#Haiku हठ

हठ में बैठी

कई तालों में कैद

उन्मुक्त सोच

मनीषा शर्मा~

Problems and slutions

Every country has a specific measure of land. If your area is to increase then you have to attack the nearby countries, defeat them and by the end of it all, end its citizens too and then take over their land. However, that is not possible.

 

Despite all efforts, world population has been increasing. Along with the population, problems are growing too. Each country claims to make fascinating inventions in every possible field for human development. Some of these inventions are beyond the comprehension of the commoners. For example, why does every country have a nuclear arsenal? Why are people trying to find water or signs of life on moon and mars when it is hard enough to get a simple life on earth? It is hard enough, because we have made it hard by ripping off life from the cores of this earth. Are we going to do the same on moon and mars, what we have done here?

 

The point to ponder over is that why are we surrounded by small problems after all. Why do we always want the government to solve every problem? Why not use our own mind? Going ahead of large scientific and government plans, commoners’ struggles on everyday bases with one or another problem and then surprises everyone by finding out better solutions that are cheaper and useful. With small efforts, we can get rid of even the biggest problems.

For example, inflation, it bothers us in many ways, such as vegetable price; they rises dreadfully fast. In big cities, people live in societies and every society provides many facilities such as a gym, parking space and a large garden. Split the Garden in two. Required vegetables can be grown in one section for the occupants and they should decide their price. The rest of the garden can be used to grow fruit bearing trees, this way it will be even greener and they will get organic food too. In the balcony, people can set up nets on which vegetable-bearing vines can grow. In the old times, people used to collect grains (cereals, wheat, made pickles, dried vegetables) throughout the year. We too can do that. Instead of buying from the food hoarders at higher-price, buying in the wholesale market at cheaper rate is better.

Then there is the matter of electricity and water. Parents accumulate wealth funds for their children. They have to understand that they must save electricity and water too. Today's indifference will cost their child’s future. They explain to their child the importance of money, along with it they should explain the importance electricity and water and how to save these. We also need to know the importance of solar power. Multistory buildings should use solar panels, as their roofs are usually only used to keep junk. Keep pots in the windows of the house; that will keep the rooms cool.

Furthermore, we must take the methods of rainwater harvesting and its uses more seriously. Today many countries are struggling with water and electricity shortage because we used these things carelessly, without understanding their true value.

The way we have damaged the environment and are struggling to get a settled life, trust me, earth is struggling the same way. It is struggling to hold on to the roots of the trees. It is struggling to keep its inhabitants alive. It is struggling to save the ice, the rivers, and the clean water. It is struggling to keep us alive. We are taking from it more than we need, all for our undying greed. It is trying to preserve everything selflessly. When our greed, crosses its limit then comes the flood of Jammu and Kedarnath. In which we lose all that we unnecessarily struggled for.

 

We have the options to live a fulfilling life, all the while preserving the nature and the future of the next generation. It our choice, it is your choice. So, what do you choose?

#Tanka दहशत

जंगल वासी

शिकारी या शिकार

शहर वासी

शिकार या शिकारी

दहशत दोनो की

मनीषा शर्मा~

A one-and-a-half-year-old male leopard strayed into the ruins of a building and primary school in Kachhabali.

Villagers gheraoed and chased the terrified creature as it tried to escape to a safer place. The villagers managed to put a rope around the leopard's neck and feet and dragged it. When the leopard growled, the villagers stuffed a large pointed stone in his mouth. The shock and pulling suffocated the animal to death. After the shameful act, the villagers clicked 'selfies' with the dead leopard pulling its tail and sitting over him.  Had this leopard killed a human, people would have had come out on the streets with candles. But on His death, an FIR was filed against "Unknown" even though the culprits could clearly be seen in the pictures.

A Whore

 

A few days ago, I got the chance to read a comment made by Kangna Ranaut, on the infamous issue between her and Hritik Roshan, "If a woman is sexually active, then she is called a whore".

  

How strange it is, that a female needs to be more socially active in comparison to a male. She needs to be more active in family and relations. If she is a working woman, than she needs to be more active in both the office and the house, unlike a man. From the day she is born to the day she dies, a female faces many changes in her body, and she has to stay both physically and mentally active. The society, the family and the traditions, expect her to be extraordinary in these things from the moment she starts walking. When a female is born, she is said to be a treasure that belongs to another house, when a male is born, it is said his purpose is to pullulate. And so when a male is sexually active, it is accepted, but the when a female is sexually active, it is unacceptable.

 

If a man wants his dynasty to grow, then sorry but it is necessary for a woman to be sexually active. Or else the man always has the choice to become a homosexual.

