Response to Wishing Wednesdays by Preeti Shenoy

In response to Preeti's prompt, as a part of her Wishing Wednesday series.

The one thing that I wish everyone would learn is.................

As a professional Tarot reader, this is the crux of everything I have to make my people understand. So simple, yet so difficult... All of us, including me, forget from time to time. "This too shall pass" has been a part of my reality check process for a while now.

May you too find comfort in the arms of change, for otherwise how else will we grow and flow?

Image taken from facebook, one of my friend's post.

Magic Exhibition and Sale

Everyone's Invited!

5 Qs and my honest As

Latest and last prompt by Preeti...


And here is my response:

1. If you had Rs.50,000 to just blow up (you have to spend it on YOURSELF. Giving to Charity or buying gifts for others not allowed), what would you spend it on and why?
A: 50000/- will be spent on a relaxing holiday on a resort (I can never have enough of these), complete with spa appointments etc. OR on a reading with Sonia Choquette. 
2. Name three of your closest friends (not family or spouse) and say why you love them.
A: My closest friends:
1. Shipra - We never need to tell each other long stories about our lives - its mostly understood. No assurances are needed, no judgement enters, and we know that we cherish our friendship beyond everything.
2. Manisha - For bringing so much joy and wisdom and guidance in my life every time I meet her. And even when I don't. She simply sends so much my way just by existing in this world.
3. A (he doesn't want to be named): For simply being there without judgement, and putting me under a microscope when needed and still enjoying my company. Oh, and the fun that we have together is, well, just too awesome.

3. Name three books which have profoundly affected you and which you would recommend to everyone to read.
A: These were my life changers:
1. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
2. Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
3. Enlightenment: The Only Revolution - Osho (Commentary on the Ashtvakra Geeta)
4. If you know for certain that you can never ever fail, what would you attempt to do?
A: Start my workshop. Right now.
5. What is THE ONE THING that you want very very badly?
A: I really, really want to experience silence - when nothing moves and there is no hurry to accomplish anything. 

Knock, knock...who's there?

As per Preeti's new Tuesday prompt. Here goes:

" The table is set perfectly, for 'tea for two'. (and the piece of cake is ready too).  I am really looking forward to this. There is still a good half an hour left for my guest to arrive as per the  text  I just got. Suddenly the door bell rings..............  "


....and in comes my long lost, and a little forgotten (please, pardon the Gemini in me), friend from the other side. She is everything I am not - respectful to all elders (deserving/undeserving), dedicated of her duty in the household, self-starter, serious, yet can induce laughter when occasion demands, studious, diligent, marvel in the kitchen, phew...the list is endless. She had disappeared a few years ago among rumors of forced marriage, where she apparently went on a "family" honeymoon...


Years have changed her. Her eyes are that of a stranger. So what is she doing here? My guests are going to arrive soon...how will I tell them that the tea-party is cancelled, as my friend of 18 years, even if she was absent for the last 5 years of them, takes precedence over every and anything. She would not have come if there was not something absolutely important for her, if things had not become too much for her to bear. 


I am about to ask her how has she been along with a thousand other questions racing through my mind; but before I can say anything, she smiles, tilts her head in the age-perfected manner, and says,"Thanks for inviting me tonight, I am Shivani, your friend Hitesh's date for the tea-party. He is coming here from the office; he gave me your address and asked me to reach here directly. I must this Alice in Wonderland theme tea-party was a totally wonderful idea. So different form any other New Year parties I have ever attended. So tell me what made you think of this? I here you are a writer...."

Her remaining words became merged into each other to form a kind of static noise. I am sure my impression of a dumb, mute person spooked her, for she is till date not too comfortable around me. This after knowing the reason of my state of shock that night. I was taught the meaning of the word doppelgänger in style. Because any other explanation is just too bizarre, right?  

Tea with the One, and the Only...

This post is in response for Preeti's creative prompt "If I could invite anybody for 'tea for two' today it would undoubtedly be ..........................." Now as I am already waiting for the book to reach me, it makes perfect sense to participate here and begin a story even before it starts unfolding when I'll have the book in my hands. 

If I could invite anyone for tea, I would invite the one person, author, celebrated wit, self-certified genius (and rightly so), Oscar Wilde. He is one person from whom even an insult will seem like praise. I fell in love with Ernest (Importance of Being Earnest) and Dorian Gray was definitely one true 'gray' character - he was not bad to begin with, only obsessed with his own perfect beauty...but then only Wilde could paint dangerous, fatal obsessions with such subtlety! And his poems! Ah! 


His one advice I have always taken to heart: 


"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” ― Oscar Wilde


Oh and also:

"The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul grows sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself." ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I would ask him to comment on the 'sensitive' sentiments of our country people who get offended with everything and everyone who does not tow the "normal" line. I wonder what he will tell both Rushdie and our government. [Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious. ― Oscar Wilde]


He would certainly have a unique view on everything - economy, humor, comics, books, blockbuster movies, novels, religion, outsourcing, and maybe even Stephanie Meyer (sorry, I enjoyed Twilight, but...). [One's real life is often the life that one does not lead. ― Oscar Wilde]


He was a lot of things, but never apologetic for living his life the way he wanted. And made fun of his own attitudes too!


To get back my youth I would do anything in the world, except take exercise, get up early, or be respectable. ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

I would also like to invite Osho and Douglas Adams, but I doubt they will be easy or even willing to pin-down. I will have to meet them both in the restaurant at the end of the Universe, they will not come, I'll have to go there.