Confusion

3 years ago, I was soo sure of the world, my views and my place in this world. I was incredibly confident that I knew how things operated and what was needed and how to fix the problems of the world. Now, its not so clear. I'm trying to find my place in this world and what it is that i really believe. Its probably the toughest thing I've ever had to do. Ya, i know it doesn't seem that way to many people but its a big deal to me, to figure out where I stand and where i'm heading. One thing i'm sure about is that i'll be in New York next year, just not sure what i'll be doing, which isn't that comforting.

I've been trying to come to terms with what I believe about God and all that. This is a tough one, especially given that I have no real experience of God. It really does work out to only being faith and belief which is sooo scary because it is entirely possible if not probable that God doesn't exist and is merely created by the human mind to avoid the abyss of loniliness. God gives comfort and order to our lives, it is really a daunting if not scary thought to think that God doesn't exist. It removes purpose and significance from our lives, it leaves us in oblivion of our own making with no helping hand or escape in sight. Thats what I'm trying to face, where do I find myself. I really want to believe, so strongly but I don't know how to do that and not do it blindly or with any foundation in my own experience.

The God issue is a deep and very profound issue in my life but another issue is that the more I get to know women and less and less i understand them. They confuse me beyond comprehension, i'm not sure what they mean when they say stuff and even when I decipher the words I have no clue as to what they really want or are saying. The more I try to understand the less I do. I'm a very straight forward person so everyone knows where they stand with me, If I'm cool with you I'll let you know and if i'm not cool with you, I'll let you know that too. The most important part is that I'll mean whatever I say. Not so with women, they say one thing and expect me to know what the hidden meaning is, its like slamming my head into a wall, it gets me nowhere to try and understand what they are trying to say. I get my sisters, probably because they think more like guys than girls because of living with me but I can't figure out any other women, I'm thinking that maybe i should just stop trying to figure them out and accept my fate of never understanding them and in the process make an ass of myself. If you have any clues or insight please let me know cause my ass is lost.

Introspective Living

Over the past few days I've been thinking a lot about what it is that i know. I don't merely mean in the epistimological sense of what can be known or what it means to know but I mean in the more conventional sense of what I know; what i've picked up through experience and also through simple book learning. I have amassed a lot of knowledge, an enormous amount actually. I would consider myself well read in terms of world religions, philosophy and cultural traditions. I'm not very well read when it comes to world literary traditions meaning the great novels and books of the world. My interest lies more with literature that deals with more philosophical issues. I try and keep up to date on many of the linguistic theories and studies that have to do with the ancient world, for some reason the ancient world fascinates me. I love to find out about how the ancients viewed the world, what they thought and how they fundamentally viewed existence.

While i was thinking about all this stuff, it dawned on me that Eastern thought specifically Indian thought isn't just or merely just an intellectual exercise, to determine how intelligent or persuasive that I could be. It is meant to stimulate the mind and then lead to living a live based on that knowledge. Its become apparent to me that I've lost that vital and sustaining notion. The acquization of knowledge must have a ultimate purpose, a raison d'etre so to speak. What is it? It is liberation and salvation from the bonds of ignorance and impermenance. Previously, I've written about the Buddhist idea of No-Self which is fundamental to entire structure of Buddhist thought, if that notion of No-Self falls so does the ediface that is Buddhism. In a similar vein, Advaita Vedanta or simply Non-Dualism of Sankaraacharya is built upon the idea of absolute identity of Individual Soul and Supreme Soul. Of course, the premise is that there is an individual soul and supreme soul which are real, the self is necessary.

In Buddhism, knowledge frees one from the bonds of samsara and into nirvana which is the cessition of all things, meaning the end of all thought and suffering through understanding that from an absolute viewpoint all this possesses no real/independent/intrinisic existence and reality. The self itself must be removed. Advaita echoes a very similar concept, all things have no real existence apart from Brahman, therefore the only real entity is Brahman and all else has no reality apart from that. Even the idea of a individual self, in the final analysis doesn't possess any real independant reality, the individual self ceases to exist upon knowledge of Brahman or moksha/mukthi. Even the God with personality in Advaita does not really exist but only exists conventionally as long as one is within the confines of ignorance. What finally and ultimately exists is a unqualified undifferentiated Consciousness, it is not a conscious entity but consciousness itself. It is beyond all qualities and all relations, it can be referred to through negatives, meaning you say what it is by saying what it is not, it is not death therefore it is life, it is not insentient but is sentience and so on. This is very intellectually appealling but it is not meant merely to be just that. It is meant to be lived and followed, that is why Sankaraacharya was also a great mystic devotee, who composed many devotionaly hymns and prayers. The point of all this, is simply to say that I need to get back to my roots and try to live these truths and ideas that i intellectually study and maybe by trying to live them i will gain a deeper and more foundational understanding of them.

