HOPE 6 - Travel

1 year back when I was feverishly planning my Gap year. 

I had thought of

• Doing chadar trek or Base Camp (Solo)

• Meet all my relatives, few whom I had not met for 20 years

• Do smaller treks around Bangalore (weekend)

And then life happened.

I am happy that despite the various curve balls life has thrown or maybe imagined by me I could at least fulfill 1 of the 3. 

Met my relatives, traveled by train - bus - rickshaw - metro whatever but just made it happen. It was not easy. I think I would have taken it after 10 years. 

But it was liberating, I had got accustomed to flying the clinical, clean, non intrusive cocoon in which you just zone in like a robot and travel from Bangalore - Mumbai. Same Vango everytime. After a point you are just going thru the motion

Train / Bus - every time is different. You meet all kinds of people, get into various conversations, philosophy, share food to soap to weed. You name it. Yes, you have to be open to it. 

But the best part is gazing at the railway track or the scenery from your seat - I can never get bored by it. I won’t be able to do much of that in my current travels, but then there are mountains and clouds to give me company. 

Lets!

Chal Himachal.

1 year off

Last year today was the last day when I was paid for the day. 

(I did not want to write a long congratulatory note but wanted to be precise so I decided to write just 3 things under each head)

I wrote and rewrote the first line a couple of times because apart from that rest everything else was still a reality.

• I still work daily  

• I am still responsible for certain outcomes

• I still have meetings / schedules / travel

Yes, the quantum of the above 3 is significantly less, maybe 1/4th of what I did earlier. But I choose to do a lot of other things.

• I am learning what I want to learn

• I feel good about what I do because it has meaning for me 

• I prioritize mindfully what works for me n family

But, this does not mean

• I don’t have conflicts

• I don’t feel lost or worthless at time

• That I don’t have gnawing feeling that I could have done much better / much more

So did I learn something on the way

• You can only plan that much. Rest you have to ‘Go with the flow’. Life will throw curve balls you can never escape so be ready.  

• Having choices is not important. Clarity of what you want is.

• You cannot do it alone. Learn to trust people and letting go off your biases

Wrote on 31st August 23

Hope 5 - Songs

Kabir Session by Vipul

Music: This has been my eternal go to place for comfort. 

The 3 playlists which I play the most

• Amol Palekar playlists which has songs from his movies mostly Basu Chatterjee / Hrishikesh Mukherjee. The movies (Gol Maal, Choti Si Baat etc) which were fun, light hearted and gave you this nice happy feeling at the end of it and I never paid much attention to songs but now that I listen deeply I realize that they have so much meaning. Sample this (Aane waala pal jaane wale hain, ho sake to isme jindagi beeta do…)  - The moment which is going to come will also go very soon and so make the best of the moment and spend your lifetime in it. This is the core of any philosophy you read. But that is just one part of it - like our memory works - these songs evoke the carefree settings of the movies somewhere in my mind I relate to 70’s. And brings a smile on my face and the day 🙂

• My Elvis playlists - mostly his love songs - There is no such philosophical musing like above, but at times I just crave for his voice and the deep - pure feeling of love when I listen to “Take my hand, take my whole life too..but I can’t help falling in love too…” It’s like my heart would melt and all my pain would flow out. Especially after seeing a few documentaries and understanding his meteoric rise and fall and all the struggle he went through - they feel more real. 

• Kabir - Multiple playlists - I got introduced to Kabir in one of the Kabir  singing sessions which was hosted in someone’s balcony in Bangalore. The teacher was Vipul Rikhi. Then I stumbled into several singers like BinduMalini, Shabnam Virmani of Kabir Project. The impact was phenomenal - In a way I took him as a teacher, every song has so much meaning that listening to him you would just forget the daily tussle as it would melt away in the soulful rendition of these songs.

Hope 4 - Compassion for All

Yesterday I read this post on my apartment group and was shocked.

”There was an accident today near our Natasha sign board at the entrance.  One cat got badly injured by a car coming out of Natasha. The car involved belongs to a resident of Natasha. I took the cat and admitted in Cessna Hospital . It will go through a Jaw operation tomorrow”

Dillep da who wrote this took him to the hospital and the cat is doing fine now (see video 🙂). But the effort to take a stray cat to a vet and get her treated - What compassion and passion for strays. Seeing the cat being fed reminded me of feeding my own children when they could not express and had what we gave. 

