Girish's Blog

The quote: Expansion is life, contraction is death. - Swami Vivekananda, Lectures from Colombo to Almora, Reply to the Calcutta Address The story: An aging master grew tired of his apprentice complaining and so, one morning, sent him for some salt. When the apprentice returned, the master instructed the unhappy young man to put a handful of salt in a glass of water and then to drink it. "How does it taste?" the master asked. "Bitter," spit the apprentice. The master chuckled and then asked the young man to take the same handful of salt and put it in the lake.The two walked in silence to the nearby lake and once the apprentice swirled his handful of salt in the water, the old man said, "Now drink from the lake." As the water dripped down the young man's chin, the master asked, "How does it taste?" "Fresh," remarked the apprentice. "Do you taste the salt?" asked the master. "No," said the young man. At this...

May 2013 We leave the small town of Kidangoor, near Kottayam, at 730 AM to head out to Thattekad. En route we stop at the ancient Subrahmanya temple at Kidangoor . It is absolutely quite except for the calls of a few Oriental Magpie Robins pecking at worms in the circumambulatory path around the temple. Women are not allowed inside the temple which has a beautiful image of Karthikeya with his spear and peacock. There is a small Vishnu temple on the side. We step out and walk onwards the river which has a bathing ghat for devotees. It is an amazing view - clear water lined by lush greenery as far as the eye can see. In a tiled hall nearby we hear the rhythmic tapping indicating that a Kathakali class is in progress.As we turn back our progress is arrested by the sight of two Asian Paradise Flycatchers, a Rufous Treepie and a few Oriental Magpie Robins. On the drive towards Thattekad we see many acres of land have been stripped bare of the native vegetation and rep...

Many of us have grown up reading The Hindu as part of the daily ritual and it has seemed a part of every morning as much as a cup of hot tea and MS Subbulakshmi's rendering of Venkateshwara Suprabatham. However, in the past few years, The Hindu has taken on a strident anti-Hinduism tone. The most recent example is a recent article attributing the increased occurrence in rapes to traditional Hindu practices and the "masculinity" projected by the famous photo of Swami Vivekananda taken at Chicago in 1893. The Ramakrishna Math, Chennai had sent a letter to the Editor , demanding an apology, but the Hindu has posted a censored version of the letter on their website which removes the demand for the apology. There were a number of comments on the article criticizing the author's efforts to drag Swami Vivekananda's name into this discussion and also critical of The Hindu for publishing this. In a reaction similar to what the Chinese (heroes of The Hindu editori...

After living in Bangalore, with it's cross-city drives turning out to be day-trips,Mysore seems like a small town. We drive a couple of kilometers and are soon out of the city, heading out towards Gundlupet. There is a steady procession of villagers driving goats, sheep and the occasional bullock towards the city. It's Bakrid, when pious Muslims sacrifice an animal to show their devotion, and the villagers want to sell their livestock when prices are high. Gundlupet, like many small South Indian towns, has one main road where all the prominent landmarks are located - high school, college and government offices. However, it's clean, and the garbage and sewerage have not yet overtaken the town. The roads are lined with decades-old trees as we turn South-West and approach Bandipur National Park. We cross Bandipur and are soon at the entrance of Muthanga National Park. The entrance resembles the Bannerghatta National Park , choked with small kiosks ...

For a nation with centuries of tradition in plays, stories and legends, curiously there are no stories of superheroes in India. Stories of characters like Robin Hood, Superman and masked superheroes are not part of our cultural narratives. And why,indeed, do you need superheroes when you have a God who can cross a sub-continent and an ocean while carrying a mountain, a God, who as a young boy, lifted a mountain with his pinkie, a warrior who fought entire armies single-handedly and yet in the midst of the battle-field could discuss the subtleties of philosophical thought, a prince who renounced his kingdom and would be remembered for centuries as the 'Light of Asia', a monk who crossed the oceans to spread the message of uncompromising non-dualism to the materialistic West and was greeted as a conquering hero when he returned to his motherland ? For centuries, India has ignored political power and wealth as metrics for measuring  greatness. And now, as we race in our efforts t...

The last bus to the Bangalore International Airport, late on a Friday night, weaves through a city that is a ghostly reflection of its daytime avatar and a pale re-creation of what the city roads used to look like a decade ago during daytime. The roads are largely deserted, except for the occasional airport bus or cars that speed by , blinding the traffic in the opposite direction with their high beam headlights. All the small shops that line the inner city commercial areas are shuttered. Autorickshaws are invisible, except for a few in front of theaters waiting to take late night cinema-goers home. Traffic lights stop cycling through the daily routine of red orange and green; the orange lights blink through the night. Bright lights pour on to construction sites where work goes on day and night. Vehicle headlights reveal the dust floating in the atmosphere as old buildings are demolished, foundations dug, and cement is mixed. White Indica cabs with yellow number plates and da...

In 1999, the stock market was behaving as though gravity did not exist, people were trying to sell dogfood on the Internet, Google was not much more than a thought experiment and India had 1.2 million mobile subscribers (it's 400 million now). On the personal front, I'm back in Bangalore after ten years, and the city has become a bloated caricature of it's previous self. NASA's Earth observatory has a great set of images cataloging these changes. Urbanization has increased and so has the deforestation of the Amazon rain forests and the ozone hole. Arctic ice has declined, many water bodies have shrunk. Where will be be in 2019 ? In Bangalore, I expect we will have better public transport, more disputes about water, children demanding better education, more private enterprise and lesser government in daily life.

