Leafy Meadows

“My name is smile. I rest on lips of countless people. I am gender, culture, race, ethnicity and caste neutral. I come in various shades, from the humblest of the order to the proudest of the proud. From the gullible and naïve to the scheming one. From the innocent to the cruelest of the cruel. From the lost to the found. From the love to the malignity. From supportive to the envious. From sad to the Happy. From the truthful to the fake. These shades define me, they define me because of the person. What am I then…? I am optimistic, whenever people smile or have any other shades of mine, they have optimism, for all their plans and schemes, their moments are hidden behind me. I am here to make a confession today. I have come to understanding that I have many other shades that were not known to me some 200 or so years ago. Did I tell you my age…? I am approximately 50-55 million years old, So, I live countless lives and have lived a hundred thousand more. Now the exa

How To Manage Stress, By Cultivating Five Easy Habits. As we venture into the world, full, of race, of time, wealth and accomplishments we retrospect and within that retrospection, we find that we took lot of decisions, some good and then some bad. It is those bad decisions that attract our attention more because we as human being are conditioned to blame. No, we never accept criticism from any person but we are very happy to blame. Blaming any person or thing or an event is easy and natural in the theory and practice. But consider following things if you are going to through stressful times. Did you feel frustrated and helpless in situations that seemed very convenient at one time? If yes then you might have come across what we call learned helplessness according to a research done by the American Psychiatric Association there is absolutely no situation which you cannot overcome. But we are so focused on the problem that solution is something other than visible.

42 Katraj, A journey of Dreams.     Part 1 Nilesh woke up, as the alarm snoozed. He looked around and saw through the window, the sky was lit by pre-dawn hue. He got up stretched the body and went straight to the toilet. Meanwhile his wife Sarita got up and fired the stove. She then put the container filled with water for boiling, when Nilesh came out of toilet, the scent of  kerosene filled his nostrils. He emptied the container in the iron bucket lying about and headed back to bathroom. His wife started boiling water for tea and yawned while the flames of stove danced. Nilesh came out of bathroom, prayed, went to the bedroom when he came out of bed room he was ready to go. He quietly sipped his tea and asked his wife as to what vegetables to bring on the way back to home. Opened the door to the front, where his Hero Honda SS model bike stood. He cleaned it with the cloth stashed in the cavity of dashboard, then kicked his bike, which started in one. He remembered th

Right Choice “When does he arrive?” the man at the platform, enquired to a woman who in her mid-fourties, was as anxious as the questioner. The train was to arrive at the appointed time, but suburban trains are never to be trusted and by each passing minute the man was getting more anxious. The man was Baburam Parekh, almost touching his fifties he looked younger. He owned a local Jewelry store at Laxmi road Pune and the woman besides him was his wife Nathibai Parekh, rather slim figure standing by a man who seemed agitatedly looking at other passengers on the platform. The person in the question was their only son, the Parekhs had their late blooms the child being the only one, made Baburam more attached to the boy and Nathibai was as distant and absent minded as she could be. She was visualizing the year of before the birth of Naresh.  They were at the dispensary located at Kasba Peth, the doctor dismissed their last hope that won’t be able to conceive. The Parekhs were

Ailurophobia It was warm summer day, having just arrived at the lodge, at the foothills of Rajgad fort, at around 2pm, the day now being one of the typical summers experienced in the western Maharasthra. There was heat and the air being still the atmosphere was heating up. Besides it was too tiring for me to just fare in to the jungle around.  I returned at the lodge, where I had my lunch prepared by the cottage attendant. The lunch was sumptuous so soon I was snoozing with constant hum of generator. The fact that cats have padded paws makes it most stealthy and lethal predator in the animal kingdom. No wonder these cats are at the top of the food chain. So, I investigated before I ventured in to the forest, some inquiries with the locals who dwell on the inner boundaries of forest  and mainly cultivate rice till October to December. these locals mostly depend on cattle and livestock. On enquiry, the local confirmed that one of the calves was predated upon by the Tiger just

The Unruly Neighbor It so happened that one night, as usual insomnia was creeping in on me, I happen to be awake till late mid night, and there it was the two antennas, waving, at me as if they are just seeing as to who I might be. I was other than intensity of my work, was focused, but somehow those antennas having done their job, had my partial attention.  So, then it was decided as a custom, I stare it back, there was silence, the exoskeleton without flinching not making any move at all. I decided to act upon, I slowly climbed up the sofa, crawled it to the other side made a note, that the ancient being is at the very same spot where left him.It was customary that I took some foot wear to just squash it to the floor, all the senses were focused now on the being on the floor. There was stillness and only thing that moved was the breeze from the ceiling fan and those antennas making concentric circles. Question was to break the silence, the stillness, with neither of us ma