Generations Of Love

February 16, 2026 at 7:19 pm (Articles, Fairytales, Humor, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, psyche, research, satire, stories)
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In response to MLMM Monday Wordle #464

https://wp.me/p1vVkp-3hz

Prompt Words:

date, love, good, struggle, touch, wisdom, generations, heart, dreams, songs, coffee, hands

Image Credits: ©PaletteNPixels

On a normal-looking date circled in faint ink, Meera prepared for something that wasn’t written on any calendar.

Not an event, but a return. Three generations were coming home.

She woke early, not because she needed time, but because she needed silence, the kind that makes space for feeling. The kettle went on. The coffee tin opened with its small, familiar click. The scent rose like a gentle announcemen – someone is about to be loved here.

Outside, life was its usual loud self – deadlines, bills, traffic, worry. Inside, Meera’s home was a soft pocket of calm. Her hands moved with the confidence of repetition: cups, spoons, napkins, the old wooden table that had held birthdays, arguments, apologies, and prayers.

A message buzzed.

“Ma, we’re on the way.”

Meera smiled, and her heart answered before her fingers did. If homes had diaries, hers would be written in wood and coffee rings.

Far away from Meera’s home, in a quaint little town, once lived a family in a beautiful home… and at the center of it sat a table that was far more alive than anyone realized.

It wasn’t a fancy table. It wasn’t polished. It didn’t have carvings or gold edges. But it had something else. It had memory.

Every time a family sat around it, the table listened. Every time someone laughed, it kept the sound in its wood. Every time someone cried, it absorbed the salt quietly, like the earth absorbs rain.
And, years passed.

Children grew up. Parents aged. The world became faster and harder. The family began visiting less.

One day, the house became too quiet. The table, lonely, began to shrink, not in size, but in spirit. It started forgetting the weight of elbows, the warmth of plates, the music of voices. It started believing it had failed.

Then, on a particular date, the door opened.
In ran the grandchildren, loud and bright, spilling dreams across the floor like marbles. In came the daughter, carrying invisible struggle in her shoulders. In came the son-in-law, trying to look cheerful the way tired people do.

The table held its breath. They sat. A cup of coffee landed on its surface. Then another, wi laughter. Someone narrated a story. Then a song. The table didn’t just hold them.
It woke up.

Because the table finally understood something wise. A home doesn’t die when people leave. It dies when people stop returning. And the return is not always physical.

Sometimes it is a phone call.  At other times it is a message. Sometimes a memory. Sometimes it is love, deciding to show up anyway.

Back in Meera’s Kitchen…

Meera watched the grandchildren throw themselves onto the floor, drawing castles and dragons and strange new planets. She watched her daughter – grown, capable, exhausted, try to keep up with their energy.

Meera didn’t ask, “How are you?” Because adults rarely answer that honestly. Instead, she did something better. She placed a cup of coffee in her daughter’s hands.

Her daughter took a sip and closed her eyes.
“This tastes like childhood,” she whispered.
Meera felt something shift in her chest. Because it wasn’t just coffee. It was a time machine.

A soft reminder that even when life becomes heavy, you are still allowed to be held. Later, when everyone settled, the grandchildren asked Meera questions the way children do – fearless and hilarious.

“Ajji, did you have cartoons when you were small?”

Meera laughed. “No, darling. We had stories.”

“What kind?”

Meera leaned back, like she was opening a hidden door.

“The kind that teaches you how to survive.”

And so she began.

She told them about her mother’s songs, how they floated through the house while floors were swept and clothes were washed. She told them about days when money was scarce but love was not. She told them about how people used to sit together, not scrolling, not rushing, just being.

The children listened with wide eyes. Her daughter listened with a quieter hunger.
As if the stories were feeding a part of her she didn’t realize had been starving. Because stories do not solve your problems.

But they touch the part of you that remembers you were never meant to carry life alone.

Which brings us readers to the Wisdom hidden in ordinary mundane things. This is the strange truth we don’t say enough. Life doesn’t break us in one dramatic moment.

It wears us down in tiny ways. A thousand small disappointments,  small pressures. A thousand times we tell ourselves, Later. When things are calmer.

But “later” is a magician. It makes years disappear. It makes parents older. It makes children taller. It makes friendships quieter.

And then one day, we look up and realize the struggle wasn’t only in the world. It was also in the distance we accidentally created. That’s why gatherings matter. Not because they are perfect.

But because they are proof. Proof that love can survive time.Proof that generations can still sit in one room and feel connected. Proof that the heart still knows the way back.

When the evening came, the family packed up.

The grandchildren hugged Meera as if they could keep her forever by squeezing hard enough. Her daughter lingered at the door, looking around the house like she was taking a photograph with her soul.

“Ma,” she said softly, “I don’t know how you did it. You make life look… possible.”

Meera took her daughter’s hands. They were the same hands she once held when her daughter was learning to walk. Now they were older, hands that had held babies, burdens, and brave faces.

Meera squeezed gently.

“I didn’t always do it well,” she said. “I just kept loving.”

Her daughter nodded, tears rising.
Meera smiled. “Also… coffee helped.”
Her daughter laughed, and the laughter sounded like healing.

After the car drove away, Meera stood alone in the quiet. The house was empty again. But it wasn’t lonely. It was full – of echoes, of warmth,
of the invisible gold that only some understand.

And Meera realized something she wished the whole world would remember. We spend so much of our lives chasing big dreams, big wins, big proof. But the most powerful magic is smaller than that.

It is the courage to return, to call, to show up, to sit at the same table again. To touch someone’s tired hands and say, without words…

You’re not alone.

So if you’re reading this and life has been heavy, let this be your gentle question.

What would happen if, on your next ordinary date, you chose love on purpose and became the reason someone else believes in good again?

© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

4 Comments

The Blog That Waited

February 16, 2026 at 12:08 am (Articles, Fairytales, history, Humor, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, psyche, research, satire, stories)
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In response to Sadje’s Sunday Poser #273

Growing as a Writer/Blogger

https://wp.me/paf3ao-mJi

I didn’t begin blogging because I wanted an audience.

I began it the way you begin lighting a lamp in a room you love, because someone precious to you was sitting in the dark. Back in 2010, I registered this blog as a gift for my mother.

Not the kind you wrap in shiny paper, but the kind that lasts. The kind that quietly says, I see you. I believe in you. I want the world to have access to the way your mind works.

My mother has always been a writer, not merely someone who puts words on paper, but someone who makes thoughts feel like living things. She has that rare kind of intelligence that doesn’t announce itself loudly, but leaves you stunned once you’ve heard it. When she spoke, her ideas didn’t just land… they lingered.

Listening to her was like listening to music. The kind that doesn’t just entertain you, but rearranges something inside you.

In those early days, the blog became a small home for her words. She published a few pieces. It also became a gentle archive of things she loved, favorite quotes, poets, and thoughts that felt too beautiful to lose. And sometimes, with permission, it held pieces written by family too. It wasn’t just a blog.

