Happy Birthday, Dear Friend!

Its taken me two and a half years to come back to my blog but there's no better day than today for that.

There are very few people in your life that make a HUGE impact in a short time and you can probably count them on your fingers. People that have done so much in their lives that you look up to them in awe. Or people that have helped you grow in their own way by pushing you subtly and sometimes overtly as well. People that helped you build your family. People that you know you can go to with any question and get a reply without judgement.

If you have someone like this in your life, tell them that they matter every time you meet them. Let them know that you are you because of them. Cherish them and their friendship. 

Because life is short and unpredictable and sometimes you may not get a chance to tell them that.

Today is the 45th birthday of just such a person who made a HUGE impact on me in the 12 years that I had the good fortune to know her. I never got a chance to tell her all this on her face because I always thought she was indestructible. She was the warrior woman. She was awe inspiring. She was warm and loving.

She was Gina Campos Braganza!

And she left too soon!

So dear friend, HAPPY BIRTHDAY to you! I hope you are having a rocking party up there and showing the angels (and devils) how to party!

I just wanted to tell you that I Miss You! 

Everytime I see the yellow jeep, I miss you.
Everytime I see Carlton, I miss you.
Everytime I am partying, I miss you.
Everytime I am with my bestest friend, I miss you.
Everytime I am up against a problem, I miss you.
Everytime I play a sport, I miss you.
Everytime I need advice, I miss you.
Everytime I look for a slap on the back, I miss you.
Everytime I want a superb smile, I miss you. 

There are times when I just feel the need to talk to you and get your advice and over the last few years, I've missed you tremendously knowing how you would have sat me down and then given me a good kick on my backside.

7 years still hasn't dulled the pain and the anger!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, GINA! And wish you were here!

Fear!

People who know me will say that I always try to push the envelope with my fears. I am a firm believer in the adage that if you face your fears, it will only make you grow stronger. There is in fact a poster on my office wall that says "Always do what you are afraid to do".

This adage has led me to do many things that normally I would have never done - Bungee Jumping, Sky Diving, Everest Base Camp Trek, Scary rides etc - and I am always on a lookout for the next big adventure to push the limit and overcome the fear.

All the above activities and my bravado are all limited to (what I now call) Physical Fear. A fear associated with bodily harm - I will get hurt if this adventure fails and goes the wrong way. I've learnt that this Physical Fear can be controlled by calming the mind, facing the fear and living the moment. A simple mental image of the fun and rush that you will feel during the experience and the pride that you will feel when you finish the adventure helps you to enjoy the adventure and overcome the fear. I've learnt that the key is to have an image of the completed adventure and aim towards that.

Over the last few days, however, I have come to realise that there is another kind of fear that is much stronger and much more difficult to overcome.

Events across the last few weeks have made me realise the power of Emotional Fear. The fear in your mind that is associated with the fear of loss.  Emotional Fear is the fear that is completely in your mind pertaining to events and issues that are completely out of your control and have no physical connotations. You cannot associate it with a physical way of overcoming it. A fear so deep seated that you don't want to imagine the end image or a fear associated with an end image so frightening that you don't want to face it. An image that you don't want to accept and a fear that it might come true. 

I'm struggling with this Emotional Fear over the last few weeks with a few major events that made me face the prospect of loss of a loved one. The emotional fear was also associated with the fear of inaction - if we didn't take any concrete action, then we could loose the loved one and not be remembered. An intense need to take action continuously while the reality might be to let things play itself out. We struggled with the 'inaction fear' recently and things worked out well for us. But the fear was always around the corner of what if it would not work out. I'm struggling with another one in that realm.

While I've come to realise that I have the ability to easily understand and overcome Physical Fear, the dragon of Emotional Fear scares me and I have yet to find a way to tame that dragon. Physical Fear is temporary and can be overcome in minutes. Emotional Fear needs a lot of time to overcome but giving it time only seems to make the dragon more powerful and all consuming.

How do you overcome Emotional Fear?

A Father's Tears!

Men don't cry! A man with tears is a sign of weakness and men are supposed to be strong.

