Cherry's World: February 2021

Sunday, February 28, 2021

DECIPHERING DREAMS – QUARANTINED CLOSE TO HOME

This post is a continuation of my series on dreams.

I see myself and my wife being detained at a point that is just a kilometre and a half from our home. In fact, this is on the top of a flyover on the side of the centre expanse. We have been asked to stay in one of the many tents setup there by the authorities. I believe that this is a quarantined zone due to the coronavirus spread. I see policemen and doctors walking around. I try pleading to them that our home is just close by and that my daughter is alone at home but they don’t give me an ear. I see that my chest is bare and that I am looking for some clothing to cover myself.

My wife is much more tense than me and gets into an altercation with the authorities, but they still don’t heed. Here too I see myself anxiously answering my mobile phone, logging into my laptop and working with it inside the tent. I anxiously check my mails to see if there is anything that I had missed out in the middle of these happenings.

When I wake up in the morning, I am happy that life is normal and that all I had gone through was just another dream. I have two big anxieties today, one being the thought of my daughter leaving me one day for her higher studies and subsequently for her career and the other being my performance in my job. And I could connect the images that I saw in my dream in some form to these anxieties.

FOR MY WRITINGS, PLEASE VISIT THE LINKS BELOW (FREE ON KINDLE UNLIMITED):

POEMS OF LOST LOVE

Poetry book 'INDELIBLE ETERNAL ETCHINGS':

https://www.amazon.in/INDELIBLE-ETERNAL-ETCHINGS-emotions-unbridled-ebook/dp/B072J4L656/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=indelible+eternal+etchings&qid=1583428166&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/INDELIBLE-ETERNAL-ETCHINGS-emotions-unbridled-ebook/dp/B072J4L656/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=indelible+eternal+etchings&qid=1583428402&sr=8-1

STORIES

Short Story book 'A PEARL FROM EVERY OYSTER':

https://notionpress.com/read/a-pearl-from-every-oyster

https://www.amazon.in/Pearl-Every-Oyster-Stories-Shorter/dp/1948473151/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3GI23X9JIKQGK&keywords=a+pearl+from+every+oyster&qid=1583428674&sprefix=A+Pearl+from%2Caps%2C302&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Pearl-Every-Oyster-Stories-Shorter-ebook/dp/B07948GRVC/ref=sr_1_1?crid=1H9GU3Q8JNH29&keywords=a+pearl+from+every+oyster&qid=1583428722&sprefix=a+pearl+from+ev%2Caps%2C363&sr=8-1

For other countries, please visit the respective Amazon sites.

Thursday, February 25, 2021

SO NEAR YET SO FAR

When my daughter was pretty young, it had been easier to get her into a discussion with me, to play or to spend time over studies. The internet had not caught up then and chat machines and phones were not there. Once into her teens, her world became different, friends were anytime around on social media and chats and tastes and topics of a young adult like her became very different from mine. The Work From Home concept was not implemented then and although I had to travel about three and half hours everyday to office and back to home, I used to consciously find time on my return to spend with my daughter. I still found a way to connect with her through books, movies and songs.

With the coming of the coronavirus and the Work From Home concept, a lot changed. Extended hours of work and work calls kept me always glued to my laptop. When there were discussions in the family, she would voice out that the time I spent with her was pretty less. Yes, Work From Home has caused work to eat up a big part of my life. This has been so for more than a year.

Today, I consciously made some time during the lunch, tea and dinner sessions to watch a movie with my daughter. We had lots of things to talk, laugh and share and after a long time, I felt life was again smiling inside our home.

We had been so near to each other for more than a year but still felt as though we had been very far away. I realized that time management is going to be the key.

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Tuesday, February 23, 2021

THE LOVE FOR THE SEA AND THE FEAR OF BOAT RIDES

I love the sea and the boats and I have spent a lot of time sitting on boats that are pulled and kept ashore by the fisherfolk. As an artist, I love every vibration of the sea and everything around it.

I have had many opportunities to go for a water ride with my family during the several travels that we have had. They would try to talk and persuade me to hire a boat for all of us to go for a ride. I would politely refuse and discourage them citing some reason or the other. On very few occasions, I gave in to their persuasion and went along. This was for rides in small rivers but where the water was still deep though. While everyone else would be enjoying the ride, I would be very conscious and tense and wouldn’t be able to focus. It was fear inside me that was causing this. Nobody in my family knows swimming and that is something I thought would have really been useful for all of us. But again, will knowing swimming really help us to wade to safety from any type of waterbody? I am not sure.

