My long-standing friend and publisher of several books Piyush Kumar sent me a copy of Lifespan, a book by David Sinclair, regarding the science behind aging, during my stay at AIIMS, New Delhi. Dr. Sinclair (b. 1969) is an is an Australian-American biologist and a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School. The book declares aging as a disease and proclaims that it can be treated. This sounds hoary, but the description of aging as the root of all other diseases was an eye-opener. 

The book is rooted in science. Written for general readers in a storytelling mode, it first describes life as information (DNA) that evolved over the earth in different life forms before human beings arrived and then passed on to us by our ancestors. So, each one of us carries within us intelligence that is 3.7 billion old, when life developed on earth that was formed 4.5 billion years ago. Some apelike creatures in Africa began to walk habitually on two legs some 5 million years ago and evolved into large-brain modern human beings some 12,000 years ago. 

Now this intelligence, stored in our DNA, that we have received from our parents, contains the secrets of how life survived all along. Though the general impression is that the human genome is fully decoded, and we have some 25,000 functional genes, that make our bodies, the reality is that of the 3 billion base pairs of our DNA, less than 2 percent codes proteins and the rest — 98.5 percent of DNA sequences – remain unexpressed throughout our life span, or so the scientist believes. 

Dr. Sinclair postulates in the book “The Information Theory of Aging,” a concept that aging happens at the DNA level. This theory, like a tripod, stands on three legs: (1) Aging is caused by a loss of information in the DNA;  (2) The environment around genes decides to switch off/on genes; and (3) Loss of information happens by loss of repetitive DNA sequences at the end of a chromosome, called Telomere every time a cell is copied and is one of the main causes of aging, and it may be delayed and even repaired.

The unexpressed genome, which is most of it, carries survival circuits embedded. How our ancestors survived without food, when they were chased by wild animals, and unprotected under severe heat and old. So, Dr. Sinclair argues, what if we relive those situations – by intermittent fasting, exercising – running even if no animal is chasing you, and having cold/ hot water baths – to activate the survival circuit?

It makes perfect sense, and even if I ignore the most recent scientific discoveries, fasting is a tradition found in every major religion in the world, along with extreme physical exertion on undertaking strenuous pilgrimages and ritual baths – both in hot springs and ice-cold mountain rivers. These practices kept our ancestors healthy for the duration of their lives, which were between 30 and 40 years. Shankaracharya lived for 31, Swami Vivekananda lived for 39 years, and both of them traversed India on foot and worked tirelessly to their very last day. Dr. Kalam lived for 84 years and died giving a lecture at IIM, Shillong, in front of a packed auditorium. 

In a typically American way, the book subtly promotes supplements and medicines for reversing aging, and when you browse through the Internet all major remedies mentioned in the book – Sirtuins activators, NAD Boosters, Rapamycin – are already being sold online, as natural products and food supplements. But the point I am drawing here is to return to a simple life, a simple diet, doing some manual labour every day, sleeping for eight hours, and a few minutes of meditation. These are the surest ways to improve the internal environment around genes.

A sedentary life style of eating and  sitting is a sure way of getting in to health related issues. Human bodies are have evolved to do physical labour. The Greek term askesis, which means to exercise, practice, and train, is the source of the English word asceticism. It was initially used to refer to sports, but over time the term came to mean systematic and rigorous training of the will, the mind, and the soul in order to achieve a more virtuous existence or a better spiritual state. A spiritual seeker, or Tapasvi, is essentially an ascetic in the Vedic society.

देवद्विज्गुरुप्रज्ञपूजनं शौचमार्जवम्। 

ब्रह्मचर्यमहिंसा च शरीरं तप उच्यते॥

Worship of gods, saints, teachers, and wise men; purity, simplicity, celibacy, and non-violence are called austerities of the body. (Gita 17.14).

Fundamentally, asceticism is a self-discipline and self-denial program that is voluntary, prolonged, and at least partially systematic, in which one forgoes immediate, sensuous, or profane gratifications in order to achieve a better spiritual condition or a more profound absorption in the sacred. I have seen Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam an embodiment of this intentional asceticism. He will stay away from all indulgences and think several times even before changing his shoes or buying a new pair of socks. He entered the President’s House in 2002 with two suitcases as his personal luggage and checked out 5 years later with the same two suitcases. 

