Gitanjali

It was a rainy evening just a few days before my birthday. Nonetheless I was baked quite much. Mamma was murmuring a poem by Lt. Atal Behari Vajpayi, sent by a friend. I passed her The Gitanjali by Rabindranath Tagore, she flipped open a random page and I asked her to recite. “When the creation was new and all the stars shone in their first splendour, the gods held their assembly in the sky and sang ‘Oh, the picture of perfection! The joy unalloyed!’….” My mind started slipping away into this colourful nostalgia when mamma used to read out to me, starting from story books to school books. I remember being in awe of her reading and reciting skills, the fluidity in her voice made me sway to words and made my mind travel. To me she was pure perfection. Somewhere down the line people started feeding doubts in me that she wasn’t good enough. My childlike mind didn’t know the need to question the beliefs they instilled in me. Until one day when she was one of the people who made me believe she wasn’t enough.

“So, how did you like it?”, Mamma interrupted my nostalgic trip, and Bam!!! The severity of the situation hit me, and I realized how naive I was to have believed in others and their definition of perfect! Feeding self-doubt in people is one of the oldest forms of manipulation. If everybody starts believing in themselves, if everyone is brimming with confidence and self-love then the gap between successful and not so successful people will obviously fade away. Now what most people fear is, “what if Jack is better than me” “what if I am not as good as Jill” “what if I have to work under her” “what if he gets the promotion” “what if xyz person is more wanted and loved than I am”. This line of thoughts is in itself full of self-doubt and lack of self-worth and confidence.

We all need to understand a simple fact, that no two people are made the same way; we as individuals cannot have the exact same set of qualities, neither can our dreams and passion be the same; maybe similar, but never the same. Though this will only be valid if we are true to ourselves and concentrate on being just us, and not like someone else we idealise. The definition of success or happiness for every person cannot be measured using the same metric system. Be it two kindergarten kids or world renown artists, when they are given the exact same description of a tree, a simple tree; their painting will always be different. It has to be.

Since our childhood we all have been caught doing something wrong or mischievous. We have been explained why according to them it is wrong, and we have been corrected, there have also been times when we have been scolded without an explanation. Now as adults, more often than not, we catch ourselves doing the wrongs, and we correct or scold ourselves. How about we stop that, and start catching ourselves doing the right, and congratulating and motivating ourselves to do it again, or do it better. There are enough people in this world telling us we are not good enough. Let’s not add up to that list, and find the good in us and reinforce it to betterment. We should consider ourselves lucky if we have even a handful of people beside us who would pat our backs for our victories no matter how small it is.

“Self -Love is the first requisite to great beginnings! and of course continued awesomeness…” By Renita Bhowmick

Self-love is often confused with being selfish, and interpreted negatively. What we forget is, self-love is the first step to grow and heal in this world full of people pointing fingers. Self-depreciation would only lead to an unhealthy mind and body. If we look closely we would find that most of our physical reactions are triggered by a mental or emotional negativity. Loving oneself can start with very simple steps, firstly by penning down what we like to do on a daily basis, secondly by being aware of our strengths and weaknesses, thirdly by being mindful of our passion, basically making our personal ‘Brag Sheet’. Making self-love a daily practice irrespective of the voices and opinions around is the second tough task. The first being shutting the voice inside our heads telling us we are not good enough. We as individuals need to first accept ourselves for who we are and appreciate our uniqueness. We all need to learn to hold a big red stop sign for every toxic doubtful thought we have about us, because that is the only thing paralyzing us. Our minds are tuned in a way where, taking the leap for ourselves can be scary and not as easy as it sounds, but at first it has to be intentional. Practicing self-love on repetition and being persistent is what will help us bring our dreams into reality.

We are all born with purpose and passion… intuition and gut… follow it! We were too young, our minds were blank, no one taught us to draw and colour, they just gave us the drawing book and asked us to colour. Even after that we were monitored. Colours shouldn’t go out of lines, put a purple here and a green there. I say let’s unlearn all that we ever learnt so far. Let’s just draw whatever we wish to, let’s just colour our hearts out. Let there be a bright yellow instead of purple and a crimson instead of green! Let’s colour outside the lines. Let’s follow our intuitions and believe in our gut. Let it lead us to our passion and serve the purpose we all are born with. Let’s all portray our uniqueness. Let us all be, ‘Oh, the picture of perfection! The joy unalloyed!’.