Stay tuned to our new posts and updates! Click to join us on WhatsApp L&C-Whatsapp & Telegram telegram Channel
L&C-Silhouette Subscribe
The L&C-Silhouette Basket
L&C-Silhouette Basket
A hand-picked basket of cherries from the world of most talked about books and popular posts on creative literature, reviews and interviews, movies and music, critiques and retrospectives ...
to enjoy, ponder, wonder & relish!
 
Support LnC-Silhouette. Great reading for everyone, supported by readers. SUPPORT

Rise and Shine

March 8, 2016 | By

A moving account of reminiscence and nostalgia of a mother as she visits down the memory lane on the occasion of her dear daughter’s birthday.

International Woman’s Day Special

Happy Twentieth birthday Iha .“Rise and shine, sweetheart.”

“Why?” She mumbled.

sunrise

I hastened towards the terrace, where the sun was on the verge of rising and shining.

“Well, simply because it is a new morn, and one is expected to get up every morning, moreover it is your birthday today. Happy birthday” I said trying to wake my daughter up, but she had no intention of getting up just yet.

“I have just woken up to the advantages of sleep.” She said turning over to the other side, and winking mischievously in my direction.

“Okay, go to sleep then, I am going out.” Saying this I hastened towards the terrace, where the sun was on the verge of rising and shining.

The entire night yesterday, I knew she had not slept a wink, talking and laughing away with her friends, discussing the end to her teens, and at 2 am, she had even broken into a dance – what type of dance it was, I could not make out though , as it was made up of the weirdest and funniest steps I had ever witnessed in my life .

A man with a red turban cycled away, and a man in a yellow shirt tried to borrow a wee bit of the sun’s golden tinge. A plump faced girl, with a tangled mess of highlighted brown tresses walked past, talking animatedly on her cell –phone, and another girl whizzed past on her scooter, her face glowing in the morning sun.

I came back, to her room and saw the sun beams playing with her hair. I remembered her as a golden-haired tiny bundle as she lay in her crib, lost in her own world of elves and fairies, plucking fistful of air from the room and stuffing into her mouth, to her lisping days, her stumbling and tumbling days, and even her grumbling days, her sulking days, her tantrum throwing days, the beginning of her teenage anger, anguish and angst days, school joining day, her school leaving day, her college joining day-and now almost a couple of months away hovered her college leaving day . And today, her teenage years had come to an end! Where did all these years go?

I shuddered – where would she go for her post- graduation? Delhi? Bangalore? Pune?
Then I remembered one day ten years back-when she was seven and a half years old.
The road had a new look, it was being broadened. I sat in the balcony of our first floor government flat, in Bharatpur, looking at life as it sped past on winged feet. Suddenly a gust of wind blew away the paper that I had been reading.

“It has gone back to its mom”. My daughter chirped from behind.
“Huh?”
“I mean the tree over there”.
“Huh?”
”How dumb can you get, mom? Isn’t the newspaper the product of the tree? And I think you are a teacher of Huh-huhing,” she said with a lopsided grin.

My seven going on eight precocious daughter was bent on embarrassing me. I refused to be embarrassed and cast a look towards the tree where her tiny hand had been pointing.

Next to the tree stood a tiny hammock-actually a shabby piece of cloth strung between two robust pieces of wood, in which slept an infant, blissfully unaware of the carts, buffaloes, camels, horses that cruised past. With a protective arm around the hammock stood a four year old girl, and another toddler sat on the ground next to the hammock playing with the mud.

They were the tiny tots of the labourers who had been laboriously working on broadening the roads, while their children patiently waited for their parents to earn their daily wages, so that their shrunken stomachs could be lined with food.

“Where are you going?”I asked bewildered as I saw my daughter race inside, come back with her bag of soft toys, a few biscuit packets and a bottle of water.

She kept the biscuit packets and water bottle on the stair case, and ran down with her soft toys and thrust them on the girl. “Do not play with the mud, play with these”. The tiny girl looked askance at the toys and then at my daughter, a bright smile lit up her face. Under the assault of the scintillating smile the sun slunk away in inferiority, and hid behind a cloud cover.

The girl gave a soft cuddly bear to the toddler playing with mud, and he pounced at the bear and gave him a bear hug. My daughter came back for the biscuit packets and the bottle of water, ran down with them and gave them to the parents who smiled gratefully in her direction, while I smiled towards her with a proprietorial air-a glow of pride suffusing my face.

