Ant in the big world

In the midst of a world full of competitions,

I'm still competing with my inner-self, trying to look for the best in me!

In the midst of a world where people are fighting to prove others wrong,

I'm fighting with myself, proving myself wrong.

Why should I be discouraged, when I know the battle hasn't even begun yet..!

In the midst of two paths, a path that would change my life forever...And a path that will only bring me regrets.

Career to me, is not just a "job". It's what I'm meant to do.

It could be anything! It could be working with an ad agency or making some feature films or working with an NGO or becoming a Journalist..!!

The list does not end here. There's a wide field open for the youngsters these days, which makes it even more confusing.

I've to make a choice this year. And it's going to be a choice between Advertisement and Journalism.

After every Advertisement lecture, I get into my college canteen, hog and go back home.

But after every Journalism lecture I go to the library, look for reference books for Journalism, read newspapers, read some good articles, look for stories, do a lot of research on them and think over and over about it to find a missing angle and research on that one as well..!!

You see, I think I'm naturally interested in Journalism.

But I'm not that spontaneous and don't have much knowledge about Politics and Sports. Two very important topics Indian Journalism deals with..!!

But the urge to do something, for not just the country, but for the world, tempts me to opt for Journalism.

But the worst part in this confusion is that my college does not provide Journalism, an option that I should have in my third year in Mass Communication.

So, even if I want to take Journalism, I'll have to change my college, which again, is next to impossible! I don't know if colleges permit admissions in the last year.

But hopefully, they will. Or I may just land up doing Advertisement and then Masters in Journalism.

Un-clear goals. Un-clear ambition. Yet smiling and ready to take challenges!

Don't know what this little ant is going to do in the huge world..!!

Waiting for my Prince Charming

I’m longing to meet my prince charming.

But he never shows up!

My sister tells me to stop waiting, he’s going to appear when you least expect for him.

And then it happens.

I met a guy who likes me a lot. But BOOM. I don’t feel like dating him. Reasons are plenty (won’t bore you with them).

Most important reason: He's a good friend..!! He's probably just infactuated, or attracted but he's lost a friend in me now. And that's really sad..

Well, when I said  “WHAT THE HELL” outloud. My sister said, “Come on! You’re just 18! You still have to meet many people! There are many guys out there!”

Well in this generation, trust me, being single at the age of 18 is like dating at the age of 80!

But at least I’m not one of those girls who waste their time dating people they aren’t going to see forever. Of course, no one knows what’s kept in the future. You can’t have everything in a package, not at least in the un-predictable specie called, “Human”.

But at least you got to know whether whoever your spending resources like time, money and energy on, is really worth it.

So now am here...Still single...Not so ready to mingle...Hogging on Pringles!

But nevermind. guess Prince Charming is still preparing himself for me.

So I should also start working on myself, so that when he comes prepared, he finds me worth all his patience J

And I have missed blogging.  But I seriously don’t get very inspired these days. I feel I’m still too naive to handle something like “Blogger”. But I’m still trying to. If I’ve started this, I don’t think I should give up.

Am sure my readers are going to be welcoming my “once in 2 month blog” always. It’s too difficult to follow up when the blogger isn’t too regular, but I really need to find a solution to this.

Well and what’s new? This is new:

I’ve started reading Nicholas Sparks’ The Notebook. Believe me, it’s a very romantic book. I love the quotes. But being an offspring of two very UN-romantic people, I really can’t digest how love can be felt for one another even at that old an age. Guess true love exists, but only in our imagination.

But if it's for real, I’d like it to happen to me too, just like it happened to Noah and Allie!

To conclude, why the picture?
I have watched Tangled TWICE this week. And I LOVE it.

The Boot-Polisher

I saw a boot-polisher on a railway platform yesterday. Not a very weird thing, is it? We see such polishers in every nook and cranny in Mumbai.

But I've seen a polisher very happy! He sat with the stool that he uses to polish other people's boots. Kept a glass of water on it, and opened a pack of biscuits.

