TURN THE FAUCET ON! #WRITEAPAGEADAY #BLOGCHATTER

 

                                                           The Write Practice

There are days when the ink dries up and the mind refuses to function! Those days when life catches up with you, holds you by the ankles and trips you over.

Maybe today is one of those days, when I have no real theme in mind to write about, no worthy subject to wax eloquent on. Yet, my fingers tap on the keyboard, hoping that a matchstick of an idea will strike and start a fire.

Whether the fire will stay a tiny spark, or blaze into a mighty conflagration, is surely up to me. As Earl Nightingale put it, “Everything begins with an idea.” An idle mind is the devil’s workshop. But a mind teeming with ideas is the fountainhead of creativity.

What is creativity? “Creativity is intelligence having fun.” So said Albert Einstein who was certainly more creative and more sagacious than most. In today’s world, there are so many professions that depend on creativity, involving the breaking out of established patterns to observe things in a way quite different from the mundane.

Maybe it is a glimpse into a world that tilts towards the magical, the bizarre or the crazy, but it is a world that is intriguing enough to hold one captivated. It was Robert Frost who brought out this idea in his wonderful poem ‘The Road Not Taken’ in which the poet spoke out at two roads that stretched out before him. He looked at one and then took the other which was grassy and not as well trodden on, signifying that it had been less used than the other.

He left the first road for another day, knowing however that he would never go back there. The poet sensed that one day in the future he would sigh and say,

"Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference."

          Maybe that is right for most professions, including writing. People spend their earlier days getting an education that will aid them in attaining the job that they aspire to. Many end up in prominent positions at the end of their lives, some fall by the wayside. A few change horses mid-stream, and turn away to take the road not taken, veering towards a profession that they never really aspired for. These brave hearts move out of their comfort zones, work their hearts out in order to succeed in their second professions. Many authors often hold primary jobs, and spend their leisure time writing. It is only when they gain the confidence that they will be able to sustain themselves through their creativity that they take writing up as a full-time activity. Brave are the ones who can afford to do so, because writing is an exacting mistress, not one who will be tamed, or one who will give of her favours with ease.

There are days when the ink dries up and the mind refuses to function! Those days when life catches up with you, holds you by the ankles and trips you over.

Those are the days when you go back to a quote which has always made sense, especially since the person who created the quote was an extremely prolific writer who churned out reams of novels based on the Wild West.

“Start writing, no matter what. The water does not flow till the faucet is turned on.”

Louis L’Amour

 

574 words

THE CHEEK OF THE MATTER #WRITEAPAGEADAY #BLOGCHATTER

 
Despicable Me Agnes - Pinterest

I was born cheeky!

That is not say that I began to sass my parents the minute I was born. It just meant that I had more flesh on my face than anywhere else. The exercise having my cheeks pinched started when I was a toddler and continued till I grew old enough to pinch people back. Just joking!

The journey from adolescence to teenage was peppered with pinches from friends, neighbours, uncles and aunts, sometimes even pure strangers. Luckily, they were all good-natured ones, never meant to harm me in anyway. Maybe life was not a perilous as it has turned today.

I had often been amazed at the priceless heirlooms passed down from grandmother to mother to daughter… gold necklaces, ruby earrings, rings studded with gems… the works, in short.

I inherited a healthy set of fibroids from the matriarchs of my family, most of whom having bade farewell to their uteruses well before they should have, passed on the tradition with ease. So, in my mid-thirties, I had doctors proclaiming me a walking miracle when my haemoglobin nose-dived to 5.8.

“You will need a hysterectomy as soon as possible!” was the verdict.

So there I was, having blood pumped into me, and not one person believed me when I informed them that I was anaemic.

“No way! You have such round cheeks!” Same old story!

Hysterics over, hysterectomy done and dusted, I was a new person. Lighter inside, with only my ovaries left behind fortunately, because of which I missed hot flushes, putting on weight, and the worst of all, developing masculine tendencies like growing a moustache, tendencies which were thrust upon me by people who had never seen a stethoscope in their lives.

