Harry.

Harry when my brother first got him home.

Things happen and we don’t always welcome it. We do not understand why something happened at some date, why things had to be changed and something had to disappear. We do not understand fate. We do not understand death. Because death is a change we wish didn’t happen.  Death of someone close is death of a piece of our soul. We have no protection against this lose. We have no way to fight it.

Harry, my little brother, my pet cat died a couple of days back. He had been missing for a few days and I couldn’t find him even after searching for him. I had kept my fingers crossed for his return. And then they found him, dead.

Maybe it was not really Harry that died, maybe it was a different similar looking cat and Harry was going to turn up the same day. That was what I told myself. Until I realized he wasn’t coming back and I mourned him.

I miss Harry. He was my little person, my little cat who went round and round my feet until I picked him up and scratched his ears or rubbed his tummy. He had the most beautiful eyes. So full of pure trust in his family. The first time he climbed up a place he didn’t know a way down, he cried until I came and got him to ground. When he went missing once before and fell down a ditch, he cried out when he heard my voice whistling for him. He trusted us to find him. And I couldn’t find him this time. I wish I could tell him how sorry I am, now much Sansa his sister misses him.

The last picture I took of him.

People tell him he is in a better place. I hope that is true. That he is in a world where there is lot of cat food and many rats to chase. And that there is someone to reprimand him when he brings home a dead rat yet tell him how proud they are of him for having caught one. He will remember me then and not forget he had us. That he has a family that loves him.

Harry was my very favorite, and with these words I honor his memory. I love you, little Harry. Thank you for your meows. They will forever echo in my world.

Books that changed me for better.

Fiction will take you and turn you on your head. It will leave you in tears, or with a content heart or gasping for another page. Fiction also stretches its fingers to the depths of your mind and heart and sows a seed of something new. A lesson. A thought. A feeling. Something that changes your perception of life. That something will make you, will guide you. Fiction will become your teacher or an inspirational story that motivates you. It will be your drive, you motto. Stories or writings that will change the way you look at life. This is top 5 of my top ten novels that has taken me in its words and changed me with its stories. 

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand

                                                                                                                                                                             

Ayn Rand single-handedly changed my perspective on life. Fountainhead showed me what it means to be a true man, a human being  who will not negotiate his principles because what are you when you forgo your principles? Atlas Shrugged liberated me on so many levels. It showed me it is okay to be selfish, rather selfish is the way to live. To remember that without the ‘I’ there is no self. For instance, the ‘I’ in ‘I love you’ is more important that the word love itself. To remember only I can grant myself true happiness. 

This is my favorite Ayn rand quote:

Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life, and that happiness, not pain or mindless self-indulgence, is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values.

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“All grown-ups were once children... but only few of them remember it.”

How much I adore this book. The Little Prince will teach you to never forget the child in you, to never erase the creativity and imagination as you grown up. The book will stay with you, I promise. You will carry it in your heart as a secret weapon against the world’s ugly.

Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse

Ah, this book. When I got through the last page I had this urge to hold the book close, to not let anything I had discovered between those pages fade. It will connect to your spiritual side and will give it a makeover.

“Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”

Particles, Jottings, Sparks: The Collected Brief Poems of Rabindranath Tagore

I love this man. Period. His are the only works that has brought tears to my eyes not because of how sad the story was but just how beautiful his words are. There is in him a stillness of nature, and my personal love for nature is augmented by Tagore’s lyrics.

“Let your life lightly dance on the edges of
Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.” 

Harry Potter by J K Rowling

Yes, you can argue that there are more amazing classics out there that should be in top five. Harry Potter has been such an integral part of my growing up that it refuses to make way for any book of any league out there. It has been a paramount source in molding my first principles of life. Simple lessons like how sometimes you need to make the harder choices or to accept your destiny and not back down even when death is facing you. 

  “Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

What books feature in your top five?


Note:Pictures do not belong to me(except the first one).