Sunday, April 25, 2010

Life is exuberant, it is beautiful if we live it consciously, receiving its wise messages, protective warnings and great experiences which help us grow into a perfect person. For example :

1) Life often says – ‘ learn from Nature to grow, survive and be deep rooted’. But we hardly listen to beautiful & rich Nature around us.

2) A small plant takes years to grow into a tree. It is never in a hurry. Because hurried efforts never give long lasting results. A tiny, small, delicate plant first learns to set it roots (feet) deep in the earth, in the soil. This root setting procedure takes time, but once it is done, all the nature’s richness gets ready to embrace that ‘deep rooted plant’. And then its fabulous growth starts day by day. By night, by day it gradually keeps growing & growing and one day, we see it full of soft green branches, leaves. Still its journey doesn’t stop. It continues. And again the other day, we notice that small flowers have covered it. After it, the next growth in the form of fruits all over the tree fascinates us . So finally that small plant reaps the great result of its steady growth. Now the process of having new leaves, foliage, flowers & fruits every year continues for years. This is called full growth. The tree survives because of its initial bottom journey into the soil, earth first. Then finishing the bottom journey properly and with utter patience, its journey to upper side takes place unbarred. Its high upward branches seem like touching the sky. So we must learn how to grow properly and fully from the Nature’s this part – called ‘TREE’.
3) Nature often tells us - ‘Failure or to be unsuccessful at times - is the part of life, but every unsuccessful effort hides the rays of success’
But we hardly listen to beautiful & rich Nature around us. See the rising sun in the east every day, but at the end of the day, it goes down, it sinks, sets at the horizon. The setting of sun in the evening daily conveys us that tomorrow it will rise with a fresh morning, fill the world with sunshine, make everyone lively & chirpy. So sinking and rising - is the cycle of life. One should not be dishearten when one goes down = faces failures because coming times do have bright & sunny days in the store for us.

4) Summer, winter, rains, fall and spring, these all seasons also convey us secretly wise message. Our life can never be the same. Ups and downs keeps on gripping our life. If happiness is required in life, so the grief too is required to relish the joy of happiness. For its continuous growth, it has to pass through rough & nice phases one after another, so we must keep our patience. May be, as if God tests our patience, our capacity to face the troubles with a smile and of course , with a hope of gorgeous time ahead. We all have hot, sweating, uneasy time in the ‘Summer’. But it is not for ever, slowly it passes away. Then arrives the ‘ Rainy season’ with lots & lots of cool showers to take away the heat and dryness. The earth that got dry in the hot summer days, is run over by velvety greenery all around. Rivers, rivulets, ponds, lakes all get brim full with water. Life seems happy and relieved from the harsh heat .And then cool and quiet ‘Winter’ rolls in. We feel at ease , enjoy the snowy time with a cuppa of hot tea and coffee, relishing cookies and so on. Having continuously two months of flourishing richness in many different ways, the turn of ‘Fall season’ comes. In past two months Nature gives us so much to face the future troubles strongly and bravely that we hardly mind the roughness of ‘fall’ season. Fall season full of dry winds takes away all the leaves and flowers from the lush green trees. Earth is full of dry leaves & figs all over. But nature speaks silently and gives us the message of coming ‘Spring’. When all the trees stand naked - leafless & lifeless, they have no charm, no colour, no beauty - Spring sets in with the bunch of colourful bud, leaves & flowers. Soft fragrance of different flowers fills the atmosphere, colourful migrated tiny cute birds chirp non stop - making the nature’s ambience melodious, lively and lovely. Spring shields the nature with its exuberance, magical charm and lavish beauty. So, thus nature whispers in our ears - never ever mind the rough and lonely phases of life like ‘Fall season’ because ‘Fall’ takes away the old leaves and flowers & makes space for the newones. Every action, every event in Nature and Life has its reason - if it takes, it give us too. We should therefore keep our patience and keep trying, putting our best and the day will come rushing to us to make us successful, lively and joyous again. But we must learn to be modest & humble to survive the achievements, our success. It should not go in our head. So take up the small & big success modestly, the same way take the small & big failure also, modestly and never lose heart.

If winter comes, can spring be far behind………..

Every dark cloud has a silver lining………..

