Cupid's post !!!

Hello again friends......after a longish gap! So how was the valentine's day this year? Was it "love"-ly or lonely? Never mind even if it was the latter......it's just another day of the year, isn't it? And since when does Love need a day to be celebrated anyway? I mean a reserved calendar day is fine and convenient to remember, but who cares? We can celebrate it every day of our life! Speaking of which, don't we actually live "love" (almost like breathing air) every moment?

For all of us "I don't believe in love"s out here(I felt so a long time back too), there is that one person or thing that all of us love....somewhere tucked away in the bottom of our hearts...the raison de vivre (reason to live) that keeps us going...taking everything life throws at us. Although I am no "love guru", it may be realized as subtle inexpressible feelings of affection, simple comfort, calm joy, poignant possession, deep trust and shared dreams....for any living being or, in fact, an inanimate thing. However, whatever love is for or towards, I feel it is actually the realization of such a feeling/relationship rather than its expression in cards/gifts/flowers/kisses that makes love "LOVE"! Don't you think it is important to understand the subtle difference between the two?

Can we make our complex relationships and shared priorities a bit easier if we start putting more effort into realizing and simplifying "Love" on a personal level?...... rather than being driven by a shady feeling we do not wholly understand, yet are intent on following it to where it leads, on the way trying to force it into expression (even if it is to one's own self)! For example, if you ask me, I believe the Muasamman Burj (Shah Jahan's prison balcony in Agra fort,through which he saw his Taj) is a greater symbol of love than the Taj Mahal itself.......why? Very simple, because the former is an example of the very feeling of love at a very personal level, while the latter was only an expression of that feeling! It is true that history (like most of us in our daily lives) mostly recounts love in its forms or expressions through the times (more exciting and dramatic that way), instead of the very basic feeling/relationship/understanding that defines "love" in itself! It's like saying "i fell in love with x the moment I saw her/him/it"...almost verbitizing an actually gradual feeling into a single moment of occurence, and that is where we make the first mistake of complicating such a sacred and beautiful feeling! That person will invariably realize much later on, that the feeling that occured from that day onwards, after seeing "someone/something special", indeed crystallized much later into what is actually "love"!

I will leave you, friends, with the above thoughts......so, maybe "love" just "happens" to our emotional senses; or maybe it gradually seeps through our senses, mind and soul for a long long time, without even our realizing it, till it seems it was always there to start with! To me, love is a continuous feeling/process of self understanding, realization and enrichment (thanks to my family and Puku)...there is something inherently selfless about it - independant of reciprocity from the person/object of love...it's about becoming stronger and better human beings...and I am sure all of us have something/someone to live for...and after sometime it really doesn't matter even if that someone/something does not share our feeling...because "love" really doesn't need the "me too" component, does it?...and if we look around us, we just might realize that we weren't searching hard enough all this while for the real reasons to live! So, let's keep our relationships simple...by asking ourselves tough questions...answering ourselves honestly...searching for true happiness in our feelings for someone/something ...because at the end of the day, what matters is whether we are happy.......finding reasons to smile...and spreading "happyness" among those that really love us!

"If only we'd stop trying to be happy we could have a pretty good time." - Edith Newbold Jones Wharton

"Just because you love someone doesn't mean you have to be involved with them. Love is not a bandage to cover wounds." - Hugh Elliott

"Real love is a permanently self-enlarging experience." - M. Scott Peck

Fair is Lovely....

Or is it? This topic was suggested by my "someone special" the other day in casual conversation......and i felt compelled to write on it...thanks sreya! There has been a huge outburst in the press lately about the "racist" attacks on Indians down under....and rightly so. But contrary to the shock expressed by most of us, I am not at all surprised by these outbreaks....rather, irrespective of the nature of motivation behind these attacks, certain things should be put in perspective: that is a nation with a marked history of racism against the aborigines, an aggressive culture inherited from convicted forefathers of the British empire (just historical facts....no offense to Australians, please!), but most importantly a seemingly developed society which always had an under-current of unemployment and anguish, that was inflamed by the Australian education industry (read as universities) taking hundreds of Indian students, trying to fulfill the "foreign quality eduction dream", only to land up often in average universities with no scholarship!

But one thing that did surprise me, as an Indian, was how we react to such atrocities outside our soil, but rarely ever introspect about the pathetic "white is right" colonial hangover/attitude that we shamelessly portray in this country! Don't agree? Well friends, let's stand in front of the mirror for once and ask ourselves:
Why is India (not China or Brazil or whole of Africa)the largest market for fairness creams in the world? Don't the "x & y" commercials on TV smell of racist undertones? Isn't "gori" or even "gora" (nowadays) silently attributed a hierarchically higher stature in society or marriage? Don't we know what happens in the air-hostess interviews of some of the Indian airline companies? Do we stop to think before calling certain names to darker-skinned people from Southern India or people with mongoloid features from the North East?

Even after 63 years of independance, we still breed in our minds a color complex even towards fellow Indians.....still acutely lack in self-confidence as a society, as a nation....we still hanker for the "white man's appreciation"......and hypocritically feel a quiet sense of appreciation to be complemented on our skin color......racism is not only the violent "Mississippi burning" or " a Melbourne stabbing" - it is also the "...gori gori ..." Bollywood songs and the "Girl, fair, slim ..." narrowly defined beauty in our matrimonial ads!

I believe that racism breeds racism.....while a fair skin breeds it believing in its misplaced superiority, a darker skin also does the same by believing that the fair skin is right! So let us stand for what is right......by taking small steps in our everyday interactions with people.......from peer groups to job desks....let us be aware of what WE, as citizens of the country of Gandhi, DONT WANT TO BE KNOWN AS ... and more importantly, LETS ACTUALLY NOT BE THAT!

"On an altar of prejudice we crucify our own, yet the blood of all children is the color of God." - Don Williams, Jr (American poet and novelist)