Lock-down 2020

#179

This year has put everyone to sleep; it has left us in cuts and bruises in the mind. The daily routine being trampled over to a lock-down living. Actually we never heard the word “lock-down” or “pandemic” and now we hear nothing else; imprisoned in our homes. 2020 is a cusp year - hopefully we change from a greedy consumerist society to a responsible eco-friendly living. Prayerfully!!

            3 full months – April, May, and June – have gone down the river of time; add 10 days of March and the count is over a hundred days of lockdown (25% of the year gone down the drain). How did this impact me? My loan process keeps getting delayed as a medieval curse which meant no earning or activity for 6 months of 2020. This year had this whimsical run on me. These are the residual memories:
 a)     Jan and Feb were two months when I felt the full force of apathy. I kept railing: The world is a maha selfish place, it cares no two hoots for me. Then these high-voltage energy thoughts stabilized to a rationale: It is the cost of living in a mass based society. We are besieged by numbers; we are rats in an army. Either fall in line or be swamped. And I am the rat that got run over!!!!   
b)     My notes on “Alexander the Great” in January; “Bhagavad Gita” recording in May, or resuming the “word study” in ages felt a tailwind for keeping the mind in good humour. But as the lock-down days kept piling, I found myself slipping into self-doubt and waiting (for the loan).  
c)      For a month – between May and June – I enjoyed the sea breeze on the terrace. I gave myself a 45 min schedule for a bit of chanting, knee exercises and listening to songs. But these days I am far too lazy. Now I content with 90 min of Vipassana and consume a lot of self-defeating television hours. I am ashamed to have consumed 9 episodes of "Aarya" and two full seasons of “24” (48 episodes in my hall of shame). When I am on a TV spell, I know I have hit my psychological bottom. The only redeeming factor is “Colt Clark and the quarantine kids”. There’s a 6 years old girl there who invokes a surrogate parent in me. Bellamy is too cute; this family band fills me with endorphins for a YouTube watch.  
        For me, living is mostly in the mind and so I should not crib too much on lock-down. More than fear of contracting Covid 19 or chained to a home, my main crib is “not trading”. More than money, stock market trading affords me thrills and spills. It’s an arena to test your hypothesis. When Glenmark reached a high of Rs.550, I planned a paper trade of shorting a lot. In less than three hours the stock went down to Rs. 475 and I would have made over 90 k for a “mental high” over a premise: a stock cannot have a 35% upside in two days and hope to stay there. The “options chains” said so in the morning and I danced with joy for a gut feel validation. Then it feels a flat tyre; easy earnings no longer possible as the loan is inordinately delayed.

            Slowly I stumbled on this insight on the "22 years of heart surgery" self-celebrations: Life is about waiting, patience and humility. It helps if you have curiosity and during these lock-down months my curiosity quotient is dry. Still I managed to hit on this insight: Most people particularly women lead an insular and minuscule life upon marriage and kids. To these brahmahastis; their world begins and ends with their kids. My siblings would have died of despair if a marriage or kids were denied. It would have driven them to an lunatic home while I frolic on my freedom. My immediate frustrations are the constraints of a  “minimum balance” living. I want my knees examined by a seventh generation Ayurveda specialist in the neighbourhood that T H Iyer mama speaks highly off, resume the SPARRC exercises for which I need a two wheeler, and a bit of swimming and guitar. That these activities have to wait a loan sanction is what is eating my soul. But I guess the answers should be out by middle of July – one way or the other. 
              What is boredom? No new thoughts in reading; books feel a weight on the mind and as insipid as masticating a chapathi in my IMT days. No new songs to dance; no new thoughts for the mind to revel. Then I console myself: wait for the monsoons that are near at hand. The South West would bring the smell of earth and the murmurs of a drizzle to a furnace city. Wait for the tailwinds of a loan sanction. Wait. 

Sushant Singh Rajput lessons!

#178

In over 14 years of blogging I have rarely commented on macro affairs. My blogs are almost always about me, my life experiences, how they impact me in feelings. I don’t have a “personal” side that needs hiding or masking; I am a very average person grappling through life issues. I think it’s foolish to live under a curtain; as long as you don’t share your account balance in your savings account or the passwords to your mails frankly nothing should be PRIVATE unless you are sleeping with different women or persuading another man’s wife to elope. If you pause to think, the world is callous. Nobody is interested in you, much less your stories. You might as well paint an apathetic world with your colours. I blog my stories for a reading value; it gives me clarity is my payoff. 

