Your Legacy Begins When your Story Ends

Today, as I remember my mother on her birthday, I am compelled to share this story. A story of my ancestry; a story about women who stand up for other women; a story about pure grit; a story of my existence; and a story that explains where my mother got her drive, her relentless and persistent nature and her never-say-die attitude.

I had heard my mother speak in jest about her father, my maternal grandfather (my naana-ji), who’d always mention to my grandmother (my naani), “If you had not given me a son as my first born, I would have left you just like your father left your mother. I am a Rajput, and it is my right to leave my wife if she didn’t give me a son as a first-born.”

I knew my great grandmother (we would call her pad-naani) and have very fond memories of her. She was a lean, tall and strong boned woman with high cheek bones, a gorgeously brown complexion and deep, pressing eyes. She lived alone, fiercely independent, in a little village till the day she died in 1981. I was 6 years old when she died but I distinctly remember her and her nice little shop that she ran from the window of her home in the village. She’d sell knick-knacks to all the little children in the village; most of whom never paid for what they “bought”.

As a child, I didn’t pay much attention to my grandfather’s statement, and years became decades till quite suddenly my mother passed away in June of 2020. As I went through the process of grieving, even before I could come to terms with this vacuum left behind by her absence, within 10 months, my father passed away from a brain stroke that he suffered from, on mummy’s birthday last year in 2021.

My desire to connect with who my parents were and where they came from increased insatiably. This led me to a long conversation one day with my mother’s younger sister, my aunt. My grandfather’s sentence from eons ago popped up in my head and I questioned her about it. What I found out was a gem, a true jewel in my ancestry.

My maternal grandmother, Krishna Bai, was the first born, and obviously being a girl, her father (my great grandfather) rightfully as a “Rajput” left his wife (my great grandmother, Dharma Bai) the very day my grandmother was born. The year was 1931. 3 days after childbirth, Dharma Bai passed away. My grandmother was left alone in the world, in a society that didn’t much care for girl children.

That is when a great miracle of a lady, Dharma Bai’s sister, took it upon herself to become a single mother, in 1931! Her name was Heera Bai, the only woman I knew as my great grandmother. She went against the entire family and the society, and even left her husband who didn’t support her on this. Heera Bai, true to her name (which means diamond) dedicates her life to bringing up this 3-day old little girl. She went on to nurture and nourish all my 4 aunts when, ironically, she noticed that my grandmother didn’t want to take care of any of her daughters. My mother resisted going to live with Heera Bai because she was very fond of her dad, my grandfather.

Heera Bai’s action to stand up and protect a woman gave rise to 3 generations in our family and countless positive impacts on society!

This is change;

This is who I am;

This defines me;

This explains to me

Who my mother was.

Heera Bai is the reason

My grandmother survived;

The reason my mother came into existence;

The reason, today I exist.

No one in our family remembers the name of the great man who left his wife and then never came back for his little girl when his wife died 3 days later. But today, by sharing this I am hoping to immortalize the name of this jewel in my family, Heera Bai.

This has helped me understand a lot of things. Here are 3:

1. The best version of yourself is in you, you just have to dig a little deeper.
2. Your actions have an impact far beyond you.
3. Your legacy begins when your story ends.

The Stirrings of an Ineffable Soul

She closed her eyes,
As she felt every part of her being
Immersed in a consciousness, alien to her.
The voices in her head, faint whispers
To begin with, rose to a cacophony,
As the consciousness reached
A crescendo of its own!

Suddenly, it was all over;
She could hear the crash of silence
Against her pining soul.
A silence so loud, she wished
For the cacophony of the voices
In her head again.
Unknown to her, every bit of her soul
Transformed, mutated and altered
To soak in the silence,
Silently creating a sound of its own.

Exhausted, she lay, waiting
Patiently, for the pain,
The angst and the clarity
Of the unknown.
She relinquished her ego;
She relinquished her name;
She welcomed the unknown
With open arms and
Closed eyes.

In darkness of the sun,
It crept up on her,
Shrouding her being,
Purifying her soul,
Lightening her mind,
Brightening her body, and
Freeing her dreams;
Until all there was left
Was a single unity;
An unknown one.

There was no her;
There was no soul;
There was no light;
There was no pain;
There was only
The pureness of being.

Honest Open Smiles

Can it be this tough?
Wearing masks all day long;
Passing by the universe.
Every day. Every night.

Needs. Wants. Desires.
In that order please...
Make mine with
A sprinkling of soul dust.

Rains feeding streams,
Leaves leaving trees,
Cups upturned in sinks,
Music. Laughter. Life.

