Love is a temporary madness

Love is a temporary madness. It erupts like an earthquake and then subsides. And when it subsides you have to make a decision. You have to work out whether your roots have become so entwined together that it is inconceivable that you should ever part. Because this is what love is. Love is not breathlessness, it is not excitement, it is not the promulgation of promises of eternal passion. That is just being "in love" which any of us can convince ourselves we are.

Love itself is what is left over when being in love has burned away, and this is both an art and a fortunate accident. Your mother and I had it, we had roots that grew towards each other underground, and when all the pretty blossom had fallen from our branches we found that we were one tree and not two.

How does ego affect Relationships?

Ego is nothing but a collection of your thoughts from all your past experiences put together.

How does ego affect Relationships?

For example, you get to know a person and try to become friends with him/her. And over a period of time, let’s say that the friendship evolves into a relationship. During the past meetings and encounters, they would have projected each other's mental images. This projection of a person has a physical as well as a mental aspect to it. So, what we end up seeing in a relationship after a period of time, you will see actual persons, but the projection of one person to the other.

At some point of time in the relationship, the true nature of these images will come out into the open. When I say true images, these correspond to the manner in which the two people in the relationship projects himself/herself to the other person. Once these images start popping up over the course of time in a relationship, the joyful period gets over and people start getting doubts each others. Anything that is related to your senses will not provide you with a chance for fulfillment of love.

So what does “fulfillment of love” actually mean?

The moment you start aiming for fulfillment, you have to realize that fulfillment is nothing but moving beyond the emotions and this is attained by helping each other. If this happens, there will be no ego and the consequent image projections that happen between two people will not have any value and will rather provide you with enjoyable memories. Also, remember that the prime goal of a relationship is moving out of mental projections. When you allow yourself to form a mental projection of the other person, it will blur your clarity of thought and stop your growth. If you stop your growth in the relationship, inevitably, you will stop the growth of the other person. When I say “growth”, I mean “the growth of fulfillment”. Hence, ego is nothing but a barrier for fulfillment in relationships.

The other way defining the EGO - It is a combination of your past experiences along with your emotions. So, a person has to get rid of his/her ego in order to experience the true nature of a relationship. If somebody understands the way they live in a relationship, it will ultimately lead to the blossoming of the relationship to the next level. On the contrary, if you allow your life to be based on the mental projection, there is a chance of you going down the path leading to depression. Actually, it will indeed surely lead to depression. So, if one understands the consequences of forming a mental projection and makes the other person in the relationship to understand and realize this, then life itself will become divine. That is the ultimate relationship between you and your ego. Ego has to be understood in another dimension.

Some people might ask “How do I relate to if he/she commits a mistake? How do I correct him/her?“. Of course, I agree there are people who are really close to us and the only possibility is to realize the entire concept of losing one’s ego and understand that the person has to be open. When you say “Open”, it means that he/she has to have the thought “Okay, I want to know how to grow into this relationship; I want to get these idiotic thoughts out of my head and listen to him/her”. If you are ready to listen to these words, then there is a chance for you to open your heart and start experiencing the true nature of the relationship. The Ego goes then true love will get unveil in a relationship.

RAIN

Rain fell last night...quiet, gentle rain,

that tapped against my window pane,

and called me back from troubled sleep,

to soothe a heart too numb to weep.

My loneliness was too deep and real,

and like a wound that would not heal,

it throbbed within me, and I knew

my arms were empty without you.

But as I listened to the sound

of soft rain falling on the ground,

I heard your voice, tender and clear,

Call my name, and oh my dear,

I threw my window open wide,

to let the sweet rain rush inside.

It kissed my lips, my eyes, my hair,

and love, I knew that you were there.

Tears that my heart could not release

Fell down from Heaven, bringing peace.

Last night while gray clouds softly wept,

I held you in my arms and slept.

Field Of Love

Holding you so close, in a field of magic love
your eyes are shining brighter than the starlit sky above
The flowers that bloom 'round us, they tickle at our feet
the river sleeps behind us, the silence is so sweet.
The wind blows just so slightly, to tell us that it's there,
and to blow the windswept petals, that lovedance in the air.
The passion that is bred here is as old as GOD above,
but the only way to feel it, is to bring the one you love.
And even though this magic field is natures' greatest feat,
without you here beside me... the magic's incomplete

