Some years ago I embarked on a project to examine old Test match scorebooks closely, to uncover previously hidden statistics, such as balls faced. Over the years, it came as a great surprise to find that apparent errors and anomalies arise quite regularly.

In the scorebook of the epic eight-day fifth Test of 1928-29 against England in Melbourne, won by Australia by five wickets, there is a “problem” boundary in the final stages, when Bradman was batting with Jack Ryder. (I found this when rescoring the Test, ball by ball, to re-create the exact sequence of events.)

While he goes on waxing eloquent about the errors in those paper-based scoring matches during those days, there comes a point when he does not really want to challenge History and get down to the depth of the matter despite having done the donkey’s work. Maybe it is not practical, but he won’t know if he doesn’t try after having come this close.

Most of Bradman’s scorebooks have not been checked at this level of detail. It is painstaking work. However, the chances of finding other anomalies, based on experience with many other scores, seem high.

Then he says,

Unfortunately, most of these anomalies are inconclusive. If something in a scorebook does not compute, this does not mean that the accepted score must be wrong.

Finally comes the cat on the wall statement,

It is worth remembering, of course, that errors could easily cut both ways: Bradman could lose runs as easily as gain runs this way. Ultimately, that iconic average of 99.94 will probably stand. Wisden is against the retrospective alteration of scores (”that way madness lies”) and I tend to agree. I do think, however, that problems with scores from the pre-computer age may create uncertainties of a few parts in a thousand.

But what is not doubted, ever, is that the average is 99.94. And that is final.

“bird’s nest jise chidiyon ka ghosla kaha jaata hai kal se itna bhara hua nahin rahega”

“yeh ek aitihasik olympics hai duniya ke liye kyonki india ne apna first gold medal jeeta hai individual category mein”

“olympic ki shama ab bujhne jaa rahi hai….aakhri baar yeh shama jwalit hai….isse dekhkar ek pankti yaad aa rahi hai….” you won’t believe what came next….he started singing “shama hai suhana suhana….” dont miss the play on the word “sama”

Thanks to a friend [Link] of a friend [Link] for capturing this though her orkut scraps! If anyone has captured it on video then please let me know. I missed it! No not the ceremony, the commentary! :)

I must say thank you to the faculty and staff of the Wee Kim Wee School of Communication and Information for inviting me to give your convocation address. It’s a wonderful honour and a privilege for me to speak here for ten minutes without fear of contradiction, defamation or retaliation. I say this as a Singaporean and more so as a husband.

My wife is a wonderful person and perfect in every way except one. She is the editor of a magazine. She corrects people for a living. She has honed her expert skills over a quarter of a century, mostly by practising at home during conversations between her and me.

On the other hand, I am a litigator. Essentially, I spend my day telling people how wrong they are. I make my living being disagreeable.

Nevertheless, there is perfect harmony in our matrimonial home. That is because when an editor and a litigator have an argument, the one who triumphs is always the wife.

And so I want to start by giving one piece of advice to the men: when you’ve already won her heart, you don’t need to win every argument.

Marriage is considered one milestone of life. Some of you may already be married. Some of you may never be married. Some of you will be married. Some of you will enjoy the experience so much, you will be married many, many times. Good for you.

The next big milestone in your life is today: your graduation. The end of education. You’re done learning.

You’ve probably been told the big lie that “Learning is a lifelong process” and that therefore you will continue studying and taking masters’ degrees and doctorates and professorships and so on. You know the sort of people who tell you that? Teachers. Don’t you think there is some measure of conflict of interest? They are in the business of learning, after all. Where would they be without you? They need you to be repeat customers.

The good news is that they’re wrong.

The bad news is that you don’t need further education because your entire life is over. It is gone. That may come as a shock to some of you. You’re in your teens or early twenties. People may tell you that you will live to be 70, 80, 90 years old. That is your life expectancy.

I love that term: life expectancy. We all understand the term to mean the average life span of a group of people. But I’m here to talk about a bigger idea, which is what you expect from your life.

You may be very happy to know that Singapore is currently ranked as the country with the third highest life expectancy. We are behind Andorra and Japan, and tied with San Marino. It seems quite clear why people in those countries, and ours, live so long. We share one thing in common: our football teams are all hopeless. There’s very little danger of any of our citizens having their pulses raised by watching us play in the World Cup. Spectators are more likely to be lulled into a gentle and restful nap.

