Valentines Day: People who inspire and my Valentine date

So its been eons and eons of years since I wrote my last post. I do not even remember the last time or the last topic I wrote about.

I am happily single and the thought of Valentines day just skips my mind. As I sit, having a quiet dinner after a day's work, aunty reminds me that it's the Valentines day tomorrow. Now, aunty and me are new friends, I dont quite get her excitement about the day. I am no romantic and have seen more than my fair share of assholish men in my life. I kind of believe that all relationships are more about convenience and milking the partner and less about unselfish love. As we take a stroll that night, aunty again brings up this topic of celebrating love and it gets me thinking. We start talking - are all relationships about what I can take; I mean my exes have mostly been more interested in what they can gain from the relationship rather than it being about sharing and caring and togetherness. Are undying love stories only found in fairy tales? Are there any stories of love in real life amongst the people we see everyday? And I dont mean the head over heels in love phase of love that eventually phases out. I mean the happily ever after kinds where, its not ever so happily. One incident that immediately strikes me is the story of my uber driver John.

I rode with John yesterday and as I get into his car, I observe he has stickers of pink ribbon on his trunk. As he cheerfully ushers me in, I see that his key chain also has the same pink ribbon that's synonymous with breast cancer. I am glad that he cares so much about the disease. During the course of our very short journey, I ask him about the interest he has taken in breast cancer awareness. John says he does it in the memory of his wife who was a victim to the disease 10 years ago. It's heartening to hear him as he speaks of his wife and the limited awareness that the world has about the disease that claimed her. He is doing his bit to raise awareness. In that moment, the love for his deceased wife breaks my thick clouds of pessimistic view on love, warming my heart instantly. It has been a long time, he says. He has moved on now. I can see that, clearly, he has not forgotten. In his own way, he keeps the memory of his wife alive. Long after she's gone. The love for his wife is so real, his actions so free of selfish intentions. Certainly there are good people on earth and he is one of them. People capable of love, even when the person they love is long dead. People capable of giving, even when they know that no amount of giving will ever bring back what they have lost. People capable of loving and cherishing fond memories of loved ones, even when cruel fate has brought a sudden, tragic end to those memories.

I will never learn of the vows John and his wife shared on their wedding. But I will always know, that for them, even death could not do them apart.
His wife still lives on. In his heart, in his words and in his actions.
He will truly be the fairy tale prince charming I happened to meet in real life.

To you John, who restores my faith in a human's capability to love and give :-)
And to you aunty - my valentine date, who believes in love even with all the naysayers around you (me ;-))

Happy valentine's day everyone!
Love and believe!

Hypocrisy, pretence and the dot com world

I was Facebooking recently when a post caught my eye. An acquaintance of mine, albeit an FB friend had posted about a spinster who refused to get married because her prospective in laws did not want her to continue running a shelter she ran for the orphans. The post gave a gist of how she went about it and the encouragement she received from her mom. The FB friend of mine wasted no words in praising her courage and effort and urged others to be like her. Reading this, however, made my blood boil. No, I do admire the lady who stood her own and did what she believed in, despite the odds and resistance. I also believe that, this, was a post worth sharing. What made my blood boil was the fact that this person who shared it on her wall was not someone who believed in it in reality. She was the same person who is busy digging up gossip on why another friend remains unmarried. She is the same person who does not think twice before doling out advice on "landing" good guys in marriage. I wonder what she must be thinking when she hit share on this post. Was it because it would make her look cool? Whenever I run into her I always get the feeling she truly believes in her antiquated and often misplaced views about how things should be. A girl should behave a certain way, you are too ugly to get married (Yes, she did say this to someone dear and therefore the volcano in my blood), girls should get married, stay married. And she has made these views of her very public in her talks and gossips yet it baffles me why she chooses a diametrically different view when it comes to her online persona. Why does she want to be projected online as someone that she so clearly is not? It leaves me with another question, are people's opinions in the virtual world the same as their opinions in the real world or are they just two different people in two different worlds? Why this pretense, this hypocrisy in the virtual world? Why are you praising something when in reality you abhor it? Does it not implicitly imply that you feel somewhere deep down that you may be wrong and you need to right the wrong? Are you justifying for something that you are not? Trying to project that you are broad minded? If that's the case why shouldn't you try to right the wrong in the real world? Why the virtual world where it probably makes nothing better for you. Baffling to me. Perhaps she believes that her words on the virtual word are far more heard than those in real world. Or maybe she believes people are stupid enough to think the virtual her is the real person. Different people, different understanding. The only good that I had was that now I know she's a hypocrite. But what's sadder is probably the fact that she knows she's one.

