Medicine for the soul

My Buddha sat perched delicately on the mattress
With the cat near his feet oddly resembling the lotus of The Buddha
He quietly summoned me with a slight nod
The lines of distress on my face suddenly seemed to ease with that motion
Today's dose of soul medicine was made exclusively for me
A dosage so pure and powerful that it be tasted only once in a fortnight or so
His prescription involved wind in my hair to soothe the knot in my lungs
A drizzle of an hour long rain to shed away high pressure in my blood stream
Holding hands with a friend long enough to stabilize my heart rate
Untasted and unknown food to boost my mental immunity
Letting my hair loose to wash away the stiffness in my joints
Will this cure all my maladies?
This medicine is only a substitute for his presence I concluded

Here's to the normal

I have a story
An ordinary one, a normal one
Knights in shining armour and castles of grandeur do not form the main parts of it
My story is one about the soft, worn rugs
Of coloured, awkwardly shaped pebbles picked up in the playgrounds
Larger than life sacrifices don't dominate my story
Mundane, kind, imperfect friendships do
Love that makes all the butterflies in my tummy go wild builds my story
My stories aren't defined by the hardest adventure or the steepest climb uphill
But tempered by the sweat and blood behind countless small feats
They ask what is so special about your story
I say nothing, it's normal
Sorry to disappoint you
Forgive me for my recipes don't titillate your ravenous hunger
Excuse me that my stories can't be the reason for your adrenaline rush
Or the ache in your cheeks due to uncontrollable laughter
One thing I'm not sorry for is having a story
A story anything but normal
One that floods me with the pride of owning a unique identity
One that gives my name enough reason and enigma of its own
One that helps me weave hundred other stories into my own fabric
One that is a cause enough for me to smile every day!

When I grow up...

When I grow up
I told you, "I will be stronger"
Strong meaning I will not need you to hold me
To guide me, nourish and applaud me
Weakness I guessed would be in reaching out to you for help
Timid assuming you wanted me to stand tall without the scaffolding that's you
Being the flowing sea I tried to touch as many shores as possible
Little did I know that I carry the shiny sand that's you, all through
But grow I did
Not to realize that strong was perfect and alone
New epiphanies struck me to reveal that strong is US
US - so strong as the thunder and lighting that appear to be separated by seconds
Nonetheless both of which do not have an existence alone
Strong as yin and yang, not completing or complementing but just being

Life happens

Life happens
When you fall in love with someone you are not supposed to
In those travel plans that weren't planned
In that extra mile towards a downhill in a trek
With a friend that is too wild for your style
In the crumbs of all the little rules you've broken
In that fifth drink that made you a bit more than tipsy
In the folds of that joint you had under a big tree
In the skipped meetings and lectures
In the money saved by cooking a meal or two with your loved one
In the lucrative career path that you threw away for a lesser one
In your first public dance, the cacophonic karaoke
In those tears at the live poetry festival
In the wrinkles of your favourite book
In the coffee stained Sunday t-shirt you wear while gardening
In the sunny afternoons you spend waiting for a friend
In the magical moments where a stranger transforms into a lifeline

#wonderingwhatlifeis #writingpoetry #adaybeforeexams #whenicantstudyanymore

My superpower!

Through the various stages of growing, I have attributed different strengths to myself. Sometimes I thought I was intelligent and the other times I have described myself as determined. 'Compassionate' is a new addition that I am proud to have in my reserve. However, lately I feel the two things that have predominantly stayed with me in all my journeys are 'resilience' and 'grit'.

During bouts of self-bashing internal dialogues I have struggled with associating myself with these labels. I have been ashamed of setting high expectations for myself, the source of which has been internal as much as it was external. If I strip down my feelings to bare minimum, I see only resilience and grit remaining. I have put myself through very tough situations and taken high risks in spite of knowing it will only cause me discomfort in the going.

