Violation of Dignity

It sometimes feels nauseatic nowadays when I sit to write. Of course there are so many things happening in this world on which I can write and write. For instance,take the nationwide outrage on the recent incident of rape in Delhi. Rape is not a new thing. In different places, cultures , communities and races, the response to it is varied. When a dalit woman or a woman in a very conservative community gets raped or gang raped,  the incident is suppressed in a wonderful way. Marital rapes often are not reported. When five to six men rape a girl in a moving bus, it only tells us that men have animals inside them and they come out when a woman is vulnerable and alone. All human beings have animal instinct in them and they come out when nobody or no social or personal monitoring system is around. Is there a solution to it? Yes, if rape laws are made stringent and people know that conviction is sure, then there will be a fear of punishment so that people will think twice before attempting any such thing. 

We are being attacked by imported west ern and European sensibilities for the last many years. Our urban society is being invaded by life-style changes such as live-in relationships, free sex, permissive behaviour etc. Sexual behaviour in a country like India was always controlled by social , legal and ethical codes. The recent changes are affecting it and nobody can help the upsurge of irresponsible and reckless sexual trends. Besides legal punishment, unless our people are educated and enlightened enough to understand that sex is a very delicate matter which requires social. legal and moral sanction and is not a matter of manifesting one's animal self , rape will continue to be a problem. Women can avoid places and situations which make them vulnerable and susceptible to violent sexual assaults. But where do you protect women and how much? Sex between married couples is a most beautiful thing because it is born of mutual love and affection. The bond of young or even little girls with their fathers, uncles or cousins are beautiful things. But are we able to stop marital or incestual rape?Everywhere women are in danger. The legal system has to be upgraded in regard to this and women, mothers and parents have to be very careful. In this way, at least we can prevent some unfortunate incidents. The present outrage is heartening, but will the government rise to the occasion and 
do something to protect women in our cities and villages. Will the legal procedure be subtle and kind so as not to harass a raped woman? 

The Song of the Magi

It's a song 
only a few wrote,
They rotted lonely and abandoned,
Some had the lock to fame 
and thrived,
Who are you but,
only a spent desire to branch out.

Seasons changed and
told you to sync in,
Yet you clung to that tune.
The carnivals passed before you
and you learnt no music,
Truths have never 
made a life,
They have only seared  hearts
and your being.

Looking for a lonely tree,
You will lose the jungle,
When the wind will usher the leaves
to a song, pick up the new tune
and erase the old,
no read read marks
you leave, to remind you of 
the dead who torched your 
soul and slipped away ,
unscarred.

This next season, gather your things
and wait,
till the caravan comes along.
 

Reminiscing in a Train -1

 

Nowadays I don't feel like writing anything. I just love my silence. I was thinking why one loves to be silent. May be because you have accepted the universe as it is, may be you are so disillusioned with everything and the truths are so clear that you don't feel like writing or talking. I will definitely like to carry this silence with me when I go..that's freedom. Living behind no trace of your existence, having no desire to want, say or leave behind anything I can call my own...absolute freedom from every attachment.. and complete bliss. 

Train journeys are great. And alone they are greater. Of course when you have company you are happy and can while away the time talking. But alone, you can think...think...and think. You can enjoy the faint light in the horizon, you can choose to be silent... you can be free not to talk to anybody, you can share groundnuts with strangers...young or old... you can help people..you can smile at people.. and all this you can do without anybody demanding your attention. It's another thing...

Winter has arrived. The world's turning dusty and grey. Mornings are cold, nights are long and pregnant with possibilities of births;of thoughts, ideas, silences. That day Pradeep came to deliver an article at my place, for Banita(name changed) I dislike getting up before my decided time, but nowadays I don't complain a lot. Both of us got up as Banita got the call and went down. I saw Pradeep for the first time. And saw the bond of immense trust and silent love between them. Possibilities between them are little that they will ever come together. Nobody can stop them if they want to, they are legally married, but they won't because they don't want to make some people unhappy. But they can’t think of moving away. Their solid bond keeps them happy and going.

