Glow worms, Stars & Aircrafts in the Sky.

Train of memories triggered on the elevated corridor at sun down all because of a few aircraft headlamps suspended in air. Could not help but pen it down. 


Lucknow 
Childhood was spent counting the glow worms in the trees or flying randomly. It was like the banyan tree was lit with fairy lights for Christmas. You could never really count them all just like you could never ever count the stars in the sky but on sleepless nights it was better than counting sheep. 
Sometimes the glow worms were caught and kept in a Kissan jam Bottle with lid punched with tiny holes made with a compass for air inlets but the glow worms  looked better up in the sky flying. Captivity was not for them. 

Summer nights with or without electricity were spent falling asleep on the terrace staring at the stars and then came the airline revolution and Pooja and I started staring at the airliners flying high up in the sky passing by, no landing approach just flying high up one after the other 15 to 20 minutes apart before sleep overtook us.
 
From Lucknow to Delhi 
The glow worms vanished from my life. The spark of happiness of simply staring at the sky into emptiness embellished with stars vanished. The dark grey smoky sky became an integral part of life.
 
From Delhi to Noida 
The sky is no longer empty. 
The stars are visible again. The moon shines brightly and the craters are visible. 
But the glow worms are probably extinct however they have been replaced by the twinkling lights and the headlamps of the airliners circling before approaching the Delhi airport’s landing strips. 
It’s been 8 years and on a good day you can see as far as 3 aircraft’s lights in a straight line approaching you.
 
14th February 2018 Shivratri Govt holiday ensured relatively empty roads was different @ 6.32pm 
Driving on the elevated corridor of Delhi under a clear sky with the sun having gone down and the blue sky getting bluer, I saw not one, not two, not three, not five, not seven but I could not believe this I counted 10 aircraft’s lights twinkling suspended in the air as far as i could see, one behind the other all at the same time. It’s no wonder that a plane lands every 2 minutes in Delhi. 
So that’s almost like 20 minutes of flying distance visible to me as I kept count up in the sky and my eyes on the curvaceous road all at the same time before the road came down on land and the sky drive running against the aircraft’s lights approaching the airport ends and the skyline line of sight gets engulfed by the clutter of Delhi concrete 


The drive is mundane again,
The sky is mundane again,
Life is mundane again till I reenter the welcoming arms of my family under a roof that does not have a terrace anymore. 
Longing to see glow worms again. I wonder what they would look like through a camera lens. 

Maruti 800 to the Baleno's air conditioning

Car Air-conditioning. 

Maruti 800 AC 

The AC  made a difference.  

Yup it depleted the bank account, 

It killed the car engine before its time, cost of running the car increased, the car was sluggish and the car failed to accelerate even if you stepped on the gas and drove the car all the way in the 3rd gear.  It was like in today's times, turning off the blue AC switch worked as pressing the NOS button to overtake a truck.  There was no option but to kill the air con to BOOST the Maruti 800.  

There was no fifth gear. 

Yes the historian will tell you that  there was a limited period edition of the Maruti 800 AC with the unmagical 5th gear but that came much later and was soon discontinued for reasonable  reasons unknown to me, for the simple reason it never came to my head to find out why.  

Was there another option in small cars ?  The sunshine tall boy Shah Rukh Khan Santro has made its entry. But Maruti which meant the "Wind" made in Japan sounded cooler,  more trust worthy and road worthy with a good network of service centres.   Oh yeah and my dad was mighty impressed with one small little fact :  Just 3 cylinders to the engine and a carburettor which you could tweak further to make the car more frugal in its fuel intake and make it go further per litre of petrol.  Some did claim that their 800 returned 21 km to a litre though ours never did better than 19 on the highway and 17 in the city, but that's cos we lived out of the city. 

It's unthinkable today.  

14 years and 70000 km only In a small radius city like Lucknow, the car was good for probably another 10 years without a heart transplant.  

For personal information and no meaningful knowledge's sake, I did find out the car which was purchased for Rs 2 lakhs only was still sold by Maruti even after 14 years for just a shade over 2 lakhs except that it could be sold only in semi urban cities as the company did not find it worth investing in to improve it to meet the emission norms set by the Indian Govt and finally phased it out completely in favour of the Alto. 

