Refreshed...

It's been 2 weeks since I returned from a fabulous holiday in Switzerland and I'm still on a high.

This was our first ever family holiday "abroad", that is Anil, Amanda, Alder and myself, we have never been outside of India or UAE on holidays by ourselves. At the beginning of 2013, we thought Amanda would be going away to University and so I wanted a "bonding" time with her, with all of us.
We're so busy doing everything else and being immersed in this life that the focus on the really important things, the little things that keep and sustain us is meagre. And so germinated the idea of taking off together, a new place to explore, experience and embrace. Europe was the natural choice but Switzerland became the obvious choice, not just because the Chopra's made it famous for Indians but because of the variety of activity it provided for each of us with our 4 different personalities, likes and dislikes and for the one goal of us bonding. The choice was also made easy by the fact that the place predominantly embodied that which runs in our veins... verdant and lush green mountainous landscapes.
I have in an earlier blog about Mangalore been not very polite about the beauty of the Alps... I hope you can hear me gulp furiously as I eat my words in haste. I refuse to compare the mountains to my beloved Charmadi ghats but the Alps are breathtaking, majestic and awe inspiring. It may sound that the experiences I have are individual to me but the family confesses to feeling like I do too, so I'm not alone in feeling that my soul healed somehow, maybe as we walked by the lake and fed the swans and ducks, or maybe when we trekked down the snow clad mountains or maybe as we rode up the mountains in magnificient cable cars and trains or in the lovely conversation we had with Frau Maria or the impossible flowers that grow abundant, maybe in the quiet serenity of the cobblestoned pathways of the old city... I don't know.
The Swiss are so amazingly organised and efficient, I have begun to appreciate the benefits of orderliness and do hope that I will transform. All those things you hear about - that travel is supposed to do for you, is so true. I found that all of us are very similar in nature, some of us are sophisticated in etiquette and manner thanks largely due to the society we live in and others are just getting there. The Swiss society though is far advanced than Indian society for sure, the engineering they adopt and the mature yet simple way of life is a far cry from ours. Both our cultures have a rich heritage and an ancient history and culture and yet their society is far more progressive in all aspects.
We stayed in Lucerne and spent a day each in Basel, Mount Titlis, Mount Pilatus, Mount Rigi, Interlaken and surrounding areas and in Ballenberg.

In subsequent blogs, I will give a day by day summary with pictures. The entire experience was great though and I am one happy cow... Indian that is.

You live... uninvited.

In the interim space between breathing and exhaling
those microseconds when the air inhaled has mated
In the grains of sand I have picked and let go
the tiny space as they slithered off

In the blink of my eyelids as they close for a split second
the almost brush of the lashes against each other
In the smile that escapes and the tiny gasps
the involuntary parting of lips

In the length of my strides as in their shortness
the gap between my footsteps
In the curve of my back, the arch of my hips
just before its comes in contact with the bed as I lay

In the folds of the wrinkles I smooth out every night
every line that I cream out gently
In the silences of the mind when the mouth is too busy
as I am still inside when talking endlessly

You live... uninvited.

Shall I compare thee...

No this is not Shakespeare's 18th sonnet, it's about our favorite pastime.
The word compare means to liken to, estimate, measure or point the similarities or dissimilarities between.
We're constantly searching for, analysing and calibrating what we have with what we percieve as someone else posessing.
Apparently, if you are satisfied and content with what is yours, you do not aim for that higher goal.

Whenever I hear such arguments, it simply wears me down, depresses me. Contentment is an easy road for me, don't really need much to warm this soul but then the external forces that try to drive a wedge into this sublimity aren't easy to subdue.

Comparisns are something we have in our DNA I guess. I've noticed that even little children who arent taught this unwelcome trait, have it innately within them and covet the toy or bauble other children have and display desperation to acquire them.

Like I always say, as we grow into adulthood, we are able to mask these feelings behind sophistication and guile but the inherent and elemental in us cannot squelch and vanquish these innervations. Comparisns are two fold, one that we ourselves endorse with our own person and those that we involve others in from children to friends, spouses to neighbors.

