Life with the red guy

Hi all, I often irritate my friends and acquaintances with my idiosyncrasy of talking about THEM all the time and refusing to talk about myself at all. My reasoning is that the time we get together is too short for even one person's life to be spoken of in a global perspective, let alone two. And so, I defer any conversation about my own Ego and Self perpetually.

This post, therefore, will be an anomaly of sorts to my current weltanschauung. It is essentially, the red guy's last post. And so, I feel it fitting that this blog - which was one of his most prolific media of expression - should host his obituary, his eulogy and his biography.

I, of course, am Nisheeth. And unfortunately, my fate was inextricably linked with the red guy's in the same manner as Victor Frankenstein's was with his creation's. The red guy was a child of my boredom, depression and ennui. And the time has now arrived, for him to be allowed to move on. I don't know yet, if the Frankenstein parallel will play out to the same result yet.

It all started back in December 2002, I think. My first semester at IIT Madras had been almost obscenely rich in novel experiences. And I had been enjoying myself, playing basketball on the college team, writing plays and stories and publishing them in journals, playing rock music and working on setting up my own rock band, and very importantly, for the first time in my life, actually hanging out, and drinking and smoking up with my peers. This Bohemian, dissipated existence was the stuff my childhood fantasies had been made of. I was physically, mentally and spiritually happy and healthy.

December, the month-long winter break was, hence, a time to put things into perspective. And that is what I proceeded to do, when I was done reading a foot-thick, 5.3 kg weight edition of "The History of Classical Greece and Rome" and Freud's lectures at the University of Bonn., that is. And I realized that I was attempting to reconcile two entirely different paradigms.

On the one hand, I had my pre-IIT spiritual life of three years. A life where I controlled every emotion, phrase and action of my existence. I would lie in bed, switch the light off, command myself to sleep, and would sleep instantaneously. I would wake whenever I wanted, I would run and run for miles and not get tired if I did not choose to get tired. For three years, I carried my practice of ahimsa and love of life to the extent of not stepping on insects while walking - which is where I get my gaze-averted walking stance from - and allowing mosquitoes to suck my blood in peace. I possessed the ability to detach myself from my physical and mental faculties so very well that when my hand needed stitches once, the doctor could operate without any local anesthetic. I just KNEW that it was a hand with irritated nerve endings reporting to a mind, not I, that felt the pain.

On the other, I had my first semester existence in IIT to contend with. The joys of youth, uninhibitedness, of recklessness and fearlessness. My first year at IIT was a period when I could try anything, do anything and get away with anything. Fighting with policemen, giving the hostel warden the finger, playing basketball in pouring rain for three hours at a stretch to get rid of a fever, climbing every high place, diving into every pool, figuring out an algorithm that would eventually get me a patent and royalty from TCS - you name it.

The difference lay in the relative positioning of the Ego. Coming to IIT, it was 'I' who was accomplishing all that I did. Pre-IIT, 'I' was just an instrument that I could use to do whatever I wished to do. And so that December, I came to these metaphorical crossroads. Was it better to not feel, to exist in a blissful mental Bardo of sorts, at peace with the rest of the world, and be efficiently productive? Or was it better to live life on the edge perpetually, to let one's emotions and instincts guide one; to experience pleasure intensely at the risk of experiencing pain just as intensely?

And that was where the trouble began.

I could not decide. I loved my spiritual life, I was advancing reasonably well, could feel the second level of 'siddhis' beginning to set in. At the same time, this new life, with all its different clashing colors and sounds seemed such an interesting place to be in. A case could be made out, for that old life of mine to be nothing better than an escapist Utopia. And as my passions, reviving after months of control and discipline asserted themselves, subconsciously, I gradually started acceding to this point of view.

The transition was extremely gradual, but I was painfully aware of its occurrence. I stopped reciting my favorite mantra compilation - the "Shivatandavastotram" - daily as I had been accustomed to, I stopped controlling my body, training it with yoga, and conditioning it with basketball, I stopped playing or exerting myself physically, I relaxed my restriction on not having sex except on Saturday evenings, I stopped controlling my thoughts, allowing them to flit by without my understanding their import.

Thus it came about that, consciously unwillingly, I was being metamorphosed into a different personality. The truth became painfully evident the night before my PMT exam in the second semester. My first semester acquaintances - Fudu, Condom (both of whom are among the rare people whom I class 'friends' to date), LED, Bobo, Lallu and I were sitting and girding our loins to get down to the distasteful business of studying. LED, as was his wont, was trying some rough-house stuff on me; it was his avowed intention to see how far I could be pushed and how my physical prowess would manifest itself; I am afraid his curiosity was piqued by my arm-wrestling and bench-pressing exploits.

As he was twisting my arm around for the umpteenth time, I felt ANGRY. And I pushed him off rather violently. And then I went to my room and cried like my heart would break. I had not been angry since the 3rd of August 2001. I find my temper scary, it is prototypically Taurean. And then Fudu and LED tried to cajole me into good humor but I was about as responsive as a wet rag at that point of time, I remember them dragging me up from my floor to my bed. It was a good three hours before I could think rationally again.

That was when my consciousness finally caught up with the transformation that had been and was in the process of being effected. I was horrified when I realized how, almost imperceptibly, my 'siddhis' had all but vanished, how three years of effort had been nullified by nothing more than indecisiveness and mental lethargy. Also, I was depressed at the thought of what lay before me, a never-ending quest for keener and keener pleasures, as the older ones grew familiar, and exasperation at the 'ordinariness' and 'phoniness' of the outside world in contrast to my tumultuous inner life.

It was with this at the back of my mind that I came across a translation of the 'Bardo Thordol' - the Tibetan Book of the Dead. In my spiritual days, I had seen and had been told by seers I had conversed with, that all the profound texts of Indian spiritual teaching, all the greatest descriptions of experiences in the astral planes - had always had a way of gravitating towards Tibet.

Tibet -who knows anything about Tibet? Less than 3% of Tibet figures on official maps, less than 10% has been viewed by the most inquisitive of Occidental eyes, the scribes that followed in the wake of the Younghusband invasion in 1949. Even I, neophyte of the mountains and their lore, know of two monasteries hidden away a little beyond Badrinath that the Border patrols on either side are blissfully unaware of.

I read the "Bardo Thordol" thirstily, groping at archetypes in an effort to rejuvenate my ebbing spiritual fire. It turned out to be the last straw. Consider this, incessant exposure to rock, deepening clinical depression, an intrinsically saturnine personality and now, a comprehensive description of the various stages that the soul passes through in its journey between one death and another birth; the Tibetan book of the Dead is effectively a guide for the soul to find its way through Bardo, the state of non-Being that follows death - either to attain One-hood or to return to another mortal coil.

(An earnest entreaty here. If you are spiritually inclined, PLEASE, as you respect my judgment, as you love anything in this world, PLEASE DO NOT read it. It is a book that the guru must introduce, one must not read it oneself. If you are not, I would still advise you to keep away from it. There is a reason why these books are not publicly accessible.)

But to return to what I was saying, all these factors put together, were leading to one inevitable conclusion. As far back as December, I had told my parents that I thought I needed psychotherapy. My own analysis, though amateurish in skill at that point of time, compared to what it is now, set off warning bells in my head. By late April, when, thanks to a compressed semester, I got home, I had become somewhat of a vegetable, displaying the severest symptoms of grand mal chronic depression and psychosis. For two weeks I lay in bed, barely eating, barely moving, barely thinking.

Unfortunately, psychotherapy is frowned upon as a form of treatment in India. The general opinion is that, if you go to a general practitioner or a clinical psychiatrist and ask him to prescribe you pills for depression, you are just 'depressed'. But if you go to a psychoanalyst and ask him to treat you, your societal status will change to 'mentally unstable' thereby stigmatizing you for life.

It is also unfortunate that most clinical psychology students prefer to take up psychiatry as a career option right out of M.D. as they don't have to go on and do an M.Phil or PhD which a psychoanalyst needs. Psychoanalysts are, consequently, fewer in number and necessarily elitist in their fees and clientele. Psychoanalysis is therefore, in the court of public opinion, dismissed as a rich man's fad.

My Dad, for all his sterling qualities, is human. He is a neurosurgeon and has to look at lots of psychological cases just as well. He knows the taboo that the tag, "been treated for mental abnormality" can engender. And so, he scoffed at my persistent asseveration that I was clinically depressed and said, "Depression is just an attitude you have, get over it". At the same time, he talked to a psychiatrist friend of his in Jaipur and started giving me 'vitamin supplements' that, I learned this year, turned out to be tranquilizers and anti-depressants.

But as I have said before, psychiatry is a physiological treatment of a psychological response and hence, cannot work on its own. In my case, I was given sertraline to boost the serotonin production in my brain and render me enthusiastic, the theory being that the brain, when excited, generates larger amounts of serotonin than is usual.

