Thoughts and happenings of a day

Something’s wrong with the people around me. They have not identified the greatest achievement of my life. Instead they believe the big change I effected in my career is the greatest achievement of my life. I am proud of the change but it is not even my second greatest achievement. Thinking about it, I realize, shockingly, that it is not even my third greatest achievement. Recently I attended an Alumni meet. I spent a refreshing day catching up with people I did not know and did not really care to know. By the end of the day, many of my more stranger than friends batch mates got to a state where they found it hard differentiate between sky and the ground. Watching the scene, I was reminded of the Wet Wet Wet song "Love is in the air".  By love, I don't mean the Romeo - Juliet type but more the Jesus Christ type. Every human seemed like an angel for most of the on-verge-of-disintegration people. Many walked over to me and congratulated me on "my greatest achievement". I smiled and mmm-ed and ahh-ed through it. I did not dare to explain that I thought otherwise.

Earlier that day, I had made a fool of myself by taking part in a discussion on career changes. During the discussion the word passion crept in. The discussion took a nasty turn. It seemed to people that I went through the change to start working on my passion. I like what I do but it will be a stretch to call it a passion. As a matter of fact, I was earlier working in my area of passion. One of my fellow batch mates (whose existence I did not know till that day) did not like the use of the word passion and objected. His objections were not directed at me but at one of my panel-mates. Later, just as I was leaving he caught me and started tearing me apart. Much as I would have loved to be torn apart, he timed it wrong. I put a pleasant smile and said in a pleasant voice something rude and walked away.

I don't have problem in people harping about my achievements. I am not afflicted by the disease called modesty and have no problems in people praising me. But how do I make them realise that for me, the achievement they talk about is not an achievement at all. For heaven's sake it comes fourth; not even a bronze medal. I can't even take the credit for having thought about it. Don't get me wrong. I am not saying that people should not talk about my accomplishments. Please don't talk about that; talk about this.

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As I walked from the railway station, I saw a man sleeping on the pavement. He did not seem like a homeless person who had made that pavement his home. He was more like a person who had fallen midway to his destination. He was lying on his back, his left knee was bent up and his right knee was over the left one. He was fast asleep. I felt a pang of jealousy run through me. The fellow was asleep in a crowded, noisy, dirty and stinky place. He was oblivious of the many footsteps forming around him. The din of vehicles probably did not even get to his dreams. He was enjoying his sleep. As I went round the corner, jealousy had given way to logical and pious thoughts.

************

I was glad the long day was coming to an end. It had not exactly gone as well as I had hoped it would but it was not bad either. I was looking forward to getting back home. The long drive listening to music that I love seemed like heaven compared to listening to other's thoughts, hopes and wishes. The traffic was smooth for a Friday evening and I got through the crowded parts of the city. The traffic in the suburbs, which is usually light threw me a shock. It was down to a snail's place; not a constantly moving snail but one that stopped every few seconds. During one such stop, my mobile started singing. As I looked down at it, the snail started moving. I took my leg off the clutch and the car, which was in second gear, jumped forward and stopped.

I tried to get the car started with no luck. It went click-burrr-buzzzz-zzzzz. I tried turning it once more and it resulted in a similar click-burrr-buzzzz-zzzzz. I had faced a similar situation a few months earlier and knew the problem precisely. The battery was down and the car required a jump start. By this time, the drivers in the vehicles behind got impatient and started honking. I switched on the hazard signal and waved my hand to inform that the car will not move. I don't think they understood and continued to honk. I waved my hands some more. Finally, they moved out of the lane and went ahead. Every one of them glared at me. I started melting. With shivering  hands, I called the roadside service and requested help. They said that help was on the way and should be with me in one hour. I could not contain an incredulous sounding "one hour?". They reassured me "within one hour". I had no choice but wait.

I kept a watch in the rear view mirror. Most drivers noticed of the hazard lamp and took care to move away from my lane. Fortunately, the car stopped at left edge of the road and not at the center. But it stopped close to a crowded signal and the whole place was choked with vehicles. Some autorickshaws and goods vehicles did not take heed of the hazard signal and came right behind the car and honked. I waved my arms to inform them a combination of "my car is not starting and I am stuck" and "go to hell". They moved with great difficulty from behind my vehicle and stared at me as they passed by. I stared right back. After sometime I got tired of staring at people and started staring at my mobile. A few people on two wheelers, commented and wanted me to move to the side. This effectively killed my thought of getting out of the vehicle, standing behind my car and waving the other vehicles away. At least inside, one can stare at the mobile and miss the comments.

Forty five minutes later, there was a knock on the glass. I looked up and saw a policeman. I have not grown out of jumping out of the seat on seeing a policeman. So I promptly jumped out of my seat. Since the insides of the car did not have room enough for me to jump out anywhere, I fell right back into the seat. I opened the window. He asked "What happened?" I said "The car stopped and needs a jump start." I reassured him that help was on the way and should reach soon. He responded "the place is too crowded and your car will cause a jam" without realizing that it had already caused enough jam to fill a few Kissan bottles. He continued "I will get a few people to help you push the car". He got into the service lane and asked an auto driver and a person with a vegetable bag to help. The auto driver agreed readily but the person with the bag seemed confused. He pointed at the auto and seemed to be saying that he did not want to ride the auto. The policeman explained patiently the need and they walked towards the car. The policeman asked me to steer the vehicle into the service lane. I nodded a nervous yes.

The next time the traffic moved, the two people pushed the vehicle. The traffic stop within a few metres. The autorickshaw driver walked by and asked what the issue was. I informed him about the car stopping and it requiring a jump start. He face brightened and he said "Oh! You should have told me earlier. All you need to do is the put the vehicle in second gear as it moves and the vehicle will start". I looked at the driver incredulously. I had heard about this trick but did not know the details and did not realize that it worked on these modern car, which is controlled by computers and other rotten fellows. I thought such tricks worked only for cars made in the 80s and 90s. I asked "so what should I do?" Before the driver could answer, the policeman asked "If you are not sure, do you mind if I do it?" This man's politeness was killing me. He was turning out to be everything I did not expect a policeman to be; not that I knew much about policemen. As he got into the driver's seat he said "you can go and push the vehicle".

As we waited the traffic to move, I heard the passerby cribbing to the autorickshaw driver in Hindi that he was getting delayed and had to go home. The driver waved his hand and said that he will be free to leave in a few minutes. As the traffic ahead of the car moved, I pushed the car but the driver stopped me. He said "lets wait for a bit. Let there be enough space in the front for the car to move." We waited and soon started pushing the car. It moved jerked, moved again and stopped. The traffic ahead had come to a stop. I went up to the driver's seat and asked the policeman "It did not start, right?" He smiled at me and said "of course not, it has started." I nearly fell on the road in joy. I got into the driver's seat and beamed a smile and thanked the autorickshaw driver and the policeman profusely. The North-Indian-in-a-hurry passerby was nowhere in sight. The two of them smiled at me indulgently.

As I continued my interrupted journey, I felt stupid. I did not know much about the vehicle I was driving though I have been driving it for more than a decade. On the bright side, I had learnt something on this day and it might come to use in the future.

As usual, this cloud too had its silver lining.

