Thriving Mindfully

Tag: Man’s search for meaning (Page 1 of 6)

A tale of three friends

Once upon a time, three close friends went for an outing to an ancient city. Being avid architecture enthusiasts, they roamed all around the town square, looking at the remnants of a once-thriving civilization. The meticulously planned city was a sight to behold, even centuries after its prime. Everywhere they went, they saw rubble and bricks holding together the skeletal form of old houses, castles, and temples. It was fascinating for them to imagine how this place would have looked like in its golden age. After walking around all day, each of them sat at a nice spot overlooking an old temple, soaking in the day’s experience.


One of them mused,

‘How glorious would this city have been in its heyday. While only disintegrated parts of the construction remain, the architecture commands such glory and respect. I will build something like this in my lifetime.’

Later on in life, he went on to become a great builder. He designed a state-of-the-art township near the capital city that was celebrated all around the Kingdom. It was the architectural highlight of the era.


The second friend was ambitious as well, but he wanted quick success. He thought,

‘No matter how well one builds a city, it will inevitably turn into rubble in a thousand years. And while I can see that everyone celebrates the remnants of this ancient capital, the person who designed it is not alive to see his work being appreciated by the future generations. Perhaps I should build a township that turns into rubble in just a few decades. At least, I will be alive to witness how people laud my achievements.’

He went on to build a township a few miles away from the first friend’s township. While it looked majestic from the outside, it was designed to perish within a few decades to fulfil his desire to be exalted while being alive. 

The third friend was an observant man. He looked closely at the remnants of the grand old temple that stood in front of him. On one of the walls, he spotted a little sapling growing out of the crevices between the bricks. Then, he looked around, and almost everywhere, he saw little plants trying to grow similarly. There was a statue of the Buddha in the old temple that was completely entwined in the roots of a Bodhi tree. That statue was believed to be a symbol of the union of nature and divinity. It was universally revered as a living sermon by the Buddha.

The third friend had an epiphany. Later in life, while his friends were busy erecting monuments in their respective townships, he devoted himself to the humble act of planting saplings all around their city. Driven by an unshakeable faith, he dedicated his life to sowing seeds for posterity. 

Unfortunately, in a couple of centuries, their civilization was wiped out by a natural calamity. 

A thousand years later, in the new millennium, their city has become a popular tourist destination. People come to see the ruins of the glorious ancient civilization from faraway places. 

The township designed by the first friend draws in a lot of crowd. Archaeologists study the architecture of the remnants with deep interest. Even if most buildings do not hold on to their functional use anymore, they still represent a magnificent past. The spirit of a great ancient civilization is still alive in each withering brick. 

The township designed by the second friend had turned into rubble within a few decades of building. Contrary to his expectation of being lauded as a great builder, he was castigated by the community for his sub-standard workmanship. After all these years, the land where the township once stood, is barren and bereft of any life. In stark contrast, the township built by the first friend stands right next to the barren land, in all its glory, despite the deterioration dictated by time.

And, there is something else as well, in this ancient town that teems with life ­­– the third friend’s work.

A thick cover of vegetation has been thriving through the times, all around the ancient city. The forest has been serving as an arena for Mother Nature to choreograph the delicate dance of life. The wise man had managed to plant only a few thousand trees in his lifetime. But he had invested his time and energy in something that would self-replicate and sustain itself through millennia. The flora all around the township is growing steadily. In a few centuries, the forest will entwine the whole city in its embrace, just as the roots of the Bodhi tree had entwined around the Buddha’s statue in the ancient temple. He left behind such a flourishing legacy.

Today, no one remembers the name of any of the three friends. But their karmic fingerprint is alive in the quality of their work.


                                                 ——–

Today, in the ancient town of Ayutthaya, under the shade of a resplendent tree in springtime, as I look at the Buddha’s statue entwined by roots, I have a feeling about what I should do with my time, life, and work.


