Feeling drained today. I just don't know why but when in the morning I put on my shoes on for another day, I literally sloth through out the day. It was not so earlier. I would sit, gossip with frieds and above all would squeeze time to read my favourite books. But these day the "warrior" in me that would awaken in me when ever I would fel like unjustly treated, has got activated. I fail to understand why people could be so bad. I always have believed in the intrinsic goodness of human beings.

Today early in the morning my daughter picked up the phone to receive a caller whom she could not identify and called me. The voice at the other end uttered, "Auntie Ji". And I cried out "Bina"! Now this was the name of the person on the other sid of the connection. And suddenly my eyes were filled with the picture of a small frail girl with bright eyes who tried hiding behind her mother who had came to meet me some 22 years back. While we sat chatting to one another, Bina busied herself with my young son who was barely few months old at that time. As I was still working for some examination and would get time for studies only when my children went to sleep, life had become very tiresome. But now Bina started coming to our home everyday and all my three kids found in her a trusted accomplice. This was such a relief to me as earlier they would not just interact with any new children when we came to a new place on my husband's transfer.

I came to know from others that her people were very poor and it was difficult for her parents to send her to school. She mixed up with my children and would go to her home in the late evening and that too grudgingly. Came our next transfer and suddenly all this world came tumbling down for Bina as now she again would be friendless and she cried a lot. Her mother came to me one day and told me about her depression when we were leaving the place for good.
Today I really feel ashamed to think about my reaction towards her genuine concern for my kids. I started thinking in a very calculative and business-like manner that if she comes with us , I will have more time to study and cater to my other preferences as she would be looking after my kids. So far as Bina's mother was concerned, she was rather too relieved to have one of her daughter off her hands though for a small period.

Thus it was a need-based relationship that emerged between me and Bina. I had my own reasons for having her and her reasons were perhaps more concerned with her love for my little son, though her mother had also felt to have this need-based relationship. So, both of us caught in our own selfish motives made Bina a sacrificial animal.

I still remember how happy she was when she was leaving her mother! Happy and relieved, with dreams in hereyes of a better future she came to live with us in a small town which was much larger as compared to the small village that she belonged to. Could I be a mother to her? Trying to find an honest answer to this question, I finsd that though I loved her but a mother to her I could never be! I remained for her "Auntie Ji" that she called me even today after a gap of 22 years.

Shobha Singh, a great Indian artist when asked about as to when he decided to become an artist, said that as a girl is a born mother similarly an artist is a born artist and you cannot say when he developed inclination towards painting! How right he was as looking back, I find that I was aborn mother. It was the doll I played with in my childhood that made me a mother to her. Those were not the days of the Barbie dolls and the THING that we called a doll and felt so close to during our childhood would perhaps be treated as a rag doll by the present day children. But the love and care that went into the making of that doll cannot be explained by merely writing about it. I would search for some old rags as tearing a new cloth for the making of a doll would be scorned by my mother. I would be lucky if I would be able to get some white cloth to make her face with. As white coloured face was an obsession with me. Even light pink would not do when it came to making the face of the doll. Then I used very tattered rags to fill the doll with and finally a black thread to make her eyes with and a red thread to make her lips red.Oh ! God where have gone those days when such small things meant the biggest pleasures of the world. I would dress my doll in a saree made of some old Dupatta of my mother and would decorate it with sequins and gota. It was the motherly instict that girls are born with that made me preserve my doll with all the love in my heart. In the night, I would make her sleep in an old shoe box filled with some cozy material.

Never did I realize that once a mother, always a mother. My days with doll playing changed very soon as my
mother delivered a son when I was in 5th class and very soon another brother arrived in less than two years. And I became a mother to my young brothers! My mother started with her left out studies and she had the household work to cater to as well therefore to take her place I became a little mother to my brothers. Suddenly the doll I so loved in my childhood got lost. Not only the doll but my childhood also was lost.

And what must I do when none was at home. It seems as if all of you had conspired to leave me alone. I thought of making a cup of tea for me but even it felt tasteless as if all the taste of my hands had vanished with you. So what had you said at the University, "Mummy. don't colour your hair! You are looking so horrendous with this red crown of yours".

