i2I...

When I had the dosa this morning, I kind of squirmed looking at the charred portion. I wanted a crispy, golden brown dosa on my plate. I went on to suggest my wife about how she needs to keep the heat at the optimum level even though she has turned out the best of the dosas on my plate before. Just one bad one and I started commenting ignoring all the good ones I had had.

The clothes I wear I have preference, the movies I watch, the books I read, the friends I keep, the places I go, the mobile phone I use and so on. Not only that, the mobile phone my wife uses, the dress she wears, the way she smiles and so on. Every damn thing out there I have a preference. I question if it is not delivered to my taste and I feel bad if it does not happen according to my preference.

You know the only thing you unquestioningly embraced in life ?

It is YOU.

Yes. When this body and mind was given to me and had evolved with me, I never even bothered to know about it. I never even questioned it once. I assumed it to be what I AM.

While I question everything about everyone I forgot to question this person who is questioning everything else.

Why is this spinning things out of control?

How did it reach this point where it simply goes on and on and drags me in?

How do I get into arguments and make mine and others life miserable?

How did it make me think I have to have this much money, a car, a home and on and on?

Did we ever question the nature of this body and mind that grew with us?

Did we have the opportunity to show preference to what we want and discard what we did not want out of it?

It does not happen unless you start to observe the patterns. You find that most of the things what you do tend to repeat on and on. Your craving for money, lust, power.

You find that your mind has cleverly camouflaged it with bells and whistles all the time but at the end of it leads you to a more affirmative image of ‘I’. A more powerful, a more lustful and a more wealthy ‘I’.

Is that good or bad?

As long as you cannot see the separation or question and introspect the images built by your mind there is nothing good for the real YOU. For sure it could be good or bad for what you are now.

i2I..

As I mentioned before, the ‘I’ is a sequence of images about ‘who you are’ reinforced by your mind over time. The one that is the current image is the most powerful. You vehemently defend and nurture it than your past.

If I say, ‘What you did to that woman was wrong’ after two years of your divorce, you care less. The same thing when said as you are going through it makes you retort and even stop seeking any words of advise. That is how powerful the image you hold now about yourself.

It is almost like a buffer cache (in computers) where the old is overlaid by the new. But in us, it is not exactly same as you still remember the old, but it does not evoke as much a reaction from you as the new. So this is really not about memory. This is about your response, reaction to those stored in your head.

If you look at this, it sounds very funny and outrageous at the same time. You have been going around thinking all what you did and what others said what you did is YOU. But the reality is no more than a bunch of images that were strong in you about who you are at that point in time.

That’s why we are always able to arrive at a better decision about things on hindsight. One you have a lot more data. But the most important thing is that you have nothing to lose. I mean not monetarily. But you no more need to defend that old image of YOU.

When I was working, I was consumed by work. I thought all I have to do is work harder and harder. And I did. I had this image of being the most hard working, and as a result most knowledgeable on the work I did. May be some others had this too. And many others might have had the image that I am brash and arrogant. Again I just have to remind you that the image about me in others is a result of the image of those people about themselves at that point in time. For example, if some one thought I am brash, he may be having a much stronger image to defend and hence cannot accommodate me. Whereas, some other may not have too much image and may be OK to hear me out. Coming back, this image of me as the most intelligent and smart at work had been assumed as what I AM by myself. Until I saw a failure, when I could not deliver what I promised. That is when I have the first jolt to the image I built up, the ‘I’ I had nurtured.

There is a Zen story about a person who bragged about his archery skills. He was convinced that he is the best archer in the town. In fact he was. But he carried that image so deep and would not believe if some one said ‘YOU are not THAT archer’. One day a master came along and he started bragging his archery skills to the master. The master took him to a hill and asked him to stand on a edge of a rock. When you look down, it was staggering. The master said “Now show your skills”. The archer trembled. He could not concentrate on the archery any longer. He bowed and moved away. The master went and stood on the steep edge and shot the arrow with the same level of calmness as he was before.

What the master did was to give a ‘jolt’ to the archer by making him stand on that steep rock. A jolt to his image and a situation to allow the archer to see it for himself. It was not really about the archery. The master had little doubt about his skills. But the image and all the bragging fed by the archer came in the way of archery. He would be a better archer if he could just keep that skill as a skill and be indifferent to that.

