LISTENING

There is no love without understanding; there is no understanding without observing and there is no real observation without mindfulness. Let us quickly analyse this. Of course if I love someone I need to understand him. Without that there definitely shall be misunderstanding and the end of everything beautiful. And to understand anything or anyone I need to observe. Without observing I can not even  fix an IKEA table (and understanding a human is just out of question  if I am not observant)! The last link is the most interesting. If I want to observe something I have to make sure that I give my full attention and without doing ten other things in my mind simultaneously. In this age of multitasking this is a difficult task to do. But it needs to be done if I want to observe properly. 

And the major way we interact with another human is through talking. Hence, if I want to observe a person then I need to be completely mindful when he speaks. I have to listen with my full attention; not to accept or reject what is being said; not to just extract catch phrases from it and make my own impression of what is being said. Easier said than done. Even the venerable Ananda (one of the major disciples of Gautama the Buddha who was responsible for transcribing all of Buddha's talks) confesses this every time he starts archiving one of Buddha's addresses. He shall never write "Buddha told" so and so; rather he will write "I heard Buddha telling" so and so! The difference is subtle but very crucial. 

Please try to do it as an experiment. Try to listen to anyone/anything with full attention. Before you realise you shall start comparing, recording, or very quickly thinking something else. As a matter of fact our brain is not designed to listen/see the complete thing out there! Hypothalamus, a very crucial part of human mind, filters out the sensory signal/data and only sends contextual and some catch incidents to our brain to be processed! No wonder it is so difficult to listen anything "completely"! 

But it is not impossible. As we just discussed, it is biologically impossible given our current brain architecture. Which just means that we need to rewire our brain! As Sci-fi it may sound it is actually possible and brain-plasticity is one of the main research themes in the recent years. Of course it needs practice. And any practice needs motivation. What can be a better motivation than to love your loved one even more? This can be done by giving more and more attention to what he says. So that you don't just hear empty words; you see the intentions behind those words; you see the emotions behind those intentions; you see the preconditions behind those emotions; you see his life story behind those preconditions; you see the whole story. And when you see the whole story (not analyse; but directly feel it in an instant) there is complete listening. Then there can be no conflict; there is only love and joy.

LISBON DIARY

As odd as it may sound, I have never ever taken a real vacation in my life. I mean yes I visit places on conferences and collaborative visits. But then its always work related and while being away I keep almost full presence online and keep doing most of my official duties (as far as they can be done over internet). And when I am in India, visiting family and friends goes to almost to the level of chore. So when I decided on taking a vacation with Chris, I did not know what to do and how to do. We chose Lisbon because of the cheap flights I could get from Cape Town.

Saturday evening is when we landed in the capital city of the erstwhile mighty explorer nation of Portugal. They have been one of the most aggressive explorers from Europe and I have grown up with the epic stories of how Vasco de Gama discovered the sea route to India. This blog is about the series of bad experiences I had in Lisbon. I am not trying to open a complain book. Rather I am just trying to think may be these trends may point to the reason why the once-mighty seafaring colonial giant is currently an ailing economy.

Story 1: Where is my Uber?

After almost 25 hours of journey I did not have the energy to use public transport to get to our Airbnb. So I called for my Uber. Uber app told that “meet your driver at the Kiss-&-Bye point on 4th floor”! Lisbon airport has multiple mezzanine floors and its confusing what is what. We asked a lady in one of the shops. She told go straight and left and take the lift. We did that and ended up in a huge underground parking lot. Then I messaged my driver and he told he has no idea how we should get to him! Then we moved out, asked a security person and he sent us in another direction. Then a lady in a restaurant and she sent us in a completely opposite direction. And finally the driver told something sensible and we went out of the building and asked the guard there where can we find the parking place. He told go there…..pointing his finger to some vague direction. But finally we found our taxi. Its as if people enjoy telling things even if they do not know what they are telling. We shall see this story being repeated often. So much so that we made our own hypothesis!

