NAMKEEN HAI PAR- MEETHA HAI

Us din ki subha hi kuch alag thi. Saniwar tha... bahut hi khubsurat din. Octuber ka mahina tha jiski baat hi kuch nirali hai. Mausam halki halki thand lapete firta hai. Peedon se patte tut ke hawa mein aise chale aate hain jaise panchii( birds) hawa ko cheerte huve apna rasta bana rahe ho. Ajeeb eetafaq hai kitne saal beet gaye lekin muje aaj bi yaad hai ki jab meine usse pehli baar dekha tha to usne neele rang ka salwar kameez pehen rakha tha. Woh mere bhai ki birthday party mein aayi thi. Usse dekhte hi muje ehsaas ho gaya muje mohabbat hone wali hai and mano barosa bi ho gaya background mein music bi mohabbat wala jo tha. Puri party mein main use dekh raha tha and soch raha tha “Kya yahi hai Love at first sight”. Sabhi friends gulmil gaye aur ek dusre se number aur email ID exchange kiye aur meine bi uska email sambala mano jaise sari daulat mil gayi ho. Agle din office gaya to kaam mein jaise mann hi nahi laga. Dus baar usse email likha aur delete kar diya aur phir akhir mein bahut koshish ke baad send kar diya. Us mail mein meine usse ek chai ke cup ke liye pucha tha. Yakin sa tha shayad woh aayegi aur pata nahi kya soch kar par woh aa gayi. Shayad meri nazroon ki eeltijah aur soch ki sachayi usse khich layi ya fir yeh soch ke ki tej raftar se chalti zindagi mein shayad sacha dost mil gaya. Intezaar ki gadiyan kaise beeti woh to pata nahi par shyam ko theek 4:30 jab woh thoda sa gabrayi huvi andar aayi to mein bahut khush tha. Woh aa to gayi par baat kya karein kuch samaj nahi aa raha tha. Mere har sawal ka jawab woh han ya na mein de rahi thi. Meine waiter to bula ke do cup chai mangwayi aur chai banate huve Waiter bola “shaker kitni??”. Meine waiter se kaha “ Shakar nahi Namak laaoo”. Woh dono muje dekhne lage aur woh heyrani se ankheen badi badi karke boli “NAMAK”? Meine kaha “ Hanji, Namak”. Aur phir baat badti gayi, yunhi chalti gayi. Kayi kisse kayi kahaniyan hum ek dusre ko sunate gaye. Us din char ghante kaise beet gaye pata hi nahi chala aur dekhte dekhte shadi ke bi dus saal pata nahi chale. Aisa lagta hai mano kal ki hi baat ho. Mein aaj bi roz office se aake chai mein namak dalke uske hath se peeta hun. Dus saal se mein uske is sawal ko taal raha tha. Woh hamesha mujse puchti “yeh hamesha namak dalke chai peete ho, kabhi shakar bi try kar lo. Vaise pehli baar namak kab liya tha chai ke sath?” Aur aaj dus saal baad meine muskurate huve usse kaha “jab tumse pehli baar mila tha , tumhe baat karne pe majbur jo karna tha. Issi baat ko lekar tumne pehli baar bolna jo shuru kiya tha aur issi namak se meri zindagi mein mithaas jo gola tha. Abhi bi namak daal ke lipton chai peeta hun to atut rishte ki mithas jeeta hun jaise abhi abhi naya pyaar shuru huva ho.

Because She Is.........

