Mubarak Eid Mubarak

 We siblings and our children , all of us call him Mama 

My parents used to address him by his first name : Niranjan 

He is our family well wisher 

He used to work for Dilip Kumar / Mehboob Khan and family and used to stay inside the iconic Mehboob Studio in his younger days , even remembers the number , make and model of "Yusuf Saheb's" personal car back then !!!

Later he moved out of Mehboob Studio and started driving a taxi 

Bombay ( or had it become Mumbai by then 🤔 ?) was under a spell of riot , violence and curfew in 1992 

My father who was working on a couple of TCS projects abroad in the 1990s , had to go back to work after a holiday at home , and needed a taxi to go to the airport 

Taxi milna , at that time was a huge task and my father looked quite maulana-like with his graceful white beard 😊😊😊 !!!

So it was all the more difficult to find someone who would be ready to take so much risk for even a super-hiked up fare 

It was at that testing time that my family found Mama 

He took my father to the airport safely , and unbelievingly charging the regular fare 

After that he became our trusted navigator for all our travel requirements in and around Bombay ,  and soon became almost like a family member 

Now he has become frail and his health has deteriorated so he cannot climb four flights of stairs to the residence of my brother , an apartment in one of the older buildings that doesn't have a lift 

So whenever he wants to meet our family , he comes over to my place , a first floor apartment in an equally old building , also without lift 😄 ...  and then Mashaallah we have a family reunion 😄 !!!

So yesterday he came to wish us Eid Mubarak ... And baatoN-baatoN meiN he mentioned that two days back was his birthday ... 😊

So Usman and Mehmood ( my son and nephew ) ordered a cake 

And we had a surprise Birthday Party for Mama 😊

His childlike delight and joyous amazement can neither be expressed in a thousand words nor in any number of emoticons 🥳🎉🎊🤗😄😄😄

And that happiness of his , so pure and innocent , is the most treasured and priceless Eidi that we have gotten in a long time ... 🙏🌟🌙✨⭐🎁💕💕💕

Inspirational

 "When God blesses you financially, instead of raising your standard of living , raise your standard of giving."

"When you focus on being a blessing , God makes sure you are always blessed in abundance"

A lot of us must have only perfunctorily read / sent these (and such other) quotes in our GM msgs on WhatsApp

Aajkal when WhatsApp Universities are awarding PhDs in subjects like EPS  and Communalism , such quotes are precious reminders , that every so often awaken the insaan in us , thus helping voices for empathy justice and equality to not be totally herded away 

 

So ... I read these quotes in a couple of GM msgs fwdd by friends / family ... but saw them being put in practice by my kitchen helper !

She had started working as a cook and helper about two decades ago because she couldn't see her children living a life of deprivation under a drunkard head of the family 

Her first employers were amazing human beings who looked after her and her children like their own 

They also talked to her husband ...

Soon enough he started mending his ways and stopped drinking too

Happiness and better luck soon followed 

Not that she has everything in life now 

And not everything is going the way she wants , but her struggles have never stopped her from sharing her blessings with others 

She even offers her own "kaam" to other women who are more deprived than her !!!

And as she shares her blessings , I ve seen God's nemateiN increase as she keeps getting more and more work opportunities Mashaallah 

Touchwood

 

Another rare quality she has is that she is extremely sincere and respectful of her "rozi" (zariya e maa'ash , livelihood)

I often jokingly tell her to open an employment agency considering how much she helps needy women get work 

She laughs it away 

I thought Ramzaan is the most appropriate time to share this story because this is the month in which Muslims try to do a lot of nekis (नेकियाँ) which include ...

Reading duas in Arabic (which someone else has written) 

Reading Qur'an (there's often a competition of sorts as to how many times one has completed reading the entire Qur'an in this Holy Month) 

Giving zakaat (can be given at any time of the year but the general understanding is that rewards from God in exchange for this neki increase manifold in Ramzaan)

Giving Fitra (charity specifically distributed in Ramzaan)

Reading the taraveeh ( the long night prayer specific to Ramzaan where Imaam Saheb , who should be a Haafiz too reads portions of the Qura'an in such a manner that the entire Qur'an is read at least once during the month of Ramzaan) 

Hosting Iftaar parties ... 

etc etc etc 

But here this humble , uneducated , ordinary woman has risen hugely in the ranks of kindness and humaneness , which is the ultimate msg that every mazhab preaches 

The universal law of Nature works irrespective of any discrimination Kaaynaat ka nizaam mazhab dekh kar nahi chalta 

kyoN ke Qudrat naa Hindu hai naa Musalmaan

#GodAllahBhagwan

#Waheguruji 

#ElElohim

#ShaddaiAlmighty

Knock Knock ... Nostalgia here ... 🌺🌿🌷🌹🌻💖

 WhatsApp par ek bahot puraaney dost ne photo bheji thi

Chaai ka cup haath meiN liye-liye hi maiN ne screen par click karaa , photo mere saamne khuli ... Aur uss ek pal meiN maiN barsoN piichhey chali gayi ... !!!

