Little Go-Green Steps in the wide waste world... My efforts exploring an eco-friendly lifestyle...

Last year, on 1st Jan 2018, I resolved that 2018 will keep me excited about learning to adopt an eco-friendly, waste-reducing lifestyle. We write New Year Resolutions all the time, but I wanted to write a post on the New Year, about the previous year's resolve, chronicling what I did about it all year, whether I remembered it every single day and where I failed. It is also my first post for the Facebook forum Zero-Waste LifeStyle India which I follow keenly.

So before I ramble on into the philosophical tangents( don't miss them at the end), here are the specific steps, where I succeeded, failed, plan to bounce back and where I continue to remain confused, lazy and indifferent. The Successes :

• Reduced paper coffee cups from 4 per day to 1 per day. The 1 cup is my breakfast so it has stayed, but it needs to change too.
• Hand shower and health faucet in the bathroom.
• Stopped tetra packs, Lays chips.
• Drink tender coconut water without a straw, like tribals might do. By mistake if anyone tells you to use a straw, that's the flaunt moment, say #NoStraw.
• Say No to Straw for juices in restaurants.
• Say No to customer copy of debit card slips at POS. Say No to ATM slips.
• Reduced consumption of instant noodles greatly.
• Bought a second-hand laptop, although I could have perfectly bought a new one, after 12 years of using and killing my old laptop.
• Repaired the headphones twice, (courtesy my room-mate). The Sony MDR XD 100 is into the 9th year now.
• Keep only a fixed no. of clothes, and give away old clothes to charity every year in May. Ditto for all other miscellaneous junk "things" that accumulate from time to time.
• Shifted to Tooth powder for night brushing. Tried bamboo brushes with plastic bristles, not happy. Might try again.
• Stopped Dhobi from packing clothes in plastic covers every time. He wants to cover, so he shifted to covering them in newspaper. Now I have to stop him from using stapler pins.
• Using the bicycle. Has a 3-fold advantage. Energy-friendly, Economy-friendly and Exercise-friendly.
• Give wet waste to cows. Since Aug-15, in honor of Swacha Bharat. Collect fruit and vegetable waste from home, go in cycle and give to cows. It's a 4-in-1 winner. Exercise + Eco-Friendly + Circular economy + Go-sewa. In the west, people who for jogging are encouraged to pick up plastic, they call it plogging. I should call this cowcycling.
• Give dry coconut shells to the farmer who (anyway) uses such a stove.
• Collect fruit seeds, don't throw them away, set them aside. Might use them for seed-balls-with-clay before monsoon. (Dunno how far this will work). Worst off, they can always go to the bushes.
• Stopped eating chocolates.
• Shifted from running water shaving to mug-based shaving. I actually measured how much water I wasted, before I did this.
• Have tried old-fashioned shaving rounds instead of gel/cream, works okay with me, once the current lot of gifted gel gets over, planning to stop gel.
• Stopped using after-shave and tried old-style alum cake used by barber, but not happy. Cold cream seems okay. Not the best, but recyclable and wastage rate is slower than after-shave lotions.
• Carry a spoon and tiffin box on trains.
• Carry cloth bags or polythene bags you have collected from before. Say No to new polythene covers and also those flimsy cloth-like replacements. They are not recyclable too.
• Set aside electronic waste for responsible disposal. (For which, it seems, options are very less in India, if you were to investigate the entire trash trail).
• No Fan or light, when I am alone in the room. Like our Prof used to say, open the windows and let the atmosphere in. I also prefer well-lit, so if there are no big windows, chuck this rule.
• No AC when I am alone in the room.
• No use of geyser, enjoy cold water bath.

An occasional exception is allowed for fan, AC and geyser based on extreme climate, though. It's not as if God is sitting in judgement and will paste a ticket on your forehead, LoL.

• Use lift only at the end of the day, if the knees are tired.
• Use sleeper coaches in trains, instead of AC. Use trains instead of flights. An occasional exception when travelling with friends or long-distance in summer.

Not Through My Hands :

Dry waste segregation : I adopted a vow 'Not Through My Hands'. I shall not put any dry waste in the dust bin at home with my hands. All dry waste that passes through my hand is set aside for handover to scrap dealer. Waste that the local scrap dealer is likely to toss out or send to the landfill, is set aside to be turned over to recycling agencies in other cities when I travel. No pushing or preaching to others, may be suggest/nudge, but move on, take care of your waste first.

After a while, as an experiment, I tried sorting my own dry waste as a scrap dealer would. That's quite a revealing and awareness-creating exercise. If we really took 'Your waste, your responsibility' as a mantra, when you spend time sorting your own dry waste of few months or so from cartons/sacks, you are appalled at what you buy, what you discard, what portion is non-recyclable and straight goes to the landfill. Also, you realize the utter monotony, manual labour and thankless, endless, pointless job that segregation workers go through to sort our million wastes, apart from the filth and the health hazards they face. Become them for three hours, it will change you.

Failures :

Good Day biscuits : These serve as instant food for late night hunger. Should move to oats instead.

Glucose biscuits : These serve as breakfast. This should change too.

When I travel, all rules are off. (Why ?) I subsist on mineral water bottles all day during travel, can't afford to risk any which water due to my health. Nowadays, I try to fill RO water in stations, but not always accessible. I use Ola, something I wouldn't do in daily life in my town. I use it because otherwise I would get tired sooner and that upsets plans. I don't segregate waste and bring back, though I drop them in dustbins. Often, I travel some distance within the city I am visiting, just to have good food at a place of my liking, something that could be avoided.

Shaving : A major consideration for me. I don't worry too much about an occasional waste, but daily stuff is worrying, recurring waste is always a concern for me.

Razors : Haven't been able to solve the problem at all, confused. Electric shavers save water. Water in my area is pumped from long distances, we need to worry about it, so it seems great to me. But they cause industrial waste, not recyclable, disposal is a problem. haven't been happy with Braun Cruzer 6, burns after a close shave. The higher models are too costly. Mach 3 twin blades provide the best experience, but cause recurring waste of blades and not recyclable. The stainless steel blades, used by the barber, are the most eco-friendly if you collect the blades to dispose. Tried that, but they are the least comfortable for shaves. Finally, may be my friend Ramnath's New Year Resolution of growing a beard might be the most green solution, but it may cause tremors in other areas of my life, LoL. Now what to do ?

