I really like his music. I like his music for exactly why I like hip-hop. The music is not about how much the singer ‘wants his lover’, ‘needs his lover’ and ‘wanna be with her forever and ever’. His music is about the real issues facing his society and what it means to grow up and live in Africa. It’s all very authentic, genuine and original.

In one song he says that, when he was a small boy, his close cousin, a buddy that he grows up with, was left in the civil war because his mom did not have enough money to rescue him. And that it was such a tough choice for her that only she and K’Naan could flee the country leaving his cousin was left stranded in the civil war. This song did something to me. I truly truly feel for the people of Africa. The people and the land of Africa were and are being very cunningly exploited.

That’s when I thought we may not even know the real meaning of the word ‘privilege’. Of course we have our own versions of ‘tough life’ most having to do with poverty. To live in a war-ravaged country is something horrendous. It is a dreadful combination of violence, lack of freedom, poverty and above all hopelessness.

I’m very intrigued by the situation in Africa. Why most of the African countries are so poor? Why are there so many wars and violence? Being such a repository of resources, why should this continent be the biggest recipient of global support? Why, even in South Africa where the standards is living are relatively better, one person in every five is infected with AIDS?

I’ve seen this movie ‘Hotel Rwanda’ which is one of my favourite movies. I liked ‘Blood Diamond’ which gave me some more idea. I knew that these may only be the tip of the iceberg.

I want to read the history of Africa. I want to know how it all began. I’m very curious to know the root cause for their current state. I can pretty much guess that the established empires of the west could have exploited and finally left them in the lurch when it all became unmanageable.

I mean it. I’m going to learn more about Africa.

Though it’s been a popular title for years, I never cared to see what those 7 habits are. When I went to the store last time, I just picked it up with a ‘lemme look’ mindset. I quickly went to the contents page to see what those 7 habits are. Those were very generic things which didn’t impress me. But I thought 10 million people can’t be so wrong. So I started reading on one of the seven habits. Before I could finish reading that page, I’d decided that I’d buy that book. I generally don’t like these self-help or self-confidence or self-improvement kind of books. This one was very impressive though, so I bought it.

Typically, I didn’t even open the book for many weeks since then. Last week, I felt like reading a book and this book was right there. There was a lot of content before Covey started talking about the habits. But I went straightaway to the first habit – Be Proactive. As he rightly puts it, ‘proactive’ is a recently coined word. I’m not sure how many dictionaries have this entry. His theory around ‘being proactive’ is all about taking the action in response to our social, economic, professional, family environments. It was a great read.

He talks about a thing called ‘circle of concern’. What he wants us to put there is all the concerns, issues and problems that you might have. Then he talks about a ‘circle of influence’. This is a circle inside the ‘circle of concern’. In the ‘circle of influence’, out of all the concerns, issues and problems that we put in the earlier circle, put all those where you can take an action. It would like this – concentric circles where the inner circle would normally be smaller. Now, focusing on what you can do is being proactive. The more you’re proactive, the bigger the inner circle would get. So being proactive is all about being responsible for our own lives. Our responses to our environment are our decisions and choices. Our behaviour is a function of our decisions rather than our conditions.

Seen this one before?

God grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change;
Courage to change the things I can;
And wisdom to know the difference.

Have you seen this movie ‘Shawshank Redemption’? For the ones who have seen this great movie, the protagonist’s actions and decisions are all about this. The 20-year imprisonment is the condition or the environment. What he wants to do there or what he can do about it is all in his hands. It’s very practical way to approach life. I can have thousand things that bother me but everything must come down to what I can do about them. I can’t do anything, I should not waste my focus. This zen story also touches upon these circles.

One day while walking through the wilderness a man stumbled upon a vicious tiger. He ran but soon came to the edge of a high cliff. Desperate to save himself, he climbed down a vine and dangled over the fatal precipice. As he hung there, two mice appeared from a hole in the cliff and began gnawing on the vine. Suddenly, he noticed on the vine a plump wild strawberry. He plucked it and popped it in his mouth. It was incredibly delicious!

I may not have known these copyrighted concepts before but this has always been my way. I hate to complain. I hate to whine. That’s because if I can do something about it, I feel that I just have to do it. Otherwise, just understand that that’s the way the environment is. The world may never meet my expectations and it’s not supposed to. It’s a set of random things that keep evolving – human and otherwise. How I deal with the expectations of the world is all in the way I respond to my environment. I must say, it is so much fun doing that. It’s like a strategy game. You make your moves. You feel like you’re range of control keeps increasing as you get better at it.

How’s it for you? Is your circle of influence closer to your circle of concern or is it expanding?

We want to witness these things so we can get that original experience and probably tell stories. That’s what exactly I’m doing now. On the tsunami day, if you’re a Chennaiite, you must have been in Chennai. I would have been hugely disappointed to find myself miles away from the coast on that day. When such things happen there is a tendency to witness and experience these things. That’s the top-of-the-mind feeling. That’s more to do with the natural calamities because we haven’t still figured them out yet. They are huge, they are powerful, they are unstoppable, they’re mysterious, they prove that they’re bigger than you and your scientific achievements all put together.

Being undecided on whether to believe or not, I took my motorbike and rushed to the beach. The beach was just a mile from my home. The moment I came out of my home, I realised that it had to be true. There were so many people on the road in groups, talking about what they saw, why the tsunami has come, the end of the world and all that. It was awfully unusual to find so many people on the road. When you find so many people on the road, they must be walking or moving or they must be in a procession. These people were not walking or moving. They were simply standing on the roads and talking in groups. May be, they felt more comfortable in the company of fellow humans. Natural calamities do unite people.

As I got closer and closer to the beach, I could see that there was a huge mass of people facing the beach, watching the damage and the proceedings. I parked my bike somewhere. Nobody cares about ‘no parking zones’ in these times. Such times are when no one would bother much about law and order or discipline. Discipline is for orderliness among the humans. But the humanity was under threat. At least that’s what most of them thought. Many thought tsunamis were happening all over the world on that day. Many thought there would be more tsunamis on the same day. Many thought that that would be the end of the world. It was impossible to ignore that, as per Hindu cosmology, the end of the world had something to do with water.