Feeding an injured cat is a much tougher task.

Hope 3 - Waste to compost

Since the chemo cycle started and we were 6 people staying for the last 2 months, the wet waste was too much to compost and we had to let go of the liquid gold aka compost which we could have made. 

Now with the waste quantity having come down - i started composting again. The very process of chopping the green stems in small pieces and mixing the vegetable and fruit waste with the peremix - touching them with my fingers rejuvenated my senses & lifted my mood.

Now, I look forward to it every day.

Hope 2 - Sun n Plants

August 23

Around 7.15 am, as I step out of my door with a steaming cup of tea in my hand the sun peeps from top of the buildings to land on my door. Bright but not  bright enough to hurt your eyes. Warm and gentle like a friend who is helping you wake up and set the tone of the days.

We have a small patch with pots of ‘sadabahar’ (always flowering) plants and the light falls on the pink and delicate flower, green leaves making a place of wonderment and hope. 

I feel the small piece of soil around the pot to feel the earth as best as I can and smell it before I head back to chase the day filled with hope and sunshine.

Hope (1) - Running to stand still

It was a difficult choice to make early in the morning, especially after a tough morning. And took some time to get my shoes on and hit the road. In the start it is always easy but it becomes difficult halfway through. And this time it was not different. 

Last week I ran 8k - I was thinking I will do 15 K on 15th August, but with my sleep issue it seems NO GO. So did another 8K to at least finish 15k before 15th August. I was feeling very tired and exhausted but the sweating out was good. 

Also the mind space when you run is very different from Yoga - It’s like the difference between surfing and floating. More importantly it is good that I could fix and reach a goal. A personal one and hence a personal victory. An affirmation to my subconscious that ‘I can’. 

These days I run to stand still.

HOPE

As I was walking down the stairs for my walk, I saw a young parent carrying a 2 month child very carefully in a car seat and probably going for a drive. She was really small wearing pink but her eyes were open and she was probably seeing some coats of color in her vision. She was not smiling or angry, just peaceful and staring. On asking I was told, he was 2 months old. The parents had happiness and bliss written all over their face like one would feel when in first love.

As I came out of the stairways I saw another child, again wearing ping, must be 3 or four years old walking with her father. I saw them from behind but I could feel the spring in the girls' walk and I could hear her asking questions in an animated way. Even though I was 500 mts away I could feel the excitement, thrill and happiness in the girl.

As I began my Sunday Run, many thoughts criss crossed my mind,

At some point in life we live life cradled in the necessities and responsibilities which are thrown at us because of raising a family and meeting our responsibilities at work. Our hopes get linked to work and family. While work is more like meeting requirements, family helps to rekindle hope and keeps it alive in us. Marriage is a new beginning and so is a child or two. It’s a green shoot, a new branch where like the tree we live our life once again with our partner or child. 

In our sunset years it becomes difficult to keep our Hope alive. With your body reacting in a different way, plants start growing on their own creating their own ecosystem, challenges from your aging parent throws challenges at you on a daily basis.

Seeing these girls took me back to the green shoots which came our way 23 n 20 years back. Now, the joy is in seeing your tree grow, branch, flower and bear fruits. 

Like my little magic.😍

Triangle of Sadness - Palm D’Or Winner

It’s just by chance that I saw all the 3 films made by the director Ruben Ostlund in a span of 1 month. Started with Force Majeur, The Square (both in MUBI) & this week Triangle of Sadness.

All 3 movies are satire: 

Force Majeure shows the reality of relationships, our insecurity which is not easily expressed but gets exhibited in situations but you refuse to accept or it tips off the relationship scale. In this case it’s a trip which the family takes and an incident of avalanche which tips the scale. Some might find it boring as the whole movie is slow and quite nuanced.  

The Square also brings out the hypocrisy of the society through a new museum which exhibits installations - some of them quite ridiculous like sands organised in some form. Rich people come to see it and in the end there is a twist where the installation is a live performance which turns awry in the end. This also is a Palm D’Or winner.