It's Beautiful to be home where my soul lives especially when she is around. ‘Beautiful’ she says, as she puts her delicate finger under my chin. She smiles and says ‘This nose you have, just like your father’s. Moments of clarity, and moments of sheer wonder written in the voice of my home's heart and it is so amazing to look out through my soul's window and to really see and feel how much I love her and how beautiful and lovelier she looks every time I see her..Yes my grandmother.
Her soft hands, her sweet smelling oil, her favourite word ‘beautiful’ , the sound of her voice singing songs especially her favourite lori’s for me( Meri gudiya kitni achhi, baatein karti sachhi sachhi,roz savere uthke nahati, haye re sabke mann ko bhati, halwa puri use khilaoon, dahi dudh main pilaoon), her lovely and genuine smile, all those small things make my gran the woman I love so dearly. While sleeping she runs her beautiful fingers through my hair and I sleep in peace thinking about all the things I learned from her “Love and believe”
She love me a lot.., there's no doubt about it. She bursts whenever I leave home. Her deep, brown eyes light up, and her full-bellied laugh fills the air when she sees me back. She'll pray to all the angels and saints especially during my exams to make sure I’m kept safe, warm and happy for then and forever.

Now that I’M thousands of miles away, there's nothing i want more than to sit on my grandma's lap, enveloped in her embrace. I simply love her because she is ...

A Big Thank You!

My final year of engineering and ahhh! what a great feeling of being senior. You come across many a new faces and encounter innocent minds , lazy brains ,naughty ones and oh, how can i forget the
hyperactive ones ….
I remember one of my juniors passing by me, wishing me just casually, not making me feel senior and i remember myself nodding in response just the usual way. She was never one of my favourites or for whom i had any special feelings. I had always thought she was indifferent kinds, or atleast to me she behaved like. Most of the times I had seen her alone which I thought she always preferred, adding some kind of arrogance to her personality.
Once for a change i wanted to concentrate on studies and chose to do so on the stairs outside my room. Suddenly this girl came and nudged me. She gave me her phone, kept it near my ears and her actions made me to understand that i was supposed to talk to some person on the phone. Being senior to her, i found it a little annoying, thinking that, “she could at least explain or ask me to do so.” But huh!Her indifferent attitude. Before I could give her a scolding, I saw her pleading eyes and at the same time I heard a voice on the other side of the phone saying, “hello, hello….kindly do me a favour. Can you just let me know if she is fine? Hello… she can neither hear nor speak properly. I am her mother and kindly help me to know her welfare.” Hearing this i was just shocked and at a loss of words. Finally controlling myself, I ventured to explain the other person on line everything what she was explaining me through actions. After i kept the phone i felt a sudden surge of emotions. I thought
what an image i had of her? I mean how could i even think she was indifferent and arrogant without actually knowing her. I wanted to hug her but couldn’t somehow as i felt too small. I felt sad but i learnt a lesson of lifetime. Now I know I cannot judge a person without actually knowing him or her.

After a few months, on the day of my farewell she came running to me and asked me to wait. She got with her a paper and a pen on which she wrote “u r beautiful”. Reading it i felt chocked so much so that i couldn’t even properly thank her. Through her I had learnt a lesson that, sometimes all that someone expects from you is a smile, or may b a gentle hand or extra time from your side…..
“U r beautiful.” was the best compliment I had ever got and perhaps will ever get.
A big Thank You..........again!

MAKTUB

Do we write our story or is it already written ? Does there exist a master plan that is already made for us?? This is hard one for me. This concept is very amazing and at times one fails to explain why we constantly try to change our destiny even if we believe it’s all written.The universe is His creation but it is far from being understood by us.

Maktub-It is written. This one word has a ring of magic attached to it and it actually rings my bells. No matter how horribly things go or they might not be the way you planned them , it is as said by Paulo “if you want something with all your heart and you believe it is your destiny, then the whole universe conspires in helping you achieve it, because it is written. And if it is written, it happens.”
I sometimes wonder about the hindi saying “"Waqt se pahle aur kismat se jyada na kisi ko mila hai na milega" which means we don't get more or less than what we deserve nor is it sooner or later than it should be....because it has been so designed by Him already.