Delirium

This entire past week from monday night till about today, I was sick. It wasn't very fun. I was bedridden from monday night till about thursday, i literally slept about 15-20 hours a day and was delirious. I was convinced that the positions i slept in gave me different sicknesses, what sicknesses? Not a damn clue, i just knew i would get different diseases. I had many weird dreams all involving me wearing some weird outfit, including skintight rubber with a tail, go figure. So basically i got nothing new to report aside from the fact that i'm pretty close to normal now, although my roommates think normal and me never belong in the same sentence.

On a side note, I know i've written about this before but the more and more i see life the more and more i really truly do believe that nice guys do finish last. Trying to be a nice guy really won't get you anywhere except pissed off, its really not worth it, because whatever you did to try to be nice will be forgotten and you will inexoriably end up in a worse place than you started off. I just know it takes a lot out of me to try and be nice and it bites ass when that comes back in your face, moral of the story be a dick and life will work out the way you want because there is no real "things will work out for the best" world, or everything will be fine world.

Sadly, the world we live in is a terrible place, which only appears to have rhyme or reason. We make rhyme and reason moreover we make order in our minds from the pointless world around us because otherwise everything we know and hold dear means nothing. Things don't work out on this world, they work out for some but for others they don't and for those they have to make due with the pieces that are around them and build some semblence of a life. Rather sad and bleak view, i know but can anyone honestly refute it, given the overwhelming evidence? Hopefully you are all the ones it will work out for, but again hope is a two edged sword it nurtures some sense of sanity and belief yet in many cases it is a faulty belief without any real basis in probability and only exists in possibility.

Weekend in the Big Apple

I was in New York City this past weekend, i went up to visit a friend Neha from college, who had flown up for some Jain broad retreat. It was a good weekend, I took the bus from boston to new york on thursday afternoon its about 4 hour trip, not too bad. I did take some books to read for school but I should have known better, I don't do work while at home why would i do work on a bus or in nyc. We went out together on Thursday night to this place called Hudson Hotel, it was a nice place and we met up with a friend of mine in the city. It was a fun night. I also went out on Friday night, again a fun night. NYC is great for the fact that its open till like 5 in the morning and that makes the night much more fun.

I had a couple of weird things happen to me on Saturday night. After we all went to this club called Earth NYC, which by the way serves pani poori with vodka instead of normal water, interesting. It was some indo party and i got claustrophobic really fast, too man indian people in one place freaks me out. I'm sure most of those people are professionals and successful but from my experience they tend to lack a lot of culture and heritage, damn straight its a mass generalization but its a generalization based on experience not something I pulled from my ass. I had to leave after a while, i really couldn't take that many indian people, its sad my tolerance for ignorant indians has dropped significantly since college, I guess i expect that as they age they would develop more culture and a wider outlook on life rather than so self-centric. This is not to say that there aren't any indians with a wider outlook and culture but they tend to be few and far between. Sometimes when I watch them interact, I find myself thinking "Do I act like that?" and sadly i think the answer is sometimes Yes. I try not but sometimes being around them just brings you to that level.

Anyways thats all beside the point, the two weird things happened to me that night. I was walking down 8th Avenue around 2am. I basically walked from 17 street to 59 street on 8th avenue, it gave me a good idea of how much New York changes within a few blocks. As I was walking up 8th avenue, this dude sees me and pulls his car over and is like "Hey". I turn over and look at him, i figured he needs some driving directions or something. So i walk over a little bit and respond "Ya, whats up" and he says "Do you know where Lincoln Tunnel is?" and I who have only been to NYC like 7 times, clearly don't so i tell him that I don't but he can ask the taxi down the street. So far very normal, then next second he is like "I am not from the city, are you?" and i respond "Nope, i'm just visiting" and he says "Do you like massages? Cause I like them a lot?" and i was like what the bloody hell, what kinda question is that. I stop for a second and think about what is this dude really asking, before i can respond he says "My shoulder and back really hurt, want to massage me?" and now I'm like holy shit, i'm getting propositioned by a dude. I was like "Umm, dude I ain't into that, I going that way (pointing away from him) " and i walk away. Crazy

Then within 10 min this other dude walks up to me and says "Yo homie, do you need anything?" and I'm like what the hell? "Umm no, I'm cool" and he says "Naw man, if you need anything girls, drugs, whatever, i'll hook you up." and I'm like "It cool buddy, i'm aight." Geez, what a city within 5 blocks I meet some weird shit, crazy world. ya its all random but thats all i have for the 3 of you that are reading this, i'll give you something more thought provoking at a later time.

