If I die tomorrow

Don’t worry guys, I am “still” sane and let me assure you I am not planning to die anytime soon. I am there to bug you guys as long as life allows me…But a thought crossed my mind many times…If I die tomorrow.

I get some sweet satisfaction thinking about how my closed ones would react if I die tomorrow. Earlier I thought I the only psycho case. But then I was stunned to find that many people have thought about it “atleast” once and I judged myself to be not as crazy as I think I am ;)

When I think about my death, I think of all the people who would be shocked and would be crying… Then I go to length of imagining what would be reaction of all my closed ones…one by one…in as much detail as my imagination goes. Then I imagine some of my friends posting on Facebook about how “good a person” I was (as after someone’s death you generally don’t put bad things about them even if you want ;)  :D). I have managed to be very dumb and earned some people who, I think, would be happy at my death and I also think about them. I think of all the “good” things people might have to say on my funeral. Yes sir, I do that and I know many of us does that.

I understand its a facet of my imagination but to be honest, I smile while I am thinking of the aftermath of my death because that makes me feel good about myself. Be it in my imagination but I know I am important to people and I "self-certify" myself to be worth mourned for. And somewhere deep I am confident that I have earned myself at least few people who would be crushed by my death, few more people who would genuinely feel sad, and some more who would at least for a day feel bad that I am gone. And we all know that about ourselves and we all have earned these people with different level of closeness and concern about us. I also know that eventually everybody would move on and I would be a memory... fading with a greater speed every day. I know that’s lot of sadism to take, but then boss, fact is fact.

But then I think even if things happen in all the pompous way I imagine it to be, it would be such a waste! It would be such a grand grand waste! All those people would have all the good things and the bad things and all the memories with me to talk about but alas... I won’t be there to listen to it all…. What’s the use talking about that person when he is gone, it would be so much better if we communicate more now. How much sense would it make to value that person when he is long gone, never to return ever again, better say each other how much you value them now. Whats the use of feeling I wish I could I could once explain things to him/her and say her sorry when the other person won’t be able to listen to you, why not just pick up that silly phone and do it now. Now is the key, for all we know the loved one might possibly be gone tomorrow and all the things would be left unsaid. Express, communicate all your feelings now for once the person is gone, you how much ever you try….you won’t reach him/her.

There was this friend of mine whom I lost all of a sudden and then I felt such a void…. I kept feeling I wish I could invite her for the last outing we went to…. I wished I could tell her she was such a wonderful person with such a lively smile. In desperation to communicate to her, even after her death, I kept writing to her for a while hoping I could reach her… off course I could not….

There is this sweet book I was reading a while ago called “Tuesdays with Morrie” which is about a professor, Morrie, who is contracted by a fatal disease and about the lessons of life he gives to one of his very dear student, Mitch, every Tuesday. In that book Morrie told Mitch about how he attended funeral of a friend and all the people there had so many good things and so many memories to share about his friend. “He would have so much loved to hear it all, it was such a waste!” he said. Morrie knew he would be dying soon, so he kept his funeral before he died where all his loved ones came and shared all the memories with him. He could hear it all before he died… everything they had to say.

Not all are fortunate/unfortunate enough to know when they would die. Like Morrie, not everybody would get a chance to attend his pre-funeral funeral. Now is the time people. We are so busy with our “routine”, we take so many things for granted. But most of all we take time for granted. Time flies, it won’t wait. Love, Live, Express, say Sorry, Praise    and most of all Value what you have.

Your children are not your children

I was introduced to this amazing book by a dear friend when I needed it the most. Its called "The Road Less Travelled" by M. Scott Peck. Its one beautiful book and talks about many aspects of life. The more I am reading it, the more its becoming the source of guidance for me, my bible.
There is no mushiness about this book, just facts! Let me stop here as I am in awe of this book and can keep going on and on about it. Just to summarize, imagine, you start reading that book and the first line says "Life is difficult".

