Freedom

We all live in the illusion of living free...why I am calling it a illusion? Because I don’t think we are free. We are not free from bureaucracy, from greed, from hatred, from corruption, from nepotism, from hunger, from war, from religion and above all fear. We all still live with all the above stated vices in the society. Most of us have grown up with all of them and have seen so much hatred and atrocities on fellow human beings that cannot really feel free. I still get pangs of anxiety thinking about people who die every day because they don't even get one meal a day whereas there are so many who throw away food on a daily basis.
Freedom for me is eradicating all the vices and feeling happy and protected in our own homes. Freedom can be interpreted in different ways. For a woman who cannot even decide what she wants to wear, freedom means to choose her own clothes. For a person who cannot take up a job due to caste restrictions, freedom is to choose a job of his own choice. For a person who cannot marry someone he/she loves, freedom is to marry at will. For someone who has been hungry for days, freedom is to just get a bite of bread.
Freedom is not only removing vices from our lives and society, it also means that we should broaden our own thinking and respect each others freedom. We are fighting over oil, over land, over religion and so many other things. It is inhuman to kill others just because they are not like you. On a daily basis we hear about hate crimes based on sexual orientation, religion, caste and every distinction that we human have created. God never intended us to be different from each other. He created all of us equal and we have divided and alienated each other.
I know I cannot change the world and cannot even change the society that I live in but I will be free when I can atleast change myself!!!

Abortion

I know it’s always been a very very sensitive topic. I will try and be as sensitive as possible and look at all the factors involved, but if I miss a point then please excuse. Abortion has been interpreted by people as a heinous act of murder, a choice issue and sometimes even a forced decision. There are so many people in this world who would not abort even if that means abandoning the child at a later day.
Do you think that a teenage girl should be given the right to terminate her pregnancy? What about rape victims? What is the point of getting the child in this world when you would not be able to love or care for him/her in an appropriate way? Is a thirteen year old who has been raped in any position to actually take care of a baby? She has not grown herself and is not in a position to take decisions about her own life, then how can she take care of another life?
Then comes another important question related to this topic…Whose choice should it be to terminate the pregnancy? It is the woman who will carry the baby and it will she who will be responsible for the care and upbringing of the child if the father decides not to be a part of their lives. When a woman is pregnant, a man has the choice of walking out on her at any time but the woman does not have that right. She is in a position that if the pregnancy is not even her choice still she has to live with it. What if she is not in a financial, emotional or social position to take care of the child? I think it should be a woman’s decision if she wants to keep the baby or not, but her motives should be verified by the court. It is a woman’s choice, what she wants to do with her body but the spouse’s emotions should also be considered. There should definitely be consideration that the abortion is not for reasons like gender and other ulterior motives. Why bring a life in this world when you can’t provide him/her with love and basic necessities.
I would like to finish this blog with just a small reference to forced decisions to abort children over the gender of the baby and it should definitely not be a forced decision. A child does not only need food, clothes and a house to grow up. He/she needs love, affection, care and above all a good set of adults to guide him/her through the difficult times of life.

how safe do you feel now, after 5 years since 9/11?

All humans are in a habit of thinking that they are safe and cannot be harmed by anyone.
I feel that we get our forces active only when we get a threat...whereas I think we should always be on the alert...the kind of changes we all make in the security, after the bomb threats, should have been made long back...and I am sure that the security check will go down after some time till we get a new threat...
Secure practices should be adapted on a daily basis rather than just beef up security when a threat is made... in the first episode of serial “Kidnapped”, Jeremy Sisto says “We are the only one’s playing by the rules”…. Terrorists and all other bad elements in the society do not abide by the rules of the book and that is why it is very difficult to combat them… We never get a not telling us that we will be attacked on such and such date so that we can atleast prepare for it… we come to know about it when people die and we take an action over it only when “one of our own” dies.. Are we ever concerned about what happens in the other part of the world? There are so many countries where people die in the name of freedom, jihad, politics and religion everyday… Terrorists have become a threat now because countries like USA and UK are under attack… why they were not a concern when they were attacking countries like India, Pakistan, etc. Even Taliban was not recognized as terrorist group by UN till the attacked USA on 9/11… they were termed as freedom fighters and no action was taken by UN for years after the revolution in Afghanistan… I think terrorism is bad and all terrorist killing innocent people should be punished…it is our responsibility to take action against them… no religion, no country, no region preaches to kill…

Temple visits vs. Home worshipping!!!

