Light, seeking light, doth light of light beguile...

“A woman is human.

She is not better, wiser, stronger, more intelligent, more creative, or more responsible than a man.

Likewise, she is never less.

Equality is a given.

A woman is human.” 

― Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration

On the occasion of International Women's Day, we had a celebration held in our college today where we all joined in to glorify women. There were a lot of competitions for the students and all the events contained something that was an eye-opener for me. Some students chose to highlight the fact that a lot of women are still subjected to violence of some kind. Others opted to showcase women achievers from various fields. The rest pointed out the resilience of women over the ages. 

Listening into everyone's opinions got me thinking on the subject. Yes, as women we do have certain issues that needs solving. But in my opinion, to truly celebrate Women's Day, we must revel in those facts that strengthen us and make us women. In this, I am also firm on the fact that we MUST NOT do this by belittling men and comparing ourselves with them. In this, I totally agree with the quote mentioned above as well as the one that follows-

“Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.” 

― George Carlin

Famous writers like Mary Wollstonecraft and Elaine Showalter have highlighted this very point in their writings. As the former puts it- “I do not wish them [women] to have power over men; but over themselves.”  

I agree wholeheartedly with this quote to the extent that as women, we must be able to create an identity for ourselves without stepping on anyone's toes. The world is big enough to accommodate both genders and is able to host both identities separately. To even compare each others’ strengths and weaknesses is as absurd as comparing apples and oranges in my opinion.

Being a woman, I am acutely aware of all the issues that we currently face. But isn’t it also a fact that men are suffering, perhaps in different ways- even those perpetrated by women? I am not trying to belittle anyone’s problems here. But when we can take off our rose-tinted glasses and view the world in a more rational and non-stereotypical and non-biased way, perhaps women banded together can achieve a lot more things than we already have and not at the expense of putting down anyone. The crucial thing to remember here is that we are aiming towards equality and by using someone else as a step-hold on our way to success immediately means that there is a lack of balance already. As we all know, for the scales to balance, there must be equal weightage on both sides. 

Therefore, let us, for a time forget all the suffering we have undergone over the ages. Let us bypass the sensitive issues that are threatening to pull us under. Let us see them as what they actually are- bullies. And as all of us know, the best way to deal with bullies is by displaying our own strengths. We must learn to identify our strengths and how to accurately put it to use. There is an old story in Hindu Mythology where the guru teaches his students that a collection of sticks tied together display such unbreakable strength which a single stick cannot show. Thus, all of us must learn to stick together no matter the issue and learn to defend ourselves in a united way.

In the end, the message I feel that we must all follow is- ‘We must identify ourselves as human first. We must understand we are all nothing more than reflections of each other- as though manifested through hundreds of thousands of billions of mirrors. To harm one is to harm others. Recognize the strengths within you and acknowledge the same exists within everyone around us. Gender is just something that keeps us apart. Much like the concept of Yin-Yang, we need both masculine and feminine characters within ourselves to bring about a balance within the body. The same must be true of the universe around us I feel.’

Happy International Women’s Day! Celebrate the female within you!!!

ALL ROADS LEAD TO ROME??

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you represents determinism; the way you play it is free will.
                                                                                                                           -JAWAHARLAL NEHRU


Very recently, I was watching an episode of Supernatural which talked about how we were all predestined to choose the same path that had been set down for us and no matter what we do to move away from this path, we always end up coming back to it- for lack of better words- our destiny. This got me thinking about free will and whether it is really present or are we all playing the parts we were assigned and following a set script, bringing to mind Shakespeare's monologue-

"All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances; "

Then I came across the quote by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (mentioned above). Sitting down to ponder on this made me even more confused. My dilemma was that even though life events were unexpected and that we were given a choice to react to it in our own way, the question arose whether these so-called random life events were actually 'random' by nature or set down for us to put us on to a path. Also based on people's nature of not changing quickly, it can be assumed that each one of us, based on our track records are expected to react in one specific manner (though surprises are definitely possible but rare). So it got me wondering whether we were set those life events for which it was almost 'determined' that we would react in a specific way? If so where is the free- will or 'choice' we are promised? 

