Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Living

 Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Living –
Also a review of the book, This Too Shall Pass, by Elango Thambiah.

A story is alive, throbbing, when it is straight from the heart and can reach deep into the hearts of its listeners and pluck strings there. This is such a story.  In first person, from the real-life incidents that took place in the life of its protagonists, it is narrated in such a simple manner, that reading it felt like drinking a large mug of hot chocolate as a young something, snuggled into the warmth of a grandmother’s love listening to her wisdom stories.

It tells the profound story of a family living through the trauma and subsequent recovery of one of its members suffering from brain hemorrhage, and how they find their way back to the land of the living.

 I read the book last week over 4 evenings and nights, of days filled with intense, meditative study of Vibhuti Pada, chapter 3 of the yoga sutra, with a group of co-sadhakas that also included the author-protagonists of the book!  

And because of this concurrence of the yoga study and life story perhaps, this book seems forever intertwined with the learning and insights from the Vibhuti Pada of the yoga sutra:

How it is possible to connect with the ecstatic joy and beauty of simply being Alive.

How just by the virtue of being this ordinary human being, he and she have the potential and possibilities of channelizing and straddling an extraordinary state of being, the extraordariness of Life, with an ordinary self simply by surrendering to that life. To the very act of being fully alive to this present moment.

Pic by Vincent on Unsplash

This book epitomizes the above for me. And brought alive an inner story for me, completing the healing process of one big part of me, and closing a very old wound. A wound that said, “Any change means loss; loss of love, loss of warmth, loss of safety, belonging… so, fear change and shun change.” A wound that did not believe that there is anything permanent and holding a terror of everything that is not.  And yet, a deeper part of me had always searched for the permanent. Is there anything that is unchanging?

This Too Shall Pass is about that which is unchanging that rests in all the dance and drama of change. And brought home to me in a primal way, that Change also means new, fresh prANA, new forms of love, new explorations, possibilities and ways of being. How fun.

It is then possible to live life with this changing, ordinary moment, every moment, being held in the lap of the extraordinary permanence within it. And as Thomas Merton says, live and celebrate the “present festival”. Like a new, tender shoot. 

Do consider buying the book, much of the proceeds from its sale will go to The GangaFoundation, an organisation for enhancing the quality of life of persons with Spinal cord injury in India, co-founded by the author, Elango Thambiah, . , 

Kapoor and Sons - Understated, Yet Emotional

One of the wonderful things about this movie is that no character in it is perfect.  They all have interesting, even darker, shades to them, just as all of us do.  The family is far, far from perfect, just like any of our families.  And yet, we come to like each of the characters in the movie quite a bit.  Especially the grandfather, Dadu (Rishi Kapoor), although he is too flamboyant, a bit like a peacock among pigeons.  However, we take him in stride as part of the mess that family and relatives are and can be. Maybe, especially because he is raucous, contradictorily, quietly so.  Although towards the end, the sudden bit of teary-eyed noise that he makes over the internet asking his grandsons to come back, is a little unconvincing. Yes it is after a death, and deaths change people, but I still felt that he would have done better doing a semi-naked jig with a young thing, that would have jolted his grandsons and forced them to come back and find out for themselves whether he has gone (completely) cuckoo. Would have been more in line with the character.  However.

The pigeons turn out to be kingfishers and bee-eaters. They each carry shadows, which inadvertently come out in the open when they all get together after a long time and stay home for a while.  Thank god almighty that it is not yet another Bollywood wedding that we are attending.  It is rather a more macabre situation of Dadu having had a heart attack that we are called hurriedly to. Just like this instance, I find much of the movie built around ordinary, usual middle-class family happenings and things and sink into it like into a bean bag with a sigh - death and heart attack, bickering over bills and money at the breakfast table, a father screaming at his younger son about not keeping his job, the seemingly perfect and responsible first child, the faded romance of middle aged parents hinting at a once-alive togetherness and harmony, sibling rivalry... In the middle of all this, bursts and moments of love, affection and connection - the quick hug that the mother gives her son, a shared look of understanding between them, the brothers starting to fight over who has their parents' affection but then suddenly laughing about the obvious reality that they both perceive, the grandfather's mischief with his grandsons (smoking weed, no less!), apple pie(!) and more, scattered across the film's duration.

