Book Review : 'Fall Like a Rose Petal' by AVIS Viswanathan - A book that will take you to realities of life!

Rose Petals

Does not leave the fragrance of the hands 

that have once held them

even after they have fallen to the ground!

Author - AVIS Viswanathan

Exactly, this is the similar impact and feeling as I finished reading AVIS's book 'Fall Like a Rose Petal'.    Its been few days since I finished reading and did not actually get time to pour out to the lessons that book had reminded me rather.  Given all the hectic and erratic work schedules I have, reading a book at a stretch is most of the times not possible.   However, this experience was different.  For almost a week, my every day ended with couple of chapters read, and few re-read as they were so close to me.....and after completing the final page....I sent AVIS, the below given whats-app message

"Hi AVIS...Namaste.  Just finished reading 'Fall like a Rose Petal' book last night.  It was such an amazing journey.  Beautiful narration n valuable lessons of life.  Plenty of takeaways.  Though our situations are different in terms of pain, the way we faced them, reacted n responded can be related.  For few sentences, I kept underlining in the book, is because, they were part of our lives too.   

Life is a beautiful journey and each experience enriches us and going by the flow of it is what makes us live today.   Honestly my respect n love for Vaani grew multi-fold after reading the book...I know you both for long, but few instances where she showed great decision making and resilience n trusting in her love, faith and inner strength is what made me salute her this moment.  Trust me, our children are lucky. One that they have parents who learn from lives,. Yet we let them dream n chase their own passions and we don't burden them with our ups n downs.    Our mothers were no different too.  Only thing is my sisters stood by me all times.  

Next thing is how we don't understand the benevolence of universe. The minute we do, I think, everything becomes bearable, manageable n life livable with happiness n focus on health both physically n mentally.   You and Vaani will always remain in my prayers.  And I will hold you closely as my good friends as well forever.  I will write a detailed review in my blog as time permits.  Just wanted to pour out my thoughts as I kept the book down last night around 1 am....thank you for the book...I want to forgive my brother in law who had similar situations but pushed us to pain n grave situations without acknowledging his mistakes.  I will gift this book to him for he may find few lessons helpful and he lives a better and non worrisome n not hurting life going forward.   Thank you Avis and Vaani.  Sending you loads of love and best wishes.   Life is beautiful. Let's celebrate"

Then you may ask me?  Why this specific review post now?  It is not for AVIS, or for the book, but for me !  How can I not document the key takeaways!

