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Nothing Human Is Alien to Me…

Nothing Human Is Alien to Me…

by | Nov 13, 2026 | RElationship, Transformation, Wisdom, Zen

Writing a blog, or learning to write, has been my practice since 2010.

It began when the late Ranjan Acharya, Head of Wipro HR, asked me to. He said one learns to write by writing. So I started.

At first I shared my writing with a handful of mentors. A safe harbour. Then came sundaysambar.blogspot.com, then thewayiseethat.blogspot.com, and now kokorozendo.life.

After moving to the Zendo, I started sharing my blogs with Fr. AMA.

One day, after I shared a blog titled "Mountain, Desert and Metaphors for Change!", he summoned me to his room.

It was late afternoon. He was seated at his desk, papers and books scattered around him in their own mysterious order. Beside his study chair was that old wooden chair, the one meant for his guests. He would point out that chair and beckon his guests to sit down, if he was intending a long talk. He pointed to that chair. I sat down, wondering what trouble I had gotten myself into.

Then  he told me, “You write OK. Interesting to read.”

Six words.

I have received bouquets of appreciation before from family and friends,  team members, bosses, by clients. But this one was worth its weight in gold.

But he was not finished.

He said he would introduce me to Cyrus Mistry and Jill Mistry. Cyrus is a Sahitya Akademi award-winning author. He and Jill have a residence in Kodaikanal. Cyrus’s brother is Rohinton Mistry, a well-known author nominated three times for the Booker Prize, who once even appeared on the Oprah Winfrey show. A student who had just been told he writes OK was suddenly being handed a door into that family.

Then he asked me to read Natalie Goldberg’s book and, if possible, attend one of her writing courses. He knew her. But he could not trace her email address. That door he could only point at.

Fr. AMA was one of those who suggested that I gather the blogs and compile them into a book. The other was Komal Jain, a good friend.

When I asked Fr. AMA to write the foreword for my first book, Fallen Flower, Fragrant Grass, I thought it was a formality. Teachers write these things. Students ask. A paragraph arrives, a signature at the bottom, and the book looks a little more respectable.

I did not expect more than that.

He did.

He insisted that I share the draft. Not a title, not a summary. The draft. Even though he had already read most of it as blog posts.

I sent it.

Then nothing.

A week went by. More than a week. No message, no word. I decided he had forgotten, and I did not hold it against him. He had a hundred things heavier than a student’s book.

Then one day he sent for me.

And then he shared his foreword.

He wrote that he liked very much my experience in the “Arabian desert in the moonlight under the starry sky, pregnant with unspeakable silence.” Of everything in the book, that was the passage he singled out.

That was his way of doing things.

He read the blogs. He spoke to me face to face. He opened doors. He asked for the manuscript. Then came the foreword.

Absolutely complete, like an Enso circle.

Nothing left hanging. Nothing taken back.

Of all the acknowledgement and appreciation I have received in my life, that short foreword is the one I treasure most.

And in it, one sentence has stayed with me more than anything else.

The Latin poet Terence expressed it as: Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.

I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.

Looking back, I think that sentence explained him better than any spiritual title ever could.

He met scholars and labourers, saints and scoundrels, earnest seekers and impossible students with the same spacious humanity.

Nothing human seemed alien to him.

In a way, that is the core of all spiritual teaching.

Spiritual seeking is not a mindless attempt to transcend human life. It is an attempt to become a humane human.

Nothing more exotic than that. Nothing less difficult either.

He taught it in one-liners.

Many of his emails arrived in the very early morning, as if some encounter from the previous day had settled overnight and emerged as a sentence or two.

On 23 August 2025, one such email arrived:

“Vishy, others may be mean, bad; let us not be mean or bad. Let us be always humble, grateful, kind and compassionate.

Ama Samy”

He did not say who the others were. I was the one at the other end of their malicious stick. And I had  given back more than I received from them. Yet he did not talk down to me. He wrote "Let us"—as if he were part of me and I of him. As his uchi-deshi, his live-in student, I felt he was taking responsibility for my response too.

But to me it was a reminder of the teaching from that foreword: Nothing human is alien to me.

Others may be mean or bad. That too is part of the human condition.

The task is not to become mean or bad in return, but to remain humble, grateful, kind and compassionate.

In June I requested him to write a foreword for my second book, Zendo Chronicles: Where Air Becomes Breath.

This time he said he had already read the blogs. He did not need a manuscript.

He would write one after his trip to Europe.  The trip was in September.

Now and then I would wonder about it.

Then I would smile. He had made me wait more than a week for the first foreword.

Perhaps he was making me wait again.

On 7 November, Fr. AMA passed away peacefully.

The foreword never came.

And yet, as I look back, I realise he had already written it.

Not for the book. For the life.

He wrote it when he read the blogs. He wrote it when he told me, “You write OK. Interesting to read.” He wrote it when he opened doors to writers and teachers. He wrote it in those early-morning emails. And he wrote it in the sentence he borrowed from Terence and embodied every day:

Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.

I am human, and nothing human is alien to me.

For a man who carried many titles, that may be the one he lived most completely.

The foreword to Zendo Chronicles never arrived.

But the blessing on the way had arrived long ago.

On Marshmallows, Attention, and the Long Walk to Mannarkkad in the Rain…

On Marshmallows, Attention, and the Long Walk to Mannarkkad in the Rain…

by | May 27, 2026 | Joy, Life, Meaning, Peace, RElationship, Transformation, Zen

Good moment, dear reader.

I want to begin slowly today. No grand thesis to prove. No ten-point framework to deliver. Just… a few thoughts that have been sitting with me since last evening — the way certain things stay with you through the night, and are still there in the morning, quiet and patient, waiting to be looked at.

I run a year-long inner work program called Kokoro-Zen-Do in Action. We are six months in. A small, earnest cohort of people who signed up — bravely, I think — to spend a year doing the kind of slow, uncomfortable, unglamorous work that does not fit into a reel or a listicle.

