Truth is in every leaf, every tear

God or truth cannot be thought about. If you think about it, it is not truth. Truth cannot be sought; it comes to you. You can go after only what is known. When the mind is not tortured by the known, by the effects of the known, then only can truth reveal itself. Truth is in every leaf, every tear; it is to be known from moment to moment. No one can lead you to truth; and if anyone leads you, it can only be to the known.

- J.K.

So, what can I call this?

Death in varanasi. Constant, continuous. The fire is on duty 24/7, 365 d-days of the year. Everyday vast amounts of energy, among other things, are expended in the Harishchandra and Manikarnika Ghats. My boatman calls Manikarnika Ghat the “burning palace”. Interesting image, that. Which is what Varanasi is. An interesting image which should be looked at like a mirror looks at things. Just observe Varanasi. Live in its time, in its faith, in its communion of Hinduism and you will enjoy the impact of what most people would call “Shiva Energy in Shiva City”. Its electric. Electric, since 3000 b.c. That sounds like a company. I should make a logo for that. The type within some sort of oval shape, electric in italics, b.c. In a beautiful serif with pretty edges at 5 pt. Yes. That is control. Ok, back to where we left off. Benaras. Today at Harishchandra I saw a set of very interesting scenes running in parallel. There was the respectable, well-loved person about to be set ablaze by his weeping son in white robes. He was holding onto three people and really crying his heart out loud. Face lost in a trance. The three or four people around his particular pyre crying into handkerchiefs. Man comforting another by holding him. So many emotions, cannot for certain say that all these were either genuine, heartfelt or the customised conditioning system of expected behaviour. But I am only observing and reporting. I dont really want to comment because all this is only opinion and opinion doesn’t really have much of a role to play in the bigger picture of, err, things. When you understand who you really are you will become a sort of throughness and a sort of thoughtlessness. Back to the scenes at Harishchandra, just on the otherside a baba carrying a trishul (a 3-headed spear) came and stood close to another burning pyre while standing on a rock. And just behind me a mother slept on a bench, her children running around under her trying to remind her to feed them. But they are also playing among themselves while trying to catch her attention. No time wasted there. Suddenly she smells something and wakes up and jumps off the bench and runs to sniff to see if she smells another dog in her territory. Pups follow. And on my way home, I stopped at dimly lit chai shop on I-dont-remember-which Ghat. Girl served me chai. A pretty thing, scarf around her head, English lettertype on red woollen sweater. Her brother and sister (I presume), about 4 and 5 maybe, making funny sounds of birds and randomness. Randomness and thoughtlessness are absolutely wonderful to see in this world of logic and opinion. Oh, just remembered I spoke to two gentlemen at Harishchandra Ghat. They spoke of Hinduism, about the children who take the little pieces of body, the ones that haven’t burnt out, to keep them burning till they turn to ash. They get a little fee for grabbing these pieces at the fag-end (no pun intended) of the burning procedure. One of them, a Marathi, spoke of how Bal Thackeray is useful because he keeps India from becoming a Muslim nation. Interesting perspective. I am not for it or against it. Just a way of looking at things, I guess. The other guy spoke of how large Muslim families are. One husband, four wives, some eight to ten children. A way to overpopulate the world so Islam becomes a majority and takes over once and for all. He also said that in his caste, death is a celebration. There is a 13-day party after the death where priests are fed. That was refreshing to hear. Atleast some of “us” hindu’s have celebration as a compulsory at some point in a man’s life , err, death actually. Oh, and the girl in the chai shop? It really seemed to me that Indra Okat was looking at me through her eyes. It was a strange, yet lovely feeling.

----

Excerpt from "Thoughtless Thoughts"

THERE DO EXIST ENQUIRING MINDS, which long for the truth of the heart, seek it, strive to solve the problems set by life, try to penetrate to the essence of things and phenomena and to penetrate into themselves. If a man reasons and thinks soundly, no matter which path he follows in solving these problems, he must inevitably arrive back at himself, and begin with the solution of the problem of what he is himself and what his place is in the world around him. For without this knowledge, he will have no focal point in his search. Socrates’ words, “Know thyself” remain for all those who seek true knowledge and being.

LIBERATION LEADS TO LIBERATION. These are the first words of truth—not truth in quotation marks but truth in the real meaning of the word; truth which is not merely theoretical, not simply a word, but truth that can be realized in practice. The meaning behind these words may be explained as follows:
By liberation is meant the liberation which is the aim of all schools, all religions, at all times.

This liberation can indeed be very great. All men desire it and strive after it. But it cannot be attained without the first liberation, a lesser liberation. The great liberation is liberation from influences outside us. The lesser liberation is liberation from influences within us.

Excerpt from VIEWS FROM THE REAL WORLD by G.I. Gurdjieff

Empire of Worry

Your smiles have shape, they're walking apart, you see the world and war apart.
To see my life upon my shoulder, shutting down it seems...

Solo

Solo cello
A kind of drone
Enveloping time like molecules to a frame

Solo piano
A kind of peace
Absorbing air, pressing metal and wood

Solo guitar
A kind of flutter
Fingers and palms singing in absolute unison

"YOU ARE GOD", a graphic novel

A revolutionary begins a sort of experiment with currency. He starts spreading the word to followers of the concept of awakening to the new earth and the new man through money notes. The project begins with a website - yagoroued.com. There are concepts and ideas classified into numbers and letters, such as 12C and 1300F, etc. Each letter stands for a concept, like light, education, family, life, death, love, etc. 12C would be 12th discourse on C. These could be subjects, ideas, opinions - all signalling a sort of change to bring about a new man. So, over time these numbers would be written on the currency that keeps spreading. For those who know how to use the internet, the message “12c, yagoroued.com” is enough. And this goes on and goes bringing about a revolutionary sort of change to the way people things. Currency is the only medium which can reach everyone. This is a fictitious story of the start of a new revolution.

This commune of sorts is also involved in the publicity of their messages through guerrila advertising tactics. People basically come together to spread the concept of inner awareness, self-depth and a new consciousness.

Slow

I have slowed down time,
Real slow.
Everything is done slowly, patiently, meditatively,
Even if it is pouring mugs of water into the bucket.
Slow, real slow.
Time stands still.
To this very moment, to the present.
There is only stillness and a slowness to things.
Beyond that, nothing, absolutely nothing.

Who are you?

Atom-green, we are all that. Matter and inner-mind, body and soul. Self and no-self. There is a place where you can go. Everything is clear there. There are no covers, no curtains, no identities, no possessions, nothing. Just nothing. Here you can hear the silence of infinite space, you can feel the space of infinite silence on your fingertips as you move your hand along the waves of the vacuum. A spectrum of seven colours, a song with twelve notes. A moment of nothingness transforms and moves through this space like hours, days, years, centuries. All time is meaningless because the only time that is there is now. The moment. Past and future all illusory now, meaningless.

Where is this place? Distance-wise? It requires a second to go there. Maybe less than a second. Suddenly everything drops from your hand, your mind drops from you. You are then all in one, one in all. Moving, changing, from second to second. Every moment is new, every moment is you, without you. You are then not Mr. so-and-so, Miss so-and-so, Mrs. So-and-so. You are not your bank balance, you are not what you own, you are not what you know, you are not who you know, you are just an is-ness. You is. That’s all. You exist in the oneness with earth. You are one of the elements of life, a simple moving coloured-dot in the ocean of worldcolour. This is the door into you, into the centre of you. Who you are. Who are you? When you cannot answer that, you are finally you. Your central core. A nothingness beyond words and images.

Letters to (from) friends

The Professor Scarfman writes:

Dude, to be honest thyngZ are not so good. I cannot find work at all. My days are as random as anti-structure itself. All those promises to come viziT you in India. I am going through life openly saying I'll do this and I'll do that and it is not happening. It is not a good time for empire.

But I do have a Mac now, so that's useful for communicating wherever I want. Freed from the desktop regime. Remember at your place in Nott Hill when the upstairs bastar* banged on their floor cuz the music was too loud?

Well, our neighbour next is playing this bullshit carribean music at 6am and it makes me fuQQyn* sick. Never have I heard such shi* musiQ. Really. I thought music was about respecting and organising sound carefully, but this reggae-type stuff is just some of the poorest forms of music I ever heard. I thynQ I am culturalist. I cannot and do not accept West Indian music. Instrumentation, formation of rhythms and harmonies. Just really poor sounding indeed. It's worse than kid's chart stuff. It's like being asked to listen to the same song over and over, but someone else has it on repeat just at a time when you wish to rest and dream about imaginary swans and their cubes. It's sickening man. Life is about loving each other, but love is corrupt man, but imbeciles ruin the sophistos who know how to use their mental gifts in bringing joy to others. Not this asshol*. He plays this dreadful mess and it enters my perspective, destroyingwhat was a peaceful state of mind. One of life's most disturbing yet oblongular concepts Prem of Prem. Imagine being forced to watch the most disturbingly poor movie over and over again, watching the pathetic direction, terrible editing etc...This level of torture should be collected in a glass vesicle and sold as evil, cuz it's evil alright!. People don't have to kill or terrorise through destruction as reported by the evil media. Artistic distortion from a disrespectful mind makes me wanna hurl huge chunkZ of vomituous nonsense from my post digested history.

This concept of feeling love for all. I wish I could feel love for all. But all around me there is incompetence man or PREM. Sure, I might be the world's most undiscovered unrecruited circus performer, but I still get angry at human ineptitude. Constantly in my received perception day after day. Focusing on this supposed negative makes me feel so sad for the species Homosapien! Are we not supposed to be skilled, respectful of each other? Capable, intelligent? Yet, cretins exist Prem, whether it's there in your home town or here in mountainous yet villainous Brixton.

Not all is bad, just that a quality of life spans many dimensions of experience, no? Not just the creative and social, but the PEACE dimension!

Peace Premjit R aka DirectoR.

