The Magic Cup

They say it takes 21 days to cultivate a habit - good or bad, but no idea how long it takes to get rid of one. I am talking about my own laziness. Its the prime reason for not writing a single line for more than a month.

I was reading a good, emotional book, "The Kite Runner", written by Khaled Hosseni. He is an Afghan writer. The plot of the story spans across US, Afghan and Pakistan. A very touching story. But I am not talking about the story here.

Mention of a small tale in the book prompted me to write this. This story is written by the main character of this book during his early days of story writing.

It goes like this. There lived a man who found a magic cup and learned that if he wept into the cup, his tears turned into pearls. But even though he had always been poor, he was a happy man and rarely shed a tear. So he found ways to make himself sad so that his tears could make him rich. As the pearls piled up, so did his greed grow. The story ended with the man sitting on a mountain of pearls, knife in hand, weeping helplessly into the cup with his beloved wife's slain body in his arms.

Doesn't it have a striking similarity with most of the people's life? People weep their entire life to be rich and happy. What an irony !! They fight their life to climb the ladders of their career. To get better job (again, again and again... it goes on..), a nice car, posh house, etc etc..during the course of which, they forget to live in the present and enjoy the goodness of life. I am not talking against achieving all these materialistic possessions. How good it'd be to feel the chilling touch of rain, warmth of sun, beauty of a butterfly or the singing of a bird. The nature is filled with so many such beautiful things. How many of us have noticed any of them lately?

Right now its raining heavily outside my flat, with thunder storm and lightning. I can do two things. As it is near to midnight, close the window, shut down my laptop and slide under the coziness of my blanket or keep the window open and listen to the poem "Rathrimazha" ..
I am choosing the later.