Cliched, but True

I have grown up in a nuclear family, but my parents always taught me to respect the elders, even when we don't want to. No matter how annoying the aunties are, or how stupid their demands are, you gotta nod your head, listen to what they say and sulk later in your room. 

Their thought behind this was to always be on the right side. No one will ever point a finger on my parents and say your kids were disrespectful to me, and if someone did. My amma's wrath would hit us hard.

The thing about parents are that they are our secret kryptonite. You can't live without them, but sometimes you just feel to run away from everything. I have come across so many people who are rebellious but still care a lot about their parents.

The reason why I am discussing this today is because of a story my father told me today. A few days ago he was waiting on a bus stop, an old man dressed in decent ironed clothes sat beside my father. He started with a small talk with my father, and later said, "Please don't get me wrong I have no extra money in my pocket except the bus fare and I didn't eat breakfast at home. Can you please give me 10 rupees so that I can eat a vada-pav"? My father was genuinely shocked with what that old man had just said. My father gave him the money and he went and ate what he wanted to.

He discussed this story with me and my mother and pondered over the thought of how can children be so insensitive to leave their own father hungry? Why do children cross that line and send their parents to an old age home and come to visit them as a courtesy? Do children forget all the sacrifices their parents have have selflessly made to give them comfort? How difficult it is to just sit beside them and ask them how their day was or have a small chat?

This is indeed a very cliched topic, but it is a catastrophic situation. Imagine you sacrificing your whole life for someone who turns out to be an ungrateful kid and turns you out of your own god damn home.

If you want your son/daughter to be well settled in their lives, you better teach them how to take good care of you! Old people who still have their parent by their side are lucky, because they can take care of each other, but the unfortunate ones who lose their partners desperately need their children's support so that they have some meaning left in their life.

Think about it. Its worth giving a thought.

Good will come, eventually.

This city and I have a very rocky relationship.

It’s been so good to me, and it’s been the worst to me.

I know, I am writing after a very long time, but I didn't want to clog this blog up from fictional stories and take away the real essence, from the message I wanted to spread through this blog.

Bombay, Mumbai, call it whatever you want. The name doesn't change anything.

Sure, we still argue with the fact that which one sounds better, but we can't do anything about it, can we?

So my love revived for this city, a couple of days back.

My commute is very convenient to be frank, there's nothing to complain about. 

But, that day the trains were uber late, and Vashi looked like Kurla at peak hours. (Get the picture?)

After waiting for almost 30 minutes, the train arrived, I managed to get into the train, fortunately got a seat.

After a few stations,I saw a woman who looked quite lost, and you instantly realise that someone is a first time traveler, if she is not fighting back with the hyper lady with ten bags yelling her lungs out to get some space.

I asked her to get inside and utilise the little space left , she asked me when does Koliwada come? 

Now, Koliwada is a le-man's name for GTB station. (Not a lot of people know that)

I asked her to wait till I tell her to get down.

While conversing with me, out of nowhere, she started crying.

Now, I am not a person who comforts someone when they cry, I don't know how to react. (I am working on it)

So, this lady next to me eventually asked her why was she crying.

She then began to tell us that her husband had met with an accident, and she was going to Sion hospital. She was not from Bombay and had never traveled alone. She didn't know what to do as she had no money and his husband was the sole bread-winner.

All the women listened to her and there was silence in that hustled little compartment.

GTB was about to arrive. 

I had to break the silence, I reminded her that she had to get down at the next station. 

All the women around me removed money from their wallets, so that she could catch a cab from the station to the hospital, and not get lost on her way. We gave her some money, she resented, but all of them forced her, ultimately she gave in.

When she got down, there was a cop, we called him from the train and asked him to guide her to reach the hospital, and hoped that she would reach the hospital safely.

This was a very small gesture.

But it made that lady's day a little better.

This is Bombay; it helps you, makes your life a little better, even if it’s having a bad day.

Sure, it has drainage issues, irregular trains and much more, but it is also a blessing.

This incident wouldn't affect you.

But it put a smile on my face.

It gave me hope that good things can happen, no matter what.

Travel issues

Okay,Let me tell you one thing.I have a small issue, along with a lot of other ones. But heyy I am not perfect. Okay, I am an average human being. Wait, who am I kidding? I am kinda stupid sometimes.
I have an issue with  these foreigners roaming around in Bombay with nothing but one backpack.I mean how do they stuff everything in this one back-pack and travel around the world? I mean,how?

And as much as I love travelling, people with OCD,people who don't travel a lot and people who live in conservative South-Indian families feel a lot of pressure when they have to travel.And here after I am gonna say "us and "we" cause I know there are a lot of people like me so I am gonna say this for all of my people.*you're welcome*.

