My Thought Universe

All the ideas that make me...me!!

[mydumbledorepensieve]

Thoughts for another trip-around-the-sun

5th Jan 2017

“This year gone by ain’t been a piece of cake Everyday’s a revolution Pull it together and it comes undone Just one more candle and a trip around the sun

I’m just hanging’ on while this old world keeps spinning And it’s good to know it’s out of my control If there’s one thing that i’ve learned from all this livin’ Is that it wouldn’t change a thing if i let go

No you never see it comin’ Always wind up wondering’ where it went Only time will tell if it was time well spent It’s another revelation Celebrating what i should have done With these souvenirs of my trip around the sun…"

From the lyrics of that song sung by American country singer Jimmy Buffett and Martina McBride probably comes the much popular phrase for another year gone by ~ our “trip around the sun”! (And thanks to Facebook this time many of us even had  picture-souvenirs of our 2016 trip around the sun!) Yes it's the New Year! Our social media accounts are witness to a superabundance of messages and wishes from friends and family. Suddenly the entire advertising world too seems to up its game bombarding us with offers and commercials playing upon the human desire for ‘newness’, for 'a fresh start’. And then there are the New Year Resolutions…so much pressure to make a unique resolution, so little will-power to follow it through beyond the first week of January!!

Different cultures around the world may mark the New Year at different times yet everywhere it is manifested through joyous celebrations. The human spirit looks forward to the New Year with renewed hope ~ new dreams, new aspirations, new expectations, new desires ~ an optimism, an anticipation, a promise of better things to come. Some hopes may be belied, some dreams may never see light of day, some aspirations may bear fruition, some desires may be fulfilled beyond expectations…it’s all forms part of  the venturing forth on this new journey of the earth’s timeline.

In the last week or so, among all the innumerable readings of articles, posts, messages, blogs et al, two stood out for me ~ the first by Paulo Coelho on “closing and moving on", the second by Sadhguru on “being joyful and knowing the fulfilment of making all you touch joyful.” For me they embody the spirit of the 2017 trip around the sun…

"One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden? You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that. But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister.. Everyone is finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away. That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place. Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else. Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.” Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important. Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were, and change into who you are." ~ Paulo Coelho

“The Egyptian legend says that if one wants to enter heaven, at the point of entry you will be asked two questions. Unless you are one big ‘Yes’ to these two questions, there is no entry for you. The first question is: Have you known joy in your life? And the second question is: Have you given joy to those around you? If your answer to these two questions is ‘Yes’, i must tell you, you are already in heaven. To become a joyful human being is the best thing that you can do for yourself and all around you. Especially when anger, hatred and intolerance are rearing their heads in hideous ways, joyful human beings are the only insurance. Only those who know the value of being pleasant will strive to create pleasantness all around. May you know the fulfilment of making all you touch joyful." ~Sadhguru

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 354 (A tale of Evolution)

16 May 2016

A family elder had once remarked, “There's a tale for almost everything under the sun in our mythology.” That is not a far-fetched claim but quite true. For every ritual, custom or even some universal fact, you’ll find an explanation narrated in the form of a story. We all grow up hearing these stories. It is an oral tradition that has been passed down from generation to generation and continues to this day~the mantle being taken over by TV serials from our grandparents! What is missing is always the hidden import of the story. So it was a refreshing change to read this modern interpretation of an old tale...

“So tell me Vasu, what are you working on in your US university these days?" "Mom, as a genetic scientist i am doing research on the evolution of man. It’s based on the Theory of Evolution by Charles Darwin. Have you heard of him? " Vasu asked. His Mother sat down next to him and smiled, "I know Darwin, Vasu. I also know that what you think he discovered is actually old news in India." "Yeah sure Mom!" Vasu said with sarcasm. "Well if you are so smart then listen to this," his Mother countered, "Have you heard of Dashavatar? The ten avatars of Vishnu?” Vasu nodded. "Then let me tell you what you and Mr. Darwin don't know. Listen carefully- The first avatar was the Matsya avatar, it means the fish. That is because life began in the water. Is that not right?” Vasu began to listen with a little more attention. "Then came the Kurma Avatar, which means the tortoise, because life moved from the water to the land. The amphibian. So the tortoise denoted the evolution from sea to land. Third was the Varaha, the wild boar, which meant the wild animals with not much intellect ~ you call them the Dinosaurs, correct?” Vasu nodded wide eyed. "The fourth avatar was the Narasimha avatar, half man and half animal, the evolution from wild animals to intelligent beings." By now she had his full attention. "Fifth came the Vaman avatar, the midget or dwarf, who could grow really tall. Do you know why that is? Because there were two kinds of humans, Homo Erectus and the Homo Sapiens, and Homo Sapiens won that battle.” Vasu could see that his Mother was in full flow and he himself was quite stupefied by her story. His mother continued, "The Sixth avatar was Parshuram, the man who wielded the axe, the man who was a cave and forest dweller. Angry, and not social. The seventh avatar  was Ram, the first thinking social being, who laid out the laws of society and the basis of all relationships. The eighth avatar was Krishna, the statesman, the politician, the lover who played the game of society and taught us how to live and thrive in the social structure. The Ninth avatar, the Buddha, the man who evolved from Narasimha and rose to find man's true nature~the nature of ‘Buddha’, of the enlightened one. It was he who identified man's final quest of enlightenment. And finally, son, will come Kalki, the man you are working on. The man who will be genetically supreme." Vasu looked at his Mother speechless. "This is amazing Mom, how did you….this makes so much sense!" "Yes it does Vasu! We Indians knew some amazing things, we just didnt know how to pass them on in  scientific terms. So they were made into mythological stories. Mythology makes sense. Its just the way you look at it - Religious or Scientific. Your call.”

