It was the July cloudy sky of Bangalore. A regular post lunch session in office. People were gearing up for their evening meetings and reviews. Everything would have remained the same except for the news which broke out soon.
Despite so many serial bomb blasts in India during that time, a bomb blast was still not routine news. And a bomb blast in your own loved city..!!!.. it wasn’t a news which would not have created flurry of responses and worry over all the faces around…
The one feeling which was dominant that afternoon was; “Anxiety”.. Hordes of anxious people were busy over their mobile phones trying to get more info about the places where bombs exploded.. The count of casualties.. The safe routes to their homes.. The traffic jams situations...
Not surprisingly, the mobile phone network got jammed soon.. People were back on their desks, checking news sites on internet for further updates..
My parents were visiting me in Bangalore during that time and I was worried about their safety.. And they off course were apprehensive about my safe return to home..
After every few minutes someone would get up and announce a place where bomb blasted: “One blast in Madiwala bus stop” … and then lots of people would get up from their places..
” Oh Man.!!!.. I take bus from Madiwala Daily..!!!..” ,
“ God..!!. Today Morning I passed from there..”..
“ Hell..thats my friend`s pick up..”..
All of us had reasons to worry about.. worry about ourselves, our families, our friends..
News kept coming for different places.. Like everyone else, I was alarmed at the way , the security of the city was breached .. I got up from my place and was moving restlessly.. I started imagining Madiwala bus stop, from where I used to pass daily, full of blood and dead bodies.. The recent Jaipur bomb blast images were so fresh in everyone’s mind and all of us were shaken by the thoughts of seeing our own city, meeting the same fate..
“Kormangala” ..someone said.. and yet another rash of emotions.. Fear, Worry, Concern, Anger, Hatred, Helplessness..
I don’t exactly remember how long it went on.. But it went for quite a long time before someone got up and said .: “ A Blast in Eskon Temple..”..!!!!...
Suddenly the air became thick…An attack on temple isn’t like an attack on bus stop..it has got more significance ..!!.. it symbolizes an attack on Identity.. A “Particular” Identity..!!!.. An identity which was not inclusive of me..!!!
And suddenly a realization rose and fall within me.. I dint have anybody coming to me like earlier and telling me this news. I just overheard it. And after that I overheard other things. I looked down and felt lots of people around me. Each one with a Raised Finger .. “Your People”…”Your People”…!!!!!.... The Accusation turned into Allegation and then Conviction..!!!... From a victim I became an Accused and then a Convict…!!..
I looked down in guilt and asked myself…” My People..!!!!...Those Killers? …!!!!!!!!”
*********************************************************************
The news of blast in Eskon temple turned out to be a rumor and Bangalore bomb blast didn’t damage the city even an iota of what bombs in Jaipur did… But the question lingered in my mind for long… Was those raised fingers, a reality? Or just the reflection of my own mind..!!.. How did my mind engineer that guilt feeling..!!.. Did the guilt appear from nowhere or was it the fruit of some unwanted crop which grew inside me through last few years… I wouldn’t say that I got any certain reply of the question… it still lives on and occasionally rubs me from inside.. And whenever it does hurt, I look back to the time when I dint have disturbing questions to struggle with….
*********************************************************************
I was a coward kid. I was scared of sounds. Loud Sounds. So obviously Diwali wasn’t a happy occasion for me.. Every year it would become more painful with the appearance of my uncle. My father’s younger brother ..
We lived in a rather small town. The number and variety of firecrackers available there, were limited.. And people, off course, had limited money to spend on it..
My uncle would visit us every Diwali and along with him would come a Big baggage full of firecrackers..!!! .. He lived in the biggest city of the region and had no kids of his own.. So he would spend his Diwali vacations with us.. And since my elder siblings, a brother and a sister, loved firecrackers, he would bring a big lot of it with him.. :-( ..
Diwali, for my whole family, was a yearly occasion in that sense. They plan all the ‘fun’ for this time of the year.. During those days, as soon as the day tilts on the eastern side, the firecrackers would come out of the baggage..
We lived in a government colony with only a single Muslim family house. ”Our`s.
And ours was the family which would fire maximum number and maximum variety of crackers on Diwali..!!!...
Like I said I was a coward kid, I would lock myself inside a room, cover my ears with pillows and wait to hear the next sound of cracker..!!.. Like all kids I was curious but reluctant.. I would pray that they wouldn’t fire a loud cracker and in anticipation, I would remove the pillow from ear and would have a loud sound of cracker suddenly at that instance itself.. I don’t know if anyone else cared about me between all the fun but My Father did. He tried few things to distract my mind… few toys, few chocolates. But what worked for me was a colorful light decoration. So we had our house decorated with colorful bulbs and funky rope lights on Diwali..
We used to have our Koran learning classes in morning those days.. Amidst all the Diwali fun, we predictably wouldn’t get time to learn our lessons and would need a valid excuse to pacify our rather strict Maulana Saheb.. With Uncle being around, we were never short of very reasonable sounding excuses. But before that we would need to clean all evidences of our fun-time of the previous night.. So During those times, whenever we would have our fire-cracking spree the previous night, we all would get up ‘early’, which incidentally would never be ‘early enough’, the next morning and clean the whole compound from the remains of crackers being fired the previous night..!!... Those absolution sessions used to be even more of fun time… we all would rush from one corner of the compound to another corner, hitting each other on the way, sometimes so hard that our efforts of collecting the ‘evidences of our sins’ would get undone .. we would quickly do it again without wasting time in any argument over the accident.. And amazingly, we could always clean the compound just in time and without leaving any traces.. Because I don’t remember any occasion when our Maulana Saheb were doubtful of any mischief of previous night…
And then Diwali vacation would end. Uncle would go back. Fire-cracking sessions would wait till the next year. Lights would come off.
But lights would have more chances during the year.. Eid would come after few months and lights would come up .. And then Milad-un-Nabi, and lights would come up again..
That was the time when our house was lighted on Diwali, on Eid and on Milad-un-Nabi ..That was the time when Fingers were not raised. That was the time when guilt was not born… That was the time when identities were not exclusive.
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Friday, April 3, 2009
Senseless logic…
A mail in my inbox one morning:
Once a plane lost its way flying somewhere in United States. It had to find its way back to its destination. Knowing not what to do, the people in airplane hanged out a large cloth with a question written on it which asked:
"Where are we?"...
The plane was moving above a huge building and seeing the cloth, lots of people gathered on top of the building. Pilot of the plane noticed that the people over the building had started spreading a similar cloth with an answer written on it. And the answer said.. :
"You guys are Inside a Plane"....
The pilot confidently turned the plane in right direction and reached its destination...Upon reaching, when people asked him how did he find his way home, he gave his reason.. He told that after seeing the answer written on the cloth, he got assured that the building was Company “M” office because “M” people always give answers which were logically very correct but practically useless...
I had a good laugh reading the mail and it reminded me of another joke I know.
**************************
In the joke, someone was trying to find out the address of a school.. It goes on like this:
A: Can you please help me in finding this School, named X?
B: I know…It is on the opposite side of the Hospital Y..
A: Well I am sorry to bother you more but where is the Hospital Y then?
B: let me see.. it is the opposite side of School X you know…
A: I m lost now..can you please tell me where are these two places, School X and Hospital Y..!!!
B: They off course are in front of each other , you moron…
**************************
Logic is a strange thing…It can be invented and reinvented and still can be re-invented further….it can be molded and re-molded and still can be re-molded further… All these inventions and remolding of the logic could at last bring some sense out of it ..but all these exercise could, at times, leave a pile of logic with no substance in it..
Some people have got their logic straight, some have got it skewed and some have got it upside down..
There is a category of people who would bring a logic which would seem to be coming from nowhere but they would mold it to suit their requirements.. Most politicians across the world are good in this trick.
