Writer’s Quote Wednesday Writing Challenge :Fantasy(Flash Fiction)

Love this quote from Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man’s Fear about the capability of human mind to find answers to question left unanswered!  The imagination has wings which take us from world of reality to world of dreams . The chase of these dreams has led men to invention, innovation and  great discoveries.

Can you imagine a life without imaginations ?

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.”
― Albert Einstein

This week’s theme being Fantasy, I wrote a flash fiction , I guess kids would like it more, but not many are on wordpress :D, Do let me know if you like it !

Princess  of Floriana

Katie was a slow moving green wobbly creature in land of Feriona the magic world. She was an orphan and being raised by her aunt who worked for the Queen of Feriona . Circumstances allowed her to live inside the beautiful lotus shaped Palace built on water pond as her aunt was Queen’s main attendant.

Katie was often the subject of mockery and teasing at hands of young beautiful fairies living inside the castle because of her looks. She has often dreamt of being beautiful like them and become a kind princess unlike all of them, Many times she used to sit alone near the pond side and talk to herself through the reflection in the water, her green skin colour and odd wriggling structure often made her cry and her tears would mix with the water of pond and spread beautiful vibrant colours on the surface. She used to console herself and reassures that looks are not everything, true beauty lies inside the heart of a person and it never fades. She is beautiful from inside and she knows it.

Tired of their behaviour  towards her, Katie decides to leave the palace and explore Floriana, the magical flower land, she has always heard about since her childhood. It was far away across the river at foothills. The most beautiful and kindest of fairies live there. She wanted to go and live in a land of justice and peace. The journey was long and hard, it took her many days to squirm across the forest and reach the river. At the bed of river, she almost lost her hope and started crying! How will she cross the vast river , she cannot swim and unlike other fairies she has no wings to fly. The old weeping willow’s heart melted down and he gave her a big leaf which Katie could use to swim across the river. She hugged and thanked the old tree to save her life and her life’s only dream.

Katie reached the huge heart shaped gates of Floriana , the two guards let her in without any question ! Not amused, she was prepared for a long explanation, she kept walking in a wonder looking left and right at the huge flowers of every colour and type she has ever imagined. She saw a group of fairies walking towards her, all happy to receive her; they gave her a welcome drink made from flower nectar. Katie was then to see the elderly Queen as was the law for every newbie. Walking down the aisle she saw many pictures of creatures like her hung on the walls, she was not a weird creature, there exist more of her kind! This very thought gladdened Katie’s heart and she smiled all the way. Katie reached the door of Queen and with her permission they all went inside. The queen sat in her bed while her magnificent wings sprawled across the floor having the same colours as of  her tears.

The Queen was happy to receive Katie like a lost child.

“All fairies of Floriana live here, you are from us. Where were you my Child until now? “ The Queen told her.

“ Me a fairy of Floriana ??  I lived in Feriona with my aunt ,she brought me up when my parents died.” replied Katie.

“ Feriona?  It is not our kind,” Queen was puzzled.

“I was the odd one there. Everyone made fun of me and I decided to leave that land” Katie replied with a heavy voice and tears in her eyes.

The tears went down making patterns of colours, Queen looked at them unbelievingly. She took her magic wand and touched the pattern. The tears rose to a small cloud and became a crown  placing itself on Katie’s head, soon Katie transformed into a beautiful young Butterfly Fairy  with huge vibrant wings same like that of Queen who was so happy to find the much awaited princess of Floriana and her next heiress. Katie has always has dreamt of becoming a princess and it came true that day. Her happiness couldn’t be described into words.

Don’t lose hope of your inner beauty the world will recognise it one day.

Ping back -> https://silverthreading.com/2016/05/04/wqwwc-writers-quote-wednesday-writing-challenge-fantasy/

Writer’s Quote Wednesday-Steve Jobs

For Wednesday Ritual of Quotes , I have with me a personal favorite from Steve Jobs .