Let the cookie crumble.
These cookie cutters 
Were made all wrong.
Honest open smiles,
It isn't this tough!

Firewood gathered,
Hunting done,
The roasting begins!
On this Friday noon,
Dream up your dreams.
It ain't tough at all...

To Listen Was to Hear

She stood in the rain, at crossroads with herself.
'Should I move straight ahead or follow the fallen leaves?'
She closed her eyes and continued to walk.
The path was chosen, she felt it with her bare feet.
She smelt the air and followed the mixture of scents calling to her.

A week passed by as she continued walking,
Seeing nothing, for her eyes were shut.
She heard every sound, 
From the distant rustle of birds on a tree,
To the blade of grass stepped on by beasts.

Something, somewhere caught her attention.
Was it a sound, a smell or a feel on her bare arms?
She couldn't say.

She knew she had to stop, for this was her calling.
This was where she had to wait till she grew a new tree.
She dug the earth deep and sowed the little seed.

Open to Empathy

My words to you will be none...
My feelings for you will be many.

I listen to your troubles
When you speak;
I cry with you
When you shed those tears;
I feel the rage
When you share your anger;
I experience your loneliness
As you spin tales about solitude.

Oh no! Your troubles are so huge!

Why do you cry so?
How dare they treat you so?
Don't worry you won't be alone for long.
I won't say none of these...
I won't claim I know any of this.

My troubles are bigger than yours,

My tears more genuine.
My anger runs deeper,
And... my isolation more terminal.
None of these will be words I utter,
'coz today It's not about me...
It's not about me...

I'm here for you,

With empathy in my thoughts,

In my actions and in my eyes.
I promise I will learn
What it means to be empathetic.
I promise I'll pass the word around.
I promise I'll pass the word around.

Comparisons

Today the poetry is lost in me
The words flow yet there's no poetry
Pardon my grammar and ignore the
Lack of punctuations.

I am as happy as you are
I am as sad as you are.
Don't read my words with envy
I won't listen to your music with envy.

My thoughts lay out bare
While you protect yours.
Read between these lines
I will see beyond your perfect world.

The world seems normal
Despite all the chaos.
Do you see the chaos
Can I see the calmness?

These words need to stop now
I might just add to your chaos.
The calm in your mind
Is the calm in mine.
The chaos in yours
Is the chaos in mine.
This universe is balanced...
And will continue to be.

As The Moon Saunters Along

Many moons ago, you sat in solitude,
Heading towards the unknown...
A strand of hair sweeping past your face,
The shine in your eyes, barely visible.

'Defining moments, these...'
You whispered to yourself,
Seven days a week,
Four weeks a month,
Twelve months a year,
Many years a lifetime.

The silent waves from the womb
Of the Universe swept past -
You, me and everyone around.
Taking with it the solitude,
Bringing with it blessings, sorrow and joy.

Wake up! Look past the moon,
The waves and the days...
The infectious glint in your eyes
It spreads humour and laughter; Hope and joy...
To me, you and everyone around.

Disappearing Money and a Short-cut Through Life

2nd in the series - Stories from Traveling by Public Transport in Bangalore

Day: Tuesday, 19^th March 2013

Time: 5:30PM

Avoid short-cuts through life at any cost, some would say. I agree and to reiterate this let me first share with you something that happened before my travel by public transport on this particular day.

I was to leave office a little early, to help the daughter revise for her exams. However, this was not to be and I was running late by a whole hour and a half. At this point, when a friendly junior colleague offered to drop me to the bus stop (a 800m walk) on his thundering bullet, how could I say no?

So, I went along. About 50m into our journey, this friendly colleague decided that he could drop me further ahead (2kms now instead of the 800m). Once again, counting the 1.5 hour delay, I gladly accepted. That's when it began... A short-cut through life!

Instead of the regular main roads that give one a comfortable feeling of traveling on the road often traveled, this polite creature decided to take a deviation off the road, climbing through a steep mound of mud and stones. Without exaggerating (though it is very tempting to exaggerate this part), this was a 45 degree angle slope! In spite of the adventurous blood that runs through my so-called Rajput, Kshatriya veins, I was tempted to tap the gentleman on the shoulder and propose that I walk till the ground is more lateral. I resisted, to avoid making him feel ill-equipped to handle, what but a slope on a thundering bullet!

The steep was cleared, albeit after some "oh!" and "ah!" from the rider himself.

The sight that awaited me on the other side of the steep slope was breath-taking (more like lung choking but we shall continue). On the left of us was a largish water body and a mud path running along the bank of the water body that met a rivulet feeding the water body. The picturesque scene was marred by the fact that the rivulet was the outlet of a sewage drainage and the water body was well what you get when you feed a land dip with sewage water! I held my breathe since there were a couple of people walking along the path and even a couple of bikes ahead of us passing through as though it were a regular scenic route that you can only be stupid not to enjoy.

