Divorces galore!

Nowadays I see so much strife between a husband and wife.
Reason is simple.. the roles have reversed. earlier it was the husbands who wanted a meek and docile wife, nowadays its the women who want a meek and docile husband. If the husband isn't understanding (read meek enough) he is out.
I don't know how many would agree to what I am observing.. I am a woman and maybe I am one of them, or maybe my husband is too good to be true!

I have been wondering about the bygone days when women were not allowed to go to school or have any formal education. There was a perfect balance and harmony maintained in the society. The girls were taught from the beginning to look after the house, to cook, clean and serve.

Its isn't entirely the fault of women. Now, they are treated as equals as long as they are in their parents house, equal amount of money is spent on both girls and boys for their upbringing and education. But, as soon as a girl enters matrimony, she senses the differences soon, and sure enough she cant stand it!
More over women want to do the neat work, go to the office and bring in the money and earn equal respect in the family.

When I see the matrimony ads, most demand for a nice fair and "educated or graduate" girl. I was wondering how long would this go on? It might happen that the menfolk realises that the less educated the better.. A sad thing for women though, but like money goes into the head of people and clouds reason, education seems to have done the same to women.

All this woman power and woman equality is anyways not my cup of tea. This only validates that a woman is powerless and not equal at all. If a woman proclaims she is an equal why does she demand that a man leave his seat for her in the bus or expect him to do all the heavy work?

So, finally I am seriously contemplating, whether to send my daughter (currently 5 months old) to school or to teach her some essentials, so that she is able to get around in the world herself, and more about homework! She would be someone rare then, and less educated would be in high demand and low supply.. no?

Picture from here

Look a Lamborghini

I saw this on the roads of Calcutta

It took my breath away.
Had seen this only on photos or movies..
It was like a star.
Everyone around started clicking pictures.

As usual, I also took a couple of pictures, but since I was driving, I took time to get a nice shot and in doing so, drifted off to another direction!
What did one lamborghini do to my senses?
I wondered if I could get so awed only by a glimpse of it, what would happen if I touched it? Better still, sat on it and what if what if.. I got to drove it.. Jeez!!

I could see a "hey look A Lamborghini!" writ large on everyone's face.
Do I seem obsessed? Well, maybe yes. I was aghast, surprised, flabbergasted, astounded, blah.. blah..  I could go on!

Phobias and nightmares :(

I have a number of phobias and nightmares:-

1 Cutting with a sharp scissor and one of my finger cutting accidentally.
2. Travelling in a train or plane and fearing every second ..what if there is an accident!?
3. Leaving one of my kids in the train/ plane, or some busy place like a fair (mela) or in the market..
4. Someone kidnapping my son from my gate.. he keeps going out to play !!
5. Sometimes when I am running a fever, my headache gives me the feel of an ant getting squeezed under the huge foot of the elephant.
6. Of course all my teeth falling off is one nightmare, I have already mentioned in my earlier blogs.
7. One of my horror dreams where there is someone standing near my side of the bed and trying to snatch my baby from me. (This is especially when I am expecting)
8. Somebody, maybe a thief trying to open the door and getting into the house through the terrace and balcony.
9. Sometimes I am falling and I keep falling, like there is no ground beneath me and I keep falling till I wake up with a start!
10. Bathing in the bathroom and suddenly there is current in the water and I am electrocuted.

In all the above cases, I am always getting up to check everything is okay and thanking God, it wasn't happening in reality.

Picture from here

Child :)

I just saw in a news on TV that a child was found abandoned in a bag. A couple found it and reported to the police station. The child was being given to an NGO for support but the couple who found the child is ready to keep it.
I was wondering what made the child's parents leave it just like that!
If it was a girl child, then we all know the reasons for disowning it.
But what reasons there could be for a male child?
I thought perhaps, that perhaps it was a bastard..

Now our society is such that it doesn't accept a bastard, so the mother probably has to discard the child for fear of dishonor. But the same society wont mind if a child is picked up from anywhere and then adopted.
Why this difference? The child in an orphanage could be an orphan or a bastard, but society would be OK with it, if the child is raised by foster adopted parents.

A child is so lovable and it must really hurt to be separated from it, but some people are so courageous, or are they more a coward, who give up their child for fear of society. Is society so ruthless, to separate mother from child? Why punish the child for no fault of it?