            Sorry we got distracted in this needless self-praise though entirely not out of place. It got us that “we can be open about our stories to our friends or anyone in the neighborhood” as long as it does not recoil on us. Now to SSR!

            I am not a movie goer, though I did watch “Chhichhor” on Hotstar. It was an average fare, I liked it though not bowled over. For an Indian movie, it was a refreshing but if your usual habitat is Hollywood this is a watchable time-pass ones. Then I heard the news of the suicide on Sunday. It did not affect me. But as I kept following the news on Twitter, I was caught in the heated nepotism debate. Seriously on Sunday the actor’s suicide was news but by the end of Tuesday the dripping poison of this debate had its venom. I felt outraged at the injustice. I saw all those Karan Johar’s slights, or that dumb Sonam Kapoor clips (Sushant Singh Rajput! Who??) and Alia Bhatt sniggering at him (I will marry Ranbir, kill Sushant and hook up with Ranveer) or the maha insult of SSR by shortie SRK and lanky Shahid Kapoor (On a dais of a film awards function, which was sickeningly patronizing) on Twitter. This is not my world, so please stomach my distaste and disrespect to a SRK or Alia or Johars. I never respected their creativity or their work, ever! 

            SSR’s death shows a mirror of our society – it does not respect talent at all. This is something I have been crying hoarse for decades in these blogs. We are self-centered and apathetic society. Maimed beggars at traffic signals does not make us kinder; we callously drive away when confronted with eunuchs and little five years’ girls who carries a baby half her size. I have repeatedly made this point ad infinitum: We are a rat’s society not only in terms of numbers but we also have a rat’s urgency to horde (it hides its food from the prying eyes of others, later itself forgets the place. Such a depraved self-defeating creative). So this nepotism makes sense: an actor would promote his son or daughter as much as a musician promoting his wards or a ex-cricketer making a phone call to the state selection board “Can you please include my son in the team?” This is no different from bribing a TTE for a sleeper berth in a train or paying donation fees to get your 3-year-old into the best convent school in town. I dare say that every Indian is a crook. What about me? Am I snow white in integrity? Fat chance, if Jayalalitha had sanctioned a petrol pump dealership, I would have no qualms erecting cut-outs or prostrating at her feet. 

            Now to SSR. What he did was wrong. You don’t commit suicide if you are out of big productions. Suicide over a love failure is laughable. There are plenty of fishes in the sea. When I was dumped in romance, I was angry but never suicidal. I rubbished her name to mud in my blogs. With time, I realized without an atom of doubt it was a lucky escape. Actually when you ponder there is no reason why anyone must self-deliver unless a terminal disease and you can’t digest your food or you need someone to clean your ass.

            A mind slips into depression when the thoughts get into a cyclic pattern almost helplessly to “I am worthless and I am good for nothing”. But depression sets in those weak people whose inner wiring feeds a strong self-critic. Or those who live on others crumbs or evaluations. These days each of my blogs invariably ends with this leading premise: there is no medicine better than “learning to respect and loving yourself”.  The mind needs to anchor - I am respect worthy, I will not put myself down or allow anyone to put me down including gods or devils or a fuckin Bollywood asshole.

