Life with Different Hues of Pains and Happiness - Assignment Example

Growing up in a family of spectacled doctors and parents with weird hair do's, was interesting to say the least. From childhood, I was made to love to smell of books and my first recollection of my mother is similar: reading a book as I was being lulled to sleep on her lap. I remember the times when papa's friends dropped by, especially the uncle with the French cut beard, for those were the times when our house, which was more of a library than a house, would have a lot of hustle and bustle going about. The aroma of the food was less appealing than the interesting conversations that the group indulged in, and my liking for this French cut gentleman grew simply for his ability to tell exotic tales of countries with weird sounding names! Later on when I discovered that he was a historian, even me I developed an inherent interest for the subject. Much of my childhood was spent in the old library that belonged to my grandfather turning up pages from the past civilisations. I would be more comfortable in reading than going out and mixing with other kids of my age. People thought that I was a snobbish child, but that was not so. I simply loved filling my minds with the exploits of Genghis Khan and the tales of Akbar and Birbal rather than whiling my time pursuing games with kids of my age. This was the reason I believe that I was so close to my grand father. And of course to Bill, my paternal aunt's son. He was a fellow who had a weird sense of imagination and I remember the numerous times we spent in the library discussing topics, which he generally dominated as he was elder to me, and making up amusing tales by ourselves. One thing, though which I admired about Bill was his ability to tell stories. Bill was a fascinating narrator, and how I wished he could tell me stories all day! I enjoyed his company so much that every afternoon after school, I made it a habit of joining him in my father's library. Bill was a research student then and used to come to our quiet house to collect materials for his study on Indology. Interestingly, I never thought him to be so elder to me, I always thought that Bill and myself were of the same age (!!!) This was partly because, now that I think of it, Bill was one of those rare people who had so much to share, so much to tell for me gulp it down my system forever. I did not have many friends in school. The only ones I did have were ones who wanted my notes. In a way, the situation helped me, for it saved me the trouble of trying to be nice to them. My parents, however, more than made up for my lack of friends. They were always there to help me whenever I needed anything. True, I was a bit indifferent to my brother David, but I guess we shared a relation that was based on a queer element of brotherly love and affection which lay not so much as in sharing as in doing things together. I remember the number of times we ate our lunch together in school, never bothering to share nor wanting to even peep into the other's lunch boxes! And yet, we did not lunch without each other. My academic record in school was brilliant to say the least. I think that was because partly because of the fact that I spent most of my time in the library, when others were busy with their first crushes or their first dating mishaps. True, there were times when I wished to have a fabulous time at a prom, but I guess my childhood liking for books made me much more far-fetched than my other peers. Truly speaking, I hardly met a person of my age who could talk sense. All they were bothered about: sex, love and dating: were things I did not pay much attention to. I may sound like a geek but I guess I lived in a world where my dispositions were affected by the courtesies of Desdemona's and the ethical problems of Hamlet's than what most people my age were bothered about. But, beneath this aloofness lay a self that wanted to be explored. A self that wanted company, understanding empathy. It was during this time that I met one of my best friends, a Chinese girl called Ji. People say that love happens at first sight. If that was true, my first encounter with Ji had nothing of the traditional romance. I still remember the day clearly. It was a chilly August evening and I was on my way back from school when a very plain looking Chinese girl came upto me and asked me directions for the state library. Being new to the place, she said she had lost her way and was frantically searching for directions. I realised that it was just two blocks away from my house, the one I visited the most and which Bill had taken me long ago. I offered to show her the way. It was only a courtesy gesture and we hardly spoke on our way. After a couple of days, I had to visit the library myself on one of my class assignments. As I was browsing through the catalogues, my eyes fell on a slightly built girl trying to explain something to the librarian. I at once knew it to be Ji but did not say anything. After this day, I involuntarily found myself going to the library everyday. It was not an infatuation or anything, but just my whim of seeing a glimpse of Ji. Interestingly, I had forgotten her name, which I thought was largely due to her Chinese accent. I had simply not got what she said! Even then, I continued going to the library. Soon, I could not say what was happening to me and for the first time in my life, I could not concentrate on my studies. I felt like the boy out of James Joyce's Araby, and since I knew the story, I did not want to suffer the same disillusionment that he faced. Then it happened! One fine afternoon as I was casually browsing through the pages of Fowles' French Lieutenant's Woman, Ji came unto me and introduced herself. I could make out that even she had noticed my presence in the