Of Godliness .....

Does God manifest Himself in a better way...
Of that I wonder...
Every moment that passes by helps me reinstate my faith in You...
You are nowhere far..but within me,
within that soul which effaces itself..
You steal a glance at me in that moment that is worth a lifetime...
Of the trials and tribulations, I hold no grudge...
May You have a share of my happiness,
and I a share of Your misfortunes in return...
May all the hues of the rainbow
light up the voyage You have set Your eyes upon...

Utopia...

I wish I was born in a world…
Where humans don’t draw the dagger against each other….
Where friends don’t refuse to acknowledge each other..
Where women don’t have to worry before stepping out alone…
Where nature is not tampered with…
Where every being is held in due respect..
Where religion, caste, creed and color cease to matter…
Where creatures live and let live…

May be it’s an utopia…
But may my journey be cut short in the most legitimate manner
Before it degrades any further….

The panacea

Nothing can soothe my mind better than good music and may be good literature(which I discovered quite late)……
Books and music can indeed be one’s best friends. Nothing feels better than receiving genuine comments on one’s creative pursuits. Even if they are negative sometimes, they help one grow.
My mentor in Rabindrasangeet is one of the finest ladies I have ever met. She sings extremely well. There is a particular style in the pronunciation of Tagore’s words which can be mastered by a few. All these years spanning over a few decades, she has continued pursuing her passion for music in the finest possible way. Still she continues to learn even today and thus inspire others ……

Thoughts...

Sometimes, I make a conscious effort of not raking up my past. But my past with its somewhat eclectic blend of sad and happy moments seems to assert its existence as if it is very much a part of me.
Fretting about past mistakes lands one nowhere. At the same time, thinking about the happy moments makes one yearn for more of them.
Sometimes I find myself harboring weird thoughts….
While in my early teens, I found myself sympathizing with Timothy McVeigh. He was the Oklahoma bomber who was executed by lethal injection. Though he claimed so many innocent lives, I found myself feeling sorry for his plight. As a child, he had been bullied in the playground so much so that, he went on to develop a deep hatred for anyone who wielded power over the weak.
Circumstances can make a Judas out of a Jesus. Legend has it that, the same person who posed as baby Jesus for Michaelangelo’s painting, grew up to be his model for Judas.
Right and wrong, good and bad, seem so much relative at times. But great thinkers like Bertrand Russel have argued that “We say a thing is good when on its own account, it ought to exist and bad when on its own account it ought not to exist.”

Perspectives changed as I grew up. Condoning a wrong act is an offence in itself. It is not that I have never wronged and have always been wronged against. Sometimes I have hurt the ones who are closest to me. Being headstrong has proved suicidal for me sometimes, as much as it has helped me on a few occasions.
Sometimes, my acts are aimed at alleviating my pain temporarily, often disregarding the long term consequences. I find myself being swept by the wave of my emotions. The heart has overpowered the mind on countless occasions. The best I can hope for is, learn and learn………..

THE ZEPHYR and I...

An attempt to translate one of Tagore’s songs…
Though the beauty of the original song is nonpareil, and I have hardly done any justice to it; what appealed to me nonetheless are the feelings underlying his words…


I wont wait till you come, I would venture out.
The flowers are shedding their dry leaves, the time is ticking away…
The zephyr blows wild all of a sudden…
Unleash the shackles, unleash them.
I row my boat in the middle of the river.
The moon is sleepless in this full-moon night.
Here I am rowing the boat of my dreams all alone…
Of the path that leads to you, I am unaware…
Does it even matter?
There’s no looking back, as I trudge along…

Shrouded

You speak a lot without saying anything…
The hopes of comprehending your words , I have relinquished.
With your busts of laughter,
You wish to reach to the one who stays deep within.
That’s precisely why I want to hide from you.
I can still see you , though you cant see me.
A dense fog covers my mind, blurring it from its own vision.
Lest I be taken in by your pretense,
I wish to run away from your sight….

Hallelujah, anyhow!

