That was a lesson well taught Ma'am

A teachers day special from my side. How I learnt to be a topper in class.

This happened when I was in 3d standard, I used to think myself as a big boss of the class, I used to get good marks too but I wasn't the topper in class. There was this class teacher of mine, her name was Philomena teacher. She used to take special interest on me I don't know why. . She must've seen something special.
And so it was exam time. class test in science I think. I didn't study for it but simply went just like that! I was overconfident there. Amazing to say that I still remember the questions of that exam! It was the structure of a plant and one question on environment . I hadn't studied well so I made a diagram of whatever that came to my mind. So that was it.

Two days later it was the result time and she started distributing answer papers. To my ultimate horror I found out that she had failed me! I had never failed in an exam before. . . I felt so ashamed and humiliated that time.

Then she was giving two beatings with scale to those who failed. When it was my turn , I held my hand out and started crying . I still think cried pretty badly there ;-) she gave me one beating and then she took me into her arms and consoled me. She told where I went wrong and that all was not lost .

She said I could come first in class if I wanted to, just that I had to work for it . That was a lesson well taught and well learnt. I never looked back after that , I started reading with the zeal from that day . I was a topper in class all through my primary, high school and pre universities . . Nice to remember now that all my successes began with that failure! I am ever grateful to her for opening my eyes at such a young age and lighting the fire of knowledge inside me .Thank you madam..

Lets Meditate!!

I'd like to share my views on meditation with you. I think the concept of meditation is ever more relevant in 21st century .In the present world full of hectic schedules and deadlines and lots of other stresses and strains, one should try to calm his mind otherwise he is sure to get hypertensive or diabetic. Also incidence of heart attacks in young people is on the rise. So all of us should try to get hold of our emotions and behavior otherwise we might be in a high risk situation later in life.

I have to tell you why I turned towards meditation. My day to day life was full of stresses and I used to feel very bad about myself at the end of the day . Also that I felt alone most of the time and that used to depress me a lot. From this year beginning I started getting migraine headache also! So I had to do something about it . To tell you the truth I didn't like to start meditating , I thought it was old fashioned .

But one day as I was talking with my classmates I found out that many of them were practicing meditation. I was surprised and then even I wanted to do it ! Peer pressure you see, I never thought my friends would be doing it, but once I found out that they also did it then I didn't have any inhibitions.

I referred many books before starting and once I started meditating I realised what all I had missed! It was such a wonderful experience! I have been practicing it from last two months and I have noticed myself thinking more clearly, being more calm and I have better control over my emotions now. My headaches have subsided . Although its too early to declare success , I am very confident that my personality will improve .

I have realised that I had a very wrong perception of what meditation is when I started doing it. Meditation is not about controlling your mind like a remote, you don't need to concentrate to meditate , you don't have to sit in difficult postures and you don't need to do it for hours. Rather my understanding of meditation is that it is a science of observing your mind . Its not about control but about release of pent up emotions and thoughts .Its a scientific method, has nothing to do with religion. If you want to meditate you'll have to learn to allow disturbing thoughts but not being affected by it. Restriction never helps. .

You can practice it sitting in a chair or cot. I meditate only 10-15 minutes per day but even this little does help . One of the easiest methods is to sit in calm surroundings and observing your breath . So concluding my article, I'd like all people to try meditation as it is easy to learn and doesn't take much of your time and has many benefits.

A rendezvous with the forest king

This event happened four years back. It was holidays for us after the end of yearly exams in pre university college. As usual we had planned an adventure .

The idea was to visit the Nagarhole wildlife sanctuary. We went till there in a quails and when we reached the place to our utter dismay we came to know that their safari vehicle had already left. Also the costs were high so we decided to cross over to Kerala and see the forest from that side.

It proved to be very good decision since we were able to see much of the forest for a longer time at half the price.

