Women must have it ALL

A speech for Area Level International Speech Contest. 

 

(Opening Scene. Running on a treadmill.Panting.)

2 km. 4 km. I need to do 10 km today. Yesterday I looked so fat in that dress! I should probably start pilates or yoga, join some class…but my gardening would suffer then…maybe I can steal some homework time for this..oh no no no..i can’t do that…it’s about my kid’s future after all…if that smug mrs do-it-all sharma’s son gets better grades, how am I going to face the mirror? Talking of mirrors, the one in the bedroom needs some shining…let me meet the maid today..i’ll show her how cleaning is supposed to be done! For that matter, cooking as well. Oh..what time is it….gosh!

(Stop Panting) Mr. Contest master, fellow toastmasters and whoever has run on the spot without getting anywhere…good morning..rise and shine and glimpse into the world of a superwoman… the all powerful, omnipresent, <speaking very fast> always fresh, always ready, always there for you, never late, never wrong, the best daughter, the best sister, the best friend, the best wife, the best mother, the best employee, the best project manager <stop speaking very fast, deep breath>..….your own fine superwoman…..miss perfect. What? Did you say nobody is perfect?

Well....i am nobody. And everybody. Unique…one and only…just like everyone else! Or, am i? Pause for effect.

Funny how things happen and wake you up when you are least expecting them to…me and my husband went to our friends’ place a few days back. They had the most beautifully kept house..spic and span…the tiles were so clean you could bend over and check if your lipstick’s still good! The bathrooms so spruced up and redolent, you’d almost end up apologizing to the toilet seat after relieving yourself. <pause for audience laughter> Naturally, my competitive instinct told me to look down upon myself and berate me for being a lax homemaker..what kind of a woman was I if my floor tiles were simply clean..and not reflective..or if the bathroom smelled just good, and not aromatic? 

Oh..the shame of it! Like other things of prime importance in my world, I ended up discussing this with my husband. “Did you see the kitchen? The cook top was virginal….as if nothing was ever prepared on it! The lady of the house must have a magic wand.” The answer he gave me was an eye opener, “Oh yeah…the sorcerer! Her amazing housekeeping skills automatically make her the best person that ever existed, isn’t it? And by corollary, it makes you the worst…because you live in a digital world..either 1..or 0.”

Well….even if he was saying this just for me to stop nagging him about his shoes lying here and there, he did have a point. What have we done to ourselves? The double whammy of guilt laden with consumerism has led to ever increasing expectations, and we are now slaves to it. We’ve gone beyond mere obsessive-compulsiveness and landed into the realm of ‘the superwoman complex’. The idea that one can do everything…and why can….one has to do everything. Phrases like just a housewife, just a mother, just a career woman….hurt us….we feel dishonored by them.

With decades and centuries of crusading for women’s rights…right from a suffragette in the 20^th century to the neo-feminists of the day…what is everyone fighting for if the object of the movement – woman - is its worst adversary! What we really need, first and foremost, is freedom from this superwoman cape. This garment of incessant unnecessary burdens that we ourselves have proudly adorned ourselves with. Who said looking fat is disgraceful…do yoga if you feel like..who said gardening is essential…if it is, hire a gardener. Who said the poor mirror will disown you if mrs. Sharma’s son excels in his studies! Take it easy ladies! Lets try being happy with good…or just ok. Sheryl Sandberg says “Lean In!”, Indira Nooyi say “Women can’t have it all”….Melissa Mayer has some radically different ideas. And us ordinary women think we must have it all. Well, if you do want to have it all, let it be A Little Leisure. (make a, L, L symbols with fingers as you say it.)

This ended up being a runner-up speech that day.

The Real Beauty of Ladakh

You get there and try to take in the snow capped mountains and the pink-blue-green-brown-grey and other technicolor rocks. The wondrous white sand and the crystal clear waters of the sangam of rivers Indus and Zanskar make you want to stay there forever. The mesmerizing monasteries and their fascinating frescos are also one of a kind. The varying shades of blue of the Pangong Lake make you thankful for being alive to witness such a wonder. The zigzag roads seemingly at odds with each other but ultimately reaching the same destination, shake you to the core, making you reach depths of thought you never consciously fathomed. The oasis town of Alchi and the bacterian camels of Nubra Valley are bedazzling. Momos and maggi at the highest motorable road at Khardungla, and the hot green tea at K-Top during snowfall is otherworldly. The pashmina shawls and the exotic jewelry at the Leh market redefine luxury for us city folks.

But, all this, taken together, does not equate the real beauty of Ladakh.

