In Life & Afterlife

For the past few days my world is revolving around the profound concept of Reincarnation. Thanks to the amazing books by Dr Brain Weiss, it has opened a whole new spiritual realm before me, of which I was completely unaware of. Our souls are immortal, it is we humans who take the concept of life & death too seriously & believe that death is the end. 

Many near death experiences state that upon our death, our soul calmly floats over our body to do a life review. It contemplates about the lessons it has learnt during the lifetime & ascends higher towards a beautiful beam of light or the "ONE" which we name as "GOD".

The people you truly love, your soul mate , the person whose presence bathes you in bliss will never be separated from you. Your togetherness shall span over the many births you take, it is simply because you were destined to be together. Physical separation by death is transitory, your bonding is eternal.Do not grieve & curse the separation, your togetherness is planned by higher forces. Let it unwind, till then enjoy your journey.

I have found this beautiful excerpt from a book, " Listen to yourself, Follow your feelings, your heart & your mind. Forget about appearances or what others think of you as no one knows the secret of your soul nor the promise you came here to fulfill". What a profound thought ! 

I have composed few lines on soulmates.

As I pass through the woods & meadows,

casting some dwindling shadows,

I share happiness , borrow some sorrow,

in my journey between yesterday, today & tomorrow.

For I know, wherever I go,

You shall find me in my afterglow,

Dont cry, dont touch , dont follow,

My dwindling shadows in my afterglow

Do not mourn or grieve, if ever I shall leave,

our physical separation is transitory, very brief,

our love has the power beyond the earthly realm,

In our journey towards the eternal  beam

We shall reunite, we shall become one,

doesnt matter if the worldly battles are lost or won,

Our souls are eternal, free from shackles,

life & death are mere transitions in our travels

In the tryst of times,

When you cease to be you & I cease to be me,

Just look behind, in your journey of births & miles,

coz you will find me , looking at you , waiting for your smile.

Souls never die or perish, soulmates never separate.

Ladies Special

Years ago, I remember a show called "Ladies Special" that my mom used to watch. It was a story of a group of women,traveling in a  local train everyday to work, sharing their stories with each other right from maid's abseentism to life's strange dilemmas.

 Since then I wondered how it felt to travel in an all women's bus or train & what would the real  conversations be like. My tryst with frequent bus travels started during my undergraduate years when I used to travel home during weekends from my hostel. Just like the poster of movie Swades where ShahRukh is seen sitting in an overcrowded bus, my picture was similar.Luckily my travels back then used to happen during low rush hours & I used to settle for a seat that was occupied by me & my bag beside me.

Transfer to Odisha requires me to travel almost 70 km (back & forth) everyday. Yet for the wonderful feeling of being at home with parents, I chose to travel everyday. A recent family function had me explaining the location of my office, mode of my travel, arrival & departure timings to almost everyone who saw me & wondered what I was doing in Cuttack after getting a job in TCS :P  After the initial joy over my transfer , I got the warnings that "Aaj kal din kaal khoob kharap"(Now a days situations are very grim) & "shabdhane jeo" (Be careful while travel).

That brings me the thoughts of my travels.Every morning I travel by the "Ladies Special" bus run by Odisha government. A dream come true of some sort. As a ninja like creature after covering my head & face with scarf, I silently observe my fellow ladies who travel. The "special" in ladies special was justified by the winsome smile of a little girl who boarded the bus with her mother only to find that she could come in the bus because she was girl, she was special. Amidst the chitter chatter of ladies who travel for work to the young students who reserve seats beside them for their friends, morning travel is almost picnic.

I have seen various aspects in a woman's personality during my travels. One is of a fearless tigress who lambasts at hooligans who try to disrupt the bus journey through her fierce words & looks. The hooligans hide their tails between their legs like scared jackals & flee.She emerges during bus travels when some lecherous beast is trying to display his dirtiness with her, she shouts at the top of her voice,reprimanding the beast with her words & sometimes slaps, fearless to the core, reminding the people in the bus that she is the daughter of the land that worships Durga, the deity of supreme power & that she is totally intolerant to any activity that provokes her modesty.Kudos & salutes to the tigresses.