This became very depressing to even think about. It reduced us to puppets who were being played by what we called 'fate'. Then unexpectedly I received an answer from one of the fiction book series I was reading- The Immortals series by Alyson Noel. It talked about the ever-lasting nature of our soul. This in turn led me to start thinking about 'Destiny' in a more positive light.

I have firmly believed that our 'Soul' is immortal and enduring. It outlasts our physical bodies. I also believe that each soul is created with specific challenges set to its name. It is the soul's mission to complete these challenges and that it uses the physical body and the various incarnations as mediums to help achieve them. Once the soul is able to fulfil these challenges, it becomes a whole and finally and fully frees itself. Thus, in the end, it is good that even if we are following a set script for ourselves, it is all ultimately for the fact that we can be truly and forever free.

I guess our role in the soul's journey is to realise what mission it is pursuing in the current incarnation and help aid it further faster in order to complete our journey towards true freedom faster. Unwittingly we may slow down the soul's journey and thus delay ourselves. So we do have some choice in our lives- to choose to thwart and delay our life's mission or help speed it up.


So I would like to end it by saying that even though we may feel that everything has been pre-determined, we still can make a choice in the little decisions that can afford us satisfaction- the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the friends we have- everything that can physically and emotionally satisfy us. So instead of concentrating and moaning about the fact that we do not have freedom, revel in the small things that afford us pleasure. Follow your instincts as they are wiser than you and contain the knowledge your soul has accumulated throughout your incarnations. Let it guide you on your journey. At the end it is all we can do to aid our journey towards true freedom and light.

 

WHY I ABSOLUTELY LOVE VILLAINS!!!

Recently, despite my initial reluctance or rather after showing no marked enthusiasm for the event, I went to watch the movie “The Avengers”. By the time I came out of the theatre, I was completely changed. I began thinking exclusively about how the world and everyone in it seem to relish on heroes, especially those who display talents that markedly stand out in a crowd!

            For me, though I enjoy watching or reading about a good hero, it is the villains or the antagonists who intrigue me the most and thus I like them the best of all in my fiction! It is very exhilarating for me to watch or read about the bad guys. I pay attention to every scene they appear in or are talked about and at the end of it all, I try to decipher the motives of their actions. I find this extremely fun and often for hours or even days later, I escape inwardly to ponder this. So anyone who meets me at this phase, in the future, please don’t take offense, its nothing personal! As it always happens I’m left with the baddies as my most favorite characters to the chagrin of others. My movie buddies actually keep asking me how I could bring myself to even like such characters let alone fall in love with them!!

            The same thing happened to me when I was watching The Avengers too! Even before I could get to know Loki’s back-story from watching Thor (which incidentally I watched after I had seen The Avengers), I was already offering my warmest sympathies to him! At least this time, I’m not alone in my devotion if the internet can be considered a reliable source! (Oh and the actor who plays the character, Tom Hiddleston is way too handsome too!) Once I did hear the rest of his story, the only way I could go was to go to the very ends of the fall!

           

            Thinking about Loki’s motives actually surprised me because I found it to be universal in the very least- the need for power to help one raise one’s self esteem and a sense of belongingness. As any person who studies humans can tell us, these 2 are extremely powerful social motivators when it comes to our species. When we actually sit down and reflect on this, we can see how much of our behavior is to be credited to them. Every thing we do as social beings is to carve a niche for ourselves in our social world or stand out in it. We go to extreme lengths to try and belong somewhere, to have our identities associated with something- our nation, our state, our gender.

            Coming to one’s need for power, it can unwittingly thrust a person into doing things that he/she wouldn’t be doing if it didn’t undermine one’s sense of control. For me, the need for power is equivalent to one’s sense of control. We all love to be in control of ourselves and not be pushed around. We want to be the shepherd rather the sheep following behind, paying heed to every one of the former’s instructions. This need for power can be found in even the smallest of social setups- from domestic positions to the hierarchies seen in employment places to our politicians.

            Even the need for revenge, which has been accorded a prime position in violence, I think, is a by-product of loss of control and from being ostracized from a social group. One also associates their self-esteem by the amount of power they can wield. This is again decided by social norms and standards which is again the reason as to why we strive so hard to live up to these standards in the first place because the more we can positively correlate with the norms, the more the possibility of wielding power over others. Despite being a person who believes in scientific research, I don’t think we need any studies to prove that one’s self esteem can actually increase with each step taken upwards on the social scale.

