14 Short Stories!

1. FALL & RISE
Today, when I slipped on the wet tile floor a boy in a wheelchair caught me before I slammed my head on the ground. He said, “Believe it or not, that’s almost exactly how I injured my back 3 years ago .

2. A FATHER’S ADVICE

Today, my father told me, “Just go for it and give it a try! You don’t have to be a professional to build a successful product. Amateurs started Google and Apple. Professionals built the Titanic

3. POWER OF UNIQUENESS

Today, I asked my mentor – a very successful business man in his 70’s – what his top 3 tips are for success. He smiled and said, “Read something no one else is reading, think something no one else is thinking, and do something no one else is doing.

4. LOOKING BACK

Today, I interviewed my grandmother for part of a research paper I’m working on for my Psychology class. When I asked her to define success in her own words, she said, “Success is when you look back at your life and the memories make you smile.

5. TRY & YOU SHALL KNOW

I am blind by birth. When I was 8 years old, I wanted to play baseball. I asked my father- “Dad, can I play baseball?” He said “You’ll never know until you try.” When I was a teenager, I asked him, – “Dad Can I become a surgeon?”. He replied “Son, you’ll never know until you try.” Today I am a Surgeon, just because I tried!

6. GOODNESS & GRATITUDE

Today, after a 72 hour shift at the fire station, a woman ran up to me at the grocery store and gave me a hug. When I tensed up, she realized I didn’t recognize her. She let go with tears of joy in her eyes and the most sincere smile and said, “On 9-11-2001, you carried me out of the World Trade Center.”

7. LOVE CONQUERS PAIN

Today, after I watched my dog get run over by a car, I sat on the side of the road holding him and crying. And just before he died, he licked the tears off my face.

8. A DOOR CLOSES TO OPEN ANOTHER

Today at 7AM, I woke up feeling ill, but decided I needed the money, so I went into work. At 3PM I got laid off. On my drive home I got a flat tire. When I went into the trunk for the spare, it was flat too. A man in a BMW pulled over, gave me a ride, we chatted, and then he offered me a job. I start tomorrow.

9. LOOKING BACK

Today, as my father, three brothers, and two sisters stood around my mother’s hospital bed, my mother uttered her last coherent words before she died. She simply said, “I feel so loved right now. We should have gotten together like this more often.”

10. AFFECTION

Today, I kissed my dad on the forehead as he passed away in a small hospital bed. About 5 seconds after he passed, I realized it was the first time I had given him a kiss since I was a little boy.

11. INNOCENCE

Today, in the cutest voice, my 8-year-old daughter asked me to start recycling. I chuckled and asked, “Why?” She replied, “So you can help me save the planet.” I chuckled again and asked, “And why do you want to save the planet?” “Because that’s where I keep all my stuff,” she said.

12. JOY

Today, when I witnessed a 27-year-old breast cancer patient laughing hysterically at her 2-year-old daughter’s antics, I suddenly realized that I need to stop complaining about my life and start celebrating it again.

13. KINDNESS

Today, a boy in a wheelchair saw me desperately struggling on crutches with my broken leg and offered to carry my backpack and books for me. He helped me all the way across campus to my class and as he was leaving he said, “I hope you feel better soon.”.

14. SHARING

Today, I was traveling in Kenya and I met a refugee from Zimbabwe. He said he hadn’t eaten anything in over 3 days and looked extremely skinny and unhealthy. Then my friend offered him the rest of the sandwich he was eating. The first thing the man said was, “We can share it.”

Morning Walk!

Pottering Soul!

It didn’t hurt me.

It really didn’t kill me. For all these years I avoided it because I thought it would kill me. But it did not. Was I wrong? Am I wrong? I played the song again. Still it didn’t. The song, I used to listen to in my happy days, which was obviously one of my favourite song. After a while you have to use ‘one of my’ a lot because you understand that the real meaning of life is finding what you love and once you get what you love you never stop finding another one. I am standing in a lonely street surrounded by tall and intimidating corporate buildings with a costly glass on most of its facets. I look at those gleaming lights inside the building through those thick glasses. As far as I know most of the people have forgotten that glass is made from sand. I am sure they know the price of it or at least they know that it would cost more than what they can afford.

I played that one of my favourite song for the third time. I started listening to the lyrics more keenly than ever. I knew those lyrics by heart but I forgot them because I was scared of listening to it. I was so attached to it. Maybe I forced myself to forget them. How would anyone forget something forcefully? I asked that question to myself. I got the answer immediately at least for my context, they simply avoid remembering it. But it was not hurting me now. What does it mean? Am I not attached to it as thought I am? Isn’t really one of my favourite songs? Am I lying to myself? I drifted my eyes to the road. I wish I would describe it as a long and beautiful road but it was not. It was a short and had a turn within fifty meters from where I stood.