It was a bookshelf with a heartbeat.
But life, as it often does, moved forward with its heavy hands.Time, age, responsibilities came. The blog gathered dust, like so many meaningful things do when the world becomes too loud and too fast.

And somewhere along the way, her stories simply changed their audience, she began telling them to her grandkids, no longer narrating onto paper, but into wide, listening eyes.” Eventually, the blog was forgotten, not because it wasn’t important, but because grief and routine are very skilled at pushing even the brightest things into the corners.

And then, when my father passed away, I watched my mother break in a way I didn’t know was possible. There are some kinds of pain that don’t scream. They simply… silence a person. They steal their appetite, their laughter, their sense of time. They make them sit for hours with a blank stare, as if their mind is searching for a door that used to be there.

After my dad’s passing, my mother started writing again. She would sit for long stretches, trying to write, and failing. Watching her struggle was one of the most heart-wrenching experiences of my life. Because this wasn’t just grief. This was cruel. This was watching a woman who could once wield pens and ladles, who could build a home, build a sentence, build a whole world, become mute.

Not mute in voice. Mute in spirit. And something in me couldn’t accept that. I couldn’t accept that the woman who had given me life, who had filled my childhood with language and imagination, would now be left with nothing but silence.

So in February 2025, I did something that surprised even me.

I began writing.

But truthfully… writing was never a stranger to me. I have always loved it, the way some people love rain, or old songs, or the smell of books. Long before the word blogger ever found its way into my life, I wrote for magazines and independent publishers, and I translated stories too, sometimes my own, sometimes those of other authors.

In that quiet work, I learned something sacred…that words can travel across pages, across languages, across lives… and still arrive intact. And perhaps that is why, when my mother began slipping into silence, I instinctively reached for the one thing I knew could still move – language.

And when the words returned, they did not return in straight lines. Not in the traditional “blogging” sense. Not in neat little posts that fit into boxes. But in my own way, through stories, reflections, metaphors, strange little thought experiments, and pieces that wandered like curious children. I wrote, not because I thought I was brilliant. I wrote because I wanted my mother to feel alive again, and because I needed her eyes to light up again. And they did.

I still remember it, the way her face softened when she read something I wrote. The way her eyes held a glow that grief had dimmed for too long. The way she started looking forward to my words, and also to the words of other bloggers. Slowly, something returned. Not the old version of her, because loss changes a person forever.

But something returned – a spark, reason to wake up to and breathe. And in the process, something happened to me too, because I didn’t just start writing. I started belonging. I found a world I didn’t expect – a wonderful group of friends who didn’t know me personally, yet offered something unbelievably personal – kindness, encouragement, understanding, and love.

The kind of love that doesn’t come with conditions. The kind that doesn’t ask you to be perfect before it lets you sit at the table.

I began reading other bloggers, not casually, but deeply, absorbing their thoughts, their styles, their courage, their vulnerability. Every post I read became a quiet lesson. Every voice I encountered added something to my internal library.
And before I realized it, I was building a treasure chest. Not of money but of minds, of perspectives, of words that made me feel less alone in the universe. It became an obsession, not the unhealthy kind, but the kind that makes you feel hungry for life again. The kind that reminds you that creation is a form of survival.

And then came the word challenges – the prompts, the single words, the strange constraints. At first, I thought…How can one word possibly inspire anything? But I was wrong, because there is something magical about being handed a word and being asked to create.

It’s like being given a tiny seed and being told: Common…grow a forest.

And when you do it, when you sit down and wrestle with a prompt, when you stretch your imagination in directions you wouldn’t have chosen on your own, something starts flowing.
Creativity begins to move again, as a current. I realized that working entirely in my own head is wonderful… but working within a shared prompt is powerful. It pulls you out of your usual patterns. It makes you play. It makes you brave.

So I made a quiet promise. With my mother’s blessings, I took it upon myself to give life back to her blog, to keep it growing, and breathing, and to make sure it never gathers dust again. Because to me, this blog is no longer just a website. It is a bridge between generations.
It is my way of telling my mother: You are not done.
It is my way of telling grief: You don’t get to take everything.
And maybe, without even planning it, it has become something else too.
A place where my mother’s love and my words meet.
A place where strangers become friends.
A place where writing becomes a form of light.

So when you ask how I have evolved as a writer or blogger over the years – the honest answer is this:
I didn’t evolve in technique first. I evolved in purpose. I learned that writing is not always about being clever. Sometimes it’s about being present. Sometimes it’s about being a daughter. Sometimes it’s about taking the hand of someone you love and walking them gently back toward themselves. I also learned that words can be medicine, not the kind that erases pain, but the kind that makes pain bearable, and give it shape.
The kind that turns it into something you can hold, instead of something that only holds you down.

And if there is one thing I know now, it is this. A blog can be a diary. A blog can be a stage. A blog can be a scrapbook. But sometimes… a blog is a heartbeat. A proof that someone is still here – Still thinking, still trying, creating, and still loving.

I began this journey for my mother, but somewhere along the way, it began healing parts of me too. And now, as I continue to write, prompt by prompt, story by story, word by word—I keep asking myself…

If writing can bring light back into one grieving heart… what else might it bring back into yours?

© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

9 Comments

The Trail, the Thinker, and the Tinker

February 15, 2026 at 11:26 am (Articles, Fairytales, Humor, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, psyche, research, satire, stories)
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In response to pensitivity’s TTC Three Things Challenge #MM 336

Prompt: Trail, Think, Tinker

In a place where the sky was always slightly lavender, like it had once blushed and never fully recovered, there existed a trail no map could hold.

It didn’t begin anywhere obvious. It started in the middle of a field of moonflowers, where the petals opened only for people who had unfinished questions in their pockets.

The locals called it The Wandering Trail.

Not because it moved…but because it only appeared for those who were willing to move first.

One evening, a young Thinker arrived at the edge of that field. He carried a satchel full of thoughts – heavy ones, clever ones, useless ones, and one tiny thought that kept poking him like a pebble in a shoe.

What if I’m meant for something… and I’m missing it?

He was the kind of person who could sit under a tree and debate the meaning of wind for six hours, and then forget to drink water (Kind of like me 😊).
He looked at the trail. It shimmered faintly, like a ribbon woven from starlight and indecision.

The Thinker frowned. “Where does it lead?” he asked. The trail did not answer. So he did what Thinkers always do when the world refuses to explain itself. He sat down and began to analyze the trail. He examined the curve. He studied the sparkle. He tried to calculate the probability of enchantment.

He wondered whether the trail was metaphorical, literal, psychological, or just poorly lit.

Hours passed. The moon rose. The moon yawned. The moon started looking mildly bored. And still, the Thinker remained. Because to him, stepping onto something unknown felt irresponsible.

Just before dawn, a second figure arrived. A Tinker. She had a messy bun made of twine, a belt full of tiny tools, and fingers stained with the joyful evidence of experimentation.

