When a bird comes home!!!

Every bird has to leave his nest if he has a dream to fly high.  They say, if you wish to fly high with great aspirations, it is dangerous to entangle himself to shrubs on earth with emotional force. It is an impediment to achieve what you desire.
I am at home after almost one year. It is not that long to have the feeling of stranger in your own country between your own people.
I feel so disconnected ever. I have forgotten the manner how I was so comfortable with the ideas of doing something without any logic/reasoning. I sense that every decision from wearing cloths, fashion of talking in short every simple to complicated decisions are taken with consideration of society's view on your decision. I do not respect this idea at all.  I can not modify any of my decisions just because what people will think. This is key factor which makes me different from all routine life here.
I figured some more reasons for my detached feeling with my own people.  Absence in their very important anecdotes of life, it may be marriage, heartbreaks, or getting new job. I am absent to share the feeling which creates distance.  Whatsapp and Facebook, are for virtual presence. Having a person in front of you, and on internet, are very different things. A guy will never choose phony over banging in real.
I guess, I must be a bizarre for some of them, as I have broken the conventional frame of life [which is roughly getting a job in MNC/any industry, getting married with guy chosen by family or by you then never ending struggle for making everyone happy, buying an apartment, a car then children's education and so on...]. I don't need an house bigger than one hall and kitchen. If transportation is good enough, I don't need a car. I can not see myself in shining furniture or mirror floor of house. Real pleasure is in radio that too an old one, than 50 inches 3D TV screen. It is more beautiful when books are kept instead of expensive crystal vase. I don't wan to get married till I feel I met the right one. I can't settle just because my biological clock is ticking. I want to travel and never settle in one city rather in one country. EXPLORE.... I felt, my idea of living life are exactly opposite of what 'society' assumes normal. Hence, it is obvious that this 'society' will try to steer me to fit in their 'normal' way, and in case I refuse, it is easy to exclude atypical amateur and keep their 'normal' way safe.
Sometimes, I get crazy ideas like if I am not happy with a job after PhD, i can go to some island and sell flowers there  or work in coffee shop, save money and travel again.
For me, quagmire is where I real belong from? This is not my place anymore, neither France can be my motherland.
A woman, in search of her country ... or maybe a woman without land...

Inspiration humiliates saudade !!!

That day, sitting by river side, a nice breeze, the cold water curling around my feet, I was listening to the song of dancing water with the symphony of dropping leaves from huge trees. Air struggling to invade my smooth hair and eyes looking at clear blue sky with hope and compassion. What an evening it was!!!

I heard foot steps ..just from behind the tree.. That grabbed my attention ... And the eyes started looking to the direction of sound... a figure wearing bright prince silk , with curly hair , green eyes and proud chest... walked towards me.  That eagle from his shoulder stepped down gently to my arm... He looked at me .... I saw an ocean.. a chaos... There was calmness like at the middle of sea... But there was strong high tides at the corner...  Drowning in those eyes, felt like finally a river met to the destined ocean... 

 

He offered his strong palms to me. I felt the gentle firmness in his hold. We were close... Now air was struggling again to find a way between us... His skin was all over around me.. That touch offered so much... Care and a NEED of care. Now I could listen his tunes of breathing... His exhale created new genre of music.. I always wanted to hear... It was beautiful ! Wind got little stronger...my long dress in the direction of wind... Finally I was having wings ..felt so strong and important... 

When his lips touched mine... Every element from the nature celebrated that first kiss with us.. Every sound wave.. Every colour and every creature.. 

 

And then I opened my eyes... The eagle flew away.. It went so far I barely could see him.. I looked back to those eyes again... It started stepping away from me... I saw his strong figure fading away.. He was fading so fast... I couldn't even ask who was he.. He kept walking away, looking towards me... After he just disappeared..  Like he never existed.. Like nothing happened ... 

 

I still have traces of his skin on my skin... His fragrance around my neck.. I still hear music of his breath..  

 

I saw wind became clam, songs from birds, songs from water... ceased... Evening was walking towards darkness... And my dress surrounded me again... I was standing still ... 

 

I closed my eyes.. Felt like a pin in heart.. And there ... I heard a sound saying  ... "Wait a little... It will be shiny morning soon with the same breeze, with same symphony " ... !!! 

