India-A Conglomerate of child producing factories

Sounds harsh…very harsh indeed. But it’s a fact, a blot which no detergent making companies can claim to erase. It can be, only if we take the case out in streets like the famous ‘Dhobi-ghaats’ in Mumbai. It has to be a current matter on everyone’s lips. Then, perhaps we can come up with some solution. And when I talk of a solution, don’t treat me like one with godly powers as the only way we can up with a solution in this case is by elimination substitution kind of method. There’s no direct formula. We have to derive it in the process of solution-making as many a time, instead of dealing with the superlatives, we have to deal with  good and better, bad and worse!

With India’s population of 1.21 billion, we represent almost 17% of world’s population at a mere 2.4% of the world's land area. Population of UP almost equals to that of Brazil!

The main culprit as we all know is poverty, which is the consequence of illiteracy and corruption. And how does poverty inflect such injury on our society? Well, poor families who are not part of the main economy consider their family members as potential economic assets. Each family member contributes something to their household incomes.Wait, lets take a pause and apply reverse gear.

There are many  poor families who don’t wish to have an army of offspring. They have it only due to illiteracy, society norms, religion and less focus on these issues by our government (In fact Iran is the only country where mandatory contraceptive courses are required for both males and females before a marriage license can be obtained!).

They are either out of reach of contraceptives or are hesitant in using them. So what happens is that in order to increase the household income, they make each member responsible to feed themselves. And so arise the issues like child-labor, high school drop-out rate etc. But this is the story of poor families without enough opportunities even to make ends meet.

What about us? The better educated people we claim to be, what are we doing to help curb the problem of population. The growth rate of population in rural and urban areas in last decade was 12.18% and 31.80% respectively. The stark difference is due to migration and Us. We better-offs still aspire to cultivate at least two children.

Social problems have attracted our attention only when it satisfies our ego or when it entertains us. We delve into so called problems of the need of daughters of our and other families to get married soon and to get married in the same caste and sub-caste and sub-sub-caste. And if there is any out-of-caste marriage, then how to deal with ‘The Problem’ becomes the problem. But population growth is not an issue. What becomes the issue instead is couples cosying up in public parks. And then sprouts periodically, the ludicrous ‘Operation Majnu’, where a police woman perhaps driven by schadenfreude, hounds a couple in a park and makes the men do sit-ups causing immense chagrin to the couple and grabbing the grinning media reporters’ attention which again shoots the TRPs of the concerned channel viewed by the ‘Concerned Us’.

What is the problem? I think the problem is that even our middle class and the high class ends don’t know what the real problem is. They still motivate young people of their and others' families, to produce offspring as soon as possible and two children is a must! Adoption and abortion are far-fetched terms. ‘Condoms’ is a word that people still shy of uttering in public (even in their rooms!). But they are not shy of having three children. They are shy of talking about sex. They are not shy of doing it but despise the topic of the outcomes of their ‘deeds’!!

They are shy of displaying even hints of basic sexual affection like kissing and hugging in public but they don’t think once before relieving their bladder in public places or performing honor killing or having loud personal conversations in public places. The otherwise shy aunts are not shy of showing off their huge unclothed potbellies while draped in ‘sarees’(Indian traditional wear). But they are definitely against the western outfits worn by females.

We are hypocrites. The whole mankind is hypocrite. But where do we draw the line? We say, “We’re proud to be Indians”. But sadly we no more identify the ‘Indianness’ or even fail to define the same. Nevertheless we’re proud of being a country of entrepreneurs. We’ve established the factories that produce the beloved children, 'Our Future’ !

You also may like to watch this documentary about kartavya, an NGO..

image source: http://www.overpopulation.org/rabbit-cartoon.html, http://filipspagnoli.wordpress.com/2009/07/29/some-more-population-growth-nonsense-from-india/

THAT FAVORITE Tee…..WHICH BROUGHT ME IMMENSE Glee…..

I’m sure that all of you must have had a lucky t-shirt or a favorite jeans and also you must have faced the brunt of caustic remarks from your mom (or your folks) regarding the innumerable times  you wore that dress while being made to  count almost all the occasions you dogmatically represented yourself in that dress!

And still at the end of it, you, possessed by the soul or as we say the feel of that dress, would keep wearing the dress as if trying to fulfill the cause of the may-be-now-withered dress.

The worse part is we start expecting others too to appreciate that dress which they obviously have ceased to do, which in turn makes us acrimonious towards those innocent people(innocent, in this particular scenario only!!)

We become scornful towards all those people who don’t shower our dress, not just us, with appreciation.

We start mitigating that childish furor by reasoning that definitely, ‘those’ people are not trendy and do not have a good taste in fashion ….

"what do they know about fashion??..!!!..huh…if by rarest chance,

 Somehow my dress is sent to Milan..

They would consider it once they give my dress a mere glance

and would price it high under a famous brand…!!!"

I remember once, a two year old favorite t-shirt of mine (which actually resembled a t-shirt worn by my favorite actress in one of her movies) met with an accident in ‘Holi’ (the festival of colors in India). The stubborn colors that were used to make merry in the festival  got cantankerous and attacked my peace-loving white t-shirt hung out in the balcony,…..at first my mom was happy while I cursed my neighbor whom those menacingly playful colors belonged to…..  but then my little’s heart agony reached my mom and soon she decided to wash it..& my t-shirt fought  bravely and came out healthy as before…!!
 In no time, the tee contained me and I was obviously elated. I had won along with my t-shirt, but something had changed. It was like a pyrrhic victory.. I had fought more than needed..

