I Am At Your Feet

Yes, I am talking about our tradition of paying respect to an elder by touching the feet. We have given our feet the lowest status among the visible parts of the human body and to confer a lower status on ourselves than the respected person we need to touch their feet.

There are so many rules regarding the feet! You cannot enter certain holy places with your shoes on. In other sacred places they ask to cover your unholy feet before entering. If you point your feet at someone, you are supposedly insulting that person. And if your feet accidentally touch an elder, or a book, or a deity, or money, or … (the list of revered beings) you are supposed to feel sorry and touch their feet. (to cancel out the insult I guess)

This culture of pronaam (yes, I am a bengali and I pronounce pranam as pronaam) is not only limited to the instances when you have accidentally insulted someone by touching them with your feet. You also need to touch the feet of your elders whenever you wish to seek their blessings. So to show someone your respect for them you do not do something to make them feel special. You do something to show yourself as a minion.

My son, who is still not influenced by the idiosyncrasies of the society he has been born into, loves to stand on his books. He also often lies on my lap and caresses my cheek with his feet. And I have never felt a greater happiness in my heart. 

Honestly, as long as the feet are clean and minty fresh I do not see any reason for them to be treated any differently from our hands. Respect or disrespect lies in our hearts and if our hearts are clean does anything else matter really?

But yet, I have to teach him that there are rules created by funny people and you have to at least pretend to abide by them. Else, you need to make Mars habitable like Matt Damon and that’s just too much of an effort.

The Woman : Part 2

She raced to the Lord with all her might,

She was a non believer but not tonight.

Tonight she had to pray for a happy future,

Not for herself but for the life within her.

“Send me a girl whom I can raise to be a worthy Woman,

A person who would go on to be no lesser than any Man.”

A person, who can live a life that is free,

A person, who can be the one I had wanted to be.

An independent one following the words of the heart,

Who would follow no rule and live by logic from the start.

A fearless one who should never be looked at askance,

Nor should anyone force my child into compliance.

A multi tasker and a nurturer my child does not have to be.

A brave heart with a kind soul is all I want my child to be.

A leader whom everyone would look up to.

The most daunting tasks my child shouldn’t be afraid to do.

Bemused the Lord decided to have some fun.

“All your wishes will be granted except for one.”

She found it reasonable and readily agreed.

And thanked the Lord and left feeling relieved.

She went home with her heart full of joy,

And 9 months later she gave birth to a boy!

Egalitarian Society

Subhash and Kush are sitting side by side on a bench. Both are wearing crisp white shirts. Both are feeling equally fidgety and are cracking knuckles to ease the tension. Both are awaiting the result of their job interview for the post of a driver with an agency.

Yet, the very observant eye would note that Subhash was wearing a cheap polyester shirt, washed and ironed carefully to look perfect while Kush’s shirt bore the label of Manzini.

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Kush was born in the family of a millionaire. A rich dad with killer looks and shitty values. A beautiful mom who came with lots of dowry and a warped sense of morality. Kush was never given the chance of becoming normal. From the moment he was born he was told in every way that the rest of the world existed to serve and pamper him. When Kush’s teacher gave him a note for destroying school property his dad sent back a cheque paying 10 times the value of the apparatus.

Next time Kush had punched a boy in the eye resulting in partial loss of vision. This time the principal expelled Kush from the school. But this was still not a problem. His dad poured in more money to get him admitted to an even better school. Kush’s father told his son, “Remember son, always hold your head high…no one from our family should ever have to bow his head.” Kush’s mother secretly felt very proud that her husband never allowed the world to make her son feel guilty.

So Kush grew up like that. A rich kid with plush degrees but zero education. Kush’s dad thought that it would not matter because he had plans to train him personally to handle the family business soon after his fake MBA was done. But people like Kush’s dad usually make many enemies and one day he died in what looked like an accident.

Then came the bad times. Suddenly within a single year, all the wealth of the family got wiped out in front of Kush and his mother. Instead of taking charge of the situation, his mother watched the series of events unfold with helpless eyes. It is at such moments that people realize why it is a grave sin to raise a girl with Sita like values. But Kush’s grandparents were long gone and no one actually stepped up to help them keep bankruptcy at bay.

And that’s how it happened, a little boy who was never given a scope to fend for himself suddenly found himself penniless after his father’s demise.

As Kush’s last car was towed away, (to pay for a loan that he never knew to exist) he stared at the scene vacantly. Their chauffeur who just lost his job chose to look past his personal tragedy. He came up to Kush and offered him some insight. Life has to go on…and Kush needed to find work as soon as possible. Kush father’s enemies had flooded the market with enough rumors to prevent him from bagging a job. It was his idea to set Kush up for a cabbie’s job. It was not the ideal situation but he hoped that the job could buy Kush some time to look for a job befitting his social status.

