Being a spectator!!

Have you been a spectator? I had been one and I believed the same for you as well; to each and every thing and everyone..I had been a spectator to innumerable people I knew and whom I didn't; to programs I viewed on the television and to LIVE cricket matches and to plays at Prithvi Theatre and NCPA. I had even been a spectator to corruption and to hostility of countless people..From now to the oldest of my memories, I had been a spectator to others MORE THAN to MYSELF.

And with every passing day, I intended and tried to move INWARDS. And I felt deeply revered to ludicrously pathetic at my LIFE'S LIVE performance. We LOVED being a spectator to a performance where people gave their 100% to what they did and we relished the outcome. I expected the same from myself. Sometimes, I felt so irritated at my raucous mind that I deliberately tried to assume myself drifting into irrelevance than to continue being my own spectator.

And then, the Sun rose. And the mind was afresh. And, a new thought. To rise above. Above oneself. From simply being you to being a spectator of yourself and then being what you were to what you can be OR moving away from just performing to the strategy to first visualize how you would want yourself to perform. To give yourself space and time to prepare and perform. And perform for just one person..Yourself...

It is really important to view yourself from the OUTSIDE; It lets you look at yourself from a different perspective..You assume to be another person with same mindset as yours and you watch yourself performing...And you really want to please the other person because first, its yours own virtual image and second, you would really want to enjoy your own performance. And that is what drives to perform with max energy.

I really want to enjoy my performance each day and it usually is a mix of full and partial achievement of my goals. But, I realize that I may lack in a few areas and I know that I need to fill those gaps. My Other person needs to enjoy me performing..I wanna keep him happy. My spectators must enjoy my performance. :-)

The Other Side of Silence - Urvashi Butalia

I just finished reading Urvashi Butalia’s “The Other Side of Silence”. It’s a book on Partition, dealing with the partition of Punjab….it is not an official account of the technicalities involved or the ‘’facts” about Partition, but deals with the impact of Partition on the human lives involved…. giving much needed space to the neglected and the silenced ones….women, children and the marginalized communities (the “Harijans”, as they are called)…..

After finishing this read, I expected to feel in myself an upsurge of emotions, a feeling of disbelief in what she has written…..but that didn’t happen…..may be because the accounts I read are so unbelievable that you keep on reading them like a robot without actually registering the enormity of what occurred…..may be because they are from too distant a past not having any direct bearing on me…..or is it because such barbaric and inhumane incidents are not able to surprise anymore?....Have they become a trend rather than an exception?....

The devaluing of the human lives that happened at the time of Partition, when the fact that a human being was just that first and foremost, a HUMAN BEING, became irrelevant and inconsequential….the only things that remained important were the adjectives that can be attached to a human being….those pertaining to religion, gender, caste, class and the like……did this devaluation happen only then?.....does this not happen day in and day out….may be on a different scale…..may be in a different form…..but does it not? Women are still the secondary gender, no matter how much we talk of gender equality……children are not even considered as separate individuals in their own right, but only as an extension of the parents….as if they were brought into the world for the sole purpose of the fulfilment of the unrealized drams of the parents….the marginalized on the basis of religion, caste and class are not even considered worthy of being treated as human beings at times…..

Why do these state of affairs not trouble us? Why does it not give us sleepless nights? How are we able to accept this and live our lives as usual? Why are we always ready with the excuse that a single individual was remained incapable of doing anything about anything? Why do not all these single individuals decide to make a difference, at least in their own lives, in which case everything will take care of itself automatically?

But till such time this utopia is realized, do read these personal and human accounts of the survivors of Partition…..it will force you to think, after you get over the numbness……of the meaninglessness of it all……..

A big thank you to Urvashi Butalia for uncovering some of the silences……

The Shadows..

The reverberations of an unruly mind bridging the gap of the real and imaginary you..The imaginary quotient is like that unfulfilled dream that you aspire for..The dream that you work on to achieve...

There are shadows that travel within the mind to remind about that dream...The shadows actually live that dream before the real you could  experience it...The shadows keep reminding of the commitment you once had to achieve those dreams...The shadows are really powerful because they have the capability to force you to act...They show you your naked face, the wrinkles of imaginary you behind your real face...They expose you to yourself..They bug you and hit you at time when you least want them..

The shadows of procrastination, of lies, of feeble you, of insecure you, of your lacklustre performance, of your troubled relationships, of your dark realities....The shadows that hide behind the real you, of real you creating a paradoxical mind...

And the life revolves around these shadows...Around bridging the gap between imaginary and real you..The gaps are meant to be bridged..They will certainly be bridged...The shadows will show the way...