The next day as I held my t-shirt in my hand, I observed that it had gone old and though its aura still tried to cling onto me, I realized its weakened grip now and that the time had come to bid farewell to it.

“Mom I think I should not wear it anymore; you were right about it...see if u can donate it to someone….”, my mom baffled by my sudden transmogrification, gave a smile not really flashed to alleviate my pain but in final relief; albeit it felt better..

 I still miss that t-shirt  that used to proudly exhibit itself, wrapped on me, to its then  little world….!!!!!!

So do you guys have or ever had such unreasonable  nexus with one of your clothes…..?? As I said earlier, I think you must have had…!!!

Love is Petering Out…...Really??

All the couples muddling through long distance relationships wouldn’t have had mustered the nerve to sail through the windy sea of The Relationship in the absence of mobile phones, telephones, internet and other telecommunication and transport facilities. OR would they have still gone for it?

Frankly speaking, I don’t know. Nowadays relationships fail to hark back to the antediluvian times when none of the above mentioned facilities existed. In today’s world, we need the constant regular feed ( the facilities) to poke the fire and keep it kindling. Am I mistaken here? Shouldn’t the only feed required be love and the above mentioned facilities be mere (though nowadays important) catalysts?

It would have been such a marvelous thing called ‘Love’ in those days when the Love was both ‘The Entity’ and ‘The Mediator’ within the two and between the two.!!

Are gone those days when there was pillar-strong connection between the two despite the absence of any putative mode of connectivity? Can such love subsist in today’s world? Has the growing connectivity today, actually rendered the strength of love as relatively lilliputian?

But then in the realms of all these questions, rises another one that changes the cusp of the previous questions. What was Love then, in those times? With the distance and no connectivity, how did they care for each other and where was the sharing?

For me love is too mammoth like to be defined or seen in its de facto figure. But there’s one aspect that I vehemently believe in and that is sharing.

I fail to discern that how can love last in the absence of sharing. But then, the fact is that it used to exist then. How and in what form it used to exist is a mystery that still evades me. 

Today, even in the times of multiple networks, love fails to get connected between the two. It definitely needs more than just technology & gizmos. It needs love..

Nevertheless I believe that love should be like a river with continuous flow. The moment it behaves in an ebb and flow manner, it can cease to flow altogether at any time later.

So once it is ignited, pull out all the stops to keep fueling it even while the most dire circumstances and also never abandon it even when prices of the fuels go high!!

                                                          After all for all those who seek love, it’s the raison d'être…!!!

At least I believe love is still there with its intact core nature. I guess, it’s just the times that have changed..or else people would have ceased to seek ‘the Love’…And So,

 It made her touch the sky and fillip the clouds

To hark him against the sweltering summer..

And to meet him she rowed across the river

Even in the cold nights as she shivered

It made her do everything

while doing which earlier she would have quivered

She went against the tide

Her spirits were not dampened nor dithered

But then the angry rains swelled the river

And every second, her life, her love seemed to sink deeper

Her eyes were getting closed, with petering out glimmer

Her heart was cold, with hopes getting dimmer

......But then the sun shone and the clouds disappeared

She was there on the shore and even He was there

After all He too had taken the same route to meet her.........!!

image source: http://shareyourlovelifestoryatthisblog.wordpress.com/2011/03/09/ldr-long-distance-relationship/

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

I’m sitting in my room at the behest of my laptop and reading blogs and wondering what can I write about…I’m WONDERING……

…..still thinking….

                         …..and my doubts about my cognitive abilities are ballooning….

                                                                                       ……and it doesn’t seem to explode….!!!!

My mind has been fecundated with a potpourri of  social, political, economic, religious, philosophical cum personal (my favorite) topics. But now the whole act of harvesting the information in the form of discussions has simply become trite…!!! Or may be now, my situation is synonymous with the one wherein I get bored of ‘Hakka noodles’ ( a Chinese food) and need  ‘Dal-chawal’ ( an Indian bread:a pulses-rice meal) instead!!! 

There is so much to write about…I can be as loquacious as possible when it comes to discussions…but I’m so fed up with all the topics getting zeroed in on corruption, law and order problems in our continent and other continents of this world…Why have people ceded to talk about their lives and the common frames and templates that our lives share? 

When it comes to discussing my personal life, the topic most of the times gets digressed to now quotidian debates revolving around our beleaguered world…!!!

 And so eventually, all I get in the name of main course meal as food for thought is a bowlful garish salad made of prosaic topics.

 Well…. I so very much miss my college days when I could talk about all and sundry ranging from trivial incidents that marked our days to all kinds of get-together  or our exaggerated love lives full of innocent crushes we boasted of, and the list goes on ………………………..

 So now all the memories of the yore, as if waiting in ambush, capture me again, and I being always unprepared capitulate to the mercy of voluptuous times that provide my favorite food for thought…!!!...

