Breathing reflections

 

To my space,

It has been a long time since we met. The quiet and the bliss we used to have in the arms of each other, I missed that. And hence, I wanted to step in and make up for it. For the shared times that crept by, in the thunderclaps of daily routine.

Here the winter has started slowly settling in, slowly raising its glorious visage to rule over the sun. Sun takes a downy rest and catches its feverish fervour a little late nowadays. It feels good to sip coffee and soak in the balmy weather before the wild routine waylaid us.

The holiday mood has set in everywhere. Christmas naivety, cribs, barns and star-crowned Christmas tree glimmers brightly on almost every shop window, enveloping the city with a warm, crushing hug. It is like the universe coming together to chase the worldliness and folly, by smiling a little longer and listening to the harmony a little deeper.

With the new year just casting its glance to get embraced by us, it is a nice time to get reflective and retrace the steps that we have taken so far. To know what worked for us and what did not, when we laughed so much and when our tear glands got a jolt etc.

This year was mingled with what used to be normal and the new normal that we were forced to believe in. Though the cloud of the pandemic shifted to pave the clear sky ahead, the detritus of the pandemic lay scattered and it got difficult to clean every speck of it. Can we lay the bygones to rest? Is our spine so steely to march ahead with a glimmer of hope? Yes and no. For, every once in a while, we go back, unearth the grave memories and pause for a bit. It is what makes us human. Our fragile selves are shielded in a hard veneer. But these momentary pause makes us shed the veneer to reveal the chink that is buried inside, away from plain sight.

Every year there are things that we do that make us proud, that make our people swell with pride and opportunities that take us on a pedestal of growth. What are we doing to regard them? Let us not one moment hesitate to celebrate them for if we fail to celebrate, we are creating an air of discontent around us. An unhealthy vibe. So, all we can do is pat our backs for the achievements and happy times that were bestowed on us, before we pile them together, lug them in a trunk and stow them away in a little corner of our house. Let’s regard and respect them. They are sacred.

Now to look ahead with mindfulness and new awareness is the only agenda that can bring everything into harmony. A space where we can breathe with fewer shudders.  

Hope everyone celebrates the year that was and the year that will be.

Happy holidays with warm food, festive glory, fun family time, comfort books and movies, and peals of laughter.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silence that leaves you speechless - The Silent Patient Review

 

 Unputdownable thriller and nail-biting mystery. Author just reels you into this masterfully told story. A premise that promises a great experience but at the same time shakes your inner core. A perfect whodunit murder mystery that will set you sailing with a detective hat searching for clues and doubting every character that orbits around the saga.

A larger-than-life painter married to a photographer, lives in a palatial house. One evening, the photographer husband is shot. And not just that, his painter wife who held him last refuses to utter a word. What ensues further makes the people engaged in the search as wild goose chase. Beautifully spun, the tale just pulls you into its labyrinth and Poirot’s ghost just takes over you. Many a times, I stopped to work out the conflict, revisit all that had been said by some characters and draw out some discrepancies in their dialogues or behaviour. But not to get overwrought but just move with the words, I pulled myself together, lo and behold, I was totally left flabbergasted towards the end.

The past lingers in one’s mind way more than what they could imagine. The old scars don’t get flushed out so easily but move within them, shifting hither and thither until there comes a point that they could not withstand any more. Time moves ahead, new unpleasant things visit them, being a last straw that break their vulnerable back. And when that happens, the old scars, not so fresh yet unhealed, re-emerge with more vitality and they break into a tempestuous rage.

This book shows us how sweeping the dust under the carpet is not a permanent solution. A resolution that is put off for future date and slighted, breaking it off the radar, will only bring in more conflicts and some will destroy not only the person but also the people around them. It also emphasizes the point that underlying reason for any cruelty are the plight and ordeals that had been suffered in the past.

It makes me say the quote again “Oppression is the preserve of the oppressed”. Physically tethering someone to something is not only oppression but mentally caging them, making them believe some untruth about themselves, hounding them through their negative self-talk, and more importantly not giving them the love which they were ardently in need of it that time, are also what oppression stands for. It takes one moment to bring in the unsettling feelings that lay benign till date to become malignant.

Brilliant, piercing and will hook you till the end.