Fasting is good

Every now and then fasting is a good thing. Helps your system reset. For some reason, fasting is more of a regular things with women in my life than the men. Mom, sister, wife, MIL all fast every now and then on a Friday or Saturday on some pretext (god's name) or other. Sometimes it is a full blown water only fast. Other times it is a liquid diet only and sometimes it is a "no tamarind, lime, etc.. sour or tangy"  fast. My dad's idea of fasting was skipping Saturday night dinner and no one in our house pushed me or my brohter to do any fasting. 

While fasting w.r.t. food is a good thing, that has been proven by eastern and western medicine and science, fasting with respect to external information is a very very good thing! Just went through that experience recently.

Three plus weeks ago, on an evening, I went through my Facebook feed, Twitter feed, Linkedin feed, google news feed and they all ended up depressing me thoroughly. There were mergers in the semiconductor industry that were unparalleled and folks were ending without jobs (this is Deja vu for me and it seems to have something to do with the election cycle for sure. Third time I am seeing this correlation), there were folks in south India fighting over a water dispute, there was US election politics and the ads in social media that just made me want to go throw up(I totally sympathize with swing state voters and what they go through), not to mention that work was tough as it is and we were going through what was probably the toughest phase of a remodeling at home. 

After some interesting feedback from my wife and kids, just decided to do the following :

- delete the folder called "social" in my iPhone (which meant no FB, twitter, linkedin, etc. )

- delete safari from my home screen in the Mac. So there was no internet searching, no news, nothing, no late night comedy shows watched the next day, nothing.

- there is no TV at home anyways, so that was automatically taken care of

- the radio was turned off in the car while I was in the car, no exceptions

This in itself was an interesting experience. The first two days, you instinctively search for that folder when sitting in the restroom at work or home, come home and try to check some cricket score, look for that FB feed... but with some training, you get past it after day 3 and stop looking. 

San and the kids were right. I spend a lot more time with them, have meaningful conversations without distractions (they are the ones more distracted now), had fights with them which I actually won! (doesn't happen), laughed a lot, lived a lot better in short!

Then just before the Asia trip, went to check the feed, just to make sure there were no world events in that part of the world that would affect me and sure enough there was a Typhoon going through on our flight path on the way back.  The fact that social media I am used to are all blocked helped continue the fasting!

During that 2 hours spent after a 10 day break, realized that nothing is really changing. Same news feed. Same negativity overwhelming the positive.

The only postivie things were : nice photos of dancing ladies, landscapes and puppies from three of my friends, posts of my friends improving on their yoga experience in and out of the hot room (either smiling faces or faces that could bore a hole right through you with their intensity!)  and the snaps of friends who posted things about their kids doing stuff!

The rest of the feed was a bottomless abyss which drowned out the positives. 

That made me want to do two things. Find a way to filter the things I didn't want to see (it is out there and we should know it is out there, but there is no need to over dose on it), or continue the media fasting indefinitely.

Two days ago, I had an interesting conversation with my yoga teacher and I realized again that it is good to have conversations, it is good to meet new people, interact. Just pick the people and the interaction and it will be okay. 

Now that there is a better system in place, will start writing again. Putting thoughts on screen (paper is better) is a good way to discharge some circuits in your head. A media fast and regular yoga, that is like a shutdown and reboot.. 

Let's see how Sundar 2.0 does in the coming months!

Walking the walk, talking the talk

Before we begin, this is a yoga post.  Not the usual experience in hot room post but rather a perspective on how the world is reacting to Yoga today based on latest media reports.

Three things sparked this post and I will list them in chronological order:

1. A friend of mine who knew I do Bikram Yoga but not much about the Yoga or Bikram recently told me "dude, I saw in the news that the guy who came up with this yoga you do is accused of a lot of bad things. So be careful with the yoga you do!"

