Grow up girl!

Dear Sammy,

Grow up girl! no, that's not me saying to you. If I had my way I would let you remain a kid for as long as you would want. Who would want sweet cherubic little angels grow up into those monstrosities called teenagers? Oops! sorry! Just kidding!
But yes this is something you will hear a lot, maybe repeat too, to some poor unsuspecting souls later on in life.
Sigh! But that is a bitter truth , or a fact, that after the dream years of infancy people are in a hurry to see you grow up, whatever they mean by that.
No I am not speaking about the milestones per se. but rather the 'growing up" as in maturity. Even 'maturity' is kind of hazy. What kind of maturity? Maturity of mind? Body? Behavior  Perception? Attitude? In fact if I had retorted back the same to my admonish-ers , I doubt if I would have received a legit answer. It has been hazy always- the term maturity and also the purpose!
Yes! you guessed it right! I have been under the fire for not being supposedly mature and have been in the receiving end of the advice, the jab, jibes-everything about growing up.
Does it bother me? Well sometimes it does, while at other times I take it with a pinch of salt. What I really do not understand is when I am handling a home well, am one of the good workers in office with one of the best trouble shooting capacities, am not an abusive mom to you and do love you a lot, don't gamble, drink or pick pockets, why the sudden hurry to make me grow up? Just assuming I am not mentally mature from the fact that I love watching Shark Tale? Read Archies? Giggle a lot? Am impish? And love short skirts?
But does that prove that I am not mentally and intellectually capable or mature enough to handle my life? Well I do have faced failure in relationships for some really intelligent reasons. So how does that qualify me to be certified as immature? I threw no tantrums, tried resolving matters amicably and am known to personify diplomacy when needed, I conduct myself very gracefully and as per norms where I am supposed to-so if all my mental facilities are within normal limits and  if I have that much insight in me psychologically, then why the tag of 'not grown up'? Because I crack jokes, laugh at myself, cry in emo dramas, pout, sulk, retort like a defiant teenager at times just for the fun of it? ?Just because I don't have a stiff upper lip, I don't hmm, haw, hem, - is that why?
So isn't growing up all about individual perception? How another individual perceives you as? Then that shouldn't and needn't be the final verdict, right?
Yes! I guess I am stressed about it. Just a wee bit! But don't worry! I am very much mature enough not to react spontaneously to jibes! I am very much neutral and at least there are twenty calculations running on my mind before I react. It's just that people are not mature and fast enough as me to catch on.
As for my advice for you, if you can call it so, is- As long as you are functioning absolutely well, with the right kind of action and reaction at the right places, hurt no one's ego as well as sentiments too deeply, well go on, I love you my child. Be a child always.
And for those who exclaim- But Egad! that exactly what maturity is! Don't go by their words. One giggle and you will be demoted to a foetus

Love Mom

Slip and slide. Just glide...

Hi Sammy,

Seeing you glide around the hall in your ballet dress , makes me wistfully wish -that if only I could do that... there is something so magical about slow, smooth, gliding, motions- gliding, swinging, swaying, breeze, swim...sigh!
And that brings me to how I would love to do certain things at least once in my life before my body totally gives in to age and all I can glide in is a wheel chair.Maybe I have already done some, but they constantly needs to be re-done and re lived. And some of course I know will never be possible. It's late to be humanly possible. Yes yes, I would put Napoleon in place if he interjected with his famous line and repeat the same to him too...
But there are somethings which will be near impossible to perform. Like?

Swan lake! yes the first time I watched them perform, them ballerinas I was wowed! Can something so beautiful as a ballet exist? I had the good fortune to watch a Russian ballet perform and the profound effect that it had on me was permanent. I just knew what I wanted to do- just glide, twirl in a tutu and feel beautiful forever, but it is another matter I didn't . Not even close to it. Still the impression persisted - of the beautiful gliding motion. And I became hooked to it's magic.

Friends

Dear Sammy,

You guessed it right. Yes, I had nothing better to do so I came here to talk with you or rather rant. Surprising  isn't it that we always feel the need to "talk" when we have something to rant about and when it is good things, then , we "share". I still am unclear whether that is a way of being civil or making it sound polite.

And for either of them we need friends. And so we have "great" friends who are with us in times of sorrow and in times of joy. Again there are those friends who are so strong , that it is easy to unburden your soul to them in times of trouble and for some you are the pillar of strength, where you listen, they talk.

Then there are those who are such fun to hang out with. They love you and like you because you are so, what they say "chilled" . You love them because they are so "cool". You or for that matter them wouldn't let yourselves to be seen as some other.

In other words, most of the time we get ourselves stuck in our projected image that we forget what friendship is.

For you , Sammy

Two years back I had a wish to write when I discovered that I could conjure something up- something passable as an article or post or anything that you wish to name it. Blogs made it easier with its anonymity , unrestricted access and a false sense of supreme power to publish anything you wish too. The word publish was a magic in itself.