When you are travelling alone in a train, you perceive nature better, because there is nobody to distract your attention. Passing scenes calm the mind, they also stir memories. Looking at certain mangroves, agricultural land or grounds, I remember how I used to think that it might be our farm, we tending it together. Memories bring sadness. Memories of beautiful, electrifying moments, moments of tenderness, love and great communication. Magical love that will never happen again, because nothing can replace it as certain people are irreplaceable. People leave our world but memories keep lingering. Sometimes they bring warm tears only, reminding of the loved ones whom you miss incessantly and will miss until the world catches up with you or you rise into sainthood. The truths also are driven home that we have the right to give love only, it is not so that the people whom we love will love us back. It’s also another truth that some people are very special, different, nobody can replace them. We only go for compromises, but life is never the same again. It’s not about three or four years, not about the extent, it’s about people, people whom we have known from a greater consciousness, have understood and have loved. But when they move away willingly, happily, seeking happiness somewhere else, only silence remains, because you can’t change their image in your conscious.

I am worried about the suffering of a good old friend of late. This friend was my only hope of a possible pure friendship with the opposite gender because I only thought of him as a human being and never perceived of him as anything else.Sometimes your intuition tells you that you should grow up and  set things right. I just want him to get over the reasons of his suffering and grow up, take care of his family as a priority and spend his goodness without being too attached to anything. True friendship and trust never breaks off , may be we fail to understand our orientation towards a friendship.We human beings are bound to have weakness, but our weakness should be invested in the right place. I only wish that his goodness never shuns him and it grows in the right direction. We are so torn by our own inner conflicts and so afflicted by pain that I don't know how to make him see the good purpose.

  The face of Aanjana ma’am comes floating to my mind. It’s a pensive face, calm yet sad. She  lost her husband in the recent past, had to leave the place where she lived for many years before coming to this city. I had started to love her very much and she’s leaving. The loneliness and the work pressure is hurting her and she wants to go to her daughter, to her old city. I don’t know if she’s doing the right thing. Daughters marry and go away. Unless they keep her with them, she will be lonely again and that time it will be more difficult to cope. I only pray that God be with her. I am alone too, and not in a very pleasant place, but I keep repeating to myself to not to long for my comfort zone, to fight and grow. May be I will learn to be at peace someday, but I am fighting definitely, for the last three and half years. But people are different and so is their response to situations. I cannot understand their problems from a distance. 

Silence is beautiful at times. When silence starts entering you, it can be a good or a bad sign. It can lead you to pure consciousness or it can destroy whatever creativity you have. I have left things to the universe and am floating with the flow. Let life take me wherever it has to. I just will have to be with the moment at hand, be very alive to it, wherever I am and whatever I am doing.

The train is nearing the destination. You can know from the breeze. It’s cold.  In a small hilly town you can feel the winter. How beautiful is the earth, with its seasons. If winter hadn’t been there we would never have known the beauty of spring or the heat of summer. Who can question the wisdom of the universe? We go, but the universe thrives and keeps vibrating with life forms and its many gifts.

The Road to be Taken...

Recently I read Daya's songs in a book by Osho. The book is a gift from my cousin who has departed to Hardwar to find out what is his ultimate goal in life. All don't need to go to Hardwar to do that, all of us are different and we all have our different paths to seek. The book is beautiful. Daya'a songs would be beautiful too but this is a crude English translation of one of her songs. What struck me dumb was the question of my heart reflected in the poem. It reads:

Why does it happen

Oh, why does it happen?

Life passes in searching,

Yet one does not find a soul mate.

In the absence of a single touch,

The flower of the heart

Takes one through so many seasons

Without blossomimg.

The heart , smiling on the outside,

Is weeping silently within,.

Why does it happen

Oh, why does it happen?

For how long things will go on

In this unlikely way?

When my hands will meet other hands

In lasting love?

When will my eyes understand

The language of other eyes?