library for the last few days. She asked me if I knew anything about Kubla Khan and if I could help her with some Chinese texts. It felt strange. Here was I, a rational being who was drawn into god-knows-what-feeling, stealing glances at a lady straight out of a Victorian fiction who was being asked for help inspite of my best effort to remain aloof. I stammered for no reason and said 'ok'. Today, I feel lucky that I did for those fumbling words changed my life by a great deal. Before I knew, I started giving her a lecture on Chinese history and was warmly received by a generous smile. Ji, I learnt, was pursuing a masters in ancient Chinese culture and had won a scholarship to study in the States. Soon, she started coming to our place and she became a part of my family. My parents were more relieved than surprised that I was finally seeing a girl, and as usual encouraged our unnamed relationship. We would spend hours debating contemporary politics or take long walks in the parks discussing Chinese history. It was during those discussions that I began to feel the flexibility of the Oriental culture and began to detest what Ji called as the hegemony of the West. For the first time in my, I found a meaningful friend who could look at a thing from an unbiased perspective and I began to depend on her for most of the things that filled my life. She helped me to shed my snobbish attitude and soon I found myself making friends with many people. My life became one of fun-filled activity, as I started visiting the theatres, museums and meeting other people, and I started enjoying the delectable nuances of life. I am perfectly happy now and am looking forward to getting married and starting my new life with Ji in the near future. Sylvia was born of rich parents. There aren't many around who are really born with a silver spoon in their mouth as Sylvia is. But that doesn't mean that she is insensitive, as the rich are supposed to be. One of the advantages of globalisation is the fact that it reduces the differences between the high and the low, and Sylvia's childhood is a clear example of that. Sylvia comes from a family of IT businessmen who own a fairly successful company. From childhood, she could afford to wear the best clothes and buy the most expensive things that she wanted. In fact, she was only seven, when her dad got her a car, a Mac at that! True, she couldn't drive it then, but she could go on drives on her favourite car whenever she wanted to. Sylvia has a younger brother, more of a brat than a brother, and like most spoilt children, did not bother much for Sylvia. In fact, as kids she spent more time with her maids than with any of her family members, who were mostly away from house on work. As her father's business was just expanding during her formative years, even her mother was looking more into official matters rather than spending time with her. Sylvia recalls: "I remember going wet eyed to bed many a time during my childhood. But I guess that is the price we all have to pay for having a secure life." "After all", she adds, "my parents were doing it for our future!" Sylvia was a good student in school. But it was her excitement to visit her grand parent's after her examinations perhaps, that she messed up her results. Over all, she fared not to badly as to enrage her parents. Her stays with her grand parents were the most important feature of her childhood. She loved being in the country and spending time with her grand parents. It was her interaction with them that really made her overcome the identity crisis's she felt as an adolescent. They were like a tree that sheltered her from all the evils around her and the death of her grand father left a lasting influence on her. Mr Thompson was a librarian, and it was more out of her love for grand dad rather than her love for the subject that made Sylvia want to be a librarian. Her school life was interspersed with a lot of tribulation, as she had to undergo the pangs of three teenage relations gone wrong. She was never an out going person and would trust people blindly. It was during such a stupid affair that she lost her chastity, something that left an indelible mark on her life. "At that time, I was so desperately to be with someone who would love me that I got used, horribly used. It was just naivety on my part and I hope that I had listened to my friends" recalls Sylvia. Heart broken after leaving high school, Sylvia was clue less about her future. Her father sent her to UK for pursuing MBA but she was soon back to her home complaining of boredom. All these days, Sylvia maintained a diary and her childhood love of visiting her grand parents. She had lost her grandfather by now, and it was her grand mother who became the guiding force in her life. Mrs Thompson was a self-made lady who told Sylvia: "Not to just float through life, but to make waves". This statement simply changed Sylvia's life as she began to find a new reason to live. She started pursuing library sciences and it was here that she met Richard, a two-year senior to her in college. Richard was a very casual guy who helped Sylvia around the campus. Being elder to her, he was able to guide her in her petty problems. It was during her stay at the campus, that she developed tuberculosis. It was now that the relationship between Sylvia and Richard began to take a definite direction. The ailing Sylvia had given up all hopes of taking her semester examinations, but for Richard. He made her believe that she was "good enough to do anything". He began reading out passages to her as a weak Sylvia listened to him. Nearly after a month of hospitalisation, Sylvia gave her exams and came out with flying colours. Suddenly, she started to feel like an important person and started following her dreams with full gusto. Richard and Sylvia