Yesterday morning, I put a reminder in our Sangha community group.

Our planned Sangha Dialogue — 27 May, 8:30 PM. A gentle nudge into the shared stream of our days. I typed it out, pressed send, and went about my morning. Thinking nothing more of it.

Now — I want you to know I am smiling as I write this. More the kind of smile that arises when life arranges itself into an accidental koan. A reminder about presence… that no one noticed.

A message about gathering… that dissolved somewhere into the scroll. Between a forwarded recipe and a motivational quote, most likely.

I thought: well. There is something here worth saying out loud.

So here I am, saying it. Not to my cohort only. But to anyone who might find themselves in it.

Dogen said: To study Zen is to study the self.

I have been living with that sentence for years. It does not get smaller with familiarity. If anything, the longer I sit with it, the more I find it has rooms I had not yet entered.

Because here is what I think Dogen was pointing at — and what I believe is true not only of Zen, but of any genuine inner work:

It is not about what we accumulate.

Not the knowledge. Not the frameworks. Not the vocabulary. Not the certificates on the wall or the books on the shelf or the meditation apps on the phone with the streak counter that quietly judges you every morning.

It is about integration. Shadow integration. The slow, uncomfortable, often unglamorous work of meeting the parts of ourselves we have been managing, performing around, quietly afraid of — and bringing them home. Bit by bit. Season by season.

That work… does not happen quickly.

It cannot be rushed. It cannot be hacked. It cannot be summarised in a bullet point or captured in a ninety-second reel.

And I think — I gently suspect — that this is where many of us are finding it hard.

Let me tell you about a marshmallow.

Back in 1972, a psychologist at Stanford named Walter Mischel ran a simple experiment. He brought children — four years old, five years old — into a small room. On the table in front of them, he placed one marshmallow. Then he made them an offer.

You can eat this now. That is perfectly fine. Or — you can wait. I am going to step out. If the marshmallow is still here when I come back, I will bring you two.

Then he left.

Some children ate the marshmallow almost immediately. Some waited — and the waiting was exquisite to observe. They covered their eyes. They turned away. They sang to themselves. They petted the marshmallow as if it were a small animal. They did everything in their power to hold the discomfort of — not yet.

What I find most moving about this experiment is not the outcome data. It is the image itself.

A small child. A single marshmallow. And the enormous, silent battle between now and later.

Because that battle — dressed in different clothes, playing out on a different stage — is exactly what many of us are navigating in our inner lives right now.

Any genuine inner work asks you to invest in something you cannot yet see. To practice something whose fruits are not immediately measurable. To sit with the discomfort of I am not sure this is working, I am not sure I am doing it right, I am not sure anything is happening at all — and to keep showing up anyway.

That is the marshmallow.

And the gratification… is genuinely far ahead.

Now. About attention.

I want to tell you something first. About who I was as a child. Because I think it matters.

I grew up reading big books. Not summaries. Not excerpts. The full, brick-like, glorious things. Gone with the Wind. The Count of Monte Cristo. Arabian Nights. And Ithihyamala — that magnificent Malayalam collection of temple legends and folk stories that my grandmother kept on the highest shelf, which made it, naturally, the first thing I wanted to reach. I read these not as tasks but as worlds I moved into and lived in for weeks. You did not rush The Count of Monte Cristo. You let it take you. You surrendered to its pace.

And cricket. Five-day Test cricket.

We were living then in Thenkara. A small village — and I mean small in the way that really means something — no electricity, leave alone a television. The world beyond our village arrived slowly, if at all.

But there was Kanna mama. My father’s cousin. He lived in Mannarkkad, in a big ancestral house. And that house was always — always — open. Not just for us. For everyone. For the whole extended, sprawling, uninvited crowd of us who would assemble there for the big game  or simply because there was nowhere else to go and Kanna mama never, not once, made anyone feel like there was anywhere else they should be.

Five full days for a Test match. The host family never once complained. Never once hinted that the crowd was too much. The house was simply… open. Food appeared. Tea appeared. And we watched. Hour after hour. Day after day. The long, slow, meditative rhythm of Test cricket — the building of an innings, the shifting of pressure, the patience required of both batsman and bowler and, crucially, of the watcher.

That is a kind of attention that is very hard to describe to someone who has not felt it. A sustained, willing, wholehearted giving of your time and presence to something unfolding at its own pace, on its own terms, with no guarantee of a dramatic finish.

And then there was the night of 21 June 1986.

Brazil versus France. World Cup quarter-final. Guadalajara, Mexico.

My father decided we would go to Kanna mama’s house to watch. My brother and I didn’t need convincing. And so we walked — from Thenkara to Mannarkkad — in the rain. I don’t remember exactly how far. I remember the rain. I remember my father walking ahead, steady, not complaining. I remember the particular quality of that anticipation — the feeling of moving toward something through discomfort, because the thing was worth it.

We arrived. The house was full and warm and loud. Kanna mama’s house always was.

Brazil lost, as it happens. On penalties. One of the most beautiful and heartbreaking matches in the history of the sport. Zico missed the crucial kick. I can still see it.

After forty years, I can still recall both team lineups. Every name. Every position.

That is what deep attention does to an experience. It burns it in. It makes it yours forever.

Kanna mama passed away three weeks ago.

And here is one of life’s quietly astonishing circles: he left his sprawling ancestral house almost right in the middle  of  Mannarkkad — that very house, the one we walked toward in the rain that June night — to Thenkara. The village we had walked from. The place where we lived in 1986 with no electricity, leave alone a television.

His house came to Thenkara where I started that long walk to watch … a football game ! . All those years later.

I don’t have a neat way to say what that means. I am not sure it needs one. Some circles don’t need explaining. They just need witnessing.

Now I look back at all of this — the big books, the five-day Tests, the walk to Mannarkkad in the rain — and I see something I could not have named then.

