Its my mother - in - law's birthday today and one of the things I want to gift her is to let her know how she has transformed 'me' into a better 'me' than I was, to a great extent. Things I paid no heed to when my mother tried them on me, my mom - in law successfully got through to my system. Its a typical case of that kid who doesn't eat/ drink something at home and you go around telling the world about it, and when someone else tries to give you those things, you happily gobble away, embarrassing your poor mom to shame! (:D) Hang on - it wasn't as easy as it sounds from the previous sentence. More like a million miles away from easy! As you may have guessed by now, the things that my mom - in - law got into my system, for starters (no pun intended when I say 'starters'), include food!

The story goes like this. My mom had spent a good 25 years of her life trying to make me put on weight. I was so thin that she would go to see astrologers seeking answers to when I would finally start looking like a 25 year old female human walking around (instead of a hanger with clothes on, magically floating in air)!! I remember one of those several times distinctly. The astrologer stared at my face for a few minutes, then held my very thin wrist, then stared at my face again , then held my wrist again, mumbling something about how thin it was, and finally went through my paperwork that had information regarding my date, place and time of birth. When he resurfaced from the pile of papers he was scribbling on, doing the 'math' about when I would finally put on weight, he popped his head up with a very evident 'Eureka!!' look and said (in Kashmiri), 'Gassinas khander.....ye banye aalephyantt hishh!!' If you're not Kashmiri or a non - Kashmiri speaking Kashmiri, that more or less translates to, 'Let her get married...she will become (fat) like an elephant'. If you happen to speak Kashmiri and understood that as you read it, the joke's over! Stop laughing now and keep reading on! (:D) No prizes for guessing that what that Kashmiri astrologer predicted several years ago, turned out to be true a few years down the line.

After getting married, when I used to sit on my chair at the beautifully the laid out table, alongwith everyone else (including the food), I would give the food a very, 'Emmm....Will I be eating you or will YOU BE EATING ME!!' look. You see with my mom, I could just tell her, well, I'm not that hungry. Well, I'm not eating this & I'm not eating that! If she tried to force me I would remind how we live in a democracy and how eating as much as I want is my fundamental right (or perhaps just listen to an earful from her and carry on with my very tiny portions! :D). I tried the same thing with my mom - in - law and guess what - it didn't work! It seems she had tackled her daughter and my now lovely sister with the same eating challenge and had succeeded! She was a master of the game - I didn't know I was dealing with a professional here. I kept doing what I did, and she kept doing what she had to until one day! That day when I jumped onto the weighing machine and my eyeballs nearly popped out on seeing what I saw!! For nearly half an hour I kept checking the weighing machine for faults and made my entire family check their weight on it to confirm it was working fine. You will not believe what I saw - she had done the impossible!! I was 10 kgs heavier within one year of being married and being fed by mommy - in - law. I don't know about myself, but my mom is ever so thankful to her for achieving so gracefully what she did while she had spent 25 years and had given up trying! It was my mom's dream come true!!

Over these four years of officially being her daughter, and nearly 6 years of knowing the wonderful person that she is, there are several lessons she's taught me and some of which I have internalised. As for the rest ( which include learning to cook) I still am working on (I couldn't cook to save my life!).

Today I would like to share with you, 7 lessons mummy (as I fondly call her) has always taught me:

1) No matter how bad someone's been to you, forgive them . However, don't forget what you went through completely, because if you do, you might end up repeating the same mistake again. That would be stupid of you!

2) Nothing in the world is more important than your family. When your family needs you, anything and everything else in life can be paused. (Except for Saavdhan India which is her favourite crime awareness programme! She will get all the bad guys one day and beat them blue I tell u! :D)

3) Never ever go after shallow, materialistic things. In the end all that matters is the number of loving and truly caring people in your life. It's no good to have all the wealth in the world and no one to call your own and share it with and be miserable. Instead, focus on giving love in abundance and everything else will fall into place and you will always remain happy.

4) Always take blessings from your elders try to never hurt them intentionally. The blessings they give you will protect you during challenging times in life, no matter how difficult they are.

5) What you do and how you act reflects what your parents have taught you and the values you've been brought up with. Always think about this before reacting to any situation. 

6) Bringing someone who has grown up in another family into yours is like grafting the branch of one tree onto a completely different one. You need to keep working at that branch for years to fully incorporate her vascular tissue into your own family's (How true - this is my favourite one).

7) Be ever so grateful for all the small mercies. God watches over you and showers more such mercies in abundance if you are.

Mummy is truly one of the strongest people I have ever known. Her mental strength astonishes me each time. I could write on and on and on about her but I guess I will end this post here for now with a, "*touchwood* how lucky am I to have her in my life!".

 
To the worlds most superb mommy - Happy birthday! :)

I am Sorry!

A couple of posts earlier, I mentioned that I am taking part in the Ultimate Blogging Challenge (UBC), where in, I am required to post one blog post a day for the entire month of July. As I went on writing posts for the first few days, I realised that it was quite simple to produce one post a day because someone as talkative as me always will have some sort of verbal diarrhea to type and translate into an online post form.

