Mr.Dog

Dear Neighbor’s dog,


Until last Sunday, I was fairly content with your existence in the apartment right above mine. Yes, I do feel bothered by your occasional bursts of paw-thumps in the middle of the night. I can only imagine you do that at 12:30am to test the sudden urge to reassure yourself that your legs are still attached to your body. I could not imagine any other reason why you would run around randomly in the middle of the night.

However, I have had no complaints about your midnight-running-exercise - since I had gotten used to them. My brain taught itself to effectively ignore these noises just like those fancy noise-cancellation earphones claim they do.

Things changed last week though. Let me refresh your memory on the series of events that took place that day.
I was sitting on my couch staring outside the window, marvelling at the first perfectly sunny day that we were having after a terribly cold winter. I heard your footsteps on the wooden staircase out side my front door. 

I saw you casually stroll on the walkway right across my valued patch of lawn.

Now, let me take this chance to remind you of the fact that I value this tiny patch of green grass quite a bit. I love its fresh green color and the fact that it is slowly coming back to all its glory after that awful winter we just had. 

Coming back to the series of events…

You had stopped strolling.
Your head then slowly turned to peer into my house.
Our eyes met.
You slowly took four steps to land on a spot on my lawn.
I stared at you and you stared right back at me.
At this point I had a hunch that you were up to no good.
We were in a stare-off contest, I realized.
You maintained your stare. You did not blink at all.
And with utter disregard to my love of my green patch- - proceeded to take a dump right on my previous patch of grass while still staring at me.
At that instant, I think I even saw your mouth curl up a little as if you were smiling ever so slightly.
You then casually just walked away, breaking our stare-off contest.

You could have at least looked away or even blinked. But there was not a single iota of guilt in you while you performed this blasphemous act and that disgusted me. As a result, You, sir have now earned a permanent spot on my list of ‘most hated’. Just saying.


Your very disgruntled and annoyed neighbor.

The Three Magical Words

First off, Happy New Year all you sweet creatures who actually read my blog.

I am going to start this blog by asking you a question:

When was the last time you called your parents and said these three beautiful words: “I love you”, without needing a special occasion or reason (gifts)? You must keep in mind that “Love you mum/dad” or just “Love you” does not count.

Take a minute and try to recollect the last time you said exactly this to your parents---> “I love you” and be honest (to yourself) when you think about it.

Chances are that, while there will be a few of us who say this to our parents every time we speak to them, I bet there will be a majority of us who would agree that it has been a while and  there will be many who won’t even remember when the last time they said those three words as a sentence.

If you belong to the latter two groups (the majority), then I urge you to start doing it right now and see the difference. When we sit and think about it, our love for our parents is more often than not, taken for granted. And that is perfectly natural. There’s nothing wrong with it. But trust me when I say this, calling your parents and saying “I love you!” makes one heck of a difference. I would bet a $100 that you would have a winder smile on your face after you hang up than you usually have.

I started doing this last year. I have the most loving and understanding parents anyone could wish for, yet, I realized one day- that I had never explicitly told them that I loved them. So one fine day, I started ending my telephonic conversations by saying “I love you!” to both my mom and dad. The first time my dad heard me say it, he just laughed.

When I asked him why- he said he wasn’t expecting me to say that and was slightly amused. So we both laughed it off, but not before making sure that he knew I really meant it (he never doubted that though) and hung up. I had already made a promise to myself that I would end every single conversation of ours henceforth by saying I loved him.

We spoke again the following weekend like we usually do. I told him about the 'on-steroids-weather' that Missouri experiences and how it still surprises me every single time. We exchanged our customary health-reports where I ask him how his blood sugar levels were and he asked me if I was being regular at the gym. All in all, a perfectly routine and normal conversation. As we prepared to say our goodbyes and hang up (and as I was preparing to say “I love you Papa.”) he suddenly said  bye and immediately followed it up with “I love you Smaran!” before I could say it to him.

I took a second and blurted back out “I love you too!”. I hung up and sat in silence for a few seconds and realized a wide ear-to-ear smile had crept up on my face. I do not remember the last time my dad actually said that (especially after I had moved away from home). I think I was as unprepared as he was,  the week before when I did the same thing to him.

Society teaches us that saying I love you to your parents aloud is not really needed since it is an understood fact and that no one can change that fact. However, I say we do have the need to call our parents and tell them exactly that ---out aloud. For once, we should disallow our brain from telling us “Hey man, you don’t even need to say you love them. They already know that.” and instead just say it because your heart really wants you to. It makes a huge difference in relationships, even the ones that are taken for granted since birth. It creates this imaginary warm puffy cloud that floats around you for a couple of hours and brings this weird sense of calmness and joy to you.

So I urge you to do this-- as an experiment. I urge you to do it not for your parents but for yourself, to feel how wonderful it is to say something so beautiful to someone who has always loved you with everything they have got.

Go ahead, take the time , give it a try and post how you felt or your parent's reactions in the comments below if you want. I promise you it will be wonderful. 

Tell your parents you love them not because you must, but because you can.

P.S- Me and my parents now make it a point to say “I love you” every single time we speak to each other. And in all honesty, I will never become tired of doing it for the rest of my life.