The other is of a shy & demure creature  who is fearful to even demand her ladies seat when it is occupied by a shameless male. She will choose to stand throughout her journey, getting pushed by others in a crowded bus, but she wont go & ask for seat from the male fearing the "SCENE" that could be created. Any girl demanding for her seat  invariably becomes the "Nari netri" ( female activist). The demure creature ranges from a management student to a working woman who is scared that the beast might attack her. She out of her own interest wants the beast to win by smiling & feeling proud by sitting in the ladies seat.By feeling superior, by feeling that he can get away with anything as his opponent is too demure & powerless.

A recent article I read stated that in India the chances of a girl getting molested in a bus are more than her getting a seat. I do not agree with this statement completely excluding the shameful incidents like Guwahati where many lecherous beasts gathered & performed a heinous act.In most cases of travel, I believe it is the choice of the woman that determines the outcome of any beast's evil intentions or actions.

She can either choose to be demure & silent, whether for a seat or any act of indecency,making the beast more powerful by making him feel that provoking the demure creature is his  damn right.Else she can  choose to be the daughter of Maa Durga , revolting valiantly to any act of indecency inflicted on her , teaching a lesson to the beast & his followers to never repeat the act again.

Dear Sisters , my appeal to you is to be absolutely intolerant to any act of indecency that you face anywhere as your silence then will become the source of your regret lasting a lifetime.Be Brave, Be Valiant, Be The Courage that destroys the beast in murderous rage !

Of love that lasted a lifetime

A few days back, my Dadu left us for his journey after life. My grandparents have had a lasting impression in my life, one of the reasons being my entire childhood spent in their loving hugs, stories, smiles & a belief that only good can exist in the world.They were both pristine people showering love right from their grandchildren to the maids working in their children's homes. 

A prose by Khuswant Singh in my std 11 English text book is still fresh in my mind. It describes a moment when he realizes that his grandmother has left for her heavenly abode.Losing someone you love dearly forever is one of the most strangest feeling anyone can ever experience. Reading the prose way back in std 11 had me in tears during the class, experiencing it in actual is a different story altogether.

 Thani-Dadu's love for each other is the kind of love we know through classic books or movies. It is unconditional,it never says till death do us apart coz even death cant be a hindrance to what they feel for each other.I have been a close witness to their eternal love, playful teasing, long letters, songs, stories of their romantic getaways, holding hands, silent smiles, sense of fulfillment to have each other around.Dadu in his own words had admitted to the fact that he was lucky to have married the most beautiful lady, my Thani.To my dear readers, let me assure you that this love exists in real life.

Thani's sudden demise & Dadu's parkinson's played a hide n seek in Dadu's mind.I will always be grateful to the almighty for erasing the fact of Thani's demise from Dadu's mind & heart. It would have been havoc otherwise. Yet I have also been tthe witness of Dadu's lonely longings for Thani during the painful moments of his illness. Thani had made all of us her world & Dadu had made Thani his world. Loving & losing is painful but the oblivion of the loss & the sheer hope of the return of one's beloved has been personified by Dadu.

I believe their love is the greatest, it is beyond life & death,beyond time, beyond the shackles of anything that has tried to keep them apart.They are together in life & death.

 That brings me to the concept of a twin soul, a soul at whom when you look at, you feel as if you have found yourself.Being with your twin soul can be the most blissful feeling one can ever get and with your twin soul you share nothing but most intimate & selfless love. In that way I am truly lucky, coz I dont have one but two twin souls, my dearest grandparents. I firmly believe that one day we will reunite, never to be separated again. This separation for now is transitory, the bigger truth is we are in love with each other for now & forever, together in life & death.

Yaariyaan

After shifting back to Odisha,last Saturday was my first official shopping date with my Mom :P Due to the incessant heavy downpour during our shopping, we went to have ice cream, hoping for the rain to subside in the meanwhile. As we were having the ice cream, I saw three teenage girls entering the parlour, giigling, chit chatting & poking each other about what to eat. Finally a few giggles later, they left drenching me in nostalgia.

As I came out & gaped at the continuous trickles of rain drops, my mind wandered in snapshots to my ILP, hostel,college & school. Each phase of my life has given me friends.Happy moments, crazy times, silent tears,sharing & caring & above all, timeless memories.

