Pyaar Ya Paisa (Love or Money)

 

A very important but common question one comes across atleast once in life. Its true that Money can buy you happiness, but love brings peace. It’s on the human to decide should they live for love or money. Both are important for a happy life. But no one understands how much love and how much money is important. It’s evident that people have seen problems in life even after having millions of money. People choosing love or luxury have suffered in keeping a sustainable life.

Maximum people have more affinity towards money than towards emotion like love. The major reason assumed can be from the fact that they have seen the real life struggles, they have bigger ambitions. Those ambitions need a lot of money to uphold their dreams. Many are never content in what they have. People mostly like to be in always in a stable condition, to be more controlling in life and to have the gigantic impression on everyone around them, being number reason for valuing money over everything else.

Human are so much convinced that they believe whatever they want can be bought from money. They hold the flag to make others believe that luxury, happiness, expensive gifts and lavishness is all that can make them feel complete. They are so much dazzled by the prize brought by the wealth that only thing that matters is how to become even wealthier.  To be wealthiest they forget the lessons learnt in life, they uphold no morality, no wisdom, no kindness and no love for anyone but themselves.

Wealth in hand is equivalent to power in the held in the world. America is one of the wealthiest countries and they are the most powerful countries. Zimbabwe is a poor country and the power that it hold in the world is negligible. This is pretty evident by the fact that power is the byproduct of wealth.

A wealthy person works even harder to keep the wealth growing every year. They are so concerned with their size of wealth that everything else is secondary. This can be easily identified as human nature called, greed. Power is not the only byproduct of wealth. The other prominent byproduct of wealth in a human is greed, selfishness, self centeredness, cruelty, emotionless, and shameless. These are the changes seen in people who believe only in money. The biggest tycoons are both divided into two different categories, the one who have morality and the other without morality. With power comes the responsibility to not only make yourself bigger but to build everyone. Money can buy you not just happiness, but the whole world, for example Elon Musk. But Money can never by you peace and love a practical example is Hitler.  

Lets now count on love and affection and other part of the question.

“Life is the flower for which love is the honey.” Defining love is little difficult to those who have lived only in the superficial world of false praise and lies. Love is formless; it’s a feeling taking birth in the heart as an infinite affection. Love is associated with emotional segment of the brain that is associated with internal satisfaction and happiness. We have experienced love in many forms from our parents, friends and teacher’s. Love is elixir and poison both. Purest form of love builds us whereas, too much of love can destroy us.

Absences of love can make one feel incomplete. The life is never complete without the affection of someone. How can one imagine living happily if that person has never been loved? No amount of wealth can fill the void created by the absence of love. The strongest bond of love as we all have known is the mother and the child. When the world comes to existence for a small child, the first thing that it is introduced to the baby is the warmness of his mother. While we are growing up we look for the same comfort in the presences of others. Someone who can make us feel loved just like our mother did. There is no word that can describe the pain of being devoid of the motherly love.

The meaning of love is very simple, someone wishes the welfare and happiness of the other. All these but nothing in return. But if something is asked in return then it’s nothing but business. And business is definitely not love but trade for their profit and loss in the other person. Birth of love should never be based on the materialistic facts of someone. Thus the saying, "Do not judge by look, that may be a facade to impress you, judge by getting involved and feeling it". Its said a true love is the rarest of the rare gift for anyone, its unique, beautiful and satisfactory. It gives a feeling of completeness to the person. We have seen some friendships and relationships to last forever and that is because they have truly cared for each other. It’s expensive and everyone can’t afford it some just do the drama very well.

