Thursday, February 21, 2013

Thoughts we want to always erase!

 Sometimes while climbing up a staircase, or walking down the street market, sudden and abrupt thoughts pertaining to everyday personal and social life hit your mind, the kinds you want to suddenly note down or think about for a little more than a fleeting few seconds, but let them go passe because there is neither the time nor immediate & direct relevance to ponder over these snippets of subconscious activity of thought and conscience. Here are some of mine, which I happened to sort of remember -

1. The art of begging

Looking at the local-station side beggars of Mumbai, I wonder if begging was an organized profession. If it was, it had all structural and behavioral aspects to it like any ordinary organization - There were timings, the office timings during which there was maximum footfall at the stations, there were focus areas, the stations which saw extraordinarily large numbers of people boarding and getting off the trains, the right communication, whether to say "aap ki jodi salaamat rahe" or "uparwala aapko bohot dega" or "khaana khaalungi beta", the target audience, an ability to pin point who will dwell down their pockets, the advertisements, whether to look handicapped or beaten or famished or simply pregnant and finally the account keepers & controls, handling collection, counting, division and distribution of salaries.

It may come across like a very cruel thing to compare begging to a profession, but it seems very likely that it either has or is shaping into one. I wonder if someone could do a dipstick research on it and understand how it really worked - whether it is a machinery in place or whether it is what it is supposed to be - impoverished, ill-fated people begging for their daily survival with no place in the world to go to and no ambition of a possibility of a better life for themselves and their children.

2. Last few minutes of my life

Articles of abrupt hanging of Afzal Guru, reports of 12 year old being shot at five times by army men and more citing of this genre of news compels me to try and imagine what those last few minutes of life during which the sudden demon of death had appeared would have felt like. What could be the thoughts and what could be the questions that came to the mind of the person who was facing death? Could he have felt like it was a nightmare? Could he have lot his mental stability? Did he feel disoriented? Did he give up, feet helpless and want to cry? Did he want his mother to come save him or visualize his beautiful wife? Would he for a split-second cursor through the possible scenario at his home when his death would be communicated to his family? Did he want to remember God? Did he want to attack? Would he be desperate or simply compliant? Would he think whether he deserved it? Would not a 12 year old be mighty scared? Would his belief in human compassion and general faith  have not died a quick silent death before his own mortal one? Would this not be a true example of failure of humanity once again? How could we then expect people to be born and grow up to have a sane mind and quite composure? Who are we? A bunch of nations or people or their governments? What do we compose of? Political systems or human interactions? What are our priorities? Business or Happiness?




Sunday, January 13, 2013

How I burnt my Lohri


Many years earlier, I think almost six; a small enthusiastic wish in me had died. The funny thing is that a lot of wishes followed suite. However only this particular one had hurt as much. It was winters of 2007 and I was nearing towards the end of my first year of engineering in Jaipur. Year is a misleading term as the session had started only in july and till January it was a period of some 7 months. So basically I had been away from my perceived reality for 7 months, a period which wasn’t enough to turn me into a master socialite of the pathetic social systems that had existed around my college and home there in Jaipur. But I will talk about it some other day. 





Today on 13th of January 2012, as I hear the drums and dholaks being beaten on almost every third street of Mukherjee Nagar in North Delhi to celebrate Lohri, a section of my heart wants to leap out of the balcony, swing open the door and let my feet do what they love doing the best..dance to the tunes of raw beats in heavenly cold winds of Delhi winter while going around the clumsily created fire by families and children. Roast pop corn and nuts in it while trying out different steps of the famous Punjabi Bhangra. And the other section of my heart, stops me, locks my feet with the invisible chains of pain and helplessness that I had suffered 6 years back at the event of Lohri. It was being celebrated by my friends and neighbors right across the street…I too had been invited and needless to say I had gladly accepted the invitation. But little I knew that I would be locked inside my house at 9 pm to only be able to catch infrequent glimpses of flames rising up in the air…to only be able to hear people dance and cheer as I stood stuck to the wooden door which locked my freedom and independence to be and live. Now I realize it had meant a lot more than not being able to celebrate Lohri. It was a symbolic lock my on freedom, to try, to travel, to move out, to talk, to share and to basically just live! For 4 years till I finished my engineering degree and moved out of my habitat, which ofcourse was home in a lot of ways, but also hell, in many others. I remember how I used to pain to look at a star studded sky. I used to miss looking at the dark, sometimes barren, sometimes adorned sky all those years. Irony being, I had grown up staring at the sky whenever I had found an opportunity, which I did in plenty till I was with my parents. I remember the time I used to finish studying at 12 in the night and then stand by my window and stare at the sky till 2 am. It used to freak my mom out! She had often found me sitting aimlessly in my balcony at supposedly wee hours of the night. During the day, she didn’t mind me staring at the sky though. I remember how blissful it used to be to sit on my recliner by the window, hold a book, read, stare and just sleep off. Such comfortable, cozy afternoons I could never experience again. Sometimes I wish I could relate everything I have felt about these small-small things to someone, someone who mattered, like my parents but then had I told them everything, they would perhaps not been able to bear the pain than my heart has soaked in it all this long. People have often criticized me and judged me according to their understanding of right-doing and wrong-doing. It is however strange that they never took context into account. I don’t blame them really. Maybe I am the mysterious wrong-doing woman that men claim every woman wants to be. Getting back to the trauma of Lohri, today I can make the decision to step down and celebrate this festival, but those memories haunt me. They ask me to punish myself for not breaking loose then, by not breaking loose today.  So even as I hear people dance and kids cheer and clap, I am going to shut my door to the world, put myself in front of something that passes my time and close my eyes to tell myself- Yes it did really happen to you!

