16 May 2025. Early morning at Namma Bangaluru.
In many many years, I woke up as an absolute master of my time. May be 3/4 Master as I had to still drive all the way back to Republic of Sarjapur or Republic of Kodathy to return the “mainframe” computer, through which my “employer” controlled my life. Though at a price. A handsome one that.
Modern work systems are the most sophisticated prisons crafted by the ingenuity of human beings. A paycheck can be both a lifeline and a leash are a paradox that many of us to live with. On one hand, it provides security, stability, and the means to survive (or even thrive). On the other, it can trap you in a cycle of dependency, where your time, energy, and identity become tied to a system that may not align with your deeper values or aspirations.
Still the crimson Sunshine rays was on the horizon. And I thought II saw an Eagle flying in the far east. Though umpteen times, Manu and Thara had told me that, the ones we get to see in the skies of Bangalore are Brahmani kites and not real eagles, I still called them eagles.
Human world is constituted by linguistic and symbolic images and concepts.
Don’t remember, when Eagle seeped into my heartmind as an osmosis of a metaphor. May be after I read and reread Jiddu Krishna murti’s “The Flight of the Eagle”. That was the second book of Krishnamurti I had read after “Freedom from the known”. The metaphor of the eagle in flight represents absolute freedom—soaring beyond limitations, seeing with clarity. Krishnamurti uses this imagery to emphasize the importance of awareness and living without fear. Much later though I read Richard Bach classic “Jonathan Livingston Seagull”. Eagle remained. As my metaphor for thriving in life.
It won’t be an overstatement to say analogies and metaphors run our life… They shape how we think, communicate, and even perceive reality.
It took some effort to return the official company laptop. On 15 May I walked out of office not with a severance package but with a corporate corpse in my bag- A laptop cold and closed. The persons in charge, insisted that as per their Asset Management Database, that computer is still in their stock and not allocated to me. When I started working in the ancestorial version of the same company some 30 years back, there were no personal computers allotted to anyone. There were no emails leave alone other fancy systems.
The person with whom I spoke to told me, he will be there at the office only at 11:00 am. Yesterday 15 May 2025 was my curtain raiser day for the next act of my life after a livelihood mission spanning 3 decades. Almost 11,000 days. 1500+ weeks, 262980 hours and 15778800 minutes!!!! March 1995- 15 May 2025 will be marked on the tombstone of that. I considered making a French exit on my last day at work. (Ironically French calls it English exit!). But Rajdev and Wipro Travel team and my team had other ideas. May be born out of sheer compassion for me. Travel team organized a warm sendoff full nice words, tasty cakes, crispy samosas and sandwiches with Amul cheese slices. When I used to visit office on Thursdays, almost always I used to carry some eatables to be shared. That good habit (though did not make it to the Covey list) was imbibed in me by my first boss R Bala. (& currently my Advaita teacher and a CEO of IT company based in London). Bala used to keep a jar of chocolates at his desk. May be that act, helped me to one of the Travel team members. They did consider me as one. Even when they went to Pondichéry for team building, Rajdev ensured I was there for that trip. It was one of the best team I had worked for in my career.
As I looked at the flower arrangement for one last time (may be that is one of the things I am going to miss other than the monthly transfer to my parched and dry bank account.) Komal Jain had called me. I knew he was on a pilgrimage to Kailash Manasarovar. I thought he is back at Delhi. HE told me for some reason; he is not able to do a video call and asked me to call back. I parked just outside Wipro SJP Corporate office gate and called back. On the small iPhone screen, Komal appeared. He looks so serene and peaceful. HE sidestepped and pointed to the majestic ice clad trapezoidal rock. Kailash Manasarovar was absolutely glistening like a piece of 24 carat Gold in the evening sun. A few seconds would have passed without me realizing it. Unaccounted for. When he said, he got to go to the camp woke me up from my reverie. My parents belong to Lingayat Community. So they named my elder brother Sasidharan, one of the names of Shiva. And me as Viswanathan after Kasi Viswanathan. Along time after that once I went to Varanasi for a Krishnamurti Foundation India annual get-together and seminars. Prof Krishnanath told me I got to go and visit Sarnath. Instead of attending those “dialogues”, I used to French exit to visit various places. Sarnath, Kabir etc. The closest I went to Kasi temple was when I searched for a good silk saree for Thara.