Excerpted from my book ‘Pedals and Perspectives
Illustrated by Marine Tellier

Find Your Self Yourself

We live in times strange, of false claim
Of calling all we own with our own name

How far have we strayed from who we are
No we aren’t our jobs, we aren’t our car

A layer of garment that’s fit to size
Becomes a part of elegant lies

Until fickle fashion changes its way
And those perfect dresses are cast away

Isn’t it the same with that gadget too
How it brings you a thrill and becomes you

Until they come out with a newer range
And make you believe it’s time for a change

With changing trends, it only gets tough
When they say what you own isn’t you enough
And we retire our respect for all good reason
Lest we commit an economic treason

If your identity is determined by all the rest
Your power will be the easiest to divest
And if all this tamasha feels odd and absurd
The time is ripe to steer your course inward.

Beware of that hypnotic popular call
You feel momentarily big, but, forever small
Seek instead that priceless core
Set out, discover, and bring it to the fore.

It won’t be easy as all forces seek conformity
As your deviance is deemed a deformity
But follow you must, beyond all fuss
The undeniable light of your inner compass

And though you might wear an old-fashioned dress
And wield tools that might fail to impress

You will shine in glory, and get way far

In the journey of discovering who you really are.

Starlight

By a warm bonfire
Through a tube of lenses
I watch in wonder
The tinsel in the sky

A speck of salt on fading indigo
A lighthouse lost in time and space
There winks that ageing star

They say it could be my grandmother
Speaking in blips of a cosmic Morse code
Do I have the heart to listen and decipher?

I wonder

She was a bundle of love, granny
Would always tell me
You are an ocean of light my child
You are a bundle of bliss

Her voice still lingers
Even if she she hangs out in the sky these days
Having herself become an ocean of light
Locked Light years away.

She says, look…look my child
You are the same light as I am
You remember how I always told so
Don’t you?

I look at her
In awe,
She holds me
Rapt

And I wonder,

Do I burn brightly enough
For her to see me dazzle
From afar?

Do I enliven the hour
With the poetry of life
With the essence, the truth

There are days when I do
Many days when I don’t
Regardless, I still come to watch her every night
Thought the telescope, a gift from her when I turned 10

But she treats me alike either way
In failure and triumph
As if she believes in every atom of my being
In the stardust I am made of

The constant in the flux of my life
My guardian, my cheerleader
In the play of every day
She’s by the ringside, eternally,
Offering a sip of hope

She whispers

Brighter my child,
I am too far away,
And I left my glasses back at home
She says

You’re the infinite within a body
You’re the blueprint of the divine
Receive, Perceive, Believe
With all your soul

And at times when I lose faith in myself
It’s her faith that lights up my eyes
And I receive, perceive, and believe again
In the light she saw in me

A bonfire keeps me company every night
As I pore at the galactic canvas through the lenses

I hope
When the bonfire dies out
And I put my telescope away

I still shine bright
Holding the candle of curiosity
In love with the prospect of discovery

Still alive, and yearning to decode the secret of the stars
The geometry in the cosmos
The pulse of the flow of time

And that beloved star at a distance
Can still see me blink
From afar.


On why cleaning is therapy

If there were any godliness in cleanliness, then the sorry state of our rooms have long proclaimed us as non-believers!

Isn’t it fascinating, how a room that feels perfectly habitable to our eyes is deemed as an uninhabitable island by our irate mothers?
Perhaps the bias is in the perspective, for we often fail to see the disarray around us. We see the overflowing laundry bag as if it had an undeniable aesthetic relevance in the room. It takes another pair of startled eyes to make us realise that sooner than later, we must wield the broom.

And once we decide to wield the broom, how deeply do we wish that we were the menacing witches in cartoons who could leave behind immaculately clean premises while sailing under the ceiling on their magical wooden brooms. Alas, such witchcraft eludes us.
But isn’t the discovery of the resolution to start cleaning magical enough already?

We look around and wonder where to begin!

That complacent colony of cobwebs, a civilization that was weaved with an unremitting trust in our lethargy, tries to hide in plain sight. The ceiling fan ails for our attention. It curses its distance beyond the reach of our outstretched hand, a moot justification we’ve been humouring us with for its dirt ridden dilapidation.

We are reminded of the day when we stopped looking under the bed when we learned that there were demons dwelling in that dungeon. And today, after aeons, we must finally confront that neglected underbelly. We pray for bravery.

We begin our ungainly dance with the broom and are faced with our diminishing range of motion. Amid thoughts of the apparent endlessness of the task, a cool bead of sweat plummets from behind the ear, and we know we’ve switched to the right gear.

