So We Understand Each Other...

Just completed The Motorcycle Diaries. First the book and then, the DVD movie.

Although I had purchased my copy of this all-students-must-own book two years ago, got around to reading it now. Post vipassana. Post - well, so many other things as well...

Am awed anew. At Che Guevara the iconoclast.

This twentieth century icon begins his memoirs on his youth thus :

This is not a story of incredible heroism, or merely the narrative of a cynic. It is the glimpse of two lives that ran parallel for a time, with similar hopes and convergent dreams.

And with these words on the first page of your diary, Che, I have felt a deep bond of kinship, that has strengthened as I have gone through all the pages. The quiet strength, the underlying sense of humour, the eye-opening moments, the loneliness of adventure even when shared with marvellous friend Alberto.

And I have felt so proud of you!

... to know that I share my date of birth with you.

... To recognize how the trials & tribulations of human lives always touched you in life, especially on this most seminal of trips when you were 23-24 , a very 'Coming of Age' age.

... To be totally moved at your vision of a single race not divided into unstable and illusory nations and narrow-minded provincialism. You mention America and mean 'Mexico to the Magellan Straits.'
I think of the entire planet. And when you describe certain lives, it is like seeing my fieldwork in Solapur come alive... Some give the impression they go on living only because it is a habit they cannot shake. I am reminded of the beedi workers met in my fieldwork again, when you say: On top of the very low wages paid in the south, unemployment is high and the authorities afford workers very little protection.
How things have stayed unchanged, Che, 40 years since you were murdered, even as the world has moved on, in man's indefatigable thirst to take control and exercise total authority.

In my need to establish more spiritual and emotional points of contact, I find I can link a few more. Some might say tenuous, but in this journal of your self-discovery, mere mortals like me shall seek other parallels with legendary souls who went on to find themselves :

... To find out you were born in Rosario, a town that I have visited up the Mar del Plata on a most incredibly memorable ship voyage (the only time I have been on a ship that actually went up a river - she traveled across the Atlantic from Antwerp, and then slowly and majestically moved up this river with breathtaking banks visible both port and starboard, all the way to Rosario) , a city I recall in vivid detail. Both its comic aspects ( my first evening ever at a sailor's 'pub' and all because I, an officer's wife, had asked good friend Piggy, the Captain of the M. V. Mannan (Piyush Srivastava actually) about where all the sailors disappeared to as soon as we berthed at any port - and he insisted I go along to 'see' for myself, much to the shock and horror of the officers but more so, those 'girls' in the pub :-)) .
Also the underbelly of the city, with the sight of its middle class begging and selling off everything owned - Argentina those days of the mid '90s was in severe recession.

To know you visited Necochea for a day on your motorcycle - a town I visited for exactly a day too, and one I recall as fascinating - pride of place in the town square held by the statue of - a dog. And where in its port, I had my first close and hilarious 'brush' with a moustached walrus. To know you played soccer and went to medical school in Buenos Aires, that city where time stands still. Where I felt I was transported into another era and catapulted as if into the insides of a beautiful movie.

You write : 'The person who wrote these notes passed away the moment his feet touched (back in Argentinian soil). The person who reorganizes and polishes them, me, is no longer, at least I'm not the person I once was. All this wandering around - has changed me more than I thought.'

The movie rephrases these original words and ends thus:

I am not me anymore. At least I'm not the same me I was.
Was our view too narrow, too biased, too hasty?
Were our conclusions too rigid?
Maybe.

Change and Che.
Isn't that true - even if not in a world-changing way - of all our diaries and journals? Of all of us? The global and universal theme of a search for one's identity.

And Che leaves us at the end of his introduction chapter 'So We Understand Each Other' thus :

It will be hard for you to find an alternative to the truth I am about to tell. But I will leave you now, with myself, the person I used to be.

Che, salut !! To the young you and to the you you became. A legend and inspiration to all those who denounce suffering. Hatred. Inequality.

From both me that was.
And the me I have become.