How had you changed? A look at your sophisticated looking Professors and you started finding flaws in your mother - your own mother. But that is what life is all about. And now you had gone. Gone to Chandigarh with a dream in your eyes and here I was sitting alone and thinking about you. What should I do? Another cup of tea might help me come out of this restlessness. Another tasteless cup of tea I gulped down but my restlessness had increased instead. Why do you keep on criticizing me all the time? Is it love wrapped in criticism or your?

Regret for having got a mother that was a bit different from the average kind of the mothers? It was perhaps your disappointment that you tried to cover under the pretext of love.

Or were you really concerned?

I just don't know why could I not be the mother that you would have loved to have? One harsh truth of life is that you don't have parents of your choice but are supposed to do with the ones that you get. I think your remark hit me more because somewhere inside me was the same feeling that why had I become so careless so far my appearance was concerned. i just wanted to do with the bare minimum requirement for looking presentable whereas you were hurt when you found that your mother was not getting the recognition that she deserved only because was not dressed up in apposite manner.

You were right my daughter! It hurts you when you find your dear ones not being recognized, as the fact remains that in the present world it is the packaging or the appearance more than the substance that matters and we evaluate people solely on the basis of this one factor. But another important factor is that appearance are deceptive and as soon as the facade is over the real you comes out stark naked and then it is more pathetic to see the rejection of the self that was artificially created.

And when you realize that there has to be maintained a balance between the inner and the outer self, you will find the truth behind my appearance. As basicaly I am a simple person at heart, I cannot pretend to be what I am not!

Or is it still a kind of escapism to run away from the reality that I rerally am lazy and a miser person when it comes to pampering you by presenting the best of you. Again I find a kind of conflict that I had tried to hide under a care-me-not attitude?

How surprising it seems today--when I was a small girl and was considered weak and unattractive, I tried my best to look pretty and today when I know that I am quite good looking, I try to look just the opposite! Why has there been a conflict in my inner being where ialways run after the things that I don't have and avoiding all those that I have?

So what I am in reality?

"Born to Win" could never make me understand all three ego states that are dealt at length in the book but a small but significant incident taught me the real ego states especially as the actor in all the three ago states was who else than ME!

Chatting on line is something that my children have not caught in so far and like a vigilant mother I would be there to help them talk more to persons with a "face" as compared to a person with "no face" at all. Why I did it was to help them from not getting hurt, suppose they fall in a relationship not worth having in the first place.

So one day when my daughter sat at the net searching for another nameless and faceless friend, I also sat along to watch and luckily the person who responded to her Hellos was really nice to talk with. Along with my daughter, I also enjoyed the conversation and felt that chatting is not a bad thing after all. This was my CHILD ego state!

Next day the same person sent a hello to my daughter calling her with an endearment that didn't go well with me. And immediiately the PARENT in me woke up to her responsibility and I just dashed a message to him to be watchful of his vocabulary while exchanging messages with my daughter. This was my PARENT ego state!

And within no time when I got an aplology message from this person and also justification for this kind of language practice in vogue among the young people, I immediately came to understand his point of view. This was my ADULT ego state!

Thankyou Rahul for making me experience the ego swings in my personality as I had stared believing that I can put on an appearance without revealing my real emotions to others. But I found that I was, even today, as vunerable to transition from one ego stat to another and that too on such small pretexts. Had I not grown with time? Or was I still suspicious of initiating and developing any relationship today also and maintained the same kind of protective cover for my dear ones?

I am thankful to you Rahul for having made me a new discovery about the REAL ME.

And also this episode has made it clear to me about the special Mother-daughter bond that we both enjoy so much. I want to enjoy and cherish all these happy moments with my daughters till the day they feel need to hide certain things from me. And that day I think one of the ego states of my personality will also die along with an important aspect of our relationship.

I really dread to think about that time. The same old fears of rejection in the little old girl have started raising their heads!

While reading the blogs written by me in this self exploration exercise, I have come to a stark realization that I am still trying to attract sympathy of invisible reader for projecting myself as a basically weak person. But am I really like that?

In this context another memory comes flooding to my mind. It is about the relationship with my father that I enjoyed the most during my childhood. He would read to me endless stories from the Puranas and mythologies and with rapt attention, I would sit cuddled in his lap spellbound by the stories of the eras gone by.

