Before it's too late...

How many of us had a higher secondary school teacher who went for a walk with us, talking about their school days? How many of us had a school teacher who joined for yoga classes and inspired us to go along with them? How many of us had a school teacher who watched Devar Magan & Hum Apke Hain Kaun with us during summer holidays? How many of us had a school teacher who taught us that there is a world beyond studies, job, marriage and children? How many of us had a school teacher who taught to read books for reference in addition to text books, at school?

How many of us had a school teacher who would teach computer operations to blind children, after retirement, for two decades? How many of us had a school teacher who travelled the world and stayed in touch with us? How many of us had a school teacher whose family knew most of her students? How many of us had a school teacher who would invite you home for a quite weekend and a movie, between her own busy retired life? How many of us had a school teacher as a friend for life?

How many of us share the same date of birth with our favorite teacher and have continued to be blessed by her every year, no matter which part of the world she's in, on that day....

Not many of us, I guess. But I did. I should have written this when I could say 'I do have such a teacher'. Today I am writing 'I did'. Today morning, when I called to greet her on her birthday and to be blessed by her, I learnt that my teacher passed away last week. She would be 80 today. We have discussed the scriptures and spiritual way of life so much for so many years that she would only expect me to accept death as a part of life. She was granted her wish by the fact that she passed away peacefully in sleep, after a grand family get-together.

While being thankful to the Supreme for such kindness, I am also overwhelmed with tears of guilt that I have not met her for over six-seven months, despite her invitations to spend time with her now and then. There is probably no one who would want to spend time with me, like the way she did.

There is always work at office and at home, containing me from doing things which I would enjoy and cherish. A quiet evening with my teacher, a brisk walk, chat with long-distance friends, a little sewing assignment, a quick swim, exchange of meaningless text messages with my kids, a photowalk on my own along the train tracks, a closing-time pooja at the nearby temple, an incoherent post in my blog.....

What have I been doing during the recent months, killing myself slowly...postponing everything I loved to do but continuing to work, slog without priorities... ignoring people, ignoring the roll of time, loosing precious parts of life. This guilt would probably remain with me, for a long time to come. I can only hope, this guilt becomes another teacher to me. To live life and not to just pass across...

Clueless...

There should be a limit to being clueless... there really should be an end to this.

I'm clueless, where to live. Chennai / New Delhi / Mysore?
I'm clueless, where to work. Home / Work / Work from home?
I'm clueless, what to work on. The World / The Self?

Big stuff...serious issues. It's ok to be clueless.

But, someone help me here: why this blind man who sings on the suburban trains, is carrying a cordless mic & amplifier/speaker in his bag. Reminds me of the sick jokes about beggars with slush funds. Ok, let him do whatever he wishes. I'm clueless, should I give him a dime, or not?

:>/

T_T

:/


....

Musically infected...

It's insanely torturous, is it not? The same song playing in your cranial jukebox in repeat mode without a break, for more than two weeks...

It's unstoppable, though I haven't caught most of the words yet. It's unstoppable, though I don't understand half of the meaning of those words I've made out. It's unstoppable, though I'm unable to relate to the exact feelings conveyed by the meaning...

This one caught me unawares. May be it's the accordion, may be it's the absence of any fusion-like stuff, may be it's just the magic of A.R.Rahman. Whatever it is, Rahman will remain unforgiven for this.

I already know the notes by-heart and may be I'd record it sometime soon.
After all, I love to here myself singing 'When You Say Nothing At All' with Ronan Keating. Aaargh...that scale-change sucks, I agree. But this song... I might get it right all the way.

Nenjukulle...

Not a day passes by without wanting to write about.... this and that... some serious thoughts, some not so serious; some funny and some not so funny...most of it bland :)

But I don't write at all, though I resolve again and again (almost everyday) that I should keep writing. However bland and silly it turns out to be. Just so, that there's something to look back later, at my thoughts if I can.

What were my thoughts today? Sundays make me want to accomplish too many things: sleep (as in SLEEP - wake up late, sleep again, eat, sleep again...), laundry, stitch, shoot, embroider, write, scan old pix & books... Most of the sundays, I manage to do just the first two things, but today's been great - did all of it except the scanning (it has been my Next Big Thing for too long...)