Or at least that's what has been told to us and taught to us over last few centuries by everyone in every form of communication - be it verbal, through ads or books. This, of course, not withstanding the metrosexual man. As a kid our fathers were our ultimate heroes and we grew up on a visual of them never having a tear in their eye.

There are certain images that stay in your mind long after they have occurred. Images that tend to define your visual interpretation of life and serve as guide for you. One such image stays in my mind to this day.

My first year engineering vacation had just got over and I was headed back from Dehradun to Pune. I was all of 18 years old and embarking for the first time on a long train journey all alone. I was pretty excited and looking forward to it. In those days one had to take a train from Dehradun to Delhi and then changeover at Delhi for a train to Pune. My Dad accompanied me to Delhi. I boarded the train to Pune at the Delhi station and settled in. My Dad checked who the companions were and told them to take care of me much to my acute embarrassment. Hey, I could take care of myself. As the train pulled away from the station and I waved good bye with a smile, I saw him with tears in his eyes waving back. I kept wondering why he was crying! I expected that of my mother who is very emotional but why was my dad crying?

Today I understand what he was going through on that day. As I watch my daughter grow up fast and a few years away from college, I fear my emotions on the day I wave goodbye to her when she goes. I know I will be scared if she will be safe away from the care of her family. I know I will be afraid if she will find success in her new chapter of life. I know I will be sad that she is breaking away from her cocoon and finding her own path. I know I will wonder if she will be able to manage the emotional rollercoster coming her way without the hugs from her mom and me comforting her. I know I will worry that as she flies away from the nest if she will be able to soar in the sky on strong wings. I know I will be very proud of her as she steps out to find her own identity.

Today I know that my Dad was going through all those emotions as he waved goodbye. Today I wonder how he dealt with them as he took the long lonely train journey back from Delhi to Dehradun. Today I cherish and value the image of my father's tears because I know that in that moment he was showing all his love for me!

Thanks, Dad for letting me go my own way, for supporting me always, for letting me make my own mistakes and learn from them. I hope I can do the same for my kids.

Thinkgifting or Thingifting?

I read this blog post of mine recently on "Value perception of a Gift" and started thinking about all the gifts that I had received over a period of time from all my friends and acquaintances. Like all gifts in life, some were gifted because it was an occasion and something had to be given and some were gifted after a lot of effort and thought. While my earlier post talked about the perception that the giftee gets on the gift and how the gifter feels, I started thinking about why does one put an effort into a gift? What is the subliminal message one wants to send with a gift? Or is there even one?

Gifts can be classified into two segments:

• THINGIFTING or giving something as a gift picked off the shelf without much thought process because you have been invited to an occasion or because you didn't have time or because you should give a gift. 
• AND
• THINKGIFTING or giving something as a gift after putting in a lot of thought and effort. This could be something unique that you believe you have created for that person. Something that you believe the person will like and love. Or even something that you thought is very unique for the person.

For most of the occasions and people that we know, we do Thingifting. We pick up gifts as we go to the occasion, stopping over at a store so that we don't have to spend too much effort.  The idea is to pick up something that we believe will be apt for the occasion so that the person feels good about it. There isn't much thought given to what we are buying with budget probably being the main concern for the gift. We spend just as much as we attach a value to that person - should the gift be worth Rs. 1000/- or Rs. 2000/-? What about buying something thats Rs. 5000/- for that person? Is he/she worth that much spend? These are some of the questions that we go through in our mind. Let me clarify, there is nothing wrong in that and is a perfectly normal discussion. I believe that sub-consciously, though, you are evaluating the importance of that person in your life and deciding to put in the required time, money and effort into gifting something to the person.

For the more or most important people in your life, though, you would do Thinkgifting. You would spend time, thought and energy into the right gift for the person. Money becomes a secondary consideration in the initiative. The gift could be a simple thing costing hardly anything at all but something that you have maybe trolled the net, found a unique thing and decided to get it made for the person. It could be something very expensive just because you know that it will bring joy to the person. Or maybe something that you will spend time to get made for the person exclusively and unique to the person. If you are doing Thinkgifting for someone, then sub-consciously you have attached a priceless value to the person in your life.

