believe that as humans we should at this stage contribute in a positive way to undo the harm done to our mother earth.Pale yellow Days! Climate is certainly changing, no matter how much people deny this fact one can see the way the seasons are delayed and the strange patterns. It is abnormally hot in Delhi these days, I don't remember when it used to be this dry and hot. There is fine dust flying in afternoon's hot blast of wind. Land is parched and monsoons are delayed. It is also a delayed and weakened monsoon that is predicted this year.
Yesterday, I was watching a movie, 'Behind the enemy lines' there is a scene where the American soldier trying to escape from Bosnia hides in a mass grave. It brings out how brutal human race can become for illogical things. In this case it is religion, some thing that was established to teach and instill peace and self awareness. Today whatever crisis has developed in Afghanistan is again a reminder that it takes a little to throw away the cloak of civilization and pretext of co-existence and become inhuman and absolute metal deprivation. There can be no logical explanation for this kind of insanity.What a contrasting world we live in, after a century of social, economic and scientific progress. There is South Africa that is still in time warp stuck with civil wars and still light years away from the very basic amenities. India had gained Independence sixty-two years ago and even with rampant corruption and siphoning of funds by politicians and officials, the growth now is relatively evenly spread across the country. There are cyber cafes in remote hills and in the deserts of Rajasthan. Mobile phones have penetrated remotest of villages and government primary schools (the standards are very low) are present in all the villages. A lot of the credit for this progress that came across through education of the masses goes to the women who have held the social fabric of the country against all odds. It is not that all is well with the system, it is sick but somehow the brunt is borne by the women of the country, who silently contribute towards the education of their children, mostly sacrificing their individual freedom for the cause. Today, if we see a highly skilled and young work force that is pitching in the world's labor market, it is because of the hard work put in by the family units. I will give you an example of how the average middle class family propels the children to excel. As soon as the children reach the tenth grade they are in for a grueling schedule of very focused studies as they appear in board exams. In the society, how you score in the boards is matter of cheer or depression. As soon as the board result is out there are rounds of congratulations from family and friends when the children perform well. This is not the end, just the beginning as now the kids face even a bigger challenge, that of scoring high ( to get a good college) in the 12th grade and then clearing some competition to make an early start in their career. Not long ago medicine and engineering were hot favorites as that would guarantee a safe future. With many options available now things have eased up a bit but there is tremendous pressure still to perform and that is the reason that Indian kids are used to hard work and burning mid night oil. I explained this as it can clarify how the women contribute towards the education of the younger generation, the very force and dedication makes disorientation of the younger generation impossible as they know they have to earn a living in a very competitive environment and human mind is such that it can be molded to work in a very constructive way.What I have observed in the fanatic societies is the absolute blind following of norms that they don't even comprehend. Education and logical thinking would have saved countries like Afghanistan. Suddenly all this makes us feel so small in this beautiful twinkling ocean of Universe. We are somewhere in the infancy of this consciousness. Just put this strife against the absolute harmony of nature, the cycles of seasons (which we have successfully disturbed, human cacophony!), even the millions of processes that are taking place right now, this moment in our own bodies. We are far far away from attaining this pure intelligence, but there is always hope. I wish people who 'matter' and make decisions for humanity have more wisdom to do so, so that more Bosnias and Afghanistans are not created. Thoughts drifted wildly and now I visualise a field of daisies in my heart... with long green grass blades waving in cool breeze and white dots of daisies nodding across the horizons. Peace to all!Tags: Edit Tags Wednesday 24 June 2009 - 07:47PM (IST) Edit Delete Permanent Link 0 Comments Eternity Another summer noon, trees stand still outside. Children love such hot afternoons when they can play outside undisturbed. I remember I and my friends used to go out into wilderness of the vast campus where we lived. In the short bushed we looked for monarch caterpillars, collecting them in cardboard boxes. We used to poke the lid with a needle to create holes so that the insects would breath easily. It used to become a competition, who will collect the maximum caterpillars. There used to be some drums near the garages, these were filled with lime stone powder and we used to pour water in these drums to see the white milky froth bubbling. We would call it milk and pour it into the cans, now the whole thing seems so silly but this was our favorite activity in the hot afternoons buzzing with heat and emptiness. Often in rainy mornings we would be out with little glass jars filled with mud looking for a deep red velvety insect. These would emerge after the first rains, from the family of spiders these docile insects burrowed in the soil and ate grass blades. I no longer see these insects after the first showers now, probably the acid rains got them.There was a childhood friend of mine, she was my best friend and as her parents were the family friends, whenever they visited I would request