It had been 8 long days since I ate wholesome, home cooked food. I felt like my energy was just being sapped. I felt like a plant withering and shedding all its leaves in the cold dark winter. I felt like a bee sucking water instead of honey, when all the flowers have disappeared.
A lot of activities we do in life is purely based on the pain vs gain principle. You do it if it brings you more gain than pain. Apparently cooking normally brings me more pain than pleasure. All that work in cutting vegetables, cooking, cleaning was simply not worth it. This was fine for 8 days, when I subsisted in the beginning on oil in vegetables in oil..aka curry from a shop. My stomach felt sick and twisted like a wrung cloth! The other days were spent surviving on an apple, banana and a ready to eat chapathi with pickle. In the afternoon at the cafeteria, it would be some cheesy tart, pie or sweetened noodles - lining up the stomach with chocolates as fillers. There was never a sense of being full. I once got up in the middle of the night to get a booster snack, something unthinkable for a sound sleeper like me. Yesterday the pain of the past 7 days made me overeat at an Indian restaurant, where I hogged like a pig on dirt. I then discovered that the food was indeed nothing but dirt when all day I spent with an uneasy stomach.
Enough is enough my mind decided. Ultimately, the pain in surviving without good, healthy food had exceeded the pain taken to cook. I hit the stoves immediately. A busy 70 minutes saw me dishing up some delicacies. Truly, I make no exaggeration when I say I felt like a parched desert wanderer who takes a bath and swig of fresh water in an oasis after nearly dying. In fact, food had always been a major problem, even while I stayed in the land of opportunities. I used to spend days on meagre quantities of fruits and other eatables. Like a moth to the light, I was attracted back to homeland, where there was no necessity to put up a big fight just for 2 square meals a day. How true that we choose our own destiny thanks to the habits and simple pleasures of life, given up for riches and glory.
Monday, December 18, 2006
Thursday, December 14, 2006
Hitching the shoe to the feet - an unlikely metaphor!
Marriage is just like buying and wearing shoes. With a bit of imagination and poetic license for prose, it is trivial to understand why.
When I buy shoes, the most important factor for me is comfort. Even if I have to fork out a huge sum, my feet need to feel 'free' and healthy after putting up with the shoe for 10 hours every weekday. Shoes that bite are a strict no-no, though it is said that both the feet and the shoe mould each other to keep one another comfortable over a period of usage. Next is durability and reliability. They need to last me a decent period of time without conking out, like the sole tearing up! The shoes need to look smart and not shoddy. This is more of a passing criteria than an independent factor. If all the other factors are met, it definitely doesn't hurt to have a trendy shoe. However, if the shoe is very stylish, but uncomfortable, then no designer can get my feet to accept the shoe!
In love marriage, the feet falls for the shoe simply because the shoe looks snappy and feels cosy when worn. The feet wears the shoe for short periods of time and thoroughly enjoys the comfort. However, once married (bought), there are unforeseen hurdles ahead. The shoe starts to bite, the toe hurts, the feet stink and cannot breathe. Very rare are the instances when worn shoes can be returned, even in a consumer friendly country like the US :-) (allegory fully intended!). Why did this happen?? Simply because it is hard to judge if the feet would adjust to the shoe and vice-versa, for 10 hrs each day, by just wearing the shoe for 10 minutes each day! Trial version turns out very different from the real-life version. All circumstances are not encountered nor thought of. Even if it turns out there is some discomfort, the thought of parting with such a beautiful shoe is heart breaking!
Live in relationships are like wearing chappals. There are no hassles of the lace to tie. It is easy to slip in and slip out (hahaha..again, allegorical) :-)). The feet don't feel as suffocated nor is there anything firmly keeping the two together. In fact, even if the chappal falls off along the way, there is no telling when it'll be noticed. All this looks fine. But the real challenge is when the going gets tough, the chappal isn't tough enough for a symbiotic protective relationship. When it is freezing out there, when you're treading over leeches, trekking over snow, the feet needs the shoe. In such cases, only a tried and trusted brand would do!!
Finally, in an arranged marriage, one first looks at the cobbler and the kind of shoes he's been producing. One takes a consensus to find out if people who've bought a particular type and brand of shoes have been satisfied. There is a Historical trend comprised of multiple sample points being analyzed to arrive at an informed conclusion. There is obviously a brief moment when the feet does get to try on the shoe - but this is short and fleeting, not at all enough to form a full opinion in the lack of data pertaining to the Historical trend analysis! Not only your feet but your parent's feet also get to try on the shoes (though the size might differ!).
Horoscope of the feet is tallied with that of the foot. This includes dimensions, shape of feet (wide, narrow, etc), shape of shoe (wide, pointed, etc), a time series analysis of the past that predicts for the future how much space the feet need, and how flexible the leather is to accommodate that. Is the shoe made of a kind of leather that is likely to bite feet with dry skin? The feet like to go hiking. Is the shoe capable of withstanding the rigours? What kind of lace is provided... can it tighten to allow speed running and loosen to let the feet breathe?
This is indeed a lot of data collected within a short period of time. The risk appears to be less since one has gone into dissecting the components and structure that make up the shoe, in relation to the anatomy of the feet and its regular activities. All this should make for a rough and tough, reliable shoe, able to protect the feet in rain, shine, snow, wind, and allow total relaxation in the absence of the elements.
Finally, for 100% satisfaction, one needs to become the creator and craft his/her own shoe with the finest leather. But alas, though we create, we're not creators!
