That.

To be plain, even ugly but talented and recognized for it. Isn't that a bigger blessing than to be beautiful talented and recognized for it?
I wonder
Because in a patriarchy placing so much emphasis on looks, (pleasing the palate of the greedy male gaze), where an interview for a woman is also a surreptitious or open faced view, wouldn't a beautiful woman always remain unsure whether it was her talent that was recognized or were some allowances made for her beauty?
I am an admirer of beauty. Its personal power aesthetic functionality. But not if beauty becomes even one of the railings of the stairway to professional success. That.
Takes away from the credibility of talent. Always.
Because from childhood we're exposed to success stories with such additional qualifiers.
Case of Martina Navratilova, and Chris Every Lloyd. About the latter, women would swooon and sigh, "Not only is she a brilliant tennis player, but she's beautiful!"
Navratilova who I adore, would be grudgingly acknowledged as a good player and then dismissed. As if a woman who didn't bother to look nice deserved to go off the radar.
Funny because Chris Evert  Lloyd was actually only moderately good looking. But then as a professional tennis champion allowances had to be made. That. Allowances again.
So are we making excuses for the quality of performance too, for a pretty woman?
Like we are making concessions for the quality of her appearance if she's successful in her chosen profession?
Just wanted to put my Tuesday thoughts on the table.

The Angel

The Angel
Busy day. Wake up at 5 am and start preparing lunch boxes for the kids, washing dishes, packing books and water bottles and napkins into school bags. Bathe kids and self drop off to school, little marketing on the way back.
Home welcomes me. eagerly with pending housework. Just finish frying a dosa and black coffee for breakfast when things undo themselves, evade my tight organization and life threads begin to unravel. Over one phone call.
But this is not about the call or my reaction to it
But what happened after.
Sputtering outrage as I ended the call, red faced with fury I saw an open mouthed angel standing outside my window. (With Two sable brows knitted in wonder.)
Who had obviously heard a fair bit of a private conversation.
And the amazing thing was, she neither ran away nor pretended she hadn't heard a thing.
I was given a warm hug and two soft palms caressed my tear stained cheeks. The voice of a feeling compassionate angel muttered a few soothing words, and then she was gone.
In that unquiet unearthly quiet moment what lingered in the mind was not the morning fight.
Nor the provocateur who instigated it.
But the musical comfort of a few soothing well chosen words.
And I say to all who aspire to be friends, to be good neighbors,  or simply to be good human beings, try it! Be like her. A beautiful woman inside and out. An angel with not just heady beauty, but beautiful brains, a lovely mind and tender heart.
Be an angel. The wings are delicately tucked inside our empathic minds. Don't crush them with those two calloused hands of cold common sense and worldly wisdom.
Our true possessions are not worldly goods. But tiny immaterial things soft as butterfly wings, fine as flower petals on ginger finger tips. Eyes sparkling with tears of gratitude, hands administering love, a hug transferring a bit of my joy to you.
These are true Angel wings, these are the real credentials you earn into your passport to whatever lies ahead. Afterlife. After death...
I vouch for it, for today I met a real life down to earth angel. Pragmatic charismatic empathic.
This is the only way I can thank her. With words of love for her kindness.

Plastic Heart

Today, the heart is plastic. Brought out in careful bubble wrap occasionally for display, say for Valentine's day, Rose Day, Friendship Day, et cetera.
The keyword being day.
In a previous generation it would be called a one night stand, (acrimoniously), today it's officially arrived, as- One Day Stance?
You see we're constantly inundated with social memes that clarify the hard line Stance that there's no market for your Emotions only your Attitude. What these attitudinal Gurus of Cool fail to realize, is that Emotions were never meant for the marketplace... One dies if ones emotional needs are suppressed, and a rich emotional life is vital in every sense.
No one dons emotion like an armor or uses it as a mask and likewise it's not social coinage for your approval or disapproval.
Emotions are like buds, they blossom in tender hands when the season is right. And no power on earth can restrict that blissful blossoming, and only evil incarnate would invite emotional confidences but then back away from any confrontation with the power it unleashes.
Yes, even negative emotions need to be expressed and safely exhausted in friendly surroundings.
And these are serious matters, not on display by demand for your voyeuristic fulfillment, or to spin the loom of gossip Mills.
These are the core of our hearts and souls. The highest honor you can receive is when a soul revealing Emotions at your urging, places its heart on the table.
Do you dare take it in your hands, or will you leave it on the coffee table for general conversations, of other lives more unfortunate than your own?
Attitude is built up on the dam of your conscience. It's a deeper than today's skin deep understanding of attitude. If your genuine good will and purpose isn't what guides it, people will always see through its facade.
How well you bleed, when another heart breaks is what makes your own more human, brave and beautiful. No longer plastic.
Attitude is not everything. It's the crowning glory of a courageous heart that's not afraid to feel.

Death Shout

Awaiting lots of trolling, no matter, my brave little poem goes out.

They make you feel proud because they're ashamed
Just like they justified having slaves
As carrying the white man's burden
Saving the black man's soul
When inside black hearted men and women
The real reason lay hidden
Money and material comforts
Unearned gains.

So guns are fun
They let you take care of your family
Take care of yourself
Shoot game and put meat on the table
Oh they make you look like such responsible men

Take accountability then
For countless children killed
On a day when they should have returned home
To mama's hugs
And answer to all the kids you are rearing up
Thinking guns are the answer
Safety is a trigger in your ready hands.

