Bedtime
Stories
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As I look back to my
childhood summer nights, I remember a terrace of the only pucca house in locality, in a sleepy town of Maharashtra. I
remember my grey haired granny, a pillow stuffed with black mustard seeds, her
hands moving through my curly hair and the sky lit with a million stars.
It was routine then, to
finish with the day’s chores and as soon as the clock ticked 10, force granny
to accompany me to the terrace, lay by her side and wait patiently for her to start
telling me a bedtime story.
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There was a village,
named Solapur. The population was
thin and people were predominantly uneducated. It had basic public structures
for name-sake. A primary school, a government hospital, a cinema hall, a well, a
temple of lord Hanuman and a cluster
of around 50 households.
Kashiram, a peasant,
had two primary school going sons. They were intelligent, playful and
occasionally used to help their dad with his routine. Kashiram always wished
that his sons study hard, move to the city, earn loads so that the ancestral
hardships that they’ve been facing, comes to an end. His sons, Harish and Soham
were quite apprehensive of their father’s painful sacrifices and never did anything
that would go against his wishes. They studied hard, completed their primary
education from the village school. And when the time demanded, they moved to
the city for secondary education.
Due to financial crises
however, they couldn’t continue with their education at college and had to
dropout. They returned to Solapur.
And with whatever knowledge they had with computers, they decided to start
computer coaching class in their village, which by this time had slowly
advanced towards educational awareness. As subjects like computer in the school
curriculum used to haunt the students, the coaching classes were a success in
the first go.
They worked day and
night, multiple shifts and by the end of the year, made quite an amount. A few
years passed, the institute expanded, students from nearby village started
taking up the coaching.
By the end of the 4th
year after it was established, it was a seemingly ever-expanding institute, and
provided its students with all the essential facilities that were possible and
needed to make the system better and helping.
The family’s hardships gradually
ended, the village now had a bunch of educated students expert with computers
who eventually moved to city to complete their graduation. Some did return to
serve as teachers at the institute.
A few years passed.
Harish and Soham were now in their late 20’s. Kashiram started looking for
brides for his sons. Eventually after a little search, he got a suitable match
for Harish and Soham and consequently they were married. While Harish’s wife
came from a middle-classes background, Soham’s wife came from the same
“educational institutes chain” background, her father’s institute was well
known in the city she came from.
As happens in our
country, Soham’s father-in-law started pushing him to take over his institute
as its chairman. Soham was reluctant initially but was ofcourse carried away by
the offer. Here it was working with his brother always, no power to take single
handed decisions, living in a village. And there it was working in the city,
getting the power of a chairperson, a life which promises all modern amenities.
The glare of the city attracted him and he couldn’t resist it for long.
He decided to end the
association with his brother and moved with his wife to the city. He was now
the chairperson of his father-in-law’s institute.
As for Harish, the work
load doubled, he had to work twice the number of hours, take all the managerial
decisions on his own, and to look after his family all by himself.
Soham on the other hand
moved towards a more comforting life, with managers swaying around him, his
workload diminished. He just had to sit in an air conditioned room, with
servants serving him delicious cuisines, manage a few meetings, take a few
decisions and that was all. With time, he became more and more engrossed in the
delicacies that his rented wealth brought him.
And as is said: Lazy
hands make poverty, diligent hands bring wealth.
While Harish’s
institute expanded its services in multiple cities with a fleet of a hundred
teachers, people working under Soham lacked inspiration to work seeing their
boss in such a state. A few migrated to join Harish, others started their own
ventures, all leading to downfall of Soham’s institute.
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While granny told me
the above story, I was eagerly waiting for a moral, not that it wasn’t evident,
but granny used to sum it up very well. She said, what this story teaches is, “However appealing the things out of our reach might seem to us, the
things we earn from hard work, the things we earn by making sacrifices, the
things that we nurture right from its inception should never be left for things
that appear glittery. You may face hardships maintaining them for a while, but
in the end it all goes fine because you nurture it as your own kid, you take
its care as you take yours. While the things you just happen to get for free,
you can never be as caring for them as you would have been if it were yours”.
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Several years have
passed now, and I am now away from my granny’s stories. But the morals and her
teachings are always at the back of my mind. The morals that she used to end
her story with, I see them applicable in many different forms in the present
world. I see them applicable to as abstract things as relationships.
In the present age of
social networking, internet love, instant hook-up and breakup chains are quite
common. People tend to fall in love with a person, and the very next day they
migrate to others, who might seem to be an improvement on the previous partner
ofcourse, i.e they move towards the glitterati. A large chunk of our present
generation is not ready to stay back, resolve and continue in their
relationships. They are like the customers who always looking for better a scheme. The standards they set to fall into
a relationship are sometimes so fundamentally flawed that as it progresses a
few steps, they don’t tend to meet each other’s expectations and eventually
they break-off. It’s no more the classic
love that we used to appreciate in the Karan Johar’s 1990’s romantics.the
intensity of love that the eyes used to convey, the lovely smile that used to
say it all, they all seem to be alien now. It’s just lust that has over-grown in all its
forms which now forms a basis for relationships. And as Soham left his
hard-earned institute for a glittery-post promising institute, people now leave
A because B is more attractive, leave B because he/she demands more time than
C, leave C because D can pay off the shopping bills, leave D for E who has the
latest-in-the-market bike, leave E for F who is the head of an esteemed college
society, leave F for G because he/ she is now placed in the company that offers
the highest pay package. The story doesn’t end here. In the end they leave even
G because they still aren’t happy.
As long as
relationships continue to be based on a materialistic foundation and lust,
it’ll continue to go through this chain. First it’s lust, with time it changes
to rust and finally dust.
First set up the basis
and gather your ideals on what your expectations from a relationship are. Try
to give them a non-materialistic shape. And when you are in a relationship with
these ideals and you are sure of it, then in case of hardships, stay back,
fight for your love and your relationship will definitely come out stronger
than ever before.
Learn to differentiate
between love and lust. The sooner you realize what’s your relationship is based
on, the better it is, because
Its
love that last’s forever, not lust.
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Epilogue
Gone are the days when I
was free enough to lay down on my granny’s laps for such stories and teachings.
Today, as I lie down on my bed after the day’s routine, I think of everything
that has happened during the day, I try to relate it to the past, I try to take
lessons from the happenings of the day, I try to sum everything up in a form of
a story, I try to make up morals from them. To sum up, I try to make a bedtime
story for myself to make sure that I continue to take up lessons that life
teaches me and prepare myself for the coming journey.
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bhai mast ekdum (Y)
ReplyDeletethanks bhai.. :)
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