Can u help being unconditional?

Much to my chagrin, I learnt to be unconditional at a rather late age. It looked insane to people, well wishers for the most, who were worried about where this would lead. Nowhere, was my confident answer. An answer I did not mind in the least. But to those who heard it, it sounded pretty fatalistic. Well, what can one do? The raised eyebrows and wounded looks were usually followed by an exhaustive list of reasons meant to stop me from being unconditional. As if that is a choice I have. Have people really forgotten about the basics of the heart? There are no reasons. The heart has its own skewed logic which it follows with a fierce tenacity.

mad mad mad life

Read these words of Kahlil Gibran today...
We guys can be such egoists at times, thinking everything is under our control...
We look at events from our limited perspective and think we can explain whatever happens...
But life can shatter that ego in one second...
Not everything has an explanation..
not everything is logical....
sometimes, you just have to watch yourself in this mad drama they call life
sometimes, explanations are not forthcoming...
maybe things will make sense one day...
till then, just have to yield, go with the flow...

Gibran

When love beckons to you, follow him,
Though his ways are hard and steep,
And when his wings enfold you yield to him,
Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you.
And when he speaks to you believe in him,
Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.

For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you.
Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning.
Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,
So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.

Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.
He threshes you to make you naked.
He sifts you to free you from your husks.
He grinds you to whiteness.
He kneads you until you are pliant;
And then he assigns you to his sacred fire,
that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.

All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart,
and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure,
Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing floor,
Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.

Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.
Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;
For love is sufficient unto love.

When you love you should not say,
'God is in my heart,' but rather,
'I am in the heart of God.'
And think not you can direct the course of love,
for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.

Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night,
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love's ecstasy;
To return home at eventide with gratitude;
And to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips.


Kahlil Gibran
1923

A wounded puppy

Someone fell for a friend recently and as soon as he realized this, a host of issues cropped up.
He claimed he was in love, while i watched, bewildered, amused…
Is that love? I thought you don't harbor any expectations in love, none whatsoever…
How can you feel resentful? What can the other person possibly give you that would match up to the devotion that you have?
Nothing actually…so you just celebrate the feeling and get distressed only when something goes wrong with the one you care for.
Love is heady, beautiful…it makes you selfless, giving, caring…
Love is not a means, its an end in itself…Its a sign that you, as a human being, have attained a higher level of evolution…
I could not explain any of this to the heartbroken romeo, because even this is so inadequate. You cant explain love…
You just feel it, silently…and gracefully accept whatever this greatest of teachers has to teach.

The newsroom

Drawn faces, slightly accusatory glances and barely suppressed anger…this is what the newsroom has to offer these days…
When work becomes punishment frustration sets in. When i came here, after years in print, i was thrilled about acquiring new skills. I was clueless at first, going out in the field all day and coming back vague about the story or the footage.
While i am far from being professional, the joy of learning something new is still intact.
How can you work like corporates in a creative field? They say all TV newsrooms are war zones, TV people are typically rude….
But i guess more than 50 per cent of the newsroom tension stems from the simple fact that they think they need to be tense to be efficient. If you look happy while working, you cannot be working at all. And then, if you are not tense, you try to look tense to fit in. A professional needs to have a permanent frown pasted on the forehead. What trash!
People are at their productive best when they love what they are doing. This is a simple lesson forgotten by so called professionals. If you have fun, you churn out a masterpiece…I don't deny pressure. But pressure can be lots of fun too! Here there are a whole lot of youngsters getting prematurely aged. What a pity…

Being a parent

A bad mood and a teary spell strengthened the bond between me and my two and a half year old. She toddled up to me, put her tiny arms around me and said, "kya hua?" Then she walked up to her father and asked, "mere bacche ko kya hua?"
I was weepy, but something blossomed in my heart. I know for sure that I can never be alone as long as I have my daughter. I don't know what it would have felt like with a son, but a daughter makes you feel special almost as soon as she figures the world out. Mommy is mommy, even if she is called an irreverent but loving "mishu." One hour after this incident, I read about the honor killings in Delhi. I am no stranger to the darker side of our strange society but God help me understand the psychology of parents who have it in them to actually hurt their kids, no matter what the provocation. Honour seems to be closely related to religion and caste. Hinduism is all symbolism. We have characters who set an example in the way relationships are to be managed. Krishna, Vishnu's most powerful avatar, bows to the mother in the form of Yashoda completely. Hw can people who have worshipped this relationship be foolish enough to believe that the rules of man are bigger than the rules of God? Anyway, forget divinity and its symbols. How about simply being human? Children will never tow their parents' line blindly, unless they are mentally retarded. Its up to the parent to simply express his opinion, list the pros and cons of the child's decision and then be there, unconditionally, when the child needs a shoulder. Being a parent is the height of being human. As far as giving birth is concerned, all animals can do that. You just need to have sex. But parenthood takes a lifetime to perfect. Its the purest form of worship. I thank God for my baby. She is a miracle i witness everyday. Her large eyes, so much like deep pools, her perfectly formed mouth, her soft curls, her peaches and cream skin, her dimples, her honeyed voice and most of all, her instinctively nurturing demeanor make life so rewarding. I don't know what i did to deserve her. But here she is. She'll be a lovely woman one day and I will watch with a smile as she soars high…

