Out of your shells please..........

"What immigrants feel immediately is isolation."

- Cecilia Johnson

Last week I had attended an event on women in leadership roles. It was a gratifying evening where I got to meet several interesting and successful women. It is not everyday you come across a 33 year old CEO of a hospital in person detailing her inspirational success story or get to meet women making their headway in politics and in the local councils. As a panel member in a leadership discussion forum, I also got to practice my public speaking skills while conveying my two cents worth on leadership. Though not at my best owing to a dip in my body temperature leaving me shivering and with chattering teeth ( I rather blame it on the air-conditioning vent right above me and not my nerves), my five minutes of the limelight still helped me break the ice with most women in the room and I happened to make some great acquaintances that night.

Once the room was filled, I surveyed the members gathered there and felt a slight disappointment in seeing very few non-Caucasian women in the gathering. In fact there were just a handful of Aboriginal Australian women and only one other Asian women in the crowd. This is a community with a growing migrant population and yet there were hardly any non-Caucasian women in an event representative of budding/recognised female leaders. Well, once the initial surprise died down, my thoughts, though spinning in circles first, later chalked this (in)significant absence to certain prevalent factors.

I tried to recall the initial days after I had migrated to Australia. On day three after landing, I visited Byron Bay, a beautiful beach in New South Wales. Perhaps not the right way to get acquainted with a new country and new culture :) I was the most overdressed person on the beach, talk about culture shock !!! I remember being a shy, frightened, young woman who was intimidated by most things around me - electric trains with automatic doors, ATM cards, getting on public transport, picking up the phone, the Aussie accent..... and so the list continued :) But yet that day, I stood before a gathering of 100 women and still remembered to breathe. I have come a long way but the journey has been an arduous one, despite being memorable at times.

Walking down the memory lane, I realised that before most migrant women can dream of leadership roles, there are some hurdles or rather social barriers one needs to cross. As a first step these women need to be accepted as an equal at the workplace or within the community. In most cases, I have been quite lucky in that aspect. I have had wonderful friends who have welcomed me with open arms despite my ethnicity and foreignness. However I have noticed in certain instances that the first impression that people have of me before I open my mouth is that perhaps I am not capable of stringing words together to form a coherent sentence. Stereotyping, labelling, marginalisation is inherent in any community/workplace, but I believe this is more out of misunderstanding and unawareness than of racism or discrimination. Most migrants irrespective of gender face this issue, with the women perhaps getting a more raw deal given that they take their own time to settle down in a new country.

I have to say from personal experience, life is not easy for migrants in a new country, especially for women. You are not only uprooted from your comfort zone but in most cases you are placed into an entirely new culture. The dislocation - the swinging to and fro between two cultures creates a lot of havoc and chaos. Life becomes a series of compromises and adjustments, with women losing their identities in most cases. The people or social skills that had worked for these women back in their own country perhaps no longer work in the new settings. As a result these women retract into their shells, diffidence becoming a major barrier.

Another common issue that I have noticed among most migrants - I am not entirely sure if this applies to women as well, is that they stick together without assimilating into the mainstream community or into the workplace , creating small ethnic "pockets". Even though this provides a temporary solace for them wherein they are familiar and comfortable with the world that they create, in the long run, it isolates and alienates them.

There is no quick fix for these issues – it takes a lot of awareness, learning and understanding from both sides of the fence. Something else that I would advocate is empathy from both sides. Migrant women need to understand their very strangeness, foreignness can be intimidating to others – can pose issues as people are not aware of how to approach them or include them; they have to learn to integrate themselves into the workplace and at the same time not lose their identity. It is not easy as it sounds as most of us tend to seek validation through other people's eyes - it is easy to lose perspective of your own worth.

I have been extremely lucky in meeting some lovely women in this small community who have been very welcoming and extremely gracious in putting several opportunities my way in helping me integrate into the community and move towards leadership roles. I sincerely hope other migrant women in the community receive the same kind of support to bring them out of their protective shells, as these shells merely turn into hindering barriers in the long run.