They would begin with, “Oh, so sad! You have a daughter? No son?” Before I could assure them that neither my better half nor I had a problem with that, they would peer at me with expressions taken straight from a coroner’s office and continue. “My sister-in-law bloated like a balloon after she had her uterus removed. Worse still, her voice became hoarse, and she looked much older than her age.”

The next naysayer made it even more graphic.

“Oh yes, and she started growing a moustache and had to go to the parlour twice a month to get rid of her facial hair. Plus, she was advised to see a cardiologist, just in case!”

Those months were quite a nightmare, and I stood on the scales regularly to fathom the extra weight that was looming over like a Damocles sword, waiting to land on my hapless head. That was when my mother, a much experienced surgery expert (having had three deliveries and three extra surgeries, almost like ‘ek ke saath ek free’) sat me down and gave me a stern talking-to.

“Will you stop being a worry wart and get back to your sunny self? Look at me. I have survived all my surgeries without adding a kilo. You have my genes. Stop listening to all and sundry and perk up! That’s an order.”

Maybe that was all I needed at that moment. To have one sane voice tell me to stop listening to those who loved embroidering tales and turning them into horror stories! It got me thinking.

Why do some folks enjoy being voices of doom, telling graphic stories of surgeries that went wrong, of mishaps that may or may not have taken place and of generally behaving like harbingers of misfortune? Their eyes sparkle as they relate gory tales, adding nuggets of information/misinformation to further embellish their narratives.

“Oh, my late uncle had a knee surgery which was supposed to be a simple affair. He died on the operating table!”

“A distant relative had a hysterectomy. She was then wheeled back to her room where she had a cardiac arrest.”

                                                              Radio.net

Is it a lack of empathy that brings out these gloomy tales or is it their shock value? Either way, they do nothing to calm down patients who are, in any case, not looking forward to any kind of procedures, but are forced to do them at different stages of their lives.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, once I had taken in Mom’s well-timed advice, I decided to cool off. I knew that my cheeks would be my companions for life and that I might as well appreciate them. My daughter had inherited them in a lesser measure, but decades later, they reappeared when my adorable granddaughter was born. History, they say, repeats itself!

I have now developed a magical sense of hearing which shuts off drivel or nonsense the moment I feel that I do not need to listen anymore. My friends and I laugh and joke about our weight or lack of it, our health issues which are thankfully trivial at the moment, and the need to walk/sing/dance/maybe even exercise on occasion. There are no hard and fast rules, the one major one being the old adage which works even today – “Live and let live!”

My cheeks continue to thrive, but I no longer disown them!

 856 words

 

IRON YOUR WORRIES AWAY! #WriteAPageADay #Blogchatter

 

                                                                       iStock photo

Strange title, right? I have always been a stickler for ‘pun’ishment, and have numerous friends who groan over my puns. Luckily, they are good friends and have stuck by me, through thick and thin, despite having to put up with my misplaced sense of humour.

It all began on one fine day when I went on a visit to my aunt’s. My uncle was not too well, and it was more to cheer him up than anything else. My doctor aunt has always been extremely houseproud, and hence, every surface shone. Not a speck of dust anywhere, the dining table was so polished that I could almost see my reflection. As I reflected (pun intended!), my aunt announced lunch. She had made all our favourite dishes, and as Mom and my sisters moved towards the dining room, I went to the wash room to wash my hands.

It was then that the ironing table caught my eye. Perfectly ironed clothes, along with crisp, fragrant bedsheets and pillow cases, with ne’er a wrinkle, beautifully placed in little stacks! It was a revelation! Imagine ironing bedsheets so meticulously? Wasn’t that an onerous task in itself? What I did was sweep my bedsheets off the clothes line, and fold them, pulling them in all directions so that the wrinkles would miraculously disappear. At least I would pretend they disappeared.

That was a Eureka moment. A New Year’s resolution even though it was August! I would also take my ironing seriously. Iron everything in sight, from my Rajasthani counterpane to my kitchen towel. I dreamed of the day when people would stroll though my house and gaze, entranced at my perfect pile of ironed clothes. I would throw open my cupboard and visitors would gasp in admiration at the sight of crisp cottons, shimmering silks and translucent dupattas all nestled together in cosy harmony.

