Idyllic holidays.

“Come down from that tree this instant, “ I shouted, “ the milk is getting cold.” A face petulantly peered at me from the leaves…..”how did you know I was here? And I had the milk!”
“Nonsense, you gave the milk to the dog. This is another glass.”
“But how do you know?”
I looked seriously at my daughter, feigning anger and suppressed a smile. The fresh litchi peels and stones on the ground told me where I would find that monkey…and the milk trick had been going on for days….
As I took the empty glass and turned away, I woke in my own room from the dream and had to smile.
How many times had I done this before?
I remember my own childhood when every holiday, more time was spent in water or on trees than on land, I had my favourite nooks, afternoons in the guava trees, specially when they were in season, mornings among the ripe litchis, it was easy to hide among the dense leaves but the pits always gave me away!!!! Pholsha season found me sneaking a ladder around in the afternoon, the branches were too light to take my weight but the laden branches with the tart sweet fruits were irresistible. Similarly in the hot summer sun we’d run about with an ankshi trying to pull down the aamras from the tree that was too high to climb and the fruits too high to reach with a ladder. Raw mangoes were stolen when everyone was sleeping possibly dreaming of ripe yellow juicy mangoes. And that hideout covered in bougainvillea where I crawled in with my story book and communed with the ants and other creepy crawlies and pretended I was miles from human civilization and hence could never hear anyone call specially if there was homework or some chore to be done. Jackie joined me…ah Jackie, The mongrel I adopted when she was just a pup, my faithful companion when I fell off a bicycle or went exploring in the ruins where everyone assured me there lived a snake…..I was as afraid of snakes as anyone else, but I couldn’t admit it, could I? So every now and then I’d venture in and climb up to the top and run back and pretend it was nothing while all the while my heart had been thumping against my chest and Jackie stuck close to me, tail between her legs,
The rest of the time I spent in the water. Swimming mainly, but also floating about and being ship wrecked, that sport Jackie was also dragged into the water, a true test of her devotion to me……poor soul often took to running away whenever she saw me making my “raft” which basically consisted of a plank of wood, an old tyre tube, some rope, a stick and a dirty rag. The game ended very undramatically one day when the rope came undone in the middle of the pond and the wood floated off and we fell into the water and Jackie had to swim frantically to shore. Days and evenings saw me turn lazy somersaults in the water, the sunsets were always colourful against the backdrop of the coconut trees…..and when the moon rose my world was lit with fantasy and dreams.