I stepped forward. The song was still playing. Something got crushed under my dirty shoes. I didn’t look down. I wished it was snow. I imagined the entire road around me and buildings around me were covered with a snow. Like as it was naturally fell on those, without any particular pattern. Just, randomly. I looked at the cars at the edge of the road. There was no snow on it. I imagined, now they were covered with snow. One of the cars was completely immersed in snow. I wondered what the owner of it would do when he see it next morning. Would he able to take the car out of it? He would need some help from a stranger who is passing by on the same road talking to his girlfriend or an old friend suddenly got in touch with him with that call on his newly bought phone. He would have worked hard to get that phone or he might be a thief and he bought that phone with the stolen money, nobody knows it but finally it is in his hands right? That’s what needed. Would that be his first call on the phone? I wish it is. Arguing on the phone is bad and that too on a new phone it is very much bad. If that guy is in a good mood I wish that is his new phone. If he is arguing and shouting on the road I wish it’s not a new phone and I am pretty much sure that he is talking to his dear person. Shouting doesn’t always have hate in it. If the owner of the car wouldn’t need a stranger’s help that is pretty much sure that one of his childhood friend is in his house on that morning. That’s right, it is not easy to get a newly found friend come in the mornings without any particular need and of course everybody is so busy in the morning so this guy in his house is his childhood friend. Sometimes I feel that it is hard to get a friend who doesn’t expect anything from you but your company. My head started case studying all the friends I have and I am pretty much ashamed to admit the fact that I proved myself wrong. There are guys who just need my company but that is just different. It’s not about souls it is just about what you are working on. If your friend is in a good mood and not bored and doesn’t have any mental trauma and he comes to your house in the morning just to see you and have a chat with you that means remember, you have got a great friend. It doesn’t matter how you tag them best or lifetime friend but remember, you got a person you can count on him or her at any time. Yeah, where am I? Yeah he would ask that friend to help him to get the car out of the snow. Of course you would command him because that’s what you do to your best friend, right? The thicker the snow the more you need to work hard. That’s where you can understand how generous your friend is to you. If he stays with you for a long time till you both get that car out of the snow, your love for that guy gets doubled. What does it mean? Leaving all his work aside and helping you with your stupid ten year old car? You got it man, as I already said it, you got a great friend. If that is what would happen really, then their friendship becomes thicker and stronger. I am pretty much sure that that incident of bringing out the car from the snow will be there in their minds for a long time. After some years it will be their memory, they will tell it to their children, grand children and so many future important members of their family. When I think about the things like this I feel like most of us live in our memories. Not present not future and weirdly not even past. I think there is some other place in your life where you can think about your past and alter it a little then have that imaginary present with the hopes on future. That is what all we do. When I saw that girl for the first time there was something happened to me. I don’t know how to explain that. But I can assure you that our movies degraded that feeling to a worst level. Something happened in me or something to my eyes or something to my mind or something to my soul. I found out that day that I have something other than just a movable body and thinkable brain. I found out that I have a … something other than I know. When she was passing me very nearly, oh god, butterflies in my stomach were dancing. Maybe butterflies don’t dance I was a in a mood to spread my excitement to everything, even to those imaginary butterflies. I never felt that way before but I bluntly ruled off that feeling whenever I saw that in a movie. How would someone even dare to present that first second on a big canvas? How would anyone fall in love in first sight? Trust me, some people get. And I am one of them. I remembered that one second moment for some hundreds of times in my mind. Now, I just can’t say that it is just a memory because every time I played it in my mind I changed it a little bit and kept on thinking what would happen if this had happened in that moment. When I played it for the first time I thought of her having an eye contact with me, which didn’t happen actually. I thought of having an eye contact with her for some hundred times. I think if there is something that is more greedy than human is our heart. It always forces us to think more and hope more. In my second visions I thought of myself saying hello to her. After so many those little shows in my mind I changed it as she was saying hello to me first. I still don’t know why I changed it that way. And in my future revised versions I imagined like, she heard about me through one of our imaginary common friend or she is impressed by my facebook profile or she is an addicted stalker to my twitter account or we are long distant family relatives and it is possible for us to marry. I am telling you some of my early imaginations but the total count is uncountable. If a star is born for every dream I have about her there will be a bigger thing than universe, for which the name is not yet existed. Some say it is called love. But I don’t want to put all my feelings in that little four letter word. Why we need to name it? To explain it to others? I don’t want to put all my beautiful worlds in a little word just to make sense for others. My stars and planets are bigger and more beautiful than anything that I have seen with my eyes. As I am expressing these to you I used the words imaginations, dreams, and visions a lot. I start feel like they are not real but I can swear you I have already lived more than a lifetime in those and I can assure you I lived happily in each and every dream than in real life. You don’t believe me? Let me tell you. While I was sharing my thoughts to you , you are supposed to wander with me. But I am still in the lonely street and you are not with me. You are thinking about your childhood friend and the girl you like. Now you are thinking that you are in one of your future house where you have a wide table with a pen stand there. Can you see that yellow pencil? I know you are watching it. You can also watching that blue colour sketch pen beside that, wait that is green not blue. Have you changed that blue colour sketch pen to green sketch? See it again. Now, you know that I lied to you. That is actually a blue sketch. If you changed the colour of that pen that means you trust me. You trust me in every word I told you. Whenever I say the word beautiful you may not get the picture of what I said but you thought of something beautiful in your life. And every time you lived in that moment. If I say, see that Zadeh Cognitive Unit (ZCU) beside your wide table you wouldn’t see it. Because you don’t know what it is, you wouldn’t trust me. You don’t even try to imagine it because you really care about me. We alter our reality little by little until it becomes a sweet fantasy and no longer it can be called as a dream. I altered my past little by little until it becomes completely new and I have been living that imaginary present with a hope on my real future.

