നാം എന്ന നമ്മുടെ ചിന്ത (It's our thought that makes us, what we want to be)

"നിർമ്മാണാത്മകമായ കർമങ്ങളിൽ ഉന്നതമായത് സ്വയം എന്ന നമ്മെ സർഗശക്തിയിൽ രൂപപ്പെടുത്തുക എന്നതാണ്" - ദീപക് ചോപ്ര. നമ്മുടെ സ്വന്തം ആശകളേയും സ്വപ്നങ്ങളെയും പറ്റി ഉള്ള അറിവാണ് ഇന്നിൽ നിന്നും നമ്മുടെ നാളെകൾ ചിട്ടപ്പെടുത്തുന്നത്. നാം ജീവിക്കുന്നത് എന്തിനാണ് എന്ന അറിവ് ഉപബോധ മനസ്സിൽ നിന്നും ഉരുത്തിരിൻഹു ബാഹ്യമണ്ടലത്തിൽ കാണുമ്പോൾ ജീവിതത്തിണ്ടേ അർത്ഥം ചായത്തിൽ പകരും. വ്യക്തമായ തീരുമാനങ്ങൾ ആസൂത്രണം ചെയ്യാൻ ഇത് അവശ്യം. ഈ ഇടത്തിൽ നിന്നും സ്വപ്‌നങ്ങൾ നെയ്തെടുത്ത ഭാവി കണ്ടെത്താൻ ഒരു കമ്പാസ് വേണം - അപ്പോൾ യാത്രക്കുള്ള വഴികാട്ടി ആയി നമ്മുടെ വടക്കെന്ന ഭാഗം കാഴ്ച്ചയിൽ വരും. ദൃഷ്ടി കേന്ദ്രീകരിക്കണം ദൂരങ്ങളിൽ ഉള്ള നമ്മുടെ സ്വപ്‌നങ്ങൾ കൈവരിക്കാൻ. മനസ്സ് ആ മാസ്മര ചിന്ദകൾക്ക് ചിറകുകൾ പിടിപ്പിക്കുമ്പോൾ നാം കര്മോൽസുകമായ പ്രവർത്തനങ്ങളിൽ വ്യപ്രിതരാവും. ചിന്ത ശക്തമാണ് - ആ ശക്തി പ്രവർത്തനത്തിലൂടെ പ്രത്യക്ഷമാവും - അവിടെ വെളിച്ചം വഴിയൊരുക്കും, വിജയത്തിന്ടെ നിർവഹണം ആഹ്ലാദിക്കാൻ, സംഗീതം പിന്നണി ഗാനം ഒരുക്കി കൂടെ ചേരും. അഥവാ പറ്റാതിരുന്നാൽ അതിൽ നിന്നും പഠിക്കുക വീണ്ടും ശ്രമിക്കുക അന്ധ്യം കാണും വരെ.

Thought takes speeds more than that of light – Get connected....