Singaporeans have a life expectancy of 81.8 years. Singapore men live to an average of 79.21 years, while Singapore women live more than five years longer, probably to take into account the additional time they need to spend in the bathroom.

So here you are, in your twenties, thinking that you’ll have another 40 years to go. Four decades in which to live long and prosper.

Bad news. Read the papers. There are people dropping dead when they’re 50, 40, 30 years old. Or quite possibly just after finishing their convocation. They would be very disappointed that they didn’t meet their life expectancy.

I’m here to tell you this. Forget about your life expectancy.

After all, it’s calculated based on an average. And you never, ever want to expect being average.

Revisit those expectations. You might be looking forward to working, falling in love, marrying, raising a family. You are told that, as graduates, you should expect to find a job paying so much, where your hours are so much, where your responsibilities are so much.

That is what is expected of you. And if you live up to it, it will be an awful waste.

If you expect that, you will be limiting yourself. You will be living your life according to boundaries set by average people. I have nothing against average people. But no one should aspire to be them. And you don’t need years of education by the best minds in Singapore to prepare you to be average.

What you should prepare for is mess. Life’s a mess. You are not entitled to expect anything from it. Life is not fair. Everything does not balance out in the end. Life happens, and you have no control over it. Good and bad things happen to you day by day, hour by hour, moment by moment. Your degree is a poor armour against fate.

Don’t expect anything. Erase all life expectancies. Just live. Your life is over as of today. At this point in time, you have grown as tall as you will ever be, you are physically the fittest you will ever be in your entire life and you are probably looking the best that you will ever look. This is as good as it gets. It is all downhill from here. Or up. No one knows.

What does this mean for you? It is good that your life is over.

Since your life is over, you are free. Let me tell you the many wonderful things that you can do when you are free.

The most important is this: do not work.

Work is anything that you are compelled to do. By its very nature, it is undesirable.

Work kills. The Japanese have a term “Karoshi”, which means death from overwork. That’s the most dramatic form of how work can kill. But it can also kill you in more subtle ways. If you work, then day by day, bit by bit, your soul is chipped away, disintegrating until there’s nothing left. A rock has been ground into sand and dust.

There’s a common misconception that work is necessary. You will meet people working at miserable jobs. They tell you they are “making a living”. No, they’re not. They’re dying, frittering away their fast-extinguishing lives doing things which are, at best, meaningless and, at worst, harmful.

People will tell you that work ennobles you, that work lends you a certain dignity. Work makes you free. The slogan “Arbeit macht frei” was placed at the entrances to a number of Nazi concentration camps. Utter nonsense.

Do not waste the vast majority of your life doing something you hate so that you can spend the small remainder sliver of your life in modest comfort. You may never reach that end anyway.

Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it for two reasons: you like it, and you do it often. Soon, that will have value in itself.

I like arguing, and I love language. So, I became a litigator. I enjoy it and I would do it for free. If I didn’t do that, I would’ve been in some other type of work that still involved writing fiction – probably a sports journalist.

So what should you do? You will find your own niche. I don’t imagine you will need to look very hard. By this time in your life, you will have a very good idea of what you will want to do. In fact, I’ll go further and say the ideal situation would be that you will not be able to stop yourself pursuing your passions. By this time you should know what your obsessions are. If you enjoy showing off your knowledge and feeling superior, you might become a teacher.

Find that pursuit that will energise you, consume you, become an obsession. Each day, you must rise with a restless enthusiasm. If you don’t, you are working.

Most of you will end up in activities which involve communication. To those of you I have a second message: be wary of the truth. I’m not asking you to speak it, or write it, for there are times when it is dangerous or impossible to do those things. The truth has a great capacity to offend and injure, and you will find that the closer you are to someone, the more care you must take to disguise or even conceal the truth. Often, there is great virtue in being evasive, or equivocating. There is also great skill. Any child can blurt out the truth, without thought to the consequences. It takes great maturity to appreciate the value of silence.

In order to be wary of the truth, you must first know it. That requires great frankness to yourself. Never fool the person in the mirror.

I have told you that your life is over, that you should not work, and that you should avoid telling the truth. I now say this to you: be hated.

It’s not as easy as it sounds. Do you know anyone who hates you? Yet every great figure who has contributed to the human race has been hated, not just by one person, but often by a great many. That hatred is so strong it has caused those great figures to be shunned, abused, murdered and in one famous instance, nailed to a cross.

