Somethin' Stupid

Chanced upon it when I was listening to another number, and I had an epiphanic moment. 

Even before I could register the song consciously, every cell of my body just reached out to the notes. It's a few split seconds, but to catch those few split seconds was surreal.

Then I got it...there was a phase in life when I had a small set of songs I heard every single day, over and over again, for years. This was one of them. So the reaction was almost instinctual......from deep within the subconscious. And it's pretty fascinating to actually start seeing the subtler layers of your mind at work, to catch that moment......like viewing yourself from a different vantage point :) 

Jungle Book

When we were driving into the theater, I was surprised to hear Diksha say 'I'm so excited to be going'. Surprised because this was her third time in the two weeks since release (and in the theater).

Once done, I understood why. It's still so aligned to the original Rudyard Kipling story,  so clear in it's story telling......in creating this deep connect between jungle and human, like completing a circle and you almost think it's how the world should be......makes you feel like a ten year old who believes it's all possible. Simply enchanting. And second, it was her own deep fondness for the movie that she had pretty much grown up on.

As story, it's about the man cub Mowgli who is brought up by wolves (Raksha, the mother wolf was my favorite) as one among them, until threatened by the fierce and ruthless Shere Khan. That's when his friend and mentor, the panther Bageera decides he needs to return to his own kind. 

One of my crying moments too

The journey back, through the perils of the jungle, his escapade from the seductive and hypnotic python Kaa, his fun and frolic with the free spirited and friendly Baloo, a misadventure with the ape monkey Louie, and finally the big battle with Shere Khan makes the rest of story.

A wildebeast stampede and a baby elephant rescue warrant special mention...they were stunning sequences. Though Col Hathi was kind of serious and overawing, unlike in the earlier one.

Also loved the ethics of the jungle, a water truce when there's a famine, a solidarity through a pledge, they all becomes like jungle ethics. Also clear messages of courage, loyalty, teamwork, love, family (even acquired) and friendship.

Had to put in how menacing the jungle was made out

And I must mention the end credits sequence against backdrop of the song 'Trust in me'. It seemed as intricate and detailed as the movie itself. I'm so glad we sat through it all, it was simply spectacular.(And this I kind of make it a point to do, after all it's the one way we can show our gratitude to all the makers of the film).

I believe the movie's even better in Hindi. Go watch, hindi or english, whatever age you are :)

Dad's Pic in Deccan

Memories and nostalgia......and the connect and excitement they can create in the present.

The Deccan Herald last week carried a picture of my dad's college farewell, way back from 1954. And it acted as a cause for not just excitement, but as trigger for a lot of them to get in touch..... after 60 years !!

                                My dad, A R Mahendra, top row, third from right

I was quite amazed to hear how the network began to develop. I understand, my dad, who is almost allergic to phone calls, actually spent three days literally on the phone catching up with all his classmates and friends. He even called the Deccan Herald and got the number of the author, Mr. Vasant Kumar, who happened to be a very close friend. It went to the extent of my dad again having that feeling that he should have settled in Bangalore instead of Hyderabad :).

From the write up itself, I really liked one line: 'During 1953 we were extremely fortunate to listen to the lecture of Sir C V Raman, the Nobel Laureate in Physics. As a preamble to his lecture, he cleverly highlighted the diverse physical state of compounds of some elements, saying "Silicon dioxide is a solid (quartz), Hydrogen dioxide is a liquid ( peroxide), but Carbon dioxide is a gas", and quipped, "any result oriented scientific research entails hard work, creativity and in depth analysis of data.". We were all inspired by his profound knowledge and his words ring in my mind till today'. 

That's real inspiration, and it's great to be able to hold onto and recall those moments, lines and people who make that difference to ones life. We can leap frog learning through awareness of those experiences.

I also liked how the author lists so many names of friends with details of the prestigious institutes they joined and served ( that includes my dad too, who served with the Geological Survey of India for a good twenty plus years). 

It even percolated down to me.....his saying even college excursions were about rocks, rocks and more rocks....realized where my affinity for rocks must come from :). It then enabled me to acknowledge what a super exciting childhood it gave us......we've experienced loads of travel and adventure, including living in Srisailam for four years, living in tents in the Anantagiri hills, surrounded by the wild, a snake dropping on to our makeshift eating table, getting stuck in the middle of river Gomti in flash floods, my brother and me standing curious right next to a huge python who couldn't move, as it had just swallowed a whole chicken or goat or something, and many many such.

