I live in an upmarket Kolkata locality, in a flat apartment of 8 houses where families of senior bureaucrats live. Last 20 years I have been appalled at the easy lifestyle and luxury that my brethren have led, but what I see now is enough to bring anyone to apoplectic rage.
Our building recently had a makeover. Most expensive marble was laid on the staircase, lot of beautification on the outside, with landscaping, coloured sandstone and marble motifs on the wall. The walls on every floor had a fresh coat of plastic paint.
The plumbing was overhauuled, the windows repaired, and as a result the building looks beautiful and gleaming.
But every evening as I leave for my evening jog or morning as I leave for office, my heart sinks....
The new plan has two electric bulbs on each floor. Each of the floors are small and have two large flats facing each other. One bulb would do...no, but some nitwit has decided that there will be two bulbs on each of the four floors. All the bulbs are kept on 24x7. I make it a point to switch off all the bulbs as I get in and out of the building during the day and extra bulbs during the night. We have police guards outside the gates, so we do not need bulbs shining all night on all the floors. However, this has not been take kindly by the inmates of our building and needless to say, I am not one of the popular people who lives here.
Secondly, the plastic wrappings of all the cement bags and other equipment packagings are piling up everyday and they look as if they are here to stay. I have asked the secretary of the building to send them to a recycling plant, but the pile seems to have been left untouched since the past month.
I am planning to take this up seriously or inform an activist group to come and do the needful. I am quite laid back otherwise but to see such blatant rape of the neighbourhood environment makes my hackles rise.
We are supposed to be the so-called enlightened members of the society, the opinion makers and implementers of policy for the nation. If we don't lead by example, then God save the environment.
Monday, 25 January 2010
Monday, 11 January 2010
Hue and View
Last week I woke up to find most of my girlfriends having a colour as their status on Facebook. Perplexed, I thought it must be the colour of their moods...however the next day newspapers carried a story on how someone had thought of a new way to promote breast cancer awareness by just mentioning the colour of a certain part of the lingerie....
This complete poverty of imagination must have come from some airhead who fancies herself to be a marketing guru. What's colour of the lingerie got to do with awareness about the deadly disease? This was supposed to be a girlie thing and no man was supposed to know what it meant. Sure enough it was all over the papers and obviously the men on FB understood what the colours were all about. Covert titillation? (no pun intended!)
I do sound very old-fashioned, but it surely beats my imagination to talk about something that is so private so openly. Talk about exibitionism....I was quite amazed to find women of all ages...coming out with the colour of the ahem, unknown, while the men on FB had the time of their lives reacting, responding and commenting on the colours the next day. Found the whole idea very cheap and what may have started with noble intentions got reduced to a pathetic excuse for extremely loose talk...
Obviously this became the talking point at most social dos...But I was nonplussed when I saw one FB status with attitude...None. Now, that's a first!
This complete poverty of imagination must have come from some airhead who fancies herself to be a marketing guru. What's colour of the lingerie got to do with awareness about the deadly disease? This was supposed to be a girlie thing and no man was supposed to know what it meant. Sure enough it was all over the papers and obviously the men on FB understood what the colours were all about. Covert titillation? (no pun intended!)
I do sound very old-fashioned, but it surely beats my imagination to talk about something that is so private so openly. Talk about exibitionism....I was quite amazed to find women of all ages...coming out with the colour of the ahem, unknown, while the men on FB had the time of their lives reacting, responding and commenting on the colours the next day. Found the whole idea very cheap and what may have started with noble intentions got reduced to a pathetic excuse for extremely loose talk...
Obviously this became the talking point at most social dos...But I was nonplussed when I saw one FB status with attitude...None. Now, that's a first!
Thursday, 31 December 2009
So what's the big deal?
For those who are unable to see my 2010 posts, please click on the link http://www.worldmenagerie.blogspot.com
My last post of the year and I am uncharacteristically late. My last blogposts in previous years have come earlier than the last day of the year. Just because I have been pondering....
This year, my take on this time of the year is very different....no looking back or forward, no mixed feelings, no trepidations and no hoping for this or that to happen, no hinging my happiness or sorrow on what happens with me or doesnt. The external environment does not matter, I shall find my own peace from within myself.
I am frozen, and possibly deviod of any thoughts. Just living for the present. Just carrying on life without planning or purpose. My life is still and so is my soul. It is from this stillness that peace and consequently happiness will spring forth. Never thought this state of numbness could be reached. It is an easier option....to go the way life steers you rather than try to steer life the way I want it. No more artificial living for me. Peace is preferred to happiness, respect is more important than love....