Everyone is born with their fate in hand, but the one who dreams and dares to change it are the heroes of their life. If you get a chance be confident enough to leave one for the other, do it for your dream. But yes, do remember its evident that you get either of the one only. It is a fact, love vanishes for ever if you ever rejected it. I strongly believe that one can earn wealth even if that person chooses love over money, but if love is rejected, it’s tough to get that back. Renowned Sufi saints have written verses to describe, what love looks like. No one can understand it’s depth unless one is all into it. Also, the beauty of money is beyond praises, a powerful man can be helpful to many. Finally, to conclude It would be wise to weigh the needs and situations accordingly. Go with the heart because all our life we work hard to make our self happy and satisfied no matter how we achieve it.

 

Inhuman - Working Condition- A chair is missing.

The time when there were no malls, only big to small shops prevailed. It used to have one or more shopkeepers whose work includes to look after the whole shop, customer and giving customer services such as returns, refunds, and other services. It worked like a reputed workplace, shopkeepers had some rights, powers, and respect. With time malls became very common and essential for shopping in big and small towns across the world. But in earlier days the shopkeepers used to have a proper place for them to sit and sell. They did not have to stand the whole day and do the job. In bigger shops there use to be shifts in working hours. And these shops used to take lunch breaks in between and everyone used to get time to go out and take a break. This made their work very comfortable; they liked to work even under pressure they had one thing for sure a place to sit and relieve the tiredness.  

The main issue in the present world is that these people whom we consider labor, who work for betterment of the humanity and take pride in doing all the lower work are suffering at the hands of powerful people. People who control the economy are least concerned about what their labor force is going through. The concern for this blog is the pain that these people who work in stores, malls, and other places are facing. They are working full time whole day standing. This is a kind of cruelty that is been done for decades without any solution.

They are not strong enough to even raise their voices for their concerns. They are more scared of losing their job if they try to question their rights. The advantage is taken by the big mall owners, they are profiting on cost and labor working hours. Every worker, salesperson, and assistant works 8 to 9 hours a day without a chair. They are not allowed to sit and rest. They have to work standing. Even the old (aged) watchman and gatekeepers are not given chairs at the gate. They are ridiculed, not given basic human rights to sit while working, and made to feel like servants in the malls and shopping centers. It not their job to serve while being standing for the whole day and listen to customers comment.

I have written emails regarding this issue long back and kept pursuing the management to take action on it. But I see no change till now. Nothing is changing and no one is caring about it. The whole management seems to ignore this topic all at once. They are working in complete comfort from their home and office so they have no problem. Big companies like Spenser, Zudio, Reliance Mart, Pantaloon, D-Mart and many more are the culprit and bringing down the working standards.

Someone needs to stand against this inhuman practice and break the glass so that others can be protected. Why no one is concerned, why does no one see their pain and help them? It's time to be a little more kind to others, lessons learned in the school in moral science need to be used now to make a profound change in the working culture. This will indirectly help the upper management of the companies to open more portals of comfort working for all employees.

Things that needs to be added are segment shifts, work scheduled, adequate amount of breaks, chairs for everyone working there, rest room, proper formal treatment, timely training, feedback grievance portal, and a stress-free environment. These things need to be added to the malls, shopping centres and Marts. This is needed for all top-to-down management from labor to assistant. May someone one gather the courage to raise their voice against any inhuman working environment.

This is a very small concern compared to other big environmental damages that these big multinational organisations are doing. One by one correct step will lead to an ethical working environment for all. May as a human we start to think and come out  of our mobiles and see the world not from eye but from heart so that we feel what others feeling.

 

When life gives you lemon.

 

When life gives you lemon, you make it lemonade. But if life gives you nothing, you make nothing out of it. It's better to have a lemonade than to have nothing.  Life is never empty, there is always something somewhere silently available.  The power to grab that thing is called confidence.

So, last month I met a woman, she was around 45, with two kids and a divorce. The kids were like 10 and 14. Her beauty was average, at 45 she looked 50 and the only feature that attracted my attention was her smile. That was mesmerizing. She talked very less, mostly about her kids, or complaining about her marriage and how her in-laws and husband ruined her life. I got curious about her after knowing that at 43 she had taken a divorce, single since two years.

