Saturday, February 26, 2011

School Days


I was on a call catching up with a friend of mine. In the background, his younger brother’s voice leaped decibels. Turned out he had reached the morning assembly late that unfortunate day, to consolidate the memory of which, his teacher had decided to pen it down in the remark section of his diary. Just then, my door-bell rang and my sister dragged herself in. I watched her fall upon the sofa and tune the television set to Pogo.

Very gradually the assortment of stimuli poking my mind began to weaken. The afternoon sun died out, and the rosewood furniture disintegrated into grains of sand and for the next subsequent few minutes I let my subconscious self steal my attention, as I began to pace past the memory lane of my good old childhood days.

Everything that succeeds school times is so much in contrast to what we imagine as kids. College is drastically distinct, though the thread of attaining education persists as one of the very few links. Professional courses may yet be segregated as disciplined, though most students may express disagreement.

School was about not feeling miserable after witnessing the near end of the sunrise. It was about rising above lousy whims. Nobody missed the day for the heck of it, or perhaps because they were much too engrossed in snoozing their cell phone alarm. Sure, the rise-and-shine bit never happened to a lot of us back then either, but we were small in size and that gave our folks a hassle-free ticket to pulling us out of our tiny comfortable beds.

Then came morning prayers, somebody reading the news, the whole swarm singing the anthems and songs in unison, waving ‘hello’ to a friend from another division while returning to individual classrooms in an admirable file, listening to every lecture diligently, standing up for the visiting teachers in respect, exchanging evident dirty looks with the monitor ex-friend of yours because she wrote your name on the black board, sitting far away from that boy who your fellow batch-mates tease you with, hurrying down to the ground in the lunch break because you want to sit with your choicest friends and share tiffins because secretly you think the other moms make delicious food and you’re sick tired of your own roti-bhaji, running back immediately as the sound of the school bell hits your eardrums, and screaming out loud as the day ends with that deafening trrring, and rushing outside the school gates so you beat everybody else to the coolest window seat in the bus.

Advancing academically from primary to secondary school, and degrading in terms of dedication, from tiffins, to tiny friends in half pants, to being teacher’s pets and crying at home over every scolding; to bunked lectures and black lists, torn jeans, messy hair-dos, to incomplete assignments, and last minute studying for exams; and peeping into the future - resumes, internships, jobs and responsibilities, sure, we’ve come a long long way.

School is, without a shadow of doubt, the most incredible kick-start the life of any little child could be blessed with. And it’s not just fond memories and the most special friends you carry forth, when you cross the campus walls to get to the other side.


The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009 states that The Government of India shall provide free education (fees, uniforms, books) to children between 6-14 years of age in a neighborhood school till completion of elementary level. Our major responsibility is that it requires proper implementation. And implementation can be taken care of only when everybody at the ground level learns of it. May the children who have been unfortunate learn about this before they have wasted their childhood years in factories or on the streets, instead of school classrooms. To make the Right to Education Act successful, it is important that each one of us knows about it, to get every single girl and boy into school. 

Make A Difference. Do it for India's future.


Web Link

School: The most incredible kick-start a child’s life can get

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Things Left Unsaid


Most of the guy-girl tiffs take the same course. Well, obviously not all, but quite a few are predictable. So, having heard of so many, below are 10 things that distinctly relates to guys, and another 10 that correlates to girls. Most of them don’t really sound too pleasant, and most of you are going to think that none of them link up to you. Happens – they say truth is bitter.


A few things that a girl would want to tell you, but probably won’t

•Life can be a lot more upbeat (more so for the others) if you can desert your male ego. Don’t let everything get to your head – fostering it isn’t going to help you get anywhere.
•Learning to stop taking things in life for granted is something that’ll make you unparalleled. You can’t just afford to sit back and do nothing. Even but I didn’t do anything can infuriate quite a few.
•You should acknowledge your emotions sometimes. Genuinely having emotions, and being all confused is perfectly human. There are theories on this stuff (I swear).
•Prioritize the very many things in your life (read: people). And while you’re on the quest to expand your circle of acquaintances, you can’t snub people who’ve always been by your side – girls also enjoy affection and time.
•You can’t just say anything anytime. There’s this little something called timing- trust me with this one, you don’t want to be in a mess.
•Sorry does not interpret as Damn, I’m a loser. It’s about being nice and respecting the other person’s feelings. Accept your blunders, everybody makes them. The philosophy is called being human.
•Girls are not meant to take care of all your needs. Now that would be your mother. Gone are the good ol’days – we’ve reached the 21st Century; show some, get some.
•It’s okay to want to cry sometimes. The tear glands are not vestigial, that would be your appendix (the last I checked)!
•There’s a difference between feelings and thoughts. When you think, its thoughts and when you don’t, but it still hits you, it’s called feelings. Understand that girls have a lot of both.
•When girls talk to you about their hassles, don’t tell them how ridiculous they are, and how they think too much. Just listen (if you can’t, then just hear: perceive the sound). Everybody does not contemplate like you do.


