Managing Hurt...

This is something Swami Chidananda sent - as usual his timing is impeccable! (More on him in www.fowai.net)

When a blade hurts us physically, there are medical means to heal the wound. Let us consider here psychological hurt, and see what can heal the injury.

This topic is of utmost importance. All spirituality is essentially about being free from hurt. When our mind is totally cleansed of all the scars of the past, that itself is moksha, liberation. The root cause of hurt and of its continuation is one and the same in the cases of other common psychological ailments such as fear, worry, greed and jealousy.

We say, “I am hurt.” The wise ask us, “Who is hurt? Who or what is that ‘I’ that is hurt?”

The entity that is hurt is a conception of I. Many thoughts, born of memory, build this concept. If I have enjoyed fame and name for years, there is a large bundle of memories of all that and I carry a ‘me’ that expects special regard and attention from others, who are common men (and women) in my eyes. When I do not receive any special consideration, it hurts me. Even in the case of a relationship between just two people, it is the attachment to memories that keeps certain expectations arising and, when they are not fulfilled, there is hurt. Go anywhere in the world, you will soon be caught in the net of expectations. Spiritual centers are no exception. You expect the so-called gurus to constantly pay attention to you; what is more tragic, some (unripe) gurus seek attention or continued admiration from a good number (if not all) of their followers.

A mind that expects nothing cannot be hurt. Such a mind is an empty but alert mind.

We cannot go far by merely deciding not to expect. Willpower is a charming aspect of mind’s capabilities, which actually is utterly incapable of blessing us with true freedom. Intelligence and willpower are poles apart when it comes to how they influence the human mind. The former is born of total seeing while the latter breeds on partial consideration. With willpower, we may win battles but are sure to lose the war. Its glories are short-lived and it puts no end at all to any human misery. Will power gives us energy in a chosen direction and helps us achieve tasks but we are back to square one very soon. Intelligence removes basic misconceptions and leads us to illumination.

We need to give up our hurried ways that often border on panic, and take a dispassionate look at how we think. What drives our thoughts? Does a certain self-image act as the basis of all our reactions to situations? Is this image closer to facts or is it sustained by fancies?
Do ideas of ‘what we should be’ have a great power to shape our thoughts? Is the fact of ‘what we are’ on the back seat, helpless and hapless?

True intelligence is the ability to see through the games that our own thoughts play. It is about gaining basic understanding of how the machinery of thought functions within us. It is not a matter of generating great thoughts; it is rather made of insights into the structure of thought.

Self-observation, carried with intelligence, dismantles all the images in the mind. The walls of the hall then shine brightly without the clutter of too many framed pictures upon them. Such a mind comes upon silence. It has transparency. Old hurt leaves it and new hurt cannot then be.

Swami Chidananda

Monday, March 17, 2008

MANY LIES, MANY MASTERS…

1.5 million copies sold. Says the jacket. True story, it says. Of a psychiatrist, his young patient and the past-life therapy that changed their lives.

I made my 18^th attempt to complete reading ‘Many Lives, Many Masters’, my interest in half life mode. i.e. going down exponentially - half-hearted as compared to the last time I tried reading - each time.

How come so many folks swear by this book, and I find the going so totally uphill?

Don’t get me wrong. I would absolutely love to do a past-life therapy on myself. Imagine if science can get my DNA to talk, and tell its fascinating history. Imagine – if I can re-look at the seed of me that existed at an earlier point of time – for something of me was there, always, in the past, that is as sure as I stand here living and breathing.

If I decide to begin my journey, say, a mere hundred years ago, there are clearly eight people I am, for sure, merged in – the four sets of parents of my grandparents. Each with future bits of me… my predilections, my genes, my inherent tendencies…Ah, that’s the one I got the dust allergy from. Oh, he’s the one who dislikes sweets, is it? And wow, look at how well she sings and plays the instrument – why did this gene evade me? My ancestors, while they gave me the genes, what I would love to know more of, is what is called the ‘environment’ they each lived in - each bound in social roles, so many untold thoughts, so many untold histories. And all stories, in a real and fascinating way, enmeshed deep deep inside me, in the mist of the past.

