Still learning abt life...

Last night I couldn’t sleep properly. I had this sick feeling in the stomach and chest and a slight headache too. I had woken up in cold sweat at around 4am and struggled to get back to sleep. Earlier that evening, I had heard the news from my friend. Something had not gone according to plan for me. A plan gone badly wrong. More than a plan, it was an expectation, largely self created, which had come crashing down. Who was to be blamed? Was it me, for dreaming big and not acting enough? Or the circumstances? Or the invisible hand guiding my destiny perhaps. Well it was not the first time in life that I was facing disappointment. Then why was I not able to stomach it?

The mind is a funny creature. It will not rest till it finds the answer or rather plainly put a justification. It hardly matters to the mind if the analysis is correct or not. What matters is if the answer can buy it some momentary peace! So there I was lying in bed trying to buy my quota of peace tonight. Giving myself all sorts of explanations, justifications, theories to tell myself that it was ok that events unfolded as it did and its all a matter of chance or fate whatever one chooses to calls it. However ‘Accept reality’ sounds so good when preaching to others but it requires strength to truly embrace the same. I had read umpteen numbers of self help books, books on letting go but when it came to actually facing my fears, I was not ready to put what I learnt into practice. Why have I failed to learn life’s lessons? Is it because I am still not ready to accept the fact that I am not in total control of the events unfolding in my life? Why am I not able to see all the good things around me, the million blessings that I have and yet just focus on a single perceived failure? I was at a loss to understand my predicament. Was I pushing myself too hard? Or it could be trying to accept reality directly bypassing the phase of disbelief and anger?

Buddhists talk about Mindfulness. It is a state of complete awareness where I allow myself to be immersed in the present moment without any judgement. A state of absolute stillness of mind whereby we perceive the present moment as the only moment with us and embrace it totally. Everytime I have tried this I found myself moving towards a state of peace. I may not become the happiest person around by practicing this but it brings me a step closer to being at peace. Being at peace with myself and in harmony with those around me.

So here was life throwing one more of her challenges at me. I may be tempted to turn back and ask “Why me?” but Arthur Ashe’s famous retort always reminds me that life needs to be judged on the whole and not in parts. Life may not be fair, but it is not fair for all and thus in a way it is fair. I know I will learn to find my way around and be better prepared the next time disappointment comes around. After all, battles, victories and losses are all built in our lives to teach us something. And when the student is ready, the Teacher always appears.

The 'Other' Son!

It was on a cold wintery day that he arrived at our house. I stepped out onto the porch and saw him peering innocently through those big brown eyes of his. I must admit that he was really cute and looked very healthy. Doctor uncle whom we had known for quite a few years now had brought him to our home. We were told that his mother didnt want him anymore and the benevolent doctor felt that our home would provide a secure environment for him to grow. My mom and sis were very excited. I could see my brother also cozing up to him. He had already been named Timothy by the doctor, though I felt the name was so un-Hindu. My Mom was always up for parenting any day. As if she hadnt had enough already with the troubles of bringing up the three of us, she was ready to take on the challenge of rearing her new child now.

From that day onwards, Timothy was the apple of the eye in the house. All of a sudden, everyone was looking out for his needs. Feeding him at the right time, ensuring he always had his siesta, outings etc. Mom even ensured that he was clean and well groomed all the time. We even got a small bed made for him. But he always liked to sleep on our beds. On many a morning, I used to get shouted at for 'sleeping' with him. "He is all grown up now" Mom would say, "Why cant u let him sleep in his bed? What would people say??" I used to grumble that I was not to blame alone and my bro also needed to share some of the blame. But the darling that he was to her, he used to get away most of the times!

Timothy turned out to be more than a step-brother to me. I remember that I used to share with him everything, from incidents at school, movies, to favorite books, to girl-friends, during our long walks together. At times he would be disintersted and keep urging me to walk faster but most times he was a patient listener. I dunno whether he understood grown up stuff but I didnt care.