Fountain Pen : Turned out to be another confusing flop show. I stopped using ball point pens or pens with use-and-throw cartridges. Tried out a few models of fountain pens, nothing seems to work for me. I use a pen very infrequently. So, in most fountain pens, the nib has dried up by the time I want to write next. Just when I want to write, it won't write. Learnt from some of my students about hacks to re-fill ink in cartridges using syringe etc. For now, using pencils more. Will revisit in a while.

Toothpaste tubes seem to be the next unsolvable problem for me, because they are not recyclable. I am not a big fan of using Neem stick etc on a daily basis, unless we understand the long-term effect on gum care. Ditto for Ayurvedic Dantmanjan etc. But I may be biased here.

No solution for Tablet strips. I segregate them hoping to send them away for polyfuel, dunno how it will work.

Things for future :

• Want to visit the local landfill, with a mask.
• Want to visit an actual waste sorting facility, particularly for electronic trash trail. Must be a very sensitizing experience. Inspiration for this comes from the The Conscious Desi FB page and other articles on Trash Trail.
• Wondering about stopping the use of Talcum powder / Deo. May be try out Chandan or something.
• Should learn some hand-craft to make upcycled products. Though handicrafts is not my cup of tea.

Compost bin : Haven't bought one still, though this is considered a mantra for Go-Green, because 60% of all household waste is wet waste. The single thing that has been evading me all year. Right now, I don't need one, because wet waste goes to cows. Some wet waste not meant for cows (such as onion peels, puja flowers) goes to the bushes as mulching. Seems to work well for me. Except that, some days you are too lazy, busy or tired. About the compost bin, I am worried about odour, worms, rats in a shared flat in apartment block. Seems a very subjective art with too many elements of balancing such as dry leaves/saw dust, moisture, stirring, jaggery, buttermilk, what not. Every third blog on composting, tells about so many aspects you need to be careful about. There should be something simple and algorithmic, LoL. Or I should simply take the plunge.

My Inspiration :

The original inspiration was the famous "The Story of Stuff" video, which I watched umpteen times prior to 2018. (For a balanced perspective, one should also watch the "The Critique to the Story of Stuff" video, which gives a rebuttal to some arguments made in the Story of Stuff video). I was drawn to The Story of Stuff video, of course, by Swami's teachings on Nature conservation, Ceiling on desires and Vedanta. I truly believe, as a social phenomenon, Ceiling on Desires, can become the single great push for an eco-friendly lifestyle, because Reduce and Re-use are at the heart of it. The International Go-Green Conference at Puttaparthi midway in the year was a great push to my learning. One person from a small town in Karnataka who sat next to me in a group discussion, totally surprised me when he spoke at length about the list of green measures he follows in his life, including switching off the community street lights on time in the morning! It's quite humbling, you often catch inspiration from total strangers.

The internal challenges :

All through the year, there are many stray thoughts that impinge on you from time to time, either from your own mind, from other's sarcastic comments or from what you see and read. Some of them :

Why bother ?
As if what you do matters ? For every green guy here, there are 10 others, littering plastic in your neighbourhood. 
The government has to take care. They have to change the laws, enforce the laws better. We can't do anything. 
You talk about going green on this issue A, but see, what about that issue B , haha silly, you are penny wise and pound foolish. 
The earth will find ways to revive itself da, don't worry. 
Conflicting options, for example, washing stuff to re-use them takes water which is becoming an equally difficult resource. 
Simply showing off, nowadays it's more of a fashionable talking point to say I am going green. 
There is the real go-green and the green stuff you do like others do, like buying a new stainless steel water bottle or a new cloth bag. 
Don't overdo these things, like collect seeds, you've gone crazy. 
Every Go-Green decision becomes a debate of a million pros and cons, then how do you even decide and do something ?
It's just a fad, let's see whether you are as much fascinated after 5 years. Take it cool, dude, get a life. 

Although I explore and persist a lot, I don’t have a strong philosophical conviction about why Go-Green. Why we should even bother about these things, Go-Green, Segregation etc. It's quite okay to me if the human race, that crown jewel n all of creation, simply disappears from the face of this earth because of their own follies. There is no duty here. In the larger timeline of Earth's history, it doesn't matter, there have been random events like Ice Ages and natural disasters that just pop up from nowhere to reboot Life. On the endless sands of time, is it not the Child's Play of Goddess Lalitha ? So, why jump around too much to save the earth ? Like that George Carlin Stand-up video on saving the earth, says, don't talk of saving the Earth, the planet is fine, the people are doomed to disaster. I am more worried about the eco-karma coming back to me during our own lifetimes, in the lives of the children around us. That would move my heart. May be we should do it for their sake. Or for ourselves, because, it's simply the right thing to do. Or because it's the new fad. As the Admin guideline at the ZWL forum says, don't debate too much, focus on your bin.

There are other challenges, when you want to take others along, family and friends, or when you want to follow it at your workplace, institutionalize it or to find scaled solutions for society, such as activism or volunteering. But, right now, I am focusing on what I can do at the individual level. Sometimes, the dry waste accumulates or lies here and there in the room, that's something to be taken care of.

The pushers :

Being in a small town and in an ashram, without realizing it, you internalize a greener lifestyle over the years, compared to elsewhere. There is the constant reminder for self-awareness from talks. Commuting is very little. Living in a shared room has its simplicity, resources shared, buying can be bundled. There are good community/public options such as a bakery and canteens that are cheap. Sewage treatment is taken care of, solar power gaining traction. There is no TV, although there is the ubiquitous internet. You don't have to buy stuff to show off your social status. Wasting food pricks your heart a little. You can buy less, because there is limited place in your house, wallet and mind, for buying more and more. You see a lot of simple happy people around you. Even then, you tend to drift away, because there are also many small practices around you that are not eco-friendly. Poor waste segregation, coffee cups, fuel-guzzling vehicles etc, so one needs to push oneself to be conscious all the time. Of course, being eco-conscious is a small part of Conscious Living, which is a larger and more meaningful pursuit.