            This brings me back to Loki’s motives again. Being a person who has been used to assuming a position of a prince and a god moreover, discovering his true lineage brought out all his insecurities in him. Failing to please his father, his self esteem takes a further plummeting. That is how we see him in the beginning of this movie- The Avengers. He feels that by assuming control of earth and its people, he can finally feel good about himself and forge himself a new identity at the same time- as the ruler of earth.

            But to thwart him are a gang of super humans! Though they initially cannot get along themselves due to the distribution of…what else (?)- power (of course!!), they do come together after seeing the bigger picture- the survival of earth and her inhabitants! And so poor Loki is destroyed and forcefully exiled with his brother (Thor)… to be seen in the forthcoming movie-Thor 2. Rest assured I’ll be one of the first few ones to be going to watch this movie as soon as it releases here! But to sign off, I would like to borrow a maxim made popular by another comic book series- With great power comes great responsibility!!! Ciao!

CURIOUS ATTRACTION TOWARDS THE CLASSICS...

As anyone who knows me even a little will testify-I LOVE BOOKS! For as long as I remember I have always loved handling books of any kind. I have never been choosy about what I read as long as I could make some sense of it. So I can confidently say that my entire life, I have been perusing books. In fact, I remember answering to anyone who asked that my best friends were my books because they made me laugh and cry and helped me when I was sad!

          It wasn’t till my high school that I made a discovery that I can honestly tell has changed my life-I picked up a copy of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice! The reason for my never having got to it before was that-fearing that they might distract me from my studies, my books were locked up every school year, to be handed out only during my vacations (but I was able to circumvent this by haunting my school library!!). So anyway when I read Jane Austen, it was like something irrevocably changed in me or maybe something that was inherent suddenly was awakened. Suddenly Jane Austen wasn’t enough! I literally gorged myself on other authors like Thomas Hardy, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte and Charles Dickens. Each book was like a treat to me- something that I was afraid would disappear one day when I woke up!

          Till today I have never been able to pin-point why reading about a time long gone makes me feel so good! I loved it all- the society, the people, the optimistic note that each novel usually ends on, the morals… oh the list is endless. I have always yearned to be able to go back to a bygone era and live my life there! My bind with history perhaps is a result of this. Every old place I visit, my imagination takes flight and I’m suddenly involved in wondering how people who had lived there centuries ago would have been and how they would go about on a typical day.

          I owe a lot of my achievements to reading the classics, including the title of ‘Geek’ as I’m sometimes referred to! It has aided immensely in the development of my vocabulary and has been a constant source of education-in more ways than one. It has led me on an emotional roller-coaster! Every involved reading of ‘Great Expectations’ has me dissolved into tears and every reading of P G Wodehouse’s books have me rolling around being unable to control my laughter!

          Jane Austen, till today has remained my favorite! Which ‘sensible’ lady hasn’t fallen for Mr. Darcy after reading about him or seeing him on the screen? He will always remain a paradigm for what an ideal man should be like!! Apart from that, being a little bit of a feminist- who can resist admiring Elizabeth Bennett?

          I had never associated with tragedy till I read Thomas Hardy and Charles Dickens. For me, life was one bed of roses. But after I read a lot of Dickens and Hardy, I understood how one small event in someone’s life can change their life for ever. After this, I went through a phase of introspection wherein I was forced to question a lot of things I had taken for granted and a lot of my beliefs too. It was almost a rude awakening for me. No longer did I believe in something just because I had been taught to do so. I started doubly contemplating on events and what they would mean to me. Thinking ahead was not something I had done much before but after this phase, I give a lot of my time to thinking about the consequences. Most important it has though me to consider things from various perspectives.

          Much in the manner of my Fantasy books, my classics have taught me several valuable lessons. I was fortunate enough to have a teacher who helped us delve deeper than the surface when it came to books for which I would ever be thankful. The schooling I have had when reading classics, I consider more important than anything I have learnt through my formal education. I have vowed to treasure and follow the morals I have derived from these precious book forever. So though I unfortunately cannot thank the authors of my books personally, nevertheless, I would like to express my gratitude to them for teaching me valuable life lessons which I will use for the rest of my life! Thank you!!!!

