Are Relationships Man-made?

When a child asks his/her father wittingly or unwittingly "Who Are You?", immediately, the father, emotionally stirred, is prompt to answer the child’s rhetorical question. When wittingly the child poses the same question rhetorically, it has its own meaning restricted to an unwanted pressure tried on each aspect of life. The father, instead of being indifferent to the child’s attitude, can set his mind to profound thinking upon the child’s milieu in which he finds himself clutched to unbearable burden of problem. When unwittingly the child poses the same question, it has a meaning, which, till the attainment of the maturity of the mind, cannot be well-defined. The father, however, should not ignore the child’s statement. He ought to ponder the statement of the child who, Wordsworth says, is the Father of man.
If a stranger, who is unsympathetically made strange owing to the existing idiosyncratic and inscrutable circumstances which always over reach their counterparts --- human beings, comes to you and poses the same question "Who Are You?", immediately, your answer will be "I Am…"(you will mention the name christened by the man whom you (can) call "father".) But if your father asks (may be for a fun) you the same question, you will instantly say "I am your son."
Let’s think of the two different answers to the same rhetoric question. Who’s a stranger? Who’s your father? A stranger is also a human being like your father (whom you call a human being "your father".) A stranger is a human being, who is made strange to you due to inscrutable circumstances that do not bind both you and the man whom you call a stranger emotionally, physically, and intentionally. The man whom you call "father’ is also a human being who never thought of your existence before his physical contact with a woman whom you (can) call "your mother". Did he and she think about you? They just thought about themselves, their desires, their erotic desires and dwelled upon how they could attain the extremity of pleasures. It was momentary; yet it took time first to the woman that something new grew in her womb, she felt. Yet she did not know that you were to grow in her womb. You grew within her; yet she could not watch you grow. She did not feed you, but you were fed with her. What a mystery!
What is relationship? Merriam Webster Dictionary says: "It is the state of being related to (or inter-related to) something or to someone. How can one reach the state of being related or inter-related to someone or something? How is a man related to a woman? (How ought a man to be related to a woman?) Traditionally, a man is related to a woman by making a physical bond in the concept of wedding (which is superficially interpreted.) The man, with likes and dislikes, reaches the state of being related or inter-related to something or someone. It is purely physical, which is the result of the man and woman’s overt physical behaviour. The man and the woman together beget an issue which they claim to be the product of their relationship bound physically. The product of the man and the woman relationship is called to be their child (who never knows of the ones who beget him until he acquires the knowledge from elsewhere.) Here, the man, the woman and their begotten child are made a tiny group which is made to be called as a family. We are to think on how this family circle is made established. A man from elsewhere and a woman from somewhere are physically yoked together (if their hearts cannot understand each other), but once for all, if their tradition cannot be changed. In this family circle, the man and the woman, it is said, are made related to each other in a physical bond. Their child is made related to the man and the woman physically since he is born through them. Hence the child is allowed to call the man as "father" and the woman as "mother", and he is called as their "child".
When the same man and the same woman beget another offspring, another kind of relationship is made established between the already existing child and the newly-born offspring. However, it is quite interesting to study their relationship, which may be called as "brother or sister" relationship, though they have no physical contact in any way; yet they are made related through the same man and the same woman. It may be called a reachable distant relationship between the first child and the second child.
Another kind of relationship is also discussed. How are you related to the one who is your father's brother's son or daughter of his sister's son or daughter? Your father's brother's son or daughter seems related to your as what is called "cousin brother" or "cousin sister". But your father's sister's son or daughter seems related to you as what is called "cousin". Don't you think it'w quite deliberately strange? And further it is said that one sect of people stresses pm tje fact tjat cpisoms pm the opposite sex may be allowed to a physical contact by the concept of wedding. The other sect of people stresses on the fact that "cousin sister" on the opposite sex may not be allowed to a physical contact by the concept of wedding. Isn't it ridiculously strange? What difference you make in establishing your relationships between you and your brother or sister born of the same woman and the same man, and between you and your "cousin brother' or "cousin sister" and between you and your cousin? The difference we all make is nothing but the difference in thinking of the relationships we make traditionally and deliberately.
Traditionally, we are forced to fix labels to the relationships we make within our so-called famijly ties. The levels are treated in terms of "close" relationship and "distant" relationship. Is that we cannot measure "distant" relationship? Is that we can measure "close" relationship? With whom can we make "close" relationship and with whom can we make "distant" relationship? We've set an unintelligible limit to make relationship within the so-called family ties (we do not care on how it has been established,) and we name this unitelligible limited relationship as "close" one, and the one beyond it as "distant" one. The who is your next-door neighbour who is always within your reach, ready to "help" you (if your next-door neighbour has a "sincere" and loving concern over you) while your "close" or "distant" relatives are out of your reach physically (we make relationships physically, but strive to express the same physical relationship emotionally?) Isn't it awkwardly strange and ludicrous?
