A date with Chrysallis

I was always feeling that I was leading an insulated life here in Bangalore... too free from the problems people face in their day to day lives. So, like Buddha, I have run away in search of enlightenment.

Ermm, not exactly :) I have actually decided to do some volunteering - for organizations that radiate hope, enthusiasm and selflessness. I wrote an email to Janaagraha, wanting to offer my services, but never heard back from them. Just when I wanted to call them and follow up, I received an email bulletin at my workplace calling for volunteers for an organization called Chrysallis. It sounded very exciting - they were planning to celebrate their 7th anniversary with an integration program for mentally and physically challenged children with normal children.

The goal was to have 160 children with and without challenges in a 45-minute dance drama - and we would have just a 4 hour workshop to prepare these children. So I signed up, and attended an introductory session on Feb 11th, where Diana Tholoor (the founder of Chrysallis) and her core team briefed us on what it's all about. I got assigned to the Music group of volunteers - our job was to teach the children to make various sounds - which would eventually form the background music for the dance drama.

The Music group then met with Marolla Meneaud, who enthusiastically led us through the script and had us identify the various sounds, like bird sounds, the sound of footsteps on the snow, and so on. After one more session on 18th for us volunteers, we were ready to rock - more or less! There was this great sense of anticipation, and excitement as we waited for the 25th. Finally, it was D-Day. We met bright and early in the morning, at around 7am, at the Guru Nanak Bhavan, where the event was planned. The other volunteer teams for the Photography, Art and Interaction groups were all there, decorating the place. The kids started streaming in at around 9am, and we guided them to their seats. The Music group leader for the day was the talented Prashant Pillai, who quickly guided us into smaller groups, each group consisting of a volunteer, a challenged child, and a normal child. We had around 20 kids to teach the various sounds to be made - all this in a few hours. I was assigned Arokia Mary, a visually challenged girl and Vinay Kashyap, a 9th Standard student from a local school. My job was to teach them whistling - bird sounds and happy tunes, and heart thumping sounds. Similarly, the other volunteers had other sounds to teach: squacks, squeaks, sounds of the wind etc. Thanks to the students' eagerness to learn (and our hidden anxiousness to teach!) we managed pretty well, I think. The show, with a packed audience, started off at 6pm. There were several dances and skits from various schools for the challenged. And then, our dance drama. It was an amazing success - the children did a wonderful job. After that there were a couple dances lead by Diana herself, and had the whole audience clapping and cheering along, and asking for encores. It was the grand finale to a beautiful night, and after leading the kids back to their waiting transport arrangements, we volunteers were given a small souvenir from Diana, thanking us for our participation.

It was a tiring day, but at the end, there was a strange sense of fulfillment. My heart got tugged a few times for sure... when I felt the grasp of Dinesh, a spastic kid's hands when he held my hand and called me 'uncle' with a wide smile, when I lead Arokia down the stairs, realizing the challenges some people face with actions we don't give a second thought about. It was also heartening to see how well the normal kids accepted the challenged kids - Vinay and Arokia were chatting away like old friends. Another sight to cherish was that of the volunteers: to have so many people wholeheartedly participate in an event like this, doing their bit to bring light and joy into a child's life was truly incredible.

Here are a few pictures that I've taken at the event. All of these were taken with my Canon A80, and improved a bit with Picasa. As you can see, this camera is no low-light champion, and as I was adviced on not using my flash, there's quite some blur in some of the pictures. Anyway, here they are. You can click on the pictures for a higher resolution image.

The Guru Nanak Bhavan, and the arrangements in the garden:



And the decorations inside:




Diana, seen here energetic as ever. She's moving so fast, my camera couldn't catch up :)



Our inspiring Music team leader, Prashant.



Our Music team kids - with their big smiles, and their special sunflower claps:



Preparing for the big event - script in hand:



It's lunch time!



Ms. Butterfly and her team getting ready:



The Asatoma Sadgamaya team getting ready:



The various performances:



And finally, the Music Volunteer team. From L to R: Preeti, Sheefa, Susheela, Anita, Thiru, Myself, Sowmya, Sunaina, Amogh, Akeena, and Jean.

