"Creators"

We seem to be spending so much time on the computer that I think we live in a different world. It has been quite a while since I came out to see the real world. This is becoming quite an addiction.

The touch of the keypad is exciting. Writing used to be the norm, those days. But now with the computer keypads, an upgraded version of the typewriter, writing becomes easier. Writing and being able to delete the unwanted stuff, while changing and doing so many different effects has become so much easier.

This reminds me of "The Canvas" that I wrote about earlier. This whole space is given to us to explore. Creating becomes fun too. The computer is amazing. I am finding out this late! Yes, writing is like an art too. For a painter, the colors, brushes, and the canvas allow him to come out with incredible pieces. The same thing applies to a musician. He may even become amazed with the unimaginable music he comes up with. Every one, who indulges in a creative fashion in fact, becomes a "creator".

Well creation is something incredible. The feeling is exciting. Imagine a child making a sand castle or trying to paint a picture. You can imagine the awesomeness of the whole thing. Each time you upload a picture or create your own stuff, the feeling is a child like jubilation.

My mind irresistibly goes towards the "CREATOR". Too much of a taboo for some, but I feel that this being or thing or whatever you want to call is also creating continuously. A very controversial subject, but I can't help pondering over it though. I am glad that I have passed those forbidden zones and times in my life and you could say I do feel quite comfortable in contemplating and questioning my mind about the Creator!

But this whole thing aside, I sometimes feel that we are totally living in our minds. This is an interesting subject that I want to go into later. I seem to be making the mistake of getting irritated when the phone rings. It puts a stop to the flow of what I am doing. Whether what I am doing is really important is another subject of discussion though!

Well right now, I need to go off to do my daily mundane stuff. Till next time…….

Food for Thought

A Violinist in the Metro

A man sat at a metro station in Washington DC and started to play the violin; it was a cold January morning. He played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time, since it was rush hour, it was calculated that thousand of people went through the station, most of them on their way to work.

Three minutes went by and a middle aged man noticed there was musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried up to meet his schedule.

A minute later, the violinist received his first dollar tip: a woman threw the money in the till and without stopping continued to walk.

A few minutes later, someone leaned against the wall to listen to him, but the man looked at his watch and started to walk again. Clearly he was late for work.
The one who paid the most attention was a 3 year old boy. His mother tagged him along, hurried but the kid stopped to look at the violinist. Finally the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. All the parents, without exception, forced them to move on.

In the 45 minutes the musician played, only 6 people stopped and stayed for a while. About 20 gave him money but continued to walk their normal pace. He collected $32. When he finished playing and silence took over, no one noticed it. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the best musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate pieces ever written,with a violin worth 3.5 million dollars.

Two days before his playing in the subway, Joshua Bell sold out at a theater in Boston and the seats average $100.

This is a real story. Joshua Bell playing incognito in the metro station was organized by the Washington Post as part of an social experiment about perception, taste and priorities of people. The outlines were: in a commonplace environment at an inappropriate hour: Do we perceive beauty? Do we stop to appreciate it? Do we recognize the talent in an unexpected context?

One of the possible conclusions from this experience could be:

If we do not have a moment to stop and listen to one of the best musicians in the world playing the best music ever written, how many other things are we missing?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

Wisdom

By associating with wise people you will become wise yourself.

Menander

The seat of knowledge is in the head, of wisdom,
in the heart.

William Hazlitt

Of all parts of wisdom the practice is the best.

John Tillotson

The more a man knows, the more he forgives.

Catherine the Great

Breathing Therapy

Something interesting I received in an e-mail from a friend.

"Our noses have left and right nostrils. Are these nostrils having the same function for inhaling (breathe in) and exhaling (breathe out)?

Actually it's not the same and we can feel the difference. Accordingly, the right side represents the sun and the left side represents the moon.

When having headache, try to close your right nostril and use your left nostril to do breathing for about 5 min.

The headache will be gone. If you feel too tired, do it the opposite way. Close your left nostril and breathe through your right nostril. After a while, you will feel refreshed again.

Because the right side belongs to heat, so it gets hot easily. The left side gets cold easily..

Women breathe mainly with their left nostril, so they get calm down easily.

Men breathe mostly with their right nostril, so they get angry easily.

When we wake up, do we notice which nostril breathes faster? Is it the left side or the right side?