I went online to the UBC website to read on details of the challenge just out of curiosity. While it is a splendid initiative to motivate people to write, share, increase their readers' network and maximise blog content, there is a downside - well at least for me there is. You see, my foremost mission in reviving my one - post - blog, was not to maximise content and or to meet any targets, or to  increase readership etc. My foremost focus is to write something because I want to write about it - not because I have to produce one post every day. While this is a great motivator for some and ideally I too would want to have something I want to write about, every day. However, I feel my previous blog post was not so good and perhaps if I hadn't taken up the challenge I wouldn't have posted it in that form. Or perhaps I would have added more value to it - I don't know.

I did think about this myself and when a dear one gave me some blatant feedback that, 'it feels like you wrote that because you have to write, and not because you want to write', I was taken aback slightly. The Bollywood drama queen in me did give the person an earful saying, 'you could have put it in a better way even if that's what you feel!', 'you're so rude!', 'you need to rethink your feedback strategy!', etc, etc (:D). But deep within I knew what the person had said was true as the thought had crossed my own mind initially.

Having given myself a couple of days to sleep over it I have come to the conclusion, that I perhaps did write that post just for the sake of writing my blog post for that day, and but for this challenge, I wouldn't have posted it just as I did. So via today's post, I want to send a very sincere apology to the person I snapped at (:D) and I want to assure my readers, that when you take your valuable time out to read this space, its a promise that you will be reading something I want to write about and offer you to read and never something I have to write about.

No matter what course my participation in the challenge takes, I still would like to thank the organisers of the challenge as every experience, is an asset in life. At least I learned that if I am to start a blog where my primary motive is to maximise content and readership, I am well capable of running it successfully. However, for here, my primary motive is to write because I want to. Everything, including the blog content and the readers and followers will come eventually but I will always focus on the primary motive. Because this is my sacred space, free from the stresses, expectations, worries and targets of the world. This is my unadulterated therapy!

To that special one of mine - I am sorry! :)

The Orkut days! :)

Once upon a time, we used to socialise virtually on Orkut. I thought typing this would make me laugh, but I feel a sense of nostalgia instead. Remember that fun time when Orkut was a breath of fresh air after the very insipid Hi5? How we used to compete on how many scraps we had collected on our scrapbook & how many fans we had. We would wait eagerly for a testimonial to come in from friends (filled with words that over sold our normal selves to potential virtual friends! :D)  and would count how many we had collected. Gosh - how jobless were we and how much time we had for things that didn't matter at all! :)))) I remember how we would join various communities and comment on threads, and keep checking regularly on what comments followed ours and if someone disagrees, or has picked up a fight or is in agreement with your views. Okay - now I am laughing!! How ridiculous! :D     What is it that out of the blues made me write about Orkut now that he/she/it (never know which one to pick for the likes) is no more (God bless the departed soul that served us so well when alive!).    

  I recall that, in a community called 'Kashmir' that I had joined, there was a thread by the name, 'My Dream about Kashmir', where I had written down my thoughts on the matter and I happened to land across the piece yesterday. On reading it I went into the, 'awwwwwww how cute' mode instantly. It was the time when I was still very idealistic about life and things that can happen in it and the piece reflected that. I feel I have to share this with my readers purely for the sake of its innocence.    Pasted below - enjoy!! :)  

   