Are there exceptions to this generic statement? Of course, there could be. I am sure someone who never gifts anything to anyone but gives you a gift, however simple and quick it may have been, is probably doing Thinkgifting from their end. 

Thingifting and Thinkgifting can also be a great way for you to find out how much you need the person and how much the person values you. If someone has been doing Thinkgifting for you for a few years, then hold on to that person because he/she puts tremendous value on you.

I do Thinkgifting for two people in my life. How many people do you do Thinkgifting for?

Second Tattoo

I got my first tattoo done about two years ago and talked about my experience here. It got me thinking on inking again. The same rules of What, Where, Who and When applied here too.

The 'WHO' was the easy part as I was sure I would want to get it done again at Dark Arts Studio in Bangalore where I got my first tattoo done and preferably from Satish Palan who did my first tattoo as well.

The 'WHERE' part was also almost pre-decided. If you read my first tattoo blog you will realise that I was thinking of getting the tattoo done either on my upper or lower part of the hand. Since the first one had been on the upper part of the hand, I decided that the second one would be on the forearm.

The 'WHAT' part got me thinking since I wanted the second one to mean something very personal. The first tattoo had been of Lord Ganesha as I had always wanted to start that way. The second tattoo's idea had already started germinating in my mind for some time. I wanted my family's names as a tattoo and the more I thought about it, the more it seemed awesome since the names were interlinked. My wife's name is Anindita or Ani for short, my daughter's name is Ipsita and my son's name is Tarush. If you look closely, as I did when I started thinking of a design, you can link them with Ani leading into Ipsita leading into Tarush or in other words AnIpsiTArush. So that was fixed. I wanted this to be an inner circle with the outer circle saying Beautiful Soul as these three were the beautiful soul of my life. Two concentric circles - AnIpsiTArush as inner and Beautiful Soul as outer.

The most difficult part was the 'WHEN' part as I just could not find the time in my busy schedule. In between travelling and family time, I was not able to take the required time out to visit Dark Arts. In the meantime, I had been speaking to my best friend, Sowmya Ramachandran, and getting her psyched to get a tattoo done as well. We had been discussing for quite some time about the possibility. 30th Nov was her birthday and we got discussing about the possibility of her getting her tattoo done on that day. I had a tentative appointment for her at Dark Arts and when she finally decided to get it done, I decided to accompany her and get my second one done as well. So the first tattoo was on Ganesh Chaturthi and the second one on my best friend's birthday.

When we landed up at Dark Arts, we got to Sowmya's design first. She wanted to get a Sun done and as she was being shown some designs, I got a chance to explain my 'concentric circle' design to Preeti. Sowmya quickly decided on a flaming Sun with a V (for Vedanth, her son) morphing into a R (for Raj, her husband) in the centre of the Sun. As I got discussing with them on my idea, we quickly realised that having so many alphabets in a circle may make it illegible. As Preeti showed me some fonts, we finalised on a beautiful cursive font which would give it some flair. The stencil looked good and we were set.

Sowmya's tattoo took a good hour to get done and it did pain a bit for her as she was getting it done right at the pulse area on her wrist. The end result is really good. Satish got started on mine after her's was done. And it took all of 2-1/2 hours to get it done. As I had mentioned earlier, this time too it wasn't very bad. There were moments when it did pain a bit but mostly it was like a small needle pricking you softly. After some time you sort of get used to it and it doesn't even register. At the end of 2-1/2 hours by 10.00pm, my tattoo was done and I had my second ink.

The tattoo is big, taking up almost 3/4 of the arm. I jokingly mention to people that now I can't even have an affair as the girl will ask whose names are those on your hand and when I tell her that its my wife and kids, I'm sure she'll disappear. :) But what better way to show commitment and love for my family than to have them tatto-ed on my body with the fact that they are the Beautiful Soul of my life!

What do I tell my daughter? And my sister?