When will the path of truth 

Be free of thorns?

Why does the heart that is longing to gain

forever lose?  

The song has very deep meaning. Most of the people can't listen to this kind of longing because the world catches up with them very first and strong and the noise of the world is deafening unless one is not thoughtful enough and questions the nature of existence. 

What is the ultimate goal in our lives? To take a job, to be married , raise one or two children, get promotion, have some relatives and friends , chase career ambitions, money, security and grow old immersed in worldly chores and responsibilities? Most of us do exactly this and never does a question arise in their consciousness.

It seems so normal. But for the seekers, once they reach one goal, its ultimate futility bores them and they want something else. But the truth is we can never be satisfied if we chase the world because the world itself is unreal yet seemingly real.

What is our goal then? What this heart longs for? It longs for some higher association, but it doesn't get.

We all will have to find that which lies beyond. There lies the land of permanent happiness and peace.

From alone to aloneness

The grass is wet from last night's tears,
When you chose to swim upstream and the very breathing
became thick,
Your muscles ached, yet you didn't relent,
as if a punishment or a curse followed you into many years
The earth saw saw the silent penance
and cried.

When you questioned the primordial wisdom and 
chose a disoriented sky over the sun,
the path was bound to grow thorns
that kept spreading to the distance you walked isolated.

Every path is not your path,
You whispered to the morning breeze
and turned saint,
The sea suddenly grew around you and 
built an island.

The leaves shook their heads in agreement,
when you walked alone in the lanes to your solitary abode,
your fists wiping away your tears and your head  high
on your shoulders.
 

BEFORE THE COOL MOON RISES...

**********************************************************************************


As you entered the afternoon outside,
It suddenly felt like an empty beach with the sun shining pale,

A bland beach without anyone or anything,
and you there in your aerial form,
only the soul moving about, your body far away in the human world.

Nowadays, it feels like aloneness and calm entering you afresh,
as if you are about to set up on a Himalayan quest,
Sometimes a woman is seen crying in the past,
shedding tears at God's discrepancy,
but it is not, you know, you are destined to walk in the ether,
with one leg on earth and one in the air,
You may walk your exterior as much like any other female,
Inside you a consciousness churns things
that keep you apart, quite apart.

Why a lone afternoon sings elegies,
Whose death do you mourn?
You drop two tears every now and then just because,
you are made up of seven elements? Air, water, earth, sky,
some madness, a lot of freedom, some bondage and some woman?

This afternoon will also slide into darkness,
When will the moon ripe, and come up in the sky?
A fatigue, a tiredness has started entering you,
Will you linger, or you want to die.
Death is easy, life's curious, to float about,
for there is an innocence in your being,
Live a little more, before the arms envelope you ,
before your perceptions light you up, and turn into a meddle,
write one more song, let your tired self break into a jiggle
once more, mingle into the afternoon once more
and sing. 

***************************************

Women like Minu...