NO RESIDUES

Swami Chidananda says:

For most people, activities of life not only cause physical tiredness but also mental exhaustion. When we are wise, the latter reduces if not disappear.

A hundred people pass in front of a mirror and images of all of them are formed on its surface. However, they go their way and the mirror remains unaffected. Even the heaviest of those visitors does not leave behind a ‘residue’ through his or her image that was formed upon the mirror.

Can our mind also likewise be totally silent after a hectic day filled with interactions? Can it be silent in the sense of absence of regret, guilt, pride or other residues? Can it be quiet but vibrant, cheerful and available?

Shri Krishna calls this akarma in karma (Geeta 4.18). Non-action in action is when the action does not leave behind any noise in our mind. Ordinarily we go on remembering especially the moments of friction, compromise or contradiction. I should not have said that, or I should not have done that, etc keep coming up in our thoughts. Upon a close examination of the matter, we realize that all this is the result of self-importance. The ego in us is much upset if something goes wrong at our hands. I should be perfect and all should admire me, etc are the underlying assertions.

We cannot be quiet by deciding to be so. At the most it will amount to suppression, and the emotions suppressed will explode at a later time. Many people in the world take shelter under some ideal and, in its inspiration, are successful in making the selfish worries and agitations subside. Religious or secular models give us often a lift and we are able to put aside our sorrows of loss or defeat. The limitation here is that the ideals also tend to change and, as we evolve, we cannot receive the same inspiration from them as we did before. Further, many realities of life collide with the ideals we adore and we are torn between the ideal and the actual. Some of us even meet with a total disillusionment with regard to what we held before as the supreme truth or the most right way of living.

The healthiest way to arrive at inner peace is by giving up egoistic ways right away. We need not cling to some conceptual support (like an ideal) to do this. We need to directly see how our thoughts have given undue importance to I, me and my. What I said, how somebody ignored me and how my position was undermined – these are the crux of the matter. Let us not justify it all saying it is most natural. If we do so, then endless suffering also would be natural. Egoistic ways are not so much natural as they are wide-spread and common.

Our mind is in a true learning mode when we keep the ego under control. The ego is itself a bundle of residues and it further causes residues to be formed. Right in the present moment, we must perceive situations with full attention. As we do so, we gain understanding and move on. There is no burden of hurt or pride. Then, as Shri Krishna put it, though there was action (which normally strains us), it is as though there was no action (for the mind is free of all strain).

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

www.fowai.org

As I go for Vipassana at Igatpuri, these are the vibrant thoughts, that steer me! Really looking forward to the next 10 days...

Our 'Copying' Fetish in Education

A building coming up in Powai has signs put up all around it : IBS Mumbai. India Business School Mumbai.

This morning, front page ads announce the CFA Program leading to a CFA charter.

The ponytailed hero of the Indian MBA wannabes, Arindam something-or-the-other takes full page ads in the national dailies with - among all else, for sure - his own photo. (I know a professor at IIM A who cringes each time - he is a namesake!)

Yet another gentleman 'Chate' ensures he hogs the media ad space every time there is talk of extra classes or tuition classes.

IBS is written exactly as the logo of LBS, the London Business School. Down to the very same blue square background. With a red underline.

The CFA India thing uses words of the original CFA program of the US, but is actually a Tripura based body, who even took the poor firangis to court (and won!). Calling what they give as a degree a 'CFA charter' and what not. A different matter, if I-Banks such as Accenture, Lehman Brothers, E & Y give a far different weightage to who they see as the actual CFA charter holder - a crazily tough place to get into and then get through its exams, where even chartered accountants and IIT engineers are known to fail - as versus these tom-tomming media and space hoggers. God knows if the Tripura one is at all entertained by the international finance institutions. It would be interesting to see how these two CFAs measure up against each other, in - say - a third exam.

Even suggesting this - same for IBS versus LBS - is perhaps giving them too much 'bhav'. And 'bhav' is something the Arindams and the Chates obviously give bhav to.

