The Gandhian legacy !!

Over the past year or so I have been keenly aware of the power that is being vested on the common man all over the world to finally come out and make his word heard . Power to mark a change is shifting from the hands of the select few to the masses . It all started in Egypt , then came Iran , Libya and finally India .

It feels great to watch history when it is being created rather than try and imagine it through videos , books or movies. As I was watching the protests in Egypt and Iran , I was wondering if India would ever have a such a revolt and if so what would it look like . The difference between these regimes and India is that the former were dictatorial regimes where the common man had very little say and every little attempt at freedom of speech was curbed down . India on the other hand is very different , we do have freedom of speech , ours is not a dictatorial regime and secular forces rule in India , there is very little Moral policing if any .

So my first thought when the Anna Hazare phenomenon hit India was that the realization that the power of change lies with the common man has finally hit India and as I watched with great interest the unfolding of this massive change phenomenon , one thing that struck me was the Gandhianess of all of it . And I am not exactly talking about the Satyagraha part of it here but the fact that a protest could be done in a peaceful manner and the fact that democracy and freedom of speech still prevail in India. Leaving aside the one stupid attempt by the Govt. to arrest Anna Hazare , overall the change was brought about only by the power of language and discussion and not by the use of military power. And no matter how much we blame the Indian govt on most accounts , I have to give them the credit for keeping up the spirit of democracy and not resorting to the use of military power to kill the protests . We might not think of that as a big achievement but if we were to just look around ourselves , most of the world right now is under shackles of a few power hungry people and things like peaceful protests are a far cry for most of the people around the world . Any attempt to protest usually would either land them in jail or have the death sentence written over them.

This reminded me of something that I read in the Biography of the Myanmar leader Aung Sang Su Kyi long time back . She was asked why was she resolving to the methods of non - violence in her country when it was clear that it was not bringing about a change in a quick enough manner and why was she not considering overthrowing the current regime by the use of power and she replied " I do not want to set a precedent where people would think that use of military power is the only way around any problem in their lives , that was the issue with the earlier revolution in the country , all the power was put in the hands of the military and eventually the military came to believe that might is stronger than anything else in this world".

So on this day my jubilation is more about the affirmation that democracy and peaceful protests are the one and only way to ever bring out a every lasting change in any system and we have to thank our Father of the Nation for having set this precedent for all of us .

Awareness vs Sensitivity

Yesterday was one of the days when you sit down for dinner with a bunch of new people and you are thrown into a totally new world of possibilities and ideas that you never would have experienced before. Karin's ( my host ) place is always the abode for great learnings and good food .. and yesterday was no different . I met Vipin and his wife Bhavya , along with Karin , Bob and Paul , with my special guest of the evening , Nimisha , who had decided to finally give Minneapolis a chance after 3 years of begging and pleading .

Sachin usually arouses a reverence , curiosity and extreeme desire to imitate in a lot of people . Now why the hell am I talking about Sachin , coz for me any grass root social worker evokes the same set of desires , partly due to my life long desire to be one . My love for Math , as I explained to Vipin yesterday is the only force that is stopping me from taking up that path .

Ok , not trying to divert from the topic , as soon as I learnt that Vipin is a social worker who works with child abuse and child rights , I fell right into the groove of asking my zillion questions . How does it work , why did he choose it , how difficult is the system , what methods do they employ etc . Vipin graciously skipped Karin's lovely dinner and answered all my questions .

I decided if I have to do justice to the learnings yesterday , I got to put them down in the blog so that I remember the words later on .

The main theme of Vipin's experience was how people often confuse awareness from sensitivity particularly in respect to human rights . He gave a really good example . Awareness is when you eat a chocolate and you know that throwing the wrapper on the road will dirty the road , sensitivity is actually when you do not throw the wrapper down and instead put it back into your pocket because you realize its your responsibility to make the road dirty .

Vipin went on to explain that when you see the plight of the children , you are really moved and you want the police officers and the government to immediately take steps to move it . Unfortunately it does not work like that because the other side does not share your sensitivity towards the issue and there could be a lot of reasons for them to behave that way . One is that they are just cold hearted and such things do not affect them , another could be that children cases dnt get them much mileage(votes) and thus little chances of promotion and lastly it could just be that they are busy and do not have time to handle this case right now .

Vipin said there are lot of social workers and other people right now who get really let down by the insensitivity on the part of the civil servants but the important thing for them to understand is that they cannot make another person sensitive to anything , all they can do is increase the person's awareness and hope that one of these days something will happen which will increase the person's sensitivity towards the issue . So he works a lot on training social workers on how to use Law and Psychological techniques to increase the awareness of police inspectors etc . He says you have to give examples that bring the story close to an officer's heart , only then can you expect a real change . One of the most heart wrenching examples was of a young girl who had been in a sexual abuse case , she kept getting interviewed again and again by everyone out there , no one seemed to have the sensitivity to understand that each time they asked the girl the story , she would have to go through the pain again . Finally Vipin shut the ACP's mouth by asking him to narrate his first night to everyone out there , the ACP was taken aback , he got angry because the question was inappropriate . That was when Vipin got back at him and asked him if your find it inappropriate to talk about it , how on earth do you think the young girl who has been through such a painful experience talk about her story . That was the precise moment when the awareness in the ACP turned into sensitivity.

He went on to give examples of a lot of children and the challenges that they face . How children on the railway stations once they become part of gangs and get used to the life on the platforms do not want to go to rescue homes and study any more because all they see the benefits of their current lifestyle and no matter what you cannot convince them that this will not last in the longer run . A typical day in the life of these railway kids goes something like this , they will all gather in one corner with a load of bread , butter and jam , share it with each other and throw the rest to the monkeys . Wondering where they got this food from and why do they throw it away. They get the food from the early morning Rajdhani and they dnt really need it because there is another train coming in at lunch and another one for dinner .

