The Shooting Wishes

This week's word for five sentence fiction is - Wishes. Here's my take.

As I blazed across the sky, a family lying on the footpath closed their eyes together and wished for four walls and a roof.

On seeing my streak through her french windows, the little girl from the chateau ran towards the window and wished she had someone who'd hold her hand tightly in their's and pull her closer.

Crowded by fellow dancers and appreciators, the woman wished on me to have her husband's client meeting postponed that evening- he never had the time.

Out of the bar, just in time to catch a glimpse of my fainting trails of flame, the man looked up and wished for a job soon for he was tired of spending the day at JoJo's.

I shot my way across the other stars in the night sky and wished I did not have to see the begging faces every night.

______________________________

Wishes. Will we ever have enough of them?

Entering the Acceptance Mode

Sitting at the shack by the sea, I see the coarse black sky. The wind blows against my face and a remembrance of the past hits me like the pangs of penury, but it doesn’t hurt. I am elevated, I feel open and free. As I decide to turn a page of my life, acceptance seeks further inside. I’m falling in love- with myself, again.

The world today encourages constant communication. Living the extroverted life now has newer connotations. These necessities have made it hard for me to keep up because I’m not somebody who attracts the crowd by my mere presence.

Unaware of the gift I had of being an introvert, as a child I wanted to be one of those kids who had the other kids following them. When children my age were hiding and seeking the hidden, I sat in my room carving out personality traits I needed to be able to titillate their interest in me. My family kept telling me that it was okay to go unrecognized in class, that there will be a time when they will all listen to me in anticipation.

“What do they know”, I kept underestimating their experiences.

As I grew up, I secretly aspired to be like one of those plastics in my class (Let’s name her A). With my nerdy hairstyle and a bag full of books I planned to finish in one day, A’s flowy dresses and her straight, silky hair always had me going. I tried to adopt her gregarious personality, failing miserably of course. I couldn’t, rather wasn’t willing to be expansive like her and let loose. I had a clenched fist and an opaque shelter around me, which wasn’t open for people to enter. I cursed myself for being who I was and decided I would die in isolation.

I rejected my qualities of being able to keep calm and be patient in every situation life brought me to. I wanted to create a ruckus like A did, to exaggerate and gain sympathies.

As days passed, my shelter only grew smaller in size, now choking me inside it.

Then came graduation. I stepped out into a superior world- a world where nobody knew A, where I, A, B, C and all of us had to carve a niche for ourselves. This world did not stop at the pomp and show of A. I realized this world was beyond the ramblings of a High School life.

I felt stupid in this world. I gathered my childhood had been wasted behind unnecessary cravings, that being an introvert could be my biggest strength. My shelter expanded and air blew in like the sweet fragrance of the spring.

Google Image

 I now understood the quietness in my life. It wasn’t loneliness; it was a nice kind of quite like the sound of a page being turned in a book. Normality that I was trying to achieve all this while was something to get away from.

As an introvert, I am my best friend now. I watch movies and go on dinner dates with myself. I sometimes take trains to places I’ve never been before. I enjoy the party in my head. I’ve shared some of the best moments of life with myself , my inner self.

I’m not anti-social. No. I only need to get away to refill my energy. It assures me, no matter what may-hem is happening around, I can always turn inward.

As I sit by the sea tonight, I steal a little piece of freedom from the water and the wind. 

___________________________

Writing for the yeah write weekly. 

                                                                         

Grace-fully silent

She had always put work before him, before the family. A day before their trip to Switzerland he heard his voice call beep, "Honey, I'm soo sorry but i had to reschedule our trip. Don't get mad yet, listen to me now..." But the door shut behind him. Her last words were, "..so just pack the bags, we're leaving in 2 hours!"

Skywatching attraction

You all know how much I love the sky- the clouds, the stretch, the soothing blue color! No? Well now you do. I develop a certain affinity to a place which has a clear, gorgeous view of the sky and I swear I do not know when my hand slides into my pocket/bag and pulls out the capturing instrument.

I have a photo of the sky from wherever I've been on vacations. I must mention here that I plan to travel each and every nook of the world. So this way, when I die and if somebody cares, they could compile all my sky photos and almost have in front of them an image of the entire sky that surrounds the earth.  How cool is that?

How then could I stop myself from posting a Skywatch Friday and a Photo-hunt Saturday prompt, though it now is a Sunday?

Anyway, here it is.

That's the sky 7kms from where I live, in Vadodara.

Image copyright- Soumyaa Verma

This one is taken from my phone, while travelling on the Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway.

Image copyright- Soumyaa Verma

This one is from Diu, one fine summer morning.

Image copyright- Soumyaa Verma

The next is the sky on the Mumbai-Pune highway. I was on my way to Mahabaleshwar.

Image copyright- Soumyaa Verma

There are many many more I want to add here, but I'm sure that's not what the prompt setters expected me to do. The theme for PhotoHunt Saturday was Azure.

The sky is something that amazes me everytime I look up. I literally mean EVERYTIME.

