Thank God..no grey hair yet!!;-D

It is one of those days the idea of which changes drastically as we grow up…In the beginning I never knew what was all the fuss about…As they told later I would be crying or shitting around and rest of the people will have the cake and chit chatting around…Later on , I got the whiff of things and looked forward to the cake and sharing of candies with friends…And those teenage years I cared less about the celebrations and more about any cash that would come in…Then I found the whole things pretty boring as during college I hardly cared about it and it was just another reason to hang out with friends…And then work made the day more “corporate” with the messenger wishes and official greetings from colleagues….

Now this day coincides with the one of the happiest times of life or infact one of the proudest as I have my parents here. As much as it is an experience for them, it is a fulfillment of a dream for me…Although getting them here doesn’t in anyway suffice the hardships they have gone through and sacrifices they have made in bringing me up, I am more than happy to give something back …

As another year passes by of growing older and in my case not necessarily wiser (You know I have already reached those “wiseness” limits..;-D) I thank my parents for making me what I am…it sounds so clichéd to say that, but I guess you never can stop saying that because there is never an “enough of that” for it… I thank God for giving me so many good things in life inspite of the fact that I have done enough things in life to make you scratch your head in “godly frustrations’...Inspite of having had a very selfish relation with God where I sought his ‘consultancy’ only during those crisis times and ignored him conveniently otherwise, I must say I have got more than a fair deal from him…I thank those people who have given me reasons to smile and laugh intentionally or otherwise (there are many bloggers out here who do that to me)…It could be just anyone who can do that to us isn’t ? Maybe a little kid or a dog playing merrily in the water…I thank those who have inspired me to do something good some way or the other…There are so many people out there to whom I should express my gratitude. But I rather end this post with a few lines I first heard in ‘Frasier’. These lines from a Tennyson poem are sure an inspiration to move forward as we grow older especially when it happened to me today by an year!!

It may be that the gulfs will wash us down
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield

P.S Apologies for not responding to comments in time…I hope to get back to regular blogging next week as I ll be undergoing the transition back to the old routine of getting back to office and doing no work!! ;-D
On a positive side I have plenty of blogs to catch up which I missed over the past three weeks and I count that itself as a nice gift!!;-D

Folio....

Hamburg

This is going to be a photo blog as I am pressed for time to write a blog…My parents are here after going through a big struggle in getting the visa. We were in Paris 2 weeks ago and just back from Rome…Although I have been to both places before, it felt good to be there again as a guide this time...More stories and adventures in later posts…

Rome

Rome

Vatican

Paris

This snap was take in Autumn last year at the same place(Versailles) and see how it looked back then here..

Versailles

Sacre Coeur

Touristo Baby

Finally the the intimidating Totti and Piero asked us to leave Italia.. ;-D

'Gift' too good to resist?

Let me share an interesting anecdote about Bombay.

The Portuguese gave Bombay as dowry to the British when the King of England married a princess of Portugal in the 1600’s. Well imagine if that dowry was not given Christiano Ronaldo might have been a street football player somewhere in Andheri West!!

Jokes aside this post is not about that historical dowry but rather something that triggered while I was about to comment on this post by Anju…A rather long comment I thought I ll do post on the subject which has been intriguing me for sometime...

In olden times, from what I could logically interpret dowry was something which was legitimised in public conscience based on assumption that it is the male in the house who was the earning member and the lady had to bring in her share of expenses from her home. Probably that argument might look fine from argumentative point of view. But what if house keeping or raising kids or cooking food for the family was a paid service…It is not that easy for a housewife to take care of a big house and kids, cook fresh delicacies everyday etc. although we find that it looks so easy from a distance. And c’mon in this era where both men and women work and have to slog the entire day in offices, such arguments don’t count either!! Why do we have put a price on a groom in the first place!!The point is, marriage is not about the groom ’buying’ a bride!

I have heard several quips when asked about Dowry...’Kittiyaal pulikummo?’ or answers like ‘If they offer, I wont say NO’...and the worst answers are like ‘well...they are happy giving me…so what??’. Probably you must already have heard of the new age intelligent techniques of indirectly quoting the dowry by mentioning how much a boy with similar qualifications was offered (not demanded)...A perfectly ‘innocent’ way of asking ...isn’t?

Recently one of my friend got married to his girlfriend…Strange that it was a love marriage where a dowry was given…Although I would blame him, I somehow sympathise with him too... This guy doesn’t himself ask for or expect a dowry, but his Parents and the so called ‘relatives’ do… For his parents it’s the returns of the investment for raising him up...For his parents, it is an important price they need to tell others how much their son fetched!! For them if their daughter were married after paying a huge dowry, its legitimate to ask dowry for their son after all…Poor guy was torn between his conscience and inability to offend his parents… It’s all a sad loop!!

Then there is another story which we doesn’t hear often…the misuse of anti-dowry law…we don’t hear often because the woman are the culprits here.

It comes naturally for us men to think woman are better than us or at least more scrupulous…I mean we think we are bad and there couldn’t be anyone more worse than us! The stories of woman exploiting men by threatening with anti-dowry suits is appalling …Men can be arrested just on the basis of filing a complaint…Woman who do such things are exactly doing what similar men do...a reverse psychological rape!!

I think it is a common misconception that stereotypes men as dowry suckers…I cant believe that we still have guys ‘educated’, ’refined’ and people with ‘broad outlook’ expecting a dowry!! Though ‘MBA’s’ and ‘Ph.D’s’ aren’t reflective of a mans craving for money there are ofcoz people in this world who think that dowry is like blood money…Every time someone takes or gives a dowry we are helping align the chains of a vicious circle where someone somewhere else is suffering for it!

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For our older generation, asking for a dowry or getting a dowry came naturally to them. Maybe reflective of age-old traditions or customs. But isn’t the onus on us to stop it some point of time? I just hope that the new parents don’t carry the old baggage of ‘girl is a burden’. Sometimes when I hear from parents of a girl child: - ‘I have to marry her off’, it almost rhymes like they are trying to dispose of something!!

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Isn’t it time for our society to move forward from there?

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P.S. Sorry if the post sounds harsh..Not exactly in jovial mood today..