For first memories of the Maruti, the Maruti 800 Dx, the Dx badge meant that the car had air conditioning in it, costed all of Rs 40000/- inclusive of taxes and was a marvel of engineering in fit and finish and the shape and the gentle purring of a cat of an engine compared to the sore throated premier Padmini and deep throated rattling Ambassador.  

It was like a small mouse without a boot amongst the big cats, but it served the purpose of commuting in the city in comfort.  In the war of multiplication and breeding between the mouse and the cat, we all know who will win by the power of sheer numbers. And there was no Pied Piper to lead Maruti away from taking over the country.  All other makes of cars died their natural death for lack of evolution.  

Back to air-conditioning, a car without it was a simple give in.  And in a small town it did not matter much. On a hot summer day by the time the first whiff of cool air came out of the vent, you had arrived at your destination. So much for wasting fuel. Keeping the windows open was the more efficient way in comparison. 

So the years passed by and the industrial revolution and the liberalisation brought with it better creature comforts but the car AC was still on the back burner in the mind.  

I Got married to a girl from the big city where distances were measured in hours and not kilometres or minutes and for whom the air con was part of the standard equipment of the car.  The car was about travelling in comfort and not just going from point A to point B.  

Not that she ever complained.  

It's like someone who has always ridden a cycle with shock absorbers is given to ride the regular cycle where the only spring is the one that keeps the stand in place.  

But then like I said the radius of the city decided the fate of that mindset. The world changed and the global warming took its toll on the small town distances as well.  Retail finance  boomed and the streets overflowed with vehicles. Everything became an emi Including the refrigerator. With Global warming also came global slowdown and the great Indian population became the growth engine of the world.  Every car company worth its name and salt came to India with better products, with more creature comforts like power windows on the front windows and side view mirrors on both sides which we called wing view mirrors in style.  Yes side view mirrors did not exist on both sides in India and power windows did not come in all windows as standard equipment.  

Don't laugh.   

And yes the air conditioning improved.  The 1800 Isuzu engine powered a battle tank Contessa and also the box air conditioner which did not Cool. It chilled.  Thats when we learnt about grill temperature.  

The small car air conditioner and the sedan air conditioner cooling was simply not comparable.  On a hot humid day.  You could have beads of sweat trickling down your temples steadily even with the air-conditioner at full blast.  You could only cool your finger tips and touch your forehead as you fought traffic and struggled with the flimsy gear shift lever.  

It's only if you have seen and experienced this can you actually appreciate the true comfort of sitting in the new age sedans where the blower actually blew out cold air and the rear seat passenger could actually feel the Change in temperature in 5 minutes.  The front seat passenger could actually close his eyes and feel the drying of the beads of sweat on the face and imagine the transportation from hot to heaven.  

It's one thing to read it and it's another to truly experience it. 

What was not an everyday experience became a look forward to experience.  

You could sit all day in the car. 

"People and cars can be easily turned around."   It's an old country song.  

All of a sudden all things true about the air conditioner in the car changed except that it drank fuel.  Big deal about it.  It was better to burn fuel than to burn in an inferno.  Creature comfort was important to living life all of a sudden. 

For us the world remained the same in our Maruti 800 and in true blue style the car kept purring along without even the obligatory minimal fuss.  We ferried a lot of expecting mothers to the hospital and then brought them back with their new born babies to their respective homes like the proverbial stork, midnight medical emergencies kept happening in the neighbourhood and the subsequent ferrying to the doctor. A knock at the gate in the middle of the night and we knew it was not for fun. Good times  Ferrying folks for weddings of friends and relative and being at their disposal for their touristy inclinations. Last minute attendances to lend a shoulder to the family of the dead, for folks who missed the "laash ke vaste"  bus.  Have even brought a cousin back home from the hospital in the back seat, when there was no ambulance driver available to carry a dead body. In hind sight  I really don't know how we did it.  We just did it.  

