Relearning to Breathe

‘Damn. I was late again. The yoga class would have started.’ I groaned yet again as I parked the car and rushed in.

I had a wallet and car keys in one hand, a bottle under the arm and a towel in my other hand while I pushed the gate open with my bum and ran in. The yoga mats were at the far end of the room. Balancing everything, I rushed to get my mat and in the process first dropped the bottle, then the keys and when I picked those up, the mat fell. The class had just started and the instructor decided to pause. Focusing on breaths would be a bit difficult with all the commotion I had caused. She waited for me to settle down. I finally plopped myself on the mat, all out of breath and flustered.

‘Why the rush, Tanuji? You could have walked to your spot, kept all your things and then gone and picked the mat.’ She smiled and added, ‘we are always in such a rush that we forget there are simpler ways of doing things, no? Need to be more in the moment.’

That seemingly small incident changed something big inside me. The rest of the class was spent realising that I was always someplace else. When I was at home, I was worrying about work. When I was at work, I had my thoughts on things to be done later that day. And when I was between these two, I was running late for the yoga class worrying about being judged. After the exercises, we have about ten minutes of breathing practice followed by a short meditation session. That was probably the first time I truly was with my breath.

Later that evening, when I settled down to read, the words made more sense. I was reading Silence by Thich Nhat Hanh those days. That evening I started reading it all over again, for the words were now newer, deeper. That day was like finding the final few pieces of the jigsaw when you are about to give up. Things started to fall in place. All I had to do was to focus on this moment, on my breath. I would be lying if I say that from that moment on I was the walking Buddha. But I was calmer, more accepting and more mindful. And in moments of anxiety or stress, I was able to calm myself down quicker. All it took were a few deep breaths.

We underestimate the power of a breath. Most of the times we are not even aware of it. It get reduced to that last peanut that we popped in mindlessly while watching TV. We didn’t want it, we most certainly didn’t need it, yet we just put in our mouth completely unaware of our actions. That is what our breaths get reduced to – shallow, quick, mindless. And the effect of this is not limited merely to our lungs, but spreads to the way we lead our lives -in short, quick bursts of action. We hurry from one breath to another, always postponing that one day we would wind down to another day in another time, not realising that the only true time in hand is this moment right now. That very moment which we spend worrying about moments that have either not happened yet or about the ones that have already faded in the pages of past.

I obviously do not propose that we need to hang our boots, and embrace the eremitic life. All I learned in that moment in the class that day is to be present now. If I am sitting by the window, looking at the autumn leaves fall to the ground, I do not want to fret about something else. I want to focus on my breath and watch life cycle unfold in front of me. If I am sitting in front of my laptop, rushing to meet the deadline, I do not want to worry about what is going to be there for lunch. I want to be. I want to breathe. And I am getting there.

Most people assume that this way of life is in complete opposition of what we were raised to do – acing the rat race. I think the two can work together to actually lead a good life along with creating your own race at your own pace. A mindful life is not devoid of ambition and deadline, it is just better prepared. The rat race we are so used to is nothing but a mirage – there is no finish line. With every step we take forward, it moves further away – just one more promotion, just a bit more security for my future, a little more money for a luxurious trip abroad, a bit more effort to fix relationships that remain broken – the list increases and makes us run more. Somewhere along the way, we forget to breathe. If, however, we were to make that list mindfully, we would probably ease out of the rat race and create a track of our own. We would learn to pause, we would appreciate that stillness we create by the simple act of striking things off the list and remembering to breathe.

I turned one more page of the book and was ready to call it the day. The older one rushed in. He had panic written all over him. ‘The deadline for the assignment is tomorrow! I had not seen the mail carefully and had assumed I had a week! I am going to die!’

I sat him down and held his hands. He pulled back. ‘Mumma I have no time for this!’

‘Shhhh! Close your eyes and take a deep breath in.’

The next few reluctant seconds gave way to a few moments of focussed breathing.

