Certain memories, not captured in photographs, not laced with emotions, were buried in the subconscious but they had never vanished. At the most unexpected moment, and at the subtlest cue, they sprung up in full liveliness as if they had occurred the last evening. 

I have been going to the United States since 1999 and have been to different places in connection with some or the other work. One such trip took me toSt. Louis with young Hamish Sahni, now Chairman, Klenzaids Contamination Controls Pvt. Ltd., Mumbai. They have been setting up the Integrated Biologicals Formulations Facility for Bharat Biotech, Hyderabad for which we met. 

The field of how to handle biological contamination was entering into India and Klenzaids was the leading company in India making HEPA (high-efficiency particulate arrestance) filters. So, I landed up in St. Louis for a technical conference I was attending with Hamish, without any idea about the place. The Internet had not yet come to our phones and one couldn’t Google to know whatever crossed one’s mind.

I was amazed to see the iconic Gateway Arch monument that symbolizes the city. It was a very tall arch that could be seen from everywhere. After completing our work, we visited the arch site, went up the 630 ft. (192 meter) arch in a cable car and watched a film in the underground theater about the importance of the monument. Constructed on the Western bank of the Mississippi River, the monument, which forms the state line between Illinois and Missouri, commemorates the westward expansion of the United States. 

Christopher Columbus started his sail from Spain to India for a share in the seemingly limitless riches of the “Golden Bird” and stumbled into Puerto Rico calling it the West Indies (India in the West). The saddest part of the story is that Columbus tried three more times—in 1493, 1498 and 1502—but could reach only up to Panama on his last trip and never put his foot on the North American continent. He returned to Spain disgraced and died in 1506. 

English exploration began almost a century later. They arrived in Virginia in 1585 and called it “The New World.” The first British settlers in the New World stayed close to the Atlantic, their lifeline to supplies needed from England and established their colonies going northward up to Canada. By the 1760s, the thirteen British colonies contained 2.5 million people along the Atlantic Coast east of the Appalachian Mountains. The Colonies defeated the British and established the United States of America on July 4, 1776. The war however continued till 1783. 

During the 1830s and ’40s, the flood of pioneers poured unceasingly westward which required the crossing of the mighty Mississippi River. The French were ruling this territory. In 1803, they sold it to the U.S. for fifteen million dollars, or approximately eighteen dollars per square mile. The United States nominally acquired more than 2 million square kilometers. The biggest joke is that the French were mere squatters there. The original inhabitants, called natives, had no role in this deal. Gateway Arch monument celebrates that crossing of the Mississippi River, as I learnt while watching the film. 

Another memory ofSt. Louis is the relaxed Sunday forenoon I spent at the Grand Hall Market. It was an old railway station converted into a marketplace. The trains now pass through the underground station. There I came across a fudge-maker’s shop. A huge African-American man was singing loudly in his baritone voice and making some sweet dish. I stood there as if hypnotized. I observed that the man was making a sugar candy by mixing sugar, butter and milk, boiling it to the soft-ball stage and then beating the mixture while it cooled so that it would acquire a smooth, creamy consistency. The aroma, his singing and beating sounds were creating the magic. 

A middle-aged lady, with pink skin and blue eyes, arrived. She was carrying two bags, which she kept on the ground and started clapping, singing and even gracefully dancing with the singing fudge-maker, making a perfect chorus. Many others also joined the singing. This went on for some fifteen minutes and concluded with the fudge ready. A few people bought little pieces but most of them were there to enjoy the making and singing. The lady standing by my side did not buy anything; she just lifted her bags and walked away as if nothing had happened. I learnt at that moment that this is the spirit of America. The lady was living in the present moment. There was no status consciousness. Neither was there any indulgence on the part of the fudge-maker – please buy… at least taste a bit…. 

So, what triggered this memory after 20 years? I think it was a juxtaposition of many things. The background was the recent visit of the Prime Minister to the coronavirus vaccine development facilities. Those images brought out the Klenzaids, who made such facilities. The shining steel interiors of vaccine-making plants brought out the memory of the shining Arch. But the singing fudge sprung up when I was microwave-warming the Mysore Pak before taking a bite. I think I overheated it, releasing the aroma of burnt sugar, and then started singing to hide my embarrassment…  

Queen Bitch, eat the rich 
I’m on the second course today. 
I’m not the first and I won’t be the worst 
She’s done most of LA.

