Thought for the day Twenty Nine

Getting married is easy; staying married is difficult; living happily married for a long time ranks among the fine arts

I had read it as the first line of a Telugu Novel. I have never ceased to wonder about the above lines. So true...

I have read one more which says marriage is a happy union of two good forgivers.

Isn’t it?

We go through our lives so many things before marriage. Some good; some bad; some are worth remembering; some utterly forgettable.

But once we are married, we take oath for a lifetime. DharmEcha, ArthEcha, kaamEcha, MOkshEcha.... in Dharma, in handling money, in controlling desire and even in salvation, we will put our steps together.. is the Hindu scripture’s saying.

So in the Hindu marriages, the bride and groom are made to chant these Mantras and made to go through seven important steps which form the initial steps of a long term legal relationship.

In Hindu families (I think in most of the Indian families of any caste) the parents stay with the sons and the daughters move to their in-laws’ place.

This being the case, the girl who comes to the household newly need to be given some extra time to get settled. She would have been very boisterous in her parents’ home. She is suddenly brought into a new household. She would be totally confused wondering how to behave. Probably she would even change her basic nature to get suited to the new place. She would be afraid of the in laws because of the notorious ‘fame’ they have. We see in the newspapers and TV, cases of bride’s death almost every other day. So, she treads very carefully.

Actually only one person she ‘knows’ better than others... her husband, with whom she has spent a little more than others... engagement period, honeymoon etc.,

A daughter in law is almost like a big tree which has grown for two decades plus time in some other soil. Now we have tried to plant it in our house’s soil. The small plants take less time to get accustomed to a new soil. But a tree? It takes more time. It needs more nurturing, more water and more care. Then the tree starts trusting the new soil and grows. It gives out flowers, fruits.

Same like a daughter in law, isn’t it?

Once they start trusting each other, the husband and wife undergo a lot of torture in the form of time spending. Marriage between two individuals becomes alliance between two families. Whether we like or not, we have to put up with the other’s relatives with whom the spouse is close. Even if there is dislike, the pretense of liking needs to be there. Otherwise, unnecessary skirmishes happen which give out place for bad blood.

This means that anyone can get married. But to stay with our individuality intact is a problem. But there are some fancies which we need to leave out. If the girl is ready to take two steps backward and change her style to suit the husband, he too has to take back a few steps.

Then the respect for each other increases. The love after marriage is the best medicine. Once the love starts blooming, the small lacunae get ignored.  Small mistakes are forgotten and big blunders are also forgiven (may not be forgotten!).

Marriage is an institution where the pair starts trusting each other more and more, depend on each other more and more, as they grow older.

All people are there, but it is the life partner who will come to the rescue whenever there is a problem.

I have written the following lines in one of the websites. I love the lines myself!

Marriage is like coffee. The decoction of adjustment, milk of compromise and sugar of understanding. When these three are blended in the right mix, you have great coffee, and you will have great marriage too.

A 'novel' idea

While traveling in the bus yesterday towards Koramangala (which took us little more than two hours to reach), I was wondering what to write in my blog. Thought for the day was written for more than 30 days which I am planning to turn it into a book in Kannada. Now should I continue writing the same or should I try something else? This question went on going rounds and rounds in my mind. It is easy to start anything. But sustenance is a problem. If I continue writing the thought for the day, somewhere I am bound to repeat. But whatever I write should not be boring to me at least!           

So I churned many ideas in my head (Mana Manthana is my blog’s name. Remember!!). First I thought I will continue writing the thought for the day (easy thing because not much of change in writing style!!). Then the second idea struck me. I have had so many interesting incidents in my life. Why not chronicle the incidents, if not in order, just write whichever is the most interesting and then come to the others and so on and so forth. Then I shot the idea off because, when it is from my own life, I have to take names. The incidents which I generally write could be the ones where I am the winner. This would definitely make the other person mentioned in the article feel bad. There was one more angle to this also. After all, I have not told many people that I write a blog. When that is the case, the person whom I mention in my article reading it would be the most unlikely thing. But remember, I don’t like to write with fictitious names when they are pages from my own book of life.

