Dear Netaji...

On the seventy first anniversary of India's first liberation army, Azad Hind Fauj, I greet you. It is so sad that barring a few none of our one and quarter billion people even know this or worse still care about it. Do people even care for our country for which you sacrificed everything? I wonder.

I don't know where you are, if you are alive or dead. With all due respect, I would still say that I would rather see you dead. To be alive to see what India is going through now is a torture that I never want you to endure. At some points of time I think it is better that you went missing. I could never bear to tar your image by imaging you as a politician vying for votes or trying to please the "minority" that comprises of a vote bank. It is much better to see you as my beloved and most honored Head of the Provisional Government of India in exile. That is how I will picture you for as long as I live - the hero, the fighter and the leader, that's what you are.

When I said what India is going through, I didn't really mean the political scene. We at least have an able Prime Minister now. I'd say the best we had in the last 68 years. You would have liked his ways of thought and actions. What concerns me more is the actual people and an apathy is every sense. There is no passion in trying to do something, the only passion I see are in negative things. Students fighting against teachers, random people on the streets killing if anyone protests against bursting fire crackers, religious fights, poverty, utmost poverty, lack of education and unimaginable violence against women. I am not just worried about criminals. Criminals have existed on Earth for as long as there were humans and they will always be there. What worries me is the criminal mind set in regular people. The high school students who killed their classmates, the terrible thing in engineering colleges called ragging... that is far more dangerous than a stray criminal. These crimes are intertwined in the society.

I also see a backdated notion of going with the flow where families keep on obliging to dowries just because it has always been the norm. Why do we still have the idea of arranged marriages? Why do we expect a child to be an engineer just because his father is one? Why does a woman still feel that she should give up her career when she has a baby otherwise people will think that she is neglecting the newborn? Why would a man feel ashamed to do simple household chores? Worse still, why would a woman, an educated working woman still believe that a woman's place is in the kitchen? These make no sense to me.

People have taunted me with "why did you leave the country" when I bring up these things or talk about helping the underprivileged. I don't feel like explaining that at times you can (and I am) doing much more from outside than from living there. Patriotism runs much deeper than being merely present within a political boundary. Maybe some day people will have the passion to do something good, however small, but still an act of kindness.

You tried to liberate us from foreign rule, but there are so many things that we need to liberate us from now. I don't know who will be able to do it... we need to change the mentality of a 1.26 billion people...who will do it? Who can do it?

Yours sincerely
Sayari

I love being an ENFJ

I meant to write this for a long time but then forgot about it. Yesterday I took a fun test on Facebook, never really hoping to get correct results, but there also I found I am an ENFJ. I was reading the personality traits of an ENFJ and anyone who knows me for even two weeks should be able to confirm that.

There is nothing more fascinating than knowing my own self. Just imagine what the layers of abstraction are that stop us from knowing how our own mechanisms work. Then you take them off, one by one, and your own self emerges. I am glad that I remember my childhood very well, not just the memories of events but also the memories of my feelings are very clearly etched. That is why I can easily track back to match the causes with the effects.

I was reading a book on dog behavior and after explaining why dogs behave in certain ways, they have a topic called "now that you know..." This personality test was "now that you know" for myself. I know that ENFJs are called life's teachers. We are naturals in leading, teaching and working with others. We love working in teams, we get energy by being with other people, it gets really irritable when we are ignored... I should be a text book example of what an ENFJ should be. That is why I was always the one speaking for my class and thereby getting into trouble, I am the one who invites different groups of friends and introduces them because "the more, the merrier". I am the teacher who thinks of her class of students as young fresh minds ready to be molded with moral values, strong characters and showing them clearly what is good. I can stand and speak up when I think something needs to be said. I am the one who loves when my team mates do well because after all it is the team, the organization, the human race that needs to progress. Life is fun for an ENFJ. She feels happy, she is upbeat and her environment becomes positive. I am not making these up, I really feel it. There have been many cases when just seeing people at work around me made me feel good. They were not all talking to me, everyone was doing their own thing, talking, working, walking to meetings... I had my headphone on and was listening to a nice song while working. But I felt very happy. Then as I always do, I tried to find the root cause of my happiness (I do it for happiness and sadness both and I always find the cause) when I realized I was just being an extrovert who was gaining energy from the people around her. It is fascinating to be an ENFJ. Given an option I would choose to be an ENFJ again and again and again. Life is amazing when you are an extrovert!