A Christmas Carol...

Christmas brings out fully the little child that I really am. I have always loved Santa. In my growing up years I read about the history behind this man called Santa. Santa Claus or rather Saint Nicholas was a historic 4th-century saint and Greek Bishop of Myra (part of modern-day Turkey). He had a reputation for secret gift-giving, such as putting coins in the shoes of those who left them out and is known in particular for secretly providing money for the dowry for three impoverished daughters of a pious Christian (he visited their house after they had gone to bed and left three bags of gold coins in three stockings left over the fireplace for drying). Many miracles were attributed to his intercession, and because of that he is also known as Nikolaos the Wonderworker! His feast day is 6 December and it later got tied up with the Christmas traditions.

Christmas season is indeed magical. When my kids hope for Santa to come in his red dress I tell them that Santa always loves to give gifts secretly so he sends his gifts through someone and whenever we get something that we dearly wanted that nobody knew about, then it is Santa’s gift.

All through my childhood  I  believed that Santa  sends me a gift on christmas…and I still believe it! I have often got gifts around Christmas time that nobody knew I wanted, sometimes even I didn't know until it arrived its winding way to me!

My best Christmas memories are of Halwara Punjab where I was part of the carol troop when I was about 11 and 12 years old.  It was fun visiting houses and singing carol songs all through the Christmas season.It was a magical time indeed. I was very proud to be the one holding baby Jesus. There was only one problem.  When we got into the coach after each house visit, the Awesome Santa became just a normal man when someone adjusted his make up for him! That’s really a deflator for a child who wants to believe the Santa is real!

When we moved from there I missed the Christmas fervor in every other place. Missed singing the carols with a proper troupe…

From the year 2007  I had been thinking that it is the new born Jesus who should be getting a gift from me and not vice versa and so I was trying to gift baby Jesus something on Christmas. It was my book. Such a silly childish thought! So nobody but I knew of this Christmas co relation of why I only tried for a publisher once a year and that too as the year was ending. I worked on my manuscript as the Christmas season approached and would try usually for just one publisher and ... fail and work on my manuscript again. It became a cycle and I was thinking Jesus would take my book when he would be fully satisfied with it.  The book would grow as I re read it each year end and edited it adding new insights.

But as six years passed, in my heart maybe I was beginning to suspect that Jesus didn't really appreciate it too much or want  it on His birthday! This September after my book became an e-book, I wasn't even remotely thinking of anything for December but coincidentally my husband gave my book into print in the Christmas Season without being aware in any way of  my little secret! I was surprised and happy for more than one reason when I came to know of it a few days ago. Evidently Baby Jesus did want the book in print on his birthday, but from my Husband's Hands?! Who knows His mind or ways....

When I was tired of trying to gift something to Jesus, I got it as a Christmas gift to me instead! 

SO I have no gift to give this Christmas or do I? A few days before December 1st,  my daughters instrumental music teacher gave me the musical notes of Christmas carol songs! (Maybe he felt I would be interested in them as I had taken from him notes for some church songs a few months earlier.)  It was a surprise, so I felt that playing the carol songs on the synthesizer was what  baby Jesus actually wanted as gift from me.

 As I play a different carol each day of this December I am reminded of the times with the carol troupe. Travelling each day together as troupe to some different locality, different people in different houses. How I loved observing it all.   I remember also that  I  particularly observed the strumming on the Guitars. I remember how I fell in love with instrumental music. Didn't I always want to play the songs on an instrument? As I play them each day of december I am still not sure - it is a gift from me or again a gift to me?!

WISH YOU ALL A MAGICAL CHRISTMAS

Vanity is Fair

When Spreads the Magic.....

Concept and Created By - Jovy Thomas- Photographer (multimedia)
Starring- Jerly
Year of creation- 2007

God gives us a mixed bag. He may not give us somethings we ask, but then he may also give us blessing which we never expected either! He gave me a blessing in the form of my sister-in-law who did for me what I don't think I ever seriously dreamed of! From taking professional pictures of me to making a video of me! Well, which sister-in-law does that!

She chose a song for me "soniye"(beautiful)! I was not sure it was a song that should be sung for me and then she allowed me to chose and sit with her as she edited.

