Essence of remembering

There was this old monk and each day around noon, once his morning prayers were done, he would step out of his monastery and walk about the streets gently urging people to fill his wooden bowl.

I often watched him from my window and I still remember I used to be very intrigued by this really peculiar habit of his. As he walked about the streets he would often stop for a while and stick his finger out and wave his hand about as if he was writing something in the air. And then every once in a while instead of writing things in the air he would instead dig into his bag and pull out a little book and a pencil and then meticulously write something in it.

One day I asked him about it and he said that he was getting old and he didn't trust his memory any more so he wrote every thing down. So now every time somebody yelled at him he would promptly stick his hand out and write in the air about how that person was nasty to him, and when someone said a kind word he would promptly pull his book and write in it how that person was nice to him.

Wily old monk !!!

Soaring over a storm

Eagles have a remarkable ability. Like most birds they can accurately predict when a storm is on its way but what makes them remarkable is that when they know a storm is coming, unlike the other birds they don't flee away from it, instead they head straight towards the storm and search for the highest perch available and park themselves on it. They then wait till the storm hits their perch and then promptly let the swirling winds carry them higher. This way they rise above the storm and save themselves all the bother of being buffeted and bludgeoned by the winds below.

Truly remarkable.

Working Parent Blues

A friend of mine was telling me the other day about how every time their child ran a temperature in the morning she and her husband, both working, would look at each other. There was no need to say anything. Just a twitch of an eyebrow, maybe, and then one of them would step up on the plate and reach out for their phone.

As a working parent myself, I knew exactly what she was taking about. In fact all working parents know the price of, what I call, emergency parenting. It all boils down to a simple question. Which one of the two puts all things on hold to stay back home looking after an unwell child. Who is the one who calls up and makes all the various deadlines, meetings and tasks disappear for a while. Tough call eh?

About a month ago we were in a real soup. Earlier in the day our housemaid had ran out on us and what was worse, the next day both of us were travelling. And this was not the usual 'morning out - evening in' kind of travel. This was overnight. I was gonna be gone for two nights and she was out for four. So this was a big deal. I really couldn't see any way in which I could get out of my trip and neither could she. So we were deep waters, real deep.

That's when our daughter, who was sitting and watching us, spoke up. "Dad, Mon, chill. I will be okay on my own. I can take care of myself. Both of you go. Trust me"

And just like that, in a space of those few words, we suddenly realised that our soon to be thirteen year old was all grown up. She was a big girl now. We were no longer parents to a little baby.

Games & Lessons

When I was a kid I was simply besotted with this video game called "Prince of Persia". So there was this pauper prince who had to fight his way through many challenges to try and win the hand of this princess. He had this sword and basically had to swing and slam his way past all these guards and this very sinister wizard with super powers, who kept springing all these traps and stuff....it was great fun. The game had all these levels, twelve if I remember right, and if you made it to the top you entered this awesome chamber where the princess awaited you. But getting to level twelve was not at all easy. The first few levels were tame, but from level five things got tricky.

When I first began to play the game even the first level seemed tricky but soon I had the hang of it and it was a breeze. At each level you had about a two minutes to make it to the next level and soon I was rushing through the tame levels like in half a minute or so as if it was some kind of a race, but no matter how hard I tried I couldn't get past level Five where I had this wall of fire I had to leap across. The number of times I got roasted in the fire wasn't funny and it really bugged me no ends. Soon all I was doing was thinking of ways to get past that firewall and it kind of struck me that I really needed to work on my leaping skills. So now in the tame levels I basically kept leaping all the time, not rushing through to the next level till the very last second, using every opportunity to leap higher and further. Guess what, soon level Five was a breeze.

But then I got stuck in level Six, where I had to simultaneously punch and slice at this tiny little spot to kill this fearsome guard. So the tame levels were now all about my swordplay. I practised slicing, punching, weaving and I found all these useful shortcuts and hell no, soon I was like some ninja and that guard wasnt fearsome no more.

As I got closer to level Twelve I kept using the tame levels as hunting grounds for working on all those skills I would need much later in the game. Now I wasn't rushing through them, instead I was using every precious second to work on my skills. No wonder within a month I was routinely getting into that chamber where the princess waited, no sweat really.

Its been years since I played that game but just a while ago something struck me about what that game had really taught me.