When a jolt happens in you life, it could be a failure of the task that you invested a great deal of time, it could be someone dear to you and acknowledged how great you were suddenly backing off, it could be a disease you get afflicted with or it could be even a small burst of anger on the road, all of this gives you that window to look at your ‘I’. The image that you have carefully built over time about YOU.

But to most of us, the images are inseparable from what we possibly are. In fact it is unimaginable to understand who this person is without any image.

Does such a thing exist?

If it is what would it be ?

i2I.

Being born in India and growing up reading stories of swamis and mystiques this one question had stuck in me for a long time. “Who am I”.

Who Am I ?

I have never seriously tried to answer this question or pursue for an answer. It has always been reading this in a book or listening to some one in a video.

The standard answers like “I am not this body” or “I am not this mind” were there in some corner and had cluttered my ability to answer this question. The more I had thought in the lines of some one else’s thinking the more I felt I was away from finding an answer.

For several years now after having gone through what I call a phase of my life, working, travelling, marrying, fathering it was clear to me that there is nothing significant in this life unless you decide to make it that way. And whatever I had done before is like a hazy distant dream fading away with this person, me, left behind.

It is almost like I was washed away by a stream of water and now standing with no drops remaining on me. You are back to where you were. However I should say there are still drops from the past on you but it is no longer a stream.

I guess it was during one of my morning jogs ..

When I felt how distant I was to the childhood image of me. As a child going to school, strictly obeying my parents and teachers, spending time with friends, reading books in the library, playing cricket…where is that guy?

Later into college, the late night discussions on varied topics with friends, the occasional intensity of exams, the pressure of coming out unscathed…where is that guy?

and on and on..a million times …the so called me in various places, various avatars

None of them can be what I am now except in photographs and the quaint smile of people who have seen me in those avatars.

10 years from now, this ME, will just reside in the photographs and a new ME will fill me.

In fact if I carefully observe I am being undone and redone every moment of this life. Every little emotion adds a colour to me, brings a new dimension of me.

Small nuggets of information about me is constantly updated by me from others, from the world every moment.

If I look at this phenomenon, every thing I have identified as myself does not hold. Some die immediately, some stick on and die later. There is nothing I vigorously defend as ‘I’ is true about me.

What I think I am simply does not exist anywhere unless I decide to acknowledge it. Almost all the time this happens automatically without me.

The true ME is the decider. The one, who if I start being that, will start deciding what can be ME.

Hard as hell. But the realization will get you there some day.

Robiotology

“At last” Ram sighed and looked at Lakshman.

“Yes, at last” Lakshman echoed immediately.

Both were quite happy at the outcome.

— — — — — — — -

It all started when Ram started this toothpaste company 20 years ago. It was a humble start in a nondescript town. He could easily get a lot of labour and was able to set up the assembly line quickly.

Workers from all around that place men and women reported to work early in the morning and went on with the filling in of the toothpaste manually after blowing it through a tube stuck in the nozzle. Further down the conveyor there were people closing it with a lid and putting it in a pack and passing it down which was further packed in cardboard boxes for shipment.

There were plenty of people and getting labour was not even in the list of top issues to worry about.

Ram had expanded his empire into cosmetics and hired Lakshman to initially help him oversee the operations as a General Manager. Soon there was competition that brought in much better technologies to scale up production and flood the market. Ram was stuck with the people who were not able to match.

That’s when he heard of Robots that can be used to automate the assembly line. He made several trips to Japan and the US along with Lakshman and struck deals to get his whole assembly line automated.

— — — — — — -

“How did he feel?” Ram asked Lakshman.

“He was almost on the verge of breaking down. I had to comfort him by taking him to the best bar in the town and make him gulp a few pints. He became al right then and talked for a while about the time he joined this company and see it grow”

“Did he say anything about all the robot stuff ?”

“Yes, he said he was awestruck when we brought in the robots to do the production and the way they did the job flawlessly. It seems he was happy to see his pay cheques doubling with the incentives on higher production and sales. But he did not expect that he will also be replaced by these robots. He thought marketing and sales would be difficult to replace as it involved meeting people”

Ram interjected “Yes, true until we could get that AI program which mimicked humans. Guess that was the final nail in the coffin”.

