Category: life

RIP Eric

Update:  There is a facebook page in Eric’s memory – https://www.facebook.com/groups/215300058526767/

Eric LaRose whom I used to work with is no more with us. It’s such a sad day. I worked on various projects as a freelancer for about 3.5 years and about half of them are designed by him. He was the sweetest guy I have ever met. We would talk about Mac technology a lot. He wanted to slowly get into development and we used to talk a lot about it. How Drupal was a good fit for his transition etc.

Death. The weird thing about death is – it leaves you with a empty feeling of wanting that one last chance. One last time if only. One last chance to meet and talk to him. One last chance to say all the things that I have thought but never was able to say about him. One last chance. And that one last chance leaves such a gaping void in your heart that sometimes it takes rest of the life to fill it up.

I feel like that today. I feel like I wish I had one last opportunity to speak to him. The last time I spoke to him was when I took a full time job and we were closing couple of open projects. It was different. Even after the meeting ended we just kept talking. He was talking about how he likes to live in the city and how he has very less expenses. I was telling him about my new job. We said we will catch up soon as I will be working only couple of blocks away.

I feel there are some people I have come across who have been extremely nice to me. I mean being professional is one thing but just being a good person is another thing. Eric is one of those guys. So many times I have stopped myself from saying true nice things to people just because I was afraid where the boundary was and whether it would be professional or not. That is such a travesty because now those good things I wanted to say stay in my heart and prick it.

It’s just a sad and bummer day. I have nothing else to say. Eric I will miss you. Thanks for being such a great guy. Rest in Peace my friend.

Khwaja Mere Khawaja

Sick, tired and can’t sleep. The least I can do is to listen to some Sufi music and try to feel better.

Funny thing is in Islam you are not supposed to idolize anything. Because we treat God as “noor” – light. So when Sufis started giving God a form in their poems – beautiful poems – and sing for hours about falling in love with God (similar to Gopikas of Krishna) – they are kinda looked down by proper muslims.

In India you would see Sufi saints everywhere. The one tell tale sign of them is that they have tomb. And that’s a form of idolization and the *proper* muslims call them with various names and don’t recognize them as muslims. I never knew anything about them. I would be visiting my grand parents and a singing saint would come by for alms and my grand mother would give him food but doesn’t engage him. She would be mad at him but still out of her generous nature she would still give him money/food. This idea of no-form-God is so entrenched in her that she can never forgive him for what he is doing – singing the glory of God. Idolizing God.

It so happened one of those summers while I was visiting them – my uncle happend to be around. And as the saint came in for alms, my uncle asked him to sing a song for us. The saint was so happy and sang a beautiful Qawwali song. It moved me so much. I was surprised how much love he expressed in his song.

Then I learned more and more about Sufism and their whirling dervishes.

Moinuddin Chisti or Khwaja is one such saint who is from 12th century. His tomb is located in Ajmer in India is very very popular with both muslims, hindus and anyone who has faith in good. Sufi music is getting into mainstream in India. Kailash Kher made it more popular. And here is a song from Indian blockbuster Jodhaa Akbar – which is a story of King Akbar who falls in love with non-muslim Jodhaa. This is a beautiful song.

On the things that I have been taught

Advance, and never halt, for advancing is perfection. Advance and do not fear the thorns in the path, for they draw only corrupt blood.  – Khalil Gibran

Remember when you have that tingling pain in your leg and you have a busy day and don’t bother to think about it? As the day goes on the pain lingers but you keep it off because you are busy. Sometime at the end of the day you can’t take the pain anymore. But just before you pop the pill in you check what the pain is about – for a brief moment you recognize it and become one with it. You feel where it is and know it much more than that morning.

I think something similar happens with us at mental level. This rush and keep-me-busy life is racing forward and there are pains that ebb in the mind but we are in no rush to attend to them. I think meditation is one way to get to know these things. I think meditation and self-introspection kinda leads one to these deeper channels. With what little time I can spend on introspection – through free writing and meditation – I have found out a lot about the things that I have been taught. It’s kinda more like things I have learned, but then when you are young – the surroundings affect you more than your own self. Here are some observations from my own reflection. This whole discovery process has been very cathartic.