Varanasi Notes: It's all in my head

The sun had not come up when we crossed the bridge over the Ganga. Later I found that the bridge's name, Malviya Bridge. I had seen the Ganga earlier, that too in a pristine form, and so it was not a "WOWWWW!" moment. Besides the darkness made it impossible to really perceive the river and its surrounding. I was told that the campus was situated by Ganga. My search for a mobile network took me to the very edge of the campus. Beyond the fencing I sighted a water body through the trees. I walked further and was, at long last, able to see the water body. Not the Ganga but a sewage laden stream. I learnt later that this was tributary of Ganga called Varuna. A few hours later, I walked to the other end of the campus and saw the Ganga flowing in all majesty. No, that's not right. Not flowing but standing still.

Buffaloes love the river Ganga. At many spots, you find them swimming through it with only their snout visible or lazing by its banks. A few of the buffaloes were active enough to graze along the. A few birds walked with them and observing them with interest. At times, they showed the courage to perch on their backs. A few times, I was surprised to see men washing the buffaloes. The buffaloes stood in the water with joy on their face and let the men scrub them clean.

I woke up at 5:30 am on two days to walk along the Ghats of Ganga. Prior to the trip my opinion of Varanasi was not good. While it is considered a holy city, it had also gained notoriety for being dirty. Hence I started the walk to the Ghats with a spoonful of anxiety. Actually, a bucketful of anxiety. The walk from the campus till the Malviya bridge took away some of the anxiety. But matters got worse since then. We crossed the bridge (and not the river; I mean from the left side of the road to the right or right side to left depending on one's direction). We walked down a dangerous ramp and stairs to reach a Ghat named Rajghat.

The writing of the wall was clear - "Swachh Bharat". Maybe the Ghats, Ganga and Varanasi are cleaner than the past but it still is far from swachh. At frequent intervals, I saw a person sweeping the Ghat and right behind her people continued demonstrating their right to litter. As I walked along the Ghats I noticed manhole covers and heard the water gushing through them as I crossed them. Many spots by the Ghats were used as urinals. Varanasi and the Gange will not see Swachh for many years.

The dhobis washed their cloths at a Ghat. The cows and buffaloes were washed at another. People washed themselves at many. A few people looked towards the rising sun, took some water in the cup of their palms, offered it to the sun and poured it back into the river. Women sat in a circle by the river and sang bhajans. A lady was deeply involved in her exercises. A man was teaching Yoga to two women. Some dead waited for their turn while others burned happily.

I was not interested in entering the Vishwanath temple. I had not taken a bath; neither in Ganga nor elsewhere. An incident from the young days has left a deep mark in my confused head. My parents and I had visited a temple though we had not taken bath. By that evening, my mother had lost a precious gold chain and I fell sick soon after. That was proof enough for the commandment "He or for that matter she who enters the abode of the Gods shall do so only after the sins and dirt of the previous day are washed away from the tip of the hair on his or her head or from his or her bald pate to the bottom of his or her feet." (I had to mangle the commandment to tone down the sexist usage of only his instead of his or her). The path from the Ghat to the temple was in shambles. We did not understand the reason for the broken down buildings and the walk to the temple was turning out to be a bewildering experience when we heard a man shout  "Dekho hamara Pradhan Mantri kya kar raha hain". Apparently, our PM had decided to have a proper approach to the temple from the Ghat and started demolishing all these ancient (or maybe old) buildings that blocked the view of Ganga from the temple.

The temple had ridiculous amount of security. A security personnel with some kind of automatic gun  announced "No mobile phones allowed". Three or four persons appeared magically besides me and said in unison "Sir, we have a safe to keep your mobiles". I asked them the first question that comes to my head when I hear such statements "How much does it cost?" Prompt came the response "Oh you don't have to pay for keeping the phone, just buy the pooja plate from the shop." I was not ready to fall for this line "Okay. How much for the pooja plate?" "250 Rupees sir!" I turned around saying "I am not visiting the temple this morning". "Sir, how can you not? This is a sacred temple. You came all the way from the South and how can you go back without seeing it?" I turned around and glared at them for a moment. I was shattered. My chaste Hindi fortress has been compromised. I realized I too speak like Mehmood in Padosan. Aiyoo jeeee, ye kaisa hua jeeeeeeee.

The Internet claims that The Blue Lassi Shop serves the best lassi in Varanasi. I found the location on the Google Map. I realized it was close to the Vishwanath temple. Not towards the Ghat but away from it. We took a taxi from Sarnath and asked the driver to go to some place close to the lassi shop. He stopped a kilometre away and said that the taxi cannot proceed any further as the road towards the shop is one way. So we had no choice but walk. As the taxi driver suggested, the shop was a kilometre away but the crowds made the kilometre seem a few more. I had the phone in my hand and from time to time checked the route. We went from one narrow road to another and then entered a gully. Soon after, the map announced that we had reached the location. I looked around, no boards of Blue Lassi. There was a lassi shop with a holy name assigned to it. I walked around a bit but no luck. The only blue in the place was within our heads. I asked a few people and they sent me back on my trail till I stood in front of a shop in a lane to the left of Google map's destination. As soon as I saw the shop I let out a understanding  "Aaaaahhhhhhh!" I could not have missed the shop had I taken the lane to the left of the destination for a man sat making lassi in front of a shop painted blue .

I am not sure about you but I am getting annoyed with all the italicised words. Frankly, the writer of this writeup (me) has no idea where to use the italics and so uses it at any place he feels he should use it. At times, he gets embarrassed of using it and drops it. He... Oh no! I am annoyed of referring to self in the third person. I have to come to an understanding regarding the use of italics (the usage of italics for the sake of using italics is an insult of the reader and I believe it should be stopped instantly). Italics will only be used for Indian words provided they are not a name or in a name, which mean lassi will be written in italics but the lassi in the Blue Lassi Shop will not be written in italics as that lassi is a part of a name and so does not satisfy the italics rule. The only exception to this rule happens when I forget about this rule.

I realized the reason why The Blue Lassi shop had taken the Internet by storm. It was filled with foreigners (Should I be politically call them firangs?). The place had an Indian couple waiting for their lassis while six or seven foreigners enjoyed their lassi (I do not mean, that the foreigners got priority over the Indians in that shop; they probably reached earlier than the Indians). Two or three walls in the shop were filled with photographs of the customers who visited the shop and liked the lassi. The foreigners talked boisterously as they slurped their lassi. The Indian couple received their lassi. The lady looked at it suspiciously before starting to drink it. We were next in line. The lassi was served in a kullad and unfortunately has nuts and other garnishing on its surface. I am a puritan as far as food is concerned, which meant I did not splash ketchup on samosas. I love having a packet of ketchup as dessert after eating a samosa but definitely not with it. So I like my lassi plain. I don't even like the smattering of rose essence on my lassi for it pops the question in my head "Did someone murder the lassi?". Here, I had to deal with nuts too. To top it, they served it in a shiny paper plate with a plastic spoon. A plastic spoon to drink lassi seemed omnious.