When the happy butterflies of getting my first paycheck and having my first alcoholic drink at parties faded away, I realized I have to radically shift the direction my life was going in. I didn't have the skills, contacts, knowledge of working in public sector. I just persisted. My 'sent items' in Gmail from 6 years ago will weave a story of a scared yet stubborn girl approaching every single person that she could lay her hands on and asking them for advice. There were rejections, embarrassments and pure stupidity in many of those interactions. But I was ready to swallow it all just so I get to make a career shift. I have read the shittiest 'self-help' books and hung out with the most boring and arrogant people just so I could learn a little more from them than what I already knew. Backing down was a scarier option than discomfort.

Once I got into doing what I really wanted to, I was scared as s**t. The most critical skills of working in public sector evaded me. My language, common sense and relationship building capabilities were sub-optimal. I wrote exams that I couldn't ace and dreamt of places I couldn't be at. Still I persisted. I took one day at a time. When I finally was at a place that would magically transform me into everything I ever wanted to be, I withdrew. I didn't make friends easily, my professional relationships were strained and there was nobody to take care of me when I fell sick. Still I persisted. I took the effort of staying back for that one extra chai, that one unplanned visit to the mall, that extra 500 bucks on food and drinks, and that one sleepless night conversation which is famed for building lifelong relationships. Slowly but steadily I met people, people who were beautiful and different. So different that I could learn a thousand things from them just blinking my eyes. So beautiful that their presence filled my life with endless love. I grew. One day at a time. I learnt to listen. I calmed down to talk. I flew to love.

Eventually I started flirting with the universe. Telling it ever so lightly in whispers about the deep desires I held in my heart- desires for myself and for others. And as is always the case with universe, it started responding but not slowly and timidly like me but exponentially. Whatever I sent to the universe came back in multiple folds into my life. If I made sure I practiced a few acts of compassion, universe blessed me with the company of numerous big-hearted people. If I showed an ounce of courage in doing a difficult task, universe provided me ladders of support in the form of mentors who allowed me to shine while standing aside as onlookers. It hinted me that it was time that I invested some of my energy in gaining wisdom. Wisdom that seems light to roll on our tongues but morphs into a band of great resistance when applied to action.

I screwed up big projects. Unmet important deadlines. Burnt bridges on important islands. Let down prominent relationships. But I didn't give up. I am everything that I wanted to be and a bit more today.  

What sets apart good ideas?

In one of our strategy classes we happened to discuss this paper by McKinsey that talks about the revolutionary courses of action required to usher in an entire business makeover. Once you study the paper it all seems to be common sense, so much so that it isn't common anymore. The paper lists that the players in a business setting need to come up with unprecedented strategies to gain a strong foothold in their respective sectors and/or to wipe out competition. 

Everybody knows that 'thinking out of the box', 'being unique' and striving creatively do bring out windfall returns in any game. However, why do these articles and books that assert received wisdom stand out in the clutter? Discounting for the common factors such as good writing, critical examples to augment the claim and good language what really sets apart certain presentations of the good ideas? 

In my opinion it is the confidence one has in ideas. History has proved that excellence, wisdom and grandeur can prop up in the most unlikely of situations and people and that they are not limited to a select few. Why then only few privileged few in the society get to take away a big share of the pie? It is because they are willing to believe in themselves, their ideas and are ready to dedicate time and efforts on realizing their ideas. They are blessed with more or less the same capabilities as the next person but their differentiating factor lies in them taking the game ahead on their shoulders. 

This confidence doesn't only come with repeated practice of applying one's ideas but also through reinventing oneself in every trying situation. Complacency, monotony and self-doubt are the biggest foes of confidence. If you have an idea, work on it. Action pays more than mere intellectual rationalization. 

