Passing the right torches

It was thirty years ago when my parents decided that their two boys should go through the "Upanayanam" ceremony. For those western folks reading this in the US, it is like a "bar-mitzvah" for Hindu brahmin boys. A ceremony which involves getting a thread around their shoulders, that symbolizes their commitment to higher learning. 

Said "higher learning" involved the following :

1. Sitting in front of a fire for hours and offering things into it and getting used to the heat

2. Learning the "Gayathri Mantra" which was to be used as a repetitive prayer

3. Learning to do "Sandhya vandanam" , a prayer done three times a day where we take water and throw it back in water and say different prayers as part of the 15-30 minute routine. 

4. Learn to get blessings from elders the formal way by mentioning our "lineage" and understanding what that means

5. Understanding the relationship between doing certain rituals and its correlation to getting really yummy food in a Pavlovian way

6. Understanding that you are not a kid anymore and people look up to you all of a sudden to be more responsible because you understand 1 through 5! 

7. Joining your grandfather or father in an evening prayer and making them proud without understanding what all the big fuss was about

8. Figuring out that the memory you have inherited comes in very handy when it comes to impressing your elders

9. This is something I forgot on the original list. The "Pranayaama" that was taught as part of Sandhyavandhanam. We were taught how to take in a breath with one nostril, hold it and release it through the other. On any given day we did this around 50 times. 

There may have been many more but the one thing that I deliberately did not list was doing the "Sooryanamaskaaram" which is the Sun Salutation. After the main ceremony finished and just before we went of to lunch, after sitting in front of a fire for 3 hours, the priest took the two newly "poonal"ed kids to see the sun. He asked us to cross our fingers in a grid and look through the sun and said "as part of your daily Sandhyavandhanam, you kids look at the sun for a few second every day like this! This is the soorya namaskaaram". 

Years and years later, I learned that the Sun Salutation in reality involved a series of forward and back bends which are combination of the Half Moon pose and Triangle pose in Hatha Yoga. It is not fair for me to criticize my parents, grandparents or the priest, who had not seen his own bellybutton directly, crossed fingers or not , over god knows how many moons. There was no way that dude was teaching me the real Sun Salutation. 

Somewhere down the line, a ritual in a village setting that would have taught young kids to stand waist deep in water and do forward and back bends, lunges etc. with the spirit of teaching them "as water goes to water" so do you back to this earth, "here, sit and meditate and find some inner peace and while you are at it", and strengthen your body while doing all this changed to fit a context and lost a lot in the translation . I am guessing the running water must have done wonders for one's circulation and bowel movement. 

My parents spent a lot of their savings on this very important ceremony. It was done like a wedding and the feast that followed made my brother and me feel like rock stars.

I still change my thread every year and commit to learning. Maybe just like the ceremony evolved from teaching lifes lessons to fit a modern day context and lost something in the evolutionary process, my commitment also changed.

I commit to watching at least one TED talk a week, reading one book or magazine a week and meditating for at least 10 minutes a day. In a way keeping up with my field of study and sticking to "Materials Science" after most of my classmates have found success in finance or software is my self delusional way of dedication to the "sacred thread".

The Pranayaama must have helped me for sure as I kept up with it for a good 10 years after the Poonal. Somehow I stopped doing it a year after coming to the US. Still don't know why. 

Here is one of the few photos I happen to have from that ceremony where my friend and his dad are congratulating me and my dad shortly after the thing was over. 

These days I am not religious. I think of myself as more of a spiritual person who believes in the goodness in all people. I am also trying to look inward in trying to find goodness in myself first before expecting goodness from ohters. Guess it is yet another change that the years and experiences bring to a person. Or maybe it is all the yoga on a daily basis that tries to work overtime outside the yoga room and search for context in everything. 

This ceremony happens to be only for boys and we see the other kids in my family go through this ritual over time. I still remember one of my cousins pleading with my uncle and aunt to skip the ceremony, have a quiet thing in the house without all the expense and give the saved money to go towards a motorbike he really wanted. He was way ahead of his time. I was not old enough to support him in his noble and thoughtful quest. 

