To Do List

I am not sure what I would do without a to-do list. Apparently I started using it when all kinds of deadlines were looming over my head. Now I cannot see my life without it. A workaholic life is pretty chaotic without it. So here I am sharing my to do list which I intend to complete:

• Getting a Tattoo (Two actually, one of the tiger that you see and another of the ying yang)

• Grow Long Hair (I would have done it earlier, but I have been warned that if I ever do it my long locks would be chopped off, still I am taking the risk)

• Keeping Beard for a year (I am pretty lazy when it comes to shaving; God only knows how I drag myself to get a shave.)

• Stop Giving Advice (I realize that most of the times people just want you to listen and don't really want to know what they should do. Still its a habit and I give it only when I think its important)

• Learning Guitar (Its been almost 6 years that I just dreamed about learning it and never came close to it. Call it a workaholic’s hazard, tend to pay little attention to life outside work. The close I came to play is an Air Guitar)

• Travel to Cambodia (I am interested in seeing those ancient temples of Angkor Wat and learn about the history. Hope to visit the place by next year)

P.S.: So do you have any to do list to share? BTW moved the Human Psyche series to the Freedom blog. It took quite a time to post the third one. Hope you like what you read.

Take A Stand

Mayur ended the call on his cell phone; went inside his house sat on the sofa stretched his legs on the table and spread his arms around the sofa.

“I thought she would listen to me, and agree to make the changes on whose name the flat is going to be, but she did not….” He said to himself.

After a moment of deliberation, he said “What difference does it make anyways? Once I marry her, I’ll get a flat and a share of her wealth. All that I have to do is tie a mangalsutra around her neck and rest of all the expenses would be taken care of by her parents. Once married, I will convince her to add my name instead of her as the owner of the flat”.

Never in his wildest dream he had seen this coming, where he would see himself moving into a flat from a slum and get a slice of huge wealth without spending a penny. All he had to do was marry a girl, who was constantly being rejected because of her dark complexion.

His face broke into a smile; after all he was the one who was going to have the last laugh.
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Such marriages do take place where the girl belongs to a well to do family and the guy is inferior in respect of status. Most of these alliances takes place as the family of the girl find it hard to get a boy of their status in the community or the reasons could vary from the girl been highly educated, being of too dark complexion or for other reasons.

Not all such marriages that take place are based on “Get Rich Quicker” route there are sometimes genuine individuals involved too.

Our society norms are such that once you grow older, one is expected to get married and start a family of their own and if they don’t do so, then rumors starts spreading on the probable causes for being single.

The lackadaisical attitude of the girl’s parents who treat her like she has become a burden on them and if she is not married after a certain age, people will start wagging their tongues!!

What is the point in getting a daughter married in such a way which appears nothing more than a business deal?

It would do more good to give the girl more freedom and letting her live the way she wants to, who knows she might find love in the future instead of giving her away in such a manner where dark clouds looms over her future, which can only be predicted after marriage.

On top of that, where is the self-respect of a man who cannot stand up for themselves and prefer to depend on their wife’s kitty. The man would end up utilizing the wife’s fund for more than often instead of finding it through other means of resources.

In such marriages, there is a role reversal where the bride takes on groom’s role and the groom plays the bride, providing other amenities such as a flat to live in, in case the groom does not own one or help him set up a business.

Such marriages do go through a litmus test of the society wherein the groom would be constantly reminded how his life has changed due to his marriage (this will only hurt the individuals whose motive was not money, a male bruised ego can take bad turns), as for the girl too, life is not going to be easy especially when the shameless relatives talk about her how her marriage got fixed in her presence.

What is the point in getting married in such a way? so that the parents feel that they have fulfilled all their duties? or the girl to think that this is her fate and that she should live with it?

There is more to life then just settling down and starting a family, something that we, Indians seem averse to.

The society norm needs to be broken when it starts to strangle the people for whom it was built for….

Unwanted

Bharat never thought he would be seeing this day in his life. He was lying on one of the beds of the old age homes. He lay awake in the endless night wondering how he ended up here.

His own daughter Veena had thrown him out of his house saying that she could not afford to take care of him anymore and that she had her own children to take care off. Her husband had left her and it was him who brought back her to his place and encouraged to work.

Finding himself on the streets he called up his only son Vijay who had settled abroad who suggested that he better take shelter in the old age homes. Not once did he say that he would try to resolve the issue or that he could stay with him.

With the help of his friends, he found himself a place to sleep at night in one of the old age homes. Though retired, the 63 year old decided to take up an accountant’s job to fend for himself.

As he closed his eyes, tears kept flowing down through his face as he tried to sleep with troubled thoughts haunting him…

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This story is actually based on a news piece that I came across. This is just one of the realities of our lives where when people get old they are thrown out on the streets by their children or left at old age homes as they cannot or don’t want to take care of them. No section of the society is untouched by this phenomenon.

What I fail to understand is what prompts this decision even when they are aware that it’s wrong and how they go on to justify it. Parents go on to make sure that their child gets the best of everything they could provide, so what changes the relationship between the children and parents when they grow up?

My best guess is that as children get more involved into their lives they tend to become detached to parents who are less involved. Then they just start treating them like any individual they come across without giving a thought what they had done for them (Their normal justification would be, they are suppose to do that).

My question is what should a parent do to make sure that they are taken care of in their old age? The problem is that at most times one can not do anything about it. Coz when one is raising a child that is not the question that haunts them, its only when they reach a stage in their life where the tables are turned and the children need to take care of the parents, that they come to know how successful they were as parents.

At the most, parents can make sure that they make a will and do not disclose about it any other member of the family and avoid transferring properties in the names of their child if the children don’t treat their parents properly.

What such adults do forget is one day they are going to finding themselves in the same situation and who knows they could find themselves at the mercy of their own children…

Human Psyche

I am starting a new series (a first for me) on Human Psyche. It would be about situations and how people react to it. It would be about people who react differently to a situation than logic permits. Giving my take of the situation and you could yours. It’s not about passing judgments but to understand the human nature.

The human mind intrigues me, I would be doing good as a shrink or as a counselor but I realized it late and by that time I was already out of college :(

Being an observer, I have often seen how people would not follow the logical route and would do something different to come out as a winner or end up losing to the situation badly.

Its about analyzing what made individuals take the decisions they did and kind of help us deal better with our situations in the present or the future.

P.S.: I don’t have any clue how I am going to pull this off, but I will and do let me know if the effort was good enough. It might take time for the first of the series to hit the blog, so be patient :)