I managed to find my way through the mass of onlookers to get a peep at my beloved beach. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I couldn’t see the beach at all. It was all filled with ocean water. The ocean had broken its boundaries and had truly entered the city. What I saw was ocean and after the ocean the main roads of the city. The ocean had come closer by more than half a mile. The beautiful sand beach was not to be seen at all. I could see the huge boats on the main road. They were washed away to that extent. The rescuers were still busy rescuing people and retrieving the dead bodies.

The marina beach had a crucial part in my life. Marina was never too far me. For about 25 years, we had stayed less than a kilometre distance from the beach. It’s hard find a Chennai boy not have played cricket in the beach. I too have played in the beach. Now I wonder how we managed to play there. There were so many teams, players, pitches and balls completely overlapping each other but still there was some method in the madness. May be it was the chaos that we liked and enjoyed. Me and my friends used to spend so much of our time in the beach also chatting, discussing, arguing and debating. During my college days and later, we used to be there almost every other evening with some or the other topic to talk about. It could range from mild-ragging one of our gang or to some serious social issues. I have some fantastic memories from the Marina beach.

I returned home dumbstruck and awestruck. That was one day when all the households were watching nothing but news channels. All those ‘I-told-you-so’ astrologers were having a field day. More doomsdays were predicted. Scientists had their say. Nostradamus was referred and every effort was made to interpret him in such a way he predicted this. I was in shock though I didn’t quite express it. It wasn’t just shock, it was some kind of unexplainable fear. There was some pain too. It was very painful to see the beach like that. It was like seeing the rubble of your house where you lived for decades. We didn’t know the beach would be back to its beauty. We didn’t know when we would be able to visit the beach again. We didn’t know if the fear of tsunami would play a part in our relationship with the beach going forward. For many days the beach was completely deserted, partly due to the police restrictions and mostly due to the fear of more tsunamis.

My father tells me that when there was a attack threat on Madras during the second world war, many landlords sold their property for throwaway prices and fled from the city. Similarly, tsunami brought the real estate prices down in the coastal regions. When there is a threat on life, money becomes a non-issue. Life is uncertain. But we go on living as if we’re very certain about our lives. We keep saying life is uncertain but don’t actually live our lives like we mean it. We realise soon enough that life being uncertain is the most certain thing.

I told you that I don’t get dreams or nightmares. But the few days since the tsunami, I got so many nightmares. The one I still vividly remember is this. I’m in the terrace of my friend’s two-storey house. The road in which this house is, is very broad and is perpendicular to the beach. From the terrace, you could see the beach and the ocean very easily. While I’m standing there road-watching, I suddenly see people running haywire on the road. There is suddenly chaos and terror. And the next thing I see is that of huge wave of water entering that road. The water level is so high that standing in the terrace I could reach out to touch the water. That image of ocean gushing towards us in that broad road submerging all the houses was the most horrific nightmare I’ve ever had. It chills my spine when I write this now!

This is a fake picture but this the closest we’d get to see a true tsunami scene. Imagine being able to see such massive waves gushing towards you and you’re watching it from the beach! Nowhere to run. Surrender and accept the truth.

If we claim that we learn from experiences, events and incidents such as these must have also taught us something. That tsunami was a clear reminder to humanity. A reminder that there is very little under our control. A reminder of how uncertain life is. There are many such reminders. They have and will come in the form of tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, fires, typhoons or even with those little things we can’t control. Let’s be aware, be reminded.

Do you know what gives you happiness? I hope you do. Otherwise, think about it today. To talk about what gives us happiness, let’s first talk about needs and wants. We all have needs and wants. Needs are what I would call as essentials for my basic existence and social status. Money is a need. Job is a need. A house or a car can also be a need. Satisfying the needs may not really give us true happiness. Needs follow Maslow’s theory of hierarchy. Once you satisfy yourself of a need, the other need is created or you create it. Needs are not wants. Wants are the expectations and desires that you as a person have for yourself. Unless you know what you want, you can never be happy.

The richest man is not the happiest man. The strongest man is not the happiest man. The most handsome man is not the happiest man. The most powerful man is not the happiest man. Even if one man happens to be the richest, the strongest, the most handsome and the most powerful, he may still not be the happiest man. Being rich, strong, handsome and powerful are all needs, temporary needs. These are needs that one may not realise as temporary needs when he has not achieved them.

Needs are those that you want ‘for your life’. Wants are those that you want ‘from your life’. Now that we have separated needs and wants, what are your wants? As we realise, needs never end. They only grow. While they are growing, think of your wants as well. What do you want from your life? How do you want to lead your life? Now compare the answers for this question with the list of needs that you have. You’ll realise that it is highly possible to satisfy your wants without satisfying your needs. Bed is a need and sleep is a want. If you keep upgrading beds without sleeping enough or realising that sleep is what you want more than the bed, it would be a sad life. For the society, you could be a grand success for only you know that you’ve wasted your life.

It’s quite important to know if we are driven by wants or needs. Needs are meant to be supporting your wants. Your wants are the purpose of your life. Your needs are supposed to help you further. Your needs don’t exist by themselves. They are there because you have certain wants. While the needs support the wants, they have no reason to exist if you have no wants. In reality, there could be people who have not identified their wants. But they would have identified their needs otherwise the society would help them identify. It is fully possible for someone to spend all their lives running behind the needs and dying without even thinking about what they actually want.

In the normal course of life, we are prepared only to handle our needs. Our education and our careers are all about handling needs. So it’s quite possible to get into this quick sand of needs and believe that’s all life is all about. Needs have no purpose by themselves. Getting rich, attaining power and reaching targets are all supposed to give you something. That’s what one must be aware of.

People who don’t identify their wants will never be happy. Because, having achieved all the needs, they would still experience that emptiness which they can’t explain. That happens when you don’t know what you want from your life. Now think of those things that make you really happy, things that give you sense of satisfaction. Exclude gratifications which are different from happiness. Gratifications arise as you fulfil a need or a desire. Think of only those things that you want from life, only those things you want others to give and you want to give to others. Once you know your wants, and once you realise that they are the very driving force of your life, needs may not even matter, let alone being very important.

