Searching for the illusive Rainbow

Monsoon has officially arrived in Bangalore and with it we have started hearing stories of roads filled with water, jams, lakes overflowing, flight delays. But wait, there is an illusive rainbow somewhere out there. Is it ?

13th June 22

The first showers brought me down with fever, cold and sore throat - with my regular doses of medicines followed the delirium phase where you are in and out of sleep, senseless but trying to make sense of things around, numb but trying to feel, half asleep but trying to listen, eating but not tasting anything, mind is a continuous mirage of things which happened, can happen or may happen. 

But I cannot give up the will to get up and move because life is cyclical, bad will follow good will follow bad. No one can escape because that is the nature of life. The Illusive rainbow can be seen - one has to look for it. 

More than seeing I think one has to believe in it and you would have seen it in your mind. Our subconscious mind triggers all kinds of thoughts in our brain - we have to guide it towards the rainbow. Sometimes it’s very difficult like my current stretch of illness and adjustment with so many people at home that most of the time you feel claustrophobic, watchful of what you're saying and the reaction it would evoke. 

But, then you see the rainbow on the days when the entire family gathers together to celebrate an occasion. The ripple of happiness and abundance can be seen on such rare occasions. We remember rainbows because of the rain. 

Without rain there will be no rainbow & after pain joy will follow.

It’s not an illusion.

Before the Coffee gets cold - A Japanese Book

Time Travel often involves complicated science because the director wants to give an authentic experience for the viewers to believe that there is a faint chance this is possible. I remember reading about Interstellar in Times that Christopher Nolan had scientists & physicists on board to give a true picture. 

Unlike the complexity of the movies or other science fiction books like The 3 body problem for example, this book has a simple premise - If you could go back, who would you want to meet ?

Here time travel is more of an emotional travel to connect or forgive or understand a relationship. It’s set up in a cafe where there is a unique chair where you have to sit and there are rules for you to travel in time. I will not go into specifics as it will spoil the fun of someone who is reading it, but the set up is really interesting as there are rules which one has to follow if they are travelling. 

The characters, like all of us, are flawed and have done something which they feel can correct or find out by travelling back in time, knowing very well that whatever they do ‘the present cannot be changed’. The characters are all very simple middle class folks like you and me and the authors sketch them out beautifully. 

I am very fond of Japanese novels and read many of them and one of the common traits I find is that they are very simple and have very simple lifestyles, they are very hard working, have very strong ethics and family values. The same is true here. 

There are 4 short stories but the characters in all 4 stories are the same - which you do not realise in the start but the author is able to generate a feeling that these stories are happening between a few close friends. It’s like a few friends are getting together after a long time and sharing stories. I liked it a lot.

Back to Future is one movie which is my favourite & I had seen it growing up & I still loved Michel J Fox in that. 

Whom would I want to meet or be at an incident if I could go back.

I would like to meet Maa, my MOM who died in 2012 quite suddenly. Since I moved out of Delhi in 2006, our interactions were only when we went to meet her or she and baba came over to meet us. She spent the last year or two of her life in loneliness, as she became more and more immobile because of multiple fractures in her hand and differences with baba which took a very negative turn. She kept away from most of her friends and spent her last 1 or 2 years in loneliness. I was busy shaping my life with 2 small children, a new job & a new city and never saw this coming. She loved celebrating birthdays and maybe I would like to visit her on her birthday and talk to her for a whole day. 

The only thing I have to do is find the cafe now which allows for time travel :)

Call me Chihiro - A Japanese movie

I read the review and found it to be a kind of slow and emotional movie which I would like. Although I am one of those who follow lists and see only those movies and read only those books which I want to see, I make these random choices which most of the time turns out well. 

I saw the movie over 1 week since I was managing home and then hospital with Papa and then both kids were coming home - so the viewing was in phases.

The theme running through the movie was that of loneliness. In some sense we are all lonely and we are also connected. But in between our travel, office, home and running errands there is this space where one just finds oneself a bit alone - it need not be a continuous thing, it can be a stab of pain or miss someone or an incident reminds you of your college. 