As we sipped the first mouthful of the lassi, we heard the chant ram naam satya hain coming from the lane outside. We looked up to see a person's final journey in progress. Two or three sips later, the incident repeated and it repeated a few more times. The Indian couple in the shop threw away their cup of lassi and walked away. We held on. Though the series of final journeys had killed the idea of taste, which to start with was not present in the lassi, I braved on and ordered for a Papaya lassi. As expected, it turned out be a bad decision. I paid the cost for the lassis and walked out of Blue Lassi shop feeling blue within. As we walked out, we gave way for another set of chanting people hurrying to reach the Manikarnika Ghat carrying someone who will never chant again.

Once one's life has decided to leave one's body and if the aforementioned one is a chaste Hindu, one would desire to have a burning good time at the Manikarnika Ghat. I hope you are not wondering how one would desire once one's life has left one's body. In case you are wondering so, I recommend you read the verse 23.A.6717 of the Gitapuranomansa. The verse, written quite beautifully in Sanskrit, I believe, means thus.

"One's life is but a moment in the immense wheel of time 

But one's desires are spokes in the immense wheel of time 

For what is life but an ever turning immense wheel of desire".

A self appointed guide tried to guide us through this Ghat by telling us that the fire at Manikarnika burnt 24 hours a day. The small lane besides the Manikarnika Ghat led to the Vishwanath temple. A few days after returning from Varanasi, I was listening to a video being watched by another when I heard the name Manikarnika come up. Rani Laxmibhai of Jhansi's name prior to her marriage was Manikarnika and she hails from Varanasi. At first, I thought the Ghat was probably named after her. But this morning I realized that the reverse is probably true.

The mystery of death and everything beyond makes it a fascinating subject. Life being what it is can be is dreary at a macro level where everything appears the same. Death in that case, is a great escape. Though the queued ones probably loved their lives dearly and wanted to continue living, I looked at them with envy. Their warm and problematic moment is over. Now it is time for the long cold rest (as Pink Floyd had said many years ago). The Manikarnika Ghat was probably the dirtiest Ghat in the city but I thought it would be a good place to leave back the only possession we own.

During Diwali, the doors to the Annapurna Devi Mandir opens for three days and a million people try to get a darshan of the Devi. All at the same time! This meant human beings choked all the roads, streets and gullies around the temple. People waited for hours in queues running for miles. An autorickshaw driver had given me his number and when I called him he said he had been waiting in the queue for the past four hours and will require some more time. When I called him four hours later, he said he was very close to the temple and would be able to be with us in another one and a half hours. From the outside, these queues did not seem to consist of individual human beings. It seemed like the scene from the climax of the movie Enthiran (not 2.0, I have not fallen for that mania yet) where the many clones of chitti (which frankly is a shitty name) come together as a snake or dragon like being. Queues are scary beings that swallow anyone close to its tail but spit away the same one if he/she goes close to any other part of its body. On that day, the scary being was caged in a flimsy wooden skeleton.

After the Blue Lassi fiasco, we found ourselves besides this monstrous being. It could not spit us away as there was no space to spit. The street was filled with vehicles going this side and that as well as humans doing the same. I looked down once and noticed an ant stuck in the crowd as it could neither go forwards nor backwards. I don't think the ant lasted on this planet much longer. The cops of Varanasi could not control the crowd. As a matter of fact, they were stuck in the traffic too. They announced their presence by wailing loudly. One police jeep was parked right in front of us and added to the confusion by refusing to budge. Suddenly, a line of people started coming toward us. They were on the wrong side of the road and were causing confusion but the fellows did not care. The new set of people pushed and shoved as though they had the right of way and nearly caused a stampede. On that day, not very far from the Manikarnika Ghat, many realized the meaning of the phrase "scared to death". The confusion inspired the police jeep to switch on its siren. The annoyance of the crowd increased. The jeep started moving at a slow pace. All of us moved behind it. Soon we were cruising at snail's pace behind the jeep. A few minutes later, the crowd was behind us and we were able breathe again.

The less I talk about that Lassi

That make us feel dizzy

Not because it was fizzy

Rather, it put us in a spot busy

Left us feeling like something squashy

Thank god! We did not end up like potato mashy

God! 

Wasn't God the cause of this incident crazy?

After many opinions and counter-opinions, I settled on the opinion that Varanasi got its name from the rivers Varuna and Assi. When I saw these rivers, I realized that referring to these rivers as rivers would hurt rivers all around the world. They are considered tributaries of the river Ganga but these days are used as channels to dump sewage into Ganga. Before cleaning the Ganga, one should clean these rivers. If Varuna's state is pathetic, I don't have words to describe Assi. The Varanasians refer to it as a nala. It is a thin stream of dirty water that barely kisses the Ganga. This thin dirty stream has a Ghat by the Ganga named after it too! Maybe the Chief Minister of the state, as a part of his renaming mania, should rename the city to something else. Maybe Kashi, its name in history and maybe prehistory. The ancientness of the name would probably make us ready to bear the dirt and filth.

The kingdom of Kashi lay to the North of Varanasi. Today, the remains of the city lies to the south of the Rajghat fort and north of Rajghat Ghat. The ASI protects this location and has a single board that summarizes their findings of the place. The board claims that the site contains evidence of settlement from 8th century BCE to 10th century CE. There are skeletal remains of buildings from the past but no further information of its age and use. There was a person taking care of the place who was ready to guide us for a cost. But by then we were tired of paying for every little thing. We refused and he promptly informed us that we cannot step on the grass anywhere in the complex. This meant we were not allowed to go close to the ruins as they were surrounded by grass.

Tuk-tuk is not the sound of someone knocking on a door. If it seems more like the sound of an autorickshaw, it probably was the reason for the tuk-tuks to be named so. But the tuk-tuks of Varanasi are silent. If you are not observant, one could pass by you without your notice. That does not happen in Varanasi though. Tuk-tuks are everywhere and that is a blessing. Prior to using a tuk tuk, one should have a good knowledge of the city though. If one finds a man shouting "Lanka, Lanka, Lanka" besides his tuk-tuk and one's destination is Lanka then the aforementioned one hops into the tuk-tuk with the elegance of a Kangaroo ignoring the shouter's shouts. Of course, if one expects the tuk-tuk's destination to be Sri Lanka, disappointment awaits.

I wonder if the one reading this piece is wondering who the one I keep referring to in this write up is. I too wonder who this one is. He/She keeps popping into my head but I am not even sure if he/she is a he or a she. I cannot see his/her features, obviously. I can feel his/her existence but am unable to have any perception of him/her. I am sure you are not the one for I know you and I can perceive you. I am sure I am not the one for I have perceived my existence for many years and am actually growing tired of it. So who is this one and why does he/she pop into every paragraph of my write up? This is turning out to be very annoying.

I remember seeing a jam or ketchup or biscuit advertisement on the television that has a child pronounce the word sharing as "shaaearing". I realized the importance of this word while traveling around Varanasi. During the initial days, I got into a rickshaw and haggled with the driver about the cost. But within a day or two I realized that I should not be selfish and should "shaaeare" my vehicle with others. This has great advantages; it is good for the environment as I am reducing my carbon foot-print by not hogging the whole of vehicle for self. Second, it brings in a sense of camaraderie with my fellows residents of this planet. The camaraderie that sets in when they squeeze you to a corner is something words cannot describe. Third, it lets you drive next to the driver and listen to his stories about the everything that's happening in their lives. I have a feeling if we ride with the drivers long enough he will let you control the brake of the vehicle. A minor corollary to the second advantage is that it lets me be a common man and not be the elitist and genteel Uber-Ola type of person. Also, such actions help in carving the qualities of humility and humbleness into my genes. By the way, the "shaaearing" also results in me paying ten or fifteen rupees for a ride. But this is only a minor advantage and hence I have used the words "by the way" while mentioning it.

