Why does God Prefers Younger Ones?

I write this with a very sad state of mind. It is about two losses of my life. The first one was six years back and the second was just four days back. I lost my brothers. Both were younger to me. First brother whom I lost six years back, was a very loving brother for all the siblings. My father passed away 54 years back. I was living with my husband's family. My mother, three brothers and a sister became almost helpless. My first brother took it as a challenge to lift the family from a very difficult condition. He was just 18. Working in a private company in Calcutta. Along with work, he did his M.Com and got a job in LIC at Calcutta. The second brother after completing his SSLC started an ayurvedic medical shop. He was very brilliant in studies, but the circumstances forced him to discontinue studies. After some time, a primary school started in our village. He managed to do teachers training and got a job as a teacher in that school. Then the ayurvedic shop became part-time. He looked after the family, with the help of my first brother's financial support. They managed to conduct marriage of my younger sister. Then my first brother moved to kerala from calcutta, and he got married. He couldn't take his wife to place where he worked, as he wanted to save as much money for the education of the youngest brother. The youngest one completed his B.Ed course and got a job as a teacher. He had to wait for 2 years to take his wife to the place where he worked. His sudden demise six years back was a real shock for me. I can not forget the help that he has done to me. Realizing that my son could not get good education in our native village, he took him with him to Trivandrum, put him in a good school, then college and ensured that he became an engineer. With that help, my son went on to do a Ph.D. from IIT. He helped everyone who needed help. Be it relatives or not. His life was full of selfless service, that too without making any noise. When he left us, I prayed to god "Why are you taking younger ones keeping me here, who is elder?"

Last week my youngest brother passed away in a sudden heart attack. He too was very loving brother and we all siblings had a special consideration for the youngest one. His children are settled and in the last two months he spent time with his one year old grandson. I can imagine how happy he would have been playing with his grand child. My great grand children are older than his grandson. Memories are fresh in my mind, when he grew in my lap, when he was infant and young boy. Because of circumstances at home, I had to take care of him and his all needs during his childhood. My mother was going through a bit of depression at that time. During his first job as a teacher in my village (where i was staying with my husband's family) he stayed with us for two years. At that time I didn't have to do anything for him. It was my mother-in-law who took care of him just as her own son. I believe that, my mother-in-law's love towards him was a reflection of her love towards me. He use to call us once in a while to talk over phone. Just two weeks back, he was expressing his happiness of spending time with his grand son. I couldn't bear the news of his passing away. I am still in shock. Again the same question pops up in my mind when I pray "Why are you taking the younger ones keeping me here, who is elder?".

Sixty Years Together....

It is after a long gap that I am posting again. Weakness due to age is troubling me these days. Today I am remembering about our wedding day which was on 24th January 60 years back. The whole event comes as a flashback in my mind...

In those days, marriages were conducted during the teenage. Our marriage was also like that. I was on sixteen and my husband was on nineteen. It was arranged by elders in the family and we saw each other only in the mandap during the marriage ceremony. Then we began to love each other. Of course it was a feeling from within and not showing off like these days what people do.

Ours was a family of seven; my in-laws, two brothers-in law and a sister-in-law. My husband was the eldest, so I had added responsibilities. First one year I had some difficulties to adjust to the new environment. I loved everyone as my own, in spite of resistance from younger ones in the family. In an year's time they also started liking me.

When I look back the 60 years.... We have three children, two daughters and a son. All are well settled and living happily. We are satisfied that we have brought them up with values that we believe are good. Daughters are liked by their husband's families. Son is also settled in Mumbai and his wife is like my own daughter. They take care of all our needs.. over and above the love that binds the family. All our grandchildren are also living happily. Four of them have settled with their own family. Altogether we have four cute great grandchildren. Their childish conversation through phone takes us to an entirely different world. Overall our family tree has now 22 members.

I feel, we are reaching the evening of our life. We are quite satisfied with what we have achieved as a couple. Have taken care of in-laws till the last day of their life. Gave love to everyone in the family, even if at times we felt that we didn't get what we gave. Then as a strong believer in 'bhagavat gita', I get happiness in doing things what I believe is right and not expecting anything in return.

Now for time-pass, I am writing stories and novels in our konkani language. My husband and everyone in the family encourages me in that. Two months back when I was felicitated (along with my husband) by our community, in front of a big gathering, I could see tears of happiness in my husband's eyes.