That is sound as far as it goes. But the trouble is, popping pills is no treatment for the lifestyle problems or existential dilemmas that caused the drop in serotonin production in the first place. One may just as well envelop oneself in clouds of nicotine or marijuana or drown oneself in alcohol.

Be that as it may, I started drifting. I would lie in bed and be very happy about how it would all be over so very soon. I wrote out letters to everyone I knew, thanking them for everything they had done for me, I divided up my 'property' such as it was, in this juvenile little 'will' of mine. And I remember I started reading a lot about Cobain.

There was this pretty little intern, Paromita - her favorite music was Metallica's 'Unforgiven' - working at NCAER with me that summer on a psephology survey for 'Aaj Tak' and I remember once we were taking a break and talking of this and that and she said (she is a Piscean) "Why do you keep opening up Kurt Cobain's suicide note up on the web all the time?" And I said, "Do I?" And then I did a double take and saw that I had it opened up right before me.

Then, our band was making moves too. LED wanted us to do hard rock - Maiden et al, which I was not very comfortable with - blues-rock more my métier. But willy-nilly, we went to Palika Bazaar in Delhi and bought ourselves some of those black "band T-shirts". LED took Led Zep and Metallica I think, Condom took Nirvana and Metallica. I took one Nirvana thing. But it was the one Condom bought that attracted me a lot, it had fragments of Cobain's suicide note printed on the back in bluish-tint ink. I pestered him into lending it to me, and we swapped.

Back home, I started struggling against the ennui that was threatening to swallow me. I took to taking my car (MY car, yes MINE, entirely MINE ha ha) out for late night drives. I slowly got into this state when an onset of depression would cause me to reach for the car-keys and run out for a spin.

To cut a long story short, I was now but waiting for the right time. And one afternoon in late June, the 24th, I think (the week leading up to it is hazy in my memory through the increasing dosage of the increasingly futile 'vitamin supplements'), I pulled on my Cobain T, and took the car out. I am not sure if I wanted to end it all when I started out; as I recall it, I was merely depressed and went off. The fact that I stopped to change my T-shirt however, seems to indicate that I might have.

Be that as it may, I went out for a really long drive, not stopping until I was 30 odd kilometers from home at a river canal. I sat there for a while, watching the turgid water flow listlessly on, not knowing where it was supposed to go. I don't know how long I sat there, probably not long; I was rather restless at that point. I started back and it was a hot June afternoon and I started sweating profusely, what with the black, synthetic abomination I had on.

So I took it off. And I drove on. And then the steering wheel felt too hot for comfort so I put the T shirt on it front-on. So now, I could read the blue scrawl on the back, I could read Cobain's suicide note as I drove faster and faster.

If one is lucky enough (or unlucky enough, depending on the perspective), one may experience moments in one's life when time actually does slow down. I can recall, in vivid detail, every trivial thought process, every single sight I saw, the texture of my own thighs as I felt them, in what I sincerely believed would be my last sensation of my own body.

I was going at around 110 now, and my dear old '97 Maruti 800 was beginning to protest. I remember formulating the following in my head, "I am so very happy right now, with the world passing by me at this incredible rate. Nobody needs me any more, the best way I can help other people live their lives is by not being any more. I have been trying to wriggle out of this, but remorseless logic has brought me to this at last. There is no point to the universe, spiritualism has betrayed me, and there is no Ultimate Answer. And if there isn't, then why should I live a second longer."

These words I recall verbatim, I remember muttering them as they came to my head. I have never analyzed them and doubt if I ever will, just as I prefer to keep the Cobain note at a distance even two years down the line.

And then I accelerated, and went crazy. I just pushed the pedal down to the floor and took off, determined that the only thing that would stop me would be the Big Red Traffic Light up in the Sky. I shudder to think now, of all the accidents that I might have caused, lives even, that I may have taken with me, for no fault of theirs. But thankfully, my driving is reasonably good, even at high speeds, and I knew my baby inside out. Nothing untoward happened. Until, swerving and swinging back on the road having avoided a white Ambassador, my front suspension gave out. I remember the speedometer was way over on the right side of the dial, so I must have been going at about a 100.

She slewed about a bit; I could hear the grating sound up front. My survival instinct made me try to control her by pumping the steering wheel but matters had arrived at a fait accompli more or less. After 5 such undulations (yes, I counted), I think I turned the wheel just a tad too much, and the car spun around and skidded on its side for a split second.

This is where the Matrix part started. I remember being taken up as if on a roller-coaster ride; the world spun about me upside-down, sideways, every which way. It seemed to last an eternity, everything was happening so very slowly. And to top it all, I seem to have found time to analyze my life and what I had done with it. I remember feeling very serene and contented at having given away every buck I had on my return journey to the tramps that abound at New Delhi railway station. I remember I thought then, as my car was somersaulting across the road 4 times (as eyewitnesses later reported, I didn't have a clue), that I hadn't done too bad a job of this life after all.

I could go on and on about those moments and never exhaust my sense of amazement and wonder. For those few timeless instants, I like to think I saw something that I can find neither words to describe, nor Reason to circumscribe. But for now, I think I would be doing my long-suffering readers signal service by moving on to speak of my next rational experience.

It was a tree that broke my car's fall somewhat; I remember our landing on something that behaved much like a giant sponge and bouncing us off. When the world finally came to a standstill, I realized I was lying on the inside of my car roof and could put a hand out and feel the bushes that lay outside the shattered windscreen. Engine oil and radiator water were beginning to trickle down to where I was lying.

I would be guilty of subterfuge and deceit of the highest degree if I were to record that my thoughts at this life-defining moment were anything other than, "Oh SHIT!"

Well, I scrambled out and onlookers who were hurrying to the spot were rather taken aback to see me. I realized why later, when I saw the car after it had been turned back up and pulled out of the nallah it had fallen in. Basically, it had spun head over heels about 4 times, and then fallen off the road into a 14 foot deep trench. My poor car was utterly, absolutely smashed, it was a total wreck. And that is why it was considered miraculous that I had gotten off, literally without a scratch if we discount the scratches I got from the broken glass as I was struggling to work my way out of the shattered case.

It was a shattering blow to my Dad as well. He had been so very adamant about my not needing any treatment and 'just going through a phase' that this came as a big shock for him. Mum yelled at him a little and the very next day, I was taken to VIMHANS, under supervision all the way. I don't exactly remember what happened, everyone seemed to think if they tranquilized me enough, I'd forget everything about it and start off all full of vim and vigor anew.

The VIMHANS people said 'psychosis' which I think was stupid because they ran standard tests on me that I fudged a lot for the fun of it. Not very responsible of me, I know, but you might find your perspective altered if you were drugged as much as I was in those days. A diagnosis of psychosis however, means state internment and probation for ages by India medical jurisdiction standards, so it wasn't as iconoclastic and rebellious as it was silly of me to have fudged those tests. I told them the standard Gestalt things don't work for 150+ IQs anyway.

But Dad would have none of it. And since he is one of North India's pre-eminent neurosurgeons and runs his own hospital, he got them to see their way to letting me go in peace. I was however, prescribed a stronger anti-depressant - two a day for five years or something. We came back home, and I remember looking at Dad and thinking he had aged 10 years in that one day. It is no joke to find that your first-born son has psychological problems. A while ago, he told me he also felt guilty about consciously ignoring the possibility of my having clinical depression. He told me that with those symptoms in a third party, he would have prescribed psychological treatment in a flash.

The next thing was to decide if I was to continue in IIT. Chennai is such miles away, and my parents were really very scared, so scared that they still haven't really gotten over it. It was I who pressed them to let me come here again. You see, I had been looking at treating myself in my own way at that point of time.

And seeing that I was so full of chemicals and delusions at that point of time, it may be expected that my proposed solution to my woes was equally fantastic just as well. There was this beautiful girl who worked as a nurse in our hospital. And we were thrown together often because I liked volunteer work at orphanages and so did she and I would help around the hospital when she'd be on duty.

I've been around women a lot in my time. Back in DPS, I was the resident swimming stud, captain at all things aquatic and got a lot of opportunities. This was where the 'no sex except on Saturday nights' rule was established because I did not have swimming or basketball practice on Sundays. But I had never actually been in love, (short of the mandatory middle school crushes and a little flirtatious fling in 10th) and I doubted if I ever could be. But now, I made a conscious decision to fall in love, with Shaina.

The crossroads were behind me, I had made my choice. I would be of this world and measure my happiness with how happy I could make a certain person whom I loved. Oh yes, this was love, beyond a shadow of doubt. All I thought about, day and night, was Shaina. It helped that she was so very beautiful, model class. And that is how I spent my time for the next year, Shaina looming large over everything that I did.