Asceticism is characterized by fasting, celibacy, poverty, seclusion, and even discomfort like sleeping on the floor. But there is also “inner asceticism,” which is harder to explain but even more important. Such asceticism involves staying away from wants and entanglement with sensory objects and staying away from the vanity fair of the world like awards and felicitations. The yoga system is distinctive because it combines both outward and inside asceticism.

Asceticism has a positive effect on a person’s willpower. It takes years of consistent practice to master.  As you continue to practice, stronger spiritual abilities begin to emerge. What was originally referred to as the hostile effects of the demons were nothing more than ingrained memories from our DNA that were manifesting in the present. Because doing so is impossible, these cannot be suppressed. Allow them to come as ideas and emotions, but resist acting on them with your willpower.

The purity of body and mind is very beneficial. Daily bathing, fresh clothing, moderate consumption of fresh food, and avoidance of pointless thoughts are all prerequisites for purity. No one would pour something into a dirty cup, and the same is true of a heart full of animosity. Whatever term is used, the best cure is to keep calling out God’s name. If you continue to live in this manner for a few weeks, you will experience communion with the supernatural, or reality that lies outside the realm of the senses and the mind.

So why not begin by fasting one day every two weeks, if not more frequently?  Join the ongoing and well-established Ekadashi Vrat tradition of fasting on the eleventh lunar day of a waning or waxing moon. Eat only home-cooked meals, avoid using the fridge and microwave, say no to all sweets including confectioneries and cool drinks, and drink as much water as possible! The goal is to be healthy until the very end, not to live longer! Die at work, surrounded by loved ones, not in a hospital bed being watched over by masked strangers. The decisions you make today, not just a desire or a prayer, will determine it.

I spent a week at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), New Delhi. My cardiac situation needed an evaluation and thanks to my long-standing friendship with Dr M. Srinivas, Director, AIIMS, it was done. I am back in Hyderabad and sharing some nice memories of the Institute and the people who work there.

First and foremost, AIIMS is a center of excellence in Medical Science. Though I am an engineer, thanks to Dr APJ Abdul Kalam’s initiative in the 1990s to develop civilian spinoffs of Defence Technology, I got involved with doctors and medical technology rather intensively. We could develop a coronary stent by developing a special steel alloy in India. 

This success was rewarded with a DRDO Award in 1997 given by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. More than the award, standing before the most handsome man I had ever met in my life was the biggest prize. Considering it my fountainhead in the organization, I resigned from DRDO thereafter and established Care Foundation with which I am still associated. We pioneered telemedicine using satellite even before broadband over the phone arrived and established the telemedicine link between Black Lion Hospital in Addis Ababa and Hyderabad in 2003 as part of the Pan-Africa e-Network sponsored by the Government of India. 

Medicine has undergone a transformation in the last 20 years. The best in world healthcare is now available in India and many foreigners, including patients from Europe, come to India to get major operations done here at much lower costs and with great service. For a while, modern medicine was a rich-people affair but then, in the last few years, the Government went in for a system overhaul. 

Medical colleges are being established with the goal of every major district of India having one. Today, there are 22 AIIMS and more than 65,000 post-graduation seats in medical education in 2023, which is more than double the number ten years ago. AIIMS Delhi is ranked the best medical college in India. Private sector hospitals have also flourished but they cater mostly to the rich and the affluent. 

My problem is related to the heart. Atherosclerosis, narrowing of heart blood vessels due to cholesterol deposits, runs in my family. My father died when he was 49. My younger brother when he was 60. In 2004, when I was exactly my father’s age, I survived a cardiac arrest, for at the time of the mishap, I was already in the hospital, “working” there, and received immediate resuscitation. I had a bypass surgery. 

Twelve years later, the bypass also got occluded. The atherosclerosis had spread over other vessels. In 2017, one nearly blocked artery was opened by rotablation, and with two stents the passage of blood was restored. Over the next five years, the disease has further progressed and blocked all three arteries in a diffused fashion. This time at AIIMS, a team of doctors under Prof. Rajiv Narang, evaluated my heart through various tests, including nuclear imaging, and fine-tuned my prescription. Dr Mohsin Raj Mantoo, a cardiologist hailing from Kashmir, visited me twice daily. 

