A Truck-load of Dung

You know that feeling when you are searching for solutions and it was right in front of you all the time, waiting for you to 'see' it. Often the solution is easy, simple to the core, and you go 'duh'! But the solution is also often very difficult to implement. One such a situation is happening in my life right now. One person very close to me is going through a difficult phase, the answer sits in front of us, but it is extremely difficult to implement.

Shell on Sand

Today I am particularly in a reflective mood, and in such times, I often open some of my favorite books to get a shot of strength. This story below touched me very much, once again.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"A truck-load of dung" from the book "Opening the door of your heart", by Ajahn Brahm.

Unpleasant things, like coming bottom of our class, happen in life. They happen to everyone. The only difference between a happy person and one who gets depressed is how they respond to disasters.

Imagine you have just had a wonderful afternoon at the beach with a friend. When you return home, you find a huge truck-load of dung has been dumped right in front of your door. There are three things to know about this truck-load of dung :

1. You did not order it. It's not your fault.
2. You're stuck with it. No one saw who dumped it, so you cannot call anyone to take it away.
3. It is filthy and offensive, and its stench fills your whole house. It is almost impossible to endure. 

In this metaphor, the truck-load of dung in front of the house stands for the traumatic experiences that are dumped on us in life. As with the truckload of dung, there are three things to know about tragedy in our life:

1. We did not order it. We say 'Why me?'
2. We're stuck with it. No one, not even our best friends, can take it away (though they may try).
3. It is so awful, such a destroyer of our happiness, and its pain fills our whole life. It is almost impossible to endure.

There are two ways of responding to being stuck with a truck-load of dung. The first way is to carry the dung around with us. We put some in our pockets, some in our bags, and some up our shirts. We even put some down our pants. We find when we carry dung around, we lose a lot of friends! Even best friends don't seem to be around so often.

"Carrying around the dung" is a metaphor for sinking into depression, negativity, or anger. It is a natural and understandable response to adversity. But we lose a lot of friends, because it is also natural and understandable that our friends don't like being around us when we're so depressed. Moreover, the pile of dung gets no less, but the smell gets worse as it ripens.

Fortunately, there's a second way. When we are dumped with a truckload of dung, we heave a sigh, and then get down to work. Out come the wheelbarrow, the fork, and the spade. We fork the dung into the barrow, wheel it around the back of the house, and dig it into the garden. This is tiring and difficult work, but we know there's no other option.

Sometimes, all we can manage is half a barrow a day. We're doing something about the problem, rather than complaining our way into depression. Day after day we dig in the dung. Day after day, the pile gets smaller. Sometimes it takes several years, but the morning does come when we see that the dung in front of our house is all gone.

Furthermore, a miracle has happened in another part of our house. The flowers in our garden are bursting out in a richness of color all over the place. Their fragrance wafts down the street so that the neighbors, and even passers-by, smile in delight. Then the fruit tree in the corner is nearly falling over, it's so heavy with fruit. And the fruit is so sweet; you can't buy anything like it. There's so much of it that we are able to share it with our neighbors.  Even passers-by get a delicious taste of the miracle fruit.

"Digging in the dung" is a metaphor for welcoming the tragedies as fertilizer for life. It is work that we have to do alone: no one can help us here. But by digging it into the garden of our heart, day by day, the pile of pain gets less.

It may take us several years, but the morning does come when we see no more pain in our life and, in our heart, a miracle has happened. Flowers of kindness are bursting out all over the place, and the fragrance of love wafts way down our street, to our neighbors,  to our relations, and even to passers-by. Then our wisdom tree in the corner is bending down to us, loaded with sweet insights into the nature of life. We share those delicious fruits freely, even with the passers-by, without ever planning to.

When we have known tragic pain, learnt its lesson, and grown our garden, then we can put our arms around another in deep tragedy and say, softly, 'I know.' They realize we do understand. Compassion begins. We show them the wheelbarrow, the fork, and the spade, and boundless encouragement. If we haven't grown our own garden yet, this can't be done.

