Mind Monologues

Observing

2012-01-28T10:34:00.001+05:30

Whenever someone compliments me, I do feel happy. However, I immediately move to witness consciousness and see a part of me feeling happy. I also notice that the part that feels happy wants more of it, the compliments sound like music to that part and it expands.

Whenever someone criticizes me, I do feel sad. However,I quickly move to witness consciousness and see a part of me feeling sad. I also notice that the part that feels sad wants less of it, the criticism feels like poison to that part and it shrivels.

And then I ask myself, who am I? The part that expands or contracts depending on the external stimuli or the part that observes myself reacting, feeling.

The more I stay in this mode, the more I realize that I'm the latter. And it starts to feel good without any external influence. In that moment, I realize that 'I just am' and the moment becomes bliss.

Amen!

And there is nothing else

2011-12-31T11:59:00.002+05:30

I'm the flower bearing the fragrance
and the fragrance that graces the air.
I'm the wind that carries it far
and the nose that smells it too.

I'm the eye that sees the stars
and the mind that guesses their shapes.
I'm the stars burning bright far away
and the space that separates them.

I'm the chicken that is hacked
and the butcher that hacks it.
I'm the act of butchering as well
and the one who eats it.

I'm the sound that your ear hears
and the source that creates it.
I'm the touch that the skin feels
and the hand that tingles it.
I'm the taste the tongue gets
and the food that melts with it.

I'm the love that unites all
and the fear that separates.
I'm the God you love to love
and the devil you love to fear.
I'm this and that and
everything in between.

I'm the best virtue
and the worst vice.
I'm the one you laud
and that which you loathe.
I'm the best form you see
and the formless unseen.
I'm bigger than the universe and
smaller than an atom.
I'm what I'm and what I'm not,
I'm it all.
I'm all there is,
and there is nothing else.

मंज़िल

2011-12-02T03:27:00.004+05:30

तन्हाई मेरा पेहला प्यार भी है

और मेरा पेहला डर भी.

तुझसे जुदाई मेरी पेहली तमन्ना भी है

और आखरी आरज़ू भी.

तेरे बिना ही सबकुछ हूँ मैं

पर तेरे बिना कुछ भी नहीं.

किस सच को चुनना है मुझे

इस बात से बेख़बर भी नहीं.

तू मेरी मंज़िल नहीं

ये पता है मुझे,

फिर क्यों बार बार

तू ऐसे सताए मुझे?

मेरी मंज़िल इसी पल में है

पर मुकाम है मीलों दूर भी.

इस पल में और सब कुछ है

काश होती थोड़ी ज़िन्दगी भी.

जीना था मुझे खुलके

जब तूने जकड़े रखा था,

अब जब कोई पकड़ नहीं

तो क्यों जी नहीं पा रहा?

ऐ खुदा मुझे ये बता

क्यों बनाया मुझे तूने ऐसा?

जो है उसे छोड़कर क्यों

जो नहीं उसके पीछे मैं प्यासा?

Presence

2011-11-26T02:43:00.003+05:30

I feel the tap of my foot as I walk

and the hum of my throat as I talk.

I hear the hiss of the wind in my ear

and the ruffle in the breeze of my hair.

I see the shift in the gear of my mind;

the future and the past it runs behind.

I see the guilt trips I take so often

and the anxieties I invite all of a sudden.

I witness the fear that traps me

and the delusions that lure me.

I take cognizance of every thought I think

and observe also its demise in a blink.

I accept these digressions and bless them as me,

they peter out as I let them just be.

As my thoughts dry, silence pervades;

as time ceases, the moment prevails.

The conscious me gives way to consciousness.

What remains is omnipresence and only presence.

Goose-bumps

2011-10-02T22:30:00.002+05:30

“Rupa, stay close and don’t go outside the gate,” said the mother to her five year-old daughter who having released her hand from her mother's grasp as they entered the premises of the ancient temple, went around jumping playfully. Rupa assumed an unspoken state of safety within the walls and, by extrapolation, a permission to roam freely. The walls were built with unsteadily cut fossilised shingles. The flooring was a patchwork of large, unequal rocks, cut roughly - just enough not to cut the feet, yet with enough crests for a natural acupressure.

The mother turned left towards a rusty iron shoe rack. She slipped out of her overused slippers, and pushed them gently in the bottom row of the rack. The morning sun was still gentle on her naked feet. She washed her feet under a tap jutting out from a roughly cemented wall. The place for ablution was sloped to draw water along a furrow and irrigate trees and shrubs.

The mother was fair with large black eyes, pointed nose, chiseled cheekbone, wrinkled face that was too early for her age thanks to bearing and rearing seven children. She was tall but slightly bent from the back, graying and shapeless, the sort of woman most men would look through. Vermillion marked her hair partition, a mangalsutra, a special necklace worn by married Hindu women, graced her neck and bangles stacked up her slender wrists. The free end of the brown sari brocaded with golden designs covered her head signaling her elegant marital modesty. She effused genteelness and a sense of peace.

Rupa turned right and went about merrily humming sweet nothings in her shrill girly voice that tore into the silence of the temple. She seemed to be blossoming from the most beautiful gene of her mother. Her beauty made her parents call her ‘Rupa’, beauty. She wore a peach frock with a lot of frills, with greenish lilies weaved into it. Her shoulder length hair fluttered in the mild wind as did the hem of her frock. She looked like a younger self of her mother, only more beautiful.

Rupa spotted a bench facing the deity, ran and sat at the edge amidst broken twigs, dry leaves and stone-hard berries that had fallen from the overhead foliage formed from an imposing banyan, an intruding neem and an ambitious jujube tree. She started swinging her feet as she pulled herself deeper into the bench, breaking a twig and crushing a leaf in the process. A chappal slipped out of her swinging feet and arced its way to the ground a few feet from her.

Rupa jumped out of the bench immediately, both hands covering her open mouth in the shock that she had flung her footwear in the direction of the God. She looked at her mother, who cast a disapproving look back at her.

“Come up with me,” the mother said sternly as she began climbing the flight of stairs leading to the actual temple, “leave your chappals there,” she pointed at the bench where Rupa sat.

Dutifully, Rupa goes to bring back the defected chappal, looking around to ensure no one else witnessed her ‘ungodly’ act. To her horror, a bald priest, sitting cross-legged on the floor in a nearby corner, was smiling at her. He wore a white dhoti; a white clothe covered most of his chest, a sacred thread ran leisurely across his torso.

‘Tong, tong,’ rang the bell in the temple.

The priest gestured with his hands, calling her towards him. She was always told to respect the priests. Having committed one sin, she didn’t want to commit another by disobeying him so she went to him despite herself, hesitating, repenting, scared.

“I’m sorry,” she started apologising before the priest could begin, “I will not do that again.” She almost choked, ready to cry at the slightest hint of rebuke from the priest.

“That’s ok my dear,” said the priest with a benign smile, “God is very kind, he has forgiven you already.”

“Has he?” asked Rupa, not able to believe her ears, instant relief returning to her face.

“Oh yes, he has,” the priest declared before adding, “and he will give you whatever you ask for with a pure heart.”

“Namami shamishan nirvan rupam, vibhum vyapakan brahma veda swaroopam,” the conversation was broken as Rupa’s mother began singing the Sanskrit hymn called Rudrashtak. Both Rupa and the priest glanced in the direction of the sound before returning to each other.

“Will he?” Rupa’s face lit up, eyes widened, “Will he give me a chocolate?” her mouth was agape even after she finished the question.

“Yes,” said the priest, guffawing, “so go now, join your mother.” He lovingly patted her shoulder as she left.

“Chocolate, chocolate …” Rupa recited excitedly as she scurried back to the bench, took off her footwear, placed them properly beside each other and ran towards the stairs, full of anticipation.

Her mother sat cross-legged next to a Shiva-linga, the presiding deity of the temple. She melodiously recited the famous Sanskrit hymn Rudrashtak even as her body swayed to the tune. The free end of her sari had come off her head.

“Nirakar omkar moolam turiyam, giragyan gotitamisham girisham…”

Rupa bowed to the Lord from the top of the stairs. She jumped a couple of times in a vain attempt to ring the bell hung overhead. Too high. She scampered through to her mother whose eyes were closed and looked completely lost in devotion. As Rupa’s hand gently brushed her mother’s forearm she immediately lifted it as if she was pin-pricked. She noticed that her mother had goose-bumps all over her hand. A vein stood out from the left of her neck. Rupa’s eyes surveyed her mother’s skin: upper arm, back, shoulder, neck, cheek – everything that her blouse and sari could not cover – horripilation all the way.

Rupa had never noticed her mother this way. She realised this was not normal. She felt her own arms to see if the same happened to her. No. Nothing of the sort happened, nor did she recollect having ever experienced such a thing.

Rupa’s original reason for excitement – chocolate – was well and truly forgotten. She noticed how beautiful her mother looked in the devotional trance. Her face radiated a divine glow, a bliss that did not belong to earth; she had lost all sense of time and space. Melody came to her as if by some other worldly intervention. Rupa’s attention transferred from her mother’s physicality to the mellifluous hymn. The symphony of Sanskrit incantations stirred something in her soul. Rupa suddenly wanted to be there, in the thick of things, in the heat of the action. She suddenly hankered to sing the hymn like her mother, add to the symphony.

A prayer came straight from Rupa’s soul, into her heart and onto her mouth, “Oh God, I do not know how to sing this like my mother. Could you please make me sing this hymn of yours like her?” she beseeched.

Nothing happened. Her mother continued her blissful recital – unaware of her daughter’s evolving fascination from chocolate to devotion.

Rupa placed her hand gently on her mother’s shoulder.

She opened her mouth, as if guided by some invisible force, and out came the miraculous words, “Tusharadri sankash gauram gabhiram,” she matched her mother, word for word, tone for tone, incantation for incantation, “manobhoot koti prakahshri shariram.” The miracle happened. She started singing the Rudrashtak as if she had known it for years. It all came to her, and it was overwhelming for a five year old.

Rupa found herself swaying in sync with her mother. In the middle of the recital, she felt immense gratitude for Lord Shiva, to whom she bowed in obeisance. There was peace, joy, bliss and love effusing from within her.

She was all that her mother was, and more. All the mirth emanating from within made her hair stand out, opened every pore of her body as she experienced for the first time in her life – goose-bumps.

When he chose

2011-09-19T01:40:00.005+05:30

When he chose to hear his heart's symphony,
he became a musician.

When he chose to wrap his thoughts in words,
he became a poet.

When he chose not to curse,
he became blessed.

When he chose not to resist,
he became a channel.

When he chose not to be a hero or a villain,
he became divine.

When he chose not to do but to be,
he became a spirit.

When he chose not to 'mind',
he became the soul.

When he chose silence,
he became enlightened.

When he chose love,
he became God.

Backpackers trip from Dubai to Salalah

2011-09-10T22:22:00.012+05:30

Four backpackers decided in four minutes to go for a four day spontaneous trip on a four-wheel drive. The trip involved more than 3000 kms of road trip from dazzling Dubai to scenic Salalah in Oman. The unplanned excursion, coupled with our total lack of preparation, had all the ingredients of making a colourful journey with emotions ranging from exhilaration to despair and ecstasy to fear, terrain from swathes of extreme desert to wild green forests to tempestuous seas.

The pitfalls of a totally unplanned trip were many, but having come out safely, we've created memories to last a lifetime. The trip had so many wow moments that with each we felt we had reached a peak of amazement, only to realize later that we concluded too soon.

Here I list the events in increasing order of 'wow'ness.

1. Driving through flood waters : We were cruising nicely between Ibri and Natih with an uneventful but comfortable journey behind us when we hit a roadblock. A string of vehicles had stopped ahead of us in the middle of nowhere, the only sources of light being the headlights. A bunch of Omani locals were perched on a small hill by the road side. We came out of the car to a loud gurgle of water streaming through forcefully across the road. We saw water gushing forcefully in what was otherwise an absolutely dry desert, with cars waiting on either side of the stream, their headlights dancing on the wild waters. Going back was not an option. So we moved on slowly, praying hard, after watching some other cars cross it. While in the stream, we could feel the force of water pushing the Prado, thumping against its body. We crossed it amidst wild cheers of jubilation and sighs of relief from all four of us. Half an hour later, however, we faced the second similar challenge. The flow here was more forceful than the previous one. Worse, we were the only ones at the spot. With no precedent or familiarity of the road, we needed a leap of faith to go through this one. We crossed it much more slowly and with fervent prayers. The celebration though was muted this time for we didn't know how many more we would face. Luckily, that was the last one.

2. Entering Salala: I was sleeping when excited cries of my friends woke me. It was 6:30 am and mild mist was all around us. The windows were rolled down. The breeze had a cool, wet spunk that made us shiver mildly. The sun roof was also rolled back as I moved up. A sloppy road was swamped on both sides by a sheet of lush green grass covering the valley. The leaves of the trees rustled in the breeze. The whole ambiance had a salubrious naturalness to it. Rambling across lazily on the road were camels that ironically were a misfit in this part of the gulf. This became a wow moment for us because for the first time in the middle east, we saw a place where the only colour around us was 'a natural green' in the lap of mystic ease.

3. Sea water springs: We travelled westward from Salalah towards ‘Al Mughsayl beach’ where we saw for the first time almost white beach sand and clouds covering the mountain tops. The road ahead reached the foothill of the distant mountains and disappeared into the clouds.

But the real wow moment was at the ‘Al Marnif Cave.’ How many times in your life, can you bathe from water jetting up from the ground? No more words, just the video.

4. From dry desert to thick forest in less than 2 kms: the best of Salala is in the wadis (valleys), not in the town, in the narrow alleys, not on the main roads and in the cradle of nature, not in the tomb of concrete. The mantra for astounding yourself is to take the most unassuming diversions off the main road, avoiding the popular and choosing the road less travelled. We did that and were treated to some of the best views of our lives. The most unbelievable experience is the temperature that drops in a space of one to two kms even as the terrain changes from hot desert to lush green forest, from dry plains to pleasant hilly springs with streams gurgling down forming small waterfalls every now and then. These beautiful valleys were ‘Ayn Tabraq’ and ‘Wadi Darbat.’

5. The caves: When nature chisels some gravity defying sculptures in the caves of a dense valley, you get the beauty of ‘Ayn Athun’. A picturesque drive through zig zag and steep roads takes you to this cavernous destination. Mild drizzles welcome you as you amble across smelling the sweet earthy perfume under the shade of trees on either side of the pathway. The trail opens into a large bowl amidst gasps of disbelief as you find yourself at the bottom staring at 20 meter high fossilized rocks showcasing brilliantly eerie contours. The carvings resemble snouts of various legendary predators hanging upside down ready to pounce on you any moment but frozen by some invisible power. A rendezvous of this place at night can spook you to death. Better go there in the day time.

6. Heaven on earth: We travelled east from Salalah with an aim to go along the beach road on the way to Muscat. After Sadah we crossed most of the dry hilly terrain and we were about to reach Hadbin when we all screamed simultaneously, our mouths left agape for a while, for what we saw felt like heaven on earth. Everything about that view was perfect. The booming Arabian sea to the right, almost white sand sheathing the landscape, hillocks peppered around stretching the oceanic tidal effect to land and a big black mountain at the far end next to the beach. The sand blanketed the landscape till the base of the mountain with clouds kissing the top. The play of light, the angelic whiteness, the hum of the waves, and the cold breeze hissing through our ears and flapping our clothes was the most divine moment of the journey.

7. sandwitched between roaring sea and imposing mountains: Soon after we crossed Hadbin, we screamed, yelled, laughed and cried our hearts out for a good 15 minutes because the mesmerizing beauty of the scene just wouldn’t end. We stopped hooting only when our divine spirits were bound by the physical limitations of our throats and bodies. This was by far the best moment of our journey. The sky displayed its bounty with a generous spread of clouds. The unencumbered breeze blew much more powerfully now. It carried with it the high tide of the seas that roared tumultuously, hitting the rocks next to our road splaying water all around. On the left were imposing mountains, at times perilously tilting over the roads, as if ready to attack if the sea dared to trespass. We felt sandwiched between two warring factions - the tenacity of water pitted against the dogged determination of rocks. This experience continued for almost 30 kms, by which time it became dark. At the end of that stretch we reached a dead end, facing a huge mountain in front and left of us, the sea to the right. Small rocks, big enough to smash a car, littered the ground all around us – it didn’t take us long to realize that we had reached a mountain blasting site. The only way forward was backward.

We enquired in the neighbouring villages and found that the road ahead was being constructed. Worse was the fact that the only way to go to Muscat was to go back to Salalah (200 kms) and then take another route. We were crestfallen and too shocked to whine, our shoulders were down as we started our long journey back. Nobody spoke for a while as all of us stared blankly outside the window into the darkness until one of us dared to see positivity in this. And then we all agreed that we would not have driven 200 kms to see some of the best visions of our life had we known that the road ahead was blocked. This suddenly brought the realization that whatever happened, happened for the best and couldn’t have happened in any other way. The thought cheered us and we started our singing and humming between the uproarious sea and the belligerent mountains. They had switched sides now, but were still at loggerheads.

8. The Mist: Upon reaching Salalah again we found that the hotels were full. So we had to drive back towards Dubai hoping to find some place to rest along the way. Just as we reached the outskirts of Salalah where the green valleys began, we hit clouds of thick mist that reduced the visibility to barely a meter. I was shaken out of my slumber once again by sighs of disbelief. The journey had many surprises but this one was the most dangerous, thanks to our unfamiliarity to the terrain. What could we do afterall, if we can’t even see? We reduced the speed to below 20 and allowed a local taxi to overtake us. We then followed it very closely until the visibility was slightly better. By then we were tired of these dangerous surprises. Our silent prayers were heard in that moment so we didn’t have any further surprises. The next day’s drive was largely uneventful.

I read somewhere that the quality of your life is defined by the answer to the question ‘when was the last time, you did something for the first time?’ Our proud answer is ‘last week.’

For all those who want to go on such excursions, here are a few suggestions:

Go with a map provided by Oman Visa authority when you enter Oman: We used different routes while going and coming The shorter route from Dubai to Salalah is : Dubai - Al Ain - Ibri - Adam - Al Ghabah - Hayma - Muqshin - Qitbit - Thumrayt - Salala. Note that Hatta route is much longer compared to Al Ain route if you want to go to Salalah.
Qitbit has a decent rest house where you can stay for the night. Hayma too has one.
Don’t let your fuel tank go below half way point anytime. You can never be sure when the next petrol pump will come. However, the maps do indicate the petrol pumps with fair amount of accuracy.
Take a good chunk of music cd, dvd, mp3s with you.
The spellings of the names mentioned here and on the map are different from the actual signs. Actually, the spellings will differ between signboards too. So go by the phonetic version more than the actual spelling.

सोच

2011-09-03T12:48:00.001+05:30

सोच रहा हूँ की ये क्या सोच रहा हूँ मैं,

सोच सोच कर ये क्या खोज रहा हूँ मैं?

सोच में इतना कैसे डूब गया?

की मैं सोच नहीं ये भी भूल गया.

भीड़ में अकेला करती है सोच,

और तन्हाई में भीड़ को चाहती भी.

जो है पास उससे दूर करती है सोच,

और दूरी को नजदीकियां बनाती भी.

मुझको मुझसे छुपाती है सोच,

और मुझे तुमसे मिलाती भी.

मेरे अधूरेपन का एहसास है सोच,

और वही तुमसे प्यार जताती भी.

मेरे हर डर का जज़्बात है सोच,

और हिम्मत की हर आस भी.

कभी पल से ज़िन्दगी छिनती है सोच,

और कभी ज़िन्दगी में पल भरती भी.

साँसों में साँसें उलझाती है सोच,

और कभी मुश्किलें सुलझाती भी.

जीने की वो हर आरज़ू है सोच,

और मरने की हर तमन्ना भी.

मेरे बचपन की वो यादें है सोच,

और बुढ़ापे की लाठी भी.

मेरा कल, आज और कल है सोच,

पर मुझे बनाती और मिटाती भी.

सोच नहीं तो क्या हूँ मैं?

इस बात से अंजान हूँ मैं.

सोच नहीं तो मेरा अस्तित्व क्या है?

सोच नहीं तो मेरी परिभाषा क्या है?

मेरे जीवन की कहानी है ये सोच,

घटना नहीं पर मेरा अनुवाद है सोच,

मुझे मुझमें उलझाए रखना है इसको

कुछ और ना सही, एक नशा है सोच.

The epiphany in Ramadan

2011-08-21T21:18:00.002+05:30

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep.

Mohammed was driving merrily, humming the Hindi song playing on FM when a loud, irritating honking from some mad fellow behind him drew his attention over the melody. He looked from the rear view mirror. A black Dodge Charger was behind him.

Mohammed realized that it was the same car he honked at two minutes back as it tried to enter the main road from a service lane barely a couple of meters ahead of him. Mohammed had to swerve slightly even as he honked to draw the attention of the driver. Mohammed knew it was not his fault for he had the right of way by virtue of being on the main road. Mohammed was relieved that no damage was done. The matter was forgotten. He moved on.

Apparently, Mohammed was wrong. On closer observation he found that the driver was wearing a white headscarf. In Dubai, this meant only one thing: Mohammed –and he prayed hard that the honking was not for him - had brushed a UAE national the wrong way. It was a bad state to be in as it is but Mohammed couldn’t have chosen a worse time: Ramadan, the month of fasting and 4 pm in the august heat – a perfect recipe for road rage. An Indian expat has a better chance at winning a bullfight in Spain than an argument with a starving , crossed UAE national.

Mohammed had heard stories of plain-clothed CIDs roaming around Dubai catching law breakers. He pulled over fearing that if he had bumped into one of them then any further delay in complying would only make matters worse. Mohammed switched off the radio. The charger stopped parallel to him. Mohammed heard angry outburst as the window rolled down and the face behind the tinted glass revealed itself from top to bottom like a photo materializing on a slow internet connection. A black rope called ‘aqal’ securing a white headscarf called ‘gotra’, a tuft of white hair hanging lazily, lines marking the forehead, eyebrows kissing each other in livid frenzy portending of a soon to be materialized fountainhead of abuses, dark eyes glowering on its prey, a nose that was flushed red, cheeks hanging loosely over his face like an appendage and vibrating forcefully with every sound he produced, his mouth alternating between gnarling canines and spitting invectives - a fuming octogenarian hurling abuses in broken Hindi.

“What do you bloody think of yourself, you mother**%$er? You think this is your dad’s road, you sister**%$er? Who gave you the license?”

Mohammed’s heart sank. He couldn’t have chosen a worse luck – Ramadan, a hungry, angry UAE national and to top it all, an 80 something old man. The last factor increased manifold the odds against Mohammed who had occasionally seen impatient, temperamental, aged UAE nationals breaking in the queues at various government offices and forcing their way through. The authorities would give in meekly with those in the queue seeking consolation in exchange of frustrated glances. As the damage was done, Mohammed realized that the only way to prevent further murkiness was by surrendering. This was a battle he could not win, so he had to lose – in that loss was his pyrrhic victory.

The old man jumped out of his car, repeating the same questions and abuses in the same order as if rehearsing a dialogue with the intensity of a maniacal actor. He placed his hands at the car door, tried shaking it violently. He yanked Mohammed’s seat belt, pushed the head cushion to startle him, all the while continuing to abuse. Mohammed was calm and non-reactive. That seemed to have angered the old man a lot more.

“How dare you honk at me?” The old man revealed his real problem for the first time, “You bloody mother**%$er, not knowing how to drive and honking at me. How dare you? I will show you now.”

“But you were in the service lane –” Mohammed couldn’t resist justifying, in-spite of having decided on surrender.

“Shut up you bastard,” the old man interrupted him thumping his frail, shaking hands on the car door and then in one frustrated motion punched Mohammed on his cheek.