Yet another category of people who would bring in a logic which could be molded in any direction without making any sense.. While the prior category of people introduce logics which have got no Origin, the later category draw logics which do not have any Destination.. Managers across the world do fall in this category…
There is yet another category of people who have got logic which would take them to the place which was the start of their chase and their intellect gets nullified.. This category of individuals is very fascinating. They take you for a ride which never ends .. This is the category of Diplomats …
**************************
The Guy B in the joke always amazed me.. and I am helplessly dragged to write about few of those Guy B , I got to deal with in life.. People who give answers which are very logical but very useless..
I haven’t decided to write about the experiences to offend anyone.. but just to emphasize that all Logic and no Sense can be so frustrating at times…
Candidate 1 ( The Politician):
She was unwell, she was alone and she was my friend.. so there I was, preparing food for her inside her kitchen. Like kitchens reflect the personality of their functional heads, hers was reflecting hers… nothing was kept in the visible territory ..every single ingredient was kept like strictly guarded secrets..!!..
I did not want to disturb her with my queries of “Where is what?” and “What is where?”.. but I had no other choice after I failed to find anything in her kitchen even after using all my Analytical and Logical Acumen to guess the place of each of those items…
So I asked her the place of black pepper in her kitchen.. The conversation went on like this:
Me: Hey “M”, where do I find black pepper?
She: I put it in a small container.
Me: …!!!!!.... so where?
She: it’s a blue color container.. Do u see it?
Me: No, where u keep it?
She: In corner.
Me: …!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..... There are four corners in Kitchen.. :-(
She : The one behind the door.
Me:…!!!!...:-S….!!!!!... Three doors… :-(
She : Come on Zarin, Listen to me carefully.. I am talking about the exit door, the one which opens in the balcony…Behind the exit door, inside the cupboard..
Me : Okay, Thanks.
Now her answer sounded informative to me and I went and checked behind the exit door.. to my annoyance I saw 3 small cup-board behind the door.. Instead of disturbing her more with my queries I decided to look in the cupboards for any blue color container… I opened all three cupboards and was exasperated to find around 30 odd containers of different sizes in one of the cupboards … and most of them were blue..!!!!.. I randomly opened few of them but gave up soon..
Me: Hey “M”, Sorry to disturb you again but how do I find out from all these blue containers..!!!.
And before I hear her telling me the well-kept-secret, she was already in the kitchen, looking irritated with me…
She: Here it is… The third row in 1st cupboard.. The 2nd container.. that’s how… !!!!.. It is simple.. if you keep things at place, you find them easy… that’s why I ask you to be more organized in kitchen .. Improve yourself in such things Zarin , before you become too old to change anything in you….!!!...
And there she was……Gone with the wind… And I was left blinking defensively..:-(…
**************************
Candidate 2 ( The Manager) :
I was working in a telecom billing project. He was my colleague. There was an issue reported by a customer. The mobile recharge was not happening for him during a specific time. I needed his help to resolve the issue. I wrote him a mail and after a full day work he replied with his ‘Analysis’.. our mails went on like this
My Mail:
Hi “P”,
As discussed I am providing the inputs I got to help you look into the issue further:
Customer reported the failure in recharge with error code 32 which maps to “Invalid Recharge card” error; however the recharge card is valid. The issue comes during off peak time when other batch jobs run in parallel. It might happen that the row is locked during night due to batch jobs, causing the issue. Please provide your inputs to help me in further analysis.
Thanks
His Mail after spending a full day analyzing the issue:
Hi Zarin,
I noticed below things in reported issue:
1: The Recharge Fails. It means that the subscriber is doing recharge but getting no money in his account.
2: The error code 32 maps to Invalid Recharge Card.. It means that the card used for recharge is not valid.
3:If you noticed correctly that the recharge card is valid then the error code returned is not correct.
4: The recharge was done during off-peak time. That means the recharge was done at time when the recharge traffic was less.
5:The batch jobs run at off-peak time.
6: Batch jobs tend to lock records.
7: Locking record might cause recharge to fail.
8: If recharge is done at off-peak time while other batch jobs run, the chances of recharge failing due to row lock is there.
Please use the above analysis and continue further testing to pin down the issue.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.
As soon as I finished reading above mail of his, there was another mail in my inbox from our Boss:
Thanks “P” for your detailed analysis. I appreciate your efforts. Hope this helps Zarin in pinning down the issue.
Regards
**************************
Candidate 3: ( The Diplomat ).
The restaurant was crowded. The waiter was frustrated and tired. The guy sitting next to my table was alone and lost. He kept looking at the menu card for long , as if searching for the truths of life there…
After what seemed like an eternity to me, he called the waiter to him and asked in a very concerned voice :
“ Egg-Bhurji me kya hoga?..” (What would be the ingredients of Egg-Bhurji )…
The waiter paused for few moments ..thought over the question being asked .. And then in a very assuring tone, replied :
“ Egg Bhurji me EGG hoga sir…” ( There would be Egg in the Egg-Bhurji sir)…
**************************
Once a plane lost its way flying somewhere in United States. It had to find its way back to its destination. Knowing not what to do, the people in airplane hanged out a large cloth with a question written on it which asked:
"Where are we?"...
The plane was moving above a huge building and seeing the cloth, lots of people gathered on top of the building. Pilot of the plane noticed that the people over the building had started spreading a similar cloth with an answer written on it. And the answer said.. :
"You guys are Inside a Plane"....
The pilot confidently turned the plane in right direction and reached its destination...Upon reaching, when people asked him how did he find his way home, he gave his reason.. He told that after seeing the answer written on the cloth, he got assured that the building was Company “M” office because “M” people always give answers which were logically very correct but practically useless...
I had a good laugh reading the mail and it reminded me of another joke I know.
**************************
In the joke, someone was trying to find out the address of a school.. It goes on like this:
A: Can you please help me in finding this School, named X?
B: I know…It is on the opposite side of the Hospital Y..
A: Well I am sorry to bother you more but where is the Hospital Y then?
B: let me see.. it is the opposite side of School X you know…
A: I m lost now..can you please tell me where are these two places, School X and Hospital Y..!!!
B: They off course are in front of each other , you moron…
**************************
Logic is a strange thing…It can be invented and reinvented and still can be re-invented further….it can be molded and re-molded and still can be re-molded further… All these inventions and remolding of the logic could at last bring some sense out of it ..but all these exercise could, at times, leave a pile of logic with no substance in it..
Some people have got their logic straight, some have got it skewed and some have got it upside down..
There is a category of people who would bring a logic which would seem to be coming from nowhere but they would mold it to suit their requirements.. Most politicians across the world are good in this trick.
Yet another category of people who would bring in a logic which could be molded in any direction without making any sense.. While the prior category of people introduce logics which have got no Origin, the later category draw logics which do not have any Destination.. Managers across the world do fall in this category…
There is yet another category of people who have got logic which would take them to the place which was the start of their chase and their intellect gets nullified.. This category of individuals is very fascinating. They take you for a ride which never ends .. This is the category of Diplomats …
**************************
The Guy B in the joke always amazed me.. and I am helplessly dragged to write about few of those Guy B , I got to deal with in life.. People who give answers which are very logical but very useless..
I haven’t decided to write about the experiences to offend anyone.. but just to emphasize that all Logic and no Sense can be so frustrating at times…
Candidate 1 ( The Politician):
She was unwell, she was alone and she was my friend.. so there I was, preparing food for her inside her kitchen. Like kitchens reflect the personality of their functional heads, hers was reflecting hers… nothing was kept in the visible territory ..every single ingredient was kept like strictly guarded secrets..!!..