“Yeah…it was a cool piece of technology. But you know I never would have imagined we are taking it this far” Lakshman sounded a bit upset.

“So what are your plans for the weekend?” Ram switched the topic.

Lakshman took some time. He was recollecting the words the marketing guy spoke in the bar. “You need to be careful with Ram. With age and moving around with machines he seem to have lost the friendly way with which he used to treat us.”

“What did you ask?” he just turned around from his monitor to look at Ram.

He saw Ram’s steely eyes staring at him. For a moment it was unnerving. He has never seen Ram like that. “You meant the weekend plan right ?” Lakshman tried to sound normal. “Well may catch up with some old Hollywood movies..”.

Ram kept his gaze on Lakshman “You know what Lakshman. I have to tell you that without you I would not have gone this far with all this robot stuff. You helped me get to this point. Now we are the last two remaining. Everything else is a machine. I am tempted to think even you are not needed any longer. I wanted to be nice to you for all the time you spent here. But you know too many of our secrets. The people whom we silenced whenever there were protests. And it would be just too dangerous to let you go”.

Ram lifted his arm and pointed to Lakshman.

Lakshman knew this would happen one day. He was ready for it.

The next hour went in two robots fighting with each other.

— — — — —

Next day, when Ram entered his office, he saw a pile of electronic rubbish.

He called Lakshman into his office. “You see it happened at last. But never thought it would be so soon”.

“Well it was all your idea to put these two robots looking like us to get the factory automated. You and I could never have done this seeing all the hapless workers lose their jobs”

“Now how do we order these machines out there?”

On a thin wicket

The more you live life, the more you know you are on a extremely thin wicket. By this what I mean is, things you have seen and read and experienced all come together in your brain to make any sort of decision in your life. And our knowledge about anything is so tiny. I hear you say ‘Yeah..we know that’. Still I inch forward to put forth my views below.

For example, the food that you eat is heavily influenced by several factors. If you are born in a South Indian Brahmin family you are pretty much a vegetarian all your life. You have no clue what you are missing by not eating fish. Yes, from science (and Google — ‘benefits of eating fish’) we know that it is a source of Vitamin D, protien, Omega 3 fatty acids and so on. Now if you do not eat fish and do not drink soy milk (Google — ‘vitamin D rich foods’) or do not get adequate sun light which leaves your body to not absorb Vitamin D and so on…

But do you really care what the deficiency of Vitamin D in your body will do? Well, it (Google — vitamin D deficiency) tells that it can lead to soft bones to skeletal deformities to cardio vascular disease to cancer.

I guess you are getting the point across by now.

We have a huge amount of things going on in our body and the complex mind. And trying to know even a small thing like Vitamin D can lead you to all sort of places you have never been before and exactly bring you back in terms of your intelligence or sometimes even degrade your decision making (remember more knowledge is dangerous, well …, sometimes..)

Now you can back track and ask all sort of questions as to why would eating fish be a bad thing to why am I staying indoors and do this social networking or why am I not having that Soy milk?

Questioning does not help much. You still continue with your life with the habits you have been inculcated with or you have acquired over time.

So does it mean knowing all this information about that little thing called Vitamin D is a waste?

If you ask a Doctor or your friends who are medically trying to come up to speed reading all sort of things :-) , they will adequately warn you that you are making a mistake and you need a change in your life style. You need to walk more outside. It’s OK if you have aversion to eating non-vegetarian…But at least be out in the open in the mornings or evenings and get some milk going in your diet.

But if you ask me, I would say ‘Forget it’.

You know why? It is obvious from the above that, if a little thing like ‘Vitamin D’ can cause so much impact to your body, and that too the information is so incomplete, still evolving and updating, and massively unconnected with other pieces of information (read a Vitamin A or a colo-rectal cancer , if such a thing exists :-) then what the heck ?