I am a Nobody

For us to function as human beings it is necessary for us to have a conception of a self, it is the idea that there is something more to us as individuals than simply our biological and psychological processes. Something much more fundamental and intrinisic must explain us, or more accurately our consciousness. All living things from plants to humans all possess some level of consciousness. In fact, it is how we determine the existence of life, if a thing possesses some level of consciousness then it must be alive. A plant is alive because it responds to stimuli, if you poke it, it bleeds sap. If you don't give it water, it will wither away and die. In the evolutionary ladder of consciousness, it is the human being that possesses the highest level of consciousness, we are self-aware. To some level, it is very difficult almost impossible to determine whether other comparable animals possess self-awareness to the extant we do because we cannot with any real means communicate with other animals.

Human beings need the self, which is thought of as both the same yet different from the body, mind, consciousness and other components which make us who we are. In fact, it is the self who we truly are. In Christian tradition (of which there are few, but i will primarily deal with the main ones), the body and soul together constitute a human being. A human being, or the individual self, is composed of both material substance and spiritual substance. Hence, the burying of the dead because it is believe that on Judgment Day, Christ's Second Coming, that all bodies will be resurrected with their souls installed back into the body to be judge for their actions. This is similarily held by the Muslims, in their theology. Hindus on the other hand have a different view. The self is the soul, the body is a mere shell which is necessary for the soul in order to interact with the material world. Hence, the cremation of the bodies so as to prevent the soul from lingering around the body.

Now, as human beings, we have a need for the self. Primarily because it helps us face the idea of total annihilation. If we had no idea of the self then our death will really be the end, period. No heaven, no hell, no bliss, no light, just darkness and nothingness. It would in essence render our very existence pointless. Our long term actions wouldn't matter because who cares what happens after I die. So we develop a second need, a need for Universal Justice, God. God is our attempt to give order and structure to a universe we don't totally understand. God is our way to make sure that our actions do have consequences on us.

Siddartha Gautama, also known as Sakyamuni or more popularly as the Buddha (from the sanskrit root of budh, which means to know in the sense of wisdom) taught a very radical doctrine, the idea of Anatta or Anatman (which means no-self; prefix An means no or non and atman is soul/self/Universal self). There is no self in any real sense, the self we speak of is only in a conventional sense, it only exists so that people may interact and communicate, it has no real existence. This self, we all think of is nothing more than an aggregate of five things (panca-skanda). The five things are matter, senses, perceptions, mental states then finally consciousness. These things are always in constant flux and are never the same, so in other words there is no enduring or continuing self, every second "you" are being born and dying. Nothing in the universe is permanent or enduring except change but even that ultimately is false. Now, the implications of this idea of the no-self are staggering. It is not a denial of the self but a statement that the self never ever existed but is a mental creation by us to give us a sense of meaning and continuity to aleve our fears of obvilion. What does Buddha give us instead? Oddly it is the void, emptiness or Shunya. What exactly is Shunya? Well it means different things to different schools of buddhism. For simplicity's sake I will adopt the Mahayana position, Shunya is true understanding of the world as being constant flux, it is seeing the emptiness in all, that all things have no real existence nor foundation. It is a house of cards built up a cushion of air, which at any moment will dissipate. Shunya is Nirvana, it is having the veil lifted and entering the world with correct knowledge and vision. We are our own salvation and we are our own burden. A fascinating and revolutionary response to the idea of self.

Natha and Me
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Mukunda Likes boys or is it men?

Every semester I play basketball on a intramural basketball team comprised of all students, my team not the league itself cause we all know law students and lawyers are all lazy and fat, and according to my roommate so am I, he shall remain unnamed until he returns to Guam. This semester is no different, I again have chosen a team of my own choosing, after all the other teams were decided beforehand.

