Fighting for our Spaces

Apart from the convenience of being totally understood, there are also a lot of household tips to gain from having a married woman as a friend in the neighbourhood. But since last four years I have not had such luck, (although I have had unmarried friends, which does not give the same benefits). It was frustrating until one day I decided; what the heck I will just ask my neighbor directly whatever I might need to know, and I asked -“Whats the best way to keep the house clear of coakroches.” And pleasantly without the process of intimate friendship and sharing I realized I could just get away with good solutions from pointed questions without much embarrassment!

I called up another friend and got the same suggestion and the whole procedure for the massacre as well. It must be good I decided. So I brought the powder and made the dough and stuck it wherever I felt the roaches would visit. The next morning as assured, I expected to see some dead roaches lying about. I was bitterly disappointed..Not even one! But then from the second day on I saw the dead roaches here and there. And I was so thrilled to see the dead ones! The writhing ones I smashed to the finish line.

It is a slow process to becoming a murderer. First time it is difficult and then it becomes easier and easier, until your senses are numbed to the misery of the coachroach. I, the tender heart, was so merciless with the roaches. “Be careful about what you condemn, for that you are in danger of becoming!” is what came to my mind as I boasted about the number of kills each day. But then Gandhiji's words came to my rescue or rather my modified version of what he said.

Well let me warn you first; what he said may not even remotely seem to be linked to my topic. So here's what he said “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need, but not every man's greed." But as a corollary doesn’t it mean “In whatever evil we do we have to check whether it is for a justifiable need or a reckless greed.”? Am I twisting it too much? Well I know Benjamin Franklin seems to have said, "Man is a very reasoning creature; he creates a reason for whatever he wants to do". Yeah sure I know that; but examples might help here to justify my reasoning. Killing a common fowl for food as opposed to killing for sport, is an example of it. If I had gone about hating and killing all the coakroaches in the world it would have been an evil, than killing some roaches that encroached into a space I mark as mine. That is a need. It should have respected my space and kept away or bear with the consequences, right?

“Every war is fought for peace” Once the threat to our space is removed, and the adversary learns to respect our space, the war should cease. "Life is too short to spend in quarrels", and yet life is lived by doing what needs to be done for peace, even when it is a quarrel, a battle, a war that is a requisite to attain it.. We often have to fight a few battles to avoid a destructive war

And now for some whisper of an advice; whatever we do, even if termed wrong, may be perfectly fine as long as it brings good in the long run, but there are dangers when conscience erodes or when we lose sight of the purpose. That is why even one offence is such a dangerous thing, which is also why some religions prefer to teach to refrain from even killing a fly; as one may slowly learn the pleasures of killing (or other evils similarly). We might chose a “wrong path” where the end justifies the means; but we must always check not to become what we once despised. Our war should easily cease when it is peace.

Waking Up .......

The Awake ; It represents the opening out to the field of cosmic intelligence. The point through which this opening or attuning happens is the Sahastra Chakra. Its name means "thousand petal lotus”. This attuning can happen after a period of focused meditation of love towards the devine

The Sahastra or Crown Chakra is located at the crown or top of the head (baby's soft spot). It is the opening to the universe- to the highest consciousness or the spiritual self. It is connected with upper brain (cerebral cortex) and is also associated with the pineal gland (third eye)

This is where the interlocking happens between the mortal and the divine. The mind is no longer contained within the head, it expands. Just as the interconnections between the left and right brain leads to communication between the logical and the emotive faculties (left and right); the chakra at which the connection is made is such a similar interlocking of the mind to the higher intelligence.

The energy travels through this connection in a clockwise or anticlockwise spiralling motion and is converted by the glands for the physical development (as of brain functions) and personal growth (spiritual qualities like unconditional love). It's like opening a window in the mind, letting in the refreshing outside air. In fact better breathing is similar in effect in bringing about wholesome development and is a part of the yogic approach to spiritual growth.

