Musings Own Thoughts

The question posed is concerning my experience is about nature or nurture. When we see an effective speaker who is a great communicator, the first reaction is of admiration and a lurking envy. The fear of facing an audience and speaking on the stage has been my problem since school days. Despite, being from a convent school with a good command over the English language, I have never volunteered to speak on a stage and if at all I was made to act on stage in school plays, a peripheral role with a few monosyllabic dialogues was the best I managed and even there I remember my play director noticing how I stiffened my shoulders while speaking. This could not go on forever and I had to overcome this flaw as I progressed in life.  While I never formally took training in public speaking, I had aspirations of leadership and once despite stage fright I stood for an election in school against a articulate speaker. On the occasion I spoke like a boy speaking by heart in an elocution competition.

  This is a debate which exists since pre independent India and continues to this day. There is a paradoxical feeling of clarity and confusion on this subject. Still I do not really feel that I need to have all the answers to this question as Nobel Laureates and economists are yet to settle these issues among themselves.  A colonised nation which before British rule was a cradle of civilization and trade had been reduced to a poor agrarian economy with small villages. Poverty, small land holdings and a caste ridden society with exploitation by whimsical kings and who in turn were exploited by the British colonizers made India a country which needed to quickly get its act together and survive as a country. The fight against the colonizers was marked by almost a hundred years of struggle. The first war of independence was notionally led by many rulers notionally under the last Mughal Emperor Bahadur Shah Zaffer. This war unfortunately failed and led to a consolidation of the British Raj.

  All religions talk of the mind as the enemy and the friend. The most important problem facing human beings is the delusion and ignorance of the Reality of the world as we see it. Scientifically, it has been said that we are physical creatures which have organs of action and perception. The beauty of nature is the phenomenon of creation where a single cell is the beginning of life form. This life form for a human being is complex and species specific. Now, this gives each species some common and some unique features which are both inherited and acquired.  Broadly on a physical plane we are as much flesh and blood as animals are and even among these we are part of the group known as mammals. The physical body made of the gross anatomical structures is given life by physiological functions which in turn is governed by the mind. This mind is in a matter of knowing the filter which sends signals to the intellect which using its power of discrimination decides what it needs to do and what

 A cricket crazy nation saw glory 4 times in 42 years and in my life time I can recount all these experiences and question of  where was I and what victory meant each time.  1983 I was 21 a medical student and in the licence permit Raj of Indira Gandhi a time of economic scarcity. Fortunate enough to be a creature of privilege and thanks to my parents entrepreneurial spirit of running a nascent Cable TV business, we had Colour Television in our house mostly imported National TV. The closed economy of India and restrictions meant that we lived with a mindset of scarcity. The cricket of the sixties was one of despair and defeat with the rare moments of brilliance and victory. This transformed a bit in the seventies on the back of some individual brilliance and the confluence of the technically sound copy book opening batsman Sunil Gavaskar, experienced Dilip Sardesai and brilliant wristy G. R. Vishwanath  and a group of 3-4 excellent spin bowlers led by  Bishen Singh Bedi, Erapalli Prasa

  The struggle of life is to always discover the true Self, the one universal consciousness which is permanent, infinite, all pervasive. In simple terms it is the isness which describes all the experiences at the level of body, mind and intellect. This seems a tall order but in reality is so simple. If we realise that there is a Sat or Truth which is the substratum of all the manifestations of the world which we think are real, then freedom and everlasting Bliss is guaranteed. For this to happen we need to work constantly and heed the teachings of the mystics and the saints who have managed to realise this Truth.  So let us start somewhere from a state of ignorance in which almost all of us are in today. Creation is a miracle of nature and we see it happening all the time. But the story starts with a seed and against all odds favourable and unfavourable a two cell union ends up into a marvel of creation a human body. To cut a long story short the human birth into a family, caste, relig