Judge- Mental

This mind is a very funny thing.

Just a little force to make it bend.

How else can a nasty tongue lead to depression?

A bad exam cause a life to end?

Muscles can’t take weight beyond their threshold,

Digestion has a limit thanks to finite walls.

But the poor mind simply learns to go on,

Even when the whole world around it falls

Every single incident leaves a dent on the mind,

A dent that’s very difficult to heal.

But the mind just forces the face to smile,

So that no one knows how bad we feel.

It also learns to mould itself,

To fit in a society where we may not matter.

Such that when self and societal priorities differ,

It forces us to choose the latter.

“Choose this profession to please a random aunt,

Prestige over passion is the new age rule.”

“Cover your head when the uncle comes along.”

“Wear branded jeans to look cool.”

The mind writes an entire rule book

To please a bunch that doesn’t really care.

So in the quest of being a parent’s and teacher’s dream,

We end up being our own nightmare.

But do we realize, that for a mind,

So preoccupied worrying about itself,

Has, actually, no space to think and judge,

The character of someone else?

The truth actually is very simple.

In the fag end of life, we wish we had known,

That the minds that have space to judge others,

Are the ones without an opinion of their own.

– Manasi Rege

The 10 Year Challenge

Facebook probably wants to make an algorithm that identifies ageing patterns and must have released the 10 year challenge. And many of us succumbed to it, didn’t we? We went back to our old photo albums dating back to 2008 or 2009 and fished out some pictures and pasted them next to our current ones, put them up on Facebook, put a hashtag and got a hundred likes. If you all have done this then follow this exercise.

Open that ‘Before and After’ picture that you have uploaded an look at the 10 years old picture of yours and close your eyes.

Now think, where were you then?

Not the exact location, but as a person, where were you? How were you? Chances are high that you were younger, immature, uncertain of the future. You were also probably happier, hopeful, believed in miracles, wished for a better life, wished for a better you. You painted a certain picture of your future self. You had dreams, you had hopes. You had an idol in mind that you always wanted to mould yourself into.

Now look at your recent picture and think of what you have actually become. Have you become that idol? Have you achieved all that you dreamt of? If your today’s self were to stand in front of your 10 years younger self, would the younger self idolise you?

What exactly happened on the way?

We fizzled out, we became practical, we realised, rather forced ourselves to realise that all dreams do not become a reality. The universe was so vast to explore that we began to think, “What if we land up in the middle of nowhere?” Then we simply told ourselves, “Why explore it anyway” and settled for living under the rock instead. We told ourselves that coming first is not everything, yet we continued running the race and while telling ourselves that following our dreams may land us in the middle of nowhere… haven’t we actually landed up in the middle of nowhere?

So is the game over now?

Put your palm on your chest and that little beating heart with it’s own sweet beats will tell you that you haven’t reached the finish line yet and you still have room to dream about the future.

Now pick up your phone and click your picture, and leave room for another picture that would be dated 2029. And start….

Start painting that picture of yours that you would like to see 10 years down the line. Dream of a happier, fearless and successful future self and start working towards being that. Build the pedestal that you want to stand on. Draw the rainbow that you want to see. See to it that your 10 year later self doesn’t see the past as happier times or successes as bygones.

Show the world what you can achieve in 10 years because ultimately, in life, that is the only 10 year challenge that actually matters.

THE LAST SUPPER

He happily went for the school reunion, glad to see each and every friend.

Little did he know that this joyous occasion would not have a happy end.

They sat chatting around the table and ordered some delicious food.

But someone dug up an old grave that seemed to dampen his mood.

His friend recalled an unpleasant memory that happened to touch a raw nerve.

He began a fight over the trivial issue just as they brought the food out to serve.

The minor argument blew out of proportion and soon turned into a fight.

He couldn’t take it anymore, so he left the place, storming off into the night.

Just before leaving he turned to them; “I’ll never see your faces,” he said.

He reached home, felt some pain in the chest, had a heart attack and was dead.

Now let’s take a pause and think for a second; let us then rewind into the past.

What if this man was somehow told that this supper was his last?

Would he have chosen the same story of making his meeting so bitter?

Or would he have tried to mend his ways to make it end a little better?

If he would have been warned, he would’ve realised, he can’t escape his fate.

So he might as well enjoy every second before it was too late.

He would have chosen his best outfit and scrubbed and washed his face;

And maybe, bothered to spray some perfume, to die with a little grace.

He would have hugged each of his friends as tightly as he could,

And maybe even offered to pay and treat them to all the food.

With them, he would recall all happy memories and cherish them bit by bit.

And if an unhappy one did come by, he would just ignore or laugh at it.

But most important, he wouldn’t forget to tell them how much they meant to him.

