9 months

This post (questionnaire) is dedicated to (aimed at) my expecting friends, wives of my colleagues and some relatives etc. Somehow there are many of them this time! (recession?) ;) Enlighten me.

How does it feel, to know that something is growing fast inside your body? Something that you WANT to grow, something that is completely dependent on you, your life, you breathing, your eating. Something that is as good as your own body part, something that will give you a new identity!
How does it feel, to know that when it is fully developed and ready to see the light, it will be the most painful time in your life! And you still want it to grow, the piece of your flesh, which is being nourished on 'your' food, blood, thoughts! How does it feel to wait for that day? The day when you will get the pain, life and identity!
How does it feel to know this, so much in advance? Something that is even slowing down the time, feeling each minute, kicking inside you slowly! Something that demands and gets all your attention, all the time!
How does it feel to know, this is the closest you can ever hold a life to yourself, your own life! Perhaps something much more precious than your own life, because you know, you had never touched your own belly with so much care and love before this! And you know how exactly it feels to exist and move around in an almost different body for few months!
What is that feeling, that you exerience till that day of 'light', amongst all those uncertainties and huge expectations? How does it feel to simultaneously know and not know something? How does it feel to know that only half the human beings can experience this? that is if you didn't consider a farmer's experience and situation worth comparing. The farmer who buries all his earnings in the soil and expects some life to emerge from there! The life that will probably save his life and few more!
How does it feel to end something good, expecting something better will start? And to be mentally ready, rather willing for it, 9 months in advance!

(update: Aakanksha gave me this link to a supposedly amazing video named 'in the womb'. Will watch it soon!)

Stories and Trees

This was a long due post and now I don't even remember how I thought about the link between type of stories and type of trees. I still haven't thought about this in depth though. With my limited reading statistics, I can provide only 1 or 2 examples of each type! :)

Palm Stories: These are generally plain looking and not so interesting stories at first look. The story teller takes enough time to build the base for the story. It requires you to go on reading till you reach the top point (high-point as it is called), to really enjoy and understand the story. Examples can be some good humour stories (jokes?) or even some travelogues etc.

e.g. Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Bush Stories:

The story teller is an ordinary person and so is the topic of his story. The story can be woven around any routine experience or common personalities existing around. Whether the story is interesting or not depends hugely upon the creativity of story teller. There is not much firm basework and main attraction is the surface ornamentation of story (or bush!). Many blog posts fall in this category.

e.g. this post. and this too

Creeper Stories: There exists a huge variety in this little complicated and equally interesting category of stories. They can range from real life experiences to fantacy stories and love stories to murder mysteries. The interesting part is, the branches or supporting parts are almost as strong (or weak) and as important as the main stem. So even if it looks like there is not strong enough base for the story, the strength lies in the complex network of all the characters and their own lives! There are lot many twists and turns and many 'high-points' worth enjoying throughout the length and width of the story, just like flower creepers. You can actually enjoy any part of the story and will be pulled in to trace the start and end, eventually realising its the journey that is more enjoyable than the end points.

e.g. the recent good example is this story by Janaki (part 1 to 10).

Pine Stories: The composition, form, structure, details.... this is what makes these stories worth reading. They are very predictable, like love stories, but the way they are told/narrated, in a very soft romantic poem like manner, makes them enjoyable.

e.g. 2 states by Chetan Bhagat, 50 first dates , bollywood movies like DDLJ etc

Mango Stories: Biographies or even some novels based on real life. A very strong base, strong enough branches,very closely linked to each other and to the environment, very much like mango tree! The concept is very deep rooted and demands your proper involvement and interest in it. This is not just for enjoying the story, it will stay with you for a long time even changing the way you think sometimes. Very inspirational!

e.g. Closest from what I have read till now is Totto Chan, better example can be stories of raja Harishchandra.

Banyan Stories: Epics! I do not have enough words and wisdom to write about them 'in short'! Unlike mango stories, they go beyond the individual reader, to inspire, affect and nurture the whole societies, cultures. They can be interpreted at various levels of literature as well as social evolution. And they are still not boring but very beautiful examples of art!

e.g. Ramayana, Mahabharata, Odyssey etc.

Bonsai Stories:

I would really not like to call them stories! They look like they were made as per marketing demand and requirements. They have everything, but still lack something very important like the scale, gravity, rendering them more of decorative item on the shelf in living room. They simply don't feel original. It's like Bhavin writing his interpretation of Ramayana/King Lear on his blog in one post! Show off!

Ok What is This?

:)

frustration sketches

This is an old concept we had in first few days of NID. I don't remember who named it so, but when we used to get frustrated while trying something worth showing someone, we used to do thes frustration sketches. The idea was to take your frustration out on paper, sketch (if you could call it that) with all the possible negative energy (!) and thinking of pencil as sword most of the time! The joy of showing the outcome (or merely of having finished the pencil or torn the paper etc) could help to get over the frustration! At least it was supposed to work like this :)Talked about this to poorva yesterday and today I felt I needed to do that for myself. The quality of these sketches is not so much enjoyable, may be because of 'not enough level of frustration' or may be because they look unnecessarily clean because of the 'hardware' (wacom tablet) used! :)nice exercise though! :)