Great Indian Ban Game

A friend sent me this message:

“Banned Porn and Maggi

Basically government is against anything which gives you pleasure in 2 minutes”

This message was forwarded along with a laughing emoji. I laughed too. Shared this message with other friends as well. Then, while I was into a conversation with one of my friends about whether or not India would ban online dating sites too, that it got me into thinking about this whole BAN x,y,z issues of India.

Facebook, all over the world, went colorful with the users setting their display pictures to colorful/rainbow mode, when in June 2015, the U.S.A. legalized Gay marriage. India, too, followed and celebrated. Another set of funny jokes ran the internet in India: “People here are celebrating Gay marriage legalization in U.S.A. but hardly can an Indian boy/girl decide whom and when to marry.”

Indians: Hypocritical?

I don’t understand, at times, the Bills issued and passed in the Indian Parliament. At times, I feel I lack the understanding about the ways of the Indian Judiciary, too. We, certainly, are the people who proudly say: “I am an Indian” as we are proud of our country and our culture. Having said that, how many of us even know and understand our Indian culture? What is the Indian culture? A sex-less culture? Do we mean to say that we are a country of test-tube babies? Haven’t our parents made love to create us? Or is it that that they just kept clean and decided like the very famous and hilarious character of the popular TV show ‘Big Bang Theory’, Dr. Sheldon Cooper, that they wouldn’t engage in coitus, but wouldn’t let the world suffer and so made test-tube babies to give the world the gift of their genes? Why do we have the sex book; yes I prefer calling it so; ‘Kama sutra’, listed in the list of Indian books? Why do we have caves and temple walls down south- south India, carved with images of different sex positions? Why, at all, did our great ancestors make all of these? Isn’t it against our culture? Why do we STILL have them? Couldn’t we demolish it as it is so against our culture? Couldn’t we stop people be visitors to such historic places? Couldn’t we burn all the sex books? Oh sure, we couldn’t! We just let it be. We are Indians, ones who believe in ‘letting it be’ and securing and protecting ‘our heritage’. Sure we couldn’t let any new-age technology copy us! How could we? That’s horrendous!

No porn sites, please!

No kissing in public, please!

No sex, please!

-“If not making it known to others, but, behind doors, can I have sex?”

=“Are you kidding me? We don’t! We are cultured people.”

-“But, I am married to the one you chose for me.”

=“Umm, ok. Now you may. But, don’t let this out. Tell all that your child is the gift of god and that an angel delivered it to you in the hospital. Ok?”

One might question me: what’s with this whole baby making and sex after marriage thing to do with banning porn sites in India? Well, let me tell you the beauty behind banning porn sites or all things sex. We humans are sinned with the carnal needs, shouldn’t we eradicate it so that we can stop having sinful pleasure and in the process stop making babies and enlarge the population? Yes, we should! We mustn’t indulge in any carnal pleasures and should even help others curb it, so that we can protect our culture and live up to the image of cultured and clean people. It might lead to curiosity in people, of knowing and doing it the wrong way and might make them find porn and give themselves pleasure, or might make them desperate and want to do it all the more, and when nothing comes handy, and with no knowledge about the same, might as well grab another human and in sheer desperation, forcefully do it. But, we must not allow anyone commit a sin of having pleasure/fulfilling their carnal needs, so, we must ban anything that is close to having sex/pleasure.

Anything that is to do with physical appetite, or indulging in sexual pleasure, or talking and discussing about carnal needs, is a hush-hush in India. Indian schools don’t encourage sex education. Parents don’t hold hands, hug or kiss in front of their children, but ones who sleep with their children, on the same bed due to lack of space, make love while their kids are asleep, right beside them! We are proud of our culture, where a couple has sex, right next to the child, thinking the child is asleep and wouldn’t get to see or know anything about sex and so we would be successful in protecting our culture. We would win against the battle of allowing anyone to see or know about sex. Unfortunately, we are losing the battle when it comes to rape cases. A boy, out of curiosity rapes a girl and is considered juvenile and set free or not punished the way a rapist should. A girl, in public, is asked about how she was raped. In a way, talking about sexual intercourse in front of those that pass the law that makes us Indians go ‘hush-hush’ about sex. Seems we are more into word-porn than visual-porn. And as the protectors of our great Indian culture say: “this is to be banned as it is not our culture and is staining the sanctity, purity and inviolability of our culture”, so we must pay heed and do the needful.

