Never Say Die

~ Ornamental flowers and Dandelion weeds in the same yard ~

 

Never Say Die

Soaked alike in golden sun
Who looks better?
the flowers or the weeds
the accepted or the rejected
the adored or the detested

Side-by-side in their race
for life. Who wins better?
the docile or the aggressive
the frail or the hardy
the shy or the pushy

Hated by the natives, the
resilient all-pervading wilds
stay on, though stomped and razed
shine on, with their heads raised
Indefatigable and unrelenting
thick-skinned stubborns, absorb
nicks and kicks, to unashamedly
survive and thrive; never say die

©2016 Alka

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For: The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge Opposites

Joy Dispensed

                          ~When in full bloom~

How delightfully, they
Doled out bounteous happiness!
Ethereal beauty and surges of fragrance
Now time for them to take leave
For they have done their bit

          ~ Same flowers now short-lived fading beauties~

 

© 2016 Alka Girdhar

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For: Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge – Flowers

Selfie-less Girl

“Mom, why is it that we never take selfies?”, little Ivana ranted as she stomped behind her mother from one room to the other.

“Honey! We do take sometimes”, replied Savita, albeit a bit indifferently, for she was too engrossed thinking about her work project.

“Nooo…but they’re just photos. They are not selfieeees!!” Ivana’s words dragged in rebellion while her mouth pouted.

“That means the same”

“Nooo Mom! As if I don’t know!!” Then after pausing for a while to think, Ivana asked “OK! Do we ever do like this in our pictures?”  She came in front of her mom and pursed her lips out in a pout, to make a duck-face. But the mom was amused.

Catty Face

 

Catty face! Catty face!!
Don’t stare at me like this
You petrified, or scaring me?
Standing there frozen still
In my home, on my driveway
It’s my territory, my pathway
You the prowler, go away!!

It’s ok! Let it be
Here I open the door
Please come inside
Play with me for a while
Have tea with me
But dear! Make sure
You come regularly

Hey!! What happened?
Why you running away??
Wait! Wait!! Wait!!!
Let me come with you
Will you? But you won’t
For you’re an impish kitty
Catty face, frisky and sneaky!

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The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge Face is so interesting, that I could think of so many of them, but this light post came by easy as I saw this prowling cat. Do you also get some regular visitor like this one?

Also for One Word Photo Challenge – Cat

© 2016 Alka Girdhar

These Grounded Earthlings…

They feel rooted
Only if they immerse
In the soil of nurturing earth
Or sprout from its womb
As a young sapling

**

They love pecking
The bare warm earth
Replete with little bounties
Of their daily food
That they love eating

**

They love earthing
To lush green earth
The oh-so-soft cushioned carpet
That caresses and soothes
Their bare skin

**

Farmer setting fire to Amazon

Amazon forests burning

They love setting fire
To their Mother Earth’s
Sprawling fertile forests
And possess its vast lands
They then call their own

(Now, deforestation is not just due to human malpractices or ill intentions of using forest land for businesses like cattle-ranching; as fires are also due to drought and overall climate change. But then again humans are the only species who ought to know how to save earth’s assets rather than cut them down or burn them for selfish reasons. Our verdant earth’s forests are home to so many species.)

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All pictures self-clicked except for the last two (for obvious reasons). Source

For The Daily Post’s Weekly Photo Challenge Earth

Tropical Rain Forest – colour your world

 

My entry for Jennifer’s Color Your World Challenge
The color for today – Tropical Rain Forest.
It’s a lovely deep green color that’s named after…well…rain forests.

(My pictures are from Minnamurra Rainforest in Budderoo National Park, NSW, Australia)

WPC: Half-Light

 

Half Light

 

When darkness hasn’t yet engulfed
Things that bright light had once touched
It’s a reign of hazy twilight…

This shadowy light that
Like some half-baked truth
Reveals enough, hides enough…

For raw truth often hurts
And so do blatant lies
Neither black nor white, have grey

Hugging these truthful-lies…
Feeling the fleeting vibes
Of dreamy glow, that isn’t here to stay

It will ebb away, at the blink of an eye
But what a feast for our thirsty eyes
This half-lit half-light!

© Alka Girdhar

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In response to The Daily Post’s weekly photo challenge:
Half-Light
Share a photo inspired by a poem, verse, song lyric or story.

The header of my blog itself represents half-light.

Flower of the Day – Home Grown Bouquet

Cee Neuner of Cee’s Photography has ‘Home Grown Bouquet’ as theme for today’s Flower of the Day.

I collected these a few days ago from my yard to form a simple flower arrangement. Today they seem just enough to pay tribute to Brussels victims, while complimenting my earlier poetic homage Victimized

Humanity Survives – My new religious book

So, M.K. Gandhi seems quite confident…that in the end truth and love always win. But how to know what is true if most people staunchly believe that only their way of working is right and they claim only their belief system to be the ultimate truth and none other?

Such unilateral opinions are the cause of all the hatred in this world, and now the cause of terror in France…a blood bath that has happened so many times all over the world that we are now either perpetually scared or kind of immune to it. When things go this bad we are shaken but we get over it sooner than we ever thought we will.

What’s the solution? Maybe one day God or Goddess (yes, that’s possible) will descend down from skies or come out from the inner earth (yes, that too isn’t impossible) and set things right. Till then, we can try taking concrete steps to remove the root cause of evils.

To begin with, put a total ban on all religions. Seriously speaking, these religions were formed as per the needs of particular era and also as per the local designs of a certain land or nation-state. In their current retrograde and political form, they do not suit us in this global world when we all have decided to migrate here and there, and we all live together.

So let all world leaders get together and dispose of all the religious books. Then make a fresh start. Write a new book called Humanity Survives. This will have commonly agreeable codes of conduct. Till this is done, our cute and immature world children will continue to harp ‘My book better!’…’My book right!’ ‘My God the true God!’ ‘My God name the besssst!!’.

My last passage is blasphemy and will anger many. Blasphemy it is. So let there be religions. But then…don’t ever say we need a solution to all this chaos! There is none.

Just pray! Pray to God till your voice goes hoarse…and the wise old bearded man up there, sitting in his big throne chair, looks at you lovingly while saying…”My lovely children! They have so much faith in me that one day I’ll set things right for them!”

 

I’m Humanity, I look at this evil world upside down…I survive. What a victory!

* Another poem written after attack in Sydney and Peshawar

Being (Extra)ordinary

No car engine this
Leaking exhaust down the path
Spewing venom of diesel puffs
Abhorred by all

Up above the sky
Smoke fumes delight our eyes
The ordinary became extra-ordinary
An awesome sight

.

Planes leave behind white streaks. These streaks are artificial clouds called contrails, a word formed from the phrase ‘condensation trail.’

Like a car engine…airplane engine also produces exhaust gases that escape from a plane. These exhaust fumes have water vapors which hit the air.  At such a height, the air outside is extremely cold which causes these water vapors to condense and form tiny water droplets or even freeze into tiny ice crystals before eventually evaporating.
It’s this mix of condensed water vapor and ice crystals that create the cloud-like trails you see in the sky.

Wow! Ordinary fumes and vapors yet extraordinary sight.

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Picture taken in Sydney skies
For Weekly Photo Challenge: (Extra)ordinary

© 2015 Alka Girdhar