The Talented Damma :D

Today while lazying around on a relatively slow Saturday, I was wondering what to do. I was standing by my window. I noticed my potato plants and remembered that it was from my grandmother that I first learnt how easy it is to grow potatoes. While my first two attempts at growing them had not been successful at all, the third attempt this year seems to have finally reaped some results. Third time is a charm, I suppose. 

Anyway, while feeling excited about my potatoes, I got to thinking about all the different things that I have learnt from my grandmother over the years. Be it gardening hacks, making her famous mutton curry and pulao, knitting, embroidering, there are so many things that I have learnt or tried to learn from her. My grandmother is an extraordinary woman. She is the kind of woman who usually does not appear in the limelight but is always taking care of everything quietly behind the stage. She always thoughtfully makes everyone's favourites when they are in town or when it is a special occasion. When my parents came to visit me last month, she sent my favourite pickle. When I visit her, she always remembers to make her delicious cabbage dish which, in my opinion, nobody in the family can make yet (I have tried and tried but it is never the same). For my elder brother, whenever he is visiting, she always makes Malpua (a crusty pancake sort of thing soaked in sugar syrup). Other than this, she makes all the season's specials without fail. If you visited her during winter, you can count on finding Gajar-ka-Halwa in the fridge.     

There are lots of things about my grandmother that I admire. Not just my grandmother, my grandfather too. My grandparents have had a life full of adventure, challenges, victories and experiences which I wish I could preserve and share. I have always wanted to write a book capturing the lives of my grandparents and the amazing stories that I have heard from them over the years. Unfortunately, I am not much of a writer and I have not yet been able to make much progress as far as the book is concerned. 

Maybe one day I will have it all down. Earlier today, my mother told me that my grandmother has caught a cold and is not feeling so well. I felt like doing something nice for her and found myself wishing that I had made more progress on the book. However, until I do, I thought I will write this little piece acknowledging everything that my grandmother is and everything that I have learnt from her. <3   

Hate the crime and not the criminal. *T&C apply?

We have all heard the saying "hate the crime and not the criminal". While I agree that in some cases good people make really bad mistakes, I got to wondering whether it is always possible to separate the crime from the criminal. In a lot of situations, what a person does is reflection of who the person is. In such cases, how do you separate the crime from the criminal? For instance, if a really poor man after starving for days ends up stealing, you may be able to not hate the man even though you may a absolutely hate what he did. However, if someone habitually commits domestic violence can you really just dislike what the person does without disliking the person? Even in our daily lives, if we see someone misbehaving with or hurting people we care about, it is possible to merely dislike what the person does without letting it affect the way we feel about the person? And if that is indeed possible, is it really fair to the person who is being hurt if nobody feels any differently about the person causing the hurt? 

While I believe that people should be tolerant towards others, maybe just sometimes judging people for their actions is the right thing do. Especially if what they do is a reflection of the kind of person that they are. Otherwise people who do wrong would never face any consequence for their actions unless what they do is severe enough to have them formally punished by an authority. 

Maybe.....

Married to a slave?

 While slavery is officially outlawed, do we often fail to see the biggest form of slavery camouflaged all around us? Before I say anything further, I'd like to say that I don't wish to generalize the situation, hurt any sentiments or say that this happens with everyone. I am sure there are many exceptions to what I am about to say, and frankly, thank god for that! This is just an observation I made about many around me. 

Right from childhood we see our mothers and grandmothers and aunts and sisters cook, clean, look after the house, tend to the children and practically do everything else for their husbands. We see it so often around us that we hardly ever find anything wrong with it. In fact, most of us grow up thinking that it is the ideal way to be. Some of us even find it objectionable from a feminist perspective. Which it probably is.

But what I am concerned about today is whether marriage is just a way of turning women into glorified slaves with certain privileges. A situation where men are the masters and their wives do everything for them. In some cases, the sense of ownership is so strong that women are not only made to do everything at home but they are also physically abused, beaten up and ill-treated. Even women who are earning do everything else in the house while the men relax, drink, sleep or do about anything else but help out. Unfortunately what makes it worse is that many women grow up thinking that this is normal or even ideal, that it is what keeps a family together and that it is done out of love. 

How is this any different from slavery? Just because a slave loves the master or the other way around doesn't change the fact that they are still a slave right? Something to think about. 

Thinking out loud

 I have not posted here in a long time. Life just got so busy. I guess I did not have much time to ponder on things. Or even if I did, may not have occurred to me to write it down.

Today, however, while having a conversation with a friend I got to thinking about something that always leaves me confused and unsure...

I always believe that people should respect each other's opinion and choices even if they don't make any sense to them or even if they seem ridiculous or absurd to them. I often have heated arguments with people who feel that their opinion is the correct and supreme and anything to the contrary is nonsense. If people don't respect and accept things they don't agree with, I believe there will just be intolerance, violence and dictatorship. 

Having said that, I often wonder, am I going against my own principle if I am questioning someone's right to judge someone else? What I mean is, by saying that people should not judge or be intolerant about things they disagree with, am I myself disrespecting someone's else's right to judge?