Bidding goodbye to the old or ringing in the new therefore has no meaning. So, what is the big deal? One needs no excuse to celebrate, or drink or be with friends and family? You can do it anytime....so does the New Year matter?
One day ends and a new one dawns...its just the same like any other day. Years, decades and centuries are just constructs of the human mind. To quantify time. Same goes for birthdays and anniversaries. What is known will always be so and what is unknown will never be known.
Not many will understand my frame of mind as I write this post. AND it really doesn't matter. I accept being one of the quirks of life....
Maybe this is what Eckhart Tolle is trying to tell when he talks of the 'Power of Now'....
My last post of the year and I am uncharacteristically late. My last blogposts in previous years have come earlier than the last day of the year. Just because I have been pondering....
This year, my take on this time of the year is very different....no looking back or forward, no mixed feelings, no trepidations and no hoping for this or that to happen, no hinging my happiness or sorrow on what happens with me or doesnt. The external environment does not matter, I shall find my own peace from within myself.
I am frozen, and possibly deviod of any thoughts. Just living for the present. Just carrying on life without planning or purpose. My life is still and so is my soul. It is from this stillness that peace and consequently happiness will spring forth. Never thought this state of numbness could be reached. It is an easier option....to go the way life steers you rather than try to steer life the way I want it. No more artificial living for me. Peace is preferred to happiness, respect is more important than love....
Bidding goodbye to the old or ringing in the new therefore has no meaning. So, what is the big deal? One needs no excuse to celebrate, or drink or be with friends and family? You can do it anytime....so does the New Year matter?
One day ends and a new one dawns...its just the same like any other day. Years, decades and centuries are just constructs of the human mind. To quantify time. Same goes for birthdays and anniversaries. What is known will always be so and what is unknown will never be known.
Not many will understand my frame of mind as I write this post. AND it really doesn't matter. I accept being one of the quirks of life....
Maybe this is what Eckhart Tolle is trying to tell when he talks of the 'Power of Now'....
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Today's tarot
You are too independent and others feel they cannot get close to you. People feel they bring nothing to your life and do not understand why you would want them around. Too focused on one's own goals. Feeling of freedom, but also have not formed ties....
Quite an accurate reading!
Quite an accurate reading!
Sunday, 15 November 2009
Farewell dearest sister
It has been exactly 12 days since I lost my dear elder sister to pancreatic cancer. She was 13 years my senior and was a strong force during my formative years. She was my strongest support, my harshest critic and one of the few well wishers I have in life today. I had never known life without her, so I took her presence in my life for granted till the last 4 and a half months when the deadly cancer was detected and played havoc with her system and finally took her away. But I had never anticipated the end would come so swiftly and painfully.
All along the four and a half months I had been begging God to grant her some extra days in life. But after seeing her in the critical care unit, I begged God to take her away, to release her from all physical suffering and mental agony. Even as she breathed her last, she looked as beautiful as she always was. Indeed God plucked the most beautiful flower from my parents' garden....
I also learnt one thing. If you are certain that God has willed something, you should not pray for something that goes against it. This is what some elders told me. Hard, but one has to accept it.
But even after 12 days since she has gone, the words 'deceased', 'dead', 'passed away', 'expired' when applied to her, hit me hard. And coping with breavement after a gap of around 21 years since my father died has become hard. So much so, it can be mistaken to be a physical illness...Bereavement and grief trigger breathlessness, drop in immunity, nausea and severe bodyache. All of this me and another sister of mine are suffering from...
After the finality of death, coping with beareavement and grief comes the prospect of moving on. As I key in this blogpost from my hotel room in central London, I am far away from home, and from her grave. But last few days, I have prayed like never before. The verses of my faith have started coming to naturally to me and as they comforted my sister when I recited them in her ears before the end came, they comfort me now.
Its far too soon to come out of mourning and start looking at business as usual. But a job has to be done and work has to go on. But after her demise, I feel something in me has changed. Cannot pinpoint it, but the change is there. The coming months will shape the change, hone it, finetune it so that it emerges clearly within me. Death is the final frontier. With one person gone, it changes many around the person who left. In work and management we are constantly talking about change management. Personal life has taught me, some changes can never be managed. You change irrevocably with the change. You cannot measure it. Life never becomes the same again.
So farewell, dear sister. May you rest in peace. I am sure you are at a better place than we are. And you will be there to welcome us when the time comes....
All along the four and a half months I had been begging God to grant her some extra days in life. But after seeing her in the critical care unit, I begged God to take her away, to release her from all physical suffering and mental agony. Even as she breathed her last, she looked as beautiful as she always was. Indeed God plucked the most beautiful flower from my parents' garden....