If you have any photos of the sky from your land, do let me know through the comments section below. I'd love to see the pictures!

Sanjani's own celebration

Photo Courtsey- Doug McIlroy

Diwali is a festival of lights, of hope, of life, of togetherness. A national holiday is proclaimed not for no reason. Amidst all the blare and the buzz of the crackers bursting in the country outside her window, Sanjani managed a sneak into her pursuits. 

She could be helping her mother prepare for the big Pooja , or cheering her younger siblings while they lit their bottle rockets and fire flowers. But she had an escape planned to the place where her dreams looked real. 

She retired NOT because she wanted to escape, but because she had tried before and our world had failed to amuse her.

__________________________________________________

Another lovely photo prompt from Friday Fictioners. How we love writing for these prompts, Rochelle. 

You're caged and you sing

Wishing farewell to the most revered poet of her times, Maya Angelou. This take is based on her phenomenal poem Caged Bird


Not knowing what your wings are for,
You're bounded and you savor them
You rubberneck twin engines of your like,
Your oblivious sleep besieges you.

But confined however you are,
they cannot hitch your discordant voice
You gather its your only asset,
to attune, you fancy unfettered and you sing.

How I battled depression.

While going through my drafts I found this post and I really wanted to share it with you people. I completed it and tada-daa, here's how I fought depression. 

NOTE: That's not really how I fought depression. More like how I will fight depression when I get depressed. That's really why I had saved the post in my drafts, but I can't wait to get depressed to post this now.

So i was sad. Very sad. I sat at the window in my room for minutes (hours is too long for me to sit idle at one place, even in depression). Observing people, cursing the happy faces. 

Every morning I woke up and wished myself a sad morning. Every night was a sad night. 

I got immune to this feeling. I was happily sad until someone asked me- Why are you sad. Now this depressed me! It's depressing to feel sad for no reason. People generally have a justifiable reason to be sad, but not me. This became a good enough reason, but not for long. 

I couldn't find solace in anything. Mummy ordered Pizzas! Nah. I topped the class test! Nah. My favorite writer wrote back to me! Nah. I kept crying and cried myself to sleep every night. Only for the sake of crying. I even updated my Whatsapp status to "I am sad". How sadder can it get?!

Google Image

                                                               

I acted like the protagonist in sad movies. 

"Oh God, why me? Why did you do this to me??"

But it didn't quite fit well if there was no actual reason of the protagonist's sadness. 

To top it, the maid saw me acting and chuckled. I know she will go and tell the neighbors. Crap!

I played loud sad songs on my speakers. Well then brother came in and took away the speakers. This could be the reason! 

"I'm sad because I wasn't allowed to play loud, ear-wrecking, sad songs for no reason".

I could do better!

When I didn't find a reason for this feeling, I grew tired of it. I wanted to be happy now.

I tried to get myself out of being sad. 

"Hey you. You should not be sad."

That didn't help. 

I tried to feel shame as a sort of motivation.

"You are depressed? Do you even know what that is? Do you know how it feels when you don't have food to eat after a tiring day of manual work? Or when your boss sexually exploits you? The worst thing that happened to you is the Pizza bar was closed."

"Did you dream on becoming a sad person when you grew up? Well you're doing a pretty good job babyy."

This only gave me a feeling of self hatred and I was still sad.

I reverted to abusing.

"Hey you freaking ugly lobster out there. STOP CRYING FOR NO REASON. Who even does that?" 

"I hate you for ruining my limited days of survival!" 

"You're so chubby and you could never get a hubby! So better stop crying"

Nothing could help. I guess they'll call me 'the depressed soul' when I die. I kept sinking in my own unknown sorrows until I felt like a machine.

Friends and Family started helping. 

"Go out with people. You'll feel better." Or end up making them sad as well? No thank you.

"Let's go to the water-park you water baby!"  I'm depressed, I'm not a kid, you buffoon. 

"I baked cake for you. See."  I could go to a cake shop to see. Can i eat now?

Google Image

                                                 

None of these was the solution to my undiscovered problem. I felt stupid. Dull. Goofy.

I had to get out of this depressing feeling anyhow! That's when I decided I would force myself to laugh at everything. At first I thought it wasn't going to work after all but well, nothing else did too.

Brother came up singing to himself- "So it's a bitter sweet symphony this liiiiiiiiiiiiife".

I burst out laughing through his weird looks. 

Friend called- "Do you have the constitution notes ma'am gave?"

I laughed again and through the phone I could almost see his him squinting.

On my way to college I saw a person driving and I laughed at him too. Thank God I was driving faster.

In college, someone started to speak- " I don't know why..." I interrupted by laughing. Even I didn't know why. 

                 

2 days went by this way. By the third, people were so tired of me that they forced a laugh when they looked at me before I could laugh. I found that funny. RANDOM PEOPLE FORCING LAUGHTER IS THE FUNNIEST THING IN THE WORLD! 

The element of laughter had allowed the laughter to circle back on itself! You go girl!