Trust me, I've never seen a man this happy in my life! And never seen the pleasure I seen on HIS face last night.

He very slowly dipped his biscuit in the glass of water and ate it, enjoying every bite he took. The satisfaction on his face was remarkable!

May be he likes to eat biscuits with water instead of tea. But he ate biscuits with so much pleasure at an hour when people SWALLOW their BIRYANI in a hurry to go off to sleep to work the next day!

I came back home a satisfied girl, got up this morning with a smile, that no matter what may happen, YOU got to believe you’re happy! And there! You will feel like the happiest person on earth.

My life is perfect with all the little fights I have with my sister every night, but wake up every morning with a tickle and go to work waiting to get back home to watch BigBoss with her.

My life is perfect even though I miss my beautiful family, 'cause I know they are just a Gtalk away from me!

My life is perfect with all my nagging friends, 'cause no matter how perfect you are, you need friends to look for those funny little flaws in you to pull your legs! And you need people who sit on your head and say things like, "Tu movie ke liye kyu nahi aa rahi, aana! Kya bhav kha rahi hai!" :P

My life has become even more perfect after I've started intern-ing. Now I have a responsibility, and I have people who I can ask thousands of questions to! Sometimes they look at me with an expression that scares me off, but most times they are sweet enough to answer them.

So I will enjoy every single bit of my life, just as the shoe polisher enjoyed his biscuit dipped in water!

I'm requesting everyone to do the same :-)

Miss you Bloggy friends! I wish I was more frequent with my blogs, I would've never lost my readers. But I will keep writing, 'cause am sure someone's reading these, or may read some day, sometime! May be after 100 years, and tell their children, "Oh look what we found! These are your great grandmom Khushbu's blogs! It's okay if you don't wanna read them, we don't want to either! No body ever wanted to! See, she's got no comments! Just one good friend named Rayees, seems like a sweet guy!"

You WANT, you THINK, you HAVE!

Well, well, well, the entire collage presented to you above talks about LIFE.

When I tried googling ‘Quotes on life’, I got an un-countable list of quotes.

And whenever I read these ‘inspirational’ quotes, I land up saying, “OH MY GOSH! THESE ARE WONDERFUL!”

And trust me, they solve all your problems in seconds, right? Like, you have the answer for every problem in life.

Are you trying to say your problem is universal? So indirectly, everything that happens in your life is some way or the other similar to something that’s happening in someone else’s life?

Now, let me be frank. I’ve been going through issues, issues that never resolved but left me even more tangled!

I’ve been worried all the time about my career. A few months back, I’d thought I’d become a writer! It’s so exciting when you write a blog or a note on facebook and you get a few sweet comments that encourage you to think that you can practically become a full-fledged writer! But is it that easy when there’s a lot more audience, more readers, and many people depending on what you write and GOSH! The critics!

I’ve been told that, to be a writer, you actually need to mug up Shakespearian quotes and quotes by other famous authors!

Are you serious? I thought the art of expressing your feelings through words was being a writer!

Never mind. May be the above definition that describes a writer does not exist!

And recently, after making a short film for a project in college, I’ve had a thought of joining a film school.

So now, I’m all the more confused.

What am I?

What am I GOING to be?

Where am I going to land up?

These thoughts have constantly been on my mind since almost a year now.

If I try finding an answer to this question, all I’m going to find is the n number of quotes based on life saying, “EVERYTHING WILL FALL IN IT’s PLACE WHEN IT’s THE RIGHT TIME!”

This makes me strong, very strong!

And then there are movies, movies like Seven Pounds. Such movies make me think of joining an NGO. It makes me think I should be lecturing a bunch of underprivileged kids, who are in need of knowledge, but aren’t benefitted with any! But am I smart enough? Their lives would depend on what I say and what I do. Would I be worth that much of trust?

And then my mind tells me, ENOUGH.

Enough with all of these notions, confusions, assumptions, policies and philosophies!

