theseekingspirit

It has been two days since India made history at the Gabba, the fortress of Australian Cricket and we still have the hangover. Bloggers ,Youtubers, Cricketing legends, TV channels and even India's Cricketing rival Pakistan is waxing lyrical about the Gabba Test win and the series win by India. No doubt this is a historic achievement (it took 32 years for a team win against Australia at this iconic Cricketing ground). People may say that Cricket is just a sport, and this is just another win, but this win is special and very emotional. Stuff that causes a lasting hangover for billions of Indians… Like many of my friends, I had given up on Cricket. Too many T20's, and too much in-your face type of Cricket had jaded me. This win shook me out of my lethargy as I realized the enormity of this David vs Goliath story. In this story, it is not a plucky David who takes on the sluggish but fearsome Goliath. This is a David that is bruised, battered, written off, lampooned on social media,...

 College reunions can be soul-elevating, as I recently discovered. Meeting friends in-person, sharing a drink (or several), and listening to stories around a bonfire, is indeed a memorable experience. The SPJIMR class of 99 reunion was special, as many of us were meeting each other for the first time in two decades. The beauty of the occasion was enhanced by the location at Lonavla, cut off from the bustle of Mumbai. The conditions were ideal for reminiscences, banter and some deep conversations. During the celebrations and revelry at the reunion, I asked several of my friends a simple question that was on my mind ever since the reunion was planned. I asked each of them for one insight, possibly a life lesson, based on their experiences.   The spontaneous answers I got may look like simple conversational advice, but as I heard them I could see that they were deeply felt experiences, and for some, life transforming. I have gathered these words of wisdom into a mind-map unde...

A few years ago, my Yoga practicing friend asked me why he should read the Yoga Sutras when so much modern information was available about Yoga. He was learning the āsanas from a teacher, and having heard about the Sutras from me asked me why does he need to learn a bunch of Sanskrit verses written more than 2000 years ago? My immediate answer to him that Sutra's are an "exercise for the mind" just as āsanas are the "exercise for the body" didn’t seem to satisfy him. I searched for better answers and came up with several arguments to counter all the busy people and sceptics. I hope one or more of these will resonate with you. Before I launch into the reasons, a brief history on the Sutras.  Yoga Sutras are 195 verses 1  (aphorisms to be precise) that were composed more than 2000 years ago by the sage Pata ñ jali. These Sanskrit verses, that essentially fit into two A4 pages, describe an entire philosophy of Yoga. The commentaries on these sutras written by s...

 We woke up at 3AM to reach Colorado Springs for the hot air balloon ride that was scheduled at 5:30 AM. In summer we have early sun rise in Colorado, and the lift off was planned at 5:30 AM with the pilot - Gary “Burner” Born. Gary owns the company called High-but-Dry Balloon Company. He came up with this interesting name after quitting drinking and taking up balloon flying. He calls it "moving from one addiction to another". We watched with anticipation as Gary’s crew unloaded the balloon from the chase vehicle, and inflated it using propane tanks. The sun was slowly starting its ascent bathing Pikes Peak in red. After many photos were taken, and recorded for posterity, we finally had lift off. We hardly noticed the ascent, and as we were busy clicking away with our cellphones we were already up in the air 500 feet above ground and moving at a gentle speed of 5 miles/hr. The city of Colorado Springs and the Pikes Peak lay before us in the glorious cloudless morning with t...

Rediscovering Pink Floyd 5 decades hence   Music Lovers will relate to this...   You are stuck in a traffic jam or on a long boring drive and trying to tune into a channel that is actually playing music and not ads and suddenly you hear an amazing piece of music. You latch onto the station, hoping against hope that the radio host has not yet announced the details of the song and the station is not going to play more ads. Until a few years ago you couldn’t do much about this, you either got lucky or that piece of music was lost to you until you heard it again and caught the host while he was announcing the artist and the band.  Smartphones and apps have finally brought us relief from these frustrations. On one such long road journey on the roads of Colorado, during the summer of 2015, I found myself in such a situation. I tuned into a radio station playing an amazing guitar solo. I scrambled to find the ‘sound hound’ app on my phone as I was driving and barely mana...

I saw pictures of Ladakh when I was in High School. Ladakh is on the northern tip of India, and is a high altitude desert. It’s on the edge of the plateau of Tibet, which is called the roof of the world. I remember being fascinated by the unique landscape that looked completely different from the rest of India. The few highland plateaus of the world (see Picture) have a unique climate. Since Ladakh is mostly above the tree line the landscape is unique. My high school dream of traveling to Ladakh remained unfulfilled due to lack of time and funds. I knew that my parents would be horrified if I even mentioned that I wanted to spend money to travel to Ladakh- a place thousands of miles away. I didn’t even bother asking them to take me there. They hadn’t heard of Ladakh and would be surprised to hear that such a place even existed in India.   In 1998, I watched a Bollywood Movie –Dil Se (From the Heart) which had a song ‘Satrangi Re’ (literally means seven colors). The song depicts t...