A note to an Older Self

Hey There!
As this year is coming to an end I have so much that I am grateful and thankful for.
This year has taught me so many lessons that I cannot be enough thankful for. I learnt to let go, that not everything in life can be planned and controlled. Sometimes it is okay to take the break from all the hustle and sit back and just relax, to take time and be proud of how far you have come. It is great to be hard working and ambitious but its good to always take some time off the grid, to take one step at a time. I took around 6 trips this year and every trip left an embark in me, gave me a new perspective and that every time I came back from the trip I was rejuvenated with so much of positivity and energy.
I have always found myself caged in the idea of age and time, but you know what? it's okay if you are unlike any other or that your purpose in life to get there is taking time, just know that you will get there eventually and when you do time will hold no value because all that will matter is that moment, the very moment when you will feel that joy and peace in your heart.
And the most important lesson of all the power of kindness and love, is close to my heart. I try to be as kind and loving as I can be to others but I would often ignore it
for my own self. In this life we are so busy loving others and the idea of love that we often forget that love has to start from oneself. That what you reap inside of
you shall come out of you either from mouth or actions, who cares. So lets plant the seed of love and kindness inside, lets be and to ourselves when things go wrong,when someone leaves or when you are having a bad day, lets be loving to all of our self ,our body, our imperfections, our insecurities, to let go of all that is holding you back from being who you really are. Trust me you cannot love or be kind to others if you are not to your own self.
Towards the end I don't believe in new years but what I do believe in, is the idea of new chances, new opportunities, new outlook for life, new connections.
So much love
Bhargavi Rana

Feminism at it's best.

Don't you have a brother? and why not? question that has haunted me for years. Initially growing up this question meant nothing but repetitively started to bother me. Well thanks to those people I started to question to myself why am I being asked this? how does it even matter if I do not have a brother. In that journey I made myself believe that I should aim on becoming the Son my parents never had. But thanks to y inquisitive mind I still wasn't satisfied I started to read and read educate myself. The deeper I got into it I realised that responsibilities have got nothing to do with my gender that even being a daughter I can still make my father proud, I can still access education to any limit I want and grow up becoming my own person.
Then comes the hottest compliment of all time, you are a Feminist and trust me it is in a tone like it is something foul. A lot of people associate feminism with pulling men down from their current status in the society, taking away their say and rights and giving women whatever they want overlooking justice and equality.
Honestly, for such people I have only one thing to say you all believe in it because you have been doing this to women which is why they have a reason to believe that Feminism is all about it, I do not blame them honestly. Though it shocks and  also concerns me that this is not just happening around me or in my country but worldwide, women have faced and continue facing such issues, even highly developed countries have such issue. What can be done? I ask myself everyday.
Here is what I strongly believe especially facing situations first handedly that the word feminism is too small to contain all of it, I see it more of as a revolution that is evolving with years passing by. Feminism in simple terms mean the liberty for being whatever and whoever I want to be, to split the check, to be ambitious, to share responsibilities to be liberal, to date men and not being judged, to make my own sexual decisions and not be judged or call out for it. and most importantly to not suppress or be suppressed by any gender rather build a community that embraces my choices with no regards to my gender.
All I ask as a women is to be open to the change, to equality, to a community where a women can be more intelligent and sharper than you, to embrace a woman who is bold or shy to a bad ass working mom or a homemaker. To build a community of equal opportunities ,wellbeing  and pay.
Let us educate ourselves before we pass any opinions.
Have an open mind!

The Paradoxical Commandments

Reading through the Book ' The 8th Habit' , I came across the, "The Paradoxical Commandments". As I was reading through it, I couldn't have felt more empowered and beautiful than I was feeling at that moment. Which is why I wanted to share them :
1.People are illogical, unreasonable and self centred, love them anyway.
2.If you do good, people will accuse you of selfish ulterior, do good anyway.
3.If you are successful, you will win false friends and true enemies, succeed anyway.
4.The good you do today will be forgotten tomorrow, do good anyway.
5.Honesty and frankness make you vulnerable, be honest and frank anyway.
6.The biggest men and women with the biggest ideas can be shot down by smallest men and women with smallest minds. think big anyway.
7.What you spent years building may be destroyed overnight, build anyway.
8.People who really need your help may attack you if you help them, help them anyway.
9.Give the world the best you have and you will kicked in the teeth, give the world the best anyway.

Reading these fill my life with purpose and more energy. Over time there have been and will be many instances where I come across the above said situations and then these commandments seem like a task to implement. You see the negative looks more easy and less painful, as to seek revenge, to be bitter, to pull someone down, to be selfish, might seem like the way to reach the top, to achieve utmost happiness, as you call it peace of mind.
In Such times I have learnt to trust myself, to be the bigger one in the picture, to learn to differentiate between the temporary and the permanent things in lives. As to the current situation that I might be facing is temporary but my response to it shall be permanent, as to how I react to it shall shape my soul and mind of a person that I  will become.
To learn to choose ourselves over such situations, takes strength and courage. It is not easy to be the bigger one or to be even a percent of the human in the above said commandments, which is why not everyone you meet or come across will be like it. Which is why it makes my purpose more worthy and fills me with more hope and faith of a humane world.