So I walk towards my sister to find an answer... My sister who can talk in a language that seems foreign to any specie on Earth.

She has this one habit of talking while moving her hands in a way that seems very interesting and tells me of how sure she is about her beliefs and notions. She talks with a lot of emphasis!

For example, when I ask her a silly question like, “When am I going to meet the guy of my dreams?”

“Well, (her palms spread out to welcome mine, I hold them tight) He’s somewhere real close, baby! You just need to stop looking for him! The harder you to try looking for him, you’ll land up with all the wrong guys who aren’t worth you, sweetie!”

So much like the quote stuff, isn’t it?

Well, I can’t judge whether she’s right about ‘the perfect guy’, or not, unless I find the answer an to it. Sometimes I do believe what she says is the truth. Sometimes she says things that turns on the switched off bulb in my brain and helps me think.

The other night I argued on how much I need a life that’s more simpler for a teenager like me. I kept telling how things have been difficult. I puked out all the non-sense I had in my brains and she didn’t have an answer to all of that confusion.

So she kept talking.

She kept trying to find the right answer to all my questions.

 It’s difficult for a 21 year old to convince her 18 year old sister, you see.

But that doesn’t mean I’d ever find better answers from somebody else. No, never. Not even my mom and dad could ever be able to help me cool down the way my sister can!

So here’s what she said that night which brought me here to blog, “Look khushi, (her palms spread out to me, but this time, not to welcome mine, but to give a gesture that almost looked like she’s weighing two things in each of her palm) You’re living TWO lives, you see. This one’s the one that you’re living (raising one palm over the other), and this is the one you ‘think’ you’re living (Raising the other palm, both to the same level).”

See? How simple was it? But did I ever think of this? NO!

There’s this one life I’ve constantly thought I was living.  It’s the life where my problems are universal. It’s the place where everything can be answered with the help of quotes and where my dreams and goals are hard to find.

And the other life, is where I have problems that resolves sooner than I thought it will. Where there are people for rescue. Where my problems are just mine and where I can make my own quote after what I learnt from my experiences!

This life, carves my niche.

This life is where the solution to all my issues are the moral science lessons that I had in my 1^st and 2^nd grade! Here, everything I’ve learnt is from the things that got around me!

This life is my JOURNEY, the reason why I started blogging, the journey that will find it’s own destination!

So both the lives I live are important to me, ‘cause the 1^st life, teaches me to reach things higher than my expectations, and the other tells me to relax, EVERYTHING WILL FALL IN IT’s PLACE WHEN IT’s THE RIGHT TIME!

Here, I, am one single person, connecting to the millions of people all around the world, making everything I say, UNIVERSAL!

Good bye dear friends, hope my blog meant something. Even if it didn’t, be nice, like you’ve always been! J :P

Thanks for the comments on my previous blog! The compliments boosted my self-esteem to a level where I went to college everyday with my spectacles on!

The Versatile Blogger

Hey friends from every where (hope your reading me and I am not addressing this to myself),

I have won the award of The Versatile Blogger! YAY! That's such a cool thing to win right? But I some how feel that I don't really deserve this love and appreciation Sarah has put upon me. I have been so unfaithful to my readers, havn't been posting updates frequently. Well, a college going girl with a house to takecare of and her assignments to complete and friends who keep nagging should be forgiven, shouldn't she? (I know that counts as a lame excuse, bloggy mommys are so fantastic and ON TIME always! They have home assignments, diaper assignments, blogging assignments, and hubby assignments, and many more, don't they? I have always appreciated their efforts on their blogs and I will do it even now! You guys are great).

There are rules for winning this award, and they are as follows:
1) Thank the blogger who awarded you and link back to them.
2) Share 7 things about yourself.
3) Pass the award along to 15 other newly discovered blogs.
Now back to the award. Well, I deserve or I don't, I have the award on my blog, so I WILL make a grateful speech.

