Posted in My life

Three Humans and Two-legged Crocodile

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

I’m sure a lot of you wonder how I look after growing up, since my current profile picture indicates my mental age, around three years. Well, I’ve decided to share a family portrait, curtsey my daughter, aged three and half…

I am the one on the right.

Please note the striking resemblance. It has a head of hair, two eyes, a nose and a smile, two legs and a hand with fingers. Not sure where the other hand is…probably busy typing this post…

The guy on the left is my husband. Again, please note the striking resemblance: a head with hair (though they look a bit short-circuited and slightly longer than usual but I guess, everyone has weird long hair during COVID-19 year), two eyes, a nose and a mouth, two hands and two legs. Not sure why he is wearing a skirt. He is definitely not a bagpiper…but then, she hasn’t learnt how to draw pants.

The one in the middle is my daughter. Again, note how she is being naughty on one side (probably plucking the feather from the pillows), while keeping an eye on her mum, ensuring she doesn’t get caught!

If you are wondering where the two-legged Crocodile is, he is the faint shadow on the top right trying to hobble into black water on its two legs on one side. As to why it has only two legs, my daughter declined to explain. But she told me that two were more than enough.

I do not question her judgement–she’s a pro. I remember the day I reminded her that her monkey doesn’t have a tail. After a quick thought, she told me its a Chimpanzee. Well, as long as she can defend her point…

Posted in Random Thoughts

Making Up For Lost Time: a Soapy Head, a White Rabbit and a Black-hole Paradox

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Thinking of the White Rabbit and his famous timepiece when “I’m late! I’m late! I’m late!”…

colinmcqueen's avatarGetting On

white-rabbit

My day began, as all my days begin, in the shower and it was not until after I had dressed that it became in any way different. You see, it was then, as I loaded my various pockets with pens, keys and loose change, that I realised that I had not rinsed the shampoo from my hair. A brief look in the mirror told me that much. My hair was sleek and shiny, like it had been steeped in a litre of cooking oil, with white lather gathering ahead of the comb like morons at the front of a bigot’s funeral. Anyway, at that point, I had three options as I saw it. Option one was the obvious one: ignore it – pretend that I had not noticed and simply get on with my day. The obvious choice, but rapidly dismissed. I cannot ignore stuff: stuff nags away at me…

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Posted in My life

Sailor, Ahoy!

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

I’ve never set foot on a ship, but I know how it feels for a sailor to wipe floorboards after a storm.

-Me

My house has a special feature–water harvesting. When it rains and the wind is in the right direction, which is at least once a year, (this year has been rather generous in this regard) the unique technique used in the windows allows maximum possible amount of water inside.

Since my room is the highest room of the tallest tower in the area, the amount of water it can intake can put a Civil engineer to shame (“Why didn’t I think of this? I could have saved riven Yamuna. I should drown myself in this pool.”) I think the architect who designed the house worked with King Akbar in Agra, since a similar water harvesting technique has been used throughout the Agra fort and Fatehpur Sikari fort. The only mistake he made was to forget creating a tank at the bottom to contain the water it collected–such a waste!

So, whenever it rains and the wind is in the ‘right’ direction, the I play the sailor, while my daughter sitting on the bed squeals with excitement and works as the lookout–“Look Maa! Water from that window too!”

I specially remember this night when my daughter was one and there was a storm. Lights went out, the inverter didn’t work, and we lighted a candle. Then the wind moved in the ‘right’ direction and water came in from all of the five huge windows covering two walls.

Suddenly we were sailors of the old times on His Majesty’s Ship in storm. One of my family members had run upstairs to help and together we bailed (wiped) water out of the room, while the Princess was sound asleep in the King’s arms. After five minutes, when it was clear that no amount of bailing/wiping could help, the King ordered us to abandon ship and we took the nearest escape route to the floor below.

Water came to us from all directions, raining down the stairs that led to the roof. It followed us down the stairs in torrents, trying to drown anyone en route. Wet from the water falling from the stairs above, we made it, somehow, to dry lands of the lower floor, leaving all our belongings to fate.

Three hours later, when the rain stopped for a while and the wind took a break, I returned to our room to find it water-logged. It took me three more hours to put out the beds on the roof to dry, and to clean and dry-up the room and the carpet…and get ready for work. No sleep for me that night!