Well, the resolution worked today. Let me see when it does again...


PS: The double-negative beginning is good, but there's just too much content within brackets. Why?

Why am I here?

The eternal question. Now, louder. Now, more frequent. Let me see if I can ever, somehow find the answer. Who other than Gibran, can ask this question in a more profound manner?

The Perfect World from The Madman, by Khalil Gibran.
God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods, hear me:
Gentle Destiny that watchest over us, mad, wandering spirits, hear me:

I dwell in the midst of a perfect race, I the most imperfect.

I, a human chaos, a nebula of confused elements, I move amongst finished worlds -- peoples of complete laws and pure order, whose thoughts are assorted, whose dreams are arranged, and whose visions are enrolled and registered.

Their virtues, O God, are measured, their sins are weighed, and even the countless things that pass in the dim twilight of neither sin nor virtue are recorded and catalogued.

Here days and nights are divided into seasons of conduct and governed by rules of blameless accuracy.

To eat, to drink, to sleep, to cover one's nudity, and then to be weary in due time.

To work, to play, to sing, to dance, and then to lie still when the clock strikes the hour.

To think thus, to feel thus much, and then to cease thinking and feeling when a certain star rises above yonder horizon.

To rob a neighbour with a smile, to bestow gifts with a graceful wave of the hand, to praise prudently, to blame cautiously, to destroy a soul with a word, to burn a body with a breath, and then to wash the hands when the day's work is done.

To love according to an established order, to entertain one's best self in a pre-conceived manner, to worship the gods becomingly, to intrigue the devils artfully -- and then to forget all as though memory were dead.

To fancy with a motive, to contemplate with consideration, to be happy sweetly, to suffer nobly -- and then to empty the cup so that tomorrow may fill it again.

All these things, O God, are conceived with forethought, born with determination, nursed with exactness, governed by rules, directed by reason, and then slain and buried after a prescribed method. And even their silent graves that lie within the human soul are marked and numbered.

It is a perfect world, a world of consummate excellence, a world of supreme wonders, the ripest fruit in God's garden, the master-thought of the universe.

But why should I be here, O God, I a green seed of unfulfilled passion, a mad tempest that seeketh neither east nor west, a bewildered fragment from a burnt planet?

Why am I here, O God of lost souls, thou who art lost amongst the gods?






..

Shooting a Blooming Flower...

Last time, first time...

When was the last time I did something for the first time? Day before yesterday. Shed a long stream of tears (a really long stream that I had to remove my glasses) watching a movie. Shadowlands. After all, am 90% Lewis and 10% Gresham. No wonder 90% cries for the missing 10%.

C.S.Lewis. Richard Attenborough. Anthony Hopkins.

.
.
.
.
.
.

My eyes only...

Looking at the stats, am doubly sure that my blog is for my eyes only!

If not anything, this, my blog is just what it is called. Reflections. Me reflecting on my thoughts. Recording the reflections, for reflecting upon later. Things I want to remember but might forget.

 Last post - August 2011. And this is end of November 2011. No posts in between. Once in at least two days, something or other captures my attention and I'd want to write about it. All those reflections remain converged in a highly sophisticated cloud-computing platform. My mental blog (or should I call it - block, huh?)

So, this post is to remember that I am consistently inconsistent. For my eyes only, absolutely.

Break the monotony...

.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.

For thy acceptance...

Sometimes, I search for the verses of a vaguely-remembered poetry to go with one of the pictures I shot. And sometimes, its the other way round. Today, as I recalled some verses while gazing at the morning sky, I searched for a picture in my archives and found this eagle I shot, about a year ago, while driving to Rameswaram.

Here's the inspiration:
My desires are many and my cry is pitiful, but ever didst thou save me by hard refusals; and this strong mercy has been wrought into my life through and through.

Day by day thou art making me worthy of the simple, great gifts that thou gavest to me unasked---this sky and the light, this body and the life and the mind---saving me from perils of overmuch desire.

There are times when I languidly linger and times when I awaken and hurry in search of my goal; but cruelly thou hidest thyself from before me.