I loved it that there were not primary emotions or themes that categorised the first and second half of the movie.  Although yes, the plot moved quite effortlessly, smoothly into conflict by the end of the first half, and the little moments and hints into relationships and characters gradually build up to this publicly disastrous breakdown wherein every person in the immediate family is furious or hurt about every other.  By "smoothly into conflict" (which sounds oxymoronic) I mean there was a logical sequence to the events and the movement into conflict did not look artificial and contrived. And so, while this sequencing took its time and got our attention, it somehow felt like, the resolution of conflicts, re-building of bridges and relationships, and life returning to a new normal, was not given enough space and work.  It all seemed too pat towards the end and a little too understated perhaps.  Despite this, it works, and I shed some tears and laughed a lot and felt much.

As a soppy, sentimentalist who wants happy endings all around, what I cant wrap my heart around is Harsh's (Rajat Kapoor) death.  Should we necessarily have some part of the ending sad?  Like in Shamitabh. Why was death so necessary for the conclusion of the film? That too when here, Rathna Pathak and Rajat Kapoor carry the burdens, the heavies and the lightnesses of their relationship with such aplomb, such sincerity, I feel their ache, that wispy thread of hope when they connect, the sense of utter hopelessness when the morning-after explodes in their faces, and then again, a tentative reaching out - the phone call, and then WHAM! why do film makers do that?

I felt much more for the older couple than the younger one, which is the one thing I have not mentioned at all until now - Arjun (Siddharth Malhotra) and Tia's (Alia Bhatt) romance. I somehow didn't feel the explicit need for a man-woman romance in the midst of the family drama (it already had its own romance - the larger kind), except that, hey, this is India, and this is Bollywood - what will we do without a woman to catch the attention of one of the protagonists and vice versa.  However, what can be said about it is that it is, like other parts of the movie, understated yet poignant in its own way.  It could also be that a Tia was needed to hold Siddharth to the place, to bring him back home again and also to bring out his softer side. Love / romance can do that.  And Alia Bhatt does a great job, carrying Tia's shadows and manifesting her own style of light.

The elder son's character is totally inspired! Fawad Khan's character is Rahul. I mean, Rahul! A name like that, and you've got to watch the movie to know why this character is a subversion of Bollywood.  Although, Fawad Khan takes some time to warm up to Rahul. His punch was greater in Khubsoorat, and it struck me that the mother and son duo was the same in that movie as well.

Speaking of subversions, I feel that there is much in this movie that subtly subverts Bollywood cliches while still being established firmly as popular, mainstream cinema. Bravo, Shakun Batra.

Of Listening and Self Discipline

This is a corollary and continuation to the Introduction of this blog.  To summarise the introduction: everybody wants to have their say, and the vast ocean of personal blogs in the world wide web seems to be expressing the same desire; however, who is truly listening, to understand and engage in a meaningful way?

Let's go further now, and ask, what if one was truly listening, just to listen?  Listening for the purpose of listening.  What does that mean?  That there is no agenda or purpose for the listening, save for that of listening.  There is no purpose (not even to understand and engage, so there truly is NO purpose except this moment's act of listening) - what happens then?  There will first probably be no inspiration to rush in to say anything to the other by way of advice or opinions or thoughts or comments or suggestions.

When can there be no other agenda except that of listening?  There actually seems to be no sphere of everyday human functioning where this listening is happening consciously.  There are of course special circumstances when this may be taking place (or at least the intention for this type of listening is present).  One obvious circumstance is that of counseling and psychotherapy besides other specific groups and spaces which may be looking at such a way of engagement, perhaps as part of a larger exploration of living meaningfully.

