You Are Beautiful O'woman: 7 Virtues of a Woman

By Shekher Srivastava

An ode to Wumanity . . .
Since billions of years ago, the woman has stood the testimony of time but has seldom been appreciated. She has, however, continued untiringly to fulfill her role as defined by God. As a mother, wife, and daughter, she has nurtured hope and been the quiet sentinel of mans ambitions. She has been mans beautiful companion, diligent and silent, helping him not only scale through difficult times, but at the same time, she has been his unwavering encouragement, applauding every milestone, big or small, that he has achieved, with positive enthusiasm.
In return, she has never yearned for any appreciation or praise. However, being human, she would be happy to receive reciprocal appreciation, even if they are two words of praise, but yet regardless, she has carried on serving man and God.
In the backdrop of an interesting dialog between God and Arvind, the chosen one, finally, her day dawns, when God himself decides to showcase her as his most beautiful creation ever. What transpires between them over a long session is actually an ode to the woman. Its an acknowledgment by God of her efforts, in the words of Arvind.
God presents Arvind with various situations and prods him to respond. As each session ends, one by one, Arvind discovers the seven timeless virtues of the woman as pearls of her inner beauty. Arvind realizes that the inner beauty of a woman is the serenity of life in every home. He realizes that if the five elements of naturewater, air, sky, fire and earthare the truth of life, her Wumanity is the vibrant sixth element and is the truth of living. Without her, man would probably never have seen progression. She is the force that binds and the love that inspires!
As he reflects over each virtue, Arvind understands the spirit of a woman and why God created her. In the process, he discovers his love for the bubbly and vivacious Jayanti, his classmate, whom he had not met since leaving school. He now fervently wishes to find her and is convinced she is the right girl for him.
Set in the framework of a light romance between Arvind and Jayanti, in flashback, it is an attempt to capture the woman, an embodiment of seven beautiful virtues as Gods most artful creation ever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 12, 2015
• ISBN: 9781503574700

Shekher Srivastava

Shekher is a keen observer and spontaneous writer who has been writing various articles and poems as a hobby. One such poem, “The Spirit of a Woman” written in October 2009 on Women’s Day, won many accolades, which became the perspective for the book. This is his first book. He is a professional business strategist with a postgraduate degree in Science.

Book preview

YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL

O’WOMAN

7 virtues of a woman

Shekher Srivastava

Copyright © 2015 by Shekher Srivastava.

Library of Congress Control Number:      2015908781

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5035-7468-7

      Softcover      978-1-5035-7469-4

      eBook      978-1-5035-7470-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/07/2015

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

709118

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Prologue

Glossary

Chapter 1     Jayanti

Chapter 2     The Chosen One

Chapter 3     Vice and Virtue

Chapter 4     Creators’ Jewels

Chapter 5     I – The Dew of Love

Chapter 6     B – The Chime of Time

Chapter 7     G – A Beautiful Companion

Chapter 8     O – A Designer Par Excellence!

Chapter 9     R – The Velvet Spa

Chapter 10     V – The Sparkle of Life

Chapter 11     Y – The Guardian of Time

Chapter 12     The Golden Anthem

Chapter 13     The Love Calling

Chapter 14     My Candle Blush

To my late father

Shri Nirmal Chandra Srivastava

who was my guide and my inspiration.

My creative and writing skills are his gift.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My Mother

Madhuri Srivastava

She has always been my role model.

Her determination and strong will have no parallel.

An iron lady, she is my architect, my pride.

My Wife

Vanita (Sweety)

She has been my beautiful companion.

She encouraged me to write on this subject.

A laughing pot, she is full of life and cheer.

She is the inspiration and portrait of my thoughts.

My Son and my Friend

Anan

He is a very thoughtful and practical boy.

He was the first one to read the manuscript.

He kept the secret about the book for seven months till it was finished.

Special thanks to

Our friends Vimi, Jivan, and Lakshmi,

for their useful suggestions and very detailed feedback.

Loving thanks to

My wonderful sister Anjali, brother-in-law Anil,

my brother Shalabh, and my sister-in-law Kavita,

for their encouragement and support.

PROLOGUE

This work is the story of every woman. She has been man’s wonderful partner and accomplice since the beginning of time. She is not only the giver of life but also the designer of man. She anchors man’s hopes and plays a significant role in his progression. How she does this is the subject and content of the book.

