My horrible Math Skills - 3

In continuation of the last few posts, I give the Mind bender problem that figured in today's (29th September 2010) Bangalore Times. I got the solution so fast that I almost chose not to verify the answer given. The problem is as follows:

A total of 15 delegates from Africa, Asia, America and Europe meet at an international conference. Each continent sends a different number of delegates and each is represented by at least one delegate. America and Asia send a total of 6 delegates. Asia and Europe send a total of 7 delegates. Which continent has sent 4 delegates?

When I saw the problem, my mind seemed to simultaneously consider America, Asia and Europe. And when I saw the numbers 6, 7 and 4, my mind automatically zeroed in on the number 4 and by lateral thinking I assigned the number 4 to Asia as it was the common continent in the two data. Then I just happened to try whether it would work if by the ensuing obviously logical deduction that America sends 2 and Europe sends 3.  So if Asia=4, America=2 and Europe=3, evidently Africa must be 6. It seemed so simple!

Then when I looked at the answer, this is what I see:

How many delegates are from Asia? Since they make a total of 6 with those from America which has at least sent 1, they can be 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5. Three would be impossible since it would yield an equal number of delegates from America. 1 would yield 5 from America, 6 from Europe and hence 3 from Africa. This would be impossible, for one continent has sent 4 delegates. Two would yield 4 from America, 5 from Europe and 4 from Africa, which is impossible because Asia and America would have the same number.

How complicated the whole thing seems! Yes, the answer is infallible. But just to be doubly sure you are right and have eliminated all the other logical possibilities, is it worth the amount of trouble? But people scarcely seem to take the trouble when it concerns the problems of life. Take my friend for instance who readily betrays without a trace of fear. In fact after reading the above answer, I felt worried whether I had not considered any of the other logical possibilities. Then I felt how foolish of me! - When I've got the right answer.

Now I realize that most of the lateral thinking is divinely inspired. I wonder whether if one sets out to cultivate lateral thinking by reading books and practicing from them, one would really be successful!

Could my dismal failure in mathematics be a divine gift? Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev talks about cooking and child rearing. He says that a commercial establishment in Coimbatore tested several formulations in various percentages of rice and urad dal and pounded rice in an effort to get delectably soft idlis when cooked. He rightly says that it sounds stupid. His grandmother prepared soft, fluffy idlis every time she tried them out and all through her life. She simply seemed to know! He says that Man knows these things if only he would trust his intuition. It is only when you logically try to deduce an answer and by analysis, proceeding carefully step by step that these problems arise. You don't seem to know anything at all.

Jaggi also talks about an experience he had in the west. He came upon a book on child rearing and as he kept browsing through he saw among other stupid and irrelevant inanities, a direction to hopeful mothers that when a baby is 3 months old, the mother has to kiss the baby a specified number of times (say 45) in a day. So as he says, if from morning to evening she has been busy and decides to go by the book, she will have to kiss the baby 45 times between 6nd 7 p.m.  Before the advent of the ulta-modern age, mothers seemed to know when a baby needed a kiss and not deserved a kiss! 

To conclude I put forth two common quotes:

Reason takes you from point A to point B. Imagination takes you everywhere !

I don't know why but I give another quote that rings similarly:

Good girls go to heaven! Bad girls go everywhere !

My horrid Math Skills - 2

Earlier I wrote to write about my inherent weakness in solving mindbender problems of the mathematical type. For some reason I never seem to get the inspiration to arrive at the solution. Others say that there is no such nonsense such as inspiration. It is your own inherent capacity - you either have it or you don't. Hence it happens that armed with this world view they see a successful person essentially as a talented person in his own right who doesn't have to owe thanks to anyone. No need of gratitude; no such things like providence and hence no such Provider.

Hence it has come about that some people are venerated beyond their dreams and aspirations, and othyers are condemned beyond their wildest nightmares. So you find a Bill Gates and you also find an Anand Jon - the Indian male model sentenced to 60 years of incarceration for an unfortunate sexcapade in the USA.

Such an obvious disparity strikes an impressionable mind. Even as a kid of 12, I wanted to be a world-famous cricketer like Sachin Tendulkar with as much glory as he is getting. As I grew into a college-going teenager, I wanted to be handsome and sought after by girls like Cary Grant and Gregory Peck. As I grew up and matured further, I wanjted to be a talented writer like Jorge Luis Borges. For some reason unknown to me, I wasn't too keen on wealth and did not fancy much getting rich. With these tendencies, when I fell in love, I became so deeply and helplessly attached that, when the universe chose to deny me the woman I loved, I fell headlong into deeper and deeper depression and had to face great shame and humiliation. For years I felt life was not worth living.

It was precisely for these reasons that, in the earlier days children, when they attained 8 years of age used to be sent to a good teacher who was an ardent devotee of a Guru who would ensure to prevent such desires from cropping up in the minds of young kids.

And then began a series of events that was to give me an understanding of the way the universe works. I became a mystic of sorts. (Came across a good definition of Mystic - a person who wants to know how the universe works, but is too lazy to study physics !) I came to acquire a degree of peace.  I suspend judgment, and in a feeble hypocritical attempt to retain some humility, I just call it Grace.

Now I have come to believe in inspiration and this will be discussed in the next post.

Where does the leap of reason spring from?

I am singularly weak in mathematics. For some reason the type of intelligence that is needed to be adept at mathematics has eluded me totally till now. When I sometimes see some math puzzles and the solutions that are given to them, I am amazed at the 'leap of reason' at certain crucial steps, and to my limited understanding, such leaps of reason are simply divine! I am amazed how one could think of a step like that? Even more astounding to me is, how on earth could one conceive of a problem like that! Take the 'Mindbender' Puzzle that figured in the Bangalore Times section of The Times of India today (28th September 2010):

My brother Julian is a little simple. I recently asked him to buy some ribbon for my daughter's pretty pink bonnet. He went to the haberdashery shop for the required length and accidentally interchanged the feet and inches. When I measured the resulting ribbon, I only had 5/8th of the length I required. How much ribbon did I originally ask for?