I would write more upon Shaina and her beauty and the things that we did and the happiness that we shared and the pain that our intimacy brought. I would write more of how, before she would actually call, I'd know she would and pick up my cell phone. (Fudu can bear witness to that) I could talk for days about our love trysts when I'd go back home.

But Shaina is too recent and sacred a memory to be defiled by a distorted perspective. That tale shall remain untold for now. We move on to speak of the red guy. The red guy basically was a very bright, very perceptive, very cynical 'old' person. He came into being when Nisheeth went out after that car crash. Nisheeth - he of the analytical mind and the balanced perspective, and the overbearing compassion and the psychotherapy and the spiritualism. At those crossroads, we separated.

He walked on down the path of aestheticism and hedonism and intellectualism. He read what I read, but he read to assuage his ego of its self-sufficiency, not to learn. He listened to music, to affirm his possession of impeccable taste, not for its intrinsic merit. He wrote for people to read, not for himself. The good poetry on my blog, 'Palestine' in particular, was written before he came into being, his advent was marked by a distinct fall in our combined creativity. His forte was deploying our shared knowledge base to write newspaper articles and get paid money to buy booze with. And the booze was used primarily to shut me - Nisheeth - out.

The red guy was born out of Nisheeth's ennui. He was nurtured by his relationship with Shaina, where he/I/we thought it possible that the key to contentedness and happiness lay in being able to take someone for granted and to make her happy. He was nurtured by living in a socially dysfunctional environment sponging off Nisheeth's reputation. It is not surprising that he got as far as he did. Looking back, I feel I really did do a lot in my first year here.

The red guy's paradigm is logically sound and comprehensive, just as a one-dimensional study of quantum mechanics is logically sound and comprehensive. Insofar as it goes, you cannot find fault with it. Lots of people live with that paradigm for the whole of their lives. But those are the ones who are born to it, who innately tend to thoughtlessness.

In our case, it started coming apart last year, when my expenditure on 'beggars and wastrels' caused me to cut down on my phone budget. Basically, a certain old lady who works in the Physics Department office as a clerk had problems paying her house rent and I was putting up a 1000 bucks a month to help out. This was not received well at High Command and I was issued injunctions to be thrifty and focused and not waste money. About the same time, August 2004, one of my two favorite uncles, Pramod, came to visit me.

There are two people in this world whom I really consider wise and listen to - Pramod Chacha and Pradeep Mama. Both were drinking buddies at Yale and Harvard too, so the triangle is completed! Well anyway, he came here and gave dear old LED a bit of a complex. LED has been trying to grow his hair long and rather prides himself on how long he's managed to get it. My uncle's hair was about twice as long as his - a long ponytail, kurta and dhoti and a rudraksh necklace, that is how he goes and delivers lectures at UConn.

He gets royalties for all the Hepatitis B vaccines Dr. Reddy's lab sells, he was nominated for the Nobel in medicine in '95 for inventing 'heat shock protein' therapy, he is one of the 5 original inductees of the International Hall of Fame for Cancer Research and he is worth about $15 million being one of the three founders of Antigenics Inc., one of the US's largest immunology research and avant-garde pharmaceutical companies. All in all, a pretty awesome role model, I'd say.

I am proud to say that he looks forward to our conversations too, partly because it was in one such that I got my idea for protein secondary structure prediction and he got a slant on the longevity problem he's been working on that he reports is looking promising. This time, however, we spoke of non-technical, non-philosophical issues; we spoke of my growth pangs.

My parents haven't told my relatives (or anyone for that matter) about my VIMHANS episode fearing it might decrease my matrimonial eligibility etc. I would have thought my appearance would play a larger role. So it came as a surprise to him and we spoke long about it. We were in one of my favorite spots, on the steps of the institute stadium, and we spoke for hours on end. Finally, he left to catch his flight and I was left to ponder over his statements.

"The only reason to get married is to have children. Do NOT get married for any other considerations."

Look who's talking! Our man has been married thrice and divorced twice, his current wife, my Jasmine Chachi, lives separately in an ashram in Florida. As a youngster of 20, he went to study in Calcutta back in the staid 70s and got into a live-in relationship with a woman so he did not have to pay any rent.

Well, anyhow, his words left an impact, as did Gibran's when he speaks on 'Love' and 'Marriage' in that amazing labor of love - the Prophet. I read them, and I was convinced that they are true. And I quoted them to Shaina. Unfortunately, she happens to belong to the statistical majority that follows the famed Nisheeth's Law.

Nisheeth's Law states that, "In a woman's case, should there exist an accurate quantization method for both qualities, multiplying beauty and brain will give us a constant value." In layman terms, the prettier she is, the dumber she is. In all my experience of women, I have found but one honorable exception.

Shaina, on the other hand, is not an exception, being exceptionally beautiful physically and spiritually though cerebrally limited. Her response was to ask me to not bang my head over philosophy. "Our relationship works fine with me not being able to live without you, and vice versa."

But as time wore on, I found that I was beginning to find a way to manage without her. That was basically the end of our relationship. A need-based relationship cannot survive if the need goes away. And the need went away because gradually the red guy started sinking, and I was able to assert myself more often.

If you read my poem, "Drunkenness is the best policy", you can clearly perceive the situational unhappiness I was in - watching my own self debilitate through apathy. I wrote that directly upon waking up, drowsily scribbling it down on my notepad before the red guy could assert himself.

I think the trigger for my resuscitation was a realization that what people, ordinary people that I met and helped - batchmates, family, mess-workers, lab assistants, puppy dogs that bite at my beard and nearly nip a chunk off - expected from the red guy was a Nisheeth-like insouciance and optimism, not his misanthropic cynicism. Nisheeth can sense unhappiness, Nisheeth can empathize, Nisheeth hurts when ANYONE hurts; the red guy decided to use that as an excuse to be extremely officious and play Jesus. So, he would talk to people and tell them what was wrong with them, but he'd not do it because he cared for them, he did that to bolster his own Ego. He used Nisheeth's gift of compassion and turned it into an abhorrent monstrosity. There would be times when Nisheeth would have the upper hand, which I am really thankful for, considering the happiness that those would give me.

It was of an October night then last year that the red guy was mortally stricken down. His impregnable armor of nonchalance and cynicism was punctured when Nisheeth came across a person so very starved of love and affection, that all the red guys in the world could not hold him back from reasserting himself.

After that, the red guy was done; he started losing his life-force as Nisheeth started regaining his perspective. This December, I finally started meditating again, after a hiatus of 18 months. I started sleeping in the Peeliamman temple here on campus until someone complained and they sat a security guard down there whom I proceeded to ingratiate myself with by taking him bananas each time I'd go there at night.

Also, with the apathetic red guy increasingly out of the way, I finally got the incentive to build myself a frequency multiplier and study the psycho-acoustics of western Classical music as a build-up to my B. Tech project on field-matter interaction and with the results thereof, I convinced a professor to take it up as research for the next year. Not only did he do that, he's also called in two other professors, booked a room for setting up a lab (ulp! I am supposed to do that) and given me tons of reference material to read up before we start on the lab work. If I fail, or hit a theoretical dead-end, heads are going to roll, primarily mine.

In my new-found vigor, I finally decided I could do without Shaina. It started as a tiny whisper of doubt in my head in August, kept growing under the surface, and finally prompted me to give her the miss in the baulk. I told her on the 28th of January.

After that, I spent the entire month of February steeped in alcohol and grass. Memories are painful things to stamp out. As Neruda says, "Loving is so short, and oblivion is so long". But the good thing was that I fell out of love ages before we eventually broke up. The reason we were together so long was the fact that our relationship started at a time when I had been through a lot of trauma and that our intimacy was so very mutual and so very comforting that I felt unwilling to trade it for the freedom of being lonely.

But it had to be. A relationship contracted out of need, maintained out of insecurity and fear is not a relationship. Its a millstone around the neck, and the swiftest cut is the kindest. To fear starting over and to thereby hang on to baggage from the past makes a mockery of both our evolutionary instincts and our spiritual individuality. As I never tire of saying, "the assignment of individual consciousness to ONE body is not an arbitrary division."

But the red guy had some fight left in him yet. And his prompting made me fear loneliness and what with her calling almost everyday, "to talk just as friends" I almost gave in and went back. What held me back was alcohol, I started drinking almost everyday. What held me back was grass; I ended up going to classes doped out.

And then one day, I realized I was basically looking for pegs to hang my hat on, when actually, I ought to be wearing it myself. I was using women, booze and grass as ways of avoiding introspection. This of course, prompted me to examine the issue closer, and what I found is what I have detailed today in this post.

Had that not happened, the red guy would have lived on, perhaps to return another day when I feel spiritually barren all over again. But I now see the crossroads that I came to two years ago. And I see that, quirkily enough, I have come back to the same crossroads yet again. The same choices face me today as they did then. What do I choose?