In today’s times, life is driven by materialistic desires. People devote less time to their loved ones. Vices, such as competition, one-up-manship, and the race for materialism, are increasing strife and misunderstanding. Life has become mechanical and unpredictable, leading to stress. Can this be stemmed?

By whom?

In the wheel of life, there is only man and woman. One of them has to play the lead role. More often than not, it is the woman who has the emotional depth and strength of character to balance the vice of materialism with love. Nature places on her the mantle of maintaining this balance in man’s pursuit of progress.

Who is she? What is the spirit she embodies to be our life’s driver? Why has she been cast in this role by God have been the pressing thoughts for years that ultimately became the context of the book. It’s an attempt to write an inadequate ode to a woman.

While being the mirror of life, she is man’s strongest advocate and unfailing confidante. She is being profiled in the ensuing pages through the virtues she displays everyday, in fostering an environment necessary for ambitions to be fulfilled. In many ways, it is a limited aggregation in words, of the roles she plays as a mother, wife, and daughter. If one were to look at her role through her eyes just once, and give her the stage, in all humility, she would probably say

I am desire

I am passion

I am pleasure

I am love

I am your Eve.

I have power

I have will

I have commitment

I have resilience

I am your pillar.

I have capacity

I have veracity

I have creativity

I have endurance

I am your ability.

I have love

I have compassion

I have care

I have concern

I am your happiness.

I have frowns

I have anger

I have fights

I have arguments

I am your smile.

I am a friend

I am a guide

I am strict

I am calm

I am your well-wisher.

I am fun

I am naughty

I am serious

I am restless

I am your expression.

I share your sympathies

I share your worries

I share your depressions

I share your disappointments

I am your reflection.

I am your wish

I am your thought

I am your vision

I am your path

I am your ambition.

I am your progress

I am your success

I am your growth

I am your achievement

I am your glory.

I am your helper

I am your master

I am your doorman

I am your driver

I am your faith.

I am your belief

I am your religion

I am your sermon

I am your hymn

I am your prayer.

I have caution

I have reason

I have intuition

I have premonition

I am your wisdom.

I have trust

I have clairvoyance

I have foresight

I have impulse

I am your destiny.

I have values

I have culture

I have character

I have intellect

I am your society.

I have sacrifice

I have pardon

I have you before

I come later

I am selfless.

I am a daughter

I am a wife.

I am a mother

I am a teacher

I am your life.

By creation, I am for you

By name, I am part of you

By completeness, I am little without you

By purpose, I am made for you.

She is, however, much more than the thoughts in the stanzas above. Her deeper side as a woman has probably been only scratched on the surface in the following pages in an attempt to profile her Wumanity.

The framework of this book is set as a light romance between Arvind and his schoolmate, the lovely, bubbly, and full-of-life girl Jayanti. Arvind, the main protagonist, likes her but realizes his love for her only when he goes through a fascinating dream while on a flight to London in which he has a supreme realization. He then understands the purpose why a woman was created and appreciates her even more. He realizes that a woman’s inner beauty, which manifest as her virtues, is a constant that has remained unchanged through time. Her virtues are the reason for man’s astounding success.

If the whiff of the rose had not the enchanting aroma to stir the soul, man would never have braved its thorns to make it the expression of his love. Similarly, if life presents itself as the thorny bush of the rose, she is the beautiful bloom with the aroma of divine profundity that sweetens the time of man to make life a bed of roses.

She is not just the beautiful extension of nature in every home but the four seasons for man. When life’s cloudy, she is spring. When it’s sultry hot, she is the pleasantness of autumn. When it’s wintry cold, she is the warm summer. This truth about her is depicted through Arvind’s perspective of her seven virtues.

A lyrical prose style of writing has been adopted to convey the many shades of her being because poetry has the power to convey emotions far better than prose.

The storyline in the book is a work of fiction. No scientific or psychological basis has been used for the thoughts, just observations over the years. Some thoughts or contexts may be overemphasized by the author or seem to present an extreme stance to the point that it could raise a debate, but it has been done only for the purpose of illustrating the core essence of the book. Any reference to man is contextual and can imply man himself or humanity.

The context in the book is generic and generally observed across humanity. It is not specific to any religion or sect. However, specific references in the story are dovetailed into Indian ethos and culture (for example, arranged marriages). There is no aspect, context, or content referenced to any other work or person, living or dead. Any semblance, similarity, or implication is only coincidental.

