Gods & Ghosts of Himalayas

Have you ever witnessed or felt something truly Divine, something magical? For many of us, the Divine is a concept to which we offer prayers and seek blessings, but it often feels distant, residing somewhere in the heavens or in a different realm. Direct communication with the Divine is rare, if not entirely elusive, especially in a brief timeframe. What if I told you that direct conversations with the Divine, with God, are not just a concept, but a contemporary reality? On a daily basis? They occur in the mighty Himalayas, where these divine beings, the Devatas, live, listen to devotees, reply, communicate, and express their emotions. 

To learn more, you can explore my book, "The Gods & Ghosts of the Himalayas," available on Amazon Kindle at https://amzn.eu/d/2mqJPEt

Blue Thumb Impressions

About 40 women were gathered near the cash-window. They were all contracted labourers hired by the Govt. institute for doing small unskilled works. None of them knew how to read or write. They were talking to each other in their own dialect, which was difficult to understand for locals. There was some excitement among them, as some of them had planned to leave for their villages for celebrating Holi Festival after collecting their hard-earned wages.

Suddenly the almost still group got animated and concentrated near the window. The cash-madam had come. That’s what they called her “Cash-Madam” or “Cash wali Madam”. Her name was Shilpa, but none of them knew it, but they all knew that she was the one who will give them their money for a month today.

“Chanda?”

Chanda went close to the window and Madam gave her few notes. Chanda looked at the notes and flipped them, maybe to understand.

“Thumb Impression here” Madam pushed an Ink-pad towards here along with the receipt.

Chanda complied and left from the window, still looking at the notes in her hand.

Similarly, the Cash-madam called everyone’s names and handed each of them a few notes and got their blue thumb impressions on receipts with revenue stamps. Cash-Madam looked at all the receipts with blue thumb impressions and smiled. She loved those thumb impressions.

Shilpa herself was from a small family. She got this job in the accounts department of a Govt Institute as a result of the kindness of a local MLA. Some people said that she had to pay a lot to get this job, but no one was sure. Shilpa was happy to be here. The working hours were less and there was no strict time schedule for her. After the initial few days, Shilpa knew she can come and go anytime she wished. She was handling the calculation and distribution of wages among unskilled working women. She also maintained their attendance records.

It did not take her much time to realize that she was like a god for those women. A day’s wage for an unskilled woman was about 300 Rs. Shilpa deducted a day from a few of the women and bagged the money. She had thought that if any of them came back, she would say there was a mistake in her attendance and she would pay the money. But none of the women came back. Next month she deducted from more women, still, no one noticed. Now Shilpa was comfortable. The payday for the women was also a bonus day for Shilpa. She deducted a day or two from all of the 40 women’s salary. Now even if any woman asked Shilpa about lesser wages, Shilpa would reply that it was because she did not come for 2 days or some other reason like that. Since the attendance record was also with Shilpa, there was no way to verify.

The women although discontent with their wages, were not able to say anything as they were illiterate and could not properly count or calculate. They depended entirely upon the honesty of the Cash-Madam. They cursed the madam internally, but could not say anything. Many of them left, but thanks to the unemployment new ones were ready to join beforehand.

Shilpa’s life was going well. She has spare money for better clothes and jewellery. She got expensive toys for her son. Being an accounts person Shilpa calculated that in the last two years she had made at least 2.5 lacs of rupees extra by deducting from wages of unskilled women.

________________________

It was payday again. The women were as usual gathered near the Cash-window waiting for their fate-window to open. The window opened at the scheduled time. The women were surprised to find a man sitting in the place of Cash-Madam.

One of them asked, “Sir Ji, where is the madam?”

“She will not come anymore. I have joined in place of her”

The women did not ask more but were happy to find her wages increase a bit. Many other women also asked the same question to the man. But all they could know was she has left the job and now this man will be distributing their wages to them. They were all happy with the wages they got now.