I have known many monks who are skilled in meditation, who are peaceful, composed and serene in adversity. But only a few have become great teachers. I often wondered why.

It seems to me now that those monks who had a relatively easy time of it, who had little dung to dig in, were the ones who didn't become teachers. It was the monks who had the enormous difficulties, dug them in quietly, and came through with a rich garden that became great teachers.

They all had wisdom, serenity and compassion; but those with more dung had more to share with the world. My teacher, Ajahn Chah, who for me was the pinnacle of all teachers, must have had a whole trucking company line up with their dung at his door, in his early life.

Perhaps the moral of this story is that if you want to be of service to the world, if you wish to follow the path of compassion, then the next time a tragedy occurs in your life, you may say, "Whoopee! More fertilizer for my garden!"

It's Too Much to Hope For

It's too much to hope for a life without pain,
It's wrong to expect a life without pain, 
For pain is our body's defense.
No matter how much we dislike it,
And nobody likes pain,
Pain is important,
And, For pain we should be grateful!

How else would we know,
To move our hand from the fire?
Our finger from the blade?
Our foot from the thorn?
So pain is important,
And for pain we should be grateful!

Yet,
There's a type of pain that serves no purpose,
That's chronic pain,
It's that elite brand of pain that's not for defense.
It's an attacking force.
An attacker from within
A destroyer of personal happiness
An aggressive assailant on personal ability
A ceaseless invader of personal peace
And,
A continuous harassment to life!

Chronic pain is the hardest hurdle for the mind to jump.
Sometimes it is almost impossible to jump,
Yet, we must keep trying,
And trying,
And trying,
Because if we don't it will destroy.

And,
From this battle will come some good,
The satisfaction of overcoming pain.
The achievement of happiness and peace, of life in spite of it.
This is quite an achievement,
An achievement very special, very personal,
A feeling of strength
Of inner strength
Which has to be experienced to be understood.

So, we all have to accept pain,
Even sometimes destructive pain.
For it is part of the scheme of things,
And the mind can manage it,
And the mind will become stronger for the practice. 

This lovely insightful poem was written by Jonathan Wilson-Fuller when he was just nine years old. He suffers from an unusual condition that makes him allergic to the world we take for granted. He lives in an artificial sterile environment.

Whenever I am down and feel that I am running out of strength to deal with all the issues and problems crushing my life, I think of this poem. We are indeed made by the pain we overcome. If a nine-year old can 'get it', so can I. This poem is a constant reminder for need to understand and bridle my hope and desire with reality.

Of babies and more

Hubby and I will be married for 14 years this summer. The intrusive questions about why we did not have kids have not stopped yet. And I often find myself defending our decision, as if we should be guilty about not having kids. Whether we have kids or not is our private decision and I expect the world to respect our decision. Unfortunately, it does not work that way.

I spent little more than two weeks in India and the following people asked me: neighbors, couple cousins, my uncle, few friends from school, and shockingly an ex-professor from my engineering school whom I met after 15 years! I am tired of replying. I have also observed that these questions do not get asked to the husband, the curious people waylay the wife. Most of these people are looking for an item of gossip, like paparazzi after a juicy story.

Hubby and I had a very long courtship and then marriage. We will have known each other and stayed committed for 22 years this summer. When we were young, of course we had thought of having a family. That is what we saw everyone doing, it seemed to be a part of being a couple. We copied that dream. But as we matured, it did not make sense to us.

We do not feel the need to procreate to propagate our genes. There is nothing that remarkable about our genes that need to be preserved. We both come from messed up dysfunctional families and there seems no reason why such such genes need to transfer to the next generation. We are not very proud our genes.

Many have implored that we have kids so that they will look after us when we grow old, or fill up our time when we grow old, or be a source of fun to our aging parents. We do not subscribe to that philosophy of kids being sort of an old age insurance. Both hubby and I live very far away from our own parents and cannot afford them the satisfaction of 'being there' for them. We do not expect our kids, if we ever had any, to do the same.