A famous poet said for Kashmir, "if there is heaven on earth, it is here."
I beg to differ, "if there is heaven on earth, its on the smile of your child's face." Blissful indeed and I am blessed and blissed.

my angel

why enough is never enough?

When do we decide how much is enough?
How do we measure "enough"?
Is enough ever enough?
Is sky the limit?
Why are we like Pepsi? Yeh dill maange more..!! (Give me more!)

Just when one thing is over, one want is over, another crops up.
There is exhilaration, celebration of something done or achieved, but again the limit doesnt limit itself and sets for itself a higher limit.

For a poor man a fan is enough
For a middle class man a cooler is enough
For a rich man an AC is enough
In all above examples, heat is constant and same for everyone, but a fan or a cooler is not enough for a rich man? Poor man's leisure is rich man's pain!

What is it that is heating the rich man? Is it the heat of money?
It is said in an hindi proverb when a person is arrogant of his money, " paison ki garmi hai." ( heat of money in him) so this heat has to be cooled with the respective coolant. the more the money the more coolant it requires. While it is harder on the way up, there are nice things added to the life style, more comfort more luxury, easy to adopt.. and on the way down, these nice things makes life worse, all these luxuries hard to give up. Can a rich man accustomed to an AC sleep under a fan? One who relies on others for his work to be done, can he work for others?

Talking about "enough", I am always reminded of my nephew. Once my sister was annoyed with her husband and she asked my nephew (her 6 years old son), "lets go to the market and get you another father." Pat came his reply, " no mummy, one is enough." Goes to show that a child knows when enough is enough! :D

Picture from here

Art of writing..

Whats going to happen to writing?
My fingers ache when I write but is perfectly at ease when I type.

I have been hearing about tablet PC's and read that the schools may soon replace notebooks with Tablet PC's.
I have written with a pen or pencil all throughout my life. But since the last 3 or 4 years, I have been literally writing everything on my laptop. Now, if I can feel uncomfortable in something I was very comfortable with, I wonder what might happen to kids who will start off with typing!!
Wouldn't it make them more dependent on power, money (expensive gadgets)?

Sure it will save trees on one hand, but wont it increase the power consumption?

Few days back I was writing a list of grocery items to be bought for the month, since mil is not there, the onus of maintaining the larder is my job. I was having real difficulty in writing so much. In my heart I wished there was a handy printer to jot down small notes and take a print out for the same!
I was amazed at my thinking process..

picture from here

I have learnt some Calligraphy and I used to write in beautiful calligraphy, but now my handwriting looks like a doctor's scrawl.


Apart from the damage in the art of writing, spell checks have made me quite dependent on MS Word to check my spellings, and without it I feel kinda lost!
The stones were replaced by slates, which were replaced by paper and now the computer uses a whole new concept.. just punch in the buttons and voila! your spellings are perfect, your handwriting is superb (but not unique), not messy anymore, no erasers.. nothing.. so far so good!
No wonder, I am writing (read typing too) so well, and I may not be surprised, if suddenly there springs up hoards of writers from all over.

I miss...my village

I miss the village where I spent most of my vacations.
I miss the bageecha (orchard), where we played the whole day.
I miss the haystack, where I hid when we played hide and seek
I miss the bullock cart ride, which took us to the fields.
I miss the soft soil rolling beneath my feet while ploughing the fields.
I miss the (delicious) mango trees, sugarcane fields.
I miss the swinging on swings on the branches of the trees.
I miss the railway tracks, walking on them and reaching the village market at the village station.
I miss placing the 5 paise coin on the rail tracks, so that it gets flattened by the train when it passes by.
I miss the dhobi ghaat where we went for picnic
I miss the drama and dance show we put up for entertainment ( no TV then ).
I loved the way my cousin engineered the curtain raising ropes.
I miss the snake dance my sister did while another cousin used the torch to give the lights effect!
I miss playing the business game for days on end, and cheating by bribing the banker.
I miss playing hide and seek, lock and key and of course antakchari.
I miss the scary feel walking alone in the bageecha and hearing each sound the dry leaves made when I stepped on them.
I miss filling the bucket from the handpump and then rushing to the toilet which was out of the main house.
I miss bathing behind a screen and always having someone to stand guard, fearing somebody might peep.
I miss the charpoy, ( though sometimes it pricked my bare skin)
I miss the burning of the dried cow dung to keep flies and mosquitoes away.
I miss counting the stars and wishing to be lucky enough to see a falling star.
I miss having to travel miles in an overcrowded rusty jeep, to a relatively bigger village for a movie treat, which anyways showed older movies.
I miss the goats, chickens and the cows around me.
I miss the look the village children gave us when we arrived there and sometimes chased us when we went somewhere..
I miss.... will be updated as and when I remember what I miss

