I was amazed. Had to put this up for reference… WoW

Totally amazed !

Driving to Bhutan, was an experience we will not forget.

Just breathing in the essence of the Land of the Thunder dragon transported me to a different time altogether far from the madding crowd. Somewhat reminded me of old time Shillong which is long gone.

That is what maybe what just made me want to dig my roots into that soil and stay there… just live a simple life… but well this lifetime, I guess, I have to wade through the souls of the corporate crowd and the many souls including me running hither and thither..

But up there amongst the clouds words and noise arent necessary, the surroundings talk to you… take care of you, nurture you…

Something again, which I felt back home in Shillong..

Maybe its the purity of the mountains.. that always beckons to me..

So well, anyway, being at home in familiar surroundings always make me feel like a child free of all external, physical and mundane worries… I missed Mom a lot at home… missed her calling my name and hurrying out to welcome me or generally calling out to welcome me.. Dad did all the things Mom would do to make me feel at home…. but Mom always had a special touch.

Missing Ma would have to be a thing the physical attached mind has to get used to… I dont know when I will get used to it.. time… they say will take care…. Till then I will keep missing you Ma.

Bihu, it was just nice being there with Dad and aunts..  Its always nice to be with family during Festivals..  kind of brings back the very meaning of part of a family, a community, always gives a sense of belonging and makes me question what I am doing so far out there… away from it all

Just for a while… but then I am back…  on track…

Weddings… aaaahhhh …. weddings are filled with nostalgia…  weddings bring in a sense of responsibility, emotions, and so many aspects of living.. it was a joy to be part of something joyous and in this occasion I met the many different relatives which form the threads of our generational web…. a beautiful mêlée of colors, expressions and well… its just one of those things which reminded me again, of the connections and roots,…

So well, its back to work and the daily routine…

Got my birds back from the wonderful friends who helped me with the birdsitting…

Sometimes, as much as I want, the sense of attachment does not go away. Even though I know that everything in life is temporary except death. Knowing this, the soul wants to grasp on to the good stuff and funnily even at the bad stuff… hahahah…

I realised that letting go of the good stuff is as hard as letting go of the bad stuff. The body wants to hold on to every moment, and does not want to let it pass.

And the truth that faces me at that moment is that if I do not let the moment of gain and loss pass, it looses its value.

So well, keeping that thought in mind, I strive to keep de-cluttering. Letting go at a physical, mental, and mundane level brings so much freedom..

My inner resolution is that whatever I have not used for the past six months, will not be used for a long time. And that I noticed is quite true. My father will disagree who loves hoarding.. but well, when he is not here, I want to give away all that is here and make space for the new.

So am going to put up a garage sale of my existing items soon…

Though a little bit of me is longing to hold on.. sentimentalism… but I think… its ok to let go… and have someone else make use of the things that I do not need.

Rocky also is getting into the decluttering mood so well I am glad I dont have to hassle with him.

Now, I have not touched his old Silencer and some old bike parts which he has stored in a place where i dont see… so we will see when we come to that.

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Facebook has turned quite like a family pool nowadays with all my cousins and brothers and sisters… all hanging out there.. Well good for me, at least I get to connect with them.. Its like being with an online family… glad they hooked onto it..  Still I would not want the whole relative gang to know what I am upto… LOL.. lets see how it goes.. As of now, its cool and I like seeing familiar faces peeking through…

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So this time, we plan to do a road trip to Bhutan. After some planning, we decided, we would do this. For me it has kind of become a spiritual quest as well, with the hope of visiting some of the important holy places.. Who am I to complain ?  Give me wheels, a camera and a backpack and I am at my happiest…

So more notes, after I am back or if possible, while I am there and if I can blog…

Guahati is going to be a whirlwind with Bihu celebrations, Wedding and visiting relatives… I spent some girly moments going a little crazy on the what to wear and stuff like that..

So well, Shillong, maybe will not have time, but I am mighty excited about the road trip..

And the best part is that we got some lovely warm bird loving people for bird sitters.. yayyyyy The universe always helps me when I need it the most…

Now have to look at the plants…

Sigh… looking back…. we accumulate so many things as we live on…. I think my roots are growing deeper… while the soul always knows that there are no roots unless its to the super-conscious….

Waiting for the rains…

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” –  Henry Miller

I think travel is going to the theme of this past 2 months. Well suffice it to say that I love when opportunity for travel comes up.  So After China, a family chill session in Kabini, its Assam and if we are lucky a bit more.

Looking forward to it and praying that the plans happen.

Weddings weddings weddings… this seems to the season in the family it seems so well, off I am going to attend some..

Time to go off and shop for some matching accessories..

Ah ha we have found a way to keep my plants alive even if we travel for a long time and our experiments worked.. Buhahaha I am happy. I hate my plants dying due to lack of us being there.. that was one of the main reason, I did not have any pots in contrary to my home with my folks where all open land was full of veggies, fruits and flowers, cactii, orchids… sigh.. I dont think I will ever see those days again, not the space, not the garden..

