Blind folded Yoga

We did a small experiment at our Yoga session yesterday. We worked half the time with our eyes open and the rest of the time with blind folds on.
Our sight plays such an important role in keeping us balanced. No matter how strong, flexible and graceful you are, being blind folded throws everyone off balance. :)

It is kind of true, metaphorically for life too. Without a vision, your talents kind of stumble along and get dragged here and there. :D

Seven Samurai? No.. just a tag game

Raj tagged me in this meme called 7×7 Link Award. The rules are simple.

1: Tell everyone something about yourself that nobody knows.

2: Link to a post that fits the following categories: The Most Beautiful Piece, Most Helpful Piece, Most Popular Piece, Most Controversial Piece, Most Surprisingly Successful Piece, Most Underrated Piece, Most Pride-worthy Piece.

3: Pass this on to 7 fellow bloggers.



Tell everyone something about yourself that nobody knows.

When I write numbers, especially after the decimal point, I sometimes read/write the order wrong. I discovered this a few years ago while doing my PhD and realized that it is really out of my conscious control. I would really like to know what it could be if any of my readers know!

My Most Beautiful Piece  

I personally think Conversations with the Cat is my most beautiful piece. Mostly because it was written in less than fifteen minutes and it came straight from the heart.

My Most Helpful, Popular, Surprisingly Successful Piece

Believe it or not my recipe for making Gajar Halwa has been my top post for the past four years. I guess people all over the world are really dying to make it. Makes me want to consider writing recipes as an alternative career (in addition to owning a coffee shop, a restaurant and an agony aunt forum).

My Most Controversial Piece

About three years ago I wrote a really controversial piece criticizing  Roger Federer for publicly crying after a loss. I was amply bashed and I took it in its stride. But about a year later, I realized I was just being an ass when I wrote it. So I deleted it. Of all the stages of writing that post including thinking, writing, getting criticized by my readers as well as friends and then deleting it, I think, realizing how dumb I sounded to myself just a year later was the most amusing and satisfying part.

My Most Underrated Piece

I tried writing a story about three tomatoes long ago.I feel like going back and making it a bit better every time I read it but I stop myself. I think it meant a lot to me when I wrote it. Not just the process of creating something completely imaginary, which is difficult, but also the phase I was in personally at that time in my life. So yeah! I think I love this piece more than anyone else has.

My Most Pride-worthy Piece

I wrote this post/letter for/to my dad when I was still very new in Australia. I don't agree with the categorization of this section. It is not really "pride-worthy" but it is close to my heart. 

Now the seven bloggers.
I am going to tag people who are hibernating for God knows how long! I absolutely do not buy the "I am too busy" excuse for writing because if I buy it, I am telling the world that I have a lot of time to waste (which is SO not true). 

1. Meera Rao of artbymeera : I have been following Meera for over a year. Her blog is unique because it is about art. She displays her own work but she always has a profound message. I enjoy her short write-ups as much as I enjoy her paintings. 

2. T.A. Abinandan of  Nanopolitan : Abi's blog is mostly about academia and it is very well written. I have learned a lot about being in academia through his blog before I actually stared working in academia. He is the "cool professor" that I follow. 

3. Shashank Kanade's English posts : Shashank is a PhD student in the US. I really like his posts but he does not write these days. WAKE UP SHANKY!!

4. Mandar of  Footprints  : Footprints used to be a really nice English blog that I followed too. *Sigh* 

I like Mandar's poetry a lot. He is also very good at writing detailed reviews of the stuff he reads, hears or watches. But he is SLEEPING TOO!

5. Gayatri  of Gray at I  : I am a fan of Gayatri's Marathi blog. But I read her posts in English long time ago (yeah the last one here is 2006!) and I think she could try and revive this little sleeping beauty.

6. Nandan of Viprashna : Again, I know Nandan more for his writing in Marathi but I have always enjoyed reading his contemplative posts on Viprashna. 

7. Dattatraya Gokhle of Alone with Life : I have been a fan of Alien's poetry since the time I started blogging. He is into hibernation too. But at least he is in Russia. So it kind of makes sense. :P 

 

Thank you Raj! This was a fun thing to do. I hope I have introduced some new blogs in the process. 

How to pick an orange

The process of buying oranges is really traumatic. I think of all the problems I have faced in my life, the dissatisfaction that is caused due to having to eat an off orange is the worst. I know I sound like I am overreacting but I am not. I have eaten enough off oranges to know that whatever I feel makes perfect sense. You know, orange is one of those devious fruits that has the ability to make you feel remarkable vulnerable and helpless. It is like a little slice of life itself. You never know if the orange you pick up at the supermarket is going to be good. There is no guarantee. And even if you take that chance, of buying something based on say, instinct (or undying hope), there is still a significant effort on your part to be made before you can consume it. Peeling an orange is not something I enjoy doing. Usually, I cook for my best friend Elodie as an exchange for getting all my oranges peeled.

