reflecting on me

I am tired.

Feels like a long week has elapsed and that a lot has happened. Though when I look back I cant say what. Am annoyed at the health or the non healthy habits that I seem to be living with; quite contrary to what should be the way of doing things.

Havnt written in two days…..not sure why. Am feeling apprehension, and fear.  Fear maybe a strong word but feel like am standing on the tip of a slope on a sledge, you know you are going to be going for the ride, you know you want to, infact choose it and yet there is this tumbling in the belly.

Think it is work related.

There is excitement about what we are doing, dread of failure and am I capable, excitement at biting into a substantial pie, and stability.

Maybe I am bullshitting.

Think the last bit of letting go is happening, letting go of the childlike me. Time to build the savings and depth.

Had asked myself a question a few weeks back; if there were 2 forks on the road one that was the traveler explorer road about being on the road and gathering experiences/memories. And the other pointed towards the road of work and commitment which one would I choose. That day I was not sure.

Today I am.

I will choose the routine of work. That lets me travel. Shocks me to write that, reason being that I truly believe that ones needs to “deserve” travel.  One needs to have done something hard, meaningful and when that is over the appreciation for the free flowing floating life that travel offers. The appreciation is much more.

I am going to pack the back pack. And get the corporate suitcase out.

Time for me to unleash the potential that is there in me instead of squandering it- happiness is not equated to being kiddish.

Lessons for the day. 

breathing easier

Started the day annoyed and ended up as peaceful. Good journey.

Woke up to not knowing what and where I was doing, was technically working for a lot of ppl had a lot of work to do but was not really adding value to anyone and least of all to myself. The prevalent feeling was one of not having achieved enough.

So yesterday.. clear conversations with the multiple bosses happened. And without anger or grievance management there was a resolution that seems to have emerged. How this shall pan out, I do now know

1.    The realization that the developmental world and me shall always have a passing flirtation and not a deep love. Meaning; the work that I am to do with P is on its last month. Feel more relief than fear of what next, because it lets me focus my energy on the area of 1 thing. the corporate consultancy that wide spanning everywhere

Deeper learning 1 and 2

• working for 2 ppl never ever works; for one. and I do not have the patience requisite for the NGO pace of work. 
• I am adamant about my financial targets. Not because I am greedy, but there is a lust to travel. need to earn well; in a high currency and this is a non negotiable as this is the only way left to travel....!!!!!!!!

2.  I need a systematic office to work with. Am getting one come July 1st and that is a great feeling to have colleagues, regular office hours and am prepping myself up for a bigger corporate job.

So the clear action plan that has emerged is this. After the 6 months of experimenting that defined this year, the next steps are

1. Deep dive into the Corporate strategic and innovation consulting - focus on one

2. use the flexible work life to learn and sharpen skills of - bike lessons, german, fitness and photography

3. Long term- get ready for a corporate job - international clients and cultural needs that shall give be (i) the travel lust i seek (ii) get me the nest egg- for the yoga studio and self development and (iii) provide a platform for moving out of India in the next year or so.

4. Before I take on this job, use the savings of this year to do a long trip... as a free backpacker

Whew!!!! Now that there is a semblance of a plan and a goal.. i get the one thing that i wanted . Clarity of what and where am i heading 

My mantra remains the same, to do consulting work using behavioural matrices for different entities, permitting me to travel and experience the world. The routes keep changing the goal remains...... the same- de-cluttering for the now has made making these choices a lot easier than not.... 

Blondie grows up. 

sensual senses

As we meandered through the by lanes of Indra Nagar, contemplating the gorgeous rain swept streets our conversations meandered along with the lanes. M had been reading a book called the Science of Senses, and I was overwhelmed by the Museum of Innocence by Omar Pamuk. 

The latter is a book set in Turkey, broadly speaking about a man who falls in love with a 18 year old when he is 30 and at first treats it as a fling, to be forgotten as he gets engaged to his more appropriately positioned sweet heart who was to be his wife. The book was set in 1960's where the virginity of a women was only to be traded for a wedding ring and nothing else. 

Anyway, the 18 year old and he have a love that is bone marrow filling, cruises through the viens makes him mad, so much so that when she ups and leaves without a trace he cannot function. He ends up cancelling his engagement, effectively destroying his fiancee's reputation and then hunts the girl down. Only she is now married. and he of course happens to be her uncle, so under the pretense of being a benefactor, he visits her house and becomes a part of the family for 8 years!!!!!!!!

