The Drifter's Direction

I have known people, who have been quite sure of what they wanted to do in life and even arrived where they knew they wanted to be. I have admired their clarity. I, on the other hand have been a drifter, never sure what I wanted to do or be in life and as I drifted from one course to another considered one job or another, I was not arriving anywhere, rather I was forever eliminating what I didn't want!

Definitely not medicine or engineering, too much study involved, try agriculture maybe. Nope, agriculture as a subject was proving too memory based for me; bailed out from the field after graduating into Environment Science, hoping I might find something interesting to do in that sphere.

Non Governmental Organisations seemed interesting but they worked where I couldn’t communicate my cosmopolitan mindset. Education field could provide an opportunity to communicate? Yeah this seems right for me and yet there were lot of other works, and interferences involved which edged out the freedom and hence efficiency of the communication.

I am sure I do not seem very practical? After all, any job will have one or the other uninteresting aspect to it! Why wouldn't I adjust, why was I only always eliminating what I did not want to do? Yeah it is true I did not need a job for a living, I needed it rather to express my being...

And finally by a twist of circumstances and unrelated happenings, through those very, seemingly wrong choices and the people and institutions I came across as a result of those choices, I arrived at the job I found just right for me. Preparing a course material for college in my subject Environmental Science. In this work, there was to be clearly thought out written communication, there was freedom to express more or less the way I wanted to, and that too in a subject I had passion for. Just an over one year work, but it brought me the satisfaction I had been looking for all my life. I realized then, that we all have an internal compass and one way of arriving at what we want is through a process of eliminating what we don’t want!

And even as I journeyed through the process of preparing the material, there were intriguing coincidences. Whichever topic I was working on,seemed to be the topic the world was working on during the same time frame.

When I was writing about nuclear hazards, the Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan happened and I added an additional reading and perspective on it.
When I was writing on capitalism affecting food distribution, highly priced tomatoes were being abandoned by farmers on the roads of Jharkhand because middlemen wouldn’t pay them even the production cost, leave alone transportation cost.

Whatever topic my mind was filled with were the topics my eyes fell upon wherever I looked, newspapers, books, magazines, even facebook! It was as if the topics were travelling to me. In that period it was as if the universe had been helping me, not only in collecting and perfecting the content, but even strangely in meeting deadlines; as if I had been destined to do this Job in this time frame.

What I could conclude is exactly what Paulo Cohelo says in Alchemist, “There are no coincidences”. When we, our very core, wants something, however unsure we are about what it is, all things work together to bring it to us, be it through a process of elimination. And so however winding, long or tormentous our road may seem, we are never drifting; rather we are always going where we are meant to go.

Jealousy Unveiled

It is said in some scriptures in effect that if a man can deal justly, let him have two wives, otherwise if he fears he cannot be fair to both, then let him have only one. Jealousy is a trait often associated with women fighting over one man, and women are often insinuated as possessing too much of the trait. But I have felt that in fact women suffer from jealousy because of a basic ineptness in men! The common man is by nature not only attracted to many women but is also basically unfair, uncaring or tactless. Women being perceptive and more emotionally developed beings (as most people would agree), are more sensitive to unfairness and end up in the vicious hold of jealousy. In fact, I have known that women can be the best of friends to each other, and generally, if they have an issue that breaks the friendship it more often than not is the result of an insensitive or unjust man who came in between them, making one jealous of the other. By the way, why men don’t suffer as much from jealousy is because they are either busy looking at other women, or have wise or caring wives who know how to avoid making her mate jealous. And then if a man suffers jealousy, it's , mostly, either because the woman intended to make him jealous or the man is getting unreasonably possessive perhaps because of his own insecurities.

Jealousy unveiled and confronted is jealousy conquered. Avoiding it can worsen the situation irretrievably. So here, I address women folk, and let's see how to cope with the greens... Well the first point is - Is it fair to expect something from Men that they are basically not capable of ? It is like asking a monkey to walk erect! How foolish can we women be! I read somewhere, "If you ever feel like making your man understand something then hit your head against a wall until that feeling goes away!" The long and short of it is: “It is we women who have to change (as always) to manage our green emotion." 

So here are some truths we need to swallow. Of course, all men are naturally drawn to beautiful women, but the one who cares for his woman (however ordinary) will never make her feel less, or hurt her self-esteem, because, any sensible man knows that to be appreciated by her man for what she is happens to be the very ground for the woman. All men surely can have affection for more than one woman in life, but the one who cares for his relationships will deal fairly in resolving conflicts, and while expressing his affections. The fact remains that 'caring men are a rare breed'!

