In A Flap

And so I was on my way to Pune FINALLY. Had been planning for months, but something or other came in the way of the road to Pune.

Vijji had called me a month ago a month before, and said that she would be going to Pune and would be visiting a mutual friend who had been ill for over two months. I was elated to note that the day was a Wednesday  and I  could go too as it was a free day. I had decided in advance that I would take the bus as I usually did.
It had been raining cats and dogs for many days before the much awaited journey.I had been advised not travel by road as I had to come back on the same day , the traffic conditions could turn chaotic.
Just two nights before I was to leave, I decided to travel by train instead, the least that could happen would be some minor delay. So I asked Nikki to book my tickets on the net and she willingly did it and got me the printouts the next day.
And then it was GET SET GO. The taxi came at the appointed time , so did the train and the breakfast when the train chugged off, followed by the much needed sleep in the comfortable seat. All ON TIME! Just before  I fell asleep I checked my ticket once again, return in the evening at  6.05 hours. Great , now onto dreamland.
I arrived on time in Pune and took an auto to where Vijji was staying with her son. She had offered to fetch me from the station but seeing the distance I told her that I would come on my own. Vamsi , Vijji's son was to come and pick me up at an appointed place. I got a good honest auto driver and reached without any trouble.
We met and talked for some time and then decided to go out for lunch. We were supposed to go to visit our friend at about 3pm.It was all sailing along smoothly , we finished lunch and proceeded to Boat Club Road.
Once there we were happy to see that Kash was better but very tired and looking a bit peaked because of the ordeal she had gone through. Kash is such a wonderful hostess, we enjoyed the lovely afternoon and the Colonel and she kept us entertained along with scrumptious goodies for tea.
The afternoon passed much too soon and it was time for me to leave for the station for my return journey. Check ticket and off we go . Kash's husband dropped me to the station and I waved a goodbye.

I entered the station and looked at the the prompter above for my train and the platform number. I did not see it. Huh? Looked down at the printout and back up at the prompter, still no mention of my train. There was a porter standing close by, so I asked him where this train was supposed to come. He looks at me and shakes his head....... no train at 6.05pm but there is one at 5.55. WHAT? Its 5.35 pm , back to the prompter to confirm, he is right, the train are at 5.55, 6pm and then at 6.15pm and only one to Mumbai. God Almighty , now what? I then looked at the printed board showing all the trains and the timings, HELP.... my train had left at 6.05 AM. ACTION STATIONS!!  5.55 here I come, but how ? There was a ticket counter where 3 people were waiting to buy tickets, ENQUIRIES AT WINDOW 24 ONLY. Where in the dickens was number 24? Start running about like a flapping hen searching for 24 to no avail. Time ticking by. Finally find a counter which is empty and the guy behind him my ticket, he says but a ticket at any counter and take the train at DARN IT 5.55pm. There is a serpentine queue at the ticket counter, I will never catch the train.. Oh what about that counter where there were only three people? Rush back still flapping. Buy a ticket to get to the train unreserved . Its 5.45. Now flap really hard  and reach the platform but where do I board? Brain screaming at me to get on wherever there is a door. I do just that. Flapping stops and panting starts. I ask a gentleman where I go with this ticket. He points to the general compartment and I gingerly make my way there. WOW! Not an inch of decent standing space even. How will I stand there for the next three and a half hours. Edge back to the other compartment , the helpful man tells me to find a place to sit there and pay the ticket collector the extra fare for the seat when he comes around. She comes and is instantly by others with tickets like mine. So this is official, God you are really kind! Pay the extra fare and settle down , thought for a minute about taking a chance at the next station for the air conditioned coach but better sense prevailed.

Heaved a sigh of relief and settled down to sleep. Ordeal over. Peace again.

WOODS AND TREES.

All of us are attached to our surroundings, a small child to it's mother,  a husband to his wife, a student to his studies, a home-maker to his/her home and definitely our life to our breathing. A few cases in point.
We are all so linked with emotions, that we get pulled into the whirl of life, and then these emotions govern all of our thoughts and actions.
We have been often told that detachment is the only way to really be, that it answers many questions. Not many in these times would ascribe to this , for it would be equal to to non-emotion, or at living in a completely emotionless state and that would be bizarre. How can anyone exist without love or loving anyone around or anything close to you?Would it not make you mechanical in what you do and then how would you appreciate anyone or anything around you? Most human qualities are linked to emotion. Sympathy, happiness , joy, love, empathy wonder, surprise, awe are some of the qualities which make us human. We will not get into get negative emotions here because at best they debilitate the one displaying them and hurt the one they are aimed at besides souring the surroundings, at worst they impact much more.

