A cup of tea in the morning in your own company is far better than a whole day of hustle and bustle. How can a day be spent without thinking, Working like a robot can be better than an hour spent thinking, relaxing, meditating etc.
When great people remind younger people to utilise morning time, they are not just telling them what they know about the golden rule enscripted in any great book, they are actually telling them their time-tested formula of success they themselves have followed.
How much does it give you a feeling of relaxation to hold a pen and let it write whatever comes to your mind? The power of the pen is so underrated in this era. It is not a special privilege owned by writers and journalists only. It must be practiced by everyone who wants to know how to write. The fear of writing is something I would call a loss, a real loss which I have faced my whole of my life till now. How grateful I am to the lord of the worlds, who has given me a thinking mind, a mind that talks with itself. What a good place to dwell in is a calm, relaxed and talking mind. A mind that talks, a talk with respect and understanding like a good friend.
I would only complain for now about how my fingers ache while I write. I think it’s due to my non-practicing of writing long paragraphs for a long time now. But with practice and repeated efforts, everything can be achieved this is what my grey hairs have taught me. What beautiful sunshine, a golden ray, a ray of hope and calm, each day the Almighty gives us as a first gift of a bright day.
It’s a 4am writing urge… like some people have night cravings for their favourite food or sweets, I get early morning writing cravings, sometimes… sometimes let the creative juices flow from your brain to your hands… most people let their creative juices flow, from their brain to their tongue… an urge to talk… but few people, mostly the lone wolfs or people who are extremely shy or people who fear to be judged by others most of the times, are the people who blocks their creative juices to flow to their tongue and let the juices flow to the hand, to write… and also, who am gonna talk to at 4am…
In recent days, I have been blessed to travel to a few places, mostly near to nature, trees, greenries, birds, fresh smell of nature, songs of nature… when you are near such places, your clogged senses somehow get unclogged… you can smell things now that you haven’t smelled for years, you can somehow hear things you haven’t listened to for years… you can also see things that you you haven’t seen for years…
Just sitting or a short walk in the silence of nature is detoxifying… it’s better than any religious spirituality… it’s a better way to acknowledge your Almighty Creator…
When I was 3, my parents moved to a small town in India. A toddler back then, I was neither reluctant nor excited about a new place.
With all the hustle and bustle of shifting, we all slept quite earlier than usual, wherever we got space in the midst of the clutter of furniture and other household stuff dumped everywhere.
I woke up a bit early in the morning and went right to the garden as early as I could. From a tender age, nature was my swadel of comfort.
It was only natural for a toddler to find a company that can soothe her like a mother. I used to spend quite a lot of time in the lap of my garden. As they say, the more time you spend with someone, the more you long for them. After abandoning my bed in the morning, the first thing I used to do was to visit my garden as religiously as I could.
It was a vast piece of land with a huge bungalow at one side. And a huge gate at its entrance. After entering the gate, there was pavement running to the main door of the house with a large garden on each side. Parallel to the pavement ran shrubs of Champa on both sides.
The right side was slightly bigger than the left. The house had two entrances from the garden. Besides the main door entrance, another opened from inside of the courtyard. The best thing about having two openings was that escaping to the garden became very easy without getting caught by the elders sitting in the living room.
The left side of the garden had more plants and less free space. It had a few flowering plants like hibiscus, a shrub of red roses, Indian frangipani also known as gulaychi, and a few fruit trees like Jamun, pomegranate and a few guava.
While the right side had more space to play and run around, besides having a plethora of floras. It had a few flowering plants like Bougainvillea, Champa, yellow bells etc. And lots of fruit trees, like the Indian jujube, also known as bair, a woodapple or bael tree, a mango tree, a custard apple tree, a few guava trees and a bush of lemon plant.
There was still a small patch available for seasonal veggies my parents loved to grow, like okra, corn, bringals, tomatoes and some leafy veggies like coriander, dill, Fenugreek and other saag.
The best life skill I learned there was climbing trees of all sorts effortlessly. When a child gets comfortable in a tree, a tree becomes a house for her. I used to study under the cool shed of trees, rolling out my straw mat on the bare earth, mesmerized by the humming of birds and chirpings of insects.
Where there are trees there will be rain, flora and fauna. Me and my siblings used to make small toys from soil, soaking our hands in wet mud all day long. We used to plant small saplings and take care of our respective babies till they stand strong. We used to chase dragonflies and butterflies all day long, while catching crickets and fireflies till late at night.
On holidays, dad would teach us painting, gardening, badminton and cycling in and around the garden. While mom would spend late afternoons taking care of her veggie plants. Like any home chefs of modern-day ASMR YouTube videos, mom would pick her own herbs and veggies from the garden.