Recently, on our trip to Langkawi, my family hired a boat for a travel to a small island. They told me that it’s on a shallow water and there is nothing to panic. Very reluctantly I stepped in as I did not want them to lose an opportunity. The boat started and soon it was going at a speed that I have never experienced before and we were actually going into deeper waters, first through a bay area and then straight into the sea. If I had known this earlier, I would have adamantly avoided this, but I was totally oblivious to this.

On reaching the island after the nail biting ride, I enjoyed every moment that nature unfolded in front of me.

I think in life too, it has happened to me, that I have been reluctant to take up something I loved because something connected to it was something I feared. May be what I need is an oblivious push.

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Saturday, February 20, 2021

A FRAME OF MIND FOR ART

Seeing my interest in art, especially writing, my father after reading my work, would tell me "Keep on writing". He would then add another embellishing sentence to it "Of course, you need a frame of mind to write". He never elaborated on what he meant and neither did I ask him anytime as to what specifically he was referring to.

It was just about ten years since I had entered my professional space and about seven years since I got married. He had observed as to how the professional space and the family space had had their impacts on me, both on the positive and negative side.

Today, when I sit back and think about those words, I believe what he meant was about how quickly I could recover from the impacts in these two spaces and get into a frame of mind that writing demanded. And I find it a real challenge today as almost everyday, there is something or the other that affects me from one or both these spaces.

Creating a frame of mind means creating a space for ourselves and that can happen only when we switch off from the other spaces.

I thought that sometimes I need to ignore certain things to create this frame of mind. This is probably what some mean when they say "Take things lightly". But then, artists are the most sensitive lot.

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Friday, February 19, 2021

CAN I BE LIKE THE SUN?

I have tried and failed and again tried and again failed. I always measure what I give or what I do for others and that makes me expect back the same from them.

The more I try to be like the sun, the more I realize that I am a mere mortal of this earth who can only give when there is a corresponding take.

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Thursday, February 18, 2021

THE POWER IN A FALL

"Sometimes there is immense power in a fall too. It's only that I have to realize and tap it".

This is one of the many lines I keep telling myself to resurrect from the dungeons of life.

Many times, the biggest victories I end up with come after the biggest falls. The humiliation of the setback and the burning desire to resurrect, fills me with truck loads of resilient energy.

Very much like hydropower plants that tap energy from falling waters, I should try and tap energy from my falls. It's a difficult process but it's really fruitful. I realize that every fall, big or small, has power in it.

What we see here is a relatively smaller and artificially created fall.

Location: Jurong Bird Park, Singapore

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Wednesday, February 17, 2021

HAVING FRIENDS AND BEING TAKEN SERIOUSLY

Friendship has become a big word over the last few years especially because the internet social media offers many options to hang together and express friendship in different ways. Things have grown to such an extent that if we are not part of a group such as a WhatsApp group, it's almost like we have been ostracized or we end up being seen as an alien.

I have also been in and out of many groups and have observed the different dynamics, being inside and outside. Here I am also including my family as a friendship group with much thicker bonds. It's also notable that some families have WhatsApp groups.

In all these groups, claiming ourselves to be friends for each other and understanding the dreams and passions of the other are two different things. It's very rare to see one who understand the passionate vibrations and dreams of the other in a friendship group. Even if there is an understanding to a certain level, the seriousness with which such dreams or pursuits are considered is pretty scanty.

I have always strived to identify such individuals who take me seriously. And this pursuit will continue till my last breath. With them around me, my world expands much faster and I find myself more often in a happy space.

I am not sure, if things would be different if these were friends who met together often in person, instead of connecting often through the social media. The reality is that we find lesser and lesser time to meet in person these days.

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Tuesday, February 16, 2021

THE YEARNING FOR NORMALCY

Today was the first time, since February 2020, that I set out for a walk on the same path that I used to take while walking back to my home from where my company shuttle would drop me after work everyday. Life I thought had returned to normal or at least my impression was that our people wanted to desperately see it that way.

I could see many move around without masks. When we are shut away for a long time from a normal life that we have been leading and then when things are slowly opened up for us, every piece of freedom we get and every ounce of life we get back, is like something we were made to yearn for long and then given.

This is the beauty of life. Today, we become happy when we get back even the small things in life. I was very happy to have walked for about four kilometres around my home. I thought it was a freedom that I had yearned for long and got back and I enjoyed every ounce of it. During times of crisis, we taste the real value of small things by going through a time when we are made to wait and yearn for them.

When I returned home and shared my experience with my better half, she reminded me that it was not a good idea to walk on the streets as yet, as the virus would still be in the air with someone's cough or sneeze happening now and then. She advised me to continue using the park close to our house, when the crowd was scanty, for my walking stints.