So anyway, I am happy we got around this worry as well..  Actually Dad helped me with his ideas..

Now its time to do the colors for my apt. So am floating in glossy finishes, matty finishes and some contrasts… Its fun.. But sometimes, I wish there were not so many choices.. sigh.. it confuses me so.

I invited my newly wedded niece for a lunch and used that as an excuse to cook up a storm…

Whoo…. I feel good now… and the end result has been good…  if I must say so…it looks good.. and tastes good… yeah I taste all that I cook… if I dont like it, no use feeding it to others…

Its always nice to create something… and provide it to souls who like food.

Well they love meat and fish, so the flavor of the day was definitely non vegeterian..

So here you go with the recipes.  Try and freak out.. if you like the sound of it..

This year, my entertaining trend has started… and it seems fun… so you will see some recipes coming out my kitchen..

Finally, we finished bathroom tiles, kitchen tiles, and electricals for Chez Baruah…  I think I like that name for our nest,… yeah Chez Baruah  is on its way ….. koooooo jhik jhik…. kooooo…wooo wooooo….

Had a hectic weekend and week running around shopping for that dream thing…

And the funniest part was when I dreamt that in my dream I am telling myself that the tiles that I chose were wrong…. WOW… talk about messages.. hahahaah .. I woke up early and realised I was right.. I had to change the theme… dammit , I had to catch before it was ordered… (inside I was thinking… so mundane… but mundane is fun)

So off I went again tile choosing.. FInally I got it… just when Rocky gave up.. and threatened me that NO MORE TILES… hahahaha

And I also gave in to Rocky’s choices which were conflicting.. .

My guest bathroom looks like a jungle… thats Rocky’s choice… and well I thought why not… so guys when you come in, do not blame me … if you feel a little bit weirded out… thats us…

Maybe the final result could be weird but what the heck… its ours… so thats that..

The apartment is bringing out its own personality and ours… you can very easily see Rocky and me here and there… and my birds as well… and well I am more interested in the creative process.. more than the ownership…

Maybe in my previous life I was a builder…

Along with being a truck driver… buhahahah

And we discovered an amazing Manglorean joint in Gandhinagar... WOW …. Fishland it is called… You must try it..

Your mother Eire is always young,
Dew ever shining and twilight gray;
Though hope fall from you and love decay,
Burning in fires of a slanderous tongue.

Come, heart, where hill is heaped upon hill:
For there the mystical brotherhood
Of sun and moon and hollow and wood
And river and stream work out their will;

And God stands winding His lonely horn,
And time and the world are ever in flight;
And love is less kind than the gray twilight,
And hope is less dear than the dew of the morn.

Is it the attachment to the result or attachment to the goal… in a way its positive because it associates ourselves with the outcome and we work towards it..

And in a way, it could be dangerous, because if the outcome does not materialize as expected, one’s whole world comes crashing down and it becomes harder to focus on a familiar goal once again and the process of disassociation starts… to have the mind fix on the much more achievable goal..

Or maybe the mind has to be set in such a way that we actually live the adage

In Devnagari:
कर्मण्ये वाधिकारस्ते म फलेषु कदाचना
कर्मफलेह्तुर भुरमा ते संगोस्त्वकर्मानी॥
च २, ४७

Karmanye vadhikaraste ma phaleshu kadachna
Karmaphalehtur bhurma te sangostvakarmani.
Ch. 2, 47

In English translation:
You have a right to perform your prescribed duty, but you are not entitled to the fruits of action। Never consider yourself the cause of the results of your activities, and never be attached to not doing your duty.

That is the only way one can be totally out of the picture of expectation and some sense of achievement… and just keep moving on..

I think being human and living in my very colorful and emotional drama specially the 8 Worldly Dharma, I keep falling in the trap of getting associated with very temporary material world… it is a trap I keep trying to avoid and yet, some weak trigger keeps making me play out the dramas again and again… sigh..

In Buddhist teaching, there is the understanding that there are certain classes of human experience that are major sources of our suffering. These experiences are known as the “Eight Worldly Dharmas” and are listed as a set of four contrasting pairs: pleasure and pain; praise and blame; fame and disgrace; gain and loss. The seemingly positive side of each of these pairs (e.g., praise, fame) triggers not only the contemporaneous sensations and thoughts related to pleasure (“I like this!” and “I deserve this!”), but also a clinging, a desire to hang on to, perhaps to intensify, the experience. And each of the “negative” experiences (e.g., blame, loss) triggers not only instantaneous sensations and thoughts related to disliking (“I hate this!” and “This should not be happening to me!”), but also, too often, a determined effort to avoid, escape, or deny the situation. If we look at our own emotional lives and behavior, we can begin to see that much of our lives are governed by the pursuit of pleasure, praise, fame, and gain; and by the avoidance of pain, blame, disgrace, and loss. This could hardly be called a meaningful life.