I did not want to disturb her with my queries of “Where is what?” and “What is where?”.. but I had no other choice after I failed to find anything in her kitchen even after using all my Analytical and Logical Acumen to guess the place of each of those items…
So I asked her the place of black pepper in her kitchen.. The conversation went on like this:
Me: Hey “M”, where do I find black pepper?
She: I put it in a small container.
Me: …!!!!!.... so where?
She: it’s a blue color container.. Do u see it?
Me: No, where u keep it?
She: In corner.
Me: …!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!..... There are four corners in Kitchen.. :-(
She : The one behind the door.
Me:…!!!!...:-S….!!!!!... Three doors… :-(
She : Come on Zarin, Listen to me carefully.. I am talking about the exit door, the one which opens in the balcony…Behind the exit door, inside the cupboard..
Me : Okay, Thanks.
Now her answer sounded informative to me and I went and checked behind the exit door.. to my annoyance I saw 3 small cup-board behind the door.. Instead of disturbing her more with my queries I decided to look in the cupboards for any blue color container… I opened all three cupboards and was exasperated to find around 30 odd containers of different sizes in one of the cupboards … and most of them were blue..!!!!.. I randomly opened few of them but gave up soon..
Me: Hey “M”, Sorry to disturb you again but how do I find out from all these blue containers..!!!.
And before I hear her telling me the well-kept-secret, she was already in the kitchen, looking irritated with me…
She: Here it is… The third row in 1st cupboard.. The 2nd container.. that’s how… !!!!.. It is simple.. if you keep things at place, you find them easy… that’s why I ask you to be more organized in kitchen .. Improve yourself in such things Zarin , before you become too old to change anything in you….!!!...
And there she was……Gone with the wind… And I was left blinking defensively..:-(…
**************************
Candidate 2 ( The Manager) :
I was working in a telecom billing project. He was my colleague. There was an issue reported by a customer. The mobile recharge was not happening for him during a specific time. I needed his help to resolve the issue. I wrote him a mail and after a full day work he replied with his ‘Analysis’.. our mails went on like this
My Mail:
Hi “P”,
As discussed I am providing the inputs I got to help you look into the issue further:
Customer reported the failure in recharge with error code 32 which maps to “Invalid Recharge card” error; however the recharge card is valid. The issue comes during off peak time when other batch jobs run in parallel. It might happen that the row is locked during night due to batch jobs, causing the issue. Please provide your inputs to help me in further analysis.
Thanks
His Mail after spending a full day analyzing the issue:
Hi Zarin,
I noticed below things in reported issue:
1: The Recharge Fails. It means that the subscriber is doing recharge but getting no money in his account.
2: The error code 32 maps to Invalid Recharge Card.. It means that the card used for recharge is not valid.
3:If you noticed correctly that the recharge card is valid then the error code returned is not correct.
4: The recharge was done during off-peak time. That means the recharge was done at time when the recharge traffic was less.
5:The batch jobs run at off-peak time.
6: Batch jobs tend to lock records.
7: Locking record might cause recharge to fail.
8: If recharge is done at off-peak time while other batch jobs run, the chances of recharge failing due to row lock is there.
Please use the above analysis and continue further testing to pin down the issue.
Hope this helps.
Thanks.
As soon as I finished reading above mail of his, there was another mail in my inbox from our Boss:
Thanks “P” for your detailed analysis. I appreciate your efforts. Hope this helps Zarin in pinning down the issue.
Regards
**************************
Candidate 3: ( The Diplomat ).
The restaurant was crowded. The waiter was frustrated and tired. The guy sitting next to my table was alone and lost. He kept looking at the menu card for long , as if searching for the truths of life there…
After what seemed like an eternity to me, he called the waiter to him and asked in a very concerned voice :
“ Egg-Bhurji me kya hoga?..” (What would be the ingredients of Egg-Bhurji )…
The waiter paused for few moments ..thought over the question being asked .. And then in a very assuring tone, replied :
“ Egg Bhurji me EGG hoga sir…” ( There would be Egg in the Egg-Bhurji sir)…
**************************
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
A Silent Revolutionary...
It was a long pause though I had planned to be back soon…Not that I was away in thoughts, but with so many things happening around so fast, I was too lost to be certain about anything… So for a while I decided to leave morning newspapers intact on the table and the remote control of television untouched.
I took refuge in a good book.. For me, a good book is a book which did not preach, did not conclude, did not try to convince.. but just put across a thought… And my ‘good book’ was incidentally talking about the same thing .. it was talking about ‘Uncertainty of Certainty’ .. about the brittleness of any dogma which claims to be the true, the final, and the conclusive one.. And that was precisely what was bogging me down for a while.. the exclusive and fundamental approach which we are discovering ( or re-discovering..!!!!...) towards life, and its impact, not just on our lives but on society and world as a whole, is leaving us with very narrow, very stingy and very edgy passage to walk on.. The mathematics of emphatic right and emphatic wrong leaves no space for moderation..
If one considers the fundamental approach as an outcome of religious fervor then one needs to reconsider.. when we see an angry crowd beating a thief so much so that he dies, or a youngster committing suicide when he fails to make it to an entrance exam or when a girl gets rejection for a marriage proposal because she is too short or too dark ,when we see all this happening around us, we know how much, the fundamental approach has encroached our space..
The scales to measure good and bad, success and failure, happiness and unhappiness are benchmarked so irrefutably that even an iota of deviation is not tolerable…amidst such stern approach towards life, a wide terrain of uncharted possibilities, unsanctioned ethos and unendorsed ethics are getting lost.. we fail to realize that beyond the obvious and defined perceptive, there could exist a wisdom which still needs to be substantiated and verified .. or still more, a wisdom which may be too profound to be defined and delineated…
So while my ‘good book’ was still half way and my newspapers were still unfolded, I got my mind wandering back and forth to the person I knew had wisdom which , to me, looked like a reply to the dogmatic approach which had left us living like morally challenged individuals …
Wearing his long white beard and a spotless Payjama-kurta he manifested his designation, which was a mosque priest.. Though sixty years of endurance had left his face shrunk but the innocence of his face was untouched by time..
Sheru Lala , as he was lovingly called, though have many stories associated with him, each one of them equally astounding and inspiring, he himself was seemingly oblivion of his narrow fame..
The day when he came to attend my sister`s wedding, I expected him to carry a serious and stiff look on his face like all priests do and be surrounded by an heavy air of the knowledge he would have had about the truths of life and beyond.. but unlike my anticipation I saw a man with a soft smile and eagerness of a child .. his eyes were gleaming with joy.. the kind of joy which is Infectious. And Pure. And Untouched ..
With such outrageous absence of any somber and rude expression which any religious guru should have, he wouldn’t get qualified for the job I thought.. he looked more like a curious kid to me..
But meeting people like Sheru isn’t a thing which happens daily.. I realized it the day I asked my father about the injury marks Sheru had on his body.. I noticed few injuries on the back of his neck in starting.. and later, on his legs when he sat down and his white payjama was pulled up a little… but soon I discovered that he had injuries all over his body .. and he got those injuries for a ‘sin’ so chaste , it inspired..
Maheshwar is a town of temples.. situated on the bank of Narmada river, it is a small pilgrimage .. every street has its own temple and people are emotional about their heritage.. The heritage belonged to the town of Maheshwar and not to a religion.. at least Sheru`s wisdom decided so.. and he paid the price of his wisdom the day he was passing by a street having a beautiful temple.. The temple had a golden dome and was getting crowded for the evening Aarti ..