Be if for a couple of days or for a freaking week,We tend to carry the same amount of stuff,the last time I was travelling and I got left my house, my neighbours thought I was moving out or something. So,clearly we have a lot of baggage with us. And as girls,people tend to misjudge us that we are one of those who change clothes like every two hours. NO! uh-uh!Let me stop you right there.Let me tell you how it works.

I am going for a trip to the north,to the mountains,to see the snow. *be jealous* *I am delusional sometimes,sorry* .People are all like woohooo! woaaah! 10 days, fun,huh! no worries, such peaceful much wow. It is so pretty up there.Lucky you!And I am like stuck on this one difficult decisions,should I buy a new sweater or take the old one? Packing for a trip like this is a nightmare.

I love making lists,but this one day when I actually sat down with my people to make a list of things we need to take with us.I got exhausted and yelled "Are we gonna go and settle there?" Things like our own vanity,tissues,towels,pyjamas,pillow cases,bedsheets,so many pairs of lingerie,motion sickness meds,winter wear!And this is not even half of the list. The OCD part of the list covers the 3/4th of it.

And then,there's your mother asking which one of the travel bags you are gonna take,and do you have enough bras to carry? Do you want to go shopping to buy new stuff ? And a lot of other things which I can't say cause personal and gross. And your dad is asking you about the train details,who's who is coming on the trip,Give me their phone numbers,give me your professor's number.

I am not even making this up.He legitimately got a print out of the itinerary and me being the person going on the trip didn't even give it a second look.Who does this?


There is just so much pressure,and so much planning to be done for this one trip.
But truly It's always worth it.
And yes I am gonna enjoy every bit of it :)

P.S :I want to backpack and just go away someday,Not possible,but its on my bucketlist.

Deep Dark Inside.

The windows of his room were always closed,he had once mentioned it in his journal that he hated the sunshine.Frankly, I never understood the logic, of him constantly being away from sunlight.He was always a fan of the dark.He loved the sight of the sky when it was filled with stars,the reflection of the moon in the lake and the silence of the night.It gave him a sense of peacefulness.I was fascinated by the way his mind worked.

I used to see him every Thursday's,he was at the health care centre for his anxiety disorder.Initially,I was a mere volunteer there,but after a few weeks I had realised that people here needed emotional support more than anybody else out there.So I started taking the visits more seriously and during these visits I met Vineet.

Vineet was a simple guy from 12th Grade,he had a terrifying back story,which had resulted in the number of anxieties he had.His parents just couldn't handle the severity of his disorder and hence he was here at this health care centre.I didn't notice him until I saw him sitting behind the garden area writing something in a book. I approached him,he got conscious and quickly closed his book and ran away.I enquired about him and figured out his room number 

I entered the room when he was out for the regular drill.I noticed the same book near his pillow in which he was writing the other day.I couldn't help but notice the neatness of the room.I sat down and opened his journal.I knew what I was doing was wrong but  read it anyway,tears rolled down my cheek.The words he used to pen down his pain were appalling.I was moved by the maturity in his writing.

The next time I saw him was at the weekly movie day.Everybody used to assemble in this room and enjoyed and socialised with other people and talked and laughed together. Vineet didn't do any of it.I tried talking to him for a month.But it was all in vain.

I was annoyed at the fact,that things in the past, effects the future so much that it takes away every ounce of happiness you could've had.The manager of that place saw my failed attempts and sat me down and told me how things had turned out badly for him in his childhood.How the people he trusted had exploited him and how he had stopped believing that there was any good left. Vineet was so damaged inside that there was no looking back.He was once a cheerful lad,an avid reader,a fantastic writer.But as years passed his anxiety increased because of constant flashbacks of those dark days.Even if he tried, he couldn't come out of that trap.I knew all of it.But I couldn't stop myself from trying.

The walls he had built around himself to protect himself,were now suffocating him.He stopped going to college and threw fits if anybody even came near to talk to him.His loneliness grew out on him and the darkness he lived in killed him from within.He was not alive anymore. He died the same day when his happy childhood was snatched away from him.He searched for it for almost 6 years,but when he failed to find it,he went back to his shell,deep dark inside,and never returned.

