Hello world!

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Ok. I will leave that first line as it is. Sentiment! You see, it has taken me more than 10 years to start blogging. This is perhaps the maximum I have ever (if at all) procrastinated on anything in my life. So.

Procrastination led to “Ruminations & Illuminations”. This is Me 2.0; opening my thoughts to the world (that cares to read this, that is) by writing, upgraded from Me 1.0 a read-only Self! Me 1.0 was much too private, punishingly selective, an exclusive recluse when it came to writing but not a frugal teacher nor a restrained talker at any point! Me 2.0 that you see and read here (and relate to, hopefully) is a sincere attempt at transformation – of the self, of the mind. A talking mirror, if you wish to give it a definition.

Friends, family, well-wishers and a few similar others who shared uninhibited fervor to embarrass me have been after me to post “stuff”. In the olden days, long before many of you were born, us Gen Y used to write to each other using a medium called the e-mail. It was largely fun; attaching pictures, changing fonts, running spell-checks, worrying about Bcc’s and Cc’s and finally praying the ever-fun-spoiling firewalls would let through the message, pictures & videos and all. Now, some of those gems shall also be recycled here in the coming days. Simply because I want to enjoy the ease of posting, the lightness of sharing without any accompanying panic and worries.

For the most part, I plan to ruminate, to reflect, and at times react. The illumination bit is to be dug through. Hopefully, what I have to share, to offer as insight as against any opinionated rant, will illumine your intellect and your heart. I hope to also provoke, occasionally only though, your beliefs, your imagination of this world and it’s people & places & things, and your passions.

In college, a little over 20 years back, I was introduced to free-writing. Delightful, scary, enjoyable, agonizing and all the other things it did to me, it’s all coming back now as I write these blogs. Whatever it will be, it won’t be cathartic. I do not wish upon you the outpourings of a frustrated mind and a restless soul, things I myself am not. So, we’ll see how this evolves, how the thoughts blossom, how the experiences take form and how the ruminations move from my reality to yours!

Integrity, anyone?

Over the years, as I have progressed through my career and experienced the vagaries of life, I have come across this term ‘integrity’ in every turn. From organizations who swear by it, leaders who wear it as a fashionable accessory and tomes written about it. I have had to deal with it – and the lack of it – through my career as I dealt with different types and cultures of people I worked with. My own experiences shaped, twisted and turned the meaning of integrity several times. I have doubted its existence many times in the world we live in. I have also marveled at it’s power and been by its simplicity when I saw it being practiced unconditionally.

In the classes I teach (in secondary schools as well as management/business Universities), we discuss a lot about integrity and ethics. The definitions and interpretations across age groups and people from different backgrounds make for very interesting analyses. A lot of people think integrity is relative: “I do not cheat on my expense reports as much as some people I know do” or “Ok, I did not file all my income for taxes but you know what, I gave so much money away on charity” or even “It’s really alright to exaggerate your resume but I’d never lie about my salary”. The assumption here is that success (results) is what counts and the methods employed to achieve it should be kept flexible and open! Some people think integrity is a set of values that is absolute and unchanging: ingredients being honesty, truthfulness and commitment. Whether practical or not in this world, to this definition I would add gratitude and loyalty. Reason is, I have always found people who are grateful and loyal are trustworthy and all their actions stem from a sense of fairness and justice – a bedrock of ‘integrity’. In our formative years, we are all fed on moral stories that emphasize on themes around “do not cheat”, “do not lie”, “do not hurt” etc and in later years many of us take it just up to their literal meanings. We then form a definition of integrity only as not explicitly violating manifestations of these tenets.

In my experience, and deep reflections and conversations in the recent past, I have come to identify two principles of integrity (if I may call them that), among several others. Let me share them here as my navigators for integrity:

1. [AUTHENTICITY] Ambition versus competence: many years ago I learnt to keep my ambition subordinate to my competence. I am who I am, not what I want to be. Its good to be ambitious, good to have dreams to create your future and work towards it but beware when ambitions exceed abilities. That’s when people do things that are not considered ‘straight’.  One way to keep the balance is to constantly learn and be aware of developmental gaps. Beyond a certain stage it is better to “work to develop” as against “work to achieve”. Choosing the right roles and right organizations (culture, people) compatible with personal values, abilities and learning priorities is critical to stay in line. At a personal level, this translates to ceiling desires within means. I have seen many friends having “arrived in life” get carried away on this and then they start compromising to do things to sustain that living style and status. End of integrity, personal or professional.

