BE THANKFUL FOR WHAT YOU HAVE

After my children were born the circumstances were such that I chose to leave my job and devote myself full time to being a mom and home maker. It was a new experience and had its own ups and downs. I enjoyed it also but I admit there were times I would really feel that it was a totally thankless, useless and repetitive job. And then there were times when I felt that I was really making a difference in someone’s life.

So basically I was on an emotional roller coaster and did not know how to get off it.

Around that time somehow magically a few like-minded society ladies got together for a party and we bonded so well that we became a close group of friends. We called ourselves ‘The Pretty Butterflies’ and met regularly for get togethers and parties. The difference being in these parties we talked our heart out. All frustrations, tensions, pressures were poured out and solutions discussed, advises and sympathies traded. The more I opened up in these gup-shup sessions I realised that we all were sailing in the same boat and my problems were actually not so huge as I had made them out to be. Others have bigger issues facing them and in the process of trying to figure out solutions for them we end up learning a few things ourselves. Friends lift you up when you are down and also keep you grounded when you are flying high.

Honestly after my school friends these are the only set of friends that I am so open with.

We started this around three years ago and since then a few of my butterflies have flown to different cities and even different countries. But this hasn’t made any difference in our friendship we all are in constant touch through WhatsApp and we still know that if one of us is going through a rough patch we have friends who will walk us through it.

And I am eternally grateful for this friendship.

To my friends:

The worries in my life are halved

Because I can share them with you

Happiness in my life is doubled

Because you never let me feel blue…

‘Thanks’ is a small word but carries huge weight. One of the three golden words that we keep teaching our children from childhood. ‘Don’t forget to say thank you beta.’ If you are a mother of a toddler you must have repeated this sentence multiple times in a day. We are so tuned to say it that whenever we get something a gift or even a glass of water from someone we say thank you.

But this word has a deeper meaning. How many times have we said this word with our heart filled with gratitude and really meant it?

Think… 

There are a lot of things in our lives apart from the special people and friends around us which we just take for granted. Some incidents in the last month itself reminded me of one such thing.

Last month when I was doing the customary Diwali cleaning of the house I did something wrong and had a very bad sprain in my lower back. Doctor advised me complete rest for two days and I tell you it was the worst feeling I ever had when I was actually bed ridden and had to depend on others for every small thing and even the smallest task like lying down on the bed or getting up became a huge task. I used to try to manoeuvre my body to such a position where there was least amount of pain. Not being able to move around at will gave me such a feeling of helplessness.

And today when I woke up after a hectic night of partying I realised that my sore throat had worsened to such an extent that my voice was almost gone. And whatever little I was able to speak nobody understood. My children laughingly said ‘Mumma, you sound like a ghost. Please don’t talk.’ And only when we face such limitations we realise the importance of what we have.

These episodes in my life made me realise the importance of our body and good health. These are a gift to us from God, the supreme being… I am really thankful to Him.

Health is a freedom very few realise

Until we no longer have it.

Be thankful for what you have… your body, your health, your mind and some very good souls around you called, “FRIENDS”. Be mindful about all you have, don’t abuse them, take care of them and use them all as your own. ❤

THE ONLY WAY I AM LEFT WITH TO THANK YOU…

Dear Grandpa,

This is the most difficult and painful letter I have ever written. I know, you know it too… You can see me and feel what I am going through in this very moment I am penning this letter.

You have been an inspiration and there is no second thought about that. I have learnt how to love and care for others only from you.  All the people whom you have helped missed you dearly after you left us.

You are the only person with whom I have spent most of my time in childhood with, I don’t remember spending so much of time with my parents too. You are the only one who really made an attempt to understand me, what I really like, what interests me. With a person like me, who doesn’t talk and express much, it only gets tougher, but you never gave up. Thank you for all the efforts you have put to become my best friend, a friend I always cherished to have. 

The loving way in which you caressed my hair to wake me up in the morning, wait for me to return from school to share all that has happened during the day and in return listen to my stories. I could rest my head on your shoulder and slip into a peaceful sleep. Without you, I would have never experienced how it feels to be loved unconditionally. I am afraid, I may not really thank you enough, for all those big and small moments which mattered to me at that little age.

Do you remember, I came to meet you at the hospital, I was so very happy to see you recovering after being hospitalized for more than two weeks. You took my hand into yours and expressed how much you missed home.  I wanted you back, back home, back in my life. I was not at all prepared for you to leave me alone and the news of your passing away only left me in utter shock. There was not a single drop of water that came out of my eyes during my visit to hospital or while we brought your lifeless body back. May be I was angry or in tremendous grief that I could barely even understand what was happening… May be only you and I know how much I cried in solitude. I can never forget any of that has happened, I can easily relive those moments in my imagination. That feel of holding your hand never leaves me.