Anyways, in various chapters the various aspects and impacts of parents-child relationship are thoroughly discussed. I am not a parent yet but I do aspire to be one and when I would be one, may this book be the guiding force for me.
At one such place in the book is this beautiful poem which I had this dire need to capture and share with you guys, for all Parents and for all Parents to be.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bows from which your children as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite, and
 He bends you with His might that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies, so He loves also the bow that is stable.

- The Prophet

Shades of grey...

Is anything in life “black” or “white” or just shades of grey!?

Perspective, opinion, impression, conclusion… All of these are very heavy words but we all in no time come up with values for all the above words. It is our basic nature, we all do that, we also have  a fancy term for this “the first impression”.

We look at every situation from our own ‘glasses’, the ‘glasses’ whose number is decided by our own share of experiences and whose shade is decided by the nature of experiences. What these glasses do, they look at the situation and declare it “right” or “wrong”. Is our perspective enough to judge the situation? How many of us take the efforts to look at the situation from another person’s perspective? We might be trying to, but then how many times could we actually successfully do it? When you try and look at a situation from someone else’s glasses that you might realize that its neither “right” nor “wrong”, neither “white” nor “black” but just shades of grey!

Let’s take an example, we see a lady wearing short dress and smoking and drinking in the pub and we immediately conclude “ ill-mannered, ill-cultured, selfish babe”! Is it always true? Do we really know her as a person? Are we not being too harsh on her? Are we not stereotyping her? Someone might say, what’s the problem with me judging her, I mean her no harm. Now imagine next day you go to office and the same lady is the new joinee in your team and as your colleague. Now by judging her already, you have created a perception about her and her every action and effort would be viewed with some prejudice. It would take a while before that prejudice would change and the harm might be already done by then. Is it fair for you and/or for the other person for that matter?

Let me take another example of a situation I went through very recently. I was having bad time and a particular bad day where I was hurt by expectations I had from closed ones. I decided I would go for a massage and entered the spa irritated and skeptical about how the masseur would be. The masseur comes and she is a thin very lady with minimum hygiene and with what seemed to me to a septic eye infection. I was all furious and almost felt like crying over my bad luck. In that rage, I didn’t greet her and replied to her queries in mono-syllable. But then I went inside, while I got my 5 minutes to change, I made a conscious decision to not let my “first impression” rule my massage experience. “I came here to de-stress myself and not to judge someone for next 1 hour or so” is what I told myself. So I took a 5 minutes effort and strike a conversation with her about her experience, her education, her background and in the entire process calling her by her first name(which by the way makes a huge difference). I immediately realized she is very qualified in her field and what I thought of as septic eye infection is her lost eye…. She had achieved all that she had with a single eye…. I felt so thankful that I took that 5 minute to understand her, to strike chord with her, to connect with her. And not to mention she was highly skilled and I had an amazing massage experience. I also praised her at the end for her massage and the smile on her face was priceless. I saved myself from a troubled experience and her from a rude client :D. All it took was 5 minutes of effort to look at things from her perspective…to understand her.

Do I manage to do it every time, hell no! I am always in too much of hurry to come to conclusion especially with loved ones. My husband is the one who suffers the most from my prejudices, my conclusions, my paradigm. But I have realized that all it takes to save both party trouble is 5 minutes of pure thinking, 5 minutes of listening. Is listening enough or there’s more to it? I did this course my manager thought I should. There were few take aways from it, very important ones. They asked a simple questions, “How many times do we listen with the intent of listening and not with the intent of speaking/reacting?”, “How many times do we simply try to understand the other person’s emotions without being judgmental about it from our own set of paradigm?”. I honestly thought about it and was surprised that its bloody true, I seldom do that. As soon as some person starts to share his/her problem with me, I start looking at it from my glasses and even the suggestions or advice I give is what my glasses suggest me. Why I don’t just listen, try and understand the situation from the other person’s perspective. Why can’t I simply remove my glasses and listen empathetically? Empathy is missing…. And without empathy even if I take those 5 minutes to understand the person or the situation I would do so from my glasses. All efforts wasted.

