Kindness is all!

 Better be kind always because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle of which you know nothing. True! Hence the title of our blog which plays with the King Lear theme, namely, 'ripeness is all'. 

Yet currently we live in such a world that we require a special day to remind people to be kind. Well, the Wo(r)ld Kindness Day happens to be today! Kindness, I think, is the normal mode of behaviour. At least, it should be. It is not, however. In fact, gentle and kind people are considered rather weak and quite stupid in the cruelly competitive world today.

Yet the world today needs kindness in a huge measure. We need to be kind not only to human beings, but to the environment as well. We need to be gentle with so many species of flora and fauna getting extinct by the day. They reciprocate even a small act of kindness with genuinely gentle response. Not so with most people today!

Yet I get the feel that there is no need to be that pessimistic because it is only shallow and stupid people who are cruel. Similarly, people, who have a huge inferiority complex,  are crooked and cruel to cover it up.

May be, hence, to save oneself from such meannesses, there is a need to be kind to oneself as well. So long as kindness to oneself does not dwindle down to narcissistic self-indulgence, it is absolutely okay. Otherwise, in the chambers of heart  would echo hard selfishness.

In other words, kindness is a choice that enriches oneself. I feel, moreover, that kindness must hence be a discipline because it does require a huge sense of sacrificing one's self centered  indulgences. If not inculcated by parents in childhood, people can consciously practise it in adulthood through mindfulness training.

 Kindness is all. It saves you from all kinds of fall. Kindness costs nothing, but its value is beyond everything. Hence better be kind. Fortune, divine justice, karma, whatever you choose to call it, will sure favour you in kind!

Pratima@Kindness and gentleness may not add to your professional profile, but such sterling qualities make you genuinely pretty and truly brilliant! Care for others and yourself . It cures you of all that is destructive.  Be always kind, leave nicest memories behind!

Defining Diwali

 What does Diwali mean? Oh, yes, literally it means diwa/deepa and awli, that is, a row of diyas. Apparently, it refers to the lighting up of thousand diya's when Shri Ram  returned to Ayodhya after defeating Ravana. Beyond the myth, when do we have such abundance of light? Why do we have it? The answers to these questions means Diwali now.

Well, yes, let us begin with the crackers. Currently, Diwali is the abundance of crackers despite the court orders. There are very many pros and cons about bursting the crackers. What is wrong if we burst crackers for a day or two? Would not crackers be burst when India wins the world Cup? Why object to enthusiasm whenever Hindus have festivals?Objections galore!

Yet in a household where around a dining table, a discussion about the issue emerges and the youngsters at least listen to it, if not follow it, Diwali is truly celebrated because Diwali is that care and concern for each other. Diwali is that love for the larger whole, too. 

Diwali is that clean and well-lighted home decorated with love with a new acquisition or two. No, it is not merely a bow in the direction of consumerist economy. It is a kindness for the very home, and genuine love for those who reside in it.

Diwali is also the heart-felt gifts and the joy of getting and giving them. The gifts, small and big, mean the largeness of heart, the depth of love for each other which is the real meaning of the festival.

Diwali is the unique brilliance of head, heart and soul which takes us from all the darknesses within to the light of knowledge, to the brightness of consciousness. Thus we travel from mundane daily chores to better lives. Diwali is the name of that lighthouse within, which steers us away from the darkness called  meannesses, viciousnesses, cruelties to an inspired, better self! When that happens, when the inner demons are defeated time and again, every day becomes Diwali as every second is then and thus lighted up with zillion luminescences!

Pratima@ What is Diwali? Where is Diwali? When is Diwali? Well, Diwali is forever in a mind lit up with all that is better than the best!

Art in the times of Diwali

 The Diwali festival is designed as per the tithi's, that is, the sequence of days according to the lunar calendar/month. To adjust the cycle, often during the five days beginning with Vasubaras to Bhaubeej, there are extra days devoid of any particular religious significance. There are not any religious or community rituals either. There can be get- together's of friends or relatives. Yet another possibility, especially in Pune for the last decade or so, is the "Diwali Pahat" phenomenon.

Just as the Diwali special magazine issues, now available on the internet as well,  provide a space to authors, young, budding, established, all the varieties, similarly the "Diwali Dawns" provide a platform to artists. Hence the title of our blog, which is a take on the famous title by Marquez, a wonderful author indeed!

Actually during our childhood, art was very much an essential part of Diwali. Aai used to draw lovely rangoli's which used to include the traditional patterns as well as very new  creative imaginative ones. Like the skylights and the earthen diya's or the panati's, her rangolis used to enhance the Diwali feel. My brother's daughter-in-law, Ashwini, an accomplished dancer, is very good at it, too.

