Thought for the Day - We Don't Really Know What We Are

 This thought came up in a discussion with a fried recently - how well do we know ourselves. Most of us have a low esteem of ourselves (which is why we either lie in our resumes or underplay them). Rarely do we find someone who has a good idea of themselves without feeling apologetic. It struck me that my resumes have generally not been able to capture me fully and when I look at the resumes of my students,I feel the same.

It triggered a thought in me. Before they write their resumes out I would have them do an exercise where they list every single big moment for them, every prize, every compliment, every achievement in their eyes, every participation without missing anything. Then I will have them write down every single thing that they feel is a weakness and have them write down the other side of the weakness - how it can be a strength. Once they are done with this exercise I will ask them to write down their resume.

I think its important for all of us to know ourselves as we are - and to accept ourselves in all our glory.  Not go around like frauds or thieves.

We are special, unique, beautiful. 

Way of the Peaceful Warrior - Dan Millman

 Mostly auto-biographical, 'Way of the Peaceful Warrior' is written by Dan Millman, a world class gymnast who, while studying at Berkeley College, meets this fascinating character that he calls Socrates in an all night gas station. Socrates takes it upon himself to lead Dan from his world of illusion to light. The book became a bestseller and was made into a movie of the same name. 

In their first meeting itself Dan realises that Socrates is no ordinary person as he suddenly moves from the ground floor to the top of the building inexplicably. Socrates, having captured Dan's attention, playfully teaches him many things, initiates him into ways of the world where one can live to their true potential without worrying about the rest of the world. His methods require Dan to give up on things he was used to - the kind of food, drink, women, sleep - and give it all up for a disciplined, monk-like life. Dan takes up the challenge and finds that he does become a better gymnast, but more importantly a better human. As always I have picked up some interesting lines.

I think Dan sums it up in his last chapter when he says - 

'There is no need to search: achievement leads to nowhere. It makes no difference at all so just be happy now! Love is the only reality of the world because it is all one you see. And the only laws are paradox, humour and change. There is no problem; never was and never will be. Release your struggle, let go of your mind, throw away your concerns and relax into the world. No need to resist life, just do your best. Open your eyes and see that you are far more than you can imagine. You are the world, you are the Universe, you are yourself and everyone else too! Its all the marvelous Play of God. Wake up. Regain your humour. Don't worry, you're already free.' 

'My name doesn't matter neither does yours. What's important is what lies beyond names and beyond questions.'

'Turn knowledge into wisdom. The lessons of experience are hidden.'

'You hold many facts and opinion, yet know little of yourself. First empty yourself. Learn how to read the wisdom of your body.'

'You understand many things but realise nothing. Understanding is the one dimensional comprehension of intellect. It leads to knowledge. Realisation is three dimensional - a simultaneous comprehension of the head, heart and intellect. It comes from direct experience.'

'Knowledge alone does not suffice, it has no heart.Life requires intense feeling and constant energy. Life demands right action if knowledge has to come alive.'

'The warrior acts. The fool reacts.'

'To get energy to survive the lessons ahead. You have to cleanse your body of tensions, free your mind of stagnant beliefs, and open your heart to loving kindness.'

''Take responsibility for your life as it is instead of blaming others, or circumstance for your predicament. As your eyes open, you'll see that your state of health, happiness and every circumstance in your life has been, in large part, arranged by you - consciously or subconsciously."

"Dis-illusion is the best gift. Dis-illusion is freeing from illusion.'

Your mind is your predicament. It wants to be free of change. But change is a law and no amount of pretending will alter that reality.'

'Life is not suffering,; its just that will suffer it than enjoy it. Until you let go of your minds attachments and just go for the ride freely, no matter what happens.

'The brain is real, the mind is not. Consciousness, awareness, attention are not the mind. There is no use for the mind.'

'When you lose your mind, you come to your senses.'

''Anger is stronger than fear, sorrow.'