For all of us, the want is to be happy. That’s for each one of us. We tend to believe that happiness comes in being more rich, more powerful and all that but the reality is happiness comes in being happy. It’s as simple as that. I want to live my life happily and spread this happiness to as many people as possible. That’s my want. My happiness comes in being happy. And I realise that unhappiness disappears when you create happiness for others. I think life is simple unless you’re bored with it and try complicating it.

That’s my philosophy in a nutshell, or in a blog entry, to be exact. This philosophy of mine is something I have concluded and realised based on understanding and experience of life. Don’t go on to try proving them wrong. Because I’m not open for logic

Here are couple of very simple, uncomplicated truths.

This is the story of an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years. One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbours came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “May be,” the farmer replied. The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbours exclaimed. “May be,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbours again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “May be,” answered the farmer. The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbours congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “May be,” said the farmer.

Great story. The old man never wants to call those as events of good fortune or misfortune. Why classify them into this or that? He does not reject them. He accepts them, but without a preference. For all those things that happen to the old man, it is his neighbours who are happy or unhappy. He doesn’t care how they feel and in fact he only has a ‘may be’ feeling.

After winning several archery contests, the young and rather boastful champion challenged a Zen master who was renowned for his skill as an archer. The young man demonstrated remarkable technical proficiency when he hit a distant bull’s eye on his first try, and then split that arrow with his second shot. “There,” he said to the old man, “see if you can match that!”

Undisturbed, the master did not draw his bow, but rather motioned for the young archer to follow him up the mountain. Curious about the old fellow’s intentions, the champion followed him high into the mountain until they reached a deep chasm spanned by a rather flimsy and shaky log. Calmly stepping out onto the middle of the unsteady and certainly perilous bridge, the old master picked a far away tree as a target, drew his bow, and fired a clean, direct hit. “Now it is your turn,” he said as he gracefully stepped back onto the safe ground.

Staring with terror into the seemingly bottomless and beckoning abyss, the young man could not force himself to step out onto the log, no less shoot at a target. “You have much skill with your bow,” the master said, sensing his challenger’s predicament, “but you have little skill with the mind that lets loose the shot.”

Oh how I love this one! How true the master’s words are. ‘Skill with the mind’. In normal circumstances, archery was a matter of routine for the champion. It was a matter or practice and routine that it became a reflexive skill. A matter of dexterity and hand-eye co-ordination. When he was put in unfamiliar grounds, he had to control his mind, its fear and its doubts, but he could not even concentrate. Thus, he had less skill with his mind though he had much skill with the bow.

Come up with your views and comments.

It didn’t take me too much time to realise that I can’t sleep in utter silence. Some of us are not used to silence. I was not. I’ve grown up in noisy neighbourhoods. Even at home, you always hear a voice. Silence is not really experienced. Silence is like truth. Too much of it is really uncomfortable. I realised that I needed some noise around me to sleep peacefully. Quite an irony but that was the case. So, I switched on the television and left it on a music channel at reasonable volume for a midnight. I think I was then asleep in about 10 minutes.

Even at home, we’ve got air conditioners in every living space but the fans are a must in the nights. The fans are supposed to run all day and night while air conditioners will be on and off. I’m writing this today because something happened yesterday too. I was putting my daughter to sleep in the night. My wife was busy with some work in the kitchen. While my daughter was falling asleep, I was suddenly thinking ‘why am I feeling like I’m a hotel room?’. The air-conditioner was running and the fan was off. That was it. So it was not so much about the ceiling fan. It’s about the sound of it. The fact that the fan does not leave me alone. It gives my mind some company with its noise.

Going back to the point about utter silence, how often have we got to experience utter silence? There is always some noise or sound or music that always surrounds us wherever we are. Those to some extent keep the mind busy. It helps the mind not to think anything in depth. While we are thinking about what to do in office today, we also hear the blaring horns of the truck, the radio music from the tea shop, the noise that children make etc. As we hear and register them, subconsciously we they keep our mind busy. Think for a moment that there is absolute silence around you. Or you have the remote for this whole world and you hit the mute button. In silence, 24 hours will be like 48 hours. I can’t explain you but I’m sure you can feel it. In silence, you tend to think a lot and then stop thinking altogether. It is the stage where we think a lot that we would normally find it difficult to cross.

Silence can be of many types – silence of the external world, your own outer silence and your inner silence. Contrary to public perception, these are not really mutually exclusive. Some minds can achieve inner silence even while the whole world is being bombed. For the untrained minds, it has to be a gradual process. That’s why you’re told to find a calm place (silence of the external world), and then sit quietly in a posture (your outer silence), and let your mind wander and finally stop thinking (your inner silence).

Since the world does not have a remote control, the idea of muting the world is purely imaginary. Believe me, you can mute the world as well. Because it is your ear that hears all the noise. If you choose not to hear, you don’t hear anything and you’d have muted the world. Forget muting the world, the idea of muting yourself is certainly possible. In Hinduism we have this ‘mouna vratham’ which is a ritual of silence. The less we speak the more we understand the importance of silence and also that of words. We don’t have go looking for moments of silence. But when they present themselves, we don’t have to run away from them, like I did in those abroad nights or yesterday night.

Our problem may be very simple in life; we find that we must keep doing, thinking, going, listening, running, talking or else what shall we be? We love to be filled with noise, images, words, thoughts, memories, fantasies, sensations, people, pleasures and good feelings. When these things are not, we feel bored, alone, scared and quite possibly angry and confused. The brain needs input almost continuously.

Isn’t it the case? We need to keep the mind filled with nonsense. If we don’t, the mind will go looking for the truth. And we don’t want that, do we?

This is our solar system. See how earth compares in size with other planets and Sun. Earth is a tiny dot already now. You can see how much unknown is there.

And now, this image compares Sun with the Canis Majoris, the largest known star. We just saw above that Earth is a just a pixel in comparison to Sun. In the below picture see how our Sun is reduced to dot when compared to Canis Majoris. When you see these pictures, don’t just look at the pictures. Just close your eyes and visualise and try to travel to space to see how they look. Unbelievable, isn’t it?