Would love to have a pipe with you man!
nic.K aka nic.K

----

And I, the Deractor, replies:

Ouch to the creaturefoot of civilisation, this wondersoul does not bringeth joy. This rubbersoul brings pain simply cos its made of rubber and not love. Love bringeth love, hate does not dispel hate, only love can. :)

I think you should begin reading some OSHO. He is amazing. A brilliant new journey for me. I am still in Benares, I will be here for a while. Its real and very simple, I do not have running water, there is a bucket outside my room with water and I have to step out and fill my foam bucket with clones of water in order to fulfill the duties of my super son. Frugality at its best. Love it. Very meditative, like thoughtbuckets into the everlasting you of me.

I thought you moved to Swiss-er-land man? Why you back in London? I dont think London can give you any joy, only clones of cheap love found on soulmates and the like. Remember how we used to arrange dates and go on them, wow, those days seem so alien to me, now that I have taken the visceral path of the discovery of self, an awakening of sorts, like fruits, like roses, a blossoming out of time, out of words and messages.

Come to India whenever you can man, I will welcome you with open arms and brotherly love, guaranteed. I am very sorry for having told you earlier about keeping your brighton-esque mentalities aside etc, that was very childish of me. What you are, you are now, the past and the future mean nothing. You are now, you are love, you are all that you can ever be only in this one moment. So, do come and we will live like brothers discovering ourselves in this oneness of life on this new earth.
Love and lots of good wishes to you my brother.

The Deractor.

Welcome to Hinterland, Mr. Isaac Niemand. :)

I can safely say that I have found the centre of me. And I have never been happier. I am aware of every second, also aware of the uncertainty of the next. Every moment can be special, its all in your mind.

Yesterday: The silence of infinite space.
Today: The space of infinite silence.
Tomorrow: ?

by Indra Okat

The Birth of Bashwa Dara Okat (a.k.a B.D. Okaath)
The man with the green heart, the golden eyes, the silver smile.
(Pokhra)

Russell / 11/11

It is very singular how little men seem to realise that they are not caught in the grip of a mechanism from which there is no escape, but that the treadmill is one upon which they remain merely because they have not noticed that it fails to take them to a higher level. I am thinking, of course, of men in higher walks of business, men who already have a good income and could, if they chose, live on what they have. To do so would seem to them shameful, like deserting from the army in the face of the enemy, though if you ask them what public cause they are serving by their work, they will be at a loss to reply as soon as they have run through the platitudes to be found in the advertisements of the strenuous life.

Consider the life of such a man. He has, we may suppose, a charming house, a charming wife, and charming children. He wakes up early in the morning while they are still asleep and hurries off to his office. There it is his duty to display the qualities of a great executive; he cultivates a firm jaw, a decisive manner of speech, and an air of sagacious reserve calculated to impress everybody except the office boy. He dictates letters, converses with various important persons on the phone, studies the market, and presently has lunch with some person with whom he is conducting or hoping to conduct a deal. The same sort of thing goes on all afternoon. He arrives home, tired, just in time to dress for dinner. At dinner he and a number of other tired men have to pretend to enjoy the company of ladies who have no occasion to feel tired yet. How many hours it may take the poor man to escape it is impossible to foresee. At last he sleeps, and for a few hours the tension is released.

The working life of this man has the psychology of a hundred-yards race, but as the race upon which he is engaged is one whose only goal is the grave, the concentration, which is appropriate enough for a hundred yards, becomes in the end somewhat excessive. What does he know of his wife? When he leaves her in the morning, she is asleep. Throughout the evening he and she are engaged in social duties which prevent intimate conversation. He has probably no men friends who are important to him, although he has a number with whom he affects a geniality that he wishes he felt. Of springtime and harvest he knows only as they affect the market; foreign countries he has probably seen, but with eyes of utter boredom. Books seem to him futile, and music highbrow. Year by year he grows more lonely; his attention grows more concentrated and his life outside business more desiccated.

Excerpt from Bertrand Russell's "The Conquest of Happiness"

Oh, and I begin my journey into the minds of Bertrand Russell, Erich Fromm, Carl Jung and Albert Einstein. :)

Gabriel-ities

So Dr. Libinski left today. A wonderful 4 days with him, his thoughts, his ideas and his (the strangest till date) sense of humour. We had wonderful exchanges on life, humanity, creativity, utopian societies, violins, flutes, 21-gear bicycles, dot dot dot. I took his room (and all its positive energy) to begin a more disciplined way of being. One thing he said really made me think. A very very frail poor boy came to us asking for money and he said that most people dont deserve the bodies they have because of the way they abuse it with drugs, alcohol, cigarettes. Its time to wake up. A simple thing to say, yes, but a valid one. One for thought. Not only thought, action too. Act. Or die. There's no other way forward.

Survivors of the mind / Heartlatitudes

The geography of the mind separates itself phsyically from the latitudes of the heart. An awakening of the mind is the only (visceral) path for the real self, the potentiality of self in the oneness of mind and heart, in full colour.

A Tendency

To own, to want, to think, to perform, to achieve, to kill, to talk...
Tendencies so disconnected, so disembodied
from the landscape of your heart.

Anger: Ego's fairest son.

Found my next film subject(s). This will be good. Hollywood, under me. Bring me a skull of lillies, a peach-coloured drum soda, a plant that borrows from the tree, the flower a thing that picks the bee's brains, a giving that's not really a giving, a soul-flashed willow tree paying for its very own appletree...

The Myth and Magic of Ajmer

Ajmer is a strange muslim town in the heart of Rajasthan. It is considered a very important place of worship primarily because of Garib Nawaz, who apparently was sent by Prophet Mohammed to introduce Islam to India. The Dargāh Sharīf is a fascinating place where the iron furnace apparently never heats up while the food is cooked, where the food stays fresh even after a year, where thousands of limb-less poor people hang around expecting to get food and money. The lanes are tiny, you can almost smell the brick that's cast thousands of years back. My friend Taj Hussain, the auto-driver, took me around and told me these tales of Ajmer. Quite fascinating.

The Dargāh Sharīf of Khwāja Mu'īnuddīn Chishtī is situated at the foot of the Tārāgaṛh hill, and consists of several white marble buildings arranged around two courtyards, including a massive gate donated by the Nizām of Hyderabad, a mosque donated by the Mughal emperor Shāh Jahān, the Akbarī Mosque, and the domed tomb of the saint. The Emperor Akbar, with his queen, used to come here by foot on pilgrimage from Agra every year in observance of a vow he had made when praying for a son. The large pillars, erected at intervals of two miles (3 km) the whole way between Agra and Ajmer, marking the daily halting places of the royal pilgrim, are still extant.

Come to Ajmer, feel the force.

It is the distance between the head and the heart that worries me the most. It is the distance between you and me that worries me second most.

A
very
private
machine:
A
study
of
the
aesthetic
&
acoustic
components
of
a
brain.

The significance of neti neti

In Brhadaranyaka Upanishad, god is questioned by his students to describe God. He states "The Divine is not this and it is not that" (neti, neti).

Thus, the Divine is not real as we are real, nor is it unreal. The divine is not living in the sense humans live, nor is it dead. The Divine is not compassionate as we use the term, nor is it uncompassionate. And so on. We can never truly define God in words.

All we can say, in effect, is that "It isn't this, but also, it isn't that either". In the end, the student must transcend words to
understand the nature of the Divine.

In this sense, neti-neti is not a denial. Rather, it is an assertion that whatever the Divine may be, when we attempt to capture it in human words, we must inevitably fall short, because we are limited in understanding, and words are limited in ability to express the transcendent. The original texts shed light on the practice of neti neti as a tool to Self-realisation aka Brahman.

The art of listening

Listening is an art which very few of us are capable of. We never actually listen. The word has a sound and when we do not listen to the sound, we interpret it, try to translate it into our own particular language or tradition. We never listen acutely, without any distortion. When you tell a rather exciting story to a little boy, he listens with a tremendous sense of curiosity and energy. He wants to know what is going to happen, and he waits excitedly to the very end. But we grown-up people have lost all that curiosity, the energy to find out, that energy which is required to see very clearly things as they are, without any distortion. We never listen to each other. You never listen to your wife, do you? You know her much too well, or she you. There is no sense of deep appreciation, friendship, amity, which would make you listen to each other, whether you like it or not. But if you do listen so completely, that very act of listening is a great miracle.
- JK

Joyless

You've got your 7-figure paycheck,
your 12-figure credit limit.
You've got your diamond-studded wristwatch,
offsetting your lizard-skin sneakers.
You've got your remote-controlled blinds,
and later, your climate-controlled jacuzzi,
You've got your computer-programmed carseat,
your chrome-plated wheel-rims,
and to drive to
your own fancy Starbucks,
You've got your white platinum cufflinks,
to match your black Armani dinner suit,
and over dinner,
to gift your girlfriend,
a precious oyster pearlset.

You've got all this.
All this and more, so why so sad?

Do-buy

Its funny I am saying all this when all along up until now I had compromised my energies for creating commercial logos and branding (which is always explained as something much beyond a logo) for rich companies, building graphic guidelines and things exquisitely called brand driver platforms. Although it did sting once in a while I always thought of (and also owned!) sports-cars with 6-speed transmission (I remember telling people that being in an Audi TT was like sitting in a cockpit), black and white minimalist Armani XL wristwatches, Paul Smith trousers (with that really gorgeous multi-coloured band that would stick out for people to see), Prada slippers and the very assumably not-in-your-face red strip with the Prada type offset to the left, the black CK underwear (oh, you could be clever and rest your hand on your hips in such a way that the Calvin Klein type could be readable to your fellow designer-conscious graphic designer friends). All very carefully crafted for the conscious pretty-faced consumer. I would walk into the boutique shopping malls with 500 dollars in my pocket knowing I was going to spend it, but not knowing on what. Its funny when I think about it now but it makes sense why I named my folder on my macpro Lavish. Ha! Its all adding up now. My subconscious mind was housing all this information and distilling it slowly through my fingertips as they pixellated my innermost fantasies. And I didn’t even know. My parents thought I was progress-personified. I lived in a housing complex called Greens where everything right from the lakes to the palm trees was man-made. Anything was possible in this wonderful fantasy world. It was every middle-class Indian’s dream to be part of a society that had its own private Costa’s, its own private swimming pool surrounded by trees. I remember texting my brother about my uber-cool lifestyle when I was lazing around in the pool in my Ripcurl swimming trunks. I used to take my Tarkovsky Sculpting in time book to the pool hoping to accidentally bump into a pretty girl who knew his films and didn’t think he was a famous medieval classical composer. Alas, it never happened. What was I thinking, God only knows. Now when I look back I can laugh. I was still sensitive back then, though. I had my own upright piano, an Eastern-european piano teacher and a filipino piano-tuner called Jun. I went through it all. I expected to find real happiness in buying all of Tori Amos’s piano transcriptions and working out my favourite songs. Unfortunately, I never got around to spending too much time on the piano. Was I in favourable environments? What was my motivation? I wonder.

