I always wanted to be sick. Not for the physical discomfort or for the incredible pain but because those close to you took care of you. You could lay in bed most of the day, with someone attending to you – putting you to bed, giving you food to eat at bed and someone always checking on you. Everyone loves being taken care of. Don’t wait for a disease to take care of someone you love.
Mumbai. January 5, 2016
It was only right before marriage when I sought to write down what my essential beliefs would be. I saw marriage as introducing chaos into my world, one which I embraced and enjoyed. Before the introduction of this chaos, I wanted to reduce my involvement in other things and prioritize them when I could not totally remove them.
One of the things that I had the most difficult time was to select what would be the set of beliefs that I would follow. I am a Hindu by birth but I have the choice of what set of beliefs I would take in and what I would keep out in the multitude of beliefs.
I read through books on Christianity, Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism and Islam and chose Hinduism to be the broad umbrella in which I’d like to continue to stay. Like all teenagers, I’ve been through atheism as well.
After choosing the broadest stream that there is, in religious beliefs, there were still many more options left to choose from. Even within Hinduism there are a range of practices and beliefs. There are organisations and traditions. This too left with me far too much diversity and only increased the chaos.
After a study of the books, I looked at how many of the people I know practiced the religion on a day-to-day basis to help me get a little more handle on things. I noticed how my grandfather practiced Hinduism. He would light the lamp at the small altar in his house and pray. He would visit temples but would stay away from elaborate ritualism but still supported the festival in the temple close to his house. He had an interest in astrology but did not let it guide him. He was content with this and had a remarkably simple practice of the religion with little interest in its theology.
After a lot of thinking, I adopted this practice as well. I would pray every day at the altar at my house and visit the temple one day a week. I’ve had an interest in some philosophy and rather than take in too many differing views have restricted myself to reading stuff mostly from the Chinmaya Mission and to talks on Buddhism on the Against the Stream podcast to satiate my philosophical appetite.
Mumbai. January 4, 2016.
Owing to lack of ideas to write about or just too many ideas, I asked my wife for suggestions for what I could write here today. She first suggested that I write about her. Since other fora exist for such intimate expressions, I digressed. The second suggestion she came up with was Romance.
I tried to keep away from writing about it but it seems she teased me into writing this blog post.
In my youth, my “romances” were imaginary one sided romances which involved me dreaming about girls I would love to have had a relationship with. These never left my mind and hence the girls thus involved had no idea about my interest in them.
As I grew up I moved aside girls and made way for space. These occupied my mind and my mental bandwidth so much that I didn’t have time for relationships. It would be false to say that I did not look at girls at all in this time but I appreciated honest and intelligent conversations with them rather than anything else.
In my college days, a single minded ambition for space took hold of me and was the only love I had in my life. I pursued this with an ambition that still amazes me but these eventually led nowhere. Perhaps like other college romances?
Today, after an arranged marriage, my only romance is with my wife who complains that I am not a romantic at all. Yes, I confess to her, I have not had the time to learn of these things as I pursued other interests and perhaps she could teach me how to be a little more romantic?
Mumbai. January 2, 2016.
Happy New Year. One more year to get out of the cycle of life and death – to attain nibbana. In my college days, following the spiritual path had an attraction for me. I had even considered monasteries which I could join to follow this attraction.
I considered the Buddhist monastery in Bhutan. I dropped the idea because it would be too cold. Then I considered one of the Divine Life Society in the foothills of the Himalayas at Rishikesh. I dropped that idea too thinking there would be too many wild animals and I had no intention of going close to even a domestic animal let alone wild ones. I considered the Isha Yoga Center in Coimbatore but dropped that too fearing the constant pestering of relatives, begging for me to return to the materialistic world and because I did not want to see my parents in tears whilst I meditated and sought the answers to the various complexities of life. I finally settled for the Chinmaya Mission’s Sandeepany Sadhanalay in Powai, Mumbai.
I went there on a very hot day, bunking college. I met a man in orange robes at the gates of the Mission. Looking at me, he asked what I wanted. I said I wanted to become a monk. He looked me up and down and asked me to return on Dusshera day to be initiated as a monk.