Next ridiculous argument that we find ourselves fighting is that kids are the vehicle by which parents fulfill their life's work and purpose. Some love to evoke the rules set by the mysterious man in the sky, but I am not going there. We feel we have only so many years of productive energy. We want to invest that energy in doing something to make the world a better place. We both have our own pet projects. We are not very keen on investing 60-80% of that energy on kids with the expectation that they will make the world a better place by being our proxy. We do not want to delegate our work effort to our kids and burden them. They should have their own dreams and purpose. We rather do the hard work ourselves. This is our choice.

And no, we do not need kids to act as a band-aid or crutch for our relationship. When we go through ups and downs in our relationship, we will 'fix' it ourselves. We refuse to use a kid as an in-between. We have observed first hand so many cases where the poor kid has to act as the tiebreaker all his/her life. That is a very wrong reason to have a kid, we believe.

Lastly, we have never felt the overwhelming feeling of the 'biological clock ticking'. We feel that given the billions of people on the planet are already fighting over limited resources, the 'bright future' of the new generation does not look that bright. We have Freo and Ozzie, our poodles, who make our lives complete enough. If we ever feel the need to nurture another human life within our household, we will adopt. For now we do not feel any such need or desire. May be in the future, who knows....

So, there you go, I have laid it all out open on the internet. We will not be making babies.
We respect every couple's personal and private reasons for having kids of their own, we expect to be afforded the same respect for having decided not to have any.

Where is Home?

I have been back in India a bit longer than a week. Last year I was here for almost three months but was very busy working on my mother’s sickness and subsequent issues. This year, I am a bit more relaxed, and it has given me the opportunity to observe with a detached mind.

As it probably happens with everything, as time passes, life changes, people change, circumstances change. We had left India to study in the US in 1998. Now 15 years later, I find that the atmosphere here is familiar but also very different. It is like a painting - I had drawn the outline, but someone else has filled in the details and colors. This is a very strange feeling. Even relationships seem so real yet faint at the same time.

For people like us, where is home really? What do you define as ‘home’?

I grew up and lived my parents’ dream – school, engineering, study abroad, etc. Now I find that their dream has changed, morphed into something that is unfamiliar to me. I trained to score a goal on their behalf, only to find that the goal post has moved. It is a strange unnerving feeling. Makes me question evermore – what is the purpose of all this?

In the US, we have a ‘life’ – pretty satisfying work, a comfortable house, great friends, nice vacations, time goes by fast and we live the years one by one. Here in India, we have caring relatives, great food, pollution, heat and humidity, busy and noisy atmosphere - complete with its own charm. But as I stand in between the two, I find it very hard to define either as my true home.

Growing up we moved a lot, every two to four years we moved because my dad had a transferable job. It did not affect me so much, infact I used to like it. Every move implied a fresh start, new friends, and new sense of discovery. I never felt out of place, even on the first day in a new place, new school, and new people. I loved the new smells, sounds, and tastes of new places. But today, two very ‘familiar’ places are making me feel so distant and insecure. This feeling is very new to me. I have no name for it.

Today I share with you this pervasive feeling that has come over me that I may never know my purpose, my home. I may never get to realize the true essence of the things around me. I am on a path, but I am not sure if this is the right one or if this has a destination. I feel I have to let go of everything and ---

“Let the blow fall soon or late,
Let what will be o'er me;
Give the face of earth around
And the road before me.
Wealth I seek not, hope nor love,
Nor a friend to know me;
All I seek, the heaven above
And the road below me.”

 -- Vagabond, by R.L. Stevenson

Inner Peace

During January 2010, I took a 10-day meditation course. It had profoundly changed my life and made me shift my life completely. Since then I have been practicing on and off, not as much as I should. But because my perspective on life changed so much during those 10 days, I see things very differently in regular life.