2. [INTENT] Persevering versus manipulating: I have learnt that the methods I employ to get what I want must be consistent with who I am. Otherwise, it is manipulation. And there are no boundaries once you start manipulating. End of integrity, again.

Why did I choose the above two?

In recent times we have seen some shocking revelations about people who have led big businesses, been role model leaders in society, advised governments and corporations on investments and philanthropy. Yet, all they did was fuel insatiable ambitions, professed that “greed is good” for larger growth and epitomized the power of “the networked elite” in our society. There are several reasons being debated as to how & why someone with high accomplishments would still deviate from integrity. Even at our levels, we see friends and colleagues falling into the same trap in smaller dimensions to begin with. They are applauded for their results, envied for their successes and become benchmarks to emulate. The herd follows.

At the risk of puttering with currently accepted “best practices” and provoking questioning of my own wisdom(!), I offer two root causes – quite against two popular adages of modern management – to reflect upon:

a. “Perception is reality”: NO, it is not. Perception is built around projecting a desired image, an ideal state of acceptance. Reality is based on facts. When there is a gap, integrity calls for working on the reality and NOT on perception of the reality.

b. “Networking – WHO you know is more important than WHAT you know”: this has been stretched beyond limits and people place this out of context. Sure, networking is important – it is the basic human tendency to socialize and create a community. Reckless ‘networking’, in any form, contaminates value. Don’t confuse PR and marketing (which are important and have their place as necessary functions) with real value-growth. Personally, over-networking leads to a bloated sense of self-importance, which in turn drives behavior inconsistent with who we truly are, behavior that is oriented towards ‘belonging in the club’. It then contaminates values. Integrity demands networking with discretion.

There! Have I gone overboard with this thing called ‘integrity’? So what do you think is integrity? Is it contextual? Or is absolute integrity possible, even advisable, in the context of our social, business and political environments? Is spiritual orientation a necessary intervention to ensure integrity or is it too idealistic?

Back to School

“If you were to go back to your primary school, what would you really like to learn?”

I was asked this question by a student of a school I volunteered at to teach a few weeks back. Very smart, right?

I was talking to a class over weekends on wide ranging topics, apart from teaching them strategy through games and game-theory, the objective being to create an ability to foresee and avoid common obstacles.  A session on “learning” sparked a very insightful discussion around the increasing need to balance between acquiring skills/knowledge and learning based on genuine interest. To say my mind was blown by the pattern, pace and quality of thinking of these Millenials would be an understatement!

I fumbled with my own answer, meandering around various truisms and evoking failed aspirations years back. But I lacked conviction in identifying what I would have most loved to learn and what I would have most needed to learn, given where I am today, even with the advantage of hindsight.

The question has haunted me ever since and the more I reflect the varied the answers get. So I did what would make me look intelligent and inclusive: crowd-source for opinions. I sent emails, SMS’s and tweets (carefully selecting the medium and the recipients for reasons of spontaneity, apart from others) asking this question.

I got a wide range of responses: ordinary, passionate, intriguing, not to mention rants and pontifications. Common to all responses however was a deep-seated desire to do what in Joseph Campbell’s description would have qualified under “Follow your bliss”

Here’s 2% random sample:

-         “Chemistry”. Quite specific, that. May help to know that the lady in question is also in search of true love.

-         “How to be successful”. Either a dissatisfied Dale Carnegie reader or has reached the philosophical readiness of debating “What Women Want”.

-         “Make better (career) choices”. Interesting, considering we in the class had talked a lot about Albus Dumbledore and his famous “our choices determine who we are far beyond our abilities”. Also, it reminded me of – and I’d recommend it to anyone who’d care or even not! – Sheena Iyengar’s “The Art of Choosing”.

-         “Soccer. No. Cricket. Ok. Both”. Sigh. My twelve year old son. Also, this was unsolicited and outside the scope of my survey demographics.

-         “Music”. From a Math & Computer Science dual post graduate.

-          “Cracking IIT JEE”. In primary school now? God, there’s just no avoiding these types anywhere, is there?

-         “Avoid bad habits”. Mummy will be so proud.

-         “To be compassionate”.  This touched something deep within, thinking back to my own experiences good and bad. Can this be learnt? I would so love to do so.

-         “WhoTF wants to go back to school”. Must be Calvin.

Here is my list, for now.