'Understand where your thoughts come from. Stress happens when the mind resists what is. Your mind is like a pond into which someone has just dropped a boulder. The ripples of your mind have nothing to do with you. Stop taking your thoughts so seriously.'

'Silence is the warrior's art - and meditation is his sword.'

'Meditation consists of two simultaneous processes - one is insight, paying attention to what is arising. The other is surrender - letting go of all attachment to arising thoughts.'

'Your attention must burn. Do or die!'

'Anger is a powerful tool to transform old habits and replace them with new ones. Fear and sorrow inhibit action. Anger generates it.'

'Focus your energy into building new patterns.'

'It's better to make a mistake with the full force of your being than to timidly walk around mistakes with a trembling spirit.'

'Satori occurs then attention rests in the present moment. It's the warrior's state of being.'

'Meditate your actions. Release attachment to the outcomes. There's no 'you'. In forgetting yourself you become what you do so your action is free, spontaneous, without ambition, inhibition or fear.'

'One must be rich to be happy. You are rich if you have enough money to satisfy all your desires. Know the difference between needs and wants. Full attention to every moment is my pleasure.'

'The secret to happiness is not found is seeking more but in developing the capacity to enjoy less.'

'Just keep your attention in the present moment. It is freedom from suffering, from fear, from mind. When thoughts touch the present, they dissolve.'

'For every strength, there is a weakness. For every weakness there is a strength.'

'The peaceful warrior's way is not about invulnerability but absolute vulnerability. A warrior's life is not about perfection or victory. Its about love. Love is the warrior's sword. Wherever it cuts, it gives life, not death.'

'Embody what you teach. Teach what you embody.' 

'A warrior can only rely on the power of love, kindness, service - and the power of happiness. You cannot attain happiness; it attains you - but only after you surrender everything else.'

'A warrior is not something you become. It is something you either are, or not. The way  itself creates the warrior.'

'A warrior is happy without reason. Happiness is who you are.'

'Act happy, be happy, without a reason. Then you can love, and do what you want.'

'Feelings change -sorrow, joy. But beneath it all remember the innate perfection of your life unfolding.That's the secret of unreasonable happiness.'

'Remain ordinary and you can be useful to others.'

...

Lots of wisdom there. Thanks Vinod bhai. Another life changing book. What got me was the line about being ordinary, about giving your best without worrying about outcomes because the grand design is unfolding, about being happy for no reason, and the one about the laws being of paradox, humour and change.           

The Dictator - Movie

 2012. Sacha Baron Cohen is unbelievably good as he says the truth as it is and makes us laugh at the absurdity of it all. He plays a dictator Aladeen who rules this kingdom Wadiya and as dictators do he generally does as he pleases - bumping people off, making all kinds of orders and demands - but not having love in his life. Unknown to him his Prime Minister is planning to eliminate him and take over the oil rich kingdom.

There is a furore in the UN about the atrocities in Wadiya and calls to make him speak at the UN. He goes, but in the process he gets switched by the PM and captured. But Alladeen survives the attempt on his life and finds himself rescued by an activist with whom he falls in love. How Aladeen's change of heart reveals that he finds out he is a nice guy underneath and changes the constitution of Wadiya so it becomes a democracy - where he wins the election by a huge majority thanks to guns and tanks. He also marries his activist girl friend who reveals she is a Jew. Aladeen, true to his nature, orders her assassination, but we all know what happens to people who are ordered to be assassinated - they land up in New York!

Fabulous. This guy is a genius. Also saw that the music for the film seems to be composed by his brother. One hell of a family.  

Chupke Chupke - Movie

 1975. Hrishikesh Mukherjee.

Dharmendra, Sharmila Tagore, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri. 

It's going to soon become my most watched movie at this rate. 

The other day, for want of anything better to do, Anjali suggested we watch a movie, and we thought since she had not watched it, we could give it a shot. And like always, it went through like a breeze. Full of fun and mischief. Glad Anjali could get a taste of movies like these.