and whine constantly to her parents to leave her at our place for a few days. There was no bigger joy than having her at my place. We would sleep in my bed, whisper our secrets and even bath together. When I remember this I can sense the thrill that I experienced every time I was permitted to visit her or she could stay at our place. In college the friendship scattered a bit and I had some girl friends who possessed me and she had some who stuck to her. We are still good friends and it is an invisible bond that we share that kicks in just as we meet, even time and distance doesn't dilute such bonds. I am sure most of us have such childhood memories that are pure joy and moments of eternal bliss. Even in our adult life we foster such relationships but these are rare and these are so spontaneous that they come into existence without our consciousness. Love makes life so very beautiful, be it innocent memory of a bursting heart at some secret adventure or the first crush. Those days with their breeze, leaves, smells when hunger doesn't matter when a friend is running holding hands immersed in freshness of a grassy field. Love in any form is precious, brings about blossoming!Pic: The velvet mite that we collected after the first showers. I wish to see snow fall, though I hail from Himalayas, I haven't ever seen snowfall, that is bit sad... no?Tags: Edit Tags Friday 19 June 2009 - 03:57PM (IST) Edit Delete Permanent Link 1 Comment Back to Delhi! Am here in Delhi now and it is a good feeling, Mumbai was claustrophobic to say the least. There is not a free patch of sky line that you can see there. The few trees jammed at corners of the roads hardly lend any green to the dull gray and yellow buildings. It took some time to adjust to the Delhi greenery, the branches spread across the horizons and the free blue skyline. As if I am able to breath again, there were so many things that my mind registered to share with you, the squalour, the strange contrast of extreme poverty, of people sleeping sprwled on pavements and fancy pubs tucked in most unimaginable locations, one was in a mill area. I had never visited a pub but this one as it had to do with rock music, my son had wanted to visit. I really did not get the city, it's overcrowded and sweltering with sad-faced humans scurrying everywhere like ants. If the development was de centralised, there would have been less influx of populations from neigbouring states to this city. Actually, there might be a vast immigration to this place as it hosts the film industry and that is one single fact that might be responsible for such constant stream of hopeful people coming into the city, just the mere awareness about the presence of this city probably. Mumbai is strange as it is like a cup full of humans in constant interaction, one can study what happens when you are constantly assulted by stimulus here. Being from the calm gentle Himalayas, it is not a place where people like me can thrive as it absolutely disconnects you from nature. How much the place we inhabit affects us! Now after staying in Mumbai for a month I have realised what a paradise Delhi is with all its open spaces and ancient trees. Tags: Edit Tags Wednesday 17 June 2009 - 08:56AM (IST) Edit Delete Permanent Link 0 Comments Life again...
Soon I will be leaving for the Himalayas for a few days before the kids' school start. There is a lot of turmoil in my heart right now.
Life...
Sita looked around her, every thing was same as yesterday, the sky, Earth and the warm breeze caressing her skin but something within had changed forever. She was sensing some quesiness deep inside and was afraid to even understand it. The mornings were dull with the tea tasting like oison, so many time she tried to force it down but would end up draining the fresh cup. This scared her she remembers her pregnancies, she maintained a constant vigil for her periods that were like a clockwork. As the day approached and then two days sank into the womb of time without a trace of much awaited flow.
She sitts on the metal bench outside the waiting room of the gynacologist, the metal cold making her numb inside. After a while he shows her a little dot on the screen of the mpnitor, she knows these are the cluster of cells rapidly dividing to create a new life. A life she was unaware of till now. He asks her to take two doses. A singal hexagonal tablet that clenches her belly like an iron fist and the four tiny tablets that make her bleed like an overflowing dam. She stares with vacant eyes and asks for forgiveness, all around her life sprouts in constant splendour and she had to bleed away the gift of life... Still uncertain she goes on, the sun sets over the horizon and the slanting rays turn the clouds peach, she asks whoever it was in her womb to forgive her and whispers her blessings over the little clots that emerge out of her body, an interrupted life...Tags: Edit Tags Friday 12 June 2009 - 03:25PM (IST) Edit Delete Permanent Link 0 Comments Life...
The sun is about to set over the hazy waves of the ocean. My heart and my mind feel exausted.Ther is a state of chaos that I sense. I have been reading so many books lately. Soon I will be traveling to Delhi, the city has a calmer strain to it. Here in Mumbai, there is something that is unsettling and too shallow. I feel deep sadness in my heart. Life that blossoms so beautifully when touched by the serenity of nature, feels so much like a foggy evening when you can't figure out anything in the haze. Stumbling across, and trying to make sense of life.
I have moved the blog to the Yahoo profile, have yet to see how it is different than this 360 blog here. Seems I need to meditate to settle the silent storms raging in my soul. Met my cousin, who is pregnant and radient these days with the glow. Her mother, my aunt is an amazing woman who has gone through a very hard life but one can learn how to enjoy every moment by just watching her in action. She has such a brilliant spirit, serving with all her heart, she embodies courage in the real sense.