There was a big peepal tree next to the temple. The tree was tall and inhabited by hordes of pigeon .. The pigeon, like pigeon do, were putting shit all around.. and a lot of their offering was shown on the beautiful dome of the temple.. As Sheru noticed the filth on the dome while passing by the street, his reason and senses could direct him for only one act..: to transpose the pigeon`s offerings .. and he acted upon, what his senses asked him for… He climbed on the peepal tree.. and ended on the temple`s dome.. started cleaning the dome with his scarf .. For a person , as old as he was, climbing the tall peepal tree would take more than courage.. it took away his breath.. but the strength of his conviction enthused him for this act of unusual compassion.. And his innocence barred him from any cautious defence.. So while this mosque priest, wearing white kurta-payjama and having the checked scarf, sitting on the dome of the temple , cleaning it from pigeon shit did not realize that the world has defined such narrow definitions that people like him wouldn’t be pardoned for such monstrous encroachment of the boundaries.. he did not realize that molding oneself in the contours made by the society is mandatory .. that pigeons of the society have put shit all over and any efforts to clean the shit is rewarded with brutal defiance…
When Sheru was dragged on the road and beaten for ‘trying to damage the temple dome with communal malice’, the centuries of stingy values and shallow convictions were winning over a innocence which refused to give in to them .. though the ‘revolution’ was so quiet and un-intentional that it couldn’t even defend itself.. it couldn’t even stand up for itself …
Sheru, with his broken bones and bleeding wounds was feeling scared and ashamed for a crime he dint understand… he did not understand the reason for people to beat him even after 6 years of the incident, the day I happened to ask about his injuries…
With a blushing face and embarrassed grin he said shyly .. “ But I was cleaning the dome…”… he looked down and was lost.. Thinking of the day when he almost died.. I asked him if he would see another dirty temple dome what he would do.. !!.. I expected him to say that he wouldn’t even look that way.. but the answer he gave me was this..: “ I would first look around to see if there is anyone to beat me up..”…
He never gave up the idea of cleaning the temple.. !!!.. The magnitude of his un-intentional wisdom gave me the re-assurance… The re-assurance that there may not be any emphatic truth to be concluded about beliefs and ethos.. The re-assurance that there are always those silent revolutionaries who would challenge our narrow understandings, based on which we compartmentalize our lives.. The re-assurance that silent revolutionaries don’t even die easily.. They live on silently….
I took refuge in a good book.. For me, a good book is a book which did not preach, did not conclude, did not try to convince.. but just put across a thought… And my ‘good book’ was incidentally talking about the same thing .. it was talking about ‘Uncertainty of Certainty’ .. about the brittleness of any dogma which claims to be the true, the final, and the conclusive one.. And that was precisely what was bogging me down for a while.. the exclusive and fundamental approach which we are discovering ( or re-discovering..!!!!...) towards life, and its impact, not just on our lives but on society and world as a whole, is leaving us with very narrow, very stingy and very edgy passage to walk on.. The mathematics of emphatic right and emphatic wrong leaves no space for moderation..
If one considers the fundamental approach as an outcome of religious fervor then one needs to reconsider.. when we see an angry crowd beating a thief so much so that he dies, or a youngster committing suicide when he fails to make it to an entrance exam or when a girl gets rejection for a marriage proposal because she is too short or too dark ,when we see all this happening around us, we know how much, the fundamental approach has encroached our space..
The scales to measure good and bad, success and failure, happiness and unhappiness are benchmarked so irrefutably that even an iota of deviation is not tolerable…amidst such stern approach towards life, a wide terrain of uncharted possibilities, unsanctioned ethos and unendorsed ethics are getting lost.. we fail to realize that beyond the obvious and defined perceptive, there could exist a wisdom which still needs to be substantiated and verified .. or still more, a wisdom which may be too profound to be defined and delineated…
So while my ‘good book’ was still half way and my newspapers were still unfolded, I got my mind wandering back and forth to the person I knew had wisdom which , to me, looked like a reply to the dogmatic approach which had left us living like morally challenged individuals …
Wearing his long white beard and a spotless Payjama-kurta he manifested his designation, which was a mosque priest.. Though sixty years of endurance had left his face shrunk but the innocence of his face was untouched by time..
Sheru Lala , as he was lovingly called, though have many stories associated with him, each one of them equally astounding and inspiring, he himself was seemingly oblivion of his narrow fame..
The day when he came to attend my sister`s wedding, I expected him to carry a serious and stiff look on his face like all priests do and be surrounded by an heavy air of the knowledge he would have had about the truths of life and beyond.. but unlike my anticipation I saw a man with a soft smile and eagerness of a child .. his eyes were gleaming with joy.. the kind of joy which is Infectious. And Pure. And Untouched ..
With such outrageous absence of any somber and rude expression which any religious guru should have, he wouldn’t get qualified for the job I thought.. he looked more like a curious kid to me..
But meeting people like Sheru isn’t a thing which happens daily.. I realized it the day I asked my father about the injury marks Sheru had on his body.. I noticed few injuries on the back of his neck in starting.. and later, on his legs when he sat down and his white payjama was pulled up a little… but soon I discovered that he had injuries all over his body .. and he got those injuries for a ‘sin’ so chaste , it inspired..
Maheshwar is a town of temples.. situated on the bank of Narmada river, it is a small pilgrimage .. every street has its own temple and people are emotional about their heritage.. The heritage belonged to the town of Maheshwar and not to a religion.. at least Sheru`s wisdom decided so.. and he paid the price of his wisdom the day he was passing by a street having a beautiful temple.. The temple had a golden dome and was getting crowded for the evening Aarti ..
There was a big peepal tree next to the temple. The tree was tall and inhabited by hordes of pigeon .. The pigeon, like pigeon do, were putting shit all around.. and a lot of their offering was shown on the beautiful dome of the temple.. As Sheru noticed the filth on the dome while passing by the street, his reason and senses could direct him for only one act..: to transpose the pigeon`s offerings .. and he acted upon, what his senses asked him for… He climbed on the peepal tree.. and ended on the temple`s dome.. started cleaning the dome with his scarf .. For a person , as old as he was, climbing the tall peepal tree would take more than courage.. it took away his breath.. but the strength of his conviction enthused him for this act of unusual compassion.. And his innocence barred him from any cautious defence.. So while this mosque priest, wearing white kurta-payjama and having the checked scarf, sitting on the dome of the temple , cleaning it from pigeon shit did not realize that the world has defined such narrow definitions that people like him wouldn’t be pardoned for such monstrous encroachment of the boundaries.. he did not realize that molding oneself in the contours made by the society is mandatory .. that pigeons of the society have put shit all over and any efforts to clean the shit is rewarded with brutal defiance…
When Sheru was dragged on the road and beaten for ‘trying to damage the temple dome with communal malice’, the centuries of stingy values and shallow convictions were winning over a innocence which refused to give in to them .. though the ‘revolution’ was so quiet and un-intentional that it couldn’t even defend itself.. it couldn’t even stand up for itself …
Sheru, with his broken bones and bleeding wounds was feeling scared and ashamed for a crime he dint understand… he did not understand the reason for people to beat him even after 6 years of the incident, the day I happened to ask about his injuries…
With a blushing face and embarrassed grin he said shyly .. “ But I was cleaning the dome…”… he looked down and was lost.. Thinking of the day when he almost died.. I asked him if he would see another dirty temple dome what he would do.. !!.. I expected him to say that he wouldn’t even look that way.. but the answer he gave me was this..: “ I would first look around to see if there is anyone to beat me up..”…
He never gave up the idea of cleaning the temple.. !!!.. The magnitude of his un-intentional wisdom gave me the re-assurance… The re-assurance that there may not be any emphatic truth to be concluded about beliefs and ethos.. The re-assurance that there are always those silent revolutionaries who would challenge our narrow understandings, based on which we compartmentalize our lives.. The re-assurance that silent revolutionaries don’t even die easily.. They live on silently….
Friday, October 10, 2008
कड़की का ज़माना ...