    I was in the fourth grade when I grabbed onto the Children's Bible one day, for he first time ever. I was a kid....innocent, untouched by either the realization or the importance of the word "RELIGION"!!!!! I did not even have the slightest idea that the book that i was holding had anything whatsoever to do with religion....i just started reading it as if it were a story book i could feast on (becoz i LOVED reading) and was fascinated with the wonderful pictures it was filled with. I remember clearly to this day the first few chapters which described some breathtakingly beautiful place called "The Eden Garden" and the relevant pictures that they contained. Looking at those pictures, my naive mind thought that, perhaps "The Eden Garden" was actually metaphoric to my homeland "Kashmir". I was living in Switzerland in those days, yet my mind could compare the beauty of "The Eden Garden" to but one place i had seen to that day, and that place was "Kashmir". With the sheep grazing on the pastures, the birds singing sweet nothings flying all over the place, the air of love and peacefulness till wherever ones vision could take them, the beautiful lake with fish swimming deep and low( which by the way i thought was “the DAL”....heheheh...silly me), and no sign of panic or fear whatsoever anywhere......in fact, i don’t think people living there had ever even heard of these words(that is a different aspect altogether that at that time only Adam and Eve lived here)!!!!!!
 Then one day Eve committed the Original Sin somewhere in the next couple of chapters, and the stunning garden transformed suddenly into living hell, with hate, worries, tensions, and bloodshed everywhere. That too led me to compare the place one more time with what was becoming of KASHMIR.....only I had no idea who was Eve in this case.......because if i DID i would have begged her not to listen to Satan disguised as a snake and not to eat the apple from the "forbidden garden", when there were plenty of apples to eat from our own garden!!!!
 I had visited Kashmir a year back, after a span of 16 years, and believe me, when i boarded off the plane and placed my first step on the land, there was this sense of serenity I felt in the air ever since the aircraft door had opened, and everything was so pleasant, that I actually wanted to bend down and KISS the land before I placed my foot on it. I know people who have not been there must be thinking I’m dramatizing all this, but believe me, you will know that flow of adrenaline and that bittersweet emotion, only once you personally go there and feel exactly what I did.. Those days spent there have by far been the most memorable days of my life. There is something in the air of Kashmir( aab-o-hawa as they say) that makes you instantaneously fall in love with it and a sense of possessiveness takes you over, like maybe for a man, as hey say, a thunderbolt strikes u and u fall in love with a beautiful and innocent girl, without even knowing anything about her (Ref: The Godfather). Guys, now I know what emotions you go through at those times…..LOL!
 Since the beginning and the next part of the Bible was almost allegorically similar to what Kashmir went through, my dream about Kashmir would be that its end be that way too. The Bible ends with a promise of God to all His children that one day He shall return us “The Eden Garden”, a place where sheep would graze beside tigers, all people would live in serenity and harmony, and there would be love, love and only love all over the beautiful valley. The love for Kashmir would take over all other things like politics, religion, and the list is actually endless. Kashmir is more important than anything else and I just hope God answers my prayers while I am alive, and someday I go to live in that heaven with my family and all my friends.
 And that is all I have to say about that (Forrest Gump style)!  PS: The irony is that I was referring to myself  as a kid in line two, whereas now when I read the post, I feel I was still a kid when I wrote it! :D Also, I have left the post unadulterated and not run it through spell check.

The unnamed post

I have forgotten to mention in any of my previous July posts that I am taking part in a blogging challenge called the "Ultimate Blogging Challenge" that a very sweet person ever so kindly informed me of. Taking part simply implies you commit to writing one blog post a day.

Initially when I heard about this challenge, I was filled with immense self doubt. For starters, in the last 6 years my blogging average has been 0.1666666666667 posts a year. Having only just returned here and truly started blogging and with a 8 month old filled with energy, wanting to cuddle and play with mommy every waking hour, the furthest I could push myself to was one post a week. Would I be able to do this? I know I so want to! I tried to calm my tormented mind and told myself, 'Well one post a day is for others. They obviously don't have a small baby crawling and cruising around all day. I must and I will give myself some relaxation for my inability and perhaps focus on one post in 2 days. Yes, that would perhaps be realistically achievable.' You see, when you have a toddler around, people like me take it for granted that no one in such a situation can or will  lead a normal life until their baby is a little older and more independent. Ahhh that felt good now! No more pressure on my head to produce one post a day - mine is a special case and my deadline is 2 days! I could literally feel the stress flying off my head.

Stress, my friends, is a funny guy! The minute it comes to live in your head, you start getting disturbed and wondering whether or not you will ever be able to deal with the situation you're in, to the standard that you actually have set up for yourself. Not the standard that you allow yourself as a special case. Your productivity commits suicide the minute he speculates his beloved creativity and stress are having a thing going on between them. Creativity, however, was always faithful to productivity, yet she digs a dagger into her heart and ends her life, just as soon as she gets the news of her beloved's suicide.

There you go - that's Shakespeare's, 'Romeo and Juliet'  (more like 'productivity and creativity' LOL. Shakespeare's soul will surely haunt me for doing this to one of his finest works) relived for you once again. Certainly, 'All isn't well that doesn't end(s) well'

Now for the bigger news - Surprise!! Surprise!! Well, surprise, that is, if you haven't noticed already. Since the day I took up the challenge, I have consistently posted one blog post each day (except for yesterday when Mr. apple ipad decided to vanish my post into nothing {I will surely write another post about that moment of frustration}. But I am confident I will soon catch up unless a natural calamity strikes.) Its almost as if from the moment when I took off my head, that pressure, and the stress it radiated, I just knew I could do this.

The lesson I learned from this experience, which I guess is the purpose of my post (in addition to making you laugh a little) is that minus the stress we all can continue nurturing our talent for a lifetime! Stress brutally and cold bloodily murders creativity and talent in any shape or form. Once again I will bring in karma here. Whatever it is that you need to get done, get rid of any strings that might be attached (or at least paint them with some invisible ink till you are where you want to be. Yes, you can shop online or buy in store - for details contact my childhood friends 'Tom & Jerry).

 
Take it one day at a time and keep doing what you can to your best possible capacity. As long as you are at peace with your own conscience, you're ok. There is no one else in the world you are truly answerable to other than your conscience (not even your boss!!) and that is a fact most of us forget while leading the busy and stressful lives that we do in today's time.

Hope I haven't spoken a little too soon. Should you not see another post here for the next 6 years, please know that I have (:D)!

And I still haven't figured an appropriate name for this post so I will leave it to what I have left it to.

Happy weekend everybody! <3 p="">

P.S: Any images I post on this blog are courtesy of Google Image Search, unless otherwise mentioned or obvious.