PSYCHOLOGY- COMMON MISCONCEPTIONS

As someone who is studying to be a psychologist, it is very irksome to have to deal with certain misconceptions people have about my subject and having to explain this to people I meet daily. This I think is specially true in India where the exposure to the science of psychology is not yet complete, thus leading to a lot of false impressions about our profession.

          One of the first things people ask me when I say that I’m studying Psychology is-‘So can you read minds yet?’ So let me first clear this point up. Folks, we are not telepathists! We do not and can not read minds! The field of psychology is the study of behaviors and mental processes. We study how certain behaviors are caused and why we may behave in the way we do and also about certain processes like thinking, reasoning, perception and so on. This is a broad definition of psychology and when we get down to the micro level, it involves a lot more processes.

          The second common misconception is that psychology deals with only ‘Crazy Behavior’. This is the most polite of ways in which people term it. Again I would like to correct this by telling that yes, we do deal with abnormal behavior but I would also like to clarify that it is but a section of the subject and not the whole. Abnormal Psychology i.e. the study of abnormal behavior and clinical psychology, the branch of psychology dealing with the treatment of the disorders of the mind is only a small fraction of what psychology is in its entirety.

          Thirdly, we i.e. psychologists are often confused with psychiatrists. So let me attempt to distinguish between the two. Psychiatrists are essentially doctors by profession and help in treating abnormal behavior through medication and so on. A psychologist, when trained in clinical psychology or counselling, does not have the license to dispense medications. They help resolve psychological problems through means of other kinds of therapies.

          There are many branches of psychology, each dealing with a specific aspect of behavior and psychological/mental processes. As mentioned above, we have the clinical psychologists. Below them fall the counsellors who are going to deal with problems of a lesser severity and also those of day-to-day living. Then we have educational psychologists who study academia in its entirety. Next we have cognitive psychologists who study psychological processes like memory, thinking, information processing, attention and so on. Next we have health psychologists, who attempt to help people with physical health issues. These are only the tip of the ice-berg when it comes to psychology.

          I’ve noticed that people are either extremely awed by my subject or it is the other extreme wherein people are freaked out by it or are highly skeptical about it and refuse to term it as a precise science. Hopefully I’ve cleared away at least a few doubts people may have had about my subject. If there are any further doubts about my subject, I will be very happy to help clear it up.

          All in all, I am extremely fortunate that I found psychology to study. I have a feeling that the relationship between psychology and me is going to be a life-long one with hopefully contributions to each other! I am sure to gain a lot more by its study but I also hope to contribute something to it as well, someday not in the too distant future!!!

Importance of Fantasy Fiction in my Life...

Since this is my very first post, I wanted to write on a topic that is extremely close to me. At the outset, let me just mention that I am a fanatic about any kind of fantasy fiction- the more outrageous it is, the better. It is only very recently that I was able to dissociate myself and discern why I find this genre so very fascinating.

          Some people I speak to opine that fantasy fiction is merely a technique I use to escape reality. Also some are of the opinion that fantasy involves plots that are extremely outlandish and could not be farther away from the truth. For such people I only say- take a closer look.

          Studying Literature and Psychology at a deeper level has now helped me realize how beneficial this particular genre has been in my life. Yes, it’s true that the plots of fantasy are very unreal. But what dissidents do not understand is that, on a deeper level it makes much more sense than anything that could have been directly told. Everything in the unreal world is merely an allusion to what is actually happening in reality, albeit what we have willingly closed our eyes to and ignored.

          One may question me now- how do I think that dragons or vampires are related to the real world. This can be answered by going beyond the face value of something and instead finding out what traits or factors these unworldly creatures may represent. Each of us can come up with a different opinion as to what they may portray and that for me is why it is so important- because it is so personal in nature.

          I have often found that due to my habit of reading fantasy, I have emerged as quite an optimist. Due to the fact that I read about how the truth and the good emerges triumphant all the time, despite all the odds, I never give up hope as to something good eventually coming out of all the bad times. It has also helped me come up with diverse and innovative techniques to help solve problems.

          Apart from this, fantasy has helped me in many other diverse ways. I agree that one can get a little un-real with too much of fantasy reading but for me at least, the good outweighs the bad with a huge margin! So unicorns and vampires and otherworldly worlds are always welcome to me! :D