The mighty captain of our team, the man known only as manimals and rarely as Girish, decided that our team name would be Mukunda Likes Boys. His plan was to put that on our t-shirts and then have each of our names on the back of the shirts. So obviously everyone else would have like their respective name: Mitch, Girish, Salem and so on but then I would have Mukunda. So basically imagine this, on the front of all our shirts it says Mukunda Likes Boys and then on the back of my shirt it says Mukunda. Well they decided that Mukunda Likes Boys might be offensive because people might think that i like little boys, but i'm not a catholic priest so thats kinda out of the question. So instead, they found a less offensiveful team name Mukunda Likes Men, which was oked by the intramural people. Yay......

Many of you might be wondering, how Mukunda Likes Boys came about given that I am a straight man. Well, cue flashback imagery and music ###### Last year, a group of us had joined the law school softball teams to play in the University of Virginia Law School Softball Tournament. So, we were all driving down to UofV. On the way down I was sitting next to Lucia, better known as Dang. Dang and I were talking and she happened to randomly mention her fingers and her hand (meaning, she asks "Do you think my hands are big" or some really pointless yet conversation stimulating question). I tell her that her hands aren't big and are small and quickly say that I have skinny fingers. Suddenly I hear both Leevin and Mike (also known as Johnny Law School, Big Ticket, Black McCoy or simply Gates) almost simultaneously reason out their thought, essentially a sylloggism. "Mukunda has skinny fingers, Mukunda has girl hands, Mukunda is a girl, Mukunda Likes Boys" That was the genius inferences made by both Leevin the Guamian and Gates the Black McCoy. I was stunned at the sheer idiocy of it but before i could utter a single word, they start to chant it on the bus then as they say the rest is history. It become their chant for anything i did. I mack on a girl suddenly out pops one of the two dudes and "Mukunda Likes Boys" is chanted. So automatically everyone who hears it assumes i'm gay, which i'm not (as if i have to even state it, its apparent when you first meet me). Its like i've regressed back to high school and the "gay guy" appeall (meaning that girls like to talk to me cause they view me as a gay guyfriend). Man, it took me years of therapy to get over it and now its back. Lovely aint it, god bless good friends.

Love thy fellow citizen?

Kaizer Family Foundation found that: "Forty-five percent would be willing to pay more in taxes or insurance premiums to help expand coverage to the uninsured. Fifty-one percent would be unwilling to do so."

We love to bring democracy to the peoples around the world because democracy is the most fundamental necessity in life, right? I guess i was just taught incorrectly that maybe health is the most fundamental necessity in life. The poll above, despite not being necessarily the view of the entire country and all its peoples, does give us insight into how American's view their own citizens and the principles we hold dear. It is truly sad that we care so much more for abstract ideals such as democracy, liberty and freedom than we do about our own brothers and sisters in this country. We have tens of millions of people without any healthcare in this country, which means that most of these people cannot get care for the most basic health needs in their lives. In 2001, 41.2 million people in this country had no medical insurance. This includes millions of children and elderly men and women. The Drug and Insurance Companies are making billions off of this.

We talk about life as if life means anything without good health. Good health shouldn't be a privelege which depends upon the economic status of individuals, it is a right, a right that is just as, actually much more, necessary than liberty or freedom. Does money really mean more to us than individual lives? How can we ever speak of being a civilized society or country when we don't care enough about our own fellow citizens? When we say that your health isn't a real worry for the government to care about, it isn't as important to us as is the war for "democracy" in Iraq. Thousands of Americans will die not from gunshots or being killed but because we didn't care enough to provide them the means to receiving the care that they needed. Love thy neighbor, indeed.

