Live Through This with Hope…An age of pandemic

 Requiem for a dream

Photo by Fusion Medical Animation on Unsplash

In the current scheme of things, hope is like a bead tied by the thread to every heartbeat. It radiates a soothing calmness into me, same the blood flows into my veins, bringing the mind to repose. Each bead perfect, each one like a tiny world of its own. I can’t know for sure that today will be better than yesterday for everybody with the spreading pandemic across the world taking so many lives, or if this is time, nature, Mother Earth is calling it her “win”.

Honestly, I am trying to be optimistic, as much as I can. Perhaps, it is the time, you can turn off all the lights and still see my soul shining bright, always burning with joy, love, always ready to start a new blaze. That’s why I feel optimistic, hearing a flock of pigeons, parrots and other birds in my balcony singing with joy, cooing and flapping away tree to tree, rejoicing the newfound silence, clean air and utter stillness around them, which they have missed for generations. Each slow chirping echoes through my mind, reverberating off a realization that this is teaching us to respect what we all took for granted — our resources, our blessings, our privileges, our environment which is now finally laying down to rest.

I sit down to meditate, close my eyes and feel the positive energy flow, recharging my myself, refuelling my energy, enthusiasm, and sparkle. So call it a little bird constantly chirping while on my shoulder, whispering “This can’t be the end!”; my hope will never be doused before my time on earth is done, not until I have lived to my heart’s content, my fullest, I have lived only a few years over two decades.

In a world of pandemic sickness, where blinding greed and cruelty is the cause and love and kindness is the antidote, the patients will soon start to declare themselves doctors and seal the fate of the world!

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Originally Published on The Spiritual Tree

On Writing — Stories that escape from your heart

“My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.” —Ernest Hemingway

Photo by Calum MacAulay on Unsplash

Always write from your heart, anytime you feel strongly, write down what you feel, scribble it anywhere tissues, piece of paper or go straight to your phone at tap into it. Pour your heart out when you are crying at 1 am, or you are feeling overwhelmed with thoughts and emotions clouding your head whenever your emotions are heightened.

Writing comes out best when it is pure and raw, genuine coming straight from the heart, helping you connect with the reader. Don’t filter or skip what you write, write everything, everything you feel, everything you want to share, just let your soul flow, like an endless river, a waterfall, onto the page.

At first, there is nothing.

Then, all at once, there is everything in front of you, the flow of words making sense.

Thoughts erupting from the feelings, in the line of thinking each one better than the last. Disorganized thoughts cloud your head, filling minds with crazy and amazing thoughts. This is a true inspiration. It feels being alive, each time you make your intangible thoughts tangible by writing. It makes you awake. More awake than ever before.

Your writing waits to speak their words with their reader, the ink on the paper or the screen will always stay. Your writing is an invitation to readers, making conversation with your thoughts, often unspoken.

In a way, it is a legacy of the writer’s thoughts, preserving ideas that would otherwise be as fleeting as the chirping of a bird, connecting with the reader in their deep subconsciousness, making a lasting connection.

We write to make things right, that is what writers do!

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart”

― William Wordsworth

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Originally published in a Few Words

The Turning Point - A Short Story

Photo by Soroush Karimi on Unsplash

In the twilight, her skin shines like honey. Veins run like connected tributaries beneath her skin. She holds the colour of the bark of a tree, dry like a parched field of land. She has flaky abrasions anyone could not help but notice, causing irritable itchiness, redness, and then breaks out into a bump on her honeydew skin with her almost brown eyes.

She believes she has a disagreeable pigment and skin, looking at all the models and advertisements on all the billboards around her city, making her insecure and lower self-esteem. As she approaches with a polite gaze to people surrounding her, she reads not quite right, off the balance, awkward stares, and wants to hide by the hem of her cotton dress and never be visible to the world.

She tries all the remedies to get rid of the pimples and the scars they leave behind as they fade away, with different creams, lotions, fruit peels, flour, everything she could get her hands on, which promised to give clearer skin off the blemishes. Finally, makeup, her pet peeve, was what she turned towards since nothing seemed to work. She was exhausted trying. She started to spend hours in front of the mirror to apply the desired make up, which helped her look her best, in her eyes.

When she looks in the mirror she sees the new confident, appealing and attractive person, boosting up her confidence. When other people look at her all they see is her, her reflection. But that’s because they don’t see her true self, as she hides it from the world, under layers of concealer and creams, afraid of what they would think of her. She did this painful exercise, for years, and started resenting.

One day, something changed. She woke up feeling different. She looked at herself in the mirror, she had sensed self-respect knocking at her door, a long time coming her way. Perhaps she was waiting for the world to grant it to her, to be respected for who she is, so she could mirror it back.

A realization struck her like a lightning, the respect she gained from others is settled at the superficial level, at the cost of coping with society, where she was sending across the message to a great many people — I am just flesh and bones instead of a person with a mind, emotions, and soul to meet.

For without full trust, how can we accept the love of others, when we fail to love ourselves?

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Originally published in The Weekly Knob

Anniversary! - A Short Story

Photo by Hutomo Abrianto on Unsplash

Forever, it has been a count of firsts! The first kiss, first hugs, first gifts, first purchases, first frosty winters, first unseen & unending fight — a quarter-century.

Finally, as they took a walk down the memory lane, marking their first glorious anniversary discussing how life went past grappling.

Here & now, it was time for another year of firsts — first night in unshared bedspreads, the first vacation without each other, first celebration alone, the first anniversary by themselves.

It was a glorious first anniversary, which was cut out of their marriage as a sign of separation as they did not feel belonged.

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Tea for Two - A poem

Photo by 五玄土 ORIENTO on Unsplash

A ray of sunlight shaping up to my feet

At the dawn of an early hour

Boiling leaves within the dark of a kettle

Making way for us to settle

Across a tiny table

seeing the gleaming eyes

and the echoing giggle

A cup of tea for you and me

Dipping a cookie melted in love

of the sweetness of the tea

Finding bliss and harmony

engaging in pure and creamy

a taste that was rhythm in the symphony!

©Shweta, 2020. All Rights Reserved.

Originally Published in Blue Insights