This reminds me of a conversation with a friend of mine .One of these days i told my friend that i wanted to help a person who i believed was not very good to me. I thought may be a good gesture from my side would make him feel better and may be it changes things between us. My friend a strong believer of maktub advised me to leave the situation as it was and explained his point of view through a short story. So, he explained “ Once there was a gentleman who used to help people and cared for their suffering. Once while walking on the road he saw a dog running after a cat. He thought the dog might eat the cat ,so he ran after the cat , picked it and threw it away and while doing that he met with an accident and died. After his death he was sent to hell and there he asked God the reason for his being sent to hell .God replies “he had committed a blunder by interfering between the dog’s hunt for cat. He further explained that dog was hungry for several days and it was the time for the cat to die, which was destined.” He begs God to give him life once again and promises to correct his misdoing, and he is granted the wish. After some days he again sees a dog running after the cat and this time he throws the cat into dog’s mouth and dies again. He is again sent to hell and God tells him that he has repeated the mistake. He explains “ this time the dog was not hungry and the cat was rightly saving itself as it was not the time for the cat to die.”

My friend while narrating the story wanted me to believe that we have to let things happen as they are happening. Everything is already destined. One has to understand destiny, path of fate and the mysterious ways in which things work. Since God is beyond time, He knows all, and His knowing itself signifies everything is written.

But that brings me to a big question mark in my mind ------ Can one wait actually for the destiny to happen or can one wait for the time to make miracles. All i can say at last is what still remains in our hands is to continue trying, and let heart and head join to get something you want desperately and believe that its your destiny, then let the whole universe conspire in helping you achieve it and wait it to happen as if it is destined ,to be credited to the magical term "Maktub"......!!

Being Philanthropist…..

I knew my grandfather as a disciplined person. He would either be absorbed in newspapers or in listening to radio news. He would start his day early in the morning even before the sunrise to take a morning walk of about 7 to 8 kms daily. On his return he would take a full size jug of water.

You would find him listening to others very keenly and but you would very rarely find him talking. He in fact seemed to lack all communication skills. Sometimes one would really wonder whether he had any friends. Once I asked my Mom,
‘‘Does Nanu love anybody? He never expresses it. And I wonder has he ever scolded you?” Mom replied, “Yes he is very emotional. But he has his own ways of expressing it. At times he loses his temper if it comes to compromising to his principles.”

He had four daughters. I had hardly seen him showing any emotion for any of his daughters. I remember once he had come to visit us. My Mom was washing clothes at that time. By the time Mom finished, he was ready to leave. I along with my Mom followed him to see him off. While leaving he held both her hands in his own and gently stroked them with a strange expression in his eyes, which to me at that age was beyond understanding. If one can call it an expression of love, then that is all I had seen it in him.

I had enough of reasons not to like him. He would never get any chocolates or candies to eat. He would mostly talk about only studies. He would ask what new I had learnt and things like that.
Once we (he, mom and me) were walking in market and one child asked for money with a begging bowl in his hand. I wanted my mother to give this child some money and my Mom was about to open her purse when he almost yelled at her and stopped her from doing so. He scolded the poor child as well. From that day onwards I framed up an opinion that my Nanu was not a man who would help poor people. To my mind that was the greatest sin one could ever commit.

As the time had it, one day my Mom got a call informing about ill health of Nanu. She left to attend him. After 10 or 15 days we got another call informing about his sad demise. The next day I was also to leave to see my Mom. It was first time that I saw her upset. She didn’t cry as I expected but I saw continuous flow of tears silently rolling down her eyes. I felt very sad. Tears rolled down my cheecks too but that didn’t change my opinion about him.

Next day morning when we were all assembled in a hall, around 25 people, all strangers, entered and sat for mourning. Some of them were sobbing and some lamenting. None seemed to know them. After some time my Mom’s uncle asked them as who they were? They narrated that they lived in a near by basti belonging to a very poor class. Nanu had adopted 3 children to send to schools for studies. He would get those books and notebooks and would also deposit their fee etc. in the school. Not only that he would go to a near by park every evening to give free tuition to many children. He would assemble children in the park, teach them some exercises and would sort out their difficulties in studies as well. He had also worked hard to convince people, mostly of his age to adopt at least one child from the basti for studies.
While they narrated this, a long silence prevailed in the hall. I could see tears in the eyes of every one present.
This group of people along with those children would come every evening to be apart of the puja performed in his name. On 10th day one of the persons delivered a lecture highlighting the social and noble work he had undertaken during his stay in this place.