Imagine. As I go back further and further in time, there are not just eight, but perhaps hundreds who I am, in a real sense , a part of back at any point of time – I am a living proof of their presence on this planet today. This is such a soul-stirring feeling, such a seamlessly connected to the wide world feeling, so much my-continuing-life feeling. So simple in the truth in it. So awesome too.

Just like the flower blooms so simply,

The morning in my life has woken up the same way.

… and I hope that my evening time also recognizes

To end in the same tune…

Tagore, I think. Who else can put in focus, our time on this planet, so well.

And science tells us there are no endings. If I am a drop in the ocean, I am so, along with billions of molecules. When I merge and go back, and then re-emerge, it will be as another combination of molecules perhaps, but what a mesmerizing history each subpart might have. Like the billions of strands in the double helix of my DNA.

Yet, what do we do - we look at the whole, and seek the past of the complete drop as such. That is because we are so attached to the 'me' of this life!

That’s what this Brian Weiss is missing the point on. When the true reality is so very fascinating, how can these descriptions of past life, by one young girl – each sounding suspiciously like some pages out of a school history text book hold my attention? I mean, her past lives (and the many masters) would do yeoman service to the world, not by providing what is being presented as 'gems of wisdom' but by perhaps going to times that would make it truly incredible - such as deciphering the Indus Valley script, no? Why isn’t anyone ever from some place like this, in her past lives? And that’s the basic defect in the Weiss logic. That he well camouflages under the academic degrees, and with continuous explanations that he rambles on & on about - of his own doubts, and thus smartly tying up of every loose end that could degenerate into outright suspicion by other readers such as me, of course written in a fairly easy to read style.

But then, if indeed she had deciphered the Indus script, the irony is that the book may not have become this famous. Whoever heard of reality – such as archaeology – sell a million and half copies? And that is a telling comment on what we humans seek – doubtful answers to the unknown are always more interesting than some proven and concrete solutions.

I loved watching the movie Ghost – still watch it if I catch it on any of the channels. Enjoy the chemistry between Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, and the story is one you want to believe in - you want to imagine it real. It is exactly what a good 2 hour movie is supposed to do – provide entertainment, in a world of make-believe simulations outside. I loved reading Roots too, once upon a time, and could never understand why folks dissed the book saying Alex Haley created a work of fiction. So what? That’s great, it was well-researched, and an important addition to the racial anthology, I felt.

But I just cannot bring myself to fit this Many Lives Many Masters anywhere into my acceptance grey cells. It is a piece of shit - to me. And my opinion each time I try to complete it, only digs in deeper. And thank god for blogs where one can bare one’s feelings as it is!

Cell Phones: Cement or Fragment??

Just back from Solapur...

Overheard this cell-phone conversation, as the young fellow talked first to his mom, and then his girl friend, even as one of his chums sat opposite... the guys were sitting across in the AC three tier.

The first thing the two guys commented on, as soon as they boarded the train Hindi-movie style while it was leaving the platform, all out of breath, is 'Arre, yahan recharge point nahi hai '. (Me - oldgen - I was thrilled enough to see clean purdahs and sheets, in our esteemed Rlys, now-making-a-profit ka AC dibbas)

