CAN NEVER THANK ENOUGH

Dear Babai & Pinni,

There are days when you simply can’t express yourself good enough. There are only two reasons for that situation, either nothing much to say or so much to say that you find yourself amidst rare numbness and words simply don’t find their way from heart to mouth. I identify myself with the second reason. And I feel I will be in this situation till the end of my life : Can never thank you both enough for how you impacted my life at different stages and phases.

Babai, I have never seen a person as emotional and straight forward as you are. I have always been in awe of how far you have gone for the people you care for. Since the time I started understanding relationships and their beauty & importance in human life, I have seen you as a rock who stood by your brother (my father) in his thick and thin. At the times when relationships are motivated, made, twisted and broken by money, thanks to you we never saw such moments in our family. I saw how you would never take it lying down whenever people hinted disrespect towards my father. Your sibling love gave our generation sibling goals – to love, support and respect our siblings unconditionally. Thanks for making our family an epitome of brotherly love for the world to see, it isn’t an exaggeration.

It’s a popular belief that to make or break a family, the responsibility lies with the lady of the house. And I can proudly say that I belong to a family that got amazing women who no matter what makes sure that family bonds are not severed. And leading from the front is you, Pinni (Chachi/aunt). Babai’s (uncle’s) love for us can be understood by the linear nature of relationship we had – brotherly love. But you are the support system of Babai who always stood by his decisions. You embraced us as your own kids. You have always been my idol when I think about strong, independent woman. A woman with strong values who values family, wisdom being your second name, love and compassion is your identity. I am fortunate enough to share the same date of birth (same date, same month) with you. You have an immense impact on how a woman has to take charge of her family and bind it. After 11 years of marriage if I can relate to happiness and sorrows of my extended family from my husband’s side, its because of a wonderful lady like you. Thank you so much for all the love, motivation and inspiration you have showered on me and still doing it. And before I forget to mention, it’s always great to spend time with you, it’s fun second to none.

Both of you have cared for me and my brother like your own children, a rarity in these selfish times we are living. You hold the same place as our parents in our hearts.

And it would be so insensitive and wrong on many accounts if here I don’t mention about my sweet little sister, Divya. As a child she used to be our favourite for she used to be super cute and we used to look quite lean (famished wouldn’t be appropriate😂😂). I will always be grateful to God for giving me such a wonderful person as my sister. She is an exact replica of Babai when it comes to emotions. The way she cares for people and bonds, so invested in them wholeheartedly I have never seen anyone else in this practical world. I have a great camaraderie with her and my brother. Summer vacations, late night talks under star lit sky, silly fights, sharing clothes, dancing till we dropped, watching movies in the front row of cinema hall, keeping secrets, breaking down, building up each other – I can literally go on. Technically we were in nuclear families but literally we grew up together (with and on each other). Thank you is a small word for the support you have been to me.

I may not have vast materialistic fortunes but very fortunate to have you in my life, it’s a blessing to have such a loving family, wonderful strong people guiding me at every step, shaping up the right ideology to look at life in a positive perspective, heaping up treasure of memories. Though I don’t like to repeat myself but can’t help today – can never thank you all enough.

Yours lovingly,

Daughter .

MY DISCOVERY WITH CANDLES ONLINE

One of the blessed days of my life book is the 10^th of January 2016. As we were driving back from church, it was my first ever personal time with Chiradeep Patra. Probably, it was his 2nd/3rd question where he enquired about my hobbies and I replied, one of them is writing quotes almost on a daily basis. Without giving a second thought, he proposed to me to write for CandlesOnline and being speechless for a while, I was like “How on earth is it possible for me?” But he didn’t give up on me! He insisted you give words to your thoughts, for the rest, I am there. Lo and behold, the first-ever article of my life “HOW GOOD IS OUR MASK OF PRETENCE?” got published on @CandlesOnline and last month I was able to post my 116^th article for @CandlesOnline blog “RELIGIOUSNESS OR RIGHTEOUSNESS – WHAT DO WE NEED TO LOOK FOR?“ Summing up this blissful experience I would say,

“God, at His time, gears you to your way

He makes you something out of nothing

For His glory, in His way.”  

One of my favorite songs is Chris Rice’s famous song “There is a Candle in every soul”. Apparently, my journey with CandlesOnline aces the same. On a personal level, if someone knows us much better than us, undoubtedly, He is God! Since God loves us, he has gifted us with numerous talents, some we know – some are still in that unknown darkness. Possibly once at a time, God sends someone to lit up a candle in our unknown darkness to make His sacred gifts known to us.

His sacred gifts are for His glory

Whereas it all seems inadequate and misty

But like a sculptor out of a mere stone,

He chisels and shapes me, gives me the beauty and maketh known.