            Imagine I have a story session with a Salman Khan or Karan Johar over my screenplay. I will be nice and courteous. If they were to say, “Sathya, we will get back to you.” I will say my goodbyes in the calmest tone, “You don’t know what you are missing out. It’s your loss entirely.” Even if nobody finds it “movie-worthy”, I can live with it. But on no account I will drool saliva or fawn over them. This is a scene I did not conjure up now for a blog post. I actually lived it. After “O my darling India” was published in 2009 I thought “story writing” would be a natural career option. I dreamed of book signing fame and being interviewed by BBC. But I met a couple of literary agents and publishers that left me so tepid that I threw in the towel. I stopped marketing my manuscripts. I realized that the Indian publishing is pulp while I am semi-literary. My attitude was: "You don’t deserve me or the Indian reading public’s wavelength is too low for me to dig my nose in.” I realized soon that we are a English speaking nation but not a English reading one. I made my contempt for Indian publishing houses so public in my blogs that TOI did an article on my views!!!! I did not stop with this. I took writing samples of a Bachi Karkaria, Chetan Bhagat, Shobaa De, Santosh Desai and many others and edited it for a better read. I had the audacity to send that link to them and inflict a personal humiliation. 
               Even in Abu Dhabi when Mohan was ramming the rod to a colleague’s ass every day I had the gumption to stand up and say, “Sir, I can’t take this verbal lashing every day even if it is directed against somebody. I am quitting.” I walked away from a 2 lacs a month job without even a second thought.  When HDFC bank rejected my loan application after two months, I wrote to the CEO and even the Finance Minister. They sent a team of four managers to my house to placate me!!! Love yourself to such intensity that not even Gods can insult you. Of course they will be many people born to run you down, or find fault and cavil. Don’t believe them and if you are as much a cunning fox as me, they will end up eating out of your hands.

Post Script: Self-respect is something you are born with.  When I was working in Contract Advertising, Blore in 1994 my manager John would twist a knife for a bully, "If the report is not in my table by 9:00 am, you will kiss the job goodbye." I replied, "Teach me advertising for a month and then I will teach you." In 1988 my father was invited to T Subbarami Reddy's daughter's wedding. That man was a film producer and a politician and those in attendance were stars like Sridevi, Jayaprada, Jeetendra and so many of them. I accompanied my dad for the wedding. They had two entrances; one in which he and his wife greeted the stars while the second one was manned by his manager to usher in lesser mortals like my father. I cringed at the slight, refused the dinner while my father went for a bite.  But for me the most vivid memory is Vinod in school. He walked up to Sam Pitroda (during the Rajiv Gandhi government) and said, "Your reservation policy stinks."  Sam replied, "Man, you seem a little frustrated."  When he narrated his incident to me, I asked, "What if he had thrown you out?" My friend replied: I would have taken a front page advertisement in Deccan Chronicle with Sam and my picture next to each other and then say "this man asked me to GET OUT." The message is clear: You don't go out of your way to get into tangles with authority. But if you are slighted, give it back. 

Living in Palavakkam

#177

Be it Besant Nagar or Palavakkam the core of my life has not changed; the contour and the template is the same for decades. I have never been an outdoor person given the acute arthritis; this suits me actually. I am a lazy sod for physical labour; even invalids do more walking and outdoors which is fine by me. I am not remotely envious. Rather I am content lying down, or watching a movie or listening to songs or just squander away time when nothing seems right. Nature made me a thinking machine; I don’t want to distract the flow of thoughts to fitful expenditure of physical energy when the mental harvest is so much better.

            Slowly Palavakkam is registering on the mind. My golden 30 min is in the terrace where I chant a few slokas and do a wee-bit of pranayama. I like the night skies, the breeze hits the body hard and I stare at the skies. It is a Aamir Khan staring at empty spaces for a “visionary scholar” pose except I am more original than that fucker. I watched “Jojo Rabbit” this week and felt that we Indians can’t make such a high quality movie for the next hundred years. I loved “Togo” and then “Mary Poppins returns” in this lockdown.

            Slowly I am getting pally with the neighbours. I invited a person home; he happened to be a rare Brahmin in the locality. I shot an exploratory arrow: I am yet to perform a homam in the new house. Could you recommend a priest? kinds. These are half-volleys to a fellow Brahmin – ritualistic by nature and also bonding - where he gets a chance for a lovely cover drive.