   

Now we will take the next word, Whore. Who is a whore? She is someone who takes money to engage in sexual activity. How many among you can think that Kangna had taken money for the sex? How many can think, that a woman of no matter what age, who sleeps outside of her marriage, does it for money. A whore does not see the color, the height, the weight or the status of a man, all she sees is how much money she can earn from him.

Whore; a characterless woman...

But then again, there is that famous saying, "A man wants his wife to take care of him like his mother would, he wants her to romance with him as a girlfriend would and he wants her to be like a whore to warm his bed". If his wife does not do all that he expects, then he puts her aside by calling her, "Thandi". However, if she is as active as he wants her to be, he becomes suspicious. If a woman has a jolly nature (she talks with all with a smile, knows how to crack a joke, can talk to men as freely as she can talk with women), then everyone thinks she is characterless.

  

Women who works in night shifts, has a touring job, or has to do the field work, the "Aaspass ki sugbugahat" deems her characterless. I had seen an ad once, in which the model was saying,"If we do a job in daylight, then it is accepted. But if we do the same job at night, then it’s not okay?" It is said that a woman wants all her needs to be fulfilled by one man. But every man only wants one thing from every woman. And yet, he is not considered characterless.

  

Just as by asking, "Kitne aadmi the?!”, Gabbar (Sholay), does not becomes a gay; the same way, your success, that you have earned on your own, your refusal to share that success with those who are more successful than you and along with it all if you are sexually active too, then that does not make you a whore Kangna.

 

There are many famous characters that I know of, whom I can call characterless openly. And you won't be able to disagree with me even if would want to. Urvashi, Menaka, Rambha, and Tilottama; what are your thoughts about these names? Men who stayed far away from the worldly distractions, from bonds such as family, and lived deep in the forests meditating half their life, these women distracted them. These women, and those like them, lured these men away with their beauty, or to be more straightforward, with their sexuality. If in today's date, a woman does this, she will be called a whore; then why were the names mentioned above called "Apsaras"?

 

I've read in many books and magazines, that our Nation's Father, Shri Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi, used to sleep with unmarried naked girls, to test his control over his body. 

Did he truly control himself every time? Or was there a guard standing by the bedside to tell him, "Sir, control!” 

Who were those girls? Did they belong to respectable families? Did they sleep with him thinking, that he truly won't touch them. If this really was true, then why did they sleep with him? Were they willing? Or were they obligated to do so? Did Mahatma or those people from the Aashram, never gave a single thought about what future these girls will have? Or maybe there was no reason to think about their future; maybe they were just whores who did this for money. However, if they were no whores, then what will you call them? Desh Bhakts, Mahan, or really just a characterless whore…?

 

Will you not question the views of Mahatma; will you not question his character?

 

Now you can say that just as people are pointing their fingers on Kangna Ranaut, I’m pointing fingers on the Apsara’s and the girls who slept with Mahatma.

Or, maybe you can now understand, that if you want to cause troubles for a woman, if you want her to feel down, then the easiest way is to point fingers at her character. The two main reasons a person (or the crowd) would do that, is that either she is more successful than them, or she is out of their reach.

 

So, what is your definition about being a whore? 

 

#Haiku मलंग

Image courtesy: Kushal Gangopadhyay

 

खानाबदोश

मन था तन नाचे

मलंग हो के।

मनीषा शर्मा~

Equipped with weapons and far away from the worldly love,
Naga Sahdus; frightening and yet so striking.  

Keywords:

मलंग

A happy and tension free personality

खानाबदोश

Nomadic - living the life of a nomad; wandering. 

So called educated people

I think about different issues, I write about different issues. These days I am thinking about nature, about how we can save it from dying. I write about it, and people like what I have to say, they agree with it and I tell them that it is in our hands to save it all.

However, I cannot help but wonder that when we write comments or articles on social networking sites, then what are we thinking? Are we thinking that we can change the world; that we can save the world? Those who are commenting on such topics or are writing about these topics, are they this mature when they are offline?

 

What is maturity defined by; by the education of the individual, by their life experiences, by their age or by the person’s lifestyle?

 

There is a family, who has been living next door to my house from the last three years; the head of the family is a government teacher and his son is a news reporter. Water is overflowing most of the time from the water tank (here we have water tanks build in the ground, where we store the water given by the municipality) in their house.

On the right side of my house, lives a couple whom I call bhaiya and bhabhi. Bhaiya is in the business of electronics but he mostly handles AC and Cooler. Most of the time, he is complaining about how hot the weather is. It has only been a year since they shifted in this house, and their house is the first from which water starts overflowing each time the municipality gives out water. Moreover, the water keeps overflowing for hours.

There is house a right in front of mine, the elder son from that family is a bank manager and the younger son is a doctor (a dentist). Water is overflowing most of the time from their water tank too.