One does not have to be evil to be hated. In fact, it’s often the case that one is hated precisely because one is trying to do right by one’s own convictions. It is far too easy to be liked, one merely has to be accommodating and hold no strong convictions. Then one will gravitate towards the centre and settle into the average. That cannot be your role. There are a great many bad people in the world, and if you are not offending them, you must be bad yourself. Popularity is a sure sign that you are doing something wrong.

The other side of the coin is this: fall in love.

I didn’t say “be loved”. That requires too much compromise. If one changes one’s looks, personality and values, one can be loved by anyone.

Rather, I exhort you to love another human being. It may seem odd for me to tell you this. You may expect it to happen naturally, without deliberation. That is false. Modern society is anti-love. We’ve taken a microscope to everyone to bring out their flaws and shortcomings. It far easier to find a reason not to love someone, than otherwise. Rejection requires only one reason. Love requires complete acceptance. It is hard work – the only kind of work that I find palatable.

Loving someone has great benefits. There is admiration, learning, attraction and something which, for the want of a better word, we call happiness. In loving someone, we become inspired to better ourselves in every way. We learn the truth worthlessness of material things. We celebrate being human. Loving is good for the soul.

Loving someone is therefore very important, and it is also important to choose the right person. Despite popular culture, love doesn’t happen by chance, at first sight, across a crowded dance floor. It grows slowly, sinking roots first before branching and blossoming. It is not a silly weed, but a mighty tree that weathers every storm.

You will find, that when you have someone to love, that the face is less important than the brain, and the body is less important than the heart.

You will also find that it is no great tragedy if your love is not reciprocated. You are not doing it to be loved back. Its value is to inspire you.

Finally, you will find that there is no half-measure when it comes to loving someone. You either don’t, or you do with every cell in your body, completely and utterly, without reservation or apology. It consumes you, and you are reborn, all the better for it.

Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone.

You’re going to have a busy life. Thank goodness there’s no life expectancy.

I was not so sure about what to do next if at all anything was necessary to be done. So, I just backed out of the conference called my wife and told her that I was fine and sat down for a few minutes trying to get more information about the blasts. Called up a friend who told me that there was one at Sarjapur Road. I was staying 100m from there at my friend’s place. My friends still stay there - I mean it is their permanent house as they say in this part of the World. Let’s assume these terrorists had planned these blasts a day before, I would be one person gone for sure as I was walking around that place the previous day.

Anyway, once I made my important calls, I called for my taxi and headed for the airport. I had a flight to catch at 1925 hours. And here I was at 1600 hours in my taxi driving towards the airport. It was a strange feeling. Though I had reassured myself that my friends and family were all safe, I was still fleeing. A couple of idiots planned a series of bomb blasts and killed a person and injured around 20 and affected the daily life of cowards like me. I felt really wretched during my drive back to the airport from the hotel. Here I was in a city a few minutes ago and was happy and suddenly I am leaving it and going away as if I had nothing to do with it. That felt strange.

Not only am I doing nothing about the current pathetic security situation in our country, neither do I have any idea of what is to be done to make the whole situation better. And that’s what really frustrates me. Even if I set out to do something, it is immediately brought to my notice that ‘one man can do nothing’. Yeah, that’s right, so why doesn’t anyone connect with me and we could do something about it. Now the logic is that: Terrorism is not something you can stop by a group of people wanting to do something.

The problem is that the enemy is not clearly defined. Some of my friends with whom I discussed this felt that we must address poverty and other issues before dealing with terrorism. I was in disagreement with that thought process. You can’t wait to uproot poverty before tackling terrorism. Terrorists will uproot humanity by then and thinking on those lines it won’t be long before they come to a stage when they kill each other and end the human race once and for all. Going by one estimate the World has another 500 years maximum to see human beings alive. The rate at which we are going, even 200 seems a realistic estimate! And I don’t think we would have uprooted poverty by then atleast as much as I would love to see a poverty-free world. So, let’s deal with terrorism at a level that we can actually deal with during our lifetime!

