Life in Covid lockdown

A long list of goals, achieved and unachieved targets, life running at a faster pace than ever thought of , everyone around seemed interested in their own set of goals to be achieved, a robotic lifestyle, a monotonous life, doctored designed perfect as a movie weekends , a social media page to blabber on half understood topics or an insta profile to display pictures of even shopping…controversies on religion, politics, criticism on top, business happening on phone calls,Emails, WhatsApp and suddenly… an invisible stranger barges in lives of billions, trillions across the globe.Just a month ago,nobody would have imagined such a state of affairs would be changing in our lives and to such an extent where nothing remains same.Life, Living and Livelihood every bit going on toss. Reboot the system ,that’s what was expected out of the first 21 days lockdown. Although corona virus played havoc in various parts of the world, every country thought ,it wont be so serious in our part of the world.Contradicting theories, it equalized the all barriers of caste, creed, gender, religion, nation and completely brought each and every person on one ground.The ground zero level.Once again ,nature showed us that inspite of differences, clashes, division of thoughts, philosophies, ideas, faiths, we all are tied in one string of humanity and humaneness.Nothing ever can surpass the compassion of being a human and being connected.Although there are some positive sides to the COVID SITUATION , families staying together to getting time for being with each other, there are innumerable problems that have surfaced .Not all families, relations are truly in gel with one another, not every house has that space of being together for 24×7 inside the smaller cross section, not all shelters have the comfort of cooling, food availability or things readily there for survival.It is a very critical as well as unique situation, wherein people from all sectors of life, all sections of life will have a unique impact on their lives , businesses, work , lifestyle, relations.Few villages are happier in locking themselves up from the rest of the world, they are self sufficient, away from technological advances and satisfied with their own bread and butter alongwith the roof on their head. Irrespective, they are not dependent on anyone outside their village.Migrant labours on other hand, are the worst hit by this calamity, stranded away from their homes with no guarantee of normalcy nor any finances,they cannot go back neither stay at their place of work. Their families used to survive on their earnings and now everything comes to standstill.Small businesses , Small scale or Micro financed units or companies will suffer the most in these times of economic shutdown, with all orders being lost, cash being stuck, payments being blocked and no chances of getting started with the same condition. Their infrastructural costs and other viable expenses will make them go to start point of their business.Medium core or mostly the medium scale industries, companies will have a setback for few months, but will survive from the lockdown problems and their loss will be subsequently managed and recovered by their operations, sales opening up.

They can manage their expenses by cost reduction, man power reduction, process changes or overall monthly target changes for the next quarter. All this leading to a lower fiscal rate and resulting in an economic slowdown will gain its own decorum with new policies and stands taken by their management people.Large scale industries will have different impacts depending on the kind of business they are into. From software to IT sectors, it shall be growth anyhow, whereas many FMCG, essential commodities, will have an average rate of growth.Startups will suffer again unless they diversify and start with something new which shall be the necessity of situation.The ones who shall rule the world’s economy will be cream layer of global industrial sector, from Pharmaceuticals,AI’s Softwares, Infrastructures, Development sectors, Military artilleries, and many such giant players for whom COVID hasn’t created difference in their personal life and not affected their question of survival…Amidst the black & white of life, artists, creators, writers, painters, shall create exclusive and extraordinary things to cherish and value in future. They are the ones who will keep you alive,in times of distress and their works will be the inspiration for many lives who shall need motivation to come out of the pandemic that hit the world in 2020.

Go with the flow

Over the years , as we grow , learn, progress in life through different stages of learning , we keep changing evolving and getting matured .

Time and Experience both make life ripen with their own effect.

The rawness of not understanding, the ignorance of not reacting or interacting to situations, or sometimes of overreacting all change,as the flow of time makes us steady, calm and more realized.

He who has valued time and understood the depth of its existence in space shall never repent or regret having lost anything. Ups and downs, good and bad phases might come and go, but the one who knows what time is , will never let a chance go waste and shall use it fullest in the most creative and productive way.