The opening of this chakra, the inflow of divine energy is like the scattering of seeds on fertile land (just as Jesus explained in a parable about the Kingdom of God being like a farmer scattering seeds). The seed is not seen and the implications of the event may not be understood by the seeker, until with added years,the seeds sprout, the plants are noticed, the flowers bloom and the smell emanates to all. It's only then that the seeker realizes, to have in fact woken up to the Kingdom





"...They sprouted, grew, and produced a crop that was thirty, sixty, and even a hundred times as much as had been planted!" (Mark Ch 4)

The Marriage Habit...Why Not?

I read a line in paper that got me thinking. It said about a certain celebrity couple-‘They were together for a year, that’s quite long by LA standards’. We are all addicted to the highs of love and when that fades in a year we move to the next. And so end up in a string of relationships. Man is a pleasure seeker and society knows that decisions taken under the whims of pleasure are self destructive. What when old age happens? You are left with nobody.

'Do not ignore the wisdom of long experience….'
Our ancestors found it necessary to bind man in marriage and religious laws, to stop him from destroying his future by marriage hopping. They knew that marriage was also important to protect the naïve trusting woman from being merely used; to pressure the self seeking man to discover his loyalties or become a creature of habit; to allow the child to have a secure future.

Society is changing again. Now sex before marriage is seen as practical unlike a few decades ago where it was unthinkable. So I was surprised when, after the legal age for sex was raised to 18 (after the Protection of Children against Sexual Offences Bill was cleared on 26th April, 2012), a news paper article revealed that there were still some guys who considered sex as sacred and preferred sex after marriage! What was shocking to me though was that, the interviewers ‘gave the guys a reality check’ saying that guys can’t wait that long! To put ideas in the last of a breed! Isn’t that quite like saying life is all about sex?

Brahmacharya(Chastity) up till 25 years was not really an 'unscientific' useless idea. It helps in bringing interest in all aspects of life that may take a backseat when one becomes sexually active. It helps to focus on the learning, personality development and career building aspect of life, where sex can be more of a distraction if given into. It helps to get interested in all the other wonders of the world, art, nature, adventure; before being swept into anything which can be all consuming. In the teenage if one manages to have self control, it is an asset for life. But once a person gets into a string of relationships, it is easier to break up than to settle down with one, when the Grihastha(House holder) phase comes.

But yeah I would say there can never be a hard and fast. There can only be ideals and then there can be exceptions; but society is supposed to focus on ideals, whereas life may often lead some to be the exceptions. When in the past the doors were closed to multiple options, one had to focus and work at the relationship at hand and eventually succeed in making it work or learn the arts of adjustment and compromise. The toughest things to handle in a marriage were handled by religion. Religion, rules, laws were all for our own good. It brings order; as once chaos is chosen it is difficult to bring the pleasure seeking man back to the “order” that is better for his soul, his peace, his health and his future.

Institutions that have evolved need to be respected. Cohabitation is a trap which gives an easy escape once boredom sets in. Love dies, friendships fade but companionship held together by a legal act is the only thing that can last though many upheavals. I read of a couple breaking up because according to them being together was just habit and love had died. Of course the heady love dies and actually habit is not a bad thing. We can't always live in awe of the Sun! Everything we do like waking up, the food we eat, even the rain, everything revolves around the sun. Being habituated to seeing it does not mean we don’t need it; because we see it daily, doesnt mean there is no wonder to it. The truth is we cant even exist without the sun.

In the same way we get used to the people around us but that doesn’t mean they are not important to us, they have not meant anything to us. Eventually with togetherness (in a marriage), familial love is born, which may not have the heady gush of a new love but it signifies acceptance, adaptation and assurance. Moreover ‘family is not just about love, but its about being there, about watching out for another... -Where are you?, how are you faring? In the long run we realize someone asking these questions is more important than momentary uncommitted pleasure relationships. These are questions a lover would not ask, but a family would.’ What matters eventually is protection security affection and a looking out for the other.

I heard from some friends settled in US about how the US became a free society- War deaths, led to single parents, who had no means of marrying off their kids, leading them to allow their kids to find their own mates. It led to the culture that was not really intended, and hence not really to be emulated. A culture evolved out of crisis is a compromise, not a culture.

Lets not be afraid of the Marriage Habit then, and trust that all that our ancestors have arranged for us is for our good and so work at it, holding on to this trust.

