The Kumkuat Korner

The life I remember from many years ago is still picture clear in my mind. The endless days of watching such as Cartoon Network, Nickelodeon, Animal Planet (the list could go on). On school days, I would be practicing my talent to look busy and when my eyeballs weren't glued to the television, I would hide myself from everyone and play with my imaginary friends, entering a world of witches and princesses previously seen in dramatic Disney movies. My efforts to go unseen were always short lived because of major interruptions such as my mother yelling at me for trying to skip my chores. Whoops! With in time, things changed unknowingly. Before there was no one who could have made me really read books.   I hated reading .  No way, no how, could anyone ever make me read a real chapter book.   I preferred picture books, like the ones on the second floor of the old Public Library, under the children section where one can always find mothers with their infants...

We have all been there. Shattered and left picking up the fragments of our hearts. And while people say "Time heals all" it really doesn't, does it? For example, its not that easy to get over a broken heart. You try to put the pieces back together after someone leaves you,  some one dies,  someone hurts you,  some one betrays you. You feel exposed. Raw. Vulnerable. You opened yourself so much to another being. You had kept no secrets from them. It was only you and them. But now its just you, after them. Because life still continues, even when we are stuck, slowly drowning in quicksand of emotions. Anger. Hate. Sadness. Regret. Guilt. Back to sadness. Back to hurt. And it continues all over again. Viciously sinking us to a deep dark place in all of us no one has ventured into. That place makes us see the ugliest part in ourselves that we fear show others. And when you finally surface from the pit of solitude, You start to see the world differentl...

A writer, who was also a philosopher, had to cross a big lake in order to get to his destination. As he waited for the ferryman, he read his notes from his lecture from the day before. During the lecture, a young man stood up and asserted firmly: “The poetry I know are verses and rimes from other times. We have been forced to read and learn them by heart, as the standards of literary good taste in style. Personally, I don’t see any interest in poetry!” His tone of voice was so convincing that Tagore felt that many of his listeners agreed with the young man. There was little time to think of a good retort. Our lecturer recited one of his own poems, stressing very expressively certain words in order to fully regain the attention of his listeners: “With a lute, the beggar’s song for you and me Out of tune, gray, high winds playing eons Sowing pauses and sighs His melody adheres as to absorb your soul and mine We may have borrowed one image or two from other childhoods ...