The third term is coming to a close. This term has been a rather bumpy ride. Started well with the general enthusiasm after all of us came back from the vacations. Had a lot to look forward to but guess this is the folly with time, you can never predict what lies in store for you, however much you may try. Having been dissapointed when things dont work out the way you want them to and how circumstances build themselves up to leave you in positions where you would not want yourself to be in, I have given up on predictions and expectations from the future. I have now given myself to the philosophy that whatever happens, happens for good and whatever will happen is not under my control so why give it a damn. This has brought enormous peace and I guess to let go of the illusion of control over our environment is the beginning of finding peace within our very own selves. We try hard to control things, and then get affected by them in turn, become happy when they work out well (and attribute it to our efforts which by the way leads us into believing that if we make similar efforts the result will be similar again), and become sad when they turn out differently. I do not mean to say that this gives us a reason to sit back and not to make an effort. Nobody can afford to sit back. But giving up that sense of control and revelling in the task rather than the result is what drives me now. The task should be well performed because that is the most we can control.The results are but treacherous, they lead us to self deception and false notions.
All said and done it is a time to bid adieu to my abode on the hills once more, this time for full two months. Have grown irritated, frustrated and tired of this place but then will miss it too. That hustle and bustle of the city with its crowds, traffic, pollution and noise, and getting back to work once again does not seem to be a very welcoming idea. Nonetheless am excited about visiting my family and want to make most of this time.

Ciao Kozhikode. Till we meet again.

मनो बुद्धि अहंकार चित्त निनाहम
न च स्रोत्र जिह्वे न च घ्राण नेत्रे
न च व्योम भूमिर न तेजो न वायु
चिदानन्दा रूपा शिवोहम शिवोहम
न च प्राण संग्यो न वै पंच वायु
न वा सप्तधातुर न वा पंच कोशः
न वक् पानी पादौ न चोपस्थ पायु
चिदानंदा रूपा शिवोहम शिवोहम

न में द्वेष रागौ न में ळोभ मोहौ
मदो नैव में नैव मत्सर्य भवः
न धर्मो न चार्थो न कामो न मोक्षः
चिदानंदा रूपा शिवोहम शिवोहम

न पुण्यं न पापं न सुख्यं न दुखं
न मंत्रो न तीर्थं न वेदो न यज्ञः
अहं भोजनं नैव भोज्यं न भोक्ता
चिदानंदा रूपा शिवोहम शिवोहम

न में मृत्यु शंका न में जाति भेदः
पिता नैव में नैव माता न जन्मा
न बन्धुर न मित्रं गुरुर नैव शिष्यः
चिदानंदा रूपा शिवोहम शिवोहम

अहं निर्विकल्पो निराकार रूपः
विभुर व्याप्य सर्वत्र सर्वेंद्रियानाम
सदा में समत्वं न मुक्तिर न बन्धः
चिदानंदा रूपा शिवोहम शिवोहम

Explanation:

I am not mind, nor intellect, nor ego,
nor the reflections of inner self (chitta).
I am not the five senses.
I am beyond that.
I am not the ether, nor the earth,
nor the fire, nor the wind (the five elements).
I am indeed,
That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,
love and pure consciousness.

Neither can I be termed as energy (prana),
nor five types of breath (vayus),
nor the seven material essences,
nor the five coverings (pancha-kosha).
Neither am I the five instruments of elimination,
procreation, motion, grasping, or speaking.
I am indeed,
That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,
love and pure consciousness.

I have no hatred or dislike,
nor affiliation or liking,
nor greed,
nor delusion,
nor pride or haughtiness,
nor feelings of envy or jealousy.
I have no duty (dharma),
nor any money,
nor any desire (kama),
nor even liberation (moksha).
I am indeed,
That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,
love and pure consciousness.

I have neither merit (virtue),
nor demerit (vice).
I do not commit sins or good deeds,
nor have happiness or sorrow,
pain or pleasure.
I do not need mantras, holy places,
scriptures (Vedas), rituals or sacrifices (yagnas).
I am none of the triad of
the observer or one who experiences,
the process of observing or experiencing,
or any object being observed or experienced.
I am indeed,
That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,
love and pure consciousness.