Chihiro is a former sex worker who now works in a small bento shop. She has no inhibitions of her past work and is a carefree girl who is happy and always helping people around her with her warmth and care - whether it’s a homeless old man whom she gets home, gives her a bath and food and continues to do so for some time, or it’s a boy whose mom is not able to care about her because of her schedule - she builds bonds with them and genuinely cares about them. It’s not like a deep relationship but a relationship which has genuine warmth and caring. 

She keeps visiting a blind old lady as a caregiver and takes a puzzle with her because she loves solving puzzles. She carries one unique puzzle with her everytime she visits and that is the challenge her patient waits for. One of the poignant moments is when she takes her in her car to a place where she can hear the rain and smell the earth - because she cannot see it. 

It's a slow movie and slightly over 2 hrs so it will appeal to those who are looking for a slow unwind with the movie, maybe with a glass of wine with someone you love.

Mindfulness Challenge

Source: thepathway2success.com

Few days back I finished a 21 day mindfulness challenge. 

I always wanted to do a course on mindfulness, having read so much literature around it. So when the 21 Day Challenge was organised free, thanks to the Wellbeing movement - I jumped in and joined on the 9th day. 

I could not do all the 21 day prompts - because I realised that many of the activities were something I picked up as part of my DIY in the last few years & have been doing it off and on. I focused on stress / anxiety release, focusing on breath and a few others - which were in the  form of guided meditation. I have been using the app CALM for 10 years listening to London English so it was a good change to listen to Sumati in Indian English & she has a beautiful & soothing voice which envelops you as you put on your headphones.

From a framework perspective,

Everyone is clear on What ? (Mindfulness & Meditation is needed to be calm). How ? is where everyone struggles. How to be mindful. How to do deep listening ? How to control anger ? How to be more compassionate?

The 21 days challenge clarified 3 things to me:

One, it establishes the fact that it’s not 1 thing, it’s an essential ingredient in everything. Morning Walk, eating, bathing, listening in addition to the mindful practices like meditation to release stress / anxiety or meditation to focus on breath. 

2nd, With so much literature / videos / opinions we should not get overwhelmed (I was) - start small & do it. I will do some of the 21 day activities but 1 thing I have taken up as a challenge is for the month of June - every day I will do a 10 mnt anxiety meditation in the evening after work & before I go to sleep.

Lastly it helps us understand that mindfulness is not a magic wand - we have to practise it daily and every moment till the last breath. 

Even at 87, the Dalai Lama gets up at 4 and practices.

How old are you ?   

Postscript: I liked this simple article which captures many of the things we learnt in the last 21 days. https://www.thepathway2success.com/12-simple-ways-to-practice-mindfulness/

Where the crawdads sing

It’s a beautiful story which follows an abandoned yet defiant girl, Kya, who raises herself to adulthood in a North Carolina marshland, becoming a naturalist in the process. 

The storyline of Kya growing up in a marshland all on her own, observing birds & animals, noting and drawing them or collecting feathers, shells which line up her house in marshes echoed with my vision of learning. 

One of the main reasons for sending my children to Rishi Valley school was to be surrounded by nature - not as exotic as the marshlands of Carolina 🙂 but equally interesting with all kinds of birds & reptiles around them. 

What I liked is the power of observation and deep observation over a period of time which was the natural thing most of my earlier generations did and survived on. They could predict natural phenomena like rain or ripening of fruits or crop yield just by observing weather patterns. Our understanding of nature came from living with it. As we moved to the city we moved completely away from nature & got detached from the soil. 

The movie is also classified as a murder mystery which runs parallel to Kya’s journey - there is a beautiful twist which came as a surprise to many of us. After seeing one goes away thinking it’s a true story. But it is not a true story but an adaptation of a bestselling book by the same name. 

But these 300 year old marshlands are in danger, see the video here (https://www.pbsnc.org/blogs/science/vanishing-north-carolina-wetlands/ ) 

Very similar to the mangroves in Andaman where few islands have already disappeared and many more will go down under if the sea level rises. 