We were, without knowing it, practicing the marshmallow.

Every single day.

We were practicing the art of staying. Of not reaching for the easier thing. Of letting something unfold at its own pace and trusting that the unfolding was worth your presence.

And now… I catch myself reaching for my phone four minutes into reading a book I have been meaning to sit with for weeks. Not because anything has arrived. Not because anyone needs me. Simply because the silence of reading has become, in four minutes, slightly uncomfortable. Slightly too slow.

The phone is the marshmallow. And I eat it.

I tell you this not as confession for its own sake. I tell you because I am swimming in the same water as everyone else. The current pulls at me too. Every single day.

We live in an age that has been ingeniously engineered to shorten our attention. Instagram reels. T20 cricket — where an entire story of contest and drama and reversal, that once unfolded over five long contemplative days, is now compressed into three electric hours. Fast food. Micro-learning. The podcast that delivers the key ideas from a book in eleven minutes. The listicle summarising a work that took a human being seven years and great personal suffering to write — delivered brisk and tidy, before your coffee goes cold.

I use these things too. I am not standing apart from any of this.

But I want to name what it does to us. Cumulatively. Quietly. Over time.

It trains us away from dwelling.

It trains us to expect resolution quickly. Insight quickly. Transformation quickly. And when transformation does not arrive on that timeline — when the practice feels dry, when the book doesn’t open, when the sitting produces nothing but a restless leg and a wandering mind — we conclude, almost automatically: something must be wrong.

Nothing is wrong.

You are simply being asked to walk to Mannarkkad in the rain.

To show up for the five-day Test.

To let The Count of Monte Cristo take as long as it takes.

To let something work on you the way a long, slow monsoon works on a hillside — not dramatically, not in a single downpour, but reshaping everything, steadily, over time. The hillside does not announce its transformation. It simply receives the rain.

And one morning — you cannot say exactly when — everything looks different.

I want to say something now that I hope lands gently.

The practice is the returning. The quiet, undramatic act of coming back — half-asleep sometimes, carrying more than you expected sometimes, having eaten the marshmallow sometimes — and being here anyway.

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi said something I have returned to more times than I can count: Each of you is perfect the way you are… and you can use a little improvement. Both things simultaneously true. You are exactly where you need to be. And you are still unfolding. This is not a contradiction. This is the Enso itself — complete, and yet still being drawn.

Let me be honest about one more thing before I close.

When I began my own journey — the longer one, the one that eventually led me to this work — I was deeply uncomfortable with not knowing how it would turn out. I wanted the map. I wanted the guarantee. I wanted someone further along to look at me and say: Yes. If you do this, you will arrive there. And there is worth going.

Nobody said that. Nobody could.

Because the whole point — the irreducible, inalienable, sometimes infuriating point — is that you have to walk into the not-knowing. Through the rain. In the dark. Not knowing if Brazil will win.

What I can offer — not as a promise, but as the quiet testimony of someone who has been walking longer and has fallen more times than he would like to admit — is this:

The walking changes you.

Not in the way you expected. Not on the timeline you planned. But it changes you in the way that lasts — quietly, irrevocably, from somewhere so deep inside that you often don’t notice it happening at all. You only notice it later, looking back, when you realise you responded to something the way you never used to respond. When you find a small spaciousness where there used to be only a wall.

That is the fruit. And it takes its own time to ripen.

It cannot be reminded into existence.

Not even by a WhatsApp message on a Tuesday morning.

So.

Be tender with yourselves.

Be patient with what is quietly ripening in the dark.

Trust the slow monsoon.

Walk to Mannarkkad, even in the rain.

And if, on some days, all you can do is remember that you are on a path — that is enough. That remembering, however fleeting, however sandwiched between a recipe forward and a motivational quote — that is the path. You are on it. Even now.

One question to sit with — no need to answer it anywhere but inside yourself:

Where in my life right now is something asking me to wait… and what would it mean, just for today, to say yes to that waiting?

Sit with it.

No hurry.

In Gassho — Metta and Mudita,

Vishy Sankara

kokorozendo.life

P.S. If something in these pages stirred something in you — Cohort 2 opens September 2026. No hurry. No pressure. Just — you will know if it is for you.

Purrfect Presence: The Trikaya on a Balcony

Purrfect Presence: The Trikaya on a Balcony

by | Mar 20, 2026 | Life, RElationship, Trust, Zen

Eckhart Tolle said: “I know many Zen Masters… all of them Cats.”

And here, three ZenCats listening to a teisho have arranged themselves with such impeccable dharmic precision that one suspects the whole scene was choreographed by something beyond mere kittenhood. 🙂

But first — what the photograph doesn’t show. These three had known loss. A sibling, gone. And with it, a wariness that only grief can plant in those small bodies. They had reason to stay back, stay wary. It took a long time — quiet sitting, no agenda, no forcing — before they would come close at all. That patience, that slow and gentle rebuilding of trust, is not the backstory to this photograph. It is the teaching.

In Mahayana Buddhism, the doctrine of Trikaya (Sanskrit for “three bodies”) describes the three manifestations of Buddhahood:

Dharmakaya (Truth Body): the formless, unmanifested absolute — ultimate reality, emptiness, Buddha-nature itself.

Sambhogakaya (Enjoyment Body): the luminous “reward” body, radiant presence experienced in deep meditative states.

Nirmanakaya (Transformation Body): the physical manifestation that appears in the world to teach and guide beings.

The balcony photograph is nothing less than Trikaya in fur.

One eager beaver kitten leaning forward with attention. Shoshin in fur form. Beginner’s mind, ardent faith, great doubt — personified in a tiny body. Not striving, just interested. Pure attention meeting the moment. This is the Nirmanakaya: the Buddha who enters the world, who takes form, makes eye contact, leans in. Shakyamuni under the Bodhi tree had this same quality — fully landed in form, fully present.