From birth to death the Maruti 800 and all the In-betweenness in the circle of life.  The air conditioner was never missed. No one complained Ki car mein AC nahi hai.  AC wali gaadi nahi bheji.  

All of sudden the car air-conditioner became important.  Well actually it was not all of a sudden. My wife had simply stated it.  "When you arrive in Delhi.  The first thing we will need is a new car.  A new air conditioned car." The wife has a strange way of being right and foreseeing the future.

Wives are kind of soothsayers who live with you.  

The big metropolis became home and the Maruti 800 kept purring along and the daily routine drive was 80 km plus and the state of pollution being such that my crisp white shirt became a sweat soggy grey shirt mess even in winters. The white shirt remained white only where the seat belt covered the shirt.  In a few months time - by the time the winters ended the seat belt was nothing but a black band of soot and I dared not wear a white shirt to line it with a black band across the chest.  That's how the house hold economy of the white shirt crumpled. 

Braved the summers of Delhi in the hot oven cum cocoon of isolation with beads of sweat trickle permanent feeling, bordering on dehydration and the glare of the sun. The good fun was that you don't miss what you don't know.   

The feeling of an Air conditioned car was unknown. So much so for progress made in life.  

I still recall the moment I decided to buy a new car.  Sorry read it as an air conditioned new car.  

Driving back to work from Malviya nagar at 6 pm from a vendor visit.  The drive was a hour long simple routine drive back which probably took 4 hours on the outer ring road via the domestic airport loop into the choked cantonment roads into west Delhi.  4 hours in isolation in an oven, with no water, sweat which flowed from the pores like water drops from a leaking tap also dried up. Dehydration set in, for all I know salt imbalance in the blood stream ensured that I was on the verge of losing my mind driving in 1st and 2 gear, even the sun went down and the sodium vapour street lights refracted into my eyes and the red back lights of the cars up ahead kind of actually blinded me.  Somewhere in those few minutes before reaching the point of delirium I decided The Air conditioner has to come in the car.  No not a mere add on AC fitted in the car.  In those days an AC could be fitted in like a music system was added on. NOT FOR ME, It has to be a real air conditioner.  Or maybe I was delirious cos there was only one car which was the best. The Merc.  The Merc sold only one model in the country in those days.  It was out of question.  It was beyond the wildest of wild dreams.  Now I knew what they meant in the English movies by isolation and confinement in a tin room in the hot sun in which you could not stand or sit completely. Not many men survive it.  From the POWs in the war movies to the jail inmates.  Only "The Heros" did not break down.  They could physically break you but not your mind.  Now I knew what they went through and felt like. So much for thoughts of your entire life gone by and the future  to create only to you company. 

You could change the world only if you could think.  Reaching the point of no thought without any attempt at meditation.  The only crystal clear idea in the mind embedded that day was the car air-conditioner.  I had everything in life that I cared about but for a car air conditioner.  

The wife was RIGHT but it took from Nov 2005 to May 2006 for that seed to germinate completely in my mind.  After that it was only a matter of time. 

The Baleno came home in June. It was a rolling steel cage with a monster air conditioner, which cooled to the point of having to clench your jaws to stop your teeth from chattering but there was no way you could stop the headache which came with sitting in the cold for too long. 

Yes it was no Merc but it had the air conditioning that was better than that of the E class.  

Time to laugh.   

This note was penned while I was waiting for the cooling coil of the Baleno in June 2016.  

What to do when your wallet with debit cards and credit cards gets stolen.

People have their wallets stolen all the time, its happened to you, its happened to people you know.  picked from their pockets in the train or in the bus or in a crowd or their domestic help flicks it  and you  realize it only when the messages start popping in for the transactions of withdrawals at ATMs / merchants/ fuel pumps and you really don’t know what to do because you don’t even know the account number/ card number sometimes you don’t even know the Bank name either and in the state of Panic you forget the name of the account holders too which is you yourself or your spouse or which or your children or …….   

 WHAT DO YOU DO?

  

In a lot of ways I just refuse to connect with people but somehow people associated with my wife and my child imagine me as the man who probably works in a bank and has the answer to everything associated including the odd phone call every now and then from neighbors, friends and relatives to check if the bank was open today or would open tomorrow or not.  