Read this beautiful article on migrating birds at the edge of Mumbai & the danger they are facing due to over development. https://mumbai.citizenmatters.in/chanakya-wetlands-in-the-pink-or-on-the-brink-50727

Being a caregiver - 2

Venice - Some day Soon :)

The weather in Bangalore is at its best now which is just before the monsoon rains come in. From where I sit, I can feel a cold breeze, the sun is not yet up but there is light and if you observe closely you can see the intensity change very slowly. Birds of all kinds are the most active flying, chirping, searching for their food & animals not seen by us but foraging for food under bushes or trees. Sometimes I hear the koyal kooing. It’s a beautiful medley of nature in the midst of a concrete city.

He is in artificial sleep thanks to tranquilizers and is unaware of what’s happening around him. His caregiver is busy preparing for the awakening of her patient so she can feed him, give him medicines and put him back to sleep. His walking is like a toddler if he can stand he rushes from point A to point B so that he finishes his task and comes back, in recent days this also has become rare. Food is fed and he is sponged & clothed like a mother would do a child.

When the day ends and I walk outside alone I often wonder - Is this really worth it ? Is this life or imprisonment, a stage where death is more welcome than cure. From being independent and head of family you have become a cause for all possible pain and discomfort to the family. What is there to look forward to apart from the day when you breathe your last? 

Will I go through it? Will I have a choice in this matter ? Human mind grapples with these questions which are quite pointless. Or Does it help you define your point of view? Having a cancer patient at home, stories of cancer survivors and otherwise come to us every day. In one of the stories I heard, a lady after being detected with cancer - she refused any treatment and said she would rather make the best of the rest of the days left than be in bed. She famously said to her son ‘I would rather make that trip to Venice which I always wanted to do and die in a year than lie in bed for the next 3 years’.

Objectively, sitting here and imagining that this can happen I would like to follow her principle. It makes sense to prioritize experience over survival. 

But as John Lennon famously said ‘Life is what happens to you as you are busy making other plans’.    

Postscript: She made the trip to Venice & lived for more than 3 years. She was living not surviving. 

Being a caregiver

On A Good Day

One of the toughest jobs being a caregiver is to understand the unsaid. How can you get a cancer patient to voice what’s going on in their mind? The only question in their mind is When? In most cases death is the only finality which one reconciles to unless a miracle is on cards. Yes they do happen but you need to want it.

I had 2 lived experiences, one which is over and one which I am living through.

In baba’s case he had surrendered his care to ME & I became a primary source & decision maker. So at least the line of control was clear and the larger aspect was that he was willing to try everything possible to heal himself - from kiwi to coconut water to some herbal medicine. Super positive and disciplined about everything. At that point it looked normal but looking back I can realize what it would have taken to have that mindset. As I reflect back, one thing which worked was that we were a TEAM and worked towards a common goal.

In my current experience I am not a caregiver directly but being a small house experiencing what she is going through. Unlike baba here it’s complete anarchy and revolt, he does not want to take medicines or food. Is abusive towards his caregiver and adamant to go to the toilet at night resulting in him falling in the bathroom and developing a clot in his brain. She has lived through all this treating him like a child and offering all possible options of food but in the end he might just eat a spoon and she will have the leftover even though we will tell her not to. Despite the treatment she continues to get, she is soft spoken, does not raise her voice and accommodates him in all possible ways.

Not sure how she manages it but even from a distance most of us are at a stage where we avoid getting into a discussion on food or medicine as it leads to shouting and screaming at her.

From his perspective - he is hovering between sanity and insanity. I never knew the power of the subconscious but seeing him smile, talk about his childhood and cousins and incidents just shows what’s hidden inside the brain and when it will lay bare without us knowing it. Scary - but his locus of control is his caregiver and he punches it with all his might. Till he can that is.

My sense of right or wrong get’s grayer as I toss and turn both perspectives. My own frailty and shortcomings tints the glass further making further viewing a tough going.