Sunday, January 23, 2005

Its been a couple weeks since i've posted on this and i've received a few requests to do so, mainly girish, so this one is for you man. So basically school has been back in full effect for like 2 weeks. I had a big interview at Manhattan District Attorney's office on Jan. 14th, it was a long interview about 40 min or so. It was a panel interview, 3 people and me. Normally, I'm a pretty good interviewee and thats because i can read people pretty well and react accordingly but for so reason I had a really hard time figuring out these interviewers, I think it was because i was a bit nervous, this is like the job that I really want. I don't know how i did, I really hope i didn't mess up my interview but who knows. I was gonna stay in NYC for the night but since a lot of my friends weren't there, i decided to come back to boston and went to a house party when i got back. So I think i've decided to take the NY Bar after graduation. On a more positive note, I just bought a 250 gigabyte external harddrive and i have most of it full of carnatic music. Its freaking amazing, i'm like a little kid in a candy store, every day is a brand spanking new experience for me because of the vast amount of quality music that i can now listen to. This past weekend I was sick due to the sudden weather changes basically from cold to nut sack turning blue cold. I just sat at home and watching 19 hour marathon of Fresh Price of Bel Air and then Spiderman 2 and then Shankarabaranam, one of the greatest movies ever. That movie captures my love of music and how music is viewed in traditional indian culture, music is divine and perfect, it is definite must see for anyone who even claims to have a love of music, which almost everyone does but sadly not many of these people know any music beyond what they hear on the radio and claim that to be good music. Yes it is fun to listen to and dance to and yes it possesses some aesthetic beauty but a lot of it is superficial. I can go on for hours about this but not right now, ask me later or in person if you want or better watch shankarabaranam with me and you'll understand. This coming weekend a huge group of us are going up to the mountains for some ski trip but i won't be skiing or snowboarding, i'll just be relaxing and chilling, prolly bring up some music and my ps2 with some games to chill. The following weekend I think we are going to NYC, or so I'm trying to make happen, i think it would be awesome.

Friday, January 07, 2005

I can't believe I'm about to say this but I can't wait till I get back to boston, yes I know, as a brown man these words should never exit my mouth. Boston, for a being such a big city and liberal, happens to be one of the most prejudiced and racist cities I've been to. Although I must admit I have yet to transverse across the Mason-Dixon Line and for some weird reason I think there might be a bit of racism down there but its just a hunch. I've had a few racial comments hurled at me while I've been in Boston in the past 2 1/2 years, probably as many as I have had hurled at me while living in Southern California for 21 years. Regardless, I am once again going off on a tangent, I have essentially for the past 2 1/2 years dreaded returning to boston, primarily because its not the life that I was used to. But now, its my life, i come back to Southern California and for the most part its as if I've never left. Most of my best friends are married, or engaged or in relationships that are gonna end up in marriage. They essentially live a very routine and static life, not that that is a bad thing, just not something I'm entirely ready for. I spend all day listening to music and catching up on tv and movies and I can't stand it. The highlight of my vacation has been my dog surya, a 150 lb alaskan malamute-artic wolf hybrid. It has been raining steadily for like 2 weeks here and Surya loves it. Normally he is a very nice and gentle dog, for a 150 lb dog. Once that water falls from the sky, a evil sparkle twinkles in his eye and immediately he runs out into the rain and proceeds to jump into the biggest hole that he has dug, which at this point is filling up with water, muddy brown water. He then continues to dig until his normally white and black coat is covered in brown wet mud. Then he waits till I have to come out to pet, feed or give him water then proceeds to shake all the mud on to me and then jump on me. Picture a dog who when standing up on his hind legs is about 6'1 or 6'2 and now picture him on me. Usually we let him in the house for a few hours a day but given his current state of being muddy for the past 2 weeks, he has remained in the garage in his place. Damn you Zeus, God of the Sky and damn your rain. I can deal with a couple of days of doing nothing but an entire 3 weeks, goddamn. Going back to Boston, is not the happy part, it is actually going back to my life, going back to a "place" in which my day and life is much more random and much more dynamic, especailly this semester, which will be our last in law school and hopefully the most memorable, or in otherwords I'll be making a lot of ass and ensuring that everyone has something to talk about. God bless alcohol and me when i'm full of it.