 

9 things my mumma's always taught me!

If you do a search, the internet is full of the '10 things blah blah blah' posts. 10 reasons why i won't do this, 10 things I have learnt from x, 10 destinations to visit before you die etc etc. Whilst there are some great teachings and learnings off these posts, I am led to believe that this is injustice to other humble numbers. Just because 10 is a convenient number, and not too big nor too small at the same time, it emits arrogance and very conveniently takes away the limelight off other numbers leaving them for mere mathematical and numerical usage.

I therefore would like to focus all attention on the number 9 today so it gets the footage it's long awaited. Today I will share with you, 9 things that my mumma taught me.

My mumma has been the most influential and the most giving person in my life and understandably, I am very attached to her. I take her for granted all the time and no matter how much older the years passing by make me, I will always act like a 9 year old when she's around. There are innumerable things I have learned from her and I could write on and on about it. However, as mentioned above, today I will concebtrate on the 9 first ones just as they come to my mind.

1) pamper your child no matter what the world says. Pampering is not the same as spoiling - there's a marked difference between the two. Eventually, your child will learn to fight her own battles but the loving memories of that pampered childhood will always remain and make her a good human being, able to deal with anything in life.

2) Relationships are more important than your ego:

3) Having a child doesn't mean the end of your life - it means the beginning of an even better life. 

4) The most important ingredient in any recipe is love

5) no matter where you live, live with a sense of pride in where you come from and set an example for others to follow.

6) Live simple and think high

7) If any sick man tries to take a shot at making you feel inferior as a woman, put on your 'chandi maa' shoes and put them in their place. Beat them like frappe coffee if need be. If you don't respect yourself and stand up for what's right, no one will. Never be afraid of such people. 

8) Nothing is more important in the world than your family

9) Consider yourself privledged if God ever gives you a chance to look after your elders. Not everyone is lucky enough.

DISCLAIMER: These are the lessons mumma has taught me. That doesn't necessarily mean I have learnt all of them. Work's still in progress! :D

That place beyond bugged!

Ever so often in our daily lives there are various things that irritate us. Some of them we patiently bear with and the rest we vent out in the form of anger, tears, and the likes. Nevertheless, they bug us and we find ways to get on with life in spite of that.

Usually the degree of being bugged is in constant low doses well distributed through the span of the day. That isn't much of a problem as our systems are well versed with adapting to such doses over time. However, sometimes the bugging takes place in high concentration and high frequency doses. This is the time that I want to tell you about today.

I have recently been in that place where something someone was constantly doing was bugging me to the core. I do not want to get into details about how, when and where as I like to keep very private, the identity of people who help me gain experience in life - specially if the experience is a bad one! They kept doing and saying things that irritated me beyond the boundaries of normalcy. Further, with more constant bugging, I became angry and swallowed my anger a few times. As the bugging treatment continued, I went into female dog mode and bitched about it with someone I am very close to. When it continued further on, I almost reached a point of breakdown. And that's when everything changed!!

I suppose if the bugging had stopped at that point, I would have broken down and wept. But since it carried on with the same constant frequency of high doses, something else happened - it made me laugh! No - I am serious!! I finally reached a place beyond bugged.

Don't know if any of you have ever been there but that place is something else! There is no more irritation, anger or tears of frustration in that place. It's a place filled with comedy and hysterical laughter. And when the bugging carries on even further, all you can do or feel is more comedy and laughter in it! :))))

Such is that place beyond bugged!!

Ever been there?

Love, hate, indifference & 'the complicated'!

We all experience various feelings in different situations that we are faced with in life. Love, hate and indifference are the three dominant ones of these. We love someone/something, hate them/it or dont really care as it doesn't bother us in any specific manner.

However, most of us do experience a fourth kind of emotion. One that doesn't fit in with the crystal clear categories mentioned above nor in any others set in place by the society. Older people like to promptly sweep it under the carpet and get on with their lives, and up until a few years ago, youngsters under peer pressure or otherwise, would want to update their facebook status to it at the drop of a hat! Yes - I am talking about our very own, the very real, yet the least discussed in black and white, 'the complicated' emotion. 

More often than not, this emotion is associated with a situation where the person/s experincing it are wondering whether they are in a relationship or not. However, there is so much more to the complicated emotion, that no amount of blogging space or words would be enough to do justice to its essence. Perhaps this is because its essence keeps changing in direct proportionality to the context within which it is experienced. When we speak about a complicated emotion, in general, we mean an emotion that is beyond the realms of understanding of the human mind. Our brain perhaps is void of the specific neurons required to interpret it in a form understood by the society and its beings. And it is basic human nature to try and figure something out with all his/her/its might, and when there is no other option but to give up, one would rather sweep it under the carpet and pretend nothing ever happened rather than come out of the closet (if you like) and give it a venting voice. 

