Some Things Will Never Change

“When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world/ I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change the nation/ When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town/ I couldn’t change the town too/ Now as an old man I tried to change my family, but to no avail/ I then realized that only thing I can change is myself and if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact my family, the town and the nation.”- Rabi Israel Salanter.

 While taunting man’s helplessness to achieve what he wants in life, this poem also underscores the impossibility of changing certain things in the world… things that remain immutable to change… things that go past human efforts.

 Some of my friends are always switching jobs and going in for new, green pastures. At the time of their migration to new companies, they would blame their old ones being regressive and dead to the changes happening around them. The new companies my friends hop in suddenly catch their fancy and I hear them speak highly of them. But, their fancy is a short- lived phenomenon. For, I know they would quit the new concerns too calling their bosses addled headed morons and the company lacking in long range visions.

So fastidious are my friends that they go on switching their jobs and adducing reasons for it. A deep study of their behavior may reveal that they have sort of mind-set that refuse to appreciate the goodness in other things or persons if they go against their pre-conceived ideas and thoughts. With the ‘I-am-always-okay’ thoughts ever filling in our minds, we built an imaginary world in ourselves and weigh the real world with our so- called self- worth.

 Like nature, we should have equipoise in life. We should appreciate that while there are many things in life that are liable to change, still there are some things that are immune to change. My friends who are switching companies are well qualified. They have all the know-how and expertise in their respective fields. However, they are not ready to adopt themselves to the atmosphere of a company, which requires a change of mind-set. They quit their jobs feeling it infra dig to work with companies that are incompatible to their self-worth. If they had been a little patient, they could have brought desired changes in their workplaces.

 ‘I am always infallible, doing things right,’ is the thought that drives many of us when we pitch in to change things around us. While we perk up our ears to hear the ideas and thoughts of our contemporaries, we never open our minds either to accept them or evaluate their merits. Unfortunately, we expect such opening of minds from others when we preach our notions and thoughts. It is a sort of ‘I am okay, but you aren’t okay’ mind-set that refuses to see the worthiness in others.

‘My mom doesn’t understand me; my family doesn’t understand me; no one in my office hears what I say; and the society too is not ready to travel with my thoughts and ideas,’ are some of the monologues we continuously indulge in all through our life without realizing that it is we who need to change and not the society.

 Why do we indulge is such mawkish monologues? Why people including our family and friends don’t understand us? Why the society is lukewarm and looks askance at us when we try to change things? This happens because we always sit in a high pedestal of vanity and expect the world to rally around us and adapt to what we preach or ignore what we impeach.

There were a lot of leaders in our midst who changed many wrong courses in the world. The world accepted their course corrections without resistance as the leaders did it smoothly without the air of ‘I-know-all’. They did not swim against the current; they rather went with the stream and turned it to their way at a right time. So, success becomes elusive to those who try to force feed others with their thoughts and opinions, however good they may be.

 We cannot bring changes in the world without changing our mindset which only reflects our pride-self and know-all-character. We’d better remember that the world will never for once fall at our feet and adapt to the change we preach. Rather, it is we who should turn our thoughts to the course of the world. For, course correction, like charity, should begin at home.

 “My god, give me powers and prowess to change those things that are susceptible to change. If not, make my mind more pliable to accept such things that are immune to change,” has been the prayers of those who want to sail smoothly through the hard waters of life.

Image courtesy: Google

                                     

Embracing the Past – Part I

Déjà vu sensations apart, she became a bit euphoric when she got down from the bus and stepped into her home town… a town where she was born, bred and lettered… a town that had witnessed her childhood idiosyncrasies and intellectual feats.’ Gosh, I’m back in my place… my home town after ages. It’s going to be a great rendezvous with my past,’ she thought, slipping into whirlpool of emotions.
 

 The evening sea-breeze had set in already and she inhaled a whiff of it with a flourish. The salty -breeze had its aroma in tact – the scent of the home town. She giggled - her eyes reflected an overwhelming joy of having at last come to her hearth to embrace her long-last past.

 The new grandiose bus-station - until now it was only a silhouette shot due to drizzling - was the first object that came to her view soon after she landed her native town. It seemed quite a new structure, disclosed the marvels of modern engineering. However, she sulked to see the new bus-station looked odd, awesome and alien. She thought of the old one, which though was crammed and indolent, gave her a sort of belongingness. Its quietude, its not being so ostentatious was so remarkable that it had left undeletable marks in her memory.

 She looked out for the vast playground that had nestled by the side of the old bus-station. It was one of the cherished landmarks of the town - her all time favorite hang-out too. If you could rewind the ‘Time’ a bit, you could see her aggressively playing Badminton with her friends; you could also notice the ebb and flow of emotions on her face when she was playing a losing game with balls going past her racket. The playground was no where to be seen. Instead, there sprang up a sturdy mall in its place wiping out a familiar ambience… cutting the chords of her connectivity to her roots.

 She got miffed, started walking toward ‘Hotel Minerva ’- a three star hotel where she had earlier booked a suit for her. Exhausted by the arduous bus journey she had had all through the day, she plopped into the bed staring at the ceiling full of cob-webs and peelings of paint. She woke up in the mid-night with a bang when the sea-breeze with a new momentum rattled the unfastened window doors. She didn’t close the windows - she had no mind to do so, for the sea-breeze was familiar to her- her old acquaintance. The breeze sneaked through the window blinds, soothed her frayed body. It had its old rhythm in tact, stroked her hair like her mother. ‘Welcome back home, my child’, she heard the breeze whispering into her ears, but she knew it was only hallucination of an excited mind.

