It's about a) CIVIC SENSE
b) GOOD NEIGHBOR ETIQUETTE
c) CHANGE STARTS FROM THE SELF
d) FORGIVING AND MOVING ON and finally
e) SEEKING the REAL meaning of JUDGMENTAL
Consider this...somewhere there is a barren strip of land a pathway to someplace where nothing grows. Then someone who commutes daily decides to make some changes. It makes him look forward to seeing this sorry strip transformed. So quietly without making any noise about it he sets on his job. Each day devoting some of his precious time to this barren strip. He digs, hoes, tills , the soil, takes out the rocks one by one, sifts the soil turns it over, airs it, enriches it with added nutrients and finally makes it fertile and sows whatever he could manage. Everyday while going to work making sure about the watering and weeding he had to carry one extra baggage too. A large jelly can of water. His hard labor paid off. Soon there sprouted tiny plants, which grew, blossomed and spread beauty, cheer and fragrance to all that passed through the erstwhile odd strip of land. The person who did it was more than happy to see the fruits of his labor and so was the community. They felt cheerful to walk across through this pathway and now this desolate area had sounds of laughter and animated chatting instead of the forlorn feel that it had to it earlier. Some lingered to admire, others wondered about the who did it but it pleased everybody and anybody who ventured and found himself there.
Then one fine day comes one Mr Hoity Toity who was coming and going earlier too when the man was at his work but had not bothered then but today he stops and arrogantly taps at the shoulder of that man who is tending the plants and says, " What man! why are you doing this ! Is this your land ? "
How do you answer this...
Especially if Mr Hoity Toity sees the world as full of ' Malice' or ' Vicious' or ' Grabber' .
For all i know most resources and time both so scarce these days are actually grabbed by the Hoity Toities. Correct me if i am wrong in my analysis.
We are a sum of our experiences i think i have said that perhaps too many times in my posts that it can be my tag line. Not surprising then i am here today once again to share one...not bitter...but yes one that does leave me baffled each time and every time it crosses my mind. The fact being that it has to cross because it is there ...right there...because i stay where it is. Here...
What is this general attitude about people about common areas...by common areas i mean the staircase...the common road...the street lights...the garbage bin. "That it is not my job".
My job is limited to my home period. We pay taxes and so that job belongs to the Govt, Municipality, Inspector of Works, Chief Health Inspector, the Housing Society...whatever name you give it.
i will refrain from the whole story because we all are aware of that, funny thing is how with all the education, " It's not my job" has stuck like a parasite deep inside our psyche and we the people just don't bother even to keep their own staircases what to talk of surroundings clean. We have all the time in the world for whatapping continuously at a stretch, gossiping, facebooking... but this we don't have the time. i know if and when some of my friends read this...they will be angry but you should hear all that gas...about waste management...about ecological balance and bla bla bla. In reality no one has it in their PRIORITY LIST to do what should be done on a daily basis. Just like how we brush our teeth and take our bath something like that.
That brings me to my story...well my staircase also is a shared one. Being a Government accommodation and i must say a pretty old one at that the state of the job done on the staircase wall with the plaster and the wires is quite appalling but what makes the whole thing worse is also the structure...dark and dingy with a say 1x1 sq ft latticed alcove in the wall which permits insufficient amount of light that too only early morning when the sun rises because the alcove faces the east. And as if this was not enough until i had come to occupy this place there was more...cobwebs...dust on the walls and in that latticed window into which some discarded knick knacks of my next door neighbor were kept. The entire wall all over the latticed window riddled with holes and nails...bare...plain and utterly ugly. That's the word UGLY.
It took me a nice six months to first settle down in this new place and all i could diligently do was to sweep and mop the staircase and the landing. Was not getting enough time to think about any make over for this dark dingy pathway of mine which was sorrowful for a person like me who loves light and the color green. Finally after my neighbor happily had a few dinners at my place and i sought her permission i decided to do what i could do...and sure i was successful.
Viola ! the dark dingy pathway not only looked nice and bright but also smelt nice...instead of a bat plus urine odor that always lingered there earlier.
One day my neighbour graciously informed me how impressed her guests were when they visited her and saw the changes. i was happy she was happy and so it went on.
Not once did it occur to me that when both of us are using the staircase why i should take all that effort...in cleaning and making it look aesthetically appealing. No no i am not such a Samaritan i must admit. It's just that i like to keep my surroundings clean. Besides i was at home and she was working so i happily excused her from the deepest core of my heart. In fact i rather took an added responsibility all by myself although she never asked me, to shine and polish and repair all the knick knacks she had displayed in the alcove plus water and keep it clean her one and only Pothos (Money plant) which most of the time drooped ready to collapse out of sheer negligence. i loved seeing that green upright as soon as i opened my door as it was the first thing that your eyes would fall upon.