To be fair ; the banks print a lot of paper on the DON’T DO THIS LIST but people simply refuse to read it because it is fine print and if its bold print then they are only selling something. So why read it. 

Ignorance and Stupidity have no age. At the age of 15/20/30/40/50/60/70/80 also you can remember the name of your childhood crush and his/her birthday but you simply refuse to memorize a 4 digit password for an ATM Card / Credit Card.  You would rather keep the password noted on a piece of paper or maybe the same paper along with the respective cards in an organized manner and pat yourself on your back for your meticulous organization skills. Some of you would even keep signed blank cheques in your wallets, just In case the ATM runs out of money.  So much so for a backup for a backup.

  

It’s amazing how the same person who has an OCD of checking the house lock twice and then walks away but turns back to open the lock again, reopens the lock and walks into the kitchen to check if the Gas was fully turned off, Locks up the house again, checks the lock twice again after turning the keys and keeping it in the pocket and walks away knowing he has done everything to secure the house from theft and fire. 

To cut a long story short – people forget their wife’s and offspring’s birthdays despite running successful and rewarding lives but don’t know what to do when they find their wallet missing other than asking for  help, which is also a great thing. It’s a good thing to seek help. By nature all of us are helpful and sensitive in nature.  

It’s just money, earned through your lifetime lying in your bank account, waiting to find a purpose 

Call the helpline of the respective banks. Immediately !

Yes, you need to know the names of the banks for you to start with, to begin to even search for the help line numbers or anyone to be able to help you.

I could note down all the helpline numbers here but that would be a waste of time or maybe I will, who knows. 

Almost all bank help lines even the automated Interactive Voice Responses have the first option as Card or Bank account and then generally have the 1^st option as report loss of card. It is Open 24x7x365.  

There is a real human being’s voice at the other end. (That should put you at ease) 

Tell your Name/ Bank account/ Debit Card number/ Credit Card Number and the representative would hotlist the debit cards / credit cards immediately after verifying your identity with your complete name/ date of birth/ mother’s maiden name / last transaction / last payment / last withdrawal / mobile number / billing address or any other random information that only you would know.  

Remember to take down the service request number / the last transaction on the account and the balance for follow up action.

You might ask why would they ask you for verification, instead of simply blocking the card but the fact is that if they don’t, you could simply block anyone’s card by just knowing his/ her  name. Imagine the fun pranks you could play on your friends by simply blocking their debit cards and credit cards.  Yes you can do that, if you do your homework properly. (There is a forward going on in whatsapp on why to remove your name/mobile from Facebook else fraudsters can empty your bank account without even stealing your wallet)  

Now here is the tricky part in the mind - - like most people including me,  you don’t know your account number/ debit card number/ credit card number so what do you do now ?

If you are, who you are saying who you are – say upfront you lost your cards with your wallet and you don’t know the numbers.

Assist the representative of the bank with your Name / Date of Birth / Pan Number / registered mobile number and he/she will be able to pull out all the details.  It is all a matter of keying in the details while you speak it out slowly and clearly.  

If you don’t know or don’t have your PAN Number or can’t even remember your Mobile number -  then you might face some difficulty or an extension of anxious moments but nothing that can’t be overcome because searching further requires isolating your name matched details with further verification.   Yes there are other people in the world who have the same name and the same date of birth as you, living in the same country and having an account with the same bank in the same city and the same branch. Amazing isn’t it. 

If it is a bank account – it helps knowing the city and the branch in which the account was opened for quicker search and find on the bank’s data base.  

Well so you get the general drift now.  That’s about all there is to it. 

If you have overcome your state of panic by this time, then go ahead and request for a fresh replacement credit card/ debit card in this phone call itself.  Considering you don’t know your account number or card number and the representative would not be disclosing the same to you, other than confirming that the same has been blocked.  You would not be able make a fresh phone call to request for a new debit card/ credit card till you go through your records at home to find your account/ card numbers. 

