Choose To Look Up- Above Expectations and Beyond Horizons

 

“To truly laugh, you must be able to take your pain, and 

play with it.” 

― Charlie Chaplin

You must believe the aforesaid words especially when a genius comic artist such as Charlie Chaplin says them. To break away from the monotony of our lives, humour becomes our ‘friend in need’ and if you notice closely, we laugh at things we relate to─ boy falling off a ladder, someone getting wet just because he was standing under someone’s balcony, how a man gets slapped for his marriage proposal.. We enjoy these little bouts of humour we may have left unnoticed or these scenes that may have been tucked into some corner of our brain while we were busy “living”.

It takes quite a lot of introspection to really make sense of Mr.Chaplin’s words. But come to think of it, we actually go through a process of experiencing grief and loss to then moving on to ridicule it. Maybe it is the christening of the step to finally move on to another set of grief and glories.

I am perhaps going through a terrible phase of my life with the sudden demise of my mother in Jan this year. And even in this entire paraphernalia, I saw myself ridiculing my grief, my stunned silence. I joked at being like a “stone-hearted daughter who shed no tear” or how we went for a vacation and returned never to be the same “we” again!
To be honest, it is relieving to choose to laugh at your pain than to writhe along. Agonizing through it will always seem much easier, what I saw and continue to see hundreds of visitors, relatives, well-wishers do. How the process of “mourning” is so crucial to settling them back to their normal lives from the very next day. I know I won’t be this easily out of the shock but then I refuse to bow before it, allowing the monster to swallow me from my head first.

Sometimes I end up offending people when I tell them that they were lucky not to be around when mum passed away. I try telling them kindly, how it was irrelevant, whoever was present in those 5-10minutes of suffocation and struggle she went through. But they don’t understand. They seem to have no idea how it is to light your mother’s pyre, to touch her cold, lifeless, decomposing body. To know that this one moment will be your last when you get to touch her. Hugging her felt terrible, for the warmth was gone!

And the most difficult part?

To hold on to your twelve-year old sister but allowing her to see her dead mother. This would be her last memory of her.

I can go on talking about those four days of our “family trip” and how she was perfectly fine until those last 10minutes of her life but then who’d understand?
I choose to instead show people her pictures, how I managed to click her smiling.. I remind people of the pranks she’d play or the jokes she’d crack. Her favourite books, serials, lipsticks and perfumes.

I do sneak into her almirah sometimes. It smells of her. The other day I saw an teaser of this upcoming Bengali show where a guy from the army expressed how he’d miss his Ma’s smell the most and would go sleep in her lap the first thing after returning home. I feel like a dog, sniffing around the house, tracing her through her leftovers.

It is a joke me and my sister share. We pretend she’s gone to Kolkata like she had in September. We keep listening to her Whatsapp audio messages I’d taught her to record.

It is during such times that you feel like closing in. Restricting your life to those you cannot live without. I did that. But I didn’t stop there. I made sure I let go of the pretentious people I once addressed as “friends” and I observed people. Strangers, especially those dealing with the loss of loved ones. It somehow gave me strength and I heavily relied on Gandhiji’s treatise of when your loss seems to grave, try looking at someone who is ‘poorer than you’.

One such example would be this extraordinary woman:

Imagine the kind of determination it takes to come out of a loss and then dare to dream again, to live fully; to trust people and to believe in the goodness of Nature and God.

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do 

that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” 

― Martin Luther King Jr

I also know of this young fellow of my age who was suffering from Cancer, such that his limbs had started to melt with all the medications he was going through. I remember my mother staying in his hospital room for hours, meditating for him. She’d stay hungry and thirsty for hours and not blink an eye. And when he’d fall really ill, she’d have tears in her eyes and say, “I wish I could make him alright. He is so young and he deserves to live.”

Today, as miraculously as is my agnostic belief in an Almighty, that Guy is Cancer-free. He is resuming his studies and coming back to normalcy!
How does a logical person explain this? The truth is, there are no answers. And when we do not find answers, we have two paths; one, to either let go of everything and just mourn and die. And the other would be to laugh at these perplexing circumstances we are brought into every now and then!

I’m pretty sure everyone is aware of the recent controversy of BBC interviewing of the rapists of Jyoti Singh who is popularly addressed to as “Nirbhaya”. The Indian Government has banned the documentary. I thought initially that it was a good move to stop the maligning of my nation.

However, I watched the documentary and was stunned. I cried.

And, mind you, I did not cry at my mother’s funeral.

But I cried when I heard what the rapist had to say about the incident. And more disgustingly, the defence lawyers called women to be “flowers” that can be either trampled if kept in the street or revered if kept in a temple! We’re gems even precious than diamonds that need to be protected by men. And for crying out loud, all that Jyoti did was watch a movie(evening show!) with a male friend!

How can one stop mocking such people outright! 

While such documentaries bring out the stinging realities of our society and thus have been shunned down, we have people like Laxmi who did not give up even after the horrific acid attack on her. She has started her own NGO and runs various campaigns regarding crime against women through it.

Losing hope will always be an option, like the albatross around our neck. Opt to take problems in life, face on. Halt and spend some time with your grief and hope will bicker in.

You’ll Never Find A Rainbow If You Are Looking Down

― Charlie Chaplin

When we talk of inspiration we gaze towards the horizon but then horizon is just another imaginary line. Look around, for we find stories of courage, determination, hope and experiences of life that mold us into better human beings. The next step of getting inspired is to inspire others. This my friend, is the circle of life.

