For Mamma

It’s just another Sunday,
I can’t face up to the brightness of the morning
The weight of your voice reeking of untold hopes
I didn’t say it, mother.
I remember the whisper of laughter in the clear blue
A murmur of a quarrel over the weekly shopping
The whiff of spices lingering from your bubbling stew

It’s just another Sunday,
The stale cheerful noise of last night has been aired out
Bleary eyes can’t take your warm adoring gaze anymore
I shouldn’t say it, mother.
Do I feel the oil from your hands smoothening my hair…
That glow of moral arrogance of your honest home.
I wish I could be a part. That I could still run up to you and share….

It’s just another Sunday,
The smoke swirling out of the stub spreads and hides
The seams. I am stitching it up for you as we talk
I couldn’t say it, mother.
I miss the comfort of those old ways.....
The cheerful pervasion of my smug dreams
Oh why didn’t I save all those simple days….

It’s yet another Sunday,
I didn’t say it, Mamma.

But did you just hear it, somehow?

Happy Days

I still remember your bright eyes when we first met
And when I said goodbye that night my heart felt that regret…
You thought there was more to this story and wouldn’t retreat
Oh what a rush it was being pursued…being swept off my feet!
A touch of madness, a bit of desperation and I ran to the mountains
With an eager man who just couldn’t wait…wearing gleaming white shoes :-)
You were disarming like a child and wore your heart on your sleeves
My heart just turned over…..the dams broke, the torrent unleashed.

I still remember that slow dreamy drive back from that vantage point
Where you showed me the snake flower and the misty valley ahead
It was a beautiful starlit sky at night, the bonfire, the wine, the joint
The magician was singing and weaving words…. I just sat, smiled and stared
Marveling at the opening through the clouds….that gleaming ray of a newborn dream
A prayer crept up my lips “God, let me live this beautiful fantasy forever.
Grant me your leave to love him and share this life. Please hear my silent scream!”
I did not wait. I jumped. I seized. I ran. Words pursued. “NO! NO! NEVER!”

We have been running ever since. I lay awake at nights trying to drown that Voice
Struggling within to reconcile myself to the tyranny of the impending Choice
The free love of the heavens which stirs my soul but provides an incomplete mortal life
Pitted against a simple life of daily deeds as A Human Being, A Daughter, A Mother, A Wife.
I turned to you for help and you showed me your empty hands and unhappy heart.
“Stop asking me these painful questions! Nobody can foresee the future at the start.
I am caught up in my own battles here. But I’m calling in Father Time and Lady Luck
They will unravel the mysteries and work out the details on getting us unstuck.”

Father Time sent me a Joyous Summer, a Pensive Fall, a Bitter Winter and a Hopeful Spring
I saw the sights they brought and the songs they sung and asked “What should I be doing?”
They held my hands and said “You seek answers from Time and he sends us your way.
But we are merely mirrors of your thoughts and actions… dark and gloomy or bright and gay.”
I turned to Lady Luck and she laughed, “Have you not heard it, Fortune favours the Bold?
I will be with you. Have the courage to chart your own course and you will strike gold.”
And thus I started walking stripped to the bones. I gave it all, I gave it more.
Fed by blind faith and nothing else…I walked not knowing what lies for us in store.

Suddenly I paused and found myself alone. I had been walking afraid to look back.
Little did I know that I was all by myself befuddled by the thickening fog
I stopped and cried aloud. What went wrong? Where did my love lack?
I was told I never understood you. You would much rather talk to your dog.
My love seemed like pity. My empathy a farce.
You had shut the door to your life on my face.
While I was living an illusion of being in your arms
Cocooned by the love and warmth of my happy days.

And I keep sneaking back even today. When the sun is harsh or the wind too cold.
I have my guilty pleasure. To get a little drunk from my happy days.

SERVQUAL in the context of Relationships (?)

My colleague has been working in the area of Service Quality and shared a few nuggets on this subject yesterday. He talked of 5 key dimensions to judge service quality as propounded by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry in their famous SERVQUAL method. A net search yields description of the dimensions as given below-

• Tangibles - physical facilities, equipment, staff appearance, etc.


