Father

My name, ‘Deeya’, has always fascinated me. Etymologically, the word has its roots in various languages. But my father named me ‘Deeya’, inspired by the Hindi word ‘Diya’, which means ‘lamp’.

 I grew up listening to my school teachers, fondly, referring to me as the ‘lamp of the family’; and I travelled with my family where ever my father’s transfers took us, changing schools and accommodating cultures and traditions.

Once on a long vacation, we happened to be in our family home in Kerala, and my father showed me his world of books and writings. There I came face to face with ‘Deeya’, my father’s pseudonym.

A surprise indeed! My father had never mentioned his joy of writing, except that he enjoyed reading my creative ventures.  To help me improve my writing skills, he encouraged reading, bought books, gifted diaries, and advised me to make them my best friends.

Occasionally, he would enquire about my latest diary entry, and I used to read it out to him very reluctantly. Then it had mattered less to me. Gradually, I found myself sharing every single write up and poem I penned; and he was more than happy to view his opinions and mend.  

In fact, my first book of poetry materialised due to his quiet work of passing on the poems to the publisher.  

Years have passed by. Nothing seems to have changed.  Even today we spend hours over the phone (distances hardly matter!), especially on holidays, discussing news, views, and his critical observation of my writings.

Need to mention, he hopes to see me read and understand the depths of Malayalam literature. To begin with, recently he gifted me an English translation of the great legends of Kerala.  

Over a period of time, my relationship with my father has matured from a father-daughter one to a guru-shishya (teacher-student) level of understanding. A teacher, who understands, guides and accepts the student as she is.

I often wonder if I have idealised him. However, I am still learning from his philosophy of life. And I have realised that I am truly his “Deeya”. On this Father’s Day, I salute you, my dear acchan (Father in Malayalam).    

  

To Mothers

What does little birdie say

In her nest at peep of day?

Let me fly, says little birdie,

Mother, let me fly away.

Birdie, rest a little longer,

Till the little wings are stronger,

So she rests a little longer,

Then she flies away.

The famous lines from Alfred Lord Tennyson, written ages ago, taught and is still being taught, have remained ingrained in my mind.

My school long forgotten, and we classmates awaiting our little birdies’ flights, still enjoy reciting this poem.

As I clicked the picture of a nest with little birdies in my garden, I look at the mother bird struggling to keep her calm.

The hummingbird that appears ageless, in her tiny body, blue sheen, and beak sharpened to perfection, fluttering, I wonder how much we struggle to look young. At the same time, life has been a sweet struggle when we take the role of providers to our children. Probably, all in the hope of living up to their expectations!

And then comes the day, when they find their way into the bigger world of dreams and aspirations. The excitement to take on an independent life makes them camouflage their love, and it transpires into achieving a living.

Apparently, most mothers, in spite of their busy schedules and work, find it hard to deal with this parting. Gradually, their love transcribe to loving selflessly. And then they learn to live with the day.

Music Writes:Remembering Rabindranath Tagore

Some days I sit long hours glaring into the computer screen. I know what I want to write. But, the words simply refuse to come and thoughts vanish into oblivion. Here I am in one such boundless moment where, the mind is behaving meditative and I sense an absolute blankness.

However, somewhere deep within, I hear one of my favourite Rabindrasangeet play.

“Aaguner parashmoni chhnoao praane

E jibon punnyo karo……….”

The lines literally mean “purify my soul”.

And blessed I feel. I do not remember the ‘first time’ when I got to listen to this song. But I do remember the ‘every time’ when I listen to this song and am overwhelmed with emotions. The lines written in Bengali  with its in-depth meaning, spoke the universal language. It touched my heart deeply.

It is then that I picked up an English translation of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali (Song Offerings), a collection of poems. To me, the precious creation is an honest heart’s journey of life in communion with the Almighty, and the spiritual connection in every simple thing that makes them the most extraordinary beings in life.

This year marks Gurudev’s (as he is fondly called) 154th Birth Anniversary (May 7, 1861). His creative endeavours are still refreshing. To quote one of my dearest friends from West Bengal, “Meaning changes with each passing phase of life….That’s the magic of Gitanjali.” “That’s the magic of Rabindrasangeet too,” I added.

Little wonder, my mind plays his music magically therapeutic. And I write, the words from my heart.

