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Interpreting Life | Blog
Interpreting Life | Blog
Just the other day, I was enjoying the rain at 1 pm in the night, it was awesome. Just then the light on the terrace of the bungalow just opposite to my place switched on, a couple was seen enjoying the rain, in full mood. That too at midnight. I too smiled at them. And as soon as I entered back to my room from the balcony, I realised what they were enjoying in fact?
Was it the rain or the company of each other?
The next day, it was a totally cloudy pleasant atmosphere with the wind blowing in the most romantic way and I was coming from my office when a thought struck to my mind. How would it have been, if, on such a day, I was with my soul mate?Again
What did I actually want the good atmosphere to enjoy or the partner to be with me?
We actually don’t like the cool atmosphere or the fast rains or anything that sort. we only would have loved it if someone was there to enjoy it with us. If someone with whom we can share the beauty of that time.
Rain or a good atmosphere or a festival are all the background score of a movie; which we like to hear, but in the centre stage, we just love to see the lead actor and actress to feel the love. In the same way; we always associate our desires to all the good part as well as the bad part of life. A family together, without any occasion is still a treat to be with than enjoying an occasion without a family.Each and every materialistic happiness depends on the people you are going to enjoy with; without them its all and the same “of no use”. In the same way; all our achievements of life are attached to the people we wish to share them with, without them they are of no use.
Life without wealth, power and many such things is a curse in the outer world but life with no happiness is a lot bigger than a curse in an inner world.
Wealth can be achieved with great efforts, but happiness cant. It can only be felt. Live life with a wealth of happiness and see how beautiful the world looks.
@ramtajogi*********************************
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An Open Letter | “Why Don’t You Call Nowadays?” | Life Blog
An Open Letter | “Why Don’t You Call Nowadays?” | Life Blog
Backdrop..
There is a nameplate hanging outside my home which has my parents’ name on it. This place is safe, surrounded by love and trust and there is a feeling of contentment. It has an aura that drives away fear, divine power in it. It entrusts me with the confidence that if everything in this world were to go wrong, this place would never let anything happen to me. My family, these are the people who knowingly or unknowingly have shaped who I am. They have totally dedicated their lives to my upbringing and betterment. We might call it ‘responsibility’ that every parent carries but that too comes out of concern, and such concern comes out of love.
As I grew up, I began to connect with others. I moved out, met new people, understood new things and experienced a different world. Once we start thinking for ourselves, things can’t remain the same; they have to change. I too started realizing what is right and useful for me. My family also supported my views and helped me make decisions that would boost my future. With a practical approach in mind, I moved out to climb the ladders of success in life.
I left this safe and secure dream world, my world, and entered into a world which I never imagined would be so big and so different from mine. From the safe confines of my private walls, I moved to this labyrinth where it’s easy to get lost. I moved to a different state and a brand new educational experience. This world was filled with new experiences, and I faced new circumstances every day; some even challenging. I made many new connections; a plethora of information blew in my face like a strong wind.
New Beginnings
The beginnings are always difficult as I missed everyone back home. It took some getting used to, for me to moved ahead. My best friends called me every day, and I called them back too. My parents called me every evening and would emotional. They’d ask even the minute details of how I spent the day and I obliged them with it. I’d asked them about life at their end, and they talked about things familiar to me, making me feel at home even in this strange new place. I took to the social media more than before to keep in touch with my kin and friends.
Alas! The constant nature of change is what tends to work against these connections. Change tends to break them, but this is involuntary. When one has taken the effort of coming out of the comfort zone, one tends to focus more on this effort, and this may us lead to a disconnect. We get lost in understanding and deciphering this novelty of a world that we’ve entered. The phone calls we made every day are now less in frequency. And this happens from both ends; mine and theirs.
We expect that they will contact us while people back home expect me to make the effort, but we both lose it. My father calls and asks “why don’t you call nowadays?” And I don’t have an answer to it. Even my friends and loved one’s message saying “Dude! You have changed a lot. You don’t even text or reply on time”, and again I don’t have an answer to it. When this happens, one tends to become an outsider.
But the truth is “I am not an outsider”.