The passing away

It had been forming for a long time. Part to part, breathing inside me day in and day out, waiting to come out in the world.
I nurtured it inside me long before my body told me i am a woman.
Even then, I knew something was kicking inside me, yearning for the light of day,
As time drew nearer, it grew stronger, eagerly looking for a way out.
I longed to see what i had nourished inside myself for so long
The time came, it peeked out, opened its eyes and held my finger,
I was just about to pick it up when the eyes closed, the finger slackened,
No one came to know and I just let it's lifeless form float into oblivion,
I shed a few tears, constricting my throat tight so no sound escaped,
around me, the world went on,
That's how it is with a dream,
It dies a silent death,
No one mourns its passing away, except the mind which was its womb for years,
Life goes on but the part of the mind, its womb, feels betrayed…

To save a sacrificial goat

Life has a way of making you learn and then testing you on whatever you have learnt. The tests keep getting tougher. I had my baby in 2007. I also found a "maid" the same year. A fiery teenager with loads of attitude. When i looked at her for the first time, i felt nothing other than the usual expectations and apprehensions of a new employer. Thereafter, life became a roller coaster for me, at the end of which i found myself in Chandigarh, alone with my baby and Poonam. Anyone who knew me for at least a month at the time would gawk at the very idea of me being left alone with a kid. I don't know how to drive and public transport in Chandigarh is a rare commodity. This made me all but a vegetable here.
But we managed, Poonam and I. I put food on the table while Poonam, with her abrasive street smartness, took on many an unscrupulous shopkeeper or auto driver trying to fleece me. Somehow, she could not be indifferent towards me. It was never the relationship of employer and employee for her. In fact, she never asked for her salary, never had to, because we became family. We fought like wildcats, cried, made up and celebrated by going shopping or eating out. We also got movies to watch at night. I generally worked night shifts when i was with HT and used to come home at around one, one thirty. She would often wait up to watch a movie with me.
I made it clear that education is top priority. We made plans of school, getting her elementary education along with a vocational course. She wanted to be independent one day. Whenever she saw advertisements for jewelry, cars or gadgets, she would tell me she would buy me something like that one day.
There were pitfalls too. Poonam and I got so close she forgot how to behave like a maid and ended up rankling anyone who visited me. People would expect her behavior to be servile, while she was the spoilt but well meaning brat. There were many scenes. I faithfully defended her. Besides, i also knew where such brashness came from in her case. She was made to do hard labour in singularly inhospitable conditions at a very young age. She was 15 when she came to me. Before that, she worked at a stone quarry in Leh at barely 11 or 12. I shuddered when i pictured her hammering at boulders in a place where the thinness 0f the air makes walking a feat. She was beaten up till she fell unconscious for refusing to do hard labour under the blazing sun, she was accused of theft….et al. It left her bitter. Her family only called when they needed money. She knew that but missed them all the same. But her life with me more than made up for her parents' absence. She is a deep sleeper. You would have to fire a cannon next to her ear to wake her up. If i forgot my key while going to office, i would be stranded outside the door after my night shift, banging the door like a maniac.
But now Poonam can't sleep. Its been that way since she went home for a week recently and came back unusually silent. After much probing, she told me her parents want to marry her off to this guy who is physically challenged. That came as a crushing blow to this feisty girl. She has become an insomniac. Her spunk is now replaced with the look of an animal about to be slaughtered.
I don't know how to stop this, but i will certainly try. When i think of people like Poonam's parents, who constitute much of this country's underbelly, i feel all our progress is negated precisely because of their attitude. They keep having babies, each one a source of income and when it comes to daughters, they are made to earn all their life and are married off while still kids. I am a mother and i know how passionate i am about my daughter's future. I don't think "peer pressure" would force me to take a step inimical to her welfare.
I asked myself if my indignation stemmed from the fact that i would lose the person who takes care of my daughter while i am away. After lot of soul searching i can confidently say the answer is "no." My kid will be taken care of even if i am not there. The family network is strong. What hurts me is the pain this teenager is going through after she placed her trust in me. I want to do something. For Poonam first and then for others like her who are regularly made scapegoats by an insensitive, feudal social set up. I want the fire back in her eyes, whatever it takes...

