Believer

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One of our greatest fears is purported to be that of dying. The thought has come to me, unbidden, as much of my own end as of those I love and live for. I have stood idly, gazing at roads and trees and structures around me, “These will remain here, long past my exit from this space.” While watching movies of the yesteryears, I have wondered, “I did not exist when these stars were singing and dancing. Where was I?”

And then, another of those stray thoughts, quickly brushed away, just in case it brings on its wings any bad luck, “How will I die? Who all will cry? Have I not moved on with my life after such losses, my family will too?” Morbid meanderings yes, but so real, so inescapable, so defining of our fragile humaneness. And the quick reassurance “It is not happening yet, that is somewhere in the distant future, right now there is a list of things to do, the day to get through, events to attend, health and finances to care for!”

Am I alone in this cyclic, cerebral, futility? Why do I tell myself pretty much every other moment of the day, “I am not passing this way ever again?” There is a sense of a steady inching forward and that vast swathe of time gone by. And since no astrologer commits on one’s “ayush” it has certainly occurred to me, “How much more do I have to run down my bucket list?”

Some of the unease attached to these ruminations could be eased off if we just became as matter of fact about death as we are about birth. Were it to become more acceptable to speak of the unmentionable, even plan for it, we would free ourselves of the pall of unsaid things and oozing fears. Half the heartbreak at sudden exits comes from this sentiment, “I did not say a proper goodbye!” There is a sea of difference between a heartfelt farewell as against a sudden wrenching away and the lifelong agony of having had no closure.

I have pledged my organs, my Mum has divided her jewelry but we have not sat down with our loved ones to share thoughts and feelings around the inevitable and eventual separation. I know it would calm my mind tremendously to air out my misgivings. I want to be able to say to them, “Forgive me for my mistakes. I wish we could be together always. I never want us to separate. But remember me when we split. Think of me when you are eating a crusty, cheese laden pizza. Hug the silly dog for me. Picture me when you are sitting across my favorite swing. Look closer at the grass on the golf course; it probably has my DNA on it. I don’t know where I will be when not with you but hold on to me. I will go with peace, knowing I have said all I had to say to you. Give me a hug, look deep into my eyes so when the time comes, we go where we need to go, in peace and on a wing.”

It cannot be… life cannot be a meaningless accident. There is too much heartbreak, far too many ecstatic moments and pure frames of joy for this journey to be so random an affair. I therefore choose to believe!

Compliment

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You would have heard these exchanges between two women.

One, “What a lovely shirt you are wearing, I love the fabric and the floral print!”

Two, “Oh, I bought it in a sale; you would be surprised how cheap it is.”

And “Your face is radiant, the skin glowing.”

Followed by, “It must be the sweat!”

Another goes, “I am so impressed with your cooking. And my goodness, your presentation of the food is outstanding.”

To which the response is, “You are just pumping me up, everybody is as good a cook I think.”

The denial mode goes on and on, “You are so fit, the clothes look so good on you.”

Pat will come the rejoinder, “Have you seen my stomach, I look at least three months pregnant.”

Don’t even try complimenting a woman therefore? She is programmed to shut it out, deflect it, play it down, fob it off outright….anything but accept it graciously. Why do women fear praise so much? Why do they feel compelled to explain?  Why is it so hard for them to believe the good of themselves? Where does this instinct for self-effacement come from? What sets them off on a lifelong of apologetic litany?

All they need to respond to a compliment with is, “Thank you; I humbly accept your kind words!”

But the fountain of disbelief that gushes from their flustered mouths is drawn from centuries old insecurity about their rightful place in the scheme of things. A baby girl is born just as affirming as a baby boy. She cries as lustily, gurgles as appreciatively and preens as skilfully. But somewhere along the way, this healthy sense of self gets buried under layers and layers of cultural pathology. Most women are not sure of their class and category. They are afraid to occupy space with a solid, self-assured sense of ownership. Their default setting is stuck on an unbecomingly appeasing mode.

Alright, so you don’t want to appear conceited, you do not want to owe anybody anything in return. Why, you may even be suffering from a low self-esteem. Perhaps you are a jaded cynic, highly suspicious of being buttered up for possible favours. Or your false modesty may just be symptomatic of a deep seated desire to appear even better than you already are. It might occur to you that a simple thank you would come across as cocky, too self-confident, even arrogant…all of them extremely unfeminine attributes.

