Miracles can be logical

Dear Ramon,

Ever met any person who reckons the cover of a match box, a coin, a calendar, a polythene bag where veggies might have been carried, ‘Divine’ because a God’s photo is imprinted on it? Well, i have been living with such a person since the beginning of my life; my mother. She is a lady who is very strong with her beliefs and confident about what she does irrespective of what others think or say about it but when it comes to any religious talks, feed her anything and she will gulp it.

There was a time when a rumour wafted in few places in India that Lord Ganesha had literally started drinking Milk when people were offering him that. Thousands of people started feeding him litres of milk and made wishes. And you might have guessed it already; my mom was one of those vehement devotees to believe that blindly. We had a small idol of Ganesha, made of clay and my neighbour had an idol that of stone. So, my mom and her other devout friend started feeding milk to the idols with spoon. I wasn’t spared either. She made me feed the idol a spoonful of milk and it worked. I saw the milk dissipating slowly as soon as I put the spoon inside the mouth of idol. I was fascinated to see the miracle and was pleased to know that my offerings had been accepted by God and I would be granted my wish.

Maths used to be my biggest fear those days. So, I wished to score good marks in maths exam.  When I wrote the maths papers after few days, unlike always I was smiling while writing the exam instead of fearing, pretty confident that my wish had been granted. Well miracle did happen; I scored full marks in Maths test for the first time. Few days before my next maths exam, I was found standing in front of God again, with a bowl full of milk hoping for a miracle to happen again. I had a plastic Idol of Ganesha.  This time, he rejected my offerings. I was perturbed and doubled my efforts out of fear, to do well in my next exam. The nervousness was back while writing Maths exam this time and I managed to score just the passing marks on that exam. I was upset but thought it was fate and it was already written.

After few months I perceived a simple fact that Clay and Stones can absorb water/ milk and plastic can’t. The secret behind all the offerings, its acceptance and all the miracles found its logical reasoning in my mind. And amidst all these spectacle I assimilated, that day it wasn’t my fate or God who let me score full marks in exam but my strong belief in God made me believe in myself, which was later replaced by fear the next time when the milk was not absorbed by the plastic idol. Success is not driven by miracles. Hard work plays a vital role in success but sometimes that’s not suffice to achieve what we want. It’s not always about the hard works we do or our competence to do something or blaming the fate for our failure. Sometimes believing in our calibre, our hard works and most importantly ourselves is all it takes to let the miracle happen, in a logical way!

 

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photo credits and references: http://www.crystalinks.com/milkmiracle.html

http://www.luminearth.com/reiki/

 

December 25, 2015December 25, 2015 by Snigdha Deb Roy Categories: Twisted thoughtsTags: Beliefs 6 Comments

Slave of our own device

Dear Ramon,

I saw a very weird man at Starbuck’s who was not using his laptop or cell phone or any other electronic device but just sat there and enjoyed his coffee.

My morning starts by peering at my cell phone right after I open my eyes hearing the electronic twitter of alarm. My laptop is never on sleep mode, sometimes even after I turn on my sleep mode. Thank God, my flat screen has auto sleep mode on. I need my ear plugs to music system on while going to the office which becomes a cherry on the sundae if I get a Wi-fi enabled bus. Being an IT person, my world revolves around all the latest gadgets all the time. Machines and technology are an important part of our lives. Right from laptops and mobiles used at our work places to the PSPs and flat screens used for entertainment, our happiness, comfort and necessities are all reliant on machines.  It’s like we all are in a committed relationship with gadgets these days and a question often strikes my mind “Are we controlling the machines or machines are taking control of us?”

I am one of those blessed children who were born during the time when gadgets didn’t subjugate our bonding with the nature, people and ourselves. I am glad that my first walk was not discovered by standing alone on walkers, I rather leant it by holding my mom and dad’s arms with my parents taking baby steps beside me. My first teacher to teach me “twinkle twinkle little stars”, “humpty dumpty” and “Mary had a little lamb” was not the DVDs played on flat screen, I had the pleasure of learning them by listening to all the dramatic tones and looking at all the hand gestures my parents did. Playing never meant entering any gaming stations or operating dad’s cell phone and tab games inside a solitary chamber. For me it was going out with friends, siblings and sometimes with parents amidst nature and its greenness, getting acquainted with the warmth of sun, smell of earth, wetness of morning dews on grass and the coldness of drizzling rain. It was the happiness of making paper boats and making it swim on water when it downpoured or looking at the full moon and counting the stars in the night’s sky.