These days the best I can do is to make sure the kids who are getting the "poonal" learn to do the Sun Salutation the right way, be it through the priest or some other person in the audience who knows how to do it. 

Always used to wonder what kind of rite of passage do I give to my two little darlings.  If I can teach them how to improve their physical and mental well being, what could we possibly teach them? This question had a big gaping hole for an answer till Bikram Yoga became a part of my life three years ago. Now there is no doubt in my mind on what I would like to hand over as a "torch" of sorts.

If we can get the kids to do yoga regularly and meditate regularly, they would be far better off than we are. To that end, Jr. is now coming with me to Bikram Yoga once a week. Granted it is not daily, but the fact that she kept this once a week commitment with some reluctance is still a big deal. 

Today the room was a 110 F and she pretty much sat down most of the class, but she stayed in the room. So many people came out and said "You make your dad very proud for hanging in there and trying". Guess she was beaming with a smile, the same way when her young daddy was being congratulated for throwing things in front of a hot fire for 3 hours straight, after managing to repeat a bunch of things in Sanskrit with a perfect pronunciation and a complete lack of understanding. 

Bikram yoga to Jr. may be the same thing as the Sandhya vandhanam was to daddy, but somehow deep down I feel that she is going to be a lot better off then me, in thirty years if she sticks to this routine. She does get to do 20 minutes of Pranayaama as part of the routine in class and this method will help her improve her lung capacity. 

It will be the little one's turn in three years!

Gender profiling hits closer to home..

Friday evening. Mom asks dad to stop by the Indian Grocery store on the way home from work. She gives a long list of things to get.  

The kids come back from evening class. It is time to unload the stuff from the trunk and given how the stores don't give plastic bags anymore and also given that daddy is not the default shopper, there are no big bags. All the individual items are just spread across the trunk. So we need as many hands as possible to do the unloading fast.

The kids are helping and Mommy says "I asked for beans. I expect you to buy beans for making curry for the four of us for one meal. Not for two. This is waaay more beans than I would have got"

The little one decides to join in the bashing "If you thought he got too much beans wait till you see how much Vendaikaai(Okra) he got!" which turned out to be a false accusation. When Mommy saw the quantity she thought it was too little.. Nevertheless, you folks get the picture..

Jr. decides to chime in "See, this is what happens when you send a 'boy' to get vegetables!" . This 'boy' is the one making them their special sepankizhangu curries etc. and suddenly this 'boy' is not to be relied on for buying vegetables?! 

It is not easy living with three girls.. When they decide to pile things on, it comes big and deep. Daddy has decided to stop doing a few things around the house till they come around. 

They are watching too many serials on the iPad that designate daddy as the person who takes out the garbage and plays with power tools in the garage. Time to unplug the internet connection in the house. 

Old is gold!

We have been watching "Baby photos" and "Baby videos" over the last week at bedtime. We stumbled on a few folders in the archives that we have skipped all along!

A drag and drop error had secretly hidden the folders inside other folders. 

The contents were so amusing that we had to share!

Jr.'s re-enactment of her circle time at school reminded me of my brother re-enacting his kindergarten class at home for us when we were kids!

Simbu should pat himself on the back for coming up with a catchy song that a 4 year old girl can sing with an American accent.. 

Needless to say, we miss those days! 

The vegetarian VP

Over the last year or so, there are friends that make jokes like "How is Mr. Vice doing?" , "What's up with the Veep?" etc. which are all references to my VP title at work. 

The irony of the vice thing is not lost on me. As a person who is vegetarian by choice, a non smoker, non drinker of coffee, anything carbonated and anything alcoholic, there is a severe restriction when I eat outside.

Folks who have worked with me over the last decade know that I always bring my own lunch box and eat my rice with Rasam, Sambar or plain yogurt with a curry or two. A perfectly okay meal that seems to meet my dietary needs and food allergy restrictions. 

