Life

Such a beautiful morning. Birds are singing so many songs that strike chords in the human soul. Leaves are waving their hands as if inviting us to embrace them. A mild smell of winter is in the air. The human mind is full of so many thoughts. Thoughts about different fears and ambitions. Thoughts about setting up the kids, buying a property, planning a vacation, or changing jobs. Thoughts about becoming and achieving. Thoughts about the past. Guilt, shame, grudges, feeling victimised, and so on. These thoughts keep pulling us into the past and future and never let us stay in the present moment to enjoy the beautiful nature just outside the window. The stories our brains create are very gross. While reality is very subtle. We create stories about the good and the bad, right and wrong, pain and pleasure. "Gupta is to bekaar aadmi hain, apne bete ki shadi me bhi nahi aaye." Do we ever contemplate how we define a good person and a bad person? Somebody who is useful to us is a goo...

Watched the movie Drishyam. The mother of a boy who was murdered wants to take revenge. The father of a girl who was sexually abused wants to protect his wife, who killed the boy in self-defence. The rest of the story follows the manipulation of evidence and the planting of a story everyone believes to be true. After watching the movie, I wondered whether it is possible to distinguish between story and reality. The advocate for the accused, as well as the judge, believes the accused’s story of innocence. All of us believe in numerous stories. Human beings are the most evolved beings on this Earth. We are the only living beings in this entire cosmos. We are making great developments by building cities. When we fall ill, we feel safe in doctors’ hands. We believe in the story of family, love, our own people, and our own community. Almost all of us have believed the story of religion for centuries. The story about the heavens and souls. What if all these are just stories believed by the m...

It's strange to see entitled people. There is a story about a donkey that gets painted like a tiger, and the other animals start treating him like the king of the forest. But as soon as he opens his mouth, everyone learns the truth, and he becomes a laughingstock. A donkey's entitlement can't last long, but we've all noticed entitled people around us who keep enjoying it for a long time. An entitled child born into a rich family, an employee who reaches a position through favouritism, a second-generation politician who got everything on a platter, or a pampered spouse doing nothing in life.  There may be three scenarios. First, a person gets a position or stature below his performance; second, above his performance; and third, on par. Similar scenarios may apply to work quality and the person's capacity. In the first scenario, a person gets work far below his capacity; in the second, far above his capacity; and in the third, on par.   Low stature ...

Does spirituality mean that when a tiger is chasing us, we won't try to save our lives? Does it mean that if someone is bullying us, we won't push back? Does it mean that when some bacteria attacks us, we will not take antibiotics? Does it mean being in a vegetative state? I don't think that can ever be the meaning of spirituality? Going by that logic, the Pandavas should have let go of their claim, and Ram would have let go of his search for Sita.  Does that mean that we should live an egoistic life, driven by the ego? "I am mine" should be the core theme of life? We should fight the battles to expand our own empires, and exploit others to become more resourceful. Going by that logic, what imperial forces did was also justified. They expanded their rule over poor nations that could not defend themselves and exploited their resources. That was for the benefit of their own people. After all, every country tries to do the same. To protect their national interest. Pr...

The Bhagavad Gita begins with profound depth. The armies of the Pandavas and Kauravas are face to face on the battlefield, and the battle is just about to commence. Arjuna looks at the warriors on the Kaurava side and becomes perplexed. How can he fight his elders and teachers? His mind had been conditioned not to fight his own family members, not to strike elders, and to always respect his teachers. He feels quite heavy, drops his Gandiva, and feels like leaving the battlefield.  Such a profound context. Krishna could have told him that it wasn't time to think about all these things and that Arjuna had no option but to fight the battle. His brothers could have forced him to fight, but then it would have become an ordinary battle. Krishna never told Arjuna to hurry up to fight the battle. Krishna took up each and every doubt of Arjuna and addressed it then and there. Krishna has no target. He knows the result of battle matters less than resolving the conflict inside human beings, w...

Almost all of us feel that we are quite emotional. In the sense that whenever there is a crisis in the life of somebody close to us, we feel the pain. A friend falls sick; we feel worried. A relative meets with an accident, and we feel like rushing to help him. A close friend goes through a relationship crisis, and we feel like helping him. We feel like sharing moments of joy, and we also feel like sharing the pain. That's what we understand about being emotional. Krishna knew Abhimanyu would die the day Dronacharya formed the Chakravyuha. Still, when Arjuna asked him to take his chariot away from the battlefield to fight Susarma, he did not warn Arjuna. Krishna did not stop the Kurukshetra war. Rama did not come back on the emotional appeal of Bharata and Mata Kaushalya. Why? In fact, why does the almighty and compassionate God allow all these things to happen? Why do human beings suffer so many traumas? Why did God allow Hitler to kill so many people? Why do so many murders take ...