Connected, Yet Disconnected

A life was gone. I didn't know. A condolence message to that friend, which appeared as the recent update on my social networking site took me by shock. I sat to remember the last interaction; it was a birthday post on my friend’s profile.

Social networking sites are the new means of staying connected with friends. School, college, office colleagues, neighbourhood and like-minded people from our profession. The friend list goes on increasing and decreasing, oft and on, as and when, people move in and move out due to their own personal reasons. 

However, the question that continued to haunt me was "do we really stay in touch with each and every individual from our friend's list?" I would not have thought about it had it not been for a friend whom I lost recently. 

Today that friend is a living profile on the social networking site.  Many may be still waiting for the site to update on the individual’s birthday; a day we chose to wish our friends. Here, I search for an appropriate word, “friend”, “acquaintance” or “contact”. Whoever it is, we hardly know most of the people in our endless list.

On the hindsight, social networking site is an excellent platform to build network. This does not necessarily mean emotional connects. A practical approach to life and the concept of “live, and let live” is the rule to live.

I wished for once to reconnect with my dear and near ones. I was happy that I still could get to speak to them over the phone. I knew they were all safe and sound. And that my cyber indulgence is a far cry from reality. A farce of true value of friendship.

Petrol Price Rise Vs. Sentimental Values

Wish we had foreseen what was coming our way when planning a future to owe a vehicle. The recent rise in the petrol price has affected the set budget for fuel allowances at every home. Reminding very much of mid- life crisis in a human life, mid-May was no different.  

The State-owned oil companies had raised the price of petrol by Rs 5 inviting the displeasure of people in India. This morning, a leading newspaper carried another hint at a possible hike in petrol price by Re 1, “if the cost of crude bought by them (State-run oil companies) remains at the current levels.”  

Turn of events for good or worse, the petrol vehicle owners, at least a few known to me, were in two minds. “Should we go for a diesel vehicle?” or “Should we change our vehicle into CNG or LPG?” Also, since the situation has triggered from petrol price hike, there was a very thin chance of getting a good price if they were planning to sell off their existing petrol vehicles.

Many of us have learnt to live with the situation by shelling out the recommended prices. “What to do, we have to keep moving” is the utmost we say and do. That’s not all; we continue to indulge in discussions, and purge our repressed energies with little actual solutions. 

I could not imagine our priced possession - our car - is suddenly an expensive affair. An artefact representing merely a status symbol in society?  In the past few trips that we had taken, our thoughts were vaguely playing with the idea of giving away our small petrol luxury for something more economical.  

After one such journey, don’t know what had happened, but instead of walking towards our home I stood there looking at our car. A purple beauty with power steering, high end functionalities, sufficient luggage space and super comfort. It was simply irresistible. Of course, craze for branded cars never fade. 

Probably, I have not done anything like this before. However, I realised petrol and diesel hardly mattered to me, but the relationship did matter. The four-wheeler evoked old tales of associations only. From being a part of our friend’s wedding to providing comfortable journey to family, our car has shared every single moment.

There are many such fond memories…

Love For A Lifetime

Shobhaa De writes in Spouse, “While (the) wife had ‘adjusted’ to his long absences, he felt quite lonely and said excitedly that he was looking forward to spending the next few days catching up with her life.” Now that’s the kind of life we are all a part of; we get to read about celebrity couples preparing for the V-Day but like them every other person appreciates the essence of the day even though it’s western culture that is getting Indianised. So even though you are very much a part of each other’s life, the much commercialised Valentine’s Day gives you the chance to express your feelings. No more do you get butterflies-in-the-stomach; it’s just the desire to spend the whole day together and revel in nostalgia. Studies of dating and engaged couples find that feelings of passion and infatuation tend to fade quickly in the first year, and a year or two later often it’s all gone. By then love takes a new meaning. You learn to accept situations, circumstances and make sacrifices along with a lot of give and take to keep the relationship going. Gradually, love, marriage, children and with growing responsibilities, forty becomes an age to participate in work and more work. There are days when you don’t take time to be with your beloved or just touch and reassure your feelings. With time every relationship gets caught in the ‘taken for granted’ syndrome. You know you love but hardly get time to put forward your thoughts and feelings. And then it is stealing time to relax and spend time together, just the two of you. Of course nothing is easy and so is finding true love in your valentine. The beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder and as psychologist Robert Sternberg puts it, if you have the three ingredients of love - intimacy, commitment and passion - the relationship is going to last forever. Excerpts from Article published in btw, Love's Labour Found by Deeya Nayar-Nambiar

Red Alert

Take interest in what your children are doing for it will not only help them be an open book, you will also be able to satiate their curiosity without them misusing the Internet.