Coming to the main point, as we went inside that forest we saw many animals there, all kinds. I still remember some of them , for eg: Malabar squirrel, bisons, deers and many others. As we were moving in the jeep, we were confronted by a single male elephant.
That was one hell of an experience for me. The elephant was towering over us, waiting for us to make the move. There it stood in that majestic manner in which only they can show. It was the king of that forest and was not pleased at us invading its territory. The tension was palpable in the atmosphere. Then our jeep driver slowly started to move the jeep in reverse gear. The elephant trumpeted lifting its trunk, dismissing us.

We moved back for next 10 minutes expecting it to attack but it didn’t come. We used an alternate route to see other places inside the forest.

After that incident I have seen so many elephants in the captivity but none of them had that imposing personality and the fearsome attitude like this one.Deep down I have this doubt that I never will see such an animal again. .

To be carried or not...

Here's an good zen story which I read long back and still remember.

Long time back there was a famous zen guru. He was constantly travelling from one place to other , helping people and preaching religion. He had few disciples who followed him . One day while travelling, they had to cross a river. The flow was high . Also by the riverside, was a beautiful young woman, alone and worried . She also had to cross the river but she couldn't swim.

The disciples ignored her, since they had sworn celibacy . The guru saw her, suddenly went near her, took her in his arms, carried her across the river and left her on the other side.

The disciples were astonished and angry. How can our guru do this ? Being sworn celibacy how could he lead us in wrong path? They were angry but didn't have the courage to ask him directly. So they continued their journey .

The next day, senior most disciple gathered his courage and asked guru ' master , after being sworn celibacy , why did you touch that woman ? ‘

The guru simply said ' oh I left her on the other side of the river, I can see that you have been carrying her all the time till here!'

The disciple immediately understood that he had mentally thought of her all the time, where as his guru had seen her as a just another human being sworn in need of help. He bowed to the guru, feeling ashamed.

Three Years @ KMC

This day , three years back, I entered KMC. I can't believe time has elapsed in such a fast pace . It seems like just yesterday ! I was a novice then and now also I don't feel any different!

As I think about it, I realise that so many things have happened from that first day . Many memories rush in . . Some good some bad . . But each day has had some thing remarkable event happening. I have seen, heard, examined and I have learnt. I have seen births and deaths and all the raw human feelings . I have observed myself changing my personality slowly to adopt to newer situations which I never faced before. I have seen so many of others changing their lifestyles. One thing I dare to say is that change is the one constant thing in life . If you fail to adopt, you can't survive here. To sum up the last three years, I have learned to adapt to situations and survive.

Trekking to charmadi in monsoon

It was a rainy day when I got the call. Kabir had called me to inform about a trek to charmadi ghats and Ballala rayana durga .’ Mostly it won't be possible as the heavy rains may disrupt traffic and all no?’ I asked .  Kabir reasoned that we would take a Toyota qualis and that we had never gone trekking in rainy weather and it would be a great adventure . That much coaxing was enough for me . I joined the group.

 We left at 6 30 am on Saturday morning . Our team had 10 members which was quite big . . Most of them were my class mates in high school or pre unis . I hadn't seen them for years . So it was like a small reunion . We had breakfast in Ujire. And we bought snuff powder and tobacco leaves in a shop. From our previous experiences, we had learnt not to go trekking without some stuff to get rid of leeches. We also bought some snacks .

 It had started to drizzle lightly by then. We had expected heavy rains but this weather was ok .  As we slowly progressed through the hair pin curves , we saw many beautiful waterfalls just beside the road . We stopped in many places to take photos. Then we also saw the beautiful alekan falls , which is also on the way. The weather was getting chilled . There was  thick mist  everywhere.

                                                                     (alekan falls)

We reached kottigehara by 11 a.m. Its a small town situated above charmadi ghats . From this place we didn't know the way up properly. So we asked bystanders for directions . We had to reach sankasale and climb from there. All the people were astonished to see us going there in this time. We were curious about this , but soon we found out why.

