Is Lucky the original Material Girl?

We are not human beings undergoing a spiritual experience but spiritual beings undergoing a human experience. Let go of the material world. Let go of these illusions. It's then that you will attain the wisdom of the sages" ( Pgs.120-121).

Shanti's words of advice somehow ring hollow in Lucky's ears becuse she is a thoroughly modern miss, with all the aspirations of an educated young lady. Infact, she exemplifies Madonna's "Material Girl" completely :

Living in a material world

And I am a material girl
You know that we are living in a material world
And I am a material girl

After all, if it weren't for human desires and aspirations there would be no motivation to work would there?

What goes round comes round

Everything that you do will come back to you. It sounded like cosmic revenge (p118).

Completely at a loss at how her life was unravelling before her very eyes, Shanti consoles Lucky by saying that

"According to the laws of karma, we reap what we sow in this or in another of our past lives. In other words eventually the books must balance."

Lucky is not alone in this world wondering how some people literally get away with murder. One such person who comes to mind is Hitler who got away with the holocaust , killing thousands of innocents in cold blood, destroying millions of lives and yet getting away with a cyanide pill. In the face of such instances from history, I wonder how the theory of karma fits in.

Any answers anyone?

However, on a lighter note, I'd like to share a joke I got in the mail about life completing a full circle.

At age 4 success is . . . not piddling in your pants.
At age 12 success is . . . having friends.
At age 17 success is . . having a driver licence.
At age 35 success is . having money.
At age 50 success is . . . having money.
At age 70 success is . .. . having a driver licence.
At age 75 success is . . . having friends.
At age 80 success is . .. . not piddling in your pants.

Ships that pass at night

Modern day students of English will find it strange that we actually had to learn the basics of the language brick by brick. Starting out with simple verbs and nouns we graduated to adjectives and adverbs, learning to parse each sentence into subject object and predicate etc.etc. In the course of this education, we also had to learn figures of speech, phrases, idioms, metaphors and proverbs.

So thorough was this grounding that there are some idioms that remained indelible, one of them being "Ships that pass at night", signifying two strangers that meet in passing, acknowledging one another by a sign , never to meet again.

Very often, one tends to unburden oneself to a stranger knowing full well that one's secrets will remain well hidden. Which is why Lucky opens her heart to Shanti (P.119)

But are Shanti and Lucky ships that pass at night? Or do they have more interactions?

Mentoring

It is amazing how the Lord opens a window when one door shuts. At the depths of despair, Lucky is at her wits end when she meets Shanti, the person who not only offers her comfort but helps her rebuild her life with her wisdom.

All of us need mentors , an older person whose experience we can draw from. The original "Mentor" was a form that Athena took to counsel Penelope's son during the Trojan war encouraging him to go out and find out what happened to his father Odysseus.

Walking 10,000 steps every day

They walked for a few yards, till Shanti stopped to check the device round her neck.'Heart rate monitor, she said apologetically. 'I try to keep my hear working , but not too hard. You don't mind, do you?' ( p117)

Shanti's device reminds me of the step counter that was gifted to me several years ago.It was a step counter which you are supposed to hook onto your trouser belt . This then proceeds to count the steps that you've taken the whole day, the target being 10,000 steps every day.

Walking a 10,000 steps doesn't seem too hard does it? After all, if you answer the door bell, you have to walk, if you need to get water from the fridge , you have to walk, so on and so forth.

I happily hooked it on to my belt and began the day. I tried hard to resist peeking at the counter but made an extra effort to walk more than I normally did. After lunch, when I cleared the table and walked to the kitchen sink with them ( something I normally never do!) to have those extra stepts registered on the counter, I couldn't help but have a look. I was amazed to find that I had only done 1,000 steps!!!

I took off the counter in disgust and decided to only use it to count the steps when I walked round the Race Course.

The next evening, I put on the counter as soon as I reached the Race Course and briskly did my two rounds. Once again, I looked at the counter and was sadly disappointed to find that I was 3000 steps short of the required 10,000 mark. Never mind, I thought, I should increase my rounds to two more and that should meet my goal.

I re-set the counter to zero and kept the counter in my bag. When I took it out of the bag to keep in my cupboard, I realised that the counter had moved! I shook it and found that it moved even more! So that's how the steps were counted and I could easily get to 10,000 steps without moving one foot in front of the other but just shaking the counter in my hand!

p.s. This image is just representational of the step counter that I actually have. I am in no way alleging that this gadget is not useful

Microwaves and the birds.

On P114. Lucky climbed up the staircase to the top of Malabar Hill. She paused in the shade of the Pipal tree to watch a small, brightly coloured bird perched on a limb. The bird was tiny like a sparrow, brown with a long orange beak, a splash of white on its chest and bright blue and black markings on its wings.

Despite being a truly urban space, Mumbai used to have a substantial bird population. Malabar Hill was in fact home to several exotic Indian Peacocks that would come flying into the gardens of nearby homes , dancing merrily in the misty drizzle .

A few years ago, though, flycatchers and sparrows almost disappeared from Mumbai's skies and the only birds we could see were the ugly House Crow. This fall in small bird population was not due to the depleting green cover as one would imagine, but strangely enough attributable to the microwaves in the sky! It seems that these poor birds had not yet figured how to avoid these waves and were literally falling out of the sky, stunned to death. Of course, I can't vouch for the veracity of this fact but this was the reason given by ornithologists.

Since then, the number of mobile operators in this city have not diminished but the bird population has increased. Perhaps the sparrows have learnt to dodge the waves after all!

Millionaire cities

Lucky's nightmare seems to get worse on P.109-110 where she meets with Dr. Das Gupta the family physician .

The doctor fidgeted in his chair. 'I'm afraid I have some bad news for you.'

Lucky sat up. 'What's wrong?' she asked

'I'm really sorry...You cannot have children."

Being told that she couldn't have children was a big blow to Lucky yet somehow While she manages to gather her wits about her and suggested some treatment. Unfortunately for her, even that option was not possible because she actually was deemed sterile.

Every woman can empathise with Lucky because motherhood is almost a given . Yet, it is amazing to know that though our population numbers are going through the roof, one in four couples has problems in conceiving.

In this map reproduced below there are over 20 Indian cities with a population of over a million according to the 1991 census. I am sure there are more cities joining the millionaire club today!