Poornima Manco

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Guest blog month

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I find people endlessly fascinating. Perhaps, that is why my stories centre around people, their motivations and compulsions. However, one does not always need fiction to experience alternate realities. Another person’s life: his journey, her passion, his hobbies, her escape, are all equally intriguing and provide enough fodder for the imagination.

In the spirit of that sentiment, I once again give my blog over to some very engaging people and their stories. The next few weeks will hopefully bring you some interesting insights into what constitutes an alternate lifestyle, being true to oneself and one’s passions, and how sometimes, the only journey one needs to undertake is the one that reconnects you to yourself.

As a blogger, I am always happy to be approached to showcase another person’s work. If you are a blogger who would like a slightly different audience for a change, or if you just like penning random musings, or if you feel strongly about something and need a platform to voice those thoughts, feel free to reach out to me with a sample of your writing, and maybe I could include you in future guest blog months. Comment below with your details and I will get back to you.

I truly believe that the writing community needs to be supportive and nurturing of one another. Our stories may be universal, but our experiences are deeply personal. In sharing them with our readers we attempt to create a bridge of understanding. However, in sharing them amongst ourselves and on our multiple and varied platforms, we start to understand the nuances and subtleties of that which is removed from our own actuality. In our myriad life realities, there is above all, a desire to understand and be understood.

I hope that the stories and articles that follow will take you on their unique journeys and you will come away with a renewed understanding and empathy for your fellow being.

 

Friendship and Politics

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I have two female friends, who will remain nameless for the purposes of this article, that hold diametrically opposite views from me, politically. They are both feisty, outspoken, bolshy and fearless. Qualities that I admire immensely. However, our politics differ and how!

How have I circumvented this divide and still stayed friends with them? And why do I bring it up here and now?

Well, firstly, I knew them much before I knew their allegiances. So, our friendship was untainted by politics. As I got to know them better, I realised that I liked them very much as people. I liked the fact that they were gutsy, I liked that they stood up for themselves and that they didn’t mince their words. I liked that they were always honest with me, even if it meant not sparing my feelings. I also realised that women like these are rare finds, and I wanted to have them in my life, regardless of how they felt about which political party governed their countries or whether Britain should stay in or out of Europe.

Now, lately, there has been much chatter here and across the pond. Politically everything is in a stage of upheaval. It is but natural that people will be vociferous about their own standpoints. Sometimes that takes the shape of defending the indefensible. Cruel laws that bypass humanity, turning a blind eye to the economics of a situation, or siding with a well known hate mongerer are all symptoms of these standpoints.

I have reasoned and combatted all of this, to the best of my ability. But the question stands, can I still call these people my friends?

I had an interesting conversation with a colleague once. She told me, in no uncertain terms, that if a friend or a partner had a different political stance to hers, there was no way she would associate with them. It meant, that at the very heart of it, they had contrary fundamental values. How could one align oneself with someone who saw the world so differently?

How can I?

Yet, political landscapes change all the time. Parties come and go, Presidents and Prime Ministers lose elections on a regular basis, and allegiances shift. Can I sacrifice two perfectly good friendships at the altar of politics? Should I?

The short answer is NO. Human connections are far more valuable than outside forces. If I, who preach tolerance and understanding through this blog, cannot practice it in my own life, what good is all the wisdom in the world? It is not by surrounding ourselves with like minded individuals that we grow. It is by opening our minds to differences, debates and discussions. It is by realising that someone else’s passionately held views have just as much validity as our own. If their politics are abhorrent then initiate a dialogue with them. Cutting them off or insulating yourself against contradictory ideas is hardly the way forward.

As for my friends and I, we talk politics in jest. They know I don’t agree with them. I know they are not going to change their minds. Nevertheless, we stay friends. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

 

 

Valentine’s Day

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Today is a day when couples all over the world will be celebrating their love for one another. It is also a day that maybe, a few tentative steps will be taken to declare one’s devotion to the object of one’s affection. Hearts, cards, roses, chocolates… the whole kit and caboodle will be the arsenal accompanying these celebrations/declarations. And why not? After all, that giddy feeling of being head over heels in love is the most amazing, mind altering, life enhancing experience that there is.

