Thinking "thanks" - Thanksgiving 2020

 Thinking "thanks" - Thanksgiving 2020

An occasion to thank life for everything it has offered - the good, the bad, the ugly. The exhilarating highs and the spectacular lows. The great joys and the excruciating pains. The great successes and wonderful failures. The ever-changing ephemeral nature of life, and the seeming illusion of temporary permanence.

Above all, a big gratitude for the amazing journey of living, learning, and loving, and living, learning, and loving, over and over again. A life of living and lived experience, with the continuous nourishment of curiosity, compassion, and romance, active days and the deep slumber of night.

The purpose of life is life itself, needs no other seeking of meaning, no prompts or crutches, where true joy is in the amazement of discovery and learning, to understand, to create, and to navigate complexity, and being agnostic to cause and consequence of every phenomena.

It is but a mysterious game, this life, and we are but in the transience of our own carbon cycles. It is what we make it to be, and everything relies on our own ability, our own ability alone, to view all things with equanimity and grace, to appreciate the good and the bad, the joys and the pain, and to use our reason and thoughts to guide us to greater resilience and adaptiveness, without resort to regrets or to blame.

The best part of life is living with the knowledge that when our moment arrives to exit, we can exit with joy knowing full well that we have given to our lives everything we have had to give, and have taken from it everything that there is to take.

Never judging the deck of cards we were served with, neither gloating nor complaining, but holding ourselves to playing the best game possible with the cards we were and are served. Therein lies the ultimate experience, embracing all things being and nonbeing, with a spirit of freedom, curiosity, learning, adventure, and oneness - belonging to all and belonging to none at one and the same time.

Let Freedom Reign

K.M. Venkat Narayan

December 23, 2007.

(Inspired by a visit to New Delhi) 

 

Crass class and caste,

Won’t you leave modern India fast?

The subservient culture of Madam and Sir,

Won’t you soon into meritocracy blur?

 

Why I ask,

That the populace still bask,

In archaic traditions

Of status, titles, and positions?

 

If you are the world’s largest democracy,

Why do you preserve a grinding bureaucracy?

Which stifles free spirit,

And breaks human grit?

 

If you are a rising power,

Why do you fret the blooming flower?

The past is but an ugly weed,

The future begs to be freed.

 

It is time to call a spade a spade,

To end the culture of servant and maid,

Of patronizing charity,

And hypocritically pious austerity.  

 

For communal harmony, as you can tell,

Your beloved Father fell.

Yet, after sixty years of strife,

Such tensions are still rife.

 

To keep you enslaved,

The colonials a civil code engraved,

Isn’t it ironic?

You have embraced this system true and demonic.

 

From your past, it is time to break out,

And to live up to your growing clout.

The world sees your growing might,

But that won’t come without a fight.

 

Wake up, and rise,

Before the window of hope dies.

Free up your people,

And let them scale the steeple.

 

Let freedom reign,

And the Sirs and Madams wane,

Let the chauffeur drive his dream,

In the land of opportunity let everyone beam. 

 

May that heaven of freedom

Hail the brave and end the chiefdom.

May ideas, merit, and self-worth rule

In an honest world that none can fool.

Christina Rossetti's poem When I am dead, my dearest

I have always felt that to live a free, enjoyable, and purposeful life, one ought to start by accepting death as something not to be denied or feared or to have to create myths about. Death is inevitable, and accepting that reality and finality without any fear and yet living life fully with hope, joy, curiosity, compassion, open-mindedness, and romance is the key. This needs no crutch of myth but an acceptance of reality and uncertainty. I love this poem for expressing that beautiful detached peaceful acceptance of the finality of death without longing for anything after that. There are a number of verses in Tagore's Gitanjali where he expresses a similar sentiment, and views death as something to welcome when it comes to us, especially after a fulfilling life. This is why I find all the euphemisms about death, the prevailing stigma to talk about it, the death rituals/ceremonies in most religions all as impediments to true liberation of the self (both in life when lived, and in death when dead) and of the eventual finite reality of life, and it’s here and now. – Venkat

 

When I am dead, my dearest

By Christina Rossetti

When I am dead, my dearest,

Sing no sad songs for me;

Plant thou no roses at my head,

Nor shady cypress tree:

Be the green grass above me

With showers and dewdrops wet;

And if thou wilt, remember,

And if thou wilt, forget.

 

I shall not see the shadows,

I shall not feel the rain;

I shall not hear the nightingale

Sing on, as if in pain:

And dreaming through the twilight

That doth not rise nor set,

Haply I may remember,

And haply may forget.

