panaecea

A Series Of Soul Bytes Just For You

February 13, 2013

KYUNKI SAANS BHI KABHI BAHU THI SYNDROME OR MORE

I am not into putting up longish post, at the same time, I wouldn’t be writing this article had I not overheard a mobile conversation on the Metro by chance. The girl was newly married (could make out from the chuda adorning her wrists) and complaining to her husband who was presumably settled abroad. She sounded terribly upset and on the verge of tears. From the fragments of conversation the picture that I pieced together was like this: –

Just a month had passed after her marriage that she realized an ever-widening chasm segregated her from the rest of the family. Her in-laws treated her more like a surrogate housemaid than their loving daughter-in-law. Her parents were being openly abused for not satisfying her mom-in-law’s insatiable thirst for dowry. While her daily routine predominantly consisted of taking care of the house and the family and entertaining the stream of guests that seemed to be continuously invading the household, her brother’s maiden visit to the house was singled out as a trespass on her in-law’s peace of mind and comfort. She complained of a caged, claustrophobic existence deprived of basic human rights like watching the TV and reading the morning newspaper. Obviously, she was a working woman – a lecturer doing her Phd. However, relegated to being the kitchen maid, her academic career was in doldrums. “I am so engrossed in preparing breakfast, lunch and dinner that I don’t even know who has become the President of India! What am I going to teach my students?” sniffed she.

A pitiable situation, perhaps a little over-the-top but here there is something which is worth a bit more attention than a mere passing thought.

In the Indian society, marriage is just not the boy meeting the girl and falling in love resulting in a mutually agreed ceremonial bonding. In India we “marry into a family“, especially for the girl, which has a larger social connotation that of “getting accepted by the family“. The boy is equally “married into a family”, however, by virtue of an age-old male dominated system, is able to retain an aura of exclusivity. Remember, he is the damaad of the family. No wonder, in certain parts of the country, the son-in-law is addressed as “Mehmanji” – a chosen invitee. Definitely, his stature is quite different from that of the girl.

However, the all-embracing family and the all-acquiesent daughter-in-law are both rarities.

As per the existing scheme of things, a professionally qualified, five-digit-salaried groom looks for an equally qualified and earning bride. However, as soon as she is married and crosses over the threshold of her new home, familial demands take a 360 degree turn. Now, the newly wed girl is expected to do a double shift – be the ever-smiling scullery maid plus earn a modest income to add to the growing “wellness” of her new family.

It’s a common crib that the modern, well-educated girls do not care two hoots for their aged in-laws and won’t blink twice before walking out on them if need be. On the other hand, is it fair to confine a girl of fine intellect, brought up by her parents, in love and care, to culinary bondage?

Well, when I first overheard the conversation I was all sympathy for the girl. After a while mulling over the incident the skeptic in me suggested that the complaint was just a precursor to shirking off familial responsibilities. Repeated cogitation enabled varied interpretations of a casual incident.

Had it been the case of the bahu-of-substance who after finishing all her daily chores still makes time to complete her thesis and empower herself additionally in the dead of the night with a touch of smile on her quivering lips, an inspirational saga of tear and toil would have been in the making, drawing a lot of ‘aahs’ and ‘oohs’ from certain quarters who are given to looking for stereotypes – the superwoman so aptly portrayed on celluloid of the 60’s and the 70’s or so lovingly sketched in the novels of yester-year classical writers like Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay. However, the girl in question is just an ordinary mortal (and thankfully not a happy masochist) who is enlightened enough to protest when the fundamentals/preconditions of good living are infringed upon.

With the advent of the nuclear family and change in urban attitude towards the girl-child, the upbringing of the daughter is not restricted to cooking, sewing, tending to the hearth alone – a twenty four hour unpaid service, highly underrated but in actuality equally laborious and tough as any other paid assignment. Rather all her energies, prior to being married, is channelized towards her overall personal growth – physical, mental, intellectual, professional, which is rather a pity, because in the whole process, the basics of homemaking, one of the rudimentary disciplines in a girl’s educational curriculum, somewhere get overlooked or shelved, thereby increasing an over-dependence on the housemaid in later parts of her/post marital life.

The clash begins when she is married off into a family with a diametrically opposite cultural ethos where the ma-in-law suffers from the typical saans bhi kabhi bahu thee syndrome and is in a perpetually retaliatory mode or has a cerebral hitch in sharing her son with his wife or cannot think of the slightest change/modification/adjustment in her established order because she has all along been a hands-on mama or bahu.

On the other hand, the girl of earlier times, who was equally discriminated against in her parent’s as well as her in-laws’, succumbed to her taken-for-granted status easily. Being replaced by the informed and aware jeans-clad crop, relational equations require an immediate re-hash. Mindsets fear that a tee-shirt sporting bahu may not be readily acquiesant to the aged parents-in-law. On the other hand, the new-age girls have a predisposition to snub off the saans, on minimal pretexts, whether the latter be tyrants or tender-hearted. Rifts widen when the buck full of progressive thought stops at the daughter’s door while the daughter-in-law is treated as the ET from outer space. Prejudices are rampant in both the camps. Sorting out the muck, therefore, is imperative, for both.

However, there is no denial to the fact that the womenfolk are the ultimate homemakers, a role entrusted upon them by society because somewhere down the line, perhaps in the primordial state of nature, the Eve of the clan was decidedly drawn to this activity by virtue of a natural instinct or acumen which lent her greater suitability/susceptibility towards the job. However, in whichever way they have been doing it or do it, is entirely their perspective and decision.

It is also the most intimidating act that marriage entails – the cross-over from one homestead to the other – leaving behind one’s comfort zone and getting acclimatized to a foreign weather – the going gets rougher when one is not guaranteed a well-defined induction period. In this whole rigmarole, at times non-issues become issues, for example, whether pajamas or shorts will be allowed at the in-laws’ or not. Without venturing into a fresher debate, I will say that a happy family is the one which permits a steady growth of its members. Thus, it necessitates that each member of the family, especially the newest entrant, be mentally as well as physically happy and content, in order to contribute generously to the well-being of the family. A certain amount of freedom, a certain amount of let going and certain adherence to the lakshmanrekha, go hand in hand, to perfect the familial bond – weren’t we all brought up that way?

Duty entails right and vice versa. Agreed. But when we lay the onus of endorsement on the daughter-in-law, we must understand that she is a newcomer much in requirement of a gestation period to be one of us. Also, the higher the model more is the price paid – sorry to use the metaphor. But the truth is when we bring in an engineer or a doctor bahu we cannot expect her to be in the housekeeper’s shoes all the time. However, the conventional role-playing is not entirely precluded as a rule.

Somewhere Aristotle’s Golden Mean is to be grabbed – a point of intersection where one can sit and talk amiably , respect viewpoints even if they are opposed to preconceived notions, be patient with each other, amicably resolve discords and assess if due weightage has been given to all. And this goes for both – the saans as well as the bahu.

Posted by gc1963 on February 13, 2013 in FAMILIAL BOND and tagged Bond, Daughter-in-Law, Family, Marriage, Mon-in-Law, Relationship.

24 Comments

February 10, 2013

An Ink Blue Sky & A Lost Missive

I think it happened at about nine-ish when I was doing the dishes – the last of a string of chores on a cluttered day. The sky, till then seething in silence, exploded without any prior notice, giving vent to an ire, earthlings would have thought it not capable of.

