Sadness

It's been ages since I last posted here. A lot of things have changed- some for good, some for bad and others of which I don't even know why they did. With every setting of the sun, I wished for a new day despite knowing that the appearance of a new beginning is just a few hours away. But there are moments in life, when you're surrounded by darkness despite all the illuminations around and sincerely hope that the melancholy will soon fade away just like the stars do at every dawn; alas! it seldom happens. Time ticks away on its course and every hour has a story about your despair to narrate.

Perhaps, what I always observed but failed to understand about life is its wavering attitude, its tendency to raise you up so high with beautiful moments that you begin to feel like the protagonist from Gulliver's travel and then suddenly jerk the cloud you're flying on so drastically that you end up smearing your face with all the world's crap. But then too, man yearns to live a pleasing, long and fuller life. Funnily though, it's man's unshakable trust in his destiny that he longs for an enviable life despite realizing its viciousness just like the starry eyed boy-next-door who fantasizes the bombshell babe despite all her tantrums and arrogance just so that his friends go berserk ogling at his booty!

I don't recommend you reading more of this post lest you might end up accusing me of confusion and incoherence about what is that really inspired me to write such a cynical piece. I'm speechless about my state of mind but He knows best. I'm wandering aimlessly in unknown terrains trying to search the definition of my existence, turning every pebble on my way to see if it has a clue to my answers and trying hard to listen to the many echoes of unspoken feelings resonating in my heart but in vain. I know of an old dervish poet called Rumi and he said, "Each moment contains a hundred message from God. To every cry of  'Oh God!', He answers a hundred times "I'm here!" How I wish I could hear Him say that to me, perhaps life would become a bit more bearable knowing that the One who blessed you with it is by your side now and forever.

Life's too short..

After 21 good years of being created, sent and overstay at this beautiful planet called Earth, and having achieved almost everything that my parents must’ve once desired, when I-out of depression or angst at the selfish business of our society-sometimes decide to wish good bye to a journey which hasn’t been really glorious or blessed for that matter; the only question that pops up before I become determined to transform my thoughts into action is-“Are my actions creditable enough so that I can fearlessly face Him?” And the answer, as in most people’s case, is always a big-“No”!!

I may not have killed anybody nor have I been a vampire to suck out joy and bliss from the lives of those around but I, despite having read the Qur’an and discovering spirituality at the age of 10, somehow find myself not too fit to proclaim myself a ‘Muslim’, simply because I tend to go for acts that are forbidden. By this, I don’t mean that liquor, drugs or infidelity are important constituents of my lifestyle or that I take immense pride in being the fairest and most adored person everywhere I go but deep somewhere there is a sinking feeling that I’m not as pure, noble and dutiful as I used to be and this feeling of worthlessness often coerces my heart to ask for death!

Should He really comply with my demands and get a few men to dig an eternal home for me in Mother Earth’s bosom or must I really thank Him for bestowing an honored life upon me? Until now, I’ve been a fix but the scenario has completely changed in the past few days. In fact, it actually took a tectonic shift a few hours ago!

It so happened, that around 5 am in the morning, our entire neighborhood was awakened by shrill cries and lamenting of a Hindu family that lost a son due to prolonged illness. He is survived by his wife and a daughter he had adopted when 20 years of religious visits to the best gynecologists in town bore no fruit. What saddened me the most was not the way all his family members-immediate and extended ones-lamented or wailed before his corpse, but the manner in which his widow-all decked up like a bride-was made to sit next to him and an old lady untied her long stresses, broke her red bangles, wiped off her sindoor; while she sat benumbed and senseless with her little 6 year old daughter innocently witnessing the entire episode without even realizing that she’s now orphaned for the second time! Is this something he must’ve yearned for? No!

Similarly, a man in his late twenties was dragged out of his house during Sehri in the month of Ramzan, by underworld guys because he was a police informer, while his wife and children begged for forgiveness on his behalf but to no avail. A few days later, his body –with every vein cut and intestine visible—was found in a dump yard near his house! Did he ask for such a death? No!

I know these incidents because they’ve happened at ground zero, but I fail to understand what it feels like when terrorists in uniform-pro or anti government-ransack happy homes, rape daughters and mothers before everyone and kill sons of poor farmers in broad daylight or how it is like when a loved one leaves the house saying he’s off to the mosque for a prayer and you later come to know a bomb had exploded in that very holy place. Or what do the family members of a girl, who was molested and burnt to death by her in laws for dowry, feel when they not only lose their child but their honor and pride is butchered as well.