I do not have fear of death,
as I do not have death.
I have no separation from my true self,
no doubt about my existence,
nor have I discrimination on the basis of birth.
I have no father or mother,
nor did I have a birth.
I am not the relative,
nor the friend,
nor the guru,
nor the disciple.
I am indeed,
That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,
love and pure consciousness.

I am all pervasive.
I am without any attributes,
and without any form.
I have neither attachment to the world,
nor to liberation (mukti).
I have no wishes for anything
because I am everything,
everywhere,
every time,
always in equilibrium.
I am indeed,
That eternal knowing and bliss, Shiva,
love and pure consciousness.

- Adi Shankaracharya

P.S.: This is neither a religious post, nor does it say anything about my loyalties to any particular school of thought or philosophy. Posting it just because I liked the essence of the verse.

The leaf had mostly known other leaves who were commensurate with her ways of living. Though leaving home, she never gave a thought to what adjustments and compromises she would have to make in order to survive in the world outside. Giving no thought to any of the so called realities, she plunged into the world. She was very vulnerable to begin with. There were many beasts who looked for leaves to graze. None cared if they trampled the leaf, for it was an insignificant part in the scheme of things and people just did not care. Gradually she adapted herself to the ways of the world, reconciled to the fact that it was not for her to change the world, she was there just to learn and to know. It was her decision to leave the safe sanctuary of the tree and venture into territory unknown. She was not cribbing about this nor did she feel any remorse at her decision. She was thankful that she came out from that protective environment because otherwise she would have withered away before the spring like the rest of them, like the myriad others before her, who fell from the tree and disappeared into the dusty earth below. She was thankful that she would not meet with similar fate. Yes she will go down into the same dust but before going down she would have seen far more than all those others who were too afraid to take the plunge. She smiled to herself at the thought of this.
She thought about her friends back at the tree. How much she longed to describe her experiences to them, to share those numerous new feelings that she had gone through, those beautiful places she had seen. But at the same time she also felt sad about her friends that they could not get to see these wonderful things, and perhaps fate may not be kind enough to let them meet again in this transient existence of theirs, and they will be bereft of all those experiences. With these mixed feelings clouding her imagination she moved on...

to be contd.

A leaf broke from the tree. It floated for sometime in the air, close to the tree. The breeze slowly took it away from the cool shade of the tree to the perils of the world that lied outside the tree. The leaf had known many friends. While on the tree she had met many other leaves just like her. They thought the same thoughts, dreamt the same dreams, and when they spoke to each other it was like talking to the soul, like when you sit all by yourself and ruminate all absorbed in your thoughts, though they were many but they were the same, realized the leaf. True friends they were. But time is not always the same. It changes. With it changed the leaves as well. They grew older by the day. The beautiful moments spent with them while young were treasures she would cherish for life and those impressions etched into the leaf's memory were etched forever. Perhaps these will come in handy when my days become bleary and life does not offer me the same gifts that it has always bestowed upon me, spoiling me, thought the leaf. The other leaves had asked her to stay for a while longer, so that they can talk a bit more and revive the memories of those old times. But she left during the night when the sheet of slumber covered the others. The tree had always guarded her against the hard sun, gave her the life sap that sustained her. She knew that once separated she would not live long. She might also not travel too far, it was too dangerous and unpredictable. But she left nonetheless. The charm of seeing things unknown appealed to her more than the safety and security of the tree and the friendship, that made her stay on the tree worthwhile...

To be continued.

The season of mists is past. The rain Gods are hiding in the skies, perhaps angered by something or somebody or just waiting for us to grow weary of the dry like we had grown weary of the rains just to impress upon us the importance of precipitation. Of late I had been evaluating these five and a half months spend here. One important thing that I have learned here is the importance of thinking objectively. As I was objectively trying to assess others I did a bit of soul searching myself and found that I had been judging people without knowing them. There is more to a person than what meets the eye. The face that a person puts up in public is not the true parameter to form an opinion about him/her, going deeper into why that person is behaving the way he is I found that I too displayed or would have displayed similar behavioral traits in similar circumstances, which does not give me the right to judge the person. I learned the importance of seeing the best in others. It is easy to follow the waves of emotions when they get overwhelming but showing restraint in these times determines whether or not we can call ourselves truly educated. It is very easy to criticize people and blame our failings on the circumstances, very difficult to own up to our shortcomings. But owning up to them gives this immense freedom to be ourselves, not imitating anybody or putting up a show just to reinforce our public identity. The statement "I am myself" is truly eulogized in the feeling that one has when there are no pretensions, no self imposed fetters that threaten to choke and suck out the vitality. The air gets fresh again and it is not difficult to breathe anymore.
It is our achievements that elevate us to the level of the gods and our failings that help us remain on the ground with the knowledge that we are still humans after all.