 I thought of trying my hand at the problem - specially now that I had a 'partial understanding of the way the world works', so I started off this way:

         1st Step : Since he got 5/8th of the length, that implies he lost 1 - 5/8 = 3/8 of the length.

         2nd Step: What number when multiplied by 1/12 (since 1 feet = 12 inches) causes a loss of 3/8 ?

         3rd Step:  So if the number is 'p' then (p)*(1/12) = 3/8
                          or p/12 = 3/8
                          or p = 36/8 or 4.5
          So is the answer 4 feet plus 0.5 feet or 4 feet and 6 inches?
Let us check: 
            Is 4 feet six inches 5/8ths the length of 6 feet 4 inches?
                    4 feet 6 inches is 54 inches and 6 feet 4 inches is 76 inches
                     So what is 54/78 ?
                      That is 9/13 and not equal to 5/8
                     Since I did not get the correct answer I QUIT !

     I decided to see the solution. Here it is :

    1st Step: Label what I asked for as A feet and B inches.  (Now who could think of that?)
    2nd Step: So I had to ask for (12xA + B)  but asked (12xB + A) (o.k. This is simple)
    3rd Step:Which means that :
                  (5/8)x(12xA + B) =  (12xB +A)             (o.k. This is also quite easy)
    4th Step: Simplifying the above equation gives :
                          A in feet = (91/52) x B                    (This too is simple)

   5th Step: As B is the number of inches, it can only be between 1 and 12 and must give A as a whole  number of Feet 

   6th Step: Which means that B is a number such that it should give 13 in the denominator as 91 is only divisible by 13 to give 7.

          ( In my understanding these 2 steps are an 'inspired' leap of reason)


  7th Step: And the number which cancels 52 to give 13 in the denominator is 4 .

  8th Step: So we have the Answer that B is 4 and A is 7.

     SO I HAD ASKED MY BROTHER TO GET ME 7 FEET 4 INCHES OF RIBBON AND HE BOUGHT 4 FEET 7 INCHES (A clear exposition helps).

If I were given such a problem in my high school examination, after my feebly attempted steps, I would have lapsed into a reverie - 'How old is the daughter? Is she sexy? Could she be of a friendly type or would she be moody? Is there a chance that she has a bobbed hair? O.K., if I meet her you know what I'll tell her? I'll tell her that...' and so on I would go along for a whole quarter of an hour before realizing I was in an examination and had to get on with the other questions.

Which explains why I got just 35% marks, which is just the marks required to pass the examination, evidently given by a sympathetic examiner to ensure that I pass, maybe responding to a directive from the state government, to ensure that a particular percentage of students pass the examination to bring a good name to the government that it is doing well in the field of education.

                       xxx

This Post - Only For Shirdi Sai Baba Followers

In times of intense crises when crucial decisions about the course of life one has to take confront Sai Baba followers they frequently fall back on a few peculiar practices : 1. There exists a book of 100 or 200 answers. So Baba followers pray intensely asking him to 'RESPOND' to the crucial question they are about to ask, and after an intense prayer they open at random a page of the Answer Book and read the answer that the book gives which is purportedly Sai Baba's ANSWER to the question.

So you may have an anxious girl asking Baba whether to say 'Yes' to a particular groom proposal, or you may have a financial speculator asking whether to invest in a particular share and so on. These days with technological advances, computers have entered this activity where the program generates a random number and a suitable response is displayed. The programs on the net advise you to take this business very seriously and pray with intense faith and further the questioner is asked to accept the answer with tremendous faith and refrain from asking the question again.

So it was that I too like a fool once took part in this exercise. It so happened that in Sai Satcharita which is the sacred book of Sai Baba followers, everyone is advised not to abandon his own Guru however more famous or attractive another Guru may appear. I had this injunction firmly implanted in my mind. One day it so happened that while browsing through the collection of books at a bookshop my eyes fell on a book by Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev entitled 'Essential Wisdom from a Spiritual Master'. Somehow the style and contents of the book appealed to me and I bought the book. On going home and reading through the book I came across three jokes:

1. Once a businessman boarded a flight and found himself sitting next to an elegant woman wearing the largest, most stunning diamond ring he had ever seen. Awestruck he exclaimed, "Wow! That's a beautiful ring you have there!" The woman replied "Yes, this is the Schoreder diamond. It is beautiful, but it comes with a terrible curse."  "What curse?" asked the businessman. "Mr. Schroeder", answered the woman.

2. Once a hypnotist bombastically said he would take everybody in the hall together into a 'let go' state of hypnosis all at once. "I want you each to keep your eye on this antique watch. It's a very special watch. It has been in my family for six generations," he said. He slowly began to swing the watch gently back and forth, while quietly chanting "Watch the watch! Watch the watch! Watch the watch..." The crowd became mesmerized as the watch swayed back and forth, back and forth, light gleaming off its polished surface. Suddenly it slipped and fell from the hypnotist's fingers and fell to the floor, breaking in a hundred pieces.
            "Shit !!" said the hypnotist.
It took three weeks to clean up the theatre!

3. A man sat in a train traveling from Bristol to London, with a young boy of four years. Halfway through the trip another man with two big suitcases got on the train and sat next to him. The first man said "Those two suitcases look just like mine; are you a salesman too?" "No," the other man replied, "I'm on my way to the airport, I'm flying to Greece." Then he asked, "So what are you selling, anyway?"  "Condoms," the first man replied. Shocked, the other man said, "Condoms? And you're taking your son with you while you sell condoms?"  "Oh, this is not my son; it is a complaint from Bristol."

Now, I'm fairly well read too. And I have come across many witty jokes. However this was the first time I came across these jokes. Now a spiritual guru who shares jokes like these while talking about spirituality I found very, very attractive. The style and the content of the books besides various other jokes too made me fall for his teachings.