(Coming up tomorrow…the mythological tale)

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 353 (Scrubbing away assumptions)

15 may 2016

“True wisdom is less presuming than folly. The wise man doubteth often, and changeth his mind. The fool is obstinate and changeth not: he knoweth all things but his own ignorance.”

Ignorance they say is our deepest secret. It is also one of the scariest things out there for you find that those of us who are the most ignorant are also the ones who are often not aware of it or don’t want to admit it. And so one needs to constantly challenge ones assumptions.

To continue the narrative, i thread together some great quotes... “Your assumptions,” said Issac Asimov, “are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”

“ It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favour, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth.”~ Milan Kundera

“Assumptions and lack of communication are the number one relationship killers. We all perceive differently. We’ve lived different lives. We have different views. Understand that before getting angry at someone for not believing what you believe.” ~ Author Unknown

“Take this simple test: If you have never changed your mind about some fundamental tenet of your belief, if you have never questioned the basics, and if you have no wish to do so, then you are most likely ignorant. Before it is too late, go out there and find someone who, in your opinion, believes, assumes, or considers certain things very strongly and very differently from you, and just have a basic honest conversation. It will do both of you a world of good.” ~ Vera Nazarian

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 351 (A travel story of a ‘sentinel spirit’ ~II)

13 may 2016

How a humble, low-ranking Sepoy Harbhajan Singh came to be deified and venerated as Baba Harbhajan is a narrative that straddles military mythology, religious beliefs and the credulousness    with which mountain-people (being a ‘pahaari’ by birth i can relate to that characteristic!!) lend credence to tales of the supernatural. The most popular account says that Sepoy Harbhajan Singh, a village boy from the Kapurthala district of Punjab, enlisted in the army at an early age and found himself stationed on the misty heights of the Sino-Indian border near Nathu La pass. The year 1968 had seen heavy rainfall and vicious floods in the region. In Oct of that year while escorting a supply carrying mule caravan from his battalion headquarters to a lonesome outpost, he slipped and fell into a fast flowing stream and was washed away. The search for his body had to be abandoned after a couple of days due to the inclement weather. At this point of his tale, legend takes over and you are told that he appeared in the dream of one of his sepoy-friends in the unit and informed him that he was no longer alive. He told him the exact spot where his body could be found and asked him to build a small ’samadhi’ or shrine at that spot. He is also said to have pledged to his friend that he would always patrol that area and never give up being a soldier. The jawan upon waking dismissed the dream as a manifestation of his personal grief at the loss of his friend and didn’t even talk about it. However, when another member of the unit had an exact similar dream, it seemed too much of a coincidence and a search party was sent to the spot that had been described in the dream. His body was found there. He was cremated with full military honours, and as per the wish expressed in the dream, a “Samadhi" was made at Chhokya Cho. Just to digress here~ that structure is now referred to as the old Baba-mandir and the present location of the shrine, constructed in 1982, is about 10-12 kms from there. The old site was comparatively inaccessible with steep stairs, so for the convenience of his followers the shrine was shifted to its present locale at the junction of Kupup Gnathang road and the trail leading to Menmecho Lake. The story may have ended there but for the second part of what he is said to  have pledged to in the dream. It’s a tale repeated over and over again of how soldiers deployed in that area since then have seen the ‘ghost-rider’~ a lone man on horse patrolling the place. Forces from the other side of the border have also reported similar sightings. The Chinese actually set a chair aside for him during the flag meets. One tale gleefully told is about a Chinese officer who attempted to sit on that chair and was “thrown down by Baba’s spirit”. Over the years Indian army battalions stationed there have come to believe even more in the power of the soldier-saint. They say his ghost warns them of any impending attack three days in advance. Some tell you of how his spirit roams around the camps at night and wakes up soldiers who may have dozed off during their watch. He has appeared in the dreams of many an army man and pointed out loopholes and unprotected areas from where the Chinese could attack.  