The Quiet Joy of Fasting

Ah, the joys of corporal mortification... some Opus Dei members do it with their cilices, and some Muslim devotees with their self-flagellation. And me? I fast for around 34 hours every fifteen days. Which means if my last meal for today is at around 9pm, my next meal would at around 6am the day-after-tomorrow morning. And what's taken in between these meals? Just some water. Nowadays I have been experimenting with limiting my water intake during fasts to almost nothing. And oh yes, I confess to popping in a mint or two when absolutely necessary.

How does it feel? I cannot immediately describe the serene and elated feeling inside. Let me try. First of all, there's a sense of control. All the chaotic thought traffic running wild in the mind quietens down. Sometimes I become an observer of myself - like sitting on a riverbank and watching the river flow gently by. And then, there's the greater awareness of the senses, especially the sense of smell. The mind is quick to recognize various aromas wafting in the air... coffee, samosas, fries, spices and so on. Sometimes there is a twinge of attraction for an instant, almost like a reflex reaction - but self-awareness immediately takes over and switches on the observer state. When this happens, there's a quiet sense of triumph. This sense of triumph results from what Bertrand Russell describes (in his inspiring essay 'A Free Man's Worship') as the strength that enables man to forgo even the joys that are possible. This gentle power over the olfactory sense extends over to governing impulses from all the other senses. There's this beautiful feeling when all the senses are reined in... a sense of power, without arrogance. A state of mind no longer reactive, but responsive. This is a state of meditation in motion, where, like in Tai-chi, the approach to everything is focussed, yet relaxed. This is the state of mind that gets induced when listening to the andante sections of some of Mozart's piano concertos.

The fast ends early in the morning, usually in a temple which organizes a special prayer ritual and follows up with serving a hot meal to the gathered devotees. I should mention that these fasting days in the Hindu tradition occur on a 'Ekadashi' - the eleventh day after a full or new moon. The ancients who decided to fast on an Ekadashi day probably had a very good reason for doing so - but their knowledge has not been preserved. The first food to be eaten on a Dwadashi - the twelfth day, is boiled rice, just a few grains to begin with. This is when the full taste and aroma of a single grain of rice is experienced... aah it is so blissful. This is when you realize how precious food is to those who cannot have enough of it.

Fasting is a process with scope for continuous improvement. Perhaps the ultimate goal is to make the meditative state permanent... where day after day, fasting or not, the mind remains peaceful, content and with a quiet sense of joy. It takes practice and perseverance to learn to control hunger, and manage its physical manifestations and side-effects. But it's these little sacrifices that leads one to greater heights. Heights you've gotto experience to believe in their existence. As Krishna says in the Bhagavad Gita (4:31): This world is not for the man who does not sacrifice, how then the other world, O Arjuna?

Sustained little Wishes

This was a thought, or stream of thoughts that scurried across my mind the other day. I was thinking about wishing someone well, and I wanted to project that little wish into the air, where the wish would take a form* of it's own and stay sustained. Then, if the intent was selfless and pure enough, that wish may actually take effect on the target. Just the creation and deployment of a wish brings a serene joy. One must not get eager for the wish to actually get realized, for afterall, the Implementer of Wishes has the final say on it. Our role is in the creation of the wish - everything beyond that is outsourced to a force beyond our control, and beyond our current science. This force knows whether the target deserves the payload requested in the wish, and whether you deserve your wish to be realized.

This universal driving force is often called God. In one of God's periodic visits to planet Earth in the human form, he was known as Krishna, and his exploits (some too risque) were chronicled in various scriptures, including the epic Mahabharata. There's a particular incident described in the Mahabharata where Krishna subjects a dude called Arjuna to some really intense drilling for refusing to fight a war containing his kinsmen and family elders on the enemy's side. The drilling was so intense that the editors of the Mahabharata decided to publish it's narration in eighteen chapters. Finally Arjuna gets his brain washed, sees the light and agrees to fight that war, and wipes out all his cousins, uncles and their families - simply because Krishna convinces him that those folks deserved to die anyway for being on the wrong side.

