My Window To Wisdom

LOVE IS NOT JUST AN EMOTION......

My aunt Anuradha Sengupta has exemplified the meaning of love in a different way. She is a lady of substance and never conducts her life on mere emotions that you and me consider to be the underlying element of love. According to her love is our very existence. She has a vociferous TIME NO BAR.... AGE NO BAR sense of commitment when it comes to helping people in distress. She stands tall in her endeavours and I am sure people will happily flourish if she sets up a counselling unit. More than the intelligent quotient she is generously blessed with an emotional quotient that helps her to place her maturity above everything. People can fall back on her and confide their deepest secrets without a cloud of doubt. Rest assured their vent out feelings will find a way through her heart and rest in peace never to be filtered out on any pretext. Her persona perhaps attracts the tired and weary souls like bumblebee. What is there in a face ? Her firm looks are not the end of the journey of knowing her. Beyond the face is a cushion like heart that can offer comfort to anyone in trouble. Magically with every passing year I am trying to unravel the mystical qualities of my aunt and the more i know her through her stories of yesteryears I am mesmerised and I have an urge of knowing her better. She is unique and foundational as she leads her life basis her principles. She has broken all the records per say courage, stability and honesty. Her hands reach out to everyone of us and she truly serves humanity. The challenges my aunt nurses in her heart, does not protect her from her pains or hurdles but helps her to act with grace. She is beauty personified. Like I mentioned according to her love is not a mere emotion but our very existence, similarly her life unfolds a different connotation for beauty too. From lessons I have garnered through the window of her life I have realised that being beautiful is being able to conduct yourself with dignity, respect and a calm disposition against all odds. I guess this strong lady has enamoured every hesitant individual with her self respect and self esteem. Her narratives talk about an impeccable tolerance in the face of hardships. That does not mean she has surrendered to injustice. She has always selected the best tool to provide a solution. She has always deferred an impulsive reaction to allow people to vouch for her socially responsible ways of handling a situation. Amazingly she will always propel herself to action with a clear direction. Despite scribbling for so long my page remains blank as all this portray only a miniscule of her ways. I do not have the acumen to describe how motherly she is and how many of us have had a share of her motherhood melodies. She will always be placed on a pedestal that surely is above the rest. There is a lot of joy indeed in conceiving a child and being a mother but here comes a lady who has spread joy around with her beautiful affection and dutiful countenance. She is an ordinary lady who has achieved extraordinary heights and wears an unseen crown for being a mother par excellence!

MEAMERISING GOD........

My sorrows have acted as a harbinger of peace for at times of distress i feel very close to you my dear Lord. You deserve a blinding adoration from me but this couldnt have happened if i was only to be basking in joy. So God you deliberately put into my kitty the burdens of life.My creator you have been generous in giving me a lot of things but have been reluctant to allow me my peace of mind as you feel i will actually be a loser then. Perhaps the happy glimpses will take me away from you. You cant possibly allow me to deny you. You have made me realise that happiness does not come with a seal of permanance. Reality is different from dreams and one has to encounter turmoils. You made me redefine happiness. Happiness is a continuous effort to overcome problems. True happiness is an undying courage in the face of a difficult situation.
Oh ! God i am brave, i will not give up my smiles. Will you not bless me with the much awaited showers of joy ? Come on God.... i have surely earned plenty of brownie points by now. With every hurdle that you have placed i have tried to clear out my frown. I have displayed exemplary courage God and i am sure you know how i have managed my daily chores at home and my responsibilities at my work station. This was possible because i love you God and always wish to respect your decision. I know you are great God and i know you have bountiful spirit and energy but God tell me ... are you not impressed with me ? Oh yes !!!!! I have confidence in you. Oh ! God you know i have taken all the pains just to appease you. God give me those melodious strains back.... its been long that i have been creating my own melodies to battle out the din of this world. I have wrapped up the miseries with a flash of defiance in the framework of my will power. I have concealed the harshness of life with my smiles. I am confident i have mesmerised you. I know you love me and soon my apprehensions will be defenceless when you unfold your divine power. I can see a tinge of grey but i know you will clear it out with your golden hue... wont you dear God ? God I promise to charm you with my forbearance and you will soon take me on an ecstatic flight and once again my life will be a rapturous song which will envisage the end of this stressful phase.
Dear God i trust your moves. I know happiness cannot cease to exist but has faded out for a momentary phase. I will revive its lustre with my fortitude and your blessings. Waiting for the carpet of green that you will set before me. Till then i am here to smile....... i am here to love and i am here to hope.......