Another example he gave was of unthought govt policies . The govt realocated a slum on the banks of yamuna because it was causing the city to look bad and polluting the river . They gave them new homes some 50 miles away but it so turned out that most people who used to work as maid servants now had to travel 100 miles everyday which reduced the number of houses they could work in and inturn their income . There was no school at the new place so the kids stopped studying and as a results child abuse and assault cases went up .

We then moved on to the topic of NGO boom in India , it turns out that 20 NGOs work on the same railway station in Delhi . It is pretty clear that instead of causing a positive impact these NGOs just end up creating a havoc . The kids are also really smart ,they know which NGO to get food in , which one will give money etc . No sustainable change can be created in this way .

There are a lot well intentioned people out there , not as much as the ill intentioned ones , still enough to cause a change . But the problem is that one man's idea might not be the best in terms of creating a sustainable change and in the long run can cause more damage than good .

However meeting people like Vipin is always a inspiring thing , as you realize how much difference each one of us can create in this world if really put our heart to it.

Are we doing enough ??

Reading about the recent campaign in India against corruption , the freedom movement in Egypt and the struggles in Libya , I keep coming back to the same question , are we doing enough to make sure we are making this earth a better place for each one of us .

I believe I do contribute in a small way , I care about recycling , tutor English and volunteer at a couple of places ,but there is always a lingering question , given my capacity is this enough or do I need to do more ?

We as a generation are better poised than any other generation before us to create a lasting change . Also I think the need to be a part of the change is higher now given the fact that if we dnt step up efforts to do things like conservation of the earth , the earth might no longer be a feasible place to live .

Before I get into things we are not doing , I think we need to spend some time on things we are doing / ought to be doing

1. Giving 100% to our jobs . It is said that even if a sweeper gives 100% to his job , he has done his part in making this earth a better place . So as long as we are genuine with the work that we do we are already doing our parts.

2. Charity begins at home . A lot of people get involved in volunteering because it gives them a ego boost , makes them look better than their peers . Volunteering done for egotistical reasons would most likely cause more harm than good . So I would prefer being a person who just works on making him/her a better person overall , because a happy person at home can lead to a lot of happy people outside . So as long as we are working on making ourselves better people , taking good care of our families and helping out friends again I believe we have done our parts in making this world a better place.

Now what are we not doing right , our parents as a generation did not have excess of time , money or technology. Their entire lives were spent earning money and taking care of their families . Our lives are not like that , we have access to a lot of time , material wealth and smthin called social networking . But are we making the most of it is questionable .

We , the younger generation are slowly becoming a generation of excess , we party a lot , big houses , better clothes , flashier cars , alcohol , exquisite food , five star travels etc . I am not here to judge anyone , as I am a part of the same gen X . And all said and done fun has to be a integral part of our lives . But all I am trying to question here is how much of this excess is worth it ?

Would our time and energies be well spent if we were to spend more time say helping to teach kids near our house , cleaning up the garbage close to our houses , learning more about indian scriptures or helping out at campaign like that of Anna hazare . Some how these ideas seem to have slipped out of our collective psyche and I think it is time each one of us think about what roles are we playing in making this earth a better place , because one thing is for sure, time is running short and before we know this place we call mother earth would have been mauled to such an extent that we can no longer get it back .

So let us all be thinking of it today and in the days to come .....

Death

I am in one of those moods today to write about a not much talked about topic , but of which I often think . Our normal excuse always is that we are too young to start thinking about death , I think there is never a right age to start thinking about death . It is a reality of life, as much of a reality as life itself is . We live and we die and the unfortunate part is we always forget in our daily routine that our life has a expiry date . We keep living our lives as if we are going to be on this earth for ever .

Ok , so why do I think we need to be aware of the fact that we are going to die one of these days , there is a very simple reason to it - It just makes us enjoy our lives better because we know that this awesome run that we are having on this earth is not going to last too long .

So what exactly are the advantages of thinking about death

1. You become aware of the fact that life passes by really quickly - 25 years have passed by already in the blink of an eye , how much time do you think another 50 years is going to take . Another two blinks of a an eye and it will be all .done

2. Once you know that life does not really last that long , then you know that you better use it in a good way and feel happy about it . There is no point really cribbing about anything , anything that brings negative emotions in you and prevents you from enjoying life is really biting into the small amount of time that you actually have on this earth . In short you stop taking Life too seriously .

3. Knowing that life has expiry date also means that you have to start making a list of things that you want to do when you can do them . Do you really want to spend your entire day , locked up in a office , doing things you hate when you can actually be out there doing something you really like .? Well you can afford to do those hateful things if you had infinite time in your hands not when you have only a few moments .

I know we have all heard this thousands of times in the thousands of forwards that get sent to us , but one thing I have found is that any time I am aware of this thought , my life changes , my actions start to have more meaning to them . I know I need to enjoy this moment thoroughly because this moment will never come back ever again . Is it tough to do this , ohh ya , what with our minds jumping around all the while , but is it worth doing this , for sure it is .

So what started this chain of thoughts today in my head . I met a couple in the temple today . They lost their 19 years old daughter due to distracted driving . Her friend was driving the car , turned around to pick up a napkin and crashed . So now they work on promoting awareness on distracted driving , they hold a vigil and walk every year , the money that they collect goes to her foundation , they are trying to contact reporters , govt officials and people everywhere to spread awareness on this . I could see the emotion in their face , when they talked about their daughter but at the same time there was a strength that if they have to make her memory a good one , they need to do something about it . It is very rare to meet people like this who can turn around misfortunes in their life into a meaningful passion . I told them , I cannot express in words but what they are doing is truly great and not many people are able to do that .

