Abraham Lincoln's Letter to his Son's Teacher

I remember being greatly influenced by this a long long while ago, like in school, I'd written it out into my book of favorite quotations ...... I read it now, and like any great writing, it tells you even more:

Toffees in the Car

A super simple and super nice gesture: I saw this done by a friend, and it had this deep impact. To keep a bunch of candy in the car at all times to be given away to beggars on the streets ( its pretty India specific).                                                    

                                           

The sceptics will still ask questions ….. wouldn’t they prefer money? wouldn’t they get used to it? what if they don’t like sweets?

It’s okay you know. They’re people too. To those who you would give money, give this is addition….. to the older ones, give it as a choice….. and it’s especially brilliant for the kids to who you’d rather not give money, give them candy instead, which kid wouldn't like toffees. And the feeling nice at the giving end…..it’s the best. You’ll for sure see a whole lot of expressions of surprise and joy.

It’s something I’ve shamelessly copied and made habit. My car dash always has candy for the street kids now :)

20 hours or 10,000 hours to mastery of a new skill !

Sounds kind of ludicrous to compare, right? Well, we’re mostly familiar with the 10,000 hours to reach perfection or mastery. Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers has given us his research on studies of extremely successful people, violinists in Berlin, Bill Gates on programming, The Beatles in Hamburg, across the board studies and given us the 10,000 hours to perfection.

One fascinating point of his study is that no ‘naturally gifted’ performers emerged. If natural talent had played a role, we would expect some of the “naturals” to float to the top of the elite level with fewer practice hours than everyone else. But the data showed otherwise. The psychologists found a direct statistical relationship between hours of practice and achievement. No shortcuts. No naturals. The elites fall in love with what they practice to the point where they want to do little else.

So when I came across the 20 hours to a new skill, it came like a breath of fresh air.  Josh Kaufman, with his 20 hour theory disproves Malcom Gladwell's thesis of 10,000 hours. He of course speaks about mastering a skill for oneself, and not reaching the ultra competitive, ranked professional global circuits. So for a lot of us this really really helps.

When I had a few months between jobs I decided to put it to the test. 20 hours seemed so doable.  I picked three totally new skills and decided to give them the twenty hours each. Very quickly I also realized I was testing not just the theory, but also myself, as the sad and happy outcome is that it also calls your bluff :). You know what you really want and which you're making excuses for. My own experience..... I did it with hula hooping, and learning kannada, decently good at both now. The third was palmistry, at which I failed miserably. Not for lack of interest but for lack of resources, so it's now on the shelf, part of the to do list. But trust me, it works brilliantly where you want it to. 

You can apparently get to just about anything. You don’t need to have the innate talent, or even the 10,000 hour tenacity…..give it 20 hours and it’s yours to enjoy ! 

Power of Prayer

In a small town of India, a person decided to open his bar business, right opposite a temple. The temple and its congregation started a campaign to block the bar from opening with petitions and prayed daily against his business. Work progressed. However, when it was almost complete and was about to open a few days later, a strong lightning struck the bar and it was burnt to the ground.

The temple folks were rather smug in their outlook after that, till the bar owner sued the temple authorities on the grounds that the temple through its congregation and prayers was ultimately responsible for the destruction of his bar shop, either through direct or indirect actions or means. 

In its reply to the court, the temple vehemently denied all responsibility or any connection that their prayers were reasons for the destruction of the bar shop. As the case made its way into court, the judge looked over the paperwork at the hearing and commented: "I don't know how I'm going to decide this case, but it appears from the paper work we have a bar owner who believes in the power of prayer, and we have an entire temple and its devotees that don't."

Amber Fort

Day 2 of our trip was supposed to be Amber Fort, City Palace and Hawa Mahal, but we got so mesmerized by Amber Fort, that that’s about all we did on that day

Amber Fort first grabs your awe by sheer size. As you approach you see this fort wall that seems to go on forever and ever, across several mountains, it’s apparently 16 kms long, and absolutely intact. And in the front is lake Maota, adding a beautiful picture card landscape to the fort…… . 

And the approach is through this quaint village with hand pumps and colorfully clad women, not to speak of the endless number of temples.

Picture Perfect

Into the village, and I was so drawn to this one temple that I wanted to stop, and go in. Our guide was like, 'if you stop to see temples, we’re in trouble as there are 364 temples in the area'. But this temple I just wanted to see, and said it would be my only temple stop, and as we go in, I was so blown when I hear him say that it is a  Meerabai and Krishna temple. 

Well, blown, because Meerabai holds a very special place in my heart and it goes back a long long way, like right from school, when I read about her in the amar chitra katha comic. She’s at one time the most esoteric, mysterious and sensual characterization I’ve known, Let's suffice it to say that while I don’t know what created that connect way back then, today I’d say she epitomizes the idea of finding and experiencing all that one wants, right within oneself. Love the idea and loved being in that temple. 

Exquisitely carved marble and standstone temple of Meerabai and Krishna

Entrance into the temple, and we were the only ones there, us and Meerabai

Now the Amber Fort itself; its actually a palace, an opulent and beautiful palace, with large ramparts, diwan-e-khas, diwan-e-aam, extensive gardens, sheesh mahal, intricate meenakari work, beautiful carvings, great architecture..... and I’ll let the pictures say the rest:

The frontal view of the palace

The gardens extending into the lake which were used for colder climate
gardening to offset the desert heat of Rajasthan
For those who've seen Jodha Akbar, the song Jashn e Bahaaraa  was shot here

The inlay work which still retains its beautiful colours

Intricate meenakari work on the wall

Entrance to Sheesh Mahal
Brought to life in Mughal E Azam's Pyaar Kiya tho Darna Kya

An inner courtyard. And yet again, the scene of the brilliant
and most sensuous sword fight sequence in Jodha Akbar

And this brings to an end my reminiscence of the trip ! 

