100 Wonders of India - A List

I bought this coffee table book in Landmark a few years ago which listed 100 wonders of India. I have been ticking off a few since. Maybe there is a power to seeing those pictures that makes things happen. Anyway, I would like to share the list here.

Places I have been to

1) Ajanta caves, Maharashtra
2) Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti dargah, Ajmer 
3) Basilica of Bom Jesus, Goa
4) Dholavira and Lothal, Gujarat
5) Dwarka, Gujarat
6) Ellora caves, Maharashtra
7) Mumbai Fort Area, Maharashtra
8) Belur and Halebid, Karnataka
9) Hampi, Karnataka
10) Hawa Mahal and Amber fort, Jaipur, Rajasthan
11) Humayun's tomb, Delhi
12) Jagannath temple, Puri
13) Jama masjid, Old Delhi
14) Lodhi gardens, Delhi
15) Mandu, MP
16) Mehrangarh fort, Jodhpur
17) Mysore palace, Karnataka
18) Nagarjuna konda, Telangana/Andhra Pradesh
19) Qutb Minar, Delhi
20) Rashtrapathi Bhavan, Delhi
21) Salajung Museum, Hyderabad
22) Mamallapuram, Tamil Nadu
23) Gomateshwara, Sravanabelagola, Karnataka
24) Rani ki vava, Adalaj, Gujarat
25) St Paul's cathedral, Kolkata
26) Konark, Orissa
27) Lake Palace, Udaipur
28) Varanasi, UP
29) Victoria Memorial, Kolkata
30) CST, Mumbai
31) Andaman and Nicobar
32) Goa
33) Puducherry
34) Jog falls, Karnataka
35) Meenakshi temple, Madurai
36) Gol Gumbaz, Bijapur 

Places yet to visit

37) Zanskar river, Kashmir
38) Valley of Flowers
39) Toda settlements, Ooty
40) Tea gardens, Assam
41) Sundarbans
42) Srinagar
43) Chandratal, Spiti, Himachal
44) Rupkund lake, Uttarakhand
45) Rann of Kutch
46) Nanda Devi National park, Uttarakhand
47) Periyar, Kerala
48) Namdapha, Arunachal Pradesh
49) Leh
50) Lokatak lake, Imphal
51) Lakshadweep
52) Kulu valley
53) Kheechan Bird Sanctury, Jodhpur
54) Backwaters, Kerala
55) Keoladeo National Park, Jaipur
56) Kaziranga National Park
57) Kanchenjunga, Sikkim
58) Kashmir
59) Gir National Park
60) Gangotri
61) Jim Corbett
62) Eravikulam National Park
63) Chilika
64) Chambal
65) Brahmaputra
66) Bhitarkanika, Orissa (Olive Ridley Turtles)
67) Bastar
68) Bandhavgarh Park, Bhopal
69) Viceregal Lodge, Shimla
70) Ranganatha temple, Trichy
71) Taj Mahal
72) Sanchi
73) Shekhawati homes, Jhunjhunwala
74) Chatrapathi Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya
75) Padmanabhapuram
76) Orchha
77) Nalanda
78) Ladakh
79) Khajuraho
80) Kedarnath
81) Jaisalmer
82) Imambaras of Lucknow
83) Gwalior fort
84) Golden temple
85) Amarnath cave
86) Asokan pillars, Sarnath
87) Bahai temple, Delhi
88) Bhimakali temples, Himachal Pradesh
89) Shiva temples of Bhubaneshwar
90) Bodhgaya
91) Thanjavur
92) Chittorgarh
93) Darjeeling toy train
94) Dilwara
95) Elephanta caves
96) Fatehpur Sikri
97) Manali to Leh drive
98) Palace on Wheels
99) Terracotta temples of Bishnupur, Bengal
100) Bhimbetka

Interesting list. I am keen on some.

Thought for the Day - Finding Clarity in the Grey Area, Hold On

 Life is the choices we make. The choices we make are either good or bad judgments. These judgment calls happen when there are dilemmas, grey areas, the part when we are not sure if we want to plunge or hold back.