But then we have to walk, time stops for no one nor can we.

Everything the Light Touches - Janice Pariat

It’s a BIG book - 700+ pages & the first question you have after reading the book is the question, Is she a botanist? And the answer to that is No, which is more fascinating because I haven’t learnt so much about plants before reading this book. 

2 large sections of the book are about Goethe & Linnaeus - both are philosophical botanists, and their way of looking at plants as a whole and not as a specimen or a classification. I got the philosophy but I found the whole thing a bit long and arduous to read. Yes, it brought out the 19th century poet's obsession with plants and how he looked at every individual plant or leaf as one leaf and not as a shrub. With drawings he explains that the same plants growing in 2 different places will grow differently. One growing under the shade of a tree and the other in the open.

I could relate to it especially my new connection to sustainability and visiting our farm in Solan. Also reading about cultivation & farming and talking about it in the climate challenge, hearing stories about people who have left their corporate job and then started farming and in the process how they connected to the earth / soil. How they are trying to lead a slow life which looks deeply & lives mindfully. 

The central premise of the book is interdependence between beings - humans, forests, animals (biodiversity). How we existed so peacefully  and in balance with nature and how that balance was disturbed by science, development & I guess by greed / desire to control everything and understand everything so we can use it to our advantage.

Growing up in the 70's / 80’s & even early 90’s we were still living in an Indian way - our food habits, thinking was balanced. I always referred to baba’s generation as a generation of scarcity and our current generation a generation of too many choices. While I also enjoyed the hyper choice & the blinkered view of ‘focusing on discount’ and less on the question ‘do we really need the t-shirt, in the last 5 years I stopped buying and kept only what I need and not what I can afford.

Reading the book also gives a small peak into Meghalaya culture / traditions and tribal life and their beautiful & musical connection to earth. Come to think of it - this may be the first book I have read on North East, the only other author I recollect is Anjum Hassan which was a decade back I think. There is so much less written about the North - Eastern part of India that it is an enigma to many of us. 

I can also connect to my Assam days where solutions to all health ailments were found in plants, shrubs, seeds, fruits grown around. In fact just a few days back I was telling my cousin if she can send me some dried thankuni leaves which are very good for the stomach and she said they are not available & grown in our homes. We have migrated to artificial and manufactured medicines which have side effects. (Found this interesting article Thankuni - Health Benefits, Uses and Important Facts https://www.potsandpans.in/blogs/articles/thankuni-health-benefits-uses-and-important-facts - Was pleasantly surprised that someone wrote about this obscure plant)

Read the book to re-establish your trust in nature.

Pinocchio - 2022

Only movies can help you visualize the wonderland of fairies & their magical land and in this case it’s puppets. It affects your senses in a way that it takes a while to come out of it. For those 2 hrs you are in a world where reality is the imagination. 

At 54 I am still as amazed, fascinated, blown and wait for a release like a 14 year old. I am sure  that’s true for many of us oldies but age is not a factor when you can experience this magical world and let go of your reality. 

You walk in as an adult but come out a child. 😀

I have not read the book, but I think all of us know him as a character whose nose grows if he lies. The last remembrance of Pinnochio is in one of the Shrek movies – where he is another character / toy who raids Shrek’s house and later helps him in escaping the castle.

To take such a character and create a beautiful movie which one remembers for a long time after the movie is over requires exquisite vision and execution. Seeing the movie I felt like every scene is from a story book, beautifully coloured and textured. The animation is very different from the Pixar movies which have been laying the rules for animation movies. 

Not just the animation, the story also is beautiful with a strong message on war and accepting someone as they are and not comparing them with someone they have in their mind or what they want them (their daughters / wife) to be.

Director Del Toro, known for his visual storytelling, waited for 15 years to make this movie. He used stop motion puppets which are operated through mechanical gears in their heads & the title character was fabricated via metal 3D printing. 

Read about it here:

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/03/movies/guillermo-del-toro-pinocchio-puppets-stop-motion.html 

Do not miss the director’s cut which is also available on Netflix to understand the journey of making the film. There’s a lot which goes behind every scene and every movement. 