It is the most lowdown thing to revel in, measure the precious relationships and people in your life to someone else. It is very demeaning and de motivating to everyone involved, including ourselves. The minute I have negatively compared my child with another, I have delivered a severe blow to the child's own self confidence and maimed him in ways that are not apparent immediately.

When I have weighed my friends strengths or my spouses weakness with someone else and have been critical of it, I have inadvertently conveyed my contempt and this cannot help anyone, especially myself. It's a double edged sword, while I have used it, with whatever intentions ( I have heard that when you compare you give the person a goal, a hero to live up to and emulate... sic!) not only do I damage the other person's confidence and psyche, I also jeopardise my own relationship.

Relationships are precious and need to be nurtured, they are fragile and need nourishment. The word compare has the 'pare' in it. Pare means to reduce, prune, trim, slash and scrape among other synonymous meanings.

I know in my naivete I probably have been guilty of all of the above and I sincerely apologise for being insensitive and stupid. But I also promise that I will never lessen the value of any relationship by ever likening it with another.

Each being unique, special and complete in itself.

The back end of a camel...

I was a terrible student I guess. Atleast it was made out to be that way. My memories of school are at best painful. I entered ST. Agnes School which was Mangalore's best all girls convent school, (apparently) in kindergarten. My parents had relocated from Bombay and were new to Mangalore, my cousins were studying in this school and were doing well and I had to study there too...

Getting admissions were not easy and through my uncle's good office, my parents managed to get me admission and I was always reminded of how fortunate I was. For years I would hear this oft repeated sentence that there are so many girls who will do anything to be educated in this school and only the 'chosen ones' will get through.

My mother says I was a good student and that kindergarten was a lark for me. Somehow that changed in school. I remember grade 1 and grade 2, somewhere during the end of grade 2, I had become another person. My school work was tardy, late, incomplete. I hated home work and would not do it most times, in fact always.

The third standard completed my metamorphosis into one of the most hated students of all time. Paradoxically, one of my all time favorite teachers, Sr. Veronica taught me in grade 3. The downslide was furious grade 4 onwards, I would only rebel. I was beaten continuously, punished regularly and insulted all the time, every time. In a while the teachers realised that my skin had grown rhino thick and no matter how much they tried to break me, I wouldn't change and conform. And they began ignoring me, except when they would PMS I think, because there would be days they would pick on me for something I didn't do, never have done, common knowledge that I will not do it no matter what and take my case.

And... I seemed unfazed, it was like I was emotionless since I could take all that they dished out to me, including physical and mental abuse. My marks in examinations were pathetic. I have failed every subject except English. Those were the days when they would detain you if you failed in the final exam and I had many classmates who had failed a class four times in a row even. But I was never detained nor repeated a class, maybe simply because the teacher couldn't bear the thought of having someone like me in her class for another year.

I was successful in my display of nonchalance but I yearned to be selected for school plays, tableau's, choir, dance and many of the activities that the school planned. It was never to be. My teachers made it a point to choose other girls and then tell me, "See, it's all because you do not do what you are supposed to. Girls like you will never do anything in life".

But... in grade 6, my luck changed (or so I thought), Sr. Florina our Music teacher selected me, ME!!!!!! to be part of the Christmas Tableau. I will borrow heavily from My Fair Lady and break into song here, " I could have danced all night, And still have begged for more. I could have spread my wings and done a thousand things I've never done before." I walked around in a daze for days. The euphoria was marvellous!!!

The rehearsals for the play had begun but I wasn't called yet, I kept wondering why, especially since Sr. Florina had told me that despite my being such a terrible person, she saw a ray of hope and her 'christian' duty prompted her to "give me a chance". Believe me, for those days, I did everything I could to prove her faith in me right. I would do my home work, shut up in class, not make faces at teachers, study hard, complete my pending impositions of the past 3 years... (stuff that got me in the dog house) and be a 'good' girl.

