Karma

What goes around, comes around.

Yet, there is no correlation in reality.

It's not about this life, it's from the previous, and onto the next. Do good because then good things will come to you.

Imaginary data points aside, you do good because it's the right thing to do. Not because you expect good in return.

A voyueristic cat

Reducing Life

October 2015

A magical time in life. My longest solo ride then, to Kumaon. A step back from Google maps and fixed plans. Ride till sunset, ask around for a place to stay.

A cop stops my bike, and gets on without permission. "There is a guy running away, chase him!" I don't know who I'm chasing or where this is heading, but I ride along, full throttle. A brief experience of absolute right of way on the road, cop with gun sitting pillion. After some time we find a guy, who lacks the urgency of a fugitive. He is caught, amidst no drama. I don't understand anything, but it doesn't matter, I ride on.

The rivers have wide sandy beaches and closer to Rishikesh there are countless campsites - it feels like any good thing remains good only until everyone finds out about it. So one way to live life is to look at choices that others don't want to make. Like physical inconvenience is a great tool to keep crowds away. This has inspired Spiti in winter, Rajasthan in summer, Western Ghats during monsoon and places that you can reach only by foot.

Back to the ride, a few times kids going back home from school jump on, as do some adults. Outside big towns in the hills, for the most part there is only one road, and people are much more free to ask for help and to offer help here.

The end of the day is the best time and I don't want to stop. I can ride for as long as I please and sync with the sun, rather than distance. It's like the difference between timing food with hunger as opposed to eating based on fixed timings.

Prayag mean confluence, and everywhere I turn there is a town named Prayag on this route. For all our worship of the Himalayas and the great rivers birthed there, the sight of so much concrete damming dry river beds is ugly. What is a river without flowing water?

The sun sets as I approach Karnaprayag, I stop and say hello to an elderly man. What's a good place? He points me to a hotel - Sri Krishna. I enter and I see Rajinikanth's photograph with the guy behind the counter. The room is not too dirty. One avoids close inspection of the sheets, and fatigue takes over.

From here the places remain anonymous. Any place which attracts too much attention gets spoiled, so here I'm doing my bit.

The ride goes on, past dusty roads under construction, across invasive forests of pine planted 200 years back for turpentine. Two days later, I arrive at the base for the trek - a 100 year old house. One guide (Tillu), one porter (Babloo), and me start out.

As we start the climb up, we stumble upon a snake - a baby Russell's viper. My first ever Russell's sighting, a snake that stretches from sea level to over 2,000 meters.

At the end of the first afternoon my legs are crying for rest. We climb down to fetch water from a known water source. It's dry. Tillu and Babloo venture further down, while I return to the tents and wait. We had just missed some nomadic shepherds and mutton at 2500 meters. We are left with a carpet of goat shit to admire, and of course it's utterly joyous to be so high up and have the world open out in front.

The next day we climb further up, and only Rhododendron is left now, as we approach the alpine meadow above 3,000 meters. We reach early afternoon, and I'm going mad with happiness - running, jumping and rolling around. Just happy to be alive at that moment. 

Life is reduced to food, water, tent and company. There is nothing else the mind craves, and there is absolute contentment with life as we settle around the fire to watch the stars. Shooting stars zoom past, galaxies glitter away, and we are taking it all in. I'm thinking this particular scene would've been there since humans first appeared, and this visceral joy for nature is a common thread that has endured.

The night is freezing, and the Tillu and Babloo silently regret their choice to bring tarpaulin for an open tent. They light a fire at 3 AM, and it melts the icicles on the roof and we have rain inside the tent. I hear sounds of chatter, and I just lay there, waiting for sunrise.

The following morning we climb further up to see sunrise at 3,500 meters, above the clouds. I catch myself looking at it thru my phone screen, and I feel stupid. I put the phone down and enjoy the rest of it.

Why do people wish to capture every moment for posterity? I find it particularly amusing when people hold up their phones to record a concert, sporting event, or Niagra falls - things which are constantly covered by professionals. Why can't we see a picture on Google or a video on Youtube? What's the joy in capturing things which have been captured to death by people with far more competence?

The climb down was quick, and my legs were happy for a break. A day later I was riding back, and my mind was filled with joy. As I ride towards Dehradun, I see a building that reminds me of my Indore campus. Turns out, it's an IIM, and I'm in Kashipur. The hostel and classrooms fall on either side of the main highway and I keep asking understand how?