2. Indian media reports in last month have a flurry of articles on Shri Shri (Art of Living), his recent event near Delhi and his tweets on cricket matches and articles on Baba Ramdev, another popular Yoga teacher/activist for his statements on what constitutes patriotism and the follow up internet memes about "does yoga help grow a brain?"

3. An article in YogaInternational which claims to debunk Bikram Yoga

Here is my perspective from personal experience.

Bikram Yoga worked for me. It continues to do the job for me. It has been nothing short of a miracle for me. By extension, I can say "Hatha yoga worked for me" and "the heat worked for me". Now what do I mean by "worked"?

Walked into the hot room for the first time, five years ago,  being 18-20 lbs over weight, depressed and having a range of other health issues after an accident in what can only be described as a downward spiral at work and home. Within a month I was back at my normal weight and feeling positive. With a fresh energy that made me a better person, it helped me through even tougher times at home and work over the next few years. Bikram Yoga turned that downward spiral into an upward spiral with positivity reinforcing more positive things. 

Could this be just me? The answer is No. It was definitely the Yoga. It is true that I work my ass off in the hot room and give it everything I got,  but still, it was the Yoga that made a difference. There is something magical about the way this sequence is put together that it worked, for me.

Does this work for everyone? The answer again is No. I happened to be at the right place at the right time in the right mindset. Had nothing to lose by walking into the room and everything to gain. The visual and non visual changes made me go back into the room, over and over and over again. More than 20 people have joined or tried Bikram Yoga after seeing me change over the last five years, but only 4 are still doing it. They all have their reasons for dropping out. Don't like the sweat, the smell, don't like to wash my hair so often, it is too long a time commitment, I am already flexible enough, etc. etc. None of them told me they stopped coming, because they injured themselves or they were afraid of their image because of what they hear in the news about Bikram or any of the other prominent Yoga teachers. 

Does it have to work for everyone? Hell, NO! If you are not serious about making a change and cannot take an opportunity to turn your life around, no yoga is going to work for you. The folks who have issues with the heat have tried other yoga and it works for them. The folks who have issues with 90 minutes have tried other forms of yoga for shorter times and some of them are very happy with the improvements. 

Does Bikram Yoga work? The answer is Yes! Have seen many miracles like me out there over the years. The folks who see the benefit come repeatedly. It seems to be a hit or miss thing. Based on the stats I collect, chances are, if you are a type A personality, Bikram Yoga has a higher chance of working for you. 

If you want to get results from Yoga you need the following basic ingredients:

- Right Teacher :There are tons of youtube videos on the poses and how to do them, but there is no substitute for a teacher who goes over the nuances. The devil is in the details. It is very easy to hurt yourself by doing the wrong thing in a yoga class (I am told it is easier to injure oneself in normal temperature classes compared to hot room classes) and blame the yoga for your injuries. A teacher who is qualified and has been through this learning experience first hand works better than a Youtube video. 

- Right method : Know what you are doing.  Not based on what you think the right thing is from your mind or just from your bodies feedback. If I only listented to the voice in my head that told me what my body was capable of doing, should have quit yoga after day 2. Listen to the teacher.

- Right commitment : Consistency and sincerity in any practice will help move it in the right direction. That goes for any learning. Practice makes perfect and in this case it is an asymptotic relationship towards perfection. 

- Right mindset : Keeping an open mind to learning new things first hand as opposed to infering from other people's experience definitely helps. 

I have only done Bikram Yoga in the last five years but the things above are generic enough for learning anything new, be it a musical instrument or a new language and chances are, with any type of Yoga, a right teacher, technique, dedication and mindset will go a long way. 

All that said, all three of those things that prompted me to write this post go towards three things.

Do not link the Yoga to the Yogi:

Yoga has not changed over the years. Pretty much every posture that you can do with the hardware a human being has, is out there in all its variants and documented extensively in stone to paper to 0's and 1's.