The next three days found me ironing for all that I was worth. I spread out my kurtas, my saris, and especially my bedsheets, and with every wrinkle that disappeared, I found my worries floating away. I hummed and I sang as I worked. My husband could not quite believe his eyes. Was this actually the girl he had married? The one who stuffed T shirts, kurtas and socks in a higgledy-piggledy mess into her cupboard, especially when visitors were expected? Had Dr. Jekyll taken over the persona of Ms. Hyde?

The bout lasted for exactly three days. Slowly, the excitement ebbed as the bedsheets seemed to grow longer and my arm muscles began to protest. They had never been exercised so vigorously for the past two decades, after all. As the ‘josh’ died away, I quickly took a few photographs of all the ironed goods just so that I had proof of all the hard labour over three days. One never knew when the next bout would come around. Maybe when the next set of visitors landed up!

However, I still claim that ironing does iron out wrinkles, and worries. Though the bedsheets remain a trifled messy, and the saris go to the dhobi, there are days when I suddenly get into a frenzy and start ironing everything in sight. My better half keeps away as the piles become bigger and my humming grows louder. As he mutters, “It is better than the washing machine tussle.” The reference is to the time when we had bought a brand new washing machine and I washed everything in sight, including our dog’s collar, which inadvertently fell in and came out looking as if it had been chewed up by the said dog.

                                                                              Unsplash

The washing bout only got over when we bought a brand-new juicer. By the end of that week, I had made juice out of every fruit and vegetable in my house, and even graduated to my neighbour’s larder. It was an extremely healthy period, till we had beetroot juice which made its presence felt every time we went round the corner. After which I stopped!

                                                                        Unsplash

Of course, reading Marie Kondo resulted in another bout, which shall be described in a new chapter, since it will run into many more pages. Not for nothing has #Blogchatter called this exercise #WriteAPageADay, after all!

 706 words

 

 

 

THE METAMORPHOSIS OF BABY LION! #WriteAPageADay

 

                                                                        iStock image

Baby Lion was unhappy. He was a chubby four-year-old who was playing the role of a lion in an LKG school play. From day one, as his little friends danced and sang and spoke, all Baby Lion had to do was to rush out, roar a bit, do a few daring moves and act fierce.

However, our little lion was not inclined to be fierce. He stood on the wings, tears running down his cheeks as he kept whimpering. His teachers cajoled him, offered him treats even, but their remonstrations did not work. He wept as he stood, and continued weeping as he wandered on to the stage, listless and morose. His teachers were made of sterner stuff. They knew that stage fright was common, and they let him be.

On D Day, the children looked wonderful. They chattered like excited little monkeys, thrilled that their parents were coming to watch them perform. The trees waved their fronds, the flowers tossed “their heads in spritely dance”, the elephants trumpeted and the actors “strutted and fretted across the stage”. The music swelled across to the audience who held their collective breath in anticipation, as they whispered to one another.

“I hope Apoorva remembers her lines.” “Doesn’t the stage look resplendent?”

Baby Lion’s mother sat somewhere in the middle because she did not want her little one to catch a glimpse of her. The teacher had warned her that he was a weepy little lion and she did not want to be the cause of further tears. Her fingers were tightly crossed.

The play began with a magnificent trumpet call, the curtain rose to a scene in the jungle. The tree and the flowers played their roles to perfection as tiny animals gambolled and birds spread their wings. It was a scene to gladden any parent’s heart. The music soared as the main actors delivered their lines on how to preserve forests and love Mother Nature.

It was time for Baby Lion to make his entrance. He looked wonderful in his costume with his shaggy mane, but his woeful expression continued. His friend, the other lion, nudged him forward, but Baby Lion was frozen. As tears streamed down his chubby cheeks, he began to crawl across the stage, even as his teachers gestured to him from the opposite wing.

“Move faster, Baby Lion! Good boy!” Their gestures and stage whispers had no effect. Baby Lion continued to crawl across the stage as the music moved on.

