faltu katha

Recently I read this interview of a Bengali actress who has in the recent past shifted her base from Calcutta to Mumbai, divorced her 1st husband and is presently living with a much younger man. I know nothing is new about this phenomenon; it’s called the cougar behavior, and is presently becoming a trend with older and bolder women of new age. What struck me was where she mentioned that she had to take and make real effort towards living her life only for herself; in fact she said that the reason she is with the younger guy is because for the first time in her life there was this other person who consciously made her his priority.

Somehow that was refreshing cause most Indian women don’t priorities their own lives, usually the child or the husband comes first and only when she becomes the mother in law she expects that her daughter in law should put her first rather than herself completing this vicious circle.

If truth were told most of us would rather receive than give, but then you can merely be content and satisfied when you get but you are truly happy only when you can and do give willingly.

On further pondering over the interview I realized that Love, Marriage, Motherhood these are windows that provide us with an opportunity to give, and yes we are willing, at least initially cause guess what ‘Love is always about giving’. But the problem with giving is that we always expect something back and quite naturally so, and when our expectations are not met that’s when we are disappointed and unhappy.

So how does one cope with this dilemma?

I am not absolutely sure, infact I don’t know how and where life stands without ‘expectations’. I slept on that for a while and discovered that may be if we counter expectations with faith; there might lay a narrow path towards salvation.

It is the faith that there will always be returns. It might not be from the familiar place, where our expectation lies but from other shores that we may not be even aware of.

Any other suggestions and comments are greatly welcomed

When I was about 8 years old, the most frequently asked question by me to others was, ‘Do You Believe in ghosts?’. The answers were varied (yes, no, maybe), to which I promptly asked have you seen any? The response was mostly in negative. I was too young to ask any more but most of these responses would make me wonder about the existence of a world that I had never experienced. It would be interesting to mention here that my mom had seen apparitions and spirits but her experience to me wre just thrilling stories that would fuel my imaginative mind.

Much later in life I asked myself if I believed in ghosts? I am yet to get adefinite answer. No I have not seen any but then I have not seen god either and yet I do believe in god.

In recent times I have observed that there is so much of respect for science and the scientific minded, And quite rightly so. But what about the things that we don’t know or the ones that we don’t see. The fear of the unknown has been much reduced with the advent of Science and technological progress since time bygone. It has been replaced with a kind of irreverence that some times I feel is imprudent.

Do you remember that quote, most probably by Newton ‘that what I have discovered is just a pebble in a pool of ocean’. It went some thing like that, I don’t remember the exact quote but that was the gist of it.
What we don’t know is like that ocean; yes truly one needs to boldly sail across it to find new shores. The journey though should be made without trepidation but a fair amount of veneration I feel is definitely a prerequisite of such an expedition.

Our Gita says ‘Do your duties but don’t think about the result’. It seems Shri Rama Krishna Paramhansa had said, that One’s mind should be like a pouch of mustard seeds, it should not get scattered, for us who are very much performing our ‘Grihastha Jeevan’ that is our worldly duties he advised that you should be involved in your daily household chores and duties but your inner consciousness should be on the abode of the supreme being; ‘God’ He also illustrated with an interesting example: like the governess who takes care of her master’s ward but her mind will always be on her child who is not in her presence.
The duality of this philosophy in our Hindu religion always confused me, it seemed as if it was an impossible task to perform, I would have to take two steps forward and then one backwards to get anywhere.
Now I see that this duality has crept in to different aspects of our lives: cultural, social and yes even political. No wonder we are slow at progress and considered to be the elephant in contrast to china being the tiger in the financial and economical context.
But then I am a supposedly a conservative, traditional person (at least some of my near and dear ones tell me so) who has this conviction that there is always something real and true in the sayings of the ‘great men’.
So this is what I discovered that yes there is duality and confusion but some how it has provided us with the certain time period that was required to bring stability in this impossibly, fantastically diverse country of ours.
We do move slow but that’s because we are taking in the surrounding as we go, somehow may be the journey is actually more important to us than the destination.
As we see in the present days that reaching the goal is just not enough, cause there will always be collateral damages that accompanies with the arriving to the destination and its dealing with and healing those damages that makes or breaks the situation and what matters after.