By now, you must be wondering what suddenly drew me to write about 'the complicated' emotion when I am happily married to a wonderful man and am blessed with a gorgeous 8 month old. As I previously mentioned in paragraph 3, this emotion doesn't always have to do with 2 people trying to figure out whether they are in a relationship or not. It could be about an infinite number of things. A son who's father wasn't a dad to him, a daughter whose dad abandoned her and so suddenly decided to return after 15 years, a reasonably good wife being jealous of her mother- in - law, an otherwise secure child suddenly becoming insecure following the birth of a sibling, or a very close old friend you don't speak with anymore because 'something happened'! In my case, it is to do with a friend who was very dear to me and perhaps who still has a set place in my heart (and perhaps I have voluntarily chosen to make that place dormant), but who I still don't speak with any longer. 

A few days back one of my one time best friend's mother, who I lovingly call 'aunty' contacted me on facebook. She mentioned that she and 'uncle' speak of my always smiling face ever so often. Additionally, she sent loving blessings for me and my family. I was surprised to receive her message but at the same time that place in my heart that I had consciously frozen away, possibly thawed faster than the speed of light. In the time machine of my mind, I was taken several years back and lived those loving times so lovingly spent with them, all over again. I could smell the tangy fragrances and the luscious taste of the delicious fresh home cooked food that aunty had perhaps spent hours cooking in heat and sweat, because I was going to visit. They loved me and as I was in a strange land away from my parents, all my friend's parents ensured they looked after me and fed me like a stuffed thanksgiving turkey, till I could puke at just the thought of food. All my friends always complained that I hijack their parents. And it was true to a great extent as sometimes I found myself spending more time with their parents than with them. Somehow I loved interacting with grown ups and understanding their perspectives and thoughts on various aspects of life. And for people I love and care for, I always keep in touch irrespective of any reciprocations which I kept doing. Until that one day! That day when my dear friend did someone else wrong. The word 'wrong', may I clarify, is very subjective. What I thought was wrong, he may have thought of to have been the longterm best for all who found themselves in that situation. However, the wrong he did to whoever he did the wrong to as a man was unacceptable to my conscience as woman. Even though I am certain most of him is the same person I was dear friends with, some part of me doesn't allow me to take that as the truth, for the wrong he so insensitively did, that value driven friend of mine would have never imagined doing. 

As such the emotion I feel is perplexing. I cannot understand exactly how I feel about him. I dont hate him, nor is he my loving friend that he once was, nor does this all not bother me. I guess I'm just going to say 'it's complicated' and make peace with my emotions. 

My experiments with untruth!

There has been an ongoing mental debate in my head for years now, on whether or not it is ok to lie! Please don't be judgemental as you read this post - its not like I lie for a living. But having said that, there have been times when I have found myself so deep under a mountain full of shit, and in spite of feeling immensely guilty about it, the only logical option that's remained available has been to lie (well, the  only option other than being grilled like barb-a-Qued chicken by the parents, that is!!).And c'mon people. whether we like to admit it or not, deep down inside, we know we all have lied at some point due to some reason or the other. And if someone tells me they have never lied, well that most certainly is a lie!

Since my childhood days my elders instilled avalue in me - that it is wrong to  lie and that one should always tell the truth. This thought was deeply engrained in my mind then and remains there even to this day. Back then I probably believed in this to the 't' and always told the truth - perhaps until that one day. The day when I probably did something I knew I shouldn't have done and then probably told the truth when questioned about it. I am using the word 'probably' as I suspect this must have happened so early in my life that I have no memories or even a vague recollection of it. So when questioned about it and when I told the truth, assuming that 'they' who were asking the question, will treat me like a star for telling the truth - well they probably didn't and I was probably grounded instead!! I probably learned a new lesson then - that you get grounded for telling the truth.
Moving on, I went to Christian School where again I was taught it is a sin to lie and it reinforced the fact in my mind that every time I lied about anything no matter what the reason, I was committing sin in the eyes of God and would be duly punished for it.

As a child I was extremely fascinated by 'Lord Krishna' (I blame it on the zillion of charming stories my grandmother had narrated to me about this naughty and adorable God). In so many ways I saw some of myself in him;  naughty and yet adorable and loved by everyone. I was a dedicated devotee too and never missed my morning pooja with my grandmother (God bless her loving soul), of my Krishna amid a whole temple filled with statues and pictures of various Hindu Gods. Then one day I found out something unbelivable. Something that so did not fit in with my Krishna's Godliness. I think it was while watching Mahabharat on TV(please refer wikipedia or search on Google if you are unfamiliar with the epic - trust me if I start getting into details about Mahabharata I will spend a year writing this post and for one, Google will be very happy with my post content, but that's not why I am here. :D). I found out that Lord Krishna once said that it is okay to lie - well if the lie told is for someone else's good, that is. Even so,  a lie was a lie and it would obviously be good for someone. If I was confused so far, this only made me confuseder.

There then came a phase when I did not think too much about it - I just simply lied in dire situations. And by dire situations, I don't mean ones where nuclear weapons were going to be released if I had told the truth. I mean some odd situations where telling the truth would have been awkward or would have got me into some deep trouble again with 'the parents' or perhaps 'the teachers' too now. I went on this way for some time but deep down inside I still believed that it was wrong to lie.