Mohammed’s heart stopped, his fists clenched, hair on his body stood up, the calmness on his face flushed out and was replaced by seething indignation. Although the old man’s mild punch did not hurt him, Mohammed could not stand being punched for something that was not his fault. He immediately transported himself into a virtual reality where he punched the old man and broke his jaw, punched him again causing him to bleed profusely, shoved him to the ground, crushed his head between the tar road and his hands and pulverized him to dust.

Mohammed didn’t hear anything after that. He was shaking internally with a revenge he could not take, a rage he could not release, an insult he could not pay back – simply because he was stuck against a mad man in his own backyard.

The old man blabbered a lot more, noted Mohammed’s car number and silently drove off. Mohammed stared blankly at the Charger that went off silently, quite a contrast from how it approached him. He sat there, livid, shivering and yet motionless as if the whole body had gone numb. The old man, having vented his anger and gratified his vanity, passed his state of being to Mohammed with that one touch – a game of passing the parcel.

After what seemed like an eternity, Mohammed returned to his senses and blinked. He rolled up his window and drove off slowly. He didn’t bother to switch on the FM.

At home, he tossed his office bag, sank into the sofa and kept staring blankly at the floor. His mind still replaying the punch and what he could’ve done in reciprocation, but didn’t. The shivering subsided but the suffering seemed to be growing with every passing moment.

Mohammed thought that the spirit of the fast was broken in the way the old man acted. If a fasting man cannot take in the right sense a cautionary honk that ensures his own safety then who else will? Ego was at its peak when it should have been seeing the bottom. Whatever happened to compassion and forgiveness? Mohammed was drowning under a deluge of fundamental questions. He was tired and wanted to run away and stop the thoughts.

He switched on the television to divert his mind. A monk with a divine peace on his face was addressing a small gathering. But Mohammed wasn’t interested. He tried to change the channel but the TV stopped responding. Having just had the most anti-spiritual experience, he was in no mood to listen to a spiritual discourse. He cursed his room-mate Kapil for watching this stupid babble and worsening his misery. Mohammed tried to ignore the proceedings but he was not at peace, the disturbing thoughts stalked him all the time. Reluctantly, he resigned to listening to the monk.

“Have you heard of the parable of the soul?” asked the monk with a simple, unadulterated smile.

Mohammed sighed as he realized that the monk was about to give some moral science lecture. The camera showed some of his disciples shaking their head in response to the monk’s question.

“There was once a soul who wanted to experience forgiveness.” said the monk, “The soul asks God to help it experience forgiveness as an aspect of Godliness. Another soul comes forward and offers itself for helping the first soul fulfill its wishes. But why will you do that asked the first soul. Because I love you said the second.”

Mohammed chuckled, not being able to gather what was going on. But in spite of himself, he started getting curious.

“But what will you do to make me experience forgiveness asked the first soul." the monk continued, “We both will go to the physical universe, to the planet earth, and I will cause to hurt you in some way said the second. But if you love me, why will you hurt me, asked the first soul, confused. How else will you experience forgiveness my beloved if I do nothing that you perceive as hurt, asked the second soul rhetorically.

I just ask one thing in return, the second soul added. Anything, said the first, overjoyed at getting the opportunity to gratify its desire.

When I do the worst possible harm to you, when I’m unkind to you, when I insult you for none of your fault, please remember who we both are, don’t forget the promise you made me. Don’t curse me for hurting you or you will not experience forgiveness, the very purpose of our interaction.

Oh, I will always remember you and my promise - my dearest one, promised the first soul.”

The monk closed his eyes for a while and asked the gathering, “Do you remember your promises now?”

The monk now opened his eyes and looked straight at the camera, “Whenever you have been hurt, have you remembered the promise you made to your beloved soul? Do you now recollect that any harm done to you is an opportunity for you to grow through forgiveness? Do you now realize that a hurt in the physical world is an act of highest love in the astral world?”

The monk’s loving eyes pierced and startled Mohammed who instantly realized that the question was meant for him. Tears rolled down his eyes as he grasped the lesson behind the disturbing incident. He cried profusely at the revelation, at the feeling of true love and compassion, and for this most amazing remembrance. The tears washed away his anger, indignation, hurt and the feeling of revenge.

The octogenarian was no longer a thorn of a memory. Mohammed had now remembered his true self and the promise he made to God through this old man. Mohammed not only forgave the old man but he also felt he could give him the biggest loving hug of his life if they ever met again. He even thanked his roommate for watching this channel, which gave him the biggest leap of faith during one of the toughest trials in his life.

Mohammed now realized that life at every moment gave us a choice between modesty and pride, love and hatred, forgiveness and revenge, joy and suffering, compassion and anger, faith and doubt. The one we choose will define the quality of our lives. We may get where we want to be in any case, but choosing the first will make the journey much more enjoyable.

Mohammed got goose-bumps as he realized that this learning was like an epiphany straight from Allah. A divine blessing that helped him live the spirit of Ramadan through forgiveness.

Lost in deep thoughts, he inadvertently pressed the remote buttons and lo! The channel changed. Mohammed chuckled and looked up at the ceiling. He smiled, for he knew the secret now – the whole universe conspired to give him this experience.

Demystifying faith

2011-08-06T22:59:00.002+05:30

Faith is a science that science has yet to fathom.

Faith is beyond hope.

Faith is the exhilaration of a kid knowing he is safe even as he is thrown playfully in the air.

Faith is the song of a lark that knows that night is about to die.

Faith is the swagger in the dance of a peacock welcoming the rain.

Faith is what makes you shiver in winter and perspire in summer.

Faith is what brings night after day and day after night.

Faith is a knowing of a certainty that it is given to you even before you ask.

Faith is a gratitude in advance for its deliverance.

Faith is a knowing that the question is not ‘if’ but ‘when.’

Faith is not having to worry.

Faith is not believing in an alternate possibility.

Faith is knowing that oneness.

Faith is pure love.
Faith is surrender but not cowardice.
Science says seeing is believing.
Faith says believing is seeing.

वो क्या है

2011-07-30T14:21:00.001+05:30

चांदी की चादर ओढ़े नाचती हैं किरनें नदी पर

ख़ुशी की धुप में गुनगुनाती हैं यादें ज़मीन पर

गम की छाँव में झिलमिलाती है चांदनी रात

ज़िन्दगी की हर सोच पर आज करनी है कुछ बात

सोच के ताबूत में आज कैद है हर आवाज़

बांध की दीवारों में बंद है हर झील का साज़

काँटों के सेज पर बिची है हर फूल की सुहास

नियमों की मोहताज है आज हमारी हर सांस

प्रतिबन्ध का प्रतिबिम्ब है आज हर ज़िन्दगी

मुझे आज़ाद करो, ये कहती है हर बंदगी

इंसान ने इंसान को जकड़े रखा है क्यों?

खुदा की ज़मीन पर ये बेड़ियाँ है क्यों?

आज़ाद होना है, पर आज़ाद करना नहीं

जाना यहाँ से है, पर रहना फिरभी है यहीं

वो क्या है जो मैं समझ नहीं पाता हूँ

मेरी नासमझी है, या लोगों की अंधी आरज़ू

क्यों दुनिया की स्पर्धा में बिचड रहा हूँ मैं?

क्यों हर दुनियादारी से पिछड़ रहा हूँ मैं?

वो क्या है जो सदियों से ढूंढ रहा हूँ मैं?

The slave that turned master

2011-07-22T22:37:00.000+05:30

I once found a young one,

small, supple and docile.

I fostered it in incubation

to save it from the worldly guile.

We played a lot together.

It was fun, him with me.

Slowly we got used to each other

and became our mutual destiny.

As he grew, he changed form,

faithful and sturdy and strong.

He helped my tasks perform

and scared the beasts that jungles throng.

As if many lives woven in days,

he now mutated more rapidly.

Daily, he revealed many facets:

the good, the bad and the ugly.

He intrigued me and fascinated me,

he helped me and fed my dependence.

He entertained me and beguiled me,

he tricked and ruined my independence.

He now danced at my fingertips,

like a puppet to a puppeteer.

But it was I for his keeps,

a pet that hid a monster.

The beast was meant to serve me,

yet he managed to enslave me.

His mutations reflected my changing psychology,

this beast that I call ‘Technology’.

The hare and the tortoise

2011-06-04T20:35:00.001+05:30

Once upon a time in a jungle,

there was a hare and a tortoise.

Proud was the hare of its feet - so nimble,

slow was his friend, but oh - so wise!

Bragged his way to glory one day,

the hare spoke thus, with a swagger,

“Heavy as a rock you better stay,

while I cut through the woods like a dagger.”

“What good are your feet that make you lumber?

Ugly, thick, can’t run you out of danger.

What use is your sheath, this constant encumber?

Every few spaces, it forces you to slumber.”

“Soft as a velvet, I am my dear friend,”

thus he mouthed his praises galore,

“swift as a lightning am I through the land,

and faster I get forever more.”

Wise as he was, the slow tortoise,

silence he chose over repartee.

He moved on, slowly, at his own pace,

without joining in the hare’s party.

The monkeys overhead started howling,

signaling that life was in imminent danger.

Scared, ran off the hare – jumping,

shriveled the tortoise within his manger.

Soon enough, a jackal came hurtling,

bared its canines to tortoise for biting.

The tortoise’s bane was now his blessing,

for it sent the jackal further for hunting.

The tortoise moved on and later found,

tufts of velvet-soft hair strewn around,

and beautiful feet scattered on the ground,

the hare’s pride couldn’t keep him sound.

Saddened, the wise tortoise spoke aloud,

“Let pride never be the rudder of your life,

for your judgments, it will forever cloud,

and shred you to pieces with its sharp knife.”

“There is always someone faster than the fastest,

and surely there is, stronger than the strongest,

your real strength is but inside yourself,

so learn to go within when facing a tempest."

I dare life

2011-05-21T02:33:00.000+05:30

My life is

a miracle waiting to happen,

a lark singing in the dawn,

a peacock ushering the rain,

a pleasure that follows the pain,

a lotus about to blossom,

a seed pushing earth’s bosom.

For I have now known

that I have nothing to do,

rather only to be

what I choose to be,

and hear the voice of my heart,

and sing my soul’s tune without a doubt.

I’m beginning to believe,

that I’m the creator of my destiny.

To the universe, hence I declare my intention,

and dare life not to let me live my passion.

Laws of the Jungle

2011-04-04T00:11:00.002+05:30

Lost in a forest, cricket sings.

Lost in a city, traffic stings.

Camouflage of the preys and the predators.

Crucible of the looted and the looters.

Survival of the fittest.

Survival of the richest.

After dark, don’t venture out of your zone.

At night, don’t loiter out of your home.

Live in your burrow.

Move only within your furrow.

Stay with the herd.

Merge in the crowd.

Hunt or get hunted.

Crush or get crushed.

The real jungle.

The civilized jungle.

Contradictions we love

2011-03-29T23:56:00.001+05:30

We build technology to prevent physical labour,
then we build gyms to have us belabour.

We create a life that keeps us on the run
and invent escalators to prevent our walk.

We claim we value values more,
but to actors, over teachers, we pay more.

We claim God is good and money is worse,
so players make millions while preachers are paupers.

We cut the distances between cities,
yet widen the miles within families.

Everyone wants to go to heaven,
but no one wants to die.

We spend half our lives spoiling health chasing wealth,
then spend the rest chasing health spending wealth.

We think nothing of killing others when we feel right,
but call it criminal when a sufferer wants to die.

We want God to equally love everyone,
yet we brand ungodly anyone who loves more than one.

There is an inner tsunami in every single heart,
but surprised we’re at the watershed on earth.

The safer a country becomes
the more life insurance it sells.

We chemicalize our foods so they survive longer
even if they make our stay on the planet shorter.

Selfishness we loathe,
patriotism we laud.

The further we move from environment,
the more we call it development.

Suicide is when you kill yourself by hanging.
Commerce is when you kill yourself by smoking.

We deny the naturalness of sex and shame our teen
but when denial turns love to lust, we shout obscene.

Towards a new education system

2011-03-19T20:30:00.000+05:30

Our current education system is fact rather than value based. However, even here, we have not done a great job at 'honestly' sticking to facts, for they are manipulated by various agenda. History is written by the victor instead of being a joint exercise involving all the parties. To transition the education to value based, I list below some concepts that can be taught to our kids.

These are listed in the book 'Conversations with God.' The purpose of sharing it here is to create an awareness of the new thought process and to expand the list. Someone may need it someday. Atleast the young parents can start teaching their kids some of these values.

I request all the readers to add their own thoughts to it.

Understanding Power
Peaceful Conflict Resolution
Elements of Loving Relationships
Personhood and Self Creation
Body, Mind and Spirit: How They Function
Engaging Creativity
Celebrating Self, Valuing Others
Joyous Sexual Expression
Fairness
Tolerance
Diversities and Similarities
Ethical Economics
Creative Consciousness and Mind Power
Awareness and Wakefulness
Honesty and Responsibility
Visibility and Transparency
Science and Spirituality

We may argue that most of these are taught in Moral Science. But the idea is not to have a couple of units in a year long course. The idea is to have these as year long courses from the very childhood.

Here then is my list:

Valuing team work
Learning to let-go
Winning is not everything
The art of sharing
The science of abundance
Redefining success and failure
Life is beautiful
Forgiveness
The art of acceptance

Looking forward to your inputs.

Quotes that occurred to me

2011-03-06T00:21:00.006+05:30

1. Forgiveness is a favour you do to yourself, not to others
2. Be it arranged or love marriage on earth, it is all arranged with a lot of love in heaven
3. Life is all about creation. Even destruction is an act of creation - when you destroy a building, you create rubble.
4. God is an observer, not a judge- Conversations with God (CWG)
5. Faith is a science that science has yet to fathom
6. A medicine to one is a poison to another
7. If life was an advertisement, every problem would have an instant solution
8. Love, free, unconditional, God, unlimited, eternal. If you are not one of these, you are none of these - (CWG).
9. Truth at various levels of reality is different and often apparently contradictory. Our level of evolution determines the truth we choose as our reality.
10. Outward complaint should never be at the expense of inner acceptance, love and forgiveness
11. Smoking Zone : A place full of fresh air where smokers go to pollute their lungs
12. Sex is the spirituality between two unwhole beings seeking wholeness. Spirituality is the sex between two whole beings sharing their wholeness
13. The more I fathom spirituality, the more I realize its proximity to sex. Wonder why mankind lauds one and pompously loathes another.
14. Envy is great for earth. It makes the world go green
15. Don't bother to be in the good books of everyone. You won't succeed. The feat has eluded even the Gods.
16. Your life is not about what your body is doing. Yet, what your body is doing is a reflection of what your life is about. - CWG
17. V-Day moral police: those who find making war in public better than making love
18. Pat your back when you overcome your tendency to classify things as better or worse, and simply accept them as different
19. Making your highest choice is only half the challenge; doing so without condemning the choices you reject completes the circle
20. The real character of a person is known not when the relationship starts but when it ends
21. Respect and obedience are not the same things. You can choose to disobey without being disrespectful.

The eyes

2011-01-29T12:56:00.004+05:30

The eyes, they haunt me.
The essence in them taunts me.

The longing in those eyes pierces my heart.
Bottomless depth soaked in water, a piece of art.

Innocent, revolting, not knowing reason,
only themselves, all around causing pain.

They tether you to the bearer,
never to let go to life another.

Love misplaced, misunderstood, even abused.
Will take a while for gloom to be effused.

Why Dhobi Ghaat?

2011-01-24T10:23:00.004+05:30

The movie captures four characters chasing their so near yet so elusive dream. Just as the dream appears right there, ready to be hugged, it evades them - in many ways – just like life. The story dribbles through umpteen curves, twists and turns, rises and falls from pinnacles of ecstasy to nadir of depression, from the hollow of dysfunction to the near-fulfillment of by-the-way desires.

Yasmin, the girl in videographed monologues is the voice of director’s soul in the movie. Remove everything else but Yasmin and the story still makes you gasp at the suppressed anger of the wronged woman. Yasmin is ‘the’ character of the movie. She pours her heart to the recording and in the process gives it the life it oozes. She makes you wonder at her simplicity, desire her conservative feminity, admire her festering mutiny and chuckle at the wisdom behind the façade of nonentity.

Amir Khan effectively straddles the various moods of a creative genius. He effortlessly segues through unflinching concentration during creative highs to glaring insecurity at Shai’s attempts to know him.

Shai and Munna share an uncomfortable camaraderie borne out of the overlap of their dreams and divisive compulsions of their backgrounds. They both desire something, settle for something else, igniting their corporal longing in the process which is brilliantly portrayed through Munna’s hesitance and shai’s glances.

All the characters in the movie live to realize a dream, and yet, someone, somewhere, disconnected, becomes an integral part of their lives, enough to take them along for a while.

The movie lets the characters go with the flow of their hearts, allows them to just be - without melodrama or value judgments. Pragmatism is relegated as the prerogative of the sidekicks.

The movie does not give any answer; instead, it leaves you with many questions. The artist in Kiran attempts to extricate the artist in the audience. Do you have the artist in you? Go watch the movie if you want answer to that question.

Old wine in a new bottle

2011-01-09T19:01:00.005+05:30

Long back, I wrote a travelogue here on a wedding I attended. I was never satisfied with my description of the marriage, the bridal ensemble and all. So, I rewrote it.

==============================
My Best Friend's Wedding

The wheels squealed lazily at being forced to move after a short but a well deserved halt as the train chugged painfully, fighting the inertial resistance, taking its first 'steps' out of the station I boarded it from. I pushed my handbag up on the top berth, settled quietly in my seat and surveyed my sleeper class co-passengers: a sexagenarian man gazing blankly through the window, a family with two kids; parents too busy teaching their kids how to enjoy and the kids too busy doing what they do best - flouting those norms, and a young lad unabashedly staring at me as if I was the only known key to solving the Bermuda Triangle mystery. It didn't take me very long to get talking to them. An enquiry about their destination was all it took to be a part of the group. A couple of hours later we had discussed most of our nation's problems, almost solved them along the way, shared our lunches and became a family. It was so easy initiating a conversation with sleeper class passengers. Compare and contrast this with a reaction from a co-passenger in an AC compartment. A similar enquiry would fetch a suave verbal reply masking a curt non-verbal expression overtly portending of a cold shoulder of non-reciprocation for any further attempts at initiating a conversation. The puffed up egos actually keep the AC compartment, which is otherwise cold, quite cozy.

I was traveling by train after a long time. The recent nose-diving of flight fares made them affordable to us lesser mortals. That, coupled with the traveling allowance provided by my company, made traveling by train not just unenviable but also unglamourous. And yet, there was something about trains I missed while flying. Although flying has its own share of ecstasies in take-offs, landings and God's eye view of earth, a train journey is about a different romance altogether. The snail-pace of Indian trains affords us the luxury of sliding open the window and enjoying ourselves in the unadulterated countryside breeze in all its glory. Watching the scared cattle fleeing, the confused dogs barking, the kids cheering and the adult males leering has its own beauty when viewed from inside the fortified window of a train. Sooner or later, our quest for speed will introduce faster, new state-of-the-art trains. But then, we won't be able to stick our necks out of the door and experience the gush of wind slapping our faces. In our hurry to reach the destination, we miss out on enjoying ourselves through the journey. Ironically, while technology helps us connect faster with far off places, it disconnects us from our immediate neighbourhood.

I reached Bhuvaneshwar slightly before dawn. To my relief, it had rained the previous night, forcing mother earth to show its more pleasant form in the midst of scorching Indian summer. I pushed my handbag in before getting into a pick-up auto that was arranged for me. It seemed to glide over the broad, rain-washed roads of Bhuvaneshwar. Engrossed in the surreal morning experience, I failed to notice when the smooth boulevards segued into potholed bylanes and brought me to my destination.

I stood in front of a big, black, iron gate guarding a small bungalow. A black metallic sheet, high enough to keep peeping toms at bay, was welded into the gate. An average Indian would not be able to see through its top. However, its bottom was considerate enough to show ankles. I rang the bell and a known voice hollered from inside the bungalow. It ordered me to hold on lest I wake others up. Out of excitement, I forgot it was still early morning. I heard a barrage of instructions progressively getting louder as the bearer of the voice approached the gate. The person reached the gate and started opening a chained lock at the bottom. I could see only the palms and feet, for the miserly gate would let me see no more. Intricate design of Mehendi adorned her hands and feet. Amrita opened the door and we were face to face after three years. That night was her wedding.

Amrita looked at me for a moment, attempted a wry smile and carried on with her verbal tirade as if we had met only the day before. I noticed her as I entered the gate. Her big black eyes were a little swollen due to lack of sleep. Her black curly hair were parted in the middle and hurriedly bound by a clip at the nape, a tuft of hair near the temples hanging down and resting lightly over her collar-bone, her gums protruded as she rebuked me for nothing that I had done. A set of glass bangles and metallic bracelets clinked as she gestured with her wheatish brown hands.

Her house was full of guests but it didn’t look congested. As her only friend to attend her marriage from out-of-station, I was accorded celebrity treatment. We chatted for a couple of hours in the morning before we moved on with the chores.

“Could you tell me how you feel?” I asked her, curious to know what a girl feels on the eve of her marriage.
“Don’t ask that,” pat came the reply, “I won’t be able to control myself.”

The only child of her parents, Amrita would not have been able to control her emotions had she let them flow any closer. The pain of separation from their loving daughter, in spite of the pleasure of her getting married to a worthy individual, was giving her parents a torrid time. Amidst her parents’ frequent breakdowns, she was the only one who composed herself and kept the situation under control.

Towards the evening, her relatives took me to the marriage venue. A hall was booked in one of the better hotels of Bhuvaneshwar. The route from home to hotel was marked with pot-holed roads devoid of street-lights. But the cool, unpolluted breeze made the journey exhilarating and refreshing. The sigh of untamed breeze of Bhuvaneshwar invigorated my spirits.

We reached the marriage hall excited and ready for the event. The bride arrived later, looking exquisite in the bridal finery, different from the girl next door I met that morning. She wore a bright red silk sari brocaded with gold-threaded designs. The free end of the sari draped over her head signifying bridal modesty. She was bedecked with heavily ornate gold jewelry that seemed to have jumped out of the matching design in her sari. A larger than normal red circular bindi adorned the center of her forehead. Gold bracelets were stacked on her slender arms. Decorative red strip was painted along the edges of her feet each of which wore two pairs of golden toe-rings. A group of elderly ladies carefully chaperoned her past the marriage pavilion in the main hall to an adjacent room where she was seated on a soft-velvet brown sofa until the marriage rituals began. Like a typical shy Indian bride, Amrita kept looking down surveying the carpet near her feet as the ladies slowly led her to the sofa. I had never seen her walk as slowly as she did that evening. I could sense in her face a mixed feeling - an anticipation of the wedding, an apprehension about life after marriage, a fear of the unknown, a remorse for having to leave her parents and yet, an invitation to find a loving life-partner.

The groom, his family and guests arrived much later. There was excitement all around as the groom’s procession arrived in the hotel. They were seated in an adjacent hall. The groom was dressed in intricate design bearing cream Sherwani and a traditional turban over his head. We chatted for a while after I introduced myself. He came across as a simple, shy and a mature person, quite different from the bubbly Amrita. I thought he complemented her well.

The marriage rituals started around midnight. Alone and tired, I followed the rituals with intermittent naps. But I was lucky to be awake at the most important moments of the marriage. I saw the groom tying the mangalsutra around Amrita’s neck. I saw them exchanging their garlands and taking the rounds around the sacred fire. I got goose-bumps as I watched them.
Amrita later told me her thoughts at that moment.
“I felt like the Vedic mantras chanted during the rituals celestially bound me to him. As if going forward we would affect each other’s lives astrologically also and not only through physical proximity. It was an act of giving him the control of my life, the key to my emotions. In that moment, I gave him the power to make me happy or sad, to make or break my life."