So when can there be no motivation to change the other through advice and comments and reactions and responses?  For if we examine with care, we will see that all our advice to others is almost always in the realm of changing and reforming the other.  We want to change them such that they can see the light, the same as we are.  The way they are seeing it and / or not seeing it, and / or seeing darkness, and / or something else entirely, are situations somehow not acceptable to us.  And it is not acceptable to us, because each of us have our frames of reference and contexts that we think from, and have already decided that our ways of thinking and doing are right and the other wrong and thus pass judgment and give labels.  I am also acutely aware that there is a huge jump in the earlier sentence and there are a lot of steps to be taken before we get to this point in the inquiry.  Also, the passing of judgment is not necessarily with vicious intent or even emphatically stated; it is part of the conditioning that we pick up and internalise consciously and unconsciously through culture, society, our parents first, then extended family, teachers, friends, and so on. For instance, "Don't cry like a girl" is an oft repeated statement, and this may be defended by saying that it is just a casual comment and / or said lightheartedly. However, we need to stay with the statement and see why it is even there. This is simply one example of how judgments are present in everything we choose to think, do, not think, not do and so on.  An important aspect to consider is that these insidious judgments are turned on ourselves also - that is, when I have a judgment about another person, it is for sure that I have that judgment on myself.  And this will work in such hidden ways and manifest as convoluted knots that would leave one stupefied and sometimes wondering, "What the hell was I thinking, doing such and such a thing?!".   To give a simplistic example, if I carried the above judgment, "dont cry like a girl", I may then be someone who would hate to cry . And hence, every time I feel like crying I would judge myself to be a wimp (just like a girl - a whammy there: crying is wrong / wimpy, girls cry, girls are wrong / wimpy), and try to suppress it. Either I succeed in suppressing it all the time, and like a pressure cooker, its going to burst some place some time, or, I may end up punishing myself covertly and unconsciously each time I cry or want to cry, or do both, suppress and punish*.  It could go further: the earlier sequence of thinking may not end with 'girls are wimpy', but take a jump and say 'boys are not wimpy'.  This may manifest in a girl being / behaving like, a "tomboy" for instance.  We will not go further with all the implications of this one judgment.

However, the above was to see how our judgments are playing all the time when we are supposedly listening to someone else^.  Much of our listening to the other, happens with this clamour going on inside our heads.  And each time we offer a piece of advice, interrupt with a solution, give a shout of appreciation and so on, we may very well be answering to the clamour inside rather than engaging with the person in front of us.

I also think that this entire self-feeding cycle of having so much to say, and listening but not listening has its beginning and roots in our childhood.  How many of us listen to children in this manner, without imposing our selves on them? Much of society and cultures see children as clay to be moulded and trained in particular ways.  If we were to listen to children without the clamour inside, that in itself would be demonstration enough for them, one would think.  Many of us are still the children that we were, wanting to be listened to fully.  So this takes us back to the question, when and how can we listen to the other without this motivation to change the other, from a space of no judgment?

For me, this practice starts with my earlier question about listening without imposing my self.  All the clamour inside is part of my self.  How can I allow the noises of my self to subside and make room for the sounds coming from the other, so that I can truly listen to them? That is the practice**.   I also see that it is not possible to force the self-noise into silence.  There is another piece that speaks of how training and controlling is a cruder form of disciplining that has its limited context and necessity.  One could follow a more meaningful form of self discipline, wherein, the disciplining is a journey of self discovery** and we discover the patterns of our judgments and understand our selves better. And that journey of discovery is also the journey of transformation.  And also the journey of truly listening, and discovering the other - because in a paradoxical way, the journey of self discovery allows the self (noise) to dissipate, giving us a chance to recognise the other, and perhaps also see that the other is not different from the self.

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* That many of us ("normal", mentally stable persons) punish ourselves for many of our perceived mistakes and judgments and so on is a known psychological phenomenon, and there are several studies on self-punishment.

^ To look at this matter as one's judgments interfering with true listening is one perspective, one view of the scene.  There would be other ways definitely; other views of the same scene.

