Goodbye 2014

The year that’s just about to finish has been a mixed one for me. Each one of the bitter sweet experiences offered me a gift: a lesson that would make me a wiser, and hopefully, a better person. Recalling some of them-

January:

I felt the repercussions of this month’s events longer than I wanted to, as they were a lot more bitter than sweet.  But they taught me to remember that sometimes one life time is not enough to know people. Human beings have complex emotions and deeply embedded memories that can make them behave uncharacteristically leaving one wondering if one knew them at all!

On a brighter note, January was the month when I also learnt to value my loved ones more and to never take their presence in my life for granted.

February:

The highlight of this month for me has always been my daughter’s birthday. And every day since has confirmed what I had been suspecting for some time – that the teenage begins a lot earlier than 13.

March:

Oh…I was busy with exams-you guessed it-my daughter’s! And I learnt that most mothers, and some fathers, go through exam blues twice in their life – first when they are students, and later along with their children.

April:

I rediscovered my friends in April and learnt that some people never change; or rather that one tends to behave the same way with one’s friends, regardless of age. And perhaps this is why one feels younger and more carefree around them. They may not be your close confidantes, but their presence and support means a lot.

May:

This was the month 33% of Indian voters chose one man from 336 Lok Sabha seats: Narendra Modi. The man and his charisma, not to forget his rhetoric, won over concerns of hidden agendas and polarization and one of the immediate beneficiaries of this win was the stock market investor.

Coming to what I learnt from this event, well, I learnt that India was a lot more prepared to shed its secular image than ever before and that the next few years may take the economy forward, but they may also make this country much less tolerant than it is today.

June:

June means summer vacations and a visit back home to spend a few weeks with parents. It also means meeting siblings and getting into arguments with them over small matters just the way it was decades back. The lesson: the more one changes, the more one remains the sameJ .

July-September:

These three months were special for the whole family what with my brother-in-law getting married. We were preparing to welcome someone in our family and amid all the important details that needed to be worked out, what worried me the most was – What am I gonna wear? Well, women will be women!

October:

The month of my birth – a lot of my well wishers, especially the younger lot, have been reminding me for the past few years how late 30s means the road goes steadily downhill for me. But I happily disagree with them as I feel a lot more confident and happier today than I did ever before. I have less insecurities than I did in 20s and have more time to do what I enjoy doing. In fact, I truly believe my best years are ahead of me and this realization itself calls for celebration!

November:

November saw the rise of ISIS and though I did not feel any tangible impact, in all my discussions with friends, religion took center stage. It was scary to see the changing attitude of even so-called liberals among my friends towards one particular religion. I wish people could realize that criminals and terrorists have no religion and religion itself has nothing to do with anything tangible. It is simply food for soul.

December:

This month Vikram and I celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary. We spent the evening celebrating with friends and relatives and it was fun for the most part. While many of our friends and relatives had kind words and wishes for us, there were also those who wondered how we had managed to come so far; and who among the two of us should take the credit for it. Neither of us had any answers for them but I do hope we can baffle them year after year!

December reinforced what I have believed all along: everything that’s worth celebrating in life needs to be celebrated in your heart!

Diwali: A celebration of homecoming!

Publishing it a year late...the message remains the same:)

This year too, Diwali was as special as it always is. The cleaning..dusting….decorating starting at least a week before the actual day of the festival. The rush to get everything in order for the evening Puja, lighting of the lamps, cooking the dinner feast…getting all decked up for the inevitable family photograph. Everything was the same save one. Never before had I asked myself the real reason I celebrate Diwali. Oh, we all pay lip service to the story of the victory of good over evil but that’s not the reason I celebrate Diwali…it’s just the right reason to give to the uninitiated firang…or the new kids on the block (read today’s generation).

I am a follower of Jainism by birth and practice. And by a celestial co-incidence, the new moon of the month of Kartik is also the day our lord Tirthankara Mahavir attained Moksha or Nirvana. So, as a devout Jain, do I celebrate Diwali for the above reason? It will be a lie to say I do.

So what really is the reason I and scores of others like me celebrate the day with such fanfare. Am I really doing it as a religious thing or is there a broader perspective that I have never really thought about. A simple and joyous piece of news answered the question for me. My parents who live in the north eastern part of the country were resigned to spending the festival without any of their four children. All of us sisters are settled in the north and my brother, their only son, is in faraway Ethiopia.

Two days before Diwali, my parents got the news that their son is coming home to spend Diwali with them. The joy of having their son home for the occasion was the highlight of the week for them. When I got to know this, my question was answered. It is the spirit of homecoming and togetherness that we celebrate on this day; it is the reason why there is such a rush on every festival of every religion…why the trains and flights are all booked to hilt. And why there is a Diwali in every home on any day that the family is finally together, on the day the birds who flew away from the nest long back return home.

Oh yes, we celebrate the homecoming of lord Rama after spending fourteen years away from his family. And yes, we do celebrate the Nirvana of Lord Mahavira….his soul reaching its final abode….homecoming of a different kind but homecoming all the same!

 

 Happy Diwali Everyone! 

Mother's Love For Her Child - Is It Selfless

My take on mother’s love

Here, I am reproducing something I wrote a long time back, in fact around sixteen years back, while I was pursuing my Masters in Business Administration.  For a long time, what I wrote then made me feel guilty, I mean who questions the motive behind a mother’s love…surely not any right thinking person! Since then, I have become a mother, that too one who gave up a promising career to make sure at least one of the parents could be there for the child. Obviously, judging a mother and becoming a mother are two different things so when years later, I revisited the pages of my personal diary and found the below entry, I decided to put my thoughts on paper again, on the same topic but this time with greater knowledge and experience and the credibility lent by the fact that I had become a mother myself!