I think I understand the spiritual path far better now than I understood then. That was bookish knowledge, acquired either through readings or through satsangs or through asking seers as I wandered in the hills above Rishikesh. Two years of living, two years of real people and real raw emotions brings it all into perspective.

The mistake I was making was in wanting to not get hurt. Spiritualism should never be an escape; it should be the culmination of joyful living. I think I have learned to appreciate the beauty in pain and sorrow, I have learned that to love is to seek pain, and that to live is to seek love. That is the most important lesson that all my wild times have taught me, to not fear pain and sorrow. They will come, and they will pass, and while they are with us they will teach us much.

I used to be scared of commitments, of wanting to love people. As late as this February, I tried to fob off a young friend of mine, "Do NOT call me Seymour!!" But I am slowly finding that all the pain is worth it, that I can help people much more if I show that I care too.

Yesterday, as I was walking to Sangeetha's for dinner, I passed by three beggars and gave them 10 bucks each. But I also gave them a pat on the back, a shoulder wrap and a smile respectively too. And I think that is the difference between the red guy and Nisheeth. The red guy would still give out money. But he would feel so very virtuous about having done so. He would pretend that he was doing it for his own satisfaction. He would not acknowledge the possibility of actually being able to love someone else. But he still would have, deep inside. He came from me, didn't he? I sympathize for him as Frankenstein did for his creature.

I've had this feeling for quite a bit now, that everyone, everything in this world is trying to make me happy, I said so two posts ago in the introduction. I find that I can look at the morning everyday and find something new to marvel at in the colors that all the clouds deck themselves out in, just for me. I can find pleasure now in watching ants scurry about in their little lines the way I used to. I have begun to enjoy doing Math again, brought out my good old linguistic symmetric cryptosystem and dusted it up and wrote some code for it a few days ago.

And of course, a big void in my life got filled up early this March. It would not do to speak of it here, but I really feel blessed thanks to my young sibling sitting in Beninganahalli. Plus, I got a comment on my blog inspired by Omar Khayyam suggesting that one of my greatest causes of unhappiness in the past year exists no more. Plus, I wrote letters to most of my friends telling them I love them a lot today, basically clearing out the old lumber.

It is time for some things to die, so that others may be born. And with me, these rejuvenations have almost always been where I found my preter-guru, Swami Devananda 10 years ago - the banks of the Ganga at Rishikesh. This time, however, I aim to go higher.

From Rishikesh, a tortuous bus trip gets one to Gangotri, the presumed origin of the Ganga. Actually, over the years, the glacier has pushed back to a spot 20 kms farther on to Gaumukh. Gaumukh is a day's trek away and hardy souls go there to actually see the mighty Ganga flow out of a crack no more than four feet wide and a foot high. The temperature, in the middle of June, is some degrees below zero.

Higher above Gaumukh, lies the plateau of Tapovanam, which only semi-pro climbers can get to. I have heard that its beauty defies description and that in the winters, the great Himalayan ‘rishis’ descend from their mountain fastnesses to meditate there. I think I can get there, they teach one well at the Nehru Climbing School, and I don't unlearn easily.

Onwards to the realms of actually wishful thinking, the local lore, supplemented by the wisdom of Swami Tapovanamji Maharaj(he lived most of his life there) in his book, "Wanderings in the Himalayas", suggests that Swargarohini, the site of the mythical final passage of the Pandavas, lies higher up beyond Tapovanam. The only map extant is a crude one I found in the above book but I desperately want to climb up to Swargarohini once in my lifetime. This might be the time I get there, should I actually make it to Tapovanam.

Which is why I am going around telling the people I love that I love them, and writing this gargantuan post. It is my avowed intention to lose the red guy somewhere amid the snow and ice. But that high up, what with the oxygen levels and the sudden crevasses and my pronounced tendency to be reckless in search of spiritual ecstasy and my going alone up there this time around, thanks to my regular pro-climbing partner getting his dates messed up, I just feel like tying up all my loose ends before I go off.

With this, I believe I shall conclude. Not for a dearth of things to say, I assure you. But because this particular vein of thought has exhausted its potential. This is the end of the road for the bearded red guy. With him, I believe, shall go his propensities towards alcohol and the green grass. With him, I hope, will go the pomposity and officiousness that often cloaked my empathy and compassion. With him shall also go, I trust, the apathy and the purposelessness and the iconoclastic ostensible atheism that was permeating insidiously the foundations of my psyche.

Crossroads galore on the paths I tread
"Whither?", I crane my neck to see
Can't see through these swirling mists
That work hard keeping tomorrow from today
Which road do I take, I sit and wonder
While the shadows grow longer and greyer
And I see others as they walk straight ahead
Frightened to look about either way
And others who walk clasping hands
As if the folly of two is half the folly of one
And still others like me just sit around
And forget that the road is made for walking
That it is our fate to be but rolling stones
All the moss in the world still makes a thorny bed
And so I get up and shake the moss off
And ask the Piper to play me His tune
And my feet start tapping to the music
And I set off down the rockiest road
Where those who see the farthest tread in pain
And I take them balm for their blisters
So we can walk and be happy together

I thank you all for being with me so far and bestowing your appreciation upon products of the mental constipation that ensued when two people were living in room for one. At least one of the inmates is not coming back any more. The other one will take this opportunity to tell you that he loves you all, that he is feeling so very close to Divinity, he can feel the beauty of God right now as he dreams of being in Tapovanam as soon as his feet can carry him there. And both of us, yes, even the cynical red guy, wish you all happiness and contentment and the Joy of knowing God and Beauty now and forever.

Be well.

Darkness liberating me ....

There and back again

Hi all. Well the breach has been surmounted. I am finally about to use my web log as it was originally intended to be used - as a medium for socially dysfunctional people to articulate their sentiments. The following may thus be construed as technically speaking being my first 'blog' post, the preceding matter entirely comprising of literary compositions of dubious merit.

But hold it.... The muse of literature strikes again, “This can be no personal narrative”, she thunders, “It is the curvature of the huge sand-glass of Time that directs the flow of your thoughts.”

Yes, ma’am.

This post is set temporally, in the direct, sleep-deprived, stunningly sober aftermath of the annual Godavari Hostel Night - the one pure frat night in all of IIT culture.
Spatially, for adherents of genius loci, this post is set a furlong away from the motherland, as the author lay peaceably on the waters of the Bay of Bengal off Besant Nagar Beach, below a profusely star-studded sky, at one in the morning.

It all started with a requirement for cigarettes to fuel the festivities at the aforementioned orgy. When Haddi, my companion in this adventure, was appointed the fag-Saki and presented with a bike key and injunctions to get the required commodity as soon as possible, he naturally sought me out as a companion on his perilous quest - to drive 3 kms to the main gate and get a couple of packs of cigarettes.

Of course, with us thrown together, the poor nicotine addicts were not getting their cigarettes anytime soon, were they? No sir, our first task was to get the mechanical beast some chemical nourishment. Next, fortuitously, we found Shiva and Chaitanya returning to the hostel and passed the cigarette buck to them gratefully.

Free of our chore, and any guilt at having commandeered a hapless comrade's bike, we hied for the great open spaces, with as much alacrity as a poor 100 cc engine had to offer. Where does acceleration derive its amazing fascination from? Since time immemorial, we have always commemorated speed, an essential component of natural selection in the days of tooth and claw; not that irrelevant in the world of broadband internet either. But it is a recognized physiological fact that the human sensory perception is incapable of gauging speed. The individual excitement to motion, as opposed to objective archetypal responses to measures of speed, depends entirely on the magnitude of acceleration.

Why does the body instinctively perceive and appreciate acceleration while remaining oblivious to its better known offspring - speed? The answer, one presumes, lies in an extrapolation of the Freudian Pleasure Principle, which may be credited to the good doctor himself. Away from his analysis of the conscious and its urges, Freud, in his study of dreams, unequivocally assigned connotations of sexual desire and gratification to the act of flying.

In 1996, designers at a Singapore amusement park researched roller-coaster rides around the world and concluded that the enjoyment that visitors derived therefrom was, in a very large part, due to the autonomous physiological response. This was found to correspond with the physiological response to sex. 80 years after his time, another Freudian hypothesis had found independent validation.

Which, of course, sheds a lot of light on why exactly Schumacher makes $50 million a year, why NBA basketball players are the highest paid professionals in the world, why the Hindu deity of virility, Hanuman possesses the power of flight and why one rather drunk and one rather long-bearded post-adolescent find a zip through empty Chennai streets at midnight so much fun.

So, basically, we fooled around for a bit, getting our money's worth out of the contraption and enlivening the night with, if memory serves me right, a chorused rendition of 'Break on through', a cover of 'Roadhouse Blues' by Haddi and a guitar solos included rendition of Hendrix's 'All Along the Watchtower' by yours truly. Heaven praise the sluggard constabulary of this great metropolis.

