Just a Dream

Hello Friends,
I am back with another tale. This story is based on the dream that I saw last night. Hope you all enjoy it.

Who knew there can be so many things hidden in the beautiful nature created by the Almighty? The shades of green and red shone through the evening light and made the woods look mysterious like a never unwrapped story. The sounds of retiring creatures buzzed in the air as the nocturnal ones started gaining momentum. As the light began to diminish and fade away, a serene picture of the woods caught my attention that projected deep mysteries hidden among the beautious trees and the surroundings. There was so much to be told, so much to stare and wonder and so much to be understood that one birth of a man wasn't enough for it.
While some sounds emerged from the corners that touched our senses, there were others that reached our hearts and yet there were some that crept in the depths of our imaginations. Some dreamy waves were also around and some that appealed so much to our souls. One of those sounds would soothe your nerves to peace while others would irritate you to the bottom. High-pitch and low-pitch with varying intensity of loudness and shrillness would humm in one ear and be gone from the other. Some unavoidable sweet melodies would linger for sometime before being dominated by some rough harsh sound waves. Yet, everything was so acceptable and the mingling of all these diversities in sound waves was the truth of completeness in all forms which aroused a desire to choose and mingle in the sound wave of your choice to define yourself, the way you want to see your own self.
The varieties did not end here. The woods had something more to offer to make those mysteries still unravelled. As the yellowish tinge of the morning became slightly golden and then orange to reddish as it headed towards a variety of colors before finally becoming dark. Yes, the bright morning turned dark black as the night fell upon and during this journey it projected so many colors before the eye that a normal human being could hardly name them all. Still, there is one color in this process that appeals the most to our eyes and we fall for it. As it leaves behind a strong liking, our passion for it rises and we find ourselves searching for that one color everywhere. We are willing to drown ourselves and mingle in that color to the extent we consciously or sub-consciously decide to. The deeper the passion for our favorite mystery color, the deeper we bathe into it. And as we come out fresh, we take a second look into the woods to realize the thirst is yet not gone. The woods is also stubborn in this matter and will not let you down. Search with as much energy, passion, knowledge and imaginations you have, and the woods would still have lot of other things in store for you without ever getting exhausted of its resources.
A gentle aroma fills the air and we start taking deep breaths to enjoy the new kind of inhaled air. As you investigate about this new feature, you find yourself amidst a group of beautiful flowers emitting fragrance of different kinds. Your curiosity pulls you towards each of these flowers and your discrete mind tries to judge the best fragrance amongst them. You realise that there is one type of smell that you love the most and you pluck the pretty flower, the mother of that smell, and take it along with you. You find yourself lost in the fragrance and the beauty of the flower as you walk in an unknown direction.
A tall tree suddenly bends down and takes you up into its arms. You are shocked for a moment of time and you either enjoy your current state or get irritated and break yourself free from those chains of the branches holding you and lo, you land on the ground. While you wonder about this tall tree, you look around to detect the different types of trees and plants that make this mysterious woods. You gain appreciation for some, hatred for some, liking for others and passion for one kind of trees. You chase your passion and mindlessly approach the one you developed passion for and as you stand near it, you look at it with admiration and pride. You either want this tree in your home or you wish secretly that you could yourself be like this tree. You don't give a second thought to your selection as you are pretty confident, happy and sure about your choice. The strong desire that creeps within you tells you to hug this tree and climb to the top of it or just stand by it forever. You are motivated by your thoughts and allow yourself to mould your actions towards making your thoughts come true. The blind faith in your choice leads you to the gates of successesfully implementing your plans which should lead you to highly satisfied mental state and in the end you turn back to thank the mysterious woods but the woods look back at you mysteriously as you have not explored everything that it could have offered you. As you select your beautiful tree, sit on its branches with your naturally perfumed flower and sing your song, you look around to find so many creatures that are hurrying back home.
Then there is thunder and you notice a Cheetah running away with all its might. Your sense of motion is awakened and you feel the desire to run like that. One step, two, three and there you fly away on your legs to challenge the fastest animal on earth unsuccessfully. But in the process, you did gain a lot of confidence on your legs and there we see you chasing away all the deers and fawns. You tend to realise the worth of your beautiful legs as you keep running around, utilizing it to the maximum with the dream to defeat the Cheetah one day to beat a record.
You wait for sometime and notice some beautiful birds coming out to welcome the rains with their beautiful body movements formally known as dance. You wonder with amusement at this new kind of motion which is so appealing to the eyes and heart. As your eyes sparkles at this new discovery, you secretly wish from within that one day you should be able to dance as gracefully as these natural dancers. You join the group of peacocks and start dancing to copy the beautiful movements. The mysterious birds fly away and hide into the woods somewhere as the rains start pouring and there you are left all alone dancing in the heavenly showers. A feeling of happiness runs inside you, in your heart and mind and you start understanding your body.

