A good Indian wife

Yesterday night I finished reading a novel by Anne Cherian "A good Indian wife". I bought this book two weeks ago while surfing half price book store. I had not really heard the name of the novel or of author but the cover looked really interesting. The cover page definitely ignites a lot of interest in amateur people like me!

A novel should be something that you take in your hand and do not want to put it down before you are done with it. This novel is a great read, the mere proof is I finished reading it at 2:15 AM. Isn't that one of the best ways of starting a weekend? ;) The story in the novel revolves around Leila and Neel. Neel is accomplished doctor in San Francisco who goes to India to see his grand father and marries to Leila against his will just to honor grand father's wish. He has a settled life back in SF with a girl friends, mixed friend circle so he thinks about divorcing Leila even when marriage ceremony is happening. The story is about how struggle that Leila goes through. She pulls him through and justifies to him and herself that grand father's wish had a good reason behind it. You have to read the novel to know more details :)

Any marriage system that you take, there is always some flaw because marriage happens between two imperfect people. In Indian marriages girls are still looked upon a "show case item", not as a companion, friend, which kinda sucks. It just occurred to me how Indian girls are always taught to stick with the husband, forgive him whatever he did and how to continue with life by sacrificing ourself every day. Even in modern India, girls carry that thinking. I look around in the society and see how girls continue when husbands are being jerks at a times (telling wives that she has gotten fat while showing off their bellies :(.) or telling shamelessly that how somebody else's wife looked so good. I thought men knew women better than that!!

Sometimes even well educated men disallow women to work and force her to continue her house held responsibilities. I have seen girls, who were rankers in their class being at home and taking care of kids. Suddenly those girls loose all their freedom just because they are now 'Married'. How do these men do not understand that they are marrying a human being, not hiring a slave? We are not talking about mid west countries where women are not allowed to go to school, learn driving, go alone to the shopping. In a progressive society like modern India, I see bad things happening. I understand the main cause of this is lack of education, but how many light years are we going to take to treat women as human beings.

In a free country like USA too, I observe that girls are treated like secretaries even when they are colleagues. I am not feminist but my blood boils when I see above occurrences. My upbringing of 'no contradictions' kicks in and I continue to smile even though deep down I know that this is not right. 

Its a coincident that tomorrow is International women's day and I still feel a little hopeless. I know this is a little disturbing post, sorry cannot help folks. Sometimes you can not continue the show without showing what are you exactly feeling!!! 

Milestones

Last tuesday, I went with my friends for a dinner treat. My friend had completed her first year on her job. It kinda surprised me how excited she was to reach to this point. My surprise was because she has had previous jobs and she must have completed first years with them too. The thing that was different was that this was a full time job. In last one year I saw her going through various milestones. She got married to her fiancee. After a few months had a Indian wedding too. She has been a lot happy in last one year by beginning new stages of life. She got me thinking what milestone offers us. 

The word milestone itself is very meaningful word.  It offers sense of adventure, courage to take on little steps to reach there and finally amazing feeling of achievement.  All of us set big,  small milestones for us. Its a great feeling when you achieve one. For some people, its not enough because they have already started their journey towards next. However big and small milestone that we reach, its important to celebrate each and every one of them. There is nothing as satisfying as achieving something worthwhile and then have someone to celebrate with.  As someone rightly said, 'The greatest things in life are not things!'

There are few people in India who do 'parikrama' that means walking on river bank from its source to destination (where it meets Sea/Ocean). This usually mean thousands of kilometers distance. These people do not carry any money or food with them. If villager offer them the food, thats their dinner. If they do not get any food, then they survive on sweet river water. Those people definitely understand the meaning of milestone because they sustain rain, cold, sultry heat, no food at a times, not proper place to sleep. We all can hope that life teaches us to be humble to understand the value of constructive and creative milestone whoever it belongs to!

Introduction to Indian classical music

I learned Indian classical music when I was in school. I did not get much chance to pursue that for long though I never really gave up listening to music. My home environment always provided those kinda opportunities as mom and dad kept adding great cassettes to our collection deliberately. We had HMV cassette by Veena Sahastrabuddhe. The title of the cassette was 'A tribute to Pt. Omkarnath Thakur'. Oh my god, its ecstasy!! One should not miss a chance to listen to that recording. This sounds foolish now, but I had serious thought of going to Pune after 10th standard and learning music from her. I had heard that she teaches at SNDT, Pune. I guess god spared her :D

Today, out of blue sky, I was googling her and found a great amount of information about her on this page. If somebody would like to know basics about Indian classical music, just visit this page. I know you will be glad that you did. She not only does a perfect job of explaining all arcane things about music but also her presentation is a great journey to know the teacher behind an artist. This introduction is sufficient who wants to start listening now. A new listener can like and appreciate it when he/she knows the basics. Just borrow CD's from friends and explore the wonderful unfathomable world of music.

