Like toddlers of all generations singing the same or similar nursery rhymes without actually even understanding what most of them mean, we go through the motions of life generation after generation. Women grow up to believe love is selfless service like the legendary mother India and men grow up with the entitlement to that service as fathers, brothers, husbands, sons and lovers.
When I read DAFFODILS by Wordsworth as a student and much later when taught the same ( how can we ever TEACH poetry?) to my students on my first job in a college I realised I had never ever seen a real daffodil and yet here I was propagating the farce. Why can't we instead/also talk about the flowers that are more close to us like the humble Delia or the sunflower?
The ghazal on a loop in my mind has a line " जो बीत गया है वो गुज़र क्यूँ नहीं जाता " ( what has passed why doesn't it pass ". If all that has passed was really past us none of us would be burdened by the invisible baggage and the tinted glasses with which we see the world and others.
Fault finding the easiest of activities of being "holier than thou", none of us let go of that wonderful opportunity of mud slinging without realising its our hands that get muddy even before the mud reaches the other's reputation. Sometimes letting out the venom helps but write it down and hit delete or better still write it down on a real paper and flush it down. breathe and without doing any damage LET IT ALL JUST GO.
When I read DAFFODILS by Wordsworth as a student and much later when taught the same ( how can we ever TEACH poetry?) to my students on my first job in a college I realised I had never ever seen a real daffodil and yet here I was propagating the farce. Why can't we instead/also talk about the flowers that are more close to us like the humble Delia or the sunflower?
The ghazal on a loop in my mind has a line " जो बीत गया है वो गुज़र क्यूँ नहीं जाता " ( what has passed why doesn't it pass ". If all that has passed was really past us none of us would be burdened by the invisible baggage and the tinted glasses with which we see the world and others.
Fault finding the easiest of activities of being "holier than thou", none of us let go of that wonderful opportunity of mud slinging without realising its our hands that get muddy even before the mud reaches the other's reputation. Sometimes letting out the venom helps but write it down and hit delete or better still write it down on a real paper and flush it down. breathe and without doing any damage LET IT ALL JUST GO.
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