DreamingAway

 “ MP woman googles how to commit murder, kills husband with lover’s help ” - an article title in the newspaper page. Without taking the newspaper from the tea-table, I read it aloud enough for my friend to hear it while we both were sitting on the sofa for our evening cup of tea. “How could a heart full of love kill someone?”, I asked. He smiled. “She killed her husband and not the one she loves”, and he continued, “I think you are attaching divinity to love and hence your question.” A little pause and my perplexed face let him continue. “Love is a tool. It is just another emotional weapon like fear, like humility. There is no rule that dictates the way it must be used. Politicians use it. Religious leaders use it. Nations use it. Your neighbours use it. Your own family members use it. You may be aware a few and might not know about a few. That is the nature of it. In fact, love is one of the oldest weapons that stays unchanged for this long and possibly forever. You can use it for a

 “I am a left-handed” - one of our new teammates introduced herself during our new joiners meet. “Which hand do you use to code?” - someone joked. Why can’t we use both hands well? By the stats, right now, 13 million Indian can do that.  Actually, our hands (legs, ears…) are equally strong, and it is our practice and the mind that brings this difference. Though you may find it difficult to lift dumbbells in one of your hands when you are new to the gym and you will eventually get it fixed. Of course, we are not going to fix the north-south magnetic field lines, nor we are going to stop the plant bending towards the sun. How do you stop a mother loving her child? That love can inadvertently cause unfairness to some other kid outside the home. I always feel it is inhumane to lock the birds in a cage. You love the bird and wish to provide everything it needs. But your love is absolutely unfair to its life. What happens when you support a particular friend when you got another friend on th

 My friend is such a nice person and so it was a big surprise for me. I couldn’t believe when he told me that his brother was not on good terms with him. I heard this when they met after several years when his brother visited the hospital to see their mother who was in the ICU. It was a non-emotional discussion as if nothing had happened between them. Even their mother’s state could bring no attachment. I didn’t ask him the reason. His brother later came to his home when their mother was discharged and spent some time with my friend’s kids. I was wondering whether the kids would love their uncle at any part of their lives. It depends! One of the gifts of having old people at home is the stories we hear from them. Family stories travel generation after generations. They are extraordinarily powerful and influential. My dad used to tell about his grandfather and I believed those and felt that I should become like him. In fact, I am following a few even now. I always feel like meeting thos

Who are the teachers? You can find so many people who hate a certain subject just because they hate the teacher who took that subject. This is where the internet is helping us a lot. We are getting access to top quality learning materials — written materials, images, animated tutorials, lectures and so on. In fact, school and college education are merely becoming a formality to obtain marks and grades. New generations might have an educational system far different from the one we had. Transition in any system is quite natural. Somasunda r am was our Tamil ‘sir’ in my high schooldays. He was very tall and always wore traditional white & white veshti shirt. His face reminded me of Kamarajar . He was one of my favourite teachers. I started liking Thirukkural because of him. And the reason? Strangely, I don’t find anything. Though he took classes for us three consecutive years and we had Kural in every year, he never mandated that everyone should have a liking for Thiru

 I even wonder whether a new born feels his mother as a friend or truly as a mother. Do you agree friendship is independent of age? We met when we were in the 4th standard, and we were like enemies when we reached the 6th standard. We were in different class section every year. That was how they split the class, so that studious and not-so-studies students were split equally between sections. Our marks were compared in all the exams. Don’t you think comparison is one of the enemies of friendship? Friendship enjoys if the friends have some common interest. He went home for lunch, and I took lunch to school. I used to play run-and-catch during my lunchtime. He preferred to talk with others if he could come early after lunch. I used to play cricket, and he used to play football in the evenings. He took part in all school competitions, and I kept away from those. We never could find anything in common. Hence, we rarely spoke to each other. Which is getting stronger when two people are in p

 I never thought that the curd rice is also a good food choice for dogs. My mom usually gives curd rice when she finds nothing else is attractive for our pet dog. He leaves some food in the bowl occasionally, and my mom makes a small rice ball and pleads with him to eat, saying, “the last one, eat… eat.” Of course, he can never escape, and I know I would have also faced the same when I was a child. He can eat that extra food, even though he is not hungry. “One more rep… one more buddy” is a common phrase you hear if you go to the gym. Self-motivation can help a person to do one or two reps more. It becomes easy and fun when you have your exercise buddy. These additional reps help in training your muscles to do more. You can note that these extra reps also cause workout accidents as the tired muscles may fail to match the spirit of the motivated mind. Those who got the habit of watching multiple episodes of a series in a single go may find that they might have slept before the last one

 They would have thought that I was a new visitor to the terrace, and they were right as I had no habit of spending time there. Doves and pigeons are actually a bunch of pleasant to watch birds, especially when the pack of them are on the floor and eating. I started giving them a bowl of rice to eat. After the initial few days, I noticed that the crows ate rice as well. I was annoyed a bit when the crows took the rice and pigeons had to stay away as they were afraid of crows. Anyway, that was not a serious problem as the crows didn’t take the whole rice. Hurrah! It was so relieving when I switched to wheat. Crows didn’t touch it at all. I wonder whether there can be anyone who doesn’t love seeing squirrels when they eat something with their rounded back and the question mark like arched tail. Yeah, when I introduced wheat to pigeons, I found that few squirrels joined them. Squirrels are afraid of pigeons, so they ate the wheat that scattered around, a little away from the pigeons. I fe

