Different SHADES of personalities

Not all human beings are same, they have different traits and personalities. We can say that they have their own respective shades. Some have lighter shades and some have darker shades.

This story revolves around the childhood of my aunt when as a little girl she realised that in this world there are different variations of human personalities.

In 1944 my grandfather had to shift to Dhakuwakhana ( a place in the lakhimpur district of Assam, India) from Dibrugarh (it's a district of Assam as well).

The neighborhood was mostly inhabited by the colleagues of my grandpa. All of them were very friendly and welcoming. Therefore inspite of being a completely unknown place, it took no time for them to become familiar with the new environment.

My aunt and uncle had made a lot of friends. All the children used to play together every evening and that was the favourite time of my aunt's day.

On one such evening she saw a group of fisher women carrying jakoi ( it's an Assamese fish catching device which is made of bamboo strips) and khaloi ( it is a pot like structure made with bamboo strips which is used to keep the fishes on a temporary basis after catching the fishes).

My aunt had never seen such type of things in her life before, so out of excitement and curiosity to see and find out what those things were, she went near them.

Those fisher women were very kind and loving. They showed my aunt their fishing equipments, the fishes that they caught and they even asked her to bring a bowl in order to give her some fishes as a gesture of love.

From that day in the entire period of their stay in Dhakuwakhana whenever my aunt used to see those fisher women, they used to greet her and give her some of their fishes.

After staying for five years in Dhakuwakhana they shifted to Dhing (this is a place in Nagaon district of Assam, India)

One day when my aunt was playing in the front yard of their house in Dhing, she again saw some fisher women, dressed the same way, carrying the same fishing equipments. But this time when she went to greet them they asked her whether she want some fishes and when my aunt got a bowl from inside like she always used to do, the fisher women laughed and mocked her saying you are so foolish to think that we will give you fishes free of cost. They made fun of her and left.

My aunt got hurt, she was so confused about what had happened because as a little girl she thought that all fisher women are alike as they  have the same profession and dresses the same way. She came back home crying, went straight to her mother i.e my grandma and told her everything about that incident.

Then grandma made her understand that it's not necessary that people who do the same profession, dresses the same way, would behave the same way. We cannot judge anybody by their appearance or what they do. Everybody have a different thought process. And that there is nothing to feel bad about as every people that we meet in our life teaches us a different lesson.

And that day as a eight year old girl she got to know that every people have their own respective shades.

The First Flood

Another chapter from my aunt's childhood

Every year many villages of Assam, India have to face the havoc caused by flood. It kills scores of people and leaves several hundred homeless.

It was somewhere in the monsoon of 1944 when my aunt was only 3 years old, grandpa was posted in Dhakuwakhana ( it's a place in the Lakhimpur of Assam)

I sometimes wonder how my aunt remembers everything so vividly as if things are happening in front of her eyes.

One day early in the morning she woke up by a few sharp knocks at the front door. Grandpa opened the door and to his amazement found the headmaster of the local school standing there along  with two students. They were in a hurry, there was tension rit large on their face and as they came running they were gasping for breath.

The headmaster told grandpa that river Brahmaputra was rushing so fiercely in high speed that they could even hear the sound of it. He alerted them of flood and asked grandpa to send grandma, aunt and uncle( elder brother of my aunt and my father) with him, so that he can take them to a safer place i.e the school building which was situated at a bit higher place. And told grandpa to pack every necessary household things and place it somewhere on a safe place with the help of the two students.

Accordingly grandma, aunt and uncle left with him. Grandpa stayed back for a while and with the help of his two students he stacked all the beds and tables one above the other, put all the necessary things above it, locked the house and finally he along with his two students left for the school building.

When they finally reached the school building, they saw that a number of families of my grandpa's colleagues have also took shelter there.

This was the first experience of flood in her life. But my aunt was too young to understand the consequences of flood at that time, instead she was very happy to meet the other children of her age and in no time she made a lots of friends and they were running and playing everywhere.

The flood waters inundated almost whole of Dhokuwakhana, there was flood water all around the school. On the second day of their stay my aunt and my uncle decided to go and have a close look at the flood water and see how does it look like.

As decided they went to the corner of the verandah and started looking at the water, suddenly  something that was floating on the water caught the attention of her eyes, it was very surprising and at the same time confusing for her because what she thought she saw was a number of seaseme seeds laddoo ( indian dessert that looks like small black ball) floating in the water. Out of amazement she asked her elder brother i.e my uncle that why somebody threw those laddoos in the water and can they catch and eat them.

My uncle was a very intelligent little boy and he had a habit of reading books and newspapers from a very tender age. Although he was a six years old boy at that time he knew what exactly those black balls were.

So he explained to her that those black balls were not seaseme seeds laddoo but ants rolled up into balls. And he further explained to her that ants can sense the coming floods and they used to form these ball like structure in order to float in the water and be safe. This is their survival strategy. Ants always do teamwork in an organised and disciplined way.

It made her wonder that how fascinating it is that even such small creatures observe unity and discipline so sincerely.

The floods came and went but she got the lesson of discipline unity and power of organization for the rest of her life.

This is indeed very surprising that how sometimes some important lessons of life can be learnt from such small creatures of earth.

Being beautiful

Beauty can be anything :- a face, a thought, a place or any other object that makes us feel good or can give us immense pleasure.

What is beautiful to me may not be beautiful to others hence we can say that it is us who defines what is beautiful and what is not.

Each and every little thing in this world is beautiful. It depends on how we see it.

Now, the question is which one is more important physical beauty or inner beauty?

