Nature's uniqueness!

Lying on the floor in open of my terrace with my younger son cuddled in my arms under the blanket on a cool cloudy day was a great feeling. In front there was a row of trees loaded with fresh green leaves wiped out of all dust due to early morning rain. In one those trees, the mulberry were turning red, in mid ripe stage, and the parrots were savouring over them. Other birds too found their own sweet fruit without being challenged by any other flock. There seemed no competition or struggle as the fruit was in abundance. It looked beautiful to see small red berries placed comfortably between green leaves and small twigs which swayingly held the weight of birds, which feasted without rush. All seemed to be harmony and peace.

What a delight was it to see the reflection of greenery in the cloudy weather. Rainy day is so romantic and if it is holiday it brings all sweetness and affection in you out to express. I was romancing with my son and puppy pug, which was hardly a month and half old. My wife was busy inside working on something. In this mesmerising moments, despite all bliss I was somehow falling back into office mode, which had not been very sweet in recent past. Habitually, I tend to get very philosophical in such situations. Love and affection transforms me into hard positive thinker and unfortunately that is what is spoilsport to my wife sometimes :) She alleges that I transcend to a different world when I am close to nature. Nature churns me inside out, draws my inner feelings outside and I start thinking loud. And, whoever is unfortunately next to me has to bear the brunt of my trance. 

All these trees loaded fully with leaves looked so vibrant. They were rejoicing their existence in close proximity, with branches of one another indisputably crossing into each others space. With breeze they would kiss each other, embrace and let go. The birds flew from branches of one tree to that of another tree and not a single tree complained of change of company by the birds. They smiled and swayed in acceptance, with belief that their love is being shared with more. Every leaf of a tree was different than other leaves of the same tree. And, so did every leaf differ from leaves of other trees. There were almost a dozen trees visible to me, making a humble crowd, and none of the leaves were same. They were all different. So, million of different leaves lay next to each other, embracing, kissing, playing without ever complaining. And I think it is possible just because they acknowledged the difference and appreciated it. The difference was essence of nature. 

Here, we struggled all our life to be critical about the differences existing in human beings. Why, for what reason, did we want to make the difference look unnatural and forcibly try to make unnatural look natural. That is to make people believe in what I think and what I perceive as right. I had no answer as to why I wanted everyone to be me, by disrespecting my uniqueness and uniqueness of others. To make someone to be me, in fact, I was compromising on my uniqueness. Uniqueness is Nature. And Nature is so simple and Simplicity is what we don't trust. We make simple things complex in an attempt to achieve simplicity. 

And, believe me, as a spoilsport I shared my thoughts loud with my ten year old son. He further drew towards me hoping for me to stop. Looked at the trees and birds to understand a bit. Looked back at me, and cried loud, 'Mamma are you calling me,' and took the puppy in his arms and left :)

 I was left alone again ruminating. I smiled loud again expressing my hidden feelings. I called him, 'Hey! It is not your mom. I am calling you. Come back dear!' 

He returned with a smile and said, 'I believe you dad. You are unique'

And, I laughed and said, 'So are you dear'.

Diagnosed of!

Our elder son had come to visit us from Mumbai this weekend. He is doing his undergrad from Xaviers College Mumbai. Our younger son, who is still a minor at 10, studying in grade five, misses his brother a lot, but is always in a denial mode. So, is the elder one, who snatches occasions to tease him full throttle, though it is loaded with love and affection. The age difference was eight years and eight days.

Whenever together, though they would be glued to each other as inseparables, they kept fighting with each other at the drop of a hat. The fight between the two would be hilarious, though sometimes this brotherly fight would get little irritating when the younger one would start shedding tears in gallon. His tears were not because of any violence but for failure to match the elder's absurd comments, which made no sense to anyone, except to the younger one. His defence to the losing verbal duel would be to hit the elder robotically and transform his smile/laugh into whine. The wet eyes gave him an excuse to vent out violently. The greatest of all was the 'never giving back' policy of the elder. He never reacted physically and to defend himself from attacks would transform himself into the foetus posture. However, the intensity of his tirades would keep increasing with increase in the intensity of physical attack on him by the younger.

I was at my wits end when the elder one made a very absurd comment. Out of the blue I heard him say, 'You know, I was diagnosed of Madhav when you were born'. This statement, as usual, made no sense to me. 'Madhav' is the nickname of the younger son and 'Udhav' for the elder one. I questioned him the meaning. He, flat faced, said, 'As a person is diagnosed of some disease, I was diagnosed of Madhav when he was born'. It took sometime for the meaning to sink into me. But Madhav was quick to pick, as always, and retorted, 'And, I was diagnosed of Udhav the day I was born. At least you lived without any diagnosis for eight years, but I am suffering from the day I was born'. His wittiness was unexpected. And the expression was an example of great ingenuity. I laughed till I had spasm in my stomach.

Immediately, I started thinking of all the people I am diagnosed of, from the day I have come across them. I dare not name them here :)….. All of you are welcome to count your own diagnosed of lot.

Reviving my dying habit

It has been long that I posted any blog. It is difficult for me to discern the cause of this gap. Is it because of writing block or just because I have stopped penning my feelings. For me writing in any form, fiction or non-fiction has always been my time tested way of venting out the pent up feelings. However, of late, unfortunately I have dropped my good habit. Now, the question arises how do I then release all that builds in me.

Through this I am trying to really find an answer to my own questions. If I look back, I have failed to address my problem. Things have been piling up within me and challenging harmony. And, to my dismay I have done nothing to solve it.

Life is so easy that we deny to accept and live it simply. Our favourite slogan is 'life is very challenging'. We prefer to be in denial mode. We have imported so much of cynicism in us that our suspicion eclipses the smoothness of the nature. Nature is natural but we force on ourselves to look at it unnaturally. Everyone here is a preacher and a failed practitioner. The gap in practice and preachings is covered by being a hypocrite. And unhappily I realised that I am one of them. I have denied all these days that my lens too is fogged. Not necessarily what I see is what it is. That is true because my mind says it is not and my heart wants to believe it is… My lens too changes colours depending on what I want to see and that is governed by strong emotions. I fail to control my emotions, and to justify my failure I proudly brag that I am too emotional.

I remember, in my childhood whenever I used to complain about a person, my mother would give a very simple solution by saying, 'Have you ever seen all five fingers same.' I would check my hand and acknowledge the difference then and there. But, as a grown up now, despite that I repeat those childhood lessons to myself many a times, I, as a habit, deny to accept that if I am thumb then another person has the right to be middle finger.

Every finger has its own strengths, forget weaknesses. I am asking to forget weaknesses because we do not appreciate our own weaknesses so we should ignore others too. Hunting for weaknesses in others is jolly good passion. We go on and on and on without realising that hunting for weaknesses in others is basically our main weakness.

I am through this writing trying to get back to my old habit to write what I feel. Feelings are not stable nor permanent, but at the moment they come, they leave their mark. In my writing I am trying to exhibit that mark in black and white.