While India is definitely going places, it is a sad state of affairs that she is doing so willy-nilly.
An Anything Goes attitude that would make Paul Feyerabend cringe.

Soda - A Caustic Story....

Fourteen year old Pooja candidly indicated the shape of things to hear at Solapur.

She said : Pepsi and Coke and drinks like that have soda. And soda is what mom uses to clean the sandhaas.

Sandhaas or sandaas is the rather popular colloquial word used across all of India - well, most of it - for a dirty Indian toilet.
I mean Indian etiquette demands that sandhaas is one of the first words we jettison as we become 'cultured' - it is that 'dirty' a word.

A couple of days later, in another part of Solapur, as part of a different interview - for my PhD stuff - nothing corporate about these interviews - ten year old Naveen more or less repeated the same thing when he remarked rather casually - he was encouraging me to drink the cool nimbu pani his mom was offering me ( i really needed no second bidding for it, what with temperatures of 45 d. And no electric fans either since all non-metros face a scorching load shedding schedule... the size of the town in India is in reverse proportion to the number of hours of 'black-outs', and so what if the current Minister of 'Power' at the center Sushil Kumar Shinde is from Solapur, and of course by now I think I'm getting away from my topic or perhaps not...)

Aunty, I never drink Coca Cola, he said dismissively. That's the stuff used in the sandaas...

Oh Oh!

Apparently Ramdev Baba in his very successful recent visit to the town had addressed a session on the sprawling open grounds of his shibir, one day - with the students of various Solapur schools. His message had been simple - and as we have seen - starkly evocative. The need to stay in good health not just by vyayaam or exercise but via the ingestion of the right stuff.

Completely irrefutable logic as far as all the children were concerned.
Yes, soda is indeed the word written on the 'do-not-touch' powders used for the recalcitrantly dirty toilets.

At least we Indians do not use 'soda' as a generic word for colas as in the West.
Can you imagine the plight of Pepsi and Coke if that were so :-) :-)

You Know You Are Back Home When...

* You come back to India and see magazines with a nation wide reach continuing to have Amitabh Bachchan on its cover as STAR of stars. 'Oh No', goes the mind, but then within the covers, one discovers a treasure trove of truly excellent articles such as Mukul Kesavan's take on why Dharmendra (an all-time favorite!) never got the true recognition he deserved, or any award. Paromita Vohra's comments on Bollywood stardom : 'a genetically modified, steroid-sculpted giant tomato'. Even Bhaichand Patel's indignant reaction on having his dreams shattered by discovering that the feet and knees he had fantasized over, as Meena Kumari 'bathed' in Footpath, belonged to someone else.

* You come to know (many days after the event) that bomb blasts have occurred in yet another city - this time Jaipur, creating a trail of media indignance nationally. But nary a ripple internationally in a terror-weary world.

* In the coalition politics of the home - between bai (the maid), Bharati (the cook), mali (the gardener), and Ganesh, the general handyman, the homefront has borne the brunt of its stresses and strains... a microcosm of the nation :-)

* When the headline that greets you as you deplane - is of a nose-dived fellow Air India aeroplane.

* When everyone you recount an incident to - of a question asked to me at the conference I am back from - Can you in India hold focus groups with a few 'untouchables' in it - is morally indignant at the West's tunnel vision.

* And then, the next day's lead story on the front pages is of celebrating a brother-sister 'other backward caste' duo who have broken through the glass ceiling of the uber-elitist IAS.

My next step:

To locate Mukul Kesavan's book 'The Ugliness of the Indian Male, and Other Propositions'. Sounds very interesting indeed....

Randy Pausch, Steve Jobs - What Do They Have in Common?

You don't speak ill of the dead.
You don't speak ill, even more so, of the near-dead.


So far, my gold standard of a lecture at a university - any commemoration lecture that is - is Steve Jobs' convocation address at Stanford in June 2005. Recently I was one of those who added up to the curious 10 million who've hit youtube to see Randy Pausch's Last Lecture.

And you know what, my Steve Jobs gold standard has just become platinum.