कड़की के ज़माने की लिखी एक कविता है , पोस्ट करने का दिल किया , कुछ नौकरी की तलाश में भटकने का तजुर्बा बुरा था इसलिए तल्खी सी नज़र आएगी :-)...
"खुश्की इस जेब की कितने रंग दिखाए और
कितने दरवाज़े खटखटवाये , कितने ताने सुनवाए और
कई गधो को तो बाप बना ही लिया है
देखिये कितने बुतों को सिजदे करवाए और ....
जो जानशीन थे सब मुँह फेर बैठे हैं
वक्त गुज़रा जब चैन से कुछ देर बैठे हैं
मोसमो का बदलना तो रोज़ की बात हुई अब
दोसतो का मुकरना तो रोज़ की बात हुई अब
मोहब्बतों में ठगी का सिलसिला , कितनी देर चलवाए और
देखिये यह कड़की का ज़माना , कितने रिश्ते तोड़वाऐ और ....
हर दफ्तर , हर अफसर मुह फेरे बैठा है
तुम्हारी कोई औकात नही , हर बाबु यह कहता है ,
चिट्टी पत्रई लाओ बड़े नामो के दस्तख़त वाली
तुम्हारी डिग्रीया नही यहाँ किसी ज़ुर्रअत वाली
देखिये इस system की बेरुखी कितनी रिश्वते दिलवाए और
कितने रास्ते नपवाये शहर के , कितनी चप्पले घिस्वाए और ....
कई गधो को तो बाप बना ही चुके हैं
देखिये कितने बुतों को सिजदे करवाए और....
"खुश्की इस जेब की कितने रंग दिखाए और
कितने दरवाज़े खटखटवाये , कितने ताने सुनवाए और
कई गधो को तो बाप बना ही लिया है
देखिये कितने बुतों को सिजदे करवाए और ....
जो जानशीन थे सब मुँह फेर बैठे हैं
वक्त गुज़रा जब चैन से कुछ देर बैठे हैं
मोसमो का बदलना तो रोज़ की बात हुई अब
दोसतो का मुकरना तो रोज़ की बात हुई अब
मोहब्बतों में ठगी का सिलसिला , कितनी देर चलवाए और
देखिये यह कड़की का ज़माना , कितने रिश्ते तोड़वाऐ और ....
हर दफ्तर , हर अफसर मुह फेरे बैठा है
तुम्हारी कोई औकात नही , हर बाबु यह कहता है ,
चिट्टी पत्रई लाओ बड़े नामो के दस्तख़त वाली
तुम्हारी डिग्रीया नही यहाँ किसी ज़ुर्रअत वाली
देखिये इस system की बेरुखी कितनी रिश्वते दिलवाए और
कितने रास्ते नपवाये शहर के , कितनी चप्पले घिस्वाए और ....
कई गधो को तो बाप बना ही चुके हैं
देखिये कितने बुतों को सिजदे करवाए और....
Thursday, September 18, 2008
Someday....
Someday when you would come, I’ll close my eyes..
I `ll hide my face in your lap and then…
I’ll Cry…
I’ll Cry so that all those painful years would wash away
from my memories…
So that the burns of scorching time get healed…
So that I could learn to laugh, all over again…
I `ll learn to sing the melody of raindrops…
…..learn to walk the lane of dreams…
In search of horizons…and beyond…
Someday when you would come..I`ll say sorry to you…for letting you go,
I `ll say sorry for living without you…all these years..
I’ll learn to hold your hands. And stop you from going,
I’ll learn to express, Just how much I belonged to you…
With you, each moment I would live a life..
And in those thousands of lives…………..
….I would learn to be yours..
I `ll hide my face in your lap and then…
I’ll Cry…
I’ll Cry so that all those painful years would wash away
from my memories…
So that the burns of scorching time get healed…
So that I could learn to laugh, all over again…
I `ll learn to sing the melody of raindrops…
…..learn to walk the lane of dreams…
In search of horizons…and beyond…
Someday when you would come..I`ll say sorry to you…for letting you go,
I `ll say sorry for living without you…all these years..
I’ll learn to hold your hands. And stop you from going,
I’ll learn to express, Just how much I belonged to you…
With you, each moment I would live a life..
And in those thousands of lives…………..
….I would learn to be yours..
Monday, September 15, 2008
completion of circle
The smell of vanilla cake and the melting candles had mixed up with the smell of roses and tulips. And had turned into a fragrance as unique as the occasion itself was… As he cut the cake, the sound of clapping which initially seemed to be coming from some distant place became louder and clearer to him…
He looked up wearily and saw her standing next to him and clapping hesitantly.. Wrapped in a pastel pink sari, she was standing with a stiff posture which told him that she was equally uncomfortable here as he was… and so was equally quiet..
Apart from her, he could see two handsome people clapping incessantly.. Their faces were glowing with hope and energy…their smiles reflecting a strange bliss …
He held the hands of the beautiful lady..The hands which never lost their warmth and softness.. He looked at her, wrapped in that pastel pink sari , with her subtle shyness and discomfort , she was still managing to keep herself standing in front of those flash camera lights.. Knowing her, he knew that she was having a difficult time..
When he held her hands, she came close to him.. She still is the same timid girl who needed him to save herself from all that was beyond her small, little comfort zone..
He looked at her and realized that though over the years her beauty has faded but her grace has increased.. He looked at her hands.. The finely filed long nails had disappeared and were replaced by comfortable looking pearl shaped cut.. the skin of fingers had loosened and was becoming softer than they ever were.. And the little shivering of hands told that she got more tired in lesser time than she ever did..
On that night of lights and candles, food and people, music and celebration he was more dreamy and lost then he ever was.. Nostalgia was taking over him …
From a makeshift hut in the village to a single room settlement in the town.. From a two bedroom rented flat to a two storey bungalow.. From a child of economically tight family to a student surviving on his small occasional earnings.. From a struggling new shop attendant to a successful businessman.. From a possessive, jealous husband to a friendly, supportive life partner.. From a strict disciplinary family head to an understanding loving father.. From a restless and insecure young boy to a content and peaceful old man..
He thought about the gone years. Years that deprived him and years that bestowed on him. He thought about the gone people. People who gave him and people who took away from him.. He thought about gone emotions. Emotions which strengthened him and emotions which weakened him..
There were moments when he complained about life`s stinginess.. and then, there were moments when he boasted about life`s bounty.. now looking back at time, life looked just to him.. His journey was an uphill chase but at the end of it , he is standing at top..
He thought this day as completion of the circle of his life.. He is SIXTY today…
He held the hands of his wife tightly and walked towards the bedroom, leaving his two children behind to celebrate his life…two loving and proud offspring reflecting his energy and his wife’s grace …And as he stepped into the bedroom ,he felt more accomplished then he ever felt…।
He looked up wearily and saw her standing next to him and clapping hesitantly.. Wrapped in a pastel pink sari, she was standing with a stiff posture which told him that she was equally uncomfortable here as he was… and so was equally quiet..
Apart from her, he could see two handsome people clapping incessantly.. Their faces were glowing with hope and energy…their smiles reflecting a strange bliss …
He held the hands of the beautiful lady..The hands which never lost their warmth and softness.. He looked at her, wrapped in that pastel pink sari , with her subtle shyness and discomfort , she was still managing to keep herself standing in front of those flash camera lights.. Knowing her, he knew that she was having a difficult time..
When he held her hands, she came close to him.. She still is the same timid girl who needed him to save herself from all that was beyond her small, little comfort zone..
He looked at her and realized that though over the years her beauty has faded but her grace has increased.. He looked at her hands.. The finely filed long nails had disappeared and were replaced by comfortable looking pearl shaped cut.. the skin of fingers had loosened and was becoming softer than they ever were.. And the little shivering of hands told that she got more tired in lesser time than she ever did..