Over time, folks have come up with routines that are optimized towards different results. The most popular ones seem to take a "greatest benefit for the average person" approach. They are like Children's Tylenol. Works great for most kids for most ailments. Then of course you cannot expect to cure cancer with it. 

Do all Yoga teachers who have created a successful routine or a successful franchise or following, required to be perfect human beings? It is a fallacy of human kind to venerate and elevate humans to god status and then see their gods go down in their own eyes. Goes for politicians, sportstars, movie stars and definitely Yoga gurus! People may be fallible and not perfect all the time. That does not mean the works they create are bad. It is very much possible that someday I will lose my mind as an older person, but that does not take away everything I do till I reach that age. 

Before you decide to believe others on Yoga's efficacy, try it yourself : 

Yoga in this context is like religion. There has to be faith first. Then there is the way. Then again, there is no "one way". The way you want is the one that works for you and that doesn't have to work for everyone. 

The difference between Yoga and religion is that in Yoga, a set of physical exercies and breathing has the ability to transform minds even though nothing is being said about the mental transformation in the class. You come in day and and day out and do the exercises, but it changes the way you think, about yourself and your relationship to everything around you. You know it is the exercise because, you get these brilliant moments of clarity in the middle of struggling through the exercises.

You have to try Yoga with the right pre-requisites. If someone else got injured doing yoga, died during yoga training (first time I heard that was in this Yogainternational article) etc. etc. one of those pre-requisites was not there. If you are not the type who is good at taking instructions from a teacher, chances are you are likely to injure yourself. Same goes for the other pre-requisites.. right teacher, right method, right commitment. 

Don't take my word for it : 

We live in a world where the lines between opinion and fact are being blurred by Like buttons and 140 characters at a time, a world where it is difficult to differentiate between a genuinely researched news article and an infomercial. It is also a world where people with responsibility, following, power and money are the ones most likely to abuse it.

I can request you go to find a Bikram Yoga studio and try a class with a teacher who went to teacher training with Bikram himself, to ensure you are not going to injure yourself and come out with a positive learning experience. Chances are you might end up in one of the 1000's of studios that claim to be Bikram Yoga but have teachers who teach whatever they want for however long they want. It is like buying coffee at the Starfucks store, where the lady on the cup looks very similar, but you drink at your own risk!

Finally, Yoga is getting a bad rap either because of some Yogi's words and actions, mistakes by the press or people like you and me believing blindly in what others say or do. The fact that Yoga has survivied for thousands of years is a testament to its ability to prevent ailments and enable faster healing, not to mention its ability to open minds for a lot of people. There are some who say it will work for everyone. I am not going that far. It might work for you. 

I for one, am happy that it works for me!  

Radical

I keep hearing the term "radicalized" and "radicalization" in casual conversations with people these days. Can only imagine what it must be like listening to news. So what is all this about being a "radical"? 

As a kid my definition of radical was a group of atoms that was free to attach to another group of atoms. 

The other definition is "affecting the fundamental nature of something, far reaching or thorough" and apparently that is what is being talked about, "Far reaching".

For lack of a better analogy, let us say there are multiple folks who want to go from various parts of the bay area to the golden gate bridge. If I had to go there I would take highway 101. Sure bet in my opinion and have been driving on it for many years. Know when to change to which lane, where to expect traffic, know I will get there.  If you ask anyone else in our house, chances are they will also say "take 101. best way"

There may be others who will bet on 280 for their own reasons. They will also get to the golden gate. Might be faster or slower, but they will get there and to them it is a safe bet.

There might even be a guy who says "I have a jet pack. I can get there much faster by going up to 2000 feet and going down". He may be right, he may be wrong. The jet pack might work for him, who knows?! Hopefully he does reach as well.

If a new family visits us here and they have never travelled to SFO, we might recommend them through 101 while a different family might suggest 280. Or they might just say "let me use Google maps to decide which route to take based on traffic info. that is crowdsourced"

Where am I going with all this?