The real and absolutely ravishing beauty of Ladakh is its people. Their unmatched innocence and simplicity. Their kindness of heart. Their zest for life in the hardest of circumstances. Their positivity and optimism. Their Julley – one word meaning hello, good bye and thank you – a unique way by which they mandate expressing gratitude at meetings and partings.

United by cricket, bollywood, music and the national language, these people can blend in with anyone and yet maintain their own characteristic naivety. They own their cars but prefer to work as drivers with the customary Dalai Lama picture above the steering wheel; we ask them incredulously, and they say, “This is a great job! Why would I do anything else?” There are blind turns and dangerous alley-roads but they refuse to honk, when asked they say, “But I did honk, didn’t I?”, and the real reason after probing a bit turns out to be, “That poor guy will get scared.” Again in disbelief we can only stare agape. When an accident does happen, we expect a fight and are somehow sadistically pleased that now we’ll see the human side. But, no sir, they just get down, smile at each other sheepishly; the offending driver admits his mistake and pays for the damages, monks who are hurt put on bandages the tourists provide, and everyone moves on. Unbelievable. There is no need for locks because there is no scope for theft. You lose some belongings in one hotel, they aptly reach you at another one – yes, staff from the very hotel from which you moved do that for you. You can only try to smile and say Julley. Walking down a road looking for some transport, a godsend car would invariably stop and offer you a ride for a hundred bucks. Struggling with lack of oxygen and the bitter cold, you could get hot tea at a monastery in the middle of nowhere. Honesty and integrity really mean something here.

The place also sprinkles some of its magic on people just passing through. From the soldiers of the army to the engineers of Border Roads Organization, everybody is happy to help, or even exchange a few words. Tourists, both foreign and domestic, some in search of spirituality, some adventure, some pure old fun, and some a few good clicks, forget language and cultural barriers and whole heartedly discuss just one thing – Ladakh: with all its glories and all its difficulties.

And the icing on the cake is the locals’ easygoing manner of talking and their willingness to go to lengths to please others. Excerpts:

From an apparel shop at Leh market –

Seller: Madam, why don’t you try our pashmina stole!

Madam: Ok. <Tries to put it on clumsily>

Seller: 1 min madam, let me show you how. <Ties it properly>

Madam: Hmm…looks good this way.

Seller: Yes madam, but you will have to learn to tie different types of knots. Videos are available on you tube.

Madam: <totally stumped>Really?

After river rafting –

Barely out of teens Kayaker: Madam, aapka umr kitna hoga?

Madam: Tum batao kitna hoga?

Kayaker: 22-23

Madam: <pleased beyond words>Thanks! Khush kar diya tumne aaj!

Kayakar: Why?

Madam: Arey, young samjha tumne mujhe, isliye.

Kayakar: Oh. Achha. Boyfriend hai?

Madam: !

(And now you know why I really wrote this post..ha!)

Someone spilled the coffee beans again…

Some coffee beans in a farm grew together and ended up in the same bag. They were very happy in the confines of the bag and it was the world to them, nothing existed beyond it. In their innocence, they did not know what sunshine or rain or wind meant, they did not care where they came from or where they would finally go, and their area of concern started and ended at the bag they were in - until that fateful day.

That day someone opened the bag, took some of the beans out and spilled them around. Some beans ended up in a small household and became a beverage for a day, a few travelled all round the world and were served as coffee in a beautiful cup at a renowned restaurant, some landed in a perfume shop to help people sniff different aromas, and others were taken at a farm and became the seeds to grow more beans like them.

More such beans grew from them; more snuggled up in their cozy bag-cocoons, more bondings were made amongst the beans - unaware, carefree, rosy bindings – only to be broken again, only to be spilled again.

5 years of the other side

Today it’s been 5 years that I joined the corporate world. 5 years since I crossed the threshold to become monetarily independent, got the final freedom from the days of pocket money; liberty from the money doesn’t grow on trees speeches. I remember I had a huge list of things to buy which were kind of banned before (well, the never ending list still continues to grow and by its magnitude it doesn’t seem likely that it will ever exhaust, only that no stuff is banned now, just a bit unreachable by priority and capability to buy standards). 5 years since I thought I had bidden a final farewell to terms like syllabus, tests, scores and grades, exams, viva voices, and of course, study books. (I had even gone to a temple to offer a nariyal and give my personal thanks to God for making it all end. I would like to remind the readers - if there are any - that I am not really what you would call a believer, and in retrospect I think I should rather have offered that nariyal to Time). 5 years since the mystery of after-all-what-exactly-people-do-in-an-office is solved. 5 years since I stopped going from home to school/college to school/college to home, and started going from home to office to office to home. And that pretty much sums up the “before” and “after” of my job life.