On that night of lights and candles, food and people, music and celebration he was more dreamy and lost then he ever was.. Nostalgia was taking over him …
From a makeshift hut in the village to a single room settlement in the town.. From a two bedroom rented flat to a two storey bungalow.. From a child of economically tight family to a student surviving on his small occasional earnings.. From a struggling new shop attendant to a successful businessman.. From a possessive, jealous husband to a friendly, supportive life partner.. From a strict disciplinary family head to an understanding loving father.. From a restless and insecure young boy to a content and peaceful old man..
He thought about the gone years. Years that deprived him and years that bestowed on him. He thought about the gone people. People who gave him and people who took away from him.. He thought about gone emotions. Emotions which strengthened him and emotions which weakened him..
There were moments when he complained about life`s stinginess.. and then, there were moments when he boasted about life`s bounty.. now looking back at time, life looked just to him.. His journey was an uphill chase but at the end of it , he is standing at top..
He thought this day as completion of the circle of his life.. He is SIXTY today…
He held the hands of his wife tightly and walked towards the bedroom, leaving his two children behind to celebrate his life…two loving and proud offspring reflecting his energy and his wife’s grace …And as he stepped into the bedroom ,he felt more accomplished then he ever felt…।
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Me in my own eyes...
This is my day to write my first blog. The thought of writing a blog was around me for almost last two years and I have had so many things to write about, but writing needs patience..And this is one thing I lack so much..Moreover,I could think of so many things I would want to write about that it looked an uphill task to sort them out and take first thing first..
So for last few weeks, when I was hell bent to start writing, I was trying to figure out the driving force of my life,the most important thing for me, the most valuable of my memories, the most scary of my fears….And strangely the single answer which I got for all the above questions was driven by one word : “LOVE” ..The answer surprised me even more then it would surprise people who know me very closely..The answer which I got from within me, for a while, not just surprised me but took me out of my own comfort zone wherein I had believed for years that I don’t cling to anything because I don’t need anything. And I started wondering whether at this stage of my life, I have changed my basic values of life..So I decided to dig more into this dilemma..
Here are the four questions I asked myself:
What is the one thing I LOVE the most?
What is the one thing I VALUE the most?
What is the one thing I CHERISH the most?
What is the one thing I FEAR the most?
…Simple questions?..But I bet finding the answers of above, for anyone, wouldn’t be any easier then how much it was for me…It took me days to find the answers and weeks to get convinced of them..But when I accepted them at last they brought a huge relief to me..You want to know why? Here are the reasons:
What is the one thing I LOVE the most? :
Ans: My crazyness,my ability to do things which make me look stupid and give people chance to ridicule me but I still do them because I feel like doing them…
What is the one thing I VALUE the most? :
Ans: My sanity, because I know I have very less of it and for long I have been scared of loosing it…
What is the one thing I CHERISH the most? :
Ans: My dreams, There is nothing else which keep me going and keep me on hold at the same time…
What is the one thing I FEAR the most? :
Ans: My impulse, because I trust it the least…
So after all, my world is unmoved..I am still the center of my world..!!!...You know the kind of breath one would take if he was dipped inside water for sometimes and then was taken out?..That was the kind of breath I took after I realized this.. LOVE is the driving force of my life..and I LOVE myself.. and this is the complete solution for living a happy life…at least for me..
All the above analysis , took me to just one conclusion: That my first blog should talk about ME..I had lot of other ideas in mind but my self-obsession (call it my ONLY true love…) took over everything else..
So let me start about it..I promise that I will hold my pen tight and wouldn’t let it spill unwanted ink over paper ..I will try to keep it neat and clean..Though I know at times it becomes impossible to control Sneezing and Snorring..so kindly (If you have an option, you can be unkind as well..) bear with those jerks and occasional speed breakers… I am not conclusive about anything, though you can be judgmental if you want…
Three is quite an important number for me…Currently I am in third phase of my life..and when I looked back and analyzed, I found that each of those three phases were marked by three important trends…and there is nothing more appropriate I could tell you about my journey so far, except those three-three…Three phases-Three trends…
Childhood Years
1: Fascination with Moon: Would you think of school when you would think of your childhood years? The friends you had? Or the games you played? The most prominent of my childhood memories have none of them…In fact when I look back to those years, I would recall trees and birds, rains and mud, sunrise with bullock carts going to fields, sunsets marked with rajasthani folk music played in evenings in rural Jhabua district even today…
I was a lonely kid, if I wasn’t reading or writing, I would do just two other things: Playing with my dolls or cycling…well, reading and writing weren’t done literally in those years, it would consist of two activities, either staring at books or holding pen while thinking, whatever I would want to think, which generally was fantasizing ,about any possible thing you could think of…
But if I have to tell you my first encounter with ‘intense longing’, it would be this: The Bright, the Shiny, the Beautiful and Lonely, the Unreachable, Round Full Moon…When the vast, quiet night held the gorgeous moon, it looked so fullfilled..And I, like a silent and dedicated victim of its beauty, lie down in my courtyard… and when everyone else would be in their sound sleep, would stare at the night’s most precious belonging, as long as sleep would take over … For years I felt this longing so intensely that it has become a part of me..the object of desire kept changing but the intensity never went down..
2: Father’s Library and my first earning: If you ask me the most valuable treasure on this earth ,for me it would be my father’s library..Not because of the literal contents and quality per se, though it would fare well on that measure as well, but purely due to my emotional attachment with it..as kid, I have spent hours each day just staring at them with amazement and wondering whether my father had read all of them and whether he knew whatever is written in them.And more than that,whether I would ever be able to step in to their mysterious looking world ..
As I told, there was much more to my fondness with the library than even the books inside..The library gave me my first earning ,at the age of eleven..a full 100 Rs currency note..!!!...Not even a single penny less than the three digit number….which was surely much more then I could have dreamt in that age(considering the fact that I wouldn’t get even a single rupee to spend on my own in those days)…
It was an endless summer vacation. I tried all the possible activities which the children of our times were aware of..and had given up. When my father came up with this ‘too good to believe’ proposal..!!.. He asked me if I would want to arrange his books in the cupboard ..cover them up with a khaki paper, number them all and prepare a reference list with the numbers and titles of the book…I just jumped on the offer..:-)..I couldn’t have asked for more..And then the labor began..I got the ingredients of the recipe.. full roll of khaki paper, gum bottle, green color sketch pen, scissors..The books were of different size, shape and age.. some were so thick and big that I couldn’t hold them for more then few seconds, and some were so small that they could be covered with the left over waste paper…some were so old that their pages were coming out ,yet some were so new that I dint feel like covering them up with that boring khaki paper… And at the end of two months efforts ,I got a 100Rs currency note from my father..!!!..Even if I think hard today, I cant find out another event in my life so far, which had made me feel so happy and proud of myself as I was that day, holding the first earned money on my own.. What I did of that money? Well I gave it to my mother…
3: Talking with myself: The one thing which made my inner world a whole and complete space was this: I could talk with myself..for hours..while playing with my dolls,while peddling my bicycle,while watching sunsets..It was the time when my world wasn’t crowded,till then no one had stepped in ,no one had touched anything…everything looked so perfect..so balanced..so beautiful..so much possible..
It was much later that this world got crowded, shadowed, disheveled…noisy, old and rough…unbelievably fake..
