What do the following have in common?

3 pieces of Starbucks Marble Cake with our favorite lattes
A bag full of books ranging from Archer to Coelho
2 spanking new "CHICAGO" tee-shirts
Dinner at the O'Hare Macaroni Grill

Yup...a 20 hour layover at Chicago's ORD enroute to Toronto, but unlike our bags we never made it to Canada !!!

Instead on a warm and sunny Friday afternoon in June we found out that the houses around the Quad City Airport of Moline IL, are really pretty and one could be asked to land there when a voice from the cockpit says...." well ladies and gentlemen, looks like we are not going to Chicago, coz no one's home.. there is a storm over ORD upto 60,ooo feet and they have evacuated the the control tower, no idea when they are coming back and we certainly don't want to crush all that steel do we?" Hell NO !!.. why crush steel, I ask you !!! This was not our first choice tho, we would have done Peoria had a bunch of other airplanes not plonked there already. Making circles in air can be quite entertaining if u are doused with Dramamine like yours truly.

In a nutshell that was our weekend. Neel and I were looking forward to going to Toronto to meet his brother and his family after over 6 years, but providence had something else in store and we ended up becoming intimately familiar with the American Airlines Terminal at Chicago's O Hare airport, gates, G, H, K, .. we know it all.. we know where the baggage claim offices are, which television monitor gets updated first, which Starbucks has the best "tall soy iced latte with hazelnut", which Hudson News sells the Iphone Charger, that the Embassy Suites and Double Tree Airport Shuttle is the SAME DAMN BUS and stops at DOOR 3 and NOT DOOR 2 like the AA lady told us !!! and that my favorite Burberry perfume is NOT available in the Terminal 3 Duty Free Store !!! and who was it that said " a little knowledge is a dangerous thing???"

But I digress, after the initial disappointment of knowing that we will not be hearing the strains of "oh Canada" this weekend and making a decision to return to SLC on Saturday, my sis in law ensured we were reserved at the Embassy Suites, we began the lovely process of getting our flights rescheduled to the earliest available ones. Of course each passenger is treated with utmost courtsey even when they may want to fly into the eye of the storm, the TSA and the AA folks have to say things like.. "umm.. we will not be taking off from O Hare Ma'am, the lightning won't permit, see those yellow lights on the tower, when they flash, you could be toast..."

Standing in line one meets a young kid on his way back from Afghanistan, fresh in his army fatigue waiting to go home to meet his uncle before the latter takes off to a war zone. You meet business travellers who missed their connections by 2 minutes and have been stranded over a day because there are no rental cars and they are just 4 hours away from their families. You meet people who still don't carry cell phones and their families are at a loss of not knowing where they are. Somehow human nature draws us closer at times of misery, or maybe innately we rejoice inside when we know someone else is worse off.. the lines seem shorter and frustration gives way to humor and after a couple of hours, you are happy with any boarding pass, as long as it says you get to go home.

And we did make it back safe and sound this morning and the Wasatch Front never looked that amazing as our flight gently landed in the middle of this misty rainy Saturday morning at SLC. Looking back, I will remember this weekend wistfully I guess, simply because I LOVE AIRPORTS. I love the energy of the people around as they are all focused about getting to some destination. I love the funny moments you share with strangers who you will never cross paths again. I love the kind wishes and blessings you receive from people you may have been privileged to help. I love knowing that Neel and I could have grumbled through a bad day, instead chose to make the most of it and laughed thru it all.

... the marble cakes, the lattes and talking to loved ones help...as does good old fashioned reading. Coelho's Brida finding her soulmate or the love of the "old sames" in Lisa See's Snow Flower and the Secret Fan, nothing helps you escape more from the mundane than a good book... and this weekend gave ample opportunities to rouse the literary senses.

And yes, the biggest lesson learnt.. NEVER EVER EVER CHECK your bags unless they are BIG.. our 2 little always-carry on's are gallavanting around some baggage carousel somewhere in some some city.. hope they make it back home .. Neel's Ogio is quite a good little bag.. by my Hilfiger with the swivel wheels is just like me.. totally scatterbrainy with a penchant for adventure and aiports.. hope it comes home one of these days with my camera and muscle relaxants intact !!!

radiance of a thousand splendid suns in a woman's heart....

Yes , I just finished Khaled Hosseini's second masterpiece and I am at cross roads of trying to pen down what the pages made me think and feel. Interestingly, I still haven't completed the Kite Runner but this one, I couldn't put down for a second. The first thing that strikes you about the book is the fact that it is the story of the lives of 2 women amidst a battered Afghanistan, spanning several decades, but more importantly, it is a story written by a man, completely from a woman's perspective. This is even more striking when you realize that this is the same author who made his readers' eyes sting with the accounts of "Baba Jaan" in the Kite Runner.

I am in no way qualified to critique this masterpiece but I don't want to lose the essence that it left me in me today. As one reads the book, one is made brutally aware of the atrocities that are lashed out on women in different levels of society in different ways. One feels a sense of revulsion towards fundamentalism in all its forms. One is apalled at how close to truth, some of these pages probably are. Yes, the storyline speaks to one geographical area and one socio-political community, and yet as I went through the pages, the paragraphs that left my face moist with tears were not the ones that shouted atrocities, rather the ones that would resonate with any woman today, in any part of the world, in any community, in any faith.

Whether it was the unshed tears of an incomplete love story, or the sorrow of a woman to lose her child even before the little one made an appearence in this world; whether it was the joy of the same woman to find opportunities where she could be a mother in ways that completed her very existence without ever giving birth; whether it was that friend who would kill for you; that friend who would die so you could live your dreams; at the end of the day this was a story of the best and worst facets of human relationships. No one is without frailties, least of all a woman, and yet what makes you look in awe at the 2 principal characters in the book is their very imperfection; their inability to probably fight their circumstances and yet their ability to be the best they can be.

Anthologies have been written through history about the "fairer sex", the "weaker gender", the "opressed lot" etc. Both literate and educated women all over the world have stood up to fight for their sisters, for the wrong and right causes, with the wrong and right means. Repetition of what women have to go through seems as pointless as meaningless. This book inspires at a very different level. It makes you look at reality head on, makes you lock eyes with the most brutal beast that can get you down, some call it fate, some call it circumstances, I call it my reflection in my mirror. You truly are your own worst enemy if you let that reflection determine your image rather than the other way around.

Laila and Mariam - the 2 principal characters in the book, didn't live, they merely existed, but somehow in all that they went through, their spirit shone with a radiance that can only be a gift of the Divine. Yes, they are characters from a work of fiction, but as I started to look around me, I realized I have the privilege of knowing a lot of women who may not suffer the physical adversities that Laila and Mariam did, but mentally they could have been reduced to a shell of a human being. Yet these women not only survived but have done so with pride, dignity, with their heads held high. We call them by different names, mothers, sisters, friends, aunts, grandmothers etc. They each had a cross to bear, and for some reason it was not a burden, rather a gift from Above.

Look around you, there are women whose faces remain hidden either behind make up or smiles, behind twinkling eyes or an infectious laugh... and if you looked really closely, you would find, they cry a silent tear when no one is looking, they sigh wistfully when no one is around, they wonder about their "what-ifs" in a moment of solitude, and yet when life takes over, they shine with the brilliance of a thousand splendid suns....