The Paper Plane...

Yay! I did it!!!

I promised myself I would DO something today - start my journey of discovery... and I did...

And what can be a better thing to start off with than a large dose of humour!

A friend sent a book on cartooning and I got going, scartooning... laughter really is the best medicine!

So here is my first creation - of the 'Paper Plane" series... hope it is not the last...keeping my fingers, toes and whatever else a non-contortionist can comfortably cross, crossed... :)

This cartoon pretty much captures my state of my mind... wanting to make and fly paper planes..getting back to the simple pleasures in life... feeling 'ungrounded'... so here I go... wish me luck...

And I had ABSOLUTE fun making it.. so cheers to man's best friend - humour!

'When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I am feeling sad, I simply........................ and then I don't feel..so bad!'

Discovery made in the last few weeks: It is one thing to speak philosophically about ‘letting go’ and such lofty ideas, but implementation is a huge pain – and in more places than that infamous one...

Well, the last two weeks I was pretty overwhelmed by thoughts of worthlessness and depression – as is wont to happen, I guess, when you try to give up anything that is really important to you. And more importantly, whatever you are struggling to give up seems to be in a hurry to give you up - show you how inconsequential you really were/are.

You suddenly seem to become non-existent and start questioning your very worth.

There is no single, correct way out to cut short these chains of depressing thoughts, but one of the things I tried was to follow the words of that wonderful lady, Maria Von Trapp, who sang – ‘...when the dog barks, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling sad...I simply remember my favourite things, and then I don’t feel so bad...’

Actually, I did not think of my favourite things exactly, but ‘favourite words’... certain things said by friends or acquaintances that made me feel good. And then I made a strange discovery – some utterances, which we take to be complimentary, actually end up shaping us – determining who we are, or rather, who we choose to be in life.

I want to share a couple of them here. Will start by sharing one ‘compliment’ from my school days (though I call it that, I doubt whether it was really meant to be one) which I think had a particularly deep effect.

We were sitting in the school auditorium, waiting (for what seemed like 25 years) for some school function to begin. To cut a long story short, I invented some weird game, meant specifically to suit the occasion – and 3-4 of us were in splits playing it, while waiting those endless hours. And after those mirthful few minutes, a friend sitting next to me, Simrat, exclaimed, “Yaar! Tere saath kabhi koi bore nahi ho sakta – ya toh tu bahut hansati hai ya bahut rulati hai...”.

At that time, somehow I think I liked that idea – and it stuck. I almost consciously decided to ‘be’ that person Simrat had jokingly accused me of being. I decided to live life with 100% intensity, feel everything deeply - joys, sadness, anger - and let everyone feel that intensity full blast.

And in the recent past, while going through all the internal churning, I started wondering how much of my present predicament is because of that decision of mine.

Overall, I think it has worked well – and I really have had a ‘100%’ life. The intensity and enthusiasm have helped create some very strong bonds – though I have to admit, with a great, great deal of sadness, that a few people that I have cared very deeply about have moved away too – unable to deal with my occasional outburst of some intense negative emotion.

But what the heck, overall, I have had a VERY good life... and if I still complain or moon, I have to be the mother of all gluttons... (the last bit is NOT to be taken literally by people who have seen my kids compete to eat kaju katris... but let me not digress)

Still, occasionally everyone needs reassurance. When at the peak of my self doubt, I pull out this mail from a very young friend of mine, who wrote these overwhelming lines to me sometime back..

“My father recently asked me where I want to see myself 20 years from now. A question that often occurred to me, something I had not found an answer to for a long time. After much thinking....I have now come to an answer.

I think if i can live a life like yours, i will be satisfied."

I also remembered another friend, who after coming to stay with us (for the first time) a few years ago, said, “After seeing you guys, I believe in life after 40”, or something to that effect..

Well – sach mein, WHAT more can one ask for???

So I am going to stop cribbing, and quickly start my journey of rediscovering myself... and though I will not be rash enough to try six impossible things before, during or after breakfast on any given day – I do promise to surprise myself, and those close to me, on and off with - well, stuff they will be surprised with...

Starting today....

Letting Go

Well... here I am – one week later than intended... but finally here. Post # 3.

As I was saying – things that were totally vague till last week are now appearing to take some sort of nebulous shape. I feel I am getting some clarity about what to do in the next few months – where I want to be at the end of the ‘break’ in my life..

Of course, there is the long list of things I have planned to do – some travelling in villages to get a taste of rural education, first hand. Maybe learning new stuff – sketching or swimming or something, or even something totally whimsical, like joining a chocolate tasting club! (the last idea originates from a friend, acutely prone to making whimsical but tempting suggestions....)

But I did not mean any of these. Woh toh hoga. But I have started feeling that the real purpose of my break is something else.

Simply put, I think, I aim to use the break period to learn how to let go. In the true sense.

But ... before writing about letting go, I must necessarily explain why I must let go...