I also learnt one thing. If you are certain that God has willed something, you should not pray for something that goes against it. This is what some elders told me. Hard, but one has to accept it.
But even after 12 days since she has gone, the words 'deceased', 'dead', 'passed away', 'expired' when applied to her, hit me hard. And coping with breavement after a gap of around 21 years since my father died has become hard. So much so, it can be mistaken to be a physical illness...Bereavement and grief trigger breathlessness, drop in immunity, nausea and severe bodyache. All of this me and another sister of mine are suffering from...
After the finality of death, coping with beareavement and grief comes the prospect of moving on. As I key in this blogpost from my hotel room in central London, I am far away from home, and from her grave. But last few days, I have prayed like never before. The verses of my faith have started coming to naturally to me and as they comforted my sister when I recited them in her ears before the end came, they comfort me now.
Its far too soon to come out of mourning and start looking at business as usual. But a job has to be done and work has to go on. But after her demise, I feel something in me has changed. Cannot pinpoint it, but the change is there. The coming months will shape the change, hone it, finetune it so that it emerges clearly within me. Death is the final frontier. With one person gone, it changes many around the person who left. In work and management we are constantly talking about change management. Personal life has taught me, some changes can never be managed. You change irrevocably with the change. You cannot measure it. Life never becomes the same again.
So farewell, dear sister. May you rest in peace. I am sure you are at a better place than we are. And you will be there to welcome us when the time comes....
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
In High Places
The story plot looks highly interesting....He, the first prime minister of one of the world's largest democracies and she, the wife of the last Governor General of colonial India. This is a story of people in high places and how love strikes at hearts of the most unusual partners in the most (if I may say) inappropriate of times ......
A huge brouhaha is buildng up over the making of the film 'Indian Summer' on the untold romantic story between Lady Edwina Mountbatten and Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru based on a book by the same name by Guardian columnist Alex Von Tunzelmann.
It is common knowledge that the two took more than (ahem) political interest in each other and have been a subject of great curiosity...lots of hearsay and gossip.
I am dying to read the book and see the movie, being the curious, inquisitive Indian that I am.
What puts me off is the moral high ground that the Indian government is taking, with the information and broadcasting ministry politicos and babus (bureaucrats) getting into a tizzy and demanding that the script be shorn of vital scenes like kissing, and the use of the word 'love' from it. Understandable they are anxious about cheap portrayal or anything in bad taste, but for them to dictate the script is clearly going beyond their brief, a habit quite natural for people of their ilk.
Who is going to explain what happened was something no one had control over....an instant attraction, a chemistry and an understanding which no rules can restrain and no rationality can explain. The restis, as they say, history :-)!
Saturday, 12 September 2009
Relationship dynamics: Is there a 'higher' love?
What is a relationship? When is a relationship defined? Most relationships have boundaries, especially the conventional ones. But what about those which exist but which do not fall into straitjackets? Are they relationships at all? If not, then what are they? Is there a term for them?
Most relationships in the world are formal, symbiotic. You give me this and I give you that. It is a lot of sharing of material and sometimes emotional needs. But what about involuntary, mental, undefined ones? A deep connection, but no definitions or boundaries, across countries and continents? ...Too many questions....
I came across this article by Janina Gomes in the Times of India and felt that all along what I had been writing especially in my poems is captured in this article. So that makes my thoughts common, everyday human stuff, no different from the mundane. But anyway here is the article and I have highlighted parts which I have dwelt on in my previous writings. So here goes...
Relationships thrive on kindness and love
JANINA GOMES
12 September 2009, 12:00am IST
Human beings are born in relationship and the lives we lead right from infancy to old age are anchored in relationships. It is in relationship that What bliss it is to love and be loved (Getty Images)
we grow and achieve adulthood and die in the final peace that comes through dying in a trusting relationship with God.
There are many views on the nature of human relationships. In practice, however, it is the day-to-day relationships that must survive the wear and tear of daily life. Sometimes we find that in order not to sour a relationship, it is better to keep a distance. At other times, a clean break becomes necessary. We need to learn to cultivate relationships in a way that there is room for love, mutual respect and space for the other to grow.
At work the equations are different. In an office or a work environment, in which hierarchy is important, relationships tend to remain at a rather superficial level. There is a certain give and take in official relationships, but they rarely survive once we are out of that particular work situation and environment.
The family, which was once the primary environment for close relationships, is no longer so for many because the sanctity of relationships is under threat. When mistrust and insecurity make demands of family life cloying, we might have to make that extra effort to strike a balance that will restore the pristine nature of the original relationship.
