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)