At no cost would he let their friendship simply shatter on his whim.

Then he would have told them all to hold his hands as he died.

And then would have peacefully passed away with all his friends by his side.

We all wish that we were lucky enough to at least know when it was time to go.

But unpredictable as it is, it could be 80 years later or tomorrow.

Life gives neither alerts, nor reminders, nor a rewind button to visit the past.

So let us all live each and every day as if it were to be our last.

Let us surprise our better half with gifts for absolutely no reason.

Let us take a holiday, unplanned, without waiting for the best season.

Let us call our parents up and thank them for all they have done.

Let us take a day off from work and just go out and have some fun.

Let us spend some time with our kids, read them a story, recite a rhyme.

Let us restart a hobby, long forgotten, and pursue it while there is still time.

Let us live to the fullest today, because we have no guarantee for tomorrow.

Let us fill our heart with joy and leave no space for sorrow.

So do what makes you truly happy and cherish every relation.

Feel alive in every second of your journey before reaching your destination.

TO NEW BEGINNINGS

Newton’s first law of motion states that, “a body continues to be in a state of rest or in a state of uniform motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an external unbalanced force.”

Don’t our lives also work similarly? We get so comfortably entrenched in our way of life that when the need of the hour is to start something new, it takes a huge amount of (unbalanced) force to make us overcome our inertia. Now this may be applicable to anything. It may be starting a new course, starting a new business or job or a new life as a spouse or parent. (In fact, starting this blog today itself involved overcoming a lot of inertia. After all I give prime importance to T.V., YouTube and Saavn music.) But is this force always good? All forces have an impact. This is that impact that may make or break the rest of our journey; that may strengthen us further or rip us apart. So how do we ensure that we make this force our strength? How do we ensure that in this new thing that we have started, things won’t go wrong and spiral out of control? How do we ensure that Midas touch to our newly begun journey?

                                  2015

The day had dawned when the zygote of a new doctor had come into existence. Well, I mean, that was the first day of my M.B.B.S. course at the Grant Government Medical College. That college which was seeing its 170^th year. That college which had its own secrets no less that any castle or monument. That college where the famous movie Munnabhai M.B.B.S. was made. That college from where both my parents studied their undergraduate and postgraduate medical courses.

My parents loved their alma mater from the bottom of their hearts. From the legendary professors that oozed royal vibes to that cutting chai in Shetty’s canteen. But the highlight of their college life was their group of friends that they made here and the bond has remained just as strong ever since. So my parents were more keen on me making friends than me scoring well.

On the first day of college (what I call as the day of creating impressions) I wore my best top, a pretty bracelet, and donned my jeans (something which you will never get to see. Yes, that’s right. I don’t wear jeans. :-p). Travelling by train alone for the first time, I went to college. On reaching the anatomy hall, I went to talk to a group pf girls (among those 199 unknown faces that I am to spend 5 and ½ years with). I wondered how many would actually be my friends. I thought that, that group of girls would be my friends for the rest of the course. On the second day however, to my utmost horror, people who didn’t know one another a day before, were now standing in groups and the group of girls I spoke to seemed to just have dissolved. These groups became even tighter the next day and on the day after that, they began to go for lunch together. It was becoming increasingly difficult for me to make friends and a voice inside me said, “What if I don’t make friends at all?” And that was the beginning of my phase of depression.

To my disdain, that was not it. Talking about the study part, after all it’s medicine. I remember that first anatomy LCD (Lecture Cum Demonstration), where the teacher held the clavicle bone in her hand and addressing those curious faces who knew nothing more than biceps muscles and knee joint, she began, “This is the site of attachment of the sternocleidomastoid and this is the region of articulation of the acromioclavicular joint.” Above that the teacher had a slurred speech and sternocleidomastoid sounded like senokidostoid. Also, she never mentioned whether it was a muscle or a ligament or a scientist ;-p. I began to seriously doubt my caliber besides suffering from a mild attack of HIPPOPOTOMONSTROSESQUIPEDALIOPHOBIA (fear of long words).

Lost in the turmoil of these problems and the apparent inability to cope up with studies, keeping my composure and fighting back tears was a Herculean effort. After all, how do you tell your parents that the thing you achieved after a tiring struggle is not meant for you? Above that my friends from other colleges claimed that they did not face the same problem. And as if that was not enough, the train journey that I was not so used to, seemed to drain the rest of my energy. Life had become hell and I contemplated giving up.

On the tenth day of college however, things took a different turn. We were having Janmashtami celebrations in our college and we had 2 hours to kill after college before the celebration. I was wondering how to spend these hours, so I approached a group of my classmates and the next thing I know is that I’m going for an impromptu outing to Marine Drive with them. Ten people,to whom I spoke for the first time, shared a Cannon pav-bhaji and innumerable selfies with me.

