... When the storm returns

Tweet

The storm is going away;
I can breathe a while.
The skies are making way
For the storm to leave.

Its deadly arms have lashed
The ground to thousand bits,
It's ghastly, fearsome eyes
Burnt the trees they hit.

I know it isn't over:
I know it's coming my way.
It's only a matter of time
Until the storm returns.

Only a moment's peace,
The relief it will bring,
I'd better start running
Before the storm returns.

The deafening roar of thunder-
Many a nerve has bent;
The storm must have its plunder
Until its rage is spent.

The damage has been done:
I know it's not forever;
But I had better be gone
Before the storm gets here.

My book of poems is now available on Kindle: Lonely Journeys

Memory

Tweet

It's something that we take for granted.
It's something whose existence we forget to remember.
It's something we cannot imagine living without.
It's something that we fail to notice except when we need to rummage it to retrieve and replay an old scene.
But without our memories, we do not exist.

The last couple of weeks I experienced a few alarming lapses of memory - uncharacteristic, I believe. The first instance is all the more alarming because right now, I cannot remember what I had forgotten. I remember saying "How can I forget something like that?!" -- and for the world of mine I cannot recall what it was about.

The second time, I spent two days trying to recollect a name - of someone I once knew so well, someone I had spoken of just last month, someone I had spoken to a few months ago, someone who had resurfaced after a few years' silence, someone whose name is very common & easy to remember. I went through all possible names that start with each letter of the alphabet, but I did not get it. I knew I just had to make a phone call to another person and I would get it in a second - but making that phone call meant I had lost. I did not want to give up - not just yet. Moreover, I did not want my vulnerability thus exposed. 48 hours later, the name just came back to me - calmly and easily as if it had just gone out for a breath of fresh air. (Don't ask how relieved I was.)

The third is another slate wiped clean: I remember receiving the medicine. I remember thinking, I need to keep it so that I will not forget to pack it. Then comes the blackout. I searched all possible places where I could have kept the medicine "safe" but it just ain't there. The medicine that vanished that day has not yet been found.

Motherhood comes with its own share of absent-mindedness. And in my case they did come in droves, in the last 7-8 years. I got used to them, more or less, because the clouds would clear after a while, and the forgotten thing would reappear like that lost name (sometimes they don't, but I wasn't unduly worried). But these instances (and maybe more that I have forgotten about) were a wee bit terrifying.

But if we really think about it, it need not be terrifying or alarming. Instead, what could be alarming is the number of thoughts that cross us in any random five minutes of our life. Close your eyes and analyse the last five minutes and you will know what I am talking about. Is it even natural for a person to have so many thoughts criss-crossing his mind? No wonder some of them slip out, and we could safely tag it as absent-mindedness.

Learning from mistakes

Tweet

Learning from the mistakes of others is like lessons from high school: some are engraved in our hearts, some are forgotten within minutes. All that matters is how well we can put it to paper/practice, when the time (exam) comes.

Hopes and Dreams

Tweet

Don't give me hope
For hope leads to dreams,
Dreams make me wish
And hope for much more.

Wishes are fake, like
Dreams of the dawn,
Goes with the light, when
You're wide awake.

Dreams take my time,
My heart off my work;
They spin off the truth, and
Make unreal yarns.

But dreams make me plod
Through trenches and dirt
In search of my prize
My aim and my hope.


My book of poems is now available on Kindle: Lonely Journeys

Lessons from the Children's Park

Tweet

Everyone gets to play with everything. There's no minimum or maximum age. If you like it, you play with it.

There is no embarrassment, if you cannot hang from the rings or you fell down from one of those things or you are afraid to come down the long, twisting slide. You just give up after a few tries and move on to the next one that you can tackle.

If they laugh at you, you laugh with them.

You hang from the bar and try to rotate a log with your feet. You can't get it right. Then another child comes along, says "that's not how it's done, here let me show you." Then he shows the child and he goes away to something else he likes to play with. There is no excessive show or expectation of gratitude. Who has the time?

The toddler takes a long time to climb the steps of the slide. The bigger ones wait till he scampers up, or they jump up and carefully climb over him, and no one complains.