 We all used to draw and colour the Diwali greeting cards.  My brothers could make wonderful Akashkandil's, paper lanterns aka skylights. This year, I have made  for  them both decorative panati's, and skylights in  bottles. Gorgeous they look. Hope my brothers and their families like the artefacts.

That brings us back to art, and Diwali in the form of "Diwali Dawns". This morning, I had the pleasure of attending a simply superb "Diwali Pahat". Organised by a music school, Trikdha, the venue was a little too far away from my place. 

Yet I did not want to give it a miss because the musical instruments involved and the artists performing during this Pahat were most interesting.  It was a performance by the highly accomplished disciples of Pandit Shiv Kumar Sharma (Dr. Shantanu Gokhale), Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia ( Saurabh Vartak) and Ustad Taufik Qureshi (his son). They played the santoor, the flute and the djembe respectively.

Simply superb their performance was. As it was organised by a music school, there was a sizable chunk of kids. Why, even they were spell-bound! In fact, there was a baby crying convulsively before the performance began. Well, later nobody needed to quieten the little one!

The highly gifted young trio indeed transformed the morning mehfil in to a divine experience. It was simply marvellous. Literally, one felt as if the mehfil should never end, and we all should continue our standing ovation to the fabulous art of these accomplished artists.

  All the three are superb artists and very sensitively communicated with each other which made their musical interaction far far better than a typical jugalbandi!  Surely all the three  were wonderful. Yet I felt that Shantanu Gokhale deserves a special thanks by the audience for making such a difficult instrument so very mellifluous. 

The classical performance  literally made the morning in to a great concert. The standing ovations, the thundering rounds of claps and the encores would not stop. It looked as if everyone wanted the mehfil to go on and on. No wonder, such "Diwali Dawns" don the festival with an art rich image. Long live Diwali Dawns!

Pratima@ If music be feel of festival, play on! Shakespeare sure would like my take on his great quote.

 

Diwali dawns

 Diwali dawns! I am using 'dawns' here to mean both, begins (as a verb) and the wee hours before the morning (as a noun).  Yes, both ways, 'dawns' means  happy, joyous moments. 

Diwali dawns, in the sense, begins on the Dhanteras day. As per the myth, it is the day when Devi Durga, Lord Kubera and Dhanwantari emerged from the samudra manthan, the churning of the Ksheer Sagar for amrita, the nectar of/for eternal life.

On this day, Aai-Papa used to pray to both Devi Laxmi and Dhanwantari. In other words, Diwali used to begin with the celebration of both wealth (In the Puja Patra, there used be foreign currency as well. They were both proudly happy about the various coins and notes their sons brought from abroad; Raju, literally from all over the world), but health as well. On this day, I suppose, most doctors, too, perform a Puja. 

Only on this day, Aai would put a 'panati', the earthen 'diya', with its wick directed southwards. The south is traditionally believed to be the abode of Lord Yama, the god of death. In a way, this custom is a subtle awareness of mortality, of death even in extreme joy, during abundance and celebration. May be, the ritual is also rooted in the bipolar balance of the earth, the north and the south poles, and the related equinox. Yes, I need to research a little, read up some more on this topic.

As for the Diwali dawns (as a noun), the lovely memories are simply a surfeit of all the senses. Aai would begin every Diwali morning with playing the LP record of Ustad Bismillah Khan's shehnai. Those gentle notes still play in my ears. The body and head massage with warm oil, next the warm water bath with the Diwali special 'utne' and Mysore sandal soap, not to forget the "owalni" with her soft, gentle fingers on a forehead still warm and wet, and the unique 'fulbaji' fragrance towards the end of the festival bath, well, to enjoy Diwali was a blessing. To be a child of loving parents was simply divine!

Pratima@ Every Diwali dawn would begin with the perfect 'faral', followed by a lovely lunch. As such sweets and those generous gifts were in those days enjoyed only during Diwali, the festival was complete contentment. 

Forgetting forever

 Memory is a boon, forgetting is a curse. All such silly platitudes vanish in to thin air when you think of or come face to face with patients suffering with Alzheimer's because in such mindscapes, memory itself is forgotten.

Alzheimer's is a truly painful dis-ease. It is indeed dis-ease because the patients lose their selves, their very identity, so to say. Dementia is a shade more tolerable because it is manageable. Alzheimer's  is not. Such patients do not remember anything or anyone, including immediate family. Much worse is the fact that they forget themselves.

