Conscience affairs

Hi. I am me. That is your conscience. I am your inner voice. I am your guide and spectator. Sometimes I help you while sometimes I seek your opinion. Sometimes you listen to me like an obedient student while sometimes you argue with me like a rebellious prisoner of war. I am there when you are happy, I cry when you are heartbroken, I console you when all your dreams are shattered; I push you when you feel dejected. I am always present in your wrong doings and your sins. I am an unconditional companion who wants no returns.

I teach you how to love, I tell you to chase your dreams, I help you identify yourself and I stop you from committing mistakes. I help you to differentiate between right and wrong, illusive and real, ethical and sinful. However, you tend to ignore me most of the times because the sinful indulgences are far more attractive. There are instances when you are so blinded by the momentary pleasures that you hardly realize that your act is not justified. You indulge in wrong practices and realize only when it is too late.

Then at such moments of self realization, I try to cheer you up by telling you that you are a human being, you are bound to make mistakes. If you make no mistakes, you become perfect and only the Creator is perfect not his creation. You fall and then you realize that the path is full of boulders. You then become more vigilant and next time you make another mistake, but that’s a new mistake. You are wise only when you do not repeat the same mistakes.

Life is a teacher of a bizarre kind. First it takes a test and later teaches a lesson. These are those vital lessons which need not be forgotten because the tests are sometimes very tough and painful. They may leave you shattered and estranged, they may even take away your high spirits and leave you disillusioned. You should never analyze the reason behind why a particular pain is coming to you because you hardly have an idea of what destiny has planned for you. You can hardly imagine what hardships someone else is facing.

You have to be brave. You have to give your best shot. You may fall; you should not keep on lamenting. Shed a tear or two, and wipe them off. Look above to the heavens, and tell him that you are back in your saddle. Tell yourself that you are a warrior and you can fight through the battle like a hero. Come what may, you won’t give up.

So promise me that from today you will live by the line BRING IT ON and I will stand by your side in all the battles.  

Love and Complications

Love has been in existence from time immemorial. I believe Adam and Eve also loved each other. One question keeps on popping up in my mind is that what exactly is love? Love is a very strong emotion, somewhat selfless and platonic. Although each boyfriend girlfriend pair thinks that they are madly in love, which is, in any case, a bizarre misconception (MOSTLY). Plus, every mother thinks that she loves her son endless, which, in any case, is subdued (MOSTLY).

A very interesting plot I came across few days back was that in a daily soap, a scary mother-in-law plots against her daughter-in-law. And the reason was that she loves her son direly and does not want to lose him to his wife. Actually, I have mostly encountered this feeling of conquering the person you love and restricting all others from conquering over him ever again (of course, the gates are open again after divorces).

What makes me go crazy is that why do we become so possessive when we love a person? I mean why it can’t always be a selfless, platonic emotion? Why do strings of materialism and expectations come attached with love? Sense of commitment, demand of loyalty and urge of privacy comes along with relationships. What I believe is that if the bond is true and pure, agenda is achieved on its own without putting in much of an effort. If the mother would not try to superimpose herself and her love, her child would still love her endlessly. Where is the need for planning and plotting, crying and shouting?

Blinded by expectations, we have become so selfish that we always reach out for our comfort zones, regardless what ordeal it may turn out for the other person. We look for emotional soothing and materialization of feelings, without even caring that it would kill the piousness of the bond. When I love you X times, I want you to reciprocate it X times always and shower Y times of my love at times! Even when you love your dog, you expect him to come to you wagging his tail every time you step into the house!

Let’s make love purest of the pure feelings. Let’s not load it with a necessity of productive returns. Let’s just love the people around us. Let’s just love the nature. Let’s become a loving son, a loving mother, a loving wife, a loving friend, a loving citizen and enjoy the festivities of life rather than estimating the costs of different birthday gifts after the party!

On Republic named India

To start with, I would like to congratulate all of you (especially Indians and may be NRI’s as well) on the 63^rd Republic Day. It was on this day that the Constituent Assembly adopted the Constitution of India. And for those who are simply not aware, Republic means “a form of government in which the people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over the government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people”.

Indian Constitution is the lengthiest constitution which derives various features from other constitutions. As far as what I have learnt till now is that Indian Constitution is a beauty and has very well catered to the needs of the masses. We have been a shining example of democracy which functions with unimaginable diversities. There have been disturbances, internal as well as external, there have been problems, economical, social, and cultural and many more and we have survived all of those.

What seems more disturbing is that we don’t value this inherited constitution and its features. One of the most prominent features of our constitution is Fundamental Rights which has its origin in the Bill of Rights. Most recently an encounter of a fundamental right being in news was that of ”Right to Freedom”. Freedom of speech and expression can never be taken literally. There has to be a cap over it.

