To New Beginnings ....

In his autobiography, Open, Andre Agassi talks about how every time he would try to run behind perfection in every shot, he would lose the match. He needed to stop being perfect. Reading this portion was an epiphany of sorts for me. " ...and that is why I have stopped writing!" I told myself --Because I tried too hard to be perfect , in my head! That is why I had abandoned this blog. I was scared of coming here and seeing what I had written over all these years. This blog has been my companion, letting me record everything that happens in my life. I cannot let a stupid wish like wanting to be perfect take away the relationship I have with this blog.

New year brought a whole new angle to my life. I am traveling tonight to the US of A. Am I excited? Sort of. Am I scared -- very! But as usual, I don't know what to anticipate. I know there are a lot of my colleagues. I know I am not going to a strange land but here is the deal. I want my own experience. The day it was known that I might be traveling soon, my colleagues have been filling me in with a lot of their experiences. You should go here, you should go there -- go to the mall of America, go to that Indian store. I nod every time someone tells me something. I imagine myself being there, I live their memories with them. I am thankful at the end of the conversation for making the place seem a little more familiar to me. But eventually, I want to form my own opinions and make my own memories-- which I inevitably will. I will leave home at 10:00 and will be flying the whole day tomorrow. It is going to be a first of everything. First international travel, first time boarding international planes (I will be changing 3 planes for my route) and first time stepping out of India. In my head, I have lived this moment too many times to count. I have stepped outside my house, I have locked my gate and I have felt my heartbeat go up and stomach do a flip, on the prospect of traveling international. The only difference was -- in my head, I was going backpacking through Europe. As of now, I am going to Minneapolis on a shoe string budget, where I will count and calculate, multiply everything with 60 before deciding to buy anything, where I will have to cook my on food because I am a vegetarian and where I will be colder than Anaa was, when she leaves for a journey to find Elsa.

I hope to come back with a bagful of experiences (good ones), memories (good ones too) and stories -- little, big, funny, happy , good stories , to share on this blog, to share them with my friends and I hope to be traveling more often. The next time I open this blog, I will be in a different country, in a different time zone and God knows what frame of mind.

Hoping for the best ... Let there be lots of love in this world!