Navratra

 Certain days have their own unique charm. Ashwin Shudh Pratipada, that is, the Beginning of the Navratra, belongs to that "D Day" kinda category. It augurs in the festive feel, beginning wih the Dasara to Diwali, and beyond.

Suddenly, the morning feels fresh. There is a nip in the very air, pleasantly cold, what with the rains in the retreat mode. The ambience is in the Go Green mood. Multi coloured flowers are in the bloom. Everywhere you have the small kiosks selling the navaratra special pooja essentials. Even when you are miles away from Bengal, that zingy zeal feel full of conches blowing,   castanets clinking fills the festive ambience.

Like the Bhadrapada Gauri Pooja, this Celebration is colourful in every way. Why, these days, women wear the colour of the day. The 'groupfies' are everywhere, on the social media, in the newspapers, and what have you.

Every Navratra, Aai used to clean up every nook and  corner of the home, brighten up every utensil. The home  would thus wear a happy smile. The "til", the sesame, flower garland for the goddess was compulsory. Their fragile beauty glowing golden yellow would give the devhara a priceless, precious feel, what with the samai, the holi diya, glowing mildly for twenty four by nine till the Dasara day.

Both of them, Aai-Papa, would keep the fast. Aai loved to celebrate the " hadaga". She used to draw the rangoli elephant on the wooden board, the "pat" (we still have it), decorate it beautifully with colours and flowers, prepare a tasty menu for the "khirapat", the special prasad, every evening. 

Sure, all these rituals are pretty. I think they have a deep meaning, too. The " hadaga", for example, teaches every young girl the worth of togetherness, of sharing. In fact, I would like to argue that not only is it an agrarian festivity celebrating the about to ripen kharip crop, imitated in the very  structure of the navaratra pooja, wherein you literally sow seeds that sprout, but it is also a celebration of the very feminine principle.

Any introductory text of sociology, political economy, ecology or archaeology would tell the truth universally established that women were the primeval farmers. They recognised the value, the worth of growing crops over the nomadic existence in and out of caves.

Even when the patrilineal, patriarchal set up took the control away from women, they were an integral part of the agrarian mode of production. Even today, in small farm based households, the woman of the family has a huge lot to contribute. Like her care-n-service duties within the family, such productivity is not part of any GDP as it is non-paid.

The navaratra festivities are actually a celebration, it can so easily be argued, of these primordial praxes. In the current digitalised days, women are more and more getting reduced to use-n-throw 'items'. The "dashhara", the doing away of the ten faces of Ravana, should be the killing of the ten and millions of harrassment modes of women!

Pratima@ yatra naryastu pujyante, that is, where women are prayed to, not preyed on!

Enter the net

 The other day, the Wapp/Facebook/Snapchat(?) trio was down for six hours, and the whole world was  up. In protest. As for myself, initially, I did not realise the plight because I do not use the Facebook as four faces booked of mine are playing hide-n-seek there! I just do not have the patience to delete any three, send friendship requests from there to here, answer questions about my own veracity and authenticity. As if one does not have to unnecessarily suffer enough of that Fate to `face' it  in the virtual wor(l)d, too!

Soon, however, three wapp messages, rather important, refused to move. At the other, receiving, end of these non-bugdgees were hi- fundoo people, not the ones frivolously playing at the block/unblock game. Well, my data provider has long back washed off any  responsibility whatsoever. In the service office main branch, I was most helpfully told to follow their own example, and switch on-n-off the device till the data pack dutifully chose to grace the screen. That sureshot panacea could not revive the moribund mobile. Instead gurgled the Google Assistant, "How can I help you?"  And thus I came to know the origin of the issue.

Well, I do not exactly belong to the species of the  social media addict. Any day any time, I prefer a book to the Wapp University. Thanks be to the Marshall McLuhan warning, I refuse to be the 'medium' of my 'message'. 

On the whole though, given the exponentially exploding digital revolution, it looked as if wor(l)ds were paralysesd. `Breaking news' tactics had to revert to old-fashioned (re)sources. The zeroes in the count of the amount M/S Zuckerberg lost were so very many that one wondered he did not the lead the leak of/in the Pandora box. 