Oh, I have been at the receiving end of this gracelessness more than once. Quick on the draw with whatever pleases and impresses me, I don’t waste time overthinking admiration. I just shower them, the compliments; they come gushing out often. But the experience has boomeranged more than once with my ending up feeling foolish, insincere and contradicted. There have been occasions when one compliment has led to ten sentences of insistent reassurance to the receiver. It is a double whammy to first praise then to raise volume a notch over the denial by the receiver of possessing the wonderful attribute you are lauding in them!

Will the day ever dawn when a woman will accept a compliment graciously without offering explanations? What would it take for her to realize that if she makes the giver uncomfortable she may not be complimented again? Also, she is losing out on a chance to feel good. She in fact, is diminishing her own value.

Let us therefore start by offering more compliments and accepting the ones coming our way with class.

Par

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I was contemptuous of the game. As a matter of fact, it barely seemed sporty enough to be called one. What a royal waste of hours, I would tell myself, chasing a tiny ball with a stick, yards on end!  Golf is made for the fuddy duddy fogies, I had concluded. And that hoity toity air about the golfing community, it helped dismiss the game even more.

Then one day, somewhere out of a deep seated fear of missing out on what so many seemed to rave about, came a voice. I heard myself announcing at the dinner table, “I am going to learn golf.”

I remember wheeling the trolley in on the first day quite a bit tentatively. Had I left it too late? Would my muscles rise to the event? Would I ever get on to the 'course' as they called it? What exactly does one do over eighteen holes?

Unknown to the self, I had made two sound decisions already. My golf set was smart and the coach outstanding. A few months short of 89 years, with the barest of stoop and a lifetime spent at the game, Sri Mange Lal was more institutional than the Club he worked at. What’s more, he had coached Raj Kumar, yesteryear's Bollywood star who I had a crush on in the movie ‘Hindustan Ki Kasam’. My association with Sri Mange Lal had all the makings!

Apart from a reasonably proportionate frame, thank you Dad and Mom, and an average health, I had no special aptitude for Golf. I cast about in my head to add to the pluses. I ticked them off. I was on the right side of fifty, yes.  I could drive, and how. And the golf course was close by, hallelujah!

“The balls are very expensive, alright and there is an attire regulation of some sort,” home advice had been succinct. I remember biting my lip, squaring my shoulders and exhaling calm over the dull dread that a new personal challenge ignites in our hearts and minds. Would I be able to make the kind of time Golf demanded? How in the heavens do these people manage to get from one hole to another? Hell, I will use the side gate, all those people busily striding along feel a bit intimidating.

On my first day in the practice bay, I swung wildly, alternating between hockey and broom sweeping moves. The munchkin ahead of me in the practice bay hit magnificently and cleanly. His shoulders described a confident arc as the club moved smoothly over the left on the finish, the ball sailing to the white flag. “Madam, have you been riding horses?” my coach asked me abruptly. Before I could close my mouth, he concluded from my face, “Ah yes, I can tell!”

The first day I got home after hitting some fifty balls, my arms blazed at the joints. The right one felt as though it would pop out of the socket. I just lay flopped over the pillows, staring at the flickering images on the TV, every single muscle in the body hurting. The grip, the stance, the back swing, the hip movement, it had all seemed so unbelievably easy but what was this, the ball had a mind of its own. The marker flags taunted me, there was no way in the world I would ever get close to kissing those pieces of cloth, it seemed.

There is a predictable evolution every new activity follows. There is the initial excitement, the honeymoon period so to say when it looks enchanting and deceptively glamorous from afar. As you get closer, the hard work and consistency involved becomes visible and the body begins to mold in the process of aligning itself to the new demands.  There may also come a time when the spirit becomes weak, “I am never going to get a hang of this!”

But the trick is to persevere. I did. Three coaches later and an above average time spent in the practice bay, I have finally fallen into the rhythm of playing nine holes a day. The bogey is happening, the par will proliferate. 

And friends continue to cheer from the wings along the way, just as a special one inspired with his enthusiasm and ready golfing cues when I first put my intent out there. 

Boogeyman

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Talk of ‘giving back’ to society is in the air. It resounds in the social spaces we glide in and out of. And there is a nice little futuristic tint to these proclamations. There is this ever prevalent mass notion that chides us for having received so much. The understanding is that sometime in the future, when the hour is ripe and the pronouncer settled and secure enough, they are going to teach underprivileged children or adopt a few or maybe volunteer in an old age home. “Something worthwhile that preferably does not call for too much time. We are all so fortunate; we must do our bit by this hopeless world. The times are becoming so dangerous. Surely that places a moral responsibility on us for donating old clothes to Goonj or celebrating our personal events in an SOS village or clicking the smile box while booking ourselves a movie ticket.”

