Rising Mercury

Though a century by our Indian cricket team is more a dream than reality, but this is not the case for the mercury. She stretches and rises like ballet dancer in the tiny glass tube touching 100 without much sweat and swivel. Beads of sweat adorning the forehead, blotch of sweat marks circling the armpits and chest, chugging down bottles of water to keep the flesh and bones hydrated, the summer is back. Traffic back-ups during the toasty days rape our patience and steal our energy.

Curd rice and cut mango pickle becoming the staple lunch for Chennaites. Children licking the dripping Popsicle sticks, men on the sidewalk biting into the juicy, fleshy, luscious deep red Melons, while women sucking water from those tender coconuts through the 9 inch stick , people have learnt the keep cool mantra. Panting dogs drinking water from the stagnant pit and homeless older folks with parched skin resting under mammoth trees to escape the swooning heat, women walking on the soggy asphalt hiding under the umbrellas and keeping their eyes covered under the UV sun glasses, the postman on a cycle relentlessly pedaling through the streets, girls adorned in cool blues and lush green swaying in the concrete jungle that radiates lot of heat. Helmets and duppattas act as veil to escape the summers of Khandahar.

The exam season makes sleepless night of mothers and kids even longer. Turning to God for support and assistance, there stands a queue to hand down the question to be in their exam papers. Newspapers already have ads to lure over ambitious parents for the summer courses both professional and vocational to keep their kids busy. Kids are ready to take their bats and balls and party all day long in the hot sun. Grandfathers and fathers lined up at the railway booking counters to send their kids and wife for a vacation, a big sigh on their face. Thanks to the monsoon, no more water lorries chasing scenes and buckets and pots lining the streets.

Sweltering heat grips the city and dog days are back. The tangy mango season is not far away the heat is here to stay for a while. Beaches, swimming pools, cinema theatres, malls, and theme parks are yet to be raided. The city is ready for the dog days, come on let us enjoy .

Rural Phantasy

The Madras Players made the rains of Markazhi and Thai returned to Chennai in the chill air-condition at Museum theatre on Mar 10, 11 and 12. It was a Broadway play brought to Chennai both in terms of quality and content.

What would it be to watch a 150 minute play set in pre-independence times with just right proportions of dance, drama, and music? All in one? Well it must for the eclectic audience who can understand the nuances of the triloka and it should be an old theme. Not really, Gowri Ramnarayan, the grand daughter of Kalki Krishnamurthy had taken her grandfather’s old novel “Kanayazhi yin Kanavu” and made it into a simple English play twined in lilting melodies of Subramanya Barathi and Rabindranath Tagore to convey Kalki’s view on women emancipation and iced with graceful movements from barathanatyam. It is old wine in a new bottle.

The play was titled “Rural Phantasy” to probably remind us that women emancipation is still waiting to be attended in the back burner and Barathi’s fantasy of Pudhumai Penn far from reality. The messages Kalki had conveyed during the pre-independence seemed to be aptly true and relevant for today’s society. Newspapers still report dowry deaths, domestic violence, and female infanticide. We live in a technology age and still we treat women like kitchen and washing gadget, and machine making babies. Aren’t these issues still pending? Our thoughts have not changed but reformed to do more injustice and cruelty to women and mankind. India independence has failed to bring independence to women and liberation in the minds of men and the society that support and nurture such horrific cruelty against women.

The backbone of the play was issues like women education, female infanticide, child marriages, cleanliness, domestic violence, and equal rights for women which are prevalent in India. Set in a beautiful village “Kanaiyazhi” in Thanjavur district, Shakunthalai the female character returns to the village for a vacation. She finds the Taliban’s of the village lazing around, bullying and beating up their women. Her educated upscale status raise a lot of eye brows and brings a lot of criticism on her back but people seem to enjoy her way of life and her idea of freedom after initial resentment. Battered, shattered, oppressed women of the village make efforts to turn literate, sing the tunes independence and raise their voice against any cruelty. Her reformations started with the trips to the local school encouraging women to step out of kitchen and start holding books and pens instead of spoons and vessels, and sing independence songs rather than lullabies for their newborns, step out of abusive marriages and live a life with self dignity and service the society. Shakunthalai was truly the Barathi’s “Puthumai Penn” and setting free the caged parrots from malevolent cages.

