Once upon a time…then people change?

In the journey of life, you meet so many people, you can’t really reckon. Some become a part of your life and some rather part ways. Out of the multitude, some secure a special place in your heart and some just mind bogglingly irritate you and leave no stone unturned in becoming an addition to your hit list. However my only concern about people is, do they really change? They say time changes people, really....? We need to give time sometime for changes to occur, for wounds to heal, for hearts to mend, but time changes people? - is something I really doubt!

Some people, who you really adore, might just carry a facade, making you trust them. And later on when you see their true colours, you feel they have changed, but the reality is they might have been the same throughout, you just drew a better picture outta them. And the perception is time changes people! You fool yourself with things and draw your own conclusions blaming time & situation. Worst is, it breaks your heart. Someone you once loved and trusted leaves you with a sour taste, it hurts for sure, but moving away from them is the only good you can do to yourself. It becomes difficult sometimes and leaves you a little shaken, but leaving them alone in their world of haughtiness will make you feel better. No point giving a person so much love, affection & respect when he/she’s not worth it. Swagger is the only jewel they carry & adorn themselves with, leave them with it! Look around for new people and start a new lease of life. That's how it should be!

People change with different experiences they encounter their life’s way; I don’t think it has anything to do with time, blame yourself, not time! Time never tells you to be good or bad with someone; you change and evolve gradually into something depending on your own mantras or idiosyncrasies of life. Some change for good and some bad, time didn't tell you to be good or bad ever; you chose to be either of them!

Anyway such people shake you, tear you apart & in turn, you become desperate to transform your own life, revealing another layer of you that survives against all odds (suddenly you discover you are a superman or superwoman :P). Give yourself another chance to live and let go of people who love their haughtiness – because they only value themselves and use others as a commodity. And yeah, you can't forget change is the only thing constant. Let bygones be bygones! Start afresh because a kickass comeback is awaiting you!

Lawyer or a Male Chauvinist Pig?

Following the Delhi gang-rape case, I was glued to the television to catch up on the updates of the verdict given to the convicts. After the convicts were given death sentence considering it was rarest of the rare case in terms of brutality involved, it brought relief to millions of people reinstating their faith in courts & judiciary.

However, there was one man who had lost it, Mr. AP Singh, lawyer of two of the convicts in the case, who in all frustration didn’t leave any stone unturned in maligning the victim’s image. After all the pain the girl went through, this was the last blow to tarnish her image, a blot on humanity at large, especially when you are referring to a departed soul, who has been through hell. Addressing the media after Friday’s death sentence, Singh had allegedly said, “If my daughter was having premarital sex & moving around at night with her boyfriend, I would have burnt her alive. I wouldn't have let this situation happen.” Isn’t it a professional misconduct on a lawyer’s part? Is this the kind of language you speak for a girl or even a human being for that matter, who was tortured & brutally assaulted to death? Is this what we have learnt in our culture or is this what our education system really fosters (legal education, esp..sigh…!)? 

All I would say is Mr. Singh please watch your words before you speak, you are no moral police to give a moral charter to all the women’s across the country or even men for that matter. Don’t be a male chauvinist pig. We don’t need a character certificate from you to live our life nor do we owe you a shit! And for heaven’s sake, don’t you use your venom spewing tongue for character assassination of a victim who fought courageously for her life against the odds, but eventually succumbed to the severe trauma & injuries given to her body.

Mr. Singh, “You want these hoodlums to be freed? These beasts who showed the young woman no mercy, raping her repeatedly & pulling her intestines out with an iron rod? (I would refrain a little to call them even beasts, as that would denigrate animals…!) Only noose can be demanded for such a “grotesque & diabolic” crime and this “comeuppance” is justified! ‘Damini’ became the voice of the multitude. This incident had sparked violent street protests in Delhi & prompted a sharpening of the country’s rape laws. It is only for the courts to change the perception of the society that thinks people can get away with such crimes, by handing down harsh punishments. 

As for her having premarital sex with someone, I don’t think, you were assisting her, to know all these details, isn't it? And Mr. Singh please grow up (not by age but by your thinking!) We live in 21st century, every person, be it a man or a woman, has a right to have sex with a person of his/her choice with their consent, it isn't a crime! (Please read Maslow’s hierarchy of needs theory!). If a woman is having pre marital sex with her boyfriend or any damn person with her own consent, it really doesn't gives a license to some other men, to molest or outrage her modesty without her will (it’s called rape & not sex). And please, if you call 9.00 p.m, night, let me enlighten you with the fact, that working women’s like us travel till 11.00 p.m or even 12.00 a.m sometimes in the night. Even professional courses like MBA need people to travel in the night, given the hectic study schedule. Having said that, I think you need to correct your definition of being late, especially when you said, she was moving around late in the night! Again roaming around with a male friend doesn’t necessarily make them our boyfriends or husbands (sick mentality!) 

Mr. Singh, having no shame to apologize for your comments, you should introspect a little, your own conscience and see the amount of filth you are carrying deep inside your soul! Or probably this may be a publicity stunt for you, to gain visibility in the eyes of people and create a bad reputation for yourself; at least people will talk about you! But again, to what extent can you sell your conscience or values to garner cheap publicity? It is as if, you are getting seduced by our own mantras & becoming monuments to them. Stop talking for a while & liberate yourself from your suffocating mantras. Be a human being. Change! Grow! Evolve!

Who rides you – Destiny or Will Power?

It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the captain of my soul.

These powerful lines by the great poet William Ernest Henley always motivate me to steer through the battlefield of life. The ups and downs, come whatever may be, the undying spirit of my soul always helps me in tiding over the waves of difficulty leading to a new transformation. Life is more like a crossword puzzle where you activate the grey cells of your mind, to fit in the best alternative to complete it. Your life is a testimony to so many life changing events that you hardly recognize how many of it were initiated by you and how many of them just occurred to you. Things change sometimes without you having any inkling of it, going through a lot of mess, leaving you numbed, dumbed & stumped. There are certain things in life over which we have no control, they just happen and this is where I feel what really rides us – destiny or will power?

