Wednesday, February 18, 2015

My First Love

It took me an aeon to actually realise that falling in love  comes naturally , easily .... and quite unknowingly too... :-) :-)
All these years  I cursed the Hindi Films for creating what I thought was an unnecessary hype about " First Love " because how much ever I thought of it , I could not remember the boy/man who was my so called First Love :-)

Yeah ! Yeah ! Memory takes a dip for the worse when one is getting old .... Lekin phir bhi .... If First Love was anything so exceedingly important , then  no matter how many dips the memory takes , or even if it freezes , that precious image had to remain forever intact and eternally exciting.
Not only this , there had to be and "in-built instant recall system" in the brain (or may be the heart in such cases ;-) ) to fetch it back at one's will and desire.
Strangely there seemed none in my case ....
Okay so this proves I was different .... Perhaps I just wasted my delightfully naughty teenage only to get tied up with the responsibilities of  a  married life some years  later :-)
Honestly this sounded a little boring and I sympathised fully with myself on having lost such priceless moments doing nothing !!!

But one fine evening as I sat with my cup of tea listening to an old song of Rafi-Dev Anand combo the memories of my First Love flashed like a rejuvenating sparkle , lighting up the evening with a glow that was both enriching and splendorous  ....
Never for a day was it away from my heart ...
Yeah ! Never away because it was not a memory .
It was a part of my own self ...and  as I grew up and matured , so did the magic of my first love ...its aura engulfed me so affectionately that I feel incomplete without those moments of euphoric joyousness and quiet contentment ....
Those were moments so gloriously colourful .... So divinely soothing .... So eternally stunning !!!

What was my age then ?
A tender thirteen or fourteen I think .
Father was posted at a place which was filled to the brim  with abundant  natural beauty ... And children were not over protected out there  for the simple reason that the place was perfectly safe .
The bungalow we lived in was almost on the edge of a valley ... And about a quarter kilometer away was this place that I would often go to all by myself.

Oh! How immensely I missed  that priceless phase in life  and longed to experience it all over once again right there ....at that very moment with the cup of tea in my hands and the song playing in the background ... :-)

The place where I used to sit evening after evening was a rock on the edge of the mountain . Far Far down below , in the valley there was a small village.
The huts in the village spread out vast and wide covering a large part of the valley . Evening was the time when , as the sun prepared to give us a cool and cozy break,  smoke could often be seen coming from the huts . A sign of  contentment that the families were preparing  a meal and would go to bed with their stomachs full ...
And across the valley rose the mountain range once again .... Behind which the sun had its retiring chamber :-)
I would forget the world around me and stare completely mesmerised by the magic unfolding right before my eyes as the sky changed colours from golden , to bright orange , from bright orange to dark ....and from dark oragne to a poetic mix of orange and grey ....
Why must all this happen so quickly ?
Why could Time not stand still in those divine moments when God  turned painter ?
Why must all that wealth of gold be lost in the darkness within such a short time ....

Oh! How passionately and wholeheartedly  I desire to hold those moments in my arms and sit with them forever !!!
That one picture of  "The Setting Sun" which I used to see almost every evening keeps coming back to me every day even now ...
That glorious sight was created by the Almighty right before me ....and solely for my eyes !!!
What a Heavenly  treat it was .... !!!
Even now I can feel its magic within me ....it gives me goose bumps whenever I think of it ....it makes me smile ...and it makes me happy
That sheer magnificence sure was ,   still is and will always remain my First Love ...
 

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Words undress you

Ever thought about the power of  spoken / written words ?

What you speak and  how you speak gives away your most secret inner self .
Just like friends do.
Remember "A man is known by the company he keeps "

Body language has become an important tool in making personality assessment these days. The language of silence may also be included as an extension one's body language .
But still one cannot deny or even ignore the message conveyed through spoken words.
Body language and  the language of silence is pretty much guess work . Keen and intelligent observers do study gestures and  facial expressions with great attention, and then give their interpretations
But  after a thorough critical analysis what they conclude is  at the end of the day their personal perception .

I read  a lot of Urdu and Hindi poetry  and remember reading this very profound couplet a little while ago :
"(Lafz) kehney waalon ka kuchh nahi jataa
(Lafz ) seh-ney waaley kamaal kartey hain "

Another one that is again unforgettable is:
"Wo ek baat bahot talkh kahi thi uss ne
Baat to yaad nahi yaad hai lehja uss ka"

It is said that one must never speak when angry or tense , the logic being a mind preoccupied with anger and tension is usually not in the right state of taking decisions and judging situations sensibly., which is obvious .
This advice is for the speaker of course.
But the listener is advised to pay attention to people when they speak in anger because it is said that like a drunkard who does not know what he is doing , an angry person usually  pours out his/her heart's inner most emotions in that state of mind , and hence he talks without any mask or pretense , therefore one can conclude that in a fit of anger one usually lashes out all the emotions that they may have kept subdued for better reasons.

Written words become even more authentic expressions of one's mind and heart . It is said that words once spoken cannot be taken back , but they may be forgotten or at times misunderstood too , however the written word is an undisputed  proof of one's thought process.

These days we are seeing large scale degradation in the values and morals including the language that is being used all around , and knowingly or unknowing being encouraged by various kinds of media. 
Obscenity and rudeness seems to be gaining acceptance even in educated and seemingly cultured homes . Civility , respect and decency are becoming extinct in the present social set up .

It is therefore worthwhile to recall that sensuousness of the body and language is not enhanced by nudity or crassness . In fact whoever advised to "never under estimate the seductive power of a decent vocabulary" could not have said it more wisely and correctly.

In the conclusive analysis of behaviour  itt all come down to how someone made you feel through their word , action and attitude and since one's language plays an important part in what  people feel about you  , it is always better to choose your words CAREFULLY ,  RESPECTFULLY and with a HUMANE heart .

Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Hurt sentiment or wounded ego ?

Let us get this clear ....there are no hurt sentiments when a cartoon , a book , a film , a painting , a song  or such other thing gets branded as "offensive"  ....
Think about it .
Most people like me , I mean the masses who have better things on hand than divisive politics to keep them busy , would never even hear of what a few European cartoonists have drawn or what M F Hussain had painted or what Rohington Mistry had written in his book or what Deepa Mehta had shown in her films.
It is actually about egotism and selfishness ...and more dangerously about vested interests mercilessly slicing the  very idea of humaneness
They certainly revel and prosper under  religious , regional , linguistic , cast , color and many many other such sectarian divisions 

It also serves to divert the masses from asking far more relevant  questions ... How boring it would be for the media and the celebrity spokespersons of various parties to talk about water shortage , unemployment , police reforms ,  road  and electricity conditions , sanitation ,  health , poverty ....
Take the viewers of a television show or the reader of a newspaper or even the ordinary net surfer . Would they like to hear such unglamorous questions to which our powerful leaders otherwise also have no answers ?
And what is new about these issues ?
Don't we all know there is inflation , there is poverty , there is unemployment , the gutters often overflow with dirt , the roads have huge potholes and ill managed traffic .... So ? So WHAT my dear ?
We have learned to live with it .... Haven't we ?

But "hurting" so called  religious , lingual , regional , cast "sentiment" also keeps happening .... Then why does it ignite intense violent passion ?
Why does it instigate people to kill (and get killed ) ?
Why can't we learn to live with this "threat" to our existence too ???
Why ... Why ... Why ???