Shades of colors in Life- Winner of IndiBloggers' Surprize prize ..

(A painting done at times when colors give more peace than white)

The first has its beauty, its pleasure, its essence and its colors.

The first yellow sunlight and still so orange

The first step on the brown land of black stones

The first colorful look through the black and white eyes

The first sip of the colorless water

The first dress of blue and pink dots

The first rain and the first blue splash

The first book and its grey cover

The first of green life and the first summer plant

The first nail paint and tongue twisting names

The first wall of the Asian paints – peach and plum

The first mango, way to the yellow world

The first traffic light, which was forever amber

The first trinket of blood with its redness

The first sip of nature and its colors for life.

‘Some things are meant to be Black and White’ said her Grandpa, if it would not have been for the fact that she knew him so well she would have believed him. Her GrandPa is an old GrandPa and like all Grandpas, he has a habit of running away from his most notorious and brain eating grandchild. Not satisfied with his answer, Srishti went out in search of someone who could tell her better ‘why a blackboard was black and a chalk white’. She had several linked questions to this particular one:

Why a chalk couldn’t be black

Why a blackboard couldn’t be white

And whether if it was white, we would call it a whiteboard?

Why the children in senior classes had no black but a white color big board in which teachers wrote with sketch pens (She was referring to the whiteboards and markers that are used as a medium of teaching the senior classes these days).

While all this was going on, I was watching silently from my window which fortunately for me (and unfortunately for the Sharma family) opened up in Srishti’s back garden. Though the child had asked questions which will bring about a smile on your face, she reminded me of some open questions I once had and are still unanswered.

When I was Srishti’s age, I had not wondered about the Blackboard and its blackness but about the sky and its colorless pouring wonder. I still remember my first rain and its colorless touch. It was something that meant and means a lot to me. However, at 6 I had popped out ‘Momma, I love pink color, can you ask the sky to pour pink rain in our house and blue in Rashmi’s when the next time it rains.’ My Mother had laughed so hard that the Roohafza Sharbat glass she was holding in her hands sprinkled some red drops on my dress. ‘I don’t like red- It hurts my eyes’ I had said. I had wished for pink, drops that would make my white frock colorful.

(The droplets of frozen water on the window of the car, looking green for some reason)

I love visiting zoo- the animals and their behavior, the rotten smells and the fresh air, the size of the limbs and that of the hair. Animals with their varied sizes and colors attract most of the young children. I love the black strips on the yellow tiger, the white dots on the giraffe’s brown body, the different shades of green on the parrot’s feathers, the grey color of the elephant’s vast body. What I don’t love is that there are no animals with orange or pink on their body that I have seen.

Wondered why the zebra was black and white,

Pink and Blue was what I would have liked,

Ever seen a green and yellow Panda

Playing with a mauve and red skunk

Wondered why the newspaper was boring

Was it because of the colors that were soaring

If it would have been the color of my candy

Blue, Pink, orange or may be Burgundy

Wondered when the chessboard will change

Out of the black and white square range

What if it changes to Beige and Lavender?

Out of the world will it be, I wonder

At the age of 12, my inquisitiveness led me to a different aspect of white all together. My grandmother changed a lot of her habitual traits, which I loved, during those days. She stopped putting red color on forehead. The big red bindi went missing. But the change that I disliked the most was that she stopped wearing any of the sarees, my mother had gifted her. I loved taking patterns from her saree and painting them in the art class- A parrot, a rangoli, a border and different squares. I did not like the plain, white and pattern less sarees she wore. All of them looked the same to me; the colors were all a shade of white. There was nothing special for the occasions and nothing different for the festivals. It was forever the white and its peace. I wanted the colors, the shades and the patterns back. I could not understand why the colors left her when my Grandfather died, I still can’t.

(Black white hooks, being sold in a shop.They look better on the red.)

Ever wondered why the sky was limitless

The giant heart of the world’s sadness

Every night sheltering the moon and the stars

The white misty morning and the black nightly scars

Wouldn’t it be better to welcome a new colorful sky?

Every night the moon in teal and stars plum joy

Ever wondered why it’s the black and white above so high?

