What a Change this !!!

I remember as a little girl I used to get so embarrassed when someone would ask me this very common question :
" What's your name ?"
Before even uttering it I could imagine the bemused look on their faces when they would hear the word "Zohra" ... !!!

But I can't blame them because most of the non Muslims would not understand the word at first , although at least two popular , but old Bollywood songs had the word "Zohra" in the mukhdas

So it was heart breaking to see that after much effort when I thought they had finally got it right , they would ruin it with the pronunciation or the spelling 😀 !!!

Even among Muslims "Zohra" was , still is , and quite strangely so , not a preferred name ...
So even Muslims would give a not-so-happy look on hearing "Zohra" as if the name had some underlying sin attached to it 😛 !!!

So for the first twelve or thirteen years of my life I grew up eagerly wishing that my parents would change my name to a more familiar , and preferably , Z-less word 😒 !!!

This heartfelt wish is now more than four decades old and has thankfully outgrown its youthful eagerness 😌

Back then the British had already left our country , after first being the catalyst that united hundreds of warring riyasats into one Bharat , and then treacherously dividing it into India and Pakistan !!!
Too much had changed for those who had experienced the horrors of partition ...
And whatever had changed was too shocking to ask for more ...

The various "conversion ceremonies" were to take some more years before vested interests got back to them

And so no one paid much heed to my "childish desire" to somehow be able to detach myself from The "Zohra" Effect 😑

Meanwhile another two - three years went by ... I was about fourteen or fifteen when I met Aunty Olivia ...

An extremely sophisticated and dainty lady , her hand writing was like musical notes written on paper 😍
She was the first person who pronounced my name correctly in the very first attempt , and with her characteristic sweet smile , spontaneously remarked that it was a beautiful and unique name

She was a gentle and kind woman
But she was not trying to be just good to me by superficially "sympathizing" with me on this name issue 💗 
Her positivity and genuineness were real

Among other meanings like "radiant" and "beautiful" , the word "Zohra" is also the Urdu name for Planet " Venus " ...
I had also discovered that there used to be a famous singer in Hindi Cinema Industry called Zohrabai Ambalewaali 😊 ...
This , and of course the songs "Zohra Jabeen ... " and "Zohra Jamaal ... " did help lift my spirit quite often 😊 !!!

But it was actually Aunty Olivia , who made me fall in love with my name , and ever since , whatever be people's reaction , I am very happy that my wish to free myself from "The Zohra Effect" was never fulfilled 😙

While Shakespeare may have said "What's in a name" , honestly anyone calling a rose by some other name does make a fool of himself and shows how ignorant he is 😏 !!!

Your name is the door to your identity
It is said that your name also has an impact on your personality
May be that is another reason why siblings are so different from one another 😎

I do realize as I look back that I am very fortunate to have met sensible and sweet people like Aunty Olivia , who by their deeds and actions transmitted goodness all around ...
Their reassuring smiles promised a better tomorrow 💞

They may physically not be near me but continue to remain in my thoughts
Their goodness is inspirational and their positivity is contagious

Their numbers must increase because they are the ones who do not insist on changing a mere name , they invisibly , yet decisively , transform a negative into a positive .

Dilwaale Dulhaniya Le Aaye

Eleven years back, the day his mom was celebrating her birthday, a boy in class eleven "meets" a girl in class nine through a social net working site
With the passage of time they must have discovered in each other an invisible mutual attraction that must have worked in consonance with The Divine Power bringing them closer to each other

A bond that blossomed more and more with every birthday they celebrated, blooming steadily Spring after Spring , growing stronger till they realized that they are destined to be together forever 💐

So here a girl and a boy who had so far "met" only in the virtual world decide to marry each other 💝 !

