#15 Feeling ashamed of being youth! Please stop all this non-sense.

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#14 Expand Your Vocabulary in Just One Step...

For those who had messaged and called me only to know how to learn new words.

Hope, this blog may help you.

Few years ago, I fetched a diary from the market and wrote hundreds of new words to upgrade my vocabulary. Unfortunately, after a few days, the pages of my journal were used in wrapping paronthas for my lunch box. I got disappointed, but the taste of maa de haath da bana hoya parontha, te aus de utte desi ghee comforted me. After that, I have never penned new words to learn, but started discovering new ways to update my dictionary.

After a few weeks or so, I found learning all the words are impossible. The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary contains full entries for 1,71,476 words current in use, and 47,156 obsolete words.

‘Abey Bhadwe!  Dara mat… competition ki taiyari kar rha hun!  (You bloody Pimp! Don’t make me afraid. I am preparing for competition.),’ is what you may be thinking right now. Do not worry, I have found an easier way that helped me to learn hundred new words in a short span and I often use those words in writing stories and articles. I am not a man of letters nor an English teacher nor an English graduate, but let me help you because experience counts.

 Penning new words on a page and memorizing it is wastage of time. So I found a new method and named it, ‘Replace Old from New.’ What does it mean? It means replace the words that you often use with the new words.

For example: She bought a new phone. The word ‘new’ is quiet old. Replace it with ‘latest’ or ‘recent’.

 Another example is my previous sentence, “Replace it with ‘latest’ or ‘recent’.” You can use ‘swap’ instead of ‘replace’.

Swap all your old words with new words and use it in your conversation or writing. Listed below, a few common words that you may start with:

Decorate - Embellish

Sad – Gloomy

Wear – Clad

Work hard- Sweat

Fight – Scuffle

New – Latest, recent

Replace – Swap

Bring – Fetch

Lot of – Plethora

Lack – Dearth

Take – Seek

Want – Wish, Crave

Rich – Affluent

Not agree – Deny, Decline, Negate

Face – Confront, Encounter

Permission – Nod       

Show – Exhibit, Displayed

Many – Myriad

Repair – Mend

Rise – Escalate, Hike

Confuse, Frustrate – Baffle

Hungry – Famish

Thousand steps of journey starts with single step. And after taking first step, thousand steps of journey will not remain thousand. Serve yourself with new words in breakfast and eat it. Everyday, learn three words. At the end of month, you will have approximate 100 new words to use.

Often, teachers recommend, Word-power made easy by Norman Lewis, to students. I will try it for sure.

I would say Non-Sense verses by Edward Lear is helpful as well as entertaining to learn plethora of new words.

Till then read my previous blog — A kiss day with a sad song: http://grovernakul29.blogspot.com/2015/10/a-kiss-day-with-sad-song.html — to know the words I often use.   

Happy Reading :) :) :) 

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#13 A Kiss Day with A Sad Song

There was a time when I got up around 5 in the morning and sat down to research on the writings of Ruskin Bond and Khushwant Singh. I think I read — the night train at Deoli and other stories by Ruskin Bond and selected writings of Khushwant Singh on women, sex and love — more than ten times. Every time I went through the pages of these books, my eyes welled up with tears. Honestly, it was not the stories who made me cry, but it was their old writing style and a skill to put humor in the stories, which I failed to find in modern writers.

I too tried to write something creative, but plotting a story for novel is always been a failure at my part. So I prefer to write short stories about people I have known. I also write self-help articles as it is all about knowledge and a little about character, incidents and plotting. A weakness, I know. Another weakness, my stories are often like an old sad song— sometimes great, sometimes disastrous and quiet boring.   

            Anyway, nowadays, I wake up around 9 in the morning, rebuking and scolding my roommate in my bold desi accent for snorting whole night. A little dizzy, I would hobble to a tea shop outside my house and drink couple of tea cups, followed by kachori and samosa. People generally fail to notice anything good about me, but they always praise me for not smoking cigarette. I feel proud that belching clouds of smoke is not my cup of tea.