(The night sky, on the darkest night)

I am an engineer by profession and one thing that stuck me hard during my engineering days were the heaps of clustered white pages, with small blackish copied writings on it (done in that way to save money). Yes, I am referring to the engineer’s bane and boon – The photocopies! Photocopies of senior’s notes, photocopies of class notes, photocopies of the topper’s notes and then photocopies of the photocopies done over the years. I hated the scrawny handwriting, the hours spent reading the clustered black uninteresting colorless writing of some author who might have at one time invented a black and white instrument. Often in my seclusion I thought, if only they were like rainbows, each page a different color, each paragraph a striking highlight, some green and some blue such that reading them was not so boring. In my 2nd of Engineering, I bought a new Desktop. All over the hardware parts there were Bar Codes printed. A small chit of white color, containing Black Lines in a random format. It acts as an identification or name for the hardware part. The first thought -'How come anything that boring and unreal can define something so colorful as 'Identity'.

Ever thought why, Ever desired the change
Base of Piano red and keys in colorful range

Ever desired a change for dangerous Khopdi and bones
Always seen in black base and white figure
I wonder the man of the Khopdi was without vigor

On Friday, I rose from by bed welcoming a glorious bright sunny morning, blue sky and green leaves of the Banyan tree. The brightness of the marigold and rose flowers was enchanting. The world seemed so beautiful with its colors. It would rain and then hopefully there will be a rainbow, a 7 band spectrum of hope, light, life and warmth. I was looking forward to the day.

He sat at the corner of the grand road, muffling the coins, among them finding the one with the highest worth. He was 45, but it was a difficult task. I remembered the rhyme ‘Roses are red, violets are blue, you love me and I love you’.

Roses were the same

So were the violets

The sky was the same

So was the earth

The mango was the same

So was the pear

The rain was the same

As he could hear

The night was the same

So was the noon

The yellow was the same

So was the red

The green was the same

So was the blue

Life was the same

Each day each night

So much black and little white

For he did not have the gift of sight.

I wish Life would be colorful for him some day ….

I am thankful to Indiblogger and HP for giving me a chance to remember the incidences of the need for colors. Please watch the above video to know how a colorless life might feel.

A special thanks to Shrikanth Balla, my colleague and Microsoft Genius photographer for providing all the pictures I needed.

To make your life colorful, a ray of yellow and blue, a streak of Burgundy and another of purple and to see the not so colorful things in the light of the VIBGYOR spectrum : do log onto to Splashing colors@HP

The Song of Hope - Brides to be

At 6, what do you remember of yourself- A pink frock, a lollypop, and unlimited dreams? Some moments caught in the frame, you and your mommy drenched in the rain, the corner ice-cream parlor where Dad would take you every Saturday, your brother and the comparisons, the tug of war for the toys and chocolates, gas balloons that never stayed on the ground, the pink and blue water-bottle you carried with pride, the new copies and books you covered with the paper brown and the night counting stars in the sky. At 8, things would have changed but not drastically. At 13, you would have thought about being beautiful and at 16, about a career. At 20, about college and life and may be at 22 about marriage.

Chronology of these events is not the same for all of us, at least not the same for girls in rural India, Yemen and parts of Afghanistan. The story of Nujood Ali had shaken the world in 2008. Nujood, 10 year old Yemini girl, walked into the court of a populous city of Yemen and demanded divorce from her husband. At 10, she had been married, had sexual intercourse, bled and lost her virginity to a man 3 times as old she was. With the help of media and law, Nujood got her divorce and is now living with her father’s family, who knowingly forced this marriage on her. There are 10,000 Nujoods who are born and married every month in the most urban and highly rural cities of Asia. Some are caught, some are not and some bleed their way to death.
In Yemen, Child brides are a part of the custom that is used to settle disputes, grant favors and flourish businesses. Girls of 8 and 5 are married with men as old as 30. I read an article some days ago in Times of India about the increasing cases of marriage of old Arabic with young poor Hyderabad local girls. It’s a means of providing security to the girl, who if not married at an early age can fall prey to some callous bastard’s sexual needs. However the concern here is - Is marriage between a 60 year old man and a 13 year old girl not a legal rape. How secure a girl is when she does not even know what is going to happen to her at the first night of the marriage? She doesn’t even understand when a new life starts breeding in her not so old body. Finally, she realizes something is wrong just before she bleeds to death producing more female offspring who carry on this tradition of security.

