Why so many colors?

Photo Courtesy - Google

It was a week before the markets crashed. I was talking to daddy on phone about what should be the theme for his bought-for-cheap-now-being-renovated hotel at jaipur. He always asks me about aesthetics and stuff like that and values my opinions more than my dear bro's. Suddenly he became serious and asked in grave voice,'Asmi you did quite well in the past one year and i am very happy, you know, i always felt you too had that sense of what is good'. The fact was I did lot of humpty dumpty investments initially without asking him and finally ended up wasting some of my hard earned salaried money. I bootstrapped and was doing good for almost a year now and this was the first time dad was appreciating me. 'But beta it is bit tricky now and this time you have to do as i say', he said. I became cautious, when he is serious he means it. He fired some rapid instructions as to what to keep what to sell and all that. I took the day off and started doing just exactly as he had said. Its bit difficult you know to do transactions with different currencies for indian markets sitting in canada. Hubby happened to check our account in the afternoon and he become worried. He called me up and asked,'what are you upto?'. I just said,'dad told dear'. He said,'ok, go ahead'. The thing is though my hubby is quite young-and-lucky-notsoproud-but-succesful businessman, he is afraid of my dad. Quite so. Might be because dad has capacity to feed us and our next 7 generations happily, if he decides to. After a week or so the markets collapsed but we were already on the safer side. When i talked to hubby after that he just said,'hmmm... i knew that would happen'. Simply men, cant help them with their ego.

But my dad rarely becomes serious like this with me. Before marriage when i was pathetically-working-all-day-to-get-middleclass-salary and then throwing all money down the drain on silly-immature-market-speculation, he kept cool. As I am very proud girl (my name also implies that :)) , i wouldnt tell dad that i lost money so stupidly but ultimately he used to find out everything from my mother. He never discussed it though, he would just see that i am sad and then he would pull me out to play golf. He looks you know like a high cultured raymond-complete-man who was born-to-play-golf! But he was not born like that, i know, and mom knows better :)

Asmita-Tagged!!!

Photo Courtesy - Google
E'me has told to write 6 random things about myself. He told me this is called tag in blogsworld. So here we go! enjoy maadi :-)
1. I own two horses. Alex and Nikki. Yes, these names come from 'Fullhouse', my all time favourite! They are with my dad now along with 6 of his own.
2. I met my hubby 2 months back and now it seems like a long time. TeeHee!.
3. I hate all men who try to give emotional support just because i am away from my hubby. I dont need them, perhaps they do. Sometimes i wish i werent as good looking as i am now.
4. I have 19 pairs of footwear. I never wear most of them!
5. My dad is the most important man in my life. Hubby comes next HeeHee :)
6. When i was young, i used to dream of being a housewife like my mom. Guess it will never come true!
I have been told that after this i have to tag someone. I would love to do this but i dont know anyone here, so whoever wants can take it happily :)

3 faces of endevourme...III

Photo by - Endevourme
Please read earlier two posts if you have not read, to understand this one better.