I recently came across this news about a young woman who was raped by six boys in Mumbai, it was also mentioned that the guys were from assumable; respectable families and studied in so-called prestigious colleges of the city. So in conclusion is it true that education doesn’t necessarily makes you comprehend the right from wrong and if so then what would exactly ensure the same.
Interestingly enough I also came across reality TV shows where the girls are hot and the guys are happening, they speak in English which in India is still considered by some (may be more than some) to be the language of the elite. And all that comes out from these wealthy, handsome/beautiful Kids is procrastinations that were actually spoken by the most deprived class in U.K. or U.S. These kids uses the same with such élan as if its a credit to their upbringing, fittingly enough sometimes I find the shows producer/ mentor/.... also to be using the same to establish his (I am not sure exactly what). It can’t be his/ her breeds cause that becomes obvious to most viewers. Yes the young may still adopt this social aberration and think they have really made in to the ‘in crowd ‘but I am sure there is a mother like me who is terrified of her child's future. Is it so difficult to make the today's youth understand that mouthing slang’s will not get you anywhere all that it does is gives the audience a peek in to the kind of place you come from, your breed and your culture. The parents of these kids, do they ever watch these shows or are they too busy with their lives. And yes finally no one complains for the fear of being called a prude. I would rather choose prudence over total callousness and ignorance.
What about you?

In the Hindu religion Ganesha is considered to be the one who grants success, so I conclude he is the lord of Success. As we all know success elusive and to me so is the understanding of the same.
To the one who is presumably successful nothing succeeds like success but to most of the others who have not seemed to come across it "success" would be relative.
My query for some time has been why is Ganesha the Lord of success? Ones who are familiar with his picture are aware that he is grossly overweight, has the head of the elephant and an expression on his face that could be described as benevolent.
Few days back I got my answer, it is said as the story goes according to the holy scriptures that when he was just a lad one day he happened to come across a cat, now before that he might not have had a sighting of the same. As little boys do, he teased and tortured this new being that he saw till the cat finally managed to escape. When he went back to his holy abode he was shocked to see his mother 'Parvati' bruised pretty badly- and in all the same places he had bruised the thing called cat. His mother explained that what ever his actions were they would have an affect/effect on his near and dear ones and also on the others who were placed far and away.
Now if as a small boy he understood this profound truth which most of us don’t get no matter how powerfully we are placed or if we are at the edge of an abyss just as we are in the present times, we would never know what success is and only very few deserve to understand and realize success just as Ganesha has.

In the very near recent past I found out something quite surprising about myself and also of the world that I am in. Are you addicted to so called reality T.V., yes I know its not such a recent phenomenon, lots of people have commented on the same.
The surprising part was that while watching one of these shows, (it involved some dance, I prefer dance to other stuff) I found my eyes were moist and soon enough tears rolled down; now I am not one of those cry babies, more like a coconut. So yes it did sort of make me sit up and say, hello!!!!!!!!!!!!!! What happened, I also saw that people participating there, the judges, the participants weepy and emotional like me. I almost told myself guess what the world is changing, on second thoughts I second that motion, yes the world indeed is changing, we don’t really cry in public, and somehow I feel that the whole privately crying thing is also outdated, now we cry with people we can see but are not really there with us. We are so disconnected from each other and would you believe it, we so would like to stay disconnected that we don’t want to share our grief, shed tears with our relatives, friends, acquaintances, and colleagues. The truth is most of the time we are not sure if they do share it with us or are they laughing at us when our backs are turned, may be they feel a little pity and that of course cannot be tolerated, could be they are indifferent and that if you consider the big picture is the worst case scenario. We don’t know if they know what empathy is, I am sure most of us don’t. So yes we cry with people who cannot see us, melodrama can easily move us than reality. But more importantly what is reality? Any one cares to answer that

Yesterday I was deliberating with my friend on love, it turned out to be a heated discussion and finally she asked me if love is there in my life and if not when did it stop being there. I did not have answers to either of the questions. I responded that I would have to think about it before I came up with an answer.
This is what I am doing now; thinking aloud so as not to get confused or drift away from my train of thought. So really why do I find it so difficult to welcome love with open arms? Why so many doubts? It could be because I have yet to got the hang of it. Love can mean so many things at different levels but I suppose universally it conveys a positive vibe. I suppose it will be rather impossible to get a Pragmatic idea of love, most of the times we try and alleviate it to such an extreme that it becomes a mere archetype. Yes love can also be reduced to the common denominator and be termed lust, which necessarily is not positive.
I sometimes wonder why and when this whole disclaimer to the idea of love arose within me, was it when I was in my mother’s womb and she lost her mother, or was it much later in my childhood when I got molested, or was it simply due to rejections that one learns are ways of life and still find it so hard to accept. I hope it’s the last one because that way you are damaged the least and there is still hope for you. You see it’s much easier for me to believe in the practice of hope, I find it to be an essential ingredient of life and is going to be there for years to come, but love, now that’s a color which is fading, and fading too fast. Maybe that’s exactly the reason I don’t want to take the risk of acknowledging that yes it is there in my life may be a very small though significant little bit. I am too scared that soon I will be left with a faded yellow paper to reminisce about love.