What strikes me is the implicit belief in one’s immortality these plans project, as though to say there is plenty of time before the skin starts scaling and the winds go out of the sails.

It is commendable to want to do something meaningful to make a difference. The assumption here is that one has achieved enough of a personal nirvana to now work for the betterment of others. What if I were to say one’s primary duty is to one’s own development and one lifetime is not good enough to get to that sharpness? And that rather than fix the outside, if we worked on our own interiors that would earn the human race a greater, longer lasting return.

Too many of us want to accuse, protest and suspect the agencies outside of us. We foam at the mouth over the ethical toxicity surrounding us. There is righteous outrage at the violence in communication. With some, the despair is so great that we withdraw from our public spaces.

Begin by calming and cleansing yourself, I say. Reorient! Reboot! Reset the mind’s exhaust engine. Hose away the clogged consciousness; vacuum out the cobwebs sitting on the heart. Begin living the exemplary life you want to see others live. Go after the happiness you deserve. Pack your days with feel good hormones. Wash yourself in Vitamin D. Release your peeves and resentments and hurts. Please get off that guilt trip. Sit down and punch out that bucket list.

You are enough. You are here, breathing, whole and full of possibilities. Quit waiting for the grand moment. When you begin humming with a sense of accomplishment and confidence, the trees will stretch taller, the grass will go tizzy with delight. As you dump the baggage of dark emotions behind, the winds will surge through the new spacious you. Stop the chatter therefore. Shut your eyes for a moment and breathe a while. It will descend on you. The unbearable joy of being! Those tears of gratitude will come, steady in the flow.

There is no boogeyman out there. Do yourself a favour! Banish the one inside.

'Googly Gaathas' at the Delhi World Book Fair 2015

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With Vandana Valsakumar of Notion Press

With Jana Pillay, Co-founder Notion Press

With Class X batchmate Sushila and kids (KV Pachmarhi)

Lobotomy

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Boxes strike terror in my heart, the ones crammed with books and papers in particular. I will procrastinate sorting them until pushed to the wall. It is not that I am lazy or disorganized; I am just scared of hurting. And so the black containers sit scratchy and sore like corns on the toes, darkly nagging while I get on with the humdrum, telling myself, “Soon!”

It begins with a reluctant dragging of a chair close. The lid clang is invariably accompanied by a sharp intake of breath. It takes more than a day. The first contact is a quick skim. I avert my eyes from the familiar covers and dog ears. They threaten to take me back to all that I have made my peace with. I am sure and strong now, more whole than I remember being. A time travel back past blocks and breakers, rasps. I’d rather be.

Technically, the contents are inanimate. There are diaries, autograph books, drawing journals, song records, dedications, notes, scribbles, letters, tickets, domestic accounts and to do lists; quite easily dismissed if I did not look too close. But of course I pause. The certainty takes root that this junk does not mean as much to any other being so why bother. “Let them chuck it all when I am gone,” is my next thought. For as long as I live, these yellowing papers are proof and a record of my evolution.

I am convinced that words do not carry our stamp, as much as our papers do. It is on parchment that we leave our life’s trail. In those mildewed and brittle covers lie our sleepless moments, the weakness in our knees, our constricted throats, the airiness of our being and the pain we have learnt to numb. No matter how bland and controlled and objective modernity brings us up to be, humans are visceral beings, ecstatic and agonized by turns. It is this gut wrenching reawakening that keeps me at bay from box full of papers. There are reminders there of what I was and what I might have been and what I chose to be. I go still at inked proofs of forgotten bonds; of friends outgrown; of sentiments faded; of days done.

It is not a place I can revisit. So I grudgingly toss some measly fliers and newsletters to justify the sorting. The rest goes all back in another metal case. I will likely not open it for another ten years but knowing it is there somewhere is enough. I wave off the “raddiwala” who has been eyeing the fraying mound, inching closer. My dismissive gestures get louder; all of a sudden I think of him as a Psychosurgeon advancing to perform a lobotomy. 

Guria

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With William, Hannah and Ada

I felt a little out of place. I was neither a volunteer nor a Caucasian and I wore an orange necklace.