Repeat the above process by calling the helpline for all the remaining banks.  I know it is not fun but every subsequent phone call is easier to follow through as you go down through your list of cards to block. 

On re-issuance of the plastic, all your standing instructions would get transferred to the new number and you don’t have to do anything for that and trust me that knowing that from beforehand is a big relief.  

But then not to underestimate the power of the buffoonery of the humans and the quality of the mobile network - Calls can get dropped - Please call back.  Sometimes a particular representative may not be able to search for your particular account successfully and express regret. Not to worry – Simply disconnect and call back again and start afresh. The representative at the other end is a new one and would have a different skill and training level and may be able to help you successfully. I have experienced such instances in my life time and hence mentioning.  Please also explore the possibility that you might not have an account with that bank either. 

I have also come across a bank whose helpline was not willing to search and find without knowing the account number or the debit card number and that was truly a scary situation to be in that despite giving all personal details the helpline expressed its inability to act upon the loss of debit card and that is what prompted me to write this piece. 

Interestingly the wonderful thing about the cards in your wallets are that they come with an expiry date too. If you are lucky you might be carrying cards in your wallets which have expired and the helpline would update you on the status as EXPIRED.    

In the times and age that I live in, the word “EXPIRED” never provided so much of relief.

In case you are the internet savvy customer – all banks have the option of hot listing of debit cards including registered credit cards after you have logged in.  It’s faster than calling the help line.

In case you have the mobile app of the bank you use – you can hotlist your card on that aswell.

Replacement cards generally arrive in 3 to 4 days. If you live in the Metros you have the new card at your doorstep even before you have taken complete stock of your life after you lost your wallet and made those phone calls. 

Now that you have the cards - replacement cards cost a mere Rs 150/- plus taxes to Rs 200/- plus taxes and vary from bank to bank.  

Hope this helped.

   

Monsoon Magic 2016.

Observations of a working visa tourist Life in Mumbai monsoons. 

People walking along the road and crossing the zebra crossing all seem to be walking with a purpose.  They seem to have a spring in their walk by and large.  Very Unlike the Delhiite who waddles or saunters or simply drags his feet.  

People leave their shoes under their work stations, change into their walking shoes and head for home. In the morning they practically dress up in the office.  

Folks eat breakfast in office. It's their morning togetherness  before beginning the day.  

Folks buy breakfast on their way to work from street side vendors and bring it to workplace in their tiffins. 

It's a regular practice not a one off day of indulgence.   

It can rain anytime with no predictability on either the strength or the length of the time of the downpour.  

The city does not stop just because it's raining.  

The city does not stop just because it is flooded.  It only pauses.   

In any case traffic only crawls in the best of times.  

Auto drivers are generally polite. They do travel by the meter without an exchange of argument, depending on the time of the day. It's all a matter of demand and supply at the pickup point.  

The meter does rule.  Auto drivers return change of Rs 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 or 7 or 7 or 8 or 9.  They don't crib about it and try to make an extra few bucks in the name of chutta nahi hai.  

By and large they wish you back with an exchange of greeting. 

Well all is not really fair.  You do have a few autos with their meters rigged.  For a regular Rs 37 bucks can end up being Rs 40 on the same route at a shorter distance and lesser time.  Yes it does happen.  Sometimes it's only Rs 34 or Rs 35.  It sets the mind wondering.  

Wish I had made notes of the conversations with the auto driver and the ola cab.  It's an insight into life you have seen and not seen, heard about it or not, known about it or not known about it.  It's all good because the conversation will end without a baggage at the destination.  

The security guards that frisk you before entering the metro are not used to being wished a good morning or a thank you. No wonder their return of the greeting is a little delayed but they do turn around and wish you back though you have passed them by.  

The office building security guards are pretty polite about requesting to see your I card.  

The residence building guards respond to your good mornings and good evenings with equal enthusiasm.  3 fortnights down the line.  It's the reverse.  They wish me instead of me wishing them just in case I miss - if I am lost in my own world or am occupied on the phone.  

It's like creating a new world of familiarity around you of people wishing you a good morning and a good evening or a good night.   It's kind of immaterial.  What's material is the smile that it brings on the face without any deliberation  even if it is artificial and we might not know each other's name ever.  