People say that the angel of death changes his face according to the soul he’s about to carry. When he knocks at the door of a pious man, he’s calm and serene and the person has no difficulty in breathing his last but when it’s the other way round, the angel of death looks more ferocious and merciless and that this person of bad deed struggles a lot before finally biding adieu to the material world.

I don’t know how much of it is true. If it really is, then somebody please tell me, how much time does the angel of death take or what garb is adorned by him or how quickly he changes his state of mind while he goes on a rampant spree of snatching away the lives of hundreds of Iraqis, Palestinians, Kashmiris and Pakistanis who’re the favorites of all suicide attackers and their motherland that has somehow been reduced to a recreational land where politicians don’t mind playing dirty games even if it means ruining a million families?

None of the above mentioned people asked for death, not at least before they could fulfill the promises they’d made to their loved ones or completed their responsibilities. Perhaps, they must’ve begged for mercy to save some breathes…and here I am, a sensitive girl who was just miffed by a few idiotic professional bad luck, inviting death over coffee, without realizing the reason (foremost one being, for writing and boring everyone!!) for being alive and kicking….Yes, I’m here to do something and I will!!

Signing out with a hope that , whenever you feel depressed and want to bid adieu to your beautifully beautiful life, this write up will at least serve as an anodyne, if not a complete remedy package..!!

Love,

Gulnaar.

A grief ago

A Grief Ago






People dwell in houses,

Whether in huts or bungalows,

But I do know that inner joy,

Rather than brick or mortar makes them glow.



For the world I was someone,

But for me, my family was my world,

Household chores, mum’s nags, demand of tea from dad

And all those beautiful things I had.



I look back to see my house nowhere,

All except debris, mud and dogs sniffing everywhere.

From the fragments of a hut too small,

The cops discover a youth’s hand from the crevices of a wall.



As I moved towards the place I stood first on my legs,

That seemed like a pile of broken bricks & torn rags.

My legs trembled and my heart skipped a beat.

As I gazed at the home built by my dad’s sweat.



As scenes of the good times lit my memory,

I see my family dining with rotis & onions.

All that was which we could have when hungry.

But the memories fade with little hope of reunion



Regularly visiting the refugee camps,

I see pompous politicians strutting about,

Quenching their thirst for votes by posing before the poor,

half naked, grief struck people.

I knew all their claims, dedications &assurances were all null.



Tear filled eyes scroll through the dead person’s list,

Trying to control the outburst of emotions, do I close my fist.

Alas! My shivering lips read the names of my parents,

For I now realized my parents stayed in this world as tenants.



Though nowhere in the list could I find those already dead,

My visions, dreams, ambitions & hopes that lived in my heart

instead

People say, “Your Present foretells the future,”

Does that mean more darkness, loneliness and tragedies await

hereafter?



As I lay motionless beneath a tree,

I ask God for strength to face the affliction,

With memories, just memories treasured safely in my heart,

I now close my eyes to wake up for a new start.

A dignified coward

In a tête-à-tête with the reflection in the mirror, I stood there stoically, interrogating myself whether or not was I so lean and fragile, an elite amongst the rest, that I’d get disfigured and infamous for helping someone I didn’t know?



It was a hot Sunday afternoon and I, accompanied by my mother and her two friends were returning from a religious function which had spiritually refreshed me, if not the other presentees. I was the only kid amongst those ageing ladies, bored of their not-so-meaningful womanly talks and the frantic cacophony of the bustling street; so, to parry off the gnawing boredom and my ‘keep silence’ irritation, I traversed across all the colorful things, possible within the reach of my retina, and put them in black and white at some corner of my mind. From the little, 3-4 yr old girl wearing headscarves, holding their mother’s finger and trying to match up with their mothers’ pace; the cunning chaiwallah at the nukkad, fooling his customers by his sleight of hand by selling ‘lamba paani’ (yes, that’s the Mumbaiya slang for a tasteless tea!) at a cool price; a heavy weight designer burqa clad lady adjusting herself on the bike, while creating a seismic effect in the bike’s engine and her slim husband’s bowels; to the dashing Iranian hunks ramping by my ogling self—everything seemed a lovely affair.



