Reversal of roles

Change is the only thing constant in the world. And I am someone who resists change. I like being in my comfort zone and if I am forced to accept change, I become moody, irritable and angry.

I always thought I knew myself very well. I said to myself that I will always be the same person.

I was the perfect daughter to my parents till I was 16. My grades were perfect. I always obeyed the rules. I was a very patient person who seldom got angry. I never yelled at people. Of all my friends, I was the more mature one, the problem solver, the advice giver.

And then I turned rebellious. I had a few issues which made me cynical and aggressive. I ceased to be logical and became increasingly emotional and possessive. My grades dropped. My parents were worried. But I did not care. My teachers were concerned. I didn’t want to do anything about it.

 I tried my best to be a good sister to my brother and a good friend to my friends. I was hurt very much by people who meant the world to me. I realized for the first time what it felt like when some people whom I trusted so much and cared about, broke their act and proved to me that I was blind. In the end, I somehow got through that phase telling myself I had to make my mother proud.My mother is the boldest woman I know. Though we fight often for the silliest of things she stood through all the problems life threw at her, and she remained strong for me.

I got into a good college. I took a course that I liked. I thought things were going fine. That’s when my best friends moved out of town and got admitted in colleges far away from home. When they were hunting for colleges I was with them the whole time, praying hard for them and wishing that they got into their dream college. But it shattered my world, when one by one they started moving out of town. After tearful goodbyes and promises to meet up as often as possible, we all began our lives as separate individuals for the first time.

That was the first indication of how badly I reacted to change. I hated every minute I spent at college. I missed my friends badly. I knew I would never ever make friends who were in the slightest bit similar to my school friends. I fought with my parents and my entire family. I had a miserable time and to add fuel to the fire, I figured out the truth about someone whom I had defended for a very long time. I was lost. I did not know what to do. I lost my ability to be friendly to people. I could not trust anyone. I spent hours on the phone crying. I lashed out at people.

One such day on the phone, my best friend who was listening to me patiently said, “Don’t you think our roles have changed? You were the more mature one and I was the one crying on the phone. Now, I have become the listener.” It hit me how true that was. While I was complaining about how much people had changed and how hurt I was, I had changed. I was no longer patient, quiet and kind. I was this ready to explode bomb of anger all the time. To my brother, I was no longer the big sister who protected him from bullies; I was the little girl who threw tantrums at home.

I promised myself to be a better person but also someone open to accepting change. I started working hard at college. I busied myself with my projects and classes. I went for auditions and club selections. I was rediscovering my talents at writing and speaking. I started working to change the things that I thought were wrong about the society. I joined NGOs and wrote to newspapers.

I learned to balance between the “old” me and the “new” me. Though I no longer am the patient, ever forgiving person, I stopped yelling at people. I still have trouble trusting, but my mother says that’s ok. She says she believes in me. No matter how horrible my day goes, I have learned to look forward to the night time when I can text my best friends and have some intelligent conversation.

I love my brother more than anybody else in the world and I want the best things in life for him. However when he comes to me asking me to teach him math, I become the most irritable person on earth. I yell at him when he makes mistakes and tear his answers and make him re-do everything. I thought I would never have the patience to teach.

The funny thing is, I work as a volunteer teacher now, and I teach English (Thank God it’s not math!). My students are a bunch of lively adolescents, ranging from extremely naughty ones who have trouble sitting in one place for more than ten minutes to very studious ones who want to top their board exams. These kids teach me, more than what I teach them. They have taught me to be patient. I don’t mind explaining the same thing over and over until they understand what I teach. I now understand how difficult teaching and mentoring is. I regret all the trouble I caused my teachers when I was in a constant rebellion against all “grown ups.”

I am a member of a chapter working on the space sciences. And as I work for the outreach programs and document each event, I learn so much. I feel gifted to be working with such amazing people who know so much that I don’t. We talk about planets, stars and black-holes. It often scares me to ponder on how big the universe is and how small and insignificant we all are compared to it. I realize now, that I am not the center of this universe. Instead of resisting change and rebelling against it, I try to be in harmony with the world.

When I wake up each morning all I ask God is to help me be a better person and to help me make the world a better place. I also ask him to give me the strength to accept the things I cannot change. Change may be good or bad. Change reverses the roles you play in life. However change is what ignites the spark of revolution. Change is what will bring a better tomorrow.

I’m nothing but a humble star.

I have stood by and watched for millions of years,

The way you humans get through your life

Never knowing how to tackle your fears,

You fill your void with battle and strife.

I do not speak to judge who you are,

You feel you are the pinnacle of evolution,

 While I’m nothing but a humble star.

I watched while you battled for survival.

I wept when you fought for ambition,

You wait for a miracle’s arrival,

Yet you choose to ignore corruption.

I see blasts, bloodshed, tears and war.

You have technology and science at your play,

And I’m nothing but a humble star.

You choose to discriminate on race, colour and creed,

It pains me to see all the suffering down there,

You’ve lost your kindness to corrosive greed

It gives me a sadness that I cannot bear.

And yet something gives me hope from afar,

I see a mother’s love for a child, a soldier’s love for his country,

I watch, I’m nothing but a humble star.

SCIENCE AND HUMANITY

We are a species living in the 21^st century, a species called homo sapiens, in other words human beings. Our world revolves on fast moving wheels.

We pride ourselves in having what we call the sixth sense. We proclaim that we are the masters of the world. On one hand our science and technology has grown so much that we can be sure that we have achieved a kind of immunity against all possible dangers. We have wondrous machines which we use as a proof of our supremacy. The human race, we all have to agree, is God’s greatest creation or Science’s best selection, call it whatever you want.