The sweet squirrels nibbling a piece of bread, the huge bear looking for prey, the royal lions roaring around, the beautiful butterflies, the fast deer, the mynah and the other birds, the small insects and flies, the irritating monkeys, the fat elephant, the dangerous crocodile, the bats and owls, the loyal dogs and the endless list of creatures sheltered by the forest. You respond to each and every creatures you see there, differently. You find yourself getting attracted towards few while you gain repulsion for some. Love and hate both comes into play and your sense of judgement is aroused to the maximum. Some of these creatures start dominating your mind, creating a feeling of companionship, and you start deciding to have a nice friend circle with the ones you choose. You pack them in your bag or choose the best from it to take away home. You are totally happy and satisfied with the gift you got from this forest and you dream of preserving your gift for lifetime. You think, 'this is all I wanted from you dear forest', and you plan to retire home and cherish all the beautiful memories you got today but the woods say, 'Wait. I have more and more things in my arms that I can bestow upon you.' If you are patient and do not go home so early, you listen to the woods with the bag in your arms and as you wonder about the never-ending mysteries of the woods, you find another beautiful phenomenon of the jungle and this series goes on and on...
The woods have definitely made your life beautiful and if you are willing to give it some more time and patience, you will be blessed with the gifts of never-ending knowledge, wisdom and dreams. This was just a small picture and the beginning of the secrets of the beauty of the woods. The journey is really long and dreamy - full of charm and variety.

Narrow Escape

Let me tell you a nice adventurous story. Here it goes....

Those were the days of enjoyment. Those were the days of fun and adventure...A carefree, happy childhood days that still lingered in their memories. Whenever they met in the weekends, Maria and Sophia often ended up discussing the old school days' incident that had once filled terror in thier hearts but was now a source of laughter and amusement.
As 14 years old kids, Maria and Sophia were attending the event practise at the school for the school's special function. The enchanting evening was filled with the sounds of guitar, of the drums being beaten by those small confident hands, of the thin voice of young angels practising the songs, of the delicate feet of little dancers tapping against the ground, of the loud virtuous voices enacting out some characters in a play...of all kinds of contribution from the superstars of the future. Maria and Sophia were not absent in this list. These blooming buds were going to dance on the song selected by their favourite teacher.
All these event practices for celebrating the anniversary of the School's Founder, were progressing at a fast pace and only a week was left for the final show. Maria and Sophia were confident of their performance and after a couple of practices that evening, they felt they were perfect at it now and took the liberty to roam around in the time left over. It was still 7 in the evening and thier Cab would come at 9 pm. So, they had plenty of time for galavanting, as you would call it. The main gate of the school stood wide open to welcome anybody inside and walk into the big green field where the busy school students' crowd hummed. So, needless to mention that the everyday's crowd comprised of not only the students and teachers but also outsiders, some good some bad. Among them were also those whose main motive was to chase girls, make friends with them, flirt around or find someone for a serious relationship. You could distinguish such people from their hungry wolf like eyes peeping out and looking at every soul passing by. They stood in groups of 4-5 and you just cannot handle them except for plainly ignoring them and being with your team, with concentration towards your work.
As Maria and Sophia wandered in the diminishing light of the beautiful evening, they felt very thirsty and to their shock, they realised that they have lost their bag containing snacks and the water bottle. The exertion of two rounds of heavy dance practice had dried their throats like that of a desert traveller. They decided to go inside the school premises to drink water from the taps available there, though the buildings looked haunted in the darkness and only two main gates at the extreme opposite ends were opened for entry and exit, rest all being locked. These girls bravely went inside to search for water in the building corridors. As they entered, they took the steps to the first floor and went to the nearest Basin with taps, turned on one of them but alas, there was no water. Instead, there came strange noises of shoes. Someone was climbing the same set of stairs ....

