_____________Silence_____________

Silence never betrays you.”

JOHN BOYLE O'REILLY, "Rules of the Road"

There are times when silence becomes a persons’ best friend.  When you’re feeling lonely, a little scared of the world and maybe betrayed by some one…. That’s when Silence becomes your best friend.

Over the years, I learnt that Silence never harms, rather it protects a person from a lot of harm that words might do.  The transition from an Extrovert to an Introvert who keeps things all bottled up for me was good and a time when I really needed that quietness around me, in my own soul to think about certain things.

As time passed, I developed the sense of really pondering over thoughts and things about which I had to make decisions, I turn them twist them in my mind, the only thing that helps me really evaluate is the answer that comes from deep within…….. From the silent depth.

My love for people, my understanding of them also comes from the time I started keeping silent and just simply observing them. At times it gets a little too hurtful not being able to talk but then it is also healed by the understanding a person reaches to about themselves in a silent mode of life.

“In silence man can most readily preserve his integrity.”

Meister Eckhart

In the middle of a fight, the winner is the one who remains silent, to some they may seem like a loser but to their own self; they have preserved their integrity. Their sense of self worth stops them from stooping so low as to bicker about what they consider common things.

I can relate a million things from my life, both personal and professional, where I hear something about myself which can be quite hurtful but I just smile and think…. “Oh Thank you who ever is saying such things about me…….. It just shows how important I am for you to spend so much time thinking about me.”

I never go and confront that person as in my opinion; it is like stoking a fire. My silence does speaker louder than words, it conveys my self discipline, integrity and it irritates people to such an extent that they show their true colors J .

A Thank You to Someone Special

And each of us can practice rights ourselves, treating each other without discrimination, respecting each other's dignity and rights.
Carol Bellamy

As a young girl in school after the home bell would ring and we would disperse for home, I remember seeing a sari clad lady with a scarf over her head watching over the prayers of the afternoon shift… As a child, I was a little scared of her and a little in awe. What I was not to know that she would in the future become one of the most inspirational figures of my life.

Now, as I see her I realize she has immense inner strength. I can understand the pain and loss she has gone through in her life but it has just made her more beautiful as a human being. I see her dedication to her family and from where I am standing to me, it seems like she is the pillar on which her dear ones are standing tall and proud….. Any one would stand tall if they were associated to her. At work, she tries her best to draw the best out of all those who work under her.  

What I learnt from her will stay with me forever. She is always telling me “Basic Honesty is what makes a relationship work”; this lesson has proved to be the truest I could have ever learnt from anyone. I have a lot to say but words seem insignificant for the dignity, poise and strength that she has…… The world would be a better place if we have just a few more people like her. I think all I can say is “Thank you Parveen Aunty, for being there, for being a mother, an aunt I did not have and for being a mentor.” I hope as time passes by I grower closer to you.

As Pauline Reage stated “Woman ... is the divine object, violated, endlessly sacrificed yet always reborn, whose only joy, achieved through a subtle interplay of images, lies in contemplation of herself.”

 The things that I have learnt from my mum and you are love, sacrifice, sincerity and honesty. The two of you are epitomes of womanhood and personification of the female which God had initially thought up of, a nurturer of humanity devoid of any spite.

The Legacy of a Mother & a Daughter

“The Strength of Motherhood is Greater Than Natural Laws.”

Motherhood is celebrated universally. It has been so since the being of time and will be so till the end of the world because if there is one person in our lives who deserves to be honored it’s’ a mother.

As far back as I can remember, mum to me has been my fairy tale princess, she has been my first love, she has always been there for me… As a child I remember being fascinated by every aspect of my mother. I would snuggle in her at night because I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep without her. I remember sniffing her dupatta at times because I could smell her :D I know I know it is a crazy thing to do but I was a kid back then.  Even now I feel lost without her.

I still love wrapping my arms around her… My earliest memories of my mother are waking up on weekends and seeing her standing there smiling over me… That memory has stayed with me till now and it has helped me find myself when I have been really depressed. For nearly all my life, I have seen mum struggle to bring us up, she has been the pillar of strength, the driving force behind all of us. She is the very reason all her children, us humans are a success. She has pillowed us at times when we fell through and we lost the purpose of our lives. Her lap has been the safe haven where we have cried and not felt scared to showing our fears. Her heart carries all our fears, our dreams, our goals even our silliest talks.

