A MIRACLE CALLED AGE

A MIRACLE CALLED AGE

                                     Long ago I had expressed my angst in a blog at not being able to stand up to the expectations of what it means to be a good human being. In spite of having gone through a major part of life, there were lacunae that made me not like the person I was looking at into the mirror. My inability to conquer negativity and certain emotions that hurt me or sometimes, hurt some other person was certainly making me not like me.

                                    The hurt I felt when my people broke the bond I had taken for granted or the anguish I felt at not being able to live up to the expectations of a relationship, the anger directed at someone for my own frustrations or the rage I felt while driving under severely stressed conditions, was all a part of my-self that needed to change. There were many loose ends that needed to be tied up. I had confessed in the blog why I don’t like myself!

                                   Much water has flown under the bridge since then.

                                    Yet, instead of the shallow pool that forms due to flowing off of water, it  has slowly started getting deeper and deeper creating a calm that characterizes bottomless depths.  The wrinkles of negativity in the heart have smoothened gradually even as the wrinkles over the face have become prominent. The ill feelings that weighed the heart down have slowly started getting weightless as the body is gearing up to face the illness of the mortal self. I could see the slow transformation of the mind and the soul as the body got older.                             

                                 A smile appeared in the eyes and a warmth spread in the heart as I looked into the mirror seeing the new evolving person that looked back at me.

A miracle called age was slowly unfolding before my eyes. Tables were gradually turning and there were some happy notes in the self that stood before me which I actually liked to see. I could see that I could like myself. The miracle had made me fall in love with the person I was becoming as I walked ahead.

                                   What is it that I like about myself today?

                                    I like the ability I have developed to face stressful situations. The calmness of thought before reacting to the situation surprises me but gives me an immense sense of relief and peace. I can feel the negative energy draining out every time I pause and think before reacting. It can be as mundane as clutter around the living room which I expect to be spic and span or as stressful as driving through prime- time traffic with vehicles crisscrossing your way in break-neck speed, unmindful of traffic rules, signals or road courtesy. From being the over-reacting, angry and often frustrated at the blatant misuse of rules that define a disciplined and honest life, I can now find myself coursing through such situations with ease and calm.

                                      I like my ability to deal with the hurt that comes with heart breaks for reasons ranging from insignificant arguments to serious lapses in maintaining the relationship. I find that although I still bleed from wounds, I have developed the ability to gradually get over the incident before it settles deep inside the heart and solidifies itself. I have learnt to move away gently from the hurt till the vision of my heart blurs and the pain disappears. I have learnt to heal and help my heart to remain strong and healthy in face of gradual destruction of the muscle pump that is an inevitable reality. I have learnt to move on, without a trace of the dreaded word called ‘stress’ burdening me. This is the miracle and I like myself for it.

                                    I like myself when I accept that the rat race is far behind me and I am now on the fringes of the path that leads to achievements, success, awards and accolades.

                                    I like myself when I genuinely and honestly enjoy the success of the hordes coming from behind me and leaving me far behind. I like it when I find peace in the regrets that harangue my past and disturb the present. 

                                   

                                     I like it when it hits without hurting that I now walk on the plateau where the walk is a flat road and there are no more hills to climb and i know that ‘this is it’ and I must now find and walk on newer paths that take me towards the health of the mind and body.

                                       I like myself when I start accepting the shortcomings of the aging body without the frustration of not finding the energy to work and play for long hours that were the hallmark of last few decades. It doesn’t surprise me if I say no to midnight jaunts for an ice-cream or a maghai paan which I loved to do only a few years back.

                                        The disappointment that comes with not being able to share the enthusiasm of the generation next as they try to pull you into their stormy vortex now doesn’t last beyond a few fleeting moments and a smily emoji replaces that emoji with eyes lowered and mouth drooping down. I like myself for the ability to smile indulgently at the youth that has just left your hand and flown into the wild night.

                                     The years are passing by and the body is getting a year older each time the calendar changes the number. The miracle is that I can find the meaning of graceful aging and realise the beauty of what it does to the self. The miracle is that I am slowly discovering the purpose of age, re-define my constitution and one day hope to blossom into a truly graceful and good person with the same enthusiasm for living life to fullest at that point of time. The miracle is that age has made me aware of the greatest gift, that is life itself.

                      Honestly, I am still not there yet.

                      But.

                      I like myself for finding the path that will take me there. It has all happened due to a miracle called Age!

                       The year is ending soon and you would wonder after all this, do I want to dance away the 31^st eve till the wee hours of the new year?

                       You bet I do, but on my own tune!

                        Happy 2020 to all.