Now I had been advised by Sai Baba never to abandon your Guru. Further you are repeatedly warned in Sai Satcharita that if you disobey the Guru you may end up severely repenting the act. So I was in a quandary. I wanted Baba's permission to go to Jaggi Vasudev.

I hence came on the internet to the site that purportedly provides Sai Baba's RESPONSES to your questions and gingerly typed:
"Have you appointed Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev to be my Guru?" and pressed the Enter Key.

The response on the computer was:

"YOU HAVE TO SUFFER ONLY FOR THREE MONTHS MORE. REMEMBER SHRI SAI. EVERYTHING WILL BE ALRIGHT.

With a response like this I lost my guts. I dared not disobey Baba. I read thro' the book but scrupulously avoided enrolling for the yoga programs of Jaggi Vasudev. As months dragged on, I found the urge to be associated with Jaggi become stronger and stronger."   Finally, despite my own will, I found myself undergoing the Inner Engineering Course and even going on a Mount Kailash Yatra with them. From the past two days I'm being troubled in my mind whether to continue the yogic practices I learned from Jaggi Vasudev or not.

Today I chose to look into Sai Baba's crucial response to my question.  I found that Sai Baba had responded indeed but not answered my question!

Suppose you ask a man "Do you think it will rain today?" and he replies "Two plus two equals four." HE HAS ONLY RESPONDED TO THE QUESTION BUT HE HAS NOT ANSWERED IT! The response may even be factually true but it is certainly not the answer!  So on reconsidering the computer response and using my commonsense I choose to continue with the yogic practices. After all what might happen? I may get punished a little, but Baba is not a hangman!!

This entry is to highlight the futility of such practices that Baba followers like me foolishly follow.

This is supposed to be the way in which the famous oracle at Delphi responded too! Once upon a time, a powerful king - King Croesus of Lydia planned to wage a war on another powerful kingdom, the king of Persia in order to annex it. He was a little unsure and nervous of the result so he approached the Delphic oracle and asked whether it was wise for him to wage a war on the other king. "If Croesus went to war with Cyrus, he would destroy a powerful kingdom!" was the response of the oracle. Hence with a new found confidence and strong courage the king proceeded boldly to wage a war. However to his dismay he was thoroughly routed and his kingdom was destroyed. Afterward, his life being spared, Croesus wrote a bitterly complaining letter to the Oracle. His letter was answered by the priests at Delphi, who claimed that the Oracle had been right  In going to war Croesus had destroyed a powerful kingdom indeed - his own!

The Freebies of Partial Enlightenment !

Yeah! It is interesting to talk about the 'freebies' one gets on the path of enlightenment. There is only one hitch - you cannot claim any of the credit either to knowledge or to the intelligence of the piece of writing, or to the style of language or anything. Yet it is yours.

Now there is another aspect. That of remarkable coincidences. On the route to partial enlightenment one is often struck with remarkable coincidences that can leave one dumbfounded. These coincidences can make you conclude that a thought of yours, or again a particular action of yours caused a cloudburst in Bangalore resulting in some tragic deaths and so on. This can turn out to be scary for you tend to assume responsibility for all sorts of tragedies and human suffering. Then again, like it happened to me today, I wanted the telephone number of a former colleague of mine (Mr. Bhasker) since I was interested in getting some articles that I had penned and given to him for his consideration many years ago. The trouble was I didn't have his telephone number. So I rang up another colleague with whom I am in closer touch (Karthik) to fetch the number of Bhasker. So when I rang up Karthik, he told me that he wanted to in fact ring me up just to enquire how I was. Then again, on getting the name of Bhasker and ringing him up, he told me that he too was thinking about me and was intent on ringing me up or contacting me as he was perchance attracted to information on Mount Kailash which I had visited recently, as he had suddenly come up on the name of a certain Sadhu Sundar Singh and CHRISTIAN HERMIT IN A MOUNTAIN CAVE  - THE MAHARISHI OF KAILASH. Mr Bhasker asked me to consult the Internet by searching on 'Sadhu Sundar Singh'.


So it accidentally happened that I got the information that Sadhu Sundar Singh was born a Sikh at Rampur, Punjab in 1889. He converted to Christianity in 1903 after he had a vision of Jesus Christ while he was intent on attempting suicide. He first visited Tibet in 1908 before entering a Christian Divinity College in 1909. Abandoned his preacher's life in 1911 and again became a 'Christian sadhu'. And from Wikipedia I get the following: "That first year, 1912, he returned with an extraordinary account of finding a three-hundred-year old Christian hermit in a mountain cave-the Maharishi of Kailas, with whom he spent some weeks in deep fellowship."

For many years I've been strongly feeling (thinking?) that God is either not Muslim (Allah), Christian or Jewish (Jehovah), Hindu (Shiva, Vishnu, etc.) or Zoroastrian or is all of these. I tend to credit myself with having a rather secular and liberal viewpoint and in being broadminded. But could what I'm feeling and thinking be due to a reason outside me? Like being exposed to information about Sadhu Sundar Singh and such things for instance. In fact most of my readings that I came across by chance were such that it promoted a secular nature. Of course, it is also true that I had an inherent preference for such a bent of writings. But then, is it only the environment in which I was raised that is responsible or are there other factors that have not been given due importance. Why do you find a one year old (or maybe a two year old) child having strong preferences - some don't like curds, some have an inherent dislike for certain vegetables. So if by some outside chance I have a character that can be called 'liberal', 'good', 'progressive' how much credit must I appropriate to myself.

If such happenstances help to make this blog interesting am I to take the full credit?

At the Jayanagar 5th Block gardens.

It is just around 7:00 a.m.on 23rd Sept. 2010 as I start writing this article. Today I just decided to enjoy the crispness and the freshness of the dawn. I didn't care too much about exercising and just wanted to enjoy the chirping of birds and look at flowers and the pale green leaves of the hedges in the beautiful garden behind my house.