The sine curve of life

Mangalore - Jan 2023

Up, down, down, down, Up down….The roller-coaster of life is like the waves I tried to navigate in the sea a few days back when I made my 1st dive at Netrani Islands. .

Out on the boat we rode for almost 1 and half hrs before we reached the mainland - Murudeshwar. They toppled me over with an oxygen tank, taught me sign language and took me down 100 m to show sparkling, beautifully colored fishes - fishes which looked like they had come out of the painting. The fishes were not a big deal. I had seen a larger variety of fishes & corals in Havelock Island (Andaman & Nicobar). 

But the dive was a big deal. 

Reflections: 

The ride: Sea is a choppy place and we were riding in a small boat with 12 people. None of us can swim. Our life depended on the flimsy jacket and the skills of a local boatman. My whole family was in it and we boarded with the enthusiasm of doing the dive not caring so much about the boat which would be in the ocean for 1 and half hrs. This thought came to me as we were on our way back and the waves were really big and a bit scary probably because of tides. 

Much of our life we ride different boats - job, marriage being 2 of the longest rides for most of us. We jump into both with the excitement of a dive without accessing the depth of water and its impact. In both of these cases experience is the only teacher rest is all theory.

So  what is our safety jacket - do we actually have one ? Each of us has our own jacket but it’s hidden or not worn like many of my fellow riders in the boat. The question is - All of us reached the land safely - so do we really need one ? 

We do,don’t wait for the right time…unless it's too late.

The sea: The sea is a place of change and in many ways reflects life. Every wave is different and is unpredictable. You are walking calmly and a large wave wets your trousers or takes away your slippers kept on the beach. 

If you are lucky your slippers may come back the next morning. 

Just like many friends, relatives, colleagues who took their boat and got busy riding the waves of success or despair. 

Last year when we went to Goa during monsoon was the first time when I experienced the fury of the sea which scared me. It;s very easy to associate anger with human & animals as you can see it in their face / expression but this is the first time I could visualize the fury of the sea. The only thoughts which kept coming back to me were tsunami. Even if you are a strong swimmer you don’t stand a chance against it. 

It has to be either your luck or God’s hand.

In life we are swamped by monstrous waves and at times we have to give in, like a bad day, just like you cannot assign a reason to a big wave you may not be able to assign it to a bad. 

Accept the day and ride on. Like today I cycled 8 km to overturn the nauseating and suffocating feeling which had no reason to be there.

And sat to write it. Life is hard work - there is no easy way out. 

The dive: One of the critical elements of the dive is you stop breathing through your nose and breathe only using your mouth. That fundamental change sounds easy but when you go diving for the first time and try it, you revert back to nose because we are hard wired to do it. I came back in a minute, not able to suppress my natural instinct. 2nd time round - the whole brain was focused on only one thing - breath through your mouth and with complete concentration I could do it and was comfortable after some time. 

This is akin to my panic attacks which I used to have where the whole body behaves in a completely different way - as if you don’t have any control. Your mind wants something but your body refuses to listen. Anything which goes against nature takes a huge amount of conscious effort and it is possible.

We all have our templates or ways of doing things and it takes a big effort to change and create a new template. It is possible, it may take days, months & years - don’t give up. 

Hold your breath and dive in.

The Garden & Unrealised Dreams

 

We stay in a flat in Bangalore – so it’s only concrete around us at home. We have using a composter to convert our wet waste to manure. Everyday morning when I go to mix the waste I touch the old wet waste which is almost half formed soil. Running it through my hands is my only feeling of soil. We have small pots in which we put plants and hope that they stay alive.

One of my dream was to sit in the garden in an easy chair reading with a dog by side – You know kind of house you see in old 70’s, that image is stuck in my head.

So, every time I come to Jaipur where my in laws stay – it’s like an unrealised dream, the lawn and the flowers and the house. There is a driveway and a lawn, beds of flower, and also a mango tree which is full of flowers now (mid-march), butterflies, birds, squirrels. The whole place is like an eco-system which we wanted to be a part of, creating something looks like a distant dream.

