Skip to main content

Changes

Changes and Choices are like bread and butter. Go hand in hand always. There is a big change happening. So what you do? Other than wishing for bucketful of ice creams and good TV?
You make choices. I say, that's quite a boring task. But not one you can escape very easily. Even if we escape ( and we do that often) changes and choices have a habit of catching up. And then they whisper in your ears pakkad liya (caught you).

I am highly uncomfortable to changes, however good or bad they might be. I know I know, one has to put up a brave face and deal with the cards, dealt by fate and blah blah. I may not read self motivation books, but I get the message.

Two literary masterpieces define this dilemma of changes and choices like etchings on granite. Sadly both were written centuries ago

First one is that poem Robert Frost wrote. I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

I mean, what do you got to eat to write such a masterpiece? Then again, when changes come, the road in front of you branches out in twos or threes, you got to deal with it. Unfair I say, why can't people just make straight roads. Did they all flunk their geometry lessons at school? Also, if you take the road less traveled by, how can you be sure that it has no haunted ghosts running loose. Oh its so crazy I tell you.

Another literary masterpiece comes from Sage Ved Vyas, who told the story of Mahabharata which incorporates the Holy Hindu text of Bhagvad Gita. All those characters are facing changes in their lives and have to make decisions like instant coffee is made. Take Arjun's dilemma when he faces the fact that he has to war his own grandfather. Or when Duryodhan and Arjun have to pick one; Krishna's army or Krishna himself.

Its all confusing and tough to deal with. But these two benchmark masterpieces remind you of people who made the hard choices and now are all dead.


Comments

shaista dhanda said…
Change is the law if nature.it is a fact which will never change. We have to bring a change in ourselves to accept the reality which is very difficult
shaista dhanda said…
Change is the law if nature.it is a fact which will never change. We have to bring a change in ourselves to accept the reality which is very difficult

Also read

Why do we crave bookshops when life falls apart? A deep reading of Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop

This article reflects on Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop by Hwang Bo-reum, a gentle novel about burnout, healing, and second chances. Through Yeong-ju and her quiet community, the book reminds you that meaning often returns slowly, through books, people, and ordinary days that begin to feel like home again. Why do so many of us secretly dream of walking away from everything? At some point, usually on a crowded weekday morning or during yet another meeting that could have been an email, you wonder if this is all there is. You did what you were told. You studied, worked hard, built a career, stayed responsible. And yet, instead of contentment, there is exhaustion. Welcome to the Hyunam-dong Bookshop begins exactly at this uncomfortable truth. Hwang Bo-reum’s novel does not shout its intentions. It does not promise transformation through grand revelations. Instead, it sits beside you quietly and asks a gentler question. What if the problem is not that you failed, but that you nev...

Spill the Tea: Noor and the Silence After Doing Everything right

Noor has done everything she was supposed to do — moved out, built a life, stayed independent. Yet beneath the neat routines and functional success lies a quiet emptiness she cannot name. Part of the Spill the Tea series, this story explores high-functioning loneliness, emotional flatness, and the unsettling fear of living a life that looks complete from the outside. The verandah was brighter than Noor expected. Morning light lay flat across the tiles, showing every faint scuff mark, every water stain from old monsoons. The air smelled of detergent from a neighbour’s washed curtains flapping overhead. On the table, the paneer patties waited in a cardboard bakery box I’d emptied onto a plate. A squeeze bottle of ketchup stood beside it, slightly sticky around the cap. Two cups of tea, steam already thinning. In one corner, a bamboo palm stood in a large terracotta planter. Thin stems. Too many leaves. Trying very hard to look like it belonged indoors. Noor sat down and pulled the chair ...

What if You Could undo every regret? An uncomfortable conversation with The Midnight Library

Have you ever replayed your life at night, wondering how things might have turned out differently? The Midnight Library by Matt Haig asks you to sit with that question. Through Nora Seed’s quiet despair and imagined alternatives, the novel explores regret, possibility, depression, and the fragile hope that living at all might be enough. Have you ever wondered if one different choice could have changed everything? You probably have. Most people do. Usually at night. Usually when the world goes quiet and your mind decides to reopen old files you never asked it to keep. The job you did not take. The person you loved too late or too briefly. The version of yourself that felt possible once. You tell yourself that if you had chosen differently, life would feel fuller, cleaner, less heavy. The Midnight Library begins exactly there, in that familiar ache. Not with drama, but with exhaustion. Not with chaos, but with a woman who feels she has quietly failed at everything that mattered. Mat...