I guess there was an innocence in the futile acquisition of things big and small. Of things beautifully designed, sensitively crafted. Before I bought my car I made sure the rims on the tires were the 19” ones and not the 17” ones. Attention to detail, eh? Talking of attention to detail, I remember spending hours and hours crafting the logo of Uptown Cairo, a 7000-home township in Cairo for the super rich. I came up with this really clever idea of positioning it as a fashion brand so people could associate their lifestyle with, say, Giorgio Armani or YSL. The brandmark was also inspired by the YSL insignia. A very sophisticated CA would drive the brand by appearing on cufflinks, shopping bags and 80ft billboards. Black and white with an accent of fuchsia-pink. It looked really nice I must say. But, wow, its hard now to understand my dedication towards something so trivial. The hours spent creating the brand driver platform, the hours spent sifting through images in Getty and Corbis containing the tags sophisticated, class, up-market, quintessential, etc. I browsed through thousands of images downloading comps of the ones that matched my verbal brand driver “Uptown Chic”. I also created a little film in flash with the music of Air. How sensitive I was as a commercial graphic designer. Did I somehow avoid questioning this or was I just too caught up in wondering what to buy next? When I think back now I really wonder what my real motivation was. On the other hand, I had to keep the social and artistic cylinders of my heart constantly full by having screenings of Bergman, Tarkovsky, Kurosawa films (and post-screening discussions) in my apartment. I felt this somehow made up for all the shit I was doing in my day-job. I constantly lived in that sense of denial that hey I wasn’t really doing too bad in the self-realisation department. I rarely asked myself the question, “Are you being true to yourself?”. Actually I don’t think I ever even thought of that. I was too busy drinking Belgian beer with friends, discussing Ermenegildo Zegna’s fall collection of men’s suits, smoking cuban cigars, making sure my 100 dollar Terre-de-Hermes cologne found its way through the smoke-infested interiors of the post-modern Blue Bar or the David Lynch-inspired Cooz Bar in the Hilton. These were the things that constantly were on my mind. I was the cool graphic designer working with the best Branding agency in town hanging out with really pretty women, some of them Mexican, some Lebanese, some French, some even as exotic as half-Danish/half-Rwandan. I constantly sent photos to my friends back in India, me in my Stone Temple Pilots T-shirt and brown Mexx leather jacket (with the minimalist red interior satin lining) hanging out with super-gorgeous women, their arms all over me. Oh, how satisfied I felt. This, for me, was the summation, the ultimate realisation of what I constantly strived for. It was me climaxing in the social circus. I was up there. As the night was coming to a close the only question on my mind was whether I was going to flash my Gold or Platinum credit card when the cheque came. Or maybe I was too drunk to think of anything at all.

In 2004, I began documenting my thoughts on a blog I called Scalable Deficit. Deficit is defined in the dictionary as being “the amount by which something, esp. a sum of money, is too small”. Ironically, subconsciously, I must have been talking of that something as being the soul, and not money. Quite an apt title, now when I think of it. I had to write what I felt. I had to be honest. I knew I was doing something wrong in my life. My life, for sure, was lacking something. Something real. Which is why the words came so easily. I needed to vent.

I give up
Its a horrible day. Never felt so alone. I think I am a bonafide misanthrope. The sound of the human voice drives me to insanity. Its all opinion right? Everything is. "Have you been to the packaging and promotions section of the website? You might want to check that out." No, I don't want to check that out. Its all bollocks anyway. Who fuckin cares? These people can stuff their opinions on advertising and how cool it is up their... My heart is filled with Castrol. I am a commodity. I am a whore. Famewhore. I am a sellout. I have nothing to contribute to society. I sell lies. I sell mouthwash. There are no stories I can tell my grandchildren. I am the lost rays of a forgotten sunrise. I am all that I never dreamed of being. Plastic and cute, all the way.
Monday, March 07, 2005

The turning point for me was when I made my film “Look here, Kunigunda” which was a kind of visual poetry with no words. Having a film-club was good because I met quite a few interesting people like Mark, the hero of my film, Siobhan, the heroine and Nick, whose camera I finally used to shoot the film. So, I guess that was an important turn of events. It made me realise that beyond the glitz and glamour of the design industry, there was a world of realism in the artistic expression through film, a kind of vocation that maybe I could pursue.

Oh, I remember this lovely little poem.

Once the poem leaves your fingertips
it is no longer yours.
It acquires new shapes
in the eyes of others.

All art rides on the vehicle of opinion. This is where the author is at his weakest, vulnerable most. At that point of time, the author either waits patiently for comments (diplomatically conveyed), honest criticism, praise or love. I have always been the sucker for compliments. This receiver of love. Accepting everything good like I deserved it, running from those who fail to think like me. Atleast when you are creating artwork without the business hat on you can choose to be elitist and ignore what people think and decide to keep at it inspite of all the negative feedback. If you honestly feel for what you do, why should you care what others think. Results are not really in your hands. Maybe someday they will get it, maybe they wont and maybe you will be written off as the weird one that no one got. Who knows.

But, its different when you’re creative expression is at the mercy of a client or, even worse, a blonde Lebanese client-servicing executive who seems to have the final word on your artistic expression. It has happened to me many times. I could be sitting there with my headphones blasting Godspeed, you black emperor, working on an advertising campaign for a very large client like American Express when suddenly I could be interrupted with something like this:-

“We just presented the work to the client. It went down very well. Instead of the black and white photographs, can we see an option with colour photographs? The client was not too happy with the font you used, can we just stick to, say, a Helvetica? Or even Verdana? The client really likes Verdana? So, two options, one with Helvetica, one with Verdana? Can you increase the size of the logo and can we have FREE written in caps, and maybe in red? Other than this its all fine. Well done, Prem. Your a star. Shouldn’t take you more than an hour to fix this, right? Shall I arrange to meet them tomorrow, in the a.m.?”

Lina, the beautiful Lebanese client-servicing executive disappears saying she needs to run into another meeting in five (she probably needs those five minutes to do her eyes). I sit looking at my monitor not really knowing what hit me. But I try to calm down by going to the pantry to make myself a strong Nescafe in my own branded coffee cup. It all boils down to this. These are the moments that really make you go “WOW”. And little did I know it would get a lot worse than this.

Turquoise boy

No?
I say no to corporate magazines. I say no 9am meetings. I say no to 9-5. I say no to cubicles. I say no to annual reports. I say no to tea-parties. I say no to sushi lunches. I say no to group hugs. I say no to the ladder. I say no to the institution. I say no to institutional leeches (who use the ladder). I say no to team-building picnics. But I still sit here in my cubicle, staring at a computer screen designing and branding corporate institutions. Fuckin hypocrite, I wish I could go to sleep and never wake up cos I am saying yes, secretly.
Tuesday, June 27, 2006

In 2006, a branding consultancy called Turquoise headhunted me and offered me a job as Senior Designer in their London offices. It was a very exciting time. I always wanted to live in London, one of the three cultural Mecca's of the world. Turquoise was run by three women, the superpowers of the new world. The Creative Director, the senior designers, the designers were like little poodles on their lap or like lilliput men stuck in their hair. The studio was in a converted Victorian building in the very very expensive Holborn area. To keep up with my exquisite Dubai lifestyle I took up a tiny (like really tiny) studio apartment in Notting Hill for an insanely exorbitant rent. Why? I wanted to tell everyone I was living in Notting Hill, just like Hugh Grant. I also made it a point to tell everyone how much the rent was, which in Indian rupees was about one hundred thousand rupees a month. Er... I didn’t realise the coming one year would be me selling out completely in the corporate world, but also the year where I would write my most honest music to date. So, once again, I managed to offset the humdrum of the branding world with a sincere artistic expression through music.

Turquoise really started to kill me. I was dying a slow death in the Sylvia Plath sense of the word. By the end of six months, I had lost every bit of soul left. I lost a lot of weight too. My artistic and social cylinders were running dry. I had nothing to say. So, I started walking the streets of London alone. I began discovering a lot of new music, new artists, new films. I went to exhibitions in the TATE, Whitechapel Gallery and Serpentine regularly and began spending my money acquiring the paraphernalia of the artists I loved. Pierre Huyghe’s “Celebration Park” and Fischli & Weiss’s “Flowers & Questions” really inspired me to look within and find my own voice and make the exit from corporatism quietly. Like those signs in concert halls that read “Please leave quietly”.

Still

I stopped to look at the sky and the clouds,
I stopped to listen to the birds and the bees,
I always stopped,
became still, really still.
Motionless.
Sometimes for a minute or two,
sometimes for hours.
But I remember I always stopped.
Always.

Letters from Hinterland

There is a definite artistic minority in the world today. What is considered mass culture today mostly constitutes of art and expression made purely for a commercial cause. And, sadly, of very bad taste. Dangerous to generalise, I know, but what you see around you, be it commercial cinema, commercial music, commercial graphic design all contribute to a very uninspiring visual and aural landscape.