One of the first things the Guria children exclaimed on seeing me with the visiting group was, “You are Indian!” I may have imagined the tiniest drawing back, just a slight dip, a nanosecond of uncertainty but it was gone before I had the time to permit defensiveness into my smiling reply, “Yes, I am Indian and my name is Neerja.”

My association with Guria was through Hannah 

( https://www.princeton.edu/bridgeyear/meet-the-volunteers/hannah/ ) and 

Ada ( https://www.princeton.edu/bridgeyear/meet-the-volunteers/ada/ ) both of whom are currently doing the service program that my daughter Asawari pursued at Serbia during the year 2010-2011 http://www.princeton.edu/bridgeyear/updates/archives/?id=5417)

(L to R) Nick, William, Allen, Mackenzie, Tyler

My trip to Varanasi was about the Bridge Year Program (BYP) community spirit. I felt a sense of connection with the students who were doing in India what my daughter had done for nine months in Novi Sad and Nis. Hannah and Ada had made me the generous offer of showing their service location and I was honoured to be at Guria on the afternoon of 6^th April 2013.

I was impressed. From the start! I watched Ada deftly hail an autorickshaw, negotiate a price and effortlessly slip into the extension next to the driver’s seat on the ride up. We trundled past Hannah on the way, a determined and purposeful rider on her bicycle, negotiating the unforgiving city traffic with panache.

Tom Davis, currently volunteer at this “grassroots anti-trafficking NGO” had insights to share. We stood talking on the periphery of some high decibel excitement involving Kho-Kho and Kabbadi. Even on this flash visit, it was clear that there were huge challenges to be faced for any effective change to take place.

I wondered if Tom or the Guria team ever felt paralyzed at the enormity of the task. I mulled over any disillusion the apparent difficulties might have caused their young American volunteers. I felt concerned about the potential of false hopes being given the Guria children. Tom was reassuring in his even, thought through and open responses.

Guria’s positive role was evident in the orderly manner in which they conducted the meditation session I attended, far more disciplined than my own class in Delhi. The children were expressive, forthcoming and expectant of participation and friendship. Two little ones whispered amongst themselves, standing next to me, hazarding a guess at what my orange necklace might have been worth. Their estimate? Rs 100!

BYP India on the Vindhyachal 

There was hope there in a young voice that said, “My ambition is to become a reporter so that I can tell everyone of the injustices I see around me.” There was a sense of pride there when a small boy thumped his tiny chest and claimed, “I taught Tom to speak Hindi.” There was a sense of security there in the little ones who toppled over during meditation to fall asleep. There was resolve there in the gravity underlining the cheerful faces of the adults in charge.

I sat there trying to guess what lay behind the closed eyes of the older girls. Did I imagine a shade of sadness? Was there a fear of what the future might bring? The tall gates that were hastily closed every time struck me. This was difficult work Guria was doing. There were too many invested agencies crusading for the status quo outside of these four walls.

Of these, the most ludicrous and foolish was us, the Indians who have the luxury of being ordinary and middle class. Unaware of our power to effect massive changes around us, we bumble through our work schedules and weekends at the malls. We have no clue how badly help is needed outside of our self-constructed walls of order and security. We cannot begin to imagine why there has to be a pretense, at the least, to an inclusive world.

A sliver is all that is needed. A shift of our glance, a speck of our time, a fragment of our thought. A thousand more Gurias would be too little!

Guria and the people behind this NGO are to be highly commended.

Visit: www.facebook.com/guriafreedomnow

         http://www.guriafreedomnow.blogspot.in/ 

At your age

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Two things happened today.

A young lady half my age offered to carry my bag. On seeing me recoil, she reached out to grab it and we tugged a bit, my sense of independence rivalling her classy upbringing. She resolved the impasse by insisting her driver see me to the car.

The second event took place as I entered the British Council Creative Writing class room. Another young watched me set up my laptop before declaring solemnly, “I am very impressed with you!” My heart fluttered with delight, steadying itself in readiness for praises of my writing. She exclaimed, “It is wonderful that you have so much enthusiasm for learning at your age!”

At your age!

I have been hearing this phrase of late and have formulated a reason.

