You join dots that glint like the tips of a tantrum
to form alphabets that are onesies dangling
from pink plastic clips of lisped words
fluttering into sentences like shape shifting wind
settling into a sepia memory like winged butterflies
on a flower.
Can we spend some more time, here, together?
~ In response to the Peter's Prompt at dVerse
Here we are, at the cusp of a new year.
Last year was a painful year as a gigantic wave of loss swelled and spilled onto the banks of the normal idea of normalcy, engulfing many in its folds. It was like as if God had tightly closed the lid on our world and was rattling it like a salt and pepper shaker.
If there is anything the pandemic has taught us, it is, according to me, the need to be kind, the significance of being understanding. It has reminded us the ephemerality of our thoughts, our desires and our existence. As long as we are destined to be here, let us be kind to one another. For, long after a person is gone, what remains alive in the hearts of the living, are the wispy petals of kindness that she has dispersed.
Let us begin the new year, gripping the torch of hope firmly in our callused hands. Let us stand united and lend each other support till we can together surmount the challenges posed by these trying times and make it to the shore of safety.
Happy new year!
My poem titled 'The Destination' has been published in Buddhist Poetry Review. You can read it here at https://www.buddhistpoetryreview.org/archive/vol-three-issue-three/preeth-ganapathy
Today is the last day of my three day mini-break in Coorg.
I must say that this time, I got to see a completely different face of the land that I belong to, the land whose beauty I just can’t get enough of, I just can’t stop raving about.
We arrived on Saturday morning after a short detour to KRS(Krishna Raja Sagar) dam. Our car tootled on the cement pathway to our home in tune to the light beats of a thin drizzle, when I caught sight of the patch of clouds hanging delicately on the tip of the distant hillock, a hillock I had never noticed before. They bowed low like hosts, eager to please, folding their palms.
It has not stopped raining since the time we arrived. The volume of the rainfall varies from time to time, alternating between heavy and light, but never stopping altogether. This sound of pattering rain is a pleasurable change from the constant din of honking horns of a dreary city life.
During the past two days, Krishna, with his outstretched palms, has been sampling drops of water dripping from different surfaces – from the red petals of wild hibiscus, from the tips of green unripe coffee berries, from the eaves of the two dog kennels, from the edge of the porch – all while we entertained ourselves to some outdoor carrom, a game at which I fare very poorly and would have happily joined my toddler in his adventures instead. Nevertheless, we did have some great moments of family bonding, ones that will remain in our mind for a long time to come.
Today morning, we visited the kere, a small pond which serves as a natural well of irrigation to the estate. It was as green as the leaves of coffee shrubs themselves and Krishna was pretty excited to see all the different birds that hung around the pond. We tried to match them with the birds we had seen from his book, but practicals are always a different ball game when compared to theory.
Otherwise, I’ve been trying to nature-watch, bird-watch, insect-watch, flower-watch from the comfort of a sheltered porch trying to soak in as much as possible.
With a book on my lap and a fountain-pen in my hand, on our first evening here, I remarked to my husband who was sitting beside me, sipping from a cup of hot coffee, ‘This is my dream life, you know. Writing in the lap of nature.’ Like one of my favourites, Ruskin Bond. And another favourite, Shivaram Karanth. But now at the end of the third day, I realize - I was so lost in her beauty that, in three days, I could only squeeze in a short poem in her praise.
The days and nights have been cold, a kind of cold that lulls you into sleep and prevents you from getting on your toes to make yourself a cup of coffee, to take a bath or to reach for the phone that lies on the table a few feet away from your bed. ‘Lie down for some time more,’ the cold seems to say, a wicked smile playing at the corner of its lips. The only other place that reminds me of this kind of cold is Mussoorie , which happens to be another favourite.
‘The chill in the weather is much better these days. When we were young, we would find it difficult to even have a change of clothes,’ my mother used to say. But today, when I call her up, I will tell her about the rains, the wind and the cold. This pleasant kind of cold.
And hope against hope that this is the beginning of a reversal of climate change.
a sunny day
caught in the folds of a month of raindrops
a bumble bee
amidst flies flitting around flaps of skin on a swivel chair
a page of my favourite book
savoured in the middle of an indulgent work break
the glow of fire in a lighthouse
waiting for salvation on the jagged banks of the Arabian Sea
In this blog post, I share with you a couple of my pieces that got published recently.
First up, another of my ten word stories found a home at Potato Soup Journal:
http://potatosoupjournal.com/how-she-fell-in-love-with-him-by-preeth-ganapathy/
A poem that I had written in response to their monthly prompt has been published in Visual Verse Magazine :
https://visualverse.org/submissions/cerulean-freedom/
A piece of prose that I had written for the Prose 500 contest organised by Wordweavers has been selected under their 'featured' category.
https://www.wordweavers.in/2020/08/prose-500-2020-winners-featured-writers.html
Happy writing, happy living!
Work gathers, picks pace and pushes aside everything else, especially the hobbies that I had clung onto all these months. The weeds have been pulled out, the table is spanking clean, the files – ready to be opened.
I clear out a section in my mind and make space for new work stuff that I’m training to love. I do this between the lines of poetry in The New Yorker.
Cheers to work! Work, here I plunge. <Sound of water splashing>
Reset, reset and reset.
Your personal life, your creative life, your professional life at the beginning of every day.
Every day, we are given twenty four hours to better yourself, to move closer to your goals, to make a difference to the people around you. Every day is a new beginning. It’s upto us whether we want to live in the hangover of yesterday and mope and moan over losses or pull our socks, jump out of our quilts and do/continue to continue to do what matters most to us.