The need of the hour is of a place for like-minded people and artists to come together and live in a sort of utopian society where each one contributes to the growth of the society and in the process also learns and grows artistically. A growth within, a growth of the soul, so to speak.

This place, which we would like to call Hinterland, is the brainchild of L, a mysterious yet optimistic version of Kurtz (Marlon Brando in Apocalypse now). The Hinterland book comprises of letters from residents of Hinterland to L. These letters are from random residents who have written and documented their thoughts. The letters have one thing in common. A coming of age of these very distinct separate lives. And that is what connects them. They may be artists, teachers, architects, orphans, musicians, cooks or filmmakers. But they all come together to bring to life this utopian dream. Hinterland, at its most fundamental level, is a collective of people living in harmony in an environment where there is no concept of money, no concept of automobiles, no concept of day-jobs, no concept of time.

Posi ti vi ty

i am positivity.
i am 6am. i am hollywood under a purple sky.
i am the sound of your silence.
i am the reflection on glass.
i am the turn on a road, i am also 120kmph.
i am the 17 seconds within a "moment"
i am the air between your head and the noose.
i am the water that falls.
i am the sound of the night. i am also the color of dawn.
i am the decomposed version of your heart.
i am the curve, the line and the shape of your thoughts.
you are one of the faces in my mirror.

Sans-inspiration, sans-common sense, sans-real joy, sans-sincerity, this city is truly sans-life.
I have no love or interest for this city anymore.
Cant wait to go back to Benares, hundreds of miles away, anywhere but here...
I'd rather be drowning with the fish.

The Mexican & The Korean

Two faces of music,
Two phases of thought,
One violin, one sitar,
One, she wears her Buddhist dress,
The other, she wears her funny little chin,
One thinking, one laughing, one hoping, one dreaming.
The two girls of Mona Lisa.
Two phases of thought.

BHU

I visited the wonderful expanses of one of India's oldest universities, the Benares Hindu University. Walking through the greens was refreshing. And with Gabriel, the laughs, my boatman on the fringes, a lassi spiked with Bhaang, every step, every second seemed like it contained a million different moments. Riding back, the images started to kick in. Every second was new, fresh. Getting off at Godolia and walking back to my room on the Ghats, I seemed to observe every single detail, every face that passed me, every little scene in the minutest of details. The world of Benares is truly something else. There is an electricity here that I cannot express in words.

"Intellectual work is important and has an undoubted place in the scheme of life. But what I insist on is the necessity of physical labour. No man, I claim, ought to be free from that obligation. It will serve to improve even the quality of his intellectual output."

M.K. Gandhi

One of the hallmarks of a man of self-esteem, who regards the universe as open to his effort, is the profound pleasure he experiences in the productive work of his mind; his enjoyment in life is fed by his unceasing concern to grow in knowledge and ability – to think, to achieve, to move forward, to meet new challenges and overcome them – to earn the pride of a constantly expanding efficacy.

A different kind of soul is revealed by the man, who, predominantly, takes pleasure in working only at the routine and familiar, who is inclined to enjoy working in a semi-daze, who sees happiness in freedom from challenge, struggle or effort: The soul of a man profoundly deficient in self-esteem, to whom the universe appears as unknowable and vaguely threatening, the man whose central motivating impulse is a longing for safety, not the safety that is won with efficacy, but the safety of a world in which efficacy is not demanded.

Still a different kind of soul is revealed by the man who finds it inconceivable that work, any form of work, can be enjoyable, who regards the effort of earning a living as a necessary evil, who dreams only of pleasures that begin when the workday ends, the pleasure of drowning his brain in alcohol or television or billiard or women. “The pleasure of not being conscious”: The soul of a man with scarcely a shred of self-esteem, who never expects the universe to be incomprehensible and takes his lethargic dread of it for granted, and whose only form of relief and only notion of enjoyment is the dim flicker of understanding sensations.

Still another kind of soul is revealed by the man who takes pleasure, not in achievement, but in destruction, whose action is aimed not at attaining efficacy but ruling those who have attained it: The soul of a man so abjectly lacking in self value, and so overwhelmed by terror of existence, that his sole form of self-fulfillment is to unleash his resentments and hatred against those who do not share his state, those who are able to live as if by destroying the confident, the strong and healthy, he could convert impotence to efficacy.

From The Psychology of Pleasure by Nathaniel Branden

The Simplest Question

...to ask yourself is:
"Are you really true to yourself?"
If you know the answer to that, if you can answer that in all honesty, you've got all it takes to make a real change. That's when you will find harmony in your work - a deep sense of satisfaction, a clear sense of you.

The man who has stolen in order never to thieve again remains a thief. Nobody who has ever betrayed his principles can have a pure relationship with life. Therefore when a film-maker says he will produce a pot-boiler in order to give himself the strength and the means to make the film of his dreams - that is so much deception, or worse, self-deception. He will never now make his film.
From "Sculpting in Time" by Andrei Tarkovsky

“Everyday life is surrealistic”, says Jodorowsky, “made of miracles, weird and inexplicable events. There is no borderline between reality and magic.” Using a flurry of archetypal symbols to tap into a collective unconscious becomes his means of transcending this borderline. But for all the “objective art” supposedly produced in this way, Jodorowsky's films are also very personal pictures (often featuring him and his sons in central acting roles) reflecting his spiritual development. Foremost is his belief in making films into books of sacred symbols inducing spiritual illumination; reminiscent of Artaud's ideas about transforming the spectator, everyone making and viewing his films (himself especially) should be destroyed and reborn as new people. For this reason, he shoots his films in sequence from beginning to end, using the filmmaking process as a search for spiritual illumination, beginning with an initiation rite (i.e. violence, for he believes that art must be violent) and moving toward enlightenment. In Fando y Lis, the key to illumination (Tar) lies within oneself, and this belief is maintained throughout the subsequent films in various forms: El Topo represents Jodorowsky's negotiation of Zen Buddhism, while The Holy Mountain is based in Sufism and the writings of G.I. Gurdjieff, Tusk deals with Hinduism and Tantrism, and Santa Sangre springs from “psychomagic”.

More here :)

Hinterland - the film?

The story of a man, K, and his teenage daughter, M, beginning an expedition of India on a couple of bicycles. Inspired by the themes of Zen & the art of motorcycle maintenance and Motorcycle diaries, the film would follow the journey of father and daughter through the hinterlands of India. Breaking away from the city life, they begin the epic one year long journey to learn about life, family, oneness and love in the heart of India. The map is one that K is familiar with and has undertaken many many years ago. So, this time around he goes in search of his old friends in the villages to introduce his daughter to them and also give her a taste of the real India.

India could really do with a film like this. It has mass appeal, could easily be a box-office success, and would, most importantly, be a vehicle or even an inspiration for people to break away from the monotony of their 9-5 lives and explore what this wonderful country has to offer. Coinciding with the release of the film, a website containing the detailed map could be launched. The film could also spur on a concept for an ongoing TV-series where every fortnight, father and daughter go exploring another little hidden gem, another diorama.

Aesthetic components of the brain is a nice name for a band.

Mr. Burn got bit by an elephant

Two days of intensive discussions on film, life, art in general, cities, society and the future of humanity. And within those, interludes of Rat and Bear, Holy Mountain and El Topo. A very rich two days thanks to a chance meeting with Gabriel, a Belgian writer-thinker-violin & miniature guitar player. Oh not to forget he rides a cycle-rickshaw in Barcelona. And the best thing - he listens. Carefully listens, asks questions, reads the synopsis of my films in extreme detail reading everything out loud. Its been refreshing to have met him. And his sense of humour, wow. Really like Alice in wonderland, but Alice on LSD. Among other things, we spoke of the insignificance of a life spent buying Prada slippers, Armani watches & ck underwear (to think I was all that!), of a society that has lost the plot, of a people living in a time where they have no connection with their own inner selves, of the foreigners who come to India and cycle around everywhere with their children - the richness of that, the inward arc, of selling out working in commercial graphic design - making rich companies richer, of "flaunting it" a book about the power of shopping and owning and above all flaunting it and women wanting to be with someone purely on the size of a man's, errr, bank balance, of the floating man productions and its rather absurd logo, of being bit by an elephant!

I will be seeing him everyday till I leave. We even jammed last night at his place, him on the violin, me on the miniature while my boatman was rolling the J. I am having too many ideas these days. Its got to be the electricity of Benaras, one of the strangest yet inspiring places ever. How about a series of films like "The Belgian in Benaras" - peoples ideas of the place, what it means to them, etc. Go on then, do it Mordecai! Knives out...

X-two-oh!

I'm speaking in tongues with the pilgrims
who are shadowing the cylindrical sun
casting their way on the path to the invisible.
Breaking the circumference of the self
and opening their heart to whats really there.
Revealing themselves only to some,
hiding from the burdened ones.

Red, Green & Blue Mountains

The three adult-oriented learning facilities are called Red Mountain, Green Mountain & Blue Mountain. These complexes house the Architecture, Music & Film centres respectively. The three structures are built pyramid-style(cylindrical cones) with branches going out into semi-circle domes housing the production facilities within each of the modules. People living and learning in these complexes carry colour-coded armbands which then facilitate in the inter-mingling of the fields thereby opening up numerous avenues for collaboration. A design for the living (triangle) & learning (semi-circles) wings is underway.