Women are just as much (or maybe more) jealous of emotional attachments in a man as of physical attractions and that is difficult for men to understand. For women, the biggest need is affection and not sex, and often the reason they give sex is to get affection whereas a man is affectionate until he gets sex, from which point he can think only of sex. So when affection is dealt unfairly among the women in a man’s life, the wife, the sexual partner can get jealous, which the man, whose primary need is sex, fails to understand. That is why a long courting period before hitching is a must. Indeed, that does not guarantee anything. So I would like to give a probably 'wild' suggestion.  If you need only affection then don’t give sex to your love interest because the assumption that sex buys love is as naive as expecting the sun to continue shining during late evening.

One way of putting an end to the green emotion is of course to end the emotional tie up that is causing jealousy, but the fall back is, it does not help with the next emotional tie up. So women, there has to be a solution that helps avoid jealousy in relationship that man is programmed to arouse. Yes, I am sure you guessed right; the answer is ‘expect nothing’. Now can you expect rivers to flow in the desert? But if you go forward expecting a desert and find a river, how happy you would be. So girls, don’t blame your love interests, blame your thick heads for expecting flowers on pine trees. Look it up, pines bear only cones. Indeed you have caused your own miseries. However it is wise to expect all trees to be pine trees as you would be allowing yourself the chance to be pleasantly surprised...

But then what do you do for your inborn hunger for affection…hmm..well….pray to god to give you luck? Or become the source of such love. 'Embodied Love' does not need any external contribution. Women have a good chance of finding that well-spring within because their need is great and they are sensible to understand it is not to be found out there. Yes, we need to turn inwards. The sooner we do, the better life becomes.

The Real Playground

I had to pressure my girl a bit to explore the river and not just look at it and then walk away to the swimming pool. I was rewarded later for this persuation by her words, "Mom I never knew the river is so much fun". I realized that today's kids from the concrete jungles do need a little persuation to realise the fun in exploring nature. We have got so used to the buildings, the computers, the TV, the pool, that it has become our whole world; from where we watch nature from afar, not participating in its flow, not experiencing, exploring or understanding what it means to be part of it. We jump into the regularity of the pool but do not care to cautiously explore the mystery and variety of the river. It is because we in our safe world don't know the fun in mystery.

I have been lucky to have explored nature in my ancestral homes in Kerala. In the hilly terrains we had lot of fun jumping into mountain pools watching the waterspiders skitting about, fishing with meshed cloth towels, climbing up slippery rocks to have a look at that mysterious cave which foxes were said to inhabit.

I always used to think there are only artificial gardens(which don't excite me) and nothing natural to explore in big cities like Bangalore..until my husband introduced us to riverside resorts.

The river was a shallow stream near the resort we were staying in. It rushed at some spots and some places it was quite still. I walked in and explored the river bed and found that it was rocky and not even knee deep. I mentally marked a circle in which it would be safe for the kids. I knew this was important as I almost drowned once when I quite naively swam into a river which I did not know about, which we had just come by during a road trip. It was without water in a region where the sandy bed was visible, giving the wrong impression that it was reasonably shallow. I swam along the shore not far from the sloping bank but when I kept my feet down a second time, towards the visible exposed river bed, I panicked not finding the river bed under my feet. It was a sand mined river!! I managed to swim to the exposed river bed (just a few strokes away) but it did leave me jittery about waters for a while though eventually it was a worthwhile learning experience. Never swim into waters you have no idea about especially if it has a sandy bed, you just cant know what man must have done to it!

We walked on the rocks, avoiding the moss ridden ones. Explored the rush of the waters over the rocks, put our hand in and watched the water glide past and then I seated my kids in the still regions of the water where they could watch the water spiders and fishes. I went to a cradle shaped rock that I had noticed in the water where the water was at its fastest and holding two rocks I dipped myself in lodging myself into the cradle with water rushing over me.... and as I came up, I had smelled, tasted and been one with the river. This was what I loved, experiencing the oneness with nature.

The next morning we walked barefoot on the poolside grass, something we had not done in a long while, but oh it was chilly and then I thought of my slippers and why I wore it! I looked at the birds unmindful of the chill, making nests that couldn't keep the chill out. No wonder man made slippers and houses. But I had planned to be bare foot and so later in the day we played bare feet in a natural patch, the games of my childhood and then I stamped on a bramble. Eeek, where are my slippers!