That was a winter morning and at the railway station, Shimla. Chill, yes but fine to enjoy. We had boarded the Toy Train from Shimla to Kalka and I walked out as usual to have a glimpse of the place and people. As I peeped in to that tiny compartment, I saw my wife, Usha speaking with Ms. Liloutee, who sat opposite her. They were in deep thoughts and I could see the smiles on both their faces. The train whistled and started its descent down the hills and Usha and I exchanged about our trip that just concluded. Walking around the woods in the hills every morning . The train whistled and moved ahead halting at all stations on the down ward journey. We felt we would have missed the pleasure of this rail journey if Ravinder Singh did not suggest and reserved our tickets. Ravi and Babli drove us up the hill from Amritsar where we stayed with my old friend and colleague. Liloutee got engrossed with her e-Book and read page by page as if the surroundings were of lesser interest than the content she was reading from Kindle note book. My curiosity grew and I asked Usha about her and where she belongs. Liloutee lives in London and with her was her adopted son who was being educated by her, on a cause of charity. I wondered how love and gratitude transcend and take shapes along the Himalayan hills. What made Liloutee provide a holiday for her adopted son coming all the way from UK? By the time we travelled about two thirds of the journey the e-Book was closed and my desire to open a conversation with Liloutee enhanced. I commenced a conversation that opens up in a train. Sooner the discussions went beyond the routine. It was as if we opened up subjects that had different colors and shapes on an architecture that was built by us. It looked as if I was and she did tilt the Kaleidoscope to get across perspectives that emerged with clarity of thoughts. The family probably migrated from India and was in Africa and she moved to UK. Studied psychology and taught this science there. My inquisitive silly question to her – “What do you say when I tell you our mind is like a monkey?” – She whispered in a jiffy – “good”. We went beyond the subject to reading and writing, effect of social media and digital world that encompass the direction of ours and the thoughts of younger generation etc. She quelled and displaced some of my mis-interpretations with logic and deep knowledge. I started correcting my perspectives and a learning process commenced at ease. We alighted at Kalka from where we were to board the same train to Delhi, departed as friends and agreed that we be in touch and with an open invite to visit her house in UK and with an extension for her to be with us in Kerala during her next year’s visit to India. Narrating the points that I appreciated during this very tiny stretch of our journey are interesting. The most interesting point is that a train journey is a better mode than a flight. I recalled my old friend George asking me in a flight from the then Madras to Bombay whether I enjoy the 3rd class sleeper berth vis-à-vis the just fit seat of a flight – we had agreed that it’s the train that makes you connect. The second point is all about communication and if I did not watch Usha opening up with Liloutee, I would not have waited patiently for the e-Book to get closed, oh no “SIGN OUT” - the new terminology. A smile ignites and you start up a chain that leads you to relationships that can last for long. “Learning” is a process that does not have a shelf life or an expiry date – you can initiate with a willingness and attitude that provide you with immense knowledge about people, places and concepts that tend to lead to action that’s worthwhile. In this world of Facebook and other social media or even an ATM, where you may not find real faces, a journey even in a toy train can give you the sense and sensitivity that link to feelings and love that may slowly blossom. Boarders and boundaries are illusions and names and cultures not limitations. My daughter Divya says in today’s world that is nearly a crucible, cultures melt and form new recipes that taste buds of the mind can capture easily to mend and form teams. One can start a new day every time Sun rises on the East and take it along and pursue your intent and couple it with intellect to build bridges. That takes us to unknown frontiers, unseen and not witnessed thus far. Begin with an end in mind - the steps are easier than we believe. The KEY is to START. Knowing that I write Blogs I intend to copy this BLOG to her and mail it to her. Where she is on the day she receives my e-mail, is not a matter, but she sure will get connected to the Shimla-Kalka toy train journey that sparked this topic that you just read.

At cross roads - Life goes on the same!