I ambled across to the park around 6:00 a.m. and watched the day break in gradually. It was my wish to see a clear blue sky, but it was moderately cloudy and it was unlikely that I would see the sun come up. But then there is a beauty of its own in a cloudy morning. I noticed a lot of dragonflies flitting about in the air. For a moment I saw that these were just flitting about randomly in a sort of Brownian motion. For a while I felt like wondering what they could really be up to! They were definitely not seeking the nectar of flowers because they were not hovering around flowers but were rather flitting about in mid air with nothing live in the vicinity. Then I wondered what, in fact, were they seeking. Is it worth a study?

(Today (April 16th 2013) I learnt that dragonflies are carnivorous and it clarified why they were not around flowers seeking nectar.  Perhaps it is worth a study !)

At that moment I stopped myself. Mankind has collected enough and more of such knowledge. I myself have remarked about the wondrous touch-me-nots. I envy the primitive man who perhaps watched their leaves fold in salutation to God even as a man touched them. There was magic in creation. Now the scientific Man knows that the leaves fold-up as water is expelled from one part of the leaf to another. The magic has been removed from creation! We now have information, but how sad! How dry that information makes this world of ours. So for whatever reason those pretty dragonflies flit around I decide to just enjoy that magical moment.

And there was another magical moment too this morning at the garden. After I spent over three-quarters of an hour just enjoying nature, a young man and a young woman came and sat down on one of the other seats some distance away. They seemed to be doing some warming-up exercises, and after some minutes of watching them it became clear that the woman was leading the man in these exercises. As I kept watching out of curiosity I found the woman giving the orders rather firmly but soon the tenderness behind the sternness became obvious. After some more minutes of watching as the couple began practicing the chanting of the OM sounds, it became apparent that the man had an obvious health problem as he could not keep his voice at the required modulation. As I continued to watch with greater intensity I came to realize that the man had a slight degree of retardation. The man apparently looked older than the woman.

I just surmised, seeing the man's obvious handicap, that the couple must be a brother and sister and that the concerned woman was helping her brother cope with life. I felt like congratulating the woman, but  being of a reticent type, I just felt hesitant to approach the couple. After many minutes of dilly-dallying I found the urge to talk to the couple building up within me. Finally I went over and said:

                                 "Excuse me! Are you a brother and sister?"

                                 "No! We are husband and wife!", the woman replied.

On further questioning she told me that they were quite distant relatives and that she had married him to help him out in life.  My thoughts went back to my own nature at the same age - around 25 yrs. How I had intensely desired a pretty woman for her beauty and saw the contrast with this young lass. The woman's name I found out was Leela and the husband's name was Karthik, they perhaps live on the 11th Main, Jayanagar 4th Block.

Postscript: I'm adding this  on 24th Sept. because I chanced to see a question in Yahoo! Answers which was worded "What is beauty to a blind man?"  Ms. Leela of the above episode looked homely to my eyes, but if I were blind would I have found Leela extremely beautiful?

My Teacher

I have a Teacher whose contribution to my well-being I am yet to fully appreciate. But I seem to get a rough idea of how it could be. Suppose you are about to make a 3000 mile long journey. You are sitting in a craft as a pilot and have just taken off. Suppose a person comes over and makes a slight three degree shift to the right, in the direction in which the craft was headed almost at the very beginning of the journey. Suppose you just accepted that direction shift without much knowledge about where it would lead. And then suppose as time flowed on, and after a considerable distance has been covered, the landscape around you was getting more and more pleasant and you become more and more sure that you are traveling in the right direction and the destination is up yonder.  You may never guess the importance of the small change of direction at the very beginning of the journey! You may have initially been heading towards a desert!

My Teacher asked me to seek knowledge from my Guru. In accordance with those directions I prayed for knowledge.  I feel I was thence blessed with a degree of self-awareness that my Teacher didn't seem to possess. My Teacher had blessed me with a certain set of procedure for my spiritual uplift, but I surmise (I stress that I only surmise) she didn't quite know the logical purpose or the reasons why the procedures worked. It apparently appears so to my perception.  However the Guru's directions to me clarified the purpose of the procedure to me (I add that it could be only one of the purposes among several others that I do not know).

And in accordance with the innate human tendencies I had mentioned in my previous blog entry, I sort of judged my Teacher for a lack of self-awareness that I seemed to perceive in her. This after my Teacher only had directed me as to what to ask my Guru for !! I do feel quite contrite now but I do keep my fingers crossed that I do not make a grave error by being ungrateful.

One of the main steps that spirituality advises is a set of procedure to still your mind. The more restless and rapidly flitting your mind is, the greater is the danger you are supposed to be in. So before anything else, the Teachers try to still your mind and to achieve this you may be advised a Mantra to suit your personality or even advised to watch your breathing. The mind - body - breath interconnection has been given a great degree of importance in Yoga and if one is really open, one can get to experience how watching your breathing and thence regulating it can bring a degree of stability to a troubled mind.

The advice that is frequently given in India to respect your teachers is to forewarn you about the tremendous value that lies in the teachings that you are to get and the extent to which they can change your life.

          xxx

Mt. Kailash - Manasarovar - Pretty pictures !

Dusk at Manasarovar. The planet Venus is seen shining bright.












An artistic Tibetan Building at Changan village near Millarepa cave.












Ramesh Perumal on a Chinese bike near Paryang.

Mountain adjoining Mt. Kailash.

Farewell to Car drivers before our return to Nepal.

Perilous road prone to landslide on our way to Kodari.

A meandering river in Tibet.

Another river landscape.

Trek buddies:L to R  Author, Udaykumar Naik, Ramesh Perumal, Mahesh Acharya and Balamurugan.

Tibetan girls in modern attire.

Some Tibetan women - both traditional and modern.

Ramesh and his Tibetan porter.

Mahesh Acharya (L) and Balamurugan at the gardens of Hotel Shanker.