To make it even more surreal, through out this time, the two of them dont exchange a single meaningful real conversation, all the hidden undercurrents are only shared by looks and reading expressions of each other. Eight years of being around, literally so close yet so far makes him want her more not less ... and in the interim he begins to steal/take little things that she holds and touches to get a sense of proximity he is otherwise denied

As I read the book, i felt immense frustration, a deep desire to slap the man and the women and a reluctant respect for this level of intensity, patience and conviction. For someone who is very direct in conversations, eight years of guess work and reading between lines seemed a waste of time, yet the book had me hooked, i could not put it down

Shall not ruin the ending of the book, but the last line said, let the reader not assume that i was an unhappy man but rather i was one who was immensely happy in spending time just being around her. Pure love? Pure exasperation i dont know. 

M is someone like that, he can pause and slow his world down where things are not rushing him by but he is intensely savouring each moment, with concentration. The simplest things get him shell shocked. there was once a time when he ate a gol-gappa/panipuri/puchka with me on the road, and his eyes became as large as saucers...... REASON.. the confluences of taste of the water was ravishing his mouth

speaking of Ravashing, did u know that lavender as a smell enters ur nostrils makes u incapable of smelling anything for 2-3 minutes, cleans out ur nose and then lets the others smells come in.. so u smell a lot more in instants. or that Chinese believe that the number 4 is symbolic of death and hence buildings have no 4th floor, or if they do its the cheapest real estate??? The cultural quirks that make a city.. 

In yoga school, meal times required us all to be served, wait till we chanted, then thanked the lord and only then eat. This ensured that the instant gobbling that one wanted to do, was curtailed to slowly appreciating the actual food. And CHEWING. the more u chew the less u eat...

There is so much that is happening in moments that its a shame not to notice

unrelated- i HATE packing, i LOVE holidays

education or experience?

I consider R to be one of my closest mates in Blore. She is a women of substance with immense life experience below her belt and is someone who has consciously stayed away from the main stream and the rat race.

The above statement implies, that she choose to not undertake a structured route of formal education, learning her way in life from experiences and self reading, as skills she is a photographer, an excellent child counseller, an artist, potter and a crochet designer.

As we sat and spoke I was asking myself the question. What is the importance that I as an individual place on Education? As an Indian, I have been doctrined to believe that education maketh the man, degrees secure your future and the having the name of certain institutes on your resume gives you credibility.

Agreed.

If someone was to tell me that they have graduated from an IIM, I would mentally classify the person with a certain level of intelligence and his/her entry barricades to most commercial opportunities would be easier. But casting the “degree” value aside, what did my education provide me?

These are the degrees that I have.

• ·         A graduation in B.Com (Hons) from Jesus and Mary College, DU
• ·         An LL.B from Faculty of Law, DU
• ·         A certification in Yoga, from Sivananda and Bihar School
• ·         MBTI accreditation
• ·         Misc courses in Transaction anaylsis, pranic healing, reiki, some other spiritual courses.

A lot of paper is what the above translates into. In my job today, as a consultant there is no use what so ever of even one of these courses. Yet what the above permits me to do is only ONE thing; lets me gain a semblance of immediate credibility in front of any client that I may be interacting with… But is that enough of a value add given that I spent nearly SEVE N years getting this knowledge? I wonder.

As a teenager, there was no questioning the fact that I would go to college. Amongst the list of givens, that Indian students have a Graduation and a Post Grad are assumed we all shall be doing.  The only choice remains what we choose to graduate in.

Sadly, this too is often not a choice, as much as a cocktail of events ranging from, your marks, the cut offs that the colleges decide, the depth of capitation fee you may be willing to pay, the desperation to secure your future and the commercial viability of the course balanced very lopsidedly against the “passion/desire” to study a particular stream

Result – Often the routes of Higher Education are chosen, not from a sense of ACQUIRING LEARNING, or a pursuit of KNOWLEDGE; but a means to secure a stable future. Perfect, no problem with that at all.

Yet, this attitude somehow ensures that the doctors, or the engineers that come from these colleges, are not driven to really pursue their fields. Recently, governmental medical colleges have made it mandatory for each doctor to spend 2 years in rural projects or pay Rs 2,00,000 and escape, guess what route is being chosen?

What is the point of this blog post? A reflection more than anything else for me to list down what I have got from my education.

- ---     in the Indian context an easier route to establishing credibility

----      7 years of SCREENING- Under the guise of “I am a student” both as a graduate and a law student, I got years to explore and dabble in several activities that today defines me in some manner. It permitted me to read Freud, or to try and understand Keats, to smuggle into the Economics class and appreciate something about Keynes points of view, to enter training and from the tit-bit conversations of people around me expand my threshold of curiousity

But then a nagging question worries me, would I have not sought this out for myself even if I was not in college? I have left formal education 5 years back, 3 of the degrees mentioned above were self acquired for no reason but the desire to do them.

