Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

Stephen Covey

We all need to develop the art of listen, because listening often is seen an response to replying. The moment we loose the intention behind the art of listening we have created a cess pool in our mind, our chest feels heavy and breathing becomes difficult. We do not quite understand what has gone wrong, is it our mind that is playing a trick on us or is what we are experiencing the truth. the moment we hear people out we are receiving them and accepting them with not only love but respect. Our heart lightens in sheer brightness refusing to turn away from any awkward conversation. We can tackle situations with much more ease which we had not before.

I wish people could tune in to other people, as its as simple like catching the frequency of a radio station. All people emit signals sometimes weak that we cant monitor while some are clear and strong. The moment we are ready to attend to the oscillating nerves around we have restored our faith in that human who will then be with us forever. We would have then found a friend we all need so much. Trying times will get easier wisdom gained will become our reward. So try and listen now to the numerous hearts that are beating faintly.

Creativity is another form of compassion and empathy, it does not come as a reason for being brave or being termed as being brave. It is an act that makes one think, write or feel as one wishes to have a reason to live beyond the realms of just day dreams and unadjourned pauses. Creativity does not create any boastful moments nor any outstanding thoughts but only because one seems to care for the unexplained.

The moment we decide to find the reason for the unexplained brief minutes and join in that dance of uniqueness, despite facing many times stares from strangers, we do not even realise how we have affected people. Yes we are often melodramatic, slushy, sugary and moonstruck but that spooning we do is only our boon perhaps. Let me be truthful it might not have the same vapid and sugary affect on people who live with us. No one wants to permanently live besides a coca cola fizzy drink do they?! So they think its better to leave the inventive one to their own sloppy stir.

Your near and dear ones arrive only when the ” prolific production of soft boiled eggs” have been devoured and eaten and that misty eyed one is has now become half sleepy eyed. Its safer to savour the hardened overnight eggs surely! Unfortunately, the soap operatic one at the rise of the next day, will always tweak in the vanguard yet again and again.

Vanity worn as the cuff links seeks to imagine that creativity is a care, and not a bravado, as seen to many. So what do I really want to say across this jumbling of too many dreamy ideas, its one simple line ” creative people come from another planet and its impossible to fit them in slots or to deal with them, leave alone live with them !!”

As a little pudgy child with dark skin and wild unkept hair, she would scamper in and out quite freely in a light cotton frock. She was unmindful of all watchful eyes and often would get rebuked and laughed at for her skin colour. ” Hey you are so dark ” said one scornful voice while another said your mother must have drunk a lot of tea and that’s why you look like black tea”. Somehow it made no sense to her for she would run to the only best friends she had, the flowers in the garden. She would talk endlessly to the roses, the pansies and the lilies who never judged her who smelled sweet as her chattering grew, but the darkness in her decided to stay on.

The darkness always crept around her when she would go to her room to spend some time alone by herself. It would appear like shadows creeping across the room, so she never would keep quiet. She would sing to herself, ” I saw that black motor car, come across to me! Go that little motor car far away from me.” No one understood her mumbling rhymes and she would get severely scolded for singing the nonsensical rhyme late into the night while others tried to sleep.

However morning always came bright and the flowers bloomed and she would run back to talk happy things to her friends. Yes it was odd to see her sing about that black motor car in the night and yet chatter happily to Rosie or Pansy her bright best friends. ” Hey Rosie how do you do? Miss Pansy hope you are fine too!”

Even today when that black motor car comes during the day she does happily chatter but in the night she needs to sing herself to sleep to forget that dark black! The sun does appear and so does her bright smile, the frightened one is brave again, maybe with real friends this time and with real high time moments. She knows now if that horrid black car will come along others will come too, bright white, red and yellow even! She can sing now about all other cars too, ” that red one will come to steal my little heart, with yellow roses we will never part! The darkness in me does fade away, within the white light of the day!

I know now as a grown woman, darkness will never reign supreme, for I still believe in my sweet smelling best friends. My darkness today defines me and my beauty!

Many times we mistake kindness as acts of mercy. Mercy and kindness are totally two different things. Acts of kindness never needs definition nor do they need validation nor do they need gratitude. It is an unconscious value that one performs daily without expectations of someone showing gratitude or even saying thank you. The moment we expect a response from our act of kindness the value of it is lost forever.

I see acts of kindness everywhere, a kind teacher who decides not to shout at her pupil, a friend who might decide to come and meet her sick friend or a employer giving new clothes to his workers. They do these acts as a value not because of the satisfaction of a ” thank you ” or someone saying ” we are in gratitude to you” but this is because they are not scaling it in utility. If one expects gratitude, then one is only displaying his ego and thus placing himself much higher than the receiver, while true acts of kindness sees all as equals.

Mercy is an act that is deserving of sincere appreciation. Its a rare act, I read of a wife forgiving the killer of her child, that is true mercy. When the president of our country decides on clemency of hanging that is an true act of mercy, when an act of assassination is forgiven that is true mercy and praise worthy of being seen as beyond mere acts of kindness.

