G.Johnson Manickaraj, Chennai: Pages from My Life

G.Johnson Manickaraj, Chennai: Pages from My Life

Pages from My Life

Being a first lady or just a lady, the treatment is the same

Being a first lady has its own downside. There was not a single woman employed in my office in Southern Railway for decades and for the first time a lady in her mid-forties was posted. She was accompanied by a frail looking man sporting a long grey beard.  All eyes were on the hapless woman. The poor lady must have felt like a deer in the midst of a pack of wolves. After a few days she came to know who’s who in the office. She would have got her intuition right that men always think differently - and collectively - have the same attitude on women. I was among the few who had gained her confidence in the office. My colleague was curious to know who the bearded person with whom she came to office on the first day, coolly asked her whether it was her father. The woman without much reaction in her face answered that’s my husband. 

One morning she looked a bit disturbed and there was anger in her face. She herself told me the reason. The previous day when she left office walking towards the main road, an Inspector (not police) was hanging around in his bike offered her a lift. She refused and moved away. I saw her turning furious recalling the incident. In that serious moment I calmly said, did he ask you too? He also offered me a lift the other day! Without noticing that I was a male, and offering a lift to me is not anything significant, she nodded her head to sympathize with me. Suddenly she realized her folly and burst into laughter.

Since time immemorial man-woman conflict appears on the horizon on a daily basis. There is of course a limit for a woman to bear such harassment before coming to the street to take the battle to the enemy camp. Once the lid is blown it’s no more a private matter but available as fodder for public consumption. 

The other day my seven year old daughter studying in class II told my wife that a boy next door studying in class IV offered her a rose saying a bad word to her - I love you. No kidding, it is the influence of films on the big and small screen that corrupts young and very young minds. The irony is, there is no TV in his home and both parents are well educated and gainfully employed.  

Our previous encounter tells it is quite natural for a boy to get attracted to a girl and age factor doesn’t matter much as far as this story goes on. During our honeymoon train journey we had a young couple with a two-plus year old boy sitting opposite.  The boy offered snacks to my wife and then a fruit expressing his love for my wife -much to the surprise- of his parents who said he never has the habit of giving anything to anyone. He then occasionally smiled at my wife and drew her attention. Tired of his antics my wife went to sleep on the lower berth and rose up in shock. The little boy in a flash planted a goodnight kiss on my wife’s cheek before hitting the deck. Totally shaken by the act of their son the parents offered their apology for his uncalled for behaviour. Thank God! that was also the time when lip-locks in movies were unheard of otherwise no protection of any kind would have saved that day from more embarrassment. I wonder what separates (little) boys from men!    

How We Overcame Grief - A True Incident

JOSHNA SANGEETHA JOHNSON

.

"The whole world might join you in a laugh but no one will be there when you cry, you have to cry alone."

The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart: and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.

² He shall enter into peace: they shall rest in their beds, each one walking in his uprightness- Isaiah 57: 1&2. 

This was the message left by our daughter Leena Chris. She marked those verses in red ink in her Tamil Bible. Did she know that she will die as a child? 

We lost our only daughter Leena Chris aged 9 years on 10th May 2003. She accidentally fell into a sump in her grandmother's house. She was there since May 5th and we had planned to take her back home on 10th evening when the tragedy struck our family. The accident happened around 3.30 pm. We fully understood the plight of others who lost their children in accidents. But life has to carry on... There was a feeling of emptiness in our family. And that was the toughest time in our life for my wife and myself, to live without our precious little daughter. 

I would pick her toys, her dress , her photos and keep them close to my heart and cry! I would wake up in the middle of the night and cry aloud. My wife is a prayer woman who felt the untimely death of our child as the will of the God; and she prayed in tears everyday. She would console me daily mentioning how Job lost his ten children (as told in the Bible) and got back everything in double fold! Hope of my wife getting pregnant began to die as a leading gynaecologist told my wife after examining her through various test reports that she could never conceive under normal circumstances!

Nothing is impossible for God. He heard our prayers and my wife conceived again -after 10 years.

In all the scans we took doctors told that the baby would be a boy. We were totally disappointed as we felt that a boy could not fill the place of our daughter. And we also kept Leena's clothes hoping that it would be a girl. My wife gave birth to a baby girl on July 1,2004.What a great miracle and what a great God we have in Jesus!This is another miracle! She looks like my first daughter Leena Chris. Now,we tell everyone what the good Lord has done to our family. 

This real incident I hope would give peace and new hope to many of you who have lost their precious ones. Also, I can quote other cases like N.L.Hariharan, founder-president of Cross Blood Foundation, Chennai (www.crossbloodfoundation.com) who lost his five year old son to blood cancer and K.Parameswaran of ONGC, Nagapattinam who lost all of his three children in Tsunami (details in www.nambikkai.org.in) They too have been comforted by JESUS! There are hundreds of promises in the Bible for us to claim in prayers and to get them.  