Blessed the Child, the Womb

The Womb- It is the most mysterious of all places. Here life is conceived and the formless, attains a form. The mother carries the baby for nine months in the womb, she cannot see the baby, and is not aware how the baby is moulded so perfectly within her. She does not mould the formless mass into the child, but it is a bond that is divinely formed in the womb that connects the mother and child and provides for the moulding.

The Chord that links us to our divine self , is such an invisible bond, that feeds and nourishes our spirit into a Child of God.



Savior- “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me..Mathew 18:5.

We have all noticed how much Jesus was moved with affection towards children. Lets be reminded of His words....

Jesus said, "Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these."Mathew 19:14

He called a little child and had him stand among them.Mathew 18:2
Then he said, "I tell you the truth, unless you turn from your sins and become like little children, you will never get into the Kingdom of Heaven.Mathew 18:3
Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.Mathew18:4

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Mathew 18:6

We have seen both the forgiving, kind, Jesus and also the Wrathful Jesus especially when he spoke against the Pharisees. I have been often surprised at how scorching words Jesus could use when speaking to them. Why the forgiving Lord who knew man is basically sinful was so harsh and critical about the Pharisees. Then I learnt some other historical truths which revealed "the basis of Christs unflattering description of the Pharisees".

There are sins which Jesus forgave as we notice; many times over he has been kind to sinful adulterous women, even protecting from a stoning that the pharisees were instigating to test Jesus; and then there are sins that brought forth wrath in Jesus ... like against the Pharisees whom he describes as hypocrites, blind guides, and adulterous,..... as they had created loopholes to laws allowing indirect forms of murder and certain forms of adultery allowing abuse involving kids!

But if anyone causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a large millstone hung around his neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea. Mathew 18:6
Jesus was obviously most disturbed by sins against Children, to have used words as these. Of all sins it was sin against a child or childlike innocence and trust, that brought utter wrath in Jesus' words. It has to be the most grievous of sins in the eyes of God.

It is very clear from the verses in the Bible that to understand what pleases God most, we have to understand how a child thinks, feels and loves. We have to go back into the innocence of our own childhood and remember how trusting we were of everyone. We must thank all those adults who allowed our life to be innocent and unknowing of the evils of the world. As we grow we realize that not all kids are as lucky; from a few days to few months old, there are many kids who have suffered a loss of trust and been given over to a life of fear and mistrust.

Lets pray for the innocent child, may each innocent bloom grow to its full without having to lose its trust and innocence. For God is most evident in The Child and Childlike. To give them the affection and protection that they need is 'giving directly - to God'

The Drifter's Direction

I have known people, who have been quite sure of what they wanted to do in life and even arrived where they knew they wanted to be. I have admired their clarity. I, on the other hand have been a drifter, never sure what I wanted to do or be in life and as I drifted from one course to another considered one job or another, I was not arriving anywhere, rather I was forever eliminating what I didn't want!

Definitely not medicine or engineering, too much study involved, try agriculture maybe. Nope, agriculture as a subject was proving too memory based for me; bailed out from the field after graduating into Environment Science, hoping I might find something interesting to do in that sphere.

Non Governmental Organisations seemed interesting but they worked where I couldn’t communicate my cosmopolitan mindset. Education field could provide an opportunity to communicate? Yeah this seems right for me and yet there were lot of other works, and interferences involved which edged out the freedom and hence efficiency of the communication.

I am sure I do not seem very practical? After all, any job will have one or the other uninteresting aspect to it! Why wouldn't I adjust, why was I only always eliminating what I did not want to do? Yeah it is true I did not need a job for a living, I needed it rather to express my being...

And finally by a twist of circumstances and unrelated happenings, through those very, seemingly wrong choices and the people and institutions I came across as a result of those choices, I arrived at the job I found just right for me. Preparing a course material for college in my subject Environmental Science. In this work, there was to be clearly thought out written communication, there was freedom to express more or less the way I wanted to, and that too in a subject I had passion for. Just an over one year work, but it brought me the satisfaction I had been looking for all my life. I realized then, that we all have an internal compass and one way of arriving at what we want is through a process of eliminating what we don’t want!