The bike now had to cross the rivulet (yes, pass through the sewage water) and the couple of bikes ahead of us crossed it without neither incident nor reason to doubt that it just may not be possible. Just when our turn to cross the rivulet got closer, one of the voices in my head tried to sound an alarm. But once again, I resisted saying anything so my very polite and helpful rider would not have to go through the emotions of one whose very ego is hurt by questioning his ability to ride through what two others rode through.

The bike began crossing and the next thing I know, I can hear the rider say "Oh no! Oh no! Oh shit!" and the bike tilted 45 degrees to the left, like the slope that it had just so proudly conquered a few seconds back. My left foot was swimming in dark, sewage water and I think I might have felt some things moving, had my 'Fight or Flight" instincts not kicked in. I jumped off the bike and jumped ashore before any more grime got to me, my clothes et al.

The bike was almost down and the poor boy struggled to get it upright, which was when (in my defence, having realised the scene I left behind) I went back into the little stream and helped him get the bike back on its wheels.

NEXT SCENE

Having been dropped off thereafter (without further incidents), I climbed into the familiar comfort of a 500C Volvo that would take me home safely for sure (Couldn't really say the same about other vehicles on the road that the bus would pass by on its journey).

So here I was, my mind too shaken up to read or write anything and instead just trying to focus on how to set the right question paper for my daughter once I got home. At the next stop, two women boarded the bus - one of whom sat diagonally opposite me while the one slightly older than her sat right next to me.

The younger girl seemed very energetic and was talking incessantly. She addressed the one next to me as Ma'am. To continue the narrative, I shall call the younger woman P and the older woman N (Note: These names are purely fictitious and have no resemblance to real people either living or dead, etc.)

From the first few seconds of the discussion, I quickly pegged them as government employees (or someone who worked in a highly bureaucratic organization). Mind you, I was minding my own business and trying hard to get over my "near complete fall into the great water-like body" and focus on exams instead.

And P went "And ma'am we have to manage 5 ATMs with wonly 2 officers"

"They can post 2 more officers but where is the place for them to sit? Paapa they can't send people without any place wonly"

"We will still need 4 officers at least to maintain 5 ATMs"

"I don't know waat they will do wonly"

My ears perked up, what with my own frustration earlier in the day with a bank I have banked with for over 11 years now! I thought to myself, this conversation may help me understand 'the bank's side" of a story and may be I could be a little more empathetic when I have conversations with the voices on the other side of the bank support phone lines.

P was by now smiling mischievously and my reading into it was that she had done something or had knowledge of someone having done a mistake at work that day. She goes, "I made the entry ma'am. MICR entry correctly I put 50 thousand rupees. Then that M made the ATR entry. Only few minutes she did ma'am work. That time wonly she put 30 thousand rupees for that cheque."

Wow! Now the conversation was definitely worth following through on.

"I don't know how it escaped when I was checking also"

"Paapa ma'am that cheque is going back. Bank charges also 22 rupees 5 paise is there. I tried to reverse charges and delete that entry but it asked password" 

"I asked sir, he you know no ma'am, he said no, let it go"

"We can actually reverse it and make it one more entry but then that email will come and they will ask why you people are doing like this. We can manage that also but he did not do. Paapa he is also being careful now after that RO meeting"

At this point N, sitting beside me asked "what is the customer name?" to which P gave it LOUD and CLEAR for all to hear "B........"

The girl sitting opposite me caught my eye and smiled nodding her head in what clearly meant "No wonder, we have such problems with bank"

And so P continued "Aiyo, his cheque will go now back with the reason also it is given - number and words not matching" "but it is matching ma'am. That M wonly she did it in that few minutes. Paapa that customer, he will have to pay the bank charges also because it is cheque returned to ma'am... what we will do?"

And then she went on to describe in more indepth details on how the bank worked, releasing money (no less than 10L) based simply on a phone call, by her, since an RTGS request hadn't come through.

By now I had forgotten all about the short-cut in life and the exam paper I had to set once I got home. My thoughts were more on the lines that your money is probably safest spent or at home in sacks! 

On that note, I shall end this post and wish all of you, my lovely readers a fabulous weekend...

A Three Course Meal and a Book in Hand

I am calling this series - Stories from Traveling by Public Transport in Bangalore

Day: Thursday, 14^th March 2013

Time: 8AM

As I sat in the bus, headed to work, a girl was seated to my left. I was reading “The Pilgrimage” by Coehlo, one of my favourite authors. Something about the girl was distracting me. I re-read a sentence almost thrice and still wasn’t able to move on with my reading. That’s when it happened!