            I am steadily recognizing the virtues of my cook, Nalini, which is not apparent at the surface. She vibrates hyper energy; ready to rebut or snap. Meera was friendly and you could even crack a joke and have a laugh. Thangam was the school principal who vibrated a lot of patience and gravitas. Nalini on the other hand is emotionally uptight; it’s difficult to have a conversation. But she is mighty resourceful. She got my ration card registered in a PDS here. This month I was getting sick and tired of sambar; she coaxed me to buy the Idly batter (they come in sachets). Her cooking drives me to despair; there is a certain decisiveness about a brahmin cuisine and try as hard she could never muster. Yesterday she requested a Brahmin lady in the neighborhood to teach her for a week. That lady is a wife of a retired Income Tax officer (so definitely high placed is society) and Nalini brought her to my house for a few free tuition sessions. Palavakkam has that village spirit, even in the grocery store the lady is game for a chat or free advice. I smile heartily and say a few inanities: Modi might lift the lockdown this week or something equally banal. I get a lot of banter from Vijay Agencies where I buy chips and grape juice bottles. Definitely a lot friendlier than Besant Nagar!!!

            The last 4 days I have been listening to OPTIONS online classes – each day there’s almost 6 hours of content and that goes for 5 days.  Just to hear Kapil Mokashi on Options is a privilege. He says, “Teaching Options online is a challenge for both the students and me. I end up having sore throat, but as long as my students benefit it’s no big deal.” Kapil is a kind of man I would like to be in my next birth; he is quiet but put him in front of a classroom and he comes alive. On discipline he said, “You may have the best course material and the best teachers but it’s your own efforts that will tilt the balance. You can’t expect others to do pushups for you!!!” After Mariam Janahi in Bahrain in 2003 I have not come across a person so perfect in demeanor. He is not a friendly person but once he returned my missed call and we spoke for 30 minutes and it felt a privilege. I felt as honored as when Mariam poured tea for me in her house; an Arab inviting you and serving tea is higher in standing than the Nobel peace prize. 

            TH Iyer mama calls me twice a day. He is as regular as a parent. I was telling him, “The first thing I will do after getting the loan is spend a week in Bangalore for knee treatment.” Dhamma Mani Sir knows a place where they take care of body aches and arthritis; he promised to tag me along next month. TH Iyer mama suggested a Ayurveda option in Chennai itself. I will try both; I need a respite from this acute lingering pain. Even if the pain comes down by 25% I will sign half of wealth away for a hyperbole.

            I slowly realize that there are heroes all around. Nalini is a woman of resilience and character. There is a story here but I shall respect her privacy. Kapil is a role-model; these recordings (I applied for this classroom session but I was waitlisted. But they were gracious enough to give access to the recordings) is getting me confident. I feel the twitch of my fingers to resume trading. He is 37 and as classy as the great Mariam Janahi. Both talk as smooth as a Rolls Royce, both use silence more effective than speech something I am yet to learn.  

I am 51 and I am scared; I have lived on my own for more than a decade. Each year is getting difficult. If I can earn in the 2-3 lacs range a month, if my knees get a little better then I can dream of swimming and hiring a guitar instructor. Frankly I don’t wish to give god a natural death, I feel tempted to blast my brains just for kicks. I am a veteran whose time is long up, nothing excites me. Not even the turbulence of the stock market (I am very passionate on my trade plans) or even if Queen of Sheba or Helen of Troy seduces me under a umbrella in those lounge seaters on a Pacific ocean beach. I am too self-immersed to take a female. But that's where living begins, drama starts. And room for disputes and arguments that my nerves can't stand. As of now, let me wait for the loan which is expected this week and bear the knee pains with the patience of a sage. Patience thy name is Sathya.....

Being “alive”

#176

I realized this of recent making: my life is essentially a desert-ish but there are moments where I come alive to every atom. I pray for 4-5 such occasions in a year where my mind is absorbed to the point of losing my identity; I am not self-conscious so dipped in an activity. This is the magic of being in a zone, at times when I write there is no “I” or even the “keypad” or the “screen” – all merge into a state of timeliness where a beginning of a thought takes flight on its own. These are few moments in life – very rare – that you feel the presence of the divine. Nature does not intrude on your life, but it’s the one that determines your destiny. There are thousands of unsung geniuses for every Bill Gates and a Steve Jobs. Most of them bloom unseen and unappreciated but what the hell they do become instruments on which nature plays its tune.