Not that this song that I chose for the video (Jab Chaye) is any modest by comparison !! It means that- when my magic spreads, nobody escapes! And then the song goes on to describe a 'mixed bag' of opposite tendencies, like both soft and fiery, wounding and healing, a breeze and a storm etc etc...While I am not always proud of the other end of the spectrum all the time, yet the song is not modest at all by any standards.  But, hey, every girl is allowed some vanity, right? Vanity is fair in a woman,....so here's some awesome lyrics and video for me!!

YAYYYYY.

Who Am I

When at the crossroads where I have to choose;

I ask-who am I?

And  I choose what is true to my being;

And pass the other by...

When I feel I am wrong, and have gone with what I desired,
I don't regret ...

It is still who I am.

All what I could not do without;

It was better , than to die...

I am, when I can be

all that I want to give.

I am the one who lives,

 when my spirit is full fire.

The out held hands come many

But want not all that I am

 I have to pass them by, 

say a hundred times goodbye.

And hold only to a hope..

 that does not choose to die
..for a heart, who knows, and calls,

                                                                          to all of ‘who I am’

Valentine Revisited

When I reread my poem on Valentine I realised it is in spirit with my tag line "I Me Myself"..except for a missing stanza on Myself, so I added it here( 3rd stanza) without disturbing the earlier post that is perfect in itself as it stemmed from a different thought. This take on 'Myself' I add simply for myself...

What is "I me and myself". I believe it is there in everybody's relational dealings with the world, where a raw 'I' is transformed into an adapted 'me' to cope with the world. It is therefore the mechanism and capacity to cope with the stresses of the world. To explain where 'myself' fits in in this picture, I will take an example of soil formation; the soil profile has transitional layers from one stage(layer) of soil to another. Like the unweathered bedrock and the weathered rock over it, sometimes has an active weathering state in between. Similarly the pure essence of 'I' and the clarity of 'Me' sometimes has a transitional stage of a muddled 'Myself' which has imperfections but which still opens up to a process that releases the impurities and brings forth clarity and wisdom.

"My self" is the space that creates the joys and the griefs from any circumstance by its interpretations of the circumstance. This is brought forth to its best when we realize our duty towards ourself in terms of survival and growth in the world.It then becomes the bed of love for ourselves which analyzes circumstances and opens the wisdom in our soul which in turn transform every troubled thought into catalysts to more joy and peace in our heart. Just like a bees sharp probe brings up honey from deep within....

'Myself' then becomes the responsibility towards ourself to turn every sting of grief into precursor to lasting Joy, an aid to the opening of the fountain of Bliss within us....


MY BEST VALENTINE


It's a day of Love, a day to give
A day of friendship, joy to live
But first I have a Heart of Mine!
I treat it well, my Valentine

It cares for all, it cries for peace
It bleeds for love, it smiles with ease
And then all lone the day?! It's fine...
as 'I', am my best Valentine!

It hears me out, its listening heals,
It clears my thoughts, its silence speaks,
It beds with love a space that's mine
'Myself', My nest My Valentine

It mends my dream, eases my frown
It holds my wishes, n'er let's me down
All darkness, it's my one sunshine!
Yes 'Me', my very best Valentine...

The earlier post is "Valentine for the Loved or Unloved"

Funny ME

I have understood one thing lately, that there is no better way to look at oneself than in a way, where we could laugh at our own self. I realised this when a friend recently told me that Proust reminded her of me and showed me a video that tickled my funny bone !! Marcel Proust is a novelist (1930), the author of the seven volumes collectively called" In Search of Lost Time" which is considered a masterpiece because of the underlying philosophy of how to really appreciate life even in the little things. You might wonder what is funny about this outrageous comparison!

I must be excused as I was hearing about Proust for the first time and what I really saw in the video about Proust rather than making me heady with pride showed me something to laugh at..at him and myself. The video of how Proust can change your life conveyed to me certain things about Proust that I accepted that there was a similarity. Although my friend meant that Proust's and my thinking process seemed similar, the similarity I saw, however,  was a bit different.

 Proust's book describes small things at great lengths and so it is suggested that one could read it only if confined to bed with illness or a broken leg with simply "NOTHING" else to do. Yeah I have sometimes had to hold my friends by the neck and shove my writings down their throats. In the video Proust is shown cutting some portions of a page and sticking it somewhere else. Well if he really was the compulsive editor like me, I am infinitely more lucky, I have the computer! Proust is shown questioning a diplomat regarding the minutest details of his routine interrupting from time to time to make him elaborate where he might have rushed past. It was the diplomats expressions this time that made me laugh. Yeah I guess I have managed that expression onto some of my close friends' faces!

