Itchy Head

What is God? Is the Nature god because we are all children of Nature? If we must worship the god, it’s in the form of worshiping Nature, the way our ancestors did in ancient times. If worshiping God in humans, scriptures, buildings and symbols then shouldn't we understand their meaning first and accordingly grasp the teachings and values of them rather than worshiping them blindly? Religion gives food to the needy but fear to the greedy. Religion is a support to a person in despair and gives an excuse to corrupt to play fair. It is a win-win situation to both. To lesson his burden of unaccounted wealth, a pittance of that is distributed in the name of religion. What is wrong?  Nothing. A hungry mouth gets his loaf and thanks God. That giving hand shares in hope of cleansing his sins and unburdens his load. It’s a win-win situation for both. The society benefits. Everyone benefits. What gets...

Today was the usual ritual of PTM – Parent Teacher Meeting or Pain in Throat and Mouth after giving thousand clarifications and explanations to the kid’s teacher for his acceptable and unacceptable behavior. Not only that, there we had that customary - setting the kid right on the path to improvement and evaluation. I was delighted and numb too. This time teachers were praising his improvement, except a few points.   I remember in the last semester I was called after school hours to review his performance and it was diving into bottom. He got three out of 20 in mathematics and showed similar results in social studies. What teachers were more aghast were his lies and huge mountains of lies! Parents either defending their kid or gather up all the history of the kid in front of the teacher to prove that their kid is born like that and they are helpless in reforming the kid. Now, it’s teacher’s duty to do so. When a child is spending most of his time...

I was expecting. My first baby. I believed a first baby was precious to everyone no matter whether it was a boy or a girl. But very soon I was disillusioned. I spent those seven eight months with curiosity, questioning, confirming glances of friends, family and all those well wishers who were known to be well educated, professionals and considered to be modern. I was surprised; everyone wanted to make sure that I deliver a BOY. I wondered if carrying a girl a sin? And I was living in a hospital residential campus; all my neighbors were medicos or Para-medicos. I was surrounded by well informed gentry, who read newspaper, watch television and comment and protest on any and every wrong doing in the world around us. The time when I was wondering about this miracle called life growing inside me day in and day out; my near and dear ones were concerned about my getting the gender detected ‘on time.’ Many of them gave me references; many of them gave me contact...

Ha..ha..ha.. I made a peanut out of myself.  Throughout the last week, I had so many opportunities to organize a gala Lohri night and see here I was. Gasping, what to do. In fact, by seven in the evening I was pretty sure that we were joining that central park gathering in our society, but when my hubby dear started cribbing just after returning from his hospital, I realized something drastic had happened to spoil sport. I frantically checked with the neighbors and got to know that each one of them had their own plans and none was as unprepared as we were. In fact, what actually happened was that somebody had died in a flat adjacent to that celebration spot and it seemed inappropriate to the organizing members to carry on with the original plans.  It had never happened in all these years but unfortunately it had to happen when we pitched in. I hardly expected this so I had no back up plan to fall on and the hubby was mad. He was furious. ...

Lohri is a festival we celebrate with family, friends, neighbors and everyone we connect with just like most of the festivals celebrated all over the world.  All festivals are about sharing and caring but with progressing times, we gather around a small bonfire in the confinement of our house and sit to chit chat over some peanuts and popcorn. But no peanut festival it is! Kids shy from going house to house asking for Lohri contributions, which is very unheard of now-a-days and even if our local residential welfare society is making efforts to gather everyone for a big celebration in a central place, many of us keep ourselves away from such social gatherings citing the reasons of late sitting in office, being tired, and sometimes having a hitch of joining because now we buy and eat whatever we want.  Now we have our PERSONAL bonfire at home, then why take the trouble of leaving the house in this cold to join a public social do which we do not much associate w...