In which case? What is this craze for education/degree gathering about? From my circle of successful  friends and family,  it would be immensely difficult for me to cherry pick even 2 people whose work is linked to the education that they did.

But here is the tricky part, despite intellectually appreciating the above. Would I as a HR manager, hire someone with the correct attitude, maybe even relevant experience but with no graduation certification. Even if I did, would the organization I was hiring for (i) agree to keep him on the rolls and (ii) permit him/her to rise to the highest level within the business.

Maybe not.

But maybe it would be good to survey and see how many of the Ambanis, the Gates, the Bransons, or the Jobs are “educated” in the limited term of being degree holders or how many of them are truly “experienced” in terms of making the world go as per their demands.

Between a well certified college ivy league professional and a person with the most diverse stories of life experiences that are shared in a calm voice by a hastily lit bonfire, I hope I have the wisdom to consistently choose to live with the latter.

Snippet time again

Have not written a proper heartfelt entry in a while. Have not got the clear will to write one here right now either, so instead are some snatches of randomness that has been my life and brain for the past few days...

Reading is the next best thing to travelling, if one thing can open your mind it has to be a book that can be well thumbed and read through to reveal the deeper parts of countries, places and people that you have no connection to.. 3 books that I am reading is doing just this for me right now..

First comes - Muesem of Innocence, Omar Pamuk, an effortless narrative from the eyes of a Turkish man, his illicit affair but more than the story is the peek into understanding some of the cultural customs that define the place, the unwritten social norms that are graze u as a tourist but never impact u unless u live it..

Catcher in the Rye- Reread it and after you do you wonder what makes this book so easy to understand, insanely addictive and realitvely ageless? Is it because we all have similar internal rants where everything we do seems utterly meaningless and yet we carry on. or is the listless angst that he seems to be surrounded with the attraction for us all.  

Kundalini Tantra-  A book on spiritual biophysics, if such a term can even be coined that without once preaching into the occult or divine is simply de mystefying simple factual truths about our systems and the latent power of it. Very tough job to keep this simple writing and not get lost into meanderings 

The week has been a roller coaster of the kind that defines life. 

The carpet was ripped from below me on Tuesday, semi replaced on Wednesday and got padding on Thursday. if one thing all this teaches me is something my brother said, roll with the punches

The wedding is drawing closer, know that when i do see my brother getting married, am going to be one of the first few to break down and get all emotional maybe even beating mom to it. its just what weddings do to me, the simple innocent promise of a future the promised land is just to heartrendingly pure that for that moment all you can do it somehow want to close and hold that moment........ love weddings, hate them too

Housefull- saw it and wondered y i did that to myself

and questioned where and what i was doing with my life. In this constant turmoil and chaos, I did one thing right i seem to have returned to spending time with myself and mentally slowing down. Calm is what i am about everything for the now, till the next set of frenzied action commences. 

straight from the heart

I don’t have anything to write about today.  There is a lot to state and share but there is a feeling of digging a layer deeper and not writing about any of the trivia of this happened and that happened and guess what she said….. Fluff.

The last 24 hours as far as fluff is concerned has been very productive, new fluff has been accumulated that shall be dealt with, monies made and for these gifts that seem to come from the universe I am grateful. Very very grateful. It seems to me that there is something deeper at play here, a little playful nudge like a mother would give to her child as he stood waiting at the entrance of the play ground.

In a nut shell, work is looking up and that makes me feel secure. There is drama in the personal life and that makes me dreamy. So all things said there is a tingling sense of relief and gratitude. Am crossing half my body parts as I even write this, petrified of jinxing even the tiniest bit of this turn around.

Today I want to go back to where this all started from.  The patience, endurance and the stamina to not give up came from an unquestionable belief in the manifestation of possibilities. Stated like that it sounds BULL SHIT.. yea roll your eyes now .. lord not again kind of a thing is the immediate reaction. But for me its been a magic wand that is hopelessly slow but works always. Not exactly as u thought, but there is wisdom in the new direction too.

This belief is ingrained at such a cellular level that after a while there is an internal craving to return to the silence of the soul. The centering needs to be revisited. For no reason but because it is there, waiting for its turn to get attention from all the external goings on that consume instant attention.

