Tag: Karma

Fathers Day.

My household has not celebrated any festival or special day like birthday, anniversary etc for decades. So, for the first time ever, my son Ranjan gave me a big hug for fathers day and a gift I was overwhelmed.

Two other adopted sons too called me from far away places to wish me and it was embarrassing. And to cap it all, I got this SMSfrom an adopted grand daughter: “A very happy fathers day to you! God bless! You are an amazing dad!”

Thank you Moni.

So, I decided to do something for my father too. Ranjan came to the rescue and went shopping for something that the former had been wanting for some time. My father was happy.

I did something more. I played a stay at home father and changed my father’s diaper.

Okay, it is not anything special that I did for fathers day, but I can’t help wonder if karma is all that it is cranked up to be. From all accounts from my late mother, my father never changed my diapers when I was in need of such a service. Inevitably either she or a servant did. On the other hand, I did change Ranjan’s diapers often when he was a child.

Talking about karma, a few days ago, my father, oddly enough, while I was changing his diaper lamented “What negative karmic effect is this that you have to suffer like this?” I answered that it was not his negative karma that I was suffering but mine. In fact, it was his good karma that he had me in his life to do it for him!

If I did not have such moments of inspiration, by now Ranjan would have been changing my diapers.

Things I Don’t Tell About Myself

Welcome to the Friday Loose Bloggers Consortium where Akanksha, Anu, Ashok, Conrad, Delirious, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Magpie11, Nema, Noor,Ordinary Joe, Paul,Maria the Silver Fox, Padmum , Rohit, Will knott, and I write on the same topic. Please do visit the linked blogs to get seventeen different flavours of the same topic. Today’s topic has been chosen by gaelikaa and Anu.

Phew! What a topic!!

If I don’t tell somethings about myself, how do these two ladies expect me to do so in this public forum? But having accepted the challenge, I think that perhaps it is time that I came clean about somethings about myself that I don’t talk about. Not because I am ashamed; I honestly believe that I don’t have anything to be ashamed about, but because I do not think that they are worth mentioning.

So, here I go with a list of things that are of importance to me, but of no consequence to others.

On top of the list is my spiritual quest. This is an entirely private matter and while I do share my experiences or sources of information with like minded people, I do not make a song and dance about it. If anything, I try and make a joke out of the whole exercise. I find that talking about this causes avoidable controversy and so eschew it.

I strongly believe in the theory of Karma. And that leads me to believe that there is nothing called free will.

I am peaceable by nature but under extreme provocation like any harm to my kith and kin, I am capable of extreme violence.

I love good company, good food and good music. Most people do not know this and think that I am comfortable in solitude, which too I am, eat anything on the table without a fuss, which too I do, and I love books and crossword puzzles rather than music.

I am very loyal and highly value loyalty as a characteristic trait in others.

I would love to keep a dog but have been forced not to due to my disability. If per chance a well trained and gentle dog came my way, I would gladly keep it for a pet.

I have a whole list of dislikes which I shall save for another day.

“Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.”
~ Lois McMaster Bujold

Relationships And Karma.

Our young blogger friend Ashok has an interesting post on his blog “In the words of Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade” which has prompted me to write this rather poignant post.

During my recent frequent visits to the hospital for physiotherapy, I came across a story from a doctor who used to bring his daughter for physiotherapy too. She had met with an accident while riding pillion on motorcycle and had had multiple fractures on her leg. The doctor and I got to talking to each other and this is the story that he told me.

He is a pediatrician and his wife a gynecologist. A perfect college romance followed by a perfect family life with two children. One son, killed two years ago while on a motorcycle by a drunken truck driver and the daughter currently undergoing physiotherapy who was widowed at the same time as the son and son in law were riding together on the motorcycle.

Since then, the wife had been out of sorts and had taken to spiritualism in a big way culminating in her wanting to go away to an organisation doing scial work in the South as part of the orgnisation’s missionary work. Just two months earlier, the father and the daughter finally gave her permission to go away to follow her bliss. Yes, that is the expression used by the father!

Now, the father is saddled with his practice, his temporarily handicapped daughter and running the household.

A lesser man would have broken down. Not this spirited man of about fifty, who is determined to find his own bliss seeing that his daughter is fully rehabilitated and to serve his patients with full commitment. In typical Indian fashion, he accepts his lot as his karma!

Since then, I have been thinking about this family often and the intense experiences that they have undergone in such a short time. I was talking about this with some other friends the other day when one of them chose to comment on the wife leaving the husband at such a time. He was all praise for the husband for being so understanding and letting her go. Another friend, more shall we say, worldly, quipped whether he would have let her go, had she decided to go with another man!

That is a very interesting way of looking at a broken relationship. Since that discussion, I have been thinking of possible answers to the question and find it impossible to!

Leave aside the Indian context to the story, I wonder whether this question can be answered at all in any other context as well.

A Story To Warm The Heart.

My friend Prasad from Sydney in Australia was chatting with me last night on Skype for quite some time. We had not spoken to each other for some time and there was a lot to catch up on.

While we were catching up, I espied something brown behind Prasad that looked suspiciously like a dog. I was surprised because, after the death of his pet and companion dog last year, about which I had posted,I was sure that he would not keep another pet. I asked Prasad if that was a dog and it turned out that it indeed it was. He then volunteered this touching story, which is a measure of my friend’s character as well as that of his lovely daughter Meera.

Some days ago, Prasad and Meera were driving along a major road in Sydney, when they saw a stray dog unable to cope with the traffic and being brushed by speeding cars. They decided to help the dog and maneuvered the car slowly to push the dog to the side of the road and Meera jumped out of the car and dragged the animal inside the car with her. They took the dog to the animal pound and left it there to be cared for by better hands.

After a few days Prasad went to check up on the dog’s condition when he was told that since no one was willing to adopt it, it would be put down soon. Prasad and Meera offered to adopt it and the pound arranged for all the pre adoption formalities including surgery etc, and Prasad brought the animal home a couple of weeks ago.

After bringing it home is when they discovered that there was something wrong with the dog’s vision and on taking him to the animal ophthalmologist, it was found that it had only one functioning eye and that too only with very limited vision. Since it was a genetic fault, there was nothing that could be done and so, the blind dog is now part of Prasad’s household.

I am often stumped for answers to some existential questions like, why this dog, why Prasad and why the whole sequence of events leading to its adoption by a caring family. Karma?