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Hawthorne on the Lake, Kansas - Sandhya Acharya Sandhya is doing MBA in the University of Notre Dame, USA. Reading, writing and music are her passions. She has studied German and is quite conversant with the language. She explains her view of life with - "My friends call me Dream Girl, not because I look like one (As you can see I am hardly a looker), but because I dream a lot. I believe that dreams sustain your today and build your tomorrow." As is evident, besides being talented Sandhya is also modest!

And so I begin one more chapter to my life. Things have been going in turmoil - in my mind and in the events around me. I suddenly have all the time to reflect. At first I am restless with the lack of activity. Sometimes we are so absorbed in the rhythm of activity, even if mundane and meaningless, inactivity scares us rather than relaxes us. I walk alongside the lake in the apartment complex looking at the waters watching it flow so smoothly into a stream over the stones and moss. Time is suddenly meaningless I back up now- and watch.

Staying alone, they say, builds character. The first day, it only seemed to beat my spirits. How important is it to be with others, to be in touch - to know what your loved ones are doing and to let them know what you are doing. To know like a sudden gust of wind, who are actually your loved ones, not bound by flesh or blood but by the strings of your heart? Whom do you muss so much in times of solitude and who is it that misses you? And, so you rejoice in the misery that you cause others. The misery of feeling the absence- the feeling of incompleteness without that someone- or so you hope. For you yourself feel incomplete.

The bird hovers low over the water, darts sharply in , gains some altitude, then darts in again - three or four times and then spreads its wings wide and disappears into oblivion. That's all it knows and needs to know and is blessed not to seek to know more. Ah, do birds ever wonder about the riddle of existentialism, about the purpose of life? Why we are here, what we are to do until we too disappear into oblivion? I wonder.

I hear puffing and panting and look below to see a little creature at my feet. The poodle's name was Duffy. He pranced merrily about where I sat like he had some music playing in his head. A little creature, but so merry. His owner did a quick introduction and ran after the quickly disappearing bob of white. Unconditional love comes rarely to humans. As we love, we expect. We expect to see a name on the mail-list hear a familiar voice when the phone rings. We expect them to say things we want to hear and are impatient when they don't do so. And when our love sometimes goes unheeded and unresponded, we are disappointed. Though the truth stares at us, we sometimes choose to look always hoping that reality will mimic our imagination. Hope that keeps us alive and hope that does not let us realize.

I walk to the stream now, hoping to see my reflection, but what I see is not clear. Maybe if the water were more still and the wind more calm- maybe if my heart were more still and my mind more calm…

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