Legalize sex. Ask for sex permit. But, DON’T seek porn pleasure! Rape issues? Male/female sexual abuse? Well, we will set another time and date in future for its BAN.

Irreplaceable

‘Irreplaceable’ is a lie!
A deception believed in till we die.

A special place for one and all,
A belief of the big and small.
Friends, neighbours and relations,
All prosper and perish with situations.
‘You are irreplaceable’, that’s a lie!
Irreplaceable- a lie!
‘You are special to me’, said one
‘It’s a lie’, learned everyone.

Friends/relations perish, but all
Believe in the illusion overall:
‘You’re special ‘n irreplaceable’
‘You’re a friend so special’
‘My feelings for you’re unchangeable’
She believed in expressions of the facial,
Only to learn she was easily replaceable,
She was irreplaceable!

Yes, irreplaceable is a lie!
A deception believed in till we die.

Self realization

I walked past a glass door. It seemed I walked past a corridor of glass doors running parallel to the others.

Got thinking. I know not what.

Wanted to see through them all.

Stood in front of one to see through the other that restricted the space it had enclosed within its boundaries.

Couldn’t see a thing!

I began with my leisure walk again. Just then I saw a shadow on the glass door. Stopped. Looked. And I could SEE.

It was when I saw through my own shadow, that I could see that which was a blur before.

Self realization!

The Birthday Girl

Blew candles. Made wishes. Expected wishes to be fulfilled. Kept waiting. Wait seemed endless. Birthday candles kept getting alighted, kept increasing in number, and wait seemed like infinity.
Birthday girl blew her cake candles and made a wish. She cut the cake in the expectation that this new year in her life would bring in moments she dreamt of. Yes, those moments did arrive. Life seemed a fairy tale. One strike and the dream bubble pricked out the loveliness of this fairy tale.
Another year, yet another set of dreams. Some old ones, some new. Life was seen differently. The span of a year of fulfilled dreams, life-like fairy tales, start and end of an era of illusions and reality, where she grew closer to reality and illusions taught her to be more real; the birthday girl waited, closed her eyes, prayed, wished that this time her wishes be fulfilled, and blew her birthday cake candles with a more mature wish. She was full of hope. She didn’t just wait for wishes to turn real, she started making efforts to build the door of opportunity. Time flew, she grew stronger, maturer and prepared for the other- the less expected. And, as she expected the less expected to not be the one knocking her door, the door of her efforts collapsed.
Birthdays seemed to be the nuclei of her next door to the fulfilment of her dreams. Defeats seemed a little less disheartening and more about a learning experience. She grew with the increasing birthday cake candles. Her dreams, too, kept growing.
Year after year, before blowing her birthday cake candles, she never forgot to make a wish. This was very essential to her. She seemed to bank on her birthday cake candles, inwardly hoping that this time when she opens her eyes after making her wish to blow out the candles, all the darkness that surrounded her would be blown out too. HOPE is what she didn’t lose.
Next birthday, the cake arrived and this time there weren’t any candles on them. She closed her eyes and opened them in the hope to blow the candles out so that her wish be fulfilled. And, when she opened her eyes, she wasn’t the hopeful, expectant birthday girl anymore. All those birthday cake candles had been blown out and now, she didn’t know what to wait for. HOPE changed meaning.

To See in this Sea!

I’ll learn to be a NEW me,

I’ll bring change in the way I see.

I bear no control over the changes I see,

Hence, its best to dive deep in this sea.

I promise to stand besides you forever,

But isn’t it true: nothing lasts forever?

Yes, it’s true:

I bear no control over the changes I see,

But, I will wait to believe in the chances of this sea!

May be, someday, I’ll sail through this sea

And see what I wish to see.

I wish I had listened to you/ I din’t know, but you knew.

I wish I had listened to you,

I din’t know but you knew.

I wish I had taken your advice,

I was a fool, but you were wise.

You asked me to take it slow,

I was in a rush, I put up a show.

Here I am today, paying for my mistakes,

Wishing to change it for no matter what it takes.

But now you’re gone and nowhere to call,

But my past still recalls!