A New Hinterland

In the near future, there will be a new kind of society where the urban mentality meets the village landscape. In these hinterlands of the future, every living entity or society would consist of the village and attached to the village in places near and in the jungles would be institutions. A list of 9 institutions have been outlined.
1/ GLASS OF GRASS. A vegetarian restaurant set in the heart of the forest.
2/ Soul (The School of unconventional learning): A school for city kids and village children that teaches fine arts and performing arts, conducts festivals, abolishes the concept of examination totally and follows a different approach to the convention of academia aiming to provide an alternative to it. The school houses camps with artists, musicians, sculptors, dancers and organises field trips into the village homes understanding their way of life.
3/ HQ: The recording studio that collaborates with artists from all over the country working on music projects and song compositions to be released quarterly. HQ also houses a venue for concerts. Apparently this is where The Strangest Band became popular with their 7 feet high animal constumes and acoustic sounds.
4/ Filmrose: A structure modelled on the design of a rose; each petal housing rooms and secret spaces for film screenings. Here, film enthusiasts meet, watch movies, collaborate on projects and have access to world-class shooting and editing equipment. (I saw a very strange film there once called Buickgreen about a white man in Varanasi falling in love with a local girl, falling out of love with her, strangling her with his lungi and very cleverly covering up the murder by having her secretly burnt in Manikarnika)
5/ The Interactive Kitchen: A restaurant opened by four friends and ace chefs. They cook live for their customers and in the process also detail the whole process right from vegetable farming to ingredients. Cookery classes and field trips contribute financially to this venture. This kitchen also is responsible for the food supply to planets of this Hinterland.
6/ Ode, The home for the Orphans, the Disabled and the Elderly: A structure set in the serene expanses of the mountains, housing an elaborate botanical garden that is maintained and taken care of by the residents. The orphans are taught in Soul.
7/ A childrens film & drama centre: This space screens intelligent cinema for children upto the age of 17. The films are categorised and discussions with adults follow screenings. The children who visit this faculty also have the option to study drama and puppeteering. Their performaces are showcased in the HQ and at the special auditorium at ODE.
8/ Yoga Cafe: This is a hotel where all the rooms have glass structures cantilevered into nature. The rooms are thin and long with high ceilings. During your stay here, you can begin your study of Yoga, understand the learnings of Advaita Vedanta and of spiritual Guru's like Sri Aurobindo, Kabir & Ramana Maharshi. Throughout their stay they are provided vegetarian food from Glass of Grass.
9/ The Library housing a large collection of art books, books on film and music & books on spirituality and philosophy.

This could be elaborated into a book with illustrations and conceptual drawings of the aesthetic of each of these planets. The book would read like a visit to a new utopia in the future. A visit to a self-sustaining society built on the grounds of humanity, learning and peace. The book could be called "Hinterland: Ideas for the government, Ideas for the developers, Ideas for people".

I'm watching everything... the buffaloes, the dogs, the parakeets, the pilgrims, the monkeys, the tourists, the water, the sky... watching everything without perspective.

The Yak

3 days starting trouble really. Dharamsala somehow didn't do it for me. Was fed up looking at all those lost Israeli spiritual-types, dread-locks and all, walking around with all of their psychotropic mentality. Yawn. I booked the bus to Manali on 26th night. The bus journey, wow, another nightmare, I was beginning to feel no good about this trip. And the fourth day as I woke up in Dragon guesthouse and made my way to the gorgeous Hadimba temple things started happening. I overheard two chaps talking to a man with a Yak about the possibility (!) of having the Yak sent to Kerala and housed in an air conditioned room. I laughed out, we three connected. Instantly. Two mallu boys, painters. Joy, expecially, top chap. Then the journey began and I just tagged along with them. We went to some really lovely environments, the Manu-rishi temple, its wonderful vibes, gorgeous wood-stone houses all around; then to the beautiful little town called Naggar. I can never get enough of the gorgeous pine-trees Himachal has. There's something very heavenly-looking about them. We first went to the castle, more gorgeous wood and stone. We visited Roerich's place nestled in the wilderness, never knew such places existed and then the highlight of the day - a rather post-modern looking temple built in a time when there was no modernism to be post about (!). The scenes and the views... I better not put it in words. I got to have all these photos added to the Hinterland website of photos from journeys. So much in this beautiful country. Oh, almost forgot had a lovely breakfast at Sheshbesh, a trippie-hippie restaurant by the Beas River. Managed to swing some Manali cream. X-genome, here I begin. Evening I sent one and went to Joy's guesthouse, a very old wooden structure in the lovely town of Vashist. I am now beginning to experience Benares-type hits part deux. We spoke of films and I browsed through his library, he has a space for guests to watch arthouse. He calls it "Inward Arc: Transvisionary centre for Art & Aesthetics". What fun. As I was leaving, he showed me the hot springs near his place in the Shiva temple where people dip. Lovely town, I am coming back. For sure. Funny how a Yak brought the three of us together. Eh?

God must be looking at the world today and thinking to himself
"My my, what have I done? These people are killing my trees, polluting my oceans, murdering my animals in the name of progress... my, my what have I done?"

A compendium of the world's wonders, curiosities & esoterica, Atlas Obscura, here &
Pocket films for travellers, here.

Residue

On a bus, looking out
I see the 80 ft billboards of an upcoming all-in-one shopping mall, happy families, smiling faces, fitter happier, children playing, a few cultural references thrown in like the done-to-death Kathakali cliche, ambient graphic shapes and bubbles,
I also happen to see the lines of construction workers running to their bus trying to find a place to sit on their long journey back to wherever they live - in the outskirts of the city
Like marching ants, so many of them with their yellow construction helmets, in queues, queues of yellow,
Faces full of sorrow, anxiety, trouble, thoughts of their wife back home, or child, fees to be paid, groceries to buy...
In front of them, Corolla's and Honda's passing by the busy road, music blasting, latest sound systems flashing neon pixel lights,
Such a world of contrasts, the equilibrium met,
Another take on humanity and its flourishes,
And a window into the lives of those workers, the residue of our society, the unwanted children of mankind.

In a milieu of strangers, the people who witness one's actions, declarations, and professions usually have no knowledge of one's history, and no experience of similar actions, declarations, and professions in one's past; thus it becomes difficult for this audience to judge, by an external standard of experience with a particular person, whether he is to be believed or not in a given situation. The knowledge on which belief can be based is confined to the frame of the immediate situation. The arousal of belief therefore depends on how one behaves - talks, gestures, moves, dresses, listens - within the situation itself. Two people meet at a dinner party; one tells the other he has been depressed for weeks; to the degree the listener as audience can judge the truth of such statements only by the way the stranger enacts the feeling of depression, to the degree appearances like this have an "urban" quality. The city is a settlement in which such problems of enactment are most likely to arise as a matter of routine.

- From the chapter "Roles" in The Fall of Public Man by Richard Sennett

To think that I was all these things...

I constantly went after the latest Paul Smith perfume, the latest Paul Smith trousers with the little multi-coloured stripes sticking out so people could see, the Paul Smith hat, the oh-how-cool-it-is black and white Giorgio Armani watch, the Audi TT with the 19" alloy wheels (17" wasn't good enough), the Prada sunglasses (but it didn't have the red Prada strip so I was disappointed - but instead I coloured my hair red to show people how cool I was), the CK underwear, the Ikea furniture and its funny spellings. I had to get my hands on the new Adidas limited edition shoes with the lovely green laces and the 1971 Mexico emblem.

And now when I look back at all this I laugh. I guess I have grown up. A little. But I am only scratching at the surface. The journey starts here, more or less.

To see that the mind is conditioned

All that we can do is to see that the mind is conditioned and, through self-knowledge, to understand the process of our own thinking. I must know myself, not as I would ideologically like to be, but as I actually am, however ugly or beautiful, however jealous, envious, acquisitive. But it is very difficult just to see what one is without wishing to change it, and that very desire to change it is another form of conditioning; and so we go on, moving from conditioning to conditioning, never experiencing something beyond that which is limited.
- JK

"Dreams are illustrations from the book your soul is writing about you." - Marsha Norman

Labours of love

It takes 10,000 hours of practice to become a skilled carpenter or musician - but what makes a true master? Richard Sennett on the craftsman in us all.

The word "craftsman" summons an immediate image. Peering through a window into a carpenter's shop, you see an elderly man surrounded by his apprentices and his tools. Order reigns within: parts of chairs are clamped neatly together, the smell of wood shavings fills the room, the carpenter bends over his bench to make a fine incision for marquetry. The shop is menaced by a furniture factory down the road.
The craftsman might also be glimpsed at a nearby laboratory. There, a young lab technician is frowning at a table on which six dead rabbits are splayed on their backs, their bellies slit open. She is frowning because something has gone wrong with the injection she has given them; she is trying to figure out if she did the procedure wrong, or if there is something wrong with the procedure.

A third craftsman might be heard in the town's concert hall. There, an orchestra is rehearsing with a visiting conductor; he works obsessively with the string section, going over and over a passage to make the musicians draw their bows at exactly the same speed across the strings. The string players are tired, but also exhilarated because their sound is becoming coherent. The orchestra's manager is worried: if the visiting conductor keeps on, the rehearsal will move into overtime, costing management extra wages. The conductor is oblivious.

The carpenter, lab technician, and conductor are all craftsmen because they are dedicated to good work for its own sake. Theirs is practical activity, but their labour is not simply a means to another end. The carpenter might sell more furniture if he worked faster; the technician might make do by passing the problem back to her boss; the visiting conductor might be more likely to be rehired if he watched the clock. It's certainly possible to get by in life without dedication, but the craftsman exemplifies the special human condition of being engaged.

Continue reading.

Touch

God doesn't really bother revealing himself to many people.

Every creator has creations he likes, and creations he doesn't really care for. A painter would have works which he would consider un-100%. A songwriter, in a time of need, would write radio-friendly tunes to make some money. The artist would do a branding job to sustain himself. This theory, I think, applies to God too. So, in that context, what happens. There is greed, politics, war, bureaucracy, and all those things negative and stifling to the human race. The human race. Those he reveals himself to have certain jobs to do while they are here among you and me. They stand up, they start revolutions, they achieve independence of their own and of their country. Gandhi had a job to do. Krishnamurti had teachings to share, schools to found. Mother Teresa had people to help. Fidel Castro had an entire country depending on him, as did Gandhi. The Dalai Lama is here for a reason. So, all these people have had contact with God in some form or the other. There is also the other tier of people working at the grass-roots level. Like Lakshmikutty teacher in Wayanad. She sold her property to build a school for tribal children and also took it upon herself to fight for them when they are exploited by the materialists. There is the doctor in Atapadi who walks the streets everyday, going to the villagers homes and treating them for free. These people are among us. They are doing selfless work because there is a hidden force guiding them. I think that is God. But I am quite certain the percentage of people that God has chosen to touch is quite negligible. But when you are touched, He will reveal himself to you in all his living supernatural glory. He will look at you from the hearts of the simple folk, He will look at you from pine trees on cloud-covered mountains, He will look at you from the edge of the ocean, He will look at you through sunset. And that's when you will look. Inwards. And begin your work, silently. No hoopla, fan-fare free. :)

A little gorgeousness. :)

Herd mentality describes how people are influenced by their peers to adopt certain behaviors, follow trends, and/or purchase items. Examples of the herd mentality include the early adopters of high technology products such as cell phones and iPods, as well as stock market trends, fashions in apparel, cars, home décor, etc. Social psychologists study the related topics of group intelligence, crowd wisdom, and decentralized decision making.

