Randomly rambling...

Every morning, when I go for my walk, I pass the early morning risers who stop by the tea stall at the end of the road for a cuppa. They stand around, or sometimes sit on a makeshift bench. Some of them are totally lost in thought while they sip their tea, some stare at nothing, minds blank, some indulge in pleasantries, and some discuss the day ahead. I've often wondered how they manage to sip their tea so slowly (the cups aren't very big, nor are the glasses), making each cup or glass last for so long, and so utterly indifferent to time...

And then it struck me...they actually relish each sip of tea. They enjoy the experience of sipping hot, sweet tea first thing in the morning, and they savor each sip. It also came home to me that obviously they push all thoughts of time out, knowing that they have to do what the day brings anyway, no doubt, but for now, it is just each sip of tea...

Then, my mind went one step farther, and I wondered, that could apply to everything...then nothing will seem like a duty or a chore...and in any case, what's the hurry anyway...

The sweet shop phenomenon...

Every time I pass a sweet shop, I see men and women standing all by themselves and eating sweets and/or savories off a plate. Their faces are a study...focused on their plate, totally intent on the food, they stand without looking at the surroundings, or at the others. Their eyes do not leave the plate, even when they are chewing the food. They seem to be completely unaware of where they are of even of how they might have come there. All their energies are concentrated on the food. There may only be a sly sideways glance to see if anyone they know has strolled in.

Studying them I've wondered what might be going through their minds? and why are they alone? why, after they finish, do they so quickly rush out of the shop?

Picture a family man. He is on his way back from work. He passes this sweet shop/fast food counter/street food stall. He glances to see what they have. And then: should he? shouldn't he? The temptation is too great. He slimeys in, orders what he wants, literally swallows it, pays and rushes out again...his face registers a range of emotions: how can I do this when my wife and kids are waiting at home?; they won't know; it's just a sweet, come on, I get them so many things; never again; gosh what a smutsch I am, how greedy can I get; the little one loves this; I'm the one who goes out to work, surely I'm entitled to treat myself; I make so many sacrifices for the family, why am I guilty about indulging myself a wee bit?; I'm hungry, and there's still a long way to go.....and so on...(it's the same for a family woman).

Shift to a widower/widow. He might as well grab a bite before going into a lonely home. The look on the face is: one of resignation to fate; reminiscing about the loved one who is no more and who probably made the same thing, or bought it to make a meal special; where have those happy days gone? we got so many of these when Baba was born; an unbidden memory pops out suddenly, a sigh escapes; have to eat something, it might as well be this...

The single man or woman shows another range of emotions: How foolish to stand here alone and eat. Wish I had someone to share this with; might as well eat here as anywhere else; look at that person standing there. Maybe I could go and strike up a conversation?; what that person is eating looks interesting. I'll try that next time; I think I'll get some of these packed and go across to ______'s house, and so on...

Each face a study. In the middle of a churning mind, I wonder if they are relishing what they have so determinedly got...

2 books and 1 incident...

I am so grateful I got the chance to read Paul Burrell's, 'A Royal Duty'. It cleared up a whole lot of misconceptions about the Queen and the Princess. The heart had just not been willing to accept what the head had gathered from the media. Reading the book helped me regain my perspectives, and my faith in the human-ness of both royal ladies. The book essentially showed the Princess' courage in fighting for her honor against the ruthless system of the 'grey-suits'. A system that wanted to crush her.

Strangely, soon after that, I read Mukhtar Mai's memoir, 'In the Name of Honor'. An uneducated, illiterate lady in a tiny village in Pakistan. Victim of the worst crime that can be done to a woman. Crushed and trampled upon, she fought back against a system that dishonored her family, and was trying to bury her alive.

And, 16th of February, 2011, in a suburb of Calcutta, 23 year old Rinku Das, being escorted by her 16 year old brother as she returned from work, saw him killed because he protested against the goons who doused her in alcohol, even as her cries and screams for help were ignored by the protectors of the law standing not too far away. Now she is fighting for her and her brother's honor.


Once again, the stark truth about womanhood stands in front of us...

The world in turmoil....

In search of -

the only thing man, no matter what color, caste, creed, economic status, part of the world, really wants above all else.....

the only thing that matters....


                                                                 FREEDOM

Randomly rambling...

Everyone loves stories...and stories belonging to our particular families have a different charm altogether...stories of the lives and times of our grandparents, or great-great-grandparents, are fascinating, and make lineage come alive and real...

It's not so much roosting on your heritage, or being ashamed of the doings of your ancestors, or basking in the glories of deeds done by your family years and centuries ago...

It is just a feeling of continuity, and you are adding to it...

