I met a local interior designer lady a few weeks back. I liked the idea of working with someone to do up the house. I immediately warmed up to her. I don't know what it is but people tend to make three kinds of first impressions on me: instant dislike, neutral, instant like. She fell into the third. It might be the quiet calm tranquil soothing energy. An intelligent introverted vibe if you will. And strangely, I become more vibrant around this type...hehe... My energy shifts the more comfortable I feel, I think.

It didn't take much for me to pour out all my ideas, plans, possibilities, etc to her. She wasn't charging me a bomb for her services so that was another reason I immediately went all in... We started talking budgets for the work to be done and that's when she threw me off. It sounded mind-blowing because my actual needs were rather basic. She said she'd come back with a budget closer to my needs. We parted with her saying her best friend was Indian. I mean, if I wasn't already quite pleased with her, that would have warmed me more...!

I went into this preamble because without it, it would be hard to understand how I feel. She didn’t respond to my message enquiring what was going on, after I waited more than a week for her to come back. Not even to say she was busy and would respond at a later time. If she’d just said she couldn’t work with me for whatever reason, I’d still respect the honesty. For some reason, it felt personal. The logical side of me figured that my budget was too small for it to be worth her time. But there was another part of me that wondered how I could have got her so wrong...? I mean, an 'instant like' is not just about the calm vibe but also a vibe that signals a person of good values. Someone I could trust. To simply disappear on me isn't what that looks like to me.

I had actually given up on her by now and started looking into the designing myself. The nagging feeling stayed though. How could somebody I instantly like turn out so unprofessional, so without good work ethic? Today she messaged a very vague one about being very busy, and gave me some random cost calculations etc. Even if it had happened to fit into my scheme of things, I could never work with her anymore. I suppose... and maybe I have said it before... in spite of being a very logical person, the decisions I make are driven by my emotions. I no longer feel the same.

Is the world becoming a really shitty place lately or does it just feel that way....? Everywhere there is doom and gloom... war, deaths, hate, bad leaders, fear, negativity, terror, job losses, depression, cost cuts... Nothing seems to be going well really no matter where you look. How do you even go about everyday stuff feeling any kind of hope for the future? I find it hard, to be honest... hard to think about tomorrow or look forward to tomorrow... I find it hard enough to get through today... sometimes they say it's best not to think about the whole mountain or life ahead... just take it one step at a time... One tries to do that as best one can... being the hyper-planner that I am though, I always have one foot on the next few steps... and the question arises now and again, for what?... When I think about moving into my new house (keeping aside challenges related to that for now), I find it hard to be excited in any way... it feels like old wine in a new bottle... the more things change, the more they stay the same... like monkeys we are distracted by shiny new things... but when you see things starkly and clearly... the distractions don't cut it... they don't reassure you about the fundamentals... I sometimes wonder if people see the irony or even the hypocrisy... what goes on at a large scale and how we mouth the usual platitudes of care at the micro level... how does one live really in the middle of all this? One feels lost and yet one must hold on tight to one's bearings... to not completely slip and fall...

I was pondering a bit more on why I have always been inspired by the quote ‘God is on the side not of the heavy battalions, but of the best shots.’ I think this goes with the fact that I have also always liked stories (real or fictional) where the underdog wins in the end. The individual who comes from nothing, has got nothing except his/her own talent to bank on, takes on the world and in a way fate itself... and wins. I admire resilience, grit, determination, perseverance, ambition, desire for excellence... and when all these wonderful qualities are rolled in one. I obviously want to see such people rewarded. And the idea that God Himself will reward those who push against all odds is very satisfying to me. I have seen enough of humans to place my trust in their judgement or discretion... but God, He surely can be trusted to make the good guys come out triumphant in the end? Or so I hope...

There is a story in the Mahabharata which has always saddened me. Now that I think about it, it must be because this story does not have the end that I like. Here is the story...

Dronacharya is a Guru, a teacher of royal princes. One of the skills he teaches is archery. He promises to make Arjuna, his best student at this skill, the greatest archer in the world. One day Dronacharya is teaching his students to take aim at a parrot in a tree. When he asks every student what they see, they respond with a whole lot of things in the scenery. Arjuna is the only one who sees only the eye of the parrot. A kid from the forest, Ekalavya, approaches the Guru at this point, and asks him to take him on as a student. Dronacharya refuses because Ekalavya is not a prince. Ekalavya takes a handful of mud from under the Guru's feet and walks away. Many years later when Dronacharya goes hunting with the princes with their hunting dog, the dog suddenly disappears from view, barking. Minutes later the dog's barking stops, and he comes back with his mouth closed with three arrows. It is a remarkable feat that Drona is aware even his best student, Arjuna, cannot accomplish. Ekalavya comes forward as the shooter of the arrows. When Drona asks him from whom he learnt such brilliant archery, Ekalavya tells him that it is he, Drona, from whom he learnt it. He refers to Drona as his Guru. Ekalavya mixed the mud from under Drona's feet with clay and made a statue out of it. He prayed and practiced in front of this statue. He attributed his skill to the Guru as he received inspiration and confidence from his likeness! To this, Drona, who has promised to make Arjuna the best archer in the world, asks Ekalavya if he would be willing to offer him 'guru-dakshina' (gift given to the Guru in return for teaching). Ekalavya does not hesitate to say that he would be honoured to do so. The Guru's acceptance of guru-dakshina would officially make him his Guru. Drona asks him for his right thumb, and Ekalavya gladly cuts it off. This means Ekalavya cannot practice archery anymore, but he does not seem to mind at all. All he cares about, as it seems, is to finally be recognized by his Guru!