People in these herds are broken up into two groups, explains Friedrich Nietzsche, a philosopher who coined the phrase. One lended itself to the religious points of views- their beliefs and how those dictated their actions- while the other lended itself to influence by the media- more liberal and based upon what others perceive as 'right' (following trends, social norms, etc.).

Herd mentality results in the slow and gradual decay of not just our tiny circle of society, but the whole of humanity as we see it today. And to quote Ms. Rand,

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision."

Reminders

Visit Dharamsala, visit Bookworm, hang out near Mr. DL, visit Dharamkot, get psychotropic, drift away
Visit Manali from there, black-out, then take the Rohtang La to Leh, see, smell, think, feel
Visit Varanasi (again!), begin learning the Sarod, walk the streets, sit in boats, wash clothes on the Ganges, observe, experience, listen
Visit the Bishnois, find out the 29 pearls, sit, learn, learn, learn
Visit Santiniketan, delve a little deeper into Tagore, hang with the Bauls, listen listen (maybe) jam?
Visit Kolkata, listen to people talk about politics, art, literature, walk the alleyways, sit under Howrah, look, really look (not see)
Visit Nagaland, check out the Naga metal scene, curiously look into the world of headhunters, remember not to panic
Document everything - write, draw, film, photograph (both digital and lomo) click click click.
Pointers for the year ahead... :)

Two poems from W

Cup of the sun
Circular
A space between the sky
made to see
a life gone by

----

Green on black, kids in a line
Hand to the leaf, rows and rows
Half empty glasses, white on black
One eye looking, one hand feeding.

Admonition

If you dissect a bird
To diagram the tongue
You'll cut the chord
Articulating song.

If you flay a beast
To marvel at the mane
You'll wreck the rest
From which the fur began.

If you pluck out the heart
To find what makes it move,
You'll halt the clock
That syncopates our love.

- Sylvia Plath

"It is often assumed that those who wander are condemned to restlessness, and that the certainty of identity and self are the markers of surety, confidence, success that all of us must strive towards. There is security in solidity, in strong foundations and structures, in finding your groove and being set in your way of life. In following tradition, in keeping within boundaries, within the womb of your society and its ways.

Wandering, on the other hand, is taken to be inconclusive, an indication of confusion and unknowing. Yet, isn't it through our wanderings that we chance upon insights and experiences that teach us in ways our regular lives wouldn't, and isn't our confusion often what provides the impetus to grow in a new direction? In transcending tradition that we come to know the real scope of our potential, in breaking boundaries that we catch a glimpse of our true nature?"

- Swati Chopra "Dharamsala Diaries"

Lullaby in three

An orange blossom breeze twirls in circles, dervish-like
One hand taking, one hand giving
Blue in green, hat and the like, pointed to the sky
Heaven-faced, fantastical
Viscera sera.

Have a guava. :)

The Music of the Spheres

A universe harmonious as a harp.
Rhythm is repeated equal times.
Heartbeat.
Day/night.
Migrant birds' arrivals and departures.
Star cycles and maize cycles.
Mimosa opening during the day
and folding when night comes.
Moon and tide rhythms.
And crabs who know the tide is on the ebb
and before it goes out have their hiding holes.
A single rhythm in planets, the sea, atoms, apples
which ripen and fall, and Newton's head.
Melody, arpeggio, chord.
The harp of the universe.
that is music.
Difference between music and noise...
The bell's sound is in its form.
Or girls' legs, come to that.
Matter is music.
Matter in perpetual motion in space and time.
Rhythmical are hearts and stars.
The universe sings and Pythagoras heard it.
The music of the spheres,
rather than classical music, jazz.

- Ernesto Cardenal.

Never to forget

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and vulgar disparity for life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

- Arundhati Roy

The conscious, the unconscious & conditioning

What is the mind? There is the conscious mind and the unconscious mind. The conscious mind is occupied with the everyday duties—it observes, thinks, argues, attends to a job, and so on. But are we aware of the unconscious mind? The unconscious mind is the repository of racial instinct, it is the residue of this civilization, of this culture, in which there are certain urges, various forms of compulsion. And can this whole mind, the unconscious as well as the conscious, uncondition itself? Now, why do we divide the mind as the conscious and the unconscious? Is there such a definite barrier between the conscious and the unconscious mind? Or are we so taken up with the conscious mind that we have never considered or been open to the unconscious? And can the conscious mind investigate, probe into the unconscious, or is it only when the conscious mind is quiet that the unconscious promptings, hints, urges, compulsions come into being? So the unconditioning of the mind is not a process of the conscious or of the unconscious; it is a total process which comes about with the earnest intention to find out if your mind is conditioned.
- JK

Ashes

The story of siblings discovering the death of their mother. They are both in their 40's. Brother and sister. The mother's only two wishes are - one, that they scatter her ashes in the Ganges, Varanasi, and, two, take the long journey from Trivandrum all the way up to UP by bus/train. She leaves behind a diary and a map of the places they need to visit on their journey. With each visit, they discover something new about their mother. A road movie where a brother discovers his sister's soul and vice versa and also in the process realise their inner worlds and the interiors of India, the villages, the people, their simple lives - a contrast to their corporate mundane city lives.

Thoughts from Wayanad (4-9 August, 09)

4/8
Back on a journey to Wayanad. Not expecting anything. In the bus, around Mysore, I experienced an intense sense of lightness. A text to Bijoy read -
"Man, I'm experiencing an intense and overwhelming sense of happiness. Something has entered. Its like time, fear, longing, sorrow are things of the past. Like being a quiet observer. Wish we were in it together seeing and learning, not judging. Wow. Feels great. Paradigm shift in its most basic sense."

It was quite something. And listening to Reich, reading some JK. Spot on. All connected. Like a rewiring of the brain. I think this maybe what I have been looking for all my life. Jiji picked me up from Mananthawadi. It was like we were meeting a day later. True, sort of, kinship. He told no one at the shop about my arrival. Lovely to surprise Jamesettan, Benny and Gautam. They were so happy. Felt like a homecoming, laughing, govoreeting. Such a lovely energy in this wonderful town. Its funny no one from the city seems so real, so unpolluted, so real to themselves. JK's words ring true here. Live examples of his teachings. God is great. Thanks to him I am now walking the visceral path.

Thoughts saved in my phone:
"Food, clothing, shelter" - A set of films about people from the Hinterland like Benny, Josettan, Jamesettan. Happy. Content with what they have, the basic food, clothing, shelter. Could be an interesting juxtaposition to the materialistic tendencies of the middle - upper middle class.
Do not renew thought, cancel all subscriptions now.

Muthuraj
At the shop, I finally met and spoke to Muthu, the drinker (thinker!). He had just downed a pint of rum, a regular activity behind the opposite bank. He spoke of his rather unfortunate existence. Over 50, unmarried, abandoned from his parents and siblings in Trivandrum living in an abject state of poverty, but having enough to buy a bottle of cheap booze daily. And over the years, it doesn't hit him anymore, intoxication and such things of the past. He told us about his strange experiences with a hypnotic pickpocketer who twice picked his wallet by making him go to sleep. He also spoke about not having had a single friend or anyone to talk to sincerely for over 8 years. Living in the absolutes of silence and alcohol, disconnected from everything. Strange. Asked him if I could film him and he said he wasn't special and didnt have anything special to say. I took some photos of him which will one day go into my book - "The Quiet Observer".

Back in the serenity of the house on the hill, Jiji and me opened a few beers. I sent some x-genome. Blast-off. We spoke of so many things from the lack of soul in most people to commitment. A lot of fun. Earlier, we went to meet the mad Paris Mohan at his place closeby. He is too caught up in himself, its hard to be around people like him. I always have the urge to tell him "a good man is a great listener". We spoke of his pretty maid, who has been unlucky, stuck with a drunkard. Very sophisticated but alas. What would life have been if she was married to a cultured, real human being. Hmm...

6/8
So, Jiji and me decided to go to the One-teacher Alternative school in the hill. Mathanchettan joined us. It was quite stunning, this small structure set against a marvellous mountain backdrop. Something bit Jiji's feet. Mathanchettan walked into some bushes and plucked some turmeric that Jiji pasted onto the bite. People of the earth, really. "Inspiring, something I would have no clue of", my cityhead realises as I quietly observe. The kids were a bit nervous, at first, to see us, the people from the otherworld. As soon as I got the camera out, it was a whole different scene as everyone wanted to be in it, laughing, jumping, pushing. Very refreshing to see this innocence, still uncorrupt by the commercial world. Took lots of photos (which will go into the book?), and filmed them eating their kanji and payar. There were two striking girls. One seemed like Bhagawati, one like Kali. Two faces of the same person. Both such beautiful faces. Wonder what it is that makes one child smile and laugh and another frown. Could be an interesting study, eh?


7/8
Nature is the essence and the landscape of the heart.