The week I spent at AIIMS has brought me in touch with a new reality – the culture of excellence. Though the hospital is overflowing with patients and there is no place to even walk in the corridors, the staff performs without losing their heads in a manner that exemplifies the stithpragya state that the Bhagavad Gita talks about. They do not succumb to high work pressure compounded by demanding patients and are steadfast in their work. All machines are the best of the line, fully functional, and manned by well-trained staff. There are 7 Echocardiography rooms and 5 Cath labs working like a factory – patients taken in, served, and replaced by new patients, almost immediately. There is no discrimination by status and no breaking the queue. No touts or agents, and the fairness of the system is appreciated by the crowd, who reciprocate with patience and courtesy.

The doctors trained at AIIMS as part of their post-graduate education, go out to work in other hospitals in the country, are amongst the best in their fields. The culture of super-specialty is evident in the way they go deep into their specialization and cross-exchange with their colleagues of other specialties. There are no arguments but healthy exchanges. The guru-shishya culture is evident and the seniors are well-respected, while juniors are well-trained. The nursing and technical staff are especially proficient, and I found them equipped with both professional and soft skills. Though there is paperwork, all data flows seamlessly across the hospital.

But the most impressive of what I saw was the use of mobile phones with free data, by the patients and their attendants. While waiting for their turns, they indulge in watching videos, with ear plugs. The security guard in the private ward, where I had a room, was using the mobile phone to prepare for his competitive exam, taking tutorials and using a slate to do the calculations. 

Hot food is available at Rs. 20/- for a meal portion and a cup of tea or coffee costs Rs. 5/-. Expansive options are not given so that instead of the majority poor watching rich people enjoying better servings, rich people consume what the poor eat, for a change. There are well-kept pharmacy outlets, and one need not go out to buy medicines. 

The truth, I realized from all this is that medicine is all about management. Whatever your malady – blood pressure, diabetes, narrowing of blood vessels, death of cells in the kidneys or liver, or wherever, and cancers – what doctors can do is to “manage”. There is no cure as such. However, as nanotechnology advances, this era of “managing” is ripe for a conclusion and in the next ten years, we will see some “cures.”

I was truly inspired by reading the theme of AIIMS – शरीरमाद्यं खलु धर्मसाधन, the body is the primary instrument to do right things – prominently written on the logo and displayed at every apron. Then, the two snakes around a rod are not the caduceus for healing but the lotus blooming at the top-end of the rod makes it the Sushumna Nadi, and the snakes are the Ida and Pingala Nadi crossing each other and reaching the Sahasrara Chakra – the lotus of 1000 petals, considered as the abode of cosmic consciousness. 

A country becomes great due to its people and institutions. India is the most populous country in the world and its multitudes of poor, about a billion people, need medical assistance, affordable medicines, and proper food. The government of India, which is elected by these people is duty-bound to take care of them in the real sense of the word. AIIMS is a shining example of this great tradition and I wish that India has 47 AIIIMS by 2047 and that the medical insurance cover of Rs. 5 lakhs provided by the Pradhan Mantri Jan Arogya Scheme be increased to Rs. 10 lakhs right away. 

After I was discharged, Dr Srinivas sent me off with a plant and a memento. It is easy to create good institutions by the well-intent government, but they only become great due to the people who work there. AIIMS is a marvelous example of New India – a great civilization ushering in a new era of prosperity and progress. Mr. Phamdom Lasti Singh, from Manipur, who was recuperating after his cardiac bypass surgery in the room adjacent to mine, felt the same way.

I had a respectful familiarity with the Sri Ramakrishna Mission. Besides reading the excellent books that they have been publishing, I had the fortune of visiting the Dakshineshwar Kali Mandir in Kolkata twice where Sri Ramakrishna met Narendra Nath, who would become Swami Vivekananda. I visited the Vivekananda Rock Memorial in Kanyakumari thrice where Swamiji meditated for three days and nights in December 1892 on a rock amidst the sea. In Goa, I visited a house in Margao where Swami Vivekananda stayed before sailing to Chicago from Bombay on May 31, 1893, and which is now maintained as a temple. But it is only now (in July 2023) that I could read about Sri Ramakrishna.

Published in two volumes and a more-than-thousand-page tome, The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna was written in Bengali by Sri Mahendrananth Gupta, under his pen name M, as his eye-witness account of Sri Ramakrishna’s last years. The English translation by Swami Nikhilananda was published in 1942. The book starts in February 1882 and ends with Sri Ramakrishna’s passing away in August 1886. The last of the 51 chapters describes how 16 of Sri Ramakrishna’s closest disciples renounced the world soon after his death, Swami Vivekananda being the most renowned among them, and established the Sri Ramakrishna Math. 