Of course life went on in the interim. Ma called and called and called. There were meals to be had, holiday homework to be done, tables to be learnt…..but in my world I was the sole explorer, a Peter Pan in uncharted Never Land discovering mermaids, pirates and crocodiles. Sums could wait, so could the world, my idyllic summers were…mine. Sometimes I was joined by cousins, sometimes friends, Often I was the bully defending my territories and making everyone toe the line……one favourite of mine (this was when I was older) was to get some non swimmers in an inflatable raft and assure them I would be there and taking them to the middle of the pond. Once there, I’d launch into this wild story of a monster that hid underwater and every ever so often would bump under the raft….which can be easily duplicated with a knee…..(I was heavily inspired by Stephen King!)…and then I’d pretend I was attacked and dramatically swim off underwater…. soon they would frantically want to go back….My father would order me to “stop that at once”. No I wasn’t all-evil. I helped them back all right and got my share of the scolding due to me but also could not stop smiling inside. After a while I tired of the game. Most people knew about it anyway. Fishing was fun when I used to sit with the rod and the reel but patience is not one of my virtues, never was. Moreover I was slow. It took me a while to realize that the fish I caught was being served for every meal. That’s when I rebelled, never caught a fish again in my life.
We had no TV. We had the outdoors. We had a cycle and a huge garden and all the freedom to explore every inch. We had earthworms, we had fireflies, we had ladybirds and butterflies. We skinned our knees and wiped away the blood without a thought of running to tell our mother for fear of tincture iodine that burns like hell and when we fell we never cried out. I remember being chased around the fields by my aged grandfather who wanted to put tincture iodine on a cut, I remember sneaking into the neighbouring houses from under the fence and always being welcomed with orange squash. In the evenings there would be a simple meal and we’d all sit around the table and share our day. There was warmth and there was conversation. Sometimes, after dinner, we’d play chess or scrabble or just read a book. Often, we would go for long walks in the night and my father would point out the stars and I’d gaze at him in admiration and now I desperately try to remember for that’s where he is but I was too self involved to remember then.
Oh we had school and all that, we had the city to return to but for our holidays we had Ranchi, we had the garden house in Murari Pukur and we had Madhupur, famous for its ghosts but that is another story..
Now I look at my girls and wonder. They have TV, they have computers that can download information in seconds so they never know the joy of hunting through an encyclopedia. They have cell phones that tell me just where they are and when they reached…hell, we ourselves never knew where our adventures would take us and when we were out, well, we were out. They have Nintendos and weird games, they have amusement parks. For us, the Ferris wheel at the Park Circus mela at puja time was enough. And candy floss. And if you teamed it up with pop corn our lives were full. My girls know all about international immigration and customs but they have never dabbled in the sand at the local stream where the clear water reflects every blade of grass and the most dangerous thing was the proverbial quick sand which we luckily never found. They have other dangers; we worry about too much time on the net, social websites, letting them out alone, bus rides, accidents and pedophiles. It’s not that the fears were less when we were small, every family had at least one pervert and we knew we had to steer clear of them. No, no one told us, we just knew. And we grew up despite all this and never thought about it….it’s just something you took in your stride.
We had the terrace, we had kites, we had the skies and we were our own masters. We had endless hours of making tea out of mud and water and making a mess. We played with our imaginations, and we bent them to our will.
Yes, times have changed. Holidays are organized; you don’t just all pile into a car and hit the road. There is no garden house to go to. When we go on holiday it is important whether there is a swimming pool and/or a TV, my girls have never been inside a pond. No, I don’t blame anyone, and as they say, the old order changeth….the new has many wonders too. It’s just that once in a while I feel nostalgic and wish those idyllic days were once more in my fist and I had my entire life to re live them!
C’est la vie!