A newfound zeal snowballs, and we get the rare feeling of wanting to dust the carpets out. We move around the furniture and try reaching corners that haven’t seen sunlight in years. We dwell in the archaeological wonder of finding the old museum of lost articles behind the study table – a forgotten batch of stationery, an old sock, a toy we believed to have been stolen all these years and that dinged up orange Ping-Pong ball that doesn’t smell of camphor anymore. If there were a zip code for all things lost, this would be it!

We shift our gaze to the shelves. The books feel moved as we touch them after ages; as if still nursing the wish that we’ll keep the word of lending them our time. We find a layer of neglect on the bookshelf. We think of dusting the room after we’ve swept the floor, leaving no doubt how little we know of the chronology in cleaning up.

Once we’ve dusted the room, we catch a breath. A shaft of sunbeam pierces through an opening and the dust motes dance a slow waltz. Intermission.

With a heave, we get up again, step on a stool and glance the corners of the room for gossamer. As the ceiling fan feels close enough to us, we do what’s due, and it relishes in a rare clean-up.

We change partners and now it’s time to dance with the mop. After moving about so much, this feels easier now. The aroma of the disinfectant makes us feel a sense of cleanliness. We choose to believe it.

After we’ve been through it all and we put everything back in its place, we sit back and wonder how we could do it all.

And we realise a presence in the room – the presence of the room itself! We realise how we’d allowed morbidity seep into the living entity our dwelling place is. We regain intimacy with our room.

In the stillness we find after cleaning up, we wonder what exactly it is that we did.

All in all, we’ve swept away a few grams of dust,  a layer of grime evaporated away with disinfecting water, a few tufts of hair that swirled in the corners have reached the bin, and the shelves shine a shade deeper…

In material terms, we’ve displaced merely a fraction of matter that existed in the room.

But the workings of cleaning happen on a psychological, and dare I say, mystical paradigm.


We feel uplifted from the slow release of happy hormones. We bask in the feeling of potency once we see we’re capable of changing the world around us. Depression melts away, and the energy within and without buzzes with positivity.

The act of cleaning burnishes the soul. The arena inside feels airy and light. A tide of tidiness tip-toes on our shores. We feel consecrated, just as our revived dwelling-space.

But after all that cleaning up, we feel a bit dirty. We resist the invitation of freshly laid bed sheets and jump into the shower.

When we’re back into the room, with droplets dotted as dewdrops on our body, we turn on the switch to the beaming ceiling fan.

A torrent of air fills the room.

The water on our body disappears slowly, leaving behind a cool sensation.

We smile. We feel rewarded. We sense purity.

We feel good.

Isn’t that akin to godliness?

Raindrops

We are clouds.
Thick and grey,
brimming with rain,
brimming with potential.

We are aware, that a single droplet we contain
can send ripples of revitalization in a placid pond.
We have the energy to share.

We’ve done it before.
We know this.

Yet, we hover in the skies above.
We look eagerly for a pond to rain into.
But there’s none in sight.

Meanwhile, time elapses.
The wind, and life, not caring for our indecision drift us aimlessly.

We fail to realize that we have to rain down first to create the pond.

But, for once, we decide to act.
To precipitate.

The immutable law of the universe,
gravity, aids us on our journey.

We fear the contact of the Earth,
the impact on the crust, on the rocks,
But we have no choice.

And we rain down without inhibition.

Drops turn into rivulets, and lakes,
ponds, and streams.

Before we know, we become a river,
chiselling the rocks smooth on our advance,
The very rocks we once feared.

And from being a nebula of meek, diffident droplets
We culminate confidently into the might ocean.

We rest in deep satisfaction.

Soon, the sun shines on us.

We rise up as vapor, ready for another challenge,
another downpour,
across the Pacific.

So, I ask you my brooding cloud,
I ask you, my tiny droplet of promise,

‘When are you going to rain down?’

THE KEY TO THIS LOCKDOWN – A message from an artist

In this period of a lockdown, this is a simple message from one artist to another. Now, you might be thinking that this message might not concern you because you might not see yourself as an artist.

I can empathise with you for this ‘non-artist’ self-image that you’ve cultivated over the years. But I would like to make you believe otherwise.