You must have noticed that how the perspective towards a particular situation changes as soon as we experience it! Reason, our glasses now have stored that experience as “right” as opposed to “wrong” (or vice-versa) that it was earlier. But we all are not fortunate enough to have experienced everything in the world and hence won’t always get chance to modify our perspective on many situations. So I suggest, take  a moment, be empathetic, look at the situation from the other person’s ‘glasses’. Your vision might not suddenly change from “black” to “white” or vice-versa but you might realize the shades of grey which you never thought existed.

Once you realize there is nothing like “right” or “wrong”, you would realize that you have suddenly opened yourself to new set of possibilities, a new set of experiences, a new found broad vision, a new perspective, a new outlook which is so positive and is such a learning experience. Let’s not be victim of the stereotypes that the world and our experiences present us with. Let’s take those 5 minutes of effort to be empathetic and to listen with the intent of listening and think from other person’s perspective before we conclude. Would be a very happy life, what say?

I am no saint to preach this, I am not even claiming I have attained the art of empathetic listening, but atleast I have realized and I am trying. I sincerely hope sharing my experience would help you to do the same .

Façade

“We all have a social mask, right? We put it on, we go out, put our best foot forward, our best image. But behind that social mask is a personal truth, what we really, really believe about who we are and what we're capable of.”  -Phil McGraw

Façade - a deceptive outward appearance. This is how we are living… that’s what has become of most of us including me. Very conveniently and comfortably we have put up a façade…a social mask.

 It’s a story of the 21^st century, we are surrounded by all these “friends” on social networking site but still alone… We talk to everyone but don’t communicate… Everybody knows everything about everyone through their updates but still there is so little they know… We have all this innumerous means of entertainment but still feel alone within… There is so much noise outside still a haunting silence inside… Something is missing ain’t it?

Has it ever happened to you that you suddenly confront a Facebook friend, who in Facebook world is all gaga over your updates and now when he/she is actually in front of you, you have nothing to talk to you about. You cannot even communicate comfortably for 5 minutes…. A very common situation, isn’t it? And it leaves you all puzzled…why such? The answer is simple, we update but we don’t connect. We show only the “best” and what you think might interest your friends or for that matter get maximum likes.

The question still remains, why we do this, why this façade. There are two parts to this question:

1.       What is the need to put the social mask even if its all so fake?

2.       Assuming I need these people around whom I call friends, then why can’t I show what I truly am.

The answer to 1^st one is easier.Man has always been a social animal. Sharing is his basic need. Society, community, caste, religion all these words exist and reflects what we are to the core. Our grand celebrations and long mourning rituals are the proof of the same. The need and the length of socializing differs from person to person but the fact remains and that is human being need sharing, affection, love, sympathy, attention and social networking give us all!

Second question is more tricky to answer. Because if socializing is basic need of human being, why don’t you see most of the people sharing their sad side, their dark side, their true emotions. Everybody(offcourse including me) loves to put a perfect picture of their so-called ideal life, showcasing only their beautiful moments and beautiful pictures… I will try and answer that on my behalf as it wont be fair to use “we” here and I will leave it upto you if my thoughts resonate with yours.

I am a very social person. But even such a social person like me don’t like to put up my “not happy” emotions out there for I fear being judged, to be looked upon as a psycho case or with sympathy or disgust. I don’t want that! On social networking I am surrounded by all these “friends” who hardly know me and I fear they will start judging me and wrongly so in no time.  We all have faces/emotions…faces we wanna only keep to our near and dear ones. Some faces so dark that we ourselves refrain from facing them. How can we bear the thought of sharing it with others. I see myself facing same emotions, fear, dilemma while blogging too. Even on quora most controversial and truthful answer are given by “anonymous” people and the on twitter given by all funky names with no one ready to reveal their identity.

No wonder Oscar said “Give man a mask and he will tell you the truth”

For me façade is ok as long as I don’t wear that mask forever. As long as I am truthful to myself, as long as I have a closed group who can accept me with what I am. As long as the evil face inside me doesn’t grow so dark that I cannot look at myself because there Is no hurt like not being able to look at yourself in mirror!