 It was late in the morning when she started her expedition up the town - she grinned as the very thought of it gave her exhilaration and a sort of euphoria. She chose the main-thoroughfare, walked thorough the pedestrian pavement stinking with uncleared garbage. The road was clean, but was getting strangulated by traffic snarls. High-rise buildings accosted the road on either side. They looked fresh, painted with potpourri of colors. Though they defined new sky-lines with grand ground plans, they were a far cry from the old settings. The buildings were strange, simply the outbursts of speculative minds, but lacked the soul… the homeliness.

 She sighed, astonished when she saw the whole town looked quaint, not even a blur of the old one. It had razed down the past, stood on its grave wearing a halo of modernity. The roads were freshly laid, but still groaned under heavy traffic, making the old tranquility a victim. The old tar-topped roads flanked by avenue trees came to her mind.

 There was not much of traffic then. On her way back home from school, she and her friends would vie with one another in picking up the tiny, olive-shaped neem fruits that had fallen down from the trees and littered on the road. Troupes of Mynas, Koels, Squirrels and Crows were seen perching on tree tops and their chirping were music to her ears.’ Where had gone the trees? ‘Who had shooed away the birds’. She wilted seeing the bare road without a single tree. The roads were as flat as the modern human minds. ‘Is this the road where I rode my bi-cycle once?’ She asked herself, paused and moved further on her way.

 ‘The new avatar of the town is perceptible everywhere even in the lanes and alleys’,she thought and looked out for some prominent landmark spots and buildings she once knew and grew up with: the square well [ its water was always potable] at the corner of the East Car street, the small, but prominent ‘Anand Vinayaka temple’, an old antique choultry where the tourists took refuge, her favorite cloth store, a road-side restaurant where her dad and she would take their evening coffee, the manually operated railway gate at end of the South street and above all the Balakrishna theatre[ a small structure roofed with asbestos sheets] where she had watched all most all the Sridevi films.

 Among the precious landmarks, AVT [Anand Vinayaka Temple] was on the top of her itinerary. The temple was in every inch part of her childhood. Those days she would frequent the temple both mornings and evenings and help up-keeping it. Come, Vinayaka Chaturti, she along with her friends would sweep clean the temple, mop its floors with cow dung and draw beautiful Kolams [beautiful diagrams created by using colored rice flour] on the prahars of the temple. She was so devoted to the Amanda Vinayaka that, even after her migrating to Chennai, she would have the elephant god coming to her dreams and calling out to her to visit His temple.

[To be continued]

Image Courtesy: Google

Something Will Never Change!

 “When I was a young man, I wanted to change the world/ I found it was difficult to change the world, so I tried to change the nation/ When I found I couldn’t change the nation, I began to focus on my town/ I couldn’t change the town too/ Now as an old man I tried to change my family, but to no avail/ I then realized that only thing I can change is myself and if long ago I had changed myself, I could have made an impact my family, the town and the nation.”- Rabi Israel Salanter.

 While taunting man’s helplessness to achieve what he wants in life, this poem also underlines the impossibility of changing certain things in the world… things that remain immutable to change… things that go past human efforts. Our idea of bringing social changes is always laudable, but it is childish to anticipate the world to accept our ideas of change easily without questions and tune it to our thought frequencies.

 Some of my friends are always switching companies and going in for new, green pastures. At the time of their migration to new companies, they blame their old ones being regressive and unresponsive to changes happening around them. The new companies upon which my friends hop in suddenly catch their fancies and I hear them speak high of them as if they are the companies’ newly appointed brand ambassadors. However, their new-find enthusiasm and fancy is a short- lived phenomenon… a flash in the pan. For, I know they would quit the new concerns too calling their bosses addled heads and the company lacking in long range visions.

 So fastidious are my friends that they go on switching their jobs and adducing reasons for it. A deep study of their behavior may reveal that they have sort of mind-set that refuse to appreciate the goodness in other things or persons if they go against their pre-conceived ideas and thoughts. With the ‘I-am-always-okay’ thoughts ever filling in our minds, we built an imaginary world in ourselves and weigh the real world with our so- called self- worth.

 Like nature, we should have equipoise in life. We should appreciate that while many things in life that are liable to change, still there remain some things that are immune to change. My friends who are switching companies are well qualified, but still quit their jobs feeling it infra dig to work with companies that are incompatible to their self-worth; they think that the concerns they are working for are not up to their expectations and that the people therein don’t buy my friends’ ideas and thoughts.

 

‘My mom doesn’t understand me; my family doesn’t understand me; none in my office hears what I say; and the society too is not ready to travel with my thoughts and principles,’ are some of the monologues we continuously indulge in all through our life without realizing that it is we who need to change and not the society. The thought that ‘we are always infallible, doing things right’ leads us to chaos.

 Why do we indulge in such mawkish monologues? Why people including our family and friends don’t understand us? Why the society becomes lukewarm and looks at us askance when we try to change things? This happens because we always sit in a high pedestal of vanity and anticipate the world to rally around us and adapt to what we preach or ignore what we impeach. There were many leaders in our midst who changed many wrong courses in the world. They did not swim against the current; they rather went with it and turned it to their way at a right time. So, success becomes elusive to those who try to force feed others with their thoughts and opinions, however good they may be.

 ‘My god, give me powers and prowess to change those things that are susceptible to change. If not, make my mind more pliable to accept such things that are immune to change,’ should be our prayers. For, it is to be realized that things not remaining in our orbit of control and influence will never get changed. Any attempt to change them is meaningless and will go against the law of nature. ‘Is change is the law of nature or the rule of man’, we should ponder.

 We cannot bring changes in the world without changing our mindset that only reflect our pride-self and know-all-character. We’d better remember that the world will never for once fall to our feet and adapt to the change we preach. Rather, it is we who should turn our thoughts to the course of the world. For, course correction, as charity, should begin at home.

 “Life can either be accepted or changed. If it is accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted.” What’s your take?

Image courtesy: Google