Is it really difficult to express yourself in a way that it doesn’t hurt someone else? Why do we have to express ourselves only in context of a controversial issue? We need to respect each other’s religion, culture and moral underpinnings. Freedom of speech comes with a sense of responsibility as well where you have to make sure it causes no harm. Only because contempt of court is a legitimate concept, you respect the courts and just because there is no provision of penalizing for defamation, you can spill trash about anything?

M.F. Hussain and Salman Rushdie are not the only protagonists here. There is probably a species of people who like to make controversial statements. Be it Mayawati or Poonam Pandey or Baba ramdev or Bal Thackrey or Rahul Gandhi. They all seem to be blinded by enmassed publicity. The anti graft crusader Anna Hazare has also delivered totally senseless remarks and then stated that they have been blowed out of proportion. Being an artist or a politician or a celebrity doesn’t give us a license to talk insensitively. 

We should make the most out of the things we have and try best to bring out positive out of it. When we have fundamental rights, we should use them make our lives beautiful and dignified rather than targeting a group of people, intentionally or otherwise too.

Banished conscience

We are living in an age of revolutions and rebellions, Libya, Egypt, Bahrain and still counting. And why do we have to go too far?  Our own country is going through a major upheaval. Lately we have been experiencing too much turbulence; black money, corruption, scams, and political instability. There has been a wave of negativity all around. People are reflecting lack of trust in the government and administrative institutions.

Every day when common man picks up the newspaper to read, he crushes the newspaper and throws it into the dustbin. It depresses him to the core. Each common man has to struggle to earn his supper. He bears the expenses of his children’s education, his family’s health, and numerous other expenses which keep on popping up. And amidst all this trauma when he sees pessimism all around he feels so helpless and frustrated.

Corruption has been a burning issue in the recent past. Baba Ramdev (who had been decorated by black ink few days back) has been a pioneer in initiating the movement. Anna Hazare and Co. has entirely given a new shape to the Jan Lokpal Movement. Parliament was disrupted and politicians have displayed an entirely new dimension of how to blame the government for everything happening (all over the globe) No wonder that tomorrow if Obama looses the senate elections, Mayawati would say that Rahul Gandhi is responsible for it.

The toothless government has been so bloody impotent in this whole scene that we cannot repose any confidence the Parliament i.e. the highest policy making body of our nation. And we come to a draft of a Jan Lokpal Bill which Team Anna has rejected completely. Question of the hour is that if Team Anna has to do the policy making for us then why do we need to have a parliament in the first place? Why is Team Anna so rigid? Such adamant attitude reflects nothing except the fact that this whole scene is moving towards a positive entropy (for those who are not aware, Entropy is defined as ‘a measure of the degradation of the universe’.) I can hardly see a point in out and out rejection of the proposed bill. The adopted draft can be put to practice and we can eventually figure out the negativities and amend them subsequently.

If this course is followed, we can restore normalcy in the political arena and the civil society, however, Team Anna would not really look upto this because they would rather go for a politically motivated and attention seeking course where one man is seen as anti corruption crusader and attention is fetched in the name of Gandhi. This game plan has easily targeted the youth who lacks orientation and vision. There is a large section of the society who has supported this movement only because they live by the herd mechanism or only because they are seeking limelight.

In the due course, the conscience of such people is on a self imposed exile and needs some intense counseling for they are totally unaware of what they are endorsing and where this is leading them to!

Behind the bars

The day I opened my eyes, this world welcomed me with open arms. Initially, I liked only the lady who kept me in her womb. Later, I learnt that she only got me here. Slowly, I started loving all the people at my home. Then I grew up a little and it was time to attend school. I could not understand why my father was so stressed. He was a rickshaw puller and earned well. We ate twice a day, however sometimes my mother did not eat and we ate all the food. At last, my school started. For a few days, I could not see any teacher but sometimes I got food to eat in the recess.

As the years passed, I started learning that we were a poor family. I was not supposed to demand any toys or new clothes. I felt very bad but I had no choice. My tears only made my mother sad but she could not get me my demands. Eventually, I stopped asking for anything. Somehow, I could not do too well in academics. Reasons could be figured out easily. I never bought books and teachers hardly came to school. In any case, nobody even cared at home. They only wanted me to finish the school education.

After finishing the school, I had somewhere built up this dream that I will at least enroll for graduation. The blow to my dreams came the day I confided this to my mother. The reasons she gave were emotional and financial. We could not afford any kind of investment on my education plus it was time that I was supposed to play a pivotal role in terms of supporting my family financially.

I started working as a sales boy and tried to earn to my fullest capacity. Somehow no matter how much I earned, it always appeared meagre. At times I felt very unfortunate and frustrated about our financial situation. I did whatever I could but things were never improved, sometimes my father’s illness, sometimes my mother’s pain. There was no end to the need for more funds. And one fine day, one more addition popped up. My family wanted me to get married.

I was already imprisoned in the cage of poverty and now, one more shrinkage in that cell. It was a difficult life behind bars where you can’t dream, you can’t expect too much out of life, you never dare to think of future because you are so busy thinking about supper. My marriage left my family in debt and added one more mouth to feed. I felt so irritated and messed up that I could not even enjoy the marital life.