 The feeling you get when you spend those seven minutes of your time carefully peeling the fruit, getting an occasional squirt of essential oils in your eyes that makes you weep and then, finding out that the orange is off is really enraging! Some oranges are downright sour. Some are downright dead (the ones that make you feel like you are eating 100 % fiber). It is easy to forgive those two kinds. But I get really mad when the orange is just past its prime. You can taste the hint of sugar it had but it is not longer there, which kind of teases you. It makes you feel like this perfect little orange was waiting for you all this while, but you only decided to pick it when it lost all its enthusiasm. The orange has sort of moved on, gone ahead without you to attain whatever fruit moksha it is destined to attend. 

I observed that Elodie always picks the good ones of the lot. So I tried to ask her if there are any rules that I should follow to get a good orange. I should tell my readers at this point that she is French. So she told me a few things (using her arms, her eyes and her shoulders more than words). Then every time I went grocery shopping with her, I realized that she changed her rules slightly. When I tried to audit her on this, she declared that picking a good orange is a combination of science and art. I usually give up when people bring me to the interface of science and art. I tried to follow her rules when I went shopping by myself but every single time, I came back home with a bunch of sad, off oranges.

Sometimes, my sadness makes me want to give up oranges all together. I don't really need them. I can do without. But then a few days later I feel as if the Universe is doing great injustice to me by depriving me of oranges. It is not so much about the orange as it is about my inability to pick a good one. Then, I let Elodie pick my oranges for me. Things were going fine for a few weeks but then this inescapable feeling of utter and total dependence started creeping into my mind. I wanted to pick my own oranges independently. After all, Elodie is not going to be there forever. There will come a time when I will have to face my own oranges, in their total and complete offness. I tried saying a quick prayer before I chose my orange and then a quick prayer again before I peeled it. But that just made me feel dependent on God. I mean, if I am unwilling to depend on a clearly visible and breathing human being, how then can I let myself depend on a faceless, formless entity (that changes its own rules in every culture and country?).

Then I decided to study the oranges at the supermarket, wondering if their carbon footprint had anything to do with their quality. A number of plausible explanations came to my mind. Maybe the Spanish people were insecure about their economy and so they plucked the oranges too soon so that they could ship them over. Maybe these premature little babies (with their giant carbon footprint) spent a bit too much time in the cold storage. Maybe that led to acceleration of ripening process when they were taken out. (As I was wondering all these things aloud, Elodie informed me that I should either see a biochemist or a psychotherapist.) So I started buying oranges from South America (hoping that their smaller footprint would help, along with the fact that South American countries are not as stressed as Spain). I always ended up buying off oranges.

Then I thought maybe something is wrong on the metaphysical level. Maybe I need to purge my mind of all this hatred and stress I have around the thought of buying oranges. Maybe just thinking more positively about the problem would make it better. So I started believing (with a fanatic certainty) that I had it in me. I had the power to pick a good orange. But my lack of confidence (owing to repeated failure) was making me fall into the same trap again and again. I cleared my mind and started a lot of positive thinking. But you know, positive thinking is really exhausting. You have to stand outside your own mind like a guard. Stopping negative thoughts from entering it. It just made me shut down and crash all the time.

So I started distracting myself with other citrus fruits.

"Grapefruit is good for weight loss! You should just have grapefruit instead. Anyway, it tastes so bad that you don't even have to worry about it being good or bad. There are blood oranges. They are easy to peel and they usually taste okay. Tangerines, tangelos, mandarins! Sky is the limit! This is just for citrus fruits. Imagine venturing out of the citrus fruit domain. Apples never disappoint (but I don't like the crunching noise I make when I eat them). There are so many other fruits!"

 But my mind always comes back to oranges.  I really want to be able to pick a good one and just for one fleeting day, a single fleeting moment, believe that I can pick and enjoy a good orange, all by myself. :)

Behind Elaine Benes

I happened to watch an episode of "Inside The Actors Studio" with Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Julia played Elaine in the first-of-its-kind show Seinfeld. I have been a Seinfeld fan for years. It is one of those shows that I have never really grown out of (I have not just grown out of  Friends, I have also developed a serious aversion to the series). One of the reasons why this show is timeless is because it is true to its tagline -- it is a show about "nothing". And Elaine is the quintessential 'dude's girl' in this show. If we had to do a serious psychoanalysis of her character, we could say that she represented the 'liberated' woman of the West. But that would be a sad way to put it.