Religion mostly provides some kind of route to a destination which most of us are worried about or cannot necessarily deal with until we die. Salvation! 

We will all swear by our religions as a sure bet to reach the other side based on our own lifes experiences, experiences of others we take for granted that are passed on through generations. Most of the time it is information that we cannot rely on as it is embellished over time and it seems to be a very rare event when someone seems to have died and come back to tell us what is on the other side. There is no dearth of smart people on the planet who can explain things by making us look here, there, inward, outward, etc. etc.

At the end of the day, there is no problem with people picking a comforable route to reach their destination. 

The problem is when one says emphatically that "my route is the only route. all other routes are false". It would be great if everyone got to go on a rotation program with different religions, much like a new college grad goes through different departments in a company before joining a particular group. It would be like we all get to try 101 and 280 or that jet pack if we can get our hands on it and see which route we prefer. Unfortunately, that is not realistic. 

What we could do is to acknowledge that different people will have their own comfort zones and let people go through their own routes. While this seems to be simple enough to say "live and let live", it may not be the real problem. It is all about money. That is a bigger problem that is beyond salvation of any kind. However, live and let live is a good place to start.

When I hear someone say "all muslims are terrorists", that person has been radicalized to believe something that is not true. It is as radical as folks who are chanting "death to America". 

There was a recent conversation with a friend who asked me "Most of the Indians I know in the bay area are so far right that they will put the tea party guys look like Bernie Sanders, yet you are preaching live and let live?" 

In all honesty I told him "the average american kid today is not getting an education on the world. they won't know the difference between India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Iran or Syria or for that matter a difference between different religions. My kids might know their world history and geography but that is not enough. It is like being a safe driver on a freeway where a drunk guy is coming in the wrong direction. End result is not going to be good for either driver. There are folks teaching their kids to hate, based on the fact that other kids are of a different skin color or wear a scarf or turban of some kind. My kids could wear a dupatta on their head and could be the target of a hate crime. I want to make sure that I support a live and let live policy and counter this hate"

I also acknowledged that islamophobia is very high among Hindu households that we interact with here in the bay area. Even on the recent India trip, we had many conversations with folks who belive that the Muslim population in India is increasing dispropotionately, not because more people are believing in Islam or converting to the religion, but because the Muslim folks are on a drive to increase their population where they are a local minority, irrespective of the quality of life they can give their kids.

A relative told me "while other communities are stopping with one or two kids, Muslim families are having four or five plus kids, the families tend to be poor and the kids are not educated and this in turn, feeds a dependence on their religious links to sponsor them and in return they are willing to do anything for their sponsors who are invariably people from the middle east with an agenda to create supporters in India". 

I am not sure if that is what is going on, as this sounds like how things were in Indian villages post Independence irrespective of religion. More kids meant more income and it could simply be that the poor folks are living in the past and economic and religious demographics are being mixed up.

What was clear to me after those conversations, was that the problems are not all about whose route is better. It is about the thought that there is strength in numbers, money and power! 

We are all pawns in an elaborate game played by folks who control the money. Most of what we hear is one side of a story that manages to reach us and the stories with money behind them invariably reach us better.

It is going to take the parents of today a herculean effort to make sure that their bigotry is not passed on to the kids. Our kids don't need to learn to hate. They could learn to love and accept diversity and differences. We need to educate our kids better. Not just our kids. All kids! Yes, I sound like an ad for "no child left behind!" that too for an education on social sciences in a world where math and science are being ignored to accomodate spreading more bigotry.

When I hear what is happening in our kids schools based on the stories they tell me, my stomach churns. In spite of what we teach them at home, they are becoming who they are based on the sum total of their experiences in and outside the house. They are smart and inquisitive and will absorb everything like a sponge. Sometimes I just cry because there are no decent answers to their questions. 

Think it was Deming who said "In god we trust. Everyone else bring data".