Owing to the extremely hot condition, with the sun scorching at his mighty best and with that thick overcoat I wore, I possibly couldn’t have been in the best of my senses but my curious nature and an innate penchant to be a good observer, just superseded all the trouble that the harsh sun rays were causing to this rather complexion conscious girl.



As we crossed the road, a strange sight caught our attention. A disheveled man, presumably a porter in his late 50’s, was trying to lay asleep on the bare, burning ground. Initially, I thought he’s one of those many drunkards who get overdosed and end up dumped in public places, sometimes in the garbage zone too, which is a very common sight in our tinsel town. Still engrossed in their ‘important’ discussions, my mother and her two gregarious friends brusquely took a few steps away from the scene but stopped before a few known girls to inquire who they were waiting for.

I being the ‘proud and arrogant’ girl used to detest exchanging words with these overly fashionable but ill mannered girls , leave alone mingling with them even if I were left alone them at a desert.



As I geared up at my level best to ignore them, I was left shocked and aghast at what one of them said—that that poor porter fell down on the ground, broke his head and is asking for help but he’s unable to get one; and that they’re waiting there to see what transpires next.





I didn’t know what to say, but probably knew what I was supposed to do. But, alas, I was a girl in hijab, amidst a bunch of long nosed, audacious, degrading so called ‘posh’ women and if I were to be his rescuer, they’d condemn and criticize me which would definitely make me face a loud music at my home by my image conscious mom. I felt feckless and damned by this self imposed infirmity but hopefully glanced around to



check if there was any human being, if not an angel but all I could see were shopkeepers peeping out and passer bys staring carelessly, with a few exceptions who stood surrounding the man and watching as if some shooting for a movie scene was going on. Every time he tried getting up, he’d fall with an equal bang, causing pain not only to himself but inflicting several severe wounds on my helpless soul. I wondered where was his family? Did he even have one or not? Why was he working so hard at this age? Will he reach out to the one who waits for him? Or will his family members come to know if something worse happens to him? I was inundated with a myriad question but went numb while answering them. I tried persuading and protesting indirectly by repeating,” Yahan koi Allah ka banda nahi?” but was forcefully dragged away with a simple excuse,” We’re women, what can we do?”



I returned home feeling dejected and miserable, like a defeated valor, more precisely, a coward—undoubtedly, my exaggerating words boasting about our spirit, humility and hospitality found in this fast paced, trendy cum raunchy city of Mumbai, with whom we’re so proud to associate ourselves with, had turned unworthy of praises and reduced to utter rubbish, all because of my action (or should I say ‘no action’??) of showing my back to someone who needed me.



---- Gulnar .F Khan

That whereby men live...

“Faith is one of the forces by which men live, and the total absence of it means collapse.-I suddenly stopped flipping through the pages of a local newspaper, stared at the line which was aptly written for a disaster that happened a couple of years ago, bringing many lives, including mine, to a pause after which my life was unrelentingly subjected to an enduring metamorphosis by destiny.



It so happened that, on the 29th of July 2004, I proceeded to a friend’s place to meet his ailing mom. It had been almost a week since he started bunking lectures because he had to attend his mother who was suffering from leukemia. For Munaf, my friend and partner in the chemistry lab, his mother and younger sister were the only reason to remain alive because he had already lost his father some three years back and was callously deserted off his late father’s hard earned money by his own uncles. His mother however led her children towards a bright future by providing them the best of education and a sober upbringing even as she diligently slogged like an animal doing the oddest of jobs like washing dishes, clothes, sweeping floors at other’s place every morning, then doing a day shift at a building under construction and stitching clothes at nighttime. She endured all the misery and sufferings caused by destiny with only one hope that –once her children grow up as successful contended professionals, all her hardships will bear fruits and they all will live a happy life once again.



Anyways, I traversed through the filthy by lanes with poor sewage system, jumping across the gutters, shooing stray dogs, asking the shopkeeper for direction along with curious slum dwelling women staring at me as if I was an unseen creature; and finally reached the three storied shabby building where Munaf lived. The building’s narrow entrance led me to the dark staircase which had a stench because of the over-littered garbage bin and paan spits around the pillars. Munaf’s destitution wasn’t obscure to me but coming across such an unforeseen hardcore reality made me thank God for whatever I had. Thus, covering my nose with a hanky, I quickly ran up and reached the second floor where he was already talking to a neighbor and he was taken aback with my surprise visit. He welcomed me to his disheveled home with not a single line of embarrassment on his forehead and after introducing me to his mom, ran out to fetch a cold drink for this guest. Meanwhile, I tried to be my formal best while talking to his mother and sister, along with behaving sensibly so that they don’t feel intimidated by my well off persona.