It is often said, time doesn’t stop for anything or anyone, it is like the ceaselessly flowing river which finds its way through rocks and rough terrains but never stops. It is us who have to be with the flow or else we lose the track of its course of flow and become alone in this trek of life.

It is the wetness and characteristics of time that drench us with experiences in between to let us realize and mature.

Never stop breathing or thinking ,just because the time is bad . It may be according to you , as you have not seen the future nor the direction of time’s flow. Let things happen at the same pace as they are supposed to be. Never suppress your thoughts, for the cycle of life shall bring before you the same circumstances to resolve any matter that remained unsolved or entangled.

Free yourself from the bondage of entanglement and flow with time.

 

THE LONG FLIGHT OF LIVING

In the long flight of living, it has been a tussle , a whole long transformation of ruffling feathers , plucking old ones, growing the new ,trying to still maintain the speed and focus of flying with all energy and magnitude and in this journey, many a times wounded get the   wings, bruised are ends , where hardly one gets time to repair, mend or let the wounds dry.

The journey goes on without stopping, with every bend bringing more challenges and showing more impermanence of life.

 

Unachievable goals, difficult roads, storms , or hovering clouds, thorns pushing out of every circumstances often shred the skin in ways where one tries to protect the family keeping  them intact.

 
Hardly all these such efforts are realized , the fact is the zeal to move forward, the confidence of fighting inspite of not being acknowledged, the selfless support and patience of 24 hours extending to 7 days and 12 months a year continuously exhausts the energy of self.
There are moments when the flight seems the last , the faraway sky seems to embrace our pains and struggles, yet the closed ones near us never realize or notice.
The long exhausting journey wishes moments of understanding, some moments of realization which remain unnoticed and unheeded.
The long laps of flight turn the wings weak, which cannot hold the rough weathers now, due to continous exposure to rough weathers and because never did they been cleaned, covered, given rest .
A life too depletes such with negligence when all paths suddenly turn down and forget to let the soul breathe.

 

 

It is a transformation to break free from all shackles, from all chains that have pulled the wings in different directions, letting the bird to forget it’s own flight and instead follow the journey of survival.

It is time ,to mend ways, to realize, to know, to understand, to see through, to accept  this struggle .

As an eagle too can live upto 70 years and for that it has to go through the painful process of transformation after 40 years.
Either one fights self, wins , overcomes and then survives as a fighter and warrior of life or else succumbs to surroundings and gets eroded in the flood of life .

This isn’t the fear of physical pain , it is the transformation that  creates turbulence within, either leading to a rebirth of self or leading to the  usual  end .

The road not taken

When nothing seems to go right and every step is like a step towards the dead end of a dungeon, when the heart feels down and sees darkness through the path till corners, when life seems a lost game of  chess, pause for a while, think and leave the moment in the lap of destiny for sometime.

The pause shall bring a new perspective , the chaos inside the mind and heart will reckon a new solitude that will pave the path of your destination.

Sometimes best things happen only after worst have visited.

Without being a loser or accepting the defeat of playing the new game of adventure, what is required to sustain and bounce back is hope and faith of crossing the turbulent ocean with oar of wisdom.

Yes! Impatience flickers our mind, courage gets dimmer, motivation takes a backseat ,yet look around ,you will definitely find a new inspiration.

A new sense and feeling of starting again and walking on the road not taken!

 

AN INTUITIVE HEART

 

 

 

Mind is the dwelling of our intellect and Heart is the abode to our feelings and realization.

An intuitive heart speaks of life as it feels not sees . It proclaims about love not as an emotion but as a part of its own existence. This intuitive heart grieves of the socio political situation and the conditions of the poor and destitute in our society. It shrieks when thousands watch helplessly the pitiable state of affairs in this world and still remain unaffected to selfishly cater their own greed.

