kokoroZendo

“Can you remember you who are, before the world told you who you should be ?  “

The famous quote  by  Charles  Bukowski  captures the essence  of finding  our original self  in  a nutshell.   It is quite possible an early child event  ( sometimes a slightly traumatic one as in my case)  is one which shapes and makes “I/us” and shepherd and navigate our thoughts and responses to the World in general , ourselves in particular.  It  looses the strangle hold in us, only  when   we become aware of it and the way it has shaped our life so far and  that is the “foot in the door into our mind” moment when we can start reworking on our psyche and soul to reclaim our original self from other-self.  My  reclaim-myself-mission got triggered  in 2002 , when Dr. Richard Mchugh  chose me a volunteer for  NLP timeline exercise in his  NLP class and it took me some 21 years  to complete it with as a Zen student of  Fr. Ama Samy.  Maybe that was mixed emotion bittersweet event,  when  Mr. Mchugh did that exercise for me, it came out so vividly like a  multicolor cinemascope movie in my mind.  Now when i recollect that event in my mind , it comes out as quite hazy black and white, soundless and detached mode.  In NLP parlance, they would say, i am quite done with it.

The way our brain amplifies or diminishes our experiences as it stores it as memories , through the process of generalisation, deletion and distortion , based on our perspective of the event is quite amazing. A few weeks back, i was facilitating the same NLP timeline exercise with one of my coachees.  She could remember many many  sorrowful experiences  in her timeline very vividly while the joyful ones were a few and far between.  Interestingly, while she recollected those events, she was still attached to those sad events, she still saw it happening thru her own eyes unlike her happy moments in life.

Coming back to my own   “Damascus road”  reverse  event ( where  Paul’s transformation to Saul started !)….

I was all of  4.5 years old then.  I am absolutely sure.  It might have been during the last week of May or very early  June.  ALP School    was not opened yet but the Monsoon was about to start.  My parents advanced my date of birth on record so that   – handful-trouble-maker  is not  at home at least during school hours.  One of my uncle,  then recently graduated & jobless (job seeking )  was stepping out of the house for his evening timepass  with his friends.  He said something to me and my brother , and i did reply something.  Might have been quite disrespectful, it did trigger one of those outlier reaction of anger and violence from him.   Though there were enough small sticks commensurating  for a  small  brat available in a Kerala home, he chose to discipline a 4.5 year old, by  folding  a steel wire  used to  dry  washed clothes and used as  his batascoir. That was the worst thrashing i got in my life. Never before that or never after. (so far! and Thank Goodness🙂 ).     My poor mother did try to stop it without much success.  After my uncle left,  she just held on to me and tried to stop my sobbing. I guess she herself was crying. 

That is when monsoon rain came on that day and wiped my tears away.  Old style kerala houses, do have those long veranadhas, wooden bench  and wooden grill instead of the wall.  It is kind of half open to the world and nature.  When  it rains,  one can sit on those  bench, resting one’s chin on the wooden rail looking at the rain for hours.  As the direction of rain changes and with some wind, one gets   needle shower on the face too.  It is quite hypnotically and can take one to another world altogether.  It ended up   being an anchor of joy and peace for me.  There is a Zen koan which says , blood cannot wash away blood, and thoughts cant save you from more thoughts…. But i can tell you from my experience, raindrops from heaven can wipe away the tears of heart.

That was my first memory of the magic of monsoon rains, my psychotherapist.

Nothing in this world nourishes and freshen the thirsty, parched and sunbaked earth as Monsoon rain..and It is very difficult. not like almost everything about Rain.. that fresh smell of earth, the rhythmic sound beats as it pours on those mangalore tiles,  small icy pellets of new rain and the feeling of it on the summer skin rashes, taste of black coffee and crispiness of jackfruit papad..

It  offers the same therapeutic massage to hurt hearts too.  It often starts with darkness even at noon. Absolute silence  after the birds scurry back to their nest  indicates curtain is going to up,  before the  light and sound show of  Natures orchestra starts in God’s own country.

A little later my father came home from his office  and saw my plight . That was the end of  joint family life for us.  There is a Zen Koan parody, “How many drops of susu does it takes to spoil a broth of soup ??”🙂. The usual answer is one.  That is applicable to  family, community, organisations and countries.

