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.

Urgent Action Needed!

We must have all heard the saying "charity begins at home" on various occasions. Earlier today, while having a conversation with my brother, we ended up talking about how it has not rained in two months in London and what measures can be taken at individual and government levels to control global warming. Global warming is something to which I was first introduced in the primary years of school and unfortunately, over the years, the situation has only turned from bad to worse.

Warning: In case you are planning to quit reading further let me tell you, this is not one of those long boring essays about what global warming is, how it is caused blah blah.

This post is just about some small things we can do everyday to help us all live in a better place. Sometimes we are all aware of a situation but in our busy schedules we do not realize that there are small things we all can do to make a difference. So I thought i'll list out a few small things which we can do to, well not save, but help the planet. Here goes:

• Reuse: I know its not possible or plausible to completely say NO to plastic but maybe we can try and reuse plastic goods as much as possible. Like carrying plastic bags when we go to the market instead of taking new ones, buying reusable glass soft drink bottles instead of plastic ones whenever possible, reusing the plastic bottles as water bottles or flower vases and so on.
• Beat to heat: Using ACs is a habit for many of us. Some of us even sleep in AC rooms in winter because, lets face it its comfortable. But if we all consciously try to minimize the use of ACs as far as possible maybe we can give the planet a chance to cool down.
• Use public transport: I know that we all enjoy luxury and it is always more pleasant to just sit in your car and travel from one place to another instead of walking in the sun or mud and fighting to find space in crowded buses or trains. But even if we all use public transport instead of private cars or cabs 3 out of 10 times that still make a HUGE difference globally. 
• Save water: Every drop counts. Be it while brushing the teeth or taking a bath, we can make sure that we take only what we need.
• Say NO to paper: Many offices and government bodies have already become paperless. We can all try to reuse paper, print on both sides, take notes on the laptop etc.
• Reduce meat consumption: Yes its true. In one of my previous posts I have explained how consuming too much meat causes global warming in the long run.

I know that at this stage it is difficult to absolutely prevent global warming through individual efforts but if every 5 out of 10 people did a little bit for the world, maybe it wouldn't be a bad start after all. As John Lenon said,

"You may say I'm a dreamer

But I'm not the only one

I hope some day you'll join us

And the world will be as one"

From non-vegetarians to carnivores?

Many of you might have heard about the recent meat scam in West Bengal. Basically, a huge chain was apparently supplying rotten chicken and the meat of dogs and other dead animals picked up from dump yards and garbage. Anyway, leaving the gruesome details apart, a meat crisis was naturally a cause of immense discontent for a non-vegetarian lover like me.

Soon after the scam broke out, I had a dinner date with my office colleagues and we got to thinking what we could have at the restaurant. Even though all of us enjoyed veg food, a dinner date did not sound complete without some meat and chicken. We weighed our options between dead dog and rotten chicken and finally ended up ordering chicken. All this while, there was one question that kept on playing in my mind, why does it feel okay to eat certain animals and weird to eat others?

I have always been a big foodie and I have had chicken, mutton, beef, pork, quail, squid, octopus and various other kinds of non-vegetarian delicacies. And while the choice of edible and inedible animals vary across the world, I am sure all of us are comfortable consuming some animals while consuming some others do not feel so okay. Dogs and cats for instance, do not fall in the edible category for many of us, even though we are totally fine with mutton or pork. I wonder why. Is it because they are domestic creatures? But then so are cows and buffaloes.

Today I read an article about a man who was jailed for selling cat samosas for 8 years. Why is it that eating some animals seem cool but eating some others don't? Is it because of mindset or is it because of our love for some animals and indifference about others? Does the love for different kinds of meat make us more animal like or is it just a lifestyle choice like clothes? Why is it so that selling chicken samosas will make you rich but selling cat samosas will land you in prison? I wonder....

Selfie Suicides

This post has been long pending and I am sure numerous people have written on it before but, what the hell, one more wouldn’t hurt. I was having a conversation one day with my cousin, my mother and my aunt about a relative who was sitting on top of a Mumbai local train and got electrocuted. It reminded me of a news report about a person who died the same way, only he was posing for a selfie while on top of a moving train. This got me thinking, how much is a selfie worth?