            A bit self-serving argument but let me explain further to make this obscure point. In the last three years there were certain events that got this timelessness in me:

a)     Going to SPARRC in 2019 got in a lot of endorphins in the system. Exercising for an hour under the watchful eye of a trainer, there is nothing remotely exciting about it. Bring some banter, supply your own humour, put some positive characters and you feel a bit of magic about living. Being in India, there are few occasions where the “environment is conducive”. It’s like being in SDP’s or Rajaram’s company, each time I talk to them my mind conjures up a startling insight or my humour is on the plane of a Beans or Jim Carrey! They give me the “space” to take liberties and the mind feeds on that little won freedom and rewards itself.

b)     I loved the one week in North India last year – be it the 50^th birthday part on day-1, day-2 at Saharanpur and a jungle safari at Rajaji National Park, then Haridwar and Rishikesh on day -3 and 4, before ending with a four hours scooty ride in Mussoorie that was a “standout” amidst standouts.

c)      I loved writing “Bangalore Vipassana” reminiscences of March, 2019 and also July round of “meditation at Igatpuri” (it was a three-part series). For me, doing the “Portraits” series in 2017 was the road to recovery. That finally convinced me that I was alive and it felt that a writer in me can never be extinguished. I may get rusty and pedestrian but there’s a vein of creativity embedded here, I treat my words with a lot of affection and at times their magic shows on page.

d)     Oh, how much I loved each of my Mumbai visits – Core strategy in June, 2019 then August for Future and Options in September.  I was mad with anger during the Options classes but a simple taxi ride with the instructor got in some much of healing and embracement. Today Rahul is one of my best friends, so is Kapil. Both instructors are possibly the best trading professionals of this zombie Bharatmata. OTA and SPARCC have a commonality – both hire professionals who vibe well, they squeeze out a measure of positivity from the interactions.

e)     I loved Madurai for those four days in December 2018 – flying into a tiny airport in a small plane, those temple visits especially Madurai Meenakshi was a memorable visit. But it was travelling in the 3 hour passenger trains from Madurai to Tenkasi for Courtrallam Falls or Madurai Rameshwaram that fetched the mind those special moments.

There are some Vipassana centres which vibrate this specialness: I always loved the Bangalore centre; Igatpuri, Kolhapur and Nagpur (there is something to Maharashtra; I visited these places during monsoons and it was a sheer delight) felt soothing to the mind; Hyderabad centre vibrates authority to me, Chennai is like common salt and so prosaic that I usually give it a miss. There is no rationale to how your mind is wired for its perception but treat it with respect. Don’t stray too far from its inferences, life is mostly about “how you feel” rather than any charm of its own.

            2020 had its share of “special moments” that felt a privilege to live. My mind was dancing with excitement when I wrote the four-part Alexander series, I loved myself doing the audio files of the Bhagavad Gita summaries on Anchor. I also relished my drinking sessions with Ranga at Maris, sad those days are denied to me from this extended lockdown. Ranga has a mind that soars from the drab of life. The best part of such timeless moments is “you don’t plan for them” for it just imposes itself on you. That’s where you get spontaneity and creativity, they seem to flow inside you. Otherwise for most part, it is dal, chawal and roti. Life is dreary as a hot summer breeze in a Sahara, there is a revulsion to waking up each day. But the compensate is phenomenal when nature decides to use you as its instrument. When you love others as much as you love yourself then magic flows. Reality is "most times we fall into self-pity and self-hatred and look at the world with apathy" but for these special moments. When you love life, it sometimes loves you back. 

Digging in the dark

#175

Digging in the dark and alone; that’s me in a drama of life.  Just pause, allow the flow of thoughts to settle a bit, take a ride above them and what you do know about yourself? Very little, I would wager. The biggest riddle in the universe is to understand the nature of your own mind; when it spikes up to “agitating” thoughts or how frequent and what are the areas the thoughts – lustful thoughts or revenge or forlorn or grieving ones – that clasp you with.