I keep saying:

I wish I had listened to you,

I din’t know, but you knew.

FAILURE

[A short story that can help students take their failures as lessons and as a positive hope of succeeding in future. This short story all-in-all is one that teaches ‘failed’ students that failures too can be positive.]

‘Oops! I failed again’. Failure had become my anthem. Every day, without giving a miss, I failed at almost everything I lay my hands on.

“Hello is this Kiara?” spoke my telephone set’s receiver. “Yes, may I know whose calling?” and then I could not believe the words that were spoken to me. I was shocked. I could only end up saying, “Okay, I’ll be there.” What was it? Did I actually hear what I had heard? Or was I day-dreaming? “The caller-id would confirm the caller, let me check,” I spoke to myself….

A young girl with dreams, I was no different. But I was different from the different. When other girls would smartly achieve what they’ve worked for, I would be the one who would be at the loser’s end even after strenuous days and nights. I would always fall short of something or the other. I would keep asking to myself, “what went wrong this time?” and like always I would never find an answer to this regular self-questioning of mine. I was so accustomed to ‘failure’ that I started taking my failure’s quite casually, it seemed very normal to have failed. Failing was like packing my school books in ‘next day’s routine order’.

Dad got me a video game, I wasn’t much fond of video games but this was a new toy and I wasn’t planning to let it go without playing a game or two in it. Guess what, I played all the different games installed in it and I just failed, yet again! Initially I crossed the first few levels, but, as I tried crossing the second last level, to reach the final level, I failed. I was disgusted at myself and made up my mind never again to try playing this game.

Those were my early days to womanhood, when a girl’s body goes through a lot of hormone changes, and that turned me into a fat girl. I could not understand these changes that my body was going through but all that I could ‘gain’ was not just body weight but also a nick-name by my classmates: ‘moti’ (the fat girl). At first I was very annoyed, and then I decided that I would prove them wrong, that I would start exercising and would reduce my body weight. Need not guess again, the result was the same: I failed again. This failure was my first that I had accepted with a loud laugh. Yes, now I had started taking failures a little lightly.

As I grew up I faced many challenges like all do, nothing different, but the result to my facing these challenges, always, came out in the negative. At times I did succeed, but then Time would fail me. When others would have achieved their goals and would have started working towards new goals, I would have to smile and thank god for letting me survive the initial levels and reach the door-step to the final level of marking my first win.

I was quite okay with the way things were turning out to be. I started taking out different ways to survive a difficulty. My classmates, who used to tease me by calling me names, now became my friends, but the ‘moti’ name remained with me throughout school-life. I used to enjoy this nick-name and would react positively to it, as it was the first time ever when somebody had called me by a different name which wasn’t my formal name: ‘Kiara’. When they saw I wasn’t affected by their ‘name calling’ and was, to their surprise, enjoying it, they too shrugged off their devilish tone and then it became my ‘nick-name given by friends’ that I’d cherish forever.

I was the only girl child in my family but instead of being pampered I was strictly checked on. ‘Restrictions’ was another barrier that accompanied ‘failure’ in my life. I don’t know how and why, but I was quite fine with the way things were. I started taking these barriers as challenges in a game. I used to enjoy getting a way out from all odds and difficulties. ‘Life’ started changing, or may be my way of dealing with problems had changed.

One day, I received a phone call and it changed everything. I was shocked. I could not believe my ears. I checked the caller-id and checked it again and again. Yes, whatever I had heard was true. For the first time ever, I had not failed. All my life I had sat amongst the audience and had cheered and applauded for others’ achievements, but now it seemed that Time whispered to me, “it’s TIME to return the favor!” I had stood first in my Honours paper. I was the only one, in my college, who had secured a gold medal in this particular paper and so I was invited by my college to attend the Annual Function Day of the college, to be honored by the dean of the university that our college was affiliated to. That day marked my first victory.

My story doesn’t end like any ‘happy ending’ cinema. Failure is still a very important part of my life. I fail every day. I am an ‘average’ girl, who is not ‘good-looking’, who is fat, who does not have the best job, who has to struggle every day in trying to convince her parents with her approach to life, but, there’s a minor difference to Kiara from earlier times and Kiara, the girl today. Today I play up the failures of my life, in a hope of receiving yet another call from Time to announce “girl, it’s your turn now!”