You see, 5 years is a long time. 1825..no…1826 days (counting the lone leap year - an engineer, even if only in name, is supposed to do the math right), about 261 weeks and 43824 hours. Lets not go into the minutes and seconds, because in a 5 year span, an hour seems to be an optimal least count..but wait! How else am I going to count my crossword solving time?? (yes, the rest of the post is going to be that boring, me counting all minutes of the past 5 years). So let’s deal in minutes, 2629440 in total, of which 783000 were spent in the office, 97875 in commuting and much of the rest is unaccounted for - you can calculate just that much okay, what kind of scheming shrewd calculative person counts minutes of her personal time anyway?

Coming to official minutes, on an average 26100 were spent playing table tennis, 13050 in daily crosswords, 52200 having lunch, 39150 for snacks, and the remaining, well that’s what we come to office for, work - which involves meetings, strategic discussions (read chatting), email reading/writing/forwarding, attending/providing training and the list goes on. After writing this I wish I could say I love my office, but that would clearly be against the unwritten protocol and ethical code of conduct of the working class.

The maximum I can say is that I don’t miss school. I don’t miss college. Just feel a bit nostalgic about them once in a while, like when there’s that ad on TV where some friends fight for who will pay the bill, or when I pass in front of my college campus and can still see my good old scooty standing there amidst a bunch of carefree idiots, whenever I am sitting in any CCD or whenever I see my school bus.

The point is, every phase of life has its bitter-sweet-stupid-interesting-dull-hillarious-embarrasing-amazing-inspring-ooh-aah-ouch-wow-psst moments. A series of snapshots, if you will. And they keep clicking and printing themselves, whether you like it or not, so why not like it? Like it to the degree of falling in love with it? Love it to limit of being proud of it?

The Pianist - Book Review

Now thats survival. Jako rakhe saayian mar sake na koi. Read it to believe it.

The Pianist is a memoir by Wladyslaw Szpilman - a Jew musician belonging to Poland - spanning three years, 1942-45. Its a true survival story of a man who lost his everything to German anti-Semitism and World War II, very modestly written intriguing tale of what the people really went through in all those years. i would have discarded it as an exaggerated tell-tale had it been fiction - or even if the events werent confirmed by a German officer's (Wilm Hosenfeld - whose compassion saved Szpilman's life) contemporaneous diary entries.

In these three years of his extraordinary life, Szpilman contemplated suicide, changed hiding places, escaped German soldiers narrowly, starved and froze - all this and more, countless number of times - in other words, scraped death every now and then. He lost all his loved ones - his only worldly possessions that remained were a fountain pen and a watch. How he lived through this ordeal and kept himself sound and sane is a typical example of the amazing human survival instinct.

Mark Twain has rightly said, "Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isnt". No wonder the 2002 Hollywood film based on this book grabbed three Oscars - actor Adrien Brody, director Roman Polanski and screenplay writer Ronald Harwood. The film has recieved many other international awards as well.

Is life a flashback?

Sometimes i get this weird thought...one day when i'll be very very old....i'll be sitting in a rocking chair on my terrace garden, thinking nothing (for a change) and then suddenly i'll realize....life has come full circle...today past meets present!! so this was the past....the flashback of my life (or the flashback of the life i dreamt??) - and i wont be myself then - > that is, i wasnt myself all along my life - > that is, i am not myself now - > that is, this is all a dream - > that is, i am actually living my dream (!) - > that is, that day, i'll meet reality - > that is, this is all unreal (maufactured maybe - by the real me) - > so which is really the real me????

(i've already mentioned this blog is gonna be full of crap..if u're still interested....read on)

Like they show in Indian mythological television shows - we've got some god telling his wife.."you are not aware...in such and such incarnation, i was so and so and you had this role to play then, currently i am going down to earth to play another role and you too will come after sometime"....and the wife still doesnt know what exactly is her role going to be this time. She goes to the earth, plays her part, comes back and then this fellow will tell her....."you know what were you in the previous incarnation?"...and again..the poor thing's clueless.

In the same fashion, could it be that we ourselves have made up our roles? But..oh..please...dont let it be that someone else has written my script...i want to be myself yaar...or least what i want myself to be...or is it what i am dreaming...or is it just happening, without any plan/purpose/role/script whatsoever...there i go again...just plain confused....to be or not to be....are you too?