So that is how Kush came looking for a job at the driving agency.

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Subhash was born in a below poverty line family. When his father lost his life to an expensive ailment his illiterate mother took charge of the family. She toiled day after day to support her son and herself. She would not have needed to work half as hard had she not planned to give Subhash the gift of education. But whenever she saw her employers leaving for work wearing tailored suits in air conditioned cars, she could not resist the temptation of offering her son the ticket to that world.

Subhash was a good son who helped his mother to run the household. He was in fact very willing to work as fuchka peddler from an early age to assist his mother monetarily. But his mother insisted that he should study. His mother never really understood that Subhash found studies to be incredibly dull. When Subhash got stuck with Geometry he ran to his mother for help. She hung her head in shame and decided to arrange for a tutor.

There was no way that she could afford to pay for a tutor but she decided to skip one meal every day and arranged for the money. Despite her best efforts Subhash could manage to study till Higher Secondary which he barely passed with a third division. Subhash never could make himself fall in love with studies. He was a good guy but he just had a preference for manual work.

His mother asked him to go to college but this time Subhash put his foot down. He felt like an idiot who was wasting his mother’s hard earned money. He wished to learn something exciting and useful. Learning that the combination of sodium and chloride ions gives us common salt did not make sense to him. There was no way that Subhash could use that piece of fancy information to earn some money. It was time, he decided, to learn something useful. He enrolled in a driving class.

His mother agreed. She was getting old and her frail body could not support the weight of her big dreams any more. She thought maybe her son was right; maybe she could be happy to see her son settled with any job that paid a decent salary.

After a few months of training, Subhash applied for the job of a driver at the agency.

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Well, Subhash and Kush both got the job.

Subhash cried a few muffled tears of joy and ran home to tell his mother that she can finally retire from work.

Kush went home quietly and took few big swigs of whiskey and hanged himself.

PS: Up in the sky, the Creator sighed. His project of Egalitarian Society has been stuck in the testing phase from 1902. Ever since angel Biley proposed the model of Egalitarian Society He has tried numerous test cases. But the experiment seemed to fail every time.

Equality probably cannot ensure happiness for everyone in this complex world.

Sick Leave

Mitali was in a big soup. Her domestic help Nalini had not turned up. The whole house was in a mess, there was nothing edible in the fridge and she had to leave for office in another half an hour. Her husband would reach home at least after an hour after completing his night shift and somehow he had forgotten to take the extra key. Mitali was counting on Nalini to hand him the keys. Ordinarily Mitali does not mind spending 1 or 2 hours to clean the house and she was kind of an expert in rustling up a quick and tasty meal. But this was no ordinary day. Mitali had an important meeting to attend plus the biggest issue at hand was her being 2.5 months pregnant. She was in that phase when she fell sick all the time and got to learn that morning sickness can occur at any time of the day.

Now before we proceed to what happens next, let us spend a moment in knowing Mitali and her husband.

Mitali has been happily married to Sanjay for the last 5 years. There was nothing extraordinary in their love story. Just two ordinary people who happened to be working for an IT company…who somehow by some stroke of luck managed to travel onsite for their respective projects. It was a magical time for both Mitali and Sanjay. First their career took off with an assignment in Europe (which every IT employee in their imagination considers to be a paid vacation) and then they found love in each other! 

They got married as soon as feasible. They worked hard and it paid off with repeated extensions in their stay abroad (much to the dismay of the long queue waiting back in India). Mitali and Sanjay were much thrilled though. Honeymoon abroad for 4 continuous years! That meant a penthouse in India and two high end cars.

Then suddenly one day Mitali and Sanjay saw a couple playing in the park with two tiny toddlers. And suddenly they realized that they would both turn 35 in a month (And anyone brought up in India is taught the basic GK that a woman needs to become a mother before 35 in order to deliver a healthy baby.)

Mitali and Sanjay decided together to try for a baby. They were in a good place in life and though they would not admit it to each other or to anybody else, some sort of boredom had started to creep into their marital life. Plus a baby born abroad meant a lot to most Indians. It is like gifting your child the right to snobbery for the rest of the life.

But as it happened, their stint abroad was not extended any further by their manager. Mitali and Sanjay took the change quite bravely and decided to try harder to conceive. They counted on the baby to cheer them up because clearly adjusting back to their life in India was extremely depressing.