My Comeback Post

So, its been really long since I wrote anything. Over an year. I am watching TV and I suddenly feel like writing. Writing about something good, something positive, something calming. Something white. Something straight from my heart, but what do I write about? I am feeling good these days, there's a sense of satisfaction and happiness and my outlook's been good but I really cannot point whats made the difference that I have moved from my old sad, depressed self to the happy, hopeful me. I wonder now, I want to know that trigger. If it has helped me now, it might help me in future too. Reminds me of a old story that I had read ages ago. Goes something like this, once upon a time a very happy but bored king summons his minsters and asks them to find something that can instantly make a sad man happy and make a sad man happy. All the ministers search far and wide but are not able to find anything that would serve their purpose. One day in a faraway place, they stumble upon an old wise man and tell him their predicament. He thinks for a while and gives them a ring to take to the king. He tells them that this is a magical ring that makes sad people happy and happy people sad. Satisfied and happy, the ministers take this magical ring to present to their king. The happy king sees the ring and sure enough, the ring works its magic and the king becomes sad. The magic of the ring lies in its inscription. The inscribed words 'This too shall pass' gleam from the ring. Everything shall pass one day, the good and the bad. Nothing can be hastened or nothing can be skipped. We just have to wait. Patiently. That, could explain my new found calmness. May be somewhere deep inside I believe my pain shall pass too and good times are just round the corner. Nature is full of examples and I see them now. Day and night, both pass too. Waves in the sea rise and fall. Seasons change.  Pain heals and good times make a comeback. Now back to my old topic, I do not have a "topic" to write about. Should I write about India's WC semis that's to happen tomorrow, should I write about the book I am reading or should I write about the depressing shows on TV. I think I'll skip the depressing talk, this post is all about being happy and chirpy. May be I should just stop rambling and think hard about a topic and then get back. Think, think and think....

The year that went by...

Me and my friend have this ritual every new year. We welcome the new year by analyzing the year that passed. This year has been a very happening year in my life. It has quite turned my life in many ways. Sadly, I wont be sharing this ritual with my friend this year.

I welcomed the new year with hopes and happiness but my happiness was rather short lived. My new year started with a summons to the court where my husband had filed for the dissolution of our marriage. For having put up with his abuse and abandonment I thought I at least deserved an explanation. I wondered why it even bothered me that he had abandoned me, when it was in many ways a blessing in disguise. I have never felt as helpless and hopeless as I have felt in this entire year. There are so many things that I have come to hate in this one year and a few things where my pride has dissolved. I used to pride myself on being a girl; I really cannot understand where this came from because now I know how much of a disadvantage I have been in for being a girl. Although its my H who deserted me, I have become the one who's become answerable to all and sundry. From the laundry man to the lawyer, from the neighbor next door to relatives across the globe everyone's curious on what I did wrong. Oh come on, she's the wife so she must be wrong. A woman can win it all but her H abandoned her. She surely did not have enough in her to win. This must be the only time a woman or her prowess is glorified beyond what is actually true. And no, these are not those dumb, gossip loving people. They are these educated, broad minded people of today who want to find solutions!!! Solutions my foot!!! If it was all so simple. All the pretense in the world cannot hide this sadistic hunger. And here I was proudly proclaiming that I was proud to be a girl. Maybe I hadn’t seen the world. I was also a diehard patriotic, I wondered why people left our country and never wanted to come back. I think I had only begun to understand the reasons with the Nirbhaya tragedy. This is a country full of hypocrites with utter disrespect for women. I should know cos I have experienced it myself. My husband and in-laws were abusive to me and how easy it was for them to get away with all of it. For all the hype and hooplah about Indian laws favoring women, they must not have lost a second's sleep. All you need is some bribe and you can get away with just about anything here. Want to inflict maximum damage on a woman? Oh! the Indian legal system is all you need. Just keep the cases dragging for years. They do not mind wasting lakhs and lakhs of rupees on lawyer’s fees and court fees but they just cannot settle things and get done with. To hell with your money. Why would anyone want to even come back to this country where women are nothing more than toys, where she has to fight for even the right to simply live and breathe, leave alone live in peace. And here we are, proud of having a mars mission when a sizeable portion of half its population live in fear and die a million deaths everyday at the hands of its culture, legal system, police forces and society. Shame on us really!! They say we worship women in form of goddesses. I think we only worship greed - greed for money and strength which are granted by goddesses. If it wasn’t Lakshmi who granted wealth, I wonder if she would even exist for our society. We blog, we argue, we discuss yet nothing changes. People raise noises about women empowerment, yet do not bat an eyelid while ill treating their maid or defining a woman by her relationships. Definitely, we do not practice what we preach. Anyways having experienced this bad world first hand, I have definitely learnt a whole lot of valuable lessons.