"Prayer brings victory"and it's true that God answers early morning prayers.

You may be a person of different religion or an atheist, but a prayer with an open heart seeking the help of Jesus will surely be answered. No one except Jesus can give you the "peace" to overcome any kind of grief. Now ours is a happy family. God Bless You!

Problems facing Teenagers and Parents

In the age of Internet where speed dating and live-in relationships calling the shots in metros, more conflicts between man and woman in love are bound to break hearts than what we saw earlier.

Educated youths with comfortable jobs and plenty of income on hand are quite unable to handle stress when it matters most like job loss, denial of promotion, love failure, death of a loved one, impotency etc.

Caught in a time warp, alarming number of women commit suicides due to stress. Parental care is required to support at the time of distress.

Sorry, We Don't Have Time!

Modern lifestyle has working couples to earn good income. But the question is do they have enough time to spend with their kids? Sadly, work pressure and place of work often keep children away from parents for longer hours.

Thanks to the exit of joint family system in urban India, young educated girls of marriageable ages dream of living in nuclear families post-marriage to avoid prying eyes of in-laws.

Life initially is blissful. As the couple turn old with children to dote on, they tend to lose insight. Children are left to defend themselves with no one around.

Swanky flats, sedans, latest gizmos like plasma TVs, DVDs, laptops, trendy camera mobiles and Internet connection, plenty of eatables in kitchen are the norms to keep kids in good humour.

Do the parents know what their children are watching or with whom they are talking to? Earning money and high-end career are the goals of most parents who admit on the sly that they don’t spend enough time with their children but have to do so for the sake of their children.

Children are mostly addicted to computer games that show violence and death. Logging on to the Internet in the absence of parents there are plenty of explicit sex sites popping up on screen appearing due typing errors. Children on such occasions never bring it to the notice of their parents fearing parents would block their Internet access.

Parents in most cases are on a weaker turf when speaking about the knowledge in using latest gadgets. Instead of child-lock facilities it is now the other way round to lock the gadget or files out of parents’ reach.

Children and Internet

Statistic show that many children visit social networking sites like Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In etc daily. These social (anti-social?!) networking sites may be renamed as social sexworking sites. Anyone can become a member and chat with the opposite sex, discuss their fantasies, indulge in virtual sex, find partners etc.

Many parents even do not know how to operate a DVD player! A former English teacher disclosed to me that it is my son studying in eigth standard who operates the DVD system and even my husband, a Chief Public Relations Officer in a public sector undertaking does not know!

Apart from DVDs, there are recorded video clippings in memory cards clandestinely sold in shops and pen drives with huge storage capacities enough to store four or five full-length movies of adult content.

With these kind of unwanted videos available as free content in the internet, the minds of schoolchildren are likely to be dangerously polluted.

Not only that, children now prefer computers for company. They are hooked to games for several hours without having food! They also tend to lose human contacts in real life. This irresposible behaviour of parents is the main cause for the strange social behaviour of their boys and girls at a later stage.

Mobile Phones Hidden Inside Panties!

In one of the leading schools in Mogappair in Chennai that churns out many state rank holders and also the one labelled as the strictest schools to enforce discipline among students was shocked to catch hold of four girls of standard six using mobile phones inside the school premises.

The girls hid the mobile phones inside their panties and kept them in vibrator mode. As soon as the phone rings, girls feeling the vibrations seek permission from their teacher to visit the restroom.

However the vigilant school management has female helpers to keep an eye on students visiting restrooms at unusual times. A girl was caught red-handed talking to someone from her mobile phone. That girl spilled the beans which lead to three of her friends landing in the net.

Immediately the parents were summoned to the school and were asked to collect TCs. This incident, luckily has not got media attention since the whole thing was brushed under the carpet.

It is also an accepted fact that present day children are very intelligent in studies and extra-cultural activities. They are capable of doing many things at a time with considerable ease.

Out of school and out of college, children armed with professional degrees and adequate knowledge skills fly high on a lucrative career.

The inevitable in the job market brings colleagues, mostly of the opposite sex, closer. Available help is on hand and sharing accommodation between opposite sexes like in western world is not a big thing now.

Live-In Relationship Is No Big News In India

Live-in relationship is mostly confined to the IT sector. As long as you pay a huge rent to the building owner and look decent, no questions are asked about who you are and with whom you sleep and what takes place within the four walls.

Live-in relationship couples come out with bold statements about casual and consensual sex! This, after the relationship sours, spells disastrous for women. It becomes more painful and the lesson is learnt the hard way that no amount of money can bring back the joy.