Mt. Kailash - Manasarovar Sojourn - 10

The last aspect of the Kailash - Manasarovar Sojourn consisted of a three kilometer trek up a streamlet issuing forth from Mount Kailash. The path is a mildly steep gradient that commences with a grassy surface but soon transforms after a short while to a valley strewn with granitic and basic igneous boulders that makes the trek a little difficult. As one ascends, you chance to see the grandeur of the valley around Dirapuk and the Tibetan village at a distance. Mt. Kailash looms large over the valley as we approach closer and closer. After a considerable ascent, the troop leader Swami Prabodha together with his associates performed with intense devotion a holy offering to Shiva in the vicinity of Kailash. Swami Prabodha led the whole group in various chants and mantras. It certainly was a very solemn occasion marked by total surrender to the power of the Divine.

After the adoration and worship of the divinity, some of us made a further climb along the valley up to  a point where Dilli's altimeter gave a reading of 5250 m (17,325 ft). At that point I collected a rock fragment that seemed to resemble the rock of Kailash parvat. I also collected a bottle of the holy water of the streamlet issuing from one of the glaciers of Kailash. After a round of silent meditation we headed back downwards towards the Dirapuk hotel. I would like to mention that Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev speaks that the rocks of the Kailash Parvat are of a metoritic composition. But to my perception and even in various photographs of the North Face of the Kailash Parvat I seem to see the presence of distinct sedimentary layering. While to my eyes the rock appeared to be a layered ferruginous chert, I cannot deny that the boulders in the stream that we traversed were mostly granitic, with a few resembling mafic igneous rocks. But I did collect a fragment of a ferruginous chert cobble, which to my perception formed the upper layers of the Kailash Parvat. In my assessment it didn't resemble a meteoritic rock.

(Top) The hotel at Dirapuk in the distance. The village settlement is seen on the opposite hill slope.


Left (3 km trek upwards toward Mt. Kailash)




The rest of the day after returning to the camp was spent in light-hearted banter and relaxation. Thus the final aspect of the Mt. Kailash - Manasarovar Sojourn drew to a close.

Mt. Kailash - Manasarovar Sojourn - 6

It was quite late by the time we left Saga on our way to our next destination at Paryang situated at a distance of 235 km from Saga. We could leave only by 10:00 a.m. local time.   This route is quite treacherous and we had to pass sites where the roads were actively under construction, and the prevalent rock types (purple, green and carbonaceous shales and in variegated colours) yield a rather clayey mud that forms a thick gooey slush through which the cars have to negotiate. One of the cars lost direction and missed the path and came down a precariously steep slope that left the occupants of the vehicle quite rattled.

(Photo below: Highway where we were stranded by the authorities)

Along this muddy and bumpy route that rattles your bones, you find that the authorities block large tracts of the path and force the convoy over the rough countryside. It may even happen that the road authorities may deny permission to move ahead and forcing you to spend hours on end stranded in the middle of nowhere. This is precisely what happened to our convoy around 11:45 a.m. or 12:00 p.m. when we were halted by the authorities who vaguely said that they may condescend to give us permission to travel further by 2:00 p.m. or failing which we would be permitted to move ahead only after 10:00 p.m. in the night. This was rather disconcerting and the leader of the team decided that in such an event we would move directly to Manansarovar without stopping at Paryang. Such a scheme of things would really be exhausting and we kept our fingers crossed that matters would not come to such a head. In the meantime we decided to put the time to the best possible use and finished our lunch as we waited. Luckily, the authorities cleared our passage by 2:00 p.m. and we headed on our way to Paryang.




Enroute we saw some wonderful arcuate sand dunes of quite large sizes that appeared very attractive in the golden glow of the late evening sun.

Arcuate Sand dunes

Sand dunes

For the first time after several hundreds of kilometers we saw a petrol filling station with filthy stinking toilets. It was the only gas station that I saw on the entire route.

After a drive of another hour or so we reached the village of Paryang at around 8:00 p.m. The hotel there is a very threadbare one with four beds to a room of rather small size. The toilets are in a miserable condition which forced many of our group members to go out in the open. We were warned about the dogs around here as they are reputed to feed on corpses of humans that are abandoned in the open air when they die. So we were advised to be wary about the dogs here which created an additional problem of going out to the toilet in the open air.  Later in the evening we had a satsang and around dinner time, the B3 Group which had left for Manasarovar around August 16th came to Paryang on their return trip to Katmandu.

In my effort to get some information on the difficulty of the Shershong - Dirapuk trek I was surprised to find every single man and woman advising me to take a pony for the journey. Not one person assured me that I could make it on my own steam. This was bad because the pony costs 1200 Yuan (Rs 9000) and I did not have that kind of money on me. Further, I viewed the trek as a challenge to my physical capabilities and I had undertaken to do it on foot as a religious observance and vow of some sort. After dinner we rested for the night.
(Photo Left: Hotel at Paryang)

Late evening Views of  Paryang Village at an altitude of 15000 feet in the Tibetan Plateau

Mt. Kailash - Manasarovar Sojourn - 1

For over 35 years, ever since I happened to trek vast parts of Arunachal Pradesh in 1975 and subsequently trekked parts of Kumaon Himalaya, I had heard of the Lake Manasarovar -  a large turquoise and emerald coloured body of freshwater occurring at dizzy heights of roughly 15,000 feet in the Tibetan Plateau, and I had nursed a dream of being able to visit the place. Back then, the Chinese were still wary of granting permission to outsiders to visit these places. Perhaps it was only in the early 1980s that Indian pilgrims were granted visas in limited numbers to visit Lake Manasarovar and circumambulate Mount Kailash. I myself had dreamt of making a trip through the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, but had refrained from taking active steps in this direction as I was not too confident of my physical abilities for the arduous journey.

