fairytales and frappuccions

“Begin at the beginning,’ the King said gravely, ‘and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

So let me begin by telling you how all this began from the beginning.  

The seeds for this blog were sown over a cup of chai, in the warm virtual company of my fairy godmother; Mr Hibiscus. 

“A warm hug for you,” he typed his customary and sincere greeting from across the time zones.  Mr Hibiscus is an expat Londoner, (in fact he is from the same town as me) and is currently in India. He is so knowledgeable, yet modest and mellow, I am pretty sure he must be accepted as an honorary Indian even amongst the most die-hard nationalists.   

“oh!!! I’m NOT happy today” I declared. I promptly followed this statement up with several melodramatic crying-faced smilies, and withered flowers and all of the other frivolous paraphernalia available to me in MSN messenger.  

“So what makes you happy?” he asked. I thought this to be an odd question for what he should have asked was “why?” I was ready to answer this but not the former, which caught me off-guard. I was all fired up to recite the long list of well rehearsed miseries including the daily chain of rejection letters for employment, the financial worries, the bad hair day, the weight gain, the unruly flamingo and of course in the British tradition, I wanted to deliver a tragic yet eloquent soliloquy despairing about the weather. 

***CYBER SILENCE***  

“Well you should do what makes you happy” the little green man was finally blinking. 

In my moronic silence I saw the simple beauty of this statement. So much of my daily energy had been expended bitching, even the mere act of reciting my list of woes was preventing me from getting on with the things I love doing, things which would make me happy. 

“So what makes you happy?” my flowery friend rhetorically asked again.  

You see, before I continue I really must pause to tell you about Mr Hibiscus. He is so called, as he possesses an unsymmetrical beauty about him which does not boast, but cannot be ignored for his character is truly striking. His soul is solid, and comfortable, and calm like the patient oak but tender with the innocence of a pregnant spring blossom. He is truly the best fairy godmother one could hope for. 

“WRITE” he instructed simply. 

I looked into my cup of golden brown liquid and a face I knew well smiled back. 

“Ok” I answered.