She didn’t carry a satchel of thoughts. She carried a pouch of parts. Little gears. Bent spoons. Broken music-box keys.

A compass that always pointed toward “Maybe.” She saw the trail and grinned. “Ooo,” she said. “That looks like trouble. I love it.”

The Thinker stood up immediately, relieved to have someone else present to validate his overthinking.

“Wait,” he said urgently. “We don’t know where it leads.”

The Tinker shrugged.

“Then we’ll find out.”

“That’s not a plan,” the Thinker protested.

The Tinker smiled.

“No,” she said. “It’s a beginning.”

The Thinker watched in mild horror as she stepped onto the trail without so much as a spreadsheet.

The moment her foot touched it, the trail brightened. Not blindingly and dramatically, just… warmly.

Like a lantern had been lit inside the world. The Thinker blinked. The Tinker turned around and waved.

“See?” she said. “It likes feet.”

The Thinker hesitated. Then he stepped onto the trail too. And something strange happened. The trail grew, ahead. It extended forward like it was being stitched in real-time by invisible hands. They walked, and the trail took them through places that felt like dreams someone forgot to wake up from.

They crossed a river that flowed upward, carrying fallen leaves back to their branches. They passed a forest where every tree held a different season in its arms. They walked through a village of sleeping clocks, each one ticking softly in someone else’s tempo.

And all along the way, the Thinker kept asking questions.

“Is this real?”

“Why is that cloud shaped like regret?”

“What if the trail is a test?”

“What if we fail?”

The Tinker, meanwhile, kept doing what she did best. She tinkered. When they came to a broken bridge made of fog, she pulled out a handful of copper wire and tied the fog into knots until it held.

When they encountered a door that only opened for laughter, she built a tiny joke-machine out of springs and a harmonica. When the Thinker grew afraid, she didn’t argue with his fear. She simply built him a small lantern from a bottle and a captured firefly, and said:

“Hold this. Walk anyway.”

After many hours, the trail began to narrow. Its starlight shimmer dimmed. Its edges blurred. Ahead, the air grew thick and quiet, like the world was holding its breath.

They arrived at a place that looked almost ordinary – A clearing. A single stone, with a sign. THE END OF THE TRAIL.

The Thinker felt his heart sink.

“That’s it?” he whispered.
“All this… for a rock?”

The Tinker crouched and examined the stone.
She tapped it. Knocked on it, and listened.
Then she smiled. “No,” she said softly. “This is not the end.” She pointed.

And the Thinker saw something he hadn’t noticed before. On the stone were tiny grooves.
Not random or decorative. They were… instructions. The Thinker leaned closer. The grooves formed words.

And the words said: BUILD THE REST.

The Thinker stared. His mind flooded with questions like a storm. “But… how? With what? We don’t have enough. We don’t know where it goes. We don’t know if it’s right…”

The Tinker placed a gentle hand on the stone. Then she opened her pouch and poured out her parts. Gears, keys and wire and little fragments of broken things. And she began assembling something. Not quickly or perfectly, but with faith in the act itself.

The Thinker watched, stunned.

“What are you making?” he asked.

The Tinker didn’t look up.

“A continuation,” she said.

The Thinker swallowed.

“And what if it’s wrong?”

The Tinker finally looked at him.

Her eyes were bright in that half-dawn light.

“Then we adjust.”

The Thinker stood very still.
Because for the first time, he understood something that all his thinking had never quite given him. A trail is not always something you find.

Sometimes…A trail is something you become.
Slowly, he reached into his satchel. He didn’t pull out a tool. He pulled out a thought, not a  heavy or clever one. A small, trembling thought that had been hiding beneath the others. What if I don’t need certainty to begin?

He handed it to the Tinker. And she did something impossible. She fitted it into the mechanism like it had always belonged there.
The device clicked. The air shimmered.

And in front of them, the trail extended again, fresh starlight unfurling like a ribbon being woven from their combined courage.

The Thinker exhaled. The Tinker stood up.
And together, they stepped forward. And the clearing behind them grew quiet again.
But if you ever pass through that lavender sky and that field of moonflowers…If you ever arrive with questions in your pocket…

You may notice something extraordinary. The trail does not appear for the ones who know. It appears for the ones who walk, and it stays for the ones who think, and it grows for the ones who tinker.

Because in the end…

The world doesn’t always reward the person who understands the path. Sometimes, it rewards the person who has the audacity to create it.

© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

5 Comments

Schrodinger’s Exit

February 15, 2026 at 8:35 am (Articles, Fairytales, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, psyche, research, satire, stories)
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In response to Fandango’s One Word Challenge FOWC

Prompt: Tunnel

https://wp.me/pfZzxd-u18

A tunnel is one of those words that sounds simple until you stare at it long enough and realize it contains an entire philosophy.

At first glance, it’s just engineering – a passage carved through rock, a practical shortcut through what refuses to move. We build tunnels because the world is stubborn. Mountains don’t politely step aside. Cities don’t widen just because traffic is late. Rivers don’t pause so we can cross without getting our shoes wet. So we do the most human thing imaginable – we don’t argue with the obstacle, we go through it.

A tunnel is proof that our species doesn’t only travel across the Earth; it negotiates with it.

But the longer you sit with the word, the more it starts to expand. A tunnel isn’t only a physical structure. It is a condition. It is what happens when the view disappears but movement continues.

There are tunnels you drive through, and tunnels you live through. We even have a phrase for the mind when it becomes narrow and urgent – tunnel vision.

The world shrinks to a single line. Everything else, beauty, nuance, possibility, drops out of frame. It can happen in panic, ambition, grief, or love. It can happen when you’re chasing something, or when you’re trying to survive something. And in those moments, life stops being a landscape and becomes a corridor.

The brain does this as a form of mercy. It reduces the world to what you can handle. But it also does it as a form of danger. It makes you forget that the sky exists.

And then there’s the strangest meaning of all, one that sounds like science fiction but is very real: quantum tunneling. In classical physics, a barrier is a barrier. You can’t pass through it unless you have enough energy to climb over it.

But in the quantum world, particles behave like mischievous poets. They don’t always go over walls. Sometimes they appear on the other side as if reality briefly stopped enforcing its own rules.

A particle can face an impossible barrier and still make it through, not by brute force, not by strategy, but by probability. By a kind of cosmic “maybe.”

Which is absurd, if you think about it. The universe, the very thing we assume is strict and logical, contains a mechanism for slipping through the impossible.

And that’s where the word “tunnel” begins to feel less like a noun and more like a metaphor the cosmos left lying around for us to find.

Because human life is full of barriers we don’t have the energy to climb.

Not the dramatic ones, those are almost easier. The quiet barriers are the ones that exhaust us: a season of uncertainty, a stretch of loneliness, a long illness, a job that slowly hollows you out, a relationship that becomes a room with no windows, a dream that doesn’t die but also doesn’t arrive.