Our life is quite like that game, we have our growing years and not much happens to us during those years, we have a nice protective environment around us and people looking after us, making sure we are safe from all those really tricky stuff . These years are kind of like those tame levels, most of us never really face any bruising challenge during these years. And because things seemed tame I was in a big a hurry, I wanted to run right through, wanted to just hop skip & jump straight to being that 'cocky young cousin brother' several years my senior. I talked like him, walked like him and I thought I was like him till I ran smack into a wall of fire, my first proper 'young adult' challenge. Ended up properly roasted. Unfortunately, unlike as in P of P, my life didn't end there, I didn't get to go back to the beginning and start all over again. I just had to get up, dust my bums and get going. And guess what; I kept running into more things I wasn't ready for. I was smacked, pasted and pulverised again and again till one day,  much bruised and battered, I was finally a 'grown up'.

How I wish I had taken my sweet time during those tame years to find out what skills I would need and use every moment I had to get ready for what life was gonna throw at me. It would have saved me so much of the pain and the bother.

The Art of Walking

Tatsen, the zen master, often walked many miles to travel between monasteries where he would hold his popular discourses on zen. His disciples, which were many, would follow him around and often discussed among themselves how difficult it was to keep up with him on his long travels. Each day he walked for so long that most of them, when they reached the monastery, would be too tired to move let alone attend to the various tasks and the prayers. The master on the other hand always seemed fresh and ready for any task. So one day, a young apostle asked Tatsen didn't he ever felt tired after his long walks. Tatsen smiled and asked the young monk;
'Are you tired?'
'Yes master, very tired'
'Did you walk more than me today?'
'No'
'So your tiredness is not because of the walk but the way you reached here'
'Let me explain. When you took your first step today morning you must have surely worried how much you would have to walk today. Thereon your mind must have kept worrying, asking you questions, complaining, constantly keeping close track of how hot it was, how you were sweating, how thirsty you were and how you needed to take a break and rest. But then even as you you rested, it worried about how you would have to walk faster so you could catch up with me and so on. So now you see, you are not tired because of all the walking you have done, you are tired because of all the running your mind has been doing since this morning. So tomorrow when you walk, just walk and let your mind sleep, let it do all the resting for you. That way no journey, and for that matter any task, you undertake will ever be tiring.'


* all the zen stories on this blog are works of fiction. My zen masters are all very real to me but did not exist in real life. I however remain indebted to all the many zen masters who have since time immemorial guided that essential thought that is the source from which these stories spring.

New Year Thoughts

I am hereby officially tendering my resignation as an adult.
I have decided I would like to accept the responsibilities of an 8 year-old again.
I want to go to a McDonald's and think that it's a four star restaurant.
I want to sail little kishtis in the puddle and splash any who dared walked by.
I want to think Cadbury Gems are better than money because you can eat them.
I want to lie under a big jamun tree and sell nimbu pani to my friends on a hot  summer's day.
I want to return to a time when life was simple; when all I knew were colors, multiplication tables and nursery rhymes, but that didn't bother me, because I didn't know what I didn't know and I didn't care.
All I knew was to be happy because I was blissfully unaware of all the things that should make me worried or upset.
I want to  think the world is fair and that everyone is honest and good.
I want to  believe that anything is possible.
I want to be oblivious to the complexities of life and be stupidly excited about all the little things like a stick of wrigleys, or a cone of icecream.
I want to live simple again.
I don't want my day to consist of hanging laptops, misplaced phones, depressing news, gossip, illness, and loss of loved ones.
I want to believe in the power of smiles, hugs, a kind word, truth, justice, peace, dreams, imagination and mankind,
So . . . here's my checkbook and my car-keys, my credit card and my passport. 
I am officially  resigning from adulthood.
And if you want to discuss this further, you'll have to  catch me first, cause I just tagged you. So you are the DEN and please do count till TEN.

Colours of the fall.

I have always envied the American fall season. What little I saw of it always took my breath away, the sheer explosion of colours. I so wished we too had a similar season.

It turns out we do.

We were on a trek into the Hathi Parbat valley. It’s off the beaten track and not many know much about this valley. Which is all that much the better for us as we are happy being just by ourselves.

So here we were, having just spent our first night under the stars, ready to head out into the wilderness. The trail led into a lush forest and as soon as we crossed a stream I saw the valley on the other side. It was the same explosion of colour. The fall running riot among the leaves.