Of girls and women....

Of all ages and sizes.....

Two articles I read, yesterday and today, have once again brought home the dreadful place the girl child and the woman has in our society. (I'm not talking about the fairy-tale of a few privileged, but of the reality of the masses).

Yesterday, Uddalak Mukherjee in her article in The Telegraph, 'No laughing matter this', mentioned how 'our culture teaches women..... to be forever inhibited by and ashamed of their bodies'. And this, in spite of all our major deities being women...

Today's paper has a gruesome story on the front page of hoodlums pouring alcohol over a 23 year old girl, a call center employee, who was on her way back home from the city. She was being escorted by her 16 year old brother. When the brother protested, they dragged him off the cycle, and beat him to death.

Leave aside the fact that when the girl asked the passengers of a passing van to help, they chickened out. Leave aside the fact that in her despair and fear, she called the guards in front of the DM's house, and they asked her to go to the police station. Leave aside also the fact that though she was screaming madly, not a soul came out to help her.Check out what the Trinamul Congress Chairperson of the Barasat Municipality, no less, told the grieving girl: it was her fate...

Yes, it seems to be the fate of the girl-child and the woman to serve the man, to be beaten, not to be helped, and....not say a word. In fact, it would be better if she is not seen at all...

Most Indian boy-children are converted into monsters by adoring mothers who see no fault in them...older and younger sisters have to go on sacrificing their dreams, wishes, even life for these monsters...and these monsters go through life expecting and demanding to be served, giving nothing in return, not even recognizing the human spirit in the girl/woman who is giving up everything, and that too cheerfully, for them...The girl child studies hard, and works harder, and uncomplainingly, juggles home and school/job as best as she can. In return, she is not to be seen, is put down and ill-treated whenever possible, and is made to believe that she is a non-entity, a non-person...

and her giving is never enough.....no matter what the age...

While we see women of other cultures walking with their heads high, we crawl with our heads hidden in the ghungat...

While 80 and 90 year old women in the West are unafraid of living it up, even go bungee jumping, our 40-50-60 year old women are already covered with a shroud...

While girls and women are encouraged to get a life, explore and live up to their potential  in other countries, our women are told - 'what life', 'you were cursed the day you were born' and 'this is your fate'...

It's most always the woman behind the man...rarely does a man lift a woman on his wings...

Randomly thinking...

There can be no - and I mean NO, none at all - love unless it is completely unconditional and non-judgmental. For that matter there can be NO relationship if there are any kind of constraints of the my-way-is-the-best-way, what-I-know-is the-only-thing-worth-knowing, I-cannot-see-what-you-mean-so-it's-rubbish, or, just-accept-what-I-say variety. Even the teeniest-weeniest self-wiping, for-the-sake-of-peace constraint puts pressure on a relationship.

By relationships I mean, all kinds - very close, close, not-so-close, or distant. For those we come across, but do not think of in terms of a relationship, or who are not part of the circle we move in, charity (read good will, compassion) substitutes love.

People are what they are (and I include children as well) because of their experiences, thoughts, life processes, reactions, food & drink, economic compulsions, climate, and possibly even karma. How then can we pass judgment on them, or put conditions on our interactions?

If we cannot love, or be charitable, the best thing to do would be to move away from that person/place/happening, till we get a better perspective...

This is not to condone the I-am-like-this-only attitude. Simply because, we-are-not-like-that-only. Being non-judgmental would make us review ourselves, so that we can be better persons, acquire what it takes, and tweak off the jagged edges. Maybe there is someone out there who needs a prop, or an affirmation of who they are...And when we do, we would add to the universal consciousness rather than subtract from it.

Universal consciousness sounds high-falutin'. In fact it is not. It is just the collective energy of all mankind...Ideally, this needs to be positive...

Wonder why...

I recently experienced two airports - Calcutta and Bangalore, and one railway station - Banaswadi (in Bangalore).

Bangalore airport is state-of-the-art, and importantly, very convenient and comfortable. What's wonderful is that all the passengers behave in a manner that is expected at an airport.

The same passengers in the Calcutta airport, with a vengeance, it seemed to me, are determined to make it as dirty as possible.

While the Telegraph has been scathing about Calcutta airport, maybe some of that scathing should be directed towards the passengers. Why, in the Bangalore airport, are the bins used? why are the toilets use-able? why is the waiting area clean? why are the coffee cups not left around? why are the newspapers folded and left on the seat? so many whys....

The Banaswadi railway station was another experience. The Railways are doing a fantastic job. There is no doubt about that. Absolutely. A ticket for Howrah, from Banaswadi, for an adult is Rs.264/- and for a child is Rs.137/-. Can you imagine that? A look at the Railway Time-Table that is painted on the wall shows trains going to and coming from places that read like fairy names...the imagination goes riot!