The kind of obstacle you can’t fight head-on because it isn’t a single enemy. It’s an atmosphere. So you tunnel.

You keep moving through the dark, not because you are certain of the outcome, but because the alternative is to stop and let the darkness become your address.

And sometimes the tunnel is literal. Sometimes it is the story you don’t forget.

There is an old tale from a small mountain town, one of those places where winter arrives like a verdict and the roads behave like fragile promises. The town had a problem that looked like a mountain and felt like a curse. Every year, heavy snow would close the only pass. Food came late. Medicine came later. People learned to ration not just supplies, but hope.

One year, after a particularly brutal winter, the town decided they were done bargaining with the mountain. They didn’t have much money. They didn’t have advanced machinery. But they had something oddly more powerful –  a collective refusal to remain trapped.

They began digging a tunnel.

At first, it was almost comical. A handful of people with basic tools, facing rock that had existed longer than their entire bloodline. Outsiders laughed. Experts shook their heads. Even some locals whispered that it was pointless, that the mountain would win, because mountains always do. But the digging continued.

Day after day, the tunnel grew by inches. And inches don’t look like progress when your enemy is a thousand feet of stone. It looked like stubbornness. It looked like denial. It looked like a town wasting its time.

Until one day, years later, the sound changed.

The diggers noticed it first. The pickaxes began to strike with a slightly different echo. The air felt less heavy. The dust shifted. The tunnel, this long dark effort with no visible reward, suddenly felt… thinner. And then it happened. A faint draft came through.

It wasn’t warm, dramatic, or even particularly pleasant. But it was air from the other side.

The town didn’t celebrate immediately. They didn’t throw a festival or declare victory. Many of them just stood there in silence, because something about that moment was too intimate for applause. It wasn’t just the tunnel that had broken through. It was a belief. A new law of living.

The mountain had been unmovable. So they moved themselves. That’s what tunnels do. They don’t remove obstacles. They create an alternative reality inside them.

And this is where the word becomes quietly terrifying. Because a tunnel is also a place where you cannot turn around easily. It commits you.

Once you enter a tunnel, you accept a certain kind of faith…that there is an exit. That the people who designed it knew what they were doing. That the dark is temporary. That the direction you’re moving is still correct.

And the truth is, most of us spend a lot of our lives inside tunnels we didn’t consciously choose.

We inherit them. We fall into them. We build them out of habit. We stay in them because leaving feels harder than continuing. We call it loyalty, practicality, maturity, “being realistic.” We even decorate them with routines so we don’t notice the walls.

Sometimes a tunnel is a refuge. Sometimes it is a trap. And sometimes it is both, depending on whether you’re moving or merely existing.

But here is the most unsettling and beautiful thing about tunnels. They are not defined by darkness. They are defined by direction.

A tunnel is not the absence of light. It is the presence of forward motion when light is unavailable. It is what you do when you can’t see far enough to be confident but you walk anyway.

And if quantum tunneling teaches us anything, it’s this.  Reality has always had a loophole for the impossible. Not a guarantee, or a shortcut. A loophole, a chance, a probability. Which means the human version of tunneling isn’t pretending obstacles aren’t real. It’s refusing to let obstacles become final.

So maybe the question isn’t whether you’re in a tunnel. Most of us are. The question is, Is your tunnel leading you somewhere… or are you just getting used to the dark?

And if you could stop today, if you could place your hand on the wall of your life and listen for that subtle change in echo, would you hear the draft of another side?

Or would you realize, with equal awe and consternation, that the only thing separating you from open sky is the part of you that hasn’t started digging yet?

So here’s the question that matters, the one that should haunt you in a useful way…

What impossible barrier in your life have you been trying to climb, when the more human, more scientific, more revolutionary act would be to tunnel through it, one inch, one day, one decision at a time?

© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

6 Comments

Say It

February 15, 2026 at 6:40 am (Articles, Fairytales, Humor, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, psyche, research, satire, stories)
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In response to Ragtagdailyprompt

RDP Sunday: Brusque

https://wp.me/p9YcOU-6cB

In the city of Velvet, people didn’t speak. They performed. Words were never simply said. They were draped, decorated, perfumed, and delivered with the kind of care usually reserved for royal babies and fragile antiques.

If you wanted someone to pass the salt, you didn’t say, “Pass the salt.”

You said, “I don’t mean to impose, and I truly appreciate your presence at this table, and I completely understand if this isn’t the right moment, but if it’s not too much trouble, would you be open to possibly considering handing me the salt at your earliest convenience?”

And then you waited while the other person smiled, nodded, and replied:

“Oh my goodness, thank you so much for asking so kindly. I’d absolutely love to explore that possibility. Let me circle back with the salt.”

The salt arrived in seven minutes.

In Velvet, people didn’t say “no” either. That was considered barbaric.

Instead, they said things like:

“Let’s revisit this in the next season of our lives.” Or,

“I hear you, and I’m holding space for that request.” Or,

“I’m not aligned with that energy right now.”

Nobody knew what anyone meant, but everyone was very well-mannered about it. The city ran on politeness the way engines ran on fuel. And yet, strangely, nothing ever moved.

Projects were started but never finished. Meetings began but never ended. Plans were proposed, revised, re-proposed, and gently buried under layers of considerate language until they disappeared forever.

The citizens of Velvet were exhausted. Not from doing too much. From saying too much.

One day, a stranger arrived…

No one knew where he came from. Some said the North. Some said a land where people spoke in single syllables and considered small talk a mild disease.

He wore no fine velvet cloak. No embroidered gloves. No ribbons of diplomacy tied around his sentences.

He simply walked into the marketplace, looked around, and asked the fruit seller:

“Apples?”

The fruit seller blinked as if the stranger had thrown a rock at his philosophy.

“Apples,” the stranger repeated.

A crowd gathered.

The fruit seller, trembling slightly, tried to recover. “Oh! Hello. Welcome. I’m so delighted you’re here. Apples are such a meaningful choice. Before we proceed, I’d like to acknowledge the courage it takes to request fruit in a public setting…”

“Two,” the stranger said. The fruit seller fell silent. The crowd fell silent. The stranger placed two coins on the table, took two apples, and walked away. People stared after him, stunned.

A child whispered, “He didn’t say thank you.”

An old man whispered back, “He didn’t say anything unnecessary.”

A woman clutched her chest as if she’d witnessed a public crime. “That wasn’t communication,” she said.

“No,” someone replied quietly. “That was clarity.”

The next day, the stranger entered the Town Hall, where the Council of Velvet was holding its weekly meeting. These meetings were famous. Not because anything happened, but because they were long enough to qualify as seasonal events.

The Council sat in a circle on cushions. There were twelve members and thirteen cups of herbal tea, because one cup was always reserved for “the spirit of collaboration.”

The Mayor began, as always, with the ceremonial opening.

