I was a career oriented, go-getter, big dreamer, feminist, living life king size kind of a person, that is before I got married to the man I loved.

I liked to think of myself as this new age bride who walks shoulder to shoulder with her spouse, who contributes financially, helps her husband with ice in his whiskey. But as much as I would have liked it to last a bit longer, shortly after getting married, on one unexpected day I discovered that I was pregnant.

My world came crashing down. Not that I never wanted to become a parent, although I never quite liked children much, this day came sooner than I ever imagined. I wasn’t ready for it. I wasn’t ready to take up this huge responsibility of raising a child. I was supposed to work round the clock, drink hard I could on days I wanted to let my hair down, travel to international destinations with my bae, indulge in unhealthy food when I liked. But as truth be told, life is unpredictable.

After I made this huge discovery, the days ahead became very gloomy and unexciting. I loathed working late, preferred staying indoors and sleeping. I quit drinking, traveled less, became a selective eater as I was having a hard time keeping my food inside. I felt guilty of not getting excited about anything, especially seeing my overly excited husband who loved kids and couldn’t wait to start his own family someday. Lucky for him, it couldn’t have been any sooner than this.

I never sang to my pregnant belly, never touched it lovingly, never shopped for the soon to arrive and resorted to the passed on clothes. I never really tried hard to make this pregnancy a special one as I never felt any connection, not even on the day of delivery as I didn’t go into labour. I had an emergency c-section because of fetal distress. Well as I lay on the OT table, I was numb but could hear the sound of instruments clanking, tissues tearing apart, I could smell the burnt skin and finally, I heard his first cry. I felt… nothing!

Everyone in the room congratulated me, said I did well. That was funny because all I did there was play dead. Anyway, the sisters holding him brought him close to me to show his genitals as I was getting stitched back. They held him a little longer than required and to escape the awkward gap in time, I planted a kiss on his forehead. They took him away to get him ready for the visitors waiting impatiently along with my nervous husband who refused to come inside the OT because he didn’t think he could see all that blood. I wonder how men can act all sensitive and get away with it without getting any eyebrows raised and some women are frowned upon when they choose to get epidural or spinal. Well, there are even people who say women who undergo c-section or opt for anesthesia do not ‘give birth’. Giving birth means going through all that pain to push out a human. I didn’t go through that pain but I sure did give birth.

As I was getting stitched I remembered how I planted that kiss and our eyes met. I started studying the details of that short encounter. It’s been more than one year but I still remember it vividly. Because that was the moment I felt the connection I always wanted to when he was inside my belly. His eyes were half shut and they pierced into mine. He was crying before our eyes met but became calm when he looked at me. It was as if he trusted no one but me. By the time the surgeons were done I was rolled back to my room and throughout the way, I kept thinking of our little eye contact. I wanted to see more of him. He was with my aunt. Cocooned inside a blanket. I asked her to put him next to me. I saw him again and again and again. He resembled no one. But it was too soon to tell. He smiled in his sleep and I laughed. He pouted and I laughed. He tried to move his body against the tightly wrapped swaddle but was unhappy that he couldn’t. He opened his eyes and saw me. I looked at him with a smile and tears in my eyes and I kissed him. Only this time it was sealed with a promise that I will continue to love him with all my heart and soul and will take a bullet for him if I have to. It was pure love and my first ever ”love at first sight”.

The post I Now Believe In Love At First Sight, An Infant Ensured I Did appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

I am a decent Punjabi girl from a decent family. I studied in a school only a selective population in this country could afford, I am studying what I wanted the way I wanted it. I have rules, regulations, biases and prejudice held up against me often, sometimes as an example of what I should not turn into. I have been raised by a single parent, who is well educated and may even be elite, but that does not spare me the wrath of society, and sometimes, even parental bias.
The point I’m trying to make is, despite having a shit-ton of privilege, I am learning something new each day, primarily because I have been brought up in a somewhat conservative, somewhat well-educated and aware environment.
When we say things are changing today, we mean two things; one, we are all trying to look at a wider spectrum of reality, and two, we are constantly facing new facts, which make or break our beliefs. Ever since the inception of social media, things are changing at a higher speed, and this makes it difficult to keep pace with the amount of development there has happened or is happening.
The past few years have been an eye-opener, primarily because I took my head out of my own ass and started looking around, trying to feel more, trying to do more. With the recent developments in the #MeToo movement, I was forced to look back at its very history and it was baffling to see how many people were brave enough to come out with their truths and face their demons. I had read somewhere that blood, tears and sweat don’t discriminate, they each hurt equally. In this case too, regardless of finances, societal position, age, religion, outfit and gender, the violation did not discriminate.
Gender. To be very honest with you, where I have been all my life, the company, the place, even my educational institutes have taught me there are three genders, Male, Female. and the taboo-ed Other. Not only is this wrong fundamentally, but it is also insulting and insensitive. For generations, we have suppressed any sort of truth we were uncomfortable with, even if it meant suppressing a part of the global population. Why is ‘coming out’ such a milestone in the first place? Because (a) we have been accustomed to this suppression and (b) making somebody uncomfortable in their own body does not matter if it keeps our idea of ‘normalcy’ alive.
I was taught to not make eye contact, I was taught to look through, I was taught this was not normal, that something about it was not right. Well, I was evidently taught the wrong things. And I was not alone. As a child, of course, I listened and even adhered to what I was taught. I learned to look the other way, I learned to look past, I learned to not acknowledge, I also learnt to use identities and truths as abuses to make any argument stronger. Fighting my bias took time, but I realized that in order to come up front with the truth, I had to know what the truth is. So, instead of asking someone, I went seeking answers to the Internet.
Now, the Internet played a very important role because there were no supervisors here. You could be anything you liked, no one would chaperone you. This, of course, had many side-effects of its own, but that is another discussion for another day.
For now, as a clueless 15 year old, I wanted to know what was the flaw in the truths I was so happy believing. I Googled gender and was surprised the there were sub-parts to the Other.
LGBTQ+. I did not even understand what most of this meant. There were people who were biologically female but had a male gender expression, and vice versa. Then there were so many who were biologically male but identified strongly as female (and the other way around), and wanted to turn their mental reality into a physical one. There were those who loved their own kind, those who loved the opposite kind, and those who’s love did not know discrimination.
I went on to read tales from mouths which knew no acceptance, staying in the shadows was now in their nature. I read that the laws of our country dictated what these people felt was not valid. That the only truth they knew as their own was a lie. It was frustrating, primarily because we are a people who harp about our doctors and engineers and the little bit of education we have all received. What use is an education if it allows you to shun your conscience in the name of normalcy.
I did more research, I read more, and then, I had to sit back and deal with my own demons. Personally, if you are a heterosexual male/female, things are easier. You do things the way you do and it fits into a grid. It is normal. It is valid. I had to now sit back and undo all the damage society had done to me. I had to start at home, where once my brother said he would ‘turn’ gay if his schooling in a same-gender school was upheld. I had to learn that sexuality is not acquired, it is who you inherently are. The only thing one needs to acquire is the courage to show this reality to the world. I had to sensitize myself to never assume. To be honest with you, I still have to, sometimes twice a day.
I am consciously reminding myself that someone else’s life and the way they decide to live it, is none of my business. I am trying to read more, listen more, and speak more. I am learning to be more tolerant each day, even towards things I was taught which are inherently wrong; and as of now, it’s working out for me. This year, the Courts of this country also acknowledged this part of the population, and gave them the freedom to finally be themselves. Nothing makes one happier than knowing that they are not alone and that they are valid.
Nothing except my gut affects my instinct any more. There is a lot of positivity and love at the end of the road, and I want as much of it as I can lay my hands on.

The post An Amateur’s Guide To Gender Sensitivity appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

My journey from Mumbai to Pune has been nothing less than a roller coaster ride.

With all the highs and lows, I’m proud that I survived and am still surviving. I faced problems, but moreover, I faced real challenges. These challenges hurt me, but transformed me.

I was happy and full of life until the CET (Common Entrance Test) results were out and the list on my computer screen read ‘Pune.’ I had two choices: either to drop the idea of relocating and, with it, my dream of becoming a doctor, or to go to a completely new place and play the game to get the title.

I chose the latter. On November 1 2016, I was in Pune, a city completely different from my hometown. For me, it was a bit easy as I knew I wouldn’t have to go through the process of adjusting to a hostel, since I was going to stay with my aunt. I immediately felt a sigh of relief when I got to know this. But, then came the challenges.

Pune as a city was good enough, but it did not give me any feeling of home. Mumbai was home, and I had thought Pune would be too, given the proximity between the two cities and that they’re part of the same state. But, that was not the case. There was no sea to drown my sadness in.

Over the years, I’ve learnt that Pune is slower than Mumbai. The life here is slow, the people are relaxed, and it is silent, rather, peaceful. What they called ‘peaceful’ was mere silence for me because I was used to the honking of cars at 3:00 a.m. and a life lived in fast forward.

In the initial days, I started cocooning myself and hardly made any friends. People from college thought I was a snobbish girl and a spoilt brat. I hated being away from my family and friends. I did not like the crowd in Pune. Since I had no friends, I started feeling lonely and homesick. The city I once loved to go to for a weekend getaway became the city I hated the most.

Travelling to college was another big challenge for me, as I was used to the ‘car and driver’ lifestyle. Unlike Mumbai, there were no trains or buses every five minutes and the only way to commute was an auto rickshaw. Whenever I went home, I would only cry and regret my decision of choosing to study in Pune. My greatest weakness was living without my parents. This started to affect me mentally and emotionally. I had to give it time, I knew, but I also had to have the will to make this work.

By the end of first year, I started giving Pune and the people around me a chance. I made friends at college, who, like me, had homes far away from Pune and had to live in hostels. I considered myself lucky that I at least had my aunt as a support system. I started to open myself up and made friends for a lifetime.

I started accepting the fact that the sacrifices I made and efforts I put in would never go in vain. I started to fare well in my tests and exams, as I studied hard with the support of my family and friends.

I realised that Pune was not only different from Mumbai, but different in its own beautiful way. It has its own charm. I visited new places and met new people. I started to understand the routes and commuting to college became easier. I started to appreciate myself and gathered self-esteem; I secured the third rank in my first year. I realised that there was no success without hard work and sacrifice.