A truly scintillating performance by the cast and crew with directional excellence from Gowri Ramnarayan and vivid choreography from Lasya Narasimhachari. Women draped in half-sarees oiled their long hair and plaited with flowers and ribbon and, a rarity these days. It is the same old spices that make the every new dish tasty and beautiful. Costumes and the settings brought out the flavor and time without much delay and difficulty.

The patriotic voices of TM Krishna, Sangeetha, and Amritha shooed away the sleeping devil in men and evoked the beauty and hidden treasures in women. The live music made it lively. The vocalists were able to bring out the emotions of the actors without my difficulty and the actors were able to show the same emotions on their faces. GNB & MS’s Manamohana from Shakunthalai won a standing ovation.

DKP’s Shanti Nilava Vendum created an ambience of true shanti and calmness, much needed commodity in today’s world. May God’s of the other worlds and all religions make a note of this? It is time such plays be staged all over the country and in countries like Iran, Afghanistan and other middle eastern nations where women are under men’s thumb. We can either make the next generation watch and appreciate such plays and the relevance of women rights or we can make such themes archaic. It is our decision, let us think now.

The Power of Unspoken Words – Silence

The beauty of language and power of words can be expressed through communication. Most often misunderstood word that is never spoken is silence. Some people interpret silence as sign of peace, tranquility and togetherness with nature, while majority think silence is rude, arrogance, acrimony, displeasure, anger. Silence is not the absence of sound, it is a combination of so many external and internal factors that involve our senses.

We all seem to enjoy the power of sound more than the power of silence. How many of us relish watching a silent movie? Next time when you are a couch potato flipping through the channels, why don’t you try turning off the sound and watch the picture? Do you think the absence of sound would have the same effect on you as that of the presence of sound? Sound definitely has an impact on the psychology. Don’t we feel elated or euphoric listening to different kinds of sound track. It was Abhimanyu who heard way to get into the Chakravyuham while in his mother’s womb. That is the power of sound and silence. You can hear everything within you and everything around you. Today we have taken music and sound to the next level to cure a lot of ailments and still ongoing research is pointing to optimistic results. We’ve also gone into the plant kingdom and some universities have found out that music therapy can help plants to improve yield. Music to heal the heart, music for expectant mothers, music for better memory, all kinds of elixirs are available in the market. What is that music or sound does not do to us? It disengages our mind from worries and other anxieties and relaxes the grey cells. This therapy uses our own self to sure our ailments. We are all doctors without lab coats and stethoscopes.

"Nothing is to be estimated by its effect upon common eyes and common ears. A thousand miseries make silent and invisible inroads on mankind, and the heart feels innumerable throbs, which never break into complaint." - Samuel Johnson

Do emotions and impressions driven away silence? Do our sensory organs take away the inner silence?

There is a constant battle for power and control between the sensory organs and mind.
It is sometimes white noise that we hear in our head. The white noise is a combination of sounds driven by the emotions triggered by our sensory perception. This sensory overload can be used to mask other back ground disturbances. Beware! Don’t go around and telling people that you hear noises in your head, then they would put you in a shrink’s clinic.

When we are a kid we are taught to use our sensory organs and use completely to distinguish and discriminate. Some people take distinguishing and discriminating as their profession. I am referring to the class of people who taste wine, tea, and coffee. We have started to make money through our sensory organs. Branding in the corporate world has taken a new meaning where senses are captured to create longstanding image in our mind. Today in some cinema halls the spray popcorn aroma through the ac ducts couple of minutes before the intermission. The moment you catch the emanating smell of garlic and onion being sautéed from your neighborhood kitchen there goes your mind on its own little journey possibly exhausting all combinations.