{Caution: may reek of personal failures or sound like Deepak-Chopra-meets-Paulo-Coelho, depending on your affection levels for me, so please read at your own risk}.

WHAT I WOULD LIKE TO LEARN IN SCHOOL. And what it would mean to the world and to me. And how. And why. Etc.

1) PATIENCE: Less rush. No overtaking. Absolutely follow the rules, always. Wait for your turn. Never say “Do you know who I am?” (unless you really want to know). Practice silence more. And enjoy it. Don’t crib. Don’t moan “wish somebody did something about it” (unless you accept you are a nobody). Don’t yell at the lady at the ticket counter (she didn’t cause the bad weather that delayed your flight). Notice the invisible people in your life, look them in the eye and thank them often – your driver, the janitor, the waiter at the restaurant, the boy who lifts the gas cylinder up, the girl who sells the Independence Day flags at the traffic signal. Return the salute of your apartment building watchman, at least occasionally.  Don’t spit thinking nobody’s looking. You are. Don’t relieve your bladder pressure by the road side on the election poster of your local politician (however tempting that might be). Breathe deeply as often as you can. For a few minutes a day, observe your breathing. Listen to someone’s heartbeat. And know what powers life. Plant a tree, vow to see it grow and have as a friend for life. And know how long life could be. Everyday remember one person you knew who is dead. And know how short life could be. Spend time in the mirror, not to admire, but to respect yourself. Thread a needle frequently. Peel potatoes. Or onions. Do nothing for sometime everyday (sleeping does not count).

Beautiful 8 year old butterflies: waited patiently for over 3 hours at the SSS Institute of Educare, a unique free school in Chrompet Chennai, while the VIP for their annual day turned up fashionably late. I have been blessed to be a Trustee the last 3 years in this 31 year old model school that offers values-based education in an unbelievably spiritual environment that shuns competition but fosters all-round excellence!

2) FRUGAL: Scarcity is the father of innovation (he met Necessity when he grew up and married her). Scarcity leads to clarity. Create your own scarcity before it is forced upon you. Try depleting a whole pencil (later in life this may teach you the meaning of “job satisfaction”).

3) GREAT TO GOOD: Ashoka the Great. Akbar the Great. God is Great. Great movie. Great guy. We have an obsession with great. We live in a world where the good die young and the great live forever. So when we become fearless leaders of business, we can’t tolerate mere good. We want great. Great results and great profits. The good guy gets passed over by the great ‘performer’. What happened to good old good? Good is an absolute. No need for useless adjectives (Very Good and Extremely Good are like Very Senior Vice President and Extremely Important Customer). Good is unchangeable. Good is greater than great. Good is the greatest great. Remember, good always trumps evil but the great are often also evil! Good is enough. Good should be the goal.

Carrots, tomatoes and eggplants are good. So are these very specially normal kids of Silver N Springs, a unique mixed school in Mandevelli Chennai where I have been recently introduced to some innovative teaching & development methods. This school, its teachers & staff and the children redefine "being good" for the world to notice. They need a chance to blossom out of this great-obsessed world.

Garbage In, Garbage In

And there seems to be no way out, at least for our garbage.  Because in our country garbage only seems to get created and accumulated. Spread yes, but never disposed of cleanly and safely. Think carefully and you’ll agree: garbage poses the biggest risk and threat to this country than any other issue!

Welcome to GarbageVille: entrance to a premium, exclusive gated residential community in Kalakshetra, Chennai.

Garbage is dirty business and not just literally. Like all other dirty businesses it is lucrative, corrupt and has a complex supply-chain. From the collectors to the scavengers to the disposers to dumping yard administration to the corporation and municipality (that is accountable for ensuring cleanliness in public places), it is intriguing as to how each one makes money out of it yet the public suffers. As an outsourced process, garbage collection and dumping was supposed to have solved the civic problems of an ever-growing city but it has only worsened.

Friends tell me I have one of the hottest pieces of real estate in Chennai. It stinks. 24 by 7. We have now gotten used to guessing the time of the day by the type of smell that wafts in even with all windows tightly shut.

This city of Chennai was dubbed by the government with the platitude “Singara” Chennai. In Tamil (Tamizh) it means divinely beautiful; pure, clean and fragrant. As with any government initiative, the reality is exactly the opposite.

Overflowing garbage bins like these are far too common. Apart from spreading more dirt and disease, the carelessly placed and manipulated bins pose accident hazards.