Moreover, I started feeling comfortable in the environment that I once felt most uncomfortable in. The people I once thought I’d never get along with had now taken an irreplaceable place in my heart.

The way life unfolds is unpredictable, but the way we face it depends on us. It’s hard to keep in touch with everybody, but then that’s life. I consider it as an indirect way to discover myself out of my comfort zone.

Today, I am proud that I tackled all the challenges and came out as a stronger and a better person. I have become independent and nothing gives me more joy. When I look back at those days, I feel proud that I lived through them and didn’t give up.

Leaving our hometown affects us all in different ways and on different levels. But I have realized, what we do need to do is give it time: time to understand how the new place works; time to the people around us because they might be facing their own challenges; time to ourselves to adjust to the chance and try to fit in.

The grumpy face I once used to make on hearing ‘Pune’ has now become a happy face, because the feeling of going back to my friends makes me feel happier than ever.

Going home is always the best time, but coming back even better. Pune is how my home away from home and I love it.

The post I Moved To Pune As A Mumbaikar, And Boy Did I Have A Tough Time appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

I had come home for Diwali and was helping my grandma sort her things out. She had spread on the bed, all her stuff from the old tin box, she had brought with her after her wedding as dowry. And boy! What a treasure it contained. While shuffling through things, I came across old jewellery, her photographs, small antique glass showpieces and various other things which would be worth a fortune today. Her twinkling eyes while she recounted every story attached to the things, explained the value it contained for her, which she had kept so close to her heart for all these years. I was trying not to be astonished by the treasure she kept safely for all the tumultuous years of her life when I caught hold of few pieces of tattered paper that made her blush. My grandma blushed! Like a newlywed bride. And why would she not, after all, they were the love letters she had written to my grandpa in her courtship period. They were written in ink and so were smudged but still smelt of immense love it must have been shared with.

On little cajoling, she started narrating her love story that seemed much better than mine in this technology-driven world. She told me that she used to write a letter to my grandpa every month after they were engaged. Those were the times when they could only exchange letters through posts and so often she had to wait for months for my grandpa’s letter. And those days of waiting went in a euphoria of excitement, anxiety and longing for their love.

By the nostalgia she carried in her eyes, I could see the purity of her love and the sanctity of the relationship they shared. I could sense the excitement of waiting for the letters and the weight each word those letters contained. I could see the pain of the separation and the joy of the news of the arrival of those letters had. I could feel the blossoming of their love in those letters. A love which was beyond statuses and relationship posts. That was a love which was not tainted by technology and not killed by the urgency of the comments and blue ticks. A love which was a slow addiction. It grew slowly and never left them.

While listening to her story, the flashes of mine surfaced before my eyes. A love story which might have been successful if we had not relied so much on technology. If we would have also passed it through the test of time, patience and love letters.

It is because my love story, like every other in this technology-driven society, was subject to how well we connected digitally, how fast we repled to each other’s messages, how many likes and comments we got on our posts and how often we posted updates about our relationship. It feels stupid today that those were the disgusting metrics we had put to judge our relationship and how wrong we were.

Breaking my chain of thoughts, my grandma asked me, what she thought of the letters. Little envious and dejected, I replied what I felt I could have saved my relationship, that her love is the purest kind I have come across, that her love is not maligned by social media and messages. That her love is not determined by the times they called each other or the time they talked to each other through phone calls or messages. That her love had passed the test of time, and the glow on her face revealed the immense love she still had for grandpa, as a teenager.

I told her about my love story (which she was aghast to hear, being unaware it) which was ruined because of technology. How we met through a dating app, and how we started dating just because we found our social media profiles interesting. She was obviously astonished to know that we would chat for hours and still had more fights than she ever had with grandpa. We broke up because we did not have any patience to personally meet and resolve our issues. Instead a few nasty and rude WhatsApp conversations ruined everything.  That we had no eagerness left to meet as a video call substituted meeting in person. And finally, because we were connected on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, Snapchat, and all other social media apps you can think off. But somehow, somewhere, our own connection reduced and finally faded away.

I had always considered technology to be a boon for mankind, but after I met my grandpa through grandma’s letters, I realised we miss out the beauty of the pre-technology era. We miss the excitement of listening to each other’s voice after days of waiting. The purity of love letters somehow is not present in the messages of social media apps, and in the spree of knowing everything about each other as soon as possible, we miss the mystery cocooning our love. Love in the age of internet can be called a developing benefit as we can communicate more often. However still, a little excitement and mystery can be maintained when we are eager to unfold each other’s personalities, over time with patience and perseverance.

After all, someone has rightly said, “Don’t lose what is real, chasing what only appears to be.” 

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रविवार की एक घटना ने यह एहसास करने पर मजबूर कर दिया कि भले ही समाज ने तरक्की कर ली हो मगर इस दौर में हमने अपने अंदर की इंसानियत को कही खो दिया है। एक दूसरे के प्रति हमारे अंदर कोई संवेदना ही नहीं बची है।

मां और मैं पटना से बैंगलोर जाने के लिए निकले। हमारी यह यात्रा कलकत्ता से होकर थी। रविवार की सुबह हम कलकत्ता पहुंचे जहां से  बैंगलोर के लिए हमारी ट्रेन 5 घंटे बाद थी। इस दौरान हमने तय किया कि वेटिंग रूम में ही बैठकर समय गुज़ारा जाए।

ट्रेन आने से एक घंटा पहले हम प्लैटफॉर्म की ओर निकल गए। प्लैटफॉर्म पर जाने के लिए हम लिफ्ट के पास पहुंचे जहां पहले से कुछ लोगों की भीड़ थी। असल में कुछ लोग लिफ्ट में गए और फिर जल्दबाजी में कुछ बड़बड़ाते हुए बाहर आ गए। इतने में लिफ्ट का दरवाज़ा बंद हो गया।

मुझे इतना समझ में आया कि कोई आदमी लिफ्ट में है। पता चला कि लिफ्ट में एक आदमी है जिसे शायद लकवा का अटैक आया है। मैंने 2 मिनट वहां खड़े होकर इंतज़ार किया शायद कोई उसकी मदद के लिए आये पर कोई भी मदद के लिए सामने नहीं आया, बल्कि सारे लोग तमाशा देखकर आपस में बात करते चले जा रहे थे। जहां यह सारी घटना हो रही थी वहां करीब 100 लोग तो ज़रूर मौजूद थे।

फिर मुझसे रहा नहीं गया मैंने लिफ्ट का दरवाज़ा खोला और उस आदमी को बाहर निकालने की कोशिश करने लगी मगर यह मेरे अकेले के बस की बात नहीं थी। मेरी इस कोशिश के बावजूद कोई भी मेरी मदद के लिए सामने नहीं आ रहा था। यह देखते हुए मेरी मां ने सामने खड़ी भीड़ को फटकार लगाई और वहां खड़े कुछ आदमियों को बोला कि आप लोग इस तरह खड़े रहकर तमाशा क्या देख रहे हैं, उसकी मदद कीजिए।

मां की फटकार के बाद दो लोग मदद के लिए सामने आए। यहां भी इनकी होशियारी देखिए, उस आदमी को उठाकर ले जाने की बजाय यहां भी लोग अपने नुस्खे उसपर आज़माने लगे। मैंने सारा तमाशा देखते हुए फैसला किया कि मैं इस आदमी को छोड़कर रेलवे के मेडिकल हेल्प सेंटर जाती हूं शायद वहीं से कुछ मदद मिल सके। मैंने मां से कहा, “तुम यहां इनको देखो मैं मेडिकल हेल्प लेकर आ रही हूं”।

दुर्दशा देखिए कि ठीक उस लिफ्ट के नीचे ही रेलवे का मेडिकल सेंटर था पर किसी को भी नीचे जाकर उन्हें सूचना देने की चाह नहीं हुई। मैंने जैसे ही नीचे मेडिकल सेंटर में जाकर घटना की जानकारी दी उन लोगों ने तुरंत उस आदमी को एडमिट करके इलाज के लिए भेज दिया। हमारी ट्रेन का टाइम हो रहा था इसलिए मैं और मम्मी उन्हें वहां एडमिट कराने के बाद चले आये।

मन में एक खुशी भी थी कि आज किसी की जान बचाने में मेरा कुछ योगदान रहा पर उस खुशी से कहीं ज़्यादा दुख इस बात का था कि वहां खड़े तमाम लोगों में से किसी के मन में भी उस बीमार आदमी के लिए इंसानियत नहीं जागी।

उस इंसान की जगह हमारा कोई अपना होता, तब भी क्या हम ऐसा ही करते? मैं बहुत कम ही कुछ लिखती हूं पर इस घटना ने मुझे यह लिखने पर मजबूर कर दिया। मेरा यह लिखने का मकसद बस इतना है कि आगे जब भी आपके सामने ऐसी कोई घटना हो बिना सोचे उनकी मदद कीजिए। आपकी एक मदद किसी की जान बचा सकती है।

The post हावड़ा स्टेशन पर वह लकवे के अटैक से तड़प रहा था और लोग तमाशबीन थे appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

“Hello,

If you know of any Delhi-based psychologist/psychiatrist who has had any experience of working with adult survivors of child sexual abuse, please let me know. 

Thanks”

I typed this email but before I could hit send, I changed my mind and let it remain in the drafts folder. Am I finally willing to accept and admit that I was sexually abused as a child? Do I want to let people know? Oh but I already sent an email to someone where I ended up mentioning this. Why did I do that? Why am I suddenly so unsure of what to communicate with whom? The group I was sending this to is what I would call a safe space, but lately, I’ve been unsure of what a safe space means. I’ve been unsure of everything. I wasn’t always like this. Not so long ago, I was full of joy and excitement. Not so long ago, I was fond of reading and music and poetry and myriad other activities. Not so long ago, I quit my job and set out on a journey that I was excited and passionate about. Today, I don’t remember the last time I had a hearty laugh or opened a book to read or put on a song to listen to. I don’t remember what joy and excitement feel like. Not so long ago, I wasn’t like this. Not so long ago, I was someone who was – in my once-upon-a-time roommate’s words – “nauseatingly optimistic about everything”, about people and about life. Not so long ago, I started having flashbacks, and then everything started changing, gradually.