• Reliability - ability to perform service dependably and accurately


• Responsiveness - willingness to help and respond to customer need


• Assurance - ability of staff to inspire confidence and trust


• Empathy - the extent to which caring individualized service is given

And understandably, in pure service industries the tangibles are greatly outweighed by the other 4 intangible parameters. The SERVQUAL technique can be used for performing a gap analysis of an organisation’s service performance against customer service quality needs and is based on the customer’s perceptions.
I couldn't help but reflect that this is generally true of any relationship and not just that between a customer and a service provider. So coming to our everyday personal relationships I equated the parameters in the following fashion-

• Reliability-You can depend upon your friend to do as he/she says will do....big or small promises are kept. So whether it is a promise to call or meet or do something together or to carry out a task.....how often are these promises kept?


• Responsiveness- Your friend is willing to help and respond during your times of need....sometimes it's lending an ear when you want to talk, sometimes a shoulder to lean on when you feel weak, sometimes it's merely a smile, a hug or a comforting presence when you are feeling low/lonely.....sometimes it's helping you when you are in a fix or under stress. (Apparently the top 5 reasons for stress in a person's life are death of a close relative, disease, shifting jobs, houses and changes in key relationships.)


• Empathy- Is your friend able to give you individualized care? Is he/she able to understand you and act accordingly to make you feel cared for? There are friends who are able to put themselves in your shoes and know exactly what u need at that point of time. They know when u want to be left alone and when u need to be coaxed out of your shell. They know exactly how u need to be pampered when u r sick or hurting inside.


• Assurance- Whether the friend inspires trust and confidence through actions/words/overall demeanour. Is there honesty and authenticity in the relationship? I also feel somewhere this is a function of the other factors being consistently met over a period of time and perception based on the person's overall actions in life. So if a friend is reliable, responsive and empathetic with you and in general in life, somewhere the trust builds up. On the other hand a person you initially perceive to be honest and truthful and yet over a period of time you find not being very reliable, responsive or empathetic ceases to inspire trust or confidence. (I'm reminded of the 'emotional bank account' metaphor which my ex-boss and guru, Dharen, used to talk about in Momentum. See below for a brief description of this concept)

I guess if there is a friend who comes out with flying colours in these 4 aspects is worth holding on to for a lifetime. And tangibles over and above these qualities (maybe....physical appearance, material possessions, gifts, etc. associated with this relationship) are secondary issues. Perhaps you are wasting your time if these key pillars are missing in a relationship. Yes, you will of course have casual friends and acquaintances in this world. However, it's wise to understand the nature of the relationship and make your choices in life accordingly. So you know where to invest your time, emotions and energy.
The interesting thing about relationships is that there are two parties at work here....So while you are assessing your friend, it is necessary that you examine yourself in the relationship as well. How would you rate yourself as a friend in turn? A tough task...so hard to be objective about this one. Hmmm.....
Ever thought about this....what we put so earnestly at work in our professional lives (most of us do try to be reliable, responsive, empathetic and trustworthy to our colleagues or customers), is so difficult to practise in our personal lives. Maybe the sad truth is that somewhere we forget the importance of those key people in our lives- our friends, family and loved ones. Look around you...so many successful and respected professionals all around with a lonely and unloved personal life. We start our lives with the booster dose of love from our parents who are programmed to love us without any expectations. Beyond that are relationships which we create and hence need to work upon.
My life is full of such wrong choices....but this is not the time or place to rue that fact. I would like to acknowledge some of those friends who made such a lot of difference at various stages of my life.....Litu, Divya, Rinki, Sayantani, Onjus, Goosie, Nive, Lara, Pavi, Saumi, Yogi, Nupur, Subrata, Richa, Doel and Tinni. I wish I could rate myself as highly as I rate each of you as a friend. But I learn each day and I will keep trying.
Love
Sharmishtha

Note: Emotional Bank Account

An emotional bank account is a metaphor that describes the amount of trust that’s been built up in a relationship. It’s the feeling of safeness that you have with another human being.
If I make deposits into an emotional bank account with you through courtesy, kindness, honesty, and keeping my commitments to you, I build up a reserve. Your trust towards me becomes higher, and I can call upon that trust many times if I need to. I can even make mistakes and that trust level, that emotional reserve, will compensate for it. My communication may not be clear, but you’ll get my meaning anyway. You won’t make me ‘an offender for a word.’ When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant and effective.