I have been re-reading "An Ancient Path" by Dr. Paul R. Fleischman. I want to share a portion of the book here that has been on my mind lately, especially with the terrible incident that happened last week that shook me to the core.
__________________________

**There was a period of time when I set about the task of studying people who attained inner peace. What do they say? How did they do it? There are people from every era of history, every culture, who address this problem in one degree or another. Here is a conclusion that seems timeless and culture-free: there are two agendas that human beings share. One agenda is to be peaceful, to be happy, I want to find "more" to life. The other agenda is safety, security; that gold Cadillac may come in handy, or gold may come in handy, you can't trust other people, history if perfidious. There could be a war; I better situate myself in a good position. With two apparently competing agendas, very idealistic or simple philosophy might conclude, well, just walk the open road. Very pragmatic, very skeptical philosophy would say: make sure you know which side your bread is buttered on. But notably successful peace seekers throughout time and place have come up with what psychiatrists call the end of splitting. Splitting is where we divide human life into antagonistic partial answers. The end of splitting is where we make complex whole answers that take away divisiveness and produce skillfully integrated middle paths. The middle path of inner peace is to live a practical, competent, skillful, worldly life, during which every moment is also infused with the spirit of harmony and peace. Peace is part of survival, not its antagonist. Rather dividing or splitting adaptation and harmony, you fuse them.

Successful lives of inner peace exemplify competence illuminated.
__________________________

I seek now to find that middle path. It's a journey, and I am very happy to be in that search-mode. It makes my life so much more meaningful. In everything I do, I try to rise above the 'splitting'. It is not always easy, it is actually very hard. It takes a lot of self control and understanding. Every time I make a small progress, it gives me great happiness since I know I am on track. This is my life's purpose now. I know it will let me live an invigorating life. That is my definition of Happiness.



**This has been copied from the chapter "Cultivating Inner Peace" from the book  "An Ancient Path" by Dr. Paul R. Fleischman. All rights belong to the author.

Solutions for the US Economic woes

Everyone seems to be talking about the fiscal cliff. It is in the air we breathe these days. So I thought I will also put my two cents into the mix, for whatever it is worth....

Here are my solutions to US' economic woes ---

Tax Consumption not Income. I think making money/ having an income is a good thing. Why would you want to tax that? As a small business, I need to pay payroll taxes when I hire an employee and then that employee also pays taxes on the money he/she makes. What is my incentive to hire if I have to pay a tax to hire? When when you tax something, you tend to reduce the 'sale' of that commodity. We should not tax payroll/ income. Instead, we should tax consumption. Americans are the most wasteful consumers in the world. Here, it is all about buy, consume, and dispose. ("Amrika mein kehte hein - thoda khao, thoda pheko.") That habit needs to be changed if we want to have a sustainable planet. Let's tax the consumption and rein the uncontrolled spending on consumer items. They do this in Canada and Australia, and people still survive there! I will gladly pay 15% extra on a gas guzzling car or a fancy Louis Vuitton suitcase. I vote for the luxury tax, if I want something fancy which is not a basic need, I should pay the premium for it.

Delete / Reduce Corporate Tax. US has the highest corporate tax rate. Every tax season we hear that all the big multinational corporations take their earnings outside of the country. But we, the small businesses, cannot do so. We are stuck in the US with the exorbitant corporate tax. I am not sure how the government thinks that if they tax us more we will help build the economy. If they are thinking that by taxing corporations they are taxing rich people, they are totally wrong. Please tax the rich people directly, not the corporations!

Eliminate the Mortgage Deduction. We own a nice little home in San Diego. And I will admit that it is a stretch for us to pay the mortgage every month. In spite of that, I am for eliminating the homeowners interest deduction on our taxes. I feel that this deduction messes up the calculations of home ownership and subsidizes the acquisition of grander and fancier homes, which in turn leads Americans to lead a life they cannot afford. This deduction supports the consumer culture too. I have grown up in India and also spent couple years in Australia. Both these countries do not have these deductions and the 'dream' of home ownership still stays strong. By the way, why should the 'American Dream' have to be linked with purchase of a home? Why can't it be just a good happy life? When I came to the US, I believed that 'pursuit of happiness' was the key to American success. It is very sad to see that the people and government here believes 'pursuit of home-ownership' is an American right and that you can be a happy American only if you have a home to your name.