The school farewell is vividly in my mind.That was my first tryst with growing up I guess. All those people with whom I had spent so many years talking, giggling, sharing secrets,  competing from cycle races to ranks, nursing heart breaks,  slogging for exams,indulging in notoriety during classes, kneeling down during punishments, chit chatting for endless hours on phone, exchanging cassettes for favorite movie songs, roaming during lunch breaks, sharing notes, cracking jokes during morning assembly & finally being there for each other right from school functions to tuitions to punishments were all going one by one to deliver their farewell speeches & wishes. It was a strange feeling, I was wondering how would I ever do without them around.We promised that we would stay in touch, we are still in touch through FB & occasional calls.

Then college came & along with it came the wave of freedom & friendship. I must admit it that the best thing about my college CET was the amazing group of friends it gave me.People from various places,backgrounds uniting together to share a unique bond,sometimes facing the side effects of studying in a State govt owned college, sometimes attending birthday treats, sometimes studying together for internal exams, sometimes visiting the zoo & Dominoes after bunking classes,sometimes organizing a fresher's party in 2 days with budget constraints,looking back, those moments could be the best ever I could experience in my life.

Even the hostel life was truly amazing. The one bowl four spoons Maggi, late night chit chats,secret sharing, movies,outings, functions & pujas & above all a silent promise to be there for each other no matter what.The biggest thing I have learnt in hostel is the beauty of sharing, from a reserved person reluctant to share her bucket & clips to someone exchanging clothes to spoons while eating, one does come a long way.

The friends in got in my college have inspired me in their own ways.My school days were my during my fairytale childhood, when I was given the belief by my grandparents that only good & nice things existed in one's life & the world.My college days began with my grand mother's demise which was a period of huge void for me,where I faced a lot of issues personally & otherwise. Yet during those moments of darkness, it is my friends in CET who inspired me to be a better person, who taught me the valuable lesson to never give up on life & the fact that along with humility comes greatness.

I have met some amazing people during my internship in IIIT Bangalore. Crazy interns is the name we give our group, each one there is loaded with talent, be it coding or singing coupled with loads of humility, yet what makes me smile is the beautiful bond we share.I havent met them many times, nor do we speak on phone often, yet be it a crazy post in our group or chat, we start from where we left. They are special !

Then there was my ILP in TCS Trivandrum. A group of 30 people from different parts of the country coming together to design & execute a J2EE Project but ending up to be friends. The All girls trip to Ponmudi,the chandelier made of plastic bottles for an exhibition, the Rangoli during diwali,the slogging in  lab for final presentation & finally the painful good byes knowing that we might not get to see each other ever.This phase taught me that friendship doesnt limit itself to geographies or distances, its just the distance between heart to heart.

And finally Bangalore. There were two beautiful things I got in Bangalore. One was the reunion with my school friend who became my room mate.We have known each other for more than a decade, yet we had lost touch in  the past few years due to our circumstances.As we stayed together we relived all those moments  of  our growing up together, it felt as if we started all over again. The lesson I learnt here was that no matter what, true friendship never dies, it might go for hibernation during winters but it shifts to agility the moment spring returns.

The project team at TCS Bangalore also has a special place in my heart. All the inhibitions I had about the real life work situations,were shrugged off, thanks to the amazing people I met there. Each of them inspired me in their own way. I found my mentors, whom I can always look up to & friends I can always reach out to.

All this again brings me back to friendship.In Rabindranath Tagore's song "Purano sei diner  kotha" , he summarizes friendship in the most beautiful way, stating the happiness of two long lost friends who meet & remember all those happy moments they spent together, stating that even if time separates them, they shall reunite again.

Working in TCS Bhubaneswar, makes 12 hours of my day perish before me realizing it. I admit that once one's work life starts , it is difficult to stay in touch with friends regularly.I know I am not good at meeting up or SMS's or regular phone calls either.

But believe me my dear friends no matter where you are, I carry a little part of each of you in my heart always.And we shall start from where we left, the next time we meet, coz that I believe is the beauty of our friendship :)

 Cheers to life !

Havoc

There is one moment in one's life when there is so much of havoc that it creates a tornado of unpleasant memories.It is the very situation when anger takes over & ruins everything else. It is like a volcano erupting & covering the entire grassland with lava, where nothing can ever grow again.

Each one of us has a tryst with havoc at some point of time. And given that we live in today's era of more stress & less time, the frequency of havoc ha increased. We are restless & stressful, too impatient to walk & too irritated to run. We dont have a middle way out also, its either walk or run, both of which let us encounter a moment of havoc.

