Hanna Schmitz #rolestroll_10

"Sometimes the memory of happiness cannot stay true because it ended unhappily"

Movie - The Reader

When we label someone as the protagonist or antagonist we see character through a very narrow lens. Well through that lens Hanna will be labelled as an antagonist undoubtedly. A middle aged women who seduces and gets into an affair with a teenager twenty one years younger than her. She as a Nazi guard in the concentration camp who had to choose six women every day and lead them to die in order to make room for the new Jew prisoners. She is a women hard to decipher and ofcourse in no way can be justified to be outrightly correct. But she carries within herself an innocence and veracity which is so captivating. Despite doing what she did she never lied about anything in trial against her with sheer righteousness. She loved with all passion and candour and did her job with full honesty though it wouldn't stand the given standards of law and morality. But who defines morality afterall?  Can't what we know as morality be the collective immorality of people in better position and time.Even if she was incarcerated for life as per the law but justice was never done to her. She had always liked been read to and was ashamed of her illiteracy. She was inquisitive to start learn how to read in her late forty. But she was imbued with helplessness and remorse for those lives which couldn't now be reverted back to life and a pain and longing for her long lost love. Her journey is disturbing, intriguing, heartwrenching and the fact that you may even sympathise with a character like that is unsettling. Now whether she was an antagonist, criminal or was it a poignant account of just another individual depends upon the kaleidoscope through which you see her story, a slight change and the patterns will be altered.

ख़ामोशी

हर वक़्त एक शिकायत थी न तुम्हारी
की शून्य को देखे क्या सोचती रहती हूँ
हर बात बस सुनती हूँ तुम्हारी
वापस कभी कुछ नहीं कहती हूँ
पर मेरा न कहना मेरी कमज़ोरी नहीं हो जाती
हज़ार बार एक झूठ दोहराने से बात वो सच नहीं हो जाती
एक कोने में यूँ ही आहें भरती थी
इसलिए चुप नहीं थी के तुमसे डरती थी
तुम्हारे मन की बनाई दुनिया मेरी धुरी नहीं थी
और मेरा न बोलना मेरी मंजूरी नहीं थी
पर तुम्हें तो सिर्फ खुद में ही खोये रहने का मर्ज़ था
गर सुनना चाहते तो जानते उस ख़ामोशी का क्या तर्ज़ था
तुम्हें मुझको दिए सारे ज़ख्म साफ दिखाई देते
और तुम्हें मेरे हर अनकहे हर्फ़ साफ सुनाई देते
तुम्हारी नज़रे तुम्हारे वज़ूद को नकार देती
वो बेआवाज़ शोर तुम्हारे कानों के परदे फाड़ देती
खुद को पूरा खर्च कर देनी की मेरी क्या रज़ा थी
सालों तक तुम्हें सहने की वो क्या वज़ह थी
जिस दिन जानोगे उस दिन सो न सकोगे तुम
बेफिक्री से रो न सकोगे तुम
उस दिन न तुम रंग ए रेख्ता होंगे
न ही गुनाहों के देवता होंगे
जानोगे क्यों तुम्हारे किये पर मेरी कोई हरकत नहीं
क्यूँकि प्यार का उल्टा बेहिसि हैं, नफरत नहीं
शिकायत तो उससे होती हैं जिसपर ऐतबार हो
बातें तब होती हैं जब सामने वाला सुनने को तैयार हो
तो गर एक दिन तुम सुनने की हिम्मत रखोगे
कुछ जानने की थोड़ी ज़हमत करोगे
उस ख़ामोशी को गिरह को एक दिन खोलेंगे
बड़े इत्मीनान से वो सारी बातें बोलेंगे
तब तक ये ख़ामोशी ही तुम्हारा रकीब होगा
और मेरा कुछ न कहना ही तुम्हें नसीब होगा

Pursuit of Happyness

"It was right then that I started thinking about Thomas Jefferson on the Declaration of Independence and the part about our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. And I remember thinking how did he know to put the pursuit part in there? That maybe happiness is something that we can only pursue and maybe we can actually never have it. No matter what. How did he know that?"
~ Chris Gardner ( Pursuit of happyness)

Happiness is a very subjective term. Some say its just another human emotion, some say its a state of mind. But the one thing that's for sure is that its a pursuit and not a prerogative that you can be entitled to. There are thousands of self help books and millions of those inspiring quotes that we scroll up on our instagram. But there are billion people in this world with anxiety and depression and zillion problems in every corner of the world. So in this abysmal world does this word really carry a meaning or is a facade and false hope to just keep lives going?