Today, when I look at her, I want to be her pillar of strength. When I wake up after only sleeping for a couple of hours to help her shop for the groceries, I don’t feel tired because I remember what ever she has done for me, I remember nudging her awake as a child when I had fever and wanted to sleep with her. The most poignant memory, I have is of her holding me tightly in the hospital waiting room when I was having severe headaches and the lump at the back of neck had started hurting too much. That was the time when we were uncertain as to what I was going through…. It turned out to be nothing big but the severity of my pains was so intense that mum developed a habit of waking up at night to check on me…. There in the hospital waiting room, she said “You are the best thing God has given me, how will I live if He takes you back?”

I learnt what motherhood means that day…. I promised myself, I would try to love her as much as she loves me but I know a child can never love their mother as much as a mother can. A mother’s heart is like a trench of never ending love.

But from that time I have tried to just be there for her. When we go to the book fair together nearly every Sunday and I see her smile, I feel something indescribably beautiful… When we stop for brunch some place and we keep on talking about every thing under the sun and the moon, I feel good about being a daughter. It is really hard at times to be a perfect daughter but I am not trying to be perfect, I am just trying to be a daughter. I want to give a little something of the every thing that she has ever given me………… I just want to see her smile.

I just want to thank her for being my mother.  

Soul – Search

“There is an eternal landscape, geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives.”

When you seek yourself out, you come across a million more questions then you first started off with. You feel like you are drowning in an ocean of confusion or falling into an abyss. A peak inside the soul leads to new discoveries while coming to terms with one’s old self… We, face bitter memories which we have shied away from all our lives, we also find our selves going over n over again some memories which make us smile… The soul is the truest reflection of our selves in our most honest form. One can not lie to their soul nor can they hide from it.

Success in my opinion comes to those who have the guts to face their soul…. to confront the ghosts of the past in order to pave way for a better future and a pleasant present. Those can not be honest to themselves can never succeed in the sense that all their success is temporary. For a person to succeed, one needs to come to terms with one’s own self. Be true to yourself; as John Jakes once quoted;

Be yourself. Above all, let who you are, what you are, what you believe, shine through every sentence you write, every piece you finish. John Jakes

Be a mirror of your inner most self… Let the world find the pleasure of knowing you…Glory in your own self. Give your 100% in everything that you do. I for one, am a staunch believer that if I am doing something I should do it all the way, give my 100% to it otherwise just NOT do it. I want to be ME…. It might sound arrogant to some, it might sound full of self importance to others but frankly the world has had its Mother Teresa, Lady Diana, Edhi, Albert Einstein, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, etc now it does not need a copy of these people. It needs people who are genuine and honest to them selves, who endeavor to create an authentic impression of themselves on people and the world.

Look inside your self and think… Who am I? What am I? Why am I? Ask yourself…. Why did this happen to me? If something bad did happen was it so bad that I have to loose a piece of my innocence and really become so harsh and cynical over it? As you turn each and every rock inside you, you will find that certain things that really did seem very horrendous some time ago are in fact not so bad after all. Your fate lies in your hands and in the way you think……….. May be you really need to let things go in order to be at peace with your self. Nurture your own soul, protect it from blackening… As you cleanse your soul…. You’ll find yourself conquering new lands… You stop at new rivers, seas and islands within yourself.

Loving yourself is no sin… It is not a defect of the mind… It is trying to become a better person, a true human… God has given you life, made you a human so that you have humanity…….. If you do not protect your own softness, your own soul who will??

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. Oscar Wilde.

Be yourself… Be free……

Me As I Am

I believe in relationships… Love, compromise, feelings, tears, anger……….. All this is a part of me and who I am. I know some people view love as a waste of time maybe or a weakness…. Some see tears or anger in the same way but for me a person is incomplete without even any one of these essential feelings. I have walked a long, a very long way to reach where I am now… to be as content with my life as I am now.  I didn’t crib about the way the adversities life threw in my face back then as a child nor do I now as a mature, grown up person. I believe adversities make a person stronger and much more capable to live a better life than they had known before. I hope to accomplish a whole more than I have till now. What is missing in our lives is the purpose of our lives, we do not search our soul for what we were born to do that is one of the reasons we are so lost as a nation and as humans. The very essence of being a Human Being lies in having humanity. I never look up to people I can not reach out rather I have looked up to my mother, my grandfather (people who have been real to me) as my role models. Now, at this age when I know I am at the stage I can inspire people with my personality; I still find things in my role models that I want to inculcate in my own self. Me, as my self I can only define by:

“When people believe in themselves they have the first secret of success.”

~Norman Vincent Peale

I must also say that a person needs to know their worth in order to feel worthy of themselves, in order to achieve something in life you have to feel confident in yourself… And you have to remain yourself. You can not do anything till you are not you.