Thursday, July 19, 2012

Detached in 20s

Happy Detachment

The way I had been brought up, I thought attachment was so necessary that it could almost take the place of something that brought merit. Being attached to home was considered to be a desirable quality. Being attached to family meant that you were a good child.



However at 23 and having learned a lot of lessons, some of which I would like to perhaps unlearn and some, relearn I can bet on the fact that attachment in a sin one commits only for his or her own downfall. Now I really do not want to sound preachy but this has been pretty much the most important learning I have had from a variety of different incidents and their outcomes.


                               


Beginning from adolescence, things that matter the most to you is your your home, family, sports and food. As a teenager, one gets attached to friends, beauty,  music, fashion and sports again. As we grow up, the level of attachments rise up to reach more dangerous stuff like social image, ego, peer affability and a lot of times, money as well. Then concepts like ambition, travel, fame, luxury etc also creep in to the extent of making a person go cuckoo. Then there are super concepts like family, religion, lifestyles and the likes, attachment to which can make anyone go haywire.



And this just goes on and on until one day you sit up straight and tell yourself - This is not how its going to work. It may work for others but does not happen for everyone. You tell yourself, I am not going to bend myself to be liked or tell myself to like things and people if I dont like them. You tell yourself, if you are not attached you are free to fly. Detachments gets you rid of troublesome good-deeds, endless expectations and forced commitments which are by products of feeling attached.



One would want to argue that he or she wants to have a feeling of belonging. But truly speaking, that feeling is only in one's head and does not exist for real. Its a concept that has been fed into our heads to tie us down to families at micro level and political boundaries at macro level. When I was younger I always felt the need of having a stable household to keep going back to it. Then an older friend argued that you would never feel homesick (which I used to quite often and ironically do so even now) if I considered the world, my home. Here fits in the concept of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam. How wise early mean really were. I dont always vouch for all such concepts because most of them are quite contextual but a lot of them do make a lot of relevant sense even today. Another example could be the Geeta Saar.



Anyways, not digressing further I would just say the mountain of attachments keeps building up if we don't keep a conscious check over it and may reach a point where we are bound to crumble under its weight. So as a young person, I would like to say to all those like me who think a lot, are very curious about life and do not want repeated disappointments that not having something is a thousand times better than having it and then losing it. So if you are yearning for something, achieve it and move on. If you dont get it, its cool because then you will not have the responsibility of preserving or protecting it. So just stop waiting on events. Quite simple, ya!




Monday, April 23, 2012

Poetry: The Unmistakable She

---------A-young-bride-to-be----------

Ladden with gold, smelling so divine
Clad in red, intoxicating like wine...

she believed in her fate and of course her life
her definitions would change, from a maiden to a wife...

her future was sealed, a seal of hope
ignorance was indeed a bliss, as preached by the pope....




--------A-forced-sex-worker----------

She blinked twice, clock was way past nine...
Bathe, groom and report, or pay her fine..

she feared her credits and of course her debts
they would not be cleared, not unless she gets...

a sum unthinkable, and responsibility of a whore,
sensuality was a curse, as Mahabharata bore...



---------An-unwanted-girl-child----------

Some toys, some bangles were enough of a shine...
her father didnt have to beat her, for his personal crime..

she loved her family and of course her tribe
unaware of her rights, that she could subscribe...

to make her choices and give them voice....
to be raided every night, and still hold her poise...



------An-apparently-successful-and-a-powerful-business-woman------

She had power she knew, so much in her sign...
It could manipulate traders, of either mineral or mine...

she held nothing back, of course there wasnt a need
she could bet on her ethics, her actions and every deed

she was the kinds, kings would desire..
however she would deny, and incarnate herself to fire...