The demands on socializing outside of work definitely increase as one moves up the management chain. At some point, it becomes a necessity to go beyond meeting at Starbucks or the local bars to some high end dining locations. 

To the amusement of the others at the dinner table, yours truly always toasts with plain water or a glass of orange juice. The 400$ bottles of wine that are sniffed and then passed around make for amusement from my perspective. Still a value shopper, I can never understand why a bottle of wine should cost 400 bucks and if the folks at the table can really differentiate betwen a 400$ bottle vs. a 40$ bottle on a blind test. Then again, I am probably not qualified to appreciate wine as I lack the experience. 

Recently at a friends place we had a discussion on "If you have a VP title, your job is to do more business and less technical stuff.. even if you are the VP of Technology... so how can you be efficient as a VP if you don't drink or eat meat or go to places where people smoke?"

That question threw me back! It was never part of the job description as a director, senior director or VP! Was it one of things like the "code red" in "A few good men", an unwritten rule of sorts? I started to wonder if my job would be better done if I drank a lot instead of being the designated driver at these dinners! 

Where the meat figures in this is still beyond me. Most of the restaurants I have visited have at least one vegetarian option if in the US. However, I did see disappointment written large on the face of a head Chef at a restaurant outside the US, when our host was translating. He pointed at me to the chef and said "do you have anything vegetarian?" and the response was "we have mussels, clams. does that work?" and I nodded saying "No. those are not vegetarian" and the Chef said "Oh, No!" in their language. They discussed for a few more minutes and finally got a large salad specially made for me. To compensate they gave me a double portion of chocolate dessert! They were extremely happy that I loved chocolate.

It is true that becoming a dedicated Yogi and practicing Hatha Yoga and simultaneously doing meditation on a daily basis makes folks around me think I am going to become a monk any day and walk into a forest. Given that there is a darling wife who cooks for me to remind me of the finer things in life and two daughters who hold the key to my breathing, there are no plans to become a monk at anytime. It is always easy for folks who claim enlightenment to walk away from social obligations, but it is a challenge to have a clarity of mind and still do what matters on a day to day basis.  

The side effect of doing Yoga and meditation is that I now have the resolve to say "No" to things I do not have to do or want to do and still strive on being the best at what is required. The first contradiction to that was the question raised "you cannot be the best you can be if you don't drink!"

Time will tell if success on the job was ever compromised by being a Yogi! So far, I think not. Every person I have interacted with at these dinners seems to appreciate my abiilty to say "no" to expensive food and wine and stick to my salad, bread and chocolate cakes. My colleagues who know of my allergy history have no complaints. 

Someday, when I retire from being the busy technologist, will write a book with this title. There are simply too many funny stories to share. Given the blogs separation of work and blog policy, those stories have to wait post retirement.

A time that was

Almost two decades ago, yours truly could dance in a competiton from 8AM to 6PM and still go for the formal "social events" that went till midnight. 

It was the best of times and that was it. Then life took a different turn and the dance floor was something that was frequented only in dreams or while day dreaming and choreographing moves for some nice song on the radio. 

Recently, after a long time.. switched on the radio and listened to a few songs. One of them happened to be Justin Timberlake's Mirrors. Loved the song and it brought back so many memories of NSYNC and a group of us dancing to some of those songs that were remixed to select dance beats. 

A thought triggered another and an attempt was made to check out the ballroom clothes that have been packed up since 1999! They did not fit. It was a clear image of a square peg in a round hole when I looked in the mirror. 

So I started focussing on select poses in the hot yoga room that were good to get rid of the handles at the waist. Bikram Choudury's book had details on what pose does what and it was a handy guide. After three months I tried the clothes again two weeks ago and voila!

It is still tight around the lower ribs now, but not bad eh?

Feels good to be able to fit into pants that were stitched in 1996! 

San of course is just shaking her head and so are the kids. Now the next step is to put on some weight in the face without putting the weight back on in the hips. Must be a pose for that! 

ps. Mommy, not to worry! There are no plans to get back on the dance floor. Dancer's pose in the yoga room will be it.