I was little when my 20-year old cousin sexually abused me, and until recently, it all remained somewhere hidden within the crevices of my mind. These memories had resurfaced some years ago as well, but they had just come and gone, they were hazy and unclear. One day, a few months ago, around the beginning of March, something triggered a vivid recollection of all those memories and it was a flashback like it was happening all over again. Along with it came a strange sense of fear and paranoia, and abrupt feelings of disgust and shame. No, it was never my shame to bear and never will it be, I know that. But at that point in time, I felt ashamed and I felt disgust, and I felt fear-driven paranoia, on and off. That day, when I had first got triggered, was perhaps one of the strangest days among a lot of many more strange days that kept recurring during my break with reality. ‘Break with reality’ sounds like a fun term, but no, it wasn’t. It was dark and strange, and I wish for it to never come upon anybody ever.

That day when the flashbacks started, I was happy and excited about working on something close to my heart. There was an event to be organised and I was meeting someone regarding the same. It was all good until I felt triggered by this same person who I was meeting. It was nothing he had done but something about that conversation triggered in me a strange sense of fear and paranoia, one that I’m still grappling to understand. I reached home, packed clothes to change, and left for my cousin’s place. I was hoping to meet my newborn niece and my cousin ‘V’. ‘V’ happened to be the younger sibling of my other cousin ‘M’ who I now recalled having sexually abused the seven-year-old me. V also happened to be a best friend, mentor, motivator, confidante. The drive to V’s place was nothing less than ‘strange’ either. A half-hour route took close to three hours as I kept getting lost on the way. At one point, I had a blackout while waiting for the traffic signal to turn green. I don’t remember how that happened. I only remember hearing people knocking on the car window, then rolling down the car window to the loud noise of honking and listening to people who had got off their cars to tell me to get the car moving. It had been a while that the traffic signal turned green and I was blocking traffic.

It took a while before I finally reached V’s place. I felt safe. I told him about this strange sense of fear and paranoia that was gripping me. I told him about the blackout I had on the way to his place. I discussed with him many apprehensions that I was having about a lot of things. And then, finally, I narrated to him what my elder cousin and his elder sibling used to do. I spent a lot of my childhood at their home. I was very close to my cousin sister, M and V’s elder sibling, and so their home was a second home to me. He had a computer, on which he would let me play pinball and MSPaint, but while playing I would be sitting on him. He would unzip his pants and take off my underwear and make me sit on him. I remembered feeling disgusted about this, that there was something wrong in what he was doing, but he was my elder brother so he could not be doing wrong, right? I never told anybody. I don’t remember how long this continued but this wasn’t a one-time incident. It used to happen often, every time when I would be alone with him in his room. I was seven or eight. He must have been twenty. At some point, when I grew up and realised this had been wrong, he stopped being my ‘favourite’ cousin. I still never told anybody. I told V all about what I was now recalling, how it happened, how it then made me feel, and how it was now affecting me.

V didn’t say a word for a while. He was neither surprised nor taken aback by what I had just told him, just silent, and then tears streamed down his face. He told me he also remembered ‘playing’ with me when I was little. How could this be ‘playing’ when ‘playing’ is supposed to be fun and not something which leaves scars and wounds? This wasn’t ‘playing’, this was sexual abuse. Of course, I knew that. I wanted to scream and shout, but I was too numb to respond. I had already begun screaming and shouting, but all in my head. There was more I wanted to tell him. There were more memories resurfacing. My elder cousin was not the only abuser. I was also molested by our domestic help, ‘R’. I had woken up one morning to find his fingers inside my vagina. I didn’t know what it was called back then but I knew there was something definitely not right about this. He immediately took out his hand from the blanket covering me, pretending to look for something under my bed. I sat up on the bed and looked at him. He got up and left the room. Soon after, he was dismissed for some other reason. I never spoke a word about this to anyone, and unbeknownst to me, somewhere this also got blocked out of my memory altogether. How could I possibly have not remembered all of this? Why did I never tell anybody about this? Could it be because of the confusing similarity between what happened here and what so often happened at my cousin’s place? Why did I never tell anybody about any of this right then? I know for a fact that my parents would have believed and supported me. Why then did I never tell them?

This pain of not having spoken up then felt unbearably hard to bear, and my mind was spiralling out of control. How could I have possibly lived so far without being consciously aware of all of this? How could I possibly have no memory of any incident involving V when I was now so clearly recalling what M did? How could I have been sexually abused by my ‘favourite’ cousins? How could I have possibly not told anybody then itself? I used to go up to my father to tell him even if I was slightly scolded by my mother or if I had the smallest fight with my brother. I grew up in a house where I was incredibly loved and pampered. If I tell my parents now, they would feel so disheartened. I can’t let them know. Little would they have known that this could have happened. V cannot possibly be my abuser because I would have remembered something at least. Is there more that I possibly still don’t remember? Maybe he is lying and making this up to make M look less bad. Why did he not seem surprised or taken aback by what I told him about M having done? Did he know about this all along? How could I have blocked all of this out and why is all of this coming back today? Is this even for real or is this all a bad dream that I am going to wake up from tomorrow?  Oh and there’s that event that I’m excited about, but why was that person smiling? Why am I feeling fear? What am I fearing?

As a child, I had possibly lost my voice. As an adult, I was definitely losing my mind, and this was just the beginning. The night turned into day, while I was still there sitting, hoping for light in the darkness. I left soon after, not for home, but to meet someone who I was scheduled to meet before the day turned the way it did. It was an hour’s drive and I had Phil Ochs for company. I rolled down the car window to let the wind dry the tears rolling down my face. I was not going to let anything deter me from doing what I wanted to do, and this is not my shame to bear anyway. I kept telling myself all along the way. I met her and we discussed hate and politics, and it almost felt like the day before had not even happened. This was it. I am going to focus on what I was setting out to do and I am going to become my own light in the darkness that I was hoping for to arrive, just a while ago. Whatever happened yesterday will take some time to process, so I will ‘deal’ with it after some time. So I told myself, except that this was just the beginning of a havoc within my own mind.

Over the course of the next few weeks and months, I had several, fairly not so private, mental breakdowns. I became a person I am still struggling to reconcile with. I am an extremely private person, but here I was, dishing out random personal details to people I barely knew. There were new things that I was working on or was beginning to work on, and I gradually kept ruining all of that. The familiar and the known suddenly started feeling unsafe, and over time I slowly started cutting off all communication with whoever I trusted. As time progressed, I evaded meeting family and friends, stopped taking calls and responding to messages and exiting from chat groups. I started communicating randomly everywhere else, to the point of spamming. I started experiencing hallucinations and delusions. I started becoming different ‘people’, each one dissociating from another. I sought help when my family realised something was very wrong and a course of medication made this ‘break with reality’ disappear, but then it brought forward the very reality I was probably trying to escape. I was able to communicate all that I could recall of this break with reality but the reality that I had been trying to escape still seemed difficult to communicate. And while coming to terms with these decades-old memories wasn’t even done, there was now this prolonged episode of an absolute mental breakdown to absorb and process.

One can heal from the loss of what one knows of having lost, but how does one reconcile with the loss of one’s own ‘self’?

The post As An Adult, It’s Even Harder To Accept That I Was Sexually Abused Several Times As A Child appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Since the age of sixteen, I have had one aim,
That was to win the title of the “perfect woman”.
I had been told to look beautiful,
Because men like fair girls with a slender waist.
I have heard my mumma mutter to an auntie that Kajol, Deepika & Bipasha could have been prettier,
So, I decided that day to look pretty to achieve my title aim.
I applied paste over paste,
Some that were sticky yellow,
Some that smelt like a rotten egg placed in a trash dump.
But I have had to apply them so as to look beautiful.
I applied hundreds of fairness creams,
I rubbed & rubbed the thick foam of the cream over my brown cheeks,
Till they started burning red hot like a meltdown lava.
Although I took all the precautions while doing that.

Finally, the day arrived,
The wedding trumpets
Were ready to make me a perfect puppet,
Then began the grand feast,
And they looked no less than a beast.
Gifts exchanged,
And relatives consoled my tender heart,
Whispered their cautious advice in my ears that was loaded with heavy flashy ornaments.
I had been told not to sit with my legs apart,
I have been skilled to walk in the dark,
I had been told not to giggle in front of ‘them’,
I had been told not to speak louder than ‘him’,
I had been told and never asked…

I was transported to another house,
My very dream house of my spouse.
I tried & tried to adjust my little self,
In the huge mansion, with big rooms.
But there was no place for my little heart,
After all, that needs art.
I worked & worked through sleepless nights,
Days passed without proper food,
But I kept my cool.
Because after all, it’s the job of a perfect woman to prove.
I kept stitching my broad red blossomed lips,
Behind this soft eclipse.
I kept galloping the leftover food,
I kept cleaning the footprints,
I kept bearing the filthy shit,
That was being thrown at my face each day, each night.
I kept hiding the scars of that every haunting night, under the long veil of a cheap saree.
I kept burning the pages of my diary,
Not because ‘I’ hate to write
But because ‘he’ hates me when I write.
Everything shook my will,
Despite that, I kept standing still.
I maintained the angelic smile on my face,
Until I realized that this isn’t a fairy phase.

One day I decided,
One day I thought,
I have had enough,
I have had enough,
I have had enough of sacrifices,
I have had enough of letting it go.
I have had enough of being pious,
I wanted to be the fire again,
I have had enough of being Parvati,
I wanted to be Bellona again.
I wanted to be that zeal again.
I wanted to be the power again.

So I took a rope,
As there was no hope.
I made a perfect noose,
As it was the time to choose…
My body turned frost,
my body turned bluish.
For the first time I felt the darkness,
Tasted the death,
As ‘he’ took his last deep breath!

~Tanisha Saxena ©

The post Poem: When I Decided I Had Borne Enough… appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Every year lakhs of people take the Civil Services exam and only a handful make it to the list. The competition is cut-throat. Successful people get the red carpet treatment-interviews, seminars, workshops. They serve as a source of inspiration for everyone. Tales of people who overcome extraordinary adversity to make it to the top are widely circulated. While we must celebrate success, it is also important to spare a thought for those who don’t make the cut. My relentless pursuit of the exam, despite the setbacks, has put me in a strange position where I find myself as the poster child of failure amongst near and dear ones. I have involuntarily acquired a new reputation for being a pro at failure. I am hoping it’s temporary! I think it is important to talk about failure and not feel embarrassed about it. Here is a glimpse at my civil services journey, coming to terms with failure and a few thoughts on how best to handle it.