Then it struck me. Why not write a series of short stories? It could be a very small story which is running into 600+ words which would generally fit into my one day’s blog. Suppose the story is more than 600+ words, then make it into two day blog story. If it is more interesting? Then make it into more days. Once the story is completed, I could make it into a small novella. If the blog pages run more than 100 pages, then it is a novel!

All I have to do then is to re-write the same in Kannada language. The market for English language novels written by a non - Englishman is not very big. Only a few Rushdies, Roys, Lahiris and Adigas  make it. I am a small fry. I started writing my blog only to improve my English language. There is another selfish motive. My self-objective!

Funny, right? Self-objective and selfish motive. They sound alike. But have very different meanings in the opposite directions.

The best help I have got by writing the blog is the regularity which has come into my writing. I was reading a book on Writer’s therapy and also a book called Creative writing for Dummies. The books suggest one thing in common. Writing means real writing. Thinking of writing, plotting in the head are not writing. Each day 500 words before 11 am is what one of the books says.

But before 11 am is not possible for me. I do write whenever I feel like. Otherwise I do it by the end of the day by hook or crook!

Why not try the short stories? This question is bothering me from the past 24 hours. There are so many ideas in my head which I can’t bring it out as a novel. But they can become short stories and novellas.

Hope I can do justice! Wish me luck please!!

Thought for the day Twenty Eight

The world is a beautiful place to live. It has animals, plants, nature et al.

God has given every living being a very good sense of liking things. The animals like their partners, kids, food. The birds like the same. These two genres are elevated to a higher level than the insects. Probably insects’ life begins with birth, mating, laying eggs, dying.

Birds and animals have some connection with the human beings. For example, birds like parrot, love birds can stay in the human dwelling. A few animals like dogs, cats, rabbits live with human beings. They have adapted themselves to stay and survive in the human company.

But for the human being, God has given a special feature called reasoning. Yes, reasoning. He can see, smell, touch, listen and eat like animals. But he can also appreciate the things around him. (The reason for using he is only for the ease of use!)

Earlier humans were staying in forests eating raw vegetables and animals. Slowly they started having a sense of belonging. The man started having one wife and kids from that wife.

He marked the boundary for his house. He declared it is his own. Then he researched and got vehicles. He started using so many modern things and got immersed in them. The forest life is forgotten.

Why that? Even the very ordinary things like rising of the sun, chirping of the birds etc. were totally forgotten. He is so much engaged with his daily fight to survive that ordinary enjoyments have become things of the past.

But when the tension prevails too much in life, we want a breakaway. What do we do then? We take a vacation. We go to places like hill stations, resorts, and homestays to forget the routine life.

So funny!

We actually started from there; we now live in concrete jungles. Our eardrums have become totally numb to the noise pollution, the eyes do not care about the dust getting into our eyes, the nose has become regularly used the stench around us. We don’t actually care about a leaking sewage pipe unless it happens in our own house.

A maximum of one week in a resort, we start getting bored. We want our cars, televisions, mobile talks back.

I remember my uncle’s holiday itinerary. He stays in the US of A. The whole family consisting of my uncle, aunt and two children decided go for a holiday on a cruise to the Caribbean Islands. The management of the cruise had drawn out a few conditions. No mobile, no laptop for the whole of two weeks.

It is almost like forgetting the whole world for one fortnight. They enjoyed the trip, they said after coming back.

My question is can we not do the following in a day, every day?

I will take my own example. I wake up at 4.30 am. I listen to the chant of the Lord. This is my alarm sound. We can have a lovely chirpy bird sound. We have so much of modernity in our mobiles nowadays.

I go for my walk either on the treadmill or outside in the park depending on whether the weather is good to walk outside.

If I go on the treadmill I either listen to some lovely music or watch a good movie/serial in my mobile. This gives me quite a good pep. If I go out to the park for the walk, the music would be ringing in my ears in a low tone. But my eyes will feast on the lovely colorful flowers, their fragrances, the birds and butterflies in the park. The heart will fill with peace.

There, the Sun is rising. The orange light slowly becomes yellowish to whitish.

These a few very few things out of many more things we can enjoy.. like a pup which comes jumping at us, the small baby’s lovely smile... oh... life is so beautiful... provided we decided to make it one.

