Happy Father's Day to You, Mom!

It's a very special day today ! Firstly, 21st of June marks the year's summer solstice. Also, it's World Music Day. And it's Father's Day too !  Be it Twitter, or FB timeline,all social networking sites  are actually flooding with Father's Day posts .It's quite funny but it seems like there's a sudden deluge of love in everyone's hearts for their father. You might be find it a little surprising, but I've never really had a close bonding with my dad. Mostly because I've been used to growing up in his absence.

Anybody who's father has been serving as a marine engineer will connect. For me, dad has been that cool person who visited once or twice a year with colorful goodies and chocolates. So family for me has always meant my mother and my sister. 

Last night, I just had a  sudden realization. My mother had actually filled up my dad's absence in the best possible way she could! Be it attending parent teacher meetings,  taking me to the doctor's clinic or telling the best possible fables so that I would quickly finish my dinner (feeding me was a real pain, and none other than a gifted raconteur like my mom could really grab my attention in order to make me gulp my food!)

She's definitely not one of those people who will try to make it to your good books, mostly because she's too candid! But there have been certain instances when she has let her softer nature play a peek-a-boo with her harsh exterior. Moments when she happily bore the weight of my head on her shoulder while we were driving home after a long tiresome day. I often find myself checking on her at night, watching her stomach rise and fall with every breath. I'm so so scared of losing her, ever! The one reason behind my soul existence.So I think it'll be just for me to say "Happy Father's Day to you Mom! Because you've sort of played both the roles successfully most of the time ! "

I turned Seventeen !

"I am sixteen going on seventeen
I know that I'm naive
Fellows I meet may tell me I'm sweet
And willingly I believe

" -sixteen going on seventeen 

                                                                    (The Sound of Music)

I just turned seventeen last Sunday! The worst part about turning seventeen is well, firstly, I have to change my blog's description which means I have to think of a new one !Whew! If you're wondering why, well the description currently says" a sixteen year old girl who fell in love with words"...And now put seventeen in place of sixteen! Check! How unpoetic ! I am someone who swoons over Bukowski and feels blissful reading Silvia Plath on a rainy day. So I need a new description. Secondly, the worst part about being seventeen is, you don't get to be sixteen anymore(why am I blabbering shit!). One year of your life has passed you, and you haven't achieved any of the glories that a sixteen year old's supposed to! I remember feeling miserable on the night of my birthday. Not that I had a bad day. My friend came over. She had baked a chocolate egg-less brownie cake( I'm a vegetarian) specially for the occasion because she's a real sweetheart ! And we also got the chance to get wet in a mid-afternoon shower. We watched some classic movies like" The Runaway Bride"and "Sweet Home Alabama".. Later I went for a movie with mum (Jurassic World) and we ordered Chinese at a take-away restaurant. So, not a bad day at all , but there you go- I was filled with a feeling of deep dissatisfaction about everything. In brief, I was thinking about the popular kids at my school and the big fat parties that are held on their birthdays! That's when I looked up birthday goals on Google. And I found this site where the author writes about his dissatisfaction over the year that's gone by and as a consequence he sets a few goals to accomplish over the next year. Its certainly a cool idea.I think I'll follow it. So I guess my next blog will be on birthday goals. Stay tuned! Oh I also got To Kill a Mockingbird and The Catcher in The Rye as presents. (Yay!)

Be Selfish

There's a really happy lie that we all like to believe in,  "We are going to be remembered." And thus we take measured steps and restrain ourselves to dream of achieving goals which only the "world glorifies". We count on our loved ones to spend a substantial amount of time mourning over our death. But the fact is, life goes on. With time, people learn to move on. A time comes when they will no longer care. My point is, is it

worth it to sacrifice our dreams in order to appease our loved ones?  

Nothing's worse than the regret you feel in your deathbed. "I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life other people expected of me." as Shannon L.Alder beautifully puts it. We've got this one life, a beautiful opportunity, a blessing to create something magnificent in order to leave our footprints in the sands of time. Your dreams matter. Big or small. So go for it, be selfish enough to make yourself happy. At the end of the day, that is what matters. 

"You are alive. That means you have infinite potential .You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you change the world, the world will change. ~Neil Gaiman

6 Reasons Why We All Need a Best Friend

“If you live to be a hundred, I want to live to be a hundred minus one day so I never have to live without you.” ― A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh 

A sorrow shared is a sorrow halved ,just as a happiness shared is a happiness doubled. And since we can't share all our problems or our triumphs with everybody, God has blessed each and every one of us with at least one close chum we can fall back on at the end of each day. The most beautiful part of friendship is, it transcends all barriers- age, sex, caste, creed ,religion or race. For me, the best part of each day is the time of the evening I share with my mother, and we pour  our hearts out to each other in a tete-a-tete over a cup of tea. So, I shortlisted six reasons why we all need a close friend, in order to make everyone aware of the blessing they have called a true friend .

