[ultimate_heading main_heading=”Non-fiction Short Stories by Abhyudaya Sharma” main_heading_color=”#1e73be” sub_heading_color=”#8224e3″ main_heading_style=”font-weight:bold;” main_heading_font_size=”desktop:34px;” margin_design_tab_text=””]Issue XVIII | July 2016[/ultimate_heading][ultimate_spacer height=”20″]

Introduction to the Author:

Abhyudaya SharmaAbhyudaya Sharma has worked in the past with Deccan Chronicle and MumbaiMag as an editorial cartoonist. His writings, other than the cartoons, have appeared in different magazines and online writing journals. He loves to write short stories and non-fiction articles. By profession, he is a dentist practicing in New Delhi.

 

 

 

Rant- Possibility

Rant- Possibility

Every day is full of so many possibilities. Possibilities brewing, spilling over like boiling milk. You could begin a startup, you can begin a novel, you can get to meet someone who would change your life. Or you can just sit at home and watch the latest episode of Game of Thrones.

Every day, I wake up with a promise that I will do my bit to change my life a little bit. I pick up the broomstick and take out one cobweb from the corner that I have been ignoring. The spider behind my toilet seat is now rendered homeless. I always wonder what happens to all these spiders once the cobwebs are cleaned. It is a scary thought. As soon as you run your mop or broom on the web, the spider just makes a gentle landing on the floor and tiptoes into some discreet corner. It is weird how all of them just disappear suddenly without going anywhere.

Killing a spider is never a choice because somehow the insect demands respect. Almost all insects demand respect, some even pray for it. You can pick a praying mantis up and release it in the garden, you can ignore an ant as it is hygienic and harmless, you can murder a cockroach without regret (because dwellers of gutter, them filthy creatures!) but, you don’t know what to do with a spider. Or maybe it is just me. I am usually happy that the spider runs away.

Some people find it natural to kill wall lizards. Lizards also look icky but demand respect. I am rooting for the lizard in a lizard-human fight. Not because I like lizards, it is just that they look so majestic in all their leathery, nasty glory. Such a bummer that they die with just one slam on the head. It is disheartening.

Oh, I digress too much. So, as I was saying- every day you can do so much but you end up spending the day watching YouTube videos. But then I sort of want life to go a bit slow. There is not enough time and although a day looks enough to accomplish one productive thing at a time, productive things of any consequence require a lot of planning. Planning not on your part, but on the part of fate, destiny, life- whatever you’d name the grand scheme of things.

For my book on a dentist’s life, I needed so many things to come together- I had to come to Delhi, I had to find work, I had to have patients, I had to meet people. The wisdom that came to me about dating- it also took a lot of boring days. I met women, I talked to them on days which were hard to pass.

Sometimes there was silence. Silence is the time when these vapours solidify. A startup needs a seed. The idea takes birth and form. The point of this whole post is that things take time. But, I see things happening fast too. Contradictions are everywhere. People who want to do things and they know, they are sure what they want to do- they run the world.

Where does the force to run things come from? Is it something you are born with? Or is it just a matter of attitude. A cob web has formed again.
Rant- Love stories

There is something about people who fall easy. People who cannot make a pros and cons list to save their life. They smile when a stranger cracks a joke and can be easily pranked. These people walk among us with their patched up, repaired, battered hearts. When they sit with people with shiny new hearts in mint condition, they do not feel envy though.
They do wish for a new heart but, truth be told, if they were given a new heart, they would rip out the wrapping and throw it out there to be broken again. It is the only way they know how to live. These are the people who write love stories with their sweat and sometimes, if absolutely necessary, blood. Not everyone can be like them. People watch these characters in books and movies and marvel at them but, not everyone can go out there and be silly in love.

Love isn’t about one chase or one win. It is about consistency. Lovers don’t always get their perfect matches. Because life isn’t perfect. So, lovers lose and they take pride in losing. Because every battle wound, every scar is a thing of pride. If you have had a broken heart, you must rejoice. It’s sign that you have a heart.

There is one thing that needs to change though. Traditionally, the lovers have fallen for people who have it together. The unbroken people. These are the sane ones, the practical ones. The impractical ones described in the earlier paragraphs need a muse. And traditionally the muse has been distant. Hence the chase, the courtship- basically the first half of any love story.

How wonderful it would be to do things differently though? Isn’t the girl who smiles often and has a kind soul automatically more attractive than the one who calmly walks past beggars with her nose high?

The guy who feeds birds and sits in the park and teaches kids in his free time- shouldn’t he be the muse of a lover instead of the broody guitarist who has a mysterious air about him?

How about some better love stories?

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