But the problem is we don’t have snow, the cars are there but not covered with snow. Streets are there but not long. There is no single car that is fully covered in snow. The owner of that car will come out of his house tomorrow and starts the engine as like nothing has happened. He will not ask for help to any stranger who is talking on a phone. Even if his best friend comes to his house they don’t spend time for long and laborious hours. Their talks end as casually as ever happen. They may need some time to repair their relation but they don’t get that now.

I took another step thinking that the imaginary snow that was crushed under my shoe is now as forming water. I looked down it was not ice but a packet of ketch up. I looked carefully It was not even ketch up. I think it is blood. I stepped on a frog and I killed him. I was a loner a while back now I am a killer of frog. I think everything that gets destroyed leaves some form of marks on the earth. When the destruction is really painful those marks are in the form of liquid, whether it is frog or heart.

The buildings are still intimidating me and I am still seeing that gleaming light through sand made costly glass. I am still listening to one of my favorite song for the seventh time. And it starts hurting me now.

One of those few books!

I read Em and the Big Hoom recently. This is one of those books made you utterly stubborn on what to say. You find it beautiful but the problem is you can’t say beautiful because it is partially-autobiography. If you do a research on classics you find them with attached tags like sad, beautiful, life changing etc etc. You may feel those writings and lives beautiful but if you put those characters in the real world where there is a government which always fails to satisfy the people, where there is a news channel which always focuses on celebrity gossips and somewhere near your house, you find them sad. Very sad. It is so sad that you ignore them with all the effort you can apply.

Em and the big Hoom by Jerry Pinto is one of such kind of story. The writing is extremely beautiful(at least I can use beautiful here). The title itself confusing and vague. The letters may allow you to pronounce the words but your brain doesn’t understand them. But your confusion is slowly taken away by the following pages. As you grow through the pages having page numbers in the mid page ( which is rare), you start understanding the book. First you came to know what is Em and What is Big Hoom. Then you realize who are they. How many characters are there in the book. What are their backdrops?.. Wait, you don’t get the full details. Not even in my opinion( I can’t say it as a review), but also in the book. There are gaps. There are open ends. You may try to find the reasons but no one knows. In the meanwhile your brain gets overflowed by the names used in the book. You get confused, but that’s okay. That’s the part of the journey. Who is who? who is being called who? You may try to ignore but remember at one point of time, in Goa (according to book) you will read the line ‘other’s names are important as much as yours’ so you have to remember. At least you have to try.

Through the pages you find mother as a pivotal character. After finishing more than half of the pages, you see the amount of pain her husband is bearing. You wonder about mental condition of those kids, Susan and the narrator. She is mad,  if you say like that it’s very easy. If you try to live with that madness, it’s extremely complex. Even reading about it is harder than you think. The only thing you remind yourself is, this is fictional. The only hope you can have is, this must be fictional. There are parts where you feel as embarrassed as the narrator. I think creating such kind of empathy is the pinnacle of any art(strictly in my opinion).

This is heart-breaking, heart-warming, wait… This has soul. This book has soul. You can find the narrator voice throughout course of reading. Even in the little breaks in your reading. I felt the awkwardness of his part in the house. I could understand his fear and horror going through his limbic system. We can’t solve his problem. We can only empathize him. We can only finish the book and looking at our ceilings and wonder what we could do if we were in his place.

Hoping to make a fan cover for this book. Not sure!

First Post!

Will this going to be a great change in my life?