I find this quote a motivation booster at times of confusion between life choices you are about to make or when  you get too confused with opinion of others or experiencing pressure from people around you.You just need to sit down for few minutes in silence with nobody else but yourself, listen to none but yourself  and let your heart speak out its heart to you.

Always take those seldom chances to do things you always have wanted to do even if it for a short while; It helps you to build  confidence and bring you at peace.I think Steve is so right in saying that you know it already what you truly want to become. We all know what we love , what our passion is . Sometimes is is hard to follow that path or practically not possible due to many factors affecting our life but giving yourself small little chances  to do things you are passionate about also helps a lot. That little inner voice which keeps bugging  you to do something gets satisfied somehow . May be it’s the reason we see people passionately waiting for their holidays to go skiing, hiking or mountaineering ,some learning to  cook or dance or paint. They might be actually living their lives in those  holidays and that feeble inner voice gets drowned for some time 🙂

Pingback- http://silverthreading.com/2016/02/24/writersquotewednesday-bewow-victor-hugo/

Food for thought from Rumi

For this week, I bring you this verse from Rumi’s Masnavi Volume 6 . The chapter is called Peace with in the Heart. Translated from  Persian by Ibrahim Gamard (with gratitude for R. A. Nicholson’s 1934 British translation) .

The original verse in Persian :

az ko-jâ jôy-êm `ilm? az tark-é `ilm
az ko-jâ jôy-êm silm? az tark-é silm

If you read the above lines, the flow in couplet is flawless and rhythm perfect. The original verse didn’t even have the brackets of true and false, they were added while translating for ease of readers to differentiate between the two.

The words of Rumi are always soul deep, playing with few words and putting reader into utter confusion is his best game and he is not even willing to teach you wisdom so easily, Right?  You need to sit back and keep wondering what he meant by his words, like a tricky homework from teacher.

Although one thing is always certain; he definitely meant something beyond our normal routine life offers to teach us.

How can we search true knowledge? :  By abandoning false knowledge!  But what is false knowledge? It could mean different things to different people, in world of information where we live today; we are blasted with data and information every microsecond of every minute of the events happening around the world and now it has become our habit to stay connected and keep checking.

If I talk about updates from Newspapers that I have subscribed to (unfortunately no better options available), some example of News:

A celebrity is getting divorced, or another is caught dating with someone! How a cruel murder was plotted, a minister slammed another minister on twitter? How an ex-wife avenged her ex-husband?

Do we need to know all of it? May be 1 % is the useful information and rest is all just crap.

Knowledge is awareness of facts; or possession of some skill .What could be false awareness and false skills? May be something which is not useful for us or others, abandoning such knowledge would magnify our view on more useful facts and skills that will benefit us and others. Instead of wasting our time on something insignificant, learning or acquiring a useful skill will give us true knowledge.

With the first jargon a bit solved, second one seems easy.

How can we seek true peace? : By abandoning false peace.

Peace is a quiet state or state with no conflicts, or absence of war between any two parties.

Let us take an example: There is a cruel king and his subjects. The subjects never protested to King for his ways of treating them but they are not happy, this is also a state of no conflict, there is no war, the King might think his kingdom is in peace, but we can easily say it is false peace. Both the parties are not happy and there is also a presence of fear in one of them. This could not continue for long, one day they will protest and yearn for true peace.

I feel it similarly, we are all cruel kings that don’t listen to our inner selves, we keep indulging in our desires that give us pleasures but momentarily, we are happy for some time but then unhappiness returns; we then chase for our next desire and so on! The conflict keeps rising until one of the self gives up. Which one gives up depends on what we choose! We become a seeker of true peace or a follower of false peace.

True peace for me is a state of no conflict between my outer and inner self. The moments of quietness of mind, tranquillity in heart and absence of fear from it are the moments of peace for me.

Ping back ->http://silverthreading.com/2016/02/03/writers-quote-wednesday-bewow-c-s-lewis/

 

Writer’s Quote Wednesday-Aristotle

I found this quote quite useful and stands true for everyone.

