of this and that ! (NaBloPoMo Post #11)

I almost gave up on the NaBloPoMo today as I am really not feeling well. I am down with severe bronchitis that has me coughing and wheezing like an old woman. All I have been doing since yeserday is lying in bed, sucking cough drops and catching up on my reading. But a promise is a promise and when I promise to blog everyday, blog every day I will! It’s just that today I really can’t muster up enough energy to think of an interesting topic! So I guess I’ll just ramble on a bit!
I just finished reading Three cups of Tea - an incredible story about a man determination to built schools in improvised regions of Pakistan. Also finished Urban Shots that has some very interesting and well written short stories. Am about to start on Gurcharan Das’ The difficulty of being good. One good thing about being unwell is that one gets time to start reading through that pile of unread books gathering dust on the book shelf ! Off course very disturbing news today is about the earthquake and Tsunami that has hit Northern shore of Japan. Thankfully everyone I know in Japan is safe but watching all the news clippings really shook me up ! But there is no other country in this world that is better prepared for disasters than Japan. Right from building earthquake resistant buildings, to having excellent contingency plans to training and educated their people; they manage to do everything perfectly and with war like precision. They key is Preparedness and that is where Japan truly excels. I have experienced first hand during my visits to Japan how much stress that country lays on safety and disaster Prevention. Today’s earthquake was 8.9 on the Richter scale and yet all the causalities that are being reported are due to the Tsunami and not the earthquake ! Can you imagine what would happen if an earthquake of that magnitude hits any of the Indian cities?
Have a good weekend everyone while I go back to my cough drops and books !

Thursday Challenge# 2 (NaBloPoMo #10)

The theme for this thursday is "MANY" (Candies, Crowd, Paperclips, Coins, Collections,...)

My picture today shows prayer wheels from a buddhist temple in Japan. All buddhist temples have prayer wheels but I was amazed that this temple had so many and that too so colorful ! (click to enlarge the pic)
Even yesterdays pic was about Japan. Yeah I know I really miss that place !

Wordless Wednesday #11 (NaBloPoMo Post #9)



Kamakura Buddha - Japan (Click to enlarge)



Same Story - Different Endings (NaBloPoMo Post #8)

Story 1

Reema sat on the bed crying. Manish stood next to her trembling with rage. The belt was still in his hand. “So you want to go to see your parents. How dare you” He said. “But it’s my brother’s marriage” she spluttered.” I have to attend it”. “You leave this house and I’ll break your legs” he thundered.
After he left Reema tried to pull herself together. Her son and her daughter stood by the door, fear written large on their faces. She got up and went to the kitchen. She could feel the servants’ eyes on her, filled with pity. She drank some water, came back to her room, locked herself in the bathroom and dialed her mother’s number from her mobile. “Mummy” she sobbed as soon as she heard her mother’s voice, “they are not letting me come for Ashu’s marriage! Mummy Mummy, he hit me again today” There was silence and shock on the other side. Then - “What to do beta. If it’s not in your fate to attend your brother’s marriage so be it. You belong to that house now, you have to listen to what they say “. Stunned Reema couldn’t find words to say anything. Her parents had directly and indirectly told her many times to bear her lot. “After all we are a well known family in Amritsar. What will happen to our status if you come back home to us! How will we show our face in society?” “Is your status more important than my life” Reema had wanted to scream. But had kept quiet.
So the years rolled by. The domestic violence ceased when her parents threatened to complain to the police but the mental torture continued. Reema's parents were not unduly concerned. After all he was not beating up their daughter. She was well fed and cared for, what else did she want ?Reema was not allowed to visit her parents, call them even, she could not step out of the house alone and was taunted about everything she did. Reema often thought of breaking free, of running away. Even if she couldn’t go back to her parents she could always move in with one of her friends till she found a job. She was a trained teacher and it wouldn’t be difficult to find a job for herself. But Reema couldn’t will herself to leave. She was terrified of what society would say and what her poor parents would have to go through. And she didn’t want her kids to grow up without a father. Whatever sort of father he was, at least there was a male presence in the house. So Reema continued to adjust and accommodate, resigned to her fate.
Today, she is a broken woman. In her youth she was controlled by her husband, in her old age she is controlled by her son, who having seen women so ill treated in his house, assumes that this is the right way to treat women. He has no respect for his mother let alone his wife. Reema has no confidence, no self respect and no money to her name. Her daughter was married off as soon as she completed her BA into a rich business class family. She was told the same thing as Reema was – that getting married into a status family should be enough to keep her happy. Sometimes Reema wonders if her and her children’s life would have taken a different turn had she dared to assert her rights.