Although physical beauty is just an illusion or a mirage which hampers us to see the inner beauty, we cannot deny that both physical and inner beauty is important because our personality is a combination of both.

There are some factors in all of us which we do not like, it may be our height, the colour of our skin, features of our face etc. We will have to understand that we can not change these things as we do not have control over them.
We should learn to accept and love the way we are because if we feel beautiful from inside it will reflect in our eyes and hence we will look beautiful.

So far as eternity is concerned inner beauty and truth are identical. So inner beauty is more important as every thing which is physically beautiful will eventually come to an end. Physical beauty is ephemeral.

Down the memory lane

When I remember my childhood I can think of so many happy memories. One such memory which always will be close to my heart is  listening to the childhood stories of my dearest aunt who is the eldest sister of my father.

So I thought of sharing one of my favorite story of her childhood.

This story dates back to somewhere in the winter of 1948. She was 8 years old at that time, my grandpa was a teacher at a school and  just got transferred to Dhing (it's a place  in Nagaon district of Assam India).

One evening grandpa went out to the market to get some groceries and vegetables. In those days shops were few and far between. The nearest shop  was about half a kilometre away from their house for which they had to cross a field and then had to reach the shop by a small gravel road.

 That day he took a total money of 8 ana consisting of 1 ana 2 ana and 4 ana coins (6 paisa was equal to 1 ana And 16 ana was equal to 1 rupee. The shopping that could be done with 8 ana is equal to the quantity  of shopping that we can do today with approximately Rs 1000).

After sometime he came back home empty handed. He was sad, tensed and worried and was walking briskly from one corner of the verandah to the other. Seeing him like that my grandma asked him what happened. He told her that there was a hole in the pocket of his kurta and he lost all of the money that he took with him. And hence he could not do the shopping. He searched the money all the way back home everywhere but it was not found anywhere.

My aunt was listening to this whole conversation. She was a little girl with a great wisdom. At that young age she knew the value of heard earned money and could not afford to see her parents in tension.

She is a firm believer of God. For her God is nothing but a constant integrated awareness. Grandma used to tell her that no matter what if we pray to God with full devotion, he will always come for rescue at the difficult times.

The whole night she constantly prayed to God that if the coins had fallen in the way to the shop please keep it safe and make it sure that I will find it out. And she planned to wake up as early as possible the next day and to go out and search the coins. She was sure that it will be there somewhere.

As planned she woke up early in the morning, took permission of grandma to go out and she set out for her search mission. It was a foggy morning, as she was walking she was enjoying the chirping of birds, the fresh air, cool breeze and dew drops everywhere. She searched everywhere but what she got was only disapointment as she did not find the money. So she came back home.

She was a very determined, self motivated and optimistic girl with high hopes. So she went the next day and the day after that day. But she was not successful.

When she went out to fulfill the mission on the forth day, after walking a few steps on the gravel road, a pile of cow dung on the road caught the attention of her eyes, as something was sparkling very brightly from inside of that pile of cow dung.

When she went to take a close look at it she saw a dung beetle had made a crack in it and then her face got lightened up and her happiness knew no bounds because she got what she wanted, the coins were there inside of the cow dung and it sparkled because of the reflection caused by the sun rays.

Immediately she took the coins and out of happiness and excitement she ran as fast as she could.

That day her belief in God grew more stronger. She knew that it was God who helped her through out the search mission and he kept the money safe and protected by covering it with cow dung. That was the first miracle out of many miracles of her life.

JUST A THOUGHT....

Our life is a story and we are the sole author of it.

Life is so beautiful and precious but it is so sad that most of the people just don't praise it. They focus more on what they don't have rather than what they have. They don't understand that if we don't experience the bad times we will not be able to know the importance of the good times. We should learn to stay self satisfied and also learn to put ceiling in our desires. 

The biggest mistake that we make is that we focus more on what people think we are rather than focusing on what kind of person we want to be.

Life is all about making choices. We are the only person who is responsible for what we are today and this is why we should stop blaming others. 

We all have so much potentialities, we just need to recognise them and believe in our self. And always keep our hopes high. Never forget that even in darker times there are bright places we just need to find them. Learn from our failures and keep fighting until we get success.

What actually love is??

What is love according to me....

There are different types of love, love between parents and their child between sibling, friends etc. But today I will share about what I think love is between a girl and a boy.

Well,  there is no proper defination of it. Everybody has a different opinion to it.
This is because every phase of our life teaches us a different lesson and hence along with it defination of love also changes.

When we were teenagers defination of love was fun having boyfriend or girlfriend was exciting and fun. We believed in happy endings. Then our first break up happens and everything changes. We feel devastating becomes vulnerable and thus defination of love changes. Now for us love is trust, respect or may be care.

Then after moving on we think of giving love an another chance and again the 2nd and 3rd heartbreak happens and we suddenly stopped believing in love and for us love does not exist.

The most interesting thing is what you know true love happens when we have the least expections of it.

In my entire life I have wondered what is love. It was the year 2017 when I finally got to know what is love and got a defination of it to myself.

After having couple of heartbreaks I was not expecting love to find my way. It was in the year 2017 I met him we got into a relationship after talking for almost 4 months. I could not believe for the first few days that this is actually happening that I have got the perfect and the best boyfriend in the world, so much of love was there. I used to pinch myself to check if it was a dream or real.

And that was the time when I finally got my own defination of what love is :- true love is not when your heart starts beating fast, or when suddenly you start to breathe fast or when your hand and legs shakes and you become speechless. It is when you feel calm, peaceful, relaxing and happy.