As we entered the valley I was surrounded by the same hues, the oranges, the browns, the deep reds and the mottled yellows. The path was littered with the leaves, softly crunching underfoot, the air suffused with the fragrance of the pine, the maple and the oak.

I had my wish. This was way better than what I had imagined. I sat on a rock and soaked it in. I saw a leaf, a dried maple, and on it were three water droplets, like three little pearls, the remains of the overnight dew. I saw a little lizard scampering across looking for a morning meal, and a beetle nearby fleeing hoping not to be the one.

I got up to carry on with the trek, the leaves softly crunching underfoot.

The tale of the rolling stone

It was surprisingly quite and I lay sleeping under the tent. It was absolutely still. No wind flapping at the tent, no stream gurgling nearby, nothing at all. Just then I heard an almost imperceptible hiss followed by a slight scrapping sound.

I was immediately alert. My first thought, it’s a Bear. But then bears don’t hiss, do they? They don’t. Then I figured it out. We had camped at the bottom of a massive glacier and the sound that I had heard was the sound of the glacier on the move. I was immediately reminded of John Muir who once said that everything in this world was on its way somewhere. So was this rock solid piece of ice.

Isn’t it interesting that it’s only us humans who attach so much importance to permanence, to having roots. It’s always about my hometown, my region, my state, my house, my this and my that and what not. But the fact is that no matter what, even that which is most dear to us, is always on the move and will eventually be gone.

Winter wars

It had been an exceedingly cold night. I hadn’t slept much and the watch finally showed me that it was time to get up and get out of the cosy tent. I reached over for my headlamp, clamped it to my head and snapped it on. As its light spread I saw many hundreds of tiny sparkling stars above me and I wondered whatever had happened to my tent. Actually the tent dome had frosted over and the tiny stars were infact frozen droplets that had ascended from my damp breath and my warm body.

I zipped on my heavy jacket, slipped into my shoes and unzipped the tent. The moment I poked my head out, the cold outside simply took my breath away. The grass crunched under my step, the frost making each stalk brittle. The stream had iced over and I had to crack the thin ice layer with my heel. I scooped a little water in my hand and splashed it on to my face. My face felt as if it had smashed into a wall. It was numb for a minute. I looked around and saw that everything had a patina of ice. Every stalk, every shrub, every leaf was glossed over, shining and stiff. I went over to the campfire and it too looked stone cold, the ash from last night’s fire all dry and grey.

I took a stick and poked around the ashes. At first I saw nothing but when I looked closer I saw a faint orange glimmer, a tiny sign that somewhere in this vast coldness heat had survived.

I quickly gathered tiny sticks, some dry grass and tuffs of juniper and I was immediately on my knees, my face close to the ashes as I blew at them. Gently at first and later, as the embers glowed a bit, I blew harder and longer till the little sticks and the grass and the juniper began to smoke. I blew harder still and suddenly tiny flames flickered to life and I had a fire going. I got up with a smile.

Yet again the heat had won over the frost in this eternal ding dong battle of the winter.

Full moon delights

One of the most fascinating aspects of trekking is to experience the full moon. Most of my treks are therefore planned with the full moon in mind.

It was therefore by design that we camped amidst a glacier on a full moon night. All around us towered the mighty Himalayas, the Hathi Parbat ahead of us, Kagbushandi peak next to it, the Ghodi Parbat on the other side and the majestic Neelkanth completing a near circle of mighty peaks. Somewhere in the middle of this circle was our tiny campsite. Since the mountains were towering all around us, the moon didn’t appear till it was practically overhead, but when it did its brightness was incredible. It lit up the snow caps and we could see things as clearly as day. I switched off the headlamp and went for a walk, stepping as surely among the boulders as I would during day.

The next morning I woke up as usual well before dawn and stepped out to read. I had my headlamp clamped on but as I opened the book to read I might as well have left the lamp back in the tent. The moon was now close to the top of the ridge behind me and its light was hitting the snow capped mountains ahead of me. I don’t know how but in some way the snow was amplifying the moonlight many times the original and I could read the book comfortably. Then I glanced around and it was not just the book that was lit up, so was the juniper, and the campfire, and the tents and the stream and the boulders and the heap of drift wood beside the kitchen tent. Every detail was sharp and clear.

I felt my breath catch, I bowed humbly and whispered a silent prayer acknowledging the sheer magic of the moment.

