SLOW DANCE

Most of my stuff still remains unopened even though almost a month has passed since i moved to Pune from Mumbai. However, i take time to take things out of the boxes as and when i need them. This is not the best way of unpacking yet a comfortable one.

When you talk of moving to a new place , the best thing about is that you come across things which were really important at some point in time but now are completely lost. It is not waste but is almost treated like one. Like old albums of the time when digital cameras hadn't really caught up, the old stamp books or the old diaries where you had scribbled something which sounds so weird to read now. But i am not writing anything weird in this note but just wanted to share a poem which my younger brother Manish had preserved from one of the Hindustan Times edition somewhere in the December of '96. In 2001, i had the same cutting of the newspaper which i found pasted in an old diary. It was in tatters so i had written the whole thing down again in a '01 diary which well, i read after almost 10 years when i found it looking for a book between loads of engineering books and older junk. It is really a beautiful poem which means so much more because it was written by a terminally ill 15 year old girl suffering with cancer. So i am going to reproduce the exact text which was published in Hindustan Times in December 1996.

HINDUSTAN TIMES, December '96

This poem is written by a terminally ill girl in a New York Hospital. It was her dying to wish to send everyone a letter telling them to live their lives to the fullest, which she never did.

SLOW DANCE

Have you ever watched kids on a merry go round?

Or listened to rain slapping on the ground?

Or ever followed a butterfly's flight?

Or gazed at the sun into the fading light?

You better slow down

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short,

The music won't last.


Do you ever run through each day on the fly?

When you ask "How are you?"

Do you hear the reply?

When the day is done, do you lie in your bed

With the next hundred chores running through your head?

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

Don't dance, the music wont last.



Ever told you child, we'll do it tomorrow?

And in your haste, not see his sorrow?

Ever lost touch, let a good friendship die?

'cause you never had time, To call and say "Hi",

You'd better slow down

Don't dance so fast.

Time is short.

The music won't last.



When you run so fast to get somewhere,

You miss half the fun of getting there.

When you worry or hurry through your day,

It's like an unopened gift....thrown away.

Do take it slower,

Hear the music, before the song is over.