Maybe its time...

Maybe its time to believe 
and have leap of faith

Maybe its time to say Goodbye
and embrace new blessings

Maybe its time to take a new path
and seek more of ourselves

Maybe its time to open up
and celebrate life

It is time..

Change the way you Decide

When we were young, we were asked by our family, friends, and teachers…”What do you like to become?” “I like to become a doctor, engineer, lawyer, piolet, teacher...” and so on…

But do you feel that’s what you really want to become? We do know our decision keeps changing based on the influence of our family, friends, relatives and so called ‘society’.

Research said 80 percent of the people do not like the job they were doing. Why is that so?

What makes us incapable in deciding our own decisions whether it’s our own career, money matters, and relationships...why?

When we look closer to our decisions we had made before, its mostly out of decisions based out of our fear, our ego and the influence of our family, friends, and the environment around us. 

Fear: Most of the parents may not recognize the importance of teaching their children based on taking their own decisions and supporting those decisions. We do understand parents are protective about their children in some aspect but at the end, your child will face lot of regrets before he or she starts living. Instead, let your children face ‘fear’ instead of protecting them from it. Give them an opportunity to get out of the comfort zone. Be supportive about it, instead of saying ‘No’. If you have any fears, push yourself to get rid of it. We have many misunderstandings on our capabilities due to fear. Start analyzing where did this fear come from? For example, John got stage fear. Maybe he got an embarrassing moment when he was on the stage at the age of 4 or 5. And doesn’t want to face the stage again. Only way he could get rid of the stage fear is going out to stage... more. Trust me, fear just happens maybe like a 1 or 2 minute and the rest is history if you overcome it.

Influences and pressure: Decisions based on influences from others and pressure can mislead us in taking wrong decisions. If your intuition says something, follow it without second thought. It’s quite difficult to cope up in today’s competitive world but we need to teach our children, friends, and family about the beauty of life and we need to cherish each moment instead of wasting our life with someone else’s expectations, influences or pressure. 

Ego: We may not feel like promoting a person because we feel inferior in front of him or her, but that person can help us internally to make the company goals successful. We may work in a high paid job just to satisfy our ego or ego of our parents, but we won't enjoy our work completely, leading to dissatisfaction and regret. Most of our life decisions are based on ego. If our voices in our mind can be quieten down through meditation, it will help us to touch our inner being, and not our ‘ego’. Through meditation, we will become self-aware of our decisions, whether we are taking advantage of someone else or improving life of others. If we haven’t taken right decisions in our life, at the end we are the ones who is going to suffer more, and not just us... but to others as well. 

So, start changing the way you decide things in your life now... because life is too short. At the end of the day it is you and only you that you’re leading your life, no one else. As Tony Robbins said, “It is in your decision that your destiny is shaped”…

The Polar Bear

Have you ever felt so numb in your life that you just want to run away, leaving behind all the troubles that you have caused and stay away from reality?! If not, you shouldn't. Because that's the worst part- you will not grow.

I was not sure what happened that day but while I was walking down the hallway of my building where I stay, there is sudden urge inside me to stop all that I'm doing at present because nothing is what I wanted to do or I wanted to be.

As I was walking down tiredly after work, I thought to myself why don't these doors in the hallway over here lead me to a place where I wanted to be. Do you remember the scene from The Matrix Movie where Neo walks into an endless hallway of doors..well that's the same feeling I had...except that it doesn't go green or computer codes running in front of me.

I can actually quit on what I'm doing at any point in time. I can say 'No'... I CAN......Maybe it's a sudden call inside me that I should stop wasting my time. And yes it will lead me to a point where I need to jump into a pit with full of doubts and fear- a paranoid stage. Maybe that's how I'll know what I really like to do with my life...

But then comes the big white frizzy polar bear who keeps on hugging me whenever I turn away from it. It made me feel so good and comfortable that I would melt into its arms. From my childhood till date, its always being there around me. At home, in school or outside. At times, I need to let it go but eventually I come back finding it. It's a hard time relationship with my polar bear. Well, my polar bear allows me to dream bigger but wouldn't let it chase it, even if it is tiny than its fur.