With the elections fast approaching in India, the leading political parties - BJP and Congress - have started blitzing websites with ads. However, it appears that the electronic campaigning gurus in both parties have not paid much attention to where their ads appear. Both the BJP and Congress  have been competing for banner space in a website called Vote For the Worst whose charter is to ""vote en masse for the contestant that we feel provides the most entertaining performances" It appears that both parties have a good chance of winning in the Vote for the Worst segment  - but the Congress campaign, centered on the Mango Man (Aam Aadmi)  has my Vote for the Worst - for now.

With the large number of gurus, tantriks, priests and prophets in the market and in recessionary times, you need to find yourself a good guide. However, you should know that your tantrik is up to no good when he asks for Rs.300,000 to book air tickets and catch a rhino. According to the complaint that the 30-year old woman who was looking for a groom filed, "Shah said that sacrificing a rhino would remove all obstacles and within a week's time I'd get married. I paid Rs 2.95 lakh to perform the puja. He told me that he would book air tickets to go to UP to catch a Rhino and will return after completing the puja."

Probably as part of our culture, or as part of our education, we've been indoctrinated to aim for accuracy and completion in our work and that work is not done until it has attained both these objectives. Bob Sutton's "The Cult of Done" Manifesto  has a different take on "doing" things There are three states of being. Not knowing, action and completion. Accept that everything is a draft. It helps to get it done. There is no editing stage. Pretending you know what you're doing is almost the same as knowing what you are doing, so just accept that you know what you're doing even if you don't and do it. Banish procrastination. If you wait more than a week to get an idea done, abandon it. The point of being done is not to finish but to get other things done. Once you're done you can throw it away. Laugh at perfection. It's boring and keeps you from being done. People without dirty hands are wrong. Doing something makes you right. Failure count...

N.Ram, the red-flag waving editor of The Hindu and champion of the People's Liberation Army, just returned from a trip to Tibet and reports that the atmosphere was "relaxed". He added that there was no sign of strain or suppression there as people were filled with excitement and the atmosphere was festive. He also says, "The contrast between the old and the new is very powerful, demonstrating what the Chinese government and the system have done for Tibet. Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that authorities have imposed an unofficial state of martial law on the vast highlands where ethnic Tibetans live, with thousands of troops occupying areas they fear could erupt in renewed rioting on a momentous anniversary next week. And Beijing is determined to keep foreigners from seeing the mass deployment . The NY Times also reports that "many of China’s six million Tibetans chose not to celebrate Losar, the Tibetan New Year, in order to mourn Tibetans who suffered ...

India has been the homeground to a number of unique methods of protesting.  Of course, the traditional protests of burning effigies, walk-outs, sit-outs, stand-ins still continues, but over the course of time new methods have evolved. Gandhiji started it with his Satyagrahas, Salt March and hunger fasts. Hunger fasts have been transformed from an event where one individual fasts until his demands have been met or he has died to a relay fast where protesting members take turns in fasting for a few hours.  Every year, Valentine's Day is a struggle between right wing nut cases trying to teach "Indian culture" to the masses and a bunch of people trying to out-West the West in Public Displays of Affection. This year's struggle resulted  in the the  Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women sending pink underwears to a right-wing group which was against Public Displays of Affection. Now, the  Kannada Chalavali Vatal Paksha president, has challenged the Governor, Chi...

Much has been written, and spoken, about the historic inauguration of Barack Obama as the first African-American President of the United States. But I thought Mr.Obama said it best himself , in the article he wrote for Time magazine in 2005: "“ ...a larger, fundamental element of American life — the enduring belief that we can constantly remake ourselves to fit our larger dreams .”

We'd heard so much about Kumarakom , and the thousands of birds that make this area their home every winter, and we decided that a trip to Kerala would not be complete without a visit to this avian resort. As soon as we entered, we were told by the staff at the gate that we had come at the wrong time and that we should come in May-June for the best bird sightings. We were then hustled into purchasing a "Safari tour" which for most of the time consisted of a Kerala State Tourism Development Corporation employee in a loud motorboat scaring the birds away. A few houseboats on the Vembanad lake cruised by, fully equipped with satellite TV dishes, Air Conditioners and deck chairs. In the peak December holiday season they rent for about Rs.12,000 per day. Once we crossed the houseboats, and cut the motor, we got sight of some of the birds we had come to see. The walking tour, which took us through dense vegetation showed some birds and marketing that we had not seen earlier....

After almost a decade, I made reservations for traveling by Indian Railways and the experience has been as easy as booking an air ticket on Southwest Airlines. When I was in school, and the designated ticket-booker at home, one had to leave home early enough (and 30 days in advance) to reach the booking counter in Madras Central at 7 AM when the counter opened, , fill the form with the passenger names, ages and desired berth (UB/LB) and then watch the ticketing agent enter in all the details with a single finger. This would be followed by a confirmation of ticket availability, or  a discussion on whether RAC 26 had a chance of getting confirmed, give exact change or go back with exact change to pick up the tickets. Cleartrip has removed much of the excitement (and pain) of getting the cardboard tickets (before computer-printed tickets were available) - now it's enter the orign and destination, the date and class, pay and print.  We've planned a completely train-centric holiday ...