"Can such a moment of entrusting my life to him be anything less than sacrosanct? The priest chanted those mantras perfunctorily as it’s a daily business for him. I paused for a moment to think about the other life I was making my own and the responsibilities that come with it. My knees grew weak as I wondered whether I was fit for such a responsibility. I gained strength from seeing my groom leading me. It dawned upon me that he was there to lift me when I would fall, and guide me when I would falter.”

The next morning was her Vidai – the ceremonial farewell. Knowing Amrita, who used to cry at the slightest thoughts of missing her parents, I expected the Vidai to be an emotional catharsis. However, she defied all expectations and didn’t let tears roll out. Quietly, she sat in the car and didn’t look at anyone for long. Our eyes met only once. I could see the pain of separation from family waiting to explode but marvelously controlled. The car left, unsettling the dust and leaving everyone’s heart with an emotional void in its wake.

I wondered why Indian girls leave their families after marriage to join the grooms family. It is easy to blame the patriarchal society. Another plausible reason emerged as I pondered deeper. An average boy has much bigger ego than a girl. So a girl is much more capable of accepting a new family as her own. She can better manage the complexities of adapting to differences. Spiritually speaking, the ego is one of the root causes of distancing yourself from God. Being born a woman is hence a mark of spiritual upliftment. Only a spiritually higher being can make bigger sacrifices to keep another family happy. Unfortunately, the feminists take this as another form of female discrimination.

Thanks to Amrita, my trip to Bhuvaneshwar was an experience worth living. I came back with quite a few memories to cherish and thoughts that made me wiser.

Dinner with God

2010-11-23T00:45:00.003+05:30

This evening, I had dinner with God.
God waited for me at the table as I scanned Him in the menu.
One of the Gods very kindly poured water into the empty glass.
God, as water, quenched my thirst
even as God brought me the order.
God, as food, was delicious.
He came in various forms, tastes and aromas.
I thanked God lovingly for coming to me as food
and He became tastier with every morsel.
I couldn't help smiling and horripilating when I saw and felt
God all around me - my little Samadhi.
The Gods that waited were all amused
at the radiant joy on my face.
I smiled for I knew a secret;
they reciprocated ignorantly.
I smiled more for I knew even their secret -
for mine was no different from theirs.
The secret was a moment of rememberance.

Esoteric Ramayana

2010-10-01T15:18:00.006+05:30

The Ram Janma Bhoomi verdict of Allahabad high court was declared yesterday (30-Sept-2010). There is wide spread media coverage of the event and analysis-paralysis of the situation on ground. All self-pronounced stakeholders have their versions of truth around it causing wide spread conflict and distrust.

This seems to be a good time to take a step back and see what Rama and Ramayana – the epic -inherently stand for and to introspect whether the whole conflict stands you in good stead.

I have gained this understanding from a very nice book ‘Kundalini’ written by Svoboda as a dialogue between him and his revered Guru Vimalananda who is an Aghora Master.

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Symbolically speaking, the story of Ramayana is a story of an individual soul’s spiritual journey and the interplay of various chakras and the expressions associated with each other. We all live some aspect of Ramayana in our daily lives.

Before we understand the symbolic esoteric meaning of Ramayana, it is vital to understand the symbolism associated to the main characters of Ramayana.

The characters

Rama - the indwelling spirit – the soul who is the king of the 72000 nadis. Nadis are to energy body what blood vessels are to physical body.
Lakshman – Rama’s brother represent the power of concentration which helps the soul regain it bride – Sita. He did focus his entire attention on his brother Rama – the individual soul.
Sita – Rama’s wife represents the Kundalini Shakti, the dormant energy located at the Muladhara Chakra. It is the dormancy of this energy that helps us identify with the body which we call the ego.
Dasharatha – ‘Ten Chariots’ meaning the ten senses. Five of these are cognitive incoming senses (Gnanendriya) of smell, taste, see, touch, hear and five are external expressions (Karmendriya) of eliminating, reproducing, moving, grasping, speaking.

Ravana – The devil King represents the limited ego personality that constantly contemplates its greatness.
Hanuman – He represents the prana which when properly harnessed clears the path for Kundalini (Sita) to meet her beloved soul (Rama).

The story

Sita was found when her father Janaka was ploughing a field. She was found from the earth which is an element associated to the Muladhara Chakra where Kundalini Shakti resides. Janaka is a symbolic representation of the creator who awakens the Kundalini (Sita) by removing her from the earth, nourishing her as she grows (rises upwards) before meeting her consort Rama (the soul) through the marriage. Soon after the marriage, Ram and Sita – accompanied by Lakshman - leave for the forest. When Kundalini unites with the soul, they are blissfully immersed (focused – Lakshman) within each other and immediately withdraw from the senses, which wither and die. That is why Dasharatha (the 10 senses) dies soon after Ram and Sita depart.

This was all fine until Sita chose to disobey Lakshman and strayed from her focus on Rama. As soon as this happens, Ravana – the devil – abducts Sita (the Kundalini Shakti) to Lanka which represents the earth element, the Muladhara Chakra. This means, that as soon as your concentration shifts away from the soul, you are bound to be dragged down to your limited self state.

Vimalananda says that Rama (soul) now lost Sita (shakti) to a strong adversary – the limited demonic human personality that uses her for his own gratification. Rama had to wander far and for long before He could reach Sita even as we all must search incessantly for the Kundalini once she has self identified with something other than the soul.

Rama (soul) needs the help of Lakshman (power of concentration) to search for Sita (Kundalini). Rama also needs the assistance of Hanuman (prana) to eliminate Ravana (the limited ego) and liberate Sita again from Lanka (the Muladhara chakra).

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This is the purpose of our soul - to awaken the Kundalini and experience its true universal consciousness. The day we realize that Rama dwells within all of us, the outward symbolism of Ram Janma Bhoomi or Babri Masjid will cease to matter. We will become the living embodiments of God.

Jai Shri Ram.

The moon and me

2010-08-28T22:48:00.002+05:30

Scared as a child when I was
of the frightening dark,
the moon in the sky I was shown,
in my heart to create a spark
of a semblance of support
up in the distant sky.
That waned in my heart
the fear of the dark nearby.

In youthful love when I was,
in the wild years of adolescence,
the moon in the sky I was shown,
with beauty being its quintessence.
I likened my love to the moon,
wherein I searched for her face,
her lashes in the lunar shades
and her smile in its nightly grace.

The first heartbreak devastated me,
as the season of love altered its stance.
The moon in the sky I was shown,
pale it was even in resplendence.
Its light for me carried no hope,
as it lumbered through the clouds
in eternal state of remorse
even as I wrapped my soul in shrouds.

Lost in a desert I was for days,
hunger and thirst battered me bad.
The moon in the sky when shown itself,
water in its shine, I perceived.

The moon was the same at all times.
I always discerned it differently.
It was always about me and never the moon,
for it only reflected the inner me.

Suicide

2010-02-26T00:40:00.002+05:30

I burn myself every moment,
in the fire of introspection.
I drown myself often,
in the ocean of self-abnegation.

I hang myself sometimes with
insults, whose memories I snooze.
I bury myself with my ego
through fights I choose to lose.

I butcher myself in the moments,
I abstain from reacting.
I run into the wire, when
I refrain from judging.

I slay myself in
moments of real observation.
I pulverize myself to dust,
in a state of meditation.

I kill my old self everytime
I choose to refine
I commit hara-kiri whenever
I preempt my whine.

I mutate my parochial self
when I exercise charity.
I discard my old skin,
when I live out of spirituality.

Whenever I change myself for better –
my worse self commits suicide.
Humanity, in every moment,
executes a collective genocide.

We all kill ourselves in
our moments of transformation.
Shame - we recognize the only suicide,
to our eyes, which is visible.

My name is Khan - what clicked with me

2010-02-13T12:14:00.002+05:30

There are two types of people: The world is born out of duality. We just cannot do without divisions of gender, religions, nationalities and so on. But never in my memory has a movie so simplistically hammered in the message that if you want duality, then keep this in your mind – there are only two types of people: Good and Bad. Every other division is irrelevant.
Fear is not bad: Crowd gathers on the road around Khan when camera zooms in from behind, signifying someone approaching the melee. A very recognizable voice asks the crowd to disperse and gives a piece of advice to Khan, “It’s ok to be afraid. Just don’t let the fear within grow big enough to block your progress.”
BC - AD - 9/11: Most of us around the world remember what we were doing and where we were when 9/11 happened. The same cannot be said about any other calamity where more people would have died. That is the impact of 9/11, and it has surely changed the world. However, I have not seen any movie put the impact of 9/11 in one simple statement as it does here.
Khan’s Monologues: Khan pens his experiences in a diary. He also talks to his beloved through this diary. The power of simplicity is exemplified many times as he makes us chuckle, laugh, cry and get goose bumps through the heartfelt honesty of his words.
Satan: The only time Khan seems to get angry is on meeting the instigator. The music score at this point is pure adrenaline stuff. For a non-violent man like Khan, stoning someone requires biggest emotional upheaval – and the crescendo matches the catharsis. Symbolically speaking, Khan accomplishes his Haj on that day; stoning satan is a ritual performed at the Mecca during Haj.
Storyline: For a change, Karan Johar focuses more on universal over romantic love. However, the leading romantic pair of Bollywood have not allowed the romanticism a renegade treatment. The movie portrays a fine balance of selfless individual love that collectively lead to universal love.

A Quest to Define

2010-01-17T00:55:00.003+05:30

What, why and how?
asks man's mind.
For his own good,
must answers he find.

He is in a hurry
to know and identify.
He must name the discovery
to stratify and classify.

All he ever comes across
must be controlled;
a friendly discovery must be tamed -
an adversary conquered.

Only in knowing the unknown
he feels more secure.
But every knowledge leaves behind
a refined knowledge of something more obscure.

The more he knows,
the more there is to know.
The more he defines
the more he feels insecure.

He feels safer
not in the strength of his adversary,
but in the knowledge of
the strength of his enemy.

His bigger fear is not the known
but the fringes of the unknown.
For in his knowing lies
the genesis of conquering.

The mother of all fears
is his not knowing himself.
These conquests are a means
to define his own 'self.'

This quest to define
he must win,
to conquer his own
fear of the unknown.

Until he knows his true self
the fears will drive him.
The day he truly 'knows,'
his fears will cease within.

So will end his urge to control
and with it the need to define.
He will not want to rule everyone,
so he will let everything just be.

The Holy Sex

2009-12-26T02:59:00.009+05:30

There are not many words in English language that can match the range of emotional reactions evoked by or outnumber the adjectives attached to the word ‘sex.’ Lip smacking, fascinating, fist pumping, anticipation, ecstasy, joy, winking, smugliness, curiosity, eyes opening wider, agape, surprise, shock, denouncing, shame, hatred, satanic, sacrilegious to list a few. What is it about sex that evokes so extreme reactions from different factions, genders, age group and so on?

I always wonder what is it about sex that human society has always tried to keep it under wraps but it still resurfaces? Why the values like honesty and integrity taught everywhere but found nowhere? Ironically, sex is not taught anywhere but is found everywhere. Why is this multi-billion dollar porn industry thriving in-spite of so many moral, statutory, technological, societal curbs around the world? Why were Indians – who pride themselves on their spirituality – the people whose most googled word in 2007 was ‘sex?’

I was convinced that there is more to sex than its physicality; that it is not as abominable as our society has made it out to be. On the contrary, I felt there was something divine about it – why else would sex be the source of creation of new life? My search led me to Osho and his book ‘From Sex to Superconsciousness.’

Osho says that our apparent yearning for sex is not actually a yearning for sex. It is a yearning for something way beyond. Sex is one of the channels to reach there. Sex culminates into an orgasmic climax. This orgasm we experience for a fleeting moment has two innate states that we actually yearn for. They are Egolessness and Timelessness. In the moment of orgasmic ecstasy, there is no ‘I’ or ego and no sense of time. It is in that condition that our consciousness is closest to God. Any wonder then that we can create a new life only when we pass through that state wherein we are closest to God.

Osho adds that it was only in the moments of love making that human beings realized for the first time that so much bliss was achievable. Those who introspected on the phenomenon of sex saw that in the moments of love making mind becomes free of thoughts. For a moment, all thoughts disappear. And this emptiness of the mind, the no-thought, is the cause of showering of the divine bliss. What mankind has all along been calling ‘the original sin’ was actually the first doorway to divinity. Man also discovered that if through some other process the same no-thought state could be achieved then the same bliss could be attained. This was the origin of the idea of yoga and meditation.

God is that orgasmic ecstasy multiplied many times. Imagine this: with a fleeting experience of this bliss we can create a new life. What would happen if we can practice and learn to be in blissful state for as long as we want? Self realized saints live in this state and hence can refrain from sex. That condition is true celibacy. Celibacy is not avoidance of sex; it is rising above sex.

Sex is no less a truth than hunger or thirst. At our current level of existence, God is still far away. By not accepting the existing fact of our life, we are not getting any closer to God. An average human being cannot pray to God if he is denied water and food for days. So it is with sex. Only when we accept sex will we open a doorway to rise above sex. If we force a person to stay hungry, someday he will steal food. Similarly, when sex is denied to someone, the person 'steals' sex from any source - resulting in sex crimes. Our own society is the real creator of sex crimes. By denying the naturalness of sex, we are denying the design of God. There is no bigger sacrilege than calling sex anti-religious or sinful. This world will only be free of sex crimes when we become capable of having a normal and healthy dialogue about it. Only by accepting sex as a natural phenomenon we will be able to understand it. Only by fully understanding sex, we will be able to transcend it. Only by transcending sex, we will be able to knock on doors of divinity.

Think of the contradictions we have built within our lives. From childhood we are taught that sex is sinful. Girls are also taught that their husbands are their Gods. So when the husband tries to have sex with his wife, she is confused; how could her God lead her into sinful act? We are also taught that children are a gift of God. This complicates the contradiction even more. God is leading her into a sinful act and giving her a divine gift. All these contradictions hinder a wholehearted acceptance of sex. These contradictions might not matter so much, if not for a deeper truth. The kind of soul that chooses to take birth through you, depends on your state of mind during the sexual intercourse. The more accepting, serene and positive you feel about sex, the more evolved soul will choose to experience its life with you. Similarly, the more negative you feel during sex, the more negatively oriented soul will choose you. Do we now see why, generations after generations, we have only given birth to same type of men? Do we now see why there are so few spiritually evolved souls that visit earth? Our sexual contradictions do not create an inviting atmosphere for them to uplift our own experiences. Hence, resolving this contradiction is very important.

Lightning in the sky is a wild force capable of killing people. But we did not antagonize or try to stop its power. Rather, we befriended that power, tried to understand it and now we have used it so wonderfully to light our houses. Similarly, only when we understand sex, we will be able to realize its true potential.

Our antagonism to sex is so deep and widespread that the recovery has to be gradual. The first and the foremost step is to drop this antagonism to it and develop an acceptance. Accept your children’s sexual curiosity as normally as you accept their hunger. Nothing in nature happens without a reason and before time. A flower blooms when it is ready to pollinate. Children get curious about sex when nature wants them to. Treat their sexual discovery with acceptance. Once the coming generation befriends sex, there will a downpour of spiritual evolution in the generation thereafter. There is no peace in this world in-spite of so many revolutions: industrial, technological, social, renaissance. This is because we have not allowed a spiritual revolution. Only after a spiritual revolution, the world will become a much better place to live.

Ever lifted a person with your finger?

2009-10-29T00:24:00.006+05:30

'Is this possible at all?' you might wonder. The answer is yes, it is. And I did this on 28 oct, 2009.

A spiritual Guru called 'Nithya Shanti' was visiting our company this day. He was explaining to us the power of the mind when he asked five volunteers to get on stage for an experiment. I was one of the five enthusiastic volunteers.

He then asked us to join our palms (like a namaste) and then have only the index fingers standing upright, with the remaining fingers interleaved to form a fist. He then asked one of the volunteer - a man weighing 85 to 90 kgs - to sit on a chair and asked the remaining four to lift him only with the index fingers. Two volunteers standing in front of him had to put their fingers under his knee and the two behind him had to squeeze in the fingers in his armpits.

We tried but we failed to even lift him an inch. I even had to crack my knuckles after it since I had never subjected my fingers to such experiments before and it started paining.

So then he made us all put our hands over the sitting volunteer's head and made us close our eyes. He then started saying some affirmations and asked us to start believing that his body is getting lighter for our fingers to lift him and our fingers are getting strong enough to lift him. After about one and half minute of this affirmation, he made us take three slow and deep breaths.

Then he asked us to try lifting him. As we four tried lifting him, I could hear gasps of disbelief in the crowd and some mute shock in the volunteers breath as we were all left agape. We had lifted this person well over two feet from the chair with only our index fingers.

That is the power of our mind. In one moment, the Spiritual Guru, turned over its head the age old saying 'Seeing is believing.' For now we saw what we first started to believe and not the other way round.

Below I embed the video of Nithya Shanti proving the same with a different group of people.

Gandhi - a Sublime Failure

2009-10-02T19:45:00.002+05:30

The title of this article is inspired from the book of the same name written by S. S. Gill. I have yet to read the book but what attracts me to it is the title, which so succinctly packs the contradiction that Gandhi’s life was.

Not many Indian leaders have done as much for the Muslims as the Mahatma did through the Khilafat movement and during the post-independence riots; yet not many Muslims rate him highly as their leader.

Not many Indian ‘upper caste’ leaders have done so much for eradicating untouchability and fought so diligently for the upliftment of lower-castes; yet the so called ‘lower-caste’ communities have completely ignored Gandhi as someone who contributed to their wellbeing.

As a saint who loved humanity beyond the divisions of religion, caste or race, he did so much for entire humanity – which benefited the Hindus as well – but the current Hindu youth hardly consider Gandhi their benefactor. In fact, they consider Gandhi almost the sole reason for India’s partition and the strife that followed.

What could be the gap that explains his lack of credit-worthiness in the minds of those he fought for? Why doesn’t a single community, caste or religion accept that Gandhi was with them?

The answer to this is two-fold. Firstly, the humanity as we know it has deep rooted insecurity and secondly because Gandhi – the Mahatma – was spiritually way ahead of the times we still live in.

The insecurity has evolved from a deep rooted fear called ‘survival of the fittest.’ Man has always been fighting a battle for supremacy because of his inherent fears that he will be killed if he doesn’t kill, and trampled if he doesn’t trample. He wiped out forests and built civilizations to lessen his fear of animals. Concomitantly, his thoughts and concepts developed into religions and castes and various other forms that divided man from his fellow-men. As he outgrew the fears of basic security from animals, his mind started feeling the threat of a different race, religion and so on. And hence the religions and castes started the battle for survival. Some of the biggest conflicts in the world have been fought for such supremacies. The human mind is so insecure that anything good you do to a man’s adversary is not good for the man himself. There lies the inherent contradiction of Gandhi’s life.

Everytime he helped a Muslim, the insecure Hindu felt the pinch. Everytime he toiled for an untouchable, the upper class Hindu became circumspect. Not to mention that the Muslims could never accept Gandhi over someone from their own religion (Jinnah) and so did the lower-castes that gave him the boot in favour of Ambedkar; Gandhi, to them, was still the significant ‘other.’ The fact that none of these communities could make Gandhi their hero due to the limitations of their own insecurity remains irrelevant.

Secondly, not many true saints have made politics their bastion. In a field where ‘winning’ is the only thing that matters at any cost, it ran in a direct conflict with a man to whom the means mattered as much as the end.

To him, Independence as an end had no value if it was attained through blood-shed. Independence with partition was like freeing a person from jail after amputating his limbs. To us, no price was big enough to achieve independence. So what if we had to stain hands with the blood of the perpetrators if that ensured a quick freedom?

He was against the British rule but had the capacity to love the British. To most of us, the British deserve as much hatred as their tyrannical government. He was capable of separating the real bad from the real good and was not scared of praising the good in the aggressor while denouncing the bad.

We have always believed in ‘tooth for a tooth.’ It is anybody’s guess what a common man would advise a Hindu father whose child gets killed by Muslims in riots? When approached by one such man, Gandhi asked him to find and ‘adopt a Muslim boy orphaned by Hindus in the same riots’ so one Muslim’s faith in the goodness of Hindus and vice versa remains intact – and love gets a chance to bloom again.

He was the messenger of unconditional love – we are very far from there yet. Hence Gandhi can never be our hero. Inspite of his subliminal love, he will remain a failure for all of us.

It wasn’t Gandhi that failed us, but mankind that failed this Mahatma.

Ambition

2009-09-12T00:43:00.006+05:30

In a world bent on winning over others,

a quest for winning over yourself - is ambition

In a world passionate about knowing the outside,

a passion for exploring the inside - is ambition

In a world ruled by subjectivity,

maintaining objectivity - is ambition.

In a world possessed with strife and sorrow,

keeping a smile - is ambition

In a world seeking things for happiness,

seeking happiness sans things - is ambition

In a world that magnifies strengths and hides weaknesses,

acceptance of both - is ambition.

In a world vying to know everything to know that one thing,

trying to know that one thing,

knowing which you know everything, is ambition.

In a world chasing infinite power,

chasing the infinite – is ambition.

In a world preferring one over the other,

living without preferences – is ambition.

In a world seeking scapegoats in others,

acceptance of what is – is ambition

In a world burdened by past and worried about the future,

living in the moment – is ambition

In a world seeking control to allay its own fears,

letting freedom take control – is ambition.

In a world swearing by judgmental observation,

simply observing – is ambition.

In a world obsessed with beautifying what is seen,

beautification of the unseen and unheard – is ambition.

In a world believing only in ‘either or’,

considering ‘and also’ – is ambition

In a world ruled by the mind,

enslaving the mind – is ambition

Where man is bothered about curbing noise pollution,

silencing the inner noises – is ambition

In a world seeking providence,

being that providence – is ambition.

In a world projecting forgiveness as a favour to others,

believing it to be a favour to oneself – is ambition

In a world worrying so much despite faith,

believing that worrying is a proof

of lack of faith – is ambition

In a world that doesn’t care for any of the above,

valuing them all – is ambition

Rise of Jain Practice in Pune

2009-08-09T23:16:00.005+05:30

Jain saints follow an ancient practice of tying mask around their mouths.

Pune seems to have caught up to that fancy lately as the picture below proves.

The only difference is that the jain saints wear the masks to prevent the germs from getting killed while the pune citizens wear the masks to prevent themselves from getting killed.

Thanks to the Swine Flu.

Office Office

2009-07-24T14:52:00.003+05:30

This was part 2 of the first assignment at Writers Bureau.

I have written a short description of my office and some colleagues in the office. I’ve titled this description ‘Office Office’ after a famous TV series in India.

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I scan my access card to unlock the door of my office. The door opens into big AC hall twice the size of a basketball court. In the centre of the hall are five rows of five rectangular cubicles each. The rows collectively form a big rectangle equidistant from the peripheries of the hall. Employees sit in the corners of the cubicles, facing the corners. An aisle runs through the longer sides of the cubicles. The wall bang opposite the main door and the one to its right are made of stained glass that makes even a hot sunny day look pleasant. Small shrubs line up at regular intervals along the glass walls. To the left of the main door is a cabin, a printer, a small pantry, washrooms, a meeting room and a cabin, in that order. To the right of the door are one more cabin and a few cubicles.

There are three balding men occupying three corner cubicles each in central set of cubicles. All three are also the tallest men in the hall. Thanks to their heights, we can see the shining scalps just above the partitions even as they recline on their chairs. Each has a distinct peculiarity: one who sits closest to the door has a smiling visage that frequently reveals two of his central teeth pushed back to give way to protruding canines and a baritone voice that more than makes his presence felt, the second one has the largest of paunches that cannot hold the trousers if they slide below the navel causing him to keep pulling it up frequently. The third one is so quiet it sometimes takes effort to know his presence.

