How rotten tomatoes can spoil your appetite

When you go to the supermarket to buy tomatoes, you find that some are lying loose while some are comfortably packed. You reach out for the loose ones, start inspecting them one by one, even like some of them, and just as you are going to pick up the polyethene for the ones you like, your hand stops as you notice that on the side shelf, the packed ones look equally good, and some appear even better.

And suddenly, you think 'Oh! They look so shiny and bright red on the outside, and are not very soft as well! So they will last a few days or even weeks', and although they are slightly expensive than the loose ones, you go for them. In fact you pick up two packets which makes a dozen and then happily go to the counter to pay for them, without observing them as keenly as you did to the loose lot.

You reach home, all excited to cook your favorite meal. You hurriedly open one packet of tomatoes and are pretty satisfied with all the contents. So you cook, eat and sleep.

Two days later
It is time for you to use the tomatoes in the other packet. And when you open it, to your surprise, you find that one out of the six is totally rotten, with its one half white and the other half smashed, and to an extent that you can clearly see it has affected the other five as well. Some are on the verge of becoming too soft, while some have black holes in them, so they as well are not fit to be consumed. You think to yourself- 'I kept them in the refrigerator in the as packed condition, did not open them, even the expiry date is two weeks later and the other ones were just fine.'

Well, it eventually becomes clearer to you then that red tomatoes are not green bananas. They won't ripen as days pass. They will remain red tomatoes.

So you have learnt a lesson now that when you go to a store, you pick tomatoes carefully, because when you are about to make your favorite dish and find a rotten tomato, you won't feel pity for it or the other way round, you won't be sad about the money it cost you at the store, neither will the tomato feel guilty and apologize to you or its fellows, but you will only regret not getting to prepare and relish your favorite meal when you had been waiting for it the whole day, to enjoy the flavor of your chosen tomatoes in it.

Instead, you miss the feeling of becoming lost in the aroma that surrounds you when the tomato bits splash inside the pan, start doubting your choices, and the next time you plan to cook that dish again, possibly you may get haunted by just the thought of that one rotten tomato that ruined your appetite for that delicious meal you deserved.

-Disha

मझधार

काश कि मैने सोचा होता

कि यह कश्ती मुझे कहाँ ले जाएगी

क्योंकि आज जहाँ इसने मुझे पहुँचा दिया है 

वहाँ से ना आगे का रास्ता दिखाई देता है 

और ना ही पीछे का रास्ता मुझे आवाज़ लगा रहा है 

इस नदी के बीचों बीच नाव कि दिशा तय नहीं हो पा रही  

क्योंकि लहरों ने जकड़ रखा है  

इस नदी से बहुत दूर जाना चाहती हूँ 

पर यह मझधार मुझे फाँसे हुए है 

शायद अब मंज़िल का मिलना पहले से भी मुश्किल है 

शायद आँधी तूफ़ान थमने का इंतज़ार करना होगा  

                                                                                                                   - दिशा 

Tracing hidden lines

It's the story of every young, urban middle class Indian girl, whose ultimate dream is to make a mark and to prove her worth to everybody around her, since the day she's born. It's the journey of her life.
I hope most of the readers, especially the girls, are able to relate to it.


Where did she go?
That bubbly little school girl with two little pigtails
Carrying a bag twice her weight
Happy that she will get to eat ice cream when she returns home in the afternoon
Excited about the summer vacation and the drama classes
Memorizing her lines for the Annual Day function
Studying hard to get good marks
Fares well in +2
Worried about admission to a respectable university
She wants to make her parents proud.

Where did she go?
That young college girl in her first semester
Happy that she could get through the entrance exams!
With a jhola on one side and a drafter on the other
She likes traveling to her college everyday
Cellphone, laptop and books are her companions now
Friends have become an essential part of her life
Struggling to get her focus back on studies
Amidst the numerous fests and events
She manages to steer through her last semester with good marks
Gets a well- paid job even in the time of recession
And that makes her think she is happy.

