Heart Vs Mind

They say listen to your heart and you will never have any regrets in life. It is a fact that every individual is unique and has his/her own way of looking at things, we all have different priorities in life and both these factors decide the choices that we make in our lives. Some of us make choices by listening to our hearts, just the gut feeling, something that need not necessarily have a rationale. This bunch of people might come across as impulsive and unrealistic, but it is also true that most of the impossible feats are made possible by these very people. Sometimes their thinking defies logic, and when you ask them the reason for making a particular decision they end up saying “I believe this is the right thing to do. I feel I should go with what my heart says.” They rarely give you any logic. It is just a feeling. Their statements are marked by a constant usage of words like “believe’ and “feel” as opposed to the other bunch of people who tend to use “I think” to express their thoughts. These people rely heavily on their logical reasoning and critical thinking. They are the problem solvers and rescuers in the moment of crisis. They are pretty smart and skillful and can carry out most of the day to day tasks pretty effortlessly. By having such a person around one can rest assured that their day to day life is going to be smoother with fewer hassles.

But life isn't about just living a hassle free life. Life is also about feeling the unfelt, experiencing the inexplicable, doing the unthinkable, reaching the unreachable! I had read somewhere, whenever there is a conflict between heart and mind, listen to your heart always, for mind has boundaries and heart does not! A heart filled with love is the most powerful force in the universe! I am yet to experience this. I’ll leave it at that for now.

For The Girl Child

I have attended a wedding recently that prompted me to write this post. There seems to be a lot of focus and discussion around female foeticide and female child sex ratio, thanks to the media, social workers and talk shows. Now, what has the wedding got to do with this? The father of the brides is a family friend of ours. The reason why I mentioned ‘brides’ is because he got two of his daughters married on the same day. Now this man, the father of the bride, has six daughters and a son as his children! Yes that’s right, six daughters! Of course the son is the youngest. He got five of his daughters married. That’s a huge responsibility! Bringing up seven children is anything but easy. It needs a lot of patience, hard work and not to mention, a sound financial background. He belongs to a family of farmers and like my dad he had moved to Hyderabad to earn a living when he was young.

When his wife gave birth to their fourth daughter, my mom had gone to see her in the hospital. As usual the so called relatives were almost mourning the birth of the girl child. My mom just looked at her and smiled and said “another baby girl?” to which she smiled back and said “yes, but that’s ok. I will not give up. Let’s see who wins, the will of God or my determination.” My mother was moved by her statement, she knew what it was to be in her position, because she has four daughters herself.

What I want to point out is the fact that the couple chose to give birth to all six girls. Probably they did not even bother to go for a sex determination test. They had a desire to have a son which is not wrong. Human beings have desires and they have every right to fulfill it. But at no cost should they force their desires on others. At the same time we have no right to sacrifice lives in order to get what we desire. They could have gone for an abortion like how other couples do, or rather are forced to do. But they did not. They brought up all six daughters well and none of their education was compromised. I am talking about a couple with limited financial resources. The husband had probably studied just schooling and the wife is uneducated. This makes me think that education in the form of degrees will not ensure that we will bring up a good society of people. There’s more to it than mere bookish knowledge and social awareness. Of course these are the prerequisites, but they alone cannot ensure the desired results. It is a very personal choice that one needs to make, a choice to do what is right. I salute the couple for having the courage to do the right thing without succumbing to the circumstances and other negative effects around them.

The Perfect Match

Marriages are made in heaven….are they? At least we have been brought up to believe it. I have seen many couples ….happy ones, sad ones, arguing couples, quarrelling couples, prefect looking couples, weird couples and it has always made me wonder as to how did these two absolute strangers manage to find each other, and how on earth did they decide that they want to spend the rest of their lives with each other. I am not going to talk about how marriages or rather matches should be made, because hell I’ve no clue about it. Neither am I going to discuss the divorce rate or success rate of marriages these days. It’s just the whole process of decision making that interests me or rather fascinates me.

This comes after I have been through the grueling process myself. However the match was not for me but for a very close family member. I wasn’t given the authority to take THE decision on her behalf, (I wouldn’t do it - not for the world) I was just involved in the screening and handling the communication part of it. Of course I am referring to arranged marriages here.

The process of finding a match has its own challenges and that vary from one community to another. A few communities have well educated and good looking guys (oh yes, looks do matter….they DO MATTER) but the girls do not seem to be up to the mark. A few others are very particular about the dialect of a particular language or the city that you belong to. For example, for a Maharashtrian guy settled in Pune, his family would want a girl only from Maharashtra, any girl belonging to the Maratha community but staying in Karnataka or Andhra Pradesh is disqualified right away. Things like educational qualification, values, and family ethics of the girl are not even considered.

