Category: Random Thoughts

Posted in Random Thoughts, Twisted fairytales

Pre-judice

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Recently, my daughter asked me to check whether it was really Johney Flynn 👦 who drowned the cat 🐈(Ding-Dong-Bell-Pussy-in-the-well fame). All of a sudden, I started wondering how we can be sure of certain facts told in Nursery Rhymes.

I mean, the cat 🐈 could certainly not tell who threw her in the well and this Johney Flynn 👦 doesnot seem like a I-cannot-tell-a-lie kind of person. So, it is simply Tommy Stout’s word against his. Yet, through the centuries of this rhyme’s existence (first recorded in 1580 AD), we continue to blame him for being ‘a naughty boy who drowned a poor pussy cat’. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was bullied as a cat drowner and grew up to be an emotionally defunct serial-cat-murderer, seeking revenge for the unjustified blame.

Similarly, people speak of Humpty Dumpty 🥚 as a careless egg who sat on a wall and fell. Nobody cared to explain why king’s horses 🐎 and men 👮 were involved in trying to put it together. Was he a kin of the king? Was he a victim of a conspiracy? Did someone push him off the wall?

And what about Jack and Jill 👫? How did they fall? How can we merrily sing about someone breaking their head 🤕?

All these questions have taken away my faith from all the nursery rhymes I have ever read. I fear a conspiracy behind every story now. I am scared someday someone will tell me that Santa Claus 🎅 doesnot exist…

Posted in Random Thoughts

Dressed Up To The Nines

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

I really had to share this. Please read the entire series.

sammicoxwriter's avatarSammi Cox

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

This is the seventh part in an ongoing serial I’m writing. To read from the beginning, click here.

‘So what you been doing for two hundred and fifty years?’ Damon asked his brother.

Crispin shrugged. ‘You know…stuff.’

‘What sort of stuff?’

‘You know,’ Crispin repeated. ‘Same old, same old.’

Damon was about to sigh, when he realised he wasn’t particularly interested in hearing what Crispin had spent the last two and half centuries doing. No doubt it was nefarious. No doubt some of it at least, was criminal.

They fell once more into silence, though it could hardly be described as companionable. Yet it wasn’t too long before the sound of rattling could be heard somewhere amongst the gravestone to their right.

Damon halted and peered into the gloom and a moment later the cause of the noise became apparent. ‘Oh no,’ Damon whispered.

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Posted in Random Thoughts

Recycling Stories

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Resuse, Repurpose, Recycle is the rage of the day. It is fashionable to paint stained T-shirts, cut old socks into mittens and carry the old, ‘vintage’ bag your grandmother received on her wedding day while sporting the latest shoes (that needed a home loan to buy) to eat out in restaurants that were once aeroplanes. I am supporter of recycling old stuff to save the environment.

But my daughter has taken the ‘Resuse, Repurpose, Recycle’ phrase to another level. I had once shared her story where Lambert, the Sheepish Lion was repurposed to be Lamabert, Hippoish Hippo.

After creating several versions of the story (Lambert, The Sheepish Crocodile, Lambert: The Wolfish Lion, Lambert: The Sheepish Hippo), she stopped and I sighed with relief. I am not the one for plagiarism. Now, she has taken a similar approach for a Hindi kids song, “Aaj Mangalwar h“.

Original plot: A mouse gets ill on a Tuesday and goes to doctor. The doctor gives him injection and he cries in pain, “Ooi, Ooi, Ooi”.

First day she asked me to replace the story with another animal, I got creative, using a Giraffe, I built a story where Giraffe, being too tall, could not find shelter on a rainy day and fell ill. His mom took him to the doctor. The doctor tried injection but it broke. So, he gave him a medicine and Giraffe became well.

Big mistake! Now my daughter asks me to build stories around the same plot, using:

  • Different animals: Rats, Rabbits, Giraffe, Lion, Sloth, Elephant, Beaver, Crocodile, Fish, Swan…∞ (infinity)
  • Different relations: Mom ill, Baby ill, Father ill, Sibling ill…∞
  • Different diseases: Fever, runny nose, runny stomach…∞
  • Different causes for the diseases: Bad weather, playing in rain, over eating, stomach infection, swimming too long…∞
  • Doctors of different species
  • Different forms of medication

The idea is superb since the combinations are endless but it is a blow to my creativity.