• The very introduction of how being human beings is itself a spiritual journey takes you one step above the nomenclature of the routine lives.  
• The assurances of a wife that ' I am there with you, however long this takes.  We have to win!'  - resonated to my own personal experience when life ravaged us with the shadows of Schizophrenia.....This particular assurance among-st spouses or any people in relationship is what makes or breaks a relationship!
• Why we are going through all this?  Would we live to tell our tale?   -  Again, each one of us will ask during the dire situations that threaten our own existence.    Answering to ourselves affirmatively is the only way out!
• Faith has replaced fear and we have developed boundless patience.  No longer scared of LIFE.   -   Trust me this is not a spiritual book, but a story of unfortunate circumstances of the writer.   But the inbuilt faith and patience built over several instances is what makes them fearless.   The minute you are fearless...your mind become stronger and agile to face anything
• If we trust Life's master plan and celebrate living our Life exactly the way it is unfolding, without resisting anything, we will be in bliss, irrespective of our circumstances.  -  It sums it up all...!
• You live Life, one day at a time, one moment at a time, making each one count!   PRESENT MOMENT!   The only one that you can call your own! 
• Mouna works brilliantly   -    Yes, it is in those depths of silence, you will get to hear your soul!   Very lately I personally started experiencing this myself and it is absolute bliss
• The more you hold on, cling to something, the more you suffer.   Nothingness is what you and I are all about.  Live Letting Go!    Powerful words, especially those in love, acquiring wealth, attention,  holding on to past suffer most when we cling on to it for longer than needed.   End of the day what started in dust, ends in it so...so whats the use of holding it !
• Don't Interpret, Understand -   90% of the time we assume, we interpret in the way it is convenient to us or we are able to understand without properly listening or understanding in the right sense.   So assuming or interpreting leads to misunderstanding of any situations and its better we stop doing this!
• Shirdi Baba's two point doctrine of Faith and Patience  -  This is the faith and Sai Baba chapter that moved me.   All my childhood, the only places of vacation/travel/pilgrimage..what ever you call it were to Tirupati, Shirdi and Madras and Sabarimala !   Fakir Baba always took prominence at home and when tragedies kept shaking us like hell, I fought with him saying I will never visit his temple again!   Just few months back in Nov 2019, my best friend pulled me to Sai Baba temple and that day I felt sad at my ignorance and cried to myself so much.   Sai Baba's life teaches us a way of life.   Faith or no faith..doesn't matter.  He will protect you once you trust in him.   Feeding those in need, trusting in him and being perseverance brings in the much needed serenity in your life.   Period!   Once he is part of you..He is in you!  Guiding you!
• Treat someone's need as higher than yours.  Your want may be someone's need.  Giving is the most beautiful part of being human.  Live, Love, Give!     Having been doing this with what ever little I had,  life kept giving me in abundance without asking, the more I started to give.   Giving in any form -   money, time, energy, love, acceptance, care, friendship, without expectation actually gives you back in multi-fold.   
• Intelligence lies in knowing which parts of your Life you can fix and which parts you can't.    -   This is a way of finding bliss !   This echo with the story time and again shared by Masters like Osho, Sadguru,  Assanji-   saying, if you can change something, why worry!  If you cannot change something, then why worry!   Knowing what you can have and what you cant have and in accepting both is the very crux of the Serenity Prayer 
• Life will Always go on!     Kalachakram does not stop for anyone or anything.   I thought our lives are all done, the day my dad fell dead in my hands...we survived.   I felt the ground shaking the day I ended up in a bad marriage....we survived.   Heart broken the day I had to let go my second child...I survived the pain..    The song of life doesn't stop for anyone or anything..It just goes on!
• All Right -  Celebrate Life -   its OK to fail, its ok to lose , its ok to be heart broken, its ok to go penniless....its all part of Life.   As long as we don't let any of the down streams affect our morale or self-esteem and break our confidence,  its all right!   The only sentence that is true is 'This too shall pass!'.  Yes AVIS, you are right when you said -  Humbling experiences are romantic and inspiring to hear, but extremely painful to go through -  Yes, but this too shall pass!
• Learn to separate ourselves from the situations that haunt, agonize and worry us the most-  and experience Peace.  And the rare state called bliss.    What lies between you and inner peace are layers of worry, guilt, hatred, grief and anger about situations...!  
• Do not invite suffering by letting the past haunt you and the future worry you -   Neither prejudiced by the past, not in the fear of the future, just live the moment..The Moment!
• Be the happiness you seek!   Live with what has been ordained.  Magic and miracle of life showering you with abundance!   Celebrate life -   Celebrate Life!
• Being an emotional fool myself, I could pretty much relate to AVIS words -  Life got me addicted to emotions that as I was soon to discover, were ruinous.   It's ok to be emotional as long as we are in control of the same.  And don't let the emotions override us being practical in any situation
• Quality of Life -   determined by being loving, caring, laughing, watching nature and being compassionate  .  Right thinking comes from good heath
• Seek Within and Ye Shall Find!
• 'To awaken people to the right way of thinking, living, working and winning!'-  Thanks to these words from Philip Sir
• We are merely executors of a Cosmic Will.   Never claim any of the success as your own.  You are only an instrument
• A soul-mate is always understanding, demanding,  forgiving, compassionate, teaching and uplifting!    A soul-mate can be your spouse, best friend,  guru, mentor or someone who can match your thoughts and passions and understanding and will be a long lasting relationship.  Glad AVIS and Vaani found this in each other.  Grateful to have learned to Rise in Love!
• Truth will inspire you.   Life never ceases to surprise you and amaze you.  In every moment you will find beauty, often in completely unexpected places. -   Whereas AVIS found this bliss in a courtroom,  I have found such miracles in hospital ICUs,  office lift, classroom,  one time during the long drive in the car in a blissful evening!  Life could have be lost in nano-seconds, but found miracles raising Life all over again.    See beauty even in pain and in the most unlikely of places.   Treat everything in Life as just another event!  Preconceived notions and expectations ruin our peace. 
• Forgiveness is freedom.  It is liberating.  -  Forgiveness is not for those forgiven but who has given it without any baggage.  It makes you peaceful,  free from the haunted grudge and pain of the rotten past.  
• All is fair in love, war and business.  Unable to concentrate on anything else but that, when you are stung by betrayal, are hurt by someone's senseless guile, you feel used,  abused and discarded  -    When you are faced with this situation, the only way to heal faster is to forgive and move on....As AVIS said,  separate the perpetrator and the action.   Also learn to forgive myself!  Give yourself the gift of forgiveness, to yourself and others, you will find peace, love and bliss.
• Remember Everything and Everyone with Gratitude.
• Profundity that only the inscrutable ways of life can imbue in a person.   Wanting Inner peace and wanting to be useful rather than wanting to rid ourselves of our problems or wanting to be more successful!    'Be Useful'   - This life for sure has a purpose.  Many a times, our lives goes off in this earnest search.  It is better we be useful to our fellow human beings in the smallest ways possible rather than trying to be behind the endless search.  In each instance of help you give others, when you can find the opportunity of giving,  it makes you rediscover yourself as a human being as AVIS says
• Bottom line -   Be Happy despite your circumstances