Triangle of Sadness focuses more on the class divide and the uber rich in this world who think they own the world and expect to be served by the rest of the world. They became rich by selling hand grenades or shit (fertilizers) - the route does not matter the money does. But it has a nice twist which changes the odds when a toilet cleaner becomes the captain. You can see it in Sonyliv.

Relationships can be tough if the people involved have a different way of looking at things or operating style & there is a refusal to understand the other’s point of view. Unknowingly of course because the intention is always to give your best to the family and think the best outcomes of the family. 

But our reactions are so hard wired that it takes years of practice to change & this creates the Triangle of sadness which  is a real-world term for the area between the eyebrows and the very top of the nose bridge.

The area tends to develop wrinkles with age and emphasizes negative facial expressions such as sadness or anger, even when the person's face rests in a neutral position.

I have quite a few wrinkles.

Being Still - Experiencing Silence

The house has been drained of activities as the hospital beckoned and we were like ‘2 lost souls living in a fish bowl’ - famously sung by Pink Floyd..

The chemo cycle happens every 3 weeks. And for those 3 weeks everyone is trying to do many things and still things are incomplete or have a sense of disapproval. Too many factors and conditions to be kept in mind by many people which ends up in a resultant chaos. 

But today there were none and suddenly I was experiencing silence of a different kind. A silence where I could hear my breath, a silent drone of insects which I never picked up, even the breeze I could experience on my hand as I sat on my doorstep. The parrots as always were the loudest and shrill and the squirrels had their sound synchronised with their tail and on seeing a lazy cat come out and sit near the tree its chatter went up a notch.

After sometime I realised that I had not heard the constant sound of traffic or the consistent beeping of horn, not even the washing machine which was running in my next flat. As if it did not permeate the bubble built by nature. 

I felt, this is not silence, this is life.

A day in balcony

22nd June 23 - Sunset

It rained heavily yesterday night when I got up it was still drizzling and everything was wet. After some time the rain stopped and the clouds were clearing. From my balcony I could see the slow walk of clouds in front of me like a marching of giants of different sizes. It just continued endlessly, I gazed at it for a long time thinking from where do they come to where they are going. Is there a starting point - Is there an end point ?

Nowadays, his memory is like these clouds, they come like a cloudburst and after moving around his mind and tiring him it disintegrates somewhere in his mind. In my morning walk with a doctor she explained this is a natural process - first you lose sense of time, then you lose sense of place and then you get attached to something and want to do it badly. Like her father who wanted to visit his village and visit his uncle who was not well.

I reflect on this and try to make sense of my life, what is the purpose. We live for unforgettable experiences, create loving relationships and spend the whole lifetime in this process. And one fine day the memories get overloaded and start switching off or worse gets all jumbled up. What will the experiences be worth if it’s all gone when you need it the most. 

The day ends, I come out onto the same balcony to see a beautiful array of faint light streaming through the clouds & trees. A listless balcony looked beautiful in the faint reflections. My immediate response was to capture the moment, I resisted for a long time just taking in the beauty of the moment. There was a cacophony of noises - traffic, men shouting and talking in a nearby office, kids playing. But, that did not diminish the beauty of the setting sun and what it created. 

I don’t know if there is a lesson, but I felt refreshed and the dark clouds which were chasing in my mind cleared and motivated me to write. 

Memories will fade but nature will always inspire even in a concrete jungle where we mostly live. 

Like a zen koan says “Before enlightenment; chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment; chop wood, carry water.”

The SNOWMAN - Jo Nesbo

After a long time I read an ‘edge of the seat thriller’. I always wanted to read a NORDIC thriller  but was busy reading others. It was one of the Harry Hole stories and had good twists and turns till the last 100 pages and I kept guessing who was the killer. In other words we kept suspecting someone but it was someone else. 

Like any other suspense or investigative book there was logical thinking and deduction. It goes into overdrive after sometime and I had to control not finishing in a long sitting. Will I read one more - I am not sure. It’s good but in the end you come out with this nauseating feeling of what devious things can be there in the human mind. How people can be so cruel to other humans. Of course there is always a deep seated psychological reason for which the person acts the way he / she is acting. 

The action and the thrill is nice but somehow the macabre murders puts me off. Maybe it’s just my age and the kind of books which I have been reading which are more on relationships or pure play science fiction or on a person’s quest for something or war & displacement. I think all my books in the last few years have been more on human drama. 