Here is one couple who has understood that death exists and accepting that it is a part of our lives and then dealing with it is makes our lives on earth even more worth it.

Continuing this chain of thoughts was a movie that I saw " Driving miss daisy " . The movie is about a old woman , who suddenly realizes that she is too old to drive . But she does not want to give up on being the independent woman that she has been all her life and ask around for help . She resists being given a car and driver , but eventually starts warming up to the idea that it is not bad to ask around for help .

Seeing that movie I suddenly realized that I am going to be that old and senile one of these days, I will constantly need someone's help , will no longer be able to do everything I wish to , I will forget stuff and I might get stuck in a one bedroom apartment with not many people around me .

Does this scare me ..sure it does , I love my youth and want to stay in it for ever . But that is not the natural way of life and I think the best way to deal with it is to be aware of it . Everything in nature starts with a seed, becomes a sapling , a full grown tree and then dies and so it is going to be with us too . A lot of times we get frustrated with our elders that they do not understand our ways of life , but we always forget that we will have to be in there shoes one of these days and it might mean all the same things for us then .

The Bhagwad geetha sums this up

"Death is as sure for that which is born as birth is for that which is dead . Therefore greave not for that which is inevitable "

Counting my blessings ...

A lot of times in the past 4 years the thought has crossed my mind that I should write a blog about my friends , fondly known as the erie rockers but I have never actually been able to that . The primary reason has been that I do not think that my words can do justice to what I feel for each one of them .

If there exists something called pure love amongst friends , then it sure is defined by the love that I have received from my friends in Minneapolis . This is one place where people do not work based on their egos or competition of who is better than whom , all they want and expect out of you is just love and that is all they give too. Friends who have left Minneapolis can justify this statement , they just keep coming back to MSP because nowhere else can they find a place where one can just be one's own self and people would just accept and love you the way you are . We can be pulling each others legs for hours at an end but at the end of the day never have there been any harsh feelings .

If there is one name for creativity , enthu and encouraging others to be a part of something bigger than themselves , Erie rockers has got to be the name for it .

Sometimes it scares me , we are too good to each other , how is that actually possible ??? :-)

Today on my birthday , I just feel like saying a very big thank you to all these great set of people for being there for me always and showering all this love on me .

Looking at the post I wanted to say smthing a lot more creative and non cliche , but then like I said words fail me in writing in this post .

Spirituality

I rarely venture to try to write on this subject , mostly I think because of my lack of definition to what that word completely entails and also in the recent times the word has been mauled so much that people wonder how any self respecting rational person can talk about rationality and spirituality in the same breath .

Anyways after reading a article yesterday and sleeping over it , I decided to express my views on certain points in the article , essentially because I needed to clear up my head on those ideas .

Here is the article that I am referring to .( The article is the last one on the page , his address to india today conclave )

http://www.javedakhtar.com/inner/interview.html

So why do I think i should comment on this article? I took a course with the isha foundation a year back and have been a regular follower of all their courses and talks ever since . I can see how much difference that has had on me in the past one year , so I have some kind of experience that I can speak from .

The other reason is that I have always been generally interested in spirituality , questions on life , after life , death and so have been following and reading up a lot on these subjects , primarily more so in the last year.

Here is what Akhtar says .

"Now, if you leave your mind what do you do? You need the Guru to find the next station of consciousness. That hides somewhere in the spirit. He has reached the supreme consciousness, he knows the supreme truth."

Leaving the part about the what the Guru tells you , Akhtar questions the need for having a Guru . In our life at every instant we have a teacher trying to teach us something . Parents teach us how to behave in the society , teachers at school teach us math and science , mentors at work teach us how to get around at work , so why is it that in this one sphere we so abhor the idea of having a teacher . I can read all the Vedas , Upanishads or whatever I want , but it could be possible that I did not understand what was written in them , is it wrong for me to approach a spiritual teacher at that point of time ? I would think not.

I think the reactionary feeling to the word Guru is primarily because of its misuse in English language and also the prevalence of hoax Gurus all around .

Akhtar then talks about the Gurus trying to paint a picture of a supreme cosmos , trying to lure people into believing that there is something out there that only the Guru understands and that is why we need to go to him . So I dnt know if a supreme cosmos exists or not and at this point it does not matter to me , but looking at this rationally why do we go to a engineerning college to pursue further education , because we believe professors at the university know have a deeper understanding of that subject and I would like to learn from them . I dnt see how this is different than from going to a Guru who has a deeper understanding of the spiritual subject. Also it can happen sometimes that our professors really dnt know anything and we end up pursuing other sources or figuring it out on own , I would expect the same intelligence to carry over when you go talk to a Guru . We should be able to figure out if he really knows the subject or not .

Next he talks about

"You see that the clientele is well heeled, it is the affluent class."

He claims that only the rich and powerful are the people who go in search of a Guru and so you see the Guru chooses to hang out with only affluent people because that has some kind of material perks for him. One thing I want to make clear is I have disregarded all kinds of hoax Gurus from this conversation , I am talking about the few genuine ones.

So at isha this is not essentially true , because I know they do programs with prisoners , villagers and all too because their belief is that no matter where the individual is in his life , there exists the possibility of a him being a happy person . A happy person would then translate into everything else a good person , a good citizen etc .

