The shedding of the cocoon

A trap is only a chrysalis and not a bond,
It refines you, it cleanses you and makes you strong!
Permanent guarantees are given to temporary things,
Don't focus too much on them lest you may lose your wings.

The cocoon that an insect makes, it tears.
Only to show the world what it gained in there!
A butterfly now has strength to fly and colours she flaunts,
She encased herself into a bond to be freed with all her wants!

So, know you all, a low phase is a cocoon,
And you will gain the strength you need very soon.
Just hang in there and absorb whatever you have to,
When you come out you will be beautiful and powerful too!

There may be times that will make you feel sad;
Just focus on what you have to do and don't feel bad.
Give up on your ego and work towards your cherished goal,
Before long the world will see the beauty within your soul!

Author’s note:

A worm gets trapped into a chrysalis only to gain a different life from the layers enclosing it.

As a worm, it wanders aimlessly, eating the leaves around until, one day, it decides to become an adult. When this decision is made, it moves away from its known environment, its comfort zone, and selects a secluded, safe spot. In this chosen spot, it sheds its skin and transforms into a chrysalis and hangs upside down for almost two long weeks from a cremaster.

Upon becoming an adult, this little worm of no real significance that wandered the face of the earth, ecloses and turns into a beautiful butterfly. It leaves its comfort zone for the second time, flaps the colourful wings that the two weeks of ‘penance’ has gifted it and soars high.

 

The worm transforms into a chrysalis and hangs upside down...

The cocoon shed, this wonderful thing rises from the status of a crawling worm to a beautiful butterfly.

Ego, like the chrysalis, shelters us, nurtures us. The time we spend with our ego makes us beautiful and colourful.

But it is only at that moment that we shed the ego, the world sees our colourful wings take the flight!

The victory of the mango man!

Dubbed as the ‘mango man’, the ‘aam aadmi’ or the commoner enjoys the status of a statistic.

With population, world over, taking the aerial route on the graph (well, next only to inflation), even the birth of this ‘aam aadmi’ is a mere number. Hospitals are keen on discharging the women post child-birth at the earliest (you may argue with me that they fuss over certain women and keep them for much longer than needed. But let me remind you that the woman in question is the protagonist’s wife and not the WAG of high-profile individuals).

Beginning their lives, by assuming the room (or) ward number as their names, they march bravely ahead. They etch out a number (roll number) for themselves in schools and then graduate to number (hostel room number) in college and then to a number (also referred to as ‘figure’, like a five figure or six figure salary) all through their work life. 

But lately there has been a change - a welcome change, to this number. First, it was the movie that characterised this ‘mango man’ as a hero, a hero born out the frustrations of the ‘aam aadmi’ rather than anything heroic. Now, it is a new political outfit that has seen a meteoric rise in the Indian political horizon. They have hit a century on début. Well, almost.

But this is not the début for the ‘mango man’. Today he has risen like a phoenix from the ashes of the many men that fell before this victory. The movie that preceded this victory was in many ways a trend-setter as it saw the rise of one mango man against the age-old fears that seem to have been hard-coded in the genes of the ‘aam aadmi’. He was somehow expected to be resilient, more due to lack of choice than any spectacular bravery. 

What followed, though, was more of a mass movement. It saw the rise of more than one mango man, this time in unison, creating a choice, where none existed! They rose as one huge pillar of strength in a formation that spun skilfully through the defences of the Goliath.  

And finally a podium finish for the mango man!

The traditional approach of capturing the centre slowly beginning from the sides and zeroing in, in a calculated manner was discarded. No time was given for anyone to thin. Parallel rallies, hunger strikes and all the other usual melodrama made the Goliath relax. And then suddenly the struggle seemed to lose direction, only to be seen erupting with exuberance and ecstasy, winning from the centre!

Well planned, very well executed, hope it sustains even better. 

The number has finally been rubbed off the forehead of the ‘mango man’, or has it? The new number now stands at 26,000! 