We have become experts at reducing the magnificent scope of our creative energy to a badge or title that we believe represents our identity. The chances are that you refer to yourself as a coder, a teacher, a marketer, a manager, or the underserving frown inviting ‘housewife’.

And in doing so, in closing the door, on drawing a circle around yourself with this identity, you are reducing your capacity to grow and embrace the 3-dimensional sphere of possibilities you hold (or thought once held, likely when you were a child).

The prevailing time of a total lockdown—where you have 24 hours that seem to feel miraculously too long, when there’s no one breathing down your neck, pointing to a work deadline, when you have time on your hands— present a wonderful opportunity to re-evaluate who you are deep inside.

We usually associate all social prestige to our occupation, rightly so because that’s how we keep ourselves occupied during a typical workday. But today, when there’s an infinite duration of hours to pass, how would you keep yourself occupied?
And would the way you spend this time tell something about what you have turned into while toiling away in your work-life?

It is a revealing time; indeed, when no online streaming service is capable of satisfying your stream of consciousness. When, in these moments of quietude, the conscience knocks gently on your heart and asks,

‘What could you do to add beauty and meaning to this seemingly unforgiving hour?

With a strict curtailment of all ‘non-essential’ forms of work—when you find yourself sitting at home and realise how dispensable your occupation has become in the light of this tragic humanitarian crisis— you will wonder what counts as an essential form of work.

When you’re past all that period of resting, you’ll wish to be a part of the task force that is currently and rightly so, essential. The feeling of wanting to be meaningfully engaged is deeply human, after all.

As you think about the question, of what counts as essential, I invite you to peep into the bedroom of a writer, who writes still, late into the night. I welcome you to the studio of a painter, who still paints and brings a canvas to life. Come and watch the dancer who still sways to the beat of changing times, or the poet who, even in this dark hour of our lives, pens down songs of hope.

All of these people who we see as artists are still following a discipline they used to every day for years. They practice and perform as usual, in the pall of a looming threat, in these times of a complete lockdown.

This period of gloom has only seen the artist to have taken a more proactive step towards making art and sharing it with the world. Suddenly, the real importance of art is shining through in this dark hour of humanity.

Whom one would usually deem as a struggling singer-songwriter, is adding a priceless value to our time when they put out a grainy phone recorded video of a song that springs from the heart, as it always did. Why are people choosing to watch them instead of the mundane cute kitten videos that would usually relegate the artist to the bottom of the stream?

Perhaps we are learning to find the essence, of what’s true and beautiful and most importantly, human.


These times of a lockdown call for three things from us—

1) Validation to art, its value in our life, and the respect every artist, no matter where they are in their journey, deserves.

2) Gratitude to our brothers and sisters who are working hard to secure our future, and making sure that our lives still run smoothly.

And most significantly

3) Acceptance of the artist in you, who’s struggling to break out of the cocoon of conformity that’s loosening as you squiggle in discomfort to find the butterfly in you.
Your work may have been deemed non-essential at the moment, but your life is still every bit essential. Art can help exalt that life.

It is an opportunity to make something with your hands. Go don that apron and try to make an omelette, even if you haven’t set foot in the kitchen, ever. Dust off the layer of civilizational history that’s sitting on top of your old musical instrument. It has been longing to channel a song through you. Do not worry about how good the art you create would be or how functional or relevant it is. The value of art is in the process, not in the outcome.

You might forget the importance of art when things normalise, but if you emerge out of this lockdown with the acknowledgement that you are an artist at heart, art will blossom in the rain of that realisation.

I invite you to switch off the internet* for a few hours every day and apply yourself. Make art. It is therapy.

Stay safe. Stay healthy.

P.S. *Really! Switch it off 🙂
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On smiling and laughter

A welcoming smile, a moment of laughter…such priceless gifts of expression.
A life bereft of either of these expressions is absolutely unimaginable. When you smile with a loving intent, your eyes gleam and invite others around you to borrow a part of your disarming expression. A smile makes it presence felt first in the eyes. The face merely dons a charm to feel consonant with the way the heart feels at that moment as the smile rides silently, from one set of eyes to another.

However, when you indulge in a moment of laughter, the eyes respond much too differently. Your eyes open up wide at first in a vain attempt to contain the amazement, and soon enough, they shut shop, drawing a blind over the visual world around.