If you are wondering why I have not italicised "shaaearing", it is intentional and not a mistake. The word is not an Indian word and should, at best, be considered as the Indian pronunciation of an English word.

As I mentioned earlier, the autorickshaw and tuk-tuk drivers love to talk. Some of them start talking from minute one enters the vehicles while others are like dominoes, waiting for the first nudge; all they need is a question "bhaiyya, aaj itna beed kyon hain?" (Brother, today so much crowd why is?). Five minutes later he will be informing you about his ancestral home. As a matter of fact, one of the autorickshaw driver showed me his ancestral home, which was situated on the banks of Ganga opposite to the Rajghat fort. I listened to him with interest. Drivers provide the greatest insight to the social and political situation of a place. But this fellow was even better than Robert Plant as far as rambling on is concerned. Soon my head was saturated with details on someone in his family selling some land and his immediate family being affected and as a result they moving out to some place else from which spot he studied to become something that he did not like and so he quit it and became an utorickshaw driver, which  is a good job as it lets him payback the loan that he... Too many details and the wind wooshing through the autorickshaw did not help. I started day dreaming and mmm-hmmmm-ing at regular intervals. Other drivers had other stories but maybe I should save those for the rainy day.

I think I hear Nowhere Man say "so little time, so much to do". Actually this is not what he said. He said "so little time, so much to know". But I am tired of knowing and am only interested in telling and doing. So I am forced to change it to fit my thoughts. There is so much more to say and I am rambling on about Nowhere Man and Robert Plant.

Boating on the Ganga is a pleasure. It is wonderful to glide past the different sights by the banks of the Ganga. It is even better once the sun goes down. The splashing of the water in the stillness of the night makes the experience... I am not ending that statement. It sounds cheesy. But I hope one understands the essence of the statement. As with everything in life, all that goods come with their respective bads. I went for boating over the Ganga twice. The first time on a motor boat that created a ruckus. I am sure it was responsible for many types of pollution and was definitely a carbon-unfriendly activity. As the boat approached the main Ghats of Varanasi, I noticed that the waterway seemed like the busy intersection I cross everyday in my non-tourist life. Some of the boats were row boats, which were almost always occupied by foreigners. The remaining boats were motor boats like ours and were usually filled to the brim with Indians. I reached the conclusion, instantly, that the foreigners were environment friendlier than us. On some thinking, I reached an Indian friendly conclusion. The foreigners traveled in smaller group whereas we Indians traveled in herds and hence the difference in the type of boat used. The second time, I was not the part of a herd and boarded a row boat. A few minutes into the rowing I realized that the person rowing the boat was a man in his seventies. I felt miserable. I did not feel the elation of being environment friendly and scoring carbon points. The man heaved and hoed for the next hour or so. I pushed the touchy side of me to the depths of my cruel brain and brought to the fore the tourist in me with questions like "yeh kya hain?" and "woh kya hain?"

I heard about the Ganga Aarthi a few years back. Late one evening, we had reached Haridwar after a long journey and had no energy to get out of the hotel and gave it a skip. On this trip, there was no missing the aarathi. The first time, was during the motor boat trip. The boat man parked the boat some two hundred metres away from the Aarthi ceremony and turned the boat away soon after it started. I felt cheated. Maybe the Ganga took the lack of interest I had shown in Haridwar to heart. I got another opportunity at viewing the Aarthi within a few days. We were at a shop near the Dasashwamedh Ghat. I inquired about the Aarthi with the shopkeeper. He took out his mobile and promptly called someone. Soon I was introduced to a person who could give us a good view of the Aarthi. I asked him the question that should be asked right at the beginning of such situations "how much will it cost?" The cost per person was an exorbitant amount. I was shocked and started the bargaining process. The process ended with cost reducing by half. I felt elated. Later, I realized even at half the cost it was still exorbitant.

The Ganga flows to the brim during the months of July and August. The water, during those months, rises to cover many steps of the different Ghats. As we walked along the Ghats we saw the silt settled on the steps at a few places. The water from the river was sprayed on the silt using a pump to remove it from the steps. In one of the places, we were forced to walk over the slit. At some places the silt was spongy and at others, it was hard but the dark colour of the silt made us nervous and we did our best to keep away from the silt caked locations. The receding water exposed a large expanse of sandy riverbed on the banks opposite to the Ghats. As we went past it, it seemed like an island. Only when we landed on it did I realize that it was the extension of the river bank.

We had a gallery seat view of the Ganga Aarthi. It was a grand affair. Seven priests decked in golden attire were in charge of the ceremony. Songs blared in the background as the priests went about their motions. The crescendo of the ceremony had the priests swaying around their tall Aarthis elegantly. They were showering salutations to their mother Ganga but to us it seemed all the worship was directed at us. We blessed them for their adoration from the bottom of our hearts. The Ganga Aarthi takes place in almost all the temples by the banks of the river. Once we witnessed three priests conducting the Aarthi at the Rajghat. It was dark and there was no fanfare around them. In the darkness the priests were not visible from the boat. All we could see were three balls of fire dancing on the banks of Ganga. The view was seemed more spiritual than the fanfare soaked Aarthi at Dasashwamedh Ghat.

We stayed for longer than required at Varanasi. For one, we are not the religious type and did not visit every important temple in the city. Even the famous Vishwanath temple was visited as an afterthought. Once the temples are taken off your list, the city did not have a lot to offer. But it was important to visit at least one attraction in the city every day; else the trip would seem incomplete. Out of desperation, we decided to visit the Ramnagar fort, which was built by one of the kings of Varanasi in the eighteenth or seventeenth century. The fort is an example for how not to maintain a historical monument. There is a museum in the fort that displays the Raja's assets; his vehicles, ammunitions, crockery and other materials. Everything on display was covered with layer upon layer of dust. People with breathing issues should not go anywhere close to the fort. The apathy of the people maintaining the place makes it a sad place to visit. The ramparts of the fort overlook the Ganga, which sounds better on paper than in reality.

The visit to Vishwanath temple was an expensive affair and I don't wish to remember it. I was conned royally and I fell for the con headlong. There are three spots of interest in the temple. The original temple was brought down a number of times and for the past four centuries a mosque stands on the location. The security is tight and no one can even look in the direction of the mosque. Besides the mosque is a well that contains the original Shivling. It is believed that the then head priest of the temple jumped into the well with the Shivling to save it from destruction. So the well has become a holy spot and a well endowed priest intimates us the importance of contributing thousands of rupees at the location. The new temple was built by Ahalya Bhai Holkar in the seventeenth century (I think). Raja Ranjith Singh gold plated the top part of the temple. The whole area is crowded like hell and half of crowd is made up of security guards and people trying to fleece the pilgrims.

