my search for meaning with my daughter

One of the best things we did on this vacation is the decision of coming back to Mumbai in the Rajdhani train. When we were young train travel was always second class and always non air conditioned. It did not matter where we traveled, this was the mode of transport. I remember going from Mumbai to Kolkata by train in a second class non A/c train. This was the norm. Somehow I also do remember trains being far cleaner than what they are now. We would get down at the stations and fill our jugs with water and buying bottled water was never on the agenda. But eating out for a Gujju family was an anathema. We would have lunch and dinner and breakfast packed along with tea. There was a box my mom once bought from Kolkata. It was called the patharo, I think. It was a mid sized aluminum box which was used to store food for a journey. We would carry theplas, khakras, pickles, tea and everything while travelling. Food was an essential part of the travelling. We liked our food and we kept it with us, everywhere we went.

I think the first time we went in an air-conditioned train was when I was in college (around 1995-95). The demand for air conditioned trains was going up and people then started travelling in the Ac trains. I remember using the Rajdhani for the first time and it was a lovely experience. You get your beddings, a bottle of water, all meals and an ice cream as a desert. Hah! It was heaven. As we (the economy) got richer, we used the AC train for more often. It was definitely the AC and if you are feeling rich then you use the second AC, otherwise the third AC was the minimum norm. The big difference is that the second AC has two beds bunked up on either side and the third AC has three on either side. And the second AC have the horrible unwashed dirty shitty curtains. I hate those curtains. I hate touching those dirty curtains.

For a long while it was the AC trains that we used till we got even richer (here we is economy and family). Also the price of airline tickets also started to fall. We started flying everywhere on vacations. It saved time and time on vacation is money. You want to use the time to enjoy your vacation, not travelling to a place.

This time, while we were planning the vacation, we decided to take the train back from Delhi. I thought that the best time to have a conversation with your daughter is in a train. Rajdhani is the best of them all. No stress while travelling, no random people climbing on and reasonably clean with your food taken care of. We got one upper side bunk. Jispa climbed onto it and made herself at home. I joined in after her in some time. We then started talking. I started explaining to her the US elections. How they are managed and how the President is elected. Of course nothing is that simple when I am explaining anything. I took two hours to explain the whole thing, including the election of Bush and Bill Clinton. It was an awesome conversation. In the middle while I was explaining to her how a friend of mine was in a government job in India, working for a minister, she was quite amazed and she asked me why I did not tell her about it before. I simply said – we don’t have time these days as we are all busy with a lot of other things. I later told Jasmine about this and we both smiled. We both knew that I always have time, but she is too busy these days and too moody and too much of a teenager to listen. She is lost in her phone or in her music or in something else altogether.

The Rajdhani experiment was a success. I look forward to many more such successes. Now that she is growing up and she has a mind, I am finding interesting things that we can share. We also booked trains to Dehradun from delhi. Here I shared my kindle with her and asked her to read another book summary that I had. This book has influenced me a whole lot. It lead bare the marketing of food and how the food giants got us to eat more, much more unhealthy but tasty food. It’s called Salt Sugar Fat. I had read the detailed summary and then recently I had bought the full book. I had the summary on the Kindle and I got Jispa to read it. She read it and enjoyed it. We then could discuss elements of the book and understand how the bliss point is achieved by the manufacturers. It’s quite an interesting book and is easily my top read. But the real fun is when I could discuss it with my kid.