I stopped walking in between in the hallway and realized something. I'm not taking any risks....

Before entering into my home, I could hear my mom's favorite serial playing out loud on T.V. and I hear it always whenever I come.  Soap operas are my mom's favorite. She watches a lot and I never understand what makes it so appealing to see such kind of serials that doesn't make sense in our daily life except it kills time.

"Di, electricity bill vanutund... da avide tableil vechtund...." mom said. I looked at the bill and smiled. Never saw 4 digit number on the bill payment section and I barely have that much money to pay after my college fees.

"Ende kayil paise onnum illa adikyan,.." She frowned. That's the decent roar from reality or at least a reminder of such things if I ever dream of quitting my job.

Sometimes it seems to be difficult to handle family responsibilities and our goals together. But the people who fought all this are the ones that we need to learn lessons from especially those who fought their own polar bear.

A tick in a clock is a call to the universe that a second has just passed, and you have finished reading this sentence in just Five seconds. Probably within that 5 seconds, almost 500,000 chemical reactions has taken place in every cell of your body, sustaining your life in each second is crucial and that an average of 1 child dies due to starvation in every 5 seconds... Irony isnt it?

Most of the people say that life flashes before your eyes when you're near to your end. This happens of your adrenaline response, making to slow the time. That's why most of the people say that time stay still when you kiss someone whom you love the most.

According to the brilliant minds, time is a dimension where you cannot see, touch or feel, but rather a concept that is created in our mind to take note the events here in our universe. A dimension where it is hard to define its true existence. But Buddhist says "Time is an illusion".

 Usually a person judge someone by his or her past. But often we forget how these people turn out to be a better person by facing all the difficulties they have hurdle and fought back, and all the mistakes they have learnt from their past. It is irony to know that some people wont have another chance after they have done something wrong, and at times we forget to forgive... a lesson that is being rarely taught nowadays.We never know where our life goes. At times it scares us when we think about our future. But worrying it most of the time doesn't help us completely. It just takes away your present moment that is to be cherished, and we rarely embrace it.

We end up thinking about our past or future and not living in the present moment. Most of us anyhow do not experience much of the present moment because we worry about our future or get caught with our past for some reason. Nobody knows the power of being at the present moment.The truth being told by them is that living in the present moment can heal you enough, can make you understand the true essence of being 'right here right now'. It gives you an escape from negativity. Thousands of thoughts run in our mind. That is how our brain functions and we cannot escape from it, unless we strive to do meditation. But the simple meditation that Buddhist can describe is running your conscious at this moment. Right now just feel your breath, the heartbeat, hear the sound of the fan that is running under your ceiling. Just feel this moment...

Time shows us the solution, and it is in our hands whether to follow it or not. Some people become patient and wait for the right moment to come or create the right moment by just doing a little bit of hard work, which you may end up drawing the things you want in your life quicker.

How does time define us who we are? Proving yourself within a set of time can be challenging. In job interviews, auditions, selling a story or your script to your publishers etc. It can turn your world upside down in just matter of seconds no matter how big or small it will be.

But how does time can heal our minds and emotions? Well the fact is, its not the time. It is you. How you take and accept..is the strength that most of the people need.

The Table Story

It was the end of July and everyone in U.A.E was just waiting to finish their work and get back to home because tomorrow Eid starts.  I was doing my usual work at the office- checking mails, making reports, staring at the clock when will it be 4'O clock (oh jeez that's the toughest part).

If you are thinking my office is like a well build furnished furniture with latest high speed laptops, and big cabinets for each employees, a separate meeting room, a modern suite toilet, and good yummy foods from the canteen, then your perfectly wrong. My office is like a shop. It's small- no canteen, no modern suite toilet, just a small nest with little division, a division where we can see each other what we are doing. My place is just situated at the corner of the room where no one can see me from outside. It’s the best place that I have chosen. A better place for money handling jobs, a less chance for someone to see what you're doing and also a good place to sleep.

Somehow I did have a good feeling that day, because the weather was awesome. It was cloudy but humid, and it’s so pleasant to see during summer. I could rarely see such climates during summer, but alas it happened, and I should thank the universe for making it beautiful.