So now, that yearning for a free walk on the streets around my house, has again returned and it's going to remain and burn in me for long till normalcy returns.

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Monday, February 15, 2021

THE MIND OF A PARENT

It was almost ten years after we had constructed our first floor that we had put some thought into using our balcony effectively. For all these years, it had remained closed and we would just open it to clean once in a few weeks.

What motivated us to give our balcony a facelift, was the thick growth of bamboo from our ground floor garden, that covered almost three fourths of the balcony and that gave us both shade and privacy. A variety of tiny birds had already made their homes in this bamboo growth and we feel blessed to have a singing ensemble everyday.

Every morning, before I open the balcony door, I peep through its window with my morning coffee, to have a view of the outside. Spotting me through the window, the tiny birds, probably the parents, fly up from the bamboo branch and hang onto the chain of the balcony light, in a move to confront me. Here, size doesn't matter to them and they take me head on. They probably see me as a threat to their littles ones. I put myself in their shoes and tell myself that as a parent, I would have been no different.

The pictures of these little ones were shot by my little one.

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Sunday, February 14, 2021

A SMALL LAPSE OF FOCUS AND THE RECOVERY FROM IT

Today was the fourth death anniversary of my father and as is the normal practice, we had wanted to attend the morning church service and take communion(the bread and wine that is offered as a part of the sacrifice at church). To take part in this, we also had to attend a confession session that closes just before the start of the Sunday mass.

I had had a sleepless night as the voltage was continuously fluctuating and the fan was speeding up and slowing down every five minutes. I had got ready pretty early and then waited for my family to dress up and get ready. The waiting went on for long and finally by the time we left home, we knew that we would not be able to make it for the confession session and therefore the plan to take communion also got closed.

I was in a disturbed frame of mind due to this and it was in this state that I had taken out my car onto the road in front of our home and was waiting for my family members to get in one by one. With my feet on the brake and hands on the steering, I was breathing heavily and I vented out my frustration on every member of my family as they got in. Once they were in and the doors were closed, I hit the accelerator pedal while still talking to them. That is where I lost my concentration and in those few seconds, my car hit a bike that had just tried to get through the gap between it and a parked car on my left. I was lucky and so was the driver of the bike that nothing serious happened. There were a few scrape marks on my car.

I told myself that I should keep my frustrations aside and focus in full while driving a vehicle. In the end, while I had attempted to vent out my frustration, I had only got more frustrated after this happening. But again, the more practical way to see it is that, frustrations are always going to be there as we cannot control the external environment, but a quick recovery from the frustrated phase to get back the focus is what is most important. And in this, I have to shamefully accept that I am still in my kindergarten.

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Saturday, February 13, 2021

REACHING HIGHER GROUND

Many times in life, it's the calculated risks that we take, that will get us to higher levels in life. We can always be smug and spend our time at the same level, but to push forward and go higher, many times the path would be adventurous and risky.

During our trip on this cable car in Langkawi, our guide told us after we finished this tour, as to how the cable car on one occasion, had got stuck in the middle and had remained still and suspended for hours. The visitors had gone through real panic and some of them had even missed their flights too, but all had finally come out safe.

This is sometimes what we see as the flip side in life too.

When it comes to taking risks, I think the three women in my family are way ahead. I think too much.

Location: Langkawi Sky Bridge.

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Tuesday, February 9, 2021

SEEKING OUT AND REACHING OUT

How did you feel while being in the troughs of life and having to seek help? Have you reached out to anyone looking for support? We need to be brave to do both.

Hesitation to ask for help or guidance is a part of our behaviour. I have also been so while going through different struggles in my life. We may attribute this to our ego or our lack of confidence to present ourselves and our situation in front of others. But the ability to seek out for help is actually being brave. It's a great step we take not only for ourselves but for all our stakeholders, be it any domain that we are into and left with the struggle.

It also takes a big heart and a big mind to reach out without condescending, to those who are desperate for help. A good mentor brings in a buoyant rhythm to our recovery.

My book of short stories, 'A Pearl From Every Oyster' (please visit the link below), has stories where mentors play a big role in reviving the protagonist Ricky from the doldrums of life.

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Thursday, February 4, 2021

LEARNING FROM THE LIBRARY OF LIFE

This concept is the central spine that holds my book of short stories together.(please visit the link below for a quick peek).

The best part of our creation and our life is that we are presented with the opportunity to learn from the life of others and the happenings around us. The more we observe, the more we learn and it's a choice we have in front of us, whether to apply these into our life.

If we wait to understand and move ahead in life only from our own experiences, then it's like deciding not to read any books that nature offers us in its vast library of life - its books that come as people and experiences.

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POEMS OF LOST LOVE