Finally, having run out of wild ideas, we made for the beach, Haddi a reluctant companion, for I explained to him that I had suddenly had this urge to bathe in the sea in my birthday suit. I think he saw jail bars and parole papers dancing before his eyes. Be that as it may, we arrived at Besant Nagar Beach at one and slunk to the shoreline undetected. Haddi then firmly declined my invitation to join in the aquatics and sat down beside my bag and slippers as I made for the primal element.

It was scary to begin with, post-midnight is high tide time at Besant Nagar and high tide is never a good time to go swimming, even if you've gone to the Delhi State Juniors. My modus operandi normally is to dive in head first as soon as I am reasonably sure I there is enough water for me to not get it stuck in the sand. Whoever heard of a sea ostrich? Ridiculous!

Partly because of the somber might of the rising tide, partly because of my anticipation of a new experience (Ah! How scarce they keep getting!), this time I chose to walk in gradually, letting the waves cover my feet, then walking in farther so the next time they lap the edge of my shorts; walk in farther ad libidum. Walking in to waist depth, in order not to aggravate the homophobic Haddi’s feelings, I stripped, tied my T-shirt and shorts together and bunched them into one hand. Onward!

It was when I first took one on the chest that the experience may actually be considered to have started. The farther in I went, the stronger the waves came, knocking me back, and fiercer still would I yell in delight and plough back farther into the sea. Thus was the status quo, until the seventh wave finally put in an appearance.

You can see it from far off, a seventh wave. In the daytime, it looks magnificent, its crests glittering green and white tongues of froth licking its crystal liquid lips. Many have given me piggy-back rides and many have engulfed me instantaneously in a murky world of aquamarine green.

But at night-time, it’s different.

Before your eyes, the horizon rises, a very murky blackness on a very murky blackness, the world tilts before your eyes as your head bobs on the water’s surface. Higher it rises, still higher, the angle rises very slowly; you feel you’re falling forward into an irrational eternity. Then it bursts over you, and it takes you deep into its womb, and it accords you the visceral warmth and softness, the primal force - throbbing with immense power, yet broodingly nurturing. Then it coughs you back out as it expends itself on the beach.

Engrossed in playing with the waves, I suddenly realized I had forgotten which way the beach lay. Of course, it was child’s play to find out, it was currently out of sight in the dark, but all waves naturally seek the shore. But I refrained from bringing my reason into play, preferring to allow my soul to absorb the immensity of this contrived beautiful situation as sincerely as possible – lost on the ocean.

So I did what sailors did when they were lost on the ocean, in the days before Marconi took the fun out of the business. I lay supine on the ocean’s swell, hands behind my head, and gazed up at the stars, which, to my extreme delight, were out in large numbers. I could not, of course, emulate the seamen in actually sleeping on the water for, it may be remembered, they do that far away from shorelines that cause waves that would wake even Rip van Winkle in a hurry.

Imagine the scene, gentle reader, a vast bowl of darkness studded with jewels of light above, cold, ethereal, immutable. Below, the warm rocking swells of the ocean, the cradle of all life, if Darwin is to be believed. And darkness withal, darkness everywhere - reason lies somnolent in the silent watches of the night.

It is a strange loneliness this, that descends on one under such unworldly conditions. I, for one, in all seriousness, seldom trust myself to venture into the ocean unattended. My friends here will tell you that that I pester them incessantly to go to the beach with me. And yet, when I go alone, I do not venture into the water.

It is not drowning that I fear; I fear that I do not fear drowning. The sea calls me on, farther, deeper – it calls irresistibly in a voice so ancient I can discern no vestige of it, and yet it tugs at every fiber of my being. I would love to follow, as long as I could, I would love to rock in my giant little cradle when I lay my head down on it for the last time. I swear it, I would love to. Hence, my little voice of reason decrees that I not go swimming in the ocean unattended.

Be it climbing up a Grade IV rock face without rappel, clips and rope, be it racing an 8 year old Maruti with a suspect suspension at 150 kmph, be it swimming across the Ganges at Rishikesh to the entertainment of the local populace, be it lying on a pebbled river bed, with just my nose sticking out, and basking drowsily in a hot summer sun, the call of life, its urgent, impatient, hot-blooded urge, is much louder in my ears than the wise, plaintive cry for its sustenance.

But faint though it is, it still impinges on my ears half an hour later, when my inchoate sea sense tells me to get out of the water which is getting rather inclement. I swim back therefore, to where I am in my depth and stand facing the waves, let them batter me and drive me back to the shore, I do not depart ungraciously, it is they who usher me out for having out-stayed my welcome. Eventually, I arrive to within knee depth and remember that I had better pull my clothes back on lest Haddi go into conniptions. On with the rags and I stumble out with the waves administering some parting shots in ill-humor.

Haddi knows better than to go into the “Look at you, you’re crazy” mode. He’s known me long enough. He merely states firmly that he will drive hereon lest some diligent police officer get some untimely business. Seeing that his breath still reeks of whisky a mile away, it is the quintessential case of the pot calling the kettle black.

But my maritime experience had rendered me introspective and so I did not contest the point and acceded to my hazardous role as pillion rider. One if the most glaring examples of lack of empathy in our world is the sad case of pillion riders. The driver, oblivious of the hair-raising travails of his passenger, guns his engine to ever-greater speeds. A case may be made out for the superior diplomatic skills of women as being a mental manifestation of having to adjust to the various demands of being pillion riders to uncouth speed-junkie oafs. Unless, of course, one happens to enjoy the thrill, the uncertainty and the looming threat of physical harm.

And this is where the adventure story per se ends. Accounts of how we returned to the hostel to find Bacchanalia reigning supreme would then eventually brush upon how I spent two hours listening to our hostel rock band play and drunken seniors telling me how to run the hostel next year on, how I spent the hours between 4 to 6 playing the blues in a dark room with the only light being the seven segment display on the guitar processor and the only sounds being my amateurish compositions, interspersed with pieces by Jimi. SRV and Clapton, and the rhythmic snoring of the room’s worthy occupant, Condom.

All of those are worthy subjects for commentary just as well, of course. Right now, however, the author has shot his bolt. It was his intention to intensively chronicle a situation-induced thought process, something he had rather stopped doing recently, insofar as the written word is concerned. It remains to you, gentle reader, to judge how satisfactory and aesthetically pleasing the endeavor has been. With this, I take your leave, for the nonce.

Damped Cogitations

Hi all, a rainy day, a bunked D slot class, a lot of late night introspection.......voila! a new post. It makes me feel very happy, a lot of things are conspiring to get me to shrug off my long depressedness and come up and feel the sun. Now, if only the NYT thing works out, I could really be sunny. Beware, damped cogitations dead ahead.

Damped Cogitations

It started raining today as I was walking back from classes in the morning. And I stopped and went up to my usual secluded haunt and welcomed the storm-clouds as they gathered from the South, arms akimbo, eyes half-shut and reverently gazing upwards and clothes, hair and beard rippling in a wind so stiff I had to fix my stance so as to not be blown off and fall 36 meters to the ground. I waited till the first cloud burst, then I climbed down and walked back to the hostel, getting absolutely soaked by the time I got here. There is a particularly beautiful passage in Jack London’s book “Call of the Wild” that goes

He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths he had drawn. He linked the past with the present, and the eternity behind him throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm to which he swayed as the tides and seasons swayed. He sat by John Thornton's fire, a broad-breasted dog, white-fanged and long-furred; but behind him were the shades of all manner of dogs, half-wolves and wild wolves, urgent and prompting, tasting the savor of the meat he ate, thirsting for the water he drank, scenting the wind with him, listening with him and telling him the sounds made by the wild life in the forest, dictating his moods, directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he lay down, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming themselves the stuff of his dreams.

And then again, in an earlier passage

Every night, regularly, at nine, at twelve, at three, they lifted a nocturnal song, a weird and eerie chant, in which it was Buck's delight to join. With the aurora borealis flaming coldly overhead, or the stars leaping in the frost dance, and the land numb and frozen under its pall of snow, this song of the huskies might have been the defiance of life, only it was pitched in minor key, with long-drawn wailings and half-sobs, and was more the pleading of life, the articulate travail of existence. It was an old song, old as the breed itself--one of the first songs of the younger world in a day when songs were sad. It was invested with the woe of unnumbered generations, this plaint by which Buck was so strangely stirred. When he moaned and sobbed, it was with the pain of living that was of old the pain of his wild fathers, and the fear and mystery of the cold and dark that was to them fear and mystery. And that he should be stirred by it marked the completeness with which he harked back through the ages of fire and roof to the raw beginnings of life in the howling ages.

