A Star here and a Star there too!

In my school and college going days like any other Indian, I was very much obsessed with the movies from Bollywood and as well as Tollywood. My love for Hollywood movies kicked up when I was in Dubai. I have to pinch myself to believe that in last years of my school I have gone to see an English Movie and it was the first one. ‘Patton’ was the movie, a war drama and without any materials that a school-going girl like me could enjoyed. Much later, I have seen some of George C. Scott movies and came to know that he received and then refused to accept an Oscar for the same role. Today I am not here to write about my obsession or the best movies yet Like to mention that for me it is Katherine Hepburn, Audrey Hepburn, Deborah Kerr and Dame Elizabeth Taylor will always rule the roost. 

Sometime, it is sad to see how a person from glamour world find it difficult to lead a normal life and plunge to depression related sickness subsequently end up with alcoholism or drug related problem. After a wonderful carrier in Hollywood and equally a very colourful life, Elizabeth Taylor too succumbed to it. This is pity that people never try to find a way that can sooth the pain and heavily depend on others to help them out. There are many noble way one can find a solution to kill the loneliness. Writing, you don’t have to be a Shakespeare, write your heart out, music, reading, this one, the best friend you can have. This era of computer and internet, sit through it, will find that time is killing you. To lead a normal life one don’t need to put an extra effort, take Jodie Foster for an example.

My tribute to the actress and phenomena known as Elizabeth Taylor, who died on March 23.

Elizabeth Taylor

Dame Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor was born in February 27 to Francis Lenn Taylor and Sara Viola Warmbrodt, at Heathwood, England. Although she was born an England, her parents were Americans. Her mother had been an actress on the stage, but gave up that vocation when she married. Elizabeth lived in London until the age of seven, when the family left for the US. She started as child artiste and then gradually established herself as one of the finer actress in her times. Her transition was very quick, Liz was a leading child star by the age of 12 after her performance in MGM's National Velvet (1944). It wasn't long before she was knocking critics dead as a serious adult actress with films like Giant (1956), Raintree County (1957) and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). 

Her tryst with drugs and alcoholism of late can not take away what she was, stunning looks and equally a good actress.

Some of her movies are : National Velvet, There's One Born Every Minute, Lassie Come Home, A Place in the Sun, Ivanhoe, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Suddenly, Last Summer, Butterfield 8, Cleopatra, Father of the Bride, Giant, The Sandpiper, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Taming of the Shrew, Secret Ceremony, The Mirror Crack'd.

My favourites are Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Giant, Who’s Afraid of Virgina Woolf and The Taming of the Shrew.

!!!R.I.P! Elizabeth Taylor.!!!

Now it is Child's play too!

It is very natural for me to be distressed by various kind of disturbing news. I hardly looked like an emotional or sentimental person because I never share my emotion with others. It happened to me many times and again, this news had the same effect on me. I tried my best to overlook by getting busy with other concerning matter, I was successful in my attempt but again forced to draw into it by Bachi Karkaria’s column in Times of India with this heading ‘when children hang themselves all our necks in the noose’. It is not another blog, feeling like as if I lost a near one, wish I was there to counsel her at that hour. Ms. Karkaria was right, soon I read it I touched my throat without my knowledge, felt suffocated. This blog is a way of talking as well as trying to counsel myself.

This time it was the news regarding the suicide of Sayoni Chatterjee, eleven years girl from Mumbai, disturbed me a lot . When her mother found that she and one of her classmate was exchanging notes, she decided to call it quit. Pity to see the note of an innocent child of eleven in her school notebook, where she wrote a big sorry to the boy in concern. Cannot imagine an eleven years girl hanging herself by a fan to ends her life for such a small matter. 

Whom to blame? May be neither the parents and nor the child. We cannot think beyond our times and it is natural for a mother to get worried about her daughter. In this era of satellite televisions, mobiles and internet, children are more mature yet stressed. The media is no less than a culprit in such case, in recent past the hype they created around the Valentine Day and sometime their breaking news are only consists story related personal lifestyle of glamour world.

Most of the stress comes from schools, current education systems and from the parents too. When something happened like this, everyone woke up then after a short period slowly and steadily all were buried, as if we opened Pandora’s Box and closed it soon by not reading a single note.

A child in my house of same age and goes to a very reputed school, one of the Asia’s largest that having twelve thousands students, school puts lots of pressure on the child and we too falls in that line, a child often goes between a double edges knife.Parents have to learn from this, not all children can be treated in same manner. The sentimental level of each child is different. On that fateful day, she left a few notes in her school notebook that she exchanged with the boy. When the boy wanted to know if her mother going to tell the teacher, her reply was an emphatic NO. Same afternoon she found her mother in the school corridor, she betrayed by her own belief and she decided to go back home and thereafter, to a long journey all alone. 