I had not seen Minu for many days. She used to come for a chat sometimes, but she had not been seen for quite some days. Her friend who lived on the opposite side of the lane saw me one day and on inquiring she told that Minu was not staying in the colony anymore, she had moved out with her daughter though she came two days in a week to give tuition to some children. I requested her to inform her that I wanted to meet her. And she did come. ‘Where did you go and why? Why didn’t you tell anything about it before leaving?’ I bombarded her with questions. Without least effort she told, ‘My husband came back from Dubai after twelve years! That’s why I moved to a bigger flat.’ I didn’t ask her anything about. Just expressed my sincere happiness. I understood what would have happened. Earlier, whenever I looked at her face, I used to be intrigued. She wore nothing. No ornaments, no bindi, and no vermillion in the parting… but she had a daughter, a big girl who was studying in college. I often felt like asking whether she was a unwed mother or separated from her husband. Whether she was divorced or was a widow? But I couldn’t muster courage to ask. I was afraid that she might feel hurt. That day, on knowing that she had a husband who had comeback to her, I felt truly happy, because as she was happy. I asked her if she felt no bitterness, no resentment towards her husband who ditched her twelve years ago leaving behind a ten year old daughter. She told she didn’t. She told that she had gone beyond any expectation and she was just happy that her daughter had got back her father. A young girl needs a father’s presence and that’s what was important. She told that she didn’t feel any resentment and in fact she had forgiven him completely. I looked at her very thin, pale but beautiful face. It was the face of a saint. I knew she had risen above the ordinary. At this level, nothing could have disturbed her peace. She went on to tell me how she lost her sanity after her husband had abandoned her with the daughter and had gone away. She had wanted to run away from everything, from known places, from family, friends and relatives, from everything familiar. She went to Delhi, requested a complete stranger for accommodation and had got shelter in their family. She did a job there too, for sometime. Later she migrated to Bangalore and worked in a school. With time, when sanity returned little by little and reality settled in, she came back to Bhubaneswar and settled down with her daughter. She started working in a school and made her students and her daughter her life. She channelized her loneliness and the energy of her youth in another direction.She started living for all the people who she came in contact with and developed a fellow feeling with the whole human kind. Thus she became love. Love that flows and only gives. Love that patiently understands and never thinks of being hurt and takes revenge or thinks negatively of anything or anyone. 

Minu’s is a sad story. There are sadder stories upon this earth. But people like Minu know how to love completely. True love forgives and accepts. It never thinks of causing harm, retaliating or taking revenge. It understands, forgives and forgets. True loves purifies our soul. It goes through pain and tears, but it elevates our conscious to a new height and ultimately liberates us. If only people could understand this, life on earth would be heaven.

The Wanderer

It was very dark 
where the train stopped.
A few passengers got down, nobody got in,
but in the faint light I saw somebody sitting or crouching
at a distance, his or her robe
fluttering violently in the wind that had 
picked up speed.

 As the wheels started rolling in'
a line of houses showed themselves 
in their own lights,
the grills on the outer walls visible
with a  comfy feeling about them.
I dreamt  myself in one of those houses,
living with a husband and two or three children,
a scene dipped with blissful domesticity.

I imagined and perceived it so odd
as I looked at the wall of darkness outside
and the two three lights visible and flickering
among the trees.

How can I be in that house,
in that tiny bit of world
when the whole sky, the coconut and palm,
the mysterious light above the dark corridor of
the earth beckoned me, when all the people 
who lived their small and big lives,
Sometimes lonely in the crowd,
and a crowd in their solitude fought, smiled and 
got involved and shrank away sometimes,
called me, 
to be a part of them.

How can I be at one place,
When I needed to stretch my hands and touch
the existence with my soul, to wander 
in aloneness and see the magnificence of
everything with my eyes wide open,
and pick up the gifts that were mine alone,
until another wanderer came along,
and picked up the muse
with solid and fearless, unwavering hands.



 

The Waiting

That one was a jealous girl,
Only wanting to be loved the most,
Attended the most.

The there was that girl, who wanted to be
seen as human,
Fighting and struggling, inside and outside,
Flinching at the unjust and unwritten rules for women,
She kept on fluttering her wings
for quite some time.

Then she fell in love with letters,
letters that never defined men,
Letters that never revealed the lies and the fear,
They only flew over misty rivers and
mountain lofts,
The time also came when she cried her tears into the rivers
and healed up.

A time came when she found herself,
in pages,
pages that smelt of defiance and disobedience
Pages that negated all the truths of
all the rats, and all the sheep,
She found that life can exist,
Without choices,
Neither climbing,nor falling,
Only in staying wherever you are.

One day she met a shadow,
That held the promise of immeasurable births
and new moons,
Which waited for only the earth and the sky,
to send it a sign,
But before time, the shadow grew restless
and lost its shape,
It scattered its strength and died.

Nowadays she looks around, for a lurking hope,
Of meeting that shadow again,
Of a birth again,
Days and moments smoke out and vanish
without a trace of anything,
Except a waiting for the unborn.