Consider this; Case 1: The first guy that we looked for was a well settled guy (this has no specific meaning or definition) with a software job in the US. When we sent the proposal with a picture of the girl, the mom said “we can take the decision only after our son comes back from the US, and then, after some time she has the audacity to give us contact details of another person and to say, “In the meanwhile you can get in touch with this guy, he is my son’s friend and both are very similar”.  Even the poorest of salesmen would not use this cheap technique to sell merchandise! I was literally fuming when my dad shared this with me.

Case 2: Now this guy is mesmerized the moment he sees the photograph of the girl, since the girl in question is beautiful. He wants to set a classic example for ‘love at first sight’, doesn’t bother to know more about the girl, doesn’t want to talk to her, for his utter shock the photo could have been a beautiful work of Photoshop (which was not the case of course), but apparently the guy had lost his thinking ability the moment he saw the picture. I had expected a little better from him considering that he was well educated and had a job in Australia. There’s another interesting twist to the tale. Apparently the guy’s parents had already seen a girl for him and his mom already gave a word to them, that she would get her son married to this girl. Till now the guy is not aware that his parents or his mom to be more specific has given a word, he only knew that they were looking for a match. Now the guy is adamant that he will marry the girl, whose picture he has fallen in love with. Till now he has no clue about what kind of a person she is. His parents were  having a tough time convincing him as it is, and when the other girl’s family came to know about the whole fiasco they landed in the guy’s house and started an argument, more of a fight, as to how can they go back on their words, and how their daughter has already applied for the passport and all that. So the mother’s word was final like in most Maharashtrian families and the guy finally gave in.

Case 3: Now this was a good looking guy, had a decent job and had come up in his life on his own. Through his own hard work, with little or no guidance from his family. But the issue was he had very little financial stability. The job was all he had. We were still considering this until my dad spoke to the guy’s dad directly. After the initial exchange of greetings he started bragging about how his was a well educated family with political and bureaucratic links. Later on after a little investigation we also came to know that he was expecting a huge sum of money as dowry. So we gave up.

Case 4: I cannot really write much about this as it is personal. But all I can say is this guy took all the time to know the girl, to think through it and only after that did he take the decision. The girl as a human being is only what mattered to him and his family, and nothing else. I had given up hope that well off families with guys with a good job will ever value a human being. All that would matter to them is social status, monetary expectations and gaining mileage. But I was proved wrong. There are parents who believe in values and instill the same in their young kids. In some cases things tend to change later on, due to circumstances, societal pressure or could be any other reason. Parents need to be strong; they must not succumb to pressure and must instill confidence in their kids for believing in everything that is right.

I am not trying to ridicule any of the parents or guys over here. Neither am I trying to say that all the above mentioned guys were ineligible for marriage. They might probably make the best of couples with their life partners if they look for the right things in the girl. It’s just that they were not the best match for the girl in question. The problem here was with their approach towards the entire thing.

I have realized that the entire process is no less than an adventure and how things change within a matter of days. It is one hell of a roller coaster ride! The anxiety, the disappointment, the feeling of being so near yet so far, and not to mention the wait! You patience is tested to the core! No matter how logical an approach you try to make, something will happen which is beyond what you had expected or thought.  You try to control everything, things don’t work, you still hang on, with double cautiousness, things still don’t work out, the stress gets on to you and just when you are about to give up, there comes the silver lining in the dark clouds.

Maybe everything happens according to the plan that destiny has for us. All we can do is to have the right approach and leave the rest to destiny. But the last part of the entire process, the silver lining in the dark clouds, forces me to believe that marriages are indeed made in heaven.

 

PS: Here’s wishing that the couple lives happily ever after. :)

Trip to Mysore

Mysore.....I only knew it as a city in Karnataka, known for a few tourist spots and of course the Infosys campus. I have recently been to the city and to the campus as well (My brother was there for his training in Infosys). Talking about the campus first, it is no less than world-class. The architecture of buildings, the recreational facilities, the maintenance, everything is top notch. The most pleasing and refreshing thing about the city in general and the campus in particular, was the greenery. It was so refreshing and soothing to the mind and body that I felt like I was very close to nature. Earlier I always used to wonder, why do you have to hire people from different parts of the country and then train them all only in Mysore? Why not do it in the respective cities and for a period of less than six months? because six months of training sounds unnecessary as every graduate (engineer) spends 4 years learning the subject as it is.

After being to the campus and after my brother shared his experience with me, my opinion changed. The method makes sure that there is uniformity in the standards of training, but most importantly this is a period to know oneself and do a little bit of soul-searching as well. Employees come from different backgrounds, families and cultures. Some of them might not have had any privacy in their lives so far, or some others might not have spent any time away form their families. So this period of six months gives a golden opportunity to not only know oneself but also to establish a strong individuality/identity of their own. It is an opportunity to not only grow professionally but also emotionally and intellectually. And I can see a few changes in my brother already. :-)