Striking the iron, when it's hot

Ups and downs are just the phases of life which keep rolling. Nothing is stagnant in this world. Everything changes for good or bad. So, if downspiral comes first do not despair that just means your up spiral is next to come.

It's better to have bad phase before the good one, as it helps to learn and to grow before your tryst with the good phase.

Sometimes on a crusade to a new destination, you make a deluge of attempts before arriving at the right place. That only makes you more familiar with the surrounding. In the same way, if hard phase comes first on the threshold of a new life that only helps you to understand the situation in a better way thus helping you to grow with the situation.

If everything turns to custard, if the best of your attempts fizzle out, do not despair that just means time is not right. So, wait for the right time to set the things right and everything will fall at the right place at the right time.

When the time was not favourable even lord Rama had to go on exile and when the right time came even stones started floating on the water surface.

So, a wise person always wait for the right time with patience and faith. Well said, it is the best to strike the iron, when it hot.

Great lessons of my life

Everyday, I look for something enriching that can feed my inquisitive mind.Absence of which leads my wondering mind to the aisles of chaotic world of thoughts sometimes. It's almost 5 am and I am still up with unshut eyes and a shut mind. Thinking why it happened, how it happened and feeling sad. But then my heart whispered something silently. So, I got up to listen to my heart carefully. Turned light on, took paper and pen and started writing the message straight from my heart, which said, 'We only need faith the size of a mustard seed to move a mountain. Instead of trying to get rid of your doubts, focus on paying attention to your mustard seed of faith.' Indeed a great message from Lord Jesus.

Listening to my heart has always been a source of my strength and writing as my best friend, bringing the best in me. Yet in the concoction of my life pattern, I neglected both of these. But as they say, true friends never leave you alone. Always geared up to sail you through hard water. And I am being the fortunate one got them back in my life too, to set the things right.

Thus reminding me that God is at work in my life too even amidst pain and suffering. So, I told to my shut mind, do not get disappointed if going getting rough, for that's when you are going to discover how strong you really are.

So, no matter how many negative thoughts cross the territory of your thinking reign, unless and until the last thought in your mind and in your heart is all positive, corresponding to the line which says, 'All is well, that ends well.' A great lesson that I learnt from my own experience.

It's almost 6 am and I am still feeding my inquisitive mind at the cost of depriving my body of a sound sleep. May be that is among one of those wakeful moments that is going to be the unforgettable moment of my life.

The other lessons that were there in store for me kept coming thereafter, enlightening my mind with uncharted avenues of intellectual dimensions. The other lesson in line was being about how important it is to stay honest to your thoughts, your speech and your actions, to put the things in the right perspective. Then nothing can stop you from dreaming beyond the realm of reservations and restrictions. And then the whole sky becomes your canvass to colour your destiny with unlimited colours of your own dreams and imaginations. Besides, I realised that unfavourable situation show you a mirror where you see your own reflection as beautiful or ugly depending on how you react to the situation and introduce your true self to you which otherwise remains to be a stranger whole of your life.

These were the lessons that life had for me to learn from untoward experiences of my own life. Just at the dawn of a new year as well as my new life. Indeed, the greatest gift from God.