As I walked in the pouring rain, face upturned and tongue lolling out, lapping up drops of rain water with an instinctive legerdemain, it wasn’t I alone that walked. I walked with my ancestors and theirs, and theirs dating back to the timeless past when bands of nomads found a river valley in the heart of a sub-continent and eked out a living at the mercy of the vagaries of the river and the rain.

I am but a link in a chain that stretches both to the past and the future. The past controls me, guides me inexorably, as the mighty current of a river guides a paper boat. And so, when I rejoice at the rain, I do so even though the days when my own family actually depended on rain water for its sustenance are beyond living memory. Today, as I walked with ghosts from the past, I was a medium of expression for their joys, their hopes, and their elation at the continuity of life.

Every day is a cornucopia of new experiences; they flow out of the glacier that is Time in an unending melody of transitions. And yet, the ones that register, the ones that remain etched in memory are so very preciously few.

My paternal grandfather is 86. He stays with us most of the time now. A couple of years ago, he was really sinking and since I happened to be at home, I was de facto nurse. Now that does not merely involve feeding, medicating, injecting, bathing, cleaning up after etc. it also involves listening to him ramble on. Tunnel vision, they call it. As the brain cells begin to die, short-term memory is lost and child-hood details become extremely vivid. Erstwhile forgotten memories of childhood are an old man’s inseparable companions.

Can it be that childhood experiences, being much more instinctive and hence not as individualistic as experiences arising of adult volition, are much more memorable because they are closer to the collective racial memory?

To take an example, I cannot remember exactly when I last lay in a pit full of squelchy mud in a pouring rain; in fact, I don’t think I’ve actually done it ever, but I can remember the sensations of softness, coldness, warmth, goose-bumps on the backs of my arms. That is a racial memory, almost as old as the mud and the rain itself.

Who does not remember experiencing a localized diffused brightness at one point or the other in one’s life, concomitant with feelings of security, happiness and contentment? Of an instant, we hark back to when we were young infants ensconced far inside the depths of a community cave, gazing through sleepy eyes at the fire that stands guard at the entrance, keeping a mysterious dark otherness at bay, ages ago when the world was young.

As children, we are all as afraid of the dark as the pitiful Neanderthal who slept in trees clutching a wooden stump, fearfully pricking his ears at the savage sounds prowling the jungle below. As children, we are all fascinated by fire, by the act of burning. Has anyone ever set a pile of paper alight and not gazed intently at the flames consuming the frail whiteness with its hypnotizing slow certitude?

What causes the universal positive emotion at the break of day, the plaudits to the beauty of the sunrise? Is it too hard to imagine the relaxing of the vigil at the break of day, as the predators of the night slink away, foiled, to their lairs, as the embers of the camp-fire are allowed to go out, having stood guard alongside their Master.

We have moved on to civilized living and our intellectual currents are increasingly directed towards the abstract and designed to assimilate nothing but an increasingly mechanized and psychotic present. We choose to ignore the fact that the psychic power of experiences, the undercurrents that hold the highest psychological value for humanity, are rooted firmly in the past, even in the pre-historic past.

The sea, does it not invoke emotions of security, angst and serenity? Looking at that vast bluish-green carpet of stormy tranquility, ‘the same to Noah as to me’, looking at the unending marches of the stars of a cold, clear December night, we see what the first fathers of men saw, a vision of immortal immutability.

“…….and because all tales must end, all music must end, all life must end, at the very end we say Khattam Shud.”
- Salman Rushdie, Haroun and the Sea of Stories

Death is an intrinsic and innocuous part of natural evolution; it is merely in its crude anthropomorphic manifestation that it frightens us. Death stares at us from the last page of every book we read, the final triumphant note of every piece of music one hears, the final scene of every film that one views. Have we all not been there?

Death is a demagogue that unerringly incites the most poignant of human emotions – those of irretrievable loss and change, of the fragility of existence, the tenuousness of consciousness and its impotence in the face of Time.

It is in contrast to this, that the experiences we speak of today are different. They offer a view of an alternative, an eternal, changeless alternative. They offer us the chance to believe that ‘some things will never change’. Note the comforting ring of the phrase, though used in a cerebral context. They thus address humanity’s basic insecurity, the need to believe that life will survive, collectively, if not individually.

All these experiences are psychologically speaking, ‘womb archetypes’. The quest for the comfort and security of the womb is indelibly etched in the mammalian psyche as an unremembered, timeless, dreamlike existence before the advent of reality and confusion and pain - the tumult and trauma of birth.

It is instructive to note here, that an anthropomorphic allegory to suit this description would uncannily resemble the Semitic legend of the Garden of Eden and the Adamite Fall. It may be remembered, en passant, that the serpent has been recognized as a phallic symbol by cultures both traditional and contemporary, as a quick perusal of journals purveying feminine pulchritude would easily reveal.

The sea, the night sky, the mother’s breast, the sounds of the night, lying in the first hours of the dawn on a bed of grass bedewed, the smell of damp earth, the coziness that ensues from pulling a blanket up over the top of one’s head and constricting one’s world to a small, warm, dark little place – all these experiences contain elements of wish fulfillment, of ‘returning to the womb’, partially or completely, literally or metaphorically, of self-reassurance of the permanence of certain memories - memories almost tangible.

The presence of ‘womb archetypes’ then, is what sets certain experiences apart from others as being more memorable, timeless, precious etc. It is the author’s contention that the psychological health of a community may be measured by the profusion of womb archetypes in its mainstream culture.

This presents a far more logical explanation, than vague individual lifestyle-based formulations, for the relative paucity of psychotic disorders in agrarian cultures and a plethora of the same in all classes (but particularly the nouveau riche) in rapidly developing industrial economies, viz. Puritan Britain and modern day India. The similarities between these two societies have been remarked upon, arrived at, and explained by other parallel sociological approaches just as well.

This essay is meant to be nothing but a monologue on the void in modern psychological theory on the significance of the uncanny commonality in the relative acuity of perception and memory of events for the vast concourse of humanity. There is much that remains to be said of the validity of the theory of womb archetypes. The observations that lead to its formulation are well nigh indisputable; the actual theory is merely an intuitive juxtaposition of Freudian psychoanalysis and the Jungian ‘collective unconscious’.

Time, and the Harvard Socio-Anthropology Department, will judge the validity of this hypothesis. As for me, I am almost beatifically happy at the thought that the memory of this moment is not just my moldy T-shirt that sticks sopping wet to my torso, it is also the residuum of centuries of experience that sticks to my unconscious, guiding my volition and shaping my apperception.

My subconscious directs my conscious to glow with satisfaction and contentment as I end; with the feeling that some things won’t, that some things will last forever, in this pouring April rain.

August 18, 1969.......flying high, in the Bethel sky......

Hi all, hearing the uproar outside my room door today in the morning put me in mind of my legendary exploits two years ago, come Holi day, outside Sarayu and Sharavati. That of course, put me in a good mood for the day. Reading up on how woodstock happened and how Michael Lang got all the credit and Roberts and Rosenman had to do all the dirty work.....and how Jimi acted like a pompous cheapskate.......well this one was a bit of a no-brainer, what! I hope the Hindu believes its incredibly profound though (boo hoo ... just 800 words again!). Here you go,

The annual Indian Woodstock

Every year, to the eye of the untrained observer, a large portion of the normally staid Indian population goes crazy for a day. To Caucasian eyes, one of the reasons why India stands apart as a distinct culture, as opposed to the colorless stereotypes that engulf other Asian countries, is its under-current of passion and joie de vivre, unparalleled save in the Hispanic nations. The Indian festival of Holi, set in the back-drop of prudish rural North India, is a perfect showcase for our study.

Recently, a law passed in Delhi has made it ‘illegal’ for couples to hold hands while in Connaught Place, the shopping heartland of the Capital. In the nearby satellite towns of Western UP, police raid restaurants, hotels and cybercafés regularly, serving up details to a drooling, salacious local press. In staid university campuses, wearing shorts in public is considered unseemly. Public opinion places drug usage at almost the same level of debauchery as paedophilia.

Contrast this, if we may, with the sights and sounds that are almost synonymous with Holi in the North Indian hinterland. Gangs of semi-naked youths roaming the streets, overwhelmingly physical displays of affection, pitched mock battles, ubiquitous eve-teasing and coquetry, and of course, the openly public confection and consumption of bhang.

Quid?

The sheer scale of Holi makes it difficult to assign it any psycho-social parallels from world history. How does one explain a humongous explosion of spontaneity and liberality that occurs at a fixed date every year? The paradox would be trivial were we to explain it to be merely a question of cult theology and religious beliefs. Only the very naïve, however, would refer to Holi as a ‘Hindu’ festival. The vast multitude that celebrates Holi does so owing to a continuous reflux of cultural conditioning.

