Spiels of a Quill

With a new year comes a new beginning, or does it? It is often considered that new beginnings happen when the new year starts .  But do we have to necessarily associate the phrase 'new beginnings' with a new year or a new decade?  Can life not change substantially for anyone in the remaining 364 days - Does it always have to be 1st January?  Some changes be it big or small, have the ability to impact us in a way that our life gets a new beginning. Can you think of some examples of such new beginnings?  While you ponder on these questions, here are my thoughts on the subject! Here's wishing everyone a very happy & prosperous new year! ❤️   ************************************************************************ ******************* ******************* ********* New Beginnings are a lot more than a new year or a new decade... Look at the baby boy who is taking his first steps in life today It is a new beginning for him as he learns to explore the wo

With a new year comes a new beginning! It is often considered that new years call for new beginnings . Hence, the end of a year is always the best time to look back and retrospect at everything that happened over the last 12 months - everything good and bad that happened to you, everything right and wrong that you did, every success and failure you faced, and every decision you made. You then identify opportunities of growth, and the lessons that you can learn. With this newfound knowledge, you are all set to enter into the new year with a bang! Here's wishing everyone a very happy & prosperous new year! ❤️   ************************************************************************ ******************* ******************* ********* It is December, I realize and I sit down to retrospect About how the 355 days so far in 2019 have changed me I see a rollercoaster ride full of ups and downs, hills and valleys And I make a note of the differen

What is gratitude? It is the quality of being thankful; readiness to show appreciation and to return kindness. As simple as it may seem to be thankful, it usually takes a conscious effort to make it a daily occurrence. This thanksgiving, I chose to express gratitude to God - to thank him for giving me some amazing and irreplaceable people in my life.  ************************************************************************ ******************* ******************* ********* To my mom... I am grateful to God for letting me be your daughter So nobody else got to be your fighting partner! I don’t know if I was the best child you could have had But you are the best mom I could have wished for! Nobody could have kept their head high and their heart warm The way you did when you faced life’s tormenting storm You winked, not being one to back off from a challenge You are my fierce lioness, teaching me how to fight! To my grandma… I am grateful to God for

This is the first time that I experimented with something that I had been wanting to do for so long - writing a blog series. It just felt like the perfect topic to start with. My first blog series is about my first ever half marathon. It was a long journey, so I thought that it deserved to be told in parts so that I could be as thorough as I wanted to be in my narration. So hop on to the train, and read along while I relive one of the most exciting journeys in my life. Part 1: The easiest part of the job is done - signing up for a half marathon Part 2:  You don't realize your strengths until you face your greatest weaknesses Part 3: Tick-tock, tick-tock... The count down to the race day begins Part 4:  The ups and downs on race day - literally and figuratively Part 5: Ubuntu - a runner's thank you note I was nowhere close to setting a PR, but I know I can never get worse than this. Because you'll always be better at something if you have the cou

Related posts: Part 1: The easiest part of the job is done - signing up for a half marathon Part 2:  You don't realize your strengths until you face your greatest weaknesses Part 3: Tick-tock, tick-tock... The count down to the race day begins Part 4:  The ups and downs on race day - literally and figuratively I think it wouldn't be a fair narrative if all I do is talk about the negative elements. So to give you a glimpse of the brighter side of things, let me start with introducing you to the two Team Asha SF running coordinators - Jennifer and Kristina. Throughout the season, I was lucky to have these two amazing people in the running group who would motivate me to not be disappointed at my failures. They would slow down to my pace to keep me company, talking to me the whole time - encouraging me to not lose hope, telling me about how everyone started out as beginners before becoming seasonal runners. While I was thankful for the company and the encouragement I rec

Related posts: Part 1: The easiest part of the job is done - signing up for a half marathon Part 2:  You don't realize your strengths until you face your greatest weaknesses Part 3: Tick-tock, tick-tock... The count down to the race day begins I had prepared a Marathon playlist with all the peppy workout songs I could find, and I had gotten accustomed to listening to those during my practice runs. I plugged in my ear-phones and started the playlist, and tried to focus more on the song than on everything that had gone wrong up until that point. It kind of worked like a charm, and before I knew it I had covered about 3 miles of my race, and I had crossed at least two dozen people by then. I felt happy and pumped up about that, and made me more enthusiastic about moving forward. Pretty soon, the hilly terrains started and my muscles started tiring out a bit. But we also had water and electrolyte stops to re-energize our body. It also meant that pretty soon, I was about to mee

Related posts: Part 1: The easiest part of the job is done - signing up for a half marathon Part 2:  You don't realize your strengths until you face your greatest weaknesses (It has been a while since I wrote the last part, but I am taking my story forward...) As race day got closer, I started panicking. I was so close to chickening out, but my perception changed when someone told me, "Even if you are the last person to cross the finishing line, you are still better than the thousands of people who didn't even muster the courage to sign up and show up for the race!". I think that during the last few weeks before the race, I was mostly focussed on two things: 1) Seeking donations to support my fundraiser 2) Reading motivational blogs to find anything that can fuel my courage I always believed that fundraising might be the easier out of the two tasks because that is what everyone around me kept saying, but it wasn't that easy. I reached out to th

Related posts: Part 1: The easiest part of the job is done - signing up for a half marathon A couple of people that I talked to about what happened at the first run humorously laughed at me and brushed it aside saying "You have been idle for too long in life that you can't even do something as simple as this. Look at people around you; if they can do it so effortlessly, so can you. It is not a big deal. Stop whining and train harder- build up your stamina, and your lung capacity." It broke me from within to hear that- probably because I am conditioned to take negative criticism to heart , but I convinced myself that it might indeed be due to the lack of strenuous physical activities in the recent years. Maybe if I push myself harder I can get better, I told myself.   Two days later as I was getting ready for my second run with Team Asha, I found myself taking mental notes for a To-Do list: take deep breaths, inhale through the nose and exhale through the mouth,

Today, I want to start telling you the story of my first ever half marathon. I know it is a cliche to do so, but please allow me to start with a quote: "  If it doesn't challenge you, it won't change you. " I never realized how true this quote by Fred DeVito is, till I signed up for the Biofreeze San Francisco  Half Marathon 2019 as part of Team Asha to raise funds for Asha for Education which is an NGO that supports the education of underprivileged children back in India. The race is over, but my journey isn't complete yet. However, I think it is important to get the narrative started - if not for anything else, merely to just share my story with anybody who is willing to listen. It was probably a hasty decision in the early days of the summer - one taken under the influence of people who had previously run for Team Asha. I always knew that I wanted to run at some point in life to raise funds for charity, but I wasn't mentally prepared to do it this

This, I believe was my first attempt at 'prose poetry', which is a style of poetry written in prose form. While I don't believe I did a good job at it, I share it solely because I like the bit of rawness in the poem that can be attributed to the prose and the repetition of phrases. ************************************************************************ ************ ************* ******** Oh yeah, I would like to know why… Why is a girl aborted or abandoned b y people who bring her to life? If now you’re planning to tell me “Ohh…It’s because she is a girl” I tell you now and I’ll tell you again! Your daughter is a precious gem a nd NOT your liability in life. Oh yeah, I would like to know why… Why is a girl told that she can’t do it w hen boys her age are encouraged? If now you’re planning to tell me “Ohh…It’s because she is a girl” I tell you now and I’ll tell you again! Never underestimate a girl ‘coz s he is NOT incapable of anything.