It is overwhelmed when let free and dances in congruence with the clouds to cherish and absorb the beauteous nature.

An Intuitive Heart speaks about anything and everything that affects its being but  often remains unexpressed and unspoken . Such thoughts are usually left to perish inside  like the walls of a caged mansion.Intuition as known is the sixth sense which is invisible like the air we breathe and yet exists around us not appearing in any form  to the common eye and perception. This is the strength  that  works as a third eye , a kind of power make us evolve further.

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When intellects speak of the logical mind and the different levels of knowledge gathered by reading and learning, pioneers of art have proclaimed intuitiveness to be the most effective way of delving into any situation and resolving the issue , as it is one of unique and different ways than the usually calculated process.

Let us gather the scattered dust

Life is impermanent and so is everything in the world! It doesn’t take more than weeks to transform a living place into a realm of  mourning prayers .

Last few years have seen the worst when disaster has stuck Syria, leaving the historical and beautiful cities of Syria into a land of ashes and crumbled buildings. The ruins speak of a rich and glorious past yet today they are in mud. Every such country which has echoed its broad-mindedness and grace of embracing the balance of life is slowly turning into a different land .

How I wish, life had been simple without the politics of power and the conflicts of mind and riches? A common man is worried more about his daily bread and is far away from the politicization of created and misrepresented news , yet the continous harping of wrong inputs and distorted facts have ignited minds into flames which can burn the world without doing good for any,yet the ones who hold the matchstick to this pyre are unmoved.

Remember if a hand tries to burn somebody else’s house, his own shelter gets burnt,it is the law of nature, devastation brings destruction for one and all.

It is too late to realize and gather the scattered pieces of this maze which can bring peace together,but let us hope this sense shall prevail soon.

 

 

 

SAFECITY- A unique mapping platform

“UN Women states that 1 in 3 women face some kind of sexual assault at least once in their lifetime. But in our experience, the statistic in India seems to be extremely high. A rape occurs every 20 mins in India.Yet most women and girls do not talk about this abuse for a multiple of reasons – fear of society, culture, victim blaming, fear of police, tedious formal procedures etc. As a result women keep silent and this data is not captured anywhere but the perpetrator gets bolder over time and we accept it as part of our daily routine. This leads to under communication and under reporting of the issue”speaks Elsa D’Silva,founder of SafeCity when asked about the role of this mapping site.

SAFECITY is a a platform that crowdsources personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse in public spaces and the data which is anonymous, gets aggregated as hot spots on a map indicating trends at a local level. The idea is to make this data useful for individuals, local communities and local administration to identify factors that causes behaviour that leads to violence and work on strategies for solutions.Since its launch on 26 Dec 2012 it has collected close to 10,000 stories from over 50 cities in India, Kenya, Cameroon and Nepal.

It is known that women aren’t safe when they are moving, traveling, commuting or sometimes even near their own houses due to various factors of harassment. There hasn’t been any such kind of initiative in India which led to an united platform to act against this kind of behaviour.

Read about the whole report on https://www.worldpulse.com/en/community/groups/leadership-group/posts/69663

For any kind of emergency ,contact the helpline links

Twitter for discussion – @pinthecreep

Twitter for reporting sexual violence – @SafecityIndia  #SafecityIndia

Facebook – www.facebook.com/safecity.in

Instagram – pinthecreep

Missed call (India) – +91 9015 510 510

 

Through the hourglass

Since ages, through the hourglass, time has witnessed change in the society, while  Darwin’s law taught us of human evolution with developing intelligence along with changed bodily structure, we are yet to completely learn ,soul too plays an important role in the history of evolution.

An invisible, unknown entity, whose abode is universe and innumerable galaxies where it dwells is yet to be understood by mankind,soul is considered to be the most important topic of research in recent years.

Metaphysics , a latest branch of science, speaks on such topics but tries to find logical reasoning behind the same.