Day by day thou art making me worthy of thy full acceptance by refusing me ever and anon, saving me from perils of weak, uncertain desire.

.
.
.
From the Gitanjali, Rabindranath Tagore

Who is D.N.Yadav...

To keep the prankster in me entertained, I needed a good laugh as in R-O-T-F-L and of course, I desperately needed to conjure it myself. If 'what is your name' is the most frequently asked question to any kid, 'when are you getting married' or 'kab khilaogi' or various other versions of this same question can easily be the most frequent one posed to me, in the recent past. Having hit upon a topic which can never fail to evoke curiosity, I couldnt be more pleased when April 1st presented itself as a good opportunity to ROTFL. I sent an email to a select list of people; a mix of whose reactions I could predict and whose reactions I could not.

Here's the content of the mail..

Subject: Wedding Invitation

Hi...

I am sure this comes a pleasantly-shocking surprise to you; am surprised too. :)

I am getting married tomorrow evening, to Yadav D.N. I have known him all my life and fell irrevocably in love with him during our recent trip to Gujarat in September 2010. They say everything happens for a reason. So, I am just hoping that we will find out the reasons for this, in due course.

My father has taken all my friends' phone numbers; he will be inviting you over phone, as we dont have enough time to personally invite everybody. A formal invite mentioning the venue & timing, is attached.

I hope you will take a few hours off from watching the World Cup and grace the occasion of my wedding, to which only a very few close friends are invited.

Regards,
Subah G.

I had zipped the attachment to add an ounce of confusion, and named it 'DN_weds_SG' to make it look authentic. Here's the invite I sent:




Here are some of the reactions...

"Disappointed. I knew it from the subject line itself. Unga kittenrundhu innum konjam adhigamaa ethir paakkaren"

"aiyo aiyo, i guessed it
ha ha ha"

"Erumai maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadu...
do u know how excited and happy i was !!!!! Idiot !! sathiyama kolai dhaan unnai adutha tadavai pakkum podhu.. "
[This dear friend of mine, is in a far-off place and so he got really wild. I added some dialogues to my original invitation mail, saying "wish you were here" :D]

"Hearty congrats... i could view only one page of your zip mail.. when you get free mail me the wedding photos. (photography by another person?!!!)"
[This one bowled me over; double ROTFL]

"I know you are april fooling me! Asku busku! "

There are some more (sure-shot) promises of killing me the next time I'm sighted.:D

Here's the prelude to the prank...
I would have believed what my friends hinted at, to be true: I've transformed into a dunce from being brilliant once upon a time, into a dullard from being exuberant in the recent past. The hints sounded louder after I failed to make a decent score in some dumb games and refused to play some not-so-dumb games. I might have even agreed with them explicitly, if only they had stopped at that. After all, change is the only constant and transformation is mercilessly qualitative. But when they said I had severely damaged my humour-bone, succumbed to reticence and killed the prankster in me along the way, just because I needed a few extra seconds to digest their silly jokes and mutual leg-pulling, I saved me from condemning myself to moronity. Though I do not talk and laugh incessantly anymore, it does not necessarily mean I have totally lost my ability to laugh, joke or talk; alternatively, it could mean that I have better things to do or doing things in a better way.

And....who is D.N.Yadav? None other than Him, DwarkaNath Yadav!

.

.

.

Yet another 365...

Starting a fresh set of days
After gains which are much
And losses having left their touch.

Mulling over places visited
Projects confabulated
And results uncontrived.

Lessons willed and learnt
Travails drowned unwilled
And together they keep me grounded.

Age is just a number
But let 16 make me humbler
And anything but a grumbler.

Will I get better or worse
Performing my chores
And in performing my chores???

Last time, first time...

Media or Medi(ocr)a...?

Spelling mistakes are granted absolution, by default. Ambiguity in reporting is tolerable, though wih a pinch of salt. Both these follies can be disguised as opportunities, to learn the correct spellings for sure and not to forget them ever, and in the second case, to derive our own opinion of the news being reported, instead of being fed in by the inevitable bias of current-day media. But the levels of mediocrity which have surpassed spelling errors and typos, want us to take a serious decision: either to cry or laugh, over the time and money spent on newspapers these days.