• A good friend is a good listener- No matter what we've gone through the entire day, we can actually share all that with our close buddy. And that close buddy won't mind listening to our crap and endless rantings until our heart is satisfied. What are close chums for, after all?
• Comfort- As I mentioned earlier, we are not comfortable sharing our problems with everyone. So we need that one person wont judge us by our actions but will instead understand our problems and try to fix them.
• Connectedness- There are certain things you share in common with your close friend. It might be a common interest in sports,  a fetish for books, or a penchant for cooking, or it can just the way you both look at things, i.e. the basic philosophies of life. This is what makes two persons the closest of friends and helps to create an everlasting bonding.
• Fun - One of the various connotations for the word friendship is fun. And that's the kind of fun that takes place when two close friends are together- whether its going ROFL over a joke only you both understand, quarreling over whose crush is better looking, or rubbing cake cream all over each others faces!
•  A true friend gives honest opinions- It is important to have that one person who is candid enough to tell us what we're doing is right or wrong. Whether it comes down to a dress we're wearing,  our behavior in public, or an unscrupulous act of having cheated on someone. True friends back us, but at the same time help us see things in a better light.
• A good friend is essentially a 3am friend-  Yes, one of the biggest reasons why we all need a best friend. If you're feeling depressed in the middle of the night and you're on the verge of tears, all you want is the company of a close bud. And sometimes, it might not be possible for your close pal to be physically present, but all it takes is to dial his/her number on your phone. Sometimes you don't even need to speak, but the feeling of having your friend on the other side of the phone provides a whole lot of comfort.

That's the kind of friendship we all look forward to in our lives. And if you look hard, I'm sure you'll find that one person in life who deserves to be called a best friend. The person who has been silently helping you in many ways, but their endeavors to make you happy went unnoticed ! And all though it is not friendship day, I decided to write this post because we don't need to celebrate a beautiful bond such as friendship on a special day of the year! Good luck to whoever is on a quest of finding a true friend !

My Blog Gets A New Name

Finally ,my blog has a new name.  Yay! This is a very important event of my journey as a blogger. Not Fundaytimez anymore, but The Diary of A Wallflower. You must have noticed the stark resemblance between the new title and Stephen Chbosky's novel "The Perks of Being a Wallflower", which of course happens to be one of my favourite books. Initially, my sister had helped me create this blog just for fun. But since it has turned into my vocation now, I thought of keeping a new name. Not that I write about serious stuffs now. But the fact is, we all love novelty, don't we ? So, I hope I get to write some better posts in future which will do justice to the new title. Cheers!

Being Happy

 It's funny how being happy can sometimes be the hardest and the easiest task at the same time. All it takes is a change in perspective. I somehow believe happiness is a choice. I've been going through a really tough time lately, with a skin disorder that has been taking a toll on me. And today, I broke down. I couldn't take it any more. I cried. And I don't think I was being stupid. I'm a sixteen year old girl who is supposed to hang out with friends and enjoy life at its very best rather than rubbing a hundred ointments on her skin daily and sitting in the sun to cure her skin problems! Plus, I had a really bad day. And I realized that I was simply focusing on the negative side of things. Which was of course the easier thing to do at the moment. But once I unloaded my  heart, I realized that life can't be perfect. But that doesn't mean one can't be happy. You can be happy if you choose to be happy. As the saying goes, "The optimist and the pessimist both die in the end. But both would have lived lives in a completely different way." I conclude with one of my favourite quotes by Parker J. Palmer ~ " Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means embracing brokenness as an integral part of life. ". So today I choose to be happy.

April Fool's Day- It's Origin

Life without macaroons- acceptable.

Life without chocolate muffins-acceptable.

But O Lord ! What would we do without fools?

Quoting Shakespeare "the dulness of the fool is the whetstone of the wits" .

So it is not irrelevant celebrating April Fool's Day every year after all, is it?

As you may be surprised to know that this day has an interesting history behind it. 

In ancient cultures, particularly those of the Romans and the Hindus, New Year Day was celebrated around April 1. It is shortly after the vernal equinox (March 20th or March 21st).In medieval times, much of Europe celebrated March 25, the Feast of Annunciation, as the beginning of the new year.

However, in 1582, the old Julian calender was replaced by Pope Gregory VIII . The new calender came to be known as the Gregorian calender and it called for New Year's Day to be celebrated Jan. 1.That year, France adopted the reformed calendar and shifted New Year's day to Jan. 1. According to a popular explanation, many people either refused to accept the new date, or did not learn about it, and continued to celebrate New Year's Day on April 1. Other people began to make fun of these traditionalists, sending them on "fool's errands" or trying to trick them into believing something false. Eventually, the practice spread throughout Europe. So, that's how April Fool's Day came into origin. Or might I say I've been fooling you? Well, I'm actually not.