[Jan Morrison always manages to get me thinking. This post is inspired by her fantastic post on 'The Core Art', which she posted over at Burrowers, Books & Balderdash. Do head over if you haven't read it yet, but only after spending a minute reading this!]
"Mamma, tell me the story of the monkey that stole your friends' oranges." I oblige.
"Did the monkey peel the orange before eating?" "Yes, it did", I guess.
"And what did the monkey do with the seeds?" "It spat them out", I improvise.
"Did the seeds hit your friend?"
The kids love old stories- new details are added, old ones embellished, the stories evolve, and yet remain the same. They love new stories too.
All these months when the kids have left me no time to write, they have been challenging the storyteller in me. I shouldn't complain, should I?
I couldn't believe my luck when I found the card at an antique store. It was perfect for Christina. The chubby cherubs bearing hearts as plump as them. I could smell the lavender water, hear the rustle of silk. 'To my Valentine', it said. I could picture a lady pausing over the words, wondering which of her numerous admirers had picked the card for her.
It was destiny that put the vintage card in my hand when I was looking for something for Christina. It would add just that touch of whimsy to her stark chrome and glass corner office.
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Catch this, and many other drabbles on the many facets of Love, live and excusive on the Valentine Feature at 'the Burrow'.
A new drabble (or more) every single day in the month of February.
All your favourite drabblers are there- don't miss it!
"When you were in school, were you very good in sports?", my son asked me.
"Not at all."
"But now how are you are winning medals?"
"Because in long races, you get a medal for finishing."
"I also finished my race. And I ran very fast. But I didn't win."
"If you did your best, you are a winner."
"I know. But I wish I had got a medal too."
I gave him my latest medal, and asked him to keep it till he earned one for himself. Maybe that piece of metal will remind him never to give up.
Me grinning after running up a hill I thought I would take many
more months to conquer.
When I wrote about women being forced to give birth at home because they didn't have a lock on their front door, so many of you offered to send locks. The problem is not of locks. If they had locks, they would not have doors to put them on. And if they had doors, they would not have walls to hook those to. The problem is Poverty. And the solution is as simple as alleviating Poverty. Sending locks may not be a solution, but the offer to send locks means all of you care enough to make a tangible difference in whichever way you can. Enough such people can, I believe, make a difference.
But while we look for solutions to Poverty, let us not forget the immediate suffering of people hit by man-made or natural disasters. People affected by political wars. People who are victims of terrorism. People in places hit by earthquakes, cyclones and volcanoes.
Margot Kinberg is putting together an effort called "Do the Write Thing" to help the victims of the recent earthquake that devastated huge parts of New Zealand. She putting together "book packages" of original works autographed by their authors, which would be raffle prizes for people donating to the New Zealand Red Cross. If you are an author who would like to donate a book, could you get in touch with MargotKinberg (at) gmail (dot) com. If you would like to enter your name in the raffle by making a donation to the New Zealand Red Cross, stay tuned to "Do the Write Thing". I know we are all as generous as we can afford to be- now is the time to show it.
[People often tell me they would love to run, but can't. This is the fifth in a series of drabbles which, I hope, will get at least a couple of people who think they can't run, running.]
So you can run for two minutes, and want to run a longer race? Smile! You are almost there- the hard part is getting started, now all you have do is keep at it.
Run-walk-run-walk-run in five minute intervals. That's the key.
Run for one minute. Walk for four. Run for one. Walk for four. Keep doing it for twenty minutes. Running gets progressively harder in each interval, but don't give up.
Rest for a day, then repeat. Rest again, then repeat, but increase the running time by 15 seconds, and reduce the walking time correspondingly.
If sixty seconds make a minute, and sixty minutes make an hour, why does a day have only 24 hours? I am not greedy. While I would love to have 60 hours in a day, I am willing to settle for 30. How much more we could get down with six extra hours every day- time for reading AND running AND blogging.