Everything ... Well almost everything ... about this event was interesting and romantic and at times unusually nerve-racking

As both the families started preparing and planning for the special day with great enthusiasm, little had they realized that God Ji was planning it all His own way

The baraatis from South India landed in the girl's home town in North India by an afternoon flight

At the airport they are informed that the bride-to-be had been suffering from fever for the last few days, she has been diagnosed with dengue and is hospitalized

Suddenly the mood changes from being joyous to becoming worried
The girl's relatives, keeping the spirit high and smiling through such trying times ... running from home to hospital to the venue, and doing everything possible to make the baraatis comfortable in their hotel rooms ... 👍

Mendhi ceremony scheduled for the evening is cancelled but the Mendhi Waali comes and applies henna in beautiful designs on the palms of all female guests

Every heart meanwhile is praying for the girl's health
She thankfully responds well to the treatment, and to everyone's relief is discharged from the hospital well in time for the Nikaah the next day , which goes off very well by God Ji's grace

And so exactly after eleven years, from the day they had first met, on the day the boy's mom is celebrating yet another birthday, the girl and the boy meet face-to-face for the first time
As bride and groom ... 😘 !!!

God Ji pens and plans the stories we all live through in our lives
He gifts to us our dreams, our actions, our family, our friends, and everything else

This one has been unusally exciting ... and suspenseful too ... so much like a thrilling Hindi film script with a happy ending 😘 !

And as we welcome the new bride we realize that this is just the beginning of a beautiful and blessed relationship between two young human beings, and their families 😊

On this auspicious occasion let us pray with utmost sincerity that may there be happiness, love and peace for everyone on this Earth
And may the beautiful dreams of all our loved ones come true
💝💝💝

💝

It was almost sleep time
But I was thinking about the telephone conversation I had just had

"Dear God Ji ! You know everything so please you do the best for us and keep all harm away from all of us Aameen "
I said as many times as I could

And while doing so , I also switched on the silliest show on television , and lay on the sofa ...

And when I woke up it was morning !!!
But it seemed like the problem had either not slept or it had also woken up with me ...

The door bell rang just as I was having my first cup of tea in the kitchen and still mulling over last night's telephonic conversation

It was still early for the sunlight to have reached the building stairway 
But it was already time for the caretaker to have switched off the lights therein
So the stairway was neither well-lit nor completely dark

As I opened the door I saw Mummy standing there
I was wide awake ...
Had brushed my teeth and washed my face ...
And also had a couple of sips of chaai
So I couldn't be dreaming

Leaning slightly forward , I took a closer look
Yesssss ... It was HER without doubt !!!

But this was IMPOSSIBLE
My mother could not be standing there ... 
She had passed away three years back !!!

"Zohra ! I hope I am not disturbing you ... "
I heard
This was not Mummy's voice

In an instant the divine illusion was gone
And there stood before me the most graceful woman living in our Housing Society
Tall , fair , dignified , soft-spoken , her silvery hair neatly tied , wearing a light coloured cotton shalwar - kameez
So much like my mother !

She is the treasurer of our Housing Society

She was holding a damaged cheque in her hand
"I am really sorry ... ye kal mere haath se naa jaane kaise phat gayaa ... Aap ko subah - subah takliif de rahi hooN ... Can you issue a fresh one ... ?"

All this took just a few minutes to happen
And I went through it quite like a robot
But when she left , I was completely overwhelmed with the aura of the celestial illusion 

Logically , if at all there can be any logic here , this was nothing more than hallucination of a mind that was both disturbed and weary
A play of the shadows in a dimly - lit place 

But for the soul this was a supremely invaluable experience
How much it enriched me and how much emptiness it left behind is unfathomable
I cried till I was exhausted
But after that everything was fine

Mummy had come
Yes ! She sure had ...

Souls don't speak
But they come
Silently
To bless us , encourage us and take our worries away



❤❤💕

Not Very Long Ago Once Upon A Time

Not very long ago ...
Or was it once upon a time that one had the liberty to be more liberal with words and thoughts , as in there was no "curfew" on expression in most places.

My Amma used to go shopping for groceries for the week and often carry the loaded cloth bags for some distance herself.
On her return she would sit down , relaxing , a cup of tea in her hand , she would remark with a slight smile :
"Bhai jihaad kar ke aa rahey haiN 😀!!!"

The shopping bags were made of cloth , and the language was made up of healthy humour and sensitivity often laced with poetry that was pleasantly sufi in character.
So , to us children , "Jihaad" was just a word that meant some kind of "hard work"
And I can say with certainty that for our elders too it meant only that much

Who could have ever imagined back then that Jihad was to become such a terrorizing word in times to come

Chatting with a cousin the other day our conversation , as usual drifted to the achche-achche puraane din , we both having lost our parents in the last couple of years , now get nostalgic more often 😔

In response to my above memory she narrated one of her friend's story
This girl had taught her toddler that if he had to do potty , he would say :
"Amma jihad karna hai !!!"
(I guess the child must have been severely constipated 😉😀😀)
But , that apart , what is interesting to note is the humour and class in language

Lekin this was years ago ... ab aaj ke daur ke hawaale se zara gehraai meiN sochtey haiN ...