I have always been a believer in God, but my parents felt that my way of worshipping was never right and the amount of visits to the temple was never enough. I personally do not believe in going to the temple. This was triggered by an unpleasant incident in one of the renowned religious places in India, where the amount donated determined the type of “prasad” (Hindu equivalent of wine and bread) and how close we could get to the deity. It was so abominable that it shook my entire belief in the temple system.
Now I prefer just worshipping God at home and lighting a lamp on a daily basis. Is this practice the right way or should I just follow the norms of the religion and pay a daily, weekly or monthly visits to the temple? The commercialization of religious institutions in India has forced people to look alternative ways to believe in God. Is paying a visit to the temple, the only way God would recognize you as a believer? If God is omni-present then why does he only acknowledge your presence and your belief in the temple? Wouldn’t he come to know that you are remembering him in your room, while driving or while maybe just working?
In my school I read a story about a farmer who was God’s favorite not because he used to spend hours in front of God but because he always remembered God once a day while performing his day to day tasks. I have seen people shunning their responsibilities towards their families and house, just to sit in the temple and worship. Is this correct? Is it more important to be true to God or to be true to your own family? Does God specify a set number of hours in a day to devote to him or does he preach to be happy and be good to others?
Bapu Asaramji preaches that “Sada prasann rahna, ishwar ki sarvopari bhakti hai” (To be always happy, is the best way to worship God), which we all should adopt in our lives. It will surely make the world a better place!!!

Are we so shallow?

Today if we look around, we see people fighting to each other for region, religion, caste, creed or faith. We are always trying to prove that we are better than many and sometimes all. We can prove ourselves better in many ways. Sometimes by doing something extraordinary or by performing well or sometimes making our competition look bad. We consider everybody, who is not like us, our competitor.
I came across a forum where people had decided to slander other religion for the sake of proving that their religion was better. This worsened even further and went ahead to become dispute between two countries. Is it really the only way proving that you are good? Cant we just be content that our country is good, our religion is good and concentrate on what our religion is trying to teach us rather than saying bad things and slandering other religions or finding mistakes in the followings and preaching of the other religion?
I think in this world things have become so complicated and we try and co-exist between so many religions that it is difficult to not cross paths with them. This has given us the opportunity to find out that we have so many common faiths with other religions. We were all followers of the same religion in the beginning or mankind. It was all one big family then why do we have to fight like foes now?
Be happy with what you are rather than being satisfied that all others are bad!!!

Were Sri Rama or Jesus Christ real?

Someone asked me yesterday if Ram was real or was he just a figment of imagination? I feel that in older times (and I am talking about thousands of years back) when civilizations had just strated and people were unruly and uncultured, the authorities needed some way of controlling the layman. They created the fear of God and started scaring people that if they dont abide by the laws then they will be punished by a superpower named God.
This worked for some time but then it became to decide upon how God should punish and whom God should punish? All the learned men gathered and decided to write down the rules of behavior and interaction with others. The writer went one step ahead and decided that he will tell it as a story so that people can relate to it and he will ahve one main protagonist whom he will create "Just Perfect!!!" This protagonist will also act as an ideal for all the human race and all should go by his example. Thus came the concept of individual Gods... everyone needed a God of their own caste and faith so that they can actually relate to him and have some hope of becoming good at heart.
The scriptures just told us ways of life. They taught us how to live and how to work and how to behave with others. Whether its Islam (Quran), Christanity(Bible) or Hinduism(Bhagwad Geeta, Mahabharataor other purans) , they all teach us something good but in this age and time we just interpret it wrong and try and hurt each other.
Ram and Christ might be real and maybe they were just very good human beings who led others by example and who were so perfect that they became Gods. If we look closer we will find God in ourselves !!!

Family or friends?

I know by this time all of you must be thinking that I always have a question as the topic name. But these are questions for you all to think. If I make a statement then it will be like imposing my own thoughts on you but I want all of you to think about the question and analyze things that I have written in the blog. Ok, now coming back to the topic in hand; Family or Friends? I have a big extended family and loads of friends too... I feel that family is the support that you will have for life. No matter how much you fight with your siblings or no matter how much you resent your parents rules and regulations, you will always love them and they will always love you. They might criticize you but they will always bring out the faults that nobody else will. They will tell you things about you so that you can work on it and improvise. We can hate our siblings for being really mean or not being concerned about us but we will be wrong. When someone is close to us and we love them, we don’t see the need to tell them how much we appreciate their love and help in every step of life. We take our family for granted and that makes us hurt them also.... But if we look closely then don’t good friends do the same? Don’t they support us and scold us when we are wrong? We love our friends but don’t think twice before sharing everything in our life with them. Is it only because they are also facing the same problems as we are due to age similarities? We chose our friends but don't have the option of choosing a family... but on the other hand we can make many friends and some friendships fade away but relations don’t break easily... I could only conclude that friends cannot substitute family and family cannot substitute friends... they are both important and balance mutually exclusive parts of our life...

Introduction

Hi, I am a simple girl in this complicated world. In my blog I would be writing about different topics that affect our lives everyday. We are too busy to notice but they are important and worth a thought. I have an opinion and this is an attempt to put forward my opinion. Its time, for everyone to see the world, from my viewpoint.