Increasing your awareness

The topic that I have chosen for myself for this final exercise is “Expanding your awareness”. The insights that I gained from the course were manifold and I cannot delve on each of them in this article due to a lack of space. However, the one insight that I wish to share with the class is the insight about how increasing our awareness levels helps you in achieving your goals.

Awareness is being open to all things around you. I heard somewhere that a Genius is one who sees 10 things where a normal person sees just 1. The meaning of this phrase is that geniuses are people who have an increased level of awareness. They just don’t look at things the way you or I do. They have an extraordinary ablility to see beyond the obvious and into the unseen. And this is really what gives them the “competitive advantage”. And most of the class was about how we need to increase our awareness levels.

The awareness levels can be applied to a host of things. It could be about increasing the awareness levels of our own body or of the nature and environment in which we live. We need to be observant and see things around us. We need to become like children. I feel that I should rid myself of my biases and judgemental views and view everything around me objectively. This would better help me understand what is going on around me.

Our senses are all numbed due to a lack of awareness...we would sense a lot more things if we increase our awareness and are just open to new experiences about a lot of things. Awareness leads to consciousness which leads to insight which leads to knowledge. Companies today excel because they have leaders who have the astute powers of awareness which enable them to visualise a certain future and formulate strategies to leverage this foresight.

Awareness is something that I have actively tried to increase in my life. I am yet to see the difference. But I also realise that these things don’t really change overnight. It requires a lot of dedication and a certain belief that it would eventually work. One sure shot way of increasing your awareness is by indulging yourself in new experiences. When we are experiencing something for the first time ever, we are not really aware of what would happen and that puts on an alert. This alertness increases awareness. But the challenge is to increase awareness in day to day activities. This would truly increase your awareness and thereby enable you to lead a better life than the one we are already leading.

LOVE

hold me now
fade away
my loneliness

kiss me now
fuse life into me
breathe strength

touch me now
nurture my soul
help me complete

hug me now
as i die with happiness
of having you

feel me now
my hand in yours
let me believe

heal me now
with your love
take away my scars

give me hope now
make life worth living
love me once again...

Rewind, fast forward and pause!!

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night–Time by Mark Haddon

“He was asking too many questions and he was asking them too quickly. They were stacking up in my head like loaves in the bread factory where uncle Terry works. The factory is a bakery and he operates the slicing machines. And sometimes the machine isn’t working fast enough but the bread keeps coming and there is a blockage. I sometimes think of my mind as a machine, but not always as a bread-slicing machine. It makes it easier to explain to other people what is going on inside it.“

Christopher is a 15-year-old child, suffering from Autism. He lives with his father and goes to a special school. His mother died of a heart attack. Christopher can recall how his parents used to fight because he is ‘different’. He hates the colors yellow and brown. He hates metaphors. He hates to be in crowded places. His school, and a teacher named Siobhan, helps him learn arts, math and Stranger Danger. He informs us that it’s a special school but it annoys him when people call his school a “special school” and that all the students there have “learning difficulties”. He observes that all of us have special needs and all of us have learning difficulties. Learning French or Relativity is difficult. His father has special needs like using artificial sweeteners to help him stay slim.

Chris has a photographic memory and can make the map of Swindon or London in his mind quickly. He loves studying stars, noticing people and their expressions and plans to sit for his Math A level exam. He can accurately recall the different patterns the cows, standing in a field, had because all he has to do is rewind, fast forward and pause!

Interestingly, the title of the book does not have much to do with the plot. Chris is detecting a case involving the murder of his neighbor’s dog, named Wellington. And no! I haven’t revealed the plot to you.

What Chris discovers while investigating the case (and he does it Sherlock Holmes ishtyle!) is what makes the book so interesting. As the story unfolds, the reader will find himself amused and entertained. Who is Mr. And Mrs. Shears? Why does Chris’s father insist that he stay out of other people’s business? Why shouldn’t Chris investigate the case? Is his mother really dead?

The language is simple and the narrative arresting. The book is not only a good and a quick read on a nice Sunday afternoon. It also delves deep into Autism and the world of those suffering from it. When you have finished the book, you know what a child suffering from Autism feels within his mind and heart.

Mark Haddon has got inside the mind of a child suffering from Autism and brilliantly carved another unforgettable character!

This review is also available at mouthshut.com, under MS Id: 4books.

When Insanity is the best Policy!!