for a selfless father

I just went through my brother's blog, my difficult elder brother who i want to kill and save at the same time. I don't know about blood ties, but there is a great bond in sharing the formative years of life with someone. To face the same forces, both inimical and beneficial. He recalled how dad defied a perpetual financial crunch to provide us with the very best in terms of education. We were made to attend the kind of events and interact with the kind of people many of my journalist colleagues don't dream of still. But thanks to dad, that was the world we knew. Ashish was the self assured one. The genius, the prodigy. Mom used to carry a big bag to the youth festival to collect his trophies. There was immense burden of expectation on my rebellious, mercurial brother. But at the nick of time, he defied everyone's expectations to follow his path.
Dad saw his son as an emerging doctor or at least an IAS officer. Knowing ashish (curiously called shalu), neither was difficult for him. I vividly remember how he announced at home that he did not want to be a doctor, a wink away from the entrance and dad tore his examination card in frustration. All hell broke lose. No one in my family is adept in self restraint. But ashish stuck to his guns and dad came round. He is a very respected teacher today and i can confidently say he has moulded quite a few minds. In a system where many teachers sleepwalk through class solely for the salary at the end of the month, ashish is part of a heartening change.
Come to dad. I wish, i pray that i have 10 per cent of the devotion he had to bring up my daughter the way he brought us up. He was no angel. (He had an extremely volatile temper we were all dead scared of). But with all his failings, he is a great father. Dad never saved money in the course of his long career with Punjab Agricultural University. Whatever he earned was spent in providing us with an unbelievable environment. I have visited many rich people over the past few years and i don't remember seeing their kids soaking up lenin at age 11. Our modest home was filled choc-a-block with books. Books overflowed from cupboards, racks, trunks, they were inside beds and on top of them…they were everywhere. i was in the habit of reading in the loo as well. (Was never the most sophisticated). Our outings were to conferences for scientists, anthropologists, politicians, what have you. And while we flourished in the environment dad painstakingly created for us, his bank balance dwindled. Our neighbors sent their kids to modest schools while we studied in the best Ludhiana had. They made houses, my dad took more loans…many from a private financier at exorbitant interest rates. Among the people who visited our house, there were many moneylenders seeking repayments.
Finally dad retired. Mom and dad are old today and they live far away, in kerala. Both of us are inexpressive about expressing affection. But there's not a single moment i don't think of them. They are permanent fixtures in my mind. My selfless, temperamental father and my frank, headstrong, loving mother. Today, i have a daughter and a blueprint of her journey to adulthood and independence. I am looking forward to grooming a woman of substance and then letting her loose, free to live her life. I want to see my daughter take her own decisions and accept the responsibility, i want to see her fly. It comes from my parents, i know and i am so grateful. Love you always.

Healing

I love emotions. Its the capacity to feel intense emotion that differentiates us from less evolved forms of life (Like unicellular beings). But recently, i noticed that emotions were getting the better of me. There was a phase of intense grief, then frustration, then anger….it went on. Till one day i noticed that my mind had become enslaved to negativity and eventually, i was the one getting hurt.
Emotions are essential to being human, but mastery on these is important. That's different from being calculative. I have started consciously tracking my thoughts, checking myself when I take a turn for the negative. There's still a long way to go. But at least i know the direction. Self control takes a lifetime of effort, but a small start can be made. In my case, i just want to do away with anger, fear and insecurity. I certainly don't think love needs self control. Serenity and optimism are great healers. Blind ambition, bitterness, jealousy and anger corrode you. They never let wounds become scars and then disappear altogether. With negativity, wounds fester, becoming gangrenous in the end.
I want to be an oasis. Someone who can touch herself and others with love. Dont know if i will get there. Its not a small desire. But if the journey is so uplifting, imagine what the goal would be like.

Silence

I love the first half an hour or so in the office when i come early and not many people are around. This is a time of meditative silence and i use it by trying to dive deep inside myself. This time is far from chaos and stupid issues. Listening to deep silence has the same effect as standing alone on a beach, feeling the strength of the ocean belittle every meaningless issue festering inside your mind. When you come face to face with a force so pure, you are purged. Sadly, I hunger for more such moments, when I can delve into the silence and feel my heart slow in tune with its rhythm. Life (and to some extent laziness), does not let me enjoy it as much as I'd like to. The push and pull of duties cannot be ignored. But I want to find a silent core in the midst of the confusion. I don't know what this feeling is called. There are many who would call me a nutcase for thinking on these lines. But still, i cherish that calm solitude.

