Eat Pray Love

All things that I enjoy - of course my order is Eat, Love, Pray of course. So sufficient to say I really enjoyed the book. But I must confess since I'd picked up the book after the movie promos of "Eat Pray Love" were already airing - Julia Roberts was narrating the whole story to me - like you always have an image of the author and the protagonist in your mind. So I didn't have too much left for imagination this time  - I could almost hear Julia Roberts voice too!

The Italy journey was described as only a true gourmand can! And you hardly find a book that can talks about Italy without talking about Milan and fashion...so this is really different. And the thought of just learning a language without a purpose and practicing it with so much gusto makes me also want to find a language which I want to learn!

The India journey is amazing especially for the struggles with meditation and search for peace. For someone who has always felt so uncomfortable with meditation and an inability to get my mind still for even a minute - its good to know that everyone struggles similarly. Of course I'm yet to find an author who can do justice to India in a way that it truly deserves. It more than poverty, spirituality and vegetarian food, but that's of course a discussion for another day. Infact when I started reading the book, I too was going through these strange moods and loneliness and it got me surprisingly calm at the end of the it.

The funny part is when I read about Bali, I believed everything just the way it was described. And then maybe I thought all the places are also much more - of course its just a very individual way of seeing it! So Bali was fun too , but there wasn't much of a personal realisation from it. But for the die hard romantic that I am - I expected a little from the Love part of the book, but of course not chicklit...its mature love and of course its real - its not fiction!!

So all in all - a fun read and since for the first time I actually had the movie version protagonist reading out the book to me - Look forward to seeing the film!!!

Freedom?

What does freedom mean to you? That's a question I've asked myself very often and I've always come up with different answers..it was freedom from school into college...and then freedom was figuring out what I wanted to do in life...during B-school days it was landing the dream job and then it was moving out from home...and then of course you start wondering what exactly freedom is? Is it just waiting for your next biggest goal, accomplishing it...feeling free for a day or two and then chasing something else?

A few months ago I read an interesting explanation of the manifestation of freedom in a Chetan Bhagat interview. He mentions in some other context that, once he was just walking by a station - and on an impulse decided to take a local to Lonavala, spent the day there, did some writing and then got back in the evening.

That's when I thought - wow this is what freedom is...doing what you want whenever you want to. But when the much awaited break to do what I want is now here, hopping on and off trains and buses isn't coming that easy to me! Well of course a primary reason being I don't get as much royalty to enjoy my freedom as he does (rather I don't get any at all). Which basically means freedom at someoneelse's expense (as in my case currently) is no freedom at all.

But on giving this a little more thought, I truly think being free means doing what you love to do and thats what I'm trying to figure - to be truly free and ride into the sunset or maybe towards sunrise!!