Author: rustleofleaves89

rustleofleaves89 https://creativewritingandillustrationart.wordpress.com A full-time thinker and a part-time writer walking the streets of life. + A photographer/illustrator

Seek solace


It’s a difficult time we are going through right now. It’s chaos spread all over the world. And we are trying to cope up with this new normal way of living, that’s not too fascinating but we can’t do anything, can we?
At this phase some countries are really doing well to prevent the spread of this deadly virus and some are still trying hard to manage the mayhem that has spread rapidly along with the virus. Yet the world is reopening irrespective of the situation at hand. They can’t help it, because the government is tired fighting and making people understand the importance of this and the ways to prevent it, but on the other hand the economy of respective countries are falling apart badly. The industries are shutting down, employees been laid off without reasons, profits going down, factories and businesses filing for bankruptcy, and economic conditions shattering down.
The world is reopening not because the virus is dead but the economy is. The virus is still out there making and choosing it’s own hunting ground, taking lives of our fellow mates, loved ones, friends, family, and sparing no one.
We know the situation is tough, yet we insist don’t loose hope. Don’t feel down. It’s okay if you are upset, we here as well are very much in pain and agony, mentally stressed and burnt out. Yet we request you to find happiness in little things. Seek solace and feel happy. Be happy because you are still fighting, be happy because you are still getting to see your loved one, talking to them over phone, you are still spending quality time with your family, stay happy because you are getting food to eat, stay happy because you have friends around you. Stay happy because you are still breathing.
Don’t let this defeat you. Don’t loose hope. Don’t give up. Because we aren’t either. Because we know we will defeat this together. We shall overcome. Cause deep in our hearts, we do believe, we shall overcome one day, some day.
Wait for that moment. The day will be again on our side and the sun will be shining bright.
Live. To witness.

Take pride

Today the world is getting united to fight for #blacklivesmatter . The protests are gradually turning into a revolution, that the world needed much before. Everyone is raising their voices against the system that has been demeaning and looking down upon the dark coloured people. It doesn’t matter whether you are brown, black or green, if you are not white you are not a part of the elite class.
The whole concept of equality becomes a joke because of the color of your skin.
So today, when the world is raising their voice against racism, take this opportunity to not only protest for black lives but for any skin colour you have, or any community you hail from. It’s their problem if they cannot accept us. God created us so that we learn to coexist. One can’t survive without the other. There should have been harmony and happiness that would have made our bond grow stronger with time, but we humans only know to point out mistakes and spread hatred all across. We love music, but we don’t understand the language of love. We love to preach about brotherhood, fraternity, and equality but we forget to question ourselves when we contradict our preachings through our actions. It’s high time we change our mentality cause cast, creed, gender, color doesn’t determine the action of love. Love is natural, it’s free and fair.
Remember the objective is not to get accepted in that “elite class” but to make those people in that class realise, “it doesn’t matter.”
You may be straight, gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender or anything you wish to paint yourself in, but what matters and what should matter is, you are a human. And we are all part of that same race – God’s greatest creation.
So don’t hate, but spread love because
Life Gets Better Together.

World envi’ruin’ment day?

Out of the many wonders that are there present in the world, which matters the most now is this piece of wilderness.
Yes, its not man made but is an art made by God Himself.
While valuing and admiring the beauty of all those wonders of the world we tend to forget what deserves our attention.
The question now is, how much more time do we have in our hands to fight for Nature and not against it. It’s getting depleted at a much faster rate than its replenished. We are draining all our natural resources at a rapid rate without any effort to refill them.
At a later stage sustainability will become questionable, surviving will become a challenge itself.
Cutting trees, deforestation of vast lands for various other purposes, building of cities, townships, growing as a community is all a part of development, but one has to realise we’ll have to live within the ecosystem, grow together with the trees and other forms of life that prevails and dwells along with us, value the ones that can’t speak for themselves. Now, that’s evolution.
We can’t take our motherland for granted, anymore. We cannot afford to do as we feel like any further. We need to halt. Question our actions. Be the change in order to see it. Don’t behave irresponsibly. Plant a seed. Leave your mark on this beautiful homeland.
Happy World Environment Day.

 

We have listed out 7 things you can do to contribute to the green revolution.

We are tired…

Pregnant women raped.

A girl raped to death.

A girl raped and burnt to death.

Sisters raped by their brothers.

Daughters raped by their fathers.

Girls sold for prostitution.