I had my moment of havoc today. It was when the surge of anger took over me & destroyed all the beautiful tranquility I had gathered over the past few months. My will was taken over by my whims & I spoke of things I never thought of speaking.

Sometimes we are too shallow to underestimate what we have & one big mistake we do is to take our loved ones for granted.These both create a dangerous combination which puts us in a loop of sorrow, guilt & remorse in the aftermath of the havoc.

The Secret, a book by Rhonda Byrne speaks about the law of attraction which governs the Universe states that if we have unpleasant thoughts, they will attract more such thoughts & ultimately they will lead us to encounter a moment of havoc.

All I can request everyone reading this is to please understand how beautiful their life is & how much damage anger can produce. Those thunders & storms of sorrow & anger will subside eventually but what will remain is a pall of silence & silent tears of remorse.

 

Of love & Facebook

I was introduced to the concept of real & virtual when I was Std 7 , Introduction to Optics,mirrors with real images & virtual images, since then I was puzzled with the concept of virtual & real & often wondered what distinguishes them. Then in my late teens when I entered the arena of social networking through the long forgotten Orkut, I slowly realized I had a virtual life apart from the real life in which I had my family, friends & studies. Infact everyone who was on Orkut had a virtual life, with  fancy display pics, fancier self descriptions & there was another option of Relationship status which could be Single/Committed/Married or blank for people like me.

Then came the God of social networks, Facebook. Like my friends, I too joined FB, doing some research initially to know the difference between Home & My Profile :P As time passed by, people fell in love & happily declared it by going from "Single" to "In A Relationship" on FB. With a sense of joy, the friends & well wishers of the person liked it & poured their best wishes & <3 through comments. Yet the sad part was when the person went from "In A Relationship" to "Single", there were :( & what happened??? in the comments, #trulyhearbreaking for the person as well as the world.

Then there was the notion of  FDA (Facebook Display of Affection ) which was synonymous to PDA ( Public Display of Affection ) in real world.The golden rule of FDA states that if you are in love, then you must flaunt it #BIGTIME on FB. The love could range from photographs to :* to songs to ohhh sweetu, i love u baby!! on the beloved's wall with the entire world liking it & filling in comments like Awww!! , So cute, God bless you guys #HowSweet :)

Then there were the underdogs, the kind of people who kept a low profile, who were in love but  were uncomfortable with FDA.They had blank Relationship status & basically did not indulge in FDA.They were sneered at, by the crusaders of FDA. Comments like "Your love is true only if you keep posting cute things on your beloved's wall" & "If you guys are not keeping your relationship status as "In a Relationship", then you are not sure about the Relationship in the first place " were hurled on to the underdogs & they were mocked at.#TrueLoveIsProportionalToFDA.

The there were transitions like "In A Relationship" to "Its Complicated", "Single" To "In An Open Relationship" , "Its Complicated" to "Single". Wide mouthed, the world gaped as the love between two people rose & sank like the sine wave in the tides of heated arguments on FB walls to exhuberant displays of passion with cuddled pics & well..lets not go there :P. #TidesOfLove

Then came the really nice feature by which we could not only know the Relationship status but also the profile of the person with whom one was Married/Engaged/In a Relationship with.#SomeSeriousStalking.

I recently read in a book that " The Greatest compliment one can give oneself is to declare 'I am open book'". The same can be applied to FB with a slight modification that goes " The Greatest compliment one can give oneself on FB is to declare 'My relationship with XYZ is an open book' " . 

Years after Std 7 , I am still confused about what is real & what is virtual. To express one's love for someone can be the greatest gift , one can get.Yet categorizing love into a specific group, letting the world  know what you sweetly whisper in your beloved's ears, constantly being in the apprehension of what exactly category is one's relationship in & then letting the whole world comment & like it is something which is merging the real & virtual.

The problem of merging real & virtual is that it is a one way process.Once it is merged, distinguishing the real & virtual will be impossible & one will be lost somewhere in middle.#Lost&Clueless.