Hope this movement of the blog does not disrupt the flow os bonds created here. One just needs to have a look at this 360 forum to understand the power of how this platform can destroy myths and really bring people close. Here the collective is working spontaneously and it is so positive a thing. On a larger scale it can work wonders.
said 3 months ago Edit · Delete · Permalink · 0 Comments
Learning!
It is wonderful to reach this age, the mid-thirties, where there is some clarity, whenever I feel utter chaos closing on me I come here and just put down the thoughts and just like the sediments the unsettling thoughts disappear and calm returns. There is something so comforting about coming to this place and sorting out the thought process, in fact the cessation of thoughts brings such deep understanding of life.Like all fickle-minded women, I am also swayed by what I see. When I see wives ordering around the husbands, I start thinking that there is something wrong with me to not object to every thing the husband says. Sometimes the influence is so profound that even knowing that it is not my basic nature to demand anything sternly, I fall into the trap. The fact is that the illusion of seizing control in a relationship is a cunning trap devised by our psychosomatic system that punishes us. After the initial euphoria of being in the driver’s seat the backlash starts. First, there is tremendous strain to keep the status quo. Next, your conscious does not agree with the unfairness and so inside the corrosion begins. When suddenly people discover the diseases they blame life styles, climate, genes and what ever they think went wrong, but the very fact that our cells emulate us should warn us to be fair in the true sense of the word. We might think that we have fooled the system and established control in a relation, but the fact is we have undermined the very foundation of a human relationship and that truth is known to our body, that expresses its frustration in form of diseases.
On the other hand, I see cases where there is absolute suppression of the women. When they have no say in any matter, in rural Northern India you come across families where what the man of the house says is the last word and there is dread of punishments both mental and physical that loom large for the whole family, specially the women of the house. In such cases to the bodies of the oppressor and the oppressed react as the unspent anger manifests as depression and then diseases.So is there any balance possible? The irony is that even when you have power and capabilities, I have seen if you do not conform to the external world and once in a while establish the fact through validation from the same external world, you are swept aside and even the most feeble member of the society would start taking you for granted. Strange but true! So on one hand if you conform to the power politics and become a party to the equations that are in a constant state of flux (That must be quiet a high as ego is constantly being fed, yeah yeah you are the boss!), you are running a never ending race that stops when your heart stops to beat.Secondly, once you are in the grip of maintaining that seesaw, your internal system punishes you, as there is no way that you can always be fair once you are in the position of power. As such, we know that absolute power corrupts. On the other hand, if you dwell inside, not seeking validation from outside and deriving value from inner peace, you are branded as a failure as no one is 'under' you and gradually there is every kind of encroachment on your mental and physical plane, again leading to frustrations and a feeling of loss of autonomy. It's a beautifully made trap with repercussions waiting on both sides. What should one do to be true to one's basic nature and yet survive gracefully? In Warm Void of Noon
In the blue of sky and the crumbling whiteness of the floating cloudsHearts turns inside out filling in the sun and silence of the noonDays of wind and grass carpet this emptiness, wider and wider horizon growsOpen the mouth and let in the breeze fill in, close the eyes and see the green darkness A warm empty noon and an empty mind just the sound of wind ruffling the clothesOpen up the limbs to the soil and the sky, the stark warm noon settles like a dust particle
Traveling on fresh sunrays, coming through a window... floating down a dark silent space...
said 4 months ago Edit · Delete · Permalink · 1 Comments
Being!
From the silence of the deep ocean Drawn out, a silver fish of consciousnessEager to dive back, but withheldMany times I walked the worldsAnd lived the loves and livesWith pain lapping as ocean waves on the shoreThey say that each cell in out body has memory. There was an experiment by a polygraph expert, Cleve Backster, where some cells scraped from mouth were connected to a polygraph and the person was sitting far away, when the person reacted to some visuals shown to him, the cells that were kept in another room reacted to the stimuli through electrical discharge in the same manner as the person,s polygraph. Even when the cells were taken away from the body the reactions were same? How were the cells still acting as a part of the body even when they were severed from it?Sometimes I feel just like the above experiment we have the truth of our existence buried deep within us. This rises to the surface at times when there are moments of absolute clarity. The severed soul seeks the whole. How will we ever decipher the music of the univerce where not even a single note is out of place? Each leaf grows at mathematical precision and with subtle aesthetic poetry in place. When soul weeps it reacts to man made reality that plays on the outer side, the shallow means of survival that have come to be, caged in ego. Humans it seems were programmed to move farthest from the essence of being. While a little sea shell sings about the cosmic dance, we drift and drift far from the melody that emanates and surrounds us.
