I thought inviting my kids, and as a result my ex-wife, on a vacation with my fiancée would help in family bonding.
Now I babysit the kids while they are on their honeymoon.
Hurrrray! 500+ Likes
It feels good to be liked for what I believe.
Thank you to all of you reading my posts. According to WordPress stats, I have 500+ Likes, 592 Visitors, 1600+ Views and 74 Followers.
Thank you to each one of you. Trust me, the fact that you visited my post is enough to make me happy. And letting me know that you liked it is a big deal for me.
I am unashamed to say that some of my posts did not get any Likes. But, it is all a process of learning. Honestly, until the month of June this year, I had 3 Likes in 8+ months and 0 Followers. So… The learning curve is definitely improving in the correct direction.
Let me know if there is anything I could do to improve further.
Now, where is that Pizza again! Cheers! 🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕
Impressive(?) Video
Sometimes some pieces of art leave an everlasting impression on you, specially visual media. I once saw a ‘piece of art’ on internet that influenced me for a lifetime: Taher Shah’s Eye-to-eye.
👁️2👁️ 😱
I am sure all 20-40 year old Indians know about this 5-minute video. If you don’t, consider yourself lucky. 😉
It was something my friends had forced me to watch by trapping me between my desktop and chair. 💻Since one of them was my senior who had to review my work, I believe it was some kind of a payback. 😋 I was in physical pain from the efforts to jump over the desk to avoid the video.
😐😑😶😯😮😵😥😫😨😰🤒🤢
Best part: Taher Shah’s Eye-to-eye is a ‘serious romantic’ song that should not make you laugh. 😵 Only, the guy is seriously in love…with himself…or it seems, since he was the only one in the video and his ‘angel eyes’, ‘mesmerizing eyes’, ‘enchanting eyes’ were featured too many times in the video.
👁️👁️💓 👁️👁 💖 👁️👁 💗
Now, why am I remembering it after four years of the ‘incident’? 🤔 I should have got over the trauma by now, or so I thought until yesterday. 😕
When I sat down to write my blog “Eyes”, I had difficulty concentrating and kept having fits of laughter 🤣🙃 remembering all the words he had used to describe his own eyes (with too much love).
💕💕💕💕💕💕
I also actively tried to avoid using the adjectives he had used for his own eyes. It was rather difficult because when he wrote the song, he definitely had Thesaurus on.
So now, I have a lifetime dearth of adjectives… I will have to learn creating new words… SIGH!
– I am not giving a link to Taher Shah’s Eye-to-Eye because I don’t want to be responsible for a similar fate of another human. But you can look him up on Google at your own risk. You have been warned!
Eyes
Across the crowded room
Alive with mirth,
The siren’s song
Drawing him in
Towards
A certain death…
Full of foreboding,
Beacons in the rough sea,
Warning him in the dark night
Of the dangers of closing in…
Before he is dashed against the rocks.
Stormy like the sea
Pulling him underwater,
And keeping him a prisoner
For a lifetime…
Eyes that sing to him
Across the crowded room.
The End of the World Approaches (Again?!)
Hi, I am rebloging one of my older pieces from my earlier site. Apologies to those who already read it.
In 1999, the daily news was filled with a number of ‘apocalypses’ headed our way: Asteroid impact, Pole shift, Nuclear holocaust, the Last Judgement and so on. I and my friends in school wondered whether we should spend all our saved pocket money in case we die the next day. Others contemplated the worth of studying for exams if, hopefully, we were dying anyway. The year went without the promised relief.
Then came Star-holocaust and the year of rising of Christ in 2000, Nibiru collision in 2003, nuclear war in 2006… There were some real catastrophes during these years, Tsunami, Typhoons and floods, but no one predicted those. In 2012, all the apocalypses promised for many years made a reappearance: Nibiru collision, Pole shift and Continent break-away, Galactic alignment, Solar storms, the Last Judgement… Again, I wondered whether I should trust them and spend my considerably larger savings.
I had reasons.
In 2006, a jyotishi (astrologer) predicted that I will die soon. I survived this personalised prediction though and had to complete LL.B.