That is when I confided my fears in a girl in that group about my inability to make friends. To this she replied, “You think these are groups? The reason people stay in groups is just because they have to; because they fear it may not be easy to make friends once groups are formed; because they feel they may not be accepted later;   because they face the same fears as you do.”

That was my moment of enlightenment under the Bodhi tree. I realized that change is a difficult process. I realized that it’s just time that I need. Time to help me adjust. Time to relieve my stress and heal my wounds. Time to understand my subjects. Time to make friends. And above all, I realized that I am perfectly normal.

As for the study part, to my utmost relief, my tiny little part exam also went well, convincing me that medicine is my home after all and if not that, it’s definitely not an alien world that would bombard me with incomprehensible rocket science. And you know what, I have a close knit group of friends as well.

The force that I applied on my life to break the inertia seemed to hurt me initially but time proved to be a great healer. After all, doesn’t every beautiful shoe, when new, give a shoe bite?

BOLLYWOOD- THE KINGDOM OF DREAMS

I was casually scrolling through my Facebook posts, when I came across an article regarding the recent Annual Day held in Dhirubhai Ambani International School. Being one of the most reputed schools in the city of Mumbai, it has a lot of rich kids hailing from the families of the who’s who of Mumbai. Naturally, the show was graced by the presence of many Bollywood actors who came to see their kids perform on stage. Among them were Shah Rukh Khan and Aishwarya Rai Bachchan who were the main attractions for shutterbugs who came to cover the event. Within no time, pictures of the stars and dance performances of their kids went viral. Facebook posts began to flow in.

One particular title which captured my attention was,”Aaradhya Bachchan’s performance at her Annual Day definitely proves that she is a star in the making.” The caption angered me for a second and I thought that it’s alright to respect the actors for who they are, but glorifying their children absolutely over nothing, purely because of the silver spoon in their mouth is just not acceptable. In fact, why are the actors glorified in the first place? And being loyal to my own profession, I felt, isn’t it doctors, who deserve to be the real heroes instead of those people whose profession itself demands them to be something that they are not? Why does an entertainer earn more than someone who restores your health? Why is getting those three hours of emotions flowing through your brain more important than permanently getting rid of any physical pain?

It brought back a memory that was about fifteen years old. I am a five year old kid who barely knows English and yet when I’m asked (of course jokingly) what I would like to be when I grow up, I reply with a babble ‘Anaesthesiologist’, the reason being that my mother is one. Everyone laughs and cheers and praises and goes about with their daily life, forgetting the entire incident.

So, I began to wonder, “what if, in a parallel world, doctors were treated like actors?’ Would we remain commoners then? Would my childhood memory remain just another toddler story or would it be magnified to an unimaginable level? And as my mind began saying ‘what if…’ believe me, the same story was quite different in my parallel world.

“My designers fuss over what I should wear, as a doctor’s kid repeating a dress suggests that the doctor has a failing practice. Of course, my parents wouldn’t have to fuss over the same as they are expected to pose in front of the shutterbugs in their white coats, with stethoscopes as their accessories. And the media loves to splash their pictures on Page 3 as one of the leading doctor couples of the fraternity, because what can be more complementary than a surgeon and an anaesthetist? My eyes are blinded with flashes from the relentless paparazzi, as we step out of our mansion. And much to my horror, one reporter thrusts the mike near me and asks, “So, what would you like to be when you grow up?” And I say the only big word that I know, ‘Anaesthesiologist’, my mother’s profession, because ‘surgeon’ is a smaller word, which I think, may not impress them.

And lo and behold! The next day, Page 3 says in bold letters, “MANASI, THE DAUGHTER OF DR. TUSHAR AND DR. APARNA IS DEFINITELY GOING TO TURN OUT TO BE A FINE DOCTOR FOR OUR NEXT GENERATION. She has her mother’s intelligence and will surely have her father’s healing touch.” And I know, all the godfathers in medicine have made elaborate plans to launch me into practice as soon as I graduate. The public accuses some of them of being ‘flag-bearers of nepotism.’ Designers have already begun to stitch white coats for me and a rich acquaintance has had a high-end Littman stethoscope delivered for me.

My age? Five years.”

So what is it, which makes this possible only in a parallel world? What is that, which Bollywood has to give to masses, that medicine, or any other profession for that matter, doesn’t?

Human life has never been perfect. It is to tide over the inconvenience of these imperfections, that God gave us the power to dream. But some dreams seem unrealistic and we let go of them to accept reality. This is, when the film industry comes along and sells dreams. They show us, how separated lovers can reunite after decades. They show us, how a slum dog can become a millionaire. They show us, how an ugly duckling can become a magnificent swan. Basically, they show us, how to dream again. How to dream again, about a perfect life; a power which God had given us initially.

