As someone pointed out; convinience trumps privacy. Morality and good judgement for too many of us- the internet has made things faster, and faster has become the point. But whatever place you’re going, at breakneck speed, the one that requires shortcuts, hustle and compromises. What will happen when you get there?
Here In north India if women had left dishes overnight to wash them tomorrow; then elderly women used to say that the dishes will now go to bathe in the Ganges. It has a metaphorical meaning if you apply it to human day to day life. What you set out for today, has to be finished today else killing time kills more time. Don’t turn it into a pattern.
In one of my travels a sage asked me, what is the measure of happiness? I tried guessing but I wasn’t close ? Measure? I could only ask back if it can be measured. As I softly asked him to please stop smiling, and enlighten me. He took his time. And said the true measure of happiness is the average sum of sunrises and sunsets a man sees divided by the days of life. Sometimes it feels inappropriate but it is kind of apt.
Sometimes from somewhere a may be comes. Now may be is a hope. It is told to you that if you can run till a point you might catch what you are seeking. The time is limited. You have no idea of the way. Your resolve at first will be far from achieving it. But in the now you start running. But you realize that light has started getting darker. The steps are uneven. Some slopes. Could be up could be down. Some roses with thorns of autumn. Some puzzles to make the way interesting. If you then just gain that rhythm of not merely running but enjoying the performance of just being. Of seeing hindrances as a way of getting better, stronger. Using your body and mind as a tool. That when you will even reach. And if there will be no one to clap. The rewards regardless, are going to be so multiple from all the oxytocin that you created with your thoughts, with your lungs. That whole space will start treating you …
Its night. Tonight I am the only person left on this hill. From my hut the jungle starts. I live in the farthest hut amongst three. The third one. It’s partially pink and other room is wood. The room is a closed wooden balcony. Surely a bear might not be able to break the door and come. I heard in the noon a news flying about two somebody seeing two bear cubs nearby. The wooden room has a pillow swing, but it doesn’t swing. Finally the Israelis left today after living by themselves here for 6 summer months. The nights are getting colder cold. We are almost past autumn. Today was sunny. Some men have been slowly slaughtering trees for past few days. I hear their machine daily. Pluto arrived with potata, she is a beautiful mountain dog. Follows Pluto like a shadow. She gave birth to nine pups last week. Later I and Pluto walked along to the thukpa shop. I ordered momos too. Thukpa was water with 10 indian chic peas and noodles …
The most beautiful things in life work and are found in silence. So should be working of our stomach be. It is the home where Shakti resides. Feed her respectfully.
A trigger prompts a cycle. And that cycle might go on longer than it should. The first spoonful of ice cream can trigger a cycle of binge eating that you regret later. The silence of walking into an empty house might trigger you to turn on the TV, and that cycle of wasting time watching nothing that matters goes on all night. The rush to get out the door leads to a cycle of rushing, which makes your commute a daredevil exercise, one that takes hours to recover from. It’s really useful to see your cycles and to work to dampen them (it’s almost impossible to go cold turkey). Even better is to find and eliminate the triggers. That’s surprisingly easy if you care enough. Quit Twitter. Empty your freezer. Wake up ten minutes earlier… Make these decisions when you’re not in the middle of a cycle. With the trigger gone, you might discover the cycles are gone too.
The world has long gone past finding comfort for humans. Comfort seems secondary. They might only say it has only started. Facebook and Google will leave no stone unturned to get even the last human trying to hide in his cave to get connected with the world. The momentum of the world trade and news constantly travelling is like making too much noise standing. Iam certain now that the race is not to find god but to become formless while living. One can argue, we are our own god and only us can stop ourselves from doing or not doing. In doing they might have exceeded their own expectations but every achievement is not the end of the story. The story keeps becoming. It is neverending. It merely adds another layer of truth, another variation of the result. How ever much our minds become digital, we are still a long way to forget our mothers.
