God's Tough Love

When we are beaming with success or luxuriating in wealth, we seldom feel miffed with god. In our affluence and prosperity, we take his blessings to be a mark of our good fortune. But what happens when we are ripped off of comfort and are faced with situations that challenge our faith in god? Losing a highly remunerative job, a loved one, or failing in life’s countless endeavors are examples of some unexpected mishaps. During privation, we often feel betrayed by god’s grace and his eternal love and begin to question his imperceptible plans for us. Here is a short story that would delineate our unfathomable relationship with god.    

Once upon a time, a survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small and uninhabited island. In his restlessness to save himself, he offered feverish prayers to the lord and desired that he be rescued. Every day the survivor scanned the horizon for help, but none of his efforts or prayers seemed to be paying. Days and months passed by and the exhausted sailor eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to defend himself from his unasked cast away. In his hut, the sailor had his little possessions that he had saved during the ship wreck. One day when the sailor came back to his hut after hunting for food, he found his little hut burning in flames and the smoke rolling up to the sky. The poor sailor had experienced the worst. In his anger and annoyance with the lord, he asked, “Oh lord, why did you have to be cruel with me?” Stunned with grief, the sailor asked, “lord, how could you do this to me?” and he slept feeling bitter and blue. The next morning when the sailor woke up, he was awakened by the sound of a ship that had come to rescue him. The weary sailor asked his rescuers, “How did you know I was here?” The rescuers replied, “We saw your smoke signal.” 

When it is dark and desolate, we can rarely imagine god’s mysterious and profound ways of loving us. His ways may seem abstruse yet they contain life’s refined and pragmatic lessons. When god puts us to a test, we may hold a grudge against him. In our failing faith, we may lose hope in prayers and believe that god’s heavenly warmth has left us stranded. We, however, forget that it is the god himself who wants us to be marooned, penniless, and shipwrecked, so that he could rescue us from our doubts and insecurities. It is god’s tough love that makes us strong enough to find a new purpose in our swamped and submerged life. Hence, from a fragile being during our gala times we turn into resilient individuals during our rough patch. It seems that God’s elusive plans are surreal, which cannot be questioned, but could only be surrendered to.

Copyright © 2011 - Present dharbarkha.blogspot

Video Courtesy:  Barkha Dhar

Dear God

Dear God, 

You may still remember the pristine prayer that I sang to you everyday in the school assembly. I innocuously thanked you ‘for the food I ate, for the clothes I wore, for the birds that sang and thanked you for everything’. As child, I wondered what contained in thanking you for ‘everything’. To date, I devoutly tumble on this thought that vaguely describes your art. I certainly imagine thanking you for my material existence that spurs my life in day and night. But that would be morsel of my gratitude. So I am writing to you about what subsumes of thanking you for that ‘everything’ unknown to me as child. At the outset, I would like to accede with my habitat’s preeminent contributions that have been substantial in valuing what I have than what I don’t. This feeling perhaps enunciates that life is beyond our control and sometimes its course gets haywire. In moments when logic appears irrational, your stupendous milieu guides and sustains me and my fellow inhabitants. Your signs reinstate that when things go wrong, there is a purpose and that you have something daring and exciting planned for us. 

God, alongside your immaculate lessons, yet another earmark distinguishes us in this habitat. It’s the disposition of your children. Besides physical self, our mind is most visceral. It reins our thoughts and feelings and often hobnobs with our relationships. So sometimes we fight, brush along with ego, meddle in other’s family matters and disturb someone unrelentingly instead of sharing love. In such instances, your blessings are colossal in reminding us of the one’s who express their cheer and ardor for us. You remind us of looking up to those who inspire us and accept us for who we are instead of picking on us. Besides, your sanctity and faith generates might and keeps us away from those who spite us or are vindictive. 

Dear God, your omnipotence is your third eye watching us all from a celestial cinemascope. Its mammoth screen is like a mirror that captures good, sad and changing moments of our lives. Besides, it reflects on the magnitude of our musings that quite often absorbs us in self-praise without any heed to self-blame. In such occasions, we get preoccupied with selfdom, criticize and conceal against the one’s we dislike. Sometimes, we may even go overboard to denigrate others with our one-sided judgments. God, this is when your prayers invoke hope and conveys that no matter what, truth shall always prevail. 

God, although your supreme craft sometimes appears absolute. It however leaves us with invincible quest to look inside before we look outside at others. Such self-exploration helps in coexistence. Unmasking ourselves even for once makes us realize that even if we are different, yet we synchronize as pieces of an unending puzzle. Now that awareness certainly seems magnificent! It indeed is a chunk of ‘thank you for everything’ that you gifted me and my fellow inhabitants in this abode that we call life. 