Winter skies are generally deeply mournful and meditative like those ageless hermits scouring the formidable terrains of the Himalayas in an endless search for absolution.However, that day it was in no mood to be the dumb witness to a degenerative civilization of barbaric mammals. A fiery crack split it in two halves with a thunderous roar for the entire cosmos to see how agonizing it is to hold in its bosom leaping blazes and licking flames.

And then as suddenly as it had growled it poured like a ruptured hose pipe dousing the Earth with torrents of water clattering and clamouring in chaotic release. It rained throughout the night and days together. The sky remained sullen, brooding and inapproachable, a sentinel of clouds disallowing trespass by the sun which sheepishly hung its head low and acknowledged defeat – an unconditional surrender.

06.00 AM the next morning my maid announced that it had snowed the previous night which in actuality turned out to be big, fat hail. We could have humoured her presumptive boasts except that encouraged by a snowing Agra (-1⁰) and a freezing Lucknow (-2⁰) every hopeless heart had at least once prayed that they would be able to enjoy the Capital’s first ever snowfall without incurring out-of-budget travel expenditure.

A frozen city may be a luxury for the ones who can afford to brace winter in all its pristine whiteness but not for those lakhs of homeless who spend the nights inadequately clad under the shelter of the naked sky on frosted beds by the roadside.

But that did not happen. I mean the snowfall (which was a meager relief as the cold wave continued unabated). And what did happen was so inevitable that it escaped mention.

Waterlogged

The vantage of stranded pools is that they effectively cover up the pot holes and dents if you are lucky enough not to splash into them. If you do, chances are your SUVs and MAVs may need a change of wheels pretty sooner than required and a dash to the Workshop. If you are on foot then a visit to your fav Ortho is very much due. But as we head towards a hurried spring and a soon-to-follow-sweaty-summer, these dirty puddles, a wistful remembrance of the sudden-not-so-long-ago rains, furnish fertile grounds for extensive mosquito farming and the invariable epidemics.

Don’t miss the debris – Whipping up memories of a cleaner city

One of the Authorities told me that my fears were far-fetched because a super-hot sun in all its machismo would soon help evaporate the puddles dry.

“What about the longer diversions back home,” I asked

“Why?” asked he.

“Coz the shorter ones are in urgent need of draw-bridges?”

The ideal answer would have been, “The moats are in the making”.

But instead I got a brush-aside, “kuchh hi samay ki to baat hai” which obviously shut me up and at the same time irked me to no end.

Down the service lane bordering the block there is a bend where a nameless tree stoops low to kiss the pavement. Shaded by its leafy branches the ground underneath is soft and sunken facilitating the post-rain bowl of water to accumulate and stagnate longer. The water mirrors the tree. The thick foliage of the tree opens like an umbrella over the make-shift pond (if I may call it that) – a picturesque frame that I clicked at random passing by to and fro Office.

The Watery Trails of Yesterday’s Rainfall

However, a city geared up for its 14^th General Election, these for-once-unwanted-gifts-of-Nature are ugly reminders of the heavy scanner that the salaried section of the workforce is subjected to by the IT Department. Could these eye-sores be remedied, it wouldn’t have pinched so hard to have generous slices of cuts from one’s khoon paseenay ki kamai at the end of each month. Which doesn’t mean that a more proactive MCD and/or other Public Service Departments would induce euphoria while glancing through Form16 at the end of each Financial Year but at least it would, to some extent, justify the stout deductions and provide wee bit solace that our hard earned money was not going down the drain in funding the (erstwhile) Tutorial Head’s expensive foreign tours or making its way to the bulging pockets of dubious Government Officials or for that matter squandered in erecting stone-carved statuettes of humble predecessors of the self-proclaimed-now-dethroned Queen of the Downtrodden.And this post may be labeled as an unostentatious pleading of an unambitious plebeian to Government, God and all such unreachable sources of Supreme Power who have made this beautiful world unlivable at regular intervals of time. Well, on second thought, God be left out of this keechaang after all, preoccupied that He is taking care of an ever-expanding Universe!!!

Posted by gc1963 on February 10, 2013 in MUSINGS and tagged Bowl, Fire, Hail, Hermit, Himalayas, Lane, Lightening, Nature, Pond, Pool, Puddle, Rain, Sky, Wate.

23 Comments

February 3, 2013

“Pansatia!!!”

Poinsettias

Ravi, my maali, is my prime find of the season. He arrived in my life when I was about to lose my patience and temper for good with the earlier one, a perennial irritant and an ad-hoc arrangement in want of a better alternative.It was, however, a matter of coincidence that Ravi turned out to be the son of the blue-eyed gardener who used to take care of all the “modest gardens” of the block from the time when the jungle infested locality was trying its level best to spruce up into an upcoming human habitat. During that time he was the only one around, knowledgeable as well as shrewd enough when it came to making money, till one fine morning we heard that he was no more. He had been to his gaon (native place), never to come back again. One of those fluke bike accidents, sudden and avoidable!

Ravi had come upon my address, both the rented as well the permanent one, in his father’s torn diary but found it a bit awkward to call upon me unsure whether I’d welcome him with open arms. We met, at last, through my sister, who spotted him on one of our neighbours’ balcony, pruning the plants.

On a closer look he does resemble his father. Brown eyed, has the same way of talking with a lisp, a seemingly innocent smile and strands of hair falling rakishly on his slim forehead. Albeit more suave and sophisticated. His suggestions, usually the expensive ones, are always prefixed with “Ham soch rahe the kii…” On the aside, Ravi is BSc. B.Ed from Agra University, having joined the family guild with as much reluctance as avenues of employment scurry past the aspirants!!!

Ravi’s Handiwork

Ravi Promised these would look brilliant in Peak Summer. Me…Waiting!!!

Reluctant or not, gardening is mapped into his genes. He is a veteran when it comes to imagination, innovation, proficiency and resourcing. Not in that particular order, however, he does come up with bright ideas quite often. Needless to say, all his experiments are funded at my expense. He doesn’t miss a single opportunity in minting money and has come to fully understand (read take advantage of) my weaknesses.As I said earlier he has a way with him. I do not know whether he employs the same tactics with the others or not. But he always keeps me informed of what my illustrious neighbours are up to in terms of beautification/enlargement of their gardens, the list of exotic plants they have ordered or are going to order, what a nice thing it would be if I followed suit, so on and so forth. These are fed with a peculiar mumbling intonation more in the nature of a soliloquy as he looks away philosophically to the other end of the horizon the sun wickedly winking into his eyes. Most of the times I give in, dazzled not so much by the brightness or profundity or profitability of the investment, but more by his persuasiveness and that inimitable style which is so intrinsic to his antecedent.

The other day he had a pair of these robust eye-catching shoots off which sprouted flaming red and bottle green leaves branched alternately. Before he could come up with his hard-to-desist “Ham soch rahe the kii…” offer, I vigorously nodded off the plaintiff. My plea the price was too exorbitant. But not for long…by the end of the month, the black plastic pot came to rest on my balcony with a fatalistic shrug and plunk. The deal was final.

The shade of red varies with the length of the day!

Here, I apparently digress from the main. Remember the Tower of Babel? The Biblical genesis of all languages on Mother Earth…Strange that the most potent human expression had to start off with an incomprehensible babble!! Notwithstanding, its inherent limitations, languages have, by all means, flourished with travel and the intermingling of cultures. It is really a thought to ponder upon the way words like guru, bazaar, assassin, avatar and many such have come to be permanently incorporated in the English Dictionary. Similarly, it’s a pleasant wonder how Hindi, as our official language, has developed with an emphatic vocab of all the technical terms finding precise synonyms in the native version. My own mother tongue, Bangla, borrows generously from Urdu, French, Portuguese, Persian and the likes easily tracing the historical lineage of the series of colonial invasions of the land.There are ample number of interesting anecdotes about nativization of language – words and expressions. And that is how languages have grown throughout the world. I still mourn Srirampore becoming Srirampur post-Independence and occasionally misspell it.