Slaving ourselves to these machines we have come too far from our primitive ways of living with limited resources or no resources at all. Speaking of limited resources, camera with films used to be my favourite which could capture only 32 pictures. Digital cameras these days are capable of taking legion of retakes but it scants the moments created when dad used to capture our pictures while we got only one chance to pose at a place. If the picture is captured before we could smile properly or after we just blinked, or sneezed  then that’s how we are gonna be seen and remembered at that place in pictures for rest of our lives. They were not a part of technology captured with the sole purpose of being posted on Facebook, instagram and other online sites but a collection of all the old memories printed and beautifully preserved inside photo albums.

Rise of Machines might have transfigured hours of works into minutes, minutes into seconds, but in the process of making life easier, it has also made us pretermit the basic elements of life and it’s ways of living. The mechanical world consuming the feeling of togetherness, our nexus with the nature and appreciating it’s essence, creating memories not for spectators but for the warmth of our heart. Because during our last days or when we are lonely, nobody remembers the time spent on these complicatedly coded lifeless gadgets but every little blob of happiness cherished with family, friends, nature and ourselves.

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Photo credit: https://in.pinterest.com/pin/307159637056602180/

November 25, 2015November 25, 2015 by Snigdha Deb Roy Categories: Twisted thoughtsTags: Technology 17 Comments

Sparkle of a Broken Mirror

Dear Ramon,

A mirror sparkles the most when it is broken……

Touch of light, sparkled through the multiple edges
Clarity of reality transfused to numerous delusions
Holding together after reflecting the touch of false dreams
Touch me again and I’ll scatter into multiple pieces of a broken mirror

Thrashed hard, wounding yourself and left me broken
Edges are still smeared with last drop of cold blood
Dripping blood from the wounded parts, frozen on me
Preserving your last touch among the broken scars

Pain will be healed, dwindling to a scar
A scar witnessing the tale of broken dreams
I’ll still illuminate through the million edges
Lights singing the lullaby of a broken mirror.

October 17, 2015October 17, 2015 by Snigdha Deb Roy Categories: poetryTags: poetry 17 Comments

Lyrical chaos of Togetherness

Dear Ramon,

Our house has a colossal collection of antiques and vintage items and the most interesting part is, none is collected from any antiques shops, but preserved so gloriously that it remained beautiful and soulful as it looked when it was bought. Most of the things are still functioning, like our television which is 28 years old and is still young and sound. The Things that stopped working became the part of my dad’s antiques collection. My favourite from his collection is Gramophone.

Dad is a fan of old classic evergreen Bengali songs. He had an enormous collection of Gramophone discs stowed with all the songs, I yawned listening to. Beneath all the boredom, I secretly enjoyed listening to those songs because my dad used to sing out loud with the flow of the songs remembering the lyrics in parts and that made me happy all the time.

That’s how i was introduced to music. I was 5 when I started learning Classical Music which wasn’t really my music taste however I was too young to realize that. The excitement of learning music notes, playing various musical instruments on my own and singing like the people who made my dad sing along with them, intrigued me to learn it with utter enthusiasm.

My bro on the other hand has been a free spirited soul since forever and never took things as they were. He was the one to break the trend of singing and listening to the songs of my parent’s choice and introduced me to Bollywood movie songs. “Jaan” was the first movie songs cassette he bought. The songs sounded like a piled up garbage but all the bad music was dissolved in the freedom of listening to music of me and my bro’s choice (ideally, my brother’s choice). This is when I started exploring music and developing music taste of my own.

My brother used to bring collection of songs of different genres. Gradually I developed the taste for Pop songs which then turned into rock and eventually I had all the inclination towards Heavy Metal. Soon Metallica, Megadeath, Iron maiden, Slipknot, Breaking Benjamin became my newly found Love and a medium of extreme chaos and terror for Mom. I remember the Hide and seek games we played whenever we cracked up loud music at home. My mom used to turn down the volume to level 1 after getting annoyed. As soon as she moved away from music system, we used to go near it turn by turn in short intervals and gradually increased the volume until it reached the same level when we played initially. After every heavy metal screams my mom used to come running again, all terrified, to turn down the volume and we used to keep moving in our own small vicious circle of listening to music and adjusting the volume over and over again.