Our own eyes have let us down so many times. A simple example is when you are surfing the web a few pop-ups would mislead you and take you to pornographic sites. The guilt trip one goes through after such engagements is horrendous and exhausting. Today apart from addictions to alcohol, drugs, and tobacco there are a large number of people who get treated for online addictions such as pornography, gambling etc.

I have often wondered the state of silence that blind, deaf and dumb people would enjoy.
It would be interesting to take a survey on what silence means to people in each of the category. Sometimes when my impulses flow like the rapids of Amazon and I would wonder if being deaf, dumb and blind would buy me the ticket to silence. Should we look at such challenged people as gifted ones?

The poor mind is cluttered with all kinds of garbage from marketing gimmicks and the end disease is mental neurosis. Sometimes the impact is so bad that you feel like a tornado just ripped through our head. The entropy in the brains can make us walk over the fine line that divides sanity and insanity.

Silence is the true friend that never betrays - Confucius

Technology has not simplified life rather has only complicated life. Today more of the human population seek counseling and help at the psychiatric level to keep them grounded and controlled. We use so many gadgets today that we carry on our shoulders, hands and hips. We are constantly bombarded with information on our pagers, mobile phones and computer screens. Television channels have messages scrolling both at the bottom and top of the screen impinging our brains with a lot of information. Advertisers look for every inch of space to market their products and target your brain with more information. This is good example of how we can get misunderstood without speaking. You may be silently surfing the web but the instant messenger running will throw in half a dozen chat windows at a time. Though you might not speak but still there is thought process that keeps your fingers busy on the keyboard. Sometimes the intent of your words gets wrongly understood and you unnecessarily get entangled in controversies. We have let these gadgets invade our lives and personal space. In turn we have lost the inner calmness and created a life of emotions.

The art of purely enjoying all kinds of emotions can be done in silence by being a spectator to the entire show. How do we do this show?

Is silence an internal or external state?
Silence is a state where there is perfect equilibrium between the internal and external world. There is no distinction between the self and universe. The divine unison of the self happens with the universe at a subconscious level. So many of us go on spiritual getaways or on vacation, what is it that we seek from such getaways? We have seen some gurus trek Himalayas to lose themselves in the mountains. What is it that nature, mountains and the river has to offer them? It is all comes down to the state where the mind can be free from any kind of bondage, desires and thoughts.

There is constant exchange of energy between the external and internal world. Our sensory organs interact with the external world and picks up the cues and quickly act on them. The polarity of the mind and actions depends on the external world to a certain extent. The mind seems to run like a perpetual engine always. There is constant analysis, interpretation, criticism of things that our senses pick. Sometimes the engine is so loud that it the noise gets transmitted through actions, words, looks. In the process of communicating the noise to the external world we end up being biased, judgmental and often times creates havoc to both parties.

We are never happy being alone. I've heard a lot of my friends tell me that they hate lonliness, even if it means sleeping in their bed all by themselves. There is so much of paranoia that is associated with being alone. The often think silence is a killer. If you watch your actions by being a satellite to yourmind, you will notice that your mind will try to pick up conversations to escape being alone and enjoying the silence. I won't blame the mind, I will only blame you for not training your mind. May it be an opinion about your friend or a gossip that you want share about a friend, you will have to share it and engage in it. The personality and value system also adds to the noise of a person. This doesn't mean that introvert are enjoying silence, they might very well suffer the silence without expressing much and extroverts are abusing silence. Freedom of speech and action must be used judiciously to enjoy the music of silence.

I accept chaos. I am not sure whether it accepts me. I know some people are terrified of the bomb. But then some people are terrified to be seen carrying a modern screen magazine. Experience teaches us that silence terrifies people the most - Bob Dylan

As we grow older we unlearn a lot of knowledge that we acquired since birth. Now spiritual leaders and yoga masters teach us to disengage from distinguishing and discriminating using our mind. Most of the religious cults talk about a silent mind. We are asked to erase the programmed mind, throw away everything and sit down like with a clean slate. The 18 chapters of Bhagawad Gita, Holy Quran, and The Bible that you’ve memorized will not help you in attaining the inner peace and calm. Mere memorization of words and verses will do nothing to the mind rather than create a bigger clutter.