It has to do with my veering off the course, I am certain. There is a view of life stages we Indians cherish; the celibate student, the married family man, the hermit in retreat and the wandering ascetic. And even though social realities have transformed beyond recognition, the four stage view remains the bedrock of Hindu socio-religious tradition. Having seen my kids through for instance, I should by extension be throttling back to enjoy life’s hard earned siesta. I am being told in other words that there is a role cut out for me. Be aunty like, content and supportive of the status-quo around me!

Instead I have jumped off headlong into ever growing adventures. I have taken up new fields of study, am working at acquiring new skills, and am busy exploring new situations. There is so much more time to reach in that the radius of my capacity to reach out has been expanding. It in fact is oddly liberating to have this authentic world view that comes from living a full life to come back to rest where it started, with me! My reflection becomes sharper with every challenge I take up and the process puts me in ever greater touch with myself.

Is this not life, in the final analysis. After all, the familiar, non-threatening and limiting orbits are not getting anyone far; there is only so much that you will gain by driving the same path, sitting in the same chair and meeting the same people, over and over.  It is safe yes, but it is also numbing and stunting to be in a sanitized environment full of order and convenience.

You live so that you may know yourself. You breathe so you can shape yourself better. You engage for the permission to nurture yourself. You therefore need to continue growing and learning to the end of your life.

Oh yes, if you loved yourself enough, you would hear what life has to say: you owe yourself big time! 

Indispensable

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The world is kinder today. It is expected to be at any rate. Witches burn, children starve, civilians perish in wars, women are raped but not without protest. There is a strong pretence at civil liberties; an educated progressiveness that is synonymous with a repugnant horror at inhumanity and injustice; to that extent we have evolved as a species.

Some beliefs persist nevertheless, unchallenged and unquestioned.

No one is indispensable! This is the golden one at the workplace. There isn’t an employee who has not had this unappetizing negation hurled at her or an employer for that matter, who has not flourished it with the swagger of Salman Khan at some time in their respective careers. I would say these infamous words reverberate across board rooms, offices and corridors of power. No one is special, we are told. One pair of hands is as good as another. An employee’s absence does not mean a hiccup to her company. Just about anyone can replace her at any given time. Her personality, her background, her ideas, her strengths, her convictions are as easily substituted as a pair of pencil cells in a torch.

This is the biggest ever bluff that needs calling.

How come in a world so full of talk about human rights, there is not a squeak about a good worker’s professional self-respect? Truth be told, every golden employee at a place of work is indispensable. How very regressive is it to speak of people in terms of holes that merely needed plugging! A company is the sum total of its employees and every solid piece in the puzzle adds value to the jigsaw. Take away one and there is sure to be disturbance to the group dynamics.

The world has long moved beyond the assembly line production days of initial industrialization. Job opportunities and requirements have metamorphosed to include a mind boggling skill set; it is no longer about just a pair of hands. Work involves personal integrity, value judgement, and risk evaluation, sense of loyalty, creative solution, professional investment, and willingness to learn and grow in addition to basic and relevant competency. Surely the range involved here begs the demeaning insistence that one is just as good as another. It even sounds callously inhumane!

People are unique. They bring a very special value to their work spaces. And companies stand to gain huge returns by acknowledging this immutable but long denied truth.The reluctance to acknowledge signature contribution has been a convenient mind-set that has saved employers bother and effort. Imagine what would happen if they were to admit people were indispensable! How would they dismiss and control in a culture that viewed employees as individuals, needing sensitive handling. It would involve acknowledging their exclusivity thus admitting their value to the company. Perhaps business heads are wary of losing negotiating strength thus.

It is time though! Is it not time leaders began to care more deeply? It is high time they thought more, applied more and took the trouble to keep pace with an employee’s growth. This destructive cliché has placed productivity in a self-fulfilling downward spiral. Bosses refuse to admit people are indispensable and so crushed does this make the employees feel that they begin to act dispensable.

In the complex and modern work place that we literally live out our lives in, every single worker stamps the company's growth story in her personal way. People are crucial, central, cardinal.

The Execution

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Like a plump seed, rich with promise

Of growth and flush branching

Springs the idea of a friendship

That will endure life and ravaging

There is hope shy, timorously tender

A twenty four carat witnessing?!

Of you that is more than their reflection

In that moment begins the dying

One day you do not water the bond

Then ease out on the weeding

A veto on mulch is bound to bring

Whispering wheeze from sapling

Rooted in that yawning pain

Bothered at the blighting

Combating blast and howl and canker

The cusp comes into sighting

And yet it weathers the life force hardy

Through night and day yet smiling

For ties do not make us

We execute the tying!