That was some time back when our friend Salma’s daughter Sharon asked me “Why you, ‘expiry dated’ speak about her?” The question had a meaning. I and Sharon’s father Suresh were talking about Aliath who is a colleague of my wife at the school. Aliath is much younger compared to Suresh and me. At cross roads in life we hear questions like this. Expiry is a milestone on time. Abraham Lincoln said – “In the end, it’s not the years in your LIFE that count. It’s the LIFE in your years”. Today 11th June Usha, my wife celebrates her birthday and I wrote a poem that mentioned “Ageless, Usha”. Age is a matter of time. Happiness is important for us, mortal beings. It’s all about harmony with creation. Harmony is all about accepting life as it unfolds and play with the orchestra. We need to change and Bernard Shaw said – “Those who cannot change their minds, cannot change anything “that includes being happy. Most of us seek happiness for ourselves and probably that’s the problem. It isn’t easy to find then. When we share happiness with others, happiness finds it ways back to us. Keshav, Attitudinal Consultant, told me once “When life changes to become harder, change your-self to become stronger”. Emotions are at play in our lives. We are, to a large extent, involved with emotions and those influence us both ways. Regret is one emotion that kills us more at times. Some of us may feel that we had the courage to live life on our own terms and not what others want us to be. Professionals may feel why they worked so hard so far? A few at least can think that they had the courage to express their feelings. About relationships some think that they should have kept those valuable ones alive as they moved on their path. A large number may feel that they should have let themselves happier. Happiness is making a choice by you, to be happy or not to be! “Contentment consists not in adding more fuel, but in taking away some fire.” - Thomas Fuller. When I see people with an urge to acquire I remember the words of Frances Burney – “A youthful mind is seldom totally free from ambition; to curb that, is the first step to contentment, since to diminish expectation is to increase enjoyment.” Isn’t it true that the gap between expectations and reality is the culprit for most of our sorrows? It was not so long that I attended a ceremony where bones of the deceased were collected after cremation. As many of the close relatives shed a tear from their eyes, I thought –“isn’t those bones like that of mine?” In fact we are that – part of earth panjaboothas. Arunima Sinha's journey from railway tracks to Mount Everest is a story that unfolded on May 21st 2013. After climbing Mount Everest she said – “There was a time when the gel in my leg had slipped out and there was blood but I could not dare to either remove my gloves or bare my leg as it could have led to severe frost bites. I took my time and fixed it up before starting to climb back again.” She achieved the world record feat of becoming the first woman amputee to conquer Mt. Everest. She was inspired also by Yuvraj Singh who fought with cancer some time ago. Adversity can, at times make changes in our lives … Julio a little Spanish boy had a dream. He wanted to play football for Real Madrid! He practiced hard and became a good goalkeeper but met with a terrible accident was paralyzed from the waist downwards. Doctors were sure he would never play football again! To lessen the pain, Julio took to writing poems at night, with a tear in his eye. A nurse gifted him a guitar. Soon Julio began strumming the guitar and also singing the songs that he wrote. He never played football again. But with a guitar in hand and a song on his lips, Julio Iglesias went on to become one of the top ten singers in the history of music, selling over 300 million albums. “imag-e-in” - if not for that accident, Julio Iglesias would have been a goalkeeper. What happened to Julio that evening in 1963 could happen to any of us. A setback or an accident or failure can often appear to be the end of the road. But if we really look at it we may be at cross roads. Learning to cope with failure is a critical step not regret – the way to happiness. Today as I pass through a cross road in our lives, I feel that we should focus on our own lives and enjoy the gifts of God and try less to satisfy others. We have only one life to live truly we should make the best of it, by living the way one feel. We can’t compare ourselves with others and if we do that we miss our train. Being ageless on time happens when we understand current – this moment that is precious and not regret on past or worry on what cannot be done tomorrow. “Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.” - Pearl S. Buck. Swami Chinmayananda said “Don't put the key to your happiness in someone else's pocket” – Both these are words of wisdom. I wish Usha, my wife as she passes this step on her milestone, best wishes. She has always been simple, content and happy with what she has and moved on … including the testing times when she had a tubular pregnancy and I was in the hospital with transverse myelitis, cases that could have lost our lives. Her calm and composure illustrate at times, the way to look at life, patiently and move on, as life goes on the same, irrespective of the window through which you view it!