The most difficult job was to make some creative stuff to conceal those holes and nails. Even now some remain in such odd places that removing them would create another hole and nothing could be hung as there is just barely any space. i wonder whoever had stayed before us, what purpose those eyesore nails served them and why weren't they pulled out, the holes filled up when whitewashing was done. Sigh! those freebie Govt jobs...well that would take another blog. Coming back to my story then...
So just a few days back a grenade was hurled upon me. That same neighbor...who has never dusted...never taken the cobwebs off...what to talk of mopping or decorating the landing...that same neighbor accused me of " GRABBING" the whole place. It almost sounded like she had abused me.
Wait a minute... how...did i overlook...oh my God should have i exercised some restraint...so many thoughts created chaos. Crestfallen, shattered and feeling very crabby i returned to my quarters.
Whatever happened to " When the intentions are good the soul has no regrets."
The entire day her words rang inside me...i went back... to the day i had landed in this place...had to go back to know if i had missed out on anything.
i got it all right.
Never yes never once did she express any desire to make some changes. She would come over from office, ring my bell, ask for tea, tell her sob stories of the day, curse the entire human race, glorify herself, her husband , her daughters and i would patiently listen. She had the TIME for all that jazz. So full of herself she would not even thank me for her Copper Sun plaque which hung there nice and shiny.
Not once in all those jazz moments did she express about her intense urge to participate in doing the staircase and i am now baffled, bewildered, bemused,...loss of words...at this word 'Grabbing'.
Rather what she did when she did had amused me at times and also irritated me at other times.
She started putting newer things on her side of the wall. Every Saturday which was her day off i would hear Thuck ! Thuck! of more nails being driven into her side of the wall. She hung up an artificial foliage that looked like a lamp just above that Pothos that she never cared to wash/wipe or even water. But i must admit when lit the entire looked very attractive and pretty. Oh yes she hung a Nazar Suraksha Kavach too...how can i miss that. Now along with that Pothos that Nazar Suraksha Kavach also greeted me every morning when i opened the door.
Yeah have to confess though did cry my heart out...in the toilet (not for the word but for how ungrateful can one be) lest my husband should know. Was so not least bit in the mood for the barrage of moral lectures that would flood me. So to clear the heavy air that had settled inside me went to the terrace in the evening where my babies were. They gave me solace. My babies, my plants. As if in inertia i started peering into all of those pots. Found all my pots had trespassers. Those who were singing in season as well as those whose season had come and gone. Coincidence...nah i don't think so.
My babies happily conveyed what i needed to know. It is the intrinsic nature of plants to grow that way...to grab wherever they get resources for life and grow but humans grow as a sum of their experiences. Whatever her experiences were i am sure as a child or as she grew up and till now have not been a very positive one. Perhaps she was taught that resources are limited and you have to grab all you can. All she could see in my efforts was ' GRAB'. The clean fragrant cheery brightly lit staircase seemed oblivious to her. Surely it would've made her feel very welcome each day every day. But...
And it is quite possible she did not visualize the staircase as a resource in the first place. Probably that could've also triggered her outburst to the earlier baggage of negativity that she already had. Who knows. All i have known of my experience with her is that she is a recognition freak. If you could only hear her speak. It's all about HER.
So perhaps after seeing my work and all the accolades that i was getting she was getting restless. But how hard it is to just ask. She could ask for tea, to prepare her daughter's dinner, ask for help to be carried upstairs one in the night when we were in slumber, for she had twisted her ankle at a wedding party, ask my domestic help to run errands for her without my permission, then how difficult was it for her to say, " Shivani i want to do something here..."
The biggest problem in our society is this...people are seeking change and yet the basic change that has to come from within is not happening. First of all no one will OWN responsibility for the common area...and when someone does something good and substantial this is what happens. Now i am taking my experience and demonstrating a micro case.
Apply it to the nation. MACRO...then imagine the implications.
Then why do we keep harping about LET'S MAKE THE CHANGE...
As for me i shall continue to be...shall continue to clean and mop and do as i was before..
i look at my babies...and the trespassers...they all seem lovely to me. Silently the prayer escapes...into the blue blue sky...
"....Forgive those who trespass against us... "
But i still am baffled i want to know if i am being Judgemental...
Can't help remembering Robert Frost...so here it should be...right here on this page.
MENDING WALL
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Robert Frost