Thankyou Sarah from People Don't Eat Enough Fudge, for thinking I am capable of this awesome award you've passed on to me along with other REALLY amazing bloggers, in front of whom I stand like an ant with absolutely no knowledge about what BLOGGING is. I am really grateful to you <3

I am also sorry to have been so late in this 'passing-on-the-award' rule, since i was busy with projects! (Please do understand this little ant).

So I have completed my very first level.

Now comes the time to say 7 things about myself. (This is going to be FUN! 'Cause there are many bloggers I've recently discovered, who know nothing about me and my fellow bloggers, will find a chance to know me even better!)

1) I am an 18 year old, who has started to look like an Cranky Old Woman (No offence to Mr. Cranky Old Man, I think you're handsome even now, and you're at some better 'stuff' than I am, so kudos to you!)

Watch the changes below!

Super terrible right? Well, this is just the physical appereance, you should watch what I do with my brains, and you will be confused of what age I actually should've been. Just 1% percent of it displays on my blogs, LUCKY ME! (Now you know why I don't blog frequently?)

Well, the above transformation is due to the huge amount of pressure I put on my brains, regarding career and 'stuff' like that!

2) I stay away from family, with my sister, the sole partner of my apartment. I miss being with my family. I meet them once every summer and the gaps are filled in by plenty of uncles and aunts, who try hard to make us feel home, but MOM is a MOM and DAD is a DAD and baby brother's shrieks can't be found any where else but only from HIS vocal chords and speaking apparatus!

My family is beautiful, I have mentioned them in almost EVERY blog, would be happy if you could scroll down and read some of those blogs.

3) I have been in a boarding school for 4 years! Yeah, it was really difficult for a kid like me, who was always a mom's tail, her sister's doll and brother's best friend, who he could play with. And dad's MOST delicate darling!

4) I am a quick thinker, which at most times, invites troubles. I am impatient for which I have been given a pearl, to wear as a pendant, by my Tarot-Reader mom. Which I think doesn't work a bit. Yeah, but it does make all the other Indians ask me, "Child, are you very restless and short tempered?". That makes me thank my mom almost a zillion times a day.

5) I can love unconditionally. I can bring a pup home, who may be suffering with cold during rains, blow-dry him with my pink dryer and clean the mess he would make in my house with a funny smile saying, "Oh my Scrappy boy! You really crap!". (I have done that in real, Scrappy blog's coming soon!)

6) I am everything my family's believed I am. I have been a dancer, 'cause my mom thought I am and she would encourage me to participate in all the dance competitions and my sister would be my make-up artist and together they made me the winner of the first price, sometimes second, but a winner!

I feel am beautiful even in the Cranky Old Woman look, 'cause my sister thinks I am. I feel am really strong within, and daintiness is just inside of my heart, only because my dad thinks so. I believe I could make a very good dummy punching bag, only 'cause my baby brother thinks I can!

7) I love every human/animal I meet. I try to find out one good quality in every person I come accross and learn something from them. For me every one and everything's a teacher. And that's why my journey will only end when I die. 'Cause there's LOTS to learn.

There's always a lot we can bitch about everyday, but a very few things that we can actually appreciate, and you practically get nothing out of the former, but a lot from the latter. Don't you think so too?

Well now you know most of me. I enjoyed being the Jenny who praised herself.

Now we move on to our next rule of this award, that is, passing on this award to my favourite 15 blogs, and it's going to be ALL the blogs that I follow. So lucky me, no picking thus no pricking!


Sarah at Ah, the possibilities!

Nita at Artistic Compostition

Glen at Glen's life

Melanie at Livin' the Dream

Maxabella at Maxabella loves...

Aakriti at Yarn of Words

Allison at Life in a pink Fibro

Carol at Naturally Carol

Pink Patent Mary Janes

Lisa at Life as we know it...

Emily at Beetle Shack (I also love the name of the blog!)

Joeh at Cranky Old man (I have joined him TODAY and read only a few of his blogs, but whatever I read, I loved! Especially the 'Having stuff' blog which apparantly got displayed in my blog too)

Felicity at Gifts of Serendipity (Gosh! Am a new follower of this amazing woman's blogs where their's a new post EVERYDAY of the week about VARIOUS kind of stuff that includes games! YEPPIE!)