  Story 2
Veena sat huddled near the charpoy, her body wracked with sobs. Her arms hurt and welts were appearing where Suresh, her husband had hit her. Blood oozed out from her cut lip. Her two daughters, Kavita, six and Savita all of three sat whimpering nearby. Veena waited till Suresh had left the room and then slowly got up and gathered her crying daughters in her arms, trying to soothe them. Her mind went back to the reason for this recent beating. She had plucked up enough courage to say that she wanted Kavita to go to school. Admittedly it was hardly a school, just a few rooms with a tumbledown roof and two teachers, but at least her daughter had a chance of education there, better than sweeping floors and washing utensils. Suresh had refused pointblank and told her that if she wanted her daughter to do something, she better take her to work with her and get her started on some menial task. “That way she can bring in some money. If you couldn’t have given me a son, at least make sure these daughters of yours bring in some money to pay for their keep.”He had said.
This was not Veena’s first beating. The reasons may have been different, but the anger was always quick to come. Anything from delay in bringing tea, to refusal to satisfy his demands in bed were reasons for a beating. Till now she had submitted to them mutely. She had tried revolting, even gone to her parents but they had told her pointblank that they couldn’t help her, her brother too had refused to let her come back, worried about supporting her and her two daughters.” Your life is with your husband now “they had told her categorically and dismissed her pleas for help.
As she sat trying to comfort her daughters, Veena decided that she had to give her daughters a chance to lead better lives. She wanted to give them a chance to grow up in a happy peaceful environment, away from this hell. “My life might be finished, but theirs is just beginning” She thought resolutely. So that night, once her husband had passed out in a drunken stupor, Veena gathered the meager savings that she had hid from him, took her two daughters by their hand and fled home. She reached the station and took the first train leaving. It was going to Chandigarh. She reached Chandigarh at 6 in the morning, shivering equally from fear and the cold. She left the station with her daughters in tow and went to the first residential colony she could see and started asking for work. None came her way. Night fell and she bought some roti and sabzi from a local shop and fed her kids. That nights all three of them sat huddled under the shutters of the closed shops. The next morning she got talking to a few riskshaw wallahs who told her the best place for the homeless was the local Gurudwara. So that is where she went. They ate at the gurudwara and at night slept in the long hall meant for the homeless. During the day she walked all over the city looking for work. On the third day, a local dhabha hired her to wash their dirty utensils and sweep the shop every morning. After she got her first salary, Veena shifted to a small room that was more like a thatched hut. It was far from her place of work but it was cheap. Every day she brought her daughters to work and they played near her while she washed other people’s dirty utensils. Finally after a few months when she had some money saved, she took Kavita to the government school and got her admitted there.
A few years passed and Savita joined her sister in the school. Veena continued working at the Dhabha, but the job was tiring and back breaking. Now that she was more confident of her bearings, she stated looking for an easier job. A teacher at the school her daughters went to told her that a private school nearby needed an ayah for the small kids. She applied and was accepted. Now she had a full time job with benefits and finished work the same time as her daughters finished school. She took up extra work of repairing clothes in the evenings. Her first customers were the teachers in her school. The years rolled by. The daughters finished school and entered a vocational school. Kavita chose to learn nursing and Savita to learn dress making.
Now Veena is retired. She owns small two bedroom room house in mohali, a small town near chandigarh. Kavita is a nurse in PGI .Savita stitches clothes from home and one day plans to open her own tailoring shop. Veena is content with the way things have turned out.

These two stories are based on true incidents. Be it an urban educated women or a rural uneducated one, emancipation of women can only work if she herself gathers the courage to stand up and fight for her rights. Sometimes all that is needed is courage to take that first small step.

Today is Womens day - We dont need appreciation mails from people thanking us for the work we do and the sacrifices we make. What we need is equal rights, equal opportunities and equal freedom.

Cricket Mania ! (NaBloPoMo Post #7)

Eyes fixed ahead,

Tightly clenched hands

You watch it run by run

Ball by ball

Shouting, cheering, jeering,

and snarling

When we mention

your obsessive absurdity

bored, we squirm and fidget

As we curse your affinity

To the game of cricket!