Changing Face of Indian Women

A woman’s life passes through many phases and while passing through each phase she takes a new birth. Neither the time nor the pain ceases for a woman. The agony she carries throughout her life enlightens the spirit within her giving a radiant spark to her persona.
Unfortunately, woman the most beautiful creation of god who is imbued with immense qualities like affection and tolerance has been projected as a vulnerable gender since time immemorial.
Her very own existence has been kept suppressed under the old clichéd social norms and beliefs, making it next to impossible for her to come out of the shackles of the tradition bound society. Her domain was aligned from a meaningful evolution of phases. Her existence has always been threatened on the verge of diminition.
The agony of carrying forward the legacy of pain by the woman of each generation is making the condition even more miserable. It seems pain and woman is more of synonymous refusing to get separated from each other. The never ending struggle tells the heart wrenching saga where she has always been exploited in every aspect. Be it as a daughter, mother, wife or a working woman.
Though we have Kiran Bedi, late Kalpana Chawla, late Indira Gandhi as excellent examples who had carved a niche for themselves and became a source of inspiration for many of those women who are getting motivated for achieving something big in life.
Yet our society is clutched with scores of social evils, which are designifying the existence of women and also hindering their way in coming forward. Moreover, increasing growth rate in crimes against women be it inside or outside the household telling grim reality of women’s lives.
This would infact be called the paradox of modern Indian society where on one hand women are excelling in every field while on the other major chunk of women are still deprived of their fundamental rights. They are subjected to discrimination in this patriarchal structure of our society and skewed sex ratio against them is one of the evident indications of this discrimination among women.
But with the advent of new era, society is witnessing few revolutionary changes in women of current generation. Those women who fought for their identity and made possible the emergence of the ‘new woman’. It took plenty of years to break the shackles of orthodox mannerism, now the whole scenario is on the verge of changing equation.
Today, Indian women are given right to enter the panchayats and local bodies where 1.4 million women were elected to local bodies, that clearly advocate that women have started getting their share of equality. Besides, town like Hissar, which touted to have warped sex ratio, has become hub of producing around 40 international women wrestlers and boxers. Thus telling the success story of women empowerment.
Today’s woman is emerging as a winner with distinction in her new facet of life. The new woman yearns for her independent identity where she will no more be dependent on her counterpart for the livelihood. Her quest for living her life on her own terms is making her to strive hard for the fulfillment of her dreams. She has come out of the shell strongly built around her, which took her a century to break, and now she wants to enjoy long awaited freedom, which can fill her soul with purity of opportunities, no conspiracy at all.
These are women who have achieved with their sheer determination and proved out to be an ideal for other women. These women are excelling in their personal life as well. The untouched avenues are no longer distant from today’s women.
These are the women who self portray their winning saga. Each carrying a unique story to tell yet shares a common struggle part in their life, which actually lifted them to reach so high.
Devoting one’s life without any self-interest is an act of appreciation and only a few of us can think beyond. These are women who thought beyond where most of us find end of the horizon of thoughts.
Life to the most of these women was never a bundle of choices but they made their own way out of their discretion and proved to be a winner. These are the women who devoted their life for a cause and kindled faith in many hearts and inspired many others to give a meaning to their existence. Yet there are lots of hurdles on their way, the acceptance factor is yet to be strengthened. And while things are progressing on positive note as far as gender equality is concerned, there is no gainsay we have several challenges before us like female infoeticide, women struggling with poverty and maternal mortality which has yet to be solved to provide solidarity to changing face of Indian women.

Remote Control for Living (When the Time Changes)

Time, the ever-changing phenomenon that never waits for anybody, is alike for everyone is it king or beggar, male or female. Everybody is subjected to its unyielding thrust, which governs every move of living beings. While passing from one moment to another, it slightly keeps on adding the significant changes in living beings. Every little passing moment never comes again exactly in the same manner, sometimes leaving behind sweet memories and sometimes bitter ones. Time keeps on running and we being the helpless living beings try to accommodate ourselves with each moment willingly or unwillingly.
Time is also running out of my hands. The moment that I just spent was the happiest one. I was really enjoying it but then the pendulum of the clock struck leaving one more moment behind and so the time for my happy moment apparently faded away. I am afraid. I didn’t want to lose that happiest moment. I wish the time could stagnate here and I could live my whole life in that single moment. But it is not possible, as the time changes.
I don’t know what is there for me in the next moment but for one thing I am sure, I can’t be as happy as I was in the previous one.
The next moment buzzed its presence at my ear and within few seconds, I was aware that this is the most heart wrenching moment where I am supposed to give my final exam where I am going to face lots of hard times. I am trying to sustain myself with this moment patiently because I know, the way daylight comes tearing the edges of darkness, the same way the next moment will come as the ray of sunshine and hope. But, it seems my patience is not able to keep me sustained and to my utter disappointed this moment seems to be too long. I wish this moment could pass soon. And the time changed as the pendulum struck again for one more moment. But it was already late, the previous moment took a lot out of me. I am not just the same by now, I have lost many things with the moment, still have to keep on moving with more moments to come. After all, this is life and I know that the time changes.
Being a helpless human being, I can’t do anything about it just wish if there could be any possibility of some device that can help us to somehow manage to keep control on time. So that we could adjust time according to our convenience. We could capture the happy moments forever and can get rid of tough moments as early as possible.
Something that could help men in deciding the time on their own. A remote control for living where through pause button, we could just stop the moment, which is the happiest and forward when comes the toughest one. In the same way we could bring back the cherished moments through rewind button also.
Life would have certainly taken a very happy note if this wish of mine had fulfilled. It would have been the blessing for the mankind. It would have been the solution for the sufferings. I wish I could have such remote control to lock the moments when the time changes.