Anyways coming back to the point , why is it that most of the times the clientelle is rich

1) From a poor man's perspective , there is always something higher that he desires and has a belief saying once I get that it will give me happiness . So there is always a yearning for something bigger that keeps him going . Again this does not apply to every one , there could be a lot of people who are poor and very contented , I am saying it does for most people. But if you look at a rich man's life there comes a point where there are very little desires left in his life that have not been fulfilled , and there is a certain kind of frustration that creeps up in his life , he thinks I have everything I want , why is it that fulfilling all these desires still does not give me any kind of contentment . If they are the thinking types they would then go ahead and start looking at the nature of desire , contentment and how to derive that .

We have all been taught "Ohh be content with what you have" , but the problem is there is a big difference between knowing something and experiencing it and that is where the Guru comes in according to me , giving you guidelines as to how go about the path of contentment , acceptance and ultimately bliss.

2) Another reason I think is that only when a society is free from the problems of sustenance only then can they explore other areas of life . Like art does not florish in a poor , malnourished society , why is that? It is because all the subtle aspects of human nature would show up only when people's mind are free to explore these aspects . If I dnt know where to get food for my family tommorow , I am very unlikely to go around painting a nude women .

Sprituallity and self awareness are also very subtle aspects of human nature which need a certain balanced environment to flourish .

3) Why is that the Gurus always target rich and powerful people ? So like I mentioned before a happy and a balanced person would translate into a good friend , good husband and a good citizen but imagine only if the president of your country was in the same state , how much more difference can he bring to the world . If the President is a man of extremes , has family issues , personal issues , alcoholism , mental diseases , physical diseases , how do you think he is going to rule the country vs a President who is balanced , healthy , can think consciously in stress situations , has a loving family . The future of 300 million people could be changed entirely by having such a president . So it makes sense to have Spiritual people in seats of power because the future of a entire nation can be changed by that .

Next he talks about life events

"Then there are other people. Who are suddenly traumatized. They lose a child. The wife dies. The husband dies. Or they lose the property, they lose their business. Something happens that shocks them and they ask - why me? So who do they ask? They go to the Guru. And the guru tells him that this is Karma. But there is another world if you follow me. Where there is no pain. Where there is no death. Where there is immortality. Where there is only bliss. He tells all these unhappy souls - follow me and I will take you to the heaven, to the paradise, where there is no pain. I am sorry sir, it is disappointing but true that there is no such paradise. Life will always have a certain quota of pain, of hurts, a possibility of defeats. But they do get some satisfaction."

So Akhtar tries to say that the Gurus are mechanism of providing people with solace . In my experience that is not true . A popular misconception is well these Gurus would just do some magic to you and get you going but a true Guru is not a pill that you can pop in , but a exercise regime that you need to practice to get into a physically fit state . All I have learnt as Isha is that this life does not always happen the way you want it to . You can either give up , blame life for being unfair to you or you can accept it and then see what to do about this . Acceptance and taking responsibility I think are the two main pedestals to leading a happy life. No true Guru will ever tell you , come to me and all your problems will be solved , he will actually go ahead and warn you , only if you are willing to sweat it out in a marathon come to me , or else go home there is always the option of having virtual avatars run the race for you :-)

Finally

"You may ask me, that if I have this kind of ideas about religious people, why should I show such reverence for Krishan and Kabir and Gautam? You can ask me. I'll tell you why I respect them. These were the great contributors in the human civilization. They were born in different points of time in history, in different situations. But one thing is common in them. They stood up against injustice. They fought for the downtrodden. "

I am a little ambiguous on this but will try to answer this too . I think this is a case of revolt vs reform . What method do you choose to do away with the injustice . There are two ways of doing this fight the system or reform the system . I think by trying to address issues with our leaders , the Gurus are trying to take the later approach . I know Jaggi Vasudev is regularly a part of economic forums trying to talk to world leaders about the economic policies they implement. Does that mean these spiritual leaders have given up on the poor people , i dnt think so , they run schools , adopt villages and work with prisoners . It is just a matter of how do you want to do it , by means of running a revolution or by silently working your way up in it . In todays times revolution would not be a viable option i would guess , also given that we have media , technology and other things at behest we might be able to lead a more silent revolution that can bring about big changes.

Overall I think Akhtar missed out on looking at the complete picture but just used his perceptions to come up to the argument .

Having said all this I think it is time I put forward my own definition of spirituality .

1) First I dnt understand , or know anything about a higher consciousness and so I decide to skip over that in my definition

2) To me this world is the highest definition of anything . Nature is GOD and no other GOD exists

3) Spirituality to me on a personal level means being self aware and honest with onself

4) It is about having a balance in life - most of the times we are so pulled away by outside forces ( animal instincts i call them ) that we are always operating in some kind of extreeme . Extreeme sadness , guilt , anger , excitement . The problem with that is such emotions is that they are like glue , pulling you down to the ground , emotions should be like water , have fun stepping into the puddle of water but then when you choose you can move on .

5) And ultimately spirituality is about understanding the transitory nature of life , we are born and will die one day , neither our birth nor our death will cause any major changes to this world , it has and will keep moving on .

So all we need to do is have the maximum fun while we are here because as they say " The holiday will end sooner or later "

A plum's story

Got up in the morning to this lovely article

"A plum once said, 'just because a banana lover came by, I converted myself into a banana. Unfortunately, his taste changed after a few months and so I became an orange. When he said I was bitter I became an apple, but he went in search of grapes. Yielding to the opinions of so many people, I have changed so many times that I no more know who I am. How I wish I had remained a plum and waited for a plum lover.'

Just because a group of people do not accept you as you are, there is no necessity for you to strip yourself of your originality. You need to think good of yourself, for the world takes you at your own estimate. Never stoop down in order to gain recognition. Never let go of your true self to win a relationship. In the long run, you will regret that you traded your greatest glory - your uniqueness, for momentary validation. Even Gandhi was not accepted by many people. The group that does not accept you as you is not your world.