During the past ten years I had constantly heard of private tour operators from Nepal who offer an opportunity for the trip in a much easier way from Katmandu and traversing through extensive tracts of the Tibetan plateau in motorized vehicles to reach Manasarovar and Mount Kailash and I was always keen on exploring the possibility. It so happened that my spiritual quests led me to an intimate association with the Isha Foundation, Coimbatore and when I heard that this Organisation also offers a trip to Kailash and Manasarovar, I felt doubly blessed. I immediately picked up the strings to explore the possibility of making the Mt. Kailash – Manasarovar Sojourn and felt happy that I had done their Inner Engineering Course on my own volition and interest, which in fact they lay down as a statutory stipulation before they enroll you as a member on the Kailash trip. One thing led to another, and I found myself as a part of the B4 group of the Isha sojourn to Kailash – Manasarovar for the year 2010 after having been found medically suitable to make the trip on their examination of my medical reports.  I left Bangalore for Delhi on the 19^th of August by rail, and on reaching Delhi on the 21^st, immediately boarded a flight to Katmandu, Nepal.



A bus transported the group from the airport to a fairly comfortable three star hotel called ‘Hotel Shanker’. I was allotted a twin-sharing room with a fellow traveler from Bangalore, Mr. Balamurugan. The room though comfortable and spacious was unfortunately a split-level room with a steeply descending stairway to the beds and the bathroom.  This aspect made it a little uncomfortable, but we were amply compensated by the excellent service and the tasty food that was served.  

Right: Split-level room - a rather inconvenient arrangement. The entrance is seen on the top.

The hotel has a neat garden with lush lawns and flowering plants and on the whole we were quite pleased with the arrangements. A swimming pool that was on the premises was very enticing, but prudence prevailed over adventure as none of us risked catching a cold before our main trip to Tibet was to begin.

The bell-boys, butlers and staff were very courteous and on the whole we had a very comfortable two-day stay.

During our stay at Katmandu the organisers had arranged for a visit to the Pasupathinath temple. The Nepali guides try to entice you to offer expensive 'sevas' and poojas by misleadingly telling you that it would guarantee a speedy darshan, but if you approach the guards at the doors and tell them that you just need a darshan, they let you in for a quick view of the deity and subsequent hasty exit. The Pashpathinath Temple has four doors in the four directions and likewise the shiva linga has four faces - the eastern door is known as Tatpurusha, the one facing south is known as Aghora, and the ones facing west and north are known as Sadyojatha and Vamadeva respectively. The present temple is supposed to be roughly 400 years old, though the locale of the temple has been an active religious and spiritual centre for several hundreds of years.

  We later visited the Stupa at Boudhnath which has 13 steps and a lotus shaped structureon the top. At the very top of the Stupa there is supposed to be a chimney-like conduit, down which kings and royals are supposed to have cast down precious jewels and money.   As a consequence, these stupas are supposed to contain a lot of wealth within them. At the outer periphery of the stupa are fixed several cylindrical wheels with Buddhist prayers engraved on them, which devotees set in rotatory motion as they repeatedly circumambulate the stupa.

  The Boudhnath Stupa is surrounded by several shops marketing antiques, art, music CDs and clothes. A small Tibetan Buddhist monastery also is seen where Tibetan monks were chanting sacred mantras. We also visited an art gallery where artisans were painting very intricate paintings on specially treated canvasses made from cotton and wax and rubbed with a polished rock and using carefully selected vegetable and mineral dyes. These paintings, called 'Thanka Paintings'  largely depict stories from the life of Buddha and include elaborate detail and are very skillfully executed.(See below)

Later in the afternoon we visited the Dakshin Kali temple about 50 to 60 km from Katmandu. The guide plodded us to do some steep climbing of steps as a preparation of what was to come further in the trip. These were the activities of August 22nd 2010.

 

                        Right : Dakshin Kali Temple

INTERPRETATION OF DREAMS

Interpretation of Dreams

Perhaps Sigmund Freud is somewhat overrated. Or is he? I'd assume from my later experience of people that people's dreams are more likely to be Freudian if they have read Freud or know somethings about his theories. People innocent of Freudian structures just dream and that's it.

Like this friend of mine once had a dream. He dreamt that some archaeological digging was being done in 'Ayodhya in Greenland' (sic) and that his son picked up a beautiful vase and went running. My friend is supposed to have shouted to his son 'Don't break it!!'

If I were to add that I had visited Greenland in 1982, perhaps that would clue everyone to believe that the dream was somehow related to me. Freud famously links objects like 'vase' to symbolically represent women for obvious reasons and that his son picked up the vase should leave no doubt as to who that woman is. What about breaking the vase? Evidently it has to do with violating the woman. But my friend is no ignoramus of geography and why did he come to dream of Ayodhya in Greenland. Obviously in his mind, for some reason, he links up a scoundrel like me to the likes of Sri Rama. But what would I have to do with his wife?

It might be useful to draw attention to the fact that I had borrowed Rs20,000/- on my personal guarantee of paying up the money to help another friend who had a penchant for charitable deeds. This other friend was seeking to finance someone who was in financial trouble. So I took it upon myself to borrow the amount from this guy on my personal guarantee. Another fact is that at the same time all of us had seen a very nice French film 'Vincent, Francois, Paul & others' by Claude Sautet. Yves Montaud - one of the main character is portrayed in a very sympathetic light who deals with his estranged wife in a very straight and cordial manner and even seeks her financial help. Having been influenced by the film and my trifling act of helping a friend in a monetary way, perhaps he unconsciously came to mistakenly associate my character with Sri Rama !!! Try as I did to draw his attention to all the complexities of his dream by saying to him several times that it was a favourite film of mine, he never took the hint.

He is supposed to have had another dream. In that he dreamt that he was sitting in a bus traveling to Belgaum, but some time during the journey he fell asleep. However when he woke up he found that he was in Tel Aviv, and in the dream he is supposed to have asked a girl as to which place that was. The girl told him somewhat crossly "Can't you see with your eyes. Its Tel Aviv". And when he looked around he found buildings with chandeliers and the works. When I asked him why in one dream he considered Greenland and in another Tel Aviv, he told me that Greenland was extreme north and Tel Aviv was more west than Belgaum.