AND NOW LIFE HAS TAKEN ONE MORE STEP

Today, I have become the father of a baby girl. I am not sure whether I should welcome the angel or start working harder to save her from the ordeal I am facing. I feel so helpless at this point of time that I can’t think of a way out of this pathetic life. And there are millions others who are facing harder situations in life. I wish a miracle which helps all of us to feed our family, and educate our children so that they do not hesitate to dream.

The notes of an old building

I am an old building which stands at the end of the road, opposite to the famous coffee and ice cream parlour. I have seen at least a hundred springs here. People of all ages are happy about my existence because I have been a witness of the long struggle for freedom of my nation from the colonial rule. I see the sea of traffic every day, I see couples fighting, parents scolding, friends chatting and innumerous such events every day. I have been seeing all this for a long time now.

Rewinding the bioscope of my life, I pause at the fight for freedom by the people of this nation; the freedom fighters have delivered long zealous speeches in front of me. Many of those have been even killed in front of my eyes. I have mourned with them and I consoled them. I even had tears in my eyes when I saw them suffer. And that glorious moment, when we became independent, I can never forget that joy.

These days, that joy is missing. I fail to revive that sense of pride while I think about my nation. The youth today doesn’t reflect similar energy and enthusiasm. There are no more conversations about what I dream of doing for my nation. Infact, the whole vibe is missing. They no more feel the special feeling of being a pot of energy. Everything has been covered with the quilt of dormancy in the season of cold heartedness. Everybody seems so overwhelmed with the inherited asset of independence that they hardly care about the ongoing degradation of the nation. They seem to be burdened by the legacy of their freedom struggle than to carry it with pride.

The most shocking fact is that the youth hardly cares about the so called “Patriotism”. They want to go to college, gossip around, complete the course and grab a job abroad. The next level plan may include marriage, children and other personal stuff. And one fine day, they would retire from their jobs and spend the last days of their life in a hospital or asylum or if lucky, with their grandchildren.

At some point, I find them selfish, doing nothing at all for the land which has nurtured them. Then, next moment I conclude that I am expecting too much out of this spoilt, instant food lover generation.  Why am I trying to see a Bhagat Singh among this dating freak lot? I would never be able find that spark here because they have got this freedom free of cost. The day it would be snatched away from them, I might see the same old fire. Mind you, I MIGHT.

It comes from the heart of a feminist

Recently, I read a couple of reports which stated that girls must resort to conservative dressing if they really want to stay away from any kind of stain on their existence. I was left wondering that are there girls on this planet who would actually like to be raped?

I could barely swallow the fact that these set of thoughts had come from the likes of an educationalist in Bangalore and a senior police official. Obscene dressing is taken as an invitation to sexual abuse. Are we kidding ourselves? 

Was the attire provocative when an 80 year old lady was raped? Or when a 2 year old child was a victim of sexual abuse and murder?  Have we breached the basic sanity levels while making such weird observations that girls wear short dresses to arouse the boys? Was it an invitation when in 2005, Imrana was raped by her father-in-law? Was the tribal woman so seductive that she was subjected to a gang rape by the policemen when she had gone to lodge an FIR about her missing husband in the police station? The women who dress up in totally covered attires are completely insulated from sexual assault?

Wearing sleeveless dresses or a Capri comes at a cost of your dignity in a nation which has embarked on the path of modernisation. Why do we go towards hypocrisy when we talk about modernisation? Are we really progressive enough to move on from the concept where women are actually treated nothing more than mere sex objects? Can we open our eyes to notice the fact that men are not open to accept the fact women deserve equal status in society and they are not inferior!

The bottom-line is that  eyes which have no respect for women rather they are brimming with lust and blinded by superiority complex can spare no women to be victimised be it a two-year old kid or an eighty-year old lady, whether it is burka clad women or a bikini clad model.

My journey

We all are sent to this world by Him for a special cause, which can be accomplished only by us.We are all special in a unique way. And that is why I'm also special. The people in my life add to this feeling and they make me feel blessed. The story isn't all sunshine, I too have gone through rough patches and mind you they are just patches and that is why they don't define my journey rather they are just a part of it.

Like everybody else who falls into my age group, I am also aggressive and arrogant, but that doesn't stop me from being intelligent ( and even smart at times). My failures have depressed me as well but they don't stop me from trying once again. Yes, there are certain loopholes in my life, but they don't make me a complete messed up person.

I'm totally aware of what am I doing and what are my goals ( both short-term and long-term). My dreams are big, but they don't stop me from enjoying my present. I am serious about my life but that has not turned me into a pumpkin faced girl. I am witty but not over talkative. Yes, I'm greedy for chocolates and slightly craving for coffee yet I'm balanced. I pray when I'm sad and I cry when I'm overjoyed.

That's me and welcome to my world.