Surviving Empty Nest

This afternoon the Palestinian Embassy in Kuala Lumpur has organised a protest against the announcement by Trump on his peace plan for Palestine where he had conveniently taken Palestinian land and bequeathed to Israel. While the Palestinians protested, some Israelis with conscience are also disagreeing to that plan.  One has to be mentally deranged to approve the confiscation of one man's land to be given to the other, no matter who does it. I do not now how other faiths deal with that but in Hinduism, the Garuda Purana has some very profound ways of dealing with such people when they leave this world and enter the other. Here are some of the perceived punishments (as it appeared in desinema.com) 1.  Rauravam (Torments of Snakes) CRIME: Enjoying others property or resources with through possession PUNISHMENT: Tortured with the serpents, thrown into the hell of Rauravam where the people they have cheated assume the shape of “Ruru”, a dreadful serpent, torment them sev...

I once had a boss who made this remark ' You people are in HR department but you do not know how to hold a relationship.' You see, those words were directed at a group of women, including me, who were either divorcees or were about to be divorced. That was a direct hit below the belt. The Boss, himself was a divorcee, who had migrated to another country in the West, unsuccessfully tried to build a life there, and returned to Malaysia to marry a prominent business man's daughter (also a single mother) and re-settle down. The group of us women who were the target of that remark felt very bad that for weeks we could not get that statement out of our minds. Smiles were wiped from our faces, we no longer joked and laughed at our department. To make it worse, the Boss was getting married in a few weeks and he proudly had invited everyone, excluding the single mothers and divorcees in the company.  I, for one, felt very bad because I had two failed marriages behind me - not one ...