With the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU)movies coming out, another point of mutual fun is getting developed. Jispa and I went for the Doctor Strange movie together. Jasmine is not a great fan is happier sleeping this one out. I enjoyed watching it with Jispa and laughing on all the attitude jokes with her. Then at the end of it, I explained to her the concept of the infinity stones and how the MCU has used it across all their movies to tie it all in together.  Now that was a seriously cool bro moment (we call each other bro and we fist pump. Yes… sigh). I know that because there are enough and more, young MCU fans in my office who are original comic book hero worshippers. Then we sat at home and looked up videos and blogs that explained the concept of the infinity stones and how all the movies in the MCU somehow connect to one or more of the infinity stones coming towards a huge final showdown. This is so bloody serious. The guys at MCU must have be crazy to take such an audacious move wherein they are thinking years in advance where the movies have story lines that are crisscrossing each other towards a grand finale. Every superhero story is to be seen in relation to the other, with Easter eggs in all of them. Discovering this is awesome, telling it to your teenage daughter to see her mouth wide open – priceless.

If this much bonding wasn’t enough – we are suddenly now reading a book together. This one is deadly serious - Man's Search for Meaning;  a 1946 book by Viktor Frankl chronicling his experiences as an Auschwitz concentration camp inmate during World War II. He is a Psychologist by profession and was thrown into a concentration camp. He uses the experience to delve deep into the mind of man and comes out to share his experience. He tries to be as objective as possible in explaining his situation and his experience. Then he explains how people who survived probably found more meaning in their life than others. Jispa and me are reading it at the same time. She folds the top of her page to mark her page and I use the bottom. The book is divided into two sections and the second section of the book explains describing his psychotherapeutic method, which involved identifying a purpose in life to feel positively about, and then immersively imagining that outcome. This was in my to-read list sine a long time, We found it in a mall in Dehradun and picked it up immediately as train reading for Jispa and me. The book has been an outstanding revelation. In many ways it resonates with what I think is true in life and have known it to be true for me. It captures beautifully the essence of what I think is purpose and meaning in daily trials. Most importantly – it talks about sufferings as being something in which you find meaning.

I have read Buddha and his various teachings and lessons. There also there is talk of suffering as real and an important part of life. I never did understand that till now. I always used to think that suffering cannot be the motive of life and how can it be the truth of life. Aren’t we all trying not to suffer, then why must we accept suffering as an important meaning of life. Here, reading this book at age 41, I realise what suffering is. To extract meaning and purpose in life we do things. We aim, we achieve, we face degection and sadness and we face trails and tribulations, we strive and we work, we think and plan. The moment we do anything we are expending effort. This effort for me is suffering. Jispa finds meaning in her tough swim schedule. She braves cold waters, tough workouts and sore ness in her body. She suffers but in that suffering she finds meaning and that is why she does it.

This what I explained to Jispa while we were discussing the book and I explained that I never did understand it till I was 41 and I read this book. Was it the book or was it the maturity? Many books are awesome but in many ways you are probably too young or too old to read it or understand it. Many books are awesome but they are not there for you at the right time or the right mental frame of mind.

Who would have known that a book is all about timing and at the right time it finds relevance and meaning?

While reading and buying books on amazon, it’s a fun thing to see the reviews and understand the book before you end up reading it. The negative reviews are also there which enhance the experience of the book. At first, some negative reviews used to discourage me from buying the book. As if I was searching for some holy grail and wanted to use my time (arrogance) only for reading the best of the best. But now, I also understand that it’s only a point of view. The book is a point of view, the reviews are a point of view and you as a reader is only reading and forming a point of view. There is no real truth, as in everything is relative. And in books, there is also the question of timing. Hence it’s nice to read the reviews and nice to understand them, but you still have to make up your mind on your own. And never let anyone stop you from reading your book. Because I have often said that even the worst book in the world will tell you why it’s the worst book in the world. So there is knowledge everywhere.

I am the bridge builder

I was explaining to someone that all my life I have always been the youngest one. The youngest son of the youngest son. From my mother’s side too I was the youngest son with only two female cousins younger than me. Being the youngest one should have been a natural to me, except that I didn’t ever do well at it. I think I was designed to be the eldest. I like to teach, to learn, to observe and to share. I like to protect and to have fun, I like to dominate yet cede. I am not designed to be the youngest but I learnt over a period of time to be one.