Only after you passed away I realized how much your love matters to me. When I entered your study room to collect some of your articles to secure them, I found more of mine. Your diary told me what you never did. All my achievements with dates penned, related pictures, all my birthday photographs, newspaper cuttings(my name appeared a couple of times) , my first ever scribble (an art piece) :-).. I have not encountered another person who can shower so much of love on me. I miss you greatly and your spot can never be replaced by anyone. If you can, please come back to me, I need you…

Life hasn’t been easy after you. I can never say I learn’t to live without you. It was so very difficult to reconcile the fact that I want to see you again with reality that I never would be. I love you and miss you so much. I find you everywhere I go and please be with me as you have always been. Thank you very much for everything, for being a friend, guide, teacher more than everything else, my grandpa. I am very blessed to have had you as part of my life…

Lots of Love,

~Aastha.

I know this letter cannot reach my grandpa, but I wanted to share this with all of you my dear friends. I would have been very fortunate if I would have had a chance to say all this directly to him. I was really very young and didn’t have an understanding about life either. Love others unconditionally and be thankful for all the love you get back, love is the most precious gift we get, I am sure all of us agree…  I hope none of us have to end up writing such letters.

Thank people for what they do whenever you can, because they deserve it …

A HEART FILLED WITH GRATITUDE

Gratitude!!!

‘It is the quality of being thankful; A Readiness to show appreciation for and to return Kindness.’

Gratitude is something that is mentioned in the bible frequently.  For example:

I Thessalonians 5:16-18 says, “Be joyful always; pray continually; give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 

What does this mean? It means to give thanks in ALL circumstances good or bad. Thankfulness should be a way of life for us, something that flows from us all the time.

Psalm 136:1 says, “Give thanks to the Lord, for He is good. His love endures forever.”

Here we have two great reasons to be grateful:  God’s constant goodness and His never-ending love. When we recognize the nature of our flaws and understand that, apart from God, there is only death, our natural response should be gratitude for the life He has given us.

Six months ago my world was turned upside down when my mother had a seizure. I prayed, asking God to help her, heal her. I also reached out to someone I had met via Facebook, 5 months prior to that fateful day but we had formed a close bond in that short amount of time.  I called him, tears running down my cheeks, and asked him to pray. He did so right then and there.

He,  along with so many others,  has constantly been praying for me and my family. I know it was those prayers and good thoughts that have helped me get through these past 6 months.

I will not name him but he, along with my fellow writers will know who he is.

My expressions for my friend…

Thank you God for bringing such a beautiful soul into my life.  And thank you my dear friend for sticking by me through it all. You are a blessing, not only to me, but to all whose lives you have touched. You are firmly entrenched in my heart where you will stay until the day I draw MY last breath.

God continue to bless and keep you safely in His hands.

 

A GENUINE THANKS

“Thank you for coming into my life and giving me joy, thank you for loving me and receiving my love in return. Thank you for the memories I will always cherish”

Last week we celebrated a “Thank You” week at work. An occasion where you are invited to take a step back to look at your life and make the most of that opportunity to actually thank people who have made a difference to your work-life.  Every day had a different theme – thank you seniors, thank you team, thank you managers, thank you working staff, thank you peers. I liked the idea, though in my busy schedule I could not really thank everybody that I wanted to. But well, I can do that anytime, right. I don’t need a day for it!

Well, I guess most of us do need a day to remind ourselves – “It is high time, you must say thanks to your folks”. Why is that, I wonder? Why do we tend to take people in our lives for granted? Why can’t we make our own people a lot happier by just saying a simple “Thank You”?

So when Chiradeep asked me “What do you want to write on the coming week?” I said “let us just celebrate a Thank You week. Let us give ourselves a reminder to thank people who really have made a huge difference to our lives.” And he happily agreed.

Attitude of gratitude really pays off. Because when you thank someone for something, the person gets even more inspired to do the same thing again.

I see how my 21 months old son’s face light up in joy when I say “Thank you baby. You are so amazing!” on little things that he does for me. And it happens to all of us. Doesn’t it?

It was sometime in early Jan this year when we were invited to one of our friends pre-wedding cocktail party. Both bride and groom were our close friends and we all were really excited. Our son was 11 months then. So, we reached the venue at about 9 pm and by 9:30 pm – my son dozed off. I made him sleep in the pram nicely tucked in under the blanket. And then I hit the dance floor. There was a lot of dance, games and fun for the next 3 hours. Thankfully, my son was sleeping allowing me to enjoy with my friends.