Anyway, where I was leading to is, these eighteen chapters are commonly termed as the Bhagavad Gita, and is a very inspiring piece of literature. Reading this should not turn you into a raving warrior, but instead lead you onto reflecting on the human psyche, and should guide you to lifting yourself onto a spiritually enhanced state of existence. The Bhagavad Gita is the equivalent of the Bible - we swear on it, in our judicial system. Not everyone understands it, and so there are hundreds of authors trying to interpret the scripture to help us laymen figure out what the heck all the fuss is about.

I digress again. Coming back to my statement on wishes, I was saying that God is behind the entire wish lifecycle. In the Bhagavad Gita, in Chapter 18 Verse 61, by which time Arjuna's defenses were nearly fully blown away, the lord Krishna speaks about himself in the third person: “The Lord abides in the hearts of all beings impelling them to movements by his own absolute wish, as if they are mounted on a potter’s wheel”. There you go - that's the proof. It's he who's to blame for everything. Nevermind if you do not know what a potter's wheel is. That's not the important part.

So to summarize, God inspires a wish inside you, and you think you've just done a good deed. God already knows whether the target deserves this wish to be realized. And so it happens, or it does not. You or your target will know it, or will not. Regardless of all this, you have been selfless, you have wished someone well, so you gain. What is this gain? Try it - it feels good. Who knew there's so much pleasure in altruistic indulgences?

* Technical Note: A wish is contained in an envelope. Within the envelope are two additional sections: the header and the body of the wish. The header contains relevant information about the wish. For example, the header can contain the date the wish has been created, a preferred realization date (optional), unique source and target identifiers, and authentication information (optional), and an anonymity status (0=Not anonymous, 1=Source remains anonymous to Target, 2=Realization status remains unavailable to Source, 3=Combination of statuses 1 and 2). The body of the wish describes the payload. Here is an example:

<wish:Envelope>
   <wish:Header>
       <creationDate>07FEB2006</creationDate>
       <targetDate>10FEB2006</targetDate>
       <sourceIdFormat>PAN</sourceIdFormat>
       <sourceId>AQRNP2865S</sourceId>
       <targetIdFormat>SSN</targetIdFormat>
       <targetId>342120023</targetId>
       <anonStatus>2</anonStatus>
   </wish:Header>
   <wish:Body>
       <enableGetNewJob>
         <orgName>Google</orgName>
         <salaryCurrency>USD</salaryCurrency>
         <salaryAmount>250000</salaryAmount>
       </enableGetNewJob>
       <enableGetNewCar>
         <makerName>BMW</makerName>
         <modelName>M5</modelName>
         <modelYear>2006</modelYear>
       </enableGetNewCar>
   </wish:Body>
</wish:Envelope>

Adequate security mechanisms would be in place to protect Personally Identifiable Information and the integrity of a wish throughout it's lifecycle. These details are beyond the scope of this footnote.

The bafflers keep changing...

Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, in Chapter 3 Verse 34, warns that sensual attractions are 'bafflers' on the path of spiritual progress. They are like highwaymen, waiting to snare and rob the unsuspecting traveller on a lonely road. As one progresses through life, one's bafflers keep changing. One starts life with getting lured by candies and toys, and moves on to getting lured by doe-eyed lasses, and so on.

As for me, nowadays, I have been into seeking image galleries of sexy models. I furtively ogle at their vital statistics and revealing photos, and long to caress their accentuated curves. I feel strange thrills when candid shots of a future model are exposed. It's so hard to decide who's most desirable. An angel suggests a Toyota Prius, while my pal with the pointy tail suggests I look at a red Ferrari Modena. The Hosur Road (and occasionally Sarjapur Road) driver in me demands a Subaru Tribeca. When in Paris, I couldn't take my eyes off a Renault Megane. Sigh, what a seductive backside she had...

This is unbearable. This too should pass. I just cannot wait to switch over to my next set of bafflers, whatever they may be :)