Now that I am 41, I am in many ways an elder. In this start up, I am the eldest in the office. The senior who must lead and manage the young. He who must nurture the young and initiate them into the ways of life. Ok – now that got way too dramatic. But as the years have piled on, I have moved to apposition of being the elder and I think I probably do a better job of being the elder than being the younger. Of being the teacher than at being the student.

Being the youngest helped me become a better elder. All I did was look very deeply at people who were older to me and see how they behaved. How they treated their younger ones, and more importantly how they did not treat their younger ones. This formed the basis of how I should treat others. In way that I would have expected to have been treated. That today is how I am what I am, as a boss, as a father, as a friend and as a teacher. You don’t always need role models to shape your behavior. You can do it just as well with the absence of role models. You simply ask yourself what you would have liked and you then listen to your own voice very clearly. That’s that simple.

Last week we were on vacation. I was very keen to have a camping experience with Jispa and Jasmine. Just about a month before the vacation, both of them pulled out. It was way too expensive they said and that they weren’t so keen. Oh Damn it. They broke my heart. I always wanted to go camping with family. Sleeping in the tents, walking all day, moving in the mountains, the bitter cold, the warm sleeping bags, the really silly places to go to the loo, everything. Discomfort is an important part of process. Only when you put men through real discomfort you realize what you are made of. And as a group of people, when you face hardship together, it binds you, it releases you. Camping together is one way to get to the same. Of course this was a luxury camp. We would have paid around 10k per night all-inclusive (including transport) for this experience. But at the last my family developed chicken feet. So we moved our vacation to Rishikesh where we stayed at a home stay, roamed the streets of Rishikesh and sipped on honey ginger lemon tea while having freshly baked butter biscuits. Some discomfort.

After which we went to Hathipaon where my sis runs a lovely small home stay.

It was a fun vacation, but it was marginally ruined or heightened depending on your perspective by the fact that I had an exam to give in the middle of it. This was an Insurance exam for which I had to leave the vacation mid-way and run to Delhi and back. The pressure was tremendous and I had to really learn the innards of the insurance business before I could have passed. The pressure was two-fold. On the business there was definitely some pressure as we needed a senior guy to pass the exam and be the principal officer for the firm and then as the elder in the office, I couldn’t have failed. It was too much of a loss of face. I put dramatic pressure on myself and pushed myself to study. I studied three books, marked a lot on them, read them again and again, and was generally prepared for what’s going to come. In the end of the multiple choice question paper, I scored 65 of 80 marks. 40 was passing. Wow – I had done it with flying colors. Serious respect. When you grow old, you lose something – something very raw, you lose your sense of fun, innocence and gay abandon. You lose the ability to chance a few things. You push yourself and your system to what you think is the most important thing and achieve it. This part is no fun. I have never studied this way as I studied for this exam. On the trip, I studied in the plane, on the train, in the hotel, on the bed and one full day in Rishikesh on the table studying for my exam. After the paper, I had a celebratory lunch in Delhi. I had my favorite Delhi lunch of chole and dal with naan at the road side thella (stall). That was yum. So much yum, that I took Jasmine and Jispa there when we were in Delhi switching trains. When in Delhi – do the Delhi!

So when we were back, my sis asked me for feedback. I knew that was coming and I had discussed a lot with Jispa and Jasmine about the place. We seemed to have cracked the travel thing. We go for cheaper home stay options at distinct places that seem to have captured the heart and soul of the place. We know the service and we know the way the thing works now. We know how to look at the reviews and how to manage and plan the trip. So far, it has hardly let us down. Trip Advisor has been so helpful in all of this. My nephew was wondering why would anyone put up a review on trip advisor. A rational human wouldn’t want to waste his time once he was already there. What could he possibly get. I told him two things – from a selfless perspective – it really helped me and hence it is my job to help others. From a selfish perspective – the more reviews I give the better the site gets and that leads to a positive cycle where hotels and home stays know that if they screw up you get bad reviews. This was the whole ecosystem is forced to improve if they have to thrive. My review about Rishikesh will in some way help my travels in Pondicherry, because of the general uplift in service standards.

