'Do I deserve this?'

Restrictions, yes. Exclusion, no.

I understand that one has to yield to get yield.
What's that? You don't believe in such compromises?
Well, then I'd say...you have double standards.
I had them too. What and how much is for me to know and reform.
Just look at yourself, then tell me if (like me) you don't.
Just look at the course of your own actions.
Did you never lie in order to persecute me?
When you came back, did we ever talk about my mother's death?
Did you ever challenge those double standards of mine by which I left the dead with their anger?

Or was it too easy to decide that I wanted your money.
Or was it too easy to never again face police stations, just call some high-up police contacts and have the cops visit and threaten me? In the course of which, they advised me to give up on reuniting with my wife and daughter and move on; that my looks didn't show my age (in a veiled reference to how I was still 'eligible') and in the end, take 500 from me after making me speak on the phone to Hari Gidwani, former cricketeer, respected member of Indian society and father of Radha Gidwani who married me without his knowldege and the complicity of her mother when all of us found out that she was already five months pregnant.
Or was it too easy to abuse me and my dead while denying my right to see my daughter from her tenth month of age and till date of this post.
Or was it too easy to leave me and stay with Hari Gidwani when I was jobless at the time and claim physical mental and financial torture after six months of no responses to my calls, mails and visits. Oh yeah, the visits where the guard at the gate was told that I was not to be allowed inside when I came to announce I had a good job.
Or was it too easy to to spurn all my approaches with sheer abuse. Abuse to which I reacted when I realized that my employment status or my bank balance weren't the reason to lie and take back your and the baby's things by telling me that I had to get a job before saying anything. I believed you but it was just 'something to say' so that I wouldn't create a scene. That it was internal family decision to mete out your brand of personal 'justice.'

Of course, it was too easy to deny any sight of my daughter who has since started talking and walking and whose single birthday I have not witnessed on the basis of the fact that you are paying for her upbringing. Now, if you won't let me share in her life by saying I haven't spent anything on her; while at the same time doing your best to kick me out of her life all together, you still need to be pointed at double standards!
Of course, you proved that possession is indeed, nine-tenths of the law. What am I supposed to do? I am not going to hurt you and consequently her. I am not going to kidnap her in any form, not since the way you tricked me with your sugar-coated approach ('You do realize that the baby needs her clothes and things.'). Nor can I give her as much in the ruins of what my life is at the end of all these circumstances where I had no one, no money and no wealthy or visible family structure around me. All that went to pieces after the first time you left me after a fight where you called your father and he tried to get me arrested on a false dowry charge. Better she, Lavanya, grows up with her surviving set of grandparents and mother, well-fed and lied to about her father. My family aspirations are dead since you two left. 
Of course, you are hoping my pride and my habits will kill me before you have to deal with any comebacks in the future. Of course, you left me to do to myself, most of the things you cannot. But you know what? I have rehabilitated myself. I won't drink myself to death, nor am I going to endlessly abuse you. I will exist, always, as mud in your eye, an eventual reminder of a world that does not end, people who can be bent and forced but won't stay silent. Since now I have come to realize that I am not like you. I am not going to do the same things you do, just to retaliate. Come to think of it...now picture this, your father's team looses and you are in the stands facing jeering opposition fans. What would you do? May I tell you? You will do what you have learned and what you did to me, shout just enough abuse back and leave. Well, the only reason you have to continue to abuse me is that you fear what I might stand for. Not that your 'fathers team' team has lost. In fact, you guys win. I choose to give in to keep myself alive in the prayer of a different tomorrow.
You wouldn't understand. You will think the world is like who you are, somebody who has to constantly fight to keep what they own because there are others who are bent on taking it away. Well, if you ever loose everything like I did, you might understand that this life is actually a dream within a dream, but more about that in another unrelated (to this) post.  

 

IAMNOTPISSED

IAMDIS-EN-FRANCHISED!