Nothing lasts forever...well...almost nothing!

I vividly remember the first time (as long as my memory goes) I got hurt real bad by a friend. The place when she was saying all the bad things to me and I was simply crying (Oh I used to be expert at that!). That day, that hurt was center of my existence then. And at that moment I felt I will never forget this hurt. 

~~chuckles~~. Now that I look back, I have  a good laugh at the incident and how I felt soooo immensely about it and how I thought it would stay with me “forever”. And then came many incident I felt equally strong about which I thought would stay with me forever like “the way my heart used to melt every time I looked at my first crush”, “that big fight with my best friend”, “that first kiss”, “leaving my parents to come to Pune”, “that first salary”, “that first confrontation with loss of loved ones”, “the bliss feeling when I first looked at the blue water of Maldives”…the list can go on! Many of these would also feel very petty to you when you now look at it, but Gosh those were center of my universe then, something I thought would stay with me forever be the it Love, the pain, the loss, the anger, the frustration…. Did it? Offcourse it didn’t, you like it or not “nothings stays forever”. Offcourse I remember the incidents but it doesn’t inflict any strong emotion in me. Surely not with the strong intensity it was then.

I remember a friend of mine saying one “You know, memories are fading, the intensity is fading, I don’t even remember her face now, its fading. Memories are not enough, they are fading. I thought I could live on her memories alone, but looks like I cant, memories are fading too, I need to move on!” These were words from a person who loved immensely and lost her…like forever…. And that day, that very day I felt, nothing lasts forever…. It cannot, its not practical and I believe for everyone’s good it should not!

Funny enough, we say life is too short to hold grudges but its long enough to help us forget those grudges and just move on! Irony of life I must say.

Well, it’s a bad news but trust me it’s a good news too. Bad news because I wanna feel what it felt like being on the top of Switzerland’s peak but I just cannot! Bad news because I want to remember that every “first time” in life but I cannot, surely not with the same intensity! Bad news because I wish I cud trap all the wonderful memories in a box called mind and just replay them every time I felt like, note by note…emotion by emotion. Well bad news, I cannot! But the good side, I don’t get to remember the heart breaks ;), the hurt, the grudges, having hurt someone (as I am of opinion, getting hurt is always easy to forget than hurting someone), the pain, the sadness, the trauma. Well there is advantages of this “buggy” feature of my mind, I get to happily forget all the horrible memories, the memories I don’t want, rather I don’t need to carry baggage of!

Such is human nature, such are we evolved, to keep the past behind, not cling to it for happiness or pain and just move on! Its beauty and beast at the same time. Never ceases to amaze me and give me more and more reason to chuckle at myself with the same thought every time “What was I thinking then!!!” It’s a necessary evil, aint it!?!

The Happy faces! The Proud faces!

 Remember this happiness, this relieved feeling.... The feeling that we have accomplished it and there's no stopping us! Here comes the board result and with it the newspaper filled with such happy and content faces. Look at the deadly combination of innocence, happiness and proud feeling....its rare. Ever thought what must be going through their minds... I find some strange kind of happiness looking at those pics which I cannot define, but I just genuinely feel happy. May be these pics connect me back to my memories...the board exam results!

Board exam, the most dreaded devil, the one which our parents repeatedly told us would define us and our Future and we believed them :). I remember giving everything I had to these board exams, the 10th std and more so for the 12th std. Those odd hours of study, the tension, those ambitions.

12th std board exam, that's the most ambitious I ever felt, that's the most effort I have ever put to achieve something. There was this powerful driving force driving me, the biggest being to make my parents proud, the second being to get admission in my dream college, the third being see my picture in the newspaper and last being to prove myself I have it and that I can do it!