Was walking with GR yesterday, and he ticked me off for letting this side remain a flirtatious pursuit. Intellectual masturbation was not what this was about. It was a Sadhana, something that you did without fail because u wanted to not because you had to.

He told me about his guru, someone who every year went to pray to this Shiva Lingam deep in the interiors of a jungle where the only other visitors were serpents. Cobras. King Cobras the wild ones. His guru along with his disciplines would enter to pray to the lingam and return unscathed.  Faith or Hypnosis??

Or person 2, who donated all his savings to the Tirupati temple and left it to god to provide the three things he wants, a place to stay, the ability to come for Darshan and the healthy old age. He got all three along with the discipline of sadhana to get higher stronger in his intention to attain the divine.

Mr. X called yesterday.  He is not a friend, and in fact was recently put in the “maybe a slime ball” bucket for certain reasons. His issue he could  not sleep for days, tests did not help, doctors merely said sleep son there is nothing amiss. … but try as he might he cant. His brain does not empty out, at all. So then there was no option but to let meditation calm him down and like all consultants he went shopping to the various ashrams to see what his needs were.

I laughed. If only an ashram could fix this in 3 days. If only it did not need self work but Om 1, Om 2 and Om 3… if only the mind was not that big a monkey… if only shanti was found in substances then we would not be this lost.

Miss X called this morning, asking about EFT and what that did or did not do. She was lost, post the breakup of a relationship and needed solutions for the doubts and questions that plagued her.  Was wondering if Vipasana was the route or EFT, where was she to be found.

Spoke to her, came off sounding very Zen. She asked me then, what do u do when u are mind fucked. I smiled and said I slept.

The wisdom in knowing and the discipline in doing are poles apart.  Mom, is my guru, she gets up and does. The 2-3 things that make sense to her are done day in and day out, and the rest matters little because unlike me and lots of others she lives her life from direct experience.

I know you have ur own practice. The one thing, something that you do. I have known sworn skeptics who found this trace of peace in chanting with a mala, or simply stretching the body out, in breathing with consciousness, or maybe meditating.

 Whatever the form or format, I believe we each have a way of connecting with us that works for us. That does not involve external substances or crutches.  For me its time to return there, to thank it for getting me here, and for remembering the silence that is epic to all this drama.

Om shanti shanti shanthihi

helicoptering again

Male Monica had devised a term for my ability to spin an intricate web of confusion and chaos in my mind, based on a 100000 permutations and combinations of "but what", "if then" "if not" " i want:" " should live like this" ...."what if" and the "disillusionment with the present"

When these moments would strike, it would be accompanied with a strong dose of apathy. Apathy towards the present as it was, and failure to accept that this present was my life too. So caught up would one be in imagination a better future and living there, that the immediate present would be sent packing to the oldest trunk in the storage room. 

Would see the wisdom in "embracing the present" and letting go of the future, but have a tough time in maintaining a balance between a visualise what you want, live in harmony with it and then let the present be. If i began visualizing the future the present was almost always seen scrambling to catch up. 

Shall stop going round the mulberry tree of my life and face facts today of reality as is. Accept that as is and from there proceed to where one wants to be. 

Taking stock it is called. 

Work-wise.---- Need to get my act together, there is lots of promise in the air of this and that. but in the every day not enough to do. I need to get 

• more work hence more money
• use the law degree
• get an office space
• close open loops

Dead line - End of April. By then have initiated 5 new conversations. Got 1 retainer and 1 legal source of income. Net Bankable income to increase from current by at least 50% more. 

Fitness:  Hmm this is looking up and the body seems to be reacting well to the demands being made of it.

Spiritual -- ZERO ... Pathetic but there is no yoga, no meditation no blanket of the mind being created and time is not an excuse, come Monday i am going to join the early morning classes and stop looking for reasons not to go for them. .. the Kriya the wonderful escasty of Sadhguru is to be felt again and letting the vibration sail me towards that which i want rather than pushing furiously against the tide. 

Its the inbetween stage of not being able to give up half of what i have-- and not being content without attaining the half that is missing!

MBA---Please dear lord, please let one big penny of luck fall into my lap. There have been enough rocks thrown in the path and enough picking up that has happened at a constant rate for 2 years. For once, even if it may be not the best fit, can you throw me an easter gift and get this one to come through. What i shall do with it is secondary but for me being me, can this one please please please please be a positive!

Think i deserve some slack.. would u agree? 

Today is dedicated to getting the pace of the uncertain career to gather momentum. Time to narrow focus. Take some decisions and get the Indian timelines to adhere to mine. 

Wish me luck.