M.P. Sharma's Blog, page 4

This Pic is a True Account of me – Not Photoshop-ped

Don’t you hate it when you think you’ve dodged a bullet only to find you’ve been slashed in the rib-cage instead?

Or maybe this just happens to me -_-

Spring is just around the corner; seriously it’s so close I can smell it.

I was secretly (because I didn’t want to jinx it. A fat load of good that did me) thrilled that I had managed to remain flu free this entire cold, harsh winter season but alas, the nasty bugger took me down last Saturday.

It’s so severe that ten days later, it’s still sinking its molars into me. And to top it all off, I had the most bizarre dream last night.

I dreamt I was RPM-ing the entire day (on a spin bike people, on a spin bike) so naturally I woke up exhausted. I mean literally, completely effing brutally smashed. Why? Who does that universe, who?

YOU that’s who!

I mean give me a break! I may have been able to forgive you if you’d just told me the name of that hot guy I was cycling next to but whatever. I would have just slobbered all over him anyway so the joke’s on you.

Well not really but I like it when I have the last say.

Now if you’ll please excuse me while I curl into a ball of woeful flu stricken misery on the floor under my desk right now. Splutter, splutter, splutter …

Bharat Mata Ki Jai Ho!

Happy Independence Day my Fellow Indians and anyone who needs an excuse to celebrate really.

On our 70th year of Independence, may all Indians revel and work towards a better, more beautiful India where we look to ourselves to improve our gorgeous nation. A country is made up of its people alongside their commitment and resolve to making a country as amazing as it should be.

Let’s take a vow to look within rather than point the finger at others as we celebrate our birthright and flamboyantly majestic, magnificent nation!

JAI HIND!

It’s Time for Some Honesty

You know those days when you realise you haven’t looked in the mirror for a while.

I mean metaphorically.

I admit it – I’ve been procrastinating. Writing the last couple of months has been nothing short of an ordeal for me, like Build Rome in a Day sort of suffering rather than incinerate it.

I’m not saying I’m cured or anything but the below video really helped to put things in perspective for me once more. It’s easy to forget the love I have in my bones for this beautiful creative piece of life and though I tend to feel brain dead most days with regards to creating words out of thin air recently, this video stirred that passionate, wanting desire I have for letters all over again and that’s got to be a good thing, right?

Don’t stop what you love people, just remember, fights are a normal part of an unhealthily healthy, obsessive, hot, overzealous love you have with something or someone. So to my writing gene, I have three words for you. Bring – It – ON.

It’s Cold & the Writing Part of my Brain is Frozen.

I swear, this is a viable condition often experienced by Writer’s in winter. It’s called Frozen Writer’s block. There’s no cure except for gluttonous extreme vegetation in front of the BBC channel for inspiration.

You know that saying, one girl’s loss is another one’s gain. You’re welcome, another week free of punishment from my brain. Don’t say I don’t give you anything.

Disclaimer: For faster results, attack the virus with a never ending supply of buttered popcorn and unhealthy salt and fake cheese infused Cheese and Bacon Balls.

Let me know if you want my address or I could just lie here with my mouth open and you can pelt junk food into it. See, there’s a positive to everything – even Frozen Writer’s Block.

Be the Change You want to See – Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

I tried this the entire day today; I lay on my back looking up at the heavens and saw, in my mind’s eye, that it was Saturday instead of Monday. I was being the change that I wanted to see.

My boss came to me and needless to say, he was not impressed. Turned out he couldn’t see the change I was being.

I think we need a mandate to make quotes come with guidelines and disclaimers attached.

Let’s just have a referendum, it’s not like Australia needs much convincing for one of those, right Turnball?

Beetroot Beatrice can’t tell you from a Bar of Soap …

Just another saying I do not get.

Isn’t this stating the obvious?

Pray tell what angle I should be looking at you from to ascertain the resemblance between your noggin and a bar of soap?

What was the person who came up with this metaphor on?

Clearly he/she was high … from all the soap fumes they had been exposed to in their obsessive compulsive bathing phase.

Seriously?

So, though you can find the very unimaginative (in fact this one was so bland even the author hash-tagged it #boring. Kudos to self-critiquing acceptance, I’ll join you one day. In the next life … perhaps) origins of this ridiculous saying here, I thought I’d give you the true, real version. The one everyone is too scared to tell you about because it’s made up of the stuff that inspires Horror Stories.

This saying was developed by Beetroot Beatrice; she was a friend of an ancestor. No scratch that. She was the ancestor of a friend of a friend. No one in my family came up with this one.

Beetroot Beatrice hailed from the great Aussie outback, somewhere near Uluru because I like rocks. But this is Beetroot’s story. Beatrice was nicknamed Beetroot Beatrice because she was purple. Hellllooooo!

And the kids weren’t quite as cruel yet to call her anything else. The anti-bullying programs were better those days. Plus Tellytubbies hadn’t been developed yet either.

Anyway I digress.

Beetroot Beatrice was very self-conscious about her purplish tinge and decided, against her … and her friends … and her parents’ better judgment to wash the purple “off” of her.

When a day and a half of incessant scrubbing didn’t work (in fact, it kind of had the opposite effect and made her more purple), she decided that the colour infliction must evolve from the inside of her so she decided to clean her intestines with soap and proceeded to eat it bit by bit. As a sidebar, if I had been born, I could have told Beatrice that this didn’t work and instead resulted in preposterous and mind numbing continuous hiccupping but I wasn’t. So tough luck but whatever.

