Tag: My life

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.

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Posted in Life and After

My Scrapes with ‘It’

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

As a response to Colin McQueen‘s comment on my recent post, The Poltergeist, I am hereby recounting my own experiences that were beyond explanation. I don’t call it ‘Paranormal’ because with all that I have experienced, who am I to say what’s normal.

It was regular middle-class apartment in Delhi in a 10-year old building. Only the hall received sunlight. The washroom led to two combined rooms at the back that had windows opening in an air shaft. No sunlight entered these rooms ever. Two other rooms at the back were locked by the owner for some reason.

The day I entered it, I got goosebumps. Since the earlier tenant had just moved out without a complaint, I ignored it, assuming that the setting was spooky enough to set off my hyperactive imagination. I was between jobs and spent the days alone at home feeling cold eyes on me and frequent touches on my back. A few days were enough to rattle my nerves.

The day I opened the airshaft window was when it all amplified. That night, we heard noises in the room that was supposed to be empty. We decided to invest in a good rat poison. Next night, I felt that I was being strangled. I was able to throw it away with the name of Almighty, but it continued into a hallucination about my roomy being undead.

That got me talking. For the first time, I was taken seriously and my roommate admitted feeling ‘something’ too. We huddled in the hall (the only room that felt safe) and stayed awake till wee hours of morning. Only the sound of morning Azaan (prayers in a mosque) quietened our fear.

We decided that dangerous as it may be, we couldn’t run away and accept defeat. So, we have to atleast try to face ‘it’ first, whatever ‘it’ was. So we started praying religiously (literally) every day and casting ‘prayers of protection’ every morning, evening and night.

After that, ‘it’ stopped touching me and featuring in my dreams (apparently, I was the only one ‘it’ touched). The prayers were also supposed to remove anything evil from the place. But ‘it’ remained. We assumed ‘it’ wasn’t evil, just angry because of the disturbance. So, we reduced the use of the inner rooms and moved our beds in the hall.

The Kitchen was unavoidable though and that was when I could feel the eyes on me and, from the corner of my eyes, I could see someone standing or passing by. But ‘it’ didn’t scare me anymore. I had the power that comes from an unshakable faith in Almighty and his power on all beings that existed. I would just ignore it as a silent co-tenant.

That’s when ‘it’ started moving things around. At nights, we could hear stuff falling and fridge door rattling in inner rooms. Our dustbin would often travel several feet to block the door to the inner rooms while we were in the hall or kitchen. This pattern continued for several months until our last day. That day, I prayed for forgiveness and peace of whoever was stuck in the house.

When my roommate went to remove the last of the lights, ‘it’ rattled the locks of the locked rooms for something to remember ‘it’ by.

Posted in Life and After

Who am I?

Posted on by Shaily Agrawal

As an Instructional Designer, I am a full time Super Hero! I save the world from the boring, never-ending and ineffective training courses. I create learning material in simple, crisp and effective English and present it in an interesting manner that (I hope!) makes you hope for a Season Two.

I am a wordy person who is paid to ‘reduce the word-load on readers’! The irony reflects in my writing style that embodies “Less is more”. I mostly write about emotions and people.

Being a Start-up at motherhood means you get to hear loads of cribbing around the challenges.