What is it like to be free of all the biases, all the idiosyncrasies that plague our vision and distort our ability to see and get to the truth. The mind plays tricks on the the self, distorting reason and judgment. The mind has its tricks of the trade like self- delusions, hallucinations and delirium being the extreme forms of it, self deception through false ego, fear, social conditioning are the other reasons why the mind is clouded. Reason and logic is one way of dispelling the unreasonable. This is but a blessing bestowed upon a few. A majority of us live in a world which is either a creation of somebody else's ambition or a dream which we have composed for ourselves. However good or bad the dream we might nurture it is after all a dream, a projection of how we would want to see ourselves in the future, which means that the present is compromised just to make sense of the future. When the dream is realized we feel the joy of achievement, and then move on to yet another set of dreams. When we feel that we have finally realized our destiny we are worried about the lives of our children and their destiny, driving their dreams and making them see ambition in their lives. Life passes by, the mind still clouded by dreams, biases(both old and new arrived by our experiences during the journey). If our experiences are good(i.e.we achieved what we set out to do) we feel that our presence here made a difference. If the experiences are bad(i.e. we fail to achieve our dreams or the dreams of those close to us) we feel at an extreme that the world is cruel to us or reconcile ourselves to the fact that it was just not meant to be. At the end of it all, when the youth is long past and the end is imminent some try and pass on this advice to the youth - see reason, do meaningful things, do things that make you happy, try and live in the present, and all the numerous things which we failed to do but realized there value only at the fag end of our lifetime feeling that we might make a difference by passing on the acquired wisdom to the next generation. The youth in its brash unreasonableness sees senility in wisdom and follows the same cycle. It nurtures the same dreams, the same stories of achievement and failure repeat themselves. The same wear and tear teaches the worth of those words heard in the youth. But learning is not rote memorizing, learning lies in seeing value in the things that we perceive, learning lies in understanding our surroundings and knowing why things happen the way they do. But this learning is a light with which we guide ourselves through the dark tunnel of the old age when the only bright light seems to be at other end of it. We hurry to pass on this acquired experience to our younger ones hoping that they will be more reasonable then we had been. But some there are who discover the veil and learn what lies beyond what meets the eye. Barring these few the cycle continues...

"Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?"

-A dream within a dream
Edgar Allan Poe

A trip to Bangalore after the mid terms was a great experience. I left Kozhikode at 2200 hrs hoping to do nothing but catch up on sleep in the bus. The five months spend in Kozhikode has had one change in me: I have become a creature of the night and it becomes a toil if I am supposed to sleep at fixed and early hours. The bus ride also did not help much. Though traveling in a sleeper coach the periodical bumps ensured that I did not enter the state of slumber. This awakened state made me open my window pane and stare at the dark outside of the bus.Though I undertook the journey during the dark hours the view outside was captivating. We were cruising through a hilly terrain and there was a mist cover spread over the sleeping mountains. I would love to undertake the journey again during the day time.
Coming to Bangalore after 5 months was a great experience. The place is air conditioned and unlike Kozhikode it doesnt rain here that often. Reaching the city during the wee hours of the morning I got down at the forum and then took a stroll, braving the morning chill, through the Koramangala area to get to my friends' place. It felt great meeting up with my roomies for 5 months. Then during the evening met up with a couple of friends and enjoyed the memories of the good old days spend here. The memories of those days kept coming back all the time and somehow it felt that I had never left. The place had appalled me when I had come here for the first time with the rush for work in the morning, and my own working hours did not help much. I met wonderful new people here and made friends with them. This was the place where I first started to live and see the world through my own eyes. A place for a lot of "Firsts" (cant mention them here). Tonight I go back again to that place on a hill which is my abode for the next one and a half years. But after taking the journey I feel change is necessary in life to make you appreciate the things you have and bring a sense of excitement in life. Monotony makes us lethargic which can be countered only by a change. I go back now a refreshed person raring to go again with the daily bustle of that life on the hill.