On this day, the 60th anniversary day of our wedding, I pray god to take care of all in my family tree and give them happiness... also dreaming for a world where everyone is happy and contented with no greed and enmity...

Now I pray god to consider "ladies first" when he decides to take us with him...

The Real Award

Till the age of sixteen i was with my parents. Then after marriage settled at my husband's house. Being the first daughter-in-law of the house, I had much more responsibilities and more expectations from me. It was a very difficult job of balancing between responsibilities and expectations. They were very long days and hardly any time to think of anything else than dometic chorus.

Life was going on. We became parents of three children. Though we are not that educated, we gave them education as much we could afford. More than anything we trained them to live a life based on values.

Time ticked fast. The family tree grew and now i have little cute great grand children. Not much work to do at home. Ten years back, when I was 68, I was looking for a hobby. I have seen my papa writing in our mother tongue konkani, and preparing a hand-written magazine and distributing it among few konkani people. Those magazines changed from hand-to-hand and more people read them.

It is more than 50 years after my marriage. I have lot of free time. Nothing much to do. My son encouraged me to write something for a konkani magazine just started publishing in 1998. First I wrote a very short story and sent to the editor, requesting to publish. The readers accepted it. Then I started writing regularly. Now ten years passed. I got some awards for my writing. But my interest was to get a place in reader's heart.

Last month I attended a function celebrating tenth anniversary of the konkani magazine. They gave me two awards . My first novel in konkani also got released in that function. I was sitting in the audience and watching the program. On my way out, a middle-aged woman came to me with respect glittering in her eyes. She touched my feet as a gesture of respect and spoke to me about how she liked reading my stories and valued the morals in my stories. She came to the function just to see me and if possible, convey her appreciation and respect. When I came to know that she was just discharged from hospital and came all the way to meet me, I didn't know how to respond. I lost searching for words.

I had no words to express at that moment. No award can give me such a satisfaction, and I consider those gestures and words from that woman as the best award for my writing.

Fight for Love

It is after many months I am writing this blog. I was busy with writing a novel in konkani and making corrections etc. The manuscript has been given for printing, and now I can devote more time for writing more blogs. This post is about my observations on love and fight for love.

Love comes from within. Everyone needs love and wants love throughout their life. One can get love only by giving it.

There are different types of love. Love between mother and her children, between husband and wife, love towards in-laws, love towards grand parents and grand children, love between friends, love between siblings, love between neighbours, love between teacher and students etc. For happy and peaceful life, everyone needs love. All our minds are thirsty for love.

A baby just out of mother's womb, start crying. The baby was safe and comfotable in mother's womb for almost ten months. After birth it feels helpless. Cry is the way baby can express its need for love. Nurses clean and covers the baby with dry cloths and the baby stops crying. The elders take the baby from the nurses. The baby feels comfortable in the warm covering. The baby's first cry thus becomes successful. From then on for every need the baby cries. It gets mothers love and enjoys it. Parents also enjoy the baby's love. After a while, the baby recognizes more people around. Everyone gives the baby love and in return they too get love. Baby becomes toddler and becomes more naughty. Everyone around loves the naughty acts of the child, and the baby acts as a bond of love in the whole family.

In school life friendships get developed and a kind of love develops between friends. During teenage, one has to be careful in love. It could land the person in trouble. Many times, such incidents and associated love is forgotten after they leave school or college. After marriage, love between husband and wife gets blossomed. These days love marriages are becoming common. Many years back, the relationship between daughter-in-law and mother-in-law was not generally that sweet as these days. Actually it is the fear that overtook the love between them. Mothers fear that they will lose their son's love, when the son gets married. Things are changing now, as more and more people become educated (I mean, not college education, but realization of relationships and values), more and more daughter-in-laws get accepted as daughters (many times acceptance more than daughters) leading to lively homes. Only love among the family members can create a happy family, whether it is a nuclear or joint family. To create such happy family, every one has to fight for love. It is an inner fight and not physical fight. That fight helps create sharing of love between husband and wife, in-laws, kids and parents etc. Everyone has to succeed in that fight for love. A failure in fight for love can come out as unhappiness or depression, which is a symptom of problem in family. Everyone has to intensify their fight for love to remove that failure and regain the harmony.

It is the ego that creeps in as a virus in a harmonious and happy life. If love between the family members is real, then ego cannot creep in and spoil the harmony. Even in love, there is place for fights and tension. When different human being live together there is bound to have fights. Then love from heart has power to ease such tensions and return of the lost harmony.