Life is beautiful, like a rose.    However, it does not come without its share of thorns.  Those who know to deal with the thorns and embrace the rose petals to enrich the life with its fragrance....will feel liberated, rejoiced and rejuvenated in every moment that life throws at us.      AVIS and Vaani's life is a reflection of the beauty amidst adversities.   This book does not have a beginning nor an end...just like the human suffering.   As long as we know to rejoice the journey,  life goes on!     It is very easy to judge people from outside.   To be resilient, to be honest, to be in love, to celebrate life despite all its tantrums is never easy.   But those who know to embrace life with all its magic, miracles and mysteries and mountains of pain, love, happiness, sorrows can alone celebrate life and become Happynesswalas - truly like AVIS and Vaani.   God bless you AVIS and family.

Raghunath, Umasree, Vaani, AVIS

One Happyness Conversations that ended my day in tears- Huge Respect to K.S.Narendran and R.V.Rajan whose love for their respective spouses brought tears to this soul

AVIS initiatives and especially their Happyness Conversations touch me everytime I attend .....today was no different.  Infact, it was very special because it had Rotarian Rajan as one of the Guest speaker...what else I need as motivational factor to push myself to attend amidst two critically complex production cutovers at working  I have been manning from early in the day and a college talk that was pre-planned long ago and skin infection that was really skin deep in trouble today and thanks to my dermatologist friend Sneha who came to my rescue last night....medication, work pressure, social commitment and the urge to go for this conversation....what a day!

Today as we heard the conversation of two different men who adored their wives in their own way, and who lost their beloved spouses in two different ways and yet, had a strong underlying uniqueness of a strong bond and falling in loving as they grow old.

R.V. Rajan and his beloved wife Prabha Rajan

Rajan who is now 70+  had an amazing career as the Ad Man, Rural Marketing Expert, Socialite, Author, Celebrity. Round Tabler, Rotarian and many other feathers in his cap.    His beloved Prabha Rajan is known to me ever since I joined Inner Wheel in 2004...on the day she passed on 5 Jan 2013, I was in the ITIL certification process and exam, and couldnt reach her house on time to see her for one last time before her final journey....that regret ran in me for long time.  Subsequently coming to know about Rajan, he became a very important part in our lives as part of our Mutual Admiration Club....and we kept bumping into each other at many social gatherings.  Rajan and Raghu also bonded well and we had so much in common to celebrate this friendship.   Prabha from being an introvert, to a very expressive writer, and her transition from being a timid madras mammi to be the 'Nightingale of Inner Wheel Club of Madras South' her journey is an inspiration to many.