Even though I had long-ago made the decision to not spend time on newspapers, I do browse through them now and then. Having recently read a book on the sainthood process in Christianity, this news item (TOI dated 02/05/2011) attracted my attention, only to confirm my belief that I should not spend time on reading newspapers.

I wonder what the editor was thinking of when this piece of news went into print; either of these?
1) Nobody's going to read the article, or the whole of it; so anything can be printed.
2) The tiny bit of sleaze should be printed twice to get noticed.

If this size of an article requires TOI to print the same sentences twice at different places, what is the status of those half-paged and full-paged articles? And with this kind of mediocrity present in the basic function of disseminating news, what is the degree of sincerity and seriousness in the much-hyped "social initiatives" of the media...

Half of what I say...

The flight lands ahead of its schedule, only to be leaving in less than six hours. So be it. Though am late to reach the airport, I am just as gleeful as a child because it's me picking you up and not some of your uniforms.

There is the cheerful welcome, with my mind already sensing the farewell which lingers so closer by in time. And then there are the white lies about how we look just the same having not changed a bit since we saw each other. I cannot find another person with whom I would exchange such lies and be so happy and unguilty about it.

Neither is there a person to whom I can say "No, I dont like the tee you are wearing". Then, strange as it may sound, we talk about all the tshirts & kurtas each other wore whenever we met, during the past. The closet sentimentalists we both are, it is no surprise that we remember the details. The surprise lies in realising that I miss you more than I knew. Suddenly, the few thousand miles between us seem longer than they usually are.

We take a ride home, the route rickety and still unfamiliar to me. I miss a turn or two, but I really dont mind - I just get to ride a little longer with you. I'm sure my bike would not complain, you being the only person who remembers to ask about it every now and then.

The visit is unplanned and so I have no time to prepare for cooking lunch at home. Am upset about being not able to stuff you with home-food, but at the same time, unabashedly glad that just the two of us can have an elaborate lunch elsewhere. I am mighty pleased that you like the restaurant I chose.

We eat and eat, updating each other about life, all its nitty-gritties, and about our worries. Laughing over so many things even as we brood over the times we had missed to spend together. Ah... those movies I wanted to watch with you but never got to; I still hope that we will catch them on DVD someday.

There are moments I fall silent thinking of numerous tiny things we've shared and enjoyed, all those shayaris over the innumerable cups of tea and all the times I was teased about my dryfruit diet and my being a sleepyhead. Too bad that we never get to exchange a shayari today. I think of all the moments when I had to send you off at many airports and many railway stations. My mind is clouded with thoughts of Kashmir, of rains, of long conversations, of babies, of Psalms, of summers, of sonnets, of swims, of prayers, of flamingoes. But when you ask, I answer vaguely, that am out of my mind.

Three hours pass off, across the table for two, and its time for getting back to the airport, but not before we drown ourselves in black coffee. I get to laugh out loud about this and that, all through the ride to the airport, at the parking lot and at the cloak room and upto the departure terminal.

Then you disappear quickly after the briefest of goodbye-hugs, leaving me to start waiting again, not knowing when I would meet you again. I start waiting again, just as I waited for you to board the train, years ago, even before we had met.

Half of what I say is meaningless; but I say it so that the other half may reach you...

Nothing funny about Sonnet 44...

Funny is how the human brain works, if that is what I have inside my head. My brain cannot remember what I ate this morning and it cannot recall when I changed my bike's oil-filter. No, it cannot even blurt my sister's mobile number. And when I have to make a total of 3 different two-digit numbers, my brain forces me to click Start->Run and type "calc" for the simple reason that it cannot add more than two numbers. But, how does it untiringly manage to relate daily life and day-to-day activities to a Tagore's poem or to a complicated philosophical expression from Gibran or to a Shakespeare's sonnet....read, enjoyed and believed to be forgotten, long time ago??

Was winnowing few storable shots from thousands, so that I could create some precious space in my overloaded hard-disk. This is probably the best-framed, out of 15 odd photographs of take-offs shot by me & Sankar, near St Thomas Mount, on a rainy day in August 2010.