Not long after that ,  we moved out of family home   from the small town of  Mannarkkad  and relocated to  a tiny village called Thenkara. Though the distance between them was just 5 km , it was kind of time travel to the past.  To start with the electricity has not come to Thenkara ( it reached  3 -4 years after we moved there. ).  School was a good  2 – 2.5 km away.  There were just 3 -4 small shops out there.  And there would have been just 4 -5 buses plying thru that village / day.  And most interestingly Mathrubhumi newspaper came  home only after 9 am.  And in Kerala that is a measure of  progress of a place.

But rain experience just got better.  While Mannarkkad  merely  translates to the  land of Earth + River + Forest,  Thenkara  in Malayalam   literally means   ” Shore of honey”.  A land of fragrant grasses and falling blossoms.  It was  on the road to  Silent   Valley reserve  forest   and we just moved  closer to it.  There was another place within 2 km which was named as  Aanamooly (which means where Elephant hums!).   The  tiny house which we lived in was atop a small hill.  There was  no  wall/ fence / gate in front of the house.  Rain, joy and peace came in  more cheerfully unhindered. undeterred. There were two small waterfalls ( since we could hear the roar of one of them,  my be they were not that far away.  But i don’t remember every seeing it in person🙂 ). We did have many in our age group in the neighbourhood.  Though many of them did have real work to do at their home and fields, there were plenty of playmates.  And to top it all , there was one Akshyapatra kind of jackfruit tree behind our house.  The most tastiest jackfruits  we had in our life !  It kind of took care the jackfruit needs of not only our home and but all other homes in neighbour hood and countless birds and squirrels.  My mother made sure , we spent our summer vacations in making tons and tons of. jackfruit papad to ensure endless supply of monsoon snacks for her 3 children.  And we did it as squirrels used to collect nuts.

After those years, life took me to places, where i had never dreamt off. Had experienced rain in Bangalore, Mumbai, Germany, England, USA , Oman , South Africa and even Saudi arabia. But they never had the charm of monsoon rains. Those phoren rains. smelt and tasted nothing like monsoon @ Mannarkkad. It was kind of half hearted to heartless. More like a bathroom shower.

A long time back during  June of 2012. ( Monsoon times)  i ended up as the only in patient/ resident of Poomully Ayurveda Mana for more than two weeks.  It was one of those serendipitous moments in my life. During those times was kind of exiled to  the deserts of middle east to make a living. It takes quite some time to get used to the  endless horizons of sand dunes and start seeing the beauty in it too. (At the least i took a while !).  As i was warned not to write any Blogs there, only outlets for retaining semblance of sanity were reading and listening to music.  The book on. “Poomully Aram Thamburan ” by  writer, actor and TV anchor. V K Sriraman was one of the books i happened to read.  Poomully Mana is a quite well known in Malabar. iPoomully Mana,( Mana is a Namboothiri  family home )  has  a history of more than 500 years. The members of Poomully Mana were famous as practitioners and experts in Ayurveda, Vedas, Yoga, Kalari (martial-art) and Music.  When i had   enquired about Ayurvedic treatment , i was told due to some legal disputes between partners  they had closed it down. And a few weeks later, they called me and asked to come over. And i ended up as a lone resident in that ancient mana for 2 weeks during monsoon.

The resident Doctor used to visit twice a day with home made medicines. And usually the ayurvedic treatment ended during morning hours. And helper used to come up with food and as security guard for the night. Most of my time i ended up sitting on that cane chair, reading and just looking at the sky waiting for the rain.

It used to be quite dramatic , the way Monsoon arrives. It usually starts late noon. Darkness at Noon ! Absolute silence before the  light and sound show of  Natures orchestra in God’s own country.

Even in that storm, an old lady used to come and light. a few lamps in that old dilapidated temple in front of the mana.

That was my first course of ayurvedic treatment… While those medicines, strict disciplines diet ( & starving😞 ) did cure my body, the monsoon rain did wonders to my heart and soul.

Soon after i left my Corporate job and took a plunge into the unknown. After almost a jupiter cycle of life of some struggle, some smile , some tears, some joy, some sorrow, some pain and some gain, i find myself at the same place four way junction in my life. And that kind of points to the fact, still i got to reclaim myself from myself, regardless the number of days at Zendo, the minutes of Zazen and. the number of Koans.

And  this May /June i am planning to go  to  PErumalMalai to be with monsoon rain  and my being.  I may not have to go all the way back to where it started  , Thenkara , like  Santiago  Paul Coelho’s hero in Alchemist, to find it.