As we reached near B.r.durga , road became narrow and after 10km there was only mud road. We went 5 kms more in that road and parked our vehicle. There was still 5 more kms to walk. Suddenly the sky turned dark grey. And within few minutes it started to rain heavily. We got a bit discouraged but we expected this so we put on our jackets and started our trek.

It was not too long before someone shouted ‘leech’!!  suddenly everyone started looking at their legs..!! some of the team members were getting this ‘leech therapy’ for the first time so they were cursing these slimy, bloodthirsty creatures. I remembered my first encounter  with the leeches. I too was terrified by them at that time but now after many trekkings I had few tactics which would give me some advantage. The idea is to stay ahead and not to stop anywhere. But after some time my shoes were also covered with crawling sticky leeches. So I stopped at the middle of a small stream , removed the leeches one by one patiently with the help of tobacco leaves. If you hold the leaf over the leech, it will stiffen and get dislodged. Mud road came to an end when we reached Hori Khan estate.

From this place we’re supposed to see beautiful view of Ballala rayana durga, but nothing was there to be seen. Everything was covered  by mist. We found a place relatively free of leeches and discussed about our next step. We had come this far and nobody wanted to go back simply so we decided to move ahead.

What we entered next was pure hell…

Full of leeches and other creepy crawling creatures,  Thorny bushes everywhere also big logs obstructing the path. In fact there was no path as such. There was very little light creeping inside the thick canopy. It was a humid and wet climate with constant rain. Obviously within few minutes we were lost inside the deep forest. We didn’t know how to go forward now.

Then we saw two dogs following us, probably they were from that estate so we let them move forward, showing  us the way . They  did move smartly for some time but afterwards they  went on two different directions confusing us. All of us were quite tired by now .. then, we saw the remains of the fort wall..

There were some pavement or something above our route. So me and Kabir took a detour  to examine it. As we went near it I heard the most terrifying sound I’ve ever heard! Some wild animal was very near to us and had warned us not to come near. Mostly it was a wild boar or a bison I don’t know for sure. The moment we heard it, we panicked and ran for our life!! After 5 minutes we met the other members and told them to change the route. Now we moved along a stream , slowly climbing upwards over slippery rocks and we reached the top of the hill. We could see the vast view only for few seconds before the mist covered all of us again. We couldn’t find the main entrance in that fog…hell ! we could hardly see each others faces!! We tried to move over the old wall in hopes of finding the entrance but sadly it too ended shortly. We saw there was no sense in moving ahead, we decided to go back..

We were almost there…had reached the top but couldn’t get that sense of fulfillment. We will climb it again , some other time, to conquer it again..

We came down very slowly and by the time we had reached our vehicle, it was 3 p.m.  We were exhausted and hungry .  We had steaming hot neer dosas and mirchi bhaji in kottige hara. Then we started our journey back home. Thus it was  the end to our adventure.

 team: Bharat,Kabir,Sharath,Karthik,Pradeep,Vineeth,     Nishanth,Ramachandra, Gautham (L-R)

me and my cousin

PURPOSE OF LIFE

FICTION

Long time back there was a man. He wanted to achieve something great. So he started acquiring knowledge. He wanted to know the purpose of life . But no book could give him that .

It was not mentioned by any of his mentors , some of whom were of great expertise and fame . He became very sad that he couldn't get the answer. He was depressed all the time. He further studied and studied . .

Later he thought penance would give his answer. So he went to a mountain and started his penance. But no avail , he still didn't get the solution . His sadness persisted and progressed . He became very old and fragile, still his quest moved on.

 Finally he was in his death bed , when God appeared in front of him.' Son , what is it that you want to know from me?' God asked in a kind voice. The old man asked 'The great one, please tell me the purpose of this life, the existence .'

God replied ' I pity you, for the reason that the answer is rather simple, life is there so that you can enjoy it. Purpose of this life is to be happy . Too bad you spent it in misery.'