Telugu is spoken by every person around the Vishwanath temple. The constant flow of pilgrims from the Telugu lands ensured that the shopkeepers and the guides around the temple spoke Telugu. Some go as far as "jaragandi" and "cheppandi" while others have lengthy negotiations with the pilgrims in Telugu. I am not an expert in Telugu but am capable of understanding 50% of the Telugu movie dialogues (which in many cases is the word champasthanu). But I could hardly understand the the Telugu spoken by the Varanasians. As far as the Varanasians are concerned anyone who resembled or spoke like a South Indian is a Telugu. They start speaking to you in Telugu and regardless of the language you respond will continue speaking to you in Telugu.

Tulsidas' presence in Varanasi can be felt in a few places around IIT BHU. I heard about a temple at the location where Tulsidas wrote the Ramcharitamanas. The deities at temple were Ram, Laksman, Sita and Hanuman. Verses from the Ramcharitamanas were displayed on the inner walls of the temple. The verses were written in Awadhi, which meant that it seemed familiar till I tried to understand it. The temple was built 50 years back and seemed like a place built with the intent of making money. When I got out the temple, I was not really sure if the Tulsidas had ever come close to that location. Fortunately, my doubts were unwarranted. A kilometre away from the temple was the Sankat Mochan Hanuman temple. The temple was established by Tulsidas by the banks of the river Assi.

I got a call from a colleague a few days prior to the end of the trip. She asked about the wonderful kachoris of Varanasi. I responded with hmm, ahh and ohh. I had not tried the famous Varanasi kachori or for that matter any other chat of Varanasi. We hardly ate at any place other than the place where we stayed. The food at the IIT BHU guest house was so good and homely that we did not bother to eat at anyplace else. The phulkas were even better than the ones served at the Queens in Bangalore. The food was made and served with a lot of love and affection. So we ensured that we went back home for food. The Shree cafe by the Dasashwamedh Ghat also served good food. The plain dosa at the place tasted South Indian. The Shree Cafe had a paying guest accommodation above it. As I went up to use the restroom, the old styled accommodation with its courtyard presented itself. Close by, a South Indian restaurant with a forgettable name served taste less food and an insult of a coffee. If this was not enough to keep us away from the place, the owner sitting in the old South Indian Udipi hotel style cashier table maintained a sullen and unwelcome attitude.

The people working at the IIT BHU guest house kitchen did not get their holidays for Diwali. Those are the only three days of the year that are given to them as holidays but this year someone up the hierarchy decided these fellows should be present round the year. We were the only people in the guest house. This reduced the variety of food available, which was not a problem except for breakfast - toasted bread, frozen butter and hyper sweet jam. We felt terrible for these people and in some way felt responsible for the situation. We did the best we could and let them go home for dinner on the two days of Diwali. We did not want the lunch either but they remained firm about serving us the lunch.

Since traveling in autorickshaws and tuk-tuks was a frequent occurrence in Varanasi, I get back to them once again. The drivers of these vehicles lived a tough life. They loved talking about it to the travelers. They did not really care if anyone listened or not. They did not bother to listen to your queries either. They wanted to talk about it and so they talked. The rising diesel cost was a big issue for the autorickshaw drivers. The constant need to charge their vehicles was the issue for the tuk-tuk drivers. The bribe they had to pay to the policemen was a big issue for both. Every time they talked about the amount they paid to the policemen, they started spewing numbers. A ledger book with debit and credit columns magically appeared in my head. The first few lines seemed legible but soon the numbers started appearing in quick succession; one on top of the other. I was unable to keep track of the accounting. I felt I was trying to count the windows of a super-fast express passing a platform. I gave up. The driver continued with his accounting till he reached a break even zero or a loss of a negative number. It was not the unpredictability of the number of customers that bothered them. The unpredictable number of policemen they could run into worried them.

Varanasi never interested me. I only heard people talking about rotting bodies floating through the Ganga. People said that if someone did not have enough money to cremate a body they let it float through the Ganga. There was also talk about Ganga at Varanasi being the filthiest river on the planet. My curiosity was piqued when I heard about the Prime Minister's interest in his constituency. Varanasi did not turn out to be a clean haven. But it certainly was not as dirty as I imagined; not even close. I am not sure if Varanasi was ever as dirty as I had imagined. People exaggerated about it and my mind exaggerated it some more. The self-appointed guide at Manikarnika Ghat mentioned that cremation was not conducted at the Ghat for three types of death; death due to child birth, poisoning or snakebite and I don't remember the third one. In these cases, the body was loaded on to a boat, taken to the centre of the river, a stone was tied to the body and it was lowered into the waters. So I was not entirely wrong, the Ganga still bears rotten bodies but I did not see any floating by. But every time I saw something float by, I got nervous.

I was sure I will not take bath in the Ganga.  Too much waste flows into the water and I did not wish to wash myself in other's waste. But I had to at least touch the water. I went down the stairs and tentatively dipped my palm into the water. I took it out and did not know what to do with it. I held it open for some time and kept it away from my body while I walked. Soon, I felt an itch inside my palm. I spent the remaining part of my walk scratching my palm. The itch only stopped after I washed my hands with soap. While I scratched my palm I saw people dipping in the Ganga, collecting water in containers to be taken back home, praying to it and praying with it. I was amazed at the difference between our thoughts and feelings. I know the reason for this difference. Its the word that has been haunting me for sometime - FAITH. They have the faith, which I don't. Their faith helps them to see holiness where I see filth. I look at the faith ridden people with envy. They are experiencing once in a lifetime experience. They will bore the coming generations with details of the trip and the dip. They will display with pride the decades old water from the Ganga that they have preserved like a family heirloom. I will only remember my itchy palm and feel sad for a river abused by greedy humans.

What is point of visiting Varanasi without faith?

Hair today gone tomorrow

I should have been careful when I walked into a place containing hundreds of young people - by young I mean people who have barely spend a decade on this planet. They are commonly referred to as children. The problem with children is that they have not yet been corrupted by etiquette. This meant that they did not, usually, sweeten their thoughts. Some of them don't air their opinions but the ones who do, do it with such precision that a person's ego gets a permanent dent. I realize now that I did not have much knowledge of children when I walked into the place and today I am stuck with facial hair. 

On the first day, I walked in with a clump of hair above my upper lip. It was not a modest not-droopy-and-yet-not-a-stand-up mustaches but the showy handle bar type of mustache. During my growing years, the terms man and facial hair went hand in hand. But by the time I got to the second half of my twenties, I was tired of maintaining this patch of hair. Also, by then, I did not care much about being a man. So I took it off. It did not make me look any better but it did not make me look any worse either. Fortunately, I had one of those "who cares?" faces and the facial hair did not make any difference (at least not at that point of time). 

Since then I wore mustache when I got tired of my empty face and took it off when I got tired of snipping this side and then that to make the mustache seem balanced. I have wasted an incredible amount of time in balancing my mustache!  The process of balancing is usually accompanied by the following conversation between the two sides of my face.

"Hmmm! It looks ok."

"Of course not! You are two millimetres longer than me."

"Eh! Is that true?"

"Yes, you are."

"Alright, let me fix it."

"Enough, enough, ENOUGH. What have you done? You have taken five millimetres off. Look at us now. We are not balanced. This is pathetic."

"Oh no! That nonsensical clump of hair was always indisciplined. They creep into the nose surreptitiously in the night and the poor fellow wakes up sneezing."