We have to live little moments as they come before us. That is what that middle-aged lady demonstrated before me that day. It was a Sunday; her grown-up children must be sleeping at home and instead of breaking her head with them, she came out to this vintage shopping area and sang cheerfully like a little girl, fully immersed in the present moment. And once the moment passed, she detached herself and moved on.

Life is indeed beautiful if you have time to observe its beauty. There are so many little pleasures hidden behind the shouting TV and the clutter of social media. We may have come from a great civilization, but we are miles behind in civility and treating other people with loving kind respect. Advancing materially – becoming rich, buying toys, luxuries and conveniences – has never made any one happy, so why would you be an exception? Everyone needs fudge, it is how God helps us cope. Don’t judge everything and keep pronouncing verdicts. Cheer up!

I am blessed with the friendship of Dr Mpoki Ulisubisya. He came to India in 2005, as part of the follow-up of President Kalam’s visit to Tanzania in 2004. An Anesthesiologist, Dr Mpoki brought with him a team of doctors, nurses and paramedics. They spent two years in India learning further in their respective fields. They left behind very warm memories and a great impression. A decade later, I met Dr Mpoki and his colleagues in Dar es Salaam at the Jakaya Kikwete Cardiac Institute, a modern well-equipped hospital in Tanzania built by China and run by India-trained personnel. 

Dr Mpoki drove me to Bagamoyo, a trading port for ivory and the slave trade, with traders coming from the African interiors, from places as far as Zambia, Congo, Lake Tanganyika and Mount Usambara on their way to Zanzibar. Later, Dr Mpoki took over as the High Commissioner of Tanzania in Canada and moved to Ottawa. He posts his comments regularly in this blog and helps raise the narrative to a higher level with his soulful insights. Commenting upon my article about fame the last month, Dr Mpoki mentioned about Dr Edson Chikumba who spent his life impacting the lives of many people around him. 

When Dr. Chikumba left for his heavenly abode, Dr Mpoki said, “Dr Chikumba’s ancestral roots in the Kingdom of Monomotapa (modern day Zimbabwe), and the mourning transcended the political jurisdictions of the Republic.” The mention of the Kingdom of Monomotapa caused a hair-raising experience. It triggered my memory of meeting Padre Filipe Couto, Catholic priest and Former Chancellor of Universidade Eduardo Mondlane (UED) in Maputo, Mozambique. One evening, on June 13, 2016, I sat with him in a roadside café and listened from him the story of the people of Monomotapa. 

Born in January 1939, Padre Filipe Couto completed two PhDs, in Sociology and Anthropology. He told me that the Monomotapa empire covered vast territories of what are now modern-day Zimbabwe, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa. In fact, Monomotapa was a Portuguese transliteration of the African royal title “Mwenemutapa” derived from a combination of two words – “Mwene” meaning King or Lord, and “Mutapa” meaning land. The empire had a well-organized religion revolving around ritual consultation of spirits and royal ancestors and had a powerful priesthood. There were vast gold mines there, but they were not exploited, and people lived in harmony by doing agriculture and animal husbandry and flourished in their paradise. 

Padre Filipe Couto told me that the problems started in 1561, when a Portuguese Jesuit missionary managed to make his way into the Mwenemutapa’s court and converted him to Christianity. This did not go well with the Muslim merchants in the capital, and they persuaded the king to kill the Jesuit only a few days after the former’s baptism. This was all the excuse the Portuguese needed to penetrate the interior and take control of the gold mines and ivory routes. The Portuguese started giving guns to the different factions, which brought the downfall of the Mutapan state. Not stopping at the plunder, the Portuguese forced their way of life on the African people. They called the Africans uncivilized and self-assumed a “right” to rule over them. Following this template, other Europeans also rushed in and scrambled the continent. 

The same story was rolled out in India by the British. Spices were the primary way of preserving meat in Europe in those times. The British landed on the Indian subcontinent at the port of Surat in 1608 for trade. They quickly spread along the coastlines and reached the East coast, first in the Coromandel, the southeastern coast region of the Indian subcontinent, and later up to Bengal. 

The British constructed the St George Fort in Madras in 1639 and Fort William in Calcutta in 1699. They got involved in factional conflicts, wars of succession, and rivalries among the regional Indian powers and recruited a large number of mercenaries and gave them guns. Over the years, prosperous India was not only plundered by the British but they turned it into an economic wasteland to benefit their local industry and global trade.