My admiration for Elaine has never waned. In fact, it increases with every repeat. Her character and her stories have philosophical undertones (see the video). I like it how in a really casual train conversation, the writers bring forth the entire liberal revolution. Elaine is at the center of this change and she is not always comfortable with it. But her frequent outbursts of fury are hilarious. I think I like her more because I have an Elaine inside me too. The only difference is that I can't express my frustration and fury as openly as her. :)

It will certainly get better

A few weeks ago, I watched an exclusive interview with Dharun Ravi on ABC. As many of you might be aware, Dharun has been convicted on multiple counts, the more serious being that of bias intimidation -- a conviction that could land him in jail for up to ten years. This is a  tragic tale of two college freshmen at Rutgers, with diametrically opposite personalities. What is perhaps worth pondering over from this story is the extent to which social media has tightened its grip around young people today. The trial was built entirely on the digital footprints these kids left behind during their first few weeks as roommates. What makes me sad, is knowing that neither tried to talk to the other face to face. If this had happened twenty years ago, it would have been hard to believe that someone could get bullied or intimidated without having any direct contact with his bully.

As Ian Parker explains in this meticulously written New Yorker article (The story of a suicide), this conviction can be interpreted as 'a state’s admirably muscular response to the abusive treatment of a vulnerable young man or as an attempt to criminalize teen-age odiousness by using statutes aimed at people more easily recognizable as hate-mongers and perverts.'

Dharun was offered a plea deal twice before he faced the jury. If he had taken this deal, he would have been excused from serving a jail term and a possible deportation to India, only under the condition that he accepted that his actions were motivated by a hatred towards homosexuals. This twenty year old declined the plea deal twice 'on principle'. In his interview, he candidly accepts that he was stupid and self-absorbed. Some of his peers describe him as somewhat of a jerk. But he did this two years ago, when he was barely out of high school and certainly not out of his teenage years.

This is not the first time that twitter has got someone into trouble. One of the most remarkable things about being alive right now is that movements and revolutions can follow you into your own legitimate social Universe. You don't have to go to a march to express solidarity with a cause that is close to your heart. You can do it on Twitter or Facebook. There are pages dedicated to Tyler Clementi that put the entire responsibility of Tyler's suicide on Dharun's twenty year old shoulders. And there are pages, albeit less popular, that urge people to reflect on Dharun's situation. The pro-Clementi group wants to use this trial as an example and a message to the young generation that they must be aware of what they say, especially when they say it online.  

This case also challenges the traditional image of bullies we have. It brings forth an entirely new trap that people are falling victims to -- the social media. It is an extension of the good old fashioned "what others say about you" syndrome that has driven so many human achievements and failures. It has taken a new dimension on the Internet where people constantly judge you by your pictures, the websites you visit, the email accounts you use, the friends you have and the music you listen to. There is a new layer of coolness attached to teenagers today. They have a real world personality and an online personality.

What made me reflect after watching this interview was that a twenty year old kid faces the camera with a stoic expression and says that he would never regret not taking the plea deal. That taking it would mean accepting that he hates homosexuals. And he'd rather go to jail than live with that all his life. I would not have been able to take this stand if I were in his shoes. I would probably have chickened out and taken the plea deal. Of course, I am not saying that what he did was right.But if I retropolate (am I inventing words?) the amount of world exposure and experience I have now to when I was twenty, I would have definitely been shattered by this. In the face of such an exaggerated media hatred where some people went on record accusing Dharun of 'outing' Tyler by posting a video of him having sex online, I would have crumbled. Irrespective of what punishment he is given, I think this young man deserves credit for facing the consequences of his actions with remarkable calm (at least in public). Especially considering this was his first tryst with the real world.

Whatever the outcome, for going through this honestly, Dharun, I am sure it will get better. 

Buddha on willpower and ego

I have been listening to talks given by Buddhist scholars on audiodharma. I particularly like talks by Thannissaro Bhikkhu. He has a way of teaching by using examples from everyday life. He does it with humor too. Although most of these talks are common sense, when you listen to them, you realize that when you are caught in a battle between the different "yous" in your head, this common sense evaporates like ether.

In this talk about Buddha on Willpower.  Thanissaro talks about the 'categorization' of actions Buddha gave us. There are four groups of actions that we do in our everyday life:

1. Actions we like doing and bring us good
2. Actions we don't like doing and bring us bad
3. Actions we like doing BUT bring us bad
4. Actions we don't like doing BUT bring us good

The measure of our knowledge is in how we handle the last two of the above. Most problems that I create for myself are due to bad handling of the last two categories.
Whether it is sticking to my diet, or finishing the tasks I have given myself at work. All of it falls in the last two groups.

