Skip to main content

Mind Gaps




6th July 2015

This Saturday morning Rayaansh my 1 year old was in the middle of his “waking up” process. We have a morning drill where usually he’ll wake up disoriented and while he tries to establish his co-ordinates,I’ll ask him if he stretched? His face will brighten into a faint smile and he’ll give a lazy stretch. Then based on how hungry he feels the crying routine will follow. I then ask him about his dreams while I kiss and caress him. Some days he begins to fill me on his dreams in a language I wish I could comprehend while the rest will be spent on inspecting the eco-system. It’s our happy mornings.

So this morning, he is having an animated conversation with me when my FIL walks towards my room calling out my son’s name. My FIL had just returned that morning from a 2 week long business trip. Instantly I see Rayaansh stops his stories and his smile just vanishes. I was surprised, as I had expected him to be excited on seeing his grandfather. With an urgency, he swiftly sat up to spot his granddad, he gave out a big cry and immediately climbed on top of his yet asleep father to reach his granddad. In the process he started crying, the real cry which included tears in his eyes, held his granddad for a few seconds and then amidst the tears smiled and hugged him again. It was a warm moment of unadulterated expression.


I realized that he missed his granddad and didn’t know where he was or when he was to come back. The moment he heard his voice, he didn’t hold himself back to express what his heart felt. That purity of the moment touched me and I felt that growing up sucks.Soon this clean innocence will be replaced with calculated reactions. As we grow,we just stop expressing our innermost feeling. Our mind comes into action and creates this gap between what we feel and what we express. The innocence slowly gets covered into these layers on mind created gaps. The London metros frequently announce, “Please Mind The Gap”, I guess it symbolizes such mental gaps as against the physical ones that we find.


We never really grow up, we just learn and master how to react in public
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

To TIP or not to TIP

As a kid every time I accompanied my dad to good old humble restaurants, I would linger behind a few seconds till he left the table, to quickly grab the coins that he would place in the sauf bowl (I thought he forgot the money & once when I reminded him, all he said was ‘that’s ok’, so I ensured his money was safe with me, you see). So this assured source of income for my piggy bank continued, till the day he caught me picking the coins (damn my timing!!).That’s when he introduced me to the concept of tipping, that we should leave behind some money for the waiters who served us. However, the last couple of years, our bills have seen a 5 to 12 per cent ‘service charge’ added to it, leaving us confused with the question ‘to tip or not to tip’. Some say its goes to the Government and some say it doesn’t. So here in my next blog, I decided to decode the mystery of the Service Charge for you. Your bill will predominantly contain VAT and service tax (which is applicable to restaurants ha...
10 comments
Read more

Being @ Chennai

I have been meaning to write this blog for a while now but somehow got caught into a series of events. Anyways, about a month ago one of my roomies, Swati left for her hometown for good. Over dinner, a common friend of ours who has been struggling to get a transfer out of Chennai, congratulated her and jokingly said “Tere paap dhul gaye aur tu Chennai se ja rahi hai” meaning that your sins have got erased and so you are leaving Chennai. We all laughed at this statement, but I quietly wondered if Chennai is really that bad. I distinctly remember how scandalized my friends were I broke the news that I had got my posting in Chennai. Some of them actually told me that I was out of my mind that I agreed to go to Chennai. Most of their concerns were actually revolved around the fact that after living all my life in a city like Mumbai, it would be exceedingly unimaginable to stay in Chennai and suspected that the place and its culture would be harsh on me. Honestly, in a way it scared me a bi...
6 comments
Read more

Food for the Gods – Chappan Bhog and more

Eateratti this time is going to give you a peek-view into the food that was meant for Gods.For the first time in my life, I witnessed the scale of spiritual dimension of food up-close. As a part of the Deewali Festivities (one of the most important Hindu Festivals), Annakoot Utsav was celebrated with opulence by my in-laws. Annakoot literally means a mountain of food, where at least 56 different varieties or ‘chappan bhog’ is prepared and offer it to Lord Krishna. I had seen this, once at the Iskcon Temple, but this one was celebrated at home!! Finishing touches to the offering being added by Mom-in law The idea is to invite Lord Krishna or Thakurji in to our homes & offer him gratitude in the form of food, for everything that he has been blessing us with. Therefore, every single item that’s offered to Lord Krishna or Thakurji is hand-made at home for which, weeks of preparation was devotedly put in by my mom-in law, her sister-in law my Aunt Sonal Kaki and their mother –in law who...
6 comments
Read more