He loved long drives and always wanted to sit by the window seat which was my favorite too. Being the eldest I had to give in. He just loved the wind blowing across his face as also the smiles of PYTs (pretty young things) staring at him!

His love for non-veg and chocolates clashed with mine. Most of time we siblings had to share stuff with him. And God forbid if he didnt get his due share he would turn the house upside down with his crying . Mom would soon be there to restore order and help us share the food equally. I tried my best many a time to hide chocolates from him but thanks to his God given hyper sense of smell, my efforts were always in vain.

Even though he was the youngest amongst us, he was highly protective of all of us. He wasn't too kind to strangers and ensured that they felt unwelcome at our place. His favorite pastime though was spending as much time as possible outdoors. He loved the long walks, the rides in our car or even just staring outside the window. The glint in his eyes whenever he was taken out was an indication that he really loved being free and one with nature. However his true haven was our Home! Here was a place that he truly felt cared and loved for and he in turn reciprocated this love back!

It has been under a year since Timmy (short for Timothy) left us. However his cute looks, resounding bark and vigorous tail wagging will remain etched in our family's memory forever. Thanks for filling up our lives with so much joy Timmy.

May ur soul rest in peace.

(Timmy: 1992- 2009)

10 years after Kargil

I woke up groggy on a Sunday morning and after brushing my teeth, headed straight for the morning papers. The best part of a Sunday is that I can use the better part of the day reading. The newspapers had the usual political and entertainment titbits. Somewhere in the corner, was this piece about the nation readying itself for Vijay Diwas celebrations. Wow...it has been 10 years already since Operation Vijay! I felt some guilt pangs for needing the newspapers to remind me of this historic day. The news item, though small in size, covered the stories of war heroes, kins of martyrs and how life had changed for most during the past ten years. Supreme sacrifices....Capt Manoj Pandey, Capt Vikram Batra, Lance Naik Sanjay Kumar and so many more stories of supreme sacrifices. By the time I reached the end of the article I had a lump in my throat. We fight over our petty differences, sometimes frustrated when life doesn't offer us what we need....and then we have these Heroes standing so tall in front of us reminding us of what we need to stand up for everyday. I often wonder how the Martyrs would look at country today. Would they take immense pride in looking back at a Nation for whom they have sacrificed their lives or would they be turning in their graves? Do we brush aside the indifference shown by our countrymen with time towards the War Heroes as general systemic apathy or is there a larger bitter truth? No major events out here to commemorate the day; citizens carrying about with their general household activities! Where have we gone wrong? Israel, Germany, USA and many more countries have huge War Memorials to honour the Patriots. Where is ours?

Its time India wakes up and honours its heroes. Not by breastbeating and shouting slogans, but by standing up and recognising the sacrifices. I truly feel that each one of us can be a hero in our own way if we live a honest and virtuous life and be of utmost value of those around us! This is why days like Vijay Diwas should remain in our hearts always. And as Peter Parker's Aunt May says in the movie Spiderman "Everybody loves a Hero".

A Valuable Lesson!