Excuse, it is not a piece of advice, because at this hour, nobody can even feel the pain and grieve the parent is in. It is very easy to kill a process but not the feeling. At eleven, a little more fondness towards a classmate of opposite sex is not an affair. I don’t understand when it is normal for the same sex then why it is a crime for other case. What was needed at that hour was,  both the families sat down together along with the kids, had a friendly chat to tell them to put another few years to their age to understand such relationship but we are Indian. We eager to upgrade our lifestyle but failed to upgrade our idea, specially concerning the children, in this case we always stick to the famous ‘OUR TIME’. 

Coming to the maturity and generation gap, not today, always it was there. What I got from my mother during different stages of my life my mother never got that and what my mother got from her mother, she was denied the same in her days. Yet, the mistake once we committed, we don’t want the younger one to fall prey but unaccounted time we bullied them too. We liked to shower whatever we can, it is our choice but then ends up blackmailing the children.

Time-line is unknown but it is certain that one day I will travel to the other side of the world. When I am going to meet you, Sayoni, you will be little older than me. Yet, I will like to tell you, girl, you made a mistake. It was you mother, who brought your in this world and no one loves you more than her but by choosing the path you made a villain out of her. It will be difficult for her to carry her life as it was and without you.

I am speechless, not having any further words to express it. Feeling like, traveled to a place and lost my way forever. I cannot call it a suicide, it is a gruesome murder committed by the circumstances. Child, you need not say sorry to anybody, we are the one who should feel sorry as we failed to create a little space that you needed.

!!!Girl, I cannot say god bless you because god already committed the biggest blunder.!!!

Land of the Rising Sun!

In this very hour, sun is not rising for the Japanese but devastated by a rising sea. All your high-end technology goes to kaput against a natural disaster. Japan, the country that rises from many disasters be it natural or a man-made. The only country in the history that was pounded by atomic bombs during World War II. Japanese reply or rather revenge was a very quite one but not in the battlefield, it was praiseworthy the way Japanese technology and specially automobile industry forced once powerful American Automobile Industry out of gear. Aftermath of earthquake and tsunami, Japan now facing another danger but it is man-made, the threat raised from their nuclear power plant is somewhere a self created hidden enemy within. Technology, works as wonder only when it works and if it failed leave you no place to hide. I am not against the high tech but then why a country like Japan failed to read the real threat.

Intelligent, soft and shrewd that is my perception about the peoples of Japan. Going back to the World War II and there you will find another side of Japanese mainly based on the treatment they meted to the prisoners of the war. My friend’s mother from Singapore once narrated how during the Japanese invasion peoples were tortured but the Indians were left alone most probably in behest of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose.

Japan (in Japanese Nippon)

Japan’s geographical formation based on a group of 6,852 islands. The four largest islands are Honshu, Hokkaido, Kyushu and Shikoku, together occupying ninety-seven percent of Japan's land area. Japan has the world's tenth-largest population. Japan is a constitutional monarchy where the power of the Emperor is very limited. Power is held chiefly by the Prime Minister of Japan and other elected members of the Diet. Akihito is the current Emperor of Japan; Naruhito, Crown Prince of Japan, stands as next in line to the throne. The Japanese Constitution does not allow the members of the Imperial Family to engage in political activities.

Japan has 108 active volcanoes. Destructive earthquakes, often resulting in tsunamis, occur several times each century. The 1923 Tokyo earthquake killed over 140,000 people. The most recent major quakes are the 2004 Chūetsu earthquake and the 2011 Sendai earthquake, a 9.0 magnitude quake which hit Japan on March 11, 2011, and triggered a tsunami.

Although Japan is one of the most developed country and a member of G8 yet having a very conservative society. Imperial Succession Law was male-preference, but recently there was a recommendation for the Imperial Succession Law that to be amended to permit equal primogeniture as the current crown prince Naruhito having only a girl child with princess Masako.

Coming out of such disaster is not an easy task, not even for a country like Japan. It required time, manpower and probably almost 200 billion dollar. Life will be not easy for the victims and rehabilitation process may take months. Most need of the hour is the process to wipe-out the fear from their mind.

!!!Wish with all my heart and hope that once again sun will rise brightly for Japanese.!!!

Embrace to Protect!

In India, a kitchen considered to be the right place for a woman. I had a driving instructor who is having his own motor driving school in Kolkata. During my learning process I found him grumbling about the woman and giving little advice what woman should do and what not. I was clueless what made him to do so. He was earning his livelihood from the customers like us. Therefore, one day I told him

- Bhaiya, if woman stop driving then you will certainly loose half of your customer.

Not going back to the history book to remind all about Laxmi Bai or Indira Gandhi. How many men from India gone to achieve that Sunita Williams or Kalpana Chawla have done? I am here not starting a debate between man and woman. In rural India, women are still badly treated and facility wise boys preferred to the girls. Then there are discriminate against girl child and honour killing. Yet, from the ashes woman rises to the top and shown that they are better than the other half. They may be weaker in the sense of physical strength but mentally stronger to fight for another day. Today I will write for a movement that initiatives by a particular woman from Uttarakhand, they found a unique way to protect their environment. My most findings are from different website and I thank them for putting it there.  