Towards the end my clutch cable snaps, and I push the bike for a while and find a mechanic. It's dark and I'm tired. The stretch as I approach home is like the last chapter in a book being written.

A week later we would ride to Spiti, at the beginning of winter.

The most important variable in life is human company. Joy and Gopal would've loved it. How fortunate though that we found each other with time in our hands back in the day.

Power and it's concentration

Whenever there is an opportunity to corner power, most people do it, and like with capital, people with power are in an advantageous position to corner more power.

In the last 100 years - a speck in the human timeline - many democracies arose to overthrow monarchy, even as some retained our fetish for princes and princesses thru irrational ceremonial excesses. With Democracy came the promise of elected representatives of the people by the people and for the people - even if it took some time for everyone to be recognised as 'people'.

Elsewhere communists overthrew monarchy, and noticeably absent here was a fetish for royalty. Here was an even greater promise of peasant power, and representation of labour's interests.

The checks and balances envisoned in parliamentary electoral democracy gave way to modern day monarchs leading political parties in democracy. They are worshipped and assume powers and accolades like Kings in the years past. Likewise, Communism led to concentration of power within the Communist Party, and led to leaders who enjoyed even more power than the Kings they overthrew.

Likewise with religion. Even the ones which branched off from a dominant religion, with the purpose of reform in society, have become cults of their own.

Most of these ideologies, religions and ways of life were made with good intentions. Unfortunately, power is a vice like no other, it blows humanity's will to smithereens.

When we imagine social relations thru culture, tradition, law and so on, we must then account for this tendency for concentration of power.

Look at some common forms of social relations: country, religion, race, caste, nationality, political party, capital, fame, cinema, sports, music etc. In every social context people have attempted and succeeded in cornering power, and to use this power to concentrate even more power, on loop.

All good things in life operate within a band. Even Food, Water and Oxygen operate in a band. Too much and too little are both deadly. Trees don't grow endlessly tall and reach the moon. There are disadvantages to size - to oneself in natural design, and to others in human design.

In natural design, if humans grow too big, our bodies struggle with coordination and balance. If trees grow too tall, they bear the brunt of the wind during storms. So in nature, things grow as big as necessary, no more and no less, within a band.

In human design of nations, religions, companies, cinema and political parties, there are no limits to how much one can grow. There are no instinctive forces of resistance, like fear of wind or a weak spine, to limit how big one of these can grow.

As humans, the more power we have, the more challenged is our ability to resist megalomania. This is not so much an individual's mistake, as it is a natural outcome of nature's design. Humans are designed with good and bad tendencies - the reason why most people are not dominant is because they are not in a position to be so. 

It's a question of opportunity. So when we imagine society, we must think of this opportunity to dominate all around us, and how, in society's conscience, we can grow an instinct to resist this concentration of power.

Ashtanga yoga

Four months back my neighbour, who is a long time practitioner of Ashtanga yoga, opened classes upstairs in her home. I joined, and experienced a rare healthy addiction. It's so cool that I can climb 20 feet and I'm there in class. The practice is a fixed series of asanas, choreographed with breath. The Primary Series is misleading nomenclature. For the first few weeks we only did Surya Namaskaram and slowly added poses, one by one. After four months, I've reached half way thru the Primary Series. I do well with core strength and flexibility, and struggle with poses that require strength, especially in the legs.

It's the same series every day, and the whole maniacal repetitive nature of the practice appeals to my obsessive nature. Any activity performed with awareness is meditative. With the first pose of Surya Namaskaram every morning at 7, the balls of my breath have begun to roll on a rhythm and count for the next one hour, in sync with physical movement. I have almost no awareness of anything happening outside of that mat during that time. It's a complete mental break from life.

The asanas are challenging, and often out of range and modified versions are used. It's challenging so that the mind and body have something to grapple with and not be bored. The idea is to be aware of each body part, muscle and tissue, along with the breath, and observe oneself thru this practice. In that sense it's a very private, solitary pursuit - every day you get to know how your body feels, much like other important daily indicators of well-being - appetite, sleep and morning shit. Some days are better than others, and we accept it as it is, and enjoy the awareness.

Death

My uncle Nagarajan says we need to have an 'Art of Dying' like we have for Living. It's one of the most profound events in our lives, which affects everything else, yet we don't think or talk about it much.

If life were a prisoner's dilemma,  Death makes the number of games finite, as opposed to infinite games if we lived forever. In Game Theory, the presence of infinite games provides an incentive to cooperate, and if the games were finite, it triggers selfish, uncooperative behaviour.