There are times in life when one's ego gets the better of oneself. Being a civil servant in charge of a fairly large subdivision, I have found myself in this familiar situation many a time. I can recount an incident where I was invited to address the students of a Government Arts College in a taluka on how to tackle competitive examinations. I was pretty keen to address the students and readily accepted the invite. The drive was a long one and even as I reached the college I could see students expectantly waiting for me. Some of them were in awe of me (or atleast I thought so!). I was received with a thunderous applause by an audience of about a hundred or so and after the usual garlanding and introductory speeches, I started my address. I could make out that many of them were from a very rural background. Most of them had very poor knowledge of English too. Some were not very interested, while others shot some good questions back at me. At the end of my address, there was a thunderous applause again and I felt pretty good about myself. There were some informal discussions later, where I gave the students few more tips. All this while I could sense myself enjoying the attention and company. I realised that a few years back I was also like one of them, unsure of myself and now here I am, all settled and people were looking up to me. After the thoroughly enjoyable experience, I was invited to the Principal's chamber for refreshments. With an unmistakable spring in my stride and chest all puffed up, I walked out of the room towards the Principal's chamber located in the adjoining building. With a song on my lips and thoughts of the adulation received still afresh, I started descending down the stairs when THUD!!....It took me a few seconds to realise that I had indeed hit my head against a low parapet. At first I thought it was just a bruise, only to realise blood was oozing out. Sheer carelessness on my part or was it? Suddenly from this infallible young achiever, here I was...a mere mortal who wasn't even looking where he was headed. It was a pretty embarrasing moment for me, with all the students watching me, some with shock and some with sniggers. I just wanted go and hide myself somewhere. The local doctor was summoned and he thankfully ruled out any neccessity for stitches. I held a bloodied hanky over my head, quickly thanked the apologetic college staff, sat in my car and drove back quitely. Over the long drive I reflected back over the happenings and felt that I really needed that bang on my head to bring me back to reality. Things do really happen for a reason and more often than not to teach us lessons. One's success or failure is truly a gift from above. We own our successes so much that we let it cloud our own thoughts by inducing a self of false pride in us! We rule out destiny and divine grace when we say that we and only we are responsible for our success. The bang on my head made me realise that it requires only a second for circumstances to change and we are not the sole reason for things happening to us. So why all the fuss over our ego and false pride! Gandhiji gave us a talisman to guide us when the Self becomes too much with Oneself. For me though just the recollection of this 'knock' is enough!!

Life and times at the Mussoorie Academy

It’s quite a challenging task to pen down in just a few lines, what seems to be a million memories to cherish. The period of probation, especially the stay at the Academy, is often referred to as a ‘honeymoon’ phase. Leaving aside the corroboration of the above statement to ‘experienced’ persons, I would nonetheless vouch for the fact that it is an experience to savour for times to come.

I still vividly remember the early morning mist and chill when I stepped off the train at the Dehradun station with a feeling of having ‘arrived’ in more ways than one. I was looking forward to training at the famed LBSNAA. Though the drive up the Queen of Hills was scenic, the entry wasn’t too romantic. Chaotic traffic at the Mall road meant that it took forty minutes to just cover about half a km to reach the Academy. The gate was the first letdown. It was as big as any other gate that one had seen, with an even smaller board. Having trained at the Police Academy at Hyderabad earlier I expected a king-size gate to welcome me here. Months later when I asked the Director of the academy if the gate could be made to look bigger or even better, his answer was that the size of the gate could never determine the quality of officer trainees or the training imparted. He went on to add that the Academy being named after Lal Bahadur Shastri, embodies his simplicity. Looking back now I don’t reflect on how big the gate or the campus was. But I do know that the stay at the academy has shaped each one of us who had trained here in more ways than one. I would say the intangibles that one has gained during training at the academy will far outweigh the tangible benefits.

The process of ‘baptisation’ into the civil service begins from the minute one sets foot in the academy. The initial few days takes a lot of getting used to. Whether it is sharing a room with a stranger, whether it is huffing and puffing all the way up to the Officer’s Mess from Ganga hostel, rising up at ungodly hours for P.T in the biting chill or the sudden downpour just when one was enjoying the day’s warmth, one has to mentally prepare oneself for life at the Academy.

The foundation course though is an experience of a lifetime. Four hundred odd persons from different regions, cultures and educational backgrounds, who found their names on the rank-list had all been thrown together to train for three months. It’s a period when prejudices break, unknown fears melt away and we notice ourselves losing some of our inhibitions. Whether it is the ten day long trek in the Himalayas, village visits to the remotest villages in India, innumerable cultural shows at Sampoornanand auditorium, dancing away into the night at the Officer’s Lounge, sports events at the famed Polo Grounds or the much awaited India Day, the primary objective of Espirit De Corps amongst probationers is met satisfactorily. And in a few cases it also helped probationers pick their life-mates. At the cultural shows one got to see ‘southies’ doing the Bhangra and ‘northies’ indulging themselves in Kolaata or Naga dance. The North-South divide which is famously talked about in every FC batch was probably conspicuous by its absence in our batch.

