Nanhi Kali

What do you think about your mother? your girlfriend?,your sister?,your grandmum?,your first crush,your teacher on whom you had a secret crush????What is the first word that comes to your mind when you have been asked to describe them? I have asked many people the same question and everyone would say “Gorgeous, Beautiful!!! Attractive and they would go on and on…. You love all these ladies in your life and so the overflow of praise and flattery!! Right??? All these ladies in your life were also small angels at a point of time, don’t you think so? But then when it comes to the preference of a child, why is it that people  still crave for a boy child? I have had this friend (girl) of mine who promised me a party if one of her aunt’s gave birth to a baby boy. Only if it was a baby boy!!! That left me a bit  disappointed and left me wondering as to why there is still a big hue and cry about a baby gal being born even now when we have reached the 21st century.We have reached the 21st century, gals have surpassed men in every field, in every thing but still the ratio of women as compared to men keeps dipping every year. Don’t you love your mum, aren’t you proud of the fact that she made you what you are today. What if she was never allowed to live? What if she was killed within 3-4 months when she was just  about to learn how to breathe? Killing an unborn child is inhuman but then killing it after knowing that it’s a girl child is nothing less than a cold blooded murder.

 In India they are obsessed with having a baby boy , since a baby boy would carry their lineage. Women are tortured, burnt, forced to abort just because they want to carry on their lineage for years. I wonder what is it that they want to pass through their lineage??? Ways how to torture your mum, your sister, kill a girl child.. Is it what they  want to carry forward??U Have some wonderful moments of love, u make your wife pregnant, 9months of carrying the baby amidst the bouts of vomiting ,nausea,cramps in the stomach, enduring 12-13 hours of labour pain,taking every step carefully so that your love child(sorry !! your lineage) is not affected..after all this hardships and when the baby is finally delivered,one day someone gets up from somewhere and just decides that they don't want to have this baby just because it is a gal. Who gives them this right? You make love to your wife but leave her exposed for the entire world to give their useless opinion.

 Only the mother i.e your wife has the right or should have the right to talk about her baby. It takes a woman to give life to someone. Its only if a gal is born ,would the generation move forward.

Those lovely pink ribbons, those lovely bottles of nail paint and lipsticks, those lovely curly locks of hair, those artistic eyes and beautiful eyelashes, that million dollar smile,those non stop talks and chitchatting ,her moves ,as you say in hindi uske nakhre,adayein,thousand expressions that run across her face…lovely isn’t it?? Yes beautiful is the apt word. The name Nanhi Kali (small little flower bud) because I find it synonymous with a baby gal.Gals are as beautiful as the petals of a flower.This is something that comes to my mind when I think of a baby girl. You are deprived of this beauty given by God if you don’t allow it to come to this world.

I have been lucky to be born in a family where the numbers of daughters are more than the number of sons. No one worries about any damn lineage..Today no one knows whether they would return home back safe when they leave early mornings for work, forget carrying their lineage. My parents have been proud of both me and my sister and they have never felt the need of any guy even when my dad underwent a bypass surgery(something that was relatively new to us, and was the first in the family), we have managed it well just like so many other such beautiful angels today.

The govt should ban all the sex determination centers and debar all the doctors from their medical degrees who are game to such heinous acts. The women should themselves stand up for themselves in case they are being tortured for sake of a baby boy. The women should never go in for a child when she knows that the family she is married to would never accept a baby gal.Stand up for yourself first and then the world would stand with you,for you.I think fighting against your in laws for your rights would be less painful than the long hours of labor pain.

Next time your wife gets pregnant, be happy that you could actually get her pregnant. Be happy that she could bear a child. And do remember it’s not a lottery system, you just cannot keep trying till you get lucky. And if u have a mindset , that your wife can  has to give a baby boy, all I can say is BE A MAN FIRST!!!!!!

Colorful Childhood Days

On the eve of independence   day, we were busy decorating our Office   ODC (offshore development centre) this weekend and in the process we shopped for lot of things right from balloons to poster colors. After a long time I got an opportunity to play with colors or rather try my hand at painting. We were trying to paint the map of India in tri color and there I tried my hand at coloring. Wow  !! it was indeed a great feeling.

All my childhood I always craved for those stylish boxes of poster colors. But then my parents would always tell me that it’s too costly and I always had to settle down with the not-so-stylish water colors. I was never good at painting and am still not, which my parents understood long back I guess  ; but then there was always this craze for Camel’s poster colors. Having them was a matter of pride in those days.I remember one of my friends Dipti nair (dunno where she is now!!) always flaunted her big box of water colors. We used to envy her for the same. We would always look at her box of colors with eager eyes wishing to have the same one day.

Today as I painted the tricolor I checked the cost of the poster colors and it was just Rs.125; an amount which was too big 10 years back. I was like poster colors are so cheap?? Only to realize that it was really costly 10- 12 years back.

I was terrible at painting then ,as am now. But then getting ma hands all soiled with colors was a pleasure.I could never agree more with surf excel fellas who said “dag acche hai” .I loved those colors on ma hand, my face but my drawing still ugly.But I was proud of them because then they were my paintings. I remember we had our drawing books with images on them and we just had to replicate them. There was a drawing of a lion and we had to replicate it.I put my heart and soul while drawing, but then my lion looked as meek as a lamb and I had got the beating of my life for that disastrous painting. These are some of the sweet and sour memories of my childhood. But then they were the best. And I have vowed to buy poster colors and try ma hand at painting no matter how meek my lion looks or how courageous my cow looks!!! It is just a matter of recreating the magic of childhood days and being a child again.

You can never be a child again but then who’s stopping you from getting your clothes soiled in mud, getting those colors on your hand ,dress and face, relishing a lollypop, jumping in the puddle of mud water , making paper boats and then putting them in a puddle of water…guess that was life…!!!

Let’s live those days of innocence again !!!