But creativity doesn't come easy. You cannot afford to be creative in  the midst of groaning patients. You cannot conjure up something when you are trying to teach your 4 year old daughter the basics of mathematics.
Blogging takes a back seat to banking when the financial year end arrives and all I can do at such times is look at old photographs of Chail Palace near Shimla and dream of one day when I will be there for one whole week for some peace, quiet and leisure and some writing. For all I can remember , I think the only writing I have been doing since a year is filling up all sorts of forms and writing absent notes of my kid.

Since mothers couldn't be everywhere they created God.

No for a change I am not ranting.
This post is different from the rest of my posts as it is a story- a fiction. But not like the ones that I usually write...or wrote. (I hardly write fiction nowadays thankfully)
Coming back to the post, well let me start with how it started or it originated because that is a small story in itself.

My kid (like all other kids) love listening to bedtime stories. And unless I am too exhausted I too enjoy that fifteen minutes of complete togetherness- the weaving of a fantasy world- the channel to her beautiful dream world...before she sleeps off.
And so forth the stories used to pour every night- Cinderella, Snow White, Little Red Riding hood, Goldilocks, Fables and Assamese folklore... Like all dreamy little girls , her favorite used to be Cinderella and many of the nights used to be Cinderella nights. But I got bored of narrating the same old fairy tales and to top it, my pathetic sense of creativity took over and one day I decided to weave a tale of my own, just for a change. A kiddie story.
I had thought it would fail miserably. But wonders ! She loved it! And no , not out of loyalty if you are thinking so. She didn't even know it was mine.

Well , so that was it. The story I mean. And So here it goes before I lose the plot completely. (literally) due to memory lapse some day. I just wanted to store it here as a kind of legacy...if someday she decides to sleuth around a bit just to check what her mom had been upto all these days...
Well, I have kept the language here,simple, just as I narrated it to her.

The Story - For you Samara

Humans- Are you the best? All the best.

Once upon a time humans came into being. Either God created them or they evolved from apes; take your pick from whichever theory appeals to you. And they were touted as the next big thing after the dinosaurs and mammoths( in intelligence, not size). Well I guess they were intelligent and their intelligence grew by the second just as gmail's size grows by the second. And after years of evolving, adapting and improvising we completely deviated from what we call the nature's laws or jungle law and developed over the period our own rules our own code of conduct... and we came to be known as the superior of all creations of the Creator , but probably in all honesty the most evil and the corrupt of all.

Please Don't Read This- The secret of disobedience

The title - Secret of disobedience is a bit far fetched, because I ain't any saint or archaeologist to unearth any secret. Well actually I wanted to title it The Art of disobedience, but I realized from my own experiences that disobedience is not an art but rather an inherent quality in us. Yes, incredible though it may sound, but humans have a disobedient streak in them. It maybe a result of curiosity, mistrust or mischief but obedience isn't something that comes naturally to us. It has to be instilled by power of muscle or logic, whichever applies best.

Virgin Thoughts

In the Harry Potter series, the horcruxes were described as a result of your soul splitting from the whole, when you murdered a person...well  I guess that was it, isn't it? In a way it is true- something in you dies when you kill someone, except that in horcruxes the dead was the key to being alive. But of course Harry and his enchanted world is not my topic of discussion today. I was just wondering about pre marital sex and that lead to me thinking about Virginity and its impact and this is what I felt after much thought- that a part of you changes when you lose your virginity. I won't say that a part of you die , but an intense change occurs in the way you feel, that it never is the same afterwards. (no pun intended)

I quit!

Hell no, this isn't a suicide note. And no it isn't a declaration of packing up my blog for good, though I admit I was tempted to do so. But it is like my private public space, which I am not giving up so soon. Well not until Google keeps it rental free.I don't publicise my blog , but I don't hide it either so the arrangement suits me fine. This place suits me great...
But where was I now? Yeah, quitting? I was wondering why are we so obsessively fed against quiting? Stuff like - 'winners never quit, quitters never win'. Well I know they sound cool , but only as long as the going is smooth or medium tough. Medium tough is the best situational option . You kind of feel heroic after coming out victorious and sighing in content- Yeah! I won my fight' -a fight probably in a situation which could be contained without any casualty.

Danger Signs- Don't lose your friend

How many of you have lost your friend or a dear one to depression, psychiatric diseases and maybe suicide? I have lost two of my friends to suicide and two to depression to the point that they became total recluse. They refuse to keep in touch with anybody. In the long run, such statistics begin to gnaw you with guilt. If only you knew how to prevent it, if only you knew what to do, if only you could stop it... and many other 'if's. I know I have started the year with a very bad, sad and inauspicious topic but maybe one of the most well meaning post I have ever attempted. This topic will not tell you how to deal with them, or what to do because even after being in a medical field I still am clueless on what I should have exactly done back then...
       Maybe a few suggestions here and there, but the post is more about identifying the danger signs, that someone is slipping away to his/her own private hell. Maybe your better sense will know exactly what to do if something of the sort is happening to one of your friends. But first of course we have to know and not only know but have to acknowledge the signs that our friends subconsciously sent to the world that they need help; that they need a friend; that they need someone to hold on...