I KNEW IT WAS OVER

when tonight you couldn't make the phone ring
when you used to make the sun rise
when trees used to throw themselves
in front of you
to be paper for love letters
that was how i knew i had to do it

swaddle the kids we never had
against january's cold slice
bundle them in winter
clothes they never needed
so i could drop them off at my mom's
even though she lives on the other side of the country
and at this late west coast hour is
assuredly east coast sleeping
peacefully

her house was lit like a candle
the way homes should be
warm and golden
and home
and the kids ran in
and jumped at the bichon frise
named lucky
that she never had
they hugged the dog
it wriggled
and the kids were happy
yours and mine
the ones we never had
and my mom was

grand maternal, which is to say, with style
that only comes when you've seen
enough to know grace

like when to pretend it's christmas or
a birthday so
she lit her voice with tiny
lights and pretended
she didn't see me crying

as i drove away to the hotel connected to the bar where i ordered the cheapest whisky they had just because it shares your first name because they don't make a whisky called baby and i only thought what i got was what i ordered i toasted the hangover inevitable as sun that used to rise in your name i toasted the carnivals we never went to and the things you never won for me the ferris wheels we never
kissed on and all the dreams between us that sat there like balloons on a carney's board waiting to explode with passion but slowly deflated hung slave under the pin- prick of a tack hung heads down

like lovers
when it doesn't
work, like me
at last call
after too many cheap too many sweet
too much
whisky makes me
sick, like the smell of cheap, like the smell of
the dead like the cheap, dead flowers
you never sent
that i never threw
out of the window
of a car
i never
really
owned

Dare to Be

"Dare to Be 
When a new day begins, dare to smile gratefully.
When there is darkness, dare to be the first to shine a light.
When there is injustice, dare to be the first to condemn it.
When something seems difficult, dare to do it anyway.
When life seems to beat you down, dare to fight back.
When there seems to be no hope, dare to find some.
When you’re feeling tired, dare to keep going.
When times are tough, dare to be tougher.
When love hurts you, dare to love again.
When someone is hurting, dare to help them heal.
When another is lost, dare to help them find the way.
When a friend falls, dare to be the first to extend a hand.
When you cross paths with another, dare to make them smile.
When you feel great, dare to help someone else feel great too.
When the day has ended, dare to feel as you’ve done your best.
Dare to be the best you can –At all times, Dare to be!”

Loneliness is Lovely

Loneliness is lovely. Supreme bestows loneliness on people to provide them with an opportunity to search for their true self and get connected to Supreme source of love and joy. In loneliness you can hear the sounds of true harmony, rhythm and perfection of Universal design. Use this loneliness to create something beautiful by developing a hobby that engrosses your whole attention. It may be reading, painting, gardening, music etc. May be through your hobby, you will get a friend or co-traveler of your own frequency.

Me, My self, My God

My Soul

And

My Tranquility

I am Five

I am not alone

This tranquility is what God loves!

Truth always conquers .....Love never fails....Karm is Dharm

Violence against women in Congo, India and Guatemala

Violence against women is not only the most widespread example of a human rights violation, but probably the least evident, going largely unpunished. This is shown by the reports published and research conducted by the United Nations, international human rights agencies and the global women’s and feminist movements which have been denouncing this situation for decades.

Violence against women is a worldwide phenomenon affecting all societies, regardless of their political and economic systems; it affects all cultures, social classes and ethnic groups. This violence is largely exercised by men against women, and it both reflects and reinforces gender inequality. However, in most countries, only recently has it been considered a public human rights issue in which both society in general and the State has to react and take steps to halt such a situation and provide care for its victims.

Violence against women takes many forms, from domestic abuse to rape, sexual abuse and harmful cultural practices ranging from genital mutilation and honour crimes to premature marriage. Trafficking in women and girls to be exploited largely in the sex industry is another form of violence; furthermore, the fact that many women, especially young girls and adolescents, are unable to demand safe sex and reject undesired sex increases their risk of contagion with HIV/AIDS. In the context of wars and natural disasters, in which most of the refugees and displaced population are women and children, women are raped, kidnapped, mutilated and used as sex slaves; the systematic rape of women and girls has been used as a weapon in numerous armed conflicts.

 The dimensions of violence against women are alarming. According to different sources,

 The consequences of violence against women are devastating; survivors regularly suffer from emotional disorders and mental health problems for the rest of their lives, not to mention those who meet their death.

This project aims at contemplating violence against women as a historic and worldwide phenomenon.

 I have selected countries from different geographical areas with different situations, cultures, religions and levels of development; in each one, I describe both the specific social context and the different specific forms of violence, as follows:

 ·      Guatemala: the murders of women in Guatemala and Mexico in a climate of widespread violence against women.

·      India: It is estimated that there are 40 million girls less in India due to selective abortions and infanticides, acid attacks and other “honour” crimes against women.

·      Democratic Republic of Congo: In the eastern of The Democratic Republic of Congo, tens of thousands of women and young girls are being raped with impunity and extreme brutality by all sides in the conflict, civilians, militiamen, armed groups, foreign-armed groups and members of the Congolese Army.