The next moment, the other little lion gave him a massive shove and overtook him. He pranced and he danced, a fierce little creature terrifying all the animals in the forest. As he took over the stage, Baby Lion stood and watched, weeping and rubbing his eyes for all he was worth. The act ended with the active little lion being chased away by a hunter. As the play came to an end, there was a thunderous round of applause from the appreciative audience.

The fact remains that Baby Lion received more than his share of eyeballs because he stood out and took the road not taken! In fact, he took no road, but froze on stage, but his stance was so adorable that the onlookers went back with a smile on their faces and a tug in their hearts.

Maybe, there is a lesson to be learnt here… maybe a few lessons!

1.     When you stand out and take the road not taken by others, you get noticed. Baby Lion did garner his share of attention.

2.     If you are not convinced about what you need to do, it is better to stick to your own stand. Even if it is remaining frozen, mid-stage!

3.     Forcing a flower to bloom is not advisable. It is gentleness, not force that Mother Nature uses. In the above case, the child was allowed to do what he wanted, even though he needed to be part of a whole.

4.     Finally, we go back to the old adage… laugh, and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you cry alone! Baby Lion cried right through but the world accepted him and smiled gently at his antics. There was no mockery there, only a sense of empathy because it could have been any of their children standing on stage, teary-eyed.

 Postscript:

Baby Lion went on to do well in his later years in school. He did an amazing job as Shylock from The Merchant of Venice, proved himself in academics and finally ended up as the Head Boy of his school. He is presently doing Engineering from a prestigious Government Engineering College.

782 words

Evidence of the Affair by Taylor Jenkins Reid

 

                                                                        Amazon.in

“Dear Mr. David Mayer,

My name is Carrie Allsop. Please accept my apologies for contacting you out of the blue. I am writing to ask a quite humbling favour.”

This epistolary short story starts with the above lines, and the correspondence between Carrie Allsop and David Mayer continues throughout, underlining the fact that their two spouses, who met at a medical conference in Coronado three months earlier, had embarked on an affair. Carrie had letters from David’s wife to her own husband to testify to the fact.

David, in turn, responds to Carrie’s letters and the two begin to confide in each other, trying to hold on to false hope. As David puts it in his first letter,

“How do you hold it inside and not let it show on your face?”

Little facets of the personalities of the characters come out in the letters. For example, Ken, the cheating husband, is methodical and logical and conscientious. In other words, Carrie has committed herself to a “bland life of boring.”

Carrie sends the amorous letters to David, letters written by Janet, David’s wife to her husband, Ken. In them, Janet confesses that Ken has ignited something in her that has never been touched before. She loves being the woman she is when she is with him.

David is heartbroken, yet he is not ready to confront his wife. “I’m not quite the man I pretend to be, and she’s certainly not the woman I thought she was.” Carrie on her part is swamped with the insecurities of being thirty, single and childless.

Slowly, the letters reveal the growing closeness between Carrie and David. At one point, they decide to meet and carry on the correspondence as well. This time, David finds love letters from Ken to Janet where he calls her “My woman from another life.” He, in turn, sends them to Carrie who is devastated to read them, especially lines like “I have never loved before. If this is what love is.”

As the months go by, the letters grow warmer, and the two jilted people find consolation in their friendship. They refer to each other as kindred spirits.

There comes a point when the affair between Janet and Ken comes to an end and Carrie and David need to make some tough decisions. Do they take back their erring spouses?

The end of the story takes the reader by surprise. Carrie confesses to David at one point

“But getting to know you – being with you- was the beginning of me understanding just how lost I was in my own life.”

There are so many lessons to be learnt from this seemingly simple story.

1.     Life can reveal unpleasant surprises. You need to make lemonade out of the lemons life throws at you.

2.     A good friend or confidant is a blessing in life.

3.     Sometime love disappears out of the window. It is better to be prepared, rather than be shattered.

4.     Do not settle for anything less than you deserve in life.

 The language is simple, the form epistolary. The narrative holds the interest till the last page, and the twist leaves the reader feeling strangely content. The whole book is around 80 pages, which makes it more of a novella, but it is packed with punches. It is only at the end that the significance of the title dawns on you.