The girl by my side, unzipped her backpack (a tell-tale sign that you are in the IT capital of India is people with laptop bags that contains what seems like everything one would need to stay alive stranded in a desert for an entire month!), she fished out a packet of something. She began opening the packet, the plastic making enough noise to fill the usual silence inside the a/c environs of the Volvo bus. The noise was bad enough as I tried telling myself that I was needlessly irritated because I couldn’t concentrate on my reading, and out came a biscuit, Bourbon cream layered biscuit at that. And I thought to myself “The poor girl has probably not had her breakfast and is just hungry.”

Feeling slightly less irritated, I got back to reading the same sentence for the fourth time. You might thing I’d have moved on with my reading but it was not to be.

As the biscuit was bitten into, what followed was slightly worse than the racket of the plastic packet a few moments earlier. It you have had the good fortune of witnessing someone chewing their food with great abandon; crumbs flying out and much chewing sounds emanating right from the gut upwards to the throat and out through the mouth, I strongly recommend that you stop reading this now. I could try to help you visualize what I was witness to but that would mean taking away your innocence a little bit. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Moving on, as the biscuit was consumed with great passion and oblivious to the God-Knows-Why discomfort it might have caused any co-passengers aboard, out came the packet once again. Oh yes! The packet was promptly stashed away into the bag after the first biscuit was freed from its shackles. The entire scene repeated.

That’s when my eyes met the eyes of another girl sitting on the other side of the aisle by the window. Very briefly, mind you, a mutual electrifying bond was created between her and I.

I got back to the sentence, now probably my most favoured sentence in the book, for the fifth time. The chewing and devouring had stopped so there was some hope that I might be able to digest the full meaning of this elusive sentence from a book by after all my favourite author.

No such luck, my lovelies. My very considerate and hungrylicious neighbour prepared to unzip the bag once again. This time though, I was mentally prepared for the onslaught of the sounds that would follow as she devoured yet another biscuit, chewing with her mouth so wide open that just maybe, the entire backpack might have fit into it.

However, I was in for a great disappointment because this time around, a noisier yellow and green packet emerged. Lo and behold! It was a packet of potato wafers (also known as chips before wafers became the cooler term to use).

Our eyes met once more, the electrifying bond converted into a shared smile, a nod and then each of us looking out of our respective windows to distract ourselves from the uncontrollable distraction that was my neighbour. After what seemed like an hour of the repeat performance but with crunchier and more crackling sounds added to it, the pack went back into the great abyss of the backpack. To be fair to my co-passenger, I must clarify that this wafery episode lasted about 10 minutes (let it not be said that I exaggerated or stretched the truth, thereby rendering my writing a work of fiction. There, I’ve set the record straight.)

Finally, I re-read that lovely sentence written after great thought (I am sure) by Mr. Coehlo.  I moved on to the next sentence and then the next and so on. There was peace at last and my world was spinning at the right speed yet again. Happy and content, I was now deeply engrossed in my book.

The end? Definitely not… just a small scene left, I promise.

Yes, the bag was unzipped one last time. As I imagined all the crunchy, crispy, crumby and noisy packaged food imaginable in the world being retrieved from the great, big bag, I was let down yet again, as a small box appeared instead. Fortunately, I was disappointed only for just a few seconds. My girl’s hand overturned the box and brought out two small pieces of innocent looking rectangular white tablet-like elements and popped them into her harmless looking mouth. Chewing gum, what luck! And then the chewing began right into my ears, for now she had a great urge to look out the window over my shoulder as well!

One last time, our eyes met and this time the bond that had transformed into a shared smile moved to the next level in our newfound relationship – uncontrollable laughter and yes, we did sense all our co-passengers smiling pityingly at me, while my neighbour was oblivious and continued with the movement of her lower mandible while peering over my shoulder.

And so I had no choice but to shut my book, put it into my very own IT signature-style backpack and sit through the next 20 minutes or so to reach my destination, enjoying the sights and sounds of nature so close to me. I was blessed. Amen.

My Daughter... On Growing Up

V: Mama, you know how everyone says they want to be like this or that person when they grow up.

Me: Yes.

V: Do you know who I want to be like when I grow up?

Me: No. Tell me baby.

V: I want to be just me.

Me: (In my mind - Awww....)

When she was barely 2.5 years old. Now all of 10!

You know, when we were growing up everyone of us said we wanted to be like this or that person when we grow up. Guess what? We all grew up to be just us. Once expectations are set closer to reality, life should be less like a fight and more like a beautiful journey.