On the farthest left corner from the entrance sits the big boss in a makeshift one-meter-high polymer enclosure that forms his cabin. His chair is cleverly positioned facing the main entrance of the hall to keep a watch on his team. He is a diminutive, mustachioed man in his early forties. He has jet black hair, sharp nose, dimpled smile and a slight paunch. I sit on the farthest row from him so it is very inconvenient to go all the way to his cabin only to find him busy on phone. So if I wish to know – without getting up from my seat - whether he is on phone, I just look at his cabin and check whether his head or elbow is visible above the partition. When on phone, he reclines as far back as possible, one hand on the phone and the free hand stroking the hair at the back of his head or caressing his upper back inside the collars with his elbow raised high. Consequently, I see either his hair if he is glued to the laptop or his elbow if he is on a call, never both simultaneously. I choose to get up or continue working based on that information.

Why do I write?

2009-07-24T13:48:00.007+05:30

This was the part one of the first assignment at Writers Bureau.
The word limit was 300 words:
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I was in sixth grade when I first wrote a very forgettable poem on God. I never knew then that the act was actually a precursor to something I would enjoy immensely as an adult.
Years rolled after that poetic escapade. Long dry spells of non writing were punctuated by sporadic bursts of creativity through writing greeting cards on friends’ birthdays, writing witty four-liners for friends during parties and so on. Time flew. On my younger sister’s twenty third birthday, I wrote a poem for her. I then performed an encore for her next birthday; the time in between, however, was a literary drought.
What characterized these impulsive spurts of writings was an immense sense of satisfaction and calm I rarely felt doing anything else. The feeling was surreal, almost like home coming, as if that was where I belonged. That was something I was made for – and vice versa. My soul quenched its astral thirst every time I penned something.
On December 31st, 2003, I wrote a poem that I thought catapulted my writing to the next league and forced me to consider writing seriously. I haven’t looked back since. I wrote scores of poetry, articles, short stories and blogs.
I send my work to various websites, magazines, newspapers etc. with occasional success, most of which is non-remunerative. My biggest success so far is a short story that got selected for ‘Chicken Soup for the Indian Soul.’ Other than this, I’ve not come close to being paid for my work. As a writer, I’ve matured as much as I can on my own and feel that I need professional help to leapfrog into the next level.
The world is seldom seen through the prism of words; I want to change that.
This is where I need Writer’s Bureau; not just to hone my writing skills but also to develop in me the art of approaching a publisher or an editor with reasonable or assured success.

Will this give me the break?

2009-07-24T12:53:00.006+05:30

As most you know, I am writing for a few years now. I have had intermittent successes with each holding its sweet little place in my heart. However, what was missing was a ‘wow factor’ of success.

In order to take my writing to the next level, I enrolled for ‘The Writers Bureau.’ This is a correspondence school designed specifically for people who need professional help in improving their writing skills and taking it to publishable standards and dare to more than just eke out a living out of writing.

I have been asked to submit two assignments to begin with.

1. Why do I write? and

2. Go to any market, soccer match, or any place of your liking and describe the place in your own words. Make the author feel the place.

Next I will blog assignments that I submit and would eagerly wait for your feedback. Please review and help me improve through this course.

Thanks a lot in anticipation.

Is Spirituality bad for economic growth?

2009-02-07T15:10:00.002+05:30

What in the world would spirituality have to do with economic growth? Shouldn’t spirituality be disconnected from money and hence the economy?

Economic growth is studied and analyzed by economists. One of the tools that most of the economists use to track growth is called Gross Domestic Product (GDP.) GDP for a country is defined as the ‘total market value of all the finished goods and services produced within a country in a year.’ This definition shows that existence of a market – a place where people gather, physically or logically, to buy and sell - is a prerequisite to analyzing growth. A country is called a growing economy if its GDP keeps growing. Getting a little mathematical might just be handy here.

The most common approach to measuring and understanding GDP is the expenditure method:

GDP = personal Consumption + private Investment + Government spending + (eXports − iMports),
or,
GDP = C + I + G + (X-M).

All above activities happen at a market-place. The basic tenet of this ‘growth’ perspective is that the more willing customers are to spend (C), the more willing producers will be to produce and sell things for profit. This willingness drives businessmen to take the risk of private investments (I) and governments to spend (G) on providing the required infrastructure. The willingness of international consumers drives exports(X) and that of national consumers drives local industries and imports (M).

How did the US become the largest economy in the world? US society made ‘living off credit’ and ‘spending beyond the means’ a way of life. The spending propensity of US citizens almost single handedly gives a reason to the rest of the world to keep producing. Credit cards were mainly introduced to induce a willingness to spend – to own more than you can immediately afford. The result: the spending power of the world grows, increasing with it the willingness to produce, in turn increasing investments and hence employment, which again increases the spending power, thus completing the circle. So the more we spend, the more we drive the world economy. And the single biggest tool to make us spend is to inculcate a feeling of wanting something which is not yours until you spend to own it. Thus the whole corporate world out there is creating a feeling of a lack of something and hence a wanting within you. True spirituality does the direct opposite to you. It attacks at the root of wanting from the outside world by creating a sense of completeness within. By connecting you to your happiness within, it reduces your needs from the outside world, through the fulfillment of which you seek your happiness. The more spiritual you become, the more you tend to live without most of the things you normally can’t live without. Most of the necessities start to look like luxuries. So you reduce your wasteful spending and that slows down the wheel of development. Hence, spirituality is bad for the economic growth of world.

I once came across an interesting ideology which I would call ‘Five why’s’ concept. It states that if you ask a series of ‘why’ to find the reason for a person’s action, and subsequently to his answers, then latest by the fifth ‘why’, his reply would be ‘He did it to be happy.’ This shows that the root cause for any action of a man is a desire for happiness. Every intermediate answer to a ‘why’ is a different path to the same end. And in these intermediate answers lies the unlimited selling potential for all the companies in the world. And boy! Haven’t they done a good job exploiting this? Think of all that makes you happy and then just imagine how many people are out there to exploit this desire of yours just to sell their product or service.

The problem with this whole cycle is that every source of your happiness is outside you. Eating a decent meal at home was very satisfying until you saw someone doing a candle light dinner in a five star hotel.

However, the real question to ask is not whether spirituality is good or bad for the economic development but whether GDP is the correct method of tracking growth. Does the monetary exchange of currencies mean everything – even more than the happiness, seeking which people exchange money at the markets? GDP was not created to be a measure of societal well being, but it is often used as an indicator for just that because it is the best available measure so far. It has served well for a good number of years, but not any more. GDP is all about money and as it is with money, GDP can keep track of food, but not appetite; medicine, but not health; soft beds, but not sleep; glitter, but not comfort; fun, but not happiness; the shell of all things, but not the kernel. As economics moves away from monetary value towards happiness index, more policy makers realize that GDP cannot be the only basis when deciding and devising an economic policy in today's society.

A person’s intelligence can be gauged from the answers he gives but his wisdom can be gauged from the questions he asks. There comes a stage in evolution where wisdom should win over intelligence. We’ve reached a stage in the evolution where we need to ask ourselves some of the most basic, wise questions that shake the very fundamental premise on which the intelligent human society is built. Is ‘survival of the fittest’ the right ideology? All through our long process of evolution, mankind has either controlled or eliminated anything that threatened its existence. It all began with wild animals, harmful plants and unruly weather. And now that these three are more or less tamed, the word ‘survival’ has added an extra dimension to itself. Survival not only means living and breathing but also means material progress, lifestyle and status to name a few. And in the new avatar of the word ‘survival,’ the above ideology pits man against man. Our basic premise has made our own fellows our enemies.

Hence the right question is not whether spirituality is bad for economic development but whether development, as we see it, is the right path? Probably for the first time in human history, more people worldwide are living in cities than in villages and thousands more are migrating to cities daily. What has this done to our lifestyles? Most of the cities worldwide are crowded, congested, polluted, crime-ridden, badly managed and much more. If, as deduced above, happiness is our final aim, then are our concerted efforts towards the so-called ‘development’ taking us towards that happiness? Where are we going wrong here? Where is the missing link? Aren’t all news on TV or newspaper a result brought about by a mankind that has ‘survival of the fittest’ as its deepest fears? If I don’t trick, cheat, beat or kill my adversary, he will trick, cheat, beat or kill me; unless I’m the best, I’ll be trampled upon by others who would use me as a stepping stone on their way to success.

Where is the solution to this? Slowly, we need to start living a life that rejects the established notion of ‘survival of the fittest’ and we can then gradually change the very definition of development. Let us stop hoarding and start sharing. Let us not celebrate without making somebody’s life better. No good news should cross our lives without doing charity. We need to start living a simpler life so we save more for the needy people. Once these simple ideas become our basis for living, we would see that the tenets of spirituality and the parameters of development are not contradictory but complementary.

Spirituality is the deepest core in all of us. Millions of years of misguided ideologies have taken us away from it. And the human soul, having tried it all, is hankering for the inner essence that has been denied to it for eons. We humans get drawn towards anything that has been denied to us. Is it any surprise then that in 2006, the most googled word in Pakistan was ‘sex’ and that in the US was ‘God?’

Freedom Haikus

2008-12-28T23:28:00.002+05:30

Freedom
in not wanting
to win

Freedom
in loving
needlessly

Freedom
in the acceptance
of everything

Freedom
in the greatest prayer:
thankfulness

Freedom
in living
in the moment

Freedom
in not wanting
to judge

Freedom
in letting things
just be

Freedom
in giving your love
the freedom

Freedom
in loving
without possessing

Freedom
in living
without preferences

A to Z of Subprime Crisis

2008-10-10T14:45:00.004+05:30

This article was also published in Gulf News, UAE's leading news paper.

***************************************

Clarence Nathan was a man with three part-time jobs who earned about $45,000 a year, and yet a bank loaned him $540,000. The bank never checked his income.

What happened that diluted the most basic rules of lending? What happened that made the banks open their coffers without bothering to even consider the risks? What were the brokers and bankers that made all this possible thinking while showing their generosity to those least deserving of the loans?

When we first heard about the subprime crisis we would’ve thought it had to do with the housing industry. However, it had less to do with that and more to do with financial services industry – and the people who were financing those houses.

The crisis really starts with what some researchers have started calling ‘The Global Pool of Money.’ This is the entire world’s investments: pension funds investing for people’s retirements, insurance companies investing our premiums, governments’ central banks investing their nation’s wealth. This global pool is estimated to be about 70 trillion dollars. This amount is more than entire money spent by everyone – individuals, companies, governments - all over the world in a year. So, this global pool of money is a huge amount of money.

We also have a group of people called the investment bankers whose job is to watch over that money. They have a twofold task to perform: not to lose a penny from the pool and to also make it grow. For a long time, they made this pool grow by investing in very safe bets like US treasury and municipal bonds. But right before the actual story starts, something happened – something really big. This global pool of money got too big too fast. In fact, it doubled between the year 2000 and 2006. The scale of this proliferation could be gauged by the fact that this global pool took centuries to reach 35 trillion dollars and just six years to double up. The major reason for this humungous growth was the sudden growth in the wealth of many historically poor countries like India, China, Brazil, Gulf countries, etc. These countries banked their profits and looked around the world for ways to invest them. So, suddenly there was twice as much money in the pool waiting for investment. However, the world wasn’t ready, simply because there weren’t twice as many good investment options. Another parallel development was Alan Greenspan’s move to reduce the US Fed interest rate to one percent, thus making US Treasury bonds – the then darling of investors - not so lucrative for the international investors. So this global pool looked around for options and found one in the US housing market and a special bond created by the Wall Street. This bond just couldn’t produce enough profits to keep all the investors happy and the pressure of generating ‘good’ profit figures just kept building up. More and more international investors wanted those bonds than the investment firms like Morgan Stanley, Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers etc. could actually produce.

This is how the investment banks produced the financial magic of turning mortgages into bonds. They buy up all the housing mortgages – thousands of them – and pool them all together. That way, they had this constant stream of mortgage EMI payments coming to them every month. They would then sell shares in that stream to global investors. That is how you create mortgage backed security or mortgage backed bond. Now, between 2003 and 2006, US housing market was growing so fast that all the global investors were itching to get a piece of that action. But there was a problem. The problem was that to make a mortgage backed security, you need a mortgage – and there weren’t enough mortgages. By 2003, with very low interest rates, all the people with a steady income who could afford mortgages – and were considered safe borrowers - had already taken those bonds. They didn’t want to take any more bonds. But this global pool of money was hungrier than ever for these mortgage backed bonds. So Wall Street started lowering its standards for offering such loans.

It used to be that to get a mortgage, you had to prove that you made enough money, that you had a steady job, that you had some assets in banks. But starting around 2003 onwards, Wall Street started to loosen up a bit every month. One month, banks would say that buyers don’t have to prove how much they make, they can just state how much they make and we’ll trust them. The next one was a No Income Verified asset; so you don’t have to tell the people what you do for a living or how much money you make – all you have to do is state that you have a certain amount of money in the bank and we’ll trust you. Then the next one that came was No Income No Asset (NINO) loan wherein you don’t have to state anything; you just need a credit score and prove that you’re living. Even the latter was optional in some cases like those in Ohio where 23 dead people were issued mortgage loans. This NINO loan is now retrospectively infamous as ‘The Liar’s Loan.’ Within the banks, there were people getting sick to their stomach at giving such loans. They fought tooth and nail with their sales force and bosses to stop offering such loans. But all they got were cold shoulder replies like ‘Others are offering it, we’ve to offer it too. The global investor has some loose cash and if we don’t use it, somebody else will. We’ll get more market share this way. House prices are booming and everything is going to be fine.’ All of this was happening under the assumption that US house prices would always appreciate. So even in the worst case if someone defaulted, the impounded house would be a bigger asset with the bank. That assumption proved very costly.

In the old days, such mortgage companies would’ve held on to these loans for years - until they were sure that the mortgagee would be able to pay - before selling these mortgages to Wall Street. In the new system, they held them for a month or two and then sold it to Wall Street – all that risk was Wall Street’s problem. Even Wall Street wasn’t too concerned because it just passed the risk to the global pool of money – all the global investors. The irony, however, is that Wall Street also wasn’t particularly cheating on these global investors. They had complex computational models that were constantly monitoring the data to assess the risks of the bonds. That data told them not to bother since mortgage foreclosure rate was one or two percent and the models were designed to perform well even on a foreclosure rate of ten to twelve percent. But this conclusion was way off because all the data they were looking at in 2005-06 for the loan repayment was years old –and was positive because the old bonds were issued to qualified people who were duly paying them back. Then there were companies like Dynamic Credit that bought and re-packaged those bonds into a complex financial product called Collateralized Debt Obligations(CDOs) and sold them to these global investors.

This finishes the chain which now looks like “Individuals taking mortgage -> broker -> small bank -> Investment Bank (Wall Street) -> thousands of mortgages in one big pool -> shares of monthly income called mortgage backed security -> repackaged into CDO -> global investors”

When it all came down at once, these pools started showing a foreclosure rate of around 15 to 50%. Therefore, such bonds then started losing money – taking with it, everyone involved. Four million Americans facing the foreclosure, hundreds of mortgage companies are now bankrupt, hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs. IMF has estimated that banks and investors could lose around a trillion dollars.

But everyone involved was not exactly foolhardy. Companies like Dynamic Credit refused to buy the bonds that were outright risky. They thought they were being conservative – yet they lost millions, even billions. Almost everyone involved in this knew that something weird was going on. The deals they struck did not feel right. But none of them really questioned things. Why would they? Everyone involved was making an awful lot of money.

The nosediving of all the share markets the world over is just the symptom of a disease. The disease is imprudent financials practice of flouting the basic pragmatic rules. As David Moore, CEO Moore Investment & Holding, Inc, wrote, “Our efforts will all be for naught until two things happen:
1. investment banking and mortgage lending institutions follow strict, conservative and prudent regulations regarding investments and lending and
2. the American people are not allowed to obligate themselves to loans they cannot afford. It would be nice to get people to conduct themselves with their own financial interests in mind, but we must regulate the areas that we can and not give financial access to people who cannot prove a reasonable probability that they can repay loans, and we must regulate business so they don't engage in these unsound lending practices for personal and institutional greed ever again.”

Main Sources : http://hbswk.hbs.edu/item/6035.html

and http://www.npr.org/

Ramadan in Gulf Countries

2008-09-24T13:51:00.002+05:30

‘On Sep 16th 2008, a salesman and a female visitor who publicly drank juice during daytime in Ramadan were each fined Dh1000 for breaking article 313 of the Federal Penal Code of the UAE.

A Public Prosecution source explained that eating or drinking in public before sunset during Ramadan is classified as a crime, which offends religious faith and rituals. "

The punishment against such a crime is a maximum one month imprisonment or a maximum Dh2,000 fine... it depends on the judge's discretion," said the source.

An Arab witness, identified as T., spotted the couple drinking juice in a station. He reported them to the police, who referred the duo to court.’

That was a news report on Gulf News, a leading newspaper in the UAE.

Saudi law goes to the extent of terminating work contracts and deporting the Ramadan law violators. All this because they believe that Non-Muslim residents must respect Muslims' feelings by refraining from eating, drinking or smoking in public places, in the streets and in workplaces.

During Ramadan, in all the Gulf countries, restaurants are closed during the day time. They cannot serve food, only supply take-away parcels that people eat in closed rooms. The only exception to this rule are the best and the most expensive hotels that house the VVIPs who pay a fortune.

Ramadan is the holy month for muslims when they’re supposed to self-abnegate, introspect, lead a simple life – renouncing their indulgences – and observe a month long fast wherein they’re not supposed to eat or drink between sunrise and sunset.

Gulf countries observe the month with a lot of fervour and faith. In these Islamic countries, the government enforces a strict observance of these fasts through an honest police, an efficient legal system and religious zealotry of the citizens.

However, these countries have grossly misunderstood the spiritual commandments. Shouldn’t fasting be a call from within rather than be enforced from without by the government, the police or the legal framework? Shouldn’t fasting be a free choice over a coerced and pompous ban on eating and drinking outdoors lest you tempt those who observe the fast? And wouldn’t a fast that is ‘truly’ a divine inspiration from within be impervious to the temptations from the display of foods which is banned to cover for the imperfections in the self-control of the fasting people? Only a vacuous and shallow law can force the non-muslims to not eat or drink in public. A truly spiritual call doesn’t need collusion with the governments, the threat of imprisonment or monetary fine for its observance. A true fast would not want to control the external display of foods or drinks much less control the behaviour of another person only to bask in the false glory of a strict observance of fast. An honest introspection would command controlling oneself before controlling others. True spirituality should be a free choice. In the absence of that choice, there is no spirituality. Sadly, in the enforcement through the law, they cheat the spirit of the fast; in punishing the law breakers, they kill their own spirituality. Spirituality is no slave to any law and yet the misinterpretation of the same necessitates a law to begin with. The non-believers (Kafirs) are made to suffer because of the imperfection in their own self control.

If you want to see a more free and unforced environment of fast observance then visit India. I want to stick my neck out and say that the fasts of those Indian muslims are much purer than the pompous fasts observed in the middle east.

In the open streets of India,
my Ramadan fasts are truly tested.
In the enticing display of sweets at shops,
my tongue is tested.
In the heat, dust and non AC ambience,
my perseverance is tested.
In my donations despite poverty,
my sacrifice is tested.
In the people eating around me,
my determination is tested.
In my not forcing heathens to stop eating,
my self-control is tested.
In my acceptance of this difference,
my spirituality is tested.

Is customer really the king?

2008-08-20T18:14:00.004+05:30

“Customer is the king” – is a cliché used ad nauseam in business circles. With the kind of buying options available today in every walk of life, even a casual glance at the market only corroborates this claim. Why then do we need to question the apparent truth? That is because it’s only the casual glance at the market place that brings about this belief. The cliché is derived through a static perspective wherein we observe only the market-place instead of people. To question this cliché, we need a dynamic perspective that entails we follow customers through their day to day lives.

This apparent truth would’ve been the absolute truth if customers and vendors were a mutually exclusive lot. This, however, is not the case. In this complex society, any given person is a customer to someone and a vendor to someone at the same time. The increase in options makes the customer more demanding while every increased demand means someone somewhere has to slog at work. The vicious circle ensures that almost everyone works harder, as a vendor, to meet those never ending deadlines. The bigger ‘King’ a customer becomes, the more slavish every vendor in that industry becomes. The circle ensures that the monarchy of the customer, however, is short-lived as he soon assumes the role of the vendor.

An example might help elucidate the point. Consider the hospitality industry. A man is on vacation with his family in a five star luxury hotel. The man expects top class service from the hotel. He ‘demands’ continuous Wi-Fi access, spic and clean rooms, gyms, spas, pickup & drop, travel advisories, smart attendants on their toes and not a semblance of discomfort. Anything less and he threatens never to come back to the hotel. So the hotel makes receptionists, cleaners, waiters, drivers, accountants, IT technicians and many others work overnight in shifts. For every such customer, vendors across many such verticals and/or horizontals are kept on tenterhooks. The hotel wakes up an IT techie at 3 a.m. to fix the Wi-Fi for this esteemed customer having problems watching ‘online streaming videos’. The IT person’s family is frequently troubled with such support calls at night. Often, the family can’t sleep properly, affecting their daytime activities. This IT person is generally competent but badly overworked and this support call is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. He is not able to come and fix the Wi-Fi. The customer on holiday is pissed off, creates a scene and books a room in a rival hotel. The first hotel chain, having lost its ‘kingly’ customer, cancels the contract with the IT vendor providing the support people. The IT vendor that had a contract of exclusivity for the hotel chain in the entire country loses its major customer and takes a bad hit. The news spreads the next day and its shares nosedive. This company is an IT venture of a famous business house of the country. The parent company calls an urgent meeting with all the CXOs to address this exigency. Coincidentally, the hotel guest in question gets a call from his company informing him of cancellation of his vacation and asking him to report immediately. He rues his predicament, not knowing what in the world went wrong to have his vacation curtailed. He is the CFO of the parent company.

In the real world, the circle may not be so small or the strings of events may not be so fortuitous but what cannot be argued is the fact that you begin the trail that ultimately leads back to you. In other words, there is nothing that is not your business. As Justin Timberlake said, “What goes around, comes around.”

So the next time you feel like ditching a vendor for a small lapse of service, think twice: you might be creating a world that ruins your own holiday.

Barber and God: A fable

2008-07-13T11:46:00.008+05:30

This fable was an email forward I once received.

=========================
This is one of the best explanations of why God allows pain and suffering that I have seen:

A man went to a barbershop to have his hair cut and his beard trimmed.

As the barber began to work, they began to have a good conversation.They talked about so many things and various subjects.

When they eventually touched on the subject of God, the barber said:"I don't believe that God exists."

"Why do you say that?" asked the customer.

"Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist.

Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people?

Would there be abandoned children?

If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain.

I can't imagine a loving God who would allow all of these things."

The customer thought for a moment, but didn't respond because he didn't want to start an argument.The barber finished his job and the customer left the shop.Just after he left the barbershop, he saw a man in the street with long, stringy, dirty hair and an untrimmed beard. He looked dirty and unkempt.

The customer turned back and entered the barber shop again and he said to the barber: "You know what? Barbers do not exist."

"How can you say that?" asked the surprised barber."I am here, and I am a barber. And I just worked on you!"

"No!" the customer exclaimed. "Barbers don't exist because if they did, there would be no people with dirty long hair and untrimmed beards, like that man outside."

"Ah, but barbers DO exist! That's what happens when people do not come to me.""Exactly!" affirmed the customer.

"That's the point! God, too, DOES exist! That's what happens when people do not go to Him and don't look to Him for help. That's! why there's so much pain and suffering in the world.

"If you think God exists, send this to other people---

If you think God does not exist, delete it!BE BLESSED & BE A BLESSING TO OTHERS !!!!!!!
==================================

While this fable does a good job in making one realize one's mistake by not approaching God, I feel there is a flaw in this article when looked at from a different perspective.
Let me try and bring out the gap in the argument. First I number the lines of interest and then take them one line at a time and try to elucidate that it might be more complex than this article has made out. There you go.

==========
1. "I don't believe that God exists."

2. "Why do you say that?" asked the customer.