Picture to be uploaded later

Redesign

Redye Redesign Redress

I am onto recycling old party dresses.
There is a gamut of weddings and parties next month, and I would be shunned if I wore old ones (worn 5/6 times considered old)
I can buy new ones, but I already have many many countless, and I am giving below reasons for not having a new one
1. I don't really have spare hangars for more, nor does my wardrobe have space for more.
2. My older clothes aren't happy because I don't wear them much (problem of plenty)
3. Investing in clothes is a bad investment. rather a dead one..unless the embroidery was made in silver and buttons in gold!!
4. I am an environmentalist now.
5. If people judge me by the clothes I wear, they are most welcome to stay away!

I'd rather spend the money I save, on travelling around the world ( this was my foreign fantasy ). I can buy gold ornaments which would have a good resale value later on.

Recycling has more than one advantage, along with the money saved, it saves on resources. When I wear recycled ones, I am immensely pleased with my accomplishment.

Along with dresses, other things recycled are old forms and notices, cut and stapled together to make notepads, envelopes used again by sticking a new label on the old address.

Most importantly, it is always easier to go out and buy, and what is easy is dull too and I hate to be DULL!

Picture from here

Matter

As a matter of fact, the fact of the matter doesn't matter anymore...

Shopaholic

I used to be a very compulsive shopper. I did not take much time in selection and when I liked something, I wanted to own it. Sometimes mummy managed to stop me from over buying, and the times when I heeded her warnings, I always thanked God, I didn't buy in the end.
She used to say, don't buy it now, look for some more, give it some thought. The shopkeeper (to lure me in his net) said, "this is the last piece and that he wasn't sure if I would get anything like this later." I felt torn, whom to listen and whom not to. Mummy on the other hand was very confident about not buying, she used to say," of course we wont get something like this later, but we might get something better than this later."

Picture from here

Looking back I realize how right she was! The things I hurriedly bought always turned out to be in bad taste, and then I was stuck with it. Tis true, bad habits die hard, but I never give up.

My shopping behavior was markedly frenzy. I had difficulty in not buying. There were 2 reasons I justified myself for buying it.
1. I usually fell in love with the article at first sight.
2. I felt an obligation to the shopkeeper to buy, because he had worked so hard by showing me so many, and I couldn't let him down.

Now, when I go shopping, I don't buy because I am in love with it (or with the idea of buying it). I look at it and say to myself, "thats a good looking thing on the shelf, but if I buy it, something better will occupy that space, and again I would want to buy it, and again." I shall keep waiting till the best thing came along. More importantly, I would only buy it when I really require it.

People buy/consume as if there is no tomorrow. Little do they realize, that if they use up all their resources today, there would indeed be no tomorrow left...

Opposites- strike the right balance.

When I was very small, I was always troubled to see so much poverty around me. I used to think why is it that some people are so poor and some so rich? I couldn't seem to find any answers.

One day I asked my uncle and he explained that if there were no poor people then nobody would ever work. There would be no plumber, no gardener, the whole world could come to a standstill!

This sounded quite logical to me and I was quite satisfied.

Now I feel that .. some people need to be poor for some people to be rich and vice versa.

they might be opposites but they have to co exist.

A friend always insisted that opposites never attract and we have had a never ending debate on this for sometime now. We recently reached a conclusion that opposites may not attract but complement each other.

For example, we have the land and water, male and female, day and night, big and small. The existence of one heavily depends on the existence of the other. That is why there is always two genders, two sides of a coin, two of everything.

Everything has to co exist , the good and the evil, the beautiful and the ugly, the gods and ghosts, rich and the poor, etc.

Once I was visiting a relative, she keeps her windows always shut for fear of lizards entering the house. My father opened the windows to let the fresh air come in and said, " let the lizards come, they will eat up the smaller insects and the smaller will eat up the smallest." he said that all things on the earth were made to coexist.

