Wednesday, June 10, 2009

a must skill..self defense

There are a few things which Indian parents often forget to teach the children, and as a result they are either deprived from some great joys or suffer dearly. I have jotted down six of them, and have distributed them in six posts. Even though I don’t and wont have a child of my own, but thought about sharing it with parents:
1. Self defense
The need of learning self defense arts may seems unimportant in the eyes of most of the Indian parents. Who somehow have built a strong misconception that nothing can go wrong with children, because no one harms innocent children. They need to snap out of that reverie, its not that thing any more, with the violence on the upward move, and too many provocations, life has become very complex. And mostly the innocent and weak bear the brunt. This harsh truth has been dished out time and time again that innocent, weak and naïve children or people are the main target of bullies.

The second main target of assaulters are women, especially women who go out to do different activities either in isolated areas or at odd hours. Recently I have read a few incidents and articles about harassment, in western countries, where women have the extreme liberty and have to face the extreme violence, they carry few things with them when they are going out at odd hours, simple available things like chilly powder, a bottle of perfume or legal guns which is capable of temporarily paralyzing the offender by giving him a low capacity electric shock. Combination of martial art with one or more of these weapons can give them lot more confidence to move around independently.

In today’s world these are the practical steps for career women in my eyes. As for martial arts, I always suggest my friends who have children to train them with self defense.

Learning self defense skill is full of boons from every angle, in one hand it gives a person the confidence to go out and meet the world without a bodyguard. Which most of the women still prefer to have when they are going out, especially during odd hours. On the other it gives immense physical fitness. I have trained myself to karate classes, could not finish it, but the immense feeling of physical well being that I enjoyed during those years was too self satisfactory.

Its not possible for us to have the luxury of simply playing some game every day, but once we have enough training in martial arts we will feel the inner urge to practice every day from home. Most of the exercises can easily be done from home and independently.

So in gist, one will have the confidence and physical fitness almost free of cost. These institutes charge minimum fees. All we have to do is be careful that the trainer doesnot messes up the muscles and bones, have the license and expertise to understand the correct methods of exercises.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

a life with golden diva

We all come across them once in a while, or some of us who like me, grow up in shadow of someone like them. The immensely popular persons the golden divas of our famillies. My elder sibling had all the glitters which a woman should have, only those who were extremely close her could look through it but to others she was the ultimate woman, golden goddess. The perfect woman, who knew how to act like a woman, look like a woman and every thing related to a marvellous woman. She had style, grace in appearance and behaviour.

I natually grew up with her, as I was supposed to becaue she is my sibling, seeing her winning the entire limelight, she was every body’s favourite and I was almost invisible. A position which I liked then and love now. When I became teenager I started to observe the traits which made her popular and saw that she had a natural flair for winning hearts.

I was impressed by what she was but never tried copying her. I let her walk her own way and walked my own. In my life I have never looked down upon what god has given me, and have rarely felt jealous for the blessed ones. There is only one thing I really envy when I see in someone, and that is I envy rabindrasangit singers like shantideb ghosh, kanika bandhopadhyay or my mom, whose rabindrasangit I relish, because this is one thing I always yearned to learn but could not . Rabindrasangit is a special type of music written by Tagore and the music was finalised by he, himself.

As I stubbonly refused to copy her , we are so very opposite that her friends used to tease me, that you don’t have any similarity with her. We look completely diffent and our nature, hobbies, lifestyle are completely different. But its also a big truth that I never felt envy for all the limelight she won, most probably because I am saturnian, I believe in the harvest of hard work. I knew she walks out of her scheduled path to get that much attention and affection, and I just was not interested in winning hearts that much. Because from my very childhood I was blessed with a vision of content and to know where to draw the line beyond which I wont go to pursue a desire. I never wanted to be the one in the limelight, I always preferred selected but trusted friends. I don’t know the reason but I never tried to copy her or became jealous of her. This is why I get surprised when I see people trying to copy someone or become destructively jealous.

When we come across these dazzling characters, or are destined to live with them for years, we should always keep our own entity, and in place of being jealous of them or copy them, we should relish their beauty and grow our own beauty. Moon is beautiful but so are the stars. There are people who love moon as much as they love stars, and there are some who love stars more than moon, like me.

We all love roses and butterflies but do we ever try to become one of them? No. do we get jealous of them? No. Then why not act the same way with human beings too?