3. "Well, you just have to go out in the street to realize that God doesn't exist.

4. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people?

5. Would there be abandoned children?

6. If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain.

7. I can't imagine a loving God who would allow all of these things."

=================

1. "I don't believe that God exists."
In trying to prove the existence of God, this article does a good job. It simply explains that people don't go to God and hence they suffer from all the pain and suffering. Beyond that, however, this article is too simplistic and incorrect. It toes the line that religions all over the world have always taken: trying to prove that God is jealous, revengeful and unforgiving. He will give you all the pain and suffering just because you hate him or don't consider him or don't accept his existence or don't go to him. Read the first line that this article begins with.

"This is one of the best explanations of why God allows pain and suffering that I have seen."

Ask yourself a question here. Is this the kind of God we are praying to? A God who makes us go through hell if we don't pray or go to him? Doesn't he appear vengeful and unforgiving? Isn't this a God conceived and contrived by humans who in their "mortalized and conditional" love couldn't think of a God that could shower His love upon us "eternally and unconditionally"? And yet, God is not what this article portrays. That is where this article goes wrong. For God is with you even if you don't go to Him. God is irrevocably, perennially, deeply, sublimely, blessing you - in every act you choose for yourself. And that act can be Hitler's genocide or Gandhi's satyagraha.

Let us go to Line 4.
"4. Tell me, if God exists, would there be so many sick people?"
All the Popes and priests are men of God, aren't they? Don’t they fall sick and die? Is being sick proof enough of God's inexistence? Line 4 has an inherent fallacy: may be, falling sick itself is not bad. It doesn't have anything to do with suffering. For pain at a physical level is an experience that soul chooses to experience and precisely that's why we fall sick. We consider sickness bad because we find it a precursor to death and death is a bad occurrence in our conscience. What we need is a way to answer for ourselves if death really is a 'bad event'.

Line 5 now.
"5. Would there be abandoned children?"
Yes. There would be. Because of the way the universe is designed, it is blessing every thought and desire of the soul. So if the soul desires to experience learning independently without experiencing parental love then it gets that experience through what we call abandonment or being orphan. And hence, those parents who we brand "bad parents" just because, fearing some social stigma, they dumped the 'physical child' into the orphanage are actually helping the soul of that newborn baby to slowly experience being an orphan. So now with one change in perspective, what you call bad is no longer bad.

Line 6 now.
"6. If God existed, there would be neither suffering nor pain."
If everybody in this world had money, would there be any value of it? In this world of relativity the good can't exist without the bad. If you've never felt pain, how will you ever enjoy being pain free? Would you even know that there is something called pain free until you experience pain? Pain and suffering are two different things (the author however uses the words as synonyms). Pain can be very much a physical experience. But a pain doesn't necessarily cause suffering. Suffering is a very psychological phenomenon. You can be extremely poor and yet be extremely joyful. Haven't you seen the little kids of labourers playing by the road side? They have the pain of poverty just like their parents, but that pain doesn't convert itself into suffering for the kids. For they need to understand the existence of money before they can feel bad about the lack of it. Until then, they have the pain, but they're not suffering. Pain essentially is a lack of some kind of comfort of a desirable state we want to be in. Disease is a pain because we see health as a desirable state to be in. But can we avoid the suffering due to disease if we know that I'll appreciate my health even more for I now know what it is to be 'not healthy'? And you alleviate your pain and suffering too or just the suffering, even if the pain persists. So just revel in the glory that every bad thing exists so that you could appreciate the good. When many souls are created from one supreme soul (that we call God), some souls choose to be good and some choose to be bad. This is precisely why God doesn't punish anyone for choosing to be bad because they're only seeking to be one aspect of that duality. And until we meet bad souls, we can't appreciate the good souls.

Line 7.
"7. I can't imagine a loving God who would allow all of these things."

Your imagination is too limited my dear fella. God will never block your free will. If the soul that envelops your body (yes – soul envelopes the body) wants to experience pain and bad things then God lets you experience those things. But why would a soul want to experience bad things or be bad by itself? Because soul knows that the physical life is a limited reality. If you are a good and a versatile actor, would you prevent yourself from taking up a role of a begger, a rich person, a villain, or a hero? Every role has its essence and after you finish one role - say of a hero - you feel bored and feel like doing something different; even if that means being a villain. Our soul goes through such cycles. And would it be fair on the part of God, to first allow us such a freedom to choose and then punish us for being bad? Is that by any means a free choice at all if God tells us something like, "I give you two choices to choose from: Good and Bad. But if you choose bad, you'll suffer in hell for eternity." No. That is not true. And hence, there is no hell. Hell is a concept contrived by religion to introduce fear of God in the minds of people. For without fear, religion would lose its existence. So have no fear. Everything that you did or happened to you which you think is/was bad is meant to be savoured as an experience and God needs to be thanked for it, for he brought to you what your soul chose to experience.

Bless every moment. !!

Breaking News

2008-06-17T12:31:00.007+05:30

Media in most of the countries are reeling under lack of freedom. They hanker to get the freedom that Indian media enjoys. But does the Indian media make efforts to translate that freedom into a news of substance for its citizens?

Any news belongs to one of the two categories. One answers the ‘what’ and other answers the ‘why’. The quality of a news channel can be gauged by the proportion of whys among the whats that it helps answer. The purpose of the news should not only be to inform the citizenry of what happened but also dig deeper into the undercurrents and help explain the whys and the trends behind it. Most of the Indian news channel focus on the former and ignore the latter. The only whys they help answering are those of stray murders that they randomly pick up and publicize and earn out of TRP ratings. And if in the process an innocent person is victimized, too bad – for he becomes a victim of the game.

The media has misused its freedom to prevent itself from telecasting genuine news. They make heroes and villains out of stray murders, dish out emotional melodramatic dialogues at the drop of a hat, cameramen practicing zooming on faces – a la ‘K’ serials of Ekta Kapoor (why doesn’t Ekta change her name to ‘K’eta?) follow the reality shows of the sister channels and telecast anything that appeals to the curiosity and amusement of the general laity.

What follows is a sample of prime time ‘Breaking News.’ I leave the floor open for you to comment. Please don’t break your head.

Commissioner's dog captures prime time space

Finally, the dog was found.

What did Rahul Gandhi eat?

Did the Big B sneeze?

Let the World Celebrate your birthday

2008-06-07T11:38:00.006+05:30

We know that the population of the world has crossed 6 billion recently. More than 70 percent of the world’s wealth is with 5 percent of the world’s population. That makes for around 300 million very rich people. It’s a long forgone conclusion that the wealth is not equitably distributed around the world. But there are reasons to believe that such people are equitably distributed across space (in different countries) and time (born round the year). Hence there would be an average 821,918 of those rich people born on any given day. On their birthdays, they spend copious amount of cash throwing parties, dining, holidaying and in many other ways that are commensurate with their image in the society. Instead, if these filthy rich people and the rest of us who are better off decide to donate a certain percentage of our earnings to charity only on our birthdays then we would have atleast a million donations happening across the world every single day. The beauty of the idea is that no single person will have to donate too much (just once a year) and yet the NGOs the world over, the UNICEFs and the Greenpeace, the PETAs and CRYs that strive to protect our environment and support the world’s underprivileged will have cash-flows coming in to them constantly.

Since I believe in practicing what I preach, on my birthday my wife and I donated a certain percentage of my salary for a good cause in my hometown. The institution I donated to engages in a lot of social service activities of feeding the poor, educating the young, teaching them skills that make them self sufficient and so on. Scriptures suggest that donation should be confidential and should not be bragged about. With all due respect to the scriptures, I, however, believe it is high time we changed the way the world looks at charity. It is time charity is discussed openly so it becomes a way of life. It is time now that we not only dream about being rich but also about being a rich person that donates, that changes lives, that inspires humanity. Chances are that some of us are already doing this and a few might be doing so more frequently than once a year. If you do, then let us join our hands in making the world celebrate our birthdays. All the interested people may contact me and we’ll see how we can take this forward. The aim is to let all the aforementioned organizations try this idea as a marketing campaign for getting funds. My mail and effort would be successful even if just a few of you can be inspired to do so. But the idea as a whole will not meet its success unless it becomes a way of life the way partying on birthdays has become today.

Let us all strive to give more meaning to our lives. Let us all not just celebrate the number of times earth has revolved around the sun since we were born. For what could be the reason for our celebration if one more stomach can’t be filled through our efforts, if one tree can’t be saved through our donations, if one more drop of water can’t be prevented from getting polluted, if one orphan can’t study due to lack of funds, if one heart can’t melt and feel inspired seeing how we celebrate our birthdays? A birthday that does one of these would truly be a birthday that the world celebrates.

If this doesn’t inspire you, this poetic rendition of my experience might just help.

*************************
The Realization

I took an obscure bylane

to reach a nondescript building.
Met my colleagues and friends,
who were already there - waiting.

Together we all waited
for the kids to come out.
About a dozen of them came,
with a hope that would never fade out.

God hadn't been too kind to them.
The kids were bequeathed with misfortune.
They lived, in an orphanage,
a life that played to a discordant tune.

Today was a special day for them.
On schedule was "once in a blue moon" shopping.
They all reacted differently in anticipation.
Some did it by tickling and some by giggling.

We took them all to a shop
to the discomfort and surprise of many shoppers.
But the kids could only have basked in the moment
with a shine on their face that was misfit for paupers.

Unlike other kids, these were a well-behaved lot.
They wouldn't even touch the things they were to shop.
For a long time, I couldn't hear their voices.
Perhaps they never thought life would give them any choices.

I wondered why two kids were very quiet.
What I found made my heart go numb.
As if being orphan was not enough,
those kids were also - deaf and dumb.

We finally droppped them home.
Their hands full with stuffs they had taken.
They waved us a mirthful good-bye
as we left with a soul that was stirred and shaken.

Not long thereafter did I realize
that this was the best day of my life.
I had done something for someone,
who couldn't give back anything tangible in return.

I realized what joy is there in giving,
helping these kids in their fight against the odds.
And since kids are closer to HIM,
this was a subtle way to realize the Gods.

I realized how lucky I am,
to have parents for all the love I need.
Oh Lord, I won't whine again for not having shoes,
for I've seen someone without feet.

Technology Vs Spirituality

2008-05-07T20:17:00.002+05:30

Would I need a telephone
when I can communicate through feelings?
Would I need transport
when I can be anywhere at the speed of thought?

Would I need arms
when I realize there is none to defend from?
Would I need defence
when I see there is nothing to defend?

Would I need artificial laws
when I follow the ‘universal’ ones?
Would I need a government
if I’m truly honest to myself and my brethren?

Would I need gadgets for entertainment
when I find joy within?
Would I need to watch movies
when I find my life a movie in three dimensions?
Would I need snaps
when I know every moment is imprinted in my omniscience?
Would I need a photocopier
when I learn to play with the universe?

Would I have violations
if I don’t view others’ loss as my gain?
Would I need magic
if atoms dance to my tune?
Would I need hideouts
if I can disassemble and assemble myself at will?

In contradictions lives our society.
We claim we value ‘values’ more,
yet we pay techies more than preachers
and rave about actors more than teachers.

In technology, we find solace.
In physicality, we grope for trace.
Averse to believe what we can’t link,
Enslaved by technology, ‘beyond’ - we can’t think.

Isn’t the need for technology
a proof of underdeveloped spirituality?

Epiphany

2008-03-31T15:50:00.002+05:30

One more inspired from "Conversations with God."
*********************************
I thought highly of goodness until
I realized it’s useless without badness.

I glorified the right until
I found it’s nothing without the wrong.

I hated the darkness,
But what is light without dark?

I hailed the spirit to live until
I saw the glory in death.

I adored the winners until
I found the honour in the ignominy of losers.

I eulogized the wise until I saw
my foolishness in ignoring the wisdom of fools.

I deplored the suffering around me
until I found in it a plan divine.

I scoffed at the unequal distribution of riches,
until I realized we experience what we choose.

It saddens to see the withering of flower,
only to see it give way to the fruit.

It hurts to see the fruit go stale,
but only to enrich its mother - the soil.

The soil then nourishes the same tree
to complete the cycle of trinity.

What we call death is hence an enrichment,
taking life towards its own fulfillment

What should I condemn?
What then may I deplore?
For, in the coin of duality, good
is an obverse side of bad.
In celebrating life but not death
I have a crooked view of faith.
In hankering to win and hating to lose
I’ve, around my being, tightened a noose.

Enlightenment begins with acceptance of all,
in unbridled joy as you yourself enthrall.
Epiphany is when you realize
that just when you think, you materialize
and then you go within and internalize,
in the deepest silence you visualize,
that you always knew
what there ever was to know,
that it’s not about learning the unknown,
but about remembering the forgotten.

Michael Jackson, Me and common sense

2008-02-26T14:06:00.000+05:30

This stroke of luck hit me somewhere in Nov 2005. In my entire life, I had never been so close to the iconic pop star Michael Jackson as I had been during that time. We were in the same city of Dubai. Ahem. Ahem. Perhaps he too couldn’t believe his luck; so much so that he went berserk.

After his much publicized acquittal in the child molestation case, Michael hid himself from the media glare by choosing to stay put in the Middle East under the royal promises of an expensive hideout from the paparazzi. The government of Dubai almost succeeded in keeping him under wraps by quarantining him in one of the world’s most expensive hotel - Burj Al Arab. Nothing wrong with making business out of someone’s desperation they would’ve thought. But funny are the ways of God and Michael (God of Pop). The ‘pop-py’ God just couldn’t prevent himself from popping out a controversy from his eccentric hat of shenanigan. And this time he chose to hit below the belt of the apparently ‘conservative’ Dubai culture by entering the ladies room in a shopping mall.

The pop star's publicist said Jackson, who arrived in Dubai this week as the guest of a champion rally driver Mohammed bin Sulayem, did not understand the Arabic sign on the door and left the bathroom as soon as he realized his mistake.

In the statement released later, Jackson's publicist said: "Upon his exit (from the ladies bathroom), he was recognized and a crowd ensued. He had to wait in a nearby bookstore until police arrived to escort him through the crowd." But Mr. Michael had done his job and successfully made his Arabic-ally challenged linguistic abilities the scapegoat.

Much as we would love to lampoon the beleaguered pop star for his confused sexuality, I would like to partly blame the ostentatiously chic washroom signs at some places in Dubai. I was once staring at a similar prospect in 2005 GITEX in Dubai, where the artistic toilet door signs wearing Arabic headgears put me in a quandary, just when my quest to answer nature’s call had reached its bursting limits. For a few seconds I really thought of letting my bladder blast than be on the wrong side of the law in Dubai. But as they say, common sense is not so common; more so when it concerns uncommon celebrities like Michael Jackson. Since I’m more common than the uncommonly unique Mr. Jackson, I’ve more common sense to overcome such uncommon circumstances even when constrained by an uncommonly swelling bladder. And so I patiently waited at a safe distance from each of the washroom doors for a few people of each gender to get in or come out. Even after they got in, I waited for a few more seconds to confirm that the same folks didn’t come out hiding their embarrassing faces – a la Mr. Jackson.

I didn’t have a publicist or a champion rally driver behind my back to protect me. I was sure people would’ve followed me after they would’ve discovered my faux pass but only to lynch me rather than gape at me in awe. However, I had the uncommon common sense to be patient when it was the last thing I could expect. That I guess saved me from reducing the fame barrier between Mr. Jackson and myself.

Isn’t it more than a coincidence that my ex- girlfriend once told me that the thing she likes most about me is my patience? Who wouldn’t want a beau who could behave so sanely in the midst of such an exigency ‘bursting’ at the seam?

As I can't attend your wedding reception

2008-02-13T19:34:00.001+05:30

As I can't attend your wedding reception,
a thought brings itself to my attention.
'As you wind yourself in anticipation
of the pleasure of this loving relation,
I get overwhelmed with emotion;
not sure how to wish you the best of life's collection'

Life is a treasure, seldom understood.
Nothing matters - is all I know.
In diving into relations, are we building
our sources of enjoyment
or sources of need
is all I need to know.

May the full-stops of life match the full-stops.
May the commas match the commas.
Pray they never juxtapose.

Lest they be caught in the rigmarole of expectations,
if Spiritual growth is not the raison d'être for relations.

Skin

2008-01-22T18:04:00.000+05:30

The layer of pleasure,
the periphery of desire
Enslaves us often -
tying us in earthly quagmire.

Brush of the derma horripilates
Bristling of the hair titillates.
Fingers faint us and nails kill;
just can't survive those mild caresses.

Skin is the master,
mind is the slave;
we toil, sweat and pant,
for a downpour of pleasure,
through mounts of pain.

Lips roll over drooling tongue
melting in enchanting kisses;
eyes close in anticipation of
a pleasure that mind seldom misses.

The eyes in their closure carry the name,
lips – all – taste the same;
mind then conjures the countenance
and makes us all play the carnal game.

Skin is the channel,
mind is the means;
for in the bodily coalescence
fructify the divine plan of creation

Rise and fall of Religion

2008-01-16T14:17:00.000+05:30

Inspiration and excerpts from "Conversations with God" - the book that occurred to Neal Donald Walsch.

***************************
Lose your faith in yourself
so you may have faith in me.

Don’t question my doctrine
for I have all the right answers.

Don’t question, for if you do,
you will start thinking.
If you think, you’ll go to the source within.
The source would answer differently from
what I contrived.

I filled your heart with fear of God
and replaced the everlasting love for Him,
lest your love preempt my success.

I ordered men to bow down to God
where once man rose up in joyful outreach.

I burdened man with worries of God’s wrath
where once he sought God to lighten his burden.

I told man to be ashamed of his body and its most natural functions
where man once celebrated them as greatest gift of life.

I ‘commanded’ man to adore God
where once you adored God for it was impossible not to.

I made myself an intermediary to God
where you once thought of reaching Him in simple truth and goodness.

I created disunity everywhere,
for, in division – I survive
and in discord – I thrive.

I separated man from God, man from man and man from woman,
who I even made secondary spiritual being.

I made you learn from other’s experience
rather than seek your own.

In your doubts and fears,
I saw my rise;
in your doubts and love
I shall witness my fall.

For in making you doubt yourself
I train you to doubt my ideas.
For in my dogmatic enforcements
I create agnostics.

I made Him a jealous God;
But who would be jealous when one has and is, everything?

I made Him a wrathful God;
But why would He be angry when He can’t be hurt?

I made Him a vengeful God;
But on whom would He take vengeance, for all that exists is He?

Ten reasons to watch 'Dus Kahaniyan'

2007-12-17T11:36:00.000+05:30

This article was also accepted on youthejournalist here.

*********************************

1. If you love the “O’ Henry” brand of short stories where the last moment leaves you gasping for breath or makes your heart skip a beat or totally beats your expectations then this movie is a must watch.
2. If you’ve an open mind towards exploring new and creative ideas in movie-making then this movie you shouldn’t skip. It is a potential trendsetter. You wouldn’t want to miss a pioneer of a movie where one scene is totally unrelated to the other. “Darna Mana Hai” was close to this but there was a main story that was weaving different stories together. This one, however, is totally different.
3. If you can’t hold your concentration for a melodramatic-romantic-tear-jerker for three hours then this is a ‘twelve-minutes each’ of scintillating story telling that’ll keep boredom at bay.
4. If you want to test how quickly you can switch context in a cinema hall, for one compact story after another then this is your perfect test.
5. If you want your heart to ache, blood to race, laugh in between for some down to earth humour and then get a lump in your heart and have the rug pulled from under your feet, then this is the movie to watch.
6. If you want to see what powerful actors can do to a movie in a few minutes, this movie is for you. Shabana Azmi, Naseeruddin Shah, Nana Patekar, Amrita Singh all make your heart ache will their brilliant and yet devoid-of-melodrama performance.
7. “Dus Kahaniyan” is to Hindi films what a series of Twenty20 is for one day cricket. If you loved the shorter version of the game, you’d love the value-for money that this version will bring you.
8. Stories are told, and stories are told, and stories are told. But if you want to see some deft and sleek story-telling with brilliant cinematography and yet with just simplistic, totally unexpected endings, then go for it.
9. Ten different stories would mean there would be something in it for you. In a normal movie with one storyline, either you like it or hate it or are indifferent to it. Here, some stories would definitely appeal to you and the twist of fate in that story would hit you hard.
10. Watch it for a few dialogues that will make your heart go numb or make you wonder where it hit you. Whether it’s the response to Jimmy Shergill’s “I love you” or the feeling of deja vu that every married couple would get on listening to Nana Patekar’s smiling rendition of marital problems or the price that Amrita Singh pays for giving-in to the pull of love or the poetic musings of Manoj Bajpai in Zahir.

From Supplication to Gratitude: A different prayer

2007-11-22T10:15:00.000+05:30

This article of mine was also accepted on You The Journalist Website: here

*********************************

A friend on mine once said, “May the Lord Bless us all!”

His prayer triggered a thought related to some wisdom from the book "Conversations with God."

Every thought, every action, every word exists out of either of the two Sponsoring Thoughts "Love or Fear." Actions like jealousy, hatred, anger have fear as a sponsoring thought. Actions like forgiveness, sacrifice, caring, happiness have Love as a sponsoring thought.

The astonishing truth of the conscious universe is that no prayers are unanswered or left unattended; we just don’t pray to God in a way that our sponsoring thoughts reinforce our actual prayers. The universal law is that our sponsoring thought takes precedence over every other form of prayer. And so we need to alter and realign our sponsoring thoughts.

The problem with our duality is that our prayers are mostly for supplication. We pray that God make us rich, God protect us, God take care of us and so on. But the underlying sponsoring thought in all this is that we FEAR that God doesn't protect us, doesn't care for us in the way we want and so we have to ask for all that. And in such prayers what manifests is our sponsoring thought and not what we explicitly ask for, because sponsoring thought is our subconscious reality that we're entrenched in. Rather than God making me rich, the sponsoring thought of fear that God doesn't make me rich or I’m not rich takes precedence because these thoughts have immense creative power. And scarcity of money becomes your existential reality.

So a better form of prayer is a prayer of Gratitude and not Supplication. Here you visualize yourself enjoying what you deeply desire. If you want to be rich, you constantly imagine yourself riding the best cars, living in a luxurious bungalow, earning millions. You make that dream of richness a part of your conscious thought process even though you can’t actually act that way at this moment. Then you thank God for making you rich, thank him for making richness a part of your reality. And the whole universe will conspire to make your subconscious reality your existential reality.

The only thing you need to change is your sponsoring thought and have a rock solid faith. Professor Debashish Chatterjee, Dean Leadership Cell – SP Jain Center of Management, describes faith as the ‘Exhilaration of child thrown in the air by his father – knowing fully well that he would be caught when he comes down, the song of the lark before the first rays of sun hit the earth – knowing fully well that Sun would rise. Faith is what makes you hungry after a few hours of taking a meal, faith is what makes you feel cold in the winters and hot in the summers.’

Every action whose sponsoring thought is ‘love’ is an act of faith. Every action whose sponsoring thought is fear is prompted by a lack of faith. Faith is the biggest science that science has yet to discover.

So the correct statement is "I thank God for blessing us all." and not "May God bless us all."