Sitting that evening with Padre Filipe Couto, I realized the universality of brute power destroying peaceful and prosperous cultures and traditions. American anthropologist, Jared Mason Diamond (b. 1937) in 1997 published, “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies” in 1997. He boldly declared, based on sound research, that European civilizations were not created out of superior intelligence, but out of a combination of guns, germs, and steel that enabled their imperialism. As much as 95 per cent of the people in the Americas died by smallpox and measles brought by the Europeans to their land. In Australia and South Africa, the aboriginals were decimated by smallpox, measles, influenza and other infectious diseases.

The recent outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economic disaster that it has already brought must not be seen as a one-off event. Three trends are being repeated here – (1) China has reached a critical mass of prosperity where it must now become an empire (2) The Chinese have already established their presence in the African continent through infrastructure projects and (3) China has taken control of international organizations like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO). It is not COVID-19, it is the guns, germs, and steel that have all been rolled into one and mounted in the template of imperialism.

Let us hear what three great people of the modern times had said. Abraham Lincoln used to quote an anonymous poet who called Truth, the “daughter of Time.” Galileo Galilei said, “All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.” Albert Einstein declared, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.” The only thing left of any worth in the world is humanness. If that is lost, everything will be lost. 

अयं निजः परो वेति गणना लघु चेतसाम् | 

उदारचरितानां तु वसुधैव कुटुम्बकम् |

The great vision of “Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam” of ancient Indians does not match with The Ming dynasty model of Xi Jinping, the Chinese President for life, demanding that other nations become tribute states, kowtowing to Beijing. The world may not be paradise anymore, but humanity cannot be forsaken. India can’t allow the Chinese to once again turn it into an economic wasteland to benefit their local industry. Humanity is indeed facing an existential threat of dystopia by a predatory superpower on the prowl.

This blog coincides with Diwali, the Indian festival of lights. Diwali symbolizes the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. It is celebrated on the “darkest night” that ends the lunar month of Ashwin and starts the month of Kartik, coinciding with the second half of October or early November in the modern calendar. The festivities begin two days before, on Dhanteras, and extend two days after, concluding with Bhai Dooj.

Motivations for celebration vary. People of North India celebrate Diwali to mark the return of Lord Rama to Ayodhya after his fourteen-year exile. People in the South celebrate it as the victory of Lord Krishna over the demon, Narakasura. In Western India, Diwali is celebrated as the rescue of Goddess Lakshmi from the prison of King Bali by Lord Vishnu in his Vamana incarnation. Jains celebrate Diwali as it was on this day that Lord Mahavira attained Nirvana. Sikhs celebrate Diwali to commemorate the laying of the foundation stone for the Golden Temple in 1577. 

The celebration of light is indeed universal. People in different parts of the world celebrate their own festivals of light. The Chinese celebrate it on the fifteenth day of their new lunar year, which falls anywhere between late February and March. From August 2 to August 7 each year, in the Aomori city of Japan, people float gigantic boats with lights. Jews all over the world celebrate it as Hanukkah, for a period of eight nights and days anywhere between the end of November and December. 

In the Netherlands, it is St. Martin’s Day on November 11 each year. In France, it takes place on December 8 every year, to express gratitude toward Mary, the mother of Jesus. In Lewes, England, people have bonfires on November 4/5.  On the 12th day of the Thai Lunar calendar, usually in November, the Thai people float beautifully decorated baskets with lamps in water bodies. In the Keene Pumpkin Festival in New Hampshire, USA, people light jack-o’-lanterns each year before Halloween. 

Light is one of the most universal and fundamental symbols of the spiritual and the divine – तमसो मा ज्योतिर्गमय – Lead me from darkness to light – mentioned in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad (1.3.28).  The appearance of God is linked to brightness, and light is seen as the source of goodness and the ultimate reality. In Paradiso, Italian for Paradise, poet Dante Alighieri ascends to a region beyond physical existence, which is the abode of God, and becomes enveloped in light. In the Bible, when the Lord created, He began with “Let there be light.”

When Prophet Moses went up to Mount Sinai, he got to see “a light much greater in brightness than the sun.” When he came down with the two tablets engraved with the ten commandments in his hand, the brightness of God’s appearance was reflected in Moses himself. Christ is called, “the radiance of the glory of God” (Hebrews 1). In the Sufi tradition, the soul illuminates the mind-space as kashf, the personal experience and direct vision of God. Any worship starts with the lighting of a lamp.