But much before all these happened, for a while ,I lived in that serene, peaceful..and very owned world of mine…
Youth Years
1: Image in mirror: Youth years were a very difficult phase...the pace of change was unbearable, un-hold-able, un-slow-able .. Youth brought lot of complicated emotions along.. The most complicated change that I felt in me was the realization that I was a ‘GIRL’..till then I was as good (or as bad..!!!.) as a boy.. Strangely the worst of my struggle started when I started noticing myself in mirror.. It was a soft looking girl that I saw in reflection. That wasn’t ‘ME’..I wasn`t what I saw in mirror.. I was a rebel at core.. !!.. An angry person…angry with everything…Not settled with anything around.. but people started treating me like a growing up innocent girl...It was few years before I learned to react to people as per their expectations..I lived that image of mine which I saw in the mirror for years..and in those years I got more lost within me..got more unsure about myself..got more confused about my identity… It was only few years back when the traces of age started appearing that I started seeing a person with more strength and more conviction in the mirror .. So I loved growing up…growing up to what I am now. Because it took me out of my mirage of double existence.
2: Overwhelming Emotions: These years brought different kind of emotional insecurity.. I was over-sensitive and was easily hurt.. I started seeing world in different light, parents started looking distant, self doubts were abound, daily I would have a new question in mind and with each question ,I would become more unsure about myself.. I was struggling at every level.. my relation with everyone was changing.
I had to re-adjust with parents, siblings, friends.. I got new sets of rules and regulations as I grew up… studies, career planning , new kind of dreams, new kind of restrictions… all this brought lots of emotional pressure… I found myself worried all the time..
3: First Crush: One of the most featured incident in my life would remain my first crush..That un-usual experience taught me lot of valuable lessons..not just about Love but about Life as well…
I struggled against that feeling for years.. I cant bookmark the time when I came out of it but as I was winning over the vigor of it, I was becoming stronger within me..during this very important phase of my life, I learnt two things which I have never forgotten
1: Building Emotional Strength is one of the most basic exercise everyone needs to take up.. it doesn’t come easy, but then, nothing valuable comes easy in life..this strength keeps you safeguarded from most of the pains and fears in life..
2: The second lesson which I learnt is difficult to explain though but I will try..
I learnt that the ethics and morality defined in our society has got a very fragile base..they have little wisdom.. poeple are judged on factors they have no control over..The rigidity of social constitution has got a huge burden on its inhabitants, who basically are very vulnerable ..
Middle Age
1: Disillusions: Middle age so far has been the easiest and happiest time of my life.. After a long struggle I learnt to take life as it comes to me…No expectations, no complaints, no looking back and regretting, no setting benchmarks for future…Just living what I get…
For long I expected things to go in a particular direction, people to behave in a particular way, myself to be on par with a particular level.. I strived… but irrespective of whether I got what I expected or not, I wasn’t satisfied.. I craved for a moment of contentment, a moment when I was happy with wherever I was and whatever I had.. But that moment never came…till I stopped longing for it.. And after that things stopped bothering me.. My expectation from life went so low that whatever I got came as bonus to me…!!!.. So there lied the secret… A complete disillusionment would have brought a complete bliss…But even little disillusionment was blissful..
2: Re-discovery of self and re-assessments: I think to re-discover you, you need to loose yourself.. At least it happened with me.. For a while, life looked very hopeless and meaningless.. Nothing I knew was familiar.. Nothing I dreamt was relevant.. Nothing I desired was fulfilling.. It was Dark and Bleak and Lonely time.. I thought that life would go on like this and when I would get chance to look back ,I wouldn’t recognize me.. but I guess it never happens.. you never go out of touch with yourself.. it is just a matter of stopping for a while and calling yourself.. the sooner you do it , the better chances you have of finding yourself intact.. I was just in time to do that.. it was a huge relief when I heard back that very familiar, very forceful, frustrated yet hopeful , tired yet compelling voice from within… that was the moment and I have taken on life once again.. right now it is a time of redefining and re-assessment for me.. I am not sure if I would loose the lesson learnt of disillusion, but at the cost of conflicting myself, I admit that I am still hoping.. and yet I am still striving ..for the complete bliss..as everyone around me must be..
3: Settling down with myself: Towards the goal of finding the complete bliss for myself, this was a major step… I have stopped questioning myself, I have stopped judging myself.. I am being very lenient towards me.. I am settled with my flaws, my shortcomings, my inabilities.. I have learnt to love myself.. I can laugh on my stupidities, I can accept my mistakes, I don’t screw myself up if I don’t get what I set my mind on…for me it is about being happy, more then being successful… I know life still has to teach more lessons to me… I might still find reason to fight with myself..but right now and right here I am at peace with myself…
So was this it?..I wish I could say,’Yeah,this was it’..but as soon as I finished,I realized that there was so much more to tell..so much more to talk about..!!.I m feeling this compelling desire to start writing all over again…I am sure I am going to write it again to include things which were left unsaid..but before that let me ask few more questions to myself, let me discover more answers and let me get convinced of them…I will come back soon….
So for last few weeks, when I was hell bent to start writing, I was trying to figure out the driving force of my life,the most important thing for me, the most valuable of my memories, the most scary of my fears….And strangely the single answer which I got for all the above questions was driven by one word : “LOVE” ..The answer surprised me even more then it would surprise people who know me very closely..The answer which I got from within me, for a while, not just surprised me but took me out of my own comfort zone wherein I had believed for years that I don’t cling to anything because I don’t need anything. And I started wondering whether at this stage of my life, I have changed my basic values of life..So I decided to dig more into this dilemma..
Here are the four questions I asked myself:
What is the one thing I LOVE the most?
What is the one thing I VALUE the most?
What is the one thing I CHERISH the most?
What is the one thing I FEAR the most?
…Simple questions?..But I bet finding the answers of above, for anyone, wouldn’t be any easier then how much it was for me…It took me days to find the answers and weeks to get convinced of them..But when I accepted them at last they brought a huge relief to me..You want to know why? Here are the reasons:
What is the one thing I LOVE the most? :
Ans: My crazyness,my ability to do things which make me look stupid and give people chance to ridicule me but I still do them because I feel like doing them…
What is the one thing I VALUE the most? :
Ans: My sanity, because I know I have very less of it and for long I have been scared of loosing it…
What is the one thing I CHERISH the most? :
Ans: My dreams, There is nothing else which keep me going and keep me on hold at the same time…
What is the one thing I FEAR the most? :
Ans: My impulse, because I trust it the least…
So after all, my world is unmoved..I am still the center of my world..!!!...You know the kind of breath one would take if he was dipped inside water for sometimes and then was taken out?..That was the kind of breath I took after I realized this.. LOVE is the driving force of my life..and I LOVE myself.. and this is the complete solution for living a happy life…at least for me..
All the above analysis , took me to just one conclusion: That my first blog should talk about ME..I had lot of other ideas in mind but my self-obsession (call it my ONLY true love…) took over everything else..
So let me start about it..I promise that I will hold my pen tight and wouldn’t let it spill unwanted ink over paper ..I will try to keep it neat and clean..Though I know at times it becomes impossible to control Sneezing and Snorring..so kindly (If you have an option, you can be unkind as well..) bear with those jerks and occasional speed breakers… I am not conclusive about anything, though you can be judgmental if you want…
Three is quite an important number for me…Currently I am in third phase of my life..and when I looked back and analyzed, I found that each of those three phases were marked by three important trends…and there is nothing more appropriate I could tell you about my journey so far, except those three-three…Three phases-Three trends…
Childhood Years
1: Fascination with Moon: Would you think of school when you would think of your childhood years? The friends you had? Or the games you played? The most prominent of my childhood memories have none of them…In fact when I look back to those years, I would recall trees and birds, rains and mud, sunrise with bullock carts going to fields, sunsets marked with rajasthani folk music played in evenings in rural Jhabua district even today…
I was a lonely kid, if I wasn’t reading or writing, I would do just two other things: Playing with my dolls or cycling…well, reading and writing weren’t done literally in those years, it would consist of two activities, either staring at books or holding pen while thinking, whatever I would want to think, which generally was fantasizing ,about any possible thing you could think of…
But if I have to tell you my first encounter with ‘intense longing’, it would be this: The Bright, the Shiny, the Beautiful and Lonely, the Unreachable, Round Full Moon…When the vast, quiet night held the gorgeous moon, it looked so fullfilled..And I, like a silent and dedicated victim of its beauty, lie down in my courtyard… and when everyone else would be in their sound sleep, would stare at the night’s most precious belonging, as long as sleep would take over … For years I felt this longing so intensely that it has become a part of me..the object of desire kept changing but the intensity never went down..