The one bang on the Middle Way. Not meditating — just being the meditation. The very picture of shikantaza (just sitting). Half-lidded eyes, no goal, no attainment, nothing to reject. Sitting is sitting. Cat is cat. This is the Sambhogakaya: luminous enjoyment body, radiating without broadcasting, bliss without agenda. Amitabha’s infinite light simply shining.

One lounging in the back row. Stretched out, utterly unbothered. Upekkha so complete it naps through the teisho — which is itself the teisho. “The sound of the talk is the sound of the breeze. The breeze is nice. I shall nap.” This is the Dharmakaya: the unborn, unmanifest ground of all three. Not sleeping, not waking — prior to both. The Dharmakaya doesn’t meditate. It is what meditation is.

Eagerness, detachment, equanimity — all expressed in fur and whiskers. One cat-nature. Three expressions. The form that engages. The presence that radiates. The ground that holds it all.

The balcony is the zendo. The morning light is the dharma. The railing is the boundary between samsara’s hillside busyness and this small square of equipoise. No separation between practice and life. No special posture required. Just this — fur, light, hillside humming in the distance — already complete.

They lost a sibling. They had every reason to remain closed, remain wary. And yet here they are — one leaning in with trust, one sitting in luminous presence, one resting into the ground of being. That journey — from grief and wariness to this open, sunlit arrangement — is perhaps the deepest teaching of all.

Cats don’t try to be enlightened. They simply are what they are, completely. Which, as this photograph shows, turns out to be the three bodies of Buddhahood — arranged casually on a balcony, waiting for breakfast.

Who still doubts that a cat cannot be a Zen Master?

The answer, as always, comes in purrfect silence. 🐾

The Mindcar: A Driver’s Manual for Comfortable Journey

The Mindcar: A Driver’s Manual for Comfortable Journey

by | Mar 7, 2026 | RElationship, STRESS, Transformation, Zen

You may remember  this iconic movie scene.

Bus number 2525. A normal day. People going to work, going home, going nowhere special. Then the bomb. Then the call. The villain on the phone telling Keanu Reeves: There is a bomb on that bus. When the bus hits fifty miles per hour, the bomb is armed. If it drops below fifty, it explodes.

Now you may remember the name of the Movie. SPEED.  It was a  big hit in 1994.

Now back to that bus 2525.

And the bus keeps speeding. The driver cannot stop. The passengers do not know. Keanu runs after it but the bus is faster. So he jumps into a car. A normal car. Not a police car. Not a hero car. But a Jaguar. And he chases.

He pulls alongside the bus. He has a poster. A handmade thing. Written in a hurry. Probably with a marker that was lying around. He holds it up to the window. It says something simple. Something that could save everyone.

It says: BOMB on the BUS

But the damn wind.

The wind from the speeding bus, from the speeding car, from the highway rushing past at eighty miles an hour—it catches the poster. Rips it from his hands. The paper flies and twists and tumbles through the air like a thing with no purpose. And then, by some strange grace, it sticks. Right there. On the front mirror of the bus. The driver's mirror. The one place where the driver might see it if she looks.

That poster is stuck. Stuck to the glass. Stuck to the minds of those bewildered passengers, who were on their way to work on a very normal day and Sam, their driver.

And on that poster, written in marker, is the warning that changes everything:

BOMB on the BUS

And then, after that message, our hero manages to get into the bus quite heroically as in any other normal Bollywood/Tolllywood movies.

Somehow. The way heroes do. A leap. A grab. A door that opens at just the right moment. He is inside now. The bus is still speeding. The bomb is still under the floor. The rule is still the same: below fifty, everyone dies.

There is a man driving. A regular driver. Sam. Who seems to know all the regular passengers of that bus 2525. A man who was just doing his job until a stranger jumped in and a poster appeared on his mirror and now his world is upside down. Keanu starts explaining. Starts trying to calm everyone down. Starts telling them about the bomb, about the speed, about what they have to do.

And then it happens.

There is an unruly passenger. Someone who cannot handle the fear. Someone who turns fear into fury. Someone who does not want to listen, does not want to calm down, does not want to cooperate. He pulls out a gun. (Which of course are available in plenty in the land of opportunities!)  And before anyone can stop him, he shoots the driver.

The driver falls. The bus keeps moving. But the wheel is empty.

And then Sandra Bullock takes over.

A passenger. A woman who was just riding the bus. Who had no plan to drive, no desire to drive, no training for this. But the wheel is empty and someone has to hold it. So she holds it. She drives. She learns in seconds what most people take years to learn. She keeps the bus moving. She keeps the speed above fifty. She navigates through traffic and turns and obstacles while behind her, chaos continues.

And Keanu? He is still there. Still managing. Still trying to calm the passengers, deal with the shooter, figure out what comes next. But Sandra is driving now. And that changes everything.

If you are driving a car through a busy Indian road (Let us say Hyderabad) and there are lot of people in the car. Many good, noble and friendly ones. And some loud, pesky, irritable ones. The one who wish that you have never come across in life. Now if you are really determined and focus on shutting up those bad ones or not have them in that car itself, you cant even focus on driving. Now the other fear is those bad pesky ones are allowed to in the car, you wont be able to drive at all. So U may stop on the kerb and fight them to throw them out. But they neve leave. They are all glued to their car seat with Fevicol. There is a middle path.. (The one Buddha and Aristotle taught ). These passengers are your memories. Your pain. Your thoughts. Some about your guilt. Some about your anger. Some about your not so good times.. Etc. That is your own. That is why they are stuck to the car seat glued with Fevicol. Consider you have enough room in those backseats of that CAR above your neck. And Just accept that fact and continue to drive. There may be other passengers who may whine to you about those loud irritable co passengers.. But even they are nothing but a passenger in your Mindcar. The tag phrase is Be comfortable with them all. While you navigate your car of life through those narrow , sometime wide alleys of this world.