----

I feel bad for Ekalavya. He should have gone on to do greater things. But instead he is tricked by the 'heavy battalions'. I suppose it makes me sad, even angry, that God was not on the side of the best shot...

‘God is on the side not of the heavy battalions, but of the best shots.’

—Voltaire

It may be pretty obvious to anyone reading my blog (or anyone who knows me well in person) that I thoroughly enjoy quotes or epigrams or short pithy sayings. They deliver an insight in a way that long paragraphs cannot. And because they do it so cleverly, I enjoy them quite a bit! I have had a hankering for them from childhood upwards. I used to note them down by hand on a sheet of paper whenever I came across one in a book I was reading or sections of newspapers devoted to literary matter. I had a file full of these papers (and still have them somewhere). Later of course, I started noting these in digital documents... now have a notepad on my phone for it ;)

A few days back, strangely and almost out of the blue, the quote by Voltaire I mentioned above popped into my head. It is one of the quotes I handwrote on paper way back then. I remember reading it several times over the years whenever I took out this file, which is why it's stuck in some corner of my brain. But I felt... I actually understood it only now! Now when I turned it in my head, its meaning flashed like a light (though arguably its meaning is open to many interpretations).

I am not at all sure as to what I made of the quote when I first came across it, why did I find it so intriguing even then, and why did I decide to jot it? Could it be that I did have the same insight into what it meant, however faintly, and with all these years having passed, I am seeing it again as something new? Could it be that my experiences in life are adding a new level of poignancy to the quote, more nuance if you will, which is why it feels like I am seeing it for the first time now, not that I did not have a vague sense of interpretation then? I certainly must have, or I wouldn’t have noted it because it wouldn’t have tickled me…  

“It may be that when we no longer know what to do,

we have come to our real work

and when we no longer know which way to go,

we have begun our real journey.

The mind that is not baffled is not employed.

The impeded stream is the one that sings.”

—Wendell Berry

When I was a kid, I used to have many arguments with my brother about very small things. Like for instance, there was this Bollywood song. A line in it goes, ‘tera pyaar hai ek sohnae ka pinjara oh shehzaadi’ (roughly translates to ‘your love is a golden cage oh princess’). That’s what I heard when I heard the song, but my brother heard ‘tera pyaar hai ek tohtae ka pinjara oh shehzaadi’ (which translates to ‘your love is a parrot’s cage oh princess’). We had a heated argument over which one of us was right, but there was no Google at the time. To figure out who between us was right was difficult. Asking other people usually led to more fights about who was siding with whom. It was never the end of the matter.

After Google and the internet more generally, I would imagine that these kinds of situations should be rare. And now with AI, there is no question to which we need trouble ourselves for an answer. Not just factual questions of the kind Google is good at but even highly contextual ones. It's mind-boggling the way AI or LLMs come up with stuff—and I will reserve another post for all the ways in which it has turned out to be surprisingly useful to me. But I wonder about what we are trading in exchange for this powerful crunching of knowledge in seconds? Efficient answers at our fingertips? Quick solutions to all knotty problems? What happens when we do not have to 'not know' anymore in what was at one point an arduous journey towards knowing or maybe never knowing? If Google had never arrived, maybe my brother and I would be forever unsettled on the point of whether it was 'sohnae' or 'tohtae'. Would that have been a good thing or a bad thing? Isn't there something in the process of working out uncertainty for ourselves, no matter how uncomfortable, that we grow in some way? We learn many things even if we do not learn the specific thing we want to know, and we put to use these learnings when we encounter a new problem or puzzle. What happens when we get the answers from outside all too easily, quickly, confidently, never really deeply grappling with the question inside ourselves? I wonder...

‘But your good opinion is rarely bestowed and therefore more worth the earning.’

—Jane Austen (Pride and Prejudice)

Being able to say little white lies easily must make life so much simpler and pleasant, I imagine. Lies that don't really harm anyone but could benefit you because they create the right impression. If I said to someone that I think they are a good listener, it would certainly make them feel good, they might warm up to me more, and no harm done at all. In fact, that person might even start building their listening skills. But... this is not something I could or would do. If you ask me why, I can't give a very convincing answer I suppose. But I'll try. The main thing is that I am rationalizing something that is hard coded in me and not something I deliberately choose to do (or not to do). I very much wish I could make my life easier by simply saying nice little lies whenever the occasion seemed to call for it; no complications, no fuss, they love me, nobody gets hurt, everybody's happy. But I can't…

I suppose my orientation comes from a compelling desire for authenticity. A sense of inauthenticity is so deeply uncomfortable to me that any other gains could not compensate for it. It is not a question of whether small lies make things easy or benefit me or make someone else feel warmer towards me or anything like that. It only comes down to a question of whether what I am saying matches what I really believe or how I really feel. If I do not feel someone is a good listener, I cannot bring myself to say it. While on the face of it there is no harm, to me making someone believe what I do not believe to be true is intrinsically harmful. Of course, I try my best not to say something that could potentially hurt another person without serving any purpose. I wouldn’t tell someone they are not a good listener—unless they specifically asked me. If they did, I’d have to say it. Another example: if a boss asked me if I enjoyed working with numbers and if this question was important for a bigger role, maybe the boss himself just wants me to agree because it's not that big a deal, I could still not go along. I will have to say the truth even if it means I lose something, or the other person will like me a little less for it. I do know that I have lost sometimes, and people have liked me less sometimes, for sticking to my truth. But I have always felt, on reflection, that those things or people were not meant for me. If instead of appreciating my honesty and authenticity, they penalized me for it, they did not deserve what I brought to the equation.