“I hope this meeting finds you all in a space of peace and receptivity. Before we begin, I’d like to acknowledge the emotional labor of being here. We are grateful for the opportunity to…”

“Stop,” the stranger said.

The Mayor froze. A gasp ran through the room like a ripple in a pond.

The Mayor blinked. “I’m sorry?”

The stranger’s voice was calm. Not angry and not cruel. Just… direct.

“Why are you meeting?”

The Council looked at each other, panicked. The question felt indecent, like being asked to remove one’s hat in public.

One council member cleared his throat. “We are here to explore solutions for the bridge.”

“The bridge?” the stranger asked.

“Yes,” said the Mayor. “The bridge has been… in a state of transition.”

“What state?” the stranger said.

The Mayor smiled nervously. “A state of… not currently being safe.”

The stranger stood. “So it’s broken.”

The Council flinched as if he’d said a forbidden word.

“It’s not broken,” a council member protested. “It’s just…experiencing structural challenges.”

The stranger nodded. “Broken.”

A silence fell. It wasn’t the usual Velvet silence – soft, polite, full of hidden meaning.

It was a new kind of silence. The kind that happens when truth enters the room and everyone suddenly remembers they have ears.

The stranger looked around the circle.

“Fix it.”

The Mayor laughed politely. “Oh! Yes. We are very much aligned with that intention.”

“Today,” the stranger added.

A council member leaned forward. “Well, we’d love to, but we need to form a committee to…”

“No,” said the stranger.

That word struck the room like a bell.

No, simple, clean and sharp. The Council stared.

The stranger continued, “You don’t need a committee. You need wood, stone, rope, and workers. Hire them. Pay them. Start.”

The Mayor’s smile trembled. “That’s… very decisive.”

“It’s a bridge,” the stranger said. “Not a poem.”

Within an hour, something unprecedented happened in Velvet. A decision was made. Not discussed. Not massaged into gentleness. Not wrapped in ten layers of respectful language.

Just made. Workers were hired. Materials were gathered. The bridge was repaired. By sunset, people were walking across it again. The citizens stood at the riverbank, watching in disbelief. Some wept, not because the bridge was fixed, but because they had forgotten what it felt like for the world to move.

Over the next weeks, the stranger became a strange legend. People began seeking him out. They came with tangled lives and long explanations.

“I just wanted to say that I’ve been thinking about the way things have been lately, and I’m not sure if it’s the right time to bring this up, but I feel like maybe…”

“Say it,” the stranger would interrupt.

And then, trembling, the person would say what they actually meant.

“I’m unhappy.” or “I’m afraid.” or “I don’t want this anymore.”

And each time, the stranger would nod as if receiving a simple package.

“Good,” he’d say. “Now you know.”

One day, a young woman approached him near the repaired bridge.

“I don’t understand you,” she admitted.

He looked at her. “What don’t you understand?”

“You don’t soften anything,” she said. “Aren’t you afraid people will dislike you?”

The stranger considered this for a moment. Then he said, “If people dislike me because I don’t decorate truth, they didn’t like me. They liked my decorations.”

The young woman swallowed.

“That sounds lonely.”

The stranger shrugged. “It’s quieter.”

She stared at the river. “And kinder?”

The stranger didn’t answer immediately.

Then he said, “Sometimes. When people stop drowning in words, they can finally breathe.”

Years later, Velvet still loved its politeness. It didn’t become a city of grunts and blunt commands. But it changed.

People began to speak with fewer ribbons. They learned that clarity wasn’t cruelty. They learned that “no” was not violence. They learned that honesty could be delivered without drama.

And the strangest part?

They discovered that when you stop performing, you start living. The citizens built a small statue of the stranger near the bridge.

It wasn’t grand. No velvet. No gilded plaque. No poetic inscription.

Just two words carved into stone.

“Say it.”

© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

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The U-Turn Redemption

February 15, 2026 at 3:53 am (Articles, Fairytales, Humor, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, psyche, research, satire, stories)
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Have you ever unintentionally broken the law?

Once upon a time, in a very ordinary city, there lived two people.

The first was a man who treated the law like it was sacred scripture. He waited at red lights even when the road was empty. He crossed only at zebra crossings. He read “No Parking” signs the way poets read love letters.

The second was a woman who treated the law like… a polite suggestion. She wasn’t a criminal. She was simply creative with timing.
If the light was red but the road was quiet, she believed the universe was clearly telling her:

“Go ahead. You’re the main character.”

One day, both of them reached the same crosswalk. The man stood still, patient and calm. The woman stepped forward, ready to cross.

And then a small child appeared out of nowhere, pointed at the woman and announced loudly:

LADY YOU’RE BREAKING RULES.

The woman froze. Because nothing in the world is more terrifying than being publicly shamed by a child with the confidence of a Supreme Court judge.

And that, dear reader, is how the woman began her transformation. Not because of the law, but because of… witnesses.

Have You Ever Unintentionally Broken the Law?

The answer is Yes. I used to be a part-time outlaw, mostly in traffic. And, If you’ve never broken the law unintentionally, I want to congratulate you.

You are either…

1. A saint
2. A monk
3. Or someone who has never tried to drive in India during peak hours.

Because here, traffic laws are not rules.
They are… aspirations.

Now, let’s talk about my criminal past – the Pre-Motherhood Era. Before motherhood, I broke laws the way people break diets. Not with evil intent, but more like:

“Okay fine… just this once.”

I wasn’t out there doing dramatic crimes. No bank robberies, no fraud, and no illegal trading. My crimes were soft, and gentle.

Like Parking in a “No Parking” zone for “two minutes” (which spiritually became 17 minutes)

Crossing roads with a confidence that said, “God will handle it.”

Treating “speed limit” like it was a motivational quote

And of course…traffic violations.
The socially acceptable criminal hobby.

Let me tell you about the day my entire personality changed. I was driving somewhere. I don’t even remember where. But I do remember I was late. And when you’re late, you start believing strange things like:

“Rules are for people with free time.”

“The red light is just a suggestion.”

“If I’m late, the government should understand.”

So I did what any reasonable former outlaw would do. I did a tiny little traffic crime. The kind where you still think you’re a good person.

And from the back seat, I heard it. A tiny voice. My child. Clear as a courtroom microphone.

“Mumma… why did you do that? Isn’t that wrong?”

I swear my soul left my body. Not because I was caught. But because I was caught by someone who calls me “Mumma.”

I looked into the rear-view mirror and saw my child watching me with the seriousness of a disappointed principal.

And I realized something horrible. My child wasn’t just watching me drive. They were watching me become a person.

So basically, motherhood became my personal law enforcement agency. You know how some people become disciplined after joining the army?

I became disciplined after having children. Because children are not just children. They are tiny detectives, moral philosophers and full-time whistleblowers


Before motherhood, I could do a sneaky U-turn and feel fine. After motherhood? If I even think of bending a rule, I can already hear:

“Mumma… rules are rules.”
And then I imagine them going to school and announcing: “My mother breaks traffic rules.”