 

 

Tribute to the saree

The saree has to be one of the most clever and elegant of dresses. A uniform-sized cloth for all, so egalitarian, but an amazing array of variations in how it can be worn - at least, 108 classic styles of wearing it, and innumerable variations within each. 

 

All kinds of colors and prints, material from light hand loom cotton to expensive silks. Can be worn by the young and the old, in the most open and revealing way or in the most closed and conservative manner. 

 

The same Saree can be changed dynamically to suit the mood and weather, can be worn differently each time, sometimes stylishly draped low and at other times a little higher. Not at the whim of a tailor or a fixed cut, but something that gives the freedom to the wearer to shape it any way and at any time. 

 

The drape can be used for multiple purposes - as a little cosy cover to draw a lover into intimate private embrace or a child into warmth or used for something more utilitarian like carrying fruits or as a cover from the sun - you name it!  

 

To the Saree, the finest dress of feminine grace and a statement of female power and versatility - I salute!!

 

Venkat

Qualities of outstanding researchers/leaders

Someone asked me for a list of "5 attributes" that I think differentiates the outstanding researchers/leaders (top 1-2%) from the pack.

 

I think being smart is not enough. Most people in competitive academia are smart, but what gives the outstanding ones the edge are the following qualities:

 

1. Willingness to take on the "impossible" - Motivation and Creativity

2. Incurable optimism - Positive thinking

3. Healthy ego - Confidence and self-belief

4. Continuous learning, self-reflection, and taking criticism - Humility

5. Clear, crisp, concise, and energizing communication

 

Venkat

 

Ancient Christianity in India

The story of Christianity in India is fascinating, and I may have mentioned, my great-grand-dad has also published a book on this topic, which I have a copy of. It is written in a quaint Victorian sort of English, which was how the language was in the early 1900s. My great-grand-dad. K.G. Shesha Aiyer, was Chief Justice of Travancore and was a close associate of C.P. Ramaswamy Iyer, who was Dewan of Travancore.  His house was in a place called Thekkad in Trivananthapuram.

 

There is some debate about the exact time of arrival of Christianity in India. The folklore places it at 52 AD with Saint Thomas. But I was talking to some physicians from the Christian Medical College, Vellore, recently, and they showed me papers that argue that the arrival was a century or two later. Regardless, an original version of early Christianity arrived and existed in India 13-1500 years before the arrival of the Vasco de Gama and subsequent aggressive Catholic proselytization which was largely a tool to assist colonization.

 

What is important is that the early Christians ("Syrian Christians") were welcomed by the Hindu population and were very Christian in faith but very Hindu in their customs and culture, even observing the caste hierarchy, marriage, birth and several death rituals. There was no tension between the Christian and Hindu communities and they peacefully coexisted. Ironically, the arrival of Catholicism from Portugal and later from Ireland, created tensions between the old and new Christians, with the latter forcing India's "Syrian Christians" to shift to Latin and to give up their "pagan ways". 

 

A theology scholar once told me that "If you want to understand the true teachings of the historical Jesus, you need to study the early Christian fellowships in Syria, Egypt, Greece, Russia, India". Another expert said, "Christianity started in the Middle-east as a fellowship, became politics in Europe, and has become marketing in America."

 

Venkat

 

PS: Islam also first arrived in Kerala through peaceful ways, and it was only centuries later when the Islamic invaders (colonizers) started using the faith for political purposes did the aggression and tensions begin. The point cannot be lost that aggressive proselytization and politicization of any faith is dangerous.

Tolerance - is it a product of structure or of culture?

Copenhagen, 7 August 2017

Tolerance - is it a product of structure or of culture?

Denmark clearly functions as a tolerant society. But from talking to folks here and from observation, it... appears that the tolerance is very much a product of structure. People and society are very tolerant as long as individuals follow the "rules" and stay within the established "norm". For example, any deviation from the rule is quickly pointed out. If a biker innocently breaks a rule, a few people on the road remind him/her firmly (almost rudely). Sides of stairs to a swimming pool are marked "wet side" and "dry side", and I ended up using the wrong side as I needed to hold the rails on the right side. I was told I am breaking the rule! Same with elevators.

My friends here tell me that the normally polite behavior changes when people drink and then conversations can get profane and rude. I have not seen this part. In many ways, Danish society and its normative rule-driven personality reminds me of a Japan or a Germany or a Singapore. Tolerance in daily life seems largely a product of structure. What happens then if rules and structure established for a certain context (homogenous population, industrial economy, etc) get challenged due to changes? Will structure change or fight to retain status quo? Is there also another route to tolerance, one more innate and culturally created with less rules and laws that can flexibly accommodate to change in a dynamic adaptive way?