One person once called me ‘naïve’ after an event because I guess they thought I was unaware my honest response would go against me. I knew it perfectly well but that didn’t mean I could do anything about it. What’s the point of getting something in the short term at the cost of losing who you are? Funny thing is, this person who called me ‘naïve’ seemed to think that by favouring others who could have lied to get what they want he was being smarter, than by choosing someone who didn’t. Tell me who’s naïve? ;) I believe it’s this tendency to reward smooth lies that gets people in places for which they have no competence. And these people continue to lie their way through because that’s the only way they can survive. There is an excellent phrase that captures exactly this: ‘fake it till you make it’!

I'm going to let the cat out of the bag. This 'investment' I hinted at a few blog posts earlier. It is top of my mind now and most likely will be for a bit. I am moving into a new house shortly or so I hope. It's been—unbelievably!—almost 9 years since I have lived on the university campus. Most of it as a student but still... You folks who already have a very good idea about my feelings regarding change might have astutely guessed that I am more nervous/anxious than excited at the prospect of moving out. The very fact that I was plonked in this one location for this long (if you keep aside my eclectic international forays ;)) should suggest my love of rootedness. I was literally forced to take this long overdue step... though for a few years now I felt I needed to make it. Come to think of it, many of my movements have happened when I have been pushed in some way. I love my comfort zone and God knows that... that's why He takes matters into His own hands I think... hehe...

Well, it's the first time in all my life that I am going to actually live in a house that I have bought. It's a funny thing but I feel that as I have grown older, I have become less and less enamoured by the things I would have thought worth aspiring to when I was much younger. Now material possessions don't have as much of an aspirational value for me. I am inclined towards whatever makes me comfortable and peaceful nowadays. More possessions usually mean... more burden. With the new house, I am hoping a bit of temporary discomfort and disturbance will eventually lead the way to comfort and peace. However, I do not look forward to the next few months at all…

One big trouble is, as I said in my earlier post, unlike in India (I mean Mumbai) people seem to love to do everything by themselves over here. Every time I am asked if I am going to do the painting of the house myself, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry? I mean, do they not know me at all? the very idea? I wouldn't know where to even start?! I don't have a concept of painting a wall, you know? That’s a specialist job in Mumbai. I wouldn’t do painting just like I wouldn’t wake up one day and drive a bus. It’s a skill in its own category is what I would have thought, but apparently not over here. Anybody could do it by the looks of it, the way anybody could take out the bin. A few days ago, I joined a colleague on a trip to a carpet place. We don’t do carpets in Mumbai either. I kind of liked the idea of going to such a place though. It felt a bit quaint, and I like quaint. My eyes glazed over when the carpet guy started talking square metres. I have no concept of square metres either :( He seemed to like explaining technical stuff and at one point he was explaining different kinds of carpet fibres with an analogy about him and his current wife, and him and his ex-wife. No kidding!

Recently I read this therapist's advice to a person who said they don't have the will or energy to make a sandwich. The therapist asked them why they don’t just eat the meat, veggies, bread etc that would have gone into the sandwich instead. It would do the same job. Why did they have to do what everyone else was doing ‘normally’? Another example was of someone who found it hard to shower with the lights on because of body image issues. The answer was why they don't switch the lights off. Why do you have to do something a certain way because everyone does it that way, or that’s the way for some arbitrary reason it is supposed to be done? Why not do it in a way that works for you (and doesn’t hurt anyone else)? Why not do what feels comfortable, satisfying, doable to you?

I have to say that this advice resonates with me a lot. Until just a year or so ago, I feel like I was hanging on a lot more to my ideas of how things need to be done. Taking it easy made me feel guilty, like I was slipping up on some unstated standard. I do believe it's good that I have this strong sense of discipline that makes me push through things even when I am not feeling it or when I am not that motivated. It stands me in good stead in areas such as my writing. However, in other areas I want to give myself a lot more grace, I should say. I want to be kinder to myself, say when it comes to cooking or cleaning. I want to do what feels comfortable or doable. I don’t want to feel like I am letting go of discipline but rather that not all things demand that kind of discipline. Nor do they need to be done a certain way because that’s how it’s always been done, or everybody does it that way. It’s okay to go easy, to just be sometimes. To give an example, I do not like wasting food at all. It's something I have learnt from childhood where we didn't really have abundance. It's sort of stuck on. But there are occasions when it's kinder to myself to throw out something than to force myself to consume it, or to have food from outside than to cook. That's the balance I try to maintain where I am not being completely thoughtless about buying/wasting, but not so hung up about it that it sucks the joy out of my everyday life. I try to make space for what feels more comfortable and easier at times... It takes some getting used to. But feels good to give yourself permission to not make everything a target you have got to achieve :)

So I went to get my veg biryani yesterday as per usual at the market. Last Saturday it was again sold out before I got there, so the chap asked me if I wanted to try their Chicken wrap. Apparently it was very popular. I figured no harm trying, who knows I might discover something I like? The chap asked me to report back next time. I didn't expect him to remember. He must have a lot of customers I'm sure. But probably not that many Indians in this town? When I asked for the biryani, he asked me how I liked the wrap last time. I had mentally rehearsed that if he should ask this question I won't say I didn't like it—instead I said I preferred the biryani ;) I did not like the wrap at all actually. The chap said, it's more a 'gore-waala' taste. 'Gore' means 'white' in Hindi (or in Urdu). The wrap was more to white folks' taste was what he meant. I guess I was looking for what tasted like Indian food and the wrap tasted like... not Indian nor anything I could pretend to like... so I was back to the familiar, tried, and tested!