By Deeya Nayar-Nambiar

Surfing the Net is like an early morning cup of tea that makes you feel incomplete if you do not catch up with your friends, check e-mail or book movie tickets online. It has made the world a smaller place, but along with that it has also brought unforeseen influences on the young, curious minds. So it is essential to monitor your children when they are in cyberspace to ensure their physical, mental and psychological growth in a safe and secure environment. For this, it is necessary that parents acquaint themselves with the Internet to understand the warning signs.

Last year a 13-year-old Mumbai schoolboy from the upmarket Bombay Scottish School died while trying to perform a choking game, a fad among teenagers in the West. Though the death was initially attributed to suicide caused by academic pressure, his parents later came out to speak about the ‘choking game’ where participants strangle themselves in order to experience the high that comes with the deprivation of oxygen to the brain even though the website warns of the dangers but peer group influence encouraged the young lad to practice the lethal stunt.

Children often engage in activities they consider adventurous or fun. The Internet to a great extent serves children in their pursuits, be it finding new friends, updating their blog or getting entertained. Parents, however, are unaware of the dangers or even the existence of such popular activities. And even if they know, peer pressure makes most of them overlook the parent and child age difference as a ‘generation gap’.

The result is that cyber crimes involving children are on a rise on the Internet with the various chat rooms, networking sites and search engines encouraging forbidden activity. But again, in every case the Internet is also an information provider that binds people in the cyber world to your children. As said by author Parry Aftab in her book The Parent’s Guide To Protecting Your Children In Cyberspace says, “Information does not harm children, people do.”

Concerned parents have started self-help groups to educate their children about the dangers and also to increase their knowledge of the same. But there are many parents who are not even aware of the basic Internet operations and these groups help to explain the concepts. Although well-read and competent professionally, they are often unable to distinguish harmful data for themselves that becomes a handicap in protecting their child.

A number of filter programmes such as NetNanny, CyberPatrol, CyberSitter, SurfWatch can stand guard against these dangers. Filters not only block out content that you do not want your child to access but also monitor the general content viewed and help you keep a tab on the time spent on the site. It can also help you to trace and protect your child from strangers on chat rooms.

For example, with CyberPatrol you can customise the filter levels depending upon you child’s age and decide how much of your personal information is open to the world. It can even limit the amount of time a child can use the Internet. There are even websites like www.website-blocker.com to help parents ‘block’ harmful or inappropriate websites. But the hitch is that in most cases once the free trial period is over, you must to buy the software if you wish to continue using it.

Here is a simple way to monitor your computer’s activities. Begin with looking into the machine’s history. Click on the Start button on the left corner of your main screen and go into My Computer -> C: -> Local Settings -> History. The history tells you the websites that have been visited along with the day date and time. You can also go and view the web pages for yourself. You can then block the website by customising the settings of your Internet browser.

An alternative method is to click on the Start button and select Run. Type c:\WINDOWS\system32\drivers\etc\hosts in the Run box. Choose to open the link in Notepad. It will display some cryptic information. Just go to the last line of the file, hit the Enter key and type the name of the website with the number 127.0.0.1.

For example, if you wish to block the networking site www.facebook.com, your last line should read 127.0.0.1 facebook.com. Save the file and exit. Likewise, you can block as many websites as you like with the above technique. If you want to remove the ban later, repeat the process and delete the name of the website from the last line.

Ask your children to help you with operating the machine and search engines and try working together. If you still feel your child is getting addicted to Internet, move the computer out of the kid’s bedroom to a more visible location, assign reasonable time limits, and encourage more real-life activities with family and friends. There is also no harm in taking professional help for your child’s Internet addiction.

It is easy to attribute the mistakes of a child to bad parenting but you need to realise that there is no better way to protect your child than being vigilant. Teach them the rules of computer safety and leave it to them to decide right and wrong. Take interest in what they are doing for it will not only help them be an open book, you will also be able to satiate their curiosity without letting them misusing the Internet.

But you can understand your children better by being a friend first and a guardian later. It becomes even more essential for parents to maintain close relationship and open communication to ensure they stay connected through all stages of their upbringing.

BTW, February 4, 2008