The day is yours

"The enthusiasm is killing me." howled the kid down the room.
His mother too was jumping in leaps and bounds.
This day was no ordinary day and her gesture was no ordinary one.
This was the day when her son had FINALLY passed the 10th class.
Yes and that too after three unsuccessful attempts.
There was a party lined up today.
The whole family had been gearing up for a together at Atif's home.
It was not that Atif was not mischievous.
Yes,he was like every second boy.
But what he was bad at was studies.
It wasn't that he never studied,infact he gave in more efforts than the regular pupils.
But still he was never able to make the cut.
Three consecutive flunks shatter a young boy who hardly understands and who can even hardly tell.


Things like these happen most of the times.
Either we or our siblings or our friends or maybe our children have been in the shoes of Atif.
Imagine Atif.
Studying hard.Planning even harder.
With friends he too might plan a long summer vacation after the break.
He too would have dreams.


I had a chat with Atif once.
I could feel the pain in his voice.
I remember the last time when his result came and I could hear his choked voice on the other end of the phone.
It was me whom he trusted the most and so he had asked me to check his result.
When I told him that he had failed he just asked me to recheck the result and said that it couldn't be true.
That was the biggest panic that has ever set in me.I could visualise the immediate outcome.
From that time to the time I reached his home I just wished that he din't do anything miserable.
I called his parents and just asked them to be with him.
Times like these are so fragile and life so vulnerable.
I am sometimes like nowadays enamoured of Atif.
I keep down weighing for my failures.
But when I see the world from Atif's view my failures have been nothing.
Imagine knowing that there is one more year wherein you can't do anything else but the same old process.
You don't even know what went wrong the last time.
You GAVE your best everytime.
You would continue to do so even now,but till when??
Add to this the shame when you meet your friends.
The humiliation your neighbours shower you with.


I have always said one thing-
Even at 3 am at night if their is some one who would take you with open arms is your family.
Be THE family,the treasure children want at these times.
Show them that you trust them.
Tell Atif that there is still life it was just a bloody exam and nothing else.
Remember that Atif is  a lot more broken about this than any one else in the whole world.
It was his result after all.
I too have not been a  standing pillar for Atif.
Misunderstanding his failing as his notoriety.


Let Atif see the light of the day.
Hopefully today is the party Atif had planned for,since three long excruciating years.
Let's raise a toast for Atif.
The day is yours.


Something on the same lines:-  in the mind of a dyslexic


Note:
Every 100 minutes another teenager will commit suicide.
Suicide is the second leading cause of death among people between the ages of 14 and 25 in the United States.
The following statistics were taken from a recent survey of college and high school students by the CDC:
Twenty-seven percent of high school students said they had "thought seriously" about killing themselves during the past year. Eight percent said they had actually tried to kill themselves.
Ten percent of U.S. college students admitted serious thoughts about suicide. Seven percent had a suicide plan.
More than 30,000 Americans commit suicide each year, and 5,000 of these people are teenager
Read more: http://www.livestrong.com/article/13945-suicide/#ixzz14rxxu65W

Thousands of children commit suicide all over the world just because of flunking in exams.

The time has come for change

Written for 3ww
The words being:-gesture, immediate, treasure


Photo Courtsey:

Sanitarium IIby =aR-Ka

~Harsha 

my 2 cents

A sandstorm hit my view as I clobbered my own failures.
I knew that somehow I had agreed mutually with my self that even at my wit's end that this road was now a dead end.
But somehow I looked back at those grapes turned sour.
A constant question had kept popping since long but I had always hushed it away.
Today I just HAD to give the answer.
The solution was to either live the barricaded life engulfed in a cyst of my own existence or fight back for my greater self.
Greater self: The word itself resonates as a satirical joke on myself.
Where has been your greater self?
Let me rephrase it.
Has there ever been a greater self for you,Harsha?
You are nothing but the outcome of the inflated expectations that people have said just cause they had to say something.You are indeed that balloon that has always thrived on waste hot air.
You are that pimp outside a brothel who is projected as THE PIMP but in fact is a prostitute for THE prostitues.
What are you,Harsha.
You don't even have a proper ego.
Do you remember that jab that you had on your jaws in your first ear.
Does your blood still curdle at the thought of that fight.
Do you still know the taste of the blood that was trickling down your nose then.
DO you remember your failures Harsha.
Have you ever thought of replying back to those silent assassins,those vampires that have been sucking your pride since I don't know when.
Have you thought of living a life you want and even more a life you deserved.
When failures miraged you,you just stopped trying for those things.
Harsha tell me one major achievement that you can boast of.