GOMA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO - OCTOBER 17, 2008:

Nzigire, from a region near Goma called Sake, was raped by 3 members of the CNDP (Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple/National Congress for the Defence of the People). They also shot her in her the breast. She was found and cared for by a female counselor from Sake, and later diverted to Gersom Hospital where they removed the bullet from her breast. Nzigire now suffers from mental disorders; she does not speak, she refuses to eat, and lies in bed the whole day. (I cannot put snap)

GUATEMALA CITY, GUATEMALA - APRIL 2, 2007:

Filomena Sajche, 30, reacts as she talks to a forensic doctor while filing charges against her husband at the Public Ministry building in Guatemala City.

MINOVA, DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO - NOVEMBER 29, 2008:

Mama Masika, who works in a counseling house that she founded in 2001, listens to Zabibu, 10. While collecting potatoes three days earlier in Kalungu, Zabibu was raped by two members of the CNDP (Congrès National pour la Défense du Peuple/National Congress for the Defence of the People). Mama Masika founded the house in 2001 after she recovered from her own experience with rape. In 1998 a group of Tutsi soldiers entered her village during the Congolese civil war. They killed her husband and cut him into pieces. They ordered Mama Masika to make a bed with the pieces. She was forced to lie on it and 12 soldiers raped her. Her two daughters, 12 and 14 years old, were also raped in the next room. After these attacks she fainted and when she woke up she found herself in a hospital. She could not remember what had happened to her. Months later, her daughter gave birth, but could not remember how she had gotten pregnant. Nobody was telling her the truth, until someone from a women’s organization started talking to her and helped her to understand what happened. After 3 years of counseling, she had recovered somewhat and decided to open this house to help women who are victims of sexual violence. Since 2001, she has helped 5,875 women and has also taken care of children who were born as a result of rape.

HARYANA, INDIA - SEPTEMBER 19, 2009:

A group of pregnant women wait for ultrasound examinations at a medical clinic in Haryana; the procedure is a vital diagnostic tool but can also be used to determine the sex of the foetus. A poster over their heads warns that sex-selective abortion is illegal and carries a sentence of five years in jail. The law, passed in 1994, penalizes medical professionals who contribute female foeticide by revealing the sex.

SALEM, INDIA - FEBRUARY 8, 2010:

A nurse takes care of abandoned baby girls in the Life Line Trust Home in Salem (Tamil Nadu). In its latest initiative to wipe out the practice of female foeticide and female infanticide, the government of Tamil Nadu has set up cradles homes where unwanted girls can be abandoned.

JAIPUR, INDIA, FEBRUARY 1, 2010:

Shahin, 13 years old, polishes semi-precious stones inside a house in Jaipur, Rajasthan, India, known as the Indian “city of gems” on February 1, 2010. She earns 50 rupees (US$ 1) per day, most of which goes toward helping her family save for the dowry and wedding expense they will pay when she marries. Two hundred thousand rupees will be needed to pay the expenses of her wedding. 

HARYANA, INDIA - OCTOBER 2, 2009:

Suman, 19 years old, eats on the floor while her husband sits above on the charpoy in the village of Madina, (Haryana). Born and raised in Assam, Suman was forcibly brought to Madina by a trafficker and sold to her husband for 40 000 rupees (US$ 842) at the age of 17. Some 20 years after the onset of sex-selective abortion, young men in India now face a shortage of eligible brides and are prepared to take desperate measures. As a result, there has been a sharp increase in trafficking of women from other regions of India or from countries such as Bangladesh or Nepal.

PUNJAB, INDIA - NOVEMBER 2, 2009:

A group of women sits idly in their room inside a protection home in Rothak (Haryana). Many of the residents were rescued after been trafficked to be sold as wives or to work as prostitutes in Haryana and Delhi; they seem almost paralyzed by the trauma of their experiences.

Female Foeticide : A Hall of Shame

More than a hundred million women are missing because their parents wanted a son.

Female foeticide is a process of aborting perfectly healthy female foetuses after about 18 weeks (or more) of gestation just because they are females. The same foetuses would've been allowed to live if they were males. There is no question that female foeticide is not just unethical but it is downright cruel as well.

Despite a law banning sex selective abortion is in force for a decade, as many as half a million female foetuses are aborted each year in the country. Gender discrimination in our society is so entrenched, that it begins even before a girl is born. Baby girls are throttled, poisoned or drowned in a bucket of water.

A baby girl tied in polythene bag and dumped in a public dustbin left to be torn away by wild stray dogs. An incident that took place nowhere else but in the very capital of our country.

To cite a couple of more examples, of many, the recovery of pieces of bones of newly born female fetuses from a hospital backyard in Ratlam district of Madhya Pradesh in February 2008. And bodies of more than 100 fetuses found outside an abortion clinic in Pattran town in Punjab in August last year were both deplorable. 