Am I the only one who wants more hours in a day? If all of us wish it deeply, very, very deeply, do you think the earth's rotation would slow down? Anyone wants to give it a try?
"Who lives in that house?", asked my five-year old, pointing a minaret lit up for Eid.
"God!", I answered, not wanting to get into the details of who's god it was.
"But that's not possible", said he. "God cannot live there."
"Why not?", I asked, bracing myself to give him a watered-down version of how all religions worship the same God, regardless of the architecture of the place in which they do so.
"Because", he said simply, placing his porgy hand on his heart. "God lives here."
How much nicer the world would be if everyone thought as he did.
When is a lock not a lock? A lock cannot be a lock unless there is no door to put it on. A lock isn't a lock when it is an offensive weapon to throw at burglars, instead of defending your house from them.
A lock is something I take for granted. As I do a door. But there are women who cannot go to a hospital even in case of a complicated labour, because the shanties they live in don't have doors, and they cannot leave their home unguarded.
A lock could be the difference between life and death.
"I'm bored." "Why don't you do some colouring?" "Okay. I want my paints." "I didn't bring paints. How about crayons? Sketch pens? Colour pencils? Okay, just stay bored."
"That's my toy." "No, mine." "Mine!" "Mamma, make him give me my toy." "Just try." "Why did you throw the toy down? Why?" "No, don't pick it up. Thousands of millions of germs."
"Don't stare." "Why not?" "It's not polite to stare." "I am bored." "Read a book." "You got all stupid books."
Sometimes I find it hard to believe there was a time when I loved travelling. A time before kids!
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Catch this, and many other drabbles on the many facets of Love, live and excusive on the Valentine Feature at 'the Burrow'.
A new drabble (or more) every single day in the month of February.
All your favourite drabblers are there- don't miss it!
On our windowsill we have a two week old custard apple fruit growing on a plant which doesn't look strong enough to take its weight. Three years back, the plant was in a seed which my son planted after consuming the fruit. I never expected it to germinate, much less to bear fruit. But against all odds, it did. I know the birds are unlikely to let us taste the fruit, but who cares? We have a fruit-bearing tree.
What's amazing is that none of the saplings we bought survived. Who can tell what will take root and what wouldn't?
_____
"Don't bring it up, at least not now", I advised a friend who thought he was being grossly underpaid. He was upset because others less experienced than him were earning more, and refused to see reason when I told him that he was getting more than he would in any other organization.
He demanded a rise. Pretended he had a competing job-offer, and threatened to quit if that fictitious salary was not met. The organization was looking for an excuse to fire him, so told him to take up the other offer.
If you did indeed go for a run, you would have discovered muscles you never suspected existed. If, twenty four hours after your first run, you are able to walk without wincing in pain, you are either Super(wo)man, or lying about not being a Runner.
If you are rudely woken up from a deep slumber, wouldn't you be grouchy? That's what you have done to your running muscles. The pain is necessary part of getting them working. Embrace the pain.
Work those muscles again however lightly. If you don't, you'll only have to go through the pain all over again.
At a traffic light I saw her. A young girl dancing joyously to a tune only she could hear. A bright pink scarf thrown over her school uniform, she twirled gracefully dragging everything around her into her whirlpool of joy. If it were a movie, colours would have radiated from her form, painting the monochromatic scene in rainbow hues.
I watched mesmerized. So this was what joy looked like.
She sensed my eyes on her. Suddenly conscious, her movements lost their fluid grace. She was just another child.
I finally understood what it means to "Dance like Nobody is Watching".
"Do you know a heart has four rooms?" "It does?"
"Yes. And blood goes from auricle to ventricle. But it doesn't go from right room to left room." "Wow, I never knew that. Who told you?"
"Teacher! But you know something, teacher doesn't know anything." "Why?"
"Because she showed us a heart, and it didn't even look like a heart." "Maybe that is how a heart really looks."
"Then why does a heart has two round round on top and pokey-pokey at the bottom? Is that a different kind of heart?"