There is another house a few steps away from mine. The head of the family is a lecturer in a government college, and both his sons are engineers. The water tanks they have on the roof of their two-story house, overflows daily for hours.

 

I have told them about it, tried to make them understand how wrong it is. I have been trying this repeatedly with no positive result.

People say that the world walks on the path of success if the society is well educated.

Look at the posts these people are on, they are well educated. Everyday at least two different newspapers are read by their family members, they read about the dry lands of Maharashtra in Jaisalmer. I point out how what they are doing can cause the same situation here too, a town that is counted as a Hard area, a town where 42° is a normal temperature (today as I am writing this article, the temperature is 52°), a town where there is shortage of water for even week many times. They feel no guilt.

 

Should I go to each such house with a plumber, to add a tap in their pipeline, so that the water does not overflow and get wasted? Even if I do so, will they really turn it off when the tank is full? I do not think so. I would definitely have to go there every time to turn it off too.

Whenever I watch the clear sweet water going down the drain, being wasted because these people think that since the water bill arrives only once in two months, and that too it is a fixed bill of rs60/- for each month, so it will not matter even if the water is wasted. As the bill will not increase like electricity bill does (a fixed bill because there are no water meters here like the ones for electricity); a part of me sees it as a crime.  

 

For me these people as habitual criminals, repeating their crime without any guilt.

 

To put it clearly, I see them as someone who murders an innocent life and then walks it off with a shrug.

How do you see these people? What do you think? Am I thinking it too exaggeratingly?

 

If you tell an uneducated person about what he is doing wrong, he will understand. Because he will think that if such a well-educated person is saying something is wrong then it must be, after all, the person has read so many thick books. However, what to say to the educated ones who cannot see what they are doing wrong, more importantly, do not care about what they are doing wrong?

 

P.s. I wrote this article four days ago, and since then I had been waiting for the municipality to supply the water here, so that I could post pictures of how these people waste the water. Four days, no sign of water.

End of innocence

My neighbors’ son, Sanu, is just three years old; he goes to play school. Three days vacation is guaranteed every week. People at home do not emphasis much anyway because the play school doesn’t teach kids much; a child is sent to a play school just so that he could get used to it as he will have go to school in future too. When I am talking with Sanu, often times I wonder what I was like when I was three years old; I was nothing next to this kid. He rides on his e-bike; in fact he runs it to its highest speed. He even showed me his mother’s smart phone and smartly explained its features to me.

Our ancestress used to compare the kids under the age of five with gods. Looking at today’s five-year-old, one cannot help but wonder if gods are like this. In today’s date, children do not have that innocence in them; they do not have that childishness in their monkey business. They only want to wear the clothes of their choice; they go to school after saying what they want in their lunchbox.

Are today’s children becoming fatheaded and spleenful? Kids that love smart phones; that insist on driving cars and bikes, who use the TV remote better than their mother or grandmother… are those kids really glorious? Their parents are nervous all the time with one tension or another. Today, they get in accidents when they are driving before the age of getting a driving license, and that too when they are drinking beer that costs more than their pocket money could allow. The global trade of smartphones, video games, and inattentiveness has forced the kids to grow before their age. The songs and dance steps that seem inappropriate to us, they dance on them with ease. Liberal, relaxed, and a childhood full of innocence, now seems like a thing of the past.

Today there is so much in the corporate lifestyle from which we need to keep our children’s away from and controlling ourselves is equally necessary too. Today, information tends to confuse terror in front of them. You must be wondering where are our children going with this, what's the solution. Then respectable moms and dads, your children are tangled in your long list of expectations; along with better smart phone, big cars and foreign trips, you want kids that are smart and sharp minded. And to get that you have them wrapped up in school, tuition, homework, exams/competitions, other activities, television, internet... entangled in the endless list today kids are as busy as we are.

Today the kids live under the increasing pressure of their parents’ unreasoned and meaningless expectations and the fear of failing them. The result is a growing depression in children; at such small age they are getting diseases of the old ones (eye glasses, diabetes, gray hair, the girls continue to get early menstruation, obesity in children increases). Many times parents put so much pressure to bring them in advertising, TV series, movies and also expecting them to succeed, which ends up as the child starting to behave like an adult. Don’t impose you incomplete ambitions on your children; that I did not become a hero or heroine, but I will make my kid a celebrity, that we have lived so poorly but we will give the children all that they need (even if they can live without all those stuff). Parents compensate for not spending much time with their children by giving them pocket money and other materialistic features. Many times to show off their prosperity, parents makes spectacle of their children.

Let the children grow up with their innocence. And to make sure that the innocence remains there, you have to change the surrounding. Let them play in mud, let them dance in the rain, let them jump around, let them be persistent but don’t make them stubborn. Let them learn according to their age and interests; don’t make them a robot of your choice.