Sleepless nights …

Sleepless nights…. It is strange to feel the same was as three years before. Three years before around the this time, I got the confirmation for my PhD in Paris, spent few weeks of sleepless nights, fighting the society for my freedom and final exit , with dreams and nightmares about venturing into this huge city without knowing a person . Landed in Paris with the enormous amount of freedom, that gave me courage to fight this western society from imposing ways to misuse my freedom. Now few more weeks to go for my vacation to India, suffering from the similar sleepless nights with dreams to see the places where I grew up and the friends who were with me during my final struggle, also nightmares about taking back home this freedom that have become a part of me. Will my society welcome me with this freedom which they never wanted to see me with?

Experiencing such conflicts and depression, no wonder the closing lines of the movie , 'Elizabeth: The Golden Age' got tears in my eyes yesterday.

“Unmarried, I have no master. Childless, I am mother to my people. God give me the strength to bear this mighty freedom."

Christmas Pilgrimage ...

I know...I wrote yesterday that I have lots of work to finish, but for Christ sake its Christmas. I took a day off and ventured into one of the region of France that I have not been before, Centre (Val de Loire ) . This region is well know for its castles (châteaux ) of Loire Valley. Today I went to a small pilgrimage village called Chartres; just few hours away from Paris where you can find this calm village. Beautiful Cathedral , considered to be one of the finest Gothic (Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Chartres)standing in the middle of a little town traversed by a small river and covered with a very thin layer of snow. Hmmm! Its difficult to say wheather the cathedral is adding a spritual peace or the cold, snowy winter is adding peace to this little village. More Pics

Holidays...

Thats how my holidays are going to be…I have something similar to that, but no regrets… Christmas holidays are the best time to be in Pairs, I should say almost 50% of the population is out of the city, calm , quite and an empty lab. Above all a very rewarding holiday is waiting at the end of this holiday! Ok…let me get back to work now…

Happy Holidays!

Coming from a country where festivals are seen as bundle of rituals; here I see festivals as an excuse to get together and express the love and gratitude, eat…drink..and party. In the last one week, I had six Christmas dinners and parties, the most impressive ones were the one with my French class, with people across the world, representing all the major religions sitting around the table, contributing some Christmas stories and food from each country, it was a emotional moment; another impressive story was how Micha bought tears in people’s eye by distributing his cute little German Christmas cookies pack. Adding a cherry to the above events was our lab’s Caribbean party today .As I entered the lab today the Caribbean music was breaking the roof tops and we had Gerald behind the bar, to make Caribbean cocktails by lunch time everyone was drunk then it was time to say Happy holidays; we had few high and low times last year, I hope my third year will be better. With this happy note and having few more Christmas dinners to attend before Christmas…Happy Holidays!

un burro viejo, aparejo nuevo

un burro viejo, aparejo nuevo - for an old donkey, a new bridle. The older I become, more exciting the life becomes; Each year birthday day seems to be getting better and better, filled with people pouring love and affection and more exciting things to do. This year I visited a very small mountain village in Catalonia. Inspite of the beautiful landscape the highlight of the place was the donkey farm. Around 40 years back when farmers started using cars, they started slaughtering donkey it seems; when this very rare variety of Catalan donkeys were at the verge of extinction, this gentle man collected the donkeys from the farmers (only 30 was left at that time it seems) and now he expanded it to few hundred; it was so amazing to see this old man’ s passion for the donkeys, seeing this beautiful majestic Catalan donkeys, it’s not so difficult to fall in love with them. Mild snow….beautiful village…friendly people…people who make difference in some one life….meeting man with a mission… Thank you Anton for this beautiful gift.

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