Please feel proud to spread a culture of fear
Tell them that the world is ending
The Annunaki shall attack with laser Spears
Yes, in cahoots with your government
And feel free to bring us back to the caves
Where you're King atop the stock pile of
Ammunition that you hold so dear.

You know the real reasons
The world deals with guns
It's not for roses nor for fun
You look good with the rifle, a  real tough honey
But the withered old men are the ones collecting your money.

And you know they arm your enemies too.

And make sure they real proud of what they do.

"Death to infidels!" they shout
"Death right back at you," you scream back
We will throw your corpses out!
Death dealers smile ensconced in safeholds
And they don't mean basement cellars or caves...
They're counting their cash, and they won't settle for a penny less,
While you shout shout and shout
And go on and about
Every shoot out, that makes you think
It's coming, the fight
So you proudly proclaim
Guns are your right,
Death, death, death
Is all you'll ever wield out
Defend your rights
As your lights,
Of sanity and reason
Liberty and civilization
Slowly go out.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

Possibilities

I surrender to never ending questions. Not knowing if the life hereafter will have all the answers. Almost hoping that it won't.
The story will unravel at its own pace and not a moment sooner. In Space and in time, which for me are not dimensions but equally vivid entities, the black unclear dreams of the becoming universe.
Somnolence is immobilized wisdom, potential to be set in motion.
Symbolized for me amongst humankind by the lotus eater, and amongst the seemingly insensate cosmos it is the Milky Way, visible flower of an evolving universe in flight.

The never ending journey is the story, the beginnings spiralling curl into the end, creation eating annihilation, serpent eternal eating its tail.
We are observer and observed. Each watching ourselves evolve.
Life is serendipity, a beautiful and brave experiment, where lab rats may redefine mazes and refine the subtleties of the chase.
Reporting from Mother Earth, our hearts recreate again, and again. Amazing grace and infinite possibilities born of love and peace.
Those who are, are prayers, birthing those yet to be.

Love isn't Easy

Love isn't ever easy.
It is not about being sweet and kind and thoughtful
Generous with one's time
And sensitive to another's heart and mind.

We can do all these hard things
If we think we wish to be good
Yes maybe it's easier to be in love
And perform all of the above

But these are things people in like
Can do
Forsooth even people in hate or indifference
Can find it in their hearts
To be true
To one's own Creed
And that's more about me
And less about
Me and you.

Love isn't ever easy.
Don't use and throw
The word, the act is sacred
And it imbues its magic
Ever its honor guard.

Can we love another better
Than we love ourselves?
Can every mother and father claim
They live for the lives of their precious angels,
And not just to perpetuate their names?

Can every Romeo and Juliet
In innocence sacrifice
A life infinitely precious
If they can't be each other's
Husband and wife?

Can you look into the mirror
At the age lines on your face?
Tell me you love to live
Every wrinkled crease
And don't desire
To make them less?

Love is an honor word.
Its demand is ever so high
It welcomes us to rise in it
Give up on all our lies.

No I haven't loved anyone
The way I imagine
Love to be
In the dead of night
My mother's face creeps on me
In a supreme summer's blissful mirth
Father's smiling face bestows grace on me.

We all love
In earthly ways

Imperfect our ideas
As flawed ourselves.

Don't give up.
Strive try harder
Ask the highest 
Of yourself
Love isn't a fall
Ascend we will
Into love's grace.

Till then,
Love is merely
The most powerful word
I don't possess
Yet daily pray.

(c) Amrita Valan 2016

My Beautiful God

People have dissed or derided polytheistic faiths in favor of monotheism without making an important distinction sadly.
Namely both monotheism and polytheism at its worst has a tendency to rebuild God in Man's image.
Do not worship idols is a commandment in the Bible exhorting us to worship the Creator and not the creation.
What if people, You and me, limited by our sensory organs can only visualize the aspect of divine in the human, can worship the Creator through his creation?
I often have to say it, when we Hindus, worship a clay idol of Durga, it's courage and strength clothed in feminine form we're worshipping, and not a female figure straddling a lion.
We are worshipping the essence of feminine in the divine. The power and potency  symbolized and not the symbol.
And when monotheism worships God in the image of a bearded father figure, or his Son, are they really doing anything different?
It is not man made in God's image, (or why would an entire gender remain unrepresented?), but what they're actually visualizing is God in Man's image.
Worship Creation, if it leads to worship the Creator, to appreciate and praise him, even better.
The abstract emerges eventually from the concrete.
The unseen from the seen.
And yes, God is bound to remain on another plane of abstraction, beyond human comprehension, to be God.
I see God, within and without.
In our hearts and minds, in nature and in the intricacy of science.
God being ubiquitous and omnipotent is bound to be everywhere and in everything.
So why the rules and restrictions, regarding worship?
Worship is but an expression of gratitude.
I can praise God,  for creating mighty mountains, bountiful rivers and plentiful harvests on mother Earth, or I may see God in them and be blessed for it.
Nothing is a sin except to try and regulate the finest expression that the human heart is capable of by saying "Thou shalt not...", without backing it up with reason.
Faith and obedience is extolled over training the mind to reason analyze and formulate one's belief. That to me is the path of despair.
" Scepticism is essential", says the 14th Dalai Lama, I thank him for it.
To train the mind to think,  is to liberate it.
To doubt is a duty.
To question is to embark on the true quest to knowledge.
To know is to value and appreciate true worth.
To discover and distinguish is to elevate humanity.
And do away with differences of opinion and discourses, and discover unity.
 
What else is religion for?

(c) Amrita Valan 2016