So before I go back to the salt-mines, someone please, just provide me with some abstract topic so that I can willfully spread my views across the table, enjoy the treat and gratify the gourmet in me…..!!! 


Image Source: http://www.cravingchocolateandlazydays.com/category/food-for-thought/

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A Brook of Paroxysm..

SO, It tickles in your stomach

It can happen to either a genteel or a pervert…

You try hard to get your lips together

But your teeth show in full glory irrespective of their color

Your mouth seems to be stretched in an irreversible manner

Your eyes now squeezed generate unnecessary tears

But it keeps increasing to a level till you would bear

The effects are  heart-warming at times or grotesque in nature

After it , you yourself might feel high or chagrined by your skewed behavior

 No, no its not what you thinking if you’ve a pervert mind, my dear

The mask of soberness in front of people that you wear

Gets pellucid for a while making the underneath-true-face glare

It can be a cry of that child inside, with your age that sears

Or an outcome of a celebration with five glasses of beer

Or a feeling of missing good-times while bad-times that you endure

and while you're deluged in it and cannot complete speaking a sentence

You splash it onto the other person trying hard to fill in the missing words..

Your mind now wondering for a moment if really human nature is so weird

To this question and the question throughout the poem that lingers

“What is it??” some might be asking , though it must have been deciphered by the clever

So It is the best medicine as opined by people of all generations

Lets make our lives beautiful with the little things we possess without the need to earn them

As, Life Allows Us to Garden our Hearts with a Tub of water from the Endless River of Laughter…

And yes, yes..It is the Laughter..!

Image source: http://forum.rogerdavies.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=76

DREAMS PRODUCTION

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I’ve a myriad of stories which have the potential to form plot for movies; and how do I’ve them?? Have I plagiarized or used some stealthy ways to possess them??..

Well to your relief, the answer is no and that the source of these stories is the home production of my dreams which manufacture them regularly without fail, unperturbed, even by gazetted holidays and Sundays…!!!

Where do these dreams emanate from?...and above all who produces and directs them…

I was in a teaching profession some time back and yesterday I had seen a photo of, Madhuri Dixit, a famous  Indian actress, in a newspaper. The photo kind of seeped in through my dreams yesterday night where the actress had metamorphosed into a teacher for class 9 and 10^th ( I know her fans would kill me for such a transmogrification). Also she applauded me for training the students while I tried hard to control my self-conceited smile….!

Here, another one goes……

I’m a die-hard fan of the series ‘Friends’ and inevitably of Jennifer Aniston who therefore got ready to act in a whodunit kind of movie directed by my dreams in which her skin was peeled off by  a female villain and was then permanently masked (somehow) with a look alike of the villain by the villain herself. The villain then goes off to lead a separate life to carry out, clandestinely, various kinds of illegal ventures. Meanwhile, the ‘Aniston’ (who has a visage of the villain) leads a happy married life, in place of the villain, with the villain’s family. In the climax, the villain returns and asks for her family back from the ‘Aniston’ (I don’t remember why!!)… To make it further grotesque, it also involved a whole lot of eldritch characters fittingly embedded in the mesh of ‘the murky movie’.

‘WOAH…!!!...’

And that was the exclamation I gave after I rose from the dream I was deluged in ….

What I don’t understand (among many other imperceptible things regarding the vague dreams) is the basis of casting in our dreams. At times, in my dreams, I act with a different face. While in others I’ more of a spectator. And in few, I participate both as an actor and a spectator( sounds ridiculous, I know!!). But I’m sure this happens to many other people too( those who can recall their dreams!). There can be a lot of mixing of names and faces, places and events, in one’s dreams.

Apropos of my dreams I can readily deduce that whatever our senses perceive from our both exterior and interior worlds in our day to day life, involuntarily get registered in some corner of our minds in an esoteric way, which then concatenate in our sub-conscious domain to concoct completely extraneous dreams which I must say are not completely illogical in nature but if implemented in directing a movie might be a success…!!!!...

I also read in an article recently that according to some researchers, remembering dreams increases one’s memorizing abilities. I wonder how true is that. Though, I’ve tried to search some e-books on ‘understanding or decoding Dreams’, but couldn’t find a good one (an understandable one!)

So, I would have loved to ask, "If anyone knows something about the whole intricate process of Dreams Production, please do shower me with the insightful information…!"; but then I read the following saying that reduced my keenness for understanding the imperceptible dreams.
 

"Those dreams that on the silent night intrude, and with false flitting shapes our minds delude ... are mere productions of the brain. And fools consult interpreters in vain."

                                                                                                                                   -JONATHAN SWIFT





IMAGE SOURCE: http://www.viceland.com/music/2010/08/really-weird-dreams/

Symphonies-Loved or Illegitimate…

As the fat walls hug you in the lazy afternoon

and no one hears you humming the loud music playing in you earphones

For few moments you ride high on the stout waves of drumbeats

before a  tune strikes you and you pause the music…everything coming to a standstill

You stare impassively at those walls now

as if playing the ‘Game of Statue’ with them,

Now who’s to say ‘Start’, when like walls, you become flabbergasted

Your competitor, the wall,  remains still, but a heartbeat of yours can’t be omitted

So while you lose another childish game, you remember the lost battles of your lifetime

You’ve stopped the music, but the time would stop for no gold no dime,

So you keep sitting fixed onto your bed

In your mind hundreds of times you’ve fled,

and feel the pain in your feet that turned stones red as they had bled,

whilst in the background the same meddlesome music being played……

This powerful can the music you hear be……….

