Sangeetha Kamath

  Books and more books 📚! All I talk about are books and Babylou. And for good reason. One is my creative board and the piece of my heart is a wise Sounding Board. When I interact with either of them I get great eye openers and enlightenment. There's of course a story behind this with these two main star casts and in no way are disconnected at all with random mentions.  Yeah, so with all my Ring Binder Journals and the various diaries having been filled to the brim with my daily writing plus visual embellishments, they now look no less than chunky blocks--overfed and hard to shut close. Having almost run their course, it was time to get new ones to document the rest of the year.  Amazon showed me the Paperideas A5 Journals with a shipping price to Singapore that would buy me month's worth of groceries for the household! Heck, ah ?! What the...! Is it trimmed with gold and encrusted with precious gems ! Plus the aesthetic pastel colours were all SOLD OUT with only some ga...

  I walk on that rickety bridge again, tiptoeing ever so mildly to rewind time, to rewrite great many chunks of heartbeats and on a quest for answers. The surging waters below are on their merry journey, a mist of spray and foam in the air in their enthusiastic trail. I've only managed to turn back the pages on my journal in my limited human capacity. What once began as a rosy project to capture the idyllic and vintage when I first started out on the April layout , turned out to be a ghastly summer of 2025. Barely had I got a foothold from the dizzying heights of the ill-fated 2024, only to step on a landmine ??! A Bed Of Roses …. what had I prophesized?  It's now a shrine staring at me ever so solemnly. In this garden of eulogy , I’ve made the pages come alive with a swarm of butterflies in as many shapes, sizes and colours I could. Not at all randomly placed but on each date which marks a significant ritual… And then there are some days in April which are remembered most ...

In the still, restful hush before dawn arose, a single bright star greeted me today through the lonely blue haze. A wordless ‘Good Morning’, it sparkled contrary to Dad's hearty voice ringing through the house.  The sky rejoices in you, we revel in all the good memories you've given us to write about, journal about, sing about…most importantly to converse about with joy in our hearts and a wistfulness in our eyes.  Could any treasure be more dear than this? It's a spring in my rose garden with your nostalgia in full bloom. A tiny heart with its vast, grand, golden and upbeat moments is overstuffed with the fabulous 50 years of my life you've given me. Everything is hunky-dory for most parts of the day and night– because I dedicate every waking moment to you, as do I with my mellowed breathing just before I fall asleep asking you to envelop me and Babylou with the most powerful, shielding aura that is now yours.  Yet, there is no silence more louder, no void more expans...

Scritch-scratch…scritch…scratch.. I scribble away with my pencil for want of nothing better to do. Building my word bank, writing fiction, creating art…or just writing about the mundane rise and close of my day.  Scritch-scratch… Dear Diary, Word of the day today is Kenopsia. It’s a new-fangled word which I chanced upon quite recently, all thanks to the pursuits propounded during downtime and this inescapable lockdown. I took upon one of them to building my vocabulary. Though this word was a novel one, the sentiment associated with it was not alien to me. I just didn’t have a name for it back then. Looking back, during my school days, I had always dilly-dallied on the last day before it closed down for the academic year. While everybody just couldn’t wait to rush home or to hang out with their friends, the arcane sentimental in me would always wait it out until a major part of the crowd had dwindled. I would get captivated and drawn to the emptiness and vacuum of the classroom, whi...

 If only I could turn back time! Don't we all wish that we could? When I don't rain down words in torrents on my treasured pages, I sketch-- Sketch my memories from the age old photographs in my albums ✨ A picture speaks a thousand words it is said. Though the retro albums hold only black & white pictures, I fill in the colors from my memory. I accentuate a certain sketch with a certain mood that had a remarkable effect on me at a certain point of time.  Decades back, I held a tremendous fascination for the moon. I still do. Crescents and the ones with misty halos in particular kindles the dewy-eyed child in me . Hauling me back to the mystique of a fairytale book. An other-worldly feel 🌙  If I want to bring back the ethereal quality that the picture deserves, I always sketch a pale, hazy moon 🌕 When I don't find the right words for my endless ramblings , I stop trying to push it and let my illustrations do the talking. Of a dream that has only come to a halt in thi...

 Self-Discovery 30 Day Writing Challenge Day #29 When have you given up on something? ✨ When my peace of mind is a priority, I have given up on advising people who I sense are not worth my time. I can gauge the response or reaction coming back at me from a history we've had in a similar situation. So I just let them be and have them face their own music. ✨ When my Self respect was a priority, I didn't hesitate to close the door behind me as I walked out. It took a rare kind of courage and confidence to hold my head high and leave everything behind me without so much as a backward glance.  Nobody owes me any respect, true.  I owe that to myself! ✨Giving up is akin to quitting. But quitting is not always negative. Quitting is not weakness. Resisting to let go of that which doesn't serve us, is. Holding on for too long only exhausts the soul and spirit. If a certain environment or a connection was not conducive to my well-being, I had no second thoughts about dropping it li...