Signing off with reverence,

Barkha Dhar  

Copyright (c) 2011 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot

Video Courtesy: http://www.youtube.com/user/BarkhaDhar

Voice-over: Ash D.

Say No To Hitler Style Relationships

If anybody had to get a hindsight of who Hitler was as a leader and as a person, then learning about him through his sayings would be a flashback of terror. Most of his quotes on waging a war, leadership and governance, revolutions, and struggle are passionate, but also pugnacious. Hitler seemed to be a man defined by extremism and belligerence, which may have been a boon to the Nazi rule. As a leader, Hitler would be always remembered as a great warrior and an authoritarian for whom victory was a battle of conquest. However, most of us may know little about him as a person. Walter S. Zapotoczny’s Hitler’s Leadership style: The undoing of Germany mentions, ‘‘Hitler combined his insistence on personal control with a leadership style that often consisted of equal parts stubbornness and indecisiveness.’’ Hitler’s such mental state and emotional behavior is a subtle revelation of his psyche and selfdom, which also forms a contour to his relationship style. 


Not surprisingly enough, but leadership is an offshoot of relationships. In addition to the domain of traits and skills, leadership is a pilotage of emotions that navigates feelings to purpose. A positive leadership builds, strengthens, and defines relationships through exchange of ideas, fair participation, and welcoming change to adapt to newer styles. Such facet is an important dimension in relationships, which helps sustain a healthy and open minded lifestyle. In my view, hearty living starts with wholesome relationships where nourishment of feelings is generated through independence and providing space to people so that love flows naturally and not superficially. Feelings of control, superiority, and spurious means to provocation have no seat in a proactive relationship. Moreover, respect being a predominant aspect in relationships is not demanded, but earned through love and giving way to trust so that any relationship that starts fresh should not end while it’s still in its cocoon. Such principle is universally applicable, whether in love, or marital relationships, between parents and children, with in-laws, among friends and co-workers, or acquaintances. 


Also, nurturing relationships is a long drawn process that should begin on a leveled surface. When we enter into new relationships, thoughtful and careful dealings lessen our emotional stress of adjusting to a new way of life. For instance, a new bride hopes to enter her groom’s family with aspirations of affinity and not abomination. In parent-child relationships, clogging a child’s autonomy through excessive control hurts a child’s psychological development and emotional expression. Being a watchdog as a parent is certainly fair, but exceeding our relationship beyond limits where a child’s expression is controlled, or manipulated seems inappropriate. In marital relationships, sharing of equitable status among the couple goes miles in building the character of their marriage as an institution of love and faith. Giving dent to feelings periodically, carefully listening to each other, providing breathing space and scope to operate autonomously are some ways to sustain a healthy relationship.


It is important to note that keeping our emotions in check when in a relationship is more productive than controlling the relationship itself. Control freaks do not last forever. Their aggression ends relationships in a sour taste. A participative style of dealings is always better than harsh motives of conquering the relationship. Such preventive measures make a relationship more receptive and meaningful.  Healthy relationships infuse us with positive energy and give a humanitarian face to our feelings and not an egoistic visage. Hence, learning a lesson from a bygone era is to begin refinement of old habits and practices to set ourselves in motion for change.  History is reminiscent of Hitler’s relationships being disturbed since early childhood years with his liking for giving orders. His eccentric behavior and his additiction to creating emotional extremism through his eloquent speeches would put his audiences into a near state of hysteria besides emotions of anger and hate that often resulted in acts of violence. Hitler, however, would be remembered as a powerful personality and an impressionist, but his relationships shall always remain a predicament. For all of us, nonetheless it is time we extirpate the hidden Hitler in us, so that healthy relationships today ascend us to a state of fruition tomorrow. 

Copyright (c) 2009 - Present Dharbarkha.blogspot 
Phot Courtesy: Imageshack

Compassion Is An Ace Virtue

Compassion is like a cathedral in our heart that incites us to serve the destitute. When we internalize this feeling as the voice of our soul, it bedazzles us with the radiance of an inner shrine. Often, words that emanate from our soul are the wisdom of our conscientious state and show us a unique light that exists in all of us. This illumination within is the grace that we can feel when we touch others lives through a compassionate heart and an open mind. As a synagogue inside, compassion is a novel gesture that connects affection and inspiration to pain and suffering in a healing relationship.