There is a world for each one of you, where you shall reign as king /queen by just being yourself. Find that world... in fact, that world will find you.

What water can do, gasoline cannot and what copper can, gold cannot. The fragility of the ant enables it to move and the rigidity of the tree enables it to stay rooted. Everything and everybody has been designed with a proportion of uniqueness to serve a purpose that we can fulfill only by being our unique self. You as you alone can serve your purpose and I as I alone can serve my purpose. You are here to be you... just you.

There was a time in this world when a Krishna was required and he was sent; a time when a Christ was required and he was sent; a time when a Mahatma was required and he was sent; a time when a J.R.D.Tata was required and he was sent. There came a time when you were required on this planet and hence you were sent. Let us be the best we can be. Don't miss yourself and let the world not miss you.

In the history of the universe, there has been nobody like you and to the infinite of time to come, there will be no one like you. Existence should have loved you so much that it broke the mould after making you, so that another of your kind will never get repeated. You are original. You are rare. You are unique. You are a wonder. You are a masterpiece. .. your Master's piece. Celebrate your Uniqueness."

~ Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

Beauty in details

Was reading an article yesterday when I came upon this wonderful concept " Look at everything as if you are looking at it for the first time " . This was follows by a couple of examples of how when you look at your wife , or your home or your friends try looking at them as if you are you are doing it for the first time , there will be a sense of excitement of having discovered something new in your life .

I have always been a person of comparatively less detail . For me the bigger picture has always been important and as soon as I grasp that I move on . I remember when I was kid I went to this painting class where the teacher asked us to paint 30 leaves . I was done in 2 days , there were kids there who had been painting the same thing for weeks , I did not understand the concept then . The teacher kept asking me to go back and refine the painting more , after a while I could not find anything else that can be done with the paintings and eventually got bored , tired and left .

Browsing further into the article mentioned above I found too paintings mentioned in it , so I checked them out . The two paintings were Van gogh's paintings - The shoes and The chair . It is believed that Van gogh spent months painting these relatively mundane things . Looking at these paintings it got me thinking on vision that the painter must have had . Every single day he must have sat down with his easel to just make sure the lace on the shoe looked perfectly like the original one , to make sure that the cushion on the chair gives you a homely feeling and so on.

Leave alone shoes how many times do we actually stop and take a nice deep look at our friends , our job , our surroundings . For us it is just the same people , the same house and the same sun rise everyday .

The whole world as they say is in a state of flux where nothing remains constant , then why is it that we find everything the same everyday . We need newer and newer things to excite us each day . I was recently having a conversation with a friend and I mentioned that maybe because I travel so much I no longer find each trip giving me the kind of adrenaline rush I used to get when I was a kid . Trips now just come down to visiting landmarks , checking them out on my list , hanging out with friends and cracking a few funny jokes but the newness of it all is missing . I have stopped embracing the fact that each one of these events occur only once in my entire lifetime and more totally I am present in each one of them , the more newer things I will be able to discover each day .

Now on anytime I am suffering from the lack of newness in my life , I plan to use the image of Van Gogh's shoes to guide me to dwell deeper into life and discover life it in all its richness !!!

Heights of eventfulness

I believe my life has been pretty eventful as a whole , but today stands out among a lot of other days .

Hardly did I know that getting up on at 5.30 on a saturday morning had the power of making a day so eventful . Got up at 5.30 all set to volunteer at the yoga festival , drove to the hotel with the sun still shying in the background and kailash kher's teri deewani giving me company . I reach the venue at 7.00 only to find that my team is not going to show up till 9.00 . A brief meditation session and a phone call later I decided to venture out for a short walk which turned out to a 1.5 mile walk ending at Al's breakfast . 1 hour and still standing in line for the pumpkin pancakes I had made 3 new friends who engaged me a very rare conversation on spirituality .

All charged up I walked back 1.5 miles only to find myself an hour later standing in the queue to see none other than President Obama . The line happily streched for 3 miles and we went and stood at very end but we had Obama's words in our head ..."Hope " and we hoped with our full hearts that we would get to see him ..joyously we waited for 3 hours and cheered for some unknown minnesota leaders but nothing could beat our joy when we got a first glimpse of Obama ...I was howling and shouting along with crowd , it sounded more like Brad Pitt had stepped in there , we were just blown over by his charisma .....

You would hope I would be done by the day by now , but the day was just starting , back home to dress for the evening dandiya event . Taking our own sweet girl time we were ready in 3 hours just in time for the 2 hours that were alloted to us . But today's dandiya was not just any other dandiya ....all the dance , all the giggles and secrets were all for a purpose , waiting for my buddy to propose to girl of his dreams and then dance in celebration for that . Thats wat you call a perfect end to the day ....1.10 am he proposed to her in front of all us and she accepted , thus becoming a part of family .

I am pretty sure this did deserve a entry in my blog ...now that it is here I can happily sleep off ...!!!

Disclaimer ..this is not my article but found it to be wonderfully true ..

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BEING IN TWENTIES - SOMETHING It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now. You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you. You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward. You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you're doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person. One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap. Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic. You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender! What you may not realize is that every one reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out. Send this to your twenty-something friends... maybe it will help someone feel like they aren't alone in their state of confusion... We call it the "Quarter-life Crisis."