When I buy shoes, the most important factor for me is comfort. Even if I have to fork out a huge sum, my feet need to feel 'free' and healthy after putting up with the shoe for 10 hours every weekday. Shoes that bite are a strict no-no, though it is said that both the feet and the shoe mould each other to keep one another comfortable over a period of usage. Next is durability and reliability. They need to last me a decent period of time without conking out, like the sole tearing up! The shoes need to look smart and not shoddy. This is more of a passing criteria than an independent factor. If all the other factors are met, it definitely doesn't hurt to have a trendy shoe. However, if the shoe is very stylish, but uncomfortable, then no designer can get my feet to accept the shoe!
In love marriage, the feet falls for the shoe simply because the shoe looks snappy and feels cosy when worn. The feet wears the shoe for short periods of time and thoroughly enjoys the comfort. However, once married (bought), there are unforeseen hurdles ahead. The shoe starts to bite, the toe hurts, the feet stink and cannot breathe. Very rare are the instances when worn shoes can be returned, even in a consumer friendly country like the US :-) (allegory fully intended!). Why did this happen?? Simply because it is hard to judge if the feet would adjust to the shoe and vice-versa, for 10 hrs each day, by just wearing the shoe for 10 minutes each day! Trial version turns out very different from the real-life version. All circumstances are not encountered nor thought of. Even if it turns out there is some discomfort, the thought of parting with such a beautiful shoe is heart breaking!
Live in relationships are like wearing chappals. There are no hassles of the lace to tie. It is easy to slip in and slip out (hahaha..again, allegorical) :-)). The feet don't feel as suffocated nor is there anything firmly keeping the two together. In fact, even if the chappal falls off along the way, there is no telling when it'll be noticed. All this looks fine. But the real challenge is when the going gets tough, the chappal isn't tough enough for a symbiotic protective relationship. When it is freezing out there, when you're treading over leeches, trekking over snow, the feet needs the shoe. In such cases, only a tried and trusted brand would do!!
Finally, in an arranged marriage, one first looks at the cobbler and the kind of shoes he's been producing. One takes a consensus to find out if people who've bought a particular type and brand of shoes have been satisfied. There is a Historical trend comprised of multiple sample points being analyzed to arrive at an informed conclusion. There is obviously a brief moment when the feet does get to try on the shoe - but this is short and fleeting, not at all enough to form a full opinion in the lack of data pertaining to the Historical trend analysis! Not only your feet but your parent's feet also get to try on the shoes (though the size might differ!).
Horoscope of the feet is tallied with that of the foot. This includes dimensions, shape of feet (wide, narrow, etc), shape of shoe (wide, pointed, etc), a time series analysis of the past that predicts for the future how much space the feet need, and how flexible the leather is to accommodate that. Is the shoe made of a kind of leather that is likely to bite feet with dry skin? The feet like to go hiking. Is the shoe capable of withstanding the rigours? What kind of lace is provided... can it tighten to allow speed running and loosen to let the feet breathe?
This is indeed a lot of data collected within a short period of time. The risk appears to be less since one has gone into dissecting the components and structure that make up the shoe, in relation to the anatomy of the feet and its regular activities. All this should make for a rough and tough, reliable shoe, able to protect the feet in rain, shine, snow, wind, and allow total relaxation in the absence of the elements.
Finally, for 100% satisfaction, one needs to become the creator and craft his/her own shoe with the finest leather. But alas, though we create, we're not creators!
Sunday, December 10, 2006
.
The title of this blog is barely visible. One needs to concentrate and be fully aware to notice it. Yet it exists, unobtrusively. It is a '.' (dot). Dimensionless and inconspicuous. It can be thought of as being the composition of every single letter or symbol that is printed on paper or screen. When you focus on the letter 'a' for instance, you only see it as 'a' and not as a continuous stream of multiple - infinite - dots. Once the form is noticed, the formless dot disappears. But without the formless dot, it is not possible to create the various forms of writing. The dot in this case becomes what is called the 'adhisthana' - the foundation. The vice versa is interesting too. Once you notice all this is nothing but a series of dots, you then only see dots. Awareness can shift between the form and the formless effortlessly. The dot which is dimensionless is beyond dimensions of space (obviously).
This whole analogy is exactly the maya concept of existence in delusion. Brahman or the unmanifested is like this dot, dimensionless - in fact, beyond space and time too. When creation manifests, it simply becomes the world of numerous forms and figures. This again is explained by the analogy of letters of symbols being formed from a dot. Though always in existence, it is rarely perceived due to a shifted awareness caused by the mind that focus on experiences of the senses and thoughts. For instance, one focuses merely on the words, the meaning of the letter, the script, flow of thoughts in this sentence and so on, without ever going into the core - how each of them came into existence. Once one goes on the other side of maya, it is still possible to see the world as it exists, but it will not be seen independent of its foundation, the brahman. The dream will not disappear but the dreamer becomes aware that it is all his own creation.
This whole analogy is exactly the maya concept of existence in delusion. Brahman or the unmanifested is like this dot, dimensionless - in fact, beyond space and time too. When creation manifests, it simply becomes the world of numerous forms and figures. This again is explained by the analogy of letters of symbols being formed from a dot. Though always in existence, it is rarely perceived due to a shifted awareness caused by the mind that focus on experiences of the senses and thoughts. For instance, one focuses merely on the words, the meaning of the letter, the script, flow of thoughts in this sentence and so on, without ever going into the core - how each of them came into existence. Once one goes on the other side of maya, it is still possible to see the world as it exists, but it will not be seen independent of its foundation, the brahman. The dream will not disappear but the dreamer becomes aware that it is all his own creation.
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