All of us feel the need to be loved, to be cared for, be it a human or an animal. Humans express their feelings, not all pets do, but even they have their own ways of expression, maybe they just answer to your call when you call them or talk to them. I'm not referring to animal obedience here, but to the feeling of being wanted or needed.

In North India, crows are considered to be the bearer, or attender of Lord Shani .It is believed that you should feed crows to please the Lord and ward off harm. My mom being an ardent devotee of Shani Maharaj  took to feeding crows. She would place bits of bread on our kitchen window sill of our second floor apartment and call out to the wanderers of the sky with the sound of "khao,khao". It was weeks before one finally turned up to eat, snatched the food and flew away. But she kept calling out and it wasn't long before they knew that they are being called everyday. So, now they come and sit and eat their biscuits regularly (they are surprisingly choosy about their fooding habits and don't prefer roti in their diets). Sometimes they come and call out to her instead trying hard to imitate the word khao. They don't just come for food, you find them calling just for nothing, mom responds back and blabbers to them as she works, they just sit their watching her work and fly away after some time.

I stand and watch from afar, they fly away when I approach them. I stand and watch and wonder what they feel, what do they think, do they really understand our feelings or is it just basic animal instinct to come for food. Even when mom's away for work, they come to our kitchen calling out for her....

Ever seen the typical Bollywood movies? Where the hero is riding a cool sports bike, the rain whipping down and the heroine sitting pillion, lets her hair loose, allowing her chunni to fly in the wing (O! how sensuous) , she feels the water pouring down on her face, tasting it with her lips...and the scene ends with a hug. And it turns out to be the most romantic of the scenes in the movie and you sit there, chewing gum, imagining - I wish....

Welcome to the real world, where life is not a drama. It was a bright evening, I was on my way to the town on my trusty steed, my aviator, when it started raining cats and dogs ( make that, big cats and big dogs! ). I immediately parked my scooter, grabbed my raincoat and hopped around to get into it in the pouring rain, when these images crossed my mind. Ah! The irony of life. Now, I was back on my scooter trying to sing two lines (in imitation of our dear Hindi movies), but all that you would hear is a gargle :p , you see there was too much water entering my mouth. So, I concentrated on the road, just when I realised I seem to be smiling all the while. My lips curved upwards and eyes squinting hard in an effort to fight that rain and a desperate attempt to see the road which was now a pool of water. My face in imitation of a clown, permanently smiling. The rain no longer felt good, forget being romantic, whipping down hard, it felt like a thousand slaps on the face.

I would say, try that with your girlfriend, and all that she would shout is, "Get home fast, you fool! This is far from romantic!!".

You turn the pages of your album and they suck you into the vortex of memories. Memories sweet, memories sad, memories sweet and sour. Each picture has its own story to tell. You sit there grinning blissfully at the pictures, weaving thoughts of your own, looking at pictures of near and dear ones, and then you 're looking at a picture of your own "little-self". And you start wondering, how fast you've grown up, outliving your care-free days and growing into this young-adult and your past just lives on in your memories right now.

Not just pictures, your memories live in your heart and mind, of moments spent with someone dear, moments of love, of friends and family. And some of those memories are your favourite, sweet and sour, which you often relive in your heart, smiling, crying, its like you feed on them and would never want to let go of them and are eager to weave new dreams into them.

Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose. 

 ~From the television show The Wonder Years