Musings Own Thoughts

 This is the title of a book by David Sinclair an Australian-American scientist on Genetics and Longevity. The sentence makes one want to read the book as all of us experience aging, resign ourselves to it's inevitability while wanting to have nothing to do with it. Let me make it clear, I have no intention to endorse this book except raise the question in the context of Vedanta or life and try to give an answer to myself and share the same with you my reader.  Lifespan is a term related to the food chain and if we left everything to nature. I recollect reading about a demilitarized zone between North and South Korea where an area untouched by human development showed a revival of bio-diversity and species which was so remarkable, that there was a call to protect this area. So this is probably what is meant by life span of various forms of life. The remarkable complexity of life from a single cellular creature to complex multi-cellular mammals intermingling with the environmen...

  A question which comes to my mind is the truth of the statement  "Trust begets Trust".  Going down to first principles we must define the word trust in every context it is used.  Trust is a noun and is simply defined as "   the belief that somebody/something is good, sincere, honest, etc. and will not try to harm or trick you".  Trust is also a verb to have confidence in somebody; to believe that somebody is good, sincere, honest, etc. So there a quality of trust as a relationship based on trust. You build up trust in someone or something. A position of trust also means that trust as quality is inbuilt or expected in such a position. This the noun.  The act of trusting is a verb. When I trust someone or say someone cannot be trusted it is an act of trusting. If you cannot trust someone to do the right thing. This is the verb.  The dilemma every individual faces in most situations is to make this choice. This choice is made with head or heart. Sc...

  A question that comes to my mind every Independence day is the concept of a free India as a liberal society. The philosophy of a free and inclusive nation with universal rights and duties for its citizens is granted by the Constitution of India. While the day marks the end of rule by the British after about 90 years, the process of colonization predated 1858 by over 200 years. The template of the kind of freedom envisaged by our freedom fighters was an evolving process and culminated in different strands of thought. The most accepted one is the one propounded by Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. While as an individual he became the tallest leader of the country, he charted a unique course for our freedom struggle.  Before Gandhi arrived on the scene in 1915, the Indian National Congress was a elite lawyers club. While there were tall leaders like Dadahai Naoroji, Gopal Krishna Gokhale, M. G. Ranade, Surendra Nath Banerjee, Bal Gangadhar Tilak, Lala Lajpat Rai, Annie Besant and Moh...

 Years ago in 2006 I wrote an article Responsible Actions. At that time I was discovering the joys of vegan lifestyle coupled with HathaYoga and was also discovering passage meditation. Dr. Vijaya Venkat my nutrition guide, BKS Iyengar Yogacharya and Eknath Easwaran were the names that seemed to my mind ultimate teachers, worth following. A quick fix solution to my health, weight issues and spiritual needs were within grasping distance. All I needed to do was to act and imbibe these habits in my life and fulfill the purpose of my existence.  It takes 21 days of consistent action to make a habit is a well known saying. To make it more strict even if you miss one day say the 21st you need to start over again. I think that that this was a reasonably certain way to ensure that we kept at something for months to ensure a reasonable consistency. However, it is equally true that stopping something for 21 days can break a habit.  Seventeen years later has my perception changed? T...

  This question has plagued me and I am not sure I have an answer. In this piece I will attempt to analyze this from different points of view. Since my knowledge of this is not clear I will need to research from multiple angles and then apply the same to my own experience and draw some conclusions. Emotions relate to feelings of fear, anger, sorrow and joy which occur and get expressed in day to day life.  However, society creates rules and roles which seem to tell most of us to avoid expressing them in public. From childhood it has been ingrained in our minds that boys don't get scared and girls get scared and need protection of boys. Boys are supposed to be angry young macho and girls sweet shy and loving. Boys don't cry and so must not cry but girls are allowed to cry and show emotion. Joy is something which is to expressed exuberantly by males but girls are told to be modest and shy when they are happy. This is I think totally false stereotyping of a bygone Victorian era a...