Tax Carbon. I am very happy to see that there are not as many Hummers on the roads these days as they were a decade ago. May be it is the price at the pump or maybe it is something political? I do not know. But I believe that carbon tax is a kind of consumption tax and need to be levied on every item of consumption. As I said before, Americans are the most wasteful society on this planet and it is time we pay the price for it. If we use it, we should pay for it. Period. This tax will be an incentive for us not to pollute the environment due to our consumption addiction. Why should the whole world pay the price for wasteful consumption? Tax carbon and give the proceeds to the EPA!

Legalize Marijuana. I am so happy to see that Washington and Colorado has legalized marijuana. Shame on you, California! A lot of money is spent by the government prosecuting criminals of marijuana while it does not have any major effect on the planet's well being. This legalizing of marijuana can reduce spending by the government, and if it is taxed (like cigarettes and alcohol), it will bring in revenue too. That is the economic side of things. Legalizing marijuana will not make every person a drug addict - if that was the case Netherlands would have been wiped off the map by now. If only the Federal government could see some sense on this issue. Legalizing marijuana may deliver the death blow to the Mexican/South American drug trade and 'save the planet'! Oh! Wishful thinking on my part....

Decouple Employment from Health Insurance. Last but not the least, I feel that we should not have employers offer health insurance to employees and their families. Yes, I do depend on my husband's employer to cover my health insurance. But that is because I do not have any other choice! Employers should focus on developing the employee as the best person capable of delivering the work product that the company provides in the marketplace. Just as the employer does not provide housing or transportation to its employees, they need not provide health insurance. The way to do that is to eliminate the health-insurance tax write-offs. I heard on the radio that this deduction costs the government about $200 billion per year. It just does not make sense to me. Just as we shop for car insurance in the wide marketplace, why can't we shop for the best health insurance? The employer's 'entitled' health care plans, in my opinion, makes people get better coverage than they need and then use it more often, and as a result drive up the cost of health care for everyone. And yes, I agree that everyone, yes everyone, should have a healthcare insurance policy, no exceptions.

Well, I am no economist. Over the last year, through the presidential run and beyond, the air waves have been incessantly buzzing about the economy. I have listened and formed my own opinions. They are a bit controversial, but I believe that it will help the US (and the world) if followed. I also know that no one cares about what I think. Ha!

How should I love?

Beauty of Orchid Beach, Frazer Island, Australia
White sands, high surf, airstrip, highway, great white sharks - all in one spot...

Their love was strong. Funny thing, they did not realize it until one of them moved on. He was left standing behind heart-broken and unable to overcome his grief. He was not ready. They were together for 40 years. They nurtured their love through many storms, hanging in there through it all. She left suddenly, zap! That's how life happens! What is there to live for, he asks?

She caught him stealing a glance at her when he thought no one will see, but their eyes met. Two hearts fluttered in unison for one moment and then the memory remained for a lifetime. Life for each on separate tracks. The possibilities are too difficult to comprehend, there will be hurt and lots of it. Too much risk, not sure it will be worth the reward. Let the unknown remain so.

They had lived together for 40 years, with children, jewelry, homes, cars, and all the shiny possessions. They were neighbor's envy, they faked it well. No, they did not know they were faking it! They were living an agreement that comfortably suited both. In their bond of convenience was strong enough to last a lifetime. Their love was stable, the rock.

She met him at a friend's place, he fell in love. Fairy-tale courtship and romance followed, complete with the evil queen trying to break them apart. They survived the hurdles and managed to live happily ever-after, or did they?

Is love measured by passion? Or, is it measured by stability? Is it measured by pain? Or, is it measured by consistency? How should I love?

Love and Fantasy, they say, go hand in hand....
I agree....