So this was a good change. 

I have not read many Agatha Christie but her books or even Sherlock Holmes were more of deductive & solving cases and in that sense innocent. 

I mean how threatening can Poirot be but his brain is no different or not less sharp than Harry Hole. 

I guess that also my personality - I identify more with Poirot than Harry Hole 🙂

Reflecting On Writing - 250th Post

In the movie 'Whale' Charlie teaches 'Creative Writing course' & One of the thing Charlie says to his students is 'BE HONEST IN YOUR WRITING'. 

Over last 17 years - there were occasions when I thought is it OK to write something which might be personal or something which will be liked by some folks or it should project a point of view which is right etc etc. But most of these are just thoughts or ideas in my mind, when I write my post it's more from my heart. I need to feel good after the post is done. That's my barometer of satisfaction.

In the process of writing initially even now I feel at times that more people should read my post - especially if I really like a post or enjoy writing it but I never write with that intention. That process is more for my LinkedIn posts as they are driven by purpose not some random thoughts which I write here in my blog. 

Blog went out of fashion I think 5 years back or more, I don't think anyone has the time to read - it's mostly see i.e video. So my writing is more for my clarity & posterity. With the hope that Google doesn't go bankrupt and these blogs survive in some server somewhere - I want to come back and read them and see what I went thru / felt / thought. 

My blog / writing is my truth. 

Whale, the movie & Father’s Day

One of the movies which I wanted to see since the OSCAR was announced was Whale starring Brendon Fraser for which he won the best actor award. I had only seen the trailers and it looked like an emotional roller coaster ride with a super obese Fraser. You can see it in SonyLiv.

It was not a happy movie to see on Father's Day but I think the need to complete my list of OSCAR winners was important. The movie is about Charlie reconnecting with his daughter Elle after 12 years. He had left the family when she was 8 years old because he fell in love with a guy who was his student. So, obviously his daughter hated him. 

He had put on enormous weight after his boyfriend died and cut himself off from the world. Staying in an apartment, ordering food teaching students online - he used to take classes on creative writing. Whatever he earned was kept in an account for Elle, which was his way of redeeming his sins. He could have used the money to treat himself but he refused to do so and preferred to die than use the money.

Typical father behavior - saving for their kids and then walking into the sunset. In my case I am more similar to Charlie as I also seem to have also isolated myself from the world after I quit last year. Not a very social person I would rather be with my book and movie than go to a birthday party. Good thing is, unlike Elle both my daughters love me and are kind enough to accept me as I am, in fact they encourage me to complete my bucket list and do what I want to.

Somewhere between school and college, I took the backseat and their MOM took charge of college, expenses, buying list, wish list, budget - everything. I guess I was struggling with my depression and high level of stress at work. Or maybe I was not just attentive enough, but from being head of family I became a person non grata - except for entertainment. It took some time to get used to this new status - I struggled but slowly the acceptance dawned that this is the new reality. I guess I am happy that they got what they wanted when they wanted. 

More Power to my Dolphins on Father’s Day from the Whale. Will surface when needed.

After we're gone ?

June 23

Every year when the kids used to go back to their boarding (Rishi Valley School), they had to select 10 photos for their term. Their term was for 6 months and we went to visit them once in the term. They will select these photos carefully or in a jiffy depending on when they remembered. In the first year when we visited then they were lined up in the inside of the almirah. Some other time it will be in between various books or on a shelf. At times we also found it in the form of a garland which had the photos clipped on it. 

We did not pay much attention to it. They were another tick box to a ‘going back to boarding’ list. After they went to college I started using their table (the picture of the softboard is on top). There are quotes - pictures & beautiful birthday cards with poetry as an ode to me or Reema. As I look at them I realise how important these were to them when they were at the boarding. There was no social media or sharing over mail so these photos were their lifeline to their family and moments of fun and laughter we all shared together in not a very distant past. 

Everytime, I sit there it’s a kind of nostalgic trip back when I see a pic taken during a trip or a very old photo when they were very small and posing for their best shot. As they came out of college, printouts became rare, photos remained digital and shared in the social media - where they are liked by many friends and commented on. 

A new world enveloped them but I am happy with the old world of printouts. 

Maybe, when we are gone they will come back to these printouts.

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/