On the matter of me blurting things out honestly. I wish I could pause for a second between what pops in my head and what comes out of my mouth. It's usually too late by the time I have heard it myself. The other day I was standing in a queue at this Subway. There was this young Indian guy right ahead of me. Normally people don't make conversations at these queues (thank God!). I had my earphones on as well, as usual. The guy smiled politely at me and asked if I was a lecturer. I had to get one earphone out and say that yes, I was. He asked, ‘what did I teach’. I got the other earphone out this time, and told him. Then he said he was studying software engineering, and he didn't suppose there was something in common… or something to that effect. Meaning being if I might be teaching something in his course. I don't know why or how I just came out with: 'I don't think we have anything in common'! I wanted to say the disciplines were very different or didn’t have anything in common, but the actual words must have sounded rather personally offhandish and standoffish. The guy just looked straight ahead after that and didn't say a word. I felt mortified but then thought saying anything more could make a bad situation worse—not to mention the side-effect of inviting more conversation! It was only going to be more awkward because I had already spent 2-3 minutes thinking through all this instead of spontaneously correctly myself! I just quietly went along with the queue after that and got my order. Maybe it was the suddenness of being in a small talk situation when I least expected it that got all my brain wires tangled up and words muddled... oh well, that’s just me :(

I interacted with a young Indian girl today. She asked me where I was from. I said from Mumbai but originally from Mangalore. I usually say the last bit because it gives more context of my heritage, though I have grown up in Mumbai. Mumbai is a city where people from all regions have settled—but we still speak our regional languages, have regional foods, etc. Turns out she was from Bangalore. Most Indians I have bumped into here have been from the north, so I was pleasantly surprised. She asked me if I had been to Bangalore, and I could actually say I have. Then she said, I had always heard that women from Mangalore and Coorg are beautiful. I was surprised at that, I half smiled, half laughed. Then she again reiterated, women from Mangalore and Coorg are very pretty. I blushed am sure... and giggled a bit probably... hehe... and said that she was good at flattering. One second I was my usual serious self and the next one I was grinning like an idiot. I heard myself saying she could pop in anytime if she wanted a chat! Kind of made me think about the fact... that in spite of my stated aversion and immunity to flattery... I wasn't all that immune? Or maybe not everyone knows what exact buttons to press to get me eating out of their hands ;)

I feel like I operate in some sort of happy tension between love of structure and love of freedom from constraints of structure. I did not realise this explicitly until someone pointed out to me how I was critiquing rationalist thinking in a highly rationally structured form. I reflected about this. I mean, my daily life is dominated by routine and structure. I am the opposite of spontaneous or 'going with the flow'. I rarely change my mind on things once I have made it up—but for that reason I won't commit to anything that I am not 100 percent sure I can deliver. Sometimes people could see it as me not wanting to do things... but it's me weighing up if I can go the distance. My idea of commitment is not about what I feel in that moment, it is about whether I can stick with it till the end. You could say no one knows if you could stick with something till the end, you might change your mind, circumstances might change, etc. But I see a commitment as something that goes beyond all this; it's primarily about will, decision, and effort. It is also about desire and that's what I assess at the commitment stage itself. If I do not desire it, I might not have what it takes to stick with it, so I must decide if I want to go the distance. Reason I am going into all these thought processes is to show that I am constrained by both internalized structure and externalised structure. If I have to travel somewhere, I am drawing up a plan to the minutest detail with plan B for everything that could go wrong... you see what I mean?

So what do I mean by love of freedom from constraints? How I see it is that I need even more structure in practical life and relationships because it affords me the solid ground in which to soar freely in the world of ideas. That is the arena where I want to fly unfettered. Does that make sense? If everything around me is predictable and works undisturbed, I then have the freedom to float inside my head. Just because my PowerPoint slides have a rigid structure to them, that does not mean the ideas they contain have to be linear or formulaic, right? I do not see the point of worrying about the format of the slides because what is important is the content we are talking about? Just as I do not see the point of me being inefficient about how I get my groceries when I could use that time to think about what makes a certain type of sentence more beautiful than another? Just because I love structures around practical things does not mean I love structure for its own sake. Nor does it mean I see truth or the good as structured or linear or following a structured logic? Do you see my point?

I asked Claude (yes, my forays to understand AI better has meant I experiment with it—more on this later) about this and it came up with a wonderful explanation based on my MBTI type which as you know is INTJ. You'll probably understand the explanation only if you understand MBTI cognitive functions really well. So introverted intuition and extroverted thinking are the first two functions in my cognitive stack (there are only two MBTI types INTJ and INFJ among 16 who have introverted intuition as the first in the stack). So Claude's point is that introverted intuition is unfettered, unconscious, and free, and extroverted thinking is all about laying down systems, processes, planning etc. That's why it makes perfect sense that I am driven to fly with my intuition into abstract territories completely unfettered by any constraints, but my feet at the same time are also firmly planted on the ground. That also apparently allows me to bring my insights back to the ground in some structured form rather than letting them waft vaguely in the air...

