I'm guilty!

As I was beginning my morning meeting on a Wednesday , Arman walked in with his sister, crying. Unusual, because Arman had started to love school and would enjoy learning, unusual also because his mother hadn't come to drop him. As he entered class, I asked him why was he crying. He ignored my question and kept asking me, whether his mom or dad or someone from home will come to pick him up from school in the evening.

I assured him they would, but he wouldn't stop crying until I let him cry and continued with my morning meeting. Sometime later he got angrossed in the classroom activities and stopped crying.

In the recess, I took him on a walk around the school and asked him what was wrong. He said nothing. I kept trying to know what was wrong because I was sure something was extremely wrong. After a while he opened up. What he said got tears to my eyes and stabbed me inside.

'Didi yesterday I made a mistake, my mom got angry and she hit me, and she said I don't want a son like you, tomorrow I will leave you to school and not come to take you back'

'Arman does she do this all the time?'

'No Didi, but whenever she does, I feel she will really not come to take me back, didi what if she does not come today? Am I a bad son?' Tears rolling down his eyes.

No Arman, relax, she will come back, she is just angry, she loves you, she will definitely come to take you'

So many kids, including all of us, may have had similiar experiences like these. Do we as a parent or a teacher or even as a human ever think about these small things that affects a kid so much? Do we realise that these small little things, build up to damage the confidence, the feeling of security, of a child? Do we realise that this little kid might grow up and become the most insecure person we know? This little kid will have a huge inferiority complex, that will hold him back from being the best he can be? I ask myself these questions, and I feel guilty for saying whatever I said to a friend who was being stupid, because she wasn't sure if she should buy a expensive phone or save money for her grad school and she choose buying the expensive phone. I feel guilty for telling my mother she did not do anything to solve her problems in life. I feel guilty for shouting at a kid when he could not speak in a loud and clear voice. I feel guilty when I unknowingly made fun of that boy in my school who was the most quite and secluded person I have ever met.

I'm guilty.

Needs and Wants

“What is the point of this discussion?” I asked my mom in anger as the discussion on whether financial independence is a primary or a secondary quality in a potential groom. She obviously is of an opinion that it is very important for a successful marriage, but is it really that important? No, before you start guessing the background of my mother, let me tell you she comes from a well-educated, open-minded (as cliched as it may sound) Sindhi family, so much so that she was married off to a Gujarati boy very happily in the early 90s after dating him for good 7 years.

I don’t deny that money is important, but does that mean you can compromise on the understanding. I have seen couples earning lakhs together and yet so unhappy. Does money decide your happiness? She argues, you cannot knowingly jump into the fire. But maybe knowingly jumping will hurt a little lesser than getting a shock later. If there is no emotional attachment, no understanding, how do you think will you ever be able to earn to be happy? Earning money isn't easy, why? Because most of us don’t earn to live, we earn to survive, we earn because of a lot of external reasons. Society, People, Luxury, Peer pressure etc. And then we call this HAPPINESS. What are we really confused about? Definition of money, definition of earnings or definition of happiness? I wonder, as I think about all that I hear each day. Is being materialistic a cool thing these days? Why is there such a wide gap between poor and rich? Because we have created that rift, right? Poverty is when you can’t afford the basic things in life, and rich is when you can afford everything in life. But do we really need everything? NEED? Maybe our WANTS have taken over our happiness. We look for happiness in that one dinner we spend on in a luxurious hotel and check-in to show the world. We look for happiness in choosing to travel by flight where we can easily travel by train. We look for happiness when we buy imported cookies instead of those Parle-G biscuits. I don’t say, all this is bad. It sure isn’t but do these things decide how happy we are? They don’t. I don’t know how people without all these comforts of life survive but the belief that we will survive and remain happy without all these temporary things is real happiness. 

Hopelessly Hopeful

She lay down there, on her bed
You know how it is to struggle to keep your eyes open and close
At the same time?
Darkness and light.
It feels like you can't walk a step further nor a step behind.
She lay down there all alone, dreaming the real
Imaginations can cause harm, she never knew
The real was all a imagination come true
He walked in quite, lay besides her
Hand on her head, on her shoulder he had his head
She felt heavy in her head, like something unreal would hit her head
Her eyes wide open, she could feel the pain
Hopelessly hopeful as things always get
She gave her hand for him to rest