I am better than you

The dangers of creating a space devoid of hierarchy of any sort is an unfathomable idea today. People are in the constant quest and race to prove their mettle to themselves and others. I need to dress better than others, I need to know more than the others, I am a far superior leader than you, I can get this job done better than you. People are in a perpetual challenge-winning mode. Challenges range from "do you want to see how much I can accomplish" to "do you want to see how you can't accomplish anything?". This reminds me of the concepts I learnt in Economics classes. When there are two competitors although the combined benefit is maximum by cooperating, every player has strong temptations to cheat in the short run and bring down the optimal benefit payoff in the long run. Contrary to what religions, philosophers and sociologists have conveyed through tons of collective human wisdom, people think that showing compassion and uplifting each other is a lose-win situation. 

When one is compassionate to another fellow traveler, there is only compassion that one can get in return. It is effortless to get flown away in the negative spiral of self-centered behavior and non-compassionate interactions. But once the wheel of compassion sets in, the true meaning of seamless, effortless meaning of life starts to unfold. In this extremely competitive capitalistic world of today, at the outset being self-centered and aggressive might denote strength and happiness. But on introspection one realizes that aggression and competition to put oneself ahead of others is taxing and unnerving. This is only because aggression is an implicit cry for attention and stems from a deep need for love. Instead, acts of compassion draw from inner reserves of abundance where one has love to shower inwards and outwards. 

Sore loser or learner!

To absolutely know dimensions of your personality and using them to your strength is one  thing and to go way beyond your comfort zone to try new things is yet another level of zen. When I think of words of describe myself the ideas that pop up in my head are non-conformist, socialist, pacifist, peace lover etc., I choose to end the list here because the terms that I just listed make me a person who doesn't enjoy conflict ridden zones. Essentially that implies that I can absolutely not compete and be aggressive. 

By spending inordinate amount of my last 5 years with the marginalized communities of urban and rural India I have seen enough to believe in the fabricated complexity and competition of daily life. I have been fortunate to witness talent flourish in ghettos and open fields amidst acute poverty, crime and abuse. As a teacher and a social worker if there is one thing I believe in it is collaboration and mutual support in hardships. This experience has instilled in me a mental block that competition with others is detrimental to growth. While some may argue that competition is inevitable for a person's growth, I ask again "is competition with others good or with oneself better? If it is with self then is it competition or self development?". 

The past one week has been really interesting in terms of being someone I am absolutely new to! I competed in an election. At my Post Graduation Program in Management at Indian School of Business, I contested for the post of Net Impact Club presidency. This is a professional club that provides invaluable exposure to using business skills to attain sustainability in society and environment. Given my professional bent towards all things social, I couldn't keep away from this club. It was natural for me to want to contribute to this club. Without thinking much I desired to work on the causes represented by this club. But all hell started breaking loose when a dear friend of mine with similar social sentiments too decided to contest for the post. Since the day he announced his candidature it always irked me whether I had to continue with mine. 

Here was a guy who was absolutely capable of taking up this position and who was skilled enough to formulate a great campaign before elections. My basic nature of being competition averse and the desire to work in collaborative conflict-free environments compelled me to reconsider my candidacy. However, since elections was something new and outside my comfort zone I decided to contest nonetheless. That meant 20 more hours of extra work in addition to the thousand commitments I already had at ISB. But I made a small bargain with myself. I decided to stay very much in my own skin. I shunned heavily campaigning for this post and I stuck to the forms of communication that I was most comfortable with. The day before soapbox presentation I had almost pulled out of competition since going up on stage and talking about myself and how I would contribute to the club was a bit too much for me. But I braved ahead and stood in front of people and cameras to give my election pitch. 

This experience played out to prove that 

• My leadership style is influential personal relationship rather than public coercion. 
• I can't market myself to save my life. 
• I would rather put in the same amount of work without a title than with one. 

All this internal struggle finally ended with my friend winning the elections deservingly so.  I am at a place where marketing oneself is seen as a strength. However mentally I am at a place where I believe endless collaboration is the best option for progress more than competition. 

To be or not be

Karan Johar has famously declared in his autobiography that he doesn't understand the social repercussions of the way he portrays the characters in his movie and also that he is least bothered about it. All he claims is that he knows to make fun movies.