The journey made me develop a lot of interest in Minimalism, Minimalist Living and Decluttering. At the root of an eco-friendly life, is to Reduce. To reduce things, you have to reduce the space things occupy in your minds. In the movie, 'Into the Wild', there is a restaurant scene where the rich parents offer a new this and new that to their graduating son. The guy says, 'Oh, these things, things, things, I don't want them'. It was my favorite scene. If you buy gifts, they won't stay with me. Hand-write a note on a chit, I'll keep it for life. Buy less today in the first place, and lesser tomorrow. Household waste is only a miniscule portion of all waste, most of it is industrial waste which is driven by the consumerist frenzy and automatic obsolescence. Recycling is not a great solution, because we can't recycle a whole planet! In any case, only a portion what is recyclable gets actually recycled. So, think before you buy.

I enjoy the meeting point of spirituality, Go-Green, Minimalism and De-cluttering, even if they conflict occasionally. The spiritual concepts of detachment and respect for Nature can be great pushers for your interest in these things.

The FB forum Zero-Waste Life Style India has been a great learning ground from successes and constraints mutually shared by like-minded users. Can't thank each one of you enough for the countless day-to-day stories from small middle-class green households amidst their challenges. After a year of comments engaging at the forum and learning from the Maharathis, this is my first post, Thank you ZWL India.

A story from every home

HE touched each one of our lives in little little ways at different points in time. Each one of us has a story to tell, about His Love, about how our lives have mingled with His, about His impact on us, our minds.

Sometimes they are stories told never before. Some are stories that are cherished deeply in the heart and might never be told. Some are stories that we enjoy telling, because the Love that we received, we want to share with the entire world. Some may be just little quips, short incidents, quotable quotes that happened some sunny morning in the Mandir here, but have been etched in our memories and bubble up from time to time, during our moments of reflection.

Some may be just silent moments, when He passed by us, He had this customized twinkle in His eye, apparently no word was spoken, but we got the message nevertheless. Some may be moments whose importance we realized only later, for, at that time, we let our narrow mind interpret the million mysterious ways of God. Sometimes it might have been as small as a thought that occurred to us, which we knew came from Him.

It's not just the story of you and me, it's ghar ghar kee kahani, a story from each home. Some may be stories that for others may be trivial, but for us, so sweet and so important, because they happened in our lives, not theirs. Even a light chiding as 'Dunnapotha' or a pleasant reference as 'Good Boy'. We can deny, question or argue somone else's experience, but can we deny a feeling when it occurs within us ? After all, if we aren't true to our feelings, what else would life be worth living for ? Our feelings and our stories are always deep, important and very personal to us. That is why, even though He was a Universal Teacher, He was a 'Personal' God. A personal God individually to all those millions, who shed a tear or two today in fond gratitude from wherever they are. He was the Head of this House, a silent listener in every conversation, an unseen guest at every meal. Every home must be narrating these stories at their dinner table today to others in the family and friends, and they are all little, but deeply personal stories of how He came into "my life" and what we felt about Him.

Whether story or not, whether told or not, each one of us was here, flocking here from time to time, for every Christmas, every Shivarathri and every November, because it was so wonderful to be here. He had made it so wonderful for us to be here, it’s so cool to bask in the shadow of this large banyan tree of Love.

It's these little but sure acts of love, invisible but 'I-know-it-is-true' kind of feelings, that have built our picture of how we relate to him. That picture is not of the material kind. It's a picture of feelings, built slowly like an ant builds its granary. The wishes we asked Him, might have been of this world and gifts that we received may fade with time. But the feeling we cherished when we prayed to him, that Moment of capture in the camera of our heart, it is not of this world and is timeless. Like Krishna who made a copy of Himself to each of the thousand Gopikas, the Master has made a picture of Himself in each of our hearts, each picture unique in its streaks and differently beautiful.

Education, Healthcare and Drinking water SHOULD be given free, He believed. And He set out to show the world how to manifest your belief into an example and an inspiration for others. In an age, where people are particularly insistent about their rights and cleverly transfer the responsibility to others at the quickest possible opportunity, He showed how an individual can take a personal sense of responsbility for the problems of the community. He felt for their problems, as really and as strongly as if it was His own problem.

When He said, in 1980, that a University would be completely free, and would combine modern education with character-building and human values, they mocked at him. It just completed 30 years and a few thousand lives were touched. When He said, in 1990, that a world class hospital would do surgeries for free for the poor, they jeered at him. That one just completed 20 years. Even better, 10 years into the first, for a bonus, He added one more hospital of the same scale and a few more thousand lives were touched, literally. When He announced in 1995, to supply drinking water to an entire arid district drawing water from hundreds of kilometers away, and He had to borrow to finish it, He said, 'Do good work with a good intention. Help will come.' And then He went on to add 4 more districts to the list and few thousand hearts.

He may not have been a personal God to everyone, but for those few thousand stranger lives that He touched by His Service, He was no more a stranger. For an unknown patient coming from a distant land, He was a giver. For that average, middle class young lad in his teens looking for a degree and can't afford it, He was a giver. For a parched throat in a uphill tribal village, He was a giver. In all these, the ones who received, got their cure, education and water and are grateful. But He was a giver of Love, above all, that was what He always gave, the rest were just the specifics. And for volunteers and the followers who participated in these works, He raised the bar for them further, beyond the work they did. Work wasn't an end in itself, He said, it was Love and the Attitude that accompanied it. Know your own reality, and every work that you do will be good.

It is said that He came to make a Hindu a better Hindu, a Muslim into a better Muslim, a Christian into a better Christian. But, above all, He came to make every Man, a better Man. So that Man may believe in Love and its cascading power of transformation. That Man may believe in Selfless Service and the proactive responsibility to care and share with fellowmen, to pay it forward with goodness. That Man may, one day, by the power of Love and Service, inquire into His own true nature and find Divinity within. And then find it pervading all over the place, in everyone. Some day, in a journey across lives, we may discover that we weren't any less godly than our personal God. Which is what He always said in the first place. We just took our time to get the point.

We are not able to figure out our own body, our mind, our destiny, our Gamyam and our real nature. What would we know of Him, His body and His Mission ?

As some famous quote goes, we love him, perhaps not for what He is, for we know not His Glory in its entirety. We love him, for what we are, when we are in His presence. For what we reflect in the light of His altar. For what we find out about ourselves that we didn't find otherwise. If you've been there, you'll know it to be true.