Your mom used to read books, mostly novels. She is no longer an active reader. She is getting older, and she finds it hard to read books. Knowing your mom’s interest in novels, you started reading out loud from your book collection. She sits patiently and listens with so much enthusiasm. You usually pick sentimental and comedy movies for your mom and you watch it with her. She never likes the political or science movies. She doesn’t follow the thriller or mystery movies - that is because she won’t pay full attention to it, even a gate opening sound in a movie feels like your home gate sound to her. Your mom used to cook potato fry (with pepper), eggplant fry and green peas curry so regularly. These were her favourites in those days. She rarely makes these items in recent times, you think it could partially because you started avoiding these for some reason. You requested her to cook them once in a week so that she could enjoy her favourite foods again. There are moms who listen to yo

Do you see love or hatred when I say that I love my country? Loving my country could mean that I am proud of its culture, or I appreciate the underlying values or the power it has, or the leaders it has produced, or I am just committed do things for my country. It could be a combination of these and many. The problem arises when something either from my country or from another country undermine and ridicule the thing that I hold close to my heart. My reaction to that could be a hatred, a revenge taking mentality or something that is not normal to me. You can check the history behind the monuments like Taj Mahal and Coral Castle. They are built in the name of love. Should the love be expressed in this way? Of course, this is just one way of it and not the only way. At times, madness and holiness are just a perception, and love is the reason for it. How much pain a mother can endure for her child? That is limitless. Can she also do some stupid acts out of love? And some brave acts? We he

Doesn’t matter whether it is a plant or an infant or a building, it is always a joy to see the growing something every day. The joy multiplies if the thing we care has lost its normal and we are trying to set it right. After spending all of your efforts on an almost dead plant, you can imagine your joy on seeing the first leaf on it. She was less than a week old when we got her rescued from the bush. The first bird in our home that I remember was a green parrot(?). Initially, my dad fed her with the banana and gave water using ink fillers and she had survived those featherless days. Later, she was eating from our plates without any restriction and moving freely without any limits. She was with us for more than a year, with a few clipped wing feathers. She would spend most of her morning to evening time at the small guava tree we had. And would return to her cage in the evening. Is it cruel to keep birds in a cage? We see birds in the Zoo. Maybe, the size of the cage matters. Maybe, the

 “ Love is when someone else protects you from your own self ,” a quote from the book “ Marry Me, Stranger ”. You can find thousands of quotes like this on the internet. Are they practical? People fall in love with someone for several reasons. Reato did a scientific experiment to set things that could make someone to fall in love with someone else. The primary factors in Reato’s experiment were 1. Physical attributes 2. Wealth attributes 3. Personal compatibility, 4. Social compatibility. Reato divided the volunteers into two groups. The first group would undergo some changes to increase four factors’ intensity while the other group unaltered. Wealth was the first factor taken for the experiment. Reato adjusted the volume of the wealth attributes for a few in the first group. The two groups met in a park like environment. They spent several hours together. The successful match count was 0. “Money cannot buy love,” Reato muttered. Reato strongly believed that altering physical attribute

COVID-19 pandemic is at the top of everything that has happened. Lots of my friends suffered because of it. I am at home since March 2020 and so about 10 months without seeing the outside world. I walk a lot at the work place as well in my commute. It has become zero. I also couldn’t visit gym. Well, that is why I am wondering how I reduced my weight from 78 kgs to 74 kgs. An equally astonishing thing is how I missed my reading habit. Staying at home with no time spent on anything else, apart from work, should have given me more time. I found no time to read books for several months. In fact, I realised it very late and started reading books again. India After Gandhi is the best read in 2020. I usually don’t prefer to read books over 300 pages, but this one, almost 1000 pages felt like 50 pages. Lean In , The Black Swan , The Five People You Meet in Heaven are few of the books I felt disappointed as I my expectation was high on them. Section 375 , Girmit , Bohemian Rhapsody , Pa

Love marriage is the one where two people love and marry without considering much about anything else. Arranged marriage is the one where two people meet in a planned way and marry by considering as many things as possible. Love is blind and that doesn’t mean that love marriage will suffer. The couple may already get everything that the arranged marriage helps to fetch in. They can also handle things as they are not kids. We have many tools and service agencies to help us find facts about anyone. So even in an arranged marriage, knowing the other person doesn’t take much of our time. Of course, this doesn’t mean that the arranged marriage won’t suffer. Knowing the facts about someone and understanding someone are not the same. It is unwise to say that one is better than the other for a married life. There are so many things involve in a successful married life. The list is endless with things like personality, goals, culture, nationality, religion, language, family, friends, activities