This is not just a story. This is a map of the human mind, drawn with the dust of Hyderabad roads and the glue of Fevicol.

the paradox we all live inside:

  • The Trap of Suppression: We try to shut them up. We try to focus only on the good, noble, friendly ones. But the moment we put all your energy into silencing the backseat, our eyes leave the road. The car swerves. We cannot drive while fighting a war behind your own head.
  • The Trap of Engagement: So then we think, "I will stop this car altogether. I will pull over to the kerb, I will turn around, and I will throw them out. I will argue with them until they leave." But they never leave. They are ours. They are stuck with Fevicol to our mind, like that advt.  Every memory, every guilt, every angry thought—it is bonded to the seat of our experience. The more we fight, the more we are just sitting on the kerb, going nowhere, while the world waits.
  • The Middle Path is the Driver's Path: This is where Buddha's wheel meets Aristotle's highway. The middle path is not a compromise between the good passengers and the bad ones. It is a shift in identity. You are not a passenger. We are the driver. The driver's job is not to control the conversation in the back. The driver's job is to keep the vehicle moving. To watch the road. To navigate the narrow alleys and the wide boulevards.

And then we add the most subtle truth: The ones who whine about the pesky passengers—the thoughts that say "Why is this thought still here?" or "I should be over this by now"—they are also just passengers. More noise. More meta-noise. All of them, just faces in the rearview mirror.

After lot of struggles and stumbles, while trying to drive the Mindcar on a Zazen cushion, we find the key to the whole journey:

Be comfortable with them all.

But what does comfortable really mean? Have given the answer inside the word itself. That was a  built  fort with letters.

COMFORTABLE = COME + FORT + ABLE

Let us sit with this. Let us feel the weight of it.

COME: This is the first step, and the bravest one. It is the opposite of running. It is the opposite of covering your ears. It is turning toward the backseat and saying, "I see you. I know you are there. You are loud. You are irritating. You remind me of things I wish I had never done, things I wish had never happened to me. But I see you. I acknowledge you." You stop fighting the fact that they exist. You invite the reality of your own mind to be present. You COME to terms with what is.

FORT: This is the realization of your own strength. You are not a fragile hut that will collapse if a loud thought shouts. You are a FORT. A fort does not exist to keep the weather away. A fort exists to stand firm in the weather. The rain comes. The wind howls. The fort remains. The noise from the backseat—the guilt, the anger, the pesky ones—it can bounce off the walls. It can scream. But the walls do not shake. Because the FORT is built with something deeper than temporary peace. It is built with the knowledge that you are the driver, not the noise. The fort is your own unshakable center.

ABLE: And because we have COME to the noise, and because we sit in our FORT, we are now ABLE. Able to drive. Able to navigate. Able to turn the steering wheel when a cow walks onto the road or a child runs after a ball. The ability does not come from a silent car. It comes from a driver who is at peace with a noisy one. You are ABLE to live your life with your memories, not despite them. The guilt is still in the back. The anger is still muttering. The pain is still there, glued with Fevicol. But you are ABLE. Your hands are on the wheel. Your eyes are on the road. You are moving.

So the final image is this: Close your eyes. And see your mindcar with insight.

You are driving through the busy, chaotic, beautiful, terrifying streets of Hyderabad—which is just another name for life. The car is full. It is loud. Some voices are kind. Some voices make you wish you had never been born. Some voices complain about the other voices.

And you? You are in the driver's seat. You have looked back once, said "I see you all," and turned forward again. You have built your FORT not in some silent mountain far from the noise, but right here in the driver's seat, with the chaos swirling around you. You are COMFORTABLE—not because the noise has stopped, but because you have COME to your FORT and you are now ABLE.

The Fevicol is strong. But so is the fort.

Drive on.

And now let us make things a little more complex.

Often You are not driving on a smooth highway with that Mindcar. This is not a movie set where the road is empty and the only problem is the bomb. This is not a Zendo.  But a market place  This is real life. Let us say that that road is in Old Hyderabad. Or This is anywhere.

On the road too you meet some good people. Some bad. And some really ugly.

Sometimes someone cuts in. No signal. No warning. Just swerves right into your lane because they are late, because they are careless, because they simply do not care about you.

Sometimes someone blares the horn for no reason. Not because you did anything wrong. Not because there is an emergency. Just because they are angry. Just because they have their own bomb inside their own car and they are taking it out on you.

Sometimes there is a truck behind you riding too close. So close you can see the driver's face in your mirror. So close that one tap of your brake would end everything.

Sometimes there is a pedestrian who steps off the kerb without looking. Lost in their own world. Their own thoughts. Their own passengers.

Sometimes there is a cow standing in the middle of the road. Just standing. Because this is India and cows can stand wherever they want.

Sometimes there is a child chasing a ball. Sometimes there is an old man crossing slowly. Sometimes there is a political procession with flags and shouting and drums. Sometimes there is a wedding. Sometimes there is a funeral. Sometimes the road is flooded. Sometimes it is full of potholes. Sometimes it is not even a road, just a dirt path that someone decided to call a road.

And through all of this, you are driving.

Your car is still full. The loud ones are still loud. The pesky ones are still pesky. The irritable ones are still making you wish you had never been born. The Fevicol is still holding them to their seats. The bomb is still under the floor. The rule is still the same: keep moving or explode.

And now there is all of this outside too.

The ones who cut you off. The ones who honk. The ones who drive like maniacs. The ones who walk like they own the road. The ones who do not see you. The ones who see you and do not care.

What do you do?

Do you stop the car to fight the man who cut you off? Do you get out and shout at the one who blared the horn? Do you chase down the pedestrian who stepped in front of you? Do you try to move the cow?

You cannot. The bomb is still there. The speedometer is still ticking. Below fifty and it is over.