Taking the civil services exam has been a personal ambition for me. I quit my job for the exam and dived headlong into it. For the entire duration of my journey, I have worked quite hard and made sincere attempts. The first time that I did not get through, it was okay. It did not feel too bad. I told myself that I had a lot more to read. Besides, not many people crack it in the first attempt. I also consoled myself saying that at least I cracked prelims. The second time around, it felt horrible. Failure struck hard. I could not figure out why I did not do well in certain areas. I was struggling with borderline depression and occasional suicidal thoughts. At this point, your friends are still rooting for you. By the time you are taking the third attempt, you are already sort of addicted to the exam. You don’t want to lose the fight. You are salvaging your pride.  You get customary wishes right before the exams. In your heart of hearts, you are still hoping that things might turn around. In all fairness that is how it goes for many.

By the time you are writing your fourth attempt, you are not even sure why you are writing the exam. Surviving an occasional failure is easy for most, but surviving back to back failure can break down the toughest of people. You just want to make sure that you do not have any regrets later. You are scared of catching up with the real world outside and trying to postpone it. The wishes dry up. Only your closest bunch of friends are checking on you. Your relatives have already given up on you and are advocating marriage as redemption and social security. Your life has become confined to your room. You have consulted a hundred astrologers and you have been considering changing your name as per numerology. You lose your sense of time and by the time you are done with your fourth attempt, it’s been five years in the outside world. Five long long years!! Half a decade! National elections are again round the corner. People have gotten married, travelled the world and got promoted. Some may have even popped babies. Your bank balance is negligible. After being out of the job market for 5 years, it is not going to be easy to go back to a job. It is a difficult situation. Pondering over all that is wrong with the Civil Services examination won’t help. You have to get yourself together. No one else can do it for you.

1. You have to tell yourself that it is okay to fail. There is no other way. There is too much emphasis on success in our society. But failure is as much a part of life as is success. Sadly there is no focus on real-life coping mechanisms in our school curriculum.
2. Don’t take your failure personally. Don’t let one exam decide the course of your life. Don’t let it be a measure of your merit or your potential. Abandon any self-limiting belief at the earliest. Hold on to your self-confidence.
3. People make tough decisions all the time. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t. Don’t be too harsh on yourself. Be proud of yourself that you had the courage to pursue something that mattered to you.
4. Self-motivate. Browsing through failure quotes can help you put the gloomy days behind you. This is my personal favourite-‘The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing but in rising every time we fall”-Ralph Waldo Emerson.
5. Spend time with family. In the hardest of times, it is family that we fall back upon. Nothing is as reassuring and comforting than to have family around.
6. Go on a vacation. Nothing lightens up a heavy heart like a bright blue ocean on a sunny day! It need not be exotic (given your dire financial condition). Even a simple one will do the magic. Throw in some coconut water for faster recovery!!
7. Work out. Any form of physical activity is good for the body and takes the mind off negative thoughts. It also lowers stress levels.
8. Do reflect on what should have been done better to ace the exam. Learning from failure minimizes heart-ache. The lessons learnt are deep and will last you a lifetime. The weaknesses are something that you must work upon and overcome.
9. Practice gratitude. While you may prefer yelling at God for having failed you, it’s important to remember that there are many things that you should be thankful for. All is not lost. Take a walk outside to see how cruel life can be.
10. Do not compare your condition to that of anyone else (although you may be tempted to).  It will make you feel downright miserable.  Don’t hold grudges against them for their happiness or feel jealous. You have to live your own life. Successes and failures included. Don’t compromise on your moral values in hard times. You are made of tougher substance.
11. Don’t dwell too much on your past achievements. Make your peace with what life is offering you at the moment while keeping a sharp eye for fresh opportunities. Don’t stop putting in your 100%.
12. You could try Vipasanna meditation. It may just work for you. Who knows. It seems to be working for Rahul Gandhi! Cheer up!! Life is beautiful. Time to catch up on all the movies and binge watch serials.
13. Consider medical help if things get too difficult to handle.
14. Patience. Patience. Patience. Time heals everything.  It really does. You will remember this as a little misadventure when you are 60. It will not matter much.
15. Eventually, everything falls into place but you need to make the first move-start applying for jobs, clearing out all the stuff. Time to move on!!

Best Wishes.

The post My Civil Services Journey And A Handy Guide To Handling Failure Like A Pro appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

2018 has truly been a year of weddings! I add myself too in the list of brides who got hitched this year. One of my earliest memories of a wedding is that of my aunt crying at her ‘Bidai’ and I wondered why?

Fast forward to 23 years from then… I was the next daughter of the family to tie the knot, and I soon found my answer to that ‘why’.

Being this family’s only daughter, I confess to having been extremely pampered by my uncles and aunts, been a spoilt brat (even today!) much to the annoyance of all my brothers. Only on the eve of your wedding do you realize the number of people you took for granted, the aunt you could have paid a visit more often, the chacha you should have checked on now and then, but here they are sharing your joy and just as happy as your parents in doing so.

In a day and age where the focus is mainly on conducting extravagant weddings, we tend to overlook the fact that a wedding rich in ‘moments’ is far beautiful. I take immense pride in saying I wasn’t the bride who woke up at the break of dawn for her makeup or fretted over costume hassles, or went through skin care routines months before the big day. I was that bride who went to the mandap wearing two different nail paint colors. A wedding can be lavish or simple, but it’s a memorable one when your family becomes friends and friends become family through it all. In this regard I have truly been an ecstatic bride in every sense of the word.

You don’t need a wedding to count your blessings, but as I sat through my functions, soaking in the wedding atmosphere, watching my family amidst the wedding madness; I looked on from a distance teary-eyed, realizing no one would love me more than they do, and I will be forever thankful for this selfless love that makes them move mountains for me.

So, I cried like a baby; through all the functions, shamelessly washing away my makeup artist’s hard work in hiding my hangover. I realized no matter how long the hours or number of days I have spent with each person in the family, the time was never enough, never will be.

Yes, I will still be their little girl, pampered each time I’m home… but a time does come when you turn around and head to a new abode.

Teary-eyed (like my aunt), but immensely thankful for so much love in this lifetime.

The post I Finally Understood Why My Aunt Cried At Her Bidai: Account Of A Teary-Eyed Bride appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

The post You Say It Best When You Say Nothing At All appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

It was an arranged marriage but, that’s ok! I was mentally prepared for that since my childhood, this has been the tradition of our family, only parents or elders have this right to choose a life partner for us. A trend which has passed on from one generation to the other.

I entered the guest room with the tray of chai and biscuits… it was full beyond its capacity, there were around 20 people in the room, including my own family members. They were all looking at me. Of course, the boy’s side of the family was staring at me from head to toe as if they had the right to, but yeah, actually they had been given that right! This is what they had come for. Anyway, continuing the show, I placed the tray on the table and walked out of the room as fast as I could. A few minutes later, they called me again. My Dada ji called me this time and I couldn’t refuse. I went back to the room with all eyes on me again. One of the onlookers inquired about my education, the second about my job and many others about my studies and work. What amuses me the most in hindsight is, that nobody asked me if I could cook, considering that is the most crucial factor for them, something I realised eventually.

One weak later, my father got a phone call. It was a ‘yes’ from the other family, and now they wanted to know our answer. My father said “yes” within a second. He didn’t feel the need to ask me anything. My then would-be husband’s family was looking for a well educated, fair, slim girl with a decent height. Someone told me that he had seen four or five girls before me. We didn’t get a chance to even talk to each other, or probably he didn’t feel the need to talk. The search was finally over. He wanted a beautiful girl and my father wanted a rich family for me. Wow, what a great combination!

It took me a little while to accept the fact that I was getting married to a person I had no idea of. “When there are no choices, don’t think much, just go with the flow,” is what someone once told me. So, the preparations started. I was happy because my family was happy after a long time, and that was enough for me, I guess.

The second call my father received was for the engagement preparations. We were told that there would be around 250 guests from my fiance’s side so that we could prepare accordingly. My father again said ‘okay’ without consulting anyone in the family. But I put my foot down this time. I tried to make him understand that spending so much for an engagement ceremony was pointless, since we had to organize the wedding for the very next month, as it is. My father, of course, lost his temper and said, “Hum ladki wale hain, we have to do whatever they demand.”

Because his family was wealthier than ours, my father wanted to do the best he could do. I told my father many times that I wanted a simple wedding, but he didn’t want to listen to me. I talked to my fiance’ directly about this, told him I was against a big engagement ceremony and that he should convince his family against it. Luckily, he tried and the number of guests was reduced to 8-10, which was okay with me. So we got engaged.

We had to present clothes to everyone as a wedding gift. My parents were in the middle of the preparations when they got a call one day and were asked to gift double sets of clothes to the boy’s side of the family, because many of them missed the engagement. I was shocked! My father looked at me with anger and said, “I told you, it would have been better if we had agreed previously.” I didn’t know what to say.

This time my father didn’t want anyone to interfere, he wanted to do the best. He gave clothes to everyone, cash, gold and all the things which are required in a house (TV, sofa, bed, dining table, kitchen utensils) and many other things which even my father didn’t possess.

My father didn’t spend a single rupee for his own clothes and he gave Rs. 50,000 to the groom for shopping. He spent his life savings and even borrowed money from everyone he thought he could. My heart felt heavy.

The wedding day was the biggest ceremony in my family and even in my village. The guest list touched 6,000. Everyone one seemed happy, but honestly, I was not. I was smiling throughout, but looking at my father’s face bothered me. I wanted to ask him, “Why are you doing this? Just to please the society? Just to please the ladke wale, who never appreciate all that you do, even after doing much more than your capacity?”

My father spent more than Rs. 30 lakhs, which was a waste for me, I know he thought otherwise, that my in-laws would be happy, that they would praise him or me, but no, that never happened. They were too busy finding flaws in me and the wedding.

Dear Papa, you spent a huge amount of money for my wedding, but it doesn’t give me the happiness I required, it only burdens me. I never wanted this and I still regret it till date…only I know how much you have struggled, just to make others happy, just to make my wedding the most memorable. But you never understood that this would never make me happy!

The post My Father Spent More Than 30 Lakh On My Wedding But I Was Not Happy appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

Dear readers, warm wishes of the new year 2019.