Child Sexual Abuse

Face of a child is the canvas to express his emotions where each shade of emotions appearing on his face pertains to some colour. Most unfortunately, colour of the sadness and pain too appears on this canvas with so many questions to ask, but what else an innocent soul can ask from God, anything more than a place so safe for that innocent mind.
As a famous proverb goes, ‘As you sow, so you reap’, but the goodness of this proverb is unexplainable in regard to the plight of mentally and physically exploited children, who get paid so harshly for their innocence. They are even deprived of their capacity to enjoy ‘childhood’ leading to immediate and long-term repercussions. There can be multiple aftermaths of abuse on children, which may include mistrust, withdrawal from people, emotional trauma, psychological problem, behavioural problem and suicidal tendencies.
Owing to the highest vulnerability and naivety on part of childhood persona, the childhood being the most cherished phase in man’s life sometimes becomes the most cursed and helpless phase.
These abused children are being constantly chased by horrifying dreams of past ruining their present. It’s the fear in their subconscious mind, which clutches their soul so badly that at the tender growing age of innocency, they are made to experience the fear-ridden plight of cruelty. For no sin of theirs, they end up paying heavy price, in terms of living life under the dark shadows of mistrust, fear and pain where trust and faith become mere words from alien land.
Life of those children become more of a hell gifted not by God but the very human beings who are far away from knowing human values. Those few psychopaths or morally errand people who make beautiful dreams of those tiny ones, a dreaded nightmare. It becomes more shameful when abuser is among known faces, it could be a trusted uncle, a family friend, or teacher, or worst of all, one’s own father. Thus ever-increasing cruelty of sinful mind snatches privilege of being innocent from younger minds that have yet to explore their world around.
To heighten the misery of fear stricken children, they are even unable to share their pain with their parents and friends. They are afraid of being laughing stock on disclosing their haunted dreams. They may just know that something is very wrong, but may be intimidated into keeping mum, and perhaps such children know that even if they do tell someone, they may not be believed on the contrary will be blamed.
That’s what stops them from sharing their pain with their very own people thus making children unable to overcome such crucial time.
The question arises whom to blame, the children who are afraid of sharing their misery or the parents who are not encouraging their children to come up with the issues haunting them so badly.
Here lies the responsibility of parents to help their children to come out of such crucial situation by showing concern and trust. If parents understand their children and encourage them to express themselves, the situation would not become so worse.
Redefining a positive self identity from a “damaged”self-image is not an easy task.It takes a whole gamut of courage and positive energies to bring old self back.It is important that parents reinforce positive image and inspire confidence in children. Parent should empower their children and have regular positive communication with them since children's feelings of esteem are highly influenced by their interaction with their parents. Besides, it is also important to take a more active approach to self-determination thus making children more assertive that can lead to warding off potential abusers at first place.
Most pathetically, child sexual abuse so far has been largely ignored by the Indian legal system. Yet, there is no separate law on Child sexual abuse. These Child abuse cases are still dealt with under the laws on rape and sexual molestation. And as there is no clear definition of sexual abuse, victims are mostly at the mercy of legal discretion. That only adds to the growing misery of the plight of those mentally and physically abused children and their families who sometimes find it more convenient to keep quiet due to lack of proper legal support, thus encouraging wrongdoers or perpetrators furthermore.
Moreover, due to sluggish legal system where even penalties are low, India is fast becoming a haven for international pedophile networks.
On the legal front, there is an ardent need of separate law on child sexual abuse keeping in mind the unique nature of such cases wherein the lack of evident definition leads to wrong doers getting away without being punished.
The child physical and mental abuse is an issue of great concern having prevalence worldwide. This being a dynamic and yet controversial issue demands a lot of inputs in terms of efforts to raise it to a platform for global perspective and make the search for solutions a meaningful endeavour.

