Hiya Boss:
Your ways are indeed inscrutable. I say that even though I know it is a cliché. How does it matter if it is one, if that is the best way to describe your way of functioning.
After casting about purposelessly for the most part of my life you put me through a crucible of trials.
I have no doubt that you helped me come out of it, unscathed largely but substantially chastened. You taught me the need for and purpose of prayer in the form of the beautiful saying by the Divine Mother Sharada of Belur that you led me to: The laws of Karma are immutable; but prayer helps moderate its pain, even ameliorate.
Stumbling upon that saying, which was a landmark event of sorts, my rational side says was chance. But then you exposed me to this beautiful line in Kung Fu Panda: There are no accidents in life. Everything happens for a reason. And you make me realise that you are often that reason.
For many years now it was almost as if you had been preparing me for looking up to you when I would need you. You started by settling me down in the new life of a teacher, a part that I would never have imagined I would play one day. Or rather I would never have thought you would make me play.
But then who am I to think or imagine. You say are antaryaami - the inner dweller in everyone's thoughts.
You made me choose a path that many among my friends thought was incomprehensible if not stupid. From being a high-flying and obscenely paid private equity fund manager, whose business card many entrepreneurs and managers would seek out - the world at large informs me that is how I was looked upon - you turned me into a neophyte academic struggling to establish himself, a Tier II member of the academic clergy, which I have remained ever since.
You made me come to terms with the social realities of the new life where the phones had stopped ringing, as some American movie dialogue once described the quiet that descends upon a man who had ceased to be a corporate executive.
As I struggled in the years that followed to build an academic career and a family at the same time, you appeared in my dream one night. All that I could think of asking you was to keep me on the straight and narrow. You assured me that I would remain so.
And then in a wonder of wonders, in the years that followed, as you put me through the wringer of the emotions of a parent that you seemed to have been preparing me for, watching his children struggling to grow, you made me resort to the most unspeakable acts.
Acts that I will never be able to speak about more because of the hurt that they might cause to people who love me unconditionally and less so for fear of social censure. Acts that shall be known only to me and my accomplices till they and I all leave this world.
I have been far from a paragon of virtues. But why did I embark on those paths at a time when I needed to be more on the straight and narrow than ever before? How do I square between my indulging in those sins that I did and your assurance?
And if that was not enough through these years since you assured me of remaining on the straight and narrow you have made me lose that yearning to have you ensconced in my thoughts all the time and forever.
You seem to have taken back that desire in me to maintain a clinical relationship with all people and phenomena in my life. You have deprived me of the sense of detachment that you taught your favourite protege Arjuna in the most emotionally charged and engaging setting that any teacher of life skills could ever choose: A battlefield where he had to slay or sacrifice those of his own blood in the name of a warrior's Duty.
In these recent years you got me all caught up in the world of doing with a sense of doer-ship that you tell Arjuna is meaningless, when you inform him that all those relatives that he is going to fell down have all been slain by you already.
You have filled my mind with childish excitement about mundane nothings that perhaps are of little consequence even in the material world, let alone in the world of spiritual pursuits. You make me lose myself in a grand delusion of being engaged in something consequential in those many hours that I spend in what are mere acts of shallow commerce!
You made me come out of the shell that I had built around me and my family and make room for a helpless fawn as if I was King Bharata on the banks of the river on that fateful day, while it appears there was neither the poor creature nor the swirling waters engulfing it in a lethal sweep.
In the event you changed my world forever. Like a smooth seducer, who tempts you into folly and then extracts a price for it, you made me pay for my misplaced affinities.
You put me through suffering of the kind and intensity that I had not experienced in my fairly long life by then. You made me taste a heaviness of heart that had been hitherto unknown to me.
In short you seem to have transplanted me into a world that resembled little of what you had been dangling in front of me in the years before. I have been like the grain that gets ground between the stones of a grinder that Kabir compared the suffering human soul to.
And then out of the blue, you brought back that yearning, however evanescently, this last Sunday. You reappeared in my thoughts during the Bhajans, like a hugh wave of longing, that washed me back to the shores of thinking of you.
Will you have me washed back to the ocean of worldly pursuits and desires that I was hoping to come away from? A world drowned in the sense of doer-ship that is at the root of all human pain, you say?
And here is one final question: If I am none other than you should I have called it a soliloquy rather than a monologue?
Only you know...after all you are the Boss!
Nanni....Namaskaaram.
PS: I felt persuaded to write this piece after our regular bhajans this last Sunday. There was one side of me which said I was being an exhibitionist about what I believe may be my spiritual inclination. There was another side that made me strongly desirous of writing down these thoughts, at least so I may be able to recall my own thoughts and feelings on another day.
You would be right in arguing that I could have achieved that by just writing a little note to myself and not a blog post. But then that is how the blog started - a place where I store my intimate thoughts.
That said, it is exhibitionism, even if on a limited scale. I beseech your indulgence.