I was born into a Brahmin family that followed the Santana Dharma tradition. There were brass idols and a shaligram passed on by our ancestors, called Thakurji. Kept on a small sandalwood simhasan, they were treated as living beings – given a bath every day, applied chandan and offered puja every morning and in the evening. Nothing happened in the house without seeking their blessings, including going out of the house and reporting to them on return. Thakurji are now with my mother and my younger brother Salil Tiwari is serving them in his house in Meerut. 

I drifted into Vedanta and Buddhist literature but regained my Bhakti roots after meeting Pramukh Swamiji Maharaj through Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam in 2014. I wrote four books –Transcendence: My Spiritual Experiences with Pramukh Swamiji in 2015 with Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam, A Modern Interpretation of Goswami Tulsidas’s Ramcharitmanas in 2019, A Modern Interpretation of Lokmanya Tilak’s Gita Rahasya in 2020, and Simple Spirituality – Recalling Kabir in 2022, all dealing with the Bhakti Marga – the devotional way of approaching God.  

Writing the foreword for the book on Kabir, the renowned author Bibek Debroy, who translated Valmiki Ramayana and Mahabharat into English, wrote, “The COVID pandemic caught the entire world unawares. With many of us having lost near and dear ones, the pandemic reminded us of our mortality in this world and the evanescence of life as we understand it. It naturally makes us reflective, forced to look inwards. Arun Tiwari too looked inwards. A book like this, meant for readers, is actually a book for one’s own self, one’s own search for the truth within.”

What makes The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna special? Before answering this question, it is important to know some salient features of Sri Ramakrishna’s life. Born in 1836 to a poor Brahmin family in Bengal and named Gadadhar (Lord Vishnu), he came to work as a help to his elder brother, who was a priest in the Dakshineswar Kali Mandir created in 1855 by Rani Rashmoni on the banks of the Hooghly (Ganga) River north of Kolkata. After his brother passed away, Sri Ramakrishna became a priest there and lived the rest of his life in the temple, except for the last year when receiving treatment for throat cancer. 

Since childhood, Sri Ramakrishna experienced trances. Living in a temple and visited by people regularly, Sri Ramakrishna used to go into impromptu spells of unconsciousness. Upon recovery after a few minutes, he would sing devotional songs of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and other poets, dance and speak profound concepts. Sri Ramakrishna married Sri Sarada Devi, but lived a chaste life, treating her as Divine Mother. His wife lived with him as a celibate and was revered as Mother. He lived a pious and unblemished life in full public view and his 16 disciples created the great institution of the Ramakrishna Math and the Ramakrishna Mission, which have 221 centers all over the world. 

Three themes emerge from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna. First, Sri Ramakrishna had God-realization via various traditions. He trained himself in Tantra under Bhairavi Brahmani who lived in the Dakshineswar temple for six years, practised Vaishnava bhakti under a visiting monk, Jatadhari, who gave him an idol of Ramlala, and Vedanta under Naga Sadhu Totapuri, another visiting monk, who ordained him into sannyasa. Second, he interacted with great people of his times, namely Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar, Debendranath Tagore (father of Rabindranath Tagore), Keshab Chandra Sen, Dayananda Saraswati, and Bankim Chandra Chattopadhyaya, and won their admiration. Third, he attracted some brilliant young disciples who, after his death, created a formidable institution through their impeccable example. 

Sri Ramakrishna was a mystic. The American philosopher and psychologist William James, in his book, The Varieties of Religious Experience, published in 1902, has established the experiences of a mystic to be as real as any other experience. Like the sensory self that processes sensory inputs, there is a reflective self that interprets experiences, deriving from cultural conditioning, and perhaps from certain patterns of thinking hardwired into the human brain. If you imagine something vividly and absorb yourself in thoughts of the same, they become as real for you as a tree, a building, or another human being. 

As for Sri Ramakrishna’s message, I quote from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna: 

The Reality is one and the same. He is Brahman to the followers of the path of knowledge, Paramatman to the yogis, and Bhagavan to the lovers of God. . . Who can fully know the infinite God? And what need is there of knowing the Infinite? Having attained the rare human birth, my supreme need is to develop love for the Lotus Feet of God. . . God cannot be realized without purity of heart. One receives the grace of God by subduing the passions—lust, anger, and greed.