The meaning of LIFE

"There was no meaning in life, and man by living served no end. It was immaterial whether he was born or not born, whether he lived or ceased to live. Life was insignificant and death without consequence. Philip exulted, as he had exulted in his boyhood when the weight of a belief in God was lifted from his shoulders: it seemed to him that the last burden of responsibility was taken from him; and for the first time he was utterly free. His insignificance was turned to power, and he felt himself suddenly equal with the cruel fate which had seemed to persecute him; for, if life was meaningless, the world was robbed of its cruelty. What he did or left undone did not matter. Failure was unimportant and success amounted to nothing. He was the most inconsiderate creature in that swarming mass of mankind which for a brief space occupied the surface of the earth; and he was almighty because he had wrenched from chaos the secret of its nothingness. Thoughts came tumbling over one another in Philip's eager fancy, and he took long breaths of joyous satisfaction. He felt inclined to leap and sing. He had not been so happy for months.

Oh, life,' he cried in his heart, 'Oh life, where is thy sting?"

- W . Somerset Maugham ( Of Human Bondage )

"It was one of the queer things of life that you saw a person every day for months and were so intimate with him that you could not imagine existence without him; then separation came, and everything went on in the same way, and the companion who had seemed essential proved unnecessary."
— W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)

"It is clear that men accept an immediate pain rather than an immediate pleasure, but only because they expect a greater pleasure in the future. Often the pleasure is illusory, but their error in calculation is no refutation of the rule. You are puzzled because you cannot get over the idea that pleasures are only of the sense; but, child, a man who dies for his country dies because he likes it as surely as a man eats pickled cabbage because he likes it."
— W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)

He had lived always in the future, and the present always, always had slipped through his fingers. His ideals? He thought of his desire to make a design, intricate and beautiful, out of the myriad, meaningless facts of life: had he not seen also that the simplest pattern, that in which a man was born, worked, married, had children, and died, was likewise the most perfect?

— W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)

Go Green !!

As a kid I used to be such a pest if anyone was to drop a chocolate wrapper on the ground instead of in the dust bin ...i would glare down at them to pick it up and if they did not I made sure I gave them the guilty eye before picking it up myself and dropping it in the dustbin . Today in the morning walking along on a trail in a state park I saw someone had dropped a big McDonalds To -go bag on the side of the road . I picked it up and walked for a mile or so before I could find a dustbin to dump it in . I have always been a conservationist at heart picking up a few litters here and there and dropping them .

This year the conservationist in me has decided to do smthing about the litter we generate . Initially when I had come to the US I remember stopping into a friend's office and asking him to explain smthing , he took out a A4 size paper , wrote something on it and then threw it away . I instantly remembered the struggle we had to go thru to get A4 papers in during my undergrad . Understandably the latter situation was not due to some green ethics but basically due to lack of availability . Still it points to a important message , back in india we were not wasteful in our ways and would use/reuse things .

As more plenty has entered our lives so has wasteful spending . No wonder US is the biggest consumer on earth . I hardly find anything being recycled in this country . Tailors , cobblers , bartan waali all those classes of people are totally absent here . The idea is to just throw away smthing once you are done using it , or even if you dnt like it . Food , clothes , shoes , furniture , cars , this idea applies to all of it . And ya how I can forget my favorite topic plastic "Plastic water bottles" , seriously why does anyone on earth want to buy water . I still remember the days when we used to carry a bottle filled with water to school , well not here ... thirsty - grab a water bottle . A statistic I once read said the amount of water bottles american consume in a year can be used to make a road from the earth to the moon !!!! And ya adding to it the To Go culture ....a paper bag , 100s of napkins , plastic spoons , forks , big plastic pop cups etc etc

My idea has been to try and cut one plastic spoon , a plastic bottle and plastic bag at a time . I keep my own spoons and cups at work so that I dnt have to take a plastic spoon , carry a shopping bag each time I go shopping and my water bottle everytime I go out . Also trying my hand at recycling as much of trash as possible at home . I would in no way say that this is enough but it is first step . I guess it mostly a gift from my mom who has been a stickler for recycling ever since we were kids .

I did pick up a few books on recycling here and there and surprise all the things mentioned in it were all the things which we have seen our mom and grand mom's do at home . Although in their case all those ideas came up because of a entirely different need , a need to make do with what little they had available , in our time although the need is different the ideas still hold true I guess.

I strongly feel there is need to educate each and everyone around us about how our wasteful ways are impacting the planet earth and ya this is the only one we have so we better get it right this time around because as you guessed there is no second chance on this one.

The new age women(NAW) ...

Sitting in a group of people talking about women , you surely know what side I am on . I am always on the side of new age women , debating her responsibilities , her rights to freedom etc etc .

I was recently reading a book "Mother Pious Lady " which obviously warrants a new blog soon. I started thinking about what is definition of the new age women . We always find ourselves saying the NAW is the one who gets to choose what she wants in here life , she is no longer guided by what the man, in short the society thinks she should do and that is what defines her .

But if we were to closely analyse things ,is that really true ? I was just looking at all my fairer sex around me and analyzing what all of us spend the maximum time doing . The answer was right there staring at me - Shopping and looking good !!! . Beauty parlour visits , hair straightening , buying the new cute dresses in town , dieting ,gymming to get into the socially approved sizes and the list goes on . We are all pretty familiar with the sequence by now .

When we think of arranged marriage events of yester years where the girl was decked up in her best of finery for when the boy's family comes to visit her , asked to do a catwalk in front of prying eyes of the elder women of the boy's family , I am sure all of my friends "The new age women " can hear their inners churning with anger . Why are women being treated as show pieces , we the NAW will never stoop down to such levels . If a boy has to like us they should like us for what we are , the arguments are countless and never ending .

If we were to stop for a minute and look at all that we the NAW are doing the arranged marriage catwalk every day , every minute of our lives . We buy a new ( shorter!! ) dress every week , we do not allow ourselves to put on a ounce of weight , and at the end of the day all of us vie for same the approving looks from Non fair sex of the society .

