A Toast To Life !!

Ladies and Gentlemen!! I have been with her all my life or may be more if you believe in reincarnation. Some of you have known her longer than I have; some of you have loved her more than I have. She is a sweetheart most of the times but sometimes she is really tough. She can be real PIA if you don’t take care of her. She has been quite fair to me almost always. In my journey with her I got a loving family, best of my friends, a few of my enemies, happiest of moments, saddest of days, tons of experience, a lot of smiles, some kisses and much more.
I have always been grateful to God for her even though there have been times when I just wanted to get rid of her and go away to some other world. But I know being with her has given me hope, a desire to do better and better always. She has been best of my teachers, dearest of my friends.
I was 18 when she first taught me what is a failure and more importantly how to get over it. She taught me how important it is to get up after every fall. She made me face it over and over again just to make sure that I understood the concept and believed in it.
I was 19 when she first taught me about love, those crazy moments; she made me feel that I was on top of the world. But in less than a year she gave me my first break up. Phew!! It was horrible, but with time she healed all my wounds and she repaired my broken heart like brand new. After many such incidents I think my heart has learnt to heal itself  .
With time she taught me how important it was to be friendly, to know people, to help them, to bring one smile on someone’s face. She made me realize the importance of every moment that I have got and she has given me every chance to make most of it.
When she was not so nice to me she laughed at me, she mocked me, she kicked me in the scariest of places. She has thrown me outta my way many times but every time when I was about to lose it, her helping hand reached out to me for help.
All this while she never came to me to say that I should take care of her, that was for me to realize. She never told me it was very important to have a passion to thrive, it was for me to realize. She never told me that my friends and family were important; it was for me to realize. But she always gave me a chance then one more and then one more to realize all this.
And today, Ladies and Gentlemen !! I want to thank her , for all she has done. A toast for Life. My life, I would live to make you better and worthwhile.
Friends !! Raise your glasses, a toast to life.

A time to say that despite all, we're still here.
A time to say that we will keep doing the dance of life
A time to remember those we lost
A time to give the finger to death.

To the old, long life and treasure; To the young, all health and pleasure.

Let’s drink to a good life in the years ahead.
Cheers !!

Animal love..

I remember when I was a little kid we had a cow , always tied to a rope in her mud built home which was a few feet away from our abode, we called it "Ghari" in bhojpuri, that is my native language. For almost always she remained calm , minding her own business , chewing all the things we threw in her pot , a huge bowl shaped thing, and we loved her so much specially my uncle who milked her every morning and evening and me and my sister got a glass of fresh milk ( right out of factory if you will ). But there were days when she showed a rather disturbed behavior , she kicked around for no reason , sometimes she would even kick the milk bucket leaving nothing that was not floored, not a single drop for cute little kid like me. I wondered ,as a kid, what makes this amazingly kind and sober animal so violent. Guess what ! I realize it now when I talk to my friend's girl friend. Better put in her words ( the girl friend's ) " She did this to spice up the relation, she wanted to make us realize her importance and a little turbulence in relationship ( an argument , if you will , that she was incapable of , thus resorted to mute violence ) , she thought ( probably ) would make her more desirable making us more caring and loving. "
Now you get it. :) :) Welcome to the relationship of animals! Indeed, we are no less.
The whole idea is absurd , that's the way i think , however psychologists and relationship therapists tend to not agree with me when they say that a little fight actually is an improvement on the relationship. There is no denying that make up over and over with the same person is amazingly pleasing, but, my dear friend the misery of arguments is inexplicable and it gets worse when we resort to brutalizing the whole scene by bringing up history. I am no relationship expert so whatever I say has nothing to do with "authentic" guidance or it would be bad to even consider it as a suggestion. But nevertheless it is an alternate way of thinking , a different approach towards building and understanding a relationship.
Being born and brought up in a north indian middle class family which chose to keep it's morals intact and sent me to a school which belonged a rather fundamentalist group upholding the very indian culture which we are proud of ( at least in the text ) , for me love became a selfless pursuit for the nothing but "love" itself. The stories which I read were not written by Ekta Kapoor or Sidney Sheldon, they did not have anything what we all tend to enjoy these days in literature and cinema. The stories I read had depiction of a phenomena where one person was so devoted to someone that she did not care if it was poison that she was drinking, the stories were about people who just fell in love and the faith that they had in the relationship was commendable. My point is , I read about a "love" which had no conditions in it, the feelings were there no matter what, my lover shows up or not does not matter, if I love her , I love her.
Well that is again philosophy , but you young fellow lovers , what is so wrong in pursuing something as perfect as that ? I am sure no one is perfect , but when you talk about something as sacred as "love" , if at all you consider it sacred, I beg you, start giving some respect to the feeling.
Well anyway this concept is less understandable and very difficult to describe in words. What is happening around us is very disheartening. People claiming to be in love and not trusting each other, people getting bored of relationship, people just dumping one and jumping on the other one, eagle eye pursuit for the next prey of "love" , this all is nothing but disgusting. As a believer , that the truest form of love is achievable I feel that my family cow's love for my family was actually a lot better than the relationships that we have around us now. For god sake!! we are humans we ought to do better than her.