Laloo, Laloo, suno toh sahi... While one of them swore he had seen it on a recent trip in another train, the other was a tad skeptical about it. Meanwhile, the skeptic received a call - ring-tone the default Nokia one - from his mom. Conversation in monosyllables, though mom, like all moms, seemed to have lots to say.
Apart from the 'Hmmmms....', 'Ji....s', 'Haan, Ma....'s', he got agitated at one point when his mom must have asked him - well, we can all guess what she asked him ... 'Ma, woh shahar ke ek kone mein rehta hai, aur mein doosre kone mein, kaise mil sakta hoon'?... and then, his phone got cut off...
Commiserated other friend , 'In today's time and age, this cutting off of signal is criminal.'
Nokia ringtone happens again almost immediately, though young man is sitting back not trying ...
'Nahi, Ma, yahan coverage nahi hai... YAHAN SIGNAL NAHI HAI...'
(listens) 'Main pahunchkar baat karta hoon... BAAT karta hoon.... nahi, Ma- TUMSE baat karunga...'
Had just about finished this conversation, when a piercing & loud police whistle went off with car-horns blaring, in the quiet of the train-night.
That - we all soon figured - was his ring-tone for girl-friend's call coming in...
'..Yeah, my phone was busy... was on an official call.... Sorry, i can't hear - there's poor signal.... No, no, SERIOUSLY, please believe me, coverage nahi hai... sach...
Arre bhai....
'Bhai' is just a figure of speech, yaar, hey-hey'....
Phone cuts off again...
Says sympathetic friend from the other side : 'In one or two years, we'll not be able to give the poor signal reason to anyone you know, what will we do...' (I made note and added to young gen's list of future problems in life in India)
Our friend (the one with the mom and the gf) is frantically trying to dial through - and getting jammed...
Piercing police constable whistle happens.... Train chugs along. All of us junta stoically do our own thing...He puts on the phone, not to his ear - first, to his mouth.
'Hello... Hello.... Mike... Testing... Testing....'.....
'Just checking.... Yeah.... OK, I am joking now....'
'Yeah, hey-hey - me too....'
'Warning you OK? The signal's not good, I am warning you, OK? Don't tell me later I didn't....'

So what do we call this aaj kal wale conversation and dialogues - is it two way/ three way / no way??? All that was spoken of, was the absence of a signal! While there was one voice I heard all through, funnily enough I never heard him - it was three other voices that were really speaking, speaking. Besides, if we remove 'signal' talk/ the cut calls, will service-providers start earning a lot less??

Mikhail Bakhtin, that great Russian thinker must be jumping up and down in his grave in delight... Back in the 40s, and later in the 60s and 70s, he had postulated the 'polyphonic' concept... the human capacity for simultaneous multiple voices; what he said was part of a 'dailogic imagination'... and his thoughts emerged out of his dislike for any structural codes of language.
Wouldn't he just adore this new fragmentedly together world we live in!!!

A 'Socio' story coming up !

And which lens do YOU wear?

Nominated, by UN, I am told, as best poem, 2006 - :

When I born, I black
When I grow up, I black
When I go in Sun, I black
When I scared, I black
When I sick, I black
And when I die, I still black

And you white fellow
When you born, you pink
When you grow up, you white
When you go in sun, you red
When you cold, you blue
When you scared, you yellow
When you sick, you green
And when you die, you gray
And you calling me colored??

The New Seed-Keepers

A few days ago, this film The Seed-Keepers totally blew me away, and that I've already blogged about. A valiant group of Dalit women in Andhra, keeping an age-old custom of a diversity of seeds alive from year to year, so that the nextgen - both of the seeds variety as well as children of these families, blossom and prosper.

On Sunday, the IITB e-cell organized an e-summit on entrepreneurship, where the Venture Capital muscle was out on display. To facilitate and 'incubate' the next-gen of the top end of young entrepreneurs. Names such as Canaan, Sherpalo, Helion, Seedfund, GlobalLogic, DFJ and many more. With India the flavor of the season, the hardened Silicon Valley 'seed-keepers' were here in full strength. I attended all day, and have come away with thoda sa queasy, thoda sa theek-thaak feelings. We students of IITB did not have to pay a penny ultimately, though the initial 'you can attend' mail told us IITians had to cough up teen sau rupaiya for lunch. Wow, was there a big outside contingent willing to pay much more, to attend the proceedings of the day. Yet, the thing is, I just did not feel completely gung-ho, in spite of the amount of money that sponsors had been willing to throw at this event (free lunch got added later, comprende?) , the media presence - that all went to indicate the general hope in the air of prosperity and riches.