I suppose I invoke God too often on this blog for someone who claims to not know if God exists or not. 'I do not know' seems like the most honest position because one cannot 'know'. But the fact that I keep invoking His name must reveal something. That I wish He exists. I am not indifferent to His existence at all. Quite the contrary, really. In fact, all questions for me fundamentally lead to the question of, is there a design, whose design is all this?

I think I draw a whole lot of comfort from even the possibility of God's existence. All's right with the world or will be if He exists... and... while this might seem like a surprising tangent, it was what I was actually getting to... there are some presences in our lives that are a bit like that. They give the kind of comfort that the idea of the existence of God gives. Even if God is not talking to us directly or showing up all the time, the very notion that he’s up there watching out for you, is comforting. These presences too make you feel that all's right with the world or will be with them around. They envelop us with their warmth and care and goodwill and… sheer presence. Perhaps parents are a good example of this. Which is why they leave a deep hole nothing can fill when they are gone. And sometimes we are lucky to have similar other presences come into our lives. Maybe they are literally God’s gift! They make you feel that all is right or will be... as long as they are around.

On Sunday mornings, I have readymade Chinese dumplings with a lovely sauce for breakfast. All I have to do is boil them in a pot of water for a few minutes and done! I got to know about these amazing easy-to-make dumplings from my old Chinese housemate about whom I have written a few times at the time. When you take the dumplings out from the freezer, they are all stuck together randomly in the pack. Some are loose, some are stuck. Earlier I used to try to separate them when I got them out. Some would even break a bit, and they would be all over the place in the boiling water. Then I read somewhere that I shouldn't force them to separate. I should just put them in the water as they are, and eventually they'll separate on their own when they start boiling. I don't need to force it.

Today when doing this it struck me that this could be an analogy for human relationships as well. Something I am not too good at. I think I approach them like I did initially with the dumplings. Getting them to fit the shape of what they should be like ideally. However, I realise that when I let them be, let the thing do its own thing, allow it to breathe, to be itself, who it is rather than who I want it to be... they might naturally open themselves up to me, literally and figuratively. This approach is not how I usually operate, this sort of openness to what will become than to force a ‘be’... but perhaps I could learn…

The porters in my apartment complex are really lovely. I think I'm going to miss them when I leave. Miss feeling like there's this nice group of people I can call whenever I have any minor issues in the apartment. I have been a bit spoilt that way. There's this particular British porter who is particularly sweet. He has this way of saying my name that makes me feel like he knows me, that I am not just one of the residents among many. I like it when people do that. I suppose I really like being treated as a unique individual, and not one among many with similar characteristics. Even if the characteristics were true, say I am a student among many students, I would like to be treated as "me", not one of the many students, if that makes sense? The more they show me that they really see me, the individual, with my own individual characteristics and history, the more I like it. The more I warm up....

So coming back to this particular porter. I had a parcel to pick up today and it was his shift. I think this was probably the first time I interacted with him up close since I came back from China, so he asked, was it China you went to around December? I said yes. To which he asked how it was. And I said it wasn't the first time I went and it gets better the more familiar one gets. To which he broke that wide smile. Something made me add, "but this is also a new country for me". He was taken aback. Shocked that I would compare my experience here with China. ...And he came back with, "I hope we take good care of you". His smile was kind and mischievous. I had to concur profusely! I felt he wanted to be reassured my experience here was much better than China. I couldn't help wonder later how people tend to assume that visiting certain countries, particularly in the East, must be some sort of traumatic experience... but never stop to think that many of us are also experiencing this country as an "other" country. I guess they take it for granted that this must be superior to what we had because we have chosen to be here. I think by mentioning this country in the same breath as another country I toppled his worldview for a second...

'...in another life, I would have really liked just doing laundry and taxes with you.' ~ From the movie Everything Everywhere All at Once

I haven't seen the movie. And I believe the context of this quote is very different in the movie. But something about this quote struck me emotionally from the first time I read it. Sometimes I have chewed on it, as if something about it is delicious. It may not seem that way—or maybe it does and I don't know?—that I have a very romantic side to me. It's not probably what one generally associates with romantic—the very over-the-top, splashy, shouting-from-the-rooftops sort of thing. No, that's not my thing, nothing over-the-top or loud about my kind of romantic. Like everything else about me, it's about the depth. It is probably only visible to the one it is expressed to in my quaint ways and if they are the kind who also values depth. From this vantage point, there is something very delicious about the quote. I paint a story in my own imagination around it which is easy since I haven't seen the movie. I imagine two people who cannot really unite in this life, but they sometimes dream about what it would be like, if they could. And that's where maybe, you the reader, will find it hard to imagine with me. They dream about what it would be like to do the mundane things together. Like laundry and taxes. I find that delicious! Not things like going on vacations or having adventures together. Nothing out of the ordinary. Just the everyday stuff. They dream about what it would be like doing the most ordinary stuff together in perfect silence and unspoken harmony. Which hides a lot more passion that any loud proclamation. That feels so deliciously romantic to me somehow!

Loyalty is such an underrated quality among friends. But I wonder if people really understand loyalty in the same way? What would loyalty between two good friends mean? To me one of the things it means, in very simple words though Aristotle says this with a lot more nuance, is that the enemy of my friend is my enemy. Obviously ‘enemy’ is a very strong word when we are not going to wars with anyone, but let's just say someone my friend cannot stomach. I for one cannot stand manipulators, game-players, and apple-polishers—these ‘qualities’ usually come in combination.