RP's talk was painstakingly gung-ho. For some reason it had the same effect on me as when a stranger had once begun to cry opposite me in the local train. You know, you are taken aback, then you want to reach out, mumble some pacificatory stuff, put your arm around the person with what you hope will be taken as compassion rather than pity, and when the stranger disembarks, there is a curious sense of being touched yet untouched - I would even say achievement rather than sadness - like the feeling just after doing a good deed or participating in charity.

What else can you feel anyway?

Randy Pausch's Last Lecture (note the capital L's - it's already an epigraph) was so much 'Look at me, I am OK, Don't pity me' - esp the push up part, remember? that contrarily, 'pity' starts becoming the overriding theme of the viewing. And also it was somehow nerve wracking in the speech's intensity of dotting every unfinished 'i' of life, and crossing every 't' junction he is now never likely to reach.

In Steve Jobs speech, otoh, the quiet 'I've seen death face to face' moment (incidentally both touch on pancreatic cancer), is not reduced in any way just because he managed to get out of it providentially... In his talk, there is a sense of expansion, of breathing deeply and savoring every transient moment of life - that gets infectiously communicated.
So much so that you expand, reach out. Want to send the talk to all your loved ones. And this is surely the story of 9999 of us in every 10000 perhaps, who have no idea how long or short is going to be our Future, with a capital F. We, who have no idea when and how we are going to die. There is one day in every year that posterity will know as my Death Day, but we are blissfully unaware of it now. What comes across in Steve Jobs' Stanford speech, with its minimal number of words, is the sense of quiet and monumental creativity that will always find an outlet whatever the circumstances doled out by fate - of a person whose genius is surely one in a billion.

And so. In the years to come, give me the June 2005 lecture of Steve Jobs anytime -and I will draw sustenance from it. Randy Pausch's?
Well... All I can say is, we all have to die one day, don't we? So many of the 10 million who hit youtube are perhaps already dead, for that matter. Who were vicariously trying to figure out this 'death' thing from afar.

Recall the first week after Princess Di died? In 1997? It was like the world came to a standstill, every minute, every hour in that first week was encased with Diana, enshrined on every channel. But after the stirring funeral, there was a sense of closure, of in fact feeling a bit abashed at having spent so many hours glued to the TV, and of everyone in the world wanting to get back to the daily routine.

I have this peculiar habit - and I know it is peculiar - of clearing up my tables, finishing my backlog of work, and sort of ensuring that my paperwork is in order, when it is time to go abroad (not as often as some, but often enough - say once a year). Yeah, yeah, I know more accidents take place on the streets in your local town blah blah blah. But bus, waisi hi hoon.

So right now, have made lists of all payments made, future payments to be made, cheques, bills to be cleared, pending dues... I mean the domestic and home related stuff. Not work of course. That has a semblance of order courtesy income tax and the chartered accountant.

All my keys are now neatly labeled. I mean the tangible ones. Kaun jaane cyber space passwords ka kya hoga... where no duplicates can be made either... Preparation, preparation, preparation.

In one respect, am way behind Chhotokaka. When Baba, my father in law passed away so suddenly back in 1991, we were all caught unawares. Shocked. Everyone, and especially the soft hearted Chhotokaka, in disarray. The religious sanskars came to the rescue keeping the mind occupied - the rituals, the preparation for the shraddha. Attending to the hundreds of well-wishers who came over in Calcutta. And in the midst of it all what did Chhotokaka - Baba's youngest brother - do?

Having witnessed the chaos in locating a good photo of the departed soul (ultimately a group photo was enlarged, spliced and a part again blown up - this was way before the ease of the digital times).
He suggested to all the siblings and his gen to go to the nearest photo studio and take the right photograph. With proper lighting etc. To be garlanded in the future.
'At least when our time comes, we'll rest in peace knowing what everyone is sadly staring at', he said.

Msg for Gaurpriya

During my three time sent-for-repairs cell phone, have lost your tel number.

Please do call :-)