One particular story that made me the kind of person that I turned out to be, is still fresh in my mind. It was about a person who stood bewildered under a tree in a thick forest and on being asked by a passer-by, he tells that he had a dream where he was directed to go to the tallest tree in the forest and to jump from its highest point, and he would see GOD. This man was in a fix—if he jumps and still does not find GOD—of what use this dream would be to him and moreover what if he dies in the process?

The other person gave him some counsel and money as well and the first one goes away, without realizing his dream. Now the second person starts thinking that if this is really the direction of the GOD to find him, why not to take the chance and up he goes and jumps from the tree. The miracle happens and the GOD appears and saves his life.
When I heard this story, my heart was filled with pride and appreciation for the second man –pride because he belonged to the warrior class to which we also belonged and I felt proud to carry the legacy of courage. I was full of appreciation, as I had learnt that one has to take risks to get something and nothing worthwhile comes for free—you have to pay the price for realizing your dreams!

I never knew that this story had made such mark on me had it not been for a strange but true incident in my life when I was barely 3-4 years old. While playing with some children who were much older than me, I took up the challenge to jump from the window of a two-storied house as I staunchly believed that like the above-mentioned story, I would be saved by GOD. I jumped out and the result was a broken pelvic girdle!

Now this sudden spurt of emotions in my being is again putting me in a fix—am I really the frail, weak and pathetic from inside or strong, and powerful. It seems that as a female, I craved for pampering and being looked after but as a person, I was much better than many of the cringing males that I have seen. So what is real ME?

Am I just bound by the boundaries of my physical limitations and crave for support or on the other hand as a human being free from all such boundaries, I am a strong person- what my daughter calls her role model!

And if she thinks me to be worthy of emulation, it is a compliment that stands much merit as compared to a part of me still craving for support.

Or is it that I have not been able to outgrow my infancy and hence the vunerability?

My elder sister, the first child to my parents, was very pretty child. When I was growing up all I heard was how beautiful she was when a child and also the comparison between the siblings. Somewhere deep inside me was the constant dread of rejection. It is the exterior that always speaks first. But gradually my wits started to show and my father found in me a capability to match his wits. I don’t even remember when and how beauty was something that I tried compensating with intelligence. But looking back, I am able to see clearly the hard truth about my feelings even today. What was the reason that I scrubbed my face so hard with a pumice stone one day, if it was not to become as fair as my elder sister was!
I remember very clearly that later as a student of English literature when I read George Eliots’s “Mill on the Floss”, I was somehow captivated by the Maggie’s character as somewhere deep inside me I tried identifying with her. Her description in black gown where she looked stunning enough for the fashionable women to notice her and also to win the heart of the man betrothed to Lucy her fair cousin, gave me such delight. What was that if it was not sibling rivalry!
Here again I had strange mix of feelings—whereas on the outer side I pretended to be very casual about my looks, deep inside was a little girl craving to catch attention.
When my mom would take us to her mother’s home during vacation when our place would be extremely cold, I would be the happiest of all. I would move around the lonely places in the village pretending to be a heroine of some film shooting for some shots. I would think myself to be extremely good looking at that time and would imagine myself to be watched by someone with a camera and therefore always to be on my guards.
I could never find any answer to that as to why would I behave in that manner. Was I an abnormal child? It was recently while reading Paul Cohelo’s The Alchemist that I was able to find some answer to my behavior that was not at all odd by his standards. Perhaps the film director that I thought of watching me was my guardian angle that I never knew about. Talking to myself about various imaginary situations was in fact having a conversation with the REAL ME—or my guardian angle!
Even at that time I had a different exterior and a different interior. There always has been a conflict of a sort between both my personas.
Though I could never be as pretty as my sister was thought to be but in effort to make up for my not-so-good looks, I started behaving in a very odd manner. Once my uncle was asking my sister and a cousin to recite the table of 13 that they didn’t remember, and I was just waiting for my chance to show them their worth and I recited correctly the Table of 13 whereas I was much younger to both of them. And it was the day that I understood that between beauty and brains, it is always the brain that is the ultimate winner.
The only consolation that I had regarding my superiority over my sister was that the color of my eyes was brown whereas she had cat eyes in green shade. As in Indian context, the green eyes were not considered very beautiful and in her childhood she was the butt of much remarks when dealing with quarreling pals, just on the basis of her cat eyes!
And here would enter the Night to save the damsel in distress—who else but me. The masculine persona, a tomboyish behavior of mine would save her and earn her gratitude. Here too I am able to see unmistakably a pattern that would later develop in my personality i.e. to jump in all the problems just to show others about my power as a person but inside me still remained the same frail, weak and insecure girl who wanted to be pampered and be taken care of! Why would I not cry like ordinary girls and would seek a comforting hand?
And today when I look at the kind of persons that both of us sisters have turned out to be, I am thankful to God for having made me at least tough from the outer side whereas my dear sister was weak both from the exterior as well as the interior and the life being cruel, has shown its true colors.
Well about her in some other post......

