A simple, fervent prayer for my Republic!

A simple, fervent prayer for my Republic!

Where the mind is without fear,

Where women are not abused (physically and emotionally) but are respected and empowered,

Where garbage is responsibly disposed and recycled,

Where people obey traffic rules - wear seatbelts, helmets, give way to pedestrians, don't honk and don't speak on their mobile phones while driving,

Where people don't drink and drive

Where people don't watch pirated movies,

Where people know their own elected representatives (panchayat members, councillors, MLAs, MPs) by first name, have access to their mobile numbers and demand accountability,

Where human Life, and sentiment, is valued more than community, caste and religion,

Where clean professionals like you and me are willing to enter the mainstream of governance - executive, judiciary and legislature,

Where eco-consciousness is a responsibility and not just an idea,

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into that very practical, possible, realistic realm, O! Mother India, may you arise!

* If you like it, please feel free to fill in the blanks by adding your aspirations to the prayer as comments to this post

** With much respect and heartfelt gratitude to Rabindranath Tagore, Mahatma Gandhi and to all those who soldier on, dutifully, despite the odds, so that we can post "Happy Republic Day" on social media today!

*** I don't know the name of any of my elected representatives and I know that's a crying shame!

“When there is gratitude, there can be no grief”

When you grieve for something – or someone – that you have lost, or don’t have, you are perhaps missing the bigger picture. You are missing focusing on what you have! 

We had coffee with a friend over the weekend. She recalled her visit to the Gandhi Ashram, on the banks of the Sabarmati, in Ahmedabad some years back and told us about how a quote on gratitude at the ashram changed her thinking completely. The quote, she recalled, read, “When there is gratitude, there can be no grief.”

I can’t agree with that quote more. The nature of Life is that what is today will not be there tomorrow. With birth, death is certain. So Life itself is a limited period offer. While it is natural to grieve over loss, of someone or some thing, grieving endlessly pushes you into a depressive spiral. Grief has to be understood as a natural emotion, a response that arises with any loss. But you must value that grieving over what isn’t is pointless. What is over is over. What is lost is lost. It is gone. Stay with the grief to mourn the loss. But move on. And if you can’t move on, learn to be grateful for whatever is (left), whatever you have with you. This sense of gratitude alone will help you overcome your grief.

To be sure, there is no harm in grieving. But there’s no use either. With every moment that you spend grieving, you are missing a moment to live. The truth is that Life is happening for you, around you, 24x7, irrespective of whether you are grieving or whether you are enjoying it. It is up to you to decide what you want to do with your Life. With gratitude, your problems don’t recede, they don’t go away, what is lost cannot be always gained back (certainly not instantaneously), but you can at least avoid missing – losing – the magic and beauty that each new moment contains.

Being grateful is common-sense. After all why would you miss what is, for whatever isn’t? 

Don’t do anything that will rob you of your sleep

Whenever in doubt, lean on the side of your inner peace. Do only that which will give you a good night’s sleep.

I was speaking to a young man yesterday who shared with me his story. Very inspiring! He wanted to be a police officer. He was selected to join the force but there was a catch. He was asked to pay a bribe of Rs.1.50 Lakh to be recruited as a Sub-Inspector in the Tamil Nadu police force. The man was in a dilemma. To be a cop was his life’s dream. Here he was on the threshold of becoming one but the demand for bribe rankled his conscience. He was raised in an upright family where they worshipped not Gods and religious texts, but worshipped Mahatma Gandhi’s autobiography “Sathiya Sothanai” (The Tamil translation of “The Story of My Experiments with Truth”). Even as he was contemplating what to do, some of his extended family members made overtures to him saying they would offer him a dowry if he married into their family – this could have helped him pay the bribe and get his dream job. But the young man asked himself some simple basic questions:

Is being a cop more important to me than being an honest citizen?

Is my dream more important to me than a good night’s sleep?

Is that dowry more important to me than really marrying the person I truly love and want to spend the rest of my Life with?

These questions gave him immense clarity. And he leaned on the side of his inner peace. He told me, “I decided that I did not want to forsake my inner peace for the sake of my dream. In fact, when I look back now, I realize I was only infatuated with wanting to be a cop. What matters most to me is being true – to myself and to all the people I know.”