But what after that?

What, once the initial flush has faded? What, once the romance has been replaced by reality? What, when you discover that your hero farts or your heroine snores? What, when the husband can’t balance the cheque book or the wife flies off the handle at the slightest provocation? What, when the children come along and it is dirty nappies and sleepless nights, upchuck, fevers, teething and terrible twos? Can roses and chocolates survive the onslaught?

I have seen many a romance crumble under the weight of the tedium of everyday living. Couples who have parted ways or couples who have stayed together, despite their mutual loathing. Couples who haven’t been able to withstand the vicissitudes of life. Couples who have blamed each other or couples who have stumbled into other people’s arms. The very same couples who had once declared undying love to each other. What does Valentine’s Day signify to them, except being an empty ritual selling fake dreams?

There are those who still hold on to the elusive ideal of the perfect partner. Those who move from person to person, never quite finding perfection, but chasing it nonetheless. To them, each new love is ‘the one’, every Valentine’s Day is another opportunity, another chance to experience that ‘high’ of initial love. They are the perfect customers for all the consumerist marketing out there. They not only buy into the idea of a perfect romance, they buy towards it too.

Then there are those for whom the initial thrill faded a long time ago. But it was replaced by something even more powerful. It was replaced by trust, assurance, respect, understanding and a deeper love. Not the kind of love that needs a public show of passion, but the kind of love that fills the air in the car tyres for the wife, or brings her breakfast in bed when she’s ill. The kind of love that stands by her man when he is at his lowest, or cooks his favourite dishes for him. The ‘porridge-stirring’ kind of love – ordinary, pedestrian, everyday. The kind that builds lives together. To them, perhaps, Valentine’s Day is just another day to spend in the company of their loved one. Whether they acknowledge it by way of cards and flowers or not, is completely irrelevant.

To all the couples who are marking this day in their own special way, remember:

“Love is friendship that has caught fire. It is quiet understanding, mutual confidence, sharing and forgiving. It is loyalty through good and bad times. It settles for less than perfection and makes allowances for human weaknesses.” Ann Landers.

Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!❤️

 

Schadenfreude

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The German language has some interesting words, none more so (IMHO) than schadenfreude. There is no English equivalent for it, as far as I am aware. Loosely translated, schadenfreude means deriving joy from another’s misfortune. Something, I’m fairly certain, we have all been guilty of in our lives.

Now, whether this comes from a place of spite or meanness, or whether it’s just the human need for seeing people cut down to size, I think we would all agree, it’s not a pleasant emotion. I struggle with it and often admonish myself when I find myself revelling in someone else’s (deserved or undeserved) misery.

So, imagine my surprise, when I came across people who consciously practiced schadenfreude with impunity.

Long story short- a group of us were participating in a much anticipated reunion. We had a Whatsapp group for planning the details, and as much of these things are wont to do, it also became a place to exchange pleasantries, jokes, random comments, wardrobe planning and other sundries. There was excitement in the build up, and as the date approached and newer members were added, a lot of good natured bonhomie and a genuine pleasure to be reconnecting with old friends.

In the midst of all of this, were a couple of individuals who insisted on not just lowering the tone, but also, consciously, even cruelly, denigrating others and their motives. Every comment was suspect, every emotion fraudulent and everyone the butt of their tasteless jokes. Time and again, they were warned off but they persisted in the belief that they were stripping back the fripperies to reveal the naked truth (that being, that at the heart of it all, we really despised each other and all this love we were displaying was just a show). All they ended up revealing was their own inability to partake in joy.

So, why did they insist on attributing ulterior motives to everything? And why did they derive such joy from our often justified anger and impatience with their pessimistic outlook?