So I soak it in – a walk in the terrace which gives a lovely sunset view, walk under the mango tree, or photograph the different flowers, birds. During winters, sit in the warm sun and read a book.

As they grow old, the place is becoming a difficult place to maintain, but they stick on to it like I do with my dream.

They have realised it and I am yet to realise.

Maybe I will never, but what’s wrong in dreaming, after all that’s what keeps us all alive.

Hearty Breakfast of Rawat Ki Kachodi at Jaipur

Jaipur - March 23

You know you are old when you ignore the upset stomach and sleep to gorge on Pyaz Ki kachodi from Rawat & add half a mawa kachodi to it. Done, that’s a hearty breakfast.

The other thing which you realize as you write at 55 is that most of your writing is like a memoir because you want to cherish the memories you are making and start hunting memories.

My visits to Kanpur and Lucknow was to meet Mama & Mashi (mother’s brother and sister) but it also brought back memories which were made when I was a growing up and used to make my summer holiday trips to Kanpur.

Lastly you give more weightage to meet physically even if it’s a shorter duration like the current visit when we are meeting Nikita & Joyeeta for just 2 days. These are the only 2 days when we will be a family but the effort required to make it happen is worth it.

As we grow old, you can either be terribly fit like many of my friends who live by the book – in terms of food intake, sleep, drinks, physical activity and there are some who say we have to anyway go so might as well make the best of it – eat, drink, make merry & lastly there are some like us who follow the middle path. Be austere when you are on your own but maximize the short visits and occasions.  

Hence the deep fried breakfast we had today (and we will have tomorrow) in honour of the children who are back.

Can there be a perfect movie - Carla Simon’s Alcarras n Summer of 93

With Oscars announced on Monday and Everything Everywhere All at once getting 7 Oscars and being nominated for 11 - the answer might be an easy one.

But having watched maybe 30 + movies on MUBI in last 2 months from 19 40’s to 23 and yes this also might be because I saw it most recently - my vote would go to Alcarras, It won the Golden Bear in the Berlin International Film festival last year. 

It’s a Spanish movie but the spoken language is catalan. This is the first catalan language movie to be nominated and winning. The director Carla Simon grew up in Barcelona speaking Catalan and living in a catalan village. 

The beauty of the movie lies in 

#Every character in the movie has a story to tell and through their behavior and actions one can understand the pre teen & teenager angst or the how a child’ mind works with so much cross talk happening between adults.

#Every relationship has beautiful moments but is also fraught with tension. That is beautifully portrayed very subtly

#The lovely picturesque setting and life in villages - from the outside it would look like a perfect place to be - reminded me of the Italian countryside with their large houses like the one they showed in many Italian movies.

#kids are real gem of the movie - their spontaneous acting and shots of kids in siesta or doing simple things like eating a fruit

#the clash of tradition - the farmer kills the rabbits as they are a menace to his peaches he grows but the blacks who are plucking the peaches, cross their hearts and bury the rabbit. 

#the village life and simple traditions of wine drinking competition and easy friendship and simple life 

#the farmers' plight with large corporations coming in and buying stuff cheap (very similar to whats happening in India.

Read a nice review in scroll below:

https://scroll.in/reel/1044583/alcarras-review-a-masterly-portrait-of-a-farming-community-on-the-brink 

I followed this up with Summer 93, 

In 1993, six-year-old Frida left Barcelona and her grandparents for the countryside. Her parents have died, and she is taken in by her uncle Esteve and aunt Marga in their farmhouse. Despite the beautiful summer and the warm welcome, Frida finds it hard to settle in.In 1993, six-year-old Frida leaves Barcelona and her grandparents for the countryside. Her parents have died, and she is taken in by her uncle Esteve and aunt Marga in their farmhouse. Despite the beautiful summer and the warm welcome, Frida finds it hard to settle in.

It’s an innocent movie which is not like a movie, the acting and the setting is so natural that it's almost like you are god and seeing it from somewhere top. 