In this note, I just want to rewind my journey with YKA in the year 2018, where I have been privileged to develop my writing skill and here all the credit goes to Team YKA who selflessly help me to write and provides me the opportunity to strengthen my voice on the various issues and concerns where I put my opinions through writing articles.

Needless to say that I am glad to be in touch with YKA, although I also love to read the pieces that are published on YKA. I hail from Biswanath district of Assam, and I feel that Assam and the northeast needs more representation in mainstream media. Slowly and gradually the numbers are increasing but it’s still not satisfactory.

I feel privileged that I have got the opportunity to share our news stories by means of media platforms like Youth Ki Awaaz. I believe that YKA should also think about increasing readers and writers from the northeast as well.

Overall, I have written 28 articles on YKA in the last year 2018. Here are six stories on YKA in 2018 that helped me strengthen my voice:

1. The Real Reason People In Assam Are Against The Citizenship (Amendment) Bill, 2016

In this I have shared about why the people of Assam stages against of the Citizenship Amendment Bill 2016. Most of the articles published regarding the bill but very a few only concerning on what will be impact of the bill in Assam’s social, political & cultural life. Through this article I have brought up the issues that are closely related with Assamese people regarding the bill. Still, here is the protest against the bill going on and this article is the great source to know about the causes & concerns that are closely observed about why Assam’s people are against the bill.

2. Why Does The Rape And Murder Of A 13-Year-Old Girl In Assam Not Make National News?

As the people of Assam, there is always a question we have been asked for a long time. Why does the Indian national media or the TV news media fail to cover news from Assam or the Northeast?  A 13-year-old minor had been brutally raped and murdered by miscreants in Hailakandi in the month of March 2018. There are also several cases registered on violence against women and rape but police and administration did not do anything. But surprisingly the national media fails to make the headlines on the sexual violence, rape and murders. I had raised my voice against this through this article.

3. The Media Needs To Be Careful About How It Reports Assam’s NRC

The process of NRC still ongoing in the region Assam, which started in December 2013 and applications for it were invited in May-June 2015. But the journey actually began during the Assam Movement in the early 1980s. The NRC official published two drafts of citizens’ name of Assam on Jan 1 and June 30 2018 respectively.  The final list of NRC will be released soon. But most of the media channels shared incorrect information and data regarding the NRC process when the draft was out with their own assumption. Somehow media fails to report on NRC correctly and gave misleading information to the people. In this article I have written about what is NRC, why it’s needed in Assam and other details.

4. In Assam, Women’s Political Participation Continues To Show A Worrying Trend

India is the world’s largest democracy, where a significant number of voters are women. Yet, there are very few women representatives in the Parliament or the state assemblies. The Indian Constitution ensures gender equality and justice for women through its various provisions. The government also promotes women’s rights from time to time. But historically, women’s participation in politics and their representation has remained low in India. In Assam too, the women’s political participation and representation is very less which is not satisfactory. By this article, I have discussed the problem along with some data and research.

5. Where Are We Going Wrong In Our Fight Against Rape Culture In India?

Rape crimes are increasing day by day in our society, which is shameful for human society. But we never say anything aloud against such crimes equally. In this article I strongly made the point that rape is a horrific crime of the society which is not a religious or political issue that the nation is facing!  So, we should stand against of this type injustice and crime against women as countrymen by keeping our religion and political choices away. If today we fail to raise our voice then our next generation will not forgive us!

6. Our Words Can Start A Silent Revolution

In this article, I have shared my personal views about why do I write? Which causes inspire me to write?

I have also discussed about why does a citizen’s voice matter in a democratic nation? Why everyone should write or speak out about the issues and concerns those are related on nation-building process?  Because as citizens, our voices do matter and help in moving the country forward.

Along with these six articles I have written on some burning topics and news where readers want to know on details and hope that I have provided the complete information. For me, 2018 has been a fabulous year with YKA where I became user of the week in February 2018 as well!

I have learned much from YKA on how to write more creatively and I thank them for giving me the platform to amplify the spirit of writing. Hope that 2019 will be another great year for me with YKA.

The post Looking Back, This Is How Youth Ki Awaaz Helped Me Find My Voice In 2018 appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

This is going to be a painful and a very personal post, so please bear with me.

Quite frankly, I do not know how to interact with others. I have a bad habit of saying the wrong thing at the worst time, of being unable to read the mood of the person in front of me, of detesting small talk. Because of these traits, I was bullied for most of my school life, at least the parts that I remember. It has been years since then, and I’ve changed myself a lot, mostly in good ways. However, I would always think, back then, that there wouldn’t be effects later on. I was very wrong.

Take this case. I am sitting at a table with three men and a woman, with me sort of in the centre. They are aggressively asking me about something and laughing, and I feel awful. Suddenly I break down and leave, they apologize. When do you think this happened? And what happened?

Here’s the truth. I did something that I shouldn’t have done, and they were asking me why I did it. I stuck to my stand, though I was wrong. They were trying to point that out. I had a breakdown not because of them, but because of the way they were seated and some other things, that reminded me too much of those who bullied me. Also, this incident took place way after I left school. That should tell you enough. They weren’t being aggressive either. That’s how I perceived that moment.

While, in some ways, I have left the past behind, although in moments of bad moods and negative emotions, thoughts of hate and disgust towards bullies are triggered. I then hate anything associated with them and wish for bad things to happen to them. These feelings pop up even now. At this point, of course, they are more like bogeymen invented by a mind that’s trying to escape something else. They aren’t around to ruin my life.

Still, the effects are likely to be permanent. Someone once told me that I have low self-esteem. I agree. To this day, I cannot stand jokes on me, especially in a group setting and when it seems that the person making the joke is being aggressive. I try not to think about it. Every time I see someone being excluded, I feel bad. When I look into people’s eyes, I have no idea what they mean, so I usually just laugh.

The point of this entire thing is to speak of some emotions and be honest to myself. I wonder what would have happened if people had bothered to understand that that kid just wanted to have friends. I wonder why those people did what they did.

Still, there is hope. Out of the four or five encounters that I’ve had with former bullies since leaving school, I feel nothing towards them, and they don’t annoy me, except for one asshole, but that’s just a small matter. Time can heal. I do have to admit that if I had a chance, I would be an asshole or a bully. I can be a massive judgmental asshole. As somebody once said, I have a bit of an evil streak.

What I do want to say is that try and empathize with others, and if you can’t just don’t be negative towards them. A lot of pain and other negative emotions would be avoided. Maybe in an alternate universe, I can sit happily on the dinner table and not want to run away. Maybe.

The post Being Bullied As A Child Has Made Me Socially Awkward AF! appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

By Nidhi Aggarwal:

An internship is an ideal way to learn the actual prospects of working in a particular field and to explore the future scope of inter-disciplinary projects. Such was my internship at National Centre for Antarctic & Ocean Research (NCAOR), Goa, a global marine research institution in collaboration with the Ministry of Earth Sciences.

Being from a chemical engineering background, interning in an off-shore and seismology field is off the beaten path. It all started in my third year of college, when I was giving a direction to my interests. I wanted to gain expertise in off-shore drilling, and that’s how I started exploring this field. Seismology and Image Processing were the two sub-fields which excited me the most. I browsed through a lot of organisations, institutions, and MNCs which had expertise in this field. In the MNCs, I found Schlumberger and Halliburton which have operations in India. In national institutions, there were the NCAOR and the National Institute of Oceanography. I applied at all four places, but NCAOR was always my first preference.

I had emailed the head of the concerned department at NCAOR. I was fortunate enough to get a reply one week later, and a telephonic interview was scheduled. The interviewer asked me some questions related to optics, fluid mechanics, and inorganic chemistry. It was not a hardcore interview but he was keen to know my motivation for doing this internship. In a subsequent email, he confirmed I had been accepted for the internship. After a month, I got an email from the HR department asking me to submit certain details and a link to a form for the same.

I was ecstatic; it was partly due to the prospect of working in Goa, the land of beaches. The project which was given to me was also in sync with what I was looking for. However, I was flooded with all kinds of questions as to why I was choosing ocean research, and why (despite being a girl) I was aiming for a future in off-shore. I kept my cool and didn’t let those questions dampen my enthusiasm.

On the first day of the internship, I reached my mentor’s office at 9 am sharp. My mentor was very nice and humble. After a small formal conversation, he took me to my desk and introduced me to the whole team. He initiated the conversation about the latest happenings in the company and appreciated my motivation to work in this field. It was a great way to break the ice.

My project was on this topic: “Marine Geophysical Data Analyses”. My first task was to understand seismic data acquisition. The concept of physical optics had to be applied in different combinations of reflective and refractive mediums. I started from scratch and made many systems, starting from two to seven or eight mediums, with various combinations. The main role was of the parameter–density. As the density of the water medium changes, the velocity of the rays also changes accordingly, which was a key point to understand. Every system required a lot of analysis. This analysis could help in detecting the carbonated salts, hydrated gas and other things present in the water.

As I was new to this field, I went through a book named “Sheriff” in the first 15 days. It is really a good and informative book enlightening one about the history of oil exploration off-shore, and how the big names (like Schlumberger, Halliburton, and Baker Hughes) started, their mergers and acquisitions, followed by technical aspects in subsequent chapters. I read about twelve chapters and applied the concepts in the ProMAXX software installed in our workstations. I made different systems and learnt what the change in velocity could tell about density. With the help of values of density, we could tell what type of particles were present under the water. As we cannot drill randomly anywhere on earth, we need to take into account two main things: the availability of natural gas and hydrocarbons, and the environmental hazards of drilling. That’s why ProMaxx analysis is done first, and if the region is found to be economically feasible, the process of drilling starts. As far as environmental hazards are considered, I went through technical details of six disastrous oil spills which had taken place in the 19th and 20th centuries and tried to understand the reasons that led to those occurrences.

I used to have five working days a week. The NCAOR provided free accommodation to its interns, subject to availability. There was a canteen inside the premises, and the food was quite good, with a tinge of the south Indian style of cooking. A bus facility was also provided to and from Vasco, one of the Goa’s many beautiful cities twice a day. The NCAOR campus shares a border with the Arabian Sea, so one could go around and sit outside for while, where it is always so peaceful and serene. Friday evenings used to be the best. I had become friends with a couple of fellow interns and so the weekends used to be super fun. We used to plan for a lot on Friday evenings, wandering around the city the whole weekend, enjoying the beaches, the nightlife, and the parties!