A young, starry-eyed, ambitious girl was brutally gangraped by 6 people in a moving bus in Delhi and dumped on the ground. Over the last 10 days, Delhi has erupted with protests with students taking to the streets demanding justice; politicians have exposed their stupidity with constantly putting their foot in their mouth questioning the freedom that girls have, questioning the make-up that they put, mentioning that girls invite this on themselves and stating that girls are 'dented-and-painted'; a policeman lost his life battling the protests; government has clamped down on the protests turning Delhi into a fortress and the social media has gone beserk with demands of public hanging, public castrations and capital punishment for the rapists. Questions are being raised on how Indian men, administrators and politicians treat women, what our laws are and how we need to change the basic fabric of our values where we treat women as things to be owned. How we need to change the thinking at the basic level of a girl child and how we need to treat boys and girls as equal. Extremely brilliant articles on the right approach have been written by my close friend Sandeep Menon and some articles have been re-posted on other friend's facebook pages like this one.

This is not one of those write-ups. I do not know how to write eloquently and while I have an opinion on the subject like everyone else, this write-up is not about that. This write-up is about fear and insecurity and helplessness!

I got 'introduced' to the concept of rape when I was 8 years old when the movie 'Insaaf ka Tarazu' was released and movie magazines carried reams of articles about it. My mom was an avid reader and I picked up one of the magazines to find out what rape meant. While at that age I thought it meant a man and woman wrestling, with time I understood the horror of it and struggled to comprehend why a man would do something like that. What instinct drives a man to force himself on a woman and rape her? India has the dubious distinction of being the third worst offender in rape cases and a rape occures in India every 54 minutes! 25 women are raped every day in India and we have done nothing to protect them. We have made speeches and spoken about it when incidents occur but we have done nothing to protect our women or give them a feeling of safety. We have not changed our laws, we have not ensured that rape cases are dealt with in a speedy manner and we have not punished rapists in a manner consumerate with the crime. Neither have we sensitised our largely-male police force nor have we equipped them with more women who may understand this crime. In fact a sting operation by Tehelka revealed Police Officers saying that no rape can happen without the girl's consent! Some rapists have gone on to become politicians and some politicians have raped women with impunity and used the system to cover their tracks. Police work hand-in-glove with the rapists and today we had a case where a young woman comitted suicide because she was being constantly called to the police station and questioned about her rape.


As a father of a 10 year old girl and a brother of a single woman in Mumbai, I was scared when I read the first news of the gangrape and have been getting progressively more afraid as I've heard our politicians talk about the 'remedies' to this 'problem'.

Women should not go out late at night, women should not put make-up and lipstick, women should not dress provacatively, women should not wear jeans, women should not smoke and drink, women should not go to discotheques, women should not take private buses late at night, women should not do this and should not do that. What kind of a country and world are we creating when we cannot offer a simple basic right of safety to a human being? Does a woman have to be constantly on her guard from the moment she steps out from her house? And sometimes even in her own house? Does society need to dictate on how she talks and walks and moves and dresses and works? Who has given us the right to do this? The biggest hypocrisy stems from the fact that in Hinduism we pray to Godesses for wealth (Lakshmi), knowledge (Saraswati) and strength (Durga) and then go out and commit the most horrid crimes on women.

My sister stays alone in Mumbai, is independent and highly successful and goes out to parties, has some drinks and has a good time with friends. Should I tell her not do that? Should I tell her that she could be a potential target? As my daughter grows up, she may decide to wear short clothes for outings, wear jeans and tops, wear some make-up, go out to disco with friends and party with them. I may not like some of these things but these are her educated decisions to make - not mine and definitely not society's. Do I tell my daughter to avoid all these 'im-moral' things and stay at home? When she steps out of the house, do I now equip her with protection in form of a small knife, some pepper spray and some alarms? But why should I? Doesn't she have the right to walk the road free of fear?