I think that in real life it works the opposite way - the fact that Death makes life into a series of finite games makes people cooperate even in situations where they suffer as a result. Like bad jobs, bad marriages and so on. I see a lot of people putting up with difficult situations because the end is inevitable, so one doesn't fear the perpetuity of any bad situation. Of course here the focus is on bad situations, and we will discuss good situations some other time.

I also think that these days we are not used to Death because of lower mortality rates. We don't see infants and children dying as frequently as in the past, or even adults dying as young and frequently as in the past, and this makes us ill-prepared for Death when it does arrive - a certainty that we have not prepared for. If you avoid all pain, when pain does arrive, it's unbearable.

Some argue that whether you have 10 kids or 2, the death of one is equally painful. I disagree with this line of thinking - if you have more of anything, losing one is less painful.

What amuses me is people celebrating children's age milestones these days, like the 1st birthday. In the years past children had a very good chance of dying before their first birthday, like one in four or one in three would die so young. And if you did survive till 1, your chances for adulthood are very good compared to when you were in the womb. There were good reasons to celebrate.

To celebrate you need to have exposure to some risk - not necessarily death, but failure and hurt of some sort. If there is nothing at stake, what is there to celebrate? So as we derisk our lives and gravitate towards a life of convenience, control, longevity, certainty and risk-aversion, we are giving ourselves fewer and fewer opportunities to truly feel celebratory, and we are increasingly ill-equipped to handle whatever uncertainty, inconvenience, lack of control and pain that does come our way. It's good to be exposed to viruses, and catch a flu once in a while to build immunity.

We must also be aware that Death can come any time for any of us. That we are living on the edge all the time, we just don't know when it will end. Anyone can die at any point, and a casual meeting with a friend or loved one could be the last - we just don't know. This leads to another question: what if we knew that we are meeting someone for the last time? Does it change how you think or behave? Does it help or hurt? One of the most beautiful aspects of natural design is the fact that the future is not revealed. That we could be facing death tomorrow, and we still wake up and do our routine and move around with life with the happiness of a person who is immortal. We'll have so much anxiety if we knew we're going to die tomorrow, yet nature shields us from it, so we can be happy until the last moment. A bit like the principles espoused in raising livestock - let them be happy and exhibiting natural behavior till the last minute, for death is inevitable and - for nature - of utmost necessity.

Another feature of death is pain. The last segment of all of life is filled with pain. It ranges from a moment to a long drawn-out struggle in hospitals. Often a person is sick for some period of time, and nature gives us hints, and then they pass. This period of suffering is witnessed by the loved ones and it's very hard to process. This is another part of beautiful natural design, although it's difficult to associate pain with beauty. There is pain so that when the person dies, the people caring for the person feel relief in addition to the grief. Watching a loved one suffer makes death more acceptable. If people didn't suffer and died suddenly, it makes the news harder to accept - the reason why we feel more tragic when someone dies suddenly, like in an accident or from a violent crime, than we do if they fought a prolonged illness and died.

Nature also gives our brains a mechanism to accept this trauma. What we remember and what we forget are carefully chosen by natural design, to help us survive and be happy. I have had a few traumatic events, and I don't remember much from the months, or sometimes years afterwards. Like the brain doesn't want to remember - it's too painful. Back in the day, when someone died and the body was burnt, that was the last visual image one takes in, and it's during a period of intense brain function, and it may be etched or erased, but either way it's the last glance. Now we have photographs everywhere reminding us of dead people and we think their smiling faces on our walls help us cope, but truth is it's a trigger  that sets us back in life. We need to move on, and refresh our minds and slowly accept the new reality and look forward, for there are more deaths to come, and life needs to be lived before that.

I end this with one of the most profound learnings from Wendrick: enjoy every day.

Digressions on the Shadabti

Ever since I started on trains to far off places, I always enjoyed returning home to Madras. Even when I was in Vietnam, I returned home for every single break. I visited home more often than many of my friends who were living in India. However, I never understood when people talked about 'ahh! my mother's food' because I was not a fan of the food at my home growing up. After 3 years as a vegetarian in upcountry Vietnam, now I appreciate my mother's food in ways that I never imagined possible.

Every time I returned from a trip during college, I would be a changed person from when I last saw things and met people back home. It's like a barometer for me to gauge my thinking against the one constant in my life - Chennai, and rediscover it with fresh eyes each time.