First of all, the idea that terrorism is a result of poverty is not entirely ridiculous but borders on that somewhere. Poverty is used as a hook to get people ‘execute’ the bomb blasts. ‘Execute’ as in place bombs, arrange for vehicles and accommodation, etc. The poor guy does not provide all this, he arranges for all this by coordinating with concerned parties as he is a localite and is trusted. So, these guys are just pawns in a bigger game. The game has been strategized by someone who is not poor for sure, who is not uneducated for sure and who is not technically dumb for sure. So, the real enemy is this. The brain behind the whole event. This brain is rich, educated and tech-savy. And the brain is globally present with its tentacles spread into every single locality of every city.

So, our first step should be to make sure that we get across to tracking these brains. It is very clear that the majority of them belong to a certain creed. These brains need to be tracked and their funding arms need to be cut off. Finding this is probably the toughest part. But I really hope someone is doing this. I have watched a BBC program where they once showed how the Interpol was tracking suspects of something that was about to happen. And when it happened on July 7th they could not avoid it but within days they got across to the guys who actually did it, the brains behind it and the financial channels too. I guess as Indians, we need to help our police in tracking suspicious candidates.

If we are only bothered about me, myself and my family, like I did by running to the airport in the shortest possible route and time, then I think I need to change. And I saw a lot of people do the same along with me and would assume that we would call it very ‘natural’ to do that. Okay, but then from wherever we stay we need to resolve to do something about the degrading state of security of human lives in our country. We need to fight the bad intelligence with good intelligence. Finally it all comes down to bad versus the good. Unfortunately, when the good ones sleeep, only bad seems to prevail. If these blasts don’t wake us up, I shudder to think about the next alarm!

The partly charred body of 48-year-old Basha was found lying in a pool of blood. This is the fourth murder under similar circumstances in the Ashok Nagar and Vadapalani area in the last one month, the police said.

I stay in Ashok Nagar with my wife and our 15-month old son. She is alone in the house for most of the day as I am away at office. While she is definitely scared about the whole thing, I am worried about one thing: What the $#@!% is the Ashok Nagar police doing? I mean they are hardly a kilometre away from where all this is happening and the murders continue to keep happening. I guess if the victim was a rich man they would have done something, but since the profile of the dead is like rag-picker, watchman, etc they seem to be displaying ample apathy.

Though I must admit that there are a lot of policemen/ women going around in uniform 24/7 near our house, there has not been a single public announcement or any sort of sign from the police that they are in control of the situation. Simply going around in mass wearing khakee uniform and for the murders to actually continue happening is in fact an insult to the uniform.

I trust the police to do something about it and stop the fear from spreading more than it already has. For example, yesterday night the uncle who stays downstairs actually called us up on the mobile to tell us that we should close all the doors and windows and not open the door even if someone knocks. He actually said that if there is a knock on the door, don’t open the door instead start shouting at the top of our voice and I will get help for you. I thought that he was being a little over-cautious. And to top it all, he called my wife on her mobile and told her in detail what had happend and what he thought we needed to do. While I appreciate his concern for us, this phone call of his actually made my wife panic!

My view on the whole thing is this: The probability that the four murders were all connected is remote. Further, the probability that the connected murders were all done by a single person is even more remote. Digging even more further, the probability that this person is a psycho is much more remote. So it becomes, 1/(remote)^3 to the mathematics enthusiasts like me and for normal people: just because the four murders have happened in close proximity to where I live is why I am even getting to feel the anxiety underlying this string of coincidences. I am concerned about my family for sure but I am even more sure that this is a false alarm and will die its natural death unless the ‘psycho’ theory is proven true!

My deepest condolences to the families who have lost their dear ones. May their souls Rest In Peace!

Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Check out this website if you are interested in knowing more about this madness!

As you know, I did my Yoga class again this June. But this time round there was a grand climax to the class. All the participants would get to meet Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev [To know more about him, click here] in a Maha Sathsangh on Sunday, June 22 2008. Though I call it climax, this was not a climax to an end but a climax to an all new beginning. Since I had done the class I was also there at the Maha Sathsangh appropriately titled “Ananda Sangham”.

It started at 6.00PM or so. We started our Yoga practices in unison. Imagine around 8,000 people doing Yoga together and chanting “Aum” at once. The vibrations that I felt was a divine experience! As we finished, Sadhguru appeared clapping to the tunes of ‘Sounds of Isha’ - Isha Foundation’s own musical band. All of us stood up and tried getting as close as we could to catch a view of Sadhguru but I guess I was outdone by the pace of others. Though I went up and near I found I did not have a place to squat, so I came back to roundabout the same place I was before. And this was the last row of the gathering. I sat down with my legs stretched out. Araam se!