For me, airplanes never mean speed, but always, denote the long distances, the excruciating pain of separation...and my brain relates this picture to these verses picked out from its mossy folds...

If the dull substance of my flesh were thought,
Injurious distance should not stop my way.
For then, despite of space, I would be brought
From limits far remote where thou dost stay.
No matter then although my foot did stand
Upon the farthest earth removed from thee.
For nimble thought can jump both sea and land
As soon as think the place where he would be.
But, ah, thought kills me, that I am not thought,
To leap large length of miles when thou art gone,
But that, so much of earth and water wrought,
I must attend times leisure with my moan,
Receiving naught by elements so slow
But heavy tears, badges of either's woe.

[Sonnet 44 of William Shakespeare.]

Feeding my Ego...

Found a bug in Google. Someone please verify...

Google Image Search for 'mylapore mrts' returns about 1600 results, the top of which is a shot from my photostream... This is NOT the bug...okay? This is actually the most perfect part of the search algorithm which happens to return my shot.

Here's the bug: on clicking the result the adjacent picture in my stream is shown instead of the picture shown on the Image Search result....by coincidence the other also happens to be a shot of MRTS train...

The second top result is from Sudhamshu's stream and am seeing the Auroville Globe in his stream, on clicking Sudhamshu's MRTS pic.

Thats one good post-lunch browsing exercise, which also fed some fodder to my ego. And an excellent example I can remember to use when somebody points out a silly bug, albeit a rare occurrence, in one of my own software apps!!

Dream school...

It's been a persistent thought. It's so inviting that I can even call it a fantasy. To be running a creche a.k.a day-care a.k.a playschool, on my own; of course with efficient staff to do all the work, and I would do nothing other than playing with the kids!!

[Shot during the Chennai Photowalk #31]

Adverts like this, across the city, apart from helping me keep the idea alive, also kindles the curiosity in me to question the naming convention followed so ardently by all the playschools:

Roots to Wings
Blooming Buds
Little Angels
Tiny Tots
Birds' Nest
Apple Tree
Butterflies
Tender Feet

Why stick to the aesthetic & poetic & downright indicative names? How about moving on to the more pragmatic -
Smiles & Wails

Jolly Brats
Crawl and Drool
Funky Monkeys
Prankster's Garden
Brawl & Crawl
Naughty Tykes
Merry & Cranky

Or a little more provoking:
Pay to Play
Pay-Care (Point-blank at working mothers: Pay to care and take care of your pay)
Wean & Dine :D
Bum Chums

Should keep adding to the list, so that I can pick the best name for my school where all I would do is play!

Divine Moments...700..!

Puri. November 2009.

My daily dose of the Holy Gita came from Chapter 5 - Karma Sannyasa Yoga yesterday, May 20 2010. The chapter which talks about Action & Renunciation, with a generous sprinkling of tongue-twisters, is pure honey to chant.

Verse 18 puts forth the qualities of a Pandit - a learned person or a person filled with wisdom - who qualifies to attain Eternity or Moksha. Roughly translated, it means "One who has the equality of vision to see the existence of the Supreme Lord in everything and everyone - in a brahmin who is well versed in the Vedas, in a cow, in an elephant, in a dog and in the animal-eating humans".

This verse took me to Puri instantly. During one of my official trips to Orisssa, I was fortunate to have a day at Puri. The moment I heard the schedule, I was all excited about having a darshan of Lord Jagannath. I also had a grim reminder of my previous visit to the Puri Jagannath temple a few years ago in the peak summer of 2002.

During the 2002 trip, I was not grown up enough to be appreciate the vibes of a holy place, even if it was horribly crowded and as a result noticeably unclean. And, Puri - I remembered - was very unclean, what with the path to the sanctum being slippery because of all the prasadam rice spilled generously. I do not remember anything about the beauty of the idol, but only the tricky walk to the sanctum sanctorum.

So, I programmed myself to fix my mind on the Lord's manifestation this time and not to bother about anything else at the temple. I was also contemplating if I could find enough time and peace to chant the Bhagvad Gita at the temple. Considering that a sampoorna paaraayan of the Gita takes a minimum of 3 and a half hours, if done at a decent pace of chanting, the idea in my head seemed to be a tall order. But I let it linger on.

