THE INDIAN COMMENTATOR

      May in this New Year each of us does not forget to leave behind stickers of memory, so that when your life is close to dullness and lack of memory a door opens, which takes you back, away from the labyrinth of confusion and uncontrollable splitting of selves, to the world and time which you cherish the best.             Hi readers, keep pondering over the resolutions you made the previous year, and making new ones. And while you get tired of thinking and in need of some refreshing thought, here is something special for all of you, published in another blog that I keep, Sidewalk.             "I woke up without a reeling head. Unusual; I thought. My gaze first fell upon the cell phone resting on the nearby chair that serves as my bed side table. A text message awaited me from a familiar number; after wishing a good morning back, I stared into the infinity of my closed room. Suddenly, something ca...

Mistakes were made; some deliberate, some unconscious, some in an effort to stand by the person who you are; grounds were held; in the expectation of a great profit, sometimes just for a feeling of security, and also to show others to what extent you can go to hold your ground; and promises were made; some were kept and some forgotten, whereas some of them you never bothered to think about; and we are here, alive, hopeful, enduring the worst but expecting the best. The year past is nostalgia and the year to come is a dream. Reality is just this day before the tomorrow, the New Year. What is there to celebrate in it, except the sad fact that our reality only has a span of just this one moment! Can our desire to live on justify the splash of joy we experience at this moment? Our reality, this one moment that we all experience now and at present, is joyous because of our courage to dream about the next moment, our tomorrow, the future. Why can’t we do it all day and make every day a cel...

The barber’s assistant was new; a young man in his mid twenties. His hands were not in harmony with the scissors and knife yet. “Don’t’ do it that way. Didn’t I tell you a thousand times, Ganesh?” the barber said furious as Ganesh, moved his scissors on the hairs of the officer from the kind’s court. The young man looked at the barber. “But Raman dada, I did it well; this is how you taught me.” He muttered with fearful eyes. His lips remained silent. “What are you staring at?” Raman barked. Ganesh nodded with his body stooping at his master’s wrath, much for fear than respect, though it seemed rather an expression of the later. “Raman dada…” the young man tried to say something. “Yes?” Raman asked indignantly. The sound of bullock carts rang in the street next to the shop. The city was full that day and the shops were doing good business. Because on that day was their king’s birthday. “Nothing…I am trying to do it as you taught me…” Ganesh said. “Oh, now you started passing your ...

“There are not many readers in your blog these days, are there?” some one commented. I didn’t say anything in return. Instead, I decided to quote this story here. The people who live in the shores of Dharmadam say that each drop of water in the sea has a unique life. Each drop is special and has a destiny to fulfill. They use this story, to explain this principle to the younger generations. “Once, a drop of water in the Arabian Sea dreamed of becoming honey. But it knew that upon the surface of the sea, which is full of salt, his dream would never be possible. So it decided to pray to God. The water drop rose to the surface, and swayed upon a wave, up and down. Even though, it appeared merged with the seawater and the thousands of drops surrounded it looked alike, many of the sea dwellers had found that there was something different with this drop. “A shark came by and said to the drop: “Every water drop at one point in its life would be transformed into honey. It’s a natural pro...

“On this day we shut out Nothing!” —Charles Dickens      To be surrounded by people who care about you is always a nice feeling, one of the ever charming feelings a human being remembers all through his lifetime. It is to light this gleaming dot, once again, in the mind of all of us; we celebrate, move close to each other and share the warmth of love and the smile of care. But what would we do when we are with solitude? Before the numbness of loneliness corrodes your joy, you must want to celebrate. You either create a reason to celebrate, or a wait for a festival to warm you up with nearness, laughter, and stories. We are very close to the grandest celebration of the year: Christmas. Like every year, The Indian Commentator too is participating in the vibe of the time. There is hardly any difference between a festival and the smile that follows a story, much due to the unignorable relationship between festivals and stories. Every festival is preceded by a story, ...

There is always a new book awaiting. One I have just finished; The Box by Gunter Grass. I stand up from my office chair. Like all office chairs it’s comfortable in a profane sense. It always seduces me to sleep; makes me work one minute less than the time to finish. It loves me lazy. I hate it. But it stood by me this time, partially oaring me to an unknown island of sleep; flashes of faces, words spoken in English, a fairy tale divulged each time; and partially fixing me where I am, with the hard cover volume in my hand. I love the later part. When my feet feel swollen, I stand up and contort my body once or twice, and then sit down, pushing forth my eyes on the white paper, only to find how familiar words dance to some mysterious tune to concoct the most fascinating potion of literary alchemy. This time I stand up again; take a stroll around my chair in a ritual to warm up my legs. I finished the book, which I have been reading from the previous week. A thread sized stream of co...

A dewdrop found itself resting on the petal of a rose. That was the only memory of the drop. It was born there, separated from a cloud of fog and felt happy to be there. There was something that lured the drop; a pull towards the heart of the flower since the petal was sloppy. The dew felt its destiny already marked out. It said to the rose, “What would happen if I slid into your heart?” The flower looked at the drop. There was a peculiar grace to the dewdrop. And the sun was sharing its gleam with the crystal soul of the drop. The flower fell in love with the dewdrop all at once. “I will…” the flower blushed, “I will receive you into my soul and transform you into honey.”   The dewdrop could not decide what to choose. The company of the flower was mesmerizing. Its fragrance was unique. But what it said was dubious. It said it will transform the dewdrop into honey. ‘What is honey?’ The dewdrop thought. ‘Would it mean I have to disappear? Whom shall I ask?’   Then, as if ...

If what you know leads you to the unknown, What you know is poetry. If what you experienced takes you beyond- Your expectations, You have experienced poetry. If the words on a paper makes you wonder, How you wrote it, You have written poetry. 

It is said that those who die, become a star in the sky. This story is dedicated to that star who told me several wonderful stories, and enlightened my mind; my grand mother. May her soul rest in peace.            Anna, my grand mother. She passed away on 26-11-2011 “Silence is the language of the cosmos. From the smallest stone to the sun itself, they all communicate through silence, greatly rich with meaning and deep, very deep. In order to understand it, we need to have a special mind. You have it, don’t you?” A pair of eyes, surrounded by numerous wrinkles, slowly connected themselves with the boy’s. He was silent for the next half of a minute. Yet another story! Why do old people tell so many stories? How do they remember a great many of these details? And how on earth does she know about the language of the cosmos? He thought. “I don’t know,” He answered. “Yes, you know. You are like that small stone that wandered all aroun...