It's December Ducky !

This month always has special surprises for me. Not to mention the eternal weddings, birthdays that I am expected to attend, with a hope to re-patch my relatively poor social skills. I ain't absolutely asocial as you all know, but my socializing gets confined gradually to small circle. What you don’t know is, that it takes conscious effort. With time, I get comfortable more with books and small talks, than I get with people with their usual conversations. And I believe, people get connected to me faster than the usual pace. I feel responsible for maintaining a distance to develop and evolve for themselves.

Strangely, absolute strangers fascinate me. Their stories inspire me to think laterally across my existent comfort zones, and I end up telling all these observations to my inner core of pals and eventually, in my write-ups. But, the sheer presence of people whom you know for sure, will read anything you write, sends chills all along my spine. Of responsibility and of shame, to unable to reciprocate a different texture of love to all of them.

Updates from my life, I am doing all good. Reading loads and pondering a lot. I wish to take out some time to travel, and yeah, I often feel creepy for not having joined the lucrative jobs I bagged earlier. But it's all the part of the cycle.Even you have your up's and down's yeah ? Tell me about it !

I was in my routine, until I had three notifications this evening. Three lengthy text messages, narrating how my writing inspired them in its own tiny fashion. I am more than overwhelmed, I have thanked them obviously.

As I ponder deep inside, I was questioning our basic instinct to fall for appreciation. We love praises. We adulate upvotes. We crave for compliments. Is that a good thing afterall? Do we often need some external force to hail our inner awesomeness? Unusually, I like someone appreciating me, but if given a chance, I would avoid that.

But, this article is a tribute to all the goodness embedded in every soul, to appreciate tiny aspects of reality, surrounding themselves. So, what did I do about it? I must have written some 30 odd letters, in the last three weeks. To many people - Close friends, family, relatively okayish acquaintances and absolute strangers. Who mean something to me, who think I mean something to them.

I strongly believe that words will last longer than virtual media activity. Thus, satiated my tryst with emotional chunk of my mundane life, with scribbling my heart out.

For the rest, where I’ve failed to gather postal addresses, here take my embrace. And my honour to your empathy. I speak less, but you know I mean a lot when I do.

Ink Stain

A fell bent of mind is upon him. I can speak no words of solace to comfort him. We have been geeky amigos since childhood. Perhaps my pen can deliver the fluid balm he needs and soothe his agitated soul. Ever since we learned to write, we wrote as often and as naturally as fish swim or eagles fly. This letter, though, had to be special. The thrill and the subtle inspiration should let him get over the malady that has been bothering him.

Took out the feather that he gifted me when we once set out on a trek amidst the woods. I have been using that as a bookmark to explore the book-bound worlds we cherished together. As I fondled it’s soft texture, I realized how symbolic my friend can be, whose gift tokenism depicted both my sensitivity and my ordered synchronization of thoughts.

I set to shave off a few fibers at the tip with a sharp blade, and I was reminded of the miracles we created together to expand our minds. Our outings were in the libraries and the coffee shops on how to read, dissect and rewrite. Learning sessions they were, still are. We grew together as individuals and that growth has brought in many combinations of our reflexes. Leaving the feather in a bowl of water for an hour, I was lost in the heaps of notes we wrote together. There were more red ovals than tick marks, I smiled as he never tried to flatter me. The only way to grow is to re-do the gray areas, his voice echoed as the sweetness of the yellowed papers tinged my nostrils.

I tapered the feather-tip as an archer treating her arrow-head. A 45 degree cut is made to it, twice. When the edge became sharp, like his ideas, I created a split in the end, which resembled his divided past. Bending those two horns together, I was recollecting how our silent eye-gazing exercises has brought us to points of no return. With his wife dead last week, he had become a paranoid. I wanted him to know that I appreciate his tastes and decisions, and so the feather was now adorned with wavy streaks of wood brown, his favorite color. SIGH. I have made my gift ready. 

A Quill.  And some Papyrus rolls for the pulp representation of my soul. 

 

“ Σε λατρεύω my star! It’s all melancholy, pondering over how we should take things forward. But, do you realize....”

I was scribbling for long, before I knew I was staining the sheets. With tears. I am so proud of my dear friend, for choosing to be the master of your own universe.

As I was putting on my overcoat, heading to visit him, I was thrown into apprehensive future anticipations. Would he think that I mistook him? Would he fear sharing his contemplations in the times to come?

Ha ! I tittered. Deep down, I knew he would kiss the papyrus rolls and the quill, and give me a million dollar smile, with those ink-stained lips.

# Reposting from my Quora Blog - http://threeminutestories.quora.com/Ink-stain

Yeh Dosthi.....

Don’t  wait till  you’ve  a garden

To   grow  life’s  favorite  flowers.

True  friendship  blossom,

Not  in  soil,

But  happy,  well  spent  hours.    --   Anne  Kreer

It all started when I began reading – The Friendship Book (Francis Gay, 1989). It is of £ 2.55 ,but I bought it for  Rs. 20. Thanks to the Sunday market of Hyderabad. 

It is a diary evincing a thought for each day, with tiny crumbles of anthology and super pixilated photographs carrying the mood throughout. Mediocore, but, it’s the voice of an optimist, who truly lives life. Soon, I began dreaming the author’s dreams, only to fall in love with it, bit by bit.

Potential lowering of ego levels.

That’s my definition for friendship, only then any two people can get along, frictionless. But my point is can they ever minify their levels to an absolute zero? What are the hurdles for it? Had my thinking cap on - the only answer popped up - Supremacy of Ego. Self.

Dictionaries define them more precisely than I could do. So, no enthu to outbeat them. And also, let’s confine it's area to friendship. Ego’s in other domains is out of my scope  :P 

You see, Ego - being selfish – these are all relative terms. You can never claim that – “This is my action which came out of a selfless divine heart”. Never. Example – You do some charity, you empathize with the situations and make some efforts to efface them. In this process, you feel elated, which can be implied that you are being selfish for your happiness – reason is not the criteria here. By the way, Ego isn’t a bad word. It’s you. Your soul’s state of happiness or sorrow.

So, when ego is almost a non-negotiable factor, let’s disguise it in the name of friendship. That’s how it works !

Throw a compliment for your friend who looks stunning today. Apologize for your wrong doings. Don’t let a microbe called ego follow you, whenever you climb. Stay humble and be a free-float. Friends can never be replaced, roger that.

# wanna go to those times where I could have been a lot better.

Wish I have a time machine !!