If the left nostril breathes faster, you will feel very tired. Close your left nostril and use your right nostril for breathing and you will get refresh quickly.

You can teach your kids about it. The effect of breathing therapy is much better for adults.

I used to have painful headache. When consulted a doctor, he told me jokingly," You will be all right if you get married!" The doctor did not bullshit me as he had his theory and supported with testimony.

During that time, I used to have headache every night and I was not able to study. I took medicine but I was not cured.

One night as I sat down to medidate, I closed my right nostril and breathed with my left nostril. In less than a week, it seemed that my headache problem had left me! I continued doing it for about a month and since then there was no recurrence of headache in me.

This is my own experience. I used to tell others who also suffer headache to try this method as it was effective for me. It also works for those who have tried as well. This is a natural therapy, unlike taking medicines for a long time may have side effect. So, why don't you try it out?

Practice the correct ways of breathing (breathe in and breathe out) and your body will be in a very relaxing condition".

Remembrance

I woke up this morning with the remembrance of my grandfather. For the first time in my life, I shed tears in his memory and symbolically touched his feet with my heart. I have not thought of him often, because I have only met him once. He fell ill and wanted to see us all, his son’s children. He was in India and we had to fly immediately to meet him.

I was about twelve years old on my first flight with my brother who was ten then, traveling all by ourselves. The journey was unforgettable. All the air hostesses looked alike to us and we kept counting them again and again adding up to more than one hundred as they kept walking up and down the airplane. It was exciting for us kids to travel unchaperoned for the first time.

The village was slow moving. My memory of my grandfather is still quite vague. He was already of advanced age and his eye sight was failing. As children were, we were more interested in rushing out to see the place rather than staying to talk to him. I was fascinated with seeing the cows behind the house and the padi fields nearby. The mornings started with me running to the fields close by. The water from the dam was used to water the rice fields. It rushed out from the dam with such force that I could not wait to stand under the gush, for my morning bath. The green fields were a refreshing sight to the eyes too.

After the bath, I would come back to the house to see my grandmother ready with freshly made South Indian coffee, which is the best coffee you could find anywhere. I can still remember the aroma which is so tantalizing.
The fresh cow’s milk and filtered coffee’s combination is truly heavenly! After breakfast with Idlis , sambar and chutney, I would rush out to walk the streets of the idyllic Indian village with a girl who used to live close by.

I remember watching the children reciting the time tables, sitting on the verandah of the classrooms. These were the children from that village and surrounding villages, who had come to study there. This was one of the small villages surrounded by many other villages with no schools around.

Grandpa was inspired to start this school, to bring about education to the children of the village. Throughout his life, he dedicated himself to the education of children. He believed that, education was the only key to bring people out of poverty and ignorance. He pursed his dream till his last breath.

People at that time were so much into the caste system, and children of lower castes were not allowed to go to school then. But grandpa stood against those policies and stubbornly went about accepting any child, regardless of his or her caste or background. There was a time when the people from his community, started to alienate him too for allowing the children of other classes to study in his school. This kept him unperturbed and he carried on with his work religiously. He fought for equality and was a staunch Gandhi follower. He preached and lived a life of simplicity, not spending much on him but in the building of the school and later a college which is still being taken care by one of his other sons.

Some years later, I had gone to do my visa at the immigrations. I met the officer, who on finding out about who I was, wanted to speak to me. He told me that he was sitting on that chair because of grandpa. There were no schools in his village, so he walked to this school from his village nearby everyday, for his primary and secondary education. Now he holds a position as an immigration officer. He felt such gratitude and told me what a great man grandpa was. Though his words made me feel proud of him then, it did not register too long in my thoughts.

An incident took place recently, which ties it with the memories of grandfather. A woman related to me, her story of how she was treated as an untouchable by her employer, which was heart wrenching to listen to. I do not want to judge the employer, but it reminds me of how corrupt this whole class and caste system is. Since she came from such an upbringing, she brought with her the system which has become engrained in her.

This is not about a particular individual. This is about the whole system. This system of class and caste can degrade a human being. Without giving an iota of consideration to the feelings of the affected person, the system eats away the self worth of a human being. The person looses all self-respect and feels utter humiliation and dejection. The woman's deepest pain and cry shook me to my core. She moved me to weep with her. At that moment her pain became mine too .

I have never really thought much about this system of class differentiation, which is still practiced in India widely though not so openly now. But remembering grandfather who was already opposing this system more than fifty years ago and fighting to eradicate it brought those tears to me.