Evolve, but naturally…

As evolution takes giant steps forward, practises of yesteryears are replaced by more pragmatic and technologically advanced innovations.

While on the one hand, it is convenient to support the newer methods as a natural advancement of an intellectual species, on the other hand, a critical analysis of the direction in which the advancement is headed is mandatory.

Simply put, are instincts being replaced by the machines that we make, is the question looming large before mankind, waiting to be answered. Walking was a motor development until recently, till it became the job of a walker to teach children to walk. Even the basic job of answering nature’s call needs a training, which in the world of the most civilised race has come to be known as ‘potty training’. I hear that institutes that specialise in this are in demand these days!

If you are already immune to these changes, I appreciate your adaptability, but if this is news to you, wait till you hear the next. I could not believe my eyes when I saw an advertisement for the diaper used for children which claimed to absorb 1 mug of the child's urine free, for every three mugs of urine that the child passes!

There are better ways of making a child stronger than making it suffer a nappy rash...

The days of greeting people with a warm smile or a cold glance have become archaic. Emoticons are the new tool that generations in the making are learning to handle.

Talking and communicating with people who are standing in front of us has become very difficult. While mankind has learnt to talk to voices remote over the network that has tightly trapped us in its web, the neighbour who lives next door is akin to an alien being. We have willingly moved into this realm of artificiality that has now become a reality, that a few years’ hence, no one will remember the era of natural living!

If you took an aerial view of the history of evolution, the sketch is sure to show steady quantifiable leaps forward for some time until we reach the current phase of a quantum leap. This phase has been singularly responsible for threatening to do away with everything natural including the way babies are born!

 Today it refers to the way babies are born and not the section in which they study in school. One obvious consequence of this seems to be that we know not how to push our babies out of the womb, but we certainly have learnt how to push them around in trying to keep up with the Joneses!

Work cultures…

The world is growing at a very fast pace. The multi-national companies have brought about, in their wake of global expansion, a culture which has come to stay. This trend is more a melting pot of corporate cultures from across the globe. Here is a witty account of the impact of this culture across homes of the globe…

Let me introduce the characters that make up this drama:-

The hero of the story, Rishi, is a vice-president in a multi-national bank. His wife, Rachna, is a school teacher struggling with revolting students and a demanding management. They have two children, or rather, teenagers, who add to the woes of their not-so-modern mother.  Neha, their daughter, hates the pranks her brother plays on her and her friends and stays away from him. Nikhil, the ultra-modern son, prefers the name Nik to Nikhil.

On that particular day, Rishi came home earlier than usual, only to realise that home was not what it used to be!

Rachna was both relieved and surprised on seeing her husband home so early. Her first question to him was, “Are you ok?” This surprised Rishi and he understood her concerns and simply nodded. 

Once she knew that he was doing well, she decided to step out of home and finish some of her household chores. She brewed a quick cup of coffee for him. She then told him that since he was at home to open the door, she could go out to buy some essentials. Initially, though, Rishi did not understand what she meant.

He was too disoriented to think and simply nodded his head. As Rachna stepped out, she heard Rishi murmur, “Both of us staying in the house is no value addition!” 

She dismissed his mumbles and walked out closing the door behind. In just a couple of minutes, the doorbell rang. Rishi thought that Rachna must have forgotten something. He opened the door, only to face a young lad, about his son’s age. The boy just went on, “Aunty…er… sorry, Uncle, is Nik home?”

“Nik!” Rishi exclaimed.

“I meant Nikhil” explained the boy. Before the conversation could proceed Nik was there and the twosome vanished in a jiffy. Rishi was beginning to get rattled.

Rishi put on the T.V. to catch up with some global news. The doorbell rang. This time Neha was wanted by her friend. Neha’s friend smiled cordially at Rishi. So he did not mind the trip to the door from the comforts of his couch.

Rishi had a ten minute tête-a-tete with his global news, before the doorbell rang again. Increasing the volume on the T.V. set, Rishi got up, expecting Rachna on the other side of the door. But this time too he ran out of luck. It was Soumit, another friend of his son. This time he was sent on an errand by Nike to fetch some spare part which sounded most important to the 13 year old, more important than the news on the television. After fetching what he needed, the boy left and yes, you guessed it right. He left the door ajar giving Uncle Rishi his day’s dose of workout.