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

Well its been a few weeks since i've written here but i've been a bit busy with finals and finally coming home for winter break. Home is great but it is also not. It has become more apparent to me that I can't live at home again, I can stay at home for a bit but not live there. Its my comfort zone, the place where I am secure and thereby lazy. It is the place I just simply accept and go along with rather than take any real intiative. I've been home for over a week now and honestly, its a bit boring. I don't have much to do. The Christmas weekend was pretty interesting, I must say. The pressure of marriage and all that comes with it, is clearly growing, not for me but for all the girls who are of marriagable age, which is slowly including both my sisters. We went to three family-friend related parties this weekend and each of them devolved or snowballed into "Oh my god, what are we going to do about getting our girls married." I tend to free float between the parents and the kids, meaning I tend to hang out with each of them. The way these parties work is that the parents take one side of the house and the kids the other. The parents further divide themselves up into all the husbands on one side and the wives on the other, it is like a grade school dance. I tend to just move about from one group to the next, so i hear all the various conversations that are going on. The kids, who of course range from 20-30 are all talking gossip or playing some card game. The fathers just pretty much sit around and talk about news or politics or the next non-personal thing that comes to their minds and the mothers all talk about marriage and how tough their kids are to deal with. It is rather weird to see how much the cultural and religious issues affect our parents and how much more real it gets as time passes by. The more I have listened to it and thought about it, the more it becomes apparent to me that the indian mind and cultural ethos is so very different from the western ethos and mind. I spent the better part of the weekend listening and talking to the parents, not just mine but our family friends, about these things. I was trying to explain to them what it means to be an indo-american of our generation in this country and society, how tough it is for us to try and balance our two very different cultures. Indian culture places vital importance on the wishes of the parents and this leads to us trying to live our lives in a manner to make our parents happy and live up to their expectations. Essentially, in our parent's happiness lies our own happiness. To a large part, I think I have come to understand this and even accept this, in these past few years. At the same time, we living in this country and being raised with many american and western values, become conflicted. American culture places strong ideas of independence, individuality and self-happiness. Meaning, we should do what makes us happy as an individual. Furthermore, we are informally taught that marriage begins with love and romance but in the indian culture marriage fosters love and romance. Western = love first then marriage; Indian = Marriage then love. Clearly, the dilemma for us can be seen. The weekend was spent me explaining this in much more detail to the parents. It was rather interesting and helped me to see much more clearly where I stand, which in this case is a amalgam of both cultures. I know for the most part now, that my happiness lies in my parents happiness and now that lets me have a foundation on how to proceed with the more confusing areas of my life.

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Right now, my entire life is in limbo. I'm not sure where i'm gonna go or where i want to go or need to go. I'm not just referring to my career or where i will be next year, i'm talking about life in general. I'm trying to figure what the next chaper of my life needs to be. So it suffices to say i'm in some state of confusion. Man, since I started law school the confusion has gotten more and more intense and kinda hitting the ultima soon. The past few years have taken me down a path that i don't think i would have saw myself following 7 years ago. I'm not entirely sure that I like who I had become and so I'm trying to change myself. I've lost sight of who I was raised to be, I know I have to become my own person but its not entirely that simple. Yes I do have to become my own person but the debts I owe to my parents must also be repaid. I've done things that maybe they wouldn't be so proud of and feel its about to make some changes. This weekend put some things into perspective for me. Maybe I don't know people that well, and maybe i expect too much from people, especially those close to me. In other respects, this weekend helped me to figure out somethings about myself and what i want in the long term. I've come full circle in many respects. I'm trying to reach back to my roots and trying to find my spiritual grounding again. Its tough, given that the past few years have taken its toll on my beliefs and some ways made me a skeptic. Music has really helped me change this, i'm attempting to get past the technical aspect of it and back into the devotion and emotions of it. Writing is also my other outlet and its helped me a lot too to trace my thoughts over the past few years. Maybe i'll put some of it up here but we'll see.

Sunday, December 12, 2004

This weekend i was in New York City, the Big Apple, still for the life of me don't know why its called that. It was a good weekend, my sister came up to NYC to visit her friends and so i decided to go hang out with her, that was lets say a fun and even more frustrating experience but live and learn. I also met up with some other people and I had a really good time there. It just dawned on me recently, that i'm at a crossroads in my life. My law school experience is drawing to a close in May and then i have to enter into the real world, whatever that is, i guess the life i've been living now is fake and imaginary. I'm not entirely sure where i'm going to be or what i'll be doing, right now i'm trying to figure out between nyc, dc, la or sf. NYC seems like the most fun and best overall experience, DC is the heart of this country and that would be interesting but i don't know that many people over there and not sure if i wanna start off from scratch again, LA is too close to home right now and i need a few more years before I head there and settle, SF seems like a great place its not too far from home and yet its far enough and a big city. So i'm not sure what I want or need to be. A really sad event transpired yesterday. On December 11, 2004 the world and especially Carnatic Music World lost a great person, M.S. Subbhalakshmi, one of the greatest musicians of our or any time. She was the first female to break down all the gender and caste barriers in Carnatic Classical Music. Her voice is famous all over the world to all Hindus, hers is the voice of the suprabatham in the morning. Temples all over india play her music in the morning to awaken the deities and usher in the new sunrise. She was an humanatarian who has donated millions of dollars to charities through her concerts. The love and devotion in her voice could bring any person to their knees in tears, music was just music for her, it was her very life breath, her soul and her soul touched all those who have heard her. I remember her voice as a young kid, she was the first voice i heard almost every morning as my parents played her songs after they took a shower and begun to pray. She taught me the vishnu sahasaranamam and shankaraacharya's bhaja govindam and she revived my love for music in the song ranga puravihara. The bhava (emotion) and bhakti (devotion) in her live and voice will never be matched. Her soul now has merged into the Universal Being and found the bliss that she has sung so often about.