The world was celebrating a legend called John Lennon. Channels were telecasting documentaries, newspapers had dedicated generous spaces for him and his fans, all over the world, lit candles in his memory. One of the documentaries was focused on John Lennon's assasination by a guy called Mark David Chapman.

Dear readers, there is a reason why I talk about Lennon, Mark Chapman and the book Catcher in the Rye. Chapman was carrying Catcher in the Rye when he shoot Lennon. If the documentary is to be believed, Chapman flipped through some of the pages after shooting Lennon.

Why I read Catcher in the Rye?
Honestly, I wanted to find out if the book had any influence on Chapman and his decision to shot Lennon. For all we know, Chapman never even read a single page of this book. Chapman shot Lennon...but who wanted him dead? Was Chapman looking for his fifteen minutes of fame? Was it the US government? or was the Catcher in the Rye, the FBI?

Curiosity led me to buy this book and here is what I found:

The book was a cult. A smash hit- critically and commercially! The books language was considered obscene and derogatory and caused furore amongst educational institutes and the masses who removed the book from their courses and suggested the book be banned. However, many critics observed that Salinger successfully captures the colloquial language familiar to most adolescents of that time.

At the outset, the protagonist- Holden V Caulfield, tells us not to expect the 'David Copperfield kind of crap'. Holden maybe at the verge of insanity but there are times in the book when his innocence is made obvious to the reader. By the end of the book, Holden will cease to be just another fictional character. He will silently creep into your world and stay there long after you have finished the book and kept it aside. He is always lying, swearing and sometimes he sounds like an escapist. He hates the world and all the "mature" adults around him. His love for his younger sister is beautifully portrayed in many chapters in the book. Also, one cannot help but sympathise with this character when he recalls all the good times he has spent with his dead brother Allie.

Holden has been thrown out of school and he decides to spend some time horsing around in the streets of New York before going back home. As he hops fro one place to another he meets different people- from various walks of life- a nun, a taxi driver, a prostitute, his classmate's mother, a girl he once dated, two starnge women in a bar. During all the scenes between Holden and these people, it is Holden who makes sense. He rules each scene and everybody around has only a blurred presence. Holden also gives his view on war, theatre, the American society, the educational system and much more.

It is interesting to note that Holden can relate only to kids...be it his younger sister, his dead brother Allie or others he meets in the museums or the central park. Why is a seventeen year old unable to relate to his classmates, his parents, his teachers and the rest? What drives him away from the grown ups? What does Catcher in the Rye mean? Why does Holden insist on wearing his red cap when he is outside? What drove him towards insanity and later into a sanitarium?

Or is he insane at all?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. The link between the book and Chapman's decision to shoot Lennon is only a figment of my imagination. The documentary I saw has influenced me to some extent.

this review is also available on mouthshut.com, under the ms id- 4books

The Misunderstood Genius

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ by Sue Townsend.

Adrian Mole- one of the funniest characters I have ever encountered, in fiction and real life. Adrian Mole is innocent and wise. He is observant and obsessed with himself. But no matter what he does…he is damn funny!!

Adrian lets the reader peep into his world through his diary. By the end of the book, Adrian ceases to be just a fictional character created by Sue Townsend. Anyone who has read ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ will unfailingly notice a striking similarity between Adrian Mole and Holden V Caulfield. These characters have been beautifully crafted with the help of pen, paper and imagination!

Adrian Mole aged 13 ¾ strongly feels he is a ‘misunderstood intellectual’ and spends his time reading critically acclaimed books like Pride and Prejudice, Waiting for Godot and the Female Eunuch. He is upset that none of his teachers in school are able to recognize his genius and warns that they will regret it when he is famous. Adrian, the genius, spends some of his time (involuntarily) taking care of the aged and visiting the home for senior citizens. He complains of being malnourished and blames his parents for all the spots on his face. He is upset that his mother leaves him for an escapade with another creep and observes that he will grow upto be a disturbed man owing to his disturbed childhood. He also tells us that his father is not careful with his redundancy check, otherwise known as dole.

Adrian, like most adolescents, battles chaos within and around him. He is madly in love with his classmate Pandora and frequently mentions his love and his emotional ‘unions’ and ‘reunions’ with her. The author uses this character of Adrian not only to make the reader laugh (and laugh so hard that you will cry!) but she blends her wit, humor and sarcasm to highlight some serious issues. If one reads carefully between the lines, we understand that the writer mocks the society, the “mature” adults who fail to be responsible parents, the National Health Service and the fact that many in the country are unemployed (a student writes- ‘three million unemployed’ on Margaret Thatcher’s photograph).

