Mother's Day

An old article that I wrote in another blog. Just posting it here again.
‘Mother’s Day’ – ever noticed the unintentional pun? It is Mother’s day every day. The day belongs to her. The mere existence of the human race and the passage of time belong to her. But it’s a poignant irony that we’ve reduced it to a mere anniversary celebration. We are pretty much aware of the fact that it is a marketer’s invention. But still things go on. Special programmes on TV. Greeting cards. Ads. And lots more to remind us of somebody we know as the “mother”. Today's generation think that it’s another day to celebrate. It’s not their fault for their life began much after the media explosion. But no amount of media clout can monitor the level of the mother’s love inside everybody’s home. The so-called reality shows can just come inside our home bur not inside our heart.
Motherhood love. It’s universal. It’s chemical. It’s biological. It’s transcendental. It’s magic. It's everything, sssooo obviously. This motherhood love is also contagious that it is in every one of us. Sometimes the father mothers the child. Sometimes the brother takes care of the sister. She has genetically transferred the GOOD DNA. And this good dna is also helping mother earth stay alive.
Ok, lets play devil’s advocate - the hungry marketers might have actually done something good without their knowledge. With so much grief and combat around the planet, may be we need a break and actually commit to our memory that there’s somebody called the 'mother'. Today’s world needs such a reminder service. To take timeout form our demented work schedules. To actually come out of our perfunctory life and spend some time with our family.
So Happy Mother’s Day. 365 days a year.

Memories. Not Forever.

Photographs. Home videos. What splendid inventions. Man found a way to capture time and space in 2D and 3D what God initially thought could be stored only in their minds. From the good old pinhole camera days, ten centuries ago to the present digital age, we have been fortunate enough to store our memories and see them whenever we want to.
The only problem now is organising our photos. There are photos and videos in our digital camera, mobile and the camcorder. Too many photos in too many folders. Too many wires to charge the devices and too many USB cables to connect it to our computers. Assuming that we have managed to organise everything... lets say, we store them properly as prints and CDs/DVDs. In hard bound albums and leather cd pouches. Now the million dollar question - how long can we have them? As long as we live. So what happens after that? Our next generation will hopefully preserve it and see it whenever they want to(and hopefully remember us). How long can this go? Do you think our great great great great grand children will treasure it too? How many photos of our great great great grand parents do we have? How much time do we spend talking about them? Once my cousin and myself took the effort of collecting old photos of our grandparents, scanning them and hosting a website. Imagine. We are a family of 40 in my mother's side. Only two had the interest. Imagine if I die tomorrow, I'll have no idea what will happen to the photos after that. Or lets say, I die a natural death at 80 something( Murphy has to prove it wrong, so I'll live longer:-)) what will happen to the photos after that? I'll never know. Or imagine there was a tsunami and the flood swept away all my photos and videos. (that is little over the top or me being my paranoid self). Ok, what Iam trying to say is that technically memories cant last forever. They last only as long as we live.
But photographs and videos are a wonderful thing. I want to collect it as much as I can and relish it on a rainy day or whenever I can. No matter when I die, I'll be happy that I have captured these moments that mean so much to me. By that way, somehow i get this feeling that Iam living life to the fullest.