___________________________________

Shilpa went home after distributing the wages. Weight of extra cash in her purse was making her happy. The excitement tired her off and she went to bed. She had dreams of getting more and more money and sending her son to the best school in City, buying new furniture she had seen at the mall a few days back. She went to the mall to buy new clothes. She donated generously to a beggar she met at a light point near the mall. At the mall, She chose the best of the dresses and went to the trial room. She took off her clothes to try the new dress. When she looked into the mirror, she was surprised. There were some blue marks on her body. As she was noticing them, the marks started getting darker. The were moving and getting bigger. Shilpa rubbed frantically on them to erase them. But they were not coming off. It was getting sore and painful wherever they were. The marks spread, soon her neck was blue. It did not stop there, it rose to her face. The reflection was now of a horrible dark blue-skinned lady. 

She woke up with a cry. She was covered in sweat but was glad this was just a dream. She finished the glass of water lying by her bedside. She touched herself to check she was fine. She actually felt some pain in her chest. She quickly took off her clothes and saw herself in the mirror. There were bluish marks. They looked like the thumb impressions of those women.

Next day Shilpa took the day off and went to the doctor. The doctor advised some tests. Test reports came. Shilpa had cancer...at its advanced stage.

A dream

I do not remember how long we were sitting on that green wrought iron bench gazing into the long shining reflections of lights dancing over the ripples of the lake. As the sun went down, lights around the lake converted lake’s dull surface into a beautiful animated painting. Soothing light music was getting remixed with evening roost of birds and random shouts of distant people. The periphery of the lake was full of people enjoying nature, having their evening walks or just gazing at the beautiful scenery. Chilly January winds were blowing, but we were cosy, for we had each other to hold. My greatest treasure was in my arms. We could see our lovely future in the splendid colourful reflections. We were destined to meet and stay together forever. Everything was perfect. There was nowhere else in this world we wanted to be.

She was looking at me with her playful and naughty eyes with her face close to my chest. I was telling her about my plans to buy a new house for us. How a big beautiful portrait of us together will adorn its drawing room and she was telling me how she wants our house to be colourful with Blue, Green, & Pink Colours. She was also dreaming. In between the talks she was giving me pecks on my face and lips. I was kissing her back. I was not able to believe my luck. There were so many painful confusions between us, which I wanted to clear up. I could not remember how everything sorted out but was glad it did. The fact that she was with me in my arms, was still sinking in. I was so happy that I was not able to contain myself. I was looking at her pretty face, again and again, to affirm that she was with me.

Suddenly the lake was filled with daylight...it was day again, the beautiful colourful lights went out and the music stopped. The hustle and bustle of evening joggers were gone. Beautiful reflections on the water were gone. It was muddy yellowish and very silent now. All the people were gone, there was no one around. The scenery was not beautiful anymore. The chilly winds were standing still now. The weather became hot and humid. As I was wondering what had happened, I looked at her. She was also strangely still, with her head hung low towards the ground. I shook her, she fell on her side of the bench. Thick bright red colour oozed out from the side of her lips. It was blood. There was something wrong. I was scared. I tried to clean the blood from her face with my hand. But more blood came out. I was scared to see what happened to her. Just a moment ago she was fine. I screamed on top of my lungs for help, but no one came. I screamed again, “What happened ....Get up, get up, please... please get up”.

She opened her eyes and with a scary grin on her face she spoke, “You have killed me. You are my killer. I am dead, life-less because of you. You are responsible for this. You lied to me. You promised to take care of me. You liar! You deserve to die”. Then a huge gush of blood came out from her mouth and her eyes were closed again. There was too much blood. It spilt all over me while I tried to hold her. I was breathing heavily. Each breath was like a stab in my chest. Everything around me was spinning. I felt my knees go weak. I tried to scream, but the voice was not coming out. I felt like my tongue was swollen and hard to move. Only muffled cries were coming out of my mouth. I tried to move away, but my body was not responding. It was paralyzed.

Before I could do anything, I woke up. It took me some time to get hold of reality and realize it was a dream.

Home

What is a Home?

The most common definition of a home is "place where you live". As per many people home is a house, an independent house or an apartment. It can be either owned or rented. Having 1, 2, 3, or more bedrooms and other rooms.