  Self Discovery 30 Day Writing Challenge Day #28 If you had a chance to dis-invent something what would it be and why? To begin with, I'm quite old world so I'll go with--- The DVD! The VCR! The Television!  The golden era which I relate to is from the early 80's to mid 80's when the only entertainment outside of family bonding over  board games were the movie theaters. Movies then were a novelty, maybe an annual episode or at the most a  biannual one which were mostly the much awaited blockbusters.  It was the thought of getting ready to go to a  movie on a Saturday evening than watching the movie itself that got me looking forward to it. It was a family outing! What a treat it was to watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs or The Fox and the Hound on the big screen. A Walt Disney movie coming to town? Our weekend would be booked!  Though I was not a big fan of Hollywood movies as a child, the first couple of them which we went to were Jaws and Superma...

  Self Discovery 30 Day Writing Challenge Day #13 If today was your last day, what would you do? Alright! For me, that's a very abstract question.  Let me start from the very beginning of 'Last Days' that I had. ✨Last day of Kindergarten---with a very snobbish air, I told the Year 1 kindergarten kids that I was going to Primary 1 next year and wear uniforms to school.  "I'm a big girl now." ✨Last day of Primary School---I was  indifferent.  "Huh! High school is next on the cards. What's the big deal! If anything, maybe I will have more subjects to study."  ✨ Last day of High School---I jumped for joy! And also had mixed emotions to part from childhood friends. " I made it! Survived the board exams. What's the next step? I must choose my stream in Pre-Uni carefully. It will make or break my life"😅 ✨Last day of Pre-Uni--- I had settled into the grind and at the same time I was deep in  thought "Will this saga never end?! The nex...

  Self Discovery 30 Day Writing Challenge Day #23  What would your ideal day look like? As ideal as ideal can be! That could only exist about some four decades back when the air was clean and fresh, when there was greenery all around and when houses were homes.  My days which I remember from my early childhood were just that. Nothing but cheery and carefree.  Only a distant memory now or a like long- forgotten dream I cling on to those hopelessly.  But they are not gone in vain because those were remarkable enough to replay in my mind, even after a generation..! Hypothetically speaking, there's nothing to beat living in an idyllic countryside in a cottage with skylights and clumps of flowers and lush trees  all around it.  Surrounded with snow capped mountains and deep pine woods, I would be one with nature listening to the hooting of the owls at night and only the rustling of wind through the leaves.   With no clocks, alarms would be non existent...

                      SPLINTERED PAGES So I didn't get any writing done yesterday. I have scores of messy drafts, but for the life of me, I just couldn't churn out a couple of presentable sentences let alone a paragraph. I wrote, I striked it out, I rewrote, I deleted....and it went on and on a handful of times. I could have berated myself for breaking the chain and beaten myself to death about it. But I said something else to myself instead--- "Take a break, just so that you don't break!" The mind is always a chatter box pushing you to the brink of overthinking. It was at it once I shut down my process of typing and quit sitting in front of a blank screen. "Oh no, Writing block?!! What if I never write again", it said I had to silence the voice in my head kindly with a  "No, that would just be an excuse not to do something that I passionately believe in". Practically speaking, sometimes everybody just needs to take a step bac...

 Just when that stray day comes along, where I underestimate myself for not having any writing done, there pops the first post on my newsfeed as an angelic answer.  It says "Writing takes weeks and even months of hard work of writing and editing. If I ever again think of quitting, I should see what I've accomplished so far". It's okay to take a break when I feel overwhelmed and it's also more than okay to feel anxious when I don't write, don't know how to express myself.  That's my current status these days and the post came as a timely motivation. There are phases like these when there's a wide gap between days, call it a partial hiatus from writing. "Writers shouldn't take it hard on themselves", he tells me. A single day doesn't define me when I've had more good writing days than bad.  It's definitely not about flawlessness. It's a rare piece of writing that dazzles instantly, but persistence is key if it doesn'...

Self Discovery 30 Day Writing Challenge What keeps you awake at night? Nothing! I'm Nocturnal.  Call me a Night Owl if you may.  The stillness and the silence of the night speak volumes to me. It's when I see the pale moon rising with it's hazy halo outside my window that I reach out for my writing pad and lucky pen.  It's in the pearly moonlight, the twinkling of the stars and the soft, cool breeze that my storylines and poems come flooding to me. It's at a magical moment like this when I'm at a loss for words and at the same time have to keep my writing pace with my thoughts pouring in at galloping speed. It's now that the ambience is perfect to draw inspiration from or a conclusion to arrive at. With nothing to disturb me and no chores to distract me, I can listen more intently to the whispers of my subconscious mind.  It's at this time, that I choose to stay alone with my thoughts and my inner dialogues to write my Memoirs. That was the precise pat...

Starlight, Star bright ! Sprinkles of diamond dust across the vast petal of Iris sky. I wish upon a star, i want to embrace a moonbeam. I want to revel in all those nursery rhymes and the stories where they said that the moon was made of cheese. I wonder what that magic was all about while we never questioned or doubted. I want to be that wonder-eyed child again and be amazed at everything.  As i chin up and name all the stars after all my dear lost ones , I believe in that magic all over again--that the tiny sparkles in the heavens above are chinks from which pour down their love. The love, which melts down like warm nourishing butter or a like  cool respite of mist on my scorching soul. As I go sky gazing every night, I listen to the songs of the stars. They they tell me a thousand tales. I believe in magic and that Celestine magic comes to me. I go star gazing and they shine down on me. ©️ Sangeetha Kamath Pic Courtesy:Pixabay