Home.....Homeland

I'm lazing on my bed in this small room. Archana is sitting on the floor, meditating. The weather is at its best--cool evening breeze blows in and tickles the windchimes. The sounds of the city are fading away at a distance.

I don't know how others feel, but for me, this small room has more comforts and luxury than any five-star hotel room. I'm more at ease and totally relaxed when i'm here. I can go to the best place on this earth, spend my time with the most compassionate person and have the best of experiences this life has to offer, but nothing can parellel the comfort I experience in this room. There's nothing rational in this-- a small room where you've spent enough time and come back day after day to unwind, to meet your loved ones, to contemplate, to sit in silence and do NOTHING....

We love our homes. And we love our homeland too. Places have a life of their own, and however much we deny, we do have an attachment to them which cannot be wished away or lost so easily. This becomes much more evident to me when i hear archana speak about her homeland, Kashmir, from where her family was displaced 2 decades ago. I can feel the passion in her voice, the love she has for a land which no longer welcomes them.

I remember Dilip wrote a wonderful piece on Kashmir, which won the best non-fiction award in the outlook-picador competition. His writing and thought can be an inspiration to anyone with an open mind.

My two year old niece is most attached to my dad---she's more at ease with Dad than she is even with her mom. Today afternoon when she rushed into dad's room, he was fast asleep and probably didn't enjoy this small interruption to his afternoon nap. He shouted at the kid's brother for bringing her into his room.

We tried to take her away from the room but she wouldn't budge. Dad cooled down a bit but by that time the girl was at a corner, sulking silently. It was now dad's turn to placate her and play around with her to bring her back to her bubbly mood.

Kids are more sensitive than most of us would believe to be. When elders shout at or humiliate children, or take them for granted, they might not know that they're trampling on a fresh rose bud. Some of the memories that are still fresh in me are those of severe fear and uncertainty I experienced in my childhood, because of the insensitivity of the elders. These serve as good lessons for us to treat the next generation with more love and respect, and make sure that we don't add any psychological burden on these young hearts.

My niece is so fond of dad that Archana says, she must've been Dad's mother in her previous life. Maybe Yes!

I go to office after the initial bitterness of not receiving a pay hike subsides. It's the same office, same work, same friends and the same mixture of freeness and heavy workload. In between work, i ask myself why i'm spending the best of my years testing some application, some code, for the benefit of some customer. Why?

It's for the money. It's because i've to earn a living and also plan for the future of my family. When money becomes the reason for any work, then a pay hike or the lack of it affects you and your motivation for work. If the work is done out of love, out of your gut feeling-- if you do something because not doing it makes you restless, if you do something because it gives you joy, then that job doesn't sap your energies. Your boss's attitude doesn't worry you. A denial of hike doesn't trouble you and make you think about greener pastures.

How to move from this money driven motivation to a state of finding joy in your work?

Until then, this suits me best.