So forgive people, forget bad experience but learn your lessons, free up your mind, take a deep breath and just do that thing that you always wanted to do.
Once you’ve done that, move onto the next.
When you embark on a new project, you are bound to hit roadblocks, bound to bump over road humps, bound to meet challenges. What helps you achieve success is your attitude – your attitude to carry on inspite of seemingly insurmountable obstacles. For a determined mind can plough a hole through the hardest of rocks and toughest of mountains.
In the words of Earl Nightingale, motivational speaker, success is the progressive realization of a worthy goal. Success is not just the act of reaching your final goal but also comprises the small incremental steps that one takes on the journey towards achievement of the goal.
If your goal is to be a writer, you may not have written anything on a particular day, but if you have read a story that struck a chord, if you have flipped through the pages of a ‘how-to-write’ book, you still are making progress, for you have not wasted the day. You are one step closer to your goal and you are successful.
When you don’t realize how time has flown, immersed in work, when breaks to feed a rumbling stomach do not trouble you, when you come up for air only when somebody reminds that you have not taken a breath, you know you have found your calling, you have found your ‘flow state’.
When you have found your calling, you have found a life of joy.
I ponder over what to discuss in today’s post, when a fly buzzes
in front my eyes. It’s one of those tiny flies, one that the eye can barely
perceive. I can only feel and hear it. I cannot see it. I hit and clap randomly in the air but to no
avail. It continues to irritate me. So I decide to take a break and walk around
in my room.
I come back ten minutes later and pull out my swivel chair.
It seems to have disappeared and I can once again get on with my work in peace.
So many things in life seem to work this way. Give it a rest
and we feel better after a while. We get new perspective and the problem seems
to have cleared itself out.
Let us learn to give ourselves breaks when we feel like it,
so we can be more efficient when we really ned to be.
‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’
Keats began his poem ‘from Endymion’ with these great lines.
If we want to hold joy in the cup of our palm and the cockles of our heart, we have to find that thing which defines beauty in our eyes - anything that you find beautiful and connect to it, so you can be joyful, however fleeting the ‘forever’ part is.
It could be a quiet evening in silence, a session of meditation or a great book.
Personally, I find the power of words, very beautiful. To immerse yourself in the craft of weaving words – whether you are writing or appreciating what has been written is, for me, finding joy at a personal level.
What do you find beautiful? Do share your thoughts in the comments below.
Great is a mind that, in the middle of the rush to get
nowhere, stops, pauses, breathes, looks around to savor the beauty of surroundings
and learnings that a mundane everyday life brings with it.
Blessed is a mind that feels the pulse of what is really
important in the challenges that one is bombarded with.
It is when the mind stops, breathes and pauses that great
things, the really beautiful things are manifested.
Life changes. One day cannot be exactly similar to the previous day. A person cannot be exactly same as he was the previous day. He has to undergo changes – some cells die, while new cells take their place, new thoughts take the place of old thoughts, new ideas take root in his mind. Change is the only constant in life, on Earth.
But what helps us remain grounded through the changes and what helps us deal with changes – minor or drastic is a routine. Routines keep us tethered to our moorings while our boat is rocked by a tempest. Routines are what power us to move forward and chart the choppy waters of uncertainty. Routines form our sheet-anchors when the world around seems to be changing colours a tad too fast for our liking.
Find a routine that is uplifting and stick to it. So you will be uplifted a little each day, no matter what changes are thrown your way.
The cursor blinks at me at a frequency per second. It blinks at me in step with the ticking second hand of the red Titan time piece staring at me from the mantel. The longer I stare at the cursor, the more difficult it is to tame it and get typing.
Enough is enough. I hunker down and type the first word on screen.
I guess this is true with any problem that you face, any challenge that you encounter. The longer you stare at the problem, the bigger it looks, the bigger it grows. Instead, gather your wits and plunge headlong into tackling the problem. Sure, strategy and planning are important. But they are important only when and if you have a strategy and plan!
If you don’t have one, it’s time to make use of the best resource you have – YOU and move on without much ado!
As I leave for work, my toddler
son touches my feet. He has acquired this new habit, watching me touch my
parents’ feet and seeking their blessings everyday before I leave for work.
Touching elders’ feet to seek
their blessings is an integral part of Indian culture, more specifically Coorg
culture. When we were children, one of our primary duties when we are introduced
to the elders was to touch their feet with both our palms and bring the palms
to our heads. And they in turn would bestow their blessings and wish for us all
the good things that the smorgasbord of life has on offer.
So, it came as a pleasant
surprise when my son who is all of two touched my feet for the first time a few
weeks ago. He then proceeded to touch my parents’ feet too. Three times and placed
his hand on his head after each iteration. Like a true blue Coorg!
He has kept up with the practice and has not missed even a single day. And today was special – he touched
my feet and also offered his blessings! Turning on his most serious version, he smiled and said, ’Be Happy!’ And his words made the rest of my
day!
Hard work. Plain. Simple. Hard. Work. That’s the number one ingredient that takes you to the top. That’s the essence of what differentiates a winner from the ones who make it to a measly almost there. It can move mountains, change hearts and raise life from the dark pits of despair. Hard work can turn around a life like nothing else can.
Of course, grace – some call it luck, matters. But it’s important to remember former President of US, Thomas Jefferson when he said, ’The harder I work, the luckier I get.’
Whenever you stare at a dead end, when you feel hopelessly useless, when you feel the world turn its back against you – hunker down and work hard. It will lift your day and your spirits. Not to mention your game. UP.