Well an year is quite a long stretch of time and it cant be all bad, can it be? There have been some happy experiences that I have had too. I have found a friend - halfway across the globe and in a manner I least expected. Someone who understands my issues just as well as I do and constantly keeps me positive. My best friend got married to her long time boyfriend and moved continents to happily settle in with her new husband. Its time for me to take a backseat in her life and so will my new year ritual. I have been writing this blog and have read some exceptionally positive ones that have kept me sane. In this adversity I have found some new friends - people with similar problems who are willing to help even though they do not know you. More than anything I have discovered my resilience - I may have been through hell but I have survived - with a lot of help from expected and unexpected quarters. I was a mess when the year started, I can still remember how much I had cried in fear of having to face the barrage of lies that my H was throwing at me in the court, yet today I have grown into this person who can say I have to deal with this, so deal I will. And I have done this while keeping my routine intact. Yes there are days of unprecedented gloom but I have hung on. Hope is something that I am still working on installing into myself but that's something that Ill hopefully achieve this year ;-) After all the world is beckoning towards a new start.

Happy new year!!!

New Day and New Beginnings

Here comes a new day 
With hope and plenty of gay.
Yesterday is past,
And tomorrow isn't here.
Let's enjoy the present day.
With prayer I start,
May all obstacles be overcome
And all happiness welcome.
Let me find joy in little things.
In giving, let my heart sing. 
Sorrows, let them be forgotten.
Fear, let it stay at bay.
With new hopes and aspirations,
Let there be lots of joy.
Begin again another day,
To new hopes and new beginnings, pave the way.

A Ground Breaking Ad - Tanishq

This is one ad that I would love everyone to watch again and again.
Shows a single mom's marriage breaking the Indian stereotypes of one man for several lifetimes.
Shows love in its purest and truest form!!!

Hope its played several times on TV, especially in between those regressive Indian soaps where love is so conditional and superficial.

Romantic and sweet.. Anybody would love to have a husband like this one..
Hats off to the creator!!!

Keep the Corrupt Away from Parliament

In a country of billion plus people like India, it is sad that a whole lot of our rulers are criminals. A lot has been said and done about controlling it but most have borne no fruit. Here's my take on how we can protect our parliament from becoming a jail:

1. Do not allow anyone other than the elected lawmakers to enter the parliament. This means no guards, no security. All guards and security are to stay outside. Afterall they are only with their harmless fellow members.
2. Allow all lawmakers to carry their weapons of choice. They need some sense of security, right?
3. Keep the parliament free from scrutiny of all kinds - electronic or otherwise. What happens in parliament, stays in parliament unless its a matter of national importance. Nobody gets to see the ugly fights that happens inside.
4. Any crime that is committed inside the four walls of the parliament is not punishable.
5. Attendance of all session is compulsory for all members. Members who do not attend any session will lose all power for 30 days.

What I expect to happen:

With the parliament filled with more and more criminals, there will be very little civil discussions inside the parliament and more of armed fights causing destruction of life. And there are freebies too cos anyone can murder anyone and still not be tried in court or punished. Since there's no scrutiny, all eye-witness accounts can be dismissed as "rumors spread by opposition". Clean image, clean records but scores settled. Seeing, how in the past, our politicians boiling with rage, have very little control over themselves, casualities can be expected. The parliament will become a battle ground for all criminals to settle scores or amuse themselves or to practice their killing skills :-) With power comes money and with money comes more money and by not attending sessions, they will be stopping their well oiled money generating machinery. Oh!! Poor them!! What a pain it must be to attend every one of those Parliament sessions :-( Going inside the parliament will be nothing short of walking into a death trap, each must fight to come out alive. Oh is there just no solution for our poor lawmakers. Yes there is - like in reality shows they must somehow stop the hardened criminals from becoming members of parliament cos their lives are at stake each time they attend the closed door sessions. They have to choose the people least criminally inclined to take seats beside them so that their lives are somewhat safe thereby increasing demand of such non-criminal members.

What say? Give it a try?? :-)