Ancient mythology and scriptures had illumined us about this essential part of our life.

Without a Soul, a human has no life.A body even though a mechanism, remains devoid of life without the soul.

If the body is dead, then does the soul die?

Nay, it skips out of the human cage and bondage .Then,is the body lifeless, because without soul, the body has no meaning ? If so, then why does the body gets hurt in pain ,if it is devoid of life? Millions of questions can struggle inside our phenomenal brain mapping , yet we lose the thread of this eternal question.

Whatsoever the logical reasoning behind this, the fact remains:

The beauty of a soul lies in the acceptance of its existence. The kind of love , a sufi feels for his Divine , is realized only through the rooh/soul.He who sings in the darkness of life and glimpses the eternal light penetrating through the dark sky , manifests the Divine and its bliss.

“Kehta hai man , kar qubool har dua meri , ae khuda

teri rahmat mein chipi hai meri zindagi

naa karo qubool toh koi gila nahi

bas nazre inaayat karna, mujh par

ae khuda….

yahi iltazaa hai … har pal, har ghadi”.

“LET US LOVE THE WORLD TO PEACE”

Peace is the most precious word which every individual,society, country, nation, continent, religion wishes to talk about, but do we really make any sincere efforts in eradicating the seed of hatred to disseminate peace ? Our words, speech, thoughts and action make this impossible. Lets strive to make this world a better place to live in by changing our perception.

“LET US LOVE THE WORLD TO PEACE”

Not less than a realm of chaos and disarray is today’s world. Through centuries, human race has evolved and moved a step forward according to the “Origin of Species”. Physically, mentally, intellectually humans have excelled far more ahead than expected and at a much faster pace.

But wait for a second,think ! Is this the true progress in terms of evolution of mankind? We boast of technological advances and economic empowerment of nations, yet we have fallen back years and years behind in the girths of insensitivity and hatred.

Look around and you can see, hundreds of incidents which crumble the world peace in pieces. #BokoHaram episode, # Syria #Gaza, continuous ongoing conflicts which are still unnamed and yet unknown even in our country. What have we achieved so far by such progress and evolution? Are we really moving ahead or losing our ground?

Intolerance is the word that defines each one of us in today’s world. The constant echo of the suppressed and destitute, silent cries of hunger and bloodshed from the gory of wars, the continuous conflicts between different faiths and the forever greed of power has saturated the atmosphere of this planet. Every individual wishes to speak about the need of peace in this hour, yet the words remain obsolete and fruitless.

Nations organize summits, countries hold peace seminars, authoritative of religious sects announce the importance of peace, yet “PEACE” merely remains as a word throughout. What does it lack? It lacks the enthusiasm, the urge and the will to go forth in this state of bedlam by removing all the inner fears, jealousies, hatred behind and embrace each other with respect and love.

Money and power cannot suffice the need for such a kind of dialogue that is needed to be done amongst people, faiths, societies and nations.

“One needs to respect and accept everyone else’s existence, irrespective of his caste, gender, creed, faith and status”.

We all on this planet have an equal right to sustain and survive, then why crush the identity of another by force or influence? When each person starts thinking on these terms and removes the pre conceived notions of his mind, his efforts begin to show results and the amicable bond starts developing from the grassroots level.

We need to cleanse our hearts and mind first from the fallacies of insecurity, money, greed and power to work in unity towards building a peaceful surrounding and an atmosphere in harmony. When we consider every other person as a human being and not recognize by any labels or tags, we have respected humanity.

“For thousands who died in the unnamed conflicts

and proxy wars,

on the border of countries … which demarcate

and divide

nations

but cannot human hearts

sheds a tear every mother ,

in which place is my child born?

Will the echo of explosions and fumes of hatred

silence the

gaps between societies and faiths

or castes for long?

then why doth not one exude peace in emotions

through eyes and love

for every soul

residing on earth

and embrace with respect

every person?”