We spent almost 15 years being brainwashed on learning things that have nothing to do majorly with our present mind space. And we keep paying the price. It is proven that the most dangerous habits of all come from high school. Because if you are not willing to explore and experience, you are not willing to learn. Traditional schooling rewards multitasking and widespread mediocrity, with a focus on ‘good enough’. means you’ve done enough, quick, get on to the next average thing. Repeat the cycle. I was reading somewhere that almost every public speaker has experienced the back-row syndrome. Where did we learn to seek out the anonymous middle or the other zone of the back row? Who taught us to worry about getting called on? If you’re going to bother showing up, why not show up in the front row? It’s that tension and focus that will help see you beyond and soon yourself in a different light. Wondering is a lot more effective than wandering. School pushes hard for wide, bot not deep. It …
I went rather late. In midst of going or not going which has become a pattern. The sun became orange and soon hid behind city buildings. I was still in metro. I took two tuk tuks and still had to walk. The air changed to worst. The smell. Blood was seen spilled. The water filled pot holed roads. I bought four chocolates for the girl and one for the boy. I reached without straying anywhere else. I arrived at a time when she was looking at herself in the mirror when she saw me from the sides of her eye. And hid herself behind the door. She was humming a song. Combing her wet hair. Looking at herself. But as she hid herself from my gaze, she was smiling, she was shying as she always did. I asked about her health. If she is studying? of course not. I met her brother. I remembered him fondly. I had filmed them both a year ago for over a week. He was the most interactive little boy …
Father was speaking after a long time. He sat in front of me. His eyes were kind of sad but when he spoke, they spoke of a nostalgia that had come after years of living in a city. He is a village man. Once one of our water buffalo had fallen sick, he started narrating, “she had stopped eating. It was felt that we needed to call the veterinary immediately. He was five miles away. Being the youngest probably, I was asked to go to the village and get him along fast. I left and as soon and as fast i could, i got him on my cycle. He immediately saw her and prepared the local medicine. It was on the burner. He asked me to give buffalo the medicine once it gets back to a normal temperature. For animals there used to come funnels. One can put that in their mouth to let the liquid medicine pass. We tried to place it in her mouth but she refused and after some struggle, suddenly she …
Teachers day is somehow another Mother’s Day. Because mother is our first teacher. First person who taught us love, and taught us how to everything on earth. It was a good day at school. Children had come becoming as new as wise. They had come wearing dresses of teachers. Its fifth class’s last year at school. Children grow at a rate of moon cycle. Its a shame we don’t have enough space to add at least three more classes. Our’s is a primary school. I was only thing that we enthuse our love, our energy and resources shaping and giving them the best of foundations but leaving school as early as VIth standard. It is hard for children to change their patterns. Who knows how much disciplined and caring the newer school be. For us, we feel to at least bring our classes till VIIIth so that you can shape those children better and further holding onto those ideas, creativity and empathy for humankind and for nation a bit longer. Every day, every year is …
Time stops for body but the mind evolves into dimensions connecting with the ethereal while disconnecting with the physical. Isn’t this magic? Sleep can consume all the good, bad and ugly actions. It dissolves the worst and best, highs and lows. And after all of this when mind comes back to see what is real we get another day. Another set of limited hours that can be spent any which way we want. For most, a time table is there in place already in terms of job and other engagements. And hence, get very less space to do anything else. The happening of anything new is rare. By the time noon ends; for most the day becomes similar as the hundreds of days that have already been dished out, No one in the moment believes that this breath is temporary, that this body is going to go. It doesn’t seem possible. Probably it doesn’t even cross ones mind. What could be the solution? What is “that meaning” which everyone is looking for in life? Is …