And then the "judgement day", the results day, the most awaited yet dreaded day. As its always with me, I can hardly eat any food when I am in tension, I hardly talk and that day was no different. And then the unbelievable result...all the hard work being paid off and all the Goals achieved! That's the happiest and most proud I felt about myself till date! Me and my parents could not stop smiling...the way they looked at me....that feeling is priceless...can never forget their faces. That day I felt maybe...just maybe...I could payback, although in a small way, for all that they have done for me... Then started the gifts and sweets being showered by all the loved ones... I was on cloud 9! The felicitations, the attention...wow!

But the BEST moment is when my Dad told me "Till now I was known as Dr.Nawandar....today is my proudest moment as I am being known as my daughter's Dad". Tell me... can any happiness, any gifts, anything ever compare to this.... No wonder I feel so happy looking at those happy faces, the parent's proud faces...it just connects me to my best memories till date, somethings I will cherish and take inspiration from all my life...

Now why I am sharing all this. No sir! I am not bragging, just sharing my most precious memories. And with this wondering where did the heady zest go, why I never felt the same at any other point in my life. If we look back we know we have achieved many more things than the 12th board exam but never felt the same happiness.... Wondering why... what is that we have lost growing old.... Got to hunt it down!

Lets get liberalized in its true sense

It all started running through my mind when an intern friend from IIT B commented in a party, “Its difficult to be a girl in an IIT. If you achieve something guys say it must be Easy. And if you cannot do something, you are a girl, its not your cup of tea”. I found it humiliating and was very angry at first and I almost immediately told her don’t worry we will prove everyone otherwise. And I realized there it starts! The struggle to find your place in this male dominated society (Yes I say that and I stand by it because atleast for this generation it’s a fact in India. Things have improved but its still a fact.) The constant struggle to prove yourself and does that end only at workspace…no…that attitude continues and you wanna prove yourself at home as a good home maker, then when you have kid you got to prove you can be a wonderful mother too! Are we not expecting too much of ourselves, trying to balance everything and expecting to excel bloody everywhere?

And then there is this "unsaid" perception of this 21st century society that you are a “new age” and “complete” woman only if you strikes the balance between home and office. And in pursuit to get this recognition, we stretch ourselves so much and try to prove yes we can do it all! To me it feels like too much of pressure and burden. At workspace whenever any women is getting recognition, it always mentioned she has kids, family, home and balancing everything as if that’s one of the criteria to get that recognition. I am not denying the fact that ofcourse it’s a tough job. But if you choose not to
do this why it makes you any less an achiever in life. But it’s always portrayed so and many of us fall prey to it.

But the burden does not necessarily come from society or outside world. We Women are cursed with this big emotion “Guilt”. I know this friend of mine who was had a successful career and then left job to take care of the child. She is giving complete love and care to child and on top of it I always see her going out of way to do things that her husband loves. She gets tired and frustrated but still continues doing it. One day I asked her to take a chill pill. I told her, ask your husband to help you and he must understand even if some things are not done his way. And then she said “Are! he works so much and supports family, I am just sitting home, I can do atleast this much” and I realized it’s a not a request coming from husband, it’s a self-imposed burden! Guilt of not contributing to family financially. Again expecting too much of ourselves! Why we women do this to ourselves?! We are our biggest critic!

So much of stress is taxing us, the abortion rate has increased drastically and you ask doctors, they contribute it to our stressful life style. More and more women are falling prey to depression. Why all this, to be looked at as “21st century women” or to find position and respect in male dominated society or we are just groomed to expect more of ourselves!

I am not saying its bad to try and balance everything. No way! But lets do it only if we feel like. Not because everyone else is doing it. And more importantly I am saying that if you by choice or by circumstances cannot do it, there is no need to feel any lesser or feel guilty. If you are a career oriented women and cannot be a good home maker, its so ok! Why feel guilty?! We, the women of this generation should embrace this attitude and only then can we pass this to our daughters. Because there is need to feel liberated, to be burdened with our own expectations with ourselves is not the right way to live. We need to groom our sons that your mother/wife can very well be a careerist and you should be ok with it and rather support her. And actions speak louder than words. We need to embrace this attitude ourselves first without feeling guilty about it. Its only then we will achieve equality in true sense.