Laughing is a bodily act, where each body part joins in—in its own unique way—to celebrate a mirth-filled moment in time. First your facial muscles jiggle with the giggle, then your shoulders jig up and down as the resulting resonance reaches the epicentre of our gastronomical desires—the stomach. The bouncing belly belches an air of celebration as a loud guffaw hitches a ride on it and laughter echoes in the surroundings, arousing the curiosity of clueless bystanders. If the moment calls for an even greater celebration, the laughter travels through the spines to the legs, making it impossible to be seated to enjoy the moment fully. You stand up, stamp your legs in a vain attempt to douse the flaming source of laughter, for it only intensifies, as your hands join in the celebration in the need to meet the pressing urge of patting your own thigh, or stroking the back of a friend, or best of all, meeting another palm in mid-air to add a smack of a layer in the gamut of giggles infected by laughter.

The success of a smile is in reciprocity while that of laughter is in finding communal consonance. Both expression celebrate our similarities. A smile is an acknowledgement of how we are all seeking the same things and a shared laughter celebrates the pleasure we derive from a common occurrence.

It is interesting to observe how either expression develop in a human since the time of birth. A child learns to smile first. The capacity for laughter develops at much later stage of understanding. Then, perhaps a smile is a more natural expression, a primal state of being.

Laughter being always open to exhibition makes for an attention seeking cousin of an introverted smile. A laugh is perceptible and has more to do with the air (think of the air you expel when you go ha ha), while a smile, subtle by nature, has an almost ethereal quality.

As much solemnity as we attribute to a smile, there are instances when we are forced to smile ad nauseam (ask the bride and groom at an Indian wedding reception), where the seemingly effortless expression, by virtue of repetition, becomes a facial torment. On the other hand, we look forward to unsolicited, belly-aching laughter, as if the pain is a reflection of the pleasure we derive from it.

The extent to which you can control either expression differs greatly. No matter how hard you try, the mirth in a moment can seldom be muffled, for if something tickles your funny bone, you cannot help but let out a loud laugh, almost as if it were an involuntary psychological function.

But the case with smiles, especially as we grow up, is drastically different. We sadly hold a distinction in holding hostage an ocean of smiles, out of fear, insecurity, mistrust, diffidence, and a void of love that we feel inside. And because we withhold our smiles and exercise our control over them to such an extent, an inviting smile from someone that beckons you to emancipate your own, feels liberating, as if a caged bird destined to sing and soar under the open sky is set free.

But if a smile is transmissible, laughter is communicable. A gaggle of giggling gentlemen is bound to pique the interest of bystanders. And, depending on how funny their laughter is, there is a good chance that passers-by find enough amusement in their expression to chuckle for a moment. The tendency of our collective conscience to be moved by a spell of laugh-worthy moment has given rise to the ubiquitous feature in the sitcoms of our generation – the laughter track. It serves as a repetitive aural reminder of what we must find funny in the act. While being constantly reminded of when to laugh can cause vexation, considering how media of entertainment are consumed these days, mostly alone in a dark living room at night, the act of laughing all by yourself, with not another soul around to share the laugh with, one’s own solitary laughter can somehow seem tragic to a viewer.

Desirable as they are, there is a dark side to both a smile and laughter. Think of the smile etched on Joker’s scarred face, or his menacing laughter, think of the Monalisa’s enigmatic smile, the echoes of the laughter of a spectre, or the vengeful laughter of an antagonist that manages to infiltrate into our dreams. By virtue of the purity of either expression, the slightest aberration in delivery invites an unsettling dread. No wonder that the ever laughing is deemed a lunatic, the ever grinning a clown, and as an act of balance, the ever smiling is celebrated as the Buddha.

Nostalgia has charming relationship with either expression. The memory of laughter shared in the past invites a cherishing smile, while the memory of a smile lived in the past might invite a wistful teardrop.

If laughter is a medicine, smiling is therapy. A smile celebrates truth and beauty, while laughter celebrates our capacity for folly, a far unsettling truth that’s best tempered by our ability to laugh it away.
A smile emanates from the core of the soul and laughter springs from the core of our body. No prizes for guessing then, on how to keep your body and soul awake, alive, and thriving.