I pray to thee , O Lord,
Help me count my blessings whenever I am down in the dumps.
Help me derive happiness from the little pleasures that life has to offer.
Help me realize that you are within me and I cannot be weak as long as You are an inseparable part of me.
Help me be independent and seek solace in the feeling that I have come to this world alone and have to depart all alone as well.
Help me face life’s trials with an everlasting smile
And not for a moment forget my own insignificance.
Help me to not raise false hopes in my heart and to face reality with nonchalance.
But I do have a request........
Do strike me a single deadly blow of the rude facts of life if at all you have to,
And spare me of being administered slow poison…
I promise thee, I will rise from the ashes!

O bard! I owe thee.....

Often words molest the beauty of certain thoughts. But they do soothe the mind when expressed. One of my friends used Urdu whenever she wanted to pen down her secret thoughts.............

Here's taking cue from her...and nothing can come more handy than my own mother tongue and the words of Tagore.....(How I wish the script was available!)

"Shokha he ki diye aami tushibo tomay.

Jorojoro hridoy aamaar mormobedonay,

dibanishi oshru jhorichhe shethai.
Tomar mukhe shookher haanshi aami bhalobaashi -
Abhaaginir kaachhe paachhe se hanshi lukay..”

A new leaf....

1st of July,’09. It was my friend’s wedding. For me, it was a much awaited event after my college life got over. We have been classmates since 1st standard. Not particularly a close friend in the beginning, in the later part of my school life and thereafter, she became one of my dearest friends. For, she is one person, whom I can rely on, even today, maybe because of her simplicity and truthfulness.

When she broke the news of her engagement three months ago, it came as a surprise for me. I didn’t quite expect someone of my age (though I don’t claim to be very young either!) to tie the knot so soon. But sensing the excitement in her voice, I thought she must be really happy. So I looked forward to it. To me she was somebody who could stand for herself, no matter what the others thought about her.
She had written in my slam book, a few years back “Few years hence, I would be a housewife, even healthier, with a caring husband and perhaps teaching some children in a school”.
While we dreamt of making it big for ourselves, it was sort of ingrained in her that, she was destined to be a good wife, a good mother and imbibe all the qualities that epitomize femininity.
The D-day was about to dawn. I arrived at her home the day before the wedding, as she wanted a friend to be by her side throughout the day. I hardly felt like a stranger there. The family members (theirs is a joint family) whole-heartedly welcomed me and treated me as one among them. I was overwhelmed by their hospitality, something which I must say , feels like a privilege to be an Indian.
It was 10pm at night. Beautiful patterns out of Mehndi were being etched on her hands and feet. I had it applied on my hands too.
Both of us were waiting for the Mehndi to dry out. We started chatting all this while and continued till 2 am. I was curious to know what it felt to start a completely new phase in a girl’s life. She explained, it was a mixed feeling. She felt lucky that she was getting married to a person who loved her for what she was (Though it was arranged, they got to know each other through the courtship period of 3 months). At the same time, she was yet to come to terms with the feeling of staying away from her parents and her beloved sister.
It stirred up some thoughts in my mind. [It reminded me of a girl, I claimed to know. The girl I knew was just like any other girl. She dreamt and dreamt…She knew deep inside that perhaps she would never experience this day in her life, but still she could visualize him kissing away her tears and adoring her for what she was, and waking up the next moment, only to realize, it had nothing to do with reality. When she looked at her mommy, she knew she could never part with her. Despite picking up fights with her sometimes and may be totally disagreeing with her mom sometimes, she knew she could live her life for her, stay by her side as long as she could. She had a friend in her dad too. Her dad was someone who was not to be trifled with. She had argued with him on quite a few decisive moments in her life, but deep down she knew he ultimately gave in to all of her wishes. She saw tears in his eyes for the first time, when she left home for her college. She wanted to see both of them proud of her someday….The transition is difficult …may be more so for a girl….]
Enough of straying away from the subject I guess………
So, back to 1st July. The morning hours were busy, with a host of ceremonies being performed one after the other. I had a good time watching them.
We reached the marriage hall ‘Punjab Viradari’ at 3pm. The “pheres” were performed at around 7pm followed by a couple of other ceremonies. The children stole the groom’s shoes in the meantime.
The guests were treated to a sumptuous feast. I was waiting for my other school friends. Unfortunately, just one of them turned up.
At around 12 am it was time for ‘vidayi’. She left for her new abode amidst tears of her near and dear ones…….
“Marriages are made in heaven” ..Well, must be so!!