Sadhguru started with the story of his great grandmother who lived for 114 years and who he met only during his summer vacations. This was when he was in his early teens. His great grandmother renounced the world and family and left for her vanaprastha at the age of 69. She built a small temple on someone else’s land and lived there despite her family owning thousands of acres of ancestral land that left her family members wondering what she was upto. She used to come back to her ancestral home whenever Sadhguru and his cousins came for vacation and stay for a while. During this period Sadhguru observed that she used to do lot of the so-called crazy stuff. She would feed half of her meal to the ants in the house and watch with tears of happiness flowing down her eyes as they ate what she offered. She would go into the Pooja room and laugh loudly, cry with happiness, offer flowers to the Gods through her feet and do all kinds of stuff that people labeled her as a crazy woman. Nobody ever understood what was happening. Whenever Sadhguru approached her and asked her to explain her actions she would apparently let out a loud laugh and say nothing else. Sadhguru always wondered at the large-heartedness of his great grandmother. How could she give away half of what she was supposed to eat to the ants?

“Here I am with a few marbles that I cannot part with. Even when friends asked me for those marbles I would give them with great reluctance and maintain accounts at the same time. I would ensure I had it recorded somewhere, even if its only in my brain, that to whom I have given how many marbles. And in front of me is a lady who cries with happiness donating half of what she is supposed to eat to the ants! How is that?”, wondered Sadhguru. And as usual whenever he asked her anything about any of her actions, the only response he ever remembered getting was loud laughter. Sadhguru never quite got to the bottom of it considering that she died at the ripe old age of 114 years that too because she was fighting cancer for the last couple of years. Cancer affected her due to the habit of chewing tobacco leaves that she caught on from the age of 24 or so.

“This does not mean that if you chew on tobacco leaves, you will live for 90 years. [Laughs] Imagine the number of years she would have lived had she not chewed on those leaves”, said Sadhguru to which the crowd responded through loud applause. Sadhguru wanted to drive home the point of offering yourselves completely to whatever you do. It did not matter what you did. Even feeding a few ants would then become such an act of pleasure that anything in this life could be made joyful. In fact life is joyful

Being joyful is the fundamental position of a human being. Shambhavi Maha Mudra [Link] is a powerful process of immeasurable antiquity. Sadhguru said that it (the Mudra) was being used in an elite circle of Yogis and enlightened people till now because they did not want such a powerful technique to get into the hands of the common man as it might be used for the wrong purposes. But he has apparently toned it down into a capsule and administered it into us so that we can attain happiness out of it for sure but if and when we try to misuse it, it will not work. That’s they way he has built the course.

“For most of you, the happiness from the Mudra might not be evident as yet but then the seed has been planted. The seed will grow into a plant and a tree if you provide the right conditions for it to grow. The conditions have been taught to you in the class. If you do not provide the right conditions for the seed to grow then it will be equivalent to keeping the seed on a rock. Nothing will happen. If you try to use the positives arising out of the Mudra for foretelling the future or something like that it won’t happen because that is the way it has been designed”, said Sadhguru. “If you have a problem doing the practices twice a day for 40 days and then atleast once a day for 6 months, then do it twice a day for the entire six months!”, he concluded to a rapturous applause.

Then it was question and answer session. We were given chits of paper on which we could write down whatever questions we had for Sadhguru to answer before the program started. People had different kinds of questions to which Sadhguru had quick, intelligent and most importantly un-redoubtable answers. One question and answer I remember very clearly was this:

Q: Sadhguru, how do we get over the death of a dear one?
A: [Sadhguru breathes in and out heavily and asks] “What is this? Life? Right?”
[Sadhguru breathes out once and stops for a while before asking] “What is this? Death? Right?”
“Now, someone or the other is dying in my family on a daily basis. What should I do about it? You don’t understand? This universe full of people is my family. How should I get over it? Get over what? You mean to get over the fact that the body, mind and emotions that you recognised the person by is no longer here, right? But when you could feel all of that of that person what did you do with that? The very fact that you want to get over it means that there is something that you did not do for the person which you ideally wanted to do when the person was alive. Do you know what that means? The person died but is alive inside you.