Dawn 7 New Delhi The day was Tantra. But first of all what is it that you feel when you read this word? Does it evoke complexity? Mixed emotions? Were you uncomfortable? Does the sound of it makes you uneasy? You should tell me. I have grown knowing Tantra in two forms that came from two masters. The first one was an elderly, who poured his grace for weeks in me for all the time I could spend in his space. He talked in Sanskrit and Hindi. And he introduced me to the simpler, most basic and foundational form of Tantra. Probably because he must have grown infinitely from within simplifying aspects of life by himself. One morning as we sat facing each other after the concluding homa, the sacred fire. He said tan is body and tra is rhythm. It is only a practise of rhythm of the body. And thus he simplified mantra and yantra. The other two forms of body sciences were prevalent since the Vedic times specific to a few tribes but were not …
I and Rasool entered the hospital minutes after winter sun arose. Rasool had been in extreme pain ever since he fell on a river stone fracturing his wrist. It must have taken some hit being the wrist of a boatman of six decades. I remember when he had appeared after the accident; his face inflamed, eyes crowded, jammed as if all the pain had run like water to get collected there. Yet I couldn’t have assumed. Only after he had not spoken for more minutes than usual I asked what happened. He had kept working and folding the tent, at the same place where he took this film forty years ago. We had decided to turn back and strangely I couldn’t have imagined how was he working and still picking up things then. I saw two x-rays of his left hand, each side few days later. A pigeon outside without a leg or having one sitting over chinar. Its shadows appearing on my being many feet away. There I stood looking at quiet Rasool, who …
To tell you, I had lost this post a long time ago. Digital world has its own miracles, I don’t know how it showed up again. And now when it has. I will try to re-write it, after so many years, this experience that still lingers somewhere in my head. This experience kept becoming solid long after it passed by me. My understanding of time, physical space and eye did see a change. I couldn’t have gathered it while it was happening. Even though it became adventurous but what Vipassana said, accumulated deeper. I wrote this on 1ST February 2007. It sure was a tender age and I will keep it the way it was then. Well, I don’t know why and how it happens as it did yesterday evening. I wanted to write about my experience at vipassna. All about what I and udi did in last five days of our stay. Oh! No… Nights. It was in a far-off village outside Delhi. There were the Aravallis, making their presence felt …
Sipna Art Residency, was a very memorable time. Very precious days and nights amongst the oldest tribes living on the border of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra. Where two quiet rivers meet. Tapi and Sipna right in the centre of India.There arrived many other artists from India and Europe carrying various skills. The residency happened in the last 10 days of December. The days were sunny and nights damn cold. We were many together. Everyone skilled in their practises. There were painters, sculptors, Architects, local artists, farmers, Photographers, Dancers, Performers and also artists who worked with bamboo and one who worked on making murals in water. We were living somewhere deep in the jungle of teak. Probably in some village on the other side of Melghat Tiger Reserve. The river Sipna dancing like a snake crawled through picturesque landscape cutting the old plateau. big, small naturally sculpted rocks. There lived an old sage somewhere along the river by the jungle. I remember him because in his hut stayed a one peacocks, three peahens, a cows, a …
Among themselves they feel free. Independent yet in a boundary, vulnerable and not sure about tomorrow. Kids are those whom, while you watch them in your most baleful of moods they still make you smile. The essential human truth, pitted against modernity – is invincible. There is a child in a man wanting to go back to the womb. The shadows of a festering burden of the next crop of humans, the unclaimed, unborn, and the just born. The Indian state perceives the child parent relationship to be a legacy of tribute to a social order, more than a right of the child. When a child is separated from his/her parent, it is not viewed as the duty of the state to provide that child with a family environment. Adoption is supervised by the state, but India does not have a long term foster care or alternate care system outside of institutionalization. A study estimates that there are about 44 million destitute children and yet only 5000 are adopted each year. A countless number of …
