Fire to the flame

Since i turned 18, i've been to a handful of weddings and one funeral. Both events are on the extreme ends of human chart. The former is said to provide us a second chance at life while the latter, a final go at salvation. What marks these events are those who surround us during its separate execution. People who cheer you while you're circumambulating the holy fire and the ones who see to it that your body burns to ashes. They are there. As if the whole world's a stage and everybody, a mere witness. Maybe we shouldn't have stopped being catalysts. We could have done better. Fuck it. Imagine attending a wedding where the couple somehow get caught in the flames, thus transmuting into an unwarranted funeral. God forbid, if that happens, the Cosmos would be more just a witness.

The grapes are sore

They say life teaches us lessons. I can’t second that. In my opinionated experience or experienced opinion, ulcers teach us lessons (we never wanted to learn in the first place… or last, for that matter!). You see, humans are by nature, morons. We don’t know what we want and we won’t get what we receive. For instance, you’re not getting what I’m trying to say here. Relax. Neither am I.

Anyway, the sole purpose of this blog post was to share a priceless lesson I learned recently: smaller problems defeat bigger ones. It’s just a matter of distraction, not perception. Like you wake up one morning feeling happy that your dreams failed to throttle you to death, scratch your balls and brush your teeth. Out of excitement about nothing, you hurt your own inner lip with your own toothbrush with your own hand. It hurts so bad and bleeds that you wish you’d died in your sleep itself. Whatever, like I said they always say, life moves on. But what they forget to mention is that a tiny ulcer just took birth.

This cankerous development ruins your existence, especially while having spicy food. In desperation, you marry ‘ulcer’ and ‘cure’ by googling them together. Unfortunately, you learn that there is no foolproof remedy. Everything seems like a stock market—pure speculation. To add puss to your woes, you learn that even scientists haven’t figured out what exactly triggers a mouth ulcer. They’ve done numerous researches but none leading to an unanimous conclusion. At this juncture, you do what you always do when you walk out of options: RUN TO AMMA!

As expected from a South Indian mother, she recommends coconut oil. You’re under too much pressure to disagree with her philosophy that coconut oil can cure EVERYTHING. She then applies while silently praying to million gods to intervene in this territorial dispute. Hopefully, it will go away. But in one case out of ten thousand (yea, that one is mine), it decides to stick with you. You’re tired now of having trouble while brushing, rinsing, eating, laughing and talking gibberish. In other word, living.

With every passing day, the spot grows greener and more reluctant to ointments. You try to inform yourself that God Himself is conspiring against you. And after all this melodrama, you wake up one night to find your worries gone. No, the ulcer doesn’t go away. A new sore pops its hideous head out on the tip of your tongue diverting all the previously-showered precious attention from your inner lip.