A citizen of the Milky Way!

During my high school days, she had been my role model; though I couldn’t emulate even a miniscule fraction of what she achieved. Yes, I am referring to Kalpana Chawla.

Just before the Columbia launch on 17th Feb, 2003, she said, “You couldn’t lose by working hard and everyone seemed to follow that rule.”
Born and brought up in the town of Karnal, it was her unflinching resolve that helped her defy all the norms that society had set for a girl during her time.
While sleeping in her courtyard in the summers, she gazed dreamily at the milky way.
And that was when the awe for the heavens struck her.
Hailing from a well-to-do family, she shunned the regular route of marriage taken up by other girls and toiled hard to realize her ambition.
Being unconventional in her attitude, she took up aerospace engineering in PEC, Chandigarh. Very soon, she became the topper of the class in her college.
After completing her bachelor’s she felt, she did not know the subject as well as she ought to. Belonging to a small town, the glass ceiling was hers to break.
She had zeroed in on The University of Texas, Airlington(UTA) for pursuing further studies.
But during her time, it was unheard of, for anyone to encourage their daughter to go abroad for higher studies. It would make the girl ineligible to find a groom of comparable academic credentials. Time started closing in on the admission date, until a family friend intervened. Eventually, her family had to relent and she headed for the destination.
In the very first hour in the US, she met Jean Pierre Harrison, who went on to become her life partner later on. She adapted to the entirely different environment, too soon.
The teaching methodology there impressed her. She toiled hours in the lab. Jean Pierre, who became her friend then, fulfilled her childhood dream of flying a plane. A year later, they got married. This decision was again met with stiff resistance from her family, but, eventually she won. After completing her masters , she moved on to Colorado for her doctors.
After completing her Ph.D in 1988, she started work at NASA Ames Research Center in California. She abandoned the prospects of a lucrative career in the Silicon Valley, as the dot com boom was beginning to unfold at that time.
Eventually she got selected as an astronaut for NASA’s space program.
Her take on life was awe inspiring. She said “Approach life as a stint of rock climbing. If one only looked at the top of the mountain, the task would always seem daunting, and for most of us impossible. Instead, the best way to do it, was to approach it step by step. Making one move at a time, it would be possible to scale the peak.”
On Nov, 1997, she set out for her first mission to the space on STS-87.
Having been absolved from charges of committing an error in launching the satellite Spartan into space, Kalpana was selected for a second mission on 16th June, 2003.
After the space shuttle Columbia made its re-entry into earth’s atmosphere, the events took a horrific turn. The shuttle exploded and along with it, she became a permanent resident of the space.
She may not be present among us, but, her unwavering grit and determination are lessons for most of us to emulate and tide over our glitches and disappointments with a dazzling smile, as she had always sported.

Gone with the wind??

She.............

She herself wasn't all that familiar with her own self.

She had a strange wish.....

It was, to turn a deaf ear to the ramblings of her heart for once and for all, and let her mind do the talking.

All she wanted was, to quietly tell him "Let go of it. I have no feelings for you either!!"

But life, as usual, refused to surrender its reins before her and continued to be driven by its own whimsical ways.

A few lines....