This Diwali has assumed more significance as the world is living under the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic and the economic hardships that it brought along. In the course of just few months, the virus spread out from Wuhan in China to across the whole world. Frightened with uncertainty, governments declared “lockdowns,” which had pervasive impacts on economic activity across the globe and millions of people lost their livelihoods.

But the “lockdown” also brought back clear skies over traffic-choked cities, improvements in local water quality, people working from home, and reductions in noise and air pollution. Glimpses of a transformed society with integrated families, reduced pollution and lowered environmental impacts were visible. 

However, the early signs of improvements in environmental quality have already succumbed to the rush to achieve the lost economic growth levels. Cities like New Delhi are once again choked with smog. Migrants are back in city slums more quickly than they had left, without any change in their living and working conditions. But thinking that the pandemic was a bad dream that is done and over with would be like brushing the real problems under the carpet. Unless the lessons are learnt, nature is not going to spare us. There is no promotion to the next class here without passing the exam. 

What are the three exams that we must take to advance into a higher level of  living? 

(1) The rebirth of medium and small-scale industries to feed local consumption, and a firm “no” to cheap imports from China and other countries; (2) No going back on new laws, making agriculture a profitable enterprise for the farmers, and investment in silos and supply chains to mitigate any distress sale and spoilage of agro produce; and (3) An Internet-driven education system ensuring inclusive and equitable quality education, and promoting lifelong learning opportunities for all by bringing every single family online and giving them free connectivity. Adoption of technology to prevent the misuse of bandwidth is also important. 

As goes the famous line of American poet, Robert Frost – Two roads diverged in a wood – mankind is standing on an evolutionary crossroad in 2020. Rising to the occasion with grit and determination will usher in a new era of sustained living and social harmony; succumbing to fear and insecurity would throw us back into the past of conflict and chaos.  

If only we could learn that very little is needed to live, as we have lived through the lockdown, and that the rest is indulgence and wastage! Quality of work is more important than keeping busy. Spurious travel is best avoided and no more business trips for fun in disguise! The incessant availability of food, electricity, water, law and order, communication, medicines, television and the internet even during lockdown proved that we are not only a robust, but also a resilient social system, better than many Western countries, including the hyped United States. 

Darkness has no real existence; it is merely the absence of light, but shadow and light are forever coupled and they fall on the same landscape. In a year from now, COVID-19 would be fully understood.  It is the learning or ignoring the lessons of the pandemic that would decide whether Diwali 2021 would be brighter and I have no doubt that it definitely will be if shadows are handled well by leading lives differently. 

One thing is clear – the coronavirus pandemic is not going anywhere soon, and worst still, scientific understanding, claims and predictions have all proven hollow, tentative, and even contradictory. How is the changed world going to affect our lives and the lives of those around us? These answers should have come from experts, scholars and leaders, but most of them seem to be imprudent and talking differently about the same thing. In the absence of any rational explanations, it seems best to sit back and take a pragmatic look at what is actually happening and what is going to happen down the road, beyond the next turn, as is proverbially said about gauging unpredictability. 

Let me first state what is seen. Three changes are apparent.

First and foremost is the huge loss of jobs for a very large number of young people in sales – pharma, financial services, insurance, property dealers, share markets – the ubiquitous ‘agents’ in business. The second is the ‘new normal’ of ‘work from home’ as it is economical for employers to not maintain expensive offices. This has affected taxi services, eateries and a hundred other small businesses that thrive on people commuting twice every day. And the third is media overkill. During the lockdown, people were forced to watch TV only to realize that most of our politicians have really no idea what they are talking about. 

Unfortunately, people in the esteemed scientific professions have turned out to be clueless. Seemingly holy global health institutions are puzzled, and their chiefs have made a mockery of science by speaking too frequently to the media and providing meaningless updates. What good are all the collective scientists if at a time of crisis, they cannot even conclusively confirm the transmission medium of a meagre virus! The rush for the vaccine for a virus not fully understood is another irony of our times. Worse still, it has already become a political tool. 

The lesser said about medical industry, the better. Even after ICMR declaring plasma therapy unnecessary, politicians and hospital chains are out to promote it. Millions have been minted on this by the hospitals already, so why to take it out of the menu? The way hospitals feasted on the pandemic ‘opportunity’ has taken the last veneer of trust off the private medical profession. It is basically another business, like all other businesses. I am not undermining the service that public hospitals and select medical professionals have rendered in these troubling times, thus saving their countrymen at great risk to themselves and their loved ones, but milk and water have been so thoroughly mixed that no swan can separate them.