In the meantime, it was almost as if the Universe was conspiring to point me towards the path of the truth and I kept hearing different stories about it. One such story was that of George Washington chopping down the cherry tree and telling his father the truth about it when questioned. However, I did wonder how much of an earful I would get from my parents if I went around chopping trees and telling them the truth about it (:D).
The conspiracy of the Universe met a very lukewarm fate though as nothing changed much for me! However, I did go on experimenting every time that I lied. I would keep evaluating periodically and feeding back into my system what the patterns were telling me. Other than the fact that no matter how small the lie, it made me feel awful about myself, everything that I could infer stood against lying.

I later started to gather other people's views on the matter. One of my interviewees shared a very interesting point of view. She is a very righteous person and does not like to do things that are against Gandhian values. Needless to say - lying is second on the list (the first one being violence- yes there's a list that Gandhi ji personally showed me. Believe me - I'm not lying!!). Now it was probably ok to do this during Gandhian times, but the world now is very different. Sometimes lying is inevitable to even save yourself from being ripped off!! So what she does is to allow herself monthly 'lying credits'. Yes you read it right!! 'Lying credits' - just like 'mobile phone credit'. So she has a set 'lying budget' available, which if she runs out of in that month means she has no more lie lines left to use!! Perhaps she then postpones the lying to next month's budget or borrows sone lying credit from the next month - this I need to confirm as I did not ask her. But thats one point of view.

Next, I interviewed another friend and asked him about his views on the matter. He told me that he doesn't like to think much about it and lies whenever it is convenient or required. The frequency of lying comes upto several times a day and there's no set figure he could give me. He calls it 'supplying a lie on demand'. So his lying works on the laws of  demand and supply and he promptly supplies a lie as and when the demand arises. You're right - he's studied economics!

Another view point came from someone very dear to me. She said lying is hurtful but 'hiding', on the other hand was ok. So in essence, she would hide the truth insofar as possible and leave lying as the very last resort. This was due to the fact that she feels lying hurts the person being lied to whereas concealing is not as hurtful. That makes sense perhaps!

Someone else kindly shared her views on the matter. She said that if a lie doesn't harm anyone and is spoken to not hurt another person's feelings then it was ok to lie. Well I agree to that to an extent. The danger here, however, is that if by chance the person finds out the truth, their feelings could potentially be irreparably hurt.

Hmmm. So from all my experience in my life as a liar, and from other people's experience, what have I concluded? Well, I'm the protagonist of my post and I therefore have the responsibility of doing the right thing! You guessed it right folks - I have concluded and decided I'm not going to lie anymore. Yes, this does have a lot to do with that value my elders had deeply engrained in my system many years ago, but it also has a lot more to do with something else. It has a lot to do with the fact that I am lazy and I have a bad memory!! No - the previous sentence is not a typo. I am indeed too lazy to lie!! Can you believe it? I bet you can't but once I explain the logic you will understand. Most lies that I have ever told in the past have back fired in one way or another. And when years later people have questioned me about them, I have realised that it is not humanly possible to remember exactly what you lied about and to who. However, it is possible to remember the truth as it is absolute (unless of course you suffer from amnesia or Alzheimer's due to old age!). I for one, like to have a genuine face to show people and hate that feeling of wondering whether someone knows the truth while I am telling a lie or whether I remember what I lied about exactly the way that I lied about it and me having to live a lie just because I lied in the first place. 
I simply don't have the confidence you need, to be able to lie with perfection and I am too lazy to work for it. The truth works well for me even if it means that in the short term I have to pay a price for it. I do not and will not ever lie in my life.

Well actually, everything I have said above is a lie. Believe me now this is the only truth I have shared in this entire post and I am starting to tell only the truth as it ends! :)

"You have changed.......!!"

I am sure that the above phrase strikes a chord with everyone and at some point in their life, most people have either said or have been made to hear these three annoying words, "You have changed!!", followed by a silent pause, or by a very unwelcome rant!! :)

For those of you who have been at the receiving end of this phrase, jump straight to the next paragraph please. But for those of you who are guilty of having said this to someone else, allow me to put things into perspective! I will take you a couple of hundred centuries back into time & history where I would like to introduce you to someone by the name Charles Robert Darwin. Mr. Darwin was an English Naturalist, and established some very interesting facts centred around, species, their survival and their evolution. One of these was to do with how species adapt to change.