Recently read Mrityunjay by Shivaji Sawant.It was gifted to me by my friends on my birthday. Should have completed it long ago. Anyways, this was my best read so far. In fact now I feel , my friend was not wrong when he said I was missing out on something , when I was procrastinating so much in starting off with the novel...
A few lines from the book, taken from different instants of the great warrior Karna's life, are really touching, I have loved them... Would like to put those here...
कर्ण : "श्रद्धा में बड़ी शक्ति होती है । किसी न किसी पर श्रद्धा रखे बिना मनुष्य जीवित ही नहीं रह सकता । "
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कुंती : " बचपन शीतल जल का एक चषक होता है, जिसको प्रकृति भावी जीवन के रेगिस्तान को पार करते समय आहात होनेवाले प्राणी के लिए पहले से ही निर्माण कर रखती है । "
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कुंती : " स्त्री का जन्म कुछ प्राप्त करने के लिए नहीं , सब कुछ समर्पित करने के लिए ही होता है। "
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कुंती : " जब जब स्मृतियाँ मेरा पीछा करतीं तब तब मैं अपना मन किसी न किसी काम में उलझा लेती। भूतकाल का चित्र अदृश्य हो जाता। कभी कभी केवल दूसरों के लिए जीना पड़ता है और वह भी अपने आंसू छिपाकर जीना पड़ता है। "
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कर्ण :" निद्रा सबसे उदारहृदयी माता है। विभिन्न व्यक्तियों के विभिन्न दुःख को यह समान ममता से कुछ समय के लिए ही सही पर निश्चित रूप से अपने विशाल उदर में समां लेती है। "
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द्रोण द्वारा अपमानित होने के बाद , कर्ण :" जीवन केवल एक दावानल है। किसी के द्वारा किसी भी तरह प्रज्वलित । किसी न किसी को जला देनेवाला । और कभी न कभी अपने आप ही बुझ जानेवाला । .............
मनुष्य एक बार सुख और आनंद के क्षणों को भूल सकता है , परन्तु दुःख के और विशेष रूप से अपमान के क्षणों को तो वह प्रयत्न करने पर भी भूला नहीं पाता । "
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कर्ण :" भाग्य मानव द्वारा निर्मित सबसे अधिक भयंकर भूल है। उसको मनुष्य के जीवन से जोड़कर प्रत्येक व्यक्ति सदैव सत्य से दूर भागना चाहता है।"
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DO NOT SAY GOODBYE!!

This dialogue from Rang de Basanti suddenly seemed to be of great relevance:
“College ke us taraf hum life ko nachate hai , aur college ke is taraf life humko nachati hai…”
2 a.m. , 26th May, 2009….Yes, that was the moment I had to bid goodbye to the finest phase of my life. Friends were there to help me out till the last moment in Jaipur.. ……The train started to whistle away from the platform, so did the leaves in the precious bunch of memories that these four years had quietly placed, in a corner of my heart…They all started to appear before me, as if in a flashback…
Barring the scorching heat of the summer, I was in love with the pink city. There could have been no better place for me to spend these memorable years.
I had always preferred to look beyond the linguistic, cultural and provincial demarcations. I feel lucky to have been in a place, which was a conglomeration of people from different parts of the country. These four years have been a roller coaster ride for me. It has shown me several faces of life, I had been a stranger to, earlier.
I have reveled in those small conquests….. I have fought with close friends over trivial matters....
I have cried in anxiety and often found a shoulder to share my angst with… I felt relieved when those night-outs during exams got over, swearing to study beforehand from the next time, only to break it the next day…..
I have eagerly waited for the birthday parties and hangouts,
felt overjoyed at a friend’s success…. at times got overridden with guilt and failure..
I met people who were like angels…It seemed I had run the entire gamut of emotions in this short span…. short? Yeah…didn’t it pass away in a jiffy? Wish we could again live and re-live those moments before the fear of the unknown could have gripped us…
Of course my friends were the ones who made these years so beautiful and parting all the more painful.
The last semester was the most eventful of all…The farewells, the birthday celebrations, those long conversations, trekking early in the morning….all seem so surreal now…
Thanks to the initiatives taken by few of our friends, we have loads of memories to cherish.. All of us are so unique in our own way..that made it all the more special…
The acts which seemed stupidity at some point of time are now reasons for us to smile..
It seems unlikely that life will give me better friends…
Can’t we assure ourselves that we will meet again? Our biggest foes, distance and time will have to bow before the bond of our friendship…Lets make them, merely a circumstance , not a determining factor…
One of my finest friends, loves this saying from Shawshank Redemption..
“hope is a good thing…may be the best of things..and no good thing ever dies…”
I will hope against all hopes that wherever we stay, we will remain as close as ever and continue to stand by each other till death do us part…
So, “ban ke sahara ik duje ka…yunhi chalte rhe…”

The journey that life is...