I would expect loyalty to dictate that I will not entertain that person either. One reason is that I care for my friend and want to show them where my sympathies lie. If they lie everywhere, that itself is a problem. A friend to all is a friend to none? But I think there is a logic beyond this too. Aristotle considered the best friendship between those who have virtue. Let's say high integrity. And this is the kind of friendship I am talking about. Where both have high integrity. If we assume that the two friends with high integrity also have high discernment, then if one of them cannot stand a certain character, it would have to mean they detect a lack of integrity or sincerity in that person. In such a case, the two friends who obviously trust each other very much, would certainly have to feel the same way about the person in question even if only one has reason to feel so. If we assume one of them has not had the chance to detect the two-facedness of the character in question or the character has cleverly managed to hide it from them (they are ace manipulators after all!), it should not matter. If the friend has seen it, that is enough. If the friend has been distressed by it, that is more than enough.

When I like a particular thing, I stick with it. I stick with what I know is good, no surprises. Like I like lemony desserts. I am not a chocolate person. I had a whole lot of choices in India but here very little. And among the few, I like the lemony ones, lemon cheesecake, posset, what have you. But not all lemon desserts are created equal. Like all things. Some are what I will call very, very good. The one I am specifically thinking about is an M&S variety. It came in a small glass bottle design. Lemon curd, cream, biscuit crumbs of the most delectable texture when mixed with the rest of the layers. In short, I was sticking to it. The trouble with things I like and I stick to is that somebody somewhere decides to take them away. So a few months down the line the dessert was out. I haven't found that kind of heaven again :( Same goes for other stuff. I like a makeup item, year later it's gone. I like a shampoo, soon enough gone.

The fact is this has been the story of my life, not just with things but also with people. I won't get into the people angle now as that's rather gloomy territory. But the fact is that as soon as I like something too much, I know it's going soon. What confounds me about these products is why are they discontinuing the good stuff?! You'd think if something is selling well, they'd make more of it? They want people to like their things and buy their things, right? What does it matter if the thing has been around since Adam? Shouldn't they just take our money and keep at it. Keep it coming? But no. Beats me really. Annoys me no end. Because now I have to spend time/energy to find a new thing and I don't have that much to spare. I have high standards, and it is exhausting trying to meet them. I haven't found a replacement for my lemony dessert at M&S. Closest is the Sainsbury's one but it's nowhere near close, if you get my point. It's at these times that I really wish I was living in London :( I might have found a worthy successor in Waitrose surely?

Some people I encounter have a strange reaction to disagreement or contradiction. There are two reactions that specifically bother me: 1. ignoring the disagreement/contradiction and carrying on with a different thread of the conversation, and 2. immediately agreeing with your opposite point of view. The first reaction tells me that they are not really interested in exploring an opposite point of view, they are not interested in why you think what you think, they couldn't care less if they/you might be holding a problematic position, and most of all, they have no desire to learn (or share). And the second reaction when it comes with no actual explanation or qualification for the about-turn, tells me that they probably never thought through their own point of view, they are not really committed to any particular point of view, or they would rather continue a comfortable conversation than get into any serious discussion that forces them to think. I have to admit that when people constantly do either of these things (I of course understand there might be times when people are not really in a space to engage seriously or there might be other genuine reasons), I gradually give up.

I suppose I might have mentioned this before—it is so fundamental to the way I approach relationships that I would be surprised if I haven't mentioned this—that the way to my heart is through my head. Mind you, it’s not a conscious approach, it’s just the way I am wired! I believe it's very different to how most people develop affections. In my case, a very high intellectual connection is the road really to a deep emotional connection. Which is why it is so rare. That is not to say that I do not have people in my life who are exceptions to this rule; the very rarity of this type of connection means there have to be. The reason I mention my orientation in this context is that with people who avoid exploring an idea, be it an agreement or a disagreement (frankly they are the same in my books), it's very unlikely that an intellectual connection could be reached. There is no authentic engagement so how can there be a connection? So I suppose when I give up I do not just give up the intellectual possibilities but perhaps possibilities for friendship as well... though philosophically speaking one could say the latter never existed in the first place.

I have a tendency to frame any explanation or discussion of the particular with the meta. A sort of begin from the beginning. I do it so that the opposite party understands the big picture against which I am viewing the particular thing. If I did not offer that, they won't get my perspective, that's my logic. But what often happens is people are not sure where I am going with what I am saying. They are not comfortable with the 40000-feet view, it makes them dizzy, and they would rather I get to the ground fast. What is funny is I am actually a very to-the-point kind of person. Just that I see a whole lot of dots that are intricately connected to the point and do not believe I can make the point well without revealing all those dots. But it's a rare few people who can see those dots even when you show them so a better strategy might be to take the shorter route. It's a rare few people with whom I care to do the dot-connecting exercise even. Except that sometimes I find myself in the middle of a situation where I need to make a point. But this logic is so hardwired in me that even when I know I am not with my ideal audience, I still can do only what I do. Part of it is that when I am focused on an idea, the world, the audience, the social situation, all disappear. Should it matter? I suppose, being the INTJ personality type that I am (more on this later), it is just how my intuition-thinking expresses itself... it cannot be otherwise. The better question might be whether I'd rather be someone else? And that's an easy one ;)

I am practising this business of letting be these days. I can deconstruct my own actions, feelings, reactions, and what have you till the cows come home (or not). It energizes me. Never exhausts me. It is a process of growth really, to know myself better and better. Growth as in not change, because not everything is about change or needs to change or can be changed. I would call it self-awareness rather. In a way, I am always in the thick of this process no matter what I am doing. But I have been wondering if sometimes it is good to let things just flow so to speak, not to question, comment, deconstruct, call attention to. To let things sort of slide, to let them take oneself over, apart,...? To talk about it sometimes might be to disenchant what is really magical in it. To name a thing might be to put it into a box and then one has to find a label... and labels again take away the magic? You understand this is not my normal mode? I am trying out something that does not come naturally to me... seeing how it feels like instead of controlling, deconstructing, making sense? How about not trying to make sense for a change? Just absorbing it? Letting it be? What's that like?