It was almost Christmas time and I had not been given my part yet... I began to worry... panic even but lacked the courage to go and ask Sr. Florina, what if my question ticked her off and she decides that I am not worth the part... it was an unbearable thought! A week to go and Sister calls me and I run with all my heart. I know that all the major parts have been taken but I was hoping I would be a shepherd at least, angel I could never be anyway neither the demeanor nor the mug justified the part.

Sr. Florina peers at me through her glasses and says, " Remember, you dont deserve this part, I have fought with Sr. Paulina (the Headmistress) and told her that you will be a good girl from now on and my reputation is at stake because I have stood my ground for you." I almost converted into catholicism and pledged my life to and the nunnery then and there.

She takes me to the stage and says, "I didn't call you till now because you are in the last scene of the nativity scene." Immediately I begin to glow, I will be one of the Three Kings methinks. I hear the wonderful words, " You are part of the Three Kings". Tears fill my eyes and before they can fall, I hear her say, "You are the back end of the camel".

When I began writing this post, I was choked up, very emotional. Felcita, my beloved classmate had just pinged me and we were reminiscing about school and I told her about my wonderful part in the play. As I kept writing, it was as though vale of tears would make an appearance... but now, I'm grinning like an idiot. It was funny, really... The frikkin camel was one girl who stood straight and the other girl had to place her arms on the camel's shoulder and bend over. Anddddd.... this contortion was covered in the dirt brown saree worn by the nuns. Of course I was the 'bend over' bit.

Hahahaha!!! And... I was given the task of making sure the back end swayed in rythmn.... Jeeeeeeez...!!!
The complete faith that was invested in me was awesome. I never outgrew it, it was the first time I was told I could do something, even be the back end of a camel and I haven't stopped swaying!!!

Shades of grey... not 50 please...!!!

No, this post is not a reference to those terrible books by E. L. James which I swore to myself that I wouldn't even bother commenting on...

Good people and bad people... do they exist? Is someone, wholly good and is the other completely bad? We are disappointed in relationships, in our interactions with people who we know well, and those we those we know superficialy too.. Most of this disappointment stems from our expectations. We think very hard and expect people around us to behave in a certain manner that is pleasing to us and are quick to push someone off the pedestal when they fall from grace.

Labelling people as good, bad, nice, mean are easy and we do so consciously and unconsciously, it's almost as though we were born with a gavel in hand. We do so with people we do not know very well either. We lose friends and acquiantances on the journey of life simply because somewhere deep inside of us we had some expectations of that person which were not fulfilled, whether it is justified or not, doesn't seem to matter.

The older I grow, I am quite sure of who I want in my life and who I'm glad to let go of. And this isn't because I am mindful of having only 'good' people around me and discarding the 'bad'. I honestly believe that there we are both in equal measure and please, I refuse to open Pandora's box here by defining 'good' and 'bad'. It's perception and so be it.

We are all many shades of that in between, indescribable hue. Just as someone who dined at your table doesn't attain sainthood because he sent you flowers, so should you not condemn to eternal damnation because he forgot to thank you.
We have to accept that all of our friends, relatives, children, partners and above all, ourselves- we are all part of that ambiguous tinge and just as we give ourselves margin for being so, we should give people who matter that leeway too.

"But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die". Genesis 2:17

One of the first 'stories' that we were taught as children and which has been harped on endlessly, is the fall of grace by Adam and Eve. I think it is one of the saddest stories I have ever read or heard of. History and Literature has given us great and tragic love stories.

I shudder in my chadds when I use the word 'love' for the sure reprimand that will come my way from Anjali, but anyways the more tragic the story, the better it captures our imagination. Successful love stories don't possess the charisma of a failed one. Maybe that is why I have been moved by the story of God and Adam. To many people and the varied interpretations, the story of the Beginning is largely narrated to display the grandoise and magnificence of God and his creation and secondly as a reprimand to all of us who believe that the pleasures of the flesh are pleasures indeed. I can go on about the stigma of sin attached to it and what it does to our psyche and the guilt trip we fly into the sunset with... but that is another post at another time!