" Give me the scissor. Let me fix this"

"Oh no! You cut too much."

"No! Its Ok."

"Nonsense! We look so out of balance."

"No. It is probably half a millimetre or so. It is not bad."

"Forget it, its terrible but I don't have the patience to fix it."

Every time, I shaved this happened. As a result, once I got into my thirties, I decided to take it all off. Let us go clean. Life was pleasant - no more balancing or wincing at the imbalance one witnesses in the mirror. Apply the cream at all the hairy spots on my face and swish it all away.

As years went by, I realized that I have a fickle mind. When one is young, it is difficult for a person to look at oneself as anything less than perfect except at those times when the question "why was I born?" (not the existential question but more a question raising out of desperate sadness) runs through one's mind . But as one gets into middle age, the perfection bubble breaks and one gets more into the why-was-I-born mode. I believe this results in the often abused phrase of mid life crisis. I being an average human being went through the same phase and decided to grow a beard. 

Growing a beard has its advantages. For a start, it hides your face and so you can pass off as a person with a palatable face. One can twirl the mustache and do something with the hair above the head and pass off as a poor cousin of Kamalhassan in Satya. Second and more importantly, one does not have to shave. Plenty of advantages here - saving money, saving time, saving water, not seeing one's face in the mirror for more than 20 seconds a day. It was amazing. I loved it.

Life and everything it encompasses is like a coin - if there is a head, there will be a tail (Annu Maliked from "Boss engira Bhaskaran"). The coin called beard has all the advantages mentioned above on the heads side. On the tails side, it has uncontrollable itch and unruly hair. I have never understood the reasons for the itching of the beard. You live life oblivious of your beard and at 5:45 pm just as the cup of black coffee reaches your lips, the spot right at the centre of your left cheek starts itching. You place the cup down and scratch the spot lightly. Fifteen minutes later, eight of your ten fingers are busy scratching every hairy spot on your face (as an aside, I just realized we almost never scratch with our thumbs - our thumbs are scratch-proof). I have the ability to live with this itchy aspect of my beard for about three weeks. 

I never go from a bearded face to a hairless one. Instead I stop at the almost handle bar mustache stage. It was during one of those in-between phases that I walked to the place with the hundreds of children for the first time. My mustaches usually do not for last more than three months. So three months later, I took it off and went clean. I walked confidently into the place without realizing that I was walking into a minefield. By the end of the day, my self confidence was crushed. I went through all sorts comments. None of them pleasant.

"You look terrible"

"Why did you do it?"

"Don't talk to me. I don't want to see your face."

"What were you thinking?"

"You looked much better earlier." This one is the worst. If I really looked better earlier, why was I not told so. But I can't blame them. How would they know how terrible I would look once I took away the clumps of hair on my face? The list goes on.

The first (and the only) time I went clean, the phase lasted three months. For nearly a year now, I have maintained a beard. Sometimes it looks like a scrub forest and at other times it looks like a well manicured lawn. The latter is also not liked by the small people. But it is usually not as brutal as the ones that a clean surface draw and so I remain bearded.

I end this pointless rant with a famous quote by Nethan Yaaro.

Bear the beard with grace

For 

Bare is a beard-less face

That has to 

Bear the brunt of words with no grace

Making even a 

Bear unable to take it on his face

To avoid ending this write-up at the end, I am throwing in a video link to a song by one of my favourite groups Faith no more beyond the end of the write-up. The song is called "Midlife crisis" and according to Wikipedia, Mike Patton says it has nothing to do with midlife crisis but about Madonna. It was released in 1992 and so maybe it is about Madonna's midlife crisis.

Lucknow Notes: In and around

For a long time I was fascinated by the words luck and now. Lucknow has the two words luck and now in it. But its is pronounced as luck and no. The two sets of words have diametrically opposite meaning. Which of these constituted Lucknow was the question. Recently, my colleague narrated an incident involving luck and now that is believed to occurred during the 1857 revolt. It is believed that the British officer who recaptured the city wrote "I have luck now". My image of Lucknow was formed from movies like Pakeezah. I thought one would find haveli lined streets with people greeting each other with Adaabs and Khuda hafizs. 

I first visited Lucknow in 2015. I eagerly looked out of the window of my cab as I passed through the roads of Lucknow but to my disappointment did not see a single haveli. It was like any other twenty first century Indian city. Normal people going about their normal lives, which included traffic. It was not the worst I had seen but it was as chaotic as in many other Indian cities. 

In November 2017, we were having a chai at Chai Gali in Besant nagar when our Lucknowi friend suggested we visit his hometown for the upcoming December vacation. A month later we found ourselves in a jammed Gol Chakkar at Lucknow. The gol chakkar or chowk is an intersection with a round about in the center and usually does not have signals. The vehicles criss cross each other to get through the gol chakkar. Often I have found the cab in which I am traveling right by the gol chakkar attempting to go straight while the car of the left is busy trying to go right. So the two cars approach each other steadily. I look from one driver to the other but neither of them seem to be bothered by the converging cars. I continue to look from one driver to another and soon my head swivels back and forth like one of the characters in a cartoon movie. At some point of time, the tension got to me and I closed my eyes. When I opened my eyes, I found that my cab had crossed the gol chakkar without harm. Driving through such conditions is a transforming experience for many. It had transformed my usually calm friend into something else once he found himself behind the wheels of car.

We did not kick start the trip by visiting the known and unknown sights of the city. Instead, we headed to a village near Lucknow; my friend's ancestral village. His father, a wonderful and kind man, accompanied us. Our destination was called Barauli. En route we crossed the Indira dam, which is the Indira canal crossing the Gomti river, which is a tributary of Ganga and cuts through the city of Lucknow. The Indira dam is an interesting structure. I have never seen a canal crossing over a river with vehicles traveling on either side of the canal and over the river.

As we approached the village, mustard fields lined either sides of the road. We stopped and looked at the yellow and green fields for a few minutes. We half expected Shah Rukh Khan to rise from between the plants with his arms spread wide but it did not happen. So we drove on. We stopped at the school where my friend's father had studied fifty years back. Since those days the school had changed beyond recognition. During his school days, it only had a building besides the gate with a few rooms. Now, the rooms were used as storerooms and kitchen.

Our first stop at the village was my friend's ancestral home. It was an old brick house in which a few of his relatives stayed. When I went around the house I realized that the people in the village preferred to stay outside most of the time and the house was usually used for certain necessities. Besides this house was a relatively plush village house with freshly laid mud walls. We were told that the residents of the house only stayed in the house for a few days a year. In many ways, the village had all the elements that I had in my mind with village temples and narrow streets. My friend's father explained that the conditions in the village were comfortable compared to his state in the younger days. In those times, the ground under their feet were not solid and waste water ran everywhere. 

With the trip to the village coming to an end, it was time for us to do some touristy activities. From my earlier visit, I knew that the Bara Imambara is the sight to be seen at Lucknow. It lay some place within the city of Lucknow. The city like most other cities in our ever developing country was swamped with metro and flyover constructions. This meant only half of the road was available for traffic at most places. This further meant that it took an hour to travel from anywhere to anywhere in Lucknow. Around the thirty minute mark of our journey to the Bara Imambara, my friend pointed to the left and said "this is a famous and old school of Lucknow". "Can we go in and see this place?" He did not say anything, instead he swerved the car left into the school campus. The school turned out to  Colvin Taluqdars' College was founded in 1889 and prior to independence was open exclusively for the British administrators and Indian aristocracy (hence the name Taluqdar). The school was closed for vacation and we were able to walk through the heritage buildings in peace.