We lay down and watched the birds. I wondered how all day birds and animals have no other purpose but to find their food and take intermittent naps! Lying there I could course the entire journey of man from the forest to houses, gathering to agriculture, leaves to clothes, walking barefoot to vehicles. It was all a natural movement.

Yet in our journey to better adapt to nature we had more and more spare time in our hands to not just create a safe region for us, but go ahead and push nature into a bystander, corrupt its natural features and flow. I was reminded of a quote I had used in my environmental science course book.

"If in a city we had six vacant lots available to the youngsters of a neighborhood for playing ball, it might be "development" to build houses on the first, and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and even the fifth, but when we build houses on the last one, we forget what houses are for.”- Aldo Leopold
Development was a natural progression but let it not become the reason to forget where we came from. Let us not forget to allow an equal space for our origins, leaving it in its pristine glory, mystery and also regularity. And finally lets not forget to play into the magical spell of our real playground.

Silence Speaks...

My daughter showed me today a picture she had drawn, which she explained was of a person throwing trash which instead of falling in the dustbin falls on Supandi's head!

Well not going into the logic of how that could have happened, let us be reminded that in fact it happens often in life! Our baggage of raw emotions which should go into trash falls on somebody's head! We have every right to our emotions but our emotions are actually 'our problem' that we have to learn to deal with. Often we have to ask ourselves, is it the other person hurting me or am I hurting myself? When it could be our own assumptions hurting us, opening up our emotions is as good as throwing trash where it shouldn't be thrown. Jesus said "You judge according to the flesh. I Judge no one"(though he judged both in body and spirit and his judgements were correct)We judge according to what we are and rarely according to what our spirit our total self reveals to us, therefore we must be aware that we can be more often wrong than right in our judgements.

Where things have to be spoken, definitely we should speak but any abuse included in it is yet again trash. Correcting is love but abusing is a desire to hurt which is not love. It does happen sometimes as we are all human and prone to wanting to hurt in return for real or assumed hurt but to recognize it as a mistake and apologizing is important because each person is a temple of god and a temple is not the place to throw trash in. So much better to keep silent giving the benefit of doubt and let time reveal the truth. Every idle word is judged by God so we should use our words with prudence.

But then if we cant show or speak all our emotions, how do we manage it or find a solution to our problems? What works for me is writing it down, in other words opening up all the emotions in a space where I am not judged, where I can be free to be myself. To some it could be a friend or a spouse. Here we have to sort out the good from the bad, the right from the wrong, the assumed from the real. This process automatically can exhume the bad and the good can be extracted. It gives us the time to quiet our emotions and in the process we also begin to understand the situation from all perspectives. "The quieter we are, the more we are able to hear" Zen. It gives us the clarity to deal with our situation. It helps us decide whether we should be silent or should speak up.

Now it is important to know that it is not always speech that can clear problems. We should recognize that there is a power in silence that puts good the adage "Speech is silver, silence is golden."

Silence speaks in ways that speech cannot. It often holds much more of meaning than words do and can hold more power than speech. It may say I have an opinion and prod the other to probe the possibilities of that opinion and take what it needs to correct itself without us having said a word. "In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends." Martin Luther King Jr. In being silent we not only show respect that the other is not a dustbin for our thoughtless words at that time, but also allow the other to understand our silence if they do care to know our mind. We leave the choice to them.

Your silence can say, I don't care to be a people pleaser, I don't care how my speech or silence can effect you or your opinion of me.“It is great wisdom to know how to be silent and to look at neither the remarks, nor the deeds, nor the lives of others.” St. John of the Cross. Silence here tells people about you that; good or bad, you are comfortable with yourself and are not affected by anybody's opinion.

Your silence can say that I don't want to prove any point. I don't care what opinion you form or that I don't want to be proved correct, I am self assured. It gives weight to the fact that you believe you are right.