As I can see he tends to exaggerate in his dreams. For one thing, my friend is a little too thrifty, so he exaggerates his weakness to call himself a Jew (Tel Aviv, Israel, Jew, Shakespeare etc). Likewise he grossly exaggerates my so-called large heartedness with Sri Rama. Ayodhya which is to the north of Bangalore is exaggerated to be in Greenland, which is even further north. And Belgaum which is to the west of Bangalore is exaggerated to Tel Aviv which is likewise further west.

Such are the dreams of the sophisticated. How do the simple ones dream? A junior colleague of mine always told me that he never ever dreams. He had told me so over a period of one or two years of talking to me. One day he came to me and said "Sir! Today I had a clear dream that was strongly registered in my mind! I dreamt that Shiridi Sai Baba came and told me 'Bete! Neenu illivarigu ninagoskara badukidiya! Inna mele bere avarigoskara baduku'" Except for the first word that is in Hindi (meaning Son!)the dream was essentially in Kannada and means "Son! Till now you have lived for yourself! From now on live for others!"

My wife too reports that a majority of her dreams are either about temples, or gods, or Sai Baba (her guru). Wonder what Freud's take on this would be!

Viva Ms. Ungleesh !

Ms. Ungleesh


This story is about the days when sex determination of fetuses by ultra-sound scanning was rampant in India and was not yet outlawed.

It was very common in North India, especially in the smaller mofussil towns, for families to use the services of ultrasound scanning centres to determine the sex of their unborn child. A female child would cause untold anxiety to wedded couples as it would mean that they had to make intense preparations for saving up substantial amounts of money and wealth to pay as dowry to get their daughters wedded. Male babies caused no such anxieties and were considered the harbingers of wealth and prosperity, besides being assured agents to lead its parents to heaven and salvation after their deaths – something which only male children could do.

In such circumstances female fetuses were rampantly aborted all over the Indian subcontinent leading to a rather unhealthy and precarious male:female sex ratios that finally led the Indian Government to ban the usage of sex determination of unborn babies.

It was under such circumstances that Ms. Ungleesh was born. Although the name, to those who are familiar with Hindu names, strongly suggests a male gender, it is actually the name of a girl. A rather uncommon name though! But how she came to be named so is a story of extraordinary and surprising awareness for a fetus within the womb of an anxious mother.

It is said that when the mother went to an ultrasound clinic for scanning, and while she was being scanned in the abdomen, the fetus had positioned its hand with its finger projecting strategically in such a position that the doctor had no doubts whatsoever that the fetus was indeed a male. The photograph of the scan was also provided and the doctor confidently showed the proud parents the evidences of the baby being a boy. The parents returned home mighty pleased with themselves and pleased with the good fortune that had blessed them with a future boy. Being devotees of Shiva they had decided to select a name that would reflect the potencies of Shiva.

When the delivery actually did happen, it turned out to everybody’s surprise that the child was in fact a baby girl. The parents were shocked beyond their wildest expectations. How had the doctor been misled? On a careful scrutiny of the images they did realize that the fetus had fooled all of them by a clever use of a finger. Astounded by the remarkable awareness even when in the womb, they had no doubt that it was one of the potencies of Shiva that in fact had manifested as the baby girl. And the proud parents named the baby after the crucial feature of the baby’s body that had protected the child and evidently with the grace of Shiva. Hence the girl came to be given the name Ungleesh (Ungli – finger) – a seemingly masculine name for the charade she had played in great awareness despite being just a fetus in a womb.

When a Venkatachalaiah Died !

My father who is 92 years old has been frequenting the Jayanagar Shopping Complex daily for the past 30 years just to spend a few happy moments with other elderly folks who come there for similar reasons. He says it is the fourth batch of elderies that are current there now – the other three batches having expired gradually, one following the other. Perhaps in his group he is one of the senior-most who is strong enough to walk up to the complex unaided. He sits there with others and chats up the political and social scene of Bangalore and the whole lot of them eye young maidens who (alas!) are beyond their reach.

The news of death among one of their group is fairly common occurrence. It so happened that one day somebody brought the news to the group that ‘Venkatachalaiah expired!’ So the group pooled in their funds and bought quite a big heap of flowers to be showered on the deceased.

As the group of elders headed towards Mr. Venkatachalaiah’s house and as they were in its vicinity, they found the said Venkatachalaiah coming out of the house and heading towards the Shopping Complex. They confronted the man with the news that he was supposed to be dead, and it was then that it struck them that it must be some other Venkatachalaiah. They felt relieved and the whole group including Venkatachalaiah headed back to the Shopping Complex. And upon arriving there, the heap of flowers was divided between the whole group, and of course, Venkatachalaiah got a portion too. The flowers were meant to be offered to God during the following day’s regular worship.

A Funny Incident In An Office

A FUNNY INCIDENT

A friend of mine is a small scale industrialist and is a Managing Director of his business. He has quite a few accountants and other clerks to run his business, and one of his assistants was a follower of Jainism.

It so happened that on a particularly tiring day of work when he could not apply his mind to the job in a meticulous manner due to being preoccupied with some personal concerns, the assistant approached this friend of mine for a seemingly small error and said:

“Ek chotti si galati hogaya saab! Is totalling mein maine aisa mistake kiya!”

My friend excused the error and said “Try and be a bit more careful!”

About an hour later the assistant again came to my friend and pleaded:

“Ek aur chotti si galati hogaya saab! Humne is letter ko Aisa likh ke bejdiya!”

My friend said “It’s o.k.! Like I said earlier, be a bit more careful!”

When the assistant came to my friend later in the day for the third time saying:

“Arre Saab! Ek chotti si galati aur hogaya! Humne …”

My friend interrupted him and said:

“Suno Mere Bhai! If the sculptor who carved out the Gomateshwara sculpture instead of carving the sex organ hanging down, had carved it erect and perpendicular to the body and said ‘Chotti si galati hogaya!’ would you keep quiet?”

