Poverty…. On the streets??

In a city like Mumbai, when stuck at the signal, the chance of meeting a beggar/eunuch is in the ratio of 3/5. Be it guilt, be it pity, or just the wish to get them out of our sight - we have a tendency of entertaining these people… especially when they are kids who give you a look of being malnourished… or if they are aged or handicapped (or pretending to be handicapped… whatever applicable)

Religious places are banks for most of them… we have been brought up to believe (not all… but a few) that by giving money to these unprivileged poor people we will be able to wash away our sins….

But a random thought…. Are these actually the unprivileged??

Those who are not even interested putting an effort towards earning their daily bread… those who would go to any extent to lure you into shelling out a few coins…. Those for whom, kids are just a mode of earning more money… do these actually suffer from something called as POVERTY??  

Lets paint something else…

Ever came across a hawker?? An ugly roadside hawker who is carrying tons of weight on his/her head and moving around….. in trains… in markets… on roads…. Trying to find a few people who would buy what they have to offer… sometimes in the form of an handicap who finds his way in and out... sometimes kids singing and doing acrobatic stunts.... sometimes really old people who sell small things here and there??

Another picture…..

You go to a market… may be to buy vegetables…. Just next to the vegetable hawker…. Sits a kid… who is trying to study… a hawker who is making every effort to try to educate this kid… so that one fine day they could live a life and not each day at a time…

The same scenario can be applied to your household maid… goes to tens of houses on a daily basis… cleans and washes dirt… If you talk to her… she will tell you… she has a child…. She wants a better life for him… she wants to educate the boy so that he could take care of her when she can work no longer… she wants a better life for her daughter… she wants her to get married to someone who could take care of her so that she doesn't end up like her...

They live every day as it comes… without giving up… they fight your stares… eat what you give them… wear your thrown clothes…. You treat them like they are invisible… at times even like a beggar…

Isn’t it worth a thought??

There are a set of people who haven’t given up yet… who are trying their best… to fight circumstances… to win….

Would it not be a better idea to help them in achieving their goals rather than helping those who don’t even want to try… who probably are enjoying on someone else’ hard earned money…

I have a family friend (m not taking names here)… Every year the entire family shells out some money… not much… a collective of a couple of thousands… purchases stationary and distributes it amongst the nearby kids…

Not much of an effort on their end, but they for sure are doing something that is adding towards making someone’s life better…. Aint that enough???

So may be… the next time you feel like giving something to the beggar… think twice… are you putting it at the right place…. Is poverty really on the streets?? 

Things to do before I die…!!

Most of us have a to do list…. Well I am not talking about a to do list that reminds us of the daily chores that have to be completed… I am talking about a to do list for life… about things that you may want to do before you die… as many prefer to put it…

So my to do list says (wishful thinking…!!) that I have exactly 27years to live and I have 12 things that I want to do before the end of the 27^th year…

But unfortunately life doesn’t have an expiry date like products….. we know when a product is likely to expire thus we can prepare a plan for it… and datewise the plan can be followed… some ups and downs may happen but you can still follow the plan…

But we humans… do we have a expiry date?? 

It’s a different thing to think about what would happen if we had one… imagine knowing that you have just 5 more years to live… which sounds not that bad… but slowly it becomes 3 years to 1 year to 5 months to 5 days…

I personally would lose my mind knowing that I have a few days left… on the other hand I might buck up and plan to do everything before the time for me to go comes… I don’t know… simply coz I do not have that option… I cannot get myself to think seriously about what would happen if I knew the date of my death…

Anyways coming back to the list… some people have variations that put it as getting old instead of dying…

Honestly… do you know if you will even reach the end of the week??? Let alone reaching old age..

I’ve seen people living their lives with a hope of enjoying it later when the circumstances around you allow you to do so…

Some get so involved in work and career that small things in life that give happiness are forgotten…

Some save everything that they earn so that they can have a comfortable oldage…

Some do not give relationships the time and love required thinking that they will make up for it at a later date…

Considering the lives that we are living, including the things that happen around us… the bombs, terrorist attacks, natural calamities, etc….. what are the chances that you will see the sunset…???

If the date of your death is today……. then???

You have worked hard… for long hours to get somewhere… but are you happy??

All monies are saved… but what about the small things that you always wanted but pushed it for the future….??