I am reminded of a recent movie called “My name is Khan.” The protagonist Khan is an autistic person who condemns cellphones, and also tells everyone to stop using them because the waves emitted by the cellphones are distracting the honeybees who lose their way to their hives, which results in the lower egg production of the queen bees and if the bees disappeared then the human race would come to an end approximately 4 years later, as calculated by Albert Einstein.

To strike the right balance, the other has to be there, the bad has to be present for the good to be good .. in fact the good is also very heavily indebted to the bad. The most important thing in life are the bad things which happen to us, for if they didn't happen, would we know or appreciate the finer things in life? Would we pray to God, if all was well?

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Why hold the "old"?

Why do we expect our elders to wait on us, look after our house when we are out, when its they who have the first right to enjoy life, go out whenever they feel like. I say, they should be given privilege over anything and everything, because now, they are at the end of their road, let them be free, let them fly away, don't scorn them when they have fun, when they want to sing, let them sing and don't frown and say things like " budhi ghori laal lagaam" literally means an old horse with red harness, simply meaning an aged woman who tries to behave like young girls by being flashy or with regards to behavior. Why has society built a wall around their emotions? Don't they feel caged when they want to do something on an impulse? For God's sake they are old and the more wiser, they wouldn't do anything foolish, and even if they did, they have earned to be foolish more than the foolish youngsters!

Most Indians cringe at the sight of their parents go on for a holiday, spend some time together, that they could also be in love with each other, and had maybe shelved all their honeymooning plans because kids were small, have to study,etc, can want to have sex, in short can want to be happy which is independent of children's happiness.
The good thing about the west is that, they don't squirm when they see their parents as a couple. In some cases, when there is only one parent, the adult kid doesn't object and in fact rejoices if the single parent is able to find him/herself a partner for the rest of their lives. They might be having ulterior motives of their own, and think that it was a good thing, because now they wouldn't have to babysit their single parent anymore. Thats a bad thing about the west, the kids don't want to have parents around much longer than required.

How nice it would be, if we could ape the west in being liberal with our parents and let them LIVE. Of course I don't mean blindly ape them and keep them away from us when they need us the most. Cant we do that? Is it so hard to see through them and their anguish? Is it right for them to keep waiting for the right time? Don't we realize that they are too OLD to hOLD on?

Picture from here

I found my mother (in law)

My mother in law (mil) has played a big role in making me the person I am now. If I am capable and know certain things well, its because she pushed me to do it. She is a headstrong and capable woman. Sometimes I really admire her for her guts. She is nothing like my mother, who is a soft hearted and sweet little thing. It is because of mil, that I have so many good habits and discipline. She taught me things my mom couldn't.
I owe my mil for teaching me cooking, managing household, cleaning .. the works. When I married, I didn't know how to run a house, not to mention I was zero in cooking. She taught me all that and more..
I was apparently a good student for I learnt well and she says so herself..

Its not that our relation was without strife. In the beginning there was so much conflict, I resented her presence in my life, I used to think she poisoned my husband against me.
My mummy used to tell me that its a good sign that my husband is so obedient to his mother, for a person who is an obedient son, is also a faithful husband and a doting father. Now, I know that she was so right. I have become a seasoned daughter in law, and being wiser now, I can understand, what she means and wants from me.

Right now she is out of station and I miss her presence in the house and await her arrival anxiously. Her absence has accentuated the importance of her presence! The house seems empty without her, (and her authoritative loud voice). After so many years, I am more close to her than my husband. Strangely enough, I think that she has always been the focal point of my married life and without her I would have surely messed my marriage. The bigger conflicts with her always helped to push my other small fights, with my husband to the back burner.

Still, I think I have a long way to go and become a woman of her caliber. She has lived a tough life, tougher than mine, and she deserves a better life now. Its a tough job that she does, managing to keep everybody together, making sure everyone eats what they want to eat, making sure every corner of the house is clean and tidy, and of course the real hard task of keeping the servants under check.

Once she said to me, that she thought me fit to bequeath the family legacy to me...(we are three daughters in law so I  was secretly thrilled). I might still have some differences with her, but I would rather ignore it and focus on the good ones! Thats making life good.

Just like I feel pity for those cousins who have never lived in joint families, I pity people especially daughter in laws who dont get a chance to live with her parents in law!
Living with in laws is like a treasure hunt game.. Over the years, I gained the treasure of knowledge, that no amount of books could give me.

Picture from here