The breath we take; and limits & boundaries in between

26th February 2013, reflected in me as a close friend and a companion in deserts where we worked later. Mohan Mathew whom any one will like was at the terminal of his moment with destiny. A friend called to say this condition and one from Saudi sent a mail. As I traveled to meet him, memoirs continuously attacked me with the times we shared as college mates. Memories never fade - good ones for sure. His wife Santha had her smile slightly distorted, but brave when we witnessed his breath took longer with struggle. His eyes, closed, without food and water for a few days we are waiting in prayers for a miracle. Our breath also had silence in between. His children had come from US and from nearby. Pausing and engaged with thoughts in prayers we returned and on the way back, I thought of the limits and boundaries we have with destiny. There exists a “Lakshman Rekha” a very thin line between the limit and the boundary. This idea evolved from my past experiences and encounters and is food for thought set on your table - provoking and at the same time tempting. There are few things hemmed by boundaries. Boundaries do not bind rather they set limits. We imprison our minds and create a YOU that you are not. Thoughts have hardly any boundaries – they move around in the neighborhood as well beyond. Space and the outer-space have no set boundaries and are in balance. Cosmos is in existence is with attraction and repulsion forces but co-exist and move on. Friendships are love affairs to some extent. Limits are set by mind and not anything else. Between birth and death there exists a thin boundary called breath and between thought and speech there exists a thin line of silence? Our minds construct the world we live in. The perception and concepts we hold determine and create the way we see. Patterns of thought, limitations and boundaries in understanding influence how we interact with and shape reality. Such limits and boundaries define the parameters of friendships and existence. As a child we are dependent, we grow and become independent and in a social and professional concept become interdependent. Friendships are everlasting especially that incarnate during school and college times that makes us interdependent. As I traveled back, I went past my own history of an encounter with death with a disease named Transverse Myelitis about 12 years ago. I was invited to depart and pack my baggage to enter the world unknown. Transverse myelitis is a neurological disorder caused by inflammation of the spinal cord. The term myelitis refers to inflammation of the spinal cord; transverse simply describes the position of the inflammation that interrupts communications between the nerves in the spinal cord and the rest of the body. What began as a sudden lower back pain, rapidly progressed to more severe symptoms and I was paralyzed from below naval, urine retention, and loss of bowel control. The attack was on a fine Saturday afternoon with a heavy back pain and the resident doctor advised me to take pain killer for the night. My breath with death was that night. It was at Hinduja where I was diagnosed and I was in the MRI scanning machine for more than an hour and a half. Lucky I am to have come and tell this story, and live to see my friend Mohan Mathew. What I missed was my breath when the consulting mentioned that I may have a few days ahead to have continued breaths and as per statistics the case is so. When an alumni friend requested to know Mohan’s status with a sob in his heart, I felt the breath in him holding for a moment and I spoke on his terrible condition and his encounter with the “Lakshman Rekha”. Pain has limitations and his son told us he does not experience pain in his condition. But pain inflict in those in love with him. This afternoon I was with a doctor who explained a condition like that of mine that caused tragedy to his father in law recently. This is termed - Guillain-Barre (say "ghee-YAN bah-RAY") syndrome. This is a serious disorder that occurs when the body's defense (immune) system mistakenly attacks part of the nervous system. This leads to nerve inflammation that causes muscle weakness and other symptoms. This is an autoimmune disorder (the body's immune system attacks itself) and damages parts of nerves. This nerve damage causes tingling, muscle weakness, and paralysis. This can cause paralysis and lead to death. The doctor informed me that his father in law whom I met a few months back came back to life after stretched limits of encounters with destiny. We have beliefs and the times I had are experiences to seek from the ultimate to give chances. Those whom I informed about Mohan were in a spontaneous feeling for one another. We reached the zenith of our friendships in conversation – beyond the limits and boundaries that set apart positions, ideologies and beliefs. Love dominates at such instances. Lao Tzu make us think with his words – “Be content with what you have, rejoice in the way things are and when you realize nothing lacking, world belongs to you. When you are content, with what you have and become simply yourself - respect comes”. We then think differently about life and its manifestations, sufferings, pain and joy. The breath I lost in witnessing Mohan’s breath made me understand that death is a necessary phase that transgresses from one to the other. I learnt more within the thin limits of time existed on the 13th floor at Hinduja hospital twelve years ago and as my colleague Ravinder Singh said sitting close to me – ‘Amar, I am reminded of a joke and that will make you laugh and feel good’ – really so, I enjoyed his wits and fun more than the sympathetic looks I used to receive in the visiting hours those days. “Life is not about how many breaths you take but about how many moments in life that take your breath away”.

H A N D S

imag-e-in: Take a turn at right angle from your path . . .

imag-e-in: Take a turn at right angle from your path . . .: The fondness for nostalgia intimidate at times with thoughts that ignite, especially if such memoirs are familiar to failures and weaknesses...