Ladies selling breakfast on the pavements of Mumbai from 8.00 am is a fairly common sight.  They are all neatly dressed with well oiled hair and yes they do wear flowers in their hair.   If it's raining there is an umbrella at hand and the hand is that of a gentleman.  

Umbrella?   Yup you always need to carry one on you.  It's like a walk in the city with your phone in one hand and an umbrella in the other.   

Don't mind getting your shoes wet ?   

Keep waking in the rain.  The street turns into an ankle deep fast flowing river.  Now that your leather shoes are soaked in water you will mind it and there is nothing you can do about it as the passing by double decker bus sprays water all over your trousers upto knee high. Squish squish is a sound remembered from childhood rainy days. Cut to : Why not drenched upto your waist ?  Well you know buses can't really drive very fast in this city.  Leather shoes soaked in rain water muck don't dry overnight and there is no sunshine.  If you are lucky to see the sun don't make the mistake of drying them in the sun. You need to dry them with newspaper lots of newspaper. 

Keep marching onwards. 

There is no sense of panic till the time you can make it to the 6.22 pm fast local to wherever and that's how you figure out that this city is not tuned into the system clock or the sun or the moon or the rain or the shine. It's tuned into to the digital clock of the Mumbai suburban railway and the Indian railways only recovers 36% of the the operational costs from the passengers.  So for all of you who thought this was a city driven by capitalism.   It's socialism that's powering the entire city daily all the way through the heart and back. 

Ever seen a road on a map that simply ends.  Of course you have. But  have you seen a road simply end because there is no place to go on land.  

Well that's Bombay for you. 

And when the sun does come out, You can smell it through the entire city.  I always thought that's dead fish.   Of course it's dead fish ! damn it ! but we are drying them so that they did not die in vain.  

As a kid staying outside the municipal limits of Lucknow -   It used to be an event going to town.   

At age 43 in Mumbai.  "I am going to town" is also kind of an event. 

The great divide still exists.

  

A happy childhood is something that no one can ever take away from you.

Sometimes I wonder what does make me happy ? I have no answers. 

What has made me happy ?

Getting a Walkman with a 3 band graphic equaliser on my birthday so many many years ago. 

Owning an iPod touch does not match.

Getting a BSA Mach 1 in school after a BSA slr can never be matched. 

Having dad's Maruti  800, Baleno and the Wagon R all 3 put together can never add up.

Having a psp and a ps2 can never match up to the joy and happiness of a  solar powered pocket video game that costed 350 bucks when my father's salary was 1800 bucks. 

It means so much more now than all the toys that Arjun has. 

I never have to sacrifice anything to provide for my son.

All the Nike, reebok, addidas and puma that I have today can never add upto the joy of having Sumitabh's worn out pair of Nike.

All the tshirts and clothes that I can buy today without batting an eyelid at the swipe of a card can never match up to the joy of searching for that one gem of a Tshirt from the used clothes lot at the Nixon, in the company of friends, who are still friends for life.  

The world is no longer the same.   

All the watches that I can buy for myself which I never do cos all they do is tell the time or gifting them to people I still love today which I actually do once in a while with or without a reason can never match upto the happiness of having the timex digital in class XII. 

What brings happiness ? 

Is it having something , or is it longing for something and then having that something. 

Or is it the time that one can spend with things acquired over time.  

Happiness is probably a state of mind which differs at different points of times in the entire life span.  

Here today, gone tomorrow.

It's all the same.  

A happy childhood is something that no one can ever take away from you.   

12 December 2011

The last picture of the heart & lungs of Maruti 800 under the hood.

A few days  short of 15 years of care.  

1999 to 2014 AD. 

As children of parents who grew up helping in polishing the Premier padmini and the Ambassador with waxapol over the weekends --   

The Maruti 800 brought in a new world of unimaginable driving experience all together for both the generations at the same time. 

The fun and thrill of driving a white Maruti  800, wearing white t shirts and the black seat-belts in stark contrast across the chest for special effects and the naturally flat stomach will never come back.   