And when I saw Kailash in that iPhone screen it was as if, if you don’t go to see the God, he comes to you by himself. In the form of pixels across vast emptiness.
The laptop handover ceremony is at 11:00 am. Then Mankeerat, Kedar and Neha told me they are buying me to beer and chicken wings. Vijay won’t be able to join today.
Instead of the usual breakfast at The Rameshwaram Café, I chose Café Amudham in Koramangala. Usually, I drive very early to beat the traffic. And it was important to be on the other side of Bangalore separated by the great Gulf of Silk Board junction. After the breakfast I walked across and sat on that stone bench in that park adrift between identities. Suddenly I became aware of the swarm of butterflies... All of them had a blue and back tinge on their wings. And there they were… like a river of blue butterflies. An elderly morning walker told me that they are known as blue tiger butterflies and they are escaping monsoon – western ghats to eastern ghats. I felt they are not fleeing rain, but dancing with it. Not lost but on pilgrimage. In that moment the Eagle in me - the old symbol of solitary power, talons clenched against the sky- fell like a stone. Here was a truer teaching: fragile wings moving with the storm, not against it. A surrender that was not defeat, but sacred alignment.
Later, I learned: Tirumala limniace. Blue tigers. Every year, millions lift off from the Western Ghats just before monsoon hits. Not fleeing rain—but riding a current older than concrete, older than corporations. They fly east, 400 kilometers or more, to the drier Eastern Ghats. No leader. No map. Just pure, soft-bodied instinct. Think of it: wings thinner than a corporate promise, carrying them across highways, cities, and droughts. They rest on wet roads. They drink from mud puddles. Some die. Most push on. Not as individuals—as a river of blue. When they arrive, they wait out the rains. Then, when the wind turns, they fly back west. A round-trip pilgrimage few ever see. Fewer still understand. That day on the bench, with a dead laptop in my bag, I didn’t just see them. I felt it in my ribs: This is how you move when you trust the body of truth more than the mind of fear.
May be a sheer coincidence as i reached back at Kanzeon Zendo on 17 May Saturday morning, was climbing down the stairs toward my room, i saw a huge butterfly... A yellow golden one with intricate design on its wings... I shared it and my spouse Thara told me it is a moth. and Google told me it is a Golden emperor. Thara called it ‘just a moth.’ Google called it ‘emperor.’ I call it a confirmation.: When you finally lay down Christ’s thorn crown— the one you wore through exiles, firings, and the desert of dead dogma— the true kingdom appears on the step beneath your foot. So instead of rushing to have my breakfast, I was googling on what else butterflies... IT was so fascinating. There was a great documentary on Monster Butterflies. They migrate all the way from Canada, across Trump’s America, without passport of visa to Mexico and then back. I chose that documentary for our Sunday evening movie at Zendo. Everyone seems to have so much into this.
Then I thought all my exiles -from jobs, gurus and tribes- and realized. I was never cast out. Rather I was migrating. Transforming on the way like those butterflies. We, butterflies, move when the ground drowns. We trust the inner compass that knows storm will end. New blossoms wait. So now when I think, I no longer visualize eagles – I become one of the millions of butterflies. Vulnerable, persistent, carried by the greater than “I”. Power is not in the fist. It is the wings that bend, body that trembles but still fly. So celebrate butterflies over eagles. Because the world already worships force. The butterfly teaches us that resilience is softer, stranger, and more miraculous—a dance of patience and trust in unseen currents.
The eagle rules the sky. The butterfly enchants it.
Eagles see from above. Butterflies feel the storm in their bones.
This time, no French exit. I stay. With wings.
Would you rather be the storm… or the wing that rides it ??
