Monday, 23 August 2021

#MondayBlogs - Crazy, Stupid, Love

Priyanka August 23, 2021 0 Comments

Photo by How Far From Home from Pexels

“But I can feel your love, as strong as mine” – Arjun B

Love, the four-letter word makes this world go around, even when we don’t like it. This is the most abused, misunderstood, misused word in the world. Yet, even the most broken, damaged souls we carve for love, some affection, a touch with desire.

In short, we all desire love in some form or other, like friendship, parents, siblings, and most desired a lover’s love.

Today let's discuss love, the romantic, heartbreaking, passionate love.

But why do you desire someone?

It is not forever, it breaks your heart into million pieces, and it will make you cry on those lonely nights, where you feel closer to the dark sky and far from your lover.

Before we go into that, let’s see what the stages of love are...

Dilkashi (Attraction): The first of attraction, the first sigh of longing.

Uns (Attachment): At this stage, she is developing her interest in him and decides to woo her or just ignore him and give him the chance to woo her.

Mohobbat (Love): She starts feeling at top of the world, butterflies in her mind lost in thoughts of her beloved. This is the most euphoric of all stages.

Akidat (Trust): She started trusting him more than anything and anyone.

Ibadat (Worship): Her love reaches the extend of worshiping him.

Junoo (Madness): She finds her own identity incomplete without him, a stage of obsession.

Maut (Death): The final stage of love, DEATH, where the self-identity is completely lost.

Now back to the main question, why are we so crazy about love.....

Childhood Neglect: The theory the psychologist propose is that people who crave love usually do this because they grew up without affection or emotional intimacy. It’s like one needs to be holding them in their arms and tell them loving words. If this is the reason for the love, it feels like a black hole consuming them from inside.

Procreate Babies: German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer maintained that love, based on sexual desire and makes babies. This is the biological theory of the crazy need for love, creating a mini us in this oblivious world. This theory also tangled sex and creating babies. We love (read Sex) because our desires lead us to believe that another person will make us happy.

According to this, men like Ovulation women as they can reproduce.

I really don’t think the theory is enough to explain the mystery of love, anyhow, who doesn’t like sex.

Escape from our Loneliness: Well, we all relate to this. It’s like someone fills the vacuum that we are carrying. However, the type and loneliness various time to time, hence the type of lover. This quality is often seen in people with high emotional intelligence, poets, and writers.

The Best way to describe this is.....

প্রেম আসলে ছন্নছাড়া,
দৌড়ে বেড়ায় এদিক ওদিক,
শূন্য মন ভরায় যে,
সেই আমার তখন প্রেমিক।

A loose translation...

Love is aimless, roaming around all day. Whoever can fill the vacuum of my heart, is my love for the time being.

Love is Misleading affliction: Gautama Buddha said we love because we are trying to satisfy our basic desires of companionship. However, our passionate cravings are defects, and the end attachment even if it is romantic love, results in a great source of suffering.

Love lets us reach beyond ourselves: French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir proposed that love is the desire to be one with another and it supposes to infuse our lives with meaning.

She advised to love authentically; it is more like a great friendship. Like a mutual support system, each other in discovering themselves, reaching beyond themselves, and enriching their lives as well as the world, together.

Though it is literally impossible to know why we fall in love, one thing is certain that it’ll be an emotional rollercoaster ride.

We lose ourselves.

We find ourselves.

It might end in heartbreak or the best thing in life.

Hence, the moral of the story, love is the pain and is the cure and we humans are powerless in front of it.

“I cannot let you burn me up, nor can I resist you. No mere human can stand in a fire and not be consumed.” A.S. Byatt

Monday, 9 August 2021

#MondayBlogs - Just for a Day

Priyanka August 09, 2021 0 Comments

Photo by Athena from Pexels

Girl;

You help the sun to blaze

You help the moon to shine

I have seen you with fireflies, twinkling in the darkest nights.

Just for once let your hair loose,

Let the hurricane become the breeze for you

The moonlight wants to burn you from inside... out

I am about to paint a picture on your naked skin,

Under thousands of stars,

In those rain soaked paddy fields

Let me love you just for this once,

I don’t want you, except for tonight...

You know, don’t like the tangled strings

Just for once, love me like you mean it

Hold me like you will never let me go,

Kiss me like its raindrops

Tomorrow, go back to being epic

Tonight let's set the night on fire,

Let me drive you to the eternal dark.