Later after I read the book 'Proust can change your life' by Alain De Botton, I could see what I might have discussed with my friend that led to such a linking! However outrageous it may sound, there were certain ideas that felt similar, like the "importance of not fully getting what one wants" as an essential ingredient to be happy. Apart from that, maybe the detached way of dealing with certain topics was a similarity, and especially I think the understanding that no book is complete in itself and we have to depend on our own intuition (according to Proust in a book we may discover our own unexpressed thoughts but these may not be complete in itself without some personal editing). But unlike Proust I don't really indulge my whole self in the minutest details of living like sipping a cup of coffee! I am more hurried. Also unlike Proust I don't think what I write is what I couldn't make use of in real life (However audacious I might sound.) I write mainly because writing benefits me by helping me think clearer and find solutions that take me towards a better direction whereas for Proust his wisdom probably reconciled him to his suffering which (for more or less understandable reasons) he couldn't change.

But what I rather admired is the treatment of Proust by Alain De Botton. He told us how serious people can be so funny. What I took from Alain De Botton is the understanding that what we need is to laugh affectionately at others and ourselves and take each person, their qualities, their faults, less seriously.

Alain De Botton speaks in Ted Talk about his philosophy of success in which what attracted me, was his view on modern society, of how it has become centered on the self. We seek out nature not for health but because we want to run away from the human anthill, from our dramas, we do want to be centered on something that is not human. Yes, It does appear that we have become more serious than we need to be about ourselves.

This touched me more as I had just come back from a nature experience, away from traffic, away from the computer, away from the serials I follow; watching the slow unhurried existence of nature in the Vidarbh region of Maharashtra, where in its windy air unwillingly trying a hand at the kite flying suddenly lifted my spirits when the kite did really take off! It lifted also the drooping corners of my mouth as it brought back the child in me. The rest of the days there, all I wanted to really do was learn to fly a kite, quite like the unthinking, unhurried little child who would take her own sweet time for a wasteful activity. Proust would have nodded his approval.

Anyway who really knows what is important enough to do in life. I guess as long as 'I' am not so important, anything could be worth wasting time on...

Starting All Over!

There are few joys compared to starting all over! A new year, a new place, new people....The new has something to hope for, something to look forward to, where the old often has exhausted itself. The last month, exhausted options, absorbed lessons. ..

I would say life has not always turned out as I expected, but I wouldn’t say in the end, I did not relish life as it turned out to be! I have been, I would also say, blessed with the new, even when I wished to settle down at one, be it places or friends! Seven places before marriage and four after, not including Bangalore where I lived four times in all the years put together. Which place do I call my place, maybe the place that calls me back the most? I have been lucky to live near Goa after marriage, to have known traffic free roads of Kudal and Chiplun, where long drives were immensely relaxing and nature was so lush. Yet it is very rare that a place has held me back, maybe once, an apartment where I could see a lake from my window in a place like Pune. But eventually the signs are so clear when it is time to move, that once done with it however painfully, I rarely look back!

People ask me which place or friends I miss. I am sure I cut across as hard hearted when I don’t have a place or person I miss. For me the place I live, the best friend I have in that place, is all that matters! I am surprised when my old friends remember details of long past times, as one would of a moment ago,but that are almost clean out of my mind as a past life would be! Being reminded of them is, for me, like having undergone a past life regression session, and I dare not admit that to my dear old friends who have carried the memories so religiously! I even surprise and scare myself with this capacity not to look back at even the most fabulous of times, even those that had been immensely difficult to give up! Which friend do I belong to then, maybe the friend who cares to keep holding my hand, whatever the distances that may come in!

I have often thought of myself as absent minded, not interested in devoting my whole mind to the routines, not living in the present, but some days like today, as I realise I am starting over, I also realise I am most present where it really matters. I do live each place fully, absorb each friend totally, so that when I part I carry their essence in me, they are added on to what I am. We usually miss something which wasn’t lived fully, which wasn’t totally added on to us.

Starting over again for me is the point of time when comes the awareness that I am a new added up person. Each place, each person, each year adds on to us in more ways than mere figures! Reminds me of the words from a song..

Maine tinke uthaye huen hain paronpe, ashiana nahin hai mera. I don’t have a nest...I carry the straws in my feathers.

Sometimes the best things about life can be found in not having a nest, in starting all over, in growing again in a new soil, however painful each uprooting is...