Lament of the forlorn

You keep moving me here and there
wherever and whenever

On the bed, in the wardrobe
On the floor, atop the dresser

You know you can’t live without me
I am a part and parcel of your life

You have all the patience in the world
when you wait for me
to get hot

And then you hold a firm grip on me
Your hands move with me
up and down
back and front
across and bottom

Please find a permanent place for me Zack
You know how cold I get on the floor
And how warm it is on the bed

~ The most underrated, your iron box

The tomato story

Two tomatoes were lying on the dining table since 2 weeks. They were plucked from the home garden when they showed a hint of red from the sea of green, washed, dried and laid on a plate to ripen. To see them every morning was a pretty sight. Tufts of green leaves on their head, which made them look as if they sprouted spiky hairs.  And two of them sitting side by side, you could imagine their gummy smiles too. As each day passed, the colors started to change. From green to orange to red. But they never morphed into bright red like the ones we see and buy in the markets.


Should they be used today, or should we wait for tomorrow, would be the question me, FIL and MIL would ponder. After all, this was the first time we could eat home-grown tomatoes. As luck would have it, we ran out of store-bought tomatoes today morning. Rasam had to be made and there was no other alternative left. The redder of the two had to be finalized. And the choosing ceremony happened. Now the lone less-redder tomato sits alone on the dining table, looking forlorn and lost. Maybe, the last thing it discussed with the now used up tomato was  – “your turn or mine” 😀

Philosophy and its implementation

Most of you must have heard of this story. I came across this quite recently and felt it to be implement-worthy, and not one of the kinds where in you say – ‘this does not apply to real life’. If any one of you can point out the source of this story, please let me know. Am more than happy to link it here 🙂

In a forest, a pregnant deer is about to give birth to a baby. It finds a remote grass field nearby a river and slowly goes there thinking it would be safe. As she moves slowly, she gets labour pain.

At the same moment, dark clouds gather around that area and lightning starts a forest fire. Turning left, she sees a hunter who is aiming an arrow from a distance. As she tries to move towards right, she spots a hungry lion approaching towards her.

What can the pregnant deer do, as she is already under labour pain..?

What do you think will happen..?
Will the deer survive..?
Will it give birth to a fawn..?
Will the fawn survive…?

OR

Will everything be burnt by the forest fire…?
Can the deer go left..? No, the hunter’s arrow is pointing at her.
Can she go right…? No, the hungry male lion is approaching her.
Can she move up..? No, there the forest is on fire.
Can she move down..? No, that is where the fierce river is.

Answer: She does nothing. She just focuses on giving birth to a new LIFE..

The sequence of events that happens at that fraction of a second (moment)
are as follows:

In a spur of MOMENT, a lightning strikes, and blinds the eyes of the hunter…!
At that MOMENT, he releases the arrow missing and zipping past the deer…!
At that MOMENT, the arrow hits and injures the lion badly…!
At that MOMENT, it starts to rain heavily and puts out the forest fire…!
At that next MOMENT, the deer gives birth to a healthy fawn…!

In our life too, there are MOMENTS of CHOICE when we all have to deal with
negative thoughts from all sides. Some thoughts are so powerful they
overcome us, and make us clueless.

Anything can happen in a MOMENT in this life. If you are religious,
superstitious, atheist, agnostic or whatever, you can attribute this MOMENT
to divine intervention, faith, sudden luck, serendipity, coincidence, karma,
or a simple ‘I just don’t know’…!

The priority of the deer, in that given moment, was simply giving birth to a
baby, because LIFE IS PRECIOUS…!

Now I went around to implement this story since I read it first.  Must say it helped a lot. To focus on what-must-I-do instead of thinking about the hundreds of what-could-I-do and what-should-I-do. But then life always throws you idiotic scenarios some days. Zack is bugging me to no end off late, with his I-will-work-on-the-laptop-even-if-my-house-is-burning  motto and almost ‘PMS’-y mood swings. I can always throw the heavy telephone directory on his head to make him see some sense, but then I am having a clean record till date, in the area of domestic violence and wish to maintain so