16 February 2016

Busy...

This is a word that can cause a lot of heartache, terrible loneliness and an awful feeling of having left important things undone or unsaid.

How so?

Just think about it....take a cup of coffee to your personal space, put everything away, and think about this word.

How many times do we use this word? What are the various contexts and situations in which we have used this word? Why have we used this word? and then....How do we feel when someone uses this word in a conversation with us?

Why I want to write about this word is because something happened the other day - for a long time, a very good friend had not been in contact - oh, contact as in sending forwards on the mail or What'sapp was happening regularly but there was no real heart-contact. I have been going through a not-very-easy time, and a chat with a good friend would have eased  my mind. However, the friend msgd saying that for some reason I had been on her mind but she hadn't been able to call since she had been very busy. How glibly she used the word to explain away a long silence....so then would it really matter to this person what I had been going through, or how I had been suffering?

It was then that I realized that using the word busy may cover up a lot for the person using the word, but it can cause hurt in the person hearing it, for the only thing that comes through is that you were not important enough for even a one-minute call....

What are you doing that is so important that you cannot spare a moment for a person you call friend....
Do you have so much work that you cannot take out a brief bit of time to connect with someone whom you have not heard from for a long time...
Are you so occupied that you have no time to reassure a person reaching out to you silently over the miles, of your love and friendship...
Is there so much happening in your life that you cannot share the comfort of your voice to someone who you know is in a rough place...

Never, ever, ever use the word busy.......for you can never ever really, in all honesty and truthfulness be thaaaaat busy....

12 February 2016

A challenge...

I came across in my daily meditation - To see the tiny spark of beauty in everything...even the bleakest and most depressing of situations.

Here's the thing - Our minds have a way of focussing on negative things: things that are not aligned with the picture we have in our mind, things that shouldn't/needn't be there and things that should/could be there, things that need to be done or can be done and are not being done, people who are not cast in the mould our minds have made....and so on....there are a thousand million things that we find fault with. It is the same with sadness...we often see the sad part of the whole picture instead of the rest of the picture.

Mind you, we are able to find these faults with no real effort...they just kind of flow through our mind. However, what they do as they flow through our mind is that they pollute the general atmosphere of our mind, which then goes on to pollute the rest of the body. Likewise with sadness....it seeps into our very consciousness changing the colors of the landscape of our heart and mind to grey and black.

Now the challenge is to stop and really SEE what we are LOOKING at.

And we WILL see that teey-weeny bit of something good and pure and lovable and beautiful in that whole picture we are looking at and labelling as wretched or painfully sad.

Try it. In a bleak landscape, you will hear the sound of a bird, or see a beetle scurrying across....In a terribly sad situation such as having lost a loved one, or having had to give up a job, or being in a state of deep depression, see the person who smiles at you and brings up a happy memory, or paints a pretty picture of something that means something to you or let that memory that is tugging at your heart surface....and you will see that the whole picture changes. The hue changes, the tone changes, and the timbre changes....and that is all we need to take the next step forward.

'Even in winter when the branches are covered by snow the plum blossoms are still fragrant.' ~ Shadows and Blossoms by Lian Hearn.

06 February 2016

A very dear friend passes on...

Mrs Sunita Salvi

A beautiful person - a truly, truly beautiful person.

I first met Mrs Salvi when she and her husband, a beautiful person too, brought their darling daughter, Saloni, for music lessons with me. Saloni was all of 5 or 6 years old and through the years till she became a teen, and we left Oman, she came to my home every Wednesday evening for her music lesson. Mrs Salvi would often come to pick her up and many, many a Wednesday did we chat while Saloni went down to her Dad waiting in the parking lot. Mrs Salvi left us a few days back. I cannot seem to assimilate this in my heart. It just seems not true and I would not have believed it if Saloni had not sent me a note on FB.

The Salvis are a very loving family and Mrs Salvi was the center of the family. Beautifully turned out always, she was extremely poised and graceful. Soft-spoken and gentle, Mrs Salvi was a tower of strength to her family and to those who knew her. She was deeply appreciative of those around her and in those long talks after Saloni's lesson, we covered a range of topics....Often, after she would go down to join her family, I wouldn't be able to remember what we talked about, but I would always recall the gentleness of her presence.

My DD was very much a part of their lives because Mrs Salvi would hold her up as a role model for Saloni. They were the first people who got my DD's school-leaving examination result and sent it to us. When my son-in-law was transferred to Muscat, the Salvis welcomed him into their home and family.

The three of them have always had a part of my heart...and always will.

I shall miss Mrs Salvi unbelievably.

Days begin and end
Light waxes and wanes
Relationships can go from warm to cold
Life has untold ups and downs

Only death is a constant...