I wish to thank Housing for a prompt named “Looking Up” which made me realise how often I’ve looked down at my feet, sore and withered in the biting cold. But what if, I choose today to gaze at the sky, smile at the sun and let the world know,

I AM.

If you liked reading my post or you didn't..if you have two words of advice to give or take, do let me know so in the comments below!

A-SHAMED YET?

Be it the December 16th Gangrape case of a 23-yr old woman or the recent kidnapping and rape of a 5-yr old by her neighbour... Nowadays it is the latest trendy thing to say "..Oh, I know how terrible it must feel."

Well, this may sound aggressive and emotional to a few or many, but trust me when I say, No, You Don't.

You do not know how it feels when the auto driver looks at the rear view mirror and his gaze revolves from the cars to your breasts. 

You do not know how it feels when you feel trampled upon by people, being touched by them and  not being actually done so. Their stares do that to you. When you walk past a busy market, people rush past you intentionally so as to brush their hands against your boobs or some even grope them in a crowd. 

You do not how it feels to be a teenager going out shopping in a street market and while trying out a top, the shopkeeper grabs your boobs to "help" you wear the top. And all this while, four other men stand there, looking at the way the man gropes the left boob under the top, and then puts his other hand on the right boob to pull the shirt down. I see innocence evaporate out of the child, right there.

You do not have any freaking idea how it feels to be brushed against at all the time, in the bus. It is so common and so disturbing that I have stopped travelling in the buses at all. If you are sitting a man will come and sit beside you, even if it is a Ladies seat. And the next thing you know is he will attach his thigh to yours, and if you are unlucky, then his bag comes up on to his lap and his hand behind the bag that slowly touches the side of your breast. If you look at the person, he'd look like he has folded his hands, but behind that veil, the man attempts to grope your breast.

If you happen to be standing, you witness a mini-porn right there, too bad if it happens to star you in it though. You just got into a crowded bus and before you realise, men have "strategically" positioned themselves around you, almost in a silent understanding between them. Thus, you find the main culprits, standing one ahead, one behind you, stacking themselves against you while two three men stand right at the sides so that you don't find an escape. Blocked from all sides, one brushes his penis from behind at your buttocks while the other brushes his butt on to you from the front. Do Not mistake it to be Unintentional because believe me,a gentleman knows how to maintain the 'necessary distance'. 

Yes, of course we move away, and no body stops us. But, the smirk on their faces reveal that they have achieved what they wanted to- simply make the woman conscious of her physical vulnerability. So, you may begin to harp the noises and bring out the flags, but when it actually happens, so shamelessly in front of you and when you look into their eyes to make them realise their mistake, you face this beastly stare back, the one that promises to ravish you down, a sexual hunger that is so scary that you do nothing but turn away, silently. Because even if you make a hue and cry about it, you know that the man with a hurt ego will hunt you down and make sure you are 'severely punished' for 'humiliating' him.

You do not know how terrible it feels, when people make passes at you, how while men at a passing motorbike whistle at you, telling you what they want to do with you. How he will fuck you till you cry for his mercy or perhaps till you die. How he will finger your vagina out or fill your oesophagus with his semen.

Image-  www.nsvrc.org

Shaming the woman of her sexuality is the new Agenda, or so it seems. A man in the auto or bus next to you looks at you in a traffic jam. You happen to look that ways too, to see him lick his lips to suggest that he wants to do the same to you, and the traffic signal goes green and he is off in the other direction.

You do not know how it feels when a dear friend comes to you sobbing about how two bikers came and harassed her, and then followed her to her house and kept stalking her, calling out names. Or how someone she did not like, proposed to her and when she declined, he posted maligning information about her on the net, created her fake profiles or posted her as a prostitute on some adult site, revealing all her personal information including her landline number and address.

You do not know how it feels to feel bad for her, and at the same time imagine these things happening to you too. Just because you dared to slap the fellow to tried to grope you or ask someone why he was staring at your cleavage. Just because you shouted back at the men who whistled at you or you filed a complaint against a person for sexual harassment who might send his friends to trouble you even further.

And what if the police never took your case seriously and the man, with his hurt ego comes after you, because you reported about him!

You do not know how it feels when you need to cancel a meet or a girls day out, only because the world out there isn't 'safe' enough, and parents do not allow us to go out because they cannot change the system, or the men but can protect us, thereby not letting us go to far away places or going out after 7pm. You do not know how unsafe you feel when you are in a cab, returning from a far flung place and the cab driver steals glances at your breasts and how they shake every time he intentionally hurdles the car into the potholes and speed breakers.

You do not know how it feels to be bullied around by a sibling or a boyfriend, simply because he is a man. How you are told to take off pictures, not talk to certain people on the social networking sites and how you have to ask for permission a hundred times, and give assurances of every kind, to simply go out for a friend's birthday party.
You do not know how it feels to be told what to do or what not to, what to wear and what not to, what to say and what not to. You do not know how scary it gets to hear news of rapes, molestations and harassments all around. You do not know how it feels to be mocked at, at every step of your life for being a woman who is aware of her sexuality and who protests at every sexist comment that comes her way, on some joke on PMS or her being fat and thus unattractive, her being a feminist and so on.

You clearly do not know how it feels to be a woman in the 21st Century where at one hand she is said to be independent strong-willed and fierce, but on the other hand, she is shamed about her sexuality, and somehow masculinity takes pride in subjugating femininity.

The power relations throughout our histories have shown gender relations as power relations wherein how strong a power is, is depicted in how weak the other power is made to be. But it isn't so. The power-relations in case of gender are complementary. We benefit each other and by each other. A home, companionship is incomplete without the feminine and without the masculine; the house cannot become a home. 

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