Social Approval or Self Approval

Sangeet is coming today for couple of days. Its our Rakhi tomorrow. Our community - Maheshwari- celebrates Rakhi on Purnima( Full moon) around 20 days after the others do. I don't know why but I have seen this since my first Rakhi and as a school kid it always looked funny when I used to reach school with all the Rakhis tied to my wrist. A few years back I had a great Rakhi at Washington when Sangeet and Rachana both were there. We decided that we will do this every year celebrating together. But unfortunately it has not happened in all the years after that. Lucky for me this year Sangeet is coming. And I really appreciate her efforts to come to Faridabad. I am excited and happy. I am sure Sangeet will be more than that. I look forward to seeing her today evening.

Talking of Sangeet - Sumant & Sangeet as of now have delayed having kids. All my relatives like when we meet - enquire if Sangeet has any kids and when I reply in negative - they look disappointed. I also used to be disappointed with their decision. But when I look at it in a different prospective I some how feel why the hell am I or the people we know feel disappointed at their decision. Its their choice if they want to have kids or they don't want. Why do we live thinking what others are going to feel. Specially on issues so personal. I now feel, there is nothing wrong in their opting to delay parenthood if they don't feel ready for it yet.I see lot of disappointed parents in today's world. May be because they don't know how to be a good parent. There is always a chance of failure in any activity we do but this one is irreversible. You have no choice but to live with it even if it brings lot of stress. Parents sacrifice so much for there kids. Their habits, lifestyle, money, emotions, friends, hobbies , it can be a long list and in most cases they don't accept anything in return. That's what parents think but may be there are internal expectations. Specially in India. How many of them the children fulfil. I know I have not fulfilled much of what my parents expected or planned about me. I don't even give 10 minutes of my time to read a book to my grand mom. I know my Dad feels hurt when I don't do these small things. I make them more unhappy than happy. When I see Minoo devoting so much of her time to teach Divyansh I feel unhappy about it. I know 50% of the time she goes to walk with me is just to please me but her mind is on Divyansh's studies. If I look at all the arguments we had in our family it has some where originated because of the kids. Then why do I have kids. Just because every married couple has one. Or its because my Grand parents or parents or the society expected me to have one. Or did I have kids because they will take care of me when I get old. Absolutely not at least this one. I neither expect nor look forward to them to take care of me when I grow old or sick. It feels so sickening when I see people around suffering because the children are fighting over family properties. They care a damn about parents - who gave there all - time, youth, hobbies, money and what not. Is it worth taking a risk. This is no business. You can recoup from losses. You can divorce if you are unhappy in a marriage. What can you do in situations like this? Just be unhappy.
I feel every couple should evaluate their capabilities to raise a child and the day they feel they are capable to upbring and grow with the child they should have one. This is not a popularity contest, at the end of the day what matters is are you happy and not creating undue pressure in you life?

Materialism and Spirituality

At our home we have some extremes in both Materialism and spirituality. The kids are too materialistic wanting to own everything they see on the net and my Grand Mom is spiritual to the max. And we co exist. Is it possible that Materialism and Spirituality can co exist? Yes, depending on what you mean of spirituality. For me Spirituality is humanity. I learned this from my Grand Father. This means - apart from looking after your family, you should look after others who are not as fortunate as you are. I have never forgotten one statement my grandfather used to say - "Jo deta hai woh pata hai" ( in English - "One who gives , always gets" - I am not sure if I translated it exactly from Hindi). He was never very religious. He always used to say , "Help others even if at the cost of some sacrifice , that's why we are in this world".

His words and lessons are a challenge to me. I have always believed in the Supreme being, the one who guides us. HE has bought us in this world and HE will take us away. Only Karma is what we can do. As Babuji ( that's what we called him) I am also not very religious. I rarely go to temples though I do my prayers - may be for a minute in the morning and before I go to bed. I also don't believe in organised religion. I don't expect my kids to follow the religion I follow. It will never bother me if they choose not to be religious. I believe religion is man made. I don't need religion to be good. I try to do in my humble way what ever good I can do for the people through money, time or counselling. I am not sure if you guys have heard about the "two percent club" located at Denver where all the members are committed to donate minimum 2 % of there revenue every year in the form of cash or kind. That's a wonderful commitment towards the needy. I am sure all these guys who do this charity like materialistic things also. I believe there is no harm in trying things "so called materialistic". To follow spirituality I believe I don't have to be away from materialism and vice versa. The best path is the middle one - away from both the extremes. I firmly believe materialism and spirituality can go together hand in hand. You don't have to leave worldly pleasure and go in search of spirituality. What I see of the Pope - he leaves in opulence - so much Gold, pearls, velvet etc. Yet he is so spiritual. Connected to the Almighty.
This is what Babuji believed in. I remember Babuji telling me one day to make a Guru for myself - some one who will show me the path in my life- I told him when I have you as my Grandfather, I don't need to go to a Guru. All his words and acts were that of wisdom. Babuji always said that Ego is the root of materialism. If Ego is put on hold , the spirit has more space to move around.You can clearly hear your spirit when the Ego is not making noise and is kept silent in one corner. Hope I can follow his this advice.

