THE QUEST

If it was just her wish, she wouldn’t have started the venture which she knew was not just tiresome, but perilous indeed. No matter how hard she tried to convince her ever friendly conscience, she just couldn’t abnegate the ominous feeling. Yes, she could see the forbidding star in the distance and premonitions and misgivings were not new to her. From time immemorial she had been witnessing the callous pranks of time. It wasn’t yesterday that she got acquainted with Time’s villainous countenance. In fact, she had often wondered if it was her hesitant relationship with time that had caused her face to be wrinkled and shadowed at such an early age. Many had convinced her that her daring teens had long before given way to the maturity of adolescence. But she had always very consciously evaded the fact. She knew she was meant to live, live life to the fullest… life was in living…

Was it her well preserved ideals that she had nurtured from her childhood that incited her to make the dart that would one day become her sceptre of support? Or was it because she wanted to escape from her clichés of ignorance? Or was it because an urge to find the redness of her blood was germinating inside her, unknown to her? Maybe she is very professionally facading it.

Now she had this undying wish which can only be satisfied by the quest she is planning to undertake. The time has come for her to emerge from her cocoon and emerge triumphantly too. There should be no more masks or fake roles to play. Time has come for the world to know that under the greyness of this corporate coat and the robotic monotony of this schedule, there is a heart - a heart that is not helpless anymore. The heart of a woman that searches for her soul and yearning for truth.

MY FAMILY

If you are so much at ease with your siblings so that you can hide her hall ticket for fun on the morning of her board exam, and laugh at it together,and tease her with her so called boyfriend right before your parents, and decorate the Christmas tree as per her instructions even if you are some 6 years older to her, and finds happiness by giving her the best chocolate from a lot and yourself taking just an ordinary toffee, make her a fool on April fool's day and let yourself be fooled, and try out her new uniform before she has even seen it herself, and scare her with the scariest stories just before her bed time, jump down at her from the cupboard, and pry on her as she is applying her makeup, smuggles snacks for her from under your mother’s nose, make faces at her when she is ready for a speech, and waits for her to come upstairs and get you the pen that has fallen down from your hands, and stands by her when the whole world is against her, and finds all sorts of excuses to make her fault look like some big sacrifice before your parents, and longs to see her on your birthday, and yearns to tell her your happiest experience before anyone else, and cry on her shoulders when you sprain your ankle,then I tell you, you have the best sister in the world.

If you rush into your mother’s arms after a hectic schedule at school or college, and tell her about the silliest incidents at hours on length and still finds her attentive, and you tell her the creepiest tales in all humour, drink the cup of coffee that she provides as if you have never tasted a better one before, and tell her about your dreams and desires no matter how absurd it seems, and her words give you solace more than the comforting words of all your friends put together, and she knows all your friends very well, and she can tell you when exactly in life you are taking the wrong deviation, and scold you and corrects you, and you find your dress ironed up and kept before you on the morning of your interview, and sees her knelt down beside her bed in prayers for your success, and feels an assuring pat on your back when your dreams fall down like a pack of cards, and a twinkle of ecstacy in her eyes when you triumph over the world, then you have the best mom in the world.

If yours is a dad who has always been your role model, who asks you whether you have a headache when you shy away from a steady conversation, who asks your mom whether you are alright when you don’t feel like going to school one day, who rushes to bring you medicines at the first sign of a cold, who wouldn’t mind going around the world in order to find the best college for you to study in, who tells you to go and change your dress after you try out all sort of mixing and matching in your attire, who will wait for you in the car until you finish your weirdest shopping sprees, who forgets your mischiefs in the next second and remembers your achievements to be cherished for a life time, who loves you, loves you and loves you…without limits for what you are and also for what you are not then... you have the best father in the world.

Mine is a home- a family in all its sense. I’m always grateful for the abounding love that my God Almighty is showering on me every single day of my life…