I have a bad reaction to anything that smacks of a rejection or a fail. But if life has taught me anything so far, it is this: 1. Every rejection/fail tells me that it wasn't right for me, not that I wasn't right for it. 2. This will open up space for something that is even better or fitter. 3. To let this temporary setback get to me and push me down is to give up my power. 4. Everything that causes difficult emotions can be channelled in a productive/creative direction. Harness it! 5. My definition of success is very different from the norm. Do not let the norm sway you from what gives your life meaning. 6. It takes courage to believe in yourself and stand your ground even against the high winds. Be proud of yourself. 7. Integrity, authenticity, intellectual honesty... whatever you lose, you win if you do not lose those.

Marcus Aurelius has some inspiration for me:

'The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.'

I feel like crawling back into my shell

Embarrassed and ashamed

The world asked me who I am

What are you doing here

Why do you pick

the crumbs off this table?

I looked here and there

Stunned and silenced

Scarcely could muster a word

Forgot I had language

The harsh voice rendered me dumb

I doubted myself, my right

To be here

What was I doing here, I wondered

I looked around

Embarrassed and ashamed

Not even able

To remember my name.

~Me

I happened upon this story about a Sufi mystic, as you do. As I write ‘as you do’ playfully it strikes me that I tend to see a whole lot of things that come my way as coming my way for a purpose. As if they are being sent my way. I am always looking for meaning in serendipitous encounters. Do they really have ‘meaning’? I don’t know… but what I do know is that it is through this alertness to what is coming my way from nowhere that I have ended up with learnings or experiences I wouldn’t have otherwise…

I believe very much in applying oneself to knowledge be it reading the masters, studying known works, and so on which this story poses something of a counter to. But I am also a believer in the power of intuition, what comes from the inside so to speak. Now how these two are connected is a different story…

Bayazid al-Bistami, a famous Persian Sufi mystic from the 9th century, spends years copying religious and philosophical texts, searching for spiritual truth and divine knowledge. One day, as he is working on transcribing ancient manuscripts, a Khidr or a mysterious figure in Islamic tradition, appears before him.

The visitor asks Bayazid what he is doing. Bayazid explains that he is copying and studying these texts to gain wisdom and understanding of the divine. The visitor says: "Why do you spend your life copying words about what you seek, when what you seek is within you? You are the text you are trying to understand. Study yourself, and you will find all the wisdom you are looking for."

This revelation transforms Bayazid's approach to spirituality, leading him to turn inward for direct mystical experience rather than relying solely on textual knowledge.

Having mentioned my favourite poetry genre in the last post, I must share a few lines from the category that have always haunted me with their beauty. I wouldn’t be surprised if I have shared them earlier…

As lines, so loves oblique may well

Themselves in every angle greet;

But ours so truly parallel,

Though infinite, can never meet.

—Andrew Marvell, The Definition of Love

I am sure I have mentioned before that I love Rumi? There is a depth in his verses... they seem to be not on a cerebral but a spiritual plane... you do not understand his verses so much as sense their meaning...

That reminds me, and maybe this must be a topic for another blog. When I was really young, maybe not even all of 21 years old, and the internet had started becoming widespread in India... that was when I started getting exposed to a much wider range of reading material than my libraries had allowed. I mean, you couldn't wander and meander and discover one thing to another in the library as you could on the internet. That's when I discovered a lot of poets I didn't know about. I had read many of the great novelists growing up, but poets not so much. A friend of mine at the time who had studied English literature formally and who knew a lot of the academic jargon told me, when he found out which particular poems I was enjoying the most, that these were mostly from the 'metaphysical poets'. After that, I started searching for more from the metaphysical poets... I was reminded of this because Rumi is not counted among the traditional 'metaphysical poets' who are all part of a western movement, but I would think he would fall in that category? And that makes me wonder why it is that I am drawn to metaphysical poetry...

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,

there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass,

the world is too full to talk about.

Ideas, language, even the phrase each other

doesn’t make any sense.

~ Translated from Persian by Coleman Barks and John Moyne from The Essential Rumi

You are going to hear a lot more about this ‘investment’ process I am in the middle of until it's done. It is all very different from how things are done in India obviously. The way I am used to things, I wouldn't mind paying extra pounds for somebody to just go away and do it and not tell me all about it or involve me in everything. I don't want to know the nitty-gritties—just tell me I can trust you and get it done! You know what I mean? I suppose I am a person who likes to be all in or all out. In things that I consider my area of interest, no detail is small enough. In things I am not an expert in, I just want the results. For instance, if I had to have heart surgery or something, I wouldn't want to know all the details of what's going to happen. I would only want to know the person doing it is the best at what he/she does and I can trust them. The less I know, the better, because if I know a little, it will cause me anxiety. Take my money and just get on with it. That's how I feel about this 'investment' process and that's how I would approach it in India... but not here clearly :(