The girls became conscious and alert. Slowly they moved towards the stairs and peeped down to recognize those folks. The buildings were not well lit and that caused inconvenience to these girls in seeing the faces. However, from their movements and thier talks they did not appear to be good guys. They were heading straight towards the floor where these girls were standing. Now, an obvious doubt came in their minds. Were these guys following them? They stood stiff for a moment as this thought ran simultaneously in their minds and they immediately ran across the corridor to reach the next set of steps to go down. The confirmed signs of being chased by those folks showed in the next couple of minutes when these guys also ran in the same direction, following the girls. The girls could hardly believe that something like this can ever happen. They nervously ran down the stairs and reached the ground floor. All around was darkness and the exit gate they reached was locked. What a stroke of bad luck! They hardly had time to analyze which exit gate would be open at this time. As their minds went helter skelter, they started running in a randomly selected direction. The guys were on their heels too, following them determinedly. The girls could hardly understand the intentions of those people but the signals were strongly indicating that definitely these people were not there for anything good. The females could hardly get time to plan out the escape. They had no clue which direction to go in and how to reach the main Exit gate. They landed up reaching the top floor of the building. A select number of gates being open and closed inside the building had created a jig-saw puzzle and solving it in a haste seemed next to impossible. The footsteps were approaching in their direction and it made them numb as there was no way out from there except the same set of stairs that would take them down. They tried to hide behind the pillars closest to the stairs and decided to run down as fast as they could the moment these people reached upstairs and turned in any direction.

They had already started breathing heavily and their hearts were pumping blood randomly. They had to start running at a proper timing otherwise they were into some deep trouble today. Those folks reached the topmost floor and it was quite fortunate for the girls as the boys turned in the opposite direction. But these girls did something really foolish and started running towards the stairs immediately and as a result they came face to face with these guys. Their big eyes bulged out and the heartbeat stopped as they noticed five big notorious looking boys comprising this group. They had good luck again as it took few minutes for those boys to realize that they were face to face with those girls and Maria and Sophia could immediately take advantage of this situation and slip between the crowd to make their way towards the next floor.

As the boys realized what had happened, they immediately changed their directions and ran after the females. Maria and Sophia could hardly understand anything as to what to do because the guys were now following very close to their heels. They almost tumbled down the next set of steps to reach the first floor corridor. They recalled that they were at the same place where they were in the beginning and running down the the set of stairs at the end of the corridor would lead them to the exit/entry gate. So, they immediately changed their direction and headed towards the end of the corridor. The boys did the same. As these girls were reaching the end of the corridor, they saw the girl's and the boy's toilets right across on the way to the other corridor. There was no time to be lost as the end of the corridor was still quite far and the speed of the boys was pretty high and scary. The escape was not guaranteed if they continued running. Maria and Sophia blinked together as they understood that the toilet was the best place to hide and changed their direction. As they headed towards the girl's toilet, Sophia pulled Maria by her hand and ran towards the boy's toilet.

What a move! As both the girls stood locked inside one of the cells of the boy's toilet, Maria looked completely confused and embarrassed. Sophia explained the significance of hiding there and told her that the boys will never in their life guess that the girls are in the boy's toilet. And yes, it did happen. The boy's dared to go inside the girl's toilet and check but on finding that no one was there they headed straight towards the other corridor to hunt for the girls. We are so much guided by the standards set in the society that by default we tend to think in the direction of those standards even in very awkward and challenging situations. Because everybody knows that girl's toilet are meant for the girls and boy's toilet for the boys, the boys automatically followed the standard way of thinking and searched in the girl's toilet but 'uncommon sense is very uncommon' and they could not think out of the box that there could be a slight probablity that the females are hiding in the toilet meant for the males. Hence, the narrow escape for Maria and Sophia who silently came out of the toilet and ran towards the set of stairs on the other end and climbed down to reach the exit gate from where, they were finally out on the open ground field along with the other school mates. They don't know what happened to those boys as they never saw those faces again but they peacefully went back home taking a good lesson from the day's incident and promising themselves to be careful and sensible for the rest of their lives.

Maria and Sophia had a wonderful show on the day of the celebration and they got lot of applauses for the same. They cherish the memories of their beautiful performance till today. All is well that ends well.

Work is Worship

When I had just stepped into my Engineering college, few of my seniors surrounded me one fine day and told me to write something on the topic "The Lost Horizon...". If any of those seniors are reading this, they will remember. I have changed the name of the topic here and presented the same story with a little modification.