Let me zoom in a bit and come to my small world of friends and families. Few believe that making innocent sexually violent comments about the opposite sex, preserving interests on one's own caste and deriding people's looks are all personal choices with no far bearing consequences on the larger society.

Come to think of it again!

Are our actions so isolated and limited to our personal space? Are personal and public lives really that tangential? If they ever meet what is the dynamics of that tumultuous space? Do humans exercise any control over the forces in that realm?  When does the personal become political and where does political impact our personal choices? Can we be naive and behave in a way so as to implicate absolute disconnectedness to the larger game of life?

Can I watch sexually violent teenage porn and fight for child rights?

Will I not add to the communal riots by not inviting my other religion friend to dinner at house?

Should I call myself a feminist if I enjoy making and laughing at sexist jokes?

Would it impact the nature if I decorate my house with only plastic stuff?

K P Poornachandra Tejaswi is a renowned Kannada author whom I like specifically for bringing in the social angle to his stories. Seemingly innocent and isolated incidents are shown to create a wave of social sensitivity and one cannot be awed by how effortlessly he shows these connections in his writing. If you have ever wondered about the implications of your actions in your private space on the workings of the public sphere then reading Tejaswi's "Chidambara Rahasya" book is a good start at gaining clarity.

A game of rewind and forward

Roughly twenty years ago, we got a basic Philips tape recorder model. Many of my ticklishly wonderful childhood memories are somehow arrested within this black box, that still sits atop my nostalgic sister's fridge. My sisters and my favorite past time was to repeatedly rewind and forward the music cassettes until we landed on one of our favorite songs. Just to beat the nostalgia I am going to play the game but only imaginarily.

Let us rewind about a 100 years back in time. Right then in a not so well known small town center called Narsipura, I met a girl called Bhagyavathi. Bhagya (for I love to shorten names) was a firecracker in the sense that she had quick wit, a sharp tongue and a insatiable curiosity about the world. She was a natural at reading people's behavior and the underlying intentions. Needless to say she carried a vista of local knowledge about plants. Icing to the cake was that she was highly logical and compassionate! Now you might be wondering how she looked right? Well sorry that I can't help you much out there since her beauty doesn't matter to my story and neither should it matter to you. I often wondered how successful she would be as the main adviser to the ruler of the territory that she lived in. But wait! She couldn't have been that right. Bhagya and many other girls like her were restricted to the domestic affairs, rightly so. What would a curious mind like her do with politics and social welfare? She learnt very early on at the age of 5 that she shouldn't be talking at volumes equal to that of the male members of her family let alone ask questions to them or around them. By the age of 9 all her outings to the nearby woods and hills were abruptly stopped because she was beginning to resemble the adult version of her species. But her parents being highly liberal and fore-thinkers allowed her to read stories from her books until she was 10 after which they all knew that  before she hit puberty she would have to be whisked away to another owner who could decide for her. Thus ended my dreams of her becoming the chief adviser to the ruler. Now I know that you would blame me of irrational imaginations but can you please allow me to narrate another story of a girl in the future, whom also I met only in my imagination.

When I fast forward to 100 years from now, I meet Spashta. She is an epitome of tenderness and kindness. Spashta is one person who people go to for solace. With her rightly measured words she always knows what's the right thing to say or hold back. Her inclination towards caring has bestowed indeterminable courage on her. She works as a bio-conservationist and right now tending to the preservation of an endangered weed species that adds valuable phosphate content to farm lands due to its presence. Spashta's work requires her to visit farmlands at night time when the phosphate generation activity is the highest among these plants and they run the risk of being poached by chemical industry laborers. Her job role involves scientific monitoring and data collection along with manually guarding (and fighting for) the crops. So naturally she needs to be out in the open at night and has claimed all possible public spaces (like all the other girls of her time) at all times of the day irrespective of who is with her or not.