Check out this website. There are no texts to read. Just a slideshow of images. It starts with the comparison on Earth and moon and shows who’s the boss there. And then slowly it keeps adding planets to the same image so we can compare the sizes. Then slowly, we start adding stars from outside milkyway as well and finally end it with the comparison with the largest star known so far. Check it for yourselves.

Now tell me, do you think there would be life outside of earth? So this nicely leads us to the new feature in this blog

Friend: So what’s your Zen saying?
Me: What?

Friend: Zen. You follow Zen, right?
Me: Yeah, I think I do, as much as possible.

Friend: But what does that say?
Me: What do you mean what does that say?

Friend: A religion must say something right?
Me: Okay I get it. For starters, Zen is not a religion.

Friend: What is it then?
Me: It is a way of life. A philosophy. But tell me something.
Friend: What?

Me: You’re a hindu right?
Friend: Yeah, you know that. I’m a religious person.

Me: What does Hinduism say?
Friend: What do you mean what does it say?

Me: As in, a religion must say something right?
Friend: Well, I’m sure it does say something but . . .

Me: You don’t know?
Friend: Hinduism is a great religion and the oldest too. There are these vedas, epics and puranas.

Me: That’s all right but I was just trying to know how much you know what your religion says.
Friend: I may not know enough but it’s a great religion.

Me: How did you end up following Hinduism?
Friend: What kind of question is this? I’m a born Hindu. Mine is a Hindu family.

Me: So you’ve inherited your religion. You haven’t chosen your religion as such.
Friend: I think that’s very normal.

Me: To inherit is normal. To continue with that or know more about that is your own choice.
Friend: Whether I know or not, I do follow. That’s called faith.

Me: How come you say that you follow a religion and you don’t know what it says.
Friend: What’s the big deal?

Me: Religion is all about beliefs right? You don’t know what it says but you have the belief. You believe something that you don’t know?
Friend: Hey hey, hold on. We do a lot of things that we may not fully understand.

Me: Is that a comforting thing? I’d say it’s even worse to say that there many such things.
Friend: But that’s the way it is.

Me: Do you know what’s the difference among Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, Judaism and Jainism?
Friend: No, I don’t. Why do I have to know about all those religions. I’m a Hindu and I’m fine with that.

Me: What’s not fine is that you don’t know what Hinduism says. It’s ok if you don’t know about the religions that you don’t follow. But Hinduism?
Friend: As I said, it’s not natural for us. Honestly we don’t want to spent too much time on that.

Me: Don’t you think religions have become like political parties. You know that they’re supposed to have different ideologies. You know they are different. You don’t what exactly their policies are. In reality, all that you see is they behave differently. But you still vote.
Friend: There’s a reason why we are where we are . . (smiles)

Me: Today, religion is all in practice and behaviour and hardly anyone cares about the theory.
Friend: Okay. Now what are you trying to achieve?
Me: We’ve got the signal. Let’s go. You think we’ll be late?

I don’t use bookmarks too. For my method of reading, bookmarks don’t help, striking out might. If I happen to read a part that I have read before, I must be reminded. If I don’t realise that I’ve read that before and it’s interesting, it’s worth reading again. So, no bookmarks.

I never have this habit of reading from chapter one. I don’t know why. I don’t read fiction or biographies, where this may not make sense. Any book where the sequence is very important, this may not work. Luckily, for the kind of books I read, this is an allright habit. Even with the chapters I read, my interest should be sustained by book. I never read all paragraphs painfully because I have to complete reading a chapter. Not all books maintain the tempo and interest throughout the book. That does not really impact me because I don’t mind reading from anywhere. Also, I don’t finish reading books.

In every book, there is an essence right? I try to get that soon enough. You may call it synoptical reading or something like that. As soon as I get that theme and essence, I might even suspend reading the book. The writer of the book had an idea, theme or an essence based on which he has written a book. If I well and truly think I understand that heart and soul of the book, I mentally try to write that book, not all 500 pages. Just try to imagine what I would capture in a book, if I were to write based on that idea or theme, you know what I mean?

It’s all about what you want from reading a book. What’s your objective when you pick up a book? To complete reading a book or reading the book. There is a big difference between wanting to complete reading a book and reading the book. I’m never under this artificial self-created pressure of ‘ah! 200 pages more’ or ‘7th chapter is more interesting but sadly i’m only in the 2nd chapter now’. I never feel that I have to finish reading a book. Sometimes, I even think that I don’t have to read the whole book.

If you ask when will I be done reading the book that you just lent me, my answer would be ‘i don’t know’. I don’t allot daily reading time or anything like that. As you figured out I don’t have a rhythm when it comes to reading. You can call it a purely customised method of sporadic reading, slow reading, comprehensive reading and a bit of skimming. There are books that you can read very quickly. There are books that cannot be skimmed. There could be books with very good views, ideas and thoughts but unnecessarily prolonged to double the size upon the publisher’s request. And there are books where you read a couple of lines and you simply can’t proceed unless you spend time to think about those lines and completely understand the author.

My unrhythmic method of reading gives me the flexibility to read any type of books to my satisfaction. So you must have deduced that I could read many books simultaneously as well. I feel very comfortable with this method. Come to think of it, this is the way I used to read for my chartered accountancy too. Of course, ‘reading’ was one of the components of ’study’, which included few other things like classroom sessions, test papers, examinations, training sessions etc.

There is a quote ‘you read to know that you’re not alone’. Very true for this topic. Read this piece on what American thinker/writer Mortimer Adler says about reading a book:

Adler sets forth his method for reading a wholly or primarily non-fiction book in order to gain understanding. He claims that three distinct approaches, or readings, must all be made in order to get the most possible out of a book, but that performing these three readings does not necessarily mean reading the book three times, as the experienced reader will be able to do all three in the course of reading the book just once. Adler names the readings, “structural”, “interpretative”, and “syntopical”, in that order.

The first reading is concerned with understanding the structure and purpose of the book. It begins with determining the basic topic and type of the book being read, so as to better anticipate the contents and comprehend the book from the very beginning. Adler says that the reader must distinguish between practical and theoretical books, as well as determining the field of study that the book addresses. Further, Adler says that the reader must note any divisions in the book, and that these are not restricted to the divisions laid out in the table of contents. Lastly, the reader must find out what problems the author is trying to solve.