Vhaali

2007-11-06T13:02:00.000+05:30

આભલા ના તારલા ને તૂટતા જોઈ મે ઇચ્છા કરી
આંખની તૂટેલી પાપણને મુટ્ઠી પરથી ફૂકી
પ્રેમ રુપી દીવો મારા હ્દયમાં પ્રગટાવો પ્રભુ
ગ્રીષ્મ ની બપોર માં વસંત નુ પુષ્પ ઉગાદી

ઇચ્છા મારી કદાચ સાચા મનથી હશે
શરદ ની પુનમ સમાન તે પવિત્ર હશે
તો આભાર કે મારી ઇચ્છા પૂર્ણ કરી
નદીમાં ખોવાએલ મારી નાવડી ને કીંજલ મળી

બેકાબૂ વંટોડિયા સામે તે મોગ્રા ની ફોરમ બની
રવિ ના તાપ સામે તે સુર્યમુખી નુ ફુલ બની
ઠરેલી સમઝણ સામે બાળપણની નર્મી બની
આથમતા અજવાડા સામે પરોઢીયા ની કિરણ બની

નાજુક નમણી વ્હાલીએ મારુ હ્ર્દય પિગડાવ્યુ
પ્રેમ રહિત જીવનમાં પ્રેમનુ અંકુર ફુટ્યુ
બાળક રુપી કિલ્લોલે મનનો સુસ્વાટ તોડ્યો
નાની નાની વાતોમાં હસીને તેણે મને જીત્યો

જીવનનો આ પડાવ હવે ખૂબ મીઠો લાગે છે
તેની બાથમાં જીવન નો થતો ઉદ્ધાર લાગે છે
તેની ખુશીમાં મારા જીવનનો હેતુ લાગે છે
તેના માટે સમર્પિત થવામાં મારો મોક્ષ લાગે છે

કોઈ નહીં થી જીવનનું બધુજ થઈ છે તે
મારી ખુશીઓ નો હવે આધાર છે તે
તે નથી તો શ્વાસ ની પન જરુર નથી
જીવનની હવે અત્યંત જરુરિયાત છે તે

A disjoint Melange

2007-09-25T14:53:00.000+05:30

Moments of truth
laid bare,
me -
out of nowhere.

Tumultuous waves
of emotions
carve the imminent
from the immanent.

The divinity of love
unexplored;
fear rules the world -
extempore.

Love misunderstood
breeds fear,
quest to possess
repels my dear.

Clouds of thoughts
never pour into oblivion,
constant reinforcements
of mortal impediments
empower the haze,
obscure the azure
to create a disjoint mélange.

777 - When my parents became kids

2007-09-15T15:59:00.000+05:30

I had called my parents from Ahmedabad (where they live) to Pune (where I work). I had a big surprise in store for them. It took a lot of convincing without divulging the real surprise especially because the plan of action involved my parents making a sudden overnight trip – a clearly uncomfortable proposition at their age - and that too for less than a day since I was to start for home that very evening.

I went to receive them at the Pune Railway station on Friday morning. They had a puzzled look on their face with a question mark on their foreheads covertly asking me what the hell was the surprise. I loved the moment when all they wanted to do was ask me that question again but their age-old wisdom had given them enough patience and faith to control their feelings and take things as they come. The knowledge of the fact that their son was going to give them a surprise also meant that it was going to be a pleasurable experience was also instrumental in their playing to my tune. I had told them that I was to leave on Friday evening for Ahmedabad. So after taking them home and arranging for their lunch, I left for office only to return early in the evening. By then they were all anxious to know the surprise and worried as to what I was up to. It was then that I revealed that I was taking them to Ahmedabad the next morning by flight. "Their first flight experience."

Being from a middle class family, we never really had the privilege of flying. Thanks to the software Industry, I had my first flight experience a few years back and I was now eager to witness someone undergoing this experience. And who better than my parents? Until now, their closest brush with an airport was when they had to wait at the arrivals and departure gate at Ahmedabad airport to receive or drop me. Everytime I'd see them waiting at the railings waving at me, a deep sense of urgency would rush through my blood to help them cross the railings and show the airport from inside and then gift them their first flight. It was this surprise that made their sudden train journey worth its weight in gold.

We woke up early Saturday morning and reached the airport. Their eyes glistened and face lit up as we reached the main entrance to show our tickets to the security, who let us in after inspecting our tickets. I was gently guiding my parents from behind as they crossed the 'dotted line' for the first time in their lives. They immediately started looking around observing the insides of an airport from within its walls. Their lifelong dream of flying was to turn to reality and I was so proud of being a channel for it. I was telling them about the procedure on our way to Kingfisher Airlines check-in counter when a pretty ground staff dressed in smart livery interrupted us and gave us the boarding pass from her hand-held. My novice parents were pretty pleased with the way she complied with a smiling countenance to my request for a window seat and the way technology had developed to ease our lives – oblivious of the fact that this industry sets much higher standards for customer service. My father promptly denounced the Indian Railways and wondered whether it’ll ever attain those standards. I mildly smiled at him knowing the yawning gap of standards between the two.

Post the security check, we entered the waiting hall from where we could see the planes parked on the tarmac. That was the first time my parents saw a plane from that close. They were amazed at its size, shape, look and magnificence. They were looking at everything around them with the inquisitiveness of a kid not able to understand a thing around and yet trying to comprehend the world.

As we boarded the flight, the airhostess working at the galley got up and wished Good Morning to my mom. My mom – taken by surprise by this sudden gesture of the lady – started blushing as I noticed how happy she was. She just couldn’t hide her excitement while my dad was still a bit subdued. I made my mom take the window seat, dad the middle and I took the seat by the aisle. We all were living our dreams that day. They were looking at the world from the window of the plane for the first time curiously observing the wings, the ground crew loading the luggage and the airport from the other side and I was observing them trying to internalize the moment and etch it in my permanent memory.

As kids, while traveling in the Railways, we used to rush to the window seat and curiously observe the outside world. How sweet were those days, when the dogs barking, the cows grazing, kids waving and the train turning were all reasons to celebrate with excitement! I realized that the life had turned one full circle as I took the place of an adult with my parents turning kids once again; this time, however, in front of their son’s eyes.

As the plane took off, I egged my mom to keep her eyes open inspite of the fear and the pressure. But she eased into her seat as the plane rose higher and she got used to the height. Even my dad – generally measured in reacting – would pull himself up and bend towards the window to see what mom wanted to show him; pretty much the way we kids used to rush to the window to see the engine every time the train took a turn. Mom then showed him the clouds. For a change, they were looking at the clouds from above. Having so gotten used to seeing clouds blocking the sunlight, they were really startled to see that the view from above was uncomfortably bright.

And finally as we were landing, things at the ground changed from minute to life-sized. My parents breathed a sigh of relief as we landed safely at the Ahmedabad airport in 50 mins, a drastic reduction from the thirteen hours of train travel.

We thanked heavens as we left the plane with both my parents beaming and proudly smiling at the indifferent world.

I let out a silent prayer of gratitude for helping my parents see this day. The day that I call 777 – 7th July 2007

Demystification Trilogy 2: Demystifying God

2007-07-18T10:41:00.002+05:30

In my undying quest for knowledge
and the unceasing trials of journey within,
in every prayer of mine, I beseech Him to
reveal Himself via any channel under Him

He is a master of masquerade;
never reveals more than what he wants.
Approach him with the humility of the surrendered
and the simplicity of a child
and he would unfold to you
in ways unexpected and mild

Through my perennial introspection,
through my friends’ communication,
through my silent meditation,
through the books and my comprehension
and through seer’s sermonization,
He revealed himself in proportion
commensurate with my ability of absorption
and my hunger for devotion

Then one day He commanded
me to be, for others, a mode.
For them to comprehend Him better,
He wanted me to write “Demystifying God.”

“I don’t believe in God. Why should I when I’ve never seen him, heard him, felt him, tasted him or spoken to him? I do what I’ve to do. I don’t think anybody controls me. There is no living proof of God.”

In the course of my life, I’ve heard such statements many times. I always found it difficult to counter them with the only weapon I had: faith. Something told me there was more to it than the argument could prove. And I delved deep into the search for an answer until such time when I could, if not satisfactorily counter those assertions, atleast cast a hole of doubt in the wall of disbelief and systematically prove the inadequacy of the claim.

Let us examine every reason that people give for not believing in the existence of an entity I choose to call God or a force that seems to control our very existence.

I can’t see God so God doesn’t exist: Our ability to see depends on a lot of factors. We see objects only when our eyes can process the rays emitted by the object in front of us. Science has proven that human eyes can process rays only within a certain range. If the same object that we see today would tomorrow start emitting X-rays or UV rays instead of the visible light rays then the same human eye would fail to see that object. Would we be right then in saying that the object doesn’t exist just because we can’t see it? A person suffering from jaundice sees the world as yellowish. But does it mean that the world has actually turned yellow? One disease can colour our impressions of the surroundings. Doesn't that point to the fact that eyes see what is relative and not the absolute truth? Our eyes function under certain conditions. When we fail to see things, we need to respect a possibility that those conditions were never met.

I can’t hear God so God doesn’t exist: If the only sound that existed in the universe was the one that humans could hear then the bats would never have survived. Science has proven that bats can hear sounds which are way below the hearing range of humans. Assume a scenario where you’re sitting in a quiet room. Suddenly you just tune in your radio and hear a song. Is it that the sound ways started coming only when you tuned in the radio? Infact, the sound waves were always there. Radio was the tool you needed to convert them to audible waves. So would it be fair to say that just because you couldn’t hear those sounds (captured effectively by the radio) those sounds don’t exist?

I’ve never felt God so God doesn’t exist: Our sense of touch also works for a certain level of grossness. As the matter starts getting subtler and subtler, our ability to feel it goes on reducing. We can always feel a solid more than a liquid, a liquid more than air and air more than vacuum. In fact, our ability to feel the air around us also depends on the relative motion of one with respect to other. As long as both air and human are stationary with respect to each other, the latter can’t feel the air. Would it be right in that case to say that air doesn’t exist because I can’t feel it?

And similarly, other such ‘senses’ based arguments can be countered. The bottomline of this argument is to say that ‘just because you can’t experience doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’

Now consider a hypothetical two-dimensional world where two-dimensional people can comprehend only height and width but not depth. In other words, they can understand squares and rectangles but not cubes or cuboids respectively which are depth based extensions in third dimension of those two dimensional shapes. A person living in three dimension can very easily comprehend a cuboid and cube but not a two-dimensional bloke. What is a cylinder to a three dimensional person is either a circle or a rectangle to a person living in two dimensions. Our three dimensional mind is also living under this self imposed limitation. Until our mind evolves enough to comprehend the fourth dimension and starts living in it, we won’t be able to understand the omnipotence, omnipresence and omniscience of this all-pervading entity called God.

Take our hand for instance. We all know that our brain controls our hand. It moves, grabs, slaps, holds and caresses as our mind commands. Assume for a moment that our hand gets the sense of hearing and an ability to speak as well. What would our hand say if we were to ask our hand, ‘Does brain exist?’ I’m sure our hand would reply in the negative for it doesn’t have a brain to comprehend a brain. Brain is way beyond a hand for our hand to comprehend the former. Consider this then. Beyond senses are the sense organs, beyond sense organs is our brain, beyond brain is intellect, beyond intellect is intuition, beyond intuition is maya (the delusion) and beyond maya is God; how could we then expect to understand God with the limitation of the tool called brain? What people don’t realize is that the very tool they use to judge, comprehend or prove the inexistence of God is by itself inadequate.

So what is God then? God is the omnipresent pure consciousness. To explain consciousness, let us understand what we mean when we use the word ‘I’. When a person uses ‘I’, he means the collection of physical, liquid and gaseous matter that is enclosed within his body’s periphery. Why is that so? That is because when someone touches his body he realizes that someone has touched him but when that someone touches a table lying beside this subject, he doesn’t feel the touch. Why not? That is because his consciousness is limited by his physical periphery defined by his body.

The universal consciousness that God is can hence know and feel everything that happens within his endless realm even as we feel every sensation within our body consciousness. Whether you like it or not, that supreme consciousness is what we all are destined to dissolve into. We don’t have a choice there, no matter how independent or self-made we think we are. As the creator of the Matrix in the movie “The Matrix Reloaded” says to Neo, “You don't have a choice, for you've already made your choice.”

Quest for Unsurvival

2007-06-27T12:34:00.000+05:30

The devil lies in the details. Practicality lies in facts and figures. Poets and philosophers talk in the clouds. Much against my poetic instincts and alluding to the skills I learnt during my recent MBA, I present some hard facts of the serious crisis looming over India, before taking up a philosophical flight of fancy to raise the hopes, as is my wont.

· The distance between Mumbai’s international airport to the heart of India’s financial capital may be only 30 kilometres, but getting there can take more than two hours in the rush hour.

· World’s average speed is 50 kms per hour, the traffic on Indian roads trudge at 25 kms per hour.

· Last year, India spent $28 billion, or 3.6 percent of GDP, on infrastructure; China, in comparison, spent $201 billion, or nine percent of GDP, as per a report by JP Morgan Stanley.

· Montek Singh Ahluwalia, of India’s Planning Commission, told the recent annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank that India must spend an additional 2.5 to 3 percent of GDP annually on infrastructure if it is to sustain economic growth of 8 to 9 percent.

· Mckenzie report states that India leads the market in offshored back-office services, but as a manufacturing center it lags behind China, Thailand, and the rest of Asia. The reasons are well documented: multinational companies operating in India must overcome erratic electricity supplies, poor roads, and gridlocked seaports and airports while contending with government policies that discourage hiring and hold back domestic demand for goods in many sectors.

· Interest payments and subsidies, which together account for 27 per cent of government spending, starve the country of much-needed resources to invest in physical infrastructure, such as roads and power stations.

· India's retail promise must seem tempting, but that outlook "is tempered by the fact that the country is grappling with severe infrastructure and policy issues," says the CII in the report it produced with A. T. Kearney. "Cold chains [distribution chains for perishable items], warehousing and logistics infrastructure will fast become unmanageable challenges for India if proactive action is not taken."

· A Financial times report on India’s 2007 march budget says that the budget, as widely predicted, avoided any mention of the politically sensitive reforms that economists say are essential to sustain 8 per cent-plus growth in a stable inflationary environment.

· The government has set aside $30bn for infrastructure development next year. “We have to think on a different scale and these kinds of miserable amounts are not going to help,” said Nasser Munjee, chairman of Development Credit Bank. “We are going to have to spend something like $150bn a year if we are going to catch up with what the economy really needs,” he said, accusing the government of failing to formulate a strategy to attract private investment in infrastructure.

A trip down the memory lane is not uncalled for. India received ‘political’ freedom from the British in 1947 but it had to wait for ‘economic’ freedom until 1991. Nehruvian socialism had strangulated India’s business and hence the economy from blossoming. Draconian laws that placed businessmen next only to traitors ruled the roost and prevented businessmen from boosting the economy through their entrepreneurial skills. Thanks to IMF’s threat of ‘reform or perish’, Narasimha Rao’s Congress government was forced to open up.

Gradually thereafter, all the reformed sectors faced international competition and evolved. The IT boom was also a fallout of these reforms.

Let us associate the impact of reforms on some industries and see how the forces of these industries have interacted to bring the scenario where we are now. Take automobile industry for instance. How many people in India owned a car – which meant an Ambassador or a Premier Padmini – before the reforms began? Trade barriers and insane import duties made foreign cars beyond the reach of an average Indian. Meager salary levels ensure that only the top government officials and businessmen had cars at their disposal. Ergo, only a tiny fraction of the society had cars. Consequently, a car was a dream that every bourgeois Indian wanted to own.

Come reforms and the Indian government opened up thirty four industries including banking, automobiles and IT. A plethora of companies then set up base in India. Banking and IT opened up new job opportunities and paid the Indians hitherto unheard of salaries. Living standards started improving along with the spending potential of the emerging middle class. More and more banks started offering various loans for everything that the new Indian customer could or couldn’t buy. Foreign cars slowly started flooding the Indian market. The dream of owning a car was no longer a dream, thanks to higher salary levels and easily available bank loans. Indian cities now saw more cars per capita running on the roads which were not modernized at the same pace. Corruption in issuing driving licenses saw people shifting from two-wheelers to cars without their rash driving habits chastened. The result: roads became more congested and accident prone with greater damage per accident. Random, corrupt and unplanned licensing for retails saw shopping complexes and modern malls come up without proper parking facilities. While retail sector boomed, traffic situation worsened. Almost all Indian cities are plagued with traffic problems. Even more so are the IT hubs. Bangalore needs a special mention here. The city has already reached a point where traffic snarls are eating into social life and spiking attrition. How long can people survive in a city that provides lifestyle but not life? How long can you survive in a city where driving two kilometers in potholed and congested roads take you 45 mins? If Indian cities were balloons, they would’ve burst by now.

The reforms in real estate meant the best of the living infrastructure being made available to the nouveau riche Indian customer. Every such luxurious apartment consumed more power. To lure IT companies, states gave them guarantees of uninterrupted power supply at the cost of some other sectors. At the same time, a bungled power reform saw states distributing power for free for silly political gains. Inefficient distribution and collection systems saw power theft as a rampant problem which drained the power sectors’ profitability. Consequently, India is suffering from a tremendous power crisis.

India lacks a holistic view on reforms. While reforms are good, the spiraling effect of skewed reforms is what India is experiencing now. Indian government patronized IT companies. Gave them tax breaks and uninterrupted power supplies but ignored the infrastructure that is so important to accommodate the influx in cities generated by rapid job creation. While rising incomes made cars within their reach, bad roads and traffic ensured consumers were left huffing and puffing by the time they reached the malls. India is offering great ‘lifestyle’ in pockets. But its skewed policies and misalignment of holistic reforms threaten to take ‘life’ away from this ‘style.’

Tata Motors is scheduled to launch the cheapest car in the world at rupees one lakh. While it is a great engineering feat, I seriously doubt if India – inspite of the existing demand for such cars – is ready for such a development. With Banks ready to offer credit at the drop of a hat, Indian lower middle class would lap it up. But imagine the traffic disaster it would bring upon the cities. The per capita space occupied on roads would increase drastically and worsen an already crisis ridden scenario. The flanking services(driving licenses, roads, driving habits) that support such industries need serious reforms before any such move would see the benefits it is envisaged to bring in.

So where lies the solution to this? The answer to this is extremely difficult and yet a no-brainer. We need a hard task master who can enforce the execution of tougher policies than cave in to political pressures. We need urgent reforms in the ‘relegate’ sectors (power, infrastructure) so they can support the already reformed sectors (IT, Banking) efficiently and help them grow at the scorching pace they’ve gotten used to.

Can India achieve it? The odds against us are high. But so were the odds against India when, during Independence, nobody gave it a chance of survival based on its utopian religious policies. The skeptics gave Pakistan a thumbs up for the world have never until then seen how various religions could inhabit a place in peaceful coexistence. India has successfully made those skeptics eat their own words now. One hopes, that the resilience of Indians would help it perform an encore.

Redefining Success of MBA

2007-04-22T23:09:00.000+05:30

Recently I finished my MBA. As I landed myself a job during the placement week at my college, I guess I didn’t do badly by the conventional Indian definition of success at B-Schools. But is getting the job at the end of the term the only criteria for success in MBA? My experience says that getting a job is just one of the important parameters, especially in the Indian context. But then, is there more to MBA than getting the job? Yes, there is. MBA as a course is an experience worth going through. A course that teaches you valuable lessons in teamwork and interpersonal skills – something other courses cannot boast of. Having gone through this experience before the multitude of you all aspirants of MBA, I technically become your senior. Seniors are like classics – the books that everyone appreciates but no one reads. We seniors are like those priests who preach what they themselves don’t practice. Let me share with you some such gyan atleast some of which I could not exercise but on the hindsight, I wish I had.

Soft skills courses are important - We need to change our smug ‘know-all’ attitude towards soft-skills courses and those that deal with Human Relations. The problem, according to me, is that we perceive them to be synonymous to Communication Skills. And isn’t our selection into one of the premiere B-Schools of India proof enough of our good communication skills? But it is this very haughty attitude which is our undoing, especially because communication skill is just a part of the whole and not the be-all and end-all of it.

Groups – There are two ways a group can be formed: either college decides your group or students decide their own groups. This second group is more coherent since people generally handpick the ‘apparently’ better students of the lot. But such a selection has two problems the first of which is a proverbial aphorism – “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The second problem is that people tend to choose only those they are comfortable and friendly with. So, the friendly, humourous and fun-to-be-with people get picked up faster while those perceived as nagging, inquisitive or overly-studious recluses are left out. This precept sometimes falls flat on its face because of the second rule, “The most sincere and knowledgeable people are not often the best people to hangout with.” Students realize their fallacy when they find that people who are pompously fun-to-be-with are not the best assets in a team. Flamboyance, in most cases, ends up being antagonistic to sincerity since the people who actually work in a group are rarely high profile. It is here that the group formed from the “left-overs” who were partners more out of compulsion than choice do a better job by working silently and sincerely, as is their wont. You need truckloads of serendipity to end up with a good group where almost everyone contributes. However, it’s only human to have a black-sheep in a group of six. So think twice before forming the group. The reserved, boring, next door nerd, & not the Mr. Flamboyant, might just be the right guy who’ll save your project.

Love blooms – It is only natural that clouds part, flowers blossom, angels sing and bells ring when a guy meets a gal. Please apportion a buffer for such an eventuality. God save the groups whose members fall in love with one of the batch-mates. No amount of coaxing, rebuking or imploring can get them out of their self-imposed honeymoon for they prefer to stay in that self-denial state of romantic hangover. After some initial altercations, you’ll learn to ignore and not expect from them. The faster your accept and adapt to this change, the better for you.

I want to Top – Our Indian education system has so deeply entrenched in us the association of self-worth with the marks and ensuing recognition that we almost forget that MBA is a different ball game altogether. You’ll find people who’re crazy after marks and those who just don’t give a damn. I would say, it is dangerous to stay in either of the camp. Going too much after marks would force you to stop looking for what you like and what would you make a career from. Your view of success would simply be a short-sighted rank. We have in our batch some commendable people who’ve been toppers all through their lives. But they say, they’re here not for rank. They’re here to discover what they want out of MBA. That should be your aim. At the same time, it is dangerous to lurk at the bottom of the pyramid. You need to ensure that you don’t let your ‘lack of concern for marks’ trickle you down to the bottom. Only a fine line separates being not concerned and being careless. Make sure you don’t cross that line. Staying somewhere in the middle should keep you in good stead and help you focus on what you want to do.

Teamwork - The Indian schools and undergraduate Institutions are partly to be blamed for laying no emphasis on teamwork. We need to inculcate the importance of teamwork in children at an impressionable age. In their quest for ‘individual’ marks and grades, Indian students have forgotten to work for the holistic good. It is amazing what you can achieve if you don’t care who gets the credit. But in the corporate world, your progress depends on your visibility. So how effectively you balance the two contradictions will decide how far you go. We still need to ensure that we communicate to our teams that while claiming credit for something is welcome, plagiarism is not. Soft-skills, ironically, have a very important role to play here.

Presentations – No matter how tempting it is, don’t get into a quid pro quo arrangement with the class to avoid challenging questions post presentations. It is important to learn to answer critical queries without getting defensive. You should be able to achieve this easily if your focus shifts away from marks.

Zero in - Zero in on what you want to do post MBA. Every subject being taught here is a potential career for you. Find out which subject appeals to you most, irrespective of your specialization. Don’t worry if you don’t know what role to get into post mba. Most people don’t and you’ve a huge company here. But look at every subject with an eye for picking your career out of it. You may choose to focus more on the subject of your interest and delve deeper into it.

Competitions - Without fail, take part in the B-school competitions. They’re not just important for you as a person, student, businessman or a manager but also for your college. These competitions will improve the scope of your thought process if not anything else.

Hope all the future MBAs can learn from my experiences and mistakes. I note this down on my blog so the future batches of MBAs have a different set of mistakes to commit and learn from them rather than reinvent the wheel themselves.

Break Free

2007-04-15T23:31:00.000+05:30

Discovering the uncharted ways
as I spend my days
the clarity of intuitive rays
unclutters my mind's haze.

Centuries of stereotypes hold me back,
the burden of conformity pulls me down.
But my mind wants to break its aviary
for 'The Force' would not let me down

Love here, love there, love everywhere
Which love do I pick and choose
Every love I pick for my happiness
cheers one and relegates the rest to snooze

I hate the rules of conformity,
being one in the crowd of anonymity
under the shadow of multitudes - a nonentity
behind the facade of active society - a passivity

This passivity is mind's implosive whirlpool
that has no exit - only entry.
Against many odds, I will survive
to find the love of my life - and break free

Why?