So you do what an expert driver of a mindcar does. You acknowledge them. You see the man who cut you off. You hear the horn that means nothing. You notice the cow and the child and the old man. You register them. And then you keep driving.

You adjust. You slow down a little for the cow. You wait for the child to get the ball. You let the maniac pass because letting them pass costs you nothing and fighting them costs everything. You do not return the horn because returning the horn does not move you forward. You do not make eye contact with the angry ones because eye contact is just another kind of stop.

The road is full of people with their own bombs. Their own Fevicol. Their own loud passengers. Their own pain. Their own guilt. Their own anger. Their own not so good times.

They are not your passengers. They are not in your car. They are on the road. And the road is where they belong. The road is where everyone belongs. The good, the bad, the ugly, the maniacs, the lost ones, the ones who cut you off and the ones who let you in.

Your job is not to fix them. Your job is not to fight them. Your job is not to understand why they are the way they are. Your job is to share the road with them. To navigate around them. To keep moving despite them.

Because the bomb is still there. The passengers are still there. The road is still there. And you are still the driver.

Come. Fort. Able.

Come to the chaos outside as you came to the chaos inside. Build your fort so that their horns do not shatter you. Be able to drive through the worst traffic, the worst drivers, the worst roads, without losing your speed.

The world outside is not your passenger. It is just the road. And the road, like the passengers, like the bomb, like the Fevicol—the road just is.

Drive on.

 

 

Preparing with Care, Trusting in Execution… Reading the First Half, Living the Second

Preparing with Care, Trusting in Execution… Reading the First Half, Living the Second

by | Jan 19, 2026 | Change, Communication, Compassion, Harmony, Life, Meaning, RElationship, Trust, Zen

My better half’s family was into Krishnamurti and she got out of a well-paying IT job to be a teacher in a. Krishnamurti school and Manu and Rishi too had their entire school education there. Though, it is an alternative education, it did give me some anxious moments, especially when i got to read about the competitive landscape of higher education and career building and livelihood earning outside that protected cocoon. They did end up in really good universities for their UG. But , the elder one, did face the challenged due to changed environment. Someone who was never part of dumb bell curve or exams for most of his life, but who pursued knowledge and wisdom for its own sake, was thrown into the high seas of surprise tests, CGPA and dumbbell curve etc without any life jacket. And it did reflect on his performance for the first two sems… There were O+ with 0 ( Not present). As someone who skipped my final year Engineering exam , for watching World cup football, in spite of my late Father's concerned advice of a lengthy 5 page letter, i knew i did not have the moral capital to advise him. Though indirectly , i tried to share some pointers and nothing much. There was some subaltern tension and concern nevertheless.

But one thing good about him was his zeal of reading and ability to observe. As a very young child, he was into ornithology and could recognize almost all kinds of birds in the Valley school campus. Their daily routing in school, even for 1st std starts with early morning Nature walking. And the first gift i had given was a book by Salim Ali and a Bushnell binocular bought in Johannesburg. And he is one of those who read much more than i do. So in the breaks between semesters, while at home, he started reading the books in my bookshelf and also started buying a lot of books chosen by him. Me and Thara had also kind of stopped asking him about his results. We just used to say in a good way that he got to prepare himself to make a living as there is no inheritance as such.

So i was quite surprised, when he walked in and showed me his Semester marks card last month. It was all O+ and A+. I asked him how did he turn himself around and he talked about Frankl's paradoxical intention and Huxely's law of reversed effort. As someone who was trained in NLP ,Counselling, and did MA in Psychology and got trained in Coaching and read a bit, i was familiar with most of such stuff. But not this. And when i asked about it, he showed it in the book ( my old book of Man's Search for Meaning). I had read the first part and just skimmed thru the second half. 🙁 .. Below is his full note on that. When your own son self-coaches himself, out of trouble into some success and teaches you about it, may be one can’t be more happier than that ... Here is his note in full:

"The law of Reversed Effect

The law of reversed effect can be viewed as a psychological boomerang. When you attempt to wilfully dictate an experience, the harder you try, the more that experience will slip away from you. It’s like trying to hold a feather steady in a gust by grasping it tightly in your hand. Examples of this principle are found in all areas of human experience. The more you attempt to force sleep to occur, the more alert and reactive your brain will become; likewise, if you tell yourself to “stay calm,” all of a sudden, you’ll feel more anxious. The conscious mind, when in a state of contraction, creates a resistance to the natural rhythms required by the unconscious mind to perform its job effectively.

This law points out that the mind is likely going to produce better results through relaxation than through strain. All aspects of performance, confidence, creativity, and memory are likely to grow, develop, and improve when there is less pressure and strain associated with them. Athletes enter into flow states by not trying hard enough, but rather by getting out of their own way. As soon as an athlete stops worrying about the results of a competition and focuses only on the performance, their body takes over and performs at its best.

The law of reversed effect does not imply to “never try.” It means to use intention rather than effort and precision over strain. For instance, aim like an archer: identify the target, align your shot, and release without forcing the bow. In many cases, the most successful result comes from creating a time period of rest and relaxation in between two actions, during which you lead, rather than restrain, your movement toward your desired outcome. Sometimes the best way to make progress toward a goal is to stop chasing after it and allow it to come to you.

Rather than mandating performance, the conditions can be established which will allow the output to develop itself, which means So, you relax the inner grip. You don’t quit, you just change the aim of your effort. Just move your effort from trying to control the end result and start focusing it on the process. When the anxiety pulls you into "I must do this right," you pull back and say, "I'll make the space for good execution."