When a woman gets married to someone of her parents' choice and if the husband comes to know of her flings and earlier relationships, life becomes hell once again.

Social inequity has left men get off the hook and escape notice of their promiscuous lifestyle.

The bad influence a child picks up in early stages and left unnoticed may lead to several ignominies at a later stage.

So on and so forth, parents of teenagers must have their eyes and ears open concerning the welfare of their children offer proper guidance.They have to be good listeners and support their children when they are feeling dejected in life and encourage them to achieve their fullest potential. Otherwise no amount of money earned or saved could come to the children’s rescue!

Corruption - In The Eyes of Law

It is most unfortunate to learn that a judge in Calcutta is facing the music for misusing his official position. The said judge, alleged to have pocketed Rs.32 lakh into his account has shown that he has no inclination to resign when asked to is something terribly wrong with our society. Corruption is so deep rooted in our civil society that there is no fear or a sense of shame even when issues of such scandals becoming a public debate. 

For the people to have more faith in the judiciary, the law must be more stringent in punishing those caught red-handed or found involved in corruption, whoever the individual may be. It is all the more painful to see the soft-term used by the Indian media to fix the judge. All are equal before law, is this happening in reality in India.   

What sort of an example we shall set for the future generation speaking on the subject of morality. All right thinking people should raise their voice to oppose corruption in all forms. A poor government clerk when caught in a corruption case for accepting a bribe of Rs.50 or Rs.100 is sent to jail and later dismissed from service. His wife and children suffer for long years from the stigma. Investigative authorities show no mercy and are happy to nail the clerk or peon but fear the rich and powerful involved in a multitude of corruption cases. 

A former CM of Tamilnadu was asked to give back illegally acquired government property and the property was returned by the CM immediately. The criminal case was closed without any action. I wish to ask if a thief caught stealing valuables would be let off if he chose to return the valuables without undergoing a jail term?

Media should be allowed to freely voice its concern without being threatened of contempt proceedings when reporting about the judiciary on finding something that is away from truth. Is this possible in India? Can we expect a change in the law from our policy makers? 

IPL Twenty20, Cricket in New Avatar

As purists frown at the Twenty20 game of cricket as disgusting, naked display of aggression, swinging the bat on anything and everything, the game itself has followers overflowing the stadium wherever it is played shows the kind of interest people have in the new format. Earlier, five days of a test match made the spectators go dumb gulping down a glass of beer in England. Changing times, as we call it, is for the better, particularly for cricket.


Twenty20 is a kind of entertainment in the shortest version of the game. A lot of youngsters, mostly from rural background have been able to fulfil their ambition joining the big league. It is beyond our capacity to think that sworn enemies of the game to play as a team. Twenty20 holds lots of promise to our rural and urban youngsters to rub shoulders with international stars. No one would have expected this kind of acceptance five or six years before. But Twenty20 is here to stay and would only improve with every passing year.


Conservative Indians lambast the organizers for hooking scantily clad foreign cheerleaders dancing around to entertain fans. Many youngsters have fallen in love for Twenty20 is the truth. Sooner or later, five-day test would be given a decent burial. There would be records preserved only in the archives department of national libraries for future historians to make out our lifestyle. Money, fame, jobs...continue to flow through the willow, so why make a fuss! Join the party and enjoy the fun!

The Homeless and Nowhere To Go!

Born to win, maybe a catch phrase that sets goal for mankind to race with one another. Slowly and steadily the big bad world is turning cruel with every passing day. Greed for making money leads to unhealthy practice-bribe,corruption,stealing,forgery, murder etc. What is lost is love for humanity, passion to uplift the poor and downtrodden in the society and to look at the other way when someone is in distress or in a deep problem.

How many times have we thought about the sufferings of the homeless and why are they there?
Those people with their families come from villages to the big cities in search of employment. To live in such miserable conditions without a roof over their head- cooking,sleeping and carrying on with their ablutions in full public glare - is not enough to make your heart feel for the lesser mortals, who are also the children of the same God, is appalling.

Understandably they are being exploited by local politicians,goons,police to ask for favour to pitch their tents or sleep beside a closed shop. Men in some cases are booked under frivolous charges by the police, young women are sexually exploited and abused; babies suffer from malnutrition and children do not get education. The homeless also do not have access to medical facilities.

On the work point of view, the homeless pick up construction work and the labourers are not provided with basic needs like shelter and creche for babies. The meagre income what they get is just enough to get on with the expenses for the day, for the whole family. To keep away from their sufferings, men and women turn to alcohol. The government and social welfare organizations should come out with solutions to keep them under temporary structures and ensure their safety and well-being.

If a part of the money ear-marked for the welfare of the poor reaches the poor, the nation can become a super power within ten years!