Like a cascade of goose bumpy moments , memories from another era , followed by an intense longing for those days , started streaming down incessantly filling my heart with love and eyes brimming with glimpses of flowers , grass , trees , breeze , smiles , dreams , saaris , bindis , jhumkas ... Cricket , tennis , badminton ... films , reading , singing ... Embroidery , stitching ... Picnics , outings , olives , wild berries , mountains , streams ... 

Collecting wild grass , dried flowers , twigs and stems while walking in the forest , and arranging them in the large old pickle jars that Mummy had brought from Daadi's store room in Shahjahanpur to our home in Tata's various residential Colonies 

My father's most memorable gift to me ... a transistor that he had given me when I came first in my class five exam ... !

My reading choices evolving unawares from comics to magazines to James Hadley Chase to Agatha Christie , Perry Mason , Robert Ludlum , Frederick Forsyth aur pataa nahi kaun kaun ... and then ... finding Mills & Boon ... jo aaye to phir forever aisey bass gaye ke aur kisi ke liye jagah hi nahi bachi ... !!!

Naram-garam-reshmi yaadoN ke ye silsiley chaley to chaltey hi gaye ... Aur meri Chaai thaNdi ho gayi yaar ... 😊!!!

As I got up to refill my cup , I could hear Mummy's fav sentence ringing clear and melodious in my ears ... 

"Chaai ho ... bahot ho ... aur garam ho"

Maa-Baap to chaley gaye 

Lekin apney jiiney ka andaaz chhod gaye 

Unn ki yaadeiN duaaeiN bann kar unn ki sabhi aaney waali nasloN par rehmat ka saaebaan bani raheiN ye hi dua hai 🙏💐💕💕💕

Sharing the photo that started it all 😍😍😍 ... 👇🏼

In the pic : 

My mother with her neighbours

The Gaikwad Family ... my parents' first neighbors at Khopoli Tata Colony ... This was my father's first posting after he joined Tata Electric Company ... And this pic was taken a couple of years before I was born

Introspect a bit

I really am fed up of this notion of communities rejecting inclusiveness , and refusing to come out of their suffocating self-spun cocoon of customs 

Earlier generations lived in earlier times 

Their customs , habits , living conditions , life styles etc were in accordance with their time 

We can read about that , get nostalgic about our family histories , even be proud of our ancestors 

But let’s stop at that 

We have their genes and that is more than enough

With communication , conveyance , transport , technology etc that those times were capable of , obviously marrying among immediate or extended families and clans , or at the most one village / city to another was more a matter of compulsion , and not essentially a preferred choice 

But love has always had a way of its own 

In those times , and in the present too ... 

It breaks barriers , it seeps in through the cracks , it braves all the evils of time and class and looks past the tightest of veils ... and thankfully survives despite all the dos and don’ts ... 

So clans / tribes who were most often knitted in multi-layered intertwined love - hate relationships , headed by a patriarch who fiercely guarded the personal laws that each such tribe / clan had laid down , specially for its women , had to give way to the breeze of change 

My generation had more options and opportunities in choosing our stream of education , our life partner , our life style etc 

What we made of it certainly needs to be discussed at length too , because had my generation evolved as human beings , we wouldn’t be talking of , or worse still being silent onlookers of insane violation of human rights back in our time and at present too 

Khaair ye kahaani phir sahi ...

Meantime we can jhaaNko in our girebaans

But now with so many opportunities available for the youth to meet and interact , so many hundreds of people to choose from , isn’t it pathetic to still see parents ( my generation people ) playing match makers , making most jaahil demands like “ fair and beautiful “ , this caste , that religion through matrimonial columns / websites ... !!!

Instead of working towards making educational institutions and work places secure , providing a healthy and liberal atmosphere inside and outside homes , respecting the choices our children make , and being grateful for such opportunities , it is heart breaking to note that there are parents ... and even laws ... out there controlling lives and doing chowkidaari of our adult and mashaallah well brought up children ... !!!

Here’s an invaluable reminder ... 

" There were three large multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious entities after World War two : 

the USSR, Yugoslavia and India. 