For me this was altogether a new dimension of his personality. He had never disclosed it before anyone, not even before his wife, my Nani-ma. But I had one question lurking in my mind, that’s if this was true then why did he scold that poor child that day?
After a year or so I asked this question to my mother.

She replied, “your Nanu would never encourage begging. He would always believe that we should not give any alms to the people who have the capacity to work, especially not to children, who easily can fall prey to art of beggary and get exploited. And one who is able to work should never beg. He believed that begging is wrong but encouraging it was a sin. He was of strong conviction that people should work, earn and eat. But my dear child it never means that he was not a philanthropist.”

And I first time learnt the meaning of being philanthropist….

MoM...... I LovE YoU

MoM Dis one is for u.....
"How beautifully painstakinly you brought me into this world is a wonder.From each moment..from my birth to my childhood and uptill now you are present in me throughout."
Everything you do is love, Mom....In every prayer,every deed, every action and everything.You love me when I don't love myself.You love me when I do!.You love me when m not confident.You love me when i m.You love unconditionally.
I remember when I was little and you loved to read and write. Watching how much you loved reading and writing made me want to read and write too(So here i m writing this 4 u).Thank you for teaching me to love to read and write.

I feel safe from all the harm when you hold me tight inside your arms.I feel the warm love from your heart.Nine months you carried me in your womb Suffered much pain until I was born.I still remember chahu(Ravi Bhaya) saying that you didn't walk for almost last three months during pregnancy because of the heavy snowfall.You used to crawl all the way through just to keep me safe.You always take good care of me, my mom.......
I thank the Lord, my God above for giving me you..
You keep telling me everyday to have fruits and milk.I eat fruits and drink milk which makes 5ml of blood bcos I know that if I don’t,you will burn 50ml.Ways are different mom – the reason remains same. This may sound silly but know it Mom( i know you know it but still)– I love you.I love you......I love you.......

Small gods--- love them, hug them… :)

20thFeb’10….. Felt great today …… Don’t know how to put it into words. It was one of the most amazing days I’ve ever experienced. I started my day at Preet Mandir, the Orphanage. Though I keep going regularly on Saturdays, yet I’ve never seen anything like it before. At the very outset I felt that the children have started recognizing me as it seemed that they were waiting for me. It feels so special when a group of kids exclaim with excitement and rush into your arms. I too hugged them like Mama Jenny :) . I hardly can describe the time I spent there, as partly it was wonderful and partly heartbreaking. I had brought toys, candy, pencils, and colors with me and a heart full of prayers for these kids. We together made some nice drawings and it was pleasure seeing them eat those chocolates.

I narrated some stories to them and explained to them how God is the most amazing father they’ll ever have. We laughed and enjoyed together. I was reminded what my Mom always says, ‘laughter is contagious, a gift from heaven, a great medicine for the soul.’ Beside the joy I realised by hugging and playing with the children, I experienced for the first time a real sense of sorrow too. While we were playing, one small girl began to cry as another snatched her candy, "give me back my candy, I want it back!" But just after a second a little hug from me made her feel better. I wondered if she would always get a hug whenever she is snatched anything…. I wondered whether she at this small age, may be just 6, she knows what has been snatched from her….her parents…the love and strength which every child is born with and has right to enjoy. Perhaps these small gods at such a small age don’t know what they are missing…..

Another girl was singing and dancing. She was excited to show how well she could dance and sing. There was some kind of spark in her eyes. I simply wondered why she had come to orphanage… may be her parents wanted a male baby or was she the outcome of some unwanted pregnancy? These questions kept haunting my mind. I kept thinking if her parents would see her today, would they find her as beautiful as I find her and would they have been proud by having her. I just could only pray that the sparkle in her eyes and smile on her face remains the same.
I try to visualize what a life they would have led If Only they had parents. I again wonder what life has in store for them. But certainly for me it was a life time experience… I know I have grown mature by being with them. I have grown in faith and learnt to be contented…..