And you’ve to be careful as it makes you climb a tree…

coz it can break your joints if you don’t know how to step your feet back onto the ground

Or else repeatedly falling off the favorite colorful tree, would aggravate the deep blue wound

But I guess, it must be like smoking or other kinds of addiction

Where you stand by it vehemently expecting some kind of exaltation

Or like while flying a kite, your spirits also with which soar,

for which you can stand barefooted on the hot terrace  with your slashed finger ignored

Or like speeding a bike on a long forlorn dusty road,

You cut the air with a countryside/rock music’s blade 

Unperturbed by the palpable dangers clouding around you like a swarm of bees

This stentorian that music can be………

But if it rains how many times do you fear cold

and refrain yourself from sprawling out and getting chilled in downpour

You breathe in the music, as we exhale it in our actions,

The music calms us while at times we fall in for its pretensions,

So we unconsciously stand, as if standing in between a rock and a hard stone

In the case of which it’s better that we sit and enjoy the unpredictable outcome

Either we may live the epitome of our fantasy world

Or we scathe our time by unfolding the fears that were earlier bundled

The feelings that emanate are either like dew drops dripping off the fresh leaves palmed by thirsty ground,

Or it may be grotesque like blood gushing out of a cut throat or a noisome wound

Such are the contrasting outcomes of music that we hear

We taste it, we ravish it, at times we even spew it out

But then we consume it like food, like water, like life

This music dutifully walks along with us, like our life’s wife

Whom we can’t abandon, whose presence in our world is simply ubiquitously rife…!!

Image link: http://www.worldgallery.co.uk/art-print/Symphony-in-Red-and-Khaki-II-21667.html

Anna's Oasis- A Mirage!!

 A TV news channel flashes the news proudly about some school children, somewhere in the age-group of  10-14 protesting and participating in the ongoing protests against corruption led by Anna Hazare and his team. The hysterical news seemed more ridiculous when a set of teachers from the same school applauded the protests by those schoolchildren. Another one showed women from a rural area naming their sons after Anna Hazare. There were many other pieces of news that were reported showing various people trying to grab the media attention in the process of which the news media definitely succeeded in grabbing our attention. It seemed everyone was following Rakhi Sawant’s footsteps to seek attention. And news media and reporters were following the ideology of an ongoing TV reality show, ‘Entertainment Ke Liye Kuch Bhi Karega’.

I then immediately switched the channel to HBO. But my mind kind of prolonged the effect of inertia. It was still grounded to the same news and didn’t seem to move ahead. After all I’m an Indian too and dream of ‘Shining India’.

The current situation with boneless protests seems to share an analogy with the one where a person takes shelter under a plastic bag or a sheet when suddenly caught in an unprecedented thunderstorm.

 The point is that people’s enthusiasm and will to fight corruption is laudable. The unrest in the people is no longer swallowed by them to fill their stomachs. They seem to have realized that discontent within themselves is not going to fill their stomachs or fulfill their ambitions. It is time they are fed with something substantial and helpful. But then again they are fallen into trap  by getting misled that the Lokpal Bill and the road that they have taken will suffice their needs.

How many people participating in the protests actually know what Lokpal Bill constitutes.? How many of these people actually know about their constitution and various  provisions under it?

I was reading an article in The Indian Express, which centralized the ongoing protests around a famous idiom, i.e, prevention is better than cure. And that the Lokpal Bill will only help curing the disease of corruption to some extent and not really preventing it.

I was having a discussion over the ongoing protests with a wise (which is my perception) friend of mine during which I asked him that why the private sector in our country is more progressive than the public sector. Since liberalisation in 1991, our country has tasted a remarkable economic growth. And we ascribe this growth mainly to the private sector. May be the answer lies in the statement that mostly people working in private organisations work more sincerely than their counterparts in public sector. And so another question arose that why such difference is prevalent at all? And the answer was that may be the lack of timely appraisals and fixed appraisals(mostly with a minimum time range of 5 years) in public sectors lead to slipshod attitude towards work which gives rise to ‘chalta hai attitude’ which in turn gives rise to indifferent attitude towards their work which finally leads to unproductivity or inefficiency or corruption or all three of them.

We already have a fantastic constitution. Though one also requires proper functioning of it. And this is where the problem arises. We do not really need a separate statutory body to look into the grievances of all sorts prevalent in our society. We have an existent judiciary system and our constitution has the provisions of amendments. Most of the salient features constituting Lokpal Bill that is making it sell like hot cakes can actually be integrated in our current governing system. Our judiciary system can further me bolstered to check corruption in various sectors of our society. The criminal trials can be fastened. Let’s make better and more rampant the usage of RTI (Right to information act). We can try to better our education system by initiating ITS(Indian teaching services) as proclaimed in a movie named ‘Aarakshan’. There are so many other things that can be worked upon to attain fruitful(sweet and non-decaying) results.

The idealogies behind the bill are right but the methodology is wrong.

