We sulk, we fight, we abuse, we hold grudges, we hurt and get hurt only to realize that suddenly the other person doesn’t exist in this world. Gone to the world where there are no mobile phones, no connectivity, no way through which you can even convey anything!

Death’s got nothing to do with age. You could be as young as 20 or as old as 80, when you leave the world is decided by God. But yes, one thing is for sure, you will leave this world and so will your closed ones.

This is coming from losing someone I knew…not very closely but having known those who knew him very closely tells me - life is unpredictable. He left from work, took the car keys from his mom for a night out only to never ever come back home. Little did she know that she is seeing him for the last time and all she is asking from God now is to be able to speak to him one last time. She forgot to tell him how much she loves him. Elder sister who brought him up as a caring mother wonders why did she ever fight with him. Friends who have had lovely memories & crazy nights with him find it weird to believe that he is no more to add to their joy.

The pain of losing a loved one goes beyond words. But what is more painful is not expressing enough love/warmth when he was alive. As long as your body is  functional, use it to tell others how much you love them every minute, every second. They may be irritating, they may get you angry sometimes because of their behavior, they haven’t been able to live up to your expectations but there will be a time when either you will be gone or he/she will be. Only then you realize that I only saw the bad side of the person. Why couldn’t I see how attached I was to him/her and how much you miss the person. 

We all know for a fact that our soul is going to leave our body. And our body is either going to be buried or burnt. Unfortunately even doctors can’t win over God in this case. So why not make the most of the opportunity while we are alive. Forget about others dieing, aren’t you going to die one day? May be the next day or the next minute.

Money, power, fame dies with death. I may be the richest person but I still don’t get the privilege to take even a percent of my wealth as I die. What you leave here are few happy memories. If you have made someone happy today, you have earned millions. If you earned million rupees today and didn’t care about your closed ones, unfortunately you wasted your life. You have none when you die – neither money nor memories.

I don’t know if I have been able to put the message across but let me quote myself from an old note: 

‘Give praises, Give smiles, Give love, Give warmth, Give hugs, Give ideas, Give a helping hand.'

Make someone smile everyday. If you get angry on someone, get calm and think – what if I don’t see this person from tomorrow onwards? You can only get angry when you have some connection with that person. And see how that feels.

Nothing, I repeat, nothing is more valuable than ‘a life’. Please VALUE it. Please love yourself and others. Be kind to yourself and others.

Spread happiness and love. Dump hatred and anger!

For the strangest reason of all, I have never been able to publish anything that’s even remotely personal on my website. And I only realized this recently that how fun is it to read ‘I’ and ‘me’ in a blog post. I bumped into a friend’s profile where she has spoken about her experience meeting a potential groom every week. Before you get any ideas, it’s the arranged marriage circle that she was fixed in.  
 
Thankfully so, she is happily married to a man of her dreams but that hasn’t made her blog any boring. So, I have derived some inspiration from her blog and have sort of convinced myself to go a little personal at this space. 
 
So, I have started anchoring live for a business news channel – ET Now. Eee... that’s professional, not personal! But the hurly-burly that I was going through when I was on the hot seat for the first time, now that’s personal. 
 
The director started by saying...one minute to go. And I was fine and confident till then.. actually until he started counting backwards – 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1 cue... “Hi there, this is Business Saturday and I’m Kamiya Jani. Let’s first take a look at the headlines.” Now, inspite of rehearsing this line almost all my life, I could sense my heartbeat literally beating me hard from inside as if it want to step out.

Thankfully so, I was covered with visuals immediately after that so that helped me hide my fake smile. But that didn’t last for too long. Thirty seconds and I was told ‘cue’ again. This time, my hands shaking in a weird fashion, was that shivering? Oh yes! But did it show? Oh no! Thank God. I had almost forgotten how to feel nervous after school but this experience was good enough to remind of the bad old days.

I went on without paying attention to my dancing hands or shouting heartbeats. And sooner did I realize that I have become indifferent to it. Well, I have no special skills of ignoring what I wish to but the fact that I didn’t have the choice of running away from the studio – helped!

And you know, all of us have been blessed with an ability to find ways of hiding nervousness. Few speak faster, few go extremely slow, few start making weird faces and the rest of us smile too much :p No matter how much the sensex has lost or the global economy is crashing, my smile was my companion through out! Thank god there was no news of an air-crash or a bomb-blast that day.

Doing things for the first time is always very exciting. As much as you want to do it, you want to avoid it too and save yourself from the turmoil. Though I must add - What a lovely experience!

I am told don’t worry about the people in the past. There’s a reason why they didn’t make it to your future. But I am sure there is a reason why they came to your life. After all, nothing happens without any reason. 

Out of the millions of people we meet every day, it’s only a handful that we really connect with. And this number goes smaller as we grow older but the imprints of who we left behind, sometimes, stays with us. It may have gone kaput out of boredom, overload of expectations, betrayal, sarcastic comments, stubbornness or sometimes just being too lazy to keep in touch.

And one fine day, we are reminded of the person out of nowhere. A joke, a song, an incident, clothes or a movie is enough to make you travel to a time you enjoyed the most and perhaps hurt the most. Though, if you forget the latter, going back in time has never been so much fun. To the extent that we are tempted to tell ourselves - Memories play a confusing role. They make you laugh when you remember the time you cried together!

People around us make our lives. Few are with us, few have been left behind and the rest have surpassed us. But a phone call is what it takes to remind the person that – hey, it was fun meeting you on the journey called life.

Tells the other person that joy is with you, ego has been left behind and pride has surpassed you. Make a difference and spread the joy! It’s contagious :-)

I say, a call is what it takes!

Magazines fascinate me. Love the write-ups, the glossy look, full page photographs and the make-overs. Aah, how I wish I was a celebrity!

But don’t be surprised to know that when you really desire for something, the entire universe conspires to realize your wish. No wonder then, Magazine Marie Claire decided to feature me for a ‘Pretty Me’ contest organized by the cosmetic & fragrance brand Elizabeth Arden. Having sent my pictures a month ago, out of nowhere, I get a call from a sweet Parsi girl Sanaya saying she wants to meet me. And the deal was cracked.

A week later, I had a photoshoot at a studio at Grant Road in Mumbai. Now, I am quite used to the video camera and I know what it takes to be able to convince the viewers but for a still camera, well, you just gotta smile!

(In the Making)

(Blush On!)



(Lips that catch everyone's eye)



(The Final Product)



(With the Marie Claire and Elizabeth Arden team)