21 Brahmachari Eccentricities

I have an untested, home-grown, humorous hypothesis : That is, Brahmacharis develop eccentricities over a long period of time. They exhibit some or other kind of eccentric behaviour or mannerism. This is not true, of course, it’s just a story. This blog post itself is eccentric. Still, I went on to collect some data. I had to use my phone to record notes over a few weeks at all times, because when the Brahmacharis pass by and eccentricities appear, you have to note them down when you spot them. I compiled a few Brahmachari eccentricities that I observed in the Brahmachari world around me, then imagined a few more, mixed some of this and that, so that people don’t make out which is which. Arundhati Roy style.

Before I get into the light-hearted list, here is some serious gyaan.

Why does this happen ? Why might Brahmacharis develop eccentricities ?

See, simply put, this is what happens if you are not steadfast in your Sadhana and not regular at your midnight meditation.

However, the main reason it happens is a misleading interpretation of the word “independence”. When you are unmarried and staying alone, you are free to do whatever you wish and you indeed go about doing just that. If you are married, Ah, this possibility shrinks quite a bit. On every decision, you might have to consult at least one more person, who has equal veto-power and can bring in additional voting candidates like your parents or in-laws. You want to buy Sony or Samsung ? You want to paint Blue or Brown ? You want to wear White or Black and you want me to wear Blue or Green ? It so happens that God puts the opposites together, so that one may complement the other and learn from the other, so every decision is a parliamentary procedure. You can’t do strange eccentric things, you may get whacked, chided or advised by your spouse, depending on what is your acceptable form of instruction. You will be gently requested to live according to the world around you and if you don’t listen, first ‘gently’ will go and then ‘requested’ will go. A person, more cool-headed, balanced and smarter than you, is walking with you and you have to be aware of the presence.You will constantly be called upon to rise up to expectations.

Neways, what do I know of the married world, except for those surmises ? Don’t ask a monk how he knows the things he knows. If you are not married, you think you have none of these boundaries. So you take your independence to the extreme and end up doing all eccentric things, because there is nobody at the peer level to ask.

Then, there is this conviction called : ‘I will do whatever I feel is right’. While this is a good thing, you take it to the very extreme, and you end up doing things that feels good only for you. You think you are following your conscience, which is a very serious matter and a wonderful thing. May be you are. But you may refuse to consider the possibility, that other people around you may be following their respective consciences with as much earnest. May be, two consciences can be in conflict. If that’s not possible, one of you may not be following the conscience after all, you may be following some other buffalo (like your mind). Whatever, taking this to the extreme, causes you to disregard what others think as an acceptable behaviour. It creates a self-centered approach to choices, partly calling it joy of independence, partly calling it conscience and what turns out is an eccentricity that I can blog about.

As the 7 habits book says, interdependence is a greater value than independence. We loosely talk of terms like financial independence, professional independence, creative independence and so on. But, at the end of the day, we are Prema Pipasis, we hanker for love, both of the mundane human kind and of the higher spiritual kind. If everyone were to be independent, there would be no one at the dinner table to share stories. Interdependence creates a better environment of togetherness and promotes love rather than independence.

Oh oh, enough of the analysis paralysis. This post was intended to be an attempt at humour. Let’s get into some lively worldview.

So here, in one of the largest ever research on Brahmachari eccentricities… 21 of them, in no particular order.

1. You put a “STAFF” board on your bicycle, in huge saffron letters. As if it is proactive compliance with RTO and thieves will check out the informative board and then keep away. You know the cycle repair guy tells some story every time and robs you of a lot of money, but you think you are helping the local economic ecosystem by providing him business opportunities and the cascading effect will benefit the whole town. You call it Gullibility with Full Awareness. What a concept !

2. You are stationary, but your parts are mobile. You keep twiddling, turning, clasping your fingers, biting your lips, scratching your head, shaking your legs (horizontally and vertically, alternatively). As if all the wood-boring Beetles in the Mummy movie have entered your body through all the holes. Drawing your tongue deep inside as if you are sipping a cool drink and releasing it as if it wasn’t tasty enough. Rubbing the chair’s handle so much that after a while, you have reached the wood after wearing out the cushion. You do all of this at the same time, so seamlessly that you don’t know where one process ends and the next one begins. Your motor nerves have a tough time handling data. You generate so much kinetic energy enough to power a household. When someone mentions this, you give the analogy of the ocean : waves on the surface, but deeep calm within, you say. Aha!

3. You think, the ladies mess up things. Always. Everything. You also think, they are emotional, they are difficult to deal with, they have more politics than the men. And loads of other such MCP opinions. You don’t know what that abbreviation means, You think they are all Maturely Considered Perspectives. You had to click on that link and look it up to know it is Male Chauvinistic Dot-dot-dot. You direct your ire particularly at nuns and spinsters.

4. You are more comfortable working with machines than with men. That’s because machines don’t have perspectives. You don’t have to be courteous to them. They are glad to get booted by you and they don’t complain ‘I got booted by my boss today’. They don’t lie and tell different answers to different people. They don’t mask hypocrisy with diplomacy. Those blue screen error messages are better than some confusing expressions put up by real people. Of course, there may be such things as Windows perspective and Linux perspective, but you can always keep them under dual boot or virtual machines, providing private space differently. A space that people hardly provide for you.

5. Apart from talking to real people, you do other kinds of talking. You talk to yourself. Sometimes, without a mirror. Pouring out, accusing people, that you can’t do for real. You talk in dreams and chase away Greek warriors in battle. You talk to your dog more than you talk to your friends. You even speak to the dog about your bank accounts and mutual fund investments. You blog as a therapy. You say the same thing again and again in conversation.'Did I tell you about my musician aunt in Thanjavur who fell from a tractor ?', you begin, not realizing that the poor listener has gone through the torture already. Some jobless listeners, they hear you out completely and even ask newer questions to elicit additional information. And then, they drop a last line, ‘Yeah, you mentioned this last week’. Huh !!

6. You never get angry. You are Sant No.1. In fact, you spend considerable amount of time sublimating your anger instincts, but you are not sure whether you are sublimating or suppressing. One fine morning, when you do get angry, the ceiling comes down, and even the sublimated impressions re-crystallize, liquefy in the heat and pour out as lava. This is a split personality disorder that manifests once in six months.

