A LITTLE KNOWLEDGE....

Raja is an 8 year old boy from a village. His large eyes and broad smile are reflections of the innocence of his soul. A friendly child he is full of stories of his village the lush paddy fields, open skies, the ponds where he dived in for a bath, and most of all, with summer around the corner, he misses the fruit laden mango trees of his village.

Every morning he waits for his chacha (uncle) to come to take him back to the village and every sundown the hope gradually fades from his face as he goes to sleep and perhaps dream of his village.

His chacha had promised him that he would return soon to take him back to his village. But, promises are only words and words, very often, are lies .it was this very same chacha who had dropped him off at this abandoned children's home after his parents died.

His mother died when he was just over a year old due to jaundice. His father died, or rather   poisoned himself to death some time back. Reason? He was suffering from fever for a while and lost his appetite and as a result was losing weight and becoming weak as well when this on-and-off fever went on for almost 6 months, the "knowledgeable" villagers, high on the knowledge gained through T.V., came to the conclusion that he was suffering from AIDS and had become a risk to society.  

Scared and ashamed, (in spite of having done no wrong), he retreated into a shell. Even his family members began avoiding him. They kept a measured distance from him. Though T.V. had "taught" them to "identify" the symptoms of AIDS, they never learnt or maybe, chose to forget that the disease did not spread from breathing in the same air. Death was a foregone conclusion for him. His very own people had, unwittingly, on basis of their limited "knowledge" passed his death sentence. Unable to take in the humiliation any longer; he had consumed agricultural pesticide and ended his life.

A case of suicide was registered. The body was sent for post-mortem. What emerged was this .he was suffering from untreated malaria!(which of course was detected only after his death)

The missing jigsaw pieces…

A lazy Sunday morning…..the whole extended family had gathered at our grandmother’s place for a family lunch. The happiest and loudest ones were of course the children…small in size, big on attitude. After a while they sat down to play with jigsaw puzzle of 1000 pieces.
As the older kids (5 & 8yrs old) got busy trying to fit the jigsaw, the youngest one (1 & ½ yrs. old) very casually picked up a few pieces of the jigsaws and walked away. The other kids had almost finished fitting in the jigsaws pieces when they realized what had happened….they rushed to retrieve the missing pieces (which, by then, had changed shape completely thanks to chewing, breaking etc.).
All hell broke loose! We tried to tell them that their jigsaw looked great and just 7 missing pieces could not take away the beauty of 993 other pieces. But they were inconsolable. They blamed their little sister for everything (who was least bothered and had, by then, moved on to other toys). In anger one of the older kids broke the rest of it too, saying he did not want an incomplete puzzle…
What struck me about how the whole scenario reflected our own lives….made me wonder about the time and energy we waste trying to find those missing jigsaw pieces of our lives. In our hunt for we do not have, we tend to overlook what we do have (which is usually more than what we don’t have).
And by the time realization dons, a lot of what we had but did not use or enjoy is already decayed or wasted beyond repair & becomes unfit for use….and like the little children blame others for the incompleteness in our lives...and fate like the little girl quietly moves a few pieces while our attention is focused elsewhere.
Often while looking back on life, we realize what we needed was perhaps already there. What were missing were our own correct perspectives to see clearly….often, in our stubbornness to play the game according to our own rules, we waste time and before we know it the final whistle is blown.
Its difficult to fathom our obsession with the missing pieces….why do let a few missing bits overtake the joy or beauty from the other pieces that we do have? Especially in our interpersonal relationships…Maybe its just insecurity that someone else may come in and feel in the gaps….maybe it’s our obsession to try and recreate Heaven which is synonymous with perfection…whatever the cause, whatever the reason, we end up losing far more than what we do not have or what we did not get … somewhere, I guess, we forget that all of us have our own unique places under the sun & that is why God created us…..

Life's A Long Journey

Beyond The Clouds...
I was waiting with my mother for our turn at a doctor’s chamber. She too was waiting for her turn. I had seen her earlier too, at the same place. We only smiled at each other on the other occasions. She was accompanied by her son who was perpetually talking on his cell-phone. Bored, she struck up a conversation with us. Her husband was admitted in the hospital and she had come to talk to the doctor about her husband’s progress to health. They had been married almost 46 years ago. She did not meet her husband till everything was fixed by the families. There was no going back then. She told me that she always visualized a husband who was dapper likeDev Anand but her husband,well...( all she did was smile sheepishly).

But, good girls did not defy their families, so she got married to the guy with loads of regrets about what may have been. Initially, though she never showed it, she was full self pity. But as time flew she realized how unwise she was in her judgment. With an impish smile on her face, she told me, how her some of her friends were almost jealous of the way her husband looked after her. He made sure that she was always treated with respect by everyone in the family, even by their own kids. When their second kid was born (they were on a foreign posting) he took care of the home & the older kid leaving her to concentrate on the new-born & herself. Today, she feels her husband was God’s greatest gift to her. She is especially thankful that she did not voice her displeasure when marriage negotiations were on, otherwise who knows what kind of man she would have been married to. She acknowledges that in the success of their long & happy marriage her husband’s contribution was more than hers. And, she added tongue in cheek, the men of her husband’s age all look more or less the same today, no matter how good-looking they were in their youth.
This encounter reminded me of what Sister Adele ,Principal of our school, used to tell us ----- instead of fretting at the sight of the cloud look for the sun behind it & you shall see the rainbow appear.