In a book as funny as this, there are many painful moments where the reader will find himself guilty of laughing at Adrian’s distress. One such heart-rending moment is when Adrian realizes about his parents splitting up. In despair he says, ‘All we are arguing over now is who doesn’t get custody of Adrian. Surely my father made a mistake. He must have meant who did get custody of me.’

This book is a guaranteed way of increasing your blood circulation. Page after page, Adrain will make you smile, laugh, guffaw and wipe your tears to prevent any blurring. Just the way Adrian ends many of his musings in his diary, I would end this review too…Ha! Ha! Ha!

For more of insanity, you can also read

The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
True Confessions of Adrian Albert Mole
Adrian Mole The Wilderness Years
Adrian Mole The Cappuccino Years
Adrian Mole and the Weapons of Mass Destruction

You can also visit adrianmole.com

This review is also available at mouthshut.com, under MS ID: 4books

To wallow in unfiltered experience

Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer

In the year 1992, Christopher Mccandless, a young man from a well to do family, graduates from Emory University in Atlanta, donates his savings to charity and hitchhikes to Alaska. Mccandless even abandons the name given to him by his parents and adopts a new name- Alexander Supertramp. He abandons all the comforts and materialistic possessions and walks into the wild.

The author probes into this young man’s poignant journey to Alaska. As the story develops, the reader will find the book unputdownable because of the compelling and arresting narrative. The author has interviewed many people encountered by Mccandless while hitchhiking to Alaska and has also referred to the journal kept by him. Krakauer also tries to draw parallels between himself and Mccandless and their rebellion against their autocratic fathers. As the story matures, there are questions that begin to haunt the reader: Is Mccandless just another Don Quixote, a rebel or an escapist? Or was it just an act of renunciation? Was he searching for the Shakespearean ‘forest of Arden’? Or was he just an adventurous youth?

Mccandless and his story made headlines in the newspapers and one of the editorial reviews I read stated, “Mccandless self-consciously adopted a Tolstoyan renunciation of wealth and returned to nature.” However, some people have called Mccandless a reckless idiot and believe he did it for his fifteen-minutes-of-fame.

This is one of the most overpowering books I have ever read and I am sure that it will continue to attract legions of enthusiastic readers. Krakauer has done an exceptional job and succeeded in weaving a gruelling, real life story without letting his opinions or thoughts colour it. Oscar Wilde once said that all good art must conceal and not reveal the artist. Perhaps also the reason Krakauer has found his way into my list of favourite writers. I am on my way to buy “Into Thin Air” – another book by Krakauer that became a #1 New York Times bestseller and has been translated into 24 languages. My review might have failed to capture the essence of the book but I would be delighted if I see more reviews written on Into the Wild at Mouthshut.

About the writer
Born in 1954, he grew up in Corvallis, Oregon, where his father introduced him to mountaineering as an 8-year-old. After graduating from Hampshire College in 1976, Krakauer divided his time between Colorado, Alaska and the Pacific Northwest, earning his living primarily as a carpenter and commercial salmon fisherman, spending most of his free moments in the mountains.

Other books by Jon Krakuer
Under The Banner of Heaven: A Story of Violent Faith
Eiger Dreams, collection of his mountaineering essays.
Into Thin Air
Iceland: Land of the Sagas, a collection of his photographs.

(This review is also available at mouthshut.com, under the MS ID 4books.)

Ithaca-the most beautiful poem ever

As you set out for Ithaca
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon - don't be afraid of them:
you' ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon - you won't encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours, you're seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind -
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.
Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you're destined for.
But don't hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you're old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you've gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.
Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca won't have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become,
so full of experience,
you'll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean

The Kopa King meets the Gypsy Queen!

Its amazing how technology can change your life- for good or bad. Its helping us flash news, read online books, launch an effective communication campaign and its also connecting people- people you have never met, people you thought you will ever meet! The world is growing smaller- thanks to all the chat rooms, the blogs, the emails, the pod castings and the rest.

For a technologically challenged person like me, blogging was a big challenge. I started with a few comments here and there. But the greed to create a space for myself continued.

It was one of those days when you sit at your workstation asking yourself if its time for you to quit...quit everything that is mundane...quit everything that has become a routine. But the devil within, reminded me that I get paid for it. So there I was, staring at my computer with the cursor blinking back at me.