Then the big day came. The day when the Prega news strip showed two bright red parallel lines. Oh, how they celebrated! They were going to be parents! They were both secretly relieved to find out that they were not too late. But the challenge came after that.

Mitali was placed into a very hectic project that required extended hours. Ordinarily, Mitali would have embraced this happily but the pregnancy brought in unanticipated changes in her body. She felt giddy…all the time. She felt out of breath…all the time. She puked at the delicious aroma of her favorite food…all the time.

Mitali and Sanjay rushed to the doctor who brushed the symptoms as “very normal” and recommended a book about motherhood in order to prepare her better for the fight. Well, he did not say “fight”…he said “journey” but it sounded more like “fight”.

So at this juncture, when her employer counted on Mitali to save a sinking project, she felt severely weakened by pregnancy. She needed sick leaves and work from home benefits like never before but that invited a lot of flak from her peers. Sick leaves almost became a taboo topic at office. Mitali’s manager was a lady with a 4 year old so she had hoped to get some support and sympathy from her. But after the day when her manager discussed loudly how she had worked till the day she went into labor and how she cannot respect women who use their unborn babies to shirk work, she stopped expecting.

When Mitali told the incident at home, Sanjay was seething with rage.

“Resign now!”, he said. “Don’t let them bully you like this.” Sanjay was a good guy who loved his wife and wanted to be her knight in shining armor. But Mitali did not want to be rescued from the current situation. She knew she had to fight through it. And she had a solution.

You see India does have one big benefit. You can get a maid at a reasonable cost. No minimum wage protection translated to affordable comforts for the upper middle class. So Mitali hired a super efficient maid who cooked and cleaned for her. She even prepared different meals for Mitali and Sanjay. And she took care to cook meals that would soothe Mitali’s nausea attacks to a great extent.

Mitali was genuinely grateful to her domestic help, Nalini and was very liberal with the perks. A new sari, a box of chocolates, an old television set and many more stuff were given away to Nalini. Mitali’s secret plea was, “Please don’t quit!” Nalini took 2 Saturdays off every month and on these days Sanjay happily took charge of the household.

So far things were not quite perfect but they were within control…till today when Nalini decided to take an unapproved sick leave. This was Monday and Sanjay would not be home before another hour. And Mitali was starting to feel another bout of nausea sweep over her. She needed to be in bed…she had to leave for office.

Reluctantly, Mitali dialed her manager’s number.

“I’m not feeling well and my domestic help has also not turned up so I was wondering if I could take the day off or at least reach office in the second half…”, Mitali mumbled on the phone. Mitali was one of those people who felt guilty about being sick and never let their illness reflect in their voice. Her manager took that for insincerity.

“Mitali, I’ve been through this stage. Motherhood is a natural phase of life…you cannot let motherhood affect your work life. And we have a meeting with the client. I hope you know…”

Mitali did not hear anything else…she promised that she would try to find a solution and hung up.

She thought for a while and dialed Nalini’s number.

“Can you please, please come over?”, Mitali begged.

Nalini was suffering from a bad fever…and an abusive husband.

“No,”  she snapped back. “How can you be so lazy? You can’t do your own work one day?”

Nalini never got a taste of education and she did not know anything about misdirected anger. She thought that it was quite ok to vent out her frustration with her personal life on her employer.

Mitali was now the doubly snubbed woman. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. Before she could cry out the sadness, nausea got better of her and she vomited on the floor. She needed help. Maybe Sanjay was right, maybe she should quit. But wait, this wasn’t her fault. This was totally Nalini’s fault. After all the perks and benefits that she had been enjoying she did not have the right to fall ill. And that tone! How could she talk back at that tone? She was the root of her misery. And she would have to pay for it. You see, misdirected anger and blame game affects educated people too.

Mitali called up Nalini.

“You’re fired.” She said and felt a little better immediately.

But domestic helps do not appreciate the brevity of sentences. Nalini immediately prolonged it into a melee of conniving words.

Mitali did not have energy for this. She hung up and lied down for a while. Her high priority meeting was about to start in 10 minutes, she had fired her maid and she was increasingly feeling giddy. There was no way to save the situation.

Suddenly, her phone beeped. She reached out very slowly to read the text.

“Sick leave approved.” A single line from her manager.

Mitali was shocked by the kindness of her manager. This meant she could wait for her husband to come back and help her. This meant she could rest her body and build idle dreams about her unborn baby. This meant her manager probably did have a heart. This meant…really a lot to her.

Mitali decided to pass on the good turn. She called up Nalini and approved her sick leave too. She got up and cleaned herself and smilingly waited for her husband to get back when they could share some quality time over two cups of hot tea. Endless small talk with your spouse on a Monday is always a big thing in the life of a corporate employee.