Now that she has finally achieved everything in life
Has tasted corporate life
Has put on stake everything she has got to reach there
Has learnt to thrive in a society that wants her to get married....

She embarks on a journey, backwards-
"Something was missing....Something is missing", she feels
And that something will always be missing....
Because that Something is her own footsteps
She has been walking on her own feet all this time, that's true
But it's amazing that there are no marks left behind to remember or to be remembered by
No records of the existence of her soul
No dreams, no fulfilled wishes
So her journey cannot be traced anyhow, anymore.....

One Gate, Umpteen Gateways

I know this is not rare,

Nor is it for the first time,
That a mortal stands before you,
Oh Mighty Gate of Life!


You have opened your arms to welcome me,
As if to invite me to an auction!
And introduced me to your clients- the Gateways,
Who, in my world, are renowned as 'Career Options'.


One after another, they greet me,
Presenting their brochures of pros and cons,
And once they are done, they offer me a key,
That is supposed to open the lock of a new dawn.


Oh! What a sight it is!
To see them lure me no end,
To make me sign their lifelong bonds, 
They plead with me, so that I might bend.


So tell me, Oh Timeless Gate of Life!
What would you do, had you been in my situation?
With due respect, and even more humbleness,
I seek an answer to my question.

- Disha Wahi

A vacated mind after vacation..@!!!!!!@

The title of this post points towards my current state of mind...confused, frenzied, pathetic & worn-out...(although it is a bit ironic that an empty mind can house so many feelings!). Yes..these feelings have taken their toll (since the beginning of the so-called summer vacation....that does not deserve to be called a vacation...sic) on my mind's multidimensional matrix that does not have a solution ( now this sounds a bit exaggerated..particularly when i am a bit weak in mathematics!!). Well..listed below are some of my vacation experiences (sic) :

• Training at NTPC was fun, since ours was a gang of seven, always ready to ransack every place we went to, eating reasonably-priced dosas (Rs 7/- per plate... unbelievable) in the canteen (in a not-so-reasonable labour-full environment), taking a joy-ride on the coal-train's engine, etc. But, I still feel that I deserved something better. Instead of burning in the heat (partly of the summer sun and partly due to the furnace fumes, coal dust, boiler heat, etc.), I could have fared well in a fully air- conditioned office of some private firm ( but obviously, you need a strong approach for that).   

• After wasting a week or so after training, I finally realised that I must do something constructive(Note: this does not include facebooking, movieying, TV-watching, cooking, sleeping, etc). So, I shifted my focus to a half-hearted preparation for GATE/IES/PSUs. Self-realisation after one more non-productive and monotonous week- "You need to join some coaching institute that would set-up a routine for you so that you can complete the syllabus in time."(In short, 'stop wasting time like money... life is not an ever-going sale...flat 80% off !'...I am surprised that my inner-voice can overpower me at times; it is not dead yet.) So, i joined this India's No. 1 IES Academy (or so are the claims). It is located in a place called Jia Sarai ( most of people dont recognise the place at first. But when you tell them- 'It's near IIT, Delhi.'- there comes an unusually big 'OHHH'...........sigh).

• The 6th semester result was declared a bit earlier than I had expected. As usual, it was not very impressive, especially when those who were way below me in the past semesters suddenly moved up the ladder, overstepping me. In fact, if my percentage versus semester curve is plotted, it would resemble the graph of a decreasing logarithmic function...that is if we exclude the point of 5th semester!!!

With such a busy (sic) schedule, I could not go to a place such as mussourie, shimla or goa .. and the worst thing is, I cannot say - '....may be next time' - because there wont be a next time. This was the last official summer vacation of my college life...in fact my entire life.

To conclude, everything follows Pareto's 80/20 principle, i.e., only 20% of your daily activities are responsible for 80% of the consequences....however, favorable or not, depends on the quality of those activities.