In this talk about Buddha on Ego, which is titled 'Wisdom of the Ego', Thanissaro talks about how the West thinks of Buddhism. In the West, people do not see human ego as a necessarily bad entity. In the East, we are brought up believing that ego (ahankar in Sanskrit, which literally translates as 'the sound of me') comes in the way of happiness. Buddhist philosophy talks about Annatta (non-self) which is an essential step towards attaining wisdom, happiness and enlightenment. However, Buddhism does not call for an annihilation of ego in order to be happy.

Then, he compares Freud's functions of ego to Buddha's functions of ego.

According to Freud, ego is essential to human beings because it is able to carry out certain important functions for the well being of the mind.

1. Anticipation (it can anticipate the dangers in the near future and guide us)
2. Suppression (it can help us postpone gratification for our own long term happiness)
3. Sublimation (it can help us divert our attention from desire by engaging in art, sports, creativity)
4. Altruism (stems from the belief that we need to make others happy in order to be happy ourselves)
5. Humor (helps us laugh at ourselves)
 

Buddhist philosophy also explains all the above functions in it's own way. The concept of non-self is not rejecting oneself. It is about expanding the mind's eye to realize that there is much more to the world than me and my thoughts. Buddhist philosophy accepts the existence of ego, anticipates the damage it could do and evolves strategies to minimize the possibilities of the ego going out of control. Since there is no all-knowing God in Buddhist way, disciplining yourself starts with understanding your own mind. It is a very difficult path but it changes you for your own sake.

There are descriptions of the self (mind/ego) in the Bhagwad Gita too
In the fifth verse of the sixth chapter (Dhyanayoga) Lord Krishna says,

बन्धुरत्मात्मनस्तस्य येनात्मैवात्मना जित: |
अनात्मनस्तु शत्रुत्वे वर्तेतात्मैव शत्रुवत् ||

The self (mind) which is conquered by the self (mind) is a friend. But for someone who has failed to control the self (mind) , the self (mind) harms like an enemy.

What I like about the Buddhist philosophy is the absence of an all knowing, accounting and punishing God. What you do, is for your own self first. Even your generosity stems from helping yourself and not others. So the delusions that could occur as a result ("I did this for you!"), get mitigated by the thought that it is for your own well being ("I am doing this for myself").

Even in letting go, the Buddha says,
"Whatever is not you and not yours, let it go. That would be for your long term happiness"

The life long experiment in controlling one's own mind for one's own sake is one of the most ideal yet most difficult states of being. These talks sound simple because of the meditation that has been devoted to them. It brings back the recurring realization I get -- that most simple things around us are profoundly difficult to achieve. And it also includes simple joy.

Audiodharma is available free to the world on the principles of Buddhist traditions. Their talks and guided meditations are very helpful if you are serious about daily practice. This website is run entirely on donations. So if you find it helpful, please let them know through a small donation.

The Happy Post doc

Moving to America has been a powerful change. One strong realization is that there no happy ever after. I think at this point, it is reasonable to accept that a complete clarity of who you really are is beyond reach. Nonetheless, post docing has been a really refreshing change too. I had read this post by FSP long time ago and I had imagined how cool it would be to be in a similar situation. I am very fortunate to say that despite all the hurdles I faced coming from a smaller, not-so-well known group to a bigger, famous group, I completely agree with the her. On most days, I am a Happy Post doc.

The one really happy change I noticed in myself was a remarkable improvement in my ability to plan. As a PhD student, I sometimes assigned myself unreasonable targets, mostly because I failed to see what could go wrong (or was in happy denial). Also, I had a tendency to suppress nagging pop-ups my mind came up with about what the reviewers might point out in an experiment. Most of these doubts turned into reviewer comments and I had to go back to the drawing board. As a post doc, I can sense that I am more rational about doing a thorough study right now than wait for it to be a reviewer comment. I also seem to have a better understanding of what could go wrong (I am the Cassandra for my own experiments!).

Like FSP says in her post, working on different projects and see them shape up separately is one of the exciting bits of this job. My ability to multitask has certainly been a big plus. Managing different experiments and collaborating with different people on each project is really exciting. I think I am more in control of what I am doing now than I was as a PhD student. There is no thesis to worry about. My fear of failing has been diluted to a great extent too. Although I sense that the overall uncertainty is still the same and failure now would mean an overall failure in life, I strangely enjoy being now and here.

Stepping into a new country/city, a new lab, being alone all over again was really daunting in the beginning. But now, a few good friends later, I realize that it is this confidence of being able to start over again that keeps me happy most of the time. The feeling that nothing really clings to you and you don't cling to anything has been a source of great happiness. I have also realized that I work better if I start happy. I think a really good voice for my thoughts would be this Ted talk by Shawn Achor.
Working in the lab has been a source of curiosity, joy and wonderment all over again. I hope this feeling stays *touchwood*. :)