Last words

             I opened my eyes to mayhem.It did not shock me.It had been like that since a couple of years.My space,my world wasn't like this, that it is now.I quickly gathered my stuff and went to the basement where I was safe from those people.It was chaos.I didn't know what to do.I had lost my family to this crisis.I had nothing to lose,but I had decided that this is not how I wanted my life to end.My mother made me promise her that I would die with dignity,but lately I had lost hope hearing all these news of people dying,looking at the corpses lying on the roads- unidentified- covered with dust and dried blood.I was too tired to fight,I got out of my basement only to notice that those people had left.I realised that I had no strength or the courage to do so.
           I noticed a crowd, I found it hard to step towards the crowd because I could hear a child crying.It was painful,more painful then watching my family die,more painful then the fearful nights that I had spent in my own house and more fearful then death.I knew something was worst then it ever was because here,in Syria we had seen a lot of terrible things.I peered through the crowd and saw the little kid.
           It felt that somebody had stabbed something in my heart to see a kid that small be in pain.I knew him.He used to play around sometimes when there were no patrolling.I had seen him laugh and fall and kick the ball so hard that it landed near my feet.We had no conversations,but he had a cute smile.I had heard him laugh,but had never heard any words spoken by him.
           People around me had just went bonkers trying to find help and some were trying to make him feel better.I was frozen.It struck me that...what the hell was happening? No one had deserve to die like that,let alone a kid.What had gone so wrong that people were treated like this? People had to live in their own country with so much of fear.Was life so cheap?Was God just watching all this? 
           He was crying so much that it was difficult for him to catch his breath.And then he said,"I am gonna tell god everything". The first.the last,and the only words I heard from that little kids mouth were those.And moments later he died.I hadn't realised that I was crying.But I was happy for the little one that he didn't had to return to the basement where he had to wait for either a miracle or death!


P.S : This a fictional story inspired by a dreadful death of three year old who died in the Syrian crisis.And yes those were his last words.

What happened to "Be nice"?

  I was reading this book recently, The Second Coming by John Niven.

It is a hilarious book on how God takes a vacation for a week or something and when He returns He sees His creation in shambles.And decides to send His beloved son Jesus to go and teach people down there of the basic commandment of "Being nice"

   It's an amazingly written book.But the whole concept of being nice got me thinking of how such a simple and basic thought has vanished from the human community.I mean how difficult is it to be nice to a fellow human? I thought over a series of events that I encountered and joined the dots.

   I was travelling by train  during peak hours and was in a rush to reach home because it was quite late and was already frustrated over the series of phone calls my mother had made to make sure I reach home fast. (I belong to a conservative South-Indian family,what do you expect?) There was this lady who was around 50's and was struggling with four heavy bags.She was literally trembling because of the crowd and the baggage.So I offered to help her,I helped her to get a rickshaw out of the station and then went on my way.I had no thought in my mind.I got a chocolate I was a happy kid.I reached home narrated the story feeling all proud over my good deed.My Appa's expression changed."See,It is good that you helped a stranger,but the world outside is evil People aren't good anymore.You need to be careful." I was amused at his respone.He sensed it and gave me series of examples of how people are tricked and kidnapped.The conversation went from helping someone to women trafficking.

  I couldn't digest these facts and the types of crimes that took place so I went and looked it up on Internet.It was true.The statistics are terrifying.

  It actually explains why people are fearful and not open enough to trust anyone.But is it really that bad out there? The concept of being nice is going to be vanished forever.I really miss the days when The scouts in the school use to get brownie points for conducting a good deed and it stayed forever.The thought process is so infiltrated these days that it's Bizarre.

But I still hope that I could be nice to people without any fear.

I would love to try.

Easy way out!

                                   We are humans!always prone to flaws,I mean seriously I sometimes love the imperfection in people and admire their effort of not hiding them at all.And the best weapon man ever had,have and will have is Excuses.

                                   I know what are you all thinking,Excuses..me..Naaah! *slap yourself* Its the best way out sometimes.Deal with it.Let me list down some things where these are most probably used.

Me for not posting a Blog:

 Umm..well..*scratches her head* Actually..*bites her nail*..the thing was...*stares at the sky for an answer*..I had college work..*slaps herself* SORRY! 

Me for reaching late in a lecture:               

-"Ma'am the trains were late".(works well in Bombay during Monsoon)

-"Ma'am I was waiting for my friend". (Don't use it.Both of y'all are refrained from entering the class)

-"Ma'am I forgot my Project so had to go back home to get it. (Legit.Highly Recommended)

Me for Not going to college:

- "Mom,the lecture is cancelled"

-"Dad,the professor met with an accident"

-"We have a weekly off"

-"My head/stomach/leg/body hurts" (Whatever suits you)

-"It's raining too much,the trains will be late"

Me for not submitting a project:

- "My Laptop crashed'

- "There was no current at my place"

- "I forgot"

- "I need more time to make it better"

                            These are like basic ones.The list goes on forever.It sometimes works,Sometimes it does not. Well you could always try!

Tell me if it does!