I know I will be very successful in my life and career if I am able to follow some of his ways and style. Miss u Babuji.

The Burden of being Good/The burden of everyone's expectation

We all must have grown up being told to be good to all. We all try also. May be at our young age we keep the vindictive attitude towards some one for something they did wrong to us but now at this middle age I am trying to be good to every one and every thing. But there are times when I feel suffocated at being Good. I feel may be I am not doing Good to myself being always good to others. The environment around me is now such that I feel I am a role model for lot of people may be in my family, relatives or even my team at work. I dont want to be one. The weight is too heavy to carry and my own Bucket List is taking a beating. How do I balance the role of a good father, son, husband and Boss with my own desires?
If you recollect Peter Parker in Spiderman ,Spidey is ruining Peters life - he's failing school, cant hold down a job and has alienated his good friends. Wearing the spider suit is too exhilarating. Being Good is also an addiction. But is it worth? And if you think the way I am then why do we carry this burden on our kids.
In todays competitive world we put so much of burden. If I feel the pressure with not much expected out of me I can feel how much it goes on the achievers. As parents we put so much pressure by punishing a child for doing poorly or rewarding him for doing well. I believe we should emphasize on learning for the sake of learning and not grades. We should let the kids find there passion. We are so stereo type in being parent. Similar is with the rest of the people we are associated with. Our expectations is so high from our close ones that we actually miss the big picture and fun. I might get upset if I dont get my cup of tea in time and that fear in my wife has so much pressure on her that the fun of having tea together is gone. It becomes stereotype life. Monotonous. Same routine, no thrill and fun. If everyone looks into his/her past, they would agree that they would have missed out of so much fun in there life as a child or teenager - like running away from classes to see movie, climbing trees in neighbors house to steal some guavas, to play in the sun and dust, to go for a date, to try out alcohol or hitting some classmate for no reason etc.......- if they had listened to all that there parents expected them of.
As Sumant once told to Sangeet, ' Set the expectation level' and you will be happy and so will be all. I agree with him. We should have minimum expectation and I think we will have more fun.

SMOKING KILLS

( TO WATCH THIS PICTURE EITHER TURN YOUR HEAD ANTICLOCKWISE OR LIFT YOUR MONITOR AND TURN IT CLOCKWISE. DESPITE ALL MY EFFORTS I COULDNOT MAKE THIS PICTURE HORIZONTAL. THIS POSTER IS MADE BY DIVYANSH AND ME).

I was helping out Divyansh making one of his Summer projects today . The project was to make a poster on Smoking is Injurious to health. We made the poster attached here with.

Making the poster took me to my times when I was smoking and how it really kills. The health part of it is may be very well described and documented and every one knows of it but the morally how Smoking Kills. I got into smoking while at college. I am not sure how I took to it but like every body in my room used to smoke so may be I took to it. The habit continued long after I left my college and got married. Minoo had a strong dislike for it and I might have lied to her so many times that I don’t smoke any more but again took to it. Smoking made me lie so many times. Though I was not big time into smoking but as it was something I was doing thinking my family would not know and wanted to hide from them despite promising that I am not doing it, I used to lie. I would avoid taking Kids and Minoo out with me and would like to venture alone so that I can smoke. When I think of all this now I feel so bad and embarrassed, how could I do all this for this bad habit. I might have lost out on some of my prime time to enjoy life and my youth because of this. I believe this was the only vice I had in my life which made me do all other wrongs. Thank God I got this strong motivation to kick this habit and what a difference it has made to my life. I don’t have to now lie from my family nor have to do things away from them. I don’t have to feel guilty when people used to look at me with a nasty look when I would smoke in public place. Smoking really kills – if not healthwise but morally it does. Avoid this.