Home

I told him, 'I am incredibly happy to return to Nancy' and then he asked 'was it so bad?'. That question stuck in my head, ' was that really bad?' That was the place I was born and lived for 24 years. And I wanted to unwind everything I experienced to conclude what was the exact reason that I found hard to get deep sleep with an assistance of sleeping pills magic.
As I am living away from my parents for so long, there was an oblivious expectation that they will be interested in my life , what I eat, what I like and dislike, who and how are my friends etc..But I had bad initial signal already as they were very passive about my arrival, and they didn't seem to be bothered about receiving me at airport. Anyways, I arrived to the hometown after exhausting journey of almost 40 hours. I found incredibly hard to talk with my own parents, I tried hundreds of topics as politics, weather, cinema, music , cultural differences between west and east, my life in France... my brain got so busy just to look for topics and have a common ground between me and my own parents. After long trail and failure, I found their world encapsulates the elements which deals wit my brother's life and mandate things, I had to stick with only these area, where I had almost nothing to speak. Overall, slight disappointment and having feeling of "disconnected" from my parents made my India visit bit sad.
The day of big festival was near. We, family of five got busy in preparations. The idea of celebrating a festival by working harder than normal day was not acceptable to me, but your opinion hardly matters. And that was the one of the reason to feel as foreigner in own country. People do things because they have been doing the same for generations without asking questions. That includes eating habits, being religious, institution of marriage, rituals like bhaubeej, javaipan, dressing, gestures, hospitality rules and so on.. etc... I disagree with number of things as I don't find any logic behind those things, e.g. Man never works in kitchen or rarely helps in house work, if you have guests at home all men eat first while woman cooking inside for whole population, age bar for marriage, if you are not qualified as married, you won't be respected as married woman which is irrelevant to intellectual attribute of the respective woman, taboo about topics such as sex, alcohol, menstruation, woman's inner wears and even talking to an unknown woman. Thus there is another reason of my disappointment, a woman is a commodity or a secondary in society structure.
Last but not the least reason is pretension. People came to visit me or sometimes I went to visit some of the relatives. Firstly, I don't understand why I am supposed to go to someone's place if they don't know anything about my life or vice versa. When I asked this question, the response I got was 'because either we share DNA or they are richer than us'. Obliviously, it wasn't satisfying answer. Anyways, when you visit people you barely know (or even they know you, they don't care much about your life except as an entertainment/gossip), they cover their faces with the mask written as 'kindest in the world', and as you leave the house that mask goes off screaming worst things about you. I found it hard to identify who is with mask and who is without.
Even with young people, I couldn't find anything in common, e.g topics to talk, music or even choices of movies. Their opinion about treating a woman, awareness about politics or their affiliation towards Donald Trump shocked me. We grew apart in very different directions, which don't have any intersection to find a common point. The painful thought that I lost my friends too was confirmed.
You belong to a place just because you hold that country's passport? Before, I believed that France is not my place, as my PEOPLE are back in MY country, but they are not mine anymore. It has came to just an acquaintance.
Although, I feel more free and liberated at the same time. I am not supposed to please anyone or follow any traditional regulations. I have full authority to stir my life in whichever direction I want. After, this was short saddening visit but I learned the most and felt very happy as it confirmed my FREEDOM is safe.

Cheers!

It's hard journey to obtain a doctoral degree.  Ragnar always needed Floki and Lagartha. The same way some unconscious sentences from the Gurus and loved ones kept me going!  I share the abstract representation of my motivational source.
Vicenç : Congratulations !! you really work hard!
Stefano : Let me know whenever you need my opinion.
Sabine : Are you happy today?
Meera : It’s always «we». I love you!
Hector, Joseph, Helem, Jean: You will achieve it !
Savitha and Vijay : We can not allow you to take that Stupid decision!
Joelle and Natahlie : We called you to see if you are doing OK.
Family : We will catch you if you fall!
Mihail :  Tezu !
Krishan : Hey, don’t worry because « some logical reasoning »
Saikat : Eat Shakshuka and keep Kalm !
Aniket : You are heading to the life that many people dream, back home!
Louis : You are the Elseth Tirel !

 

India in Nutshell

 

It was amazing to see the different shades of India on that table. We were 4 Indians, with some French, Canadian and South American people. They dropped a question : "how it is in India?" "How life looks like?"... Rain of opinion was tropical. I was listening: one Indian replied "It's pretty cool now, have good jobs, infrastructure and can get stable life!" And yes... "we have still have to work on freedom of expression but we have increasing population of intellectuals." Another headbrow on the table was updated with numerical data and supported the previous opinions by throwing big numbers on the table. "Drinking is quite accepted and woman are surely matters as better half in the society"  then more facts about "booming IT industry, international trades, improved life standards and the list went on. Then they turned to dark side of the moon by mentioning  "poverty, safronisation, corruption etc... " Then energy expert didn't forget to mention "how we can move to renewable energy and create more jobs and growing economy".

 

 

It was wonderful to hear the heated discussion and see their depth of curiosity and knowledge about India. I will never deny several facts mentioned by them... butI was quite disturbed to realise that we were not living in same India.

 

The aggressiveness in your experiences and opinions clearly depends on if you have "lived" that life or "read" that life.