            As I sat down on a wooden bench, dipping biscuit in the cup of tea, I saw a woman, standing wayside the road, waiting patiently for someone. Soon a little boy draped in school uniform arrived behind her and held palu of her saaree. She turned around and grinned. No sooner the boy passed a lovely-smile; she took him in her lap and gratefully kissed him. After a minute or so, a shuddering auto-rickshaw laden by school children halted. The little boy climbed down from the woman’s lap and climbed up in the auto. As the children bade by to her, pain of separation and sadness passed across her face. Soon she disappeared in her house and a kiss day with a sad song begun.

            I ate two chapatties with egg curry in lunch cooked by my roommate, Rajish. Rajish was a scholar and recluse. He knew nothing other than sleeping, eating and studying. That might be a reason for me to take room with him. I like people who do not poke their nose in others’ life.

He came and sat down beside me, slurping a bowl full of curry. He passed a curvy smile at me, followed by few more slurping sound— the sound resembled like a couple passionately kissing each other.

All of sudden, the bowl fell over him and the whole curry smeared his clothes. He grumbled under his breath and then threw his lunch emphatically, cursing his fortune. The food strewed on the floor, mucking up the walls. Soon he cleaned everything and took his books to study, sadness remained stuck his face.

It was the time during the nightfall I took a long stroll to get some fresh air. I do it quiet often. I found nature better than my books. No doubt, books help me to live a good life but I have to accept nature gives me a good life. It was just after moving to my new room, I became an ardent lover of nature. The austere and obscure hills of Chennai were enough to enlighten my love for nature. Beauty of Bougainvillea trees is the other reason for my fondness towards nature.

As I passed by the lake, near my University, I noticed a young couple sitting in the dark, snuggling and kissing each other. The boy laid his hand in her waist and pulled her towards him, and then a long-slow kiss followed. Instead of lust kiss, it was a love kiss. She pushed his hand mildly and unlocked her lips to peck his ears, nose and neck. His hands rhythmically smoothened and caressed her contours of her body. She held his hands and independent herself from his arms in a lovely way. No sooner he tried again to kiss her, they observed me standing there. Embarrassed, they maintained a gap between themselves. Their faces, all of sudden, consumed with fear.

I wanted to reach them, to reassure them, everything is fine. No need to feel embarrassment. It was their moment, and never going to come back; live it. Full of fear, they stood up and left the place hurriedly. I felt sorry for them and made my way to back to my house.

I was disappointed with myself. It was better if I would have left the place, instead of gazing them. I had never wanted this to happen. As soon as I reached my house, sonorous sound of namaz from a masjid, at a distance, could be heard. I climbed up to my room, took out my mouth organ, and climbed the rooftop. I had never missed hearing last namaz from past one year. Prayers have always made me more positive and hopeful.

Often, I used to sit on the boundary of roof and play mouth organ, coping up with the hymns from masjid. After that I would settle myself on a chair and meditate on the trees, singing Urdu poetry in the cool evening breeze. A large tree with its small branches lured me more than any other tree surrounding my house.

The moon girt with myriads of stars shimmer above me. I felt the wind, trees, my God, gently, fervently kissing and loving me. I felt goose pimples arising over my body with a few sensations in my hands and legs. I do not know when I slept off in the lap of beautiful earth.

A little drizzling failed to wake me up. You can never predict the rainfall in South India. Sometimes it comes with a loud thunder and sometimes, it pours like a thief tiptoeing in the house. As the heavy rain tore my sleep with a loud rumble, I got up and till I climbed down my roof, I was entirely drenched and saddened.

Disheartened, I recalled an old-fashioned verse from a book of Ruskin Bond:

The pure, the bright, the beautiful,

That stirred our hearts in youth,

The impulse to a wordless prayer,

The dreams of love and truth;

The longings after something lost,

The spirit’s yearning cry,

The striving after better hopes…

Those things can never die.

                    

                                                

#12 How I am spending my vacations...

As the festival vacations have begun, half of the students have departed for their respective hometowns. The remaining half is using their time in sleeping, smoking and drinking. A few among them discovering new places to roam and a few are loitering to discover new places. Whereas I am spending my time with the same old friends and same old books of same old authors.

Though I got all the volumes of Swami Vivekananda to read, but it is quiet boring and full of knowledge, getting tough for my mind to digest. These volumes are now working as sleeping pills for me. I think it will take almost a year to go thoroughly from these volumes. 