Bengali

Bengali or Bangla is an eastern Indo-Aryan language. It is native to Bengal, and about 230 million users speak it all over the world as no matter where you go, you are bound to find a few Bengalis. Along with other Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, Bengali evolved circa 1000-1200 AD from the Magadhi Prakrit, a vernacular form of the ancient Sanskrit language. (I got that from Wikipedia.....so it must be right.)
Till here, I am okay. To re quote Amitabh Bacchan, I can talk Bangla, I can walk Bangla, I can dress Bangla, I can also read Bangla but for God’s sake don’t ask me to WRITE Bangla….or explain what I just read. My mother always said it was deliberate and for some reason our generation is proud to say, “I don’t know my mother tongue …”, but that’s not true. Right from our early days we are taught our ABCs. By the time we get to the Bengali alphabet our minds are so congested with apples, elephants and the like that the elegance of the letters elude us. My mom also said that if you are good at one language you can also be good at another……she is a wise lady and I do not to want to sound disrespectful, but I also did German for a while and sucked at that too!
Now, so many years away from school, I’ve been wondering what it was that really made us so averse to the language? We are not from a generation that only spoke English at home, we heard the language all day all around us…..what was it then, that prevented us from loving the language? After all there are many wonderful words that cannot be expressed in any other language…like ‘nyaka’ or even ‘eeeshh’, as made famous by Aishwarya Rai in Devdas, (only she made it sound like she wanted to go pee or something…..in the translation, the words are lost……..as ‘bitch’ or ’shit’ doesn’t quite cover it…….and I would have to say a paragraph to call someone “nyaka” in English!). I had the dubious good fortune of learning Bengali as my first language till Class XII…under the West Bengal Board, that means you know the language like the back of your hand, swirl it in your morning milk and drink it and know all about the history of the language too. And moreover, you have to pass, for it is a primary subject. Now when I was in school there was a lot of tension in the house about this……my father insisted I needed help, mother’s eyes would water when I asked her the meaning of a word for the hundredth time, grammar had me running to my grandfather who would consult a huge dictionary….and well, any morning of any Bengali exam would see me brooding quietly into my breakfast and praying for salvation from a God, any God, I insisted hitherto did not exist!!!
Somehow I passed. I had the distinction of writing Chaitanya in place of Chandidas because I had no clue of the latter, and I wrote ‘jatra’ as a journey instead of a local play but….yes, by some stroke of luck the Board of Examiners ensured I would not make a mess of the language again! I barely passed but the ordeal was over.
In West Bengal, Bengali was compulsory in college, is it any wonder then, that I went away to Pune to study……?
Anyway that took care of that. Or so I thought. I never thought then that years later, I would return to Calcutta and actually marry a Bengali. Thankfully, his Bengali isn’t THAT much better, but we get along. Or rather, we did. Until our daughters were in school.
Now one reason why I put the girls in my old school is that they now have shifted to the ICSC Board and I was very adamant that they would not have to go though the rigors of a Madhyamik Bengali. Yes, that was one of my primary concerns when choosing a school for them…..but lo and behold, here we are again, those same text books that had tortured me, the same tongue twisting words and those pencil breaking spellings…..I hesitantly asked Isha’s Bengali teacher about this, since Bengali was a second language etc etc etc, I hummed and hawed and reached my point. The teacher very brightly smiled at me and said that they were maintaining the standard of the school and instilling the children with a love for the language……Uh oh! I think I saw a strain in her eyes when I quietly asked her if it was working…….
Now my point is this, if you want some one to love a language, talk to them in it, read to them, sing songs, enact plays……..make it interesting for them. Why on earth insist on correct spellings and difficult sounding words that do not mean what they sound like or sound like what you think they mean and more importantly, grammar? When Isha was in Class III, lost in a deluge of Bengali words like "kingkortorbo bimurho" and "pratyutpannamotitto",(next time you meet a Bengali speaking individual, why don't you ask what it means?) I surrendered. One bright day I shuddered at the text book and wrote to the principal asking her to appoint someone to teach Bengali to my girls after school hours. Two years have passed, she is still searching while I have been tearing out my hair in frustration. The other day someone said “hey, your hair’s really thinned out….”, I sweetly smiled and said it’s acid indigestion from the Bengali words I seem to be regurgitating from my schooldays! I have bought English to Bengali, Bengali to English, Bengali to Bengali dictionaries but they don’t seem to be helping much…..the nuances of this sweet language escape me every time.
Is it any wonder then, that when ever I call the girls to do some Bengali, they develop a runny stomach….they hide in the loo and keep flushing the john till I drag them out and make them sit down. Then they cannot find their pens, the text book has vanished and a rat made a hole in the exercise book. I wait till they run out of excuses and we begin. At the end of the hour, I have a glazed look on my face, the dictionaries have been pawed at for the umpteenth time and I have called at least five people for intricacies of the language which my friends in turn ask their mothers to answer!!!The other day I went to a Crossword sale and bought only Bengali story books for the girls, books I thought were easy to read and interesting. I told them they were fun and would help them learn the language…two days later those books could not be found.....I was told that the maid reads them! They ultimately turned up from behind the old newspapers while my daughters continue reading their English “trash”.
Sure, I love the Bengali language, it is sweet sounding and expressive…..please, dear God, help my children love it too.
More importantly, LET THEM PASS!!!!