Tell me a single milestone in your life that you can say you have put your blood and grit in.
Have you ever felt sweat trickling down your forehead,veins throbbing hard in your arms and eyes tired but still sparkling with the glow of success.

When Harsha when you would be the Harsha you want to be.
When would you stop this crap-a-homa.
When would you love your work.
When would you live your life.

I put 2 options in front of you:

First one being what all do.
Start loving your work.Start making starts.Get into the groove.
Respect everything cause with enough grit this is also the place where I have seen marvels happen.

And 2nd the path less travelled-Have faith,not in god but in your abilities,master perfection,infuse passion,be deaf not to the people but more importantly to your self.Kill that under achieving bastard in you.
And I dare you and beg you at the same time be that change that you have only admired.

One last question Harsha doesn't your blood still boil,you Bastard?


~Harsha

Photo Courtsey:

to fight or notby ~anatheme

Curiosity killed the cat-Did it

Why am I not curious anymore.
I know not to be curious means not to have the desire to live.
But still if people had not been curious of the apple falling,or the earth moving or the fire burning,things would have never ever moved on.
But still am not curious nowadays.
Am anchored in my thoughts for actions that never burn.
Sadly,its not only me but a lot of prototypes I see everyday have lost the nerve of being curious.
Look at yourself,how many times do you actually stop at a construction site to see how the crane works.
Or how many times are you actually curious to read about that author's roots.
Or how many times you have actually felt to call the maitre d' of the hotel and ask him how he has cooked the food.
Not being curious is like going into an unstated limbo.

Is it either that we know that,we know all or is it the shame that moves with the act of being curious that is to ask.
Let's all not be duds.
We have got to accept that we don't know everything.
And there is no harming in trying to know.
To live is to be curious.

Life is just all about being curious,
about why we perform why we don't
about why we love why we don't
about how the sun sets how seasons won't.


Remember curiosity never killed the cat it was just that the cat committed suicide as it had nothing to do.

See,am curious what you people think:)

~Harsha

Dude,that's what exactly am made for

Social media,bah humbug.
Thats what I should blurt out.
But I too am one of the addicts out there.

But this media is the place that has been throwing quite a few stark realisations straight on my face since a long time.

I am not being me or basically am not being what I intend to be but rather what I succumb to be.

The whole profile pages,the albums,the wall to wall talks are all showing me people who are finally giving way to eccentrities.
There are people who are going on the craziest of the trips.
There are my very own friends who have been embarking on the most bizarre professions that I had dreamed of,
or more properly felt in awe of.

When I turn my neck around I see people who are going to become lawyers,cinematographers,chefs and even many who are at home.

Somewhere today i am feeling that I am very soon turning into that cribbing regular man who cribs, spathes himself again and again in a glorified crying.
i tend to innovate caricatured excuses of job,of studies and  n more alibis every other day.
But every day I know deep down that dude you had to be there.

Look at the sun rising from the peak's tip,look at the concoction that he just made,look at the awesome video she just made,Dude I had to be there.
But the biggest question that stands straight is why then am here.

I too want to be happy,clicking pics in places where I yearn to be.
i too want to be bubbling with a euphoria where I would be proud to say taht :look dude I belong here.
This is what i wanted to do all my life.

Then where am I going wrong.
Let me see what I actually want to do.
First is to write,write endlessly,maybe just a letter or maybe a novel,maybe for my solace or maybe for the world's pensieve.
So what is stopping me.
Me and me alone.

Am I stuck in a priority quagmire which is eating me and me trying to eat it almost at the same time.
Cause I have got excuses ready.
I want to do that bloody MBA since I dont know when.I am so vexed at times that it seems even stupid to put it in writing a crime.
And whats stopping me now.Thats me again.
This I say cause it is the only respite for me.

But then there is the acting bug which is there or not or well maybe ummmmm....

Whatever atleast the bug of living shouldn't die.

