Daily Prompts: Finite Creatures

At what age did you realize you were not immortal? How did you react to that discovery?

I have learned man is ephemeral at the tender age of twelve. I watched my father take his last breath. I came to the sad conclusion I’d never see him again.

Bit by bit I grew up knowing , every living thing comes to this world for a certain number of days, months or years that it varies from plants, to humans, to animals and so on. It was a constant worry for me that my mom like my dad will leave us some day, when it happened I was far away from home, no one saw my tears and did not understand how painful it was for me to lose my mom too.

This I told myself is the cycle of life : we are born, grow up slowly, reach adulthood, get old our organs go through the process of deterioration, the clock of life tells us the journey is over and we must leave. The cycle is complete.

I always knew legendary status is not for me. I will never be remembered like Hitler, thank God for that. He was so brutal,who would like to be remembered as he is reminisced about  today.

But Tagore is a legend who has claimed the status of immortality by his life’s work. He was the youngest of his siblings but his name so far has not disappeared from our hearts, as long as we “The Bengalis” are alive Tagore’s name will be alive.

William Wordsworth’s poetry will always warm our hearts and we will say how great he was.

Who can forget Longfellow’s poem : “Tell me not in mournful numbers , life is but an empty dream.”

Yet another poet and Philosopher is worthy of mention in the long line of legends is Iqbal: The following is one of his many poems we love and repeat:

Two planets meeting face to face ,

One to the other cried ‘How sweet

If endlessly we might embrace,

And here forever stay! how sweet

If Heaven a little might relent,

And leave our light in one light blent!’

 

But through that longing to dissolve

In one,the parting summons sounded.

Immutably the stars revolve,

By changeless orbits each is bounded;

Eternal union is a dream,

And severance the world’s law supreme.

I’ve always known I am not immortal. It wasn’t a surprise for me. I did not have any reaction!

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Writing 101 Day Eleven: Size Matters (in sentences)

Today’s Prompt: Where did you live when you were twelve years old? which town, city and country? Was it a house or an apartment? A boarding school or a foster home ” An airstream or an RV? Who lived there with you?

Today’s twist: pay attention to your sentence lengths and use short, medium, and long sentences, as you compose your response about the home you lived in when you were twelve years old.

Situated in Punjab, Pakistan is the city of Rawalpindi.It was restored by Jhanda Khan after the devastation by the white Hun. This was the  place where I lived when I was twelve years old.

Our house was located  on Peshawar Road. At the front, close to the main road were three majestic Eucalyptus trees, the scent of their leaves awakened the passers by who looked curiously at them.Behind the trees was a  fence  built with bricks, it was a tottering one , ready to collapse any moment. The herd of buffaloes obliged us by leaning on it. The fence came crashing down which made extra work for the gardener and the servant.

The house was a large one, it had to be, to accommodate fourteen living souls, Mom, Dad, and the kids.

In all there were twelve rooms, four larger, eight smaller with attached bathrooms.

Mom and Dad occupied one  large room. The bossy older sister wanted one large enough to entertain her friends,one was designated for our parents’s  friends, and the left-over for us unimportant kids.

Kitchen was a separate building where my mom cooked and the two servants, prepared the vegetables and washed the dishes.

Hi all I’ll appreciate your feedback. Thank you. 🙂

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DP Daily Prompt: Our House

Our house oh how I miss it. It was a bungalow. It had stables on one side. There was a separate kitchen on the other side. The front lawn was very long. There were three Eucalyptus trees at the far end of the lawn. We had a gardener who planted a variety of flowers.

He was an artist in my mind. He planted the short  flower plants in the front and the plants were gradually taller as they were farther from the house. I had to pick flowers almost every day because my teacher wanted me to take them for her.

Our gardener was very strict about his plants,he wanted us to be gentle when we picked flowers. Every day after school,he’d catch me and showed exactly where I picked the flowers from.He always threatened he’ll tell my Dad.

We had a long veranda,it was part of the house.

We had a hedge on the side which hid the house from the left where the stables were.

We had two gates ,between the house and the garden we had a long passage which extended from one gate to the next. It was covered with small red stones.

We had twelve rooms in the house. Four were large and eight were small. My parents had one large room. My older sister took possession of one, she claimed she has to have a large one to entertain her friends.

We younger ones were given one bedroom. The fourth large one was our drawing room AKA living room.

There were four bathrooms for us. We always used our parents bathroom, but were caught once by Dad, who warned us to stay away from their bathroom. I was allowed to use the bathroom because my parents always made me do chores. They thought I was the most reliable.

It didn’t smell bad it was okay.

It did sound like there were twelve of us. No it couldn’t sound like a library.

We played outdoors, when we came in we were quiet. All our energy was spent running around outdoors. The only time we were noisy was when we played Monopoly, my eldest brother had the bank beside him . I caught him a few times when he stole the fake money. He was not good at strategy, he had to pay up when he landed on the houses belonging to one of us.

My mother could hear us from the kitchen which was outside. She said I made the most noise so she’d call me  into the kitchen, to bring the noise level down.

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