The daily vagaries

Love Story        of the young one   Aashish Singla  Written in year 2000 Those days, love was in the air. A wave came and swept the city with the effervescence of eternal love. Every moment, someone was falling in love with someone or something at every place. Even that fellow with crooked nose found a lovely girl to fall in love with. Markets and parks were full of people, as if a festive season were going on. Girls, all over, were buying, borrowing, consulting and reading "Mills and Boons" while boys could be seen carrying Erich Segal’s "Love Story". Throughout the day, people perambulated on the roads with their beloved, reciting verses, smiling and throwing loving gestures at every other soul. Those were dreamy days! Everyone was dreaming - strangely enough, dreams were getting converted to reality too. The whole city became a living dream where love lived; love ate; and love only slept. How could I have managed to escape the love epidemic that the entire city

Scraping through my old notebooks, today I stumbled upon some interesting piece-meals of notes - written on the way of "learning to write" and ofcourse they carry a deep impression of writers that I was reading at that time (almost copying the style :) ) but this scene did come about okay, isnt it? ---- He sat amidst children’s party at her home. Though in exuberant surroundings, he felt too dull and aloof. Even in a group of children of his own age, he felt himself alone and different from all others. His silent watchful manner had grown upon him and he was rarely a participant in the games. The children were throwing knee slappers, inventing new games, dancing and chattering noisily, and though he tried hard to share their mirth, he felt gloomy. But then someone pulled him to the dance floor and he too tried some steps. After doing his part, he retarded safely to a snug corner and slowly he started to taste the joy of his solitude. The joy, which in the beginning of t

I am musing over the world of arts - of literature, of music, of artists - wondering over questions and answers. How our mind tricks us into the hunt of answers that are nothing but the "golden deer" that even Rama could not recognize. Questions are eternal. Answers will always be found wanting at the high altar of eternal questions. What is it that we want? Security? Love? Power? Well, nothing stands the test of time; everything keeps shifting ground. We live in a mire of our own mental pettiness and pull ourselves down every moment with the weight of our own self-destructive ignorance. Compromise is the word that we feed our souls on; Compromise on every single breath. Do we ever know what is it to let loose? To be ready to die in order to live? But then we are too scared of death. So scared that we talk ourselves into accepting a compromise as if it is not what we know it is. What is it that we want and what is it that we really need at this time - again an eternal questio

One morning, a buddhist mendicant went through the streets of Sravasti asking for alms. He sang aloud the praise of Lord Buddha, on whose behalf he was going abegging. From the palace of the King, jewels were thrown on his path, but he did not pick them up. Wealthy merchants and their wives opened the windows and showered gifts and gold, some took off their necklaces, some jewels from their hair. But the mendicant went on refusing the gifts and saying aloud - ‘Buddha, who is greatest of all men, has come to the city among you, so give him only your best’. He passed the roads, making his way through the jewel strewn path, till he reached the end of the city, where a poor beggar woman was lying on the ground...she also heard the call of the mendicant and bowing to his feet, she somehow took cover in the forest and took off her only garment and stretching her arm she dropped it on the ground in the path. The mendicant eagerly lifted the garment on his head and throwing up his arms, he pr

“Once there was a king .... “ and so starts another of those melodious stories, somewhere in the broken old voice of granny while somewhere in the rhythmic tones of a loving mother. Each moment somewhere a young one is waiting for another story to be told and retold; for what else has ever been more interesting in our lives than the flights of imagination and loving dreams. Isn’t that the reason that whenever we meet someone, we generally ask - “So what else?”, “What is new?”, or “what is the news?” - waiting to hear some other story whether old or new. Our mind is distilled down from school to high school to college but it seems that howsoever far the refinement may take place, there is one thing in us that never dies - “longing to hear another story”. While the memory of trigonometries and geographies goes down in our mind; the image of Krishna driving the chariot grows even clearer. Isn’t Duryodhana as real for us as Akbar is? Whether there is an evidence to prove it or not - does