God behind the gate

 

That gate fascinates me. It’s a solid iron gate, painted black that firmly closes the entrance to a wooded tract of land and which remains locked always. The boundary of the tract is lined by steel barbed wire all around it that ends tethered to the black gate that has a slotted design welded in its make. A line of pretty white and sometimes interspersed with red flowers dots the horizontal length in the slots midway through the gate.

What are they there for?

Apparently they are an offering made by some people. The mystery is solved as I take a peek inside the black gate and find another smaller gate or rather a doorway, someway beyond to this one. The pyramidal head of a small ancient temple, hides behind the shadows caused by the tree cover and the clouds that seem to stay permanently stuck overhead and threaten to break open their heart at any moment.

The God is kept hidden by its keepers from the ever keen flocks of its followers. The doors will open at a determined time later and there’s another approach road to it that must be somewhat out of the way for some at least. Those that have to reach their destinations early in the morning whether to schools or offices, and cannot stay or spend much time with their God, have wished him good morning and gone on their way again. Those that came for an early morning walk or exercise do not want to lose their rhythm and have offered a flower or two and registered their presence too. Those ones with shaky bones who came out to air themselves and found the other road difficult to trudge along on have bowed their heads in deep reverence, mumbling those esoteric mantras that’d bring health and prosperity on them and their families. They have placed the white flower on the black gate, certain in their hearts that the God is listening to them and has accepted their offering happily.

The unseen God will of course come out later and see the flowers kept there on the black gate for him. He’ll touch them and absorb their scents and colours so that they will then lie there brown and dry and then get blown away by the wind. The God will be remembered the next day too.

Don’t break a heart, Son!

“Ma ne kaha tha o beta, kabhi dil kisi ka na todo……..’

This line from a Hindi movie translates as “Mother said, son, don’t break anybody’s heart……”

For, the consequences can be unthinkably disastrous.

It used to be a cliché at one point of time, now no body cares to remember such a platitude, and more over nobody even cares for its underlying sentiment. There was a time when becoming mature mattered more than staying younger. Guiding the younger lot to stay on the right track, was a responsibility elders took upon themselves as easily as breathing air rather than beating oneself up just thinking about how much of an onus it would be. As the lyric suggests, the mother has asked the boy to make note of a sentiment he wouldn’t necessarily have thought about while he’s out and about enjoying the perks of being young.

The greatest day in your life and mine is when we take total responsibility for our attitudes. That’s the day we truly grow up — John Maxwell

It’s easier to extend a hand of friendship, enjoy the company, become popular among them, be civil, and also uphold some responsibility attached with it like protecting her from any harm or ferrying her to some place etc. These are in fact the testing grounds to check who responds the best in generally occurring crises and who can actually be banked upon when you face a difficult situation, for future reference of course. It’s an unwritten code that has been largely accepted the entire world over that the men will take care of their women. In the former financially dependent scenario, 98% world worked this way. It was an understood thing that the boy would try his level best to keep the girl happy. The offerings of flowers, chocolates, gifts etc made by them was a precursor to a promise that she would be well looked after if/once they settled in the cut and fold of the bliss of matrimony- expectedly a happy one. Both would be party to the easy and difficult times and that’s that.

In the now present independent times, when more and more women are financially on their own, a lot of confusion seems to have percolated in some of the men folk owing to the newer personal equations being formulated with each passing day. It’d rather be unfair to place the onus on the men totally to take care of the lady while she has the best of both the worlds-personal and professional. Caring has to be a mutual thing right? We’ve overtaken the caste, status, religion, and the financial baggage in some and increasingly more cases so that the institution of marriage has itself become an interesting case study of late. When two parties meet it may be a marriage between hearts or minds or status or convenience or whatever. But the basic premise and promise should be that of taking care of each other, not to let each other down and not to break the other’s heart for….breaking a heart is the biggest sin anyone can commit. Now.., sin is such a dated word!

Reading the news about Sunanda Pushkar’s death case, the beautiful second wife of the dashing and talented MP from Thiruvanthapuram, Kerala Shashi Tharoor after only 3 years of marriage, has led a lot of curiosity mills grinding as to the motive or cause of her death whether suicide or murder. No certain thing is being let out but the one tidbit that’s coming up again and again is the presence of a third person in their marriage, a certain media celebrity in our neighbourhood.

We can’t say what killed her exactly but a broken heart isn’t counted as crime in law or is it?