The journey of a 90's kid

Being a 90's kid has a great charm in itself. We grew up watching Shaktimaan , Alif Laila , Bournvita Quiz contest, Mahabharat, Surabhi , Malgudi days , Om Namah Shivay , Jai hanuman, drank Complan wanting to be a Complan boy/girl, had a fairly simple gaming experience with Super Mario, Battle City , Alladin etc. The cartoons that we watched were also innocent like our minds, Duck tales, Silly Symphony, Talespin, Captain Planet,Alladin etc. 

We spoke to our parents in our respective mother tongues as tiny tots and not in English.We didnt know what pizza & burger meant until we reached teenage. We had fairly simple clothes for us in the markets ranging from frocks & skirts for girls & pant - shirt for guys & also jumpsuits for the elite ones :P Most of us didnt nag our parents to wear only this dress with this hair band or shoe coz most of us I believe had only school shoes to wear outside. PS Not because we could not afford other shoes mostly because fancy shoes of our sizes was not easily found in the market :P

The music of that era is also eternally beautiful. I remember my father's happy face when we had bought our first tape recorder. It was giant, almost covered our entire rack in the living room.My mom made a beautiful cover for it in white wool.The 1942 ,a love story's tracks, Akele hum akele tum, Baazigar, Darr, Nadeem Shravan's music had found a inseparable place in a stair case like cassette holder beside the tape recorder.

That was also the time of Real Greeting cards. Real as in paper :P. My mom has a fond collection of a huge bunch of cards & letters which we got from our near & dear ones on new year, birthdays , anniversary or simply just like that. We used to smile & giggle when we used to go through them.

I had the first taste of burger & pizza in Hyderabad during 1997.Rs 10 for a chicken burger from Citizen Bakery near our Apartment where my mom would take me if I did well in school tests or just if she wanted to see me happy. We used to have pizza very rarely on occasions like my parent's anniversary & it was almost luxury :P.  The fond memories of me & my parents roaming on bike through the streets of Hyderabad are so special especially after my father would return home from office tours & we would start. 

I also saw the first computer during that time when my I visited father's colleague's home. The desk top, I was so thrilled to see it. I remember having played Pac man & Minesweeper in it. There was a type writer in our home & we had a TV too, in my mind I had the picture of the computer as a combo of TV & typewriter with a small mouse :P.I used to read happily about ENIAC, EDVAC, Sinclar, Pascal in Computer text book  back then :)

That was also the era of pagers, mobile phones & digital diaries. I remember my father's senior in office carrying a pager & mobile phone when he had visited our place for dinner. The mobile phone was of the size of a small papaya i believe.As a kid I was so thrilled to see it that I demanded my parents to get both of them for me. Kiddish obstinacy. I remember my grandparents gifting me a toy pager & toy mobile phone that said "Trrnn Trnn May I help you" :P when I pressed a particular button.So happy I was that I carried it everywhere with me hoping to show everyone that I too owned a mobile phone.

The first laptop I saw was in 1998 when we visited an acquaintance's home. It was the size of a suit case.The display was a bit hazy i think.Spellbound was all I was when I saw it. I wanted to touch & play around with it but stopped coz I saw the angry eyes of my father embarrassed due to my behavior before them inspite of him stopping me.

When we shifted to Odisha, every evening we had relatives visiting us. Its because there was no addiction of serials , no complexities like today's work life, no social networking sites & no multiplexes or malls, so the best way people thought of spending their leisure time was through visiting their kith & kins.

Then time passed. We got our first computer but my mom didnt weave a wool cover for it this time.My father got a mobile phone but his calls from office on it substantially increased too.Our first laptop came but it was mostly used by my father for MS Office.Our relatives visiting us also decreased as the elder ones had become older & hence reluctant to visit & the younger ones were too busy with their work.

There were also some puckered eye brows when we visited people during the time of their favorite daily soaps.Burger & pizza had become a staple diet. The social networking sites had arrived & writing a Happy Birthday on someone's wall was much more simpler than sending greeting cards & letters.

The things which had caught my  delight in the 90's were all there in my home in 2000's yet I think somehow the element of wonder had faded away with time. We have latest apps from our Smartphones that can help us call people for free yet its so strange that the number of people we want to call & talk for hours are reducing day by day.

I am an adult now, a happy one coz technology has made my life so easy & smooth. Yet the old world charm of the 90's keeps luring me to go for a time travel :P Hope the 90's kid in all of us stay alive & be the same always.