Of course, this young man faced several challenges on his way to finding a stable career in an NGO, where he currently works. But he says has no regrets: “I earn enough to provide for my small family. I am happy. And content.”

I share this story for two reasons. One, we must all have the clarity in us to be discerning – to know what will give us peace and what will disturb it. The other is that we must be prepared to journey along, without regret, whatever be the path we choose. For there will be many times and situations when you will rue the choice you made. But if you believe you would have been unhappier not making that choice, then plough on. Live with your choice. And it will always end well.

Yes, in the end, everything works out just fine. So, why trade your inner peace for petty short-term material gains?

The enduring relevance and power of Truth and Ahimsa

Truth and Non-Violence are the only two real assets that you possess. Nobody can take these away from you. No recession can erode its market value. They are eternal, importantly, practical, assets that are as relevant today as they were in Mahatma Gandhi’s time.

In fact, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, an ordinary barrister at law, a man as trapped in worldly affairs as you and I are, transformed to become ‘mahatma’ (great soul) because he discovered these assets within him. These two transformational tools that are in our arsenal but we don’t deploy them because we think they are outdated concepts that don’t work. Wrong. I have lived, experienced and learned to report that they work. Big time. And are the only two weapons or resources that we need to survive the vicissitudes of Life.

Truth is not just about seeing, saying and doing the right thing. In fact, ahead of that, comes the realization that all Life is equal. This is the whole, the absolute truth. In front of this truth, all else pales in significance, everything is stripped naked. Apply this truth in real Life, in today’s world. You are plagued by worries of job security, of not getting a visa, of an unknown, scary future because you are out of job, of death because you are terminally ill. Now ask yourself why do you want this worry to cede, to go away? So that you can live in peace. To do what? So that you can die in peace. Now, therefore, if there is birth, you agree, you know, that death will happen sooner or later. If all of us have to eventually die, and we know that is inevitable in the future, why worry? Why wonder if we will have a job, a marriage, health and so on? Why not choose to live in peace even now? The truth is that whoever you are comparing yourself is also human. And so will eventually die too. When you awaken to the reality that all Life is equal, you start valuing Life and begin to live in the present.

Non-Violence is not just the absence of physical violence as Gandhi discovered. He found, understood, practiced and taught it as ‘ahimsa’. Which when understood from the original Sanskrit implies that ‘when all violence in the human heart subsides, the state that is arrived at is intense love’. None of us is physically violent at most times. We don’t go about hitting each other or killing people. But there is so much violence in our hearts. We hate people, we hate attitudes, we hurl abuses at each other, we swear on the roads, we wish pain and suffering to those who cause them to us. All this, Gandhi classified as violence. And pointed out that when we are filled with so much metaphorical, verbal, emotional violence__hatred__how can we go to our native state of love? From the neighbor who insensitively parks his car outside your garage to the colleague who plays petty politics at work to the tyrant boss who does not regard merit to the government official who demands a bribe from you to the guys on the street who eve tease your daughter, we are hating someone, somewhere, all the time. When so much instinctive, intuitive hatred fills our Life, where is the scope for love to prevail?

Gandhi was inspired by the Buddha’s teaching that ‘when one person hates another, it is the hater who falls ill__physically, emotionally, spiritually.’ Gandhi employed these two tenets of Truth and ‘Ahimsa’__intelligently to first transform himself and then the world. He called this process ‘satyagraha’__which means nothing but ‘truth in action’, and is certainly not some vernacular jargon for describing a protest methodology. Gandhi proved through practice that you can fight any battle, even an army, with just these two weapons. To be sure, he did not say that we must not fight for our rights, for what is right or for justice. He only said that we fight it with non-violent means and while upholding the truth of our creation as equals. He explained this, in his context, thus: “I do not hate the domineering Englishmen as I refuse to hate the domineering Hindus. But I can and do hate evil wherever it exists. I hate the system of government that the British people have set up in India.” Gandhi’s philosophy, then and now, remains a game changer.