An English traveler, landing on this godforsaken land dotted with green, asked the native man chopping grass by the sinewy river bank, “What is this place called?”

The man thought the foreigner was referring to the bundle of grass lying next to his feet and replied, “ Yeh kal kaata.”

The Englishman replied back satisfied, “Oh! So it is Kaalkata, is it?”

And that’s how the city came to be named Calcutta, now Kolkaata.

Though, the authenticity of the above incident may be debatable yet the fact remains that the so called purity, per se, of any language, over a period of history (more so, with the ‘global’ onslaught), have come to be ‘soiled’ to the extent that no language remains ‘untouched’ by other languages. On the other hand, it’s, if I may say, the ‘polluted’, ‘adulterated’, ‘infringed upon’ vocabulary (by official/unofficial entry/intrusion of other languages and dialects), which have unquestionably expanded and enriched the respective language(s). There are these so-called untranslatable words, German, Czech, Polish, etc., which have come to be embraced by the English language as it is, there are the nativized ones which have found place in the vocabulary because of their colloquial worth and ease of usage and there are those technical ones in English which have been straightaway adopted by other native languages in want of appropriate synonyms. Whatever the type be, in the final analysis, borders have blurred when it comes to symbiosis of languages.

As the shadows darken the Poinsettias look deeper in colour!!!

Coming back to my latest botanical acquisition, the one with the flaming foliage…The beauty was unknown to me till I surfed the net and found out about its Mexican/Central American origin cultivated (about 100 varieties) in abundance in the deciduous tropical forests, its commercial and cultural importance, its mildly toxic nature and its English name, derived from that of Joel Roberts Poinsett, the first United States Minister to Mexico, who introduced the plant to United States in 1825.

The Poinsettia changes mood with the time of the Day!!!

Of the diverse splurge family, Euphorbia Pulcherrima, or Poinsettia adorns my balcony in its fiery ensemble of colourful, dentate leaves, created by a process of photoperiodism .

As I said I would have remained relatively ignorant of these facts had I not consulted Wikipedia. However, before doing that, in my lazy leer for easy information, I had asked Ravi the name of the plant to which pat had come the smiling reply, “Oh! Yeh to hai Pansatia, madamji.”

And I am sure, give it a patch of time, and the word ‘Pansatia’ will be found entombed in an enriched/enlarged version of Vishwa Hindi Shabdkosh, invariably so, for the reference of all and sundry.

That, my friends, is a burning example of lingual evolution at its best, nativization be damned!!!

Posted by gc1963 on February 3, 2013 in NATURE BLOG and tagged Central America, Deciduous, Euphorbia, Garden, Gardener, Garndener, Maali, Mexico, Palnt, Photoperiodism, Poinsettia, Pulcherrima.

18 Comments

January 20, 2013

Tick…Tock…Tick…Tock

The Colours of Life

2012 has given way to 2013.

Time’s linearity has once again been infallibly subscribed to and the usual chronicled with faithful diligence. The sun beamed up from the East. The smoky blue sky, a miasma of pollution and dirt, cupped the white fluffy clouds. The grass, still thankfully green, fluttered and the trees strong and strapping housed flocks of birds, which were by some divine conspiracy still not extinct. The eventide brought a fading glow to the Western end of the firmament. As night fell, the moon strode in like a tongue-in-cheek tag line to our dear old mad cap of a planet going over-the-top, literally so, orbiting around her Old Flame with unmitigated gusto. Wonder she hasn’t had a massive head swing by now and petered into nothingness!!! Well, that would be much better than her own children doing the same to her with their devastative manifestoes.

Nothing’s changed so far. Yet, the first day of January resurrected history from prophesied doom.

A customary post, emotional and reminiscent, an overview of what was and what will be is yet not out-of-place or quite that irrelevant and those promising resolves to one’s own selves? So, here I go:

2012: It was not so good, not so bad either. Some parts were grueling, some not so hard on mind, body, soul and in part considerably noteworthy! Strange how indulgent we are to remembered hurt and angst! Keeping the tradition intact I’d say, airily or otherwise, the time gone by was a subtle tight rope walk between content and discontent. Contentment comes with an inbuilt quantum of enforced gratitude which inevitably injects fear and nurtures an aversion to adventure. We are happy to be confined. The ‘enough’ in the coffer puts a definite full-stop to more. Having derisively snubbed the soaring inflation the smugness defined sufficiency. The missing pair of gloves and a fur-lined coat, once high on priority purchase list, somehow diminished in urgency, when a stiff, lifeless body huddled in a subway froze the headlines. A comfortable homestead, when the mercury outside touched 45⁰ and above or dipped to 2, appeared to be the ultimate luxury!! At least I wasn’t one of those one lakh in the city who spent the night shivering on the frozen asphalt under the bare star lit canopy of the sky. A 9 to 5 job that didn’t require me to venture out at odd hours suddenly seemed a blessing when a twenty three year old butchered, battered and brutalized by a pack of carnivores breathed her last leaving the city numb with shock and grief.

(I think I should replace the ‘was’ with an ‘am’)

The dissatisfactions, quite a few, once again prove irrevocably that I am human and inherently ungrateful. The opportunities which I thought I was ripe for didn’t quite come by, the strangled wishes, a dozen or more, made me resentful of the responsibilities which came in the way of their fulfillment, a job saturated and lacking in challenge and creativity and dreams shackled hopelessly to thresholds which did not allow a cross over to vaster avenues, yes, as I enlist them the infinite possibilities which never matured mock me while the futility of the whole exercise caps my pen – a wise move for sure!

A Promise of Tomorrow

2013: Hope is something to live for. Hope is something to die for. Future at this point seems rosy and cozy because of the unprecedented booty of hope invested into it. I hope to do so much and so little. So much in terms of the associated excitement, indulgence and expectations and so little in terms of magnitude – marginal and inconsequential things, yet founts of joy, which make life easy, me more at peace with myself and the Earth more livable. Of course there are those customary dos and donts, those attractive mandates and those lame excuses which follow suit, too often too frequently. Nevertheless let me inhale deep the fragrances of the soil each morning – the redolence in the air, the freshness of the greens, the life that surrounds with all its power and promise. Let me refrain from dousing myself with deadlines which I am sadly habitual of. Vamoose once in a while to those unchartered territories which beckon in dreams. Bugger-off the perfectionist and welcome the carefree. Sharpen pen & pencil and untie the dusty drapes wrapped over a heap of unlettered words playing hide and seek in the remote recesses of mind. The biggest is yet to come. Let’s hurt & learn – break that reclusive shell and let the vulnerable chic out in the big, bad world. Go the Zen way – be aware of the awareness within. Say no to the control freak inside and accept Nature with its intrinsic disorderly surprises. Be with the loved ones…always… and above all converge the dissipated strength and focus to abide by these glorious musts.

Until then tick…tock…tick…tock

Ciao

Posted by gc1963 on January 20, 2013 in HOW WELL DID I DO THIS YEAR and tagged Chime With A Rhyme, Tick Tock Goes The Clock.

12 Comments

January 10, 2013

Where Dawn Meets Dusk

I have a habit of clicking at random. The interplay of light and shadow fascinates me though I am not much of a photographer. And when it comes to technical knowhow my rating will be sub-zero. Still, I cannot stop my fingers from pressing the camer button on my mobile or zoom in on an object unaware with my Canon.

