158.A day well spent!

I hadn’t been able to talk to Fr. Johnson even for a second after the first call. And then I got into a frenzy of activities. Then came D-day. I decided not to go for my routine jog in the morning as I wanted to sit and work ‘cause I hardly had any time between my preparation and reaching DBI.

DBI or Don Bosco Institute at Kharguli is located at a location, which is very close to Paradise. As the Borluit flows at an unpretentious pace, my mind races to give my best. Why best and to whom?

Well, it’s been quite a journey with DBI since the start of the millennium. Fr. V.M. Thomas literally kept me on my toes with the plethora of activities over a decade and now with Fr. Johnson, I knew my schedule was going to be busier than I would dare to imagine.

Incidentally, this is what I love doing. Counselling, talking to people and resolving their problems. So, on 20^th of September, I, armed with my laptop, which invariably is loaded with all sorts of things, made my way full speed to DBI. I had to present or rather animate for 30 odd junior engineers from Assam State Electricity Board (ASEB).

Though I almost always go to present something or the other but I actually come away learning far bigger lessons from the participants and at the same time having a hilarious time.

The mixed participants of young and old laughed, interacted, joked and made my presentation on communication far more interesting than when I started off with the thought that I will stick out as a sore thumb with this crowd. What a group! Hats off to this beautiful team from ASEB.

After lunch, my drive through the road from DBI to Tata Institute of Social Services was a dream ride. I was relaxed, it was drizzling, while I drove at a snail’s pace glancing at the misty-with-drizzle-river once a while to satiate my love for my Luit.

I reached TIS by 4.30 and within a couple of minutes the whole place was swarming with young people only to be joined a few minutes later by the moderator Kula Saikia and speakers Indrani Rai Medhi, Sriparna Barua, Mitra Phukan, Pulak Banerjee and Samudragupta Kashayap and a host of other people from different backgrounds. It was quite an evening as we all talked about whether “Society can change the Media”. Well, I was only of one opinion.... “If we got to see change anywhere, every individual should be the change. Be the one man army.” Wow! Quite a day!

157. Trying to understand

The human psyche has been a study of interest for me as long as I have been trying to understand people and why they behave in a manner peculiar to them alone. No two persons behave, think or act similarly but throughout life, in the process of meeting endless numbers of people, I have come across only a few, maybe a handful who seem to understand me. But my inbuilt radar system somehow catches stray waves of people's behaviour and I, humanely human that I am, try and mirror the behaviour of the other person, which ofcourse means in short that I am concerned about that person and wish only happiness (with no gender biasness whatsoever!!) and want them to come out of that quagmire!

However, in this jet-paced life that all of us lead, love, patience, understanding, concern, thought for the other would probably be words alien to us in a couple of years, maybe months. If only we took some time to understand our brethren, the problems therein, become more sensitive, maybe we could ease the pain for someone and bring the much needed change that we all talk about day in day out. 

If we look around ourselves, we tend to meet more lonely people than people who are happy.They might be smiling and pretending to be over-the-top-happy but once we start talking, we find a person  who is ailing to be loved, pampered and cared for. One reason might be that we are not talking about our problems with family, friends, well-wishers, best buddies across the table. There are no problems without solutions 'cause there is a key to every lock that has been manufactured. 

Trying to understand a person can be a big task but no task can be a mountain if we start to climb it one step at a time!

156. .....and you thought, what?

Since I had come to my senses in the mind, body and spirit, I have realised about the unfathomable depth of the one powerful factor that moves the world; the one factor none of us can do without; the one factor all of us crave for till the last breath. No prizes for guessing but I know some of you got it right. Yes, it is love, love and love.

Saturday was an overwhelming experience with the children adopted by the Don Bosco Institute of Guwahati as I spoke words of enthusiasm with them. They almost brought the house down with their screams of joy and laughter. And I enjoyed every second.

My pledge was simple but that was a day I wanted to give away something. My eyes. As tears rolled down my cheeks looking at the sight impaired little boys and girls, singing, "I have a dream....a song to sing," I only wished I could live that much more to see the dreams of these little angels come true!

(...and all this time you thought my life belonged to me? Nay, it belongs to the people of that same God who has shown me the way to give myself away to the privileged few who desperately need me!)

155. I love you Teacher!

Thankyou Mom! I just wonder where I would have been without your teachings. I hated it then when you used to make me sit straight, close my mouth while eating, smile and not frown (as you told me I would get wrinkles sooner than I could think!), walk daintily in the new dress you sat through the night and stitched, treat everyone with respect, forgive and forget, study hard and best of all, enjoy life! I disliked you reminding me to do all these things all the time. It was so perplexing. I thought there couldn’t possibly be a worst enemy than you at a time when this girl thought she came packed and sealed with all the knowledge of the world. And now, when you are busy with your prayers all day, quiet and tired of the years behind you, I miss your reprimanding Mom, everyday, when I wish you could tell me I am making some silly mistake and not do it again. After all, Mama, I am still your little girl and I don’t want to grow up.

Having said this, my teacher called me today morning at a time when I was driving through the city to get to some place. I told him I am often worried seeing the sad, frustrated, dejected, angry and confused faces of people driving their cars, who behaved as if their work was the most important. He told me, “Try and look at the smiles behind those faces and you have nothing to be worried about.” I know it’s going to be tough but my teacher has surely taught me an important life lesson; “See the positive in the negative.” Thank you teacher ‘cause it’s for you that I stand apart from the crowd instead of being a part of the crowd. Salutations!