It is not that I want to behave the way I behave, it is the environment and the thoughts that separate me from what I was and what I am about to become. It is not always the work or hectic schedule of mine that keeps me away from talking to my family and old friends. In a way, this is newfound freedom and I am busy utilizing it. I prioritize indulging into this freedom more than the constant need to keep in touch. The occasional drink, the rare indulgence in smoke, and of course there is the workload. Why shouldn’t I explore this freedom? I do remember them, but by the time I want to call them, it’s too late in the night and then it’s not an appropriate time, and people think I have changed.
But I have not. I have only taken charge of my life. After living in security for so long, I have come out and taken the charge of securing myself. I am dependent on “ME”. My mother’s not here to ask me what to have for dinner, nor is my father here to ask me what to bring while returning home and nor do I have any siblings here who will help me with my work. I am an individual who has come to create his own identity. I have an agenda here; this keeps me occupied. I may forget about them now and then, but do miss them.
I am still the same insider.
At times, I do miss them and get frustrated being alone but these feelings rise and die within the confines of my new, temporary accommodation. Nostalgia keeps me from even listening to their voices sometimes. This dependency on my parents who raised me, the friends who were always there, that girl who always spoke to me for hours but it seemed like minutes; this dependency is what I’m trying to end. Of course, I am desperate to see them again, be home for the festivals and during the holidays.
Who doesn’t?
But you change. You get used to living alone to the point that you actually prefer it. I prefer the solitude the crown has to offer. No one comes to talk to you if you’re not “alone”. I have tried to purge emotions so that it gets easier for me. And then I asked myself a question. Who am I without my parents, friends and that one girl? I got busier trying to find my identity, and it all soon became easy and found myself. I had to dissociate first to find myself and in this process, I became an outsider. Well, better the real me outside than this shadow of a person I was inside.
The truth is that in this self-discovery. I have realized that I just have different sides to the same person who lived in that place with his parents’ name plates on it.
@ramta jogi
Published in Youth ki awaaz
An Open Letter | “Why Don’t You Call Nowadays?” | Life Blog
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The smile that lasted | Life Blog | Youth Ki Awaaz
The smile that lasted | Youth Ki Awaaz
“Sometimes LOVE has no words, it has just SMILE”
In Youth Ki Awaaz comes my latest article.A story of love, loss, grief and a smile.
Beginning
I met Anant when I was in 6th grade. A very smart person with decent looks, Anant made for a talkative, naughty and charming classmate. He had a smile which impressed many and helped him make quite a few friends. With each passing grade, we became the best of buddies.
However, when college started, I moved to a different city and phone became the only way to stay connected with my childhood friend. During his college days, he met a girl named Tia – his good looking and charming classmate. Their relationship started with a close friendship and progressed to love. And within the second year of their course, the two of them were in a committed relationship. Whenever I visited my hometown, I would make it a point to meet the two of them. Somehow, I always felt that Anant’s smile was what kept them glued together.
Time passed, and we had reached what you could call the marriageable age. Anant and Tia now had 6 years of togetherness to fall back on. In a generation which has the power to end relations by simply sending a message; where people change with the blink of an eye, here I was witnessing two amateurs who were still dedicatedly in love. They knew each other inside out. Whether it was the happy side or the miserable one, their understanding of each other was what made their bond so extraordinary.
They spoke to their parents about getting married – argued and fought but stayed adamant in not letting go of each other. Somehow they knew that love is something which can be and should be fought for. Before I knew it, I was preparing the invitation cards for the guests. A day I wanted to witness for so long had finally arrived.
The middle
In the midst of happiness what we forget is the temporarily of our emotions. Nothing lasts longer than it is destined to. We are animals of hope, and that’s what keeps us going. One and a half years after Anant and Tia’s wedding, I got a call. Waking me up from an afternoon nap, I picked up Anant’s call only to have an unknown voice speak to me –
“Hi, Brother. This is Raj. Our sister-in-law Tia is no more. Her rituals are to be performed at 11:30 today.”
The phone left me in a state of shock. I was not sure what and how to react. Sitting isolated in my dorm in a different city so far away, I felt incapable of doing anything that would make things better. I called my parents and friends and asked them to reach Anant’s place at the earliest.
And then I was crying. Only to try and hold back my tears and be strong the next moment. All those 6 years of knowing Tia was running through my mind. All the short and sweet memories I had with her and, moreover, with them will now be permanently stained with the sorrow of death.