He was much calmer when he opened his eyes. ‘I still have 30 hours and quite a bit of work already done. But what if…’

‘Shhhh. What ifs happen in moments that have not yet occurred. What is here is now. And right now you have an opportunity to be on time.’

He stared at me for a few seconds, smiled and left.

I kept the book down, Hanh’s words lulling me to sleep:

“It’s okay to make a wish, to have an aim. But we shouldn’t allow it to become something that prevents us from living happily in the here and now.”

Previously published at: Roadfolk

Finding our stories

‘All the animals boarded the train and the station-master, the Monkey, flagged it off.’ Thus began the little girl’s tale of love for stories, perched on her Grandpa’s shoulders. He would take her for his evening walks and narrate absurd animal tales complete with perfect sound effects to make her see the monkey wear a uniform, and birds flitting in and out of the train windows. He hooked her to stories. Thirty-five years later, when this little girl’s relatives gathered, they had a single common memory of her, ‘You used to corner us for a kahani. You could never have enough.’ 

So the little girl devoured stories. She bullied her aunts into telling one whenever they visited. She pried her mother’s eyes open during her siesta and pleaded for a story. She even sat with rapt attention when the helper related ‘real’ anecdotes of ghosts in the mountains. Every year, on Diwali, she and her brother cornered their father for a story, and he obliged with the same one for years. Yet, each year listening to the tale of Sher uncle taking the bear cubs to the moon in an aeroplane, where candy trees grew created the best memory for years to come. 

All these years later, I, the little girl, am still hungry for stories. Grandpa left me with insurmountable joy of discovering new tales with each turn of the page. It was never forced; I never attended any reading classes. I doubt if there were any back then. Yet we read. My parents never monitored what I was reading and never thrust ‘virtuous’ books in my hands. When it came to the rows of shelves in the library, I was a free bird. I carried back whatever caught my fancy without checking the appropriateness in terms of content or age. The girl who got caught with a ‘questionable’ book open between her biology book in grade 11? Yep, me. Yet, no hell broke loose. The mother casually told her to wait a while if she could. The girl went back to reading.

Around the same time, we had this friendly rental service for comics. The magazine guy came loaded with bags full of books and rang the bicycle bell with an air of urgency. We would rush out and grab the latest Phantom comic, Mandrake or Lot Pot. Middle school brought with it the discovery of authors like Emily Brontë, Jane Austen, and an abridged version of Oliver Twist. There were no star stickers put against my name for completing any non-existent ‘class reading challenges. ‘ It was just a natural thing to do. 

Oliver Twist made my cry. Pride and Prejudice gave butterflies in the stomach, and around first year of college, Dracula gave me sleepless nights. As I grew, books grew with me. But then, with passing years, somehow they got left behind. A decade whizzed past with very few books reaching out to me, and then one day, while I was caught between a loop of soiled nappies and baby-food bowls, a package arrived – the first four Harry Potter books! It was the best Rakhi gift I could have ever hoped for. The nappies and the food bowl circle widened to include books in it. And for the next few days (and nights) I was lost to the world. Harry Potter set me back on track. Books started trickling in again. 

Years later, I chanced upon a writer’s workshop thanks to my brother’s mail. The organisers, a leading Children’s Books Publishing House, sent the participants a list of children’s books. That list induced frantic book purchases. Before that my only encounter with children’s literature was as a mum but not as a reader. That workshop took us out of the closet. It wasn’t odd to love books meant for toddlers anymore. I stopped pretending to be reading only for my kids. And that led me to the wondrous world of children’s books. I could spend hours gazing at the gorgeous picture books in bookstores. I found new friends who shared the enthusiasm. It was like rediscovering myself. 

A few years later, the journey took a new turn with the setting up of a Library in my hometown, Faridabad. It all started with two things. One, I saw my boys getting affected by books just as I was a child. The older one had once remarked after reading Talking of Muskaan, ‘this needs to be read by my friends. We all go through different trials each day, Ma. It is kind of reassuring to know that kids out there are fighting similar battles against different pressures.’  From Wimpy kid to Percy Jackson series, they read it all. However, most of their peers never went beyond text-books. That needed to change. And libraries are best suited for such tasks. 