Chennai is home to several hundreds of ancient temples and churches, including centuries old four of the 108 Vishnu Divya Sthalas, St. Thomas’s Cathedral and even an Armenian Church. Chennai sports the world’s second longest beach promenade, the Marina Beach, with a legendary lighthouse. The southern coastal areas of Chennai have historical beauty – the Dutch Sadras Fort town and the ancient Mahabalipuram. I fell in love with this city many years back for all this and also it’s classical music heritage and spiritual antiquity, not to mention a simple and traditional lifestyle. Now all these are shrouded with garbage dumps and an all-pervading stench. Of course the (in)famous Cooum River (a large effluent stream running through the city that has made many politicians rich through successive scams of “cleansing” it over the decades) adds to the woes. There is not a week in the year that someone in the family is not sick – caused solely by the pollution and garbage as doctor after doctor tells us. You cannot walk or jog on the beaches in a carefree manner anymore. I know other big cities in India have similar or worse situations – the slums of Mumbai, the Yamuna banks of Delhi and congested dirty Bangalore, our answer to Silicon Valley! And I have seen it get really bad in smaller towns – gutters, flowing drainages and open toilets so seamlessly integrated with people’s conditions of living. Schools do not practice and teach the importance of public hygiene (last month in a program at a prestigious school I was shocked to see the waste strewn around in the corners of the playground). Hospitals are even worse – I don’t think we even have regulatory audits in this country for ensuring proper disposal of medical waste. The cattle and stray dogs that hover around the backstreets of where restaurants are, scavenging on waste food rotting away, add to the public menace prevalent in an already unbelievably packed colonies in our cities.

The Pallikarnai Marsh off the famous IT Corridor of Chennai in Old Mahabalipuram Road used to be a veritable haven for exotic migratory birds in thousands. Anywhere else in the world, it would be a protected site, highly valued. Not in Chennai. Just opposite is the largest garbage dump of the city, spread over a 100 acres. Reckless dumping and incessant burning of waste has made this entire area perpetually smoke-filled with an extremely strong pungent smell hanging in the air throughout day and night. The huge IT Parks (including one SEZ on an erstwhile lush farm land) continue to spring up unabated and so do residential apartments, all around this place. Sometime back an environmental group had sought stay in the Madras High Court on dumping and burning garbage here but today when I visited there the practice is in full swing still!

An afternoon congregation at the Pallikarnai Marsh, south Chennai off the IT corridor in OMR. Once a rich and beautiful ecosystem and even now home to a variety of local & migratory birds.

Birds of different feathers: high-rise high-tech parks and spiraling residential apartments all around the Marsh threaten this fragile ecosystem. But nobody seems to care!

We need a Ministry of Garbage. No, no a separate one – we know all ministries are garbage anyway! We need to accord this scourge the highest national priority. Obama said India has already emerged – let’s hope soon for the day we will emerge out of our garbage heaps into a clean country. And what should be done to us who dirty our surroundings with gay abandon? Spitting, answering calls of the nature, throwing waste in public- all these habits are so deeply ingrained in us that we simply do not care about the fact that where we dirty is also ours, our children’s, our neighbor’s. As individuals we are simply dirty.

And it is not the government alone – the private sector, specifically the large employers IT / ITeS companies that have created whole townships within and off cities, that need to allocate attention and resources to solving the challenge of sustainable city living conditions. We cannot turn a blind eye to the decay around us, more so, when we’ve benefited so much from the government and society (cheap lands, tax-free statuses and a highly visible, completely deserving of course, profile amongst the most productive and educated demographic in the country). I myself have cringed many times in shame escorting foreign customers to my offices, bragging about our capabilities in technology, our high-tech infrastructure and them looking away bashfully when the topic of hygiene, cleanliness and public infrastructure comes up! What sort of technology business and industry leaders are we if we cannot fix our own homes and neighborhoods while boasting about our IT prowess and giving lip service to the concepts of ecological preservation and sustainability? If each of us i.e., our companies just allocate a small percentage of our customer entertainment budget and CSR resources to fixing the roads and surroundings around our massively branded and market-valued STPI and SEZ assets, it wil be great great start. An example to set for the entire country.

The largest, foulest burning garbage dump in Chennai shares space and visibility with the largest IT SEZ in the city!

