What does Independence mean to you?

This Independence day, social media was flooded with “What Independence meant to you personally" posts. I ignored it, like many other thoughts that couldn’t find the space or time to find a way into my lost brain since the last two months I began my professional life. I am not sure of how the first few months of work life translates for any other fresher, but I personally, couldn’t be more lost. A couple of days would be fantastic, the next two would find me trying to make sense of whatever fantastic I’d found and the last two (yea, six days in a week, that could be an easy blame for my frustration) I’d try to compensate for the time I had wasted not finding any sense, only to realize that all of this was solely driven out of the pressure to please the important people. Meanwhile, (I thought) I was doing every possible supposedly right thing, skipping the late nights, being early to and staying late at office and doing all the shitty work I thought was shitty but also important to be done for the sake of it. It took me two months, or probably just a 15th August to understand how I was on the fastest track to becoming a perfect corporate slave. Thankfully, the Independence day hangover I was in, for a change, I did not work (read pretend to) post 10:15 a.m. today – also because people to please are going to be on a leave for the remaining week. I did everything that fell outside the “right” bracket, came back home not cribbing about work, spent a whole one hour oiling my hair and another one chewing every grain of rice at dinner, started a movie post 10 which I have no memory of doing the last time – bothering least about the next day or the next year and giving my lost self some time off to be the shameless useless one it needs to be at times. Being shamelessly useless gives one the guts to care less of failing and being useless another time, and that is letting yourself free from a lot of self created liabilities - call them the pressures of success or the shallow standards of the society. Let not too many words spoil the magic of what happened in the next few hours,  Rejuvenation – this was my spring. At this late hour of night, I still have all the motivation to wake up early for work tomorrow despite the absence of people to please. Just the idea of not being answerable to someone could – and made so much of a difference – so much so that you would want to work even when you are not bound to – that I found what independence means to me after a carefree yet most productive day. Let us not work each day because we are hired, and let us be carefree enough to keep reminding us of the understated gift of freedom we have.

The Ever Clueless

The Ever Clueless: Right and the Wrong (only Left)

How many times have you hesitated to take that life changing decision? How often have you felt undecided among the innumerable options that life brings upon us? Now, more than ever, w bump across many more crossroads than perhaps our parents or grandparents did. The liberty to choose a life partner, a career, to even selecting the city to live in or device to talk on were fewer back then. And, while our generation does luckily receive this gift of freedom, we are also burdened with an ever growing indecisiveness.

Most of my friends, including me, in the middle of our twenties, are all in some dimension of life or the other, standing in-front of these big question marks that can and that will dramatically change our life. Being first timers, we are all scared. While some are scared to marry the “wrong” person, others are across junctions of choosing the “right” career field, in the process of which are losing what they already have. What leads us to this indecisiveness and hesitance?
Humans are inculcated with a sense of fear. The fear of doing the wrong - woven by the stories of the hell and the heaven, it is repeated and reminded by our society until almost it becomes an unavoidable part of our belief system. Some even become the basis of our moral system. The wrongs of being in love with not the opposite gender, the wrongs of being an unsatifactory bread earner, the wrongs of marrying twice or thrice, the wrongs of being a bad mother who is professionally also a success, the wrongs of breaking a family by divorce, the wrongs of going against our parents even if. Doing “the wrong” has become a societal failure, frequently also termed a moral failure by some. The fear of settling for anything lesser than the best also haunts most. A mediocre student shouldn't exist, and you are always expected to earn that promotion your relatives and friends won't even understand. Isn't it those same stories and society that decides the  yardstick of measurement putting success on one pole and failure as everything else? Indecisiveness is an escape route we have fallen prey upon to, that delays if not completely avoids the fear of failure.