The Brahma temple at Pushkar

Pushkar is one of the few temples in the country dedicated to Lord Brahma, the creator. Some say there are two, some say four, but apparently it is described in the scriptures as being the only one.

The temple dates back to the 14th century, but is believed to be over 2000 years old. For the enormity of the number, and prominence of being the only Brahma temple, it’s a temple which is still really small and pretty, and has been allowed to remain at original size.

That's the whole of the temple

It makes one curious how religion has evolved to focus on the other deities of the trinity, and the million other gods of the hindu pantheon, with even minor gods having multiple temples, but the creator has only this one, or at best the two or four temples, which are also from the 1st millenium.

Apparently the Tirth Yatra , the main Hindu pilgrimage, as described in the Mahabharata, starts from this Brahma temple, which was considered highly auspicious and important in the 1st millenium. But today it's more of a tourist spot than a revered temple, which made the visit very peaceful, but also made me wonder..... Is it because the task of creation is considered complete, that praying is now directed only to the preserver (Vishnu) and the destroyer (Shiva) ? Wonder what happens to being grateful....

The Pushkar Ghats

A small temple in the middle of the lake

The pushkar sarovar, which is the lake associated with the temple is considered extremely holy and has the typical pilgrimage feel to it. The holy dips, the cows, the monkeys et al.

The lake is surrounded by the Aravalli Hills on three sides and is extremely picturesque. It is surrounded by 52 bathing ghats (stone steps that descend into the lake for the holy dip). There is one ghat named Gandhi ghat, as Mahatma Gandhi's ashes were immersed in this lake. A dip in the lake is believed to cleanse one of all sins and skin diseases as well.

There's a story from the ninth century of a Rajput king who came across the lake while on a hunting expedition, and in order to quench his thirst he dipped his hands into the lake, and the leucoderma marks on his hands disappeared. To enable others access to the curative powers of the lake he had the lake restored to its original glory.

Janak Singh, our cab driver in conversation with a sadhu

A camel in Rajasthani attire

And pushkar has a real interesting footpath market; loads of funky clothes, junk jewellery, silver trinkets, glitzy bags......the chadaus, swords and knives add the rajasthani touch .....mehendi and hair braiding on the street....real fun stuff

                                          

          

And after all that walking and shopping, we had the best ever nimbu soda and jaljeera from this bandi !

Visit to Ajmer

A magical two day trip to Ajmer, Pushkar and Jaipur. I say magical, because everything about it was. The way it came about, the trip itself, the place, the feel.

Ajmer, or Ajmer Sherif as it's more popularly known, is a Dargah, a sufi shrine. It is one of India's most important Muslim pilgrimage centers, with the shrine being the maqbara (grave) of the saint Moinuddin Chishti, also known as Khwaja Gharibnawaz, dating around 500 AD.

Ajmer itself is a small and beautiful city, geographically nestled in the rugged Aravalli Hills and developed around a pretty lake, Ana Sagar.

The lake, the city and the Aravalli Hills

The Dargah

Once you get to the place, it's a further two kilometer walk to the Dargah itself, and we took some by lanes which took us through some of the narrowest and most intriguing lanes I've seen, and bonus was seeing donkeys in there too. (I think they're really cute).

The real narrow bylanes we took to the Dargah

And donkeys in those bylanes, sadly as beasts of burden too

The main street leading into the Dargah

The shop where I bought a taveez, as memoir of the trip

I wanted to have the whole experience, so at the dargah we did the traditional 'chaadar chadana'. This is a ritual of dedicating a brightly coloured, and beautifully embroidered chaadar (a large bedsheet...ours was bright red with golden embroidery), along with a basket of roses and attar (a natural concentrated perfumed oil). And that whole sequence was a really interesting and intense experience; next to the maqbara, the priest puts the chaadar over our head like a tent, and he''s guiding our thoughts, and it feels almost like it enables a conversation with the spirit of the place. Like Sagari said, I wished he'd let us stay in there a while longer. 

The religious fervor of the place also get to you, as you see people in a trance, some singing, some crying and it's just very intense; an experience worth having if you're upto it. And considering women are not allowed in a masjid, this was the closest we could get to a muslim religious experience.

An added factor; Sagari had sufi music playing through the three hour journey from Jaipur to Ajmer, though she didn't know earlier that we were doing a Sufi Shrine, and it just added to the whole aura of the experience.

To me it was also this whole feeling of .....'it was meant to be', to add to the magical element of it.

Ajmer has been one place I’ve been wanting to visit for a few years now, one of those just pushed to the back of the mind kind of things. Towards the end of december, when I’d gotten down to my new year resolution list, one of them was ‘make a trip each quarter, and at least two new places to be seen in the year'. As I wrote this one, I just saw the thought of Ajmer flash through the mind, must have been the subconscious mind throwing it out there.

And then, a day later I’m doing this casual, what’s up kind of chat with a friend and it so turns out that this friend is going to Jaipur in two weeks and the friend who she was supposed to go with had backed out and stuff and somehow, within ten minutes of the conversation, I had my tickets booked. One of the more impulsive decisions of recent past. And if I think about it, over that two weeks there were a lot of other things that fell in place to enable the trip to happen.

What it told me is that wanting something and letting it marinate in the subconscious is one thing, but articulation and awareness can get things moving at an altogether different pace if you’re up for it. :)