And since these have mostly proved accurate, the legend of Baba Harbhajan Singh has only grown and spread. The gratitude of the army units stationed in the area can be seen in the rows of plaques that line the walls of the shrine. The popularity of the legend has elevated the complex to a pilgrimage spot and hordes of devout worshippers from all over Sikkim and Bengal throng the place with the faith that their problems will be resolved by the Baba who had came back from the dead to protect his kinsmen. People bring offerings of bottles of water with names inscribed which they arrange to be collected after a weeks time—that being the time Baba is supposed to take to purify them. Sometimes they just take back the unmarked ones lying there ~ the faith being that the water left with Baba becomes holy and is capable of curing ailments. You are told that this blessed water is to be consumed within three weeks. Some believe slippers kept in the temple help to cure gout and other foot problems. Followers who cannot reach the place send ‘letters of requests’ which are opened and read out in the ‘office-room’ by Baba’s associates. What most people find really fascinating however, is the military folklore that has grown around the shrine. Taking care of the complex is part of the responsibilities assigned to the unit stationed in that location. The army-like barrack that forms the ‘mandir’ is basically a three room structure.The central room or the ’shrine' has a large portrait of the young-turbaned-jawan in his olive green Indian army uniform along with pictures of other Sikh Gurus and Hindu deities. There is a smaller room which serves as the office cum storeroom and is filled with water bottles, unused slippers, tooth brushes and other sundry items brought in by devotees as ‘offerings’. On the right is Baba’s personal room that houses all essential household belongings from clothes, shoes and slippers to a camp cot for sleeping. Barefooted soldiers guard the place and his uniform and boots are cleaned on a daily basis; his bed is laid out and his meals are cooked and served with the complex closing during his meal times. His portrait shuttles between the various rooms depending upon the activity he is supposedly engaged in. Caretakers are ready to swear that each morning the bed sheets appear crumpled as if someone had slept over them and sometimes even the carefully polished boots are soiled and covered with mud as if someone has worn them for patrolling. A souvenir shop and a cafe also form part of the complex. Even more bizarre is the fact that till he was ‘retired’ in 2006, Harbhajan Singh’s pay check was not stopped and was dutifully credited into his account. Realists of course say that this ‘ghost's-salary' was nothing but the pension-payment to the next of kin of a deceased soldier, a normal army practice. The fact however remains that he also received his regular army-kit given to every soldier and was granted annual leave in September every year. A vehicle with his packed belongings and his portrait on the side would wind its way down to Dibrugarh station and was probably instrumental in propagating the belief in his powers. A berth was reserved for him on the Dibrugarh Express, two or three  jawans accompanied his belongings and the portrait to his hometown and also brought them back the same way. The army also steadily promoted him up the ranks and he was retired as a “Honorary Captain” in recognition of his contributions. Retired he may be, but Baba Harbhajan's aura lives on. It is easy enough to be dismissive about the inexplicable muddying of his boots, the strange sightings of his ghost, haunting encounters with his spirit among the ranks or even the miraculous healing powers accorded to him ~ regarding it all as pandering to superstition. The fact however, is that in that treacherous, unfriendly terrain his story provides some morale-boosting-solace to the soldiers manning those isolated posts. The miracle, i felt is the strength the soldiers derive from his unseen presence. Living in the comforting cocoon of our city lives who are we to question this faith. Somethings are beyond logical explanations and the parting thought that stayed with me was this line from the Bard~“There are more things in Heaven and Earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy"   

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 352 (Nurturing positivity)

14 may 2016

Sharing an old post from the web on nurturing the positivity within~

Ten Commandments for a positive attitude...

# Heavy rains remind us of challenges in life. Never ask for a lighter rain. Just pray for a better umbrella.

# When the flood comes, fish eat ants and when the flood recedes, ants eat fish. Only time matters. Just hold on, God gives an opportunity to everyone!

# Life is not about finding the right person, but creating the right relationship. It's not how we care in the beginning, but how much we care till the ending.

# Some people will throw stones in your path. It depends on you what you make with them~ a Wall or a Bridge?  Remember you are the architect of your life.

# Every problem has (n+1) solutions, where n is the number of solutions that you have tried and 1 is that which you have not tried. That’s life…get used to it!

# It is not important to hold all the good cards in life. But it’s important how well you play with the cards which you hold.

# Often when we lose all hope and think this is the end, God smiles from above and says, `Relax dear it’s just a bend. Not the end.' Keep the faith.

# When you  are sad, try to cheer up--- just go to the mirror and say, 'Damn i really am so cute' and you will overcome your sadness! But don’t make this a habit coz liars go to hell!