Here are some examples of my mistaken clicks.

On a summer dawn, waking up from bed in sweaty night shirt, I decided to capture the arrival of the Sun God in all its splendor and glory, breaking through the sheets of wooly clouds. It was, I presume, too dark for a good click. And a professional might have adjusted the aperture to the right degree/ alignment/whatever. But not I. So, here goes my photography faux pas:

The first rays of the sun brings in a missive of hope

This I clicked from my Chartered Bus window. A dusky sky and a winding road going nowhere

“इस मोड़ से जाते हैं

कुछ सुस्त कदम रस्ते

कुछ तेज़ कदम राहें”

Though not exactly that…we were heading homewards and I did know the bends and turns the stretch might indulge in….yet those words by my fav lyricist sound so apt..don’t they?

The sky is ai combination of blue and gold

Whether we want or not life’s always tagging us along

“इन ऊंग से लम्बी सड़कों को

मंजिल पे पहुँचते देखा नहीं

बस दौढती फिरती रहतीं हैं

हमने तो ठहरते देखा नहीं

इस अजनबी से शहर में

जाना पहचाना ढूँढता है

एक अकेला इस शहर में”

LIFE – is like that! Moving towards “Destination Unknown”

Do we really reach anywhere? Running a race against time?

Love The Roads , The Sky, The Golden Clouds & The Fast Moving Cars

Life is a long stretch of road; if you stop for a while, all goes kaput

And here…all roads come to a standstill.

All search ends.

“कोई मोड़ नहीं

गलियां चलते चलते

रुक गयी है अनायास ही

एक गुमशुदा दीवार से टकरा कर

और थम गया है

चहल पहल दौड़ते क़दमों की

बस एक ख़ामोशी है

जो सुनती भी नहीं, कहती भी नहीं

सिर्फ एक सन्नाटा है जो सुनता है

कह भी रहा है कुछ

बस हम ही ,बेसब्र, बेहरे कानों से

कर्कश आवाजों की गूंज ढूंढते हैं”

The bends have dissolved

The alleys that used to whisk past

Have, bumping into an invisible dead end,

Stopped suddenly on their own

With that have come to rest

The hustle bustle of running feet

Just a silence prevails deep

Which doesn’t let me speak, listen to me either

A wordless, speechless desolation accompanies

Which speaks a lot and listens to my unspoken words too

It’s me, the impatient that I am,

Who is still looking for the rowdy echoes

Of persistent noise within

With ears that have gone deaf a long, long time ago

A flawed translation…

Well! Ahem!!That’s two bits from my pen…no Gulzaar, no Saahir! Excuse me.

Yeah! Those who feel its Kitchhhh, look away, click on arrow and move on please.

And the kind ones, who don’t want to hurt my feelings, can give a comment or two, vote for this one or press the like button, if you may, please.

No sweat, if you don’t.

I understand.

These roads are longer than Life itself, My Friend

Posted by gc1963 on January 10, 2013 in MY PHOTO BLOG and tagged DAWN, Dusk, Photos, Poems, Road, Search.

8 Comments

January 6, 2013

Munmun Ghosh Unplugged

UNHOOKED – THE BOOK

“I disconnected suddenly and crashed into bed. My body felt heavy. My legs hurt. My whole life seemed like a mistake. The tick-tock of the table clock grated on my consciousness. I pulled the pillow over my head, wrapped the blanket around me tightly and curled my body into the foetal position. It was time to go back into the silence of the womb, one had cried enough…”

…….Unhooked

Anamika, the protagonist, intelligent, inquisitive and an emotional wreck with a string of broken relationships hurriedly stashed into the past, was in dire need of an anchor, to reposeher aching mind, body and soul in the tender yet strong arms of a man who will not only embalm her wilting spirit with his passionate embrace but also strum the strings of her heart with nimble fingers and at the same time satiate her mind with his titivating intellect. Will she find her soulmate? Or will she give in to the charming candour of her very-much-married-long-distance friend, Uday, who was hell bent on exploring her as a woman? Or will she remain in self-delusion forever contented exploring those treacherous arenas of platonic togetherness wherein the minds of men and women welded with tempting promises of illusory seductions and fairy-tale-homecoming (read finale)?

Unhooked in one word unsettled me with its unconventionality, brazen sweep and blatant expositions!!! It spoke of men and women bonding and breaking off in a journey chartered by contemporary and conflicting influences.Even after deep delving and prolonged musings Anamika baffled me. I wanted to understand her and her sexually virile, best friend Mohini and her suave pursuer Uday who stalked her relentlessly from afar. Too many questions riddling the mind of the reader and the one who could solve the puzzle were the authoress herself.So, in all forthrightness, I suggested an interview cautioning her that it would be akin to a threadbare dissection of the novel itself. And you know what, the spunky lady agreed graciously.

So here goes the volley of questions which I darted at her punctuated by herunhurried and poised replies which not only cleared all my doubts but also enriched me with the novelty of a perspective, hitherto, eluding me:

THE AUTHORESS & BOLLYWOOD ACTRESS VIDYA BALAN AT THE BOOK LAUNCH

VIDYA AND MUNMUN AT THE BOOK LAUNCH OF UNHOOKED

Me: Let’s start with the title of the book – “Unhooked” indicates an unshackled existence. Did you intend your characters to find liberation amidst a torrid avalanche of steamy lust?

MG: No, as I saw it, through her final liaison with Uday, Anamika finally gets liberated from her own deep fears about sex and comes to understand it better. The new knowledge, gained through actual experience, empowers her to face the world of men on a stronger footing.

Me: Anamika, the protagonist of your novel, is a seeker, a bit lost, not very confident about her own self, unsure and indecisive when it comes to tutoring emotions. Do you see many Anamikas in gen now?

MG:For sure, you can find Anamikas everywhere today. Once we women reject the traditional role assigned to us, we are on our own. And we are bound to experience emotions like confusion and insecurity, as much as excitement and powerfulness, as we chart out our own distinctive destinies.

Me:Mohini is more earthy, gutsy, worldly-wise, ambitious. Do you see two confronting personas in her – one, a doting, caring mother and two, a highly sensuous, sexually volatile woman?

MG: Yes, like any of us, Mohini combines so many personas within her. I have known many women who possess both strong maternal instincts and sexual instincts, and strive to fulfill both.

Me :How will you define Uday – an artful villain or a consummate lover?

MG: I don’t see Uday as a villain, but as a real contemporary man, a great artist, with his own fetishes and weaknesses. His honesty is becoming. He is candid about his lust for Anamika and does not delude her at any point with any false promises and avowals of love. But yes, he provokes thought on the male sex-drive and what sex means to men. I see him really as an artist who wants to stretch the limits of sensual pleasure (like his art, i.e., his music) and feels Anamika may be a suitable partner. If he pursues her doggedly, that’s because he is perseverant by nature, a quality that has helped him to hone his art and achieve excellence as a musician.

VIDYA BALAN AT THE BOOK LAUNCH OF UNHOOKED

VIDYA HAS EXPRESSED A DESIRE TO WORK IN THE MOVIE BASED ON UNHOOKED

Me: Against the backdrop of a society wherein sex is still very much taboo, we see a woman brazenly trespassing and avidly exploring a debarred terrain – her sexual identity (read urge). How did you conceptualize this theme into a novel?