By now it is clear that we are horribly deficient on knowing ‘Who we are’ (not the philosophical stance I took in other articles) but instead the knowledge about our own physical body. The more you search and learn the more it is obvious that we know ( I mean not just you and me, but humans themselves) very little and what little we know are just pointed nuggets of information completely disconnected in our overall understanding of health. (Again I digress to think that had Larry Page and Sergey Brin not made Google we would still be thinking we know everything. But now that we have most of the information what we know out there in front of us, it becomes clearer that we have a long long way to go on any small thing and we will still be unfinished like the way the word Infinitesimal comes to mean what it means. Well I may be missing on that 48 million 52 thousandth search result which may have all the answers to my problems, but I need to wait for that to bubble up in eternity)

It looks like a “Huge, Huge Work in progress’ to me. This whole science and knowledge and all that stuff and it ain’t gonna get over any time soon baby! But there is no other way out there as an alternate as well to pin your hopes on.

OK, now that I have frightened you adequately (or enlightened you in some other ways), it turns out to be ‘What can we do from here?” type of thinking.

I guess I would say this. Which had been said a million times in a million possible ways by elders and people who have lived on this planet before you (well could be you as well :-) and I repeat for the sake of ending this article on a happy note.

1. Just enjoy what you do.
2. Repeat 1
3. Repeat 2

Belittling Intelligence

When you cross the forties, it is likely you have seen a large part of life and you kind of know what you will get in the remaining time seeing those in front of you.

I have seen that fatigue sets in in many. The pursuit of materialism changes over to some extent at least to some as pursuit of happiness. And suddenly they begin to belittle the mind.

Mind, the source of all what you did suddenly seem to bring in more misery or seem to stand in the way for you in your pursuit of happiness. You find people telling everywhere to cut down on your thoughts and mind is the root cause of all problems.

Spiritual seekers often misunderstand this. They even begin to find animals to be more happier than human beings. I have had discussions with friends about how animals do not THINK like humans (they may have a very limited sense) and hence they are not tortured by thinking. Anything that needs deep thinking is scorned at.

You stop watching movies that are very deep. You are fine with those comedy, action, light weight stuff. You stop reading deeper things and you even keep away from people who do that. You start blunting the very weapon which gave you all the pleasures of life until now and dumb yourself down in the idea of becoming happy.

And often I find that you do not become happy either by doing all this. In fact you become worse. You lose the sharpness, as well as you allow thoughts that are surface level, shallow, you end up having conversations that are meaningless and in short you chicken out of an intense living by having wrongly identifying the root cause of all your miseries as your mind and thoughts and the intelligence which defined you over the years.

Now, I am asking you to stop doing this, if at all you were in this path. Instead, sharpen your intellect to be able to better see things. What led you to this path is not the mind, but what you had gathered in your mind. Plenty of garbage of this and that. Sharpen your intellect to identify the garbage and keep your mind to remain free of it. Unburden your mind of the contents. Keep vigil constantly on what gets in. But remember that it should be done with an ease, with a sense of having your mind as a tool, a certain level of ease with which you would operate a tool that lies outside of you like driving a car.

Back to the future

While crossing the bed and entering the bath, Ram noticed the crumpled bedsheets on the bed.

“Whoa” he muttered and started folding them to put them in place. He remembered the previous night when his son and wife had used them unfolding it , which was folded in the day before by him. Now he is again at it.

The same thing follows now. Bath, breakfast, bye to office, back home and bed. That is why we like watching movies or going for shopping he thought. They seem to occur so rarely in our lives and hold the key to the other part of existence which is all those ‘B’s above.

“When I was a kid, I used to jump at every possibility. And every moment was a possibility. Where did it all go?” He brought in Sita into the fold of his thoughts. Sita had just come upstairs, of course, to keep some toy or something in its place displaced by the kid.

This is a subject that touches the very core of Sita. She has been bitten by this a lot more than Ram. “ Just imagine the millions of folks right now folding bed sheets around the world” she said and laughed heartily.

Ram started laughing and it became uncontrollable, the thought of joining the millions in folding bedsheets. He was now ROFL.

“This is sheer madness” he said.

“What?” she asked.

“This existence. And the way we have made this out to be” he said.