Now back to where I am today in 2016. Unlike Bhagya for whom having a voice and education was next to impossible, I enjoy a certain degree of intellectual and political freedom through which I can claim my rights to study as much as I want. However I am still not as free as Spashta in pursuing job roles that are gender-unbiased, roaming wherever I want at whatever time I want with whoever I want doing whatsoever that I want. I feel fortunate that I live in times where there is so much progress that women have already made and the fruits of which I already taste. These times are also tempered with a restive feeling of injustice where I know there is so much that women still cannot do.

Pigeon story

This morning when Bangalore was recovering from an incessant rainfall of two days, there was a pleasant lull in the air. The air was unusually chilly, humid and the sun didn't claim his share like he usually does. I persisted with my love for warm clothes. One of the places where I am consulting these days happens to fall right beside Lalbagh lake. As I was talking over my phone, a curious flock of pigeons were eating rice grains that were laid out on the moist ground for them. After a minute or two of mindless watching, I observed a strange phenomenon. One of the pigeons, which was fat, let us call it 'Dumma' for the moment, strutted along elegantly into the center of the group and started pecking any pigeon who tried to eat the grains. Dumma would peck a pigeon until it flew away and then peacefully pick on its own grain not until another pigeon came in the proximity, by when it would again start its irrational assault of sharp pecks. This continued to happen until Dumma had successfully driven away more than 11 pigeons and had a big fill.

This incident made me reflect strongly on one philosophy of life that has stuck with me for a very long time now. Nature always tries for disorder, a phenomenon beautifully captured by a scientific term called entropy. It has been observed that all molecules try to attain the state of highest disorder. It takes more energy to maintain order than to disorder. It is easy to allow water flow than to restrain it. It is easy to break than to build. It is easy to rumple than to tidy up. When such is the natural order of the world, human beings are trying to build a cumbersome case against nature by trying to hold an enormous social system in a unified fashion. It is extracting painful energy on part of humans to maintain this system that is so inherently unstable. All the additional energy that is going in to retain order rather than chaos is bringing up strain in the human society. The cracks due to this are conflicts. Conflicts within human mind, families, communities, nations and ultimate globally.

Human mind tries to rationalize every act as moral and immoral thereby laying huge stress on the mind. Like for our Dumma, for a human mind too it is natural in an evolutionary sense to fight for the available resources, to gain supremacy. This act demands an exercise of power at all times which gives rise to unfairness and inequality. When such is the case, for human mind to pursue illusionary quests of equality, honesty and justice is just hypocrisy. As Sartre says "man is condemned to be free, because once thrown into the world he is responsible for everything he does" and to hold responsibility for a world as chaotic and as random as ours is nothing but insanity. Likewise in family and relationships as soon as the human mind claims unconditional love, it is fake, for a human mind or for that matter any species can look after only its own survival and it will pursue any relationship only for its usefulness in its survival. If this argument is further extended to nations and global relations, we can soon see sense that any claim to eradicate the inequality and crime to humanity (is there a thing called humanity after all?) is doomed.

So that leaves us with the question of 'what is the ultimate good in the world?'. Well that is an effing joke. There is nothing called the ultimate good or the noble truth. Humans need to shed all delusions of grandeur and realise the fact that they too are humble species on the Earth trying to etch out a living for themselves by fighting against many odds of the nature. Sorry to break this you but you (and me) are not special in any way.

I cried!!

It was a pleasant rainy day at Bangalore and I had the most productive day at work. To add to it all I had a sumptuous lunch and an interesting snack time :) Just when I thought the world was at its beautiful best in an Ola share cab, I met a woman who challenged it all.

This woman that I so unsuspectingly helped was reeking pride and meanness. First of all she made the driver wait in front of her hotel door for 5 minutes even when he called her. She simply assumed (without checking her app for the car number) that he isn't the one. Then she strutted around to the front of the car grudgingly when she couldn't get into the back seat because there were already two customers from the previous bookings. She allowed 3 men, plus me, to fit her big suitcase next to my bag in the back of the car without offering so much of a thanks in our way! Fast forward 15 minutes, it was time for her to get down. The cycle repeated when she loitered around the car door and let the driver manage her heavy luggage all by himself. I would have still not minded her lack of compassion had she not thrown away the driver's book rudely onto the seat that she had nudged down to the road while getting down.