Second thing that propelled me to working towards creating a library was the magic of accessibility. I regularly take piles of books to my mom’s place for her helpers’ kids. No one reads to them. No one encourages them to pick a book. Yet, one day when I stepped in, I saw a little girl with a picture book, running her finger over the text, trying to join letters into words. It was no rocket science. She didn’t go to any Phonetics class, a reading group, or some such workshop. All she did was listen to the books coaxing her to flip them open. When she comes over to my place, the excitement in her eyes on seeing towering shelves full of books is infectious. She sparked the idea of a library for everyone in a town that was completely devoid of books. 

Reading transforms. Not just the reader but also the world around them. It is almost like a cloud being lifted and a colour being added with each page. It could be a simple picture book or a profound philosophy book exploring the meaning of life. Each one of them changes the course of our life, even if it is a tiny bump to a different direction. It has no age. I have seen people become avid readers at the ripe age of 42 and toddlers that can barely speak coherent sentences chanting, ‘Book! Book!’ until the parent gives into reading the worn out page for the 12643^rd time. 

Each day I slide a book towards an unsuspecting child. Some throw it back and I patiently try another one. Some get hooked and before the parents can realise what hit them, they are paying the bills for books that seem to never stop tiptoeing into their homes. And when someone pulls a book down from the shelves at the library, a dream of a better world takes a more concrete shape. That someone could be anyone; books do not discriminate. The young man who helps me with managing the home loves reading Premchand’s stories and Amar Chitra Katha. He has barely been to primary school. With time, he has taught himself to string the broken letters together to form stories. That is the power of words, dreams, and that insatiable thirst for more tales. 

We all crave for stories, some have found theirs, and some are still looking. Eventually, if we do not give up on books, our story finds us just like it found a little girl perched on her nana’s shoulders, or the little boy who made his mother read a dinosaur book for the millionth time, or the helper who, while the food cooks, finds his stories in the latest Amar Chitra Katha that he found, or like the young man who rediscovered reading after a gap of a few years and now is found sitting in a cafe near his college reading Murakami and hoping for his bank balance to be just enough to pay for the vanilla shake. Our stories eventually come to us; all we need to do is stay open to books, keep the shelves full, and the head empty enough for the story to find its way. 

Note: This piece was found in a long lost folder. I have no idea why it was written or for whom. So if someone out there finds a link to the same, inbox me please!

The Insignificant Stray

Dear stray puppy,

Give up. You should have given up long back. Your life is of no value. You should have heaved the last breath out the moment you were hit by that car. That car which was driven by some one drunk on alcohol, fatigue, or simply the sight of a long lonely road which gave him a much sought after chance to step on the gas, or perhaps he was drunk on his position in the hierarchy of nature. You figure nowhere. That is why he never stopped to check what he had hit. And you? Oh, so insolent! You just lay there in the middle of the road whimpering? You should have given up.

The best time to go would have been when you came into this world. You had the perfect excuse. You were born under the bushes at the corner of the street. There were no ‘oh-so-cute’ pictures of you shared on social media. Hell, you didn’t even have a father around, at least not the one who could make your papers look good. Ha! Papers! Of course, you didn’t have anything to prove that you were born. You don’t even have a breed name. No floppy ears, silky coat, large eyes. Nothing. That was your first cue to leave. See, you should have given up.

But you clung on, and look what things have come to. So many of my species must have passed you assuming you were dead. Did anyone bend over you to see the faint rising of your stomach? And the tiny whimper that escaped your mouth every time you clung to what should have been your last breath? Of course they didn’t. Yours is not a life worth saving, silly. Give up.

You will not find many fools like me and my poor helper. We picked you up, and brought you inside. You still clung on to that trace of a breath you had. Then, the madness set in. One after the other, the veterinary doctors hung the phone up.

‘Stray? It will not make it.’

‘My clinic doesn’t open till 11.00 a.m.’

‘Take it to the government clinic.’