The true secret of happiness lies in taking a genuine interest in all the details of daily life and elevating them to an art.

Thought for the day twenty seven

You don’t become enormously successful without encountering and overcoming a number of extremely challenging problems

We have many problems to face every day. Some problems are created by others and some others by us. When these are not seen in the right light, they look huge, unsolvable and the goal unattainable.

But if we see it in a different angle, maybe we will find a solution.

I am very eager to tell a story here. A story which is there from time immemorial and many versions are also available for this story.

I will narrate the incident which is directly from that epic.

Rama decides to send monkeys across the nation to search for Sita. Hanuman is chosen to go to the South.

The whole army of monkeys assigned to go to south reach the banks of the ocean. Now, they are stuck. They do not know what to do.

They have the information that Lanka is about 100 yojana in its length. Each monkey says how much it can fly.

Hanuman would be keeping quiet. Finally Jambavanta coaxes Hanuman to fly. Hanuman is not even aware of his strength. Finally Hanuman decides to fly to Lanka to find out whether Sita is hidden by Ravana in Lanka.

He prays Rama and jumps and starts flying in the sky above the sea. A demon suddenly appears from inside the sea and swallows Hanuman. He is totally lost inside. He goes here, there, everywhere inside the body of the demon and makes his body so big that he tears the body of the demon and comes out to pursue his journey.

Out of the blue a mountain appears from nowhere from inside the sea. It was a mountain called Mainaaka. Long ago Hanuman’s father Vayu would have helped the mountain. So, now Mainaaka wants to please Hanuman. Hanuman just touched the mountain and flew forward.

The Gods who were watching the whole act wanted to test Hanuman. Does he really have the ‘thing’ to search for Sita? So, they told one of the angels to test Hanuman.

Simhika, the angel suddenly appeared in front of Hanuman. She demanded that she wants to eat Hanuman, if not, at least Hanuman should go inside her mouth.

Hanuman started growing big. Simhika’s mouth also started growing big to accommodate a blown up Hanuman. This went on for some time. And suddenly Hanuman became very tiny and entered the big mouth of Simhika, went in and came out.  He now told Simhika that he has fulfilled her desire.

Simhika smiled and blessed him.

Hanuman finally reached Lanka. A woman was guarding the gate of the golden Lanka. He just beat her because he did not like to kill a woman. She understood that she has met her match and Lanka is going to be doomed. She had a prophecy heard long ago that a monkey will come and beat her. That would be the end of Lanka.

She went off allowing Hanuman to enter Lanka.

He found a lot of women in the harem of Ravana. But he was both relieved and worried that Sita was not there. He finally found her in the Garden of Ashoka Trees. He saves her when she was about to commit suicide in despondency. She says she is fine and that she wants Rama to come and kill Ravana and take her back.

Hanuman now wants to tell Ravana that Rama is coming. The best way he chooses is to create havoc. He breaks the trees, eats away the fruits.

Ravana sends his son, some of the soldiers. All are killed by Hanuman. Then Hanuman would be bound by a very powerful Brahmastra. He is marched to the court of Ravana.

Ravana mocks him that he is just a monkey. Hanuman says, there are so many other big monkeys in front of whom Hanuman himself is just a small fry.

One wildly important goal of finding Sita. Hanuman did not know his strength. He did not flinch when the animal tried to eat him. He was friendly with the friendly obstacle of Mainaaka. Then he matched his wits with Simhika and came out a winner.

He finds Sita, gives her the signet ring of Rama and takes back the brooch given by Sita to Rama.

He achieves the goal despite all the obstacles he faces – friendly, testing or dangerous.

Thought for the day twenty six

Do not procrastinate and never regret

We should not waste time thinking and wondering ‘Should I or shouldn’t I?’  This mental debate would make us waste hours, days, months and even years! The planning can’t be too long because we do not what is stored for us in the future. The fate and destiny too play an important role in our lives. We have to just value our time and do our duty. We may fail for the first time. That should not matter. We have to correct our mistakes and make it right the second time and succeed. Just idly sitting and worrying won’t let us go anywhere. We have to learn from our mistakes, but we should not waste time by brooding over the same. Whatever is going to happen is destined to happen that way only. If this is taken as the will of God, we are not in the regret mode. God’s will is ultimate and we do not have power to alter the course of God’s will. Why should we cry as if something has happened?