We interact with many people in this world. When we talk to someone, we share our likes and dislikes, what we have done in our lives so far, our occupation, where we live, and our family. Generally, that's all. Sometimes, in deeper talks, we discuss our belief systems and understanding of life. But generally, these discussions stay at a very surface level. As if it's a fixed image talking to another fixed image. If the other person has a different belief system than we do, our brain simply rejects it as alien. Suppose I am worried about the marriage of my child, and the other person says that marriage is the decision of the child and he has nothing to do with it; I may simply reject that idea as alien. If I am worried about my bad health, running from one hospital to the other, and the other person advises me to try naturopathy, I simply reject that as being alien. Our brain has made an image of every person and thing. We generally don't interact with people, but we interac...

I am really surprised to see how so many intelligent people become so narrow-minded as they grow. So sure of the completeness of their narrow frame of life. Every intelligent person knows the Earth is not even a particle of dust on the cosmic scale, and we know so little about this cosmos. Then how can these intelligent people be so sure of what they do in their lives? Why would they not like to understand the meaning of life? Why would they believe the social narrative and spend the whole of their lives in pursuit of what this world considers happiness, while knowing very well that it's a very minuscule part of reality? That looks so stupid: spending our entire lives believing something we are not sure about. Like somebody living his entire life believing two people to be his parents and getting to know towards the end of his life that they are not. But intelligent people aren't that stupid. Why would they do so? If they know that "what we know" is very minuscule com...

Yesterday, I was discussing with my daughters why people keep tolerating mindlessness in public places. A few people don't do the work they are supposed to do, and it affects so many people's lives. A poorly designed road, someone parking on the side of the road and causing a 15-minute traffic jam, a poorly designed website by an organisation, the unresponsiveness of someone in an important position. Why do people tolerate all this? They responded that, since the beginning, students are asked to be compliant in the classroom. For everything, they have to take permission. That independence of mind is never inculcated. In fact, whenever somebody takes a stand against injustice, people try to make him understand that he should not get into all these things and should concentrate on his career. I agree with them, and the impact of this attitude is quite evident everywhere. The son does not take a stand when his parents ask him to take dowry; employees do not take a stand when their...

When we take up employment in an organisation, we are expected to carry out certain tasks and handle different responsibilities. We keep playing these roles and fulfilling the responsibilities, and sometimes get fed up and want an escape. A pleasure trip, a sabbatical, a few days of leave, a home visit, and so on. After the escape, we are back at work and go through the same frustration every day. Some people are more intelligent. They make their workplace and their lives enjoyable. If you can't run away from dirt, enjoy it. People enjoy office politics, bickering, sycophancy, talking rubbish about their colleagues, and poking into the personal lives of others. Very few like to explore and create new possibilities.  Life is what it is. It has a lot to offer in every situation, and yet it may be quite frustrating. We take up certain roles, both consciously and unconsciously. The moment we are born into a family, we assume certain roles. The role of a son, daughter, sister, brother, ...

The brain's conditioning is so deep that it takes years to feel comfortable with a language other than our mother tongue. That's why, when we travel to a different country, have to speak English all day, and meet an Indian, the first thing we do is speak in our native language. When we come back after touring for a week, the first thing we want to do is have tea with ginger and milk and eat home-cooked food.  We are born and brought up in a society where almost everybody shares common beliefs about life. Different societies have different meanings of life. Family members, relatives, and neighbours pass these meanings on to children, consciously or unconsciously. For example, people of my generation, who were born and brought up in North India, would have heard of all these things: "Padho ge Likho ge to Banoge Nawab, Khelo ge Kudo ge to Bano ge Kharab", such a bad social narrative about sports; "Jaldi se settle ho ja", as if the purpose of life is to get ...

It's interesting to see how we behave when both lifts in the building are out of order. Everybody is in a hurry to go to the office. The lifts are not working. Somebody on the 12th floor gets ready to go down and suddenly realises the lifts aren't working. He curses the RWA, the office, and the entire setup, takes the stairs, reaches the office, and forgets it until evening. By the time he gets back, one lift is repaired, and he follows the same old routine until the next time, when both lifts are out of order again. Why don't we make an effort to put the systems in the right place? Some of us make an effort and then give up after a few years. They realise that it's very difficult to bring change. Change is hard to bring about because very few people think about it and make the effort. Otherwise, most people are happy with some Jugaad. That's why the few who work to bring change get exhausted. If everybody tries to do their best in whatever position they are in, cha...

This morning, a thought suddenly came to my mind. Mathematics has great lessons for living life. Take, for example, zero. If you add zero to some other number, there is no change. Similarly, if you have a discussion with someone with zero ability, nothing will be added. We may spend our whole lives at zero, and at the end of life, nothing will have been added. What if we multiply some number by zero? The outcome is zero. Otherwise, multiplication increases the value significantly. Many combinations and permutations are created. Suppose a person knows two subjects: History and Economics. The second person knows two different subjects: Psychology and Philosophy. When they come together and form an alliance, they get four different skills. They can blend History with Psychology, History with Philosophy, Economics with Psychology, and Economics with Philosophy. Thus, they both acquire four different skills. Their individual skills multiply. On the contrary, if we blend with a zero, a perso...