I am reminded of this poem about which I think I have blogged before.

The Bridge Builder

- Will Allen Dromgoole

An old man going a lone highway,
Came at the evening, cold and gray,
To a chasm, vast, and deep and wide,
Through which was flowing a sullen tide.

The old man crossed in the twilight dim;
The sullen stream had no fear for him;
But he turned, when safe on the other side,
And built a bridge to span the tide.

"Old man," said a fellow pilgrim, near,
"You are wasting strength with building here;
Your journey will end with the ending day;
You never again will pass this way;
You've crossed the chasm, deep and wide-
Why build you this bridge at the evening tide?"

The builder lifted his old gray head:
"Good friend, in the path I have come," he said,
"There followeth after me today,
A youth, whose feet must pass this way.

This chasm, that has been naught to me,
To that fair-haired youth may a pitfall be.
He, too, must cross in the twilight dim;
Good friend, I am building this bridge for him."

This poem was especially significant for me for in the 6^th standard, I tried to take part in the poetry recital competition in school. There was no one to help at home but I knew I was good to take part in the competition. I told my teacher that I was interested and she gave me this poem. By the time the trials came in, I was hopelessly underprepared and I was not selected. What a total loss it was. I laughed at the end. There none but me to crown myself!

Recently I understood the bride builder and its metaphorical significance. I am in many ways a Bridge Builder. Yes, good friend, I am building this bridge for him.

So yesterday I went over to my sister’s house and discussed what all you can do to improve the service. Small things that cost very little but can make a dramatic impact on your stay experience. In the end, today she puts on the whatsapp group something akin to ‘when did you get so smart?’. Oh well. Now the fun starts. The dichotomy of being an elder elsewhere nad being the young one at home. Sometimes I wonder how I manage it in my brain and in my behavior. I wonder.

English Literture and Silence

The times, they are a changing. Jispa has been studying regularly and I too have been studying along with her. No this time around its not me studying thanks to her but I am genuinely studying for a damn exam that I have to give. In the insurance industry one has to give some relevant exams if one has to represent the firm in various forums. This Saturday Jispa and I, both sat to study on the dining table. I found myself studying seriously, very seriously. I studied the whole day and finished one book of three that I needed to. It was quite surprising. I hate studying and I hate exams and I can’t bear to give any other one anymore.

The last time I gave a test professionally was around 15 years ago when in the broking industry there was a need for certification. I hated the feeling and I never understood why I should be the one giving the exams. They were meant for the sales and the dealers, not marketing professionals. The only reason the CEO made it compulsory for all, was that each certification was compulsory for each terminal and we needed as many as we could get. The stupid dealers were not competent by themselves to pass these tests and hence it was compulsory for all. He had made it a mandatory thing if you want your bonus.

Even then, studying without a purpose is a complete burden on yourself. I just found it difficult to sit down, remove time and study. But this time around things are different. I don’t know. Possibly because it’s a start up and hence there is a greater sense of a shared vision in me or because it’s just that I am older and saner and wiser and I realize that I have to pass this exam, I am studying religiously. I took a pen and the book and went through the whole book word by word. I took in time to understand the syllabus and try and remember the key points. At the end of the day, it wasn’t a chore; there was something more to it.