Wives are beaten at home by their in-laws and husband.

Wives forced to have kids because her in-laws want to revisit the experience of watching a kid crawling around!

Man murdered because he had dark skin. Don’t forget, that he shouted: ” I can’t breathe”!

Man beat up because he was thought to be COVID positive.

A mentally unstable man beaten because he was thought to be “trespassing”.

Read all these before you read the next line. Okay?

Now, this is the society we live in. This is the life we fancy poems about. This is the life on whose threshold we await a cherry-scented fairy tale.

And a member of this society feels it highly justified to slaughter a pregnant elephant. And in an unfathomable way!

You might say, “But bro/sis, there are good people too. “

Well, I will just say that if you feel that the fact that “there are good people too” nullifies the badness lurking in this society then God help you!

In a society where one half of it treats the other half as objects, as machines to cook, clean, and give birth to babies, if it treats one half of this pseudo united society as objects to have fun with for some time, and then fling them away in some dank corner, then how can we expect this same society to be merciful towards a pregnant elephant?!

Perhaps a highly delusional thought of this helpless elephant causing harm to their ‘fragile life’, provoked her murderers to indulge in one of the most grotesque plans that one can ever make! Or perhaps not! Moreover, humans don’t need a cause to inflict cruelty nowadays, do they?!

[Thank God she wasn’t a human being, otherwise, she would have been probably raped before being murdered!! ]

This society with its decrepit representatives has dirtied its soul in the tears and cries of helpless victims, men, women, animals, trees, and the Earth.

How does it plan to survive in the days to come is a big question that is posing itself, more now than any time before!

We are giving statuses with the elephant’s picture with her baby in her womb. I am writing lines inked with hatred for this society.

But the unfortunate truth is, after some time, you will go back to where you were. Probably cooking, or doing your house chores, I will go back to writing, while ashes born of the burnt body of that raped girl, cries of a girl being raped, sighs of an unborn child of a betrayed elephant will haunt this air that our lives soak in to thrive.

How do we smile so easily after all this? How do we sit at expensive cafes and click selfies after this?

Is that inevitability? Going back to where we started from? This poor ‘old’ chap doesn’t know. He/She is sad to witness the power of inevitability quieting every storm that rises in this heavy heart of his/hers. He/She is agonized to fall prey of time, that heals every wound, without even asking.

 I know that Whatsapp will delete my status after 24 hours. Our minds will delete the incident maybe over a delicious bite of a cheesy pizza. But people if you are reading this, please please please don’t forget so easily.

I am not going to.

Ps: For people getting ready to criticize me, for this particular piece, I don’t care about your criticisms.

Thank you. – rustleofleaves89

#icantbreathe

There the man lay, still,
“I can’t breathe” he had whimpered,
Alas! His words went unheard,
Heavy with extreme grief and resentment, protests clamored against the white walls painted in racism,
The white snow and the black mountains,
The silvery-white moon and the dark night skies, “The epitomes of contrasting elegance” whom man labels,
They all looked down at the street, hushed in shame,
There a white man knelt on a black man’s neck, “I can’t breathe” the black man cried, till he died a brutal death. -rustleofleaves89

Focus on what matters

Focus on the root cause.
Rebuild it, if it’s broken. Fixing it will do but that’s temporary. Break it down and start from the scratch. Point out the problem. See where you have gone wrong. Don’t deviate from the root cause. Beating around the bush does no good to you but only kills time and time is one of the most precious things in life that you can’t afford to waste. Don’t think about quitting. Don’t think about the consequences of whether it will be a failure or a success. Try to focus on the problem itself and find a possible solution. Question yourself, seek answers from within. Don’t blame. It does no good. Try till the last moment. Each time you fail, you get to learn something new.
Don’t just take the easy route of applying colour on the wall and somehow fixing it, cause that’ll be again a temporary solution. Think of something that’ll be more permanent, that can give a new perspective, that can influence someone, that can encourage someone to try something new. Change for the better. Challenge to become the best version of yourself. Break it to rebuild it. Fail to learn new things. Explore to gain knowledge. Loose to feel the joy of success. Die to be born again. Only thing to keep in mind here is – don’t quit. Focus on the root cause.
If you want to quit, then do away with the bad habits, for eg. how about quitting smoking?
Take a pledge today, on #worldnosmokingday to quit smoking.
We know you can.
You know you can.
Just believe and rebuild.
And don’t loose focus.