These days the selling features of a phone are not its call features but by how advanced the selfie camera is. They call it selfie phones. But the question is, how important should selfies be to a person, enough to risk their lives, or even worse, risk other people’s lives? I had read about an incident where two students climbed on to a rock that rise out of the sea during low tide to click a selfie with his friends and did not notice the that the tide came back. They were swept away when a man who lived nearby noticed this and dived. He saved one of the three youngsters but drowned himself. Human nature is such that people constantly need appreciation and acknowledgement. Selfies are a perfect way of demonstrating oneself before the world in the most daring, exclusive and exquisite ways. But is it okay to fall into water canals or drown in rivers or get hit by a train in this pursuit of appreciation? I doubt.

Maybe if we all took a little time off our busy schedules to appreciate the people around us for little things like a new haircut or a new recipe or an assignment well done or maybe just for providing good company people won’t feel the need to go to daring extents to be appreciated. Here’s hoping. J

Cluey Part II : Shantiniketan'er Toto-wala.

This is a longish post but I hope you can make it to the end.
My elder brother introduced me to the term cluey which in one word explained what exactly I felt when I wrote my last post. I think all of us feel cluey about something or the other quite often in out lives and the feeling cannot be better explained. For all of you who haven't come across the word "cluey" before you could take a look at this.
So now that you know what cluey means. I must admit that it is a feeling I experience very very often. A few days back, I had taken a trip to Shantiniketan with my mother, aunt and my cousin. It was quite an eventful journey but this one incident with a Toto-wala is something which ended up having the strongest impression on my mind and has left me feeling very cluey for a long time. So what happened is this. In some places in India including Shantiniketan, a Toto is the faster equivalent of a cycle rickshaw. In small places like Shantiniketan, Totos and cycle rickshaws are actually the only mode of conveyance. On our first day there we spoke to one such Toto-wala (Toto driver) to take us around the next day and agreed on an approximate rate. The next morning, Raju (our Toto-wala) was there before time and as discussed he took us too all the places that had been agreed upon. He was a youngish man in his 20s I suppose. He was soft-spoken and respectful and as you can assume, the parents found him very agreeable. We started at 10 in the morning and everything was comfortable apart from the heat. Raju had to cover almost all of his face with a cloth to tackle the loo. By the time we got back it was almost 4 in the evening and that is when things got a little bad. As you can imagine, after the whole day of driving, Raju probably realized that he had charged insufficiently the day before and when it was time to make the payment he started asking for Rs. 800 instead of Rs. 300 like he had said the day before. Obviously the parents lost it, scolded him and paid him Rs. 600.

Now if you ask me, I think expecting him to be satisfied with 300 after that long trip was not fair at all. Also it should be mentioned here that while my Aunt lost it a little bit and called him a cheater and what not he never spoke rudely or disrespectfully. Just kept saying very sadly, "ete hobe na didi, shotti bolchi. Chalate parbo na ami." ("This is not enough Ma'am. I swear. It wont be enough"). For a moment I thought he was going to start crying. However, I do understand the grown-ups point of view a little, "if it was not enough you should have said so before!". Anyhow they finally handed him 600 bucks and we left. That same day we had a train back home and earlier we had asked Raju if he could drop us to the station. While we were leaving, he called back and in spite of being sreamed at so much asked, "Didi station e jaben toh" (You will go to the station with me right?). The parents were almost about to start grumbling again when I quickly managed to convince them to let him take us. Back at home my aunt kept complaining as to why he behaved like that and he was so wrong and that my mom should have stuck to 300 and not paid him extra. She said they were very clever and only tried to extort as much as possible. Anyway, he came again an hour or two later and dropped us to the station. This time the rate was again pre-decided and he did not say anything more about it till we were turning to leave. Just when we got off and were about to walk away he turned to my mother, joined his hands and said. "Bhool hoye geche. Khoma korben. Kichu mone korlen na toh?" which means, "I am so sorry. I was wrong. Please don't mind."
Now I know that bus drivers and cab drivers and rickshaw puller everywhere are generally known for misbehaving and extorting unreasonably. But all I want to say is maybe not all of them are bad people. Maybe some of them are nice. Maybe we do not know what conditions they live in or the difficulties they face that push them to behave badly. Maybe sometimes we should be a little patient with them and not assume the worst. Some of them are genuinely good people stuck in bad situations.