On rainy days, the garden would flood and we would “jump up and down in muddy puddles” like Peppa does.
Some days when grass grew wild, dad would call our old and eccentric gardener. I loved scraping gardening wisdom out of his skull for hours.
And then came the day like a sad ending, love story. We had to move on to another place, leaving behind my garden, my best friend of 8 lovely years. I was never able to erase those memories out of my mind till now, even after 3 decades. I learned so many life skills there. One of them is keenly observing things and that enhances my creative writing now.
This year I only got a chance to revisit my old friend, my garden, after 3 decades. I was so full of excitement about showing my sons my old friend, but to my grave disappointment, new settlers of the house razed off all the trees, leaving behind bare land.
Not everyone has the same love and excitement for the things you have loved the most. Maybe my sons too will never truly understand the feelings, the emotions and the love their mother had for her childhood friend, her garden.
I sometimes think about the current generation who have never climbed a tree, clinged to a tree, smelled a tree and lived so close to the wonder of nature. I could never truly thank the Almighty for the closeness He blessed me with His nature.
Most important rule to learn and to teach is that temporary things make permanent changes. Biggest example is life.
A small assessment for you to do.
Sit and visualize your life from childhood to till today. Record a pattern, how petty things shaped you into the person you are now. Connect positive connections between negative dots. And burn a positive permanent mark on yourself with the temporary negative stamps.
And then you will truly understand the purpose of physical and mental pain in life.
I tried doing this assignment with my painful memories. I have been in a dilemma whole of my life regarding my sufferings. Why me? What good did they bring me? Sheer pain with no good explanation.
Until recently, I found a pattern in my pain. There was a clear pattern but with changing variables. How different variables pointed towards the same target. Each variable, not sharing any connection between themselves, pushed me to my ultimate goal.
How temporary pains helped me discover my inner needs which ultimately brought me permanent changes in my being.
I believe this must be a divinely guided discovery, each person goes through in their respective lives.
Friends meeting after a long time and were discussing how life was passing funny for them…
Ash: …hey! You know what… my toddler son makes this sound and that I too like to hum it all the time… (started rolling eyes and making weird sounds) “a gullu gullu… gullu gullu gullu… gullu gullu gullu gullu…”
This is so addictive…
Sam: Are you insane…
Ash: I think you haven’t done your parenting right and hence you are still sane… (bursting into laughter)…
There are tons and tons of memories that only 90’s kids will understand. Are you, like me, an adult who still find herself diving into vast ocean of memories of her childhood? If yes, then let me hold your hands as I am going to take a dive to explore one such pearl of memories which only you and me can cherish.
Radio… Do you remember that small noisy box, that when get its ear twisted slight right or slight left started speaking a totally new language… Those were the days when radio was not just the source of sole entertainment but also major source of news and communication… But for me it was a sensation of nostalgia… How in those days, especially in remote outskirts of India, full day electicity was still a luxury people crave for… When sunset and mosquitoes emerged in full moon night and then powercut for whole night… Sitting under the glory of full moon, in the midst of fog of mosquito repellent’s smoke, dad would pull out a medium giant box with antenna like an antler of a wild moose… Deciding which station to land on, twisting it’s ear in middle of a slight left and a slight right, neither too left nor too right … As if a sailer holding a stiring of a giant ship, a slip of hand and ship will land on a strangest of land…
A slight ups and downs of frequency modulation, FM is what they call it, would have changed the country and language of broadcast… It could be a Korean singer singing a Korean song, or a Japanese newsreader reading news in Japanese language… It could be a radio drama in Hindi language or an English movie… A maxican chef cooking tacos and salsa in maxican language or a BBC repeating same news how a whale was stuck offshore, for a week… So many of such memories… Do you think those were just a gadget? Naah!!! Those were life, a modern-day kid will never understand… How fast technology has eaten up one another… Walkman then tape recorder, then VCR then VCD then very recent one, pendrive… All vanished… They say, the more the better, I say naah!…
What counts for me are memories we can cherish years and years after the time has passed…
… As she slammed the door in fury and whispered some words. “I know he is there, people like him do exist. Not everyone are alike. Some are different and can be trusted.” And after uttering those words she came out of living room to her beautiful green garden.
Her vast and green garden shared boundaries with dark and bewilder forest. Old porch swing was making squeaking and creaking sound as she started swinging back and forth on it. She kicked the ground and started thinking about him, how he is different from rest of the world, how he completes her. Suddenly she saw a shadow of some well groomed man moving towards forest. She jumped out of old swing and ran after that shadow in quest of her dream prince whom she considered ‘different’ from the crowd.