I am totally confident that the results will be amazing – the richness that migrant women can bring into the society when given a chance to blossom is totally mind-blowing:) Won't you agree with me??

When matrimony ends in acrimony........

“All marriages are happy. It's the living together afterward that causes all the trouble.”

-Raymond Hull

If Life is a box of chocolates, I would like to know what marriage is. Perhaps this is the candy with the most eye-catching wrapping, HOWEVER, it comes with a disclaimer "TASTE AT YOUR PERIL". But (un)fortunately for us, most of us are not in the habit of reading the small print :) Coincidentally, this post comes just within days of my wedding anniversary. I swear it has nothing to do with the wry comment from a friend at work "you get less sentence for murder" when he heard the number of years that I had been married or the "deer in headlights" look I get to see in my poor hubby's eyes lately.

But seriously, this post was triggered by a conversation that I happened to overhear last week. I was placed in a position where I could not walk away but what I heard made me ruminate a lot about relationships and especially marriage. I gathered that the words were from someone who is in the throes of a marriage breakdown or perhaps experiencing the aftermath of it. Despite the words uttered in a casual tone, the hurt and pain that seeped through them were quite obvious even to a stranger....I was even able to discern the disbelief that embodied her words as if she was making a silent plea "how could this be happening to me"?

Sacrifices are made at the altar and sometimes it is true of the marriage altar too. Who knows what dreams are being compromised but yet when two individuals partake in a lifetime commitment, neither of them enter into it, expecting the relationship to be doomed or the bonds to break. But eventually as invasive weeds creep into an untended garden, some of these alliances come apart at the seams. What starts as mere annoyance or mild irritation mutates overnight into a sundering breach of relations and very soon there is a wide chasm that leaves the couple adrift in the matrimonial sea of differences. When I see this matrimonial rupture, instead of the much anticipated rapture that the couple must have dreamt of at the altar, it definitely makes you ponder of the brevity or perhaps the fragility of relationships.

For those blessed enough to stand within the sheltered confines of blissful matrimony or harmonious relationships, it is not easy to comprehend the vitriol and bitterness that the estranged partners spew at one another or the traumatic, acrimonious divorces that they undergo(or get subjected to). It only gets messier where kids are involved, especially when one of the parents starts treating them as mere transferable assets or at times as financial liabilities given that the relationship has soured beyond repair with the ex-spouse/mate. There is no more room for the shared past, as one friend puts it rather bluntly, no nostalgia for the spectral ghosts from the past as the people in the relationship have outgrown their need for each other.

Perhaps there is some comfort when the couple mutually separate despite the bitterness of the situation; however there are cases when the separation is forced upon one of the partners and in addition to the shock and grief one experiences at the split, the person is also subjected to the growing apathy from the other end. I am sure Dr. Kotarac would have been happier with her name in the papers for anything other than being found very dead and decomposing in her "on again, off again" lover's chimney. How can people put their ex-partners/spouses in such demeaning and mortifyingly (literally in this case) humiliating situations? It makes you seriously wonder how do they get to a stage where one no longer awards the other the commonplace courtesy that one bestows on a stranger.

This is what my gripe is about - how do people easily forget the memories they have shared, how do they let such animosity and hatred blind their eyes, calcify their heart and turn against each other? I am told that years of anger, resentment, hurting, disappointment and such negative feelings can chip away the foundation rock of a relationship and then there is nothing left to anchor the unmoored subjects who end up as human flotsum in the sea of humanity.

Well, I have spoken of the ones who vent their anger one way or the other and break free of their yoke when the marriage sours - however I have seen cultures where partners put up with their incompatible spouses and live their life either in denial or in total acceptance of their situation for the sake of their kids and perhaps the society as well. It is sad to see such lives drifting by - however the stoicism that they portray as they endure their roller-coaster ride is truly admirable.