The second reading involves constructing the author’s arguments. This first requires the reader to note and understand any special phrases and terms that the author uses. Once that is done, Adler says that the reader should find and work to understand each proposition that the author advances, as well as the author’s support for those propositions.

In the third and final reading, Adler directs the reader to criticize the book. He claims that now that the reader understands the author’s propositions and arguments, the reader has been elevated to the level of understanding of the book’s author, and is now able (and obligated) to judge the book’s merit and accuracy. Adler advocates judging books based on the soundness of their arguments. Adler says that one may not disagree with an argument unless one can find fault in its reasoning, facts, or premises, though one is free to dislike it in any case.

So how do you read? What are your habits? Tell us about your methods and styles of reading and types of books you read and how your methods and styles helps you to read your types of books.

A baby is the purest form of mankind. Unadulterated. Then the baby gets loaded with all morals, values, ideas, rituals, formalities, knowledge etc and then it grows to become a man that can fit into this society. The world that we live in, be it Chennai or London or Newyork is like this grown man. The places like Himalayas are the babies which are as pure as they arrived, devoid of any human developments or distortions. That’s what attracts me to that place. To see how life can be lived in places where you have no phone, no internet, no electricity, no pizza huts, no malls, no shops, no cinema, no banks. All that’s left there is nature and some forms of lives. I can bet that it could be an unbelievable and unforgettable experience. I don’t think there can be a more humbling experience than this one where you look like a sand in a beach. Imagine if you were one of the people in the below photograph. You’ll be an ignorable dot in the massive himalayas.

The biggest challenge is to travel into that unknown. We can have our expectations based on the stories but the actual experience could be quite different from person to person. What one needs to be aware is that this expedition involved risk. The temparature could be in the negatives, water could be frozen, you need to eat what you get, no one might understand your language, your fatigue can end your trip or can even end your life.

I want to go there. I cannot force my folks at home to join me. I don’t think it’s wise. This whole expedition demands a lot of physical exertion. Step one to be able to do this is to persuade my wife and my parents that I’m going. The expedition is for about 15 days which includes the travel from Chennai to Delhi to mountain base at Dehradun and back. So that means going offline with your family, friends, colleagues, office and business for about 15 days. So persuasion for acceptance should happen first.

Now, the most important question. Who would take me there? I don’t know anything about himalayas and trekking there. I don’t even know where to start. All that I have is the desire and will to go. There are lots of agencies that organise himalayan expeditions and take people as groups. One such group is Youth Hostel Association of India (YHAI). They do it as a service and charge a minimal fee for a trip of this significance. Money wouldn’t be too much of a concern. The total cost involved is not beyond Rs.10,000 and most of it is spent on train tickets to reach Delhi and charges to reach the base. The organisers take about Rs.3,000 for arranging, organising and conducting the expedition. Anyway, there is little worth for money as you climb up so all that you spend would be when you’re at Dehradun and not beyond.

It would be real adventure. I’ve spoken to people who’ve personally experienced it. As with any adventure, there are risks. When you’re trying to reach a height of more than 12,000 feet from the sea level, you can’t do it like walking the dog. You need to climb, trek, cross rivers, pass through bridges, walk through streams, get past snow capped hills, dense forests and withstand very gutsy cold winds. The expedition that starts with a 30-member group might end with a 20-member group at the highest point because many people to give up in the middle and prefer to make a return. The group would be accompanied by a good number Sherpas, the local community who are experts in climbing and trekking. They are practically our life guards who can help, guide, support or even carry us if required. Generally, the ratio of Sherpas to participants would be 1:4 which spells safety.

To desire to climb the himalayas is not sudden. I have always wanted to do it since my college days. May be I wasn’t strong willed enough back then to really give it a go. That’s why I say I now have not just the desire but also the will. Does this mean I’ll pack my bags next week? Not really. I may not even do it this year. Certain things will have to fall in line – home, office etc. But I would certainly do this once in my life. My wish is to go before I get so old that my body becomes a burden for me to be able to do this to my satisfaction.

I’m sure I’ll be there one day. I’ll be here to tell the tale as well.

There was once a stone cutter who was dissatisfied with himself and with his position in life.

One day he passed a wealthy merchant’s house. Through the open gateway, he saw many fine possessions and important visitors. “How powerful that merchant must be!” thought the stone cutter. He became very envious and wished that he could be like the merchant.

To his great surprise, he suddenly became the merchant, enjoying more luxuries and power than he had ever imagined, but envied and detested by those less wealthy than himself. Soon a high official passed by, carried in a sedan chair, accompanied by attendants and escorted by soldiers beating gongs. Everyone, no matter how wealthy, had to bow low before the procession. “How powerful that official is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be a high official!”

Then he became the high official, carried everywhere in his embroidered sedan chair, feared and hated by the people all around. It was a hot summer day, so the official felt very uncomfortable in the sticky sedan chair. He looked up at the sun. It shone proudly in the sky, unaffected by his presence. “How powerful the sun is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be the sun!”

Then he became the sun, shining fiercely down on everyone, scorching the fields, cursed by the farmers and laborers. But a huge black cloud moved between him and the earth, so that his light could no longer shine on everything below. “How powerful that storm cloud is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be a cloud!”

Then he became the cloud, flooding the fields and villages, shouted at by everyone. But soon he found that he was being pushed away by some great force, and realized that it was the wind. “How powerful it is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be the wind!”

Then he became the wind, blowing tiles off the roofs of houses, uprooting trees, feared and hated by all below him. But after a while, he ran up against something that would not move, no matter how forcefully he blew against it – a huge, towering rock. “How powerful that rock is!” he thought. “I wish that I could be a rock!”

Then he became the rock, more powerful than anything else on earth. But as he stood there, he heard the sound of a hammer pounding a chisel into the hard surface, and felt himself being changed. “What could be more powerful than I, the rock?” he thought.

He looked down and saw far below him the figure of a stone cutter.

What a lovely story! This has got to be one of the best. There’s always someone better or there’s always someone worse. The more you want the less you get, at least in your mind.

