Afternoon tea vol. 3

(photo by the lucky files on flickr) Sitting by the window & enjoying a late afternoon coffee.

There is something about solitude which attracts me greatly, i can let my defenses down, I can put on my favorite music & tackle all the stuff I need to finish.

Perhaps it was the 5 years of having always to smile & make small talk with the people around me that makes me shun social engagements these days.

And especially lately when the blues have hit me hard... from the people around me.

There is this thing about human nature that prevents us from feeling happy for someone when we are feeling down. I suffer from that too. But when all my friends are at stages in their lives where they are not happy professionally or in love or with their families, it really brings me down & makes me feel guilty & I dont want to feel that way.

Oh but you have a perfect life, they say. I don't. I am far away from my family & my country. I deviated from what society expects of me based on education & background, & I paid the price for my decisions. But instead of focusing on the glass being half empty, be happy that at least you still have half a glass.

A phone call from home perks me up instantly, fresh flowers make me smile, sending my purses overseas fill me with happiness, discovering a new restaurant excites me, unexplored cities fuel my wanderlust... in my own ways i try very hard to find something to smile about & to be thankful for everyday.

It's not easy if you are naturally pessimistic like me.. But if you don't want to make this effort... then can you say you deserve to be happy?

Afternoon tea Vol. 2

Having my afternoon tea & thinking of Proust's In Search of Lost Time which has a beautiful paragraph on how the taste of a piece of madeleine brought back a whole host of childhood memories.

In English:

"And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane. The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it; perhaps because I had so often seen such things in the meantime, without tasting them, on the trays in pastry-cooks' windows, that their image had dissociated itself from those Combray days to take its place among others more recent; perhaps because of those memories, so long abandoned & put out of mind, nothing now survived, everything was scattered; the shapes of things, including that of the little scallop-shell of pastry, so richly sensual under its severe, religious folds, were either obliterated or had been so long dormant as to have lost the power of expansion which would have allowed them to resume their place in my consciousness.

But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken & scattered, taste & smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; & bear unflinchingly, in the tiny & almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection."

Beautiful isn't it?

afternoon tea Vol. 1

In the depths of winter, i wandered along the Left Bank and found tucked away near Notre Dame, a gem of an english bookshop.

I had a chat with the guy manning the till, and he told me it was founded in 1951 and that aspiring writers could stay there above the bookshop and write to their hearts' content.

The place was crammed with English books, both new & used. Everywhere you turned, there were books. I must have stayed there for 2 hours, just reading and browsing.

Up the rickety stairs I go & we come to the smoky reading room. All the books are wonderfully old and not for sale, only for reading.

Happy bookworm. Being in the presence of books makes one very happy i think. I don't think I could ever be friends with someone who didn't like to read.

A little dark alcove where you can sit & type out letters.

And for those looking for a little respite, a wonderfully worn bed/sofa where you could sit & read or write. Heaven, isn't it?

And of course, a piping hot earl grey in my favourite tea-room in Paris, while relishing my books. Bliss xxx