The two months that I spent with the company were as fulfilling as anything I’d done professionally in quite a while. The learning involved was huge. Every day brought with it an opportunity to learn something new. As a result of my internship, today I’m working in the same field of mineral exploration in a company, Vedanta Resources PLC, headquartered in London, and I’m specialising in process engineering.

About the Author: Nidhi Aggarwal, a student of BITS Pilani, talks about her experience of interning in the field of seismology and how the internship helped her in getting a clear idea about her career choices. This article was first published on Internshala, an internships and trainings platform.

Featured Image courtesy of the author.

The post As An Intern Exploring Off-Shore Drilling Science In Goa, I Found So Much More appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

After completing my graduation in journalism, the only thing I was sure of was to come out of my comfort zone and that is just when Gandhi Fellowship found me. I always had an urge to do something out of the box. I joined Gandhi Fellowship like a blank piece of paper- determined to become a better version of myself at the end of the journey.

I am currently based in the tribal belt of southern Rajasthan called Banswara, also known as the Cherrapunji of Rajasthan. Our interventions are with government schools, specifically uplifting the student-learning outcomes of the primary section and working on the leadership skills of the principals. We also work in the communities and have the liberty to initiate projects in whichever domain we want to contribute to. During this two-year extensive residential program, we have a process called Community Immersion where we live with a family for about 28 days, immersing in every possible sense. It was during this time that I experienced grass-root level realities and various social obligations and dynamics that still exist.

I realised that for any society to grow, it is essential to empower the youth and women.

I began to closely work with the communities to understand their hopes and desires. My only goal was to give something back to the society that has given us so much. I initiated a project with the name of ‘BaaiR’ which means ‘women’ in the local language of Banswara. The vision was to help the local handicrafts, that they otherwise do not make commercially, to reach the market outside. Their products have reached many cities and we are looking out for more opportunities to make these ladies self-independent.

Women empowerment is definitely not an easy task, but I am determined to contribute in whichever way possible. Similarly, in another rural village, where the population is mainly dependent on agriculture and 90% of the families are below the poverty line, there was a need for an alternative livelihood option. I mobilised the local Self-Help Groups and oriented them on dairy farming. We are under the process to start the very first milk collection centre in the village, which will directly impact 46 households.

It is not a down-hill task, but I am committed to bringing change in whatever capacity I can. We all are in a much privileged place than thousands of people we can ever imagine, it is on us what method we choose to contribute; I chose Gandhi Fellowship.

Change is not easy but it is essential!

The post My Fellowship Gave Me A Chance To Work At Grassroots And Bring Real Change appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

We’re back at your dim-lit, straight-out-of-a-Spielberg film house. I have complained about the unkempt kitchen sink and the leaking tap so many times, and yet, I find myself here every Tuesday morning. The ritual is to walk in discreetly, get in bed next to you and run my hands through your hair. You open your eyes, gently, and close them again, smirking.

I get to the kitchen and make both of us chai, without sugar, and a wee bit of milk, and elaichi, only because you said it smelt of museums, Old Delhi and happy days. We’ve known each other for thirteen years now, you know every crevice of my skin, every movement of my eyes, the hint of sarcasm in my voice when I talk about how much I love football and hate summers. The flames try their luck at covering the saucepan entirely. I get lost for a moment in the fire’s beauty to consume, to perish, to destroy us.

When I get back, you’re lying in bed, intertwined in cotton sheets. Never have you looked so pure, so innocent. I see the sunset in you. The process of sleep evading you is one hell of a scene. I still believe it leaves your hands first, because your fingers always etch the bedsheets, in an attempt to find something to hold on to. That is closely followed by your breathing, which gets faster as consciousness crawls in. Before I can say anything, your phone rings.

You answer, your tongue still struggling to find its way with words, but as your eyes dart across the room, I know something has caught your attention. The phone disconnects. You head straight to the shower without another word. Something is wrong, I can feel it, but can’t seem to understand what it could possibly be.

When you get out, I’m flipping through your sketchbook absent-mindedly. You often paint scenes of turmoil. There is a sense of disturbance in each scene, as if something is amiss. As if things aren’t right. A little boy, in a half-torn t-shirt, holds up a sign for help, for a fair trial, the sketch speaks to me. It scares me. I often wonder how people like that little boy, who feel so much, can sleep at night. Ironically, it is this question that keeps me awake most days. You take the notebook from my hands, and sit at my feet.

You tell me you have to leave. That it might be a few weeks, maybe months until I see you again.

I don’t like change. I don’t like to wait. And I certainly don’t like distance. You say they need you, pointing to the little boy between the pages I had taken a personal liking to. I might not hear from you for some time, but I am supposed to know you will be safe. I don’t remember saying I understand, or that I hope you know I believe in you, or that it will be okay, or I will wait. But I hope I did say it. And I hope you know I meant it.

You tell me you love me, ruffle my hair with your fingers, and light a cigarette.

When I leave your house that evening, I don’t quite feel like myself. Something in my gut tells me my fear is justified, that my anxiety is necessary.

For the next few weeks, I keep my eyes glued to the television till they burn. I eat headlines for breakfast and lick articles for lunch. I write to you. Everyday. They become a pile of letters I am too scared to send, so I keep them. Missing you comes in waves, so I take longer showers. At night, I say a silent prayer, but I don’t know to who. I beg for safety, but I don’t know if my prayers are heard. I get left on read by the universe, but I do it each night. My Tuesdays are empty, so I stay home and immerse myself in hot coffee and cold hope.

You said you’d be back on Christmas. Christmas is less than a week away. In my wish-list for Santa, I create acronyms out of your name. My current high score is 18. Christmas comes and goes. I go to the neighbours’ house, to check if Santa made a mistake.

Later that night, I receive a letter, which says you won’t be able to make it for Christmas. Or New Year’s. Or anytime soon. It has autopsy reports, and a ten thousand dollar cheque, which I must submit to the bank as soon as possible. They say they are sorry, that it happens all the time, but that it wasn’t supposed to. Look, I show my mother, his life was worth ten thousand dollars. Look.

I spend the rest of the night, and the coming week in my room. Curtains drawn. Doors bolted. Loneliness doesn’t scare me anymore.

When I emerge from my dungeon, not much has changed. Life has gone on for the world. It’s Tuesday. I walk back to the dim-lit house where the doors creak and the sink is still dirty and the tap still leaking.

I make myself some chai with elaichi, and turn to complain, but my voice echoes into emptiness. Nobody listens. I don’t remember saying I understand, or that I hope you know I believe in you, or that it will be okay, or I will wait. But I hope I did say it. And I hope you know I meant it.

The post Thanks To That War, Loneliness Doesn’t Scare Me Anymore appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

“I am not her cousin, I am her boyfriend.” 

When you hear this over the phone in a across-the-city call, you don’t know whether to laugh or to cry. You see, being a Mumbaikar, I pride myself in seeing and knowing some of the weirdest stuff, but this anecdote that I have surpasses them all. I do not write this piece because I am heartbroken or angry, I write this piece because I learnt a lot about the urban-rural divide and it was an interesting study of human psychology. I also write this because every armchair feminist should read this, and understand how trivial ‘holiday for periods’ seems in the face of the real problems women face, all over the world and in India.

Three months ago, I made an account on a matrimonial website. As the end date approached, I gave it the good old try and sent profile requests to some girls. Now, the funny part about matrimonial websites is that even if a paid member sends a request to an unpaid one, the unpaid one cannot see the phone number or the address of the paid member – as long as the paid member doesn’t expressly agree to that. I was, therefore, pleasantly surprised when one of those proposals contacted me via my Facebook Page, my page, not my profile. Here was a woman with drive and determination, the two Ds every guy wants in a woman.

The rest, as you will know, is a flurry of Facebook messages, Whatsapp messages, calls, video calls and whatnot. That lasted three days, and ended with a message that her cousin will speak to me.

Now, this would be confusing to a generation that’s plied on dizzy ideas of films like the ones that Imtiaz Ali peddles. What’s a cousin gotta do with love, one would ask. But it was confusing even for me, someone who knows exactly how rural patriarchy works. However, because I liked the woman, I accepted this. What followed was a quick chat with the cousin, and that conversation ended with him asking a copy of my Aadhar card. In hindsight, I wonder whether I committed a mistake by giving him my Aadhar card, but that’s another story.

After this conversation, she asked me to continue talking to the cousin, so that he thinks that he is ‘in the picture’. I remember… I was sending him a Whatsapp message from Andheri Station at around 3:30 on a Saturday. That’s when the first Bollywood twist hit. His reply to my Whatsapp message was:

“I am sorry, she has declined the marriage proposal.”

Yea, readers, I am thinking what you are thinking. I contacted the girl immediately and then started a story that I can’t screenplay so I will write it out.

After that, I was in a weird circle where I’d speak to the girl the whole week, and then she’d stop speaking over the weekend, saying that her cousin is creating a nuisance. One week, he actually called me and told me to be in touch, as they are looking for some other marriage proposal. He told me explicitly, not to speak to the girl. I filed that under ‘suggestions not needed’ and proceeded with my life, talking to her off and on.

Another week, he called me up and invited my family to the girl’s place. After about 45 minutes, he called me up and said, “Didn’t I tell you not to speak to her? Consider this relationship cancelled”.

This was not the first time something like that had happened. The girl had bid me goodbye one of those weekends, blocking me on Whatsapp.

By now, I knew how this was rolling, one week of talk and a weekend of block. During one of the weekends, I got a call from the cousin, and that’s when he told me those glorious words with which I started this article.

He proceeded to tell me that he is married, he has two kids, and he is trying to make this girl his second wife. He told me that his wife knows this. Clearly, he didn’t know, or didn’t care about laws like bigamy. Whenever I told him that he is married, his retort was ‘but my wife knows.’

This is living proof here, to something that I have maintained, women are women’s worst enemies.  In my mind, here was an independent, mature woman who I was talking to. Nothing stopped her from picking up her bags and coming to Mumbai to live with me. So, I played along with the farce.

The farce included the woman’s sister and brother-in-law travel all the way from one city to my house, with the proper ‘rishta meeting.’ That meeting ended with the confirmation that they would call with their decision.

