M.P. Sharma's Blog, page 24

Sometimes life just can’t be put into words, no matter how hard you try

I think most of you by now are fully aware of my absolutely obsessive passionate lustful love for words, but I am, at times, stumped when I look at the wonder all around me, which is what brings me to this post.

This piece of writing is a little different because today I am going to be talking about how words just can’t cut it sometimes, and this is where I take my hat off to all of you wonderful photographers out there!

As some of you may have noticed, I’ve added a page to this blog today titled “Photographer Extraordinaire” (just in case you missed it) directing those of you who are interested, to my amazingly superbly talented sister’s blog – mayunkasharmaphotography.wordpress.com.

I am sure all of you would have caught on pretty soon after you checked it out (because I have like the smartest bunch of followers’ eva!) considering our scary family resemblance. My condolences by the way, just when you thought you could barely cope with one of us, I give you another.

Mayunka is mind-blowingly, mind-bogglingly, awe inspiringly talented when it comes to clicking photos. Now I know what most of you are thinking – “sure she has to say that, I mean she’s her sister”. Am I biased? In all honesty, most likely, but I am willing to put my buck where my mouth is, so go ahead and check out her work and see for yourself.

Mayunka has taken all of my photos here (including my book cover) and is marvellous at natural landscapes and profiles. Plus she is heaps nicer than me, so feel free to contact her for any work you may be interested in, or even just for a chat (she’s a motor-mouth!).

Or, you can contact me (if you’re shy) and I’ll pass it onto her when we’re on talking terms, which is 99.94 1/4% of the year – just in case you’re wondering ;)

Enjoy!

What’s your excuse?

I figure if Nature can do this, I have no excuse to stop trying. Damn, another one of those “I told you so” moments. Can signs from the Universe get any more in your face sometimes? Please note – self pity has been appropriately shamed! :D

Sponge Bob ain’t got nothing on me. My brain’s absorbing ...

Sponge Bob ain’t got nothing on me. My brain’s absorbing words like there’s no tomorrow. Now all I have to do is make them coherent.

Try like Insane or stay the same …

These are the words my spin instructor said to me in the morning in the middle of a heart destroying work out.

Before I could restrain myself from the avalanche that was about to tear itself free from my endorphin spiked (and incomprehensibly inflicted with allusions of nonsensical grandeur) mind and stick a repulsive gym sock in my mouth, those twelve fateful words poured out like verbal diarrhea.

“So what you’re really trying to say is I’m fat, aren’t you?”

I know, I know. It was like watching a train derail itself and crash into some poor unsuspecting civilian (that would be me, just in case you’re wondering) in slow mo. Complete with the package of all the guts and intestines squirting out from inappropriate body parts. Even incarnating my best version of a wounded puppy dog expression didn’t save face.

She-Hitler (as I have nicknamed her) gave me one dry, uncommitted expression & ordered me to drop and give her 20.

Moral of the story? My mouth is the one part of my body that does NOT need any more exercise. :/

What Dwarf are you?

I got asked the other day what dwarf I felt the most connected to. After I had looked at my enquirer perplexedly and conducted my civic duty aptly by wondering aloud about all the lines of political correctness my friend had grossly surpassed, I was politely chastised to stop reading between the lines and just answer the bloody question already.

It was then that I realised that the reference was alluding to which one of the seven dwarfs in the ancient Snow White fable I felt I was most like. Seeing as I can never ever answer a query straightforwardly, I asked if the question was multiple choice. My friend told me to forget it and muttered something under her breath that sounded a little like “I should know better” mixed with a whole heap of curse words, but my other friend (who is a shrink by the way and I am still not quite sure why I feel the constant need to bring that up) has been telling me to let things go lately. So instead, I bit my tongue profusely and decided to go home and write a list of why I thought this exercise should have been multiple choice in the first place.

Even though I lead an amazingly exciting life, I somehow fit in the exercise when I (cough cough) had some free time and thought I’d share the results with you. Okay fine, I had absolutely nothing to do, so as soon as I ripped through my front door, I slammed my bag hard against my kitchen counter and wrapped my eager beaver fingers around my felt tip pen to release my maniacal onslaught by proceeding to scribble down my ideas on the half used serviette I had left near the sink in the morning.

I don’t think it’s possible to imprison yourself into a simplified notion of one personality group and when I think about it, the seven dwarfs in Snow White are just that, personality groups. I go through all the dwarf representations numerous times and often repeatedly in one day itself. Take this morning for example. I was happily Sleepy before an uninvited Grumpy pounced after I had realised that I had put my alarm on for a whole hour earlier, which lasted till about mid-morning when after scratching my head in confusion for the better half of a dawn, I felt Dopey for forgetting about the 24 hour format lessons I had promised mum I had learnt appropriately in Year 2. Then when I got home and saw my alarm unashamedly tauntingly flashing at me, a light bulb moment hit – my clock isn’t even in 24 hour format! So that was Bashful.

To top it all off, I have allergies early morning so waking up at the ungodly hour I did didn’t help my situation making me Sneezy all afternoon when I decided to self-medicate myself because I sincerely believe that being a Doc was my higher calling which meant that Happy was the only feeling left to experience.

I must admit, this was a tough one but I wasn’t about to let my friend win [because apparently I am quite competitive as someone very wise on this blog once told me - you know who you are ;)]. Then as I commenced reading down my list, my eyes glazed over in gleeful victory, the kind you feel churning in the pit of your stomach when it dawns that you may be on the outskirts of a very promising “told you so” victory because it was settled – my friend had lost. I had made six out of seven dwarfs in a little over half a day already and voila! That made me Happy. Score, 7 out of 7!