Schadenfreude.

At the very core of this word lie our own insecurities. When we are pleased at someone else’s failure, when we enjoy raining on someone else’s parade, when we can only extract pleasure out of someone else’s displeasure, what does that say about us?

Perhaps there is a lesson in this for everyone. Schadenfreude may be an emotion that arises unwittingly, even unconsciously, within us. But maybe, the nicer, the more humane thing to do, would be to consciously replace it with empathy.

After all, no one heals themselves by wounding another (St. Ambrose).

 

 

 

 

The pencil test

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Yesterday

I put a pencil under my breasts

and when it didn’t fall and roll away

I cried

For in the teen magazine it said that meant my boobs weren’t perky enough

 

Today

I casually stick a pencil in my hair to keep my bun in place

and examine my breasts in the mirror

They sag a bit

But

they are not diseased

and they’ve been the receptacles of milk and love

they’ve fed my children

 

Yesterday

My legs

those skinny legs

those hairy legs

so disproportionate to the rest of me

how I hated them!

 

Today

those same legs have carried me

through life

through marathons

on hills and plains

through scary by lanes

I love them

 

Yesterday

my small hands

those stubby fingers

those grubby nails

those myriad lines on my palms

were not artistic enough

 

Today

they remind me

of my mother’s hands

mottled and aged

roughened with work

I see her in them

and find them beautiful

 

Yesterday

My nose was too big

my forehead too broad

my cheeks too chubby

my skin too brown

 

Today

I have lines

and wrinkles (and grey hair too)

a testimony to my past

to laughter and tears

a life well lived

 

Yesterday

I jumped

I ran

I swam

to get

washboard abs

 

Today

I have a rounded belly

a network of stretch marks

all over it

for it housed my babies

and carried them safely

how can I complain?

 

Yesterday

that pencil that didn’t roll away

told me

that I would never be as beautiful

as the girls in the magazines

 

Today

I realise

No one is.

 

Why reviews matter & what’s stopping you?

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Ok, hands up… this is the first time I’m blogging from the WordPress app on my phone and from a sick bed. I am, currently, feeling extremely sorry for myself. I have been sick for five days and the luxury of lying in bed and binge watching ‘Homeland’ has lost its allure. So, I’ve taken to trawling through reviews of my second book… except there aren’t that many to trawl through.

Is it the law of diminishing returns? Or, can most readers simply not be arsed to put in a review? I’ll come to the third possibility later.

Firstly, please understand, to an Indie writer your reviews are IMPORTANT. You know why? Because, even if you say, “hey, I didn’t really care for this book”, it’s showing that YOU, a real, live person picked up the book and read it. It’s life affirming stuff for someone who has beavered over it for the better part of a year!

Secondly, no one is judging your review. No one is checking your grammar, syntax and flow. You’re not writing the novel, you’re just reviewing it. So, if it’s fear of your own command over the language that’s putting you off, don’t let it. You are helping multiple other readers see what they may or may not like about a particular book.

The third possibility is that you have really, REALLY hated the book. You’ve read a story or two and decided that this book really isn’t for you. In that case, there isn’t much point appealing to you. We are clearly a mismatch in terms of writer and reader, and I wish you well in your reading journey with other, more compatible writers. 😊

Finally, an important lesson I’ve learnt in my Indie journey is that Amazon really doesn’t want friends and family reviewing books. So, my apologies to those of you who took the time to read and review the book, only to find it taken down by the great Zon. Please don’t forget, you can still post that review on Goodreads with no such repercussions.

For the people who have written to me or told me in person how much they loved the second book, please do pass the word on. AND get others to review the book. People who I don’t know and people who will not give me a favourable review because of my extremely charming personality.😉

Right, that’s it for now folks! The sick bed blogging has its benefits but I don’t think I’ll be making it a regular feature anytime soon.

For your copy visit:

getbook.at/Damage