They say LIFE’s A JOURNEY…but for me it was a journey that showed me a glimpse of what life can be for different people….
It was one of those train journeys from Howrah to Jaipur…must be for the 8th time….but with a difference…may be because of the nagging thoughts of the time ticking away on the last few months of my college life (that was a not-so-obvious reason )..
The immediate reasons being, I was coming back alone for the first time (generally I manage to get some group-mates to accompany me on all the other trips)…
And I was allotted a middle berth, that being a cause of concern because, I normally prefer the uppermost berth so that there’s nobody to knock me out of my slumber…
So this time I couldn’t sleep for too long and had to comply with the wishes of my fellow passengers, especially the one whose berth was below mine….
There were people in different phases of life…A baby(must be around one and half years old),her young parents(a Bengali couple), a young Muslim couple, a 40 something pot-bellied gentleman(Arjun Jain), a middle-aged Marwari lady who seemed a bit more aged than she actually was( her son was going to get married soon, as I could make out from her conversation with her would-be- daughter in law’s mother, who was making all possible efforts to appease her)…

As it was almost midnight when we boarded the train, there was nothing eventful that night. Next morning, I found the lady struggling to get down from her berth…she had arthritis and had to sleep in the middle berth opposite to mine…somehow helped her out…when she struck a conversation…she asked me ,why I was traveling alone and what was I doing in Jaipur…When I told her, all she said was, being a girl I should reconsider my decision of studying this far(this far?? All this while I was thinking…what would I do with a plain Btech degree ..now that my MBA hopes for this year were almost crushed, and at the moment- fully of course)….her rationale was- I would have to give up all that ( job or whatever career moves I make) once I get married! All I could say was “Aunty woh toh baad me dekha jayega”…she said she had so many experiences to support her view…I had those usual feminist thoughts stirring up in my mind…but then how could I argue with such an elderly woman..kept them to myself…my attention shifted to the Bengali couple with their baby..they could get just one berth owing to the huge rush for tickets at that time of the year..they were a Gen X couple..They were conversing in English..although there was that typical Bengali accent in it…Both of them were in western outfits and the mother was particularly beautiful..the father had a faint resemblance with Madhavan..the super-hero from south. I had the feeling that they were software professionals..The Marwari lady in her usual inquisitive manner asked the mother where did they stay and their occupation..She said..she owned a management institute in Salt Lake city,Kolkata.(whoa…that explained her getup..these B-school ppl are supposed to be smart) And her husband was some executive in a company…As usual,the lady put up the question..how could she take care of her kid while she has to manage her business…After listening to her, I could see the skepticism in the Marwari lady’s face(as if thinking ..she wont let her would be daughter- in- law do that)…The couple were talking very little to each other…the wife was looking out of the window…and the husband was busy reading a novel while listening to music,the kid was sleeping..On the topmost berth there was this Muslim couple busy talking to each other..quite a contrast to the ones I talked earlier about..they seemed newly weds..Does life have to become so mundane after few years of marriage..various thoughts kept crossing my mind,idle as it was..though sometimes I was reading a novel...
During lunchtime..I got to talk to that Muslim lady..she was of my age or may be younger(as she got married after her three yrs of graduation)…exceedingly sweet and well-behaved..her husband was lucky, I thought...She was a housewife and said how life was so different in Kolkata from that in Agra…yes, her parents’ place..that was where she was going to…She was all praises for her husband.. “mere husband mashallah bahut achhe hain..kabhi bore nhi hone dete hain”..good for her, I thought….she had mixed feelings ..of the excitement of visiting her parents after quite some months and the grief of parting with her caring husband (her husband had gone away for getting food when she was saying all this to