But if I have a habit of showing discourtesy, disrespect, cutting you off, overreacting, ignoring you, becoming arbitrary, betraying your trust, threatening you, or playing little tin god in your life, eventually my Emotional Bank Account is overdrawn. The trust level gets very low....Then what flexibility do I have ?

The quandry and the solution

Is being authentic actually being inauthentic? Hear me out on this before you take me to the nearest mental asylum! The journey of my meandering thoughts lead me to a space which I wanted to share. So here's my two-bit 'aantel' theory....

I started with the thought that being authentic might perhaps mean acting as per your words. But words are authentic when they are true to your thoughts and feelings. However the actions ensue at another point of time. If human beings are moving through time wouldn't their thoughts and feelings move through time as well? And in that case isn't there a possibility that when the actions are to take place, the thoughts or feelings would have moved to a different point? So when you are being authentic by acting as per your words, you are possibly being inauthentic to your thoughts and feelings at that point of time.

An interesting solution to this is a worldview which I experienced during my Landmark Curriculum for Living. As per this point of view the world is created through words and hence only words can bring things to existence. Internal thoughts and feelings in this scheme of things would not hold any ground till they are given birth through words. Hence my whole issue of inauthenticity towards thoughts and feelings is taken away in one clean sweep. I love a simplistic and definitive approach like this which forces the little voice in my head to shut up.

"Huh! Living in denial is a fool's privilege."

That was my little voice. My life partner doesn't like being ignored....(Sigh.)

Note: Date-30th Oct 2008

Ok here's the recent development on this line of thinking....My brother who is currently delving into some learnings from Buddhism and Vipassana technique of meditation told me that if you are able to view thoughts and emotions as guests who come and guests who leave (some perhaps a bit later than others) then the whole issue of identifying yourself with your thoughts goes. If you are able to identify these thoughts and emotions and in some cases even name them it helps to create the awareness. Beyond that what you do with the thoughts and emotions is a separate issue. Obviously once you've spoken, you have given birth to the thought or emotion. So actions need to follow the "word" and not necessarily the current thoughts or emotions. This ties in beautifully with my earlier distillation of Landmark philosophy which essentially talks of the "word" bringing things to existence in this world. Thus there is no dilemna of "inauthenticity" with regards to actions not as per current thoughts/emotions.

Oh well...

It's almost been a year! Where the hell have I been....Seems like I've been signing out of life.
There is a question that vexes me- does it help to know what lies ahead in your life? If you know that something unpleasant is round the corner, wouldn't you try to avoid it? And if you manage to do that, your prediction was inaccurate to begin with. Hence how can you take actions based on predictions which are not reliable? Ahem! Have I lost it again?:-)

For you

I was walking back from the swimming pool in a blissfully exhausted state when suddenly the lights went off. Pitch black all around. I was transported to an age and land far away where the silence of stillness pervades the earth. You could hear the buzz of the night and nothing else. The darkness seemed an apt metaphor for the stories running in my mind…..”Just when you think everything is fine, life springs a black hole on you”. But before the despair overtook me the Hawking radiation was not too far away. A million fireflies fluttered all around taking my breath away. Dancing mischievously and showing me the spirit of all things beautiful in life. It was like Diwali in the middle of summer.
Silently I said a prayer…..For this special friend. I had no appropriate words the other day and I do not believe in temples. But I saw God in those million fireflies and may they light your way.

In search of peace...Munnar hills

Munnar…beautiful, lovely, comforting, Munnar. The silence spoke for me and I felt at home. I felt like walking and walking and walking….it was like a long happy conversation with an old friend in a coffee shop with no purpose or end point.
And the people…the helpful driver, the smiling plantation workers, the purposeful tea museum guide…all seemed like people I’ve known earlier in this life or perhaps a previous life. The cobwebs in my memories are clearing and suddenly I remember the English schoolteacher from 2nd standard and an old driver who drove our jeep through the blistering heat of the colliery mines. Funny what all you can hear if you listen hard enough…
I saw the sweetness in the smile of the plantation worker plucking a cardamom flower. His white teeth and his dark eyes glowed as he showed the fragile white flower and fledgling cardamom pod in his hands. A strange unknown fear gripped my mother and she started hastening me to leave. A few questions come to my mind….Why is it that we are so scared of strangers and unexpected kindness? Does it impose a strange sort of obligation on us to come out of our shells and be nice in turn? Or does being nice run opposite to the productive narcissistic self that we are all turning into?