A lonely, sad, morose, happy, lovely Christmas.

Namaste!

This is going to be a looong one my friends!

I'm not Christian! If it matters, my documents state that I am a Hindu. I do not mean to imply that I am without religion. In fact, I follow my flavour if you will, of Hinduism, which is something that is ever evolving.

But I have celebrated Christmas, just like most Indians have and still do. In my honest and humble opinion, I believe that Indians celebrate all festivals (Yes! To us, Christmas, Ramzan and New Year are all festivals unlike most of the rest of the world where festivals imply musical concerts!) irrespective of the religion we follow. We celebrate it with our friends and their families. Celebration of anything in India strongly revolves around food. Diwali means Sweets, Ramzan implies Mutton Biriyani, Christmas is Plum Cake! I celebrate them all in a non-religions way. I celebrate them for the ideology that I believe they were created for and that is to bring people together, to remind them that no man is an island!

Now, there's something about being alone and celebrations that just doesn't feel right. They just don't seem to fit together. This morning, I woke up late, to a ringing door bell. I had slept over at my friends' apartment after having watered their plants, having watched a couple of movies and having missed my last bus home. It was his house owners and they were there wishing to fix his broken foyer lamp. A very sweet gesture, given that they were not obliged to do so. A really nice old couple from Macedonia, they went about their business trying to keep out of my way. Boredom struck and soon I found myself conversing with the wife. She was a pleasant old woman and it seemed like a Christmas alone was not so bad after all! But something was amiss!

Soon I decided to get back home to my apartment and gathered myself up and left. But this feeling of something amiss just got bigger and bigger until a sad song on my iPod made me sit up and notice an actual physical feeling of a hole inside me growing. I felt sad and alone and frustrated and all sorts of negative feelings started rushing through my mind. Pang after pang of pain gnawed away at my mind, wave after wave of sadness washed over me until at one point I felt that I would end up crying in public! It's extremely interesting how the human mind works. When you are feeling something negative, it is very efficient at bringing more negative thoughts to the forefront to reinforce your negativity and vice versa.

There I was, I didn't have any where to go or anyone to visit, most of my friends were all home with their families and my family was 6600 km away. What more do you need to start feeling even more sad! I came back home a frown on my face and not feeling very social, my room mates didn't look very entertaining anymore and everything looked as gloomy as it could. In fact I had even started writing a post titled "A Morose Christmas".... But then ..... the miracle of positive thinking happened. I realised that I was just being a wuss; that there are people in the world with problems greater than mine, that if I focussed on solving someone else's problem, I will start seeing mine getting smaller and smaller and soon it will disappear!

Post lunch, one of my room mates, who had gone to meet a family, called, inviting all of us (me and my room mates) to a dinner. We all agreed immediately just because there was going to be food! At the dinner, I met a couple (Swedish man and Singaporean wife), their two kids (a boy and a girl), the Swedish mother in law, a Spanish-English man, a Georgian man, a 92 year-old woman from the United States of America, a Swedish Man, 2 nice cats (Gandalf the Grey and Tiggr), a rabbit and a guinea pig. We were 5 Indians in addition to the company that was already in the house. The atmosphere in the house was something that completely changed my mindset. I felt loved, I felt welcome and I felt like I belonged to someone and somewhere. There are but a few times in life that you get to witness selfless love. When someone you have never met, invites you to have dinner with them - that is selfless love. When someone you don't know drives you from and to the bus station even when they don't have to - you know they care about you. And this night of all nights I felt love, though it did not need to have happened.

The 92 year-old woman was completely devoid of any ability to hear and I heard that she has a lot of problems in her daily life due to this and other problems that she has and yet, she was the picture of happiness and love. She smiled and laughed, had coherent conversations with everyone with her talking and us responding to her in sign language or by typing on to her laptop. She even remembered everyone's names. She reminded me of why I should smile. Again I was being shown, how much smaller my so called problems were. I was seeing, the way I should live my life right in front of my eyes.

The family had cooked us a feast of turkey, meat balls, mashed potato, different Swedish dishes, Georgian barbequed meat and salad, tea, coffee, cookies and chocolate cake. There was so much to eat and this was also meant for the 4 Indians whom they hardly knew out of the 5 that were there! There was no need for such a gesture but there it was, a heart warming gesture of love that one rarely gets to experience. One sentence from the dinner table conversation that sticks in my memory is as follows. I said "Jesus Christ! That's a guinea pig." and pat came the response, "No! That is a guinea pig and Jesus is in your heart." I was both shamed and impressed at the same time. I was reminded that one has no right to use the Lord's name in vain. There was nothing more to be said.

At the end of the evening, I had gained more than I had thought I could, I had learnt more than I thought I could and I had felt more than I thought I could. I give my deepest and heartfelt thanks to whatever maybe the reason - a power watching over me, a God or Gods there maybe or Karma, for the events in my life.

I do not know how to end today's incomplete and incoherent post, nor do I know whether I should, for I feel like I cannot do justice to the experience I had today. All I know is the feeling I have and the knowledge I will carry with me however, fuzzy it maybe now! Today's song - One Love | Playing For Change | Song Around the World

नमस्ते


<3

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