A fair & common example is love, isn’t it? You fall in for someone, who is just another person you know on this earth or a stranger may be, but eventually becomes an important part of your life (barring few exceptions). You don’t realize when and why you start developing feelings for a person. With time things change and you miss the person in your life (happy realization!) eventually falling in love. Don’t you think it’s destiny? Isn’t it destined for two hearts to meet, a divine grace? You can control your mind for will power but heart I’ve always felt, you don’t have much control over. I mean c’mon you just can’t tell your heart to stop beating for someone. Anyway before I digress from the topic (spare me that love snooze) we were talking about destiny & will power. Life is actually a beautiful play between destiny and will power and this connection is divine!

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love stated in her book that “Destiny is a relationship - a play between divine grace & willful self-effort”. I agree to it. Life is a strange game, half of it you have no control over, half of it is absolutely in your hands, & your actions will show measurable consequence. How many times we keep cribbing on something that didn’t work out? And then we come up with our own excuses like “I think it’s not in my destiny…sigh...!”. “I know it’s not gonna work out, why should I waste my time?” Ain’t we familiar with these sentences? We love blame game (passing the buck!). Destiny no doubt can bring you close to your goal, but it’s always will power that helps you to accomplish things in life.

We are neither entirely a puppet in the hands of the god, nor do we entirely own our destiny, we are a little of both. We run through the madness of life where things keep on changing every minute, all we need to do is keep weighing and balancing the act like performers because life is a play. We can’t worry all the time about things we don’t have control over but we can drive our steely will power to steer through the difficulties. There is so much about our fate that we cannot control, but other things do fall under our jurisdiction. Like we can decide on, how to spend our time, who can we talk & share our thoughts with, who we can share our life with (destiny can only make you meet & fall in love with someone, will power helps in keeping him/her despite difficulties), how to regard unfortunate situations in life (how do you view it - either get through or keep sulking). We can choose our words to speak, our emotions to vent, our thoughts to express, isn’t it?  Ain’t all these things very much in our control?

Yes it is, and it’s great, you do own your life to an extent. What you can’t control just leave it to the “Destiny”. I believe there’s always a reason behind things you experience, you either start trusting someone or something (if it’s a good one) or you get mad at someone or something (if it’s a bad one), but either way you learn and it kinda shakes you, tears you apart, shows you your obstacles and makes you so desperate that you transform your life revealing another layer of yourself to you (self discovery). To sum it up all – Have a determined life with the ever changing destiny!

RIP ! Humanity…!

While we all have ushered in the New Year with new hopes, aspirations and promises, I still can’t stop thinking about the rape victim who died 3 days back. My heart nearly sinks to even imagine the forty minutes of horror and 13 days of desperate battle for life thereafter, that ended in the early hours of Saturday when the woman breathed her last in the Singapore hospital. I just shudder to think of what atrocities the woman must have gone through in the ghastly incident that eventually ended her life. She fought courageously in fighting for her life, for so long against the odds, but the trauma to her body was too severe to keep her alive. She succumbed to serious injuries to her body & brain leading to multi-organ failure. Her death has awakened entire nation on the increasing number of crimes against women’s and their safety. Ever since protests are held in every state to show solidarity to this movement, demanding justice. Even NRI’s abroad are protesting, showing concern & solidarity with this ongoing movement.

This ghastly incident has made us find our voice and we won’t clam up! Damini is dead! Long live she! Like any other girl, she too had so many dreams twinkling in her eyes. She wanted to live her dreams and aspirations. She didn't want to be a martyr, but she lost the battle! Yet in her fight for life, and in her surrender to death, she has become the voice of the multitude. The incident has awakened and called upon the collective conscience of people who have made a faithful engagement with a cause: making India safe for womens. We can’t allow her death to go in vain. After years of being treated like a herd, we have finally found our voice. Those in power are bound to listen, and listen they should! This is the power of democracy. What we are experiencing now is no less than a revolution. People on the street irrespective of their age have become part of a larger cause. The nationwide outpourings of grief and anger are not merely bubbles of discontent that can be picked; it proves the ground reality that is bleak and scary. If women continue to be stalked, groped and raped, we have no right to call ourselves human beings. We have lost humanity and have turned beasts, but again to call rapists and molesters beasts, we should refrain a little, ‘coz that would denigrate animals, who too follow some code of ethics.

The government is scared of the rage on the streets. It’s time for it to act, and act it will, we will ensure that. Without resorting to violence and without spilling blood on the streets, we will have to stand guard to this cause and movement. However deep down in my heart I feel, only exercising stringent measures, and increasing the number of policemen will not help in curtailing the crime against women’s, the issue is much deeper than that. However much we say we are a society of equals, it is a farce. As a culture, Indian women are viewed as inferior. Things have to change at the basic level, which involves education and gender sensitization. Mentality needs to be changed, in order to bring in equality in the real sense. Merely blaming a woman for wearing provocative clothes or blaming her to be out on the street at the wrong time will not serve the purpose. Every person has the right to live and breathe, and we as humans should not infringe on this basic right of anyone, be it men or women.

This incident has angered, appalled and ashamed me and at the same time has made me conscious of where are we heading? Do we really behave as humans? And if so why have we turned demons for our own friends, siblings and relations? What values did our parents instill in us and what are we doing with it? So many questions and the answer lie all within us. Let us hope and pray such things never ever happen and our humanity never ever be questioned again, ‘coz death of humanity is death of our conscience! Live and Let Live!