What causes Alzheimer's? The brain chemistry of this auto-immune dis-ease is surely, though slowly, getting unravelled. Hopefully then, medicines would emerge as well. Right now, this dis-ease, on the rise even in the so-called developing countries, is tough both on the patient and the caregiver from the immediate family. 

Possibly such patients can never be left to the heartless carelessness of the paid para-medical staff. Ideally, the entire family should be involved  in taking care of such patients, and out of sheer gratitude for what the patient, when she/he was a 'person', did for you. Primarily, there must be an acute control of/over their movements because they can just walk out, and then completely lose their moorings. 

Hope the medical technology manages ASAP to cure this dis-ease which is a desert of oblivion. May it soon turn in to a h(e)aven!

Pratima@On the World Alzheimer's Day, a heartfelt prayer for sure, and  fast, in fact, urgent, remedies!

You hate me? Please feel free!

 Has this happened with/to you? Earlier, it used to happen hugely with me. That is to say, I used to feel terribly upset when someone would knowingly, consciously ill-treat me to let me know that she/he hates me, despises me, influences others to hate and despise me, moreover!

Well, I used to be like, I never bother you. In fact, you harass me. You ill-treat me every which way possible, spread silly gossip around in every nook and corner. Despite that horrendous inhumanity, I never descend down to your viciousness. Then why?

Indeed I could never fathom it initially. One day then I decided to analyse it thoroughly within myself. With a very powerful intellectual/ideational/emotional microscope, I analysed each and every thing about myself.

Then I realised that their not liking me, their despising me, their hatred of me, their ill-treatment of me IS THEIR problem, not mine at all. Even if I am better than the best, they are going to be nastiness itself.

Once I realised this, there was a huge sense of calm. Next came the realisation that whosoever you like/dislike reveals a lot about you, nothing much about the person. Let me give you an easy-to-understand example. If I like Amir Khan as an actor, it reveals a lot about me, about my abilities, my perceptual/intellectual levels and cognitive depth, my tastes/priorities, and so on. On the contrary, if I dislike Dada Kondke, once again, it reveals who I am. 

This insight led me to the next realisation. Who exactly are THEY as human-beings? May be, I am not accepting the fact  that they are trivial nobody's within themselves. If so, why worry about their hatred and their dislike, right? Hence the title of this blog. What say?

Pratima@When you are going to market, on the way, at every crossroad, there would be thousands of mange-eaten, flea-infested, garbage-fed curs barking at you, right? Why waste time and energy throwing stones at them? Better be like the elephant, an extremely intelligent, sensitive, generous being, who despite the huge power to crush to pulp such creatures, ignores all such distractions!

Cant

 Look carefully at the title of the blog today. What do you think it means? No, it is not the abbreviation of 'can not' as the apostrophe sign is missing. No, it does not mean religious mumbo-jumbo.  

Okay, let me give you a clue or two. Gr8, B4 are examples of it. Have not got it as yet? Well, listen to this anecdote. An over indulgent Daddu (yes, such is the status symbol which shows that you have arrived; has nothing to do with filial love) often heard Sonny Boy scream 'LOL' in to his smart phone. So he deduced that it meant 'lots  of love'.

One day, his wife's aunt broke her hip. Huge as it was though, must have taken a hard hit indeed, he thought of the mean machine when he was told that a Volkswagen hit her. Well, he wanted always to be in the good books of his son's mother, and that rather huge branch of the family tree.

So he asked Sonny to send across a 'LOL' message. Wifey flew in to a rage. As usual, he could not understand why the good ole Vesuvius  erupted yet again. Very innocently said he, 'I am sending your aunt lots of love'. Sonny screamed 'ROFL' and took pity on the ignoramus to explain that 'LOL' meant 'Loads of Laughter'.

Now he knew why the good ole Vesuvius spewed poison! ICYMI, the episode straight from a comic strip should tell you that the titular 'cant' refers to a secret code shared by the core group. 

As if the emoji's were not enough, this version of the 'cant' is quite a headache! 'ROFL' has no French connection, mind you. It means 'rolling on floor laughing'! 'ICYMI' is not an educational institute, 'in case you missed it'. 

Most exclusionary is this so-called creativity. In a way,  reminiscent of the linguistic process of 'acronymy' is this 'epigraphy'. See how bothersome jargon is! The social media users revel in it though.

So let my blog not get the 'TMI'(too much info) tag, coz then the readers may 'TL;DR' (too long, don't read) it. 'NVM'(never mind). 'LMK' (let me know) if you practice this fashionable eyesore called 'cant'!

Pratima@ 'AFAIK' (as far as I know), 'cant' cannot clear  communication!Hinders it the best, causing quite a 'noisy' havoc!