I read these volumes all day long and when I get tired, I slap it down and read fiction to entertain myself. I try my best to avoid the outside world. I do not have friends who lament all day long for their career and future. Obviously, I do not want to kill my present thinking about my uncertain future. Whenever I step into outside world, I find competition, envy, anger, fear, fuming and fretting among people. These days a few new words — startup, entrepreneurs, CEO— are popular in the world around me. I mere think about these struggling areas. I found stories of Ruskin Bond and Khushwant Singh far better than the stories of Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and so on.

 For me struggle is nothing more than losing patience. “Do not push the things. If it meant to happen it will happen,” a quote I recalled I read somewhere. I do not write to become rich or popular. In fact, I write once a week or two. I love reading books and that is what I do whole day long.

I too have dreams. My dreams are not that complex as compare to dreams of people around me. I do not want luxurious cars or fancy bikes or palatial apartments. I write because I want freedom. When I write I can feel my soul attaining infinite happiness. Most people have forgotten doing the things what they love. But in my case, I’ve forgotten everything in doing what I love. A brief poem of R.L. Stevenson is apt to explain what I am dreaming now:

Give to me the life I love

Let the lave go by me,

Give the jolly heaven above

And the byway nigh me.

Bed in the bush with stars to see,

Bread I dip in the river-

There’s the life for a man like me,

There’s the life forever

#11 Six Ways To Attract Your Luck

I often feel myself lucky enough to get the things I ask without any hard work. Most of the time, my luck takes me to cloud nine and makes me feel how blessed I am. It is not like whatever I will say it will happen for sure. But, I do believe whatever I continuously think and say will surely happen in future. I’m not God, but yes, I do believe in Him, and I do not feel embarrassment while saying, I’m traditionally old and have faith in Him.

        I am very grateful to my parents who taught me to live a life according to Dharma (righteousness). Above all, I am thankful to God, who made me to study his scriptures and words, the highest of all the education and I feel so fortunate that not everyone gets the same vision I have. Through this blog I am sharing the ways that may help you to attract your luck.

(1)   Think wisely – A single negative thought can kill your 100 positive thoughts. We are living in a world where people are searching security to have a comfortable living. We do not believe in our self, get influenced by others’ opinions and as a result our vitality sags. And then we continue to form negative patterns in our mind throughout the day. While we sleep, these negative thoughts go deep down in our sub-conscious mind and releases electromagnetic energy which goes into the ether and returns to the conscious state in morning. That has been thought will surely and certainly be manifested.

(2)   Stop being so serious- We are not what we are eating, but we are what eating us. Jealous, hatred, argument, resentment, fuming and fretting became a part of our daily life. We catch fear and worries from people around us more quickly than we can catch measles or other infectious diseases.

      Why so worry? No one is going anywhere by working hard or day in and day out. Everyone is going to remain in present. Do you know anyone, who took life so seriously and reached in future? If not then stop worrying and start living. Become child again and have a life of truth, honesty and happiness. ‘Except ye be converted and become as little children, ye shall not enter the kingdom of heaven,’ said Jesus.

(3)   Observe everywhere – What is luck? Believing in own abilities is luck. Living a life with passion is luck. Above all, grabbing opportunities is luck. Blessed are those who take risks and willing to achieve the heights, no matter whatever it takes. Observe everywhere. Opportunities are always there, waiting for us to grab. Now read this, ‘Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.’  

(4)   Have faith on your luck – The only thing which is impeding us to being lucky is believe. Bible says, ‘When you believe you become but you will realize it later.’ Bible used present and future tense together. Bible wants us to accept that at the time we believe something is true, it becomes true for us but we will realize it later. Sun rises every day is an ageless promise, like that, mind filled with positive thinking promise immeasurable luck.

(5)   Make Him your friend - Life gives us problems more than we are capable of handling. It does not matter whether we are a child or an adult, life will surely knock us down at every point. Accept, it is the duty of life to make us strong every passing day so why not let Him take the reins of life?

Some circumstances are not always in our hands. It’s better to sit patiently and relax till the hard times of our fate pass. Surrender yourself to Him. Keep calm. Tension blocks the flow of thoughts.
It is only in hard times, when I feel how blessed I am. Believe Him; He knows what we know not.

(6)   Shortcut - ‘Keep your heart away from hate, mind from worries. Live simply, expect little from people and more from yourself.  Help others. Fill your life with love. Do not fear because ‘For the thing which you greatly fear will come upon you…- (Job 3:25)

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