Legend has it that Beatrice’s parents came back from a Fly Fishing expedition only to find a semi-conscious Beatrice maddeningly repeating the phrase, “can’t tell you from a bar of soap” continuously. Apparently, Beetroot Beatrice was confined to her bed in the Mental asylum for the next forty five years torturously repeating the words, “can’t tell you from a bar of soap”, “can’t tell you from a bar of soap”, “can’t tell you from a bar of soap”.

You get the picture.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, Beatrice died on the “can’t tell you …” section and never got to finish the sentence according to her psychiatrist Mr. Bath (I know – an unfortunate coincidence).

Poor Beetroot Beatrice. Apparently she still haunts the sand dunes of which ever place is closest to you so next time you take a bath, make sure you check your soap hasn’t had a bite taken out of it.

I know. Scary stuff.

You’ll never take a bath the same way again, will you?

Those are the power of words. And soap.

But pretty much, mostly words.

I’m Bold & I’m Beautiful …

Well maybe not, but I wish I could be.

I had the utterly disgusting sense to sit through half an hour of The Bold & The Beautiful the other day and well, let’s just say that that’s 30 minutes of my life I’m never getting back again -_-

Seriously, I’m not even sure what the writers of these shows do anymore, as far as I can tell, they wrote a “plot” (or a vague resemblance of one – the way a Monkey and Tiger might resemble each other) at the turn of the nineteenth century and decided to regurgitate the same stuff and stick a different character’s name at the beginning of the lines (unless you’re that Brooke character, I don’t even know how her limbs are still attached and that she isn’t brain dead yet but whatever. Another blog post. She gets to do everything at the same time).

I thought I’d feel better at the end of the half hour the way The Brady Bunch promised me I would but I just barely managed to find the remote in my staggering shock induced state to switch the TV off and curl into a miserable ball of nothing.

I mean if I thought my life was borderline boring before, boy did I have another thing coming. I wailed and yelled at my insignificance and how a ménage à trois was so yesterday and ate half a tub of ice cream.

Now, not only do I not have Brooke’s amazing love life, I look like three of her rolled into one messy, blah ball of yesteryear attractiveness.

Ugh, I hate soap stars.

Write for the Likes or for your Like?

It’s a question all of us writers have been (or will be) inevitably faced with, let’s be honest.

Do you write for yourself or do you write to become popular?

But here’s the deal:

When you write for the masses you get recognition. When you write for yourself, it’s this amazing cathartic experience that may keep you off the suicide watch program. Though slit my wrists Suzie may have been pushed to the backburner for a little while, chances are no one else really cares.

Write for everyone and at least you get a comment or two amongst that deafening crickets’ sound I at least, have become so very well versed with.

My suggestion?

I’ll be damned if I know.

What?

C’mon, it’s not like you come to this blog for answers is it? Because if it is, please don’t.

Really.

I already have enough lawsuits led by Psychiatrists around the world against me and I’m kinda broke, so the joke’s on them.

But still, I don’t want your insanity on my conscious. You have been adequately warned. Just be entertained or at least pretend to be, my ego bruises easily.

Thanks. xoxo

Thinking about Writing

I’ve been thinking.

About writing.

Then I thought some more about writing and used it as a viable excuse for procrastinating, ahem, I mean researching. For my writing of course.

Turns out you really can think too much so I decided to write about thinking instead which is why you got this fairly pointless post. I know, what’s new?

Apparently mum was right when she told me to think before I spoke. Or in this case write.

I think I’ll just go back to thinking.

About writing.

Naturally.

Are you from Slumdog Millionaire?

Honestly?

Seriously?

Um, no.

If I have to hear one more “innocent” remark on whether Slumdog Millionaire brings back bitter sweet memories, well let’s just say I cannot be held responsible for any ensuing actions.

It still baffles me why certain “developing nations” are only recalled for certain mundane, overly stereotyped versions of malnutrition, flies (every country has flies people, every country), painfully demonised diseases and generally poor human conditions when we have other stuff to offer, really we do.

When I say Africa, people conjure up skinny children. When I say India, people conjure up Slumdog Millionaire, when I say Middle East, people conjure up terrorism.

On the other side of the coin when I say Australia, people conjure up Blond bombshells on Bondi Beach. I say America, people conjure up glamorous Hollywood. I say England; people conjure up grand historical monuments.

My point? Every country has the good and the bad, it’s easy to forget that Africa has an amazing intricate royal system, India has wonderful examples of people from different parts of the world not just living, but rejoicing in one another (Taj Mahal people, Taj Mahal) and Middle East is breathtakingly beautiful in all its natural wonder.

Oh, and guess what? Poverty sux and it’s not just restricted to the “third world region” but I’m not here to air other people’s dirty laundry in public. So the next time you come to India and choose to take a photo of the beggar outside the Taj Mahal and forget about the amazing monument my country has to offer, just remember others could do the same and take a photo of the homeless dude in front of the Harbour Bridge too. Show the respect you expect please and if you’re having trouble coming up with what India has to offer, check this link out for some inspiration.

Rant officially over.

Thank you.