Little Angels

When my daughters were born, I was thrilled. For several reasons.
But then everyone exclaimed how lucky I was to be blessed with two little angels…..”not like boys,” they said, “ you’ll see girls are such an asset, you’ll have peace and quiet and there’s nothing quite like daughters to heal a mother’s soul….”
Ever skeptical, I resolutely went through the enigmatic stages of breast feeding, weaning, bottle feeding, diapers, potty training, the mashed vegetables, the stage when every time I sat to eat, one or the other would want to go to the loo, the stage when all I ever got in a restaurant was mismatched leftovers of food I did not want to eat…and waited for them to turn into the little angels I had been told they would become.
I’m still waiting. The girls are now almost 10 and almost 11 but there is not even the slightest hint of a halo on either head. Even if I squint at them without my contact lens when they are in the shower….no. Not even an illusory soap induced rainbow like aura on their head, much less a golden one!!!!
At a party another mother sighed, “you are lucky you have girls, I have two boys, you can’t imagine the noise and the mess……” I invited her then and there to visit my house. Somehow I manage a semblance of order in the rest of the house, but their room always, but always, looks like a hurricane just passed by. I seriously suspect a ghost lives in that room. I go home from Court after a long day. The cupboard doors are open, flapping about in the wind, clothes are strewn on the bed, books are all over the floor, some naked headless limbless relics of Barbie dolls stick out of the toy basket and the study tables resemble a kabadi khana. And if that’s not enough, a roller skate is strategically placed on the floor so that any unsuspecting entrant will slide halfway across the room to cause serious bodily harm or at least stub the toe.
I yell…two would be “angels” peer at me after some delay…..no one knows how the room is messy. “But Ma I had closed the cupboard door, Ishadidi must have taken out her clothes….” and “those books we don’t even read, how would I know how it got there, it must be Amisha…..” Sigh. And we don’t have a cat so it must be the ghost!
So I order them to clean up……for ten minutes there are a lot of “stop its” and “shut ups” and “Ma, she’s not helping”…..and then silence. A while later, when my nerves are ready to face it again, I go to their room again. The cupboards are closed but I do not open them for fear of a landslide and I can see Barbie’s limbs peeping from under the cupboard but I settle for it. Because I now have another battle to face…..
Studies. (In the interim, my husband and I have had dinner, he’s gone down to his Chambers, the teacher has made them do their homework, but the pivot joint that joins the skull to the spine has been saved for me…...)
Now I seriously have a complaint for Kapil Sibal. And every teacher, educationist, professor and all those knowledgeable souls who are in any way connected to “educating” the “future of India…” Why on earth do I have teach my kids all those things that I thought I was over and done with quarter of a century ago? And I know mothers who are very knowledgeable and informed…..they dedicate themselves to inspecting the child’s bag when the child returns from school. They attend every parent teacher meeting and school discussion and have a network of other mothers to fall back on when the child is unwell or…(God forbid,) forgets to copy the homework….. I am not one of them. I do not have one single iota of patience in my body. I do not know my daughter’s friends’ mothers, I have no retentive powers when it comes to the alimentary canal of a frog and I seriously do not care that the people in Jammu speak the Dogri language. Yes, I am a self contained selfish individual who does not want to fill her head with useless bits of information…can you imagine, a judge asks me “and what do you have to say to that, Mrs Banerjee?” and after a slight hesitation, I say “ a baby cockroach is called a nymph, the process of growing up is called molting…” Yes, that’s one of my recurring nightmares!
Anyway so there I go. Everything from fractions to HCFs to un enchanting Bengali words that have me frantically reaching for a dictionary to Black Beauty’s rescue from a fire to the fact that Jain holy books were written in an obsolete language called Ardhamagadhi (I think!), those are all saved for me….. I study, I write, I learn poems and I feel like I am back in school again.
I keep telling my husband that I was not made for this life. I should be lazing indolently on my bed in a chilled room all day, servants running at my beck and call and have pet lap dogs who I will cuddle once in a while for diversion…..I’ve even thought of names for the dogs….gin and tonic….and I will call them ginny and toni and when the kids come from school, I'll wave a perfectly manicured finger at them and they shall silently retire to their rooms! Once in a while I shall attend Kitty parties and shop for diamonds…….
Only that is not to be. Here I am stuck in an endless world of climatic zones and bone marrow and hominids. After I have finished battling them with the studies, I badger them till they spend some time at the piano, banging away tunelessly and shout at them while they fuss over dinner. After all my orchestrations I am free. Only it’s usually well past ten o clock, I may have work to do but I am exhausted….. I do what I must and quietly sneak into bed and dream of baby tadpoles wriggling about in court!