For many years, we have looked for ways to make our room waterproof without sealing the windows (since sealing them will turn the room into an oven) but to no avail. It doesn’t stop me from loving it though.

I fell in love with those huge fancy castle-like windows the day I entered this home for the first time. They gave me the sense of living in a hotel with a spectacular view…mine is that of trees and a field across the road. Well, beyond that there is a water tank and houses, but it is as good as it can get while still living in a city. And then there are birds that knock on my windows so often…

Some inconveniences are worth it…

Posted in Random Thoughts

Answering Socrates: Part 2

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

It was Petra Jacobs who posed these questions to her fellow bloggers in her blog, Inkbiotic. I decided to ponder over….

Do your dreams ever give you inspiration for stories? If so can you describe one that has?

More often than I’d like to admit. Many pieces of my poetry are based in dreams/nightmares. I guess my subconscious is a better writer than my active brain. My vivid dreams of various breathtaking locales and very realistic nightmares create the base for a lot of my poetry.

One of my frequent dream destinations is an ancient temple on a mountain. Not sure what deity or what religion…but it calls to me. It is dark, mysterious and beyond time. I only get to see it from a distance though. Every time, I spend all my time trying to reach it–walking up the mountain road, sometimes trying to persuade my companions that it is worth it but failing, sometimes stuck in the small colorful market that falls in the way wasting precious hours, and sometimes climbing up and down a maze of overpopulated stairs.

I only reached it once. It was just as dark inside, so still don’t know if it has any deity, and it had a lift that took me to the underworld, where ‘life’ was…as usual. Just a little darker due to lack of the Sun.

Do you feel comfortable writing characters of other races/ genders or with extreme experiences you’ve never had? What are your no go areas for characters?

I mostly write stories that are unlike me and have experiences that I haven’t gone through. My characters do not belong to any particular race. I actively avoid describing my characters, so their stories are universal, since my readers come from 40 countries across 5 continents. (I think penguins don’t read WordPress yet).

I have written both from the point of view of Satan and God. So I don’t see any no-go area in Characters.

Have you ever written anything that you wouldn’t write now? What was it and what’s changed?

I never publish anything I cannot stand up for in the future. So nothing yet.

Do you ever work on a style? Or do you simply write and a style happens?

I simply write. I have no particular style in mind except keeping it simple.

How about a genre? Do you always stick to the same one? Is there a genre you’d like to work in, but don’t know how?

Earlier I always stuck to realism. I tried to make my stories as close to the present reality as possible. But later I tried my hand at horror, nature stories, science fiction and mythology. I loved them all. So I’m expanding my horizon. I would like to try classic poetry, but somehow it seems beyond me.

If you’ve written a novel, what was your method? did you plan it all out beforehand with flow charts and lists? Or did you have a vague idea of what would happen and just start writing?

I cannot stick to a story for more than two days in a row. Novel writing is for people with a stronger resolve than mine.

Thank you Petra, for giving me a chance to babble. Yet again.

Posted in Blogging

Writing Tip: How does that line sound?

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

As Instructional Designers, we design instructions. We create courses about how to do certain things, may be run a software, mobile phone, or a crane… To ensure that learners remember the said instructions, we make them easy, and at the same time, interesting and strong, and professional. Formatting words correctly plays an important role in the process. 

Have you ever wondered why a certain line you wrote sounds different than you intend? Somehow it sounds, sharper and angrier? Why the person you sent an email to never saw the link you shared? Or why they are suddenly avoiding talking to you?

Have you been using CAPITAL letters a lot? Or may be boldfaced it with an underline?

Read through the lines below to see the effect of each formatting.

You may leave now and need not come back. (Statement of fact?)

…

You may leave now and need not come back. (Order?)

…

You may leave now and need not come back. (Order?)

…

You may leave now and need not come back. (Angry order?)

…

YOU MAY LEAVE NOW AND NEED NOT COME BACK. (Shouting?)

…

The same sentence sounds different in our mind when formatted differently. While you may be using different formatting to bring certain actions to people’s notice, they may read it as an angry order or shouting. When not meeting a person face to face, people find it difficult to interpret their mood. Make it easier for your audience to understand, by following the formatting rules.