Though India has a history of skewed female sex ratio, what the country is witnessing today is the systematic extermination of the female child, with the ultrasound machine serving as an instrument of murder.

Clinics offering ultrasound scanning facility have mushroomed throughout the country, and despite making pre-natal sex determination a penal offence, doctors and parents alike rampantly violate this law. A survey in Maharashtra showed that an alarming 95% of the amniocentesis scan were being carried out for sex determination.

In India, the 2001 census reveals that the overall sex ratio is 933 females for every 1000 males, showing a marginal increase of 6 points from the 1991 census of 927. However, this is a very sorry state indeed and we are doing much worse than over a hundred years ago when the sex ratio was 972 in 1901, 946 in 1951 till the 933 today.

More and more baby girls have either been aborted or killed as infants since 1961 and that this trend continues strong even today. Indeed, an improvement in the child sex ratio has only been marked in one state, Kerala, and two Union Territories, Lakshwadeep and Pondicherry. Everywhere else, there is a decrease in the number of girls.

The greatest offenders in this area are the northern and the western states, with Punjab and Haryana leading the pack. In Punjab, the child sex ratio has decreased by 77 points to a new and horrifying low of 798 females to a 1000 males, and Haryana has seen a decrease of 60 points, meaning there are now only 819 females to a 1000 males. Other offenders high on this list are Himachal Pradesh, Delhi, Chandigarh and Gujarat.

This is not so much a legal problem as it is a social disease. The son-centric model of our society forms the foundation of the practice of female feticide and infanticide. Girls are made to face discrimination before birth, at birth, and throughout their lives at the hands of their families. Even those girls who are allowed to live get second-class treatment. They are denied adequate medical and health care facilities, they are denied adequate nutrition, and they are denied educational facilities. They are often subject to physical and sexual abuse.

This is not so much a legal problem as it is a social disease. The son-centric model of our society forms the foundation of the practice of female feticide and infanticide. Girls are made to face discrimination before birth, at birth, and throughout their lives at the hands of their families. Even those girls who are allowed to live get second-class treatment. They are denied adequate medical and health care facilities, they are denied adequate nutrition, and they are denied educational facilities. They are often subject to physical and sexual abuse.

Unfortunately, various schemes to counter this situation brought out by many states as well as at the central level have been ineffective in reducing the extent of this problem. Removal of this practice must involve:

• Focus on the humanist, scientific and rational approach and a move away from the traditional teachings which support discrimination.

• Empowerment of women and measures to deal with other discriminatory practices such as dowry, etc.

• A strong ethical code for doctors.

• Simpler methods for complaint registration for all women, particularly those who are most vulnerable.

• Publicity for the cause through the media and increasing awareness amongst the people through NGOs and other organizations;

• Regular appraisal and assessment of the indicators of the status of women such as sex ratio, female mortality, literacy and economic participation.

Infanticide is a crime of murder and punishment should be given to both parents. There ought to be stricter control over clinics that offer to identify the sex of a fetus and stronger check on abortions to ensure that they are not performed for the wrong reasons. Doctors must also be sensitized and strong punitive measures must be taken against those who violate the law.

It has been calculated that more than a hundred million women are missing because their parents wanted a son. We have made significant scientific and technological progress and we churn out some of the brightest minds every year in every area possible. But if we can’t check  female feticide all this progress is absolutely worthless.

How can a society expect to survive without women? Indeed various studies have shown that having far fewer women in a society leads to increased violence in a society, particularly against women. If the macabre practice continues, it would spell doom for both sons and daughters and will have a disastrous impact on the future generations. 

 

Source: Based on a speech by Justice Y.K. Sabharwal, Chief Justice of India and newspaper reports.

The Dalit among Dalits

Even after reservation policy, positive changes and a constant support of the political machinery in the country towards eradication of discrimination against the Dalits, it is still not easy being a Dalit. So the question that comes to one's mind is - if being a Dalit is so tough, how tough will it be to live a life of a Dalit woman? Women in any caste are considered lowly creatures. So how does a lowly creature among the alleged lowly creatures live?

The Dalits who constitute roughly 16.23 per cent of our population, since the Constitution of India "cast a special responsibility on the State to promote with special care the education, economic interest of the Scheduled Castes and promised to protect them from all forms of exploitation and social injustice (Article 46)."

Dalit women in India are considered the Dalits among Dalits and suffer from a three-fold oppression — 

1. On account of gender because of existing patriarchy,
2. On account of their caste 'the untouchable',
3. Finally, on account of their class - as they hail from the poorest and most marginalized communities.

Census shows that 80% of the SCs live in rural areas and are dependent on wage employment. They have to contend with high rates of under employment leading to greater incidence of poverty.