One fine night, I was wondering in the woods. The charm of the cool romantic night had totally captured my senses and made me lose my attention as I carelessly strolled around among the mysterious trees, lost in an unexplainable beauty. I found myself almost becoming a poet or a philosopher as the practical touch and feel began to diminish in the growing darkness of the uncanny night. As I crossed the thin paths clothed with dry leaves that were crunched by my strong spiky shoes, I seemed to have forgotten the promise I made to my teacher early this morning.

In the retrospect I could see myself talking earnestly to my honourable teacher that morning, who was sitting alone in her cabin in a complete messed up situation. I tried to intrigue into the matter and dared to boldly ask her if I can help her sort out any problem. It would be a pleasure to help her find a solution to the complications she seemed to be trapped in. Her perplexed face looked at me like broken pieces and her eye brows raised up in a question as her uncertain eyes met mine. I realized the need for empathy in those curtained eyes and became even more convinced of some unwanted condition around her. As I showed my strong desire to be of assistance, she felt she could confide in me and thus told me the whole thing. She wanted a good writer for herself who could write some unique articles, with high artistic approach, for her in a short span of time. All these were to be submitted for the school's International Literary Competition and she was the one selected by our school to accomplish this giant artistic work. She needed a helping hand for sure but where was she going to find extra-ordinarily skilled people. She will have to accomplish everything on her own like a crash-course which might finally crash at the International level. Oh! then it would be so disheartening that her heart might get dislodged from its position threatening her collapse. Oh no, a sincere and responsible student like me would not let that happen. Would I?

I told her that I was willing to help her as much as possible. Her dismayed looks began to vanish as an iota of ray started shining in her much-relaxed eyes as I told her that my father, few of his friends and myself sometimes get together and write articles for International competitions and we were good at proofreading too. So, we would help her achieve the goal in the desired time-frame. After making this promise, I made my way home and we all got engaged in this new errand. Monotony and tiredness began to dominate my mind, after I had gone a long way completing this task, which led me to the decision of going for a short walk in the woods nearby.

So, here I was walking all alone in the cold night trying to seek some refreshment for the heavily laded mind and had got engulfed by the serenity of the picturesque night. As I roamed about like a wonderer, I kept no notice of the path below my feet and dragged myself aimlessly in any appealing direction. All of a sudden, the whole world changed as a strong awakening signal was sent to my brain via my nerves which shook me from top to toe. Before I could realize the potential danger I had come across, I felt a strong stinging sensation on my left leg and fell unconscious.
When I opened my eyes in perplexity, I found myself in a strange city. I looked upwards to admire the heavenly white clouds, looked far all around to feel heavenly soft air and get the heavenly vision of white snowy mountains and then....I looked down....aaaah!!! What was that? There was no ground below my feet. I was floating in the air and there was no horizon, no demarcation or boundaries and all that was present was white snow-like clouds everywhere. Below my feet, as far as my vision permitted, there was just soft white clouds with no hard surface. I felt as if I was granted some power to walk in the air. How funny!! I found myself enclosed in an infinite space of a big ball of snowy white clouds. As I tried deeply to find out the sensitive details of my surroundings, I could figure out few more people floating in the space. So, I was not alone in the boat. Thank God!! But which place is this? Out of curiosity, I approached one of the souls there and inquired about this mysterious place and his answer made me stiff with shock. I was in Heaven!
I became anxious to talk to The Almighty. I asked this soul if he could help me to meet God. On this, he expressed difficulty and the need for a prior long-waited appointment. He took me to the soul incharge of that area and told him about my wish. The soul incharge denied. I begged and pleaded and tried every means to convey the importance of this required meeting with God. It was really urgent and important, otherwise everything will go topsy turvy on our dear Earth. Hearing this, the incharge soul got nervous and took me to the presence of the God. So, here I was face to face with God Himself.
I was stunned for a couple of minutes to see the peaceful, smiling, soft and loving personality of God. My eyes grew brighter and larger as my lips sealed up preventing me from uttering a single word when finally The God broke the silence and asked me the reason for my wish to meet Him.

I bowed down humbly before Him and said that He has picked me up at a wrong time. I cannot leave earth at this time of life when I have something that really needs my attention there. God told me that I was bit by a snake and so I am dead on earth with the completion of all my duties.

I told God that I have very important duties left to be performed and I just cannot afford to leave it in the middle. After that I explained the complete situation there on the earth, effortlessly, emphasizing the importance and ugency of the matter. My state put The God in confusion and he gave it a serious thought. Yes, work is worship and it comes first always. After a lot of pondering, He granted my wish to go back to the Earth for the sake of the crisis created there.