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

‘Unfaded Gaze ‘

Woman a Goddess of beauty – ‘Venus’, incarnation of ‘motherhood’, symbol of ‘substance’, Narishakti - has one more strong attribute that is – ‘efficient worker in various fields. She possesses an amazing horizon of caliber, dexterity & vigour. She has proved her mettle from taxi driving to corporate world. She modestly crossed the boundaries of bedroom and confidently entered the boardroom . Fighting against the odds, facing tormenting storms, she with utter patience, calm & faith paced through unshaken. She soared to the highest plane in education, defence , corporate world & many many more sectors.
As per the research done by some NGOs, it is found that today women have been reigning the leadership roles in almost every old & new organization . They have been giving tremendous results as opposed to their male colleagues . By each passing day, their demand in all the fields is in rife. Through their result oriented quality work they have proved that comparatively they are more efficient, dedicated, and tackle the popped up adverse situations wisely and of course, successfully. They provide quality & quantity both.
Today’s educational and corporate sectors opine that they focus to sharpen the skills of their women employees and welcome new female staff from the lowest to highest posts because they are an asset to the organization they work with. They enrich the organization by their undying commitment. Undoubtedly working women are behind the all round progress and prosperity of their institutions. They are organized, persuasive, composed, sensible and smart enough to avert a risk and generate thumping success & benefits.
Surveys done by the WILL forum & KPMG speak about the great caliber of women executives. Over the last few years, woman’s capability & ability in various areas have been duly recognized. Not only in India but globally, she has been holding the reins. The roots of her amazing capacity lie in the past as long as world war II, when women used to cross the thresholds at the call of the hour to look after the family business or take charge of their men’s workplace when they were away at the warfront. During the freedom struggle in India they came forward as martyrs. In all the ages, women came forward & contributed untiringly.
This so called ‘weaker sex’ always found mentally & spiritually stronger & tougher. From education to profession females outnumber males. Recently during the unfortunate global recession , it were men who lost jobs in America, Asia & Europe and it were women who retained in & gained the jobs.
In both organized & unorganized sectors women employees are in rise. Time to time study & surveys conducted by social groups & forums presented the reports stating that women tend to work more methodically & efficaciously along with taking care of their families in every way like day to day need, children’s education & health etc. In view of this they are the axis of economic & social growth. Small town & village women have also accepted challenging roles as leaders in different sectors. We can see them toiling in fields, running the shops, offices & top notch companies & at the end of the day, their homes with the same zeal & dedication. No country can flourish, no society can survive without acknowledging the contribution of its women folk.
Senator Hillary Clinton recently on 12th March at an international women’s conference said referring to equal rights to all the women around the world – ‘’ The subjugation of women is a direct threat to the security of the United States. The status of women is not only a matter of justice. It is also a political, economic & social imperative. It is time to declare with one voice that women’s progress is human progress.’’
Jhansi ki Rani - Lakshmi bai, Razia Sultan, Begum Hazaratmahal, Indira Gandhi,Pratibha Patil, Sonia Gandhi, Super cop Kiran Bedi, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Margaret Thatcher, Benazir Bhutto, Sarah Palin, Anu Agha, Sulajja Firodia, Kiran Majumdar Shaw, Khalida Zia, Chandrika Kumaratungam, hands – on competent heiress Geetanjali Kiloskar, Meher Pudumji, Ambika Hinduja Macker, Devita Saraf, Upasna Reddy, Rashni Nadar, Ashni Biyani. These women have many role models. They are brilliant and carrying the huge responsibility with lots of commitment & accountabilitry. Akshta Murthy, daughter of IT billionaire Narayan Murthy is a marketing director with Tendris, a Dutch cleantech incubator fund. Toaday’s 21st century women entrepreneurs do not accept their set family business, they prefer to work their way up outside their family domain too.
Thus we see women all over the world are entrusted great responsibilities. Many of them carry the duties of ‘three in one’ or ‘ two in one’ package with equal energy, efficiency & wonderful management. Their bosses carry a great sense of relief leaving their established empires on them. All these success stories are not the fairy tales but the dazzling truth that woman is an indispensable unit in the progress, upliftment & prosperity of the society. Her caliber, her efforts, her influence, her dedication can’t be ignored at any front. Salute to her multifacet persona !