I am definitely not the person to talk of successful relationships but I have been blessed with people around me who have the grace and fortitude to accept me as the person I am. But yet this post is a harsh reminder of what might go wrong in a relationship if it is not nurtured properly.

Dedicated to my husband - the only constant in a life full of variables :)

Last night I dreamt of.....

"I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams."
- W B Yeats

Not Manderley for sure, I will leave that to Mrs. De Winter :)

I had gone to the movies on Sunday with a friend of mine. Never a big fan of DiCaprio even while the Titanic was afloat, I still wanted to catch "Inception" at the cinemas. Despite a terrible cold and a nagging headache, I was quite keyed up the whole day awaiting the "me" time.

However, having long since departed from my days of watching Bollywood movies, nothing had prepared me for the looooong 2 1/2 hours of this over-hyped and much awaited movie. I was quite disappointed with the movie and at times, my patience was running quite low that I was quite provoked to give the much needed kick the cast needed to get out of their maze of dreams. Of course, this is the kind of movie that would either be critically acclaimed as a masterpiece or considered to be a downright disappointment. Sadly, despite the stellar cast (I do luv the Juno kid) and visibly stunning special effects, the movie did not do much for me........it did get awfully boring towards the end and I wished I had a remote so I could get to the part where the credits start rolling :) In the end when we stepped out of the cinema-hall in a stupor with our grey-cells almost fried, we too needed a totem to remind us if we were in reality or still in a dream.

However I digress, my post is not about the movie itself, but just the concept of dreams. I am one of those people who does not have a restful sleep. Given my restless nature or a disposition easily reactive to stimuli, I have very vivid and colourful dreams which would more likely fit the label of nightmares than actual dreams. Despite having seen 3 1/2 decades, I totally freak out on sleeping on my own. My family and close circle of friends are well aware of my nocturnal episodes. I had a trying time especially when I was away on my own......I used to try everything suggested to ward off bad dreams.......rosary, pair of scissors, a copy of the shroud of Turin, even sleeping with the light on. Sadly nothing helped. I used to wake up in shivers or keening and sometimes suffering from bad episodes of sleep paralysis......occasionally my dreams have served me as premonitions of bad tidings as well. In the end I reverted my sleep cycle turning nights into days and catching up with my much needed sleep during the day.

So technically, I should be afraid of dreams by now !!! No, this is where "Inception" despite not being warmly received by me, struck a chord in me. What are we without our dreams? Why does reality pale in significance beside our dreams? Are dreams merely the incessant and meaningless chatter of our subconscious and if so, why do we still long for the faraway world of dreams?

Imagine stuck in a harsh reality with no exit signs highlighting your way out !!! What if the monotony of life painted in shades of black or sombre grey leaches the breath out of you and all you have within you is your capacity to dream. Would not the world of dreams then become the sanctuary offering total refuge, the only oasis of solace and comfort in the arid desert of existence? Perhaps the parched soul takes its sip of life-giving water to continue on its meaningless journey!!! Perhaps this is the parallel world where flimsy and broken castles of reality morphs into sturdy structures, where forgotten faces from the past are thrown into sharp relief, where broken relationships are mended anew without traces of fracture, where perfidy is forgiven with grace and compassion, where ablutions are conceded without judgement, where broken souls become whole, where utopia is the natural state..........maybe reality in this dimension is nothing but a bad dream :) For those living other people's dreams, this world becomes the only place to live their own dreams. Once the dream is over and you wake up blinded by the rays of harsh reality, the only thing that keeps you going, is your hope that someday your dreams might become your reality.

However I rush in to put a disclaimer ( read the small print folks), this post does not sanction any rights to you to throw away your reality in a haze of dreams :) Guess it is time I cut short my rambling discourse and hasten to the world of dreams :)

Two to tango....

"Ah, but let her cover the mark as she will, the pang of it will be always in her heart."