This miss here is the answer for why big reforms often take a very very long time to bring about a small change. It's because we forget to give the world a little more compassion on our part. 

Good leaders never talk about money

I have had the fortune of meeting leaders from various walks of life. I have been blessed to witness the works of student leaders, leaders in education, art, engineering, design, motivation, service, dance and spirituality. One common trait among all of them is that they do not talk money! However it is not to dismiss their understanding of finance in reaching their goals or meeting their teams' inspirations. Although they realize the importance of constant flow of funds and remuneration for their team members' work, seldom do they base their decisions on how much money flows in or out. They constantly define their actions based on the strong shared values and principles that they uphold and inspire people to meet their best performance under all circumstances. Their language is one of hope and motivation and is never infused with the threats of financial gains.

Good leaders
-talk of organisational or personal goal to set their milestones
-write about coherence of budget with their dreams
-incentivize their team members on the positive growth they have achieved
-evaluate the organisational or personal outcome on the yardstick of their vision and mission

It takes immense reflective capability for a leader to see gains beyond the monetary ones. The moment someone gets entangled in the woes of balance sheet and payslip, he/she is a mere manager of tasks and teams and not a leader!

Where are the women anyway?

The perks of working from home is that you can cut down that draconian travel time in Bengaluru traffic and use those precious hours to do what you like. Today I went out on an excursion to explore the very architecturally attractive CCD near my place. When it turned out to give me a capitalist and mindless consumeristic feel, I decided to move on to take a walk (more like a stroll actually). In the stretch of 3km I came across a humongous playing ground, 3 beautiful parks (yup that’s Bengaluru) and serene streets of J P Nagar (a predominantly middle class and upper middle class settlement). To arrive at the point of this article, there were no women at all! Now you would accuse me of making a preposterous claim but before you do that let me clarify what I’m trying to say.

The gigantic playground that I mentioned above was filled with only boys! Not a single girl found. The streets were empty of women who strolled around in leisure. The very few women who were on the streets were young mothers taking their kids on an evening walk and the elderly women walking in pairs. My question is where are the women like their male counterparts just chilling in the breezy Bengaluru weather? Do good girls avoid public spaces because that’s what makes them good in the first place or are the public spaces so unsafe that even a soothing chilly weather doesn’t pull the girls onto the streets?

When our system and culture celebrates a fit body, does it dutifully open up public spaces to girls? Is a playing ground the property of only the boys? It means that only the rich who can afford an enclosed safe place for sports  can indeed indulge in sports.

The gender politics doesn’t get played only in the parliament, government buildings and corporate offices, schools and hospitals, instead it reeks its bloody teeth in public places. You needn’t go look into compelling radical feminist articles and books to understand the nuances of sexism. Just look around. I ask for only this puny indulgence. When you are whizzing away on your vehicles, or sitting in a coffee shop or simply sipping chai on the roadside tapri, look around. You’ll see that the roads don’t welcome women. They prove that it’s a man’s world after all!

Boys vs girls

On my visits to multiple rural schools I am greeted by beautiful school campuses with gardens, lively colours and huge farms attached to the school premises. One cannot help but relish this picturesque view outside the highly populated cities. But as soon as you bring people inside those school buildings, my heart gets punctured rudely with the inequality that reeks in every nook and corner of these schools.