Which brings me to my next question, is there an extent to which people should have the right to make choices free of judgement? Is it ever okay to not respect someone else's opinion? For example, if someone tells me a woman belongs in the kitchen, I do mot think I will ever be able to respect that opinion. Does that make me a hypocrite?

I wonder.... 

One more cup of coffee?

A few days back I saw a huge pile of used paper cups at a tea stall near my office and started wondering... I'm sure all of you reading this know that we need to save paper and minimize the use of plastic and environmental impacts and what not. Most of us have been studying it every year in EVS classes in school. But we often miss out on how all of what we have studied and what we read and hear is connected to the simple aspects of our everyday lives.

When I saw the huge pile of disposable tea/coffee cups my first thought was whether they were made of plastic or paper. If they were made of plastic, I could only imagine how much plastic waste is created by these cups every day. And if they are made of paper.. well, I read up on it and it turns out that the cups are either made of plastic or they are plastic or wax coated paper cups. The real shocking thing about this is that millions of trees are cut down and billions of gallons of water are used every year to produce these cups. 

This is not fresh news ofcourse. We often read about certain things or know about certain facts but we are so used to our busy routines that we overlook how everything we read or hear applies to each of our lives. Obvious things like printing on both sides of a paper are more commonly implemented. But little things like minimizing use of disposable cups or straws or paper tissues often escape our attention. So this post is for all of those people like me who want to make a difference. Lets raise our mugs to no more paper cups at work. :)

 

Our Everyday Heros

We often come across strangers who do something to help us when we are in a bad fix and then they disappear and we never see them or hear from them again. Even though they do things they did not need to do and nomatter how grateful we feel at that moment, we often mention them a few times and forget about them after a while. Their heroism is never rewarded, mentioned or remembered.

Recently I met one such person while travelling from Jalgaon to Pune. We had boarded the bus without prior reservation and there was only one seat available. The conductor said that a few people would be getting off in about 2 hours and we could then take their seats. So I let my mother occupy the vacant seat and I thought I would stand until I get a seat. It was about 11pm and I was the only person standing in the darkness of the bus when the conductor took pity and offered me a seat behind the driver and told me that I could sit there until I got a proper seat. Right when I was more or less comfortably seated behind the driver a man approached us and said something to the conductor in Marathi which I did not understand. The conductor then asked me to step inside and on doing so I understood that there was a couple with a kid sitting right next to my mother. On observing the entire situation, the husband had volunteered to sit outside in the cold behind the driver while I occupied his AC reserved seat.

I do not know his name. Neither do I remember his face. But his act of heroism is something which deserved some mention somewhere. So I decided to write a post on him to pay tribute to him and to all the other everyday heros who save the day but whose names we never get to know.

If you have had such similar experiences please feel free to share. :)

Can we fight without being fought?

I was faced with a weird dilemma the other day at work while drafting a legal document. Have you ever been in a situation where you were at a loss about what to do because the other person was being too honest? I was faced with a similar situation where i was drafting a reply and i came across the following paragraph:

I started the drafting fully geared to contradict everything the opponent said and make his case a complete nothing. And then this innocent honesty threw me completely off track. You must be wondering what this is all about so let me explain a few things about legal drafting.

It it standard legal practice that while replying to any document filed by the opponent, if any statement is not categorically denied it is implied that such statement is admitted by us. So over the years it has become the practice to deny every statement of the other party irrespective of whether it is true or false. For example, if the opponent writes that apples and oranges are fruits, we write that it is denied that apples and oranges are fruits. Because, well, when we are arguing, are we ever humble enough to admit that the other person is right about something? Not really. We often keep fighting knowing that we are wrong and in most cases the favour is returned by the other person and the momentum of the fight stays intact. This is the same in case of a legal battle. We deny everything the opponent says just because the opponent said it.

I felt bad for the person who drafted this because it is almost never that you find someone who is honest enough to agree to anything the other party says. I found it almost childlike with the broken English and the repeated "I didn't know". To be honest, our case was not even completely justified and yet I was prepared to counter him if he fought. But i didn't know how to react when he was being honest. Just like we have learnt since childhood that you do not accept sweets from a stranger, as a lawyer I have been taught to say " it is denied that..... (basically whatever you said)" but how do i deny something when the person is agreeing with me?

Maybe our mind is so conditioned to deal with people trying to hurt us that we are at a complete loss when someone is not. I can recall so many instances when I've taken a step back from helping people assuming ill about them. Haven't we all thought twice before giving money to a poor person doubting whether he will buy medicines with it or gamble with it? Or even worse, in this moral dilemma we don't help the person and then later find out that the person was indeed suffering and not trying to fool us for money. I'm not saying its always wrong cz we defend ourselves only after being tricked in the past. But what do we do in a situation where we are prepared to fight and the other person lays their arms down? We can either lay down our arms too or we take advantage of the situation shoot at an unarmed person. In this case, unfortunately, i was compelled to do the latter but i hope in real life we can make a better choice. I hope we don't reach a stage where we are so used to acting a certain way that we no longer have the choice to make that choice. I hope we do not eventually become fighter robots.