Rebekah at A Buddhaful Journey (Well, am new here as well. Am having fun reading her blogs about her life with her two really handsome baby boys!)

Rebecca from Rebecca Loves!

Two Soldiers

Have you ever read the story Two Soldiers, written by William Faulkner?

I just finished reading it. And I am sitting with an empty tissue box, still sobbing. 

I have been studying subjects like 'Creative writing and English Literature' where you have to read different books and short stories and poetries and read about different authors and study and analyse thier work.


I've read many stories. And all in all of them, I have placed myself in the shoes of the characters and the protagonist. This is a very common thing to do. All the readers enjoy reading only if they can actually feel the character and read with empathy.

But today, it was different. This story does NOT put you in the little protagonist's shoes, but also reminds you of the little fears. We often feel over-protected these days. We are so bound to ethics and norms and all the DOs and DONTs, that we often forget what fear and danger is. Infact we even protect our computers with anti-viruses! Therefore; there is no scope for threat. But there are inner threats, for which no software has been created till date.

 

One of these threats is, the threat of losing your loved ones.

We all have cried and weeped when we've been away from our loved ones, even if it were for a few minutes.

I was on a trip to Nasik, when my dad came and anounced that he's taken our admission in a boarding school. It was hard for us to believe this, as we'd never ever even dreamt if living away from family, living away from home.

I cried. Like I usually do. And gave birth to swollen eyes that were convincing enough to let me go back home with my family, leaving my sister alone, all by herself.

We'd played together, shared secrets, fought, hurt and scared each other after watching horror movies.

She dressed me up in all my dance, fancy dress and drama competitions. And let me tell you, she was no make-up artist but she always won me 1st price in EVERYTHING.
Sometimes I was a Barbie, and at times, a snake charmer. But I always looked the character I played. 

My snake charmer-do was her favourite. She got to try all the lip-stick shades of my poor baby skin.

Like I have said earlier in my post Families ARE important, she was the one who introduced me to Cinderella, Snowhite and the long haired Rapunzel.
She would go complian about my little mischiefs and most times, 'cause of her, I was beaten to a red bottom. 

But there was also a time, when she would become a savior instead.

She would polish my little shoes, carry my school bag, make place for me in the school bus, hit big girls with her water bottle if they wouldn't let me sit or would try to harrass me.

She met me in the intervals, bought me lunch from the school canteen where she had to barge into the group of hulky bulky people who would THROW their hands out for food. These kids made gluttons look thinner. She would place the plate of Samosas and Donuts in my tiny hands and would rush to her class. Most times, without eating anything.

She stood there inside the gate, while we kept waving our hands outside the car's windows. She smiled as though she was very happy.

Just waved back and smiled.

Smiled as we went further.

Like we didn't know she was shedding big tears that rolled down her cheeks continuously.

She was there all by herself. No maa, frying french fries for that fat-so. No daddy, yelling at her for misplacing her stuff. No little sister who would run around troubling and irritating her. No baby brother who would stop crying when in her arms.

It was difficult for her. And so it was for me. I wanted to run to my sister, and get her home with me!

I was strong, strong in my heart. I wanted her any how. But I used that strength against my emotions. I'd promised my sister I will takecare of maa and never let her cry. I'd promised I will buy my baby brother lunch, just as she bought me. I'd promised I will help daddy filing his important documents,  job she'd been doing uptill now. I HAD to keep my promise. I had to grow up to her age quicker than I thought I would have to. 

After a few years, she came back home and now I was the right age, according to my dad, to be a boarder.

Staying there, I learnt to be more practical. I stopped feeling home-sick in few years. I got strong enough to face the bullies, and strong, very strong, like a concrete wall was my heart, which seldom cried.  