Hypothesis 1: If a Portuguese tells you to go left then ignore her or
if at all you want to follow then go right!

Story 2: Where is my check in counter and boarding gate?

In a day I had to take a flight to Tallinn. Reaching the airport I realised that there are more than 4 clusters of check in counters and navigating between them needs some special skills. And again, I had to ask 3 persons; get lost a few times before I could find where to check-in. (That being said the security check and other processes were pretty streamlined). Once inside, one would need to wait till 15 minutes to the boarding time before they display the boarding gate. Its pretty counter-intuitive to me. I mean most of the flights do not originate from Lisbon and hence they would be knowing which gate will used for which flight. But for some mystic reason they won’t tell you the gate number till the very last minute!

Story 3: Where is the good food?

If you are a food connoisseur then be warned. We have tried in multiple places and the food is either terrible or you have dropped your expectations to such a level that even an absolutely plain food may taste OK. We were pretty brave in terms of experimenting with food and tried in a range of place starting from Pizza Hut ice-cream to a health food-place to Portuguese food in the tourist heartland to recommended brunch places to Asian food to Nepalese food to Pizza! Somehow people have lost the taste for good food or have just kind of accepted their destiny and manage with whatever crap is available.

Story 4: Where is my castle tour?

One fine day we wanted to do the most touristy thing and visit the castle. It was a decent 20 minute hike from ground level roads. The first trouble came when we stood in front of a trifurcation and there was no sign telling which way to go! Bifurcations and trifurcations kept surfacing up but never could we find any signage! I mean tourism department in India is pretty pathetic; yet they care enough to put some signs (especially something of this importance)!. And once we reach the top at the front gate of the castle there was a notice saying the castle is closed because of strike! How is this even possible? And even if it happened is not it just a kind gesture to put the notice below before people start hiking or taking taxi to come up?

Story 5: Where is my pizza hut?

After the castle saga, we took a really really long walk and by the end of it were too tired. In the search for something crap we thought of having pizza at pizza-hut. We checked it in Google-map and took an Uber. Reached in our street and there was no pizza-hut. Never ever has Goole-map failed me so far (not even in India or Thailand)! But I guess in Lisbon even Google learns a trick or two :) The pizza-hut was just not there! We tried to call and it linked to the pizza-hut office in Porto!

The Epilogue!

That being said, it’s not all bad of course. Lisbon is a fairly small city with pretty good public transport. The apartments have a nice vintage look to them; and the coffee is really nice. So if you have some great company then Lisbon is not a bad place to spend few days in!

OVERCAST LISBON

Overcast sky, chilly wind and cold drizzle;
With a wet jacket, cold is all you feel.
Small poddles of water on the road,
Light too dim to see only shadows,
With leaky canvas shoes,
Disgust and wet is all it feels!

But dim light feels so romantic,
And the cold jacket gives more the reasons to hold you tight.
Walking in rain with clasped hands,
Perspective is all it takes to change the sight!

Coming to the beautiful Lisbon,
And trapped indoor by the insistent rain;
Weary of the preceding long trip,
Hunger, anger and hopelessness is all you can retain.

Lying in the bed with you and
Looking at the smearing raindrops by the windows,
It feels so serene, and... time stops,
And life feels free from all shadows!

Perspective is all it takes,
To change shadow into inner brightness,
To make overcast Lisbon
A myriad colorful symphony of dripping droplets;
To make shoggy wet walks on potholed roads
Into delightful warm cosy memorable walks;
To turn the trapped indoor feeling
Into blissful exotic moments;
Perspective is all it takes.

Alter ego! (written in 2003)

It has just been another of those typical Saturday mornings in the Indian high tech cities, which we salaried people call weekend. So it looked as if the business clock of the city has started a few hours late.  The cuckoo, crow, and who knows what other varieties of birds were busy presenting their symphony. Not that they do it only on these great days called the weekends; but only on these days you become able to have some clear picture of their melodious chorus, due to the thin human interference. Dust free roads, sparkling sunlight, men-n-women in black and white on stroll,... these are some typical sceneries that you find on a weekend morning in Bangalore.