The magnificence of compassion is a push that we feel by sharing its benevolent power with the ones in great need. As the lyrical beats of our heart, compassion is a song that God gifted us to listen to other’s call of anxiety and turmoil, violence and abuse. Uncovering this abundant empathy inside to uplift the oppressed and unfortunate, is a fulfillment beyond comparison. Such rehabilitative force inside us can repair wounded emotions, help restore positive energy in others and can sometimes be a phenomenon deeper than the acumen of medical science.

Compassion is also a stimulant virtue that helps us honor the dignity in human relationships, irrespective of one’s material status. As fortitude of a visionary mind and strength of character, compassion is the route to righteousness. Preserving the sanctity in humanity through kind actions and genuine concern for the sick, poor, battered and homeless conserves positivity in us and also promotes social conscience. Most importantly, as a cornerstone of faith, compassion trespasses creed to create uniformity in our feelings for others and unites us in motley with our global brothers and sisters.

Mother Teresa was one such humanitarian who left us with the legacy of her compassionate mission. Her work for lepers, abandoned women and children is instrumental in the history of charity and social change in India and world over. Born as an Albanian with a heart that was truly Indian, Mother Teresa took compassion to a global scale. As an apostle of charity, she served and saved many vulnerable lives in India and throughout Asia, Africa, Latin America, North America, Poland and Australia. Had she restricted her altruistic mission to her native in Albania, this world would have been deprived of a compassionate mother. On her death, Mother Teresa laid beatified in a glass coffin with her serene white face and a life similar to a sage. As a holy icon, she taught us a chaste lesson that compassion is not an end but the means to an allusive beginning.

Copyright (c) 2009 - present Dharbarkha.blogspot

A Conversation on Faith

The other day an interesting piece of dialogue on religion caught my attention in ‘letters to editor’ section in the Foreign policy magazine. An exchange of views on Islam and its perceived partake on fundamentalism seemed to be the debate between Sam Harris and Karen Armstrong. Both the writers shared their sagacity on the issue and in a way inspired me. An argument on religion, in my view, is particularly sensitive, be it Islam or any other form. This however does not mean that in order to discuss religion one needs to be a prophetic or an authoritarian on system of beliefs. Any religion, according to me, is a system of religiosity, a doctrine for oneness and communion not only with God or the Holy Scriptures but within us and with others. Such veneration for religion, Islam, Christianity or so many other forms is actually our faith or an allegiance with principles that we are born and brought up with. So how can any religion create an antagonistic pattern? But we people who represent different forms of religious identities sure can. It’s our thinking-feeling patterns and obviously our perceptions and sometimes social/community pressures that incite us to trespass creed. 

As for ‘fundamentalism’, it is a component that seems to be present in most religions. Such ideals sometimes act as foundations leading to fanatics, a state of extreme emotions. This extremism can be our ‘good or bad’ emotions and no religion in my perspective would motivate us to act against humanity or the ideals to preserve it. In my view, focal for any religion is faith, a foundation that inspires to love and be loved. Such zeal is always deep inside; it just needs to penetrate our heart and mind to see all human beings as unique, all religions as equal and all fundamental principles as single entity that respect dignity in humanitarian relationships. Also, human nature and the capability of our mind as a dense and dynamic characteristic, sometimes forges us to affliction in the name of religion. How deeply is it justified using God as an instrument of disharmony or associating devotion with emotionally charged movements that may benefit few in the society? Having an eye for faith, on the other hand, can seed our theological desires and help us to internalize happiness in whatever religious identity our destiny brought us into.

Copyright (c) 2009-present Dharbarkha.blogspot 
Photo Courtesy: localenterprise

The Art of Giving | Intent.com

Is life always about yearning for more? Truly one, who loses it all, knows it all. Life at full speed often loses its purpose. Money, money and more money are the rules of the game. If this is the change that we yearn then why bother for soul search or the art of living? I however feel living starts by giving, when one attunes to sharing happiness, prosperity or a piece of bread with others. Faith in god, in oneself and in others is the connecting spirit in humanity and the act of giving. Faith never shares facts, and giving never requires any. If quality of life is defined through materialistic possessions then we sure have achieved a lot, but what about our inner fulfillment? In spite of all the good wines, traveling round the globe and designer pieces, why do we yet feel unfulfilled? Is then “giving” an obligation only of missionaries or charities?

Art of giving commemorates the purpose of existence. A heart that aspires for such acts truly embodies inner peace and an outer purpose. The act of proffering is truly aesthetic and ecstatic. One who has more, should give more and service before self, are values that are immortal. More importantly, in the whole wide world, our children need to be taught to imbibe the art of giving at a nascent and blooming age.  If a toddler today can share a bag of potato chips, I wonder what all he would yearn to give through his youthful years and the rest of his life.

The Art of Giving | Intent.com

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