So many years have passed. Now I stay away from Home, my parents and so does my brother. Our music tastes broadened, changed, and explored various forms, genres and languages. Now we all get to listen to our kind of Music without any interruptions but one thing still remained the same; Re-enactment of the moments of playing hide and seek games while listening to music, when together. We still hate each other’s music taste and criticize them with all our hearts but deep inside we secretly love listening to them with each other as these diverse music makes each other’s presence felt and brings the feeling of togetherness. Before we could realize, Music became our strange medium of bindings where we found our little bundle of joy!

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photo credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/470204017316259215/

October 11, 2015October 11, 2015 by Snigdha Deb Roy Categories: MemoriesTags: memories, Music 20 Comments

Nature’s ostentatious Boundaries

(In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge theme: Boundaries)

Dear Ramon,

Boundary holds ambiguous perceptions. For me boundaries and dividers are nature’s ways of cessation of monotony, like the river dividing the uniformity of mountains. It also sculptures and directs the nature’s indefinite forms, like the mass of earth shaping the amorphous river and directing it to its path to flow. Border is the implication of limits; Omnipresence of an invisible barricade outstretching our ability to reach what our eyes reflects, like admiring nature’s beauty from distance without any existing ways to reach there.

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October 3, 2015October 4, 2015 by Snigdha Deb Roy Categories: Twisted thoughtsTags: Boundaries 28 Comments

Heart spelled with memories

Dear Ramon,

Sharing my most precious poem,

Memories like the warmth of winter’s sunshine
soothing the cold skin,so warm, so tender
cuddling like a bare body of a loving soul
Every touch reviving every part of the skin under

Like a new leaf growing from a dead stem
Bringing a new hope deep within
Every nerve challenging the soul’s originality
Saying,Shed the dust and hear the heart breathing

Precious things are hard to find,treasured once found
Like a pearl lost in a big sea, unexpectedly found
Rising as a woman started feeling so sinfully beautiful
Like the rising sun between the snowy mountains, sparkling all around.

Firmness breathes with the inner softness like a gold dust
As a child’s innocent chortle, seizing away all the pain
All the long forgotten tunes re inhibits in the lost soul
Fresh as the delicate fragrance of earth after the first rain.

Memories like the lullaby of infancy
living in the innocent sleep, in a mysterious depth
Sweet tickle reminding every blissful second was once real
Forever resting inside like an untold promise beautifully kept!

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Image: Sharing one of my random clicks! Sunshine after Rain #MobilePhotography

September 16, 2015September 26, 2015 by Snigdha Deb Roy Categories: poetryTags: poetry 32 Comments

Taming a Dreamcatcher

 

Dear Ramon,

Last few months have been the worst time of my life. Every moment I felt as if somebody would shook me up and I would realize it was all a nightmare. I don’t remember when was the last time I smiled, had a deep sleep, listened to music and felt good, ate because I was hungry or because I was tempted to eat something, did something fun, watched a movie, talked to anybody because I wanted to, or went out to explore. It’s conceivable that I am not a happy girl or may be somebody who is immensely depressed.

When we don’t find answers to our questions in the present, sometimes it’s better to dig in the past where our childhood mind rooted happiness which eventually weakens till the time we reach our adulthood. Recently I was looking at one of the albums of my childhood pictures and it oozed out numerous long forgotten memories.

While playing with my brother at the age of ‘I barely remember’, I once bumped my head on the window pane and fainted, when I regained consciousness, I was in a hospital and the doctor was stitching my wounded forehead. I started screaming for help against that evil doctor who was causing me pain with those needles. Then a lady came as my saviour and the doctor stopped and she took over. Mom said she was a ‘nurse’ and she became the superwoman I wanted to be when I grew up.

Few days passed and the influence of superwoman faded away.  In the year 1994, Aishwarya Rai, an Indian woman won the crown of Miss World. Awed by her elegance and poise, my wild heart weaved a new dream and my independent mind decided to live it. So, I ended up dressing like miss world in a school competition and won third position.

As a kid I played the role of multitudinous characters. Characters my heart desired to be and my mind made me that. Someday my gypsy mind was a girl praying in the balcony to win a boon from god, after watching a mythological tv series episode, someday I was headstrong Lara Croft of Tomb raider or a rockstar after watching any music concert or a traffic police who superintended hundreds of vehicles each day. My vagabond heart painted colourful dreams on the blank canvas and my mind made it come alive.

