General

Image: Daniel Salmieri

The commute was a daily coming together of some like minds. You got used to the same people sitting around you even if there existed little more than a nod of recognition between you.

My travelling companion was an avid reader, and on occasion, we compared the novels we were reading.

“Have you read Rachel Joyce?” I asked one morning.

She hadn’t and was immediately interested in hearing my thoughts on her writing.

She had written four novels I had read and thoroughly enjoyed. My enthusiasm must have been obvious as she took in my every word.

“I like the way she creates endearing characters and through them, she leads you along a path. All her books have a journey of some kind in them. “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry’ takes in the journey Harold Fry makes on foot from one end of England to the…

Daniel Salmieri in A Velocity of Being

I
need a
distraction
from the boredom,
setting imagination in motion.

Inspired by Reena’s Exploration Challenge #122

NO DAVID VERSUS GOLIATH 

By Neel Anil Panicker

“Looks like David is going to topple Goliath,” Vijender Agarwal, the portly thirty-five year-old declared as he stood at the entrance to the main gates of Rajender Nagar, a middle class residential locality in Central Delhi that owed its name to the first President of Independent India.

Across the counter, as he took delivery of a packet of milk and brown bread, septuagenarian Hansraj Dhillon countered, his voice feeble yet striking a defiant note, “Looks like but is it so? Let’s not forget that politics is a waiting game and here the Davids of today could end up as the Goliaths of tomorrow and vice versa, but aren’t we a wee bit too hasty in announcing the winners and losers before the game is over”?

The comment from the elderly well respected gentleman though met with a quick rejoinder.

“Are you saying…

One man’s loss is,

Another’s gain, neither hers nor his,

What I may consider as waste,

Another may grab it in haste,

Giving and receiving,

Is an unwritten pact which we live by, stop grieving,

What is mine, wouldn’t remain for too long,

What is yours, would change hands, as you go along.

53 words.

Acknowledgements :- Thank you Reena Saxena for running the challenge at Reena’s Exploration Challenge # 121. For rules please refer here. Thank you all for stopping by and reading.

Reena’s Exploration Challenge #120

PROMPT

The theme this week is

RHETORICAL QUESTION

Inside the outer shell
Aren’t we all same?
Aren’t our bodies function the same way?
Or since you believe that
You are from a different race, culture, color, religion,
your body is not made of 5 elements?
Would death be different for you?
Isn’t the difference is just that our hardware is all the same,
only the software is different.
You let your mind control you, your ego control you, your greed control you.
Don’t you think the laws of nature, nation, and society should be different for you?
Don’t you think you are the chosen one?

Image by Andrew Martin from Pixabay

After the dust had settled and the shaking had stopped Pete and Chris ventured outside to see if any damage had been done to the outside of their house.

“That was quite the rumble. What would you say it was, a 5 or 6 on the Richter scale?”, Pete asked Chris as they were looking at the huge cracks on the backside of the house.

“I’d say it was at least a six, the damage done to those bricks will have to be fixed soon. Do you know of any brick masons?”

“Well since the quake knocked out the internet and our cell phones are not working; how do we find one?” asked Pete.

Chris sighed, “Didn’t we have one of those phone books, I think it was called the … something or other pages.”

“Don’t you remember telling me to throw it out?…

Reenais the host of Reena’s Exploration Challenge

Reena’s Exploration Challenge

~*~

“I would not read this book even if was the last book on the planet!”

The words drifted out of the open window when Janice inserted the key into her front door. An amused smile touched her lips. It was the voice of her ten years old son Luke, and the book in question, she was pretty sure was the one she had just finished reading.

Once inside, she found her son and his friend Chuck in the living room. The book, the topic of discussion was sitting innocently on the center table and Luke was telling all about it. Janice gave both of them a cheery hello and asked them about their day.

“And why wouldn’t you read this book, Luke?”

“I saw you crying when you were reading this one! I don’t want to cry…

It had first been released with very little fanfare and to very little interest.  Critics and readers agreed that it was a painful read; slow, pedantic and really no more than propaganda.

Sometimes the things that end up have a huge impact come in with a whimper instead of a bang.  This book was one of them.  Slowly one came to realize that it was everywhere.  In every store, on every billboard this book was now being lauded as a book everyone Must read.  People scoffed.  Late night comics made jokes about it…for a little while.

Then all of a sudden the same comics were giving it ringing endorsements, “The Book is the last book you will ever need to read.” “Your guide to being a true member of our great society: The Book.”.  Children in high school were given it as assigned reading.  Copies were in every doctor’s and…

The last book on Planet Earth will be the first book, the one to be an idealized representation of what humans could and can be if they could clear their minds of the cloudiness of what is most frail and harmful about our species. When it is found or taken with humans, it can set the stage for what’s next.

The last book must be a transformative text. It must be one that plants the seeds for a new and improved crop of humans. The text must imprint on the psyche of the reader the concept and belief in the relativity of things. The concept of us and them must cause a great disease when considered. The concept within it that all pieces are part of a whole and an essential piece of all that is will be embraced.

In it, profit will be looked at as an act that…