my life, my stories

  I turn 40 today. And as I sit here, I am with one of the most precious gifts that I have been able to give myself. My consciousness of every single year over the past decade. Every single year , on the night of 16 september, I sit and right down what I am feeling , thinking, doing at that time. It is like that notch on the wall to mark time. A ‘I was here’ kind of mark . It started when I was 25 years old. And it gave me so much relief I started writing each year. Over the years it has helped so many others reflect on their life , and so I started sharing my birthday retrospect. Today as I leave my 30s and enter my 40s I printed out all my birthday blogs from the last decade. A decade of life. An entire decade of twists, falls, struggles – documented! A lot of tears have been shed in the last 24 hours as I read and remembered the last decade . 30 year old me – darling girl. Married, living in a rented home, working for a multispeciality corporate hospital. Oh girl ! In 10 y

  Happy 40 th Birthday to me! This year we are going a little Meta and Woo. Did you know that in Various scripts and in astrology the turning of 40 has a lot of significance? Some spiritual teachers call it the ‘Portal’, I want to call it the Transformation arc. Why do I call it a transformation arc rather than an ‘upgrade’ or ‘upleveling’ ? It is not about one half of your life being better than the other half, it is about The journey that the protagonist takes in his lifetime. So imagine any Movie, book or story telling – we begin with the protagonist being a workaholic and by the end he is carefree and chooses living over work (Hrithik in Zindagi na milegi dobara). If the character starts of as a carefree person, then by the end of the story he is a man driven by his mission and purpose ( Hrithik in Lakshya) . That is what is a transformation arc. Every good story has a character arc- think Sholay, Titanic, harry Potter, lord of the rings. The Hero’s or Heroine’s journey. Infact