Sister Marco Polo and Sister Robin Hood.

Sisterhood is a beautiful thing. Although my mom tells me that when my younger sister was born I was consumed with jealousy and did everything in my power to bring her points down and be my parents favorite. Being a rosy cheeked baby with golden curls that was never hard. I was out going while she stayed in the shadows. I ll talk incessantly while she would sit and listen or as mom says play with ants. Perhaps my sister was thinking ooooh when will she shut up.

Growing up too, I always had stories or some other thing I had to talk about. So I hogged all the lime light and my sisters had to be content being in the corners. WE fought like wild cats on everything as children and also as adults; but with all this came the territory of complete trust and utter affection. IF I was ever out of cash I could just take the money they kept in their secret stash, cause it was an unwritten rule that this was ok. If they ever wanted clothes to wear they could go and grab my ironed shalwar kameez and be off. Getting ready was always a riot with one small bathroom in our rented house and three young ladies trying to put on mascara and such, not as easy as it sounds people. It was when I moved away from home that the worth of my sisters truly started to sink in.

I had a whole support system all my life, some one who was there every time I had a story to tell a heart break to relate to and now I felt utterly alone. No one understood my humor like Sister Marco polo did and no one understood my off key songs like sister Robin hood.

Sister Robin Hood and would make long tableaux and songs of weird funny things. We created funny dances with funny names like the wedgy sister dance cause we all had gotten wedge cuts.

It was also when I moved away from home that I realized which sister was the adventurer and which one was the explorer.

Although to be brutally honest we all are adventurers and explorers, so that is not quite the right distinction to make. So let me rephrase;

Sister Marco polo: She is the one who likes to go into uncharted territory , always the one who would take up the road least traveled and push boundaries. I admit that I on my part have also done quite a number of things which can be attributed as going against the grain of social norms but sister marco polo has the grit to go ahead and forge her own way. She started talking about environmental stuff when no one in our family had really heard about it or cared to do much about it. She managed to turn all of us pretty much into tree huggers like herself. She convinced me to buy and compostor which is practically a big bin full of earth and earth worms and we kept it in our tiny basement apartment and composted anything that could be composted. The funny story is how we got it. We bought it and trudged back from the bus stop about 1.5 miles to our home. It soon became a favorite with our land lady too and she would bring all her food to compost as well and soon the poor worms were suffereing from a bout of indigestion. It was fun times though, I guess I have a ton more stories to tell about her because she was my room mate for 3 years when we both were living in Canada. Although I have lived with her almost all my life until I got married ofcourse, but those three years really put me in touch with the kind of wonderful person she is.

Sister Robin Hood: Well this sister of mine is always rooting for the under dog. The social reformer who will go to great lengths to bring about a social change. Always on the move championing a cause, and training in the martial arts along the way. As kids there was a couple of times when I being the big apa was able to really give her a beating but now; the tide has certainly turned I will think twice before I do anything which would anger this one. She used to use me as her practice dummy when she was training for ROTC and had to learn to carry a fallen soldier. So yes, you can imagine ........

Joan of Arc: According to my sisters, I am the only one in the family who has the capacity to fight in the way of religion and be burned as a heretic at the end of it. I guess they are right I have come along way from the girl who was following everything by the book and started thinking about things from different points of views and reading different books. I used to the the most religious one and in many ways I still am, I guess I am more inclined to look at things more spiritually than dogmatically.

So as I said before sisterhood is an amazing thing you have adventurers and explorers all living under one roof and then one by one charting their own course in life but that strong bond always remains. Onward we go my sisters :)

Moving towards World Peace.

Last week was my birthday and I was dwelling on the fact that I am fast approaching the big 3 zero..... What have I accomplished? my idealism is fast being replaced with realism and sarcasm. I was supposed to be Mother Teresa re-incarnated and here I am doing absolutely nothing to eleviate world poverty or illness. I was actually dwelling on this when one of my friends in jest asked why so serious? and then asked how can we have world peace.

I did not have an answer for his question at that time because honestly I never really really thought about it. His question was the catalyst which oiled my brain gears into motion. I am no Socrates but I think that world peace is a real possibility if we concentrate on just three things.

Human dignity + Tolerance + Compassion = World Peace, that is my formula.

Let me break it down for you, human dignity by its very meaning is the idea that all humans are deserving of respect, love and recognition regardless of gender, race, color, creed, caste, religion or any other distinctions. They deserved to be treated well because all humans have inherent worth and it does not have to be earned by status, class, culture or creed.

If we all started to treat each other well simply because we are human and not keep creating divisions amongst each other based on nationality, class, culture, sex, gender, creed, religion. If we do not sit in silence when we see mistreatment and injustice we will move towards world peace.

Next up is tolerance, why tolerance you may ask because tolerance simply means to allow another person to have a point of view. It may be completely opposite to your point of view but you allow it to exist, you do not have to agree with it, you do not have to like it but you let it be within some boundaries of course. If someone believes in infanticide you will of course not sit ideal while they go and bury the kid alive.....

The last in line is compassion, I think in order for someone to be compassionate they have to believe in human dignity and be tolerant to begin with... compassion is the idea the one feels someone else's pain or mishap as acutely as one's own. Of course you just don’t sit and feel the pain you do something about it, to help. Compassion is one of attributes of Allah and He placed compassion within our hearts so we treat one another with kindness. The idea behind two main tenents of Islam is also based on compassion, Zakat and Fast. We are told to give out of our earning to the poor so they can live better and to Fast in the month of Ramadan so we can feel the pain a hungry man feels.

So this is my view, if we all manage to have these attributes within our selves we may be closer to world peace.