A Lesson Learnt!

So I am writing a post after a year.. Not that I forgot about my blog but somehow or the other it kept getting postponed and before I knew it so many months have gone by. Anyway, I recently had an experience and I decided to finally write about it.
I met a lady. I had gone to Mumbai and was putting up at a guest house on sharing basis. On my first night there I was sharing the room with an oldish lady. She said she was Gujarati but she lived in Kenya. You must be thinking why I suddenly decided to write about her. Well, to be honest, I was sitting uselessly during internship one day and I suddenly remembered about the blog and was determined to write a post. So I tried to think about something I could write on and this lady popped into my head and it made sense to me.
So this lady, (either she did not tell me her name or I cant seem to remember it for some reason), asks questions. From the time I entered the room she kept asking me a million questions about my life, my work, my family, my affairs and every other possible aspect of my life. Now that might sound harmless to you but in my defense, that was the first time that I had been alone in an unknown city all by myself. The point being I was quite taken aback by the degree of inquisitiveness and was a little scared to be honest. I did not know where she actually came from, what she was doing there and why she wanted to know so much about me.
Since childhood we are taught not to talk to strangers or take sweets from them. And there I was in an unknown city in a room with a stranger who would not stop asking me everything about myself. So my first impression of her was that of pure suspicion and dislike.
Later, the next day she came to me in the morning and asked me, "are you unhappy that I moved into the room?" I was not prepared for a question like that and as much as I would have liked to say, "yes very much so", something inside me slightly softened for her. That night she asked me when I leave for office in the morning and the next morning I was really surprised when I overslept a little bit and she tried to wake me up so that I don't get late. This was just one of the many things she did during her 3 day visit which completely changed the way I felt about her. She was concerned when I kept sneezing and offered me fruits when I did not have anything to have for breakfast. She offered to make my bed when I was getting late and she took care of me like she has known me since childhood. She left three days later and told me before leaving, "Hey, I am leaving today. Won't be bothering you anymore." She left that night and believe it or not I actually missed her when she was gone. She taught me how wrong it is to always assume the worst about people, something we probably do quite often in our lives.

Apocalypse Now?

The recent earthquakes and the other natural and man made hazards suddenly got me thinking one day whether this is the approaching end- of the world and of civilization. We are all aware that doomsday is long gone and I am sure almost all of us took a mental note in 2012 when the world was after all in one piece. But what if we have been imagining the end all wrong?

Be it because of the movies or just imagination, but I have always imagined the end to be a day when the earth sort of sucks in every living soul and everyone is gone and there is nothing left of what we called the Earth. But what if that's not it? Since I was a child until very recently, I had no idea what an earthquake felt like, never thought I would ever know what it was like to have an earthquake. However, in the recent past over the last year or so, I have experienced around 4-5 earthquakes already. It definitely shows something is seriously wrong. It might be due to the deforestation or the planting of huge rods on the Earth for building metro-rails and flyover or the building of huge multiplexes. It is a world where people live inside mobile phones and are more familiar with their office computers than their families, a world where the poor is becoming poorer and the rich even richer. The newspapers are filled with killings, bombing, rape, protests and what not. It becomes a task to actually look for some happy news. Everybody knows the effects of global warming, and yet the number of air conditioners and air conditioned classrooms never ceases to increase. People complain about climate change and yet never stop a moment and do something about it in their own little way.

When I thought about all this I though maybe apocalypse is really coming this time but on second thoughts, what if its apocalypse now? What if this is the end of the world everybody has been dreading? Maybe apocalypse is not the end of mankind and the earth after all, not literally at least. Maybe it is this end of humanity, of rationality and of peace. To me it sounds pretty much like the end already. Maybe everybody should just stop and think whether the blind race is worth it or maybe its time to open the eyes and take a step towards what is actually worth the while.