Well it really takes an effort to unravel the meaning and to really tell what significance it holds in our life. Why Bhutan measures its development with Gross national happiness? Why is there an addition of forty five minute happiness period in curriculum of Delhi schools. There is no denying the fact that its important though hard found. Its utopian and idiotic to believe that happiness is the absence of all sorrows. Joy and sorrow are two sides of same coin and its foolish to try upbraiding them.

Maybe its a very simple concept in its core  that we have overhyped and intricated over times. Maybe happiness is in the little things around us which we really never cared enough to stop and appreciate. Maybe it was always there like the  school bus passing round the corner of your  house, daily sometimes delayed by a minute or two. World is your oyster. Its upto you to find the pearls. Its the tapestry you weave out of life which can be beautiful, ordinary or even ugly but yours afterall that no one can take away from you or tarnish.Happiness is the snuggle into your mother's arm around you while you are sleeping. Its the nonchalant caress on your head when your father was proud of you for reason you didn't think was big enough.Its the ten minutes of extra sleep after you snooze off your alarm. Its the pokemon tazo and tattoos that used to go away on next day's bath. Its the extra stuffed mouth refreshner in your pocket from the restaurant.It is getting bigger piece of cake than your brother. Its an icecream stall you see across a road on a hot summer day. Happiness is also a reflection and in lies in  seeing someone else happy.Happiness is the upcoming argument after you wronged something with your friend because they care enough for you. Its about shedding tears for and with the people you love. Happiness is in the cry of a newborn from the labour room and also in the cry of a mother for whom justice took seven years to come.

Happiness is also accepting that it does comes naturally and easily to some people and not to others. And you might be in the latter category and that's okay.Happiness is also the faint belief that someday things will be better if not the ideal. That there will be a brief moment of happiness when you will smile and be glad that you sticked around for it. That it is a conscious decision that you have to make and remind yourself from time to time. That its a promise you make to yourself and meet no matter what the circumstances may be . Happiness is knowing that its not easy to be happy and there is no golden rule to achieve it. Ways are different, esoteric, personal  but nonetheless possible. I don't want to sound preachy or didactic even though I perhaps am when I ask you all to make an extra effort to be happy. I know we are living in a dismal world and even in the worst phase and its going to be worse from now on. There will be another chaos,  further environmental deterioration, another pandemic waiting ahead. But whoever is reading this I still insist you to smile ;smile behind the masks that you are wearing right now ; smile despite the burden of agony and  melancholy in your heart because that's the only way.

Stay blessed..stay safe..stay happy....
Wish you International happiness day

Amrita #rolestroll_9

हाँ मैंने अपने आँचल का अम्बर बनाया है।
के कहीं गर मेरा रास्ता,
चाहतों से अलग जो चले।
 के कहीं गर मेरे सीने में,
साँस थोड़ी भी जो कम पड़े, 
मेरा अपना भी इक आसमाँ हो, 
ख़ुद को हर इक दिशा में बिखेरूँ,
मुझ को हर इक दिशा से बुलाना,
मैं अगर फिर से मिल भी जाऊँ
मुझे पाश में भींच लेना
मगर मेरे आसमाँ को
तहा कर मुझे सौंप देना,
ताकि तेरा भी इक आसमाँ हो
और मेरा भी इक आसमाँ हो
और मेरा भी इक आसमाँ हो।

Movie - Thappad

There is nothing more painful and difficult to be with a person you can't respect. The protagonist Amrita is a trained classical dancer but still choses to be a housewife oblivious to her own dreams and aspirations and what follows is obvious from the title of the film. While people might argue that just a single slap is not a reason enough to end up marriage.Well it doesn't require you an ocean for you to find out that you are drowning, you feel it between your chest and your throat;the weight of it stretching you outside your self, like a dead fish on the shore.Hence it was one slap, a single slap after which a contrite awareness struck her.All the wrongs she eschewed until now became crystal clear before her eyes. Its not a story of a single woman but a collective reflection of many such marriages where women chose to live in a toxic relationship, draining their life, killing their dream, doing a compromise with the self esteem they deserve. The movie voices against the unfair marital norms,marital rape, domestic violence and taboo of being a divorcee. Many a times the people who convince women to not divorce are their own relatives and parents leaving them even more unmoored.That patriarchy is so entrenched to every strata of society heeding and feeding to the male ego that they are okay to let there wives be a binbag of their anger. What Amrita decides for herself exemplifies that violence can never be condoned,  however bad the circumstances are and can't be justified to be an expression of love. It teaches that your own happiness need not take a backfoot for the family pride or to save a relationship in which there is nothing to be saved.That at the end of the day there is nothing more important than your own self esteem and happiness.