And this is probably, what has made every Bollywood star, a demigod in his own way. A demigod that is not just highly worshiped but also highly paid. Because they don’t just entertain; they give a ray of hope when reality seems dark.

THE LESSER CHOSEN PATH

The thing which set me thinking on these lines was a question from an aunt, many years ago, “Beta, you want to be a doctor or an engineer?” This was just one, but probably there were countless aunts out there who asked the same question to kids in their families. Those kids probably wanted to be football players or detectives or rock stars or scientists at some point of time in life. They let friends and T.V. shows influence their minds. They saw dreams in school and swore to make them a reality. Those dreams ranged from going to Mars to making a humanoid robot to winning an Oscar.

And this was until they reached the crossroads. And then, life happened. These kids were thrown into a ‘doctor, engineer and C.A. manufacturing’ factory. Those who played along became heroes overnight. And what happened to the musician, footballer, actor and detective? Those dreams were allowed to die. Those who dared were initially looked down upon. And eventually, they were all judged on what they earned.

The same aunt, who asked me that question, made her schedule for the following Sunday. She went for a matinee show of a running blockbuster, curled up with a novel for a few hours, cheered in the stands of a cricket match and ended the day with dinner at a fine-dining restaurant. And then she said, “That made my day.” The actors of the movie, the novelist, the cricket players and the chef of that restaurant had put a smile on many more faces. They made people happy and content, gave them a break from their monotonous life. And yet, when it comes to some of our own near and dear ones taking up these professions, why do we behave as if it is a parallel world? As if sitting in front of a computer is prestige but making someone happy is a crime? Remember, the ultimate goal of life is to do something, not which is prestigious in society but something that is good for mankind.

He works nine-to-five in front of his laptop. He is a hero, considering what he earns.

But as he sees his guitar lying in the corner, he knows life took wrong turns.

He wishes he would have chosen better. To go back to the college band, he yearns.

Because if our profession differs from our passion, then one lives and the other burns.

His brother, though, chose to be an actor.  He struggled a lot for quite a while.

But, though paid in crores today, what he actually earns, is seeing his fans walk away with a smile.

 

MONEY

                               One of Bollywood’s top actresses gave birth to a baby boy!! The family of the actress celebrated. The world spoke about the child. News channels and reporters jostled to get the first click of the baby. The boy’s pictures flooded Twitter and Whatsapp. The actresses’ pregnancy had become news even when the boy was just a shapeless mass of cells. In those nine months, she was doted upon as the newest ‘mom-to-be’ in B-town. The child she had, was the new addition to the list of celebrity kids. And in all probability, she must have had a lot of parenting tips from those around her and must have binged on all types of delicious foods. The child must have been showered with expensive gifts. A life was born and took the world by storm.

 

10^th March 2017

Shahida Banu had reached full term. But at 25, parenting was nothing new to her. Married at 15, she was already a mother of 3. She did not even remember the details of her current pregnancy. “She’s a moron” the nurse sang out loud. “How many more do you want,” the doctor asked her rudely. She would probably not have come here to deliver. But the nearest Government hospital was all she could afford. The hospital lacked an incubator. She was not getting labour pains in spite of being given the drug to induce them. The labour room was just adjacent to the ward and anybody could walk in. No luxury of privacy. The doctor had to keep a watch on her and cursed her for not getting labour pains and keeping the doctor waiting. She was thirsty and no nurse paid heed. When the pain finally began, there was yelling all around. The staff was in a frenzy and in less than a minute, it was over. She was crying and called over an observing student. She could not hear her child cry due to her own loud wails. She did not ask to admire her newborn’s face. All she said, through her tears was, “please give me some water.”

The child was just another number in the family. No celebration or glitterati. No expensive gifts. No photos on Whatsapp. A life was born and was swept up in the storm of the world.

 

Is it possible to believe that both these incidents happened on the same planet, in the same country, in fact, in the same city and almost in the same year? So what was the dividing line; the deciding factor of their fates?

Money.

Somebody once asked Money,” you are but a piece of paper.” “True,” Money replied, “except that I have never seen a dustbin in my life.”

Money may not buy happiness or family but buys amenities and luxuries which almost equate happiness in today’s time and gathers influential acquaintances that people treat even better than family. There was a time when fame and money were two separate entities, but today fame solely depends on money. The best movie is not that which touches hearts but that which crosses the 100 crore collection in box office.

Money is magnetic and draws people towards it. People give up their sleep, their families, and their home in search of wealth. It may probably be after losing all this that man may realise that money was earned but the purpose behind earning it was probably lost on the way.