2007-04-02T16:59:00.000+05:30

Why do we need to lose innocence
to realize its value?
Why do we have to value relations
only after we bid adieu?

Why do we hate everything
that we don't like?
Why should the alternate to liking
not be respect but dislike?

Why do we make a virtue
out of our habits?
Why should heretics always be
looked upon as culprits?

Why do we seek comfort
in familiarity?
Why do we always loathe
any dissimilarity?

Why do we return an insult
twice as strong?
Why do we sometimes not even
return favours to where they belong?

Why should nine people lose
for one to win?
Why should the inner voice drown
in the outer din?

Why are breakups needed
to unfold a person's real character?
Why should adversities separate
the real person from the actor?

Why is a king's crown dearer
than a child's doll?
Why should the worth of a person
be bound by a monetary wall?

In you

2007-03-07T22:38:00.000+05:30

In you, I see the freedom of my spirit...
In you, I see the emancipation of my soul.

In you, I see the unshackling of my inhibitions.
In you, I see the breaking of my aviary.

In you, even a faux pass seems right.
In you, I see my longing in the night.

In you, I see the blossom of flowers.
In you, I see the rise of my 'loving' powers.

In you, I want to retreat for days.
In you, is the shine that clears my haze.

In you, I want to lose myself.
In you, I want to discover myself.

The Spirituality of Business

2007-02-07T14:57:00.000+05:30

“Never talk to me about profit, Jeh, it is a dirty word,” snapped Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first Prime Minister, at JRD Tata, India’s premier business Tycoon of the yesteryears, when the latter tried to explain that Indian public sector needed to make profits.

Business and ‘profit-making’ ideology have been the favourite ‘whipping boys’ of our society since time immemorial. While philanthropy was always admired as an epitome of altruistic virtues, business was relegated as a nadir of selfish vices.

In ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ Adam Smith, regarded as the father of Economics, says something to indirectly corroborate this thought of the society: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”

A deeper dissection of any person’s actions would reveal that the final purpose of every human action or inaction is to find happiness for himself or herself. Why does a kind hearted person help others? Why does a selfish man help himself? Why does a crook cheat? Why does a lazy person believe in inaction? Why do people fall in love? Why do people run after money? Why do businessmen hanker for profits? Whatever be the intermediate motive in the above actions or inactions, their final aim is happiness. It is in this final purpose of any action that the difference between philanthropy and business starts to dissolve.

The glaring and obvious difference between business and charity is that the overt beneficiaries of business are the owners while the same for charity is the society at large. But what misses our eyes is that for business the covert beneficiary is our society. Since happiness is the common denominator and the final aim of every action of every human being, a philanthropist becomes as much a covert beneficiary of his own act of charity as community becomes for business. And so - when both are working for their own happiness - why should a businessman be denounced and a philanthropist be eulogized? What society as a whole has failed to realize is that business and charity are not antagonistic but complementary to each other. Whether explicit or implicit, both cater to the betterment of our society in totally ‘antagonistic’ ways. Businesses directly impact the “employable” workforce through which the benefits trickle down to their families. But businesses don’t bother about the downtrodden. Charity and non-profit organizations pick them up and make them employable, from where some businesses absorb them. Consequently, both business and charity are the obverse side of the same coin. They’re like two brothers where one is ruthless in execution while the other is mild hearted and caring. But the contribution of one over the other towards the betterment of society cannot and should not be underplayed. Interesting it is to note that ‘Corporate Social Responsibility’ (CSR) is gradually blurring this difference between business and charity at the intermediate level as well.

Thomas Edison invented the electric bulb. However, had it not been for the business interest of someone, the society would not have found an efficient way of distributing it to the larger mass. History is abound with scientific inventions that changed the face of mankind. But without the able support of businessmen, inventions would never have become commodities we have so gotten used to. Ironic as it may sound, the beauty of business is its ruthlessness. If markets are left by themselves, only the most efficient and the most effective businesses – barring a few exceptions like monopoly or unscrupulous practices where government regulations become antidotes - would survive; and efficiency introduced in business processes leads to a betterment of human society in the longer run. This is where businesses start touching the spiritual chord of philanthropy: “Service to mankind is service to God.”

Philanthropy and spirituality believe in serving people irrespective of their caste, religion, race or any other form of discrimination. Business precept also commands serving the customer by turning a blind eye to any of these discriminatory factors. The essential idea behind Globalization is that businesses don’t recognize the political boundaries and divisions that countries form. A business will go and spread its roots to countries where it sees an opportunity - political rivalries notwithstanding. For example, when Nato was bombing Serbia in 1999 both sides could eat at McDonald’s during the breaks. A business knows no divides.

McKinsey’s Eric Beinhocker in a brilliant, thought-provoking book, ‘The Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity and the Radical Remaking of Economics,’ states that “The economy is a marvel of complexity, yet no one designed it and no one runs it.” ‘For any living creature,’ he adds ‘the evolutional game involves obtaining resources to live long enough to procreate and rear its young. Business is humanity’s successful effort at obtaining those resources.’

Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of Needs proposed in his 1943 paper ‘A Theory of Human Motivation’ contends that as humans satisfy basic needs, they seek to satisfy successively higher needs that occupy a set hierarchy depicted here as a pyramid consisting of five levels. The basic concept is that the higher needs in this hierarchy come into focus once all or most of the lower level needs are satisfied. As mankind satisfies higher needs, it’ll find a need for self-actualization which is the essence of spirituality.

So successful have businesses been that much of humanity no longer has to focus on staying alive. Thanks to business, our basic existential needs are satisfied and we’re moving towards higher needs leading up to self-realization. Business is hence an indispensable cog in the wheel of human ascension up the spiritual journey.

My first brush with acting

2007-01-17T19:29:00.000+05:30

I never thought I was the right person to leave people in splits of laughter.

But then the new batch of SP Jain centre of Management, Singapore joined us early this year and we wanted to present them with something memorable on the Fresher's Party. So some of us decided to do a skit for them. The first day of rehearsal was horrible - what with all kinds of ideas coming from all corners of the room and the attempts at comedy looking pedestrian at best and pathetic at worst. My lack of confidence and experience in acting did not help me either. Thanks to my fallacy of acting not being my cup of tea, I nearly backed out mid-way through the rehearsals.

However, clouds parted, flowers bloomed, angels sang, and the divine intervened as I gleaned myself out of my self-imposed straightjacket. I then decided to hang on and enjoy myself through the experience. Thereafter, what I delivered surprised not only myself but the entire batch. Enjoy my new theatrical avatar of "Paresbhai Tikli" who is a student of SP TS (Shaan Patti Terrorist School).

Without further ado, here are the two links on google video that would show you the combined 20 mins skit.

A word of caution: This is a college skit and hence it will have its share of 'college-lingo.'

Part1

Part2

Oxymorons that describe Mankind

2007-01-14T00:52:00.000+05:30

Demonic mystic
Inconclusively decisive
Miserly generous
Religious atheist
Spiritually agnostic
Destructively creative
Satanic Deity
Divisively united
Seething calm
Silent din
Fundamentally baseless
Childish Adult
Veracious hypocrite
Pompously modest
Living dead

Marketing Gap

2006-12-19T22:25:00.001+05:30

This article lists my learning from Prof. Ram Kumar’s Marketing sessions and my thought extrapolations on the same. The professor left us with a few ideas and hints to provoke our thinking. This article is an attempt to finish the thought that he kindled.

Scenario 1: How much does an average middle class person spend for the trousers and jeans he wears? Say Rs. 800 to 1000

How much does the same person spend for a shirt, T-shirt or a top? Say Rs. 500 to 700.

And how much does he/she spend on the undergarments? Hardly Rs 30.

The discrepancy is for all to see. People spend 70% of their life in their undergarments. Some people spend even more time in them; they take them off only during ablution and defecation. The undergarments are essential for our comfort and hence make the foremost contribution towards making us confident. If you doubt the confidence part then try wearing a misfit. Also, wearing a good quality undergarment prevents you from so many disorders. And yet we spend so less on them than the outer clothing we wear.

My take:
Isn’t this ‘individuality’ and ‘healthful living’ a marketing gap that undergarments companies should try to tap? Shouldn’t these companies appeal to every individual’s ‘dormant’ desire of living the life for himself or herself for a change?

Scenario 2:
On a normal day, how much time do we spend in the
washroom? 15-30 mins.
drawing room? Max 1.5 to 2 hours
Kitchen? Gender specific but say max 3-4 hours
Bedroom? Assuming a normal person sleeps for 8 hours, we spend atleast 9 hours there.

Now the critical question: which part of our house do we spend maximum on?

Undoubtedly it is the drawing room, right? We spend the most on that part of the house where we don't even spend our maximum time. Compare the money we spend on the drawing room sofa sets and their smooth velvet cushions with the amount you spend on the bedroom mattresses and pillows. Guests come and sit in the drawing room. That is the place that needs to be at its best then. Why should we spend on our bedroom where we go only to sleep? Isn’t it a stark contrast that speaks volumes of the neglect we subject ourselves to? Don’t we pay the price of this through stiff neck at best and spondylosis at worst? Isn’t this the kind of gap that furniture and mattress companies like Ikea need to tap?

My take:
As a society, we’ve evolved giving too much importance to others. We grew up getting conditioned to doing what our parents recommended and not doing what they forbid us from doing. Parents learnt those lessons from their parents and so on. But the essential basis of all those dos and don’ts has been the perspective of others towards our actions. People in our society have evolved wondering what other person in the society would think if they do this and not that. This overbearing importance given to others has forced us to undermine the importance we ideally should’ve given to ourselves. Somewhere, the huge disparity in our spending on our personal comfort through undergarments vis-à-vis the outer clothing or on our personal feel-good factor through bedroom spendings vis-à-vis those on drawing rooms is a fallout of this societal psychosis.

Scenario 3:
How much would the following people cost per month?

A good cook: Rs. 1000
A washerman: Rs. 800
A 24*7 house cleaner: Rs. 2000
A sex worker: Rs 10000
A Personal Relation manager: Rs 10,000
A 24*7 nanny: Rs 7000
A secretary to remind you of your important appointments and deadlines: Rs 6000

Now compare and contrast all these against the cost of a housewife.

My take:
Ergo, can the contribution of a housewife be considered as the sum total of all the above costs that you save? What about the intangible gain of peace of mind that comes from not having to worry about these scores of daily chores which helps you focus better on your core competence which is to become an efficient bread-winner for the family. Pardon me for the crudity of the comparison. While comparing the monetary value of house-wife is the last thing one should do, this comparison nevertheless brings out the stark contrast like none other. If only we could realize the qualitative value that a house-wife brings to our life, we would start looking up to her and give her her due rather than relegating her to a position of nonentity. The housewives themselves need to realize what they’re to the family. That would help them value their self-worth and respect what they do.

Marketing helps change people’s outlook. Certain things were never meant to be a certain way. But societal dynamics force people to make rules out of exceptions and vice-versa. There are always some innate human desires curbed under societal forces. Companies that identify such rules that conflict with the innate human spirit need to bring out and emancipate those souls hankering to break the shackle by attacking that dormant, implicit need. Companies need not go too far to innovate in terms of new products that generate newer needs. There are enough dormant needs that are curbed under the societal forces. The sooner the companies target them, the happier the society at large would be.

My First Haiku

2006-12-16T20:37:00.000+05:30

To love or not,
you
or myself.

The irony of Soft-Skills

2006-11-08T19:26:00.003+05:30

Our 2006-07 batch of SP Jain is halfway through the designated one year Global MBA program. We’re done with our stint in Dubai and are taking a much needed break in India before we move on to Singapore for the second and last part of the program. Our last term was grueling to say the least and going by what our Dean Dr. Vijay Sethi says, our stay at Singapore is to beat Dubai stint by miles, for now we’ll be robbed of even the weekends that gave us a little bit of a breather in Dubai.

And what a learning it has been! Just yesterday, I was discussing with my brother, a commerce graduate, the Macroeconomic nuances of pegged and floating currency. While that might just be a fraction of the ocean that Macroeconomics is, the discussion was something I couldn’t have done without undergoing the Dubai SPJCM experience. It has been a whirlpool worth being sucked into.

However, was there anything we could’ve done differently? Was there anything that we students as a batch could’ve handled better? The answer is an unequivocal ‘yes.’ We need to change our smug ‘know-all’ attitude towards soft-skills courses and those that deal with Human Relations. The problem, according to me, is that we perceive them to be synonymous to Communication Skills. And isn’t our selection into one of the premiere B-Schools of India proof enough of our good communication skills? After-all, didn't we all take exams like CAT, GMAT, wrote case-studies and essays, underwent Group Discussions and Personal Interviews to get selected for this program? A pretty comprehensive selection procedure I’m sure all would agree. May Hell unleash its fury now on the imprudent soul that still doubts our communication skill. But it is this very haughty attitude which is our undoing, especially because communication skill is just a part of the whole and not the be-all and end-all of it.

Our program at SPJCM entails us to work in three different groups for different purposes. The first one is a special project group for which we have the liberty to choose our team within the first couple of weeks of the commencement of the program while the other two groups are preselected for us. This group is more coherent since people generally handpick the ‘apparently’ better students of the lot. But such a selection has two problems the first of which is a proverbial aphorism – “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” The second problem is that people tend to choose only those they are comfortable and friendly with. So, the friendly, humourous and fun-to-be-with people get picked up faster while those perceived to be nagging, inquisitive or overly-studious are left out. This precept sometimes falls flat on its face because of the second rule, “The most sincere and knowledgeable people are not often the best people to hangout with.” Students realize their fallacy when they find that people who are pompously fun-to-be-with are not the best assets in a team. Flamboyance, in most cases, ends up being antagonistic to sincerity since the people who actually work in a group are rarely high profile. It is here that the group formed from the “left-overs” who were partners more out of compulsion than choice do a better job by working silently and sincerely, as is their wont. The other two groups are pre-selected and hence more heterogeneous, both in terms of experience and attitude. You need truckloads of serendipity to end up with a good group where almost everyone contributes. However, it’s only human to have a black-sheep in a group of six.

All these above groups work on various assignments that have atleast one deadline per day. Every choice is a trade-off here. You can’t choose to work with one group without antagonizing another. You can’t please one without relegating the other. You can’t continue neglecting one for long lest you be seen as a worthless moron. Life, in the middle of all this, is a huge management game in itself. It is here that the Soft-Skill and Organization Behaviour courses pitch in. Every time a team member chooses to work for a different group, there is a conflict. Motivating them to work for you is no mean task. God save the groups whose members fall in love with one of the batch-mates. No amount of coaxing, rebuking or imploring can get them out of their self-imposed honeymoon for they prefer to stay in that self-denial state of romantic hangover. Then there are some who just don’t want to work. Then there are some credit-mongers who join the group when it’s time to stand on the podium. So what do you do for them? How do you get them to work for you, especially when you’re only his peer and not his boss?

These are the very issues of conflict and motivation that you face in corporate life. The B-school environment is a fantastic learning ground for such things. But in our self-righteous myth of omniscience for soft-skills, we fail to gauge its importance. Consequently, not a single group succeeded in motivating the Non-Performing Assets (famously called NPAs) of the teams. There, according to me, lies the single biggest scope of improvement for the batch.

The Indian schools and Undergraduate Institutions are partly to be blamed for laying no emphasis on teamwork. We need to inculcate the importance of teamwork in children at an impressionable age. In their quest for ‘individual’ marks and grades, Indian students have forgotten to work for the holistic good. It is amazing what you can achieve if you don’t care who gets the credit. But in the corporate world, your progress depends on your visibility. So how effectively you balance the two contradictions will decide how far you go. We still need to ensure that we communicate to our teams that while claiming credit for something is welcome, plagiarism is not. Soft-skills, ironically, have a very important role to play here.

My myriad moods

2006-10-23T04:39:00.001+05:30

Kutte Kamine, Main tera khoon Pi jaaonga...

Manoj Kumar ... The thinker!
Deserted...

Smokin!
Flowery times...

Ogle thru goggle ...

Strip but not tease...

Lost in Oakley

Who am I?

Thinking like a Manager

2006-10-13T05:02:00.000+05:30

The Indian IT companies may have made the world wake up and notice India but within the company circles there is mass sarcasm that does the rounds. The IT firms have made the word ‘bench’ a byword for ridicule and frustration among the employees. To a victim, it might cast his employer in bad light for lack of projects and demoralize him, making him doubt his own abilities and credentials. Is there a better way of tackling this problem? Is it possible to ameliorate the way a ‘benched’ employee might look at himself and the company? My attempt through this article is to answer this question in the affirmative.

Mr. M Hariharan, our brilliant Cost Accounting professor, discussed a consulting assignment he once worked on. The company in question was a paint manufacturing company. The business model of the company was to produce paints of different colours in bulk and then sell it to wholesalers. The manufacturer wouldn’t sell the paint to anyone needing anything less than 250 kgs of any colour. Shifting production from one colour to another needed a large setup time for cleaning the vessels, removing stains, drying them etc. So he would actually incur some cost in shifting production from one colour to another. So he chose to produce large quantities of a colour in one go rather than shift frequently from one to another.

Think of the problems with this strategy.
• It was cost centric and not customer centric
• Except for wholesalers, not many needed that huge quantity of any single colour
• This stretched inventory turnover as the stocks piled up waiting for a big order
• He lost out on a large number of smaller orders
• Piled up inventory would slowly entail reduced production
• Inflexibility delayed delivery to customer if the colour was not already available

All his problems were solved when he - following our professor’s advice – became more customer centric. He now produced lesser quantities of paints in one go, regularly shifted to different colours and bore the setup cost.

Think of the advantages of this model.
• There was always some amount of any given colour available for sale
• Even if it wasn’t, flexibility ensured that customers’ requirements were met
• Customer was now charged a premium for faster delivery which helped cover setup cost
• The size of the order didn’t matter so he could address all customers’ needs thus increasing his market size
• Inventory turnover was reduced as he was ready to take even the smaller orders

Inventory, as we just saw, is a necessary evil. It gives a cushion of serving an unexpected customer readily and yet becomes a liability once it exceeds a threshold. Crudely put, inventory is to manufacturing what human capital is to IT. The Indian IT companies have always been following a costing model of keeping a safety stock on ‘bench’ and charging the customers for this through overhead costs. Just like the safety stock, the employees on ‘bench’ are very critical to any IT company to overcome any unforeseen exigency. Consider the attrition in the Indian IT companies and this problem would appear even more bothersome. The shadow resource or ‘benched’ employee is thus a conscious choice not only of the vendor but also of the client.

Not many people could’ve taught us Marketing better than Professor Ram kumar did. An IIM Ahmedabad alumnus, he stretched the limit of our thought processes. He made us play a short game while explaining a principle in marketing. He asked us (about 65 of us) to close our eyes and then count from one to twenty individually with only one person speaking at a time. No one was allowed to speak two consecutive numbers. We’d restart if any two students spoke at the same time. With everyone’s eyes closed, no one knew who would speak next; you always felt like speaking next but something would hold you and you would keep quiet and then somebody would speak out the next number after some time. The game was very interesting and after a few days practice we could reach a score of twenty, to our own surprise, amidst cheers of disbelief. So what was the takeaway from this game? Two. First learning has nothing to do with this article and yet is a valuable learning - human beings communicate at the subconscious level. When our goal became the same and grew stronger with every failure, our collective subconsciousness inhibited all but any one person from speaking until we reached our goal. Second learning was a statement that the professor repeated every time we bungled and had to restart the counting. He used to say, “Let us start again. Be patient. Remember that those who are not speaking are contributing equally to our cause.” This was the statement that hit me hard and gave me goose bumps all through this game. I never spoke for the entire game just to experience the thrill of contributing through silence.

So what has that got to do with employees on bench? This game conveys the idea that even without a tangible contribution to the company’s cause, such employees’ contribution is no less than those making a tangible contribution.

Dr. Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist and founder of Logotherapy and Existential Analysis, in his book “Man’s Search for Meaning,” talks of finding a meaning in any state of life, even in the most sordid ones, to help one live a better life. In the book, he cites an incident where unemployed youth who feel dejected, demoralized and worthless due to their inability to land a job are asked to volunteer for social service until they get a job. After realizing the worth of their voluntary work, these youth realize the meaning of their existence and feel a growing sense of self-worthiness which leads to happiness at best and reduction of inferiority complex at worst.

This is precisely where IT companies have failed. They’ve have failed, not because they keep employees on bench, but because they’ve not effectively communicated the ‘benched’ employee’s worth to the victim himself. This becomes all the more important when, as shown by above examples, an employee’s output is directly related to his sense of self-worthiness, which in turn is associated to the meaning he associates to any state he is in, be it productive or buffer. Keeping the employees motivated is a titanic task for Human Resource Department of any company. They can ill-afford to ignore a threat to motivation which is as glaring as keeping them on 'bench'. This idea should hence be drilled in their minds during the new joinee's orientation to make their state of mind and self-esteem impervious to 'bench.'

Who am I?

2006-09-05T19:30:00.000+05:30

I am Kamlesh Acharya. Simple, isn’t it? But am I really the name the world knows me with? I guess not. So? Am I the physical body that moves around various places on earth? Not quite. I think I’m something deeper than the body. Am I the mind? Well, may be. But at times my mind works even when I sleep; do I then say that I’m working? I guess I’m not the mind then. So am I the soul? Well, may be; may be not. While these questions always rustle in my monologues, I don’t quite know how to answer them.

On 4th Aug 2006, Prof Debasis Chatterjee from IIM Lucknow visited SP Jain and took a guest lecture on leadership. While his leadership talk was inspiring, what grabbed the students’ attention most was the high Spiritual Quotient of his speech. He spoke fluently as if reading from a book; being an author of a few books would’ve definitely helped clarify his thought process. He delivered the lecture from his heart and brought the crowd to a mesmerizing introspection through his true words, insightful speech and a high SQ’ed visage to corroborate. Throngs of students just swarmed him after the lecture got over - something I had never seen in any of the previous lectures even when the guests were equally impressive and scholarly in their domain. I believe the difference here was that Prof. Chatterjee managed to touch a chord of our dormant self somewhere and the swarm supported this thought of mine. I was a part of that crowd and a mute spectator. I saw fellow students talking to him, barely able to control tears of joy in their eyes as others simply observed him and gathered the pearls of wisdom that fell from his mouth. I was pleasantly surprised to see so many people impressed with him. Like an avid businessman looking for an opportunity, I realized that the iron is hot and waiting to be struck. So, Dhruv Patel, Kush Bohra and I invited our batch-mates to form an esoteric group of people ready to introspect and look within for answers.

A digression of thought is warranted here. Be it in business or otherwise, isn’t MBA all about finding opportunities for what you want to do and executing your plan when it yields the most?

We roped in Prof. Mala Kapadia - our Human Resource Management professor – to lend authenticity and discipline to the group by forming some ground rules. She was more than happy to oblige. She took our first session and forced us to think deeper and introspect harder. She left us wonderstruck with her simple logical flow of thoughts.

After that session, we’ve had three session conducted by us – the students. We’ve discussed topics like ‘Demystifying God’, ‘True Knowledge’ and ‘Learnings from the Bhagwad Gita on Work.’

Through this group and our meetings, we might not know ‘who we are.’ But by sharing the knowledge with each other, we end up learning a lot from others’ thoughts. Through these sessions, we might not reach the core of true knowledge but we’ve started gnawing at its peripheries for sure.

An interesting incident to end with.

I offered to take the first session of “Who am I?” after Prof. Mala. I called my session “Demystifying God” and sent a mail across to the group. An eager beaver I met thereafter told me that he found the topic really interesting and wondered what I’m going to talk about. I told him to wait and watch. The impatient guy that he was, he told he would search for it. Before I reveal my reply, a small digression to surprise you is not uncalled for.

Our Marketing Management professor Mr. Ramkumar told us some statistical facts released by Google.

From within India, the most searched word on Google last year was ‘S**.’
From within the US, the most searched word on Google last year was ‘God.’