# One of the basic differences between God and a human is, God gives, gives and forgives. But the human gets, gets, gets and forgets. Be thankful in life!

# Only two kinds of people are happy with total abandonment in this world. The first one is Mad, and the second a Child. Be Mad to achieve what you desire but remember to be a Child and enjoy what you have achieved.

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 350 (A travel story of a ‘sentinel-spirit’)

12 may 2016

Every army person posted in the north-eastern sector of the country has heard of the legend of "Harbhajan Baba.” Those serving in and around Nathu La pass and the Sino-Indian border between the state of Sikkim and Chinese occupied Tibet, have the firm conviction that his spirit protects every Indian soldier in the inhospitable high altitude terrain of the Eastern Himalayas. In Sikkim and Bengal he is revered as a saint who grants the wishes of those who worship him. A visit to Baba-Mandir is listed among the top tourist attractions even on the official site of Sikkim-tourism. The first time i had heard of the story was from officers of my husband’s unit who had gone to recce the area around Nathu La pass. The paranormal tales of all the miracles attributed to the spirit of a dead soldier seemed quite far-fetched to me at the time. It was only a decade later when we went visiting Gangtok and Nathu La that i experienced first hand the devout faith of not just the local populace but even the army soldiers, in the miraculous existence of this supposedly immortal soldier.

We were actually on our way to visit the army post at Nathu La pass a couple of years back. The pass is a strategically important location for the Indian Army and one of the four agreed upon Border Personnel Meeting points (BPMs as they call them) for regular interactions between the Indian and Chinese armies. During the course of the arduous drive up the Himalayas ( it is located at over 1400 feet) the person deputed on behalf of the army to do all the liaison for my husband's visit seemed more keen to talk about Baba’s shrine than the border-post! It soon became apparent that it had been taken for granted that we would also visit the shrine, even though we had not expressed any explicit desire to go there (i came to know later that for an army person going to Nathu La, not paying obeisance there is considered to bring bad luck). The shrine itself is a detour from the main road and is set amidst the high mountains in a lunar-like landscape dotted with some typical high altitude vegetation. But before we talk of the quaint shrine complex, one has to understand the legend and make some sense of the many stories people shared with us.

(The story and more coming up tomorrow~~)

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 349 (Of living in the moment...)

11 May 2016

Just a thought for the day...

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 348 (Contemporary “thought-proverbs”)

10 May 2016

“ A good proverb is like a foot-bridge-troll, short statured, sturdy and armed with a vicious bite”

To see "the world in a grain of sand" or should i say to "encapsulate the sagacity of experience in a few words"…well that’s what people have been trying to do ever since language came into use as a tool of communication. Pithy sentences that express wise words to remember have been coined in every culture and language. You can call them proverbs, aphorisms, epigrams or sayings, they manage to convey interesting and at times profound insights. And then there are humorous takes—anti-proverbs if you can call them that—on the wisdom of the ages. Here is a collection of contemporary ‘wisdom', a modern take on proverbs, an axiomatic comic understanding of life-truths : ~ Age is a very high price to pay for maturity. ~ Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a mechanic ~ Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity. ~ A clear conscience is usually the sign of a bad memory. ~ A closed mouth gathers no feet ~ If you must choose between two evils, pick the one you’ve never tried before. ~ My idea of house work is to sweep the room with a glance. (like that one!) ~ A bird can love a fish, but then where will they live? ~ If you break it, you buy it. ~ Not one shred of evidence supports the notion that life is serious. ~ It is easier to get forgiveness than permission. ~ For every action, there is an equal and opposite government program. ~ If you look like your passport picture, you probably need the trip! (loved this!!) ~ Always yield to temptation, because it may not pass your way again. ~ Bills travel through the mail at twice the speed of cheques! ~ A conscience is what hurts when all your other parts feel so good. ~ Eat well, stay fit—die anyway. ~ No husband has ever been shot while doing the dishes. ~ A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand. ~ Middle age is when broadness of the mind and narrowness of the waist change places.(hahaha!!) ~Opportunities always look bigger going than coming. ~ Junk is something you throw away three weeks before you need it. ~ There is always one more imbecile than you counted on. ~ Experience is a wonderful thing. It enables you to recognise a mistake when you make it again. ~ By the time you can make ends meet, they move the ends. ~ Thou shalt not weigh more than your refrigerator. ~ I believe the only time the world beats a path to my door is when i’m in the bathroom. ~ Blessed are they who can laugh at themselves for they shall never cease to be amused!!