Water's journey is so interesting. While it forms a part of the big ocean, a few molecules come into contact with the Sun. Full of energy and motivation, they rise above the surface of the ocean and take the form of clouds roaming free across the globe. They interact freely with the winds, having no fixed destination; they travel from one place to the next till they fall in love with a landscape and fall on that place in the form of rain. Sometimes, they fall in love with the heights of the mountains and fall as snow, taking the form of glaciers. After years of solidity in these glaciers, the water realises its abode and sets out on its journey to merge again with the source, taking the form of a river. Because of their greed, humans have not left even the rivers. They have blocked the natural flow of rivers and built dams. How would the water trapped in the dams feel? As if a lover is desperate to meet his beloved, and some villain stops him from meeting the beloved and confines h...

Love, freedom and exploration are fundamental attributes of life. When we fear nothing, we feel full, and we have no ambition or target to achieve; we all connect to these fundamental attributes. When we go to a hill station and do not have a target to cover the tourist points in our minds, and the mind is relaxed, we experience a strange connection with nature, the mountains and trees. It seems as if we can talk to each other. We feel connected to the birds and butterflies. We experience freedom. No social obligation to perform, no office target, and no financial decision to make. We feel free to live in the moment. In that state of freedom and with that connection with the valleys and the mountains, we feel like exploring them. We feel like trekking. We feel like breathing the air. I believe we've all had similar experiences. That means we all have a natural capacity to connect with others, including trees, birds, mountains, and valleys. We all love freedom, and we all want to ex...

The same battle of Kurukshetra is being fought by many. Every warrior shares the same target: to win the battle. Yet the locus is so different. With the same purpose, how can the locus be so different? Duryodhana fights for the greed of the kingdom, Karna to prove himself a better warrior than Arjuna, Bhishma to honour with a bow, Shikhandi to take revenge, and the Pandavas against injustice and unfairness. The same battle, and so many different loci.  What decides our locus? The answer to the question "Who am I?" If you ask the same question to Duryodhana, he would say, "I am the king of Hastinapur, and I am fighting the battle to protect my interests". Karna would say, "I am an outstanding warrior, and this world has not recognised my bravery just because I was born in the family of a charioteer; I am here to prove my bravery and to prove that I am better than Arjuna in archery." Bhishma would say, "I am true to my words and have a responsibility to...

Whatever we do in life, there is a source of motivation. Along with that, we set a purpose or target. When we prepare for a competitive examination, we have a purpose: to gain admission to a good university, and with the same goal, different students may have different loci: to earn money or explore new subjects. Somebody wants to bring reform to society. With the same purpose, different people may have different loci: somebody may do it to gain popularity, while another may do it out of love for humanity. When somebody works hard in the office to achieve the task at hand, this drive to do good work may again have its locus in a desire for personal excellence or love for the organisation. We keep setting different targets in our lives. These targets keep changing as we grow. Even the targets of nations and organisations keep changing with changes in management and ruling parties. Some political parties may focus more on inclusive growth, while others may focus more on the latest techno...

I watched the movie Namkeen, starring Sanjeev Kumar, Sharmila Tagore, and Shabana Azmi. Suddenly, something struck my mind. Most of us live life in the name of family. To provide our children with the best education, to get them married, and to get them settled. Whenever a crisis hits the family, all members stay rock solid. Family members share happiness and sorrow. No other relationship compares well with family. Almost all parents have made their share of sacrifices for their families.  On the other hand, a question is quite evident: "Is the purpose of human life limited to taking care of family and getting the children settled? Even if we assume it is, for a moment, it naturally implies that our children's purpose in life will also be restricted to getting their children settled. Do we really believe so? So we think our children's purpose in life is confined to raising their children and getting them married. What if they decide not to get married or not to have kids? ...

When we look back, some of our childhood reactions seem so stupid. That crush on a friend at school and thinking about that crush for hours, that competition with friends to come first in the class, grief when another student comes first and we feel that he has been favoured by the teachers, the anxiety about scoring well in the examination, worry about the career, what will happen in future, will we be able to get a job, the apprehensions about a life partner, how will we live without friends, and so on. We had thousands of apprehensions and worries, and when we recall them, we just laugh at ourselves and our immaturity. What if our present worries and anxieties are also equally laughable? During childhood, all the worries appeared very real. But as we gained exposure, most of those became meaningless. Maybe, as we get more exposure, our present worries will also become meaningless. But how do we know? Health crises, office politics, job uncertainty, uncertainty about the future of th...

A newborn child, until around 6 months of age, cannot talk or walk. Then magic unfolds. The child learns to say maa or paa. He starts rolling, and soon starts crawling. Where does he get these skills? Do the parents train him to walk and talk? No. He picks them up on his own. In the language of neurology, his brain mirrors what he sees, and that's how his brain picks up the language, and he starts talking. These mirror neurons are quite magical, and they help us understand how to live in society. We learn so many responses naturally through these mirror neurons. We learn how to communicate, how to live in a society, how to take care of our bodies, how to behave in relationships and many more such things. Once we mirror something, that becomes part of "me". A child picks Hindi, for example, while being in Delhi, and then he goes to China. What will be his first reaction? He will feel that Chinese is a foreign language, but for him, when he was 6 months old, even Hindi was ...