Today morning before leaving your house… you fought with your parents/spouse or got angry on your kids/siblings… what if you never went back?? Will that person be able to live his life peacefully knowing that the last memory that you went with was bitter??

I do not mean that career, future, etc. should all be forgotten and that you should live in the present only… ofcourse not…!! That’s a path to foolishness….

I mean to say… why not spend every second of your life in a way that makes you happy?

Every day would include of everything that I can think of…

I give my education complete priority….

My career my best effort and my employers my loyalty….

I want to do something… I do it..

People who are important… I tell them that I love them…

If I like something about someone I compliment them… share the happiness…

I try my best not to hurt anyone’s heart (purposely!! )... if it happens.. i apologize and try to make up for it...

If I feel like helping someone… I help…

If my heart is broken... I share it with the person who hurt me... I dont bury the wound... i try to heal it...

If I feel like giving something to someone… I do not wait for tomorrow…

If I feel like pampering myself… I do so (I don’t mean like a princess.. but generally)…

I live like a child and think like an adult…

If I have to die today… I know that I have lived my life.. there are no regrets… there is nothing that I could have had done better… I gave my life my best shot…!!

Does helplessness have the power to help??

I had seen this movie – 127 hours a few months ago… I guess most people have seen it… An amazing movie (in my opinion ofcourse!).. made in a manner that can give you goose-bumps…

He realizes… that he may shout and scream.. no one was around.. there will be no help… the rock was stuck…. He wasn’t strong enough to move it… his Swiss knife wasn’t capable of cutting it.. there was no hope… he was stuck in a way that nothing can be done…..

And suddenly he decides to help himself.. to free himself of the rock… to do whatever is required in doing so…to fight till his last breath... to go to the extent of cutting his own arm… millimetre by millimetre… to scrape his bone… to cut every nerve that blocks him from freedom….  to reach to the core… to detach a living arm from himself… To survive on things that are beyond the understandings of a regular humans….

It made me wonder… why??

I just couldn’t digest the fact that how can a person go to such extents and fight for life… for freedom?? Would it not be easy to give up.. to let destiny take over??  To die??

I had gone for water rappelling a couple of weeks ago (I have already mentioned this in one of my earlier blogs)…

Ofcourse it wasn’t dangerous… and I was sure that I wasn’t going to die… I had all safety measures attached to me.. to ensure that whatever may happen… I survive with nothing more than a few scratches..

Knowing this… with a lot of fear in mind, I start rappelling… one step at a time… measuring the water-fall force and using all my mind to concentrate on keeping my feet on the wall… obviously I am not good at this.. and so I slip.. bang… against the wall…!!

And I lose it… all the nerve that I had before I started the rappel… everything’s gone.. suddenly, I want to get down… want to reach the ground… enough of adventure for the day… I know I am not going to die.. but still…I am scared… the water is hitting my head (there is a helmet on it ofcourse) and I don’t know how to start again.. how to get going….

I shout… but no voice comes out… where the hell did my loudspeaker disappear at a time I needed it???

I try to look down…. To find the person who is waiting there for me with my rope in his hand… but I can’t see anyone… not because I have suddenly turned blind (like my voice had betrayed me).. but because there was so much water that it was not possible to see anything from the height that I was at (not that high... just 90 ft from the ground)…

So what do I do?? I cannot shout… I cant see anyone, thus no chance of asking them to pull me down… !!

I am stuck at this place in the middle of nowhere.. scared as hell…knowing that I have just myself to help…  

Suddenly.. I get a feeling that I can do it… feeling helpless gave me the power… chuck everyone.. I can help myself… or more like…. I can help myself till someone else can help me… 

I ignore the water fall…. push the wall with my hands… balance my feet against the wall and start again…

I fought… I tried… I fell a few more times… but this time… I did not give up… I kept going… till finally I saw the person waiting for me… I did it… all by myself.. I conquered the task….

As usual… I wondered….

Why so??? wasn’t helplessness supposed to be the end??  wasn’t I supposed to give up?? 

Well ofcourse in this situation it wasn’t the end for me … if I hadn’t turned up for a few mins… definitely help would have come…

Its then that i realized that when you feel that there will be no help.. and you know that this is not the end... you get the power to fight...

Referring to general life… there would have been many instances when you feel helpless… hopeless… that you can do nothing… that you are doomed for life…. you feel that it would be better if the world ends… or rather your life would end…

Go deeper into your past…. Think about every such event that made you feel lost.. feel helpless… When you are at your lowest… something surely would have had happened…that helped you fight…. that brought life back.. and made you feel that it will be alright….