‘Puppy? Yours? No? A stray! You are wasting your time.’

Why do you think I am telling you to give up? If you had been one of mine, with a neat certificate, and a mild cough, these very doctors would have treated you like an emergency. But you, the one with no lineage, are not an emergency.

Fine, we did find you a doctor eventually. So what? To what end? He shook his head gravely, and said, “Pneumonia. It is not the injury that is more serious. He was out in the cold a good part of the night, and has developed Pneumonia.” After a shot of an antibiotic, he too whispered to you to give up. You are stubborn.

We sat there, watching you cling on. Seriously, give up. What chances do you have? The man outside the doctor’s office just scoffed and said to me, “there are people dying in this world and you are wasting time on a stray puppy.” You must pay. There are people dying in this world hence, you must die. For your death will set the balance right somehow it seems. You do not deserve to be saved.

There is no pretty collar around your neck that jingles every time you walk. You do not own a cosy bed right next to the heater that makes sure an ambient temperature is maintained. You are out there on the street. Even if you make it through today, who will find you again tomorrow? Another car? Or, perhaps a kick?

There. See? It is much easier this way. The breathing is more laboured now, and the whimpering has stopped. Thank God you are listening to me now. Let go. There is no hope for the likes of you. Next time, if you do decide to be reborn as a dog, make sure you have a pedigree, and humans on your side. As for now, you must give up.

I shall lay you down now. Was that the last breath you just took? Don’t worry. I am not abandoning you just yet. Don’t be sad. Find solace in the fact that you’ll not end up stuck to the tires, picked on by crows, or dragged by your own kind. Yours was a short life. There are others of your kind who go through their worthless existence out in deplorable conditions. They get kicked, run over, maimed and yet they drag on. Not worth it. Does that comfort you, now that you have given up? It should. Would it give you any peace in knowing that you are not the only one? We, the superior beings in the hierarchy of the world, too have pedigree-less ones amongst us. They too perish like you. So, trust me, it is good that you have given up. 

No, I’ll not fling you out with trash. I’ll go out and dig you a grave. You’ll get a burial. There will be tears. I just saw the helper shed one. Trust me, your end was better than many. Next time do not indulge in this silliness? Do not cling on. For there are fairly few hearts out there with space enough for you. So next time, if you find yourself sitting on the roadside, eyeing that decaying leftovers someone dumped on the other side of the road, just give up.

Sincerely hoping you have better sense next time,

Your human.

I am a flaw in your eyes

What defines me? What is my score on the character scale? What all am I allowed? Just tell me once and for all. So that I know exactly which barriers to crush and bones to break. Or perhaps accept and give in?

If I wear a sari, will you spare me? Or a burqa perhaps? Please tell me the precise length of the skirt above which I become characterless and you get the license to teach me a lesson. What about make up? Does that count too? Any particular shades that raise a red flag? I shouldn’t even mention the choice of beverage, right?

When I go to the market, do I have to always look purposeful? Do I have to walk with my gaze firmly fixed on the road lest I miss a pebble? And the frown? That has to stay, right? When the rain hits the ground and an intoxicating fragrance makes every cell of my being tingle, do I pretend to not notice? Can I not raise my head, close my eyes and feel the breeze on my face? And smile?

While driving, when my favourite song plays, can I sing along without you staring? Am I even allowed to have a favourite song? And drive? For when I drive I see challenge in your eyes. Sometimes I see a satisfied grin in your rear-view mirror when you force me to jam the breaks to protect myself. I deep breathe then and resist the urge to scream and ram my car into yours. Should I be thankful for just being on the road? That you decided to just put me in my place and not a ditch?

You scoff and say that I sip my coffee in a high-end cafe. I have no business complaining. Should I ignore all the stares for having the coffee alone? Am I supposed admire the table, or can I look up? Are you wondering if I am divorced? Widowed? Unmarried? Where is my character-stamp, the man? Are you wondering?