We are a democratic nation. But then what if one day we, the common people start marching in protest demanding right to decision-making in the Indian Army. I know the idea sounds ridiculous and is a perfect analogy to the current scenario.

How can we get a solution without identifying the problem. The solution to the problem definitely does not lie in shaving the problem everytime it rises. We have to pull it out with its roots. We know that population is the major hindrance in the development of our country. How many people participating in the protests believe in ‘Hum Do Humara Ek’  ('one child ') policy?

Issues like population control and adult literacy have to be looked upon more seriously. There are so many issues which have to be dealt with separately and effectively in a vast country of ours.

The mindset that youngsters today have towards government jobs has to be changed. Why is it that we relate government sector with dullness and private sector as a more happening thing?

The Anna Hazare campaign is trying to remind the unfairness which we have suffered for decades in the hands of corrupt officials. It is seemingly showing an oasis in a desert like situation. But the fact is that it is a mere mirage and we have fallen for it and have trodden our steps towards an unrewarding journey. At the end of it we’ll end up feeling more thirsty.

“Be practical..!!”, is a famous phrase that we youngsters use in our daily life. Many of us end up making it synonymous with the phrase“chalta hai” (“It’s OK”), which is certainly not being done by me right now. I really mean when I say, “Be practical”.

If one’s wish is to relish one’s eyes with ‘Shining India’ , then let us convert this protest into a more meaningful one with clear and deep rooted objectives which would automatically sweep the weeds off our fecund soil.

Let’s not use the childish toddler machinery in which children just throw a question mindlessly on their less dominating peers saying, “tu meri team mei hai ya uski?”(“are you in my team or in the other’s?”) which forces the innocuous tamer children into undesired polarised groups.

I’ve been getting many sad messages demanding(yet another demand by the people) to forward the same messages on the current protests to help Anna win his battle. Many of these messages are made mawkishly sentimental by concatenating the issue of Kasab’s pending death sentence!! They end with a notorious line saying, “I did my job…”

 Well my job is of a perennial nature which will go on to remain a responsible Indian citizen.

And I would rather end my post with “Jai Hind..!!”

Image source: http://www.petehobden.com/2011/02/people-in-crowd-tourist-trap-painting.html

Commas in the Beautiful World,,,

First of all, to all those who have been reading my blog posts and might have mulled over the blog title, A Little of That in those commas, at some point of time or the other, perchance, I owe an explanation for the same….!!!

What are commas for?

What are these?

Well as per my perception, they are those beautiful curves which beg us to take short breaks or else bear the consequences. These are those little speed-breakers on streets, roads, and highways in the context of literature. Literature somehow has also been an area of high magnetic field in my life. Metaphors, personification and similes have always attracted me because you can compare anything with everything in this world and also out of this world.

And so I can compare our lives with paragraphs; our daily lives with lines; and those little breaks that we take in our daily lives to think from sensible things to absolute rubbish things, with commas.

Well, as I said earlier, commas are supposed to be short brakes, but I kind of enjoy them, and so for me, they last for a little longer durations (after all, I know, I am going to have a long life!!).

 Just like today, when I was supposed to work for a project, I rather chose to listen to cold play (my favorite music band) and it took to me to a different world.

 My favorite number from the band is a song titled beautiful world. There are other masterpieces that the band has gifted its fans, but this particularly is my favorite because it neither makes me happy nor makes me sad. It seems as if the band while composing the song thought of something like; let’s go to the outer space and mimic our lives in the form of music for two minutes. In two minutes it manages to touch all the chords of my senses as if finger-tipped all the moods that I can go through and all the emotions that I can feel, to make me aware of all of these. So basically in the end it makes all kind of forces act upon me and in the end I don’t know what the result is! All I know is that within the two minute frame, the time realized a change of momentum. And then I get pulled by the invincible force developed around me to relish all those moods and emotions again.

It is like a word that fills up blanks in any incomplete sentence. The song somehow just fits in each phase of my life.

.

And so every time I listen to it, it makes me realize this is how life is; it just goes on with no defined breaks or moods, but with commas. It goes on with intervened vicissitudes accentuated with low and high tempo or absence of it in the song. For instance, we usually follow a normal mundane daily routine but sometimes our days get highlighted with special moments or times when we could imagine a different instrument or a set of instruments being played in the background. But in the end does it leave you with an entirely different mood?

 At the end of the day, we neither feel high sense of elevation, nor do we feel terribly depressed. This is what happens most of the times. It just goes on…..nothing really changes…Time has got a unique property, i.e., at the end it neutralizes everything…

 I remember, in the second year of my college, when for the first time I started traveling long distances, on my own, I used to listen to the song again and again on my walkman (those were the times of technology backwardness). I used to keep rewinding it to understand what exactly the song was doing to me. All I knew then was that it seemed that the song was being played in the same rhythm of my life, of my journey.

And even today when I listen to it, it makes me hear my own life. And it does nothing else….

Have you ever come across such a song…let the music player of your mind play it now…!!

Watch the video of 'Beautiful World' ...(also named 'don't panic')..

The Birth of Inspiration(s)

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Do you remember, as children, we were told the so called educational stories of ants and spiders and other big and small animals time and again.