Everything happening in this world is happening where? Inside you. Am I right? I am talking here, where is it happening? Inside you. The tree is there but where is it actually? In your eyes, again inside you, right? You know all that nonsense of light falling on that image is getting reflected and creating an inverted image on your retina that is being read by your mind and shown to you in the way that it is, right? So where is everything happening? Where is the world? Inside you. Whatever is happening here is actually happening inside you. The moment it comes into your experience the world is inside you. So where is death of a dear one happening? Inside you?

This January when I was at the World Economic Forum, there was this nonagenarian lady who came upto me and narrated her experience. As a 13 year old she was from some part in Europe that was being conquered by Hitler and they were systematically exterminating the Jews and other people as well. It was at a time when her parents had disappeared, assumed dead, and she was left with her 8 year old brother at the railway station for around 4 to 5 days waiting for a train that would take her somewhere. As soon as they got on to the train, she noticed that her kid brother was not wearing shoes. He had missed it somewhere. The temperatures there are freezing cold. She got enraged and wrenched her brother’s ears for not wearing his shoes and scolded him almost throughout the journey. The boy did not respond even a single line. As the train reached its destination the boys and the girls were separated and taken away to their respective camps for extermination. The girl survived the camp and came out alive after 4 or 5 years and never saw her brother again.

To this day she remembers this incident with lot of emotions. But she said that she made an important decision from then. The last thing that she ever gave her brother was admonishment and hence whoever she met from that day on she spoke to them as if it was the last word she would ever speak to them. Please see how you interact with people at home, neighbours, colleagues, people on the road and others. Imagine if it was the last word you would ever speak to them and speak to them from now on. How would you speak? Would you still speak the same way or would there be a change in the way you spoke to them? In fact it is a reality. Look at it - you are here now, I am speaking to you. Is there any gaurantee that you will be here next moment or tomorrow? Not that I want all of you to die or disappear suddenly, in fact I wish and pray that all of you lead long and happy lives [folds his hands in prayer], but can you gaurantee me that you will be alive the next moment for me to speak to you?

Now the reason that you want to get over the death of a dear one is because somewhere deep down you feel you have not done or said something that you ideally wanted to do for the departed. Now that the person has departed you feel you have lost the opportunity of doing whatever you wanted to do. Imagine if you spoke and lived as if it was the last time you ever saw the person. Would there be any reason for you to get over death at all?

While doing this program, Anandha Alai, two of my volunteers have had an accident and have broken their skulls and died. Two others of my family, very loved ones, very dear ones have passed away recently. If we have done whatever we wanted to do for them then we continue to live joyously, right? We don’t have to let sadness affect us because they have passed away. We can be joyful and happy when our conscience is clear”

There were many other questions and answers. This one answer particularly created a deep imprint. There were questions on how to move my body energies from one chakra to another and many other topics that Sadhguru handled with typical elan and wit. The Q&A session ended by 8.45PM or so. I have no idea about the timings because I did not carry a watch with me. I did not want any distractions while I was with Sadhguru. Sadhguru asked us all to stand up and sing along with him. He sang a song in the praise of Lord Shiva and we sang along. Then ‘Sounds of Isha’ took over and played some soulful music. And Sadhguru was walking off the stage while saluting all of us. As he came to the edge of the stage he stopped and turned. The music was playing all along. He was still saluting us, but this time round his expression seemed to be more serious. This routine, of Sadhguru walking upto the edge of the stage and returning to the center, repeated itself again and by the fourth time I was close enough to the stage to see tears streaming down Sadhguru’s eyes. Sadhguru had tears streaming down his eyes, uncontrollably, and his hands were tied in an eternal namaskaram. Seeing him like that something happening inside me. I went into a daze. He finally walked off the stage after around ten minutes on the stage. (Any reference to absolute time or period of time is absolutely a figment of imagination. I have no idea how long anything took)

In the same dazed state, I too walked off. I sensed that ‘Sounds of Isha’ had continued their music and there were people dancing blissfully to it. But in my daze, my feet took me to the chappals stand. My chappals were exactly where I had left them! Imagine 8,000 people and still your chappals have not even moved in their position by an inch! I was amazed that in this daze I could actually analyze something to this extent. And walked to the parking lot. All the way I was looking only one way - down at my feet. I didn’t look at anyone else or anything else. This I realised only later.