HOLD ON TO THE HELM........

No other day of my life can measure up to the 1st of march. God came down on this day.... years back to assert that the impossible could happen if the heart yearns for each other. My life has been quite amazing in its rocky terrian with a lot of lows and then the highs that come with a reassurance. There was no doctor to snap the umbilical cord, I couldnt hear the cries of a new born yet I could feel the tug in my heart .... perhaps happiness can create a spark even in a dark chamber. Thats how my daughter entered my life. As I unlocked the door to our house she walked in and the bells of heaven rang in unison ushering in the comfort of a home. I must have done something good to have deserved a child who came breaking through the boundaries of the incredibilities of life and not through my womb. God settled all the scores when he gave me 'BHAVANA'. I was unaware that the LORD had such a surprise planned out for me. I am an ordinary person and so have my share of sins and that is why I have never seen GOD neither can i expect to have his darshan yet I can tell you that in the form of his blessings I have sensed his apparition. So whenever any of you out there feel that you are in distress.... hold on to the helm with patience and bear out the pains..... GOD'S MIRACLE WILL UNFOLD !

BON VOYAGE

I know my man since I entered my teens. When I sit down and connect the dots it tells me that I have lived only thirteen years of my life without him. I am almost a part of his life......torn apart between the phases of success and failure that touched us at the same time with its far reaching impact. I define our togetherness this way. Every time life treated us shabbily with a crisis we found ourselves picking up the cudgels and moving ahead with a unified force trying to gratify the demands of life with our forbearance. This “WE” feeling gave us strength and courage to pull on.

25 years did not pass in the wink of an eye. Our marriage has its own residue of mixed emotions........ The romantic days when our eyes met, spoke, cajoled, the exciting moments when we became one in unison with all the spark and magic of this world. Those were the days when we were enslaved because of the yearning that tugged at our hearts. But the entire journey wasn’t always euphoric. There came some years in our walks of life, years that enveloped the rainbow and shrouded it with apprehensions and travails. The busy life took us away from each other. We couldn’t fight against the tide and surrendered to the monotonous drudgery that came to greet us so unexpectedly. The peace, joy and happiness of being in communion with the man of my life were soon lost in the oblivion. A hollowing loneliness widened the gap between two people who always loved truly. So when I talk about 25 years I cannot rule out the moments of despondency. It has been quite a journey........ the colours brightened, dimmed and then at times faded not knowing how the bright hues transformed into misty shades. Yet the stressful moments could not dwarf our minds forever. We realised what we missed out on due to our incorrect ways of handling things. We wished to get back to our beautiful dreams that brought us together as man and wife in reality. We were indeed caught in the serpentine maze of life but couldn’t allow happiness to be so elusive. So yes...... we had our share of moments of poignancy but emerged victorious holding our hands with a special reassurance. Eventually we were brought back to the shores perhaps cleansed of our silly logic and false ego. We were able to fight back the hostile cosmos that is a part of every marriage. Both of us made a home in the vastness of strange ordeals our marriage gifted us with.

Honestly marriage is three parts of love and seven parts of forgiveness. 25 years of married life is not about celebrating silver jubilee, but about celebrating our growth, our maturity which allows us to understand that marital bliss is not about riding on a winged chariot, not about creating a sensation. It is life in itself...... so it has its turmoil too.
We have been married to each other because of a longing we shared once upon a time as lovers. Today our relationship has transcended above all the emotions...........love, fear, anger, grief.........all have merged ......... to create a genesis of a unique relationship in the oasis of our life as.. MR. & MRS. VIRENDER RAINA................TOUCHWOOD !!!

FROM NOWHERE TO EVERYWHERE .....

My STAR daughter TWINKLED all along. Yet in my ODYSSEY of life it took me some time to glean and capture the GLOW of light she emitted in my heart. On my graduation from a woman to a mother I realised soon what I missed all the years that had gone by. The surge of pride when your child does well, the swelling of the heart at the excitement of nurturing a child and even the agonies that arise from your child's pains are EMOTIONS of a LIFETIME. I found each one of them although different in their respective ways merged together and united us (MOTHER and CHILD) as ONE.

