Warrier's Collage on Sunday February 16, 2025

Welcome To Warrier's COLLAGE On Sunday, February 16, 2025 Friends Happy Birthday to all readers having birthday during this week. Best Wishes & Regards 🙏 A Cover Story PERMANENT ADDRESS* (Written by Javed Akhtar who celebrated his 80th Birthday) Our Joint family home housed 14 of us from age 5 to 95 years. Today, I watch both the houses abandoned and nature taking over the garden my mother used to tend for hours every day. The Jamun, the Drumstick, a few Ashok, Neem and Peepal have survived, but all beauty is both transient and fragile, and the law of entropy is powerful. The lovely flowers of myriad colors are all gone. I wonder what happened to the peacock family that came every day and ate from my moms hand. The Bulbul, the sparrows, the parrots, spotted flycatchers, Cuckoos, a huge troop of monkeys that once in a month would upset the order of the place. Once People leave, a Home becomes a House. Initially, I didn’t feel like selling, and now I don’t feel like going. Time has taken away ten of its fourteen occupants. I walk around our neighborhood and see similar fate of so many homes once full of life now replaced or lying still. Why do we stretch and stress to build houses? In most cases, our kids won’t need it or worse, fight over it. What is this human folly of attempting permanent ownership in a leased life with an uncertain tenure given by a landlord whose terms are non-negotiable and there is no court of appeal. One day, all we have built with love and EMIs will either be demolished, fought over, sold, or lie in ruins. Every time I fill a form that asks for _‘Permanent address’ , I smile at human folly. There is a Zen story : An old monk walked into a King's palace demanding that he wanted to spend the night in this Inn and the guards told him, “What Inn, can't you see its a palace?" The monk said :“I came here a few decades back. Someone was staying there. A few years later, someone else took the throne from him, then someone else. Any place where the occupant keeps changing is an Inn.” George Carlin says “House is just a place where you keep your stuff as you go out and get more stuff”. As houses get bigger, families get smaller. When the house has occupants, we desire privacy, and when the nest empties, we crave for company. Birds and Animals must be laughing at us humans who give up living in order to build their dream home and, in the end, depart the Inn they mistook as a permanent residence. The real folly of human desire! *Shared in a group by Valsala Devi, Ex-RBI, Thiruvananthapuram B Javed Akhtar (Content shared by Sreekantan Nair, Ex-RBI, Thiruvananthapuram) An interview of youth club with Javed Akthar : https://youtu.be/BACOis9ykTw?si=OlMvNM0eONuKJUKD Listen to the last question from 28th minute. The question was whether art literature and poetry would survive in this AI Era. The answer is very touchy. He cites that when there is big hue and cry about killing of animals, birds and men, no protest is there about huge killing of fish. He says that the reason is that there is no vocal chord for them to cry when killed. According to him the art literature and poetry relays the bitter cry of human beings and will continue for ever. C Love means... What Love means? (Contributor : Sharada Nair, Chennai) It was Valentine's Day, the day before. It was interesting listening to children describing what "Love" means. A group of researchers once posed this question to a group of 4 to 8 year-olds, "What does love mean?" The answers they got were broader & deeper than anyone could have imagined. 1. "When my grandmother got arthritis, she couldn't bend over and paint her toenails anymore. So my grandfather does it for her all the time, even when his hands got arthritis too. That's love." ~Sonia- age 8 2. "When someone loves you, the way they say your name is different. You just know that your name is safe in their mouth." ~Billy - age 4 3. "Love is when you go out to eat and give somebody most of your French Fries without making them give you any of theirs." ~Chintu - age 6 4. "Love is when my mommy makes coffee for my daddy and she takes a sip before giving it to him, to make sure the taste is OK." ~ Danny - age 7 5. "Love is what's in the room with you at Christmas if you stop opening presents and listen." ~ Tina - age 7 (Wow!) 6. "Love is when you tell a guy you like his shirt, then he wears it everyday." ~Nargis - age 7 7. "During my piano recital, I was on a stage and I was scared. I looked at all the people watching me and saw my daddy waving and smiling. He was the only one doing that. I wasn't scared anymore." ~Gautam - age 9 8. "My mommy loves me more than anybody. You don't see anyone else kissing me to sleep at night." ~Suraj - age 6 9. "Love is when Mommy gives me the best piece of chicken." ~Anita-age 5 10. "Love is when your puppy licks your face even after you left him alone all day." ~Varun - age 4 11. "I know my older sister loves me because she gives me all her old clothes and has to go out and buy new ones." ~ Ananya - age 4 And the final one - Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia once talked about a contest he was asked to judge. The purpose of the contest was to find the most caring child. The winner was a four year old child whose next door neighbor was an elderly gentleman who had recently lost his wife. Upon seeing the man cry, the little boy went into the old gentleman's yard, climbed onto his lap and just sat there. When his Mother asked what he had said to the neighbor, the little boy said, "Nothing, I just helped him cry" Love is magical, its a language the deaf can hear, a song the cripple can dance to, and a sunset the blind can see. If we want love, we must try and realize that the only way to get love is by giving it, that the more you give, the more you will get and the only way you can give it is to try and fill yourself with it and become a magnet. Fill yourselves with love & stay blessed forever. D Media Response* The Economic Times Chat Room February 14, 2025 Simplify for better compliance This refers to your editorial "Simpler Tax Law Means Simpler Life" (ET, February 14). Well said. Common man rightly believes that law and the system that administers law are in the domain of highly paid professionals. Be it criminal or civil laws or those relating to revenue and taxation. The multi-layer judicial system and the government hierarchy strengthen this belief by the delay in delivery of justice. As now diagnosed, the main culprit is the complicated legacy of rule books which is part of the heritage from the Britishers. It is gratifying to see that government has woken up to the real issues. Perhaps, simultaneously, the Centre could look into : 1) Reducing judicial and administrative reviews to two layers where possible. 2) Ensuring periodic review of statutes and the rules and procedures as a regular practice, say once in five years. 3) Weeding out provisions which become irrelevant or obsolete over time. M G Warrier Mumbai *Not published