However the end of FC also brings with it a pall of gloom. All the other services’ probationers leave for their respective academies and we are left with only our service mates. Most of my friends being across services, I now found myself saying Hi to people I had hardly noticed or interacted with during FC. But just as the famous saying goes that one ending is the start of a new beginning, the journey in the IAS had just begun for me. Two months of Bharat Darshan with ten other new faces and suddenly I had seen more of India than I had ever seen before or would probably ever see again. Add to that the bonding and sharing that one experienced during our innumerable sojourns. Though I must confess as the group leader I had one helluva task in managing the ‘motley crew’ and tried my best to cover up for the absence of a couple of probationers here and there during call on(s).

Back at the academy, we were welcomed back and told the long story of who we were and what we stood for (blah...blah...). Honestly it didn’t make much sense to me but I did realise that each one of us stepping out of the academy after our training would have onerous responsibilities on our shoulders. Our batch as such was truly an empowered woman batch. Quite a handful of lady officers were within the top twenty ranks, with the top two ranks going to them too. Of course most of us watched gleefully at the undeclared wars between many to climb up the civil list ladder with a few competing male KTPs also thrown in here and there. For the non-interested types (called ITPs or Invisible Type Probationers) though, the academy was more like a side posting which they were more than glad to wait out before they actually went out for the kill in their respective cadres. I truly hope and wish they are enjoying themselves in the field now and hope the academy invites them to hear their perspective on training.

Being a day scholar all my life, I was looking forward to what hostel life could offer. The academy had taken a decision to put us in shared accommodation. Months later during our Phase-II, amidst sniggers, the course director had to defend the decision of shared rooms and argue that it was not the reason for CBMs not materialising within the batch. That aside, sharing rooms as I had noticed in FC came with its own share of problems but I must give credit to my roommate for having put up with me for more than three months. My room-mate being an early-sleeper, many a night when it got late, I had to tip-toe back into my room hoping not to wake him. My efforts though always went in vain. The room itself was strategically placed and offered a scenic view to the play-ground below and the horizon ahead. Many an evening, despite ferocious monkeys threatening to tear me apart, I have enjoyed the evening chai, lazing on the grass outside watching the Sun set. My neighbour was not so lucky though with monkey attacks and in this one particular hilarious incident which has become folklore in our batch he had to give up the chase behind a monkey which was running away with his undergarments!

The food at the Mess during our times was nothing much to talk about and most of our waistlines were getting smaller. Of course Mr. Rana, the ubiquitous P.T instructor took all the credit. The early morning whistle broke many a sweet dream and it used to take some effort to throw off the blanket and come down in the biting cold for the morning exercises. One of the probationers who had had enough, through a self confessed letter to the Course Director on his absence at P.T, accepted that he had lost the battle between ‘waking up’ and ‘sleeping more’ in favour of the latter!

Coming to the topic of sleeping during lectures, it is something that some of us have mastered over the months without ever getting caught. The auditorium had been aptly named ‘Sampoornanand’. Some probationers have even earned the sobriquet of ‘serial sleepers’ and one has to stop and wonder how they still wake up at the end of the lecture and ask pertinent questions. 'Yours truly’ is also guilty of dozing off on a couple of occasions for which I squarely hold the speaker of the session responsible. My neighbour had caught this unceremonious act on his mobile cam and it became quite a rage when it was passed around the classroom.