~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

As a kid growing up in India, I used to come across several stray dogs in the neighbourhood. Most of these dogs, emaciated and bodies covered with sores used to incite feelings of abhorrence and disgust in people who came across them. Paranoia of rabid dogs usually induced people, especially kids in the neighbourhood to chase these unfortunate animals out of the area mainly by throwing stones at them. Sometimes when the stones found their target, you would hear the pitiful cries of the animal while it scurried away, badly limping. The squeals which you would expect to die would later be picked up octaves higher when some other kid would direct his meanness on the ill-fated dog in the neighbouring streets.

Lately reading about the Iranian woman Ashtiani in the news, condemned to a stoning sentence for adultery, I am vividly recollecting these stoning episodes of dogs from my childhood days. It is sad enough to witness such deeds against stray animals, but likening a human to a mere animal and subjecting him/her to such draconian penal codes, it leaves you wondering if humanity is really prevalent in these days. What use is morality when you kill the very seeds of compassion and empathy in a society?

I am struggling to understand the macabre connection of stones and adultery in most cultures. Yes everybody is fully aware of the punishment for adultery in both the Old and New Testament of the Bible, but did not the Lord Himself condemn this barbarous act? In the Indian myths, we have the story of an adulterous woman turned into a stone by the curse of her husband? Atleast, the Indian race given their gentle disposition and less inclination towards violence, gave the woman a deliverance from her ordeal than an actual punishment - in any case here the woman is not subjected to judgement or ostracism or even traumatic experiences unlike her modern day counterparts.

As much as I would like to write about the grave injustice of the harrowing ordeal this woman and few other females languishing in Iranian prisons are undergoing, I can truly see the futility of my words. The international intervention and scrutiny this case has received has still not seen the liberation of this woman. Nor am I going to rally my sagging spirits and cast my stones against the Sharia Law especially in the holy month of Ramadan. Besides not fully equipped with the knowledge of the Islamic faith and principles, I would merely be seen as someone baying at the full moon. Neither am I going to empathize with these women who are very unfortunate in living in the wrong society and in the wrong culture nor condemn their folly when they ought to have been fully aware of the consequences of their actions living in a non-secular country.

But my curiosity is about the men involved in these acts - where are they in the picture? Why is the media silent about these men? Are they not worth mentioning because they have been acquitted of their guilt or they never were found to be guilty in the first place? Where are the men to catch the "fallen" women as the society labels them? Why does it take two to tango but one to burn at the stakes - in this case the women who are stoned? The reply, my dear genteel folks, even though stoning is not a gendered punishment, usually the men are allowed to get away with adultery given that polygamy is never frowned upon in the Islamic states.

What words of comfort can one offer these women, who perhaps driven by inexplicable needs have chosen to break the rules of their marriage but are now left to languish and wallow on their own in the aftermath of their passion - bereft even of the solace of the ones they sought earlier? How pitiable is their fate if they are discarded and thrown away even by the very men they chose to violate the sanctity of their marriage for? These women, left alone to face public scrutiny and ostracism and subjected to harsh judgement in the eyes of their loved ones -- have they not already died a little - what more are the courts going to achieve by flogging or stoning a lifeless corpse?

Alas, the saga of the Scarlet Letter repeats again........

Two minutes please.....

"The BEST part of waking up? Hitting the snooze button and going back to sleep."

- Anon

- It is 6.45, are you not getting up?

- Mmmm, 2 more minutes.....

- It is 7.00 !!! It is your turn to go early to work, remember !!!

- Yeah, yeah I do........just 2 more minutes please....

- It is getting late, you don't want to be late....

- I know, I know........I am getting up....soon...

This is how my mornings begin, with almost an identical conversation every single day........well and truly I can never boast of being a morning person.

