The Love of Stories ❤

In primary school, I had a teacher who used to tell us moral stories every week. And we all used to listen with awe and excitement. 
Even before that, there was a set of some 5-6 stories that my father used to tell me and brother repeatedly when it was our ‘good day’ before we slept. With all the expressions and sounds and liveliness; those stories sure made his kids either open their WIDE with excitement, or cringe, or cry or be happy. All those stories had little things which he wanted us to learn so he told us those stories over and over again. Whether it was to tell us that good habits will take us a long way in life and bad ones will destroy us, or that we should trust our parents and never hide anything from them, all the stories are etched in my mind completely as they were; word by word to be told to other kids :D   
I’m sure most of us were fond of either listening to stories or storytelling back in the days.

When we grew up however, the frequency got lesser and lesser. But then in 2012, I started following Neelesh Misra on radio and was back to ‘a-story-a-day’.

A couple of weeks ago, me and a friend started listening to his show, “Qisson ka Kona” On Saavn. We have been religiously listening to a story together every day right before we sleep. It has been a wonderful experience. Some days the stories let the tears flow, some days they leave a big smile on the face, and some days, they are just unexpected and leave us surprised and thinking throughout the day. (Don’t judge a story by its title! :P) It’s very common that we end up discussing our thoughts about the stories and the characters.
A lot of times we can relate to them.

The beauty of the entire thing is that: The stories he tells are quite simple, yet very thoughtful. They are not too far-fetched or too impossible. But, they are the things which keep happening with everyone now and then. When we think about it, we meet a hidden corner in ourselves… waiting to expose itself by a stimulus like this. Moreover, we also end up sharing similar things with each other which we never thought we would tell anyone.

In the end, either the sweetness of the story calms us after the ending “Bingggg!” Or they put our thoughts on fire and after that, calms us up. Either way we feel relaxed slipping into the world of dreams, away from our daily routine for some time!

Over this time,

I have found bedtime stories back along with an ocean of secrets, and the strings of our bond have grown stronger: with stories, as well as with each other. :D

In fact, that's what we all will become one day- Stories! :) Or in the evergreen Kishore Kumar's style: "Ek din bik jaaega maati ke mol, Jag mein reh jaenge pyaare tere bol"

Some days, I realize I was cycle waali chiraiyya, 
while on others we reminisce over paper boats, 
or feel sorry about hakim sahab ke chori hue joote, 
or cry our eyes out over the Pashmina tragedy, 
or we cry happy tears when Bangla No. 8 is blessed with children's laughter, 
or I point out to him that he appears to be boss wali beghum's husband, 
or wonder how effortless was making naye dost while falling off the bus, 
or wait eagerly for the reply of the lady who went from Guwahati to Dibrugarh, 
or think how a thing as trivial as a nakhoon would make a girl realize what she wanted from her life and what she didn't.
And on other days, we simply smile at the sweetness of the suicide note, 
or well up because of the innocence of poor Dibiya.
We are loving the stories more and more with each passing day :D

Now if you people excuse us it’s the time to choose today’s story J

Tada :D

Dream, dream - what do you mean?

After a long time, I welcome you to the blog still finding a name :P

I’m done with three-fourth of my college and back to the mountains for the monsoon :D Man! These days are passing slowly and lovely. It’s like a dream stay for a month.- Watching F.R.I.E.N.D.S, Gorging on food, sleeping, reading, and writing something different after newly acquiring taste for Shayari :D

The thing I’m writing about today is what haunted me three days back. So let’s begin:

I am at home. Happily enjoying my afternoon nap. La lalala. When suddenly out of nowhere, one person appears.
“What the hell is he doing in my dream?” I thought. If, out of all the people in the world, I know 100, then he would be probably the 98^th person I would expect to see during my REM.

He is a very nice person and a good friend of mine BUT someone who is unexpected to be seen like this. My classmate from 5^th class was fine, Dora the Explorer is also acceptable, maybe even Narendra Modi would do. NOT HIM. Again: He is a close friend, the kind where you want to break each other’s bones all the time, but NOT HIM.

So we are in my dream and we’re in our college and I have car keys in my hand. I hear the Dean of my college say to us, “Go there carefully and call me when you reach there”.

The next scene I remember is me driving on a beautiful road. Both of us are enjoying the journey so much that it’s evident from our eyes sparkling with excitement of traveling to a new place. Good Road-Trip songs are playing loud and we stop to have some food at a roadside Dhaba.

That’s when I woke up. Confused at what happened just now and surprised that my dream catcher couldn't capture this nightmare. Weird. But it was over. I thought so :P

The dream continued when I finally slept at night. This time we were at my town. And I was searching for the person. I was calling out his name loud!

Too bad, what happened as the dream progressed was that my shouting was not limited to the dream and that I actually started shouting while sleeping. I woke up at 1am in the middle of the process of calling his name loudly.

My mother, who was sleeping beside me also woke up from the noise and started staring. Now I had to explain to her why I was shouting the name of a random person while sleeping. AWKWARD.

Good question. No answer.

This was too much. I took my phone and texted him “WHAT ARE YOU DOING PARESHANIFY-ING ME AT THIS TIME IN MY SLEEP? !@#$%”, and sunao-ed him everything.

Then the beautiful thing happened:

He remembered, and pointed out that exactly 1 year ago at this time on this day we were together in a train going somewhere :O

Oh Wow! Mood swinging. :D I suddenly started laughing. 
My little brain is very good at remembering trivial things, I know. But it’s strange that it periodically recollects memories when I haven’t thought about the journey or that time after that.

Getting this kind of dream one year after something happened amused me and made me remember everything good about that trip, How good the time was, how indifferent we were about each other and how we explored an entirely new place together.

And now, having known the reason for dream-invasion, I happily slipped into sleep again.

Needless to say, the dream continued once again, where I was shaping his teeth with a chisel ... and I kept smiling throughout my sleep (probably) Like this :D