A Brush With Death

Death, a universal truth that holds many unrevealed truths inside, is the only reality in this kaleidoscopic corporeal world. But unfortunately, all through our life we keep running away from this reality behind mirage, following delusions in life that keep on misguiding us from the real purpose of our existence. We are living in a fool’s paradise with the misconception that we are making progress at each step but in real sense we remain dormant only the phases in life keep rolling.
Virtually, life originates from the same point where it ends, but we keep running away from ourselves, which is the true self.
It is human tendency to search for happiness and satisfaction outside and indulge in rigorous ritual for the fulfillment of never ending desires being ignorant to the fact that the best prayer is healing of a broken heart.
Unluckily, we tend to chase for materialistic things in pursuit of happiness and put the fact aside that the perfect bliss is the peace of mind. Inability to identify our true self is the actual cause behind Weltschmerz.
Most strangely we tend to search for the bliss all around and fail to attain it at a hair’s distance. That’s why, when god created this world and thought of hiding to a place where nobody could find him. The only place he decided to hide was the innermost part of human entity, as he knew the weakness of human behaviour. He knew howsoever is the sharpness of human mind but it’s the human tendency to look for the things outside, which is the reason why he is unable to identify the power of self, the only power, governing the existence of life. All through his life he remains ignorant from the real being.
But it’s only when he gets brush with death, realization factor comes into being. Then the whole concept of existence takes a new shape leading to many bitter realities and experiences followed by knowledge of self.
It’s irony of life that human beings become aware about the purpose of life and absolute bliss simply when he is left with few more moments of life to repent. He then repents for not reaching to his desired goal in life. The purpose for which he was granted human life remains unfulfilled leaving another round of rebirths, which he is supposed to go through as cited in revered Vedas.
It is believed that human life is the key to attain Moksha, which can only be achieved through meaningful works. It is also believed that this is the only blessed birth to reunite with god where passage for heaven is built with kind deeds and by overcoming passion that ultimately leads to spirituality. But letting this birth go simply by gratifying the pleasures of senses make human beings a failure in achieving the goal of human life. And the lost moments never come again leaving behind to regret.
So the best life is one that is guided by harmony in thoughts and actions. The one, which is devoted towards attainment of spiritual insights rather than materialistic goals. As it is very well cited in revered Bhagavad-Gita, “ That man is disciplined and happy who can prevail over the turmoil that springs from desire and anger.
Aim of our life should be search for truth. The practice of discerning truth comes from faith in God. We can attain real happiness only when we are game to sail our boat without a map to navigate our journey towards the unknown, which requires immense courage, and that courage comes from faith in God.

The Dream

This beautiful story pertains to a dream, which aspired to be beautiful. His craving for being beautiful and gorgeous is an enriching experience of its own kind, which is going to set new dimensions for the thought process.
Such a selfless story in which there are heart-warming dialogues between god and the dream, undoubtedly leads to mental excursion where grey matter gets a close encounter with the beauty of thoughts of subconscious mind.
The seeds of this story started germinating from the very day when that dream came face to face with the crude reality of god made world. There was something, which rankled into his heart and kept on pestering that dream since that day. So one fine day he goes to god to get out of his anxiety.
He makes request to god to get out of his anxiety. He makes request to god, “I wish to be beautiful, Almighty god, can you bestow upon me the beauty?” After carefully listening to him god asks him, “ Child, o my sweet child, why do you want to be beautiful? Don’t you think you are already a beautiful creation of mine? The dream starts weeping. Tears start rolling down from his eyes. The unbearable pain he was carrying with since previous night was really annoying him. On seeing such a plight of the dream, god asks him, “what happened child? Why are you crying?” Dream starts telling the sad story of previous night. He says, “ Last night, I went to a boy’s subconscious mind while he was sleeping.” He continues, “that boy was very hungry for the last few days and his subconscious mind was preoccupied with thoughts of sufferings. Then suddenly that sleeping boy saw himself being brutally beaten up on stealing a piece of stale bread. The whole night the boy couldn’t take a wink after seeing that horrible dream and the other day he died of hunger and due to his inability to get over the whole incident seen in the dream.”
Then dream stops and starts contemplating. God asks him, “Is that the reason you are unhappy? But I didn’t find any link between you being unhappy and requesting me to make you more beautiful.” The dream explains to god. He says, “ By beauty, I mean those parameters which lead to my capability of making people believe in their dream and thus essaying to make that dream a reality.” He continues, “ That boy died and couldn’t survive, what if he would have seen a dream which has encouraged him to make life a success story?”
The dream tells further, “ I wish all dreams to come true so that people who can’t afford beautiful and wonderful world around would at least will not feel disappointed in their dreams. This is all I want, nothing more than that.” After listening to the dream god looks at the dream and his eyes brighten up with the pride on creating such a beautiful creation, which is going to touch millions of hearts in their subconscious state, thus teaching the humanity the lesson of ignorance from the selfishness.