Colors of life

It was just a couple of years back when I gifted my wife a mobile phone. Since the phone was meant only to contact each other whenever needed, we went for a very basic one. Although it was a basic phone, it had come with a preinstalled video game called ‘snake’. From the day we bought the phone, my son and I used to get hold of it to play the game, till we better ourselves to score more and more points. One day, when I was engrossed in playing the game, my wife asked me, “why like children you are crazy about this an otherwise very silly game?” To this I explained her that although it’s a silly game, it very much holds lessons for living life better. In an exasperation to what I remarked, she wanted me to elaborate it a bit so that she can understand clearly what I intended to say. I further explained her that there are different levels to play the game and each level is divided into a set of challenges and difficulties. And, to move on to the next level one has to success...

During Diwali vacation my nephew had come to stay at our place. Like we use to get homework for Diwali vacation, now a days, children call the same thing as a project work. For his project work, he had to write a passage on ‘ Health is wealth ’ and he wanted me to help him completing the task. I took the task as an opportunity, since I often feel starved of having enough ideas to write about. Soon I penned down a passage keeping his age in mind and taking real life instances  from my childhood. And here is what I wrote for him… Could you believe that I still get a feeling of gloom when I remember the days I had fallen ill. A few months ago I had a viral fewer which kept me bed ridden for several days. Lying on the bed in a corner of my room I used to hear voices of children playing outside which prompted me to get up and join them. But, I remember how weak I used to feel getting up which forced me to drop the idea of going out. It was only after a few days when...

It has not been much time when we saw people around the country rushing down to the nearby temples to see the idols accepting milk.  It is equally amazing to see people across the nation coming out in support of Anna Hazare, who has begun a protest against corruption. It is difficult to comprehend whether it is merely a faith in Anna that is driving people crazy to see their country free of corruption or it is their clear understanding how and in what way the Lokpal Bill (not the one, which Congress wants to introduce) will be effective in getting the corruption removed completely. The hue and cry on the street put a big question mark on the trustworthiness of the government to which people themselves have elected for the second consecutive term. Given the case, isn’t it a drawback of people in our country that it took eight years for them to realize that their country is being run by a corrupt government? In fact, people are ignorant of the fact that despite having Lok...

I never intended to have friends, but despite that I am privileged to enjoy a healthy friendship. It is quite difficult to understand how we get into a friendship with someone who was, in fact, a stranger before the time the friendship came into existence. I remember those early days of my childhood when I got into a friendship with a boy who, my parents believed, was not worth having one as a friend. My parents tried a lot to discourage me to carry on with the friendship. The reason, perhaps, would have been their concern to prevent me from getting into a sort of bad company at that tender age. Going forward, because I could not stop that boy from keeping friendship with me, my mother adopted sullen behavior towards him in an anticipation that the trick would help getting rid of him. But, he ignored everything and managed to keep our friendship going exhibiting maturity at the tender age of around twelve or thirteen. Of late, my parents have realized the wor...

It is only our thoughts that make us and we are, indeed, what our thoughts are. In the year 2007, I had been to Ranchi to attend a retreat organized by Yogoda Satsang Society of India . It was a first such instance in my life that I had made my mind to go and attend such a retreat for a spiritual perspective. Reaching Ranchi and attending the retreat was a wonderful experience that I would relish for my entire life. It was beyond my imagination, that on reaching Ranchi , a group of volunteers would come to receive me at the railway station. The volunteers holding display boards having written “YSS” on it, to make it convenient for devotees to get assembled, greeted everybody with large smiles saying “Jai Guru”. Indeed, it expressed the sense that “We Care”. It was only after getting assembled there, I became aware that it was not only me who was travelling down to Ranchi alone but as many as seventy devotees to attend the retreat. At the very next moment it made e...

Your son is your son till he gets himself a wife. The quote mentioned above holds true. The marriage of son puts parents and their son in a situation making it very difficult to manage home especially when parents are not financially dependent on their son. I would not at all hesitate to say that I have experienced the state of being in such a situation. I would say that marriage brings many troubles one would have never imagined before getting married. In our case, the trouble aroused because of dominating nature of my mother coupled with my feeling to create an impression, before a newly brought bride, that of not being a parent’s son who behaves only in accordance with what his parents think is right. To some extent we (my wife and I) were right. For example, my mother, to keep her dominance prevail, she wanted me to hand her over the monthly salary I earn. However, the system adopted long before I got married worked fine helping us plan our expen...

Irrespective of how much care we take of ourselves, at some point of time, we all fell ill. When we fell ill, we undergo psychological changes. Some of us take it with a bit of carelessness and later find themselves even  in a big trouble. Some of us get too worried about it and start suffering. I have a bit different way of tackling illness. To me, illness brings an opportunity to interiorize. It allows me to become aware of the self. It demonstrates how the body responds to illness. It is during illness only, one can experience the potential that God has given us. Recently, my wife was detected to have Hypothyroidism. On closely examining her report, I found T3 and T4 hormones having normal values while TSH being higher than what it should be. To keep TSH under control our family doctor prescribed to start taking Thyrox 50 mg tablets every morning. After three months of time when we again got the thyroid tested, to our surprise, t...

It's very interesting to see the way life unfolds itself. Every day it brings new issues to be addressed and resolved. Out of these, the most important and perhaps the most difficult one is to manage children. Of late,  it occurred to me that there is a big difference in the way we elders look at the things. We judge or imagine taking into consideration certain conditions. But, things are usually not the same with our children. And that's what makes it very difficult to deal with them especially when they are in their puberty. Now a day, we face issues pertaining to children on a daily basis. We feel that our children do only those things we do not want them to do. When we try to explain them they simply take it as a boring lecture. We expect them to bring improvement and what happens - exactly the opposite. My wife, Leena tried to take strict actions which turned out to be ineffective. When she tried to be their friend, they started t...