Nothing else can change or save this world except the bond of humanity. Our humaneness shall revive the flame to bring peace and spread the compassionate voice to every corner of the world.
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.
—–Martin Luther King Jr.

photocredit: www.pinterest.com

Give me back, my love!

Last summer it hadn’t been that difficult, even though the weather cycle has shifted and now seasons no longer arrive on time. Obviously seasons hardly proclaim their arrival,it’s the nature which speaks on the behalf of its beloved.

The frost covered ivy leaves and the white sheet of luminous pearls on vast expanse announces the winter days. Even though the chilled breeze cuts through the veins , its tingling sensation brings pleasure.

Aman never noticed how seasons change . Oh! but neither he noticed any change in Ria.

So what? Thought she! She couldn’t possibly make all the efforts and take the stress of not being closer to him. She got attention from the rest of the world, so did she really cared for this?

Somewhere inside,she did. It wasn’t that easy to let life slip off so easily from her hands.Yet she couldn’t force or change anything. “What was wrong in me”? often Ria thought.Even though they were classmates and sat next to each other, he seldom glanced on her. They hardly spoke to one another and when in a group, he usually avoided talking to her.

This irritated Ria more and she tried to find out the real reason behind the coldness.

That evening was a memorable one when graduation day neared and juniors had planned for a farewell party. Winter had arrived, unnoticed.

It was snowy all around and the valley was lit with intermittent fireplaces at many places. The fir trees had on their tips the whiteness of love.

Yet love was missing in the hearts and was frozen.

In a white satin dress which kissed her toes ,Ria had let her hair loose.The tresses followed her till her waist and swayed gently as she moved. The red rose tucked in her hair near the ears was smiling vibrantly at every onlooker. As she entered the hall where the party was at its peak, eyes followed her everywhere,but her eyes searched for someone else.

She couldn’t see Aman anywhere and got desperate. For hours she waited ,yet he was nowhere to be seen. Her heart sank and she at last realized, he had never loved her. It was her misunderstanding or her premature thoughts which made her feel that someday he would confess.

Last year when the college students went for trekking camp, things were different. Aman was still aloof even though around,but she had discovered his stolen glances on her. Out of any pretext, he had tried to touch her several times and her eyes blushed. That fateful night while the camp was asleep, in the mid of night, she heard a rustle nearby. Apprehending it to be an animal, she was going to scream when a palm slid onto her mouth.She gasped.

 

“ Shh. Do not speak” , signaled the shadow.

She could feel his warm fingers over her neck and around her lips. It was a moment that melted her for ages.

“What is it?” the trainer shouted from outside.

“Who’s there?”

“Nothing Sir”, replied Ria.She was confused over the appearance of a stranger in her tent at this hour of night,but something resisted her to speak about it in front of everyone.

*************************************************************************

Today it was the last day of college and she would be leaving this place forever,how could Aman not be here? Her sixth sense had deceived her. Aman had never loved her.

She left the celebration hall quickly and started walking through the thick layer of snow. Her feet were getting numb and the cold had frozen her fingers. Her eyes cried in sadness over the indifference and tears rolled down.

Within few minutes , she became unconscious and fell down.

Hours later , when she opened her eyes, Ria was confused to find herself in a new place. Her head was still reeling and she was wrapped inside a thick fur blanket. The wooden walls were strangers and the only lamp hung on the corner of the room was lighting the cosy place.

“Where am I?”

Suddenly she saw a silhouette coming near. In awe, she became speechless.

The silhouette sat near her and directed her hair-locks from her face behind her ears.The caress of the touch was warm and the same. She had known this touch very vividly. Her heart pounded faster as the shadow bent and pressed on her lips.For a moment , he withdrew, but Ria realized.

It was love which had been relived by the touch. She whispered in his ears, “#Bring back the touch.Give me back my love”.

This post is written in context to the http://www.pblskin.com/ campaign.