Unbox Jindgi, This Diwali!

“You know, I think we Indians are afraid to show and celebrate our happiness, let things change around. But I feel that it's okay to be sad and okay to show when you are happy”… Shah Rukh Khan.

Well, sometimes our Bollywood stars does talk sense & in above quote our times melody king has shown some sense in speaking for what we as Indians are! Yes we do are shy in celebrating happiness as first we think people will be jealous with us & will try to steal that happiness from us & second we are a bit selfish when it comes to share happiness, though it’s not our culture! It’s in this country even a stranger if he enters our home we first give him water & something to eat; but somewhere in the age of carrier & success we have lost that touch of sharing & that took away our celebrating happiness also!

Diwali does makes many brands advertise aggressively & innovatively to en-cash the festive mood & I always love to read or watch advertises in news papers & on TV. Two advertises, first that of Snapdeal & other of Amazon, both are online shopping companies, caught my attention. Snapdeal’s advertise says, “Unbox Jindagi, This Diwali” whereas Amazon is appealing to people, “Ye Diwali Bade Dilwai’! What we mean when we say Unbox Jindagi? We all keep hidden many things which desire to do, may it be dancing in rains or may it be buying a purple color top for us, many things which we would have liked to do for our own happiness but right from what people will say to is it doing worth, so many what’s & it’s makes us box our desires in the box which we call mind. All we need is a little push to open up that box & show day light to our own desires, wish, whatever we may call it as there lays real happiness & celebrate that happiness with all around us! I think that’s true meaning of Diwali, isn’t it? As after all Diwali is festival of light so let’s enlighten our surrounding by opening up our very own box along with us!

The Amazon advertises makes us understand our desire to make others happy by our small acts for e.g. gifting something to our society’s watchman or our laundry man & many around us whom are not as fortunate as us. Often when we celebrate then we limit or say restrict our celebrations to our close ones only, may it be relatives or friends, but we forget many others who are part of our day to day life & actually making our life a bit easy by their presence! We are selfish as either we just ignore others importance in our life or curtail our wish to make them part of our happiness for many reasons; "why to spend on people who are not close to me", is one standard reason which we never openly acknowledge but get ruled by that is a bitter fact. Ask our own self, as some time or other each of us feels like doing something for those unknown faces which moves around us in many forms; may it be the boy who cleans your table when you are enjoying your morning coffee with your friends in Vaishali, that face may be of a doorman of a posh restaurant who opens your car door for you when you are driving back to your home after a dinner which may be equal to his months’ salary, or your societies watchman’s face who salutes you every morning when you are leaving for your office in your SUV or the garbage collector of your building who rang the bail of every morning to collect your homes dirt & the list goes on. All these faces looks at you & you even don’t return their looks avoiding, thinking what you have to do with them. Well, these faces are not of beggars; they all are respectable men, doing their duty honestly & with pride. Only thing is their life is not as easy as yours, because of many reasons & their faces do reflect that stress of every day’s battle for survival! Off-course you may not be responsible for the reasons of their stresses but you surely can be the reason to reduce those stresses a bit by just one small act of gifting something to them along with a genuine smile! Frankly speaking in the process of living by DP’s on whats-ap accounts of the people around we have forgotten to read the real life faces! This is what the Amazon advertises appeals to us, to respect the real faces in life & know your responsibility to make them happy, so open up your mind & even pocket also a bit for that. This is what Amazon advertise appeals us, “Ye Diwali Bade Dilwali” i.e. in English language it means, “Make this Diwali Generous”! 

And remember one thing whatever success in our carrier we may have achieved or whatever age we grow yet we love somebody making our face glow by small act of love & compassion; here I will share from my own experiences something. Even today on Diwali morning when my mother who has been retired as a school teacher gives me Rs 1000 & asks to buy a T-Shirt of my choice for myself, I become speechless; somewhere deep within something moves & it reflects on surface in the form of tears in eyes & smile on lips. It may be just Rs 1000 but it’s a time machine for me, taking me back in past! It brings back memories of a small boy in a small town, for whom Diwali was the only time to get something of his choice; so it brings the best glow on my face & I realize that 1000/- note is more precious than all my earnings! I am sure many of us are lucky enough to experience such glow on Diwlai but often we fail to understand importance of that glow. I think we ought to share this glow with as many people we can, is what I think celebrating happiness on the occasion of Diwali!

What I wondered most is how precisely both this advertises have pinpointed our Indian mind which Shahrukh was referring to! As this exactly is what we needed to remind our self while we go through our daily rituals of so called job, family & friends. There is a lot more life than what we see or hear around & that life have got boxed in our mind & then we make that box small by acts only, same way our hidden desires also get compressed & die eventually! Along with those dead desires dies something for more precious within us & that is true meaning of celebrating happiness. As if we forget to celebrate every small moment of happiness & if we are restricting that celebration to our own cage then we haven’t understood the meaning of life in itself! Diwali is festival of lights & that doesn’t mean just lighting your home with LED lights & fireworks; what it mean is make the other lives glow with your sharing of happiness as that is something which will enlighten their faces forever!

Below is something I wrote for my team on Diwali, sure you too can read it & share with yours family/friends & do add something of your own glow in it, they will feel nice…

                              

                    Happy Diwali !

“Love & hatred, both provide us a cause to live; it’s up to us what we choose to live for”… Malala Yosafzai.

Dear Team,

As you know your boss is very much fond of quotes by people around the world, not that because they are big names but they are big names because they share such wisdom or feelings with us through such quotes! The youngest Noble prize winner for Peace has suffered herself a lot & above words can come through only extreme suffering as that mind only can understand importance of love!

And how correct is Malala, because unfortunately knowingly or unknowingly we allow hatred to rule us making us walk on that path only. Outcome is in present times we have forgotten even to smile genuinely leave apart celebrating happiness as where hatred exists happiness has no place! And hatred doesn’t mean you want to harm someone deliberately, for many reasons however small or irrelevant those reasons may be yet we despise many people around us; may it be colleagues, suppliers, contractors or even our clients too, in some cases! And in the process we miss to notice small joys or moments of happiness the very same people brings for us, may it be a hot cup of tea served by our office boy on a rainy noon or an umbrella handed over to us by our driver on a hot sunny day at site, so many times we fail to appreciate such small acts of concern or promptness in duty. At home also scene isn’t different, a loving hug by your small daughter when you enter in home or your better half waiting for you for dinner on a late work day! These are smallest of acts which actually say so much to us & with deaf ears we just walk on with carrying hatred for unpleasant moments which in a way is like carrying some unnecessary baggage, making us tiered & irritated with the journey of life! And all these people around you doesn’t expect something great from you, just a smile & a thank you message which can be conveyed by your eyes is what needed but even that we  fail to do!

This Diwali lets enlighten our mind with love as that’s one sure way of keeping hatred away & let this unnecessary baggage of bad memories melt, just the way darkness melts when you burn an Anar at Diwali night! As your boss, I promise to make an effort doing the same, starting from myself as I too am not the exception to what I have shared above! What better wish I could have made for my team which makes my every day bright & beautiful! Happy Diwali to you along with your family!

Sanjay 

Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev.

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