....  But how can you hold back the soaring spirit - Covid or otherwise?  Hence "Meira" - my restless spirit - who has used these restrictives times to soar through her travel archives, to look at her personal journey across geographies, sometimes solo, sometimes with loved ones - to reflect on all she has learnt from her recent wanderings and how it has helped her become who she is, now. And so Meira begins ..... "There are some people who are meant to grow strong roots to a place and build beautiful things there, including a home full of warmth and love.  Then there are others who even when having to stay in one locale, feel the winds calling their name everyday, with promise of the new.  I belong to the latter. Period. Life had kept me focussed and based in the desert for many years, feeding the wanderlust in my soul with little drops - few and far in between. I will...

Time does fly ..... whilst we still seem to be heaving from the aftermath of 2020, we find ourselves already at the end of the first month of 2021. A lot of us had wished, prayed even, at the end of December last year that 2021 be kinder - so what did the first month of the year show?  I would say - uncertainty mostly but with a splattering of hope!  New cases of infection continue to rise amidst fears of lockdown again and at the same time, vaccination roll-outs across the globe are fostering some hope of protection against the impact of the virus,  if not total immunity.  The confidence we saw at the end of last year has dampened for sure; but we humans, don't give up so easily and so the battle wages on.  I believe that the past month has reminded us of what we truly control and can influence and where we are simply onlookers or receivers. It has reiterated what Steve Covey called the "circle of influence" - where we need to focus - however small that circle ...

2020 is definitely the year of lessons.....for me, for you, for all, for communities, countries, economies... I am a part of a Facebook group called "Girls LOVE Travel".  Yesterday I came across an interesting post there:  " Please brag to me about a thing you did in 2020 that you are proud of. "  The post got thousands of responses - and I spent most of my morning reading them. For a year that everyone characterizes as all things negative, I was struck by the positivity I saw there ...... from hundreds of women all across the world .... it filled my heart.... and reminded me of the indomitable spirit of us humans. Instead of mourning or worrying themselves silly due to the crazy times around, these women have given a positive twist to their coping mechanisms, to do wonderful things - they have taken better care of themselves, so many have got out of abusive relationships and moved on to better lives, some mended broken connects, many started new endeavors - commerc...

I am sure we have all learnt something this year - good, bad or ugly.  So much has changed - some we were able to manage and some not at all. Yet the year has listened to no one..... like tsunami, it has crashed on our unprepared shores and created a lot of deep wreckage, some that probably can be restored / revived and a lot that has changed forever.  One of my many learnings this year has been this :  We spent most of our lifetime building bridges and then either breaking them or having to walk away. Only a handful, if at all, of the bridges we built in our lifetime, remain unchanged .....  And I don't mean this in a negative manner, I say it as it is - the way Nature and Life intended it to be, perhaps.  One of my recent joys has been gardening, though I have the smallest of space to use. Yet, each morning, I rush to my balcony to see which buds have bloomed and which flower has wilted overnight. Both fill my heart. A little bud sparks hope in me - of somethi...

  I think all of us will remember this year for a very long time - probably for as long as we live. So many things have changed for most of us. Deeper questions have unravelled in many of our journeys and not many of us have any answers or even clues. We just don't seem to know anymore!  Now that makes us humans, uncomfortable. We like to know and we have been spoiled to believe we control far more than we actually do. Hence the build-up of angst in many quarters - we are in unfamiliar territory and we don't like it at all. Just before the Covid lockdown, a dear friend gifted me with a book by Oprah Winfrey - "What I know for sure." And I started reading it during the countless days when I was home alone - staring out at a clueless world that had been brought to a grinding halt. This is the first time I read a book by Oprah and the theme resonated deeply.  In these uncertain times, when the fundamentals of all we knew, have been so rudely shaken and for so long - what...

Suddenly... I realize that it's been 6 months since the world started changing, almost beyond recognition - 6 months since Covid took over almost all of our life decisions. I realize that there's just about 4 more months to go in this Gregorian year that probably none of us will ever be able to forget.  And in the midst of it all, in a couple of days, I will advance further into my fabulous 50s. This seemed like perfect time to take stock! And I look back ..... Globally, the new normal is now settling in ...... even as some countries and economies struggle to bring back "normalcy" or in other words, the older ways of doing things. I seriously wonder how much will go back to what we  had got used to. I am reminded that like perspective, normalcy is also dependent on where we stand....... when we move, our perspectives and what we consider normal also shifts.  A 7 year old instinctively reaches for his mask when he is venturing outdoors and hasn't met his friends fo...