Sunday, November 28, 2004

Marriage!!!! Wow, it is such a daunting thing. I just came back home for the thanksgiving day week for one of my closest friend's wedding. I met Nitin in college, in my senior year, to be honest, he was just another pretty boy to me, well it happened to be the third time i was wrong about a person. The other two times also lead to my two other best friends Mike and Simms. Eh, what can I say, I'm allowed a few mistakes in my life and that includes that one time at band camp.... Well, to make a long story short I only made a few close friends in college and Nitin is one of them. Oddly, he is also a day younger than me but thats neither here nor there. He has been basically dating his fiance/wife for about 5 years, crazy, the only commitment i've made for that long is college and even that involved me transferring. It is rather awkward for me because he is my age and he is already set in life. I mean, he has a job, which he will stay with for most of his life, he knows what his life will be like in the next 5 years and now he is solidifying all that with marrying his fiance. I have no idea what I will be doing 6 months from now let alone 5 years. Its funny how life works out, about 2 1/2 years ago as we were all finishing college, i had life figured out and had some idea of where i was going but now, not so much. C'est la vie....

Monday, November 22, 2004

There is an age old philosophical or more specifically metaphysical debate about the nature of reality. There are two main positions which are debated, the school of monism and the school of dualism. Monism, best understood in the West by Immanueal Kant and in the East in Shankaraacharya, posits that the universe, individuals and God are One, no differentiation between them in the ultimate view. There is no world, no individual soul but there only is Being or Brahman, pure and undifferentiated. Dualism, on the other hand is best understood in teh west by many of the theological philosophers but more so in Rene Descartes and in the East in Madhvaacharya. Dualism holds that the world, individuals and God are ultimately distinct entities, they cannot be the same because the difference is due to their very essences. The implications of both of these theories leads to very different world views. For the Monist, all things are ultimately the same and the world we see before us isn't the ultimate nor is it even representing the actual state of things, in fact it is not even truly real. The realm of ordinary experience is seen as only useful in some base sense since it is based on the "illusory" world. In some respects the world before us is negated and our very existence as individuals is deemed false. Dualism does the opposite. The world is seen as distinct from individuals and God, so distinct that it cannot seen as equal to the individual, just as the individual is seen as in a inferior position to God. God is seen as ultimately unrelatable to the individual and sooo beyond the individual that the individual has no hope of understanding God. The world and the experiences in the world are held to be paramount because they are real. Our experiences in this world show that both view points have some truth to them. We clearly experience distinction between ourselves and everything around us but at the same level we have experiences that things around us are some how connected to us. But the exact relationship we share with the world is very difficult to describe in words. Same goes for the Divine. The Divine has been experience throughout human history ane experience in soo many different ways, that it is almost impossible to discern what is the exact position of the Divine and its relationship to everything. Just something to think about.

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

If math is the ultimate and universal language then music is the universal form of expression. Music has the ability to uplift and liberate the most downtrodden mind and soul to heights of esctacy and joy. In the same vein it has the power to drag the soul to the depths of depression and pain. Music is pure and perfect, nothing can compare to it and nothing can detract from it. It is our connection to something deeper and greater than us, the Divine, and it is also our connection to the baser parts of ourselves, our emotions. The Power of Music is beyond comprehension, it allows us to tap into that part of ourselves that is untouched and hidden in the inner reaches of our soul. The musician who is enthralled and possessed by music, draws those expressions out of themselves and conveys them to the listener and the listener sharing in that state of musical esctacy feels the beauty and power of the music in a way so inarticuble that it brings tears to the eyes. The music connects all those who truly participate in it with the Divine. Music is a spiritual endeavor and it is the medium in which the soul expresses itself. The mind expresses itself through thought and speech but the soul expresses itself through music. Music is creativity unbound. The musicians of yore, used music to express their relationship with the Divine and to communicate with the Divine, who responded through that same music. The 17th century composer Thyagaraja, wrote "what good is music and musical knowledge without devotion" and I think that holds true even today. Does music connect you to the universal? Does it fill you and touch you in a way that is beyond explanation? Does it cause your eyes to well up with tears for no explainable reason except the pure beauty and grandeur of it? Does its power overwhelm you? If it does all that, then you have experience but a portion of the essence of Music, a limitless and infinite well.