7. Nothing is useless to you. You keep collecting every single nut and bolt, pin and paper. Pamphlets and empty diaries are your favorites. You take pride that archaeologists 2000 years down the line will be able to reconstruct lost history of an entire civilization by excavating just the room where you lived. They are going to connect the dots in cuneiform script by matching the pictures in the pamphlets to the dates in the dairies. You have empty diaries, that SBI had gifted to Dadabhai Naoroji , which he passed on to your great grand mother’s servant maid. Every year, you think you will use the diary for “time management”, to keep a log of, when you got up, when you had noodles etc. Personal Growth, you think. You haven’t used the rotting, rusting stuff in years, but you always want to use all of them tomorrow. ‘Just in case I require’, you know. The only good thing out of this unlimited inventory is the polythene bags you keep. At least, they save the environment. Although you are incapable of such a noble intention, it’s just an incidental benefit to mankind, apart from the archaeological ones.

8. When you see a boy and a girl talking to each other in the post office, you think, they are upto something. Upto what ? You wish in all the world, that they broke all the societal shackles and told you what they are upto, but sadly, that doesn’t happen. You don’t want to consider the straightforward naive possibility that a girl might just be borrowing a pen from the boy. Things can’t be that simple, a pen can lead to anything, you know. Curious, you come to post office the next day at the same time, because you watched a Maniratnam movie and you are expecting something to happen. Oh sad, it’s some other boy, some other girl and some other pen this time. You deliberately left your pen at home and came, but you feel shy to ask. You are hoping someone will come and ask you, ‘Do you need a pen ?’ and then compliment you by saying ‘Nice T-shirt there’. But, it doesn’t happen, you buy a new pen and write the address and go home. You spend entire lifetimes in such misplaced wishful thinking and unanswered curiosity at every post office, ATM and bus stand. Phew.

9. You are so desperate for good food that you go to the canteen with ghee (or Amul butter cubes), 2 types of pickle in bottles, Podi(2 types again) and Chips, all of them as side-dishes to your meal. You ask for more chutney and sambar than the total mass of the idlis, maximizing value for money. The board ‘Outside food not allowed’ seems so intimidating to your kind of eating habits. The good part is you share it with everyone around. This food urge can take other forms. You are waiting for your indirect aunty, three levels away in the family tree (or any aunty for that matter) to invite you for a home lunch. As they say in Dil Chahta Hai, ‘we go anywhere for a piece of cake’. On festival days like Deepavali, you even schedule your lunch/dinner offers and space them out at regular intervals, getting choosy at which item is best at which home, putting up a reasonable performance at each location.

10. Someone sends a wedding invitation over email, and you are thinking whether to wish him or not. Where does the question arise? Even for wishing over email, you go through three levels of complicated algorithms to arrive at that dilemma. Finally, you go to the reception. You are talking to people, but you are feeling lonely. You wanted to go for the wedding, but after reaching you wonder why you came. You have been collecting sayings like :

• Marriage is like a besieged fortress where people who are inside, want to get out and people are outside, want to get in.
• Married people have one set of problems and the unmarried ones, well, have another set. Problems still.

You are waiting for the every little opportunity to use these sayings. You want to make married people feel guilty and unmarried people feel confused. You finish your food before the couple arrive on stage. Got to save on time, you see.. Food is good, but you when you reach the couple to wish them, you finally say, Happy Birthday. Hmm. You are uncomfortable being photographed, and more uncomfortable standing on the bride’s side, even though you are standing three people away outside the camera’s range.

11. You carry a great feeling of brotherly oneness, but only when you are using things that belong to someone else. ‘Ah, our brother only na, he wont mind ya’ is your local delivery of Vasudaiva Kudumbakam. Someone has given chocolates to your room-mate for safekeeping in the fridge and you have already nationalized it without the slightest hesitation or ethical dilemma. The thumb rule is : If it can be used by you, it can be used by me.

12. In the school, in the Indian Pledge, they taught you ‘All Indians are my brothers and sisters’. You believed it, took it seriously and now you don’t know how to provide for exceptions. You haven’t grown up since. In fact, you don’t want to grow up, because, there is this sweet feeling of not growing up. After all, grown-ups have problems, don’t they ? You don’t realize that modern young women working in multinational banks hate to be called ‘Akka’ by their male colleagues, because it makes them sound so old. It looks outrageous to you that you can call them by their name and they would prefer that indeed. You still want to add a ‘ji’ to their name, just in case. After all this conservative build-up, you finally end up treating foreigners as exceptions to the Indian pledge and get ready for a cross-cultural revolution.

13. You think fluorescent orange, fluorescent green are good colours. You wonder why the rest of the world doesn’t agree with your aesthetic tastes. . Saree choices: you get confused so much, you give up and buy whatever the sales girl suggests, as if the sales girl thinks exactly like your niece. You don’t know that there are things like male colors and female colours. You also wonder how gender differences can be attributed to non-living things, like gents watches and ladies watches, gents footwear and ladies footwear, gents purse and ladies purse. They are just functional instruments, right ?, why do they complicate choices ? Why not have gents cars and ladies cars, gents keyboard and ladies keyboard, gents mosquito repellent and ladies mosquito repellent ? Thus goes your orrriginal thinking.

14. You are so much established in Vedanta, you have mastered the art of detachment so much that you can right-click and choose attachment or detachment. You come up with complicated phrases, like, attachable detachment and detachable attachment, which only the Brahmachari community understands. At a given point of time, you can be emotionally connected but spiritually disconnected. This can baffle people at times, because they are trying to find out what mode you are operating in, are you interested or not interested ? It’s like the loose contact of the network cable to your laptop. Every time before you press Enter, you have to check whether it is connected or not.

15. You have no clue how to handle kids, particularly infants. If someone gives a baby to you for a few minutes for caretaking, you start sweating. You think they are going to scream anytime. And just when you thought that, it does scream. Their cheeks get red and you think it needs medical attention. You are always wondering whether it is going to do the zing thing on your lap-top, causing you to rinse your clothes. You have strange concepts from nowhere, like, ‘if you spend lot of time with kids, you may convert to making some of your own’. You are waiting for the Mummy or Daddy to come and get the baby back from you.