I gather myself groggily from bed and with all the longing a mother has for her newborn, I turn back and give a yearning look at my still warm bed. I envy the slumbering family, their few extra minutes of sleep while I trudge slowly towards my shower. The cold manages to seep through, despite my heavy layers and I shudder at the prospect of getting ready for work. I am tempted to get back into the bed and snuggle under the covers but work beckons.

Even as a child, waking up early used to be the bane of my existence. My dad was fond of repeating the well-worn phrase "The early bird catches the worm". I ended up pitying the worm for waking up early and getting caught but yeah try telling my dad that........as a result, I used to bid a tearful farewell to my beauty sleep every morning and fervently attempted to master the art of sleeping with my eyes open. The moment he stepped away from the scene, I used to sneak back into my bed and slip into an uneasy but nevertheless welcome slumber......my ears sensitively attuned to the sound of the bathroom latch opening, an indication that my post at the study table has to be resumed. Passing years have not made much of a difference......I now sleep with my ears tuned to the alarm tone on my mobile. What can I say, I am totally powerless under the mighty spell of sleep incarnate, Somnus :)

I have come across people who not only have an in-built alarm system but are totally immune to the captivating charms of the snooze button. The concept of a sleep-in on a cold wintry morning under a warm blanket is totally alien to them. Come rain or shine, they are up at the said hour every single day. To these friends, I can only say that they are missing out on something so delectable an experience :) Despite the heavy pounding the snooze button receives every morning at my hands, we are best buddies and it is only fair I elucidate the nature of the tenacious hold the button has on me.

On a deeper and somber note, sometimes I wonder if I am hitting the snooze button on my life too. Am I afraid to step out of my comfort zone..... am I wary of tilting the fragile status quo in my life and embracing change? At the crossroads of life, am I taking refuge in the familiarity of the past, putting away major decisions that I ought to take rather than face the dark unknowns of the future? I am reluctant to find the answers for my question or facing a truth that has been staring in my face too long.......perhaps I ought to put a snooze on this question as well :)

The hot shower wipes away the remants of sleep from my eyelids and puts a spring back into my step. I now proceed to wake up the kids and well no surprise, I hear my daughter giving me "the two minutes" routine as well. Ha ha, there is no escape from my slumber genes, is there? I give her a warm hug, happy to have spawned another "snooze" addict into this world and proceed to wake her up gently to face a new day outside the barricades of sleep.

My latest affliction....

"We always hold hands. If I let go, she shops."
-- Henny Youngman

I do not remember when exactly the symptoms crept on me but sure the diagnosis caught me unawares. On hearing my latest affliction, I did run the full gamut of the emotions as postulated by Kubler-Ross : denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance. I lasted a bit longer in the denial phase arguing that the symptoms were perhaps temporary in nature and would pass soon. But little did I know then it was a condition to stay.

The medical term for my condition would be "sale-philia".......more colloquially, the lingo in use would be "sale-fever". Increased palpitations, feverish gleam almost bordering on manic proportions, at times sale induced catatonia are few of the symptoms that the placard "sales" in retail shops induce in me. However I have heard of people affected more severely and in some cases the behaviour of the crowd that throng a sales can become unpredictable, sometimes inciting mob frenzy as well.

Despite its roots shared with its more severe sibling condition "shopaholic syndrome" aka "retail therapy syndrome", I was relieved to hear that my condition is less grave and is sometimes seasonal. The medical team is still baffled as to whether this condition could be genetic, but apparently it looks like the case atleast with my mom and I. However the experts in the profession gravely state that despite its non malignant nature, sale-fever is widespread in occurrence, affecting both gender but mostly women regardless of age, background and financial status.

I also learnt that this condition, though disabling the rationale and sensible section of the brain temporarily throwing the victim into a sale-induced stupor, it also, in some cases, enhances the grey cells in some women to learn the other language equivalent of the word "sales". Sadly, I can corroborate with this fact, as during my 5 months stay in Italy, one of the few words that I managed to learn was "saldi"......of course one would know what it stands for when reading this post. Likewise my mom, despite her staunch refusal in learning the Queen's language, can, easily and correctly without anybody's help, pick out the word "sales" with her rather sharply tuned retail antennae.