                                                                    

sadness flies away

SADNESS FLIES AWAY

Sadness flies away on the wings of time- Jean De la Fontaine

                   I came across this sentence a few days back. It really intrigued me. It was sending hope yet I knew of situations that saddened the heart irrespective of time. It was full of positivity yet I myself had experienced the negativity of sad situations again and again, irrespective of time. I wondered if sadness really flew away on the wings of time. I had always felt that time blunts the cutting edge of sadness and replaces intense pain with bearable pain. But it never flies away, always leaving your heart empty and with that deep heaviness where sadness sits on heavy bottoms, moving just ever so slightly to allow a trickle of happiness to jostle for space in an already overcrowded cubicle.

               There are sad moments that disturb us and there are sad events that destroy us. The sad moments remain floating and their lightness gives them the effortless ability to fly far away from our hearts. It is the sad events in our life that settle down in the deep recesses of our heart, never to leave. It’s crucial to understand the difference to lead a life free of burden of sadness.

               Losing a dear one or a young member of the family suddenly is always devastating. In a split second it uproots the entire family tearing the fabric to shreds. Its not just the suddenness of loss, it’s also about the inability to comprehend what lies ahead. Life stops acutely and the wheels running smoothly brake with a deafening sound that tears the ear drums causing a deathly silence in that moment. The vision is clouded and the mind gets numb beyond words. You walk in a daze unable to make sense of anything that formed your routine. Is it easy for this extremely devastating sadness to ever fly away?

               Experts working on grief and bereavement have analyzed the grief and bereavement period classifying it into four stages. The last stage is about acceptance. Eventually after going through the phases of disbelief, anger and guilt of having lost the loved one, the person begins to accept the situation. Time is the greatest healer they say. With time, the intensity of sadness starts to blunt on its edges and the jagged margins of memories hurt less than before. Time and acceptance help to look at the memories of the lost one with a new vision. Eyes blur less and heart cries a little less. Physical expression of hurt lessens and an occasional smile replaces the memory.

                       All this happens over decades and that one life we have gets scarred with utter sadness. Many of those who are left behind lose a lifetime in coming to terms with the reality that just swept them away from a normal life. Sadness takes a real long time to get washed away and here it also leaves behind imprints that are hard to clean.

                        Fortunately, such an immense tragedy strikes rarely. For most of us, our lives are filled with floating sad events that do get washed away and we can barely remember the pain or hurt they had caused.

                      Illnesses of loved ones, humiliation at work place, inability to bear pressures of life or work, stress from relationships, broken hearts and broken bones, thefts, breach of trust, cheating, financial losses, failure in businesses, strained family ties, natural calamities that wash away home and hearth, all account for those moments when things can get unbearable and cause a deep pain in the heart. Many of these tragedies take away all that we have or have collected over years of hard work for a secure future. Often, thoughts of ending the problem by ending the life cross the mind, some weaker minds even going ahead with it. Often, despair and depression cloud the rational thinking. Darkness envelopes the mind and the tunnel seem to have no proverbial light at its end.

                     With a mad rush to lead life in the fast lane, most of us lose the ability to tackle pressure head on. The greed for success can be so blinding that we forget to see our inner strength and beauty. Even small ups and downs can appear colossal and stop us in our tracks. They can break us because we have forgotten to harness our inner strength. Depression and stress induced physical ailments capture our minds and bodies. The energy of youth and the skills of the adulthood are lost in the maze of fear of failure and hurt. The helplessness and hopelessness of the situations arise because we have lost the confidence in ourselves.

                     However, one must never forget that in face of greater tragedies like death, these are the floating lightweight sadness that only time will erase and will one day fly away on it’s wings. Most of the problems we encounter, most of the difficult situations we face seem to hold us in their tight angry squeeze. But there is no such a problem that does not come with a solution, albeit it can make one compromise the routine or change tracks. Eventually, the sharpness of the difficulty blunts away and the pain fades away leaving no evidence of the hurt it has caused. The human body and mind is well equipped with so much strength as to handle any of these distractions and fill the heart with happiness again. There is no such a bad situation that eventually does not fade away into the horizon. What seems impossible is just another problem with multiple possibilities of opportunities. 

                     A change of business or a job, re-establishing communication with the person that has hurt you or simply moving on, slowly rebuilding life after calamities or financial losses are all a sure possibility with time, faith and determination. None of these problems take away the ability to work our way to the top again. The bottomless pit where one finds oneself in such a situation is not bottomless at all. The tunnel is dark but we must believe that there is light somewhere. Slowly and steadily, we can crawl up into light again. Our precious life and our inner resolve is very much alive to pull us up.

