1. Give. Never take. Never want to take. Never ask anybody for anything.
2. Never whine.
3. Read. Everything.
4. Value time. And being disciplined. These are no-brainers.
5. You will never cherish being lazy.
6. Purity. Honour. Truth. Honesty. Integrity. Dignity. In thought, word and action. Above everything else. If you're not there yet, try and you will.
7. Ego. Desire. Anger. Renounce the ego. Desire and anger will disappear on their own.
8. Value people and relationships. But don't go overboard with it.
9. 'Silence is golden'. There's a reason why it's a proverb. Don't talk unless necessary. Allow for meaningful conversation to happen, but don't go looking for it.
10. You will never cherish watching TV.
11. Write. Everyday.
12. Hold your tongue. Don't gossip. Never speak ill of others.
13. Never give in to the lure of "cool".
14. Be warm, to everyone. But don't be stupid.
15. Help when asked for. Venture advice when asked for. Don't be presumptuous. But learn to judge when someone wants help or advice but is too proud to ask for it. Develop and use your discretion in such cases. After having helped/ advised, forget about it.
16. Learn from the past. Then forget it.
17. Be grateful. Always. Even for the tiniest of things.
18. Respect everybody. Trust nobody.
19. You don't know everything. You haven't experienced everything. You're not God's gift to mankind.
20. Everything passes.
21. Patience is a virtue. So are resilience and persistence.
22. Dream.
23. Eat well. Sleep well. Stay fit.
24. Refrain from judging. You're the pigeon one day, the statue the next.
25. Watch children. Listen to the squirrels. See birds fly. Gaze at the stars. Look at colours deeply.

The 100% Perfect Girl

Winter is still here. The park is frozen.

You're wrapped up in an old green sweater that smells like home. Your nose is runny. Your eyes are tired, your hair clumsy.

We've been sitting quietly all evening, the air between us heavy with distance. It feels like we have weighed it down with all the words that could ever be spoken between two people. It feels like we could go another hundred years without talking.

But then you turn to look at me.

Those beautiful big eyes blink into mine.

Before thought can spark into language and ruin everything, before the cold can clamp its claws around our hearts, before time can ply its trade and memory can trap us with its tyranny, our souls understand the simple truth in our eyes.

A smile seeks its way out, feeble like the sunshine. On your face and on mine.

And the walls crumble. Just like that.

I want to reach out, hold your hand in my hand, ask you how you are, where you've been hiding from me all this while. I want to tuck the stray strands of hair falling on your forehead behind your ear, tell you how beautiful you look even though I know you'll snort in disbelief. I want to tell you that I'm sorry, that I've been an idiot, that I didn't know what I was doing and all the usual lies men tell women.

But all that can wait.

I want to erase every memory, wind the clock back to the beginning of time. I want to take every word I have said and throw it back into the well of silence where it belongs. I want to hold you in my arms and never ever let you go; no, not even if you want to go sleep.

But all that can wait.

For now, all I want to do is gaze back into your eyes, smile till you start squirming despite all these years, till you start laughing and ask me to not look at you that way, till you look down and away, shy all of a sudden.

For now, all I want is this tiny piece of heaven to last forever.

Even spring can wait.

Title reference

Hello World

Sunday morning. First sunny day in ages. Or at least the first one you've managed to see.

Bend, double tie your laces, look left, look right, plug earphones in snug and set off.

Fifty strides in, Anushka Manchanda shuffles in neatly and starts to crank it up inside your head.

Mit Jaaye Gham, the chorus croon around all her spunk.

The delicious perversion of running to a remixed song about rebellion hits you. A smile spreads its warmth thinly across your lips. Smoking it up couldn't have found a more bedevilling evangelist.

You find yourself starting to stretch your hamstrings. The calves begin to tighten. You reach deep into your lungs. Hold it. Stretch it. Let go. Let go. Let go ...

Let go.

Mit Jaaye Gham. Mit Jaaye Gham.

The sun slips behind a cloud, the stride swings sweetly into form and hits the rhythm -- stretch, float, land, let go, stretch, float, land, let go ... You put the girl on loop. Her high-pitched angst screams its way into your soul. You let it flood your insides and pump it clean right out of your lungs.

Dum Maaro Dum.

DUM.

MAARO.

DUM.

One more stride.

Stretch.

Land.

Let go.

One more stride.

HARE. KRISHNA. HARE. RAM.

Thirty minutes. Sweat starts stinging your eyes. The lungs start to hurt. The stomach tightens every time your shoe crashes down on the concrete. Every breath burns its way in and out of your chest.

The pain starts to wall up.

You start searching. Probing. Looking desperately inside yourself for something to hang onto, to keep you going.

And then out of nowhere, the voice  cuts through the fog:

Duniya ne humko diya kya. Duniya ne humse liya kya. Hum sab ki parvah kare kyun. Sabne humara kiya kya.

Somewhere something gives. The sky explodes into a thousand pigeons.

Hum sab ki parvah kare kyun...

You clench your fist, start grinding your teeth; the more it hurts, the harder you breathe. You turn a sadist after your own self.

Sabne humara kiya kya...

With every step, you draw more into your self. Diving. Plunging. Snorkelling right down to the depths where you've buried yourself.

Andar ke bandar se ho guftgu si ek baat...

Just when all hope seems lost and you're running out of breath and the pain threatens to drown you, you start to surface, climbing, shrugging aside all that sea-weed, out, into the sunlight where the world's waiting for you, and you alone.

Hum sab ki parvah kare kyun. Sabne humara kiya kya...

And just like that, there's no pain any more. There's no point to it any more.

Mit Jaaye Gham.

Dum Maaro Dum.

Breathe. Run. Breathe. You just got yourself an unlikely anthem.