Those stories illustrated the importance and meaning of then mammoth like giant and weighty terms like perseverance, hard work, sincerity and largesse. As children, we were hardly bothered by those aspects (some of us still don't care for these things...!!). There were stories told revolving around a young poor child making big against all odds and others from various mythologies. All of us remember the famous saying, telling how a rope leaves marks on the inner walls of a well when used repeatedly, depicting the idea and extent of practice, hard work and sincerity.

These stories were narrated to inspire us.

Many of us love to read rags to riches stories. ‘Kaun banega Crorepati?’(based on ‘Who wants to become a Millionaire’) got success as it exploited the same unknown, involuntary desire to get inspired. ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ did the same. (There are obviously many other reasons as to why they drank the the glass full of success..!!)

I’m sure that most of us have been inspired by more than one aspects, things or living beings in our lives.

I myself was reading a heart wrenching inspirational story which compelled me to think of one; the Inspiration of my Life. And then I realized that it should rather be, ‘The Inspirations of my Life’!!..

There is a photo of mine framed, hanging on a wall in my room. I must be around ten month old child in that photo which my uncle clicked after I had got up in the morning on a just normal day. I’ve few strands of my hair falling on my forehead with a ‘bindi’ put on it by my mom and so I got photographed while sitting there wide-eyed as if cogitating on something, unperturbed, but not ignorant, looking at a journey to be undertaken………………….

Yes, that photo inspires me. It inspires me to live, to go onto the path I’ve treaded on for so long. As a child I must have got inspired by a motley of things and as a grown up now, I get inspired by that child, by my childhood....

I think that children, in general are the best inspirational subjects around us. The excitement, the enthusiasm, the vigor and the optimism with which they start and end a day is stirring.

 I remember, I went through a bad phase of my life while I was studying in high school. And so one day while I was heading towards my school in a disoriented way, I confronted a child held in its uncle’s arms smiling brightly at me dissipating the clouds of despair that had earlier enveloped me. I don’t remember its face; I never met that child again, but I remember, that child brought the most selfless smile on my face. It was as beautiful and precious as a flower blossoming in a grave-yard.

It roused me because it told me that one doesn’t always need materialistic success in one’s life to be happy. A little thing like an unknown child’s smile can bring that light needed in your darkest hours of your life. It again inspires me to  keep going as no matter what all and howsoever grotesque I might confront ahead, there will be something beautiful that will quench my thirst and rejuvenate me in my life to go on.

Even, nature can inspire us who is a great teacher and arbitrates in her own global language immutably without any discrimination on the basis of culture, caste, creed, country and anything that divides us otherwise.

And when we talk about the nature mother, how can we preclude speaking of our own mothers!! ( In this post, I can write about my mother only..!!!)

She’s not a very educated woman, nor is she the best person to take advices from, but still she’s definitely the most wonderful and greatest person in my life; and she inspires me immensely.

She taught me when she was a novice and I just a kid

She found me when I was lost; and when I was broken, by her I was fixed

She rebuked me and even now she can chastise me without rattling my ego

She removed the dirt from the surface of the picture of humanity,

When inhumanity beleaguered me and I gasped for breath due to the allergy

Little did I know it is for me that she smiles

And then I swore that I would always smile for her and keep the vile off my face

Little did I know that from her I learnt what it is to be inspired

And so I took the blindfold off my eyes, to see and feel the soft grace

So I walk farewelling sunsets behind, and welcoming the sunrises ahead

Treasuring and cherishing everything I can be inspired by…!!!




image source: http://magickalgraphics.com/

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HOW TO PRIORITIZE?

 In today's fast-paced world, the phrase ‘to prioritize’ has gained a currency.

We say that it is required to keep up with all sectors of our lives to be dealt with. We keep a list of dos and don't s. And the list keeps changing with respect to both its elements and the elements’ ranks in the list.

More and more of our generation are becoming career-oriented. And there the bell of prioritizing rings!!.. As otherwise, we will be left behind and we don’t like to lose!!

It is in the recent years that the need of networking(socializing)  has increased manifold and has gained a status of ‘being indispensable’ for ‘survival’, the new ‘having a successful and reputed life’, in this kaleidoscopic world of Facebook and twitter..!

And as we increasingly pander to these requirements, the respective spaces for the priorities in the priority list reduce to such an extent that we tend to forget their respective ranks.

For instance, there is a young recently married, lovely couple that one of my friends know. Now the guy (the husband) has been staying abroad for quite some time and intends to stay there for another year or so, in order to escalate his career prospects, so that he can serve his family in a better way, i.e; his topmost priority is his family and not the career.

But,what if in the mean time, his career takes the topmost priority!! Who can assure that it doesn’t go the other way round in this indefinite article like world where nothing is certain? Now that’s debatable..!

Is there a solution to it ( if you ever consider it as a problem..!!)?

Today, even we might prioritize say, our career over other things in the name of prioritizing something else!!

Now, a child is never a priority to his/her parents because the child is not just an entity to them.A mother doesn’t really prioritize feeding her child or to be there for her child…she simply does it.

Why?

Because she has to do it; she loves doing it; it need not be stated in a priority list, in any list whatsoever!!