Once, when I retaliated and declined to honour the request for these stories, my daughter decided to humour me by telling me the stories herself. In one of them, she gave 100 injections to a lizard baby.

I feel for the lizard baby and wonder if she survived the wrongful detainment and the horrific treatment. Nobody deserves that, even in imagination. As the diseases and their treatments become more graphic, I am praying this fetish passes soon before we get a notice from PETA…

Posted in Random Thoughts

Little Things | Shaily Agrawal

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Hey All! My piece was published on Whispers and Echoes eMagazine.

sammicoxwriter's avatarWhispers and Echoes

I had always been like that–

Building shrines

For dead butterflies,

And visiting

With the freshest flowers.

You had been like that too,

Loving me for little things,

Until you grew up

And I didn’t.

Shaily Agrawal is a small-town Indian and a working mother. Her skewed perspective is apparent through her stories on her blog: https://fishinthetrees.home.blog/ You can read her first short story collection, The Forest Bed on Amazon Kindle.

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Posted in Random Thoughts

Am I Evil?

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Last night around 11, we heard a hair-raising screach of car tyres in the narrow lane outside my house, followed by a loud thud. We ran towards the windows facing the main road. The car had ended against the electric pole across the road.

My first thought was, “Is that a learner who pushed the accelerator too hard? Is he even an adult?”

Smell of burnt tyres filled the air and a whiff of smoke rose from the car front. No one stirred out. The next thought was, “Is he dead?”

As I itched to run out and help them, the family of the car’s passenger (who live at the end of the long lane) ran into the scene. The shouting that ensued confirmed my worst fear–the driver and co-passenger had been drinking in the car. My will to help died right away.

That pole could have been me or my child!

Of course, they have the right to risk their own lives–they can hang themselves from a fan if they want. They don’t have the right over my family though.

The policeman in the area alerted the driver to remove the bottles of alcohol and go home before the police car arrived and checked him for a breath analyzer test. The owner will get his insurance money and buy a new car soon for a repeat performance. Apparently, he’s not new to all this and this drunk driving will go on until someone dies. I hope it is him.

Does that make me evil?

Posted in Random Thoughts

Little Treasures

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

One of my favourite writers, Pete Johnson from Beetley, recently wrote about his tin box and the memories within it.

It reminded me of my own. My treasured tin box holds:

  • Old coins from my late grandmother (1 paisa worth around 10,000th part of a pound, 3 paisa and 5 paisa) that went out of circulation before I was born and have no materay value;
  • A couple of leaves that were birthday gifts by friends with “Happy Birthday, Shaily” and “We Miss You!” written on them in red paint, gifted by two of my friends who were in a village with no access to birthday cards at the time;
  • Beads of a broken bracelet from my oldest friend;
  • The dollar my brother gave me when he returned from Texas;
  • The 1″ X 1″ Philips music player that my parents gave me as a reward for excelling in my MBA first semester (doesnot work anymore, but…);
  • My pen drive that holds my MBA research project (doesnot work anymore, but…);
  • A pair of beloved, well-used and, now, broken earrings that one of my best friends gifted me on my birthday, right before he got down on one knee to tell me that he loves me;
  • A single earring (well used and now deviod of its partner) sent by mail by the same person two years later on our first Valentine’s day apart; and
  • Five capsules, each one stuffed with a miniscule handwritten notes, saying “I love you” from you-know-who on the same day.

Some treasures I am unable to fit inside a tin box.

  • A couple of birthday post cards from Manpreet, my bestie, that have handmade paintings with 100+ “I LOVE YOU” hidden inside the design
  • My copy of Three Men in a Boat that I read too often to bother hide it inside a tin box, only to pull it out the next day
  • The invitation card of my marriage to you-know-who
  • Our daughter’s countless pictures

All of these treasures, except the coins, were acquired after I became an adult. What, do you think, does that say about me?

Do you have any treasure boxes of your own?