For all the creature comforts of the cars that we drive today, the 800 would be rated at the top of the favourite list for the simple reason that it gave us independence to be where we wanted to be from where we were. 

White t shirts and black seat belts will always be a Sumitabh Badgel original idea.  

Have driven a lot of cars with a lot of creature comforts.  But there are two intangibles in a car that come only with time.     "Trust " and a gushing flooding rush of "memories" every time you sit behind the wheel.

Rio - Christ the Redeemer

Meandering of a mind in conflict. 

We lie to the world without a second thought because calling a spade, a spade means getting hit on the head with the same spade.   

We keep our thoughts to ourselves with our loved ones, for reasons best known to our own perceptions.   

We don't listen to our own self.  

Interestingly there is so much of chatter in the mind yet we try to drown it instead of making sense out of it.  We think we have all the answers without knowing the questions.  

When are we really ourselves ?  

"Our entire life gone by",  is the basis of the perception of our own life at the present moment and is the reason for the way we are -  the way we are, so in a way it's a self fulfilling prophesy of yesterday repeating itself today and then the same today becomes tomorrow and life becomes a photocopy of no change except the change in age.   Which eventually means we become animals  of habit with a mind without a mind of its own - on the larger picture. 

The imperceptible  changes - though visible to us are not ignored but we fail to act upon them.  When we fail to act upon them, there is nothing else to do but to react to them.  Reactions are generally of the knee jerk kind, both in the mind and in real life, which basically means that we end up with an action and a result which is more often than not - unwanted or unwarranted. 

Do luck or stars or karma play a role in your life is another line of thought that plays on the mind of why we are, the way we are but that's only when you choose not to fight the flow or not to take the blame for your own mistakes in life. 

Yes we all do make mistakes in life whether we choose to accept them or not is again a matter of choice.   When you have a choice you  make a choice. Choosing not to choose is also a choice. Choices are not always left, right or centre.  Sometimes the choice could be just to stand still and breathe deeply or simply run faster on the same path to self destruction or self gratification which ever way we look at it. Destruct we surely will,  like all humans- eventually when breath becomes air and what you leave behind is immaterial to yourself. If you look back you can plan a seamless transition from being there to not being there for what remains behind you.  

The idea is not to press the self destruct button.  The idea is to press the button of "Keep going" every morning with or without knowing where we are going ourself but we send the child to school every morning thinking we know which path we are sending him/ her on and where it leads to. Or do we even really know that ? 

We just know it leads to the future.  What the future holds is not known but the belief of creating a better future than our own is the goal.  

As I write this I am reminded of what my dad always said that his dad in turn told him that as a parent you have succeeded only if you leave your child on a platform to walk ahead in life than what you ever walked on. I never really understood those words till maybe today as I sent  my son or should I say despatched him to school imagining that he is headed for a better future than mine while not knowing what the future holds. It's all imaginary.  It's all about creating more opportunities for him to be better than his grand parents when he looks back at his own life. 

Which of "The 7 Wonders of the World"  would you like to visit ? : 

If my son wants to go to "Rio" out of all the locations of the wonders of the world for the simple reason that the Fifa World Cup was held here and Messi won the golden boot here and so on and he writes an entire page of it for class work but we rub it all at home and say - "Son, all this is very nice and very well written but you can't write this for an answer. You can't write what your mind thinks.  You have to write what your teacher wants you to write, what she expects you to write." And so he writes about "The scenic beauty around Christ in his flowing robe with the beautiful ocean on one side and the city of Rio on the other and the image of the feeling of warmth of the embrace that Christ's arms are  open wide for all of humanity and it's only befitting that the Olympics are being held in the city with Christ overlooking it." Or something to the effect.   

The beginning of teaching the child to lead a dual life has begun in real earnest.  

Ridiculous that we preach to allow the child to be what he wants to be and express what he wants to express and be how he wants to be.  

Children learn best by example. 

Are we really the complete perfect sample of what we would want our children to be like ?  

The child also does not really know you or maybe he/ she knows you better than you know yourself because he/ she sees you for what you are and not for what you have become.  

12 August 2016