माँ - The definition of Love and sacrifice

  Often lost in my ostensibly insubstantial world of dreams and imaginations,I come across this never-ending conflict between the two facets of love: a mother's love for her child, and his love for his spouse/lover.The utterly confused mind of a son and a lover ends up with his hands reaching up to pull out his hair in disgust and despair.

Years ago,my father used to tell me this story of a young man who loved a pretty girl very sincerely and could do anything for that beautiful smile on her face.Once he saw that smile missing.In utter distraught,he begged her to let him know what she wanted.


Boy:Why, Love,u seem to be gloomy! What is it that makes you sad?
Girl(throwing tantrums): You don't love me.
Boy: O' lady of my life! I can lay down my life for you,don't you know that?
Girl: Everything is easier said than done!Can you prove your love?
Boy: Anything for you,sweetheart!
Girl: Okay,I have this silly doubt in my mind that you love your mother more than you love me.It's freaking me out.
Boy: Hah!Yeah,it's true that I love my mother,doesn't everyone? But it's of a different kind. How can you be jealous of my mother?
Girl: Whatever! If you really love me then show me your face again only if you come with your mother's heart in your hands!


The boy couldn't fight his tears anymore. Engulfed in this vortex of emotions, he came back home. Seeing the long drawn face of her beloved son,his distraught mother asked him the reason,the lines of worry creasing her foreheads clearly. The boy didn't answer. After much cajoling and persuasion,he finally told her, shame running down from his eyes with tears.


Mother broke up into her wry smile and lovingly stroked his forehead,"silly boy! For this stupid reason you are sad? Here,take this and show your mother that smile which brightens up her world". With this,she took her heart out and handed it over to her son. His face lit up instantly..and she fell down, dead!

Struck with grief,the boy started walking with his mother's heart in his hands towards his girlfriend's house, absent-minded. Accidentally ,his foot got stuck somewhere and he fell down. Instantly,his mother's bleeding heart, almost a metre away,jerked with a huge "thud",asking worriedly,"beta,kahin chot to nahi lagi(son,did you get hurt)?".


A mother's love is divine. It is unmatched, unfathomable and unquestionable. She doesn't expect anything in return. For her,love is giving every single bit of happiness she can to her child right from the moment she endures unbearable labor pain to give birth to her child.


Likewise,I feel,is our Motherland. She, too, gives us everything-land,food,shelter,employment-just everything we need to live and prosper.But we horrendously selfish parasites keep on drawing her blood to quench our avarice. Analogically,our greed takes the place of the girlfriend in the story I narrated before. We don't even feel like doing the least bit for our motherland's happiness. And when this bespectacled,dhoti-wearing Mahatma gave us this gift of independence so that we could live happily and commemorate that day as Independence day, Mother India's happiness knew no bounds. She felt like dancing with joy ,for her every child would remember her that day,what if it'd be only for a single day?


The pity ,now,is that her grateful sons remember the great day as a mere holiday to chill out with friends or to relax at home.The songs of Lata Mangeshkar and Mahendra kapoor must be thanked to remind us of the meaning this day holds.Mother India hides her agony from her children,refusing to let them get sad and disheartened after knowing this.


But she has silently and secretly been weeping.Over the years,decades and centuries.And she continues to do so.If anyone has still any doubts over this,kindly recall your geography lessons and concentrate on the Indian peninsula. And then you can understand why she's surrounded by water bodies on three sides-and quite salty ones at that! It's a wake-up call ,my brethren,for our generation to make our mother smile! Otherwise,we might end up with an island instead of a peninsula!!
                                                       Long Live Motherhood!
                                                       Long Live Mother India!
                                                              JAI HIND!!

दिल चाहता है

फिर उन लम्हों में जीने को दिल चाहता है
फिर उन आँखों से पीने को दिल चाहता है
सीने में कमबख्त ये दर्द ही है कुछ ऐसा
की इसी दर्द में मर जाने को दिल चाहता है

रिवाजों की दीवारें तोड़ने को दिल चाहता है
रस्मो से मुह मोड़ने को दिल चाहता है
ये कायनात तो बड़ी छोटी सी चीज़ है,अब तो
खुद खुदा से ही लड़ने को दिल चाहता है

क़र्ज़ चुकाने को दिल चाहता है
फ़र्ज़ निभाने को दिल चाहता है
हैं माँ-बाप के जो सर पे लकीरें
हमेशा के लिए मिटने को दिल चाहता है

गुमशुदगी हटाने को दिल चाहता है
कामयाबी पाने को दिल चाहता है
थे इन आँखों में सपने कुछ ऐसे
के फिर सपने सजाने को दिल चाहता है

कहानियों में जाने को दिल चाहता है
परियों को पाने को दिल चाहता है
न जाने क्यों है हकीक़त इतनी ज़ालिम
फ़साने को हकीक़त बनाने को दिल चाहता है

सितारों से मिलने को दिल चाहता है
फूलों सा खिलने को दिल चाहता है
है उस आफ़ताब का नूर ही कुछ ऐसा
उसकी ही माफिक जलने को दिल चाहता है..

The ecstasy and agony of being in love..

Sitting by the window,I lay my gaze on the vain clusters of clouds gathered together as if to celebrate the pain in my heart. Does this pain also exist in my better half,I ask myself unknowingly. As soon as I think of her, I feel teardrops trickling down my cheeks. A loud thunder brings me back from my imaginary world and makes me realize that those teardrops were raindrops in reality.I smile wryly and shrug off my foolish act,again tending to get lost in my own world-hypothetical..but not hypocritical,where a spade has no other meaning than a spade and no one is afraid to say so.

Another one of millions of silly questions pops up in my mind. Is it really possible for the sky to have a heart like us,be it of any shape or size,but still a heart which beats for someone,say earth? Which,through all these centuries and millenniums of existence,has endured the pain of maintaining a long-distance relationship with the earth with only occasional outbursts of emotions quite insensitively named "rainfall" by us humans. Or maybe it took a step below,and came down in the temporary disguise of clouds to have a close look at its dearest and couldn't hold on to the volcano of emotions which caused it to embrace the earth through raindrops. It pretty much seems analogous to when I go to meet her,and often lose my control over my usually quiet emotions.

Quite content with the sky taking my role,I lookout for the analogy in the earth.The worst situation in your life comes when you are torn apart between loving someone limitlessly,and expecting to be loved equally in return.Why can't the earth understand  how the sky feels for it? Why can't it hear it's heartbeats,deafening in the form of thunders? Why is it always so patient as if waiting for some miracle to take place? Why is it so stone-hearted? Are all those emotions- swirling of trees,blowing of breeze,greenery of surface-all fake imaginations of the sky?.....

Questions still loom large,and yet remain unanswered in my freaky brain. I get worried all of a sudden that if this is indeed the scenario of my love story then I'd always have to stay apart from her. I don this worried romeo look and start sleepwalking in my garden,lost in her thoughts,of course. The way she hugs me tightly, the way her eyes lit up instantly whenever I appear from nowhere,the way she caresses me, the way her lips never wanna get detached from mine,the tears in hers eyes bidding adieu to me when I'm about to leave.... all these memories wash away all those mundane questions popping up in my good-for-nothing mind..and I start feeling a plethora of love being showered upon me. I raise my hands mid-way in the air,as if to embrace her in my arms. My hallucination finally breaks when I can't find her and deja vu'...it's the showers of the rain again. Feeling sorry for my accomplice,I walk inside praying for it's love to be a success.On some TV channel,the song's playing from the movie Chaandni....."mere saath barsaat bhi ro padi hai..lagi aaj sawan ki phir wo ladi hai.."