I had a clear three months before the day. I prepared for engineering exams that would begin in the next week or two and finishing last minute submissions. As I was filing a journal for submission, it struck me that I would enjoy the worldly life more than one of the renunciate. I could ponder the questions of life even whilst I had my materialistic joy in between, when these questions would bore me. At that moment, I laughed and have never since considered becoming a monk myself. I do not think it is for me. It would bore me. I’d probably be done in a couple of years and I would still be left with a life to live. And that would annoy me.
Mumbai. January 1, 2016
From the Mr. Money Mustache blog
On this date in 1956, the State of Kerala was carved out of the erstwhile Madras Presidency. Celebrated as Kerala Pirravi (കേരളപ്പിറവി)
Every Birthday I write either on paper or on some digital media, a review of the year that is past. I usually do it on the day that is celebrated as my Malayalam birthday, partially out of fear that the Gregorian one may be banned.
This year has been pivotal for me and hence, I felt the need to store it for posterity. Hence, this post, here.
This year saw me getting married, go on my first foreign trip and make several important decisions which were left hanging in the air for one reason or the other. I’ll go in the reverse order of importance on this one.
I decided to make this my main blog.
I decided to continue following the course my career in banking will take. I have permanently left any hopes of returning to engineering as my core career option.
I decided to follow my interest in Astronomy as a hobby. I am yet to take concrete action in this direction, but the primary decision is made, as such.
I decided to follow developments in the world of geography and space exploration. Geography is a new addition, I will be following this with a particular emphasis. While following these developments, I will not be part of any organisation.
I decided to take up editing Wikipedia again.
Many of the above decisions were pushed with the fact that I got married. It led to some urgency in resolving these pending decisions that were in my mind so that my mind space could be allotted to resolving more pressing issues that involve leading a life.
Very few organisations in the world fund the fundamental sciences – astronomy, high energy physics or even certain strands of biology whose only intention is to know what the universe is about. In many science talks that I attend many scientists also try to focus on how this idea will help the common man rather than focus on how science would advance the knowledge of mankind, in particular. Schools are only now beginning to teach any amount on quantum physics which surpassed several boundaries in the 1970s. Science taught in the schools today are at least fifty to seventy years old. This creates a difference in the perception of science among the scientific community and that seen by common man.
I’ve been spending the whole of last week watching videos related to Jaggi Vasudev of the Isha Foundation. One of his conversations is with American neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman inserted below.
In the video at about the 17 minute mark, he brings up the topic of how the science we do today is so influenced by funding which looks at how it is beneficial to man. Vasudev says that science would really be more effective if it is delinked from that objective and one does it purely with the curiosity to understand the world we live in. He suggests that technology should be given the responsibility of figuring out how the knowledge yearned from science be put to use in benefit of humankind. Currently, both are intertwined so tightly that science is funded on the basis of its application, technology spin-offs rather than the fact that it would further the boundaries of knowledge, per se.
This is an interesting distinction that I had not been aware of despite my grounding in science and some time I spent working with technology as an engineer. I shared this because I think it is an interesting insight to work with.
The United States is celebrating its independence day today. I am embarking on yet another blog. My first blog had my name on it and was on Blogspot. It was a Tibetan blog talking about alternative services to those provided by Google that first turned my attention to WordPress. I have since used Drupal, Tumblr, Vox, LiveJournal and the self-hosted WordPress. At the end I am back here again.
It has been a journey where I have learnt a lot. In the meanwhile, I moved away from being a mechanical engineering undergrad to being a banker. No MBAs were involved. In the end, I use my most favourite of the names of blogs I have used thus far.
Parallel Spirals is my imagination of how I see myself following these various parallel interests that I spiral down into once in a while.
Our neighbours had lent out the flat for rent. The aunty staying there (Raji aunty) had given us her Tulsi plant when she moved to Chennai. Because of our constant care and attention, two out of the three shoots withered. We then went to Babu Anand Farms to ask what would have caused the shoots to wither. He said, it may be because of the lack of nitrogen in the ceramic pot in which we had kept the shoots. He suggested that we replace the soil along with some natural fertilizers like coco soil and manure.
We’re still trying to recover the last shoot although we have added a Rama Tulsi that we obtained from the farm along with the last shoot. Awaiting results.
Parallel Spirals 