There are three prominent features of a pandemic-affected world.

(1) Automated, corporate funded supply chains connecting producers with consumers with the least number of intermediaries. Even geopolitics will get aligned to where the money is and who controls it. Unfortunately, corporations own more money than governments in the modern world.

(2) New education is making the old obsolete but, in the process, half the population is going to be denied basic education and a huge digital divide is looming on the horizon; and

(3) Politics based on primordial identities and family loyalties will die its own death with the mainstream of aspirational young people seeking and getting a better quality of life from the people they elect and defeat.

Of course, the drama of democracy would continue. TV and social media will also continue, politics and businesses will get adjusted to the new realities. I have seen narratives of high and mighty leaders change so many times. Each leader knows how to do talk in public and they will call whatever happens as their ‘achievement’ and rejoice in their positions. Markets and politics always support each other, whatever be the theme of the day and the slogan of the season. India especially, excels in adapting to change. 

The wheel of time is always moving – what goes up, comes down. It really does not matter who opposes and who supports, when the tide of time rises, entities ride or are drowned under it depending upon whether they are on it or beneath it. Therefore, it is time to reflect and see where you, your family, especially children, people around you, connected to you, and dependent upon you are and then align yourself with the tide and not against it. 

The beautiful Latin word, ‘Renaissance’, has no exact equivalent in English and even in Indian languages. It originated after the Black Plague devastated Europe, to describe a new cultural rebirth and the rise of the Modern World beginning in the 14th century and concluding in the 17th century. So, in that way, it makes perfect sense to use this word to define the present times – a new viral infection erupts in China, spreads with great speed in the highly connected world, forcing long periods of lockdowns as the only way to survive and in the process killed the globalized world marked by free movement of goods, people, and money across the globe.

It will take years, maybe decades before people are welcome in foreign lands again for work. Extraterritorial investments will now be seen with suspicion and as soft-imperialism. The Cold War world order will return, this time, with China replacing the USSR, opposing the U.S. and its allies. India will find itself once again in a ‘neither here nor there’ predicament. And Self-Reliance as the only way to survive, will be a tough test for a mediocre system built for profit by trade rather than production.

Habitually, brilliant and intelligent Indians seek ‘advisory’ and ‘administrative’ roles rather than ‘doing’ and ‘implementing’ things. This must now change. Going abroad and bureaucratic job will not be an option hereafter.  I am writing this because it must be written and read. In the famous story of the ‘writing on the wall,’ a commoner, Daniel, had to read a warning that no one in the court of King Belshazzar was willing to notice.

Life is not about sitting in front of the TV, watching reality shows and playing games like ‘fantasy cricket.’ Real life bites if ignored. Plan for your career, your children’s education, your healthcare needs and start living within the budget, avoiding all credit purchases, no matter how lucrative or irresistible the deal. Know that all deals are eventually designed to take money out of you. 

Learn something new, make one dollar on the internet, pursue excellence in your rusty hobby, mend your relationships with friends and family, spend thriftily, supplement your earning, and in your free time, if you still find it, choose your entertainment wisely, by listening to some old songs on a radio, perhaps. 

Today is October 15, the birthday of Dr APJ Abdul Kalam (1931-2015). Upon being elected the President of India in 2002, he decided to spend this day, away from Delhi, at a sacred place. For the five years of his Presidency, I was with him on every occasion—at the Twang Monastery in Arunanchal Pradesh (2002), with Acharya Mahapragya at the Terapanth Bhavan in Surat (2003), at the Sri Suttur Math near Mysore (2004), with children from Tanzania brought in for their heart surgeries in Hyderabad (2005), and at the Sri Adichunchanagiri Math in Mandya, Karnataka (2006). 

There are many ways to define sacred—both as a noun and as an adjective. When used as a noun, sacred refers to a higher power that is bigger than we are. If we use it as an adjective, it can mean something that is spiritual or holy. By deciding to meet Tanzanian children in 2005 in Hyderabad, instead of going to a religious place, Dr Kalam had integrated both these meanings. What I find a common theme in the five different places that I visited successively on this day with Dr Kalam was that he was setting aside time or setting aside a space and sanctifying time for his own experience in touching divinity in order to be mentally clear and emotionally calm.