Women’s Bill

In the constantly progressive women’s age, how much is the women’s reservation bill is an honorable move ? Is it to enhance her empowerment or vice versa ? As we know Indian constitution clearly declares that the discrimination on the grounds of caste, creed, religion, race, place & sex is prohibited – so why are we violating the sensible law of our constitution by seeking the women’ reservation in the parliament on the grounds of ‘ weaker class or sex ’, just because at the same time , this ‘prohibition’ has been prohibited by introducing the provision for the resurgence of socially , educationally & financially weak classes ?
Now in 21st century women are neither socially or educationally that weak as they used to be in the past, instead they have been giving tough competition to males in all the fields. Over a few years, woman has constantly been reigning the educational, defence, political & corporate world. When she has the capacity to create a place for herself on the grounds of ability alone, why this hue & cry for 33% reservation ??
Somehow I feel, it would not empower women the way it should. First, our political domain has lots of daughters, daughter-in-laws and wives & sisters ruling various nooks & corners, main forums, side forums. Reservation would invite the nomination & domination of relatives of those male candidates who are compelled to vacate the constituency as it was done in reserved constituencies that Panchayat raj ministry saw the female relatives got nominated by the male leaders. Similarly if a male leader expires during his tenure, his wife or daughter easily gets the party ticket, votes and the seat as well. Thus indirectly seats remain reserved for women representatives through this tendency. Secondly, reservation would diminish the enthusiasm of the elected leaders to work whole heartedly for their allotted area as they will be apprehensive about their come back in the next election. So it will kill the work dedication. Third, is that ‘Reservation never proves a 'Right & Healthy thing' later on as it seems in the beginning. For instance, take the obvious example of OBCs - upsurge layer of OBCs again & again reaps the advantage and the neglected layer remains always neglected & ignored. This can happen with women’s reserved seats too.

It is mere a beginning and politicians have started fighting, arguing and thus getting disoriented from the main issue of women’s political /social empowerment. S.P., R.J.D. are bent upon withdrawing support to the U.P.A. govt and as a result the fear of its shattering down is surrounding. Trinamul congress on this issue is also ready to move against U.P.A. That means it’s a threat for U.P.A. that these parties will shake hands with B.J.P. led N.D.A. In upcoming assembly elections in U.P. & Bihar S.P., R.J.D. B.S.P. are focusing the women’s reservation bill to sieve voters on the basis of religion & caste. Hence the real political empowerment of women would leg behind & vicious vested ‘interests’ are ready to float on . On the other hand leading clerics are also opposing the Muslim women’s move into the politics. This selfishly combined opposition is strong enough to sideline the targets.
In democratic set-up, pandemonium in the Parliament - unruliness and rusticity of leaders show the ugly face of politics. Parties are not united on the issue of Bill. They keep asserting their demands on each other.
New assumptions like reduction in quota in the Bill to address the concern of S.P. & R.J.D. for OBCs & Muslim women making a mock of it. A big tail of denials, approvals, flickering dimensions, suppressed simmering issues have been glued to the lucrative ‘Kite’ of women’s bill. The day is not far off when this kite - soaring high in the sky - is craftily cut by the opposing parties and it will tumble down to be lost in the dense jungle of bushy debates & discussions. Caste based reservation already is enough to provide liberal entries to women and open seats draw the able ones on it. So what is the need of women’s bill ? It took roughly 14 – 15 years period when it was first proposed to push forth the women’s reservation bill & seems will take little time to get pushed back before it gets into the proper form of law.
In view of this , deeply pondering over the every aspect, I feel it is sheer waste of time & energy to enforce the Bill, instead precious time & energy be invested properly and methodically to empower women by giving them more opportunities to work for the society as per their caliber. Women nominated and elected on their own ability will groom the legislatures with discipline & decorum and help it come up with relevant issues related to social, economic growth & the all over progress of the country. I’m not against women’s bill for political reasons as S.P. & R.J.D. are opposing it. But simultaneously, I am not in its favour too simply because I have intense faith in women’s caliber & ability to rise up to the any limits in most of the fields. Woman doesn’t need any such support like ''women’s bill''. She is her own support, own resource to perpetuate her energies & capabilities. After all since 1950, she has been empowering herself amazingly & patiently despite lots of confrontation and opposition, so why in today’s progressive time women’s bill is required ? Women’s bill seems ridiculous to me for today’s educated, intelligent, diligent, intellectual, courageous and smart women. Women’s bill seems as ridiculous as a rubber ring around the waist of an expert swimmer to go ahead. When she has already reached to so many heights gracefully, her dignity should not be diminished by introducing & thrusting women’s bill.