At our studio, DIG, we have been discussing, a long while actually, but along with more concrete steps recently about doing some products together with other like-minded teams in a way which we can all share and benefit from our best strengths. We are talking with teams and like minded individuals, in development, in marketing, in design, in management, in academics… and so on. As these discussions progress, I see a clear thinking style emerge strong in our thinking: Of success, of all our successes, being one and the same. A openness in planning and sharing these successes. No ‘my idea’ – ‘your idea’ hangups. Visualization of path forward for all of us.
It’s exciting times ahead folks!
Stephen Cohey, coined a word, and explained it better as an ‘abundance mindset’. If this appears to be too simplistic & too basic, isn’t it how all great ideas appear?
Look beyond the rational. ‘The divided brain has profoundly altered human behaviour, culture and society.’ says renowned psychiatrist and writer Iain McGilchrist. Here is his talk, RSA Animate -d. Take a lookie.
Yeah, Grammar apart. Just stumbled upon it yesterday, the hard way. This is supremely interesting. Not abstract or philosophical; – it’s very tangible; here & now.
Try an experiment; When you feel something, say anger, pride, happiness about someone. And if you can pause, pause and see if you can find out somehow, what that someone is feeling towards you. Most likely they will be feeling the EXACT SAME FEELING!
This is funny. I am thinking you are stupid, and you are thinking the very same? You are thinking the call-center chappie is rude, guess what he is thinking of you? You’re thinking you are not appreciated in the work space; Guess what… yeah… you get my drift…
The aha moment of today morning began here -
Karaagre Vasate Lakshmi
Karamadhye Saraswati
Karamoole Sthite Gauri
Prabhaate Karadarshanam
Each day I recite this. And of course, you know, I try all kinds of visualizations to keep up with this – B/W, Line drawings, many sorts of abstractions – and typical one that usually wins is like a soft soothingly animated version of Ravi Verma. I typically am mighty pleased when I get the form really human-like and believable.
Anyway, today’s Aha – wasn’t about the visualisation at all. The key element in this is not the all powerful goddesses – which another day I will say, it is about. The key element is really the ‘Hands!’ the Karas.
It’s repeated thrice here (significant, don’t you agree!). Should have been clued into it earlier!
Someone, sensible somewhere figured it out. That it’s all is in our hands, in our control. It’s symbolic. Lakshmi for the ability to sustain (also represented as wealth), Saraswati for ability to persue and achieve learning (also represented as knowledge) and Gauri ability to sustain human relationships. I get it – ‘It’s all in my hands!’ So each day, morning as I look at my hands and I am telling myself ‘its all in my hands!’ – ‘I just didn’t know it!’.
But REALLY now, what IS in my control? Most things aren’t. So, imagine that these (represented by the three symbols) are and aren’t in your control. It is the actions that are in our control – the doing, the initiations to influence your sustenance, your learning and your relationships. And it is also a ‘day to day’ control model. We don’t get a complete control – its a ‘present day’ or ‘present moment’ idea. The results of the actions aren’t. (the shloka doesn’t work the results in)
Now, I feel like a complete-pseudo-modern prophet. Parroting what most Hindu Gurus probably already have said it – can’t you picture Mr. Sri Krishna himself, or Buddha, Paramahamsa, Osho, JK all sorta saying this in different words? About the control thing – that it is and it isn’t.
Not saying anything. But still pretty pleased. 
When it rains like it did today, that is when the weather is sunny and raining at the same time, as children we would knowingly nod, ‘Fox and the crow are getting wedded’. This must have been just a comment on the unnaturalness of it being sunny and raining at the same time.
It’s called a sunshower. I Wikipedia it, apparently similar animal wedding sayings exist across the world for this phenomenon. Foxes wedding, Bear’s wedding, elves wedding? Take your pick.
I laughed aloud and said ‘Escaped from the entire shebang of hopeless useless miserable shit-hole life. Love, sadness, success, children, death, divorce. Every thing. You escaped it all. You must have been out in couple of minutes – lucky bum‘.
Not aloud – not to the dead body – not to anybody. Everyone was saying idiotic things. Someone said ‘thank god – he was not married’.
He was lying in the middle of the room. I ran out of the room in a couple of seconds. The dead body was very oppressive. On the way my sister had said – ‘so quickly people become dead bodies – its no longer him’. In the room, my aunt & uncle were conversing abnormally loud – about God and his crappy reasons, their poor dead son, their prayers being in vain, their misfortune. They didn’t understand. What is to understand? Death is not understood – its only a fact.