me..Came back after sometime)….In the meanwhile a lad from Bihar had arrived….The old lady quite expectedly didn’t spare the Muslim couple of her questions…as soon as she got to know they were Muslims..out of nowhere..she started the discussion as to how the Muslims were hard core terrorists and were responsible for the then recent 26/11 attack on Mumbai…it was kind of embarrassing..the couple were decent enough to maintain their equanimity in such a situation…She was talking of the government inaction on not waging a war on Pakistan and such things…the bihari lad was supporting her…Meanwhile this gentleman..Arjun Jain(an ex-army personnel,who had fought in the kargil war) came into the scene or rather to the rescue of the situation..he said “Aunty aapki baton se train me communal riot ho skti hai” The lady protested on being called “aunty” by a middle aged man and continued with her points…He kept saying that it is wrong to generalize the behavior of any community..and brought forward the good points of muslims ..he said the good thing about them was..the Indian muslims were mostly united among themselves and a few other things…Meanwhile, the muslim couple who were sitting beside me heaved a sigh of relief..and the husband was asking the wife “aap kiske paksh me hain?” ..A full fledged group discussion turned debate was in progress…finally the voices had died down and a brief silence followed….the Bengali couple seemed to be pretty aloof from this discussion….after sometime the next discussion ensued ..it was on how the kids of today were being spoilt and not being brought up in the right way, initiated by aunty again.. Arjun Jain was again on the other side..he was in favour of bringing up kids in a friendly manner and cited the example of his son..there were many conflicting regional views being put forward..the Bihari lad advocated the use of corporal punishment to the extent of slaying one’s kids if he/she went against the wishes of parents..Arjun Jain went on to note down his mobile no. saying that he will ask his point of view again once the bihari(who wasn’t married yet) has a kid himself …The muslim couple were gradually drifting into their own world again..now that Agra was going to come…it was time to sleep again…and the discussion had stopped …As I closed my eyes , I wondered about the diversity of people and their thoughts…whatever it was.. the greatness of our country lies in it….i didn’t realize when I went off to sleep ..only to wake up when the train reached Jaipur…

"The bliss of solitude"

I earnestly wish that I realize the bliss that solitude is. Why should I be dependent on anybody else? hard to accept..but thats what I have been all this while. Nothing hurts more than the feeling of being a burden to somebody else,specially someone who I thought I was really close to, emotionally.I had been gravely mistaken ,only to wake up with a bitter disillusionment.I am guilty of passing my guilt onto somebody else, thats the easiest way to escape from one's failure ,you see.I dont know if I would be forgiven or not, but all I can say is I am responsible for the doom that has cast its cruel shadow on my life. And nobody , but I ,have to take myself out of this.Relations are fragile and something which is largely out of our control...I have learnt it the hard way. But I had valued the bond of friendship above anything else.Its true that I had erred, I had this unending craving to be the one ,who mattered the most to someone. But then, we could have helped each other in so many ways ,instead of ruing over petty things.In this process, I have plumbed new depths...I have distanced myself from people who probably did really care , stooped low begging for 'sympathy'(yes ,thats what I would call it - perhaps an euphemism for brushing someone off)..How is it that ,I never understood it?..Ego in its moderated form does help to protect one's self respect, I believe.Where did it all vanish?..And worst of all how could I even try to make somebody else feel guilty for it?...Most of us fail to take a stand on something. Humans are perhaps susceptible to the most mercurial twists at critical junctures.After so much of self annihilation, I think its high time that I respect His decision.If He has brought me ,may be there is a purpose I should serve.I have been blessed with all the means to survive on my own. I would have to move on...perhaps that is what life is all about...Despite all the trials He has subjected me to, I would survive and wait for your final verdict...