Since I do not have much work to do, I was simply browsing internet. I usually go through buzzfeed just to get ideas, tricks, gossips....fun platform to be there when you’re bored or doing nothing. No one is there at the office and that's how most of my time is spent.

I know, I know and it's horrible. Trust me don't ever join in a company where you will be spending most of the time alone. The good stuff is that no one will be monitoring you unless you don't have cameras around, but the bad stuff- you will get weirder and weirder day by day. Maybe a quality time with yourself is good, but seriously no…not so long.

As I was going through articles through internet, I heard the door opening. For instance, I thought it would be one of my colleagues, but no it wasn't. It was a lady.

She was short, pretty and had a good smile.  She came inside and asked for a favor. She wanted me to keep the table. Since she is short and couldn't carry on her own, she asked if she can keep the table inside at my shop, so that her husband could pick it up later when he comes back from work.

Without any second thought, I said yes. She went outside and came back with the table and kept inside near the entrance. She asked when will the office be closed and asked my name. After answering to her questions, she gave a relief smile and said 'Thank you dear' and left instantly.

I looked at the table. It was white with brown borders, cute little tiny drawers on the left side and a small open space on the right side.

I went back to my seat thinking what I should do next. Should I throw away the old bills? Nah, no time. Should I do the maintenance report? Nah, it would be nice if I do it on the next day.  Yes you can see it for yourself, I'm a big procrastinator.

It was 3:15 p.m and I didn’t see anybody coming over to office to pick up the table. I realized suddenly.. I haven’t asked any details about her. Who is she? What’s her name? Where does she live? Did she just say that her husband will pick up before 3:00 or 4: 00 p.m. I do not have a single info about her.

My mind started to crawl with thoughts on asking the worst questioning part- What if???

What if the husband comes to office after I leave? What if he comes the next week, should I still keep it in the office? What if he doesn't shows up at all for a month and if someone throws the table out of the office, and if the husband comes back and asks for it, what will I say?

At that point, I realized I was so in trouble. I cannot sit and wait patiently for that man to come. I was walking around the office, and turning to the table to see the clock. It was 3:30 p.m, and still no sign of him.

Somehow I wanted to deviate my negative thoughts. I started listening to songs, checking emails and believe that he will come before I leave.

It was 3:45, not even a single bird pass through in front of my office. I have no other idea as to what shall I do next. Only thing I can do is to wait, wait and wait…I always kept looking out the door every single minute. I started to ask myself as to why did I allow her to do that? What made me to do this? How can I be so stupid for not asking anything about her?

As these thoughts started to creep up, I decided that I had to call my boss, and talk about it. I can visualize myself for being cursed by him, but I had no choice. I just need to accept my mistake and take responsibility for what I have caused.

I called him with a little bit of hesitation. My boss took the phone and asked what the matter is. I didn’t begin my story very well, but somehow he followed me and asked if I had taken any details about this person. I could feel the heat around me. I just have to pull my dumb mask and show it that I was stupid enough for not asking anything.

What happens next is like this- a huge elephant hit the ground, made the world tumble around, wrecking every single thing into smaller and smaller pieces, and putting a crap on it. I have nothing else to say but to hear his sayings and enlighten my mind with ‘THE FUCK ARE YOU THINKING??!’

As I was listening to his ground-breaking words, I noticed a man coming towards the shop. He opened the door, and looked around for something. He was short, cute face and had a beautiful smile. I hanged up my boss. (Wow..who didnt do that?, But later on I called him to tell the good news)

I asked the man,‘How can I help you?’

He said ‘My wife kept a table over here, can I take it?’

As he said those lines, the only word that it ringed in my ears was ‘Table’.

I bursted out with relief.  I said, ‘I was waiting for you.’

He gave me a smile and said sorry for keeping me wait. He took the table, and pushed outside and looked at me and said sorry again, in his deepest respectful way. I couldn’t say anything else but to smile back again and said ‘that’s okay’.

Now you must be thinking, what am I trying to say from this story?

When you help a person, you can actually feel greatness in you after you received their thanks that come from bottom of their heart. In today’s world, we lack such helping mentality because of what we see around us- theft, cheating, killing, and all those bad deed that we created. With that vision, most of the people are not ready to do favor or to help someone specially those who needs the most.