Relationships become our chief means of reaching God. Ritual, common prayer, worship and solidarity are all conventional ways to do this. If we wish to take the relationship still further, we might have to establish a more personal link with God. Sometimes, the give and take of ordinary relationships creates a gentle arc that connects us to the Divine.
Conversations are an important way of building up relationships. They could be silent or expressed vocally. Such relationships look beyond a given set of circumstances for a wider, deeper perspective, to understand the truth that lies beneath what is apparent on the surface.
The longer we live and the more experienced we are, our ability to discern the true nature of relationships improves. We are able to take considered decisions on whether to continue with a certain relationship or call it quits without acrimony or hatred.
When we cultivate virtues like patience, compassion, mutual respect and a loving nature, we are well on the way to touching the heart of God, whose reflection we see in other human beings. God invites us through the diversity and wealth of His Creation, to a relationship of universal love. To love His Creation is to love God.
Any relationship that is nurtured for selfish motives and which is vulnerable to feelings of jealousy, hate and suspicion cannot last for it is not founded on unselfish love. And without the ingredient of love, a relationship lacks the spark that can help take it forward towards higher dimensions.
We might remember those who built empires or created elaborate monuments for themselves in the course of remembering inconsequential details of material achievements. Immortal memories ^ in our collective consciousness ^ would however be made up of those acts of kindness and love that came unsolicited, or of those who nudged us on to the path to finding God, to share with us the divine experience of unalloyed bliss.
Most relationships in the world are formal, symbiotic. You give me this and I give you that. It is a lot of sharing of material and sometimes emotional needs. But what about involuntary, mental, undefined ones? A deep connection, but no definitions or boundaries, across countries and continents? ...Too many questions....
I came across this article by Janina Gomes in the Times of India and felt that all along what I had been writing especially in my poems is captured in this article. So that makes my thoughts common, everyday human stuff, no different from the mundane. But anyway here is the article and I have highlighted parts which I have dwelt on in my previous writings. So here goes...
Relationships thrive on kindness and love
JANINA GOMES
12 September 2009, 12:00am IST
Human beings are born in relationship and the lives we lead right from infancy to old age are anchored in relationships. It is in relationship that What bliss it is to love and be loved (Getty Images)
we grow and achieve adulthood and die in the final peace that comes through dying in a trusting relationship with God.
There are many views on the nature of human relationships. In practice, however, it is the day-to-day relationships that must survive the wear and tear of daily life. Sometimes we find that in order not to sour a relationship, it is better to keep a distance. At other times, a clean break becomes necessary. We need to learn to cultivate relationships in a way that there is room for love, mutual respect and space for the other to grow.
At work the equations are different. In an office or a work environment, in which hierarchy is important, relationships tend to remain at a rather superficial level. There is a certain give and take in official relationships, but they rarely survive once we are out of that particular work situation and environment.
The family, which was once the primary environment for close relationships, is no longer so for many because the sanctity of relationships is under threat. When mistrust and insecurity make demands of family life cloying, we might have to make that extra effort to strike a balance that will restore the pristine nature of the original relationship.
Relationships become our chief means of reaching God. Ritual, common prayer, worship and solidarity are all conventional ways to do this. If we wish to take the relationship still further, we might have to establish a more personal link with God. Sometimes, the give and take of ordinary relationships creates a gentle arc that connects us to the Divine.
Conversations are an important way of building up relationships. They could be silent or expressed vocally. Such relationships look beyond a given set of circumstances for a wider, deeper perspective, to understand the truth that lies beneath what is apparent on the surface.
The longer we live and the more experienced we are, our ability to discern the true nature of relationships improves. We are able to take considered decisions on whether to continue with a certain relationship or call it quits without acrimony or hatred.
When we cultivate virtues like patience, compassion, mutual respect and a loving nature, we are well on the way to touching the heart of God, whose reflection we see in other human beings. God invites us through the diversity and wealth of His Creation, to a relationship of universal love. To love His Creation is to love God.
Any relationship that is nurtured for selfish motives and which is vulnerable to feelings of jealousy, hate and suspicion cannot last for it is not founded on unselfish love. And without the ingredient of love, a relationship lacks the spark that can help take it forward towards higher dimensions.
We might remember those who built empires or created elaborate monuments for themselves in the course of remembering inconsequential details of material achievements. Immortal memories ^ in our collective consciousness ^ would however be made up of those acts of kindness and love that came unsolicited, or of those who nudged us on to the path to finding God, to share with us the divine experience of unalloyed bliss.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