A father's child (after the child's mother death) is totally neglected by the same father's second wife (a woman who has been given a position physically.) A few exceptions are there. How do you name the relationship between the father's child and the same father's second wife? Yet, it is formally accepted as mother-child relationship. What name do you give to the relationship between the father's wife's child and the same father's second wife's child? Do we call "half-brother" or "half-sister" relationship? How silly are we to cut the relationships we make and weigh them literally!
A child born of a woman and a man outside the so-called ritualistic marriage law (which seems to be ostentatious in its seeming attributes, but wholly set apart alien to hidden thoughts of human beings) may be treated as an intelligence offspring to those who are blindfolded of the fact that the child is also a human being born of innocence (may be due to a deliberate ignorance of the ones who beget it.) Has the child lost its "father" and "mother" if it is thrown away as an orphan? Its "father" and "mother" may wantonly and deliberately break the relationship between their child and them (they can do so, for they themselves form certain inconvenient principles temporarily maade for a short-period convenience to satisfy themselves of their erotic desires. The orphan-child may be brought up by a group of human beings, to say frankly, some have love, others have various other reasons,) and a new relationship is established between the orphan-child and the ones who bring it up. When the child grows, can it make up the relationship earned in the orphanage or try to seek the ones who dropped him/her on the road? Yet, the relationship between the orphan-child and the ones who beget him may not be as genuine as the relationship between the orphan-child and the ones who brought him up. Who are strangers here? (The world bears no strangers for it carries every one in its arms; but every one in the world seems to be strange, dividing oneself with one's ideosyncrasies which are nothing but conveniently pre-conceived inconveniences to make oneself different in indifference.
How do the ones who have no accesss to beget a child establish a relationship with their "adopted" child? Once the child seemed alien to them before their adoption (it is but a self-made statement to convince oneself.) Now they practise themselves to be familiar with their newl-adopted child, and their overt behaviour is the only witness of their efforts. The adopted child is also used to the new relationship, unaware of its own whereabouts and its "look-after" parents. Can the child call them its "father" and "mother"? Or should the child wait for the ones who actually beget it and call them "father" and "mother"? (So strange!)
A man and a woman are physically yoked (if their hearts are not faithfully united together) with traditionally fixed inconsistent laws in the so-called marriage bond, and are allowed to part when one of the so-called physical partners dies (or divorces himself or herself.) How does their relationship exist if the living one (may be bearing the sign of widow or widower) is again bound to another one? They themselves made a relationship and had no thought of continuing the bond, but deliberate enough to break it when no found a new channel to purgate his feelings.
What name do you give to the relationship made between a man, who belongs to one so-called caste and a woman, who belongs to another so-called caste, when bound in the physical contact made in traditional rituals and rites of wedding ceremony. To which caste does their child belong --- to mother's caste or to father's caste? What kind of relationship is made between the child of the man's brother's son belonging to one so-called caste and the child of the man's wife's sister's son belonging to another so-called caste? Are these two children "close" relatives or "distant" relatives?
When an American man is wedded physically to an Indian woman, the child born of them is called as American-Indian, who picks up two different cultures. When the same child (if the child is a male one) grows and weds a Japanese girl, what kind of relationship is made between the Japanese girl and the American's "half-brother" (if the American's father has a son of his second wife)? They say, emotionally,(if either of the party is financially sound) that they are relatives (if not financially sound, he's no more relatives to them.) How self-fish and stupid are we!
Let us recount the rhetorical question posed in two different situations, by two different persons: WHO ARE YOU? Why do we not individually ask this rhetorical question to each of us? "WHO AM I?" Does each one of us think of how each one of us is related to oneself? Each one of us ought to think that each one of us is a human being uniquely born, whose purpose is to establish the real and true relationship among the fellow-human beings. Each one of us is NO way alien to ourselves since each one of us has the same power to think, the same red blood to survive,the same flesh to pull on unto the grave. How then did each one of us separate oneself from our fellow-beings? Did language play its role? Did colour play its role? Did the so-called caste play its role? Did profession play its role? Did religion play its role? Did science play its role? Why does each one of us not think deeply on how each one of us restricted oneself unintelligibly making unintelligible whims and fancies that totally nullify the concept of ONENESS in mankind? What makes us to make different kinds of relationship among our fellow-human beings? Language, caste, colour, profession, religion, science are all mere tools to each of one us to make different kinds of relationship. Then who is responsible to all these whimsical different kinds of relationship? It is EGO-CENTRIC nature seated in the heart of each one of us that stubbornly believes in the concept of egoism and pushes a self-styled drive out from the deepest of the deep. One's ego prefers to self-dominate human values and this self-dominating nature never realises the concept of acceptability of positive attitude to life. One's ego prefers what it desires, and denies what it hates.
Can each one of us kill the EGO super imposed in our heart and live with broad-mindedness in our thinking, making all unintelligible relationships, nullified, and and be of the same mind until we all reach the grave?