are married for the last five years and are extremely happy together. As Sylvia says: "I earnestly believe in love now. I think God has a special person chosen for everyone and how lucky am I to have him!" Ria is a Dalit girl, one of the lowest tribes inhabiting the Indian State of Bihar. She was born to parents she does not know and was brought up in refugee camp. She has no siblings and did not go to any school. If there was a word to define her, it was poverty. From childhood, she has been taught to protect her chastity like her life depended upon it. After all, she had seen what had happened to Gauri, who had got raped by the village head's son and the humiliation she had to suffer. Nobody spoke to Gauri nor offered her any help. She was what the locals called "achut" or "untouchable". Ria had seen with her own eyes the plight of women in her village and had seen how the men folk beat up the women kind. From childhood everyone lamented her cause of being a woman. But Ria was not hindered. From a childhood where she had to wash utensils in people's places in order to provide for herself, to keeping herself awake in the dead of the night in order to learn the first vowels of the vernaculars, Ria had a tough life. People mocked her, at she being an orphan and trying to read, and taunted her with remarks of being an illegitimate child. But she carried on. She educated herself in lieu of working at the village head's house. True the threat of one of the mukhiya's (village head's) house was great, the fact that she was a flat chested, dark skinned girl helped her in remaining unnoticed. Of course, the fact that she worked there of course, had an advantage. The common folks did not pester her in fear of the mukhiya. Ria found a true friend in the mukhiya's wife. The large bosomed lady was more than a mother to her and helped her to give her class 10 Board examination. At a time, when she had none to fill in the examination form, the lady became her local guardian, thereby enabling Ria to sit for the exams. Ria was one of the three students out of the fifty pupils from her village who cleared the exam. The other two were all boys, one of them being the mukhiya's grand son. The fact that Ria had done equally well as the mukhiya's grand son did not go too well with him, and Ria was driven out of the village. With only a few hundred rupees, which the benevolent lady had given her secretly, Ria did not know what to do. She was at the railway station , waiting for a train to take her to Patna, than motley of men started teasing her. Ria did not retaliate, but as the teasing got more violent, one of the fellow passengers lashed out at the boys. Frightened, the boys scurried away. But what it did was start the man's curiosity on Ria. He soon found out that she was one of the class 10 passers from the village and enquired if she was continuing her studies. Ria answered in the negative. Without saying much, the man told her to accompany him to Patna. Ria was scared. She did not know what to do. Though she was weary that he might attempt to molest her, she had no other option. She decided to test her luck and agreed to go with that Good Samaritan. A month from that fateful day, Ria found herself enrolling herself at a night college. The man had been kind enough of not only providing her with shelter, but also make arrangements for her studies. Ria was to work in his house as a maid and to go to college at night. The arrangement was great for Ria. For the first time in her life, she had a home and a society that enabled her to forget her scary past. She completed her graduation in flying colours and with her saved up salary, was able to rent a small place. She started giving tuitions to school children and soon got the job in one of the local schools on an ad hoc basis. "I had a tough life," Ria recalls,"But I guess it had to be tough to make it so sweet now!" she adds. True, life has not been all kind to her even then, she lost her benevolent guide to a road accident, but Ria was able to carry on her chosen path of truth and honesty Today, Ria is a schoolteacher. She not only teaches, but also helps gives other poor students of her locality with free tuition. She is an example to many that get bogged down by the flip side of life. If we were to compare the three histories, we would find almost a fairy tale element of the triumph of the good over evil. Be it my introspectiveness, or Ria's fairy tale story or Sylvia's episode with her grand parents and Richard, what these trio of histories teach us is that life is for living. It iterates the almost Sanskrit ideology that the "best is yet to be", for good and bad are but cycles of a greater design. Difficulties exist in all forms of life, even if you are rich as Sylvia or as helpless as Ria. The best part lies in fighting in out, of showing what mettle you are made of. One could lead an otherwise happy life as me and still want something they do not know, crave for something like Sylvia or desperately need a break of situation like Ria. The best part should be in waiting for the time. People should be patient to life and make best out of opportunities. True, at times, it may seem that there is no end to sufferings, as was the case with Ria's life, but there should be enough faith in one's ability to struggle it out. Last, but not least, all our life histories elucidate that life has different hues of pains, joys, sufferings and happiness which makes it such a beautiful experience. This was the lesson, perhaps people like me and Sylvia should learn from Ria. We should not accept what ever that comes our way, like Sylvia's failed relationships iterate, nor be over judgmental about things like me, but carry on living life without any prejudices and doing what we want to do just like Ria. 1 1 1 1 Read More