                          The story goes of the king who was so despaired in face of defeat that he ordered his people to find a solution in one sentence. None of his ministers could find a proper sentence. It was an old uneducated simpleton who gave a ring to the king embossed with a sentence to be seen in situations of utter despair. The king facing one such situation saw what was written on the ring. It said, “this too shall pass”. 

Almost similar to what Jean De la Fontaine has said, sadness does fly away.

                   

The more I thought about it, the more I saw the positivity and strength in that sentence.                     

Very rightly, it is profound, it is full of hope and guides us through those difficult times which at that point seem permanent and endless.

                    

 We forget that, this too shall pass.

 But it will.

On wings of time, for we all know, Father Time has our back!

House full..............house empty..................

HOUSE FULL………..HOUSE EMPTY…………..

A few days back, there was a news clipping in one of the prominent English newspaper about a study done regarding the parent-child relationship.

Quote

‘Kids make people happy….when they’ve left home’

Parents who still live with their children face financial worries, stress and anxiety.

The study conducted by scientists in Germany studied 55000 people over the age of 50 living across Europe and found that people whose children have flown the nest have greater satisfaction and fewer signs of depression.

Unquote.

This piece of news set me thinking about how different we are!

 We Indians have a totally different approach to life as far as our children are concerned. We raise them without letting them know how much it pinches us, even if it does. Most of us don’t even register the pinch. We struggle, we sweat and lose our sleep over giving only the best to our kids. The best of education, the best of extra-curricular life, the best of living conditions, the best of food is what we work tirelessly for, to give them. Our sole purpose of survival and struggle is to ensure a secure, safe and happy environment in their upbringing. Our parents have done the same and we inherit the same culture and create the same world for our children.

In majority of households, the woman gives her career and her life the back seat once she enters the stage of motherhood. Her day revolves around the children, their food, their school, their sports and their home work and projects. Her time is spent on planning their day, their food, their school and their dinnertime specialties. Her morning is spent on dropping them off to school, afternoons to bring them back home and evenings to ferry them from one extra class to another. She creates her home around them. Her world revolves around them and her thought process is completely taken over by her children. Even if she has a career, either a job or a business, the work is adjusted to suit the needs of the children. Often, set-backs in career are taken to fulfill the necessities of home and career advancements are given up for ‘children’s sake’.

The fathers too have their share of involvement. They work harder to keep the momentum, sometimes the vehicle running on one tyre. There is often a sacrifice of a good vacation or a big buy because the fees and books and clothes and sports gear needs to be bought. Often dreams are set aside to fulfill the aspirations of children. Loans are taken, properties are sold, gold is mortgaged to give the child a dream education or a dream wedding.

In all this, we Indian parents not even once feel the pressure of raising our children. The world that is complete with them, the joy of their smiles, the pride of their achievement and the satisfaction of their settled lives gives us the deep sense of having made ourselves good parents and good human beings. Someone has said, “the ultimate happiness of life is when you know your children have become good human beings”. We strive for that in that phase of life when we become parents without the feeling of being burdened to fulfill these responsibilities.

All the tears and the sweat is forgotten, all the pain of broken dreams vanishes and all the struggles and heart breaks are worthwhile when at the end of the day, we know that we have done our parents proud by being the parents they were to us.

And then one fine day, they fly away. Just like we have long, long ago. The world that we have created comes to standstill. The home that was filled with noise and clutter lapses into a deafening silence. The hour hand in the clock moves on leaden feet.

We find ourselves engulfed by ‘the empty nest syndrome’.

We struggle to find our life for ourselves all over again.

We struggle to find a new meaning to our life all over again.

And yet, life goes on.

This is what we are. 

Whatever the outside world may conclude!

A few lines to express the feelings of all of us standing on that threshold with our hands empty and eyes looking into that vacant space that was once cluttered-

HOUSE FULL………..HOUSE EMPTY…………..

The house is full, things strewn everywhere, the walls smudged with crayons.

Toys and broken pencils, note-books and text books

With frayed brown covers all over the floor, their rightful place

The television blares out non-sense, and small bits of biscuits and wafers

Keep obstructing the path to cleanliness

Even as the curtains blow and the sofas get stained with

Bournvita stained tiny hands.

In the cacophony of routine, the lights go off and the water boiler shuts down.

Another happy day without bath and off to school.

Crisp uniforms and stainless white socks on polished black shoes

Tiffin’s with surprises and home-work not done. Browned white shirts and smudged pants,

Back-packs pouring out and sheer joy on tired faces.

Another dull day of complete chaos.

Coughs, colds, Doctor’s waiting room, anxiety, medicines and loads of pampering

New clothes, bicycle accidents, scraped knees and tears

Years push ahead. Festivals, family vacations and dinner time gossip come and go.

Pain, hurt, heart-breaks and soothing hugs, a sure sign of growing up.