A few things that a guy would want to tell you, but probably won’t

•Horrifyingly and completely in contrast, girls, let your emotions take a back seat for once. How about analyzing all your problems with your brain? (I mean, with rational reckoning) The neurons are in the head, and the heart is elsewhere.
•Try and make do with lesser attention. Too much bhaav is downright unfair. Weigh up the fact that there might just be better things for others to invest time in.
•You have got to avoid playing mind games – telepathy is miraculous, but not everybody is born with a sixth sense. Speak out loud, people can hear (some can also understand) – and all this can potentially sack more than half your tears.
•You don’t have to be Mother Teresa. Be yourself – the globe can make do without all the sacrifices and compromises. Niceness is a piece of good fortune – everybody doesn’t have it. (Your mission is not to save the world)
•Shedding tears is not obligatory. It’s not a join the girl gang thing! Save it for tougher times and God no, every minute of your life simply cannot be that tough.
•Don’t brood over everything somebody tells you. People talk a lot of gibberish; you don’t necessarily have to be drunk to be all cracked (you could also be on drugs, but that’s not the point). If you draw a hundred conclusions from everything a guy tells you, the probability of your thoughts telling you that he’s in love with you are very high.
•Just because PMS is scientifically proven, doesn’t mean you get away with it every time. (Neat trick though!)
•Not everybody likes free advice, they got parents for that, so save your brainwaves for your children – or for the least of it, for someone who wants it.
•Learning to keep secrets - apart from those belonging to your close pals, which you ought to keep anyway) is quite an art – how about at least trying to be commendable at it?
•Oh, and I had to put this one on! If you’re on the higher side of the weighing scale, and you know it, please stop asking around and make people sin by getting to them.

Friday, February 18, 2011

The Little Kid

It was a gusty Saturday morning. A couple of minutes were pending for the next local to arrive at the platform. The jet black minute hand of the white clock hanging from the ceiling hit twelve. It was ten.
I made my way inside the train pushing aside the other women. To my bad luck, I had to fit myself into this namesake of a place between a fat lady and the door. As the swarm kept jumping inside, through the saris and the dupattas a little boy emerged, clumsily suppressing a sigh of relief. He glanced around, and in less than a fraction of a second, carried his petite torso towards the doorway.

He wasn’t much of what you would visualize a child-beggar to be. He had a dark round face, and deep jet-black eyes. He wore slightly dirty black pants and surprisingly, they weren’t torn at all. Complimenting it was an oversized dirty brown shirt with sleeves tidily folded till his elbows. The black belt of the watch strapped onto his left hand was completely missing after its mid-length, but at the end of the day, the dial flaunted digital timing. I couldn’t help but let this 12-13year old steal my curiosity. He positioned himself cautiously with his hand circled around the pole by the door, blocking a skimpy path of breeze that in retaliation unsettled his short black hair.

“Do you go to school?” I asked in Hindi. There was a baby girl crying in the arms of her young mother, college girls who took the liberty to confer personal ratings to senior boys who were oh-so-hot, a cluster of office going aunties discussing their children, two grandmas chatting about somebody else’s daughter-in-law, all increasing the sound decibels to annoying levels, and then there was this little boy, enveloped in a world of quiet.

“No,” he reverted back, breaking the spell of silence.
“Why don’t you join a municipality school?”
“Mun...munay...what?”
“Municipality, uh, the government school. You can’t clean train floors all your life.”
“I have no money to pay.”
“Government schools are free. Where do you live? Perhaps, you’d let me help you.”
“Vaapi.”
“Vaapi, Gujarat?! And whatever are you doing here in Mumbai?”
“No work back home.”
“Where are you headed to now?”
“CST station. To take the train home.”
“To Vaapi?! So, you travel back and forth, well, daily?”
“Yes.”

Not a word more, not a word less. My attention lay transfixed, while this wonder of a kiddo was exclusively occupied observing the inanimate assortment of objects flying past us as the train gathered more speed and raced ahead.


“Where do you parents live?”
“They’re dead.”
“I’m sorry. Listen, why don’t you find yourself a school? You can study hard and get yourself a decent job. What you’re doing isn’t, well, buddy that’s not what kids do.”
“I can’t afford a uniform. I’m a beggar.”

I took in a deep breath and whispered a prayer into the spill of sorrow. He began to open up.