But what is really appalling is beyond the garbage and it’s stink. It is in the complete apathy we seem to have developed towards lack of civic sense. We have just accepted it in its entirety. The overflowing bins around the commercial corners, rotting waste by hospitals & restaurants, the squalor in and around our places of worship, the foul smell in our neighborhood markets we shop at, the apartment stairs and basements that are host to dirty clogged rain water, heaps of plastic bags on the roads flying around….nothing seems to shock us anymore! We just carry on, inside our cars, hurrying to reach our homes in the comfort of our ACs, shutting out the ugliness of the world around us. We have learnt to plug our ears permanently with our iPods and cell phone headsets, drowning out the miserable noise pollution around us, creating an artificial world of audible beauty for ourselves. Will we soon also start moving around with a nose appendage that creates custom-made aromas for us?

For how long will we continue to watch this despicable degeneration of our own environs and try to escape from it?

Can we afford to turn a blind eye to this? Water supply tower surround by garbage dump, smack in the middle of the city!

What kind of cities will our children inhabit?

A beautiful wild pheasant in the Velacheri Lake south of OMR Chennai: serene and alone, how long before such a sight vanishes from our world and our children's lives?

 

Christmas with feathered friends

This year on Christmas and through to the dawn of the new year 2011, we’re retreating further into a minimal life at our village home in Poonthandalam. Far away from the city’s hustle & bustle and the inevitable parties & innumerable get-togethers. Just a simple & nice village, farm animals and lots of birds!

One of my leisurely shots of a beautiful Kingfisher - he looks pleased!

The weather is unbelievably fantastic – a first for Chennai winter I must admit! – and this time of the year sees migratory birds in hundreds of thousands flocking into the water bodies of Chennai and coastal Tamil Nadu.

Pelicans, Egrets, Flamingoes, Cranes, Ducks….you name it and the exotic birds flying thousands of miles from as far away as Siberia and Northern Europe can be seen giving an altogether different hue and colors to the marshes outside the city.

A migratory bird at a make-shift lake near our Village park home - beautiful to behold for hours together!

The rains have left small lakes around our village home. The early morning smokes raising from the huts, the refreshing fragrance of the verdant paddy fields and the unique smell of cattle and wild flowers in thick mist leave us hypnotized.

Perched with a regal indifference on our fence, she wasn't expecting us nor we her... but we enjoyed each others company immensely without any panic!

The lakes are filled with water lilies and the rare, wild lotus. Bees and wasps – at sizes that are astounding – are everywhere, as if partaking in the magic of the season. We even spotted the shy Madras Pond Turtles that kept ducking into the water but peeping out every so often to bathe in the sunlight!

Paradise, in all it's glory, singing the onset of another magical season!

Never before have we seen so many different types of birds in our garden and the surrounding wilderness: barn owls of multiple shades, glorious ravens always behaving roguishly, brahminy kites, kingfishers, egrets, wild ducks, drongos, mynaahs, parakeets and the birds of paradise in their unique honey-brown-black-white colors!

The cormorant eyes his fish - angled strategically for a deep dive!

And the flowers! Colors that spread a divine energy around and bring to life even inanimate objects in the vicinity.  Their presence everywhere reiterates the inexorable connection between the beauty of nature and the mystery of life! Here’s one that I particularly liked (and it ended up as our loving offering in our early morning prayers at the altar on this wonderful day).

Such a divine rose, even by any other name, would still evoke poetry: Merry Christmas!

Still printing?

If there is one technology I would like to see completely gone from the face of this planet, from our lives, it is this: printouts. I would like to leave a world where there will be no printouts except perhaps for only the visually-challenged (Braille). And I fervently hope that at least by my grandchildren’s time it will become illegal for anyone to print out anything.

Where do we begin? Let’s say we begin with just computer printouts. Yes, I am referring to stuff we print in office and at home.  I am reminded of the very old Dilbert strip where the pointy-haired boss asks Dilbert to get him “a printout of the Internet” so he could do “some serious surfing over the weekend”. As I fret writing this, a million bosses are getting their emails printed (including the attachments) by their secretaries, while carrying two smartphones (one of them a Blackberry or an iPhone for sure), an iPad and a laptop, not to mention a slew of computers with broadband at home. If you are a boss or someone with any clout at your work, please try and ban printouts in your team. Treat the resulting outrage with calmness – trust me it will pass in a few days, with exception cases so very few you all will be throwing a party at the enormous amount of money and time saved. If you think it is fashionable and customer-friendly to offer glossy color printouts of your sales pitch in slickly bound non-degradable plastic in advance, please cringe. And please make people demanding that cringe too. You will have done more for world peace than all Miss Universes speeches put together.