A stark gender divide appears in the schools. Starting from the teachers to the students discriminative gender roles are a norm. Majority of the lady teachers show submissive nature. Most of it has to do with the typical gender stereotyping that occurs in Indian households. Teachers favour boys which is evident in the way they position themselves while teaching (they stand closer to the boys' column, they joke around with boys more (that is whenever they do)). Teachers restrict girl students to gender typical jobs such as fetching snacks/drinks to guests, decorating the school premises etc., When it comes to  students, on a qualitative analysis boys answer more number of questions than do the girls, boys undertake more volunteering tasks while girls are typically huddled up not taking initiatives on most occasions (like typical good girls, they come forward only when asked to).

I do not know the ways to end these seemingly minor yet potentially harmful gender discrimination acts as an outsider. In my capacity as a teacher too I  found it hard (if not impossible) to make everyone act in gender neutral ways since gender stereotyping runs deep in our psyche as a society. I know 'this is how the world works' but let me tell you that it is definitely wrong. There are societies that are worse than ours but that doesn't stop us from progressing on right paths.

Snaky

One of those days
The only movement you make is to crawl from one end of the bed to the other
The sun shine dims
The thirst, the hunger all wait to knock until you are ready to receive them
The phone calls have more pauses than words
Videos run in tandem with the stories that flow through novels
Sleep beckons you yet you are wide awake
Tomorrow seems further apart while today is a story of your slumber
A leaf rustles, a bike horns, a cat cries
Golden hues of the day light are arrested in the orange of your drapes
You plot a poem, novella and are waiting for the first word

That. Is when you seek yourself.

Hiraeth

'Hireath' is a word I newly learnt. It means "homesickness for a home to which you cannot return, a home which maybe never was; the nostalgia, the yearning, the grief for the last places of your past".

I just finished reading " The Prophet" by Khalil Gibran. It is one of the most acclaimed literary giant ever written. The reading was an act of mindfulness for me. Those 3-4 hours that I read this book were reflective, contemplative and unencumbered. I am left with such a pleasant sense of being. A certain peace has washed over me. Is it the prose poetry, my most favourite form of literature that affected me? Or was it the effortless philosophy rendered in the most naturally possible simple way?

This reading took me to places of deep conversations I've had with strangers. To the sweet pains of the failures I've had. To the humbling life lessons I've endured. To the lost love and care of close ones. To the bliss I obtained by sharing laughter with children. To the friends who travelled long paths beside me. To the gentle warmth of my beloved and to his irrational ways too. To the irksome thorn of societal conventions, to the callous religion and the tender humanity.

Hireath is the word that I'm left with. This book took me through moments of intense mindful awareness. I cannot say what really stuck me about the book. It just flowed. It's one of those books you read only to realise you've known this all throughout and that the poet/writer gave ink to your thoughts.

Plight of a bibliophile

Due to the pressures of my academic study,work and wedding preparations I did something unthinkable this time! I had willingly decided to not indulge in reading apart from my academic and work related ones. Although there wasn't a dearth of intellectual stimulation (as part of my sociology, curriculum and pedagogy courses I read famous sociologists, linguists and revolutionaries) I felt a nagging void in my life.

So after 2 long months of refraining from reading for pleasure I picked up Gloria Steinem's title 'As if women matter'. This is one of the essential feminist reads that was recommended to me strongly.

It's a delight to loose myself in this book. Bus stand, coffee breaks, bed, loo - I have taken this reading everywhere. But you would then think that this book makes for an excellent read. Frankly, no. It doesn't. I have read better authors who have a balanced approach to delicate matters, who give both the sides of a narration, who keep strong emotions at bay while convincing readers about their theories.

However, I certainly am enjoying responding to a book and engaging with it by employing all my mental faculties. It is a cheap thrill to Google about the greater matters that a book has to offer. Reflecting on one's own life through the lens of the author is a highly desirable act. Gaining new perspectives, analysing one's current mental makeup and accommodating new knowledge is what makes for an exciting learning opportunity.

I can never run away from being what I am- a bibliophile.