“I’ve studied till fourth grade. Then Amma-Baba died, and bhai took care of me. He even got me re-enrolled at a school in Gujarat…”
“Then why don’t you attend it, mister?”
“Before my first day at school, he left. Bhai never came back.”
“Oh. Do you know what happened?”
“Never heard from him, never saw him.”

A flock of fanatic aunties hopped in as the train made a screeching halt at the next terminus. A few fisherwomen ran to our side, took off their tattered chappals and sat on them. I looked at my wallet.

Le lo. Here.”
“No,” he nodded his head side to side.
“Come on now, take it.”
I held his tiny hand, placed the rolled up twenty rupees and closed his fist.
“Don’t spend it at one shot. And preferably use it to eat, alright?”

As the journey ended and the station appeared out of the nothingness of the stretch of railway tracks, the ladies began to push and pull to disembark. The boy jumped off while the train was still threading through its final seconds of slow momentum. When I got off, I saw him standing right in front of me. He waved.

He hadn’t seen notes worth twenty bucks together in many years. He raced past a collection of ideas. He placed the fortune safely in his pocket. As he walked, he felt good. It wasn’t loose change, the money wasn’t clattering.

The little boy looked up at the vast light blue colored sky, and smiled.

Relationships


You spot your special someone for the first time, and the world comes to a standstill, and your favorite romantic track begins to play in the background, next thing - he sees you, and the sky is illuminated by firework. This one’s for the ultra quixotic populace. For the rest of us, we keep spotting them; sometimes we take note, sometimes they do. Finally, somebody realizes it’s worth the try, and takes a step ahead and sometimes it works, sometimes it works much later, sometimes it works with somebody else – but it works alright.

Successively the most beautiful inclinations of the social angle of your existence come to life. The creative and ‘could-have-done-better-without-trying-to-be-creative’ techniques of saying “will you go out with me,” and the wonderful ways of saying ‘yes’ - thespian and crazy, or the over-subtle and expressionless, or the closer to sanity, smiley and amorous. 

From here kick starts your love story, the chronicle of the good and bad/sad/boring/irritating fractions – depending on how long you’ve been dating - of both your lives entwined.

All your first time experiences, or your first’s with this someone, depending on how socially flourishing you’ve been, take flight from this moment - your first date, your first time holding hands, your first peck, your first kiss, your first I LOVE YOU and other bits and pieces, like first time getting caught by somebody you didn’t tell (read ‘parents’), first big fight, first time you wanted to bang their head against the wall and hit them so hard that.., well, just hard enough.

On a more serious note, you’ll find your days filled with all these colors that you never knew existed, and a hundred thousand additional emotions that crop up from somewhere deep inside your own little heart, and each time you perceive the musical whisper of an I love you from that one soul, your heart beats a little faster, and there’s this weird kind of warmth that packs up your heart – I do not get how it’s possible, but really, and then you congregate all those hundred thousand emotions and deliver the equally perfect and heartfelt, I love you too.

A new found relationship is one of the most exhilarating things to happen. You never know what could ensue (unlike our television soaps) – one minute its perfect, the very next you have a tiff; one minute you’re defending yourself, a second later you’re saying sorry; one minute you’re eating a hell of attitude, and the very next, you’re down on your knees begging.

Even then, those love filled moments surpass every other practical ruling. You may get stuck having to listen to your friend grumble about her boyfriend/his girlfriend, and you’re just wondering in full volume in your head, then why are you together, and you realize, oops, you just said it out loud! Regardless, the immediate next day, you get some valuable data reminding you how adorable, kind, loving, thoughtful and everything good on the globe that person is, and you go like, what the heck, why bother?!

Let me explain. From all the excitement, to all the joy of a relation, to the steady pace of commitment; to fights, and arguments, and taunts, and dying understanding; to a ray of hope, to the joy of giving, to the beauty of understanding, is the miracle of love.

With time, comes this false feeling of the attachment going stale and bland. Nobody likes it ordinary. But you know what, love does not fade with time, it just has this new dimension, the part wherein it dawns upon you - from here on, you’ve reached a whole new level, a bit of a new world, where you’ve got to grow up a little, and just end your hunt for anything new, and try and comprehend the actuality - that this person by your side has been there for so long, that this person doesn’t have to, but still is.

It’s messy though, if someone special and close to you falls in love. They’re in high spirits alright, but you, you’re stuck listening to over-sentimental sagas, sometimes tragedies, and being duty-bound to help with surprises (like the-first-time-we-held-hands anniversary) that you don’t care about, and at the end of it all, trying, trying very hard, to be calm and composed even though all of this is really beginning to get to you.

In the end, they’re the ones who get to live happily ever after.