Because of majoritarianism two are no more ...... "

~~~ Shama Zehra Zaidi 

( Screenplay writer, costume designer, art director, theatre person, art critic, and documentary film maker. )

Ajnabi thi , soulmate bann gayi 💞💓💗

 When one fine morning she knocked on the door to my virtual world via Messenger , neither of us had imagined what destiny had held in store for us !

Poles apart in everything , it is but a miracle that we met at all 

But be convinced that miracles happen everyday and life bursts with mysteries that may not always be explicable but unexpectedly and pleasingly change the course of a life's journey 💗

When I decided to write this note , I had to look up the dictionary for a proper word to describe my first interaction with this very special person because I really want to emphasise on the fact that this out-of-the-blue “hi-hello” had seemed quite an unimportant "by-the-way" thing back then 😊

Google came up with words like "unintended" , "unprepared" , "unarranged" , "unplanned" , "uncontrolled" , "impromptu" ,  "unscripted" , "spontaneous" , "unrehearsed" ... and even "unpremeditated" and "extemporaneous" 😊😊😊 !!!

It could have been all of the above , but “unscripted" it certainly was not , because this chance interaction with a complete stranger was definitely scripted in stars by no less than the One and Only Writer of all Fates ... The One who writes both kinds , the most mundane and the most exciting of all stories with utmost perfection ... 🤗😍😊🙏 

After her first message which I answered perfunctorily , I was surprised to find another a couple of days later ... and another again some days afterwards ... all of which I kept answering like a programmed robot ... 😐

She was pulling me towards herself with amazing confidence and familiarity , all of which was overly unfamiliar and unexpected for me 

... but knowingly I was letting her allure me into a relationship that was unfolding before me like the sun rays gradually rising in the Eastern horizon and then warming and brightening up every little blade of grass that's there under the vast open sky 💛☀️🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾🌾

If I have to give this experience a name , I'll say "yaar ko yaar hi rehney do koi naam naa do" 🙂

 

I had been on this planet for half a century , tasted life sour-n-sweet , bathed in and splashed around more than a thousand of its colours ❤️🧡💛💚🤍💙💜🤎🖤 , but this was a hitherto unshared and exclusive "mera-walaa-zindgi-ka-raNg" that had fallen in my decolored path straight from a million rainbows 🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈🌈

And now , as I look back and celebrate a decade of this extraordinary friendship in all it's highs and lows , ebbs and intensifications , closeness and aloofness and so much more , I feel blessed to be in this refreshing bond of freedom 💃💃💃

Yes ... it is a bond of freedom that has helped me identify enslaved mindsets , liberate myself from them , introspect and evolve ... and above all , fall in love with myself many times over without being preyed upon by narcissism 😄😉💕💕💕

She never cared what religion or age I was 

She never cared what I wore ate or looked like 

We have never met in the real world 

But she has always been there for me 🥰

I am often inclined to think that she possesses something like power of telekinesis 🤔 because I always find a message , a song or a ghazal from her in my inbox whenever my head needed a shoulder to rest on and unwind in silence ...  😌

She says :

When there is friendship 🤝💞👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩 nothing else matters 🙏

How very true indeed 💐💐💐 !

But I have looked up for every available information about her 

Her age , her preferences , her profession and even the meaning of her name , which is as unique and beautiful as our friendship 💕💕💕 !!!

For her I am a friend-philosopher-guide kinda person 

And for me she is my soulmate ... 🙂💞💐🫶💞💐🫶💞💐🫶💞💐🫶💞💐🫶  !

Yeah ... Typically I guess a Soulmate would have to be a person who one has met in the real world or someone with whom you share likes / dislikes / hobbies /  🤔 ? 

May be ... But from the beginning this was anything but typical !

It was not me ... It was God scripting the screenplay of my story 🤗😊🥰

This was His choice 🙏💐👍🏼

And my soul often whispers to me :

"Ye hi hai right choice babyyyyy !"

🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

Conversions

Religious conversions are a result of Capitalist mentality 

You can change the name of a person or teach them to pray in another manner 

But their genes don't change 

They don't forget their culture 

Their language and food habits do not change 

But the convertor tries to impose a certain kind of culture , language , dress , food habits etc upon the converted 

And then the controlling begins ... !!!

Religious conversions are a facade to control more lives than were born into your religion

Let In Peace

I consider myself fortunate to be living in the country where not just me , but my parents , and their parents , and earlier generations were born 

I can go visit the place where my elders lived , the house where they walked , talked , celebrated ... 💝

I can feel the proverbial "connection with my soil"

I still belong to my roots 

Everything is familiar even if I visit after several years

I meet people in the mohalla where my generation and even people belonging to my children's generation know my parents and their parents 

And we strike an instant connection because at some point my parents too have talked about them 😊😊😊

This is the kind of joy that rejuvenates my soul 

Contrast this with those who were cruelly pulled away from their roots and forced to leave their beloved huts and homes , villages and towns !!!

 

Kaise ujad kar phir se basey hoNgey ... Kaise sahaa hoga dard apni zamiin se begaaney ho jaaney ka ... Kaise apnayaa hoga ek ajnabi-anjaan rahen-sahen ... Can one even imagine the emptiness that must have never left a corner of their heart !!!

Badi himmat ki baat hai 

Bikhar kar simatna 

Aur bikhrey huoN ko sametna 

Stop the hate 

Make way for peace 

So we live and let live 💐💐💐💐💐💐💐💐