And suddenly I’m not breaking the law. I’m breaking my own reputation.

So, forget police, forget fines, forget the legal system. The real fear is your child’s honest commentary, because a police officer might stop you once, but your child will remember it forever.

A police officer will fine you. But your child will bring it up at family gatherings like a documentary narrator, “This is the woman who taught me honesty…but also once crossed at a red light.”

Since motherhood, I drive like I’m in a public service advertisement. I stop at red lights even when no one is around. I wear my seatbelt like it’s part of my religion. I don’t even touch my phone while driving.

Not because I’m perfect, but because I know, I am raising tiny humans who will copy me. And then do it louder. With regards to anything, motherhood gave me a conscience with a child’s voice.

And that is the strictest law enforcement in the universe.

© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

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Play It by Ear(th)

February 15, 2026 at 3:26 am (Articles, Fairytales, Humor, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, psyche, research, satire, stories)
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In response to Ragtagdailyprompt

RDP Saturday: Playful

https://wp.me/p9YcOU-6cr

Nobody tells you this when you’re little, but the world has secret places. Not the obvious ones, like behind the sofa, or under the bed, or inside your mother’s handbag where the mints go to die.
I mean the real secret places.
The ones that don’t show up unless you are slightly bored… and slightly brave, and not trying too hard to be sensible.

That’s how I found it. I wasn’t even looking. I was just trying to escape a grown-up conversation.
You know the kind. The kind where adults say important things like “tax,” and “deadlines,” and “networking,” and their faces all tighten like they’re wearing invisible shoes that are too small. So, I slipped away.

I walked down the hall of our house, past the door that always sticks, past the cupboard where the vacuum cleaner lives, and past the big mirror that makes you look taller than you are. And that’s when I saw something I had never seen before.
A door. Not a normal door. A door that looked… wrong. It was too small to be for adults. And it was tucked between two walls where there had definitely been no door yesterday.

It was painted the color of early-morning sky. The kind of blue that makes you think of wishes. And it had a handle shaped like a spiral. Like a snail shell, like a tiny galaxy, like the curl at the end of a smile.

Above it was a sign, written in handwriting that looked like it belonged to someone who didn’t believe in straight lines.
It said:

Serious people only
(ABSOLUTELY NO PLAYFUL CHILDREN ALLOWED)
Naturally, I opened it. Inside was a long corridor. So long it looked like it went right into the future. The floor was made of stone. The walls were stone too, and they were covered with doors. Thousands of doors. And every door had a word carved into it. Not fun words, like “ice cream” or “pirates” or “dragons.”

Grown-up words. Words that make you feel like you should sit up straight even if you’re standing.
like DUTY, REPUTATIONSUCCESS, WORK, MARRIAGE, POLITE SMILING which I thought was a bit unnecessary.

And then I noticed something else. There were people in the corridor – many adults. They weren’t walking like normal people. They were walking like the corridor was pulling them forward by invisible strings. Their shoulders were hunched. Their eyes were tired. They looked like they had forgotten how to blink properly. They passed all the doors without opening any of them. They kept walking like they were late for something they didn’t even want to attend.

I stood very still. Because it felt like I had wandered into a place where playfulness had been outlawed.

I took one step forward.  The corridor made a sound. A serious sound, like a headmaster clearing his throat. And suddenly I understood something without anyone telling me. This corridor was not in our house. This corridor was inside the world. Inside grown-up life, where people go when they stop being playful.

I walked along the stone floor and tried reading the doors. FEAR, CONTROL, PERFECTION,
BUSY. KEEPING IT TOGETHER, DOING THE RIGHT THING.

There was even a door that said: I’M FINE and that door looked the heaviest of all.

I don’t know why I did it. Maybe it was because I was curious and small enough to not be impressed.
Maybe it was because children are born with a kind of playful bravery adults forget. But I put my ear against the door that said JOY. And do you know what I heard? Nothing. Not even a tiny giggle or a whisper. Just… emptiness. Like the room behind it had been abandoned for years. That made my stomach feel strange. Like I’d swallowed a cold coin.

I walked farther. The corridor got darker. The words on the doors started to change. They became heavier words, which sounded like they had teeth. REGRET, LONELINESS, WHAT IF, NOT ENOUGH, TOO LATE.

At the very end of the corridor, there was a door bigger than all the others. It had no word on it. No handle either. It was simply there – enormous, silent, waiting. And even though it didn’t have a name, I knew what it was. I knew it in the way you know thunder is coming before the rain.

The adults walking past me didn’t look at it. But their footsteps became quieter as they approached it, as if they were already beginning to disappear.

That’s when I heard it. A sound, behind me. A very tiny laugh, like someone trying not to be caught.
I spun around so fast I nearly fell over. And there, halfway down the corridor, between two enormous doors – ACHIEVEMENT and APPEARANCES – was something that absolutely, positively, should not have been there.

A little door. A door that was so small, it looked like it belonged to a rabbit. And it wasn’t made of stone. It was made of warm wood. The kind of wood that remembers being a tree. It was covered in scratches and paint marks and little dents, as if a thousand playful children had knocked on it with sticky hands.

There was no word carved into it. Only the spiral symbol again. I walked toward it slowly. As I did, the corridor changed. The stone walls seemed to frown. The air became colder. The big doors shook slightly, like they didn’t approve. And then something even stranger happened. The adults in the corridor stopped walking, just for a moment.

One man looked down at his hands as if he didn’t recognize them. A woman touched her own face like she was trying to remember what it felt like to be playful. A very old man blinked hard, like he’d heard a song from a long time ago. Then they all kept walking again, but their steps were not as steady as before.

I reached the little door. The handle was not a handle. It was a spinning top. A tiny, carved top, fixed into the wood like a secret. I touched it, and the door giggled like a hiccup of joy , like a bubble popping. Like the world itself turning playful for a second.

I turned the top. The little door opened. And I expected to see a room, or at least a normal hallway.

But what I saw made my breath leave my body like it had decided to go on holiday. It was a sky – a whole sky, full of stars, warm like they were alive. And the air smelled like rain on hot I stepped through.

The moment my foot touched the ground, something happened behind me. In the sky-world, there were children. Children made of light, who ran in loops and spirals, laughing without words. They were playing a game that didn’t have rules, or maybe the rules were written in a language only playful hearts can read.

One of them ran toward me, And I felt my eyes sting, because it looked like me – the younger version of me, when I still believed the world was enchanted by default. The child held out a spinning top. A real one, painted in colors so bright they didn’t look like paint, but like stolen pieces of sunrise.

I took it. And the second it touched my palm, Time… hiccupped. The stars rearranged themselves slightly, as if to get a better view. The wind turned into music.  And somewhere far away, I heard the corridor’s stone doors creak, like they were losing their grip. The child didn’t speak, but smiled.
“You found the playful door.”