When i decided to split the roles, i thought i will have to deal with two personalities and it will be convenient. I was right, but only partially, life became simpler really. But then happened something that i had not earlier thought of. Even after splitting, my mind kept itself integrated. There were OuterMe, DreaMe and yet another Me, my integrated self. Our mind always shows us life as a consistant story. We go through life as a sequence of experiences and our 'self' is what binds this story together, story which we call as 'my life'. If there are two different personalities which are inaccessible to each other then there are two different stories, which is inconsistant(something similar happens with dissociative identity disorder or split personality). But a sane mind is self-organizing. My mind kept itself consistant, with an integrated third personality, an integrated self or Me, the story of whom encapsulates everything. This Me is what keeps everything bound together, it decides to switch between the other two and full range of capacities is accessible to it. Now why do i switch to one end or the other? why cant i stay always as Me?Me is highly powerful but Me is also highly complex, complex to such an extent that he tends to seem irrational. To our mind, OuterMe and DreaMe are two extreme ends, handling them at the same time is difficult. We see people which are down to earth, which stick to die hard reality, facing imperfect side of life. We also see people who are imaginative and sensitive. But we rarely see a person who is blend of both. Different types of people are successful in different ways but i wanted to give chance to most of the abilities that i have. Having an integrated Me as a combined OuterMe and DreaMe makes my life extremely complex. It leads to lot of internal conflicts, because these two personalities have different goals and different needs. But when i become one or the other, the goals are perfectly defined, i know what exactly i need to do, and that reduces conflicts greatly. Mind is more focused and it is more efficient as well. If i am at office and i get tonnes of workload, i switch to OuterMe, person who deals with crisis efficiently and coolly, without expecting much and accepting that things can go wrong. If i am at home and comfortable, my mind switches to DreaMe, a gentle, refined and sensitive person. If i start being sensitive at work, i wont be able handle it and if i stick to strict schedule at home then i wont be able to enjoy my hobbies. Both the personalities serve different purposes and both have different needs too. OuterMe is more 'problem oriented', his purpose of existance is to solve problems. If there are no problems then he is of no use. We dont need army if we know there wont be any war. DreaMe is vulnerable and he needs to be protected. Like everything else, nothing is completely black or completely white, but rather we have multiple shades of gray. Sometimes i need creative instincts at work, some shades of ideas which make my work simpler and more interesting. Also, imagination happens to be a crucible where i try out my behaviour while dealing with real people. These are the times when i am gray, i am somewhere in between.

It is a damp cloudy afternoon of rainy season. I am sitting in the corridor in front of my house. There is a cat resting on my lap. Simple creature with a simple mind. We are relaxed, witnessing the drag of a slow afternoon. After some time, wind starts blowing hard and along with that, it starts bringing few drops of rain too. Slowly the drizzling picks up speed and it starts pouring. The atmosphere is filled with a steady sound of rain. Slowly, at some places small ponds begin to form. Water accumulates, and it flows. I can see drops of water on leaves, on blades of grass. The wind is still blowing and along with that it brings small droplets of water, in sudden bursts of fine droplets. I feel the drops on my skin, the cat can feel them too and we together share a moment. A moment when we, the living things, feel. Moments that show us the promise, promise of creation, promise of existance, promise of new life. Moments of existance when my dreams look faded. Both of us see that and both of us feel the freshness and liveliness, almost exactly the same way.

These are moments when it doesnt matter what you are or who you are. Doesnt matter what you do to survive or how complex you are. Just matters is that you exist. Its such a wonder that life exists...and that we exist.

3 faces of endevourme...II

Photo by - Endevourme
Face-II DreaMe and his pond of dreams
Someday...i would like to climb mount everest and see sunrise from the top, looking at the thick blanket of clouds below
Someday...i would like to be a new born baby and start it fresh all over again
Someday...i would like to join back perfectly a broken glass
Someday...i would like to swim in the blue ocean and play with dolphins
Someday...i would like to fly like a bird on vast unending land, then cross borders without passport and visa, and think what i lost and what i gained being a human
Someday...i would like to go to the moon, point my finger towards beautiful earth and say "do u see that blue planet?.... you know i have been there..."
Someday...i would like to go straight, take left then go straight, take left go straight, take left go straight and then wonder how i reached the same place again
Someday...i would like to live in a jungle, get drenched in rain and then drink hot fuming tea
Someday...i would like to grow very very old, and then sit in a chair and tell big...big...stories to small.. small.. children
Someday...i would like to sit relaxed in sand, sipping orange juice listening to the music of waves
Someday...i would like to become a crow and join weekly meeting of crows on our terrace, discussing conspiracy about yesterday's rain , 'Yeh saajish hain boondonki...'
Someday...i would like to become a music director, deremix® 'oooo hoozoooooor...' and make a new album on gramophone
Someday...i would like to discuss with Albert Einstein about solution on corruption and see all his hair standing up straight
Someday...i would like to run alone in Olympics, and win first second and third place at the same time
Someday...i would like to dive deep into ocean where Titanic sank and find the diamond necklace dropped by Rose
Someday...i would like to lie down below clear open black sky on a cold night with a blanket, counting stars, wondering how small we are...
Someday...i would like to find the key, open the door and run through vast open grass field and shout, 'i.... am...... free...'
Someday...i would like to know, why HE made me?...