The ways of nature

As I was walking along the narrow trail, I came across a tiny alcove, a shrine of sorts. It was carefully tended and there was a marble plaque at its center. This plaque commemorated the brave efforts of the five soldiers of the Garwal Scouts who had, on a September morning in 1990, reached the summit of Hathi Parbat only to be lost to an avalanche the very next day.

I sat beside the plaque, reading the names and trying to flesh out the men behind those names. It struck me how often fate did the thing it had done to these five men. It handed them their dream and then rashly took away the very means to enjoy that dream.

I felt nature had somehow cheated on them but I know enough to know that nature may not always be fair but it never cheats. Its every act is part of a larger purpose, a higher design that may or may not be immediately visible. The five brave men lost their lives only because they were are the wrong place at the wrong time.

Essense of trusting

A zen master and his disciple were on their way to a distant monastery. They had to cross a dense forest to get there. The guard at the gate had told them that they must keep walking north else they will lose their way and be lost forever. So they headed north.

After a while the zen master suddenly turned due east. The disciple began to point out the error but when he saw his master walking purposefully ahead he simply followed. An hour later the master again turned due north and then due west and eventually due north again to exit the forest.

The disciple never knew that just before turning east the zen master had spotted the pug marks of a ferocious tiger and he knew him to be ahead somewhere. Had they kept walking straight they would have been, no doubt, caught and eaten alive.

The disciple didn't have to know this because he knew something far more important. He knew that to trust someone means one has to trust them just that little longer even when you know they are making a mistake.

A mouse tale

All farms have mice, loads of them. They usually have a gala time, there is tonnes to eat and hazzar places to bed down, when they feel like. One just has to be vary of a few things. Like the landlady's broom, or the big fat cat, or that mangy little pi-bald cur who likes to kill mice just for fun. And of course, most of all, all the mice knew, they HAD to be very vary of that big pot by the hearth. They all knew that the pot was full of fresh cream that the landlady would top each day. How the mice loved the cream and would lick every little drop that fell by the pot but to try and lick any cream from the pot itself was strictly forbidden. For many a mice had tried, slipped in and drowned.

This one little mouse didn't know any better and would keep dreaming of taking a lick right off that pot, though his mom was very clear on that issue. Don't you dare, she would say.

So one day he couldn't help himself and leaned from the brim of the pot towards the cream. 'Just a little bit more', he said.,' why? my whiskers are already touching it, a wee bit more and i bet my outstretched tongue would be there too', he thought. So he leaned a fraction more and his tongue touched the delicious cream. 'There', he squeaked in delight, 'nothing to it really' and... then.., PLONK.

Let alone his tongue, his entire self was now in the cream,,,, Uh, oh.

All the mice heard his desperate screams and rushed to the edge of the pot. The eldest mice all clicked their tongues and shook their heads. 'We told you so'. His mom was livid. More elders came and they all said just one thing. WE TOLD YOU SO.

The little mouse was frightened out of his wits. He cursed the moment he decided not to listen. And now he was going to drown.

He didn't want to die but that's what happens to mice that fall into the pot. That's what everybody says. That's what everybody was saying right now, clicking their tongues, shaking their heads and making sorry gestures with their little hands. All waiting for the little mouse to gasp and go under.

But this little mouse was different. He didn't want to give up, not just yet at least. So he began to kick and struggle. 'Oh no', they all said, 'wasting his and our time. Why cant he just go under so we all can go on with our lives'. But the little mouse kept struggling. Kicking his feet, trying with all his might to reach the brim.

One by one all the other mice got bored and went away and he was all alone, struggling. He too knew that he was eventually going to drown but not just yet, he kept telling himself. And just when his strength was about to give up he felt his feet get some purchase. All that kicking and struggling had churned the cream around him to butter. The little mouse realised he needn't drown after all. Within an hour he had churned just enough butter around him to reach the brim and haul his exhausted body over.

As he lay on the other side, his little body glistening with butter and his muscles quivering with spent energy, he pondered about what had just happened and why?

The 'what' was simple enough. He had survived.

The 'why' was a little bit deeper. Think about it.

The Boss speaks

Here is what Bruce Springsteen spoke way back in 1987. As I read it today I felt like asking myself which room am I sitting right now?