Seldom do we ponder upon the basic question of who invented these wrongs? Most of them are governed by our society. Law defines our sexuality; Indian culture permits only monogamy and historically prevalent patriarchy expects the man to earn more than the woman. Without undermining the existence of any of these beliefs, we should all take the judgement of our subjective intellect at-least once if not always going by it. (We were also gifted with it along with the so many other negatives that we are anyway complaining about!) What if we are lucky enough to choose the so called right option now? Does that mean an end to all the future struggles in our professional or personal life? Does it stop the several bigger fears that are prepared to take on us in the coming days? What if we do take the wrong road, will that bring us to a dead end? Taking the “right” decision may not then be as important than taking a decision at the apt time, and indecisiveness is sure not helping with that.
Now, more than ever, we are indecisive; now, more than ever, we are also coward crumbled souls. Why aren’t we brave enough to close our eyes and jump off the cliff? Why can't we shut off our mind, listen to our heart and take that required plunge? Just like the stories of the hell and the heaven, we were also told that God resides in our heart. Why are we then scared of the God that resides in myths but fail to trust the one that resides inside us?

P.S. (If that sounded a bit too dreamy to your ears that only understands logic and you are having difficulty comprehending what I just meant with that dreamy stuff, do try this experiment once. *coming soon)

The Good, the Bad and the Angry ~

This one’s for those inherently angry souls, who have a mind and mouth of their own and do not hesitate much in putting them to use, sometimes even when it is not really required. While it is great to be expressive about what one feels, there are repercussions too, most of which may not be noticeable early in our lives but slowly starts to take over relationships that matter. Not at all easy as it might sound, anger curtailment takes years, a lot of patience, few bad experiences leading to guilt trips and a regular sincere conscious effort. While I haven’t learnt how to control this enemy residing inside me, I have been able to figure out some simple ways that do help in minimizing the aftereffects. Following is a list of these lessons I learnt through my personal guilt trips hoping it could be of help to some.

1.    The one on the other hand has a mind and a mouth too – Yes, so while she or he may appear to be more civilized than you during most of your arguments (read fights), you got to be aware of the inner demon that haunts all. Remember not to ignite enough this demon, and if so you do, be prepared to accept harsher things coming your way. And, you cannot be critical of their curses or attack them back with this as your new weapon. Just as conveniently forgetful you are of your anger bursts, so should you be or even more to what’s directed at you. It’s a difficult thing, considering you have mostly been on the other side of the radar and don’t have the capability of empathizing with the one who has to hear things difficult to forget.

2.    Learn to be apologetic – Agreeably, a hot head fails badly at weighing things wrong or right. But we all accept that at least one out of the hundred bad things we speak in anger would be wrong. Wrong, morally, and wrong in a sense that puts you down as a human even though it might have helped you gain an upper hand in the argument. The other person might be a little more wrong than you (as your head would always tell), but when it comes to apologizing, you must be the first one. Acceptance of apology is a question that shouldn’t bother but apologize for the simple reason that you were wrong and doing so has put you down in your own eyes. This might require you some moments of calm and silence of your hot head, after which you would feel a lot of relief. This also makes easier the process of forgiving yourself which is of prime importance considering such an anger burst is not going to be your last one.

3.   Apologies aren’t going to help you get away with everything – There would be things you could get forgiven for, but there is always a boundary, in a civilized world and in its more liberal form in the world controlled by anger as well. Some words and actions cannot be taken back. Very often we find ourselves blurting out mean things that are a product of our cunning mind invariably coming up in addition to the other vices that anger invites. Personal attacks, pointing out each other’s weak points or troubled past, going to their families or upbringing turn things really ugly and are a strict no. Try to maintain the basic respect you have had for the other person even in times your mouth would want to go all foul. Break things, look away, scream, or at best curse (in the least offensive way) but never cross the line.

4.    Afterall, we have all fought with our mothers the most – If you are girl, you wouldn’t agree more to the point that our teenage was spent fighting and arguing with our moms practically every day. And yet, it is one bond that’s unbreakable, unshakable. Remember of all those times you closed your eyes, your fists even badly, said a thousand bad things in your head and hoped you could get away with that one fight that would spoil both your mood and hers. And what if you couldn’t? Did that one fight or did those every day fights bring any difference to your relationship with her. Did you start thinking any bad of her? Did you ever lose your respect and love for her? Am not really comparing any of those fights with the ones we have with people now, but if that person is someone even an inch close to your heart, its cruel to spoil all that matters for a few moments of weakness that shouldn’t. Such incidents are only meant to take lessons from and help being more tolerable to others. Post anger burst judgements of any sort should be learnt to ignore.

