My feelings...

You came into my life as a pleasant breeze,

Swept away by it, I let my guard down,

Letting you be my knight in shining armor.

Through the gentle phase of fledging love,

I loved the warmth of our relationship,

I kissed you and caressed you.

The magic of your articulation, left me spellbound

The twinkle in your eye captured my attention,

Orienting my delightful fondness mirage in you.

Little did I know, the winds would turn tumultuous

You made me face the fears of a virgin naive girl,

Of deceit, distrust, and heartache

Shattered my dreams and crumbled my emotions,

All my hopes and questions left unanswered,

Leaving me stranded with tears of hurtful memories.

Despite the affects of the boisterous relationship,

My first infatuation shall always be you,

I treasure the joys of our sweet nothings.

Everyone deserves a second chance…

To err is human; to forgive is divine! It is said that the person who forgives has the greatest heart….

Why don’t we follow this in our daily lives?

In a perfect world, each one of us would love to live up to the decisions and promises we made during happier times. Sometimes circumstances change, and the accentuating pressure changes the dynamics of a friendship. In the more modern slang I would call it ‘S*** happens, and it’s a part of life!’ However, this doesn’t mean we kill the friendship and accuse the other person of being wrong. It will just make the whole situation vulnerable leaving the people involved injured beyond imagination.

For example: Lets look at us; we make so any mistakes yet our parents forgive us and protect us under their wings. Their love is unconditional and nothing that we do ever will change them. In my opinion, this is because they understand us beyond what we think they do and this is pretty much evident from our behavior during the teenage turbulence years. However, we take them granted and always know that they will excuse us no matter what!!

This is not the same case with friends or anyone outside the family. For a few people its takes a heart beat to say ‘lets not talk anymore’ and they never look back. We are so lost in this fast paced world that we fail to understand the other person which is a sad plight. In my opinion, we should give a second chance to everyONE! My friend Chandi always says ‘never give up on people no matter how uncontrollable the situation becomes’…and I try to follow her suggestion when I am stuck in a situation where I have to debate between the friend and my ego!

So peeps, don’t give up on people, communicate and understand their feelings before letting them go 

Indian Life of Justification...!?!

So I've noticed that when we talk to Indian friends we seem to give justifications a lot. Why? 

I mean somehow, we end up giving explanations, convincing the other person. This doesn't happen when I talk to my friends from other countries. Have you noticed this? 

Whom we need to justify is a broad question!? 

Let’s understand the definition of justification and justice:

Justification: For me, it means giving a reason to someone for something, as they do not believe/or they do not understand your circumstances.

Justice: Justice on the other hand, is more on being truthful to play a fair game. 

Both are mutually exclusive and inclusive depending on the situation. However, there is a fine line between justification and explanation. The theory of justification gives a good insight on to human beliefs and their way of expressing the same. Following this theory, there are many layers to it, self- justification being one. Self-justification often plays a governing role in our lives, irrespective of the ethnicity.  Daniele Procide states “The process of self-justification is driven by an engine of cognitive dissonance, the discomfort we feel at the gap between our self-image and the less attractive reality that sometimes confronts us.”

Focusing on the first few lines of the opening paragraph, there are many factors influencing the ‘Indian Life of Justification’. Lets look at some of the benchmark factors like insecurity, hypocrisy/double standards, and fear of losing friendship.

I would like to call my friendship life as a ‘venn diagram’ of my friends and theirs; the process continues to increase by the day. I thoroughly enjoy discussing various topics under the sun with friends to get different perspectives and through this process knowingly or unknowingly their personality traits and thought process comes into light. No one is perfect; we all have certain levels of insecurity but a few people display this trait stronger than others.

Firstly, insecurity makes us listen to everything and everyone. Or else we won’t satiate. We can’t be let down, don’t want to let down our families. I don't know the root cause of it, but it seems to be deeply rooted in our lives, so much so that we don't know that our behavior portrays a different us. Secondly, the other factor is hypocrisy or double standards. From my experience, we claim to be Indian and talk about culture- but hardly follow it. Thirdly, the fear of losing friends can be a major personality shaping attribute.