Loved it. Will always be in my top 10 funniest movies.

Sagara Sangamam - Movie

 Watched 'Sagara Sangamam' with Anjali, something I had been meaning to for a while. It was released in 1983 and I remember the  wonderful music, the subtle love story between Kamal Hasan and Jayaprada and that crazy dance number on the well. What stayed with me was that the film was about art and the struggles artists face yet continue to stay on the path. It was beautiful watching it after so many years and so much more nicer to share it with Anjali.

What also struck me was how beautifully the story was woven and told. Two struggling artists, a dancer and a poet, live in the city eking out a meagre living while trying to pursue their art. Kamal Hasan as Balakrishna, the dancer, and Sharath Babu, as Raghu the poet,are perfect. While Raghu tries to balance his art with a pragmatic outlook at earning money, Balu seeks perfection and god in his art. Perpetually seeking he learns and perfects all dance forms to the extent he can without a concern about how he will live. 

Enter a rich patron of arts, Jayaprada as Madhavi, a song writer herself, who chances upon the passionate young dancer and promotes him. She gets him a big stage to perform which is lost because his other dies before that program. She promises to promote him and stay the course with him and that gives Balu renewed hope. 

They fall in love and he proposes to her when he is told that she was married and her husband had abandoned her three days after their marriage. Despite this Balu wants to marry her and she is willing, dreaming of a life in art - she writing songs, Balu dancing, Raghu writing poems - when her penitent husband returns. Balu does the right thing by her and his love for her by telling her she should go back to her husband who can take care of her better. Balu disappears from her life and becomes an alcoholic, taken care of by Raghu and his wife.

A dance recital of a young dancer is criticised by Balu. Turns out the young miss is our lady's daughter and she wants the kid to learn from the master and keep his art alive. Master has but a few days but he resolves to teach her all he can and he does - and in doing so keeps his art alive - though he dies at the end of the performance.

I loved it. Jayaprada looks hauntingly beautiful. The relationships between Madhavi and Balu is beautifully shown, the friendship between the poet and the dancer, the relationship between a patron and an artist. Loved it.     

Thank You for Coming - Movie

 Bhumi Pednekar plays Kanika Kapoor (Kapoor khandaan ki Kanika) who earns the sobriquet of Kaandu Kanika (which sounded suspiciously like a word I thought was not appropriate). But this name she has earned thanks to her regular landing up in kaands. Over the years we realise that she is featuring in all sorts of kaands but is not able to achieve one major kaand - the big O.

Many women tell her that its not a big deal. Kanika finds out that she is perhaps not destined to find her O despite trying all ages, sizes, intelligences, sexes and decides to settle down with someone who does not look like he is capable of an O himself. Turns out that after a major drinking binge on her engagement day she finds out the pleasures of masturbation which she obviously was not aware of (though she claims to have had sex with a few men - now seems a suspicious claim). Only she does not remember anything of that night except that she had orgasmed. The search is on for the orgasm giver and they sift through the list of her ex bfs (who obviously know nothing about an O). Some major twists later she has this epiphany - the O was caused by herself. She is the source of all her happiness. Men are not required in this process and most men do not know enough about this stuff anyway (like her fiance who has an O or an E or rather a premature E upon finding an amorous fiancee climbing all over him early morning. The film actually picks up on drama quotient as her friends who till then have been talking liberally in terms of setting up sexual partners for her accuse her of 1) sleeping with husband 2) corrupting intelligent child by encouraging her to have sex with a porn cameraman in the making. Her carefree and liberal mom and her grandmom support her in her hour of need and it all ends well. We do not need men for the O and hey, men are actually messing up the O because they do not know the ABCs of the whole process.

I fully agree with the premise. Glad for Kanika and her ilk. Happiness is your own responsibility dears.     