I’m also a pessimist, thinking ways of me getting into trouble with that table. I’m not saying you should open hands wide and accept things whoever comes up to you. For your safety, you will do what’s best for you, but you should not completely deny someone’s favor. The end result is what you really need to go through. It is just a beautiful feeling, a feeling where you love yourself even more.

For those who have hard times on themselves, start helping and make people happy around you. You should do this in not expecting any return. It’s like a karma- what goes around comes around.

The Great Cat Massacre

The Great Cat Massacre was written by Robert Darnton, an American cultural historian, who is a leading expert in knowing about 18^th century of France. The book, ‘The Great Cat Massacre: And other episodes in French Cultural history’ was published by Vintage in February 12^th, 1985. The Great Cat Massacre story is viewed as a primary source as Robert Darnton has executed perfectly about the real situations faced by the people of the late 1730s in France. In this book, Robert Darnton tells a story of a French print shop, which was run during the late 1730s, at Rue Saint- Severin, by a master and his wife. With them, they have apprentice printers working for them. In this story, the author was trying to show the hardships of the apprentice printers. Jerome and Leville were two apprentice printers who had trouble times in working with their master. The mistress adores cats and loves animals. The master and his wife owned 25 cats and one of the cats named La grise (the gray’) was the favorite cat of the mistress.

The apprentice workers live in a shack, where they consider it as their own palace. They work all day long and have no proper food to eat or sleep. They eat the leftovers of the Master’s or the cat’s plate. They couldn’t sleep properly because of the cold outside at night as well as the noise of the cats howling. Leville, with his inborn talent to mimic the sounds of the cats, made his Master not to sleep several days. Finally, Leville has successfully made his Master to decide to kill the cats. The apprentice printers were able to convince that all cats must be killed because they were the agents of the witchcrafts and that they had to kill mistress’s favorite cat La grise also. Nicholas Contant, one of the apprentices in the print shop, said that the funniest event that was ever witnessed during his time was the mass killing and torturing of several cats.

The Massacre story showed us three pictures- the social hierarchy, the beliefs of witchcrafts and the social behavior of the apprentices. Social hierarchy started off in the late 18^th century, where wealth and income are the key indicators to determine people’s position in the society. Here in this story, the apprentice printers were considered to be the low class and their Master and his wife as the high class society. The living condition of the apprentice printers is so poor comparing to the condition of the cats. Besides, the cats are given proper care by the Master and his wife and lived better than the apprentice printers. Such irony situation has showed us and makes us realize the real situation of workers or the low class people of the 18^th century in France. The upper class of the society were considered to be the most religious and superstitious people. Because of this, the apprentice printers were able to convince their master to believe that cats are also the part of the witchcrafts.

Many people believe in witchcrafts in the early modern Europe. Due to the fear of evil spirits, many people were executed or burned till death, believing that they are the real witches or are the part of the witchcrafts. In this story, the Master misunderstood that the cats were the agents of the witchcrafts. Throughout our history, we can see that different culture has different conception about cats. In France, black cats are referred to as magician cats. According to them, they believe that the black cats can bring good luck or charm to owners who treat their cat with proper care and respect. But in India and Egypt, when a black cat comes across your path, it means that it will bring bad luck for you. Some people in those days say that a cat’s howl is a connotation of witchcraft, rape, seduction and murder.

Carnival is said to be a time for young people to cut the cats and make it as charivaris to mock cuckolds, husbands who got beaten up by their wives and brides who got married with a person younger than their age and so on. During carnival, the cats were passed around by young people and cut their fur to make it howl. This amuses them. Such amusement can be seen in today’s world like the bullfighting, the cockfighting and the dog fighting. The social behavior of apprentice workers towards the cats was not normal. The reason as to why they see the massacre of cats funny is because the apprentice printers were able to play prank with the Master. The Master had totally believed on what they had said and this made their Master as their base of the joke.

                                                               

We live in the same world and share same stories of the past, yet we have some commonality on our human nature with the people of the past, and it may or may not be good for us, once we know the history.

