Sathya, the Alexander

#165

Needless to say, Alexander the Great.

            This loan imbroglio (extremely confused, complicating and embarrassing situation) served some wonderful lessons. Today I know as much as a loan consultant on procedures and documentation. For those regular to my pages this is one more affirmation that we indeed are a rotten apples society for an insight: when you approach this system from the front door, they’ll ask you for come through the back door.

            These loan procedures are a funny thing – you get a housing loan within six months of purchase, interest rates for a home loan is 9-10%, minimum 5 years to a maximum of 15 years duration. Then there is mortgage loan and Personal loan (say 10-11%) while the private financiers starts from 12% onwards (say a Cholamandalam Finance or Muthood Finance). Loans are given to salaried people and people with good IT returns; so if you are a self-employed asshole like me, ask your auditor to dress up your IT filing. Pay a nominal income tax even if you go through the entire year without earning a dime. Now with this much experience, I am getting loan by greasing a lot of hands. That shows even if I have 5% odds of success, I have enough cunning-ness to open the doors wide.

            The first 3 months of 2020 got me to introspect a lot. Take these as my insights: The world just does not care for you. My definition of Maya is the self-delusion that we are cared and protected in this society. It’s further away than meeting Harry Potter’s characters on the subway!!! Second: India is corrupt to its neck and ass, exploit it to your advantage.

            When I look at my life, I have grown leaps and bounds. My teenage years were a blur, the 20-30s was a decade of RAW COURAGE as I managed jobs, heart surgery, 30-40s were years of SLOW RECOVERY as I found a lot of solace in TS walks, Swami Paramarthananda’s lectures. And now 40-50s is the decade of re-birth. It feels like going back to a womb for a world of possibilities. For isn’t the definition of DEATH is that we lose all that we know and feel to BIRTH where we are born and start from scratch. Mindfulness turned me inside out for a new leaf without the scars of the past.

            One of the worst sins of living is GUILT which is a result of wrong interpretation of the past. The SELF-CRITIC in us must die so that a SELF-FRIEND is born. Most people don’t bat for themselves they are busy batting for Modi or Rahul or Tendulkar or SRK. How absurd!!! A daily practice of GRATITUDE makes you HUMBLE of creation.

            I will be 51 in 6 weeks-time and I will not change a line of my script. Nature is a mother and a thousand times kinder and wiser for it gave me a Balakanth, Sarada mami, Ranga, TH Iyer. It also gave me a morally vacuous pUsHpA who entered my life for a dose of romance, and the exit couldn't have been better timed. It’s then the penny falls – we need the gross characters. But for my sisters, I would have never grown.  

            When I look at my past I have nothing but love and respect for me now. I have survived storms, tsunamis of shame and abandonment. Each time I fell to the abyss – rock bottom – I clawed my way back to the summit. For a long time I thought of myself as a bird without wings and mortified of heights until I realized that I have been an eagle along. We don’t live in a random universe of chance, it’s a painstakingly orderly in its writ, each dot and line on the canvas is a work of a supreme artist. This is a universe that is so efficient that it records every thought and feeling of all its creatures. These mental imprints are the inputs for evolution. The recording and storing is not in the heavens above but as energy packets in your own mind. Once you know how to handle those energy streams of the mind, you win always. Including bribing your way to a housing loan!!! Just love yourself, trust yourself, and you'll have the mindset of Alexander. Whatever I do, it's world-class for an output. I add value to life with each moment or as many as I can.