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It took me hours to realize what Anant might be going through. People asked me to talk to him, but it was just not possible for me to do so. Maybe I was scared of witnessing the pain and harsh reality in his voice. I never understood why people often try to console and stop others from crying during such situations. One must shed their share of tears before the wound heals. I didn’t call him for many days. I couldn’t.
My parents told me that Tia had been suffering from a lung infection. And as fate would have it, Anant had to move to a different city for his work at around the same time. He would return to the city only on weekends to meet Tia. During the last week when things got worse and she was admitted to the hospital, he could only return by the time she had permanently made peace with his absence.
My parents said they found it overwhelmingly difficult to face Anant at his home. His eyes were swollen with the constant crying. He was not able to carry himself without the support of others. My mother also cried seeing his plight; pitying his loss at such an early age.
Conclusion
I was not able to imagine what Anant might have felt seeing his companion lying lifeless on the hospital bed, not opening her eyes one last time. I blamed fate, destiny and life and never understood what mistake that 25-year-old girl could have committed.
And what about Anant? Wasn’t this when he was supposed to enjoy life with his love instead of losing everything like this? I cried for days, feeling sorry for all that had happened. I felt sorry that Anant had lost the love which had held him together in times of sorrow and pain; the love which cheered him in his success. The one who was the reason for him to grow and achieve more was now no more. These past 7 years, Anant and Tia had created memories and lived a life of dreams that suddenly all ended in ashes.
3 weeks later, I returned to the city deciding to meet Anant that very night. We sat facing each other, barely talking; not once daring to mention Tia. We exchanged an awkward smile aware more than ever of the huge void she had left behind her. A void that was now filled rather oddly by an inanimate garlanded photo frame, propped in between our sofas. One that froze her in a single moment complete with her bridal suit and smiling face. We glanced at her photo, looked at each other and could only fall silent again.
Maybe it was still the smile playing charmingly on their faces that was keeping them together even now.
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When “Moving On” can hold you back
Moving On | The Huffington Post
There exists a world as seen by us. Each of us is a minuscule part of that world, and we are all struggling. We think about hardships, relationships, unfulfilled aims and many other things which in some way or the other are not acceptable to us, but still, we live with them and carry on, accepting that some things will never change.
But our world doesn’t end there. Inside of us exists another world, a world larger than the one outside. In this inner world, our thoughts are felt in a deeper way. It’s a world where pessimistic thoughts give way to the hope that there will be better days if we only wait for them. This is the world of hope and patience.
We are a part of a fast-paced and dynamic ecosystem where our wishes are fulfilled through a mere touch of a smartphone screen. Our relationships are public property, to be “shared” with friends and strangers. Often times, love begins, progresses and even ends on social networking sites. We hardly have the time to think about what went wrong or how to make amends or learn from mistakes. The mantra is to “move on” and forget all about past experiences.
But is it truly possible for us to move on from each and every action, aim, past, guilt or regret?
Can we really forget that past which we once thought held the key to our future?
The answer is NO. It is not possible to move on.
The striking thing about humans is that we never grow up. Our looks change, expressions change, habits change but one thing remains the same. It’s our heart. At 25, our heart is just the way it was when we were five. A five-year-old child cries for whatever it is he wants, regardless of how realistic it is to expect that wish to be fulfilled. All the child knows is that something felt good and it must be had. Twenty years on from then, nothing changes. We crave for things, for people whom we love but are far from us. Try to grasp at them and when they slip away, we feel very low even if we don’t show it. We tend to move on superficially, but our heart seldom keeps up.
Similar things happen when we are in love. We have good days in love to cherish and bad days to regret. There are times when we feel stuck in circumstances and patterns of behavior and things refuse to go the way we want. We don’t know what to do. In such situations we can only wait and hope for things to get back on track.
But after a while we start to lose hope. Our patience disappears. And we give up. It is difficult, it is painful, it is harsh to give up on something which we actually loved and desperately wanted. We start acting as if we have left the love behind and we are just fine. But the fact is we are not. Inside us, the wish for this love to return continues to linger.
So if we can’t let go of someone or something in our minds, why do we abandon all hope of actually getting them?
What we fail to realize in such scenarios is that there are things which take time. Certain phase does change, many people do come around, and many times things definitely move in our direction — if not now, then later. Never ever regret your past, and if it is worth regretting, then never let it be your past.