One last drink. One moment when we take our eyes off. One extra chance.

That's all life is about. Taking those chances and losing it all. It finally comes down to those gray areas - the ones who can handle them well, come out alive, the ones who cannot, die.

To handle the gray area one must be aware of that situation, must replay the tempting chance it offers just like the devil and know when to hold back.

Winners hold back when required and plunge in when things are clearer. Losers rush in without realising that they could perish.

Its about keeping your eyes open, about taking ownership and making something grand out of it.

Life is about handling the grey areas. The grey areas is where the devil sits. Hold yourself and go past that. Practice holding back. 

It's the same thing - instant gratification blindly versus long term benefits that compound, by holding back.   

Thought for the Day - How To Become Big Hearted or How to Make Your Hear BIG

 We look around and we say - he is big hearted or he does not have a big heart. In sports also we say that - does not have the heart. And then we wonder, what does a big heart mean and how does one get it.

A big heart is something that goes beyond oneself. One who plays selflessly for the team. One who gives his all without fear or injury, loss of reputation, of fame. One who is willing to stake his all for the bigger cause, for the team and who does it time and again, who jumps into the fire and comes our burns and all, having done what was required or failing gloriously.

One who goes in thinking - this is a do or die situation and I am willing to die for my team. For something bigger than me. Only one thought.

Not someone who has Plan B of escaping. Of surviving.

That is how we make our heart big. By embracing something bigger than ourselves and losing ourselves in that something bigger. By having no other identity but that.

By becoming one with that cause.

A big heart embraces all. It's purpose is so big that it has no time for petty thinking, for survival attitudes, for manipulative behaviors. It encompasses everything and draws everyone in.

Thought for the Day - All We Have to be Is Just 'Be'

In a recent conversation with a friend we wondered if we were doing 'enough'. We concluded that perhaps it was good enough to just 'be'. I remember that was what Patrick San Francesco would tell me when I asked him what else I should be doing. 

Just being

I thought about it and felt I said it from the space of -we make a difference to the world by just being ourselves actually (if we truly are being ourselves that is). To illustrate this point, I got this example of how a beautiful or good looking person needs to be be beautiful - there's nothing else he or she needs to do. By just being beautiful they are already making a difference by just being who they are.

Then, it sank into me. Perhaps I need to be more myself to make a difference and stop trying to be any 'more'. When we say we should do 'more' we need to be 'more of ourselves'. i closed my eyes and breathed and asked myself what it must feel like to be myself, to just be me so I can make the biggest difference to the world.

It did feel like some veil fell off. I could sense myself relaxing, my shoulders relaxing, my body relaxing, from the tension of not being myself. I was loose and just sat there, no thought of impressing any one, no self-image thoughts or behaviors, just me doing nothing. 

I never realised how much I tensed up without realising. How on the edge I was.

Just being myself. Relaxed. Breathing. Doing nothing. Making a difference by being fully present and fully myself.

That's good energy. Calming energy. To be more me then. To be.

   

Think Straight - Darius Foroux

 Darius has already written seven books and this one is said to be an international no 1 bestseller and is published by Penguin and has an attractive title for someone who is muddleheaded like me and it was slim and had small chapters with illustrations - so I braved it. Overall, it was very underwhelming. More like a motivational talk about how to be successful.

The by line says - 'Change your thoughts, change your life' which is something we have been told from the time of 'The Secret' or 'You Can Heal Your Life' or maybe some of our ancients. Darius says that the emphasis must be on 'deciding' to choose one thought over the other. He says we can control what we think. All we have to do is decide. He says he changed is life by changing his thoughts - 3 years before he wrote this book he was stuck and now he is not.

To think straight he says, stay grounded, look at facts and listen to other perspectives. One can do this by training one's mind. He says when things go wrong don't worry, think through (like the time he rented a house and went there and the landlady went back on her commitment and he panicked and then thought straight and got himself an AirBnB which worked out just fine because the landlady gave him the flat in the end).