 

(Post still in progress!)

Wrath about PSUs

I looked closely how candidates prepare for these exams. They study numerous topics from history to geography,  maths, science,politics, current affairs and so on.. They have burn themselves in this process of remembering the facts and numbers, basically store what you can and as much as you can.

 

If we closely isn't it is a memory test? But shouldn't it be more than that? Considering complex Indian  society, the officials should be able to comprehend and conquer variety  situations. So just memorising the facts and number will help to do their job?

 

The personal qualification should clearly depend on decision making abilities, how the official can handle the pressure and conspiracies, how he answers the communal chaos, what his ideology. Its is a Challenging job and the preparation of the competitive exams should structure them to handle it. Preparation process itself can be made motivating to change and progress. Isn't it time to reform these exams and make them more realistic than testing the memory capacity of the brain?

A journey !!!

I always admired a poem by Maya Angelou, "why caged bird sings.. Because it has a song to sing".  I chose to sing my song so Loud and with so much of intensity that I could see the bars around me melting down.  Now I understood, what Maya really wanted to stay. I breath freely because I had a song. It's pity that singing is such a foreign concept to many of caged hearts. It is sad to see unawareness of power of words and the power of sound. Although, it was a pretty thrilling journey. I thought  to turn the pages back, and have a glance through a time-travel. 

Being an Indian girl, coming from an ordinary middle class family, where woman in kitchen are always worried to make their recipes work so the men in house will return home. Men in the house are the captains of the ship, sometimes who are the one taking ship to the destination breaking all ice-mountains or sometimes in contrary, they are the ones escaping when ship is about to drawn. I belong to the place where woman are trained to transform themselves to a nice soft pillow, who sometimes increases the beauty of a room, or the one men can cuddle at stormy nights or sometimes they handle the heavy weight by holding man's broken leg in bed. There is a protocol for the pillow to follow, defined by social hypocrites. I see, all woman are really religious about their protocol, following every single claw without questioning. 

I was one of them,from the collection, a multi coloured pillow, trying to digest the rule book. I finished schooling and moved to bigger town to study science. I worked hard enough to secure a position in government engineering school who offered quality education In lowest fees. Although, my father is supportive, lower financial load was the reason he gave his helping hand for my education. With all odds, (crucial health hurdles and tough professors) I completed my bachelors with great enthusiasm. The hunger-fire of knowledge inside me was not calm, so I prepared for entrance exam for master's, then got good percentile which was the green card for the admission into one of the other best engineering school in  India. I elevated my bars their again by having gold medal in academics. Later, I was noticed by a greatest researcher , father of control theory and I got the opportunity to attach my name to his, in a research paper. This opened the door of recognition and resulting a doctoral position with brand name of "European Commission". And here I am !!! 

Though, this professional graph seems to be perfect, but it was always complimented by many life-time scars. Scares by my own parents when they used to fight all night and write suicide letters starting with " Dear Teju" which never ended saying " I love you ". Scare by a devil whose hands were having a pleasure with my body in a public bus when I didn't even know how to spell the word "child abuse".  Scares by breaking own heart while trying to fit it with least possible match. This professional rainbow also took a storm of "polycystic syndrome" where there was a dance of "emotional hyper sensitivity" due to hormonal imbalance. But, I assure that I won every battle with sever injuries sometimes but that's how it works I guess. 

In all this journey, I always cherish gems I received. It was in the form of my classical dance, it came in the form of my volleyball, sometimes it came in the form of first kiss and a hug by loved one. Also bag of diamond, soothing souls who are/were with me to hold my hand tight and said "fight back, darling,". There was a diamond, my professor supported me financially without giving any second thought , because of which I breathing French air now. A diamond in the form of definitive support by my friends, who cooked soup when I was sick, who shared last beer at late-night in Scottish music bars,  who filled my purse with money secretly when I was drained out, who taught me put a lipstick and walk with high heals, who listened all my childish stories and amazingly remembers them or when they say " why didn't you tell me before that you are in problem!"..  I got handful of these diamonds, who are of all age, having diversities in countries and in languages. They are the blessings I receive divided on time scale. 

This journey made me realise that, some diamonds just vanishes with time, I have to let them go. I learned to "let go". When I hear my parent's voice with a proud tone about their daughter, I learned to "forgive and love back".I also learned "to cut the strings" at the right moment when they pull me back from desire of flying high. I learned "to hope", that I will work to make world a better place and keeping my brain thirsty for knowledge, I also hope that I will meet a MAN, who admires my battles, who will remove my mask and kiss me hard. Then I can be his pillow if he loves to be my pillow cover. 

I promise , I will never give up "to hope", and wait for the day when God will whisper in my ears "it was WORTH giving you a life, my child".