You can make Agreements that:

Protect your rights only     or     Respect your spouse's rights too

Are only good for you     or     Are good for everyone

Give your spouse less     or     Give your spouse what is rightfully theirs

Do not inconvenience you     or     Work well for everyone

Need frequent court hearings to enforce     or     Need no court hearings to enforce

What Am I Writing

Beginnings, ends, middles; all notes over ten years. Imperfect prose, shorthand prose, easy poetry, involved illustrations, ruled copybooks and a stagnant pool of paper that is going nowhere. Maybe now I can get some fish in it.

More promises to myself to write down some angst and grudging portions of my childhood. Abuses of power that children notice, jading of younger energies in people already dead — social vampires who move unknowing through circles, sapping energy in the twilight.

Statement of Purpose?

ANTI-NOTICE

I don’t have any product to push
I don’t have any dogs to distribute
I don’t have a business to run
And I don’t have any furniture to sell
Therefore, you don’t have a reason to read this
And it’s best we never met

Children Learn What They Live

been thinking about what fatherhood will mean to me,
found this on the back of an old schoolbook cover:

If a child lives with criticism
He learns to condemn

If a child lives with hostility
He learns to fight

If a child lives with ridicule
He learns to be shy

If a child lives with shame
He learns to feel guilty

If a child lives with tolerance
He learns to be patient

If a child lives with encouragement
He learns confidence

If a child lives with praise
He learns to appreciate

If a child lives with fairness
He learns justice

If a child lives with approval
He learns to like himself

If a child lives with acceptance and friendship
He learns to find love in the world.

Inner Space: The Pen-ultimate Frontier

Where does it all go when there are things left unsaid or unresolved that make you feel incomplete inside? Trust me on this one but everything that has ever been left incomplete just hangs around staying incomplete. In the world of words, things left unsaid remain until they find an opportunity (through you) to get said. I hope you haven’t but here is the best example of incompleteness; if you have a dead loved one whom you wish you could say something to but cannot because they are gone.

I had a sister who passed away, since she was before my time, I grew up wondering what it would have been like if she was still around. There were things I desperately wanted to say to her about how the family felt and changed after her, and how we still thought and spoke of her. Some more whimsical things about how things would have been different if she was around. I lived on so, with these things inside me which had nowhere to go or no one to listen to.

I have also seen people estranged from their families with no intentions of ever getting together again go through life and was always struck by how they seemed unaware of what was missing in them. I believe that people always carry their problems with them, in one way or the other.

Even if they leave their problems behind, they cannot help but carry the part of them which has been shaped by the problem. The pain of dealing with problems contributes to our identity and sense of self.

Now step back and see life as a never-ending conversation you are constantly having with everyone around you and even with yourself, inside of your own head. The part within the mind is also known as ‘internal dialogue.’

The two most pertinent things to internal dialogue in this conversation we are having (You are reading this, aren’t you?) is the fact that we are always the central character in the story of our lives. You won’t mind agreeing to that but you will certainly deny it when I tell you that the central character in the story of our lives is usually or naturally a tragic one.

It’s not anyone’s fault. Just look at our cultures, arts and literature; tragedies are considered seriously while comic material is never taken seriously. Even sad old Hindi film songs are considered more meaningful than a current peppy and happy song. It’s not like you cannot change the plot in the story of your life from a tragic to a happy one. You just have to empathically and positively do so.

Yet everyday we come across people with the same old problems. The impossible diet, the hometown in the hills they miss so terribly, the brother they never got in touch with for the past twenty years, the way the people they stay with are treating them, their salary, their mother-in-law, their city, their planet…all things they are continually grumbling about or smarting under but haven’t done a thing to fix. Ever wonder why they carry on the way they do? Ever wonder why you are happy to live with an obvious problem rather than solve it? You might want to take it slowly at this point and read this bit again just to be sure you are getting what I describe.

Well, they do not change because they are getting something out of it. Sometimes they know what little kickback or reward they get from putting up with a problem but usually they do not. Albert Einstein once remarked that ‘we cannot solve our problems at the same level of thinking at which we found them.’

