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Random thoughts on a sleepless night

Amusing it is how a father is often concerned with how the child will make the ends meet while the mother has sleepless nights pondering whether the child will forever able to meet her eye in the mirror. There must be stories of role reversal. I wish I had the resources to say to my children, "Go on. Live. Don't follow the masses. See the world. Witness the miracles that exist in a day." Wo kaun se log hote hain who know what they want to make of their life. How do they know it? Where do they get the strength to do what the heart wishes for?

The story of the seven 'surs'

I am always in awe of any kind of music that I hear. To me music remains the magic paintbrush with which the child painted what he wished for. I have grown up listening to film music and very old English numbers which when I go to hunt online I don't find. I can't lay any sort of claim to classical music or instrumental music of great repute but I like to think that I do have discerning ear. But the post isn't about my musical ability or inclination. It is about what I felt today as I listened to some song being played on the TV as I was busy pushing some khichdi down my son's throat. I don't now remember whether it was a nice song or something terrible but I do remember feeling goosebumps. I realized that the seven notes were all that it took to create an array of emotions. Joy, love, horror, terror, fun, funny, childish, serious, beautiful, awful, fast paced, slow and delicious, and much much more. I also realised that the world over people have used these se...

Mothers

Exasperated mothers Trying mothers Mothers who have too much on their mind. Mothers who think cake counts as a meal. Mothers who worry too much. Mothers who fly away so that their kids might follow. Mothers who stay put so that that their kids might get a solid platform. Mothers who love without being ever seen or heard. Mothers who let their children know they are there and theirs. Mothers who feed. Mothers who eat. Mothers who bleed. Mothers who get readily cut up. Mothers who become fathers, storytellers, advisors and sounding boards. Mothers who never get asked for their preferences or opinions. Mothers who are teachers. Mothers who are learners. Mothers who mother and mothers who smother. Tired mothers. Fresh as  a daisy mothers Yummy mummies, sporty mummies Mummies with tummies Tummy filling mummies every girl who becomes a mother lives life on the edge of a sword always on the verge of forgetting who she is and yet not having that luxury of forge...

What do you write?

What do you write when you want to write? When there are precious moments of solitude And no distractions When there is a story bubbling inside of you And the ending lures you into reading those of others When days have passed without having had a conversation Though there are plenty of subjects But there is a dearth of subjects that  matter What do you write when your memory fails And you can't recall exactly whether it was the month of June or July The 20th or the 22nd The tale of which you want to relate What do you write when you want to write About the burning desires And glorious goals Of which you have little knowledge left What do you write when there is stillness all around you But you yearn for some noise

Life in a metro

Whenever people, especially us north Indians and those not from the IT industry, think of moving up in the work ladder and look at cities we might have to relocate you can be sure that it would either be Delhi or Mumbai. I could have even forgotten that there was a city named Kolkata. And while we were leading a comfortable life in the country's most planned city, the city of gardens aka Chandigarh, Calcutta made way in to our lives and today after four years I wonder if it would be wrong to say that all hell broke lose. So it happened and within fifteen days we went from living in the most planned city to probably the most chaotic city. Relocation is a real bummer. You are more alone than you could have bargained for, for many reasons. Initially when the stuff is in transit and there is no house to clean, co-ordinate and run, you are wowed but the wow soon turns in to a painful aoowwww. The spouse is busy, more busy than usual in getting acquainted with the work place and tak...

Whats the news?

There is no structure to the days. Was there one ever, I ask myself? I have never been the one for structure, a time table, a way of doing things. This has been a source of joy and distress at one and the same time.

Pain

Dard. Pain. This word in English language doesn't probably deliver the force which a parent feels when the child is hurt. Moving on. Physical pain goes away but the memory of many such physical episodes lingers. There are times when this memory hits you with a surprising ferocity like the way I just now remembered Netra's ear incident wherein the lock part of her earring had lodged itself in the pierced part of the ear, stretching the skin and how she screamed when the doctor had to make an incision and took it out with tweezers.