And even as I journeyed through the process of preparing the material, there were intriguing coincidences. Whichever topic I was working on,seemed to be the topic the world was working on during the same time frame.

When I was writing about nuclear hazards, the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan happened and I added an additional reading and perspective on it.
When I was writing on capitalism affecting food distribution, highly priced tomatoes were being abandoned by farmers on the roads of Jharkhand because middlemen wouldn’t pay them even the production cost, leave alone transportation cost.

Whatever topic my mind was filled with were the topics my eyes fell upon wherever I looked, newspapers, books, magazines, even facebook! It was as if the topics were travelling to me. In that period it was as if the universe had been helping me, not only in collecting and perfecting the content, but even strangely in meeting deadlines; as if I had been destined to do this Job in this time frame.

What I could conclude is exactly what Paulo Cohelo says in Alchemist, “There are no coincidences”. When we, our very core, wants something, however unsure we are about what it is, all things work together to bring it to us, be it through a process of elimination. And so however winding, long or tormentous our road may seem, we are never drifting; rather we are always going where we are meant to go.

Jealousy Unveiled

It is said in some scriptures in effect that if a man can deal justly, let him have two wives, otherwise if he fears he cannot be fair to both, then let him have only one. Jealousy is a trait often associated with women fighting over one man, and women are often insinuated as possessing too much of the trait. But I have felt that in fact women suffer from jealousy because of a basic ineptness in men! The common man is by nature not only attracted to many women but is also basically unfair, uncaring or tactless. Women being perceptive and more emotionally developed beings (as most people would agree), are more sensitive to unfairness and end up in the vicious hold of jealousy. In fact, I have known that women can be the best of friends to each other, and generally, if they have an issue that breaks the friendship it more often than not is the result of an insensitive or unjust man who came in between them, making one jealous of the other. By the way, why men don’t suffer as much from jealousy is because they are either busy looking at other women, or have wise or caring wives who know how to avoid making her mate jealous. And then if a man suffers jealousy, it's , mostly, either because the woman intended to make him jealous or the man is getting unreasonably possessive perhaps because of his own insecurities.

Jealousy unveiled and confronted is jealousy conquered. Avoiding it can worsen the situation irretrievably. So here, I address women folk, and let's see how to cope with the greens... Well the first point is - Is it fair to expect something from Men that they are basically not capable of ? It is like asking a monkey to walk erect! How foolish can we women be! I read somewhere, "If you ever feel like making your man understand something then hit your head against a wall until that feeling goes away!" The long and short of it is: “It is we women who have to change (as always) to manage our green emotion." 

So here are some truths we need to swallow. Of course, all men are naturally drawn to beautiful women, but the one who cares for his woman (however ordinary) will never make her feel less, or hurt her self-esteem, because, any sensible man knows that to be appreciated by her man for what she is happens to be the very ground for the woman. All men surely can have affection for more than one woman in life, but the one who cares for his relationships will deal fairly in resolving conflicts, and while expressing his affections. The fact remains that 'caring men are a rare breed'!

Women are just as much (or maybe more) jealous of emotional attachments in a man as of physical attractions and that is difficult for men to understand. For women, the biggest need is affection and not sex, and often the reason they give sex is to get affection whereas a man is affectionate until he gets sex, from which point he can think only of sex. So when affection is dealt unfairly among the women in a man’s life, the wife, the sexual partner can get jealous, which the man, whose primary need is sex, fails to understand. That is why a long courting period before hitching is a must. Indeed, that does not guarantee anything. So I would like to give a probably 'wild' suggestion.  If you need only affection then don’t give sex to your love interest because the assumption that sex buys love is as naive as expecting the sun to continue shining during late evening.

One way of putting an end to the green emotion is of course to end the emotional tie up that is causing jealousy, but the fall back is, it does not help with the next emotional tie up. So women, there has to be a solution that helps avoid jealousy in relationship that man is programmed to arouse. Yes, I am sure you guessed right; the answer is ‘expect nothing’. Now can you expect rivers to flow in the desert? But if you go forward expecting a desert and find a river, how happy you would be. So girls, don’t blame your love interests, blame your thick heads for expecting flowers on pine trees. Look it up, pines bear only cones. Indeed you have caused your own miseries. However it is wise to expect all trees to be pine trees as you would be allowing yourself the chance to be pleasantly surprised...