For the last one year, I've been roasting coffee from a couple of permaculture farms and one other confused-in-between farm, under the name Vui Coffee. I roast in Chennai, and so every time I run out of coffee, I take the Shadabti to MAS (now named after MGR, and not Chennai Central anymore).

I don't enjoy sleeping on the train anymore. I used to not care about these things, but now a preference has emerged. Also, only retired people visiting their adult kids have 7 hours to spare during the day on a train, so I get tickets any time I want. I've been ferrying coffee up and down in suitcases, to roast in Chennai and bring back. The word-of-mouth route has resulted in sales growing at a snail's place so I can still lug coffee in a train, only a little more frequently. Talking of slugs there is a sudden abundance of them in the Mysore home this year. Leaves of plants have been eaten all over the place. I don't know what had caused the sudden jump in their numbers, but they move around like in some sci-fi movie.

Back to my sales, if any of you would like to try the coffee, or recommend it to a friend, the website is www.vuivui.in. It's nice to see a steady, albeit small group of customers value my values.

There are many like-minded people around, we just need to find each other, and not spend our lives in lonely battles. I remember going to remote places where life would reduce to food, water, shelter and company. Sometimes I wonder why we all live far away leading such busy lives (I include myself in all of this ranting, except the busy part), hardly ever meeting each other, spending our lives on Whatsapp. I say this even as I plan for a life in Coorg which is going to need 'Ekla Choro' on loop for some time.

Back to the Shadabti, for unknown reasons, they mistake the air-conditioner for a freezer, and routinely you'll see people dressed for Christmas in Kaza. I dislike the air-conditioning, but it's the only way to keep the dust out they say. Still, why so cold?

When I was young I used to spend long train rides sitting on the footboard by the door. Back then nobody said anything for this, and sitting on top of buses and so on. This time a security guard came and asked me to close the door because people are pelting stones from the darkness into the train, for no apparent reason. Once when I was in the early teens, me and a few kids stood outside our apartment situated in the corner of a T junction. When an auto turned the corner, we threw a punctured water packet (Re.1) right on the auto's windshield and ran. The auto guy was in shock and rage. He ran after us, and I was the laggard. He caught me by the collar and whacked me. By the time he paused my pants were wet, and I ran down in embarrassment. Still a tiny word spread that I didn't rat on the guy who actually threw the water-packet, and that's the only Goodfellas moment in my life.

Back to the train, the weather is great most of the year, and I love that the Indian railways somehow thought of putting a solitary seat by the door. The scenery from Chennai to Bangalore is filthy to begin with, and Mysore is not like this. It's early in the morning and it's a good time to relax - the hard part of waking up and reaching the train is over. I sit and look out and the scenery slowly improves, and mid-way to Bangalore, we are seeing rocky hills and shrub-forests. A sight that never gets old.

I used to see if I can spot a snake from the train. Recently I had the privilege of sharing a train ride with the amazing Kaali from Madras Crocodile Bank. When I recognised him I had a fanboy moment and I shook his hands, and he proudly turned to his wife. He turned back and told me that she doesn't believe him when he tells her that he's famous. I asked questions for the entire ride and he patiently explained everything about snakes that one could want to know. We stood by the door and he also appreciated the fresh air. A cop passed by and stared at him suspiciously while not giving me a glance. Kaali explained that this is normal for tribals, that I look a certain way which gives me immunity. When I was narrating a story about some tribals cutting sandalwood trees from a farm I knew, he said 'what will they do... they also have to live no?', and it was the first time someone had directly voiced the other perspective. Anyway, Kaali told me it's futile to look for snakes from a moving train, and since then I stopped looking so hard.

By the time the train leaves Bangalore, 30 minutes out as we cross the huge apartment complexes whose residential density and it's effects on the neighbourhood I cannot even imagine, we see the blessings of nature upon Karnataka. The greenery and water is rivetting. So many little streams and lakes everywhere. Sometimes I see peacocks, my aunt saw a mongoose family the other day. Ten days ago the Cauvery was in full flow, and it took that to get people to look up from their phones. It was especially appreciated by the service staff who do this route six days a week. It's a joy to reach Mysore.

I always enjoyed sitting in a moving train or bus and staring out. It filled my childhood with time to reflect and process everything in my head. A lot of ideas and strong thought-pathways were built this way. I feel the same way these days. I can sit there and meditate for hours, and sometimes listen to a little music.

This might change once I no longer have to go to Chennai to roast, but that is still some time away, and it's great to live in the moment and enjoy this phase of life.