‘Silence is better than a thousand words’ or some such thing the poster said in his house. Did he choose this poster? An image of two people in a boat at night. Someone had thought this ugly image worked for the words. Actually, the words fit better with an image of death. Ugly death.
I saw fleeting glimpses of folks touching his face for the last time. Was there a point to that? My mind repulsed at it. Its a dead body.
I want you to know I love you. Are you going through shit – I will not judge. I will share your super happiness – I will be super proud and tell the whole world. I love you. And here is a hug for all those happy and sad times I missed, a hug when we are still alive.
A thousand thoughts floated by ‘what if it were my son?’ or ‘…my daughter, my loved one?’ That’s when the grief hit people and they would weep convulsively, scrub away the tears.
I lived through that real grief. About 10 years ago, I lost a friend whom I loved dearly. That grief was like being hit by a train. Everything went extremely slow and extremely fast at the same time. I didn’t remember anything. Not the air hostess offering tissues or the next person looking fearfully at me weeping. I didn’t remember the questions or the answers. But I remember the horrendous weight of grief all those days. You could slice that grief and play football or something – it was that real. It took years to get out of the guilt. The survivors guilt. Every laugh, joy, simple life rewards of walking, breathing hence forth for a long time makes you feel guilty ‘How could you live, and be happy when someone you loved died?’ Really how could you?
Today I felt wiser. I wanted to laugh. To ask people to recount the stories of the man they knew – What really ticked for him? What made him laugh? He laughed didn’t he? He lived a good life, didn’t he?
We are all the same. We die. Is there a master program that calculates whats the best bet of keeping someone alive. And eliminate the rest. There’s is no reason for our existence anyway. It may be sensible to be sensible, ‘don’t smoke, don’t do drugs, don’t hold grudges, don’t kill, eat well, pray and be healthy, meditate’. And then, if were lucky, we will die quickly and easily like him.
A jovial young boy. Long ago maybe 20 years ago – when we were very young and wore embarrassing clothes that were in fashion – we all had gotten dressed up to get pictures taken in a photo studio – no one owned personal cameras then. We were all laughing really really hard. ‘What had made us laugh that day. Were we laughing at ourselves?’ – I asked. He looked like he’d open his eyes, laugh again and say ‘Tada!! Practical joke!’.
‘Bugger you escaped life. You died!’ I said. ‘Escaped from the entire shebang of hopeless useless miserable shit-hole life. Love, sadness, success, children, death, divorce. Every thing!’
Once, this was a temple’s or garbha griha’s gargoyle (water spout). Details on the Makara are elegant foliage-like. It’s dated 11 Century Bihar, and can be found at India Museum Kolkata on the ground floor.
Makara: An aquatic mythical or pre-historic creature, depicted as half animal & half fish. It looks like a crocodile, with its long extended snout. Makara scuptures are found in many South Asian countries.
More on Wikipedia.
The color play is so electrifying and mesmerizing that you can watch the Aarti forever irrespective of whether you are a believer or not!
Almost no child in over 500, in 2 villages in Andra Pradesh India, wanted to be a farmer. Why? I’d say, Farming is the Great Indian Gamble.
Who knows what the prices will be a few months from now for a crop sown today? Who knows if it will rain, or rain incessantly when it shouldn’t? Who knows if the pesticide will help the yield? Who knows if all the months of slogging in the harsh tropical sun will be an iota of use? Who does know magic?
New Thinking? No, Thank you – Rather than try something new and add to near impossible risks. They’d rather follow an successful example. I would do too. Heck, If I were a farmer, with the amount of impossible things I have to have faith in to live each day – God and Superstition are good bets!
No. It doesn’t help a farmer to have a farm. It doesn’t keep poverty at bay. Forget respect; getting a job as a truck driver is more respectful. Hardships? A maid or a mechanic has it easy. You’d make more consistent money working as a house maid, daily labourer or a contractor. A leased farmer’s means next to impossible loans. If the farmer owns the land, he is better off selling – else in a next couple of years, he may have raise next to impossible loans and lose it all. Farming doesn’t even lock you in the same economic status, it’s a vicious downward spiral. Period.
Heck, Why are they gambling, ops sorry, farming?
While writing a letter, an email or a document I don’t spell out each word in my mind as it gets typed. However I tend to spell out letters of words of all passwords I use even if it is a straight forward English word or phrase.
28th of November 2010 is going to be historic; the third world war is waged and its on the internet. This is world’s first information war and watching in the arena are millions of netizens. Wikileaks, a small whistle-blower site, against the US government. Most governments are bound to get into this fight.