Critical thinking is the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skilfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness.

I might have taken you back to your school and college years with that kind of definition. But that’s the most comprehensive way to define critical thinking. Basically what it means is, improving one’s own thinking knowing with the awareness of the common pitfalls, and also continuously improve one’s own thinking . Apparently, good critical thinkers can be very good problem solvers.

Thinking is often casual or routine, whereas critical thinking deliberately evaluates the quality of thinking. The ability to think critically involves three things:

* Using logic, reason and the scientific method over abstract theories and emotional judgements.
* Awareness of heuristics (shortcuts) and biases (errors) that influence human thinking.
* Using these abilities systematically on everything in your life. From that, using the results to make improvements.

It is natural for humans, once an idea is formed, to look for supporting instead of conflicting evidence. The first goal of a rational thinker is that, once a theory is formed, evidence that conflicts with this theory is sought. Searching to be proven wrong, rather than vindicated, is a cornerstone of critical thinking.

Everyone thinks; it is our nature to do so. But much of our thinking, left to itself, is biased, distorted, partial, uninformed or down-right prejudiced. Yet the quality of our life and that of what we produce, make, or build depends precisely on the quality of our thought. Shoddy thinking is costly, both in money and in quality of life. Excellence in thought, however, must be systematically cultivated.

That’s a fantastic paragraph. We might not want to admit this – we are biased, prejudiced, partial and uninformed. But we still think and make decisions. May be due to the fact that our thoughts and subsequently our decisions can be faulty, we do get into problems. The quality of our decisions determine what kind of life we lead. There is a reason your office life or personal life is going in a certain way. Most of it is controllable by you provided your thoughts and decisions are good enough. It’s up to you to be aware of the known hurdles for thinking such as bias, distortion, partiality, lack of information or prejudice and ensuring that they don’t bring down the quality of your thoughts. There is a reason why it is said that ‘critical thinking is a way of taking up problems of life’.

Critical thinking is also defined as the art of taking charge of your own mind. Its value is also at root simple: if we can take charge of our own minds, we can take charge of our lives; we can improve them, bringing them under our self command and direction. Of course, this requires that we learn self-discipline and the art of self-examination. This involves becoming interested in how our minds work, how we can monitor, fine tune, and modify their operations for the better. It involves getting into the habit of reflectively examining our impulsive and accustomed ways of thinking and acting in every dimension of our lives.

Errors and mistakes can happen anywhere and everywhere. So they can happen in thoughts and thought processes as well. If the whole thought process is faulty, there is no way it’s gonna give you a good decision at the end of the process. The thing with the errors and mistakes with our thought process is, not many would come to know about the mistake. The result of the mistake in the thought process could be bad decisions, strained relationships, bad image and stuff like that. Those are things that we may not want to admit that those could be a result of our poor thinking. The thinker, which is you or me, would most probably come to know of the mistake. We have the options of believing that we are masters of the universe and not going back to analyse where exactly we went wrong and put the blame on something else or to analyse and identify why we could not come up with a good solution.

Critical thinking is the art of analyzing and evaluating thinking with a view to improving it. Much like professional athletes or musicians must practice to master their sport or art, so must thinkers practice to master their minds.

Come to think of it, I think I’ve always practised ‘critical thinking’ (though I might be a novice at that) without actually knowing that such a recognised concept exists. Many a times my thoughts and decisions have gone wrong. Over a period of years, I’ve learnt to think better. I’ve learnt to decide better. Though thinking is natural, critical thinking is not natural. Biased thinking and prejudiced thinking are very natural. I don’t know how good a critical thinker I am but I’m happy that I have been able to recognise critical thinking and also distinguish normal thinking and critical thinking. I’m sure one can become a better thinker with the practice of critical thinking.

This is an open question. What kind of thinker are you – impulsive, casual or critical? Has your thinking improved over time? Over time, you would have obtained better sources of information and more experience but let’s not mistake them for improved thinking. Unless we have made a conscious attempt to improve our thinking, it would most probably be the same style of thinking loaded with more information and exeprience. Hence my question. This is an instrospective question. You can ask yourself without burdening yourself with the thought of having to admit it to others. Is our thinking casual or critical? I know this is quite a heavy subject but how often do we get to ‘think about thinking’?

Lao Tzu became very famous, a wise man, and he was without doubt one of the wisest man ever. The emperor of China asked him very humbly to become the chief justice of the supreme court, because nobody could guide the country’s laws better than he could. He tried to persuade the emperor, “I’m not the right man”, but the emperor was insistent.

Lao Tzu said, “If you don’t listen to me . . . just one day in the court and you will be convinced that I’m not the right man, because the system is wrong. Out of humbleness I was not saying the truth to you. Either I can exist or your law and your order and your society can exist. So . . . let us try it.”

The first day a thief who had stolen almost half of the treasures of the richest man in the capital was brought into the court. Lao Tzu listened to the case and then he said that the thief and the richest man should both go to jail for six months. The rich man said, “What are you saying? I have been stolen from, I have been robbed – what kind of justice is this, that you sending me to jail for the same amount of time as the thief?”

Lao Tzu said, “I am certainly being unfair to the thief. Your need to be in jail is greater because you have collected so much money to yourself, deprived so many people of money . . . thousands of people are downtrodden and you are collecting and collecting money. For what? Your very greed is creating the thieves. You are responsible. The first crime is yours.”

Lao Tzu’s logic is absolutely clear. If there are going to be too many people and only a few rich people, you cannot stop thieves, you cannot stop stealing. The only way to stop is to have a society where everybody has enough to fulfil his needs, and nobody has unnecessary accumulation just out of greed.

The rich man said, “Before you send me to jail I want to see the emperor, because this is not according to the constitution;this is not according to the laws of the country.” Lao Tzu said, “This is the fault of the constitution and the fault of the law of the country. I am not responsible for it. Go and see the emperor.”

The rich man said to the emperor, “Listen, this man should be immediately deposed from his post; he is dangerous. Today I am going to jail, tomorrow you will be in jail. If you want to save yourself, this man has to be thrown out; he is absolutely dangerous. And he is very rational. What he is saying is right; I can understand it – but he will destroy us!”