And that precisely is what I am feeling odd about. No one says VCs are expected to be philanthropists. Sure, they are here to make money. But why did I get a feeling that reminded me of vultures swooping in for the kill? Talking of payback in 4 to 6 years, seed capital of 2 to 5 crores, IT this and IT that. Bade bade baatein. Oonche oonche nazar.

One fellow in one of the multiple sessions, from the audience, clad in a kurta, asked a pertinent question - in Hindi... Why is it that VCs do not 'micro-finance' entrepreneurship. Pay out Rs. 5 lakhs, 10 lakhs to hundreds of people - as versus seeking to pay out in crores to a few dozen. Why not a more 'social entrepreneur' role... I am not sure he got any clear answer.

And of the 'speakers' / 'mentors' / 'panel discussion members', the less said the better. The hype overshadowed the content. A great idea the e-summit, that got jacked by some strange folks who participated as speakers. But first, the good bit : Among the guys who were phenomenal, in their scope of thinking, were Ashish Gupta, of Junglee fame, and said to be one of the original 'seeders' of Google, and Sharad Sharma of Yahoo. Their two-man session sparkled, wit, gyan, food for thought all compounded wonderfully. A total pleasure and joy to behold. Total paisa-vasool. Ultimately, to all potential entrepreneurs, this is what one aims to be - that 'all-is-well' with the world, that bone-deep confidence.

In other sessions was Manik Arora, full of polite postures up on the stage, and while on camera to the media, and otoh, totally unwilling to give the time of day to genuine questions when I overheard him being asked outside - with a brusque "I don't have the time". In other words, if you are not a potential entrepreneur who I can make money out of, bugger off and do not disturb me. (And come to think of it, does doing a top-level job in an entrepreneurship company make one an entrepreneur?? Aka Manik-man as well as some others... Hitesh Oberoi who came in from Naukri for example (I thought that was Sanjeev Bhikchandani's baby??) ) Vivek Bhargava, another chap, so called entrepreneur made an ass of himself up on stage by using 'real' parenthood as versus adopted parenthood as a metaphor, that he was actually clueless about. Perhaps he should be reading today's newspaper item about this child who is hearing handicapped and has found a loving home with this couple in Bhopal.

Sab baccha party entrepreneurs, green behind the ears (behind the years?) - as we would say. This brings upfront the inherent contradiction... Ajit Balakrishnan of rediff (in the first panel discussion of the day) felt there was a need for many more mentors of the 45 to 60 year age-band variety. Kahan hai, bhai??

Rajendra Mishra arrived - if his name did not mean much, his intro in the booklet said 'Serial Entrepreneur' . If that still did not mean anything, his face (rather than his name) said 'RK Mishra' - Ah!
He was, justifiably, on a euphoric high, enjoying his 15 minutes of fame. This then is the guy who had just won the Lead India the previous evening, and was splattered across the front page of one - merely one (not others, of course!) daily. In today's world, 'news' is not common news - it is branded news - the papers decide who will be on their personal front pages.

Anyway, what he did - and good for him! - was that he generally threw a necessary spanner in the works - by demolishing the entire line-up of 'stars on display' at the summit as an unnecessary 'dotcom' e-venture.
Why is it, he asked, that all the speakers here are from software? If that is what IIT is about, you should just halt all other departments and only keep Computer Science. And where is the 'giving back to society' within all these talk of crores and billions?

Perhaps Mr. Ramadorai, the TCS head had the last word in his first words (he was the keynote speaker) - India had 13 million retail outlets. That tells you about the power of entrepreneurship in this country. The entrepreneurial spirit rather than the making-big-money factor.