He further said “Aisi chotti si galatiyan mat kiya karo!!”

Fear In The Mountains

Published in Deccan Herald, Magazine Section, July 12, 1987. Reproduced by Permission.

            In the month of March 1975, I was carrying out geological traverses in the Kameng District of NEFA Himalaya.  I had started out from Delhi with two scientists of the Wadia Institute of Himalayan Geology and the three of us had traversed along the Bholakpong – Bomdila road up to a place called Jamiri Point. At Jamiri Point we parted company and I was left with a Kumaoni called Haiyath Singh, who played the dual role of a cook and field coolie.

            We shared a room in a tiny Border Roads rest house constructed mainly from wood and asbestos sheets. The rest house was rather isolated and lonely, being about two km from Jamiri village which was upstream of the Tenga River.  The village settlement consisted of five or six huts and a Tibetan coffee shop. At Jamiri, the swift flowing Tenga River executed a very broad meander and flowed southwards in a narrow gorge.  The Bholakpong – Bomdila road bordered the Tenga river on its western side, and at a point where the river took a southerly turn, the road veered off to the left. The rest house was located beside the road just before the point where the road left the river.

            The sides of the valley were rather steep but that did not prevent the growth of a dense mixed jungle on either side of the river.  There was no electric supply anywhere nearby, and during the night one could see more stars than a city-dweller could imagine.  In the stillness of the night one could hear even the beating of one’s heart above the soft murmur of the river.

            After a tiresome journey one day, Haiyath Singh and I returned to the rest house around five in the evening and refreshed ourselves with some biscuits and a cup of tea. Later, I suggested that we go and get some cigarettes.  The shop was situated downstream and we had to walk two km in a direction opposite the village.  When we left the rest-house it was already dusk and one could barely see ten metres ahead.  We had walked some distance from the rest-house when our attention was attracted by the sound of a bell.  It was ringing intermittently and softly.  Ding-Dong… Ding-Dong… it went and rang again after a gap of a few seconds.  We could not discern which side of the river it was coming from.

            As we stood trying to locate the sound, we noticed a tiny red spark rise up, apparently from the river, on the other bank, become brighter and fall back into the river.  This was curious.  So we stood still for another half a minute when we saw the spark rise again and fall back.  Except for the ringing of the bell intermittently, and the soft gurgle of the flowing river, the silence hung so heavily that one could cut it with a knife.

“Saab, woh Kaali bhooth hai”, said Haiyath Singh in a soft whisper.

When I turned to look at him, I noticed that his eyes were crystallized with fright.  I could understand the cause for his fears, as he was from a remote village in the Almora District of Kumaon, where numerous superstitions are rife regarding ghosts and evil spirits.  We started walking away from the place towards the cigarette shop, and all the while I busied myself in allaying his fears about ghosts.  He persisted in relating various ghost stories of Kumaon and especially of the ‘Kali bhooth’ which was known to chase people, particularly young virgins, and set them ablaze.

            We reached the shop, purchased some cheap cigarettes that were available, and on our way back, the sound of the bell and the spark rising and falling were still there.

            We reached the rest-house and Haiyath Singh proceeded to cook dinner, which consisted of a few chapathis and dal. All the while he kept insisting that his ghost stories were true.  I could see that he was working himself up to a frenzy.  We dined around 8 pm, and by nine, having nothing much to do, put out the candle and lay on our beds.

            In the silence of the night and in total darkness, still wide awake, I could not help my thoughts racing back to Bangalore – thoughts of Central College, of beautiful young girls, and specially of the pretty girl I had left behind.  While I was enjoying my reverie, I began to hear the sound of the same bell faintly but distinctly and it was certainly far off.  More than the sound of the bell what had troubled me was the spark of fire rising and falling, for which I had no conceivable explanation.

            “Saab!” groaned Haiyath Singh.

            “Kya bhai”, I asked

            “Aap ko neend aayee?”

            I kept silent, and in a while, he rose up and lit the candle.  In the feeble glow of the candle light, I could see that his face was contorted with fear. The light cast eerie shadows on the wall, and in the stillness of the cold Himalayan night, the intermittent sound of the bell was disconcerting.  The grave expression on Haiyath Singh’s face was not very assuaging either. Then there was that inexplicable spark of fire. And those gruesome ghost stories.

            The bell was getting closer and closer and in a few minutes it sounded just outside our rest-house.  Haiyath Singh threw up.  I was disconcerted. I decided to settle the matter once and for all. Lighting up a torch, I crept out of a door which opened to the rear of the rest house, avoiding the front door, and trudged slowly around the building towards the barbed-wire fence, from which direction the sound was coming. I shone the torch in the direction of the sound, but could not see anything from the distance. I stood still for a while, and when matters seemed pretty safe, I mustered up enough courage to take a few steps in the direction of the bell, the sound of which was now mixed with the rustling of leaves.

            In a few steps all was clear. There stood a brown horse munching away merrily. And around its neck was tied a bell. I could not help smiling. I walked back to the room and reported the matter to Haiyath Singh. He still would not believe what I was saying, so I was forced to drag him out the front door to show him the horse. I am still not convinced his mind was set at rest after seeing the horse, for when he woke up the next morning, he was complaining of a headache. I was still troubled about the spark and decided to investigate it the next day.

            We left the rest-house early next evening and went and sat down at the spot. A little later, just before dark, we saw a fisherman arrive on the narrow eastern bank of the river.  Haiyath Singh told me that it was the practice even in Kumaon, to cast the net in the river after dusk, when the fish cannot see clearly and are easily caught. He squatted hunched beside the river. A little later he lit up a beedi.  Then the whole thing became clear. He would cup the lit beedi in his palm and when the hand was dropped beside him, the spark was concealed by his fingers. Whenever he lifted his hands to smoke, the spark became visible, appeared to rise from the river, would glow and fall back.

            “Jo bhi hai, Saab! Kaali Bhooth ki kahani sach hai”, insisted Haiyath Singh.

xxx