1. Perfection: The education system in India is very competitive. Those 5 years of rigorous college where there was very little to do anything other than studies – I think the idea of perfection and getting a centum (I know that’s a crazy word) has been honed well into me. But the side effects of that is – I have so many half baked ideas, projects that I always wanted to work/launch but never could because they never are perfect in my eyes.

Creation is dirty. I mean raw. Potential is raw – it needs it’s rough edges to become something. But the eyes of perfection can only see ugliness in it. They reject the raw baked idea and what I get is a dull humming of judgmental mental chatter. Not worth it.

2. Out there solution: The strong belief that there lies a greater solution out there. There lies a messiah out there to save me. There lies a perfect trick that could fix me. This mental cog is a strong one. Because of the duality of this world and the nature of mind to dissect and box everything – it’s easy to believe that the solution is out there. It’s an illusion.

3. Knowledge: That all knowledge is contained in books and teachings. That I could gain everything and learn it all if I acquire it. What a hogwash. This is nothing but brainwashing for more brainwashing. It’s like the never ending loop. You can’t eat up all the food in this world, you can’t digest all the knowledge of this world.

4. Linearity: This one is like a big cousin to Causality. Because we see cause and effect, we have come to believe that everything around us is linear. It’s good to have a check list and work through it, but not everything is linearly dependent. Freakanomics tells us that we confuse correlation with causality. There would come a day where all this linear thinking will mis-lead us. That would be be the day we would have to chuck that linear list.

5. Time: This one is so weird. There are 2 aspects to this – short term and long term. When it comes to others’ priorities we are told that we don’t have time. It needs to be done yesterday. This causes us to put our priorities away for the long term. So, this causes an imbalance – where we are knocking out a lot of stuff for others’ or a lot of un-important stuff and the most important things that matter to us are lying there in dust. We are taught to live as if  we are going to be here forever! What a fine trick.

Remember Gordian’s knot? My to-do list is like that knot that could never be undone. Because I put stuff in there which was prompted by my brainwashed subconscious over period of schooling and wrong company. The only way to undo is to cut it open. That’s what Alexander did.

I believe fate and destiny are like 2 sides of the mobius strip. Entangled. The mind has it’s limitations for it’s reasons. It’s very smart at discovering short cuts. That’s how we survived. And I think the best way to feed it is to give it short and few targeted goals. Not a barfed up list of minutiae. The mind works on heuristics and short cuts. It’s time to clean up the learned tug of war between heart and mind. It’s time to get clear on goals.

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass the world is too full to talk about. — Rumi

August 15th – The day I got my freedom

Every Indian is aware that August 15th is our Independence day – back in 1947 India became an Independent country as well as was divided up based on religion thus causing the bloody partition. It signifies freedom after 400 years of colonial rule. We may not be doing great things yet, but I am sure we enjoy the freedom that we have. Just visit India once to see how its been used and mis-used.

I will always remember August 15th not only for what it means to be an Indian but for what it means to me personally. Long time back (oh God, one sign I feel really old is that – this feels like a long time memory). After I finished my college/MBA in 1998 – I was like any other Indian student. Full of dreams and no sense of reality. I was sure that I would be able to find a job of my dreams and just find that ladder to climb up in the corporate world. So naive I was, but then who isn’t when they are 23.

You should know that India is a very populous country. I mean very. To get a sense of it – ask any guy who is trying to get a job. I used to go to an interview (publicly open to anyone qualified) and then find myself standing in a line with like 200 students in front and back of me. Forget getting to actually have an interview – after 4-5 hours of waiting they would ask us to go away. This was the situation (and sadly it still is for many) for me. I tried my best to find a job for about 6 months and nothing happened. But good thing I was hungry (think I still am). When reality dawned on me I realized that I will have to work it through the lower rungs to get to a place which I like.

And so it happened through my friend I got a very small job (paying about $65/month). The job was in an Internet Cafe. For those of you who enjoy un-interrupted Internet access now – an Internet cafe is a place where you pay hourly to browse internet. Since there was no way I can have my own internet access at home, as it was expensive – I jumped on the opportunity to work there. By work I mean, just making sure all computers are turned on and working fine – make entries about people coming in and sitting at the cash register now and then. I was ok with it. I was looking forward to what it means for me – an opportunity to learn so many new things.

