Skip to main content

Inspiration

Like the cool breeze she comes to lend a hand every morning, she bathes in moderate human values yet she is the supporter of our needs, bathed in wisdom and magnanimity, she is my maid. She smiles and advises me to pull up a thin upper lip when my haughty neighbour passes by me without so much as a cordial look...she says..." what has come to the world didi..? neighbours here fail to recognise each other"? I too wonder at her perseverance and worldly wisdom.

Inspirational blood pumped in my viens, my heart throbbed like the dead bat's wings still in darkness, I set about to think like she did, with care and wartmth, with wisdom and the feeling of giving...and at awe when she recited the saraswati vandana with clarity and frequency that puts my own skill to shame and yet her name is Mehmuda....There are goose bumps on my arms when i heared her recite the Gayatri mantra yet her name is mehmuda and her mother's name is Nafisa.

Her mother does not allow her to dance in the ganapati utsav and how she craved to be discovered, but her cruel mother instead married her off to a drunkard whom she has borne a child. Oh! how ...how she wishes now, standing with the soap-studded scrubber in hand that if she had been given a chance to show her talent to the world! she would have escaped the beatings of her husband! lived on her own terms and done something different!! she wishes she hadnt been so unlucky!!

All of 24 years and the wisdom of the world reflected in her wish to educate her son in an "English medium" school...'didi, teach me English, I will bring a notebook every day, ' she quipped and surprised me further. I looked at her with new -found fondness. Looked above to thank god and aspired for more such prowess and knowledgeable human minds.

I promised myself to take care of Mehmuda's wishes and fulfill them as my own. She lends a hand in washing utensils but she is the butterfly I know in the garden of my dreams fluttering in a corner to be discovered. Our dreams are nothing but mere distant truth for everyone who waits for an opportunity to fly...if only the moment arrives for Mehmuda.

The morning when when she ran home to appease her bedraggled husband, I promised myself again to wake up to the need to fulfill the dreams of the fluttering butterfly that has been my inspiration to strive on and discover more Mehmudas in this world.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

No one stole Mamma's laptop

Times have come to naught it would seem! This apathy factor of everyone around us― we are just not bothered about others….whether someone lies bleeding on the road or a robber runs away with stuff or someone guns down a person in broad day light….what are we doing as spectators and why aren’t we moved enough? Why? Why? I have donned the task of a ‘cop’ going around the sultry summer sun in the busy market place, questioning onlookers or even hawkers, trying to find out who stole my laptop….. The day was full of activities...the housemaid didn't turn up on time so I set about completing my household chores trying to meet the deadline. Like an automaton I managed to complete washing, swabbing and cleaning on time. As soon as I procured the car keys from inside the drawers, hung my laptop around my shoulders and my lunch box and went down the steps two at a time to my car...it was already 10 AM and I had to be in office by 11! I decided to call office to inform that I would be in lat...
4 comments
Read more
Glorious Past Rukshana Nanji stumbled upon a female human skeleton as old as three thousand five hundred years, while digging a site in Navadatoli in Madhya Pradesh. Back in the early nineties this was a stunning discovery when historians believed the Harappen Culture to be existent around the Indus. A masters degree in Archeology and Ancient History from Deccan College Pune, Rukshana is one of the few women in the country to have worked in new and ancient sites like Harappan port city, Padri, Samrapur, Daulatabad, Hampi ,Sanjan ………….. . A bizarre turn of events strikes the life of the young Archeologist. Mysteriously her discovery containing data and log books get stolen from her study in Pune. The chapter of the buried Chalcolithic woman buried deep in the heart of a big civilization clasping an herbivore molar tooth in her palms remains unsolved. The whole episode was heart ranching for Rukshana so much so that she left archeology to look after her family business. “ I did not...
1 comment
Read more

A Winter trail

As soon as the bleak morning sun streamed through the thick window curtains, my eyes flickered and opened to the sound of the chugging and pulling train. Heavy-headed from the long night's sleep, I pulled up myself and drew back the curtains to see that which took my breath away. I was speeding across a beautiful, serene river, the rising red disc of the sun's rays perpendicularly reflected on the placid waves, forming a kaleidoscope of  mirages and tiny drops of light. I could see in the horizon, a single shaft of a boat on which a fisherman was tugging along his line in hope for a good catch at the wee hour of the morning. The river was foliaged and fringed on the two sides by tall coconut tree bowing towards the river in all their humility, made the landscape so enduring. As I write this piece, I realize that the train journey from Mumbai to Kochi has sixty four such rivers, big or small that are dotted with the tropical v...
Post a Comment
Read more