It had been some half an hour or so when I started sensing some tremors in the floor but couldn’t understand what was happening and plainly waited for Munaf’s return so that I can give him some of my notes that’d help him to study at home. He came back running and frantically yelled,” Be quick, leave the premises right now!!!” but before we could act upon his words, there was an uproarious thud and I didn’t know what happened next. When I opened my eyes, I couldn’t see anything, not even my hands but knew I was buried deep underneath. For once, I thought my breathes had betrayed me and that I was lying in my grave but when I turned my neck with a lot of effort, there was an old lady besides me who was constantly worried about her grandchildren. Then I realized that the sleazy building had collapsed and we were gasping for oxygen some feet below the debris. That was the most horrifying incident of my life; I didn’t know what to do and became hopeless of reaching out to life once again. Thus, the only seemingly possible way for me to kill the clasping fear was to talk with the lady—no not that I wanted to bolster the stigma about every woman’s chatting habits but with that, I expected to remain reposed and encourage the other lady to have faith in God.



I kept talking for more than an hour only to realize that the lady, owing to the suffocation and distress, had at last surrendered to death. This aggravated my predicament as now I laid next to a corpse and despite countless assurances to myself, death seemed inevitable. But still,. I knew there was a reason if my life wasn’t snatched before that lady’s and that He’s the most Merciful thus, with that hope, trembling with fright but resolute of my faith in Him, I shrieked and called out to The Creator. This went for some hours and dejected of the engulfing trepidation, I was now ready to renounce my racing heartbeats that still had some impudence to His justice alive deep somewhere. Exhausted, I closed my eyes only to be awakened by the cacophony of the overwrought crowd, the bells of the fire brigade and the squawking of the rescue men. All at once, I felt myself getting richer by courage and hope. I was oozing with confidence and the utopia of reuniting with my family was viable. I screamed at the top of my voice to gain their attention but to no avail. After some time, I again yelled for help and finally I felt some steps nearing me and I thought I’d be rescued within minutes. But to my bad luck, they had seen the hands of the old lady and while removing her body from the debris, they engraved me deeper with all the bricks and dust. It felt miserable while being thwarted away from my goal. I went berserk and lamented at the thought of getting buried alive and envisaging my parents’ trauma after my death was just horrendous.



Luckily, some fireman heard me and he shouted out to his colleagues in Marathi. They all teamed up and started removing the debris above me. As they did their job, I felt dizzy and had no more energy to scream but could manage to mutter,” Help!” I don’t know what happened next as I fell unconscious and when I opened my eyes the second time, I had my parents wiping their tears before me.



After having gained enough energy to talk sense, I enquired about my friend Munaf and his family. I was told that his mother and sister were alive and recuperating at a Municipal hospital but Munaf had already left for his heavenly abode. His mother was still not informed about her only son’s untimely death! I don’t have the courage to envisage his mother’s reaction to this gruesome news because I myself still remain inundated with our memories in the chemistry lab –of stealing each other’s apparatus to show off the correct conclusion to the examiner or whooping at the sight of his love interest. It’s unimaginable for a friend in me to accept he’s no more, may God have mercy on his survivors.



Few years down the line, when I scan our newspapers flooded with innumerable stories of building collapses and breath taking death tolls of innocent people, I’m reminded of those horrible hours where I myself escaped the deadly clutches but my sweetest friend succumbed to them and it incinerates my heart with extreme animosity and vengeance against the government because of whose foolhardiness, thousands of young Munafs lose their lives every day and their poor parents, if alive, have nothing but memories enshrined within their hearts and tears for survival!!



-- Gulnaar. F Khan

Daddy dearest!