Birthday calls or birthday pings?

Birthdays are meant to be special whether you are a year old or a hundred. If you look at it that way, the days before the birthday are the ones more exciting that the birthday itself. The birthday comes and before you know it its gone. For me, one of the many things that I have looked forward to on my birthday are the numerous birthday calls one after another. It feels like birthday only when the phone starts buzzing and doesn't stop for a very long time. The sheer excitement of being on a call and having five more on wait is what has always made the birthday kick in for me. 

This ritual has however, unfortunately for me, changed a great deal over the years. While we get used to new and newer forms of technology or communication, we often leave behind the old methods. So, before Facebook and Whatsapp came people used to wish each other generally over calls and sometimes over a text message. Now people ping each other on Facebook and Whatsapp instead of wasting balance on a call. If you ask me why people do that, well, to begin with, you save balance, its easier, faster, also it often saves awkward conversation with people you do not like a lot but have to wish. However, if you look beyond these merits, it has a dark side like everything else. The personal touch and the little chit-chat which used to happen while calling and wishing a person is completely lost with the system of pings. For instance, you cannot call up a person, wish her and hang up. You have to talk for a bit and then politely hang up. Even though you might not always want to have a conversation with a person, that wish might have made a person's birthday a wish more special, an extra call on wait. Those of you who, like me, have counted the people who have called and who have texted etc. at the end of the day will understand what exactly I mean when I say "a wish more special". I accept that often I have taken the benefit of pinging people on their birthdays as well just like you. But that was probably because until now I had not realized what a call might be worth. It is okay to ping each other for every other thing, but I hope after reading this, some of you would try and keep the old system of calling and wishing going. These are the small little gestures that matter, that one remembers, that we should try to preserve against the force of time.

To dadu..

I always shared a special bond with my grandfather. He was the kind of person I looked up to, respected, pampered and loved to the greatest degree. He worked with the Air Force and had a very adventurous life. He married my grandmother when he was around 20 and since then they have been the most perfect couple. There were certain things in him like generosity, good humour, affection and so many other things that made him very popular among his friends, seniors, grandchildren, and everyone else including the rickshaw pullers, shopkeepers and maids. He was a person everyone loved. It is'st possible to sum up what he meant to me or what kind of a person he was but this would help all those who did not know him to relate to the picture.

And for all of you who knew him, you can imagine how amazed I was at the accuracy of the analysis of his handwriting which I found while going through his documents.

Are marriages really made in heaven?

They say "Marriages are made in heaven". I wonder if that is true. Last night I was travelling in a train with my friends. Because we had booked tickets last minute, my friend and I had only managed to secure RAC tickers which means that both of us were allotted only one berth. Nonetheless, we invited two other friends, who were supposed to leave the next day, to join us so that all of us could have fun even if it meant four people share one berth.

So anyway, as we boarded the train we found a lady sleeping on the sorry side lower berth that we were allotted. On asking her to move, she called out to her husband who was sleeping in the adjacent middle berth. The woman complained that she had a bad leg and could not climb onto any other upper berths, but gave us our berth nonetheless. The husband in the meanwhile got off from the middle berth and promptly climbed the berth above us and lay down comfortably. The lady kept standing and complaining to her husband that he had booked bad tickets and how he should be more careful. She said, "tumi erom ticket ketecho, ami ki korbo ebar?" meaning you have booked such tickets, what do you think I should do now?. In reply, her husband, almost showing a temper, says, "tomar ja iche tumi koro, ami jani na." meaning do what you feel like, I do not know. Helpless the lady made a failed attempt to climb on the one of the empty middle berths. Then having no other option she took out one of her sarees from her luggage and spread it out on the ground. Not being able to take it anymore, we insisted that the middle berth was not very difficult to climb and if she agrees we would help her to climb up and down whenever necessary as it was not possible for the four of us to manage in a middle berth even if we tried. We also offered to request some other male passengers on her behalf to let her sleep in their lower berths. However, she said she had other relatives in some other berth and left. All this continued for almost half an hour and all this while, the husband silently lay on his berth not uttering a word of concern or worry. Just as we were thinking she has managed to get a proper place with her relatives she came back saying they were on the other end of the train and she could not find them. We again offered to help in any way we could but she said she will just lie down on the ground and that it was okay. All this time her husband, instead of offering to help, kept insulting her and abusing her publicly. At such a point what shocked us the most was the fact that after she spread her saree on the floor, she started offering her husband tea, food and snacks and insisted that he went to sleep and made himself comfortable. He obliged. In the morning, when he woke up after being woken up by her a million times, she said "how much will you sleep? do you care that someone has stayed awake the entire night", and he says "So what should I do, that is none of my business". Then he ordered her to give him tea and while sipping the tea he kept going on and on about how he will fight with some relatives, how he is not at all selfish and everybody else is and so on.