Which is a theme, I think, that the e-cell organizers, need to do next year. Invite some grass-roots folks - banie ke dukan wale hi sahi; vegetable vendor hi sahi. In fact, we sorely need a reality check of a session that can no way be conducted in English. Yet of the success stories that keep this country rooted. And there are the top-end folks such as Dangayach of Sintex; that guy who's in the new rupee billionaire list - what's his name, from IIMA, who makes those sugar factories in Belgaum and so many more... Narendra Murkumbi, I think...Connected to the land, not flying up there folks. Most real (and really big) entrepreneurs always display a certain amazing quality - of not working for the money, and yet the money comes rolling in. These guys then channelize most of the funds in very interesting social ways. ... These are those who have understood the Swami Vivekananda diktat of 'Those alone live, who live for others' even as we take our country forward. It is time to move away from making the Ambani brothers our icons - who we only hear of, in terms of rocks worn around their necks or Gulf-Jets given as birthday gifts... More stories of folks like Dangayach who keeps insisting he is not a entrepreneur (if he is not, God knows who is!), the Subhiksha guy, our IIT's Dunu Roy, Shailesh Gandhi....

And of course, we would all gain by watching 'The Seed-Keepers' - the real seed-keepers that is! To begin with, those who missed the film , might as well read a bit about it.

Last word: I thought, paediatricians use 'incubators' only if a child is born premature? :-) :-)

These Times in Hindustan...

Our monthly paper bill is Rs. 273/- . For TOI (that includes the Mumbai Mirror tabloid), Hindustan Times, Indian Express and The Economic Times... in short, with the thickness of pages nowadays, a significant amount of newsprint to be able to sell to the raddi-wala.

The thing is : this entire thappi of papers, I find, I can skim through in five minutes. Seriously.

Ind. Exp. we keep because I used to quite like the editorials. Now I increasingly find this is so with HT instead. Today's 'paper actually had a lot of food for thought. On various angles, and not just some 'issue of the day' like the kidney racket or something... Many are mediated - in other words, representing another (not the writer's) point of view, but made the richer, for drawing us - the reader -'s attention to it...

The Faithscape page held me... as Renuka Narayan replicates a poem written by Lance Naik Sukhwinder Singh, the first liver recipient of AORTA. To quote her: Here's how the young soldier thinks of the dead lady whose liver now keeps him alive and fit. Calling his poem Jigar Ki Dhadkan

Khushkismat hoon main ki mamta ke aanchal mein jee raha hoon,
Tootne lage the jo sapne dil ke, un sapnon ko phir se see raha hoon,
Ek maa hai jisne janam diya aur laad pyaar se paala hai,
Ek maa hai jisne jeevan diya aur girte hue samhala hai,
Apna jigar ki dhadkan dekar so gayi sitaaron mein
Bhool na paoon kabhi main unko chamak rahi jo taaron mein
Aasmaan ke taraf dekh ke ghoont sabr ka peeta hoon,
khushkismat hoon main ki.....

RN also writes an aside on Uddhav (eeks - not the Shiv Sena variety - the original one) as he brings a message from Krishna to Radha, in her other article on the same page. Uddhav feels awkward at having no real message to deliver, and fakes one up.

And then there is Khushwant Singh. Again, what spellbinds my attention is his quote - of Kuldip Salil's translation of Ghalib...

Dair nahin, harum nahin, dar nahin, aastaan nahin,
Baithey Hue raah-guzar pe hum, koi hamein uthaye kyon.
(No home, no hearth for us, no temple, no mosque,
Why should anyone remove us from one thoroughfare, can we ask)

And ultimately, there is Barkha Dutt with her article 'Disadvantage Sania'. Lucidly put and clearly point-put-forth, it is a joy to read. It highlights our peculiar Indian love-hate relationships, that swing between adulation and annoyance. Her analysis of what exactly makes people so uncomfortable. She highlights how the visible women in sports hold up a mirror to both our prejudices as well as our changing attitudes. She calls it a mixture of 'breathless awe' and 'bewildered fright'. How we would rather do with the sentimental do-goods of fiction than the messy reality of fact. The article - I think I said this already, but what the heck, let me just say it again - is simply brilliant.