154. Back to school

The best part about getting back with school friends is that I can be, unpretentiously my own self. Letting my hair down is just one option when I can actually choose from a wide variety of putting my legs up, laughing uncontrollably, screaming across the table, disturbing the people seated at the next table , eating what I want and not being a wee bit ashamed of it. After all, we were meeting after ages. We were bound to act wild anyway!

So, when a whole zing bang of us from Loreto Convent, one class-mate and an unpredictably larger number of seniors, met at the Brown Bean Cafe for dinner and a chit-chat, people might have passed only one comment with a tilted smirk , "I wonder where these girls were educated. Quite an unruly lot!"

But we LCites, nonchalant as we always were to negativity, gossip and what not, have only learnt to cover our mouths as we laughed with the mirth of a naughty 16 year old!

153. Dr. Jekyll and Ms. Hyde

152. VEILED VERMILLION

The facial mutilation of the attractive Apatani women, in the days of yore, was the circumstantial compulsion to discourage Nyshi warriors from forcefully taking them away. Similarly, during the Burmese invasion, pretty women smeared their faces with ash to protect themselves.

The use of tilak and regha by men and sindoor and bindi by women in India since ages old was more to dissuade hypnotisers and face-readers.

The wearing of sindoor and bindi is more a cultural phenomenon than a religious one. And the Indian woman looks best with her red bindi and sindoor. No other fashion statement can beat the Indian woman’s rich intricately designed ensemble, not to forget, the fiery red vermillion and bindi, which sets her apart from the rest of the crowd.

This bindi fascination has been with me since I was a little girl. I have loved wearing traditional clothes and my colourful bindis to go with them. Red being an all time favourite with me, I feel my ensemble is complete when a round, oval, a mere dot, crystal, an intricately done with thread or just a mere black line with small leaves drawn with an eyeliner bindi sticks between my two not-so-shapely-brows, starts a conversation with whoever I meet.

Well, talking about conversation, a couple of years I had quite a bit of gaggle following me around and wondering wide-eyed about my bindi and sindoor. Yes, you heard me right; sindoor! I have always had this fascination for women who have had this ornately done up line of red vermillion, right through the middle of their neatly parted hair. Beautiful may be too miniscule a word to describe the exquisite ornament on the Indian woman’s forehead.

To satiate this desire, I have had endless opportunities on stage to overtly decorate the parting in the middle of my head. In one play, when the director saw me, he had the most perplexed look on his face, “Tina, I am not quite sure if the character you are playing needs so much vermillion. A mere scratch will do.” I however, talked him around saying the audience at the end of the hall might not see the red line and might be confused about my marital status in the play. He decided not to argue with a ‘crazy’ woman and spoil the show!

Going back to the gossip about my sindoor, on one of my compering sessions at the Rabindra Bhawan, I decided that I would wear just a wee bit of vermillion to complement my mekhela sador and bindi. As I walked into the hall, the people who usually talk to me, raised an eyebrow and curiously smiled. Instead of looking straight at me, they constantly shifted their eyes to the vermillion. It amused me no end.

On the same day, during a meeting, more than being interested in what the speakers were emoting, people, especially the women, kept nudging each other, slyly looking at me once in a while. I was however enjoying the histrionics. The men, however, were nonchalant, preferring to manage a stoic countenance even if they did have some ‘horrific’ or ‘disbelieving’ thoughts cooking in their not-so-pious-minds. One lady shrilly asked me, “Hey Tina, when did you get married?” I smiled back and told her, “Oh several years now, baidew. You didn’t know?” “No, I didn’t! I have seen you wearing sindoor only today!”

However, I was numbed to a statue, when a lady rechristened to Islam by law against the wishes of her family, but which didn’t make much of a difference now, came up to me, with the most emotional face I had ever seen. She stood in front of me and stared at the vermillion on my head for several uncomfortable seconds, while she held my shoulders with both hands endearingly. “You know what,” she started saying. “You are looking beautiful with this red sindoor.” I smiled. Though I was shifting in the place where I was standing, I preferred to feel the emotions coursing through this dejected lady. “I never had a chance to wear the vermillion. I so wished to wear it too.” Till the time we sighed together and managed to give each other a bleak smile, everything seemed fine. The conversation that followed left me desperately wondering what to do next. The lady’s fingers dug tighter around my shoulders as she pulled me closer and whispered, “Oh, I am so sad for you. I heard a while ago that your husband passed away and you are now married to a Hindu man.”

“Oh goodness, baidew. That’s not true at all.”

“Then, why the vermillion?”

“Oh, this was just to complement my ensemble, that’s all.”

I rolled my eyes upwards and pretended to faint. Both of us laughed out loud.

 (Writing in the Hadith goes this way! Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in one of his several meetings, noticed that one of his followers was wearing an outfit, which had a combination of red and yellow. The Prophet commenting about the colour red asked, “What is this colour you are wearing?” The faithful disciple, scared that he might have hurt the Prophet, returned home and burnt up his clothes. The next day when The Prophet found him in a different set of clothes, asked him, “Where are your clothes?” The man said he had burnt it as he felt he might have hurt The Prophet.

“You shouldn’t have done this. You could have given away your clothes to one of the ladies in the house to wear.”

The Prophet was never against the colour red. He however preferred the men to wear any other colour apart from red but never passed a doctrine that the women could not wear red.)

(*Ref. To Abu Dawood Hadith 4057. Narrated by Abdullah Ibne Amr Ibne Al As.)