Canvas Kolkata-Kumartooli The Durga Puja Preparations - 1

 As The Mother Eagerly awaits at the gates of Kailash
To descend to the Earth, once her abode......

As Lord Shiva looks at his wife longingly....

Nine Days of parting is a shade too long....

 Her sons and daughters fervently engage in creating divinity out of clay

The monsoon almost over....

A clear sky is all that they pray..

 God creates Humans and Humans create a frame for God...

The daughter of  This Earth

Is The Strength to the Supreme one....

Maa Asche......Mother is Coming

The Sky it Was-Thursday Challenge

The Golden Moment

Far away Land

To the Paradise

Homeward Bound

Kolkata Sky in its different shades

This is a part of Thursday Challenge initiated by www.spunwithtears.com for more photographs around the world please do click here
This Thursday's Theme:Sky

The Beginnings

.........And I missed my train.

I sat on my hunches, panting hard grasping every breath as if it were my last. My heart kept on jumping in my rib cage as if it just wants to be set free, maybe it wanted to be freed of the body it was hopelessly pumping life in.

I closed my eyes and still the pain won't go off. I tried to get up and somehow dragged my body to the bench and sat somehow clinging my bag, the only luggage I had. I looked up at the concrete roof of the station and the sickly ceiling fan and smiled. I never missed a train actually and it was my first.

"Hello, missed the train?"

I sat up startled and looked at a smiling face. A pretty good looking face at that. Missing train may have it's own perks I believe.

"Yes." I said

"Well I saw you running towards it and I was in it."

"Were you sleeping that it took you so long to get down at the station?"

"No, I got in the train from this station, I saw you missing your train and I got down."

"Why?"

"Because I felt like it."

"Why?" 

"The next train leaves at 10 o'clock in the night. We have 4 hours plus the train ride in our hands."

"So, what do we do?"

"Live the moment when we are still together."

"I don't know let us roam around the city." I smiled something in me told me that this is going to last.

Even if it doesn't last I wouldn't lose out on the moment where I can be in the road of falling in love with each other. Falling in love and the rush of this moment was so amazing that you could live your entire life in misery out of it. I was the one who lived in moments and this moment or the next moments were mine and I will certainly Live, Love and Laugh in them.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

Sky on Fire

My Sky is on Fire

The earth is not my abode

Hither I wonder

Remember I am the Vulcan

Thrown out of heaven

Still too proud for the earth.

On Empathy

When I first stepped as a nervous newbie in that school little did I know how far will helping others take me. My first day in a new school and a new city was horrible. I joined mid session in the month of  September. On the first day as I entered the class all the kids were playing as the assembly bell was yet to ring. I was all of nine and half years studying in 5th Standard. After assembly I was introduced formally and was made to sit in a bench in the last rows because of my height.

The first day was:

Me smiling a friendly smile at all.

All frowning back at me.

This went on for a month till the mid terms I used to sit in a corner and quietly do my work. The Mid Term elevated my status from a "New comer Nobody" to "One of the Toppers Somebody". Atleast people didn't frown the just returned my smile with a blank stare.

Then that day came: One of the classmates accidentally dropped his tiffin and I quietly forwarded my tiffin and said him to have it. He had his fill and I was a bit empty stomach but it felt good when he smiled looking at me and said "Thank You". This is what I wanted for so log a selfless smile at me.

It slowly became a pattern in the class. If a student got stuck in a particular chapter I explained it. If a person had a problem in Drawing I helped her. I was my Class' "Help and Advice Centre".

On a lighter not being benevolent was my USP. I was not an interesting company nor I was a beautiful company. So, what won me friends was my benevolence and empathy. 

My mother said that they were just using me and I was investing my time on them for nothing but I was using their smiles to bring me joy.

That was when being benevolent helped me to become a better human. I learnt to be more empathic towards people.

True I don't give alms to beggars because I believe in empathy and not in sympathy. My logic is till there is life in you be the light in you.

I have seen a blind man selling incense stick in front of the Railway Station. I buy them even though I don't use them. The reason: I am respecting his choice of not bowing to easier means of work.  

Swami Vivekananda once said - If you give a fish to a hungry man you fulfill his hunger for a single day but if you teach the man how to fish you solve his hunger for a lifetime.

Benevolence for me is understanding a person's problem and work together towards solving the problem in such a way that the problem never comes again and even if it comes we have the solution in hand or are ready to face it efficiently.

If I help a person, I address the process and not the output. For eg: If a person comes and says me to write an application for him or her in English because he cannot frame words properly I will guide him to frame the sentences and give him a basic understanding of sentence formation. It will take much more time compared to the process where I simply write the letter but in the long run it will be much more fruitful.

Kindness and empathy are two things which can never have a transactional value in terms of material. The only thing you expect out of being kind is the smile of the person whom you help.