If we consider the whole world as a family (vasudaiva kutumbakam), and there is real love and concern for ever other person, then there is no reason fo so much disturbance. I fear that the real love is disappearing from the world, as we see more and more wars and fights between different countries and different sects these days. All of us have to strive hard to spread love among mankind, so that all can live happily.

I believe, there is no power in the world that can beat power of love. Let us spread love and let everyone learn to fight for love than fight for all material things.

A grandmother's satisfaction

Evening of March 9th. I was watching my pet grand daughter's bharatnatyam arangettam. I was in praying mood. I am not able to see the crowd. I was feeling a bit of tension. 19 years of our hard work and prayers are getting fulfilled. It was a challenge. As the program progressed, I thanked god... she is doing well. I kept hearing big applause from the audience. My little grand daughter, special grand daughter, smiling.. in the middle of all people who gatherd on the stage to congratulate and complement her. For most of the people gathered, it was unbelievable. They never expected her to perform the way she did. It was a proud moment for me, as a grand mother.

It is the result of our patience and love. She is a special child. Only when she was 2 years old, we realized that she has problem and is intellectually challenged, and it was a shock for us. Her milestones got delayed. I felt my children's pain. It's life and we have to face it. We considered her as a gift to us. With prayers, therapies, and homeopathic medicines, she started improving. Bit by bit she started speaking. Began walking when she was four.

She started going to special schools. Special educators came home and started teaching her. She is weak in academics. If not academics, we thought of trying some art for her. We found that she likes music, but because of speech problem she couldn't get into it. Then we tried keyboard.. it didn't work out. The dance teachers we approached were not willing to teach her.

About 6 year back, we found a bharatnatyam teacher. His ability to teach special children started working on pratibha. She took about three months to get up and start steps, and get involve. Once we realized that she can dance, we took her to kerala, where my daughter has a dance class. The students there became her friends. Seeing them, and trying dance with them, she started understanding better and started to learn better. She started performing on stages for 5 to 10 minutes. She participated in some competitions for special children in mumbai. She started realizing that she too can dance on stage and started enjoying dancing.

We decided to arrange an arangettam for her, decided a date 9th march 2008, and we stated preparations many months in advance. Her hard work, sincere efforts by both her gurus, her ambitions, her parent's expectations, her brother's encouragement, grand parent's blessings, support from all my children, and encouragement from my other grand children... made the day. All of us were very happy to see her dance so well.

My beautiful little pratibha in the traditional bharatnatyam costumes and ornaments was dancing like an angel on stage. My mind's camera clicked it full. I can see it again and again. The hall was almost full with invited friends and relatives. Most of them came with a curiosity to see what a special child can do. But her footwork, abhinaya (expressions), mudras, and graceful movements were outstanding for a special child. All gathered around her and cheered her at the end of the program.

She proved that "she can also do something". That was our aim. She did six items, which took about 70 minutes of dancing with some intervals in between for costume change and rest. Every now and then it comes to my mind. I hope in coming days, she can move forward step by step in this art form and do better. This is my prayer to almighty.

Thank you for all lovely wishes...

My eldest of grandchildren Nandu wrote a blog on the day i was entering into my 60th year of married life. Two grandsons wrote poems wishing us and remembering the days when they were kids. Another grand daughter created a wonderful postcard using the site created by y son's company. Another grandson made a collage of the family tree and gave us. And the little one, a differently abled granddaughter made a lovely card in her own way.

We were filled with love and all this made us emotional. We responded to all their lovely presents... The response we wrote to Nandu's blog post is posted here also.

Dear Chakki,

We both read your post again and again and felt very happy. It took us back to those days at our old house in the village. I liked the way you started the post "How can you"? My answer is "If you have faith, trust and determination, then you can". At that time (59 years back), the family and social circumstances were such that it was difficult to get an opportunity for the newly wed couples to speak in private. But instead of complaining for anything and everything, we faced the challenges in our own way, without hurting anybody's feelings. But that affected our peace of mind many times. But considering that happiness of people around would bring happiness to us', made us stronger to face the difficulties. In case of difficulties we supported each other, most times discretely. As any other newly wed couple we also had our dreams, but we had to pack them all as to have a peaceful life and make people around us happy.