A man sets milk in a quiet place to curdle, and then he extracts butter from the curd. After once extracting the butter of Devotion and Knowledge from the milk of the mind, if you keep that transformed mind in the water of the world, it will float in the world unattached. But if the mind in its ‘unripe’ state-that is to say, when it is just like liquid milk is kept in the water of the world, then the milk and water will get mixed. In that case, it will be impossible for the mind to float unattached in the world.

You see, as long as a man is under maya’s spell, he is like a green coconut. When you scoop out the soft kernel from a green coconut, you cannot help scraping a little of the shell at the same time. But in the case of a ripe and dry coconut, the shell and kernel are separated from each other. When you shake the fruit, you can feel the kernel rattling inside. The man who is freed from maya is like a ripe and dry coconut. He feels the soul to be separated from the body. They are no longer connected with each other.

So, I earnestly suggest that you spend some quiet time alone, learn to see people around you as human beings living their own lives, and having their own dispositions and dispensations as you have yours, and never call anyone’s experiences absurd. See this world as a mango grove, pick the fruit that has fallen into your lap, and relish it. Why bother about how many trees there are in the grove, how many varieties exist, and who the owner of the garden is? This life has been given and it is up to us to make the best use of it before it is lost. Live purposefully and try to leave behind a legacy – at least a good memory, a nice feeling, in the hearts and minds of the people you come across. 

Last month, I reread Dante’s 14th-century Italian poem, “The Divine Comedy” (Commedia). These are three works that were eventually blended into one to tell a fantasy of what occurs after someone dies. Inferno (Hell), Paradiso (Heaven), and Purgatorio (Purification) are the titles of the three books. While Hell and Heaven are well-known concepts, purification is a little trickier. The core premise is that a soul takes human birth to purify itself, and everything else one does in a lifetime except this one duty is pointless and amounts to squandering a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

There are four methods to purify: purging bodily desire, purification of the will, illumination of the mind, and unity of one’s existence or will with the Divine. Different religions use different phrases and techniques to communicate the same thing, but they all ask for control over “desires of the flesh” by the “reasoning faculty,” that is the intellect. The human body is described in the Katha Upanishad (I.iii.3-4) as a chariot drawn by the five horses that are the senses; the mind is the reins; and the driver or charioteer is the intellect, carrying the soul as a passenger.

 आत्मानं रथिनं विद्धि शरीरं रथमेव तु।

बुद्धिं तु सारथिं विद्धि मनः प्रग्रहमेव च॥

इन्द्रियाणि हयानाहुर्विषयांस्तेषु गोचरान्‌।
आत्मेन्द्रियमनोयुक्तं भोक्तेत्याहुर्मनीषिणः॥ 

Know yourself to be the charioteer, and your body to be the chariot.

Know intelligence to be the driver, and the mind to be the controller.

The senses are called horses, and they go after the objects of this world.

The Self is the enjoyer using the senses, and the mind, thus says the learned.

So, one way to grasp the problem is to live by do’s and don’ts, which obviously does not work. People frequently find themselves powerless to control their senses. Emotions contaminate reason in a million ways. People flee from what their senses dislike and are drawn to what they enjoy. Thosewho are aware of the dangers of excessive consumption of oils, sugar, and salt continue to do so. They smoke, drink alcohol, and waste money on useless gratification of wishes, such as filling their closets with clothes in the name of fashion and collecting shoes, watches, and various toys in the form of electronics.  

Dante’s method is another option. In Divine Comedy, Dante transports the reader to a fictional world and introduces them to great characters who explain why they are there. Their stories have the capacity to leave an impact that not only lasts longer but also leads to transformation, allowing people to stay away from dangerous habits and inclinations by choice and intent. Dante has constructed different levels in the three realms of Hell, Heaven, and Purgatory in a fairly magical fashion, and what effort is greater or inferior to the others comes out in a way that cannot be readily ignored. Hell’s souls have lost the ability to reason.  

Dante begins the book by stating that he found himself in a dark wilderness midway through his life’s journey because he had strayed from the straight and true. This has an immediate resonance with the reader. Who doesn’t think so? Mid-life crises are well recognized – family, careers, businesses – there are always more people who feel stuck in their lives rather than that they are prospering.  

Dante conjured three animals to obstruct his exit from the wilderness: a panther, a lion, and a she-wolf. These animals embody desire, pride, and greed. People live and die in suffering, as if eaten away by one of these three creatures. The Bhagavad Gita (XVI. 21) refers to them as the three portals to Hell.