When a close friend like Arundhati Ghosh puts up a status update that says - "I travel a lot and many days of the month I land up late at airports of cities I have come to love, cities with friends and memories, cities with sounds and smells that make me want to call it home. Today as I leave for yet another city I am worrying about what transport I should take from the airport to reach my hotel, is it judicious to land as late as 8 pm, should I keep a small pen knife in my bag but then I will have to check it in, when i get into the cab should I pretend to call people so that the driver thinks I have people who will worry about me if I dont land up in time, will I be able to do my general chit chat with the driver or should i just keep to myself and not talk too much.....yes ...I dont want to turn into a person I would loathe to be." - it makes me worry! This is a woman I respect tremendously and this statement from her makes me hang my head in shame.

I have been brought up by my parents to respect women and I think I've done that. I am bringing up my son with the same values that women are precious, strong beings that you should respect. I am bringing up my daughter with the thought that she is an equal and can do whatever she wants to and whatever a boy/man can do. There is no distinction! But are the other parents out there teaching their boys the same thing? Will my daughter find the respect and the safety that she needs, nay is entitled to, in the outside world?

I don't have answers for my daughter. And my sister? What do I tell them? What kind of a world and country is my daughter growing up into?

Forgiveness!

I just got off watching an episode called 'Damage Control' on Grey's Anatomy which for me thinking on this whole concept of Forgiveness. In the episode a young man closes his eyes for a second while driving and rams into an oncoming car injuring the family. While the father, mother and husband survive, the pregnant daughter dies in surgery but the child survives. The young man wants to apologise to the family for causing the grief.

The most poignant moment of the episode is when the father walks into the room where the young man, himself injured is lying just when he has heard the news of his daughter's death. The young man says "I'm sorry" and the father walks angrily to the bedside with his hand moving towards the young man's throat only to place it on his shoulder who breaks down crying profusely.

To forgive, they say, is divine. Forgive and forget, they say. Forgiveing, they say, gives you peace. But does it really? If someone has done you immense harm and affected your life in an adverse way, can you really forgive and live? I know the other side of the fence - harboring that hatred in your heart eats away at the very essesnce of existence and erodes your being. But how difficult is it to forgive someone who has harmed you immensely. Moving beyond the philosphical musings of the gurus and the quotable quotes, How easy is it to forgive?

I think the ease of forgiveness depends on the magnitude of the hurt and/or the closeness of the relationship. In every relationship you expect a certain degree of trust and response. You expect the person to behave in a particular manner mostly conducive to your well being. A best friend is supposed to help you and stand by you, a parent is supposed to love you unconditionally and help you succeed, your office friend is not supposed to bitch about you behind your back, a spouse is supposed to stand with you and support you.

When these 'regular' responses do not happen you feel hurt and that hurt translates into anger which converts into a wish to do the same harm. How easily you can nip that hurt in the bud and forgive that person determines the future of that relationship. But the forgiveness also depends on the level of your perceived hurt and that makes the decision very personal. It is futile to 'advice' someone on what they should forgive and how easily. It is also an insult to compare your act of forgiveness in a similar situation and tell the person to do the same. The best you can do is empathise with the person and guide them to a proper path. To forgive or not is that person's prerogative. But I digress......

The perception of hurt plays a very important part in the forgiveness quotient. You can easily forgive your friend for going to a movie without you, may take some time to forgive the same friend if he happens to bitch about you behind your back and may take many many years to forgive the same friend if he hurts a close family member in an adverse manner. Take the same situation and you may forgive that friend easily if he hurt some far family member that you may not have liked that much but may never forgive him if he hurt your parent or sibling. The perception of hurt and the closeness of the relationship determines the ease of forgiveness. How easy would it be to forgive your spouse if they had a relationship out of you?


While I do largely agree that forgiveness is the best thing to do, I also think that no one has the ability to tell me how easy it should be for me unless they have faced the same situation.

I am sure you've forgiven a lot of people in your lives for small issues, maybe even some people for things that hurt you to some extent but I hope you and I never have to face a situation like the father in the episode. I am not sure how I would react to that kind of a situation. To me, that is almost like the ultimate forgiveness that you could give and it requires tremendous will power and ability to accept what life throws at you. I hope I never face that kind of a situation in my life!