“So many things have entered our lives, so many objects and so many things to maintain and put it in its place, maintain them, else it becomes a living hell. And the irony is these objects were supposed to help us. This bed is supposed to help us have a cosy sleep, these lights to help us read, these laptops, mobiles, books, printer, TV, washing machines, Cars and on and on..but instead, they all come to torment us in many ways than you realize. They keep failing, we keep fixing them. They keep moving off, we keep putting them in place. They keep lagging behind and we keep upgrading them. There are warranties, service people, marketing calls, emails, financial transactions, and a whole lot that comes with them and enters our lives when all I wanted was to watch a damn Television program.

Don’t you see where this is all heading? This crazy existence?”

Ram paused. He loves to speak long sentences to convey his mind. And often Sita loses patience. So this time he ensured he comes a full round trying to end it clearly without leaving it half way.

“So throw all of them out?” She asked.

“Will we miss them at all?” he asked.

“No not at all. I guess the best thing is to start all over again. Just get rid of everything in your life that seem to occupy a tiny spot in your brain and start fresh all over. As if you just got out of college or something. In fact, if you say yes, I can give many of these to the housemaid and the fellow doing the laundry at the street corner” She said.

Ram thought for a while and agreed it to be the best thing that would help him manage the entropy.

Next few hours went in listing out things into the OLXs of the web and some kept for distribution.

Got rid of the TV. Got rid of the washing machine. Got rid of a old laptop. Got rid of the inkjet printer which had to be repaired twice without using it much. Got rid of cameras that load films, mobiles, medicines. Got rid of a lot of clothes, Got rid of lot of utensils in the kitchen. Got rid of furnitures from aeons. Got rid of a old car, a bi-cycle and a ton of toys. He deleted a whole lot of contact numbers on his mobile.

“I can smell freedom” he chuckled.

Suddenly the house looked quite empty.

“OK. I need to get back to work” he turned on his laptop.

He saw the stock market is doing fine. He logged in to find his stock position. He saw there was this amazing trailer of the new movie. He watched that.

His mobile screamed of a chat message from his friend. He briefly responded to it.

There was an offer on the vacation he wanted to do in his inbox. He could not resist seeing it.

Ram was now very busy. Like he was yesterday. Like he was the day before.

Sita shouted from the kitchen. “Hey Ram, did you see that vegetable cutter?”.

It took some time to sink in for Ram. He then shouted back.

“It was given off in that OLX sale”

The Gate of Love

There were four people waiting before me. We were all seated comfortably. It was quite hazy outside where we waited. Mostly like fog. I was not sure how long it will take for the gate to open. I was slipping into some sort of dream and then waking up to find that we were all still there.

Vaguely, very vaguely her face appeared in one of those dream — wakeup sequences I was going through. I could see a pall of gloom in her eyes.

******

She was not the most beautiful in our batch. But she had the grace and intelligence which I liked when I first saw her. I used to frequent the college library. It was a cool and shady place with lots of trees and a huge building. My haunt was the basement where I could read a lot of old papers. Not newspapers but research papers. I was deep into understanding human mind being a psychology major. It was fascinating. I used to spend all day there sometimes. It was during one of those visits there when I was sitting in that basement she crossed me. I was buried in thoughts but something made me look at her.

She came and sat across me. I looked up and said “Hi”.

She said “Hi”.

That was it. She was into her world and I was. Was I ?

Second time it was the shopping complex which we used to call as SC. She had come with few of her friends and I was alone with a juice. She recognised me and said “Hi How are you?”. I guess she would have stopped at “Hi” but it extended a bit to maintain continuity. There was a five minute exchange of personal details.

She was doing computer science. She was that hard working and intelligent combination but at the same time was very fascinating to have conversation with. We would have met few more times before it became like a regular affair. We had so many diverse topics to cover. I used to talk about Ray Kurzweil and his thoughts on how to construct a mind. She used to talk about algorithms that can be devised to simulate that. I used to talk about politics and the psychology of hoarding wealth and she used to talk about how machines can bring order to this world. It was always like connecting disparate things which brought out completely new meaning. And both of us had a taste for that I felt.

******

The man in the front, I have seen him somewhere. Though the face is not all that clear because of this fog, I could make out from his features that he is known to me somehow.