Jispa has also been studying like it’s serious business. For her studying is not a bore. She is right now amazing me by making notes of what she needs to study and she is carrying her books everywhere. Yesterday while we sat at the Starbucks at a mall, she was busy making her biology notes. I was talking to her, that I was never ever as serious as her about studying and looking at her makes my heart feel very warm. She is putting pressure on her own to study and do well. She wants to study. I told her that I think that, one of the big factors is also what she is studying. The style of teaching, the text books, the ability to put thought, the teachers, everything is so amazing that you feel like studying. I had a shit load of everything and my life was all about mugging up. That was studying. No application of brain or thought or out of the box thinking in an exam. Just shut up and vomit your brain of all the unwanted shit as fast as possible. If you met me 24 hours after an exam, I wouldn’t have even been able to recollect most of the syllabus. I remember cramming formulas seconds before the exam and running inside the class and writing it on the answer sheet, first thing. Then you can refer to it when you want, as you want.  That was my studies.

Jispa has been writing amazing things for her favorite English literature subject. We share a lot of time discussing stuff about how to interpret her English poetry. The other thing we also spend time over is listening to her music. I am trying to connect to it and am making an effort to listen to it. It’s been largely rewarding. I too have been trying to get out some old songs and getting her to listen to it. One song that V-inu played when we were at his place and which came up in the listening list on internet radio was ‘The sound of silence’ which was re-sung as a cover by Disturbed. It’s an amazing version with a really gruff voice of a rock singer. When melody meets a gruff voice and some tempo changing, it makes for a compelling listening.

Here you judge

But while you do so remember the original by Simon and Garfunkel. It’s a lovely one with the melody coming in through the strumming of the acoustic guitar and the vocals in chorus.

You decide which one is the better one!

But the point is not the music, but the juxtaposition of the poetry. With Jispa and me talking music and English, such music with amazing lyrics suddenly has far more meaning that simple melody

"The Sound Of Silence"

Hello darkness, my old friend

I've come to talk with you again

Because a vision softly creeping

Left its seeds while I was sleeping

And the vision that was planted in my brain

Still remains

Within the sound of silence

In restless dreams I walked alone

Narrow streets of cobblestone

‘Neath the halo of a streetlamp

I turned my collar to the cold and damp

When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light

That split the night

And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw

Ten thousand people, maybe more

People talking without speaking

People hearing without listening

People writing songs that voices never share

No one dare

Disturb the sound of silence

“Fools” said I, “You do not know

Silence like a cancer grows

Hear my words that I might teach you

Take my arms that I might reach you”

But my words like silent raindrops fell

And echoed in the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed

To the neon god they made

And the sign flashed out its warning

In the words that it was forming

And the sign said “The words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls

And tenement halls

And whispered in the sounds of silence”

Tell me it’s not poetry and tell me it’s not literature. Garfunkel once summed up the song's meaning as "the inability of people to communicate with each other, not particularly internationally but especially emotionally, so what you see around you are people unable to love each other”

We look at songs as lower art than poetry and pop songs as the way lower. I have argued that pop songs that fire a population’s imagination are as much literature as anything else. I have argues way back in my blog piece ( http://jaimit.blogspot.in/2009/07/time-to-change-times.html ) that Bob Dylan should be taught in schools and then, recently, it gave me joy to know that he got the Nobel Prize for literature. While there has been enough criticism on this, I firmly support the move. It brings song writers within the realm of serious literature. If Shakespeare would have been alive, would we have given him the Nobel or would we have told him that an Oscar is at best what he can do?

The Nobel prize allowed Jispa and me to revisit our friend Dylan while we were returning in the car. She put the music on as we listened to the times, they are a changing’ and “blowin in the wind”. She took my phone and searched for the lyrics online while the song was playing, enjoying the poetry in the composition as much as the melody.  Who knew English syllabus and Music would merge?

 Now that is song writing! If that doesn’t deserve the Nobel then what does.

A Nobel prize is a cash award for sure, it’s a recognition of the individual for sure, but more than anything, its role is to inspire many more to either emulate and try and achieve or simply still, follow the work being done in order to understand and imbibe. Because simple money can come in the form a grant, but real difference comes from the inspiration that recognition brings about. That is the true value of a Prize, especially if it is as big the Nobel Prize.

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End bonus video of the "Disturbed" singer on singing the Sound of Silence.