I sat down on the ground. I spun the top. It danced, not in circles, in stories. It spun like it was remembering something. And suddenly, in my chest, I felt a door open. A door I didn’t even know I had. And something came out of it – small and bright. A laugh. My laugh. The laugh I had been keeping quiet lately because adults don’t like it when you’re too playful.

I laughed. And I laughed. Until tears came. But they weren’t sad tears. They were the kind of tears you cry when you find something you thought you’d lost. Like when you find a toy from when you were tiny, and you hold it and remember who you were before you learned to be careful.

Then I looked back. The corridor was still there. The heavy doors were still there. But something had changed. The big doors didn’t look like gods anymore. They looked like rules people had agreed to obey. And in the stone, I could see tiny cracks, thin as hairlines, spreading outward from the little door. Like the corridor was beginning to break, not because it was being attacked, but because it was being… softened, by something playful.

I walked back through the corridor and returned home. The grown-ups were still talking about taxes and deadlines. It was still raining. Everything looked normal. But I knew something now.

I knew the world had a hidden door. A door adults forget. A door children can still find.

A door that leads back to the part of you that stays playful even when life tries to make you hard.
And the strangest thing? That night, when everyone was asleep, I heard something from the walls.
A sound so faint I thought I imagined it. A tiny laugh. Like a star learning to giggle. Like time itself cracking a joke. Like the world whispering: “Stay playful. Or you will forget the way back.”

© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

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Arrested by Affection

February 13, 2026 at 9:25 pm (Articles, Fairytales, Humor, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, Poetry (Self Inspired), psyche, research, satire, stories)
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In response to Linda G. Hill’s Stream of Consciousness for Feb 14, 2026 #SoCS

Prompt: Love

https://wp.me/p2CQXv-57J

Love is not a rose.
Love is a system update
that installs itself at 2:07 a.m.
without permission
and suddenly your brain,
a once-respectable organization
starts buffering on basic sentences like,
“Hi.”

Love is a software bug.
A glittery one.
A romantic virus.
A polite malware.
It corrupts your dignity folder,
renames “self-respect” as “seen at 11:48,”
and makes your heart run hot
like a laptop watching emotions in 4K.

Love is an alien invasion.
First it observes.
Then it abducts.
Then it replaces your internal organs
with playlists and hope.
And you, the victim,
stand there like,
“Wow… I feel so chosen,”
while your sleep schedule is being dismantled
in a spaceship made of longing.

It is a haunted house
with excellent lighting.
You enter for the aesthetics,
a little candle, a little laughter,
and then the floorboards creak with childhood trauma
and a ghost whispers,
“What if they leave?”
from inside your ribcage.

Love is a religion
and the holy book is
a screenshot of their text saying:
“haha”
(with one extra “a,”
which is basically a miracle).

There are rituals.
Good morning prayers.
The sacred double-tap.
Communion in shared fries.
And the original sin…
“Just checking if you saw my message 😊”
which is the modern version of crawling on broken glass
while smiling politely.

Love is a crime scene.
Detective, please note:
The victim was last seen functioning normally
before encountering
that smile.

Evidence includes:
– unusually soft voice
– dramatic hair changes
– a sudden interest in astrology
despite previously mocking it
like a responsible adult.

Motive: unclear.
Suspect: devastatingly charming.
Weapon: “I was thinking about you.”
Verdict: guilty.
Sentence: life without peace.

Love is physics, unfortunately.
It is gravity
when you said you wouldn’t fall again
and still did
like a Newtonian clown.

It is relativity,
because five minutes without them
feels like a century,
and five hours with them
feels like a suspiciously short lunch break.

It is quantum entanglement,
because you can be across the city
and still feel your stomach drop
when they don’t reply.

Love is a black hole
wearing perfume.
It pulls in your thoughts,
your standards,
your entire personality,
and leaves behind
a tiny, glowing singularity
that whispers,
“Maybe they like you too.”

Love is also a government policy
and I propose it becomes law,
All citizens must experience
one unreasonable crush annually.
Failure to comply will result in:
mandatory poetry,
unpaid daydreaming,
and random smiling at walls
like a malfunctioning lamp.

Love is a street dog
with one ear folded
and the audacity of destiny.
It follows you home.
It eats your boundaries.
It sleeps on your chest.
It looks at you like you are
the whole universe
and then pees on your emotional carpet
just to remind you
who’s really in charge.

It is a raccoon.
Let’s be honest.
It shows up at night,
knocks over your mental trash bins,
steals your snacks,
and you still go,
“Aww.”

It is time travel,
a glitch in the calendar.
Suddenly you remember your childhood
with softer edges.
Your past stops screaming.
Your future stops feeling like a threat.
And your present becomes
a little less lonely,
even if it’s messy.

Because love,
this absurd, haunted, cosmic raccoon,
is not a feeling.
It’s a parallel universe
where you become
a braver version of yourself
and call it romance
instead of personal development.

Love is not a poem.
Love is the reason
you start writing them.

And if you’re lucky,
really lucky,
love is when someone reads your chaos
and stays anyway,
not because you’re perfect,
but because they find your weirdness
oddly…
home.

Which is unfair.
Because now you have to be emotionally responsible.
And honestly,
I was thriving as a disaster.

© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

6 Comments

Sass in Progress

February 13, 2026 at 9:01 pm (Articles, Fairytales, Humor, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, psyche, research, satire, stories)
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If there were a biography about you, what would the title be?

“Sass in Progress” is basically how I would want to title my biography because I’m not a finished product.

I’m a limited-edition prototype, with updates rolling out daily. I’m a writer, which means my brain doesn’t simply think… it narrates, turning the smallest moment into a full-blown plotline. A random glance? A character arc. A misplaced comma? A tragic backstory. Someone saying “we need to talk”? A whole season finale.

My imagination is permanently caffeinated, my thoughts are delightfully weird, and my stories come loaded with wit, chaos, and the kind of sarcasm that arrives before I do. I’m still a work in progress… but the sass? Fully installed and regularly upgraded.

© Rohini 2009–2025.
All text, prose, images, and artwork presented herein are the original intellectual property of the author. All rights reserved.
No part of this content may be copied, reproduced, distributed, displayed, or used in any form without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.

For licensing requests or usage inquiries, please contact: manomaya0214@gmail.com

6 Comments

Smooch Economics

February 13, 2026 at 1:20 pm (Articles, Fairytales, Humor, kids stories, mental health, My Reflections, MYSTERIOUS, philosophy, psyche, research, satire, stories)
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In response to Jim Adams’s Friday Faithfuls

https://wp.me/p4t2PZ-7gR

Prompt: Kiss

Welcome back to the Friday Faithfuls challenge where I have lost touch with my audience over the last few weeks, but I am going to make that up to you by giving you a topic that everyone should know, as kissing is described as the most intimate human experience.  You can respond by writing about your first kiss, or a kiss that went horribly wrong, or how you like being kissed, or if you think it is wrong to kiss and tell, or kissing the Blarney Stone, the kiss of death, kissing someone’s ring, kissing frogs to find your prince, or anything else that you feel fits.