The Love Collection Review

Stars: 2/5

I have read 'Bright Lights' under the Urban Shots series, which is a collection of 29 stories by 21 writers. Bright Lights was a nice read with many different flavors of Urban Life, with ironies, romances, memoirs.

With the experience of Bright lights I ordered "The love collection".

Review: The story-lines are not very impressive, with most of them very predictable and cliche stories. A few stories like "Written in Stars" are good. But for most of the stories I had to make an effort to read all of it, as they felt easily put-down-able.

Super hero of Gujarat

Ten year old Chintu was very excited to go to school, or let’s say ‘super’ excited to go to school. Why wouldn't he? He had worked very hard for this. Only last evening he noticed his power. He checked it by lifting his dad’s car. He saw a truck parked on the roadside. He wanted to check his power once again. He looked around, there were not many people. He quickly went to the rear side of truck and put his hand to the cargo. With a small pull truck’s rear axle was off the ground. Assured of his super power he slowly kept the truck back. There was a small dent on the cargo of truck where Chintu had lifted it. It was clear, now Chintu was a super-boy.

We all had wished for a superpower when we were young. But as we grow up we realize there is nothing like a superpower and we are all at almost same level. OK, some may be more powerful than others but overall our maximum powers are limited.

Even as now we know that there are not super powers, we all still enjoy the comics, cartoons and movies based on them. I have been fan of superhero movies. I know a lot of them. We all know, to name a few these are Superman, Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, and Spiderman and so on. And for today’s kids there are some things like doremon, pokemon etc.

I am still thrilled when superhero beats the bad guys, or aliens or even gods and saves the world with his powers. Sometimes I dream that I also have the powers of superman or Ironman, this happens a lot when I had recently seen a superhero movie. :)

But this all settles down soon. Because such superheroes do not exist Or do they?

They do exist in reality. But they do not wear any special costume, cape or metal suit. They look just like us, dress like us but do extraordinary things.

Superhero Name: Mittal Patel, Superpower : Giving identity and helping the ignored communities.

This lady has single handed worked a lot for the communities which were ignored. She had started alone in 2006 and now formed VSSM – Vicharta Samuday Samarthan Manch.

She has worked to provide identity for more than 20000 people. That is actually a lot of work, especially in our country. Here is the Youtube link to her inspiring video.

Just one of the many inspiring stories of VSSM is the story is of nomadic tribe “Sarania”, from Vadiya village of Gujarat, where the women are forced into prostitution by the male members of their own family. Girls are not married in this village. And this is going on from generations. The new generations are born without marriages. How can they have an identity. As a rule of their community if a girl is married she is not brought in to prostitution. But this is seriously resisted by the families themselves as prostitution is the only income source for many of them.

VSSM came forward and arranged marriage of 8 girls, and engagement of another 12 in this village in 2012, to end the prostitution, bring this tribe to mainstream and enable them live with dignity.

To do this huge amount of work, you got to have super-powers.

I hereby salute to the Superhero of Gujarat, Mittal Patel. She has inspired me to again look for a superhero in myself, like I did when I was a kid, as we need more superheroes.

This post is written for Franklin Templeton Investments partnered the TEDxGateway Mumbai in December 2012.

My Jaipur visit

A Visit to history.

I had recently been on a road trip to the Pink city of Jaipur on a long weekend. It is a lovely city and luckily we were welcomed by first rains of monsoon. Following are some of the photographs from this trip.


A colorful window in Albert Hall Museum.

Albert Hall

A Window in Amber Fort...

Deewan-e-aam - A place where common people could go and talk to the kings directly for anything.

Deewan-e-Khaas - Place for officers and royals to sit and discuss. Notice the shine in the walls and roof. These are all small mirrors. It is said on a dark night  a single lamp was enough to light up whole Deewane-e-khaas.

Amber fort by night (During the Light and Sound Show)

Hawa Mahal: A small palace with lot of windows specially constructed for queens to see the city and market, without being seen themselves.