And lo...I was back on earth, in the same woods. I got up from the ground as if I had been into a deep slumber and as I made my way towards home, I kept recollecting the dream I had just seen. Was it a dream? or a reality? I inspected my left limb to discover the mark of snake bite. Holy Jesus!

Do you know, what did I tell God? I told him that I have lots of literary work to do to help my teacher who was struggling hard to do some good quality work. God granted me the permission to go back to the earth for the sake of work but on a condition that I should not over-burden myself and work at a slow constant speed and all those souls over-burdening themselves will be checked by God.

So, good luck to all. 'Work is Worship' but do not over-exert yourselves.

Diamonds

Well, this is a story that I published in my school magazine when I was in 5th class. Let me share it with all kids...


Once upon a time, there was a farmer who lived with his three sons. The farmer had brought up his three sons with good values and principles and had educated them with the knowledge of virtues of hardwork and sincerity. They were quite poor but never went for any wrong means to earn money. Instead, they relied on thier own efforts to bring home whatever they could afford to. All they had was a barren piece of land and they would break the hard rocks, water the ground day and night and work on it to make it as productive as possible, to earn the maximum out of it. By the time the sowing season arrived, they had done reasonable work on it to sow reasonable seeds and then came the reeping season which, naturally, gave low productivity owing to the type of land and amount of seeds sown.
Two of the three boys decided to find some other work that would give them a better income but the third one decided to persist with working on the same piece of field and work hard till he really is able to make it fertile. The other two wished him good luck and set off to seek some other work. The farmer, himself, bought few hens and started selling eggs. The third boy ( let's call him Jack) continued breaking the rocks and ploughing with complete positive attitude that the complete land will soon become fertile and they will start having beautiful harvests each year. With lots of hope and confidence in his heart, Jack started ploughing and watering his field and working in the desired direction and to tell you the truth, he was never discouraged whether his attempts were bringing the desired results or not.
One day, Jack, tired after his day's work, sat under a tree nearby and opened his bag to have his lunch. As he was eating, he noticed some noise in the background. He ignored it for a while but the tinkling sound ocurred twice or thrice. Jack ignored it and went off home that day. The other day, owing to convenience, Jack decided to have his lunch under the same tree. As he sat there busy eating, he again noticed the same tinkling sound. It was the sound of some particle hitting another but yet it sounded so mysterious. Jack could not resist this mystery any further and decided to unveil it. He looked all round the tree and there was nothing that could have produced that sound. He looked as far as his vision could permit in all directions and yet there was nothing he could trace. Tired with his investigation, he looked up in the sky with dismay. The expression on his face changed as soon as he noticed a bird carrying a shiny object in its beak and flying on top of a big hole on the tree top and dropping that object into that hole and lo, the noise came..the tingling noise. Jack was excited and curious about the whole thing he saw. He decided to peep into the hole of that tree. So, he climbed up and looked inside that hole and saw that there was a path inside through which he could get down into the hole. So, boldly, he got down into the hole and on reaching the ground level of the hole, he saw that he was surrounded by the shiny objects all around. What were they? He picked up one of them. Diamonds!! Oh! He was a Millionaire. No, a Billionaire!!No, a ....??Well, well, he had no idea how much the diamonds were worth.
Good gracious!He immediately came out of the hole and ran home to tell his family about this treasure that a bird is accumulating inside the hole of a mysterious tree. His father and brothers were amazed at what they heard and they went along with him to see the truth. They almost fainted with happiness. This time, they had to make the right judgment about what to do with the treasure and as usual their noble father suggested his sons that they should report it to the king who shall decide. Though this meant losing the treasure but it also meant following the norms of a good citizen.
The farmer and his sons went to the king's court next day and told the whole story about the diamond treasure. the king could not believe it and he personally visited the place to see the unbelievable truth. He captured the complete treasure and was happy that honest citizens like this farmer exists in his state. He wanted to gift the farmer huge amount of money and make him very rich but all the wise farmer requested was a fertile piece of land where he can work to earn his decent living. The king was impressed not only by the farmer's honesty and dignity but, now, also by his wise thinking. The king happily gifted him and his family a nice big piece of fertile land and kept him as a juror in his court.
The king did not miss out to go to the same tree next day to see whether the bird still brings those diamonds. He waited for the bird to arrive to that tree for dropping the treasure but the bird did not come as it's treasure hiding place was discovered. Probably, it is now dropping those diamonds in some other tree hole .....