Have you wondered how come you can have a completely paperless, online & real-time process to book your airline ticket, even check-in to your flight, but have to carry reams of printouts to prove that yes it is you who has done that and then basis all that printout have a boarding card printed to actually pass security? Invariably, the pretty woman at the counter asks me my seat preference after printing the first boarding card. Then she gleefully tears it up and in the most customer-friendly way prints another for me. I am sure it costs a lot of money (in billions of dollars, if not more) to airlines printing useless stuff, including boarding cards. Not to mention the expense to trash and dispose of waste paper. If banks and merchants can accept digital payments (it has even come to phones now – Near Field Communication Chips or NFCs that are getting embedded like Bluetooth technology in devices), I am sure it is only a fairly easy step to “waving” your phone or any other device to pass security at the airport, with your retina or finger-print or UID to authenticate the transaction. I wish governments invested in upgrading this transaction in airports than wasting money on controversial full-body scans! I also wish the retail outlets I shop at stop printing “bills” and just wirelessly transmit it to my phone or email it to me (yes, you Zuckerberg fans, there are ways to do that WITHOUT compromising on privacy).

At the very core of it, if you really pause to reflect, any printout based transaction is just about (a) authenticating your ID, (b) confirming the transaction completion and (c) informing you with the proof. Incredibly, all of these have already been automated, fully digitized and made cheaper years ago. And that’s what makes this whole printing things business more and more frustrating. Organizations and businesses keep talking about saving the planet but still throw good money on useless technologies instead of reaping immense benefits out of focusing on small things like these. By 2012, we will have dumped 1.8 BILLION printer ink cartridges in our oceans and landfills and these will take about 1000 years to bio-degrade.

Technology, unfortunately, is being used to do nastier stuff more easily. Printing technologies have become more sophisticated but instead of eliminating the NEED for printing, they are being unleashed to print more, faster and apparently “cheaper”. Today, you can own a color printer at home for less than $50 and most people who have a computer at home own a printer too. But the cost of printing – to our lives and to the planet and not just to our pockets – has shifted to the environment.  Let us stop printing just because it is easier and cheaper to do so. Will we expose ourselves to harmful radiation everyday  for every minor illness if full-body medical CT Scans were to become free?

To close this rant, here’s my tech fantasy – an idea inspired from Harry Potter. Imagine printing replaced by “projecting”. Every time you want to show something in writing or in any visual form to anyone, just “project” it digitally in thin air like a “Patronus” – your own unique virtual monitor or page in the air! It would look so cool to wave your phone like a wand with the incantation of “Expecto Patronum!” and the information appearing clearly in the air. And to get to that state maybe in the interim we can take a cue from James Cameron’s Avataar where visuals are materialized on disposable film-like things that would disappear or get reused once you are finished with them. And well here’s a tag line someone will adopt for a healthier life: Stop Printing, Start Sprinting.

Khwaaja Gharib Nawaaz: Dargaah Sharif, Ajmer

Qawwali, Mehfil-e-Sama, at the courtyard of Mazar (main shrine) in Khwaaja Moinuddeen Chishthi Dargah at Ajmer. This evening ritual of Sufi devotional music still reverberates deep within me, among the several other experiences I treasured from this pilgrimage I made in September this year. Something I will never forget in my life and probably can do little justice to describing!

Standing in front of the entrance to Dargah Sharif through an unbelievably narrow and crowded lane (left) and the mazar lit up after the evening Roshnee prayers, with pilgirms jostling in the courtyard (right).

My first visit was earlier in the evening for the ‘Khidmat’ ceremony; I had already squeezed with other pilgrims offering flowers at the Tomb of the great Sufi Saint Khwaaja Moinuddeen Chishthi and my prayers with the Fateha recitation by the Khadims. I also had a Muraad (an offering, for a wish fulfilled, to the Sufi Saint in my gratitude) to complete – the ceremonial ‘Chaadhar’ ( a large blanket to cover His tomb) as a gift, with benediction graced upon me through the prayers of His Vakils, the Chishthi lineage who are in charge of the upkeep of the sanctum.