Well, as with major afflictions, this life-style threatening condition also has its support groups. Usually victims gather at these meetings with full of remorse over their latest forays into bargain sales but not before proudly displaying their acquisitions still complete with their tags displaying their discounted prices. Despite the numerous vows and painful reminders of the long list of credit card expenses blacklisting their name, most of us are repeat offenders still struggling to break out of this condition. Meanwhile not just the spouses complain, but even our closets do trying to contain all our purchases.

PS: This post was written in remorse as a self-flagellation act after yet again spending (3 times just this week alone and it is not even mid-week yet) my hard earned lentil sorting money on stuff that I most definitely do not need. Er, having said this, I still have a few sales to check out the remaining week.

The hues of my life....

"Life is like a rainbow.....you need both the sun and rain to make its colours appear."

- Anon

It was a cold and dismal day, the continuous rain making it even worse. Days like this remind me of our judicious (??) decision to move interstate where the Victorian weather is as finicky and unpredictable as my moods. After a long day at work, especially being on my feet and the monotony of the work hardly offering any respite to my unwelcome train of thoughts, I was glad to be out of the workplace. Thankful that the rain had finally eased, I get into my car hastily turning on the car-heater on full blast. As I drive past the gates, still struggling to shed off my gloomy thoughts, I look up at the sky to see the most beautiful sight. Rainbows are still capable of producing that wonderful jolt in my system and this particular one, a huge complete semicircle of vibrant hues was a top contender for the most perfect one I had seen in years.

Almost close to breaking the speed limits, I rush to pick up Mugil hoping that the rainbow would last till he gets to see it as well. Perhaps something to cheer him up while he misses his sister who is away spending her school holidays with her cousins. I pick him up and drive nearby to an open field and park the car and show him the plethora of colours in its resplendent glory. I watch him, at a loss for his usual babble, awe-struck at the beauty and we both spend a few minutes of silence while the liquid sunshine bathes us with its feeble setting rays.

Inevitably, as if I could already foresee what his next words would be, he asks if we can climb the rainbow and see what is beyond it. Of course, the child within me rushes to answer him with the fairy tale of the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. But I bite down the garrulous flow that threatens to spill out of me and wonder how to explain the phenomenon of rainbows in simple words to a kid who strives so hard to be on equal footing with his sibling despite their differences in age towards understanding the mysteries of science and nature.

At around the same time my mind wanders to the biblical explanation of the rainbow. It symbolises the Lord's promise to mankind and a sign of the covenant that God would never flood the earth again. I let my imagination run wild and can almost visualise pictures of Noah's ark tossed by the tempests of the flood and in the end, the majestic rainbow, bringing promises of new land and new life. How many of us wait for one such rainbow to materialise in our own lives - with no signs of the storms abating, left adrift in a rudderless raft tossed by the tempests of life, with no shores materialising on the horizon, perhaps we too wait for one such divine sign to be the harbinger of glad tidings and hope.

With all these thoughts clashing within me, I proceed, rather contritely to give a watered down version of dispersion and refraction from the rudimentary physics lessons of ages ago. I watch him trying to understand my words as I strip the magic of the rainbow and present it to him without any trimmings. As he tries to pronounce "refraction", I hear the uncorrected lisp, a harsh reminder of the time I had been away from him. He giggles at his own attempts, his tiny face, a miniature version of my own unflattering features transformed with that heartwarming smile of his - the sight sure did warm the cockles of my heart. Was I searching for my own rainbow when I had the pot of gold beside me the whole time??

The glint of his smile, my own unshed tears.......perhaps Mugil and I have created our own rainbow, who knows.......the glimmer of a faint hope and smile touches me while I try to take strength from the hues of my life !!!!