The Bara Imambara is a large mosque complex built during the final years of the 18th century. The big attraction in this complex is the Bhul-bhulaiya, which is a labyrinth with a terrifying reputation built over a large hall. According to our guide, one could be stuck in the Bhul-bhulaiya for years if one was unfortunate enough to take a wrong turn. The first time, I went through the labyrinth I followed the people ahead of me and reached the terrace of the hall. I did not face any difficulty on the way out either. I came out feeling "that was not very difficult". Only when I heard the guide explain the intent of the labyrinth did I realize earlier naivety. On the one hand, the labyrinth was used as a safe pathway for the ladies to reach the balconies overlooking the hall. Second, it was used as a hiding place when the city was under siege. As I followed the guide through the labyrinth, I understood the menacing side of the Bhul-bhulaiya. If one were to get lost in it, even the pathetic graffiti would be of no help. The large hall below does not have pillars, which meant that the labyrinth's construction had to be light enough for it to not cave in. The guide informed us, the builders achieved this difficult task through the use of a combination of lime, jaggery and other such materials as mortar.

The road from the mosque does through an arch called Rumi Darwaza. Rumi, I understand is Rome is Arabic. It is believed that the arch is modeled on an arch built by the emperor Constantine in Constantinople. The arch was constructed tastefully, almost literally according to our guide. The decorations at the top of the arch resembled cloves. The arch was featured in a number of Bollywood movies. He informed us that in the movie Ghaddar Sunny Deol is shown entering a Pakistani city through this arch. Beyond the arch, stands the tallest clock tower in Asia called Ghanta Ghar.

The surroundings of Lucknow was at the heart of the 1857 uprising. At the heart of today's Lucknow lies the Residency, which housed the British garrison. During the uprising,the Residency was at the centre of the uprising and was nearly razed to ground. Today, the Residency stands frozen in time except for the grass, trees, people and a plastic penguin with its beak open wide. Many of the buildings carry the marks of gunfire and cannonballs. The burnt down fireplace in the hall of a mansion, which stands frozen from that time gave me the spooks.

The big surprise about Lucknow is its parks. The city has a number of large parks. The parks have an interesting political background to it. In the year 2007, the Samajwadi party (SP) opened a 76 acre park called the Dr Ram Manohar Lohia Park, which, in my opinion, is the Central Park of Lucknow. SP lost the elections that year and the Bahujan Samaj party (BSP) came to power. In the year 2012, they opened a lavish 106 acre park named the Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar Memorial park (actually reopened). The memorial park has almost no soil visible and is built using red sandstone brought from Rajasthan. The estimated cost of the memorial is seven billion Rupees. The park has a stupa in memory of Dr.Ambedkar and uncountable elephant statues. Coincidentally, elephant is the election symbol of BSP. Many believe that the money spent on the construction of the park was one of the reason for the BSP loss in the 2012 state elections. The SP came back to power in with the son of the earlier Chief Minister as the Chief Minister. In 2014 he responded to BSP's park with a 376 acre park called the Janeshwar Mishra Park. For me, the highlight of the park is the humongous statue of the late politician Janeshwar Mishra from the Samajwadi Party. It is claimed to be Asia's 10th largest garden. Politics apart, these parks give the people of Lucknow large green expanse to relax. This is something that we miss in most cities and could very well be the reason for the Luck in Lucknow.

During one of my trips, the cab driver took me through a street filled with "gun houses". A street lined with shops with names like kisan gun house and janata gun house that sell and service guns .

We finally come to the highlight of this and almost every trip we make - Food. Lucknow is the land of Kababs and Biriyani. We visited the Tunday Kababi, which is more than 100 years old at two locations - the new one and the original one. Driving to the latter was filled with excitement. My friend took the car into streets where no car had ever ventured. At the end of a trip, we ended at a restaurant with only three dishes. The people at the restaurant tried their best to turn us away saying "Aapko yahan kuch nahin milega" but we persevered. Desserts at Lucknow came in the form of kulfi and the one of the famous kulfi shop at Lucknow had the message "kulfi icecream nahin hothi, kulfi, kulfi hothi hain". I was moved by the message and took an oath to never have a kulfi instead of an icecream.

Lucknow offered us a variety of experiences as far as food is concerned. As we returned from my friend's village, we stopped at a roadside eatery on a highway close to the village to have kastha, which consisted of a poori stuffed with peas curry. Though it tasted good, we were unable to have more than one. We had panipuris at a by-the-road stall somewhere in Lucknow. My friend took me to the most popular tea shop in Lucknow. I did not remember its name and searched the Google yesterday and there it was on the top of the results - Sharma ji ki chai. We put our hands through the milling crowd and managed to get the tea to our lips without spilling it. The tea tasted... Well, I don't remember how it tasted. It definitely tasted like tea. My friend's father owned a restaurant, which serves great food. We also had the privilege of getting food not in the menu. My friend's father being a perfect host ensured we were very well taken care food wise and other wise too.

As we reached the airport to leave Lucknow, I noticed a fascinating golden mural high above the check-in counters that summarizes the story of Lucknow. More than anything, we will remember the parks, food and my friend and his father's kindness. Over the past year, we have talked to the father a few times and every time I hear his response on the phone, I feel I have known him for many years.

Not just another ordinary day

It seemed like an ordinary day

An annoying review in the morning

Don't have to worry about it, much

Yet reviews are never pleasant

Something could go wrong

And this could end up being that

Did not like what I had to say

Had not prepared the way I had to

Standing in front of the bored faces

Talking about materials and matter

Clothes and their properties

I would have been bored too

If I found myself a listener

Reviewer reviewed by circling numbers

On a paper, I had to save for long

My talk continued for a bit

Then I gave them work and moved away

Till it was time to play

Under the hot sun running here and there

Chasing and kicking a ball 

With a goal to kick it into a goal

I was sapped at the end of it

Wished to go home to get some sleep

But the day was only inching towards half time

A brief work interlude gave way to 

Movement and poses as per a French wish

Memorable lunch of sambar and curd rice

With many appalams and fruits

As I walked back from dining room

An elderly colleague walked by 

With her bag by her side and tears in her eyes

Was it so or did I imagine it?

Two hours later, I knew it was not imagination

A new entrant to her family

Was taken away, early and quite rudely

God or something like that

I am not sure which of the following statements is true. I exist in the periphery of religion or religion exists in the periphery of my life. Either way, in my life, religion and periphery go hand in hand. This is not a result of long periods of deep thinking or walking into the higher realms of agnosticism or atheism. I believe the shift took place due to a series of unanswered prayers from my childhood. Every night prior to dinner my parents would light up the lamp in front our small pooja area with pictures and small statues of Gods that we had collected over time. Then the family stood in front of the lighted lamps with the Gods behind and prayed.