The famous saying comes in my mind on this….It's always darkest before the dawn…. Which is true… at an hour when everything is dark…there is a small hole that appears suddenly and it brings light…

The next time when I feel helpless again.. I know that downright helplessness will bring with itself a stronger feeling… this feeling will bring along hope… and that hope will give me the power… to live again…till it is not the end… forever!!

Sudden Change....!!!

I have been writing since the past few months now...

Luckily people haven't yet said that I am crazy and that my writings do not make any sense....

Positive feedback has been  received too (luckily)... and few have given their inputs... Thanks to all you guys...

But everytime I had to share the name of my blog with anyone, it would take me a minute to remember it... dude that was a large name (what was i thinking)....

observations-in-my-mind.blogspot.com

This used to be my link earlier. And as a web rule, one mistake in the url and you are lost....

Thus, I decided to change the name of my blog... to come up with something more simple and short.... but it should still keep the core meaning that i wanted to put across when I started the blog...

Also, i was bored of the way my blog looked... some R n D and I was sure I could give the blog some kind of makeover...

With a little deliberation and effort over the weekend, I have redesigned my entire blog....

I now have a new name and a new look with the same crazy head feel...!!!

It has now become "Gazing Mind!!"

The earlier link is deactivated.....The link now reads: gazingmind.blogspot.com


Hope you guys are liking it....!!

A small Realization…..!!

I had recently gone on an adventure trip with a group of people… mostly everyone unknown (not anymore though)… It involved water rappelling from a waterfall of around 120ft.

This piece of write-up is not to describe my experience in that particular trip (though I will write a little something about the overall experience of that trip, but later).  

Well this site was somewhere near Kasara, Maharashtra. It was in one of the surrounding villages. Its path involved passing through a lot of small lanes…ofcourse off highway. There was an entry gate, similar to the one that a fort has. Surprisingly, most these roads were pucca.

Inside the village there were small huts scattered here and there, cows and bulls grazing everywhere. You have to be extra careful while walking. If not.. you are likely to step on something that is not very exciting… 

There were small paddy - fields of rice.  Not larger than a few square feet. People were working on them trying to sow rice seeds or stems or whatever they are called….

Once our trip was over, we passed a couple of huts in the surrounding area. Infact, we also got a chance to go into one of them…

I don’t know if it was a good experience or a bad one…..

Its raining outside and you see a hut that is made of wood and dried leaves. It has small holes on the roof… an effort has been made to cover them using plastic sheets. The house in unkempt. Not that they can help it. It is barely  sustainable. There is a traditional chulla that is used to cook food with the help of wood. I don’t know how they use wet wood though!

There was a fleet of half-naked kids sitting on the front porch.  The thing that they had in their hands caught my eye. It was lunch hour. The kids had a bowl in hand that was filled with something that looked like baked flour. Not far away, there was another group of kids heeding to the cattle. A little surprise was that a place as small and underdeveloped as this also had a small govt. school.

This site was merely 2-3 kms from the highway, yet it seemed to be so secluded, so alone. So far from our normal lives. Like it belongs to the past century.  Then how would the other lakhs of villages of India be, some of which are not even accessible?

It made me wonder… aren’t we a little too lucky. Looking at the conditions that these kids lived in, our lives were nothing less than walking on rose petals. They had little means of education and no scope for anything of what we call a social life.

Also, what was the possibility of them making any remarkable progress in the future. The place that they lived in provided no means of business. The nearest city or town being in some faraway land. Education that did not go beyond primary. Living was from hand to mouth.

All of us have complains with life. We have problems with our work, our friends and families, neighbours, our social and love life. But we can think of these complexities of life because we do not have to worry about our basics.

What if we had no basics?

What if, instead of worrying about what vegetable or delicacy to cook, a mother had to worry about what to cook?

What if, instead of worrying about buying his daughter a new iphone a father had to worry about his house blowing away in the wind?

What if, instead of worrying about how much will you and I earn, we had to worry about how to earn?

What if, instead of worrying about her first crush and bitching friends a 19 year old girl had to worry about taking care of her own child?

Understanding this doesn’t require a lot of intelligence. All of us want to be someone else’s shoes. But those few shots in the lives of these people makes me realize that how I lucky I am to be wearing my own….!!