Are marriages really made in heaven? Maybe they are. There are only two explanations to situations like these. Either marriages are really made in heaven so that the perfect woman is matched with a man so that in spite of such behavior she is capable of being a loyal wife and making the marriage last. Or, a far sadder explanation would be that most women in our society have grown up the believe that this is the normal male behavior and it is their duty to put up with it and serve him and to go on with the marriage no matter how much torture or humiliation she has to put up with. Out of the two which one would be a happier explanation, I wonder.

Disclaimer: To any man who is reading this, I do not mean any offence or do not mean to make any generalizations. It is merely based on my experience being a girl and on certain incidents in my life.

A better place.

Some say it's better to die young than suffer the hardships of old age. Others argue that no matter what, a person should be kept alive for as long as possible. Most of us are aware of the debate circling the notion of Euthanasia. While some believe that people should be released from extreme pain and suffering and should be allowed to die, other argue that death should not be brought voluntarily and a person should be kept alive till he dies naturally. However, it is only when one is in that place does one realize that the choice is not so simple. Recently, the death of my grandfather raised these questions in my mind. A part of me keeps telling me that its a good thing that he is at rest and relieved from all the things that were ailing him. But there is another part which tells me that in spite of everything if only he could have lived longer it would not be so bad after all. What he would have chosen had the choice been given to him, well, I don't know. Everyday I see so many people with so many sorts of ailments. Some are poor, some insane, some handicapped or disabled while some just unlucky in every way possible. Today itself, in the morning while climbing down the metro stairs I noticed a man climbing up from the other side. His legs were permanently bent forward from his knees and he was walking on his toes and I have never seen another person put in that much effort to climb stairs. He had a walking stick and another person to give him support, but to balance oneself while climbing up stairs like that is one hell of a task. Yet he was doing it, and he probably does it everyday, more than once. In spite of that he still chooses to live even if he has to put up fight at every stage. While I was walking from the metro station to my office I saw a beggar, a lady who looked like she was a hundred years old. Yet she kept the fight going and she asked every person to give her some money hoping at least one would listen. After seeing these things, I couldn't help but wonder, when we say a person is in a better place once he is dead and free from all the pain, perhaps its completely a built up notion to console ourselves. If there are so many people going through so much just to keep going a little longer maybe this is the better place after all. 

Is it a colourless world?

The theories of reflection suggest that the colours we see depend on the amount of white light it absorbs and the amount it reflects. White light is colourless light like ordinary daylight, ie, it is the light humans see when all the colours (VIBGYOR) make up visible light. The different colours which comprise white light have different wavelenghts. Light always travels in waves and wavelength is nothing but the distance between the crests of two waves. Scientists say that when white light falls on any object or surface, some of the wavelenghts get absorbed while others get reflected. We see the portion of the light which is reflected and that is how we perceive the colour of a thing. When all the colours are absorbed a thing appears black and if none of it is absorbed, an object appears white. For example, when white light falls on an apple, all the colours of VIBGYOR gets absorbed excepting red. The red light is thus reflected and that is why when we look at an apple it appears to be red. Similarly, a sunflower is yellow because it absorbs all colours other than yellow, a rose is red, a chocolate is brown and parrots are green.
So if every colour we see is a result of refection of white light falling on it, what is the actual colour of a thing, rather, does colour even exist? If white light was not there, would roses be blue, or green, or would they be colourless? The colours make everything looks beautiful, be it a garden or a temple or a bride. But, do all these things even have a colour of their own? What if white light is no longer available one day: would the world be colourless? Even if it were colourless, what does colourless actually look like? I wonder....