We call this Meena Mesha! We keep on thinking should I do it or should I not do it? Like Shakespeare said ‘to be or not to be?’

I have seen people waste time for very long. I give an example. An author who has written about 17 novels and 3 short story collections and an anthology on ‘home’ and a joke book wrote his last book in 2002. Then he went out of country. Came back after 3 years.  Every day he thought of writing. But nothing came out. He went on brooding today I will write, tomorrow I will write, this weekend for sure, no! my birthday is the right day, why not on new year’s day as a resolution? He kept on harping about writing without putting one word on the paper for 10 long years. Finally he was made to write by his ‘boss’ by putting him under the self-objective scheme! He finally wrote some solid book. The procrastination was too long!

We have to think of our fate and destiny. Lord Sri Krishna has mentioned in his celestial song Bhagavad Gita that we need to do our Karma. On the result we do not have any right. The God’s will is the one which gives us the fruit of our efforts.

We may fail for the first time. We have to introspect why we failed and take up the job again and continue. Once bitten, twice shy – the second time, we would be extra careful. We do not make the same mistakes. We would ensure that those mistakes are not committed. If we make some new mistakes, no problem... we need to correct them the next time. The mental debating of whether to do something or not should be avoided. Like said before, it is futile.

We need to be very clear in our thinking. We should have some aim in life. Can we count the number of things we want in life?

Money – Money is required and money is not the only thing which is required. But money can bring us lot of things which we crave for.

Happiness – We can’t buy this. This has to be earned. The cooler we stay, more the happiness. We need to promise ourselves not to harm others, not to indulge in bad vices and regrettable habits.

Peace of Mind – This also becomes a very important part of a ‘real life’. The book gives many ways to earn this, retain this.

Health – Good health is required to enjoy the above three. We need to be alert about our habits. No smoking, no drinking, no tension, no drugs... will give good health. The healthier we are, the merrier we can be.

Long Life – If we have all the above things and not having a long life, we feel something is cut short from our lives. God should will to give us the long life. He should give us the right mindset to have the proper habits, good upbringing, etc.

So, it is Long life, health, wealth, happiness and peace of mind – correct?

These five play a very important part of our lives. We should strive to achieve this. If it is not possible, no regrets. It is  destiny.

God bless the world with all the above five.

Om Shanti Shanti Shanti:

Thought for the day twenty five

Never leave the mind vacant

An empty mind is a devil’s workshop. All evil deeds start in the mind. We have to keep our mind occupied with something positive, something which is worthy. We need to have a good hobby. Our hobby, if it is a social work, would not give us chance to earn money, but sense of fulfillment and achievement would give us happiness. Even if we are resting physically, we need to indulge in healthy reading, chanting of God’s name etc.

We have seen people committing heinous crimes. What could be the reason? Their growing up is wrong? I do not think so. We know that even bad parents do not want their children to become bad. When that is so, we have to emulate good things so that our kids follow us. Generally kids do not listen to us. They try to do what we do. In fact, during growing years, the kids tell their parents ‘Don’t tell me anything which you are not following’

Unfortunately we are doing exactly the same. Imaging the father going on the scooter with the son sitting behind or standing in the front. There is a traffic signal. The father looks this way and that way, ensures there is no police and jumps red light. The son grows up. But his mind has the mental picture of father jumping red light. Why not I?

So, instead of making the kids go through such a procedure, we should make them pick up some hobbies. Good hobbies at that. It could be reading, stamp collection, drawing, painting, carpentry etc. The kid’s mind gets occupied with this. If he is an artist, he would always think of picturing whatever he sees.

Music is a good hobby. Be it Carnatic or Hindustani or even Western, the kids need to be exposed to one of them. This will help their imagination grow. When the imagination is high, they try to experiment in the same line. Then they will not have time for anything bad. This helps in keeping their mind occupied and it won’t be a devil’s workshop. When it is not a devil’s workshop, the bad thoughts won’t cross their minds and they don’t decide to become serial killers, terrorists, rapists etc.