Scientifically, a girl attains puberty between 10 and 14. One of the main physical changes of puberty is the growth and development of the sex organs – the parts of the body that are used to have sex and make babies. But at 14 also there is no emotional and physical stability in most female’s body to give birth. The fact is - At 14, most of the girls married at 8, are a mother of 2 or 3 children. Pregnancy and childcare takes place in unhealthy and unhygienic environment for most of the girls, leading to the development of many diseases, prolong bleeding and repeated failures and miscarriages. All the more shocking is the fact that the girls shy away from telling anyone what they are going through because they feel shy. An utter neglect and lack of education forces many of these girls to continue bearing the torture till the time their bodies give up.

Can we feel sad or can we do something? I think we should and we must do something, as far as I can see education is the only medium, the only channel, the only path and the only hope. Even if each of us can educate 1 mother of each of those brides to be, I believe there will be a change, a subtle but significant in its own way.

The other day I was sitting and chatting with my mother who was again asking me about the same old question of marriage (I am 25 and hence I owe some explanation as to why I do not want to marry now). I smiled and said ‘I am not ready, and there are still some career commitments I need to fulfill’. She smiled back and said ‘your choice’.

‘Give her the right to choose, give her the right to decide
Give her the freedom to live and if needed fight.’

SAHAI - Helping Life

Yesterday the CBSE declared the 12th board results. There were bright smiles and tears of joy, but there also were tears of fear and strain. The burden of not living up to expectations of family and self. Parents keeping an eye on their children so that they do not do anything wrong after the results. Hurt and depressed some students take the easier way.
These are moments in life when you feel the journey so far has been worthwhile but you do not want to continue any more. Those subtle moments when the will power breaks and shatters, moments when you feel the world is not a good enough place to be, moments of anxiety and anger, moments of sadness and dry laughter.
In these anxious moments when the only ray of hope is not be there anymore, are the ones when you need that warm hug, that affectionate smile and that pat on the back. You need the assurance that things will get fine. You need someone to say ‘They will get fine’. Some of us are lucky to have friends and family around in those shattered moments and we run through that rough phase emerging successfully at the end. Some of us are not so lucky.
Today, SAHAI is helping to make each child, each Parent, each woman and each man lucky.

HISTORY THE SAHAI WAY: HOW AND WHAT

Activity: Started on 2nd Oct 2002, SAHAI is Bangalore's telephone helpline for people in emotional distress. Our dedicated, trained volunteer counselors are available to answer your calls between 10.00 a.m. & 6.00 p.m., from Monday through to Saturday.

All calls are confidential and privacy is assured.

Whether it is facing problems with your family, in school, at work or with your friends,Sahai Counselors will give you their undivided attention and will guide you. And, when you're ready, SAHAI will help you find a long-term solution to your problems, through telephone counseling. Sahai volunteers will help and equip you with the skills, needed to cope with distressing situations of life like loss, failure, broken relationships or the ever-increasing demands of today's fast-paced life.

SAHAI volunteers are homemakers, professionals and college students - people from all walks of life who are committed to saving lives. SAHAI volunteers undergo 30 hours of suicide prevention training conducted by professionals from NIMHANS and the Medico Pastoral Association, along with Rotary Bangalore East, three of the help line's founding partners.

Volunteers are trained to help each caller ventilate, to respond without judging, and to guide the caller to address their problem. Volunteers learn how to listen pro-actively, and to recognize and assess signs of stress and depression.

Details: India’s first suicide prevention helpline we are pioneers in telephone counseling in Bangalore.

Support: Suicide prevention and emotional distress telephone helpline.

Note: Public awareness, more volunteers and funds to raise awareness.

This post is a part of BlogAdda's Bloggers Social Responsibility (BSR) initiative. I am exercising my BSR. You can too with three simple steps. Visit http://www.blogadda.com/bsr/ and support the NGO's.

‘Giving you the help to play, to live, to swing, to way
Making your life colorful red and blue, but not grey
A better life awaits you and your tomorrow
Dont give up ever, SAHAI will end the sorrow.’