Árbol de la esperanza, mantente firme

The ‘tree of hope’ was painted by Frida Kahlo, a Mexican painter. She is best known for her self portraits. One of her self portraits was the ‘tree of hope’ painting which she had done in 1946. She learned painting by herself and she was sick for many years after she met a bus accident at the age of 18. She suffered severe injuries, which includes her broken collar bone, broken ribs and pelvis, eleven fractures in her right leg with dislocated right foot and dislocated shoulder. Even though she had recovered her injuries after three months, she had relapses and was bedridden the whole time. Because of it, she was not able to conceive a baby, leaving her more depressed.

When I looked at the painting for the first time, I saw two women in the portrait, where one is wounded with a deep cut on her back, lying on the hospital gurney, while the other one beside her is another woman who is wearing a beautiful red dress. She looks peaceful and calm, and is seated next to her. The painting has two sides- the day side and the night side. Looking at the day side, it shows the reality of the wounded woman. She has got a very deep long cut from her back and it looks like she is suffering severe pain from it. She has to lie in her bed in such a way that the wound shouldn't touch any surface which includes her dress and blanket and has to stay half naked until her wound gets healed. The surroundings on the day-side looked very hot and dry, and that indication is clear when I saw the land, which looks like it is experiencing a drought. When I looked more closely on the day-side, I could sense that she is sweating, maybe through her pain or the environment around her. At the end of her hair, it looks like her hair is half soaked and it is maybe by her sweat that made it appeared like that. Looking at the wound deeply, I feel the blood and sweat seems to blend together and is flowing down on her back, making it more tickling for her, and couldn't rub off because it will hurt her more. So she has to bear all this until her wound gets healed. This was the disturbing part of her portrait.    

Looking at the night side, the atmosphere looks rather cool and the woman is wearing red dress holding a flag and a belt, which is supposedly to be the corset. The red color used in her dress is to show power or the strength to overcome the difficulty and pain faced by her. She holds a flag with a Spanish saying ‘Árbol de la esperanza, mantente firme’, which means ‘tree of hope, stay firm’. It looks like the woman is not ready to give up because there is a hope that something better is going to happen to the other woman beside her (which is she herself). On the whole, the woman on the daylight looks uncomfortable to see because of the pain she goes through, whereas at the night side, the woman looks very much strong and alive.

Frida Kahlo used warm and cool colors to signify the warmth of the day and the coolness at night respectively. She used red, yellow and orange colors for the daylight. For night she used cool colors like blue that recede on the background and warm colors also that comes in front of the picture, like her dress are painted in red and cheeks in yellow-red. She also used complementary colors like yellow and dark green together to highlight the upper part of her dress. The red dress worn in the painting is Tehuana. Tehuana is a traditional Mexican dress. “According to legend, Tehuana women were the real figures of authority in their society, and Kahlo’s wearing of such outfits was a demonstration of strength and will.”

A painting can express someone’s ideas, emotions, past stories and it can be communicated to the audience. In this painting, Frida was expressing her inner emotions after she met the bus accident, leaving her bedridden for few months. Even though she was sick and weak, she was strong from inside. She was hoping that she will become the same old person before the accident. Yet, her fate has changed once she has got relapses. But then, she couldn't stop living. She decided to paint from her bed itself with the help of her lap easel, which was given by her mother. Most of the portraits she made got some linked with her emotions after the bus accident like Broken Column (1944), Henry Ford hospital (1932), the bus (1929), and the Accident (1926), where she shared similar experience like the tree of hope painting.

From the portrait, I feel that the word ‘hope’ is very important in each one of our lives. Some say hoping too much can make you self-depress at the end. Well yes it does, but I feel it is necessary to do it so as it is the only thing that makes us move forward. Every human being does hope for something or someone and making it successfully is the real bliss we experience in our life. We always hope for something better when we are living on our darkest days and it is easier to loose it when one doesn't counts on it.

On the whole, the painting tree of hope is really beautiful yet a heartbreaking work, and more than that I like the way she inspired us and make us believe that life doesn't end there, it can be go on when one has the ‘hope to live’ and eventually she did proved herself to us through her paintings.