A long and winding road...

............ some places it is macadamized, but some stretches are graded,

Some parts are paved with a nice broad pavement, while some have only stones by the wayside,

Sometimes the traffic and the weather makes potholes and craters in the road. Then it needs the healing touch of something higher and bigger to smooth it out again.

The part that winds through habitations have street lights, but there are long stretches that are dark,

Sometimes the road winds uphill and down, sometimes it goes straight up and comes swooshing down again,

On some stretches there are beautiful trees forming a canopy - a shade from the sun, but there are whole parts where the unrelenting sun beats down,

It goes past rivers, oceans and lakes, and it also winds through deep and silent valleys,

Sometimes there are people on the road, but oftener, there is no one...

That long and winding road....................................................is life
                                                                                                       

Randomly rambling...

4 friends...

We were 4 friends in Isabella Thoburn College, Lucknow, back in the 70s. Seems a really, really long time ago. We were close pals, and shared everything - good, bad, happy, sad. We got upset with each other, and frantically made up as well. We were up to all kinds of mischief, of course, within our system.

I must tell you here that when we joined Isabella Thoburn, we were told that we were honour-bound not to break the school rules and do anything wrong. That was something we did take seriously, because, it immediately made us feel very responsible and grown-up. We had all of a sudden become 'Young Ladies'. Woops - but in our dorms and rooms, in our playing fields, and tree groves, we were children - happily playing, frantically grabbing each day, trying to fit in 36 hours into 24...

We depended on each other emotionally, as one is bound to do living in a hostel, far away from home. There was no easy connectivity, either by telephone (remember those trunk call days??), nor postal mail.The most important man in our lives was the postman. Of course, it has always been a source of great astonishment to me how the postman knew each one of us, though he never really saw us. He was a very special man, the postman to Chand Bagh (as our college was also known). Besides our letters, we would wait EAGERLY for our pocket money and tuck - don't know which one we waited for more!! i still remember asking Daddy for 'dough' as we called money then (back in the old days!!) and weeks went by without the Money order coming in. Finally when I was frantic and mailed them a rather weepy letter, I got the brilliant reply that my poor Dad thought 'dough' meant doughnuts (something I'm insane about) and was wondering why Mummy was taking so much time about it!!!!!! They used to send me tuck in these big tins and it would all finish in a day--maximum 2 days!!!

Cannot think of Isabella Thoburn without Miss.Anand, and Miss.Paul very, very, very specially...and of course the others -
for better or for worse. How very understanding Miss.Anand and Miss Paul were...heavens!

Miss.Shipstone, of course was on the unreachable, unattainable pinnacle - tiny as she was, her stature ensured that she towered over us...in my Junior year, I was at the hyper anti-establishment-radical stage of my life (still retain some of those traits), having been heavily influenced by and having fully accepted the hippie philosophy (from having been in Florida Southern). So, when I rebelled against something, Miss Shipstone called me to her office, sat me down, looked at me and,  'Elizabeth', she went, 'you cannot question the status quo. You have to appeal to their better judgment. If you question them, they will close all doors, right or wrong, but if you appeal to them, they might listen to you through a window and then open the door'.

Oooohhhhhhhh there are tons and tons of memories.......

How much, how much fun we had. I wouldn't know where to begin. Even now, as soon as any of calls each other, the only thing we remember is our pranks and the fun we had, and regardless of our 'venerable' ages, we end up hooting and laughing on the phone!! 

After all these years, the love is still there, and still intact!!

Damning...

The most damning indictment but true, nevertheless, was made by Swapan Dasgupta that the Commonwealth Games was never about the games.

There is a suffocating feeling of rage and frustration that the money that is so obviously being over-over-over-over spent is the ordinary tax-payer's hard earned money. I do believe that the people sitting in high places in Delhi think that India is Delhi,and that the citizens of this Delhi-India are made up of only those who live in Lutyens' Delhi. The rest of India lives, and works as-how-and-where, for the advancement and aggrandizement of these people, and to hell with the rest of India and as-how-and-where they live and work...

How else can one account for the total callousness towards the tax-payer? The rest of India gets nothing from Delhi, and if they do want something, they make their own arrangements...they do whatever it takes to create a reasonably good, decent life for themselves and their children.

Randomly thinking...

If we are not in THIS moment, this VERY moment, right NOW, then we are in a different time zone. The time zone, naturally, could be the past, or the future. 

One is over; can't do anything about it,

And there is no guarantee of the other; can't do anything about that either...

Keep checking on your time zone!

Ramdomly thinking...

Those of us who belong to South India, or are familiar with at least one South Indian language will be able to catch the imagery and lyricism of this statement:

'What-what things should happen-o,

That-that things will happen-a (a as in pace) happen'!

...........................................................................................and the wisdom of it.....................

Time...

I'm wondering if there are other women out there, over 50, who are also becoming conscious of the wonderful fact that they don't need to hurry any more??? That they can do things at a comfortable pace, and hey, the world is still going on as always - no calamity??? That they can take their time over EVERYTHING, still finish what they set out to do, and best of all, not fret and fume over time passing by???

I'm asking this, because I had to move from easy-going to hyper, and since that was wearing me out, and not really doing anything for me, am again learning to shift down to taking things easy and taking everything as it comes - easily, that is....and of course I'm over 50!! Love being over 50!!!

And so, it's cheers to 'TIME UNBOUND'!!!

Hypocrisy & multiple identities - is there a connection?

The terrible hypocrisy in our society has been troubling me - and the newspapers are full of it - how people who mouth all kinds of wonderful ideals, in real life do just the opposite; the awful corruption in India shining; the attitude of chalta hai, and the we-are-like-this-only line that we sprout to cover up intolerable and unacceptable botch-ups, the evil power of 'khadi-clad' politicians over the people they are meant to serve; the impotency of the judicial system meant to protect its citizens; the carelessness with which we trample on those who are less fortunate/of a different caste or creed/who speak a different language/who belong to a different region, all the while talking about 'Indianess'. And there does not seem to be a respite...

I'd read about multiple identities somewhere, cannot remember...the article said that Indians have multiple identities. We have the identity of the region where we are born (therefore we learn to speak the local language, and maybe even identify with the local culture), the region to which we actually belong (therefore we speak our mother tongue, and identify with our own specific culture), caste, sub-caste, creed, social position... have I left out any? If we belong to that minuscule class of English-speaking Indians (who therefore cannot help being slightly westernized, or are clearly West-philes), then that is another identity we have.


So, does our national talent for hypocrisy have something to do with our multiple identities? Multiple identities would presuppose multiple personalities. How do all these reconcile with each other? Guess this is where the whole problem of who we really are lies. Maybe, too, this is why we are so good at faffing - we have to somehow or the other bring about some kind of synchronization between all the confusion of personalities inside of us! Of course there are those who scrupulously lead their own lives free from hypocrisy, in spite of the multiple identities, but they are very much in the minority. And, like all minorities these suffer...

Once again, we see that it is the common man who  is the most grounded, and who is not generally confused. He has the identity of his culture through his mother tongue. He may have a little Hindi (picked up from Bollywood) which he needs for practical reasons of business. He is the one who gives our country whatever stability it has.

Could this then be the reason that Westerners come across as more whole, more sincere, maybe even more naive, than us? because they have only the one identity they are born with and into? The identity that comes from one culture as expressed in their mother tongue...Here again, what we see is that if they do speak in English, it is only for reasons of pragmatism.