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 347 (Life-lessons from my ‘other-mother’)

09 May 2016

In a recent scientific study by some Kentucky-based researchers, it has been found that the brain patterns of self-less people are different and there are human beings who are just ‘born' kind. One such beautiful-soul i have known was born this very day 93 years ago. She became a part and parcel of my life when i got married. Technically she was my mother-in-law but in our cultural-context that relationship doesn’t have the best of connotations (!) and having spent thirty years in close proximity with her caring ways i’d rather call her my ‘other-mother’. It’s been five years since she left us for her heavenly abode but her spirit lives on in the hundreds of little things i imbibed from her. On her birth anniversary a reflection upon some life-lessons she taught me...

~ Education is your greatest asset so put your time, money and effort into nurturing it…it was one of the first lessons i learnt from her. Married just after my first year of post-graduation, i was having second thoughts about completing the course. She was quite aghast that i could even contemplate such a plan of action. Imposing her will strongly on others was not her style (and she wasn’t going to start practising it on her new daughter-in-law!) but in her own down-to-earth style she told me,  “Che mahine roti belne ki koi degree nahin degaa, par padhai poori kar legi to kam se kam zindagi bhar ke liye tere paas ek MA ka certificate hoga!” (To translate..no one will give you any degree for rolling out chapatis for the next six months, but if you work at completing the course you will have a post graduate degree for life). That gentle reminder helped me refocus and i remain eternally grateful to her for that. Both she and my father-in-law were strong proponents of formal education and in later years she often shared how much they had worked (even sacrificed) towards ensuring all five of their children—four daughters and a son—were given quality education and made self-reliant. Perhaps a part of this desire stemmed from the fact that she herself could not get an opportunity to complete her own education being married at the age of thirteen; but there was no rancour or bitterness over it, just a regret which she largely overcame through the achievements of her children. Indeed her greatest pride and joy, in fact her biggest boast, was the fact that every one of her children, their spouses and her grand children were well-educated and successful in their own respective fields. ~ Which brings me to her second great conviction of life: your family—read spouse and children—come first always and every time. They were her world and she would brook no outside criticism about them. She may have had her own reservations about some of our actions and behaviour but they were never voiced in front of others for she believed that the world not only sees your near and dear ones through your eyes, but also accords them the same respect you do. If you pick faults in your husband and children in front of others, people start doing the same. It was a right she was not willing to give anyone. Over the years i have found much wisdom in this insight and it’s a practice i have consciously followed. ~ If her family was her world, nothing she needed to do for them was ever a tiresome chore. From her and my own mother i have understood the role of being the 'family-nutritionist-cum-nourisher.’ The best quality ingredients had to be procured for cooking and a lovingly prepared meal at home was to be served religiously without exception. Nourishing the family with good cooking was their greatest joy. It’s easy enough to be dismissive of this quality by saying that they never had to undergo the rigours of a career, but they did have to deal with a whole host of other responsibilities and yet displayed an attitude of never shirking from that work. So often i wish i could have imbibed more of that...     ~ Where personal appearance was concerned, being shabby was never a choice, let alone being ‘cool'! Till her failing health prevented her from doing so, she would be elegantly draped in a saree even at home. Stepping out in anything crumpled was anathema and she would change her saree a couple of times if the need arose. She would proudly tell you that her five children never went out to play unless they were properly attired and were wearing socks and shoes. From her i learnt that true elegance and grace lies in the way you carry yourself (with her it was keep your back straight and hold your head high…both literally and figuratively!) ~ An unshakeable faith in her deity and an unquestioning devotion and piety. She was a living embodiment of ‘keep the faith always’. All her life she never put a morsel of food till she had had her bath and performed her daily ritual-puja (some couple of cups of tea being the exceptions). Yet what was most engaging was the fact that she was not bound by any superstitions or bigoted religious beliefs. Her head would bow in reverence in front of any manifestation of the divine and her personal God was good and gave the necessary strength to cope with the vicissitudes of life. She didn’t believe in running to astrologers for any kind of quick-fix solutions to combat malefic planetary influences, convinced as she was that every time you show your 'janam-patri' to someone, your good fortune diminishes a bit! Part of this open-mindedness was the influence of my father-in-law whose training abroad had helped him cultivate a more tolerant world-view. Part of it came from her own experiences and her understanding of how life-events work. Her philosophy (which i too believe in and follow) was to accept what comes to you as a consequence of your own karma and pray to God to help you tide over bad times.   ~ Somewhere i had read that "the true measure of intelligence is the ability to change”. In the eight decades plus more that she lived, she had seen stupendous changes in her own standard of living and in societal mores around her. Yet with equanimity she had learnt to adapt to them all and move with the times. No where was this more evident than in the warmth and generosity with which she welcomed the life partners her grandchildren chose, whatever their caste or religion. The orthodox-Brahmanical background she came from never stood a chance in the face of her little ones happiness. 