Obsession & sediments

My obsession with your touch is like the sediments in bottled water.
It hibernates peacefully, deep down in the gallows of my skin, until a whirlpool of events ruffles its composure, churning the fragments of you out of their sleep.
I feel them climb to the surface of my skin, with the most unstable steps.
I taste the bitter havoc that they spill.
For an hour. For a day. For a week. Until they fall back into a slumbering memory.
Each time this tiered process takes longer than usual, causing me more pain than most times, I indulge myself in a game.
I shake a bottle of water, on and on, heavily and then heavier.
The peaceful pause in the water shreds into a thousand pieces.
And I watch the sediments on the floor of the bottle, pushing themselves to the top, leaving the water baffled for some time.
Then much like a spent up force, they fall back to the bottom of the bottle. The sediments retreating at to the core of the bottle, appears to me like some unpronounced prophecy, assuring me that these moments of discomfort are a phase in its passing. 

Sky has its limits


Nothing is permanent in life. Today what you are so proud of maybe not be yours the next day. Today what you say will live together with you for the rest of the life, may not be able to withstand the wrath of a storm even.
That’s what is portrayed through the lines above in the quote.
You see clouds, you see the kites flying, birds fluttering across the sky, airplanes taking off, the sun shining brightly through the day, the moon changing its position frequently, the stars sparkling and many more tiny details than the words can describe. But, does it stay forever? It’s a matter of some time, maybe some hours or some days, and the vast stretch of the landscape over your head changes. Sometimes it adds more color or sometimes it gets dull. It keeps surprising you every moment now and then.
The water bodies all across which are a reflection of this skies paint itself in whatever color the sky wraps itself in.
Such is life. You cannot hold on to something forever and claim it will forever be yours. You have to learn to let go, sometimes. Who knows there’s a surprise waiting for you around the corner? Don’t fix yourself in one place. Learn to let go.
Look up above. Look at the sky….and sing the famous lines from Coldplay:
“Cause you’re a sky, ’cause you’re a sky full of stars
Cause you light up the path.
I don’t care, go on and tear me apart
I don’t care if you do
Cause in a sky, ’cause in a sky full of stars
I think I saw you
Cause you’re a sky, you’re a sky full of stars
Such a heavenly view
You’re such a heavenly view,…..”
Sing along & stay happy.

Half-cooked stories


Some friends are unique.
Some we fall in love with.
Some we tend to depend on.
Some becomes a part of our life.
Some never leave us.
Some are there just to share happiness.
Some becomes a distant acquaintance.
Some are here to love.
Some we share everything with.
And the list goes on and on and on. But you can’t name all the relationships because it doesn’t need to be named always. You don’t need to give it a tag. The important thing is to understand the importance, to respect each other, look out for one another, be there in the most difficult of times and also to stand by when the other one is facing a challenging time. Try to be there equally at good times and also in the bad phases of life. We’ll grow together. Stay together. That’s the way friendship works. That’s the way things should be. We are all missing our friends in this phase of life. Social distancing can work with relatives but how do we distance socially ourselves from these friends? Trust me, everything will be over and we all will be again hugging each other around. A few more days. Just a few more moments to miss. Time will change. And all will be again back in track. Again time will come to make memories memorable and make some new friends. So next time keep in mind, enjoy the best of the moments with them, spend as much time as possible. Let go off your ego.
Grow.
Love.
Give a hug.

Boring life

Before Corona happened, for most but not for all, life was simple, easy-going, smooth, yet we complained. We found out difficulties that were not there. We were busy looking for problems and discussing them. We deliberately overlooked solutions that were present right in front of us. Happiness lost its colour and value. We complained about life being dull and grey. We had friends, colleagues, work, places to go to, neighbors to talk to, restaurants for dining in, a job to save, a family to look up to, a loved one to hold on to, yet we said ‘Life is boring’.
So, how’s life treating you now?
There’s no life now, the only thing that’s remaining is the boring part. With nowhere left to go, with no one to talk to, with no left to share our joy with, with no one left to walk together with, life is dull, now. And to make it even more miserable, we have to hide our faces also. No one knows what’s in store for us, how much more pain we have to bear, how many days more do we have to suffer.
Most of us didn’t respect or value when we had a life, but we chose to tag it ‘boring. However now what you call ‘boring’, is our life.
Share kindness.
Stay home.
Stay safe.
When all of this gets over, and we become free again, remember to enjoy every single moment of your ‘Life’, love it and live it as if that’s your last day on the planet.