PAGES FROM NEW JERSEY

FRIDAY, 29 MAY

It's a beautiful sunny day. While walking in the park, I reflect on the boundary wall free houses here and all of a sudden, these lines of Mending Walls by Robert Frost' flashes across my mind-

"He only says, "Good fences make good neighbours."...
I wonder If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbours?
Isn't it where there are cows?"
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there's that does not love a wall,
That wants it down...
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,...
HE will not go beyond his father's saying,..
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbours."

Some poems become immortal because of their universal theme. Robert Frost's poems are rich in symbolism that rakes up the brain of the high brows and the thinkers on a much larger scale than petty issues of day to day life.

When I see no boundary walls here, less cases of assault, theft or trespassing reported here, I question the use of walls in India where such cases create everyday's news headlines in spite of the boundary walls. Why are we so possessive of our worldly insecurities that hinder our self-progress. It then, comes to my mind the lines of 'Geography Lessons' by Zulfikar Ghosh-

"...it was clear the earth was round                      
and that it had more sea than land.
But it was difficult to understand
that the men on the earth found
causes to hate each other, to build
walls across cities and to kill.
From that height, it was not clear why."

I find people in the park, greeting me with a smile and then, I fail to understand what stops us from smiling back at strangers which I find quite common in India. I don't find people here, staring at others' clothes that makes one feel so uneasy and self- conscious, giving a kind of feeling of sin committed. Clothes are not character here. People have respect for others esp. women and old folk. Why are we like that primitive man with stones in each hand? We call ourselves educated but are we making proper use of education? Do we have rational thinking?

Questions after questions rumble in my mind. What must be done to overhaul the entire thinking process of our mind? That primitive man is so deep rooted in our mindset that it will take many generations to uproot it. These questions haunt my mind and the only answer I find to them is the quote-"Be the change to bring the change." Changes are there taking place in the present generation in India but at a snail pace. However, it is better late than never.

I have cooked rice and 'Besan sabji' in mustard paste for lunch. Yasmin likes it. I love to cook, esp. for my children. It is a kind of meditation/querencia for me. 

I have almost completed the acrylic painting. This one I have made it especially for Shammi. He is so fond of dogs.