Its truth, its oneness is its harmony with the trees, the birds, the rivers, the lakes, the sea, the sky, the clouds, the stars. Over time as one is influenced and preconditioned by the two pillars of society, ie parents and teachers, the poor vulnerable heart gradually loses all sense of realism. The heart then, controlled by the mind, is taught to dissolve into an infinite grid of the second-grade, of monotony, of the dullness of acquisition, of the expanses of greed, of wanting to be this and that - to compete. The mind now begins to think like a machine, not questioning, not probing, not asking. It quietly works within a mechanical pattern and follows presets. This pattern eventually kills that landscape.

When will all pre-existant, pre-conditioned, preset thought end? When will the real observation begin, when will the real meditation begin, when will the real introspection begin? When? In time, now is the only choice you have. The landscape is waiting to be discovered.

----

Visited Mathanchettans gorgeous 10-acre property nestled right in the heart of the forest. Quiet, real quiet. The apt place for "Hinterland". So Jiji and me made a business plan to propose to "we dont know who". And a secret voice inside me tells me to give up all motive, give up the silly pursuit of these things. But, no, hinterland is special, its important. Its my responsibility to the next generation, our only link to the future. All JK-inspired.

8/8
Funny how Gautambhai heard my "Vertigo" ringtone and immediately felt it was the Koyaanisqatsi theme. Classical music, basically. Bernard Herrman vs Philip Glass. Hmm...

Ideals?

The ending of a quality such as violence or greed is not a matter of time, and it does not come about through ideals; it has to be done immediately, not through time. We get caught up in the gradualism of ideals when we are concerned with time.Please do not jump to conclusions or say, “Without ideals I shall be lost”, but rather listen to what is being said. I know all the arguments, all the justifications of ideals. Just listen, if you kindly will, without a conclusion, and try to understand what the speaker is talking about; do not block your understanding by saying “I must have ideals.”Ideals have existed for centuries. Various religious teachers have talked of ideals, but they may all be wrong and probably are. To adhere to an ideal is obviously to postpone freeing the mind from violence, greed, envy, ambition and the desire for power. If one is concerned, as one should be, with righteousness, which is the foundation upon which rests all true inquiry into what religion is, then one must investigate the possibility of ridding the mind of violence, of greed, of envy, of acquisitiveness, not at some time in the distant future, but now.
- JK

That Point of Enlightenment & The Observer

There is that point of enlightenment which, in my opinion, does not lie in total and selfless physical renunciation. Its a simple look inwards. An eye opens. There's only two we physically have... a third one we could say. It sees. It observes. Everything outwardly, physically, tangibly and everything inwards psychologically, emotionally, intangibly. This I'd like to call The Observer. At this point, ego, "I", pain, suffering, loss, attachment, things, everything, just about everything becomes external. Only a real point is you. This point is open to giving, to love & to live. That point cannot contain the burdens of these innumerable separate "I" things. The poor self is now not poor anymore. It holds a force stronger than anything in the world. And it doesn't need to justify that to the world through saffron robes, 2 foot long beards, vermillion dashes, white robes, turbans and the works. It silently observes listens and learns. A new thing every minute. Yet, it only keeps to observing. At this point, all thought is killed. The motionless silence is just about everything. Everything is there. Just there. Somewhere but not here.

A change that is not of time

Surely, this is the fundamental question that one ought to put to oneself—how to bring about a change which is not of time, which is not a matter of evolution, which is not a matter of slow growth. I can see that if I exercise will, control, if I discipline myself, there are certain modifications; I am better or worse, I am changed a little bit. Instead of being bad tempered or angry or vicious or jealous I am quiet; I have repressed all that, I have held it down. Every day I practise a certain virtue, repeat certain words, go to a shrine and repeat certain chants, and so on and so on. They all have a pacifying effect; they produce certain changes but these changes are still of the mind, they are still within the field of time, are they not? My memory says, “I am this, and I must become that.” Surely, such activity is still self-centred; though I deny greed, in seeking non-greed I am still within the self-enclosing process of the “me”. And I can see that it leads nowhere, do what I will; though there may be change, as long as my thinking is held within the process of the “me”, there is no freedom from struggle, pain.
- JK

Wildernest

A place,
Small wood, small twigs,
The dedication to the art of building a home, a tree of figs.
Contrasting with the world's pace.

A space,
Quiet, undeterred by unwanted noise,
Simplicity, tenderness, not by choice.
Contrasting with the outside race.

The need of the hour...

Is there the urgent need to do a Decalogue of films on JK's teachings. So, you have one on Love, one on Fear, one on Death, one on Religion etc etc. I have written to the KFA (Krishnamurti Foundation America) to explore the possibility of getting access to audio and video archival footage of the man. To take this idea further, do we have camps for students and youths across the country introducing them to these films. So, Hinterland, but in a broader sense, a camp introducing today's generation to JK. I wouldn't be surprised to know that majority of today's school-going and college-going children haven't even heard of the man, let alone know what he has spoken about. During these camps, we should have the kids read chapters from his books. All of this should be filmed and should form an important part of the message within these films from the camps. No? I think its very important. If Gigi and me manage to get the Wayanad property on lease, I think this could really be a possibility.

Human?

I wonder if any of us has wondered why the human being, throughout the world, is perhaps the only animal that is so corrupt - I am using the word 'corrupt' in its basic sense of being broken up - so contradictory, so self-deceptive, and so extraordinarily dishonest. I wonder if we have ever asked ourselves why human beings live that way, saying one thing and doing another, thinking one thing and acting in a totally different manner. All the indications throughout the world are that there is a great degeneration taking place. We are becoming more and more mechanical by following a routine, by following a certain tradition, and by following some leader, some guru - generally self-appointed. Why do we, human beings, follow anybody at all? - except that perhaps when we are physically ill we need a doctor, a surgeon or a dentist. But, psychologically, inwardly, do we need anybody at all to help us to step out of this corruption, this confusion, and this extraordinary sense of insecurity that exists throughout the world? I wonder if we are aware of all this? Or, are we all self-enclosed, with our own little families, our own little jobs, our own little gurus and, therefore, we just forget the rest of the world? So, I ask why a human being, man or woman, has become so utterly degenerate. I am using that word very carefully. To 'degenerate' is to not create oneself; it is not flower in goodness and in beauty, but all the time to destroy oneself.
- JK

Want (Pt. II)

Have you realised how many times you begin a sentence with the words "I want"?

Want (Pt. 1)

Let us say that you have a house with a beautiful garden, and you look after it nicely. Then you see a television set advertised and, if you have the money, you will buy it. You will keep buying more and more things and adding them to what you already possess and, yet, you will not be satisfied; you will want something more. You will want to be happy, you will want to be peaceful, you will want to be loved. As your wife or husband doesn't love you, you will turn to the priest, to God, or you will give your love to somebody else; but even then you will not be satisfied, and you will keep going on and on in this way.

Now, have you ever asked yourself if there is such a thing as being satisfied? Whatever you have, you always want something more. If you are the big man in your town, you want to be the Prime Minister of the whole country, and so on. You are everlastingly accumulating, climbing the ladder of success. At the end of it all, there is death; and you want, hope, there will be something even after you die. You never question and find out if there is an end to wanting. One must have food, clothing and shelter - that is understood. But why should one have the desire to be well-known, to see one's picture in the newspapers, to be famous as a marvelous artist, a great thinker, or a self-sacrificing social worker? You never ask that question, do you? If you find out for yourself why this craving gnaws at your heart night and day, you will also discover that you can go beyond it - not in ideas, not in imagination, not lost in some cloud away from yourself, but factually. Then you will also find that you can live happily in this mad, stupid world with a few essential things, being neither satisfied nor dissatisfied but tremendously alive; and from that will come the discovery of something much greater, something far beyond all this wanting and not-wanting.
- JK

Oh, and I began my discovery of Bill Frisell, Eberhard Weber & Rokia Traore today.

RGB

Idea.
A trilogy of films: Red, Green, Blue. No, not Red, White, Blue trilogy. This is a set of documentary films exploring the natural core of India. The Red documents the deserts, barren lands, festivals, rituals, fire, death, love, anger and onwards. The Green documents trees, our environment, its beauty, its expanse, meditation, dot dot dot. The Blue documents lakes, rivers, oceans, skies, clouds, peace, serenity, openness, oneness. The films are mostly silent accompanied by music - Reich-esque music, could be local, of their place, of them, by them, around them. Three views of a secret.

Yesterday

A good day, a lot of learning spiritually and artistically. Spiritually, I began reading The Mother's Vision (Selections from Questions and Answers) and A Timeless Spring (by J. Krishnamurti). JK's thoughts on Varanasi are so beautifully expressed. Its inspiring to see this simplicity. It really helps connect. And get closer to the core... the hinterlands of the heart if I can call it that. Artistically, I downloaded a lot of music today. The new Depeche Mode "Sounds of the universe", the new Tori Amos "Abnormally attracted to sin", the new Harvey/Parish "A Woman, A Man walked by" and the new IAMX "Kingdom of welcome addiction". Also I began discovering the vast catalogue of Steve Reich and John Surman. There is so much out there. ECM is just fantastic.

You know, one of the strange things is that though India is a very sad country, there is always a smile. The poor smile. They are starving, downtrodden, the have no happiness, they are perpetually working and, yet, as you go by the street, especially in the countryside, they smile at you. This happens nowhere else in the world. This is the miracle of this country.
----
There is something curiously pleasant to walk, alone, along a path, deep in the country...

J. Krishnamurthi (JK)

In pursuit of...

...all things material, trivial and temporary. A want for all these things in unison. Happiness through the pursuit of the physical. This is what the state of things is. Never really finding the synthetic fabric of the real self. Never giving up want for money, constant money, regular revenue... never understanding the fallacy of this type of an equation. An equilibrium sought through the methodical and regular want for self-promotion. A vain and disappointing attempt at wanting to feel superior. Superior, how? Through the acquisition of things, by talking down at people, by appearing in glossy magazines. A very poor realisation of the real self, indeed. Sad. But this is what the state of things is. Never finding the real synthetic of the self but only being a fabrication of it.

Onwards and forwards
away from here.
Three sentences too long,
one zentense too short.
Finding the way
in the overall grid.
The pattern is made,
the machine, it moves,
close your eyes,
let the moment begin...