I shrugged. It is impossible to satisfy seven-year olds.
Boy meets girl. They fall in love. They want to get married. Their families object. Society tries to pull them apart. Their plans to run away fail. She consumes poison. He shoots himself. She's taken to hospital, but gives up the fight. In an afterlife, they are perhaps united.
A tragedy from Shakespearian times? No, it happened yesterday in India. The Hindu boy and the Muslim girl decided to end their lives to coincide Valentine's Day.
Instead of trying to ban people from celebrating Valentine's Day, why can't politicians try to change society, so lables cease to have any meaning.
"Shhhhh", she said, adjusting her lenses. I looked at her absorbed in her work- that is one of the things I love most about her. Her total concentration, even on something as commonplace as a dandelion. The seeds scattered. Her shutter clicked continuously. She checked the images on the viewer.
"Darn, missed it again by a microsecond", she said straightening up. She turned her heart-shaped face to mine. "You were saying?"
"I love you", I said, slipping my arms around her waist. The moment had passed. I had a lifetime to pop the question.
_____
Catch this, and many other drabbles on the many facets of Love, live and excusive on the Valentine Feature at 'the Burrow'.
A new drabble (or more) every single day in the month of February.
All your favourite drabblers are there- don't miss it!
From a distance the two trees looked like one. The smaller, light green leaves of the Neem, merging with the larger, darker coloured leaves of the banyan. The branches were intertwined- locked together in a divine embrace. They were one, it would be impossible to tear them apart. And yet, though close together, their trunks stood apart, maintaining their separate identities.
The Neem tree is a manifestation of the Mother Goddess. Her consort, Shiva, is said to reside in the trunk of the Banyan tree. Were those two trees a representation of their Union? Did they personify a successful marriage?
[People often tell me they would love to run, but can't. This is the third in a series of drabbles which, I hope, will get at least a couple of people who think they can't run, running.]
There is only one way to start running- Start Running!
Slip on your most comfortable trainers, walk for five minutes, take a deep breath, and start running. Pick a speed not too much more than your walking speed, and run.
Let your mind wander out of your body and observe you running. Marvel at how your hands and legs remember exactly what to do. Keep running as long as you can.
If you last 20 minutes, you are already a runner. If 2 minutes is all you can do, you are exactly where I was five months before my first half-marathon.
"Plucked my brinjals and had katarika tohayal and pongal for breakfast", said a friend's status update. I was jealous. Not because I particularly like the tangy brinjal dish, but because my friend lives in an apartment like mine, and if he can grow his own veggies, why not me? I thought I did not have space for any more pots, but when I looked again, I realized I could perhaps pack them a little closer and squeeze in two more pots.
Maybe someday, this basket of veggies would have been grown on my window sill. Dreaming costs nothing, does it?
I was thrilled when I won a personally autographed copy of Margot Kinberg's book B-Very Flat in a contest. Her blog, Confessions of a Mystery Novellist, has reintroduced me to the pleasure of reading well written crime fiction, and the only reason I hadn't read either of her books was because even the online bookstores in India didn't stock them. When I finally held the book in my hands, I wanted to drop everything and dive into it, but managed to resist the temptation till I finished the book I had then been reading.
The wait was worth it. Within moments of opening the book, I was drawn into the story of music student, Serena Brinkworth. Beautiful, rich and talented, she could have been someone you admired from far, but didn't really want to get close to. Instead, she turned out to be a very nice person, who genuinely cared for others and often went out of her way to help them. You knew she was going to die, but kept hoping she would not, and when she actually did midway through the book, all you wanted to do was to find the murderer and see that justice was done.
Margot knows more about crime fiction than anyone else I know. She is also a mistress of crafting a mystery story in the tradition of Dame Agatha Christie. There was a range of very diverse suspects, each with a unique and very plausible motive to murder. Which of them actually did it was the question. The story followed Dr Joel Williams, a professor of Criminal Justice (and teacher of Serena's lover) as he sifted through the evidence to find out which of them actually also had the means to commit the crime.
