Valentine’s Red roses

“One red rose says more than a dozen.” ~ Wendy Craig.

So you love me, care for me?

Your devotion is steadfast?

It would be impossible for you

To break my heart, to forsake my love?

The care you take to never poison our love

Will be the hallmark of your attachment

I would have believed you, I’d really have

If I hadn’t found the pictures from the last vacation

Plastered all over your Facebook page

Posing with a new girl every day

How quickly you change your affections

No one holding your interest for long

Won’t I be a fool to take all your declarations of love

At their face value, as if I was born just yesterday!

Take these valentines, red and beautiful back

And present them to your latest love

In response to; Weekly Prompts- Valentine red, hosted by Sue W and GC

(Edited version of a poem written in 2019)

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The glow in your eyes

“The glow of one warm thought is to me worth more than money.” ~ Thomas Jefferson.

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Deep down in my heart

I know that in your eyes

The glow of love I can see

Will illuminate our lives

For love is selfless, giving

It is blind to the flaws in our personalities

It’s deaf to the moaning of discontent

It is generous and ever rewarding

That’s why it glows like a candle

The only source of light in the darkness

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Written in response to; Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge – GLOW , hosted by Sue W and GC

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Coming home!

Re-Sharing this poem from December 2021, written in response to FFFC!

For the visually challenged writer, the image shows a young girl carrying a lantern through the snow and she is heading toward a log cabin at the edge of a forest.

Trudging through piled snow high

Obstacles life throws in my way

Coming home after gaining enlightenment

Carrying it like a beacon glowing

I come back to the welcoming lights

Home pulls me back to my roots

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In response to Weekly Prompts- Home, hosted by Sue W and GC

Also included; FFFC, hosted by Fandango

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Bends his head

“Change, Adapt, Bend so as not to be broken. Let opportunity guide your actions.” ~ Wayne Gerard Trotman.

The crimson blushing sky heralds nightfall

It’s not the time for eternal sleep yet

There are many tasks to be finished until then

The lone wolf stands and keeps guard

Rare shells scattered on the shoreline

He sees the keeper of the secrets approach

And bends its head in acquiescence

Now the duty entrusted to him is done

He retreats and leaves others to complete

The mission that was of utmost importance

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I’m re-Sharing this poem written for daily prompts in 2019.

Written for;Weekend Challenge from GC and Sue W – BEND.

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Heed the warning

“Remember that life’s big changes rarely give advance warning. ~ H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

This week, the Weekend Challenge from partner GC and me is the word Warning.

The sky is overcast heavily. The clouds are threatening and dark. It may bring the much-awaited rain but Kelvin was experiencing a foreboding feeling in his heart. With a sudden loud clap of thunder fat drops of rain started to fall on the ground. Kelvin took to the shelter of his porch and was still staring worriedly at the sky.

The rain continued with increasing intensity and it became apparent that this was not the healing and reviving rain that the farmers were hoping for. This was fast turning into a furious storm, lashing with high winds. Nature was not in a giving mood. It was going to wash away the newly planted crops and with it all the money and time these hardworking men had put in. This was so sad as they had high hopes of a good crop this year. The previous year’s crops were ruined by the dry season and now this!

How he wished that when the scientists and weather experts were warning them all to take steps to save the planet from the extreme weather changes, someone had listened. For it seems that things were beyond repair.

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I’m sharing this post from 2018!

Written in response to;Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge – Warning, hosted by Sue W and GC

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On wings…. Up and away

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease forever to be able to do it.” ~ J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan.

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*Encountered this keen seagull following our boat cruising the Bosporous straits, Istanbul*

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Gravity grabs my feet

I feel unable to take flight

I imagine myself letting go

And like magic my spirits lift

It soars in the air, floats weightlessly

I see my body still on the ground, shackled

But my mind, my imagination is free

To fly, to observe and to savor

The beauty of the universe around me

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Written for; Weekly Prompts Weekend Challenge – Flight, hosted by Sue W and GC

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The delicate shades of pink 💖

“Pink isn’t just a colour. It’s an attitude too.” ~ Miley Cyrus

December is here and with it our final monthly colour challenge for 2022 – Pinkish.

💖💞💕💖💞💕

Delicate pink blush

Tinting the dawn sky

Spellbound I watch it

Till the sun sucks the pink

Spreads it all over the sky

And then the golden sun rises

The pink returns in the evening

The process reversed in sequence

The orange and pink vying for dominance

Till all is swallowed by indigo sky

And then the stars start to sparkle

Another day is done and sun will rise tomorrow!

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Written for ; Weekly Prompts Colour Challenge – Pinkish, hosted by Sue W and GC

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Quirky foods

“There is no sincerer love than the love of food.” — George Bernard Shaw.

This week the Wednesday challenge here on partner Susan and my site is QUIRKY FOODS.

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People from different parts of the world have different tastes and preferences.

Our culture and food are pretty similar to Indian cuisine and culture as we lived together for centuries. In our part of the world, people like spicy food, deep fried and calorie rich!