The place sucked like hell. The job was hard – manual labor. I showed up at 9 am and left for home only after 9pm. Sometimes I slept over at work – because there were people who would come in to browse (mostly porn) after 12am. The cafe was open all 24 hours. More than that it was filled with politics. My boss was abusive and constantly putting me down to get more and more work from me. He was kind weird too. More than anything else I hated was the politics. Every employee there was kinda brain washed to manipulate someone for something. They took advantage of my naiveté and made me work like a donkey.

I was completely helpless. Here I was trying to make a career in software but stuck in a place where I have no control on anything and I couldn’t even get close to any programming environment. I spent all day (and sometimes all night) helping people to browse and learn what Internet is. How to use Altavista, Yahoo chat (messenger) and ICQ.

My only way out was to learn something on my own in my own time (I think this trait stuck with me till this date). So, I joined a course to learn Java every evening. My friends were making fun of me about how I am spending more money learning Java than making it on a monthly basis. I was un-deterred. I knew this would show me a way out. So for 3 months everyday I would leave work at 6 and go to a class and try to learn frigging Java (I despise it for various reasons which came up later).

This gave me some confidence that I can escape this crazy job and also make it on my own. So finally after about 10 months of abusive job on August 15th 1999 I woke up (It was supposed to be a holiday for everyone except for people who work there) and decided that I won’t be going to this pain in the butt job any more. I went right back to sleep. My dad was worried as to why I am not up – but I think he was relieved at some level that I am ending this painful experience. I got like 10 calls from my boss threatening me but I didn’t feel anything. I was so happy inside and just didn’t give a shit.

So on this day about 12 years back I became mentally free – which led to the transformation of my life. So powerful was change in my life – that in the following month – me and my friend took a gamble and went to Singapore for work and succeeded in establishing a career. It took me 40 days to do what I really wanted, but my mind was shackled for almost a year in a painful job.

Every year I feel more happy about the choice I made on this day and thank my stupid courage that pulled it off. I will never forget this day.

Jai Hind. 🙂

On becoming a Father

I have been thinking about what is different in my life after Sahana, my daughter arrived. My friends have asked me what feels different. I didn’t have any right answer for that question as I was busy with being one and never spent time on thinking about it. I think I have my version of what is different now that I am a dad.

I think everyone has preferences, strengths, weaknesses, tendencies etc which can be categorized in 4 categories. Physical, Mental, Emotional and Spiritual. That’s not written in stone but one way to slice it. And among these 4 categories there is order. People over a period of time build a stack of importance using these 4 categories. I think being a dad/father/mother/parent brings a lot of insight, shift in the top categories.

For example: Mine are ordered – Spiritual, Mental, Emotional and Physical (yeah last physical – which explains why I don’t know anything about Baseball and why I carry those extra 20 pounds on me!). I think after Sahana came to our lives, I was affected more spiritually and mentally than emotionally or physically. I mean, I have gotten used to little physical inconveniences like – sleeplessness, more work etc but they don’t discourage me from anything nor they inspire me.

What affected me more was I became more spiritual. The whole experience from the moment I learned that Sangita is pregnant till today is this great spiritual dance. Everything that happens to me, around me has a spiritual meaning tied up with Sahana. I do believe she brought in a lot of luck for both me and my wife. If she brought more patience to Sangita, she brought me more spiritual depth.

As for the mental side – I have shed everything that has short meaning in my life. I used to treat work in a specific way. I wanted it to be more my way and that was the reason why I went to work for myself. But now, after this change – something in that area has shifted for me. I still have the same passion towards my work but less stubbornness. I focus on what is most important and drop everything that is trivial. Thats been very refreshing in the past 3 weeks since I started to work full-time. Especially interesting how it is affecting my 2 other areas of life – emotionally – spending more quality time with Sahana in the evening and physically – going to sleep early and getting more than enough sleep than when I used to work for myself.

I wholly welcome all these changes in my life. I am happy to be a dad.