“I had certain preconceived notions of what I thought the rock and roll dream was all about. And I was very immersed it in my early twenties. I guess later on I realised that’s only a starting point … I realized that you can’t live within that rock and roll dream that I had in my head. If you do, then you’re really betraying its very promise. You’re bullshitting. If you try to, then you become some self-indulgent decadent asshole. Its not a worthwhile thing for a man to be involved in…

“The whole rock and roll thing has become such a big thing and has meant so much to so many different kinds of people and has taken up such an enormous amount of time in people’s lives that it’s real out of proportion. There’s a certain loss of perspective to the whole thing….

“I think at the moment in ’75 when my dream in its own funny way came true, I had to deal with the consequences. At that particular moment I realised I did not want to live inside it. There was nothing there except an empty room. There weren’t many other people there. Now my job was to find my way out of it. Because that was the only way I was going to be worth anything to anybody, including myself. That was the only way I was going to be able to maintain my own vitality and life.

“Once you’re inside that dream room, things about you that are important and relevant in the real world to your friends – the people who will hear your music – will just strangle and die. And so will you. But it’s very difficult because that room is always very comfortable and there’s an illusion of safety. It’s really a very dangerous place. There’s no real security there and there’s no life there. There’s really nothing. So then you’ve got to create something else. In my writing after ‘Born To Run’, I’ve been trying to find that alternative: where does the man with the guitar fit? Where’s my place in the world? I guess that’s all anybody’s trying to do, no matter what their job is.

“It’s not even a result of being successful, or being a famous guy who plays guitar. It’s something that people wrestle with their entire lives, no matter what their job is. Everybody has a choice whether to stay in that dream room or go out and build something that’s real. You can stay in there real easy. All you need is a six pack of beer and a television set. You can just let yourself go in there. I guess that particular moment was my moment of confrontation with it, but it’s not a unique or unusual situation for anybody …

“I guess in my music, one of the things I wanted to do was provide that set of consequences. I wanted Saturday night and Sunday morning – but I also wanted Monday through Friday. Because there’s a lot more Monday through Fridays than there are Saturday nights and Sunday mornings.

And those are the days you’ve got to live with. Those are the days everybody’s got to live with. So I wanted a music to live with – truth and consequences!”

Woodcutter's Vows

There was once a poor woodcutter who toiled day in and day out just to make ends meet. One day, as he sat under a tree, tired and hungry, a yogi passed by. The woodcutter begged the yogi to take a break too. The yogi agreed and the two sat besides each other under the tree. The woodcutter then asked permission to ask the yogi a favour. He said that, as a yogi, you no doubt met god often enough, so would you please ask God a question next time you met him?

The yogi was amused and asked the woodcutter what was his question. The woodcutter said that no matter how hard or how long he worked, he never had enough to eat. He wanted God to tell him why it was so.

The yogi promised him that in two days he would have his answer. He then told the woodcutter where to find him and went off on his journey. Two days later the woodcutter went to the yogi and sought his answer. The yogi replied that God told him that he had fixed the quantity of food that each person could have in his lifetime. So the faster one ate the food the quicker he would run out of it and die. The woodcutter thought that an empty stomach was a silly way to live longer so he wanted to know if he could choose to have all his food supply upfront and then decide for himself what to do with it. The yogi thought for a while and then said that he thought God may not have a problem with that.

So the next day when the woodcutter woke up he was surrounded by mounds of food. He was delighted and began to prepare a huge feast. And for the first time in his life he ate and ate and ate till he could eat no more. But there was still lots and lots of food leftover. He thought that there was enough time to eat the rest and so decided to step out for a stroll.

In the meantime, all the wonderful aroma of his cooking had attracted scores of mendicants and they were now all squatted around his humble hut. When the woodcutter saw this he thought it was unfair that there was so much food inside while outside these poor souls were hungry. So, even though he knew the consequences of finishing all the food inside, he generously invited all of them to eat till not a grain of food remained.

Later that night he lay down to sleep knowing that his end was near. But he was happy and felt fulfilled, so he went right off to sleep. When he opened his eyes next he realised he was still alive and whats more he was amazed to see that his house was still filled with mounds of food. He was totally perplexed and went running straight to the yogi. When the yogi heard his story he smiled and said that all the grain in the house was from the share of all those scores of mendicants the woodcutter had fed last night and that it was now his.

It is said that the woodcutter lived for several more years. Each day he finished every grain of the food he had feeding those that needed it. It is also said that he chose never to eat a full meal in his life ever again.