In a way, this is line with. Viktor Frankl’s Paradoxical intention. Paradoxical intention is a psychotherapeutic technique developed by Viktor Frankl, the founder of logotherapy. It is designed to break the "vicious cycle" of anticipatory anxiety—the fear of a symptom (like insomnia or stuttering) which, through the very effort to avoid it, makes the symptom worse. This directly mirrors the "Law of Reversed Effort". Many who read Frankl’s “Man Search for Meaning”, though it is a small book, reads the first part where he narrated his experiences and let go the second part in which describes the second part of Logotherapy. ( Like my Papa!) . And they don’t realise that , Man’s search for meaning is meaningful, only if you stay with it rather than let go in the middle. 🙂

Coming back to exams, it involves studying for them and going to them trusting what one has prepared for rather than going for what one has not perfected. With anxiety, it involves recognizing the sensations one feels without trying to struggle against them. With skills, it involves practicing them in a structured manner and executing them by breathing into them instead of straining them.

The core is:
Let’s put the effort into preparation rather than execution. Let the trust go into execution. You're not letting go of control; you're choosing the right kind of control: conditions, not grip. The effect appears like a cat; pounce too hard and it runs off; just be still, and it curls up in your lap."

What he has written is not just a psychological principle, but a Dharma gate. The law of reversed effect is nothing but the Zen koan of “trying not to try.” The feather in the gust, the archer’s release, the cat curling up in the lap—these are not metaphors alone, they are lived gestures of life teaching us that control is often the enemy of presence.

I see in his words the same paradox that Krishnamurti pointed to when he said, “The more you pursue pleasure, the more pain you invite.” Or in Zen, when Master Dōgen reminds us that practice is enlightenment itself, not a means to it. The reversal is the teaching: when you grip, it slips; when you soften, it arrives.

And perhaps this is the most ordinary miracle—that a boy who once walked the Valley campus identifying birds by their calls, now identifies the subtle calls of the mind itself. He has moved from Salim Ali’s field guide to Frankl’s logotherapy, but the movement is the same: attention, observation, and trust in what reveals itself when you stop forcing.
For me, reading his note was like being shown my own bookshelf anew. I had skimmed, he had stayed. I had read the first half, he had lived into the second. And in that reversal, the son became the teacher, the father became the student. That is lineage too—not only bloodline, but wisdom line, where insight flows back and forth, unowned, ungrasped.
So I take his words as a reminder: prepare with care, execute with trust. Grip less, condition more. Let the cat curl up. Let the arrow fly. Let the feather dance. And let the law of reversed effect be not just psychology, but practice—practice of living, practice of dying, practice of being.

And perhaps, this is where the circle of education and life shows its hidden symmetry. What began as a child’s morning nature walk in Valley School, listening to bird calls, has now become a young man’s walk through the inner valley of mind, listening to the calls of anxiety and learning to let them perch and fly away. The binoculars of Salim Ali have turned into the lens of Frankl, but the act is the same: seeing clearly, without grasping.

It reminds me that the true inheritance we give our children is not wealth or security, but the courage to observe, the patience to stay, and the humility to learn from reversals. My father’s five-page letter was one kind of inheritance; my silence with my son was another. Both carried concern, but only one gave space. And in that space, he found his own way.

This reversal is not a defeat of the parent, but the flowering of lineage. The son teaches the father and  the feather teaches the hand. And life, in its ordinary rhythm, teaches us again and again that the way forward is sometimes to soften, to trust, to let go.

So I bow to this teaching—not as a principle in a book, but as a lived koan in my own home. The law of reversed effect is not only his discovery; it is now mine too.

The Song from Behind the Wall: On My Grandmother, Kathakali, and Kalamandalam Hyderali

The Song from Behind the Wall: On My Grandmother, Kathakali, and Kalamandalam Hyderali

by | Dec 22, 2025 | Compassion, Harmony, Life, Meaning, Peace, RElationship, Zen

I have mixed feeling about Kathakali.. I have also mixed feeling about my paternal Grandma. … Mixed with likes and dislikes. No idea about the ratio of that proportion though. The artform of Kathakali was introduced to me by my Grandma.. So we got to start from her.

By any yardstick, my grandma was a very strong lady . She went to school only till 3rd standard.. But could remember the poems . especially the song praising the Queen of British Empire, she leant in her school. And she remembered all the slokas from Malayalam version of Ramayana.. Though she was not a great believer of God per se.. Guess her faith was very much rooted in practicality of day to day living. May be she followed Aristotle’s golden mean on that aspect. She liked temples and festivities as such. Especially those temple artforms such as Kathakali.

She was born into a very wealthy family, lost her mother when she was 21 days old. And sooner her father lost all his wealth. Her upbringing was taken care by a relative. She used to tell us that, as in infant she was fed goat milk. May be that explains her health till the very last moment of her life. I don’t remember she was ever hospitalised for any major illness. Though she was as smart or more smart than her cousin brothers, her education was stopped as was the norm during those days. Girl.

And as the daughter of a poor father, she got married to another not so wealthy person in that small Kannadiga community. Her husband, my paternal grandfather had almost a similar story being born into a wealthy family, but his parents squandering all their wealth and become quite poor by the time he finished his FA . ( During those days, intermediate was known as FA.). In our old family home, there was a photo of him in Football jersey . And my father Sankara, used to tell us that he was quite a good centre forward, that got him a job with Spencer’s. Then suppliers of British Army. But when their unit moved to Singapore , he had to leave that job and stay back to take care of his parents at their insistence. Guess not to his choice or liking. As he used to love Football too. And he took a govt. job.. and due to his over honest and over idealistic nature, remained quite poor throughout his life times.

During those times, there were around 10 Kannadiga families in Mannarkkad, 2 temples and a big graveyad just for the Kannadiga community.   Rest of them were quite wealthy and due to that my grandparents were kind of socially ignored. Also was at the end of ridicule by them.

May be that environment made her seek cultural wealth. I guess Kathakali was her connection to the lost grandeur , an equalizer and display of cultivated taste.

Another story she used to tell us was on how she and other relatives planning to grow vegetables. During those days, they used to grow most of their needs. And most vegetables were seasonal. And she always used to plant a few a few week before others did and used to harvest and share with her relatives. May be some competitive streak.