Cloud is the new battlefield
One side is privy into the other’s secret information. The world’s watching the David & Goliath play out. Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, is putting up a brave fight. It would be hard to make internet free of Wikileaks with hundreds of mirror sites and almost zero replication costs. Perhaps that’s the reason US Government, has to hit credibility of the Assange and psyche its citizens to not access the site by oscillating between advice and threat.
Individual Voices of Democracy
Were not social networks touted as the platform for democracy? Anyone with a mobile or an internet connection has an opportunity to voice and this voice can now be measured. This was going to be the greatest tool for democracy. But will it? Twitter seemed heroic to postpone it’s maintenance when Iran Elections was going on. They were supposedly making sure Iranians had a platform to protest. Perhaps they are more bothered about their business than being heroic. In the wikileaks case, Twitter has not blocked @wikileaks account and can’t really block individuals tweeting without major backlash, but strangely wikileaks is not trending on twitter despite the spikes clearly noted here. Its easy to see that most cloud businesses don’t want to be in the war path. They didn’t choose this fight. Amazon, EveryDNS, Paypal have all quickly chosen to close Wikileaks account permanently! Rightly said, networks do great harm by appearing enough like real communities to create expectations that they can manage human & social needs.
Causalities
Do you believe that this information war will be without causalities? Aren’t the citizens /netizens/ individuals shouting out? Will this be an anarchists utopia? Will the power of individuals and voice of democracy be back to where it was; a fairy tale?
Look – Look at the Blue of the river Ganga, it is so electric! Especially along with the Oranges! Folks gather each evening here, at this Ghat, opp to an ashram aptly called ‘Paramaarthi Niketan’. At sunset, they sing Bhajans and perform the GangaAarthi. Earlier this ghat overlooked a big Shiva Murthi, installed in the river, which washed away a couple of days earlier in the floods. There is a smaller makeshift Shiva idol, whose pic I will share later.
The camera man you see in the centre of this, captures these videos and this Aarthiis telecasted LIVE each evening on Aastha TV Channel (hearsay). Most tourists in the area congregate here. You can see foriegners in White and humming along, Indians singing along, the students of the ashram; all very dedicated to the Aarthi. I noticed an especially devout fellow bang in the middle of all this; all eyes closed and trance like. Just after the Aarthi was done, the students formed a human chain or a human pipe – to safely escort the ‘guru’ the guy in long flowing tresses who is the focus of the cameraman in the pic.
Also, met a very nice Sadhu Ramu Baba, who insisted on English and sorta always kept appearing ahead of us! (?!) He revealed to us the secret nuances of visiting Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s ashram. Rishikesh, else, is very hip and very like the India shown in glossy foreign magazines. I live this Indian life partly and partly feel like a alien strange tourist here.
The City Palace museum at Udaipur offers a few hours of lookie before the mind goes entirely numb and you start to lose it!
But while you are there early on, and you have a decent camera, you are sure to capture these shots. These are windows into rooms that were used by royalty some decades ago. These have brightly colored walls with beautiful, really beautiful murals on them.
I find these places of history like wormholes in time. They transport you into their times, and you can freely imagine the king walking by one of these rooms, with this entourage debating various political stances they may assume. And imagine the overtly beautiful ladies looking down into the darbar hall, influencing some of these decisions with the dismissive wave of their fans or a subtle nod of approval.
Oh, Why do the worm holes work so well only in historical places you ask? Try walking down the streets of Udaipur and imagine the king, his entourage et all walking on the outside roads rife with Airtel Banners, SBI Atms, Hotels screaming discounts… Doesn’t work! Nada – Just not the right props.
Naga baba off Mana, 3Km from Badrinath in the himalayas. He is cooking some bendi for his lunch and offered to share with one of my friends as well. He is covered in ash to keep himself warm – its quite cold up here.
PS: This picture was dug out as I was writing a post for Six Items…
Here is a quick 1 hour poster for this Fran Lebowitz’s quote…
“If you are a dog and your owner suggests that you wear a sweater… suggest that he wear a tail.“
You can see all sorts of deer at Bandipur – barking deer, standing deer, sitting deer, eating deer, running deer…
This was a performance put up for benefit of the tourists. Imagine these colorful ladies in the courtyards of the white city of Udaipur! Fantastically and out of this world!
Hope this year brings in great new colors in your life. I am going to be on a Portrait Mode for this year. I will have many self portraits but of course it will not be here. Other’s portraits may be.
Hope to bring in more pictures here. Till later then.
I like this young one here. As enterprising as our clever crow who dunks stones into a jug to drink up.