Why didn't the word " Jihaad" frighten us back then ?
Why and who allowed some outsiders to snatch away the beauty and humour from our language ?
How , when and who chained our feet , tied our tongues and caged our minds ?

How many of us grudged the throwing out of "Z" from Ramzaan ?
Did we make enough noise when our "Khuda Hafiz " was being replaced by "Allah Hafiz " ?

Do we even realize that most of us don't say "Allah / Khuda ka shukr hai " any more ...
It has been replace by "Alhamdolillah , Subhanallah " and more of such Arabic stuff , often trying to copy the Arabic accent too 😞

Does this change ever alarm us ?
It should have , but it never has ...

Honestly as believing Muslims it is not enough to take the easy way out saying that Jihad was just another word that we thought meant "hard work" and that we are shocked to note that today it is being used in such horrendous terms.

When will the believers start to see their contribution ( and take responsibility ) in how the politics of the community they claim membership of , has changed so devastatingly ?

Because these seemingly trivial changes penetrated in our daily parlance rather innocuously through the well-to-do middle and upper class Muslim NRIs , both from the US and Arab Countries
And were as eagerly lapped up by the desi Muslims as that joke called "hijaab" which only covers the hair of an otherwise very stylish and invitingly fashionable female.

And soon the new words became a prestigious addition to the vocabulary of the "modern" Muslim community

Either way - whether we actively contributed to it or stood by the wayside minding our own business , believers are complicit in how the "barbaric others" ( like these terrorist groups ) have been using religious discourse to legitimize their actions and building organizations geared towards destruction.

Looking back I feel that language is among the most powerful medium of controlling peoples' thinking.
And it is also the first to fall prey to the heinous agendas of vested interests
The beginning is apparently harmless.
But builds up gradually and the pitiable irony is that the victim never realizes what went wrong and where

Coming back to what I have said initially in this article ... back then shopping bags were made of cloth , and the language was made up of healthy humour and sensitivity often laced with poetry that was pleasantly sufi in character.

Plastic took over the world as gradually and as dangerously as the right wing across religions is taking over the human race

The World is just about waking up to the menace of plastic ...

Gharazparast Jahaan meiN ... Be Warned ... !

Sahir Ludhianvi's words of caution, wisdom, romance, philosophy and all else, come mostly from his own life's experiences. Quite a few of his film songs that one hears even today, had actually been written much before as a result of circumstances in his real life, but used in films because they suited the situation

He has woven his pain, his happiness, his helplessness, his hope, his ambition and all else in poetry,  and placed his life undressed before his readers / listeners
Much has been written about his choice of words and not without reason, because what sets Sahir Ludhianvi apart from other poets of his time, as also poets in general, is the choice of the subject / topic of his poetry and the words that he chooses to express his thoughts (on the subject) .
 
The song that I have in mind today is one that hits hard upon the listener's ears and mind, before traveling deep down to the soul, creating a suffocating vacuum.

"Naa Tu zamiiN ke liye hai naa aasmaaN ke liye
Tera wajood hai ab sirf daastaaN ke liye"

What an unfathomable downfall and what an unspeakable feeling of worthlessness comes with these lines, as if there can be no retrieval from this heart-breaking wreckage
    
In the next couplet
"Palat ke suu e chaman dekhne se kya hoga
Wo shaakh hi naa rahi jo thi aashiyaaN ke liye ... "
Sahir Ludhianvi sums up the life-shattering experience when one unexpectedly faces disloyalty and faithlessness from a loved one.
He is not able to come to terms with the truth that has hit him in the face so brutally and yet come to terms he must
He may take time, but he has to accept the reality with all its bitterness 



Sahir Ludhianvi's uniqueness also lies in the fact that while he lists down the problems, his mind is also busy suggesting solutions ...