Gaura Devi.  

One woman whom future generations in Uttarakhand are not likely to forget is Gaura Devi who has mobilised the women of this region to protect their natural heritage. Gaura Devi was not educated in the conventional sense of the term. She had not attended any school. Born in 1925 in a tribal Marchha family of Laata village in Neeti valley of Chamoli district, she was only trained in her family’s traditional wool trade. In keeping with the tradition of those days, she was married off at a young age. She went to a family which had some land and was also in the wool trade. Unfortunately at the young age of 22, Gaura Devi became a widow with a two-and-a-half year old child to bring up. She took over the family’s wool trade and brought up her son Chandra Singh alone She was actively involved in the panchayat and other community endeavours. Hence, it was not surprising that the women of Reni approached her in the wake of the Chipko Movement. 

 In Hindi the word Chipko means "to stick" or “to embrace” or “to hug” and that is what the Uttarakhandi women have done in 70’s to save the trees. Chipko Movement, started in 1970′s, was a non violent movement aimed at protection and conservation of trees and forests from being destroyed. The villagers used to hug the trees and protect them from wood cutters from cutting them. Chipko movement was based on the Gandhian philosophy of peaceful resistance to achieve the goals. It was the strong uprising against the against those people, who were destroying the natural resources of the forests and disturbing the whole ecological balance  

On March 26, 1974, when lumberers were to axe the trees, the men of the Reni village, and DGSS workers, were in Chamoli, diverted by state government and contractors to a fictional compensation payment site, while back home labourers arrived a truckload to the start logging operations. Gaura Devi led 27 women of Reni village, reached the site and confronted the loggers. When all talking failed, and instead loggers started shouting and abusing the women, threatening them with guns, the women resorted to hugging the trees to stop the them from being axed. This went on into late hours, and the women kept a whole night vigil guarding their trees from the cutters, till a few of them relented and left the village. The next day, when with the men and leaders back, the news of the movement spread to the neighbouring Laata and others villages also Henwalghati, and more people joined in. Eventually only after a four-day stand off, the contractors left.

Awed by the courage and the dedication shown by Gaura Devi. Today prefer to end with one of their slogan.

We have risen, we are awake;

No longer will thiefs rule our destiny

It is our home, our forests; No longer will the others decide for us

!!!Happy Woman’s Day.!!!

Immovable, Motionless yet sprinting! Its Chalta hai!

First time, when I landed in Mumbai, then it was Bombay, my first address was in a building in Housing Board Colony situated in one of the Mumbai’s buzzing suburb. There were hundreds of such buildings in that area and most of them looked same. Each building had a ground plus three other floors, with a staircase in the middle, in each floor there are four self-contained flat either side of the staircase and each flat contained one room, a kitchen and toilet, that way each building is having thirty-two such flats. Those so-called flats share a common balcony, it is known as chawl, of-course a colony full of row houses is also called by the same name, in Marathi it is chal.

My building was having it all, Jews, Christians, Muslims and Hindus. The Hindu families also belonged from different parts of India. Marathi’s, South Indians, Gujarati's and a couple from North India too. My next-door neighbour was an old man from Karnataka. He was a great human being and very helpful, unfortunately he is no more.

The community centre, I mean the balcony, which supposed to be a passage, served for all activities. Playing cards, housie and on Holi day it was painted with a few buckets of paints. Celebrations were unlimited, be it Christmas or Eid or some Hindu festivals, were always celebrated together. I remember how we poured buckets of water on human pyramid on Govinda (Janmashtami day, Lord Krishna's Birthday). Specially on Deepavali and Christmas, there were helping hand from all families to the family in need for making various delicacies.

I left after a couple of years but thereafter whenever I had time, I visited the building. Most of the Jews went back to Israel and some other got into the big money subsequently left the place and moved to a better place. Even Life got better with monetary inflows yet they never forgot those days that they considered being the golden times of their life. A big family living under one roof yet inside different doors but stayed like one family.

It has happened everywhere in Mumbai till today, I remember once visited a friend in Kanjur who was staying in a row-house, found a locked door but the neighbours never allowed us to leave, the man went on his cycle to the nearby place to look after my friend and her husband, while the wife served us cup of tea with some homemade snacks.

With emergence of high-rise and multi-facility complexes, the chwal culture in Mumbai is dying thick and fast, but neighbourhood helping hand remains better than other part of India. Often every one from each walks of life carried it to the office while moving via Mumbai local. You will find some of its taste even today while travelling in Mumbai local, especially in office hours and of-course in Central Railway between Karjat or Kasara to C.S.T. Feeling is not the same while travelling by Western Railway, I mean Virar to Churchgate, if you ask me the cause, frankly  I have no idea, better I leave to the travellers who travel by W.Rly.

!!!Sharing gives so much joy yet it is our misery that we end up only sharing our pains not our gains.!!!