Insecurity is present by default and more so in Indians visually. When we go to a foreign land we tend to look for people from our home country. Insecurity here is a consequence of being inferior.  Many of us walk around, boasting our rich cultural heritage. This is more opportunistic in nature; for example, in one of the current affairs book, the nationality of Dr. Venkataraman Ramakrishnan who was a nobel laureate in the year 2009 was given to be Indian. Even though he was born Indian; he holds the citizenship of the United States and United Kingdom. He has never worked for/ or in India and his research is contributed to those countries. Then why are the books claiming him to be an Indian?  There are numerous such examples.  Not giving the right recognition for the talent and/or exploitation has left us insecure. May be this is why, we want to rise by proving ourselves rather than recreating the magic! 

So peeps~ Be proud of YOUR culture! We all have our head over the shoulders, lets be like that, confident! 

Today’s World of Speed Dating

This happened over the routine weekend conversation with one of my school friend. After a few decent minutes of talking, the conversation took a serious turn. (With due respect and privacy of my friendship the topic of discussion shall be kept under wraps). I had a jaw dropping moment and decide to quit the conversation politely. 

It brought me to think: 

1) Are we living in a generation of speed dating? 

2) Isn't there a true meaning for 'love'? 

3) Why are all friendships misunderstood to be the stepping-stones for affairs? 

4) Are we so hormonally imbalanced that each one is a walking sex object? 

5) Can’t there ever be true friendship between a girl and a boy?   

In today's world there is so much of freedom for people, bigoted by globalization. We are slowly adopting and moving towards westernization. The transformation in Indian culture started drilling fast with the onset of IT revolution in the 90s.  Employees who travelled abroad adopted the culture in bits and pieces. The inflow of knowledge in terms of movies, technology, etc are uncontrollable. Our people learn a lot from movies, as it  is the surrogate life they live in. And with globalization, also there were increased stress levels among the people due to stringent work schedules and as a consequence relations take a toll. And the easy way to find solace is being with opposite sex or  getting addicted to alcohol or smoking. This instability forces people to meet the opposite sex to ease  their pressures/tensions. They can meet people of same sex, but as opposites attract, they connect emotionally well. 

I would say sex is the driving force. The only way a person vents his energy is by anger or sex. Many of us find reasons to be angry or upset on some issue or the other.  If not explicit forces, we create situations to be angry. Sex is an alternative to ease off as it maximizes pleasure. Utilitarian way. 

Sex is definitely the most driving force in today’s way of surviving a relationship. Sex weakens the bond between the two involved. How? Have the marriages of our parents' weakened over the years? If anything they've strengthened over the years that they have lived together. Of course they have their points of differences and fights, but it has never let them to let go off their partner. The earlier generation people though maximized their happiness in order to minimize pain of family and society they were bonded. Even their expectations were low.

In the current situation once sex is over, the mind becomes happy and ultimately with time the partner becomes an object as the person has attained maximum pleasure. It is like buying a new phone, once you are satisfied, you do not like it and want a new model.  And if you ask me why people do such things? That is because they are emotionally unstable and the earlier culture has been infringed. Also it is a problem of surplus. Wasn’t this problem of surplus there in earlier days? Yes indeed it was, but back then, we were bonded by culture and were better individuals, morally.

Are we living in a generation of speed dating? This is the day of ‘free world’. We want to end a relation as quickly as possible to form a new one. We do that, because we have become more individualistic and financially independent. We want to get what we want; and we do!

For example: if a couple is in a relationship and things don’t work out, instead of finding the root cause of the problem they call it quits and call it off. This is now the increasingly visible ‘new culture’. Imagine earlier, during an arranged marriage if the girl had affairs prior to marriage, the guy would straight away reject her. But that option was not given to girl. And also, if a girl had any affair with any guy, she would marry ONLY him if not commit suicide. Very few ended up choosing another guy.  With the changing times, this fact is also seen changing. Now a days, neither the guy nor the girl worry about the past. Whatever happened in the past is done and a new life together MUST start. That is the idea. Surprisingly parents also support this probably as they want to support their children despite the mistakes.