Monday, 2 August 2021

#MondayBlogs - A Different Life

Debdatta Dasgupta August 02, 2021 0 Comments

Photo by August de Richelieu from Pexels

When I was young and hated to go to school, my mother would always tell me that one day I would find ‘education’ was the only thing that could liberate me in life. Whenever she made me sit and do my homework or study for my exams, she would keep chanting, ‘This is going to be your ticket to a different life. You don’t want one like mine. You’ll see… you will be free and then you will thank me for putting you through this.’ At first, I was too young to understand what she meant. Then I was a rebelling teenager to whom her mother was the ‘bad guy’ in real life, and I did not have a moment to understand her motivations. Soon I was too wrapped up in my own life to give a second thought to what she meant and what she wanted for me.

Today, I am turning 40. I have already lived through a big part of my life – I would like to think more than half. I have seen see a lot of places and people. I have had my share of ups and downs of life and I have gathered a lot of experience - experience of learning from my mistakes and triumphs and also from the mistakes of those around me. Today, I am turning 40. I am married to a ‘very successful’ man; I am a mother of two most beautiful children and an efficient home maker.

I had met my husband in college and have been together ever since. We had even done our Masters in Business Administration together, with same majors. We had the same ambition and the same drive. ‘We both want the same things from life,’ he had said. ‘Nobody else can understand this need better. Why wait? Let’s get married and be together to support each other.’ We had eloped and gotten married straight out of the University. I remember our initial struggle. For the first five years we had worked hard to make the ends meet and build some sort of life for ourselves. We had finally reached a stage of stability in life, but our long hours had taken us away from each other. We hardly knew the person we had become and knew even less about the other.

Things changed again when I got pregnant and found out that we were going to have twins. We started working harder and even longer hours. In the fifth month of my pregnancy, he said, “Why don’t you take a break from your job? The job, home and now the twins. It is too much stress. I am going to call your mother to come stay with us and you can quit your job. Just sit back and relax. You need to think about your health, and you must think about the health of the babies as well. All this stress cannot be good for them. You can always get back to work later.” So, I quit my job. Since then my life has changed completely.

Every mother likes to think that their child is the best and most beautiful thing on this earth. I do so too. But I do not mean their physical appearance; they have the best from both of us and while we are both average looking, our children are beautiful. But I actually meant about their personality, their nature and their temperament. They hardly ever fuss or fight. They are very adaptable and most sensitive about their surroundings… They know the importance of a good education and excel in their classes. My son enjoys playing the guitar while my daughter loves to sing. I revel in their talents.

Personally, my life has become very monotonous and predictable. My mornings start with the rush of school & office. The day passes on with washing & cleaning. Evenings are busy with homework and preparation of dinner. My husband usually arrives at the nick of time for dinner. After a family dinner and discussion of each person’s highlight of the day, the kitchen beckons me for one last clean down. By the time I am done cleaning, checking on the kids and a shower to wash off the day’s exhaustion, I find my husband snoring slightly on his side of the bed.

Today as I turn 40, I look back over my shoulders to the days that have gone by. I see all the forks in my life where my decisions took me towards one and away from the other. I can see all the failures and I can see all my triumphs. I can see how, when and where the priorities in my life had changed. I can see what I had wanted to be and what I had become. I finally realized what I always wanted to be like – everything that my mother was not; a practical career-oriented woman who was totally independent. I can see what I had become – everything that she was; a sentimental and emotional housewife whose whole world revolved around her husband and children.

Today as I turn 40, I find myself looking back at the little girl whose mother kept telling her that education would bring her freedom. I finally have the time and maturity to understand her motivations. So, I ask myself, am I anymore free than she was? Do I have a ‘different life’?

Monday, 26 July 2021

My Favourite Shows

Priyanka July 26, 2021 0 Comments

If one can get paid to watch TV shows (not daily saas-bahu shows), I would be a multi-millionaire. This love affair started with Vampire Diaries; we are still passionate lovers even after 10 years.

Disclaimer Alert: I am in no way claiming these are the best shows ever made or other shows are not good. All I want to say is that these are my favourites.

Without any delay, let’s talk about my favourite TV Series:

Modern Family: Modern Family is about three families from California trying to deal with their kids, quirky spouses, and jobs in their own unique ways.

It was a summer evening around 7 years back and I was lazily surfing the internet and came across this show. And voila; I am was in love right from the first episode of the first season.

My most favourite episode is the Punkin Chunkin from season 3.

And the most favorite quote from the show is….

“There are dreamers and there are realists in this world. You'd think the dreamers would find the dreamers and the realists would find the realists, but more often than not the opposite is true. You see, the dreamers need the realists to keep them from soaring too close to the sun.”

Person of Interest: Former CIA agent Reese, now presumed dead; and billionaire software genius Finch join forces as a vigilante crime-fighting team.

Though this show was started in 2011 and ended in 2016, I saw it in 2019. And to my surprise, I loved it so much that I binged watched 103 episodes. There are very few shows where all the seasons are well made, this is one of them.