Now, of course, there has to be some action and drama and lo and behold, there was.  The cousin/boyfriend traveled one weekend to the girl’s office and created a scene there. Now, the woman doesn’t work in any common office. She works in a private company that is contracted by the Indian Government for a program that’s aimed to uplift women (Yes, I know the irony).  From what she told me, I understand that the man was given access not just to the building, but the actual room where the woman was sitting. How much that speaks about security and sheer logic in the administration of such an institution is anyone’s guess.

When I found out about this, I put my foot down. I said that you should go to the authorities over this. Even if not a police complaint, at least make an non cognizable, so that we are in the clear if anything untoward happens tomorrow. She agreed to this, and I thought it was all sorted. Until I got the penultimate call yesterday morning.

In that call, the guy and the woman was in a patched call, and the guy questioned me why I was marrying someone who was quite frankly, ‘second hand goods’ for him. Oh, feminists, don’t worry, that’s not the worst of terms he’s used for her. I said I don’t need to talk to you about this and disconnected the call.

Yesterday night, I got what seems to be the last call from the ‘couple’. A tearful she was on the other end, in a patched call and this is what she told me:

“I am sorry I contacted you. I am sorry I made my matrimonial profile. My life is ruined. He has told my brother-in-law everything. Nobody is supporting me.”

I haven’t seen or heard a woman cry in my life, so like many metrosexuals, I didn’t know what to do. I gathered courage and bid both of them a best of luck and disconnected the call.

I agree, this is a one dimensional account. It’s possible that I was just a pansy in a love story that’s as weird as it’s illegal. But if I consider all what the woman has told me to be true, I wonder what’s the status of women’s liberty, personal choices, and personal freedom at the grassroots. I wonder how the man could gather up courage to call her, harass her, and finally intimidate her. I wonder how nobody in the woman’s circle – all of them quasi Government employees – allowed the man access to her in the workplace and her residence – which was not a bungalow or a flat.

And while I think about that, I just got sucked into extending my matrimonial profile by another 24 weeks.

The post My Love Story Is An Anurag Kashyap Script Every Indian Should Know About appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

My association with YKA dates back to the year 2010 when I was looking for a writing internship during my college vacations. At that time, YKA was in its nascent stage and I, on the other hand, was looking to flourish my love for writing. I had by then explored various fortes of writing including fiction, non-fiction and factual content. YKA introduced me to a new aspect of writing, which in my words is called writing for a difference!

There are a large number of issues in our society which need a lot more importance than we give them. Issues like periods and sex are considered taboos in our society and are the least talked about in public. Then there are topics catering to the basics which are generally sidelined by the media- these include water crisis, waste management and several others. Stories which affect us the most are personal stories- be they happy or sad. The story of an auto driver escorting a girl safely to her place at night makes all of us beam with pride whereas the story of a son brutally assaulting his parents makes all of us cringe. But until a few years back, we had no platform to vent out our frustration or even share a happy story. YKA then took us into its arms where we can share stories and learn from each other.

The aim of all the stories at YKA is to bring about a change. Bringing a change does not mean changing the whole world. It could also mean impacting merely two or three lives. It could also mean that somebody reads your story and silently sheds a tear because he/she can connect with it.

After being an active reader and writer at YKA, I started writing fictional stories too with an intention to create an impact with the magic of words. I started realizing that words are powerful enough to move mountains. Taking inspiration from this and writing one story after another, I finally launched my first short story collection titled ‘Something called Life’.

The stories of Something called Life talk about falling relationships, broken trust, narrow mindsets; but they also talk about the much-needed change, about those extreme steps which are sometimes needed to be taken in order to bring everything back to place and also to set things right.

The mother who has to choose between her to-be-born daughter and her husband, the father who is yearning for his son to return to his homeland, the wife who feels her husband does not love her anymore; all the characters are struggling to put together their fallen pieces of life. Whether they will succumb to their hardships or will they rise and fight back to change things around them, is what unfolds in the various stories.

We spend a major part of our lives in decoding life and in many situations, we are caught in choosing between the right and the wrong. To fight for our problems and to raise our voice against issues that affect us is our responsibility as human beings and let us all pledge to take the first step towards change!

The post How YKA Inspired Me To Write My First Book appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

All my life I have lived in Delhi. It has been home to me since birth. So, naturally, the trashy, crowded, jammed streets of the city and the numerous people who are forced to spend their lives starving on these streets have become commonplace for me. But this one thing that happened yesterday made me realize to what extent I was neglecting everything around me. This one small incident changed the way I think in just a matter of seconds and lead me here, to writing this article at this particular moment.

So, yesterday on my way back home from school, I was eating the food that my mom had given me for lunch. I wasn’t really hungry and the aloo gajar ki sabji and roti wasn’t exactly very appealing, but afraid that my mother would scold me for not having eaten anything the whole day long, I felt that I had no option but to eat it. The car stopped at a red light at an intersection. The stop was about two to three minutes long. As I sat there in the car, eating, a young girl about the age of seven, or eight maybe, came to my car window asking for food. I thought I should give my food to her but I couldn’t get myself to do the work. I have always had that mentality that most of us Delhites do – ‘Do not give anything to the beggars for your own safety!’ I kept thinking over and over again should I? Or should I not? And once the driver had revved the engine and my opportunity to do any good deed was gone I realized I should have.

I felt so sick of myself! I would rather force myself to eat something than give the food to someone who was actually hungry! I realized that I am one of the worst kinds of people; the ones who pretend to be good. So many millions of people go to sleep with an aching, empty stomach on the hard and cold footpaths of India, every day, and I just go on living the spoiled, luxurious life that I am living. I was angry at myself for doing what I did. I was angry at the society for giving me this sick ideology. I was angry at everyone living a satisfied life in this world because everyone else was living a life that belongs in garbage.

The hatred and anger that I felt was totally irrational but it taught me a very valuable lesson; it made me realize that I have to change myself. I know that being the person that I am I couldn’t ever change my way of living but what I can change is some tiny little habits. I could at least give the food that I do not want to eat to someone who needs it way more than me. And not just me, each one of us can. It is with the cooperation of all of us that the quality of life of Indians in general could be improved.

So, to conclude, I am not saying that everyone should start giving away their lunch to the poor. People are denied the opportunity to live a happy life in numerous ways. You can start by paying equal respect to everyone. You can start by not wasting food perhaps. And if you have already started helping in improving the lives of others around you, you could encourage more people to do so too. Together, we could make India a better, happier place for ourselves and everyone else.

The post ‘I Realised I’m One Of The Worst Kinds Of People – The Ones Who Only Pretend To Be Good’ appeared first and originally on Youth Ki Awaaz and is a copyright of the same. Please do not republish.

गोवा, एक ऐसा शहर जो इसके चाहने वालों के लिए एक नशे की तरह है। एक भाई अभी मुझसे बोले कि यार गोवा ओवर रेटेड है। खैर, मैं सिर्फ 3 बार यहां आया हूं लेकिन एक बात जनता हूं कि यह बिल्कुल भी ओवर रेटेड नहीं है। गोवा के बारे में काफी चीज़ें हैं जिन्हें मैं लेखनी के माध्यम से साझा करना चाहता हूं।

गोवा में समुद्र की शांति, खूबसूरत और जबरदस्त रातें, व्यक्तित्व की आज़ादी, सपने सरीखे घर और नए-पुराने का अद्भुत सामंजस्य है। मैंने सपने में भी नहीं सोचा था कि मैं शादी के बाद अपना सबसे लंबा टूर गोवा में मनाऊंगा क्योंकि हमारी पसंद अलग है।

नदियां, समुद्र, मरुस्थल और जंगल, यह सबको अपनी ओर खींचते हैं और कोई भी प्रकृति प्रेमी इनके आकर्षण से नहीं बचा रह सकता। इन्हीं की तलाश में हमने ‘यूथ हॉस्टल एसोसिएशन ऑफ इंडिया’ का गोवा ट्रैकिंग प्लान अपने दोस्त गुरप्रीत के कहने पर बुक करा लिया।

उस समय इससे जुड़ने के सिर्फ दो कारण थे, एक तो यह पैकेज सस्ता था और दूसरा यह साल के अंत में था जिस वजह से मैं अपना जन्मदिन, क्रिस्मस और नया साल वहां मना सकते थे। फाइनली जैसे-तैसे हम अपनी छुट्टियां बचाकर 23 दिसंबर को गोवा के लिए रवाना हो गए।

खैर, अब गोवा के संदर्भ में जो भी चीज़ें आपके ज़हन में हैं, उन्हें किनारे रखते हुए मेरे निजी अनुभव को पढ़िएगा क्योंकि मैं गोवा के अनसुने और अनछुए पहलुओं को बताने वाला हूं।

ट्रैकिंग के लिए लोगों को प्रोत्साहित करने वाली संस्था ‘यूथ हॉस्टल्स एसोशिएशन ऑफ इंडिया-बजट यूथ हॉस्टल्स’ के बारे में हमें (योगेश, हेमलता, गुरप्रीत) जानकारी मिलते ही हमने गोवा का ट्रैकिंग प्लान बुक कर लिया।

समय के अनुसार हम 23 दिसंबर को भारतीय रेलवे की स्लीपर कोच से चलकर 24 दिसंबर को गोवा बेस कैंप, स्पोर्ट्स काम्प्लेक्स पणजी पहुंच गए। जब हम वहां पहुंचे तब पता चला कि 55 लोगों के समूह में 45 अपने गुजराती भाई-बंधू हैं। खैर, पहला दिन कुछ खास नहीं था और हम अपना सामान टेंट में रखकर गोवा भ्रमण के लिए निकल गए।

गुरप्रीत और मैं पहले भी यहां आ चुके हैं जिस कारण हमें काफी अनुभव था। हमने हेमलता को घुमाया और साथ ही मेरा बर्थडे (24 दिसंबर) भी मनाया। 24 की रात सभी 55 लोग कैंप में मिले और कैंप फायर होने के बाद मैं बायडिफॉल्ट सेलिब्रिटी बन चुका था। जी हां, वहां पर मेरा जन्मदिन मनाया गया और मैंने ही उपेन्द्र भाई कैंप को होस्ट किया।