Prabhjot, Kapil and Joey

At 1 in the night, when we along with some friends were getting ready to go to our place for the after party (of course, there had to be an after party after all two of our friends were getting married!) my son woke up – nice and bright. Everybody had good time at the after party and our son too enjoyed the music and dance. The only problem was that I slept off in the middle of the party. I was so dead tired and no matter what my husband did I wouldn’t wake up. And now my hubby had to arrange the house for all our friends, make sure they had enough space and comfort to sleep well. Along with all this, he had to manage our son who was in no mood to sleep.

Well as I heard the story in the morning, Joey (my son) slept almost at 5 in the morning. My hubby could hardly sleep after that. 7 am when I woke up, Kapil (my hubby) was visibly upset. My first reaction was to snap back at him “So what if you had to take care of everything, he is your son too and these are your friends too” but instead of saying that I chose to say “Thank you so much for taking care of him and everybody else. I know I was irresponsible last night” and to my surprise there he melted, his anger gone. We then proceeded to cook breakfast for everybody together. I genuinely meant that Thanks. I sincerely felt that I should have been there the night before. And I could keep my ego away and just for once acknowledge what he did. And I saw the results almost immediately.

It was a huge lesson learnt.

Prabhjot and Nishit

This was one such incident where wisdom dawned on me at the right time. But usually that is not the case. While there are a lot of people I probably should be thanking for a lot that they have done for me, for now I would just take one name – Nishit. That is a newly wedded groom who is also my brother in law. He just moved out of our home to now have his own home with his wife – I realize how much I had been taking him for granted. He lived with us since last 6 years and his moving out makes this home as dull as it can be. Nishit was the one who brought Milo (our dog) in my life. In spite of all my resistance, he just got the dog that I happen to fall in love with at the very first sight. I cannot thank him enough for that. I couldn’t have been the same happy person that I am today without Nishit in my life. In spite of all my fights with him, all the times he has irritated me to the core, all the times I have scolded him and all the times he never listened to me, I love him and I miss him. He rightfully fills in the gap of a real brother that I never had.

Shruti, his newly wedded wife – she and I just happen to click and it doesn’t even feel like that I have known her only since last few months. Thanks to both of them for bringing in so much energy, positivity and fun in my life.

When you are in love with your family, life is a heaven. And I am living in a heaven today.

I want to invite all of you to please take this time to think “Who is it that you want to thank today?” Thank them in real today and share your experience with us. It makes all the difference in somebody’s world when the golden words “Thank You” are genuinely spoken.

 

HAIL THE MEDIA

Encyclopedia and Wikipedia are the wholesome twosome,

That tickle minds in ways so awesome.

The international, national and local dailies,

Reach out to people merrily or wearily.

 

Live broadcast of sixers or bouncers,

Greedy in-laws who are sly pouncers,

Plane hijacks or illegally hoarded onion sacks,

Refuge crises and the killer seismics,

Create ripples in all circles.

 

Deprivation, Devastation or the programmes for Immunization,

Pollution, Corruption or Mass Frustration,

Forecast of raging cyclones and the birth of new clones,

Stupendous athletic feats and exposing big cheats,

Give rise to opinions bittersweet.

 

Regular newsfeeds and crafty tweets,

Keep channels on the heat.

Opinion polls and crimes on roll,

Stir up the human mind and soul.

Big and small scams on people’s faces slam,

A picture of reality behind the masked morality.

 

How detached the globe would’ve been,

Had so much been left unheard and unseen!

The media definitely is a big boon,

Which lets us know all things very soon.

 

Information and commerce,

It does aggressively endorse,

Reaching the masses without absolute remorse.

A responsible pillar of knowledge dissemination,

The media at times is wily in its articulation.

 

So hail the media and those behind it,

We nail those opposed to free permit.

May the voice of people reign on high,

And the banner of democracy freely fly.

3 IGNORED TRUTHS OF 21ST CENTURY MEDIA

The 18th century is the advent age of media. Since then the work of Indian media is remarkable. As the days went by media industry took new contours and today India is globally recognized for its media power. In India, Media is considered as the Sight, Sound and Voice of People. In our country every day 100 million copies of newspapers are sold, from 690 satellite channels, more than 80 are news channels and apart from this p-media (print media) and b-media (broadcast media), the o-media (online media) works like wild-fire. Every Indian kid above 10 yrs of age has a glimpse of what is happening in times today. And all these numbers and statistics clearly portrays ‘how active media is in bringing all issues, big and small into limelight!’