But for people like Salim the auto driver, Satya the vegetable vendor and of course our own Chinnamma, days and dates seem to have no special significance. Yeah, Chinnamma, the lady who comes everyday early morning to wash our utensils and clean our household; she must be around 35. Of course with the evergreen or ever yellow look on her face, if Sarita would say she is 30 or 40 or 43 or..., I have no proof to support my axiom on 

Chinnamma's age. Age is a luxury that only the non-poor can entertain with!!!

I and Sarita have never bothered ourselves with the exact details of Chinamma. And our language barrier, with Chinnamma's Hindi vocabulary amounting to two words and Sarita's Tamil proficiency limited to a few words, has stopped a gregarious housewife like Sarita from getting the family details of Chinnamma. All we knew was that she belonged to some distant village of Southern Tamilnadu and her husband was long dead in some odd road accident for which she is yet to get the 1 lakh rupees of compensation from the car owner who caused the accident. And of course she never failed to entertain her guests. Every week we would be having a few new faces in her one room roadside temporary home. But we have to admit that we have never seen Chinnammma in a gloomy mood in our last two years of stay.

And on that particular Saturday, my old friend Manu happened to pay us a visit in the early morning. As far as I remember I have never seen Manu rising before 9.30 in the day, when we were roommates in college. Of course time and marriage have the potential to change anything and everything!!! On enquiring, Manu told that he had come to take a few snaps of our Chinnamma. Photography has been the hobby of Manu since the days we were roommates. Of course presently for a long time, we had not been in touch, hence I had no chance to know if he had still persisted on his hubby. But like modern art, I have always failed to appreciate his snap-shots. Still I successfully hid my inability all those days. So continuing on my old habit, I again suppressed my surprise on why on earth should Chinnamma be photo graphed. Like ever, I appreciated (of course against my inner voice) his choice of subject and without delay asking Sarita for some snacks. I myself went to call Chinnamma. But my old friend stopped me and expressed his desire to frame Chinnamma along with her very own milieu. So we went outside to find Chinnamma busy in her eternal unending list of some odd job. This time she was cleaning the coconut leaves to gather the sticks for a broom. On hearing my voice, she just stood up and starred in a way as if asking like the Aladdin s jean "Just a call and I am ever ready to do any small chore for you, disregard to the time and place". But this time, I asked her using heavy sign-language to just sit down and do her job but give a glance towards us. With a lot of effort and another lot from Sarita we could finally convey our idea to her. Our good old friend, then, took his own time in adjusting his accoutrements and then another couple of minutes to take a few snaps. Busy as always he was, he left soon after finishing the job. But we could find Chinnamma working (who knows what) at the same place and for a quite a few hours so...!!!

And the very next day Chinnamma came to Sarita all blushing. We have never in these two years marked that pinkish Chinnamma!! May be some of her enlightened kids have told her about the magical instrument called camera ! So she told a lot of things to Sarita, from which she could clearly get that she wants to have a glance of her snaps. But I knew my friend very well and hence by another great amount of gesticulations, we conveyed to her that we will give her the photos after three months. And the next few days we saw Chinnamma glancing at the undecipherable thing called calendar on the wall. But soon she forgot the episode and was back to her old Chinnamma form.

Again it seemed, marriage and time have changed my friend. Because very soon, one day I got a mail with all those snaps of Chinnamma as attachment. Very religiously I got the best printouts of them as soon as possible. On coming to home the first thing that I deed was to show those snaps to Sarita. Though she was not impressed, but she appreciated Chinnammma's photogenic face !! And next we had to call Chinnamma. As ever, she was prompt enough to appear before us within a few minutes. And I handed over the snaps to her in a presidential demeanour, as if handing over some gallantry award to some army chief. Seeing the snaps, Chinnamma was dumb stuck. Her labour-stricken raged fingers touched her very own photographs. How strange, beautiful it would have looked to her eyes. We had doubts about when Chinnamma would have last looked at her own reflection on mirror. So obviously this reunion of Chinnamma with her alter-ego was a scene that neither me nor Sarita could ever forget. I positively doubt if Eliot or Keats would have been able to put those out-flowing expressions into words. Nor can there be any word for that emotion in any language of the world of mortals. And a matter of minutes, she was out of her trench of bliss and was smiling and blushing. Sarita conveyed that there was no other chore to be done. And she left for her home in a manner that can be compared to the way a Cat chases a mouse, swift though but silent enough.