Lights burn beyond mid-night, extra classes take the toll. Endless cups of tea.

Strained faces and difficult schedules that become a load on the heart.

Dreams dreamed and success achieved, all that takes away your and their years

Of carefree youthfulness and adventures of growing up.

Yet you both find joy in what lies ahead.

Excitement of new independence. Taking away the dependence from you.

New life. New friends. New decisions. New paths.

Slowly you move to the fringes, trying to stand

and make sense of the time on hand.

It’s no big deal you say, they come to roost. Till its time up for you.

A bird flies into the clear blue sky, next follows the second one.

You have strengthened the wings and filled them with power,

You pride in their flight and look towards the sky till the shadows disappear,

leaving a shadow of doubt and anxiousness in tear-filled eyes.

The home is spotlessly clean, the books sold to the paperman, the school pictures

Carefully chronicled in the album.

The dining table, the curtains, the empty beds are all that’s left.

Clean, dry, lifeless.

You look around. You look at each other.

We are all that’s left.

The circle from a full house to an empty house.

A complete life. An incomplete phase.

Somewhere on a tree a branch sways gently, a little bird lands with a twig.

A nest is built, the floor strewn with toys and pencils.

The walls smudged with crayons.

The house is full……………………………….

 DR. REINA KHADILKAR

STRUGGLE ENDS WHERE GRATITUDE BEGINS

STRUGGLE ENDS WHERE GRATITUDE BEGINS

I came across this beautiful sentence a few days back.

There was this story of a young man who is so fed up of his life, his poor paying job, his nagging wife, the daily expenses, his daily commute in the overcrowded local train in the city of Mumbai that he keeps praying to God to end all this and finish his life. Once he gets some throat infection for which he goes to see a doctor. The doctor takes some blood samples and tests them. He is found to have lung cancer. When he is told about this, his world crumbles in a million pieces. He thinks that his wish, which actually is not his wish, has come true. He panics, fear grips him and the thought of death breaks him. However, there is a twist here. The doctor has mistakenly given him another patients’ report and declares him to be hale and hearty. Suddenly there is light in his darkened life. The gratitude he feels to be alive more than makes up for his daily struggles, which now pale in the background giving him the joy of living through all that. The story ends with this sentence.

I pondered over the story. 

The story speaks volumes about the human psyche. We all go through troubled times, sometimes so prolonged and consistent, that we casually say, I would rather be dead. We think like this because we know for sure that death is nowhere on our minds. It’s just a fleeting thought. One that we don’t believe even in our innermost mind. One that is hollow and of no significance in our life that is going on in spite of all our troubles. It’s really not serious. Circumstances change, things get back on track and the difficult times are over. So does the thought. Life continues unhindered and we forget our past with two beautiful words, ‘time heals’. The low patch may strike again and so does the thought of deliverance. But then again, it is never taken seriously.

In short, we take life for granted. We never spare a thought for the gift of life that comes with every sunrise. For most of us leading ordinary lives we believe that struggles and problems come as a part and parcel of life. But when they come, we curse the day, we curse the stars and we curse our destiny. We feel helpless, we feel victimized, we feel destined to doom. All that life has given us just gets washed away in that difficult moment. In our blinding moment of unhappiness and sorrow, we are unable to look at what we have rather than what we don’t at that point of time.

The moment of realization comes when the most precious gift seems to slip from our hands, as that happened to the protagonist of this story. Suddenly when he saw the sand slipping out from the sand clock, he wanted to live more than anything else in the world. He wanted his wife to nag him, he wanted to face the troubled job situation and he wanted to go through life’s daily struggles.

The story brings on the beauty of what this one life is. The gratitude he feels to be alive makes him happy enough to go through life’s struggles.

I thought hard over the profound sentence.

I feel gratitude that I believe in that Supreme force that looks after us, smiles upon us and walks with us through all our struggles.

I feel gratitude to the fact that I wake up every morning to see the sunrise, hear the twitter of sparrows (now getting extinct in urban areas), sip my steaming cup of coffee, check my mobile for new forwards and know that my loved ones are doing good today!

I feel gratitude that I go out every day to my work place, enjoy the old and new filmi songs as I drive through mad traffic and madder roads, turn myself into the good doctor and help suffering souls to heal and get back to their routine. The struggle to survive in an environment that can sometimes threaten my job and my sanity seems irrelevant given the happiness that I have a work place.

I feel gratitude that I have a world around me filled with caring, honest and compassionate family and friends. With the pace of life threatening to break old relationships, I still have tons of them who find time to share a word or two, share a gossip or two, share a pain or two and fill my day with usual mix of love, anger, envy, sadness, regret and pure, pure joy! The plethora of emotions that define our day.