If there’s something in life that remains as ingenuously memorable as a brilliant movie watched a few hours ago, with its plots fabricated well to depict life as another fairy tale, and the characters-fictitious yet awe inspiring enough- for you to imagine yourself adapted in that very circumstance repeatedly and emerge as heroic as the protagonist did; so much that you don’t mind indulging in such reverie at times when silence greets you or the vagaries of life leave you all exasperated-it has to be my childhood! Not to mention, that one person whose life, though ordinarily modest, has made such a huge difference in my evolution from a tot to an adult, whose philosophies I’ve learnt as gospel truth and the one with whose name I’ll be called out of my grave on the Day of Resurrection-my father, is the only one before whom I would bow with great reverence, if one can assure that my identity as a Muslim isn’t rebuked for surrendering before His creation!



He’s no business tycoon nor does he own a sprawling 3500 sq feet sea facing bungalow at Juhu, he’s but an officer at the Mumbai Port Trust who was born to an ordinary laborer who slogged at that very place. Papa scaled heights after clearing tests after tests, terrific performance at job, maintained a very compassionate and benevolent relationship with his subordinates and got promoted to a rank that my grandfather could never think of. That, my grandpa never stood intimidated and submissively before my ‘afsar’ papa is a co-incidence as by the time papa reached that rank, my grandpa had already retired.. It wasn’t like he had had a meteoric rise from being a ‘mazdoor ka beta’ to a high rank officer, which is evident from what I was told about his early years as an employee-that he himself wore shirts altered with rags from old shirts but would buy lovely frocks for me from the choicest of high end showrooms with savings from the previous month!



My maternal grandma always told me that when I was first handed over to him, he danced around with me in his arms and sung a few lines from one of Kishore Kumar’s memorable ditties,’ Mere ghar aayi ek nanhi pari,’…I cherish this episode about my birth quite proudly but it’s only after I learnt about the tribulations he bore by working for three shifts continuously for four days a week, for about 6 months that I feel overwhelmed for his quest to bless me a life of that of a fairy, literally!



I still remember how he would talk to me in English only while momma, an Urdu educated docile housewife, would fondly hear our talks though she understood nothing. So huge was my confidence that I once challenged both my parents at the age of four when I remarked that foreigners aren’t called ‘angrez’ but the English synonym for it is Congress...(I’d learnt this name from the radio news my dad switched on to every morning!) And when they seemed reluctant to accept my correction, I scoffed at them saying,”aap logon ko to English bhi nahi aati’….Even today when I talk about some white lady, dad prefers me to call her Congress only!



My childhood was delightfully perfect with incidents like me enthusiastically participating in a fancy dress show organized at dad’s office. As a fairy-I was suppose to tell the audience to close their eyes and wish something that I was capable of granting- I confidently stood on the dais, but just when I looked at the huge number of people all staring at me, every dialogue just fizzled out but I did manage to win a prize and how, by crying out,”Daddyyyyyyyy….I want my daaadyyy..” in a sugary tone peculiar to that age..

Now, whether those guys mistook it as a part of my act or what, I still don’t know how I won that!



Life isn’t a bed of roses, so as they say. And I did discover this at the age of 15 when my pillar of strength-my dad- who’s been a heart patient since the age of 23, suffered a mild cardiac arrest that seemed terrible enough to make us lose our senses. Mom and I would stoically console dad saying, “everything will be fine”, but he preferred not to believe us. This was also the time when we’d incurred huge loss in the stock market and as mice are the first to escape when a huge ship, that harbored them all, is on the verge of sinking; my paternal relatives, especially my dad’s only brother, turned their backs and nobody responded to my calls! Imagine, while my dad was declaring his will and requesting his better half to wear her bridal dress assuming his last moments were approaching, a young soul in despair was frantically calling her aunts only to be sweetly told how busy or worried they were in their own lives!

Sounds like a perfect Hindi potboiler movie from the 70’s, isn’t it? But, it did happen to me.Tht feeling of helplessness, being devoid of any help or protection, dismay and the thought of being orphaned, of losing someone I owe my life, is a wound which is least likely to heal with time; and perhaps, most difficult to pen down as well!

Anyways, now that everything’s smoother and lovelier than before, life once again looks like a perfect celluloid adaptation! I have a vision, a dream to fulfill which is not restricted to just being a well known writer but to set up an educational institution with his name at our native place to make his principles, philosophies and his presence immortal and eternal! (I would never want to repent before my children of achieving success and fame when he’s no more- something he’s always regretted coz he couldn’t introduce his mom to the comfortable life we’ve all lived!!)

Papa, you're indeed a precious gift from God and I cannot or will to see a life without you!