As she was approaching the shadow strange nervousness engulfed her. She was very close to that man. As close as she can now smell his presence and feel his warmth. But still she can’t see his face from behind.
She put her hand on his shoulder from behind and smiled in her heart with the relief that ultimately she found him. The one for whom she fought the whole world, “He is not just a dream. He is a real man. I know he is there. One day I will prove whole world wrong. He is not like anyone else. He is different. The trustable. “
She slowly approached the shadow. A strange nervousness engulfed her. She was very close to the man from behind, so close that she could smell his presence and feel his warmth. But still she could not see his face.
She put her hand on his shoulder from behind and felt happy in her heart with the relief that ultimately she found him. The one for whom she fought the whole world for. She thought, “He is not just a dream. He is a real man. I know he is there. One day I will prove the whole world wrong. He is not like anyone else. He is different. I can trust him. “
As he turned around and faced her, his face was clearly visible in the bright light streaming from the canopy. The happiness on her face turned to bitter disappointment. Her whole world collapsed around her. She was doomed. She was wrong after all. One look and she could tell, tell in her heart – He was no different. She turned back running as fast as she could away from that man, that shadow. She caught her dress on the shrubberies and fell hard on ground…
Moral: Most people are untrustworthy in their unique sense. No one ever created can be trusted in its complete identity. Some are less trustworthy some are a little more but no one comprehensively. Everyone has their weaknesses.
My prince, my sheer happiness, my pure love, my miracle baby, my life, my companion, my sweet little bundle of joy, my coolness of eyes, my purpose of being alive, my sweet smell, my dopamine, my honey… My baby son…
Blessed was the day when you filled our life with your little feet and hands… And blessed is this day when you completed a whole year in my arms…
How addictive is your smell, your smile, your softness, your kiss, your babblings, your crawling, your crying for my attention, your baby fight with your elder brother to be in my arms first, your sound sleep in my closeness, your morsels from my hand, my singing makes you so calm…
How fast you are growing… One day you will be big enough, like your elder brother, and run away from my arms and I will be running after you to hug you ones… I will not be your whole world as I am now… You will have your life, you freedom… and your mom will be your biggest fan and finest supporter for life… You mom will always have your back… no matter how strong you will become, your mom will be your comforter for your hard days, tough days…
I wish my days and nights pass praying for your success and happiness… teaching you life skills, wisdom and knowledge… Cooking for you food that will make you healthy, happy and satisfied… Showing you wonders of graceful nature… Protecting you from harshness of this world… Manifesting before you eternal mercy of Almighty…
May I never stop writing for you my eternal love I have in my heart… Happy birthday my sweet son… May Almighty give you a very long, healthy, life full wisdom and knowledge and respect for people and nature… Gratitude for Almighty and your parents and elders… May He makes you a fine and handsome young man who gives respect to everyone and gets respect from everyone… May my prayers for you never ends…
If there is still a love which is in its purest form… For that love… I love you my love of life… Stay blessed…
I have natural inclination towards writing since my childhood and it’s mainly due to my Dad… Thanks Dad for teaching me how to write and making it so interesting that I almost fell in love with writing…
Earliest memory I have of writing is when Dad bought me an English cursive writing book when I was in kindergarten… Each page of that book had a name of an animal and it’s offspring… And I love it so much to write that I completed it in a week or less…
The next memory I have is when I participated in a speech competition when I was in class 5th or so… Dad wrote me the speech I delivered, The Pen is Mightier than Sword… I don’t remember that whether I achieved any rank in the competition but Dad surely achieved best writer’s award in my heart… And from then onwards I delve into writing as much as I can… In our growing years Dad used to give me and my siblings prompts to write on and we used to rush to show Dad our compositions…
Then when we grew a bit more Dad used to advice us that we should memorise our study notes by writing them as much as we can… And only recently I came to know that science suggests writing as a way of memorising stuffs and call it ‘ muscle memory’… I learned it in a course I did online, Learning how to learn by Barbara Oakley…
And then came my high schooling years… I confess I was always a mediocre in grammars, it never generated me any decent grades in school nor in college… But creative writing did… I got 86 marks out of 100 in high school final grade only due to my writings…
Then after I completed my Post Graduation I did a couple of writing courses… One from a distance learning mode, diploma and another under a personal mentorship of a prestigious writer of our circle… And I intend to do more writing courses in near future to intensify my writing journey…
To conclude, I would like to say I have restless hands that pushes me to write whatever I can… I can just write whole book down on notebook mindlessly… And therefore I am also a passionate stationary collector… I have had a decent collection of vintage pens… Most of them gifted to me by Dad…
For me writing is an emotion that connects me to my favorite person in this world, my Dad…
Off the beaten path... 
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