then try, try and try again...

Been mostly lost in thoughts today.One could even say, i was feeling blue...... By the way, friends, why do we associate feelings of depression with the colour blue? I cant understand. Imagine blue skies with cotton candy clouds..ummm then blue-bells on a stalk or turqouise seas or babies in blue dresses.And imagine blue beads on a white dress mmm....(wanna go shopping:x ) I think blue is a joyous colour..... maybe not the sunny abundance which denotes yellow, or the wild passionate rapture of red, but the kind of happiness we feel when we hear a choir playing, or the strains of a flute or our very own jaltarang.. Before i get carried away in these musings lemme chase away the clouds for some time and tell you about the problem.
It started many years back , i was 14 , a schoolgirl.. There was this play going on in my colony on christmas eve and i had to write a report on it .( we had someone called Mr G.H Banerjee in our colony who was adressed as granpa by all the kids in the colony. He was the soul of all cultural activities there and we totally adored him.) He was constantly encouraging me to write and till date i owe much of my scant literary efforts to him.:) aneways, lets get back to the play... I watched it, enjoyed it and made a note of whatever i interpreted as funny inside it. For example the lead actor who stuttered over his lines, the actress who entered from the wrong side of the stage.. At night in my home, i sat and polished the entire report, busily adorning it with what i used to call"dry wit". We had this local newsletter kind of thing being published and the day

my article (read report) was published i was very excited. Ours was a close knit community and everybody knew everybody else and were mostly on first-name-terms with each other. The very first person to call me up and congratulate me was my friend annie. "Oh i totally adored the way u wrote, it was hilarious" Till date i remember the warm rush of pleasure i felt in myself on hearing the words. Well, then after numerous combinations and permutations of the same compliments i was feeling rather proud of myself as i walked down to the local bakery shop.

Suddenly i saw granpa standing there under his favourite krishnachura tree." Oh, how did u like my report" i asked with a bright smile. He turned, looked at me and said in a level voice"u have hurt a lot of people" I was younger then, and drunk on praise , the sudden jolt must have brought a flush to my cheeks... He must have seen it and so continued in a gentler voice "you are young, talented and so have a lot of strength in you. if u use the same strength to build instead of pulling something down, imagine how beautiful your world would become. whatever u wrote in that report would be forgotten by you in a week, but the people you criticised would always remember it--and not in a very nice way."

Granpas advice stayed with me for a lot of time, i was always careful henceforth on the way i used words. But as i said time is a great equalizer, in my exciting jrney from college to work to b school now, i must have unlearnt the lesson. After a round of (What i thought was incisive) discussion in the training and developement classes, i detected a hint of chill in the atmosphere, and no, it was not because of the weather. Come, evening and one of my good friends(d name is secret though) told me "u know u have this ability to put ur points in a effective manner, and ur voice has this attractive element in it.... but the saddest thing is that u use it to pull people down and hence u are converting ur biggest strength into ur biggest weakness".

And i was again transformed into the 14 year old kid under the krishnachura tree. Old habbits die hard i guess and i must try again...... It takes a lot of love and care between 2 people for one to point out mistakes to the other unhesistatingly. Thank u dear friend for caring so much....:)