Coming Out as Dalit - Yashica Dutt

Yashica Dutt is a New York based journalist who previously worked with HT and Brunch. She is the founder of Documents of Dalit Discrimination. 'Coming Out as Dalit' is the winner of the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar 2020. The book documents her life of hiding her 'dalitness' in India because immediately slots you; and shows how most dalits thinking of moving forward in the social or financial chain want to disown their dalitness and behave like a forward caste person.

Yashica writes about the burden and pain of hiding the fact that she was a dalit for most of her life. She recounts how her grandfather wrote the civil services to escape the burden and stigma of being a dalit, a bhangi, because education and a government job gave him the comfort of living life like other forward castes. However the price for progress or acceptance was that they had to blend with the forward castes and not let others know of their dalit status which would immediately attract discrimination - explicit and implicit. So for much of her young life, Yashica remembers trying to be like the forwards castes - clothes, birthdays, rituals, food - anything that gave her a cover from being seen as a dalit. Her mother realised the damage of the discrimination of being dalit and fought every inch of the way to provide good convent school education to her children and a good cover from the world. Yashica was bright and did well at school but the family also had to deal with her father's alcoholism which cost them in more ways than one - instead of supporting the family, the family had to support him despite the fact that he was a government servant. Her mother on the other hand (perhaps the one reason for Yashica being where she is today) put her through the best schools, bargaining, negotiating, working herself to the bone so that education can pull them out of the hole they were in. Mayo's at Ajmer, St Stephen's and another college in Mussoorie exposed Yashica to a network of high class contacts but also made her feel inadequate about her own double life. She brings that pain out very well as she writes about the subtle ways one feels the discrimination - socially, politically, financially. A job in a call centre, jobs in top newspapers give her the financial freedom to think beyond merely surviving, the realisation that she was as good or better than any and that this caste narrative of merit was flawed. Interestingly her foray into writing on fashion and other topics also exposed her to a life of the high societies, the aspirational stuff so far away for dalits. Until one colleague from work who went to the USA to pursue a course in Columbia University gave her the courage to try it out for herself too - despite having no money.

Her bosses helped - one with flight tickets and another with something else - showing that people are good and there will be no dearth of help when we set out on conquests beyond our reach. Her Professor waived her fees which reduced her financial burden considerably. But more than anything it is the essay she writes for her admission - something that truly is her story - that helps her to come to terms with her identity as a dalit. Writing about it to a foreign university gave her the freedom to explore her own identity without the fear of being ridiculed or looked down upon which could have happened in India. And while writing that, she experiences a freedom of stepping out of the charade, of accepting herself as she was, is. In a moment of truth, she hesitantly asks her colleague and friend if she could tell her a truth before she leaves for the USA (Columbia University where BR Ambedkar studied as well). Her colleague hears her double life story of being a dalit and laughs it off and says - so what's the big deal?  

Yashica intersperses her narrative with a short history of dalits, their past, the burden they carry today, her introduction to Ambedkar, to discrimination and how important it is not to buy into the narratives that society is quick to thrust upon them - about merit, status, about greed at taking up merit seats through reservation. She writes about those who proudly proclaim their dalitness and talks of the long way ahead. More than anything else, by writing this book as honestly as she did, she opens to door for so many dalits who are confused about their identity, whether to reveal it or to remain silent and hope to be mistaken for a non-dalit. Accept it, revel in it, she says. That's your identity. There's nothing to be ashamed of. In fact there's everything to be proud of.  

My father was a dalit. It took me years to know what I was because he never told us about it despite being a high ranking government official himself. It took me another three decades to understand what dalit means and what their history was. Like Yashica, my convent education and other social cover ups allowed me the comfort of not having to state my caste. Unlike most others who have to suffer the many daily ignominies of their caste.

Yashica dedicates the book to her mother and also to Rohith Vemula whose death once again brought to focus the discrimination that dalits face in India. Rohith, as is well known, was a bright scholar at the University of Hyderabad who committed suicide protesting the discrimination he faced on the campus. Today he is branded a dalit where convenient, and at the same time has had the label taken away from him by the system, where convenient. Proves the point Yashica is trying to make.