As I reached the parking lot and got to my bike I broke down. I cried uncontrollably. Tears came out as if they were just waiting for years to come out. I had no idea why I was crying. At the same time as I was crying my mind was telling me, “Adi, what is this? why are you crying? this is a public place. stop crying. don’t be a fool”. I had no idea what was happening to me. Initially I tried to stop the tears and the crying, I was hugely unsuccessful. I did not know if it was the effect of anything at all. I do not know, even now, why I cried. I just cried. It kept coming. There was no way of stopping it. Then my mind realised it knew how to stop me from crying. It asked me to call my wife and tell her that I was on my way back home. I realized that was not such a good idea later.

I picked up my phone from inside my bag. I remember seeing the time then as 9:23PM and all the timings you see here are a reverse calculation from here. I called my wife.

Me: “Hello”
My voice broke.

My wife: “Hello, hello, hello….”

Me: “It’s me Aditya speaking”
Wife: “What’s wrong? Your voice does not seem alright”
I broke down completely. I was sobbing uncontrollably again. And at the same time, since it was a parking lot and had rained the day before, a enfield bullet guy fell down as he was taking his bike out. I went forward to help him, all this while I am sobbing uncontrollably. I lift his bike up and he leaves.

Me: “I will come home and speak”
Wife: “Hope everything is alright?”
I don’t remember if I answered the question or not. Because I do not know, even now - after almost a day has passed, if everything was alright.

I got on to my bike and started driving home. On the way tears just kept streaming down my cheeks. My helmet was completely wet by the time I reached home. It was a good 20 to 25 minutes drive. And nothing seemed to stop my tears. I assumed that once I get back home I had be normal.

I got back home. I picked up my 14 month old son and sat down on a chair while he was on my laps . My wife came and sat down next to me near my legs in a very concerned manner. She knew something was wrong but was not sure whether to broach the topic or not in front of the kid. The kid would get disturbed to see his father sobbing like a child. But I guess she could not control and asked, “So, how was it? What happened there?”

I started my reply with something I don’t quite remember but broke down midway again. This was shocking. Tears again. My son was thankfully looking at the Sun TV music that was playing loudly. He loves that music. My wife said, “Ok stop now. Don’t cry in front of him. He will get scared”. I don’t know if I understood what she said but nevertheless I controlled it somehow. As I went to change my dress, I found tears coming. And I guess that was the last instance I saw of it. Then we sat down for dinner and it was all fine. Post dinner I watched Star Movies that was playing “Rang De Basanti” which is one of my all-time favourite movies and I slept after that.

I am going to leave this post untitled because I don’t know what I can call this experience. Something inside me changed for sure. I am not trying to analyze why the tears came or why I cried or what happened. It just happened and that’s the truth. I wanted to share my experience with all of you and hence the blogpost. It might sound like just another story when you read it on this blog, I know that and despite that I am posting it here because I wish and pray that everyone in this world goes through an experience that is so deep that putting it down in words becomes impossible. I want to end this post with my utmost gratitude to Sadhguru. I am yours Sadhguru. Do what you want with me.

Q: Dear Sadhguru, I have too many doubts, how can I cultivate faith?
A: Faith is not something that you can cultivate. If it happens to you, it happens, if it doesn’t happen to you it doesn’t happen, that’s all. Does it mean to say ‘I have to just sit and wait and someday it will fall upon me’? No, it is just that if you understand the fundamentals of living here, in this existence you will see, for anything to happen, you must create the right kind of situation.

You want to grow cotton, you must understand what are the right conditions for growing cotton. If you go sit there near a cotton plant and pray to God, cotton will not bloom! If you just learn what are the right conditions for the cotton plant to grow, how the soil should be, how the manure should be, how the atmosphere should be, how the water should be, if you understand these conditions and create them, cotton will grow.

This is the basis of everything that is happening in the Existence - if you create the right kind of conditions, it will happen. If you do not create the right kind of conditions, it doesn’t matter how much you struggle, it’s not going to happen. So, if faith has to happen, for that also you must create the right kind of condition.

What is the condition necessary for faith? Jesus said, “Come follow me”. That’s his teaching, if you really look at it, all the other things don’t matter. The most fundamental of his teaching is: “Come, follow me”, that’s all. When he said this, the great scholars of that time, the intellectual, the educated, the powerful, did not follow him. It’s only the fishermen, and the farmers who followed him, because the thinking minds cannot follow anybody. They cannot, it’s not possible. Only the simple and innocent could follow him. Even these fishermen, these simple folks, even they walked a few steps behind him and then, they said “My father is dead, I’ll bury him and come”.