Why am I writing all this stuff? Is it that I want someone to read it or is it that I want to know about the real ME? I vividly recollect a very interesting discussion that I had with my daughter one day about the need to write ppersonal diary.

When a small girl, she used to leave notes on my kitchen shelf about the things she would like me to notice. Later on what she would do was to write, something which she wanted me to know, in her personal diary and would leave the diary somewhere within my sight--obiviously deliberately. And don't say that it is bad manners to read someone's personal reveletions. We don't have much of what the westerns call "personal space" in our lives! And I would read her diary!

I would think that I had read her diary surreptously and would feel guilty about it and on the other hand would be relieved to know something about her that she would not otherwise share with me. Again, the common thread that binds together all my blogs, is mixed feeling at all stages of my life. One which I would reveal and the other that I would hide from others.

When she grew up and we could talk to one another on one to one basis and could also laugh at the personal mistakes that looked murderous blunders at one time, we both realised that what she did when she left the diariy within my visibility was deliberate as she wanted me to learn about her. And when i asked her about the verocity and truthfulness of her personal accounts in her diaries, she said with a rare truthfulness that we all dread facing the truth even when we are sharing it with our ownself. We love writing good things about us so that if someone happens to read the stuff about us, he gets to know the best part of our personality!

Amazingly honest was her opinion and how wise she looked for her years. And today when I am feeling the need to unburden myself and write the feelings that are driving this blog-- I am reminded of Anshu's wise observation.

The answer to the question that I raised in the beginning of this blog seems simple enough--perhaps I am also doing the same. PERHAPS is the word that gives respectability to my reveletions as I still believe that I am being honest with myself--the real ME.

A part of me is being truthful and another part of me thinks of the invisible countless readers, unknown ofcourse, but still there to judge me on hte basis of my writeups!

Can't I be truthful even to my ownself?

Dear Anshu,

Now when you are gone, I feel so lonely as we shared a special kind of bond. Don't we? I felt like getting the next bus and following you to Chandigarh. I kept on feeling so guilty all the time and especially after your phone from Lathiani when you blamed me for not being with you whenever you needed me the most! I thought of running and chasing you. I will surely come to you as and when I get a chance. You take care of yourself. I opened Yahoo Messenger yesterday but closed it soon after as I needed you to be there to talk to anyone
I have been thinking of chatting with you online as this is the only way to keep in touch.

I kept on thinking about the food that you must have taken in the evening and the sleeping arrangement that you must have made.

So finally now you have "a room of your own" like Virginia Woolf and must make the best use of it.
Teaching is something that has to be enjoyed and relished and as you hav already tasted the fruit of success related to teaching, I am sure that you will continue with it.
Just ask me whenever you are in doubt. Atleast,for that I will always be there.

Yesterday I saw you in my dream-- You looked like a small girl to me and were very angry with your Dadi as she hade hidden all your ink pens and you had to appear in some exam where you needed those pens to write with. You seemed so venerable in the dream! Perhaps basically that is what you really are despite the tough exterior that you try to put on.
So my dear Anshu, just be yourself and don't quarrel with people as like Herbert Blumer, a Psychologist has put it "you have to become a part of their world to see why they behave the way they do" "getting inside the shoes of other" and this is that we cannot do all the time and end up quarreling with others. It destroys even your cool and in the long run the loss is yours. We are not responsible for makiing the world run in right way though at time s we wish like setting it right and getting hurt in the process.

I would now be writing to you everyday and we can even chat if we fix the time. Do tell me about your experiences. And now you are regular faculty and there is no need for you to hide yourself or not to be very interactive. Show your enthusiasm that is natural in you and you will enjoy your stat at your new assignment.