Bad news for the "purely non-vegetarians"!

Recently, a lot of news has been coming up regarding polar bears feeding on dolphins. Dolphins do not generally form a part of the diet of a polar bear but scientists have found out recently that there have been more than a few incidents where polar bears have been found to be feeding on dolphins. Research says that even though dolphins are found in the Arctics in the summer months, they have never been observed there during any other time of the year when the sea is covered with ice. However, with increasing global warming, there has been a strong retreat of ice which is why the dolphins might have wandered that far off during winters and fallen prey to hungry polar bears. Sad isn't it? Wait. It does not end there.
This is where the twist is. I found in an article that us non vegetarians are substantial contributors to global warming by virtue of our immense appetite for lip smacking steaks, Tandooris, kebabs and all the other hundreds and thousands of non-vegetarian delights. Surprised? So was I. Apparently, animal agriculture is responsible for 14.5% of the global greenhouse gases. Over the years, large areas of forests have been cleared for animal grazing.  Also, it consumes a major portion of the freshwater resources while contributing to air and water pollution. How many of us would have imagined while enjoying a big piece of mutton or a delicious pork chop that the contents of our plates would, somewhere far away, be changing the menu for a polar bear's dinner. Well. unfortunate as it is, it is true. Now the important question is how many of us are strong enough to do something about this. We have all in some occasion talked about global warming and how it should be reduced. How many of us are actually ready to take up this challenge of giving up our beloved non-vegetarian diets for the planet? It is a small step but yet for some of us a very difficult one. I do not know if I am strong enough to be able to do it immediately but I earnestly hope some of you reading this are.

The wealthy snatchers!

After many days of procrastination I have finally sat myself down to finally put into words the post that I has been pending for over a month. A few days back while I was reading the newspaper, I read an article which especially drew my attention. It said that studies and reports have revealed that the majority of the cases of snatching by bikers are committed by youths of extremely wealthy families. The wealthy youths to keep up with their wealthy lifestyles have taken to robbery and chain snatching which provide them with easy cash for expensive parties, malls, alcohol and drugs. This information got me thinking how most of us develop this wrong notion that the financially needy for the underprivileged are the ones who are responsible in any case of theft, pick pocketing or robbery. I do not mean to make any generalizations here but what I mean to say is most of you will understand or will be acquainted with the idea that all of us have at some point come across the idea that the poor are the ones behind most of the crimes like theft, snatch and run, drug dealing etc., driven by poverty or otherwise. Whether knowingly or unknowingly, people tend to blame the poor for anything that goes wrong be it global warming or the cleanliness of the city. I will not lie. In the Indian society it is very common for people to immediately blame the servants, drivers and caretakers for anything that goes missing even before giving it a proper search. They may be right in certain cases but is it not wrong to assume it by default? It is true that some of us are in financially weak positions while others are comparatively financially sound. Does that mean that the needy are always looting the rich to satisfy their necessities? The Article clearly suggested a different idea, not based on conceptions but based on reality.
It is time we change our notions and open our minds. What is important is that each one of us should first take responsibility of our own actions. Like just a few days back a friend of mine could not find her scissor. The first thing that came to her mind was the cleaning lady stole it. It is surprising how naturally it comes to us to blame someone for something just because they are weaker than we are. The scissor, however, was found just a minute later buried under a few books that had been carelessly kept on the table. Unfortunately I know that this is not isolated incident but is a very common mistake that one often makes. What is important is that everyone takes some time to think and to ponder before they form an idea, before they hurt someone, before they blame someone, before every small action that they take, before they shift the responsibility to someone else.