Now that we have each other, we understand one another. We think about practical things alongside emotional. We are mature children, who don't play, but often tickle each other while laying on the bed at nights and laugh while watching movies and go out shopping together. These are the special moments now. She still brings back chocolates home from office. Just as she brought them whenever she had a class-mates birthday in school.

Things haven't chnged alot. Somethings have. But love doesnt change.

She always loved her privacy. Shes been reserved all her life. She always kept secrets. She wrote her diary which I longed to read. And I did. I confess. It's terrible to accept I read it. But I did. And those weren't secrets. WE lived in there. And ofcourse, the little things that happend to her everyday.

But some how accepting her change of attitude and the trial of reaching her after crossing the huge space she's created between herself and all the others around her, seems really difficult. She aint selfish and neither is she arrogant.

She's just grown up!

We HAVE to understand that her priorities have changed. She may still act like a 5 year old when in a swimming pool, acting foolish, pretending shes drowning. But she's NOT a 5 year old anymore.

Last night she and I fought over her laptop. I'd forgotten to shut it down for more than 48 hours. 

I cried (again).
She yelled (again).
Then maa had to scream louder than both of us to reach our ear drums and beat them till they managed to hear just her voice.
And then we slept.

I woke up with swollen eyes. She woke up and put on her invisible armour, ready to face another day, another battle. I thought she did not care of how I felt that morning after the ill night.

I read Two Soldiers immediately after she left. Cried and cried. Missed her. And then I heard my phone beeping;
                                                       
                                                        "Have you eaten baby doll?"
                     

See? She's just learnt to put petty things behind! She knows this little fight would not ruin our relationship. She wants me to learn to take care of things. What's wrong in that? If I keep thinking of how she yelled at me, instead of understanding the feelings behind this little message, I would be mis-understanding her and ruining our bond. She may be having her lunch break, and she's missed me.

If I stop seeing what she fights with me for, and notice that she still FIGHTS, I will see my fat-so, cribbity, orgress sister who I've loved the most in this world!

If my dad can put her in a boarding, try to act stronger than he actually is, at his heart. Thinking she needs to be strong and independent, he SHOULD understand, shes become that strong and independent, like he always wanted her to be and can very well manage herself with her desicions. He cannot expect her to be sensitive and practical both at the same time.

Life moves on, just like in the end of the story, where the author is on his way home. We donot know what happend then, whether he ever got the chance to meet his elder brother whose got into the army again. We donot know whether he took care of his mom and dad, just as brother asked him to. But we know, he will sooner or later accept the fact that he aint with his brother anymore.

Our life will keep rolling, like a wheel with no breaks. But if we remember there's something bigger than any materialistic property we own, there's something we can always count on, no matter what! We will know there's love.
Lots of it!
Waiting to be touched.
Waiting to be felt.

After all of the fights, and all of the arguments and all of the practical issues that needs to be brushed every minute, there is a soft corner in all our hearts that needs love. People dont HAVE to say they love you. You got to feel it yourself. You got to look over the petty things.

Maybe this is what you call 'Growing-up'. Where priorities change, ways of expressing love changes, behaviour in public changes. But LOVE, my friends, remains the same.

My journey continues.... 

Poor Mr. Old

Am I a killer?

YES I AM. Do you know why I say this? I say this ‘cause of what happened a while back.

Accidents do take place. Many times.  In many places.  They are called ‘accidents’ because they aren’t done deliberately. But what if you miss killing’ someone whose going to complete a century in a few more years in not a very ‘accidental’ manner? Would you call that ‘an attempt to murder’ case?

 I think I would YET like to call it an accident, ‘cause wait! Why would I wanna kill an already withered man?!

Now before I write about the CRIME I just committed a while back, I’ll give you a slight description of Mr. Old.

We met in a long distance train, an Indian train to be specific. Where you find little rats moving swiftly and nimbly, freely around all the places without any fear. Maybe we Indians are quiet inspired by the rats we ‘pet’.  The smaller and browner we are, the more are we fat and strong. And not just fat and strong, smart and quick!