I feel gratitude that I go through the day, sometimes down with an illness or two but most of the times, hale and hearty. I feel gratitude that I have enough to feed my family and any number of guests who I would love to have. That I have been granted more than enough to feed strangers too. I have kitchen fires that burn anytime of the day, never short of happiness and sumptuous food.

I feel gratitude that I have the freedom to choose what I wear, what I eat or drink and make choices, even though sometimes the choices I make may have gone horribly wrong. I feel gratitude that I garnered the strength to rise from a deep, deep fall when I took the wrong turn.

I feel gratitude that the roof over my head never leaks, the hand in my hand never leaves me and the loving arms of my two beautiful children always hug me with intense, yet tender love.

I feel gratitude that I come across rude, dishonest and untrustworthy human beings who teach me that there is more to life than what we naively look at. That such people prepare me to be strong, expect the unexpected and value those who really mean something to me and are genuinely good to me. That such people make me more aware of what gratitude for everything I have is!

Gratitude for the flowers that spread color, the fragrance of the first rains on the parched  earth, the little green twig that breaks through the stem, the sorrow of the grey-black mountains and the dying rivers , the cacophony of the undisciplined traffic, the dull routine, the joy of birth and the intense pain of death that put some years in me and the adventurous unpredictability of life.

Little things that make up our day. The familiar roads, the peace of the temple, the faces that smile, the hands that beg, the laughter from the hearts of people living on the edge, the high-fives of the young and restless, the energy of the school grounds, the street fights and the crime, the justice denied and the justice delivered. That our life is a melting pot of events and people and the world where we live.

I feel gratitude for giving me the chance to see, feel and live through this.

I feel gratitude to be alive and feel alive.

On a lighter note, it is about your own personal “haves and have not’s”

Struggle ends where gratitude begins.

FINDING JONATHAN

 (This essay is dedicated to all dreamers who pursue their dreams irrespective, and all the teachers who motivate, teach and stand solid with them creating generations of Jonathans who go beyond themselves to make this world a better place)

                         

                                         FINDING JONATHAN!

First time i met Jonathan

                 I first got hold of Jonathan Livingston Seagull when I had just cleared my board exams and was poised to enter the professional world of medicine.

                The author Richard Bach, a professional pilot by training, narrates the story of an extraordinary seagull called Jonathan who goes against the flock and learns to fly high where 'no gull has gone', braving death and conquering fear to achieve his dream.  For most gulls, life is just about eating and surviving. Flying is just a means to find food. None in the flock have ever dared to, or rather even thought about flying to greater heights. Flying high or venturing into the unknown came with its   risk of injury and death and none ventured into the unseen. The community of gulls was so particular about not allowing the gulls to do anything but find food as their only mission and aim in life that anyone who even thought of revolting was banished forever from the community into the land where

                    Then comes along Jonathan Livingston Seagull, a tiny seagull who loves to fly. He experiments with glides, sweeps and heights even doing the stalling mid-way much to horror of his parents who could not fathom why he did not live to eat like the rest. You are all bone and feathers, screams his mother in agony looking at her son who has lost interest in food while pursuing his passion. Winter is coming and you need to store food, so get back to doing what other gulls are doing, reprimands his father. Jonathan does not heed their worried calls and continues to perfect his flying techniques, modifying height and speed and always trying to  break his limitations brought about by his physical and mental self.  His experiments of flying from great heights, curving his wings below the body and gliding ever so smoothly, stalling mid-way and reaching the skies, where lie his dreams, continue unabated, unmindful of the hardships that come along its way. The elders in the flock disapprove of his un-gull like behavior, shame him for doing the unthinkable and banish him from the flock forever. Saddened but not disheartened, Jonathan tries to explain to the flock the joy of finding the strength to fly beyond your universe to realise your dreams and potentials and not just live to eat but the flock elders are unperturbed and blind to his pleas. 

                           Eventually, Jonathan flies away to a distant land, pursuing his dream of learning to fly higher and higher, unmindful of day or night, food or water, flock or loneliness. He is eventually guided by angel gulls to a higher world where he finds gulls that have a similar purpose as him and a teacher who helps him to understand the pursuit of happiness and more importantly, the responsibility of carrying the teachings of love and following your heart. Eventually he becomes the teacher to outcasts like Fletcher Gull and Kirk Maynard Gull whom he teaches to fly against odds like wing injuries and fear of heights. In his words, " Maynard Gull, you have the freedom to be yourself, your true self, here and now, and nothing can stand in your way." Maynard Gull who is barely dragging his broken wings finds the power to spread the wings and fly to freedom. Gradually, the taught become the teachers and its time for Jonathan to fly away into the silver sky beyond nothing.

