My journey back to Oregon started at 10 pm last night. Mumbai International airport has been ripped up as all international and domestic airports undergo facelifts. It was crazy, the traffic was bad and I saw more crowds outside bidding their departing loved ones good bye. The airport was packed - with many more flights and airlines flying out that evening all at once. Things felt chaotic, but once I was checked in I simply had a long walk to the gate. I had to switch to Swiss Air as Lufthansa flights were cancelled due to a strike in Germany - yes they cancelled flights to India, one of their most promising and always full market, but not the US flights.
As I went through immigration and was waiting to take the escalator down to the gate, I saw a big sign hanging in front "INCREDIBLE INDIA". I also simultaneously heard one of the Swiss flight attendants heading to the gate make a snide comment on that sign. She probably didn't see what was so incredible about India - the noise, chaos, upheavel, poverty. That is all she could see. I had a strong desire to respond back, be defensive, but I stopped. I realized that was her view and I had to show indifference, thanks to the advice some time back by Nina Pileggi. The sutras tell us to be indifferent. I had to be indifferent.
As I walked through the maze of construction towards my gate within minutes the sight of the airport changed from Chaos, to a modern terminal. Only part of the terminal had been finished, but boy what a contrast. Suddenly the dusty, musty chaos has changed to sights I am familiar with at other international airports. Nice cafes, clean restrooms, well organized sitting areas. There were crowds, but everyone was lined up in queues to get to theri flights. There was buzz, no different than any busy airport. I felt I was in another world......
The Jet Airways crew looked the smartest - they reminded me of Singapore Airlines crew - young vibrant and most fashionably dressed. Anyone flown Jet Airways lately? They are ready to take over the world with their incredible service at the global level. They have literally revived the Brussels airport and the defunct Sabina airlines, but making Brussels their international hub. This year Jet Airways made a huge profit, despite rising oil prices, while other airlines stuggle with losses. Jet is flying every where. There were at least five Jet flights that night to Bankok, London, Brussels, Shanghai, and Hong Kong. Jet is part of the Incredible India. For years they have had an incredible domestic service, setting new standards in quality and service. Now they are emerging into the global scene and their goal is to displace Singapore Airlines as the number 1 airline in the world for service.
As I settled myself in the Swiss Air aircraft - a half empty plane that looked aged and haggard. No wonder they went bankrupt and got acquired by Lufthansa. I realized they were no Lufthansa, but they certainly were no Jet Airways. I had trouble getting the seat to adjust and the same flight attendant profusely apologized.... "we will be having new seats next year"... I smirked and said to myself - Incredible Swiss! The universe strikes back!
As I settled myself, I took out a book I had just purchased - "The Elephant, the Tiger and the Cellphone" by Shashi Tharoor. Imagine t0 my surprise - the entire theme of the book was about the incredible transformation that is happening in India today. I am still reading it but I was quite enlightened.
India is a bundle of contradictions - there is extreme wealth right next to extreme poverty. This year India had more billionaires on the Forbes list than any other nation other than the US. More than Russia, Japan and China. Number one in the emerging economies. At the same time 212 million Indians live below poverty lines. 50 years ago 350 million did. 50 percent of Indians are below 35 years of age - an incredible demographic of 500 million people. Suddenly what was India's biggest weakness, is suddenly being viewed as its strength - the largest middle class in the world. The largest English speaking nation in the world.
The country is going through a gigantic transformation both economically, socially and culturally. It is the biggest democracy in the world but at the same time about 100 of the 500 elected members of its parliament have criminal records and three recently had to be released from jail for 3 days to vote on an important matter of keeping the current government in place. What a contradiction - but despite these problems, the counrty is growing at at tremendous pace, approaching 10% GDP growth a year. It has reserves of $300 billion. Contrast this to 20 years ago, when it had to mortgage its gold reserves to pay its debt. The country was bankrupt.
So what is so incredible about India? Whats incredibe is that despite itself, India is going to become an incredible nation and a world power in the next 5 years. By 2015 India will be the number 2 economy in the world after China. After 300 years of British rule and 40 years of being suppresed in closed walls, India is breaking through the seams and racing ahead. All of this chaos is needed for the calmness to appear. But what is life without some chaos? It has to go through the pain to achieve its past glory, as a peaceful, spiritual and vibrant society where yoga originated 5000 years ago.
India is country of many cultures, languages, ideologies. Shashi equates India to a thali (plate) of many curries and they share one thing in common, the incredible spices. I think the government PR needs to change the slogan from "Incredible India" to "Incredibly Spicy India". Its the spices, the culmination of so many flavors and tastes, the dust, the noise, the sweat, the contradictions in the coexistence of calm with chaos that makes India so unique. All of this is what makes India incredible!
