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Experiments, with Truth
In the town, where i was born, lived a man, who sailed to sea…
and he told us of his life, in the land of submarines…
No, this has nothing to do with The Beatles. I was born in Sewagram. This is where Gandhi (the original one) lived for a substantial part of his life. And he did sail to sea, albeit not as a sailor; but as a student once and as a guru later. And he did tell us of his life in the land … well not of submarines, but of just marines. More interestingly, he told us of what he did on those trips. In the first one, he experimented… With truth. The most elusive substance on earth, and may be beyond. And somehow, we Indians, and especially the ancient Indians have been obsessed with this thing called truth.
Recently, i have been introduced to a new paradigm of experimenting with truth. It says that truth is not a substance, its a method, or may be an act… Like sex. It says that, don’t seek the truth, rather “do” the truth. Though grammatically awkward, it seems to work – while interacting with clients, co-workers, families and friends – “doing” the truth works. So how do you do it?
by just responding to the tiniest reality in front of you.
Here’s an example. One of your coworkers lied to you, yesterday, on an email. By the time you reach office today, you can conjure up a huge conspiracy theory of why he has lied to you, and who else might be involved in the conspiracy, on how this is going to affect your promotion to the post of CEO in 2029, and how the next increment may be affected and your wife might feel bad about not buying the second car you could have bought with the increased EMI capacity, and if you are not married how silly you would look to the blue-eyed girl CCed on that untruthful email.
OR,
you don’t think about the lie at all. You just go to the office – read what has been written – and respond to that line – just that line. And forget about it after you press send. If he replies with another lie (chances are, he wont; but in case he does), its a new experiment to respond then, tackle it afresh. Each response to the tiniest reality in front – is an experiment with truth.
I was advised to do something like this by a colleague recently. And he helped me do it – it was nice. Hope it works.
And, if we lack the temperament it takes to stick to this practice, consult the Buddha.
When in doubt, smile!
I have this friend, who loves and believes this line – “when in doubt, smile”. So this person, has actually followed it, for a long time in life, and has successfully managed to sound and be innocent. And I mean it, when I say the “be”… 
So for a change I tried it for a while, and concluded that it works. So, when in doubt, smile
A new look
It’s been long since I posted; and very very long since I upgraded my blog. After borrowing some enthu from Sandy, who recently bought some web-space and domain name, I finally decided to upgrade my blog – for whatever that means.
It was not easy. Firstly, my earlier Wordpess was installed in 2004. For god’s sake!! I ran it on a version so old, that it took me four hours of careful reading on various forums, taking multiple backups in various formats, and a lot of coffee to get it working on 3.0.1.
Then, the theme. Impossible to choose – at least without the help of womanly whims. Somehow chose this new theme, little bit of Gimp work, some PHP tweaking and the thing was up.
Then I realized, that I now live in 2010. The world has changed a lot since 2004. There was no social bookmarking then, there was no twitter and no Facebook… Oh My God!! NO FACEBOOK!! So I got the right plugins to help people socialize from here.
All in all it took me a day with some break…. and here we are. Welcome back
BTW, any suggestions?
Tomu
In chomu pose
Sham-e-Gam
Talat Mehmood is one my favorite singers of all time, and Sham-e-gam ki kasam is by far is most soulful song of his. Majrooh Sultanpuri wrote the song for the 1953 film “Footpath” … and the poetry is equally matched by Khayyam’s music. Here are the lyrics:
शाम-ए-गम की कसम, आज गमगीं हैं हम,
आ भी जा आभी जा आज मेरे सनम।
शाम-ए-गम की कसम…
दिल परेशान है, रात वीरान है,
देख जा किस तरह आज तनहा हैं हम।
शाम-ए-गम की कसम…
चैन कैसा जो पहलू मे तू ही नही,
मार डाले ना दर्द-ए-जुदाई कहीं।
ऋत हसीं है तो क्या, चांदनी है तो क्या,
चांदनी ज़ुल्म है और जुदाई सितम।
शाम-ए-गम की कसम…
अब तो आजा कि अब रात भी सो गई,
ज़िन्दग़ी गम के सहरा मे खो गई,
धुंढ़ती है नज़र, तू कहाँ है मगर,
देखते देखते आया आँखों मे दम।
शाम-ए-गम की कसम…
And you can listen to the song here: 
http://www.saavn.com/p/song/hindi/foot+path/shaam-e-gham+ki/SARfcwdkUmY
It all started with the mind
Pronouns, for once, are the most important part of the speech. They mean more than what they say. They rely on the reader more for grasping of the extra-literal meaning that they present. In essence, their meaning is subjective.
And as many of you might know, I believe the world is subjective.
Perhaps, that’s why all great books and great people use pronouns for expressing deep things. Michale Jackson: “They don’t really care about us”. Mahadevi verma: “जो तुम आ जाते एक बार”. Jim Morrison: “What are they doing in the hyacinth house”. Richard Bach: “Was it really worth it?”. RigVeda: “Not even nothing existed then”.
“They”, “तुम”, “it”, “then” are all pronouns. The object they intend to qualify is not specified. Perhaps deliberately so. And still, these are probably the most clear poetic expressions ever. The clarity of comprehension is actually not subject to the verbosity of the truth. In fact, the pronouns make the truth stand out. As if, vindicating the claim of truthfulness, by the arrogant declaration that they don’t have to say it …
… perhaps reminding us that it all started with the mind, and objectivity barely a creation of the mind.
Change!
Reason for this so very late night post… there has been a big change in life. And this is to mark the date. I don’t remember a bigger event in life so far. So it has to be recorded on the blog.
So you would ask, what the event is? No no no no… it’s not frivolous enough to be made public. The only thing I can say, is that an era has ended, and a new one is taking shape. As, Daagh Dehalvi, would have said it:
गर्म चश्मा है पत्थर के शिगाफ़ों से उबलने को,
ज़माना किस कदर बेताब है करवट बदलने को।
Until next time, stay tuned!