USA is supposed to be the country of equal rights , men and women are equal , there is freedom of dress , speech etc . However the women have to come to regard meeting the societal standards of good looks also as one of their rights . She cannot face her partner without make up , the less is more now , showing some portion of the body is not enough , more needs to be shown each time . Even the lady who has all cures for souls in troubles , Oprah seems to offer the same mantra to women , high heels , color coded hair , tight clothes which you cannot breathe in , that is what is needed for you to find the real you .

Unfortunately I find myself getting to be a part of this race more and more everyday . I was once getting pictures taken for the so called shaadi.com and someone commented , pose delicately like a girl atleast for the picture otherwise no guy is going to marry you !!! . So is that all that is there to being a girl , posing delicately , wearing clothes that are super models have specified will be regarded as feminine , being size zero .

There is something that at a deeper levels makes us all feminine , our love , care , intuitiveness , the strength of character , our ability to place our families before ourselves . I hope our future role models can be so that we start to considerhoning these characteristics more important than

looking like some physically impossible divas.!!

Taking the bollywood out of our lives .!!

I was reading Midnights with Mystic and it got me thinking about the melodrama each one of us carries around in our lives. I guess mostly influenced by the emotional barrage that we see in bollywood movies :-) .

I have never been a very emotional person but have always had my moments of emotional outbursts . The happy moments I dnt really question but the sad ones I do . I think we as humans take ourselves too seriously at times and so when things do not turn out exactly the way that we want them to we start to despair coz this is not how we imagined our very own Bollywood movie to go .

Life is a just a beautiful story which we are watching playing on the big screen in front of us. We walk into the movie called life with no knowledge of how it is going to be and we live through it . Sometimes it turns out to be a awesome movie , other times a average one , but at the end of it that is what it is , just a movie that we are all supposed to njoy and then walk out off . So moral of the story eat all the popcorn you want , cry , laugh but at the end of it remember that it is just a movie which will end in the so called three hours . So why not make the most out of the movie and enjoy it to the fullest ?

I look at Bollywood movies that so dramatize the romance between the hero and the heroine, people going to the extent of killing themselves or giving up on their lives just because they lost a loved one . I often wonder after watching all that how much more of life could that person have experienced if they were not stuck in melodrama of that one single moment in their lives, if they could seen clearly through it and just said to themselves , "Ohh that turned out to be a not so ok experience , so let me just move on and see if there are any other interesting experiences to be had".

As some wise men have said most people have too many fanciful ideas about themselves and their future lives , if only the one person that you can be really honest with becomes you , right at that very moment all the melodrama will drop out of your lives .

My quest for my very own version of a simple , honest bollywood movie still continues :-)

Behind the scenes

The name NITR brings back many memories from the very first day of walking in the Ladies Hostel , till the final day of looking out of the auto to get one last peek at it . When we talk about the college days we talk about the hostel nites , our friends , the institute and its happening but one thing that almost always slips out is all those behind the scene people.

I think my college experience would not be complete if I do not mention these people . The first person that I still fondly remember is Chunni Opa , she was there was us every evening getting us all the things we wanted , she always had the most interesting stories to tell while she was taking attendance , she was also the person that I got to try out my oriya on and no matter how bad it was I always got encouragement from her . I will never forget her sincere attempts to find a Oriya Puo ( Good oriya boy ) for me to get married too. I think one of the most at home experiences that I had was when she invited us to her place for the pooja . Not just her all the Opas in the hostel were so helpful and forthcoming all the time , I am filled with gratitude for the love , care and the pampering that we got from all of them .

Who can forget Nakul bhaina , for every student in NIT JAM signified so many things , place to go when you grew tired of hostel food , place to hang around with friends , cool out the summer heat with infinite number of nimbu paani and lassi glasses and Nakul bhaina was the one who added the personal touch to it . I remember when I used walk in my final year into Jam and I would say Nakul bhaina ek coffee , he would finished the sentence by saying chini kam , dood zyada . That’s how well he knew all of us .

Then there was Nakul Bhaina for the mess , sameer ( hawa ka jhoka as we used to call him for serving us food ) , the maggi waali didi and all others who made hostel life so much simpler for us .

Moina bhai was always a permanent friend , giving us back door access to the printers in the SAC whenever we needed them . Everyone at the SAC office was almost like family to us , when we ran out of things to do we would drop in there and chat .

They say hostel becomes almost like a family away from family and all these people were surely one of the most loved people of our extended families

Life of insanity !!

Just finished reading Paulo Coehlo's Veronica decides to die . I find that I always find his passages very impactful . He has a amazing was of putting down life's great truths with some very simple words.

I have great respect for authors that can use simple words to convey the whole gamut of life. I always joke that I will one day sue authors ( primarily technical )who use really complicated terminology to communicate something really simple just for the heck of sounding intelligent. There is that complete other array of authors who try to make life sound more depressing that it is , the crime in their novels sounds more treacherous than it is ..all the stories are in darker shades of black ( i.e if there can be a shade darker than black , wherein lies the irony of their stories I believe ) . I can only manage detest for these authors.

Nyways coming back to this novel , I would think everyone should give this book a read , it very powerfully communicates the inevitability of dealth . If all of us believed our lives would end tmrw they would be so different , we will have not time for anything negative after all there is just one day left ...no one wants to die crying !!.

Rest I will leave it to Coehlo's words to communicate the meaning . This is written by a lady who had resorted to a life in mental asylum just because she found it too tough to go back to a normal society and confirming to the rules of the society . She thought living in a asylum was more of living because you got to be as insane as you wanted to and no one questioned it . But then because of a new young girl in the asylum who is about to die in a day she starts re-evaluating her understanding of life and insanity.