Some of them praise me and put me on a pedestal for having obtained multiple degrees, but I feel miserable with the amounts of information that sits in my head. It is not letting me have a peaceful sleep. This information makes my mind analyze, over analyze, and behave like a beheaded chicken. The education has failed to bring the much needed peace and silence in my mind. I can see a lot more peace and silence in the eyes of an illiterate citizen. Literacy is only good enough to chase other materialistic things in life.

There are so many people who retire from service and then think about their purpose in life. They look around for spiritual leaders to find out ways to attain the silence. They spend their summers on mountain tops meditating and memorizing holy verses. By this time they’ve lost their healthy and peace of mind.

Silence has many dimensions and the situation also decides the intent and meaning of silence. The silence that we keep during the prayer mass means differently from the silence the accused maintains in the courtroom. Tricking of the river, sound of the wind, swaying of the crops, humming of the birds is all available in nature for us to enjoy. What is music to someone can be noise to another. To each his interpretation of the beautiful world of silence.

Have you ever wondered what it takes to keep the mind silent? Are all these religions talking about the same techniques to muffle the mind? Some of us religiously practice the latest and time tested fad, Yoga. The breathing exercise and yoga postures are foreplay to keep the mind silent. There is a lot of science to back up Yoga and its effects of human mind. This silence happens more at the superficial level while the blood fills every vessel and capillary in the body and enriches the cells with oxygen.

A few of us enjoy the silence and traverse beyond the shallow water to the dark and deeper waters of silence. The silence comes from the disengagement of the mind form the any kind of thoughts and desires. This silence gives a sense of detachment and directs attention away from everyday emotional turbulence, fosters inner calm, and makes us aware of the innermost self.

We all go to bed at night and only a few of us fall asleep immediately, while the rest of us toss and turn holding on to our anxieties. What is the point in making million dollars when you can’t rest well for the night? Most millionaires lose their night sleep thinking about other ways to multiply their wealth and fame. The beggar who sleeps on the platform seems to enjoy his sleep even without a mattress. Have you ever watched a baby sleep? There is a calm look in the face and often a flashy smile appears like lightning. What is this baby happy about and why is this baby sleeping peacefully? You think about it and you definitely have the answer.


We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Silence in action, thought, emotion is what some religions teach to insulate the mind.
Most chaos emerges and thrives due to polarized thoughts, actions, and emotional turmoil that one goes through. Heinous acts of terrorism, destruction, rape, theft all happens when entropy strikes the mind. These prisoners are victims of circumstances, over reaction has bought them a free ticket to the prison and life imprisonment to some. Spiritual leaders have targeted prisons and rehab camps to build the inner strength of the inmates. There is nothing that silence can’t cure.

It feels so nice to cut your ties with the world and other gadgets that invade your peace and privacy. When I do my trips to the village, I usually cut myself away from mobile phones, computers, news papers, and television sets. Not that these are not available, but it is a conscious choice that I made to stay away from them. We are so used to such things that we crave for it on the first day. There is no personal loss that one goes through in the absence of such gadgets. I find my mind is less clouded and more alert in the absence of such interruptions. I make fewer impressions and carry less baggage as a result and the power of silence is felt. I was reaching out for strength and support now I am able to reach in for the same. It is not the place that made the difference, but it is because I made a conscious choice to disengage myself from the connections to this world.

The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words - Rachel Naomi Remen

Silence, solitude and self consciousness are the best path to follow. You don’t have to believe in any religion or any god to follow this path. You don’t have to go to Himalayas to silence the mind. No doubt that the external environment will help in reaching the silence but before that we need to work on the inner silence. Rather than living prisoners of our mind let us live free from thought through exercising silence. Rather than spending our energy on gawking at things around us and engaging in a verbal war, if we could direct that energy in exploring our inner self it will prove very rewarding. Let us understand the senses and our mind rather than trying to control them. Let us understand silence and enjoy the absence of language and words.

India Shinning Yet?