Rajan instead of mourning the loss of his beloved wife, decided to greive in a different way.. Celebrate her life and create more of Prabha Rajans in the remaining life he is gifted with after her demise...His Prabha Rajan Talent Foundation has a beautiful purpose on its own and today, he still feels that he can help women recreate the magic in their lives by becoming published authors and he encourages women writers to survive, get opportunities and chase their dreams...Hats off to you Rajan....some where deep down in me, I am discovering a father bond in you...God bless you Rajan.

K.S.Narendra and his wife Chandrika.

Ever since MH 370 disappeared from the skies on 8 March 2014, this particular tragic event baffled me like many around the world.   It was absolutely undigestable that a so called most secured passenger aircraft can just go missing   for no reason known so far from the skies and no amount of loss, anger, frustration,  pressure from the families those who lost their beloved one's could make this search continue till the whole episode found a logical conclusion.  It is very unfortunate that 3 families from India lost 5 of their beloved one's and it wasnt even a number that would be considered important for Govt of India to push for answers and it is the most unfortunate thing for the families when compared with the 150+ lives of Chinese .   As Naren, was speaking, I could feel that choke in his voice...absolutely controlled grief,  a deep anger that had no where to go, the pain that is absolutely devastating and lots and lots of questions that probably will never have answers.  Chandrika who used to be full of life disappeared along with the plane she was in.   You should watch this conversation video recorded to feel the depth of love he has on her and how tough this spouse goes through after she is gone.   Naren calls life as a gift and he has to move on.  But one thing that can never go from him, is the love for Chandrika, his grief which he learnt to live with,  the healing that is very minimal and a life ahead which is absolutely based on the flow of the daily routine, with no dreams of his beloved coming true.     I struggled to hold back my tears while hearing him.

What this conversations about 2 deaths was disturbing to me and absolutely related....

2018 was a painful year in my life..losing 2 absolutely important women in my life...my mother and my god-daughter Manasa.

My mother lived a full life,  had her own struggles and health issues,  a life full of battles of all kinds and tasting success of the daughters she raised, and her glorious last 20 years of life was filled with the joy of being a very very happy grand mother and she adored her grand children like nothing else. 
A small fall at home, that broke her arm, and subsequently restricted her movements and finally diagnosed with 70% clots in 3 of her nerves in the brain....was a painful journey...Just like Prabha, my mom struggled with the issues related to her brain problem for 7 long months and the physical pain she was suffering was unbearable and difficult for us to watch.. We could help her with supporting externally round the clock, ran to the hospital errands and stayed with her, treating her like a baby in her last few months.  At one stage, seeing her in so much of physical pain,  I prayed God to give it an end and relieve her from this earthly pain.  I prepared myself to accept her death when it happened.  I started celebrating her life.   Despite that her loss created a deep sense of vacuum and I wished to knock on her door when I return from work..   She was there to take of my home and my daughter and gave me ample space to pursue what I want and chase my dreams.  Today, I miss her support, her discipline and her unexpressed unending love in actions.  Probably this is so similar to what Rajan is going through.  The only difference is that my loss is of a parent and his loss is of his spouse of more than 40 years.    We need more Rajans in our society who don't talk on women empowerment but just be the torch bearers of the same.   God bless you Rajan

Munni (Sai Manasa)  gave us no clue that she will disappear one night , like an star into the skies.  The foster daughter who adored me like her own mother,  spent more of the last 6 years of her 19 years young life at my home as my twin-friend-soul-sister to my daughter.  Ever since she came in our lives in 2012, I stopped my regret of aishu not having a own sister and Munni just became such an integral part of our lives.  She stood with us like a soothing soul when my mom passed away in august and spent every day consoling Aishu who was raised by my mom.  The day I was starting to Canada, she really gave me headache by sleeping off in the flat and not opening the door for the roommates and make me go crazy on her.  Wish that craziness continued.  She used to love me, trouble me, pamper me, get pampered, get fed, get cajoled in my arms to sleep and literally bite my cheeks and sleep... First 15 days of my Corporate Service Corps journey in Canada went off very happily till the screaming call I received on the night of Oct 15th last year from aishu saying that Munni met with a tragic bike accident and died on spot.   I didnt know how to react, I became numb...I was on the other side of the planet...and next 24 hours was brutal...and subsequently the grief of her loss became more and more as I could not see her final journey and catch one last glimpse of her.  Today I strongly believe that I wouldn't have had the courage to bid her a final bye.  The guilt that she wouldn't have even done what she did to end up in this tragic death had I been in India ...similar to Chandrika's death where Naren had no control., we didn't have any control in the way we lost munni

Several questions remained unanswered!