Maybe, the main reason why this book impacted me so much is because the message it conveys is that however hard life hits you, there is always an element of hope that uplifts you as long as you are willing to grasp at it.

 *This short novella is available on Kindle unlimited.

 

Taylor Jenkins Reid - Goodreads

 This post is a part of Blogchatter Blog Hop. www.theblogchatter.com

 

 

TIME TO ADJUST ONE’S SAILS!

 "Well, we have a whole new year ahead of us. And wouldn't it be wonderful if we could all be a little more gentle with each other, a little more loving, and have a little more empathy, and maybe next year at this time we'd like each other a little more." Judy Garland

Every year brings new challenges with it, doesn’t it? Do we run about like headless chickens, trying to solve them all or do we work our way through, one step at a time? 

"Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives, not looking for flaws, but looking for potential." Ellen Goodman

 Despite my hectic professional schedule, running a household with the help of an extremely supportive better half, and of course, my multifarious writing projects, I still managed to smile through it all, mainly because I loved everything I was doing. Isn’t that the key to enjoying life? Doing what you love?

On the one hand, I had taken over as the Director of my mother's school on January 1^st, and it was a task rife with challenges especially after two long years of COVID-19. Being with young ones made it all worth it, and the feeling of being able to make positive changes, however small, made me smile at the end of the day. In fact, one quote that keeps me going is by BB King.

“The beautiful thing about learning is that no one can take it away from you.”

                                                                        Canva

Of course, my days ended long after midnight, when I sat down to finish my writing tasks. The #Blogchatter #WriteAPageADay and the BlogchatterAToZChallenge2022 were tough but satisfying as they made me sit down and write every single day to create a body of work that I could look back upon with pride. The second challenge was turned into an e-book which I christened ‘Literary Characters with Character – (Pun Intended!)’ I also put together an anthology of Shakespearean tales for children, replete with illustrations by some amazing young artists, and hope that it will soon see the light of day.

BlogchattereBookCarnival

2022 found me rekindling my poetry genes and writing poems for vibrant writing groups like Chrysanthemum Chronicles, Readomania and Soul Craft. My pieces found their space in anthologies like Songs of a Mermaid, Remnants of Loss, Unkahi: The Unsung, The Aniconic Cosmic Dancer and Lockdown – Tales from the Pandemic Era.

Published by Chrysanthemum Chronicles

                                                                 

                                                   Published by Readomania

                                            Published by Chrysanthemum Chronicles

An Anthology of Poems from the Armed Forces

Published by Writermelon

When my blog ‘Deep Ties’ (no points for guessing where that name came from!) found a place in the Directory of Best Indian Blogs in English 2022 Edition for the second time running, I was delighted.

Winning prizes is always gratifying and when both my stories submitted to The Story Cabinet won prizes, it made me want to dance. My first story was adjudged the Overall winner in the Monsoon contest and won me a cash prize which I promptly converted into buying the books I had been yearning to read.

Two wonderful books which landed up on my desk were On Writing by Stephen King and Steering The Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin, courtesy Bookswagon.com, both books I had been itching to lay my hands on.

 

The one cloud on my horizon was when Amazon suddenly woke up one morning and banned all my book reviews. They gave me no reason, sensible or otherwise. Since I had been writing reviews for over a decade, it hit me hard. I did fight but realised that I was up against AI minions with neither the acumen nor the emotions to understand the anguish of a dedicated writer. After months of protests and struggling through my social media campaign which I called #GoliathtomyDavid, the wonderful Himalayan Writing Retreat group, whom I want to thank from the bottom of my heart, came to my rescue by highlighting my ‘Amazonian’ issue.

https://www.himalayanwritingretreat.com/behind-the-amazon-reviews-in-india/

20^th August 2022 was a red-letter day, the day when I was able to pay a public tribute to my mother, Mrs. Nalini Chandran, who has spent a lifetime in the field of education, apart from having founded a school which will turn 45 in 2023. Ms. Kalpana Ramesh, a close friend and erstwhile teacher in our school, and I burnt the midnight oil, putting this tome together and we were thrilled and relieved when it was finally done. Logos Books, Pattambi, published the book for us, and were extremely pleasant to work with. ‘Defying Destiny: Nalini Chandran – A Life Sketch’ was launched at an event that saw many luminaries attend and applaud.