Other things he says to think straight is to understand that life is not linear, that we must filter our thoughts, that we must connect the dots by making enough dots, and stop thinking 'useless' stuff. Focus thoughts on what is in your control (desires, action, words, thoughts, intentions) and let go those outside your control.      

His personal experience was these two useful thoughts 

- think about how to solve a problem at hand
- think about using your knowledge to improve your life

Don't make decisions based on your beliefs. Always check for facts vs assumptions. Don't make quick decisions - take your time.Also, draw your thoughts he says.

Be yourself he says - not what you should be. Ask yourself what are you good at, what are you passionate about, what do you dislike. Reflect by keeping a journal.

Somewhere we went into his Money Rules - don't buy stuff you don't need, save 10% of what you earn every month, have a no debt policy, invest early and don't be stingy in spending on yourself.

You think best when you are not thinking he says - which makes sense. He insists that we must take care of the details for good work. 

Finally he says we must take thinking out of the equation by being clear about what we are doing and why - that way we end up with decisive and purposeful action.

He also says we must not live with regrets - we only regret what we did not do (so do what's on your list right now).Also, don't look back - for nostalgia don't keep old stuff, throw it all away, don't get stuck.

Focus on effective thoughts which lie in the domains of

- making your life better
- giving your career and business a boost
- visualising your future
- thinking new ideas
- solving problems
- coming up with fun things to do with family and friends

All this is about inner calm, about thinking straight. Then he says, think beyond yourself and gives the nice story of William James, a renowned psychiatrist, who gave credit on the idea of 'Principle of Pragmatism' to his old colleague Charles Sanders Peirce, who had fallen from grace and thereby resurrected him.

... 

As I discovered, there was precious little in the domain of how to think straight. Would have liked to go deeper into the how of it, actual examples which drove home the point, that one big thing that we take away when we say ' hey, this is what this book is about'. It goes all over the place which is not what I expected. The ones I will remember are the illustration of the mess and the straight line, the points about effective thinking about what one could think about, what one need not think about, and the story of William James.

And Penguin, how can you make an edit mistake in the foreword itself! (..that I longer live my life that way!)

 My take on thinking straight is that it happens when we take ownership. When we own things, are held accountable, we think straight because we are responsible for the results. When we are accountable for the results of our actions, we tend to think straight, or we mess it up. Either way we learn.

And that's where MS Dhoni's greatest advise on how to became a better decision maker comes - make more decisions and you will become a better decision maker. You will make mistakes but you will learn to keep your eyes open, to study the landscape, to watch out for the details and to take calculated risks instead of hoping. You make dots by going into things with passion, with eyes and heart wide open, and when we look back those show up as dots because we owned those moments and decisions.

The rest, I will save up for my book!    

Eleven Minutes - Paulo Coelho

I got another Paulo Coelho in the second hand book store in Ahmedabad which i think is fleecing me but that's OK.  It looked small enough and I had not read this before. Paul starts with saying how he met a reader who told him he had changed his life with his books and introduced him to his relatives and when he wrote Eleven Minutes which was about a prostitute, he felt obliged to mention that to his reader that as a writer he needs to explore and write about diverse topics - not just nice sound ones.

Eleven Minutes is the time he says it takes to have sex - Irving Wallace had pegged it at seven minutes but Paulo decided to add another four. So much thought, so much judgement, so much about sex and the energy that is around it, that he decided to explore it. As he mentioned in the epilogue, he met a woman whose story is that of Maria, the protagonist, and met several more who were involved in prostitution, one of whom had written a book about it.

The story is about Maria, a pretty young girl from interior Brazil who gets her heart broken with an early crush - a time when she did not take the initiative. Slowly over time she believes that love will make her suffer and shies away from intimacy, choosing instead, to use her body and her charms to manipulate men to get what she wants - like paying her boss. She finds that she enjoys masturbation more than real sex and wonders if something is wrong with her.