said 4 months ago Edit · Delete · Permalink · 0 Comments
Living in the world
Keeping in mind the learning from the stone waves, I ironed a load of clothes today, mostly my husband's and kids' clothes. Somehow I find ironing a task that according to the 'younger me' was a waste of time. I would jerk the clothes twice while spreading them on the clothes line and then they would dry with less wrinkles, that would make them ready to wear without ironing. So, today I thought if rocks can become waves, then I too can overcome my dislike of ironing and ironed away a huge pile of clothes. A few days back I was in the market buying some biscuits and cakes as we are staying in a transit accommodation and the kitchen is not fully operational. A lady I had met earlier launched on me taking me unaware, with a non stop loud complain as how she shuts up the 'middle class women' who complain about the small houses they have to do with. This, without any initiation from my side, in fact the moment I saw her I tried to push off in opposite direction to avoid any interaction after the mandatory' hi'. I was not successful, and as usual she started the assault, she always highlights the fact : " people like me who have lived in bungalows are entitled to complain(how many times one needs to know that?), they (the other women) are not from industrialist families to crib about the houses they get. They would be living in match boxes in their home towns but here they constantly crib! Let them rent out a house somewhere in Mumbai if they are so troubled." I wanted to say that the very fact that you are trying to show that others are beneath you in some manner speaks of an inferiority complex, but that would invite trouble.Well, I did not know where to look and what to reply to this sudden onslaught of verbal missiles. I tried slowly moving sideways pushing my trolley just nodding now and then, even without any participation her attack was a disturbing experience.What makes people so violent is beyond me. Why do they feel such an absolute necessity to convey their status? Why this need to control others? Normally, when we encounter such an approach with people with whom we constantly interact, we try to counter it with resistance or with our version of control. This may be the present way to survive in the artificial hierarchies but the deeper, stress-free way of being is devoid of all these energy-sucking tactics. The flow of life would be so much more smooth and enjoyable if these ego hassles were not there. Sadly, we live in a world where outer things have become more important and the silence of the soul and inner wholeness is forgotten. The only way to erase such meaning less interactions is to connect with nature, the sea constant in its waves, the wind ever flowing and the Earth ever green even after the harsh seasons. Most important and most beautiful things in life are unconditionally given to us. Just as blood courses the limit of our limbs, as humans it will make life like a poetry if we know the limits of our ego. I needed to put my thoughts here to understand why I was so puzzled at certain behaviours. We have every thing that is required to make a human happy, food, work, a roof over our heads and most importantly, children. More essential are the facts that sun never fails to rise every morning, oxygen that keeps us alive is created afresh by plants, water that sustains us maintains its cycle, if even one of these is withdrawn there will be no life as we know it, yet we put this' miracle of nature', our mind, to petty things! May God bless all of us with the true way we were meant to be.Pic: Waves crashing and absolute peace. Nature is divine and we are a part of nature. It is just a matter of connecting with this divinity. Amen to this.
said 5 months ago Edit · Delete · Permalink · 6 Comments
Beach!
We visited a clean and peaceful beach here in Mumbai and that is a rare thing in this city. There were rocks submerged in sea water, these rocks have been sculpted by nature to look like waves. The hard rock had taken soft contours of a wave, its dark mass undulating under sea's constant touch. It was a moment of deep peace to stand near these rocks, in the deeper parts of this giant sculpture, crystal clear water shimmered. On closer look there were whole ecosystems surviving in these little water bodies. After a gentle massage of waves on the sand I rested in a calm pool created by these huge rocks. The water was warm and I sensed my body drifting easily in salt water. There was a transparent crab trying to climb up and a little fish flitting by me. Across the rocks I could see the sea waves and the surf.There were a temple and a church far away etched against the skyline. I and the kids looked for shells in the beach and this beach was like an open treasure. Near the wave like rocks we found entire portions of beach covered in a thick layer of shells and little colorful stones. We picked up the most beautiful ones. In nature every thing is in abundance, this came to me as we picked each of these beautiful creations and observed how intricately the patterns were woven into these exoskeletons of sea animals. What kind of intelligence has depth of thought to create such subtle beauty? On the rocks there were tiny calcareous projections along with greenish algae. I was carrying a glass in one hand and as I jumped from one smooth rock surface to another, I slipped a bit and landed on the smooth rock, to my surprise without breaking the tea glass! It was as if mother nature had softened my fall. Just to be lost in the vast expanse of sea shells and sand was a peaceful experience. I wanted to share it with you so I was eager to put it down here. Take care and enjoy our magnificent mother, Mother Nature.Pic: Animesh, my son sitting by the 'rocky waves'. Look at the way these rock waves are peaking and cresting.
said 5 months ago Edit · Delete · Permalink · 6 Comments
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