Ramblings- Read at your own risk…

Festivals are a time of mourning for us… ever since this Saraswati Puja (from photo)… It was the first and last time ‘rangoli/alpana’ was made in our house on the puja day. My mother became her superstitious best after my father passed away in a few weeks. I can understand now that she just wanted to keep us as safe as possible…

Learning, unlearning and relearning about the law of attraction does not help; the reactive mind wins…

How to be detached? And is there any fun without attachment? I used to love children; play with kids of cousins… My mother used to suggest I should join a Montessori school… But ever since my sister’s girls have come, I have realized that the affinity I feel for them is something else and touch wood, they love me back equally! ‘Me’ and mine are important to life and so is learning about the self… Although we know about it, the relearning has got to be done until it is genuinely and fully realized…

Until such a moment, the ‘jaddo-jehad’/struggle is on… Faith, that all is well, is the most important reminder in this age of awareness, as how we feel in the moment is determining the next experience in the making… Let’s count our blessingsJ Thank you for being a part of my lifeJ

Anger and Empathy- Creation of a Story

My nephew had come over last Saturday; you know how it was in those days, my aunt, (kindly read blogpost ‘Mrs. Aadi’) was married when my father was born and gave birth to a son after a year, and Prashant is her daughter’s son, who currently works at Earnst & Young, London (born in Mau and raised in Bareilly!)… So, he was asking how the process of writing stories works… Here’s the account of the creation of one of my favourite stories…

Lata, Umesh, Samrat and I with Sir... clicked by Snehveer

It was around 1:30 am or 2:00 am but definitely way beyond midnight and I was returning home alone in the auto-rickshaw after a long but very enjoyable day at the ‘Monday ManDali’… That was a story workshop with renowned Lyricist Neelesh Misra who now has the fourth season of a radio story show running successfully…

As soon as my rickshaw entered the building premises, and I could see some cars parked outside the small gate, a thought flashed in my mind, ‘If I were to get down silently and vanish (by the time security opened the main gate) behind a parked car, what would happen to the auto-rickshaw guy? Would he not get scared when he finds nobody around?’

I related this to my mentor, the next morning, as the new story idea and generally a serious person, he laughed out loud! We as a family have been through enough to realize the value of comedy. So I began writing, hoping for a segment of 450 words per week… In the middle of that, my niece, Manya, then in class VI, called up and asked for a poem to recite in class… I came up with something that she thought was too childish… So I narrated it to Sir, and asked if I could do series of ‘kid-ghost’ stories…  He liked the idea. It reminded him of Casper…  

Most of the manDali at my friend Yamini and Sir's wedding in Mussoorie

And then came the instruction from the channel- ‘Only love stories!’ What finally came about a couple of months later is a mixture of my own life experiences, theatre scene in Lucknow, coming to Mumbai with dreams, some news reports of fake ‘sadhu babas’, some anger and some empathy with auto waalas and some fantasy with the paranormal…

Here’s the story 'Locket ki tasveer waali laRki'... Hope you enjoy it... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjHsOZwv3TM