The emperor understood it perfectly well. “If this rich man is a criminal, then I am the greatest criminal in the country. Lao Tzu will not hesitate to send me to jail.” Lao Tzu was relieved of his post. He said, “I tried to tell you before; you are unnecessarily wasting my time. I told you I am not the right man. The reality is your society, your law, and your constitution are not right. You need wrong people to run the whole wrong system.”

Your comments please!

Sun signs were not invented by Linda Goodman. And sun signs are not a thing of Western Astrology. Sun signs and moon signs are described very well in the ancient hindu astrology. There, sun sign denotes the body and moon sign denotes the mind. Sun signs talk about personalities and how someone is seen by the others. Moon signs talk about what emotional side of the person. Therefore, sun sign alone may not be sufficient to judge a person. You need to combine the qualities of the sun sign and the moon sign for a decent package. But sun signs, moon signs, ‘your day today’ and ’signs this week’ are not astrology. They are pieces of astrology which may not make full sense when used in isolation. By now you’d have understood that I believe in astrology. That makes me a bit old-fashioned, isn’t it? Sadly enough, I can’t even prove to you how it works. I cannot convince you.

Some people don’t believe astrology. That’s because they don’t ‘believe’. I believe in ancient hindu astrology. When you believe in astrology you’re either old-fashioned or superstitious or lacking self-confidence. Those are perceptions that are hard to erase. When I say I believe, let me clarify that I’ve never consulted astrology or sought any help from an astrologer or sought to know my future. Now you may ask, is it possible to predict the future? The way I see it, astrology is a science. It has its own methods, formulae and theories. It can predict the future and those predictions can go wrong, just like it happens with any science. Astrological predictions are like those by-pass heart surgeries. There are proofs of concept that it works. But it depends a lot on who performs it and various other circumstances. Just because a by-pass surgery fails we should not be doubting medical science.

Astrologers are like bloggers. To be an astrologer, you don’t need a degree or a certificate. So anyone can be an astrologers. Most of the amateur astrologers give astrology a bad name. Because of them, astrology has even become a joke. Reminds me of the local meteorological office. When they say it will rain, it will be sunny like sun has come closer by a million miles. That’s a local joke because they get it wrong most of the times. That’s why people don’t really take bloggers or astrologers or meteorologists any seriously.

The fake astrologers are like magicians. They show you what you want to see.

Astrologer: You must be a very hard worker. You’ll give anything and everything for your work. Right?
Astronut: Absolutely. You’re right!
Astrologer: You hate lies. You hate being lied to.
Astronut: You got it. My blood boils when I’m lied to!!
Astrologer: You’re a very creative person. You get upset when you’re ideas are not considered.
Astronut: Spot on. Looks like you know me better than I do!!!
(By this time, it is clear that the astronut is willing to get laid. Now comes the business end of the discussions which wins the bread)
Astrologer: You have some loans and that worries you.
Astronut: Yes, it drives me crazy. That’s why I’m here.
Astrologer: Okay now, what you need to do is . . .

Whatever he prescribes, if it works, the astrologer becomes a legend otherwise he can blame it on anything including the fact that the ‘astronut’ had his kitchen facing north and his gas stove facing west.

Let’s be clear. Unreliable astrologers should not mean astrology is unreliable. Astrology has stood thousands of years. I think the basis of astrology could be statistics. Suppose you survey a group of 1000 people wearing blue shirts and 800 of them are very positive-minded. Suppose you survey another group of 1000 people wearing white shirts of which 900 are very pessimistic and skeptical. Your survey conclusion would be that wearing blue shirts generates positivity and creates vibrancy whereas wearing the white shirt makes you negative. When you’re wearing a particular shirt, if 9 out of 10 times, your day has been fantastic, you’d ‘believe’ that it’s your lucky shirt and would wear for the right occasions. It’s all probability based on track record or past data.

Now take a bunch of 1000 pisceans and study they personality and behaviour. I’m sure you’re going to find lots of similarities. That’s because, before someone for the first time wrote that Pisceans are unexciting sober introverts that you should avoid, the survey and study must have happened. That is, thousands of years back, before the earliest scriptures of hindu astrology was written. My take is, it is a pattern. I need not be the introvert of highest degree because I’m a piscean but most pisceans could be. That’s statistics. That’s trend analysis and study of patterns. While this is understandable, you can still ask why should all pisceans be so boring? Why Sun in Pisces makes someone an introvert? That’s a bigger question. That’s where the fundamental belief of ‘planets do influence lives’ comes in. It’s like saying, ‘I know blue shirt is your lucky shirt but why?’.

Astrology is not just sun signs and moon signs. It is much deeper. Astrology is also based on mathematics and astronomy. Do not ask me how astrology works? I don’t have an answer. I’m sure this is not the only question for which you and I don’t have an answer. I certainly believe that astrology works because I believe planets can influence the people’s lives. There are so many things that we don’t understand. We call them luck, fortune, God, unknown, unknowable etc. Wait for a few years for a NASA group of researchers to come up with a paper to say that planets of the universe can influence people’s lives. Some might even win a nobel prize for that.

Now, go ahead. Knock me down!

This travel I refer to, happened about 10 years back. Me and my cousin boarded a train with an idea of going to our hometown. Few minutes into the travel, strangely, we agreed that we drop the idea of getting down at the destination. We thought we will just get down in the last station and catch the train back home. Or basically, we were ready to get down anywhere and go anywhere. Go anywhere but return home by evening. I must tell you, it was so much fun. We felt so free.

I’m sure many won’t do that and even if they do that they won’t really feel proud talking about it. Imagine yourself travelling just like that. You gotta update someone on your travel right? You need to explain to someone what you gained out of the travel. You need to convince others why you did something that you wanted to do. Isn’t it?

I know some people say that they want to be like birds. Being able to fly anywhere, to feel free with no hurdles or hindrances whatsoever. In fact, a flying bird is a symbol of freedom. We may not be as free as the bird but you know what, we are more free than we might think. Birds go wherever they want to. Same applies to you and me. We are as free as we think we are. I know, we have certain roles and responsibilities that restrict our freedom but we tend exaggerate this. The truth is we need a reason, a tangible reason, for everything that we do. If you board a train, you need to go somewhere and to do something. We need a real, visible output at the end of any process. May be that’s because all these things are seen as a process. Also because, you are being watched. By everyone around you. You need to explain things that you do.