Criticism is another reality of life, something nobody can avoid or escape. Aristotle expressed in best possible words that only solution to it is ‘Do Nothing, Say Nothing and be nothing! ‘Though it will not apply if you have nosy and sneaky neighbours who will then gossip about you

“O My God, he doesn’t do anything? “

Or

“She doesn’t say anything she has no opinion of her own “,

And

“He is useless”.

There is no end to criticism and there is no way you can avoid it. The only way is to deal with it and live with it. The best or worst everyone had their share. The normal human behaviour against criticism is to criticise back and we just do the same thing and end up complaining about criticizing nature of people.

We are human and mirror images of each other, sometimes the criticism is just out of envy, that we are envious of people’s success or looks or their possessions etc. That is when you feel there was no reason to criticise you for doing something good or harmless to anybody. You can completely ignore such criticism.

There is some reasonable criticism too, and there is where you just can’t go blindfolded and deaf eared, some people criticize you so you can improve. They didn’t see how good you are, they tell you how better you can be. There is term called constructive criticism which is taught in management and practiced in corporates as well. It is used to give you a feedback in best possible way which shouldn’t demoralize you but tell you your best abilities, your weak points and areas of improvement. The words and tones are chosen wisely as not to offend the receiver, and this is what we should do in our daily lives too. We need to choose our words and tone wisely in case we are giving feedback to someone. So if someone is genuinely interested in your betterment he will approach you in a wise and sane manner.

Stay away from hate mails, hate speeches or hate comments from people, they are in no way thinking any good of you  or  to correct you. It is from bunch of people having nothing to do except spreading hatred which will ultimately come back to them. It is a negative energy and don’t let it burn you or weight you down. Ignore it, just think it like a released arrow from a bow, and you have to dodge it. Don’t reply back and don’t even think about it.

Keep doing the good work you are doing, at least you are doing something 🙂

Pingback- http://silverthreading.com/2016/01/13/writers-quote-wednesday-bewow-david-bowie/

Writer’s Quote Wednesday: Mother Teresa

For the Wednesday Ritual of Quotation I am sharing with you all , a beautiful quotation from Mother Teresa.

( Yes, I know it is not wednesday today but  better late than never ,  and  I am also whining too much about my  work load from a month  but  I am almost there to finish my project 🙂  )

This quote held me with itself for quite sometime, When  I read it for first time  I couldn’t read  or search for other quotes for many days, it hooked me completely  in its truth and beauty and how in simple words,  Mother Teresa said it all. I do miss her though I never met her in my life .Her presence in this world was like a lamp  keeping away  darkness by teaching  us  humanity  , love and kindness. We need more such humanitarian leaders today. The world needs more of them than ever.

We are often complaining about poverty  in  some nations, those who have enough complain for  not being rich, some are content with what they have but more is always better. Our scales of measuring  success are also material and monetary but this is how everyone counts affluence , lavishness and prosperity ! But nobody talks about prevailing unseen poverty in our lives, poverty of loneliness , poverty of heart ,  poverty in relationships , poverty in our thoughts , poverty of morality , poverty of humanity. The world is getting poor day by day but can we see it?

We meet people everyday for work or outside, greet them , talk to them to a bare minimum . Do they know us as real us ?,  even after spending 8 hours together in  a day. We are connected to people online by being physically present with others ,why ? may be to diminish our sense of loneliness and the fact is we are all lonely  even when surrounded by people because they are not the ones who love us or our loved ones .We all need to be loved and that is what our hearts are yearning for .

My life experiences taught me that  poor is not the one who is not  able to eat good but the one  who  is not able to sleep good.We need to love others for the seed of love will only grow  love and to be  kind to people around us . The feeling of love could only remove this poverty of  loneliness .

The key to happiness is also being grateful for the blessings of Allah and the Rizq(sustenance) that  He gave us which could be anything not only food or money ,  these hidden riches make us  actual rich in life. 

May Allah give us all richness in our hearts , thoughts and actions.Aameen.