MG:I had actually conceived UNHOOKED as an exploration of the theme of intellectual mating between the sexes in today’s metros and its repercussions. For I see a lot of that happening around me – a man and a woman talking zestily, one developing feelings while the other is content to talk, desires clashing and finally a painful or perhaps amicable separation of ways. The question is can a woman who is emotionally unattached, enjoy regular intellectual intimacy with a member of the opposite sex and disregard her natural bodily needs. I wished to explore this dilemma through Anamika. How far can you go with these uni-dimensional relationships? How long can you keep sex out of the picture if you are going to engage with the opposite sex? The instinct to touch is natural, beautiful, and perhaps our most primordial urge. How long can you deny it? I felt these were important issues that had to be addressed in this era of free mixing of the sexes.

MUNMUN GHOSH – THE AUTHORESS AT A READING OF UNHOOKED AT INDIAN MERCHANTS’ CHAMBER, MUMBAI

Me: “Intellectualization of emotions is a territory monopolized by men” – Like to speak for or against the motion?

MG: I can speak only for modern, urban women and I think they analyse their emotions even more than men do. Perhaps, because mostly a woman has more to lose. Given the fact that humans are capable of reason, both men and women do deliberate the steps they take even in love, in the interests of survival. But women are conditioned to be more cautious and have to think harder than men about where their relationships are going. I believe women spend far more time analyzing and discussing their personal relationships than men. Yes, a woman may allow her heart to still rule over her head, but it does not mean that she is not aware of her condition and has not dissected it threadbare.

Me:You have cleverly dissected two very mixed up dimensions understanding and yearning for sex. The latter hugely underrated (especially in women) and the former largely overlooked. Did you feel uncomfortable doing so at any point of time?

MG:No, not exactly uncomfortable but it was very important for me to bring home the point that disconnected sex, i.e., sex without real emotional content, even if based on mutual consent, can be hugely dissatisfying and leave a lingering bad taste.

The male mindset may find it difficult to appreciate, or understand for that matter, the distinction between a woman’s emphasis on understanding the act and longing for the same. While Mohini, who is keenly alive to carnal pleasures readily jumps in and out of physical pursuits and feeds her sex appetite , Anamika is more sedate and cautious in her approach, and is not ready to accept intimacy without an emotional connect.

VIDYA BALAN AT BOOK LAUNCH OF UNHOOKED AT LANDMARKS MUMBAII

VIDYA SAYS SHE EMPATHIZES WITH ANAMIKA THE PROTAGONIST OF THE BOOK

Me: “Men won’t accept slackness from women today like my father accepted mom with her unwaxed arms and legs…A woman needs a man …And you must take your body seriously…”

“Were there any laws specifying the age below which it’d be a crime to take a child for waxing”.

The physicality of co-habitation is grossly overrated. Would you like to underscore the point?

MG:Yes, it is grossly overrated. Be it media, cinema or advertisement, this constant harp on a beautiful body is an exaggerated and artificial hype. A woman is just not a body alone. She is much more than that. The physicality in a man-woman relationship, likewise, is an orientation which takes time to evolve. Sex is a sacred thread binding two beings – it entails a deep exchange of emotions and transference of positive energy.

Me: Anamika, the emotionally charged idealist chasing a mirage, Anamika, the detached spectator brutally critical of her own self and you, the writer, probing, prodding and pondering over Anamika’s fate. Where does the threesome intersect?

MG: Human personality is multi-dimensional. Anamika, the involved seeker and Anamika the detached onlooker are two sides of a single persona. Humans are an emotion-driven species. Rationalization is more of an afterthought for us. Similarly, a lot of me has gone into Anamika, but so have many of my other friends – bit of all of us. So it will not be right to say Anamika is me. This finally is fiction.

Me: “Unhooked” is a peripheral statement on women’s liberation. Dodge…

MG:My intent was to tell an honest story highlighting those aspects of contemporary times which have hitherto not been spoken about. In doing so, I have not attempted at any generalization which can be termed as a statement.

VIDYA BALAN & MUNMUN GHOSH AT THE BOOK LAUNCH

Me: You have said, “…men find ‘Unhooked’ a difficult terra…” Elaborate.

MG:I said that in retrospect, based on the reactions I got from male readers and my male friends. Like recently, noted film director VinodPande said that ‘’The book UNHOOKED can make men feel guilty.” Some male readers commented that the men in my novel had been shown in a weak or unflattering light. This came as a kind of surprise or revelation to me. For I did not think so while I was writing the novel. Both Shekhar and Uday, the two central male characters have many good qualities and strengths, the reason why Anamika is drawn to them in the first place, and if they fall short of her expectations, it’s because they are unfortunately human and so have their own share of weaknesses. I still do not regard either Shekhar or Uday as weak men, I see them as ‘real’ men with their own individual drives and limitations, different from our conventional, goodie-goodie heroes of Bollywood.

Me:“Mind-mating” is the lavish leisure of the neo-urban. Agree?

MG:Yes, definitely. And if both the parties are already rooted in good marriages/relationships with other partners, they can enjoy it too. But yes, there’s always a risk in mind-mating; you can never tell when it will go beyond the minds. Most man-woman relationships remain platonic in actual life, but not in the minds.

Me: Do you stand guilty of de-mythicizing women?

MG:My women are more human and relatable. They are real and inspired by those whom I have met and interacted with in my life. Different from the all-enduring, enigmatic, restrained and composed women we find especially in classical literature. I have tried to bring forth what goes on in the women’s minds behind those façades of cool composure and enviable restraint. I chose the trope of the first person monologue to help develop a more intimate equation with both the characters and my readers.

Yes, in that sense, you can say I have de-mythicized women but not guilty of the same. 🙂

VIDYA BALAN SPEAKING AT THE BOOK LAUNCH OF UNHOOKED

VIDYA READ THE BOOK BEFORE AGREEING TO INAUGURATE UNHOOKED – HER ONLY BOOK THAT SHE READ IN THREE YEARS DUE TO BUSY SCHEDULE

Me: Marriage as an institution has lost its sanctity. Yes/No with reason.

MG:I would say, not exactly, but it is definitely under threat. The occasional flippancy that marriages have come to accommodate definitely endangers its foundation. Yet, I have also seen couples striving hard to make their marriages last, ignoring these impulsive foibles, which in itself is a sure sign that all is not lost.

Me: Platonic love or passionate love?

MG: As a person, I would definitely go for a complete relationship.

VIDYA BALAN READING FROM THE BOOK UNHOOKED

Me: Which one do you prefer – Anamika zealously guarding her turf orAnamika giving in to curiosity and temptation?

MG:Anamika zealously guarding her turf is ideal, Anamika giving in to curiosity and temptation is more realistic. I prefer both as they make Anamika complete and human.

Me:You have wrenched sex out of the closet. You have been sinfully candid about love and lust. You have disclosed the dark secrets hitherto safely ensconced in a woman’s heart and mind. How difficult was that, being a woman, yourself? What have been the reactions of your friends and foes to your bare-it-all perspective?

MG:Writing those sex scenes was a challenge, but when I did it, I knew that I had managed to put down something significant. I was satisfied with them and I am rarely satisfied with my writing. Like most artists, I tend to be overly self-critical. At one point, I had feared that the critic in me wouldn’t let the creator survive. Anyway, thankfully that stage is past. Coming to reactions, you know, Geeta, I have Face Book messages from girls who have confessed that Unhooked reads like their life-story, that the novel retells what they have gone or are going through. As for my male readers and friends, most of them have been rather disturbed by the book, though they have all admitted to finding it gripping and indeed haunting. One male reader told me that actually most men also go through the kind of experiences Anamika undergoes, in their quest for love, but only men don’t easily speak about these.