PS: Mitali’s manager never had a change of heart. The client had fallen ill and had requested Mitali’s manager for a reschedule.

Why Do I Love You?

I love you for a reason. I know it does not sound quite perfect but if you have the courage to face the truth then there it is.

Why do people feel that they do not love someone for a reason? That their love is unconditional? Filial love is unconditional; romantic love is very much conditional.

Different people have widely different needs…some go after money, some after looks, some after brains…etc. Actually people go after a combination of different attributes; the difference is usually in the proportion of the individual attributes and then they claim that they fell for the person’s “nature”!

Sure, that’s not entirely wrong, because the nature and personality of a person is collectively built with different doses of discrete attributes.

So, at the point of falling in love, we are falling for a collection of measurable traits which are pleasing to our senses. However, the subject tends to be under the illusion that they fell in love unconditionally and their love will remain unchanged no matter what.

So am I saying that if a formerly beautiful girl loses her face to an acid attack, her boyfriend will stop loving her?

No, love is not opportunism! People genuinely in love will stick through the misfortunes that fall upon their partners.

But now let us go back to the point where the pretty girl got attacked before meeting the boy. Would he still fall in love with her? Forget about pity, would he love her?

You could come back saying that beauty is a superficial trait and may claim that he would still fall in love with her.

Ok. What if her sweet nature got altered due to a particularly brutal experience before they met? What if her tongue got vitriolic due to some unfortunate experience? Would the boy still fall in love with her? 

Believe me, he would not. When we fall for someone we love the entire package and if you strip the package of the offers one by one, we will no longer love the package. Sounds harsh but that's fact.

What happens after falling in love is a different story altogether. Both the girl and the boy change but they change together and so does their definition of love. And changing together strengthens love…usually.

There are of course instances where a mismatch occurs and that ultimately leads to falling out of love.

Love is a powerful but austere emotion, love happens based on certain rigid rules and there is absolutely nothing lovey dovey or coochey cooey about love. If you thought that love is an abstract concept that defies all logic then I'm afraid you are just under an illusion.

What's Your Sun Sign?

Most people get enticed by the zodiac system in early teenage and some people spend hours poring over the interesting facets in their personalities. Then with the passing years, some people write off the zodiac signs as idiotic ranting, some still follow the updates out of curiosity and others continue to have staunch faith in them.

But really, have you ever looked at the descriptions of the zodiac signs and noted carefully how they make a complete fool out of our teenaged brains? ( No, it is not a problem if you have grown past that phase and still are hooked on to these things.)

Say, for instance you are a Scorpio. If you start to read about yourself, you will find out that you are the most enigmatic and enchanting person that was ever born. You have the power to see through others and you have an unmatched passion for the things/people you love. You will undoubtedly be overjoyed to know that you are unique and perfect.

However, what you do not know is that all the other 11 zodiac signs would also get equally enchanting superlatives describing their personalities. Why would you never find out? Because you are self obsessed (and this trait is true for all 12 signs) and if you are a Libra…you do not care to find out about a Virgo or a Cancer. Unless, you are interested in a person who belongs to that sign. That is ok, because you already love that person and you do not mind knowing that your Piscean boyfriend/girlfriend is the most romantic and dreamy person that mankind could ever get.

You would also see that the zodiac signs usually focus on the positive traits and even when they talk about the negatives they would sugar coat it in a way that you would love to be flawed. For example, who would not loved to know that they are highly misunderstood for their intense and rebellious nature?

I really feel that zodiac signs would not be half as successful if we were not so self obsessed but maybe that’s because my zodiac sign makes me a little skeptical about everything.

So, what’s your zodiac sign?

The Woman

She toiled and toiled and toiled some more,

She gave and gave and gave some more…

Hoping that someday a thank you would come,

Or may be a smile to make her heart warm…

But only disapproval and annoyance came her way,

They threw up their arms and cringed in dismay.

She started again; and toiled even more,

This time she toiled till she went sore.

Hoping that a word of praise would come,

Or may be a gesture to light up the glum…

But more criticism and rebuff came her way,

And that is when her nerves started to fray.

She toiled and toiled and toiled as before,

But this time she knew not to expect any more.

A day came when it was her turn to die,

They came crying to bid her goodbye.

They told her that they felt very sad,

And if there was any last wish that she had.

But there was nothing she could ask for,

That part of her had died long before.

An alternative end to the human race

I used to spend most of the days in my childhood wondering about how the world might end one day and the myriad possibilities kept me awake on many nights. Yes, it was a weird and rather dark way to spend a chunk of one’s innocent years but let’s not get into that now. 