Then for the next couple of days we could find Chinnamaa showing her snaps to every odd friend out there. It became her favourite hobby. May be for the first time in her life she got a HOBBY..!!! For people like Chinnamma words like hobby sound too expensive. But there was our very own Chinnamma, spending the few minutes of her hard earned time in her newly possessed pastime. Me and Sarita were observing her as our pastime, while our friend, the father of these pastimes, must still be enjoying passing his time in supplying a few more Chinnammas with their very own ALTER-EGOs...!!!

Perfection in imperfection!

Living in a stunningly beautiful place like Cape Town is a matter of luck. And the best part is that the weather never gets too harsh for my walk to university. And when you add regular meditation to that then one tends to get amazing thoughts during those walks!

Few days back, while walking, I felt an amazing insight. Yes I wanted to use the word "feel" because it was direct (and not the result of thought). Everything looked "perfect" and perfectly balanced. Every tree, every grass, every car, every person in those cars, all the thoughts in the heads of those persons...all beautifully orchestrated. Everything following sequences of cause and effect; everything in place.

"But, sir, the world is not at all perfect", you may say! Yes, there are nasty things in this world, nasty thoughts in the minds of some of those persons, nasty deeds done by some people, nasty natural disasters.....But if you can see that the tag "nasty" is something we give then things will look different. People are people; things are things; we add tags. Calling a person nasty for rape is equally ridiculous as calling lion nasty for killing deers. And don't get me wrong. I am not asking for forgiveness for the rapist. That is up to the law of the land and the people. I am just saying that its just cause and effect (and the cause that he raped will effect in him hanged or stoned to death!). Its like a giant machinery whose every part is working in perfect unison.

You may not like what you see; you may not enjoy what you see at times. But when you can view it all together, the whole giant machinery we call creation, you can just see perfect working of it all. Like a giant clock; you may not like the fact that its 8am and time to go to work....but you can not but amaze at the perfection of the clock....tick tick tick....

Mudita for Laddoo!

Last year I was thrilled to discover the word "MUDITA". It is a Pali word meaning the opposite of jealousy, i.e. the feeling of joy on seeing someone else's joy. There is no doubt that it is a strongly positive feeling with the potential of removing negativity and sorrow. Why would you ever feel sad if you can absorb the joy of others. Practicing this is not easy though.

Today morning I saw the post from a close friend stating that one of his friends made a box of delicious coconut laddoos (sweetmeat) as an un-birthday present! Of course my friend was thrilled. I felt a big tinge of jealousy. Then I tried to use Mudita, i.e. to feel my friend's joy. I could not. I tried to think why.....In my life no one has ever made an un-birthday present to me. No friend of mine had ever made a box of handmade laddoos for no reason. I do NOT know how it feels like when one gets a gift like that.

That made it clear why it is more difficult for us to feel Mudita than to feel empathy and compassion. We do not have much experience in being happy and joyful. In developing world we are too pressed for time and too pressed by customs to feel a wider range of joy. In developed world we are too pressed by selfish individualism to feel a wider range of joy.

People want to get rid of sorrow. But they never try to be free and enjoy joy like an epicurean. Even the life of Sakyamuni Gautama, the original Buddha, teaches this. Till the age of 29 He was immersed in pleasant life and 'so called worldly' joys. One can feel empathy only when one has experienced a range of pain himself. One can feel Mudita only when one has experienced a variety of happiness. And unless one is able to feel both empathy/compassion and Mudita there is no real freedom from pain!