16. You go to a 5-star hotel with friends and have just curd rice. The waiter looks at you, as if your Mommy never fed you anything else for upbringing. You look at him back, brimming with pride that it’s indeed true. You shoot off into a speech to your friends on the wonderful effects it has. You recall with nostalgia, how, in your school days, you ate previous day’s rice soaked in water with curds and how it was instrumental in acquiring the vast intelligence you have now. Not knowing, that’s precisely, what the waiter will be bringing in a few minutes. And then you crib, ‘How can curd rice be so costly ?’. ‘Exclusive cow for you, Sir’, he explains.

17. When you want to describe a corporate scenario where two parties are fighting, you use the husband-wife analogy. When more parties join the fight, you start extending it by upto third wife, fourth husband and so on. If it’s software projects, it even extends to, my kid and your kid are fighting with our kids. You don’t realize that the project manager on the other end of the conference call, may be married and he may be raising his eye-brows at the way you are making his professional discussion more lively.

18. You do not know the difference between normal jokes and adult jokes. You think they are all the same. You even think, every normal joke has an adult significance. You don’t know which to use, when and where, to whom. Therefore, you draw twitches from people who listen to your jokes, instead of laughter. You wonder why the women in the gathering are not laughing but staring at you with a confused look like “what’s happened to this bloke”. Then you realize that you have told the wrong joke at the wrong place. But you repeat the mistake all over again at the next gathering with a different joke.

19. What is meant to be taken seriously, you take it as a joke.What is meant to be taken as a joke, you take it seriously. Like this post. You are an enigma.

20. You think, you don’t suffer from any eccentricity. It’s the rest of the world that is way off the orbit, particularly the married folks. The world revolves around you and it’s not doing it properly. You also use phrases like ‘Cha, married peepal, they are like that only no?’ or ‘Once you get married na, that’s all raa, gone case, booked forever, Govindaaa only’ and so on. To think you don’t have any eccentricity, may itself be one. Also, even a normal eccentricity found in normal people, you wrongly assume only Brahmacharis suffer from these eccentricities. It could be anyone. This misunderstanding can itself be an eccentricity.

21. And finally, some tidbits, all bunched into one item.

• You are scared to death, of dogs.You feel all the dogs in the world are out to get you and afraid even of sleeping dogs. Let the dogmatic dogs lie as they are.

• You think that a girl’s mind is programmed and re-programmable. By you.

• You think the whole world is there to listen to your bathroom singing and you distort the lyrics of sweet devotional songs with Mexican tribal drum sounds produced by you, because you think tunes transcend the lyrics.

• You carry a wide green sitting mat that looks like a flying magic carpet, occupying area worth three kadapa slabs. And yet you jostle for space.

• You have tea at the middle of the road at midnight, after a drama practice session, and want to call it Brahmachari independence.

• If someone names his book as Jyoti Rupa Sandhya Vandana and Gayatri Mahima, the title doesn’t look spiritual to you.

So, Which one of these, do you think, I suffer from ? Let me know in the comments.

Not that I’ll eliminate them. I’ll even out those eccentricities, get back into orbit and replace them with newer eccentricities, as part of personal growth. Different people have different eccentricities, and there as many eccentricities as there are people. So if yours is not on the list, put that in the comments and let others know.

I have no idea how the Brahmacharinees operate in this terrain. So if you feel this post has a gender bias or a chauvinistic angle, please know that it is not intended. Indeed, both genders are equally capable of going off the orbit. Do a simple find-replace and tweak the context a bit, you will get their side of the story. My guess is, it’s as complicated as it is on this side. But don’t break your rules and go to verify it, in Mohabbatein style.

If you think the eccentricity I am mentioning here refers to someone whom you know, keep quiet. Don’t put that in the comments and get me sued. We can giggle on that over a cup of coffee. I don’t know you, I disown all my readers regularly. Read Ram Gopal Varma’s disclaimer on Raktha Charithra. It’s all fiction and faction blurring into fact, occasionally. The rest is just accidental coincidence.

What's your Personal Work Ethic ?

The personal work ethic is a topic I always wanted to write about. Ramnath triggered this piece, by posting a short review of the book, The 4-hour Workweek at the Sai Students Portal. The book is mainly about how you can manage to work only 4 hours a week and amongst others, suggests outsourcing personal tasks. Some discussion ensued and here are my comments at that blog, made out into a post (with a few edits ) here :

I havent read the book, I find the title and theme of the book as described, quite interesting. But I find that the "methods" that he suggests are a bit cliched, just a e-Yuga rehash of the old school lessons of time management, personal efficiency, goal setting stuff talked by a lot of other books.

That apart, the ability to contemplate on why we do what we do and the conflict between what we want (at our ideal level of aspiration) and what we do, is something we lack in our times. What Dritharashtra said in the context of Dharma is also applicable to goals, Jaanami Dharmam Nacha Me Pravritti, Jaanami Adharmam Nacha Me Nivritti..., the gap between knowing what to do and doing it in-deed.

The personal work ethic that each of us bring to the workplace is something that I have always found interesting to observe. How much of what we do is because of the control system that pushes us and how much of it would we do in its absence ? How many hours of work is "right" or "optimal", assuming you want to be just loyal to the contract, not any less or more ? Peter Drucker once said, that the best motivated employee is a volunteer. What is the substantially differentiating basic attitude towards work, between, say a waiter whose opportunity to bring originality to the work is limited, and say, a Google employee who gets to spend 20% on it ?

Why work ? Well, that can be a dangerous question :) . If you deconstruct this too much from the Advaitic angle, you might end up with a fallacious conclusion : Don't work. Which we knew already and we are good at. :) To avoid that, you should start from Gita's premise, that work is inevitable. You can't not work, dude, the software doesnt provide that feature. Given that, and all of us have the same 24 hours, a deep thought on 'Why do I work ? ' can provide custom answers to what satisfies you. It can differentiate achiever from a non-starter, a poet from a mechanic, a saint from a sinner. It can be a basis for the development (or lack thereof) of other qualities like loyalty, dedication, team spirit and ambition. You can find some of these qualities and an amazing work ethic in some workers and simple people, so it may not actually be a function of the money you get. It's probably just a function of what custom answers you form in your mind, after you solve the equation for yourself.