The Buck

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Damini. Amanat. Nirbhaya. And now Jyoti Singh Pandey.

India’s airwaves are thick with comments and critiques and that generic canard.   

Just as soon as her friend appeared on TV, a virtual electronic frenzy broke out.  I first caught news of the interview on Facebook. It was late night. The laden air sagged under the chill outside and sobering thoughts of the daughter leaving home the morning after made the barrenness of his narration even more despondent, sucking the air out of my lungs. It all hit together. The shame, the regret and the unbearable bareness of his pain. The only edge of annoyance was with the cameraman. Where was the need to zoom in onto his nostrils, watering eyes and the dry lips? His burden was writ large on the screen, screaming agony for all to see.

This was the “aam aadmi”, the “ordinary citizen”, the “regular folk”. This was you and me, I thought.

I watched and heard him, unmoving  and what I really registered was his non-verbal cues. In his tone and pitch and volume was that defeated resignation, almost a dignified acceptance that defines us ordinary citizens.  He was oddly apologetic about expressing any hope. There were no histrionics, no playing to the gallery. He was matter of fact. I did not hear any peppering of bitterness or expectations. He did not dramatize, did not glorify, did not embellish. He skirted the gory details with socially acceptable words. He described it skeletally, exactly as it had unfolded.

A regular Indian citizen was out with a friend, there was no safe transport and when the two came to be assaulted, there was no system in place to alleviate their misery. The structure that should have been their safety net presented itself as a useless goulash of bickering police vans, impotent onlookers and inefficient hospitals. Their horrific experience followed a predictable path ending in loss of life and limb. Their fault?!  Bad timing?  Wrong country? Ill informed decision? Or an outright immorality?!

These questions beg answers for now. It is the hot air balloon however, that has been set afloat by some in the aftermath that I find the most astonishing.

I am being told it is us, you and me, the junta that has blood on their hands. There were people around who stood gawking at their naked, wounded bodies on the cold, hard road, we are being told. Vehicles slowed down, took it all in and throttled away. The citizens of this modern democracy who cry themselves hoarse demanding professionalism from their state failed the most basic test of humanity. Like faithful mirror images, they reflected their leaders’ narcissistic dismissiveness of another’s pain.

So there is this talk of finding us, the ordinary citizens, punishing us, hanging us and castrating us!

And I am wondering! When did we come into this power to influence events? We have been invisible so long, I barely know me. I am the aam aadmi with my cyclic, one day ballot power. For the rest of the year, I remain dormant, rendered impotent by the corrupt inefficiency and toxic politics of my government. I am the product of a system that has banished the word “integrity” from its lexicon. I have grown up believing you either need money or contacts to breathe easy in the country I was born in. I truly believe that an honest, hardworking, tax paying Indian citizen does not count for much. Have you not seen my tribe on Kaun Banega Crorepati (KBC) or Satyam-eva-Jayate (SMJ)?  Those are the only two forums that have bothered with me. And for all their smart marketing, I have laid bare my soul to them, sharing my life’s experiences with that same hallmark decency I show every place else.

But the din in the air continues to credit me with far more. Perhaps the term “ordinary citizen” is a misnomer in that case. Before I accept the guilt of inaction that the powers that be are trying to heap on me, I am trying to decide where in our modern democracy the buck really gets to rest.

Does it come to a stop at all?

The Catharsis

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For more than sixty years these people have been invisible

.

With India having declared her “tryst with destiny” they disappeared into their homes and got busy with the India developing story. You would see them in private photos and spaces but barely ever on the democratic canvas. While they labored over raising decent families, the political evolution of the country was left to a strange breed of Indians. These either rose to become leaders through labour union conflicts and college youth politics or came to inherit dynastic crowns. 

Whatever their mode of entry, this power hungry brand of Indians were one in sullying the word “leadership”. From a fight for freedom from the Imperial crown, politics came to mean the fight to usurp power and money for self and the next seven generations to come. Bloated with a sense of self-importance, our MPs and MLAs cultivated the convenient delusion that the only India that mattered wore the tag “disadvantaged”. They dismissed, ridiculed, and even mocked the middle classes. The political growth of the country thus came to read as the story of educated India’s marginalization. By declaring politics dirty, the ruling class effectively put it out of reach of the regular God-fearing, family values driven, sanitized Indian citizenry.