Now coming back to the ‘Curious case of an 18 year old who AMOST killed Mr. Old.’

I was running inside of the train with my four other Domadia’s behind me. Mom, Dad, monster sister and stupid little brother. With TWO huge bags in each of my hands, barging inside the train as though the train’s gonna to leave the very second it lands on the platform!

Now even though the train left almost after 45 minutes from the platform, we were happy we managed to get in on time. So what if we look like crazy people, right? Was anybody else, ANY different?! When too many similar people get together, they make a CROWD. Leaving NO space for embarrassment or feeling abashed of yourself.

Now I very swiftly and quickly, like the rats in our train, threw all the bags on the seats that ‘hung’ on the top (never been a basketball player, but always a good aimer when it comes to throwing stuff into the ‘basket’!).

So fast we placed all the other bags under the seats, unknowingly that we are accidently destroying the Rats villa, or rather the Rat dynasty!

I yelled out our seat numbers standing right in front of our seats and a bunch of people flew from our seats and landed onto the others that were yet unclaimed, or maybe yet un-yelled.

We were then introduced to this little family whose head was not a very ‘head’ anymore.  He was almost like the new-born in the family. Well taken care of, carefully fed, etc etc. And he also happens to be my Mr. Victim of the day! 

So fragile that body is I tell you! As he now lays peacefully, protected, much more than before, as his family knew, there’s someone EVIL enough to kill that little-old creature, who can barely hit a fly!

Now the very ‘smart, quick, furious’ me, wanted to make some space for the fat me on the ‘hanging beds’. So I picked up all the huge water bottles and tried placing them on the steel holder, that again, ‘hung’ in the middle of the cubicle.

WAIT! Before you start imagining everything hanging, let me describe how the placements in an Indian 2 tier AC compartment usually are.

A rectangular cubicle, with two beds in either length. 1 on the bottom, and the other on the top, ‘hanging’. One breadth’s open to the rest of the train, and the other’s got a window and some holders.

Now since the holders were quiet high, or maybe I was too short for them, I ‘accidently’ THREW one of the TWO litre water bottles on the holder that ‘coincidently’ tumbled down STRAIGHT on Mr. Old!

Lucky him, he swiftly moved like a rat to the corner of his bed even though he couldn’t move an inch by himself until then!  (Indian he is. Indian he proved.) Maybe it was just the human stimuli that made that quick move.

But he made it that night.

And he stayed awake that night then after, until morning, and left us no peaceful sleep.

But he saved me from guilt for all my life!

I blamed myself for his unpleasant sleep, that also caused him falling from his not-so-hanging bed later in the night and also for the unpleasant sleep everyone in our coach suffered from ‘cause of Mr. Old’s VERY disturbing cries.

He would act as though there was someone holding a TWO litre water bottle in her hand,  aiming RIGHT on his puny bobble-head and in a way that she would aim on the bull’s eye, without missing on her target. Somehow, SHE resembled ME quiet a lot.

Every time I got up in the night, and that was when my baby brother woke me up (for reasons you may understand without me mentioning them),  I had to slide into the different hanging beds, where even an infant can hardly move his baby legs when he wants to cry (excuse my exaggerations, it’s nothing but my frustration. WOW, I just made a rhyme!). I almost felt like Mrs. Incredible, the one with an EXTRA flexible body. And every time I did those stunts, Mr. Old would open his puny-wrinkled eyes and look at me with fear. SO MUCH FEAR.

I tried my best to show the best of my sympathising expressions. But I guess those were even more scarier. Remember Lady Macbeth being the serpent behind a flower?

His family was nice enough to understand the ‘accident’. Well now that we’ve got down the train, carried on our own paths, I just hope and pray he doesn’t meet a co-traveller like me again.

I also pray for that poor withered man’s soul to find peace soon! This life was only making it worse for him. But if he wishes to do anything more, any undone work he has to finish or a wish that needs to be granted on him,  may god help him finish it soon and grant all his wishes.

I better go now, got to rush quickly into my bed like a rat!