By most estimates, more than half a million people gathered in a field at Bethel, New York for three days beginning August 16 1969 – to watch the largest rock concert in the history of mankind. Woodstock – as the event has forever been immortalized as, was the apotheosis of that psychedelic tapestry of youthful angst that was the 60s USA. The mental archetypes of the hippie culture finally passed into the mythology of American culture with this epochal, cathartic pogrom – 3 days of the flower people and their quaint anti-war, pantheistic philosophy.

Gangs of disheveled, semi-clad youths, sexual tension in the air, hallucinogenic drugs sold over the counter and partaken of with impunity, color running riot – ’69 USA or present day India? The similarities are extremely striking. Professor Joshi, I am sure, could unearth an erstwhile unknown Sanskrit text that conclusively proves that it was a venerable Indian ‘rishi’ or deity who invented rock ‘n roll millennia before Elvis walked the earth.

Should such a helpful text not exist, we are forced to look for less simplistic explanations. What do the hippies of the American cultural Golden Age have in common with the Indian common man?

The first step, of course, is to realize that most of the hippie pioneers looked to India and its pantheistic, Ego-effacing culture for spiritual nourishment and took back their own conceptions of it to their subsequent followers. Secondly, hippie culture following music as its religion, the impact of Indian collaborators in the 60s served to reaffirm the exotic Indian stereotype, adding to its mystique.

The remarkable difference lies in the fact that whereas the hippie movement was but a monument to iconoclasm, to be replaced by consumerist fads in American consciousness by the early 80s , our indigenous chaotic festival occupies pride of place in an extremely prudish mainstream consciousness.

It is here that the power of tradition and culture is evinced in its entirety. American culture, itself a subset of the largely Protestant European culture, has been built largely in cycles of growth and destruction. Conspicuous by its absence is a continuity of tradition, each succeeding cult repudiating and rebutting its predecessor. The adjective ‘brittle’ comes to mind, particularly when juxtaposed with the Indian mentality.

Through countless millennia, cockroaches and Indian culture have survived by absorbing the fundamental tenet of beating natural selection – ‘anything goes’. ‘Anything goes’ - ‘chalta hai’ in the vernacular – is the life-blood of Indian society. It is evident in our chronically corrupt public offices, in our chaotic public transport systems, and in our inefficient public infrastructure. It is also evident in the vitality of our festivals, the controlled spontaneity of our celebrations, the universal spirit of bonhomie that engulfs us all, around this time of the year.

‘Amorphous’ is the best possible description. The stubborn continuum that is Indian culture and society; smoothened and ground down by the passing of time has learned to accept, to incorporate, if one may quote Orwell, “to change out of all recognition and yet ever remain the same.”

Greetings on Holi to everyone, appreciate the uniqueness of our heritage.

The Gospel of Krishna Yogi....

Hi all, I think I will introduce you today to this friend of mine who is an extremely intriguing personality. I think of him as the most interesting reclusive iconoclast on campus. He comes from a family with a history of spiritualism, witness his middle name. The first thing that struck me about him, even before I knew him, was his physique - unadulteratedly Aryan. The similarities of our experiences in the spiritual path are a big confidence-booster for me in my experiments with Sufism and Zen. And our conversations about the meaning of God and the relevance of tokens and symbols in spiritualism have afforded me more food for thought than most other people I know on campus. He wrote this at my behest as an insight into the mind of a born spiritualist and a practitioner of Kriya Yoga. I then took the thing up and filled it out and fleshed it up and rewrote it and added chunks to it, the usual bag of tricks. So, this is my second co-authorship post in a row. I present to you, "An introduction to Kriya" and my good friend Krishna Yogi Kolluru.

ROADS TO PERCEPTION

GOD

God is the most beautiful concept in all of philosophy. God is the ultimate paradigm of creativity. Witness the seeming incongruity of universes within universes. And yet the structure of the universe evinces considerable similarities at the microscopic and macroscopic levels. If this universe is created, then how infinitely creative is the mind of the Creator!

There was never a beginning, witness the insurmountability of Planck time: nor, by symmetry, shall there ever be an end. This essay takes for an axiom the active involvement of a ‘Divine Intelligence’ in the creation of chaos and its time-evolution into symmetry and order.

In Indian spiritualism, this is called ‘Leela’, a Sanskrit term. ‘Leela’ is the nature of God, vast beyond the farthest stretches of our imaginations, yet intricate beyond all hope of deterministic inspection. It is He who gave us life, He who plays with us, and He who eventually stows us away – for future use, if re-incarnation were to be admitted as valid. And yet, for all our seeming insignificance, every sentient entity, says Hindu pantheism, is equally important to the show. Going even further, it would not be too much to say that a single electron spinning in the wrong direction might lead to a collapse of the universe, as we know it. Such is ‘Leela’.

It would be a consummation devoutly to be wished for if we would all take our noses off our self-inflicted grindstones and ponder upon the wonder of it all, savor the magnificence of this moment, all the parameters that happen to be just right for it to exist!

SELFLESSNESS

Personal reflections: rising early in the morning, I see the sun, feel the cool breeze, hear the sleepy piping of birds as they arise, like me, to face what we collectively perceive as a new day. But who is it that sees? Who is it that feels? Is it I? Who am I? What am I? Try as I might I cannot answer this. What am I? What am I?

Have you ever felt the same way? Are you too all too familiar with the mental block that results? Forget about meditation, religion and Divinity. What if I do not exist? More accurately, what if whatever I think I am does not exist? Hint: think ‘The Matrix’. Now, the Matrix theory, if we may call it that, makes some kind of sense. It is not a phenomenal stretch of logic to theorize perceived reality to be illusory and the actual ego to be dormant.

Vedanta however, categorically negates the existence of the individual Self. ‘I’ – ness, ‘You’ism is the highest or the beginning of ‘maya’ – illusion. One may view the world as imparting the primary illusion of ‘being’. The illusion of identity is the most deeply-seated of all such. And once established, it leads very easily to the others.

It is when one abrogates the delusion of identity that one is faced with the real nature of Consciousness. That is when one realizes the true significance of pantheistic philosophy, the appropriateness of the fundamental credo of Vedantic thought, ‘Tat Tvam Asi’ – ‘ ‘thou art that’.

Whither the distinctions between good and evil, sin and sacrifice, black and white? Nothing exists save the Cosmic Consciousness. All discriminatory power vanishes with the individual identity. You are the ‘One’. (This, however, has nothing to do with Keanu Reeves!)

THE PATH TO PERFECTION

Vivekananda held that to walk the path to perfection was harder than walking on a sword’s edge. However, with swords being in rather short supply these days, used solely for the purpose of political gimmickry as they are, it behooves us to be more pragmatic in discussing methods of attaining perfection.

Basically, eradicating the thought of imperfection from our minds is the road to perfection. We say the earth is not a perfect sphere. But, my friends, the earth IS perfect in having its own shape. Who is to say which shape is better? Likewise, the realization that everything is perfect is concomitant with the realization that ‘This is it’. This is possible only by getting rid of illusion.

It is my contention that, after identity, the besetting illusion that plagues humanity is the concept of relative worth, things being better or worse. Why call anything good or bad when all things are truly manifestations of the One, the Divine – You.

You are the one who created this world, its transient images, its ephemeral sensations. And then you are the one who mesmerized yourself into believing that your creation is disjoint from your own Self. Therefore, you and you alone can transcend the entrapments of ‘maya’, melt all illusions in the fire of spiritual knowledge and realize your true identity. As Vivekananda said, ‘ Not a sheep thou art but a lion. Arise, awake, and roar.’

MEDITATION

Now, the only way, vouchsafed to us by five continuous millennia of spiritual quests, is by awakening the ‘Kundalini’, and causing it to ascend to the ‘thousand – petal lotus’. This can be achieved most effectively by meditation. The guiding precepts are simple. Concentrate your will on perceiving the universe as containing just two elements – you and God. Soon you will transcend this duality and attain the realization of Unity, which is the highest state of meditation, known as ‘Nirvikalpa Samadhi’. Even after setting aside the dubious claims of charlatans, we are still left with examples such as great sages like Ramana Maharishi of Tiruvannamalai, Sai Baba of Shirdi and Ramakrishna Paramhamsa of Dakshineshwar, who had attained those towering spiritual heights, proving thereby, to twentieth century cynics, the truth of the Vedantic doctrine.