Soon all was quiet on the wapped front, but it made me realise how `netted' we are, whether we like and/or want it or not. Indeed enter a `dragonet' phenomenon it is. A regular maze you cannot avoid even at your peril, and there is not any Ariadne's thread guiding you out of it. Mind you, I am not being an orthodox bibliophile, lost though I am to the charm and nostalgia of the genuine communication of the pre-emoji era of likes and upvoting.

My problem is with the faces that most all book on such sites so much so that it looks like a wor(l)d of mirrors masking each other endlessly. Such political correctness mistakes opinionated, half-baked propaganda of all possible varieties for the real event, the genuine feel, the intimate togetherness. Even when I use the social media minimally, often I get the feel of living in the Orwellian Ministry of Love guided by doublethink wherein one is metamorphosing weirder than Kafkaesque Samsa. Long live post truth chimeras of veracity!

pratima@Enter the net wherein half lies are truths and language is emoji's and abbeviations so as to often mean/comm(un)i(ca)t(e) meaninglessly.

Therapy

 Now that the Corona pandemic seems to be a little under control, other major diseases seem to be getting the attention they deserve. One such dis-ease absolutely to be addressed immediately is Alzheimer's.

It is the deadliest, I would say. It steals the very selfhood, the real identity of the elderly patient, most often women. It is a kind of autoimmune disease, so to say. In a world greying fast, therapy against it was the  urgent most need of the hour.

Those of you who have been regularly reading my blog (I am not exactly kidding or flattering myself when I say most humbly that indeed there ARE some readers who have thus chosen to bless me and mine!) would remember that on September 22, in the blog Post entitled "Fathoming Forgetfulness", I did mention this demon.

Today, however,I refer to it again because NOW a major breakthrough in its treatment is imminent. What I love about this emerging treatment is its utter simplicity. It consists of the patient being administered pure oxygen per day for an hour or some such specified period as per the stage.  Right now, sure it is thus given under strict medical supervision. Very soon, however, it should be available in containers, rather like the asthma pumps.

What a divine Promethean gift it would be to the patients and the family caretakers! This is pure real science, a breakthrough worth a Nobel, as it would spare trauma for an entire family.

In a way, I would say it takes us back to the yoga inhalation practice of pranayama and its various typologies. Old is thus gold in a way because pranayama is the current rage on the fashion circuit, and is easily accessible to the poor as well, welfare state or otherwise.

Let me hence end the blog today with a big  "Congratulations cum Thank You" to the entire team of medical researchers at Tel Aviv University .  In a post-truth world, too,the  truism that doctors are gods is real for sure!

Pratima @ God is omni-present, And yet he And his emissaries are around us, as mothers and  medical researchers when He gets real busy!

 

The Animal Planet

 Why this title, you would wonder. Sure the channel is out of this world. Indeed because it deals with animals, luckily out of this world of us humans!

Sure we evolved out (of) animals, to put Darwin's ideas simplistically. Actually, however, animals are much more, and better, evolved than most all human beings put together. Mind you, this truism holds good about so called wild animals as well. 

No animal ever harasses, harms, hurts another out of sheer ill will, wickedness, mean selfishness. If fully-n-properly fed, a lion would allow a fawn prance around. In fact, in the animal world, there is a subtle sense of co-operation as can be seen in any  lion pride. Even when it comes to human-wild life bonds, there are tremendous tales of true devotion, loyalty and faithfulness, of the Elsa lioness types from the days of Aesop and the hungry lions.

When it comes to pets, even cats are better than many human beings. Dogs are wonders when it comes to love, affection, devotion. Even if ill treated, a dog would never hurt its "hooman". Eternal clowns, they are superb stress busters. Moreover, they are intelligent enough to learn and perform. They are real gems, unlike human tricksters.  They communicate in multiple ways. Be it Robinson Crusoe or Ulysses, dogs have revealed God like behaviour! Remember Laila,the Guinea pig dog whose sacrifice made the current space  field possible.

As animals are the best buddies, here is wishing them a long, happy togetherness on this world Animal Day! Hence the title today!

Pratima@ celebrating our real best buddies! 

You See/say what YOU are

 I was just listening to what X was saying about Y. At such times when anonymity matters, one can always call in Shakespeare as one's alibi, given his Juliet's great assertion about names. 

Let us get back to our theme today. While Y pandered to X's vanity, Y was  great according to X.  The moment Y moved an inch away from X's interpretation of self, that very Y was the worst person ever living! Funny, no? Hence the title today, which anyways is a word game on Descartes' famous axiom.

