Learn life from (Part 1)

Learn life from

•    a young widowed mother who toils for her only son
•   an old man who has lost his wife after 40 years of marital bliss and smiles when you wish him a good morning
•    a blind father-son duo who make their living by selling bamboo baskets
•    a child of 2 years who has lost her parents and laughs with all innocence when you give her a chocolate
•    a cancer survivor making most of his remaining life striving to make the society better for next generation
•    a community rebuilding itself after complete devastation due to a natural calamity

Being happy is not that you do not have any problems; it means to put them all behind and smile to say "I can sail through this".

The Child That I Was

The older the wiser; the aged the better understanding of concepts around you. It is sometimes so weird to think of things that you have done as a kid, more so sometimes even disgusting when an elder in the family discloses something nasty from the past in an all grown up cousin gathering.

I know of a kid who in her third or fourth standard of her school hated one of her classmates. She does not remember why, but she hated him to an extent that every day when her mother asked her to throw away the nirmalyam (flowers offered to God the previous day) in a place nobody would stamp on, she used to choose the same place every day and imagine it to be the boy’s grave and offer flowers to it. The kid was none other than me!

I feel crazy and weird as to why I did it, but I do not have an answer!

P.S:  Nobody knew about this until recently I told this to a friend of mine only to be called a lunatic.

Life - Part 2

Life is unfair to some people and more than fair for most of the masses. As my brother told me once, the irony of two people on a bicycle and a scooter is that even though the person on bicycle works harder than the other person, he never gets past him. Such is life. And as is, many people come into your life to be there for a period of it and just vanish in thin air as if they never existed. And some to leave a lasting mark and few you never knew existed as a part of your life. 

I usually buy fruits from a street vendor rather than from the supermarket just opposite to where she sits. When I went to her the other day after a long time, she inquired why she had not seen me for long and I explained her that I was out of the station. After the usual purchases, she paused a little before taking the money from me and looked at me expressionless. She showed me her thumb and told me that she had cut herself earlier in the day when she was trying to cut open a jackfruit. I looked at her with sympathy and could offer only a few words to be careful and took leave from her.

On my way back, I could not give up imagining about the closeness the vendor displayed. I see her once in a week or so or sometimes once in a month or so. I was surprised by her friendliness. (She usually chooses what I should buy!). But I was ashamed of myself for not having the presence of mind to buy her a band-aid from the shop a little distance away.

Are you missed?

All of us are so used to our environment that we hardly tend to notice the inanimate things around us. We live oblivious to the nature of how they try connecting with this. By inanimate, I mean all those living and non-living things around us, people excluded. The other day, when I was on my usual evening walk in a park nearby, I noticed a vacant space in its corner. Though I instantly recognized there was something missing and it was not a usual sight, it took me a minute and a half to realize that there was a huge tree and had been cut. Although the thought why it was cut came on my mind, the thought that I will miss it and most importantly, will the inanimate things too miss you if you are not around predominated my mind. 

Books- Companions For Life

“A Dog is a man’s best friend”, said someone. I do not know, because I do not own one nor have I fancied owning one. “Books are the windows to the world”, said another. I agree because I am in love with them.

I started reading very late (I started at 20, which I realize is late. So many Books, so little time!) But have since then read decently (with over 100 Books to my read list till now). I realized you can just get immersed in your Book and forget the rest of the world as if it did not exist at all. I have many a times missed the places I had to alight from the bus, during my college travelling, missed many a night’s sleep just to complete a Book because I could not put it down. Every Book you read or for that matter every Book that has been published, has taken a great deal of effort for the author to write, get approved and get it published when every ABC claims to be a writer/ an author these days. Every Book teaches you something valuable and kind that you would remember for life (that is if you enjoy Book reading and choose what interests you). A Good Book takes you to a level, place where it is set in. Each book has a story. Yes, it does. Not the story inside it written by the author but the story of its life. An Autobiography in itself. If Books had mouths, then every Book would tell you a story out of which another book could be born.

It saddens me when I ask my librarian for a Good Old Book and he says it might be misplaced because it is a very old one. Not his fault, he goes with the trends. It is also disheartening to see most of the people do not even bother to read Books anymore. With n number of apps, kindle, e-books in the market one can easily access books than finding a library. But believe me; nothing can ever equal the pleasure of holding a hard copy of a Book in your hands and enjoying it. Every time an e-book is downloaded, a Book in a library or a Book store loses a chance of being borrowed or bought.

For those of you who agree with me, try reading more Books. And for those of you who have not read any, please grab one Now and you will never regret it.

P.s:    Books- hard copies

          books-any other modes