त्रिविधं नरकस्येदं द्वारं नाशनमात्मन:।

काम: क्रोधस्तथा लोभस्तस्मादेतत्त्रयं त्यजेत्॥

 This is the threefold gate of Hell, the destruction of the self.As a result, one should avoid lust, rage, and greed.

Next, Dante takes us on a great voyage guided by the soul of the first-century Latin poet Virgil. Virgil guides him through Hell and Purgatory, but he is unable to enter Heaven. Dante’s youth inspiration Beatrice, who has died before, takes over there.

 Hell is a nine-level spiral of torture. Here, those souls languish in eternity who lived by animalistic desires shunning human reason and committing violence upon others. On the gate of Hell is an inscription that reads, “Abandon all hope, you who enter here.” What a strong message! We enter hell the instant we lose hope. As we progress deeper, we encounter people whose depravity grows inexorably, culminating at the centerof the Earth, where Satan is bound. He is up to his waist in ice, flailing his bat-like wings. Our misdirected passions are like a raging whirlwind that never stops.

I find the story of Count Ugolino della Gherardesca, a nobleman from Pisa, Italy, particularly compelling. He is kept at the lowest level, where sinners who betrayed those with whom they had close relationships are imprisoned. Ugolinowas a political traitor who harmed his country for personal gain. In retaliation, he is portrayed chewing Archbishop Ruggieri’s head, as a dog consumes a bone. Ruggieri had imprisoned Ugolino in a tower with his children and grandchildren and starved them to death. What could be more agonizing than seeing his four children die of famine before him, as he was the last to die? But, even if Ugolino must die for his crime, why are his sons put to death? This did not occur in Pisa’s renowned leaning tower, but rather, in a different building nearby. How much terror lurks behind some of these seemingly gorgeous structures? 

Two ethical trips in this life are detailed in the Purgatory journey, which is depicted as climbing a mountain. One is the pursuit of happiness, which can be attained by adhering to the teachings of philosophers and dealing with fellow beings with loving-kindness. The other is a spiritual path to eternal beatitude through acts such as prayer, service, and penance. Purgatory, however, is more than just paying off the debts acquired when one sinned; it is also about reflecting on those sins and altering the psychological inclinations that lead to sin. The objective of life is to shed the baggage of previous lives and become a pristine spirit capable of merging with the One of this creation. 

Journey through Heaven, Dante’s final and most beautiful section of his poem, has much to teach us about happiness, the perfection of the intellect, the nature of authentic liberty, the thriving of community, the role of love in learning, and the profound connection that the good and true have to aesthetics. It is especially pertinent for people who have dedicated their lives to education. This beautiful book struck me as Dante’s hymn of gratitude – a tribute to all his guides and to guidanceitself as a work of grace. The book is freely available on the Internet. You merely need to set aside some time to study this brilliant piece of work.

We frequently overlook patterns of change since they are typically spread over a hundred years or more, and the average human life span is approximately 70 years, minus 20 formative years in which people begin to know the world beyond their local environment and others in the family and community. However, as technology has revolutionized the globe, first with computers, then with the Internet, then with mobile phones, and finally with the Internet on mobiles, change has accelerated. It is now evident and unmistakable.

Ankit Agarwal, a friend of my younger son Amol for the past 15 years, just visited me. He is from Meerut, my hometown. Ankit and Amol previously worked together at Infosys and Oracle. Ankit left Oracle to pursue his interests, which were vastly different from entrepreneurship. He discovered some employment in Europe that he could accomplish from home using the Internet. He reasoned why he was living in Hyderabad and moved to Goa with his wife, where they found a coastal home for half the rent they were paying in Hyderabad. After 6 years, I saw him – fit and full of the confidence that comes from living a happy life.

He brought me two newly published books, one on Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the other on Swami Vivekananda. I asked him how he got his work done, and his response was thoughtful and insightful. “I can effectively balance time, money, and freedom, Uncle,” he said. “I am both my boss and my employee, generating decent money, and working no more than 40 hours per week in a flexible way determined by my degree of enjoyment rather than when to start and when to close.”

 My father, who worked a 9-to-5 job for 30 years, would findthis ridiculous. Even the street dog recognized his rhythm and would leap around him in pleasure when he returned home from work in the evening. But even I was shocked becausethough I have retired from work, I continue to log 10 hours of reading and writing as if I were living in a monastery under the abbot’s supervision.