~ Above all what abides in memory is her joie de vivre, her exuberance for life till the end. The image of her celebrating her last birthday surrounded by her children and their spouses, a gentle smile of contentment that comes from a life well lived, and the childlike enjoyment of the little birthday frills of balloons and birthday caps…that’s the enduring image that lives on in our hearts….

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 346 (All about the ‘golden day’)

08 May 2016

In the tradition of appointing days for “celebrating” (read new ways for spending money!!) this week has seen umpteen advertisements for “best gift-ideas for your mom” and “offers for buying gold this Akshay Tritiya”. Every inbox of mine is full of messages/quotes/activities/offers for these two days. Mother’s Day is an imported festival, but Akshay-Tritiya is the re-discovery of an ancient tradition. Much of this awareness can be credited to the vigorous campaigns conducted by banks, jewellery shops, real estate developers etc who have used it to capitalise on the materialistic urge in people. Thanks to them we all know that Akha-Teej or Akshay-Tritiya is the most auspicious day for buying/investing in gold or similar expensive investments (the belief being that if you buy gold on this day, it will never diminish). To be honest till a decade earlier, i wasn’t even aware of such a date in our Vedic calendar. We were stationed in Bengaluru  when i first saw the mad rush at gold showrooms on this day and since then every year it has continued to gain in prominence. Nothing in our scriptures is without valid reason so i began to read about what makes this day so significant and the reasons are not one but many.

In Sanskrit ‘akshaya’ means inexhaustible, or that which can never diminish or deteriorate. The second part of the name, tritiya, refers to the fact that it falls on the third tithi (lunar day). It is celebrated on the third day of the bright fortnight (shukla-paksha) in the lunar month of Vaishakha. Astronomically the sun and moon are believed to be at their most exalted equal brightness on this day. Incidentally often in our lunar calendar, some tithis can be absent in counting and some can be extra, but Akshay-Tritiya is one day which is never “absent" from the lunar calendar. The day is considered auspicious for starting new ventures, the legend being that any venture initiated on this teej continues to grow and prosper ~ it being the golden day for eternal success (an interesting trivia~ akha-teej falling on a "Rohini-star-Monday” is considered even more auspicious!)

Among the many stories and legends associated with this day, some of the more prominent ones are~ # It was on this day that Lord Ganesha began writing the great epic Mahabharata to the dictation of the sage Ved Vyasa. # It is traditionally celebrated as the  birthday of Lord Parshurama, the sixth incarnation of Lord Vishnu (the day being associated chiefly with the worship of Vishnu) # In mythology this day is said to mark the beginning of the Treta-yuga as also the day when the sacred Ganges descended to the earth. # The Goddess Annapoorna Devi was born on this day # In the Mahabharatha, Yudhishtira received the Akshay-patra on this day, which he then used to serve food for all the needy in his kingdom (hence the importance of charity done on this day) # Kubera received his wealth and position as the custodian of wealth and property with Goddess Lakshmi on this day. # It was on this day that poor Sudama, Lord Krishna’s best friend, visited him to greet him after Lord Krishna became the King. # Another legend says that it was this very day when Dusshasana, the brother of Duryodhana, tried to unveil Draupadi’s saree in the royal court, where Lord Krishna then protected her by providing the ‘unending-saree’ # In more recent history, Adi Shankara recited the ‘Kanak-dhar-stotr” on this day for the sake of the poor couple at whose house he stopped for bhiksha and was offered their only available gooseberry. # Also, the temples of Badrinath, Gangotri and Yamunotri reopen on this day after remaining closed for winter. The construction of the chariots for the Rath-Yatra of Jagannath Puri begins on this day. # It is also the birthday of Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of the Art of Living Foundation!

(Many thanks to Wikipedia, ISKCON and other Hindu sites for providing all this information.)

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 345 (Remembering our poet laureate)

07 May 2016

He is the Bengali polymath who “reshaped Bengali literature and music, as well as Indian art with contextual modernism”~ India’s grand old man of letters, Rabindranath Tagore (see my blog post # Day 152). Today is his 155th birth anniversary. According to the Gregorian calendar he was born on 7th May 1861 in Kolkatta. (There they observe it as per the date in the local Bengali calendar, which this year falls on 8th May; Tagore Jayanti being popularly known as Poncheeshe Boishakh)

For today a small lyrical verse from one of his poems~

"The love in my body and heart For the earth’s shadow and light Has stayed over years. With its cares and its hope it has thrown A language of its own into blue skies It lives in my joys and glooms In the spring nights birds and blooms Like a rakhi-band On the future’s hand…"

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 344 (Of those who matter)

06 May2016

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 343 (All the spiritualism you need...)