GLOSSARY

CHAPTER 1

Jayanti

It was January 20. I still remember looking out of the hospital window. It was a bright and unusually calm day. Jayanti, my wife, went into labor at 7:00 a.m. In half an hour or so, we had admitted her to the City Center Hospital, one of the upscale hospitals in town. Today would define a new journey for me, I told myself quietly, and I prayed to God that everything be fine and normal, especially the baby, who was to arrive.

It was noon, and the wait was just getting longer. She was alone in the labor room that day, as there was no other case for delivery. I was waiting outside the room in expectation of a good news anytime and at the cost of annoying the nurse, asking her the same question every time she passed by me to and from the labor room. How is Jayanti, and how much more time? I could hardly restrain myself, and in nervousness, I would look at the watch every now and then, and whenever I thought half an hour or more had elapsed, time seemed to stand still. Even five minutes seemed like ages to me. I got up and looked around the adjacent maternity ward and saw two babies in incubators; one was born with a congenital heart disease. I could not look anymore, and praying for the early recovery and well-being of the little angels, I decided to just get my mind off the worry and tensions and look out of the window and relax.

I was looking at the garden from the third floor, where Jayanti was, and I could see that the flowers were more vibrant than I had ever noticed. They were the same flowers I had seen during our umpteen visits to the hospital, but they were looking so different today, so pure in color. Maybe my ebullient state of mind made me observe them more deeply. The aroma of the roses filled the air; I could smell it right up here. The lilies and the gladiolas were swaying in the wind as if singing a welcome song heralding the arrival of a new life, and the dahlias were so majestic in full bloom, standing in guard of honor, as if ready for a twenty-one gun salute at the baby’s first cry.

I had all the time in the world to look at the handiwork of the master craftsman—yes, none other than God—and was mentally appreciating how beautiful life is. There is so much to marvel about, so many intricate creations to absorb. At that instant, my head went up in reverence to Him, and I closed my eyes. I said to myself, So tastefully, you have created the world, chastity in every stroke, and today you are going to plant a tulip in our garden of love. Thank you for the blessing, God. Please let this day be the dawn of the most fantastic moment of my life. Nature, shower honey and lay a red carpet of rose petals when our new bud blooms. Bless her as your most artful creation ever. (Oh! Unknowingly, I let out my wish to have a baby girl.)

As I opened my eyes, I saw a bunch of clouds, my prophetic clouds, in the early afternoon, which I was sure were not there before. Ever since I was a child, I had a strange belief that clouds are messengers of God. That belief has only grown with time, as I could somehow read messages from their patterns. Maybe, over time, they became a way to de-stress myself. Thankfully, Jayanti never thought of that belief as insane, and she believed in the goodness of it because it made me happy. She believed that by gazing at the slowly moving pattern of clouds, I could engage with my conscience and find clarity. But whatever it was, now again they were here, and I could see in their patterns an assurance that all will be well. I opened my folded palms, and lo and behold, to my surprise, I found a rose petal. A good omen, I thought, and with the garden in the foreground in full bloom, I felt that the red carpet was already laid by providence.

I saw the nurse again as she was coming out of the labor room, and I heard the earlier soft moans of Jayanti become louder. The nurse just went past me, not answering my queries, but almost instantly, I saw her gynecologist hastening inside.

My feelings suddenly switched from euphoria to an anguished concern. The sound of Jayanti’s growing moans was making me feel concerned and helpless at the same time. God, why did you not make childbirth painless? After all, you are the master creator. You could have easily programmed the human body that way. It was more a thought than a question, as I knew that He has a purpose behind this pain too, as He never does anything without a reason.

Realization has a strange way of dawning, and it sometimes does in strange circumstances. The sound of her moans had already driven a wedge in my mind and planted in it the pertinent question of why birth is not painless. I felt, at that moment, that I was a coward in comparison to Jayanti. It was the first time that I realized how brave she was. Like an armored battle tank resisting the enemy’s onslaught, here she was, bravely fighting the excruciating pain alone. I was wondering what was driving her to bear it. I am sure that I, the more masculine of the species, wouldn’t want to experience such a thing. I was overcome with emotions, but at the same time, I felt a new high in the feeling of being proud of Jayanti, a twenty-eight-year-old girl grittily fighting and winning.