Web Link:
Relationships - Changing with Time

Love and Hope


And she smiled all day long. They were all so glad to see her happy. Things were finally falling back into the right slots, they concluded. She deserved somebody better, they gathered. So, they let things be, and never asked again. She was evidently well, what was left to decipher?

Amidst all those who meant the world to her, the solitude began to slither in. The murkiness of sorrow triumphed over the vibrant colors of happiness. The loneliness enveloped it all, and heavy with its weight, a tear drop rolled down her cheeks. She walked forth, as melancholy began to hum a familiar tune. Her vision blurred, diluting the picture of reality. The silence of the withdrawing companionship masked the sounds of her troubles. The distress burdened her shoulders as she retired to the world of slumber. The painting of every tomorrow was left disfigured. The colors that were meant to mesmerize, metamorphosed to the anguish of a broken dream.

She hugged her pillow tight, and wrapped herself in the warm embrace of the sheets. She stretched her hand out and reached for the switchboard. The twinkle of the golden-yellow light peeping out through the lampshade merged with the dark of the long night. The slight gush of cool wind through the half-open windows played with the curtains. Overpowered, they let in a handful of the moon’s silver.

Love was way beyond what could be categorized as right or labeled as wrong. It was about that one connection, the abstract bit that it was. It could not be defined by reason; it was a complicated epitome of assorted emotions. Keeping herself distracted wouldn’t change the gravity of truth. Those hidden sorrows, entrapped behind those half-hearted smiles would irk her, and sleep by her and transform into colossal hollowness as the burst of brilliant sunshine would invite in the following daybreak.
There were a hundred thousand things that she desired for him to be acquainted with - feelings left sacrificed, and a bunch of feeble words, all left unsaid. She gazed at the endless velvety sky. Lonesomeness could be so arresting at times. The starless night enveloped her in her arms and began to sing a soft lullaby to ease the profound wound, one that time didn’t look too intent on healing.

There were many dimensions to ‘love’. Love was not just about the blissful times – singing, dancing, holding hands; it was about staying back even when you could perceive the bustle of the approaching storm inch closer. Love was about that empathy you have for someone, caring beyond what you do for yourself. Love was when it came from the deep confines of the heart. Love was when it was nothing but unconditional. Love was about never letting go. Love was about being there, and living up to those undefined promises that you make every time you say ‘I love you.’

And so she whispered an ‘I love you’ into the nothingness of the night. She prayed that somewhere out there, wherever he was, he would perhaps say it too. And that maybe one day their timings would synchronize and something miraculous would ensue. Maybe they’d get a wish, some shooting star, anything, and maybe her prayer would coincide, and maybe they’d get the chance to write it, all over again. 

The Sunset

The sky began to metamorphose. The day began to suffocate, like a candle about to be extinguished. The night was in waiting, encroaching. The sun decided to make peace.


They sat by each other. Friendship is a very strong bond. They had known each other since school, and school was so long ago. College drifted by, and they slogged through university.


The rays of sunshine started to change colors as it figured it was time to get home into the sea. The sky was like a canvas painted with the most flawless set of colors, merging and blending with such finery. A streak of vibrant pink spilled adjacent to the ball of fire. The gold made its way through the clouds and shone past them with complete awe and majesty. 


They were talking about life, how things had changed - for the good and the worse - since they had last had each other’s company. The cool waters hitting against the rocks by the shore began to play their symphony softly as the two conversed. 


They were happy, and the joy reflected onto the setting ahead, and a million shades of orange and yellow began to dance around the sun. A stroke of red deepened the horizon. They continued to speak, unaware of one of the most splendid and miraculous transitions of Mother Nature. The images settled onto the silent waters closer to the shore. Nature humbly carried on, as perfect as she was with her errands.


They were getting nostalgic. The sand began to cool. The sea began to touch their feet as they got up and walked on the beach. The transparency of the water was intruded by the changing colors on the widespread sky. The sun began to inch downwards.

They passed tiny sand castles constructed recklessly by little ones and thought of their own dreams. They reminisced the old moments, those precious years, and thought of how speedily time had flown past.


The last bit of the sun was yet to make shelter. It looked as though it waited for admiration.



There was a huge rock positioned slightly off the shore. They walked into the sea. The waves were growing stronger, cradling them amidst. They held hands and laughed. The water hit their legs. They climbed on the giant rock and sat halfway towards its top. As the waves grew in magnitude, it touched their feet, tickling them. They sat facing the sea. It was as though the spectacle was waiting for applauds. They watched the sun sink in, and watched on, till gradually all the colors followed it. In a jiffy, the shades were gone, the pellet was empty. The reflections on the sea were gone. The day was gone.


The black marched down. The stolen light from the sun was gifted to the stars as they shone. The glitter in the velvet sky looked fabulous. One by one the indoor lights began to fill in the houses.