Gender equality and safety

As part of my work, I happen to travel to interior villages and not so forward minded taluks. On one such visit when I was delivering a training at Gubbi taluk, I felt threatened in a very long time. For the past few years, I've been blessed with the company of rational and egalitarian individuals. I've revelled in conversations that challenged, refined and pushed me to be a better individual. As a result of these exalted opportunities I've come to strongly believe in a society that celebrates free and equal individuals. But this recent experience violently woke me up from my slumber.

Upon finishing the training, I sat with my team to have lunch. One enthusiastic participant who held respect for me came to serve food to the place where I was sitting with a big vessel. A young fellow in my team discarded the entire scene as one that of patronising a girl. He rashly commented that all those people who complimented and showed respect to me in various trainings (there are about 10+) did so mainly because I was a girl. He felt that people admire me only for me being a girl. In the process, this young villager belittled my expertise in content, public speaking and interpersonal relationship in one single statement. Not only was my pride hurt but I felt extremely inconsequential. There were few others in the team who enthusiastically agreed to this man! This interaction highlights the following facts in villages:
1. After all that a woman does, her gains of the game are associated to society's tender feelings for a girl
2. A woman is expected to fill in the shoes of the stereotypical girl

I still believe there is merit in me being me because:
1. Upon seeing a girl who doesn't fit the traditional roles of a girl, the people will take notice of the progress society is making in gender equality
2. If I deliver good results irrespective of gender, the villagers will have a fine woman role model
3. My gender atypical actions might inspire someone who is trying to break free of gender stereotyping

Women do not highlight such subtle discrimination in their day to day life. A typical reader might now feel that I'm coming out too strongly by stating the above pointers. But I see my role beyond the confines of my job description. I'm not there to just provide guidance to village teachers about curriculum and pedagogy. I see every human as a potential force to alter the mechanism of this world. If my stubbornness to defy stereotypical roles brings about a subtle change, then I believe I like many other people in the world hold a power to influence others. And as Spiderman says "with great power comes great responsibilities". I will not allow any one experience to kill my spirit of achieving equality. I demand equality and thereby hold the responsibility to deliver equality myself.

On the same day I had to halt in the town to deliver one more training the next day. After a tiring visit to the village (35km away from the town. A village with no running tap water, electricity for 1-2 hours of the day, food still cooked on firewood) of the same young man mentioned above, all I wanted was to crash on bed and nourish my tired body with a good night's sleep. The hotel I decided to stay at was a newly constructed, comfortable and clean one. I was immensely grateful for this! But the whole experience was uncomfortable. A male colleague also decided to stay back, although he confessed much later that he did so to ensure my safety. And guess what! I was glad for that gesture since I was the only girl to stay in the entire hotel, which had about four floors and some 10-15 rooms on each floor and my colleague's presence gave a soothing assurance of safety. Where ever I walked that evening in the hotel I had different eyes set on me wondering what exactly I'm doing! When you have so many people looking at you trust me it is not a welcoming feeling outside your home city, in a strange small town.

In my opinion, nobody should  feel unsafe just because of their gender. I might be comfortable walking travelling alone in the cities I've lived in. But it's disheartening to accept that I don't feel safe travelling alone in small towns and villages, particularly at night. Will this condition change? Yes. I'm definitely hopeful of that. Whether that change is going to be one at high speed or at a snail's pace is left for the villagers to decide!

Ultimate solution to educational crisis

A religion focussed solely on education is the ultimate solution to end all the educational woes of our society. 

I recently finished watching Zeitgeist and reading the book Rise of Kali by Anand Neelkantan. What's prominent in both these intellectual discourses is that dominant people in the society fabricate the rules and ways of a religion to influence and manipulate the commoners.

Theists who lead life within the constraints of a religion follow anything that the priests/religious authorities put forth as the good code for life. Imagine a religion based purely on making the population rational thinkers set out to create a free and equal society. The followers of such a religion based on the ideals of democratic education would definitely solve problems in our education system.

If anything can save the doom of education then it is a strong blind faith that will make people believe in any tough way of life and fanatism that will fuel the minds with a craziness.