                                             Deepti Menon and Kalpana Ramesh

                                           Published by Logos Books, Pattambi

I have always maintained that I am a thriller writer, but even I didn’t realise that I would slip into the horror genre, until I turned into the Guest Editor for a graphic horror anthology titled ‘The Abandoned House Horror’ published by Chrysanthemum Chronicles. The coffee table anthology has just come out, and its graphics and content are certainly going to give its readers sleepless nights and the heebie-jeebies!

Guest Editor: Deepti Menon

Published by Chrysanthemum Chronicles

I also did my usual Christmas reading, taking a passage from ‘How The Grinch Stole Christmas’, a tale that I have always loved.

https://www.facebook.com/deepti.menon.98/videos/204208506266457

 “It seems like everything sleeps in winter, but it’s really a time of renewal and reflection.”

 Elizabeth Camden

Lessons I have learnt over the year:

a.     Do things in mini doses without making grandiose resolutions.

b.     Write, write, write with enjoyment, and edit with determination.

c.     Maintain relationships with friends, especially reader and writer mates.

d.    Keep myself alive on social media.

e.     Read for all I am worth, write reviews (forget Goliath)

f.      Make friends wherever I can, unless they lock their profiles against me!

g.     Keep my funny bone honed… never know where it may come in handy!

h.    Dedicate myself to whatever I do, be it reading, writing, speaking, administering and strive for almost perfection. Nothing in life is perfect.

i.      Accept the good with the bad – praise with criticism. Both help.

j.      Finally, accept that I am human. I can do what I can do, and leave the rest!

 That’s it, folks! Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. As Tiny Tim put it in ‘A Christmas Carol’ -

“God bless us, every one!”

 

 

Sleeping Dogs by Archana Sarat

 

Is it better to let sleeping dogs lie? It certainly does make life easier, I suppose. Archana Sarat’s latest thriller titled ‘Sleeping Dogs’ introduces Aarna, a 21-year-old girl who lost her mother, Devika, when she was young. “I have always lived with my mother in my imagination.” Aarna’s words wring the heart especially because she lives with her maternal grandparents in Chennai in a home that has no traces of her mother, not even a photograph.

Suddenly she receives a summons from her father, who is living with his second wife. A reluctant Aarna makes her way to Mumbai and almost immediately, gets embroiled in her own investigation of her mother’s suicide.

Why does Aarna have horrific nightmares about her mother who died twelve years ago? Even worse, why are there huge gaps in her childhood memories? Why is the girl’s relationship with her father, Yugan, strained? Even as Aarna goes for professional counselling, she strives to connect the dots in her life in a logical fashion. As her psychologist advises her, “Listen to stories and you will discover the truth.” She is no pushover, as is proved by the determined way she goes about trying to solve the mystery that has consumed her childhood.

Archana Sarat is a gifted writer. The way she intertwines the past and the present through the accounts of Devika and Aarna forms the main narrative of the book. These are helped along with the bits of information the latter pieces together, like a jigsaw puzzle, at the end of which the daughter has a clear idea about the intriguing personality of her mother.

The book deals hints at issues like parental responsibility, sexual misdemeanour, the importance of consent in relationships and professional impropriety. The narrative is fast-paced and gripping, and as the mystery comes to an end and the final piece of the jigsaw is placed on the board, the reader sits back with the satisfaction of a tale well told.

The cover image is mystical, vibrant in its hues, eye-catching in its detail. ‘Sleeping Dogs’ from the Readomania stable lives up to the promise of the earlier novel by Archana Sarat, ‘Birds of Prey’ which is now a major web series featuring ex-ACP, Anton Pinto, who makes an appearance in this book as well.

                                                                     Archana Sarat