Do we worship girls? Why?

I got up in the morning early today as today is a special day. It’s Ashtami pooja. This day conjures up so many memories and stories... memories that bring smile to my lips. I remember being a small girl frolicking in some cute attire, being invited to the entire neighbourhood, carrying a plate (it used to be a BYOP - Bring Your Own Plate affair back then), and going from one house to the next while others waited patiently for their turn for me (and other girls my age) to visit their place. It was a busy, busy time. I was no less than a celebrity that day. Or a deity, as the men of the household told me washing my feet reverently. I didn't know what that meant but I didn't care either. Especially when I got to lay my hands on more money than I could handle and other girlie things while doing little except looking pretty and savouring delicious halwa-poori.

I carried on the tradition after getting married like any ordinary Punjabi woman would, of course on the other side of the table now. Traditions have a way of getting into our psyche and becoming a part of who we are. I love little girls and their cuteness, I prepare traditional prasad for them all smiling and excited every year - twice. So, today while I was doing that, my 7-year-old son was curious as to what was that all about. I told him all about Navratras and Durga Ma and how we think little girls are in her image, so they are little deities in their own right, smug at my knowledge of my religion.

He nodded contemplating each piece of information. He was fine with all that. But not surprisingly he wanted to understand why we have a celebration like this only for girls. “When is the boy-worshipping day, then? When not Durga Ma but some other male god is having his time?” was his question.   

That got me thinking. Deep. Why don’t we have a boy-worshipping day? The more I thought, the more I realized: it is (not so) subtle misogyny at play. Yet again! Can we imagine a day when all the boys in the neighbourhood are gathered and worshipped? It will be ridiculous. And unnecessary. Not to mention oh-so- politically-incorrect.

Perhaps we worship (or so we pretend for a day) girls because at some level we don’t feel they are the same as boys? They deserve special treatment for a day. And also, a very tricky and effective message is sent deep into girls’ conditioning along with all this ritualistic hullabaloo: that you are expected to behave in a certain way, poised, holy, conforming to sanctity of society, and not like your real self. You are a deity for God’s sake!

Hmmm...

  

      

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands...

If you're happy and you know it, clap your hands...

I love this children's song. It is a beautiful song. It also makes me think, every time, that it is possible to be happy and NOT know it. As a matter of fact, it is usually the case. We are happy most of the times and we don't know it and hence fail to clap. Normally we realize that we were indeed happy when the happiness goes away for some reason. So while the happiness is there, it is taken for granted more often than not. 

For example, when I started on my long journey of struggle with physical pain 7 years ago, I was in deep anguish. As I was going from doctor to doctor and healer to healer, I went to a Reiki master and I complained about my back which was hurting so bad that I couldn't breathe a sane breath. She said something to me that was so profound and yet so simple that it stayed with me ever since. She said:

"You are cursing your back now but did you ever stop to think and be grateful that all these 29 years you lived, your back served you so beautifully? It supported you, carried you, catered to every demand you made of it and didn't even let you feel it existed. Were you happy and thankful then?"

No, I wasn't. I was too busy going about routine business of life and I never stopped to 'live'. 

Today I am also aware that there is another kind of happiness, that is the real happiness, that does not depend of external stimuli. It comes from within where there is an eternal source of joy and bliss. Here I am not talking of that happiness. I am talking about ordinary day-to-day happiness that does depend on external factors. There is so much abundance of that too. I have the opinion that if a person decides to go on living, no matter how miserable he thinks he is, his happiness quotient is more than the sadness quotient, whether he knows it or not. 

Now knowing it has its own benefits (that's where the clapping part comes). When we know it, we feel better. And secure and taken care of. That's when we attract more of it. 

Being happy and not knowing is like sitting on a treasure and dying of hunger. How stupid is that!   

Today when I am done with that pain episode (seemed to have learnt what it had to teach me), every time, and I mean EVERY time, I sit, especially on the floor, I am so thankful to my back and the whole universe supporting it that I can't describe in words.

We don't have to go through hardships to know we had so much happiness to start with, you know. There are easier ways.  

Today, no matter what, I am happy and I know it and I do clap my hands!  

Bed of roses is no bed of roses

It has been bugging me for a while now. This nagging feeling... of getting it easy. Easy is not easy after a while. On the surface, it would appear that a life devoid of complications and struggles would be an ideal and desirable one.  But really, is it so?

When life gets into a comfortable rut and there is nothing exciting to look forward to, life energy gets drained out. It is interesting to note that laborers working on the road in scorching heat, farmers in the field and people who work hard, just to have two meals a day never seem to be out of that ‘spark’ or life energy. You will see a twinkle in their eyes. It’s the listless and bored people of well-off community who go into depression.

Sometimes I feel depression is a luxury disease that only people ranking high in hierarchy of needs can afford. This is not to offend or mock people who suffer from depression. I myself have seen highs and lows of life in quite some details.  

    

I know people who don’t need to do anything for survival and they can sleep all they want, but the problem is that... they can’t. Not even the healthy amount. And the sleep a laborer will have after a hard day is nothing but a distant dream to them. It never ceases to amaze me how God or Universe, whatever you may call it, has made everything so ‘balanced’ in its unique way.

The money, the recognition, the reward, the sleep that you ‘earn’ by really working with all you’ve got is what you cherish the most. The taste of water you drink after running a few kilometers in desert in simply beyond words.

