Quotidian Tales

She woke up feeling something wrong... 'Maybe I feel too much'... She thought... Or maybe I harp on the wrong ones all along... She tried to overlap her insides with the exuberance outside... But she failed to latch... There was a weird mismatch... Maybe she was a little too sensitive... The feelings were a little paralyzing... A little gnawing... A little igniting... And a lot perplexing... But the emptiness was a little obvious... Is emptiness really empty? Or is it the completeness crying out for fulfilment... roaring acoustically... She tried to outline the human-shaped emptiness inside her... Trying to sense the aura... Was it really inside her... Or an abstract outside her world... Chasing her all-over... Was it really the shape of a human?... She agreed to disagree... She dived deeper and said... 'Maybe these are the unhealed parts of me'......!! By: Shreya Basu © Quotidian Tales

The indefatigable human spirit can conquer any opponent. You just need to believe in it. S he is my Mummy. She is a Mummy to many more. She is not my biological mother. And that makes the relationship beautiful and unique. She is a cancer warrior. She knows that cancer will defeat her soon. Any day, any moment. But until that moment comes, she will fight it with dignity and grace. Looking at her medical condition, I feel even breath has fallen in love with her. And just wants to keep her alive. It's indeed difficult to defeat someone with so much love and positivity. She is alive, throbbing and thrusting. Embracing every minute with the intensity of conquering it. And everything she does is nothing short of a celebration. Be it her love for nature or her desire to dance in the rain. Seriously, she becomes a kid when she sees the skies open up! She gets drenched to the bones whenever she gets a chance to do so. I vividly remember how I had pulled her leg on her s...

Every child is special. Do we have the heart to feel it? T hese days my 9-year old seems to be obsessed with Ninjas. She loves to watch their movies, read about them and even use the primary karate moves (picked up from weekly lessons in school) to emulate them. Last night as she was intensely watching an animated Ninja episode, she blurted out a phrase. Without any conscious effort, it caught my attention. ‘Ninjas never quit!’ As I moved out of the room and into the verandah to take off my daughter’s uniform from the clothesline, my eyes fell upon the ‘Niketan’. The school-cum-residential that stands just across the street. It is a home in which, not one, two or even a few children live. It is one which accommodates 150 - 200 children. They live there, not with their parents or relatives but under the supervision of caregivers and special educators. Though they are like us and our children, they are often referred to as ‘special’. Apparently, they have physical, mental ...

The desire to cross paths ceased... She realized the presence was parallel all along... Doting faces encircled her... But it's not where she truly belonged... Struggling in the darkness of the exile... she made every effort to reconcile... But her soul was wrapped in someplace else... In a distant world... less complex... There was restlessness like a bothersome child... Yearning for an escape... A grand beguile... And then it dawned... she had it all wrong... The presence had indeed been parallel all along... She gave up the strife... Conceived the cosmic design... 'Self-realization'... is the other name of 'life' By: Shreya Basu © Quotidian Tales

With years of roles foisted upon her, she has forgotten what it is to be herself A certain Mrs Sen was staring hard at life. Four decades of scathing remarks and constant belittling had reduced her to an entity she could hardly recognise as being her true self. Irritable and lost, all that she could remember of her past was the warmth of her childhood home and the amassing accolades for her performance. Marriage had bestowed on her, activities and engagements, but untimely and unknowingly, halted the flowering of the self. Doing the chores and tweaking her life in the larger interest of the family soon became her habit and the only way to be. And then one day, life seemed to have passed by in a whiff. With her fledgelings flying out of the nest, age and ailments catching up on her, the gnawing presence of the spouse and every morning a span of twenty-four long hours hurled at her, she barely knew what to do. In those yesteryears, she never had the time (though she did...

Body-shaming is the weapon of the weak….Shun it to emerge stronger and beautiful. T he video above has gone viral in social media. Vidya Balan (Bollywood superstar well known for her iconic presentations) has poured her heart out. She is dealing with a topic that screams for attention from society. Provokes it to think and feel. Perhaps not for the first time. It is a collaborative effort with radio station 92.7 Big FM. It is streaming across the internet with the catchy hashtag #DhunBadalKeTohDekho. It is about body-shaming. No...not just that. Something that goes way deeper and diffuses through the untouched. An individual, even if a child, is never spared. Every breathing moment of her life, she is judged for her looks. She is ridiculed and rebuffed for something she has no control over. And who does that? The society. That uncountable mass that has the power to not let the ‘she’ admire her reflection. But look forward to external approval. "Don’t your parents ...

As I witness the grey dawn break out into streaks of gold... I smell the bitter-sweet air and let my heart unfold... I wonder if it fuses our worlds or does it cruelly divide... As I slip into the day and you into night... The mighty fireball cleaving our skies... And still the misty air...stirs up thoughts very fond... I bask in this tranquillity...my daily dose of dawn... By: Shreya Basu © Quotidian Tales

The mind’s eye can yank you from reality into an alternate world in seconds. T he mind is a magician. It harbours the special but mysterious power of imagination. When it gets to work, it makes us see more than what could possibly meet the eye. A stage show with the world’s finest conjurer will pale in comparison. Take, for example, the stunning photo here and what my mind made of it. To borrow the name Netflix gives the alternate reality in its runaway hit, Stranger Things , I went ‘upside down’ with it. As my mind’s eye zoomed in on the photograph, I was left staring at the vast blue sky. One fine line was scoring it -- a jet plane -- piercing through the light, fluffy clouds that punctuated the brilliant blue. And then...in the blink of an eye, I was on that plane. No more gazing up through the photographer’s lens but looking down. I saw the calm ocean, peeking from under the clouds. A tiny speed boat grazed the water like a flying fish. I was completely ‘upside do...