We believed that making others happy is an investment, which will bring returns later. I can vouch for this now. Our children with their spouses, grandchildren with their spouses, and great grandchildren are showering us with love; what else do we need now? They are fulfilling all the dreams which we could not fulfill ourselves. Children make our dreams realize, grandchildren add colours to them, and great grandchildren make us really enjoy the dreams.

We believe, whether the marriage is arranged by parents or arranged by the couple themselves, the recipie for success is "love each other, trust each other, support each other, love everyone around you, respect elders, feel happiness in making others happy".

Dear chakki, Abu and Ammumma are happy to see that you are remembering and enjoying the childhood days with your naughty boys. Blessings to you, prashant, kanna and sreeku, on this day of our stepping into 60th year of our life together.

All our grandchildren wished in their own ways... Nandu, you posted this blog, suji and vinnu wrote poems, suma made a wonderful postcard, prashant made a collage of the family tree and pratibha created a lovely greeting card in her own way. What else do we need at this stage of our life?

We also thank everyone who wished us through the comments to Nandu's blog.

Aabu and Ammumma

Shatasamvatsaram Deerghamayuhu

When we were very young, there use to be puja at home every month. After the pooja, the priest used to give few things in my father's hands that include flowers, a coconut, betel leaves, a bunch of bananas, and some akshathas (rice mixed with kumkum) and would chant ashirvada mantra. I was curious to understand the meaning of mantras. The ashirvada mantra goes like this "Dhanam, dhanyam, pashum, bahuputralabham, shatha samvatsaram dirghamayuhu". It means, have wealth, plenty of food, cattle, many sons, and live for 100 years.

How relevant is this ashirvada mantra today?

First is dhanam, meaning wealth. Everyone want wealth, like wealth and tries to get as much wealth as possible. Material wealth is necessary to make a living. But it makes people fight with each other and as people get more material wealth they forget humanity, and becomes more selfish. Thus more Dhanam is a real problem.

As days pass, prices of every item increases, and it becomes difficult for many people to make a living with their income. Now cultivation of paddy, wheat etc. is going into lo, ass and we hear farmers suicide s they are finding it difficult to pay of their loans and take care of their family. Changes in weather also affects agriculture. So price of food items increase. Thus getting required Dhanyam becomes problematic.

The third one is cattle. Rarely we see cattle these days even in villages. In towns and cities, we don't see cattle at all, except in diary farms. Maintaining cattle is a real problem these days compared to olden days. It is really not possible for small families to have and maintain cattle. So people just go to shops and buy mils in plastic covers. Many times, the milk is adulterated; we take it without knowing that. Thus cattle is really not there with people these days.

The next item is 'bahu putra labham'. Many children. These are the days where many prefer atomic family with just one kid or at the most two. It is not that easy these days to bring up kids by giving right education and other facilities. More money is required to bring even one or two kids up. Thus bahuputra labham is an impossible.

The fifth one is dirghmayuhu... 100 years long life. Who wish to live 100 years these days? Human life is more of problems these days. Though everyone wishes for peace, but life is full of uncertainities and new problems appear every now and then in life. Many families find it difficult to run household with their salary. If children are weak in studies, they need tuition. Then medical expenses, etc. etc. Managing life becomes difficult, then who would like to live for 100 years?

One enjoys childhood under their parents love. School days are joyful, but have to work hard to beat competition and to meet goals. When one starts family life, age is already close to 30 and parents are close to 60. I think, none would like to live for another 40 years afther that. If there is no health problem, one can live for another 15 to 20 years.

Lifestyles are changing very fast. Food culture is becoming different. Genration gap in thinking between father, son and grand son are widening, and that poses many problems at home. To live peacefully, there is only one medium, that is love. Love makes one to adapt and adjust.

After seventy, our organs becomes our enemy. In early days people lived in forests by eating leaves, fuits etc. Now doctors advise to eat salads, fruits, and leafy vegetables, which is very similar to that kind of food. As age increase, sugar, pressure etc. becomes our companions. We are forced to eat sugar-less, oil-less, salt-less, chilli-less food. Many of us have to use stick as support for walking, need specs as support for reading, and sometimes hearing aids to hear. Some of us start forgetting things. How many would like to live like that?

We have to change the meaning of the ashirvada mantra. It should be change or we should interpret it as: Wealth, food to live healthy, drinking diary milk to improve health, one or two children who will give love worth of many many children and care the parents, and a life that gives happiness of a 100 years of life. I think, everyone likes a life till they can do their own work and strength to support their children.

So, let us interpert the ashirvada mantra this way.