First and foremost, gotta give it up to my buddy Malik-G aka Geeta Malik aka the Basher (she is a violent girl and has injured many of men in her time, plus she is trained in like karate), check this out Aunty G's its her first short film and pretty funny. Rock on, Malik and remember I'm still your go to hero and villian. :) Have you ever wondered why you turned out the way you have? I have and i'm rather confused. People think i'm complex for some reason, but I'm not so sure. I mean the fact i was dropped on my head a lot as a child explains a lot of things about me, for example my frequent and rampant assmaking (i once asked out a girl at a bar, on a bet, by saying "yo gimme your number") . I was raised in a somewhat orthodox yet liberal Hindu family, its a bit of an oxymoron and a contradiction but thats my family from the outside perspective but i think we are really openminded even though we sometimes afflilate ourselves with orthodoxy. My dad and mom raised me with strong religious and moral values and i think to a large part i still hold those values albeit in a more skeptical manner. My childhood friends are not the friends people would think i had and have. Most of them have been to jail and prison for various crimes and honestly i think most of society would condemn them and say that they are a blight on society but nothing could be farther from the truth. These are guys that have been raised by a single mother who gave them everything that she could, they were good kids but got caught up in something beyond them and paid the price. that being said, these guys are the guys i would call my brothers and infact my parents have essential treated them like they do myself. We've been through a lot together and i wouldn't want anyone else in my life or at my side. Here is the weird part, my parents, the people who have never cussed in their lives, when I say "what the hell", my father gets mad at me and says "Don't say hell, say what the heaven". I'm not allowed to say idiot to my sister when i'm home, but if you know my respect for rules u'd know that rule is never followed . My parents have totally accepted my friends even after they went to jail and all, and have never pronounced judgment on them. Not very many people would do that. See, my parents are geniunely good people, wait great people, prolly few of the best in the world, and i would say that to anyone and I have examples from their lives to back it up, not just in regards to their kids but to people in the world they've helped. See here is the part that confuses me, they are such great people yet they have a son like me. My only redeeming qualities i clearly get from my parents but the rest its all me. I mean, i'm a jackass, they are sweet and caring, i'm much more judgmental than they are. They are genuinely good people and I'm not, i've been an ass to people which i know my parents have never been. If you got insight into this, let me know.

Saturday, November 13, 2004

The past few weeks have been a bit hectic, just a lot of school and law stuff going on and been draining me, suffices to say not a fun time. I have spent the past day "studying" for the MPRE, the professional responsibility test for lawyers, aka the one thing we will never use or had, ethics. Lawyers as attested to by millions of people are the scum sucking monsters of the world, we have no ethics or morals, and for the most part, they are right. So a group of like 6 of us went to Waltham, the greatest city in the world, ok fine its not a city more of a village and fine not even great, more of blah but whatever. So myself, girish, amudha, robin, sejal and sean basically waited from 11 am to 2 pm in a ridiculously long line cause the peopel who administered this test were dropped on their heads as children and are morons and incompetent. When we were sitting at the testing center, we saw this cute girl, or so i was told. We being the 5th graders that we are decide that we are bored so lets have some fun. Girish, Robin, Amudha and I decide that I will try and get her number, why me, because i'm the only single dude in the group. First we talked about my normal ass making line, "yo gimme your number", and no thats never really worked and never expect it to. So we spent another few minutes going over my various tactics, basically me trying to come up ridiculous lines just for comedic effect. Then Robin and Girish came upon an epiphany, what if we write her a "love" note. So we did just that, Girish wrote a note that goes like this: "Hi, i am writing this note on behalf of my friend in the grey sweater (Me). He thinks you are really pretty and wants to know if you are interested? please check one of the following. _ Yes _ No _ I'm thinking about it" Girish also proceeded to put my email on that note. Amudha hads her the letter and points to me and says its from him. So i'm giggling like a lil school girl, cause i can just imagine her face upon getting this note. We were all trying to not to laugh. She responds and says thanks but i'm engaged. We all bust out laughing, not because of the response but because we are all jackasses and while everyone else in the room is stressed about the test, we are writing love notes to girls like we were in the 5th grade and scared to talk to women. Whats the point of this story? Well first is that I'm still a 5th grader and second is that I'm the king of all jackasses and assmakers.