Written for Three word wednesday. (Prompts - Affinity,Mention,Fidget)

Frozen Lake - A Haiku (NaBloPoMo #6)

I walk on the frozen lake

watching the birds fly forlornly

In search of some fish

Written for Haiku Heights -Prompt Cold)

Ladka Bikau Hai ! (NaBloPoMo Post # 4)

So on the way home from work, I was sitting in the cab quietly minding my own business while the guy next to me was regaling everyone else with the marriage proposals he is getting.
“ Ek ladki to Lucknow ki hai, uske father railways mein hain acchi khaasi kamayi hai, doosri delhi mein naukri karti hai, software engineer hai, uski bhi salary achi hai, onsite bhi ja kar aayi hai, paisa to kamaya hoga, ek aur hai jo teacher hai lekin father ki property bahut hai Bareilly mein”
(One girl lives in Lucknow, her dad is in the railways, he must be earning really well, the other girl is a software engineer, she earns well, has been to onsite so must be having quite a bit stashed away, the third one is just a teacher but her dad has a lot of property in Bareilly)
What shocked me was that he was only concerned about the financial status of the Girls family. It was as if he was not talking about marriage but a business deal.Then came the biggest shock, he said
 “Haan Haan shaadi to wahin karenge jahan paisa jyada milenga”
(Ya ya, I am going to marry in the family that gives me the most money)
So finally my feminist self couldn’t take it anymore and I retorted –
“phir to aisa karo ek board laga lo apne ghar ke saamne jis pe likha ho Ladka Bikayu hai !” (So why don’t you just put a board in front of your house that says Boy for Sale!)
But seriously, this guy is an educated software engineer! Isn’t education doing anything to change our mentality?
I wish I had a begging bowl for each and every male out there who thinks like this!

The “Wallahs” of our country! (NaBloPoMo Post #3)

There is one thing in India that we don’t find in any other country. And no, I don’t mean the heat and dust, the pollution or the corruption :) I am talking about the various vendors that roam the streets selling everything under the sun! I call them the “wallahs” of our country, since we simply name them by affixing “wallah” to whatever they are selling! For example doodh-wallah, Sabzi-wallah etc etc. :D
I don’t think we realize it, but they are an indispensable part of our life. Our morning starts with the Doodh-wallah ringing our bell with fresh milk in huge steel vessels or dolchis as they are called. (Well now things are modernized in most parts of the country and these fellows are replaced by the more modern Doodhwallahs who brings our milk in tetra packs along with our eggs and bread). They are followed by the Sabzi-wallahs. They come calling early in the morning bringing fresh vegetables on a thela (cart), loudly proclaiming how red their tomatoes are, how crisp their cabbage is and how fresh their ladyfinger is at the top of their lungs. They are a boon for those of us who rarely have time to go out vegetable shopping during the week and only realize we are in trouble when we start cooking in the morning and realize that we are out of onions or potatoes or ginger! A quick shout to the sabzi wallah and we can buy whatever we want right at our doorstep while still in our pajamas! It’s so much better than getting packaged vegetables from the supermarket. After all buying vegetables loses most of its fun without the bargaining and the supermarket doesn’t give us free dhaniya and mirchi, does it! Once the Sabzi-wallahs leave, the Nariyal-Paniwallah comes to stand just outside the park, strategically placing himself in the path of all the joggers who are bound to be thirsty when they leave the park after their morning exercise! Next comes the Istri-wallah. So convenient to get our clothes ironed! All we have to do is tie them up in a bundle and hand it to the fellow and we get them back stiffly starched and ironed by the end of the day!All through the day comes a procession of these people. The Fruit wallah, jhadu wallah (he sells everything from mops to dusters to brooms), the chaku-tez-karane wallah - he will sharpen your kitchen knives till they are razor sharp! And how about the kabadi wallah that comes every weekend! These are the guys who buy our old junk and recycle it. What a novel way to dispose of our newspapers, old boxes, utensils, buckets and even electronic items! Imagine getting rid of our useless items and getting paid for it too!
Besides these roaming salesmen on bicycles, I don’t think any other country has the variety of small shops that repair anything from torn shoe straps to electric kettles. Sole’s come off your shoe? Not to worry, just walk over to the nearest mochi sitting under the tree and get it repaired! Handle broken off your pan! No problem! just take it to the guy repairing utensils and he will fix it in a jiffy! Not only do these people make our lives very convenient they are also very inexpensive. I remember in Tokyo the strap of my otherwise perfectly all right handbag broke and when I went to a shop to get it repaired, (it took me two days of search on the Internet and a lot of asking around before I could find a shop that repairs leather items); the cost of stitching the strap was more than the cost of my pure leather bag!
How about the various food vendors that we see everywhere. The chaiwallahs who do a brisk business throughout the year, the nimboopani and juice wallahs that appear every summer, the moongfali and popcorn wallah that come every winter and the Bhutta (corn)wallahs that turn up as soon as the rains start ! And my all time favorite the Chaat wallahs. Ahh the joy of gorging on golgappas and telling the chaatwallah “Bhaiya thoda aur teekha banana” or “bhaiya thodi imli daalana !
So tell me do you deal with these “wallahs” every day and which one do you like the most?