Take a turn at right angle from your path . . .

The fondness for nostalgia intimidate at times with thoughts that ignite, especially if such memoirs are familiar to failures and weaknesses. I was requested as I alighted from a train that halted at Mangalore railway station by a co-passenger to help guide a person who was blind. Leading him through the platform till the auto-rickshaw stand I enquired whether he was blind from birth and he said yes. I made an enquiry whether he was missing something by not being able to see like others. He answered saying he do, as he has all other faculties functioning well and miss that link of picturing the whole world. He traveled from Chennai to attend a friend’s wedding and as I made him sit in the auto rickshaw, he thanked me and said – “I will find the rest of my way to the wedding hall”. He came to part in a wedding of his old friend’s daughter. I wondered then what my relative had asked me “why I undertake that journey after an accidental fall that injured me?” Hearing the blind man’s story made me realize how purpose defines path. I use a video clipping posted on You Tube on Nick Vujicic during training sessions to demonstrate how obstacles can be visualized as challenges. Most of those who watched the video got charged. We all are luckier than many others. Another man, a double leg amputee made history recently by competing in an athletic event in Olympics with carbon fiber blades and thanked his mother Sheila for instilling values in him. The South African Pistorius watched his 89 year old grandmother flying the national flag as he ran. Sheila never took NO for an answer – “Looser is not a person who gets involved and comes last; but one who don’t get involved”. The nature of habit is an automatic compulsion to do what one has become accustomed to. Habits want to repeat old patterns to stay within comfort zones. Edward de Bono is one who spoke about parallel thinking to find deviations in our life’s journey. Tension can be classified in four type viz. of task, relationship, surprise and mystery. With demanding life styles we try to cope with tension as we are in confrontation with situations and yield in defeat, procrastination or surrender. This is where the familiarity of failure disallows parallel thoughts for improvised action to grow and sustain. As a student of engineering, I studied surface tension and it is termed as the pressure difference between the inside and outside of a BUBBLE. Water strider an insect can freely run along the surface of a quiet pond. There is something we need to learn from the insect – to utilize the tension and move forward! Surface tension in simple terms is the balance between the inner and outer chores. And in a different concept it may be applied as our inner thoughts and environment we live. When the few of us who returned as NRI’s met at Wayanad for a picnic, Vijay Menon had lots of games in stock and if you click You Tube video you will understand his question “how many coins can that glass of water accept without water spilling over?” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2mKpZHnEzw Fact is that human resilience to motor through un-known terrains is huge, and we need to appreciate this as we encounter ups and downs of lives. Most of us won't approach problems, but we seek peace of mind. It’s written on Facebook’s walls – “done” is better than “perfect”. Our lives today place enormous demands on time and energy and these demands exceed our capacity to deal with them. We try to align and attempt to function. Too often, this underlying tension surfaces at slightest provocation, and we find ourselves in conflict. Our responses shift to tensions reflecting conflicts. We need to progress through change of beliefs. I believe tension is a need to vibe to the music in our lives. Guitar makes wonderful sounds with tension in the strings. Like in a symphony, we need to learn and adapt to situations, to avoid tension. Happiness is all about harmony with creation; harmony is all about accepting life as it unfolds. Stretch is the elasticity of comfort zones that can redefine our identity bringing out hidden capabilities. Look at a child – he moves on and on. We should not allow the child in us to grow. Then we can participate in that grand orchestra of life. Essentially, to turn sideways with parallel thinking is to reject mental blocks of conflict management. For most of us, we are so programmed either to submission or aggression. When in the journey of lives, the path is a dim and uncertain we need to take a right angle and yet reach the same goal; and get onto move ahead with life. At times behind a hidden door, the key to that door may have been temporarily misplaced but finding it by wisdom, compassion and enlightened thoughts makes it possible. It’s possible with matured, balanced thoughts without breaking the envelope of water bubble that holds the phenomena of surface tension - Longing to seek peace result in belonging.