Or we turn silent where we know speech does not help. It reminds me of a bible passage in which Jesus says that "You do not believe me because I speak the truth"(While you believe all the liers). This happens often in life. People may like lies or like people who praise them to get benefits from them. Or they may know the truth but prefer the lies. In such situations often it is better not to waste energy speaking. Your silence here would have said, If you dont want the truth, I dont care to say it. Here your silence may either let the other take the meaning in it as whatever they want to believe for their own good or if truth was different and still bearable to the other, silence would also have said the truth without a spoken word

We also have to recognize the situations in which we have to choose silence even when it may lead us to be misunderstood or look like the wrong one; going against our natural impulses to point out the right when things are wrong. Because it is also wisdom to know where not to make our wisdom evident. Here it may often require to wisely give up our ego but giving up the ego for the larger good turns out a good bargain eventually.

Finally 'Silence' should be out of choice.That is, where we recognize that we have to speak, we should. It is very rightly said that Wisdom is in knowing when to speak your mind and when to mind your speech...


"Confidence Counts" is a guest post by me for the blog "Whatever it Takes" that deals with an ingredient that can make the wrong- right and allows the right to be-right. It is the power behind powers.

Valentine Revisited

When I reread my poem on Valentine I realised it is in spirit with my tag line "I Me Myself"..except for a missing stanza on Myself, so I added it here( 3rd stanza) without disturbing the earlier post that is perfect in itself as it stemmed from a different thought. This take on 'Myself' I add simply for myself...

What is "I me and myself". I believe it is there in everybody's relational dealings with the world, where a raw 'I' is transformed into an adapted 'me' to cope with the world. It is therefore the mechanism and capacity to cope with the stresses of the world. To explain where 'myself' fits in in this picture, I will take an example of soil formation; the soil profile has transitional layers from one stage(layer) of soil to another. Like the unweathered bedrock and the weathered rock over it, sometimes has an active weathering state in between. Similarly the pure essence of 'I' and the clarity of 'Me' sometimes has a transitional stage of a muddled 'Myself' which has imperfections but which still opens up to a process that releases the impurities and brings forth clarity and wisdom.

"My self" is the space that creates the joys and the griefs from any circumstance by its interpretations of the circumstance. This is brought forth to its best when we realize our duty towards ourself in terms of survival and growth in the world.It then becomes the bed of love for ourselves which analyzes circumstances and opens the wisdom in our soul which in turn transform every troubled thought into catalysts to more joy and peace in our heart. Just like a bees sharp probe brings up honey from deep within....

'Myself' then becomes the responsibility towards ourself to turn every sting of grief into precursor to lasting Joy, an aid to the opening of the fountain of Bliss within us....


MY BEST VALENTINE


It's a day of Love, a day to give
A day of friendship, joy to live
But first I have a Heart of Mine!
I treat it well, my Valentine

It cares for all, it cries for peace
It bleeds for love, it smiles with ease
And then all lone the day?! It's fine...
as 'I', am my best Valentine!

It hears me out, its listening heals,
It clears my thoughts, its silence speaks,
It beds with love a space that's mine
'Myself', My nest My Valentine

It mends my dream, eases my frown
It holds my wishes, n'er let's me down
All darkness, it's my one sunshine!
Yes 'Me', my very best Valentine...

The earlier post is "Valentine for the Loved or Unloved"

Funny ME

I have understood one thing lately, that there is no better way to look at oneself than in a way, where we could laugh at our own self. I realised this when a friend recently told me that Proust reminded her of me and showed me a video that tickled my funny bone !! Marcel Proust is a novelist (1930), the author of the seven volumes collectively called" In Search of Lost Time" which is considered a masterpiece because of the underlying philosophy of how to really appreciate life even in the little things. You might wonder what is funny about this outrageous comparison!

I must be excused as I was hearing about Proust for the first time and what I really saw in the video about Proust rather than making me heady with pride showed me something to laugh at..at him and myself. The video of how Proust can change your life conveyed to me certain things about Proust that I accepted that there was a similarity. Although my friend meant that Proust's and my thinking process seemed similar, the similarity I saw, however,  was a bit different.

 Proust's book describes small things at great lengths and so it is suggested that one could read it only if confined to bed with illness or a broken leg with simply "NOTHING" else to do. Yeah I have sometimes had to hold my friends by the neck and shove my writings down their throats. In the video Proust is shown cutting some portions of a page and sticking it somewhere else. Well if he really was the compulsive editor like me, I am infinitely more lucky, I have the computer! Proust is shown questioning a diplomat regarding the minutest details of his routine interrupting from time to time to make him elaborate where he might have rushed past. It was the diplomats expressions this time that made me laugh. Yeah I guess I have managed that expression onto some of my close friends' faces!