Wordless Wednesday #10 (NaBloPoMo Post#2)



Delhi Haat (Click to enlarge)



The Power Of faith (NaBloPoMo Post # 1)

 

Tomorrow is Shivratri, Lord Shiva’s birthday and somehow I always associate Lord Shiva with Peace, serenity, solitude, mountains and snow. That is why I am so fond of going to Kedarnath. I find the scenic beauty as well as the spiritual grandeur of that place unparalleled to anywhere else. I have blogged about my visit to Kedarnath here and here.
Whenever I think of Kedarnath, I am reminded of a certain old gentleman we met when we went there a few years back. We were a group of around 10 people, all of us in our 20s and 30s except one old gentleman who was then in his late 70s. He was the uncle of our friend ‘S’ and soon we had all started calling him Uncle. He had a round and cheerful face and was very sprightly inspite of his age. He was filled with incredible enthusiasm and zest for life. All through the journey he regaled us with countless stories about Shanti Niketan where he had spent most of his life. Inspite of the huge age difference between us, we were really having fun with him. We reached Rishikesh late evening and decided to make the night halt there. After dinner we were all sitting in the guest house lawn talking when uncle suddenly fainted. One moment he was walking towards us and the other he had collapsed on the grass. Fortunately there was a clinic nearby and we could get a doctor quickly. The problem was low blood sugar and uncle revived after he was given some sugar water and sweets. In no time he had regained his cheerfulness and had dismissed the whole incident laughingly.
The next day we reached Gaurikund, the last stop before the climb to the temple starts. The previous day’s incident was still fresh in our minds and we asked uncle if he was sure he wanted to climb up till the temple as it is at a very high altitude. “Off course I will come” he said. “How can I go back without darshan when I am so close to my destination? “. He seemed unperturbed when we pointed out the health risks to him. A few of us brave souls decided to climb up the 17 kms till the temple. The rest decided to go by Ponies. Except uncle, he wanted to walk with us. We looked at him as if he was crazy and in one voice told him to get atop a pony. He refused. He said he was confident he could make it walking and there was no way he was going to the temple of Mahadev sitting on a poor animal’s back. No amount of pleading and argument worked. He was adamant. He told us that we were too pessimistic and that he was sure nothing would happen to him. He looked so determined and had so much faith that he would reach the temple safely that we all reluctantly agreed although deep in our hearts we were very apprehensive. The first few kms passed easily, we climbed at a steady pace, laughing and making jokes. But as the climb grew steeper, the air became thinner and the weather became more and more unpredictable till it finally started to rain. Breathless, tired and cold we were all feeling out of sorts. All, except Uncle. He was as cheerful as ever and told us not to concentrate on the negatives but enjoy the scenic beauty around us and think about the wonderful temple we were about to visit. We were amazed by his attitude. Here he was, nearly three times our age, frail and definitely not in the best of health yet he was walking undaunted, almost without any worry. We could see he was tired and panting with exertion, but the smile never left his lips and when he was not chanting mantras and singing bhajans he was pointing at the rare flowers on the path or at the snow peaks with child like delight and enthusiasm.
By the time we reached the half way mark almost all of us had given up and decided to cover the rest of the distance on ponies. We tried to persuade uncle to take a pony as well. He waved us on cheerfully and told us not to worry, “Mahadev will take care of me”.  S decided to walk with Uncle. The rest of us found ponies for ourselves. Finally we reached the small guesthouse we had booked near the temple, tired but ecstatic at having made it. Now we all waited anxiously for uncle and S to make their way to the top. We were quite worried and wondered how uncle was faring and what S would do if uncle collapsed on the way .They appeared after 2-3 hrs, S looked exhausted and barely in a state to talk. He simply collapsed in a chair. But what shocked us was uncle. We were prepared to meet a very tired if not sick uncle and had even discussed what to do in case we faced a medical problem. Uncle was undoubtedly tired, but his humor and enthusiasm were intact. Not once did he complain of the bad weather, or of the difficult climb, or of his aching joints. In fact he broke into a Bhajan as soon as he saw us, he was so happy and filled with devotion. S later told us that even he had started to feel the strain at the end of the journey and thought that he couldn’t make the last 2-3 kms. It was uncle, himself tired and worn out who had edged him on, motivating him!

We were amazed. So frail of body yet so strong in faith Uncle had managed to achieve the impossible. I don’t know how he did it, was it his unwavering faith, his willpower or simply the power of positive thinking? What do YOU think?