Of course, there are major implications when you institutionalize the optimal work ethic of an individual, because, "market" forces like competition, cost, performance pressure, peer presence etc chip in to make it complex. But probably, the large scale orientation towards metrics and efficiency in modern management, is pushing the individual more and more away from his or her optimal band of work-life balance. As a race, we have moved from success in survival to success in war to success in trade. The common element in those phases has been competition. What's the next dimension of success we will move towards ? And what will that revolve around ?

I also wonder whether people doing one kind of work (say intellectually challenging strategy work ) are any more "busy" than, say, a construction worker who carries bricks all day. We usually think the former kind to be much more "busy" and perhaps "better contributive", "better value-adding" than the latter, but, in terms of the time spent, they both spend the same amount of time (give or take a few hours) on something that they have chosen (or say forced to have chosen) to do. And in most cases as part of a contract. When someone says, I am more busy than you, it's most often untrue, it just means, what I am busy with, has more visibility than what you are busy with. Or, I may have all the time in the world, but that time is not for you. :)

One type of work may be more satisfying than another, depending on what satisfies you. But is one type of work, intrinsically superior/good than another ? Is a painter better off than a conductor, because his work is creative ? If it is, what parameters contribute to its superiority ? Say, "to create a better world", is one such. The person who is at the top of such a company identifies directly with it and probably closer to that vision whereas for the person who is involved three levels down the work hierarchy, it would just be, being a waiter, a job to do for the pay he takes. The reverse is also possible in their attitudes, someone takes to it as carrying a stone (or pushing numbers), and someone else takes to it as building a cathedral. We once spent a whole night loading trucks with rice, clothes and relief material for the victims of the Gujarat earthquake. Oh, we found it very satisfying when the series of trucks were leaving the campus. Why was that ?

I think there are actually very few templates in which majority of us fall in. Very few actually get to do something that is substantially different, creating a new template altogether. Although we often want to claim and feel what we do is somehow "unique", and say so in our marketing brochures and interviews, most of the time it's the same cycle and the same pursuits, with minor variants/derivatives of what we call in programming design as an Abstract Class. Brings me to the thought: how much of programming work is different from plumbing ? You fix one valve and there goes the next, phut. What, we actually use the words like architecture, platform, address, tunnelling and named pipes... :) If you push us a little more, we'll start coming out with software equivalent terms for concrete, steel, emulsion paint, waterproofing and so on.

In every area of work, there is the exciting part, the boring part and the hated part. That exciting, boring and hated tasks come as a package in any vocation is something you may have to live with. Like doing the dishes after the party. For this reason, I have always failed to resolve one of the usual guidelines that personal effectiveness books suggest : Prioritize and ensure you give your time to high value-adding tasks. The fallout of this is that you are forced to categorize a certain set of tasks as low priority, with the effect that they are first ones to get rescheduled or postponed. Over a period of time, these tasks will build up to become critical or requiring immediate attention and graduate to become high priority and then you run to it. Whereas the very buildup should have been averted in the first place if you paid due attention to those seemingly low priority items on a more distributed basis. Cleaning, maintenance, fixing things that dont work, backing up your computer, stitching that button in time and a hundred other little things would be called low priority in a "Value-Time-Matrix" that these books would draw for you. Of course, the rationale is to avoid getting lost in a ocean of little things, but too much focus on high value items only results in escalation purely born out of negligence. At the workplace, everyone tending to high value prioritization can cause defects that are not noticed and people finding their own little ways to cut corners even as they continue to present a nice greeny picture on the high value items.

To be able to give every task its due entails the acceptance of a certain amount of boredom that comes as a package with enjoyable work. Tenacity, thoroughness, exhaustive level of detailing can all turn to boredom, but one may have to go beyond that attitudinal fatigue to be able to deliver good work.

On a personal level, outsourcing comes at a more pinching cost than it does for orgs. In the hostel, there were always two sets of guys, who always washed and pressed their clothes even if they could afford and the ones who outsourced them. I used to find it strange when someone said "I love doing this myself". My favorite outsourcing question used to be : why dont you grow your own paddy ? :) . Hmmm, that explains the success of Farmville ! (and my failure therein).

The famous quote "enjoy what you do and you don't have to work a day in your life" is so cliche now. That also entails a certain amount of re-orienting our attitude towards work, if not opting out of the entire work stream that one may be currently involved in. I think it's a flowery way to encourage those who find that boring and hated components of the package are greater than the exciting part. Either find work that you enjoy or learn to "book" something as enjoyable :) :)

This shouldn't be depressing, however. The point is that, what we think about the work we do and want to do, has a lot to do with how happy we are. Happiness, in a mundane sense, is a function of what we do, why we do and how we do but it's like an ice cream. As long as you get the flavour A you like, you are as averagely happy as another person who liked and got his flavour B.

The ideal personal work ethic would probably be a cross-product of buddhist, protestant and the Gita approaches to work, with collectivist lessons drawn from communism and the achievement orientation drawn from capitalism. Well, that would be NextGen Sociology !!

The value of Tenacity in Youth

Recently, I had attended a Music Programme by the University Brass Band of my alma mater. The programme, I think, might have been, part of the farewell season. The stadium stage was very elegantly decorated. Lemon juice was being served optionally, to riverside walkers like me who insist that music, cool winds, gang chat and late evening moonlight should always be accompanied by a glass of drink. I thought of insisting on pop-corn, but I dropped the idea, thinking that they may be forced to put a footer in the email invitation next time, saying attendees may please bring their own pop-corn. The performance was electrifying and included a couple of spiritual remixes of my favorite Rahman tracks, and was probably one of the biggest in the few years. In the end, they invited one of the veteran singers in the community, to speak a few words. I think, he must have been invited ad-hoc from the stage after the performers spotted him in the audience. He was full of praise for the way in which the Band has consistently grown over the years saying 'We may not participate in the inter-collegiate competitions which is held elsewhere, but the talent we have at the Hostel is one of the best.' However, this post is not about how great a particular band is and some other is not. It's about the connection between music and college education in our times.