Sometimes the bigger children help the little ones to play with something that's a little tricky. They don't even think much of it, they don't pretend they have done something magnanimous, and they forget it soon enough.

If the hurdle is too high for you, you crawl under it to the other side and you're happy. Then you jump over a smaller one, and you're more happy.

If you knock a child down in your hurry, you wait a micro-second to make sure he is okay, he isn't screaming, and then you run on. The fallen one dusts himself up and goes on with whatever he was doing. If he screams, you are a little delayed, but nothing else happens.

You applaud in real enthusiasm when you see someone else rising up the bars and hanging upside down effortlessly. "Dude, that was great," you say. And you mean it.

The bigger kids like to swing high in the swing, but when they see the wide-eyed, excited infants approaching the swing eagerly, they just let it go and go climb up the slide instead.

Because everyone gets a chance at the slide.


(Things are a little different when it's a question of a game like Uno or a team game like cricket or football, and it's a post for another day.)

Night birds

Tweet

I remember the night birds
Squealing in their pursuits;
With hours and hours to go
Until the sun arose.

Nights of pain unbearable
Day after week after month,
Minutes passed me by but
The darkness never did end.

I hear now the night birds
Squealing as they did
once, dashing after prey
Or living nights in glee.

They still send up a chill
The screams of the night birds;
Do they know their voices
Are heard and felt by us?


My book of poems is now available on Kindle: Lonely Journeys

Signs

Tweet

There are signs everywhere: signs that inspire you, motivate you; sometimes even those that disappoint and frustrate you. They keeping appearing and disappearing. You miss some, you catch some. One could say they reside in your head. Or you could believe that they were planted before your eyes by someone else.

I have some real ridiculous stories to share, but you're going to call me nuts so I won't. In a few short words, I have been inspired at different times by something I read in the paper (that reminded me of something I had to do), the shape of a shadow in the night (very complicated to explain, but the next day I got an email I was waiting for), a name that keeps popping up (the name of a character in my story), a message or a call at the precise moment (with words that held a deeper meaning), a person who turns up for no reason at all (and said something that made me work harder), things that all of a sudden seem to mean a certain thing, oh the list is endless. Too long to be called a list of coincidences.

Someone once told me that it's merely an 'association' - the signs (as I call them) were there all the time, but only at one point in time would I have made the connection. For instance, I was reading a book, in which the climax was supposed to take place on a certain date in September. I was jolted out of reading and I looked at my calendar. It was a day or two before the date in the book. (Different years, of course.) So if I were reading the book a couple of months later, I would not have even noticed it. I was just associating it with today. A pure coincidence. The name is quite common, it is all over the place, but because I have named my character so, it holds a special meaning to me, and only to me. It's probably just a case of things crossing paths by accident. Get what I mean?

Everyone has them - these short moments when you're startled at something that has tickled your memory; you could choose to ignore them, or take them as signs. I choose to believe they are indicators. Because they inspire me, they motivate me, they encourage me, they make me rise from my seat of procrastination and get something done.

Anything that motivates us must be good. 

Giving credit where it's due

Tweet

The little one turned the basket upside down and began showing off the toys and dolls that fell all around her.
"Now who will clean this up?"
"My mother will."
"Won't you help her?"
"My friend K- always helps my mother to clean up."
"K- sounds like a good child."
The little girl frowned a bit as she pondered over that piece of news, for a second. Then she said, "I help my mother clean up too. Sometimes."
"You are a good child."
A small smile of pride and satisfaction spread across her face.

Everyone loves to be credited for something they did, even though it appears insignificant to others.

If others do not note it, some would be tempted to drop a subtle hint or two. Sometimes not so subtle, sometimes not too casual.
"Oh, I just patted the baby like this and she stopped crying and quietly went back to sleep."
"I initiated it, you know, I went around asking everyone to do it. No one had ever thought of it before."
"It wasn't all me, the team did support. A bit."
"She never used to do it until I told her to."
"I just tried it and was very surprised at the wonderful result."
"Everyone was over the moon about what I did."

Even the ones who say the credit goes to the rest of the world could do with a word of appreciation. And none of us would lose anything by offering it.