The whistle is my fault, right? The man on the bike who tried to pull a dupatta was putting the girl in her place. She got sent to the hospital with friction burns because she earned it. Let us not even start about acid attacks. What the hell were those girls doing outside in the first place? The girl whose entrails are still plastered somewhere on the road, it was her fault. She tested her boundaries. She stepped outside. She deserved it. Didn’t she?

What about the girl who hesitates going back home from college alone, although her village is next door from college? The village men accuse her of doing “dhanda” when she comes late from college. She wraps her head in her dupatta, hangs her head and hurries home while the boys shout, “kitney kamaye (how much did you earn)?” She is stupid. She should have stayed home. Education is not for her, right?

What about the girl in an upmarket private school? What does she do when she is told to take home science instead of electronics club? Should she give up on the soldering iron? When she comes home, the helper at home opens the door with a bruised arm. The drunk man beat her up and she fears that going to the police will worsen things. What do they do? Definitely not look you in the eye, right?

What about the woman who gets beaten up despite being educated? Despite living in a first-world country? What do you want to say to her pleas, begging to be spared? The muffled punch, the brazen kick? What is she doing wrong? She needs to know.

On most days, I have a thick skin. I sing along, I smile when the first spray of rain hits my face. I ignore your gaze that moves from my head to toe. I know you don’t care what my age or shape is. It is me that matters. It is my flaw of being a woman. And a woman who refuses to stay indoors. Every day we skip through a landmine. We look over our shoulder, we judge every step. Is this route safe? Those men standing over there look like bad news. Maybe I should turn and take the longer route. Oh, crap. It is dark and I need to get home. I skip a heartbeat every time a car drives by a tad bit closer than usual. Or the driver steals a sideways glance. Or a stare. The fear chokes the rage that I feel every day. Every minute. The rage that makes me want to grab you by the neck and ask, “Why? Where am I going wrong?” But that will have to wait. In my rear-view mirror I can see a car. It is drawing close. I can see your silhouette. There are four of you. I need to go. Fast.

First published on huffpost

Momster-in-law?

Picture a woman with a halo and angel wings. She has the most benevolent smile, love dripping from her honey sweet words, and her soothing shadow forever protecting you from the harshness that life has to offer. That’s mum. Now add the suffix ‘in-law’ and poof! The halo disappears, and horns take place. A forked tail whips about and the soft wings are replaced by batwings. The smile is there, albeit a crooked one, exposing fangs. This is the true picture if all the rants on social networking sites are to be believed. Now before you pounce, yes most things in the world fall in a Normal Curve and hence there are outliers so you might have mothers worst than the devil herself and mum-in-laws who tops even that.

Also, before we go any further, I would like to dispel any notions that you might have about me as a daughter-in-law or for that matter, my own personal devil – the ‘fanged’ mother-in-law. I am nowhere close to the ideal bahu as projected by the multiple soaps on the television, nor am I as evil as shown by some. I do not sport make up at bedtime, and do not sleep with a ton of jewellery. I rarely cook, do not embroider or knit, and light a diya in the temple only on Diwali. Now for the mother in law – she doesn’t have a piercing gaze forever fixed on me trying to keep me away from the apple of her eye. She loves to cook and secretly hopes that I’ll some day learn to cook like her. Her sole purpose in life is not to make my life miserable and neither is it to find faults in whatever I do. So does that make us the ideal pair? Of course not! But does it make either of us as evil as some of the online rants claim us to be?  Sigh, nope. No drama on that front either.  

I am no crusader and if I haven’t emphasised enough earlier, not even remotely close to the idea of the ‘good bahu.’ And my mother-in-law is at least a mile and a half away from being remotely perfect. However, we are good together. We can gossip about the most inane stuff over tea, disagree over just about everything and be at loggerheads. But one thing that remains undisputed is that we both love the poor man that connects us, a hell of a lot. What I fail to understand is why the love takes the shape of an Olympic event for a whole lot of women out there? Really? You think the mother-in-law wants to win over the man and is forever coming up with schemes to do just that? That, I am afraid, is probably a misconception in most cases- she doesn’t need to compete. Period. Again, remember the Normal Curve – not everything falls at the center. There are outliers.