Well, that’s the picture I would drop as a referral for my journey with candles. God’s sacred gifts which are our talents that always come in a raw form, primarily it appears to us as inadequate. We feel our talents are incompetent, we struggle for relevance and finally, as we dearth of enthusiasm, we feel bored enough to give up. In spite of, this boredom as we stay put to our talents, learn from our experience, our talents proceed to excellence. Since the gluiness of comfort doesn’t allow a man to grow, God puts the man in discomfort to chisel and shape his learning experience and builds him for excellence.

Sow a seed, water enough the plant

But all it may become extraneous

If the thorny bushes chock, making it impotent     

While speaking to a crowd, Jesus used the parable of seeds to explain why some people do not grow in the Word of God while others do grow. And one of the reasons He mentioned, using the instance of the seed that fell among the thorns, went unfruitful because of its environment, it was choked by the thorny bushes. On contrary to the picture is, what I feel being in the CandlesOnline community. It won’t be wrong to say, CandlesOnline is of my extended virtual family. In which, there is always someone out there to care and support spreading out positive vibes. In the Candles Online group, I always experienced everyone is too good and gracious enough to make you feel friendly. Refreshing a couple of my experiences, whenever I felt low and it reflected on my social media posts or in personal connection whether it is Chiradeep, Preeta, Kalpana, Rajnandini someone in some way always enquired my negative state and had comforted my soul. Going further, friends like Sreepriya, Kuljeet, Sriram, Astha, Sakhi, Sony always makes you feel friendly and alongside respectful. How can I go unmentioned about the three tiny peepers Aparna the first Bengali girl who addresses me as Dada; Payal whom I never meet physically but time to time made her presence vital through reasoning on some facts virtually; and topping all Vipra, my Choti Doctor Sahiba, always trusted and lavished her affection through enquiring about my health condition and also scolding on having late dinner. She never gives a prolonged gap to our virtual chats that had always brought smiles to my face. Putting right my experiences I would say, the best place to grow in your talent is being in a positive environment and that’s each of the Candles Online community made me felt.

God out of His infinite riches

Gifts and Grows our talents.

He gifts out of many purposes

It’s all for His glory through impacting lives.

God gifts us talents, equips us through life experiences to excel in our talents, and provides us a community to grow with positivity, God’s way of work always denotes God has a Purpose in whatever He does! And God’s purpose is we may have a personal experience in our personal relationship with Him and encourage others to have a taste of the same experience and as we continue to do so God’s name is glorified. This perspective becomes more evident as we look at our life situation through the Word of God (Bible). It reminds me of the Bible verse,

“The Word of God (Bible) is the mirror for our souls”.

AND CANDLES ONLINE HAPPENED….

When journey begins with simple conversations

Close to 7-8 years back, I was going through a period of distress in my personal life. Writing greatly heals me so I started my own blog for which I wasn’t getting any readership. I started browsing looking for platforms where I could publish my blogs. I came across an interesting article on Wrytestuff.com (another blogging website like Candlesonline). The article spoke about how connecting with God really helps. Since I was going through a hardship, I found the article really helpful. I posted a comment on the article thanking the author for bringing some inspiration in my life. Along with this, I too registered myself as an author on wrytestuff and started blogging endlessly.

For a few weeks, I did not get a reply on that comment. I was checking it quite regularly because I really wanted to connect with this author. I almost thought this guy must be some established author, maybe too arrogant to reply to a petty comment on his article. But one day he replied and to my surprise, it was a very warm and friendly reply. He mentioned that he was away and had not logged into this website for certain reasons. He too became regular with his blogging and we started following each other quite regularly. Wrytestuff had certain assignments for the writers, I remember waiting for his article so that we could talk about it. There was no whatsapp those days, so we used to chat over Facebook and gtalk.

Needless to say we had endless discussions, debates, generation of new ideas and fun together. One thing led to the other and I contributed to Candles for the first time on his request. At that time candles was a printed version. I was very surprised to see his dedication over getting Candles printed and distributed as much as he could in his personal capacity. Eventually in July 2015, candles online was born. And he catered to it like a baby. Right from designing the logo, bringing up the website, hunting for writers, keeping the writers family close and connected, basically being a great leader to Candles – he did everything. I am so glad that I am connected to him as a friend. Of course, I am talking about Chiradeep.

I wrote one of the first few articles. At that time, the Candles family was really a small one. Chiradeep used to discuss the topic for next week and we used to brainstorm together. A couple of years later, I got really busy with my work and my contribution to Candles reduced. However, by then the Candles family had grown with a lot of talent. We kept churning out articles every week and reading was such a pleasure. We did story relays, debates, picture captions. All credits to our boss – Chiradeep for coming up amazing ideas. I am so proud to be a part of this family. We have fun with each other, we tease each other, we support each other and we write together.