men are really from mars

Thank God for girlfriends! No one else will understand you like a girlfriend would. When we were around 15 years of age, the word "opposite sex" came to have a thousand connotations and as many dreams. For me, it symbolized a knight in shining armor, as brave, as gallant and as romantic as my imagination would allow. It took more than two decades to realize the sexes cannot understand each other on the lines of our childhood dreams. (Some happy exceptions notwithstanding). So we have the man and the woman, who really are from different planets for all practical purposes, looking for the kind of complete acceptance that is just not possible to come by (not where they are looking). So as we finally go back to that warm circle of girlfriends (and boyfriends for the men), baring our hearts in the assurance that we will be understood, authors try to bridge the gap with books like "Men are from Mars, women are from Venus." Some titles are really intriguing, seeking to explain why women cry and why they cant read maps…Let them be na!
So there are couples who spend a lifetime trying to figure out what the other partner wants. Soon, one or both is frustrated and wants to opt out. Wouldn't it be much better if we just let each other be and satisfy the hunger for understanding with girlfriends? Get a life beyond the partner? It would certainly save a few marriages.

rain rain rain!!!!

Its raining!!!!!
The coffee and tea vending machine in the canteen conked out at the wrong time. Can we stay away from a steaming cuppa in the rain? So we picked up two umbrellas from the lobby, without bothering about the identity of their rightful owners and sauntered out to the "Khoka" in the corner.
The overly sweet cup of chai in the downpour tasted better than the best of wines I have had (not that many actually). There we were, beneath a big pipal tree, its leaves dripping droplets on us and into the chai…the fragrance of rain drenched earth and the refreshing aroma of the tea made it a heady experience.
We stood there and chatted, smiling at people making a dash to the small shanty and the stoic chaiwala, who looked more an aristocrat than a tea vendor. We went into the air conditioned office soaking wet, but happy. mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm……the flavors of life.

Bhopal, who's responsible?

Two years jail for the top brass of Union Carbide India Limited. Two years for making a pleasant December night a nightmare of pain and death. Can anyone imagine what that night in Bhopal must have been without a shudder going down one's spine? What it must have felt like to have your own breath suffocate you and to watch helplessly as your kids and parents exhaled life with every breath?
Is two years enough? Anyway, who is responsible? Why did the tank burst? Who was really responsible? The one man who failed to make sure the valves and water tanks were maintained or the one who decided it was okay to clear pipes with water…completely disregarding the fact that the water could leak into the tank which stored the lethal MCI.
Or is it the top officials who decided to use the more dangerous but cheaper MCI for their pesticide?
Two years or 20, can justice be done without fixing accountability….real accountability?

what's betrayal anyway?

Everything needs to be balanced in life. There's a positive for every negative and a negative for every positive.
But in the end, everything is relative…even betrayal. Now that's a greatly misunderstood phenomenon. Who betrays who?
I suppose, it's all a matter of choice, trusting someone is a gamble and having that trust broken is a risk we have to take.
I guess no one plans to hurt someone. I mean, who would get up in the morning and think, "today's a great day to hurt a friend…"?
No one…people do what they feel is right in a particular moment.
If that turns out wrong (For someone), too bad.
What's most needed is the toughest thing to do, at least when the wound is fresh----reacting with understanding and forgiveness.
Negativity hurts more than anything. When reaction to something or someone is anger or hurt, it is you who is tormented.
It's essential to let go…move on, to save your own skin.

For one moment of freedom

How would it feel to forget everything for sometime? Name, profession, so called obligations, hurts and debts….everything?
How would it feel to start over on a clean slate, wiping off the dust of years…
How would it feel to have to confirm only to the heart, peeling off that stifling mask forever…
How would it feel to free everyone from grudges, hurts, expectations and to free yourself in the process…
How it would feel to drop the heavy load of pain and feel the lightness of joy and love?
How would it feel to just let go…..

contenment

Some sights percolate into the deepest recesses of the mind. The other day, I saw a woman selling something on the road divider of a busy highway. She had her baby next to her, who was fast asleep amidst the vehicles whizzing past. The way he was sprawled out on the narrow divider, with mud as a mattress, showed he saw no discomfort in the situation. His face was immensely peaceful, deep in slumber. There was no fear, no discontent, only peace. In that moment, the baby achieved what most of us cannot even think about all our lives. He had the treasure of contentment. Nothing, absolutely nothing could take from the kid his delight in the company of his mother and the chance to catch a wink ---- regardless of where. I am sure my face does not look so tranquil when i sleep, even though i have a bed and an air conditioner.
I may be happy at the sight but that does not absolve me of the responsibility to do my bit for those who are in a tighter spot (Can't call them underprivileged. Privilege is a relative term). Its not right for our women to be forced to work on roadsides, carrying their babies to eke out a living. We are all responsible.