~~ [Weekly Prompts – 19.03]: This is us ~~

Originally written on Jan 18 2019

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Hey guys, how was the week that has gone by!?! Mine was just so and so, mostly because, I am sleep deprived this week.  But hey, am not complaining. The main reason for that is my own plummeting self-restraint to not postpone the time to go to bed so I can just watch one more episode from this series on Amazon Prime – This is us. The only time I get to watch the episodes is after the little one goes to bed, and so I am compromising a bit on sleep, but not for long as I am already nearing the end of available episodes, and well, the sleep deprivation so far, is worth it. All thanks to Pratishtha (an amazing writer who is in hibernation from writing which she shouldn’t be) who referred the series to me. Lady, thank you  though it cost me my beauty sleep Now, you gotta compensate for this by writing something surreal so we can justify your hibernation and my under-eye dark circles – will you please write already?

So, I do intend to catch up on sleep this weekend and I do plan to add an additional goal to my this year goal-list – Go to bed on time – and as I type this, I can only hear myself saying the same to my kid, every day after each story I narrate to her. Anyways, no more sleep deprivation for any heart-tugging amazing series or social media. Nope.

Now coming back to the series, I love the subtle heartwarming family drama. Every scene is as meaningful as the other – Every other quote memorable. The relationship dynamics, the love & trust in a marriage, the warmth that only parents or siblings can provide, the happiness of belonging, the search fueled by not belonging, the silences that convey more, the conversations that convey nothing, the conversations that are not meant to be but still happens hurting beyond repair, those tiny moments from childhood with your parents which molds you and influences how you handle a similar situation later in life, those teen age addictions, those self doubts, the haughtiness that comes with being good at everything, the self doubt that creeps when that one thing you like the most is snatched away from you, the unsaid emotions, the neglect, the love, the care, the understanding, the sibling rivalry, the sibling bonding, the marriage issues, the things you invariably do when you can’t do anything about something, oh, all of it and much more just simply woven beautifully scene after scene. Each episode leaves you with this weird-cosy-heart wrenching-numb-happy-sad-fun-tear jerking-beautiful-subtly-warm feeling. Each episode has managed to pull on my heartstrings and with only few more episodes to go, I am sure, I will feel empty for a while after.

I love all the characters with their positives as much as flaws. I cannot pick favorites as there are many lovely memorable moments in each episode, but, of all, I keep going back to this scene, where a young lady asks a dying old man on how it feels to know that one is dying. And the response is

“It feels like all these beautiful pieces of life are flying around me and I’m trying to catch them. When my granddaughter falls asleep in my lap, I try to catch the feeling of her breathing against me. And when I make my son laugh, I try to catch the sound of him laughing. How it rolls up from his chest. But the pieces are moving faster now, and I can’t catch them all. I can feel them slipping through my fingertips. And soon where there used to be my granddaughter breathing and my son laughing, there will be… nothing. I know it feels like you have all the time in the world. But you don’t. So, stop playing it so cool. Catch the moments of your life. Catch them while you’re young and quick. Because sooner than you know it, you’ll be old. And slow. And there’ll be no more of them to catch. And when a nice boy who adores you offers you pie, say thank you.”

You’ll probably get the reference about the pie and the nice boy only if you watch the episode, but never mind, this scene is just beautiful.

There’s also this other scene, where that nice boy from the previous excerpt, inadvertently blabbers about “Death” to his unsuspecting tiny young nieces who have probably no idea about what “Death” is. The conversation turns awkward when the kids realize that their parents can and will die someday too! Well, the thought is quite scary, even for adults, right? And to make up for the blunder, the nice boy (his name is Kevin BTW), then, attempts to set things right and explains death from his perspective with a painting –

“I painted this because I felt like the play was about life, you know? And life is full of color. And we each get to come along and we add our own color to the painting, you know? And even though it’s not very big, the painting, you sort of have to figure that it goes on forever, you know, in each direction. So, like, to infinity, you know? ‘Cause that’s kind of like life, right? And it’s really crazy, if you think about it, isn’t it, that a hundred years ago, some guy that I never met came to this country with a suitcase. He has a son, who has a son, who has me. So, at first, when I was painting, I was thinking, you know, maybe up here, that was that guy’s part of the painting and then, you know, down here, that’s my part of the painting. And then I started to think, well, what if we’re all in the painting, everywhere? And what if we’re in the painting before we’re born? What if we’re in it after we die? And these colors that we keep adding, what if they just keep getting added on top of one another, until eventually we’re not even different colors anymore? We’re just one thing. One painting. I mean, my dad is not with us anymore. He’s not alive, but he’s with us. He’s with me every day. It all just sort of fits somehow. And even if you don’t understand how yet, people will die in our lives, people that we love. In the future. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe years from now. I mean, it’s kind of beautiful, right, if you think about it, the fact that just because someone dies, just because you can’t see them or talk to them anymore, it doesn’t mean they’re not still in the painting. I think maybe that’s the point of the whole thing. There’s no dying. There’s no you or me or them. It’s just us.”

See, what I mean? Maybe not. But for me, it felt right. Because, Kevin doesn’t get too many quote-worthy lines to his credit in the series and probably to make up for it, he was given this whole piece of paragraph, you know?! There are so many such moments throughout the series which pushes all the right buttons to make you fall in love with the characters and of course, the series. Okay, enough about it, I guess. Do go watch and let me know how you liked it. No, that’s not the prompt.  And yes, sleep deprivation over it,  not recommended.

So, the prompt for you this week is to write a story revolving around a family along the lines of – Theda hai but mera hai – as in “Crazy, Weird, Twisted but Mine”. Write about a family which is as weird, crazy, twisted, different as any other family, but at the end of the day, no one would want it away or any different.

And oh, I will be super glad if you choose to write on your own one-of-a-kind family  (I am sure, each one of us has one such) instead of a fictionalized version.

Go on, choose real or fiction and then write!!

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If you attempt this prompt – Thank you 🙂 and

• Please make sure you leave a tag “Weekly Prompts – 2019” on your posts.
• Please link the post that gives out the prompts for the week when you post your response to the prompt (so people know where it all started)
• For the folks who want to know where it all originally started – refer here