While we claim that our minds have grown and that we have come a far way from the last century, let us ponder for a moment, upon our so called cleverness. Hypothetically speaking, let’s say, we have been pushed back in time, around two centuries. How many of us can build the commodities that we use today? Do we know how to make a refrigerator? An air conditioner? A cell phone? We learn science and application oriented subjects, we attend workshops, create complex hacking codes, yet we do not know anything that will help us survive if there was no electricity.

Our survival has been ensured by our genetic sequence. This is what science says. We are taught that our hearts are merely blood pumping machines. Compassion, love and all such emotions are triggered by nerve signals to our brains. Yet, why do we “feel” our heart break or melt in a metaphorical sense at least? I am sure there must be a scientific reason for that too.

Let me elaborate on an incident that “melted” my heart, recently. That is saying something, because I had all but lost faith in humanity and had a cynical attitude towards all the emotion and drama of daily life. On the 15^th of August, 2013, I visited an orphanage with a group of my fellow engineers. We had a lot of fun interacting with the kids, teaching them and playing with them. There was a little girl, four years of age. She was very shy and we all wanted to hold her and play with her. I sat alone watching her for a while. She was walking on her knees. When I spoke the other kids, they told me, she couldn’t walk. She was born with a disorder that had crippled her legs. I kept watching her, entranced by her smile. She went crawling to the place where we had left our slippers and she tried to fit the slippers on her knees. It hit me then that to this child, her knees are her feet, and she must have wanted to try on slippers, just like the others. This incident had a deep impact on the way I saw life.

What is the point of science, if that girl can’t try on pretty little slippers? Yes, we have come a long way in the field of medicine and regenerative tissue engineering, but what use is that if it cannot help a poor child who probably tries to stand on her legs, every single day.

We call ourselves engineers because we can build skyscrapers, crack codes or make cars. But if we were thrown back in time, with no electricity, no gadgets, our existence will not depend on money. If we are to live, truly live and not just merely survive, what we need is humanity. If any of you doctors, engineers and scientists want to work on something you truly believe in, do it not for the money you might earn or for the patents to add to your name. Do it for a fellow human in need, invent for the sake of humanity. As for me, I would love to watch that little girl try on slippers on her feet someday. Hopefully someday soon.

PRINCESSES NOT OBJECTS

India, the land of beauty, colours, heroes and a rich cultural heritage. A land that has given birth to hundreds of brilliant and talented minds. A land that is today full of crimes against women, so much that the front page of every newsletter is plastered with incidents which we cannot even believe were possible.

We feel that justice has been granted to those vile rapists, by sentencing them to death. The most savage of them, escaping the sentence because he is a “Juvenile.” How on earth is raping and mutilating a girl, a juvenile act?

For those of you who claim that these amended laws will instill fear in the minds of such perverts, just a few days ago a ten year old in Guwahati, was gang raped by a bunch of brutes who say they are “12 to 16 years of age” and thus ask for pardon under the juvenile laws.

Do you think a mere few years in a juvenile rehabilitation centre is enough punishment for those, whose crimes cannot be classified as juvenile? If the prospect of a death sentence does not deter these savages then what will?

The child whose only struggle should be solving mathematics, is going to suffer for the rest of her life unable to come out of the trauma which she has gone through. She probably didn’t even understand what had happened to her.

There were some angles in which the case of the girl from Delhi was looked at by the general public. I heard many men and even women say that the rape incident was partly due to the way the girl was dressed. “Her dressing provoked those men” is what I heard them say. If that is the case, then in what way did a 10 year old provoke those men? In what way are 2 year olds and 4 year olds provoking the mindless pedophiles that exist in our country. Let me tell you something. Even if you cover a woman in concrete, these savages will find ways to lust after her.

Women are becoming pilots, engineers and astronauts in our country. At the same time, in remote villages, children and women are still sold like objects and trafficked into other countries to satisfy the pleasures of flesh eating slugs.

What is happening? Why do we try to hush up these issues? Why are we so fearful of stigma that we cannot act to do something right for a change? A thousand protests and the most stringent of laws will not change the minds of these animals. Imposing curfews on the girls in your house will not protect them.
I strongly feel that there is no change happening in the minds of people because we hide behind veils of clouds on what we perceive to be reality. Our thoughts are deluded so much that we don't even realize that it's hailing painfully all around us.

What we need, is the youth of this country to take charge. Talk to your friends about these issues. When my friends heard me talk about this, they told me to talk quietly fearing that others might hear our conversation. I started talking louder. The more people you talk to, the more people they will talk to. Create awareness.

If a girl in your street is getting teased or harassed, gather a few of your friends and confront the idiots. Every sick pervert in this country should have a fear that if he tries to touch a woman or child, thousands of her brothers and sisters will beat him to pulp and punish him in the most imaginative ways.
I want to be able to stroll the streets at night with my best friends, with a comforting feeling that no one will harm me or my friends. When will that dream turn into reality?
When will I ever be able to take that jog before dawn? When can I ever enjoy the moonlight when I drive at night? Help me erase my fears. Help every child and woman show the bravery that we all know they are capable of.

By the year 2020, more than 50% of our population will comprise of people below 30 years of age. This makes us the strongest country in the world. If we all start standing up for what we believe in, we can not only give our precious princesses a safe and happy life, we can truly create an “INCREDIBLE INDIA.”