Missing you badly,
Mummy

A comment from a member has made me really think hard as to why I stated this particular topic and his suggeatios regarding analyzing the choices that I had today made me find answer to it.

Yesterday my younger daughter who is 22 and is incidently my second kid, left for her job to a place quite faraway from our hometown. I really wanted to accompany her but as I had the periodical examination of my students fixed on the day and some renovation work was also going on in th kitchen and above all there was a feeling that Anshu i.e. my daughter can take care of herself that made me send her all alone. But later on I started feelinf guilty and moreso when she called me from midway and accused me "for not being with her when she needed me the most".

It is perhaps that I am treating her the same way as I was treated by my own people who thought me to be capable of looking after my ownself whereas the real-me craved for pampering that all females get so easily.
It was this guilt feeling that made me start the blog to find an answer to the querries flooding my mind. How could I do the same things that I blame others to have done to me. Is this the way the cyclic nature of the universe works as well? Can I blame others for the same things that even I do today? And the worst is that i have given her the same nickname that I so hated being given to em in my childhood--KALOO.

How could I be so ruthless--i who prided myself in being so compassionate, caring and loving OR is it also the kind of mask that I have put to hide the real me that is burning with revenge to take from the peole around her. REVENGE-for being ruthless and making me take responsibility when they could hve take nthat and left me to enjoy the life as it came to me!

Unmasking the real self would be a torture and I never would have thought of doing it had it not been to see my real self. I think that I have hidden myself behind so many masks that even I would have to meet my real persona through this blog.

Have I really grown or it is the same old girl inside me that has refused to grow with time. I am old and have three kids of my own who look at me for inspiration and safety but I am really baffled at times as I think that I am not what everyone thinks me to be---a strong person.To find answers to as to why I feel like that I have to peep inside my innerself and this self realization through self-questioning would help me, perhaps to see the real ME. The quest may go on and on and I may not find answers to questions that trouble me.

Should I start from the very beginning when as a child I starting introspecting myself as an entity different from my parents and having an identity of my own! The feelings, emotions and dreams that I had at that time would perhaps help me find the real me.

I remember myself as a very young girl who was called Kaloo as she was not as fair as her elder sister was and the first memory that I carry is quite negative in its inception. Wait there is another flooding the gates of my memory and I can vividly see my mother and my aunts talking about me and laughing at the THING that I was during my infancy.

I remember hearing a number of times the story about me being so frail and weak during the early months of my childhood that my mother took me to a Peepal tree and bathed me under one of its roots that had somehow above the ground leve as according to some hearsay that would make me healthy.This story made me love my mother who had a real concern to see me healthy or was it just to make me look at least somewhat respectable so that noone could blame her for neglecting her second daughter. I am really happy that there was no such concept as a small family during the days of my childhood otherwise I would have blamed my parents for all that I hold against them-- to their frustration for begetting a second daughter when they aspired for a son.

So it was a mixed feeling for my mother that I have a recollection of even today. A feeling of love or gratitude for caring for a daughter who was sick, frail and weak during her infancey and a feeling of anger that she still could laugh at my looks and finally the name they gave me -Kaloo-substantiated the second feeling.

I have not written anything about my father till now, but what I remember about him, is that he really cared for me. Though I feel that, looking back at him today, I find myself again filled with mixed feelings for him as well. He always addressed me as Saroj Singh. By adding Singh instad of the official version of "Kumai" he made me feel like a man. Was it his frustration at having sired another daughter when he waited for a son? But thankgod all these questions never raised their poisonous head during my childhood and I really loved him for making me what I am today.

I find that during early childhood, I developed a tough exterior as compared to my elder sisterwho was the apple of everyone's eye whereas I was a son to my fahter that he really wanted to have. This tough exterior hid inside a weak little girl who was scared of her fraility, her looks and her weakness as a girl.

See how useful this self analysis has been as I have been able to find some answer to my persona that has started troubling me at this age when I am 49. Even today behind the so called striong womabn resides a young girl, still unsure of herself. When my colleagues comment upon me that I am the only woman employee who has the guts to take abny challenge and question the wrongs of the power that be, I realise that it is the tough exterior of SAROJ SINGH--a masculine persona --at work. But is it the real ME?????