Four Days

22/7
"What is Auroville"
7am. The day began terribly. Bijoy and me were supposed to go to this screening of "Doshi" in Auroville together. But over the last few days, I have noticed he has changed a lot and there seems to be a lot of distance growing between us. After 4 months of working on the film in Kerala, he has not even asked about it, leave alone see it. Instead he has time to go watch HANGOVER and leave the responsibility of dropping Anjal and Sid back home at night onto me. Anyway, if I had a greater sense of myself and an understanding of the trivialities of these experiences, I would have looked above it and forgotten about it. But I am still walking towards that path. I have not reached the beginning of it yet but I can see it. And after this trip my mind will open a little more to accept that I have been touched by the hand of a divine being. It feels great. Anyway, getting back to the morning I called him and said I would prefer to go on my own in my car and, as I had expected, he lost his head and asked me to go alone. Well. I didnt realise this decision would help me find something magical later on. I decided to go alone. And what a drive. I enjoyed every minute of it. I have a newfound love for Tamil Nadu. The road from Krishnagiri to Pondicherry was quite breathtaking. Like photos from an old torn book on a lost hinterland in Tamil Nadu. If only the book would be accompanied by a CD containing the lost film music. Gorgeous trees, lovely browns and greens. Beautiful local people, the colour of their skin. All very visceral. I felt I was now in a place called Etherea. On reaching Pondi, I realised after speaking to Lalit in Auroville that I had gone on too far so I drive back and was on my way to Auroville. I frequently wrote this place off as some uber-cool hangout for the spiritual wannabes of Europe. When I entered Auroville, I realised I thought right. I didnt get a great vibe in the beginning. I went to the guesthouse and it was deserted. Lalit told me to meet him at the auditorium at 6:30. I reached a little earlier. The path was kucha, trees everywhere. Suddenly I saw the Matrimandir, the iconic circular-shaped meditation centre right in the middle of Auroville. There seems to be a whole new world operating here. A world cut off from the superficiality and materialism of the outside world. A city of friends. How cool. The auditorium was nice, lovely energies. The film looked and sounded cool. No bad cables, no inefficient sound chaps. It was all pucca. At around 6:45 the crowds started filling in. I met Lalit, lovely chap, no flowery "hi, how are you sir, its a pleasure to have you on this eventful day" garbage. To the point. I like that. The audi was full. The film began. Went off really well, lots of laughs and everyone really seemed to enjoy Mr. D's warm personality. They all connected. As it got over, Doshi hadn't arrived yet so the Q&A began with me. Great response. They asked me what was my inspiration, what was the secret of capturing the uncurtained personality of Doshi on camera etc. Doshi then arrived and the applause was overwhelming. Then the discussion progressed to the masterplan of Auroville, which is now Doshi's responsibility after being invited to join the Auroville board of governers. After the film I had a few nice conversations. Mita, one of the Aurovillians who has been here for 13 years, told me how lovely the "portrait" on Doshi was. We spoke for a bit. She has a lovely energy to her. Especially liked her Erykah Badu-esque headgear. And her lovely accent too. She introduced me to a chap who is responsible for the green belt, an oriental chap who didn't wear a shirt to the screening. That itself speaks volumes. No? I got her number and she also invited me to her office the next day for a chat. I was very curious to see what she does. Lalit then asked me to come by to the Centre guesthouse for dinner. Mita showed me the way there. There were a few others and we all chatted. I felt quite at home, there was no frivolous talk. I learnt about the alternative schools (the "vandi" school - a mobile school in a bus that Lalit's wife talked about sounded rather interesting), the thoughts and the soul of Auroville. Very inspiring to see this kind of a settlement.

23/7
"Listen"
Woke up, decided to call Mita. Switched off. How disappointing. I accepted the possibility of not meeting her. As I was getting set to head to the beach, she called. After a round of confusing directions, and a few wasted miles, I finally found the lovely blue and white house. She showed me her space. Apparently, she specialises in the development of the ear, after having researched the Tomatis method. Her work is mainly focussed on increasing the potential of the ear. She told me about an autistic boy who she has had a lot of success with. She also suggested we work on a set of portraits about people living in Auroville. A nice idea and I bet I would learn so much from such an experience. Hope its in the plan for me. Its amazing to see people like her. It makes me realise how petty my life is and how little I am doing for the community. The best part about Auroville is the community involvement. Since, its a small community of like-minded people, it makes more sense to work towards the betterment of it rather than being in a housing society flooded with families worried only about their own betterment and their next fully-loaded car. She gave me an article she wrote on Auroville back in 2000 and a little leaflet about the Tomatis method. I headed to the beach, hung around there for a bit and then headed to Tiruvannamalai. On reaching TVmalai, I couldnt find a place to stay. And then suddenly, like a gift from God I found Arpanaa. A lovely hotel facing the sacred mountain. Very comfortable, very posh, quite expensive too. I decided to stay in for the day as I was quite tired. So far so good.

24/7
"Starring Shanmugham"
I tried to wake up early. No such luck. But everything was working in a pattern. My grid says I was meant to meet a certain Shanmugham around 9ish. As I stepped out of the hotel, everything just clicked. His auto stopped right in front of me and we just connected. I wanted to visit the main temple. I wasn't aware how much I was going to experience. He took me to the temple but since it was crowded he went into a small lane and we stopped in front of Yogi Ram Suratkumar's house. A "God-child" from Tiruvanamalai. One word. Wow. I entered the house and it was filled with all his paraphernalia, from Charminar cigarette packs, to old clothes, to blessing lines on the walls, to all sorts of photos of him. It was all quite beautiful. I didnt feel like leaving. And there was a caretaker who looks after everything, lights the lamp, keeps the chanting of his name playing 24/7. He was a beggar who lived off leftovers and was constantly stoned by civilians. A very interesting story for film. And its not really been documented. Wow. How many opportunities at every corner. Which one do I grab? I really liked Yogi Ram Suratkumars energy. We then went to his ashram. Large sprawling auditorium with a shrine for him and many women chanting his name repeatedly. How bizarre. We also visited the really cool Ramana Maharshi's ashram. The photographs of him were really breathtaking. Its totally out there, this place. I am so fortunate to see all this. And all along Shanmugham was with me talking to me in English, Hindi, Malayalam and Tamil and if I knew Kannada and Telegu, he would speak those too. After a healthy vegetarian lunch at Anbu Mess, we went to see this Swami who lives about 15 km from TVMalai. He was asleep. We waited. Finally when he woke up and we were invited inside. I didn't get a great vibe from him as he asked me for money and I dont know something didn't seem right. There were a couple of families there too, everyone touching his feet asking for the Swami to pray for their daughters marriage, for their son to be successful in IAS etc. I found all this quite boring really. Anyway, that's that. We also went to another Swami's house but he passed away few years back so there was only a caretaker who looked like JP's mom and a little doggie called Kumar. :) Shanmugham dropped me off at the hotel by about 5. Oh, I almost forget. Before that he took me to his nephews little shop. Ramesh arts. He does paintings of filmstars, those classic ones of Rajni and Kamal. And ofcourse Vijai, Vijaykanth, Ajith and Vikram. He was telling me how he has lost a lot of business because of the digital revolution. I asked him to make a painting of Sid and gave him the passport-size photo I had in my wallet. He loved his face. What lovely people. I told him I will come by later to his shop to hang out. After taking a nap, at around 8:30 I came back to Ramesh arts and hung out with Ramesh and his friends. We spoke of art and how Ramesh wanted to call the painting "Sweet boy". The painting looked gorgeous. Amazing sense of detail. I cant wait for Mum to see this. I will gift it to her to keep at home. And oh, I forgot to mention I bought one of those mini xylophones from a shop in Auroville. A gift for Bijoy's office. I think that instrument has a lot of good energies. Wow, this has been a great trip so far.

25/7
"Panchabhoothi at Shankarapuram"
Shanmugham landed up at 9. On the dot. He took me for breakfast to a fantastic little place. The idli/vada was outstanding. And a choice of three chutneys. Heaven. I wanted to visit Yogi Ram Suratkumar's house again so went there and hung out for a while. I took some more photos. Felt more at home today. We then headed to Shankarapuram, the place that has the famous Panchabhoothi, 5 points of Shiva's presence. Shanmugham was driving my car. Insane driving! The landscape out there, 40kms from TVMalai was gorgeous. Rocks, trees, herds of cows, and very few people. Really out there in the hinterland. I felt off the earth as I walked barefoot in these temples almost burning my feet from the scorching heat. But it felt great going to these small temples. We went to pick up Hariharan, a pujari, from his house and he took us to all these spots. Each of these temples had interesting pujari's. The young lad who looked like he could be the next Tamil superstar, the pot-bellied pujari with the rather peaceful face and hair tied in a bun (not to forget him, Shanmugham and Hari busy tying the massive garlands on my cars bonnet), the strangely psyched out swami with the reverberating singing voice accompanied by the mechanical drums. All characters for film. All shot, all documented. Ready to go and be part of "This is a documentary of my life". After visiting these five temples, we headed back and after waiting for almost half an hour got some lovely food to eat at Anbu mess. Then Shanmugham took me to his house where he took the garlands and tied them on the bamboo out on the porch of his very humble home and beautiful children Poornima, Gauri and Ramkumar. Santosh Kumar wasn't there so I didnt meet him. Took some photos of the street kids. Then we went to Ramesh's house and he came back with us to his shop and showed me the painting. Framed in the classic ornate golden frame, it looked beautiful because I am now able to see beyond the so-called gaudy aesthetic of the frame and into the heart of love, of a painting made with real love. He also made a black and white sketch as an extra to keep on top of the TV, as he recommends. I hugged them and thanked them for their work and gave them 1300 Rs. I know its not much, I should have given them more. I will. When the time is right and when my hands begin to really live. Then. Wished goodbye to Shanmugham and Ramkumar and I headed back on the long drive back to a world where I dont belong.