Month: May 2024

Have you been noticing the maddening Guwahati traffic. This city has no rules for driving, parking, walking or even standing.

No where in India ( any smart city) shall you find vehicles to right, vehicles to left, vehicles behind all in a sea of vehicles. To top it all, pedestrians often smartly raise an arm and cross the road when the signal has just turned green and you have started driving after a few minutes of waiting.

The question here is, why is everyone in such a rush? If you are maintaining a decent distance from the vehicle ahead of you why others barge in from another lane. If you are taking a left turn with your flasher blinking, why does a two wheeler cross you on your left and you thump with a adrenaline pumped heart beat.

With new flyovers, road widening lighting and policing nothing appears to ease traffic. It’s just perhaps the mind set of our people. Unless we have the time and attitude to be patient nothing will change. Let’s do some teaching of decency to our comrades. If even a small fraction of our educated people start a venture obviously many will benefit from. Every car/ two wheeler please be polite and patient. By crashing traffic rules and creating chaos on the road either by rash driving or irresponsible parking you are challenging your own peace of driving.

Since our roads are narrow and population is high it’s all the more important to work in symbiosis to make life easier by following rules. Unless our drivers, pedestrians, slow vehicles are willing to change their mindset from gatecrashing to civilised civic rules followers nothing can change.

A class of educated people sit together to frame civic rules and some talk about developed countries and their facilities. But the reality is no country can progress unless citizens have it in their mindset to abide by rules with no second thought.

Parking is an etiquette. Driving a fancy vehicle but parking irresponsibly reveals your uncivilised crude true nature.

It’s not any authority who can set this right. It’s us, YOU and ME who have to soak it in us that “this is our city and it’s our individual responsibility to make life liveable”

Dr Madhumita Priyadarshini Das

This is often a lesser discussed concept. However with every other family who are managing a home and raising kids, does anyone even for a thought imagine what it is to sail alone. Most people highlight their limitations when one parent is temporarily off line. But unless you run over the grill of balancing parenthood and work together it is not easily comprehendible. Humans are naturally created to be either a mom or a dad. A female child loves to play with a baby doll trying to be the mother and boys love cars and guns. This is of course not mandatory but when circumstances compel otherwise the sailing gets bumpy. It also perhaps depends upon the situation.

These days some youngsters by choice adapt single parenting and they follow their own strategy of accomplishing it. My highlight here is to share the major hurdles that I as a single mom encountered 20 years back when I had to manage two boys one in his early teens and another just 6 years old.

The 1st feeling is just a thunderous, fearful, sinking fear of uncertainty. There was always a castle of high hopes and aspirations nurtured over a decade of married life which got crushed in the blink of an eye. The initial few months is obviously managing grief and insecurities. It’s a very big challenge to set oneself back onto the rails and keep moving ahead. In the process of monitoring the mental health of children the mother in me forgot to address my own issues. I highly recommend every single parent who’s trying to face this challenge with a rage of love and promises, it’s extremely important to also care about all the mental and physical limitations that you encounter and not feel guilty about it as I once did. There was a time when I felt gripped with blameworthiness whenever I was tired at the end of a long day.

Now after over two long decades, yes I can reveal the rather ludicrous things I once did. I strongly believed that good food was only for my children. All my earnings was only for their rearing. I should never ever even dream of any personal priority. I am not too sure if the boys ever understood all my efforts and intentions. But looking back I feel one should never forget to love oneself.

The mountain of promises and commitments can be realised not just because you are working hard. It’s actually because your children also follow you. Such gifted and parentally challenged children have that igniting force to run towards their dreams.

Emotions like loneliness, love and simple desires of living got annihilated from my heart. I sometimes ask, would it have been possible to balance myself with all what was happening. Even today I am not sure.

It’s indeed a herculean task to live a normal life and also move on with grief and losses.

But certain facts are obviously more lucidly comprehensible now.

• If you are working hard finances fall in place

• If physical and mental health are taken care of, you can run the race

• Children learn values from what you do. Not from what you teach.
• leave certain decisions to this universe to which you are giving your best.
• Trust your children with their decisions.
• Never believe that they will forever depend on you.
• The sole purpose of parenting is to make children independent as early as possible.
• At the end of it all never believe that I will be a baggage for them to carry.
• Trust in destiny and keep floating as long as possible.
• Children obviously know your insecurities and they will hold when needed.
• Today looking retrograde and commenting is very easy compared to what it was when the days were charged with helplessness, fear, hopes and hard work.I came across so many people commenting with weird advice. But I am thankful that the courage in me kept me going valiantly. Simple skills like meeting a teacher in school, helping children with their daily issues, being an earning parent and a caring mother. I swear is something not every soul would appreciate.
• All said and done. I understand no one nurtures kids to be applauded. We enjoy the beautiful journey through all the bumps. Every day is divine. All we need to be thankful that we got a chance to do it. Now my only hope is as long as possible, let me deliver my dues to this universe so I can reach a shore of peace.

This busy world that keeps us running round the clock sometimes pauses to ask a question. Where are we headed for ? When will most of us feel done and dusted ? What’s our destination upto ?

The simple answer to most of us is that we are moving on in an inertia where our pursuit for the wrap up to ring down the curtain is undefined.

As young adults we were headed for a career, next most people get busy with family and priorities around our loved ones. We work initially to get the ship of life sailing and when we reach the mid sea we dream higher and unless intercepted with misfortune the goal gets misty in the horizon. As success ushers people envisage bigger fantasies. It’s at this time when it’s important to ask oneself, what did I initially conceive about life and now what am I trying to pursue.

It’s absolutely pragmatic to upgrade and bear aloft one’s achievements but the question is where to ? and also when upto ?

It’s one life that we are all living . We need to work, achieve, give, relish and also take back our share of bliss. The journey of the busy race sometimes blurs the purpose with the pace. The few who know when to hold up, slow down, introspect and be in peace with this universe are the few blessed ones.

The aura of material attainments and triumph of social positions are perhaps alluring. At the same time that beautiful delineation between to do and done needs to be drawn. Apart from running for herculean achievements to fill our basket of name and fame it’s edifying to perceive that life has beauty beyond.

The small fountains of peace in every situation in life are often ignored until a very late stage of maturity. There is so much happiness in making another person smile. That wild flower in the bush and the drop of dew on the grass in your backyard. The neatly set kitchen, that half empty wardrobe. The dishes done and the laundry bag empty. Some may feel these are paltriness. But no if you can feel happy with these usually insignificant things then peace is what you have perceived.

The journey continues as preset. But the traveller which is each of us can choose to be happy or forever thirsty. The baggage of good and bad is usually equal at the end of it all. What matters is how we introspect what we have on our platter. Honestly meeting your own soul and counting all the positive energy it holds can give each of us a wonderful feeling of fulfilment.

Life is ultimately how you interpret your own equation of search and found in terms of pains taken to reach holy grails.