For posterity.....

Hey! don't you dare say that you do not recognize me. After all you had been practising me for so long. I was passed into your blood from generations. I have become indispensible to you...
Remember the silence that prevailed in your house when you were born as a girl....
How you were taught to adjust and compromise, to forgive and sacrifice.....
You were tortured and used, harrased and killed, molested and raped.....
But you should not grumble Afterall you were always in 'demand', penned and praised, worshiped and idolized….
I was there in everybody who did this to you….

Remember, how you were taught by your parents that “Truth is supreme” and if you lie the boogeyman may pick you or God may not bless you with ice-creams and chocolates.
And you were so imbecile to believe ‘them’, those who later on taught you the contradictory lessons of being ‘worldly-wise’ and ‘self-interested’. It’s the ‘survival of the fittest’, they said.
It was then that I started creeping into you. You then kept turning the pages of your childhood innocence and learnt the newly added chapters of prudence and never looked back.

Remember, how your father taught you that ‘All men are equal’, ‘God is one’ ‘Respect all religion’….
You obsequiously imbibed all that he said. After all he was your ideal, your hero, who was always right.
And when you wanted to marry that decent, nice guy you loved, your father refused because he worshipped some ‘other God’.
Oh no! please do not blame your father for all this. It was me who forced him….

Remember, how one single prince was saved. The whole country came to a standstill suddenly. All hands joined together to pray for him, all eyes were constantly glued to the television sets till the little prince escaped from the gallows of death.
Take my word, even more than forty killings in Nithari would not match those TRP’s . The media should be thankful to me….

I have been a way of life. I am religious too, albeit secular. You can find me at all religious places, with little effort. Some even find me synonymous to religion.
You call me ‘hypocrisy’ with love. Whether it was your home, your school, your society, your country, I was always there in my macro and micro forms.
I am somewhat like humor, clever, quick, contemporary….
You had been learning my nuances for so long. I was there when you loved me. I was there when you hated…
And now you blame me of contaminating you!
Instead I will sue you for contaminating me. I occurred in purest forms. You contaminated me, distorted me to uglier, incognizable forms, as per your requirements, every now and then.
I have now become your age old tradition, your cultural heritage and you are obligated to save and preserve me…save me for posterity…..

What is the point?

Everything has a point or rather should have a point. If the universe originated from 'nothing', a 'point 'must surely have succeeded. A 'point' comes after a 'nothing' and 'nothing' comes after a 'point'.
Confused? So am I. This point has always baffled me and I have been constantly asking myself questions like ' What is the point?'. But let me try to explain. we try to search for a point or a sense of purpose to remove the pointlessness in our life, but what worries us more is the pointlessness that follows after the point is reached.
It has been years when our geometry teacher taught us how a fixed point is necessary to draw a circle. And yes it has been years that i have been searching for the same point about which my life could revolve.
There are times when you have to face 'it'. They call 'it' as 'a deafening silence'. This deafening silence is not just an oxymoron but is strangely palpable. It brings you to a pointlessness and then you start wondering if 'pointlessness' is the only 'point'. It has been long that i have been wondering that 'what is the point?'.
There are many like me who ask this question to themselves daily. But this has to remain unanswered, for if it is answered than what is the point?
I am amazed how a 'point' can be so important that people keep searching for it throughout there life. I amazed how a 'point' can lead you from the infinitesimal to the infinite. I am amazed how a 'point' can take you to another 'point' and you could thus move on a continous graph of life. The infinite is full of points but then you have to search your's and complete your circle....

Tea is not my cup of tea!

That might sound an odd title to start my first blog with...But since that is what may reveal to you why 'i m nostalgic', i will surely go ahead.
I am a person who gets attached to anything and everything. I have a certain nostalgia for my childhood days. No wonder i am greatly attached to my maternal grandparents who brought me up. I relate my life, my very existance with them. They made me what i am. They taught me all lessons of patience, honesty, culture and life.
I could still remember how my nanaji(my grandpa) rode his old bicycle to a nearby village in heavy rains just because i was 'feeling like eating mangoes'. He was all wet and shivering with cold when he gave me that most delicious mango i ever had in my life...
I could still remember my amma(grandma) giving me imlas(dictations) so that i do not rank low in class. She was very strict when it came to studies. That is more than one can expect from someone who had only had her primary education!

I still remember how they both heard all the non-sense that i uttered after coming to school. Nanaji remained very worried about my low grades in maths. He used to take me with him to the garden. While he did his gardening he used to hear from me all the tables, prime numbers etc that i was supposed to know.

I still remember the day when he bought me a new bicycle and ran after me when i rode it so that i do not fall. He gifted me an alarm clock on my birthday and said "Its very important to be punctual and value time". (Though i could never become punctual as he wanted me to be:))
I still remember how amma would make 'gajar ka halwa' and 'til ke laddoo' on my birthdays(and she still does it without a miss) inspite of having a severe backache.

I still remember how she allowed me to talk to guys despite her strong disliking. She is much of a narrowminded person or rather we have a 'two generations gap' between us. Still she never stopped me from anything that was out of her realms of transgression.

I still remember how they never called me when i went to college so that i may learn to live without them.
I still remember how they boasted in front of all relatives and aquaintances how i never spoke a lie, how well mannered i was, how nice chhapaties i made, how i had never tasted tea.....
They felt a certain sense of pride when they told others that i have never even tasted tea. And somewhere inside i also felt the same kind of strange pride. Whenever someone offered me tea i simply,bluntly said "I do not drink tea. I have never tasted it, you see...."And true enough, i never tried to taste tea and i never wanted to. Even three years after leaving home i never thought of tasting tea because if i taste it, back home my nanaji and amma must still be saying to someone "she never drinks tea. She has never tasted it you see..."
Tea, certainly is not my cup of tea!