Meeting Jonathan as a young student

Quote

"I don't mind being bones and feathers.

I just want to know what I can do in the air and what I can't. That's all.

I just want to know."

Unquote

                           As a hard working ambitious student I just wanted to soar ahead.  Performance mattered at that time and all I wanted was to be in the top rung of performers. Jonathan Livingston inspired me to plough on and march ahead to find my happiness. Then came the time to realise my dream of becoming a doctor. He was there with me, nudging and pushing, helping me to fight hard to get there where I wanted to go. My selection of the subject of my choice during that time, as specialisation, inspired by Jonathan, was like swimming against the current and getting into deep troubled waters where no 'female medical student' had ventured. Jonathan came to my rescue. He had shown me the way to fight tooth and nail for getting what I wanted. He had prepared me to go against the flock. He had energised me to climb the steep straight cliff without fearing for defeat or being labeled an outcast.

                                  The young blood that flowed in my veins was unmindful of the consequences and like Jonathan, I was ready to face it chin up. As a 'green behind the ears' young girl, my perception of Jonathan stopped there. It was inspirational to work hard to achieve what we have set out for. It was inspirational to fight the system if need be. It gave the fire to climb ‘every mountain and cross every brook’. There was a fearlessness of the path unseen and not taken.

                                   Jonathan feared nothing but his inability to fly higher than what he wanted to. Jonathan threw caution to the wind and life asunder to reach the dream he had wanted to. Survival was not for food but for the goal he wanted to achieve.

                                      As young restless souls, we look towards the sun face up and dive headlong into the turbulent waters. We hurtle us towards the horizon on the rainbow of our dreams, collecting abrasions and cuts on the way that we carry proudly on our shoulders. With stars in our eyes and fire in our heart we move forward, inching towards our goals, unruffled and uncaring about the difficulties that are strewn in the path. It is that age where the power to mount the insurmountable lies deep in the heart and all that hurts are the midnight oil fumes burning bright as nights melt into days and the horizon appears closer than what it was. The single-minded determination of achieving the unachievable ploughs the body forward, the tiny flicker of light far away beckons the tired body and the joy of struggle fills the heart with warmth of the impending success.

                                  As one climbs the steps inching closer to the dream, the feathers fall off and the bones hurt. But the heart is exhilarated with the sweet smell of achievement. It doesn’t matter that you have paid a price, it matters that you have made it!

Meeting Jonathan after decades

Quote

‘The gull sees the farthest who flies the highest’

‘As days went past, Jonathan found himself thinking time and again of the Earth from which he had come. He stood on the sand wondering if there was a gull back there who might be struggling to break out of its limits. The more he thought, the more he wanted to give something of the truth he had seen to a gull who only asked for a chance to see the truth for himself.’

‘ You, Jonathan, can show a gull how to see beyond a thousand miles’

Unquote

                               A lifetime was spent in pursuing the dreams, following the heart, facing the challenges that came with it, building the moments, days, years brick by brick to build what one calls life. Yet there had to be a pause to look back and understand what I had done this far and look ahead to know where I wanted to go. The passion that was work had seen me through the smooth and rough patches as is with every person who dares to leave the flock and learns to fly rather than live to eat! The toil and the late nights, the sweat and the palpitations, the thought and the plan, the recovery and the reward were all there to make me realise the strength of my decision and the freedom to fly ‘where no gull has ever been’. Life came with its frills of a family, children and social responsibilities that completed my world. Life introduced me to the joys and sorrows of living the dream. The path was walked, treaded, bruised yet strangely satisfying.

                                    Then came the crossroads of an uneasy sense of lack of fulfilment, when I met Jonathan again. It was time to find the meaning to my existence and to the path that lay ahead. My knowledge was beneficial to the many, many suffering souls who walked into my clinic to be delivered from pain and disease and more often than not, walked out happy and relieved. The blessings only multiplied the joy of knowing that the struggle was worth every heart beat that had gone haywire till the patient went home.

                                     Yet there was a sense of emptiness, a sense of incomplete achievement in-spite of having walked through the dream. The proverbial thorns had long past stopped causing pain. The work had fallen into a routine and a plateau had struck that made me restless, wondering where I was heading or if I had just fallen into the rut of routine!

                                      I met Jonathan again on the crossroads that once again challenged my restless soul.

                                       My decision to become a teacher came after a few months of pondering and then realizing that like Jonathan, it was time to be the fire beneath the wings of those who were dreaming to fly into the unknown. The emptiness, the restlessness or that incomplete feeling seemed to have found its answer. I had to give strength to the dreams of those who wanted to walk the path taken by me and so many others who chose to follow their dreams. The cycle of life had to go on. Jonathan had chosen me to help perpetuate that innate desire in each one of us to explore our limits and go beyond them.

