A dark new world

Gosh! I have turned so dark! Each post I have written in the last few days is gloomier than the previous one. My thoughts can almost be used to create the sets for 'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II'.

I am on my blog regularly (for the last 20 days) after a decade. Most of the time I am writing on a stop-watch mode: log out of work-drive-write-post blog-shut down-move to next task. It’s Friday evening and I have half-a-dozen less things to do today evening so I got a few minutes to click randomly on my older posts from a decade ago.

That was like watching 'Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone'. There was wonder and hope. There was fun and innocence and a sense of faith.The kids were on the brink of discovering a whole new magical world. The newness of it all-the majesty of the bewitched world of schools, making friends, discovering spells and learning to fly! 

There were so many people who read my posts back then. There were strangers who commented and shared their reactions. Now it is mostly a solitary reflection. It was a commitment made on Facebook that made me come back and stick through for the last twenty days. I thought I’d get over my reticence over sharing my blog with known people and broadcast the recent posts on Facebook. Maybe more people reading the random posts will make me write more (and less randomly).

When I logged on, I realized what a battlefield social media had become. The country is raging over the latest bills/acts, but it was unnerving to read the words thrown by people I thought, I knew. It’s not just the views of some my ‘friends’ but the stringent violence and outright nastiness of it. And yes, I am shocked at the depth of naivety (or plain dumbness if that’s a word) of so many of who have turned into pawns of dark wizards on both sides of the battle. So many different masks have emerged under the faces that were so familiar!

The streets of our cities are full of death-eaters and the dementors have taken over the virtual world. It is not just me; the whole world has gone dark. There is no place for our barbie-fairytopias here. This world needs a million patronuses.

abracadabra

No matter how fiercely you believe in it, a dream is a dream. When the morning alarm rings, you have to wake out if it and start your day.

Is that how a kid feels when she wakes up to the fact that fairies exist only between the covers of books and Santa cannot be real?

I saw it happening with Elena.

How can Santa keep a track on how good each kid in the world was? How could he keep updated on all the changing addresses and reach every home in one night (that too riding on reindeers). How can he enter ours without the proverbial chimney? In fact Santa sounded decidedly witchy---quite like Loverna. OK-it had to be Mom.

Yet, she announced, she would continue to believe in the magic-because she wanted her gift.

She continued to believe in the Tooth fairy too.

It was only when the distracted Tooth fairy forgot to exchange her tooth for a coin one night that she began to get suspicious. We blamed the traffic and the rains (as we do for so many things) and she agreed to give the fairy another chance. The part-time fairy added yet another reminder on her phone and actually followed through. Yet the seeds of doubt grew roots-the fairy acted so much like Mom.

I knew she was convinced when she came home from school and said: You know Mamma, Tara broke her tooth on Monday and it was Friday by the time the Tooth fairy came and left her a coin.

Oh great! Another Mom like me. And I know why she was telling me this.

Anyway, she had to know one day.

Aurora broke her first tooth today!

I quickly added a reminder and started hunting for change (if not my wand).

Yeah, she’ll soon grow out of it, but I want her to believe in the magic for some more time.