To move on, to give up, to succumb to exhaustion will never give us what we truly want. We craved, we tried, we waited, we even prayed… and then what? We stopped hoping, we stopped waiting, and yet certain desires stayed even as others came and were lost.
Why not be patient and hope?
The world never belonged to the people who ran fast and jumped from one thing to another because the first attempt took too much time. The world always belonged to the people who trusted their love, their belief in their work, waited patiently and saw what was wrong with what they were doing, made changes and continued to improve instead of changing their beliefs and aims. That’s what made them reach their highs.
Our life is based on the hope of survival. We don’t know how long we will be alive, but still we breathe. Still we hope to live long, we have the patience to wait until it all ends. We think, act and take measures, but in the end hope and patience are integral parts of whatever we do.
Don’t let the hope in you die, don’t let the patience slip away.
Moving On | The Huffington Post
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Published at : Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.in/aakash-joshi/the-world-of-hope-and-pat_b_8477096.html
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I am a coward |Article |The Huffington Post
I am a coward | Article | The Huffington Post
I respect women; actively participate in candlelight marches for rape victims. I write Facebook posts supporting women’s empowerment and liberation; project myself as a man of the changing world and try to embody its evolved approach towards women.
I strongly believe that no woman deserves to be attacked or humiliated for any reason: not for the clothes she wears or for how late at night she chooses to be out. She is still the same person with the same dignity and self-respect that she is at noon or midnight, in a mini-skirt or sari. These are my views. Yet, when I introspect and look into the depths of my heart, I realize I don’t believe enough in my own beliefs.
When after a tiring day at work, I make my way back to my home, I sometimes go over my own convictions, which I often relay passionately to other people. But have I convinced myself enough? As I knock the door of my home and see my mother’s face, the confusion lifts and I get my answer.
I am a coward.
I am a man who fears everything. A man who waxes eloquent (with full sincerity) on women’s liberation, but finds it difficult to practice what he preaches in his own home.
When I reach home late at night and don’t find my sister there, I start calling her, asking her whereabouts and when she will return. I stare alternately at the wall clock and door until she comes home. It gets worse. Sometimes, I ask my mother to adjust her sari more modestly when she goes out and I am uncomfortable when my love’s top has a low neckline or threatens to reveal her midriff.
To the outer world, I project myself as an open-minded person. I tell the women in my life that they are free to do what they want; as and when they want, but deep in my mind and heart I don’t feel the same. I do not try to restrict them from doing anything but I do keep a careful watch on their actions. I know this might be wrong and irritating for them many times. They might get upset with me or even feel embarrassed by my behaviour. Yet, I cannot help myself because I know what the men on the street are like and that I cannot exercise any control over them. The only thing the men out there need is an excuse. I really don’t want the women who are a part of my life to be that excuse.
That there is a mindset problem in India is well-documented. Irrespective of how much we learn, we see or we practice, we men tend to have an inflated sense of self, a feeling of superiority just by dint of our gender. We find it challenging to accept that a woman can be better than us or outperform us. Even the concept of equality doesn’t sit quite right. As a result, many men feel that it is their duty towards their gender to bring down women a peg or two, reduce them to victims.
Published in : The Huffington Post
I too am a man residing in the same culture, with many of the same influences. I am the same guy who, along with his friends, stares at a “hot” girl walking on the road. But of course I won’t lose control of my mind and body and force myself on a girl. I know my limits. I too have a family and when I see them, I take my limits in a more serious way.
Life is a complete cycle. The way I see society and the opposite gender is the same way society looks at my home, my sister, my mother and also at my love. This realisation makes me fearful. It makes me mend my actions and my way of looking at the world.
I don’t think that women will ever be truly empowered until men are. Until the way we think changes, our progress will always be incomplete, the road to equality half-paved.
But right at this moment I am a frightened man. I am frightened of society. I fear for my family. To deal with that fear I keep tabs on them, stop them from doing certain things, stop them from going to certain places and stop them from going out after a certain time. This is not because I think they are weak, but because I want them to be safe. I love them, I care for them. I can be open-minded and embrace every definition of freedom out there, but deep inside I know I cannot change because my love and fear for them will not let me. If this makes me a coward, then I am one.
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URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.in/aakash-joshi/i-a-coward-man_b_8017382.html