05 May 2016

 Some days that’s just about all the spiritual talk you need~

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 342 (When you feel ‘besieged’)

04 May 2016

We all have those days when we feel overwhelmed by the demands on our time, swamped with things to do, buried under deadlines to meet; days when you know you have to take deep breaths and just keep going one step at a time. The other day i discovered a new word for this feeling ~ to be ’besieged’. Having spent a lifetime surrounded by all thing military, the word for me has a definite battle-connotation~ lay siege to a city, a fortress or castle besieged; but your ‘self' besieged…i confess i had never thought of it thus! So what does one do when you are thus assailed? The poet David Whyte presents a wonderful insight~ Truly…"other people will never go away and aloneness is both possible and necessary…" "BESIEGED~ it is how most people feel most of the time: by events, by people, by all the necessities of providing, parenting or participating; by the creative possibilities they have set in motion themselves, and most especially, by a success they have achieved through long years of endeavour.

To feel crowded, set upon, blocked by circumstances, in defeat or victory, is not only the daily experience of most human beings in most contemporary societies; it has been an abiding dynamic of individual life since the dawn of human consciousness. In a human life there is no escape from commitment: retreat to a desert island and the lonely islander will draw up a Robinson Crusoe list to make the place habitable or begin building a raft to escape; tell everyone to go away and they hang around wanting to know why. Earn a great deal of money to gain individual freedom and a whole world moves in for a share of the harvest.

If the world will not go away then the great discipline seems to be the ability to make an identity that can live in the midst of everything without feeling beset. Being besieged asks us to begin the day not with a 'to do list' but a 'not to do list’; a moment outside of the time bound world in which it can be re-ordered and re-prioritised. In this space of undoing and silence we create a foundation from which to re-imagine our day and ourselves. Besieged as we are, little wonder that men and women alternate between the dream of a place apart, untouched by the world and then wanting to be wanted again in that aloneness. Besieged or left alone, we seem to live best at the crossroad between irretrievable aloneness and irretrievable belonging, and even better, as a conversation between the two where no choice is available. We are both; other people will never go away and aloneness is both possible and necessary.

Creating a state of aloneness in the besieged everyday may be one of the bravest things individual men and women can do for themselves. 'Nel mezzo’~ in the midst of everything, as Dante said~ to be besieged--but beautifully, because we have made a place to stand - in the people and the places and the perplexities we have grown to love, seeing them not now as enemies or forces laying siege, but as if for the first time, as participants in the drama, both familiar and strangely surprising. We find that having people knock on our door is as a much a privilege as it is a burden; that being seen, being recognized and being wanted by the world and having a place in which to receive everyone and everything, is infinitely preferable to its opposite."

From ‘BESIEGED’ in

CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words.    

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 341 (So who’s better at this ‘green thing’?!)

03 May 2016

It’s like a generational-stereotyping—grouping an entire age group (two or three decades worth of people to be exact!) and then putting forth the argument that they share the exact same characteristics, the same tendencies, the same way of thinking and the same faults. Where the last is concerned, i have found that every generation feels the previous one (in some cases even the next one!) has been (or is) ‘selfish' and hasn’t bothered to do anything about the environment! That was the understanding we had when we were teenagers ~ our generation was going to save the planet for those before us had brought it to the edge of ruin. The theme has continued over the decades. The issues remain the same, the slogans and action-plans keep changing ~ much like the reinvention of the wheel!

Perhaps that is why i so enjoyed this anecdote circulating on the internet. No one knows who wrote it originally but it does express the sentiments of many oldies who are told by the younger lot that their generation was not conscious enough about preserving the environment. To me even more enjoyable is the apparent use of rhetoric irony: the progressive cadence of “our generation didn’t have the green thing “ so reminiscent of that iconic funeral oration for Caesar by Mark Anthony in Shakespeare’s "Julius Caesar” (for "honourable men" read "green thing"!!). For today enjoy the story~

Checking out at the store, the young cashier suggested to the much older lady that she should bring her own grocery bags, because plastic bags are not good for the environment.The woman apologised to the young girl and explained,

"We didn't have this 'green thing' back in my earlier days."

The young clerk responded, "That's our problem today. Your generation did not care enough to save our environment for future generations."

The older lady said that she was right and then went on to elaborate: "Back then, we returned milk bottles, soda bottles and beer bottles to the store. The store sent them back to the plant to be washed and sterilized and refilled, so it could use the same bottles over and over. So they really were recycled.

But we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Grocery stores bagged our groceries in brown paper bags that we reused for numerous things. Most memorable besides household garbage bags was the use of brown paper bags as book covers for our school books. This was to ensure that public property (the books provided for our use by the school) was not defaced by our scribblings. Then we were able to personalize our books on the brown paper bags.

But, too bad we didn't do the "green thing" back then.

We walked up stairs because we didn't have an escalator in every store and office building. We walked to the grocery store and didn't climb into a 300-horsepower machine every time we had to go two blocks.