The Smallest Doorway (With the Biggest Drama)

Once upon a time, there was a village where people didn’t say goodbye. Not because they were emotionally evolved. No. They were just… dramatic in a tasteful way.

They believed “goodbye” sounded too final, like a door slam, or like your phone battery dying at 2% with no charger in sight.

So instead, when someone left, the elders would place a tiny dot of paint on the traveller’s forehead.

Just one dot.

It meant…
You were here. You mattered. You belong. Please don’t forget us when you become successful and start buying fancy olives.

Years later, when travellers returned, older, wiser, slightly more disappointed by adulthood, the elders didn’t ask where they’d been or what they’d seen.

They just touched that same spot again. No speeches, awkward questions. No “So… how’s life?” Just contact.

Because the body understands something the mind takes years to admit.

touch is language.
touch is memory.
touch is reassurance.

And in the modern world, we have our own version of that ritual. A tiny, powerful, confusing, electrifying human phenomenon.

A kiss.

A Kiss Isn’t Just Romance. It’s a Full System Update.

People treat kissing like it’s only about love. Sure, sometimes it is. But if we’re being honest, a kiss is also:

a greeting
a goodbye
a peace treaty
a plot twist
a motivational speech
a “you’re not dead yet” check-in
a “stop talking, I’m trying to feel something” moment

And occasionally…a mistake.

A kiss is basically the most intimate way humans say:

“Let me bring my nervous system close to your nervous system and see what happens.”
Which is a sentence that sounds romantic until you read it twice.

The Neuroscience: Why a Kiss Feels Like Sorcery

A kiss is tiny. But inside your head? It’s a fireworks show with paperwork.

1) Your brain lights up like a festival

Kissing activates touch, smell, taste, emotion, anticipation, memory, multiple systems at once.

So while you think you’re just kissing a person, your brain is going…

“ALERT: HUMAN CONTACT.
POSSIBLE SOULMATE.
POSSIBLE BAD DECISION.
RUN COMPATIBILITY CHECK.”

2) Dopamine: the “I want more” chemical

Dopamine isn’t just pleasure. It’s the brain’s way of saying:

“This is important. Repeat immediately. Cancel all responsibilities.”

That’s why a great kiss doesn’t simply make you happy. It makes you stupid in a charming way.

3) Oxytocin: the emotional glue

Oxytocin is associated with bonding and trust.
Which is why kissing can be dangerously effective. You kiss someone and suddenly you’re like:

“I have known you for 14 minutes, but I would like to emotionally adopt you.”

And your brain is like: “Yes. We are now a unit.”

Meanwhile your rational mind is in the corner whispering: “Please. Not again.”

4) Your nervous system is secretly doing math

Here’s the weirdest part. Kissing is also a biological interview. Your brain is collecting data through scent, taste, rhythm, pressure, timing. It’s like a resume review, but with lips.

Sometimes you can admire someone, even want them…and then the kiss happens and your whole body goes: “No ❤️”

That’s not you being picky. That’s your nervous system politely declining.

A Kiss Is a Memory Hack. Some memories don’t live in words. They live in, smell, temperature, closeness, timing, the pause before it happened

That’s why you might forget the conversation. But you remember the kiss. Because a kiss is not just an action. It’s a timestamp. Before…After. And if it was a really good kiss?

Your brain will store it in the same folder as, childhood comfort, favourite songs, the smell of rain, winning something you didn’t expect to win

The Many Secret Lives of a Kiss

This is where it gets interesting, because kissing isn’t one thing. It’s a word that wears many costumes.

1) A kiss as a contract

Not legal. Nervous-system legal. A kiss can be an agreement that says: “We are crossing a line.”
Even if nobody says it out loud.

2) A kiss as translation

Some feelings are too big for language. A kiss is what happens when words fail and the heart goes: “Fine. I’ll speak directly.”

3) A kiss as a risk

Kissing is consent + timing + vulnerability. You’re letting someone into your space, your breath, your scent.

It’s basically saying: “Here I am, unedited.” And that’s why people get nervous. A kiss isn’t scary because it’s intimate. A kiss is scary because it’s revealing.

4) A kiss as a lie detector

You can fake confidence. You can fake charm. But a kiss has a way of exposing the truth, because the body doesn’t always cooperate with the story you’re trying to tell.

5) A kiss as grief

Sometimes kisses don’t begin things. They end them. A goodbye kiss isn’t romance. It’s the human version of trying to soften a heartbreak with tenderness.

6) A kiss as routine

This one is criminally underrated. The forehead kiss. The quick kiss before leaving. The half-asleep kiss.

Routine kisses are not boring. They are the kisses that say: “I choose you even when life is laundry and traffic.”

7) A kiss as power

Not all kisses are sweet. Some are about control, performance, possession, manipulation. Which is why kisses can be psychologically intense. They can be a gift, or a weapon.

8) A kiss as resurrection

One kiss can restart a relationship. It can remind two people: “Oh. It’s still you.” Sometimes the mouth reconciles before the ego is ready.

Why Humans Keep Coming Back to It

We live in an age where we text affection, emoji intimacy, and send voice notes instead of eye contact. A kiss is stubbornly old-school.

It cannot be automated, multitasked, and cannot be faked for long. A kiss demands presence. And presence is a rare luxury now.

Which is why a kiss still feels dramatic. Not because we are dramatic but because our nervous systems are starving.

The Most Human Truth About Kissing

A kiss is not just lips meeting. It’s the moment when two people decide: “For a second, I will stop being separate.”

That’s why kisses can be, holy, hilarious, awkward, tender, messy, healing, devastating, unforgettable, because they touch the deepest human hunger, to be met. Not admired, tolerated, and scrolled past.

But actually met.

A Kiss Is a Question

Every kiss asks something. Sometimes it asks: “Do you want me?” Sometimes: “Are we okay?”
Sometimes: “Will you stay?”

And sometimes it asks the most vulnerable question of all: “Can I come closer… and still be safe?”

And that’s why kisses matter. Not because they’re perfect, but because they’re honest. In a world full of noise, a kiss is one of the few things that is both, silent and impossible to ignore.

So yes, kissing isn’t “just” a kiss. It’s a full neurological event disguised as a casual moment.  It’s basically human Wi-Fi…sometimes it’s instant connection, full bars, life-changing signal… and sometimes it buffers awkwardly and you both suddenly remember you left the stove on.

A kiss is also the only performance review you can deliver without speaking, one says “Five stars, would recommend,” another says “Thank you for your time, we’ll be moving forward with other candidates.”

And if it’s truly spectacular, don’t worry, your logic will return eventually… right after your heart finishes writing poetry, your dignity finishes packing its bags, and your self-respect files a formal complaint from a safe distance.

A kiss – the mouth’s way of making bad decisions feel spiritual.

© Rohini 2009–2025.
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