Time and Tide

Courtesy : wallpaperscraft.com

“That’s it! I am done sitting alone at home”, were the words of a girl in pyajama looking at the clock, the laptop and the mess around her. It was already 5.15pm and all she did was oversleeping and eating that day. Yes, it was her day off (the only day off in the entire fucking long week!), so sleeping and eating are essential but she had been doing this for over a month now. It was the usual office-overdose with no social life scenario. She would usually sleep again when such thoughts creep-ed in, but not that day. She got up, dressed up and within 10 minutes she was down on the road. The roads were familiar, they were the same for the past six months. The restaurants on the left, the dry cleaner, even the cats were recognizable now, after all she occasionally meow-ed to them. She walked along the pavement, crossing the road with music plugged in, which was a relief, though she would frequently change the songs. The day was mundane, until she saw a road which she had never noticed before. It was a small lane, a detour, between the buildings. She stopped. Changed the song again and walked. 

The lane was deserted except for some pigeon poops that jazzed up the tiled road all along. When she reached the end of the lane, a huge smile had hit her across the face; ‘Flowerhorn Pets Trading‘, the board on the door of the shop beamed at her. She had never noticed that shop before and of course she almost barged in! The shop was adorned with turtles, tortoises (Yes! there is a difference between tortoises and turtles and they are not the same), parrots, love birds (varieties of love birds chirping), fishes (small cups with colorful fighter fishes and other kinds) and BUNNIES!

Five Small, tiny ball of fur crawling in the cage, consuming what ever was kept, cuddling into each other, totally an Awww-moment. Two were as white as snow, other two were grey and one was white with black odd patches. She bent down to have a better look; seeing the attention he was getting, the black and white bunny rose up on his two feet, twitched his nose.

“May I help you?”, the keeper of the shop asked. 

“Errmm… Can I have a look at that?”, she pointed at the black and white bunny. 

The next moment she was cuddling the bunny and walking all around the store with him in her arms. Hours passed by, the keeper of the shop was polite, did not mind much as long as she and the bunny behaved well. Somehow, she never had the courage to buy the bunnies no matter how desperately she wanted one, because it was a huge responsibility and with her lifestyle, she did not want the bunny to suffer.  Although she visited them on a regular basis and each time it was a new group of bunnies to be cuddled. 

She was glad she went out that day; you see, sometimes we care about the bigger picture so much, that we forget that the tiny details are also very important in it. 

 

P.S. – For all those who thought, its was an autobiographical, I’ll be off now. 😀 I can’t wait to meet the bunnies ❤ 

A Look Back as a Kid

Picture Courtesy: http://kcrosietoes.wordpress.com

Today while coming back home, with my earphones on and sipping the Zafrani Chai and walking down between the residential complexes and empty parking lots; I saw a kid aged not more than 5 playing with her father. It brought a smile to my face seeing the father letting his kid catch him so easily. Ironically, in the car beside them, was a couple with their son who upon being cranky was shoved with an iPad by the irritated-cranky parents (genes my friend! GENES)! Suddenly it dawned on me, what happened to all those amazing games we played as kids when cool gadgets were somewhere else still on the papers waiting for their approvals!

Being an Indian, I grew up in the typical colony of Delhi, where load shedding was an excuse to get out of our homes just to play again!

I remember myself as a very shy kid and after moving to a new house, I stayed for almost a year inside because making friends was something I was shit scared of, though I would spy on them through my window. Earlier my elder brother used to take me to this park (somewhere far) where he played cricket while I would just crush leaves and flowers and and color the walls of the park with them, or better, make tiny homes with the soil specially after rains.

Anyways, so one day, eventually my mother took me to the park forcefully (i just did not want to get out of my comfort zone) and introduced to one of the girls playing there. I was just talking to her and my hoshiyaar Maa just vanished, !POOF! That’s how I started interacting with strangers and that’s how it melted the ice. 🙂

Since that day there was not a single evening when I would not get out of the house and be with my friends. Clock strucking 6 (and 5 in winters) was a bliss, until I moved out of Delhi for college.

• “WHAT TO PLAY TODAY” would be the biggest question back then (bigger than your salary expectation questions in interviews) and it did not matter if we had the right equipment or not; I mean we have even played cricket with those ‘swimming pool balls’ and ‘chappals’ as our bats!

• The time when even getting a treat of those black ‘chatpat’ golis were such a celebrated thing!

• We were professional babysitters to those who needed to go to the local store to get some samosas or rather we were paid to get samosas for their unexpected guests, and our fees, of course! one samosa! 😀

• Festivals were more well planned than planning our life and started 1 week prior to the date, be it Diwali, Holi or Christmas!

• Singing songs (we sucked at singing songs but nevertheless) and dancing to the same ones; we were our own MP3s!

• Car windows used to be the canvas to scribble our hearts out, dogs were petted and named.

• The poor grass in the park, suffered a lot!

• When every decision of life was made by ‘In Pin Safety Pin’

• There was more warmth in sharing a cold ice-cream, that is a scoop divided by minimum 10 of us!

Not a single day was boring, we somehow found new interesting ways to live it. Each day. Everyday.

Good Old Days

Copyright © DeekshaSarkar

Dear Customer, an amount of so-and-so has been charged on your Debit Card so-and-so, from so-and-so, on so-and-so.

Now-a-days, my inbox is haunted by either Bank SMS or the offers from so-and-so shopping centers (and occasionally the recharge-done SMSs)! I mean, what happened to the SMS era? Surely Whatsapp killed it! Of course BBM came before Whatsapp, but BBM rather belonged to  a higher status people (overrated if you ask me), and the general masses were connected through SMS. I still remember, to recharge your SMS-packs were something more important than studying for your exams the other day. Then there would be friends who would forward you chain messages just to finish their SMS pack before the deadline because wasting a single SMS was a horrible thing to do (I did that too) – injustice to your very being of owning a mobile phone. Now its like every Tom, Dick and Harry owns a smart phone, that’s what has happened.

Forget SMSing even, what happened to the Letters Era? Remember the good old days? When people used to ‘talk’ and give warm hugs. What happened to those warm hugs? I’ll tell you what happened? It got reduced to this, >:D< , xoxo! I MEAN WHAT ARE WE DEALING HERE WITH? Humans?? Are we technologically getting advanced or receding of being human beings? Social Networking has become our sole being of existence that even if we are with our friends, we would be so busy ‘updating’ it, rather than enjoying the moment.

I remember this dialogue by Drew Barrymore from the movie He’s Just Not That Into You, which kind of fits the situation,

“I had this guy leave me a voice mail at work so I called him at home and then he e-mailed me to my Blackberry and so I texted to his cell and then he e-mailed me to my home account and the whole thing just got out of control. And I miss the days when you had one phone number and one answering machine and that one answering machine has one cassette tape and that one cassette tape either had a message from a guy or it didn’t. And now you just have to go around checking all these different portals just to get rejected by seven different technologies. It’s exhausting.”

Woaaah! Are we really driven by technology so much? I personally miss the SMS era, though writing letters are still my all-time favorite (and I can jump the whole day if I receive a letter), Whatsapp and BBM are just a medium to stay connected halfheartedly (as all your friends are there), and I am never downloading WeChat, Line or Viber! 😐

It sometimes bothers me, Next is What?