** This is also the practice and journeying in the path of Yoga

My Grandmother's Obituary

My great grand mother, Kamakshi Ammal, passed away on Feb 15th 2008. Fighting to retain her independence till the very last days. That was one of the foremost qualities about her - Her independence, of action and thought. She was traditional and yet modern at the same time. She was a stickler to her 'acharam' in practices like not touching anybody until she has finished her daily 'parayanam' in the morning, but at the same time would not blink an eyelid about a girl marrying out of her religion, and would say, "So what?" You have to remember the generation she comes from and all its orthodoxy. She was 88 when she passed away. Despite her orthodox times, she studied for nursing, which was stopped half way through when she went to live with her husband and in-laws at age 16 (she was married at 13), took up the management of a big household and made for herself a position of authority in a male-dominated house by assuming greater and greater responsibilities, and also picked up reading, which stuck to her until the end of her life. One has to understand what it meant to manage a household in those times - a joint family, moreover a family which was very illustrious in Madurai in those days, dozens of visitors every day to meet the advocates in-house, numerous do's and dont's for cooking, and feeding this large number of people, the numerous religious practices, poojas and daily routines... and so on. She would tell us of all this as many anecdotes and stories involving the house and the people... one of the favourites that I remember are the late evenings, early nights when the men would go off to a movie or hang out with friends, and the women would retire to the women's chambers upstairs and then "they (women) would have all their fun". This fun consisted of my grandmother reading from novels, magazines, news papers for her mother-in-law and other women, young and old in the family, from the light of the hurricane(?) lamp. Only she could read. I imagined how my grandmother would have opened a whole new world of happenings and things through her reading on many of these nights. 

A voracious reading practice and an openness to new ideas and experiences were things that were essential to her being. She was well-versed in many many scriptures, could chant as well as explain their meaning, could quote lines from any of Kalki or Sujatha's novels apt to the situation; she also had a huge repository of all these quaint folk songs which she let loose to hers and our absolute glee, very relevant to the situation. My greatest regret has been that I have not documented any of these. It is these songs or small poem-compositions of those times, which show a different life - of deep observation of people and the way things happen, even the time to observe, and then the time to compose a song on the observation, the inclination to sit around and sing these songs in the evenings.... I must mention here that all the Ramayana and Mahabharatha that I know, I know because of her. She used to tell us stories from the 2 epics and that is how I know any of it. My sister lying on one side of her and I on the other at bed time, we used to listen to these stories which she said with great detail, relish and abandon. This was yet another quality that she kept with her always - her story telling quality. I realise as I write, that she enjoyed telling people stories and anecdotes. She also enjoyed meeting people, and talking to them about various things, drawing them out to tell her things (little realising that she was collecting anecdotes), and of course having them listen to her. Later, she would talk about them and come out with some wise and funny insight about their behaviour. 

It took very little to tickle her funny bone, and she would see some humour in almost any situation, and have a private laugh to herself. It was this ability to see the funny side of things which probably kept her sane, strong and open, even living with generations of people 4 times removed from hers, having different lifestyles and values, and doing strange things which she cannot understand. But it must also be said that she strived to keep herself up-to-date with all the things happening around her. She read all the Tamil news papers, magazines and all trivia that she can come across and would be able to talk to us also about these things. I remember talking to her once about some political issue, and with great reluctance she stated some of her views and during the conversation also told us how they had stopped wearing new clothes after the partiton of India happened! The entire family went into a life long mourning on this and vowed not to wear new clothes for any occasion. It was an eye-opener for me! I suddenly realised from what a political background she comes, and how her contemporaries in the family took part in the freedom struggle. And then came the realisation that she had no trouble keeping up with the political and social developments in the country or even in the world; it was technology and its application in every day life, life style and occupation, which she found strange. 

The core of my great grandmother was strength. Strength all the way - imagine a woman who had seen everybody in her family, from her own parents, children, children's spouses, siblings, grand-child's spouse, her husband whom she tended in the last days of his life when she was 80! (his bed sores and all), die before her ... and after all that could retain her sense of humour, love for new things, reading, propensity to pull everyone's legs, her love for knowledge... 88 years of life, well-lived, seasoned by so much of life's struggles and still the twinkle in the eye through it all.