" But yesterday because of a piano and a young woman who is probably dead by now , i learned somthing very imp : Life inside is exactly same as the life outside . Both there and here people gather together in groups , they build their walls and allow nothing strange to trouble their mediocre existences. They do things becuase they're used to doing them , they study useless subjects , they have fun because they're suppossed to have fun and the rest of the world can go hang let them sort themselves out. At the very most they watch the news on television as we often did as confirmation of their happiness in a world full of problems and injustices."

The year of Art !!

I have decided to get back to writing my blog more often . I have so many interesting experiences happening around me and it would be a shame not to put them down in words .

I have been practically attending some or the other concert or a show every other week this past month . Added to that there has been the carnatic music class , the dance practices and the so called impromptu artsy stuff . It started with the Beyonce concert , that would be a tough act to beat in the shows i will ever witness in my life . The spectacle that was created in that live show was spectacular . The shows that came after that have been fun but now get compared each time to the Beyonce show and thus lose the race .

But then through all this there has been a new understanding or art and music . That art is of the higher realm , to be able to produce some kind of art a person needs to much more touch with his inner self , away from the head and able to listen to the voices around and inside him .

That is probably the reason why a brilliant piece of music or a wonderful piece of art has the capacity to instantly touch people because it touches the core of what we are and does not pertain to the logical understanding that each one of us develops out of our own accord.

Found this poem in my notes . Its in the book "Eleven minutes" . A simple and beautiful poem

For I am the first and the last

I am the venerated and the despised

I am the prostitute and the virgin

I am the mother and the daughter

I am the arms of my mother

I am barren and my children are many

I am the married woman and the spinster

I am the woman who gives birth and she

Who never procreated

I am the consolation for the pain of birth

I am the wife and the husband

And it was my man who created me

I am the mother of my father

I am the sister of my husband

And he is my rejected son

Always respect me

For I am the shameful and the magnificent one

Hymn to Isis , third or fourth century BC

Destiny

One of our all time favorite topics . Is there something called destiny , do we create our own destiny , is it all upto us ?

For me my opinion on destiny has been changing over the years but the pattern has been somewhat like this . When things are going great then it is I create my own destiny , when things hit a rough patch or more accurately when I have trouble keeping up with some of my tough decisions , then it is destiny and that is how it was meant to happen .

So past few years have gotten me to think on this subject believing and unbelieving it at the same time . It was only recently when I read an excerpt by Jaggi Vasudev that something struck a cord . He says 100 years ago if a 4 year kid died of a disease we would say it is his destiny . Today we have methods to make sure that a 4 year old kid does not die , what happened to his destiny now , we have changed our destinies.

Man has been meddling with nature in so many ways , when the first ice age occurred that destroyed all dinosaurs it was the destiny of dinosaurs . But now if we drown due to global warming it is destiny , we have created this . Man is becoming his own creator in certain ways .

As we are becoming more aware of our surrounding and the laws that guide it , a lot of things are coming out of the purview of destiny . It is only the things that we dnt understand that still fall under the label of destiny .

The thing that got me thinking more deeply on this was showing of horoscopes before marriage that is still very religiously followed in india . 50 years back a girl was married of to a guy from one of the families that were related to us or stayed in the same village as us . That was the extent of our social circle and so the girl's destiny lay in that village . Now we use the internet to find matches and are reaching out to people who we could not have contacted or even thought about 50 years back . So internet has changed our destinies in a certain way . Even after meddling with our destinies in so many ways we still believe that the stars above will tell us how each one of our lives are going to be .

Sadhguru says if you were to leave your life and death both in the hands of the creater then you can say " Ohh this is my destiny and this is how it is supposed to be " but now we want to meddle with our lives as well as our death and still believe destiny will take care of everything .

Maybe that to an extent is the problem with India too , we still believe God will come and take care of everything for us . It is high time we realize he will not , either we stop changing all of his creations to suit us ( which we would not ...) or take things into our hands and build them up responsibly.

Miracles do happen

I wrote the last blog about how I had decided not to run the race and was really disappointed about it . My friends and my sister kept telling me till the end something would work out but I was the one who had run with painful knee and I knew this was not something that is going to work out .

The come friday I just dropped in my running shoes , just incase I felt like running . So while driving to duluth my friends kept coaxing me alteast run a mile , how can you stand there and look at those people who are running ...all the while i kept saying ya we will see . I was so terrified I will have to make a decision in the morning about running the race that I could not sleep the whole night . I kept looking at the alarm clock just hoping it will not go off .

So when I got up in the morning the easiest thing seemed to be to just put on my race clothes, get there on track and hope that I can pull myself to the 3rd mile so that my friends can come and pick me up .

Well the race started and in no time I was at the 3 mile marker , my friends were out there waiting for me , surprisingly no pain yet ..i told them meet me at 5 mile marker , i will drop out there ... they met me again at the 6 mile marker , no pain still . I told myself if I can make it to 7 miles without any pain I am finishing this race by hook or crook . So miles kept going on and I managed to run all of . All the while I kept telling myself this could not be happening , this is a miracle and I am so happy I am a part of it .

In retrospect it just seems like if you really want to do something , things have a way of turning out ..my sister kept telling me that all along and then all the wonderful friends I have who gave me the push at the right moment . Had they not pushed me I would have been standing on the sidelines wondering how it would have been if I had run .

The more I run the more it is turning out to be life changing for me . Running no longer is about physical fitness , it has a lot more surreal experiences attached to it and I am lucky to have experienced them .