Every day I had a long list of requests. Please make the principal declare a holiday tomorrow. Please make the teacher who has a given the homework that I have not completed sick and ensure he/she does not come to school tomorrow. Please bring down the school building by tomorrow morning. Please make be sick so that I can take off tomorrow. Most of the requests were around school and homework. Nothing worked. Even my most passionate prayer did not fructify. I got disillusioned but I did not write off God. I did not jump to the conclusion that God did not exist. Instead, I reached the conclusion that God did not accept specific requests. So I moved to generic "please save us all" prayer.  It worked! I am alive still.

The concept of every night prayer went out of my life once I stopped staying with my parents. In the initial years, I was in a hostel and used to visit a temple every Sunday. The "please save us all" prayer continued. But once I moved out of hostel, even the regular visit to temples stopped. Temples were visited when either I wanted to visit them or they wanted me to visit. Most times, the latter happened. My greatest religious achievement in life was visiting Sabarimala subsequent to undergoing the 40 day vratham.

So I am not the religious kind and yet I am not an atheist. I believe I belong to the agnostic realm. I have a feeling anyone who is not a believer belongs to that realm. Only those with a very narrow definition of the term God can believe the nonexistence of God. The atheist, as they are called or liked to be called, too are grappling with a number of unknowns but they don't choose to delve in them. We have no idea about why we are doing what we are doing. The questions go right down to the essential existential question. So how can we be sure of the nonexistence of the inexplicable. Even science is unable to explain our existence and go beyond the Big Bang.

Being an agnostic is convenient. One can visit temple when one wishes. Neither do I have to keep away from the temples nor do I have to visit it on any occasion. Some days I feel the urge to visit a temple and sometimes I satisfy the urge. Even when I visit I only prefer certain temples. I would prefer to stand in front of a plain wall in prayer at my house than visiting a down-the-lane-encroaching-the-road-while-blaring-out-loud-music temples. On certain days, I remember God only when I run into an annoying issue. If the problem exists, I look up at the sky and shout at him. If the poor fellow exists up there and can hear me then I sympathize with him and/or her. 

I realize God and religion are different. God is the concept for everything that happens around us, which baffles us as we are not able to understand the reason for its happening (at least beyond a point). Whereas religion is the means that people choose in reaching out to God. People search for different mechanisms to reach God. Some believe they have succeeded in the attempt. A few are able to convince the world or a part of it of their success. Thus a new religion takes birth.

Unfortunately, our brains are mysterious creatures that cannot be tamed. We believe we posses it but in reality the brain possesses us. Do we have any control of our thoughts and emotions? No, never. Some great souls claim they do but I am not sure. Even in the case of Buddha, whose messages primarily deal with control of our thoughts, I see an ambitious person who wanted his thoughts and messages to be accepted over others. The sixth century BCE was a fertile and revolutionary time when a number of alternate thoughts stood against the Vedic thoughts and practices. At that time, these thoughts were probably not religions. Each of these thoughts and its proponent(s) had a large following. The leaders of these thoughts debated, argued and maybe even have fought against each other to establish supremacy. Ultimately, the followers of Buddha succeeded. Thus, it seems Buddha himself had ambitions to win over the others and possess a number of followers. 

Thus the brain has a mind of its own and does not listen to us. We want to be happy but an Amazon package does not arrive and we feel miserable. But the brain has the ability to do more. It has the ability to hallucinate. In his book "Phantoms of the brain", V. S. Ramachandran talks about a number of hallucinations that a person's brain can come up with. Reading the book tends to take one's belief  off the supernatural experiences that people claim they have had. Our brain has the ability to convince us anything it wants. So we cannot believe any of the supernatural experiences that people have had. It is probably a trick by their brain or a lie (either from them or by others over the years).

While, I tend to believe in the existence of God as something that is beyond my understanding that is making me and everything else in this universe to live (or is it "live"?), I have no faith in people who claim they have the ability to communicate with God. I don't think we can communicate with God till our brain let us off the cause or reason based thinking.

I am an unfortunate person, though. To have thought of all the rot that I wrote above. Its my brain. That fellow, has been taking me down this pointless path of rationalism and yet not letting me be on that path completely. I envy all the religious people on this planet. They have placed their complete faith on their respective Gods. Life becomes simple when you live with the thought "God will take care of me". If something goes wrong, they think "its Gods will and I am sure good times are round the corner". They believe in heaven or the next birth where all the difficulty will be paid back with interest. They visit their places of worship and come back in peace. Their Gods are powerful whereas my God is inaccessible. 

I have never been a witness to a supernatural event but my evil brain is desperate to go through one. The only way it can have experience of such an event is if my brain conjures up one but it hasn't and I have the feeling it won't. To make matters worse, my brain wants me to believe that certain events in my life had an element of miracle in it. For example, once I was broke and the money that was expected to come was delayed. I was driving home and my car was stuck at a signal. I gripped the steering wheel, closed my eyes and prayed desperately to God. In this case, my request was specific - I want that money to come in now. I think I added a please at the end of the prayer as an afterthought. When I reached home, I got a call confirming that the money has hit our account. It could be a coincidence but we are talking about money from a Government department where coincidences are rarer than unicorns. So, this was a strong case for divine intervention. There are other incidents too that my brain assigns to divinity corner at some times and to coincidence corner at others.

But there is a problem with the above incidents. These, too, deal with causes that is actions and reactions. It is logical - I have a problem and am hoping for a solution, which God provides. God acts like a super parent; a hierarchy flows from me to my elders (humans) and to God ultimately. It is not very different from the experiences of a religious brain and mine is not religious. So even when most of it is looking at such events in the divinity corner there are many parts of brain smiling cynically shaking its head (what am I writing! How can I stop this nonsense! God help me!). So these do not satisfy my cynical brain.

Once I stayed at Guruvayur; the first time I had done so. I heard about a spectacular morning ritual at the temple called Seeveli. Early one morning, I went to the temple. I recorded my presence with Guruvayurappan and waited for the Seeveli to begin. The ritual consisted of decorated elephants walking around the temple accompanied by musicians on Chenda, horns, cymbals and other musical instruments. The environment inside the temple with the milling crowd, the loud music from the melam and elephant walking through it was electric. I was in trance and even as I write these lines, I live through the experience. It was not a supernatural experience, for sure, but it was divine. Music and fervour seem to be the only means available for me to have a divine experience.

Recently, I received an invitation for a Saibaba pooja at my apartment. It should be obvious from everything I have said so far that I am not a devotee of Saibaba. I have probably visited a Saibaba temple once in my life. Normally, I would have ignored the invitation and preferred to stay home to watch a mindless movie. But on that day, I was forced to visit the pooja and I was glad I did.

The pooja consisted of a set of people singing bhajans. The singers had beautiful voices and were skilled at singing. The result of their abilities, belief and passion for both Saibaba and singing were spectacular. The structure of the bhajans helped in invoking passion within the singers and listeners. It started soft and mellow and proceeded to a crescendo, which usually took up 75% of the song. The singing to the beats of the tambourine enthralled me and pushed my brain to erase the line between natural and supernatural.

As I reach the end of this piece, I hear my brain humming the lyrics from the song "God Am" (by Alice in Chains). 

How proud are you being able 

To gather faith from fable 

Can I be as my God am 

Can you be as God am 

Can I be as my God am