Okra ( Bhindi)is a very popular vegetable in summer. We fry cut okra and put it in a gravy made with fried onions, tomatoes and yogurt. It’s full of spices and very tasty. Similarly, bitter gourd ( karela) is also a summer vegetable, thought to be beneficial. It is very bitter on its own so we boil it or fry it first before we make a curry out of it.

Another unique dish is made with fried chickpeas flour dumplings, cooked in yogurt sauce. It’s called “karhi” and can be eaten with boiled rice or roti! We also fry our fish coated in chickpeas flour batter( baisin wali machli ), spicy and crispy. A usual accompaniment to this fish is hard-boiled eggs and green chilies fried in the same chickpea batter, all this is served with naan.

These are some of our quirky dishes. 😋

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Written for; Weekly Prompts Wednesday Challenge – Quirky Foods, hosted by Sue W and GC

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The ugly duckling ( A re-share)

This week the prompt from Sue W and GC his Ugly

Growing up with three brothers, I was more of a tomboy than a girlish girl. I wasn’t much aware of the fashion trends and preferred plain over fancy. I used to buy running shoes for everyday use, no fancy heels for this girl. I also wore ugly glasses, chosen more for durability than style.

This was me when I joined med school and went to live in another city with a bunch of girls. I realized that my appearance lacked something that those other girls had. They would wear matching shoes, put on makeup, and would look like ladies. Whereas I would blunder about in my manly shoes, plain utilitarian clothes, and an extroverted, Donald Duck-style gait, ( which resulted in more than my fair share of accidents).

But I couldn’t emulate them as I was made different. So there was no ugly duckling transforming into a swan. Rather this ugly duckling gradually grew to be more careful while walking and learned to dress a bit more stylishly.

Why change my basic nature, when I am happy with who I am. If I try to become someone else or act like someone else, I would lose my identity.

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Making things easy for oneself – De- cluttering

This week the weekly prompt from Sue W and GC is Easy

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I wrote this post in 2019. It is all about making life easy and streamlined.

I recently read a great blog about the beauty of simplicity. So I am trying to make my life simple and easy by de-cluttering it.

This is the season for making new plans and implementing life changes. So if you want a streamlined life, free of a lot of extra stuff, both literally and figuratively, go for a purge.

De-cluttering space ;

I think that sorting our clothes, books, pictures, and all other stuff that is unorganized not only frees up the space but also gives us the comfort of knowing that we don’t have anything which we are not using.

The extra clothes, outdated, out-sized and worn out all can be sorted into the categories of;

Donations

Give away( disposed of)

Stored away for next season

One piece of advice, I found to be practical is to give away or donate clothes that don’t fit anymore. If we keep them in hopes of fitting in them again, that day sometimes never comes.

Books and photographs are more difficult to organize. We seldom feel like parting with books, old or new. Some can be donated to the lending libraries but most books we would love to keep most. So the trick is to store them on shelves and not in boxes or crates. A cheap bookshelf is easy to get and will keep the books within your reading range. Nowadays we usually don’t have pictures in hard copies. But if you do, take some time to organize them in albums or scrapbooks, with a small note saying when and where. It may be useful to add who, in the case of old photos. This is a time-consuming process and should be attempted when you have free time on your hands.

Knickknacks and other miscellaneous things can be either stored away or kept in the appropriate place

De-cluttering digital space;

The digital space we have is limited, no matter how many gigabytes of it we have because all things add up. Make a point to free up the space on the laptop, phone and tablet/ iPad, etc by deleting old documents that you no longer need. If you feel like me that the moment you delete anything, you will have an urgent need of it, then you should buy a portable hard drive( a really large memory stick) and transfer your data onto it. iCloud, OneDrive, and other online storage facilities are excellent to store data that you don’t want to part with. Uploading pictures to online data storage helps free up the space on your digital devices and may even do away with the necessity of getting a new one with more storage space.

De-cluttering mind;

The most useful and important part of de-cluttering is that of our minds. Worries, stress, and concerns about the future eat away the peace of mind. We can be so distracted by all that is going on in our brains that we may not perform our jobs properly. There are a few tips to de-clutter our minds;

Set priorities; do what is important first. Leave the unimportant tasks for later.

Learn to let go; you cannot do everything, and achieve all that you want. So if you are unable to do something, let go of the feeling of failure and move on.

Take a deep breath; deep breathing gets more oxygen into our bodies and helps us relax.

Make decisions; being decisive takes a load off your mind. But don’t go back and rethink your decisions.

Share with loved ones; as they say that a burden shared is a burden halved.

Limit the amount of media, social media, and digital devices you use; we all know now that too much information, can bring chaos to our minds, so limit the amount of TV, Facebook, or other media/ social media you use and give your brain a breather.

Unwind; at the end of the day, unwind. Physically unwinding and relaxing can make our minds relaxed.

Photo Credit; Google for all images

These are a few of the tips to make life simple and free from clutter.

Hope that this is useful to some of you.

Waiting for your feedback and comments.

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De-cluttering space ;

De-cluttering digital space;

De-cluttering mind;

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