Does anyone know why I call her my STAR CHILD ? Oh yes as she works for STAR PLUS ! ha....ha.... JOKES APART... how can I rate my indispensable jewel to a TRANSITORY thing like a COMPANY. She is my STAR CHILD as she is the NORTH STAR that will always illuminate my life. Like the POLE STAR she stands STEADFAST and INSPIRES me to be STRONG like her. Like the POLE STAR whose light never FADES out she is there with me SMILING away the TEARS that VEIL our eyes and REJUVENATES me with her spirit. Her PRISTINE way of leading life in this STAINED world talks about the DIVINITY of a STAR. I have always been happy that my STAR works for STAR but I know even if she moves away from STAR PLUS she will forever be a STAR in her own CHARISMATIC ways. My STAR will SPARKLE wherever she goes. She is the CURTAIN RAISER of my life and as she journeys through her life my BLESSINGS will take her to a PEDESTAL where the SKIES will be CLEAR and SUNNY always. This is my confidence in a CHILD who came from NOWHERE to be EVERYWHERE !!!.

THE BOLD AND THE BEAUTIFUL

Living in this modern era BOLD obviously means to BARE and BEAUTIFUL is the ‘H’ word ( HOT !!!!) ; but to me the phrase has a different connotation. It depicts a courageous lady who is bold enough to expose the corruption around. She is clad in a simple saree which is not meant to attract anyone yet is beautiful enough to pull the entire crowd like the Pied Piper Of Hamelin. Yes she is beautiful. It is her simplicity, her honesty, her will power and her wish to be herself without being influenced or maligned by insignificant things or people around that talks about an aura in her. She is beautiful as she has always respected her identity. How many of us can remain the way we wish to be. At young age there is peer pressure. Even if we wish to live with dignity and integrity our friends feel we are ‘MISFITS ‘. It is very rare that people ignore such demands of the society and preserve the pristine outlook one yearns to maintain. There was a time when many fingers were directed towards Mamata Banerjee for her unparliamentary dressing sense as I may frame it as in todays world her simplicity is a matter of mockery and a standing joke. Many a times I tell my students what beauty is. Beauty is not the fair and lovely skin, beauty is not in having a string of affairs and get the MOST WANTED tag. Beauty is the self esteem, the self confidence , the grit, the forbearance and the perseverance that makes you glow in the altar you create for yourself. If all this is beauty then Mamata Banerjee is beautiful. Today she has proved to the world that our true mettle lies in our honest dealings. The path of honesty however is as always full of gravels. She crossed every hurdle with a burning desire of not the throne but to prove to herself that she had to pick up the cudgels against inhumanity at riot. Today the throne automatically is hers. She has been crowned the CHIEF MINISTER OF BENGAL and it isn’t just her victory. It is an hour of triumph for every individual who has suffered because of ones principles, idealism and righteousness. She is the torch bearer of truth setting an example to the entire world that nothing can come to the weak. One has to be strong and the strength is not our physical prowess but our determination and passion to live upto our values- come what may.

Eighteen years back Mamata Banerjee was thrown out of the Writers' Building and she wept at the insane behavior that was meted out to her. Yet it is said whoever insults will be insulted someday. Mamata Banerjee was choked with humiliation. Life at that time was a haunting spectre of nothingness for her but she held on to the helm. Although she went through a crushing stasis with politically correct people calling her names she refused to stoop to the debased world and lead a measly existence. For her life is a continuum as she always is fortified with the greatest weapon – HONESTY.She took a pledge that she would come back to the WRITERS' building with her head held high. Today I watched her entering the same place as CHIEF MINISTER OF BENGAL.

20th May 2011 is a turning point in the history of Bengal. It will be etched in my mind for aeons to come. As I was glued to the television I saw a sea of crowd united in the canopy of a leader with a patriotic fervour, a crowd that seemed like the unending stretch of ants but one that had the serenity which reflects how dependable ‘DIDI’ is. The crowd wore a look of relief and calm. I have never seen such pomp and grandeur on any swearing –in ceremony and ‘DIDI’ has proved it to us that true pelf and power lies in ones popularity. She swerved through the huge gathering and walked fearlessly from Raj Bhavan to the Writers' building oblivious to the fact that a bullet from the opposition might strike her. A lady par excellence, undaunted in her spirits walked amidst the crowd just like any ordinary man and earned the pedestal of an extra ordinary woman.

Mamata Banerjee’s rise to power comes as a message for us. We shouldn’t belittle ourselves when people insult us and we shouldn’t lose hope when there is no ray of hope. We should believe in ourselves and have intimate confessional talks with GOD. No one should be able to change our subtle qualities and we should have the courage to be BOLD AND BEAUTIFUL in the true sense.