21^st May, 1998

I realize that what I am saying will be considered sacrilege by many, however, after thinking about it deeply, it would be dishonest not to admit my views on the so called ultimate in selfless love: a mother’s love for her child.

A mother’s love for her child is not selfless in the very fact that it is the result of a very justifiable belief that the child is her - belonging to her, indeed a part of her. And humans have a tendency of loving, caring, nourishing, and cherishing all they can call their own. Which is why, I dare say that such a love is at best, the most respect worthy of all selfish loves, pardon the term selfish loves as no language is rich enough to perfectly describe emotions!

But then, what do I consider selfless love? I have always felt that for love to be selfless, the person has to be unrelated or detached from the recipient of that love. Again, I may seem to be using contradictory terms…how can you love and be detached at the same time? Well, I think love is selfless only when the emotion doesn’t have any personal connotation. So, if you are prepared to take any risk, leave all comforts and go through any kind of hardship for a child, you really are ultimately saving yourself from the hurt and guilt that any parent goes through when the child suffers. How is it selfless then?

20^th Apr, 2010

While reading what I wrote almost twelve years back about selfless love and motherhood, I am moved to adding my thoughts on the matter, now that I am a mother myself. Do I love my daughter only because she is mine? Do I fear only for her safety….and not of the thousand others who are dying of hunger, diseases, bullets, and even plain old carelessness on the part of their wards?

While these questions are difficult, but truth be told, I am no beauty queen facing the judges at the pageant and the answer to these is as clear as day to me. However selfish I may sound, I fear the most for my daughter because she is mine. Yes, I care about the others too, the morning newspaper with its many reports on child abuse, accidental deaths, etc. do bring tears to my eyes, but I must admit that till I actually go out and do something about it, these tears don’t matter!

So, yes, I guess I still stand by what I wrote back the – A mother’s love for her child is not selfless – rather it is the most connected with self because it’s born out of it.

The Case for Death Penalty

The Case for Death Penalty

As I opened the newspaper in the morning, I was struck by the headlines, that our President has rejected the seventeenth, and the last, pending clemency petition filed by the death row convicts in India. He has the dubious distinction of being the most efficient President as far as the studying and rejection of mercy petitions go. It was just yesterday, that I had finished reading a novel by one of the well known crime and thriller novelists of our times and it dealt with the execution of an innocent man in the state of Texas, USA and its aftermath. The narrative was fast paced yet moving and it raised questions about the justification of state sponsored revenge killing. I was still debating the issue with myself when I woke up to this news.

As a devout follower of Jainism, I have been raised on the principle of non-violence and the role of seeking and granting forgiveness as a means to achieving peace within. These principles form a major part of the daily prayers by every practicing Jain and I am no exception. Having said that, it would be a lie to claim that I, and many others like me, have attained that level of spiritual superiority where we never seek retribution. Indeed, like all other mere mortals, I have always endorsed the killing of those who commit heinous crimes: torturing, raping and murdering women and children; killing elderly in cold blood; planting bombs that result in loss of hundreds of lives. Not once have I stopped to ponder over the question of its legitimacy. However, forced to try and form an opinion on the subject, I would list the following reasons against death penalty:

·         Legitimacy of death sentence as just punishment for heinous crimes is derived not from credible studies based on its impact on crime prevention, but on the basis of the majority view. True justice is served when the punishment prevents more such incidents in the society.

·         A civilized society should not believe in killing for revenge, rather it should lay stress on rehabilitating criminals.

·         No person is born a criminal. Most of those who commit crimes against humanity are those who have been victims of such crimes in their childhood and thus, need our empathy.

·          While on the surface, a death sentence granted on the principle of ‘rarest of rare’ crimes seems to be justified, it does raise questions on what, if any, gives one human the right to judge and kill another.  

·         Even if we can somehow justify death as a punishment for certain crimes that involve extreme torture of the victim as in the case of rapes and child abuse followed by murder, is is not true that death by electric shock or injecting lethal chemicals is too easy for the convict, as opposed to solitary confinement for the rest of his natural life?

While all of the above arguments, whether originating from a sense of morality or anger, have merit, the case for death penalty is no less strong:

• Sometimes, it is the only way to bring closure to the families and friends of the victims. They need this act of revenge to move on in their lives.
• Death is a deterrent for most, if not all, criminals. If this was not the case, there would be no need for last minute appeals and clemency petitions by death row convicts. Also, it serves as a deterrent, to those serving life terms, to keep away from such crimes when they are out of prison.
• Most of the convicts, in the rarest of rare cases, do not feel remorse at their actions. Indeed, in cases involving acts of terrorism, the convicts are proud of the killings.
•  Those convicted of brutal rapes and murder, tend to commit such crimes as a force of habit, even after serving years in jail for these crimes. Society is served better by giving such criminals the harshest possible punishment.
• The civilized society fulfills its obligations by giving the accused a fair trial. Once convicted of a rare and heinous crime, the taxpayer should not be made to bear the expense of keeping the convict alive for the rest of his natural life.

While these arguments can go on and on, certain incidents like execution of innocent men and women make us question our right and the ability of the state to hand out true justice to all. Even if there is one person unjustly convicted and put to death, then there is a case for abolition of capital punishment. On the other hand, some incidents of killing, mass murder and torture end up shaking our collective sense of security, belief in humanity, and indeed in God, to the extent that the society, as a whole, gets closure only by making sure that the accused can, in no way, come back and  inflict more suffering on it.