But then what do you do for your inborn hunger for affection…hmm..well….pray to god to give you luck? Or become the source of such love. 'Embodied Love' does not need any external contribution. Women have a good chance of finding that well-spring within because their need is great and they are sensible to understand it is not to be found out there. Yes, we need to turn inwards. The sooner we do, the better life becomes.

The Real Playground

I had to pressure my girl a bit to explore the river and not just look at it and then walk away to the swimming pool. I was rewarded later for this persuation by her words, "Mom I never knew the river is so much fun". I realized that today's kids from the concrete jungles do need a little persuation to realise the fun in exploring nature. We have got so used to the buildings, the computers, the TV, the pool, that it has become our whole world; from where we watch nature from afar, not participating in its flow, not experiencing, exploring or understanding what it means to be part of it. We jump into the regularity of the pool but do not care to cautiously explore the mystery and variety of the river. It is because we in our safe world don't know the fun in mystery.

I have been lucky to have explored nature in my ancestral homes in Kerala. In the hilly terrains we had lot of fun jumping into mountain pools watching the waterspiders skitting about, fishing with meshed cloth towels, climbing up slippery rocks to have a look at that mysterious cave which foxes were said to inhabit.

I always used to think there are only artificial gardens(which don't excite me) and nothing natural to explore in big cities like Bangalore..until my husband introduced us to riverside resorts.

The river was a shallow stream near the resort we were staying in. It rushed at some spots and some places it was quite still. I walked in and explored the river bed and found that it was rocky and not even knee deep. I mentally marked a circle in which it would be safe for the kids. I knew this was important as I almost drowned once when I quite naively swam into a river which I did not know about, which we had just come by during a road trip. It was without water in a region where the sandy bed was visible, giving the wrong impression that it was reasonably shallow. I swam along the shore not far from the sloping bank but when I kept my feet down a second time, towards the visible exposed river bed, I panicked not finding the river bed under my feet. It was a sand mined river!! I managed to swim to the exposed river bed (just a few strokes away) but it did leave me jittery about waters for a while though eventually it was a worthwhile learning experience. Never swim into waters you have no idea about especially if it has a sandy bed, you just cant know what man must have done to it!

We walked on the rocks, avoiding the moss ridden ones. Explored the rush of the waters over the rocks, put our hand in and watched the water glide past and then I seated my kids in the still regions of the water where they could watch the water spiders and fishes. I went to a cradle shaped rock that I had noticed in the water where the water was at its fastest and holding two rocks I dipped myself in lodging myself into the cradle with water rushing over me.... and as I came up, I had smelled, tasted and been one with the river. This was what I loved, experiencing the oneness with nature.

The next morning we walked barefoot on the poolside grass, something we had not done in a long while, but oh it was chilly and then I thought of my slippers and why I wore it! I looked at the birds unmindful of the chill, making nests that couldn't keep the chill out. No wonder man made slippers and houses. But I had planned to be bare foot and so later in the day we played bare feet in a natural patch, the games of my childhood and then I stamped on a bramble. Eeek, where are my slippers!


We lay down and watched the birds. I wondered how all day birds and animals have no other purpose but to find their food and take intermittent naps! Lying there I could course the entire journey of man from the forest to houses, gathering to agriculture, leaves to clothes, walking barefoot to vehicles. It was all a natural movement.

Yet in our journey to better adapt to nature we had more and more spare time in our hands to not just create a safe region for us, but go ahead and push nature into a bystander, corrupt its natural features and flow. I was reminded of a quote I had used in my environmental science course book.

"If in a city we had six vacant lots available to the youngsters of a neighborhood for playing ball, it might be "development" to build houses on the first, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and even the fifth, but when we build houses on the last one, we forget what houses are for.”- Aldo Leopold
Development was a natural progression but let it not become the reason to forget where we came from. Let us not forget to allow an equal space for our origins, leaving it in its pristine glory, mystery and also regularity. And finally lets not forget to play into the magical spell of our real playground.