Grateful to Mr.Vasant Kumar for evoking fond memories, not just for my dad and his peers, but down a further generation, to even me :)

Hypnotherapy

Well.....I've signed up for an Integrated Hypnotherapy Program. It's with EKAA (Ekagra Karma Apara Antara), a Hypnotherapy Foundation (formerly known as the California Hypnotherapy Institute of India).

It's a one month program...... everyday, whole day, so you can imagine how intensive a program it is.

So what is it ?

It's been four days, and I feel like I'm on a trip....like a high. (no, not under hypnosis :).  Yuvaraj Kapadia the founder and our teacher, is by himself an amazing experience. He's this real fund of knowledge, totally sorted on the most complex and deep of concepts, full of energy, and as said by him....he just loves to talk, and he's crazy good at it too. Makes the ten hour day (8.30 to 6.30) just fly by.

I'm not yet ready to provide a coherent and concise enough answer to the what yet, but let's suffice it to say, it covers the entire gamut of Hypnotherapy, right from it's clinical application, through which almost any ailment can be healed, through to the mystical and metaphysical facets of consciousness.

The Hypnotic State, simply put, is an altered state of consciousness which enables access to the subconscious mind, which is like the powerhouse of the mind.

Hypnosis is derived from the Greek term 'hypnose' which means 'nervous sleep',  a paradoxical term which nicely defines what hypnosis is. Nervous is 'heightened awareness' and sleep is 'no awareness', so 'nervous sleep' is a different state of awareness, where the body is asleep and the mind is awake. And by mind it's more the subconscious mind.

The mix of people attending is really interesting. Of the forty people, there are only four from Bangalore. There's twenty five from different parts of the country, including Mumbai, Pune, Delhi, Ahmadabad, Calcutta, Chennai, Baroda, Hyderabad and Mangalore and then ten from overseas, including Kenya, Dubai, US, UK and Norway. The bunch ranges across all age groups from varying professions, including Doctors, Psycho therapists, Physiotherapists, Chief Engineers from the Merchant Navy, Corporate Coaches, Motivational speakers, IT professionals, Special Educators, NLP practitioners and others. With this mix, and the one common eclectic thread of interest, it makes for a really fascinating group.

When I got home yesterday and a friend asked how it's been, what came out was 'Mind Blowing.....metaphorically and literally, mind blowing'

This was just a peep o......I'll try and write more about it as I go along.

On the Road to Coonoor

Well, guess I can't complete the chronicles on the road trip without experiences from the road itself, so here's the final post on the Road trip to Coonoor.

Channapatna, known for its wooden toys is the first major town we pass off from Bangalore. I remember buying one of these wooden rocking horses from here for the kids.... what with all the fancy new toys, these weren't even available in the city.

While Bangalore to Mysore has lots of towns and green on the way, Mysore to Bandipur is really barren countryside.

In Bandipur, we caught an elephant, and bonus was the baby elephant, but sadly not wild

A flash of red that looked so stunning in real, especially in that hot steaming afternoon....a grove of 'the flame of the forest'

A pretty sight somewhere along, I think this was on the way to the Isha Yoga center

Can't help but be reminded of the three wise (curious and cute) monkeys.....this was on the ghats. Diksha was actually enjoying making eye contact, and the first one does seem to be looking straight into the camera.

In Coonoor, these kids looked so focused and cute

A beautiful bamboo archway in Madumalai

Way back......diksha getting us fresh carrots and mouthwatering totapuri mango with chilli powder and salt

The last pic before we left Sans Souci,  just had to have all three of us :)

Thanks be to Diksha, and Nandi (our car) for pushing the boundaries, to make yet another super road trip !

Visit to The Isha Yoga Center

The Isha Yoga has it's main center at the foothills of the Velliangiri mountains close to Coimbatore, which was a three hour drive from Coonoor. 

            

This is one place that's been on my want to visit list for over two years now, and since attending the Isha Yoga program a month back, I've been wanting to do it with Diksha. So, this kind of fell neat into my lap. A one day trip from Coonoor.