I know perfectly that very few wishes like these will come true in my lifetime. But does being so make them less precious? We cant always measure things based on whether they are possible or not. We are small, we are imperfect and we live in a world which is imperfect. Thats why we have been given imagination, to see things which dont exist so that even if the world around you is imperfect, you still can have a taste of perfection.
Earlier i used to dream for myself, as everyone does, but then mind doesnt free itself, rather it tends to stick to reality. So now the person who lives in my dreams is not OuterMe but is another face of me, he is DreaMe. A character whose purpose is just only that, to exist in my dreams.
DreaMe lives a perfect life. He was born at the right time at the right place(nature) surrounded by people which were themselves perfect(nurture). He was born somewhere around 1920 because i love the good old times. People and life both were so simple. He was brought up in a well cultured family. He is not too rich to be spoilt and not too less to worry about money, rather, the concern of money doesnt come up in dreams. He is well educated, had an education without mental tensions(before this i didnt know that education can be so wonderful, it can make creativity inside you boil). He is decent, well mannered, mannerism means only comfortable one which comes from natural social freeness. There is also a she perfect. She is beautiful, she is calm, they are a perfect match and they have the loveliest life together. Fortunately we have ample love songs and many of them go perfectly with their moments of affection. Its really wonderful how our mind can show us a world by blending reality(music) with imagination. Here life is not at all fast but it drags much slowly. There is enough time to communicate feelings and easy unhurriedness to appreciate precious moments. His life has drama because there is a sensuous pleasure in drama especially in anticipating good moments. There is uncertainty but situations always end up in happy endings.
The purpose of dreaming like this is not to run away from reality because remember that OuterMe is facing it. Rather the purpose is to come closer to reality, in a more final sense. As a child we see a fresh world, with a surprise of seeing a new creation. But as we grow up we stop getting surprises. We think this is because we are grown ups and we know so much. But infact the reason is not that we have grown up but that we have stopped exploring, we have stopped seeing. As we grow up and we mature, gradually our vision gets coloured. We see the world from point of view of our 'self', with respect to our identity, identity which is a concept of what we think we are. As i grew up i found myself changing and there is a huge difference between what i was few years back and what i am now. If i see the world from the point of view of my older self then it looks like a really horrible place. But if i see it now, then, its not that bad after all. We are not born in a perfect environment and not all of us are young and with impeccable health with a clean mind. But if we were, then would we see the world in the same way? We put limits on the way we see the possibilities because the possibilities are for 'us', or rather for what we think of ourselves. But if we had a perfect unbiased mind then we would have seen things in a much better perspective than we do now.
It really takes effort to imagine your own self, with a healthy, open, free mind. We always carry our imperfections, our guilts, our expectations with us, even to our dreams. At some point of time we decide,'yes, this is me, this is how the world is, this is my life and this is what will happen to me'. Our entire life runs around this,'me' and somewhere we settle down to that. We stop exploring. We form a concept of world,'this is how it is' and we stick to it. We just dont have the courage to go and see what lies outside because we think it will give pain to us. But while doing so we also miss the good part of it. Most important thing to do is to accept, accept what is good and what is not. Few years back I too started accepting, i stopped lying to myself that i am satisfied with everything that exists in the world and the way things are. This was when i really grew up. It takes courage, courage to accept that some things are not perfect instead of just being satisfied with whatever is thrown to us. It is painful to accept that, what we are getting is not perfect but it is 'just about' or 'just enough', but then even that pain has a quality. A quality of acceptance, acceptance of the truth. When we see outside with a clear unbiased mind we start finding good things as well, things we have not seen before. I too tried the same and i started getting surprises again.

When we say, 'free your mind, free your imagination', ever wondered from what we are trying to free it? it is from your 'self'. We are so much occupied with ourselves that we just dont see the obvious. For most of my life I used to think of myself as OuterMe. I didnt know i had creative instincts, that i can do photography, that i can write, that i have a whole spectrum of capabilites. At one point of time i even thought i am dead and i have lost my ability to feel. But no, we dont die that easily. Creativity and imagination are integrated qualities of us, if we exist then they exist. They come naturally and thats why creation is so satisfying. Nature achieved its biggest feat during evolution, it gave us imagination, an ability to see beyond reality.