Then, in 2008, another couple of jyotishis said that I should have died already and wondered how my stars saved me! Surprise! Then, they suggested pujas for an entire year to change my stars. (I wonder why, when they were also keeping me alive!) For six months, I followed the rigid daily schedule of pleasing various stars religiously (literally!) until I had had enough and decided that I would prefer dying instead and skip MBA exams. I am still alive though!
Hence, I couldn’t trust these people in 2012. What if I had to live at a night shelter in Delhi after spending all my money?
Someone I know was foretold to die at 50. Dreading the day ever since, he has planned life accordingly—doesn’t spend on himself, saves entire money for his family’s future and strives to settle his children as early as possible. Close to 50 now and with perfect health, he lives under the constant threat of dropping dead any day. I don’t know if crossing 50 will prove to be a shock to him—No plans post-50!
Most religions believe in Destiny but also believe that it is not written in stone. Even a change in a single molecule of the tiniest little thing can change future drastically.
Say, a certain X was destined to break a leg in a bike-truck accident on a fated day. However, on the way to hit him, the trucker ate food that an E. coli bacterium decided to infect out of sheer whim. The trucker got a stomach disorder, had an urge to relieve himself first and missed X by a few seconds. Hence, the whim of a single-cell being, the (Good?) bacteria, saved a human from hopping around for months. The trucker had a hard time driving though.
Again, Y was destined not to win a lottery on a certain day. But the person who picks the winning lottery numbers was eating bubble gum that he dropped in the bowl by mistake. While he was picking out the sticky gum, Y’s ticket number stuck to the gum. Y became the winner.
Consider this: If destiny is so exact, wouldn’t it have known that you would meet this jyotishi and thr advice he/she would offer? Then wouldn’t it design your fate around the said advice leading you to the foretold fate?
“Prophecies can be broken”, as told by the great saint J.K. Rowling in the holiest of holy books the Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. Wonder what if Lord Voldemort had not heard the prophecy and not gone after Harry… He could have been saved a few years of playing Phantom in Albanian forest. Once you know your ‘Destiny’, you will take the exact steps leading to it.
So, for a happy life, avoid jyotishis at all cost—especially the you-are going-to-die type. Don’t wait for or dread your Destiny or the End of the World. Don’t try to kill Harrys to save yourself. Learn to play hopscotch in case you break your leg someday. Also learn to fly a glider, go bungee-jumping, make friends, fall in love and celebrate each day. This way, whether the world ends tomorrow or not and whether you find your Destiny or not, you would have lived a Life anyway.
The Bus Detour
She was looking out of the window with unseeing eyes as the bus took a detour to avoid a roadblock.
For the hundredth time, she thought of earlier that day…in the back of his car… She smiled. Absent-mindedly playing with the ring he gave her, she wondered if he was thinking of her as well.
Suddenly, the bus turned a corner into a dark alley. Its headlights revealed a familiar car with a couple entangled ferociously in the backseat. She had her answer.
An Unlikely Story(?)
Hi, I am rebloging one of my older pieces from my earlier site. Apologies to those who already read it.
Long time ago, there lived a woman who used pigeons to send mails. She spent all her day sending and reading her mails. She would draw pictures of ‘Aloo salad’, ‘Kadhai dal’ and ‘Chulha roti’ and send it. People would, then, tell her that they liked it or loved it. She, in turn, would do the same for them. Once an insect bit her lips and she sent her picture to her friends. This inspired others to post their picture with a pout as well.
All this made her feel important and happy!
She kept her precious pigeons in a cage and locked them when not delivering emails to ensure no one stole them. One fated day, she lost the key of the cage. No other key would work. Locksmith tried different combinations, even tried breaking it but the lock would not budge. He gave up in the end.
A week later, the woman passed away of a broken heart…
Unlikely story? Weird story? Stupid story?
I don’t think so!
Most of the people on Facebook or Twitter spend all their free time on it. They post pictures of what they cooked or wore, where they went and how they are feeling. They wish their own spouse and children a ‘Happy Birthday’ on Facebook or Twitter, even though they live in the same house. And the rest of the world likes and loves it.
They call their friends to ask why they only posted a like and did not comment on a particular picture if they really liked it.