Evolve
Much Love
Bhargavi Rana

A note to an older self

As another year passes by I want to take this chance to be grateful to each and every opportunity that I had. 

As my father beautifully quoted to me " daughter do not take any task as big or small, rather put in all your heart and soul to it, as to everything that comes your way is a lesson learnt" .

That time I surely did not understand his words but now I do. Thus I do not take anything for granted and  try to learn from anything that comes my way, even while I am doing household chores. As someone said "Beauty lies in the eyes of Beholder" , my version on it is "Learnings and opportunities lies in the eyes of those who seek". More than anything I am thankful to each and everyone who touched upon my life, I am forever grateful to the experiences they left me with, positive or negative it has moulded me.

I take every second, every day of my life as a chance to grow and gain knowledge as an individual self, to dedicatedly spend my coming year as a lover and a seeker.

Thank you for your time.

Much love

Bhargavi Rana

My version of Still I rise

When the night is dark and cold
The world shall leave you on your own
But what this selfish world doesn't understand is,
That just how the day turned to night
The darker shall turn to a brighter path
That time doesn't stop whether it is good or bad
and so does the fate doesn't remain the same forever
today I have dark night
and tomorrow I shall have a bright rise.

A questionable Dillema

The question of my existence my lifestyle my belongings have always fascinated me

because when I look around I see so much of variety no one person has same things as I do. I do not understand why I have more than someone has and less than some other one has.

why is there is so much of difference between you and me? how is it even possible?

this will always be the question of a lifetime for me. For instance why a janitor working 8hrs a day at a local place earns less than the janitor working at a high end place. I really miss out the reason for gap in the picture. Are not they both doing the same job? how in this life have we managed to create such vast differences that looks impossible to fill in.
when did this even happen?

how do you know my intellect is more than an old lady who has spent life in poverty struggling to feed her babies just because I have a degree and she don't?

when did we manage to create a society where even something as private as our careers are being judged.
Why are porn stars or prostitutes or strippers seen less than people working at corporate office?

 is it because they choose to sell their physical bodies and latter one choses to sell their brain. Aren't both of them selling a part of each selves? then why such parity?

why are we constantly on the run? what is there to achieve in this lifetime? What is that you seek? why is my need a luxury for you and my luxury a need for someone else?

What is that you seek in me? what is there to love in me or makes me likeable?

is it that I do things that you like or that we share same opinions or has it got to do something with my body.

Do you know me? Do you want to even know me? or just act like it.

People call me unromantic because I do not understand what it feels like to be presented with huge gestures,may be I don't may be because I have never had one or could it be that I happen to find happiness in small things. what is it?

what does it feel to be hopeless romantic ? addressing heart full of emotions or box full of chocolates or heart full of broken pieces? what is it?

I just thought that love is love, it could mean differently for all of us.

Why am I any different?

Woman Of Colour

Growing up as a dark skinned woman was not that easy. I was often advised to not sit in the sun,to play in the sun or to not drink tea or to not wear certain colours and not to forget use fairness creams. Fairness cream ah! what to say about them, the concept of lightning cream was to lighten the scars of acne or help with pigmentation which are real skin problems and not to change the colour of ones complexion that they were born into. But you will be shocked to know how vast the market of fairness cream is. Women unknowingly find themselves trapped just because we live in a world where beauty is defined by the colour of your skin and honestly I do not know whom to blame, because everywhere I see there are ample of fair women figures it is like the world is dominated by colour, be it movies, songs, television series. How can I forget watching advertisement where they tape young women saying how their lives were full of rejection just because they were dark but as soon as they started using the fairness cream everything changed and all of sudden hard work in real terms did not reap but a fairness cream did and their lives where changed forever.It came as a shock to me when at a younger age some of my peers did not want to be friends with me because there was some cult for so called fair looking people. Oh what a day! it did not bother me though it did get me thinking what is it? why is it so important to be of fair colour, how does it even define or portray me as a human? am I not supposed to better at studies or doing homework than to just worry about why I am dark and desperately attempt to be someone I was never meant to be. Lucky for me I found a figure that inspired and affected me as person. She gave me more clarity and she was none other than my mother. Yes my mother is a dark skin woman just like me, she is filled with full of passion courage, strength someone who never gives a damn to what anyone had to say or do but did whatever she loved is passionate about. I grew up watching her respecting people around us helping them and most importantly being an amazing mother, a friend without I whom would not be what I am today. That is how I decided to become a woman I was meant to someone who as confident with whoever she was and most importantly embrace the colour of my skin and take pride in it. I use creams and also make up but not to change my colour but to enhance the skin I have and take care of it. Beauty is not about colour, figure or clothes it is about who you are as a person. Do you have light that lights the people around, Do you make people around you feel better about themselves? Do you radiate positivity around you? Beauty is abstract you cannot see it but you can always feel it. It is about who you are from the inside and how you look at the things around you. Do not let just one part of you over shadow,who you are and can become. It is upto you how you want to spend the rest of your life to become someone you never where or magnify all the qualities you already have into becoming someone that blossoms not only oneself but also the others that surround them.