-------------An-old-mother---------------

A long piece of cloth, an ageing skin and a priceless beauty
of mind and heart, of love and duty..

she had nothing more to lose, she had given it all
sometimes to save her children, sometimes to let empires fall...

she awaited her end to escape the fud
of ill treatment and hatred, as the Vedas had said would bud...





Monday, March 12, 2012

Questions & Answers


1. I lose my consciousness every time I sleep, so do I technically die and get born everyday?

2. It’s all about small -small choices I have made and I have to make and that decides the person,       I am going to be.

3. I have never made any bold choices ever or if I have, they are insignificant. This is
preventing me from being the person I want to be.

4. I have to stop thinking so much about everyday things. In the end, nothing is going to matter.

5. If people don’t love me, its okay! They love none. But if people don’t respect me, should I start
to bother?

6. Am I a leader of my own or do I need recognition?

7. I am letting myself being overshadowed in the name of love.

8. Love means selflessness. But I love myself too.

9. Who decides what best is. Ultimately, the question is what I want.

10. It’s okay to be unnoticed, eccentric, random and lost. Most geniuses have possessed these
qualities. Is this some kind of a relief statement though?

11. It hurts not to genuinely feel angry over things people are doing to you every day.

12. Am I rude?

13. Does she love me? Does he not love me?

14. I miss childhood. I don’t want to keep growing up.

15. Am I living or do I only exist?

16. Am I responsible for all my successes? If not, then I am not responsible for all my failures
either. In that case, why the f*** did I let others contribute to my failures?

17. Is it not possible to be a template normal and yet have multiple-personality disorder?

18. Is popularity a yard stick?

19. I like fashion and sex. I also like religion and politics.

20. I might be a science student. But I am interested more in philosophy!

21. Why are there boundaries everywhere?

22. Atomically, there is no difference between Bill Gates &  Mother Teresa or Rakhi Sawant & bin Laden.

23. I did well in school because there was no internet then.

24. I lost my proposal ring. Is it such a big deal?

25. I want to prevent accidents because I live my life like it was a video game.

26. Die hard optimism also means turning a blind eye to the risks involved.

27. Coffee and books go together. Who the f*** told you that?

28. Early to bed, early to rise, makes a person la la and la. How, if I may ask?

29. Waasup? I would be able to tell you better had you asked how I felt.

30. There was a time, compliments embarrassed me. Too much modesty! Do I crave them
today?

31. Am I shy or am I an introvert? No, they don’t mean the same.

32. Don’t play the reverse-psychology trick on me.

33. Those days when solitude was beautiful are gone. Now it’s a responsibility.

34. I crib when life sucks. I crib when life is perfect. I crib.

35. My beauty is inner. Please look into my eyes.

36. I was an open book. Now, I am a closed trunk of things which guise themselves as crap.

37. You think you are cool? Define Cool.

38. Samay-ka-mehtva was every Hindi teacher’s favorite essay topic. Any takeaways?

39. Life sucks? Break the straw.

40. Too many rules. Too much strain. Heaps of laziness. Countless commitments. This is what education does.

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Relationship Status - Symbiotic


Mind is powerful. Difficult to remember how many times I must have heard this phrase. But I do remember the times I have taken it very seriously. Zero. However, when I sit down to type these strings of sentences, I realize how quickly mind proceeds and processes. However there is a catch to it.

It does it at its own little but, mind you, egoistic will. No matter how fast it speeds most of the times, especially the times you want to go to sleep or not argue or eat or drink or do some random but necessary sustenance activity, it will fail to perform when you need it, perhaps the most!

For example, your memory will go for a toss during examinations, your IQ will be in soup when you are debating and your thinking power will simply JAM when you want to tell the well-dressed hot looking female HR, why precisely you should be the one she should be aiming for or was it otherwise? [wink, wink ;)]

And when a person, such as the reader-of-this-post, bothers to spend around a minute pondering over why it so often happens, the most plausible explanation comes out to be that the mind-is-moody. Mind almost is another person in itself over which we do not have control but what we do have is influence. So if you rise in your egoist grandeur and order it to do something, it will not be your slave to serve you. However if you flirt with it like a potential lover, if you praise it, play with it, feed it, accept its feedback, make it your friend, it will more often than not respond positively. Imagine! So much for something which is inside you and is not even a living thing! Well, not exactly, right?

Imaging having the scope to do so much with just one bit of yourself. Nevertheless with the most powerful bit. While reading this, I hope, my-dear-reader, you realize that when you have your mind in place, why do you need someone else to train? A student, a pet or a system?

Where I am getting is at the old idiom- 'Charity begins at home'. Your mind is your first and also the ultimate abode. If in a lifetime of ups, downs, successes and failures, you are not able to attend to the callings of your mind, I am sorry to say, you have not done too much. So if there is training to do, in order to achieve whatever might be your ambition or goal, it is most important and perhaps the most simplistic challenge to meet, it is of your mind.

