Just finished reading...

Muriel Spark, The Biography by Martin Stannard, and want to share something for those of us who have entered the 60s.

Muriel says:I think the happiest years of my life started between sixty and seventy...For one thing, I can handle life. Up till the time I was sixty I was never very capable of saying "No", of really saying "This is the way I do it" and being absolutely firm. She felt that too often she had wasted energy humoring those staking claims on her time...

How true - we keep humoring those staking claims on our time believing that to be our bounden duty - but it isn't. Yes, a fair amount of give and take, with maybe a little more leaning to the give, does happen, and that's fine, but more than that not only begins to drain, it also begins to subdue and stifle and eventually deaden and destroy what we are really all about. This is not to say we become selfishly short-sighted about ourselves, no--not at all----it is just that comes a time in life when we just have to plain and simple say a definite No to others and a resounding Yes to ourselves.....this is not being me-centric, it is the realization that the me has got lost somewhere, it is no longer visible, drowned as it is by the voices and demands of others, and doing something about it. As my DD tells me, "Ma if you are not going to start living now, then when?"

Also, as we grow older there is a sense of release from all kinds of things that seemed important...the focus changes...and  we need to explore this - now, at this stage of our lives...

I also have a sneaky feeling that if we do things that show respect for ourselves, others, even those close to us, will respect us, even if it gives them dreadful jolts....

All this is totally exclusive of one's girl friends, for your girl friends are your support system and the only ones, who love you unconditionally and don't try to make you over into their image...and a wonderfully encouraging DD!!!!

I do so disagree...

with Salman Rushdie when he said at an interview that 'self-censorship is a lie to  yourself,' and that 'self-censorship is the death of art.'

To me that is an incredibly strange thing to say, especially coming from someone who considers himself educated...

Imagine what would happen if all of us just said and did what we felt, with no self-censorship? Where then would be the grace in conversation? Where ethics? Where 'The Golden Rule'? Dickens, Thackeray, Twain, Austen, Hardy, and all the authors we've grown up on didn't offend anyone with their writing, with their literature. Michelangelo, Da Vinci, Picasso, Van Gogh, didn't offend with their art. They too portrayed life as it was in the times...as they felt...the pictures they painted were very realistic and quite painful at times - how is it that what they said or painted never caused offence? never caused violent reactions? never divided society?

In a society that is increasingly becoming a kind of free-for-all, the only thing that would keep some kind of  sanity is self-censorship...

By all means say what you think and feel, but to those in your inner circle - the very fact that you have to defend your stand, or writing, or painting so much, so loudly and from so many forums, means that something is not quite right somewhere.

And, well, if he did not believe in self-censorship, then he should applaud that not having him over was because others too did not believe in self-censorship - they too said what they believed...

The hue and cry...

over Rushdie coming to India has taken on a life of its own and like a juggernaut is rolling all over the place fomenting unrest and instigating violence. I think the only one who is gaining is Rushdie himself because by now The Satanic Verses must be in printing overdrive...

Literature, to my mind, is all about feeling, and therefore by extension, about choice. One should welcome all kinds of literature else how will one ever know various lines of thinking; how will one ever get to know about things/people/occurrences, to name a few worlds that reading opens up; how will one ever extend the boundaries of life and living? how will one choose what resonates with our core, or our way of thinking? how will one know what and how to think? how will one choose between one and the other kind of literature?

What is more satanic than The Satanic Verses is our hypocrisy. What is more demoniacal and diabolical is the  way we treat each other; or behave with those who are less fortunate, or cannot hit back; or grovel before those who are 'above' us, all the while making others grovel before us; or willingly become sycophants of those who we imagine have an advantage over us, or hold our interests in their hands, even as we ruthlessly push our tiny two-bit position; or cruelly use our clout and position over who have nothing to give; or kowtow to people for our own personal furtherance, expecting the same; or behave with impunity to gain our ends; or allow our personal greed to gain dominance and precedence over public good; or............

What can be more satanic than the crime we allow to be perpetrated against girls and women?

I'm exceedingly angry...

at the report I read this morning in the Times of India, Kolkata.

An 18-year-old girl was tortured, her hair cut off, and paraded in a semi-naked condition across the village by family members of her second husband in a Birbhaum village on Sunday night. In the face of strong mob sentiment the husband could do little to protest. Neither could her family members. The girl's father said they were very poor and could not protest as they had been threatened. He didn't even dare to take his daughter to the hospital. The groom and his family have fled the village. 

It was only on Monday that the local authorities got to know, when they came and took the girl to the hospital.

The girl was married, but when her marriage failed, she came back home. Anyone familiar with Indian custom would know that this marriage would have been arranged by her family. Anyone who knows what Indian society is all about would also know that coming home, the child probably realized the unwelcome situation she put herself and her family in, and the burden she would be on her already burdened father. The child must have also come face to face with an unrelentingly merciless society. So, when she got an opportunity, she must have decided to marry a second time. I am sure she found herself driven to taking this step. 

Angry, frustrated, helpless questions and feelings are raging and surging in my brain and heart. (Our putrid society offers no solace or solution to a girl in these circumstances). What must she be going through? How will she resolve the pain? How will the child ever come to terms with this? What will she do now?

I would want all the women who read my blog to join me in sending this young girl all our love and strength. There is great power in thought and if we all send her our collective force, it will surely have an effect...

Have you ever felt...

when reading a word/phrase/sentence someone has used in a context which is familiar to you, a resonance, and a settling down, or definitive conclusion of feelings and thoughts that heretofore were left unconcluded?

I felt this way a couple of days back, and am able to articulate it only now after it has seeped into my being. My home has been robbed three times over the years. We belong to the professional stratum, and each time, we lost some of our hard-earned belongings and a lot of personal effects which had emotional connections, considerably setting us back. My DD always helped put the bits and pieces of my heart back, but I just could not bring a closure to my feelings, till I got a letter from my cousin. He told me that their home had been broken into on the 11th, and they had lost their life savings. While I sympathized with him and his wife, he was philosophical about his tremendous loss, saying, "I am not despondent or disheartened, but feel a sense of being violated." That was it! - Violated - that was what I had been feeling all these years. Somehow when articulated like that, it clicked into place, and I find I can now put to rest all those inconclusive feelings that have periodically permeated my head and heart and brought so much pain...

It's my life...

you bet it is...

only thing is that it is connected by a hundred thousand strings, visible, invisible, tenuous, strong, loose, tight, thick, thin, whatever... but connected nevertheless to a hundred thousand people...important-in-our-lives, and not so important, and not important at all, distant, close and personal, far and near...

and there's nothing we can do about it other than try and wiggle around and create a little space where we can be what we really are...

so that the tugging and pulling strings don't disfigure us, instead, they emanate from us...

It's...

my DD's birthday today...

A child's birthday is an exceedingly special day for the mother...the memories...the wishes...the tenderness...for the teeny-weeny baby lying so trustingly in your arms...

and the blessing of God's gift for us mothers...