What a noble hearted human being he was. I felt sad that I do not even remember his face clearly. But this morning, my heart prostrated at the feet of this wonderful gentle man, who lived with his principles of equality and died with them.


“But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate — we can not consecrate — we can not hallow — this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” -

Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863.

Quotable Quotes

LIFE

"What most people need to learn in life is how to love people and use things instead of using people and loving things."
~ Unknown ~

"To be sensitive is to feel the thoughts and hearts of others as only you would want yours felt."
~ Author Unknown ~

"Your work is to discover your world and then with all your heart give yourself to it."
~ Buddha

Down Memory Lane - Pt.4

Under the Banyan Tree

Thanks to facebook, I have been able to contact a few of my friends after 30 years ! Yes incredible isn’t it? I used to wonder all these years, whether I will be able to meet these people, since I did not know their whereabouts other than remembering their names.

It was so exciting to know that they too remembered me. Exchanging some messages, I find that, I may be able to get in touch with some of the other girls too. I am excited to know that they are around somewhere, and I have another chance to catch up with the people that I thought, I had passed by in this journey of my life. I thought that I may never be able to meet them in this lifetime. Sounds huge but isn’t that the reality? We sometimes end up never meeting some people who made an impact on us.

Memories of us being a little naughty runs through my thoughts. Can you imagine, going for a movie was taboo, back then. We would literally spin some stories to the wardens, to able to go out of the hostel on Saturday afternoons. A 20 to 25 minutes walk, depending on our pace, would take us to the bus stand close by. From there we used to go to the city to go to some theatre there for a movie. After the movie, we may go for an ice-cream before returning to the hostel. Coming back was a little difficult sometimes and we used to sneak in quietly without Padhu teacher’s knowledge.





Classrooms










She was some disciplinarian. There was always the worry, that someone might catch us rushing back late from our outings. Sometimes we had to hush them and rush in time for dinner at the dining hall. Exhausted but feeling happy and at the same time a little relieved, to be able to come back without any problems, we will go to bed to prepare for the next day. Imagine that was the level of mischief we were allowed!

There were times we were a litte bolder than that, but somehow it had to be within the limits. Sarees were the only attires allowed. Anything else was unacceptable. Some found difficulty in adhering to such strictness, but since it was a part of the culture there, we had to dress accordingly. I was not too experimental like some of the girls, who would wear pants beneath a saree and remove the saree on their way out during their jaunts !





The dining hall does look better now. There were no fans then.








That was Kalakshetra then, a different time, a different generation. Nevertheless it was fun. Sweet memories of coming together with students from all over the world. We gathered at this idyllic place, which also happened to be the place we had come to learn the arts. The pace was slow moving with ample space to be in tune with the natural setting of the environment.

Lying in bed at night, I would sometimes listen to the winds howling when the night was quiet and if it was going to rain. When the sea was rough we could hear the sounds of the waves on the beach close by. In retrospect, what a beautiful environment to be in. Walking on the sands of the campus was cumbersome at that time. Sometimes I wonder if given another chance, would I have looked at the place in the same way? I guess, I would have greater appreciation now.

I was too busy with my classes and practices. Getting up at 4 or 5 in the morning to practice my music. Bathing in cold water and having to only be in a saree was quite a challenge, but the fun was there too. We were not allowed to listen to any other music other than classical music. It took me some years later to be able to get used to listening to other genres of music. But it was fun to be able to come together from different parts of the world and living in the same environment and learning to adapt to the time and place there.

We had to adhere to the strict discipline, not to the extent of a monastery though! But I remember meeting Padhu teacher a few years later, when she told me that the place was not the same now. Times had changed and they could not expect the girls to follow their strictness as we would!

Wow! What a compliment coming from her. Yes dear Dr. Padmasini who was also a doctor of homeopathy, was in here sixties when I met her. She was a slim lady with silver hair and was always seen in a white cotton saree with the pallu wraped around her shoulders most of the time. She would have been a beauty in her younger days. You could see from her features. We used to fear her for her strictness. She was the doctor we would have to see when we fell ill.

Nostalgic memories of my times in Kalakshetra. Though the years have gone by so swiftly, the memories are still fresh like the jasmine flowers. I always consider it as one of my greatest gifts amongst other gifts, to have been given the opportunity to be in such a wonderful and beautiful place.