But this stupid state of mine moving between some sort of dream world and this haze all around. My God, what a crazy state to be in.

My mind slipped again I guess.

*******

It was on a rainy day in front of the beautiful lake inside our campus that I told her about my wish to be with her forever. It was quite dramatic I thought. I had been with this thought for a long time and went sleepless over it. But the previous night was one of those best nights when I got a solid sleep and fresh I was out of bed like a flower. All this gave me the courage to call her out. She was sort of liking me which I was sure of. But the thought of living with her is not something that I would still dare to tell her directly. I thought there is a small chance that she might reject it and it will bring some sort of awkwardness. But when we went to the SC, got a juice for ourselves and started walking around the lake, it was spontaneous. The conversation was like this..

‘What happened to you..Didn’t see you for a while’ — She

‘I had called you several times…you do not seem to respond’ — He

‘No…oh my God, I had a trouble with this phone, just got the firmware updated’ — She

‘You look fresh today’ — She

‘Yeah, had a good sleep after a while’ — He

‘Why ? Slogging for the exams?’ — She

‘Yes sort of, but you know you were also responsible. I had to spend more time because you were occupying my mind as well. Will you marry me?’ — He.

It was quite sudden for me to go there. She was silent. I was kind of imagining what went on in her mind ‘Take off for higher studies, new people, new environment, broader life’ and where I fit in into that equation.

And it is hard to find answers for all that as answering this question means answering all of that. Which is hard.

Stupid me. Knowing all this and I still popped out something nasty I thought.

********

The man in the front was trying to get up from his seat. After great difficulty he went and knocked on the gate. The gate was as before silent and still. When will it open ? Why am I waiting here? Who is that guy?

*********

When I went back to my hostel, I was sure the relationship had broken. Several days it went like that. I was busy with some presentations. The fellow next door was quite noisy with his rock music. It used to be like that. But now I was hearing it. I went and knocked his door when he was listening to ‘Doors’.

‘Hey man, nice music’ — I

‘Hey, what man come on in, long time’ — He

‘Wow, you have a living out of this place man’ — I

He had a refrigerator, music system, TV, nice cozy bed, air conditioner, bean bag and a lot of big posters of grown up women around.

‘What happened to the girl’ — He

‘Nothing..just a brief hiatus’ — I

‘You look depressed. I have never seen you like this’ — He

‘Yeah, a bit, but I will get over it’ — I

‘Why don’t you have a gulp’ — He

He opened the fridge and poured a bottle of something and gave me a glass.

I badly needed one and I gulped. It went on.

At some point everything was slowing down around me. I saw him hand over a glass of milk. I gulped that too.

I am now watching him talk something. His lips were growing big by the minute into something monstrous and uttering those words.

It had become dark everywhere.

‘Why don’t we go for a ride?’ — He

‘Sure..’ I was not sure if I said that.

We both walked outside the hostel. His super bike was parked outside.

Next moment I felt the rush of fresh midnight air whizzing past me, sitting behind him.

He was talking something which whizzed past. I guess he asked me ‘You enjoying the ride’. I nodded my head.

We had a cup of coffee in some distant road side shop. The folks around were staring at us and our bike.

On the way back, he missed slowing down over a couple of speed breakers. I was still flying high with all that that went in. But I could see a bit better now.

There was this truck coming against us. He took to the side and the next moment we both were flying into the sky.

***********

Now a man dressed in a black overall and a hood had come out of the gate. And I could see him, my next door friend talking to that man. He was shaking his head heavily for some of the questions asked by the man. He was taken in and the door closed.

************

I woke up and smelt hospital.

I saw her. It appeared like she had been waiting for me to open my eyes. A smile appeared on her face.

‘You are alright’ — She

‘What happened ?’ — I

‘You are alright. Thank God, Thank God…’ She kept repeating.

‘What happened , why am I here ?’ — I

‘Don’t worry just take rest’ — She

I felt weak.

When she came back bringing a doctor,

‘What happened to my friend’ — I

She looked at the Doctor. The Doctor was not in a hurry to answer that. It appeared he was working out within himself.

‘He is fine’ — Doctor said and looked at my girl.

***********

I knew he is no more. I no longer waited at the gate.