VIDYA SAID SHE FOUND ANAMIKA IN AND AROUND HER

Me: Anamika succumbing to Uday is a let-down…a mindset you would like to oppose…

MG:No, it is absolutely situational. After having gone through the n^th rejection, it’s not unnatural for Anamika to give in to Uday. It’s like what-the-heck-let’s-see-once-and-for-all-what-it’s-all-about mode that she operates in. A kind of desperate move on the rebound. It often happens in life that when we fail to find happiness in the ways we initially choose, we lose self-confidence and in our despair clutch at even dubious ways of happiness suggested by others whom we respect.

Me: As I have said earlier, you are too harsh, skeptical and sarcastic with Anamika. Why?

MG:On the contrary, I am told by many that I have been indulgent with her. 🙂

However, I have at times been critical of her as much as I would have been of myself since there is so much of me in Anamika.

Me:Have you deliberately left “Unhooked” open-ended,inconclusive?

MG:Yes, I did not want to give it a they-lived-happily-ever-after or marriages-are-made-in-heaven kind of an ending. I wanted to end it on a positive note though, and that’s what I have done. Readers are free to imagine what happens to Anamika after I have signed off.

MUNMUN GHOSH THE AUTHORESS WITH HER BOOK UNHOOKED

Me: Many have equated you with Shobha De. Your reaction…

MG:I have always admired Shobha De as a jourmalist; she is a great columnist. I like her straight-forwardness and wit. But as fiction-writers, I think we work with different milieus. The only commonality between us is that we are both direct and unabashed in writing about sex.

Me: It’s a pity that Anamika in her obsessive quest for ideal love neglects other facets of her life and career. How justified is that?

MG:Yes, she does neglect her career at first, not her friends though, but later in the course of the novel, she evolves and locates true fulfillment in her work.

A CAMERA SHY MUNMUN AT THE INAUGURATION OF HER BOOK UNHOOKED

Me: I quote “…The question then is, should we retain our innocence or should we keep seeking more knowledge and lose the thrills of life, one by one…”Explain.

MG:Well, Geeta, I had not dwelled on this before but now coming to think of it, Varun’s query does insinuate at Anamika’s disturbed mental state after the fiasco with Uday. It’s what is baffling her and at the same time she does not want to delve into it too deeply.

Me:The opening passage of your novel reads – “I straddle men’s minds. Men seek me out between relationships or during tough times in relationships. I fill the emotional gaps in men’s lives and keep them warm and loved till they find security and happiness in the arms of the women they desire. My way to spread warmth is through words, conversations.”…underlines a self-deprecating, secondary status; Anamika, knowingly plays the second fiddle…Your line of defense.

MG:Yes, it is. She knowingly gets embroiled in these interim relations. Yet there is no hypocrisy about her. She admits to it.

Me: “I opened my eyes and gazed at the sky. It was such a beautiful transparent blue! The sun would have risen on the other side. It struck me the sky was without partitions. One.A continuity without stitches. Always one, unlike us humans. We were so hopelessly fragmented. Fucking sometimes with our minds and sometimes with our bodies. Rarely all there in an act.”…An epiphany!! Yet Anamika is tempted to settle for that fragmented life. Why?

MG:For lack of better choices I’d say. We humans are all great thinkers, we can analyze a problem to shreds, advise other people, but when it comes to ourselves, we are mostly propelled forward in life by our emotions.

MUNMUN GHOSH AND VIDYA BALAN AT THE BOOK LAUNCH

Me: Somewhere you have spoken about “emotional rape”. Do you think it is an offence unjustly de-criminalized in judicial texts?

MG: No, I think we have to leave the settlement of some wrongs to God or call it Nature or a higher power or just the law of karma. Also, the problem is once you think deep, you realize even the offender who has hurt you emotionally has acted out of his/her own circumstances. Can you really blame him? Shouldn’t you feel compassion for him? Justice for emotional wrongs definitely falls into the space of ethics or religion.

Me:Has globalization interfered with the concept of love and belonging?

MG:Not with the concept of love, as love remains a basic need which humans will find ways to address in whichever space they are. But globalization has definitely affected our sense of belonging. It has forced people to question themselves about the bigger group to which they perceive themselves as belonging. Is that group your own linguistic community, or the city where you live, or the country to which you belong or the country to which you have migrated or are currently based in – to whom do you belong? Or can you perceive yourself just as a citizen of the world? Our sense of belonging roots us and motivates us to take action. So it becomes important.

Me: A clichéd query – Where do you see yourself and Anamika ten years hence?

MG: I don’t know about Anamika, but I do aspire to create a body of work (both fiction and non-fiction) by then that will be widely read and help people to lead even if slightly happier lives. For the summum bonum of life is happiness.

Me:Tell us a little about your first born – “Hushed Voices.”

MG:My first work of fiction HUSHED VOICES is extremely different from UNHOOKED. It is structured as a linear chain of 39 monologues, intricately linked to each other by both technique and plot. The voices belong to the poor, marginalised people of Mumbai, as they live out sharp, challenging moments in their lives, revealing in the process their entrails, aches, strengths and the whispering hopes that keep them ticking in the most inclement of circumstances. Most of them commute in near inhuman conditions by the locals which become a metaphor for the city. Finally, Hushed Voices was my fictional attempt to capture the rush of urban life, the density of a modern, flourishing city, and the fierce fight for space, comforts and the joys promised by urban living in an increasingly populated world.

Me:The journey as a writer…

MG:It’s been arduous but also gratifying. And the journey continues with new challenges to be met every day.

MUNMUN GHOSH AND VIDYA BALAN WITH THE BOOK

Me: Authors you would never dream of imitating…

MG:Salman Rushdie. His linguistic complexity and intricate metaphors are mind-boggling.

Me: Greatest publicity for any book today is getting translated on the silver-screen. In case so happens with “Unhooked”, who would you entrust the stewardship?

MG: I don’t think I am in a position to entrust the stewardship of UNHOOKED to anybody. I believe – like Vidya Balan who has expressed her willingness to act in a film based on the book, depending on who directed it – that this book will need an extremely sensitive director to handle its subject.

Me: Piled with wit, humour and satire, “Unhooked” could have been yet another spoof on fickle social dalliances in the garb of self-discovery. Yet, the underlying pathos, the wistful reminders of desires unfulfilled and unfound, detract it from the former. Will your next venture also be in the same lines or an entirely different take on life?

MG:I always hesitate to commit about the future, since things tend to change as we go along. As of now, I plan my next work to be a more ambitious venture that will drag into the spotlight an extremely important but barely spoken-about social and humanitarian issue. The setting will be the same as UNHOOKED – urban, contemporary India.

On that note of creative intent we came to the end of this exhaustive and very, very interesting interview.

Here’s wishing Munmun a very creative and fulfilling year ahead….

Cheerio!!! 🙂 🙂

Links to Reviews of ‘Unhooked’ :

http://www.induswomanwriting.com/review-of-unhooked.html

http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Unhooked-review-nmronnunor

A RAVISHING VIDYA SMILES UP TO THE CAMERA WITH THE BOOK IN HAND – HAPPY TO BE PART OF THE LAUNCH & KEEN ON WORKING IN A FILM BASED ON THE BOOK

Posted by gc1963 on January 6, 2013 in INTERVIEW and tagged Book, Interview, Mummun Ghosh, Novel, Unhooked, Vidya Balan.