Yes, I know my life is full of light, laughter and sunshine. I know my children are the daughters of Life’s longing for itself and I house their bodies and not their souls or something like that as Kahlil Gibran has wisely said. And I know they are little angels in waiting…….
Right now only I am waiting.

Non application of mind.

I am often accused of a very serious crime: Non application of mind.
Take this for example…..
One morning when I was busy with yet another mindless crossword, I get this call: “you know ML Roy?” without waiting for a reply he continued, “the shop near triangular park.”
“Yes, yes,” I replied, I didn’t want to sound like a fool.
“Can you go there and find out if they have a rain shhhr shhhr…….” The cordless crackled.
“Eh, can you say that again?”
“you know a rain shrrr shrr…crackle crackle…shop…..”
“Eh”, only I said it in Bengali and as any Bengali will tell you its impossible to reproduce in any language, much less in a limited language like English…
“ok, don’t bother, I can see you are not thinking…I’ll do it myself.”
“no, no, you tell me once more, I can’t hear you”
“it’s ok,. You don’t have to do anything, I will manage…”
Click.
So I call my husband and narrate the conversation.
I learn that ML Roy is a renowned sanitary ware shop. (I had no idea, it’s not like I go running about buying commodes everyday…..)
And I was told:
“rain shower, cant you understand rain shower? Couldn’t you figure it out? You just do not apply your mind.”
Ah.
“so should I go and get one?”
“Do what you want, don’t disturb me, I’m busy.”
Bang.
So I look up the yellow pages, call up some sanitary ware shops, find out if they have a rain shower and arrange to pick it up and have it installed.
Now if anyone asks, I am a minor expert in rain showers, they have an arm and can be square, round or rectangular. The sizes vary too. And the water falls like big fat rain drops…hence the name.
The more I live the more I learn.

Or take this instance. My mother calls.
“you don’t talk to me anymore……you know the other day I called the girls and they just returned from school and they were having curd and rice…can you imagine, only curd and rice.” (Sure, Ma, on a hot day at 3 in the afternoon, it’s a crime) “they need nutrition, they are not getting enough nutrition, you want them to be tall…and when you were small I always ensured you ate fish curry and rice, it makes your brains open up” (no Ma, didn’t work on me, either the height or the brains) “and they should have eggs, have you seen what proteins they have and you don’t buy any fruits for them, when will you learn about a balanced diet and you give them that worthless maggi blah blah blah ….” I resign myself and listen…words beget words, so I shut up and listen…or continue with whatever I am doing with a few mumbles, then my ears perk up “…..haven’t been paying the rent”
“Whoa, stop, what rent, who has to pay?”
“Obviously the tenant, you think I’m talking about the girls, you just don’t like to think.
Ah. There we go again.

Or take this.
We’re at this fancy shindig party and everyone is busy kissing everyone’s cumulative backsides….we have to attend these social dos a lot. And I spy some friends in a corner, and make a beeline for them. On the way I have probably ignored the chief guest and looked through the host but I am undaunted. I have my drink in my hand and turn with the latest gossip that I heard on the way to the party, “You know, X’s wife ran away with her gynecologist…that old pervert ….” I feel a hand on my arm. I hear silence. X is standing next to me pretending to admire some flowers. My friends take me away. My husband says “you just don’t look around you and you don’t think.”
Oops!