It's so tough being a parent, and more so with the kind of education system we have at hand in our country, the worst part is knowing that there is so very little awareness and knowledge towards changing this system.
We don’t have Candlelit marches on this issue; no parents don’t have the time for it or even actually addressing this issue at some level or atsome forum. We don’t know where to go?
We are working too hard to put our children through institutions where we pay good money yet we are not involved in it so as to enhance, improve or even to lower the amount of pressure we are putting on our children and also on ourselves to make them what????
That’s another thing we are not sure about. Yes we do say we want them to be good humans but then do you know a lot many good humans around you, I don’t see them, and I am definitely not happy about the icons and the role models that we have in the present times. They are not good; just very successful. So then truly all we want is that our children should succeed in all their endeavors and become rich robots of this century.
The truth is we are not happy even when that happens in the long run, we become old and lonely, we drift away from friends and sometimes from family too, that’s when we realize just being successful and rich robots was not enough. But by then it’s too late to change or make a change.

SO Why not now? Yes we are under pressure but you see things seem to be going downhill from here; at least for people like us. So why not we take this opportunity to change some little things in our lives and more importantly in the lives of our children.
This is a call to all the moms and dads who are suffering from lower back pains due to our education system. Lets make a difference at least let us take a single step forward in that direction. I would be very eager to find out if parents in our country would join hands to do something about it.

Love and Death surprisingly are a part of an equation, no not that I have been able to work it out yet and some how I don’t find the courage to state that some day I would be able to find out the same. One may put it down to confidence issues.

What was amazing to me is that both of them are so dissimilar; one may put them at two different extremes. Death is something that is inevitable while with love one never can be sure. Yet they do form an equation and that’s what makes life a tight rope on which we all walk.

On second thoughts the outcome of both of these almost always result into pain, grief, misery, suffering and lastly realization of the fact that we are so inconsequential in the big scheme of things. And to some, the ones who are truly emancipated both may turn out be comfort.

Not for me though. Love and death has been the cause of pain and an understanding that I indeed am of very little consequence to the big picture. A picture that has not yet been envisioned by me but am still aware that there is one.

My question is where do I go from here?

It was suggested that I write something on my B' day, well at 39 you almost want to forget that you were born, but any way still I had a party at my place on the 21st of this month.
I am pretty social person but lately I have seen that I am not so much of a people's person any more.
So there was this party held to celebrate my son's and my B'day all together to cut cost and also to celebrate the festive season.Our friends and some relatives were invited. So the whole day we were busy with all the party arrangements, the cooking, the decorations the serving etc, etc,my mom did most of the cooking while I did all the "Mise en place".
Then the guests arrived, and here are some snippets of conversation from that party.
My cousin sister arrived with her family and was quite insistent that I had reached 40 instead of 39,
my good friend's wife seemed thoroughly bored through out and just when I was feeling guilty about not being able to entertain her as she would have liked she jokingly accused me of having an affair with him when we both were not married. The unpleasantness of the whole thing was avoided as I tried to convince her that though I did not have an affair then, I was so much willing to have one now after 12 years of long marraige. She said that yes that would be easier and we shook hands on that.
My other friends arrived late and minus their child were both gleeful and a little bitter about one of our commonfriend going through a troublesome divorce, I reminded them the marraige too was troublesome, but then who does not have a troubled marraige these days.
Finally one of my good friend's husband arrived, he was pretty wasted, and tried to have conversations that did not have any endings, it would start and then fizz out somewhere, he also recited some of his instantly composed poems to my mother that did not make any sense to most of us but still we cheered him on.
So what was so great about this party, maybe all these not so funny yet quirky incidents may someday become good anecdotes when I become 50.
By then hopefully we would have forgiven but mostly forgotten all this due to slow brain function. My friend's husband would not be in that great health to get wasted and my good friend's wife would just be greatful if her husband did have an affair and left her alone.
Most of us by then would be celebrating long marraiges and quick divorces.
So till then lets just go on with whatever it is that we are going on with.