                                         As ‘green behind the ears’ students came to me for knowledge, Jonathan guided me to make them understand their ability to look farthest so that they could fly highest. The knowledge I had acquired from my teachers and the most important teacher of all, life itself, had to be passed on to the eager, restless, inquisitive young ones just setting out on the path unseen. I reveled in the happiness of holding unlearned hands and guiding them through the mysteries of the body till they could maneuver on their own. I found happiness in finding answers to the barrage of questions that came out of inquisitive minds. I had found my path, yet again. Imparting whatever I had learnt about my subject became that purpose that brought meaning to my existence.  

                                    My search was over. Jonathan had found me yet once again.

                                    A decade of being the teacher has gone by. As the baton passes and as I gradually fade into the sunset, there will be Jonathans to take the next generation of young restless souls to that edge of the cliff from where they can spread their wings and soar towards the limitless sky. They will have found the purpose which defines us as beings with a meaning.

Jonathan lives on, in all of us!

I AM GRATEFUL FOR THIS LIFE- REINA KHADILKAR

I AM GRATEFUL FOR THIS LIFE

I don’t want to write about this, but I must write!

I must face the worst part of the history of this world to know how blessed I am to be born in the era which began far later than the world’s worst nightmare, ‘The Holocaust’

How else will I understand and realize that with all the ups and downs I have had, that there was something more terrible than the simple uncomplicated downs of one’s life to know that I am very, very grateful for this life.

How else will I learn why we are given the mind which can think big, the mind which can think bad and the mind which can think nothing!

How will I know the horrors of holocaust on one side and the strength of the human spirit to withstand it, if I do not revisit and acknowledge this dark hour in the history of humankind.

Lessons of mankind’s history are the paths that show us the peculiar ways in which the world develops into what it is at present. If we never learn from the lessons of history of the world, then as they say, you are condemned to repeat it!

With great difficulty and a heavy heart and, of course, a deep sense of pride for the indomitable human spirit, I try to find words to describe my encounter with an actual concentration camp of WWII.

I dreaded the day that was to take me to the Sachsenhausen Concentration camp a few miles from Berlin where a day earlier we had seen yet another hot spot of the world war and the Nazi regime. We walked through the streets of Berlin past palaces now converted to museums, the Humboldt University that has till date produced 29 Nobel prize winners in all fields and continues to inspire students from across the world to create a better world and vie for the Nobel, a sculpture of a mother holding her dead young son, a war martyr, in her lap as a reminder of the wars faced by Berlin leaving a deep impact on the heart and a flow of tears that welled up in the eyes!

We walked across the ‘Memorial of the murdered Jews’, designed by architect Peter Eisenman, which consists of rows and rows of sloping concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern with an underground information space holding names of 3 million Jews who were holocaust victims. There is no explanation or derivation of the architect’s vision of this memorial and we are left to walk in the grid deriving our own meaning of the memorial for the hapless souls who died the sorriest death ever recorded in history. The gloom gets to you as you move solemnly in the space, a foreboding of what was to come next day.

The great Berlin wall dividing the east and west, now stands in a large enclosed area as a memorial to the days of Communist and Capitalist rules that separated not just geographical areas and ideologies but people, families, sons from fathers, mothers from children, lovers and friends. The story of how the wall was erected in the midnight of a Saturday and when people on either side woke up on that fateful Sunday morning found themselves imprisoned beyond the wall and unable to go back home, sends shivers down the spine if one just stands there to feel the helplessness beyond! The last stop at Checkpoint Charlie, the very famous historical point dividing Berlin occupied by USA and the Berlin controlled by Russia during the (in)famous cold war is now a photo-op point belying the terror of those days. Berlin was as much a history of its kings and their art and culture as much as it is about the world wars that raised it to rubble. Almost 90% of this glorious city was devastated after WW2, but like the proverbial phoenix, it has risen to become one of the top developed cities in the world. A story of the true human spirit here.

Next was that day that had a deep impact on me. After leaving our train at the Oranienberg station, we walked the same route taken by the thousands of imprisoned Jews, political prisoners and other petty prisoners of the camp daily to be taken for hard manual labor to factories, farms, ammunition workshops and construction activities. The peculiar heaviness in my heart began as I retraced the steps of hundreds of emaciated, impoverished, tortured, beaten and starved innocent people as they walked with their heads hung low, steps heavy and leaden, stomachs empty and the butt of rifle inches away from the limbs and torso that would bear its brunt, lest a step fall slow or even for no reason at all.