Classical musicians and Engineers

I was in India for Diwali. Its our family tradition to tune to 5:00 AM kirtan (praise of god) and after that head to Classical Indian music concert. When you live in city like Pune, the opportunities are ample. This year we attended music concert by Kaushiki Chakrabarty. I did not know much about her but dad had told us to get those tickets. I am not music connoisseur (would love to be some day) but what I really liked in her singing the way she connects with the audience. Somebody who does not know anything about Raga will know everything by the end of it. Her boltana (where one mixes up the song and taans) are amazing. She has developed that style from her father and teacher Pt. Ajoy Chakrabarty and also Pt. Jnan Prakash Ghosh. She sang Miyan ki Todi and Ahir Bhairav. I wished we could have recorded, it was an awesome concert. She sang a bhajan "Ab aa jaana bhagwan" (O God, please appear now) - brought tears to my eyes. We all have heard classical music from so many musicians but this artist performs some kind of magic. No wonder, all I hear in my car these days is "Raag Madhuvanti - Kaahe Maan Karo" by Kaushiki.

When we came home from the concert I was talking with my dad about her music and how did he know that she is so good. He pulled my legs by telling me that he has magical powers but then on my incessant insisting he told me that he had read the review. She had sung in Sawai Gandharva music festival in 2007 and of course the reviewer could not stop praising her. He was talking passionately how all these artists connect with the super power called as god with their music. It started a thought in my mind, does music really have that magical power that let a human being connect with the almighty? I may never find that out in this life time but then I guess its because these artist devote themselves fully to music. The connection is a result of ultimate devotion in anything that we do. Their music soothes so many peoples mind. It gives the endless joy to a common human being.

I am thinking, do I feel that connection being an engineer? Am I that devoted? Very few times I had felt it but I had :) It was when I forgot where I was when I was solving algebra problems or when I wrote Unix Operating Systems paper in Engineering or when I left office feeling that "my god, I can't believe that I could participate in that big project and do some work". My work do not give endless joy to others but I think, it gives endless joy to me at least that day. We engineers are thirsty people, we crave for more and more and many times nothing is satisfactory. May be that's the essence of this profession - bettering ourselves and hope that this journey give us that devotional feeling every day!

Birthday thoughts

Whenever my birthday comes, I am always dubious about what will happen this time. When I was a little girl, I used to wonder "is mom making fruit salad this year too?", "how will the birthday party go". In college it was so much fun celebrating particularly in girls hostel. One of my friend used to remember the birthday and used to give me a beautiful greeting card every year. It was more meaningful because she used to be blunt other days but that day she used to make me feel special. I felt it so many times. The other time, one of my best friend just wrote a nice poem about our friendship and made me realize that I hold one end of the friendship. It was just wonderful when she wrote me that poem. We have maintained our friendship even after several rifts and 8000 miles distance.

Now I stay away from my family and all these wonderful friends. I have made new friends here but they just seem to evade as time passes by. Somebody who celebrated my birthday with utmost enthusiasm last year, do not even call this time. It hurts, but then one cannot fathom the complexity of human mind and how it take decisions and sometimes the mind cannot find any logical reason too. May be just realize that we need to move on.

Yesterday when I left office I did not know what will happen that evening. We usually celebrate birthdays at 12:00 in the night, banging on the door, waking up birthday girl/boy from sleep and decorate their faces with cake. Will that happen this year too? May be not, most of my friends are back in India, so may be no one will celebrate. I was also missing the family so much because I just came back from India. I left office wrapped in all these thoughts.

I saw clear moon and thought it was specially bright for me :) While driving, I noticed christmas lights all over in Omaha downtown. This was one beautiful site. My doubts was gone. I was happier than usual. Truly just the presence of light enlightens our hearts so much. Even though nobody banged my door at 12:00 in the night, I got calls from family and friends in India. In the morning, there were emails and greeting cards in my inbox. Its just wonderful how small things like sending a greeting card can cheer up somebody's mood. There were celebrations in the office, at a friends place. The day was really really great. 

It just made me realize that there are people somewhere who are happy for me being a part of their life and thats what make my life more livable, so happy birthday to me!!!

What exactly I am thankful for?

Sometimes the festivals come at most unfortunate times. Here in US, almost everybody is getting prepared to celebrate Thanksgiving. I will celebrate too but I am deeply saddened when I think what exactly I am thankful for. I was all excited to celebrate but yesterday afternoon I heard about Mumbai bomb blast and spent all day finding out if the situation has improved. Mumbai is an identity for India. Its free spirit, infinite opportunities have lured people from all over the country. This act wants to dampen that spirit, even though Mumbaikar will not allow that, but only Mumbaikar need not brave all the time and suffer.

It is a difficult time for all humanity, because we are dealing with senseless people who are strongly motivated. This is high time that we as country take some action because we have to help ourselves now. There is a saying "God help those, who help themservles". We need better intelligence network, better communication from common man to police authority, and their action. India is a big country with huge population. Its foolish to expect government authorities to take care of its citizen simply because it cannot have that big of infrastructure. We as citizens need to be a little braver and need to put some trust in our police system. In democracy, one had to bear the responsibility first then has the right. It also means that government need to come up with some plan. I still like to believe that we have excellent people in government who are motivated to secure the country and they can do it.

Even though there is feeling of helplessness in my heart, simply because of being 8000 miles from my country, but I have not given up. I am going to donate money to help families who suffered trauma but I am also going to raise voice being a responsible citizen. I am thankful for being an Indian citizen and strong democratic values imbibed in me!

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