I studied mechanical engineering at the G.B. Pant University, where I could get deep into the techniques of perspectives about how to see things in imagination and draw them on paper. We had a sprawling lush green campus and vast open skies with hardly any feature on the horizon except for the distant mountains in the north that appeared blue. There were long power cuts and we could see the night sky in its full splendor including the Milky Way band a few times. I used to imagine God beyond them, overseeing everything. 

It was at Pantnagar that I discovered the beautiful connection between man, nature, the spiritual world and the Universe. There is a cavity inside your physiological heart, where God resides as consciousness, watching our every breath, whether pure or tainted with passion. Anytime we are feeling adrift, we can connect back to the Infinite Source Energy or Spirit. In fact, the truth is, we are never disconnected.

In almost all ancient cultures, a lot of emphasis is placed on directions. The direction where the sun rises is the east; where it sets is the west. The Pole Star defines the north, and opposite to that is the south. The east is renewal, the giver of energy. If we are looking at the east, we are reconnecting to our visionary selves, our destinies, learning to fly and soar like a bird in the morning. We look at the west to learn the ways of the luminous warrior—the Sun goes down to return without fail. The North is eternal, permanent, that which never changes, never decays, and never dies—the abode of Lord Shiva. The south is for releasing what no longer serves us, and shedding our skins just as a serpent does, all at once. During the last rites, a dead body’s head is turned towards the south.

Again, in all cultures, the earth is the mother, and the sky is the father. To feel gratitude, to find support, we prostrate as if to embrace Mother Earth, the provider of food and abundance, and the great diversity of life—the two-legged, the four-legged, the finned and the furred, the winged ones, and the creepy crawlies. We request the earth to mulch all of the denser, heavier energies that are too great and too intense for us to handle. Looking up to the sky with our arms and hands raised and open, we beg the Supreme Spirit, the Infinite, the waxing and waning moon, stars as the guides, angels, ascended masters, and benevolent luminous beings for help. 

While life on the earth is billions of years old, mankind is recent in comparison. Human evolution reached the goal of becoming Adam (in Hindi, the word for human being is Adami), possessed with free will, capable of inculcating divine qualities, able to use the physical forces for his own benefit and that way, the crown and the acme of all creation. But this unique gift of free will, not enjoyed by any other creature, also makes us capable of becoming the opposite of the divine by giving up self-control and succumbing to choose immorality, selfishness and rebellion.

When we access the sacred, inside or outside, we connect with our original ground, the source code, the innate truth, consciousness, bliss (Sat-Chit-Ananda). We connect with the sacred to disconnect from the ever-changing world, our haughtiness, our selfish desires working against the collective good, our feeling of superiority, enmity, lust, greed, enticement, ill thoughts, immoral desires, negative emotions, lewdness, plotting evil, and a thousand other facets of evil. 

When we go out and connect with nature—feel the wind, look at the moon and stars, bask in the sunshine, visit a garden or a water body – we indeed connect with the divine. Sometimes, it may be difficult to do so. We can see the sun shining, but the rays don’t seem to touch us. The moon seems to be just a shining disc and the stars, distant dots. The burdens of our lives have obscured our divinity. During these times, accessing the ‘sacred’ helps us to appreciate that life is to be experienced, rather than solved. It is a journey. There are no destinations. 

A touch with the sacred connects us to the basic pillars of well-being: wholesome food, quality sleep, living in the present moment, and in harmony with the people around us. We can nourish ourselves and let go of any expectations. We can remind ourselves that what will be, will be, and at the same time, all will be well. The emphasis shifts from my own good to the good of all – ॐ सर्वे भवन्तु सुखिनः, सर्वे सन्तु निरामयाः – May all sentient beings be at peace, may no one suffer from illness. We no more seek comfort; we seek and relish peace.

The timeless sacred is there to teach us—unmoved behind the ever-moving flux— everything that matters, everything that is truly important, the ground on which everything moves. The family, co-workers, neighbours, friends, even the birds, dogs, and all seminal beings for that matter—these are the foundation stones of our happiness. We start seeing everything else—work, money, reputation—like a game. They are fun, but they are not really the issues of life or death. The secret of the sacred is that there is no secret. It is so obvious. 

Dr Kalam was a wise man to avoid the flowers and bouquets brought to him on his birthday by the high and mighty of the society and connect with the sacred distant and secluded instead. He would have been 89 today, but again that is this world’s count. He is now immortal, part of the sacred.