Atul and I met in 2010 while filling our bikes at a petrol pump outside Leh. It would be easy for me to say that he gave me magic. A magic that built dreams. I lived in that dream, a few of us. We witnessed it together. A year after I met Atul. It was Teach to Learn for his organization Karmabhoomi – This year in July we had gone for an Omni journey to Hanley. We pulled over at Leh for a few days. We were meeting Bhai, Atul. – One lazy, cold, leh morning when Atul me to come along for a visit at his dream resort. It was called The Last resort I had visited this place before years ago. When it was unknown. Like Reaching a measure, or when becoming a process of leaving. It was a place that makes you only. I now remember looking at horses that kept crossing the homeless river. There was a bell inside a Buddhist temple, which kept feeding a language to the wind. Later we …
Photograph of a lost memory in flaring heat of Jaisalmer – It is hot in Barmer. It is so hot that my lower portion feels different and apart from my head. My right cheek has swelled. Ulcers recognized heat. I am staying with amma here, a Bhopa. Last night we decided to attend Pabu ki phad. Happens rarely now. A local god. Reincarnation of Laksman. Bhopas sing and dance for Pabu. For two nights Bhopas from all across the region have come to sing and dance reciting Pabu’s story. Anada Ram was the most prolific Ravanhatta musician, who died 33 years ago. His wife, Amma vowed to never sing after that day. I am here to document her son. He never learnt Ravanhatta. He wanted to be a dancer. I have known him for eight months now. There were many other dancers from the community who had come yesterday. Veer was going to show me one of his acts dancing on the mirror glass with fire in his mouth. He does not dance in …
In her wedding dress that one day she stopped counting years I met J uncle on a very cold january morning this year. It was raining and we stood outside an empty swimming pool. His room – 705, is just beneath my room – 805, where i am writing this. J uncle had his own quiet world till he met my sister. My sister, Ruspsi is a kathak dancer(banaras gharana). J uncle would not know about it for a month till one day they meet in the elevator, she moved and her ghungroo rolled from her bag. J uncle and his lovely wife had come from Banaras. In a quest to live with their son, they sold their house. They used to sing all morning there, he told me. He disliked it here. Everything. But he never spoke about it. He was just visibly sad. In his walk, thats how mostly i saw of him. A singer coming from a gharana who doesn’t sing anymore. In the meantime J uncle grew fond of my …
Starless night winter Old Donkey barking at the new comer To zojila, to Leh, to Hanle, to tso moreri, to i don’t know what pass that came after hundred’s of horses ran to take left, we took towards sky- a concrete river bed on top of a conical mountain which went all afternoon. Many called it a road. Through a broken bridge, through the ditches connecting another ditch on the Yoga day. While laughing at others. While laughing atourselves. While stopping before every loop to the mountain up. The dancing carrier. The nostalgia of the petrol fumes over six days. As every bicycle left us behind. Our omni made it across the Rohtang. But always carry two people to push it through. We needed many only once. On the road with Omni | July 15.
An image of my parents wedding in 1982 I met J uncle on a rainy very cold january morning this year, near an empty swimming pool. His room – 705, is just beneath my room – 805, where i am writing this. J uncle had his own quiet world till he met my sister. My sister, she is a kathak dancer(banaras gharana). J uncle would not know about it for a month till one day they meet in the elevator, she moved and her ghungroo rolled from her bag. J uncle and his lovely wife had come from Banaras. In a quest to live with their son, they sold their house. They used to sing all morning there, he told me. He disliked it here. Everything. But he never spoke about it. He was just visibly sad. In his walk, thats how mostly i saw of him. A singer coming from a gharana who doesn’t sing anymore. In the meantime J uncle grew fond of my sister and attended one of her performances in Delhi. That …
– All say i have gone on my mother, slanting slope with a dead end like nose, high cheekbones, eyes watching from a socket, paler complexion. Today when i lied beside her listening, i saw a few lines sketched around her lips, tight forehead, intense she looked, and looked old. I leave for Kashmir the day after for a month and wanted to post this write-up which i wrote six months ago on the ghats of Benaras. I am drunk tonight. … Holi city, indeed Crowded by boredom Of new and the old Japanese is written on the walls, Telugu, Gujrati, Hindi, Marwari and deity of the falling doll, Walls are tall as lanes are narrow concluding steps Going towards the flow Ganga looks like one today The sun is shining on the polluted dark A bark flows with the river, with a free body, swelled liked a shapeless balloon Him, crows are murdering more. But the noon is calmer here, they say, river trudges up from there background chantings and prayers from sound systems …
It was a memory
devbhoomi, I went through
This journey, I grew
ROAD TO NARA 