This pilgrimage to Dargah Sharif, Ajmer was literally a dream come true. A severe personal crisis in 2009 saw me praying – and surrendering – fervently to God for His intervention and I found myself (being a devotee of Sai Baba of Shirdi, a Muslim Fakir and a living God to all who pay their obeisance to Him) having a vision in my dream visiting the Dargaah. I vowed immediately to make it a reality as soon as I would physically be able to make the trip. And the culmination of my muraad at Khwaaja Sahib’s darbaar in a small way recompensed my not having visited the Shrine of Sai Baba at Shirdi till date.

The Persian Sufi Saint buried here is considered a munificent giver of grace, in whose presence miracles (‘karaamat’) abound even today. He was particularly fond of the poor and the needy, regardless of their religious faith. And the most impoverished, the most needy are still those that are spiritually bereft. I cannot explain why or how, but what I witnessed and experienced here at the Dargaah left me richer within, and a gave me a feeling of tranquility even in the most awfully crushing crowd I have ever been in.

Faith. It has to be experienced within and the most ornate language will still fail to describe it. It can be seen manifesting in places like the Dargaah at Ajmer: a confluence of the rich and the poor alike, a leveler of the able and the stricken and cherished equally by those who seek a tangible benediction and the few for whom suffices simply loving the formless God. The need to seek the Divine transcends rituals and traditionally-held faith here. Looking at the throng of devotees here from all sections of the society, from all walks of life and from all religious faiths I cannot help questioning as to why this convergence of the human spirit cannot expand universally? When and how does it turn into hatred and intolerance? Because one cannot but be amazed by the spiritual unity that exists in our religious diversity. Hazrat Khwaaja Moinuddeen Chishthi lived that quintessence of Sufism, that one hopes to see more of in this world: river-like charity, Sun-like affection and Earth-like hospitality.

Kindled

From the physical to the virtual, my reading has undergone a fundamental but huge change. The last bastion of my Luddite-ness (after a full switch to DRM-compliant music and video) also came to an end three months back. I had stopped subscribing to physical newspapers years ago. And now it was time for “no more paper books”. Really? Let’s see…

The most difficult part was overcoming the exhilarating-yet-soothing thumb-feel of the rustling paper. So also the distinct aromas that waft off old and new books.  Then the flipping of pages, fast and slow, depending on the mood and urgency. The joy of choosing one or two from the vast collection to accompany on that journey, the sadness of leaving behind that particularly appealing one for lack of space. And at times simply looking lovingly at the collection that has somehow occupied most of the home beyond just the book shelves! But frankly, this book business was getting out of hands. Yes, sure, reading is a great virtue, a noble habit even but to constantly put up with “there is no space in this house for people anymore” cries to “why don’t you open a book shop” taunt, you start feeling guilty about amassing books. I ran out of space in the apportioned library at home, ran out of space in my room, ran out of the quota provided by my son in his shelves and finally even my parents and in-laws started hinting at how many of my books they are so proud to carry in their homes! “Think about the environment” said my family, repeatedly and I listened. And did something about it.

From dead-trees to digital books the journey was quite protracted but when it happened I was a total convert – a devotee at the altar of $AMZN and everything E-Ink.

Hooked to my Kindle, a constant companion. I now carry an entire library with me!

I am a reasonably generous man. I give away things constantly, recycle my cupboards frequently. But with books I am simply mean. Friends and family have tried to “borrow” (few successfully) but I keep track and hound them. When someone asks me to donate to a good cause (library for the corporation school in the neighborhood) I buy them new books. Over time, I have bought many copies of the same book simply because (a) I loved the book so much and (b) I like possessing it in different forms- hard cover, paperback, different cover pictures, reprints, newer editions – you name the excuse and I have used them. For instance – just one of the many instances, mind you- I have 4 copies of Vikram Seth’s “Golden Gate” and I will lend even one of them to someone – anyone – over my dead body.

So what’s hapenned? Well, for one thing, I stopped buying paper books (for now) but I still hesitate to lend or give my physical books. They still adorn my….well, everywhere at home. I have got ‘Kindled’. Bought the Amazon gadget three months back after a lengthy period of research, discussions, debates and more research. Some of these phases also involved inventorizing my digital over-dependence: from big has-it-all home PC to laptop to tablet to a plethora of smartphones, not to mention the ubiquitous iPod in various avatars adorning all corners. I finally decided that all I wanted was a simple, black-and-white, lightweight reader with a long battery life on which I should be able to do nothing else to distract me from reading the book. So Kindle. Not for me the fancy color touchscreen thingies (although some feel the future of ebooks is headed that way – multimedia – but I shudder!). My books were in B&W. Good, old fashioned charm. Ok, the Kindle does a few more things these days (Kindle3, that is). It has 3G and Wi-Fi and a couple of ‘experimental’ features that go well with the device – a basic browser and a no-frills MP3 music player (for those nights when I want the soothing reassurance of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons in an otherwise drab-weather Chennai while reading a particularly difficult portion of Paradise Lost).