But then again, we didn't have the "green thing" in our day.

Back then we washed the baby's diapers because we didn't have the throw-away kind. We dried clothes on a line, not in an energy-gobbling machine burning up 220 volts. Wind and solar power really did dry our clothes those days. Kids got hand-me-down clothes from their brothers or sisters, not always brand-new clothing.

But young lady you are so right, we didn't have the "green thing" back in our day.

Back then we had one TV, or radio, in the house -- not a TV in every room. And the TV had a small screen the size of a handkerchief (remember them?), not a screen the size of the state of Montana. In the kitchen we blended and stirred by hand because we didn't have electric machines to do everything for us. When we packaged a fragile item to send in the mail, we used wadded up old newspapers to cushion it, not Styrofoam or plastic bubble wrap. Back then, we didn't fire up an engine and burn gasoline just to cut the lawn. We used a push mower that ran on human power. We exercised by working so we didn't need to go to a health club to run on treadmills that operate on electricity.

But oh you have to admit, we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

We drank from a fountain when we were thirsty instead of using a cup or a plastic bottle every time we had a drink of water. We refilled writing pens with ink instead of buying a new pen, and we replaced the razor blade in a razor instead of throwing away the whole razor just because the blade got dull.

But what a pity we didn't have the "green thing" back then.

Back then, people took the streetcar or a bus and kids rode their bikes to school or walked instead of turning their moms into a 24-hour taxi service in the family's $45,000 SUV or van, which cost what a whole house did before the"green thing." We had one electrical outlet in a room, not an entire bank of sockets to power a dozen appliances. And we didn't need a computerized gadget to receive a signal beamed from satellites 23,000 miles out in space in order to find the nearest burger joint.

And you~the current generation~ lament about how wasteful we old folks were just because we didn't have the "green thing" back then!

(And the punchline for the end~)

Remember, we don't like being old in the first place, so it doesn't take much to piss us off...especially from a tattooed, multiple pierced smartass who can't calculate the change due without the cash register telling her how much!!

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 340 (Looking for the ‘curious-child’ within )

02 May 2016

They say if we let them, children can “reintroduce" us to the world with their inborn desire to learn. It’s one of the most engaging (and at times even the most exhausting and irritating!!) quality of a child…their insatiable curiosity to explore and discover. It comes naturally to them because most of their surroundings are new, unusual and unknown. They have to figure out how this world around them works and so for a toddler there is novelty and intrigue to be found even in the mundane and ordinary…just turning the light switch on and off over and over and over again can be a fascinating exploration!! Spend some time with a toddler-on-the-prowl and you begin to see why writers time and again talk of keeping the ‘curious-child’ in you alive even as an adult…. "The highest ethical calling, it strikes me, is curiosity. The greatest reverence, the greatest rapture are in it. During the first few years of our lives, we’re in a state of perpetual dumbfoundedness. Then, like a film, like a word, things go—from inscrutable to familiar to dull. Unless we are vigilant and fight this tendency. It’s a challenge~how does one stay as irrepressibly curious as a child? How do we keep the bit rate of our lives up? Maybe it’s not so much about possession of the entire world, as a kind of understanding it. A constant endeavour to catch just a glint of its insane detail and complexity. Maybe the best we can do is try to leave ourselves unprotected. To keep brushing off habits, how we see things and what we expect, as they crust around us. Brushing the green flies of the ‘usual’ off the table cloth of our lives. To pay attention...with the curiosity of a child~~"

[mydumbledorepensieve]

# Day 339 (Some pitfalls to avoid)

To continue yesterday's theme...here's the poem by Martha Medeiros~ He who becomes the slave of habit, who follows the same routines every day, who never changes brand, who does not risk and change the color of his clothes, who does not talk to people he doesn’t know dies slowly. He who makes television his guru dies slowly. He or she who shuns passion, who prefers black on white, and the dots on the "i" to a whirlpool of emotions, precisely those that recover the gleam of the eyes, smiles from the yawns, hearts from the stumbling and feelings dies slowly. He or she who does not turn things topsy-turvy, who is unhappy at work, who does not risk certainty for uncertainty, to thus follow a dream, those who do not forego sound advice at least once in their lives, die slowly. He who does not travel, who does not read, who can not hear music, who does not find grace in himself, dies slowly. He who slowly destroys his self love, who does not allow himself to be helped, who spends days on end complaining about his own bad luck, about the rain that never stops, dies slowly. He or she who abandon a project before starting it, who fail to ask questions on subjects he doesn't know, he or she who don't reply when they are asked something they do know, die slowly. Let's avoid death in small doses, reminding oneself that being alive requires an effort far greater than the simple fact of breathing. Only a burning patience will lead to the attainment of a splendid happiness.