Jesus sounds so arrogant. For people who don’t understand, he is very arrogant. He said, “Leave the dead to the dead, you come.” Your father is dead, this man speaks like this. When your father is dead, what a thing to say! But, that’s what he said. So, only the very simple and innocent followed him. Others ignored him. Those who could not ignore him, crucified him. That’s all that happened.

Faith is only for the innocent. Don’t believe that you are innocent. The moment the modern education has entered you, you have a thinking mind, a questioning mind, a doubting mind. With this you cannot follow the path of faith. Does it mean to say faith is impossible for you? No, but don’t start with something that you don’t have, start with something that you have right now.

Whatever is dominant in you – right now you’re a thinking person, let’s use that; right now you’re a very physical person, let’s use that; right now you have a very strong sense of energy, let’s use that; lets say right now you have lots of emotions in you, let’s use that. But all the four need to be cultivated and used. If you come to a certain level of experience, then devotion becomes a natural part of you. If you try to be devote you will become deceptive; this devotion is just deception.

Faith is something which is within you. It’s your quality, it is something that you become, it is not something that you believe in. Faith is just a deep falling back into the Existence; you as a person have fallen apart; you have just become like a simple little wave with the Existence. You understand and you experience that you’re just a brief happening here. This moment it’s up, the next moment it’ll be down. It is not an intellectual understanding, it’s a living experience that you just see yourself as a small outcrop of this earth. When you’re like this as a living experience, then you are faith, until then there is no point talking about faith.

The faithfulness that you’re talking about is simply loyalty. That’s for slaves and idiots. People who talk loyalty are always people whose vested interest is how to hold you. It’s a devise to hold you. Faith is not a devise to hold you, faith is about liberating you. Faith is not about holding you, not about being for this group or that group. Faith is just to become a part of this Existence. That is not something that you do, that is something that you become.

Yoga is expected to take you beyond the usual experience of yourself which is limited to body and mind. And Isha Yoga has a good track record of doing that. During my earlier course with them they had transformed me into something else. Rather that sentence should be rephrased to this: during my earlier course they helped me find my true self. I had realised that all the while I was trying to be someone else and never my true self. And true states are always ecstatic states to be in. That’s why we find sadhus and munis to be in an eternal state of happiness - they have found their true state and are on a journey to explore further. I don’t expect to find anything different in this course either. Plain simple myself. And I am confident that ‘I’ am capable enough to handle whatever life throws at me henceforth. The only thing I wish not to repeat this time is: to disconnect from the practices being taught in class. I want to hold on to them and do them for the rest of my life.

1st June, 2008, Sunday, 4PM

Friend calls up BSNL Broadband helpline number 1800 424 1600. A tech support person by name ‘Hemanth’ picks the phone up.

Friend: Hello, my internet has been up only intermittently for the past 3 days. And even when it is up I am recieving speeds of 3 kbps.
Hemanth: Ok Sir. Please give me a minute. I will make a note of your complaint. May I put you on hold while I do this?
Friend: Yes.

After what seemed to be an eternity, a voice comes up on the other end.
Hemanth: Sir your complaint number is 1061280.
And he was about to disconnect apparently. My friend chipped in just in time.
Friend: By when can I have my internet up?
Hemanth: Within 24 hours we will have someone come to your house and set this right Sir. Thanks. Is there anything else I can help you with?
Friend: No, that’s it. Thanks.
Hemanth: Thanks for calling BSNL Broadband. Have a nice day.

3rd June, 2008, Tuesday, 10AM
No action. No ’someone’ turned up at his house. Internet is still fluctuating between 0kbps and 3kbps. So he calls up again. This time he forgets the name of the technician once the conversation is over. Read on to find out why.

Friend: Hello, my complaint number is 1061280 and I was told that my internet would be up within 24 hours when I called on Sunday. Today is Tuesday. It has been over one and a half days now.
Tech Support: Sir BSNL works for 8 hours a day. And going by that you can only expect someone to come to your house before Wednesday 4PM because 8 X 3 = 24 hrs that means 3 days since….

Friend: #$%^&