Today I am not exactly dissecting the end of the world, rather I am pondering the extinction of our species and what might be the trigger to start it.

A cosmic calamity of great magnitude? Possible.

Ruthless infighting and an ultimate battle for superiority? Very much possible. But say we learn to live in peace and harmony and choose to treat each other as equals. (Present circumstances make my very normal expectation sound like a joke.)

How would our species then go extinct? Let us digress and take a look at the other species; less intelligent and thus less important to us. We can observe that most species nurture their children with utmost care and ensure that their offspring live on even at the cost of their own lives. This is pretty obvious because filial love is a very primal instinct wired into all living beings. The law of the nature in this regard is very simple.

You shall care for your child and help in preserving your species.

But we are human beings. We need more than a clear cut instruction. So evolution thinks, what is the biggest obsession of the mankind??? From Ravana to Voldemort to you and me, all human beings seem to crave immortality. So evolution decides to fool us into thinking that our children are our genetic extensions, through whom we can hope to get a shot at immortality. When we human beings have a child and feel that unconditional outpouring of love flooding our hearts, it is just evolution doing its magic.

But…human beings are evolving…perhaps faster than the evolutionary laws. This idea of loving someone unconditionally without expecting anything in return has become extremely obsolete. And children are increasingly being looked at as a hindrance to freedom. The elitist people are increasingly opting to not have children. It is just a matter of time before the less intelligent part of the population realizes that having kids tantamount to premature aging and such voluntary steps of self preservation, when adopted by everyone can only lead to one thing…extinction.

The Original Sin

No, I am not going to talk about what you think I am about to discuss. It’s a good topic too; we will put it away for another day.

Today I want to talk about how we human beings are the hypocrites of the first order. We all claim that we do not care about what the world has to say about us but secretly we all crave approval and adulation. The rebels are the worst kind of attention seekers, they believe that they are special (well, we all do…so do our mothers) and go on to defy all conventions and they secretly hope to set a trend, may be one named after them.

I have seldom come across a genuine recluse. Some people move away from a set of people only to seek validation and approval from a different set of people. No one is capable of living without the assurance of being lovable from other people.

Evidence 1: Our love for fame

Is that not the worst form of approval seeking tendency? You want people who do not even know you, to like you, even though you know that you will never be able to return the favour! How selfish is that?

Evidence 2: Our need for love

Yes, our need for love from another person is a subset of this attention seeking syndrome only. We seek out someone we consider to be special and then we want this person to feel the same about us.

Evidence 3: Facebook

Well, the saddest irony is that with age we tend to grow more and more rigid and we tend to like less and less number of people; yet somehow we feel a growing need to be loved and validated by other people. And yeah, we find the solution in Facebook.

We can no longer tolerate face to face meetings with certain people but it is totally ok to have a symbiotic friendship on Facebook.

Well, I am human and I have never claimed to be God…in fact if you know me closely you would know that I do not even believe in the concept of God. So it is pretty obvious that I too would highly appreciate it if you like my blog. It is just a lie when I say that all sorts of criticism are welcome. I do enjoy the debate that follows from a negative response but I feel sore when you truly find the post limpid. That’s enough truth for one day and I hope that you would have the courtesy to lie in case you do not like this post.

One reason in favour of arranged marriage

Arranged marriage has a number of stereotypes associated with it.

“Arranged marriage is a safer bet because you include the consent of your elders…”

“Arranged marriage has a greater chance of success because people are willing to adjust more…”

“Arranged marriage is much more preferable because we are Indians…”

…and it goes on.

Also, arranged often gets tagged as “not cool enough” among the “urban and educated” Indian population.

Well, I am not here to defend or deface arranged marriage. You can be a pro love marriage person or a pro arranged marriage person; I would not object because that’s just your own business. Just stay clear of calling it the grammatically incorrect yet beautifully rhyming “arrange marriage” and I would not have a bone to pick with you.

Let me go on to say what I actually wanted to say.

Getting to sleep with a stranger is a popular female fantasy. Brought up within the confines of a conservative society, educated about the perils of having a sexual relationship with an unknown hunk, a woman feels unsure about living her fantasy. So what do they do? Settle for a boring carnal life instead? Die with lust that never got satiated?

No! This is where arranged marriage makes itself useful!

Arranged marriage gives a woman the chance to live her fantasy of losing her virginity to a little known man. (Alert for intellectually superior people: This is not sarcasm, go for the literal meaning.) To the society he is your husband so it is “morally legal” to sleep with him, to you he is still an unknown attractive hunk who turns you on. Now, this is what I call a win-win situation.