Here is a man who has, as they say, been there and seen it all
And true to this personality trait, he comes up with a worldly-wise piece of advice

Sahir says seeking unconditional love and faithfulness in a world full of opportunism and egotism can leave you miserable and dejected
It is in one's own interest to realize that unvarnished trust, devotion and steadfastness are rarely found on this planet of self-obsessed and self-consumed people
(Hence be warned, don't trust people blindly and measure the distance before you take the next step)

"Gharazparast jahaaN meiN wafa talaash naa kar
Ye shaai bani hai kisi doosre jahaan ke liye "

Written for Dilip Kumar - Sharmila Tagore starrer, B R Chopra's "Daastaan", this song is a profoundly educative commentary on the human nature in general and makes sense even independent of the situation in the film
The listener is often left taking stock of his own life
The truth of relationships lies bare.
Could be shocking, could be gratifying ...

And if one is true to oneself, one may end up seeing the reflection of his own soul in the mirror of this stupendous piece of writing 😊

Bai ! Tula Salaam

We call her Bai.
Her family too, (even her children) call her Bai.
She is now eighty seven years old
( I won't say eighty-seven-years-young, because old is (g)old, and replacing the word "old" with "young" is a rather poor and cockamamie play of words )

So this eighty-seven year old bubbly octogenarian has great eye-sight and fairly good health, but her hearing is gone.
Recently I met her after more than three and a half decades.
Obviously, she could not recognize me.

So I asked her :
"Aap ne mujhe nahi pehchanaa na ?"
She could not hear me
Then her daughter-in-law spoke, literally inside her ear :
"Bai ... hi Zohra ... hila olakhlas ( ओळखलास ) nahi na tumhi ... "
Instantly her face lit up with child-like delight as she excitedly remarked :
"Aiyyya ... Zohra ... !!!"
She held out her hand to show a height of about three and a half feet and said to her daughter-in-law :
"Aga mala tar itkishich athavtey hi ... " indicating how tall ( or small ) I was in her memories !!!


As we got talking, after every few lines, as if to convince herself that I was the same little school girl who she knew, she would exclaim :
"Kitni badi ho gayi re tu ... Kitttti mothi zhaalis ga !!! "
 ( An endearing and irrefutable proof of how children never grow up in the eyes of their elders 😉😀😀)

                                         ( Bai and Me )

She was the second wife of her husband.
Ahead of her times, she chose to marry the man of her choice despite the fact that he was already married and having children too

It never occurred to me to ever ask how love blossomed and bloomed between them but I do now know that her father and her husband worked for the same company and as luck would have it, they were immediate neighbours, a single wall separating both their houses.

                             ( The houses as they stand today )

The fact that more than sixty years back, living in a traditional middle class household, she had the freedom and the strength to take important decisions in life, stand by those decisions, and live life sunny-side-up, has fascinated me infinitely

At first glance she would come across as a conservative Indian woman living a simple life.
But five minutes into a conversation with her one is totally charmed by her extraordinary personality oozing with affection and peppiness
She has balanced modernity and tradition with an amazing sensibility, which makes her special in an adorable way.

Her conversations are full of delicious sense of humour and zest
Her love for life and faith in her personal convictions is evident in the radiance of her face, in the choice of sarees that she prefers to wear, and the bindi that adorns her forehead even if there is a garland on her husband's photo in the drawing room

"KaaNton se khiiNch ke ye aaNchal ... " is a song written by Kaviraj Shailendra, for Rosy, the character played by Waheeda Rehman in the film "Guide".
This song brought to life the emotional saga of a woman as she comes out of her shadows to embrace life in all its glory.
In the film, Rosy opts out of an abusive marriage to live life on her own terms, even if that meant being in a live-in relationship with the man she loved, so defying the generally acceptable norm in those times.

But here is a woman in real life, who has neither betrayed nor "insulted" those cultural values and yet liberated herself from the shackles of hollow societal dogmas and lived life more or less on her own terms.
She has proved that positive thinking is the key to better living and when the thought is progressive, customs and traditions will not chain the mind or stagnate intellectual growth.

The choices she has made in life set her beautifully apart from other women of her time 
She has truly lived the spirit of Kaviraj's song and continues to do so every day of her life

Bai! tula agdi manaa-paasoon salaam

                       ( Bai with her family and well wishers )