2: Father’s Library and my first earning: If you ask me the most valuable treasure on this earth ,for me it would be my father’s library..Not because of the literal contents and quality per se, though it would fare well on that measure as well, but purely due to my emotional attachment with it..as kid, I have spent hours each day just staring at them with amazement and wondering whether my father had read all of them and whether he knew whatever is written in them.And more than that,whether I would ever be able to step in to their mysterious looking world ..
As I told, there was much more to my fondness with the library than even the books inside..The library gave me my first earning ,at the age of eleven..a full 100 Rs currency note..!!!...Not even a single penny less than the three digit number….which was surely much more then I could have dreamt in that age(considering the fact that I wouldn’t get even a single rupee to spend on my own in those days)…
It was an endless summer vacation. I tried all the possible activities which the children of our times were aware of..and had given up. When my father came up with this ‘too good to believe’ proposal..!!.. He asked me if I would want to arrange his books in the cupboard ..cover them up with a khaki paper, number them all and prepare a reference list with the numbers and titles of the book…I just jumped on the offer..:-)..I couldn’t have asked for more..And then the labor began..I got the ingredients of the recipe.. full roll of khaki paper, gum bottle, green color sketch pen, scissors..The books were of different size, shape and age.. some were so thick and big that I couldn’t hold them for more then few seconds, and some were so small that they could be covered with the left over waste paper…some were so old that their pages were coming out ,yet some were so new that I dint feel like covering them up with that boring khaki paper… And at the end of two months efforts ,I got a 100Rs currency note from my father..!!!..Even if I think hard today, I cant find out another event in my life so far, which had made me feel so happy and proud of myself as I was that day, holding the first earned money on my own.. What I did of that money? Well I gave it to my mother…
3: Talking with myself: The one thing which made my inner world a whole and complete space was this: I could talk with myself..for hours..while playing with my dolls,while peddling my bicycle,while watching sunsets..It was the time when my world wasn’t crowded,till then no one had stepped in ,no one had touched anything…everything looked so perfect..so balanced..so beautiful..so much possible..
It was much later that this world got crowded, shadowed, disheveled…noisy, old and rough…unbelievably fake..
But much before all these happened, for a while ,I lived in that serene, peaceful..and very owned world of mine…
Youth Years
1: Image in mirror: Youth years were a very difficult phase...the pace of change was unbearable, un-hold-able, un-slow-able .. Youth brought lot of complicated emotions along.. The most complicated change that I felt in me was the realization that I was a ‘GIRL’..till then I was as good (or as bad..!!!.) as a boy.. Strangely the worst of my struggle started when I started noticing myself in mirror.. It was a soft looking girl that I saw in reflection. That wasn’t ‘ME’..I wasn`t what I saw in mirror.. I was a rebel at core.. !!.. An angry person…angry with everything…Not settled with anything around.. but people started treating me like a growing up innocent girl...It was few years before I learned to react to people as per their expectations..I lived that image of mine which I saw in the mirror for years..and in those years I got more lost within me..got more unsure about myself..got more confused about my identity… It was only few years back when the traces of age started appearing that I started seeing a person with more strength and more conviction in the mirror .. So I loved growing up…growing up to what I am now. Because it took me out of my mirage of double existence.
2: Overwhelming Emotions: These years brought different kind of emotional insecurity.. I was over-sensitive and was easily hurt.. I started seeing world in different light, parents started looking distant, self doubts were abound, daily I would have a new question in mind and with each question ,I would become more unsure about myself.. I was struggling at every level.. my relation with everyone was changing.
I had to re-adjust with parents, siblings, friends.. I got new sets of rules and regulations as I grew up… studies, career planning , new kind of dreams, new kind of restrictions… all this brought lots of emotional pressure… I found myself worried all the time..
3: First Crush: One of the most featured incident in my life would remain my first crush..That un-usual experience taught me lot of valuable lessons..not just about Love but about Life as well…
I struggled against that feeling for years.. I cant bookmark the time when I came out of it but as I was winning over the vigor of it, I was becoming stronger within me..during this very important phase of my life, I learnt two things which I have never forgotten
1: Building Emotional Strength is one of the most basic exercise everyone needs to take up.. it doesn’t come easy, but then, nothing valuable comes easy in life..this strength keeps you safeguarded from most of the pains and fears in life..
2: The second lesson which I learnt is difficult to explain though but I will try..
I learnt that the ethics and morality defined in our society has got a very fragile base..they have little wisdom.. poeple are judged on factors they have no control over..The rigidity of social constitution has got a huge burden on its inhabitants, who basically are very vulnerable ..
Middle Age
1: Disillusions: Middle age so far has been the easiest and happiest time of my life.. After a long struggle I learnt to take life as it comes to me…No expectations, no complaints, no looking back and regretting, no setting benchmarks for future…Just living what I get…
For long I expected things to go in a particular direction, people to behave in a particular way, myself to be on par with a particular level.. I strived… but irrespective of whether I got what I expected or not, I wasn’t satisfied.. I craved for a moment of contentment, a moment when I was happy with wherever I was and whatever I had.. But that moment never came…till I stopped longing for it.. And after that things stopped bothering me.. My expectation from life went so low that whatever I got came as bonus to me…!!!.. So there lied the secret… A complete disillusionment would have brought a complete bliss…But even little disillusionment was blissful..
2: Re-discovery of self and re-assessments: I think to re-discover you, you need to loose yourself.. At least it happened with me.. For a while, life looked very hopeless and meaningless.. Nothing I knew was familiar.. Nothing I dreamt was relevant.. Nothing I desired was fulfilling.. It was Dark and Bleak and Lonely time.. I thought that life would go on like this and when I would get chance to look back ,I wouldn’t recognize me.. but I guess it never happens.. you never go out of touch with yourself.. it is just a matter of stopping for a while and calling yourself.. the sooner you do it , the better chances you have of finding yourself intact.. I was just in time to do that.. it was a huge relief when I heard back that very familiar, very forceful, frustrated yet hopeful , tired yet compelling voice from within… that was the moment and I have taken on life once again.. right now it is a time of redefining and re-assessment for me.. I am not sure if I would loose the lesson learnt of disillusion, but at the cost of conflicting myself, I admit that I am still hoping.. and yet I am still striving ..for the complete bliss..as everyone around me must be..
3: Settling down with myself: Towards the goal of finding the complete bliss for myself, this was a major step… I have stopped questioning myself, I have stopped judging myself.. I am being very lenient towards me.. I am settled with my flaws, my shortcomings, my inabilities.. I have learnt to love myself.. I can laugh on my stupidities, I can accept my mistakes, I don’t screw myself up if I don’t get what I set my mind on…for me it is about being happy, more then being successful… I know life still has to teach more lessons to me… I might still find reason to fight with myself..but right now and right here I am at peace with myself…
So was this it?..I wish I could say,’Yeah,this was it’..but as soon as I finished,I realized that there was so much more to tell..so much more to talk about..!!.I m feeling this compelling desire to start writing all over again…I am sure I am going to write it again to include things which were left unsaid..but before that let me ask few more questions to myself, let me discover more answers and let me get convinced of them…I will come back soon….
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