Women's days: The true spirit

Happy Women's day!! Even today, even the well educated lot think having a girl child is a sin. Why I am stressing on the educated lot is because it is expected of them to talk sensible. I heard one of the recorded messages of Chaganti, one of the greatest speakers, where he said that you will be blessed with a baby boy only when u look at your partner in the eye at that auspicious time during marriage instead of the videographer and you hold the jaggery jeera mixture in one particular way on each others heads. What does that mean? Having a baby girl is a sin according to him?? There is another saying in telugu, "abadhhalaadithe aada pillalu pudatharu" which means if you tell lies, you will be cursed with a baby girl. How the hell can people demean women like that? Every single day people keep forwarding all sorts of jokes on women in general and wives in particular. And today every single person is going on picking some quotes from the internet on how great women are and just forwarding across bombarding the inboxes and social media with messages. Not sure how many really believe in it. What i am trying to say is, if you believe in something, do it. Don't do it just as a custom or just because others are watching. First respect the women around you and realise the value of their presence, then go on wishing the rest of the world. 

One year after demonetisation...

What did Modi Say? What actually happened in reality a year later? What according to him was the purpose of that decision? What are the four main problems he said will be eradicated with that decision? Were they really eradicated? Here is a small AV which summarises it all so well.. 

https://youtu.be/JGBPDjsmlUM

Respect for the Job

Yesterday, we have been to Pantaloons @PVP Mall, Vijayawada. There is a brand there for the plus sizes. We went to check out the garments there. One salesman came down to attend to us without us asking/calling him. There were two Jeans on the table. When we asked him for our size, he was with some kind of puzzled expression. I asked if those are the only two jeans that they have. He said, 'Yes, madam. We are just introducing the Jeans in this brand. So, that is all we have' I then took a look around and found one whole rack filled with Jeans(about 40 of them) I told him, hey, what are all these? He said..oh, they are there. I asked him to show us some size 2 Jeans. He just searched in a very disinterested fashion and said, there is no size 2. Only sizes 1, 3 and more. By then I already picked a size 3 and asked my husband to try it out. I din't trust that guy. I looked into each of those 40 Jeans and found three size 2's. I was very angry and told him-'u said there were no size2's. I found three of them.' He was like. I am not from this brand. The corresponding person did not come. I looked at him as though I din't even want to talk further and went away from that place. 

We din't call him. We were good on our own. He comes to us, gives us wrong information, that too so

confidently and cooks up some story to support it.. we are just introducing Jeans and thtz y only two of them? crazy explanation. And then later even after I showed him the bulk of them, he did not care to bend and check them out. He doesn't care whether we buy it or not. At the end of the month, he gets his salary. Who is at a loss? His employer. I don't know why people don't respect the job they do.. and why they don't do it sincerely. That is helping their living. Such people should be marked unfit and tagged across some Aadhar card or something and no other person should appoint them. Only then will every citizen start taking their job, whatever it is, seriously. Its really getting difficult to find some good people who consider work as a responsibility and do it with full commitment. Now I realize how awesome I was and how fortunate they were, when I worked for my employers. ;) lol

helping vs exploiting

Hypothetically lets assume there are two people. One person, say X believes in making the other person happy and tries to help her as much as possible. The other person, say Y finds greater pleasure in the fact that she exploits X. She has zero respect for X and tags with her only for the benefits that come along in the process. And if you happen to watch all this and are able to see through both the people and the motives behind them, how should you react? Lets consider another hypothetical scenario wherein you actually explain X about Y and still, X chooses to ignore it completely. Are you the bad person because u tried to warn her? Or did you do that out of love and respect for X? Or did you do it just because your intellect fights with you, saying you should do something about what you don't think seems right?! Should X be considered very good and helping? or innocent and ignorant?? Should Y be considered lucky and cunning? or exploiting and dangerous?

From this I can deduce the following.

• Some find it hard to change their habits, even when deep down they already know their habits are bad. And obviously, they don't like it when you point that out.
• Some have the knack of acting like a strong glue, getting into your head and controlling you and feeling real proud of themselves on their act.

This world is filled with both the types of people.

Doing a task is one thing. But the motives behind that task is another big thing. If you do a good thing and have a bad motive behind it, whether anyone else figures it out or not, The supreme power watching us does!! 

Marriage

There are many sweet pages in marriage, which cannot be explained by any gauge
None of the degrees from Cambridge, can dare to sum it as garbage
With the jokes they stage, they change it to carnage
I definitely discourage, their attempt to damage


The two souls that engage, With various feelings in the backstage
decide to become a package, and travel together on the bridge
Be it in a village, where things are in shortage
From times vintage, to the end they acknowledge
It’s a great bond that doesn’t need any leverage

Expectation!

Was talking to a few friends at the breakfast today and in the conversation one of them said, "We should not have any expectation from others. Only then we can have a happy relationship with the person". I actually kind of agree to disagree on that stand.

If there is no expectation at all between two people, is whatever the thing it is between them even called a 'relationship'? ?They will just be two people, two random people if all they do is care about nothing at all for each other. If you are talking about an ideal scenario where both are very selfless and each person cares about the other person and at the same time does not 'expect' that the other person cares about her, then we definitely are living in the fictional Atlantis world. And why even in that world would someone do that? Just because they are related to each other somehow? or should one do that to the entire mankind living in that world?? Then we would all be part of "Vasudhaiva kutumbam", a sanskrit phrase which means, "the world is one family".

For a bond to develop in any relation, we should have some basic trust and belief in the person that he/she will be there for you when you need them whether or not it requires them to go over the line for you. You don't sometimes 'expect' every person to go over the line to help you. That part of not expecting is fine with me. But as long as it is within their limits, you do expect them to stand by you. Otherwise, what is the difference between a random stranger on the road, your friend, your relative and your family? In most cases, its how much or to what extent you can count on the person that makes up the intensity of the bond you share with the person.

Do you react? or respond?

"Don't react, always respond. That is a smarter way with life"- I came across this somewhere recently and felt its rather thought provoking. Reacting is what we do in the heat of the moment, mostly driven by emotion. Responding is what we should do after we have our thoughts gathered and are not clouded by the emotion.

But how exactly can one plan to do that? Counting to ten or twenty when you are angry is a way. But not sure how effective it is when the other person continues to irritate you throughout the counting. You can walk away from that place and give yourself 5 to 10 minutes. But what happens in that time?? Frankly, you take that time to think about all the bad things that person has ever done in his/her life against you or any other soul. And then what? Your anger intensifies. You might have refrained from having a stained relationship with that person by walking away and not reacting when you were angry. But it did not lessen your burden. You are still carrying it and it will be heavier than ever, because you have attached a lot of dirt to the person and are holding it with you.

I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other day and it came to my mind that there is a work around to the above issue. Two things can be done

• Isolate the argument/scenario. Don't club it with other bad incidents you might have had with the person.
• In case you don't hold a good bond with the person, imagine that person to be someone else you really like. That makes you not look at their mistake as a huge one. And also gives you the big heart to forgive/ignore that and move on!

And btw, I just googled respond vs react to get a relevant picture to post it with the blog and there are tons and tons of quotes, messages and cartoons all over the internet on this very topic! Upon self assessment, I think I mostly just react. Let my emotions pour in and lead the way. After sleeping over it for a couple of days, I come up with 'n' number of ways I could have handled the situation in a better way. I need to work on responding and I plan to start practicing with my kids, I guess! ;)