A Visitor called Death

Only that day,
she was plucking flowers for her Gods,
and chatting with the good neighbours,
Talking of her owes, and her falling health,
but she shone like the afternoon sun
her poplar like body standing strong and erect on her feet,
her forehead clear and voice crisp like potato chips.

Munna, the boy who lived in her house on rent,
was running from here to there and
there to here since early dawn,the next morning,
His face, a wooden block
divulging nothing of what was wrong,
The maid went to her house at eight, and was driven away,
by her freshly arrived son and daughter,
She went to another house and wailed,
Alas! Rekha Maa is dead.

The news spread, and people came flocking,
Rekha Mousi lay , with her lips slightly parted,
cold and dead on a mat.
Women whispered, the frowns questioned,
'How did she die?', she who was only fifty seven and as
straight as a stick,and as agile as a d0e,
What death embraced her in one night?

Munna, who had become her only salvation in a life
of utter solitude, sobbed and
told, Mousi had all the lights on at twelve in the night,
and didn't pick up a call,
He called her son and daughter at midnight
and told his fear,
And they came running from eighty miles,
and broke a door,to find Mousi sprawled on the ground,
as dead as a stone.
Another son expressed sorrow over phone from distant States,
He will reach for sure and attend the Karmas, he told.

How did Mousi die?
Why death visited her so untimely, so young,
without any pre-signs?A heart stroke?Or a brain stroke took her,
Or some secret pain, or the loneliness of years after
her husband died and the children left the nest?
The sons and daughters looked serious and sombre
in their loss,
Munna and his wife looked pale,
and fearful,their faces smeared with tears.

At nine in the morning,
The funeral party left ,with a neighbour at the wheel,
The driver simply refused to drive,
The son, and Munna sat with the body
at the back, Mousi in the same saree and the blouse
with silvery patterns,
she loved to dress to her liking.

Rekha mousi went away,
with many of her older neighbours still alive and shocked,
Accepting that the call came when it came,
Age or health notwithstanding.
All wondered at the enigma of her death.
The death of a woman full of life,
a lonely woman who filled lives with her rantings and laughter.

The Interview

One interview didn't go very well. It happens sometimes.I learnt that I don't know certain things and I know certain things. And I can learn the things I don't know provided that my children need those things and I have the capability and the drive to learn and relearn. But in my mind there were questions.Does memorizing poems makes a good teacher? I can love and remember Frost's lines in a serious poem and can recite it, but I may not like an humble poem by Wordsworth. We don't live in the romantic era anymore. Our life is diversified. We can't cram our mind with not so necessary information. English has become functional. Our children need to know how to write a job application, how to dominate a group discussion, how to write compositions and e-mails. They can read and read and write and write and can become Arundhati Roys and Bikram Seths. They can get a Man-Booker prize some day. We need originality, we need expression, we need crisp and correct English. We don't need to know what is "mood". We need to know our moods and transform them into authentic writing and speaking. The world and our lives are changing. While retaining the value system, we need to move ahead. Rote learning has given place to comprehension and understanding. We cannot remain stagnant in nineteenth century.

Interviews are great teachers and eye openers. They teach us great spiritual lessons. If they make us feel disappointed, they teach us that expectations beget disappointments. We feel bad because we have nurtured a seed of EGO within us. And when this ego is hurt, we feel angry, shaken and frustrated with others. But the fault doesn't lie with others. It lies within our self. We have created a self image of ours and if this image is tarnished in any way, we are hurt. It tells that we have allowed our happiness and peace to be dependent upon others. This way we become slaves of outside agencies and allow them to hurt us.

The setbacks also tell us that life is a journey with ups and downs. It cannot always be a straight line. When we get happiness, we don't think how they came our way. Rather we smugly think that we are worth it. But when we meet failures on the way, we question, 'Why us?'Thus failures propel us to meditate on the truths of life and to learn to accept life both way.But we are so attached to our comforts, joys and successes that we cry havoc when we face defeat at times. We are unable to accept things and feel frustrated.