So what’s changed now? My reading life for sure. I now carry 300-odd books and several dozens of magazines, lecture notes, PDF-ed presentations. No more of leaving behind some books for lack of space. My mobile library, in its entirety! I flip – not only pages but also genres – more easily, more frequently and with greater panache (imagine combining Google and Wikipedia search from within the Kindle while looking for something in the collection!). The E-Ink technology is simply ingenious. Simple, elegant and just like the printed version. No LCD radiation. Thumbing has acquired a new meaning and extremely conveniently so. The full QWERTY keyboard is a delight for search and for making notes (just clip them and update Twitter!). Find something interesting while browsing on the computer? Just email it to the Kindle email ID and within the next few seconds I have an e-book version of the material on my Kindle!

And the reading collection – free as well as paid – is humongous. Project Gutenberg has ALL the classics free. Amazon has a reasonably good collection and variety; with the wonderful 1-click technology (patented, mind you) my bills have been adding up unobtrusively. Unlike before when it had to be budgeted sometimes and scrutinized often, now I feign surprise when questioned. I also mumble something about not mentally converting USD to INR in my excitement about the book and hence….well, you know the stories…

My first new release reading (instantly when it was released!) was John Grisham’s “The Confession” – see what he says about e-books and the future. I have also managed to get the e-book versions of several of my past favorites (I still won’t give away my paper versions, sorry).

The range of my reading, which had gotten all muddled after years of aimless airport-ness, has become richer and daring! I have discovered interesting authors I would have never before strayed towards in the physical world: William Boyd (delightful), J.G.Ballard (another British author famous for Spielberg’s movie ‘Empire of The Sun’ based on his book and experiences), Sara Donati (American, historical fiction) and Margaret Truman (I liked ‘Murder At The Library of Congress’) – not all great but definitely a great diversion for me, providing different perspectives, writing styles and thoughts! I also read about people I would not have readily – Condoleezza Rice’s “Extraordinary, Ordinary People” which I enjoyed thoroughly, Sidney Poitier’s “Measure of a Man” which moved me immensely and Ingrid Betancourt’s sordid and thrilling tale in ‘Even Silence Has An End’. My classics collection is overflowing: Leo Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Lewis Carrol, Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, well…endless really! I have enough to keep me going for 3 full years – yes I actually calculated that basis my average reading speed and proclivities! Which means it will stretch to infinity since new ones will keep coming in magically to my Kindle – just yesterday I added “Pictures of the Mind” by Miriam-Boylen – a fascinating essay on the developments in neuro-science and its impact on understanding & predicting human mental state (Behavioral Science – in all its hues – is my latest interest BTW!). Also sneaked in with this new book were Bob Woodward’s “Obama’s Wars” and an entire collection of Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan series! And guess what, nobody at home is complaining about my books collection anymore – it is all within my wonderfully light portable Kindle, all of six inches! It warms the cockles of my heart to no end that I have at my finger tips more than 50 P.G.Wodehouse novels, all of Douglas Adams writings and every word published by Ayn Rand and Paulo Coelho!

I also discovered this amazing free software (Calibre, by Kovid Goyal – you can download it here) that helps me convert PDF books and epub books to Amazon Kindle’s MOBI format.

And so what do I miss? Well, for all my addiction to Kindle and eBooks, I still miss the book shop smell. The wonderfully lazy and beautiful Sunday afternoons in Odyssey, Landmark or Crosswords. Meeting real people (strangers, mostly) and exchanging knowing smiles and snippets on what we’re browsing. It’s been three months since my last book shop excursion. Sigh. And every time I find that a particularly great book has no e-book edition yet, I fume resisting the temptation to grab a dead-tree version. It’s been three months since my last paper book purchase (“The Grand Design” by Stephen Hawking hence has a special place in my bay window). Sigh again.

But then, as I 1-click my way back into the digital world on my Kindle – with its myriads of reading and shopping possibilities in the e-book store – I am a changed man again. I am already in the future of reading and publishing. Goodbye, Gutenberg. Hello, Jeff Bezos.