My angel

My angel


In the course of life, when the joie de vivre of companionship and love are mowed down by the sudden turns of Destiny’s wheels, you have little left to thank the world for its cruelty and insanity that taught you lessons you were least bothered to learn. Abstractly, life always appeared as an objective examination question paper, where I ticked at the right options of questions whose answers were known but simply ignored the tough ones-either because I had not paid enough attention to its difficult nature when some elderly figure was explaining it or probably because I thought it would never be asked at the test. It was indeed foolish of me, I know! But how unfortunate of me that at this phase of my life, I cannot, even if I desperately want to, turn the clock back to the time I was sinfully guarded and pampered no end by my parents and two elder brothers; the damage for sure has been done and shall forever haunt my family in guise of an irreparable dishonor!


I’m literally flummoxed at the sudden turn of events…A few passionate moments of mine with a burning desire to melt in somebody’s arms that ignited out of nowhere at a pleasantly cold evening in Goa, where our friends reveled in chasing us at any secluded spot we put up; it’s indeed ironical to see how something that started off as a joke got retailored into an ugly, awfully detestable being that now rested in my womb as a piece of flesh.! She was a miserable, accursed and forsaken unwanted addition to my life and the one responsible for my rotten luck...her birth would not only create a loathsome scar on my belly but would also be an enduring shame for every person related to me!


I find it difficult to describe the travails I succumbed while simultaneously trying to get her out of me—the futile determination to find out a covert human slaughterhouse, the pricking glare of those receptionists who scornfully denied an appointment because I was a singleton or the opprobrious shooing of hostel wardens who refused an asylum—I bore every such torment with extreme pain and fret and prayed to get rid of her as soon as possible. Unfortunately, a few months had already passed and I was told by a gynac that an abortion was impossible. Despite this, I went against all the cautions a local ‘daai’ had explained to me, and lifted heavy weights, traveled and worked out rigorously just because I was hell bent on killing her! But, that stubborn creature refused to leave me and sometimes, out of joy for being victorious over me, she pleasantly kicked me from within. Initially, I hated those kicks and sometimes revengefully exclaimed, “How I wish I could kick her as well!”

But as time passed by, loneliness and gloom began torturing me and I had no option but to talk to the ‘brat’ –who danced, wandered and jumped, restlessly sometimes, even at the middle of night-within me. Quite funny but its still unintelligible for me as how I lost out to her and fell so deeply in love with her movements. I’d wake up every morning feeling nauseated and dreary, but her antics would tickle me no end. She made it a point to reply every coo of mine with a movement left or right! As my delivery date neared, she demanded utmost attention; I could feel her hiccups, flutters, her hands moving and those somersaults-oh what lovely feelings-lovely to the extent of being simply indescribable!

It was now that I realized what a horrendous error would’ve it been if I had succeeded in robbing her, and myself, of all these joys and ecstasies! Moreover, I thought- if my parents had abandoned me after 20 years of all the unbound and selfless love just because of one mistake, I had absolutely no right to flush her down the drain even when she was so purely divine and innocent! And so, I began anxiously awaiting and grandly preparing for her arrival. I summoned technology to aid and Google-d to prepare a list of all those goodies which she’ll need- be it baby jablas, rubber sheets, swaddling pink blankets, lots of nappies, Dettol, branded baby powder, cream, lotions, baby oil, feeding bottle, cute pillows, socks and mittens and what not!! I stocked them all for my little fairy and madly awaited her..

Finally, the D day arrived and the umbilical cord was cut to bring her into this world. Here I must confess that if bringing your mirror image into this world was so easy, it never would have started with something so unbearable called ‘labor’! It sure was the most severe pain I could’ve ever gone through, but the pain quietly subsided the moment I held her in my arms for the first time. How do I describe the feeling so divine when she opened her angelic eyes full of trust, rosy red lips giving a dreamy smile or those ten little delicate fingers which I kissed every moment or that cute button nose-undoubtedly, she was a gift of God or else how could something so perfect come to me?

I may not be a perfect singer to soothe her with a beautiful lullaby or fill the vacuum that her father so selfishly created, but I’m a mother who she can trust and cuddle up any time and with dream filled eyes for a bright future, I may now sleep blissfully only to be awakened by her melodious cries….and that, a sleeping beauty like me shall never mind!!!