Here for writing

Why we do what we do is a very important question. And I had been struggling to answer this for the five years I was working in commercial banking. Why am I doing this job? Apart from salary, there was absolutely no other answer that I could give myself. Good pay, yes. In fact, a very good pay. Work life balance, yes. It was a five day week work. Work profile, yes. I had to interact with and manage the commercial accounts. Which means, low volume and high value. So yes, it was a good profile with amazing exposure and learning. But, I hated going to work. Every morning, it was a struggle for me to go to office. Often, I just had to switch off my mind and completely ignore its protests. Because, fairly speaking, I had no reason to complain. It was a good job with good pay with a very comfortable work environment -in both the banks that I was working. But still, it didn't make me happy. I used to go through the five days of the week, looking forward for the weekend. And I use

Being mindful is a term that is done to death. I first came across this term during my PG, where one of my faculties was discussing about Thich Nhat Hanh, when he was just becoming popular in India. She expounded the monk's theory of mindfulness and said how we should be mindful of everything that we do. At the age of 22, I didn't understand this concept. You just do things, right? So what is the difference between doing things and doing things "mindfully"? Out of all the things that she said that day, one example is still stuck to my mind. I remember her saying something to the effect of, "even if you are doing something as simple as, say having an orange, be mindful of its flavours, think about how the earth has produced this wonderful fruit, absorb the wonderful smell that the fruit emantes when you peel it...savour the burst of tangy juice when the fruit is bitten". And I was thinking, "Heh, how boring? who would do all this? Then all that I

A quiet mind is a happy mind. But the fleeting happiness that I experience every now and then does not mean that my mind is quiet. It just means that I am experiencing a fleeting glimpse of bliss, that will soon be replaced by the hum drum of everyday existence. However, a mind that is truly quiet, is a source of infinite and abiding bliss. It is truly fascinating to observe this mind. And the biggest paradox is, when I start observing the mind, like a shy child, it slinks away and curls up into a quiet corner. And when that happens, the bliss becomes infinite. Just think, wave after wave of ceaseless thoughts is what constitutes the mind. And all these thoughts are purely based on experiences of my past or the expectations of the future. To rephrase, the mind always moves in the space that I create for it, ie -it roams about in the realms of past or in the unexplored kingdoms of the future. My minds chews on a family outing that happened when I was 12, or it invokes ang

The endless ocean. Sky so blue, dotted here and there with tall tall palms. Hard soil and soft sand. Scrubs and thorns and salt pans. A winding road curving sharply every now and then. Goats with dirty white coat and black underbelly grazing in clumps. A few even sauntering across the road, oblivious to the zooming cars. Space space and more space. The air always tinged with salt. A silence so sacred that the audio system in the car is often turned off. The lighthouses looming across the horizon every now and then. Tantalizing glimpses of sea every, playing peek -a -boo with travelers driving south. A town or village appearing here and there. Tea stalls, butcher shops, small temples and tall minarets, the Virgin carrying her son and the cross looming behind, posters of happy couples welcoming guests for their wedding, flower shops, a bus stand and then, the space again. We found God here, more potent and powerful, whipping through us with the powerful wind and shining upon us t

Love, such a commonly used word. We all know what it means. An intense like for something, a feeling of attraction etc etc. In today's colloquial parlance, we "love" anything and everything. Right from the pizza with extra cheese topping to the new dress that we brought. We love our new haircut, we loved the trip that we took last year, we love that actor and we love hanging out with friends.  We love the rain and we love that cup of coffee. And then, we also go around, holding this love as a precious burden in our heart for that one person we "love". Isn't this funny? If love is so easy, so commonplace in our lives, then loving should also be equally easy, right? And this so called love, as we know it, should be liberating. It should only bring us joy and peace and contentment. But many times, especially when it is latched on to people, all it does is bring heartache. Oh, the misery is all too familiar, isn't it? The way our heart broke

Often, I am just stuck with my fingers hovering uncertainly over the keyboard. I can't bring myself to type out the entire sentences. My thoughts are always on a rush, each one pushing and shoving and jostling for attention. They just push past each other, tripping over each other and reducing the words a jumbled garble of letters that just spew out as a powerful stream of projectile vomit. Before long, the vomit of letters will just trickle down to a string of weak, spent saliva...still stuck precariously to the tip of the lower lip, but utterly spent. Then there will only be this uneasy stillness, like a room full of acquaintances suddenly gone quiet with awkward silence hovering over them, after running out of topics to discuss within minutes of settling down to talk. But that silence only lasts so long, before the letters start peeping into my brain. They gather their might, bit by bit, a sentence here, a phrase there. Then they slowly brew into full paragraphs tha