Life is beautiful, soak it up

Their mothers were sisters and they were born days apart. Yet, the cousins were as different as chalk and cheese.

The one with the spotlessly fair complexion was a bundle of enthusiasm and every teacher’s dream, while the other who was beautifully dusky was aloof and indifferent, her attitude screaming quiet defiance.

On the first day of school, as excited fifth graders who have transitioned into middle schoolers from the protected confines of primary school, my friends and I had the pleasant surprise of finding the cousins in the same class — our class.

However, the sisters did not share our enthusiasm for they went out of their way to steer clear of each other’s path.

While the bundle of enthusiasm steadily picked up a spot as the teacher’s pet, the indifferent one’s silent defiance — that the teachers were familiar with — had ballooned into a sense of cold standoffishness and resentment.

After her parents were summoned and after the teachers gave up trying to persuade her out of the shell of unrelenting silence that she had retreated into, she became the mute spectator who sat through every class unnoticed.

Then one day, we noticed her absence — the empty chair in the corner was cold devoid of its quiet occupant.

The sister with a zest for life had disappeared too. When she made a comeback a fortnight later, she appeared frail, jittery and shaken, living every moment through unending pain and perpetually at the brink of drowning into a flood of tears.

Even when our hearts went out to her and when our curiosity could hold no more, we kept the flood of questions that plagued our minds to ourselves because by then we knew that the empty chair in the corner would stay empty for the rest of the year and that the quietly defiant sister would never come back.

Our little minds could not fathom a reason enough to comprehend what could have led our unusually quiet classmate to take her life. Suicide was an unfamiliar territory and a strange word that suddenly stood dominating and looming dark in our mental dictionary.

We held hushed discussions in-between classes and during breaks after the lone sister was gently whisked away by the school counsellor.

Time heals wounds and the fog of loss and despair will evanesce to reveal the path of life ahead for us to move on.

The lone sister has moved on. Her enthusiasm is still infectious, but the gaping hole of loss remains for being the best and bringing out the best in her had been a curse big enough to shoulder the responsibility of the weight of another life — her dear sister’s life.

While we tread through the gravelled and otherwise unfair path of competition, comparison and disillusion between the tarred roads of happiness and joy, it is good to take a moment from our meticulously planned inert existence to immerse in a moment of solitude that will shake off the shroud of depression and angst and question your practical mind: Is a failure, an opportunity lost, a mistake, the unrelenting pressures that we forcefully succumb to and the many opinions and words that measure the value of our existence worthy of giving up on life itself?

You will be pleasantly surprised to realise that the answer will always be a NO!

 

This is an extract from a piece that was published in the Gulf News. For the full article please click here.

Good Morning! Wishing you all a very happy Sunday and a great week ahead.

 

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Have you developed your partner’s scowl?

Some of us can pick up a book and magnetically escape into the mesmerising world created by the author while there are others who can pick up the same book and be lulled into sweet slumber in under five minutes.

And then these people end up marrying one another.

Science explains that opposites attract.

 

Luckily, the matrimonial rollercoaster on its railroad to an exhilarating ride with unexpected tight turns, inversions and stomach-churning slopes possesses the power to transform two individuals locked in love to tweak their personalities in order to sustain two worlds under the same roof.

Even Bollywood has never dared to cross over the threshold of life past the happy and dramatic union of the hero and the heroine’s love conquering all odds amid music, drama and dancing about trees in designer wear into the monotony of a real life where sustaining marriage and children amid boring routines becomes the norm.

Could that be the reason why research shows that the longer you are with your partner, the more you begin to resemble one another?

Or is it that thrown under the same roof, sharing similar experiences, food and thoughts day after day — you end up emulating your partner’s frown.

Coming to think of it, I now enjoy watching movies as much as the husband has learned to pick up a book. I am less sceptical about trying a new restaurant while I believe practice has forced him to pretend that he has not noticed the ‘charring’ of the dish that I have called ‘a little over-cooked’ or ‘caramelised’.

It is good that even though we share routines, children and a home, we hold on to a little mind of our own and speak it out too. For, we even disagree on the same topics!

But there are some traits that even matrimony or years of togetherness cannot change.

Like a question, “How was your trip?” that would have lasted a good fortnight, can elicit nothing more than a clipped “Good”. A little coaxing and fretting (read whining, moaning and grumbling) can manage just about a full sentence or two.

While a question in return about my days in his absence can bring about an animated and elaborate explanation about every morsel that my hands have painfully cooked, every individual that I have met, every speck of dust that has been wiped clean and every job that has been successfully accomplished with nothing more than just about a nod in return.

Or the fact that he can sit for hours basking in the glow of the screen before him and manage to efficiently toggle between three jobs with relative ease, but conveniently overlook the painstaking effort that has gone into transforming the chaotic mess amid juggling between two children with varied interests — one intent on gobbling up books while the other determined on wrecking every room with her creative mess, into a beautiful home.

But coming to think of it, I would be worried if he were to bring out the entire cupboard on display every time he makes a trip matching every shirt and pant checking which goes with what for hours at end like I am often known to do.

Or if he decided to rant on about his trip covering every detail leaving me too exhausted to talk about mine.

Or if his meticulous eyes do not miss that inconspicuous blemish or crease in a freshly pressed dress when I seek his honest opinion just like how brutally honest I am known to become when he seeks mine.

Then the both of us would be locked in a marriage of boring similarities and develop the same worry lines until one day someone will take pity on us and exclaim, “Oh! How much you resemble each another.”

 

This is an article that was published in the Off the Cuff section of the Gulf News. Click here to view original post.

Happy Morning, my dear friends! All you happily 😉 married couples out there. Let me know what you think.

Have a wonderful Sunday!