So the next formal do I go to, I resolve to be quiet. But what does a gal do when she’s decided to shut up? She drinks. One thing I’ve been blessed with is a strong constitution when it comes to alcohol. I can put away amazing quantities and not appear drunk. I am a quiet drunk. So I quietly sms my husband, skip dinner, or forget all I have eaten and go home. Only in the privacy of the car do I admit I may have had too much. Hubby grunts, drives home and sends me to bed. I lie in the dark and think I’ve escaped this one…….
Oh no. Next morning I’m looking at life though a jar of Vaseline, my tongue feels like it has been scraping paint off the walls and a marching band is playing in my head and my husband says, “you were drunk last night” (Bingo!) “ at these formal places you have to act like the other ladies and chit chat in the corner…you don’t think about these things.” I groan and say I’ll fight about it tomorrow; I’m just not in the mood today. Thankfully, sweetly, he gives up.

At the Bar Library, I’m the last to understand the bawdy jokes. I’m the one who gets kicked under the table when I launch on yet another embarrassing story and the one who’s glared at for speaking out of turn.
I believe I am at an age when I can say what I want and get away with it…because by now anyone who knows me knows what I am and the ones who don’t can go hang themselves for all I care!

A lost cause? Or just guilty as charged?

Mornings

“Ma, Ma, can I not have my egg today? And there’s ‘shor’ in my doodh…yuck…and I said I don’t like Complan…can’t you get Milo? Please Ma. And Ma, Suhasini wants to have a dog, can we get one too? At least a kitten? And you know Suhasini’s father said he cannot teach her Sanskrit…I told her that you once got 3 out of 100 in Sanskrit. …do you think Miley Cyrus wears baby dolls to bed? When will you get me those socks, Ma, you know the ones I wear have become too small. Ma, you are not listening…I said I need bigger socks…Ma, Amisha is sleeping at the table. And I need chartpaper, don’t worry I’ll take six rupees from the tray and buy it myself in school. And Ziggydidi said when Amisha’s friends come on Sunday I can go and watch ‘Legally Blonde’ with her because Amisha’s friends are sooo naughty and VERY irritating and I do not want to be here… and you know all my friends are afraid of Amisha and her friends, you do like Selina Gomez, you remember her, the girl in that movie we saw at the hospital…and Ma, yesterday Amisha and Subhika made Ziggydidi chase them in the rain..do you thing Ziggydidi has a cold today? And NOBODY scolds Amisha,, even you don’t tell her anything…I AM eating…and you need to get another toothpaste, something minty. I like minty. And where’s my badge, AMISHA where is my badge, oh yes, it’s in my yesterdays uniform. Ma, do you think I can also call Tatjana and Suhasini on Sunday? Hey, have I taken my Arith CW book….ah there it is….And you said I could have chewing gum, so where is it? And my friends loved your cake, can we have brownies? Yuck you gave me sandwiches again today……Can I watch TV when I get home……..”
That’s Isha for you in the morning…a non-stop prattle jumping from topic to topic that goes on and on till she’s out the door. I just grunt in desperation while Amisha sits and groans and wishes she was back in bed…But a thousand grunts or shut-ups cannot quell my elder daughter’s tirade…. Not being a morning person, I stumble to the kitchen to make their tiffin and save for a few “shut up"s and “hurry up"s, bury my face in the morning Sudoku and wait for the storm to pass….In the 50 minutes it takes for them to have breakfast, get ready and leave for school, I am a wreck, praying for quiet…. Amisha sits at the breakfast table staring at the food and willing it to disappear until one yell from me gets her moving…Then she wants to jump back into bed and pretend it’s a Sunday….
I growl. I grunt… I yell. I resolutely tie their hair, pin their badges, ensure that they have brushed their teeth (Amisha’s the slacker) and mumble a quiet “bye”. They leave and peace descends…..softly, and I have ten more minutes before my day begins……..