It takes brutal honesty with yourself to tell yourself that you are not dieting because you have not got the discipline (or maybe the motivation). You never went back to the hometown in the hills because you cannot stand the narrow-minded folks back there and enjoy the lifestyle which a city pay-packet can afford you. You broke contact with your brother in the first place and you dread apologizing. You can always try and fix your salary but that would mean hard work, humility or quitting for a bigger salary…until in the end it is just too convenient to dump toxic waste in the garbage pail, in a drain, in river, in the ocean, you name it. It would be scary to be responsible for the entire planet.

Ever chucked a pair of Duracell batteries away? Well, try and imagine what nickel and cadmium can do to your skin on direct contact. Better we just dump this here and let it be Somebody Else’s Problem* which means no matter what happens, we ignore it. If we try and do something about it we just might have to change. Change our situation, location, our idea of what is right and wrong, our idea of who we are, our relationship with another person, our instinctive reaction to hit back and
‘who-do-they-think-they-are’ ego-based responses.

Too much about your problems, eh? Maybe I need to put my ego aside here and make a confession just to re-assure you. If you must know, my secret is that I do not know how to drive a car. I never learn't, so that is also behind my whole biker stance in life. Anyway, enough about me and internal dialogue, let’s get to the part which is outside our heads; that concerning the rest of the world and the people around us.

Now let’s quickly wrap up a couple of crucial continuums. We need to be aware what is behind our thoughts, words and actions. For example, the salesman who is meeting targets is sure to do worse than the one who is out to convince the client that his product is just what the client needed.

Let me try and convince you a little further. IF what is behind your conversation with another person is a desperate need to make yourself right, then everything that the other person says will be judged by you and used to prove yourself right. IF you are out to prove the other person wrong, you shall filter out all but those bits that give you a better argument. However, you sincerely listen with an open mind; both you and the other person learn something. Sometimes, you can still do the same actions, but if you adjust what is behind you, you can actually change the outcome.

Still not convinced because you tried it and it did not work? That is because you did not give it enough commitment. Yes, that’s right. Before the hard work comes the commitment to hard work.

Sometimes the commitment to hard work is really hard work but seriously, quite a few people we consider great in the history of the world have kept themselves committed over a period of years and sometimes in impossible conditions or situations. That is the power of commitment. Just tell any mother they cannot possibly assure the well being of their children and they will tell you how they jolly well intend to give it their best, if not tell you to go jump in the river or ask their husbands to deal with you.

If you can find an equal degree of commitment, you might loose but you will never be defeated. Before you start to take some of this and use it to win fights or dominate situations by pretending to be sincerely listening, let me tell you that you need to learn a lot about being aware of what is behind you. You see, the idea is to always keep what is bigger than you behind you. Over long-term, it usually the better ones who win: those who are just, those who have stronger principles, more support, are in better alignment with the way things work or just plain better intentions.

Saree about the Ties that bind!

here's one of those three-part marriage counsel programs that can be used in other places too.

Phase I: Individual Healing - Understanding Personal Feelings and Sorting through Emotions

* Take control of the paralyzing emotions.
* Regain your sense of stability and get rid of the images.
* Eliminate the paranoia and restore your self-confidence.
* Cut-off the issues and move back to your spouse.
* Replace the lies with truth and start over.
* Understand why the fight happened.
* Uncover what was missing and how to add it.

Phase II: Healing As a Couple - Working Together to Identify and Resolve Key Issues

* Accelerate the healing process: Protect your relationship from further harm.
* Discover how to talk about the details.
* Transform your relationship with a heart-felt apology.
* Generate new honest communication.
* Ignite a renewed life-long commitment.
* Capture peace of mind with true forgiveness.

Phase III: Negotiating a Renewed Relationship - Understanding How to Rebuild and Sustain a New Trust-filled Partnership

* Eliminate the suspicion with complete transparency.
* Restore your life without haunting visions.
* Proof your marriage for life.
* Develop lasting safety, honesty and respect.
* Accept the past without being tormented.