So here comes the solution. Perhaps, the solution circulates around the fact that it is not just about how to prioritize but also what to prioritize. Just like a mother does not have to prioritize a child, a husband or a wife need not prioritize his/ her spouse. They cannot compare their spouse with other people or with other Important entities in their lives. They can individually be a part of priority lists of other people(in their so called networks), but not a part of each others' ‘the list’.

So placing your family on such a list, becomes as tricky as playing a trick of mixing pearl and fish eye, in later stages of our lives. You can’t really prioritize your family among other things. You can only choose between the two - having a family(one can define family as per his/her wish) and not having the family. They(family) need not be prioritized at all because of the way we do. Let’s not say that we prioritize our families. They are our families-and their importance need not be explicated!!

As for me, I do not want to be ever reduced to even, so-called, the topmost priority of my parents or my husband’s (once I get married) in future…because priorities always change….and Life is like a series of marathons in which no participant secures the first position always.....!!

The Final Flight of the Feathers

Quickly Alma opened the window

A little rain bird flew in and perched itself on the palm of the widow

“What message have you got for me, my bird

through the thunderstorm you have flown to my place

I’ll always take care of you little bird, I give you my word

Just let me know if my son’s alive under grace….!!”

The bird fluttered its white wings till a Golden Feather fell

She held it with her dampening heart and for a while she went pale

Impetuously her eyes, scurried through the words inscribed

Reading which, the life in her revived

True tears of joy streamed down her cheeks, she ardently proclaimed, “He’s Alive!!”

And As I watched her down from here, I was exulted………………………….

She dozed off into her chair, after the bout of forlorn days

She now atleast knew that both she and her son were kissed by the Golden sun rays

As the morning blossomed with the fragrance of sunlight

The rain bird chirped incessantly like a child till she arrived

Alma fed the bird with grains and water

She pampered the bird as if it were her own daughter

She wanted to reap the overgrown past and grow her future

But how could she do it…after all she was a mother…!!!

As I watched her down from here, I missed her warmth, and I shuddered…………………..

Years went by, with her each day, spent on the wings of the bird

Alma recited lullabies to it at nights, she went on living like this unperturbed

And then one day the news of the war stumbled upon her doorway

“The War is Over..!!”, she chirped like a bird..just like the rain bird

She was to meet her son, the twinkle of her eyes

She sewed the future events of his life, for him she had to find a lovely bride

The innocuous bird panicked caged in the incongruous sight

The now fledged bird couldn’t grasp the meaning of Alma’s behaviour

As I watched her down from here , I too feared…………………………!!!

One day it thundered and the tumescent clouds outbursted, as if failed to feign the pain,

Amidst the angst, the bird was caught yet again…!!

Alma this time awaited her daughter, she sat near the window praying

Till the bird flew in , and this time another feather, but a White One, fell out of its vest,

And Alma intuitively picked it up in a haste

It read, “I love you, my mother, and I miss you more than ever

But I want to make you aware, of the fact that my scars have now become fade

The rain outside your window has wet me, but don’t worry, I won’t catch cold

and I can see the sun winning over the sky, and forming the rainbow, it looks just  beautiful from here

but let me confess a lie, that I can no more wear

I had to lie, as you and your daughter were alone and needed to be taken care of ,

When you had met it at first, when the golden feather it had doffed

I had sent it, to you, for you, my Mother..

I was avowed that you would love it the way you would love your daughter

You’ve waited for me for a long time and now that the war is over

Now’s the  time for you to confront the inevitable truth….

the truth of the feathers…………………”

As I watched my mother down from the heaven, I missed her rebukes more than anything else in that world…

She wept helplessly deluged in her grief,

Which I had anticipated earlier and so to save her, I had sent the bird, the little nymph..

Who roosted on my mother’s thin shoulders

The bird chirruped a tune, which it had learnt while crossing the heaven’s borders

As I watched her, down from here, I too hymned the song…

That night I tried to sleep, but grief had thorned my pillow

I then heard a familiar lullaby, soothing me, gliding high from underneath the sky,  from under a willow

I got up and saw the mother’s beautiful face cupped on her palm, looking out of the window

She didn’t drag the grief anymore, she had learnt to bid farewell to the yore

She was singing the lullaby, for me, like always she had in my childhood

She knew, that she alone had the power to heal my scars

And so, As my mother watched me, up from her house, her eyes shone

I was freed from the heaven, freed from the insatiable heart borne

I then finally winged my Golden Feathers, to Fly Higher… to diffuse into the White Dawn…….

PARALLEL UNIVERSE

                                                              Flames to dust ,Past to existence

                                                                 Iron to rust, gold to pretense

                                                                Time to haste, love to revenge

                                                             Glut to waste, glory to demotion

                                          In my mind all of it piles up to clog the drainage

                                                      Dull isn’t it, is this what you wanted?

                                         To see the nasty peril taking you into its bondage??

I drag my feet against the ground

I dance for the devil anonymous, unaware, like a clown

How many times would you give the devil a chance

It makes a mockery out of your life and you still take it as a prank

Can you not see the face, of course you can’t, you’re blindfolded

A rigid shaft in which your life has already been molded

You cannot see the unseen with your naked eyes wide open

But I see it through my twitched eyes,through the convoluted fiber woven

It is the destiny that arrogates everything we ever own

It is the devil that binds us to our life in this world, whether idyllic or forlorn….