The station was a cute one. Two railway tracks. One covered platform for one railway track. The parallel track on the far side had only the platform, no cover. There were trees growing on the platform with seats built around them, and all along were the 'railway' plants with the big waxy leaves and purple flowers.

There was at one time a picket fence all around. One can see remnants of that. The platform was used to walk a dog, for school children and working mothers to take a short-cut to the road, and even for the station master to come straight to the door of his office on his scooter!

The platform ticket cost Rs 3/-. Obviously that was too much for some of those who had come to receive family and friends, because they just came onto the platform through the gaps in the picket fence. I noticed that they took their family and friends out of the station the same way too - through the gaps!

When we are so vocal about criticizing the country, maybe we could also just stop and wonder if we are pulling our weight as responsible, country-loving citizens...it may be a tiny weight, but collectively we could create change...

Randomly thinking... and agonizing...

The Hindu magazine of Sunday, February 6, had a bitingly thought-provoking analysis of India as it is today, by Nissim Mannathukkaren: India@61: An idea gone astray

 Nissim has voiced what all of us who agonize over where India is headed, feel. With the striking disparities and contradictions that are only growing and becoming increasingly visible, we truly do need to get real. The twin opiums of religion and Bollywood are not working any more. It is unlikely that we will ever have a 1789-style revolution, caught as we are in the stranglehold of caste and karma. But, we do have voices that are shouting out, voices that are not ready to be stilled, voices that are crying out.

Why are we not listening?

Randomly thinking...

I lost a diamond from a set of 3 on my platinum ring. That ring meant a lot to me, because it was given to me by my husband 5 years back. Moaning about this to my dear friend, Malt, she showed me her ring, bought almost 20 years ago. Of the two original diamonds, one was missing. She'd lost it around the same time I had. Neither of us can really afford to go around losing diamonds...for us, these are once-in-a-lifetime things.

Talking about this, we realized that because we love the sparkle of diamonds and love wearing them, this was a risk we hadn't thought about.

What we did realize though, was how, instead of thinking about the years of happiness we had wearing our diamonds, we were caught up in the unhappiness of losing one of them.

And, what we didn't even stop to consider, and which could in all probability happen, was that we might be able to replace that one tiny diamond...

Point: don't drown in what's unhappy - there's the flicker of a rainbow always in the distance...just need to keep our eyes trained on that...

For other searchers like me...

I have tried and tried, and tried to search for and find a suitable answer to what stress is all about. My dravid brain needed something concrete.

This, by Dr. Hans Selye, clarified it completely for me:

Stress doesn't kill us, our reaction to it does.

Which automatically puts the focus on our inner selves (one cannot always blame the outside world...)

Adding to this was another thought: We bring stress to life when we take something we see/hear/read inside of ourselves. Before we know it, our thought processes have started working overtime, our perceptions take off in various tangents, our brains start dissecting and analyzing, and then....we get caught in our own thought-noodles creating more complex noodles, till we are completely entangled in our own noodle mess. Meanwhile all the other connected parts are slowly but surely empathizing with this noodly condition, and getting tighter and tighter, till we are a tight bundle of taut strings. But, has the outside changed? No---everything and everyone is carrying quite merrily...and us? we have incapacitated ourselves quite thoroughly. 

The example that suited me best to explain this to myself was this: I go for a walk on the road. There is huge traffic sometimes. Everyone, naturally has a right to a bit of the road. Then, there are the rambling pedestrians, focused-on-their-destination pedestrians, blissfully-unmindfully-connected-to-their-iPod folk, running-to-catch the bus commuters, have-a-snack-while-you-wait-for-the-bus/auto fast food wallahs with their moving stalls, dogs, cows, cyclists, and motorbike riders who believe that if there is no place on the road, there is certainly place on the sidewalks. Add to these, are those who smell bizops. They set up their wares quite attractively on what remains of the sidewalks. This is the reality. If I process these through my mind processes, instead of concentrating on my walk, the chaos and noise is definitely going to get to me, making me totally stressed-out. The reality, though, remains the same, and everyone is carrying on the same way, quite happily,...so, where did that leave me? and only me? Overwhelmed by and submerged in stress. 

But, if I focus on my walk, on every step, and on the ground I am walking on, then the environment just fades away out of my consciousness. Best of all, nothing has got under my skin, and I don't feel stressed at all. On the contrary, I feel quite refreshed.

This also brought home to me the concept of mindfulness and to be fully concentrated only the task in hand...

Am feeling so much happier and at ease inside of myself...