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?????