SHAADCHAKRAS

The following is a brief exposition of the theory of Kriya Yoga, a powerful shortcut in the arduous spiritual trek. The ‘Shaadchakras’ and the ‘Sahastrakamalam’ together constitute the life-force. Under waking consciousness, they remain dormant. They are activated in increasing order of magnitude by:

• Sleep (Sufficient, one may note, to induce loss of spatio-temporal orientation)
• Deep concentration
• Overwhelming positive emotion
• Sex
• Hallucinogenic drugs, notably heroin
• Volitional activation via meditation/yoga

Osho’s advocacy of free sex as a spiritual practice shocked moral sensibilities around the world . It is true however, that outside of Yogic practice and drug abuse, the most perceptible rise in Kundalini is observed during the sexual act. This, however, is marginal as compared to the extreme rise experienced during meditation. In proportion, the bliss of orgasm is dwarfed by the ecstasy of meditation. Osho described the bliss of ‘Samadhi’ as a state of continuous orgasm. Not even Hugh Hefner can match that!

To continue with the theory of Kriya however, the ‘Kundalini’ present in the ‘Muladhara’ travels through the spine and reaches the ‘Sahastrakamalam’. There it ‘melts’ the ‘lotus’ causing the subject to experience an extreme state of ecstasy, followed in most cases by a blissful realization of the true nature of reality.

This process may happen, as in some historic cases, spontaneously. In most cases however, the subject is required to rigorously follow a particular Yogic practice (Raja yoga, Hatha yoga etc.) until the mind is subdued sufficiently to allow Realization.

The Indian system of Yoga is thus a far more systematized method of spiritual practice than other systems with concurrent aims. In all other cases, be it Gnosticism, Sufism or Zen, though the intellectual theory is the same, the practice is highly individualized, causing Realization to be a hit-or-miss proposition.

CONCLUSION

In conclusion, I would appeal to you to give yourself a fair chance at understanding the fundamental unity of the universe and the essential purpose of existence. Of course, mindsets ossified in a colonial distaste of all things indigenous would find it unpalatable to accept the relevance of Vedanta and Yoga. My only request is that meditation and Indian spiritualism should not be dismissed as hysteria driven hoaxes. While the ultimate bliss of Realization is almost inaccessible to us common mortals, even the intermediate stages of meditative absorption are far more satisfying and fulfilling than corporeal pleasures. I leave you with one last nugget of information, which explaining the title of the essay allows me to conclude aesthetically satisfactorily: who do you think has written the introduction to ‘The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna’?

Aldous Huxley. Huxley who? Ask any druggie worth his brown sugar.

Gee! (wish people) had (more sense)

This one happened in a very familiar manner. Noemaun brought his article on 'The Prophet who fought wars" to me for a proofread, then it turned into an editorial session, following which it metamorphosed into a rewrite, following which...... well, this is what ensued. Certain sentences and passages are his and so I think I may claim but co-authorship of this essay. The subject, as may be seen, is extremely close to my heart (ref. buying a stairway to heaven). Here you are

Militarism in Islam

In today’s new-found neo-Conservative morality, it is so very fashionable to berate Islam and its practices as being primitive, brutal and anachronistic. While it is impossible to irrevocably refute all such allegations in such a short essay, it is endeavored here to take issue with supporters of the Huntingtonian school of thought on one alleged aspect of Islamic culture – militarism and Islam’s concept of Jihad.

Right up to the late 90’s, the Russian stereotype of the “godless Communist aggressor” was so firmly entrenched in American mindsets that successive Conservative administrations and pulp fiction authors like Ludlum and Forsyth managed to keep making money out of flogging the Commie horse.

Interestingly, as a quick perusal of any best-seller list and current affairs paper will show, the interests of both have shifted to a new target, the older one having been rendered obsolete by the internal collapse and democratization of the Soviet Republic in 1991. The Conservative laser-sights sought a new target and found one. Thanks to the hypotheses of academician Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” theory, circa 1995, their gun-turrets are now trained on Islam.

To this effect, the story of the spread of Islam is embellished with improbable stories of cruelty and debauchery, the current separatist movements in Chechnya, Palestine, Serbia-Montenegro etc. are highlighted as being manifestations of Islamic militarism. Also, socio-political observers of the woolly-headed Right make incredibly presumptuous proclamations of stirrings of malcontent in the Middle East. A state of paranoia, with reference to the past, present and future of the role of Islam in geo-politics, is being consciously and unambiguously generated.

Our case in defense rests on the unanimously held Orthodox Sunni premise that the path of Islam lies in the emulation of the intentions and deeds of the Seal of the Prophets, Mohammed (pbuh), the founder of Islam as we know it. To know Islam one must know of the life of the Prophet – a figure incomparable in the history of the world save to that other Semitic miracle, Jesus.

Irrespective of your political, religious or societal persuasion, any attempt to understand the Islamic ideology with a modernistic perspective will fail. Your quest for knowledge of the modalities of Islamic geo-politics and social stratifications can not even begin without a comprehensive biographical review of the personality of this man. To place the purported militarism of the Islamic creed, let us view the Prophet’s (pbuh) views regarding warfare.

“The most senile thing ever thought about man is contained in the celebrated saying 'the ego is always hateful'; the most childish is the even more celebrated 'love thy neighbor as thyself'. -- In the former, knowledge of human nature has ceased, in the latter it has not yet even begun.”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Assorted Opinions and Maxims

To any reasonably pragmatic reasoning individual, it is evident that war is a necessary evil, which must be carried through, in order to solve social and political problems which cannot be resolved peacefully. Human communities have plunged into fights not only for the mere accomplishment of material aims but also for achieving social justice. Case in point, one wonders if Luther King could have accomplished so much had he not stood on the broad shoulders of Lincoln and Ulysses Grant.

Prophet Muhammad ibn Abdullah (pbuh), the founder of Islam, led his community to battle on innumerable occasions. And yet, one can unearth no records of his having benefited materially from any of these military conquests. His bearing ever remained the same, for all the prosperity and dominance of the Muslims by the time of his passing. It was thus neither lust for gold nor glory that led the Prophet to take to the sword but a burning sense of responsibility towards his fellow Arabs wallowing in ignorance and misery. It is a fact that does not really require mentioning that it was the unifying power of Islam that allowed the Arabs to establish the strongest, most magnificent empire that the world has ever seen this side of the Dark Ages.

Also, 1300 years before the West thought of the Geneva Convention, and 1360 years before the Imperialist West breaks its regulations with impunity, the Prophet of Islam imbued martial codes in Arabia with a sense of humanity and compassion. The total number of casualties in all the wars that took place during his lifetime, when the whole Arabian Peninsula came under his banner, did not exceed a few hundreds.

Fight in the cause of Allah those who fight you but do not transgress limits; for Allah loveth not transgressors .

[Quran 2.190]

To the aggressive Arabs, who were used to fighting forty years on the slightest provocation, say of a camel belonging to the guest of one tribe having strayed into the grazing land belonging to other tribe, which ended up with both the sides fighting resulting in the loss of thousands of lives, the Prophet of Islam taught submissiveness and discipline; Discipline so rigorous that congregational prayer during wars was common. Even during the heat and fever of battle, whenever the time for prayer came, and it comes five times every day, the congregation prayer was never postponed.

In an age of barbarism, the battlefield itself was humanized and strict instructions were issued not to cheat, not to break trust, not to mutilate, not to kill a child or woman or an old man, not to hew down date palm nor burn it, not to cut a fruit tree, not to molest any person engaged in worship and those who sought quarter were escorted to a place of safety. One can but wonder at the emotions of the confinees at Guantanamo Bay who are informed through the American popular media that it is THEY who are barbaric!

On the conquest of Mecca, the Prophet (pbuh) stood at the zenith of his power. The city which had refused to listen to his mission, which had tortured him and his followers, which had driven him and his people into exile and which had unrelentingly persecuted him even when he had taken refuge in Medina, more than 200 miles away, now lay at his feet. By the universal law of retribution (“we’re gonna smoke them out!”), he could have ‘justly’ avenged all the cruelties inflicted on him and his people. But what treatment did he accord them? His heart flowed with affection and he declared, "This day, there is no reproof against you and you are all free." "This day" he proclaimed, "I trample under my feet all distinctions between man and man, all hatred between man and man."

¨Jihad¨ is a generic term for concerted effort or struggle against major obstacles, such as injustice, disease, or poverty. It’s meaning is much broader than ¨holy war¨, and can only be understood within the context of Islamic teachings. Jihad is a very powerful pillar of Islamic faith. Unfortunately, it is misused by terrorists to rationalize their actions, much as the Nazis hijacked the teachings of Nietzsche, Fichte and Hegel to propagandize their Aryan supremacist theories. Blaming the Prophet (pbuh), Islam and Muslim culture for terrorist activity around the globe is much the same as blaming the Lutheran Church for the Holocaust, or J D Salinger for John Lennon’s assassination.

In view of the aforegoing, it is to be hoped that the next time you hear the Prophet (pbuh) being referred to in acrimonious terms, you will accord it the same amount of gullible acceptance that we cunning Indians have cultivated for official government pronouncements – nil.