It’s not been long since I have moved out of the Academy but I do miss the protective environment which the academy provided. One often reminisces the wonderful times spent with batch mates, faculty, staff of LBSNAA and the people of Mussoorie. ‘Life and times at LBSNAA’ would probably take a lifetime to recount. But sufficing to say that here is an institution that has given me a sense of common identity, shared values and a feeling of belongingness to the Service as a whole and am sure that it would be shaping many more minds and giving the country many more able hands to run the wheels of governance smoothly in the years to come and help us stand by our motto – Yoga Karmasu Kaushalam.

Letting Go of the need to Control

There are times in life when we feel the need to control. In fact I have felt it most of my life. I wanted to control circumstances, certain events, their outcomes, other people's reactions, thoughts, actions. Trying to control every aspect of life including the uncontrollables is the source of stress and unhappiness....and I have learnt this the hard way. Once we realise that neither do we truly 'own' anything nor can we truly 'control' others, life would be a lot simpler. We would realise then that whatever the situations that we face in life, the only thing that we can control are our own thoughts, feelings and action in response to a given situation. Funny that this simple fact hit me only when I was in the car the other day in the middle of a traffic jam in the city of Chennai(Madras). I  was fretting and cursing my luck for being late and then it suddenly occured to me that by honking and cursing the situation was not improving....In fact I was angry at not being able to control something that is uncontrollable i.e. to make the traffic move faster. 

Well most things are like this in life....without even stopping to think a moment we worry about what happened in the past or what may happen in the future even though both these situations are not in our control. Taking precaution and planning for the future is fine but trying to control the outcome is way beyond us. On being asked how he would handle the fast Australian wickets, I remember my favorite cricketer Rahul Dravid saying that he is not bothered much by the uncontrollables(the pitch). He said he would concentrate on what is within his control and thats his batting. He went on to help India register its first test win abroad at Sydney. 

One of my friends once told me "You know when the Gods laugh most? When we make plans!". This is not to discourage people from making plans or making them fatalistic. In fact one must have a clear plan, direction and purpose in life. However one also needs to hold on to it loosely and detach oneself from the outcome. Absurd as it may sound this is the only practical way to live a healthy life. Too much of our life is wasted in us fretting over the fact that our plans fell through. What we dont see is that when one plan fell through, it has created an opportunity for another to be put in place. So friends the next time you feel something hasn't worked for ur good, trust the higher plan, let go of the need to control and flow with life....Nothing can ever go wrong for this is your life.

Whats in a name?

So here I am...Blogging for the first ever time! Better late than never I guess. When I racked my brains as to what my first ever blog post should be on, it didnt take me long to narrow down to that famous saying of Juliet Capulet "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." Juliet rejects a name as an artificial and meaningless convention. This topic also happens to be the first ever time I spoke on stage…so all the more reason for picking this as my first blog topic.
In countries like ours, we have ceremonies running into days devoted to naming the new born. In most cases, the surname signifies the family name or the caste. Most Indonesians do not use a family name and stick to just one name while the Japanese usually do not use a middle name. In some Spanish countries, people have two last names: their mother's father's name and father's name! One has to really wonder then if these names are just labels or social identities. I for one have always been against display of one's social identity through names. It could be for the fact that I come for caste ridden country or even the fact that I use just a single word name.
However names also influence us. I had this one friend of mine with the name Shiv Sewak meaning Servant of Lord Shiva ( a Hindu God). He told me something very interesting. He was not a very religious person but the day he came to know the significance of his name, a transformation occured within him. He felt a natural attraction towards the Lord and today he is a devotee.
We have always been told never to judge a book by its cover. I have always tried to live my life that way. Sometimes a name as a social tag becomes very hard to shed and one is always viewed with some kind of bias. This is something that I have always tried to guard myself against. Allow every person to be the person she or he is actually before judging them. I am aware that my country(India) is named after a river (Indus) which flows today only in a small territory within India. Yet the change of the name does not take away the essence of the country. Whether the names have changed to Kolkatta, Mumbai, Chennai or Bengaluru, the spirit of the city has always remained the same. So the next time someone asks me why being a South-Indian I have a Punjabi sounding name, my answer to them would be "Whats In A Name?"