A drab grey wall, all of twelve feet high and barbed, enclosed the camp area. The wall is now covered with photographs of atrocities, camp inmates, the fearful SS army, the loads of corpses and the survivors that were rescued at the end of WW2 giving us a glimpse of what was inside. The imposing gate proudly proclaimed, “Arbeit Macht Frei” (Work sets you free), apparently a sign on all the gates of nearly hundred concentration camps that were active during the Nazi regime. It gave a sense of hope to all the inmates who kept feeling that if they worked hard, they will be set free and that’s how they continued to rot, waiting for that sliver of hope. The gate opened to a vast ground, now empty but lined with rows of areas like sunrays that once housed the barracks. Just before the barracks was the main office notoriously called the dehumanizing center, where the freshly arrived inmate would be stripped of all dignity, paraded naked and given the first dose of the horror that was to come.

The barracks, now just three have been reconstructed to show the appalling living conditions, housed tens of thousands of people with a capacity of less than five hundred. The long halls on either side of a central wash room section had rows of wooden bunk beds where up to seven people would be cramped in a space for two. The washroom was a common room with three large water fountains that were to be used by all in a matter of few minutes. The toilets for ablutions was a single room with rows of commodes placed next to each other with no screens or doors. The dehumanization was complete!

According to a plaque on the barrack, the bell for waking up would go on at 4.15 am and in fifteen minutes all the inmates had to wash and clean up, and rush to the central ground for a head count that would then take them for the day’s grueling work. Any person, feeble, old, disabled or ill who could not keep up with the rush of humanity moving towards the washing area would be trampled upon and left to rot in excrement’s of others or to die! There was no other route to hell. The counting of prisoners would be conducted in the open ground and could take few hours. In winters with temperatures falling below zero, people would get gangrenes of the toes and fingers by just standing in the snow waiting for their number to be called, that resulted in amputations at the apothecary, loss of usefulness for the regime and a certain death by torture! The long march would then begin with soldiers shouting, screaming and mercilessly hitting helpless people. It was a dance of death and cruelty that went on and on for almost six years.

The other end of the camp housed the most dangerous areas, the crematorium and the ‘neck-shot’ area where unsuspecting people were made to stand for height measurement in front of a scale that had a hole which corresponded with the neck of the victim through which a guard shot him. Apparently designed to reduce the post-traumatic stress of SS men who shot them!

Diseases proliferated, sickness enveloped the air over the camp, screams of pain and hurt rented the air that was enclosed in a high double barbed wire. Experiments for liver and blood diseases were conducted on innocent and healthy people in the specially built human laboratory in the camp. Doctors, architects, engineers, mathematicians, bakers, florists, watch makers, butchers, drivers, teachers, lawyers, laborers, just anyone who was not fit to live in the society that the Fuhrer was trying to create, or anyone who was a threat to the regime was brought to one of many such camps, tortured mercilessly and either shot dead or made to suffer till he died. Six million Jews, political prisoners, homosexuals, criminals, and mentally or physically disabled people were deemed unfit and had to go through the horror of survival till death came as a relief.

I was numbed by the immensity of the whole crime. I was dulled by the intensity of the torture humans can inflict on one another. I was appalled at the psychological conversion of the minds of millions of people by one psychopath, to make them believe that they are wronged by a certain people and they must cleanse the world of this. I was horrified at the nature of torture that can be designed by the same human mind that also paints, sings, draws, thinks, cries, hurts and loves.

It was that moment in my life that showed me the sunshine that has filled me. The blessings that one gets not to even know about such dark areas of humankind are immeasurable. I was deeply humbled to see that the challenges and the ups and downs that seemed huge and daunting to me were infinitesimally small as what people have gone through those who lived through this horrible time. I was also terribly ashamed of falling weak at times or even being scared in front of trying situations that were not even a millionth of what these innocent souls have faced during holocaust.

It also brought me face to face with the strength of the human mind. The astounding stories of holocaust survivors were proudly emblazoned on the museum walls. The courage shown by these brave-hearts in face of raging fire was unparalleled and has become a beacon of hope for the entire mankind across the world. The body can withstand only that much, but the mind is capable of withholding a deluge of gigantic proportions and adversities helping the body to stand even as torrential storms rip the body and uproot the self.

The thing called hope is the greatest gift to mankind. It is the only single force that drives the beaten, tortured, torn soul through that dark tunnel into light. In all the mayhem of holocaust, I saw this legacy left behind by millions of people, strong and weak, for generations to come.

The world I was born into is definitely a better place and a better time for the free spirit which we come with. History keeps getting repeated in small doses across times, but by and large, the humankind today believes in live and let live.

I am grateful for this life in this world in this time.   

I am very, very grateful!