So... God creates Paradise and gives Adam everything he thinks Adam needs but withholds from him the Tree of Knowledge. Hmnnn... the prostitute (protestant!) in me has always balked at this what I have considered as mean and unfair. Why dig up a carrot and dangle it tantalisingly and say hands off??? (Bugs Bunny is nodding in vigorous approval), to which the answer has always been that there are some things you are better off not knowing and that all knowledge is not good. Prostitute is all up in arms!!! How can you say that... What do you mean... Let me learn what there is to and then decide whether that is true or not...

Hasn't taken me too many years to do a U-turn on this. Ever since I became a mother I began believing in this adage and have used it endlessly with the kids. "Mum... what is xyz?". Although flummoxed that the question is thrown at me I look and behave nonchalant and brush it off with a "You don't need to know now, you're too young for that". Now as they are older and are probably more knowledgeable in various fields ( I'm not even going there!) I'm having similar conversations about substance abuse with the kids and I tell them that "some things you are better off not knowing and all knowledge is not good".

The internal prostitute weeps.

Life's all about U-turns and eating your words faster than they got out of your mouth. Kids make you do that. I guess that's one knowledge we should all have and pass down to all. That we really should be careful and mindful of what we say, because we may have to eat them one day!

And... do I concede defeat now and say I was wrong about knowledge... :)

I bow down as gracefully as I can... People who know me will know why I used 'graceful' and simply say... He who made me knows Best!!! Knows what's right for me and what's not and know's what I need and when and He makes All things beautiful, in his time...

Ended rather dramatically didn't it... Mother will be proud (if she ever discovers this blog :D)

Charm...

I've always been attracted to charming people as most of us are I would guess... almost all children have an innocent charm which makes them endearing and attracts us to them, as they grow, they lose that glow to the mundane and necessary act of growing up and becoming clones of other grown ups.

Very few people retain their innocence and those who do indeed are looked upon with disdain, pity, tolerance and are objects of ridicule. It really is quite impossible to retain that innocence, life grows us up.

Does our charm depend entirely on innocence then? Of course not, the charm of innocence has its value but the charm of a personality is quite something else. One of my favorite quotes on charm is by J. M. Barrie, who said, "Charm- It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it, you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have."

Well, I'd like to say that charm isn't limited to women alone, its a unisex attribute, both men and women can be and are charming. We do not place much importance to being someone who is able to make another person smile or feel good about something around them, about themselves, about the world in general. How eager we are to display our intelligence with well measured words and carefully constructed sentences aimed at exhibiting our knowledge of the world around us.

I have the opportunity of meeting many accomplished and successful people in my place of work and I love to watch the by play of human nature, its cause and effects and the many role plays that people are busy indulging in. I have to admit that irrespective of a person's education, professional capacity, designation and profile, the ones who leave an impression are those who had that something special about them, that quality which made you feel good, a lasting impression that is above and beyond the trappings that surround us.

To please someone, to be delightful has no bearing on the physical appearance of a person, I will not harp on beauty, been there and done that in one of my older posts in this blog. It would be ridiculous to think that charm is the preferential and licensed property of those in possession of good looks. Anyone can have the charisma and pizzazz... or can they...

There is a parallel argument to this too... that if you are taken up by someone's charm, you are a fool and are naive, being exploited somehow by the exhibitor of that grace and magic. You are truly strong and rooted when you are not swayed by another's magnetism and appeal, you are so self contained and mature that the fringes of another's chemistry leave you unfazed and it's a spell you dont fall under. All because you are this oh-so-smart-and-intelligent person, silliness isn't your forte.

We pass through this life, in this shape and form, just once, or so it is said! How lovely it would be if we were charming, pleasant, of cheerful disposition and made a few people smile and feel good about themselves, not paying anyone lip service in a fake manner but genuinely, from the heart... I guess we would have fewer woes and more joy if we are able to fascinate others just being charming...

Irrespective of who we are.... we are all attracted by this special quality... no matter how much we digress...

“It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.”... Oscar Wlde.

Odious, tedious or charming warming.... a no brainer huh!