Let's pick up a scenario that's easy to visualise. Suppose I am a rabbit that hops on land 24x7x365 going *boing-boing-boing-boing* (perhaps you just imagined Bugs Bunny with my face on didn't you?? :D), along with my herd of other rabbits just like me. Then imagine one day a  really bad flood happens to greet us (surely it lost its way to somewhere else where Mr. Drought was visiting instead - how typical!!). The flooding is potentially devastating for my herd as none of us know how to climb trees nor do we know how to swim. As a result, all of us end up drowning. All of us except one rabbit.....you guessed it..... that rabbit is me (at least I can be a hero in my imagination!!). Now you must be wondering how I possibly survived that flood that wiped out my entire herd? I did not mention a vital piece of information about myself - the fact that I am a deaf rabbit; unaware that 'we' the 'rabbits' cannot swim. As such, my brain too, was unaware of the fact and responded to an instinct so I could pull through and have the best possible chance to survive. With a lot of struggle I kept on kicking my hands and legs to keep myself afloat, till the flood finally passed. As the dawn broke, I looked around with a deep sense of sorrow to know that all my buddies were capable of swimming and surviving that flood - if only they were deaf too! I stood there and sobbed my heart away. Just then someone tapped me on the shoulder and said 'Son..(no, he actually said "hey rabbit" - I am joking!! And I heard that in spite of being deaf - its MY imagination remember??)'. I heard the voice again, 'Hey rabbit....don't cry.' As I turned around to see who it was, I couldn't believe my ironical luck. 'On this sorrowful day I finally meet that very man who inspired me to dedicate my future to research & who I had spent hours reading about when I was at my "Rabbit High School" ', I thought. The half bald head, the long white beard, those questioning eyes, and that enlightened look was unmistakable - it was Mr. Darwin - the man, the legend himself indeed, standing right there behind  me. He hugged me comfortingly and said ' Well done Mishi rabbit. You should be proud of yourself. - You're a survivor; you've just adapted to a change.'  And having said that, what was probably Mr. Darwin's real ghost (or me hallucinating after 24 hours of struggling to keep afloat amid a ferocious flood ) slowly vanished in thin air.

Now then, ladies & gentlemen, coming back to the, 'You have changed,' business. Each and every one of us is faced in life, with several such floods, earthquakes, storms, tornadoes, droughts, or what have you, of various intensities from time to time! For those of you who like to call a spade a spade, I would like to highlight that I mean the previous sentence in a metaphoric sense. This process of encountering various challenges is a series of small or big, good or bad, floods that change your 'comfort zone' habitat and demand for you to adapt in order to survive in it. Adapting to change is therefore a constant and dynamic process that is happening to all of us even as we read this post from start to finish. Whether it tips your balance towards becoming a better person or worse is a separate matter of discussion. But what I am trying to put across to you here, is that you don't change from one time to the next, of meeting/ speaking to the person who makes that annoying comment - you merely adapt. And my point is that adaptation is essential for survival in that changed habitat.

So next time do think twice before judging someone and making the statement, 'You have changed!' And for those of you who are made to hear this statement henceforth, refer the culprit to my post here and make sure you clarify that you haven't changed; you have simply adapted!!

Hakunna Matata!!

When 'Humans' became 'Resources'!!

As an HR professional I find the term 'human resource management' quite disturbing. Yes, day in and day out I use it to describe the related department, the qualification I studied, the professional body to which I am affiliated, the workforce, my profile on Linked in, etc, but somewhere deep down inside, each time I hear or use the term it makes me think that the essence of what it entails is being undermined. I am filled with an inexplicable sense of guilt for not challenging it. To call human beings in all their wonder simply a 'resource' is demeaning and makes me picture the movie 'Ben Hur' and the hundreds of slaves in uniforms straining every sinew to keep the ship assail. Maybe I am taking things to the other extreme but it gives me the feeling that human beings are being taken for a 'resource' that can simply be bought and sold at a price. Although this may to some extent be true in practical terms, and is to do with the laws of demand and supply and how the so called 'Labour market' (another term I am not too comfortable with) functions, the thought makes me very uncomfortable.  I find in it, a real sense of emotional and spiritual deficit.

True that every employee is paid a wage and benefits in exchange for the work they do, and yet there is so much more to humans who can never truly have all their effort, creativity, insights and passion finitely evaluated with numeric values imprinted against their profiles. The last I remember, human beings had spirits and emotions that deserve to be respected.  Talking of them as resources irks me. 

I know this debate has been running for many years but little has changed, and with finance increasingly driving the agenda with various austerity measures some would say we are even going backwards.  So today I would like to propose something different, something fairer and perhaps ground-breaking for the profession. I would like to rename the term 'Human Resource Management' to a more sensitive 'Employee Management'. Everyone working for a company, including people in the HR department itself are employees. To use the term 'employee management' gives me a feeling of having a sudden gush of fresh air in my suffocating lungs. It seems to encapsulate what I have been trying to communicate to staff for a long time now - that we are here to help and support you in doing the best work of your lives. We are not here to cut your wages for no obvious reason, to be difficult, or discipline you without reason.

I appreciate in one way it is only a change in words, but deeper it is much more than that and a signal for something far more significant about the power and significance of our humanity.  So who knows, this may be the first tiny step in changing the hard, dry image of the Human Resource Department prevalent in most places. As they say, 'Well begun is half done!' :)

Looking for answers?? Naaaah!!

