The Day the World Changed Forever

Invisible City

Sweet and bitter smoke stains the air
The verb stains has a thread torn out

I step out to the linden grove
Bruised trees are the color of sand.

Something uncoils and blows at my feet.
Sliver of mist? Bolt of beatitude?

A scrap of what was once called sky?
I murmur words that come to me

Tall towers, twin towers I used to see.
A bloody seam of sense drops free.

By Liberty Street, on a knot of rubble
In altered light, I see a bird cry.

by Meena Alexander(author of Fault Lines, Nampally Road etc)

Dot's Tag of Fav Smells

I'm doing Dot's Tag....Here is my list of favourite smells:

1. The smell of the earth just after the first monsoon rain...did you know that it's called "petrichor"?
2. The mild fragrance of Johnson's Baby Powder...it takes me back to the time my daughter was a sweet little baby
3. The aroma of my mom's chicken stew brewing in the pot...yummmm
4. The smell of new books...something I loved as a child and still do.
5. The ethereal smell of coffee blossoms back home in Kerala....

Now, its my turn to tag:
Vidya, Jac and Hillgrandmom

Hello there!

Hey Guyz…..I'm back with a bang. Fully charged and ready to take on the next year's challenges after the most relaxing and refreshing holiday in the best place on planet Earth: monsoon drenched Kerala. Missed you guys…I'm catching up with everyone.
In the meantime, here's an excerpt from a wonderful book on Bombay, that I read during my vacation. It takes you right from the crown to the underbelly of the city and never ceases to amaze you with facts about this great city, that the author gathered by befriending people from every section of the society- from slum dwellers, killers, smugglers and prostitutes to movie stars , cops and politicians. This non fiction book reads like a novel that you simply cannot put down.

Excerpt - Maximum City : Bombay Lost and Found

You have to break the laws to survive. I break the law often and casually. I dislike giving bribes, I dislike buying movie tickets in black. But since the legal option is so ridiculously arduous – in getting a driving licence, in buying a movie ticket—I take the easy way out. If the whole country collectively takes the easy way out, an alternative system is established whose rules are more or less known to all, whose rates are fixed. The 'parallel economy', a traveling partner of the official economy, is always there; turn your head a little to the left or right and you'll see it. To survive in Bombay, you need to know its habits. If you have a child, you have to know how much 'donation' to give to the school to get admission. If you have a traffic accident, you have to know how much to give to the cops to dispose of the matter and how much to give to the father of the child you've run over to stop the mob from lynching you. If you're a tenant, you have to know how much to demand in key money from the landlord to move out. The parallel economy is fed on a diet of judicial rot. The system of justice, supreme legacy of the British, is in tatters, starved by a succession of governments afraid of its power over them.........

- Suketu Mehta ( Maximum City)

Excerpt 4 - Off to GOC

....Outside the window, the brown countryside was gradually giving way to a green one. Swaying coconut palms- myriads of them- welcomed us to the land of coconuts.
Lush green paddy fields flowed past. The purple lines of hilltops rose behind them on the horizon, scalloping the sky. Slowly, the sun rose above them, heralding the birth of a new day.

I was in God's own country where the sun smiled, the rain danced and thunder applauded as nature sashayed down the catwalk in all her finery. Here, nature was endowed with an abundance of beauty, grace and charm in such measure that tourists often exclaimed, "Surely, this must be God's own country!", and the tourism people decided to use this expression to their advantage in luring more tourists to Kerala.

God’s own country with its fields and rivers, lapping lagoons and bewitching backwaters was a treat to the eyes. I looked out of the window at the scenes racing backwards as the train raced forward. But I was hardly appreciating the beauty of the land. My mind was racing. Racing backwards. Through months, through years, through decades……………

-Geeta Abraham Jose (By the River Pampa I stood)


Dear blogger friends,

Yay! I'm off on a vacation to Kerala. Will miss you all. See you in August. Have fun, keep writing and KEEP SMILING!!!!

Book Excerpt: Broken Wings

Every time I went to the fields I returned disappointed, without understanding the cause of my disappointment. Every time I looked at the grey sky I felt my heart contract. Every time I heard the singing of the birds and babbling of the spring I suffered without understanding the reason for my suffering. It is said that unsophistication makes a man empty and that emptiness makes him carefree. It may be true among those who were born dead and who exist like frozen corpses; but the sensitive boy who feels much and knows little is the most unfortunate creature under the sun, because he is torn by two forces. the first force elevates him and shows him the beauty of existence through a cloud of dreams; the second ties him down to the earth and fills his eyes with dust and overpowers him with fears and darkness.

Solitude has soft, silky hands, but with strong fingers it grasps the heart and makes it ache with sorrow. Solitude is the ally of sorrow as well as a companion of spiritual exaltation.

The boy's soul undergoing the buffeting of sorrow is like a white lily just unfolding. It trembles before the breeze and opens its heart to day break and folds its leaves back when the shadow of night comes. If that boy does not have diversion or friends or companions in his games his life will be like a narrow prison in which he sees nothing but spider webs and hears nothing but the crawling of insects.

That sorrow which obsessed me during my youth was not caused by lack of amusement, because I could have had it; neither from lack of friends, because I could have found them. That sorrow was caused by an inward ailment which made me love solitude. It killed in me the inclination for games and amusement. It removed from my shoulders the wings of youth and made me like a pong of water between mountains which reflects in its calm surface the shadows of ghosts and the colours of clouds and trees, but cannot find an outlet by which to pass singing to the sea.

Thus was my life before I attained the age of eighteen. That year is like a mountain peak in my life, for it awakened knowledge in me and made me understand the vicissitudes of mankind. In that year I was reborn and unless a person is born again his life will remain like a blank sheet in the book of existence. In that year, I saw the angels of heaven looking at me through the eyes of a beautiful woman. I also saw the devils of hell raging in the heart of an evil man. He who does not see the angels and devils in the beauty and malice of life will be far removed from knowledge, and his spirit will be empty of affection.

-Kahlil Gibran (Broken Wings)

More on Optimists and Pessimists

The optimist is a person who wakes up in the morning and shouts: "Good Morning, God!" The pessimist is a person who wakes up in the morning and groans: "Good God! It's morning!"
(this is my favourite quote on optimists and pessimists- I don't know who said it)

Here are some more:

The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.
-Mark Twain

The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.
-Kahlil Gibran

An optimist may see a light where there is none, but why must the pessimist always run to blow it out?
-Rene Descartes

An optimist is a person who sees a green light everywhere, while a pessimist sees only the red stoplight. The truly wise person is colorblind.
-Albert Schweitzer

Always borrow money from a pessimist, he doesn't expect to be paid back.
-Anonymous

An optimist will tell you the glass is half-full; the pessimist, half-empty; and the engineer will tell you the glass is twice the size it needs to be
-Anonymous

The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.
-William Arthur Ward

Don't ever become a pessimist; a pessimist is correct oftener than an optimist, but an optimist has more fun--and neither can stop the march of events.
-Robert Heinlein


Any more quotes on Pessimists and Optimists????

Optimist or Pessimist?????

I found this at Hillgrandmom's and set to find out where I stand. And here's the result:

You Are a Realist

You don't see the glass as half empty or half full. You see what's exactly in the glass. You never try to make a bad situation seem better than it is... But you also never sabotage any good things you have going on. You are brutally honest in your assessments of situations - and this always seems to help you cope.

Are You An Optimist or Pessimist?