What is love for us (us meaning the current generation)?  Nice bike rides, gifts, movies, sex, and then bye bye??! How many couples have married their 1st love? More importantly it is related to emotions, and we do not think it through before giving the commitment. If we say we thought well, before falling in love, and still it did not work out, it means we did not think well.

Consciously or unconsciously our brain works towards indulging our self in opposite sex. Opposite poles have to attract, come what may! Peoples thought process has changed, and hence when they enter into a bond of friendship they know it could/will turn into an affair or may be friends with benefits. The movie strengthens the idea too. Why do people consider friendship as an affair is mostly because of our culture that never encouraged friendships with opposite sex in the earlier days. This shows that the world has changed while the saying  remained true! Frankly speaking a girl and guy will make good friends, as sometimes friends of the same gender cannot convey their feelings as it is. There is a veil always. But with opposite sex there is no problem as such. The energy just flows.

We are morally corrupt- that’s the whole problem here! People need counselling. But what is the measure for this problem? Work culture, friends, lifestyle…. are just a few factors that can be changed to change our mindsets. We are what your friends are, right? We get influenced by our surroundings might not by 100% but at least to about 10%.

Finally, it is a combination of one or many of globalization, easy access to sex, craziness, stupidity, hormonal imbalance, blindly trusting people, trying to explore new things. 

Ducks and us...!

Have you ever watched ducks? Just sat and observed them? 

They're indeed beautiful and graceful in the way they swim. I always loved watching them; but today I was sitting and just observed them for a while. 

The water was clear and I could see them peddle their feet to swim afloat on water. It is so magnificent to see them working hard to move while their face is up with pride. 

We, humans are the same in life. We keep up our face with pride while we trying to make it through the steps in life. We would never want to disclose our rough patches with everyone when going through one, but would share eventually end up sharing it with friends after the issue is resolved.

True to the fact that we have evolved from animals, there is so much to learn from them. The lessons learnt from animals and nature are the most difficult to absorb in our brains albeit they look simple but hard to endure.  Lessons from animal kingdom has been used extensively. It was in our childhood days when we first heard the saying ''Try, try until you succeed''. This phrase came from from King Solomon, when he watched a trail of ants trying to  climb and failing and after few attempts they succeed. He learns the lesson from a minute, very weak and scantly visible ant. How could an ant teach him such a big lesson? Is it the problem of interpretation? Other than this, I would like to know any other interpretation. 

To give an analogy about Sangha, we can study the pattern of birds flying, they always form boids, and they make it so easily without fighting. No one tells them to make such way and no one decides their leader. They just do it as a habbit. Also, we can see bees working on hives. Their movement is so random, no one decides their job, but all do. No leaders and no slaves in their community. The queen is just for laying eggs, even the queen has to work. This analogy is used to study the development of a  Sangha, Law of equality prevailed.

Shopenhauer the great German philosopher while talking about human tendencies of mating, he correlates that to a typical mongoose. He says, mongoose lives in hard conditions, faces lot of problems in terms of food and climate but still mates. We humans are like that too. However frustrated or suffering we are in our life we give birth to children or feel the necessity to mate. I would like to say, mating is a sense thing, but for animals? I guess it is their need. We humans always have the option of abstaining from sexual practice but may be our intellect doesnt permit us.

There are umpteen examples to find the analogy and any behaviour of animals can be interpreted in any form. Observe it numerous times, if the idea is not changing, take it as a lesson.

If we want to be compassionate towards humans. we must first learn to be compassionate towards animals. If animals can't harm or have no voice doesn't mean we will show our dominance on them. Winning over animals doesn't make you a human! Whatever you do to animals, you would do that to humans, being merciless. Will you be quiet if a silent member of your family is dominated and hit by others? No you wouldn't. So, please be kind to animals! :)