What do I mean by ‘letting go’? Basically - how to overcome attachment. I contemplated whether to say just ‘attachment’ or ‘undue attachment’ n the previous sentence – and stuck to the former. Because, all attachment is undue attachment... And here, if you, like Caesar in the Asterix comics, ask ‘ALL?’, the answer, emphatically, is ‘ALL.’

In a sense, by attachment here I really mean ‘moh’, which necessarily has a negative connotation.

And why so? Probably because almost all unhappiness comes from attachment - maybe to different things - power, people, possessions.

In fact, I would even argue that what we normally call ‘love’ is also nothing but attachment. For instance – can the ‘feeling’, that inspired Shah Jahan to have the Taj Mahal built in his wife’s memory, and subsequently, have the hands of the workmen mutilated to prevent replication, really be termed as ‘love’? Have a deep, hard think!

And boy! Is attachment a force to reckon with! It functions like a normal addiction. It grows on you quickly, often taking you by surprise, and soon it is so bad that it hurts like hell when you have to give it up... After all, you do not start off by being addicted to, say, power – you enjoy the work, slowly start liking having a team around to do your bidding, then a larger team, more perks and a ‘say’ up there - where it counts.... And hello! One fine morning, you feel the whiskers just below your nose...and feel the nose twitching.. you are a rat, all right... and you are definitely running in the race...

So, I think what I really would like to do at this stage is to try and purge myself of attachments, and lower the probability of life serving up doses of pain and grief... yes, I do think that is where I want to be after 6 months.

And yes – ‘letting go’ does not mean giving up.... it means detachment - it means being involved in action without expecting any pleasing results...like writing to someone you love just because you feel like it, without expecting a reply.... or going to a birthday party just to have fun and share a special moment with your friend, without expecting interesting ‘return gifts’ (not even very very privately J)....

So yes, I want to be able to enjoy family, friends, work and life without those trappings that weigh one down... and my only fear - I just hope I do not get too attached to detachment..... ;)

A (hazy..) light at the end of the tunnel

Ok. Post 2.

A little nervous after the incoherence of Post 1...but what the heck... ‘hum honge kamyab ek din’ and all that...

3 more days of uncertainty... and non-success. The brat still revels in being aggravating, and I still have not found suitable earplugs to stem the Calculus leak from my ears.

And yes, I did finish cleaning up the bathroom tiles – and showed it to my household help, with a ‘ta-da’... expecting her to be impressed. She wasn’t. Impressed, or amused. Just snorted, and gave a sort of a scowl, which seemed to say, ‘How could you do this – kanjoos! Scrounging on my diwali bonus!’

But a picture, of what I really need to do during this break, seems to be emerging – albeit, still hazy...

Will write about it in the next post... (After all, it's sabbatical time, and I want to savour the non-existence of deadlines fully!! J)

Zen and the Art of Tile Cleaning

No, no, NO!

I am not ready to be locked up... at least not yet...

But yes, my life has been interrupted. With uncertainty. 6-8 months ago I thought I knew exactly where I was going, but today I am clueless...

And 2 days into the so-called 'sabbatical' period, I am more confused than ever. My work, which has kept me going for the last many years, is no longer there, and the things I thought would quickly and seamlessly replace that, is stubbornly refusing to fall in place obediently like well-gelled hair.

I had enthusiastically thought of spending a lot of the sabbatical time teaching high school math to my 17-year old. But my brat and my brain are both refusing to cooperate. It is tough to try and stuff calculus back into your own (seemingly rapidly shrinking) brain... and when you do manage to stuff some in, the boy simply refuses to allow me to deliver it to him quickly before it runs out of my ears... stating something aggravating like 'abhi mood nahi hai...'

So you see, I do have my work cut out. Presently, in this battle I retire, wounded, for a strategy revamp.

But haan - I did do one thing on these 2 days that I am really proud of...actually, two.

The first was, of course, creating this blog. I guess it is no big deal for today’s teens and tweens – they can probably start 3 at one go, while having lunch... but for me it was like breaking some sort of a mental sound barrier. So, please, do take 5 seconds out to pat my back.

The second - I cleaned the tiles of my bathroom. Does not sound too impressive, right? I cleaned them really well, and even made some new discoveries - for example, handwash dettol is more effective than Surf to clean tiles! Still not impressed?? But here is the surprise – I absolutely LOVED it...it was near nirvana, seeing the scrubbed, spotlessly clean tiles – after months of bickering with and cajoling the household help. It was so liberating, to be able to do it yourself, the very act of doing something so totally non-intellectual and mundane!

And I remembered a book that Sudarshan had made me read at college – ‘Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance’. (Those are the risks of dating a Philosophy undergrad.. :-/) At the time, all that philosophising went completely overhead... but now, at 44, and in the present situation, it is starting to make sense. Definitely I need to read that book again.

What is meant by 'good', really? Can conventional/conditioned and romantic modes of thoughts be reconciled? Can rational thought be married to an artistic outlook? Can spiritualism be found in the day-to-day?

Can I get in touch with the real me without losing myself...? The next 6 months might hold the answer...and then again, many lifetimes might not...

But then, I can’t really stop trying, can I?