Some years ago I had with a group from  Bombay to Kolkata for a celebration . There we met others who had come from all over India . Some of us were chatting one evening and one of the older ladies asked me why I was not married ( this kind of invasion of privacy is considered perfectly all right even if one is not well acquainted ),  and not wanting to get into details I loftily answered that I  did not want to get into the attachments which marriage brings. There was a young woman who was present there and when I asked her if this was not true, she said something which left me speechless. She was from a small town not far away and had left her family ( which is not common) to be there for those few days.  "Dekho to bandhan, dekho to koi bandhan nahin" . If you look at it (married life) it is an attachment, if you look at it , there is no attachment at all.
WOW! A statement made without any sermonizing or the need for endless debate. So true for situations we find ourselves in everyday and when seen in a larger perspective.

When I started writing this , I was veering towards writing about my view of attachment vs. the necessity for detachment. This incident came to me ( the attachment of my psyche to the memory of the incident). There is no need to say more.

Sometimes one sentence can speak a thousand words.

Trysts

As I watch the rain playing gently outside the balcony accompanied  by the odd wet caw from a drenched crow and a few random honks from passing cars, the lilting melody takes me back to childhood trysts.Of looking at the flash of lightening a pure zigzag of beauty, awed at the wonder of it. We were supposed to be in bed, it was already past 9pm and were as usual resisting sleep. Amma came in to admonish us and tuck us in when there was a loud clap of thunder rumbling and continuous. The zigzag flashes followed instantly. Mom pushed us towards the centre of the room hen like in her protection. I struggled out of her clasp and rushed to the mesh door to watch the heavenly drumbeats and laser shows mesmerised at the wonder of it.

When the hailstones used to beat down both bhaiya and I would rush out to the veranda as soon as Mom had her back turned, and into the garden to collect the ice lollies and back into the safety of the veranda and then eat them with abandon. Several times. Small pleasures, simple games with nature.

We used to spend most of our school vacations in Allahabad . Arid summers with the hot wind called 'loo' locally, a wind which causes severe illness and fatality and best avoided.We were warned by the elders not to out of the house at those times.The fun only began when they retired after a heavy meal in the somnambulent afternoon. Racing trough the house into the compound back into the dining room hiding as close to to the buckets of luscious mangoes, grabbing and sucking the juice out of as many as was possible despite the warnings by the adults.
The hailstorms in Allahabad were more severe, I have seen a couple of them in the winter there but remember the huge bullets of ice which would hurt if one ventured out.The sound beating against the red tiled roof  sounded as ominous as  thunder. The sudden blitz and the just as sudden end made us rush outside despite the shivering freezing cold.

There were two most exhilarating storms that I  have seen, the Kaali and the Peeli Aandhi, black and yellow storms, but of that later, the experience can't be described in a few lines.

When I started writing this blog , Nikki  had said 'Well begun' . I almost left it half done, an endeavor towards completion will be attempted.

Disparities

Yesterday it stared me in the face again. The vast divides in our society, chasms which one cannot cross easily. However much one may try to fill those gaps the bitter truth is that there will be always be the haves and the have nots. An ideal world cannot ever exist, it is foolish to even dream of such. Perhaps the very reason for the human endeavor is the imbalance around but then we also talk about the harmony of nature and how much we can learn just by observing it. We observe, we don't learn. Continue in our own disparate ways, each with his personal goal and agenda of life.

Yesterday I was at a radio station and met a larger than life personality, who is the epitome of humility. But this is not what I wanted to say. The  radio station radio station was was collecting notebooks for distributing to children who cannot keep up their education because they can't afford to buy books. Mission Shiksha....... I too donated my drop in the ocean worth of books.

I have always been concerned about the education levels in our country, they have undoubtedly risen considerably in the last few decades but what one sees around is the alarming number of those who do not have the means and at times the inclination to continue with their studies. (There are many success stories about people coming out tops despite the odds which continue to inspire).The dropout level in government run schools is high, many children do not go beyond the 4^th or 5^TH  class, some manage to stay on until a they complete the eighth or ninth year of school. These schools,funded by the government, for educating the economically weaker sections of society are more than less a laughing matter, there are so many instances of  teachers not coming to school at all but getting their salary at the end of the month, some which I have witnessed personally,others which are reported in the newspapers.And this is just the tip of the iceberg, there are many other irregularities which result in the high dropout rate. And if teachers behave in that way the example they set for the students is disastrous.

We HAVE TO HAVE dedicated individuals, perhaps foolish idealists,  to  change the existing situation. Why do we not question ourselves when we see children begging on the streets, why do we shrug it off as an the effect of Karma, or whatever excuse we have for our good fortune. Have we become so self centred that we cannot see outside the  well of our own little lives. We give towards charities but are we genuinely concerned or is it just for placating  our egos and dealing with the guilt of poverty around us.