Loved it because it shows

#the pains of being orphaned

#especially when both your parents died of AIDS

#sibling rivalry and it’s innocence

All of us have run away in our childhood, i went to a sugarcane field and my brother in law tried to catch a bus and in the movie Friday packed her beautiful dolls, took some fruits which I thought was wise for her age and then trudged out of a farmhouse which is literally in between a jungle - with a high way on one end a stream on the other. You have to see it to know more…..

Reading Agatha Christie & Thinking of Slow LIFE

Solan - Feb 20 23

My mindspace has been blocked by MUBI and the daily dose of movies where I am trying to sample a few movies from directors and across genres. While I did my best to pick and choose based on reviews and suggestions. Many of them were stark / had strong emotional overtones or covered topics like transgender growing up n identity (GIRL), war and its effect (beanpole) which leaves with a very melancholy mood.

To beat the same & lack of a good book for which I have a strong desire I picked up Agatha Christie’s ‘A pocketful of Rye. I had never read a Miss Marple mystery - I am not an out and out fan of hers but I enjoy reading them when it comes to our house. In recent years I am more in the space of experiencing different genre’s / authors and have not read any of the latest books of 3 of my all time favorites - Amitava Ghosh, Jhuma Lahiri or Murakami.

What I like about her books are the way she describes the English life, the description of characters and the overall setting is of a laid back life, something which I always looked forward  to and am enjoying (read trying to) in the last 6 months. It’s like the movies by Hrishikesh Mukherjee & Basu Chatterjee - everytime i feel bummed I go back to Chupke Chupke or Gol Maal. They have to put a smile back on your face. Yes they are comedies but they are also so 70’s an era I wish I was born - there was a romanticism about life which has been taken over by our aggressive competitiveness / career focused objective life. Everything has to have a purpose and an outcome.

As I was reading the book I realized that so much of the investigation is about the understanding of the character and how his / her mind works. Deriving how a criminal and all other character’s minds work based on their past actions or what they speak about. Her deductions are mostly based on an astute understanding of the psychology of the person & the mechanics of the society and less of the deductive science which Holmes uses.

And as I was reading it, rather after finishing it I couldn’t help but reminiscence about my recent conversations with many of my relatives when I met them in Assam, Lucknow, Kanpur - especially the older lot on how much they talked and most of the talks were around pretty inane stuff which just did not make any sense to me. Why are we talking about someone’s issue in their house and how that will affect someone else & what’s happening in the village etc. I just could not make any sense about it and after a point of time I used to feel restless and find everything so pointless. 

But that is probably the biggest unlearning, there is no point of being so purpose driven, you have to learn to flow with the time. 

Kabir says” Aaaye hain to Jayenge Raja - Rank - Fakir…. 

Postscript: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaasWuOieqw (Listen to Prahlad Tipania - his renditions are priceless...)

Buddhist Chants

Ladakh mountains - 2019

In the last 5 yrs, I developed a strange affinity towards Buddhist Chants. Around the same time or maybe a few years before that I was drawn to Buddhism as a religion. It sort of fitted the concept of religion - it’s very logical in its explanations. Also led very strongly by psychology - for example mindfulness has become a whole new thing and there are lots of studies on how meditation, mindfulness helps to calm you down.

In Gayatri mantra or other sanskrit shlokas I have heard & I haven’t heard many - there is a meaning to whatever is being sung, recited. So you actually are listening to words and music is only on the periphery. 

But the buddhist chants, tibetan music - it evokes a very different feeling, the music, chiming bells and the way chanting or the words are spoken makes me feel calm. It has become one of my go to playlist whenever I am feeling stressed or a bit off sync. One of the visual memories which it triggers is of Ladakh. The snow peak mountains filled with mist and large rock cut images of Budha and the monasteries and prayer flags. 

Postscript: I stumbled on this blog & love this creation. 

Poetry and ceramic pots. http://blogs.newarka.edu/nawam/2022/06/07/poetry-ceramic-pots-by-julia-polen-24/