So, it seems we need to have a sense of ‘mission’ to get that adrenaline flowing. We do know at an abstract level that we are but a tiny speck in the scheme of things. Even then, self-worth and accomplishment are not only hard to beat, they are necessary for a healthy survival. Perhaps this has been coded into us this way so that we can contribute to the Universe in our own way.

“Wow! I contributed this!” is one of the “high”-est emotions a human can feel!     

Aaahh...... the newness of anything....

Now that I am back after a good New Year bash in Jaipur and life has started to go back on its usual track, I can’t help wondering... what is it about New Year that makes it so wonderful and us so excited about it?

If we really think about New Year, it’s just an arbitrary line we have drawn between years. If our year consisted of 500 days, January 1 wouldn’t have meant anything. And what is it that incites us so much about New Year, or anything new, for that matter? What is it about newness in general that feels so great, be it the beginning of a new dawn, blooming of a new flower, arrival of a new baby...

 Well, it’s a fresh start. Unconsciously we feel that we can let bygones be bygones and move on to a new beginning where we can plan things in a novel and better way. That’s how New Year resolutions come into picture. We start on a positive and optimistic note. It’s another story that somewhere down the line (as early as in January only) we tend to go off the track. The usual-ness of life and everything sets in and we are like, “Oh, what the heck!”

The good news is that after 365 days, we get to have another new year and even if it is for a while only, we feel a whiff of freshness and enthusiasm. The way I see it, it is buoyancy like this, however temporary, keeps us charged for life.  

If we take this concept to the next level, wouldn’t it be brilliant, if after years of struggle of trying to figure out life, we are given a fresh start every once in a while? Wouldn’t it be amazing if the baggage we accumulate over years taken away from us and we can begin afresh?

Wait a minute! Isn’t that what’s happening already? After one lifetime that we mostly screw up, we are mercifully taken away and given another lifetime to start totally with a clean slate. Isn’t it a huge blessing? Imagine if it were not the case!

On a related note, people ask why we have to experience effects of our past life karmas when we don’t even remember them. What would we learn if we don’t know why we are going through what we are going through? And here it gets even better! Not by chance or mistake, but by scrupulous and compassionate design, our previous memories are erased from our conscious level so that we are not bogged down with past baggage and can start in a breezy way. Just compare the innocent smile of a child and wrinkles of an old man and I rest my case.     

It's like when we feel really bad about something we have done or has happened to us and we want to put it behind us, we say, "Oh, come on, forget it!" That's what the universe does. It thankfully lets us forget it! And it doesn’t end there. Another magnificent thing is that nothing is really erased. It’s all there and keeps on working at deeper levels so that we are not unnecessarily perturbed in our present life. One more beauty of this plan is that we can access those deeper layers if and when we are ready.  God! The more I look deeply into the scheme of the things in the universe, the more I am in awe of the greatest masterpiece of the greatest master!

The way I see it, start with anything, New Year celebrations or whatever, we end up saluting the ultimate power in the universe, if we go really deep into it...

What is happiness, anyway?

This is the most basic and most important quest of human life. In whatever we do or plan to do, there is only one goal - to achieve happiness. The journey of our whole life is an endeavour to bring us closer to, what we feel, makes us happy. It is another story that we get there sometimes and some other times we feel even unhappier than before we started on this path to happiness.

Happiness is elusive, they say. The more you chase it, the more it dodges you. So this journey is more like a mirage. Bur what is happiness, anyway? Can we define it or can we have a definite formula for absolute happiness? Is there anything like absolute happiness? Is it possible for a human being to be happy always, or is it even desirable to be happy always?

A great deal has been said and written about happiness being inside the person himself. Let’s try a few shots at defining happiness. We feel happy when our desires are fulfilled or we get what we wanted. So, is fulfilment of desires happiness? More often than not, fulfilment of one desire makes way for a bigger desire and it goes on and on. And in the process, whenever we are faced with failure at some point, the unhappiness caused by the situation is much bigger than the happiness created by fulfilment of initial desire. Spiral of desires is an unending process and it is inevitable to face failure, and hence unhappiness, somewhere. Anything leading to unhappiness eventually cannot be termed as legitimate happiness.

Let’s try contentment. Contentment is not equivalent to happiness as I have seen a large number of bitterly content people. They have made peace with their lot in a very unpeaceful way. They are anything but happy. Happiness can and does result into contentment but vice-versa, I am afraid, is not true.

Another very interesting aspect that comes to my mind is that we have this ability to feel happy and get swayed by it only because we cannot see our future. This is true of sorrows also. In other words:

If we had the ability to know our future, no happiness could make us happy and no sorrow could make us sad. Because we could see clearly how, what we perceive as happiness today, is going to end, mostly in an unhappy way. The same goes for sorrows. No sorrow in the world, when you look back at it, is completely an unhappy experience and it often ends in a happy way.  

That means that our ability to feel happy or unhappy stems out of our unawareness. I feel, any feeling originating from ignorance can never be a valid feeling. So, what is happiness, then?

As I see it, happiness is the realization that everything happens for a reason (a very powerful and much needed reason), so there is really no reason to be unhappy about anything. This realization comes about naturally when you begin to analyze your experience in an unattached and unbiased manner. Take a look at life more closely and deeply and you will find out that happiness lies in being who you are, having what you have and doing what you do. Happiness is not a distant destination. It is right here. When you begin to understand the scrupulously intricate designs of the universe, which are meant just for your growth, you are happy in whatever situation you are in. Hell, even in unhappiness!