  • Use boldface only to highlight certain words not the entire line.
  • Use underline to show it is a link.
  • Avoid boldface and underline at the same time.
  • Use ALL CAPITAL letters where you want to sound like shouting. (I’d prefer it to be happy shouting, like YEEEEEE! But I leave it up to you.)
  • To bring certain actions to notice, just add a boldface ‘Note’. e.g. “Note: Get this done on priority.”

Please note that ALL CAPITAL is considered both unprofessional and difficult to read. I avoid it all the time, only resorting to it when the shouting out loud emotion cannot be captured otherwise. Even then, I use it only for certain words for emphasis.

I hope it helps. Let me know if you disagree through comments.

Posted in My life

Missed opportunity of being a sloth

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

An excerpt from Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) by Jerome K. Jerome (1889):

“…I had the symptoms, beyond all mistake, the chief among them being a general disinclination to work of any kind.
What I suffer in that way no tongue can tell. From my earliest infancy I have been a martyr to it. As a boy, the disease hardly ever left me for a day. They did not know, then, that it was my liver. Medical science was in a far less advanced state than now, and they used to put it down to laziness.
Why, you skulking little devil, you, they would say, get up and do something for your living, cant you? not knowing, of course, that I was ill.
And they didn’t give me pills; they gave me clumps on the side of the head. And, strange as
it may appear, those clumps on the head often cured me for the time being. I have known one clump on the head have more effect upon my liver, and make me feel more anxious to go straight away then and there, and do what was wanted to be done, without further loss of time, than a whole box of pills does now.”

A friend had gifted me this book 10 years back. I’ve read it end number of times and often go back to it to ponder over the things in life that remain unchanged even after 130 years. This excerpt from the book clearly calls out my present state of mind.

I’ve been a sloth for most of my life. For those of you who are unaware who a sloth is, it is the slowest mammal ever. It spends its life hanging on the tree and eating leaves from the same branch forever, digesting one leaf in 30 days. It’s life is so slow that it grows algae on its coat.

I sometimes feel, while being programmed, my chip got swapped with that of a sloth, the same as Jerome. I could stay in the same spot undetected for hours, reading or painting quietly. I read around 50-100 storybooks/novels in an year, depending on the thickness of the book. Often, my parents didn’t know I was home. Unlike my brother, I wasn’t into sports, didn’t party, didn’t have a social life outside school, and moved my ass only when absolutely required, like when it came to clumps on the head. I didn’t grow algae, but only because my mother forced me into the bath once a day.

Now as a mother, I always have the company of my child who hasn’t started school, and the duties of a mother and homemaker. I enjoy her company, but often miss the opportunity of being a sloth.

Posted in Random Thoughts

Royal News Blackout — beetleypete

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Update on the post: After some digging, one of our fellow bloggers found out that the video is two years old. The prince still refuses to present himself in front of the court. Royal disobedience, it seems!

Originally posted on REDFLAGFLYING: Unless you have seen it featured on Twitter, you will be unaware of a loud protest by a fair-sized crowd outside Buckingham Palace in London today. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F4mlcW7QWk This is a protest against Prince Andrew’s involvement in the trafficking of underage girls for sex, part of the Epstein scandal in America. The…

Royal News Blackout — beetleypete
Posted in Random Thoughts

Song Lyric Sunday – Cyndi Lauper and Matthew Shepard

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

Why do we fear those who are unlike us? Unfamiliar face, unfamiliar race, unfamiliar gender…
What would be a garden with only one type of flowers? An orchestra with only one type of instrument?
How difficult could it be to accept others the way they are?

Maggie's avatar

Welcome back to Song Lyric Sunday. Mine will be short and sweet this week!

This week we have some general words that are used to describe object placement, being Above/Below/Between and hopefully everyone will be able to find a song that utilizes one of these prompt words in the title or in the lyrics.

I wish I could tell you the circumstances surrounding the first time I heard this song, but I cannot. I just know it touched me the very first time I heard it.

”Above the Clouds” was written by Cyndia Lauper, Jeff Beck and Jed Leiner as a tribute song for Matthew Shepard. Matthew was an openly gay student at the University of Wyoming who was beaten, tortured, tied to a fence and left to die in 1998. He later succumbed to his wounds. It is a heartbreaking tragedy.

Cyndi Lauper is a long time advocate of the…

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