I have learnt the futility of imagining that we are all created different__and grieving and suffering from comparing, from pining and from staying rooted to an I-don’t-have mentality. I have learnt that violence in the heart is more destructive, more lethal than all the arsenic and all the RDX in the whole world__it burns you day in and day out, and leaves you emotionally charred. I used to be called ‘chiefscreamer’ at work (my colleagues invented this, punning on my work title that says ‘chiefdreamer’) and my choicest vitriolic abuses were even compiled as AVIS-isms by some of my more creative colleagues. But when I discovered the potency of ‘ahimsa’, and practiced it, I now realize that getting angry is an option, not a necessity. And when I do get angry and agitated, an inner alarm goes away, calling me back to attention and mindfulness. These two tenets that Gandhi lived and taught have transformed me and my Life. They can do so to you too. As Gandhi himself claimed: “I have not the shadow of a doubt that any [one] can achieve what I have, if he would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.” 

Live – ‘knowing’ you will die!

To understand Life, understand the certainty of death. It is the only thing you can be sure of in this lifetime – that you will die! Once you understand death, you will live fully, intensely, celebrating each moment that you are alive!

The conditioning, however, that all of us have had has led us to fearing death than accepting it. Death is presented to us as something that’s horrible, grave and sorrowful. So, we grown up fearing it. And therefore we don’t really live – for how can you live, forever cowering with fear, of a death that you certainly can’t avoid?

There’s an insane political drama playing out in Tamil Nadu politics where Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) patriarch M.Karunanidhi has expelled his older son M.K.Alagiri from the party ostensibly because the latter wished for the death (a charge that Alagiri has denied) of the former’s younger son, M.K.Stalin. The brothers have been sparring publicly for a long time now – to the extent that, especially with the ruling All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) firmly in power, the public at large hardly bothers about this sibling rivalry or the internal challenges that grip the DMK. But a charge from Karunanidhi saying Alagiri was “wishing Stalin’s death” certainly made Page 1 headlines. What I found interesting was not what the father and the older son were saying, but how calmly Stalin reacted. He said: “Everybody who is born has to die someday.” Political analysts don’t see Stalin’s retort as a study in profundity. Nor do I. I see it simply as the truth – stated aptly, appropriately.

Gandhi before his final journey
Picture Source: Internet

Today is also the day, 66 years ago, when Mahatma Gandhi was assassinated by Nathuram Godse. In a book being published shortly by Roli Books, titled, “My Experiment with Gandhi”, author Pramod Kapoor says that “Gandhi would often say – ‘Death is a celebration…the body falls and the bird within it flies away. So long as the bird doesn’t die, the question of grief should not arise.’” I believe this is the most profound understanding of, and a very beautiful explanation for, death.

So stop fearing death. Rejoice in the awareness that you have of what the end-game is all about. Celebrate that your soul, your true Self, is non-perishable and that it will soon be free – when death consumes your body and ends your current lifetime. If we can understand this truth about death – and Life – you will live, than merely exist!

Practice non-violent thought – be the change

To find inner peace, learn to practice non-violence – to ensure non-violent thought – within you!

No one practised this better than Mahatma Gandhi, whose birthday it is today. He taught the world the power of courage, the courage of non-violence. And he didn’t talk only about physical courage or summoning physical courage. He championed non-violent thought. He truly celebrated the spirit of Ahimsa – which does not simply mean non-violence as the English translation suggests, but is about non-violent thought. Gandhi was, to be sure, the original Angry Young Man (much ahead of the venerable Big B on Indian celluloid) as Shyam Benegal’s classic The Making of the Mahatma (1996) portrays. Of course, through the famous railway platform experience of Pietermaritzburg of June 7, 1893, Gandhi’s anger against the British establishment had led him to pursue a path of confrontation with the Empire – and he launched his historic crusade then – but Benegal’s film shows how Gandhi understood his tendency to lose his temper and how he conquered rage, replacing it with non-violent thought. Incessant practise through his years in South Africa, through engaging himself in service and daily meditation, Gandhi became an embodiment of love and compassion. This is what led him to employ non-violent thought – Ahimsa – as a key weapon in uniting 300 million Indians, who were as disjointed then as they are now, without even the boon of technology we are all blessed with today, in the struggle against the British empire. 10 days before his assassination, on January 20, 1948, someone, believed then to be a Sikh youth, hurled a bomb at a gathering Gandhi was addressing. The bomb missed the target and Gandhi survived. A group of Sikhs called on Gandhi the next day to clarify that the assailant, who was by then arrested, was not a Sikh. Gandhi rebuked the delegation for playing the religion card. He said, irrespective of which religion the youth belonged to, he only wished him well.