Actually, what we think and  what we say about others, how we treat others reveal a lot about ourselves, and, in fact, absolutely nothing about the other(s).  Our words, like our actions, are mirrors of our selves, not of the objects of our talk/activities. A mean remark/action about someone else shows your cheapness actually, does not it?

The same holds true with competitive behaviour. Only an insecure person would try to wipe out a better alternative. When you are confident in your own skin, you are sure nobody can steal your success/limelight. In fact, you consider a person better than you as a learning opportunity, as a chance to work on yourself. Anyways, even if you block a good person in one particular context, the person is sure to shine some where else, sooner than later,  and that brilliance is going to show 'you' up, right?

Aai-Papa never allowed us cheap gossip or silly comments against others. Nor did they themselves indulge in it. At times, hence,  I do not know how to deal with such frenemies!

Would you agree with me if I say that a woman suffers the worst in such name-shaming game? If a woman is friendly, she is a flirt. If she does not respond to the obvious overtures, she is frigid or a lesbian! If she is sincere about her work, she is ambitious. If she is lackadaisical about what she does, well, a woman after all. If she achieves anything, she is not brilliant, but she used her charms! 

The best way, I suppose, to deal with such carping is to send it to the trash bin of  your mind, right? Better always to remember the story of the old man, his son and their donkey, is not it? Well, let one's critics and frenemies flourish.  One thus has nothing to lose, except one's possible mistakes!

Pratima@kuch to log kahenge/karenge!logon ka to kam hai yehi, na?

Wonderful Communication

 October 2, it is today. Indeed it is a Landmark Day in India. The day marks the birth anniversary of two of The Great Souls produced By Our motherland: Gandhi ji and Shastri ji. As every affiliation wants to own them solo, up and close was a dogfight, each group accusing the other of misunderstanding their legacy, falsifying it, and so on.

What I find remarkable about both of them, in addition to their famed virtues and values,  is their communication. Both of them are very effective communicaters.Look at Shastriji's clarion call," jay jawan, jay kisan". In simplest possible terms,  with a chant like effect, he encapsulated the vision and the priorities of his times most effectively, truthfully, and efficiently.

Gandhji's "chale jaon", too, had a mass appeal. In fact, I  would go a step ahead, and say that his actions were very communicative, too. His Dandi March, his khadi weaving on the charakha,his jail bharo agitation, through simple activities that can be easily followed, he gave an entire nation a self image that was very idealistic and yet rather realistic to live up to. Great communication indeed this is that has superb evocative and emotive value that can be translated in to concrete action by the average common man.

Just as they thus conquered all barriers to communication, both of them enriched the experience and the very process of connecting with the partner with a truly child like smile. Hence this tribute to their wonderful communication prowess.

Pratima@speak simple, true and  well, and thereby hangs a tale!

A Day for the Elderly

 Days can sometimes be good and valid when they devotedly espouse a cause, and do not carry the baggage of commodification. I would maintain that October 1, a day dedicated to the elderly, is an effective example of such a sensible practice.

Currently the number of the elderly is expanding exponentially, while the concern and care for them and their welfare is decreasing digitally. I am using the term 'digitally', in both the senses of the term, that is digit by digit, and due to digitisation. The latter process has reduced communication, the need of the elderly, to emoji's and oft repeated wappies, liked or otherwise. In a way, we are thus thumbing down life itself.

In such troubled times, a day, though not as sexy as the other days, that makes the social conscience aware of the elderly plight can work a little, if not  exactly, wonders. In our socio-economic context, most frequently, the elderly belong to the non-formal sector. They get very little pension, if at all. The salary is mostly spent in the children's welfare in their growing-up years.

Children, given the current times, hardly care, if at all, beyond a point. Given rhe better life expectancy, the old thus become an unwanted burden. Emotionally this plight can be both scary and scarring, given the physical debility.

Mobility nil, old age diseases aplenty, children often far away busy with their lives, the skeleton bodies with failing eyesight and listening deprivations, find life terrible, almost a prison without any escape and with vicious warders.

More than welfare schemes, or stringent laws, sensitizing the societal mindset is the urgent need of the hour. After all today's youngsters are soon going to be tomorrow's elderly, with much worse problems to face in every which way. Old has to be valued gold!

Pratima@age has to be a mere number/let there be happy days before we forever slumber!