“You have risen sweetheart, and are shining,” I said as she came and stood next to me, beaming from ear to ear, and hugged her.

“But were they not your favourite soft toys, sweetheart?” I asked; keen to know her answer to that.

“Well, mom, I think they needed them more than me, did you not see they were playing with mud? And do you not say that you should not have any second thoughts about giving your most precious things to people who need them more than you?”

“But I will never give you away, mom,” she said flinging herself at me.

I jerked myself out of my reverie, my cherished memory of the day when my tiny daughter had really risen and shone brilliantly!

“Happy birthday”! I sang again , planting a kiss on my daughter’s cheek.

“No way am I rising and shining”, she mumbled.

Pic courtesy: Antara

Medley of Literary Pieces on International Woman’s Day

 
The Irrepressible ‘ She’ – a poem by Divya Rajgaria

I am no Goddess – a poem about the everyday diva by Anindita Bose

Where Goddesses Cry – a thought-provoking poem by Rhiti Bose.

Woman – a poem by Daipayan Nair

Wish – a son remembers his mother poem by Amitava Nag

Short Stories

The Separation – a short story by Maya Khandelwal

The Last Night of My Life – a short story by Nikita Goel

Musings

Rise and Shine – a touching mother’s musing about her daughter by Santosh Bakaya

Book Review

Defiant Dreams: Tales of Everyday Divas – A Book Review – by Maya Khandelwal

Dr Santosh Bakaya is the author of three mystery novels for young adults, and a book of essays titled Flights From My Terrace, which was recently published as an e-book on Smashwords. Her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad Of Bapu has been published by Vitasta Publishers, Delhi, India in May 2015 and has been receiving rave reviews from everywhere. Although a Political theorist, with a doctorate in political theory, it is literature which has been her first love. She was awarded the Reuel international award for language and literature 2014 for her long poem Oh Hark!, which forms part of the Significant Anthology. Many of her poems have figured in the highly commended category in Destiny Poets, a UK based website and many are part of international anthologies. Right now, she is giving the final touches to her satirical novel, tentatively titled Sanakpur Shenanigans.
All Posts of Santosh Bakaya

Hope you enjoyed reading...

... we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading and supporting our creative, informative and analytical posts than ever before. And yes, we are firmly set on the path we chose when we started... our twin magazines Learning and Creativity and Silhouette Magazine (LnC-Silhouette) will be accessible to all, across the world.

We are editorially independent, not funded, supported or influenced by investors or agencies. We try to keep our content easily readable in an undisturbed interface, not swamped by advertisements and pop-ups. Our mission is to provide a platform you can call your own creative outlet and everyone from renowned authors and critics to budding bloggers, artists, teen writers and kids love to build their own space here and share with the world.

When readers like you contribute, big or small, it goes directly into funding our initiative. Your support helps us to keep striving towards making our content better. And yes, we need to build on this year after year. Support LnC-Silhouette with a little amount - and it only takes a minute. Thank you

Support LnC-Silhouette

Creative Writing

Got a poem, story, musing or painting you would like to share with the world? Send your creative writings and expressions to editor@learningandcreativity.com

Learning and Creativity publishes articles, stories, poems, reviews, and other literary works, artworks, photographs and other publishable material contributed by writers, artists and photographers as a friendly gesture. The opinions shared by the writers, artists and photographers are their personal opinion and does not reflect the opinion of Learning and Creativity- emagazine. Images used in the posts (not including those from Learning and Creativity's own photo archives) have been procured from the contributors themselves, public forums, social networking sites, publicity releases, free photo sites such as Pixabay, Pexels, Morguefile, etc and Wikimedia Creative Commons. Please inform us if any of the images used here are copyrighted, we will pull those images down.

2 thoughts on “Rise and Shine

  • Leave a Reply

    Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

    Today’s Motivation

    <div class=at-above-post addthis_tool data-url=https://learningandcreativity.com/motivation-quote-think-unthinkable/></div>“Being an architect isn't only about construction, it's about creating wide spaces with small spaces.” 
― Yannick Heywang<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings above via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings below via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons above via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons below via filter on get_the_excerpt --><div class=at-below-post addthis_tool data-url=https://learningandcreativity.com/motivation-quote-think-unthinkable/></div><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt -->
    “Being an architect isn't only about construction, it's about creating wide spaces with small spaces.” ― Yannick Heywang