 I have no doubts regarding the significance of earning money. Money is the backbone that supports everything that makes life good – education, a well–furnished house with 24×7 facilities, a car and gadgets, travel, and healthcare. Money leads to financial freedom; however, it rarely leads to time freedom. People neglect social functions and family obligations due to work and are unable to attend to their elderly parents or be present for parent-teacher meetings at their children’s schools. Ankit has attained financial independence as well as complete control over his time, which he spends on pursuits that bring him pleasure and happiness.

 After Ankit left, I ordered Time Money Freedom, a book written by Ray and Jessica Higdon, which was published in 2020. While Ankit’s decision-making predated this book, reading it helped me better understand this new concept. An intriguing read, the book contains ten guidelines that the writers developed from their own lives and businesses to change one’s life to achieve its maximum potential. Though I don’t endorse it verbatim, it stimulates the reader to break free from the hypnosis of the status quo and complacency and live to improve one’s own and others’ conditions. Lethargy and procrastination are like weeds in a garden that, if not pruned, turn life into a jungle.

 Individualism pervades the American way of life. There is heroism in the quest for happiness, power over others, and possession of resources, be it oil in the old days or knowledge in the new. The Fountainhead (1943) and Atlas Shrugged(1957) by Russian-born American writer Ayn Rand present the idea of man as a heroic being, with happiness as the moral goal of his life, creative success as his best action, and logic as his only ideal.  

The introduction of computers provided an excellent chance for Indians to move to America. Few American kids were pursuing advanced education, and Indians filled that void most effectively. Since the 1970s and 1980s, when waves of Indian graduates flowed into Northern California’s Silicon Valley, exceptional Indians have produced breakthroughs, pushed boundaries, and held positions of power in the worlds of technology and media. Almost all major US technology businesses have technology pioneers of Indian heritage, including Vinod Khosla, co-founder of Sun Microsystems, Ajay Bhatt, the father of USB, and Vinod Dham, the father of the famed Intel Pentium processor.  

 The four major technology companies in the world –Microsoft (Satya Nadella), Google (Sundar Pichai), IBM(Arvind Krishna), and Adobe (Shantanu Narayen) – are led by Indian-origin engineers, and the incumbent World Bank Chief (Ajay Banga) and President Biden’s Chief Advisor for Scienceand Technology (Arati Prabhakar) testify to the individualistic streak of the American culture, where merit and competency trump all other factors. Unfortunately, engineers remain in the shadows of the Indian industry, which is dominated by powerful families and investors. Individualism is passionately practiced in India but is hidden beneath ideological jargon in which every leader claims to work for the poor and oppressed while living in prosperity and luxury. On a recent trip to Silicon Valley, my buddy Dr. S. Chinnababu met an American billionaire sitting alone in a coffee shop like a commoner.  

 So, what Ankit is doing appears to be the correct course of action. Job security is becoming less and less important with each passing year. People’s ways of communicating, conducting business, spending money, and earning money have all altered. Online food, grocery, and other goods delivery, as well as networked taxis, have resulted in a massive number of self-employed persons. They may not be their bosses in the same sense that Ankit is, but no one can boss them, and they can choose to go offline. Even street vendors are sourcing the goods they sell from worldwide supply chains and a variety of products. There are services that accept consumer orders for food, including fruits and vegetables, pick them up from local retail shops, and deliver them “instantly,” which means within 15 to 20 minutes. Allthese people are their own bosses and employees.  

 Blaming the system, exploiting employers, terrible bosses, bad leaders, inflation, and the stock market, while still widespread, is losing relevance and getting relegated to a hobby for idlers. Despite the flaws in the educational system, people who are dedicated and motivated are making progress in life. The only thing that will benefit you in the future is you and your ability to structure your life around honing abilities and working with discipline. What I learned from Ankit is a new technique to develop a dependable career – a way of life that puts you at the mercy of no one; employment that is flexible enough to provide you with the money, time, and independence you desire. God bless the next generation of Indians who will lead the new world.

As the first Noble Truth, Buddha declared that life is suffering. According to the legend, Prince Gautama Siddhartha was restricted to his palace by his father, who worried that he might become an ascetic due to a prophecy made at the time of his birth. However, on his first trip out of the palace, Gautama saw four things: a man bowed with old age, a sick person, a corpse, and a wandering ascetic, and wondered whether this was all there was to life. He felt a spiritual urgency and became a wandering monk, which eventually led to his enlightenment.