With the summer heat peaking in May, 5 states in India will have State legislative elections. This will be the 5 year immunity for many parties and Chief Ministers. It is going to be a busy time for the Media, both print and digital covering the events as they unroll and unfold. Well this change in government will be no less exciting. More cases will be foisted on the candidates who lose the election and he/she will be made to enjoy the time behind the brick walls and iron doors. There other power hungry species start amassing wealth through bribes and other perks in the political world. Do we call this retribution of justice?

Today’s edition of Hindu talks about Viako, the leader of MDMK party joining hands with his bitter rival, who imprisoned him 3 years back under POTA act. The scars of the imprisonment have not healed but the bitter rivals are toasting over the new found friendship and alliance. It makes me wonder if these alliances are nothing less than a one night stand. The same fellow had accused the opposition party leader for foisting cases and making an attempt on his life. When it comes to elections these party leaders are no less than prostitutes who sell their flesh. Well on the contrary it could be that these guys are so spiritually evolved that they forgive their enemies so soon. This is a point to ponder, let us not discount this. If these alliances would bring more good to people then I would not care about who is shaking hands with whom and who is going to bed together. But in reality this is all about who is getting how much from the treasury.

I wonder the fate of the people who put these governments in place? If these people can forget longstanding enmity overnight, why would they not forget the promises that they made to come to power? How many elections have gone by? How many patriotic speeches have we heard? How many times have we been fooled by politicians? Why is India still the same in the clutches of poverty, poor infrastructure, low literacy rate, high infant mortality? It makes me wonder will there ever be redemption for this country?

Economically, the country is doing well. Foreign investments are flowing into the country, software and manufacturing sector doing extremely well, and MNC’s betting on India brains and talent. The country has never been so attractive before. This is the purview at the macroscopic level. When you get to the microscopic level, then the country is despicable. Education and medical care is out of reach for many Indians. If you think medical care is a luxury, then what about availability of basic needs? Unable to cater to basic the needs like proper housing, food, potable water poor infrastructure. We still have many mouths to feed, to quench thirst and to cover. At one end of the spectrum we have the educated class who drive around in foreign cars and own lavishly furnished apartments and have multiple demat accounts to trade in the market. At the other end we have people who can barely afford a bicycle, a pair of footwear, never had a bank account and to have a leak-proof roof is a luxury. Well the contrast is so vividly pallid. The rich seems to get richer and the poor tries to maintain his economic status, if not go further down.

In the name of servicing the poor, making their voices heard in the Parliament, the scramble for electoral vote and support begins and ends with elections. If the country and state is run like a corporation or a business entity there will a lot of progress. There is no accountability and there are no KRA’s and measurable parameters to keep the system healthy and productive. Strangely this profession needs no qualification, and even thugs and criminals get the seat and run the state. It is sad that professional and political ethics never existed in the profession. This is the country that had great thinkers and political reformist like Chanakya. His arthasastra seems to have no “artha” in today’s changing times.

We have read about all this and we have written odes on India political system. But there seems no change in the horizon. We would need a Karl Marx kind of a revolutionist to bring about such radical change in a mass scale. Is this person referred to “Kalki” avathar by the Hindus.

Sadly the land with the 2nd largest population in the world, and a home for 26 languages, 4 major religions has failed to create species with proper ethics and moral conduct. The country that produced Chanakya, Adi Shankara, Aryabhatta is now churning out these mutated species called “Politicians”. The politicians have cleverly used the religion veil to divide people, get their votes, but when it comes to servicing them they conveniently fail to acknowledge the duties of the religious sect. Conscience seems to be lost somewhere in the race or may be religions have failed to acknowledge the self in the individual.

Visits by foreign delegation, representation at the UN Security Council, investments by foreign banks and governments cannot change the fate of India. We Indians must learn to act with responsibility, treat our fellow humans with respect, and conduct ourselves morally and ethically at all times. It is our duty to speak up before and after elections. The clock doesn’t stop ticking when the ballot boxes are emptied. Speak up and remind the politicians who seem to suffer from perennial idiopathic amnesia, if not let them walk over you and India will ever be the land of sadhu’s, flith and snake charmers.