Namaste
The Yogi
Showing posts with label pune india. Show all posts
Showing posts with label pune india. Show all posts
Monday, August 4, 2008
Friday, August 1, 2008
Adios Pune - The Calm within storms!
As I struggle to wrap up my trip to Pune I am consumed by many things - the blunders and the mistakes I made, the learning I achieved and not the least the work challenges - phone calls back to the office in Portland with arguments with a senior staffer on miniscule items, keeping my high maintenace sales people focused and off their ego, countless meeting with my Pune staff to inspire and challenge them.....
I dealt with many challenges, including sleepless nights, jet lag, sleep deprivation with 4 am phone calls and last but not the least my flight from Mumbai being cancelled due to a Lufthansa strike. I have no idea if I will get home on the 5th. I am now awaiting to hear back from my travel agent - its 1130 pm. I have been awake for nearly 18 hours and I feel like I could go on for another 8. And with all this craziness I held on to my yoga practice commuting 30 mins to an hour every day to RIMYI since July 22nd, except for the last two days, as the sacrum pain required I just rest.
Somehow I got the energy to do all this. To top it all off, I just read my earlier post and realized what blunders I made in my writing. The last paragraph on Skeptic Yogi says it all - I simply lost control of my writing. I was embarrassed first and then just laughed my head off. I made desperate attempts to change the post, but blogger will not let change. I could have deleted the post, but I am just tired of fighting with blogger to fix the words. My apologies if anything in that post is offensive. Please just see the humor in it.
So on this note, I sign off from Pune. My staff asked me when I would be back next - I replied "I going to leave that to my karma"!
Namaste
The Yogi
I dealt with many challenges, including sleepless nights, jet lag, sleep deprivation with 4 am phone calls and last but not the least my flight from Mumbai being cancelled due to a Lufthansa strike. I have no idea if I will get home on the 5th. I am now awaiting to hear back from my travel agent - its 1130 pm. I have been awake for nearly 18 hours and I feel like I could go on for another 8. And with all this craziness I held on to my yoga practice commuting 30 mins to an hour every day to RIMYI since July 22nd, except for the last two days, as the sacrum pain required I just rest.
Somehow I got the energy to do all this. To top it all off, I just read my earlier post and realized what blunders I made in my writing. The last paragraph on Skeptic Yogi says it all - I simply lost control of my writing. I was embarrassed first and then just laughed my head off. I made desperate attempts to change the post, but blogger will not let change. I could have deleted the post, but I am just tired of fighting with blogger to fix the words. My apologies if anything in that post is offensive. Please just see the humor in it.
So on this note, I sign off from Pune. My staff asked me when I would be back next - I replied "I going to leave that to my karma"!
Namaste
The Yogi
Saturday, July 19, 2008
Detachment from Sorrow and Pain - Your children are your best teachers
For the first time in a while I had an amazing conversation with my father. Over the years I have learnt so much from him, but today I felt for the first time that I had enlightened him about something that he has been struggling with for years.
My father is blind and has been for the last 34 years. It was a tragic incident and I inherit those problems (Retinal Detachment). It was in that tragedy that my whole family was uprooted from India to move to North America for a better life. My dad never gave up - he worked despite his handicap for the best for his children but blindness prevented him to achieve everything he wanted in his career. He took early retirement, once his children were educated and set in life.
He lived a hard life as a youngster, first surviving one of the biggest earthquakes in Quetta (in Pakistan) in 1936 as an infant and then faced tremendous hardships as he and his family were uprooted from Quetta and moved to India in 1947, while India was divided by the British into three countries. He had a vision for his future and he worked for it, and educated himself, studying sometimes late night under a street light in a park. His life has been a constant source of inspiration for me.
While life seemed so settled and good, he still faced the trauma of blindness. He never received mobility training; so he remained dependant on my mother to hold his hand. He faced the death of my mother with great courage and a major heart surgery. What has kept him going is his utter dedication to his daily 4 hour practice of meditation, which includes chanting. But despite all this he has trouble detaching from pain and sadness. He seems to be not satisfied and is constantly troubled by his failed eyesight and he keeps thinking he still has some light. In that hope he lives, but alas that hope is just hope.
The reality is that he is able to function well and fine at home but he feels helpless. He is also devastated with recent events of my life. While I detach from the destruction in my life, he is constantly in pain and sadness by what that has done to our family. It was not in the master plan - life seemed so smooth and happy. He gives me hope but he himself feels hopeless which in turn torments me.
