Life

Life has been such a ride from the start go. Everyday there is so much to understand.

As a toddler, I am told that I was Utpatia. It means close to a naughty restless kid. Perhaps my first date with life happened then when I flexed my arm to look at a vessel kept above a height to keep me away from the contents. I had to flex the feet, arm and hand to reach the upper rim of the vessel and pull it towards me. 

It had chilly powder. Truth did hurt. I had a swollen bear face and I am told that a litre of milk was poured on my face to ease the hurt.

From then I think it was this urge of knowing that made me open every toy before I did what the toy was meant for. Play.

Slowly, I realised that playing the toy won’t have given me the joy that I used to find opening it.

Some of the most memorable vessels that I have overturned and  toys that I have unscrewed and tasted the joy and pain of truth would be woman (and man), poverty, greed, ambition, career, urbanisation, hometown blues and parenthood.

When I wrote wrong answers deliberately on my compulsory NDA exam, and then refused an engineering degree to study economics in Cotton, it was one of my best search. Quitting my Deutsche Bank career to a life of spiritual growth in Duliajan with my parents was my second best ‘overturning the vessel’ search. 

I am still opening up toys. Only difference is that the toys are adult boring stuff like books, meditation and prayers. You see knowledge gets boring for a lot of people when it gets higher in terms of enlightenment. That is the reason why so few people read books, meditate and pray in the real sense of the word. Among my books, I prefer history, philosophy and spiritual studies. Interestingly, science do not interest me as well. I think the reason may be that I love discovery more than inventions.

For the thirsty, knowledge however is never boring. Knowledge starts with information and data and slowly converge into truths and then finally into one absolute truth.

All these years of search have brought me closer to the absolute truth, the one and only beauty. The truth that is nothingness. A happy nothingness. Every philosopher and spiritual guru has spoken of this one-ness in different languages and manner of speaking. I see exactness in the writings of Gurujona Srimanta Sankardeva, the great disciple Shri Shri Madhavdeva, Plato and even Osho... and so many other intellectuals in search of truth and truth only.

The truth is so blissful that you slowly feel no need for money, material comfort and even moksha.

::: Board Exams, Success, Happiness and that puff of a Cigarette :::

The mind is kind of naughty as well as mighty. 10th boards is perhaps the first occasion when it starts acting on you, and then it acts as if it tasted blood.

It will try to depress you and make you feel you are depressed. It will try to distract you by pumping adrenaline into your body, and will make you do things that would waste your time. A puff of a cigarette in secret is more exciting that arithmetic any day. Going to the market to get a glance of that special girl is more exciting than your essential work of the day. Sleeping late seems like the best time of the day.

We have to speak back to our minds.

For many of us, the urge that we had felt to get good marks that made us study for our boards is the key to success. Not the marks that we ended up achieving.

For Sania or Sonia or Rishi Kapoor, the urge may have been to play badminton, tennis or to act. Even their minds, naughty and mighty, surely tried to distract them. Every morning, even their minds tried to make them feel that they didn’t want to practice today. The thought blurb “Will do tomorrow” must have attacked them too. But they got a control on their minds and kept working as if it is their  duties - acquired or inherent.

In my experience, one of the important factors to excel in life is to control your mind to make it say, ‘keep working’. The outcome of a particular work is not important.

The outcome is just a goal or an objective. It’s not an END. Missing a goal should make us work harder or do a strategic decision of changing the goal perhaps.

Missing a goal definitely doesn’t mean we have failed. There is no failure in life. Even death is not a failure. It may just mean a rebirth for some, for another goal.

The outcome of the ‘Keep working’ philosophy is important. That is the only truth. The outcome is happiness. Happiness is the true goal and an end. But mind you, happiness is not a high. Snorting cocaine gives you a high. Happiness is not even a low.

Happiness to each one of us is different. I feel happy is an intensely personal feeling. When we KEEP WORKING, defeating the ugly machiavellian plans of the mind, defeating anger, defeating arrogance, defeating lust, defeating even a fighting spirit; we feel happy in our own personal ways.

Some may say, the backbenchers ultimately do well, some say the toppers do well but I say that one who keeps working does well.

Illiteracy only help us to bark..

He didn’t speak
when Dadri happened,
when Gauri Lankesh was shot dead...
.. and was dumbfounded when Palghar happened. He didn’t know what to say.

Now he has nothing to say when Corona is destroying us.

Then I realised he is illiterate, and is scared to realise that he doesn’t know what to say. Neither he has built a core team of bright minds for the fear of being exposed of his own hollowness.

Giving election speeches and one way pep talk is one thing; policy making, strategic thinking and crisis management requires serious education and exposure to concepts.

Illiteracy can only help is to bark.. running a nation is out of the question.

5 Urgents Step that India must take to tackle Corona crisis

It is scary.

Either the Government has not learnt any lesson from the experience of the 3weeks’ lockdown, or the PM is unable to express what the Government has learnt and has therefore acted on.

5 things if Government listens to me:

1) My guess is that March salary is more or less paid without cuts. A significant number of people won’t get April salary. This, in addition to the daily wage earner crisis will topple the country’s law and order upside down. Help the businesses to pay salaries. It’s difficult to put money into accounts as the Aadhaar project as an identity program got derailed to an authentication program. Pay the businesses to pay salaries as one of the cash programs. Other cash programs need more thinking. Perhaps paying to the merchant may be an idea. Start an outreach program now.

2) This is an emergency and food stocks need to be utilised like in an emergency giving it in every tehsil and blocks of the country. More emphasis should be given to the URBAN poor.  They should be given assistance that they will be taken care of. There should not be any documentation to be presented for food. Believe me, the people who has food at home won’t come out for free food, for fear of Corona. Wherever possible cooked food should be given, using the machinery of the mid day meal program. Most importantly, covid testing should be focused on these resulting activity areas. All distribution centres should be tracked closely for outbreaks.

3) Road / Water / Train Transport should be strategically opened with rules of minimum social distancing. Rules are as follows: 1) Make a map of buses and train routes that are a must to operate for migrant workers. 2) Only 36 Tickets to be issued per train bogey 2) One Ticket per seat of 2/3 in a bus 3) All state transports should pick the tab 4) No standing traffic in any of these public transport. 5) Clear announcements for only essential travel 6) Make approach to train and railway stations narrow / zigzag to minimise and regularise the flow of passengers 7) Increased testing /Tracking of Corona cases in these focused points of likely gathering. 8/ Change the ringtone to announce only essential travel

4) Strategic manufacturing and Goods transport must start with rules of social distancing. With reduced demand, these two sectors will anyway work less than capacity. Daily tracking of these regions for outbreak is a must. We must allow only closed group manufacturing setups and townships. A map has to be drawn.

5) Since we have limited testing infrastructure, we must focus this infra towards economic and social activity areas only, apart from testing the sick. Test, trace and close the area has to be done with increased focus.

Covid 19 like any living organism will try to survive all sorts of intervention, just like we are trying to survive. So it is quite likely that we can’t stop it from spreading. Complete lockdown has not flattened the spreading curve. One day the lockdown has to end and the virus will find its survival instincts. The only way is to spend the lockdown or semi lockdown stage to DISCIPLINE our civilisation into a structure where we see more permanent physical distancing at one side, and more testing and tracing technology on the other side. According to me, scientists should spend more time in getting a more conclusive and cheaper testing infrastructure than to find a cure. Finding a cure for a virus is tough and a cure for a 2% fatal virus cannot be primary focus. Testing and tracing will be an easier bet on our limited resources.

Please don’t let the situation go out of hand. India can not handle a complete lockdown for another 20 days.