The way the world is going, we might have to ask God to bring data as well.

As for "radicalization", for anything to reach far, there are two forces behind it. A push and a pull. The pull for radicalization is there in every shape and form with every over zealous preacher saying "only route xyz can save you!". In spite of that pull existing, not everyone takes a radical view.

It also needs a push. Either the push is a mental defect of some kind in some individuals, or a society that creates a situation where people around the person push that person closer to what is pulling. The youth of today don't need that push. The more we teach our kids to hate, or fear people and things that are different from them, the more the push.

Actually like the Chinese folks I interact with in Asia. They work hard, play hard and religion doesn't seem to be a big part of the day to day life and they are doing fine. They think they are all going to a nice place after thus life and don't seem too worried. The Chinese folks in Cupertino though, seem to be very much like the desi folks when it comes to religious prejudices. The melting pot that is the US of A does seem to do strange things to folks when they melt in.

As we close down on 2015, it is my sincere hope that we all spread a message of peace and do our best to educate everyone around us on going after facts, instead of made up stuff on FB and Whatsapp! Teach your kids to be nice to all their classmates. We are working on it at home.

Media blitz..

NaMo has won by a landslide!

What the western media is doing, even after more than 1/2 a billion people have clearly said, "They want Development. They want good governance. They have moved on from 2002. They believe jobs and economy will take a focus and the people as a nation can pull out of the current stagnation.", is ridiculous!

Every news report and article today mentions "polarized", "divisive" etc. etc.

The US media needs to grow up!

An absolute majority! where is the polarization? where is the divisiveness? folks from every segment put economy over 2002.. 

Funny thing is that US media does the same thing with China. "No freedom, no rights etc. etc." is all we hear about China, all the time in US media. When I go to China, I see those people are actually happy that the country is growing. They don't see it as a big deal that the govt. is checking their mails. they don't care who their Premier is, as long as things improve day to day. There is a pragmatism there when it comes to accepting that a large population needs a lot of things to support it. The email snooping was happening in the US also, except we didn't know it! So all we pride ourselves on is not security but a false sense of security. 

When you have a billion plus mouths to feed, and a population distribution that is getting younger, you need different solutions. A larger population has larger inertia. It is not easy to move everyone in the same direction. Yet, that has to happen to a certain extent if development has to thrive at that scale. 

It is high time we sent a whole bunch of US media guys on some kind of exchange program to India and China!

There are a bunch of people in India who are still speculating that Modi's government will turn India into the dark ages and communal violence will be everywhere like 2002. Well, it has not happened in Gujarat for 12 years. Why will it happen all over now? 

The polarization seems to be in the minds of folks who do not back Modi, with respect to the sanity of Gujarathis. The argument seems to be "NaMo did not develop Gujarat. Gujarat and Gujarathis were developed long before Modi even came into the picture." If they accept that Gujarathis are smart folks, then they voted Modi and kept him their leader for 12 years! So they must see something in him, no? The response to that question has always been met with silence. 

It is time the media moved on from making Modi into some kind of monster, and see him as the builder that he is!

Going to "fast"

Getting tired of hearing the news with every two time politician and social activist starting a fast.

Seriously here, here, here and here...and much much more.

Half these guys are overweight and their fasting is more of a much needed break from binge eating. To top this off, they get a ton of press, a "breaking the fast" press release where everyone is feeding the faster (fastee?) a glass of orange juice, milk, sweets etc. which negate the whole fast this guy was on, which by the way does not go past one day (typically)!

Next thing we know there will be headlines like :

10 year old boy goes on fast unto iPad 3 or

Engineering graduate goes on fast unto getting a girlfriend in Chennai etc..

For crying out loud, enough with the fasting already!

We should say "patni kedakkariya.. Nalladhu! Odambu koraiyum." (Want to starve for a few days, good. Your body will get in shape).

Or I am going to go on a fast unto no fasting..

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