After about 10 minutes, his 16 year old daughter rang the doorbell. As the battered Rishi opened the door, he saw his daughter waving goodbye to her friend. She lingered at the door to get some last minute update about the latest hair-do that her favourite actress had sported in a recent movie. 

She turned around to her father and asked him to ‘chill’ as she would close the door and come in when she was done. “Oh, that’s really kind of you” said Rishi without applying too much thought to his comment.

A few minutes later, Rishi’s interest in the stock market graph seemed to fade and he found himself readying to get up and open the door. Though opening the door did not form a part of his SLA at home it now seemed to be the key task area that required maximum manpower allocation! On a previous occasion when he had come home early from office, his job profile had included accompanying his children to their friends’ houses! He felt like he had re-joined after a long sabbatical and was trying to acclimatise himself with the massive restructuring!

At this point, he even thought that he heard the doorbell ring but waited to hear it again before wasting a trip to the door needlessly.

The bell did not ring. 

Instead he heard the opening of the door from outside and saw Rachna entering the house. “Why don’t you open the door? Should I ring the bell twice?” she demanded.

She was juggling with the shopping covers in one hand and the door key in the other. As she spoke she was removing the sandals from one leg using the other leg. She skilfully opened the shoe rack with her leg and picked up her sandals with her legs and placed them inside the shelf and closed the door.  She placed the shopping covers on the table, replaced her keys inside her purse, before the doorbell rang again. She went swiftly to open the door. As her son walked in, throwing his shoes, one very close to the door and the other near the shoe rack, Rishi suddenly realised something. 

He realised that his early presence at home was a wasted resource. Juggling between jobs that needed different skills, being able to listen and talk at the same time and optimum use of available resources were glorified in his corporate world, but rarely noticed at home. 

“Why are you looking lost?” Rachna demanded. She was calling out to Nik and Neha as it was dinner time.

“If you had told me you would be in early, I would have made something you liked. Make sure you inform me the next time” she said, smiling for the first time at her husband since the time he was back from office.   

Birds of a feather fall together…

One day a saint was walking along a forest. As he was walking he saw a hunter running past him. As the hunter was looking up towards the sky and running, he did not see the holy man and would have banged into him. But the saint caught the hunter and brought his speeding toes to a halt. 

“Why are you running so fast?” asked the saint to the hunter. The hunter did not seem in a mood to answer the saint and yelled at the saint to move and give way. By now the saint was also looking up into the sky, curious to know what made the hunter drop his bows and run. He saw two birds labouring with the net, that, until a few minutes back, belonged to the hunter. 

The saint chuckled and told the hunter to give up his chase as the birds were flying high and it was common sense that a man running on the ground will never be able to catch up with flying birds.

Hearing the saint’s words the hunter stopped dead in his track. He sharply turned around and remained silent for a moment. It was now the turn of the hunter to chuckle.

The holy man was astonished, but said nothing. The hunter signalled the saint to follow him and started walking swiftly in the direction of the birds. The saint gathered speed to keep pace with the hunter.

“Oh holy man”, he addressed the saint. “Looking at you I thought you would know the happenings of the world. But you seem to be naïve and innocent” said the hunter much to the amusement of the saint. 

The hunter told the saint that the birds were from the same breed and hence would soon start fighting with each other and the weight of the net would eventually pull them down. Much to the surprise of the sage, the net started descending in a while and the hunter pounced upon his catch in a jiffy.

As the hunter started walking towards his hut, the saint followed him. “How did you know that the birds would fall?” he asked the hunter.They are birds from the same flock and therefore there will be argument between them which will turn into a fight. When birds from the same feather fight, they fall said the hunter to the saint. 

The saint thanked the hunter profusely and headed towards Hastinapura where trouble was brewing between the Pandavas and Kauravas!