What started as the sad end of a young, promising actor, gradually built up as a media frenzy wherein the person departed was turned into an analytical object and as many versions have been created of his life as the fancy of the analyzer allowed. The truth that emerged out of this hectic media coverage, that has not yet abated, like the calmness at the axis of a storm, is that a person’s life does not have an unequivocal meaning. There are as many stories as there are people telling them. And they are telling these stories because people are listening. But why are people listening? Are they distracting themselves from their own multiple stories?

We find a myriad of biographies written and there are even autobiographies in case of famous people. I had the privilege of assisting Dr APJ Abdul Kalam in writing “Wings of Fire.” Twenty-one years after it was published, it sells in large numbers, purely because both Dr. Kalam and his story are liked by many people, most of whom had never met him. But why do they like him? They like in him what they themselves wish to be – a celebrity, in spite of his humble background, his average academic record, and a simple, no-frill lifestyle that makes him famous and the hero of millions of ordinary people. 

There is a marvellous book, “Memories, Dreams, Reflections” by Swiss psychiatrist and philosopher Carl Jung (1875-1961), wherein he wrote about the “self-story” – about what his life meant to him, sharing a privileged insider version of the life to help others to understand their lives better. The point Jung makes in his book is that there is no ultimately privileged point of view in any life.  Each person lives circulating stories that stand in a dialectical relationship with each other, demanding continual revision, as if different actors are playing the same role in a drama, and different singers, rendering the same song in their own styles.

However, there are some “facts” which belong to the deceased – indisputable existential life facts, deeds and dates about which there is consensus, and artefacts – mementos and possessions. People have created institutions that lasted much beyond their lives and their personal values have become the hallmarks. In stark contrast, we now have various chat apps, social media posts, light-hearted musings, and carefree exchanges that become “truths and facts” after our bodily death. There are no more footprints on the sands of time; there are “records” of every careless word you utter, a picture you click, and a joke you crack.

Be aware that an average person is watching over three hours of television each day. We have indeed become a “time pass” society, watching others. Play-acting has become a living for us, and we are selling our attention for free. We are expected to stick around, glued to the same television channel, irrespective of the number of commercial breaks. It is time to introspect how far you are willing to go, diluting your own personal and inter-personal life for these shows. 

In our super-competitive modern life, the ladder of success is hard to climb. For every person who makes it into public celebrity and culture-hero status, hundreds, if not thousands of others of equal merit and ability go unrecognized and suffer the agony of defeat in the winner/loser creed of modernity. The success and publicity market devalue the accomplishments of the unrecognized; their genius goes largely unacknowledged. In every scientific laboratory, there are people doing high value work that is “not in sync” with the powers in control of their times. They need affirmation, encouragement and energy to continue with their work, which may even bring them immortalization.

All of us are “luminaries,” carrying a speck of the immortal soul. It is the degree of muck that covers it, sometimes due to circumstances, but mostly due to carelessness about not cleaning it, and almost always by the willingness to live with it. The drama of this world is a crowded show – there are no pantomimes and monologues – each one of us carries circles of our existential cast of characters: the people whom we encounter in our lives and with whom we establish a lasting and meaningful personal relationship. If these circles are not harmonious, we are not only wasting our time but are also carrying the ignominy of show-spoilers. 

We are living in an age of upheaval – what was normal when 2020 started, is unlikely and remote in the future and by the time 2021 comes, we will be living in an altogether different world. Don’t resign yourself to the fate of living in a flux. Be not some virtual ghost but the author of your life story. Include in the story, real people around you, family and co-workers. The members of the existential life-community living in genuine reciprocity do share a fate together and are meant to better each other’s lives. Be the star in the eyes of the people around you, the flame in their hearts, and remove the muck so that your soul can shine through. 

You are complete, full, and gloriously gifted already. Know yourself, put your act together, and perform without the fear of someone else’s disapproval. The world is designed to bow before those who dare to rise. Know yourself as a superstar in your own ensemble, an irreplaceable, valuable person, best suited to “perform” the role that has come your way. There is no life that cannot hold a work of art, worthy of appreciation. Once, travelling in a train, I met an old man, who sang a song so soulfully that tears rolled out of every eye in the compartment. People paid him generously. Life, for this person, had obviously not turned out well for his talent, means, and circumstances, and yet, he articulated and preserved his gift and was displaying and celebrating it. 

So, arise, awake and claim your own fame!