8 Comments

January 5, 2013

My Water Lilies

Winking Up To The Sun – My Water Lilies

Soft
Snowy Supple
Smooth Slender
Seductive
My water lilies

Swaying
Sashaying
Sighing
Singing
Simpering
Soothing
Staring
Skyward
My water lilies

A Shimmering Sprinkle of Pristine Beauty

Sweet
Simple
Subtle
Summery
Shimmering & Sizzling in the
Sunshine
Scintillating
Symphony of Nature
My Water Lilies

Romancing With The Flirty Breeze – My Water Lilies

Saucy
Savvy
Sassy
Sensuous
Savouring the
Songs of the bees Synchrony of gaiety
My Water Lilies

Stimulating
Soporific; as I wake up in the morn, they
Smile and greet me and
Some other times, as though
Spying on me
Synonym for happiness and joy
My Water Lilies

Playing hide & seek with me - My Water Lilies

Beautiful Lady

Posted by gc1963 on January 5, 2013 in MY PHOTO BLOG and tagged Photo Blog, Poem, Water Lily.

7 Comments

December 31, 2012

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The new Boeing 787 Dreamliner can carry about 250 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,200 times in 2012. If it were a Dreamliner, it would take about 5 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

Posted by gc1963 on December 31, 2012 in HOW WELL DID I DO THIS YEAR and tagged Annual, blog, Report, Wordpress.

9 Comments

December 29, 2012

Of Clouds & Ghosts

Mist deepening over the landscape

What with cloudy days and ghost stories, the former being considered as ideal for the latter, I have yet not been able to make out the deeper connection between the two. Is it the mist that rises from the grounds on a cold, cloudy morn, thickening on the trees, shrubberies, bushes and the grass-beds, slowly enveloping the surrounds in a dull grey shroud? The gradual opaqueness which prevents normal vision through the vaporous mesh? Or is it the black, rain-laden clouds with furrowed brows, hunched over the bosom of a breathless earth, ready to spout in torrential rage? Or is it those who will themselves out of downy pillows, cozy quilts and warm blankets to follow their usual routine of daily toil, covered head to foot in heavy overcoats, caps and boots, leaving the trudge-marks of their purposeful gait on desolate roads tearing the misty veils and ignoring the wrathful sky? Or is it those mean four-wheelers revved up to action throwing a glissade of pale lights on fast vanishing tracks striving to mark a weak trail in the coagulating fog? Or is it the solidified silence that descends unaware and prevails for long hours on the cityscape as though the civilization has come to an abrupt halt or to an untimed end? Is it the greyness, the paleness, the mistiness, the cloudiness which make it easier to believe all those things which slink away hurriedly in the light of cool rationale and irrefutable logic on a clear and bright sunny day? Whatever the inexplicable link be, on a frosty winter morning, you do feel nice getting scared and haunted and mystified, somehow enjoying those curdling goose bumps on your arms and the steaming cup of tea held in light, shaky clasp going cold over a furious discord between doting dread and dauntless courage. The gathering darkness and freezing cold outside spooning in that extra measure of surreal to wholesome incredulity and triumphant make-belief!! Be it a film, a book or just a robust, raucous debate on their (non) existence, cloudy days are meant and meant only for the extra-sensory perceptions.

My mamaji (maternal uncle) was a great story teller, relishing every bit of the unwavering attention that he received during those afternoon tale-telling sessions. At the most suspenseful juncture he would stop suddenly, perhaps to gauge the effect of his narrative on the audience, and light a cigarette and drag on it with calculated ease, demanding a cup of tea of my mother declaring that he would not utter a syllable further till he had wetted his parched tongue with the slurps of that golden brown beverage. We would object loudly, we the children of the household, whom he had managed to reign in so cleverly around him with his sing-song word pictures, putting thereby a sound brake on any further rowdy mischiefs. He is the one who introduced me to Maupassant, though not exactly a ghost story writer, but definitely dealing in those strange human behaviours and incomprehensible happenings in their lives, defying outrageously all cerebral deductions.

My elder brother, decades younger than my mamaji, had weirder snippets to share…

“Kolkata of the 70s reeling under the Naxaal onslaught…

A bus plying through the night, its head lights the only means to lighten the dark, deserted stretch. Night riders were few, restful and sleepy, in their respective seats. A boy sat next to the open window dozing lightly. The cool night air brushing his cheeks and swaying his well combed locks. A plain boy in his early teens in a bush shirt and pants; nothing remarkable or extra-ordinary about him!!! All of a sudden, the bus came to a halt, perhaps at a regular stop, now indistinct in the overcrowding darkness. A man jumped on board and came to sit next to the boy. After a while, the bus moved on. The man was about to settle into a comfortable posture turning his head towards the window to get a draught of fresh air.

Seeing the boy, he jerked up from the seat and exclaimed disbelievingly, “Aren’t you the very same who got killed at the bend of the alley a few minutes past?”

And poop tumbled the boy’s head off his shoulders before the man’s bulging eyes.”

While we would gasp with fright the elders would have a hearty laugh at the bluff master. And soon would ensue a vociferous debate on the believability of such happenings…

However, there is one such incident, which comes to my mind, being a more recent one, though not the only brush that I have had with the extra-sensorial.

Shadowy images billowing in the wispy mist

Around five years back…

We had moved into our new flat, our own, that is to say and were in the process of settling down. Those who had shifted base would know, it takes ages to get accustomed to the new habitat. After a trying day of shifting and placing the furniture where they should be, we retired to bed early. I am in the habit of visiting the bathroom intermittently during the night.

It was peak summer. For effective air-conditioning we always shut our bedroom door tight. At 04.00 am as I opened the door to go to the loo (we don’t have attached baths), a few steps towards the right of the bedroom, I had this electrifying encounter.

Our bedroom opens into a big, square drawing-dining hall. The far end of the wall is taken up mostly by a big window. On either side of the window are placed the TV and the Music System on stands moulded to fit in to each corner. The drapes were drawn allowing only a faint streak of moonlight to disperse the darkness inside the hall, albeit, in vain. I am myopic and don’t generally put on the specs when I get up during the night which may account for the shadowy skeletal figure that I saw stooped a little over the Music System as though trying to switch it on.

Usually I go dumb and rooted in fear. But on this occasion a shriek escaped my lips which could have awakened the dead, “Who..who is that standing there?” A few seconds and I was fumbling for the switch, a few steps to my left. When the lights came on, the hall was devoid of all spectral form except me shivering in my night gown.

When I told my mother (now wide awake) what I had seen she promptly attributed it to my fertile imagination and penchant for spooky Hollywood movies. My sister and Brother-in-law were a little more condescending analyzing zestfully all the aspects of the episode from various angles and reasonability till my mind was soothed to a considerable measure. Throughout the commotion, my pet Mr. Snow Boot slept soundly.

However, that morning more surprises lay in store for me. Our office, a corner plot, with three sides open, was distributed in three floors and was easily accessible to tresspass/invasion. We had recently been taken over by a larger corporate entity. The new Administration had purchased a dozen computers off-the-showroom which were largely installed on the first floor. The night I had the encounter-of-the-unknown-kind, a pack of hooligans had broken in and robbed the new machines clean off the desks. Evidently, they had transferred their loot through an open windowwhich they had expertly unlatched from the outside.

When I shared my experience of the previous night with my peers, they insisted that it was a kind of premonitory indication of what was simultaneously happening or going to happen in the office that very night. Some friendly spirit was trying to communicate the same in his/her own way to me.