  Today, I am writing in the context of making the mind still by using some simple rules to deal with all kinds of persons and relationships in the world. The 4 words are part of an aphorism from the Yogasutras of Patanjali. Patanjali is the name of an ancient sage, who seems a remarkable individual who was the author of Sanskrit grammar as well as the author of the Ayurveda system of medicine. Myth and reality seem intertwined when we refer to some sage who is supposed to precede Christ. However, the most important contribution of this great sage remains the Yogasutras. He propagated and created Ashtanga Yoga or 8 limbed Yoga. The first two limbs contains the Yamas and Niyamas relating to restraint from unethical actions and performance of positive action. The next three limbs are related to control of the body in the form of asanas (body postures), Pranayama (relates to control of breathing), and Pratyahara, (relates to control of the senses). The following leads to the final, Dh...

People  didn’t  know h o w to do that anymore, brew some pr op er  coffee .  Just like  that  skill of baking bread or even drilling  a hole in the wall  are  lost   to   many .  While I understand that  there is a case to be made out for simplifying life and making it comfortable, the loss of basic skills is lamenta ble. It is important to reflect on this problem, rather than  pass it  off as  a generation gap. The present generation is   probably on e  which will  never experience the fear of ever getting lost thanks to the availability of  digital data.    Things we take for  granted like the availability of power ,  pure drinking water  and clean fuel for cooking  in the Metro cities and the Western world  are absent for  13 –15 % of the population. Even among the rest the distribution is very unequal.   This really leads to problems of dis...

 The statement has been heard so often that it almost seems like a self evident truth which need not be a subject of debate. I have in the last fortnight after 7 years of leadership thought about this more in the last fortnight than ever before. The reason is the sudden decision of a key member of my team to quit. There are many reasons for persons to leave an organization and in this case, there was an inkling that this would happen but the manner of quitting has prompted some introspection.  A little bit of context and background is needed to understand the issue. I am an Orthopedic Surgeon turned Hospital Administrator who had been made head of the oldest Charitable Trust Hospital in Mumbai, a post which I have held for the last 7 years. The employee in question was a young enterprising girl holding a post of Head Information Technology. She had been present just a few months before I became her boss. Coming from a tier two city, Indore in Madhya Pradesh, she came across as...

Let me begin with a disclaimer, I want to be as neutral as possible and just give my views. Let us examine the facts of the case. Rahul Gandhi has been found guilty of defamation in a case filed by one MLA from the ruling Bharatiya Janta Party. He is named Mr. Phanesh Modi and represents Surat (W) constituency.  The CPC defines defamation as any statement that harms a person's reputation or lowers them in the eyes of others. The burden of proof in civil cases is on the plaintiff to prove that the statements were made with malice and caused harm to their reputation or livelihood. “Whoever defames another shall be punished with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to two years, or with fine, or with, or both.” The offence under this section is  non-cognizable, bailable and triable by a Court of Sessions . Based on the above two pieces of information I want to state some facts and coincidences which are relevant to this case.  Elections in India are generally...

 Intelligence is defined as an ability to learn and understand things which help us to gain skills. So all of us think that our life is secure and set if we somehow acquire a skill or a bundle of knowledge which makes us employable in a defined role or job description. It is something which is acquired from outside in an education system which is utilitarian. Most of us live life which is mundane and routine. without clearly defining a purpose  We seem to be victims of a herd instinct and go through the stages of birth, toddlerhood, then go to school, rote education which crams us with external education. This prepares you for college and a job, so you get married, have children, retire, grow old and die after fulfilling your worldly obligations. Our upbringing and parents often feel that this is what is enough and there seem to be hardly any incentive to go beyond the routine and find a higher purpose for life.  The fundamental question which needs to be asked is " Is hu...

A few years back while driving I just felt plane bored of FM radio and realized that Podcast could be a form of entertainment. After searching for the known devils like Cyrus Broacha and his profanities, I started looking for better longer serious podcasts, maybe scriptures , spiritual discourses, cricket and politics. Out of nowhere I came across Amit Varma and his podcast "The Seen and the Unseen". As the name suggests, this podcast seemed to try and go beyond the obvious, to try and discover what was not seen.    Guests galore and of all kinds; known or unknown, celebrities or ordinary folk all had a story to tell. The stories were unique and revealed more about public personalities than the known image. Slowly terms like multitudes, narrative, rabbit holes became familiar. The show notes and book recommendations resulted in widening my reading habits and increasing my engagement with the world of the authors. However, this blog which I started with enthusiasm lost ste...