Movie review: Three Billboards outside Ebbing, Missouri

I have been wanting to combine two of my love interests, movie and writing, and what a movie to start reviewing with. This is surely one of those you haven’t seen before, the characters are going to stir up your definitions of the black and the white, their emotions going to leave you raw. The story is about the mother of a rape and dead victim, Midred. She is angry, full of rage, hates one and all, and none of what she does is anywhere close of being a typical victim. She rents three billboards to bring into public light, the yet open and unsolved case of her daughter, with the hope of longing justice. The police chief (Willoubhy) who for whatever reason gets to take the bashes of these billboards, is one respected by the whole town and is a cancer patient living off his last days. The victim is all you’d want to hate (and not hate at the same time) and the accountable will take away all your empathy, and, this is a fresh, interesting and brave prospective attempted by the writer, Martin McDonagh, as pointed out in one of the dialogues in the movie, “how the whole town supports you for the case of Angela (the rape victim), no one does in the case of billboards”. Adding to the cast, is the supporting character of Dixon, subordinate to Willoubhy, that comes as the shining element of the pack, and every time he makes a screen presence with his own set of “Mommy says” and a weird and rare sense of charm you’d probably associate with violence, you’d want to see him more. The crisp screenplay keeps you glued to each scene, and more than often sweeps you off with a twist you’d hardly expect, and that with the interestingly placed Oscar nominated score by Carter Burwell is a delight to watch. The characters, who are all each going through a lot within, never fail to surprise you with the next set of actions they take, and by the time you’ve reached mid-way through the movie, you are convinced of the unpredictability of humanity that is agitated with emotions of that kind. What I particularly enjoyed about the movie were the very few conversations, and going beyond, that unsaid relation shared between Midred and Willoubhy, or Dixon, where each do understand the other, but are constrained by their own limitations that reason them for their course of unfavourable action they take towards each other. The movie, in parts, will be rough enough to digest, but that’s been smartly dealt with humor, a thing, which again, you wouldn’t expect coming from a movie about a rape victim. Dialogues are heart felt, especially the one where Midred talks about "how a day of false hope was still better than having none". The ending couldn’t have been better, you catch a glimpse of that angry woman smiling for once in the movie, even though it’s not the best she’s been hoping for. Having watched the movie in two shifts, it still couldn’t help me much in taking away all that the movie’s got to offer. A story about hope and vengeance served in a totally fresh perspective. Watch this if you are up for something you’ll remember for years!

Heroism, cannot be taught!

I grew up seeing a woman waking up with me, gulping away the same milk as I did and ran for my school, as she for her job. Early childhood remembers her magically appearing to pick us kids from the bus stop and vanish again, once she ensured we were asleep after lunch. Later, though, I would only see her again in the evening, but all this while we would receive a million calls updating her with the daily milestones before she saw us again, bringing all the fancy snack from the world. She would take us to her workplace during holidays, and that would be our idea of a picnic. She was the strictest mother possible, I have had a hundred fights with her, and frankly speaking, I did complain about her not being like a normal mother I saw around. On this women’s day, while I find myself growing into a woman myself, I realise how she has been instilling the most basic and fundamental ideals of a woman in me, in the most natural manner. I use the word “instil” and not “teach”, because courage, independence, self-belief, dignity and selflessness can never and hence, should never be attempted to teach. Heroism, cannot be taught! The bigger things in life are learnt by seeing and am glad I had a real example right in-front of me.  I would not even start to mention the things she has done for our family, and meanwhile building herself an amazing professional life, we all take pride in. It would be wrong to confine her achievements with just that. The freedom of choice that my sister and I enjoy exercising in each decision of our lives, is the true reflection of what we have taken from her. On multiple discussions over feminism, I have often found myself quiet, because never once I felt the need of an external thing to protect me, never once I’ve felt weak. This is how she’s grown me up, and this has been her true achievement. Happy Woman’s Day mum, thank you for what I can be proudly see myself growing into.