But assuming that the mum-in-law in question is not a psychopath or made of 206 evil bones, there are some things that we could be doing making us step in the vicious cycle of dislike, suspicion, irritation and sometimes even hate:

The first mistake that we make: Compare. Do you compare your children with each other? Or (if there have been) ex-boyfriends with the husband? Then why compare the poor mother-in-law with your own mum? That is an unfair competition that she has already lost before even attempting to compete. Why can’t she be respected, loved or at least tolerated for being your husband’s mom? ‘Ma-jaisee’ – that term itself is competitive. As long as you respect each other as an individual, it is enough. Don’t get in to the race to be daughter-like or attempt to find a mother for self there. That will happen naturally over time if it has to. For most part, it is sufficient if both can simply respect each other as people.

The second: Expect. Women have this magic beanstalk of an expectation from the mother in law. The more you climb it, the taller it gets. If she helps you care for the little one, you do not like her ideas and ultimately end up making fun of her on public forums online, or endlessly gossiping to your friends about how she thinks coconut oil is better than the baby oil for massage. Just rub the damn oil, woman. The brand/type of oil is not going to determine muscle strength of the scrawny bundle. And God forbid, if she decides to give you your space, or plain and simple refuse to pitch in and be the unpaid maid – she just sprung an extra horn and spikes to go with it. She is the mother-in-law after all. Damned if she does and damned if she doesn’t. She doesn’t owe you anything and vice versa. The moment either of the two start taking each other for granted or lay a layer of expectation on them- the relationship cracks under the burden. If she helps you, great. If not, that can not be held against her. Of course that holds true for both outlaws.

The third: Differential treatment. So you think that your mother -in-law can never be like your mum? Bull’s eye. Thing is, if you make a mistake, your mother can shout at you, put you in the naughty corner or skin you. But all hell breaks loose the moment the husband’s birth-mother even points a shaky finger (or for that matter a firm one) at anything. Your mum could gift you crap but you’d frame it, and nail it to the most visible wall and sigh every time you pass it by.  The mother-in-law’s gift would probably languish in a corner unless you have already given it away to the maid. So we might not be indulging in extremes, but I feel it is a good idea to always take a pause and reflect on our behaviour before assessing the other person’s. Of course the other person could be toxic, but come to the conclusion only after proper analysis and not simply by virtue of the suffix added to their role.

The fourth : Narcissism. Really? Just because you are a new mom, or a mother of two wild toddlers, the world should revolve around you? One look at the multiple forums on networking sites and you can draw these neat statistical charts – proportion of the poor, tortured Daughter-in-laws whose mums-in-law offer no help in raising the kids versus the pampered ones who have found a nanny in them. The latter, is a thin line hugging the X-axis if you were to make a bar chart. The way I see it, if she helps, great. If she doesn’t, that can’t be held against her. She needs to be able to exercise choice like any other person, like you and I.

I can go on. And on. But most of you have already drawn up red flags, or stopped reading beyond the first few lines. If you are still here with me, shout out so that I can duck to avoid the brickbat. The fact still remains – no one is perfect. I, the daughter-in-law, and her, the mother-in-law – we are both regular human beings, full of flaws, opinions and attitude. But would we ever hate each other, ridicule each other on public forums, or think of novel ways to hurt each other. Come on! We do have better things to do! If anything, I sympathise with her. Ask my mum. I was a tough cookie to raise. They must have done a secret happy dance the day I got married!

I am not saying that all people with the suffix ‘in-law’ attached to them are angels sent from heaven but then, neither are the ones without any such honour. We have all sorts of people in this world – but to discriminate against them based on their designation or membership to a particular class/group is called…? Yup. That’s right.

Next time, when you have this overwhelming urge to tell the entire world what a vile, scheming character (though the adjectives I read online are nowhere near this civil) your mother-in-law is, stop. Think. She might not be perfect, but she gave birth to the man you decided to marry….hang on! Maybe that’s it. Ah! So that’s what the grudge is about!