Later after I read the book 'Proust can change your life' by Alain De Botton, I could see what I might have discussed with my friend that led to such a linking! However outrageous it may sound, there were certain ideas that felt similar, like the "importance of not fully getting what one wants" as an essential ingredient to be happy. Apart from that, maybe the detached way of dealing with certain topics was a similarity, and especially I think the understanding that no book is complete in itself and we have to depend on our own intuition (according to Proust in a book we may discover our own unexpressed thoughts but these may not be complete in itself without some personal editing). But unlike Proust I don't really indulge my whole self in the minutest details of living like sipping a cup of coffee! I am more hurried. Also unlike Proust I don't think what I write is what I couldn't make use of in real life (However audacious I might sound.) I write mainly because writing benefits me by helping me think clearer and find solutions that take me towards a better direction whereas for Proust his wisdom probably reconciled him to his suffering which (for more or less understandable reasons) he couldn't change.

But what I rather admired is the treatment of Proust by Alain De Botton. He told us how serious people can be so funny. What I took from Alain De Botton is the understanding that what we need is to laugh affectionately at others and ourselves and take each person, their qualities, their faults, less seriously.

Alain De Botton speaks in Ted Talk about his philosophy of success in which what attracted me, was his view on modern society, of how it has become centered on the self. We seek out nature not for health but because we want to run away from the human anthill, from our dramas, we do want to be centered on something that is not human. Yes, It does appear that we have become more serious than we need to be about ourselves.

This touched me more as I had just come back from a nature experience, away from traffic, away from the computer, away from the serials I follow; watching the slow unhurried existence of nature in the Vidarbh region of Maharashtra, where in its windy air unwillingly trying a hand at the kite flying suddenly lifted my spirits when the kite did really take off! It lifted also the drooping corners of my mouth as it brought back the child in me. The rest of the days there, all I wanted to really do was learn to fly a kite, quite like the unthinking, unhurried little child who would take her own sweet time for a wasteful activity. Proust would have nodded his approval.

Anyway who really knows what is important enough to do in life. I guess as long as 'I' am not so important, anything could be worth wasting time on...

Starting All Over!

There are few joys compared to starting all over! A new year, a new place, new people....The new has something to hope for, something to look forward to, where the old often has exhausted itself. The last month, exhausted options, absorbed lessons. ..

I would say life has not always turned out as I expected, but I wouldn’t say in the end, I did not relish life as it turned out to be! I have been, I would also say, blessed with the new, even when I wished to settle down at one, be it places or friends! Seven places before marriage and four after, not including Bangalore where I lived four times in all the years put together. Which place do I call my place, maybe the place that calls me back the most? I have been lucky to live near Goa after marriage, to have known traffic free roads of Kudal and Chiplun, where long drives were immensely relaxing and nature was so lush. Yet it is very rare that a place has held me back, maybe once, an apartment where I could see a lake from my window in a place like Pune. But eventually the signs are so clear when it is time to move, that once done with it however painfully, I rarely look back!

People ask me which place or friends I miss. I am sure I cut across as hard hearted when I don’t have a place or person I miss. For me the place I live, the best friend I have in that place, is all that matters! I am surprised when my old friends remember details of long past times, as one would of a moment ago,but that are almost clean out of my mind as a past life would be! Being reminded of them is, for me, like having undergone a past life regression session, and I dare not admit that to my dear old friends who have carried the memories so religiously! I even surprise and scare myself with this capacity not to look back at even the most fabulous of times, even those that had been immensely difficult to give up! Which friend do I belong to then, maybe the friend who cares to keep holding my hand, whatever the distances that may come in!

I have often thought of myself as absent minded, not interested in devoting my whole mind to the routines, not living in the present, but some days like today, as I realise I am starting over, I also realise I am most present where it really matters. I do live each place fully, absorb each friend totally, so that when I part I carry their essence in me, they are added on to what I am. We usually miss something which wasn’t lived fully, which wasn’t totally added on to us.

Starting over again for me is the point of time when comes the awareness that I am a new added up person. Each place, each person, each year adds on to us in more ways than mere figures! Reminds me of the words from a song..

Maine tinke uthaye huen hain paronpe, ashiana nahin hai mera. I don’t have a nest...I carry the straws in my feathers.

Sometimes the best things about life can be found in not having a nest, in starting all over, in growing again in a new soil, however painful each uprooting is...