My office lies outside the municipal limit of my city. Though, within the ambit of the National Capital Region (NCR), however, geographically, my office falls in the neighbouring state (NOIDA, Uttar Pradesh) whereas I reside in the Capital. What good would it have been even if I had an inkling of what was going on in the Office was beyond my comprehension. Neither would I have been able to reach in time to stop the miscreants from stealing nor did I have the telephone numbers of the concerned In Charge to tip him off about the ongoing/forthcoming burglary. It would have been really helpful if the good hearted ghost had contacted somebody who lived near the office premise or could communicate with either the Guards-on-duty or the Administration Head.

Notwithstanding the wrong choice that our friend from the other world made in me, his intent, ethics and accountability were indisputably irreproachable. 🙂

However, the explanation proffered by my colleagues did provide me something to mull over especially on days when the window panes licked on mist-crested creepers, birds nested in quietude and the sun snuggled a little longer under the coverlet of velvet clouds.

More spooky tales:

http://mindspeak-vanderloost.blogspot.in/2010/07/haunted.html?showComment=1279423550669#c2600781788493659036

http://vanderloost.blogspot.in/2010/03/my-good-samaritan.html

http://vanderloost.blogspot.in/2010/10/story-of-strange-mr-briggs.html

http://vanderloost.blogspot.in/2010/06/bizarre-shadows.html

http://vanderloost.blogspot.in/2009/11/gory-story-teller.html

Posted by gc1963 on December 29, 2012 in SPOOKY and tagged Clouds, Dark, Ghosts, Mist, Sky, Spirit.

22 Comments

November 3, 2012

Cry Hoarse

A frustrated soul knoweth no peace!!!

What do you do if your job degenerates into some kind of a drab, dreary and burdensome routine leaving at the end of the day a bitter taste in your mouth? The deterioration is not sudden but gradual, of which you were aware for quite some time, but chose to ignore, now no more, because your cerebral elasticity called endurance is tightly stretched to the point of breakage.

It’s somewhat like the moment in that seedy restaurant where you had sipped a bowl of tasteless soup, insipid and watery, and made a horrible face but decided not to call the waiter and get the same replaced because it was you who had ordered it in the first place impressed by the exotic name on the menu card or that scorching summer noon when you had gulped down a de-fizzed Cola, lukewarm and zing-less, not bothered how harmful that could be to your health, because goaded by an overpowering thirst you were too much in a hurry to finish it off?Why? Dunno…but we do play such games with our own luckless selves.

When going to office each morning perpetuates a splitting head ache. When you drag your legs back home every evening dissatisfied to the core guilty that your daily output does not justify the fat pay packet you pocket at the end of each month. When the excitement and adventure of handling an erstwhile challenging work front eventually dry up like an arid wasteland. What do you do?

You still carry on nonetheless…you accept your fate meekly…. you crib and nag intermittently….you roar and revolt infrequently….you suffer from acute inferiority complex and subsequently get into a mode of manic depression…you’re pushed to the wall…your patience comes to a screeching halt…you finally break down…you do all that and much more…

(a) Wallow in self-pity mistaking it to be nostalgia. Recall wistfully all those days when you were browbeaten by excessive work load and somehow managed to stay afloat gritting your teeth and cursing silently all those around you who spent the day whistling about…(Aaaah! Those good, old, spring-kissed days!! Will they ever return?)

(b) Take to spiritual chanting…meditation…pranayam…realizing instantly its ineffectiveness because no sooner do you close your eyes to concentrate on that elusive ‘Third Eye’, than the sniggering, smouldering face of your boss bobs up and down in front of your mind’s eye with increasing ferocity and sadism…

(c) Find an appropriate outlet to vomit your venom and after several such ‘eclectic’ bouts feel extremely light hearted and hugely empty-stomached secretly hoping that the exercise would also prove to be the much hankered after antidote to all your obesity related issues but alas the very wish is perfunctorily denied as the ravenous, rueful soul is habituated to seek quantum solace in mouth-watering, calorific diet and substantial bites of creamy, chocolaty mounds foils the plan…

(d) Be jealous of all those who have better prospects in life than you do and show it in no uncertain term…’Course don’t mean you change colour like a chameleon and go green (Yuck!! Hideous!!!). There are more suave ways… e.g., being subtly bitchy and nonchalantly provocative (in words and manners, that is)…

(e) Have it out with your boss who fails to generate intellectually stimulating work, even after pointed reminders (at regular intervals) to do so…with your colleagues who treat you with a certain amount of poorly disguised contempt… with your hapless subordinates because it’s generally all their fault, you see…

(f) Chuck your job, isshhhh,….and look for a new one. Considering the amount of security, perks and above all salary enjoyed in the present one and the folly of not having assessed your own market value for a very long time, it appears be the height of foolhardiness, nay, totally suicidal, to even think of such a dire, drastic step….a big NO!!!

(g) Mop around looking suitably disgruntled, de-spirited, demotivated, and any other verb prefixed with a ‘d’ so as to make even your foes unanimously feel sorry for you and pray for an improvement in situation (Will that ever happen?)

(h) Explore alternate sources of challenge and creativity wherein, in all likelihood, you shall excel by and by because that’s the way it is with the human race… Remember Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and that gratifying theory on Self Actualization…however remote the connection be it’s a possibility that you may sniff out a few hitherto unimaginable avenues of self-satisfaction and promotion, as you detract, tired and bored, from the extant not-so-happening-scenario…

(i) Remain calm and collected (saintly *! @ # ?) , enviably so, and make the most of the situation, however, distressing the same be…Every bleak/rocking/neutral paraphrase of life has something to contribute to your booty of experience. You learn and move on..blah!…blah!…blah…Moral of the story is that you think, feel and behave like a motivational guru (I have often wondered how many times they practise what they preach!!!).

Anyway…There is another diametrically opposite reaction available to the stimulus…Make merry and be happy…Ooops! Or should it be ‘Don’t worry and be happy’…Whichever…

Seen that vagabond boy, playing truant from school, in his dusty shorts and socks and boots and askance blazer and rumpled shirt? He dribbles down the road while his golden locks wave in air with a carefree swagger. He arches his right leg in the air, in a semi-circular motion, and kicks high the battered tumbler lying in discard in a heap of mud. Then marches a few steps more, in similar cadence, and kicks again with all his might, this time with his left leg the same tumbler which is quite out of shape by now. Thus, ambles down time with a jovial tick following the boy’s gait, who is none too ruffled either, by the twists of fate. What he has not and what he has, he bothers not much, as he goes by life’s way in his own sweet will and flourish, relishing the moment with a mischievous wink keeping the past way behind and the future safely in the hands of tomorrow.

Much like the boy perhaps!!! Or no…is it too unmanageable a state of affairs wherein redemption seems like a distant dream?

Having delved deeply into the psyche of a frustrated worker, I now present my dilemma to all and sundry. Which one do I go in for? Or do I follow each and every step (a) to (i) to arrive at now unthinkable (j) which may prove to be the revelation of a lifetime?

In candid confession, let me declare that I have already surfed from one option to the other i.e. from (a) to (i) in a phased manner, the only pertinent point here being, that the so-called options/phases, whichever nomenclature you may like to attribute to the agony of the mind, did not appear to be in any way a progression from the former state or an either/or situation, in my order of vacillation. I felt stuck, clogged, entrapped and I still do so.

Therefore, I ask thee, my readers, friends and my dearest enemies, for your esteemed guidance to the path of righteous dissension/defiance … Or do you per chance have an absolutely apposite alternative distinctly different from all the above?

Pray reveal.

Posted by gc1963 on November 3, 2012 in LATEST MANAGEMENT GLITCH and tagged challengeless work profile, demotivation, Frustation in work place, job dissatisfaction.

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