It was an intense and interesting visit. (The pictures are all courtesy Google, as we're not allowed mobiles or cameras within the center.)

There's a sanctity, a structure and an energy to the place that you just can't miss. It's in the layout, the architecture, the methodology, the procedure, all designed towards increasing receptivity of the energy.

What's needed from us...... is to surrender to the process. And I was happy to see that Diksha wanted to do it all..... right from the dip into the Theerthakund. Guess it comes from the structure and approach again....focus on spirituality rather than religion.

A pillar at the entrance with symbols of all major religions of the world.

The Theerthakund is a deep pool with a live linga immersed in it, said to be an energy source capable of enhancing one's spiritual receptivity as well as overall health and well being. A dip in its waters serves as a preparatory tool to receive the energies of the Dhyanalinga, before entering the Yogic Temple. Built from gigantic granite blocks, this extraordinary structure is built 30 ft deep into the earth in a copper tank. 

The Suryakund is for men and the Chandrakund for women, and they're built pretty much symbolically aligned to the sun and the moon. The Suryakund is open, large, bright, while the chandrakund is dark, serene, small. Very interesting.

The Suryakund

The Chandrakund

And then you go into the Dhyanalinga yogic temple.  Dhyana means concentration and Linga means Form. It is said the be the largest mercury based live linga in the world. In the metaphysical sense, Dhyanalinga is a guru, an energy center of tremendous proportions. It has been consecrated by the mystic Sadhguru and enshrines the fully energized form of all seven chakras. 

Dhyanalinga is the distilled essence of yogic science. It does not ascribe to any particular belief or faith. It does not require any pooja or worship. Just sitting silently for few minutes within the sphere of Dhyanalinga is enough to make even those unaware of meditation experience a state of deep meditativeness and feel the energy that overflows from the form.

From the outside

The inside

It's powerful and beautiful, envelopes you with an awe. And while there were atleast fifty people inside when we went, it was absolute pin drop silence. One just sits and meditates; and the closest to a ritual is that at certain times they have a rhythmic instrumental cum vocal sound thingy, which makes the experience very intense, (apparently all based off sound vibrations).

And yes, can't forget, the place has a lot of snake sculptures, just about everywhere, like this one, and diksha loved it, as she's fascinated with snakes.

I've always believed in 'Sthana Balam' (energy concentration of a place), and there was no mistaking the energy here.

Coonoor - Day 3

Well, considering we pretty much stayed put at Sans Souci, the rest of Coonoor was from vantage points at Sans Souci, or long walks from Sans Souci.

This was one of our favorite vantage points. Not even a tree to obstruct view of the deep valley with its never ending sloping tea gardens, and acrross the valley, the nilgiri ranges with their scattered villages. The villages were like a star sprangled sky at night. The viewer up and the viewed below.....both very pretty

This was a picture from a walk recommended by Shibani, and Diksha's capture of a bird in flight just made the picture that much more beautiful

The neighboring 'nonsuch' tea estate with an interesting but too daunting a walk up. The estates seem to have some interesting names, huh? 

Dusk in the mountains..it's always too clouded for clear sunsets, but that doesn't take away the beauty of dusks. 

We luckily caught one clear night, when we shut of all the lights in the house to see a star studded sky. It was thrilling, but also scary as its a kind of pitch dark we don't even know in the city.

I'm sure there's a pretty bird on one of those branches. I kept taking pictures of these really cute birds, but they're so well camouflaged into the green, that I mostly can't even find them in the pictures.

Those rows you see on the mountain slope on the left are the tea workers houses

There's tea picking going on there, but again a camera on your cell as against a DSLR will bring you only so much. I was asking Diksha how a trip like this would be with a DSLR, and her response 'it would be only about the DSLR, don't even think about one ma'

This one's from way within the porch, nice ready made frame it gave. And I must mention, that evening on the porch we saw the largest spider we've ever ever seen, big as a saucer, way bigger than anything we've ever seen on even national geographic. Alwyn, who did the brave job of getting rid of it, said it was poisonous to boot.

Dawn .......

Well, neither inside nor outside....or shall we just say both. One of Diksha's candid pictures, she will mostly neither take, or allow taken, a posed for picture. Has it's own charm (though at times, annoying too), and guess we survived quite well for it.

Didn't take the laptop, but then...where I go, my diary goes :)