This bulk of polite people grew increasingly disconnected with the drivers steering their destinies. Escaping to foreign lands was the most they did to deal with the mess their country was becoming. One profession they tabooed their children from considering was politics. While the good India stuck their head into the sand, the leaders grew fatter with the lucre of misappropriation. It was tolerable when limited to an inefficient, rude and corrupt government but all that changed on the 16 Dec night when a young, paramedical intern was beaten and raped in a private bus, only to breathe her last thirteen days later.

The inhuman brutality of that attack ending in the brazen throwing out of her mutilated body onto a busy road made India’s somnolent bhadra lok sit up. This was too close home. Cries of “it could be me” rang across the subcontinent. India’s sleeping giant was raising the head. The Lilliputians began to scramble off in rage and fright, dusting off years of apathy and resignation to step out, in twos and threes, in groups and clusters.

I joined them at Jantar Mantar, walking up on leaden feet, alone. There were grim faces, not a few teary eyes. I stood around, breathing the air of pained incredulity. The only two faces I recognized were those of Brinda Karat and Sitaram Yechury, both senior CPM leaders. Some NSD persons and TV channel bosses rang familiar. But it was the faceless crowd that I was most at home with. It felt strangely like family. It felt like a complete emotional and mental and moral spa. At long last we were thinking community.

My countrymen, who are ordinarily gluttons for TV cameras, celebrating even if it is their elbow caught on the screen, were pushing the gadgets away.  I stood by, watching with pride as some young Indians took the mike to speak with quiet but impassioned dignity. There was no shade of awkwardness. They communicated with confident clarity, quiet pain…no scramble for glory, I did not see any posing for the cameras, and for once the gadgets were inconsequential.

This was a gathering different from the usual raucous, grimy and unthinking milieu. I was caught off guard to receive a couple of apologetic "sorrys" in the crowd on accidentally brushing against strangers! People shifted and made space so you had a better view. When a voice rang out, requesting people to sit down, they promptly obeyed. I saw complete strangers using  their grey hair to advantage, delivering motivating speeches to young groups. The crowd kept the odd misbehaviour in check. There were people pouring thoughts and emotions on paper lining the road. Twenty year olds spelled inconvenient truths into public address systems and people applauded affirmatively. I heard astonishing words and sensed a simmering anger born of frustration and fear. 

There was a master mind in the throes of a public catharsis out at Jantar Mantar that day. 

These ordinary citizens are the rightful owners of India’s airwaves, I thought to myself. Their education and self-sufficient means gives them both the onus and the ability to reclaim the Indian story. Let them come out in greater numbers, I prayed. Dear God, for far too long, they have sanctioned the moth eating of their country with their silence.

Pledge, pledge, and pledge...I screamed in my head. Pledge to raise our sons and daughters equally. Pledge to protest gender crimes. Pledge to speak, write, and communicate anguish at injustice. Pledge to reach out and connect. Pledge to demand a safe, equitable and clean India. Pledge not to let this assertion die.

I came away with a mental shot of the sign a protester carried, “I have not felt this hopeful in a long, long time.”

It is not about you!

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I should have learnt this lesson earlier in life.

But it is one of life’s ironies that most Eureka moments come too late for application. The next best thing you then want to do is to try and save your children all the pain and hurt and disappointment that go with a lifelong negotiation. It is entirely likely that they will want to make their own mistakes in turn but at the least, you would have done your moral job of highlighting the red markers.

Take our earthly tenure. There is a socially defined blueprint we spend our alive moments trying to fit. In the process, we are swamped with inputs and feedback, quite a bit of it uninvited.  Judging is such a full time human engagement, it begins to look like our social and religious edifices are built with the express purpose of crushing our fragile human spirit. So there are comments, observations and assumptions about your looks, mannerisms, actions, decisions, observances and otherwise.

Alterity is undeniably critical to survival but we never seem to take a break from it. The insidious fillip to this “otherness rant” comes from our notion that we are the centers of our universes. So there life finds us, alternating between being martyrs and heroes. Every moment is grand, every twist is personal, and every scrape is deeply felt. Thus we stumble through our days with our armload of pain, all bluff and bluster one breath and tears in the next, until the day we look under the bed to find the bogey gone; there never was one in the first place.

Life’s enduring lesson I would have my girls know therefore is that most of what causes grief is rarely about you. It is not about you at all. You barely exist for those you credit with the capacity to hurt you!! How ironic that we should go through life refuting and explaining and denying and justifying when all we are addressing is a vacuous space, too caught up with itself.