Let us stop once to re examine our own deeds and see what are we looking for, if is it praise behind the act of kindness it is unworthy in value. The moment we do not put any value behind the act, we are truly kind. That is worthy of praise as we ourselves do not know when we were kind.

We are all just an idea a way, a thinking of a new concept, an novelty which we can imagine which we wish to share the world with. However something stops us, is it fear of the unknown, of loss, of insecurity I do not know, but we stop many times mid way. At that those moments of doubt we tend to consult the cynic who has been with us through out. That scornful friend proves right to us at that time and we tend to overlook the idea that gave us so much joy before and move into the hands of the suspicious player with much ease.

In that moments when we slip into that comatose stage of despair all we need is to shake our inner self doubt and go back to the dream that dwells within us. Many climbers have returned from the base camp of Mount Everest without thinking only because of the fear of the climb. It is the fright of the vault that will kill us and not the jump into the belief that you will win. The moment we feel insignificant we have lost the game. The page turner is the intention to win, the affirmation of the judgement that what you are feeling and what you are about to do, is the truth and only truth.

No one can hold your hand in your resolve to find significance in what you are teaching yourself, as you are the pupil and you are your guru. Caper into the flight, attacking all doubt only to skyrocket yourself higher and higher. Let us hurdle and free ourselves of all chains of uncertainty and find confidence in that belief which is our truth and only truth.

We often are led to think or we lead ourselves to imagine that death comes to destroy us and the person who meant the world to us has taken everything which we called ours. However do we ever stop to think to go beyond the departing and make us truly learn to live life and enjoy the living instead of mourning? I am not trying to negate memories but trying to rejoice in that memory of that beloved. The death reminds us that we need to belong more and more into the realm of the positivity of that earth it was made to rest. The earth now grows trees and flowers whose sweet scent is enough to fill our hearts with joy.

I chose before in my life to see destruction in death but when I saw life I was awoken to the needs of life and living. I see my world as pillow soft rather than hard as rocks and every step as taking me to soar beyond my dreams into a magical world I wish to create. I may be mocked, if wishes were horses then beggars would ride them, however my dream is not an imaginary horse but a strong step as building blocks to my heathen.

We need therefore to see importance of a death that is responsible for creating life, a life that will take us into another realm of cultivating , of celebrating, of curating the new and the born. Let us see this vitality in a death not as decay but as dissemination of power in the unique fostering care and compassion once again.

.

All my life I have kept an open, inclusive lifestyle. I feel that all should feel welcome and at home as this is how I was raised. I was raised by very open parenting and a household where even strangers who were met for the first time found a room with bed and food. My parents welcomed all with open arms without the slight feeling of them being strangers.

However this does not seem to be the case today. That inclusion I saw or many would have seen is changing in todays time. What is interesting here though is, many while choosing to be exclusive to people but inclusive to strangers on the social media. I am amused to see this change that we are willing to be open to a complete stranger to someone on social media who could misuse your generosity while we refuse to let the real into our lives.

We are getting so disconnected with the real person and also not willing to welcome them into our hearts and heaths that we are creating a social cocoon around ourselves. How can we feel a human content in that I wonder? It will make us slowly into hermits with having friends with perhaps an synthetic generated text voice or an what we will paint as a perfect blend of a person with a hundred percent flawless face and body over the computer. We will spend hours on that since we will feel a strange sense of perfect fulfilment. Funny, we are only having conversations with our own voices of perfect words that the computer steals to generate a virtual reality which only entangles us.

I wish for the world to see the value in the closeness I hope to try to create with all. I hope that the myth of the perfect computer is destroyed within a body of an imperfect human. It is in that closeness I feel that we all can get to live within our truth. We will hence create a total willingness to be under no fallacy or mediated illusion of the other. Let us create only an life that creates a change of hope, connectedness and belongingness to all, with the help of the machine only and only to be help human kind.

When we speak to our loved ones on the phone, over whataspp, zoom or google meets we just don’t realise the huge distance or how far they are. We also do not realise that we have not met them over years and time just dissolves in the space of the internet.

However this was not the case about twenty years ago. I remember how much distance one had to carry in our hearts just to hear the voice of our loved ones or read their had written feelings in that blue heart pages of the inland letter. I would eagerly wait for that blue companion to reach my mail box. I would excitedly rush to get it and read and re read the contents pouring the love expressed inside.

My mother and I thought of many devices that would help us to send the affection to our close family who had chosen to stay far because of work or studies. We used to tape our voices over the recorder and laugh or sing songs so that it becomes easier for our beloved to carry on the tasks of the day. We also wrote diligently every week and it was an exercise that never failed us. That duty we created helped us in many ways and has helped us even today to keep in touch.