Ever since we are little children, we envision a life that lies ahead and picture it to be so perfect and assume its a given that all we dream of will so perfectly and so flawlessly come true. A perfect degree, a perfect job, a perfect love followed by a perfect marriage and perfect babies leading on to to lot of other perfect stuff and then a perfect old age spent perfectly with perfect little grand children. Or perhaps at that age you just think up to the perfect 30 something where everything you've dreamed of will be in your kitty and life will be so smooth. Parents always protect you inside a bubble and keep you in that rosy world till you are out there on your own one fine day and that world appears alien to you. You feel like you've spent your life so far living in some sort of a parallel universe. And then life throws its fair share of challenges at you. Unimaginable situations and some you never thought your perfect life could ever encounter. You experience various emotions you never knew existed; pain, sorrow, more pain and more sorrow and you don't think you can ever make it through that time. You wake up each day wondering why this is happening to you and what you have done to deserve this, and go to bed each night trying to figure when this will pass . You try to evaluate the situation against your 'karma' theory of life that you grew up believing but nothing makes sense anymore and everything becomes a mess. You lose yourself completely in the process!

Yet you lose yourself only to find yourself again in due course as someone new, someone different and someone transformed! A survivor - a caterpillar who finally became a butterfly!! And when that happens you have developed a new level of strength that you never knew existed within. You stop looking for answers as you realise that somethings in life just don't fit into any watertight compartments and are completely random. There is no real reason why whatever happened with you, good or bad, actually took the liberty of happening to you and not to someone else.

On another note, I do still believe in Karma. But I believe in doing the first line of the karma shlok 'karmanye vadhikaraste' and then not thinking about what comes later. Maybe all the good/bad Karma does even out over several lives after all, and thats why some good things happen to bad people and bad things to good people!!

Here I go again.....looking for answers.....so much for saying I have stopped looking for answers.....LOL!! :))

Me then and now - Older and perhaps wiser :)

Just yesterday I was thinking of creating a blog where I could share my experiences, thoughts and findings(if you like) about life, as I progress on through its journey. I was reading about how to set up my own blog when I remembered vaguely that many years ago, I have in fact already set up a blog which has long been forgotten by me. I dug a little to remember how to gain access again and I landed back here.

Around 6 years have passed since I wrote the one and only post that I did here. I remember that time very well. When I was naive, innocent and filled with enthusiasm about anything and everything in life - the world was my oyster. When I started this blog I was going through a very confused and challenging time, wondering that, when I have never been mean out of intention or hurt someone, (on the contrary I always put 'human' ahead of 'being') and tried to help anyone and everyone in every manner possible, then why should I be going through this sort of a time. I used to see the world through my rosy tinted glasses and thought everything and everyone was either perfect in my life or not. If I loved someone because they were good people, then there were no flaws in them, at least none visible to my eye. But if someone was silly enough to be unfair to someone else (particularly my loved ones) or treat them badly, then they lost their place in my heart forever. It was a colourful world, and yet it was divided in to the black and the white, with no room for any shades of grey whatsoever. Then came a time where I just couldn't figure out what was going on and why. I had no control over happenings in my life and nothing was fitting in with my theory of life which I had been taught and that I believed in, since my childhood days. The theory that good things happen to good people and bad things to the bad. Some of the white in my life, had shown some unforeseen shades of grey which my processing system dismissed as unrecognised and did not quite understand. Whereas some of the black started fading away and becoming less intense. Perplexed about the situation, I just did not know what to do and simply didn't have answers to so many questions. Nor did I know where to find them. However, I did know that a few things kept me going through it all; my family and friends (blessed to have been granted the finest stock available with God) AND my sense of humor (and an occasional downpour of salt water from my eyes ;) )

I came here yesterday and read what I had posted here about describing myself, 'i'm still an enigma to myself...........trying to solve the mystery that is me.......hoping blogging assists the process :)' Unfortunately, my bogging experience was very short lived but my experience with life went on much further. Since then I have solved some mysteries about myself and about life in general - maybe not all but most certainly some!! And the work is still in progress.

No longer am I the person that I was those 6 odd years ago. I guess its safe to say that I have recognised my own shades of grey and I have learned to love them as much as every other element in myself. I have learned that it is ok to feel bad about certain things people say and/or do, and it doesn't necessarily make them good or bad. As long as they are not 'evil' everyone who matters has a set place in your heart. And I have learned to not bottle up negative thoughts inside me about people I love - they do nothing but make you miserable and certainly do not make you love those people any less.  Instead, I have learned that it helps to let off the steam somewhere where it can be absorbed with ease and without causing any damage (my main scapegoat is my husband and occasionally my parents - God bless them LOL :D ). I have learned that its good and very important to be nice, but most importantly one needs to be nice AND real. Even more important than that is to remember that no matter what emotion we sense (positive or negative), its what makes us human and void of it we wouldn't remain normal healthy human beings any longer.

I have returned here today with a commitment to not just keep my blog alive but to fill it with life through my experiences and thoughts. Be it personal issues, professional learning or random thoughts - it will be all about life and my reflections on it as I continue through this journey 'searching the ultimate truth of life!!! :) <3 br="">

Tathastu, Amen, Insha Allah!!