Improv and Me

For the last four months I have been taking Improv classes at the San Diego National Comedy Theater. I steadily moved on from Level I to Level II, and now I am going to graduate Level III. Our graduation show is on Wednesday, September 26th, where we will be performing in front of a live audience. Along the way, I have had some great teachers: Jamie (Level I) and Mike (Level II and III). I owe them a lot!

What is improv? We do it all the time in our daily lives. At any given moment when we are interacting with other people, we do not know what the other person is going to say next, but we almost always have an answer for them. That is improvisation! The difference is that in real life, you are yourself all the time, but when you are on that improv stage you have to be a character that you fabricate in a split second on stage or go with the character your colleague on the stage has assigned to you. That is the hard part. You have to leave all notions of "self' outside and get up on the stage as a naked no-name person. On stage you put on the shell of the character and act as him/her. It is quite challenging and for almost all of Level I, we had the trouble to leave our ego behind. In Level II, the challenge was letting go of the competitive spirit. You are not trying to out-smart the other person on the stage or show-off your comedy skills. All you do is "Yes-And" your partner on stage. You accept whatever the your partner says, not deny it, and then build on it. You are not trying to deliver clever lines, you are just trying to act your part the best way you can. And as you make a fool of yourself, the audience enjoys. In Level III, with more practice, it all sinks in. You realize that you are up on the stage only to make the audience happy, no matter what you do, if there is a laugh or any reaction from the audience, you have earned your time on stage. I have thoroughly enjoyed my improv experience. I wish I could do this more. I don't think I have it in me to take this on as a career, I just want to practice more. Let's see, I will have to find opportunities to do that.

Why did I chose improv? Many reasons. Lets start with the the story on how I discovered improv. I have to confess, when they used to show "Whose Line is it Anyway" on TV, I did not like it much. I did not get the point of the show and wondered why someone would create a "show where every thing's made up and the points don't matter". But I watched it since hubby liked it. This was when we lived in North Carolina and somehow had the time to watch TV! Fast forward to March 2012, I happened to hear Alan Alda being interviewed on NPR and talking about the Center for Communicating Science where they are trying to teach engineers and scientists to talk and connect with people. I got intrigued. Hey, I am an engineer! I could use some communication skills! I researched that program and since it was on the other coast, obviously I could not attend any of those courses. But I did find out that they use improvisation techniques to 'loosen up' engineers and scientists. That stuck with me and then after a few emails back and forth with the Center, I convinced myself that I will have to learn improvisation myself. Fortunately for me, there was a fantastic opportunity to learn the craft here in San Diego!

There are other reasons for picking improv too. Some are very personal. My mother passed away this year suddenly with cancer of unknown primary. I spent three months in India trying to help her and failed. When I returned back to the US in March, I was grieving, I felt lost, I was in a terrible shape emotionally and was finding it very hard to reconnect with the world. I desperately needed a distraction, something to take my mind off for couple hours a week, something to engage myself and forget the deep hole in my heart. Improv helped a lot. I made new friends, my colleagues were from professions very different from mine. Their life experiences and attitudes were very different too. It was very nice to find these people. Growing up I led a very focused life, we lived and hung out with folks of the same kind - engineers. My dad envisioned that I will grow up and become one and my family made sure that I was not distracted with any other career options. It was all study, no hobbies, no play, no fun. Even at school I was somewhat a pariah, no friends. There was not much fun in my life back then and I really did not learn how to have fun, how to let go and relax, how to just live in the moment and savor the happiness. This training of 'not to enjoy' stuck with me through adulthood. About the time I turned 30, I realized that I can do other things. But I found myself tied up with responsibilities, job, etc. and spent the next four years lamenting on lost chances - if only I had learned to draw and paint, if only I had spent time singing, if only I had learned to play an instrument, if only I could learn to write, if only I had gone to chef school, if only ..... About 2010, a door opened inside me and the person said - Stupid! It's no use thinking 'if only', just do it! If you want to learn singing, do it. If you want to cook, do it. If you want to learn acting, do it. Since then, I am looking for ways to advance my skills. I have been focusing all my free time on learning a new skill, does not matter what it is, it just has to be something that I find interesting. The best part is that I get the opportunity to meet new people, learn their stories, connect with them at a different level. This is very liberating. I am slowly training my right brain to wake up and become active. It has been a fabulous experience for me. I feel so alive. The world seems full of possibilities everyday. I feel as if I have a crush on life!