Finding an Equinox in Life on Solstice

December 21. The eve of the solstice. A local celestial event that bathes earth in different hues of light, with peculiar views of the sun, no matter where you are on the planet.

As the tilt of northern pole, reaches its furthest extremity with respect to the earth’s annual pilgrimage around the sun, the Northern hemisphere, curled up in the windy winter, witnesses the shortest day of the year. At the same time, the south pole, leans closest to the sun, as the southern hemisphere saunters in summery delight, witnessing the longest day of the year, just a few days before a Christmas celebrated sans the celebratory snowfall.

And the closer you are to the poles, the more fascinating the spectacle. Beyond the Arctic Circle, the sun wouldn’t hover even for a moment in the sky, drenching the area in darkness, while within the Antarctic Circle, the sun would efface the night, as it suspends in the sky all through the 24 hours that make a day.

The gentle tilt of the earth gives us so much to celebrate – the gift of seasons, the trade winds, a breath-taking biodiversity and of course, seemingly unearthly events of solstices.

While a solstice is a fascinating earthly phenomenon that marks the extremes of the duration of daylight, the human conception of a day, its length and the value derived from it is rarely synchronous to the event. There are cultural and psychological influences at play that dictate our relationship with the duration and depth of what we now understand as a day.

In the sweep of advancing technology, our species has successfully conquered darkness with illumination. Culturally, we’ve moved beyond the local solar day, thanks to household electrification. Being a flick of a switch away from illumination past sundown, our days have become longer for sure.

However, as far as we have come from being dictated by nature beyond us, we are still tethered to our own human nature. On a psychological level, each human perceives the length of a day differently. It’s an experience as personal as a dream that nobody else is privy to. A day spent in good company or spent being meaningfully engaged, breezes past elegantly. But a day spend without purpose slithers painfully, adding undesired friction in our stride.

Evidently, a ‘long day’ at work is a phrase that’s being used far too often in our cultural parlance, part due to the wear-out, part in lament of a day divested of depth. Gone are the times when daylight was celebrated as an incantation for living life outdoors in the field and the nights were a hymn that decreed us to rest peacefully.

Most of us have lost the privilege of retiring from work as the sun retreats beyond the horizon. Global connectivity and economic metrics can dictate us to work as the sun rises and sets in a more prosperous part of the world, time zones apart.

Our days have come far beyond the solar day. Incandescence has bled into our earthly night as we forget the value of the most natural de-markers of dusk from dawn.

And along with that, we’ve lost the romance for the spirited rise of the sun. We have a hard time recollecting the last instance when we watched the parting winter sun paint splendid hues in the sky, with a dazzling Venus in its tow. Perhaps the further away we are from such natural invitations for contemplation, the more unsettled we become deep inside.

We live in a funny era, where after unsettling elegantly designed natural equilibria, we run around like chickens to find balance in life!

The workdays are becoming longer, so are the commutes, and sleep is drifting further away from being a continuum of placid repose.

The best thing about a good night’s sleep, just like a good day’s work, is how you only remember the beginning and the end, while all the magic that happens in between is effortless as a flamboyant stroke on the canvas by a painter in flow.  A good day at work and a good night of sleep are precursors (and pre-requisites) of each other, in our daily cyclic dance. And more than duration, what matters most in either engagements, is depth.

Nowhere else is this profundity of engagement better exhibited during childhood days. The presence in each moment of wakefulness, in each moment at play is at its zenith. And the hours of sleep are as deep as they can be, in preparation for another day full of joy and zeal.

Perhaps what we need more than longevity in life, is the elegant passage of time, both in sleep and in wakefulness. And, as time passes elegantly, the notions of length of the day would matter little, for what would matter more is the completeness in our involvement in all states of our consciousness.

Then shall we find a balance, not a perennial solstice in our workdays where the days are always long, but an equinox, with profound presence throughout, both in sleep and in wakefulness, regardless of the position of the sun in the sky, regardless of the state of our consciousness.

Today is the shortest day of the year. Perhaps, for a change, it would be nice to give up control of the luminosity around us, and watch the sun paint a silhouette in the far horizon. If we choose to do so, the Venus shall burn brighter, in its retreat into the afterglow. While the length of the day today on 21 December, might be the shortest this year, the presence in the moment, as we pore the sky in wonder, shall be a worthy consolation.








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