The Paranoia of a Cab

One fine weekend evening, my wife and I were sitting in the driveway of our apartment, enjoying the breeze when a cab came and stopped just about in front of us. Obviously, it was either an Ola or a Uber waiting for the passenger.

At about the same time, an aged lady whom we knew in the apartment, was walking close to us, carrying her 9-month-old grand daughter in her arms. She smiled at us and we returned the smile. The grand daughter was happily looking here and there, and enjoying the general ambience, being pampered by the granny. And then, her eyes fell on the cab, and suddenly she started sobbing. She pointed her hands to the cab and shook her head while her crying increased. Her tears welled up, she became absolutely restless & started wailing. She was almost furious with the cab while at the same time realized she was helpless. The very presence of the cab in the apartment was causing her immense distress. While this sudden change in the emotions puzzled me and my wife especially because the child was crying looking at a cab which seemed so unusual, her grandmother explained it to us:

Apparently the child's mother goes to office every day in a cab in the morning. And the presence of this cab made the child think that her mother would go off once more in this cab! And hence - the anger directed towards the cab & the helplessness of the inability to stop the separation from her dear mother all of which resulted in a desperate outburst of tears...

Aah, such a heart-wrenching sight. Poor child, what unimaginable pains she would have gone through every morning of her life when her mother left to office for the emotions to come out like this just by seeing a cab...

Like so many other times, Sadhguru's speech on motherhood came to our thoughts.

A child's question

I was walking in the park when I saw a child who was maybe about 3 years old. She was swinging on the swing. Her eyes were roaming all around the park and she was talking to her mother who was right in front of her. 

When the path on which I was walking came close to her, I heard her ask her mother, "From dinosaurs?".

As I was about to go out of earshot, I heard the mother reply "No; from other human beings."

As I continued my walk, within a few seconds I came across some other kids running around the park as a warm-up. They were all wearing Taekwondo uniform. 

And that's when I understood the full conversation between the child and her mother...

The Strange-Looking Fruit

I was driving on my two-wheeler with my family near Banashankari bus stand one day, and was about to take a left turn when I noticed a mother crossing the road, dragging her child behind her who was struggling to keep pace. I stopped my vehicle to let her cross the road despite getting honks from behind me. While the mother was looking hither and thither to ensure she was not in the way of any vehicle, the child who was about 4-5 years old, had absolutely no care in the world for all the traffic around him despite the road being heavily occupied with all sorts of vehicles. He had absolute faith in that hand which was held by his mother; and his legs just kept moving one feet after next following his mother. To be honest, it was definitely a tough road to cross even for adults what with all the vehicles enjoying the erstwhile green signal, and having to drag a child too in the complex moving maze was a challenge indeed. 

And while he was following his mother, his eyes were looking high above the sea of vehicles. His eyes lit up and he tugged at his hand to catch his mom's attention. But she didn't pay any attention to the tug. Her sole aim was to cross the road. He kept tugging and indicating her to look at the top of the tree which was at the corner of the junction. But she couldn't take her eyes off the road. At that instant both my wife & I followed the direction of the boy's attention and then we saw what the boy was seeing: a strange-looking fruit!

It was big in size, rectangularly-oval-ish, with maybe some spikes & brownish. It was something I had never seen before. And there were lots and lots of them. I was astounded and so was my wife. In fact, my wife asked my daughter to see that bunch of strange-looking fruits too! I am not sure if the mom finally paid any attention to her son's tugging or not but it was as if that whole episode was for my family and me to witness Nature's inexplicable existence: a massive tree growing a large bunch of weird looking yields in the middle of a highly polluted crossroad!

I have driven over that road thousands of times having never once paid any attention to that tree nor its fruits - & here comes this tiny being who just took the tree and kept it right in front of my eyes! What a marvelous experience! And look at the innocence of a kid: in all that cacophony of angry honks, amidst the waves of vehicles, he calmly looks at a tree while crossing the road, sees it in entirety a way an adult never does & appreciates it to such an extent that he wants his mother to acknowledge too!