I reached the temple early in the morning and it made me think if I had gone to a different temple in 2002. The temple is very well-kept and being a lean period of tourism, the crowd was so less. I had a wonderful Darshan, unable to take my eyes off the magnificent idols, with no one to shoo me away from standing right in front of the final steps leading into the innermost part of the sanctum sanctorum. But, I had to attend to office work too. Krishna was looking at me with His BIG eyes: 700 verses...mmmm?

A replica of the idols of Puri, ISKCON - Hyderabad.

I resolved to return back to the temple in the evening. But, by the time I finished all the work with a bit of touring, and made it to the temple, it was 8 pm. The temple closes by 10:30 and I had 2.30 hours for 700 verses. Another 30 minutes went by in finishing the circumambulation of all the deities. Finally, I reached the place (an open patio) outside the main sanctum sanctorum, specially marked for paaraayan, at 8:30 having made up my mind to chant as much as possible and as fast-paced as possible.

Though it was cold, not wanting to bundle up in my woollen scarf which lied on my lap, I had my silky duppatta over my head. There were a few others sitting nearby and doing various chants. A kitten was loitering around. Yes, kitten. I was not even 20 verses into His 700, this kitten found me. Trying to concentrate on chanting, my efforts in shooing the kitten away went in vain. The kitten kept climbing in out of my lap, making me wonder if its claws were ripping threads out of my silk-soft dress.

It was getting colder and the crowd inside the temple grew thinner. So, I decided to go inside and sit right in front of Him to continue the chants, free from the distraction offered by the kitten. There were about 50-60 people scattered inside and I sat near a huge pillar. Within a few minutes, the kitten found me among all those people, and continued to play around as before.

No, the kitten wouldnt settle for the woollen scarf I laid out for its sake, on the floor beside me. The smart kitten and me thus reached the 18th verse of the 5th Chapter. The moment I chanted verse 18, divinity dawned on me to appreciate His presence. I stopped chanting for a good long minute. The kitten is His manifestation too and will I be shooing Him away? By the time I finished Chapter 5, the kitten having done its alloted job of teaching me a lesson, pulled my scarf to the floor and settled down into a nap, nuzzling in my feet. Throughout Chapters 6 - 18, it kept shifting its position floor-lap-knee-lap-floor-lap..., but never moved away. The kitten was not distracting anymore but aided my concentration.

The temple doors started closing. It was 10.40pm when I finished Chapter 18. By the time I started my final prayers thanking Him for the day and for the 700 verses, THE KITTEN stretched its luxurious stretch in all glory, and moved away when I finished thanking my Teacher - Shree Gurubhyo Namaha. Harih OM !

No doubt that am going to remember THE KITTEN through out my life, for revealing the profoundness of Verse 5.18. And also the moment of revelation !

Divine Moments #2.

Divine Moments...

Mumbai. Tuesday.

Long day at work and epic traffic of evening rush-hours. Wrong time to expect a peaceful drive and added to it are the numerous phone calls from office,office,offices, friends and home - some pleasant and some not so pleasant. Made it to THE Siddhi Vinayak Temple, somehow.

Had to park the car a good furlong away from the temple, after making the good driver that he would not move too far away from the car. Top security arrangement at the entrance wouldnt allow my handbag (which is more a backpack than a handbag) inside. No - no cameras. Hafta run back to the car and again to the temple so that I would not be blocked out of the queue at the time of the evening aarthi.

Was pushed into the jam-packed crowd of devotees and finally found a place to stand. Bang on front of a big pillar completely hiding the beautiful diety of Lord Vinayak which I was seeing on all the three 42 inches LCD Screens around.

Work, traffic, security, sprint to car & back, messy queue and a big crowd. After all that, I dont get to stand in front of the Holy Idol? Disappointment must have been written in capital letters all over my face, even I was clapping my hands to the mighty tune of the aarthi song. A child on the shoulders of its father, looked at me for a minute or two unblinkingly and smiled its angelic smile. And touched my cheeks. And my held my clapping hands with its two cherubic palms.

There....I had the Lord's Darshan, up-close and absolutely personal.

Divine Moments #1.