But of course, I catch the whiff of skepticism  You do not believe me. Well then, recall the last heart to heart, clear-the-air session you took the luxury of indulging in. Did it conclude with a life changing affirmative action or are you, as I suspect, back to square one? Did your partner in conversation hear you, see you, acknowledge you or was their lens pointed at themselves?

Sometimes, and rarely, there come along evolved beings that have the periscopic vision of empathy. Quite simply put, they get you! But for the most part, home, office, public turfs are about coming to terms; about lowering expectations; about ignoring stuff; about getting on. The degree varies from one person to another. Somewhere along this path you get to work out how much you are all right giving and taking.

Out of this balancing and evening out emerges the flicker gaining strength  that there is something bigger and way beyond these negotiating tactics of which, you are a significant wedge or slice or crumb. In other words, you alone are about you. Oh what sweet liberty! The power to change what you feel and think suddenly seems round the corner.

The only thing left to learn thereafter is to tell what is about you and what is not about you at all!

No second act

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Whoever said women were permitted only one act in a lifetime?

Do twenty extra kilos, remnants of an invasive surgery, dental supplements and some somnolent muscles mean you are done for in this life? Would it be fair to say that you are now past your peak and prime, having discharged your primary obligations of parenting and being a supportive spouse? Could there be more to look forward to in addition to grand-parenthood and paying back your dues to the generation before, both very desirable and welcome albeit.

Oh yes, there was a  time when you were squaring with sleepless hours, aching muscles, palpitating heart, nervous requests, wary expectations, and endless neglect of the self. The loci were always outside of you. There were priorities. Is the family healthy? Are the relatives congenial enough? Are you in an OK equation with the colleagues? Could you have chartered your primary relationship better? Have you been nice enough, warm enough, positive enough, pleasing enough, non-demanding enough, adjusting enough, mature enough, sensible enough?

Of course you have. As a woman, you have paid heed to what the world outside told you for the better part of your life, so much so that you tuned out all the voices that ever clamoured inside of you. They would have receded, becoming a whisper before fading out completely. But they are coming back now, are they? They are coming at you with a vengeance, telling you that you owed yourself the same authentication that you have been preaching your mother and your daughters?

There is no mention of these voices in the description of the four Vedic ashramas of life but I hear them too! And they are telling me surprising things. They discount that this is the time to take it easy, throttle back, relax and enjoy the well-earned lull. They claim my best years lie ahead of me. They say this is my consolidation age. They assure me it is not too late to get myself into shape. Playing roles is all OK but where is your definition of the real you, they ask. It would be harakiri to draw my sense of self from those I love, they would have me believe. This is your second act and you are darned lucky to be getting to do one, I am being told.

I admit my first act was shaky. There were milestones to be met. I had people depending on me. I was not friends enough with myself. There were worries, fears, and concerns. I was doing the risking, the motivating and the envisioning. Self-nurture was the last thing on my list, the first priority being to secure a safe nest and get the young into their flight mode.

Was it a sacrifice? Far from it, I would not have had it any other way. Did it leave me fatigued or bitter? Certainly not for it was self-validation at a different level, an evolution of a fundamental nature. It is that experience in fact, of having been responsible for other lives that eventually empowered me with a sense of calm certainty. It put me in a space made for constructive closure.

I have never felt better. When I step out onto the streets, I no longer experience the nauseous lechery of the yore.  I am at home enough in my skin not to be rattled by physical blueprints.  I earn enough to fund my personal whimsies. I can hold my own in any scenario now that I am no longer afraid of embarrassing myself. I have hurt enough to understand that we are all, deep down under, similar in our needs.  I have at long last begun to understand that I cannot pin blame for my lows on others. I am glimpsing more and more the range of possibilities that begin and end with me.

And so, I have decided to pull my projects off the back-burner. It is never too late to learn Golf! If you always dreamed of playing the piano, walk into a school of music right now. Do not listen to anyone who says your bones may not be able to take the Zumba! It is great to want your life to matter and be of some relevance.

Will I ace the second act? I do not know and I do not care. What resonate in my ears are words like these: life is given to us in trust, it is for living. We owe it to ourselves to challenge the self constantly and in so doing grow. The day is about venturing beyond the walls of security we build around ourselves. The more you reach out, the more you reach in. And what else is life about if not reaching out and touching!