हेमू ने सबको पहाड़ी गाना सुनाया और गुरप्रीत ने पंजाबी और साथ में सभी नाचे भी, कुछ इस तरह हमारे पहले दिन का आगाज़ हुआ। दूसरे दिन हमारी ब्रीफिंग हुई और अगले 5 दिनों की ट्रैकिंग का पूरा लेखा जोखा बताया गया। इसी के साथ हमने बाबा अमित को अपना लीडर चुना और पर्यावरण लीडर बनी हेमलता जी।

पांच दिनों के सफर में हमें 5 कैंप्स में ठहरना था। हमारे कैंप्स बेनाउलिम, वेलसाऊ, दूधसागर, करंजौल, और जम्बोली में थे। शुरू के 2 दिन तो हमारा 15 किलोमीटर का सफर समुद्र किनारे ही था। शुरू के दो बेस कैंप दक्षिण गोवा में समुद्र किनारे थे। इसी समय बरखा, अमित, मिलिंद जी, रश्मि, नीलम, राजू भाई और दीपू जी जैसे बेहतरीन दोस्त कुछ ही घंटों में बन गए।

इसी के साथ हमें समुद्री रक्षकों से भी मिलने का मौका मिला और उन्होंने हमे बताया कि कैसे वे यहां पर आए हुए हर एक टूरिस्ट की सुरक्षा करते हैं। एक घंटे के सत्र में हमें काफी कुछ जीवन रक्षक बातें सीखने को मिलीं। समुद्र किनारे की शाम, लंबी-लंबी शांत लहरों का शोर, शाम को ग्रुप में ज़ोर-ज़ोर से चिल्लाकर किशोर कुमार के गाने गाना, समुद्र किनारे नहाना, लोगों से मिलते हुए जाना और सबको क्रिसमस की शुभकामनाएं देते हुए पता नहीं कब हमारे दो कैंप नाइट्स गुज़र गए।

समुद्र किनारे चलना पहाड़ों पर चलने से अलग होता है और यह अलग प्रकार की थकान देता है। 30 किलोमीटर चलने के बाद हमें यह एहसास हुआ। दोनों ही कैम्प्स में मस्त-मस्त खाना और शानदार कैंप लीडर थे। उनके साथ बहुत दिनों बाद टीचर्स वाली डांट का भी अनुभव हुआ। 2 दिन समुद्र किनारे के कैम्प्स के बाद हमें  ‘भगवान महावीर नेशनल पार्क’ जाना था जहां अगले 4 दिन और 3 रातें व्यतित करने थे।

29 की सुबह हमने दूधसागर के नज़दीकी रेलवे स्टेशन के लिए वेलसाऊ से ट्रेन ली। यहां से फिर 14 किलोमीटर की पैदल यात्रा शुरू हुई जो दूधसागर के बेस कैंप में जाकर खत्म होनी थी। घने जंगलों से गुज़रते हुए रास्ते में अलग-अलग लोगों से तरह-तरह की बातें हुईं। हस सभी काफी उत्साहित थे क्योंकि यह इलाका भूगोल के हिसाब से बेहद खास है।

एक तो यह भारत का ‘बायोडायवर्सिटी हॉटस्पॉट’ है और साथ ही दक्खन पठार से जुड़ा हुआ है। मेरे लिए समझने और जानने को बहुत कुछ था जिन्हें मैं अपनी पढ़ाई से जोड़ सकता था। हमारे साथ कुछ जंगल एक्सपर्ट भी थे जिन्होंने हमें बहुत कुछ सिखाया। ठहरते-ठहरते, गाते हुए, प्रकृति का आनंद लेते हुए और नदियों में नहाते हुए हम शाम को 5 बजे दूधसागर बेस कैंप पहुंचे।

यहां तक आते-आते हम अपने 3 साथियों को पीछे छोड़ चुके थे जो नहीं चल पाए। दो और साथी यहां से हमें अलविदा कहने वाले थे। दूधसागर और करंजौल का कैंप घने जंगलों में था जहां लाइट की कोई सुविधा नहीं थी और मोबाइल सिगनल काफी पहले ही हमारा साथ छोड़ चुके थे। यह समय था साथियों के साथ वक्त गुज़ारने का, रात को लोगों को (बरखा को) भूतों की कहानी सुनाकर डराने का, जंगल को सुनने का और खुद के अंतर्नाद को समझने का।

हम फिर से नदी में नहाने और नीले आसमान में तारों को निहारने के लिए चल पड़े। यहां कैंप के पास किसान की खेती भी देखने का अवसर मिला। उड़ने वाली गिलहरी भी हमें मिली और बंदरों ने भी हमारा स्वागत किया। दिनभर की थकान के बाद रात को टेंट और कंबल भी घर का आनंद देता था।

10 बजे सोना और सुबह 5 बजे उठकर जंगलों के लिए चल देना, यही हमारा नियम बन गया था। यहां 25-65 साल के लोग साथी बन गए थे। छोटे-बड़े, जात-पात, महिला-पुरुष और अमीर-गरीब सबका भेद मिट गया था।

इस पूरे कार्यक्रम का मुख्य फोकस ‘दूधसागर’ था और वहां पर 28 की सुबह हम जाने वाले थे। इसके लिए सब 7:30 बजे तैयार होकर बेस कैंप से निकल पड़े थे। नदी पहाड़, जंगल और झरनों के रास्ते हम दूधसागर पहुंचे। यह तो प्रकृति का असीम वरदान था। धन्य है भारत भूमि और इसकी खूबसूरती जो शब्दों में बयां नहीं हो सकती।

हम सब झरने के पास थे, दूध सा सफेद पानी कल-कल बह रहा था, सूरज अपनी किरणें धीरे-धीरे हमारे उपर फैला रहा था और शांत पत्थर हमें लाखों साल का भौगोलिक इतिहास पढ़ा रहे थे। मछलियां पानी की गहराई बता रही थी और मानो बंदर उछल कर कुछ कहना चाह रहे थे। इससे अच्छा प्रकृति का वरदान और क्या हो सकता था।

यही पर एक घंटे हम प्रकृति की गोद में बैठकर खुद को धन्य करते रहे। 9:30 बजे वहां से हमारा कारवां आगे बढ़ गया और हम रेल पटरी से होते हुए, 3 रेलवे टनल पार करते हुए और बहुत ही संकरे रास्ते के ज़रिए नदी किनारे पहुंच गए। यहां पर हमने खाना खाया और उसके बाद कुछ नदी में जाकर मछली (तैराकी) और कुछ नदी के किनारे मगरमछ (सो गए) बन गए।

यश और सावन हमारी चलती फिरती रसोई थी जो बहुत कुछ घर का खिलाती थी। 15-16 किलोमीटर के सफर के बाद अपने अगले पड़ाव ‘करंजौल कैंप’ पहुंच गए जहां पर हमारे कैंप लीडर ने बहुत ही प्यारी मुस्कान के साथ हमारा स्वागत किया। जितनी प्यारी उनकी मुस्कान थी उतना ही प्यारा इस कैंप का खाना था। भालू की कहानियां काफी डरावनी थी। हालत ऐसे थे कि 7 बजे भोजन कर सब 8 बजे तक अपने-अपने टेंट के अंदर थे और वहीं से भालू के आने का इंतज़ार कर रहे थे।

अगली सुबह नहाने और जंगल को सुनने के लिए सभी भालू को भूलकर नदी किनारे पहुंच चुके थे। यहां से मस्ती करते-करते हम अपने लास्ट कैंप ‘जम्बोली’ की ओर चल पड़े। जम्बोली तक का रास्ता भी घना जंगल था जहां जम्बोली पहुंचते-पहुंचे मोबाइल में सिगनल और टेंट में लाइट भी आ गई। फिर हम बाहरी शोर में जंगल की शांति को धीरे-धीरे भूलने लगे। एक बात यहां अच्छी हुई कि सभी को खाने के लिए बहुत सारे गन्ने मिल गए और हमारे सरदार जी तो अकेले 5-6 लट्ठ चबा गए।

यहां पर हमने बेहद खास रात गुज़ारी और इसी बीच दीपू भाई अपने बच्चे का जन्मदिन मनाने के लिए केक लाए। केक के ज़रिए जो कहानी शुरू हुई वह आगे बढ़कर हमारी मेहंदी रस्म, हमारी शादी, हमारे बच्चों के पैदा होने और अब कहानी उससे भी आगे बढ़ गई। सबने मिलकर यह घोषित किया कि सुहागरात मनाने के लिए आज हमें अलग से टेंट मिलने वाला है।

हम दोनों शर्म से पानी पानी हो रहे थे और टेंट के मिलने का इंतज़ार भी कर रहे थे (जो कि हमें नहीं मिला)। हमारे कैंप लीडर तो अपना टेंट खाली करने के लिए भी तैयार थे लेकिन हम बच गए। शादी के गुजराती गाने चले और हमारे पिता तुल्य राजू भाई ने हमे वहीं गोद भी ले लिया। वह आखिरी रात हम सभी के लिए एक याद बन गई और सबने बहुत आनंद लिया।

हर अच्छी बात का भी एक अंत होता है और इस मस्ती का भी एक अंत हुआ। ‘जम्बोली’ से घने जंगलों को पार करते हुए आखिरी दिन हम 15-16 किलोमीटर चलकर शिव मंदिर पहुंचे जहां से हम अपनी बस से साथ में गोवा बेस कैंप पहुंच गए।

जो कल तक अनजान थे, वे सभी एक दूसरे के हाथ पकड़कर 100 किलोमीटर चल दिए। जब हमने शुरू किया था तब हम तीन साथी थे और जब हमने बेस कैंप छोड़ा तब हम 55 साथी बन गए थे। मेरे लिए यह और भी खास था क्योंकि बहुत टाइम बाद अपने खास यार के साथ इतना वक्त बिताया।

इस दौरान सभी से मुझे काफी स्नेह मिला और हेमलता जी के साथ काफी वक्त गुज़ारने का मौका भी मिला। हम दोनों को सारे ग्रुप ने अपने दिल से लगाया और हमेशा के लिए अपना बना लिया। शब्द कम हैं और भावनाएं बहुत अधिक लेकिन उम्मीद है हर कोई जो भी गोवा को सिर्फ मस्ती की निगाहों से देखता है, वह यह समझ पाएगा कि यहां आकर भी दोस्त बनते हैं, जंगल मिलते है, शांति यहां भी आपको आगोश में लेती है और यहां भी आप खुद को पा सकते हैं।

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