In a life where so much was decided for her—her halted education, her marriage, her social standing—controlling the calendar of a seed was a powerful act of sovereignty. Planting earlier was a way to command time itself. And Harvesting and sharing first wasn't just kindness; it was a subtle restructuring of social dynamics. The relatives who may have "socially ignored" them became, briefly, recipients. She transformed from being overlooked to being the source, the one who provides. It turned perceived lack of enough into plenty.

All her life experiences had made her a formidable person. And sometimes ruthless too (most of the times she was quite self-centred too.) When a small infant grows up against all odds, it might have ingrained in her that she got to take care of herself. And she is there to take care of herself. And that reflected the way she treated her others in general and her daughter in laws in particular. May be the dislike part in me for her comes from that.

And the like part comes from all the great stories of our ancestors, she shared with us , and especially the stories of Kathakali. ( Kuchelavritham and Karna Sapatham etc were here favourite) and great insights.

For example, when Rajiv Gandhi was PM of India, there was some commotion about his wife, Sonia Gandhi being an Italian. ( Bofors times). And. I remember , her cousin brother, who was a national award winning school teachers talking to her about it. She said, anyone who can ties a saree so well got to be an Indian. Now when I look back, that was great cultural exams, no one can dispute.

Coming back to Kathakali. During those days, 2 or 3 days Kathakali performance was part of the annual festival at MuMoorthi temple in Mannarkkad. And that was something she never wanted to miss. Every single time, she will tell us, next year no one knows whether she is going to be alive so that this may be her last Kathaakali viewing.

I did not like Kathakali is an understatement. For those who wonder what Kathakali is ! It is an 4 or 5 century old temple art form in Kerala. Now almost dying. That is more to do with its form than its content. Kathakali programs used to be like 3 -4 full days. ( Nights in fact... from after the dinner, till just before the sun rises !). Most of the audience used to be Old people.. and often the younger ones with them were there to go with them. As our attention span, ability to really learn nuances and enjoy the slow pace of life declined , Kathakali too moved to reel size appearances in movie songs or on the welcome program of foreign tourists in those fancy resorts.

On that temple grounds, on the grass mat we used to carry as our seating ( in our case sleeping pad), we kids used to sleep .. While elders used to enjoy every moment of it.

I should say that , I was quite happy when that annual sojourn ended.

Much later , it came back. Through the voice of Kalamandalam Hyderali. He came as an arts festival guest at Govt Vicotria college. As the most famous Kathakali singer , as a Muslim , his invite seems to be more of a political statement. But when as an humble man, he said he is no orator and he would sing a kathakali padam for us. And he sang “Ajita hare” without any accompaniments it hit the heart note of all the audience. That song from KuchelaVirttam might have entered into my brain, during my sleeping stint as an audience on that temple ground. Hyderali's rendering of that, just woke me up from my slumber.

Even then I did not make any attempt to learn about him. Again during 2006, he reappeared in the obituary column of the Hindu. And that was a great story. When Mohanlal and Kalamandalam Gopi’s epic movie based on Kathakali “Vanaprastham” was realised, Hyderali was again in news and the legendary Kathakali Artist Gopiasan told in a TV interview, the most iconic kathakali singer was Hyderali.

Kerala is known as God’s own country.. I would hasten to add that it is also Devil’s own country too… In This small Gaul like state , both profound and profane coexist…. Secularism and fanaticism .. kindness and meanness… Openness and narrowmindedness…

Kerala is also home to K J Yesudas, an Xian who is more known for his Hindu devotional songs, K Raghavan an Hindu whose Mappila songs are evergreen. And Kalamandalam Hyderali a Muslim who went to become a legendary Kathakali singer. Kathakali is a Hindu temple art form and was in the hands of conservative echelons of Kerala society.

One of the Best KATHAKALI singers of his generation, Hyder Ali is the first non-Hindu artiste to make a mark in the four-century-old Classical Dance-Drama KATHAKALI.

It was when he was 11 years old that Hyderali joined Kerala Kalamandalam. Hailing from a poor family, his parents had struggled to pay the admission fee -— incidentally "a Hindu and a Christian" helped him secure admission in the premier performing arts institute, as Hyderali later recalls in his autobiography.

Hyderali was blessed with a light, pliant and sonorous voice that tuned well to softer and melodramatic scenes on Kathakali stage. His emotive singing used to earn him praise from masters like Kalamandalam Gopi.

Hyderali, suave and soft-spoken, nurtured the wish to see Lord Krishna in real life, but had to occasionally suffer professional humiliation on religious grounds, as entry to temples, where a chunk of Kathakali shows finds stage, in Kerala is barred for non-Hindus. Kathakali aficionados recall how those in control of an ancient temple near Haripad actually pulled down a part of the compound wall and extended the platform there for Hyderali to sing for the Kathakali performers inside the compound.

And that was a great story.. And Hyderali in one interview says as he was forced to stand on the stage part which was behind the wall outside the border of the temple, “ My body was outside the temple, but my voice was within.. Had I extended my hand, I would have touched the God.”

After a few years in wandering through the Zen way, I would have told him, that God was within him and may be all the Gods go wherever he used to sing to listen to him.

Coming back to my grandma, maybe she too would have felt , she is standing outside the wall of this world, even from a 21 days old infant till she passed away…

It took the story of a Muslim man singing of Hindu gods from outside a temple wall to make me finally hear my grandmother. Her life, too, was a voice singing from behind a series of walls—of poverty, of gender, of social slight. I had resented the formidable structure of her person, as I had resented the endless nights of Kathakali she loved. But Hyderali taught me to listen for the song within the fortress. The 'Ajita Hare' that seeped into my childhood sleep was that song. Her sharp wisdom about a sari was that song. In the end, the walls—of the temple, of the art form, of her difficult strength—dissolve. What remains is the voice, reaching for the divine. And finally, I am listening.

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