So today as he called me to wish me safe journey, he expressed his sadness and pain. I finally had the courage to speak up and say "why can't you just detach from this sadness, detach from my pain, and what I may be going through? What good is the 4 hour meditation?" I think those words simply summed it up for him and I think he realized that the only thing he can remain attached is hope, and the positive things he has in life. He has to detach from the pain, or he will never be happy.
I also realized that my kids do the same with me - when my 6 year old simply reads my face and says "daddy, can you please smile every time you look at me". She never forgets to remind me and it instantly brings the smile on my face. I realize how equally thoughtful and insightful your children are. Never underestimate them and never take them for granted as your private property. These were the words of a very thoughtful person. I will never forget what this person had to say. " Your children are not your property and you can't divide them or use them as such - they are not your little hostages!" I learnt an important lesson from this person. I broke down and cried.
I think your children are your greatest teachers. They are as thoughtful and intelligent as you may be; despite your age and experience. It is not your right to use your children as emotional pawns. They love you unconditionally and they will give it you unconditionally. Love your children unconditionally, teach them, take care of them - but also be open to their feelings , listen to them and learn from them and don't deny them the love they deserve from others, just because you may no longer love those people anymore. Let them go, let them be the person they need to be, free them from your own emotional chains, they will only love you more for that, but never love you any less. I guess that is in itself a form of detachment, while you remain so strongly attached to them.
With these thoughts I am off to Pune, India. I will hopefully detach some with the distance from my pain. I will miss my children every day while I am gone. They are my two little yoginis and I know they love their dad unconditionally no matter what, just as I love my dad no matter what.
Namaste
The yogi
My father is blind and has been for the last 34 years. It was a tragic incident and I inherit those problems (Retinal Detachment). It was in that tragedy that my whole family was uprooted from India to move to North America for a better life. My dad never gave up - he worked despite his handicap for the best for his children but blindness prevented him to achieve everything he wanted in his career. He took early retirement, once his children were educated and set in life.
He lived a hard life as a youngster, first surviving one of the biggest earthquakes in Quetta (in Pakistan) in 1936 as an infant and then faced tremendous hardships as he and his family were uprooted from Quetta and moved to India in 1947, while India was divided by the British into three countries. He had a vision for his future and he worked for it, and educated himself, studying sometimes late night under a street light in a park. His life has been a constant source of inspiration for me.
While life seemed so settled and good, he still faced the trauma of blindness. He never received mobility training; so he remained dependant on my mother to hold his hand. He faced the death of my mother with great courage and a major heart surgery. What has kept him going is his utter dedication to his daily 4 hour practice of meditation, which includes chanting. But despite all this he has trouble detaching from pain and sadness. He seems to be not satisfied and is constantly troubled by his failed eyesight and he keeps thinking he still has some light. In that hope he lives, but alas that hope is just hope.
The reality is that he is able to function well and fine at home but he feels helpless. He is also devastated with recent events of my life. While I detach from the destruction in my life, he is constantly in pain and sadness by what that has done to our family. It was not in the master plan - life seemed so smooth and happy. He gives me hope but he himself feels hopeless which in turn torments me.
So today as he called me to wish me safe journey, he expressed his sadness and pain. I finally had the courage to speak up and say "why can't you just detach from this sadness, detach from my pain, and what I may be going through? What good is the 4 hour meditation?" I think those words simply summed it up for him and I think he realized that the only thing he can remain attached is hope, and the positive things he has in life. He has to detach from the pain, or he will never be happy.
I also realized that my kids do the same with me - when my 6 year old simply reads my face and says "daddy, can you please smile every time you look at me". She never forgets to remind me and it instantly brings the smile on my face. I realize how equally thoughtful and insightful your children are. Never underestimate them and never take them for granted as your private property. These were the words of a very thoughtful person. I will never forget what this person had to say. " Your children are not your property and you can't divide them or use them as such - they are not your little hostages!" I learnt an important lesson from this person. I broke down and cried.
I think your children are your greatest teachers. They are as thoughtful and intelligent as you may be; despite your age and experience. It is not your right to use your children as emotional pawns. They love you unconditionally and they will give it you unconditionally. Love your children unconditionally, teach them, take care of them - but also be open to their feelings , listen to them and learn from them and don't deny them the love they deserve from others, just because you may no longer love those people anymore. Let them go, let them be the person they need to be, free them from your own emotional chains, they will only love you more for that, but never love you any less. I guess that is in itself a form of detachment, while you remain so strongly attached to them.
With these thoughts I am off to Pune, India. I will hopefully detach some with the distance from my pain. I will miss my children every day while I am gone. They are my two little yoginis and I know they love their dad unconditionally no matter what, just as I love my dad no matter what.
Namaste
The yogi
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