Faith....or faithlessness.

Faith is never random. Faith is universal. It's just that our specific methods for understanding it is arbitrary. Some of us believe in salvation or nirvana, others in heaven, yet others believe that they shall go to heaven only by taking the lives of innocent 'infidels' along with them. (Ah, the roads to destruction are too many to be counted.) And for how many decades have people been fighting for their own faiths? Trying to get others to believe what they believe.....why do they do it, I wonder, is it so important to be multitude? Why do we not realize that in the end we are all just searching for a truth that is far greater than ourselves.
Why do we have to belong? Why do others want us to belong? I admire people who have faith...I have seen what faith can do to you...walk bare feet up a craggy mountain or wear sack cloth and ashes and sleep on stone or whip yourself bloody....it's all faith. It's what one person believes over all others that propels him to follow some strange customs or rituals put in place by some perverted individuals that thought only in punishing our bodies do we attain some degree of truth. So I really admire all those who pray, who believe that God will rescue them from evil, real or imagined. And they organize themselves together and go about their business in the name of religion...
It's fine by me till here. You have your faith and I have mine, you go your way and I am free to believe in the lack of a "way" and make my own. Yet, sadly, that is not so. Right from our childhood, we are required to belong. In school, I got into trouble because I left the space for religion blank. I ultimately compromised by writing my father's religion and not my own.....At every stage of our lives we have to fill up the blank for religion. We are even judged by what we fill. I do wish people would quit that. For most people it is automatic, they are brought up to believe what their fathers believed, no questions asked. In my case, I came from a family where my mother was a non practicing Christian who went to Church maybe once a year for Midnight Mass and my fathers was a non practicing Hindu who did not believe in the fuss of rituals and prayers. We had no deities or puja rooms in our house, we were given information on both religions and given the freedom to decide without actually being told to do so. True to the tag of being a "difficult" child, I chose neither. For a while I toyed with the idea that there is no God but even in my addled brain I knew that there was, however, a truth far bigger than ourselves. So my God does not smile beatifically from a cross nor does she stick her tongue out at me from the top of decapitated heads....my God exits in peace within myself without any form or image. Where I dwell is my God. As I think so is He (or She or It for that matter!).
But that does not solve my problems with rituals, I do not believe in them. I refuse to bow down before an image or idol or go on a mindless fast be it for my family or anyone else. But I do so quietly for I have no wish to hurt the beliefs or feelings or others. I do not feel the need to shout what I think from rooftops nor do I want people to understand me. I am at peace with myself and wish everyone would just do everyone else the same favour.
But no. We have killing, fighting and lectures in the name of religion. We have all kinds of evil just because everyone wants others to cut off their tails just as they have. THAT is what makes me angry. And frustrated.
Faith does not protect you. Medicines and airbags, these are the things that protect you, and that too not always. Ask the 18 year old who died in the car accident, the Tsunami victims, or the children dying in the earthquakes. No, God does not protect you. Intelligence does. And enlightenment. One should put their faith in something with tangible results. How long has it been since someone walked on water? Or balanced a mountain on a single finger? Modern miracles belong to science...computers, medicines, vaccines; we have instruments to warn us of dangers, natural or otherwise, yet nothing prepares us for the calamities that follow.
And we cling to faith.
Still.
Like drowning men we cling, yet so few of us have faith in ourselves. In our own strength, in our own ability to make a difference.
I believe that doing one's duty or karma is enough. "When you live by the highest you know, however it turns out, it turned out right" (Richard Bach). So I do what I have to. When required to teach my girls, I do it although it means re learning Bengali again. I ensure there is food on the table (and beer in the fridge!). I do my best for my clients and solicitors when I am acting on their behalf. I even go to the puja room at 4 am to cut fruits for a God I do not believe in. It's all a part of my life, of who I am. My thoughts I keep to myself. My beliefs too.
Does it really matter, that I do not "belong"?