It is such simple things as these that we as adults miss but kids do not. And unfortunately when kids highlight it to us, we brush it off lightly and yet these are the gems of the Creation that we ideally ought to wonder about. The whole scene might have lasted less than five seconds - and it occurred about 4-5 months ago and yet I cannot forget it.

Nor did I want to miss blogging about 'such a simple incident'!

😊

The Family Tree

My daughter just uttered "Amma" as a way of "Good Night" endearment while she was about to head to sleep, without wanting to say anything else - when the below interesting conversation ensued. Much of it was in Kannada, and it is imperative that I retain the local language because the conversation churned out certain gems only due to the Kannada words...!

Daughter said, "Amma..." 

Mommy replied, "Magu..." (but pronounced it as 'Maggu')

If pronounced as 'Magu', it means baby; if pronounced as 'Maggu', it means a flower bud.

D: "Naa Maggaadre, Nee Hoova." [If I am a bud, then you are a flower]
M: "Naa Hoovaadre, Namma appa amma are seeds." [If I am a flower, then my parents are seeds]

D: "Then Ajji thatha are roots." [Ajji thatha = grandparents]
M: "Mutthaatha has transformed from roots back to Earth, from where all Life originally comes up!" [Mutthaatha = Great Granddad (who died recently)]

D: "So, I am a bud!"
M: "Yes, from Magu to Buddy - thats how parents ought to treat children as they grow up!"

🙏

Body & Mind Calibration

Mind, as we know it, never stops churning. It rambles on and on and on - at least when we are awake. Unless you are a master at it, it ain't that easy to stop it from rambling. Now, the body, on the other hand, is a different thing altogether. When we were kids, the body is hardly still. Slowly, as we grow older, the body starts to become stiller and stiller. 

This imperfection of the calibration of the pace at which the Body & Mind works is what I believe to be the cause of Man's sub-optimal way of living. 

Let us see this with two examples: 

a) Sub-optimal: 

A primary school-going daughter and a father both wake up at the same time. The father goes to office & the daughter goes to school. When the father comes back home, the daughter is still full of energy but the father is exhausted. Mentally speaking, both would have had almost similar "amount" of rambling thoughts, ideas and emotions. Physically speaking, the child has spent more energy playing one full day whereas the father sat in his office chair almost 90% of the day. And yet, why is the parent exhausted...? That exhaustion could be due to the lack of physical activity which did not go hand-in-hand with the mental works. Perhaps it is for this reason that offices now have sports lounges & gyms...?!

b) Optimal:

In any sports, the athletes competing are all thinking only about the game and they have an equal amount of physical activity to go with this thinking. So, during the game, the pace of their body & mind is just perfect to get the best out of each of them. And hence this grandiose display of human potential is a major attraction for the general population.

We will now consider another angle - 

We have all heard and read so much about the benefits of meditation - which, as per my understanding, is to calm one's mind and make it as still as the body. Once the body and mind are still (I am as yet unsuccessful in doing so), we are supposed to feel the bliss of Life. And whoever is blissed out in life cannot be unhealthy, right?

So, here we get one equation: 

Body still & Mind still = Bliss

Hence Healthy

Now the most common thing any doctor advises these days (for good health) is to exercise regularly, go to the gym & work out, go for long fast walks, etc. In other words, this indicates to me that - "Since you cannot keep your mind still in tandem with your body, better keep up the pace of your physical body with your mental pace!" 

So, we get another equation by going to the extreme end of the hypothesis:

Healthy if Body pace = Mental pace

So, essentially, what this is indicating is that as long as the pace or the stillness of the Body is matched with the pace or the stillness of the mind respectively - or in other words, if the Body & Mind are calibrated correctly to go hand-in-hand - Human Beings have the ability to reach their optimum mode of operation - and also free from any sickness or disease! 

Phew, what-a-thought, da?!

While I am thinking all this, the only physical activity I am undergoing is typing! So, to match up to my mind & be optimal, let me stop this typing & do some push-ups!!

💪😄