            Vipassana and Mindfulness has got in a lot of self-awareness for me. I learnt to observe myself. I was shocked at myself; the last year's river rafting run in Rishikesh got no adrenalin. I was imperturbable despite the chilly glacier water swamping me in that small inflatable rubber boat. I should have been squealing like the rest of the crew; but sadly not even a whimper. Throw back to 1998 in Manipal Heart Foundation where there was a procedure for draining fluid from the peri-cardium in the Cath Lab.  It was hot summer May morning at 10’0 clock, I had just turned 29 in that week's stay at the hospital, when a patient next to me suffered a cardiac arrest. He was shrieking in despair: Darling I love you. It is hurting, I am scared. This is the end. His rant was so infectious that my heart rate which was a steady 90 beats to a minute now climbed to 135. You see, we are all connected to those computer terminals that shows your pressure points and heart rates, it was then I realized how toxic negative spikes in energy is for the poor heart. This incident had a huge impact on my psyche; after this I intuitively avoided noisy people and any place that got crowds in. I learnt to appreciate quietude. And now in May, 2019 my heart just wouldn’t race to the river run in the Ganges at Rishikesh!!!!

            On 12^th May, 2020 I went to RTO Office at Thiruvanmiyur. I was excited to be on the ECR again after two months of cooping in my apartment at Palavakkam. My driving license was renewed and I felt a surge of excitement for a while. I came home and was sick for two days. Any time my mind views more than a dozen people, it just shuts off or feels fused out – such has been my cooping, a claustrophobic cloistered living.  Then on Saturday, 30^th May, I spent two hours in familiar Besant nagar for bank errands and bit of food shopping. And ever since my mind feels like the churning of a giant wheel. Being so alone, my mind is fused out, jaded, drained out when I see crowds!!!

            And of the best things I realized about life and me was “I don’t know whether I am a force for good or evil in this innings here.” There is no doubting the courage and perseverance; I have lived 51 years without basic affection. If a mother rejects a child, it usually doesn’t make it. The first relation of a baby is with the mother, if that equation is messed up then life is an uphill task – swimming against the current – for a life. I had a terrible mother, physically abusive father, apathetic sisters for the first twenty years of life. All those scars manifested as cyclical depression in IMT days. I entered adulthood without a ray of hope like a hapless lamb waiting to be slaughtered, the road ahead was a suicide or a mental asylum. Then came heart surgery, a woman burst out of nowhere and when that relation flunked I knew: I am back to “on my own” territory. I have a lot of friends but pause to reflect: I never had anyone in the house who owned me up. I was a rotten potato, abused and reviled in my first twenty years. Then next 30 years were in repairing this rotten apple. There is tremendous heroism for an attempt at becoming normal, this journey was my own. That’s a reason why I don’t reserve faith in Gods above – nature has not furnished me one reason to be grateful for.

            I ask myself: what will make me happy now?  The answer is immediately intuitive: I would love a bonding with a human being. I want to be trusting and bonding (sharing banter, feeling worthy of myself, feeling wanted in the eyes of another person). Such a bonding happens only in a man-woman relationship and I am past that station. Now if I chance across a woman of my dreams and fantasies, it would be hard labour in the bed. As a friend jocularly said: my testosterone levels have dipped, there is no more joy in the bed. Actually the coitus looks a horrible joke. So where does it leave me? Can I come across a place or a person in whom I can reserve faith without necking and tonguing? Conceptually it's an oxymoron, and it is. Most probably I will have to manage my old years on my own just as I have these 51 years.

            Earning 3-4 lacs a month on the bourses will not get me out of my skins exulting, it’s more a par for the course. My knees is unlikely to improve. If I save a wish, I would love to play guitar like a rock band front man. Singing and playing the guitar is the best I can hope from this point in life, maybe get in swimming too. I might take on to the Kumbakonam air, at least that place guarantees me “Brahmin Iyer food” that Palavakkam does not. To my mind, I can’t think of anyone who has brought more courage and patience to life than me. Yet the question remains: Am I a force of good or evil? I cross my heart and affirm: I don’t know. I don’t know what attributes are rewarded in life or after death? But one thing is sure, I may reach an abode meant for the greatest warriors or I might be condemned to the worst dregs, a place where the waste rots away. I am usually the worst or the best in a situation, there is no middle comfort zone of safety. Simply put, I am not sure whether I am a force of good or evil. Trying to figure out would be the course of my reminding years. Even now there is no destination in sight or the roads mapped, I trudge along none wiser. I am a lost kid in a cosmic traffic fare in downtown. I used to holler as a kid, now I am that derelict beggar in the corner of the street. Apathetic as the world around is.