This is a story that each of us is living. In our busy lives, surrounded by activities – chasing happiness, comforts, friends and loved ones, and more wealth – blank moments stare back at us, questioning the fruitfulness of life in this intrinsic vanity fair and narcissistic theatre that we have turned our lives into. However, because we are extensively conditioned by society, we emerge from this discomfort sooner rather than later and return to our fantasy of daily life, of earning a living and making money, a large portion of which goes into the system that generated the delusion. In this process, we try to avoid the truth of our existence, and this inevitably creates pain.  

The reality is that each one of us has come into this world, not at our bidding, and must depart someday, not at our chosen time and not on our chosen terms. Understanding this Reality is the first step towards enlightenment. I am not an exception; I am like everyone else. What applies to me applies to everyone else and vice versa. Others also value their viewpoints, ideas, and judgments in the same way that I do. Like me, others like a certain hue, a certain flower, or a certain meal, but their preferences differ from mine. The stubbornness that my choices and preferences are superior and must be followed by others, is the source of my anguish.

Reality does not need or seek our approval. We will just make ourselves sad in the end by resisting reality. Our suffering stems from a single belief: that reality should be different than it is. We have been taught that the world should be a certain way, and when reality falls short of our expectations, we are disappointed. However, that upheaval originates within us, not from the outer world. Reality is unconcerned with what we want it to be. It simply is what it is.

No amount of adamantly denying facts will change the world. Yet, we frequently act as though this isn’t the case. We oppose reality with growing zeal and obstinacy, as if the universe will bend to the will of a single person. This is childish hubris that must be overcome as we mature into adults and even approach old age. We suffer the false belief that if we are unhappy enough, the world will notice and bend to our will. People do this by worrying themselves ill, overworking, or withholding love from others whom they perceive do not love them properly.

All of these approaches are unsuccessful attempts to change reality by making people unhappy. They are all inoperable. Even those whose jobs indicate that they serve you – maids, drivers, security guards, hotel servers, vendors, and so on – are there as part of a social contract, not because their lives are less important than yours. Accept others as if they are doing their best. Remember, they would have done better if they could. Recognize that like you do what you want, others also have the right to be themselves.

We are continuously bombarded with political and commercial propaganda, thanks to electronic media. We are conditioned to learn a stimulus that is designed to elicit a response to determine whom we vote for in elections, what we buy with our money, and whom we love and hate. This sponsored propaganda is neither knowledge nor entertainment. Who is the owner of the TV channel? How much money do TV anchors make? In debates, who is opinionated and who is knowledgeable?

There is a continual attempt in public discourse to make people feel nervous and uncomfortable, in the hope that they will feel better by purchasing specific items, following particular leaders, and strengthening a creed. It is a subtle game of controlling people and making them serve vested interests. You can’t change it, and neither can anyone else. The best that can be done is to recognize the reality – differentiating what is genuine from what is fake. The ability to see the motives behind actions is a great skill. 

These are the times of Kali Yuga, the Age of Decadence, with struggle, dissension, disagreement, and contention. Injustice and inequity prevail, and the right actions do not always result in the right outcomes. According to Hindu mythology, Kali Yuga began when Shri Krishna’s incarnation ended and would span many thousand years before the planet is destroyed and re-created after a period of dormancy and another cycle resumes. You have to embrace the current way of circumstances without panic or despair like a bird stranded on a rock in the middle of the ocean. 

The challenge is to remain good and do what is right even when everything around you is unjust and the people you live with are unreasonable. It is vital to understand that acceptance and agreement are not the same thing. It is possible to accept reality without agreeing to it. Whether we like it or not, we must admit that injustice exists. However, accepting the existence of unfairness does not entail that we approve of it. Acceptance allows us to perceive reality for what it is. Our erroneous notions of denial collide with reality’s granite, causing a spark that eventually burns us. The acceptance of reality makes dealing with it much easier.

Accept the existence of others as a part of your life and reality.  Allow life to live through you by letting go of your biases. The unpleasant things, challenges, difficulties, disputes, and quarrels are all created to bring out the best in you. Take them as a learning experience, learn from them, and move on. Accept that suffering will always be a part of your life; there is no getting away from it. The best advice I have ever come across is that of Mahatma Gandhi, who said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” If you want others to be kind to you, start by being kind to them. If you wish to get more money, start by giving a little to those in need. And if you want others to tell you the truth, first start telling yourself the truth.