So, I welcome you to come watch me make a fool of myself and enjoy it! For more details click here.

White Cotton Sarees with Red Border

".... who possessed Beauty without Vanity,
Strength without Insolence,
Courage without Ferosity,
and all the virtues of Man without his Vices."

Lord Byron wrote these lines for his beloved dog, Boatswain. It very eloquently describes the vices we humans possess and find very hard to shed in our lifetime. For me it is a constant journey and I find myself going adrift often, then my little boys, Freo and Ozzie, manage to put me back on track.

Yesterday I was reminded of this poem during a conversation. A lady was telling me how every festival season she donates cotton sarees (white with red border) to orphans. The orphans do not ask for it, but she does that on her own volition. The sarees are cheap, about a dollar and half per saree. I wore them for a fortnight during the mourning period for my mother earlier this year. I found them quite comfortable and soft after the first wash, especially for the Indian summer. But they are definitely not akin to the fashionable sarees that we wear during the festival seasons. I think many affluent people donate like this during the festival seasons or during a disaster, it is usually prescribed by the religion they follow and it also makes them feel good. And in theory, it seems to be a great thing to do. Give your money to the poor and the needy. Big countries do it, they give aid to the 'less fortunate' countries.

So what is the problem? The issue is not with the gift, but with the sensitivity of the giver and the assumptions behind the gift. Ask Anshu Gupta who runs Goonj. On a cold January night Anshu went outside AIIMS, and dropped a lot of used clothes for the people camped outside. Coming from other states to this government run hospital for affordable treatment, these people were not equipped for the Delhi winter and they did not have spare money either to buy woolens. Anshu noticed an elderly lady rummaging through the clothes. She put aside many good pieces. So, Anshu asked her what she was actually looking for? She said that she wanted a black shawl. It was midnight and it was freezing, why the fixation on black? She replied that she had a red saree and the black colored shawl will match well.* That day Anshu realized that even the poorest of the poor have dreams. They have preferences too. They have needs, but their needs do not match the giver's donation all the time. There is a gap, and sometimes this gap is so large that it voids the goodness in the act of giving. Unfortunately this pattern is repeated all the time with donations during disasters or festivals. It happens on the people scale and on the the scale of countries. And it is a reflection of the inherent vices in the human condition that does not always allow us to shed our vanity, insolence, and ferocity and act with beauty, strength, and courage.

All is not lost. People like Anshu exist. We just have to hope that more Anshus are born everyday. Social entrepreneurs are working round the clock around the world and there seems to be the start of a change. Seven decades of 'aid' to Africa did not do much good. Now we see organizations like Water For People working on a empowering the poor at a whole different level. May be not in my lifetime, but I hope that soon thereafter this force of will shine through and it will be a different happier world.

--------------------------------------
* This story is from Rashmi Bansal's book "I have a Dream" where she chronicled 20 inspiring stories of social entrepreneurs.

Life as we know it....

Recently I came across this picture while surfing the net while looking for something totally random.

Pale Blue Dot

This is the picture of our blue planet seen from Voyager I in 1990 some 3.7 billion miles away. When I saw the picture, it was quite a humbling experience for me. We seem to be living our lives on that little dot and in our own egotistical world we think every moment is so important. We strive for power, for money, for love, for adulation, and for so much more. Yet we are so insignificant in the whole scheme of things.....

As I was lost in these thoughts, I came across the words of a great man expressing the same thoughts much more eloquently than I ever can. So, here are his words. May be this picture will touch you the way it touched me.

"But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and in triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity – in all this vastness – there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." -- Carl Sagan, from "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space".