Maha's musings

It's the small hours of the fifth day of the lockdown. I was standing on the terrace,looking down at the passers by. My mother was sweeping the doorstep before adorning that with decorative patterns, wearing a kerchief as a protective mask! Our nextdoor aunty was sweeping the garbage away and uncle was Venturing out for a morning walk, his everyday ritual. Some three to four people were passing by, wearing masks for numerous reasons– to buy milk, newspaper and so on.  In the flickering street light's dull luminance I could see a carcass of a mouse on the path unremoved by anyone. The passers by didn't give a damn about that and walked past mindlessly. I could neither find any scavenger around to wipe it off nor could I gesture my mother to do that. Within a wink of my eyes there came a murder of crows. They started feasting on the carcass; thereby scavenging the carcass. I was reminded of my sixth standard science teacher telling, " Crows are natural scaven...

It's 25th of March, 2020. The first day of the 21 days lockdown imposed by the government of India which none of us knows when is going to be lifted. I am at home, doing nothing more than scrolling through my WhatsApp and other social media sites for the latest news feed. And very rarely jotting down my random thoughts and musings. Thus staying home idly without any work pressure. This was what I had been considering bindass until yesterday. But, This morning when I saw a woman police discharging her duty devotedly, a strange sense of pride struck me. By then I was having a cup of coffee (my morning ritual) and about to turn on the Television. But her penetrating voice made me peep through the window. I was just mesmerized by the way she tackled the unruly public who tried to cross her without wearing mask. She was a plump lady in her late or early thirties, in a neatly pressed uniform and a tightly coiled bun, wearing a blue mask to be away from contracting Corona. St...

Dear Corona, It was December 2019, you were just a new born baby. We baptized you Novel  Corona . You just opened your eyes and most of our brethren closed their eyes. You start crawling, we fondly called you an  outbreak ; you flourished,got nourished and started walking; we called you  Epidemic . You laughed in content and started acquainting with everyone for that we were to  quarantine  our people. You grew in hunger day by day and became a glutton. We couldn't fulfill your hunger. We called you  Pandemic  finally. Even now you are roaming around merrily and we, playing hide and seek with you. We hide ourselves, we stay at home, under the pretext of  curfew, lockdown, quarantine  and so on. You are ultimate! You just let us  wash all our sins using hand sanitizers; you let us know how it feels to be at home with our loved ones during week days; you just showed us the truth that our money and possessions have nothing to do...

Happy Women's Day 2020! This is how I'm supposed/expected to start this post. But before that there are many things to be dealt with. Under the pretext of taking women's side, we degrade them by letting them subconsciously believe that they are biologically, socially, psychologically, intellectually inferior to men. Who are men to give freedom to women when everyone is equal and there is no difference at all. Neither the boys have horns, nor do the girls have tails. (they do have ponytails though). Then what prompts us to beg for equality? There are many myths to fuel this practice. One among them is regarding the creation of mankind. God created Adam and breathed life and later only from the rib of Adam,Eve was created. A typical patriarchal story. Moreover there are some nerds to justify this too. By telling, God did it purposefully. Because he didn't create Eve out of Adam's skull or out of his leg bone. But out of his rib. It's to state, the wome...

"Teacher Plus" magazine takes up thought provoking themes on education every month. In one of the articles, the writer discusses the significance of travelling in the pursuit of learning. "Travel expands the mind and fills the gap" . Travelling expands us and transforms us entirely. When we are inside the four walls of the classroom, we learn theories but when we step out of the class, we acquire practical knowledge through real life experiences. They help us to sustain our lives in this competitive world.  The writer introduces a term " gap year ". It is almost like " career gap ". The later is a period of time spent away from work for varied reasons. Whereas the earlier is when a student takes a year off after finishing school and before starting college; perhaps to find out what he/she wants to pursue in life. It gives ample time to travel and explore and thereby enables him/her to research on a particular subject which he/she is i...

" Bounce Forward" by Sam Cawthorn tells us how to transform crisis into success. The author has interwoven his personal experience of how he learnt resilience after the traumatic accident which gave him excruciating pain and left him an amputee with prosthetic limbs. "What is to give light must endure pain". Crisis is inevitable. It can be tough and traumatic but it's a great initiator which makes us take decisions during make-or-break points and allows us to connect to our purpose. Author highlights a term called " halftime " which means every life has a halftime just as football or basketball games have. We must assess the first half to see if we perform well if not we have the second half to put it right. Facing crisis becomes more difficult due to our inhibition to admit our vulnerability. We are born vulnerable. When we are children we never have this inhibition but as we grow we think this vulnerability as our weakness. But being v...