There’s great merit – and an urgent need – to reflect on Gandhi’s Life and message today. Not that any of us, busy with our unpauseable lives, even has half-a-chance to change the world and make it more peaceful. But we can focus on ourselves. And change ourselves. Every time we find a violent thought rising in our minds, we can quell it. We can make a small beginning instantaneously and slowly build on it. For example, each day, subconsciously, when we swear to ourselves over the conduct of a fellow road-user or at the slimy machinations of a colleague at work or at the dishonesty that is prevalent in public Life or at an insensitive act of a neighbor – when we even say words like idiot or f@*$ or ba#@$*d – let us remember we are encouraging violent thought. The less violent we become in our minds, the more peaceful we will be in our souls. And the more peace we are within, the more peaceful our worlds will be. This cannot happen by merely wishing for change. This can happen by being, as Gandhi famously said, the change!

Don’t fight your desires. Understand them!

Every scripture in the world will tell you that desire is at the root of all our unhappiness. But it is also intrinsic to human nature that we desire. The way to deal with desire then is to not resist it but to understand it, appreciate it and make an intelligent choice. Desire cannot be dropped. Because desire is an energy. And energy cannot be destroyed. When the energy, the desire arises, go it its root and understand it. Do you need what you desire or do you want it? If you need it, go for it. If you want it, you can still go for it, but absolve yourself of all guilt. Make a free choice by remaining alert, being awake and by practicing awareness.

The latest issue of India Today runs a cover story on ‘The Untold Story’ of Mahatma Gandhi’s experiments with practicing celibacy based on now available excerpts from the personal diaries of Manuben, who was his personal attendant for many years and was with him at the time that he was assassinated. It is common knowledge that Gandhi’s experiments with celibacy involved sleeping naked with female companions. People then, and now, see it as an eccentric side of a Mahatma, Great Soul. Others find it condemnable and questionable. We will never know why Gandhi used this method to deal with, in an attempt to perhaps conquer, his sexual desires. It is believed that Gandhi looked to conquer this enormous energy within, which would have only helped satiate his selfish and intensely personal desire, his lust, and direct that energy in the pursuit and practice of ahimsa, to help his country and its citizens. It was Gandhi’s personal choice and something he had the honesty, as Manuben’s diary jottings reveal amply now, to make no bones about what he did as part of this practice.

While the India Today story will be lapped up by its readers for the sheer expose it offers into the private Life of one of the most revered Indians, it helps us, on another plane, to reflect deeply about our own ability to deal with desire. I lean to Osho, the Master, for a better understanding of the anatomy of desire. Osho says the energy behind desire and the energy behind creation, existence, are one and the same. He quotes from the Eastern scriptures where legend has it that God had a great desire. To expand beyond himself. And so, in order to grow from one to many, he let his desire create us__humans. So, fundamentally, all desire is about expanding oneself because we are all an offshoot of the same creative energy. Fighting desire, therefore, means fighting with ourselves. No desire is bad unless you succumb to it and it starts to enslave you. And nothing must be succumbed to. We must not capitulate but we must choose freely. When a desire, let us say to smoke, to drink, to eat an additional gulab jamun, to have sex, to get angry, to feel frustrated, to be jealous, whatever, arises, look at the desire not as if you are desiring it but as a third person. As an observer. Understand the desire with your awareness. Where there is awareness, there will be prudence. It is only when we are blinded that we succumb mindlessly to our desires. When we stay alert, we will always be able to deal with the desire intelligently, effortlessly __ perhaps, overcome it by letting go of it, perhaps, choosing it consciously.