Making it our own...

INDIA..My Nation..I love my country. I love every aspect of what it is to me. I have had a wonderful childhood here, I have made a lot and lot of friends here, I have chosen my partner here, I found my Love here. India will always be special to me, I would never be able to love another country like I love this one. This country may not be all that great for a someone else or as organised, powerful or advanced as many other countries, but its MINE and thats enough for me. 'There is no place like home', and this is home.

If you have to write an essay (like you used to in school) about India you might have used the following words in it - developing nation, slums, poverty, festivals, colors, bollywood stars, unhygenic, unorganised, poor infrastructure, IT minds, mathematicians, pollution, population and more. Any nation has both positive and negative aspects to it, depending on the person you are you would focus on either of it. India too has both positves and negatives to it . We are a developing nation. Yes we are not China, we are slow, but we are growing. We are a land of colors, festivals. You can see different colors in the rangolis we draw, sarees in a marriage, duppata of a college student, recently in the vastu appropriate houses. Everything that a foreign mind thinks about India is true, but its not all. We are much more as a nation, a nation with more to offer to world and also a nation with a lot more dirt to clean up and a lot more internal problems to solve.

In this post I want to present an idea to solve one such problems we face. Not a solution but one small step towards solving this problem. Close your eyes and imagine (both video and audio) of the following places- you in a Mumbai local train..... now move to your school class room..... now move to Majestic bus stand in Bangalore......now to Forum mall in Bangalore. Lets do the same with a different country, take yrclose your eyes again and imagine similar places of a different country........ Let me give you few more minutes to relax :).... I hope you are back... Was your brain less stressed in the second set of places? I'm sure the difference you saw was the number of people unless you imagined China in second set (If you did, why would you imagine China of all the places???). We Indians say population is one of the major problems of this country. People are everywhere, there is a queue for everything, waiting list from train, waiting list for college admissions, we don't know the term 'personal space' because there is no such thing called personal space in India. (This dialogue just came to my mind- if someone asked me for personal space i would answer- There is NO personal space in public places and your father is not the 'Father of Nation' to demand... even if he was, know that 'Father of Nation' was killed by one of us).

Problem - Population. Solution - to make it our own, by which I mean solution is adoption, to adopt a child to make this child your own. Whenever you decide to have a child think of adoption too. If you want only 1 kid and want it to be of your ''own blood'', well go ahead and have one. If you want to have 2 kids, why not give birth to 1 and give life to another by adopting. If you decide on more kids, it would be great if you can adopt as many as possible. I know most of us would adopt a child when we cannot have our own. We go to a orphan child when we are helpless and we cannot have our own kid hoping it would make us its parents. Instead why not go to a orphan child and make them as our little angel or little prince even when we don't need to. Adoption should be from heart not the step when thats is the only way to have a child. If you cannot adopt a child and bring it home due to what ever reasons atleast adopt a child's education, donate to a child's education, its health care, its future. We spend a awful lot of money in branded clothes to parties in an expensive restuarant all for a image. Why not adopt and change the image that you see everyday in the mirror, to an image much gentle, much kind. Giving money to charity work is an excellent deed but doing the charity work in your home taking it as a privilege would be Beautiful.

I just realized this may not reduce our problem- population, but on the other hand may help in cleaning up dirt, dirt from some child's life, that it may not have to suffer in streets or grow up without guidance or love. I urge you, if you can, talk to your partners about this. If not to eradicate any of our nation's problems atleast to go beyond the call of duty. Think about it.

I think to give birth and love your child is human but to adopt and make it your own is -divine. Why divine? See below.

Ephesians 1:5 - 'God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure.'

Proudly Presents...

Pride. I take pride in certain things I do, in certain things I have, in certain things that I am.