We are like grass, it looks like it has become dry but it is not dead really. It is just the way it survives. Let the first drops of rain come and they enliven the will. The will, to rise.

3 Faces of endevourme...I

Photo by - Endevourme

Face-I Outer Me
OuterMe is the person people see when they meet me. The practical side of me, the person who deals with uncertainties and not so perfect side of life. His basic aim is nothing but to survive and to be sane and many times more than this is luxary. Our world is where things can and often do, go wrong. Not that he expects negative things to happen but just that he wants to be mentally prepared. He was perhaps born at the wrong place at the wrong time(nature)and surrounded by people which were themselves not so perfect(nurture). He had a rough childhood, often bullied, outnubered by others where people force impression on your mind,'you dont deserve to exist'. But since he has grown up, he doesnt mind, he accepts the world and people in it as it is. World is imperfect and thats a fact. What people do is just what they do,and we cant reason with them on their terms about what they did to you. And now sometimes when he sees their miserable condition he wonders whether to blame them or to pity them. Impressions of childhood still bother him but he accepts them and even manages to live with them. So as far as life situations are concerned he has only one rule.'Face it!'. He does just that,and he is quite good at that. Its not that he has come out victorious always cause he is a real person. He failed, not always but many times, its not that he is of the unbreakable kind. He broke, often, but sooner or later he recovered. He rarely dreams, for himself, he thinks they make him unstable and he will even ask, 'why to dream when you know that they will never come true?' be practical . So people see him as a low maintenance fellow with a simple lifestyle, not much talkative and bit of reserved. But once you become aquainted then he is a good company. He has friends, not so close cause since childhood he has drawn a circle of caution around himself. And at any cost he will not let you know what lies inside that line. But whatever people think about him, i like him. Most importantly because he has his priorities right, he thinks straight and he is sane. And he has not done bad, he did quite a good career inspite of some of the failures that he had. He faced failures and came up well. There are times when he does more than his expectations but as always he keeps doing a reality check. He is bit hard on himself, with a strict routine and minimal lifestyle. He doesnt have much preferences. He will accept things uncomplainingly. Very few things are perfect, thats what he thinks. He evaluates many things based on their utility and that makes him look emotionaly insensitive. Emotions have given him more pain and misery and they often caused more harm than good. Like others, he never had a guide,people to support and help. And that made him grow independent. If you dont get help outside, you have to help yourself. Read, think, imagine, work and get things done, by facing them.
On a typical saturday morning , you can see him drinking tea at a roadside stall, sitting just next to a daily wage worker and he is at peace sitting there just like that. Thats what keeps him connected to a practical day to day life. Plain down to earth life where main aim is just to exist. He knows that there are people, many people who face life harder and uncertain than himself and no work is good or bad when you do it for survival.
OuterMe is what protects me and thats what makes him sometimes look harsh and insensitive. By being so he protects a hidden, more sensitive side of me. For most of my life i lived primarily as OuterMe. Slowly, over time, he kept learning and kept growing up, understanding better how the world works. And then came a time when he started outperforming himself, sometimes doing things he never thought possible. Then came more dreams for himself, more expectations and more pain. He is efficient, he is good and i adore him but this new life started making him unstable. Many facets of myself started coming into light, but i coudnt accomodate them into this OuterMe. OuterMe is an efficient survival machine, but now nature wanted more out of me. It wanted me to heal, and healing needs you to be sensitive. This person coudnt do that. I was growing, and i needed dreams, mostly to clarify what i really want. They help you to unlearn and help you think more freely. Old habits dont die easily. OuterMe started applying reality checks on my imagination and utility checks on my creativity. I was in a conflict. But i needed OuterMe, for his ability to survive, to go on and on for years, a life which was empty.
Dreams rest on imagination. Sanity rests on reality. And I needed both. Hence it became necessory, to split.