Must say, sometimes when I watch 'We, The People' am filled with misgivings at the thought of the way the media - including Barkha - perpetrates the sensational stuff of the moment. Once I had the (mis)fortune of being sent as an 'expert' to the show by one of my corporate clients to defend their position on a certain brand. It was quite an intriguing experience seeing the episode from the inside out. I recall being totally taken aback and alarmed at the deference with which I was ushered in the NDTV offices at New Delhi into a 'special room' - as one of the key 'experts' of the day along with stalwarts such as Dipankar Gupta, Balki etc. where each of us virajmaaned with our own individual halos of importance (separate from 'we, the people' the hoi polloi that we were kept away from, till we reached the actual 'set').

And the main HT editorial today, highlights the plight of Indians who get hospitalized. Apparently, a quarter of all those hospitalized every year, slip below the poverty line for medical expenses for which they are not insured. Falling ill means entering into an unending debt trap.

In the past two years, while I have pursued my 'course-work' in sociology leading up to the actual PhD fieldwork, have often added to my growing list of topics I could have covered (but ultimately have not) for my dissertation. One has been the whole 'moneylender' thing in India... how come so many of the unscrupulous ones survive and thrive, and where the bloody hell is the 'State' in all these dealings, and why does it prefer to look away...

Vibhu (Mittal) and we have been having this conversation recently ... He is on a sabbatical right now from Google, and while he is busy being (what he calls) Mr. Mom ! , while wife Sujata helps run the company HP in Palo Alto where they reside, we are having this sporadic chat regarding publications - how they are disappearing from the West, and simply snowballing in India. Earlier I had sent in this essay by Ruchir Goswami, a classmate in the 'Culture & Media' sessions, who has done a halt-in-the-tracks analysis of the diversity of publications that come out in IITB versus those in Harvard, as written by students... At Harvard, students have carte blanche, while in IITB, any masala has to be whetted by the DOSA - Dean of Students Affairs...

Since we are talking media out here, let me speak of an Urdu sammelan recently, and cut-paste from my chat mail here:
...I was attending a talk as part of an Urdu Sammelan (lest you wonder where all i go - this was at Solapur, and of interest to me as part of the changing 'Public Culture' space being created in liberalized small town India)... and the speaker - an erudite and extremely articulate editor from Hyderabad was rueing the fact that readership in Urdu is completely dying off - and the culprit is not just the content, it is also the style - they cannot afford to print in color, nor can they bring out the latest in fashion in print : 'glazed paper'.... A huge part of the 45,000 figure you mention (Vibhu had said : On a larger level, that figure is inverted: the US has 1500 newspapers versus 45,000 for India. I wonder if this just reflects the fact that the IITs (or maybe IITB) is not a reflection of the larger Indian demographic at all?) ...., are folks doing it dedicatedly, as part of some inner-directed goal of 'wanting to make a difference'. Like this Urdu ed said, 'We are not just the editors, we are the owners, we are the jamaadar who sweeps the floor, we are the watchman, we are the peons'.

... Actually, IITians just adore and devour all that is published locally. The point Ruchir is making is that the authorities refuse to recognize this is important, and one has to scrounge out time to do these 'extra curricular activities' in the literal sense of the word. In that sense, the campus is as much a reflection of the larger Indian demographic... in the sense of working within impossible constraints, and still bringing out the papers against all odds..

Like all staid media articles, let me also end on a good note (why can't we end with anger????) - Of eleven month old baby Kyson Stowell (Fate names us well!) surviving a twisted tornado and its debris.

And this faith - that the nextgen deserves the best - will keep us all going on, in life. Or to go back to the RN article, Radha laughs, for the words when they reach her, read 'Uddhav has not finished his learning yet'. Shocked, he seeks an explanation.... 'I am one with Krishna. I don't need a letter from Him. He himself is my love letter'. It is the realization that Uddhav figures - a village woman has understood the nature of faith better than he had, particularly faith in oneself, that comes from a secure belief in one's soul connection with all Creation!