Nothing But Wind

Music the world filled with,
And is God-breathed the melody in it.
Music moves the world around on its way,
And it’s wind in music dwells.
Muse of Music! Let me imbibe thy notes
For sans thee my voice lies half-dead
When my heart is to sing
That
NOTHING BUT WIND is music.
My soul enters the sylvan woodlands---
The abode of musical birds,
And in quest of music haunts every nest.
It’s music that birds chirp,
And I lay my soul on a pasture,
And the chirping of birds does caress my soul:
The cuckoo sings with twain quick notes,
The nightingale babbles with nectarous notes,
The sparrow squeaks with mumbling thoughts,
The throttle bubbles with drizzling thoughts,
All sail into, my soul cherished
When wind turned to music through birds.
Crickets join the orchestra with their wings rubbed the air,
And music flows when their wings flap.
My soul journeys along the bank of musical stream,
Where bamboos rustle when wind penetrates them:
It’s "Bamboo" music breathed thro’ flute,
I learnt the love for music born thro’ bamboo
Perfected with beautiful melodies.
Dwelling on pastures music grows personified:
Harps reverberate at the hands of the shepherds,
Green music born of pastoral spirit join the bleating of lambs:
The lambs bleat and music is breathed,
And the whole of the pastures flutter with joy.
Into deep woods my soul moves,
And lions roar I hear, elephants trumpet,
And ravens voice hoarse notes
When "bamboo" music is tried by machines:
Harp turned to Guitar, bamboo turned to piano,
And music now flows thro’ science ---
Science that survives with computers.
When engine whistles I hear music
And train follows it with "friction" music,
Rhythmic beats perfected on rails. "Friction" music turned to "roar" music
When air-plane has been invented.
My soul speeds up --- speeding up
And hears jet engines launch musical roar
Yet perfected by computer technology ---
An impeccable rhythm thro’ jets.
My soul runs atop the mountain peak
Where rockets zoom into the sky with "rocket" notes
Blasting off for the stars,
Measured with "light year wavelength".
Stars roll down with noise and roar,
The universe being filled with "lightning" sound.
Seeks solace the world shrouded with machines…
………seeking solace thro’ divinity
With mantras chanted;
Yet "disco vogue" lingers on earthly pleasures,
And man is belittled by his social excusable sins,
And his society turns to animalism.
Down from the mountain peak my soul rolls down…
The peak that showed me fleeting moments of life.
An inevitable holocaust shrouds the earth,
And a victim with wounds and bruises am I.
Back into the sylvan woodlands my soul runs now---
Into the sylvan woodlands, the abode of musical birds,
And haunts every nest in quest of music.
To breathe "bamboo" music I run,
For I learnt the love for music born thro’ bamboo.
Forlorn! Bamboos are found nowhere.
My soul longs for "bamboo" music,
Yet learns a truth that music is NOTHING BUT WIND.
And my soul is convinced that Wind is Music, and Music is Wind.
Longing for silent music at the threshold of woodlands
My soul now lies.

Muse of Music! My heart sang a truth
That
NOTHING BUT WIND is MUSIC.
And it’s my garland of thoughts presented unto thee.

This verse is penned as being inspired by the musical album created by Ilayaraja,the first Asian who composed symphony at Royal Philharmonic Orchestra London. A musical genius in India