Maybe one day I would meet you all and say:
"Dude,that's what exactly am made for:)"

~Harsha

Divide and fool

This story dates long back,back,back and enough of back.
Its a time when we actually cared for some things and people could easily see the potential of our care and use it in a lot of constructive work.
But this construction only helped them which was something that we later realized.
This story dates back to a time when we have seen our very own neighbours behaving a bit weird,eccentric due to some issues of as they say higher importance.
Its about the time of a pressure cooker world(although its still the same),but yet at that time the pressure was always ready to explode,hissing all the time with an anger that seethed since ages.
And believe me there was a time when after demolishing something of grave importance when you went back to your town you were treated like a swatantra sainani(freedom fighters) to the grades of Bhagat Singh or Chandrashekhar azad.
Well enough of the times,hoping at the same time that time never returns back.
So, at that time there cropped up an issue of a house,of a cake so common to all people but divided by lines not of flavours but of vengeance,vengeance sown by people who had no place whatsoever in that house,who had no share whatsoever in that cake but then there was a bigger reason.
These people had a big big cow.Lets call it the holy cow.
They just wanted to milk that cow.
They called that cow- INDIA, with love.
So all they wanted was some fodder to feed the cow,just some safe fodder.
And people of those times could even stake their own lives just so that the cow could have its say.
Sadly the fodder got all eaten by the men themselves.
The cow has shrivelled up to the size of a retarded goat.
And the only instances when we hear about the cow is when photos of tidy rooms come in national dailies for some stupid local games with ' articulate beautiful designer dog leg blankets' or of creative pan stein walls.
I still am unable to understand why the kangaroo land people are all praises for those dragon owners. Instead of appreciating the beauty of our designs they make faces,ridiculing at the marvels that won't ever be found at any other place on earth.
And now isn't it the best games village we could ever give.
Now small bits of wrongs and rights are always there.
Now take this even if someone comes to visit your house these small things always stay,don't they.
Like dog stained blankets and pan coloured walls.Isn't it common :)
Add to this we have epitomised the way judgement happening in this country with god himself being one of the petitioners.
Our cow has come of age now.
Sadly one of its calves got divided into 3.But then that was a fair judgment based on facts after all.
But even if it is who cares.

Why to draw lines on places when we all are the same.
Even now we can all come up mutually for places that are common to all.
I understand the angst that we had this place so we will have it back.
We ruled it once so we would rule it again.
But when would we absolve our generations from a hell which they would never want.

What we all need too understand that lines once drawn would only get deeper.
The cake has been divided.
The essence now lies with us that how good these pastries could be aligned so that we all can mutually eat together.

May the pressure just wane out of this cooker.

To the cow:)


~Harsha

Determination

As I stretch my hand

My blades hurt 

I scamper to a rescue 

but my veins thrust

I pull whats all within

and let out one last cry

with sweat in my eyes

and blood in breath

I yearn to instigate everything

that has not turned death

The silence tickles

as if insane

The time trickles 

as if it would never wane

But there I see the hourglass

Losing all the sand

There I see my life 

losing all that could be grand

I had promised myself 

that I would hold that time

I had promised myself 

that I would fight this time

So,one last time

I stretch my hand

My blades hurt 

And ah,

I hold the time.

------------------------------------------------

Written for Magpie Tales

~Harsha

A hollow body

Don't make me feel offended.
Said he looking straight into his stark naked being in the mirror.
Days have passed and I have lost my demure,he thought.
He thought of the days when people would envy him of his gaunt body, of the flawless structure.
But a major accident had left most of his lower chin disfigured.
This combined with a powerful malignant liver disease had killed his appetite and love for food.
And finally the loss of his wife had left whatever desire he had for life.
Today while coming back from the graveyard the empty house and his hollow body were his only belongings.
A shining blade in all its glaze was looking at him.
Smiling as if hungry for his blood,for his life.
It was just ready to cut his veins with a slash of his fist,to put to silence the last jargon of a body that clinkered heavily with the drops of water seeping from the tap.
With high hopes and crumpled beliefs,he was ready to end the pain,pain of living.
The blade glistened in his hands,at the tip of a murderer who was a saint at the same time.
A last slash waited and just then over the shelf shone the lone hairclip of his wife.
And for the last moments before death he saw her,felt her and thought of every single moment they ever had.
And remembered the belief she had in him,in his disfigured face in his shrivelled appetite,in her volatile life.
That was the moment when the blade fell down and the spark to live returned back.
His eyes now glistned back for their love they shared.
Then he felt that killing himself now would mean killing all the wonderful memories he ever had of his loving wife.It would mean ending all the moments where he can still feel happy cause he had a wonderful life once.
The naked body was not naked anymore.the disfigured face was beautiful now cause it had the beautiful lines that had aged with his love for her.
Suddenly he headed to the kitchen to subside his craving for a wholesome dinner.

~Harsha