The solution lies within ourselves. We should make ourselves so strong that no external power can hurt us. We should be humble and should keep our expectations low. Besides, we should know what we really are and should not depend upon the opinions of other people to know what we are. When we have shed this dependency on external factors, we will be immune to pain and hurt. And we will be humble enough to forgive people and love everybody from our pure centre.

The world of knowledge is vast. We have so much to learn from others. I am happy that I could understand my problem immediately and purge my mind of negative thoughts so as to be humble and establish my faith in the almighty as I always do. I have learnt to be grateful to the people who let me know my weaknesses and my strengths. This understanding becomes our source of peace and contentment and our ultimate salvation.

Reminiscing

It's a cobweb or a jigsaw puzzle?
Or it's just time streaming forward?
Moments and faces lose their shape and fade out,
People you have allowed to shear your heart
walk past you nonchalant
with a new song in their heart,
You fall apart,despite yourself,
and dwell upon your rights,
the pluses and minuses that tell you
that may be you never deserved love.
But you gave away unreserved
without thinking,
what darkness and deceit awaited you.

Your violated self doesn't revolt, but questions only,
because love still lives, for its own,
like a cloudless sky changing its colours softly,
evanescent and lingering sometimes.

The beloved that was born of love,
lost itself somewhere,
but your widowed self turns
the yellow pages sometimes,
in tender melancholic moments,
and holds the dead to the heart.

Another eventful weary day ends ,
without intimate conversations between
lonely souls,
and without the maddening touch of love.

A Day Named after Teachers

Gone are the days when the teachers used to be revered as Gods. In today's times the teachers and the students are equal partners in the process of teaching and learning. Thanks to the knowledge explosion because of advanced technologies, teachers of today are not a group of professionals who know everything. Children of today are exposed to a lot more things than they used to do earlier and they know things even teachers don't know. So, a teacher has become a facilitator, a guide and a friend who not only teaches but also learns from the students. The teacher also grows in all directions because of the curiosity and the inquisitive attitude of the students.

A teacher's life is full of activity if she or he thinks that it is a great responsibility that God almighty has bestowed on him or her. She has to be loving, just, impartial, fair and compassionate. She has to be strict lest her students go astray and don't grow in a balanced way. She has to listen to a hundred complains each day and act as a psychologist and a counsellor pacifying them , understanding their sentiments and healing their wounds. Her heart shifts in its place seeing any one of her children sick, pale-faced or bleeding.She has to inspire her children each and every day to study, to behave, to be disciplined and good. She has to deal with hundreds of restless, impulsive, talkative and fickle young minds. She has to stand for hours at a stretch and strain her voice to disburse knowledge. She has to find ways to mould the character of a pampered and arrogant child who errs continuously. She has to handle the children who are disabled, shy and subdued. She has to make them laugh, make them study and make them write their lessons.

A teacher is a professional, yes. She works for a salary. But a teacher is also somebody who has unfathomable love for her children that she gives out every day, every minute, from a pure centre, from a pure heart and that love has no price. It is very easy to be a jobholder but it is very difficult to be a teacher, especially in the changing world scenario where every day is a new revolution.

Education has been transformed into a commodity now and the parents are like customers.Educational institutions are mushrooming everyday and there is cut throat competition to market education. Old values and notions are dying and man has become prosaic and materialistic. The teachers fraternity is not held with reverence anymore. The definition of success is being counted in terms of marks. In these difficult times, working under a lot of pressure every moment and trying to strike a balance between delivering the goods and maintaining a value system and a proper standard, the teacher is often sandwiched. Engaged in teaching and evaluation, besides a hundred other related tasks, the life of a teacher is hardly easy. But it is a teacher who is busy grooming our young generation and shaping the future of a country every day.

On the occasion of this teacher's day, let's raise a toast to teachers. Let's wish them good luck. May God help them in sustaining their energy so that they never cease to be what they are; the builders of a generation and the architects of generations to come.