We talk about a strong vibrant India, a nation on the go, where the young population outnumbers the greys. Accepted. The work force which is on the move and the youth who are with it and all there. Are we only looking at cities, what of rural India are they there if so where? Are they not left behind in the scheme of things? How many ideal villages do we have like the one painstakingly built over the years by Anna Hazare?


To come back to the main point only and only when we have 100 % literacy that we can hope for the next level, an educated and enlightened India.


We hear that the world is looking at us,  are we looking at ourselves or are we looking at ourselves with of our perceived view of the world's view.

I think I am ending a bit abruptly here. I don't know why despite all this I am so proud  of this ,my land. My one fervent wish is that it wakes up and becomes the country which Tagore dreamed of   .................


Nandita.

PS  There is some error in the format of the text hence the different sized fonts,please excuse. I have to go back to school.

Lanes

I thought I would go down memory lane today, there are many lanes which we traverse each with its own hues.
Memories of childhood, school days, which may or may not be interlinked, memories of college days, your first job, and then others in the course of ones  life. All forming a collage in before your eyes, some fading with time, a mere blur, others refreshed by looking at old photographs. Strange that a memory of a shared event  may be entirely different from that of your sibling or friend. Is that because of a difference in outlook, just mere forgetfulness, or else do we remember only what we want to?

Sorting out papers a few years ago, I came across some letters which I had not seen before, memories of people before my time, their feelings hopes expectations frustrations, sadness,a whole gamut of emotions in those lines before me,a small window opening into a world gone by,overtaken by the today's rapid constructions. Some moved me to tears, others to laughter and still others to a jaw dropping surprise. It shall begin again...... the re-sorting.................. and memories will rebound , more fresh more poignant.Distances of decades within the grasp of a hand.

I thought that I would be walking down my own lanes today. Some sunlit some in the shade the springs of youth flowing into adulthood surging into what? The sea is not visible as yet, the meandering may be slower,  the goal is certain the path unsure and once reached will be a memory once more.
  

Oft I remember those I have known
In other days, to whom my heart was lead
As by a magnet, and who are not dead,
But absent, and their memories overgrown
With other thoughts and troubles of my own,
As graves with grasses are, and at their head
The stone with moss and lichens so o'er spread,
Nothing is legible but the name alone.
And is it so with them? After long years.
Do they remember me in the same way,
And is the memory pleasant as to me?
I fear to ask; yet wherefore are my fears?
Pleasures, like flowers, may wither and decay,
And yet the root perennial may be. 

H.D. Longfellow

                  

Having missed out on two days of posting, here I am back again to offer my trivia. It has been a washed down weekend, no....I have not been washing it down anything or washing the car for that purpose. The rains have hit with a fervor,the heavens having let loose as it were. Now that we are well in the middle of the monsoon season,the thunder and lightening have stopped and it is as steady downpour. The overcast sky, the naturally air conditioned house, the snuggling cats and the monsoon snacks are the order of the day. The felines get completely confused by the change in weather, they sit and watch the rains with bemused expression,run helter- skelter at the sound of  thunder and disappear forthwith. Oh ! the little stray who I feed every night found his way up last night ate the leftovers and ran down again, before I could blink.AND he was as dry as dust!

Reading a good book with some pakodas and a hot cup of tea with a cat curled up on either side is pulling me away from this machine. Will be back later with the weather update however boring.

At a Loss

Can't think of anything to say today, its one of those days when there is a lessening in the brain activity. But come to think of it does the activity ever stop ( unless you are brain dead of course). I  would like to think that there are those moments of complete silence when one is at peace with oneself and the world in general. There are less of these than we would want. Human needs, our expectations wants more often than not take over and restlessness prevails. The driving force behind any activity, the desire for excellence, to ahead of ourselves, is all a part of the trail left by early man and the discovery of fire and from there never looking back until the present and the future which lies before us. We do what we do because we have to for want of anything better to do. We have to keep busy,we would probably drive each other up the wall if we didn't....countless examples of that malady.

Come to think of it , (seems like the thought process has been activated) our brain is active at all  times, even at the moments when one feels that there are no thoughts , they continue to be there sometimes buzzing in and out of the brain at such speed that they are difficult to comprehend let alone ponder about. Ponder about thoughts you say, how can you think about thoughts ? The process of thinking specially when it leads nowhere is futile, but is it? When one thought leads to another ,when we go over what has happened in the course the day, it does help us to come to terms with what has occurred whether good bad or indifferent. Most of the time though, the activity ends only at the resting time and the thoughts translate into dreams.

The slowdown of the activity in my brain has led to this pea brained post. Apologies for putting you through the ordeal.