I want to be able to do things that need not give anything to me tangible. I may not want to get any financial, social or reputational benefit out of everything I do. Do things that give me peace, calm and joy. Most probably these things won’t be very popular. They will attract remarks like “are you crazy?”. I’m an xbox console addict. When I play on xbox, that does not help anyone but me. I don’t hone any ‘useful’ skill, I don’t improve my knowledge, I don’t ‘gain’ anything. But that’s my time. I don’t care if that helps me or not. I don’t care even if people say I’m wasting my time on it. That’s my private time. Try applying this to travel, you’ll feel as free as a bird.

In fact, for everything that we do, including blogging, we have an audience in mind. Being at office, being at home, being with friends, we play to the audience all the time. Aren’t you tired of playing to the gallery? How about doing things that are just for ourselves? That don’t have to necessarily enhance your health, finance and all that stuff. Just doing things for the heck of it, because you love it and you want it. For all that I talk about destination-less travel, I never did it more than once. But the one time I did ‘travel to nowhere’, I realised the joy of it. That joy need not always come from such travels. Just have to do things with the sense of absolute freedom with a sense of I, me, myself.

I know it’s cool to say I’m ambitious. It’s inspiring to say ‘20 years back I had a dream and here I’m today’ or ‘my relentless efforts driven by my ambition made me achieve this’. I don’t know people who claim to be ambitious are really ambitious or just claim so because that’s a nice thing to say in our society. As far as I’m concerned, I have no ambition. I don’t know what and where I want to be after 10 years. While I don’t dream about the end result, I certainly enjoy the process. I don’t need the carrot of ambition.

Every want or desire is not the ambition. It is the ultimate state, the superior motive. The ambition is an uncertainty. What is certain is the process that we are on now which might lead to the destination, whether desired by you or not. I simply don’t understand the concept of having an ambition and working towards that. I see that’s a reverse appraoch. What’s natural is to do best with what you have and you’ll get what you deserve. I know I won’t come across as the most optimistic guy with this kind of thoughts.

Ambition is like religion. Some people badly need religion. Some people are very comfortable without it. Some people do need ambition to drive them. Some people don’t. You don’t have to do wonders only because you have an ambition to push you. Need not be. One can do well because he is dedicated, committed, truthful and honest, because that’s the right way, the only way. It’s very easy to live here and now. Living in the past or for the future is unnatural but common. I’m not a sanyasi. Living in a material world, I can’t live ‘here and now’ like the zen masters. But I try as much as I can. It makes me feel light and free. If you live ‘here and now’, you might even laugh at the term ‘ambition’. My idea is simple: live here and now, live happily.

I’ll leave you with this Zen story:

One day, while walking through the wilderness, a man encountered a vicious tiger. He ran for his life, and the tiger gave chase. The man came to the edge of a cliff, and the tiger was almost upon him. Having no choice, he held on to a vine with both hands and climbed down. Halfway down the cliff, the man looked up and saw the tiger at the top, baring its fangs. He looked down and saw another tiger at the bottom, waiting for his arrival and roaring at him. He was caught between the two. Two rats, one white and one black, showed up on the vine above him. As if he didn’t have enough to worry about, they started gnawing on the vine. He knew that as the rats kept gnawing, they would reach a point when the vine would no longer be able to support his weight. It would break and he would fall. He tried to shoo the rats away, but they kept coming back. At that moment, he noticed a strawberry growing on the face of the cliff, not far away from him. It looked plump and ripe. Holding onto the vine with one hand and reaching out with the other, he plucked it. With a tiger above, another below, and two rats continuing to gnaw on his vine, the man tasted the strawberry and found it absolutely delicious.

You can never have the past or the future; one is irretrievably gone and the other is yet to come. The present is here and now, and it is yours completely and unconditionally. No one can take it away from you, and you alone have the power to decide how to use it. Cheers!

My professor in college used to tell us that we should read newspapers not for following the news but to improve our English. We had this habit of reading the papers and noting down those words that we didn’t know the meaning of. That way, all that it became was to go looking for the words that we didn’t know. It sure improved our vocabulary but not sure if it improved our English. But then, good vocabulary is always mistaken for good English.

I used to wonder how about half a dozen daily papers each have 24 pages of news to publish on a daily basis. It’s impossible to do this on a daily basis without using a lot of garbage. There must be a lot of recycled news, outdated news made to look new, unimportant stuff being made like the president is assassinated and such stuff. There’s gotta be a lot of nonsense in there. It’s not practically possible to run daily papers full of quality, reliable news published fully in compliance with the ethics of journalism. That’s not the reason why I don’t spend too much time on papers.

I just feel that it does not deserve too much time. It simply does not. In my school/college days, it helped me to gain brownie points because I knew about something in detail. I’ve grown up now. So I don’t need that. Nowadays, I’m not even sure if I can claim that I ‘read’ the papers. I just browse them through. I can call myself a ‘headline checker’. Anything that catches my eye, gets my attention. I have this in-built scanner that helps me look at only those things I want to see. The maximum time I spend on the daily newspaper would not be more than 10 mins. That’s all. The way I see it, newspapers are a source of information. There are various other sources such as the internet, the television and the people/friends who read newspapers. Quite a lot has changed. Newspaper and Radio are not the only sources for us to get information.

At times, it does make me look a little stupid because I don’t quite follow the news as people do. Someone asked ‘did you see the news about the octuplet’? I could make out that it had something to do with eight. I thought octuplet meant a verse with eight lines. I just don’t care though because I know the exact difference between intelligence and knowledge. Timely or otherwise, knowledge can always be acquired. I have not yet lost anything because I’m not spending more than 10 mins on papers. Of course, I’ve gained a lot. See, I’m not spending that time on blogging. Writing vs Reading.

Yes, I missed that ‘octuplet’ news. I don’t think that news of use to me but I would have at least learnt that term ‘octuplet’. Now that I have learnt a new word, hope I get to use it often. Octuplet.