Are you proud? This feeling makes me feel a little arrogant but a lot more special. When you are proud about something example if you can multiple numbers fast and you are proud of it, you know for sure that you can beat a lot of them in and around you if there was a competition right now. You just KNOW that you can do it. You have confidence in it. This makes you a little arrogant because you compare. Comparing with others and concluding that most of them are less talented than you in this area. But we should never forget that there is someone better and this is what keeps you grounded and keeps you on track, that you have to work a lot more, you could be a lot better.

Have you always been proud of yourself? Have you ever taken pride in someone else? someone dear to you, someone you have inspired, someone you mentored, or even some relationships you have. A pride where arrogance is not involved.

I usually prefer to talk about the heart. So naturally this post is not about how proud you are about yourself,  something related to your head but its about how proud you are about someone else. Do you have someone whom you are proud of?

I know a person from almost 14 yrs. I take pride in that. He is not my best friend nor do we spend a lot of time with each other. This fact makes it more difficult to be good friends after so many years. It needs efforts and sometimes just this trust that no matter how many days you don't talk it will still be great the next time you pick up that phone. I somehow am proud of this because I know most of us don't have friends from our childhood. This makes me special and its my own and hence I take pride.

Similar to this there are a lot more that I am proud of. I take pride in my parents, they are AMAZING. Their way of love or the way they brought us up teaching us to treat each other equal, to be responsible with money, to be responsible about our responsibilities. I also take pride in my friends, some of them are really good at math, some of them are great writers, some of them are cool, some of them are good at sports, some of them have amazing sense of humor, some of them have a lot of patience, some of them can talk well, some of them can sing well, the most important thing that demands my admiration is that all of them have a BEAUTIFUL heart. All these features are not mine but its their own, I know that, but still I take pride in them. May be because I am a part of their life, or they are part of mine.

Sometimes I wonder do you take pride in me? As your sister, as your daughter, as your friend, as you girl friend, as your wife, as anything that I am for you. Would you present me proudly....????

Most important of all, not as a comparison but I want my heavenly Father to say this to me.

Proverbs 31:29 - “Many daughters have done well, But you excel them all.”

Inhumanness in Me

Recent events have been very disturbing, the shooting at a Connecticut school and gang rape in Delhi. World seems to be heading towards more uncivilized and more evil destination than towards a civilized, mature and a better world. Why are such events happening around the world? I was wondering what would make this world a better world. The world where there is a constant progress, a constant growth, a constant betterment. I'm not talking about the economy of a country. I'm talking about 'the person' in people.

On second thoughts what about the person in me? When I see the event objectively I say such events have been happening every day. People get killed everyday, someone or the other is abused everyday. But a shooting in a school or a girl been beaten inhumanly after physically abusing her would disturb me more because I can relate to the victim. I think that girl could have been Me, that school could be where my kid or any kid i know is studying. This reminds me of Joker's dialog from the movie 'Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a gang banger, will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all, part of the plan. But when I say that one, little old mayor will die, well then everyone loses their minds!'. Is this true? Is a solider at border meant to be shot, is he there to die? is a teenager who is riding fast meant to get killed? Yes he should not ride fast but does that justify my indifference towards his death or make it easy for his parents to deal with the tragedy? If I hear a news tomorrow that a group of soldiers were blown up I'm sure it wont be stuck in my head all day. But if i hear a news of lady killed by her husband say who is from IT it would remain in my head all day questioning how could he do that. I'm not sure if this is the case with all of you but that is how i am affected. Affected to different extent by different events when both result to death. I wonder why? Why is that i don't feel anything when i hear about the soldiers. Am i so insensitive? Am i biased to these events? A Life is a Life isn't it? It should not matter what gender, age, reason for death, a life, a person is no more. If that girl is some one's mom, sister or wife, so is the man at the border some one's husband, son or a friend. Then why is that i don't feel anything towards this man. Why is that I'm inhuman towards him? Why?

Isaiah 1: 17- learn to do right! Seek justice, encourage the oppressed. Defend the cause of the fatherless, plead the case of the widow.