As I spent some time wading through my mails, I located an invitation to join Orkut by an old pal of mine. And before I knew it, I was caught in a quagmire. The opportunity to meet thousands of people, in far away places with similar interest as mine, was tempting. I joined communities after communities until one fine day I found a space dedicated to Paulo Coelho. There were comments, questions, answers, suggestions and advices. I thought I would contribute something for the benefit of all the mortals and let them be grateful to me for having given them some valuable insight.

I wrote the golden words and decided to exit a world I felt I could never become a part of. However, the thought that my comments might have stirred controversy, chaos, a revolution or at least a dozen ‘thank yous’ or ‘bravos’ by some of the mortals, forced me to log in again. This time one particular mortal’s comment caught my attention. A few more posts later, my brain scanned his comments and his invite to become an Orkut friend.

The chap sounded interesting and to some extent challenging. Hmm…has the war begun? Will this be one of those pacts that change the world and create history? Or will it be one of those chat room escapades where people exchange vague, meaningless comments and their mobile numbers? These questions haunted me for a while but then I have always failed to resist any temptation (or shall I say I have always succeeded in grabbing an opportunity!!).

This is how the Kopa King met the Gypsy Queen.

We both are still getting to know each other and often share our thoughts on politics, books, travel, relationships and much more.

Do they happily blog-talk-travel-together ever after? Well the journey has just begun…

Welcome to the Kopa Club!!

My first post ever

Well….this is my first blog…ever…really don’t know how to write here…I have never written in public…guess there is a first time for everything…was just thinking of a good topic to write…but there is just one single thought that is at present consuming me…I am going to TIBET…gosh…I am actually going to Tibet…I still have trouble coming to terms with this fact…don’t know how long it has been…but from whenever I could remember I have always wanted to go to this place…it is more like a pilgrimage than a journey for me…I have one person to thank big time for making this happen for me…you know, you kind of get this thought or idea in your mind…but you need a catalyst to actually make you transform your idea into action…and for this I have Shalini to thank…I mean the whole thing was so weird, I still have some difficulty coming to terms with it…there I was one Friday afternoon…feeling really bored not knowing what to do…I come across this community about Paulo Coelho on orkut…had joined that community ages ago but had never posted anything significant on it…I was just going through some of the posts over there and came across this rather intriguing post by someone named Shalini…went to her profile and kind of had a pretty close look at it…it was not much, but I kind of had this feeling or intuition about her…so I wrote on her scrap book…received a pretty frosty response from her…but then, the very next day I received a rather nice message from her…we then graduated on to yahoo chat and made like this awesome instant connection…chemistry over warped digital highways…intriguing thought…probably would write a poem about it someday…anyways we had a really lovely conversation and a part of it was about traveling…the very next day she says if you are free we could go backpacking to Tibet…that shook me up quite a bit…but I instantaneously said yes…in my heart I really wanted to make this journey, but the only thing that was holding me back was permission from my parents…I mean I was just wondering what my dad would say if I told him that I want to go backpacking to Tibet with this stranger girl whom I haven’t even met…it has been just 5 days since I first spoke to her…I had kind of made up in my mind that he would definitely say no…but I would never have forgiven myself if I had not asked him…so there I was having breakfast at the table and talking to my dad…he was telling me about his boss going on a second honeymoon and all the plans that they had made to rent a houseboat on the backwaters of kerala and spend a couple of days there…I decided I have to drop my bombshell at just that moment…I nervously tell him “Dad I want to go to Tibet”…that’s all…nothing more nothing less…was too nervous to even think straight…he says “TIBET?”…so then I mention that I want to go backpacking all the way, that this is not a journey but a pilgrimage and I just poured my heart out and I guess the genuineness of my outburst touched him…he just stared at me for a moment and said…”you look just like a monk, you are even wearing a maroon tee shirt…hmmm, you probably were a monk in your previous life and your roots are now calling out to you”…my only response was “So…can I go?”…and he said “Yes…this is the only time you can actually go on such adventures, I guess your time is running out, do it before it is too late”…I am stunned stunned stunned …I was numb to any emotion at that point of time…then the thing struck me and slowly started sinking in…I actually got the permission I was dreading I would never get…could not help this HUGE smile creep onto my face…and I was filled with this immense joy…nothing could have gotten me down on that day…I immediately called shalini and gave her the news…gosh, she knows how excited I was, she was literally yelling at me come down from this euphoric high…there was just no looking back from there on…WOW!!!!!!! Tibet here I come…want to tell you guys exactly what I feel about going to Tibet and the exact purpose of my visit…probably will do that on a later day…am late for dinner already…