1.  Why did she go on that fateful bike journey of 400 kms without telling her parents or us?
2.  Why did she trust the professor and traveled alone starting from home at 10,30 PM to reach Theni in the morning to see kurunji flowers bloom?
3.  Why did she neglect the fact that bike riding on highway in the night can be dangerous?
4.  What a stupid sense of gender-equity that professor defended himself saying he never thought the difference of a girl or a boy when she asked to venture out?
5.  Who gave Ben Philip right to take her on the ride without proper permission?
6.  Why did Ben Philip tell the NIFT management that accident happened at 5.30 am where as Post Mortem report mentioned the time of accident at 12.05 and death on spot?
7.  Did Ben Philip ensure that she had the right helmet,  jacket and other precautions to travel that far in the night?  When he was wearing all that, where did his common sense go to not ensure she is safe?
8.  How did he miss to see the sudden /or slow coming of the bullock cart and ramp his bike to the bullock cart and eventually resulting in the death of the animal on the highway?
9.  Why did our law system not punish him for his over speeding or rash driving and negligence resulting in loss of lives of both the teenage student and the animal on the road
10.  There is no justice to the suffering of pain our child went through as she got  hit to the ground and died on the road bleeding and in darkness and loneliness and later butchered in the hospital in the name of PM and investigation?
11.  No amount of police investigation or running behind advocates, could ensure that Ben Philip is punished for his negligence.  I could not pursue this case due the fact that aishu is studying in the same college. 
12.  Ben moved ahead with his life in no time, just like every other newspaper and political leaders after MH370 disappearance and so did his college, and her classmates.  What impacted was the family of manasa and us and the grief was so deep that we are still struggling to cope up
13.  A normal excursion and adventure turned into a nightmare and loss of a precious life which did not matter to any one in the system..except for the family and friends
14.  Why did Munni not even tell Aishu till the last half hour before leaving our house in OLA to that fateful bike ride?
15.  Is this Karma which united Munni with her biological mother as she longed to see her once, to be with her, despite all the efforts her dad and mother put in to raising?
16. Of all the time , why the hell I was away from India and did not see her finally to bid adieu...
17.  Road accidents happen every minute and every hour it claims 17 lives in India....and most of them are due to negligent driving.  But why Munni?   why us to this suffering?   Why do we deserve this? Is 19 a age to die this tragic death? 
18.  Is there a logical conclusion to this pain and when and how are we going to make peace with her death and move on?
19.  Will punishing Ben philip matter any more and bring her back to life?  Will it give us peace?  Will it resolve the loss?   I dont know
20.  This is the grief, we dont want to ignore but embrace, celebrate the love she shared, memories she created with 1000+ pictures she took with aishu...and despite she being our limited edition, her memory will not be of the past.  She will live with us till our last breath.... Oct 4th , her hindu thiti is going to drain us and coping up with her first anniversary on 15 oct is going to be painful...but I am sure she will not like us sulking or crying..instead she would want us to wear her pink, dance in her memory, feed the destitute children and sleep hugging the part of her remaining with us. 

This happyness conversation for sure made me end the day in tears and pain.  The takeaways of the evening are many and recalling the conversation will hopefully give us the strength to celebrate the 2 important women in our lives and move on with daily grind of routine.   Miss u mom and munni

Rest in peace Prabha and Chandrika.   Gone are the physical bodies but not your souls that are truly cherished in your spouses hearts and minds....Both Rajan and Naren are coping up this in their own way and spreading the message of love beyond death. 

Thanks to Vaani and AVIS for one another touching conversation .   God bless you both.