A modern Tapas

It is a slow transition,
Something that took time and a lot of intensely tense moments.

A real sense of calmness has settled upon my demeanour, it has taken a lot of sculpting to get here.

I have had a lot of jittery moments that have questioned and tugged at my resolve; the desperate craving to be heard, to be seen and appreciated.

And then I made a pact with myself, to become the social media yogi.
To move away from the din of the moving madness, and like the Shiva, become a tapasvi.

It was ridiculously tough at the beginning, my thoughts always tugging at the need to come to a road that I have been addicted to.

There was never a day in the last four to six years that I have not opened my Facebook account.

I decided enough was enough, and I challenged myself to stop using it for a while.
A target of 21 days without social media interactions.

And ...

It's day 42 today,and it has been an intense journey thus far.

It's like a pilgrimage, to move away from something you have grown to like and connect to; to move away from the normalcy and the comfort into a place unknown.

At first , It was alien, my hands were fidgety to come back to the state of ritual.
Each time I had the urge to simply login , i had to manufacture a reason to stay away; to abstain from this addiction.

This act of training the monkey in the mind ; the child in the mind ,  away from its favourite toy is tough. This military ritual took time to sink in.

And believe it or not, I had a lot of time to simply sit at home and have a conversation.

It became a detachment.
Slowly the things that made the list of important things took a back seat.

And this aim to rid myself of this entanglement took center stage.

The connection of the being with people, the chaos of the interconnect was just getting too unreal.
And the relative cool shade of this isolation gave me the much needed connect with myself.

And now this calmness of the mind, the trained monkey in the head have become a state of bliss.

This state of disconnect,
An almost absence from the need to be heard, read and appreciated has been a personal transition.

A task I never could bring myself to even think of before.

Personally it has been a very calming influence.
From a person who sent write-ups daily for over 5 years to a readership of over 500 people,
To switch off this way has been a task that has truly been a Tapas.

500 rupee Note story

When trump was busy campaigning for votes , with his slogan vote for me and get a biriyani free. Reserve bank of India have grabbed the # revolution and have already raced ahead to become the most searched word of the day.

The network providers are having a field day as the nation is all Gung ho about this 500 rupees note .

The troll pages are busy making the most of this news bulletin and most importantly the media is more focussed on note experts than vote experts.

What is this hush hush news then?

Black money eradication programme.

Maybe all the money people, drug dealers like narcos season 1's pablo escobar who have stored stacks of money in mariyamma temple basement will get their bag of money and put in banks.
This way more money in banks,more money for investment and more money with tax on the money, more gdp and less dollar rates.

And the pink note of 2000 rupees has i think been designed by Pink movie designers.
This has got to be the effect of watching too many sonam kapoor advertisements and movies.

Next time when you meet a fashionista, be sure she ll have a pink top, pink nail polish , pink gucci handbag, pink sandals and bro tons and tons of pink notes.

I am a huge fan of this media sensational news.
And WhatsApp forwards but then this news has made all of us count our notes, head to banks and store our money or simply invest in other things thereby making all money once stored in piggy banks, towels under the bed ,hurt lockers etc come out in the open and become extinct.

Definitely got all of the groups active, and
Most definitely one topic for all senior citizens to tell everyone that in their age they never had so much money.
Things were not costly.

And the round table gossip in muniyamma's watara is going to be about this.

After award wapsi its about note wapsi ...

A calm mind

Slowly he had brought his mind to focus; his eyes still moved about restlessly but his mind was held in check.

His breathing pattern stable, and going slower each time.

The Guru looked at his disciple, growing in strength.
His normally running list of questions, words and paradoxes seemed muffled and silent.

Guru smiled at his disciple.

He was always drawn to people, their problems and always wanted a stamp of his authority on a lot of things. He was thrilled with the intricacies of life, but the deeper he went the more pain he had to take.

In the last gasp of sanity he had chosen the path of the Guru.

The Guru lived in a small house, near the sea. And would bathe in the chaos of the sea everyday, yet he remained unruffled and happy.

He needed to know this secret.
The Guru asked him to sit down at a place and only wake up when all his thoughts were over and his mind was thoughtless.

He tried his best initially, but his legs began to ache.
As days went on his thoughts were of anger, betrayal, jealousy and desperation.

And he announced to his Guru that he was cured, and went back to life.

The Guru smiled. The steaming hot milk develops a layer of small boundary between itself and the world outside and it can break very fast.

And so his disciple had returned.

And he knew it would take time to accept the intricacies of life ; to be at peace with the silence of the mind,
To be attached to nothingness and breathe in the energy of the universe...

His mind was like the sea of milk and the devas and asuras were churning his mind for elixir of life...

Unforgettable Chill

Truth be said, I still have not gotten over that experience.

It was a cold day and a hot afternoon and colder night, and six cricket matches had been played in the yard next to my house.

I had scored an overall of ten runs and taken two catches, which in itself was a miracle.

We were around ten really young people with a few slightly elder ones mixed up like a good salad. Every Saturday we came back from school and finished our home work and ran to the road to play.
The big tree next our house had to bear the brunt of our matches.

After play, we went back to our houses and got ready to go to a house just beyond our road end where an elderly couple organized bhajans every Saturday.

And the main attraction of the show was the Prasadam. Each occasion it was different ; each time it was lip smacking and free.

And so the boys gang set out at 7.30 to their house.

Ah, I forgot to tell you the most important thing of the day. Our local road dogs; Grahana, Blacky had just given birth to a new band of puppies and they closely guarded the lower rung of the road, just beyond which the house was located.

They were good dogs on good days and on bad days they were bad. And the first trip had all of us in good spirits and they too were sleeping and we slipped away.

And the Bhajan was as usual done, our minds constantly upon the food counter and it took ages for the uncle to announce the festivities for the day were officially done but not before I bowed in reverence to Lord Hanuman's statue that was kept there.

And it was very late and so the boys decide to walk back home , taking the risk with the local dons.

The twist in the tale was yet to come.
While coming on our initial walk to the house, it was quite dark and the frequency of the night lamps was very small in our area, which meant a shadowy road in a lot of places, and the leader of our gang had already told us something about devils hiding in the trees at night.

Twenty steps in the road, the death trap with the dogs safely negotiated and a shadowy road ahead, the navigation was smooth.

But then the current electricity board decided to enforce a power cut, the road instantly turned pitch black.
The wind picked up speed and the trees began to sway. And we were exactly at the spot where my friend had just explained to us about the devil folklore and we all froze when the dogs suddenly gave a shout that chilled our bones.
It was not a shout but a howl.

And in slow whispers and trembling hands we gripped each others hands, slowly made our way home.

Too dazed to utter anything.

It was a cold night that night.