When our hobby is a social work, like watering the plants of the street or the park which don’t get the water, people would wonder what you are doing. They talk for some time and then keep quiet. They see the worth in your work.

Then they may stop talking about it and they may even take it up along with you. A harmless social work is good. A social work which is doing well to one at the cost of happiness of others is not a good idea.

My favorite author writes somewhere about the trees on the road on which his house was situated. He was one of the earliest occupants. He saw that the saplings planted on the road were not watered regularly. He started watering the plants. Others in the neighborhood thought it was odd. But it did not deter our author from watering. He writes, ‘After a few years it was a proud moment to see these trees grown happily since they had the quota of water required for their growth’

That is the satisfaction he got due to the watering. This does not get us money. A sense of achievement, fulfillment fills our heart.

When we are resting we should ensure that we do some reading, healthy reading. The reading should help us in giving us happiness, satisfaction.

We can even chant God’s name continuously for some time during our physical rest so that it helps us in concentration. 

Thought for the day twenty four

There could be some instances where we are forced to take up more work than what we can actually complete. The reason could be that the company has taken more projects than it can handle due to the financial binding. The other reason is that our boss is having a higher trust on us that we could finish more things with a small time frame.

When we are in such a situation, we would be taking more work. We would be thinking at the back of our mind that what we are doing is wrong. We should have told that it is too much when we  had a chance. Now we can’t let down the people who trust us.

But there would be some signals that we are biting more than we could chew.

Some of the signs are mentioned below:

We tend to give least priority to the projects which are for our self-development. We overlook this pointedly. Actually this is the easiest thing to do. We could have kept a set of books to read, movies to watch, places to visit personally. We may even have thought that we could make a reading table for ourselves with the carpentry we learned during our college days. All it needs a minor modification. But suddenly we find that we do not have time for any of these things. This should tell us that we are asking ourselves too much. Even if we write down in the ‘Things to do’ list, the personal jobs we want to do, we keep giving it a skip. We feel really repentant that we did not spend much time for our self-development.

We feel tired after a long day and go to sleep after dinner. We promise ourselves that we will compensate during the weekend. But when the weekend arrives, we tend to sleep more. This will skip the writing, reading etc. Though the time spent on reading is quality time, we feel more relaxed by just sleeping. After all the whole of the week we have bitten more than what we can chew.

Probably if we add the fun time also in our time table, it would at least trigger a thought in us that we should have some fun. The fun could be a simple one. Spending time with the kids or sitting under a tree and reading a book.

We will have sleep disorders. If we are too tired, we may not get sleep in the night. This leads to oversleeping in the mornings. This makes things worse by making us late for the office the next morning. So, the previous day’s additional work gets added to the next day’s list. Then again, more time spent, more tired we become, reach home late, have late dinner which is not good for digestion, sleep eludes, we keep waking up during the nights and early morning nap catches us and we are late for work. This is vicious circle which should be avoided at all costs. The cluttered mind may end up this way. So, we need to think for a small time about what has been done that day and what needs to be done the next day.

If we go hungry when we are supposed to eat and skip meals during the stipulated time, we end up in eating at odd times. This leads to overeating or under eating or eating junk food at odd times. We will put on weight. Some times this weight is not possible to reduce. This would show on our health. We have to eat at the proper time and at least during eating we should not work.

We easily get angry when things cannot be got done. We get annoyed if there is no sugar in our coffee. This should tell us that we are stuffing our brain more things that it can take. We get annoyed about even small things. Bad temper is a sure sign that we are taking more responsibility than we can actually take.

Concentration is another good character which gets ‘killed’ when we are overloaded. We lose track of what is urgent and which is important. This means we are feeding our brain with too much of stuff. We should try to focus on one job and complete it, though it is very difficult to do that in this corporate world. We have to try since our health may get deteriorated.

Our memory goes out of order. We tend to forget very small things which are important. We would wonder when our boss asks about a project of the previous week. We end up clueless and scratch our head.

We need to write down everything which we are supposed to remember.

The last resort is to consult a professional psychiatrist and get a possible solution!