We were talking to each other as we sat next to each other in the AC waiting room in Kolkata station waiting room. I asked her, about her life after divorce and got a lame common answer. I asked what actually happened, and she showed no interest in replying to me.  So I changed the topic and asked what you do to meet your ends. She laughed and laughed and then smiled, and said, “I worked for twenty years for a mean man so now he paid for my job.” It was a good sum of alimony that was paid to her. I was curious to know more, like what her relatives, kids, and society had an impact on her. And I was curious because I was trying to understand about marriage and its life.

Was she happy doing this, instead of asking her, I thought to observe her behavior towards people, things, and situations. This gives an overall idea about the person’s mental situation. I kept looking at her elder daughter, who looked just like her mother, and the son who looked like his father, I guess. The kids were fidgeting over a packet of chips and the girl seemed more dominating. While the fight was too loud by now her mother shouted at the girl and then the chips were all of her younger brothers. Here again a girl sacrificed her needs to become a good girl for her mother. At this very young age she was behaving like half mother to the boy.

I went out and bought two samosas and asked her would like to share them, she smiled and said I don’t eat oily food. I went out and started to stroll on the platform looking at passengers and trains. I bought a book to read. While getting back in the cabin I saw her eating the patties and chips. She looked bewildered and smiled at me. I looked at her with surprise, what about the oil now? Anyways, I got bored and I wanted my train to come now. Suddenly she started to explain to me, “I was really hungry and felt that eating a few chips won’t raise my cholesterol as I am suffering from diabetes”.  I showed sympathy to it and asked how long. “Yes, last year only I felt all the symptoms of diabetes, so when I got myself, tested my sugar level was excess high.” On that her daughter said, “I give her medicine on time, mummy will get better in one year only.” Then our discussion started to move on to my parents, my father also got diabetes at his 45th year and so my mother. Both got it in the same year. We discussed natural medicines, yoga, and other method that can be helpful.

Then again a silence, it gave me a chance to talk to her daughter, I looked at her, smiled, and asked, "do you want some chocolates"?, to which she said yes. I said, “Let's go out and buy some for you.” To which she looked at her mother for permission, and reluctantly her mother nodded yes. We went out to a nearby stall and bought chocolates. There I asked her, “ Where does your father lives.” She said here in Kolkata.  I asked her "why did she left your father", And she looked confused and shy to answer. So who is in Delhi, “No one, we are going to Delhi to visit the place, after that, we will go to Agra and return via Haridwar”. The excitement was so clear on her face. “are you not missing your father?”, “No one is missing him, my mother has made some good decisions in her life now, we are happy with it.” She said proudly.

Here I got my answer, it’s not important if she is happy or not, if she will able to meet ends or not, it’s important if is she satisfied, and content with what decisions she has made. Here I was seeing a powerful, confident, and independent woman who took her lemon to make it into a sweet lemonade. A mother taking two young children alone to big cities all by herself to just have a vacation is not very common in our country. I was at that moment inspired, to be confident enough to take a stand for my decisions and the right steps that are important for my growth in life. Its important to walk on path created by you because you are not a pet. Take risk and live for yourself. The danger of passing or failing is always there, the important part is whether are you on the path drawn by yourself or someone else. Life will always try to give you a lemon, you should learn it by the experience how to make a good lemonade. Problems, anger, dissatisfaction, and disappointment are a part and parcel of life don’t take these as danger or something to stop you from making your decisions. Move on, learn with experience and stand and walk. Walk until you reach the goal set by you. The pleasure and happiness that one gets after reaching a the goal is immeasurable.

I have learned a lesson today, anyone can teach you a lesson that is going to help you in reaching your goals. Fear ends when you start to believing in your decision and your ability. Don’t be dependent, just because you think someone else is authorized to guide your life. Take charge, fight, and walk to reach the goal. I went back to the cabin and she was talking to her son and it seemed that she was good enough for her kids and could build the happiest environment for all of them.