In response to weekly activity held at  SilverThreading.com

http://silverthreading.com/2015/11/18/writers-quote-wednesday-bewow-paulo-coelho-magical-places/

Writer’s Quote Wednesday : Rumi

It is been another of hectic week at work and my brain is so drenched in coding that I do have  hardly any thoughts for my blogs  ( even in my dreams I am  debugging my code ) but I  am still trying to be regular with my Wednesday Quotes 🙂

For Writer’s Quote Wednesday , bringing you again from treasure of Rumi, I love  reading his quotes and books whenever I get time, they are full of wisdom and  resonate very well with my feelings,moods and thoughts,  so sharing another of his wonderful gem.

 ( In response to WQW at SilverThreading.com 

http://silverthreading.com/2015/11/11/mark-twain-quote-on-character/ ) 

Reason for sharing this quote , I personally feel very associated with this quote , and I have observed it to be so true with my life so far. There are difficult time in everyone’s life ,we all try to be strong  but then there are those breaking  moments when one realizes this is my threshold ,I cannot take it any further! Patience is running up , time is passing by and things are not getting any better. Then also come in self doubt , was it right decision I made ? or am I not good enough!

We are helplessly trying out all the options but nothing works! There is anger and frustration piling up each passing day and we start to lose our motivation,We get sad about our situation . Comparison to  the  happy lives of others bring us more pessimism.We all reach a point  when we have thoughts of giving up on being strong and holding on  , Everything is pulling us to give up but there is something inside, asking us not to give up and hold on ,telling us Everything will be fine! and we wonder  when and how ?

So when you feel that  iota of hope amidst everything going bad, Jump on it and grab it quickly , because it is then when you are so close to things getting done,  finding solutions to your problem  or the end of bad times.

It is alright to cry ,but not alright to give up!

You are just there at end of night,  take a break from yourself ( from your bad mood), take time to think clearly, away from your problems ,say a silent prayer to your Lord for He knows what is inside every heart , just ask Him to ease your way and InshaAllah you will be soon out in the sun again !

( P .S : today again I have deja vu Murphy moment for the metro  but I didn’t get pushed out this time , a bit of Indian style worked for me )

Writer’s Quote Wednesday – Rabia Basri

I am sharing the quote from Rabia al Basri, She was a muslim saint known for her great devotion and piety, has high regard among sufi scholars and  considered among first female sufi saints. Her life is narrated by another contemporary saint and poet ‘Farid al-Din Attar’ in his teachings and writings and that is how the world knows about her.

Birth Name:Hazrat Rabia al-Adawiyya al-Qaysiyya
Born in: between 95 and 99 Hijri. In Basra, Iraq.

Her life is an inspiration because she managed to achieve what she wanted  to in her life i.e Nearness to Allah without having any formal education or following any great master in her early life .Her story motivates me through her determination with which she sought her goal ,her focus on reaching her destination and not for a second her attention wavered  . She never gave up in the world where being saint was only a man’s thing then, not that she aimed to become a saint but it was a part of her journey and she didn’t hesitate for a while of doing something which was unusual for a women .

You can read more about her on  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabia_Basri

Her above thought is so strong and empowering that we are bound to think that  Are our problems , really  ‘problems’ or they just exist in our minds ?

Have we created mental barriers that stop us to see beyond that barricade?

What if there is no problem and it was just our perspective to look at things ? and when we adjusted our perspective the problem has suddenly disappeared!!

Are we knocking on an open door and complaining  that nobody  is opening and coming to our help ?

Isn’t time to check if we really need help and if we are doing something about our problems ?

We do not have to panic or worry too much for our problems because they blind our minds and we lose the ability to  think what can we do and what needs to be done in right time! and even if we do panic , we shouldn’t make it longer to revive , We need to overcome it quickly by having courage to see the open doors and keep moving in this journey called life .

Another of her quote that will inspire you :

(In response to Writer’s Quote Wednesday  at http://silverthreading.com/2015/11/04/writers-quote-wednesday-george-orwell/)