I am bound by linguistic limitations to have been referring this as training, but you could also call it friendship, love, understanding or cooperation.

Any term that remotely showcases characteristics of a symbiotic relationship with a heavenly bliss.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Conversing religions!





" This is a first hand account of an ongoing conversation with a close friend over text messages. The background is that we both happen to belong to two different templates of this society, me being a so called 'Hindu' and him being a believing 'Muslim'. The conversation began with my curiosity of learning the disputed differences between Shia & Sunni Muslims, the question solely arising because of a certain reference of Hazaras in the book that I am currently reading"

Him -The conversation begins as a result of his remark - "Tell me, if you turn a Muslim! I would love to see that."

Me- "I am beyond belonging my identity to any religion. I only want to learn ways of life. Religion anyway is unnatural."

Him - "Religion is unnatural?"

Me- "Yeah obviously, man created it! No one is born with religion!"

Him - "Well, do you believe in your religion?"

Me- "I don't think I have a typically established religion. I do say I follow one for my society and parents. I revere all beliefs. The only thing that I find important is compassion & humanity. Why bother about deities, rituals or certain dates? If religion is a folk way of describing nature, I would accept it."

Him - "So you are open to the idea of being in any religion?"

Me- "I am not open to the idea of religion only as such...but yeah you could say"

Him - "But then, don't you think the world is run by a higher being? I mean is it possible all of this runs naturally?"

Me- "Are you trying to say you believe some one up there is playing a video game? One person or a gang? Really? I do believe that there is an energy but it is the energy of life, energy of existence, energy of duality."

Him - "Well I don't believe its really that simple...I believe there is a higher entity responsible for creating the world as it is and the beings and non beings in it...somehow I find this world to be too complex to be run by natural mechanism..I believe there is more to it."

Me- "Everything is simple....its a matter of perspective...you can break down an entire engine into metal which further breaks down into atoms and further into ions...totally depends on how you want to look at it ...I don't want to contest your viewpoint with the fear of shocking you or offending you..but I don't agree."

Him - "No its ok...I wish to know what you think about this...I may be a little shocked and offended eventually..But I want to hear what you have to say."

Me- "Haha ok, tell me, how do you know about religion? Have your parents told you? Have you read books on it? Isn't first hand experience way more authentic? Try to remember what you have felt. And if religion is true, do you think Gods above belong to different beliefs and are fighting up there like we do on earth? Is it not absurd? Who knows which religion is true or right? Religion is just a way of organizing people. Its an institution to take away some rights, to put some order, to establish rules...and am not sure if that is again a good thing.."

Him - "Apart from my belief in a higher entity, if there isn't a belief in a higher power, what draws the line between good and evil...what gives us the choice to do whats right? What is the right thing to do? What I believe is that a God exists, different religions substantiate different means to that existence...different rituals & cultures are there honor that power................................................................................Besides, what remains in living in this mortal world? For money? For power? For honor? Do you think that there might be more to it than that? And besides, can you deny the power of your prayers? Can you just restrict its strength to the fact that it empowers you psychologically? Or is that it raises serotonin and endorphin levels in your endocrine system and relieves you of mental stress and increases your concentration? Is that about it? Is it possible to explain everything through nature & science? Or is science and nature a medium of his knowledge to us? To show us signs of his blessings and the might to deliver us well being and health in one instant and take it all away in a minute."

Me- "See as far as the power of praying is concerned, it is a form of meditation ...its stimulation and relaxation of mind and body ..and you think a higher entity exists so that you and i could have a purpose to exist? As far as good & evil is concerned, they are sides of a coin...they are subjective & situational..without evil, even good has no importance."

Him - "No! What I wish to imply is that the grand scale of life is much beyond the realm of our understanding and knowledge..Yes, evil & good do go hand in hand...and which side we choose defines who we are..And how we find a place in this world and the next.What the ultimate purpose of life is something that is a mystery to me...But I live by a code that 3 generations of my family have taught me... - Respect your God, love you family and contribute to the good of humanity in whatever way you can."

Me- "That's cool"

Him - "Well, I am sure my humble and simple code may not explain or satisfy your quench for understanding..but I find it fulfilling enough for myself..especially in such testing times...."

Me- "Yeah, its totally understandable that you follow these codes and if you think it simplifies your life and keeps you happy, its great."

Him - "Every1 needs something to keep them running, whats yours??"

Me- "I don't know. Happiness maybe"

Him - "Happiness in totality is good....very simple...its difficult to pursue that.."

Me- "I would like to say a lot more but then I guess we would keep debating..."

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Poetry: Pink Lipstick

I put on a pink lipstick and curled my hair Wore my heels and slit in my skirt, without a care Chin up and chest out, I walked towa...