Since you know that Margot is too much of a student of the classic whodunit to cheat the reader by withholding clues, it was relatively easy to sniff out the red herrings, and nab the culprit pages before the investigators. But that only added to the allure of the book.
The book is written in an easy to read style that draws you in, and keeps you floating along with current. Each of the characters is well deliniated and multi-dimensional- whether you like them or not, you feel you known them. Best of all, through Serena, her lover and one other character, Margot tackles a topic that most writers tend to keep away from, and does it with great sensitivity.
Overall, a book I enjoyed reading, as much as I do her daily blog posts.
I am sure most of you have already read the book, but if you haven't, do yourself a favour and get hold of the book at the earliest.
____ Disclaimer: Margot sent me the book, but it was not in anticipation of a review. I reviewed the book, because I loved it, and I want more people to enjoy it as much as I did.
If I have done it right, the book trailer should show up here -
My root canal treated molar seemed jinxed. First the filling fell off, then a part of the tooth chipped away, and two days back, almost the entire tooth broke off. The dentist wanted to save the tooth, but an X-ray showed two pin tips embedded in the tooth. Sooner rather than later, they would have got infected and spread to the entire gum.
I had cursed my luck when my tooth fractured. But now I am glad it did- the problem was caught before it became one.
And I hope that after extraction, my dental problems come to an end.
_____
Annabell is beautiful. Huge masses of golden hair. Blue eyes fringed with long lashes. Red lips shaped like rosebuds.
Annabell is My Human's favourite doll. She sits daintily on a shelf well above the chaos of the Nursery, and is brought down only on special occasions.
I am jealous of Annabell. I wish I were beautiful. Then I would be My Human's favourite doll. Her friends would admire me, not Annabell.
But when My Human puts her arms around me at night, I forget everything. So what if I am missing half my fur- every hair has been loved off.
_____
Catch this, and many other drabbles on the many facets of Love, live and excusive on the Valentine Feature at 'the Burrow'.
A new drabble (or more) every single day in the month of February.
All your favourite drabblers are there- don't miss it!
"Don't worry about your kid. Allow him to have a happy childhood. We'll take care of his studies", my second grader's teacher told me. I was more than happy to take her advice.
Till I found his grades slipping. Till I found him struggling with basic concepts. Till I came to know that other kids have tutors giving them extra coaching at home.
The story is no different in government-run schools. Teaching is so bad, even people who can't afford it need to send their kids to coaching classes to get educated. Is that how education is supposed to be?
"What did you do during the holidays?" "I went to China!"
[to me]"You went to China and never even told me?" "I had fun in China."
"What did you do there?" "I learnt kung fu and I played with the pandas!"
"And Mamma let you do that?" "I didn't go with Mamma, I went with Lalit*."
"Who is Lalit?" "My best friend. In school. He is a kid, like me."
[to me]"How could you allow such a young kid to go to China alone."
Should I smile at the gullibility of adults, or admire the imagination of my five-year old?
[This fantastic post of Margot Kinberg got me articulating my pet peeves]
Those glasses left on the dining table, which will miraculously sprout legs and trot to the kitchen sink. That habit of saying, "Poor kid. Maybe he is not hungry. Don't force him", when I am trying to get a stubborn kid to finish his meal. Telling me he doesn't need a blanket before I go to bed, then stealing mine and leaving me shivering in the cold.
I know I am far from perfect. I know I have my own quirks which could irritate just as much as any of those things. Why then do these things upset me so?
_____
"Teacher asked us to write stories today", my seven year old told me. "And she said my story was the best in the class."
I asked to see it, and he proudly handed me his battered notebook. Spelling mistakes and grammatical bloopers were generously sprinkled all over, but the story was compelling. The outcome was predictable, the ending was not.
After winning, the good car didn't gloat. He went across to the bad car and said, "Win, lose, it doesn't matter. What matters is that you work hard."
