Marasim - Right or Wrong?

The title is inspired from the famous album of ghazals composed by Gulzar and sung by Jagjit Singh. Perfect combination, isn't it?

Marasim means "relations". Well I am not going to speak about the album. Just read on...

In the last 24 years of my life, I have come across different kinds of people. I have built different kinds of relations. Without a doubt, the most important element in a relationship is mutual acceptance. Respect, understanding and all other elements will follow. It's not necessary for two people to be exactly similar to get along. It's more about accepting each other in your original selves and getting along with it, sometimes with a little bit of compromise.

I have been lucky enough to have discovered some relationships which have taught me lessons- and when I say lessons, it might be because of something good they have done to me or something bad. Nevertheless, as long as I am learning, I have no complaints!

In any relationship except the one we share with our parents, the moment we start judging someone is the start of the breaking point. Then there are expectations and constant need of assurance. There's jealousy and misunderstanding. There comes a necessity to decide right and wrong. To convince ourselves that we are right, we choose the easy way out - prove the other one wrong. This feeling gets so strong at times that we forget we do not have the divine power to judge anyone. We are all humans, all prone to making mistakes. We forget that if we make mistakes, the ability to correct them is also within us. If any mistake is incorrigible, we can at least learn from it and not repeat it.

Truth is bitter, but if I can categorize something as more bitter in today's world, it is accepting one's fault and asking for forgiveness, because everyone wants to pose as being right. If there are a handful of people to have the guts to fall on their knees and accept their faults, it becomes unacceptable to the one who is standing. When we hold our heads high and think that we are great because we have struggled so much, we forget that we do not have the slightest idea of what the other person has gone through. Why is it that people don't try to dig out their own happiness instead of trying to spoil someone else's by hurting their dignity? Is it necessary to wreck someone else's esteem to maintain yours? Self-love is first love, and this is true even for the kindest of souls. Of course there are exceptions, but this rare case has become even rarer nowadays. The desire to be superior has become so strong that innocence is slowly getting extinct.

Am I sounding like I believe this world to be a very cruel place? Actually I don't. All that I wrote above is nothing but a part of human behaviour. There is always room for improvement. We have our entire lives for it. It's only in the last few months that I have learnt how to live in this world and appreciate the good things it in the midst of the bad ones. In fact, I have learnt how to remove the line between good and bad, because you need a little bit of both to survive. It's all about knowing when, where and how to stop. It's about getting along with the crowd and yet being different in your own special ways, which are known to very few people.

Sometimes I wonder how much a small conversations shared over coffee can do. The talks might not be fruitful, might not even mean anything, and yet they seem to take away some of my mental fatigue and boredom from work. People say you cannot have friends in office, but I beg to differ. These are the only people I know in this city and I'm glad to have them around. Maybe it's just a silent understanding I have developed with some of them that it's not necessary to reason out or even explain my actions or my words. I guess that's acceptance, and there's no right and no wrong in acceptance. Well, this is just one example, but if we look around and observe the people who have stuck on to us in spite of differences, it boils down to the same thing I have been repeating-the ability to accept.

All I know is that what I am today is due to the contribution of the marasim of my life- be it my family, teachers, friends, colleagues or some relations I could never name. With all my imperfections, I have not done a very good job in maintaining all of them, but for the ones who are no longer a part my life, I've preserved them as memories and they keep helping me live different moments and face different situations with whatever impact they've left on me. I strongly believe in the following lines beautifully composed by Gulzar-

Haath chhootein bhi toh rishte nahin chhoda karte,waqt ki shaakh se lamhe nahin toda karte...