I told the edgy friend, ‘You can’t search God on Google.’

*************************************

P.S. One of the subjects that is setting tongues wagging at Harvard Business School is also on the same lines. Isn't it wonderful that what is taught by professors there at Harvard is a student initiative here at SP Jain? Check out.

A Picture or thousand words?

2006-08-02T18:56:00.000+05:30

This is the first time I've included in my blog something that is not my creation. For the first time in my writing experience, I find words redundant.

Help me evolve...

2006-07-25T16:52:00.000+05:30

Seeking your reply, I again write.

In sheer despondency, my face is contrite.

Oh my Aphrodites! have mercy on me.

If you like it then kiss, else kill me...

What good does it do, to hold it

within you, your views on my work?

When all I need is an honest feedback;

a job you shouldn't shirk.

An aphrodisiac to romance my thoughts;

that's what your view is to me.

An honest critique of yours will

help this poet evolve and just be.

First Week at SP Jain Dubai

2006-06-25T20:05:00.000+05:30

When dreams turn to reality, the first reaction is of disbelief. Then comes the realization that you’re experiencing what you’d always dreamt of. And yet, the feeling is mixed. The ecstasy is overruled by fear; a fear that you somehow don’t belong to the place – a fear of failure; what if you don’t prove yourself from hereon?

It’s a proud feeling to be chosen to represent some of the brighter brains and smarter people of the lot. And yet, it is a humbling feeling; humbling - for no matter how smart you’re - you always have someone smarter than you here. No matter how intelligent you’re, there is always someone more intelligent than you here. Every brain has a better half here. Every pride meets its vanquisher here. Every wit has a repartee here.

I had always dreamt of doing an MBA from a premier B-school. After quite a few years of toil and unsuccessful attempts at entrance exams, I made it to SP Jain Dubai. Having worked with IT industry for a few years, I had seen IT industry from close quarters. Through projects, products and consulting, I had seen IT vertical at the micro level. I now wanted to work at the macro level. I was sick and tired of being directed by the organization; I now wanted to direct the way the organization went.

I left my home in India on my birthday. That might not seem too emotional a farewell until you know that I was spending my first birthday in ten years with my family. As fate would have it, I just couldn’t have left a day later – or earlier – as the session was starting soon thereafter.

So here I was in Dubai; dreaming, like everyone else, and visualizing how it all is going to turn out. The next day, Sudeep Jain, my batch mate, took me to the college and then to the hostel which actually is a villa.

Then started the real nightmare. I was the first person to arrive in the by-now-infamous ‘blue’ villa. The villa was being readied for the students who were to arrive that night and the preparation were running late even for them; I arrived that afternoon. I entered the premises of the villa to a shocking sight of carpenters and labourers going about their business. If it were not for the girls accompanying me to show me the way to the villa, my entry would not have surprised many and I would’ve been mistaken for another labourer at best or would’ve had to share their load at worst. I felt like a chief guest who arrived for the function before time. After a few hours of moving around like a zombie, I got some water to drink and freshen up. By late evening a group of about forty guys arrived in the villa and it suddenly was not a bad place to be in.

But that by no means was the end of villa ‘blues’. For more than a week we had a torrid time in the restrooms. I once had to ask my roommate to pass me drinking water bottles so I could wash the soap foam after the shower had so dramatically stopped when I needed it most. Restrooms were never the reason we prayed so hard. Luckily the prayers were answered and water never played truant when I was on the closet. The sale of deodorants in the adjoining grocery had suddenly seen a spurt. But thanks to our woes, I learnt some early lessons in economics – outside of my class: The increase in sale of a commodity may not always be due to excellent strategies of companies but due to unexpected exigencies of totally unrelated societal dynamics.

Our dean Mr. Vijay Sethi had, on our first orientation day, told us – perhaps very intentionally – to look at the bigger picture and ignore the teething problems. This advice stood us in good stead, for the administration issues put a shoddy picture in the initial week but the professors at the same time were excellent to say the least. I didn’t get worked up for I wondered what my condition would be had it been the other way round.

The professors at SP Jain Dubai need a mention here. They are sincerity and commitment personified. This stands true atleast for those we’ve seen in this short span. I was talking to an alumna the day I arrived at SP Jain and she told me that the best thing about this place are the professors. And I thanked heavens. A man of knowledge is of no use if he doesn’t know how to impart knowledge. The assignments, tests and group works ensure that we keep awake till late in the night. We have pre-session tests that ensure we read our stuff so there is a better class participation. But that also means, we’re kept on tenterhooks.

The other day I asked my roommate, “How many days we’ve been together?”
We both were shocked to realize that it had been only three days since the classes started. And it looked like we hadn't slept for ages.

I was to learn another management lesson the hard way. My earlier stint here in Dubai got me in touch with a few good caterers. I approached one of them to deliver food in the campus. He charged a very reasonable Dhs 5 a meal. It so turned out that he delivered so much in one meal that we ended up sharing the meal. There was such a downpour of people taking the meal that a lot of those who paid had no meal left for them. I started supervising the distribution but to no avail. I did not take lunch for two days so others who had paid could eat. It took me three days to realize the discrepancy and solve the problem. Now the students eat a meal at Dhs 2.5 which by all means is cheaper than what we get in India. I struck a golden deal for them; the flip side of this achievement was that I became so famous for food management that I was hand-picked for food committee instead of the ones I would’ve loved to be a part of.

Just as I’m writing this article, I get a mail asking the food committee to meet. My feet just can’t get ready to move on. And I plod away wondering at my predicament…

I take refuge in the thought that God doesn’t always give you what you want, but He sure gives you what you need; and I be happy - as is my wont…

Free Lunch – The Review

2006-06-04T13:05:00.000+05:30

Ever tried reading a business page of a newspaper without a proper grounding in economics? Or reading an annual budget analysis in core jargons of economics? Felt dizzy at the downpour of jargons as comprehensible as Greek or Latin would be to a Metric fail from the outskirts of Delhi? How often you turned those pages to read politics, sports or entertainment? Did you always think that economics was the obverse side of entertainment?

Don’t give up just yet if you are starving to build a foundation in economics - sans the complexities - even though you haven’t formally studied the subject. Help is not far. “Free Lunch” is just the right sumptuous banquet to fill your belly to your satisfaction.

Introduction to economics had never been so simple and interesting. Those who couldn’t read more than a paragraph or two of core economic articles have read the whole book and released a burp of never-before-seen satisfaction after reading “Free Lunch”. Economics, suddenly, was no rocket science to them.

David Smith not only copied the second name from Adam Smith – the man who introduced the world to microeconomics - but also bettered him in teaching economics to novices in a lot simpler manner. He, very skillfully, cuts through the intimidating jargons that surround the modern economics. He simplifies the explanation to near layman language and provides very relatable instances to make the complexities look surmountable.

Why do house prices rise and stock markets fall? How does it affect us when interest rates go up, and why? What is a lesser evil – Inflation or Deflation? Does a budget deficit matter? Suddenly people, after reading Free Lunch, won’t be so indifferent to the economic jargons.

Just like any normal human being, I was always disappointed at the seeing so much poverty, hunger and sickness around me. Other than wondering at the divine plan for such inequalities, I would always search for an economic solution – to whatever extent my mortal knowledge of the subject would allow – towards resolving the problem. One solution I always thought, obviously out of my naiveté, was to distribute cash to all the poor so they could spend their way out of poverty and hunger and at the same time the society could trudge its way out of inequality and suffering.

I smugly marveled at my solution and wondered why nobody on the planet ever thought of such a solution to this problem. That was until I read Free Lunch.

David Smith, in this book, takes help of innumerable such hypothetical instances, then suggests some solution, which to a layman might look like a perfect antidote at first, and then systematically dissects the solution to show how the solution would lead to another set of problems.

Economics, as you learn through this book, is not about finding perfect solutions to grave economic problems; it is about finding a solution that would lead to least number of subsequent problems or more subsequent problems that might not warrant immediate attention.

Using one such hypothetical scenario described in the book and the incremental knowledge I gained from lapping it up, I could, all by myself, prove that my solution was not a solution at all.

An attempt at emulating Smith’s style of explaining is in order. Assume for a moment that there are only ten people in an economy. Two of them are very rich, five are middle class and three are beggars. Assume just one commodity – Rice, which is needed by all to survive. The demand for rice is generated only by the first two sections (rich and middle class) of the society as the beggars eat only what is leftover. The quantity of rice is constant and just enough to meet the demand.

Now what happens if we distribute enough cash among the beggars so they could buy their share of rice? The demand for rice suddenly jumps from seven to ten while its supply is still the same; just enough to meet the demand of seven. Now we don’t need to be a connoisseur of economics to realize that the excess demand would cause the price of rice to rise. But the price hike would be just enough to bring rice beyond the reach of beggars once again and to not dissuade the middle class from buying it. The great thing about the market is the way it brings this equilibrium. So, the sudden availability of cash would breed sudden inflation, which would leave the intended beneficiaries deprived of those very benefits.

While there might be flaws in my conclusion or the means to this end, I still have come a long way in interpreting the way market works; a far cry from where I was before I read this book.

All is not that rosy though. The author is British and an overwhelming majority of the historical examples he cites, to explain his theories, are on Britain’s economy. At times, the reader is left groping for the background of the events in question. For a book intended to be as globally relevant as this one is, “Free Lunch” makes an unfair assumption, though not always, that readers know what it is talking about. A slightly detailed background of some vintage events would do a world of good to beginners in their quest of conquering economics.

Except for this, ‘Free Lunch’ is a big leap towards making economics an enjoyable read. I realize that there is indeed no such thing as 'Free Lunch.'

Life comes a full circle

2006-05-27T10:00:00.002+05:30

This night is different from all my previous nights. Tonight I’m unable to sleep; I’m forced to ponder over my life.

It didn't take long for my mother to realize I was a different kid. Barring the physicality, I didn't have anything in common with the girls of my age. I was born a tomboy.

At an age when girls loved decorating their dolls and dressing them up, I took sadistic joy in crushing and dismantling them. While the other girls would raise their hands and ask parents to lift them while crossing a puddle in our street, I would slap any hand outstretched to help, and jump and cross it myself. That would give my ‘boyish’ ego, a smug boost.

But I wasn't different from the girls only; I was a rebellious kid even by boys' standards. I felt that every societal rule was there to curb my freedom. So I would break them at the drop of a hat. At times, I would even search for societal conventions to commit my faux pass.

I have always been a nightmare for my mom. My antics never allowed her to sleep peacefully, more so after she discovered the real me. I found archaic, every word of caution that came out of her mouth and every rule of discipline she laid for me. No amount of chastening would ever work on me. I was an undisputed apotheosis of a spoilt brat.

“Don’t sit that way”, “Behave yourself”, “Don’t stay out after 7”, “Learn to cook”, “Don’t wear shorts; wear frocks”, “Don’t play with the boys”, “Why can’t you play with other girls of the society?”, “Why can’t you behave like a normal girl?” and so on. My life was a constant questionnaire I preferred to tear apart with my actions.

The only time I behaved like a girl was when my mother was seriously ill. I took to doing the chores and taking her care, something totally unexpected of me. That was the only time I patiently listened to what she said.

“You’re a little girl, so gullible. You don’t realize that the outside world is very bad. You’ve to be very careful with the company you keep. The bad people will use you and throw you away. Why don’t you obey me my child?”

But soon after she recovered, I returned to my old ways.

Life went on, punctuated by altercations with my mom. I was tired of cold stares and loud rebukes that had become an almost daily phenomenon. So, after my schooling, I chose to go abroad for graduation. The move was more to move away from the prying eyes of my mom than for my love of foreign universities. The thought of freedom from having to justify my every action was too mouth-watering for me to feel the pain of separation from my spying but caring mom.

College life, away from home, was fun to say the least. I could mingle with friends of my choice without any botheration. Even here, my coterie had few girls. With my group, I was party to all kinds of outings; even to places considered to be guys’ bastions. I had gone crazy with my newfound freedom and enjoyed it to the hilt.

One such day, feeling groggy after the previous night’s drinking binge, I went to meet my friend. That day, he had not gone for lunch with the rest of our gang. We were not doing anything in particular: watching TV, gossiping and pulling each other’s legs. Suddenly I picked up a magazine with no particular intention of reading it. He snatched it immediately from my hands saying he wanted to read it first.

“Why should he read it first?” I thought.
“How could I let him snatch something from ‘my’ hands?” my alter-ego was too bruised to let him win the physical challenge, even though I was no match for him.

That gave me an instant kick and I snatched it back, for I saw, in his snatching of the magazine, a rule I had to break.

He jumped to grab the book but missed it. I ran and he followed. After a few missed chances he grabbed me from behind. He held my arms and turned me around with such power that I couldn’t do anything but face him. He held my elbows tightly; so I turned my hands with elbows as hinges and secured the magazine behind my back, holding it as tightly as I could. His hands, groping for the book, ran through my forearms, then wrists and reached the magazine. In the ensuing duel, I found myself kicking and pushing him, but in vain. In my efforts to relieve myself from his hold, I tripped and fell on the bed and he - not one to let go off the book - fell on top of me.

We were still fighting for the magazine. During the duel, our eyes met and I chuckled smugly at not letting him take it. Taking this as an insult, he did the unexpected. He planted his lips on mine and my hands that had, until so far, firmly held the magazine released it immediately. My eyes bulged out in shock at the sudden development. I tried to bring my hands out from under me to stop him, but our combined weight was too much for them. He won the book from me; but today that was not enough. He wanted to win me over.

Shock turned to anger at my inability to be in control. Anger turned to exasperation as I squirmed under him in frantic attempts to release myself. I somehow managed to release my hands and held them against his muscular chest to break the lip-lock. But the bitter-sweet sensation of the kiss had started playing its hormonal games on me by then. For the first time in my life, I didn’t mind being forcibly controlled and subdued. And I decided to go with the flow; force of my hands against his chest reduced and I found myself opening my lips in response to his. The inevitable happened.

I had made a life out of breaking the rules. However, in this quest, I didn’t realize that I made “breaking rules” the rule of my life. But someone, if not I, had to break this rule too for me. The self-imposed rule of my life was that I was to behave like a guy. Someone had to bring out the girl from the façade of a guy.

The next day, I found myself changed in a way that would make my mother proud. The sudden realization of being a woman was too much for me to be the same once again. To my surprise, I drastically reduced the frequency of meeting my ‘boy’ friends, except for him. The two of us had always been the best of buddies; that incident promoted him to a ‘special person’ in my life. I fell for him, head over heels. We met each other quite often and made out occasionally. Those were the best days of my life.

To my shock, I missed a cycle for the first time since puberty. But he, to my obvious consternation, refused to marry me and suggested instead to abort the baby; he then started ignoring me completely. I was staring at the prospect of becoming an unwed Indian mother - a social stigma of the lowest order. I felt that my fate had given me a very crude choice on the same rules that defined my life. Another rule of society was inviting me to break it and yet, I couldn’t find myself amused at the prospect of doing so.

But the recent realization of being a woman and the unexpected, yet pleasant, longing for motherhood made me take the choice of my life. I decided to become a single, unwed mother.

A few months down, I delivered an angelic baby girl. All my worries of societal stigma were drowned in her pleasant countenance and infectious innocence. I wanted to protect her from everything bad on earth. I told myself, ‘I will protect her from bad company, never let her be misguided by people like her father who could use her and throw her away.’

For the first time in my life, I could relate to my mother; I was thinking like her, and I suddenly realized, she wasn’t out of her mind in looking after me the way she did. For the first time I felt, she wasn’t entirely wrong.

My last few years have been wonderful with my little angel around me. She has been the centre of my universe ever since she was born. She has given meaning to my aimless existence.

Last night it rained heavily. This morning was so pleasant that I took my little angel out on a ramble. On the way, we reached a puddle left behind by the overnight showers. I crossed over in one big leap but my angel released my finger just when I was to cross. From the other side, I extended my hand.

She slapped my hand and said, “Mummy, I want to jump and cross it myself.”

No wonder, I can’t sleep tonight.

Memories

2006-05-08T08:51:00.000+05:30

Like the fragrance of flower, I waft;
Never to return, I had left.
But I still cling to time breweries,
never to let go the hangover of memories.

I want to ...

2006-05-01T08:29:00.000+05:30

NDTV selected this poem and published it on its site. Check out

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I wanna be the fragrance of flower;
powerless, and yet full of power.
I wanna be the flight of a bird;
singing, and yet never heard.

I wanna be the sigh of wind,
to help tired souls unwind.
I wanna be the hiss of a stream,
to push their hopes upstream.

I wanna be the smile of an infant
and the untiring spirit of an ant.
I wanna be a kid's mirth from its toy
and its parents' tears of joy.

I wanna be the crescent of the moon
and the warmth of sun on a cold noon.

I wanna unload my past
and live until I last.
I wanna live in the present
and make most of every moment.

I wanna get rid of my fear today.
To all, I wanna be near and dear today.
I wanna be the quenched thirst today
and the soothing shade of tree today.

I wanna stretch my limits today.
I wanna break the rules today.
I wanna be everything that is good today
and make the world a better place today.

Godspeak on His Return

2006-04-21T19:02:00.000+05:30

I visited the earth as Christ
and they formed Christianity.
I came down as Mohammad
and they became Muslims.
I incarnated as Zoroaster
and they followed me as Zoroastrians.
They then found excuses to divide
and smallest pretext to fight.

Every Divine intervention
is followed by a crude division,
wherein my doctrine of 'follow my path'
is mistaken for 'follow my religion.'

Ram, Krishna, Christ and Mohammad are the same,
separated in time and space.
But man can't fathom their oneness,
for he's bound by his limiting consciousness.

They really want me to return,
but only under their own names.
They want their messiah back
but only to play their own games.

The Christians want their Christ,
the Hindus hanker for Kalki.
The Jews wait for their messiah
and Muslims for Imam Mihdi.

Born in their faith, if I call myself Christ,
of blasphemy they'll blame.
If born a heathen and then enlighten
they'll call me a trickster and ridicule my name.

It all began with vibration
and will merge in perennial reverberation.
But even while seeking permanence in "The Absolute",
man yearns to glorify his 'ephemeral' religion.

But I will be back to restore
'The Divine Plan' upon every region
for I'm bound only by faith,
yet, I'm beyond every religion.

My Reservations against Reservations

2006-04-12T16:21:00.000+05:30

Every now and then, the Indian government keeps pulling out the reservation rabbit from its magic bag. This time they're gunning for reservations in IITs and IIMs; that too for an appalling level of half the seats. This divisive politics –in the name of secularism and socialism- is getting too hot to handle now.

Unlike most of the writers criticizing the proposal, I'm going to deal with this in specifics rather than generics and cite instances out of my personal experiences to show how reservations are not only detrimental to the so-called general class but also to reserved categories – the very people in whose favour the whole policy apparently is. Not to mention, India is paying through its 'bleeding' nose for this.

I'm an engineer from one of the reputed National Institute of Technologies (NIT) of India. I belong to the general category of students for whom there is no reservation. I completed my engineering in the allotted four years and passed out in 2000. I know some of my batch-mates and seniors who're yet to clear all their papers. Almost all of these people are from our so-called 'reserved categories'. Every year during the university exams, the hotels surrounding the colleges fill up with all such candidates once again trying their luck at clearing the exams. I marvel at government's ingenuity in boosting small scale hotel industry at the cost of large scale industries that are crying foul over lack of skilled engineers. Consider this incident. One such 'privileged' senior, who had failed to become an engineer even after a decade of taking examinations, urged one of my friends to help him clear the exams, for he felt ashamed when his kids asked where he was going. The difference between the open and reserved category students is obvious from the very first exam. Since they lag behind in their grades, they end up developing an inferiority complex over their abilities. Over the years, this complex worsens to broaden the psychological divide between the castes. Scratch the surface and chances are you might find a caste-fundamentalist in the very person apparently benefited by the reservations. Not to mention the growing resentment among the general category students when they see some worthy individuals losing their seats to someone totally undeserving in a merit based selection. Our caste based reservations are thus dividing the nation psychologically, while they're not reaching anywhere close to the apparent aim of social upliftment. Although there are students from the reserved category who do well academically, they are more of an exception than a rule.

The reservations do not end with the education. These candidates have reservations for jobs and promotions as well. My dad used to work for the Railways. During his working days, he wasn't promoted only because one of the reserved category candidates had to be promoted to be his superior. Now this gentleman didn't have the prerequisites to man that post. He couldn't do a single important task without asking my father. We frequently used to get his calls from office and my dad guided him even when on leave. An inspection or audit would see him malingering through sick leaves. Already, corruption has eaten into our work ethics, reducing our efficiency way below acceptable limits. To add to our woes, our flawed and illogical policies are not letting honest officials make the most of remaining work opportunities.

If reservations are so justifiable, why don’t we have a fifty percent reservation in our cricket team and the film industry in the name of social upliftment? How many of us would then go to watch the matches we won’t win or movies with mediocre performances? A simple truth of market is that customers want their money's worth. When companies go to the IIMs or IITs offering high salaries, they demand nothing short of brilliant work in return. Can the reserved candidates, chosen inspite of less than desirable credentials, do the needful? And when the companies find that they're not getting their money's worth, wouldn’t they stop visiting the brands we're so proud of?

My sincere question to all those politicians - where are we taking our nation with all these? It has taken years to build the brands that IITs and IIMs are. They demand high standards. How could we enforce reservations that dilute these very standards and favour mediocrity over meritocracy? Our policies make economic backwardness look wholly irrelevant while that should be the only criterion for reservations - if at all. We should rather ensure that everyone gets equal opportunity. A deserving candidate, irrespective of caste, should not remain deprived of higher studies for lack of funds. A specific number of seats should be reserved for such candidates.

It is only human not to value things you get for free. When people realize that they get the best without much hard work, they’d, but naturally, be inclined to relax. And only a fine line separates relaxation from laxity. Standards of performance are lowered and promotions reserved for them inspite of mediocre performance; who wouldn’t relax under such a luxury? The sad thing about the whole policy is that in the guise of reservations we’re inviting the socially backward classes to become lackadaisical and non-performing. Is it really going to benefit them or our nation in the long run? The answer is anybody’s guess.

I don’t hold anything personally against anyone from these reserved categories. Some of my very good friends are from these castes and I try my best to help them in whatever way I can. But when such policies on the whole negate our nation’s progress, I’m forced to speak up.

While Cadbury's Dairy-Milk might do great business when a not-so-good-at-studies 'Pappu' passes the exam after many trials and tribulations, IIMs and IITs might run out of business very soon, forcing brand India to nosedive, if we allow such Pappus to proliferate.

The Irony of Love

2006-03-26T10:29:00.000+05:30

We seek love in her enchanting smile;
in the process, ourselves we beguile.
We seek love in his fingers running through our tresses,
and miss out on enjoying our soul's caresses.

We find life incomplete without him,
but never grope for completeness within.
We feel life is nothing, if not for her;
and seek our happiness in another.

Caught in the shackles of possessive vanity,
lovers link joy to their mate’s proximity.
Their sorrow, they feel, they can beat,
only when the twain shall meet.

We give our lovers the key to our passions,
and live our lives under self-imposed illusions
that they've the power to affect our emotions
and, for better or for worse, control our reactions.

Man has a lot to learn from a child,
the fount of mirth, so pleasant and mild.
Its joy is unconditional and within;
if not a toy, sand is a play-thing.

For a kid’s existence is rooted in the present,
he is a joy so pure that is born to last.
We limit ourselves in conditions of possession
and are bound by the future, burdened by the past.

Free mind of a child breaks its aviary.
Man is but a slave to idiosyncrasy.
He pulls love from unbound divinity
and restrains it in parochial conditionality.

When we fathom that happiness is our slave,
we will not in ‘normal’ ways behave.
Our love will flow from us forever,
whether our love is with us or another.

Mirth is the essence of existence.
This joy is the divine fount of love.
Man, in his quest, mortalized it
and bore what I call the irony of love.