You were already in love with a little life you have not yet seen, I thought, looking at Jayanti from the vision panel on the door of the labor room while seeing her amazing ability and capacity to bear pain. It is unseen by the world, but you have already felt the little one in your being, spoken to it in a language that only you and the little one share, communicating with it in almost the same way God connects to us, unspoken through an unknown bond.

Thinking of all the women who have borne this pain and those who will come to bear it, I thought, The soft kick, the feeling of begetting life is yours and only yours, O woman! You are the privileged one chosen by the creator on Earth. If time is one dimension of continuity, you are the other!

Yes, you are, O woman. Take pride!

He gave you clay and tasked you to mold

He gave you an empty canvas and colors to fill

He imagined man, and you gave him form

He created Ma, but you christened Pa

O woman! Salutation to who you are!

While the wait was agonizing, my thoughts were fixated completely on Jayanti. Our first meeting was flashing back in my mind.

I remember a slightly plump girl in my class when I was in tenth grade. She was an army officer’s daughter, and she had gotten transferred to my school that very year.

I saw her for the first time in the school assembly, probably three months after classes had begun. It was by sheer chance that I was in the exact adjacent place in the next row. She was striking, I must say. It was just a glance. She did not catch my eye, as she was looking straight ahead toward the principal, Sir Dias. After the assembly, we went to our respective classrooms. I was like any other teenage boy just growing out of my kid years and did not attach any meaning to the moment I looked at her.

She was a good girl, well groomed, a bit shy, poised, and homely. These were my first impressions. Having been brought up in multiple locations, being an army officer’s daughter, she had perhaps seen a lot more life than any of us, but she carried no air of being a well-decorated Major General’s daughter.

School life continued with the pressure of the important tenth grade. We hardly met or spoke in school, as we were in different sections, but we used to exchange an occasional hello and short well-meaning sentences in the common chemistry lab almost toward the end of the first term. Our chemistry teacher had left the school a month before the end of first semester because of her husband’s transfer, and the new teacher appointment was still in progress, so my section was combined with her class.

However, there was some inexplicable appeal about her. Maybe it’s her pencil-thin lips or the sparkle in her eyes set on her round face, complementing each other, or maybe it’s the occasional French-cut hairstyle she would sport that added that twinkle and charm to her personality, making boys blink at least once. On the whole, she was quite attractive.

I used to love sitting on the last seat of the bus and be the last student to come in to school. However, after our few hellos in the chemistry lab, just to be adjacent to her during the morning school assembly, I used to bully the smaller boys sitting on the first seat of the bus and sit there. I would quickly jump off the bus and run toward the assembly. If her bus reached the school before mine, I would look for her in the assembly and try to get as close to her in the next row, if not always exactly adjacent.

Though some of my bus mates eventually understood the reason for my seat change and would tease me, it was, however, worth a hello with her in the assembly. Thanks to the chemistry teacher who had left, I met Jayanti. Meeting her in the assembly every morning became my life’s objective those days at school. She would sometimes catch my glance and smile. I guess girls at that age are more mature than boys to ignore the little glances and take them positively as a compliment.

The sun in all its intensity couldn’t wilt the rose

The moisture in its petals preserves its pink and red

Ignoring is a virtue that hydrates your strong character

O woman! Salutation to who you are!

We were both students of St. Ignatius Convent. Mobile phones were not permitted in school, and parents were strict about socializing with girls outside school. School was the only place in which I could socialize.

Our meetings in the chemistry lab happened every two weeks. In our missionary coed school, discipline was very strict. At that preteen age, we needed to focus on our studies. The missionary nuns and brothers were always patrolling during recess or while we were moving to the labs or sports grounds. They ensured we moved with horse blinkers. Hence, the lab was the only open place where we could exchange pleasantries, as our places were almost opposite each other.

I remember that once, I was down with fever. There was no way I could attend school. As luck would have it, it was the lab day. My parents would just not listen to my pleas regarding how important it was for me to attend the chemistry lab. On the contrary, I was in bed for at least a week.

While I was remorseful about having missed her that week, I was rewarded adequately by the get well note she sent through my neighbor who was in my class. It was an out-of-the-blue surprise but a mood-elevating one. I still have that note till today because the simplicity of the