On another tangent, I was talking to someone recently about how adversity really brings out the creative juices in you. As in, I don't think I could think deeply or feel deeply or reflect deeply if my life had been a bed of roses. In comfort, I don't see how anything could have grown inside me? I would have had no experiences to think out of or feel out of or write out of. Obviously, I wouldn't wish for suffering for that reason on myself or anyone else... but I don't see how I could have been who I am today without the trials by fire I have been through. Anyway, the main point I was coming to is that this conversation reminded me of some beautiful lines that I had almost forgotten:

"Sweet are the uses of adversity,

Which, like the toad, ugly and venomous,

Wears yet a precious jewel in his head"

—Shakespeare, As You Like It, Act II, Scene I

I get Indian veg samosas or biryani on Saturdays sometimes at the marketplace. For a change from my own cooking. I prefer vegetarian because even though I do eat chicken, they tend to use breast pieces over here unlike in India, and I am not a fan of it. I prefer thigh/leg pieces. I like vegetarian so it's not a compromise at all. This time the chick peas and potato was gone so the chap asked if I would like chicken on my biryani instead. I was about to say "no". He remarked, "You're not a vegetarian, are you?" I guessed I was not the only Indian who didn't care for the chicken... hehe... I said no, I am not, but I don't like breast pieces. To which he said, with a straight face, "breast is the best". I didn't know how to react to this because he seemed quite in earnest. I just said I'll have the veg samosa. I found this entire exchange a bit... funny!

My approach to life appears to be to make lemonade out of every lemon life throws at me. I have remarked about this in different ways over here in the past 2-3 years. Mind you, it's not an approach I am a fan of. I do it kicking and screaming literally. I would rather God gave me grapes or honey or something instead of leaving me with the onerous task of squeezing and squeezing till my arms hurt. My first response to a lemon is the refrain you are probably now familiar with, why God? Why me? ;)

But I suppose this constant position of being handed lemons has helped in 1. making me already prepared for the task, 2. developing strategic skills for the task. Every time I am in any situation I am interested in minimizing my energy spend. Because I have little energy for physical activities or activities/people who don't interest me. Obviously, I want to reserve the most for things/people that do. With the lemon squeezing situation, which for that reason too is inherently harder for me, I try to look at how to make myself spend less and less energy at every successive such situation. I suppose that's how I end up maximizing the lemons... if you know what I mean!

I wish

I could go back

To those days

Somewhere in the past

Relive those moments

Do them over

Experience them

All over again

If I had one wish

I would ask Him

The powerful one

Can you turn back the clock?

Just once?

And don't erase

My knowledge

Because if I knew then

What I know now

I would be

So much the better

I would make

Every moment count

I would, I swear

Stop complaining

Every damn time

Even when

They were kind

So kind

I would be

Better, gooder, nicer

Gentler, mellower

Not my

Fiery self

Spitting arguments

All the time

Like now

Like I try to be now

While my heart bursts

Because it hurts

To know

There's so little

Precious little

Time...

~Me

It's amusing and irritating when some people try to play a one-up game with me. I am not really into taking them on. I don't mean 'take on' as in put them down or anything. It's just that their game does not interest me nor is it something I aspire to win. It's a bit like them showing off they are going to be the CEO of Fluff and Vapid Co. when all I want to do is write poems at Books Ltd. It's fun to watch them preen at me as if I envy them their CEOship at the Fluff and Vapid. They will never understand my passion for writing poems as much as I will never understand their jubilation at their empty title. I don't expect them to 'get it' but the problem is when they expect me to bow to their (apparently) elevated status. That is what really riles them because I don't. They can't imagine why I am not enamoured by their power and why I don't grovel to gain their influence. It's no use pointing out that status does not impress me if it does not come with depth, dignity, intellect, excellence, or anything of intrinsic merit. Even a donkey can be given a crown (no offence to donkeys). Maybe it is knowing that they don't possess any internal remarkable qualities that triggers their insecurities and makes them clutch even more tightly at fancy titles. When people don’t recognize these, they must be forced to wonder if they appear as undazzling without as they are within!

There are days when just existing feels so hard. I don't want to write on such days because it could seem very morbid. It is morbid. Existence is morbid for anyone who thinks very deeply. The cure then is perhaps to numb thinking or not give yourself any time to think. If you think about it, everything ordinary people do takes them away from the trauma of thinking. Work, entertainment, food, sleep, play, social media... you name it. It's all to occupy one's mind with something, anything, but to not let it be empty. The chap who said an empty mind is the devil's workshop was onto something. Let your mind not be attached to any activity and next thing you know you are pondering on existence. And that my friend takes you to morbid territory. It hits you like a train head-on. What's the point of all of the stuff you are doing to get yourself out of thinking, it will ask. Nothing lasts. No one lasts. They are all speeding away really, bit by bit. You are speeding away too. Just the rate of speed differs so some are moving farther away and some are catching up with you. Imagine us all sitting in different buses looking out at each other. It might seem like we are in the same bus if we are sharing the journey for a bit or a while. But then suddenly their bus is zooming away. You are lucky if you get to wave out or call out. But whoosh, gone. Morbid, right? It's one of those days where I feel like holding tightly to some people so they don't just leave me staring into the distance. Tomorrow I will likely pop out of this mode and decide to revel in the journey again, albeit tentatively. It's a decision one has to make to survive the day to day... if one is the thinking sort.