Those beautiful inland letters still are kept in boxes, the photographs sent, carefully placed in heavy albums. In todays world we can click and delete anything in nano seconds which many times has made us forget the value of being in the past. It should be said that to access is much easier which has its own advantage but it has made the sincerity towards our feelings a little hazy. In that haze we often times stand to forget as easily as we can remember.

Let us, I urge keep both in store, the virtual and the real both can amalgamate into a zigzag cross roads of several meeting points and quick departures. These goodbyes will only be met soon, which can then become realities. Our world is being far enough to be near, very near and let that closeness remain as the mementos we will treasure forever.

When we first start watching the play Bhediya (written by Dinesh Agarwal and devised and directed by Binod Sharma and Hema Bhist) you feel that too many complex ideas are at interplay. What remains interesting at the core of the direction is that the farrago of complexities come together well in the end. One realizes soon interestingly that the script is in chapter formations, i.e. one chapter instead of leading to the next, had an end to itself while in the end all themes merge to highlight the main theme.

At the core this play talks about the restrictions that the society places on women, it ranges from a young girl ( Prithi, played by Rajni) getting raped by her boyfriend whose hapless parents show their true plight and loss ; the activist Malti Malini (Meenakshi Naithani) and the misogynistic reactions towards her, the ever presence of the television anchor and correspondent ( played by Aditya Deshwal and Sheel Kalia) who only wants to increase their TRP despite the occurrence of wild allegations made by the other panelists the submissive Iyer and the pontiff of all society’s bearing, the algebra baba ( Vyom Gupta).

At the other end of the spectrum, we see a Bhediya (Mohit) or a wolf that is roaming in the village of drunk Maheswar Mahto (Dinesh Agarwal) who is unable to protect his grandchild Nanku (Tanuj), or even his own jobless son Mangarua (Nitesh Raghav) from the clutches of this preying animal. The heart wrenching scene of losing her child, husband and father-in-law is witnessed by Chameli (played by Richa Arora) which is only used again to as piece of news item by Bhatuknath (Sheel Kalia).

We see the play ending in a huge climatic wave of voices of strong female powers that emerge to create a huge medley. The grand opus thus is to destroy all the grave concerns of society against the females. What remains as a point of interest is the way the grave ideas are displayed and enacted, which the director, Binod Sharma cleverly used in a sequential order with small scenes and larger scenes and an opus of females in the end.

Instead of using a single point of reference in the script, Dinesh Agarwal has intertwined many ideas, the rape of Rajni and the devastation of her mother Madhvi ( Nishta Sharma) and father Sadashay ( Jitender Singh); the everlasting huge presence of the media; the attack of a real wolf on a small child of a rural village depicting the plight of the villagers and in the finality the waving rise of womanhood in itself.

What impressed me was the use of televised narrations and the interaction of multimedia projected screens in the play. A special word must be given to Jitender Singh (Sadashay) and Nitesh Raghav (Mangarua) who pulled the act with great command of their acting skills as they had little dialogues. Little Nanku and Tanuj were a delight to watch, and Hema Bhist, Richa Arora and Nishta Sharma pulled me in their act.

Only one needs to look attentively at the technical of play as the lighting was choppy and so was the blocking too much centered. The stage could have been used in multiple formations despite the use of a projected screen. The songs could also have been used more appropriately with lights as well as the use of actors. Overall, the play Bhediya is indeed a good watch, and it brings a difference in style of scripting and direction. It marks a new way of looking at theatre and hence one should watch it as a mark of contemporary Indian Drama.

When one more year has finished in your life span and your birthday marks that celebratory day we realise many things. We come to see that life is neither too long nor it is too short, its just enough to be content in a day. The meaning of life should be seen within that day, the steps taken on that day should be enough to be carried forward. There is hence value in one, singular step.

When we live day to day we come to realise that we are not slighted in the least and words of today might echo the past ones. The last breaths of yesterday has given only new meanings today. When you realise how to contain yourself within one day without looking too far ahead you are only and only able to see the rays of the rising sun of tomorrow.

I must say that I have learnt to live day to day without creating too many plans for the future. This has given me the wings that I need to fly higher as I do not fear the future nor feel sorry for the past. I simply give myself just one task to perform per day. I give vale in the singular without the wanting of the plural.

There is value in slow downing to a simple one task. I make sure that I only do one only chore and I define that to my passion, hobby and profession. That one task is always related to theatre, it could be reading a book, watching a play, talking to a student, writing a blog or a paper, or finding a grant. I do not try and push myself beyond that singular task as it makes me content and happy to have finished it in time. This makes me look forward only to the next few days to come.

I know my singular voice of today will turn into a multitude of voices tomorrow. This will help me leap into the golden rainbow to bring back dusts of diamond, gold and silver that will adorn not only me but all. Lets all slow dance. Lets try and be content in one, only to sing and raise our voices to the future sun, to dream that one common dream and share the common glories that are thus sure to come.