Apart from the entire statistics, the call of media is ‘to bring the truth to the people”.  Media stands for two things “TRUTH” and “PEOPLE”. The lifeline of the entire universe is also “Satyamev Jayate !”. Truth needs People to survive and People need Truth to survive ! But in this 21^st Century media has mostly fallen down from its call. In this 16^th year of 21^st century Media is more concern to TRP (Television Rating Point); Money-making; Market Competition; Glamour; Yellow Journalism, Politics; so on and so forth. Censorship is more on “Truth” and “People” rather than all sort of fabricated stories. Every media agents ask for one thing – “MASALA”, not for the sake of Truth but for TRP. In the blockbuster film “PK” when Jaggu (Jagat Janani) introduces PK to “Jerry – the pictured News head”, she says if we will bring Tapaswi and PK front to front, our TRP will increase and that’s what most of our media story is today.

Now the big question is, “WHY MEDIA HAS DRIFTED AWAY FROM ITS CALL?” Today, every individual’s plea to media is, don’t ignore the 3 central truths of your call!

1. Intent must be prior to Content:- Every word that we convey has an intention behind it. There is nothing called random ! Nowadays there is frequent divergence between Intent and Content in media stories. Which ought not to be ! Most of the media presentations are politicized with party politics, every statement that is flashed is in favor of some political party. Yes, every good work must be appreciated but that must not become the means of upliftment/buttering. Mostly media contents portray the promotional picture of the ruling party.

Every media agents must be PEOPLE intention and TRUTH contented !

2. Stand for TRUTH:- Media agents name their programs/presentations with sellable words like “Sach Ka Samna”; “Aap ki Adalat” and much more but where is the change? Do we truly present “SACH (Truth)” for the cause of “AAP (People)”? or again some more well-dressed lies with flamboyant masala!

Today we bring censorship on Truth, let not that day appear when we will find censorship on our Rights !

3. Remember, People trusts you:- While conveying some news to our friends we often quote “arre, you don’t know! This has come on media.” This simple line expresses the trust level we people have on media. People trust media because they consider media, “as their ears to listen to their plea; as their eyes to listen what is happening behind the curtains, and as their mouth to speak for them”. In short, if it is good enough to be on TV, it is good enough to be true.

My two questions for media is:-

• Does Media have the guts to say, ‘yes, we have obeyed our call (bringing the Truth, before the People)’?
• Can Media prove itself today, ‘yes, we are the Ears, Eyes and Mouth of People’?

Keep thinking!

CHOOSE YOUR MEDIA…

I stopped reading the newspaper long time back. With the news full of scams, murders, rapes and corruption, it makes me feel helpless and resigned. “Nothing can change this country” – we say and get on with our daily routines. This feeling of resignation makes us blind. It makes us somebody who is only ready to blame and not take any responsibility. It makes us blame the authorities, government, neighbors, schools, colleges and youngsters – basically everybody other than the people living under our own houses.

It is very easy to sit at home, watch news the whole day and read newspaper which is anyways full of negativity and blame the government. It is not very easy to take up an issue that our society is struggling with today and make it a mission of your life. Fight it with all your might – like a soldier protecting his nation.

Few years back, when Aamir Khan (renowned Bollywood actor) premiered the show named – Satyamev Jayate, I was touched to the depths of my heart. The first episode was about female infanticide and feticide – a major problem in this country. I cried my heart out imagining how many girls are killed every day, either as an infant or in the womb.

Satyamev Jayate is not about the problems in our society, it is not about finger-pointing and blaming the authorities. It is about looking for a solution at the ground level. The way this team has got the heroes of this country in limelight, it gives a huge inspiration to each one of the viewers.

To believe in the fact that “change is possible”! Yes, there are burning issues but the solutions are also available. In a country of 1 billion people, even if 10% of us take up a cause and a mission to bring about a change, corrupt politicians will be weakened.

I don’t read the newspaper at all. I rather subscribe to Facebook pages of the organizations and individuals who have taken up the mission to bring about the change. They give me much more hope and motivation to continue my own mission. I am not interested in reading about scams, murders and rapes; I am more interested in reading about heroes of this country who never come into a limelight of media.

I was so surprised to know that somebody named “Kailash Satyarthi” from our own land won the Nobel Peace prize 2014. I had never heard of him, never knew what sort of a mission he had taken up till he was honored with Nobel Prize. Why our media never recognizes such heroes? How come a common person of India (like me) didn’t know about this great person and his work? And I am sure there are many more like him who is just working without seeking any selfish returns. Let us get those heroes to limelight.

What is it that you choose to read/watch – Inspiration or hopelessness??