Many of these students hadn't had a formal training in music before they were picked up to train for the band, that's the beauty of the event and a demonstration of the value of tenacity in a right learning environment. There is usually a little test of music sense held a couple of weeks after you join the degree course. If you clear the test, you would be picked up for being groomed for the brass band or other music groups. I remember very well how I flopped terribly at this test, for all the music I thought I always had in my heavy head. While I had conjured up non-existent questions like the difference between Ada Taalam and Adi Taalam, the test turned out to be a simple but effective one, just to quickly check whether you had a music sense, not whether you were a musician. The examiner asked me to sing or hum the first few lines of a popular Ganesh Bhajan, which he confirmed from me that I was familiar with. I messed up the beat right in the opening word. The next flop was even stupid. He asked me if I can hum a tune that is played by a band during March Past. As I raked my brain to recollect that tune which was just below my throat but refusing to bubble up, he probably thought I didn't know what a March Past was, and helpfully hinted "you know, the music they play when they march left-right". Hehehehe, I had heard it, but again hehehehe, I sheepishly gave up. He didn't have to comment regarding the result. That day, I also understood the inner significance of why my violin teacher, eight years earlier, had told me that I will flourish well in tabla instead of violin. Ahaaa, why did he have to be so diplomatic to a teenager ? May be, he didn't want to hurt the sentiments of someone who purchased a second-hand cycle and a second-hand violin and travelled 3 km each way for 3 months to find out that certain areas of interest should be earmarked for future births. However, this post is not about the ones who failed, but about the ones who succeeded by their tenacity.

I remember my room-mate and classmate during my MBA, who went through the same test. No one even faintly guessed he had a musical streak in him but he was selected to train for the band, on cymbals. I am not sure if he still continues his interest in music while working with SAP. I used to admire the way in which these guys would apply themselves regularly and consistently, starting almost from nothing. Most of the time, the 'teacher' would be mostly a college senior, a member of the band who plays the same instrument and may be in his final year. Other times, you were your own teacher. They would be found practicing in groups or repeating and perfecting what they have learnt earlier, sometimes near the library, sometimes at the stadium, sometimes on the Hanuman Hill and all the time humming at their cupboards. Their public performances would have to be of impeccable quality and they would leave no stone unturned to see to it that it was. Not that the hostel schedule was any lighter, they would have to go through what we called "life is an interval between two bells". Starting from nowhere, from a hum test, by the time their stay for 3, 5 or 7 years in the Hostel gets over, they would have mastered the instrument, become adept at performing as a band and given quite a few public performances in glory. Quite often, at the farewell functions, both the artists who performed for a jugalbandhi would be introduced as "both learnt the instrument on their own after joining the first year".

Youth is clay. It gets moulded the way you shape it. It applies itself to what you point to it. It succeeds in whichever skill you inspire it to learn. Our small towns have lots of it and waiting for the proper direction and bringing together. If the best of our institutes can incubate the start-ups seeded by their management graduates, in the small towns, all the hidden potential talent in music, sports and literature can and should be incubated and groomed in those three years, the best prime time of our youth. I know students who joined as dwarfs, literally, but would apply themselves at sports so rigorously and regularly, finding time between Yoga and learning Vedam and few other varied skills, and would finish by captaining Basketball and the Volleyball teams in their final year. Application, Focus, Tenacity, the mantras of success, are sown, learnt, tested and demonstrated, best when you are in college. This is true, not just about music, but about any area which you choose for yourself. Like in this post from Randezvous Perceptions which mentions decoration.

I remember the small town college in which I had done my UG. For a sleepy little tobacco town, we had all kinds of extra-curricular associations, the Toastmasters Club, a Tamil literature club called Thamarai Vattam, a Personality Development course all of which I would juggle with. There were many after-college courses, in addition to the village camps of NSS, the Adult Education campaigns and the free eye camps organised by Arvind Hospitals with volunteering from students. Some colleges had courses on Arabic, Gandhian Economics and Agarbatti making. I remember explaining about a computer and taking Rs.100/- from my mother for a WordStar course, for this "new computer cheej", 100 rupees for 10 days-10 classes, everyday one hour. It might have been glorified typing at the time, but it led me to the next Rs.100/- course in the Basic language, a field that would catch my fascination and I would settle in. In contrast, however, the band wasn't a great place. It would mostly consist of people who already knew how to perform, played a few jumping numbers and the only occasion I remember they played seriously was after the college union elections. That I failed at the music test even there is something you should not ask about. If you conduct a test now, I would fail, but I would show up again at the next test, until you notify Security to disallow losers. Even then, since I wouldn't call myself one, I might take a printout of this post and try to convince the gatekeeper.. May be I believe, if I fail all tests in this birth, success will be instantaneous in the next birth and my opening cry will be a Thyagarja Kirtan ??

It's not just about extra-curricular interest and development of a versatile personality, it's also about the direction at which these talents are directed and the shapes they take after the skill is mastered. The value of tenacity invested at that time of life, is invaluable in the later years. Ironically, as life would have it, those who skipped it would realise it only in the later years and those who apply themselves in concerted self-development will fondly remember those days as the most productive as well as enriching phase of their lives. The excellence streak in Youth is ready to proliferate if we can create a culture that promotes positive action and a formal or informal reward environment that recognises positive application of such effort. This YouthCurry blog post makes a passing reference on how bands in colleges have a short, rocky existence and interest wanes after a while. May be there is nothing much we can do, is it ? No. Band or not, one of the things that a college or university, should do, is to create an environment or culture that promotes versatility, tenacity and recognising the value of higher inspiring goals for application of such effort, whatever you define such noble goals to be. If our colleges continue to just exploit the energy and passionate zeal of the youth to the benefit of frivolous areas, waste them into controversies and be chaltha-hai about irresponsibility, instead of focussing on developing richness in their thinking patterns and preparing them to be responsible citizens, desh ka band bajega.

P.S. As to those millions of readers who are pining to know the answer to why I haven't blogged for long... I won't feel off as if I was Stephen King and attribute it to Writer's Block. I would instead take refuge in this many-faced fellow blogger's succinct reference to a famous punch dialogue : Sneeze, Cough, Hiccup, Yawn, blah blah blah and Blogging Ideas do not come when we demand it. We cannot stop it when they come and we cannot hold them back when they leave.