Your ways are indeed inscrutable. I say that even though I know it is a cliché. How does it matter if it is one, if that is the best way to describe your way of functioning.
After casting about purposelessly for the most part of my life you put me through a crucible of trials.
I have no doubt that you helped me come out of it, unscathed largely but substantially chastened. You taught me the need for and purpose of prayer in the form of the beautiful saying by the Divine Mother Sharada of Belur that you led me to: The laws of Karma are immutable; but prayer helps moderate its pain, even ameliorate.
Stumbling upon that saying, which was a landmark event of sorts, my rational side says was chance. But then you exposed me to this beautiful line in Kung Fu Panda: There are no accidents in life. Everything happens for a reason. And you make me realise that you are often that reason.
For many years now it was almost as if you had been preparing me for looking up to you when I would need you. You started by settling me down in the new life of a teacher, a part that I would never have imagined I would play one day. Or rather I would never have thought you would make me play.
But then who am I to think or imagine. You say are antaryaami - the inner dweller in everyone's thoughts.
You made me choose a path that many among my friends thought was incomprehensible if not stupid. From being a high-flying and obscenely paid private equity fund manager, whose business card many entrepreneurs and managers would seek out - the world at large informs me that is how I was looked upon - you turned me into a neophyte academic struggling to establish himself, a Tier II member of the academic clergy, which I have remained ever since.
You made me come to terms with the social realities of the new life where the phones had stopped ringing, as some American movie dialogue once described the quiet that descends upon a man who had ceased to be a corporate executive.
As I struggled in the years that followed to build an academic career and a family at the same time, you appeared in my dream one night. All that I could think of asking you was to keep me on the straight and narrow. You assured me that I would remain so.
And then in a wonder of wonders, in the years that followed, as you put me through the wringer of the emotions of a parent that you seemed to have been preparing me for, watching his children struggling to grow, you made me resort to the most unspeakable acts.
Acts that I will never be able to speak about more because of the hurt that they might cause to people who love me unconditionally and less so for fear of social censure. Acts that shall be known only to me and my accomplices till they and I all leave this world.
I have been far from a paragon of virtues. But why did I embark on those paths at a time when I needed to be more on the straight and narrow than ever before? How do I square between my indulging in those sins that I did and your assurance?
And if that was not enough through these years since you assured me of remaining on the straight and narrow you have made me lose that yearning to have you ensconced in my thoughts all the time and forever.
You seem to have taken back that desire in me to maintain a clinical relationship with all people and phenomena in my life. You have deprived me of the sense of detachment that you taught your favourite protege Arjuna in the most emotionally charged and engaging setting that any teacher of life skills could ever choose: A battlefield where he had to slay or sacrifice those of his own blood in the name of a warrior's Duty.
In these recent years you got me all caught up in the world of doing with a sense of doer-ship that you tell Arjuna is meaningless, when you inform him that all those relatives that he is going to fell down have all been slain by you already.
You have filled my mind with childish excitement about mundane nothings that perhaps are of little consequence even in the material world, let alone in the world of spiritual pursuits. You make me lose myself in a grand delusion of being engaged in something consequential in those many hours that I spend in what are mere acts of shallow commerce!
You made me come out of the shell that I had built around me and my family and make room for a helpless fawn as if I was King Bharata on the banks of the river on that fateful day, while it appears there was neither the poor creature nor the swirling waters engulfing it in a lethal sweep.
In the event you changed my world forever. Like a smooth seducer, who tempts you into folly and then extracts a price for it, you made me pay for my misplaced affinities.
You put me through suffering of the kind and intensity that I had not experienced in my fairly long life by then. You made me taste a heaviness of heart that had been hitherto unknown to me.
In short you seem to have transplanted me into a world that resembled little of what you had been dangling in front of me in the years before. I have been like the grain that gets ground between the stones of a grinder that Kabir compared the suffering human soul to.
And then out of the blue, you brought back that yearning, however evanescently, this last Sunday. You reappeared in my thoughts during the Bhajans, like a hugh wave of longing, that washed me back to the shores of thinking of you.
Will you have me washed back to the ocean of worldly pursuits and desires that I was hoping to come away from? A world drowned in the sense of doer-ship that is at the root of all human pain, you say?
And here is one final question: If I am none other than you should I have called it a soliloquy rather than a monologue?
Only you know...after all you are the Boss!
Nanni....Namaskaaram.
PS: I felt persuaded to write this piece after our regular bhajans this last Sunday. There was one side of me which said I was being an exhibitionist about what I believe may be my spiritual inclination. There was another side that made me strongly desirous of writing down these thoughts, at least so I may be able to recall my own thoughts and feelings on another day.
You would be right in arguing that I could have achieved that by just writing a little note to myself and not a blog post. But then that is how the blog started - a place where I store my intimate thoughts.
That said, it is exhibitionism, even if on a limited scale. I beseech your indulgence.
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