Living the past memories one more time I realised, life or predicament don’t make us what we are, what we think about ourselves is what we actually are. We don’t have control over actions happening around but we do have control over our reactions to them. A lot of things, a lot of people, circumstances triggered to what I am dealing with these days but to live it like a bad dream and impel myself to suffer by limiting my heart from desiring anything, somewhere has been my choice. Going by my childhood trend, what I thought is what I have become.

We all are born with a boon of being whatever we want to be; a mind capable of making us anything we choose to be. So, today I choose to live a life again by playing the role of a happy woman. I decided to let my independent, vagabond mind be the dreamcatcher and in return it let me believe, no matter how bad the nightmare is, it will consume it to nothingness and let me be a Happy Dreamer, Always!

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Photo Credit: https://www.pinterest.com/pin/315814992595663480/

September 11, 2015December 23, 2015 by Snigdha Deb Roy Categories: Twisted thoughtsTags: Dreamcatcher 22 Comments

Tarnish of Trinket toy

 

Dear Ramon,

It’s weird how things lose it’s existence with time….
 

Promises moulded into words
Words polished to uncertainties
And uncertainties painted with lies
Made a Toy embellished with life.

 

Jiggled and wiggled for the sound of entertainment
Swirled around to see it flying and fall down
Every Hit on the hard floor made them playfully scream
On the verge of rupture, it still shone

 

Time snatched the spirit of sustenance
Outgrown the means of amusement
Sheltering in the long forgotten smutted corners
A toy wounded for happiness, lost its existence.

August 28, 2015September 11, 2015 by Snigdha Deb Roy Categories: poetryTags: poetry 8 Comments

Blinded in Light

Dear Ramon,

When Realist meets an illusionist….

Light breathe in some life and
Let us meet for the first time
So perfectly close yet so far
And all our thoughts were sublimed

Like a missing piece of puzzle
You filled in all the curves bit by bit
With every sticking bit, i kept feeling complete
Like mirroring my own heart
We spoke those unspoken words
I smiled when you were happy, i cried when you were hurt

Dipped in the sweetness of togetherness
Savoured the untamed madness of love
But the inexorable arrival of sunset
Impounded the day’s shine and
From nowhere to nothing you dissolve

Parting away, time pushed us to the depth of darkness
To the place where no one mirrors my untold action.
Anxious mind wandering in dark, to find you again
While they call me a girl who fell in love with her own reflection.

August 21, 2015August 21, 2015 by Snigdha Deb Roy Categories: poetryTags: poetry 14 Comments

I am a Girl and I bleed pure

Dear Ramon,

A biological process in which a female body sheds the lining of the uterus resulting in bleeding after every 28 days called menstruation. Read it in details in 10th grade science textbook.That’s the time when the girls used to feel embarrassed and the guys used to laugh in the class. That made complete sense to me because being kids any unusual and new thing either scared us or made us laugh.

Years changed, time flew, we all grew up but one thing remained constant; the embarrassment a grown up woman feels about a completely natural biological process. Going to any small medical store where a male shopkeeper is sitting makes a girl uncomfortable from asking for sanitary napkins. Shopkeepers double wrapping the packet to hide it completely from outside but why? Why hide something or feel embarrassed about something that is so natural and happens with every girl, every woman? It is as natural as the growth of beard in men. I have never seen any guy hiding his shaving lotions or razors or shaving kit for that matter.

I find it very revolting that girls are prohibited from entering any holy places while they are menstruating because of misconceptions, taboos and practices which say that girls and women bleed impure blood and hence they are considered impure. As far as I am aware, only veins pump impure blood (de-oxygenated blood). Does that mean all of us are impure because our body is pumping impure blood? Science has evolved so much but it’s sad to see that we still follow the rituals which are so shallow.

Yes, I am a girl and I bleed; so does your mother, sister, daughter, girlfriend and wife. I don’t feel ashamed of saying it neither I find any need to hide it or feel embarrassed about it because it’s not a sin, disease or impurity. It’s a blessing that makes me a woman.

August 18, 2015August 18, 2015 by Snigdha Deb Roy Categories: MisconceptionsTags: taboo 24 Comments