If needed, they would even suggest a good comment.
First love, first kiss, first baby and first soiled diaper… They are all on Facebook for the world see, like and comment on.
If you didn’t post it, it never happened. If you didn’t ‘like’ it, you ignored them. If you didn’t post a comment, you never cared about them.
Facebook and Twitter are not websites anymore. They are oxygen cylinders. Lock people out of their account for one day, they will suffocate. Lock them out for a week, they will be as good as dead. If they lose their password, they will spend the rest of their lives resetting and securing it, or die trying.
That reminds me… what was my Facebook password?
…Where did I write it?
…Oh no! Where did it go?
…Gawd! What do I do now?
…OH NO! (Gasp) Can’t breathe… Need air…
…HELP!!!
-Dedicated to the Dimpy Angel and all my friends on Facebook
Feeler: New Poetry Site
Hi All,
A friend and I have started a new site on traditional Urdu Poetry called Shayari. Please visit the site and let me know if you would like to see more of it through reblogs.
https://almightyandme.wordpress.com/2019/10/29/koshish
Main roz kai khwaisho ko apne andar dafan karta hu.
Jeena toh chahta nahi, par roz koshish zaror karta hu.
Translation:
I bury my desires within everyday.
Don’t wish to live, but I try anyway.
The First-time Mother
Hi, I am rebloging one of my older pieces from my earlier site. Apologies to those who already read it.
People say that women are born mothers. I disagree.
When it comes to being ‘born mothers’, there are two categories of girls: First, who love playing the babysitter to all toddlers in the vicinity, and second, who keep a minimum five feet distance from anyone on two legs below three feet.
I belong to the latter category. Even while playing ‘Home’ as a child, I never agreed to play the ‘mother’. It was too big a responsibility. Hence, while waiting for my first child, I was clueless about how to handle children. I had to conduct a lot of Google search to ensure I knew everything.
But nothing could have prepared me for the reality.
Being a mother is a difficult job anyway with the 24×7 food-potty issues. For me, it was akin to fighting a dragon with bare hands. A live bomb ready to explode any second for known and unknown reasons, she scared me out of my wits in the first month. I was scared that I might drop her, touch her too hard, leave her hungry, overfeed her or crush her beneath me while sleeping at night, or somebody else at home might do the same (the jaundiced eye…), or she might fall off the bed if I left her unattended for a nano‑second. There were a lot of other crazy fears that I had never experienced before.
On cold nights, she throws away her sheets and I spend the rest of the night covering her. God bless the person who invented diapers, else I wouldn’t even get the 3-4 hours of sleep at night that I get now. Ever since the fated day, I can be caught sleeping anytime anywhere. I remember this day when I was found asleep while standing against a pillar.
I feel a renewed respect for my mother and all the mothers who dare a second baby.
I love my daughter! I just wish she was not so much of hard work. On the day she was born, my mother said, “Your struggle has just begun.” With nearly one year out of the way, my daughter is gradually switching from crawling to walking, and the challenge is heightening from Beginner level to Professional level. I am beginning to wonder whether mother was referring to the rest of my life.
Well, fingers crossed!
The Day You Died
I was in a shock, I think.
Holding the phone to my ear
With one hand,
I ironed the same dress
For an hour,
Until I saw the holes
Burnt through the fabric,
Much like my heart.
No, I don’t love you anymore.
I had that sorted out long back.
Until Now.
I sat down
On the pile of ironed clothes
And stayed there for another hour
Still clutching the phone
Close to my heart.
Waiting for something… someone…
No, I don’t love you anymore.
I had that sorted out long back.
Until Now.
Someone called, not sure who,
Confirming what I already knew.
“Of course, I am fine.
I got over him.”
I called my new love
To share what I felt.
“Of course, I’m fine.
I got over him.”
Of course, I don’t love you anymore.
I had that sorted out long back.
Until Now.
Not sure if I ate that night,
Not sure how I got to bed.
Not sure if I cried.
But I remember
Turning over my wet pillow
In the middle of the night,
The day you died.
-Dedicated to the one ‘I didn’t love anymore’ until the day he died
Short Stories 