There is a way out of this trap. First, we need to develop the habit of observing our reactions to situations, to see where it is that we are getting hooked into believing in the importance of the dramas we create by way of the “eight worldly dramas.” In doing this, we learn that we seem to be living on a highly unpredictable roller coaster, as we emotionally rise, descend, and rise again, based on our interpretations of the events of our daily lives. When we are being praised, we feel marvelous; if, in the next moment, we receive what feels like blame, we feel terrible. When the experience is painful, we tend to tighten, or clench up in a fierce (and counterproductive) effort to protect ourselves. Either way, we dwell on, and feed off of, the emotions generated by events and (especially!) our interpretations of those events.

Second, we must practice compassionate acceptance of precisely the things we might most want to change: painful experiences; being jostled and bruised by others as they, too, scramble about in the thrall of their own eight worldly dharmas; and our own proven capacity to fall into the traps and stories created by our own minds. Recognizing that I harbor a childish tendency to insist that things go “my” way, my task is simply to notice when this arises, acknowledge it for what it is (just a misguided demand that I am making of the world), and return to the situation at hand: what does this situation demand of me, now? According to my own values, what is the correct action, right now? Sometimes the correct action will be to accurately label what is happening (perhaps an injustice being done to someone); sometimes it can involve an attempt to relieve the suffering created by an injustice; and always, if it is truly a “correct” action, it must be done in a spirit of non-harming. This is very demanding work, and we will not always get it right; however, life will always give us more opportunities to practice!

Somehow today again, I fell prey to my silly expectations instead living in what I believe in : just do what you have to do, give it your best and forget it… and its hit me unexpectedly at a dark corner of the soul where I am weak, greedy and grasping… Not a very good picture…

Am disassociating with this and am willingly and gladly moving on to that portion where I fulfill my purpose of what I have to do and just strive on… I just hope I do not build a lake of disappointment where I will drown or actually play out the dramas…. what a horrid picture..

Glad I wrote about it…. feeling better… I have to get out of this vicious cycle of expectations…  create it, live it, forget it….

Today’s world has it seems gone wireless, hi tech, with scanning pens, camera, internet connections, etc.. WOW !!

I was thinking of days when this act would have been so simple and it almost bordered on how creative you could get and get away with it.. I would like to call it an art.. it would take serious thinking out of the box to do this.. and yeah loads of confidence….

I remember my matriculation exams where students would roll papers into their pen covers, spend time writing in tiny ant script and put it in different places in their Geometry box.

And yeah the famous excuse of going to the restroom and bringing out the needed content and replicating.. this would be tough I would say.. because well, you would have to memorize the same there and get back and write.. some good memory required there… LOL

So then in Chem Honors exams, coming near, I see my friends enjoying themselves while others including me were sweating it.. but no, these elite group who had political backing actually spent time writing the whole paper ( dont ask me how they got the paper) on their legs… from thighs to their calfs and I would wonder how they would have a look and replicate the same.  Well one would have to have very good eyesight and very good dexterity.  I mean he spent every night before the exam writing all over his legs the answers to the papers… if he put half of the effort in studying, I think that would yield him better results.. Oh well !!!  I have to tell you that he passed with flying colors..  He was proud and sure of his political clout that he would be taken care of..

And in that same exam time, in one of the papers, one of elite student sat behind me and gave a blank paper. He just submitted that many times in many papers… And guess what he passed with Honors… and distinction.. This was in Assam.

I still remember one more incident where I was comfortably writing an exam, and the invigilator who was supposed to check on this act, actually went to each student writing the exam in that room and asked if they needed help on any question.. and when someone said yes, she actually told the answer or got some paper on the same.. I mean WOW.. !! I was stumped… I went on.. with my writing, and refused help.. hahahahah !!  And this was in Bangalore…

And I still remember one friend proudly telling me that he would get his degree by bribing the peon. The whole year he had missed his classes but he was good with the peon and I remember this was St Josephs in Bangalore…

So well disillusioned as I am and have been in our education system, I still have faith that well inspite of such a system, somewhere there would be a better systems of students honestly getting through their papers…

I remember in my seventh or eighth class internal exams, I would ask for help from someone who would ask me for help.. But it would leave me with so much guilt..

I mean, I for one realised that no matter how much I tried, I could not cheat but it was very interesting to observe the gumption of souls who would do this with so much flare.  I mean anyone looking at me will know that I am cheating… hahahah… I would go red, sweat, and then fidget, and completely ruin the moment..  hahahah

Sigh…and yeah !! I think sometimes, because of this education is overhyped… specially with the fancy degrees…  I mean I know its important but there has to be a actually use what we study and get the results that we deserve when we write exams, good or bad…  But thats a story or a thought for a different day….

Disclaimer : No judgement on cheating.. whatever floats one’s boat… just sometimes, think that the others also would get an equal chance to float