In a visit to Rio, to explore the big city, she gets to meet a man of the world, a businessman from Switzerland who offers her a job in Geneva. Money, a contract etc for dancing in a high end club. Maria takes the offer, goes to Geneva to explore life and soon finds out that it is a high end escort service job. After the first time with an Arab who pays her a thousand francs, she finds it quite easy to make money, which she hopes will help her go back and buy a farm in Brazil. Despite the many intelligent, powerful, cultured men she meets every night, she realises that they are all insecure with her, that she cannot have an orgasm with them, and that some of them only want to talk to her. Maria writes a diary where she writes - a man wants to find someone to give meaning to his life. Could be a prostitute too.

One of the girls in her service tells her not to fall in love with a client but she ends up falling in love with an artist Ralf, who is very rich and experienced, but someone who sees a rare inner light in her and ends up painting her. He follows her to her place of work, buys her time and woos her despite knowing her profession. At the same time comes another English businessman Terence who finds pleasure in pain, in sadomasochism, and in his unabashed and gentle and persuasive ways he somehow leads her to an orgasm which she did not believe she is capable of.. For a while she is confused until Ralf explains to her that she can choose to find love in the correct way or through the dark way. He tells her of sacred sex and that she need not feel ashamed of her, nor hate sex.

Ralf knows of Terence but also knows that one must love the other but not try to possess one another. Ralf also says in the context of pain and pleasure, that to master the soul, one must master the body. When we demand the maximum from our body, the mind gains a strange spiritual strength. What makes the world go around is not the search for pleasure but the renunciation of all that's important. Pain and suffering are used to justify the one thing that should bring only joy: love.

In replying to her question about sex - whether there is a sacred sex, Ralf clarifies that there were two types - one was that of prostitution where people either solicited sex on the streets, went slightly higher as escort girls, or went even higher when sex was used to control power and politics. The other is sacred sex where in certain old customs women and sex were important to the process, a ritual of the gods. A sacred ritual. 

Paulo's research seems to have led him to certain discoveries which he puts out through a rather forced conversation with a librarian friend of Maria's. Initially Maria asks her for books on sex which she does not have, but when Maria is about to leave Geneva, she calls her and tells her that she read a book on sex where she found that the clitoris was a 19th century discovery! She also tells Maria about the G spot which she says no one knows - most men certainly don't and she explains its position well - when you go in, on the first floor, the back door. The book apparently said that there were nerves connecting the clitoris and the G spot and if one finds these two places, one can pleasure a woman immensely. The librarian tells Maria that her husband assumed that the woman's orgasm happened in the vagina and not the clitoris which was what Freud and co also said. Since most men don't know about the Gspot the librarian also tells Maria that if they can think of the clitoris as the hands of a clock, one can ask one's partner to move it back and forth between 11 and 1 o clock for maximum effect. The final piece of discovery - that a clitoris also gets an erection. Having said all that he learned about female orgasms, Paulo explains it well, and educates most men about how to pleasure women.

Meanwhile Maria, having found herself and having dropped guilt, having found love, decides to leave it all and head back with all the money she saved. Ralf however pursues her with a bunch of flowers and one can only guess that a happy ending was had in many ways.

Thanks to the setup, the setting, the topic and the context, the book was a breeze. And one picks up a ton of stuff that is useful as well. Bravo Paulo Coelho. He also acknowledges all the prostitutes he met during the course of his research - how they all came and go their copies signed by him. Definitely worth a read.    

          

The Ahmedabad Diaries - Day 11 (Sabarmati Riverfront Sunrise)

 Last day of the trip and I could not miss the dawn at Sabarmati Riverfront so made it to daspite a late night. It was beautiful as always. Lots of cyclists.

From the park

Across the Sabarmati river

On the way back i called Jyo for a chai at the small shop which serves the second best tea in Ahmedabad after Lucky cafe. Breakfast and check out after leaving a thank you note to the staff in an inspired moment, thank you to the room and off to the Railway ground.

Bird feeds - all over

Cyclists on the riverfront

Statue of Vikram Sarabhai

Close up

View from my room

Match done early, headed off to the airport to catch Hyderabad in the New Year. New Life.