Take me to the first dew, to an early morning rain

The life poured into our bodies cannot be now changed

We can at least adulterate the poison with antidote forced into our veins

Take me to the freshwater of the free spirited river

 flowing ahead of fixated constellations, in an aplomb manner

Our ears benumbed by the blaring sounds of horns

 popping out of the world’s cloak’s every invisible hole

Take me to a sky where chirpy birds glide Higher Heights

away from the black hole, free after scraping the ugly witch’s face full of black moles

Take me to the land shining soothingly with reflection of the moon

We may not live, although we can sojourn in a celestial world,

A terrain no one ever reigned, beautiful with flowers and leaves

We’ll make it true with our efforts solid with determination and soft with dreams

At least, I do get success every time I shut my eyelids when heavy with the burden

I can open them feeling light  in my perfect world which in the real world is seldom

And this perfect world on the other side of my eyes,

slips away from the shackles of my life,

and so I walk into this  PARALLEL UNIVERSE  that I’ve designed,

in which the flame of love lives throughout the time and

Where gold is only the nature of heart of every person here

Where destiny is interdicted and time flows like a perennial river…….

                                                                                                                                                                                                             

The cloying Sip- a blissful memory

“TA TARUPTUP TA-AN RA RA 

TA TARUPTUP TA-AN RA RA 

NESCAFE…”

 I remember when I first saw the add, I loved it; coz the model it showed looked independent and free-spirited. And immediately I had imagined myself to be living in my own flat with a coffee-machine in the kitchen. It gave me that sense of independence. So, I started loving coffee, not just because of the advertisement, but also because of its life-like taste; bitter, yet to be consumed, where you can add a little sweetness to it in just a right amount.

And then god bestowed us (coffee lovers) with CCD(Cafe coffee day) and Barista Lavazza. I used to go the outlets of CCD in metro walk (the most visited place during my college days!) where I usually had ‘kaapi-nirvana’ or ‘tropical ice-berg’.

So one day, I went to metro-walk with my best friend; both of us being coffee lovers, decided to go to then hallowed CCD. Also I wanted to have a ‘garden sandwich’ which is served grilled with mayonnaise in between, there in CCD.

So we went to the CCD and somehow got an ill feeling. It was a bad omen. We should have understood it. But, we didn’t…..!!!!!

 We sat there and soon we found out that the air conditioner was not working(max temp:40̊C) and so I felt suffocated and found it hard to maintain my composure in that nauseating hall,  overcrowded with families with air stuffed with loud noises made by blabbering customers. We felt as if we were seated in McDonald’s rather than in CCD. That was just not our usual CCD….!! So we dropped the idea of the ‘garden salad’ and ordered just the ‘kaapi nirvana’… It felt like hell sitting in there but I hoped gallantly that I would soon feel better once the coffee arrives. But it was seriously suffocating so we decided to change our seats and occupied the ones where apparently the air conditioner was stronger (our observation as regular customers!!). But the coffee didn’t arrive. We ordered once again. We waited with my hope diminishing in direct proportion to the time elapsing.

The coffee finally arrived.

We first decided to have the whipped cream but couldn’t have much of it as it was saccharinely sweet. We mixed it with the rest of the coffee. We then had the first sip of the coffee and it reminded us of a sugar syrup. We realized that something was terribly wrong with the coffee. This is not how our coffee tastes like!! And it wasn’t worth some 93 rupees!! I then complained saying, “I told you I can have coffee from McDonald's and that too for just Re 30 and it’s not bad…!!”.  We couldn’t have it and wondered if one of us could complain them regarding the ‘sugar-syrup’. We couldn’t complain. So to relieve our frustration we decided to write a note on the napkin. But none of us had a pen or a marker and were again realized of our bad luck. But we had to write a note and could not have given up that easily and so we did write,

                                  :(

                       BAD COFFEE
                                  :(

                                  

                                        , with coffee using a straw on the napkin and kept it on the coffee mug and went to the counter for the payment. But then with an askance I saw the waiter crumpling the note carelessly indifferently without reading it, above of which we had to pay the service charges which further escalated my saturation level and made me furious and so I blurted out our complaints….!!!

We were then given another mug of coffee and were asked to taste it. It tasted the same but we didn’t complain. Instead we went out and threw it in a dustbin… We could simply not have it; it tasted awful………………..!!

We then decided to have ‘aloo-tikki’ from the food–court there as we wanted to have something spicy(edible) and sit in an air-conditioned place. We got the coupon for it from inside the food-court and were asked to go out of the court, to the stalls situated outside it. We realized it was one of our bad days as we stood helplessly in the hot stream of air coming from the hot pan of ‘aloo tikkis’ and even they tasted unusually vapid……. It was indeed our bad day…!!...I then decided to get cold coffee from McDonald's which brought me some respite and he got noodles’ box from Bercos (a Chinese restaurant)takeaway in which noodles were rare. They were bad.

So we couldn’t get either a good coffee or a good air conditioned place.

But what had really disappointed us was the ‘BAD COFFEE’!!!...which of course did distort the musical image of the NESCAFE ad in my mind for sometime…!!!!

Albeit, I still love coffee and the likes of Barista Lavazza as most of the coffee lovers would…

And yes...................HAVE A NICE COFFEE…!!!