I tore the phone of its carrier thingy ma-gig and quickly punched in the numbers of my friend yelling maddeningly, “you lose, I win, you lose, I win. I made 7 out of 7”.

My friend who apparently DID have better things to do with her life asked if I had forgotten to take my Prozac again and about what the hell I was talking about.

I continued to give her a heated rundown and summary gawking at her inability to recall past events of only moments ago to which she dryly and succinctly replied “you need a shrink”.

Before I could barely get the “well the joke’s on you, I already have one” words out, I heard the dead end dial tone bullyingly boring into my right ear drum.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter – I console myself by knowing that I won, so there…

The one attribu…

The one attribute that is synonymous to all who achieve success is a relentless positive attitude, so never ever give up.

I just realised that my book sales are in the double digi...

I just realised that my book sales are in the double digits now, so I can quit my day job in about ooh, 2.759835137835 lifetimes! :D

I’m heading a new campaign to make the weekend as long as...

I’m heading a new campaign to make the weekend as long as the work week – I mean, it’s only fair.

So I went to the gym in the morning …

That’s how the story ends, because I died from exhaustion soon afterwards :/

How grandparents are often better than parents

Today marks the one year anniversary of the passing of my paternal grandmother.

If I had to explain my grandmother in three words, I would find it difficult to imprison all the woman she was (and who she continues to be for me in my life) but I would have to settle (after much deliberation) for infectious, feisty & determined.

Infectious in her laughter, her wit and her mischievousness, feisty in her ability to overcome all the obstacles and curve balls her life threw at her while she walked the planet, and determined to make the best of whatever she was faced with no matter what the drawbacks. My grandmother lived and loved with vigour and stubbornness. I’m lucky in that on her passing, I didn’t have any painful lingering doubts on whether she knew I loved her, because in my soul, I know she did and continues to do so, wherever she may be.

Amma, the Hindi word for mother (as her three children, six grandchildren, two great grandchildren and countless more extended family called her) was the second youngest of five spirited sisters. She was the favourite of her doting and docile mother (or so I am told), and the proud child of the Headmaster of a local school, located somewhere in the Himachal Pradesh district of Una, a common boundary shared with Hoshiarpur in Punjab.

Revered for their exquisiteness (Amma’s oldest sister was actually stolen from her neighbourhood by a group of bandits due to her mesmerising beauty!), my grandmother was one of those women who took compliments and the entire notion of attractiveness in her stride. Though my grandfather fell in love with her the moment he laid eyes on her at a mutual friend’s party, Amma was never one for making a fuss about the way she looked, always partaking with me on the importance of having a good “inside” over what she vehemently believed was fleeting and subjective on the “outside”.

Amma is unfortunately not the first grandparent I have lost, my first was my paternal Grandfather, or as we all affectionately called him, Papaji, a little over ten years ago and I can honestly say that it isn’t any easier the second time round. I perhaps naively believed that I would know what to expect when the undeniable time of passing would happen for my Amma, but knowing what’s coming doesn’t make the ensuing pit in your gut any easier to tolerate or facilitate any sort of preparation in advance for that matter.

I feel extremely blessed for having spent a considerable chunk of time with my paternal grandparents as I was growing up in Australia, which leads me to why I really believe that grandparents are often better than parents.

My grandfather fostered my immense love for writing, and most importantly, storytelling. Recounting a traditional, family heirloom of sorts, I know for a fact that every child connected to the Sharma household has been told, retold, and blasted with the disastrous Indian “kuja” story on how parents of children were nearly ripped apart before they could marry by the infamous, evil kuja (a conventional Indian clay pot)! I remember all of us children listening with barely concealed gleeful excitement at our parents having escaped the maddening clutches of the menacing clay pot to have gone on to have us, I mean what could possibly be worse than us not existing? No matter how hard we wracked our brains, nothing we could ever muster up by way of our imagination could suffice the disastrous results had the kuja had its wicked way!

Grandparents are great storytellers. In fact most children, no matter where we come from or the cultures we belong to, will have at least one story of a great tale revealed to us through our grandparents. Why? I believe that the simple reason is because they have the time to repeat, repeat and yes, repeat the same story to us after our many pleas, without ever losing their patience. Amma taught me lifelong lessons through the age old wise modes of sharing knowledge and morals via her storytelling and the best thing is I didn’t even realise that she may have been lecturing me (only slightly of course!) until it was over and the point had finally hit home!

Grandparents are fortunate (or as is the case sometimes, a little unlucky!) to be able to spend time with their grandchildren and actually enjoy it. They get to spoil you without having to deal with the consequences and best of all, at least in my case; they are always way cooler than your parents! They also have the wisdom to understand that life goes on no matter what happens, that it is rarely the end of the world (even if you are absolutely positive it is. I mean that guy found out I liked him!), that there is ALWAYS a solution to a problem (you just have to think outside your immediate box sometimes), that it is most likely not as bad as it seems (yes, yes, even when the guy I liked found out I did in the worst possible way), and that you are only ever going to be truly happy being and rejoicing in who and what you are without giving a damn about what anyone else thinks! And best of all, you’re perfect, didn’t you know that?

This year has not eased the pain of losing Amma anymore than when the wound was fresh, but I do laugh when I remember the happy times a lot more easily now than I did possibly 11 months ago. My religion advocates reincarnation, so losing someone is never quite final however, regardless of what Hinduism dictates, I truly believe in my soul that our paths will cross again and I look forward to many more lifetimes as the proud granddaughter of both Papaji & Amma.

Thank you for the memories & I love you … xoxo.